Pocket Island Part 3

"No," she replied, "I will not; why should I?"

"Well," he continued, "to be candid, I was rather ashamed of myself that evening, or at least ashamed of my clothes. Then you told me you were going to the academy, and for that reason mainly I wanted to go, so you see what resulted from my going to the party. I do not think father intended to send me, and he would not if I had not coaxed him. My first term there was not very pleasant for many reasons, and had I known all I was to encounter I think my courage would have failed me. I am glad now that it did not." He paused a moment and then continued in a lower tone: "Whatever good it has done me is all due to you."

No more was said on the subject, and as they rode along in silence, each was thinking of the curious web of emotions that was moulding their lives and making definite objects grow from intangible impulses. He was hardly conscious yet what a motive force in his plans Liddy was destined to be; and she was filled with a new and sweet consciousness of a woman's power to shape a man's plans in life. When her home was reached, and after he had a.s.sisted her to alight, they stood for a moment by the gate beneath the maples. No light was visible in the house; no sound of any nature was heard. The sharp outlines of the buildings were softened by the moonlight, and the bold formation of the Blue Hills, vague and indistinct. The near-by brook, as of yore, sparkled like silver coin, and the landscape was bathed in mellow light. As Liddy's face was turned toward him, a ray of moons.h.i.+ne fell upon it, and her eyes seemed to fill with a new tenderness. It was a time and place for loving thoughts and words, and what these two young hearts felt called upon to utter may be safely left to the reader's imagination.

When Manson drove away, he felt that the future was bright before him, and that life held new and wonderfully sweet possibilities. If he built a few air castles as he rode along in silence and alone, and if into them crept a fair girl's face and tender blue eyes, it was but natural.

The magic sweetness of our first dreams of love come but once in their pure simplicity; and none ever afterward seem quite like them. We may strive to feel the same tender thrill; we may think the same thoughts and build the same fairy palaces, woven out of moonbeams and filled with the same divine illusions, but all in vain, for none can live life over.

When Liddy entered her home her footsteps seemed touched with a new life. Perhaps the effect of "Money Musk" had not entirely died away.

CHAPTER IX.

GOOD ADVICE.

The next day after the husking, when Manson resumed his studies at the academy, a new and serious ambition kept crowding itself into his thoughts. Some definite shape of what the object of a man's existence should be would in spite of all efforts mix itself with his algebra, and form an extra unknown quant.i.ty, still more elusive. He tried to put it out of his mind, but the captivating air castle would not down. Of course Liddy formed a central figure in this phantom dwelling, and to such an extent that he hardly dared to look at her when they met in the recitation room for fear she would read his thoughts. Occasionally, while studying he would steal a look across the schoolroom at her well-shaped head with its crown of sunny hair, but her face was usually bent over her book. She had always treated him with quiet but pleasant friendliness at school, and he, understanding her nature by degrees, had come to feel it would annoy her if he were too attentive. His newborn ambition he felt must be absolutely locked in his own heart for many years to come, or until some vocation in life and the ability to earn a livelihood for two could be won.

For the entire week his castle building troubled him in a way, as a sweet delusion, but a detriment to study, and then he resolved to put it away. "It may never come, and it may," he said to himself, "but if it does it will only be by hard work." He had never felt satisfied to become a farmer like his father, but what else to apply himself to he had no idea. He knew this was to be his last term at the academy, and that he must then turn his attention to some real occupation in life. He had been in the habit of calling upon Liddy nearly every Sunday evening for the past year, and to look forward to it as the one pleasant antic.i.p.ation of the week. He felt she was glad to see him, and what was of nearly as much comfort, that her father was, as well. He resolved when a good chance came to ask Mr. Camp's advice as to some choice of a profession.

When he called the next Sunday evening, which happened to be chilly, Liddy met him with her usual pleasant smile and invited him into the parlor, where a bright fire was burning. She wore a new and becoming blue sacque, and he thought she never looked more charming. He had usually spent part of the evenings in the sitting-room with the family, but this time he felt he was considered as Liddy's especial company and treated as such.

"I have noticed a cloud on your face several times the past week," she said, as soon as they were seated. "Has your algebra bothered you, or is the barn dance troubling your conscience?"

"I have been building foolish air castles," he replied, "for one thing, and trying to solve a harder problem than algebra contains, for another.

The husking dance does not trouble me. I would like to go to one every week. Do you feel any remorse from being there?"

"No," she answered, "I do not; and yet I heard this week that some one over in town who is active in the church said it was a disgrace to all who were there. I wish people thought differently about such things. I enjoyed the dance ever so much, but I do not like to be considered as acting disgracefully. Do you?"

"I presume you will be so considered," he responded, with a shade of annoyance on his face, "if you go to dances in this town. I wish the busybodies of that church would mind their business."

He made no further comment regarding the dance, but sat looking gloomily at the fire.

"What ails you to-night?" asked Liddy, finally breaking the silence; "you seem out of sorts."

"I am all right," he replied, with forced cheerfulness. "I have been trying to solve the problem of a future vocation when I leave school next spring, and I do not know what to do."

Liddy was silent. Perhaps some intuitive idea of what was in his mind came to her, for, although he had never uttered a word of love to her except by inference, she knew in her own heart he cared for her and cared a good deal.

"Come, Charlie," she said at last, "don't worry about a vocation now.

It's time enough to cross bridges when you come to them. Do you know,"

she continued, thinking to take his mind from his troubles, "that I have discovered why Mr. Webber does not like me? It's simply because I do not flatter him enough. I have known for a long time I was not a favorite of his, and now I know why. You know what a little bunch of mischief Alice Barnes is. She whispers more than any other girl in school, and makes more fun of him, and yet she is one of his prime favorites. Well, one day last week, at noontime, while she was talking with three or four of us girls, he came along, and she up and asked him if he wouldn't read 'The Raven' the next Wednesday afternoon when, you know, we all have compositions, and then she winked at us. He took it all right, and you ought to have heard the self-satisfied way in which he said: 'Certainly, Miss Barnes. I shall be very happy to read it for you.' The way he strutted across the schoolroom after that! Lida Stanton said he reminded her of a turkey gobbler."

Manson laughed.

"Webber doesn't like me, either," he said, "and never has from the first. I don't care. I came to the academy to learn, and not to curry favor with him. Willie Converse is another of his pets and is cutting up all the time, but he never sees it, or makes believe he does not."

The discussion of school affairs ended here, for even Manson's evident dislike of the princ.i.p.al was not strong enough to overcome the mood he was in. He sat in glum silence for a time, apparently buried in deep thought, while Liddy rocked idly in her low chair opposite. The crackling fire and the loud tick of the tall clock out in the hall were the only sounds.

At last he arose, and going to the center table, where the lamp stood, he took up a small daguerrotype of Liddy in a short dress, and looked at it. The face was that of a young and pretty girl of ten, with big, wondering eyes, a sweet mouth, and hair in curls.

"That was the way you looked," he said finally, "at the district school the day I wrote a painful verse in your alb.u.m and you gave me a lock of hair. How time flies!"

"You are in a more painful mood to-night," responded Liddy, glad to talk about anything. "You have the worst case of blues I ever saw;" and then she added, after a pause, and in a low voice: "It makes me blue, too."

Manson made no reply, but sat down again and studied the fire. The little note of sympathy in her voice was a strong temptation to him to make a clean breast of it all; to tell her there and then how much he loved her; what his hopes were, and how utterly in the dark he was as to any definite plans in life. The thought made his heart beat loudly. He looked at Liddy, quietly rocking on the opposite side of the fireplace.

A little touch of sadness had crept into her face, and the warmth of the fire had lent an unusual color to her cheeks and a more golden gleam to her hair. As he looked at the sweet picture his courage began to leave him. "No, not yet," he said to himself, "she will think me a fool."

"Let's pop some corn," said Liddy suddenly, still anxious to say anything or do anything to break what seemed to her his unhappy train of thought; "the fire is just right."

She waited for no answer, but stepped quickly into the kitchen and returned with a long-handled popper, three small ears of popcorn, and a dish.

"There," she said, cheerfully, "you hold the popper while I sh.e.l.l the corn. I am going to make you work now, to drive away the blues. I believe it's the best medicine for you."

There is no doubt she understood his needs better than he supposed, for with the popping of the corn the cloud upon his face wore away. When it came time to go Liddy rested her hand a moment on his arm and said, in a low voice: "Charlie, we have known each other for a good many years, and have been very good friends. I am going to give you a little advice: Don't borrow trouble, and don't brood over your future so much. It will shape itself all in due time, and you will win your way as other men have done. I have faith in you."

Her brave and sisterly words cheered him wonderfully, and when he had gone Liddy sat down a moment to watch the dying embers. She, too, had felt the contagion of his mood, and strange to say, his hopes and fears were insensibly merging themselves into her own. She watched the fading fire for a full half hour, absorbed in retrospection, and then lighting a small lamp and turning out the large one, she walked down the hall and upstairs to her room.

"I wish that clock wouldn't tick so loud," she thought as she reached her door, "it makes the house sound like a tomb."

CHAPTER X.

HISTORY.

From the time Manson, as a barefooted boy, caught trout in Ragged Brook, until the winter of '62, when, a st.u.r.dy young man of eighteen, he had fallen deeply in love with Liddy Camp, a few changes had taken place in Southton. Three different princ.i.p.als had been in charge of the academy, one of these, a Mr. Snow, being very capable and universally popular.

Later, when Mr. Webber succeeded to that position, the question of popularity may have been considered an open one. We must do him the justice to say he was efficient, however, and if he had an exaggerated idea of his own importance, it was inherited, and a failing that neither time nor experience could eradicate.

The two worthy dominies continued to try to convert sinners by exhaustive arguments on predestination and infant d.a.m.nation, but strange to say, made little progress. A few of the good townspeople who were not members of either church, as well as some that were, had been for many years reading and thinking for themselves, and had come to realize that the dry bones of Calvinistic argument had lost their force, and that the Supreme Being was not the merciless G.o.d the churches had for years depicted him, but rather a Father whose love and mercy was infinite. The then ultra-liberal Unitarian idea had begun to spread and a few who had outgrown the orthodox religion organized a Unitarian Society, and built a modest church to wors.h.i.+p in. Among these pioneers in thought were Loring Camp and Jesse Olney, the latter the author of some of the best school-books then used; a deep thinker and a leader in town affairs.

There were other thinking men, of course, who were prominent in this new movement, but, as this simple story is not an historical narrative, their names need not be mentioned. This new church and its followers of course incurred the condemnation of the other two, especially the one led by Parson Jotham, who exhausted all argument and invective to convince his hearers that Unitarianism and sin were synonymous terms, and that all the new church followers were surely slated for the fiery furnace. So vigorous were his utterances in this connection, and so explicit his description of the fire that is never quenched and the torture that never ends, that it was said some of his hearers could smell brimstone and discern a blue halo about his venerable white head.

One of his favorite arguments was to describe the intense joy those who were saved through his scheme of salvation would feel when they came to look over the heavenly walls and see the writhing agony of all sinners in the burning lake below. When his eloquence reached this climax he would cease pounding his open Bible and glare over the top of his tall pulpit at the a.s.sembled congregation, in the hope, perhaps, of discovering among them some Unitarian sinner who could thus be made to realize his doom.

In justice to Parson Jotham it must be said that his intentions were of the best, no doubt, but his estimate of the motive forces of human action was too narrow. He believed the only way to win people from vice to virtue and good conduct was to scare them into it.

In spite of all the denunciations of the other two churches, the new one, though feeble at first, slowly increased its following. To this one with their respective parents, came Liddy and Manson. While perhaps not mature enough to understand the wide distinction between Unitarianism and Calvinism, they realized a little of the inexpressible horror of Rev. Mr. Jotham's theories of infant d.a.m.nation and the like, and were glad to hear no more of them. Like many other young people to-day, they accepted their parents' opinions on all such matters as best and wisest.

They were not regular in their church attendance, either, for Liddy could not always leave her invalid mother, and occasionally she and Manson found a drive in the summer's woods or a visit to the top of Blue Hill more alluring than even the Unitarian church. Of similar tastes in that respect, and both ardent admirers of nature, and loving fields and flowers, birds and brooks, as the lovers of nature do, they often wors.h.i.+pped in that broad church. Manson especially, who had from childhood spent countless hours alone in the forests or roaming over the hills or along the streams, had learned all the lessons there taught, and now found Liddy a wonderfully sympathetic and sweet companion. To spend a few quiet hours on pleasant Sundays in showing her some pretty cascade where the foam-flecks floated around and around in the pool below; or a dark gorge, where the roots of the trees along its bank grew out and over the rocks like the arms of fabled gnomes, was a supreme delight to him. He knew where every bed of trailing arbutus for miles around could be found; where sweet flag and checkerberries grew; where all the shady glens and pretty grottoes were, and to show her all these charming places and unfold to her his quaint and peculiar ideas about nature and all things that pertain to the woods and mountains delighted his heart.

Since the evening when she had given him the wise advice not to cross bridges till he came to them, they had grown nearer together in thought and feeling, and whether in summer, when they drove in shady woods or visited a beautiful waterfall, where the rising mist seemed full of rainbows when the sun shone through it; or in winter, when they went sleighing over the hills, after an ice storm, and were breathless with admiration at the wondrous vision, no words or declaration of love had as yet pa.s.sed his lips. He had vowed to himself that none should until the time came when he had more than mere love to offer. Since all his acts and words showed her so plainly what his feelings were, she began to realize what it must all mean in the end, and that in due time he would ask her the one important question that contains the joy or sorrow of a woman's life. As this belief began to grow upon her it caused her many hours of serious thought, and had she not discovered in her own heart an answering throb of love it is certain she was far too honorable to have allowed his attentions to continue.

How the townspeople viewed the affair may be gathered from a remark made by Aunt Sally Hart, the village gossip, one Sunday at church.

"They tell me," she said, "that young Manson's keeping stiddy company with Liddy Camp, and they're likely to make a match. Wonder if they'll go to live on his father's farm, or what he will do?"