An Alabaster Box Part 5

"Don't you tell me a thing you don't want to."

"I think I had better wait just a little. But I don't know about all those things."

"Say, why don't you send them to missionaries out West?"

"Oh, could I?"

"Of course you can. What's to hinder?"

"When I buy that place will you help me?"

"Of course I will. Now you are talking! I'm glad to do anything like that. I think I'd be nutty if I had to live in the same house as that fair."

The girl burst into a lovely peal of laughter. "Exactly what I thought all the time," said she. "I wanted to buy them; you don't know how much; but it was like buying rabbits, and white elephants, and--oh, I don't know! a perfect menagerie of things I couldn't bear to live with, and I didn't see how I could give them away, and I couldn't think of a place to throw them away." She laughed again.

Jim stopped suddenly. "Say."

"What?"

"Why, it will be an awful piece of work to pack off all those contraptions, and it strikes me it is pretty hard on the missionaries. There's a gravel pit down back of the Bolton place, and if you buy it--"

"What?"

"Well, bury the fair there."

Lydia stopped short, and laughed till she cried. "You don't suppose they would ever find out?"

"Trust me. You just have the whole lot moved into the house, and we'll fix it up."

"Oh, I can't tell you how thankful I am to you," said Lydia fervently. "I felt like a nightmare with all those things. Some of them can be used of course, but some--oh, those picture throws, and those postage stamp plates!"

"They are funny, but sort of pitiful, too," said Jim. "Women are sort of pitiful, lots of them. I'm glad I am a man."

"I should think you would be," said the girl. She looked up in his face with an expression which he did not see. He was regarding women in the abstract; she was suddenly regarding men in the individual.

Chapter IV

Elliot slept later than usual the morning after the fair. Generally he slept the beautiful, undisturbed sleep of the young and healthy; that night, for some reason, he did not. Possibly the strange break which the buying of the fair had made in the course of his everyday life caused one also between his conscious and unconscious state, which his brain refused to bridge readily. Wesley had not been brought face to face, many times in his life, with the unprecedented.

He had been brought before it, although in a limited fashion, at the church fair. The unprecedented is more or less shattering, partaking of the nature of a spiritual bomb. Lydia Orr's mad purchase of that collection of things called a fair disturbed his sense of values. He asked himself over and over who was this girl? More earnestly he asked himself what her motives could be.

But the question which most agitated him was his relations with the girl, f.a.n.n.y Dodge. He realized that recently he had approached the verge of an emotional crisis. If Mrs. Black whom he had at the time fairly cursed in his heart, in spite of his profession, had not appeared with her notice of dinner, he would be in a most unpleasant predicament. Only the girl's innate good sense could have served as a refuge, and he reflected with the utmost tenderness that he might confidently rely upon that. He was almost sure that the poor girl loved him. He was quite sure that he loved her. But he was also sure, with a strong sense of pride in her, that she would have refused him, not on mercenary grounds, for f.a.n.n.y he knew would have shared a crust and hovel with the man she loved; but f.a.n.n.y would love the man too well to consent to the crust and the hovel, on his own account. She would not have said in so many words, "What! marry you, a minister so poor that a begging fair has to be held to pay his salary?" She would have not refused him her love and sympathy, but she would have let him down so gently from the high prospect of matrimony that he would have suffered no jolt.

Elliot was a good fellow. It was on the girl's account that he suffered. He suffered, as a matter of course. He wanted f.a.n.n.y badly, but he realized himself something of a cad. He discounted his own suffering; perhaps, as he told himself with sudden suspicion of self-conceit, he overestimated hers. Still, he was sure that the girl would suffer more than he wished. He blamed himself immeasurably. He tried to construct air castles which would not fall, even before the impact of his own thoughts, in which he could marry this girl and live with her happily ever after, but the man had too much common sense. He did not for a moment now consider the possibility of stepping, without influence, into a fat pastorate. He was sure that he could count confidently upon nothing better than this.

The next morning he looked about his room wearily, and a plan which he had often considered grew upon him. He got the keys of the unoccupied parsonage next door, from Mrs. Black, and went over the house after breakfast. It was rather a s.p.a.cious house, old, but in tolerable preservation. There was a southeast room of one story in height, obviously an architectural afterthought, which immediately appealed to him. It was practically empty except for charming possibilities, but it contained a few essentials, and probably the former inc.u.mbent had used it as a study. There was a wood stove, a standing desk fixed to the wall, some shelves, an old table, and a couple of armchairs. Wesley at once resolved to carry out his plan.

He would move his small store of books from his bedroom at Mrs.

Black's, arrange them on the shelves, and set up his study there. He was reasonably sure of obtaining wood enough for a fire to heat the room when the weather was cold.

He returned and told Mrs. Black, who agreed with him that the plan was a good one. "A minister ought to have his study," said she, "and of course the parsonage is at your disposal. The parish can't rent it. That room used to be the study, and you will have offers of all the wood you want to heat it. There's plenty of cut wood that folks are glad to donate. They've always sent loads of wood to heat the minister's study. Maybe they thought they'd stand less chance of h.e.l.l fire if they heated up the gospel in this life."

"Then I'll move my books and writing materials right over there,"

said Elliot with a most boyish glee.

Mrs. Black nodded approvingly. "So I would." She hesitated a moment, then she spoke again. "I was just a little bit doubtful about taking that young woman in yesterday," said she.

Elliot regarded her curiously. "Then you never had met her before?"

"No, she just landed here with her trunk. The garage man brought her, and she said he told her I took boarders, and she asked me to take her. I don't know but I was kind of weak to give in, but the poor little thing looked sort of nice, and her manners were pretty, so I took her. I thought I would ask you how you felt about it this morning, but there ain't any reason to, perhaps, for she ain't going to stay here very long, anyway. She says she's going to buy the old Bolton place and have it fixed up and settle down there as soon as she can. She told me after you had gone out. She's gone now to look at it. Mr. Whittle was going to meet her there. Queer, ain't it?"

"It does look extraordinary, rather," agreed Elliot, "but Miss Orr may be older than she looks."

"Oh, she ain't old, but she's of age. She told me that, and I guess she's got plenty of money."

"Well," said Elliot, "that is rather a fine old place. She may be connected with the Bolton family."

"That's exactly what I think, and if she was she wouldn't mention it, of course. I think she's getting the house in some sort of a business way. Andrew Bolton may have died in prison by this time, and she may be an heir. I think she is going to be married and have the house fixed up to live in."

"That sounds very probable."

"Yes, it does; but what gets me is her buying that fair. I own I felt a little scared, and wondered if she had all her b.u.t.tons, but when she told me about the house I knew of course she could use the things for furnishing, all except the cake and candy, and I suppose if she's got a lot of money she thought she'd like to buy to help. I feel glad she's coming. She may be a real help in the church. Now don't color up. Ministers have to take help. It's part of their discipline."

Sometimes Mrs. Solomon Black said a wise and consoling thing. Elliot, moving his effects to the old parsonage, considered that she had done so then. "She is right. I have no business to be proud in the profession calling for the lowly-hearted of the whole world," he told himself.

After he had his books arranged he sat down in an armchair beside a front window, and felt rather happy and at home. He reproached himself for his content when he read the morning paper, and considered the horrors going on in Europe. Why should he, an able-bodied man, sit securely in a room and gaze out at a peaceful village street? he asked himself as he had scores of times before.

Then the imperial individual, which obtrudes even when conscience cries out against it, occupied his mind. Pretty f.a.n.n.y Dodge in her blue linen was pa.s.sing. She never once glanced at the parsonage.

Forgetting his own scruples and resolves, he thought unreasonably that she might at least glance up, if she had the day before at all in her mind. Suddenly the unwelcome reflection that he might not be as desirable as he had thought himself came over him.

He got up, put on his hat, and walked rapidly in the direction of the old Bolton house. Satisfying his curiosity might serve as a palliative to his sudden depression with regard to his love affair.

It is very much more comfortable to consider oneself a cad, and acknowledge to oneself love for a girl, and be sure of her unfortunate love for you, than to consider oneself the dupe of the girl. f.a.n.n.y had a keen sense of humor. Suppose she had been making fun of him. Suppose she had her own aspirations in other quarters. He walked on until he reached the old Bolton house. The door stood open, askew upon rusty hinges. Wesley Elliot entered and glanced about him with growing curiosity. The room was obviously a kitchen, one side being occupied by a huge brick chimney inclosing a built-in range half devoured with rust; wall cupboards, a sink and a decrepit table showed gray and ugly in the greenish light of two tall windows, completely blocked on the outside with over-grown shrubs. An indescribable odor of decaying plaster, chimney-soot and mildew hung in the heavy air.

A door to the right, also half open, led the investigator further.

Here the floor shook ominously under foot, suggesting rotten beams and unsteady sills. The minister walked cautiously, noting in pa.s.sing a portrait defaced with cobwebs over the marble mantelpiece and the great circular window opening upon an expanse of tangled gra.s.s and weeds, through which the sun streamed hot and yellow. Voices came from an adjoining room; he could hear Deacon Whittle's nasal tones upraised in fervid a.s.sertion.

"Yes, ma'am!" he was saying, "this house is a little out of repair, you can see that fer yourself; but it's well built; couldn't be better. A few hundred dollars expended here an' there'll make it as good as new; in fact, I'll say better'n new! They don't put no such material in houses nowadays. Why, this woodwork--doors, windows, floors and all--is clear, white pine. You can't buy it today for no price. Costs as much as m'hogany, come to figure it out. Yes, _ma'am!_ the woodwork alone in this house is worth the price of one of them little new shacks a builder'll run up in a couple of months.

And look at them mantelpieces, pure tombstone marble; and all carved like you see. Yes, ma'am! there's as many as seven of 'em in the house. Where'll you find anything like that, I'd like to know!"

"I--think the house might be made to look very pleasant, Mr.

Whittle," Lydia replied, in a hesitating voice.

Wesley Elliot fancied he could detect a slight tremor in its even flow. He pushed open the door and walked boldly in.

"Good-morning, Miss Orr," he exclaimed, advancing with outstretched hand. "Good-morning, Deacon! ...Well, well! what a melancholy old ruin this is, to be sure. I never chanced to see the interior before."

Deacon Whittle regarded his pastor sourly from under puckered brows.