Clover and Blue Grass Part 3

Mary touched John on the arm. She tried to speak, and could not; but there was no need for speech. John understood the pallor of her face and the imploring look in her eyes. He whispered a word to the children, then he and Mary rose and pa.s.sed out unnoticed.

"What's the matter?" said John in a low voice, as soon as they were fairly outside the door.

But Mary only shook her head and walked faster toward the old rockaway, which was standing in the shade of a tall chestnut tree. There she sank on the ground and began laughing and sobbing, while John, thoroughly alarmed, knelt by her, patting her on the back and saying: "There, there, Honey; don't cry," as if he were talking to a frightened child.

The touch of his kind hands and the fresh, sweet air on her face were quick restoratives, and in a moment or two Mary was able to speak.

"Don't look so scared, John," she gasped faintly. "There's nothing much the matter; I'll be all right in a minute or two. I haven't been feeling very well lately, and I'm afraid I ought to have stayed at home to-day.

It was too warm in the church; and I got to looking at the clothes the people had on, and nearly everything new was cut out by my chart, and it seemed so funny, and I felt all at once as if I wanted to cry or laugh, I didn't know which, but I'm better now."

John was listening with keen attention. Nearly all the new clothes in the church made by Mary's chart, and she so tired and nervous that she could not stay inside the church! His face grew grave and stern, but when he spoke, his voice had its usual gentleness.

"You come along with me, Mary," he said, "We'll have our Sunday meetin'

out of doors, after all."

He lifted the cushions and robes from the rockaway and started towards the woods at the back of the church, Mary following with the docility of utter weariness. It was wrong, of course, to miss the May Meeting sermon, but how could she worship G.o.d with that striped shirt waist in front of her? Her temples throbbed, and there was a queer feeling at the back of her head.

John laid the cushions on the ground and folded the robes into a pillow.

"Now, Mary, lay right down here," he commanded. "Sunday's a day of rest, and you've got to rest. Don't you worry about the children. If they get tired listenin' to the sermon, they've got sense enough to get up and come out here; and n.o.body's goin' to know whether you and me are in church or not. They're too much taken up with the baptizin' and the bride."

And with these a.s.surances Mary closed her eyes, and surrendered herself to the sweet influence of the day and hour. The sunshine lay warm on her shoulders and hands, the breath of May fanned her aching head, and John, like a strong angel, was watching beside her. She heard the twitter of birds in the top branches of the giant oaks, the voices of the choir came to her softened by the distance, and her brain took up the rhythm of the hymn they were singing:

"This is the day the Lord hath made, He calls the hours his own; Let heaven rejoice, let earth be glad, And praise surround the throne."

But before the last stanza had been sung, the tension of brain and body relaxed. John saw that she slept and thanked G.o.d. He looked at her sleeping face, and the anxiety in his own deepened. For five years he had borne the cross of a peevish, invalid wife, and then he had known the bliss of living with a perfectly sound woman. He had never a.n.a.lyzed the nature of his love for Mary,--as soon would he have torn away the petals of Mary's budding roses to see what was at their heart,--and he did not know that the charm that had drawn him to her and kept him her lover through three years of married life, was not alone her sweet, unselfish nature, but the exquisite health that made work a pleasure, the perfect equilibrium of nerve and brain that kept a song on her lips, that made her step like a dance, and her mere presence a spell to soothe and heal. His heart sank at the thought of her losing these. He had always shielded her from the heavy drudgery that farm life brings to a woman, and now he called memory to the witness stand and sternly questioned her concerning the cause of this sudden change. She had been having a good deal of company lately, but then Mary enjoyed company. She had never complained about the unusual number of callers, but who ever heard Mary complain about anything? She was not the complaining kind.

John was not a psychologist, and could not know the danger to nerve and brain that lies in enforced--even self-enforced--submission to unpleasant circ.u.mstances, but his brow darkened as he thought of her words: "Nearly everything new was cut out by my chart." And yet, what right had he to blame the neighbors for their thoughtlessness? If he, Mary's husband, had not been considerate of her health and happiness, why should he expect the neighbors to be so?

"It's all my fault at last," he thought remorsefully, as he leaned over the sleeping woman and brushed away an insect that had lighted on her gold-brown hair.

Yes, there were faint lines around her mouth and under her eyes, and the contour of her cheek was not as girlish as it had been a month ago.

"If that chart was at the bottom of the trouble--" But again why should he blame the chart or the agent, when the main fault was his?

Taking off his coat, he laid it gently over her shoulders and seated himself so that the shadow of his body would screen her from a ray of sun that lay across her closed eyelids.

The minister's voice rose and fell in earnest exhortation. He was preaching an unusually long sermon that morning, and John was glad, for the longer his sermon, the longer would be Mary's sleep. As for himself, he needed no sermon within church walls. He was listening to the voice of his conscience preaching to him of things undone and of judgment to come.

"It's curious," he said to himself, "that a man can't see a thing that's goin' on right under his own eyes and in his own house and that concerns his own wife."

Suddenly a new sound was heard from the church, a duet of infant wails that drowned the minister's words, the voices of two young protestants making known their objections to the rite of infant baptism. John smiled as he pictured the scene within.

"I wouldn't be in Sam Sawyer's place now for ten dollars," he mentally declared; "holdin' them squallin' young ones, and everybody in church laughin' in their sleeves."

The lamentations of the twins gradually subsided. The notes of the organ sounded, and the choir sang joyfully. There was a hush, then the moving of many feet as the congregation rose for the benediction; another hush, then a murmur of voices growing louder as the little crowd crossed the threshold of the church, and came into the freedom of G.o.d's great out-of-doors.

Mary opened her eyes and started up with an exclamation of self-reproach at the sight of John in his shirt sleeves and the realization that she had slept all through the minister's sermon.

"Take it easy," said John, smiling at her and putting on his coat with more than his usual deliberation. "Your hair's all right, and you look fifty per cent brighter than you did an hour ago. You needed that nap worse'n you need Brother Smith's sermon. Now sit still and let me do the talkin' and explainin'."

"Yes, Mis' Morrison," as the neighbors came hastening up with kindly inquiries, "Mary wasn't feelin' very well when we started this mornin', but she's all right now. She's been workin' a little too hard lately, and I'm afraid I haven't been as careful of her as I ought to 'a'

been."

"Bless her soul!" said Aunt Tabby McElrath, giving Mary a motherly pat on the head. "You did just right to come out here. There's nothin' like a hot church for makin' a body feel faint; and a day like this it'd be better for us all if we'd have the preachin' outdoors as well as the eatin'. Now, don't you stir, Mary. You're always waitin' on other people; let other people wait on you for once. And, John, you come with me, and I'll give you a waiter of nice things for Mary. n.o.body can cook better'n Mary; that I know. But when a person ain't feelin' very well, they'd rather eat somebody else's cookin' than their own."

"Well, it depends on who the somebody is," said her niece, Sally McElrath. "I'd rather eat anybody else's cookin' than my own, whether I'm feelin' well or not; but for mercy's sake don't get anything from my basket on that waiter you're fixin' up for Mary. My cake ain't as light as it might be, and the icin' didn't cook long enough; and when it comes to bread, you all know a ten-year-old child could beat me."

The May Meeting dinners in Goshen neighborhood had long been famous.

Town people who were so fortunate as to partake of one were wont to talk of it for years afterward, for the standards of housewifery in this part of the country were of the highest, and the consciences of the housewives made them live sternly up to their ideals, all but Sally. Her cooking and her housekeeping were always below the mark. But she had the wisdom to ward off censure by a prompt and cheerful admission of her failures, and none but a professional critic like Ma Harris cared to find fault with the delinquent who frankly said of herself the worst that could be said.

May Meeting in the country is like Easter Sunday in town, a gala occasion, and it was an idyllic scene around the little country church as the congregation gathered under the trees. Stalwart men, matronly women, and youth and maiden clad in fresh apparel that matched the garb of Nature. They had worshipped G.o.d in prayer and song within church walls, and now they were to enjoy the gifts of G.o.d under the arch of his blue sky and in the green aisles of his first temple. The old earth had yielded a bountiful tribute to man's toil, and on the damask cloths spread over the sward lay the fruits and grains of last year's harvest, changed by woman's skill into the viands that are the symbols of Southern hospitality, as salt is the symbol of the Arab's.

The minister stood, and turning his face heavenward, said grace, his words blending with the soft twitter of birds and the murmur of wind in the young leaves. Then arose a crescendo of voices, the ba.s.s of the men, the treble of the women, and the shrill chatter of children, glad with the gladness of May, but softened and subdued because it was Sunday. And now and then the Sawyer twins lifted up their voices and wept, not because there was any cause for weeping, but because weeping was as yet their only means of communication with the strange new world into which they had lately come. The Master who proclaimed that the Sabbath was made for man, and who walked through the cornfield on that holy day, might have been an honored guest at such a feast.

When John returned with the laden tray, Mary was holding a little levee, and her sparkling eyes and happy smile told of rested nerves and brain refreshed. "For so He giveth to His beloved while they are sleeping."

The minister had come up to shake hands with her and tell her that he had missed her face from the congregation. Sidney had brought his bride over and introduced her, and Mary was getting a near view of the violet dress. Her spirits mounted as she ate the delicious food Aunt Tabby had selected for her. She was surprised to find that she could look at the stripes in Ellen McElrath's shirt waist without wanting to cry, and when the meal was over she insisted on helping to clear off the tables.

"My goodness!" said Aunt Tabby McElrath, as she placed in her basket the remains of her bread, ham, chicken, pickles, cake, pie, and jelly. "It looks to me like there'd been another miracle of the loaves and fishes, for I'm surely takin' home more'n I brought here. What a pity there ain't some poor family around here that we could give all this good food to."

"I don't know as we'd be called a poor family," said Sally McElrath, "but if you've got more than you know what to do with, just hand it over to me. It'll save me from cookin' supper to-night."

"Yes, Aunt Tabby," said Dan, "don't be afraid to offer us some of the leavin's. Jest cut me a slab o' that jelly-cake and one or two slices o'

your good bread. I ain't forgot the supper I had last May Meetin'

Sunday. Sally had a sick headache and couldn't cook a thing, and all I could find in the basket was a pickle and a hard boiled egg."

There was a general laugh, in which Sally joined heartily. Aunt Tabby made generous contributions from her basket to Sally's, Dan watching the operation with hungry eyes, and then she looked around for a convenient tree trunk against which she might rest her ample back and bear a part in the general conversation.

In rural communities the church is the great social center. After the period of worship, though the hours are G.o.d's own, it is not deemed a profanation of the day to spend a little time in friendly intercourse, and only the unregenerate youth of the congregation consider it a hardship to listen to a second sermon in the afternoon.

"Now look yonder, will you?" exclaimed an elderly matron; "them young folks are fixin' to go off ridin' instead of stayin' to second service.

You, Percival! You, Matty! Don't you stir a step from here, Preachin's goin' to begin again before you can get back."

Matty's right foot was on the step. Her right hand grasped the top of the buggy, and her left was firmly held by a handsome youth whose energies were divided between helping her into his "rig" and managing his horse.

"You, Matty!" The second warning came in strong tones and with a threatening accent.

Matty turned with a bird-like motion of the head. She darted a glance and a smile over her shoulder; the glance was for her mother, the smile for the young man. The latter had failed twice in Greek and Latin, but he understood the language of the eye and lip, and the delicate pressure of the girl's fingers on his. He, too, threw a glance and a smile backward, and the next instant the two were spinning down the road in the direction of the Iron Bridge.

There was a burst of good-natured laughter from the fathers. They remembered the days of their youth and rather wished themselves in the young man's place. "Pretty well done," chuckled Uncle Mose Bascom. "I've always said that when it comes to holdin' a spirited horse and at the same time helpin' a pretty girl into a buggy, a man ought to have four hands, but Percival did the thing mighty well with jest two."

The young girls who lacked Matty's daring looked down the road with envy in their eyes. How much better that ride in the wooded road to the bridge than another dull sermon in that hot church! But the mothers of the virtuous damsels smiled complacently, thanking G.o.d that their daughters were not as other women's, and Ma Harris "walled" her eyes and sighed piously.

"In my day," she said, "children honored their parents and obeyed 'em."

"No, they didn't," retorted Matty's mother, her face crimson with shame and vexation. "Children never honored their parents in your day nor in Moses's day, either. If they had, there wouldn't be but nine commandments. Didn't your mother run off and marry, and haven't I heard you say that that youngest boy o' yours was bringin' your gray hairs in sorrow to the grave? Matty's headstrong, I know, but she ain't a bit worse than other girls."

"That's so," said Sally McElrath, whose own girlhood gave her a fellow feeling for the absent Matty. "I say, let the young folks alone. We all were young once. For my part, I wish I was in Matty's place. Here, Dan, can't you take me ridin' like you used to do before we got married?"

"I can take you ridin' all right, Sally," agreed Dan placidly. "Yonder's the same old buggy and the same old horse and the same old road, but the ridin' would be mighty different from the ridin' we had before we got married. Before we started, we'd have to canva.s.s this crowd and find somebody to take care of the children, and after we started, we'd both be wonderin' if Sarah wasn't drowned in the creek, and if Daniel hadn't been kicked by somebody's horse, and I don't believe there'd be much pleasure in such a ride."