Mercy Philbrick's Choice Part 4

"Mercy," said she, "queer people allers do take to each other. I don't believe he's a bit queerer 'n you are, child." And Mrs. Carr laughed a little laugh, half pride and half dissatisfaction. "You're jest like your father: he'd make friends with a stranger, any day, on the street, in two jiffeys, if he took a likin' to him; and there might be neighbors a livin'

right long 'side on us, for years an' years, thet he'd never any more 'n jest pa.s.s the time o' day with, 'n' he wa'n't a bit stuck up, either. I used ter ask him, often 'n' often, what made him so offish to sum folks, when I knew he hadn't the least thing agin 'em; and he allers said, sez he, 'Well, I can't tell ye nothin' about it, only jest this is the way 't is: I can't talk to 'em; they sort o' shet me up, like. I don't feel nateral, somehow, when they're round!'"

"O mother!" exclaimed Mercy, "I think I must be just like father. That is exactly the way I feel so often. When I get with some people, I feel just as if I had been changed into somebody else. I can't bear to open my mouth. It is like a bad dream, when you dream you can't move hand nor foot, all the time they're in the room with me."

"Well, I thank the Lord, I don't never take such notions about people,"

said Mrs. Carr, settling herself back in her chair, and beginning to make her needles fly. "n.o.body don't never trouble me much, one way or the other. For my part, I think folks is alike as peas. We shouldn't hardly know 'em apart, if 't wa'n't for their faces."

Mercy was about to reply, "Why, mother, you just said that I was queer; and this old man was queer; and my father must have been queer, too." But she glanced at the placid old face, and forbore. There was a truth as well as an untruth in the inconsistent sayings, and both lay too deep for the childish intellect to grasp.

Mercy was impatient to go at once to see their new home; but she could not induce her mother to leave the house.

"O Mercy!" she exclaimed pathetically, "ef yer knew what a comfort 't was to me jest to set still in a chair once more. It seems like heaven, arter them pesky joltin' cars. I ain't in no hurry to see the house. It can't run away, I reckon; and we're sure of it, ain't we? There ain't any thing that's got to be done, is there?" she asked nervously.

"Oh, no, mother. It is all sure. We have leased the house for one year; and we can't move in until our furniture comes, of course. But I do long to see what the place is like, don't you?" replied Mercy, pleadingly.

"No, no, child. Time enough when we move in. 'T ain't going to make any odds what it's like. We're goin' to live in it, anyhow. You jest go by yourself, ef you want to so much, an' let me set right here. It don't seem to me 's I'll ever want to git out o' this chair." At last, very unwillingly, late in the afternoon, Mercy went, leaving her mother alone in the hotel.

Without asking a question of anybody, she turned resolutely to the north.

"Even if our house is not on this street," she said to herself, "I am going to see those lovely woods;" and she walked swiftly up the hill, with her eyes fixed on the glowing dome of scarlet and yellow leaves which crowned it. The trees were in their full autumnal splendor: maples, crimson, scarlet, and yellow; chestnuts, pale green and yellow; beeches, shining golden brown; and sumacs in fiery spikes, brighter than all the rest. There were also tall pines here and there in the grove, and their green furnished a fine dark background for the gay colors. Mercy had often read of the glories of autumn in New England's thickly wooded regions; but she had never dreamed that it could be so beautiful as this.

Rows of young maples lined the street which led up to this wooded hill.

Each tree seemed a full sheaf of glittering color; and yet the path below was strewn thick with fallen leaves no less bright. Mercy walked lingeringly, each moment stopping to pick up some new leaf which seemed brighter than all the rest. In a very short time, her hands were too full; and in despair, like an over-laden child, she began to scatter them along the way. She was so absorbed in her delight in the leaves that she hardly looked at the houses on either hand, except to note with an unconscious satisfaction that they were growing fewer and farther apart, and that every thing looked more like country and less like town than it had done in the neighborhood of the hotel.

Presently she came to a stretch of stone wall, partly broken down, in front of an old orchard whose trees were gnarled and moss-grown.

Blackberry-vines had flung themselves over this wall, in and out among the stones. The leaves of these vines were almost as brilliant as the leaves of the maple-trees. They were of all shades of red, up to the deepest claret; they were of light green, shading into yellow, and curiously mottled with tiny points of red; all these shades and colors sometimes being seen upon one long runner. The effect of these wreaths and tangles of color upon the old, gray stones was so fine that Mercy stood still and involuntarily exclaimed aloud. Then she picked a few of the most beautiful vines, and, climbing up on the wall, sat down to arrange them with the maple-leaves she had already gathered. She made a most picturesque picture as she sat there, in her severe black gown and quaint little black bonnet, on the stone wall, surrounded by the bright vines and leaves; her lap full of them, the ground at her feet strewed with them, her little black-gloved hands deftly arranging and rearranging them. She looked as if she might be a nun, who had run away from her cloister, and coming for the first time in her life upon gay gauds of color, in strange fabrics, had sat herself down instantly to weave and work with them, unaware that she was on a highway.

This was the picture that Stephen White saw, as he came slowly up the road on his way home after an unusually wearying day. He slackened his pace, and, perceiving how entirely unconscious Mercy was of his approach, deliberately studied her, feature, dress, att.i.tude,--all, as scrutinizingly as if she had been painted on canvas and hanging on a wall.

"Upon my word," he said to himself, "she isn't bad-looking, after all. I'm not sure that she isn't pretty. If she hadn't that inconceivable bonnet on her head,--yes, she is very pretty. Her mouth is bewitching. I declare, I believe she is beautiful," were Stephen's successive verdicts, as he drew nearer and nearer to Mercy. Mercy was thinking of him at that very moment,--was thinking of him with a return of the annoyance and mortification which had stung her at intervals all day, whenever she recalled their interview of the previous evening. Mercy combined, in a very singular manner, some of the traits of an impulsive nature with those of an unimpulsive one. She did things, said things, and felt things with the instantaneous intensity of the poetic temperament; but she was quite capable of looking at them afterward, and weighing them with the cool and unbia.s.sed judgment of the most phlegmatic realist. Hence she often had most uncomfortable seasons, in which one side of her nature took the other side to task, scorned it and berated it severely; holding up its actions to its remorseful view, as an elder sister might chide a younger one, who was incorrigibly perverse and wayward.

"It was about as silly a thing as you ever did in your life. He must have thought you a perfect fool to have supposed he had come down to meet you,"

she was saying to herself at the very moment when the sound of Stephen's footsteps first reached her ear, and caused her to look up. The sight of his face at that particular moment was so startling and so unpleasant to her that it deprived her of all self-possession. She gave a low cry, her face was flooded with crimson, and she sprang from the wall so hastily that her leaves and vines flew in every direction.

"I am very sorry I frightened you so, Mrs. Philbrick," said Stephen, quite unconscious of the true source of her confusion. "I was just on the point of speaking, when you heard me. I ought to have spoken before, but you made so charming a picture sitting there among the leaves and vines that I could not resist looking at you a little longer."

Mercy Philbrick hated a compliment. This was partly the result of the secluded life she had led; partly an instinctive antagonism in her straightforward nature to any thing which could be even suspected of not being true. The few direct compliments she had received had been from men whom she neither respected nor trusted. These words, coming from Stephen White, just at this moment, were most offensive to her.

Her face flushed still deeper red, and saying curtly,--"You frightened me very much, Mr. White; but it is not of the least consequence," she turned to walk back to the village. Stephen unconsciously stretched out his hand to detain her.

"But, Mrs. Philbrick," he said eagerly, "pray tell me what you think of the house. Do you think you can be contented in it?"

"I have not seen it," replied Mercy, in the same curt tone, still moving on.

"Not seen it!" exclaimed Stephen, in a tone which was of such intense astonishment that it effectually roused Mercy's attention. "Not seen it!

Why, did you not know you were on your own stone wall? There is the house;" and Mercy, following the gesture of his hand, saw, not more than twenty rods beyond the spot where she had been sitting, a shabby, faded, yellow wooden house, standing in a yard which looked almost as neglected as the orchard, from which it was only in part separated by a tumbling stone wall.

Mercy did not speak. Stephen watched her face in silence for a moment; then he laughed constrainedly, and said,--

"Don't be afraid, Mrs. Philbrick, to say outright that it is the dismallest old barn you ever saw. That's just what I had said about it hundreds of times, and wondered how anybody could possibly live in it. But necessity drove us into it, and I suppose necessity has brought you to it, too," added Stephen, sadly.

Mercy did not speak. Very deliberately her eyes scanned the building. An expression of scorn slowly gathered on her face.

"It is not so forlorn inside as it is out," said Stephen. "Some of the rooms are quite pleasant. The south rooms in your part of the house are very cheerful."

Mercy did not speak. Stephen went on, beginning to be half-angry with this little, unknown woman from Cape Cod, who looked with the contemptuous glance of a princess upon the house in which he and his mother dwelt,--

"You are quite at liberty to throw up your lease, Mrs. Philbrick, if you choose. It was, perhaps, hardly fair to have let you hire the house without seeing it."

Mercy started. "I beg your pardon, Mr. White. I should not think of such a thing as giving up the lease. I am very sorry you saw how ugly I think the house. I do think it is the very ugliest house I ever saw," she continued, speaking with emphatic deliberation; "but, then, I have not seen many houses. In our village at home, all the houses are low and broad and comfortable-looking. They look as if they had sat down and leaned back to take their ease; and they are all neat and clean-looking, and have rows of flower-beds from the gate to the front door. I never saw a house built with such a steep angle to its roof as this has," said Mercy, looking up with the instinctive dislike of a natural artist's eye at the ridgepole of the old house.

"We have to have our roofs at a sharp pitch, to let the snow slide off in winter," said Stephen, apologetically, "we have such heavy snows here; but that doesn't make the angle any less ugly to look at."

"No," said Mercy; and her eyes still roved up and down and over the house, with not a shadow of relenting in their expression. It was Stephen's turn to be silent now. He watched her, but did not speak.

Mercy's face was not merely a record of her thoughts: it was a photograph of them. As plainly as on a written page held in his hand, Stephen White read the successive phases of thought and struggle which pa.s.sed through Mercy's mind for the next five minutes; and he was not in the least surprised when, turning suddenly towards him with a very sweet smile, she said in a resolute tone,--

"There! that's done with. I hope you will forgive my rudeness, Mr. White; but the truth is I was awfully shocked at the first sight of the house. It isn't your house, you know, so it isn't quite so bad for me to say so; and I'm so glad you hate it as much as I do. Now I am never going to think about it again,--never."

"Why, can you help it, Mrs. Philbrick?" asked Stephen, in a wondering tone. "I can't. I hate it more and more, I verily believe, each time I come home; and I think that, if my mother weren't in it, I should burn it down some night."

Mercy looked at him with a certain shade of the same contempt with which she had looked at the house; and Stephen winced, as she said coolly,--

"Why, of course I can help it. I should be very much ashamed of myself if I couldn't. I never allow myself to be distressed by things which I can't help,--at least, that sort of thing," added Mercy, her face clouding with the sudden recollection of a grief that she had not been able to rise above. "Of course, I don't mean real troubles, like grief about any one you love. One can't wholly conquer such troubles as that; but one can do a great deal more even with these than people usually suppose. I am not sure that it is right to let ourselves be unhappy about any thing, even the worst of troubles. But I must hurry home now. It is growing late."

"Mrs. Philbrick," exclaimed Stephen, earnestly: "please come into the house, and speak to my mother a moment. You don't know how she has been looking forward to your coming."

"Oh, no, I cannot possibly do that," replied Mercy. "There is no reason why I should call on your mother, merely because we are going to live in the same house."

"But I a.s.sure you," persisted Stephen, "that it will give her the greatest pleasure. She is a helpless cripple, and never leaves her bed. She has probably been watching us from the window. She always watches for me. She will wonder if I do not bring you in to see her. Please come," he said with a tone which it was impossible to resist; and Mercy went.

Mrs. White had indeed been watching them from the window; but Stephen had reckoned without his host, or rather without his hostess, when he a.s.sured Mercy that his mother would be so glad to see her. The wisest and the tenderest of men are continually making blunders in their relations with women; especially if they are so unfortunate as to occupy in any sense a position involving a relation to two women at once. The relation may be ever so rightful and honest to each woman; the women may be good women, and in their right places; but the man will find himself perpetually getting into most unexpected hot water, as many a man could testify pathetically, if he were called upon.

Mrs. White had been watching her son through the whole of his conversation with Mercy. She could see only dimly at such a distance; but she had discerned that it was a woman with whom he stood talking so long. It was nearly half an hour past supper-time, and supper was Mrs. White's one festivity in the course of the day. Their breakfast and their mid-day dinner were too hurried meals for enjoyment, because Stephen was obliged to make haste to the office; but with supper there was nothing to interfere. Stephen's work for the day was done: he took great pains to tell her at this time every thing which he had seen or heard which could give her the least amus.e.m.e.nt. She looked forward all through her long lonely days to the evenings, as a child looks forward to Sat.u.r.day afternoons. Like all invalids whose life has been forced into grooves, she was impatient and unreasonable when anybody or any thing interfered with her routine. A five minutes' delay was to her a serious annoyance, and demanded an accurate explanation. Stephen so thoroughly understood this exactingness on her part that he adjusted his life to it, as a conscientious school-boy adjusts his to bells and signals, and never trespa.s.sed knowingly. If he had dreamed that it was past tea-time, on this unlucky night, he would never have thought of asking Mercy to go in and see his mother. But he did not; and it was with a bright and eager face that he threw open the door, and said in the most cordial tone,--

"Mother, I have brought Mrs. Philbrick to see you."

"How do you do, Mrs. Philbrick?" was the rejoinder, in a tone and with a look so chilling that poor Mercy's heart sank within her. She had all along had an ideal in her own mind of the invalid old lady, Mr. White's mother, to whom she was to be very good, and who was to be her mother's companion. She pictured her as her own mother would be, a good deal older and feebler, in a gentle, receptive, patient old age. Of so repellent, aggressive, unlovely an old woman as this she had had no conception. It would be hard to do justice in words to Mrs. White's capacity to be disagreeable when she chose. She had gray eyes, which, though they had a very deceptive trick of suffusing with tears as of great sensibility on occasion, were capable of resting upon a person with a positively unhuman coldness; her voice also had at these times a distinctly unhuman quality in its tones. She had apparently no conception of any necessity of controlling her feelings, or the expression of them. If she were pleased, if all things went precisely as she liked, if all persons ministered to her pleasure, well and good,--she would be graciously pleased to smile, and be good-humored. If she were displeased, if her preferences were not consulted, if her plans were interfered with, woe betide the first person who entered her presence; and still more woe betide the person who was responsible for her annoyance.

As soon as Stephen's eyes fell on her face, on this occasion, he felt with a sense of almost terror that he had made a fatal mistake, and he knew instantly that it must be much later than he had supposed; but he plunged bravely in, like a man taking a header into a pool he fears he may drown in, and began to give a voluble account of how he had found Mrs. Philbrick sitting on their stone wall, so absorbed in looking at the bright leaves that she had not even seen the house. He ran on in this strain for some minutes, hoping that his mother's mood might soften, but in vain. She listened with the same stony, unresponsive look on her face, never taking the stony, unresponsive eyes from his face; and, as soon as he stopped speaking, she said in an equally stony voice,--

"Mrs. Philbrick, will you be so good as to take off your bonnet and take tea with us? It is already long past our tea-hour!"

Mercy sprang to her feet, and said impulsively, "Oh, no, I thank you. I did not dream that it was so late. My mother will be anxious about me. I must go. I am very sorry I came in. Good-evening."

"Good-evening, Mrs. Philbrick," in the same slow and stony syllables, came from Mrs. White's lips, and she turned her head away immediately.

Stephen, with his face crimson with mortification, followed Mercy to the door. In a low voice, he said, "I hope you will be able to make allowances for my mother's manner. It is all my fault. I know that she can never bear to have me late at meals, and I ought never to allow myself to forget the hour. It is all my fault"