Saxe Holm's Stories Part 8

There was no trouble with the town in regard to the land. If there had been any doubts, Elder Kinney's vigorous championship of the new claimant would have put them down. But the sympathy of the entire community was enlisted on Reuben's side. The whole story from first to last appealed to every man's heart; and there was not a father in town that did not rest his hand more lovingly on his little girl's head at night, when he sat in his door-way talking over "them Millers," and telling about Draxy's "writin' to th' Elder."

Before the first of May all was settled. Elder Kinney had urged Mr. Miller to come at once to his house, and make it a home until he could look about and decide where he would establish himself.

"I am a lonely man," he wrote; "I buried my wife and only child many years ago, and have lived here ever since, with only an old Indian woman to take care of me. I don't want to press you against your will; and there's a house in the village that you can hire; but it will go against me sorely not to have you in my house at the first. I want to see you, and to see your little daughter; I can't help feeling as if the Lord had laid out for us to be friends more than common."

Reuben hesitated. The shyness of his nature made him shrink from other men's houses. But Draxy inclined strongly to the Elder's proposition. "Oh, think father, how lonely he must be. Suppose you hadn't mother nor me, father dear!" and Draxy kissed her father's cheek; "and think how glad you have been that you came to live with uncle," she added.

Reuben looked lovingly at Captain Melville, but said nothing.

"I'll tell ye what I think, Reuben;" said the Captain. "It's my belief that you'n that parson'll take to each other. His letters sound like your talk. Somehow, I've got an uncommon respect for that man, considerin' he's a parson: it's my advice to ye, to take up with his offer."

"And it seems no more than polite, father," persisted Draxy: "after he has done so much for us. We need not say how long we will stay in his house, you know."

"Supposin' you go up first, Draxy," said Reuben, hesitatingly, "an' see how 'tis. I always did hate Injuns."

"Oh!" said Draxy; she had hardly observed the mention of that feature in the Elder's household, and she laughed outright. Her ideas of the ancestral savage were too vague to be very alarming. "If she has lived all these years with this good old minister, she must be civilized and kind,"

said Draxy. "I'm not afraid of her."

"But I think it would be a great deal better for me to go first," she continued, more and more impressed with the new idea. "Then I can be sure beforehand about everything, and get things all in order for you; and there'll be Mr. Kinney to take care of me; I feel as if he was a kind of father to everybody." And Draxy in her turn began to wonder about the Elder's appearance as he had wondered about hers. Her mental picture was quite as unlike the truth as was his. She fancied him not unlike her father, but much older, with a gentle face, and floating white hair. Dim purposes of how she might make his lonely old age more cheerful, floated before her mind. "It must be awful," thought she, "to live years and years all alone with an Indian."

When Elder Kinney read Reuben's letter, saying that they would send their daughter up first to decide what would be best for them to do, he brought his hand down hard on the table and said "Whew!" again.

"Well, I do declare," thought he to himself, "I'm afraid they're dreadful shiftless folks, to send that girl way up here, all alone by herself; and how's such a child's that goin' to decide anything, I should like to know?"

He read again the letter Reuben had written. "My daughter is very young, but we lean upon her as if she was older. She has helped us bear all our misfortunes, and we have more confidence in her opinions than in our own about everything." The Elder was displeased.

"Lean on her;' I should think you did! Poor little girl! Well, I can look out for her; that's one comfort." And the Elder wrote a short note to the effect that he would meet their "child" at the railway station, which was six miles from their town; that he would do all he could to help her; and that he hoped soon to see Mr. and Mrs. Miller under his roof.

The words of the note were most friendly, but there was an indefinable difference between it and all the others, which Draxy felt without knowing that she felt it, and her last words to her father as she bade him good-by from the car window were: "I don't feel so sure as I did about our staying with Mr. Kinney, father. You leave it all to me, do you, dear, even if I decide to buy a house?"

"Yes, daughter," said Reuben, heartily; "all! Nothing but good's ever come yet of your way o' doin' things."

"An' I don't in the least hanker after that Injun," he called out as the cars began to move. Draxy laughed merrily. Reuben was a new man already.

They were very gay together, and felt wonderfully little fear for people to whom life had been thus far so hard.

There was not a misgiving in Draxy's heart as she set out again on a two days' journey to an unknown place. "Oh how different from the day when I started before," she thought as she looked out on the water sparkling under the bright May sun. She spent the first night, as before, at the house of Captain Melville's brother, and set out at eight the following morning, to ride for ten hours steadily northward. The day was like a day of June. The spring was opening early; already fruit-trees were white and pink; banks were green, and birds were noisy.

By noon mountains came in sight. Draxy was spellbound. "They are grander than the sea," thought she, "and I never dreamed it; and they are loving, too. I should like to rest my cheek on them."

As she drew nearer and nearer, and saw some tops still white with snow, her heart beat faster, and with a sudden pang almost of conscience-stricken remorse, she exclaimed, "Oh, I shall never, never once miss the sea!"

Elder Kinney had borrowed Eben Hill's horse and wagon to drive over for Draxy. He was at the station half an hour before the train was due. It had been years since the steady currents of his life had been so disturbed and hurried as they were by this little girl.

"Looks like rain, Elder; I 'spect she'll have to go over with me arter all," said George Thayer, the handsomest, best-natured stage-driver in the whole State of New Hampshire. The Elder glanced anxiously at the sky.

"No, I guess not, George," he replied. "'Twon't be anything more'n a shower, an' I've got an umbrella and a buffalo-robe. I can keep her dry."

Everybody at the station knew Draxy's story, and knew that the Elder had come to meet her. When the train stopped, all eyes eagerly scanned the pa.s.sengers who stepped out on the platform. Two men, a boy, and three women, one after the other; it was but a moment, and the train was off again.

"She hain't come," exclaimed voice after voice. The Elder said nothing; he had stood a little apart from the crowd, watching for his ideal Draxy; as soon as he saw that she was not there, he had fallen into a perplexed reverie as to the possible causes of her detention. He was sorely anxious about the child. "Jest's like's not, she never changed cars down at the Junction," thought he, "an' 's half way to Montreal by this time," and the Elder felt hot with resentment against Reuben Miller.

Meantime, beautiful, dignified, and unconscious, Draxy stood on the platform, quietly looking at face after face, seeking for the white hair and gentle eyes of her trusted friend, the old minister.

George Thayer, with the quick instinct of a stage-driver, was the first to see that she was a stranger.

"Where d'ye wish to go, ma'am?" said he, stepping towards her.

"Thank you," said Draxy, "I expected some one to meet me," and she looked uneasy; but rea.s.sured by the pleasant face, she went on: "the minister from Clairvend village was to meet me here."

George Thayer said, two hours afterward, in recounting his share of the adventure, "I tell ye, boys, when she said that ye might ha' knocked me down with a feather. I hain't never heard no other woman's voice that's got jest the sound to't hern has; an' what with that, an' thinkin' how beat the Elder'd be, an' wonderin' who in thunder she was anyhow, I don't believe I opened my dum lips for a full minute; but she kind o' smiled, and sez she, 'Do you know Mr. Kinney?' and that brought me to, and jest then the Elder he come along, and so I introduced 'em."

It was not exactly an introduction, however. The Elder, entirely absorbed in conjecture as to poor little Draxy's probable whereabouts, stumbled on the platform steps and nearly fell at her very feet, and was recalled to himself only to be plunged into still greater confusion by George Thayer's loud "Hallo! here he is. Here's Elder Kinney. Here's a lady askin' for you, Elder!"

Even yet it did not dawn upon Elder Kinney who this could be; his little golden-haired girl was too vividly stamped on his brain; he looked gravely into the face of this tall and fine-looking young woman and said kindly, "Did you wish to see me, ma'am?"

Draxy smiled. She began to understand. "I am afraid you did not expect to see me so tall, sir," she said. "I am Reuben Miller's daughter,--Draxy,"

she added, smiling again, but beginning in her turn to look confused.

Could this erect, vigorous man, with a half-stern look on his dark-bearded face, be the right Mr. Kinney? her minister? It was a moment which neither Elder Kinney nor Draxy ever forgot. The unsentimental but kindly George gave the best description of it which could be given.

"I vow, boys, I jest wish ye could ha' seen our Elder; an' yet, I dunno's I do wish so, nuther. He stood a twistin' his hat, jest like any o' us, an' he kind o' stammered, an' I don't believe neither on 'em knew a word he said; an' her cheeks kep' gittin' redder'n redder, an' she looked's ef she was ready to cry, and yet she couldn't keep from larfin, no how. Ye see she thought he was an old man and he thought she was a little gal, an'

somehow't first they didn't either of 'em feel like n.o.body; but when I pa.s.sed 'em in the road, jest out to Four Corners, they was talkin' as easy and nateral as could be; an' the Elder he looked some like himself, and she--wall, boys, you jest wait till you see her; that's all I've got to say. Ef she ain't a picter!"

The drive to the village seemed long, however, to both Draxy and the Elder. Their previous conceptions of each other had been too firmly rooted to be thus overthrown without a great jar. The Elder felt Draxy's simplicity and child-like truthfulness more and more with each word she spoke; but her quiet dignity of manner was something to which he was unused; to his inexperience she seemed almost a fine lady, in spite of her sweet and guileless speech. Draxy, on the other hand, was a little repelled by the Elder's whole appearance. He was a rougher man than she had known; his p.r.o.nunciation grated on her ear; and he looked so strong and dark she felt a sort of fear of him. But the next morning, when Draxy came down in her neat calico gown and white ap.r.o.n, the Elder's face brightened.

"Good morning, my child," he said. "You look as fresh as a pink." The tears came into Draxy's eyes at the word "child," said as her father said it.

"I don't look so old then, this morning, do I, sir?" she asked in a pleading tone which made the Elder laugh. He was more himself this morning. All was well. Draxy sat down to breakfast with a lighter heart.

When Draxy was sitting she looked very young. Her face was as childlike as it was beautiful: and her att.i.tudes were all singularly unconscious and free. It was when she rose that her womanhood revealed itself to the perpetual surprise of every one. As breakfast went on the Elder gradually regained his old feeling about her; his nature was as simple, as spontaneous as hers; he called her "child" again several times in the course of the meal. But when at the end of it Draxy rose, tall, erect, almost majestic in her fullness of stature, he felt again singularly removed from her.

"'Ud puzzle any man to say whether she's a child or a woman," said the Elder to himself. But his face shone with pleasure as he walked by her side out into the little front yard. Draxy was speechless with delight. In the golden east stretched a long range of mountains, purple to the top; down in the valley, a mile below the Elder's house, lay the village; a little shining river ran side by side with its main street. To the north were high hills, some dark green and wooded, some of brown pasture land.

"Oh, sir," said Draxy, "is there any other spot in your mountain land so beautiful as this?"

"No, not one," said the Elder, "not one;" and he, too, looked out silently on the scene.

Presently Draxy exclaimed, with a sigh, "Oh, it makes me feel like crying to think of my father's seeing this!"

"Shall I tell you now about my father, sir?" she continued; "you ought to know all about us, you have been so good."

Then sitting on the low step of the door, while the Elder sat in an arm-chair in the porch, Draxy told the story of her father's life, and, unconsciously, of her own. More than once the Elder wiped his eyes; more than once he rose and walked up and down before the door, gazing with undefined but intense emotion at this woman telling her pathetic story with the simple-hearted humility of a child. Draxy looked younger than ever curled up in the doorway, with her hands lying idle on her white ap.r.o.n. The Elder was on the point of stroking her hair. Suddenly she rose, and said, "But I am taking too much of your time, sir; will you take me now to see the house you spoke of, which we could hire?" She was again the majestic young woman. The Elder was again thrown back, and puzzled.

He tried to persuade her to give up all idea of hiring the house: to make his house their home for the present. But she replied steadfastly, "I must look at the house, sir, before I decide." They walked down into the village together. Draxy was utterly unconscious of observation, but the Elder knew only too well that every eye of Clairvend was at some window-pane studying his companion's face and figure. All whom they met stared so undisguisedly that, fearing Draxy would be annoyed, he said,--

"You mustn't mind the folks staring so at you. You see they've been talkin' the matter all over about the land, an' your comin', for a month, an' it's no more than natural they should want to know how you look;" and he, too, looked admiringly at Draxy's face.

"Oh," said Draxy (it was a new idea to her mind), "I never thought of that."

"I hope they are all glad we are coming, sir," added she, a moment after.