Stories by American Authors Volume IV Part 9

"I should think she'd better be at home with her children,--if she has any. Fancy _thee_, mother, going about to strange meetings, and lifting up thy voice."

"Hush! hush! Dorothy! Thy tongue's running away with thee. Consider the example thee's setting the boys."

"Thee'd better write to father about Dorothy, mother! Perhaps Hannah Husbands would like to know what she thinks about her preachin'!"

"Well now, be quiet, all of you. Here's something about Dorothy: 'I know that my dear daughter Dorothy is faithful and loving, albeit somewhat quick of speech, and restive under obligation. I would have thee remind her that an unwillingness to accept help from others argues a want of Christian Meekness. Entreat her, from me, not to conceal her needs from our neighbors, if so be she find her work oppressive. We know them to be of kindly intention, though not of our way of thinking in all particulars. Let her receive help from them, not as individuals, but as instruments of the Lord's protection, which it were impiety and ingrat.i.tude to deny.'"

"There!" cried Shep. "That means thee's to let Luke Jordan finish the sheep-washing. Thee'd better have done it in the first place. We wouldn't have the old ewe to pick if thee had!"

Dorothy was dimpling at the idea of Luke Jordan in the character of an instrument of heavenly protection. She had not regarded him in that light, it must be confessed, and had rejected him with scorn.

"He may if he wants to," she said; "but you boys shall drive them over.

I'll have nothing to do with it."

"And shear them too, Dorothy? He asked to shear them long ago."

"Well, _let_ him shear them, and keep the wool too."

"I wouldn't say that, Dorothy!" said Rachel Barton. "We need the wool, and it seems as if over-payment might not be quite honest either."

"Oh! mother, mother! What a mother thee is!" cried Dorothy laughing, and rumpling her cap-strings in a tumultuous embrace.

"She's a great deal too good for _thee_, Dorothy Barton."

"She's too good for all of us! How did thee ever come to have such a graceless set of children, mother?"

"I'm very well satisfied," said Rachel. "But now do be quiet, and let's finish the letter. We must get to bed some time to-night!"

The wild clematis was in blossom now--the fences were white with it, and the rusty cedars were crowned with virgin wreaths, but the weeds were thick in the garden and in the potato patch. Dorothy, stretching her cramped back, looked longingly up the shadowy vista of the farm-lane, which had nothing to do but ramble off into the remotest green fields, where the daisies' faces were as white and clear as in early June.

One hot August night she came home late from the store. The stars were thick in the sky; the katydids made the night oppressive with their rasping questionings, and a hoa.r.s.e revel of frogs kept the ponds from falling asleep in the shadow of the hills.

"Is thee very tired to-night, Dorothy?" her mother asked, as she took her seat on the low step of the porch. "Would thee mind turning old John out thyself?"

"No, mother, I'm not tired. But why--oh, _I_ know!" cried Dorothy, with a quick laugh. "The dance--at Sloc.u.m's barn. I _thought_ those boys were uncommonly helpful."

"Yes, dear, it's but natural they should want to see it. Hark! we can hear the music from here."

They listened, and the breeze brought across the fields the sound of fiddles and the rhythmic tramp of feet, softened by the distance.

Dorothy's young pulses leaped.

"Mother, is it any harm for them just to _see_ it? They have so little fun except what they get out of teasing and shirking."

"My dear, thy father would never countenance such a scene of frivolity, or permit one of his children to look upon it."

Through our eyes and ears the world takes possession of our hearts.

"Then I'm to spare the boys this temptation, mother? Thee will trust _me_ to pa.s.s the barn?"

"I would trust my boys, if they were thy age Dorothy. But their resolution is tender, like their years."

It might be questioned whether the frame of mind in which the boys went to bed that night, under their mother's eye,--for Rachel could be firm in a case of conscience,--was more improving than the frivolity of Sloc.u.m's barn.

"Mother," called Dorothy, looking in at the kitchen window, where Rachel was stooping over the embers in the fireplace, to light a bedroom candle, "I want to speak to thee."

Rachel came to the window, screening the candle with her hand.

"Will thee trust _me_ to look at the dancing a little while? It is so very near."

"Why, Dorothy, does thee _want_ to?"

"Yes, mother, I believe I do. I've never seen a dance in my life. It cannot ruin me to look just once."

Rachel stood puzzled.

"Thee's old enough to judge for thyself, Dorothy. But, my child, do not tamper with thy inclinations through heedless curiosity. Thee knows thee's more impulsive than I could wish--for thy own peace."

"I'll be very careful, mother. If I feel in the _least_ wicked I will not look."

She kissed her mother's hand, which rested on the window-sill. Rachel did not like the kiss, or Dorothy's brilliant eyes and flushed cheeks, as the candle revealed them like a fair picture painted on the darkness. She hesitated, and Dorothy sped away up the lane with old John lagging at his halter.

Was it the music growing nearer that quickened her breathing, or only the closeness of the night, shut in between the wild grape-vine curtains, swung from one dark cedar column to another? She caught the sweet-brier breath as she hurried by, and now, a loop in the leafy curtain revealed the pond lying black in a hollow of the hills, with a whole heaven of stars reflected in it. Old John stumbled along over the stones, cropping the gra.s.s as he went. Dorothy tugged at his halter and urged him on to the head of the lane where two farm-gates stood at right angles. One of them was open, and a number of horses were tethered in a row along the fence within. They whinneyed a cheerful greeting to John as Dorothy slipped his halter and shut him into the field adjoining. Now should she walk into temptation with her eyes and ears open? The gate stood wide, with only one field of perfumed meadow-gra.s.s between her and the lights and music of Sloc.u.m's barn! The sound of revelry by night could hardly have taken a more innocent form than this rustic dancing of neighbors after a "raisin' bee," but had it been the rout of Comus and his crew, and Dorothy the Lady Una, trembling near, her heart could hardly have throbbed more thickly as she crossed the dewy meadow. A young maple stood within ten rods of the barn, and here she crouched in shadow.

The great doors stood wide open, and lanterns were hung from the beams lighting the s.p.a.ce between the mows, where a dance was set, with youths and maidens in two long rows. The fiddlers sat on barrel-heads near the door; a lantern hanging just behind projected their shadows across the square of light on the trodden s.p.a.ce in front where they executed a grotesque pantomime, keeping time to the music with spectral wavings and noddings. The dancers were Dorothy's young neighbors, whom she had known and yet not known all her life, but they had the strangeness of familiar faces seen suddenly in some fantastic dream.

Surely that was Nancy Sloc.u.m, in the bright pink gown, heading the line of girls, and that was Luke Jordan's sunburnt profile leaning from his place to pluck a straw from the mow behind him. They were marching now, and the measured tramp of feet, keeping solid time to the fiddles, set a strange tumult vibrating in Dorothy's blood; and now it stopped with a thrill as she recognized that Evesham was there marching with the young men, and that his peer was not among them. The perception of his difference came to her with a vivid shock. He was coming forward now, with his light, firm step, formidable in evening dress, and with a smile of subtle triumph in his eyes, to meet Nancy Sloc.u.m, in the bright pink gown; Dorothy felt she hated pink, of all the colors her faith had abjured. She could see, in spite of the obnoxious gown, that Nancy was very pretty. He was taking her first by the right hand, then by the left, and turning her gayly about;--and now they were meeting again, for the fourth or fifth time, in the centre of the barn, with all eyes upon them, and the music lingered while Nancy, holding out her pink petticoats, coyly revolved around him. Then began a mysterious turning, and clasping of hands, and weaving of Nancy's pink frock and Evesham's dark blue coat and white breeches in and out of the line of figures, until they met at the door, and taking each other by both hands, swept with a joyous measure to the head of the barn. Dorothy gave a little choking sigh.

What a senseless whirl it was! But she was thrilling with a new and strange excitement, too near the edge of pain to be long endured as a pleasure. If this were the influence of dancing, she did not wonder so much at her father's scruples,--and yet it held her like a spell.

All hands were lifted now, making an arch, through which Evesham, holding Nancy by the hands, raced stooping and laughing. As they emerged at the door, he threw up his head to shake a brown lock back.

He looked flushed, and boyishly gay, and his hazel eye searched the darkness with that subtle ray of triumph in it which had made Dorothy afraid. She drew back behind the tree and pressed her hot cheek to the cool, rough bark. She longed for the stillness of the starlit meadow, and the dim lane, with its faint perfumes and whispering leaves.

But now suddenly the music stopped, and the dance broke up in a tumult of voices. Dorothy stole backward in the shadow of the tree-trunk, till it joined the darkness of the meadow, and then fled,--stumbling along with blinded eyes, and the music still vibrating in her ears. There came a quick rush of footsteps behind her, swishing through the long gra.s.s. She did not look back, but quickened her pace, struggling to reach the gate. Evesham was there before her. He had swung the gate to and was leaning with his back against it, laughing and panting.

"I've caught you, Dorothy, you little deceiver! You'll not get rid of me to-night with any of your tricks. I'm going to take you home to your mother, and tell her you were peeping at the dancing."

"Mother knows I am here," said Dorothy. "I asked her!" Her knees were trembling, and her heart almost choked her with its throbbing.

"I'm so glad you don't dance, Dorothy. This is much nicer than the barn; and the katydids are better fiddlers than old Darby and his son.

I'll open the gate if you will put your hand in mine, so I can be sure of you--you little runaway!"

"I will stay here all night, first!" said Dorothy, in a low quivering voice.

"As you choose. I shall be happy as long as you are here."

Dead silence, while the katydids seemed to keep time to their heart-beats; the fiddles began tuning for another reel, and the horses tethered near stretched out their necks with low inquiring whinneys.

"Dorothy," said Evesham, softly, leaning toward her and trying to see her face in the darkness, "are you angry with me? Don't you think you deserve a little punishment for the trick you played me at the mill-head?"