Christmas gold, p.518
Christmas Gold, page 518
Nothing was further from Diana's thoughts than that any grave trouble was overhanging her lover's mind--for her lover she very well knew that James was, and she had arranged beforehand to herself very pretty little comedies of life, to be duly enacted in the long vacation, in which James was to appear as the suitor, and she, not too soon nor with too much eagerness, was at last to acknowledge to him how much he was to her. But meanwhile he was not to be too presumptuous. It was not set down in the cards that she should be too gracious or make his way too easy. When, therefore, he brushed by her hastily, on entering the house, with a flushed cheek and frowning brow, and gave no glance of admiration at the pretty toilet she had found time to make, she was slightly indignant. She was as ignorant of the pang which went like an arrow through his heart at the sight of her as the bobolink which whirrs and chitters and tweedles over a grave.
She turned away and commenced a kitten-like frolic with Bill, who was always only too happy to second any of her motions, and readily promised that after supper she would go with him a walk of half a mile over to a neighbor's, where was a corn-husking. A great golden lamp of a harvest moon was already coming up in the fading flush of the evening sky, and she promised herself much amusement in watching the result of her maneuver on James.
"He'll see at any rate that I am not waiting his beck and call. Next time, if he wants my company he can ask for it in season. I'm not going to indulge him in sulks, not I. These college fellows worry over books till they hurt their digestion, and then have the blues and look as if the world was coming to an end." And Diana went to the looking-glass and rearranged the spray of golden-rod in her hair and nodded at herself defiantly, and then turned to help get on the supper.
The Pitkin folk that night sat down to an ample feast, over which the impending Thanksgiving shed its hilarity. There was not only the inevitable great pewter platter, scoured to silver brightness, in the center of the table, and piled with solid masses of boiled beef, pork, cabbage and all sorts of vegetables, and the equally inevitable smoking loaf of rye and Indian bread, to accompany the pot of baked pork and beans, but there were specimens of all the newly-made Thanksgiving pies filling every available space on the table. Diana set special value on herself as a pie artist, and she had taxed her ingenuity this year to invent new varieties, which were received with bursts of applause by the boys. These sat down to the table in democratic equality,--Biah Carter and Abner with all the sons of the family, old and young, each eager, hungry and noisy; and over all, with moonlight calmness and steadiness, Mary Pitkin ruled and presided, dispensing to each his portion in due season, while Diana, restless and mischievous as a sprite, seemed to be possessed with an elfin spirit of drollery, venting itself in sundry little tricks and antics which drew ready laughs from the boys and reproving glances from the deacon. For the deacon was that night in one of his severest humors. As Biah Carter afterwards remarked of that night, "You could feel there was thunder in the air somewhere round. The deacon had got on about his longest face, and when the deacon's face is about down to its wust, why, it would stop a robin singin'--there couldn't nothin' stan' it."
To-night the severely cut lines of his face had even more than usual of haggard sternness, and the handsome features of James beside him, in their fixed gravity, presented that singular likeness which often comes out between father and son in seasons of mental emotion. Diana in vain sought to draw a laugh from her cousin. In pouring his home-brewed beer she contrived to spatter him, but he wiped it off without a smile, and let pass in silence some arrows of raillery that she had directed at his somber face.
When they rose from table, however, he followed her into the pantry.
"Diana, will you take a walk with me to-night?" he said, in a voice husky with repressed feeling.
"To-night! Why, I have just promised Bill to go with him over to the husking at the Jenks's. Why don't you go with us? We're going to have lots of fun," she added with an innocent air of not perceiving his gravity.
"I can't," he said. "Besides I wanted to walk with you alone. I had something special I wanted to say."
"Bless me, how you frighten one! You look solemn as a hearse; but I promised to go with Bill to-night, and I suspect another time will do just as well. What you have to say will _keep_, I suppose," she said mischievously.
He turned away quickly.
"I should really like to know what's the matter with you to-night," she added, but as she spoke he went up-stairs and shut the door.
"He's cross to-night," was Diana's comment. "Well, he'll have to get over his pet. I sha'n't mind it!"
Up-stairs in his room James began the work of putting up the bundle with which he was to go forth to seek his fortune. There stood his books, silent and dear witnesses of the world of hope and culture and refined enjoyment he had been meaning to enter. He was to know them no more. Their mute faces seemed to look at him mournfully as parting friends. He rapidly made his selection, for that night he was to be off in time to reach the vessel before she sailed, and he felt even glad to avoid the Thanksgiving festivities for which he had so little relish. Diana's frolicsome gaiety seemed heart-breaking to him, on the same principle that the poet sings:
"How can ye chant, ye little birds, And I sae weary, fu' o' care?"
To the heart struck through with its first experiences of real suffering all nature is full of cruelty, and the young and light-hearted are a large part of nature.
"She has no feeling," he said to himself. "Well, there is one reason the more for my going. _She_ won't break her heart for me; nobody loves me but mother, and it's for her sake I must go. She mustn't work herself to death for me."
And then he sat down in the window to write a note to be given to his mother after he had sailed, for he could not trust himself to tell her what he was about to do. He knew that she would try to persuade him to stay, and he felt faint-hearted when he thought of her. "She would sit up early and late, and work for me to the last gasp," he thought, "but father was right. It is selfish of me to take it," and so he sat trying to fashion his parting note into a tone of cheerfulness.
"My dear mother," he wrote, "this will come to you when I have set off on a four years' voyage round the world. Father has convinced me that it's time for me to be doing something for myself; and I couldn't get a school to keep--and, after all, education is got other ways than at college. It's hard to go, because I love home, and hard because you will miss me-- though no one else will. But father may rely upon it, I will not be a burden on him another day. Sink or swim, I shall _never_ come back till I have enough to do for myself, and you too. So good bye, dear mother. I know you will always pray for me, and wherever I am I shall try to do just as I think you would want me to do. I know your prayers will follow me, and I shall always be your affectionate son.
"P.S.--The boys may have those chestnuts and walnuts in my room--and in my drawer there is a bit of ribbon with a locket on it I was going to give cousin Diana. Perhaps she won't care for it, though; but if she does, she is welcome to it--it may put her in mind of old times."'
And this is all he said, with bitterness in his heart, as he leaned on the window and looked out at the great yellow moon that was shining so bright as to show the golden hues of the overhanging elm boughs and the scarlet of an adjoining maple.
A light ripple of laughter came up from below, and a chestnut thrown up struck him on the hand, and he saw Diana and Bill step from out the shadowy porch.
"There's a chestnut for you, Mr. Owl," she called, gaily, "if you _will_ stay moping up there! Come, now, it's a splendid evening; _won't_ you come?"
"No, thank you. I sha'n't be missed," was the reply.
"That's true enough; the loss is your own. Good bye, Mr. Philosopher."
"Good bye, Diana."
Something in the tone struck strangely through her heart. It was the voice of what Diana never had felt yet--deep suffering--and she gave a little shiver.
"What an _awfully_ solemn voice James has sometimes," she said; and then added, with a laugh, "it would make his fortune as a Methodist minister."
The sound of the light laugh and little snatches and echoes of gay talk came back like heartless elves to mock Jim's sorrow.
"So much for _her_," he said, and turned to go and look for his mother.
--
Chapter V.
Mother and Son
Table of Contents
He knew where he should find her. There was a little, low work-room adjoining the kitchen that was his mother's sanctum. There stood her work-basket--there were always piles and piles of work, begun or finished; and there also her few books at hand, to be glanced into in rare snatches of leisure in her busy life.
The old times New England house mother was not a mere unreflective drudge of domestic toil. She was a reader and a thinker, keenly appreciative in intellectual regions. The literature of that day in New England was sparse; but whatever there was, whether in this country or in England, that was noteworthy, was matter of keen interest, and Mrs. Pitkin's small library was very dear to her. No nun in a convent under vows of abstinence ever practiced more rigorous self-denial than she did in the restraints and government of intellectual tastes and desires. Her son was dear to her as the fulfillment and expression of her unsatisfied craving for knowledge, the possessor of those fair fields of thought which duty forbade her to explore.
James stood and looked in at the window, and saw her sorting and arranging the family mending, busy over piles of stockings and shirts, while on the table beside her lay her open Bible, and she was singing to herself, in a low, sweet undertone, one of the favorite minor-keyed melodies of those days:
"O God, our help in ages past, Our hope for years to come, Our shelter from the stormy blast And our eternal home!"
An indescribable feeling, blended of pity and reverence, swelled in his heart as he looked at her and marked the whitening hair, the thin worn little hands so busy with their love work, and thought of all the bearing and forbearing, the waiting, the watching, the long-suffering that had made up her life for so many years. The very look of exquisite calm and resolved strength in her patient eyes and in the gentle lines of her face had something that seemed to him sad and awful--as the purely spiritual always looks to the more animal nature. With his blood bounding and tingling in his veins, his strong arms pulsating with life, and his heart full of a man's vigor and resolve, his mother's life seemed to him to be one of weariness and drudgery, of constant, unceasing self-abnegation. Calm he knew she was, always sustained, never faltering; but her victory was one which, like the spiritual sweetness in the face of the dying, had something of sadness for the living heart. He opened the door and came in, sat down by her on the floor, and laid his head in her lap.
"Mother, you never rest; you never stop working."
"Oh, no!" she said gaily, "I'm just going to stop now. I had only a few last things I wanted to get done."
"Mother, I can't bear to think of you; your life is too hard. We all have our amusements, our rests, our changes; your work is never done; you are worn out, and get no time to read, no time for anything but drudgery."
"Don't say drudgery, my boy--work done for those we love _never_ is drudgery. I'm so happy to have you all around me I never feel it."
"But, mother, you are not strong, and I don't see how you can hold out to do all you do."
"Well," she said simply, "when my strength is all gone I ask God for more, and he always gives it. 'They that wait on the Lord shall renew their strength.'" And her hand involuntarily fell on the open Bible.
"Yes, I know it," he said, following her hand with his eyes--while "Mother," he said, "I want you to give me your Bible and take mine. I think yours would do me more good."
There was a little bright flush and a pleased smile on his mother's face--
"Certainly, my boy, I will."
"I see you have marked your favorite places," he added. "It will seem like hearing you speak to read them."
"With all my heart," she added, taking up the Bible and kissing his forehead as she put it into his hands.
There was a struggle in his heart how to say farewell without saying it-- without letting her know that he was going to leave her. He clasped her in his arms and kissed her again and again.
"Mother," he said, "if I ever get into heaven it will be through you."
"Don't say that, my son--it must be through a better Friend than I am-- who loves you more than I do. I have not died for you--He did."
"Oh, that I knew where I might find him, then. You I can see--Him I cannot."
His mother looked at him with a face full of radiance, pity, and hope.
"I feel sure you _will_" she said. "You are consecrated," she added, in a low voice, laying her hand on his head.
"Amen," said James, in a reverential tone. He felt that she was at that moment--as she often was--silently speaking to One invisible of and for him, and the sense of it stole over him like a benediction. There was a pause of tender silence for many minutes.
"Well, I must not keep you up any longer, mother dear--it's time you were resting. Good-night." And with a long embrace and kiss they separated. He had yet fifteen miles to walk to reach the midnight stage that was to convey him to Salem.
As he was starting from the house with his bundle in his hand, the sound of a gay laugh came through the distant shrubbery. It was Diana and Bill returning from the husking. Hastily he concealed himself behind a clump of old lilac bushes till they emerged into the moonlight and passed into the house. Diana was in one of those paroxysms of young girl frolic which are the effervescence of young, healthy blood, as natural as the gyrations of a bobolink on a clover head. James was thinking of dark nights and stormy seas, years of exile, mother's sorrows, home perhaps never to be seen more, and the laugh jarred on him like a terrible discord. He watched her into the house, turned, and was gone.
--
Chapter VI.
Gone to Sea
Table of Contents
A little way on in his moonlight walk James's ears were saluted by the sound of some one whistling and crackling through the bushes, and soon Biah Carter, emerged into the moonlight, having been out to the same husking where Diana and Bill had been enjoying themselves. The sight of him resolved a doubt which had been agitating James's mind. The note to his mother which was to explain his absence and the reasons for it was still in his coat-pocket, and he had designed sending it back by some messenger at the tavern where he took the midnight stage; but here was a more trusty party. It involved, to be sure, the necessity of taking Biah into his confidence. James was well aware that to tell that acute individual the least particle of a story was like starting a gimlet in a pine board--there was no stop till it had gone through. So he told him in brief that a good berth had been offered to him on the _Eastern Star_, and he meant to take it to relieve his father of the pressure of his education.
"Wal naow--you don't say so," was Biah's commentary. "Wal, yis, 'tis hard sleddin' for the deacon--drefful hard sleddin.' Wal, naow, s'pose you're disapp'inted--shouldn't wonder--jes' so. Eddication's a good thing, but 'taint the only thing naow; folks larns a sight rubbin' round the world-- and then they make money. Jes' see, there's Cap'n Stebbins and Cap'n Andrews and Cap'n Merryweather--all livin' on good farms, with good, nice houses, all got goin' to sea. Expect Mis' Pitkin'll take it sort o' hard, she's so sot on you; but she's allers sayin' things is for the best, and maybe she'll come to think so 'bout this--folks gen'ally does when they can't help themselves. Wal, yis, naow--goin' to walk to the cross-road tavern? better not. Jest wait a minit and I'll hitch up and take ye over.
"Thank you, Biah, but I can't stop, and I'd rather walk, so I won't trouble you."
"Wal, look here--don't ye want a sort o' nest-egg? I've got fifty silver dollars laid up: you take it on venture and give me half what it brings."
"Thank you, Biah. If you'll trust me with it I'll hope to do something for us both."
Biah went into the house, and after some fumbling brought out a canvas bag, which he put into James's hand.
"Wanted to go to sea confoundedly myself, but there's Mariar Jane--she won't hear on't, and turns on the water-works if I peep a single word. Farmin's drefful slow, but when a feller's got a gal he's got a cap'n; he has to mind orders. So you jest trade and we'll go sheers. I think consid'able of you, and I expect you'll make it go as fur as anybody."
"I'll try my best, you may believe, Biah," said James, shaking the hard hand heartily, as he turned on his way towards the cross-roads tavern.
The whole village of Maplewood on Thanksgiving Day morning was possessed of the fact that James Pitkin had gone off to sea in the _Eastern Star_, for Biah had felt all the sense of importance which the possession of a startling piece of intelligence gives to one, and took occasion to call at the tavern and store on his way up and make the most of his information, so that by the time the bell rang for service the news might be said to be everywhere. The minister's general custom on Thanksgiving Day was to get off a political sermon reviewing the State of New England, the United States of America, and Europe, Asia, and Africa; but it may be doubted if all the affairs of all these continents produced as much sensation among the girls in the singers' seat that day as did the news that James Pitkin had gone to sea on a four years' voyage. Curious eyes were cast on Diana Pitkin, and many were the whispers and speculations as to the part she might have had in the move; and certainly she looked paler and graver than usual, and some thought they could detect traces of tears on her cheeks. Some noticed in the tones of her voice that day, as they rose in the soprano, a tremor and pathos never remarked before--the unconscious utterance of a new sense of sorrow, awakened in a soul that up to this time had never known a grief.
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