Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

“ Poor Persis Buckley sometimes felt herself turn fairly cold with dread at the thought of entering that splendid coach and driving away forever out of her old life at that strange gentleman's side. He became to her as cold and formless as a moving column of mist on the marsh, and even the dreams which sprang of themselves in her girlish heart could not invest him with love and life again. ”

“ Mistress Tabitha's purpose had not wholly failed in its effect. A great vague horror of something which she was too ignorant to see fairly came over her. The face of that fine strange gentleman, dimly remembered before through all the years, shaped itself suddenly and plainly out of the darkness like the face of a demon. Persis looked away, shuddering, to the candle-gleam over the meadow, and Darius Hopkins's eyes seemed to look wistfully and lovingly into hers. ”

“ Yet he often trembled when he came in sight of her house lest he see a coach and four standing before it, and see her carried away before his very eyes.
And sometimes he would look at his own comely face in the glass, and look into his own heart, and feel as if the love therein must compel her even against her will; for she was not an angel or a goddess, after all, beautiful as she was, but only a mortal woman. “She cannot love this man whom she has not seen since she was a child, and he must be an old man now,” reasoned Darius, viewing his own gallant young face in the glass. ”

“ The funeral urns and weeping-willows, a very art of sorrow in themselves, with their every curve the droop of a mourner's head, and all their flowing lines of tears, were still distinct. Indeed, the man who had graven many of them was still alive, and not yet past his gloomy toil. He lived in his little house not far beyond the burying-ground, and his name was Ichabod Buckley. He had a wife Sarah, a son Ichabod, and three daughters, Submit, Rebecca, and Persis. When Persis was twelve years old a great change and a romance came into her life. ”

“ One morning in September it was hot inland, but cool on the point of land reaching out into the sea where the Buckley house stood. The son, Ichabod, had gone to sea in a whaling-vessel; the father was at home, working in the little slanting shed behind the house. One could hear the grating slide of his chisel down the boughs of a weeping-willow on a new gravestone. A very old woman of the village had died that week.
At the left of the house there was a bright unexpected glint from a great brass kettle which the eastern sun struck. ”

“ When Darius and his aunt were out of sight she heard her father's voice in the kitchen, and she arose and went out there with a sudden resolve. “Father,” she said, standing before Ichabod.
He looked at her in a curious startled way. There was a strange gleam in her soft eyes, and a strange expression about her docile mouth.
“What is it?” he said.
“He will never come, father. I want to be different.”
“Who will never come? What do you mean, Persis?”
“The — gentleman — the grand gentleman with — the coach and four. He will never come for me now. I want to be different, father. ”

“ Then Darius kissed her hand, and she stole softly through the dark doorway into the gloom of the house, while her faith in her lover was as a lamp to all her thoughts.
On the next afternoon there was a sensation in this little seaport town. A grand coach and four, with a black man driving, a fine gentleman's head at one window, and a fine lady's at another, came dashing through the place at two o'clock. The women all ran to the doors and windows. Lounging old men straightened themselves languidly to stare, and turned their vacant faces over their shoulders. ”

“ Ichabod Buckley's wife had her dye-kettle out there on forked sticks over a fire. She was dyeing some cloth an indigo-blue, and her two elder daughters were helping her. The two daughters Submit and Rebecca looked like their mother. The three, from their figures, seemed about of an age — all tall and meagre and long-limbed, moving in their scanty petticoats around the kettle with a certain dry pliability, like three tall brown weeds on the windy marsh.
Persis came up from the shore at the front of the house with her arms full of drift-wood. ”

“ And, in truth, when he did look up, and saw Persis close before him in a pew at the side of the pulpit, a tremor ran over him, his lips twitched, and all the color left his face. His aunt pressed her bottle of salts into his hand, and he pressed it back almost sharply, and turned red as a girl to the roots of his black hair. Then he sat up straight and looked over almost defiantly at Persis. Her face in her blue satin bonnet, with its drooping blue plume and lace veil thrown to one side, was fair enough to stir the heart of any mortal man who looked at her. ”

“ As for Persis's brother Ichabod, nearly all his savings were given to her, but, after all, not with any especial self-denial. This beautiful young sister represented all the faint ambition in his life; he had none left for himself, and nobody had tried to arouse any. He made perilous voyages on a whaling-ship for his living. When he came home, with his face browned and stiffened by his hard fight with the icy winds of the North Atlantic, he sat down by the fire in his father's kitchen. ”

“ Then Mistress Tabitha Hopkins, holding her Sabbath gown high above her hooped satin petticoat as she stepped along, unfolded to her nephew Darius Hopkins the strange romance of Persis Buckley's life.
“'Tis a shame!” cried the young man, indignantly, when she had finished — “a shame, to keep her a prisoner in this fashion!”
“'Tis only a prince with a coach and four can set her free. A prince from over seas, with a black gentleman a-driving,” said his aunt.
Darius turned, and stared back across the flat meadow-land at Ichabod Buckley's house. ”

“ She laid down her sampler, and pulled open the front door, which was seldom used, and hard to move, being swollen with the sea dampness. Then she stole around the house towards the group at the dye-kettle. She felt scared and uncertain without knowing why. Her mother called out sharply when she caught sight of her, and waved her back. “Can't I go down for more drift-wood?” pleaded Persis, timidly.
“Back into the house!” ordered her mother, speaking against the wind, which was now blowing hard. “Back with ye! Out here in this wind! Would you be as black as an Injun? Go back to your sampler!” ”

“ She sat at the front-room window, with her beautiful face looking out meekly from under her crown of curl-papers. Her mother had a theory that a long persistency in the use of the papers might produce a lasting curl, and Persis was seldom freed from them. She walked abroad on a pleasant day at a genteel pace, with a thick black embroidered veil over her face to protect her complexion. She never ran barefoot, and even her thick cowhide shoes were discarded. She wore now dainty high-heeled red morocco shoes, which made her set her feet down as delicately as some little pink-footed pigeon. ”

“ Across the meadows the light of Tabitha Hopkins's evening candle shone out suddenly like a low-hung star, and Persis sat watching it. When Submit called, in a scared voice, that supper was ready, she went out at once, and took her place at the table. There were pink spots in her usually pale cheeks; she spoke not a word, and scarcely tasted the little tid-bits grouped as usual around her plate. Her father swallowed his food with nervous gulps, then he left the table and went out. ”

“ Nobody knew how the Buckley Lady, sitting in her window watching, had seen Darius Hopkins pass by, with never a coach and four, but striding bravely along on his own stalwart young legs, and how her heart had gone out to him and followed him, whether she would or not.
Darius Hopkins was Mistress Tabitha Hopkins's nephew, and he had come from Boston to pay his aunt a visit. People whispered that he had expectations, and had come with a purpose. Mistress Tabitha had received within two years a legacy, nobody knew how large, by the death of a relative. ”

“ Not one of them had ever spoken to her or heard her speak, or seen her except in the meeting-house, or at her window, or thickly veiled on the village street.
Persis to-day kept her eyes fixed upon the parson, exhorting under his echoing sounding-board. She never looked around, although she knew that Darius was sitting beside his aunt in her pew. She also was afraid, and she never recovered courage, like Darius. Her father, Ichabod, fiercely intent upon the discourse, his nervous face screwed to a very point of attention, sat on one side ”

“ The morning after his return from his voyage, Persis, passing her brother, would be arrested by an inarticulate command, and would pause while he dragged out his old leather bag, heavy with his hard-earned coins. Then Persis would hold up her apron by the two lower corners, and he would pour in a goodly portion of his wealth, while his face looked more smiling and animated than she ever saw it at any other time. “'Twill buy you something as good as anybody when you go among the grand folk,” he would say, with a half-chuckle, when Persis thanked him. ”

“ Her eyes were like dark stars, and her hair was a braided cap of gold, with light curls falling from it around her face and her sweet neck. Of late Persis had rebelled upon one minor point: she never, even of a morning, would sit at the window with her hair rolled up in curl-papers. She argued with her father, with a duplicity which was unlike her, that should the gentleman arrive suddenly, she would have no time to take them down before he saw her. But that was not the reason. Ichabod never suspected, neither did the stupid Submit, padding faithfully in her household tracks ”

“ Persis Buckley is fitted to adorn any high estate to which she may be called.”
There was a mysterious tone in Tabitha's voice, and her nephew looked at her with eager inquiry.
“What mean you, aunt?” he said.
“What I have said,” replied she, aggravatingly, and would tell him no more. She was secretly a little jealous that her nephew had shortened his greeting to her to inquire about Persis. Old single woman though she was, her feminine birth-right of jealousy of the love of men, be they lovers or sons or nephews, still survived in her heart. ”

“ Her mother caught her arm with a jerk. “Who be they?” she hissed in her ear.
“I — don't know — such — grand folks, and — the coach and the four, and the black man — oh, mother!”
“Go bid your father come quick.”
Sarah Buckley gave her daughter a push, and Persis flew on towards the shed where her father kept his stock of gravestones and worked. But Rebecca had already given him the alarm, and he was at the well washing the slate dust from his hands.
“Go quick, father; they want you!” panted Persis.
“Who be they?” queried Ichabod Buckley. ”

“ The measure of freedom is always in proportion to the measure of previous restraint. Persis Buckley had been under a restraint which no maiden in this New England village had ever suffered, and she had gotten from it an impetus for a deed which they would have blushed to think of. ”

“ He waved his hand carelessly backward, and tried to speak as carelessly, but his aunt gave him a sharp look.
“It must have been Persis Buckley,” said she.
“There is not another face like that in the whole country,” said the young man, and in spite of himself his tongue betrayed him.
“Yes, it is generally considered that she has a fair face,” said Tabitha, dryly. “She has accomplishments also. She can play music, and she has a pretty voice for a song. She can dance, though that's not to be spoke of in this godly town, and she is well versed in polite literature. ”

“ A multitude of small lads, with here and there a little petticoat among them, collected rapidly, and pelted along in the wake of this grand equipage. They followed it quite through the town to the road that led through the woods, past the graveyard, to the Buckley house, then up the road, panting but eager, the smaller children dragging at the hands of their elder brothers. ”

“ The daughters, tidying up the kitchen, could hear the low murmur of their parents' voices, but that was all. Persis was polishing the brasses on the hearth — the andirons and the knobs on the shovel and tongs. That was always her task. It roughened her small hands, but nobody ever minded that. To-day, as she was scouring away sturdily, her mother came suddenly out of the front room and caught her plying arm.
“There!” said she; “you need do no more of this. 'Twill get your hands all out of shape, and make them rough. They are too small for such work. ”

“ And the little maid remained in her solitary state until the meal was ready, and she was bidden forth to it. There was a little sweet cake beside her plate on the table, one of those which her mother kept in a stone jar for company. Nobody else had one. Persis looked at it doubtfully when she had finished her bread. “Eat it,” said her mother, and Persis ate it, but it tasted strange to her. ”

“ Persis dipped another affirmative courtesy towards her, then fled swiftly around the corner of the house. She met her mother and her sister Submit face to face, with a shock. They had been peeping around the corner at the grand folk. Rebecca had run into the house to put on her shoes and a clean kerchief, in case one of the elder women had to go forward to speak to them.
“Father! the gentleman wants father,” said Persis, with soft pants. “Oh, mother!” ”