Nancy Huston Banks

“ Miss Judy was now chirruping quite like herself, and Miss Sophia listening and nodding alternately in happy content. Nearly asleep, she did not hear the soft rustle of Miss Judy's bombazine skirt as it slipped off in the darkness.
"You don't mind, do you, sister Sophia?" said Miss Judy, feeling, nevertheless, bound to apologize in respect for her sister. "It's too dark for any one passing to see. And it does make the back breadths so shiny to sit on them, no matter how lightly you try to sit down," she added, as if she could sit any other way, dear little atom of humanity! ”

“ Misfortune never comes singly to a community any more than to an individual. No life anywhere may ever stand or fall quite alone, so are the living all bound together. In a village where every door stands wide and all lives are in the open, and where no high, hard walls rise between the people,—as they do in a city,—the bond is closer than it can be elsewhere. So that the uneasiness which the judge communicated so unwillingly to Miss Judy on that quiet midsummer night was the beginning of the end of the peace of many of the good people of Oldfield, for a long time afterward. ”

“ She stood still for a moment, gazing wistfully, waiting and longing for the far-off glimpse of Doris, which nearly always sweetened the beginning of the day. On that wet March morning there was no flutter of a little white apron, no sign of a wafted kiss. Miss Judy sighed gently as her gaze came back to her own yard. There were two japonica bushes, one standing on either side of the front gate, and as Miss Judy now glanced at them she was startled to see what seemed to be a roseate mist floating among the bare, brown branches, still dripping and shining with the night's rain. ”

“ Before a tragedy so overwhelming every earnest soul striving in Oldfield stood awed, although it was not given to many to comprehend that the greatest awe which even the simplest felt was for the awful Mystery of Life. Never in the history of the village had its simple people been so slow in taking up the petty burden of daily struggle and strife. It seemed as if the least imaginative must be feeling the littleness of all earthly things.
Even old lady Gordon's look and manner were almost gentle, certainly more gentle than her grandson had ever seen them. ”

“ When, therefore, it came to such delicate matters as walking and courtesying—as a young lady of quality should walk and courtesy—not even Miss Sophia was permitted to be present. Miss Judy took Doris into the darkened parlor and raised the shades only a cautious inch or two, so that, while they could see to move about, no living eye might behold the charming scene which was taking place. And there in this dim light, the dainty old lady and the graceful young girl would take delicate steps and make wonderful courtesies—grave as grave could be—all up and down, and up and down that sad old room. ”

“ Looking at her, Lynn knew well enough that he had but to loose his firm hold upon himself ever so little, to love her as he might never be able to love another woman. He never had seen, and never expected to see, such beauty as this of Doris's, for the true lover of beauty knows its rarity. And nothing else in the world so appealed to him; no charm of mind, or heart, or spirit, could ever quite make up for the lack of it, notwithstanding that he valued these qualities also, and held them higher than thoughtless youth often holds them. ”

“ So John Stanley thought, under a sudden great wave of the old bitterness, with the pain of memory rushing back as if the flood of wretchedness had engulfed him but yesterday. He could do nothing else than tell Miss Judy, and he must tell her at once—lest she hear it from some other source—and so gently that she could not be frightened, timid as she was. There need be no trouble about the mere money; he did not consider that at all; unknown to Miss Judy, he could shield her from that. Nor was there any danger of so much as a collision of words with the Spaniard, now or at any time. ”

“ With this heavenly music in his ears and this seeming peace and happiness before his eyes, Lynn Gordon could hear no sound of the sorrow of living, nor could he see any sign of the pain of the world. An unconscious smile even lifted for a moment the weight from his heart as he idly watched a merry couple of nuthatches, those gay "clowns of the green tent of the woods," tumbling up and down a giant elm. He did not see the solitary butcher bird, nature's most cruel executioner, sitting in motionless, sinister silence in the dark depths of a great thorn tree, nature's cruelest scaffold. ”

“ But then, on the other hand, perhaps no woman, however loving, ever can fully realize how much unstinted tenderness may mean to the greatest, the gravest, the most reserved of men, when he has never found it in his own home or anywhere else in all the cold world, which he has conquered by giving up the warmth and sweetness of life—as they must be given up by every conqueror of the region of perpetual ice. Miss Judy's gentle love now enfolded him like a soft, warm mantle, so that the chill at his heart melted away. ”

“ Her father had been a true lover of the best in literature, and her mother had been as fond of sentiment in fiction as in real life. These books, thick, stubby old volumes bound in leather, gathered by them, were Miss Judy's greatest pride and delight. She therefore led Doris to them in due time, impressing her with proper reverence, and thus the girl became in a measure acquainted with a very few of the few really great in letters, and learned to know them as they may be known to an old lady and a young girl who have never had a glimpse of the world. ”

“ There were no new books in Oldfield, had poor Anne known the new from the old, and there were few of any kind. Miss Judy had more than any one else, and she was eager in offering all that had belonged to her father, as well as the handful of more recent ones gathered by her own simple tastes; and these last she urged upon Anne as being lighter and more cheerful, and consequently more suited to the cheering of an invalid. She was quite sure, so she said, smiling to hearten Anne, that Tom would like to hear about Becky; he had always liked lively, good-hearted people—like himself. ”

“ And neither love nor honor nor any other of all the tenderest, noblest feelings of the truest heart, can ever bring together those whom cruel nature has set forever apart. For it is one of the mysteries of the sorrow of living that the deep rivers of many earnest lives are thus set to run side by side, and yet forbidden ever to mingle from the beginning to the end; from the unknown fountain of life to the unsounded sea of death.
Lynn had noticed more than once that a shadow fell over Doris's gentle spirits whenever, on their strolls together, they caught a glimpse of Sidney. ”

“ There also seemed to be some wonderful little white thing in Doris's lovely arms, resting on her breast as a bud rests against a rose; and as the light shone brighter and brighter over the rose-clouds of the silvery dream, Miss Judy saw that the rays about the girl's head were the aureole of motherhood.
"How strange our dreams are," she said to Miss Sophia, smiling and blushing, while they were engaged in the usual polite conversation over their frugal breakfast. "We dream of things we never thought of." ”

“ Her soft hair, white as falling snowflakes and as curly as a child's, was burnished by a silver gloss lovelier than the sheen of youth. And her beautiful eyes were still the blue of the flax flowers.
Lifting her shining, curly head on that sunny morning, Miss Judy cast a glance of dismay at the ruthless sunbeams lying on the carpet, and she could not help a slight start. Then she held her breath for a moment, turning her blue eyes on the back of Miss Sophia's nightcap, in a look of anxious love. It always gave Miss Sophia a headache to be aroused suddenly. ”

“ And then, after she had thus lived through many wasted days, and many empty nights, it seemed as if this grandson had come at the eleventh hour to open the door of her prison-house. She had not believed it at first; more than a half-century is so long to wait for everything which the heart most craves, that it cannot believe at once when its supreme desire seems about to be granted at last. But, nevertheless, old lady Gordon's pleasure and pride in her grandson had grown fast and steadily through those perfect days and weeks of summer. ”

“ Speak low," said Sidney, bending over the fence and speaking herself in a hoarse whisper, "Doris has got a beau!"
"You don't say so!" exclaimed Mrs. Alexander under her breath, but not as yet much enlightened as to the cause of the extraordinary manœuvres which she had witnessed. "And who is it?"
"Old lady Gordon's grandson," said Sidney, trying vainly to keep the triumphant note out of her voice.
The doctor's wife involuntary pursed up her mouth; had she been a man, she certainly would have whistled. "Indeed!" was all she found to say. ”

“ A round, heavy, dark, uninteresting old woman, utterly unlike her sister, except in gentleness and goodness. On Miss Sophia's side of the bed were three stout steps, forming a sort of dwarf stairway, and down this she now came slowly, backwards and in perfect safety. But Miss Sophia's getting to the floor was yet a long way from being ready for breakfast. It was hard to see how so small a body, so simply clothed, could get into such an intricate tangle of strings and hooks and buttons on every morning of her life. Miss Judy's sweet patience never wavered. ”

“ It was easy enough to train Miss Judy, whose nature responded to exquisiteness as an æolian harp responds to the breeze. Miss Sophia was different, but the little mother did not live long enough to find it out. Perhaps no true mother ever lives long enough to find anything lacking in her child. Miss Sophia was standing on the threshold of womanhood, and Miss Judy had barely crossed it, when the little mother died, worn out by hardship and broken-hearted by exile, but cheerful and uncomplaining to the last, as such mothers always are. ”

“ She looked forward from one of these visits to the next as to the greatest honor, and, after her love for Doris and her tenderness for her sister, the greatest happiness of her life. She knew how great a man this quiet, gray-haired, famous jurist was to a wider world than she had ever known; and the flattery of his open and exclusive devotion filled her gentle heart with sweet and tender pride. But there was something far tenderer and sweeter than pride in the feeling with which Miss Judy awaited the coming of John Stanley; for he was always John Stanley, and never the famous judge, to her. ”

“ To Anne, as much as to any mediæval saint in any rock-ribbed cell, the longest, happiest earthly life measured nothing against a glorious eternity. Her husband was handsome, spirited, high-hearted, masterful, compelling, and kind, too, in his careless way; another woman might have been happy and proud to be his wife; but Anne's heart had ached from first to last for the one thing of which she never spoke, and for which she was always praying. ”

“ This young Gordon seems to be a fine young fellow, but, fine or coarse, all that I ask of that old Hessian, or of anybody, is to do as I do, and to let him and Doris alone, and not to meddle; just to give the two young things a fair field and no favor. And that's what she and everybody's got to do, too, or walk over Sidney Wendall's dead body."
"Don't—don't," entreated Miss Judy's soft voice, coming out of the quiet darkness with a tremulous gentleness, and telling of the tender tears in her blue eyes. "Let not your heart be troubled, dear friend. All will be well with the child. ”

“ The doctor was too deeply absorbed—too seriously troubled—to smile as he usually did at Miss Judy's sweet absurdities, appreciating them almost as much as he valued her heart of gold. In truth he hardly heard what she said.
"Maybe you can make Anne see how different things are now," he went on musingly, and somewhat hesitatingly, as though the possibility had suddenly occurred to him. "Women understand one another," he added, uttering a fallacy accepted by many a sensible man and rejected by every sensible woman.
The fair old face on the other side of the gate grew grave in its perplexity. ”