The Project Gutenberg eBook of An Alabaster Box, by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and Florence Morse Kingsley This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook. Title: An Alabaster Box Author: Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and Florence Morse Kingsley Illustrator: Stockton Mulford Release Date: April 10, 2006 [eBook #18140] [Most recently updated: March 29, 2021] Language: English Character set encoding: UTF-8 Produced by: Jeff Kaylin and Andrew Sly *** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AN ALABASTER BOX *** An Alabaster Box By Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and Florence Morse Kingsley Illustrated by Stockton Mulford D. Appleton and Company New York London 1917 ......There came a woman, having an alabaster box of ointment, very precious; and she broke the box..... Contents CHAPTER I. CHAPTER II. CHAPTER III. CHAPTER IV. CHAPTER V. CHAPTER VI. CHAPTER VII. CHAPTER VIII. CHAPTER IX. CHAPTER X. CHAPTER XI. CHAPTER XII. CHAPTER XIII. CHAPTER XIV. CHAPTER XV. CHAPTER XVI. CHAPTER XVII. CHAPTER XVIII. CHAPTER XIX. CHAPTER XX. CHAPTER XXI. CHAPTER XXII. CHAPTER XXIII. CHAPTER XXIV. CHAPTER XXV. CHAPTER XXVI. CHAPTER XXVII. CHAPTER XXVIII. CHAPTER XXIX. Chapter I. “We,” said Mrs. Solomon Black with weighty emphasis, “are going to get up a church fair and raise that money, and we are going to pay your salary. We can’t stand it another minute. We had better run in debt to the butcher and baker than to the Lord.” Wesley Elliot regarded her gloomily. “I never liked the idea of church fairs very well,” he returned hesitatingly. “It has always seemed to me like sheer beggary.” “Then,” said Mrs. Solomon Black, “we will beg.” Mrs. Solomon Black was a woman who had always had her way. There was not one line which denoted yielding in her large, still handsome face, set about with very elaborate water-waves which she had arranged so many years that her black hair needed scarcely any attention. It would almost seem as if Mrs. Solomon Black had been born with water waves. She spoke firmly but she smiled, as his mother might have done, at the young man, who had preached his innocent best in Brookville for months without any emolument. “Now don’t you worry one mite about it,” said she. “Church fairs may be begging, but they belong to the history of the United States of America, and I miss my guess if there would have been much preaching of the gospel in a good many places without them. I guess it ain’t any worse to hold church fairs in this country than it is to have the outrageous goings on in the old country. I guess we can cheat a little with mats and cakes and things and not stand any more danger of hell-fire than all those men putting each other’s eyes out and killing everybody they can hit, and spending the money for guns and awful exploding stuff that ought to go for the good of the world. I ain’t worried one mite about church fairs when the world is where it is now. You just run right into your study, Mr. Elliot, and finish your sermon; and there’s a pan of hot doughnuts on the kitchen table. You go through the kitchen and get some doughnuts. We had breakfast early and you hadn’t ought to work too hard on an empty stomach. You run along. Don’t you worry. All this is up to me and Maria Dodge and Abby Daggett and a few others. You haven’t got one blessed thing to do with it. All you’ve got to do is to preach as well as you can, and keep us from a free fight. Almost always there is a fuss when women get up a fair. If you can preach the gospel so we are all on speaking terms when it is finished, you will earn your money twice over. Run along.” Wesley Elliot obeyed. He always obeyed, at least in the literal sense, when Mrs. Solomon Black ordered him. There was about her a fairly masterly maternity. She loved the young minister as firmly for his own good as if he had been her son. She chuckled happily when she heard him open the kitchen door. “He’ll light into those hot doughnuts,” she thought. She loved to pet the boy in the man. Wesley Elliot in his study upstairs—a makeshift of a study—sat munching hot doughnuts and reflecting. He had only about one-third of his sermon written and it was Saturday, but that did not disturb him. He had a quick-moving mind. He sometimes wondered whether it did not move too quickly. Wesley was not a conceited man in one sense. He never had doubt of his power, but he had grave doubts of the merits of his productions. However, today he was glad of the high rate of speed of which he was capable, and did not worry as much as he sometimes did about his landing at the exact goal. He knew very well that he could finish his sermon, easily, eat his doughnuts, and sit reflecting as long as he chose. He chose to do so for a long time, although his reflections were not particularly happy ones. When he had left the theological seminary a year ago, he had had his life planned out so exactly that it did not seem possible to him that the plans could fail. He had graduated at the head of his class. He had had no doubt of a city church. One of the professors, a rich man with much influence, had practically promised him one. Wesley went home to his doting mother, and told her the news. Wesley’s mother believed in much more than the city church. She believed her son to be capable of anything. “I shall have a large salary, mother,” boasted Wesley, “and you shall have the best clothes money can buy, and the parsonage is sure to be beautiful.” “How will your old mother look in fine feathers, in such a beautiful home?” asked Wesley’s mother, but she asked as a lovely, much-petted woman asks such a question. She had her little conscious smile all ready for the rejoinder which she knew her son would not fail to give. He was very proud of his mother. “Why, mother,” he said, “as far as that goes, I wouldn’t balk at a throne for you as queen dowager.” “You are a silly boy,” said Mrs. Elliot, but she stole a glance at herself in an opposite mirror, and smiled complacently. She did not look old enough to be the mother of her son. She was tall and slender, and fair-haired, and she knew how to dress well on her very small income. She was rosy, and carried herself with a sweet serenity. People said Wesley would not need a wife as long as he had such a mother. But he did not have her long. Only a month later she died, and while the boy was still striving to play the rôle of hero in that calamity, there came news of another. His professor friend had a son in the trenches. The son had been wounded, and the father had obeyed a hurried call, found his son dead, and himself died of the shock on the return voyage. Wesley, mourning the man who had been his stanch friend, was guiltily conscious of his thwarted ambition. “There goes my city church,” he thought, and flung the thought back at himself in anger at his own self-seeking. He was forced into accepting the first opportunity which offered. His mother had an annuity, which he himself had insisted upon for her greater comfort. When she died, the son was nearly penniless, except for the house, which was old and in need of repair. He rented that as soon as he received his call to Brookville, after preaching a humiliating number of trial sermons in other places. Wesley was of the lowly in mind, with no expectation of inheriting the earth, when he came to rest in the little village and began boarding at Mrs. Solomon Black’s. But even then he did not know how bad the situation really was. He had rented his house, and the rent kept him in decent clothes, but not enough books. He had only a little shelf filled with the absolutely necessary volumes, most of them relics of his college course. He did not know that there was small chance of even his meager salary being paid until June, and he had been ordained in February. He had wondered why nobody said anything about his reimbursement. He had refrained from mentioning it, to even his deacons. Mrs. Solomon Black had revealed the state of affairs, that morning. “You may as well know,” said she. “There ain’t a cent to pay you, and I said when you came that if we couldn’t pay for gospel privileges we should all take to our closets and pray like Sam Hill, and no charge; but they wouldn’t listen to me, though I spoke right out in conference meeting and it’s seldom a woman does that, you know. Folks in this place have been hanging onto the ragged edge of nothing so long they don’t seem to sense it. They thought the money for your salary was going to be brought down from heaven by a dove or something, when all the time, those wicked flying things are going round on the other side of the earth, and there don’t seem as if there could be a dove left. Well, now that the time’s come when you ought to be paid, if there’s any decency left in the place, they comes to me and says, ‘Oh, Mrs. Black, what shall we do?’ I said, ‘Why didn’t you listen when I spoke out in meeting about our not being able to afford luxuries like gospel preaching?’ and they said they thought matters would have improved by this time. Improved! How, I’d like to know? The whole world is sliding down hill faster and faster every minute, and folks in Brookville think matters are going to improve, when they are sliding right along with the Emperor of Germany and the King of England, and all the rest of the big bugs. I can’t figure it out, but in some queer, outlandish way that war over there has made it so folks in Brookville can’t pay their minister’s salary. They didn’t have much before, but such a one got a little for selling eggs and chickens that has had to eat them, and the street railway failed, and the chair factory, that was the only industry left here, failed, and folks that had a little to pay had to eat their payings. And here you are, and it’s got to be the fair. Seems queer the war in Europe should be the means of getting up a fair in Brookville, but I guess it’ll get up more’n that before they’re through fighting.” All this had been the preliminary to the speech which sent Wesley forth for doughnuts, then to his study, ostensibly to finish his lovely sermon, but in reality to think thoughts which made his young forehead, of almost boyhood, frown, and his pleasant mouth droop, then inexplicably smooth and smile. It was a day which no man in the flush of youth could resist. That June day fairly rioted in through the open windows. Mrs. Black’s muslin curtains danced in the June breeze like filmy-skirted nymphs. Wesley, whose imagination was active, seemed to see forced upon his eager, yet reluctant, eyes, radiant maidens, flinging their white draperies about, dancing a dance of the innocence which preludes the knowledge of love. Sweet scents came in through the windows, almond scents, honey scents, rose scents, all mingled into an ineffable bouquet of youth and the quest of youth. Wesley rose stealthily; he got his hat; he tiptoed across the room. Heavens! how thankful he was for access to the back stairs. Mrs. Black was sweeping the parlor, and the rear of the house was deserted. Down the precipitous back stairs crept the young minister, listening to the sound of the broom on Mrs. Black’s parlor carpet. As long as that regular swish continued he was safe. Through the kitchen he passed, feeling guilty as he smelled new peas cooking for his delectation on Mrs. Black’s stove. Out of the kitchen door, under the green hood of the back porch, and he was afield, and the day had him fast. He did not belong any more to his aspirations, to his high and noble ambitions, to his steadfast purpose in life. He belonged to the spring of the planet from which his animal life had sprung. Young Wesley Elliot became one with June, with eternal youth, with joy which escapes care, with the present which has nothing to do with the past or the future, with that day sufficient unto itself, that day dangerous for those whose feet are held fast by the toils of the years. Wesley sped across a field which was like a field of green glory. He saw a hollow like a nest, blue with violets, and all his thoughts leaped with irresponsive joy. He crossed a brook on rocky stones, as if he were crossing a song. A bird sang in perfect tune with his mood. He was bound for a place which had a romantic interest for him: the unoccupied parsonage, which he could occupy were he supplied with a salary and had a wife. He loved to sit on the back veranda and dream. Sometimes he had company. Brookville was a hot little village, with a long line of hills cutting off the south wind, but on that back veranda of the old parsonage there was always a breeze. Sometimes it seemed mysterious to Wesley, that breeze. It never failed in the hottest days. Now that the parsonage was vacant, women often came there with their needlework of an afternoon, and sat and sewed and chatted. Wesley knew of the custom, and had made them welcome. But sometimes of a morning a girl came. Wesley wondered if she would be there that morning. After he had left the field, he plunged knee-deep through the weedage of his predecessor’s garden, and heart-deep into luxuriant ranks of dewy vegetables which he, in the intervals of his mental labors, should raise for his own table. Wesley had an inherent love of gardening which he had never been in a position to gratify. Wesley was, in fancy, eating his own green peas and squashes and things when he came in sight of the back veranda. It was vacant, and his fancy sank in his mind like a plummet of lead. However, he approached, and the breeze of blessing greeted him like a presence. The parsonage was a gray old shadow of a building. Its walls were stained with past rains, the roof showed depressions, the veranda steps were unsteady, in fact one was gone. Wesley mounted and seated himself in one of the gnarled old rustic chairs which defied weather. From where he sat he could see a pink and white plumage of blossoms over an orchard; even the weedy garden showed lovely lights under the triumphant June sun. Butterflies skimmed over it, always in pairs, now and then a dew-light like a jewel gleamed out, and gave a delectable thrill of mystery. Wesley wished the girl were there. Then she came. He saw a flutter of blue in the garden, then a face like a rose overtopped the weeds. The sunlight glanced from a dark head, giving it high-lights of gold. The girl approached. When she saw the minister, she started, but not as if with surprise; rather as if she had made ready to start. She stood at the foot of the steps, glowing with blushes, but still not confused. She smiled with friendly confidence. She was very pretty and she wore a delicious gown, if one were not a woman, to observe the lack of fashion and the faded streaks, and she carried a little silk work-bag. Wesley rose. He also blushed, and looked more confused than the girl. “Good morning, Miss Dodge,” he said. His hands twitched a little. Fanny Dodge noted his confusion quite calmly. “Are you busy?” said she. “You are laughing at me, Miss Dodge. What on earth am I busy about?” “Oh,” said the girl. “Of course I have eyes, and I can see that you are not writing; but I can’t see your mind, or your thoughts. For all I know, they may be simply grinding out a sermon, and today is Saturday. I don’t want to break up the meeting.” She laughed. “Come on up here,” said Wesley with camaraderie. “You know I am not doing a blessed thing. I can finish my sermon in an hour after dinner. Come on up. The breeze is heavenly. What have you got in that bag?” “I,” stated Fanny Dodge, mounting the steps, “have my work in my bag. I am embroidering a center-piece which is to be sold for at least twice its value—for I can’t embroider worth a cent—at the fair.” She sat down beside him, and fished out of the bag a square of white linen and some colored silks. “Mrs. Black has just told me about that fair,” said Wesley. “Say, do you know, I loathe the idea of it?” “Why? A fair is no end of fun. We always have them.” “Beggary.” “Nonsense!” “Yes, it is. I might just as well put on some black glasses, get a little dog with a string, and a basket, and done with it.” The girl giggled. “I know what you mean,” said she, “but your salary has to be paid, and folks have to be cajoled into handing out the money.” Suddenly she looked troubled. “If there is any to hand,” she added. “I want you to tell me something and be quite frank about it.” Fanny shot a glance at him. Her lashes were long, and she could look through them with liquid fire of dark eyes. “Well?” said she. She threaded a needle with pink silk. “Is Brookville a very poor village?” Fanny inserted her pink-threaded needle into the square of linen. “What,” she inquired with gravity, “is the past tense of bust?” “I am in earnest.” “So am I. But I know a minister is never supposed to know about such a word as bust, even if he is bust two-thirds of his life. I’ll tell you. First Brookville was bust, now it’s busted.” Wesley stared at her. “Fact,” said Fanny, calmly, starting a rose on the linen in a career of bloom. “First, years ago, when I was nothing but a kid, Andrew Bolton—you have heard of Andrew Bolton?” “I have heard him mentioned. I have never understood why everybody was so down on him, though he is serving a term in prison, I believe. Nobody seems to like to explain.” “The reason for that is plain enough,” stated Fanny. “Nobody likes to admit he’s been made a fool of. The man who takes the gold brick always tries to hide it if he can’t blame it off on his wife or sister or aunt. Andrew Bolton must have made perfectly awful fools of everybody in Brookville. They must have thought of him as a little tin god on wheels till he wrecked the bank and the silk factory, and ran off with a lot of money belonging to his disciples, and got caught by the hand of the law, and landed in State’s Prison. That’s why they don’t tell. Reckon my poor father, if he were alive, wouldn’t tell. I didn’t have anything to do with it, so I am telling. When Andrew Bolton embezzled the town went bust. Now the war in Europe, through the grinding of wheels which I can’t comprehend, has bankrupted the street railway and the chair factory, and the town is busted.” “But, as you say, if there is no money, why a fair?” Wesley had paled a little. “Oh,” replied the girl, “there is always the hoarding instinct to be taken into account. There are still a lot of stockings and feather beds and teapots in Brookville. We still have faith that a fair can mine a little gold out of them for you. Of course we don’t know, but this is a Yankee village, and Yankees never do spend the last cent. I admit you may get somebody’s funeral expenses out of the teapot.” “Good Lord!” groaned Wesley. “That,” remarked the girl, “is almost swearing. I am surprised, and you a minister.” “But it is an awful state of things.” “Well,” said Fanny, “Mrs. B. H. Slocum may come over from Grenoble. She used to live here, and has never lost her interest in Brookville. She is rich. She can buy a lot, and she is very good-natured about being cheated for the gospel’s sake. Then, too, Brookville has never lost its guardian angels.” “What on earth do you mean?” “What I say. The faith of the people here in guardian angels is a wonderful thing. Sometimes it seems to me as if all Brookville considered itself under special guardianship, sort of a hen-and-chicken arrangement, you know. Anyhow, they do go ahead and undertake the craziest things, and come out somehow.” “I think,” said Wesley Elliot soberly, “that I ought to resign.” Then the girl paled, and bent closer over her work. “Resign!” she gasped. “Yes, resign. I admit I haven’t enough money to live without a salary, though I would like to stay here forever.” Wesley spoke with fervor, his eyes on the girl. “Oh, no, you wouldn’t.” “I most certainly would, but I can’t run in debt, and—I want to marry some day—like other young men—and I must earn.” The girl bent her head lower. “Why don’t you resign and go away, and get—married, if you want to?” “Fanny!” He bent over her. His lips touched her hair. “You know,” he began—then came a voice like the legendary sword which divides lovers for their best temporal and spiritual good. “Dinner is ready and the peas are getting cold,” said Mrs. Solomon Black. Then it happened that Wesley Elliot, although a man and a clergyman, followed like a little boy the large woman with the water-waves through the weedage of the pastoral garden, and the girl sat weeping awhile from mixed emotions of anger and grief. Then she took a little puff from her bag, powdered her nose, straightened her hair and, also, went home, bag in hand, to her own noon dinner. Chapter II. A church fair is one of the purely feminine functions which will be the last to disappear when the balance between the sexes is more evenly adjusted. It is almost a pity to assume that it will finally, in the nature of things, disappear, for it is charming; it is innocent with the innocence of very good, simple women; it is at the same time subtle with that inimitable subtlety which only such women can achieve. It is petty finance on such a moral height that even the sufferers by its code must look up to it. Before even woman, showing anything except a timid face of discovery at the sights of New York under male escort, invaded Wall Street, the church fair was in full tide, and the managers thereof might have put financiers to shame by the cunning, if not magnitude, of their operations. Good Christian women, mothers of families, would sell a tidy of no use except to wear to a frayed edge the masculine nerves, and hand-painted plates of such bad art that it verged on immorality, for prices so above all reason, that a broker would have been taken aback. And it was all for worthy objects, these pretty functions graced by girls and matrons in their best attire, with the products of their little hands offered, or even forced, upon the outsider who was held up for the ticket. They gambled shamelessly to buy a new carpet for the church. There was plain and brazen raffling for dreadful lamps and patent rockers and dolls which did not look fit to be owned by nice little girl-mothers, and all for the church organ, the minister’s salary and such like. Of this description was the church fair held in Brookville to raise money to pay the Reverend Wesley Elliot. He came early, and haunted the place like a morbid spirit. He was both angry and shamed that such means must be employed to pay his just dues, but since it had to be he could not absent himself. There was no parlor in the church, and not long after the infamous exit of Andrew Bolton the town hall had been destroyed by fire. Therefore all such functions were held in a place which otherwise was a source of sad humiliation to its owner: Mrs. Amos Whittle, the deacon’s wife’s unfurnished best parlor. It was a very large room, and poor Mrs. Whittle had always dreamed of a fine tapestry carpet, furniture upholstered with plush, a piano, and lace curtains. Her dreams had never been realized. The old tragedy of the little village had cropped dreams, like a species of celestial foliage, close to their roots. Poor Mrs. Whittle, although she did not realize it, missed her dreams more than she would have missed the furniture of that best parlor, had she ever possessed and lost it. She had come to think of it as a room in one of the “many mansions,” although she would have been horrified had she known that she did so. She was one who kept her religion and her daily life chemically differentiated. She endeavored to maintain her soul on a high level of orthodoxy, while her large, flat feet trod her round of household tasks. It was only when her best parlor, great empty room, was in demand for some social function like the church fair, that she felt her old dreams return and stimulate her as with some wine of youth. The room was very prettily decorated with blossoming boughs, and Japanese lanterns, and set about with long tables covered with white, which contained the articles for sale. In the center of the room was the flower-booth, and that was lovely. It was a circle of green, with oval openings to frame young girl-faces, and on the circular shelf were heaped flowers in brilliant masses. At seven o’clock the fair was in full swing, as far as the wares and saleswomen were concerned. At the flower-booth were four pretty girls: Fanny Dodge, Ellen Dix, Joyce Fulsom and Ethel Mixter. Each stood looking out of her frame of green, and beamed with happiness in her own youth and beauty. They did not, could not share the anxiety of the older women. The more anxious gathered about the cake table. Four pathetically bedizened middle-aged creatures, three too stout, one too thin, put their heads together in conference. One woman was Mrs. Maria Dodge, Fanny’s mother, one was Mrs. Amos Dix, one was Mrs. Deacon Whittle, and one was unmarried. She was the stoutest of the four, tightly laced in an ancient silk, with frizzed hair standing erect from bulging temples. She was Lois Daggett, and a tragedy. She loved the young minister, Wesley Elliot, with all her heart and soul and strength. She had fastened, to attract his admiration, a little bunch of rose geranium leaves and heliotrope in her tightly frizzed hair. That little posy had, all unrecognized, a touching pathos. It was as the aigrette, the splendid curves of waving plumage which birds adopt in the desire for love. Lois had never had a lover. She had never been pretty, or attractive, but always in her heart had been the hunger for love. The young minister seemed the ideal of all the dreams of her life. He was as a god to her. She trembled under his occasional glances, his casual address caused vibrations in every nerve. She cherished no illusions. She knew he was not for her, but she loved and worshipped, and she tucked on an absurd little bow of ribbon, and she frizzed tightly her thin hair, and she wore little posies, following out the primitive instinct of her sex, even while her reason lagged behind. If once Wesley should look at that pitiful little floral ornament, should think it pretty, it would have meant as much to that starved virgin soul as a kiss—to do her justice, as a spiritual kiss. There was in reality only pathos and tragedy in her adoration. It was not in the least earthy, or ridiculous, but it needed a saint to understand that. Even while she conferred with her friends, she never lost sight of the young man, always hoped for that one fleeting glance of approbation. When her sister-in-law, Mrs. Daggett, appeared, she restrained her wandering eyes. All four women conferred anxiously. They, with Mrs. Solomon Black, had engineered the fair. Mrs. Black had not yet appeared and they all wondered why. Abby Daggett, who had the expression of a saint—a fleshy saint, in old purple muslin—gazed about her with admiration. “Don’t it look perfectly lovely!” she exclaimed. Mrs. Whittle fairly snapped at her, like an angry old dog. “Lovely!” said she with a fine edge of sarcasm in her tone, “perfectly lovely! Yes it does. But I think we are a set of fools, the whole of us. Here we’ve got a fair all ready, and worked our fingers to the bone (I don’t know but I’ll have a felon on account of that drawn-in rug there) and we’ve used up all our butter and eggs, and I don’t see, for one, who is going to buy anything. I ain’t got any money t’ spend. I don’t believe Mrs. Slocum will come over from Grenoble, and if she does, she can’t buy everything.” “Well, what made us get up the fair?” asked Mrs. Dodge. “I suppose we all thought somebody might have some money,” ventured Abby Daggett. “I’d like to know who? Not one of us four has, and I don’t believe Mrs. Solomon Black has, unless she turns in her egg-money, and if she does I don’t see how she is going to feed the minister. Where is Phoebe Black?” “She is awfully late,” said Lois. She looked at the door, and, so doing, got a chance to observe the minister, who was standing beside the flower-table talking to Ellen Dix. Fanny Dodge was busily arranging some flowers, with her face averted. Ellen Dix was very pretty, with an odd prettiness for a New England girl. Her pale olive skin was flawless and fine of texture. Her mouth was intensely red, and her eyes very dark and heavily shaded by long lashes. She wore at the throat of her white dress a beautiful coral brooch. It had been one of her mother’s girlhood treasures. The Dix family had been really almost opulent once, before the Andrew Bolton cataclysm had involved the village, and there were still left in the family little reminiscences of former splendor. Mrs. Dix wore a superb old lace scarf over her ancient black silk, and a diamond sparkled at her throat. The other women considered the lace much too old and yellow to be worn, but Mrs. Dix was proud both of the lace and her own superior sense of values. If the lace had been admired she would not have cared so much for it. Suddenly a little woman came hurrying up, her face sharp with news. “What do you think?” she said to the others. “What do you think?” They stared at her. “What do you mean, Mrs. Fulsom?” asked Mrs. Whittle acidly. The little woman tossed her head importantly. “Oh, nothing much,” said she, “only I thought the rest of you might not know. Mrs. Solomon Black has got another boarder. That’s what’s making her late. She had to get something for her to eat.” “Another boarder!” said Mrs. Whittle. “Yes,” said the little woman, “a young lady, and Mrs. Solomon Black is on her way here now.” “With her?” gasped the others. “Yes, she’s coming, and she looks to me as if she might have money.” “Who is she?” asked Mrs. Whittle. “How do I know? Mrs. Mixter’s Tommy told my Sam, and he told me, and I saw Mrs. Black and the boarder coming out of her yard, when I went out of mine, and I hurried so’s to get here first. Hush! Here they come now.” While the women were conferring many people had entered the room, although none had purchased the wares. Now there was stark silence and a concentrated fire of attention as Mrs. Black entered with a strange young woman. Mrs. Black looked doubtfully important. She, as a matter of fact, was far from sure of her wisdom in the course she was taking. She was even a little pale, and her lips moved nervously as she introduced the girl to one and another. “Miss Orr,” she said; sometimes “Miss Lydia Orr.” As for the girl, she looked timid, yet determined. She was pretty, perhaps a beauty, had she made the most of her personal advantages instead of apparently ignoring them. Her beautiful fair hair, which had red-gold lights, should have shaded her forehead, which was too high. Instead it was drawn smoothly back, and fastened in a mat of compact flat braids at the back of her head. She was dressed very simply, in black, and her costume was not of the latest mode. “I don’t see anything about her to have made Mrs. Fulsom think she was rich,” Mrs. Whittle whispered to Mrs. Daggett, who made an unexpectedly shrewd retort: “I can see. She don’t look as if she cared what anybody thought of her clothes; as if she had so much she’s never minded.” Mrs. Whittle failed to understand. She grunted non-assent. “I don’t see,” said she. “Her sleeves are way out of date.” For awhile there was a loud buzz of conversation all over the room. Then it ceased, for things were happening, amazing things. The strange young lady was buying and she was paying cash down. Some of the women examined the bank notes suspiciously and handed them to their husbands to verify. The girl saw, and flushed, but she continued. She went from table to table, and she bought everything, from quilts and hideous drawn-in rugs to frosted cakes. She bought in the midst of that ominous hush of suspicion. Once she even heard a woman hiss to another, “She’s crazy. She got out of an insane asylum.” However nobody of all the stunned throng refused to sell. Her first failure came in the case of a young man. He was Jim Dodge, Fanny’s brother. Jim Dodge was a sort of Ishmael in the village estimation, and yet he was liked. He was a handsome young fellow with a wild freedom of carriage. He had worked in the chair factory to support his mother and sister, before it closed. He haunted the woods, and made a little by selling skins. He had brought as his contribution to the fair a beautiful fox skin, and when the young woman essayed to buy that he strode forward. “That is not for sale,” said he. “I beg you to accept that as a gift, Miss Orr.” The young fellow blushed a little before the girl’s blue eyes, although he held himself proudly. “I won’t have this sold to a young lady who is buying as much as you are,” he continued. The girl hesitated. Then she took the skin. “Thank you, it is beautiful,” she said. Jim’s mother sidled close to him. “You did just right, Jim,” she whispered. “I don’t know who she is, but I feel ashamed of my life. She can’t really want all that truck. She’s buying to help. I feel as if we were a parcel of beggars.” “Well, she won’t buy that fox skin to help!” Jim whispered back fiercely. The whole did not take very long. Finally the girl talked in a low voice to Mrs. Black who then became her spokeswoman. Mrs. Black now looked confident, even triumphant. “Miss Orr says of course she can’t possibly use all the cake and pies and jelly,” she said, “and she wants you to take away all you care for. And she wants to know if Mrs. Whittle will let the other things stay here till she’s got a place to put them in. I tell her there’s no room in my house.” “I s’pose so,” said Mrs. Whittle in a thick voice. She and many others looked fairly pale and shocked. Mrs. Solomon Black, the girl and the minister went out. The hush continued for a few seconds. Then Mrs. Whittle spoke. “There’s something wrong about that girl,” said she. Other women echoed her. The room seemed full of feminine snarls. Jim Dodge turned on them, and his voice rang out. “You are a lot of cats,” said he. “Come on home, mother and Fanny, I am mortal shamed for the whole of it. That girl’s buying to help, when she can’t want the things, and all you women turning on her for it!” After the Dodges had gone there was another hush. Then it was broken by a man’s voice, an old man’s voice with a cackle of derision and shrewd amusement in it. “By gosh!” said this voice, resounding through the whole room, “that strange young woman has bought the whole church fair!” “There’s something wrong,” said Mrs. Whittle again. “Ain’t you got the money?” queried the man’s voice. “Yes, but—” “Then for God’s sake hang onto it!” Chapter III. After Jim Dodge had taken his mother and sister home, he stole off by himself for a solitary walk. The night was wonderful, and the young man, who was in a whirl of undefined emotion, unconsciously felt the need of a lesson of eternal peace. The advent of the strange girl, and her unprecedented conduct had caused in him a sort of masculine vertigo over the whole situation. Why in the name of common sense was that girl in Brookville, and why should she have done such a thing? He admired her; he was angry with her; he was puzzled by her. He did not like the minister. He did not wonder that Elliot should wish for emolument enough to pay his way, but he had a little contempt for him, for his assumption of such superior wisdom that he could teach his fellow men spiritual knowledge and claim from them financial reward. Aside from keeping those he loved in comfort, Jim had no wish for money. He had all the beauty of nature for the taking. He listened, as he strolled along, to the mysterious high notes of insects and night-birds; he saw the lovely shadows of the trees, and he honestly wondered within himself why Brookville people considered themselves so wronged by an occurrence of years ago, for which the perpetrator had paid so dearly. At the same time he experienced a sense of angry humiliation at the poverty of the place which had caused such an occurrence as that church fair. When he reached Mrs. Solomon Black’s house, he stared up at its glossy whiteness, reflecting the moonlight like something infinitely more precious than paint, and he seemed to perceive again a delicate, elusive fragrance which he had noticed about the girl’s raiment when she thanked him for his fox skin. “She smelled like a new kind of flower,” Jim told himself as he swung down the road. The expression was not elegant, but it was sincere. He thought of the girl as he might have thought of an entirely new species of blossom, with a strictly individual fragrance which he had encountered in an expedition afield. After he had left the Black house, there was only a half mile before he reached the old Andrew Bolton place. The house had been very pretentious in an ugly architectural period. There were truncated towers, a mansard roof, hideous dormers, and a reckless outbreak of perfectly useless bay windows. The house, which was large, stood aloof from the road, with a small plantation of evergreen trees before it. It had not been painted for years, and loomed up like the vaguest shadow of a dwelling even in the brilliant moonlight. Suddenly Jim caught sight of a tiny swinging gleam of light. It bobbed along at the height of a man’s knee. It was a lantern, which seemed rather an odd article to be used on such a night. Then Jim came face to face with the man who carried the lantern, and saw who he was—Deacon Amos Whittle. To Jim’s mind, the man resembled a fox, skulking along the road, although Deacon Amos Whittle was not predatory. He was a small, thin, wiry man with a queer swirl of white whisker, and hopping gait. He seemed somewhat blinded by his lantern, for he ran full tilt into Jim, who stood the shock with such firmness that the older man staggered back, and danced uncertainly to recover his balance. Deacon Amos Whittle stuttered uncertain remarks, as was his wont when startled. “It is only Jim Dodge,” said Jim. “Guess your lantern sort of blinded you, Deacon.” Then the lantern almost blinded Jim, for Whittle swung it higher until it came on a level with Jim’s eyes. Over it peered Whittle’s little keen ones, spectacled under a gray shag of eyebrows. “Oh it is you!” said the man with a somewhat contemptuous accent. He held Jim in slight esteem. Jim laughed lightly. Unless he cared for people, their opinion of him always seemed a perfectly negligible matter, and he did not care at all for Amos Whittle. Suddenly, to his amazement, Amos took hold of his coat. “Look a’ here, Jim,” said he. “Well?” “Do you know anything about that strange woman that’s boardin’ to Mis’ Solomon Black’s?” “How in creation should I know anything about her?” “Hev you seen her?” “I saw her at the fair tonight.” “The fair at my house?” “Don’t know of any other fair.” “Well, what do you think of her?” “Don’t think of her.” Jim tried to pass, but the old man danced before him with his swinging lantern. “I must be going along,” said Jim. “Wait a minute. Do you know she bought the whole fair?” “Yes, I do. You are blinding me with that lantern, Deacon Whittle.” “And she paid good money down. I seen it.” “All right. I’ve got to get past you.” “Wait a minute. Do you s’pose that young woman is all right?” “I don’t see why not. Nothing against the law of the land for her to buy out a church fair, that I know of.” “Don’t you think it looks sort of suspicious?” “It’s none of my business. I confess I don’t see why it’s suspicious, unless somebody wants to make her out a fool. I don’t understand what any sane person wants with all that truck; but I don’t pretend to understand women.” Whittle shook his head slowly. “I dunno,” he said. “Well, I don’t know who does, or cares either. They’ve got the money. I suppose that was what they were after.” Jim again tried to pass. “Wait just a minute. Say, Jim, I’m going to tell you something. Don’t you speak of it till it gets out.” “Fire away. I’m in a hurry.” “She wants to buy this old Bolton place here.” Jim whistled. “You know the assignees of the Bolton estate had to take the house, and it’s been running down all these years, and a lot of money has got to be spent on it or it’ll tumble down. Now, this young woman has offered to pay a good round sum for it, and take it just as it is. S’pose it’s all right?” “How in creation should I know? If I held it, and wanted to sell it, I’d know darn well whether it was all right or not. I wouldn’t go around asking other folks.” “But you see it don’t seem natural. Folks don’t do things like that. She’s offering to pay more than the place is worth. She’ll have to spend thousands on it to make it fit to live in. She says she’ll pay cash, too.” “Well, I suppose you’ll know cash when you see it. I’ve got to go.” “But cash! Lord A’mighty! We dunno what to do.” “I suppose you know whether you want to sell or not.” “Want to sell! If we didn’t want to sell this old shebang we’d be dumb idiots.” “Then, why in the name of common sense don’t you sell?” “Because, somehow it don’t look natural to me.” “Well, I must confess that to throw away much money on an old shell like that doesn’t look any too natural to me.” “Come now, Jim, that was a real nice house when it was built.” Jim laughed sarcastically. “Running up your wares now, are you?” “That house cost Andrew Bolton a pile of money. And now, if it’s fixed up, it’ll be the best house in Brookville.” “That isn’t saying much. See here, you’ve got to let me pass. If you want to sell—I should think you would—I don’t see what you are worrying about. I don’t suppose you are worrying for fear you may cheat the girl.” “We ain’t goin’ to cheat the girl, but—I dunno.” Whittle stood aside, shaking his head, and Jim passed on. He loitered along the shaggy hedge which bordered the old Bolton estate, and a little farther, then turned back. He had reached the house again when he started. In front of the gate stood a shadowy figure, a woman, by the outlines of the dress. Jim continued hesitatingly. He feared to startle her. But he did not. When he came abreast of her, she turned and looked full in his face, and he recognized Miss Orr. He took off his hat, but was so astonished he could scarcely utter a greeting. The girl was so shy that she stammered a little, but she laughed too, like a child caught in some mischief. “Oh, I am so glad it is you!” she said. “Well, taking all things into consideration, so am I,” said Jim. “You mean—?” “I mean it is pretty late for you to be out alone, and I’m as good as a Sunday School picnic, with the superintendent and the minister thrown in, for you to meet. I’ll see you home.” “Goodness! There’s nothing to be afraid of in this little place,” said the girl. “I have lived in New York.” “Where there are policemen.” “Oh, yes, but one never counts on that. One never counts on anything in New York. You can’t, you know. Its mathematics are as high as its buildings, too high to take chances. But here—why, I saw pretty near the whole village at that funny fair, didn’t I?” “Well, yes, but Brookville is not a walled town. People not so desirable as those you saw at the fair have free entrance and egress. It is pretty late.” “I am not in the least afraid,” said the girl. “You have no reason to be, now.” “You mean because you have happened along. Well, I am glad you did. I begun to think it was rather late myself for me to be prowling around, but you will simply have to leave me before I get to my boarding house. That Mrs. Black is as kind as can be, but she doesn’t know what to make of me, and on the whole I think I would rather take my chances stealing in alone than to have her spy you.” “If you wanted to come out, why didn’t you ask the minister to come with you?” Jim asked bluntly. “The minister! Oh, I don’t like ministers when they are young. They are much better when all the doctrines they have learned at their theological seminaries have settled in their minds, and have stopped bubbling. However, this minister here seems rather nice, very young, but he doesn’t give the impression of taking himself so seriously that he is a nervous wreck on account of his convictions. I wouldn’t have asked him for the world. In the first place, Mrs. Black would have thought it very queer, and in the second place he was so hopping mad about that fair, and having me buy it, that he wouldn’t have been agreeable. I don’t blame him. I would feel just so in his place. It must be frightful to be a poor minister.” “None too pleasant, anyway.” “You are right, it certainly is not. I have been poor myself, and I know. I went to my room, and looked out of the window, and it was so perfectly beautiful outdoors, and I did want to see how this place looked by moonlight, so I just went down the back stairs and came alone. I hope nobody will break in while I am gone. I left the door unlocked.” “No burglars live in Brookville,” said Jim. “Mighty good reasons for none to come in, too.” “What reasons?” “Not a blessed thing to burgle. Never has been for years.” There was a silence. The girl spoke in a hushed voice. “I—understand,” said she, “that the people here hold the man who used to live in this house responsible for that.” “Why, yes, I suppose he was. Brookville never would have been a Tuxedo under any circumstances, but I reckon it would have fared a little better if Mr. Bolton hadn’t failed to see the difference between mine and thine. I was nothing but a kid, but I have heard a good deal about it. Some of the older people are pretty bitter, and some of the younger ones have it in their veins. I suppose the poor man did start us down hill.” “You say ‘poor man’; why?” asked the girl and her voice trembled. “Lord, yes. I’m like a hound sneaking round back doors for bones, on account of Mr. Bolton, myself. My father lost more than ’most anybody, but I wouldn’t change places with the man. Say, do you know he has been in State’s Prison for years?” “Yes.” “Of course any man who does wrong is a poor man, even if he doesn’t get caught. I’m mighty glad I wasn’t born bitter as some of the people here were. My sister Fanny isn’t either. She doesn’t have much, poor girl, but I’ve never heard her say one word, and mother never blames it on Mr. Bolton, either. Mother says he is getting his punishment, and it isn’t for any of us to add to it.” “Your sister was that pretty girl at the flower table?” “Yes—I suppose you would call her pretty. I don’t really know. A fellow never does know, when the girl is his sister. She may look the best of the bunch to him, but he’s never sure.” “She is lovely,” said Lydia Orr. She pointed to the shadowy house. “That must have been a nice place once.” “Best in the village; show place. Say, what in the name of common sense do you want to buy it for?” “Who told you?” “Oh, I met old Whittle just before I met you. He told me. The place must be terribly run down. It will cost a mint of money to get it in shape.” “I have considerable money,” stated the girl quite simply. “Well, it’s none of my business, but you will have to sink considerable in that place, and perhaps when you are through it won’t be satisfactory.” “I have taken a notion to it,” said the girl. She spoke very shyly. Her curiously timid, almost apologetic manner returned suddenly. “I suppose it does look strange,” she added. “Nobody’s business how it looks,” said Jim, “but I think you ought to know the truth about it, and I think I am more likely to give you information than Whittle. Of course he has an ax to grind. Perhaps if I had an ax to grind, you couldn’t trust me.” “Yes, I could,” returned the girl with conviction. “I knew that the minute I looked at you. I always know the people I can trust. I know I could not trust Deacon Whittle. I made allowances, the way one does for a clock that runs too fast or too slow. I think one always has to be doing addition or subtraction with people, to understand them.” “Well, you had better try a little subtraction with me.” “I don’t have to. I didn’t mean with everybody. Of course there are exceptions. That was a beautiful skin you gave me. I didn’t half thank you.” “Nonsense. I was glad to give it.” “Do you hunt much?” “About all I am good for except to run our little farm and do odd jobs. I used to work in the chair factory.” “I shouldn’t think you would have liked that.” “Didn’t; had to do what I could.” “What would you like to do?” “Oh, I don’t know. I never had any choice, so I never gave it any thought. Something that would keep me out of doors, I reckon.” “Do you know much about plants and trees?” “I don’t know whether I know much; I love them, that’s all.” “You could do some landscape gardening for a place like this, I should think.” Jim stared at her, and drew himself up haughtily. “It really is late, Miss Orr,” he said. “I think, if you will allow me, I will take you home.” “What are you angry about?” “I am not angry.” “Yes, you are. You are angry because I said that about landscape gardening.” “I am not a beggar or a man who undertakes a job he is not competent to perform, if I am poor.” “Will you undertake setting those grounds to rights, if I buy the place?” “Why don’t you hire a regular landscape man if you have so much money?” asked Jim rudely. “I would rather have you. I want somebody I can work with. I have my own ideas. I want to hire you to work with me. Will you?” “Time enough to settle that when you’ve bought the pl...