when louise and leslie walked together through the forest of betsey they had not as a matter of fact passed entirely unobserved.
hilda, after her sister had gone downstairs, didn't remain long in bed. right on the heels of that cloudy fear lest mr. barry fail to arrive and louise's heart be a second time broken, there flashed, for hilda, a fine little campaign in her own behalf. hilda's education in the great school of love was already quite well launched. of course she was as yet graded rather intermediately. but hilda was an alert and ambitious young student. she told herself it would be very much worth while to observe how an engaged lady behaved in the company of other men. louise was a pattern for her in so many ways—both papa and mama kept insisting. why not in this also? she might very possibly have need of the lesson some day. however, the real, specific, if not exactly admitted impulse behind her nimble relinquishment of bed was the plain desire just to see leslie.
it did not take hilda long to dress. for one thing, of course, she dressed very simply up here in the[pg 49] wilderness. louise dressed simply also, but not so simply as hilda. however, there was a reason for this—a reason of which hilda was fully cognisant, and one to which she was perforce reconciled. age made all the difference in the world. she consoled herself with enormous bows on her jumpers, but also with the promise that there would come a day when she, too, would dress less simply, even in the wilderness.
hilda was listening at the head of the stairs when her sister went up to the "tea-house" to summon leslie. while the lower part of the cottage was thus momentarily vacant, the girl stole down, making comical faces of deprecatory concern at each separate creak. then she sped quickly out of the house and off through the thicket in a direction oblique with the path which louise and leslie were later to take. hilda's little by-way struck over two low hills and spilled itself recklessly into the broader road used by the cottagers of betsey, at a point about a quarter of a mile along, toward crystal lake.
she was an odd, inquisitive child, and had a genuine passion for watching the great world spin. wherever was the most going on, there you would generally find hilda, an earnest observer, if age or circumstance unfortunately forbade her active participation. she knew far more about the people who summered at point betsey than any one dreamed. hilda had a hammock strung up in an invisible bower just beyond the spot where the little path lost itself.[pg 50] there was only a dust-powdered screen of boughs and bushes between it and the road. the hammock, handed down to her when the rev. needham invested in a fine new one for the cottage, had seen more than a season of unroofed service, and was consequently rather inclined to be stringy. it was, in point of fact, a very dilapidated hammock indeed. but hilda esteemed it highly. she thought it a very estimable hammock—had a real affection for it. hers was happily the age when rags are royal raiment—without the solemn, limiting balance of that sublime and classic exclamation.
she reached this secret nook quite out of breath. of course there was no real need for all this haste. she knew there wasn't. but youth does not loiter on such errands. she flung herself down in the hammock and for a time lay still. it was cool here, and hazy with dawn. to one side of her the scrub thicket, sprinkled with sturdier growth, lay almost stygian; to the other side was the betsey road, a bright, tortuous band of morning, threading the betsey woods as though it were the path of some exploring courier of sol. through the flimsy façade of leaves the light of morning streamed into hilda's bower with a mistily tempered shine. though ample, this screen afforded plenty of peepholes; and naturally hilda knew them all. if a storm threshed through the forest and wrenched wisps of woodbine into a different position, or whipped the heavier undergrowth into a new pattern, temporary or [pg 51]permanent as the case might be, the girl was quick to perceive the new order of things and to train her eye to the altered scope of vision. she lay now in the hammock, regaining her breath, and swung herself gently back and forth with the aid of a stout wild grape tendon.
there was a great deal of wild life all about her: birds and squirrels and chipmunks and queer little humming, whirring, chirping insects. some seasons certain of the cottagers brought up household cats with them from town, when it might be observed that the birds and squirrels were much less in evidence—much more wary and reserved in their deportment. but as it chanced, this year there wasn't a cat on the point, and the woods were full of day-long frolic.
hilda had some time to wait. the two persons on whom her innocent espionage was designed, loitered, as we have seen, through their breakfast; and the little girl was almost ready to persuade herself that louise and leslie must have taken the much longer, circuitous northern route, when suddenly she heard their voices.
they appeared to be talking softly, as though still imbued with dawn-cautiousness, even where there was no longer the possibility of disturbing any one's slumber. hilda, lying there so still and expectant, saw them walking together along the road. leslie's eyes pursued the ground he was treading, but louise was glancing anxiously up at him.
[pg 52]
"you would think we couldn't even be friends any more," she was saying.
and then hilda heard the lad beside her mutter: "friends!"—in that tone that appeared to embody so much....
"i'm sure we'll always be the best sort of friends, leslie," louise said warmly.
and then they were almost beyond hearing. however, hilda caught leslie's thick communication about going back to the city, and it troubled her a good deal. she slipped out of the hammock and peeped through the shielding leaves. she thought to herself: "how well they look together!" and she seemed suddenly full of a vague unhappiness. out of a subsequent observation: "louise always looks well with men," hilda did not for some reason or other, glean the poor ounce of consolation, regarding leslie, that might appear nestling there.
she left her bower and returned to the cottage in a rather soberer mood, along the open road they had so recently traversed.
the summer rising of the parent needhams regularly occurred about seven. in town, during the season of lengthened nights, the household was suffered to slumber perhaps a half hour longer; but matinal "dawdling," as the rev. needham put it,[pg 53] was a symptom of decadence to be scrupulously shunned. the rev. needham had a rather definite persuasion that all the people in the east inclined towards late rising. he had a theory that a day well begun was bound to end well. it didn't, as a matter of fact, so far as he was concerned—at least there was nothing at all dependable about it; but these collapses, these drab failures of the real to coincide with the ideal, these sloughings off from a kind of platonic scheme of perfection, constituted what stood as perhaps the reverend gentleman's most distinguishing quality. here was a man marked for a kind of almost rhythmic disaster. the wheel of life never ran smoothly, but kept bumping over sly pebbles of chagrin and disappointment. the rev. needham was like a middle age (or perhaps early chinese) delinquent, strung up for chastisement, his arms pinioned to a beam overhead, and the mere points of his toes permitted to touch the ground. an inch or a few inches relaxed, and he would be all right. if he could only get his heels down! but that, alas, was just the trouble with the rev. needham: however dignified and calm he might appear externally, there never was, there never could seem to be, an entire and sincere consciousness of solid ground under his feet. sometimes he would sigh: "ah, at last!" but anon there would be a devilish tingling in the heels, which would remind him that they were still upreared. the poor[pg 54] man's destiny seemed eternally a thing suspended. it dangled and flopped, like a rope's end in nervous, persistent gusts.
anna needham relinquished sleep at the hour specified by her spouse cheerfully, as a rule, though there were also occasions when raillery and even discreet rib-proddings entered into the program. mrs. needham was, of course, well inured to these regularities of routine, just as her very fibre was toughened and moulded to the ministerial caliber generally. fundamentally, she was a person of slightly less strenuous tendencies than her husband. anna needham was the type of woman whose life is very largely shaped, as is her destiny largely determined, by the man with whom she lives. her nature was naturally somewhat more amenable than his. still, she had her distinct rebellions, too. she could take a stand of her own in an hour of crisis. the rev. needham's was a nature that did not weather storms any too well. yes, in time of storms anna was the more seaworthy. for one thing, perhaps, she had fewer ideals. thus she did not experience quite such blasting shocks over upheavals and cataclysms. but it must be confessed that this apparent stability was touched, perhaps one might say, rather, a little diluted by a few parts moral or intellectual laziness. comparative criticism of the needhams, husband and wife, usually fell into two major divisions. there were, in other words, two factions: those who maintained she was less profound than he,[pg 55] and those who would insist that she had more common sense. but that they were economically well-mated seemed pretty generally accepted. it was a coalition in which appeared the very minimum of waste, since one was always ready (or in her case perhaps merely inclined) to shut off the spigot of the other's temperamental excesses.
on this particular july morning there wasn't a hint of friction over the proposition of getting up. the rev. needham began his brisk, determined stretching at the first stroke of seven. anna lay passive till the last stroke; but as the strident and spiteful clangour of the dutch clock downstairs resolved back again into a monotonous though hardly less crabbed tick-tock, tick-tock, the lady yawned deeply and with just a concluding gurgle of relish. there was a guest already in the house, another guest on the way. hostesses, however soft the bed, aren't likely to surrender to tempting inertia under such circumstances.
as a matter of fact, the bed was not a very soft one. or rather, it was very soft in places and very hard in others. perhaps one of the enduring charms of small resort cottage life is the amusing inequality of things. the best and the worst hobnob. lo, here is a true democracy! and virtues utterly commonplace in your urban ménage may very easily be given a most heavenly lustre in the wilderness.
"well, anna," he said, in his best tone of fresh,[pg 56] early morning cheerfulness, "i guess it's time to get up."
"alf, you don't mean to tell me that was seven!"
she had counted the strokes; but it was customary to have a little conversation about the time of day before arising: a sort of pleasant, innocuous tongue-limbering, a lubrication of the way to more important themes later on. such gentle, indirect prevarications may perhaps be looked upon indulgently, even when, as in this case, they crop out in clerical families.
the rev. needham proceeded to dress and shave.
he was in a good, confident, substantial mood today; rose singing. the rev. needham was very apt to arise with song in his mouth, bravely defying the chance of his going to bed with a wail. this morning the selection was that fine old laudes domini which seemed peculiarly appropriate, both fitting the hour and reflecting the joyous state of the singer's heart.
"when morning gilds the skies
my heart awaking cries:
'may jesus christ be praised!'"
the rev. needham had a tenor voice of fair quality, though not altogether true of pitch. in the wilderness, so far from pipe organs, pitch however, dwindled to comparative unimportance. it was the spirit of song that counted.
now, one might observe that in this hymn the rev. needham would come out very full and strong on the more purely ecstatic lines (such, for instance, as [pg 57]depict the spread of morning across the heavens, the awaking of a fervent heart, etc.), and that, almost invariably, those more climactic, particularly the more ecclesiastical, lines would issue a little muffled, as the singer found it urgent to immerse his head in the washbowl's morning plunge, or apply a towel vigorously, or perhaps bend suddenly over to lace up his shoes—by this movement naturally cutting down the egress of breath. they were subtly odd, these mufflings. it was almost as though fate had determined sedulously to deny to this unfortunate man an indulgence in his very life-mission: praising his maker! for another than he the intervals of competition might very easily have fallen less saliently. yes, another would have found it possible to cloud over, if necessary, the heavenly gilding and would have been suffered to come out free, triumphant, on the diviner phrases. but not the rev. needham. no, alas, not he. it was a part of the rev. needham's destiny that the better and more satisfying arrangement of life must be withheld, or temporarily awarded only to be broken rudely off. inquiry ought to pause here. yes, it delicately and righteously and above all humanely ought. no, it ought not to lead one away, fiendishly to lure one on to a certain door in one of the three-quarters partitions, beyond which the slumber of a human being was giving place, at this stage, to the more irregular sounds signifying a return to consciousness. ah, better to leave out altogether the thought of any[pg 58] mortal responsibility for the muffling; better to cling decently just to the adverseness of an obdurate fate. and yet, the tenor of the conversation which now ensued between the rev. needham and his wife might favour the suspicion—let us call it by no stronger name—that the person beyond that door in the three-quarters partition had something to do, however slightly, with the matter of vocal emphasis.
"anna," he asked softly, "do you suppose your sister's awake yet?"
"i don't know, alf. perhaps i'd better go tap on her door."
"oh, well, i wouldn't disturb her just yet. eliza is always late with breakfast." he sighed as he beat up the lather in his mug. "we can't expect things to run along quite as smoothly as when we're just by ourselves."
"i told marjie we made a practice of getting up at seven," said mrs. needham a little anxiously. she slipped a coloured silk petticoat over her head and tied its tape strings round her waist. mrs. needham was growing a bit stout. "she told me if i didn't hear her moving around i'd better tap on her door."
"it's this air, i suppose, makes people sleep so," he remarked. and then he added, displaying a strong touch of nervousness in his tone: "i think, anna, your sister is changed, somehow."
"you think so, alf? how?"
[pg 59]
"well, i don't know. perhaps it's our not being used to her after so many years."
"you may be right, alf. but she talked real sensibly to me yesterday. we had quite a long talk in the afternoon, while you and hilda were out after berries. she seems real sensible, alf. of course she does say things—"
"yes, she makes remarks, anna, that i could rather prefer our girls not to hear."
"you mean like what she said at dinner about the natives of tahulamaji?"
"yes—things like that." and then he confessed with a nervous little gesture: "i can't seem to figure out where marjory stands any more. she talks with a freedom.... anna, i don't think i ever heard any one talk just the way marjory does."
"you mean—about religion, alf?"
"well," he resumed, "it may be her way. but i can't say i ever knew a woman to talk like that. i think marjory's very good-hearted. she no doubt means the best in the world. but somehow...." he turned toward his mate, poising the razor in the air. he looked, without of course suspecting it, almost terrible. but he went on with merely the same inflection of nervous timidity: "anna, there are times when i suspect she doesn't believe the way we do any more."
"oh, alf—do you mean—is it as though she'd gone into some other church?"
[pg 60]
"well, i don't know." he resumed his shaving in a troubled, fidgety way.
"alf," she said solemnly, standing in the centre of the room with her hands on her hips, where they paused in the act of adjusting the band of her skirt, "alf, you—you don't think she isn't a christian any more?"
the rev. needham nervously cut himself a little. he laid down the razor with a startled sigh.
"anna," said he, "how do i know? if it is true, then it's one of the things i've always dreaded so—having atheism break out right in the family!"
"oh, marjory can't be one of those people!" her sister cried earnestly. "alf, we ought not to judge her so harshly. she's lived in foreign countries so long that i suppose she's kind of gotten into new ways of speaking. she talked so sensibly yesterday, alf—i kept wishing you could have been there to have heard."
"well, anna," he said quietly, "marjory's your sister, and, whatever the facts, naturally i've nothing to say."
"you try and have a good talk with her, alf. i never felt you two understood each other very well. she don't talk so flippantly when there aren't other people around. i'll fix it so you two can be alone together. oh, alf," she concluded, almost piteously, "marjie may have gone into another church, but i can't believe she's drifted any farther!"
"i hope not, anna." he tried to speak with an[pg 61] air of charitable calm; but the impression conveyed seemed rather that a disturbance of his own convictions was troubling his heart than that he was primarily moved with concern over his sister-in-law's spiritual well-being.
all persons with whom he came in contact influenced the rev. needham. they influenced him one way or another, however transiently. in fact, when it came to that, there was seldom what one would call any really permanent influence exerted. contacts with life merely kept him hopping back and forth or up and down. they augmented, were perhaps more largely than anything else responsible for, the poor man's perpetual inner unrest. he could not seem to settle down to cool, steady views; could not feel his soul impregnably at peace. but then, in this regard he seemed, though perhaps in a rather acutely pointed fashion, logical fruit of his time.
to be, for the moment, quite ruthless in one's musing upon him, what would the world say if it could really pry into the tumultuous inner consciousness of the rev. needham? might the world call him melodramatic, stagy? could it actually be brought against this minister that he was, in a sense, theatrical? what a blow—and at the same time what a terrific coup of irony; for the rev. needham would be the very first himself to cry out against any such trait as staginess! staginess, he would say, must certainly have something to do with the so-called[pg 62] "culture." but the world could never bring this charge against the rev. needham, because the world, one realizes with an instinctively grateful sigh, was denied the license of prying inside. no, to the world this minister appeared a being not essentially removed from the usual run of beings. the world by no means thought of him as a chinese or dark age delinquent strung up for punishment in such a manner that his heels were perpetually off the floor. he might not, perhaps, strike people as a man of intense and dynamic, of unfailingly clean-cut personal persuasions about religion—or, for that matter, perhaps, about anything else in life. nevertheless, he scarcely stood out as vivid or eccentric; scarcely like a sore thumb; because nobody realized what he was really like inside.
but now, to return to cases, here was marjory, his wife's own sister, lodged right under his roof; and she baffled him. he couldn't deny it—could not get away from it. yes, she baffled him. he felt nervous in her presence. sometimes when she would laugh, or look at him in a certain way, it seemed to him—it seemed to him—why, as though he didn't know where he stood any more....
marjory whitcom was his sister-in-law, one of the family; and at his own hearthside, somehow, he could not feel quite free. he could not feel cheery and at ease. and dimly it troubled the rev. needham to realize that he felt this way.
