From Cinnamon Roses (Hodder and Stoughton; London: 1908)
At five o'clock, Eunice Fairweather went upstairs to dress herself for the sociable and Christmas tree to be given at the parsonage that night in honour of Christmas Eve. She had been very busy all day, making preparations for it. She was the minister's daughter, and had, of a necessity, to take an active part in such affairs.
She took it, as usual, loyally and energetically, but there had always been seasons from her childhood — and she was twenty-five now — when the social duties to which she had been born seemed a weariness and a bore to her. They had seemed so to-day. She had patiently and faithfully sewed up little lace bags with divers coloured worsteds, and stuffed them with candy. She had strung popcorn, and marked the parcels which had been pouring in since daybreak from all quarters. She had taken her prominent part among the corps of indefatigable women always present to assist on such occasions, and kept up her end of the line as minister's daughter bravely. Now, however, the last of the zealous, chattering women she had been working with had bustled home, with a pleasant importance in every hitch of her shawled shoulders, and would not bustle back again until half past six or so; and the tree, fully bedecked, stood in unconscious impressiveness in the parsonage parlour.
Eunice had come upstairs with the resolution to dress herself directly for the festive occasion, and to hasten down again to be in readiness for new exigencies. Her mother was delicate, and had kept her room all day in order to prepare herself for the evening, her father was inefficient at such times, there was no servant, and the brunt of everything came on her.
But her resolution gave way; she wrapped herself in an old plaid shawl and lay down on her bed to rest a few minutes. She did not close her eyes, but lay studying idly the familiar details of the room. It was small, and one side ran in under the eaves; for the parsonage was a cottage. There was one window, with a white cotton curtain trimmed with tasselled fringe, and looped up on an old porcelain knob with a picture painted on it. That knob, with its tiny bright landscape, had been one of the pretty wonders of Eunice's childhood. She looked at it even now with interest, and the marvel and the beauty of it had not wholly departed for her eyes. The walls of the little room had a scraggly patterned paper on them. The first lustre of it had departed, for that too was one of the associates of Eunice's childhood, but in certain lights there was a satin sheen and a blue line visible. Blue roses on a satin ground had been the original pattern. It had never been pretty, but Eunice had always had faith in it. There was an ancient straw matting on the floor, a home made braided rug before the cottage bedstead, and one before the stained pine bureau. There were a few poor attempts at adornment on the walls: a splint letter case, a motto worked in worsteds, a gay print of an eminently proper little girl holding a faithful little dog.
This last, in its brilliant crudeness, was not a work of art, but Eunice believed in it. She was a conservative creature. Even after her year at the seminary, for which money had been scraped together five years ago, she had the same admiring trust in all the revelations of her childhood. Her home, on her return to it, looked as fair to her as it had always done; no old ugliness which familiarity had caused to pass unnoticed before gave her a shock of surprise.
She lay quietly, her shawl shrugged up over her face, so only her steady, light brown eyes were visible. The room was drearily cold. She never had a fire; one in a sleeping room would have been sinful luxury in the poor minister's family. Even her mother's was only warmed from the sitting room.
In sunny weather Eunice's room was cheerful, and its look, if not actually its atmosphere, would warm one a little, for the windows faced southwest. But to-day all the light had come through low, grey clouds, for it had been threatening snow ever since morning, and the room had been dismal.
A comfortless dusk was fast spreading over everything now. Eunice rose at length, thinking that she must either dress herself speedily or go downstairs for a candle.
She was a tall, heavily built girl, with large, well formed feet and hands. She had a full face, and a thick, colourless skin. Her features were coarse, but their combination affected one pleasantly. It was a stanch, honest face, with a suggestion of obstinacy in it.
She looked unhappily at herself in her little square glass, as she brushed out her hair and arranged it in a smooth twist at the top of her head. It was not becoming, but it was the way she had always done it. She did not admire the effect herself when the coiffure was complete, neither did she survey her appearance complacently when she had gotten into her best brown cashmere dress, with its ruffle of starched lace in the neck. But it did not occur to her that any change could be made for the better. It was her best dress, and it was the way she did up her hair. She did not like either, but the simple facts of them ended the matter for her.
After the same fashion she regarded her own lot in life, with a sort of resigned disapproval.
On account of her mother's ill health, she had been encumbered for the last five years with the numberless social duties to which the wife of a poor country minister is liable. She had been active in Sunday school picnics and church sociables, in mission bands and neighbourhood prayer meetings. She was a church member and a good girl, but the rôle did not suit her. Still she accepted it as inevitable, and would no more have thought of evading it than she would have thought of evading life altogether. There was about her an almost stubborn steadfastness of onward movement that would forever keep her in the same rut, no matter how disagreeable it might be, unless some influence outside of herself might move her.
When she went downstairs, she found her mother seated beside the sitting room stove, also arrayed in her best — a shiny black silk, long in the shoulder seams, the tops of the sleeves adorned with pointed caps trimmed with black velvet ribbon.
She looked up at Eunice as she entered, a complacent smile on her long, delicate face; she thought her homely, honest looking daughter charming in her best gown.
A murmur of men's voices came from the next room, whose door was closed.
“Father's got Mr. Wilson in there,” explained Mrs. Fairweather, in response to Eunice's inquiring glance. “He came just after you went upstairs. They've been talking very busily about something. Perhaps Mr. Wilson wants to exchange.”
Just at that moment the study door opened and the two men came out, Eunice's father, tall and round-shouldered, with greyish sandy hair and beard, politely allowing his guest to precede him. There was a little resemblance between the two, though there was no relationship. Mr. Wilson was a younger man by ten years; he was shorter and slighter; but he had similarly sandy hair and beard, though they were not quite so grey, and something the same cast of countenance. He was settled over a neighbouring parish; he was a widower with four young children; his wife had died a year before.
He had spoken to Mrs. Fairweather on his first entrance, so he stepped directly towards Eunice with extended hand. His ministerial affability was slightly dashed with embarrassment, and his thin cheeks were crimson around the roots of his sandy beard.
Eunice shook the proffered hand with calm courtesy, and inquired after his children. She had not a thought that his embarrassment betokened anything, if, indeed, she observed it at all.
Her father stood by with an air of awkward readiness to proceed to action, waiting until the two should cease the interchanging of courtesies.
When the expected pause came he himself placed a chair for Mr. Wilson. “Sit down, Brother Wilson,” he said nervously, “and I will consult with my daughter concerning the matter we were speaking of. Eunice, I would like to speak with you a moment in the study.”
“Certainly, sir,” said Eunice. She looked surprised, but she followed him at once into the study. “Tell me as quickly as you can what it is, father,” she said, “for it is nearly time for people to begin coming, and I shall have to attend to them.”
She had not seated herself, but stood leaning carelessly against the study wall, questioning her father with her steady eyes.
He stood in his awkward height before her. He was plainly trembling. “Eunice,” he said, in a shaking voice, “Mr. Wilson came — to say — he would like to marry you, my dear daughter.”
He cleared his throat to hide his embarrassment. He felt a terrible constraint in speaking to Eunice of such matters; he looked shamefaced and distressed.
Eunice eyed him steadily. She did not change colour in the least. “I think I would rather remain as I am, father,” she said quietly.
Her father roused himself then. “My dear daughter,” he said, with restrained eagerness, “don't decide this matter too hastily, without giving it all the consideration it deserves. Mr. Wilson is a good man; he would make you a worthy husband, and he needs a wife sadly. Think what a wide field of action would be before you with those four little motherless children to love and care for! You would have a wonderful opportunity to do good.”
“I don't think,” said Eunice bluntly, “that I should care for that sort of an opportunity.”
“Then,” her father went on, “you will forgive me if I speak plainly, my dear. You — are getting older; you have not had any other visitors. You would be well provided for in this way —”
“Exceedingly well,” replied Eunice slowly. “There would be six hundred a year and a leaky parsonage for a man and woman and four children, and — nobody knows how many more.” She was almost coarse in her slow indignation, and did not blush at it.
“The Lord would provide for His servants.”
“I don't know whether He would or not. I don't think He would be under any obligation to if His servant deliberately encumbered himself with more of a family than he had brains to support.”
Her father looked so distressed that Eunice's heart smote her for her forcible words. “You don't want to get rid of me, surely, father,” she said, in a changed tone.
Mr. Fairweather's lips moved uncertainly as he answered: “No, my dear daughter; don't ever let such a thought enter your head. I only — Mr. Wilson is a good man, and a woman is best off married, and your mother and I are old. I have never laid up anything. Sometimes — Maybe I don't trust the Lord enough, but I have felt anxious about you, if anything happened to me.” Tears were standing in his light-blue eyes, which had never been so steady and keen as his daughter's.
There came a loud peal of the door bell. Eunice started. “There! I must go,” she said. “We'll talk about this another time. Don't worry about it, father dear.”
“But, Eunice, what shall I say to him?”
“Must something be said to-night?”
“It would hardly be treating him fairly otherwise.”
Eunice looked hesitatingly at her father's worn, anxious face. “Tell him,” she said at length, “that I will give him his answer in a week.”
Her father looked gratified. “We will take it to the Lord, my dear.”
Eunice's lip curled curiously, but she said, “Yes, sir,” dutifully, and hastened from the room to answer the door bell.
The fresh bevies that were constantly arriving after that engaged her whole attention. She could do no more than give a hurried “Good-evening” to Mr. Wilson when he came to take leave, after a second short conference with her father in the study. He looked deprecatingly hopeful.
The poor man was really in a sad case. Six years ago, when he married, he had been romantic. He would never be again. He was not thirsting for love and communion with a kindred spirit now, but for a good, capable woman who would take care of his four clamorous children without a salary.
He returned to his shabby, dirty parsonage that night with, it seemed to him, quite a reasonable hope that his affairs might soon be changed for the better. Of course he would have preferred that the lady should have said yes directly; it would both have assured him and shortened the time until his burdens should be lightened; but he could hardly have expected that, when his proposal was so sudden, and there had been no preliminary attention on his part. The week's probation, therefore, did not daunt him much. He did not really see why Eunice should refuse him. She was plain, was getting older; it probably was her first, and very likely her last, chance of marriage. He was a clergyman in good standing, and she would not lower her social position. He felt sure that he was now about to be relieved from the unpleasant predicament in which he had been ever since his wife's death, and from which he had been forced to make no effort to escape, for decency's sake, for a full year. The year, in fact, had been up five days ago. He actually took credit to himself for remaining quiescent during those five days. It was rather shocking, but there was a good deal to be said for him. No wife and four small children, six hundred dollars a year, moderate brain, and an active conscience, are a hard combination of circumstances for any man.
To-night, however, he returned thanks to the Lord for his countless blessings with pious fervour, which would have been lessened had he known of the state of Eunice's mind just at that moment.
The merry company had all departed, the tree stood dismantled in the parlour, and she was preparing for bed, with her head full, not of him, but another man.
Standing before her glass, combing out her rather scanty, lustreless hair, her fancy pictured to her, beside her own homely, sober face, another, a man's, blond and handsome, with a gentle, almost womanish smile on the full red lips, and a dangerous softness in the blue eyes. Could a third person have seen the double picture as she did, he would have been struck with a sense of the incongruity, almost absurdity, of it. Eunice herself, with her hard, uncompromising common sense, took the attitude of a third person in regard to it, and at length blew her light out and went to bed, with a bitter amusement in her heart at her own folly.
There had been present that evening a young man who was a comparatively recent acquisition to the village society. He had been in town about three months. His father, two years before, had purchased one of the largest farms in the vicinity, moving there from an adjoining state. This son had been absent at the time; he was reported to be running a cattle ranch in one of those distant territories which seem almost fabulous to New Englanders. Since he had come home he had been the cynosure of the village. He was thirty and a little over, but he was singularly boyish in his ways, and took part in all the town frolics with gusto. He was popularly supposed to be engaged to Ada Harris, Squire Harris's daughter, as she was often called. Her father was the prominent man of the village, lived in the best house, and had the loudest voice in public matters. He was a lawyer, with rather more pomposity than ability, perhaps, but there had always been money and influence in the Harris family, and these warded off all criticism.
The daughter was a pretty blonde of average attainments, but with keen wits and strong passions. She had not been present at the Christmas Tree, and her lover, either on that account, or really from some sudden fancy he had taken to Eunice, had been at her elbow the whole evening. He had a fashion of making his attentions marked: he did on that occasion. He made a pretence of assisting her, but it was only a pretence, and she knew it, though she thought it marvellous. She had met him, but had not before exchanged two words with him. She had seen him with Ada Harris, and he had seemed almost as much out of her life as a lover in a book. Young men of his kind were unknown quantities heretofore to this steady, homely young woman. They seemed to belong to other girls.
So his devotion to her through the evening, and his asking permission to call when he took leave, seemed to her wellnigh incredible. Her head was not turned, in the usual acceptation of the term — it was not an easy head to turn — but it was full of Burr Mason, and every thought, no matter how wide a starting-point it had, lost itself at last in the thought of him.
Mr. Wilson's proposal weighed upon her terribly through the next week. Her father seemed bent upon her accepting it; so did her mother, who sighed in secret over the prospect of her daughter's remaining unmarried. Either through unworldliness, or their conviction of the desirability of the marriage in itself, the meagreness of the financial outlook did not seem to influence them in the least.
Eunice did not once think of Burr Mason as any reason for her reluctance, but when he called the day but one before her week of probation was up, and when he took her to drive the next day, she decided on a refusal of the minister's proposal easily enough. She had wavered a little before.
So Mr. Wilson was left to decide upon some other worthy, reliable woman as a subject for his addresses, and Eunice kept on with her new lover.
How this sober, conscientious girl could reconcile to herself the course she was now taking, was a question. It was probable she did not make the effort; she was so sensible that she would have known its futility and hypocrisy beforehand.
She knew her lover had been engaged to Ada Harris; that she was encouraging him in cruel and dishonourable treatment of another woman; but she kept steadily on. People even came to her and told her that the jilted girl was breaking her heart. She listened, her homely face set in an immovable calm. She listened quietly to her parents' remonstrance, and kept on.
There was an odd quality in Burr Mason's character. He was terribly vacillating, but he knew it. Once he said to Eunice, with the careless freedom that would have been almost insolence in another man: “Don't let me see Ada Harris much, I warn you, dear. I mean to be true to you, but she has such a pretty face, and I meant to be true to her, but you have — I don't know just what, but something she has not.”
Eunice knew the truth of what he said perfectly. The incomprehensibleness of it all to her, who was so sensible of her own disadvantages, was the fascination she had for such a man.
A few days after Burr Mason had made that remark, Ada Harris came to see her. When Eunice went into the sitting-room to greet her, she kept her quiet, unmoved face, but the change in the girl before her was terrible. It was not wasting of flesh or pallor that it consisted in, but something worse. Her red lips were set so hard that the soft curves in them were lost, her cheeks burned feverishly, her blue eyes had a fierce light in them, and, most pitiful thing of all for another woman to see, she had not crimped her pretty blond hair, but wore it combed straight back from her throbbing forehead.
When Eunice entered, she waited for no preliminary courtesies, but sprang forward, and caught hold of her hand with a strong, nervous grasp, and stood so, her pretty, desperate face confronting Eunice's calm, plain one.
“Eunice!” she cried, “Eunice! why did you take him away from me? Eunice! Eunice!” Then she broke into a low wail, without any tears.
Eunice released her hand, and seated herself. “You had better take a chair, Ada,” she said, in her slow, even tones. “When you say him, you mean Burr Mason, I suppose.”
“You know I do. Oh, Eunice, how could you? how could you? I thought you were so good!”
“You ask me why I do this and that, but don't you think he had anything to do with it himself?”
Ada stood before her, clinching her little white hands. “Eunice Fairweather, you know Burr Mason, and I know Burr Mason. You know that if you gave him up, and refused to see him, he would come back to me. You know it.”
“Yes, I know it.”
“You know it; you sit there and say you know it and yet you do this cruel thing — you, a minister's daughter. You understood from the first how it was. You knew he was mine, that you had no right to him. You knew if you shunned him ever so little, that he would come back to me. And yet you let him come and make love to you. You knew it. There is no excuse for you: you knew it. It is no better for him. You have encouraged him in being false. You have dragged him down. You are a plainer girl than I, and a soberer one, but you are no better. You will not make him a better wife. You cannot make him a good wife after this. It is all for yourself — yourself!”
Eunice sat still.
Then Ada flung herself on her knees at her side, and pleaded, as for her life. “Eunice! O Eunice, give him up to me! It is killing me! Eunice, dear Eunice, say you will!”
As Eunice sat looking at the poor, dishevelled golden head bowed over her lap, a recollection flashed across her mind, oddly enough, of a certain recess at the village school they two had attended years ago, when she was among the older girls, and Ada a child to her: how she had played she was her little girl, and held her in her lap, and that golden head had nestled on her bosom.
“Eunice, O Eunice, he loved me first. You had better have stolen away my own heart. It would not have been so wicked or so cruel. How could you? O Eunice, give him back to me, Eunice, won't you?”
“No.”
Ada rose, staggering, without another word. She moaned a little to herself as she crossed the room to the door. Eunice accompanied her to the outer door, and said good-bye. Ada did not return it. Eunice saw her steady herself by catching hold of the gate as she passed through.
Then she went slowly upstairs to her own room, wrapped herself in a shawl, and lay down on her bed, as she had that Christmas Eve. She was very pale, and there was a strange look, almost of horror, on her face. She stared, as she lay there, at all the familiar objects in the room, but the most common and insignificant of them had a strange and awful look to her. Yet the change was in herself, not in them. The shadow that was over her own soul overshadowed them and perverted her vision. But she felt also almost a fear of all those inanimate objects she was gazing at. They were so many reminders of a better state with her, for she had gazed at them all in her unconscious childhood. She was sickened with horror at their dumb accusations. There was the little glass she had looked in before she had stolen another woman's dearest wealth away from her, the chair she had sat in, the bed she had lain in.
At last Eunice Fairweather's strong will broke down before the accusations of her own conscience, which were so potent as to take upon themselves material shapes.
Ada Harris, in her pretty chamber, lying worn out on her bed, her face buried in the pillow, started at a touch on her shoulder. Some one had stolen into the room unannounced — not her mother, for she was waiting outside. Ada turned her head, and saw Eunice. She struck at her wildly with her slender hands. “Go away!” she screamed.
“Ada!”
“Go away!”
“Burr Mason is downstairs. I came with him to call on you.”
Ada sat upright, staring at her, her hand still uplifted,
“I am going to break my engagement with him.”
“Oh, Eunice! Eunice! you blessed —”
Eunice drew the golden head down on her bosom, just as she had on that old school-day.
“Love me all you can, Ada,” she said. “I want — something.”
