Under the Pear-Tree: In Two Parts. Part I

CHAPTER I.

ONE Sunday morning, long ago, a girl stood in her bed-room, lingeringly occupied with the last touches of her toilet.

A string of beads, made of pure gold and as large as peas, lay before her. They had been her mother’s,—given to her when the distracted state of American currency made a wedding - present of the precious metal as welcome as it was valuable. Three several times, under circumstances of great pecuniary urgency, had the beads sufficed, one by one, to restore the family to comfort,— to pay the expenses of a journey, to buy seedgrain, and to make out the payment of a yoke of oxen. Afterwards, when peace and plenty came to be housemates in the land, the gold beads were redeemed, and the necklace, dearer than ever, encircled the neck of the only daughter.

The only daughter took them up, and clasped them round her throat with a decisive snap. But the crowning graces remained in the shape of two other ornaments that lay in a small China box. It had a head on the cover, beautifully painted, of some queen, — perhaps of the Empress Josephine, the girl thought. The hat had great ostrich-feathers, that seemed proper to royalty, and it was a pretty face.

In the box lay a pin and ring. On the back of the pin was braided hair, and letters curiously intertwined. The young girl slipped the ring on her own finger once more, and smiled. Then she took it off, with a sigh that had no pain in it, and looked at the name engraved inside, — DORCAS FOX.

Whoever saw this name in the town records would naturally image to himself the town tailoress or nurse, or somebody’s single sister who had been wise too long, — somebody tall, a little bent, and bony, — somebody weather-beaten and determined - looking, with a sharp, shrewd glance of a gray eye that said you could not possibly get the better of her and so need not try, — somebody who goes out unattended and fearless at night; for, as she very properly observes, “ Who’d want to speak to me ? ”

This might have described the original owner of the pin and ring, who had died years before, and left the ornaments for her namesake and niece, when she was too young to remember or care for her, but not the niece herself. She was young, blooming, twenty-two, and the belle of the country-village where she dwelt.

The bed-room where the girl stood and meditated, after her fashion, was six feet by ten in dimensions, and the oval mirror before which she stood was six inches by ten. It was a genuine relic of the Mayflower, and had been brought over, together with the great chest in the entry, by the grand - grand - grandmother of all the Foxes. If anybody were disposed to be skeptical on this point, Colonel Fox had only to point to the iron clamp at the end, by which it had been confined to the deck; that would have produced conviction, if he had declared it came out of the Ark. This was a queer-looking little mirror, in which the young Dorcas saw her round face reflected : framed in black oak, delicately carved, and cut on the edge with a slant that gave the plate an appearance of being an inch thick.

Sixty years ago there were not many mirrors in country - towns in New England ; and in Colonel Fox’s house this and one more sufficed for the family-reflections. In the “ square room,” a modern long looking-glass, framed in mahogany, and surmounted by the American emblem of triumph, was the astonishment of the neighbors, — and in Walton those were many, though the population was small.

Dorcas looked wistfully and wishingly at the oval pin ; but with no more notion of what she was looking at than the child who gazes into the heavens on a winter night. When she looked into the oval mirror, no dream of the centuries through which it had received on its surface fair and suffering faces, grave, noble, selfsacrificing men, and scenes of trial deep and agonizing,—no dream of the past disturbed the serene unconsciousness of her gaze. She looked at the large pearls that formed the long oval pin, and at the exquisite allegorical painting, which, in the quaint fashion of the time of its execution, was colored with the “ ground hair ” of the beloved; so materializing sentiment, and, as it were, getting as near as possible to the very heart’s blood. Yet the old gold, the elaborate execution of the quaint classical device, and the fanciful arrangement of the braided hair interwoven with twisted gold letters, all told no tales to the observer, whose unwakened nature, indeed, asked no questions.

The little room, so small that in these days a College of Physicians would at once condemn it, as a cradle of disease and death, had nevertheless for twenty years been the nightly abode of as perfect a piece of health as the country produced. Whatever might be wanting in height and space was amply made up in inevitable and involuntary ventilation. Health walked in at the wide cracks around the little window-frame, peeped about in all directions with the snowflakes in winter and the ready breezes in summer, and settled itself permanently on the fresh cheeks and lips of the light sleeper and early riser.

Beside the white-covered cot there stood a straight-backed, list-seated oaken chair, a mahogany chest of drawers that reached from floor to ceiling, and a little three-legged light-stand. Everything was covered with white, and the room was fragrant with the lavender and dried roseleaves with which every drawer was scrupulously perfumed. There was no toilet-table, for Dorcas had use neither for perfumes nor ointment. No Kalydors and no Glycerines came within the category of her healthful experience. Alert and graceful, she neither burnt her fingers nor cut her hands, and had need therefore of no soothing salves or sirups; and as she did not totter in scrimped shoes or tight laces, and so did not fall and break her bones, she had no need even of that modern necessity in all well-regulated families, “ Prepared Glue.” There was no medicine-chest in Colonel Fox’s house. Healthy, occupied, active, and wise — but not too wise — was Dorcas Fox.

It is no proof that Dorcas was a beauty, that she looked often in the little mirror. Ugliness is quite as anxious as beauty on that point, and is even oftener found gazing with sad solicitude at itself, if haply there may be found some mollifying or mitigating circumstance, either in outline or expression. But Dorcas’s face pleased herself and everybody else.

A certain freedom and ease, the result partly of a symmetrical form, and partly of conscious good-looks, gave the grace of movement to Dorcas which attracted all eyes. Almost every one has a sense of harmony, and old and young loved to watch the musical motion of Dorcas Fox, whatever she might be doing, — whether she queened it at the “ Thanksgiving Ball,” and from heel-and-toe, pigeon-wing, or mazy double-shuffle, evolved the finest and subtlest intricacies of muscle, or whether, on the Sabbath, walking behind her parents to meeting, she married the movement to the solemnity of the day, and, as it were, walked in long metre.

She always was in Hallelujah metre to the Blacks, Whites, Grays, Greens, and Browns that color so largely every New-England community; and the youths who were wont to form the crowd that invariably settled at the corner of the meeting-house waited only till Dorcas Fox wont up the “ broad-oil ” to express open - mouthed admiration. After her fashion, she was as much wondered at as the Duchess of Hamilton in her time, and with much more reason, since Dorcas was composed of real roses and lilies.

On Sunday, though the Puritanic doctrine prevailed, as far as doctrine can, of not speaking week-day thoughts, or having them, if they would keep away, yet inevitably, among the younger portion of the flock, the day of “meeting” was one of more than religious importance ; and many lads and lasses who were never attracted by Father Boardman’s eloquent sedatives still made it a point to be regular in their attendance at meeting twice on every Sunday. From far and near came open one-horse wagons, piled high with weekly shaven and dressed humanity, — young and old with solemn and demure faces, with brownribboned queues, and garments of domestic making. Fresh, strong, tall girls of five feet ten, dressed in straw bonnets of their own handiwork, and sometimes with scarlet cardinals lightly flung over their shoulders, sprang over the wagonthills to the ground. Now and then the more remote dwellers came on horseback, each Jack with his Gill on a pillion behind, and holding him with a proper and dignified embrace.

Hard-handed youths, with bright, determined faces, — men nursed in blockhouses, born in forts, — men who had raised their corn when the loaded gun went every Step with the hoe and the plough, — such men, of whom the Revolution had been made, who could say nothing, and do everything, stood in a crowd around the meeting-house door. There was some excitement in meeting each other, though there was very little, if anything, to say. There was time enough in those days. Progress was n't in such a hurry as now. Inventions came calmly along, once in a man’s life, and not, as now, each heel-trodden by that of his neighbor, tripping up and passing it, in the speed of the breathless race.

The sun itself seemed to shine with a calmer and silenter radiance over the broad, leisurely land.

Time enough, bless you ! and the Sunday, any way, is so long !

This Sunday morning, at ten o’clock, Dorcas has already been up and dressed six hours. Everything having the remotest connection with domestic duties has been finished and laid aside long ago, and she has devoted the last two hours to solitary meditations, mostly of the kind already mentioned.

In the great oven, since last night, has lain the Sunday supper of baked porkand-beans, Indian-pudding, and brown bread, all the better the longer they bake, and all unfailing in their character of excellence. In the square room, in the green arm-chair, sits the Colonel, fast asleep.

Four hours ago, he fumed and fretted about barn and cow-house, breakfasted, and had family-prayers. Since then, he has donned his Sabbath array, both mental and bodily. Mentally, having dismissed the cares of the week, he has strictly united himself with his body, and gone to sleep. Bodily, he appears in a suit of hemlock-dyed, with Matherman buttons, kneeand shoe-buckles of silver. Hia gray hair is neatly composed in a queue, his full cheeks rest on his portly chest, and the outward visibly harmonizes with the inward man. He sleeps soundly now, purposing faithfully to keep awake during the three-and-twenty heads of the minister’s discourse. If he finds it too much for him, he means to stand, as he often does. Sometimes he partakes freely of the aromatic stimulants carried by his wife and daughter as bouquets. The southernwood wakes him, and the green seeds of the caraway get him well along through the sermon.

Mrs. Fox steps softly in, rustling in the same black taffeta she always wears, and the same black silk bonnet,— worn just fifty-two days in a year, and carefully pinned and boxed away for all the other three hundred and thirteen.

As fashions did not come to Walton oftener than once in ten years, it followed that apparel among the young people wore very much the expression of individual taste, while among the elders it was wont to assume the cast now irreverently designated by “fossil remains.” And, really, it did not much matter. Whatever our country - grandmothers were admired and esteemed for, be sure it was not dress.

As the clock pointed to half-past ten, the door opened quickly, and Dorcas stood on the threshold, like a summer breeze that has stopped one moment its fluttering, and hovers fresh, sweet, and sunny in the morning air. The breath of her presence, if indeed it were not association, roused old Colonel Fox from his sleep. He glanced at her, took the ready arm of his wife, looked again at the clock, and passed out over the flat door-stone with his cocked hat and cane, as became an invalid soldier and a gentleman. Behind them, hymn-book in hand and with downcast eyes, walked Dorcas. Not a word passed between the parents and their only daughter. On Sunday, people were not to think their own thoughts. And familiarity between parents and children, never allowed even on week-days, would have been unpardonable unfitness on the Sabbath.

They reached the church-door just as the minister, with his white wig shedding powder on his venerable back, passed up the broad-aisle. A perfectly decorous throng of the loiterers followed, and the pews rapidly filled. The Colonel and his wife, being persons of consequence, took their way with suitable dignity and deliberation. In the three who turned, about half-way up the broad-aisle, into a square pew, a physiognomist would have seen at one glance the characteristic features of each mind. In the Colonel, choleric, fresh, and warm-hearted, a good lover, and not very good hater. In his wife, “ a chronicler of small-beer,” with a perfectly negative expression. One might guess she did no harm, and fear she did no good, — that she saved the hire of an upper servant, — that she was an inveterate sewer and cleaner, and would leave the world in time with an epitaph.

On the third figure and face the physiognomist might dwell longer, — but that rather because youth, hope, and inexperience had refused to make any of the life-marks that tell stories in faces. There was abundant room for imagination and prophecy.

A figure not too tall, but full of wavy lines, — two dark-blue eyes, whose full under-lids gave an expression of arch sweetness to the glance, — a delicate complexion of roses and lilies, as suggestive of fading as of blossoming,— features small, and not at all of the Greek pattern, — and the rather large head and slightly developed bust, typical of American rural beauty.

To this summary of youthful charms would be at once added the grace of motion before spoken of, which made Dorcas Fox a favorite with all the young men in Walton, and which gave her a reputation of beauty which in strictness she did not deserve. A little habitual illhealth, and the glamour is gone, with the roses and lilies and the music of motion. In our climate of fierce extremes, both fieldand garden - flowers speedily wilt and chill. Dorcas herself had been a thousand times told she was the very picture of her mother at her age. And just to look now at Mrs. Colonel Fox!

A tall young man stood on the doorsteps of the meeting-house, as Dorcas went demurely behind her parents in at the open door. He looked at her with a quick, inquiring glance from his keen Yankee eyes, which she answered with an almost imperceptible nod of her graceful head. She dropped her eyes, and passed on. This young man was Henry Mowers, and he owned the Mowers farm. He was a very good, sensible fellow, and had “ kept company,” as the countryphrase is, with Dorcas Fox for the last few weeks, having, indeed, had his eye on her ever since the New-Year’s sleigh-ride and ball.

After Dorcas had reached her seat in the pew, and adjusted her spotless Sunday chintz and the ribbon that confined her jaunty gypsy-hat over her sunny hair, she raised her eyes carelessly to a pew in a side-aisle. The Dorrs generally occupied it alone; but sometimes Swan Day, when he was n’t in the choir, sat there too.

Swan Day, or, as he might better have been called, Night Raven, kept the country-store in Walton. One naturally thought of afternoon rather than morning at seeing his olive complexion, dark eyes, and thick - clustering black curls. Such romance as was to be had in Walton, without the aid of a circulating library, certainly gathered about Swan Day. An orphan, born of a Creole mother and a British sergeant, he had been left early to his own resources. He had found them sufficient thus far, in a cordial neighborhood like Walton, when industry and temperance were cardinal virtues not carried to excess; and he was rather a favorite among the young women.

The peculiar languor and richness of his complexion, — the dark eyes, soft as an Indian girl’s, — the mouth, melting and red as the grapes where under a tropical sun his foreign mother had lain, and, gathering them ripe, had dropped them lazily into his baby mouth : these were new and strange features in the Saxon community where he had accidentally been left on the death of his father, who was shot at Saratoga. The mother lingered awhile, and then dropped away, leaving Swan to thrive in the bracing air in which she had shivered to death.

Many Sundays before this, Swan had looked at Colonel Fox’s pew, and, looking, loved.

Dorcas looked occasionally.

All the time, while the minister preached, she twiddled her caraway-stems, sometimes biting a seed in two very softly between her little teeth, and keeping, on the whole, an appearance of exemplary devoutness. When Father Boardman reached “ sixthly,” she raised her eyes, and saw Henry Mowers looking straight at her. Then she dropped her eyelids at once, sniffed delicately at her bouquet of southernwood, and, gaining strength from its pungency, applied herself to staring once more at the great pine pulpit, where, like a very old sparrow on the house-top, Father Boardman denounced and anathematized at leisure all who did not think as he did. By degrees, all the eyes in Dorcas’s neighborhood that had been any length of time in the world were dozing and closing with the full leave of the spirit. Finally, when Father Boardman entered on the “improvement,” Dorcas, who had not heard a word, looked again in the direction of the Dorr pew. Henry Mowers had succumbed to Morpheus half an hour before. Still there flamed on the deep, bewitching eyes of Day; and as all the rest in her neighborhood had gone to sleep, and the young girl had really nothing specially to keep herself awake with, she looked up, too, and then down, and then rosily, and timidly, and consciously, and then at him once more. By that time she blushed again, and a smile was just beginning to wake from its sleep in the corner of her mouth, when a rush, a rising, and a general clatter and banging of pew-seats announced the blessed news of suspended instruction.

In the fashion of sixty years ago, the congregation waited reverently, until the pastor walked down the broad-aisle and out at the door, before a soul stirred. Then the men followed, and last of all the women. In the crowd, there were frequent opportunities for whispered words, all the sweeter for the stealing; and in the crowd, after he had seen Henry Mowers jump into the wagon and drive off his three sisters half a mile to their home, and after seeing Jenny Post ride off on a pillion behind her old brother, as in the gone-by days when wide roads and wagons were not, Swan sauntered carelessly towards Dorcas, and said, in a tone too low for her parents to hear, but very distinctly, —

“ I must see you to-morrow night.”

“ I can’t,” was the murmured reply.

For the last time, Dorcas! come down to the old pear-tree to-morrow, before sunset,” he whispered, imploringly.

He was wise to turn suddenly away before her parents could hear him touching on secular subjects, and before she could herself get up any new objection. Her objections, truly, were very faint and few, and, being tossed about awhile, finally settled out of sight. Henry would, she knew, come to his weekly wooing as soon as the setting sun proclaimed the Sabbathday over. After that time she was safe. She could slip down the orchard to the pear-tree, and hear what was the important word, and what Swan meant by “ the last.”

Eight or ten persons, who lived at a distance from “ meeting,” were in the habit of partaking the hospitality of Colonel Fox, of a Sunday, as the hour’s intermission gave them no opportunity to return to their distant homes. After the Puritan fashion, unlike enough to the present, families were restricted on Sunday to two meals, and those were provided with a Jewish regard to the fourth commandment. All labor was scrupulously anticipated or postponed, but such hospitality as consisted with the strict observance of the Sabbath was at the service of their friends.

On coming in at the door of the square room, with its sanded floor, its old desk, its spare bed in the corner, and its cherry table with wavy outlines, which had belonged to Colonel Fox’s mother, Dorcas found the cloth already laid, and the bonnets and cardinals of half a dozen old friends on the bed.

In five minutes, early apples, old cider, and a plate of raised doughnuts, flanked by plates of minceand apple-pie, rewarded the patience and piety of the company. Colonel Fox, solemnly, and as if he were quite accustomed to it, poured from a jug into large tumblers that held at least a pint, dropped three large lumps of loafsugar, filled the glass with water, grated some nutmeg on the top, and bade his guests refresh themselves with toddy, unless they preferred flip: if they did, they had only to say so: the poker was hot.

They all ate and drank, and by that time the bell rang again; and then they all went again. And if they heard Father Boardman at all, it was with utterly composed minds, when he told them it was their duty to be contented, even should their condemnation be eternally decreed, since it must, of course, be for the good of the whole, and for the glory of God. Hopkinsianism was in fashion then, and the minds of men in many parts of the country had accepted the logic of its founder, negatived as it was, in its practical application, by the sweetness of his Christian benevolence and his large humanity. Then the toddy helped them to swallow many doctrines that in our coldwater days are sharply and defiantly contested. The head is much clearer; whether hearts are better is doubtful.

After supper, and while yet the sun lingered smilingly over the Great Meadows and on the hills, behind which he sank, Dorcas, who had meanwhile adorned herself with Aunt Dorcas’s bequest, broke the long silence, by whispering so low that her father’s sleep should not be disturbed, —

“ Mother, do you set much by this pin ? ”

“ Of course I do, child ! ’T was your Aunt Dorcas’s,” said Mrs. Fox, “your father’s own sister.”

“ Yes, I know it, mother ; but how did she come by it ? ”

All these years, and this was the first time Dorcas had asked the question! She colored a little, too, as if some secret thought or story were busy about her heart, as she looked at the ring.

“ Well, — it was a man she ’xpected to ’a’ hed. They was to ’a’ ben merried, an’ he was to ’a’ gi’n up v’yagin’. But he was cast away, an’ she never heerd nothin’ about neither him nor the ship, He was waitin’ to git means, an’ he did, privateerin’ an’ so; but I ’xpect he was drownded,” concluded Mrs. Fox, in a suitably plaintive tone.

And that was Aunt Dorcas’s story.

CHAPTER II.

IF anybody is curious to know why there should be mystery or secrecy connected with Swan Day’s meeting with Dorcas, or why they should meet under a pear-tree, instead of her father’s rooftree, in a rational way, it might be a sufficient answer, that there never was and never will be anything direct and straightforward about Cupid or his doings. But the real and more important reason was, that Colonel Fox did not like Swan, and had said, in so many words, that “he would n’t have Swan Day a-hangin’ round, no how ! — that he was a poor kind of a shote, — that he wished both him and his clutter well out o’town,— and that he need n’t think to make swans out of his geese, no time !”

In the first and last sentence, Colonel Fox indicated the ground of his dislike to the handsome young store-keeper, and his dread that Swan’s eyes would somehow interfere with his own cherished plans of a union between the Fox and Mower farms. Whatever Colonel Fox determined on was done or to be done. He had anticipated the French proverb ; and the “impossibility” made not the slightest difference. Therefore Dorcas had no notion of disobedience in her head, permanently. She solaced herself by the occasional luxury of departure from set rules, and she intended to depart in that way to-morrow,— for just five minutes, — just to hear what that foolish fellow wanted of her; and what could it be? and why was it the last time? — would he give her up ?

Dorcas pondered the matter while the sun still crowned the heights, and glanced at her sleeping father in silence. Why should Colonel Fox dislike Swan so very much because he was a Britisher ? All that was done with, long ago, and why not be peaceable ? Just then her father drew the breath sharply between his teeth, as if in pain. It was the old wound, that had never been healed since the Battle of Bennington. He had lain on the ground,—Dorcas had often heard him tell the tale, — and had striven to slake his deathly thirst with the blood that he scooped up in the hollow of his hand from the ground about him. So terrible was the carnage where he lay. “ A d—d Britisher had shot him,—another had driven his horse over him, and afterwards, while he lay half-dead, had tried to rob him ! ” Would he ever forget it ? He would have continued, on the contrary, to fire and hack till the present day, but for the wound in his knee, which had disabled him for life, long before a peace was patched up with the mother-country. So he had retired to Walton, and before Continental money had depreciated more than half had bought acres by the thousand, and become generalissimo of flocks and herds. Through the admiration of his townsmen for his wounds, he rapidly and easily attained the rank of Colonel, without the discomfort of fighting for it; and from his excellent sense and the executive ability induced by military habits, became, in turn, justice of the peace, deacon of the church, town-clerk, and manager-general of Walton.

Nobody—that is to say, nobody in the family—spoke, when Colonel Fox was in the house, unless first spoken to, — not even Dorcas. Such were the domestic tactics of the last century, and Colonel Fox held fast to old notions.

The social ones were far more liberal, — so very liberal, indeed, so very free and easy, in the rural districts especially, that only a knowledge of the primitive conditions under which such manners grew up could possibly reconcile with them any impressions of purity and discretion. In hearing of manners, therefore, it is always necessary to remember that the children of country Puritans are and were wholly different in the grain from Paris or London society of the same period, — as different, for example, as the Goddess of Reason from our first mother, though at first glance one might think those two similar. New-England parents had the utmost confidence in their daughters, and almost no restraint was laid on social intercourse. Their personal dignity and propriety were presupposed, as matters of course. Religion and virtue needed only to point, not to restrain.

The Colonel, on his part, took little heed of Dorcas’s movements in the way of balls and sleigh-rides. Content that her face showed health and enjoyment, he never thought or cared what passed in her mind. If only the hay-crop proved abundant, and the Davis lot yielded well,— if neither wheat got the blight, nor sheep the rot, — if it were better to buy Buckhorn for milk, or sell the Calico-Trotter,— these thoughts so filled his soul that there was very little room to let in any nonsense about Dorcas, only “to have Swan Day shet up before he begins,” for, as he often said, “ he would n't give the snap of his thumb for as many Swan Days as could stand between this and Jerusalem ! ”

She had met him twice before, and both times rather accidentally, as she supposed, under the pear-tree,— both times, when she went to the well for water. He had drawn the water, and had talked some with his tongue, but more, far more, with his eyes of Oriental depth and fascination. Dorcas thought and meant no harm in meeting Swan. Even if her nature had been more wakened and conscious,— even if she had had either the habit or the power of analyzing her own sensations, — even if she had seen her soul from without, as she certainly did not within, — she would have recoiled from the thought of deliberate coquetry.

In the nature even of a coquette there is not necessarily either cruelty or hardness. It cannot be a fine nature, and must be deficient in the tact which appreciates the feelings of another, and the sympathy that shrinks from injuring them. It may be called selfishness, which is another term for thoughtlessness or want of consideration or perception, but it is not deliberate selfishness. This last is often found with fine perceptions and intuitive tact. It is rather a natural obtuseness, a want of thought on the subject. Such persons remember and connect their own sensations with the object, thinking little or nothing of the feelings they may themselves excite by the heedlessness of their manner.

If Dorcas had once thought of the value of the hearts she played with, and as it were tossed from hand to hand,— if she had even weighed one against another, she might have had some sorrow in grieving either. But having no standard of delicacy and tenderness in her own nature by which to judge theirs, Dorcas cannot be accused of intentional injustice, which is generally understood by coquetry. On the contrary, if she had been able to express her emotions, —

would have done so. Dorcas was very young in experience.

In those days of freedom there was no such word as “ engaged " least of all, did the parties concerned violate all their own notions of decorum by “announcing an engagement.” The lists were free to all to enter, and the bravest won the day. After weeks and months of shy “ company-keeping,” it was “ expected it would be a match ” by the keen-sighted or deeply interested. Sometimes the dissolution of an engagement was mentioned as “ a shame ! after keeping company so many years, and she had got all her quilts made and everything ! ” But best of all was for the parties to be married outright, by a justice of the peace, without a word of public warning, and then to enjoy the pleasure of outwitting the neighbors, and coming down like a thunderclap on a social sunshine unsuspicious of banns, which had been published on some three literally public days, but when nobody was hearing. That was something worth doing, and very much worth remembering !

The sun set. The Sabbath was done. The Colonel heaved a sigh of relief. The Colonel’s wife took her knitting - work ; and the Colonel’s daughter looked up with a shy smile at Henry Mowers fastening his horse by the corn-barn. It was time Sunday was over, indeed! Such a long supper! but it must end sometime ! — and then prayers, and then Dorcas had amused herself with Bel and the Dragon and Tobit awhile. All would not do, and the family had been obliged to resort to the sweet restorer for the last ten minutes. Now they could think their own thoughts in peace, and talk of what interested them, — cattle, people, and the like. Poor Dorcas! what with Father Boardman’s preaching, and the Westminster Catechism, she associated religion with all that was dull and inexplicable, though she did not doubt it was good in case of dying. In the Nature and life that surrounded her she had not seen God, but a refuge from Him. In the crimson floods of sunshine, in the brilliant moonrise, or the pulsating stars of a winter night, she found a sort of guilty relief from the dulness of what she supposed was Revelation. But she never thought of questioning or doubting any teachings, in the pulpit or out. A woman cannot, like a man, fight a subject down. Her intellect shrinks from being tossed and pierced on the pricks of doctrine. She is gentle and cowardly. She sets the matter aside, and is contented to wait till she dies to find out. But the men in Walton were all theologians, and sharp at polemics. In the bar-room the spirit of liberty throve, which was crushed in the pulpit. In that small New-England town, where, like a great white sheep, Father Boardman now led his docile flock to the fold, whoever looked long enough would see many new folds and manynew shepherds. Every shape of religious thinking will have its exponent, and the widest liberty be claimed and enjoyed. Though he slept through Father Boardman’s sermons, it is doubtful if Henry Mowers did not in his dreams lay the corner-stone of the new meeting-house on the hill.

Monday, and the hurly-burly of washing over. Dorcas had nearly finished her “ stent ” on the little wheel. As she sat by the open door, diligently trotting her foot, and softly pulling the last flax from her distaff, her glance went hastily and often towards the setting sun. She could see beyond the sloping orchard, no longer loaded with fruit, the Great Meadows, extending along the banks of the Connecticut. She could see on the eastern side great white mountains, that went modestly by the name of hills, and that came in after-years to draw pilgrims from the ends of the earth. They were whitecapped and solemn-looking, and girdled by majestic forests ; while the Green Mountains, that layalong the horizon, not so high as " the Hills,” were crowned with verdure to the very top, and flaming with autumn dyes. As far as the eye reached, beyond the immediate view rose an immense solitude of forest that had lasted through centuries.

Dorcas’s eyes rested and roamed alternately over these massive natural features. She felt dimly in her heart the effect of the solemn aspect of t hese great wastes,— these sublime possibilities, concealed and waiting for the energy of man to discover them. A melancholy, sweet and soft, composed partly of the effect of the view, and partly of the languor of the Indian-sununer weather, diffused itself over her. She accused herself of various sins,—of levity, vanity, and not knowing her own mind. Soon, however, feeling her unskilfulness to steer, she abandoned the bark, and left it to drift. She must see Swan Day.

“ And as to Henry ! ”— here Dorcas set back the little wheel, — “and as to Henry!” — and here Dorcas threw her apron over her face, — “ why, what harm is there ? I’m only going to see what he wants.”

Under the apron rippled and rushed a thousand warm blushes, that contradicted every word Dorcas said to herself. They made her remember how, only the evening before, Henry had said words to her, which, although she pretended not to understand him, had made her heart beat proudly and tenderly; and how she had thought whoever was chosen to be Henry’s wife would be a happy woman ! How many times had he said, as they stood parting on the stoop, how sorry he was to go, and she, like Juliet, had whispered, ’t was “ not yet day ” ! Yes, of course Henry Mowers would be her husband, and she would tell Swan Day so, if—if—But then, perhaps, there was no such nonsense in Swan’s head, after all.

Why could not the gypsy be satisfied with her almost angelic happiness? But no. She shivered a little as the sun went down, and exchanged her workingdress of petticoat and short-gown for something warmer.

Because Cely Temple was cutting apples and pumpkins, and stringing them across the kitchen and pantry to dry, and because black Dinah was making the “ bean-porridge ” for supper, it came to pass that the daughter of the house was called on to lay the table. Dorcas bit her lip, as she hastily did the duty, and postponed the pleasure.

The laboring-season is nearly over, the eight hired men reduced to two, and the family-table is spread in the kitchen. How is the table spread for supper in the house of Colonel Fox, one of the richest farmers in Walton ?

This is the way.

Dorcas brushes a scrap from the long table, scoured as white as snow, but puts no linen on it. On the butteryshelves, a set of pewter rivals silver in brightness, but Dorcas does not touch them. She places a brown rye-and-Indian loaf, of the size of a half-peck, in the centre of the table,—a pan of milk, with the cream stirred in,—brown earthen bowls, with bright pewter spoons by the dozen,— a delicious cheese, whole, and the table is ready. When Dinah appears, with her bright Madras turban, and says she is ready to dish the “ beanporridge, nine days old,” Dorcas tells her she is going down beyond the cidermill, to bring up the yarn, and, throwing a handkerchief over her head, is out of sight before Dinah has finished blowing the tin horn that summons to supper.

In five minutes, she was beyond the cider-mill, beyond the well, and standing under the old pear-tree. Behind her, hiding her from the house, is the cornbarn, stuffed and laden with the heavy harvest of maize and wheat, and the cidermill, where twenty bushels of apples lie uncrushed on the ground, ready for the morrow’s fate. A long row of barrels already filled from the foaming vat stand ready to be taken to the Colonel’s own cellar, for the Colonel’s own drinking, and as far as one can see in one direction is the Colonel’s own land. The heiress of all would still be sought for herself.

Dorcas stood in the departing light, and leaned against the pear-tree. Not yet come ? A flush went up to her forehead, as, dropping her handkerchief, she raised her hand to her eyes and glanced hastily about her. Her chestnut curls were fastened with a blue ribbon on the side of her head, and the floating ends fell on her shoulder.

This was the one departure from the severe simplicity of her dress, for neither bright-hued calicoes nor muslins found their way to Walton. Once in a long while, a print, at five times the present prices, was introduced into the social circles of Walton by an occasional peddler, or possibly by the adventurous spirit of Swan Day. But these were rare instances.

Flannel of domestic manufacture, pressed till you could almost see your face in it, stood instead of the French woollen fabric of modern days. It left the jimp little waist as round and definite as the eye could ask, while the full flow of the skirt exposed the neat foot, deftly incased in stout Jefferson shoes. A plaited lawn, technically termed a “ modestypiece,” was folded over the bosom, and concealed all but the upper part of the throat. Above that rose a face full of delicacy and healthy sweetness. Eyes full of sparkles, and dimples all about the cheeks, chin, and rather large mouth. Youth, and the radiance of a happy, unconscious nature, of the capabilities or possibilities of which she was as ignorant as the robin on the branch above her, whose evening song had just closed, and who has just shut his coquettish eyes.

A minute more, and Swan sprang over the stone wall, and with throe steps was standing by her. He stood still and looked at her, drawing deep breaths of haste and agitation.

Dorcas spoke first.

“ You wanted to see me. What is the matter ? ”

“ Nothing, — but — you know I’ve got home.”

“ Why, yes, that is clear,” answered Dorcas, mischievously, and entirely easy herself, now that she saw Swan’s checks aflame, and his voice choking so he could not speak.

“ We might as well go towards the house, if that is all,” added she, gathering in her hand some skeins of yarn that had been spread out to whiten.

Swan caught the yarn and threw it away with an impatient jerk. Then he took both of Dorcas’s hands in his, holding them with a fierce grasp that made her almost Scream.

“ You know I can’t go near the house.”

“ Yes, I know,” said Dorcas, half frightened at his manner. “ When did you get back from Boston ? ”

“ Saturday night. And I am going again to-morrow. And then — Dorcas — I shall stay.”

“ Stay ? ”

“ Stay, — till you tell me to come back, maybe ! ”

“ Why, where are you going, Swan ?”

“ To China, Dorcas.”

“ I want to know 1” exclaimed she.

“ Just it, — and no two ways about it. Sold out to Sawtell. Now you have it, Dorcas ! ”

This curt and abrupt dialogue needed no more words. The rest was made out fully by the bright color on each face, the sparkling interest on the bent brow of Dorcas, and the deep, mellow voice, full of tenderness and hope, mixed with stern decision, on the part of Swan Day.

No wonder Dorcas’s eyes had a glamour over them as she listened and looked. What did she see ? A slight, erect figure, with Napoleonic features, animated with admiration and sensibility; emotion glorifying the rich, deep eyes, and making them look in the twilight like stars; and over all, the indefinable ease that comes from knowledge of the world, however small that world may be.

Swan had little gift of language. The foregoing short dialogue is a specimen of his ability in that way. But looks are a refinement on speech, and say what words never can say.

“ You see, Dorcas, I'm going out for the Perkinses with Orrin Tileston. We each put in five hundred, and have our share of the profits.”

“ But to China ! that’s right under our feet! You ’ll never come back!” murmured the girl.

“Do you ever want I should? Dorcas, if I come back rich, shall you be glad? It will be all for you, — dear!” the last word low and timidly.

The mist went over her eyes again. A vision of Solomon in all his glory swept across her. Even to Walton had spread rumors of the immense fortunes acquired in the China and India trade, and the gold of Cathay seemed to shimmer over the form before her, so strong, so able to contend with, and compel, if need were, Fortune.

As to Swan, he looked over the river of Time that separated him from love and happiness, and saw his idol and ideal standing on the farther bank, dressed in purple and fine linen, with jewels of his own adorning. Like Bunyan’s " shining" ones,” she seemed to him far lifted out of the range of ordinary thought and expression, into the regions of inspired song. Now that he was really going to the East, the image of Dorcas in his heart took on itself, with a graceful readiness, the gold of Ophir, the pomps of Palmyra, and the shining glories of Zion. He longed to “crown her with rose-buds, to fill her with costly wine and ointments,” — to pour over her the measureless bounty of his love, from the cornucopia of Fortune.

“ Dorcas,” said he, — and his words showed how inadequately thoughts can be represented, — “ Dorcas, I know your father thinks nothing at all of me now ; but, supposing I come back in two years, with — with — say five thousand dollars I — then, Dorcas ! ”

The bright, soft eyes looked pleadingly at her.

Truly, in those days of simplicity and scant earnings, five thousand dollars did seem likely to be an overwhelming temptation to the owner of the Fox farm.

“ But,— Swan ! ” said the blushing girl, releasing herself from his grasp, and stepping back.

“ Yes, Dorcas ! — yes ! — once ! — only once ! ”

He came between her and the image of Henry Mowers; he was going away; she might never see him again. A vague sentiment, composed of pleasure, pity, admiration, and ambition, but having the semblance only of timidity in her rosy face and downcast eyes, made her yield her shrinking form, for one moment, to his trembling and passionate caress, and the next, she ran as swiftly as a deer to the house.

Swan’s eyes followed her. With his feet, he dared not. His bounding heart half-choked him with pleasant pain. All he had not said, — all he had meant to say to Dorcas, of his well-laid plans, his good-luck, his hopes, — all he had meant to entreat of her constancy, for in the infrequent communications between the two countries there was no hope of a correspondence, — all he had meant to say to her of his fervent love, of his anguish at separation, of the joy of reunion, and that his love would leave him only with his life, — if he could only have told her ! But then he never would or could have put it all into words, if Dorcas had stayed with him under the peartree till the next morning.

He thought of the Colonel’s pride, and how it would come down, at the sight of Swan Day returning to Walton with five thousand dollars in his coat-pocket, and mounted, perhaps, on an elephant! If he had held a foremost social position in Walton, even while selling tape and mopsticks, molasses and rum, at the countrystore, what might not be the impression on the public mind at seeing the glittering plumage of this “ bird let loose from Eastern skies, when hastening fondly home”? There was much balm for wounded pride to be gathered in this Oriental project.

Swan collected his energies and his clothes, finished his remaining last words and duties, and took his seat with the mail-carrier, who had the only public conveyance at that period from the town of Walton to the town of Boston. His parents were dead; his immediate relatives were scattered already in different States; and he left Walton with his heart full of one image, that of Dorcas Fox.

CHAPTER Ill.

“ THEY du say Swan Day’s gun off for good ! ” said Cely Temple, as she returned from the store, with a Dutch-oven In her hand, which she had purchased, — “ an’ to th’ East Injees ! ”

“I want to know!” rejoined Mrs. Fox.

“ I know some ’ll be sorry !” continued Cely, while Dorcas diligently stirred a five - pail kettle of apple-sauce, that hung stewing over the low fire.

Mrs. Fox looked up quickly at her daughter, but Dorcas continued quietly stirring, and without turning round.

“ Mahala Dorr, I guess,” said she.

“ Wall, M’hala ’ll be, an’ so ’ll others,” answered Cely, prudently. “ But I expect likely Swan ’ll do well, ef he don’t die. They say the atemuspere is pison there ! — especially for dark-complected folks.”

To this hopeful remark Mrs. Fox rejoined, that “ old Miss Day come herself from a warm country, and ’t was likely her son would settle there for good, and enjoy his health there better than what he would here.”

“ He ’ll look out well for Number One, anyhow ! ” said Cely, lifting the lid of the Dutch-oven from the fire,

Dorcas shot an angry glance at the apple-sauce.

Nothing further passed on the subject, and Dorcas somehow felt, as she stirred, as if Swan were already a long, long way off,— as if the ship had sailed, and would stay sailed, like an enchanted ship, hovering on the horizon, and never come near enough for the passengers to be distinguished,— or else, maybe, go up into the clouds, and rest there with all its masts and spars distinct against the rose-mist, as she had read of once in a book of travels,— or, perhaps, even be inverted, and stand there on its head, as it were, always: but everything must be upside down, of course, in China. Already the thought of Swan Day had mingled with the mists of the past. The outline became indefinite, and softened into a golden splendor, that belonged no more to her, but was essentially of another hemisphere. He had by this time cut loose from home and country. Whether a hundred, or a hundred thousand miles, it mattered not. Since she could not grasp the idea, the distance was as good as infinite to her.

This, you see, is not exactly coquetry. But events drifted her.

When supper was over, and Dinah had gone to sleep, and Cely to visit the neighbors, as usual, Dorcas shyly approached the subject which occupied her thoughts, by getting the little box of jewelry, and looking at it. Her mother called her from the kitchen, out of which the bedroom opened.

‘‘Does mother want me?” asked Dorcas, turning round, with the box in her hand.

“ No, no matter,” answered the mother ; and, possibly with an intuitive feeling of what was in her daughter’s thought, she went into the bed-room, and looked with her at the pin and ring of Aunt Dorcas.

“ Was it — was it a long time, mother, — I mean, before he came back ?” said Dorcas.

“Who? Captain Waterhouse ? Bless you ! they was as good as merried for ten year, an’ he was goin’ all the time, an' then, jest at the last minute, to be ’racked ! It’s ’most always so, when people goes to sea,” added she, in a plaintive tone.

Dorcas meditated ; she looked wistfully at her mother.

“It’s a pretty pin, — dreadful pretty round the edge.”

“ Yes, 't is! I expect likely them ’s di’mon’s. ’T was made over in foreign parts. He was goin’ to bring his picter, too, from there. But he’s lost and gone ! Your Aunt Dorcas never had no more suitors after that, and she kind o’ gin in, and never had no sperits.”

Dorcas’s eyes filled, and she closed the box.

Henry Mowers would not come to the Fox farm till the next Sunday night. That was as much settled as the new moon. So Dorcas had the whole week to herself, to be thoroughly unhappy in, — all the more so, a thousand times more so, for being utterly incapable of saying or seeing why. An instinctive delicacy kept her from showing to any of the family that she was even depressed; and her voice was heard steadily warbling one of Wesley’s hymns, or “ Wolfe’s Address to his Army,” in clear, brilliant tones, that rang up-stairs and down. The general impression of distance and water associated her absent lover with all that was heroic and romantic in song; for of novels she knew nothing, — the Colonel’s library being limited, in the imaginative line, to a torn copy of the “ Iliad,” which had been left at the house by a travelling cobbler.

However, romance is before all rules, and shapes its own adventures. The beauty of Swan Day, which, dark and slight as it was, gleamed with a power for Dorcas’s eye and heart before which Buonarotti’s would have been only pale stone forever, — that beauty dwelt in her imagination and memory, as only first romantic impressions can. Distance canonized him, enthroned him, glorified him. And when she thought of his setting forth so boldly, so bravely, to tread the wide water, to tempt the hot sun, the foreign exposure, the perpetual dangers of heathen countries, for her unworthy sake, all that was tenderest, most grateful, in her now first wakened nature, rose up in distressful tumult, and agitated the depths that are in all women’s souls.

If there had been anybody to whom she could confide the sad wrenching of her spirit, any one who would have cleared her vision, and taught her to look on “this picture and on this,” she might not have been so puzzled between her two Hyperions. But as it was, it was a sorrowful struggle. One had the advantage of distance and imagination, — one of presence, and of the magnetism ot eye and lip.

“I am a wicked, wicked girl!” said she, as she stood before the glass, and loosened the locks that fell like sunshine over her shoulders. But this confession, with true New-England reticence, was uttered only to one listener, — herself.

Then she recalled, for it was Monday night once more, the frank and noble nature of Henry: how he had not asked her to promise him, but seemed to take for granted her truth and faith ; how he had looked so fondly, so clearly into her eyes, not for what he might find there, but to show the transparent goodness and sincerity of his own ; and how he had told her of all his plans and hopes, of his wish and her father’s intention that they should be married that very fall ; how little he had said of his own overflowing affection, only that “ he had never thought of anybody else.” Dorcas only felt, without putting the sense into language, that in this life-boat there was safety. But then had she not sent her heart on a venture in the other,— that other which even now was tossing on the waves of a future, full-freighted with hope, and faith in her truth ?

She opened the little box again, and looked at the ring and painted pin. How sorrowfully she looked at them now, seen through tears of conscious experience ! How mournful seemed the ground hair, and the tints woven of so many broken hopes, sad thoughts, and wrecked expectations ! the hair, kissed so many times in the weary years of waiting, and then wept over in the drearier desolation, when the sight could only bring thoughts of the salt waves dashing amongst it in the deep sea ! What a life that had been of poor Aunt Dorcas! Then came across her busy thought the words of her mother, ,— “ It ’s ’most always so ! ”

Swan sailed very far away, in these tearful reveries, and took hope and life with him.

When the next Sunday evening came, and the next, and the next,— and when Dorcas had ceased to say, blushing and smiling, — “ Don’t, Henry ! you know I should make such a poor kind of a wife for you ! and your mother would n’t think anything of me ! ” — and when Henry had had an offer to go to Western New York, where there were nobody knew how many beautiful girls, all waiting to pounce on the tall, finelooking young farmer, — when Colonel Fox forgot he was a deacon, and swore that Dorcas was undeserving of such a happy lot as was offered to her,— when the tears, and the reveries, and the pictures of far-away lands, and the hopes that might wither with long years of waiting, were all merged and effaced in the healthy happiness of the present,— Dorcas dried her tears, and applied herself diligently to building up her flaxen trousseau, and smothered in her heart the image of dark and brilliant beauty that had for a time occupied it.

“ She waited — a long time! — years — and years ! ” murmured Dorcas, sorrowfully, as she looked at the pin and ring, which in her mind were associated strangly with only one person,—and that one hereafter to be dead to her. As soon as events clearly defined her duties, Dorcas had no further questions with herself. If the box had been Pandora’s, not the less resolutely would she have shut it forever, and so crushed the hope that it could never have leaped out.

So, with choking tears, and throbbing pulses, she followed many brilliant fancies and hopes to their last resting-place. Henceforth her path was open and clear, her duties defined, and with daily occupation of hand and thought she strove to displace all that had ever made her other than the cheerful and busy Dorcas. For the last time, she closed and put away the box.