FullReads

“Draw in your feet, brother Geake,” he called out, “or else pray short.”

One or two women giggled at this. But Geake did not seem to hear. For five good minutes he prayed vociferously, as was his custom in meeting-house; then rose, replaced his hat, dusted his knees, held out his hand for Naomi’s shilling, and wrote her the customary voucher in his most business-like manner, and without another word. But there was a triumphant look in his eyes that dared Naomi to repeat her offence, and she very nearly wept as she felt that the words would not come. This and the shame of publicity drove her back into her room as Geake passed down the stairs to collect the other rents. A few women still hung about the doorway as he emerged, some twenty minutes later. But he marched down Chy-pons with head erect and eyes fixed straight ahead.

II.

On the following Saturday, when Geake called, Naomi was standing at her wash-tub. She had seen him pass the window, and, hurriedly wiping her hands, and pulling out her shilling, placed it ostentatiously in the very centre of the deal table by the door; then had just time to plunge her hands in the soap-suds again before he knocked. Try as she would, she could not keep back a blush at the remembrance of last week’s scene, and half looked for him to make some allusion to it.

His extremely business-like air reassured her. She nodded towards the shilling without removing her hands from the tub. He took it, including in a polite good-morning both Naomi and her mother, who was huddled in an arm-chair before the fire and recovering from an attack of the fever, wrote out his voucher solemnly, set it in the exact spot where the shilling had stood, took up his hat, hesitated for less than a second, replaced his hat on the table, and, pulling a chair towards him, dropped on his knees, and began to pray aloud.

The old woman by the fire slewed her head painfully round and stared at him, then at Naomi. But Naomi was standing with her back to them both, and her hands soaping the linen in the tub–gently, however, and without any splashing. She therefore let her head sink back on the cushion, and assumed that peculiarly dejected air, commonly reserved by her for the consolations of religion.

On this occasion William Geake prayed in a low and level tone, and very briefly. He made no allusion to last Saturday, but put up an earnest petition for blessings upon “our two sisters here,” and that they might learn to accept their appointed portion with resignation, yea, even with a holy joy. At the end of two minutes he rose, and was about to dust his knees, after his usual custom, but, becoming suddenly aware of the difference in cleanliness between Naomi’s lime-ash and the floors of the various meeting-houses of his acquaintance, refrained. This little piece of delicacy did not escape Naomi, though her shoulders were still bent over the tub, to all seeming as resolutely as ever.

“Well, I swow that was very friendly of Mister Geake!” the old woman ejaculated, as the door closed behind him. “‘Tisn’t everybody’d ha’ thought what a comfort a little scrap o’ religion can be to an old woman in my state.”

“He took a great liberty,” said Naomi snappishly.

“Well, he might ha’ said as much as ‘By your leave,’ to be sure; an’ now you say so, ’twas makin’ a bit free to talk about our dependence–an’ in my own kitchen too.”

“He meant our dependence on th’ Almighty,” Naomi corrected, still more snappishly. “William Geake’s an odd-fangled man, but you might give ‘en credit for good-feelin’. An’, what’s more, though I don’t hold wi’ Christian talk, if a man have a got beliefs, I respect ‘en for standin’ to ’em without shame.”

“But I thought, a moment ago–” her mother began, and then subsided. She was accustomed to small tangles in her own processes of thought, and quite incapable, after years of blind acceptance, of correcting Naomi’s logic.