PAGE 13
The Mortuary Chest
by
Her face contracted slightly. “Perhaps I wouldn’t! perhaps I wouldn’t! But I’ve had a good deal to bear this afternoon, and maybe I do feel a little different towards you from what I ever have felt. I’ve been hearing a loose-tongued woman tell how my own niece has been made town-talk because a man old enough to know better was running after her. I said, years ago, I never would come into this place while you was in it; but when I heard that, I felt as if Providence had marked out the way. I knew I was the one to step into the breach. So I had Tim harness up and bring me over, and here I am. William, I don’t want you should make a mistake at your time of life!”
The minister seemed already a younger man. A strong color had risen in his face. He felt in her presence a fine exhilaration denied him through all the years without her. Who could say whether it was the woman herself or the resurrected spirit of their youth? He did not feel like answering her. It was enough to hear her voice. He leaned forward, looking at her with something piteous in his air.
“Mary Ellen,” he ventured, “you might as well say ‘another mistake.’ I did make one. You know it, and I know it.”
She looked at him with a frank affection, entirely maternal. “Yes, William,” she said, with the same gentle firmness in her voice, “we’ve passed so far beyond those things that we can speak out and feel no shame. You did make a mistake. I don’t know as ‘twould be called so to break with me, but it was to marry where you did. You never cared about her. You were good to her. You always would be, William; but ’twas a shame to put her there.”
The parson had locked his hands upon his knees. He looked at them, and sad lines of recollection deepened in his face.
“I was desperate,” he said at length, in a low tone. “I had lost you. Some men take to drink, but that never tempted me. Besides, I was a minister. I was just ordained. Mary Ellen, do you remember that day?” “Yes,” she answered softly, “I remember.” She had leaned back in her chair, and her eyes were fixed upon vacancy with the suffused look of tears forbidden to fall.
“You wore a white dress,” went on the parson, “and a bunch of Provence roses. It was June. Your sister always thought you dressed too gay, but you said to her, ‘I guess I can wear what I want, to, to-day of all times.”
“We won’t talk about her. Yes, I remember.”
“And, as God is my witness, I couldn’t feel solemn, I was so glad! I was a minister, and my girl–the girl that was going to marry me–sat down there where I could see her, dressed in white. I always thought of you afterwards with that white dress on. You’ve stayed with me all my life, just that way.”
Mary Ellen put up her hand with a quick gesture to hide her middle-aged face. With a thought as quick, she folded it resolutely upon the other in her lap. “Yes, William,” she said. “I was a girl then. I wore white a good deal.”
But the parson hardly heeded her. He was far away. “Mary Ellen,” he broke out suddenly, a smile running warmly over his face, and creasing his dry, hollow cheeks, “do you remember that other sermon, my trial one? I read it to you, and then I read it to Parson Sibley. And do you remember what he said?”
“Yes, I remember. I didn’t suppose you did.” Her cheeks were pink. The corners of her mouth grew exquisitely tender.
“You knew I did! ‘Behold, thou art fair, my love; behold, thou art fair; thou hast doves’ eyes.’ I took that text because I couldn’t think of anything else all summer. I remember now it seemed to me as if I was in a garden–always in a garden. The moon was pretty bright, that summer. There were more flowers blooming than common. It must have been a good year. And I wrote my sermon lying out in the pine woods, down where you used to sit hemming on your things. And I thought it was the Church, but do all I could, it was a girl–or an angel!”