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The Mortuary Chest
by
“How’s your cistern?” asked Mrs. John Cole, who, with an exclusively practical turn of mind, saw no reason why talk should be consecutive. “Got all the water you want?”
“Yes,” said Mrs. Page; “that last rain filled it up higher’n it’s been sence November.”
But Mrs. Ellison was not to be thrown off the track.
“Ain’t there been consid’able talk over here about Parson Bond?” she asked.
Miss Sally Ware, a plump and pleasing maiden lady, whose gold beads lay in a crease especially designed for them, stirred uneasily in her seat and gave her sisters an appealing glance. But she did not speak, beyond uttering a little dissentient noise in her throat. She was loyal to her minister. An embarrassed silence fell like a vapor over the assemblage. Everybody longed to talk; nobody wanted the responsibility of beginning. Mrs. Page was the first to gather her forces.
“Now, Tilly,” said she, with decision, “you ain’t comin’ over here to tole us into haulin’ our own pastor over the coals, unless you’ll say right out you won’t pass it on to Saltash folks. As for puttin’ it in the paper, it ain’t the kind you can.”
Tilly’s eyes burned.
“I guess I know when to speak an’ when not to,” she remarked. “Now don’t beat about the bush; the men-folks’ll be back to rights. I never in my life give Len a mite o’ news he couldn’t ha’ picked up for himself.”
“Well, some master silly pieces have got into the paper, fust an’ last,” said Mrs. Robbins. “Recollect how your Len come ‘way over here to git his shoes cobbled, the week arter Tom Brewer moved int’ the Holler, an’ folks hadn’t got over swappin’ the queer things he said? an’ when Tom got the shoes done afore he promised, Len says to him, ‘You’re better’n your word.’ ‘Well,’ says Tom, ‘I flew at ’em with all the venom o’ my specie.’ An’ it wa’n’t a fortnight afore that speech come out in a New York paper, an’ then the Sudleigh ‘Star’ got hold on ‘t, an’ so ‘t went. If folks want that kind o’ thing, they can git a plenty, I say.” She set her lips defiantly, and looked round on the assembled group. This was something she had meant to mention; now she had done it.
The informal meeting was aghast. A flavor of robust humor was accustomed to enliven it, but not of a sort to induce dissension.
“There! there!” murmured Sally Ware. “It’s the Sabbath day!”
“Well, nobody’s breakin’ of it, as I know of,” said Mrs. Ellison. Her eyes were brighter than usual, but she composed herself into a careful disregard of annoyance. When desire of news assailed her, she could easily conceal her personal resentments, cannily sacrificing small issues to great. “I guess there’s no danger o’ Parson Bond’s gittin’ into the paper, so long ‘s he behaves himself; but if anybody’s got eyes, they can’t help seein’. I hadn’t been in the Bible class five minutes afore I guessed how he was carryin’ on. Has he begun to go with Isabel North, an’ his wife not cold in her grave?”
“Well, I think, for my part, he does want Isabel,” said Mrs. Robbins sharply, “an’ I say it’s a sin an’ a shame. Why, she ain’t twenty, an’ he’s sixty if he’s a day. My soul! Sally Ware, you better be settin’ your cap for my William Henry. He’s ‘most nineteen.”
Miss Ware flushed, and her plump hands tightened upon each other under her shawl. She was never entirely at ease in the atmosphere of these assured married women; it was always a little bracing.
“Well, how’s she take it?” asked Tilly, turning from one to the other. “Tickled to death, I s’pose?”
“Well, I guess she ain’t!” broke in a younger woman, whose wedding finery was not yet outworn. “She’s most sick over it, and so she has been ever since her sister married and went away. I believe she’d hate the sight of him, if ‘t wasn’t the minister; but ’tis the minister, and when she’s put face to face with him, she can’t help saying yes and no.”