Miss Primrose: A Novel

"Too low," said Shears. "Suppose he makes half a dollar on every book, and suppose he sells – well, say he sells one hundred thousand – "

"One hundred thousand!" cried Caleb Kane. "Go wan!"

"Why, darn your skin," said Colonel Shears, "why not? The Old Red Barn sold five hundred thousand, and only out two years. Saw it myself in the paper, the other day."

"No!"

"I say yes! Five hundred thousand, by cracky!"

"Oh, well," said Caleb, "that thing was written by a different cuss."

When it was learned one morning that Karl had returned under cover of night for a visit to Grassy Ford, those who had known the boy looked curiously to see what manner of man he had become. And, lo! he was scarcely a man at all, but a beardless youth, no laurel upon his head, no tragic shadow on his brow! – a shy figure flitting down the long main street, darting into stores and out again, and nodding quickly, and hurrying home again as fast as his legs would take him – to dodge a caller even there and wander, thankful for escape, on the banks of Troublesome.

"Well, you 'ain't changed much," said Colonel Shears, when he met the author.

"No," said Karl.

"Look just as peaked as ever," was the cheerful greeting of Caleb Kane.

"Yes," said Karl.

"Don't seem a day older," said Grandma Smith.

"No?" said Karl.

"Why, Karl," said Shears, "I thought you'd change; thought you'd look different, somehow! Yes, sir, I thought you'd look different – but, I swan, you don't!"

"No," said Karl, and there was such honest chagrin in the faces of those old-time friends, he was discomfited. What had they expected, he asked at home?

"Why," said his mother, "don't you know? Can't you guess, my dear? They looked at least for a Prince-Albert and a stove-pipe hat."

"Silk hat! Prince-Albert!"

"Why, yes," said his father. "The outward and visible sign of the soul within."

Karl's clothes, it is true, were scarcely the garb to be hoped for in so marked a man. The dandies of Grassy Ford noted complacently that his plain, gray, wrinkled suit did not compare for style and newness with their own, while they wore at their throats the latest cravats of emerald and purple loveliness. Karl's tie was black, and a plain and pinless bow which drooped dejectedly. His hat was a mere soft, weather-beaten, shapeless thing, and he walked on Sunday with gloveless hands. Miss Johnson, a reigning belle, tells how he once escorted her from the post-office to her father's gate, talking of Wordsworth all the way, and all unconscious of the Sun Dial burrs still clinging to his coat!

Letitia, for one, declared that she was not disappointed in the author of Sleepington Fair. In honor of her old pupil she gave a dinner, and spent such thought upon its menu and took such pains with its service, lest it should offend a New-Yorker's epicurean eye, it is remembered still, and not merely because it was the only literary dinner Grassy Ford has known. There was some agitation among the invited guests as to the formality involved in a dinner to a lion – even though that lion might be seen commonly with burrs in his tail. The pride and honor of Grassy Ford was at stake, and the matter was the more important as the worthy fathers of the town seldom owned dress-suits in those days. For a time, I believe, when I was a boy, Mr. Jewell, the banker, was the sole possessor, and became thereby, no less than by virtue of the manners which accompany the occasional wearing of so suave a garment in so small a town – our first real gentleman. In his case, however, the ownership was the less surprising in that he was known to enjoy New York connections, on his mother's side.

Now, to those who consulted Letitia as to the precise demands of the approaching feast, she explained, gracefully, that they would be welcome in any dress – adding, however, for the gentlemen's benefit, and hopefully no doubt, for she had the occasion in heart and hand, that the conventional garb after six o'clock was a coat with tails. As a result of the conference two guests-to-be might have been seen through a tailor's window, standing coatless and erect upon a soap-box, much straighter than it was their wont to stand, much fuller of chest, robin-like, and with hips thrown neatly back – to match, as the Colonel said. Two other gentlemen of the dinner-party told their wives bluntly that they would go "as usual," or they would be – not go at all, before which edicts their dames salaamed.

Letitia counted on five dress-suits, at least, including the author's and my own. Mine I must wear, she said, or she would be shamed forever; so I put it on when the night arrived, wormed my way cautiously into its outgrown folds, only to find then, to my pain, that an upright posture alone could preserve its dignity and mine.

The hour arrived, and with it the Buxtons, old friends and neighbors; Dr. Jamieson, homœopathic but otherwise beyond reproach, and Miss Jamieson, his daughter, who could read Browning before breakfast, much, I suppose, as some robust men on empty stomachs smoke strong cigars; the Gallowses, not wanted over-much, but asked to keep the white wings of peace hovering in our hills; the Jewells, and some one I've forgotten, and then the Buhls – Mr. Buhl smiling, but unobtrusive to the ear, Mrs. Buhl radiant and gracious, and pervading the assemblage with a dowagerial rustling of lavender silk. To my mind the quieter woman in the plain black gown adorned only by an old-lace collar and antique pin, her hair the whiter for her cheeks now rosy with agitation, her eyes shining with the joy of the first great function she had ever given, was the loveliest figure among them all.

Last came two plain, unassuming folk, though proud enough of that only son of theirs, and then —

"Oh!" cries Mrs. Buhl, so suddenly, so ecstatically that the hum ceases and every head is turned. "Mister St. John!"

It is indeed the author of Sleepington Fair. And behold the lion! – a slight and faltering figure, pausing upon the threshold, burrless indeed, but oh! – in that old sack suit of gray!

Letitia bore the shock much better than might be expected. She changed color, it is true, but the flush came back at once, and, standing loyally at his side, she led the lion into the room.

It was a trying moment. He was an Author – he had written a Book – but we were thirteen to his one, and four dress-suits besides! Thirteen to one, if you omit his parents, and four dress-shirts, remember, bulging and crackling before his dazzled eyes! New York wavered and fell back, and the first skirmish was Grassy Ford's.

At the same instant it was whispered anxiously in my ear that the ices had not arrived, but I counselled patience, and dinner was proclaimed without delay. The lion and Letitia led the procession to the feast, and I have good reason for the statement that he was a happier lion when we were seated and he had put his legs away. Still, even then he could scarcely be called at ease. Once only did he talk as if he loved his theme, and then it was solely with Letitia, who had mentioned Troublesome, out of the goodness of her heart, as I believe. His face lighted at the name, and he talked so gladly that all other converse ceased. What was the lion roaring of so gently there? Startled to hear no other voices, he stopped abruptly, and, seeing our curious faces all about him, dropped his eyes, abashed, and kept them on his plate. Then Mrs. Buhl, famous in such emergencies, came to the rescue.

"Oh, Mr. St. John," she said, while we all sat listening, "I've wanted to ask you: how did you come to write Sleepington Fair?"

"Oh," he replied, reddening, "I – I wanted to – that was all."

"I see," she replied.

"Do you like 'Sordello'?" asked Miss Jamieson, in the awkward silence that ensued.

"Well, really – I cannot say; I have never read it," was his confession.

"Not read 'Sordello'!"

"No."

"Let's see, that's Poe, isn't it?" asked a young dress-shirt, swelling visibly, emboldened to the guess by the lion's discomfiture.

"Robert Browning," replied the lady, with a look of scorn, and the dress-shirt sank again.

"New York is a great place, isn't it?" volunteered Jimmy Gallows.

"Yes," said the lion.

"Been up the Statue of Liberty, I suppose?" Jimmy went on.

"No," said the lion.

"What!" cried the chorus. "Never been up the – "

"What did he say?" asked Mrs. Jewell, who was deaf. Mr. Buxton solemnly inclined his lips to her anxious ear and shouted:

"He has never been up the Statue of Liberty."

"Oh!" said the lady.

The silence was profound.

"What, never?" piped Jimmy Gallows.

"Never," said the lion, shaking his mane a little ominously. "I have never been a tourist."

Letitia mentioned Sun Dial, and would have saved the day, I think, had not Mrs. Buhl leaned forward with the sweetest of alluring smiles.

"Oh, Mr. St. John," she said, "I've been going to ask you – in fact, for a long, long time I have wanted to know, and I wonder now if you won't tell me: how do authors" – she paused significantly – "how do authors get their books accepted?"

A dress-shirt crackled, but was frowned upon.

"What did he say?" asked the lady who was deaf.

"He hasn't said anything yet," roared Mr. Buxton.

"Oh!"

"Do tell us," urged Mrs. Buhl. "Do, Mr. St. John. I almost called you Karl."

"Was it a conundrum?" inquired the deaf lady, perceiving that it had been a poser.

"No. Question: how do authors get their books accepted?"

"Yes – how do they?" urged Mrs. Buhl.

"Why," said the lion at last, for all the table hung upon his answer, "by writing them well enough – I suppose."

It was a weak answer. There was no satisfaction in it, no meat, no pith at all, nothing to carry home with you. Mrs. Buhl said, "Oh!"

"To what, then," piped Jimmy Gallows, "do you attribute your success?"

He was a goaded lion, one could see quite plainly; the strain was telling on his self-control.

"It is not worth mentioning, Mr. Gallows," he replied, stiffly.

"Mr. St. John," Letitia interposed, in a quiet voice, "was just now telling me that there is no music in all New York to compare with Troublesome's. Shall we go into the other room?"

That night, when the last guest had departed, I asked Letitia, "Well, what do you think of the author?"

"I am not disappointed," she replied.

"Not much of a talker, though?" I suggested.

"He does not pretend to be a talker," she replied, warmly. "He is a writer. No," she repeated, "I am not disappointed in my Johnny Keats."

Next day, I think it was, in the afternoon, he asked Letitia to walk with him to the banks of Troublesome, to a spot which she had praised the night before. His heart was full, and as they lingered together by those singing waters he told her of his struggles in the city whose statue he had never climbed. He told her of his black days there, of his failure and despondency, of his plans to leave it and desert his dreams, but how that mighty, roaring, dragon creature had held him pinioned in its claws till he had won.

"And then," he told her, "when I saw my book, I looked again, and it was not a dragon which had held me – it was an angel!"

Seeing that her eyes were full of tears, he added, earnestly:

"Miss Primrose, I wanted you to know. You had a part in that little triumph."

"I?"

"You. Don't you remember? Don't you remember those books you left for us? – in our old school-room? – on the shelf?"

III

THE FORTUNE-TELLER

Autumn comes early in Grassy Fordshire. In late September the nights are chill and a white mist hovers ghostly in the moonlight among our hills. The sun dispels it and warms our noons to a summer fervor, but there is no permanence any longer in heat or cold, or leaf or flower – all is change and passing and premonition, so that the singing poet in you must turn philosopher and hush his voice, seeing about him the last sad rites of those little lives once blithe and green as his own was in the spring.

Ere October comes there are crimson stains upon the woodlands. "God's plums, father!" Robin cried, standing as a little boy on Sun Dial and pointing to the distant hills. A spell is over them, a purple and enchanted sleep, though all about them the winds are wakeful, and the sumac fire which blazed up crimson in the sun but a moment gone, burns low in the shadow of white clouds scudding before the gale. Here beneath them the bloom of the golden-rod is upon the land; fieldsful and lanesful, it bars your way, or brushes your shoulders as you pass. Only the asters, white and purple and all hues between, vie here and there with the mightier host, but its yellow plumes nod triumph on every crest, banks and hedgerows glow with its soldiery, it beards the forest, and even where the plough has passed posts its tall sentries at the furrow's brim.

In the lower meadows there is still a coverlet of summer green, but half hidden in the taller, rusting grasses, whose feathery tops ripple in the faintest wind, till suddenly it rises and whips them into waves, now ruddy, now flashing silver, while a foam of daisies beats against the gray stone hedges like waters tumbling on a quay.

There is cheerful fiddling in these dying grasses, and crickets scuttle from beneath your feet; there is other music too – a shrill snoring as of elder fairies oversleeping; startled insects leap upon you, flocks of sparrows flee from interrupted feasts, squirrels berate you, crows spread horrid tales of murder stalking in the fields.

Then leave the uplands – tripping on its hidden creepers; part the briers of the farthest hedgerow, and descend. Down in the valley there is a smell of apples in the air, pumpkins glow among the wigwams of the Indian-corn, and deeper still runs Troublesome among the willows, shining silver in the waning sun. There in the sopping lowlands they are harvesting the last marsh hay. A road leads townward, the vines scarlet on its tumbling walls; the air grows cooler —

"Oh, it is beautiful!" says Letitia, sadly – "but it is fall."

I observe in her always at this season an unusual quietness. She is in the garden as early as in the summer-time, and while it is still dripping with heavy dew, for she clings tenderly to its last flowers – to her nasturtiums, to the morning-glories on the trellis, and the geraniums and dahlias and phlox and verbenas along the path; but she gives her heart to her petunias, and because, she says, they are a homely, old-fashioned flower, whom no one loves any more. As she caresses them, brushing the drops from their plain, sweet faces, she seems, like them, to belong to some by-gone, simpler time. Some think her an odd, quaint figure in her sober gown, but they never knew the girl Letitia, or they would see her still, even in this elder woman with the snow-white hair.

Every fall gypsies camp in the fields near Troublesome on their way southward. It is the same band, Letitia tells me, that has stopped there year after year, and Letitia knows: she used to visit them when she was younger and still had a fortune to be told. It was a weakness we had not suspected. She had never acknowledged a belief in omens or horoscopes, or prophecies by palms or dreams, though she used to say fairies were far more likely than people thought. She had seen glades, she told us, lawn or meadow among encircling trees, where, long after sundown, the daylight lingered in a fairy gloaming; and there, she said, when the fire-flies danced, she had caught such glimpses of that elf-land dear to childhood, she had come to believe in it again. There was such a spot among our maples, and from the steps where we used to sit, we would watch the afterglow pale there to the starlit dusk, or that golden glory of the rising moon break upon the shadowy world, crowning the tree-tops and quenching the eastern stars. Then, sometimes, Dove and Letitia would talk of oracles and divination and other strange inexplicable things which they had heard of, or had known themselves; but Letitia never spoke of the gypsy band till three giggling village maids, half-fearful and half-ashamed of their stealthy quest, found their school-mistress among the vans! She flushed, I suppose, and made the best of a curious matter, for she said, simply, when we charged her with the story that had spread abroad:

"They are English gypsies, and wanderers like the Primroses from their ancient home. That is why they fascinate me, I suppose."

How often she consulted them, or when she began or ceased to do so, I do not know, but when I showed her the vans by the willows and the smoke rising from the fire, last fall, she smiled and said it was like old times to her – but she added, quaintly, that palms did not itch when the veins showed blue.

"Nonsense," I said, "we are both of us young, Letitia. Let us find the crone and hear her croak. I am not afraid of a little sorcery."

Paying no heed to her protestations I turned Pegasus – I have always a Pegasus, whatever my horse's other name – through the meadow-gate. A ragged, brown-faced boy ran out to us and held the bridle while I alighted, and then I turned and offered Letitia a helping hand. She shook her head.

"No, I'll wait here."

"Come," I said, "have you no faith, Letitia?"

"Not any more," she replied. "This is foolishness, Bertram. Will you never grow up?"

"It's only my second-childhood," I explained. "Come, we'll see the vans."

"Some one will see us," she protested.

"There is not a soul on the road," I said.

Shamefacedly she took my hand, glancing uneasily at the highway we had left behind us, and her face flushed as we approached the fire. An ugly old woman with a dirty kerchief about her head, was stirring broth for the evening meal.

"Tripod and kettle," I said. "Do you remember this ancient dame?"

"Yes," said Letitia, "it is – "

"Sibyl," I said. "Her name is Sibyl."

Letitia smiled.

"Do you remember me?" she asked, offering her hand. The old witch peered cunningly into her face, grinning and nodding as if in answer. Two or three scraggy, evil-eyed vagabonds were currying horses and idling about the camp, watching us, but at a glance from the fortune-teller, they slouched streamward. The crone's entreaties and my own were of no avail. Letitia put her hands behind her – but we saw the vans and patted the horses and crossed the woman's palm so that she followed us, beaming and babbling, to the carriage-side. There we were scarcely seated when, stepping forward – so suddenly that I glanced, startled, towards the camp – the gypsy laid a brown hand, strong as a man's, upon the reins; and turning then upon Letitia with a look so grim and mysterious that she grew quite pale beneath those tragic eyes, muttered a jargon of which we made out nothing but the words:

"You are going on a long journey," at which the woman stopped, and taking a backward step, stood there silently and without a smile, gazing upon us till we were gone.

Letitia laughed uneasily as we drove away.

"Did she really remember you?" I asked.

"No, I don't think so – which makes it the more surprising."

"Surprising?"

"Yes; that she should have said again what she always told me."

"And what was that?"

"That I was going on a long journey."

"Did she always tell you that?"

"Always, from the very first."

"Perhaps she tells every one so," I suggested.

"No, for I used to ask, and very particularly, as to that."

Why, I wondered, had she been so curious about long journeys? I had never known travel to absorb her thoughts. Why had she inquired, and always so very particularly, as she confessed, about that single item of gypsy prophecy, and the very one which would seem least likely to be verified? Never in my knowledge of Letitia's lifetime had there been any other promise than that of the fortune-teller that she would ever wander from Grassy Ford. I might have asked her, but she seemed silent and depressed as we drove homeward, which was due, I fancied, to the gypsy's rude alarm. For some days after she continued to remark how strangely that repetition of the old augury had sounded in her ears, and smiling at it, she confessed how in former years she had laid more stress upon it, and had even planned what her gowns would be.

"Did you guess where you were going?" I ventured to inquire.

"Well, I rather hoped – "

"Yes?" I said.

"You know my fondness for history," she continued. "I rather hoped I should see some day what I had read about so long – castles and things – and then, too, there were the novels I was fond of, like Lorna Doone. I always wanted to see the moors and the Doone Valley, and the water-slide that little John Ridd had found so slippery, when he first saw Lorna."

"You wanted to see England then," I said.

"Yes, England," she replied. "England, you know, was my father's country."

"The Doone Valley," I remarked, "would be Devon, wouldn't it?"

"Yes," she replied, "and it was Devon where father was a boy."

"And our old friend Robin Saxeholm came from Devon, you know," I said.

"So he did," she answered. Then we talked of Robin and his visit to Grassy Fordshire years ago, and what Letitia had forgotten of it I recalled to her, and what I could not remember, she supplied, so that it all came back to us like a story or a summer dream.

When she had gone up-stairs I sat for a long time smoking by the dying fire, and musing of some old-time matters which now came back to me in a clearer light. From thinking of my own youth, little by little, I came to Robin's – I mean the younger, who was now so soon to be a man. Tall and fair like the youth he was named for, though not red-haired, he had all but completed that little learning which is a "dangerous thing": he was a high-school senior now, and overwhelmed sometimes with the wonder of it, but a manly fellow for all that, one whom my eyes dwelt fondly on more often than he knew. In the spring-time he would have his parchment; college would follow in the fall – college! What could I do to give my son a broader vision of the universe, lest with only Grassy Ford behind him, he should think the outside world lay mostly within his college walls?

"You are going on a long journey."

The gypsy's words came back unbidden as I rose by the embers of the fire. "A long journey," I repeated; "and why not?"

IV

AN UNEXPECTED LETTER

During the winter a great piece of news stirred Grassy Ford, and in spite of the snow-drifts on our walks and porches furnished an excuse for a dozen calls that otherwise would never have been made so soon. Old Mrs. Luton was discovered in a state of apoplexy on our steps, but on being brought in and divested of her husband's coon-skin cap, a plush collar, a scarf, a shawl, a knitted jacket, and a newspaper folded across her chest, recovered her breath and told her story. Mrs. Neal, so Mrs. Luton said, had been heard to say, according to Mrs. Withers, who had it from Mrs. Lowell, who lived next door to Mrs. Bell – who, as the world knows, called more often than anybody else at the Neal farm-house, feeling a pity for the lonely woman there, as who did not? – Mrs. Neal had been heard to say, what Mrs. Luton would not have repeated for the world to any one but her dear Miss Primrose, who could be trusted implicitly, as she knew, and she had said it in the most casual way – Mrs. Neal, that is – but secretly very well pleased, though, Heaven knows, she, Mrs. Luton —

"Won't you have some coffee?" asked Letitia, for the breakfast was not yet cold.

"Yes, thank you, I will, for I'm as cold as can be," exclaimed her visitor, laughing hysterically, and she was profuse in her praise of Letitia's beverage, and inquired the brand. Her manner of sipping it as she sat in an easy-chair before the fire did away with all necessity for a spoon, but was a little trying to a delicate sense of hearing like Letitia's, and was responsible beside for what was wellnigh a disastrous deluge when in the midst of a copious ingurgitation she suddenly remembered what she had come to tell:

"Ffff– Peggy Neal's a-living in New York!" she splashed, her eyes popping. It would be impossible to relate the story as Mrs. Luton told it, for its ramifications and parentheses involved the history of Grassy Ford and the manifold relationships of its inhabitants, past and present, to say nothing of the time to come, for in speculations Mrs. Luton was profound.