Laura Richards
Mrs. Tree's Will

CHAPTER XII
MISS WAX AT HOME

Miss Bethia Wax was at work one afternoon, bending over her little round table, busily plaiting a hair chain, when she heard her front door open. She looked up in some disturbance, for Phœbe, the little maid, was out, and there were few visitors, since Mrs. Stedman died, with whom she was on "run-in" terms: her disturbance was not lessened when the billowy form of Mrs. Malvina Weight appeared in the doorway.

"Good afternoon, Malvina," said Miss Wax, rather coldly. "I heard no knock; I trust you have not been kept waiting. My domestic is out."

"Yes, I see her go past the house," said the visitor, "and I thought I'd jest make a run-in. How are you feelin', Bethia? You're lookin' re'l poorly. I noticed it in meetin' last Sabbath. I said to myself, 'That woman is goin' jest the way all her fam'ly has, and she the last of 'em. As a friend of the fam'ly,' I said, 'it's my dooty to warn her'; and so I do."

Mrs. Weight sat down, and fanned herself with a small and rather dingy pocket-handkerchief.

"I am much obliged to you," said Miss Bethia. "I am in my usual health, Malvina, though I am never very robust. I was always delicate, as you may say, but yet I don't know but I have held my own with others of my age. Flesh isn't always a sign of health," she added, not without a touch of gentle malice.

"I expect I am aware of that!" cried Mrs. Weight. "I expect there's few knows the frailness that comes with layin' on flesh. What I suffer nights is beyond the power of tongue to tell. But all the more it behoves me, as the widder of a sainted man and deacon of this parish, to do my dooty by others; and I ask you, Bethia Wax, if you are doctorin' any."

"I am not," said Miss Bethia, dryly.

"Well, you ought so to do," said Mrs. Weight, impressively. "It come to me right in meetin', when I ought to have ben listenin' to the sermon, – though the land knows I have hard work to listen sometimes, the sort o' talk Elder Bliss gives us: Gospel's well enough, but a person wants some doctrine, and it don't set good, any way, shape, or manner, for a man of his years to be the everlastin' time tellin' them as might be his mothers that they'd oughter do thus and so. I was leadin' in prayer when Elder Bliss was a bottle-baby, at least he looks it if ever I see one. But what I started in to say was, it come over me all of a suddent that what you wanted was a bottle of my spring med'cine, and so I brought you one."

She produced a bottle from under her shawl, and set it on the table with a defiant air.

"I am much obliged to you, Malvina," Miss Wax began; but Mrs. Weight went on impressively.

"Now you want to take that med'cine, Bethia Wax! You want to take a gre't spoonful with your victuals, and in between your victuals. You take three bottles of that remedy, and you won't know yourself for the same woman. If you're a mind to pay me fifty cents for this bottle and sixty for the next two (that's thirty cents apiece, three spoonfuls for a cent, less than half what you'd pay for any boughten stuff), you may, and, if not, it's all ekal to me; the Lord will provide. He feeds the ravens when they call, and I've never had no doubts of bein' one, far as I'm concerned."

Mrs. Weight here drew a long and deep breath, settled herself deeper in her chair, and took a fresh start.

"So now that's off my mind, and my dooty done, whether it's ordered that you should remain, or pass away same as your folks has done. Now, there's another thing I come to speak about. Be you goin' to march in this procession?"

Miss Wax colored painfully. "I have not decided, Malvina," she said. "I am considering the matter. Mr. Pindar Hollopeter has invited me to appear as – as Minerva – "

"There!" exclaimed Mrs. Weight. "I knew it. I felt it in these bones!" She indicated the spaces which veiled her anatomy. "I felt certing to my inwards that this would end in pagan blasphemy, and so it has. Oh, that I should live to see jedgment on this village, as I've lived in, and my fathers before me, sence – "

"I do not understand you, Malvina," Miss Wax interrupted, with some warmth. "The Mr. Hollopeters are Christian men, I believe; at least, I know Homer is, and I've never heard anything to the contrary about Pindar."

"Have you ever heard anything about Pindar, anyway?" cried Mrs. Weight, her little eyes gleaming. "Do you, or doos any one in this village know, how or where that man has ben livin' these thirty years past? He never was one to hide his light under a booshel, if he had any to hide. Don't tell me, Bethia Wax! For thirty years Pindar Hollopeter has ben livin' let them know how as he serves, and never a cent, nor so much as a breathin' word for the place that give him birth. But direckly he hears that Mis' Tree has passed away, and left her money to Homer, and Satan's own words and works in regards to changin' the name of this – "

Miss Bethia interrupted her again, promptly. "Malvina," she said, firmly, "I have told you before, and I tell you again, that no word disrespectful to Mrs. Tree shall be spoken in this house. There is no need of bringing her into this matter at all; but I should like to know why you call the Festival Procession pagan."

"And ain't it pagan?" cried Mrs. Weight, leaning forward, her hands on her knees. "Ain't you jest told me with your own lips, Bethia Wax, that he asked you, a church-member in reg'lar standin', to strut and stomp as a heathen goddess, in heathen clo'es? Ain't that enough? Hasn't he got all the girls in this village takin' their Mas' best sheets and table-cloths and sewin' of 'em up to make toonics for muses and graces and all sich pagan trollops? Ain't that enough? Do you think sheets is fit and suitable clo'es for church-members? or table-cloths? And 'tain't as if he hadn't ben shown a better path. 'Pindar,' I said, when he come to see about Annie Lizzie, 'you get up an Old Folks' Concert,' I says, 'and I'll be the Goddess of Liberty for ye,' I says. I had that red, white, and blue buntin', you know, that we hired for the Centennial. Some of it was damaged, and the man wouldn't take it back, and it's ben in my attic ever sence; and I thought 'twould be a good way to use it up, and help him out at the same time. Why, Bethia, that man looked at me – why, I believe he's ravin' distracted; he poured out a string o' stuff that hadn't no sense or meanin' in it; and then said, 'Shakespeare,' as if that made it any better. Deacon never would have Shakespeare's works in the house; he said they was real vulgar, and that was enough for me. So he see I was real indignant, and he blinked his eyes and spoke up and said I might be a Roman matron if I was a mind to. But I says, 'No, sir!' I says. 'I am an American lady, and the widder of a sainted man, and I am not goin' travellin' and traipsin' in heathen and publican clo'es, whatever others may do!' and so I come away, and left him flappin' there on the door-steps. He's ravin' crazy, Pindar Hollopeter is; he'd oughter be shut up. And I told Annie Lizzie she shouldn't have anything to do with it in any way, shape, or manner. She's ben bawlin' all day about it, but I tell her I didn't take her out of the street to have her rigged out with wings. If she'd think of her end, I tell her, and how she can aim a pair to walk the golden streets with, it would set her better. Well, I must be goin', Bethia; I only run in jest for a minute. Now I hope you'll take that med'cine reg'lar, and benefit by it. I couldn't answer to Deacon when I meet him in glory if I hadn't done my dooty to them as is neighbors to me, specially when they look as gashly as you do, Bethia; but I'm in hopes we've taken it in time, and you may be spared. Good day!"

The visitor gone, Miss Wax heaved a sigh of relief, and tried to settle to her work again; but it would not do. Her mind had been disturbed, and, as she often said, her profession required calm. The hand must be steady, the nerves tranquil, or the delicate strands would twist and knot; and now her long, slim fingers were trembling, and the silken threads danced before her eyes. "I must give it up for to-day," said Miss Bethia, sadly; and she put away the little table, and took out a clean silk duster.

A parlor must be dusted twice in the day, according to Miss Wax's theory: once in the morning, to remove the night's accumulation of dust, and again toward evening, to take up such particles of the evil thing as had settled during the day on chair or table, book or ornament. The morning task was an anxious one, and apt to be complicated by fears of the coffee's boiling over; but the afternoon dusting was one of the good lady's pleasures, and she took her time over it. She loved to linger over the glass cases, polishing them, admiring the treasures they protected, and recalling the circumstances of their making. It was pleasant to accompany her, as one was sometimes permitted to do, on one of these friendly rounds.

"These pond-lilies," she would say, "were a wedding present to my cousin Cilissa Vinton, deceased. They were admired by some; Cilissa thought they were real, and wished to wear them in her hair. After her lamented death (of spasms), the family returned them to me as a memento. That spray of roses is made of feathers, the breast-feathers of the domestic goose. I never allowed them to be plucked from the living bird, my dear! I used to wear them in my hair; some thought the contrast pretty." And Miss Bethia would sigh gently, and glance at the long mirror, which reflected her tall and angular gentility.

But this afternoon the good lady's thoughts were not reminiscent. As she stood before the rosewood "what-not," lifting each article, wiping it, and replacing it with delicate nicety (I can see them all: the two mandarins, the china baby in the bath-tub, – you could take him out! the whole thing would go into a walnut-shell, – the pink-and-gold Dresden shepherd and shepherdess, the Chinese puzzles, and all the other quaint pleasantnesses), it was of to-day rather than yesterday that Miss Bethia was thinking. Should she —could she – walk in a public procession attired as Minerva? She put aside with an inward shudder Mrs. Weight's characterization of the possible performance. She, Bethia Wax, could not "strut and stomp" if she tried. Her walk was graceful, as she was well aware; in her youth she had been said to glide.

 
"As a swan o'er the water,
Quahaug's fairy daughter
In majesty maiden doth glide;
May the day Wax and wane
When the sighs of her swain
May waft her to bliss as a bride!"
 

Homer Hollopeter had written that in her album at a time when she and Pindar were – oh, no! not engaged, certainly not; only very good friends. Homer, she was aware, had regarded her as a sister, had wished – but she never laid it up against Mary; no, indeed! Who could wonder at any one's falling in love with Mary?

And now, after all the years, Pindar had come back; still an elegant man, Miss Wax thought, though nervous, to be sure, sadly nervous. "But perhaps it is his emotions," she said. "No doubt he feels it, coming back after thirty years, and all so changed." And he had pressed her hand, and murmured, "Ye gods!" which was almost profane, Miss Bethia feared, – yet not quite, she hoped; and had asked her to represent Minerva, goddess of wisdom, in the Festival Procession. He was coming this very evening for her answer; what should it be?

Miss Bethia glanced again at the long mirror. The angular, yet not ungraceful, figure, the long, oval face with its delicate features and arched eyebrows, the glossy bands of hair, still jet-black, – the whole reflection was familiar, friendly, not – Miss Wax modestly hoped – not wholly unpleasing. She tried to imagine the figure clad in flowing draperies; there was a rose-colored slip under the spare room spread; sateen always draped prettily; pink was her color, and she could not somehow feel that sheets would be quite – quite what she would wish to be seen in. And – on her head, now! Would a helmet be necessary? There was not such an article in the village, but she presumed with silver paper – and yet, a wreath would be so much more becoming; the feather-work roses, for example! She took them from under their round glass case, and laid them against her hair, then put them back with a sigh. The contrast certainly used to be thought becoming, but somehow – and after all was it suitable? What would Phœbe and Vesta Blyth – what would Mrs. Tree have said?

With the thought, a vision rose before Miss Wax's eyes: a little figure seated in a high-backed chair, leaning on an ebony crutch-stick; black eyes gleaming with merriment, lips curving in a shrewd yet kindly smile —

Miss Wax glanced at the trophy of silver coffee-spoons which still adorned the mantelpiece; sighed again, and turned away from the glass. "After all," murmured dear Miss Bethia, and this time she smiled, though it was a rather wan smile; "after all, Minerva was the goddess of wisdom!"

CHAPTER XIII
THE SORROWS OF MR. PINDAR

It must not be supposed that Mr. Pindar Hollopeter's path was altogether set with roses at this time; on the contrary, many a thorn and bramble arrested his progress, and the poor gentleman's enthusiasm received many a prickly wound. He had been able to wave Mrs. Weight away with a lofty, "Off, woman, off! this hour is mine!" but there were others who could not be so dismissed. Mrs. Ware had gently but firmly declined to lead the band of Roman Matrons; and Salem Rock, when approached in regard to leading the Village Elders, had expressed his mind with massive finality.

"Pindar," he said, "I don't exactly know what you mean by robes, but my gen'al idee of 'em is somethin' white and flappin'. Now I wore a christenin' robe when I was a baby, and I expect to wear a burial robe when I'm laid out; but, betwixt them two, I expect co't and pants will have to do me. Jest as much obleeged to you," he added, kindly, seeing Mr. Pindar's look of disappointment.

Again, Mr. Pindar was amazed and distressed by the lack of youth and beauty in the village. It did seem unfortunate that Sophy Willow and the three pretty Benton girls were away, and that Villa Nudd's mother was ill and could not spare her. Beautiful Lily Jaquith could not leave her new baby, and Vesta Strong wrote that she should have been delighted to be Juno, but all the children had just come down with chicken-pox. On the other hand, Mr. Pindar found to his dismay that the line between youth and middle age was less closely drawn in the village than in the theatres of the metropolis. That very morning, Miss Luella Slocum had come simpering up to him in the street, and had given him to understand that she would have no objection to taking the part of Psyche "to accommodate," as she heard that Annie Lizzie Weight was not to be allowed to walk in the Procession. Now Miss Luella would never see forty-five again, and her eyes, as has already been intimated, took widely divergent views of things in general; but she had always had a "theatrical turn," she informed Mr. Pindar, and had taken the part of Mrs. Jarley when they had the Wax Works.

"And I do love to accommodate!" said Miss Luella, blandly. "I know what it is to have folks set back and keep out of things, Mr. Hollopeter. I don't know but Mis' Weight is right about Annie Lizzie; she's too young to be dressin' up and comin' forward in public, and besides, she's had no experience, as you may say. You couldn't expect her to have the air, like a person that's had experience. That's what I always say; you have to have the air, or you can't do it as it should be done. Don't say a word, Mr. Hollopeter; I shall be real pleased to help out, and I have a flowered Cretan that I'd like to have you call and see if 'twill do."

"I wonder if he is a little wantin'," said Miss Luella, in telling Miss Eliza Goby of the incident afterward. "He didn't hardly say a word, only give a kind of groan, and flapped his cloak, and begun walkin' off backwards in the most sing'lar way. I'm goin' to take this Cretan in to Prudence this afternoon, and see if she can make it over; it's Princess shape, and that's always stylish, I think; and I thought put on pink silk reveres would kind of liven it up: Psyche wants to look kind of youthful, I presume. The sleeves are a mite snug, but I don't know as that matters; I sha'n't have to raise my arms. What are you goin' to wear, Eliza?"

"White muslin," said Miss Eliza Goby, "and a blue sash, or green, I haven't decided which; green is my color, but I have that blue Roman sash, you know. I think Pindar is queer, Luella. One thing, he doesn't seem to have hardly any knowledge about this village; I don't know as he takes the paper even. Why, he thought I was married, and wanted I should walk with the married ladies; matrons, he called 'em; the idea! I told him I'd never ben married, and didn't hardly know as I should; anyways, I warn't thinking of it at present, and I'd go with the rest of the girls."

"And what did he say?" asked Miss Slocum.

"I don't believe that man is well," said Miss Goby, gravely. "He made pretty much the same answer as he did you, sort of groaned and flapped. I think he had a pain in – in his digestion, and didn't like to speak of it. He's a perfect gentleman, if he is a mite flighty. That man had ought to have him a home, and some one to look after him, that's the fact; him and Homer, too."

"That's so!" said Miss Slocum.

But the unkindest cut of all was administered by the hand of Miss Prudence Pardon. It was Mrs. Bliss who advised him to take counsel with Miss Prudence in regard to costumes in general, and the little lady was smitten with remorse afterward for having done so.

"It was base of me, John, I know," she said; "but I simply could not tell him myself; he was so hopeful and confiding, and so – so pitiful, somehow, John. I don't think he is a bit more crazy than other people, – I believe I am a little cracked myself on some subjects, and I know you are, – only his craziness is in a different line, that we know nothing about. And when he blinks at me with his nice brown doggy eyes, and flaps his little bat-cloak, and says, 'The Dramatic Moment, Mrs. Bliss!' I want to be a Roman Matron, and a Village Elder, and everything else, just to please him. I would, too, if you would let me, John. I don't believe that man had enough to eat before he came here; he's a perfect skeleton."

"I do not precisely see the connection, Marietta, my dear," said the Reverend John, mildly.

"You never do, dear!" replied his wife. "Talk of bats! but – well, so I just told him that I should have loved to if I hadn't been a minister's wife, but that you were a cruel tyrant and wouldn't let me; and then I advised him to go to Miss Prudence, because she would know all about tunics and togas and everything else. I knew, you see, that she was all ready to give him a piece of her mind, because she gave me just a scrap the other day, when I was trying on my blue dimity. It's going to be perfectly sweet, John. Oh, I do hope she will not hurt his poor dear funny feelings too much: she can be frightfully severe."

But even while Mrs. Bliss was speaking, Miss Prudence Pardon, Rhadamanthus in a black alpaca apron, was laying down the law to Mr. Pindar, and emphasizing her points with a stiffly extended pair of shears. Miss Prudence had sat on the same bench at school with the Hollopeter boys, and saw no reason for mincing matters.

"Pindar," she said, "if you hadn't have come to me, I should have held my peace; but seeing as you have come, and asked my opinion, you shall have it, without fear or favor. I think this whole thing is ridic'lous nonsense; and I think if you go on with it as you've begun, you will prove yourself, if I must use such an expression, what I call a gonoph."

Mr. Pindar shrank for an instant before the epithet, but gathered himself together with a protesting wave.

"Madam!" he cried, "you fail to comprehend – "

"Excuse me!" said Miss Prudence, waving the shears in return. "I expect if there's any one in this village as ought to comprehend, it's me, with all I've ben through this week. Do you see that pile of truck?" She pointed stiffly with the shears at a mass of drapery piled high on the haircloth sofa. "There's thirty whole dresses there, let alone odd skirts and polonays. There's full sleeves and snug sleeves, and gored skirts and full skirts, and ruffles and box-plaits, and more styles than ever you heard of in your life, and every material from more antique to sarsnet cambric. I am expected to make all them over into toonics and togas, and the hens only know what other foolery; and I tell you, Pindar, it can't be done, nor I ain't going to try to do it."

She paused for a moment, for Mr. Pindar was waving his arms and flapping his cloak in fervid assent.

"My dear madam," he cried; "my dear Prudence, if I may take the liberty of an old schoolmate, I agree with you fully, entirely. I have endeavored to point out to the ladies with whom I have conversed, that a harmony of costume is absolutely imperative; that flowing drapery – the classic, Prudence, the classic! – is what the occasion demands. A glance at statuary will readily convince you – "

Miss Prudence pointed the shears rigidly. "Pindar Hollopeter," she said, "I have seen considerable statuary in the course of my life, both Parian and wax, and I say this to you: I never see a statue yet with clothes that I would say fitted, – where there was any!" she added, grimly, and compressed her lips. "As to hanging sheets and the like of that on human beings, as if they was clo'es-horses," she went on, "it's no part of the trade I was brought up to, and I've no idee of beginning at my time of life, and so I tell you. Now my advice to you is this: give up all this foolishness of a procession, and have a reception at the house, or the museum, or whatever it is to be called from now on. Have it a pink tea, if you like, and I'll get up some real tasty dresses for the girls, the few there is, and the ladies can receive. That'll part the cats from the kittens, and I dunno's there's anything else will. The idea of 'Lize Goby in white muslin! She'd look like lobster and white of egg, and so I told her.

"The fact is, Pindar," Miss Prudence went on, more gently, laying down the shears for an instant, "you and Homer was both brought up real peculiar, and you're feeling it now. I don't mean to set in jedgment on your Ma, far from it; but look at the way it has worked out. Homer is a poet; well, luckily for him, he got into the post-office, where it didn't do a mite of harm. Homer is well liked and respected by all in this village," she added, benevolently, "and there was no one but rejoiced at his being left well off. But you, Pindar, took to the Drayma. Well, I've nothing to say against the Drayma, either, because I've had no experience of it, nor wished to have, only this: it never had any holt in this village, and when you try to bring it here, you make a big mistake. What is it, P'nel'pe?"

Miss Penny, kindest soul in the village where so many are kind, had been hovering uneasily about the door during this interview. She respected Sister Prudence's judgment highly, and her own cheerful common sense forced her to agree with it in this instance; and yet her heart ached to see Mr. Pindar – such an elegant man! – sitting forlorn and dejected, with drooping head and wings, he who had entered with so jaunty a stride, Importance throned on his brow and the Dramatic Moment flapping in his cloak. She did wish Sister Prudence had not been quite so severe.

But now Miss Penny looked in, with anxious eyes and heightened color. "Excuse me," she said. "I see some of the ladies comin', Sister, and I thought likely they was comin' to try on. I didn't know but Mr. Hollopeter would wish – " She paused to listen, and then hurried back, for already the little shop was full of voices.

"Is Prudence in, Penny? Has she got that polonay ready to try on, think?"

"Penny, I want to know if you've got any linin's to match this pink cheese-cloth; it don't hardly show over white."

"Penny, I found this up attic, and I've come to show it to Prudence. See here! don't you think it'll make an elegant toonic, take and piecen it out with a Spanish flounce, and cut off this postilion? Shall I go – "

Mr. Pindar sprang to his feet and looked wildly about him. Miss Prudence spoke no word, but, raising the shears, pointed toward the red-curtained glass door that opened into the little back garden.

" – right in?" The door from the shop opened, and admitted Mrs. Pottle, her massive arms filled with polka-dotted purple merino.

"How are you, Prudence?" said Mrs. Pottle. "You look feverish."

"I'm as well as common, thank you," said Miss Prudence, grimly. "Won't you be seated?"