Chapter IX: A New Champion

IF the Sunday callers to the kitchen had astonished the family group, this descent upon them with work-basket, book, and, above all, lamp, fairly took from them the power of utterance—at least after Dorothy's first startled exclamation, when she retired into flushed silence.

"Lewis was going to read to me," explained Louise, in a tone intended to convey the idea that their proceeding was the most natural and ordinary one imaginable, "and I thought it was a pity to waste a new book on one person; so we came down for you all to hear. May I sit by you, mother?"

Without waiting for answer, the artful daughter-in-law took her pretty bronze lamp from her husband's hand, and, setting it in "just the right angle," drew one of the wooden-seated chairs, and settled herself near it before the audience had time to recover from its surprise.

"Now, Lewis, we're ready," she added, in complacent tone. She had resolved not to venture on the doubtful question as to whether they desired to hear any reading. If their consent was taken for granted, what could they do but listen?

Nevertheless John seemed resolved not to be taken by guile; he drew himself up, with a shuffling noise, and was evidently making ready for flight. Her husband telegraphed a significant glance at Louise, which said, as plainly as words could, that encouraging sentence, "I told you so; John won't stay." But she saw the whole, and, while her heart beat for the success of her scheme, her voice was prompt and assured.

"O John! Have you got to go to the barn so soon? Well, never mind, we'll wait for you. I selected this book on purpose, because I was so sure you would like it; it is a special favourite of mine."

Thus addressed, John, who had had no intention of going to the barn, but simply of escaping, sat down again, for very astonishment; and Lewis, who was both amazed and amused at his wife's boldness, promptly seized the opportunity to commence his book without further introduction.

It was nearly eight o'clock when the reading commenced, the usual hour for the family to separate, but for an unbroken hour Lewis Morgan's voice went steadily on. The shade of embarrassment which he felt at first speedily lost itself in his genuine interest in the book, new to him; and perhaps he never showed his reading powers to better advantage. Louise, to whom the story was an old one, had leisure to watch its effect on the group, and was more than satisfied with the hushed way in which Mother Morgan laid down her great shears on the uncovered stand, and finally transferred them to her lap, that their clatter might not make her lose a word; at the knitting which dropped from Dorothy's fingers, and lay unheeded, while she, unchid by mother, fixed what were certainly great hungry eyes on the reader, and took in every sentence; at the unwinking eyes of Father Morgan, who did not interrupt the hour by a single yawn; but, above all, at the gleam of intense satisfaction in John's face when the young minister came off victor. Besides, did she, or did she not, hear a quick, suddenly suppressed sigh coming from the mother's heart, as she listened to the story of that other mother's wrestlings in prayer in her closet, "down behind the beans." The loud-spoken clock, as it clanged out the hour of nine, was the first interruption to the reading since it struck eight; and Louise, mindful of the unwisdom of carrying her experiment too far, hastened to change the programme.

"Why, Lewis, it is nine o'clock! It won't do to read any more."

And Lewis, who had many an evening read until ten, and occasionally until eleven, to that other family group in the old home, looked up with obtuseness exactly like a man, and was about to ask, "Why not?" but the warning look in her eyes brought him back to the level of present experiences; and, despite Dorothy's hungry eyes and John's utter stillness indicating that he was entirely willing to hear more, the book was promptly closed.

"Well," said Farmer Morgan, drawing a long breath, "that minister in the book was a most likely chap as ever I heard of; if more of 'em acted like that, I should have a higher opinion of them than I do. It's a very well told story; now, that's a fact."

"A pack of lies, the whole of it." This from Mother Morgan; not said severely, but in a deprecatory tone, as though she felt herself obliged to say it, as a sort of punishment for having allowed herself to become interested.

"Well, now," said Farmer Morgan, dropping his head to one side, with a thoughtful air, "I don't know about that; there is nothing so dreadfully unlikely about it. And that smart chap had a streak of good luck and a streak of common sense; and I've known, myself, exactly such a family as that set of boys, father and all, hard as they were. Whether it is lies or not, it is told exactly as though it all might have happened. I don't object to hearing it, anyhow. It takes up the time, though; I had no idea it was nine o'clock."

"Nine o'clock isn't late," ventured Dorothy. "Stuart's folks sit up till ten nearly every evening; I always see a light in their front room when I go to bed."

"Yes, and they don't get up till long after daylight, and don't have breakfast until it's almost time for dinner. I never brought my children up to habits of that kind, thank fortune."

There was a good deal of sharpness in the mother's tone by this time. The reaction was coming over her; she was growing vexed to think she had allowed her heart to throb in sympathy with the trials of a mother whose experience was only a "pack of lies," forgetting for the moment that touches of the bitterness of that mother's experience over her youngest born had already come to her. If only she would make the experience of prayer her own!

Louise arose promptly; she was satisfied with her experiment, and judged it wise to beat an immediate retreat.

"Come, Lewis," she said, her hand on the pretty lamp; "if I am late to breakfast to-morrow morning, father will think it is a bad book. Isn't that a dainty design for a lamp-handle, mother?"

"It's a dangerous thing to carry around," the mother said grimly, meaning the lamp, and not the handle. "I never take up the paper that I don't read about an accident of some sort with kerosene lamps. If I could have had my way, there should never one of them have come into this house."

"Oh, but this is a new patent; if Lewis should stumble and drop it, the light would go instantly out. Look I just a little motion, such as, of course, the lamp would get if it fell, and the light is gone." Suiting the action to the word, the flame was instantly extinguished.

"There!" Lewis said, "now we are in darkness."

"I didn't mean to have it go quite out," Louise answered, laughing. "I was only going to move it a little, to show mother. Never mind, John will get us a candle; won't you, John?"

Thus appealed to, John arose slowly from his corner, went slowly to the high mantel, where shone several beautifully polished candlesticks, took from the paper-holder a paper match, applied it to his mother's candle, solemnly lighted the other candle, and as solemnly handed it to Louise; really performing the first act of simple courtesy for a lady that he had ever done in his life.

"Thank you," she said, quite as a matter of course; yet it was actually the first "thank you" of his grown-up life!

There were certainly two sides to John's gruffness. Louise would have been amazed to know how that simple "thank you" thrilled him! He looked after the bright vision on which the stair-door closed, and had strange stirrings in his heart, the name of which he did not know.

"If I had dared," began Louise, as soon as they were in the privacy of their own room, "I would have substituted that big, old Bible for this book during the last ten minutes, and asked you to read a chapter, and pray with us all. I believe your father would have liked it. I don't believe he is as indifferent to these things as he seems."

"It is well you don't dare," her husband said gravely; "I am afraid I should have disappointed you. Louise, I don't believe I could have done that; it looks to me like an almost impossible thing."

"Why, Lewis, you led at family worship at home right before papa and mamma and Estelle; and, sometimes, when the house was full of company!"

"That was a very different thing," he answered earnestly. "I felt then that the head of the house was in sympathy with me, and joined in the reading and the praying. It was like a company of brothers and sisters talking together with their father; but here it is different. My father's tendency would be to make light of the whole thing."

"I don't believe it," she said positively. "I can't believe that he would make light of an earnest, simple prayer, such as you would offer. It is the profession of godliness, and an absence of the fruit that he naturally expects to see in lives, which inclines him to ridicule. That sounds harsh, Lewis, but I don't mean harshness. What I mean is, that he evidently expects great things of Christians, and their lives, naturally enough, disappoint him. How do you know, dear, but that your very silence, or reserve, toward him on these subjects leads him to question the degree of anxiety you have for his conversion?"

Whatever Lewis Morgan thought of this direct question he made no definite answer, and the subject dropped.

All things considered, Louise was well pleased with the result of one evening's sacrifice; for to give up the delightful privacy of their own room, and their own plans, and listen to a book that she had read before, was of course somewhat of a sacrifice. Its result elated her; she felt that her position in the family was on a more assured footing, and looked forward to the accomplishment of other little plans with a greater degree of certainty of success than she had felt heretofore. What a pity that her complacent feelings should have been put to rout through the intervention of a boiled dinner!

A victim to old-fashioned dinners of that type once explained to a novice the method of making them after this fashion: "You take a few of everything that grows in the garden, and dump them all together, with some slab-sided beef and a little pork, and let them boil for hours and hours, sending a remarkable odour through the house, which penetrates through every tightly-closed door and window; and then serve with quarts of slush!" Whether this recipe would be acknowledged by the lovers of such dinners or not, it exactly describes the state of nerves with which a few people sit down to them. Now, I beg you will not fall into the mistake of supposing my friend Louise to be an epicure, or of being unreasonably dainty as to the food which she ate. On the contrary, if her friends had but known it, she had the comfortable natural appetite which a healthy condition of stomach and brain are likely to produce. She was not one of those unhappy beings to whom the sight and smell of food which they do not happen to like is positive torture; on the contrary, Mother Morgan might have had a boiled dinner three days out of every week, had she chosen; and so long as the bread-tray was piled high with generous slices of good, sweet, home-made bread, and the butter-dish held its roll of hard, yellow, glistening butter, and the generous-sized pitcher brimmed with creamy milk, Louise would have made a dinner fit for a queen, in her own estimation. For when was a healthy city maiden other than rejoiced over real country butter and cream?

The trouble lay in the fact that poor Mother Morgan herself had nerves. Albeit she despised the name, and considered all such matters as modern inventions of fashionable society, it was just as surely an over-wrought and undisciplined state of nerves which caused her to visit hard-voiced displeasure on certain innocent tastes differing from her own, as though she had expressed it with a burst of tears. Did you ever have for a hostess one who accepted it as a personal insult if you declined any dish of her preparing? If not, you are fortunate. But just such an one was Mother Morgan: Her family had, for years and years, partaken, with a fair degree of relish, of cabbage and turnip and potato and beets and beef and parsnips and pork, all dwelling in friendly nearness in the same large pot. Nay, they had appreciated sometimes in addition, little round, yellow balls, known to the initiated to be meal balls, but tasting to the ignorant like nothing so much as sawdust wetted up with a little pork gravy.

With a feeling nearly akin to dismay did Louise watch the lading of the plate which she knew was intended for her. How was she ever to dispose of that mass, which, from the unmeshed turnip down to the yellow cannon-balls, she disliked? If she might only say, "No, thank you," and betake herself to the inviting-looking bread and butter and milk! Why need people have nerves leading straight to their palates, and, in this world of infinite variety, take the trouble to be aggrieved because tastes differ? Meekly she received the well-laden plate, meekly she sliced bits of potato and minced at the turnip, even taking delicate nibbles of the stump of cabbage, which she detested. All to no purpose. Mrs. Morgan was watching her with jealous eyes. What right had she to presume to dislike so savoury a dinner? Presently her indignation found vent in words.

"I don't see but we shall have to set a separate table for you; it seems you can't stand the dishes we are used to. I don't want you to starve on our hands, I'm sure."

Despite the fact that Louise had just received a letter full of tenderness from the dear mother at home—a tenderness which made this mother a sharp contrast—she was enabled to laugh, as she answered, pleasantly,—

"Oh, mother, I'm in no danger of starving. It seems to me that I like your bread and butter better than any I ever tasted. I suppose I am somewhat peculiar in my tastes; but I always find plenty to eat."

If people could see into each other's hearts, or if people could keep still when they ought, it might yet have been well. But it chanced that life had gone awry with the young husband that morning. A discussion had arisen between his father and himself concerning certain farming plans, and a decided difference of opinion had developed, during which the son expressed himself warmly and positively; and the father, waxing indignant, had sharply informed him that going to college and Australia, and marrying a fine lady for a wife, didn't make a farmer. Had Lewis found a moment's leisure and privacy with his wife, and he had spoken his thoughts, they would have been somewhat after this fashion:

"I am discouraged with the whole thing; we never can assimilate. If it were not for you, I should be miserable; you are the joy of my heart, and my rest." Then Louise would have comforted and encouraged him.

As it was, believing in her wholly, and being just then desirous that she should appear perfect in the eyes of his father, he addressed her in a disturbed, not to say almost vexed tone, albeit it was a low one,—

"Do, Louise, pretend to eat something, whether you accomplish it or not."

Louise could never understand how it was; she had not supposed herself one of the nervous sort; but just then and there arose such a lump in her throat, that to have taken another mouthful would have been impossible; and, to her dismay and chagrin, there rushed into her eyes actual tears!

Then up rose John to the emergencies of the situation.

"Why, in the name of common sense, can't you all let folks eat what they like, without nagging at them all the time? I never touch cabbage, and won't no more than I will touch a frog, and you let me alone; why can't you her?"

Whereupon Dorothy was so amazed, that she continued pouring milk into the bowl long after it had brimmed, her eyes fixed, meantime, on her younger brother's face. As for Lewis, he seemed stricken with remorse for his words, apparently realizing at this moment how they sounded. But Louise was so pleased with John's evident desire to champion her, and so amused that it should seem to be necessary to shield her on a question of cabbage or not cabbage, that the ludicrous side of the matter came uppermost, and, as she laughed, the lump in her throat vanished.

"Thank you," she said gaily to John; "don't you like cabbage, either? I'm glad of it. We'll form a compact to stand by each other for freedom without cabbage."

Something approaching to a smile hovered over John's face, and Dorothy giggled outright.