Bankrupt ( part 6)

"It's that old haddock't lives up on the mountain," said the latter,

composedly, searching in her pocket, and then pulling out a stray bit of

tobacco and pressing it tenderly into her pipe.

An old man, dressed in a suit of very antique butternut clothes, stood at

the sill, holding forward a bunch of pennyroyal. He was weazened and

dry; his cheeks were parchment color, and he bore the look of an active

yet extreme old age. He was totally deaf. Dorcas advanced toward him,

taking a bright five-cent piece from her pocket. She held it out to him,

and he, in turn, extended the pennyroyal; but before taking it, she went

through a solemn pantomime. She made a feint of accepting the herb,

and then pointed to him and to the road.

"Yes, yes!" said the old man, irritably. "Bless ye! of course I'm goin' to

meetin'. I'll set by myself, though! Yes, I will! Las' Sunday, I set with Jont

Marshall, an' every time I sung a note, he dug into me with his elbow, till

I thought I should ha' fell out the pew-door. My voice is jest as good as

ever 'twas, an' sixty-five year ago come spring, I begun to set in the

seats."

The coin and pennyroyal changed ownership, and he tottered away,

chattering to himself in his senile fashion.

"Look here, you!" he shouted back, his hand on the gate. "Heerd anything

o' that new doctor round here? Well, he's been a-pokin' into my ears, an'

I guess he'd ha' cured me, if anybody could. You know I don't hear so

well's I used to. He went a-peekin' an' a-pryin' round my ears, as if he'd

found a hornet's nest. I dunno what he see there; I know he shook his

head. I guess we shouldn't ha' got no such a man to settle down here if

he wa'n't so asthmy he couldn't git along where he was. That's the reason

he come, they say. He's a bright one!"

Dorcas left her sweeping, and ran out after him. For the moment, she

forgot his hopeless durance in fleshly walls.

"Did he look at 'em?" she cried. "Did he? Tell me what he said!""Why, of course I don't hear no better yit!" answered old Simeon, testily,

turning to stump away, "but that ain't no sign I sha'n't! He's a beauty! I

set up now, when he goes by, so's I can hear him when he rides back. I

put a quilt down in the fore-yard, an' when the ground trimbles a mite, I

git up to see if it's his hoss. Once I laid there till 'leven. He's a beauty, he

is!"

He went quavering down the road, and Dorcas ran back to the house,

elated afresh. An unregarded old man could give him the poor treasure of

his affection, quite unasked. Why should not she?

Nance was just taking her unceremonious leave. Her pockets bulged with

doughnuts, and she had wrapped half a pie in the Sudleigh "Star,"

surreptitiously filched from the woodbox.

"Well, I guess I'll be gittin' along towards meetin'," she said, in a tone of

unconcern, calculated to allay suspicion. "I'm in hopes to git a mite o'

terbacker out o' Hiram Cole, if he's settin' lookin' at his pigs, where he is

'most every Sunday. I'll have a smoke afore I go in."

"Don't you be late!"

"I'm a-goin' in late, or not at all!" answered Nance, contradictorily. "My

bunnit ain't trimmed on the congregation side, an' I want to give 'em a

chance to see it all round. I'm a-goin' up the aisle complete!"

Dorcas finished her work, and, having tidied her father's room, sat down

by his bedside for the simple rites that made their Sabbath holy. With the

first clanging stroke of the old bell, not half a mile away, they fell into

silence, waiting reverently through the necessary pause for allowing the

congregation to become seated. Then they went through the service

together, from hymn and prayer to the sermon. The parson had his

manuscript ready, and he began reading it, in the pulpit-voice of his

prime. At that moment, some of his old vigor came back to him, and he

uttered the conventional phrases of his church with conscious power;

though so little a man, he had always a sonorous delivery. After a page or

two, his hands began to tremble, and his voice sank."You read a spell, Dorcas," he whispered, in pathetic apology. "I'll rest me

a minute." So Dorcas read, and he listened. Presently he fell asleep, and

she still went on, speaking the words mechanically, and busy with her

own tumultuous thoughts. Amazement possessed her that the world could

be so full of joy to which she had long been deaf. She could hear the

oriole singing in the elm; his song was almost articulate. The trees waved

a little, in a friendly fashion, through the open windows; friendly in the

unspoken kinship of green things to our thought, yet remote in their own

seclusion. One tall, delicate locust, gowned in summer's finest gear,

stirred idly at the top, as if through an inward motion, untroubled by the

wind. Dorcas's mind sought out the doctor, listening to the sermon in her

bare little church, and she felt quite content. She had entered the first

court of love, where a spiritual possession is enough, and asks no alms of

bodily nearness. When she came to the end of the sermon, her hands fell

in her lap, and she gave herself up without reserve to the idle delight of

satisfied dreaming. The silence pressed upon her father, and he opened

his eyes wide with the startled look of one who comprehends at once the

requirements of time and place. Then, in all solemnity, he put forth his

hands; and Dorcas, bending her head, received the benediction for the

congregation he would never meet again. She roused herself to bring in

his beef-tea, and at the moment of carrying away the tray, a step

sounded on the walk. She knew who it was, and smiled happily. The

lighter foot keeping pace beside it, she did not hear.

"Dorcas," said her father, "git your bunnit. It's time for Sunday-school."

"Yes, father."

The expected knock came at the door. She went forward, tying on her

bonnet, and her cheeks were pink. The doctor stood on the doorstone,

and Phoebe was with him. He smiled at Dorcas, and put out his hand.

This, according to Tiverton customs, was a warm demonstration at so

meaningless a moment; it seemed a part of his happy friendliness. It was

Phoebe who spoke.

"I'll stay outside while the doctor goes in. I can sit down here on the step.

Your father needn't know I am here any more than usual. I told the

doctor not to talk, coming up the walk."

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