The Wizard's Daughter, and Other Stories

And for His works of wonder done
Unto the sons of men."

But such absorbing enthusiasm, even in a good cause, argued a doctrinal laxity which could not pass unnoticed.

"A deegnifyin' of the creature above the Creator, the sign above the thing seegnified," Uncle Johnnie Turnbull urged upon the session, smarting from the deep theological wound he had suffered at Jonathan's hands.

A perceptible chill crept into the ecclesiastical atmosphere which Marg'et Ann felt without thoroughly comprehending.

Nancy Helen was sixteen now, and Marg'et Ann had taught the summer school at Yankee Neck, riding home every evening to superintend the younger sister's housekeeping.

Laban had emerged from the period of unshaven awkwardness, and was going to see Emeline Barnes with ominous regularity.

There was nothing in the affairs of the household to trouble Marg'et Ann but her father's ever increasing restlessness and preoccupation. She wondered if it would have been different if her mother had lived. There was no great intimacy between the father and daughter, but the girl knew that the wrongs of the black man had risen like a dense cloud between her father and what had once been his highest duty and pleasure.

She was not, therefore, greatly surprised when he said to her one day, more humbly than he was wont to speak to his children: —

"I think I must try to do something for those poor people, child; it may not be much, but it will be something. The harvest truly is great, but the laborers are few."

"What will you do, father?"

Marg'et Ann asked the question hesitatingly, dreading the reply. The minister looked at her with anxious eagerness. He was glad of the humble acquiescence that obliged him to put his half-formed resolution into words.

"If the presbytery will release me from my charge here, I may go South for a while. Nancy Helen is quite a girl now, and with Laban and your teaching you could get on. They are bruised for our iniquities, Marg'et Ann, – they are our iniquities, indirectly, child."

He got up and walked across the rag-carpeted floor. Marg'et Ann sat still in her mother's chair, looking down at the stripes of the carpet, – dark blue and red and "hit or miss;" her mother had made them so patiently; it seemed as if patience were always under foot for heroism to tread upon. She fought with the ache in her throat a little. The stripes on the floor were beginning to blur when she spoke.

"Isn't it dangerous to go down there, father, for people like us, – for Abolitionists, I mean; I have heard that it was."

"Dangerous!" The preacher's face lighted with the faint, prophetic joy of martyrdom; poor Marg'et Ann had touched the wrong chord. "It cannot be worse for me than it is for them, – I must go," he broke out impatiently; "do not say anything against it, child!"

And so Marg'et Ann said nothing.

Really there was not much time for words. There were many stitches to be taken in the threadbare wardrobe, concerning which her father was as ignorant and indifferent as a child, before she packed it all in the old carpet sack and nerved herself to see him start.

He went away willingly, almost cheerfully. Just at the last, when he came to bid the younger children good-by, the father seemed for an instant to rise above the reformer. No doubt their childish unconcern moved him.

"We must think of the families that have been rudely torn apart. Surely it ought to sustain us, – it ought to sustain us," he said to Laban as they drove away.

Two days later they carried him home, crippled for life by the overturning of the stage near Cedar Creek.

He made no complaint of the drunken driver whose carelessness had caused the accident and frustrated his plans; but once, when his eldest daughter was alone with him, he looked into her face and said, absently, rather than to her, —

"Patience, patience; I doubt not the Lord's hand is in it."

And Marg'et Ann felt that his purpose was not quenched.

In the spring Lloyd Archer came home. Marg'et Ann had heard of his coming, and tried to think of him with all the intervening years of care and trial added; but when she saw him walking up the path between the flowering almonds and snowball bushes, all the intervening years faded away, and left only the past that he had shared, and the present.

She met him there at her father's bedside and shook hands with him and said, "How do you do, Lloyd? Have you kept your health?" as quietly as she would have greeted any neighbor. After he had spoken to her father and the children she sat before him with her knitting, a very gentle, self-contained Desdemona, and listened while he told the minister stories of California, mentioning the trees and fruits of the Bible with a freedom and familiarity that savored just enough of heresy to make him seem entirely unchanged.

When Nancy Helen came into the room he glanced from her to Marg'et Ann; the two sisters had the same tints in hair and cheek, but the straight, placid lines of the elder broke into waves and dimples in the younger. Nancy Helen shook hands in a limp, half-grown way, blushingly conscious that her sleeves were rolled up, and that her elders were maturely indifferent to her sufferings; and Lloyd jokingly refused to tell her his name, insisting that she had kissed him good-by and promised to be his little sweetheart when he came back.

Marg'et Ann was knitting a great blue and white sock for Laban, and after she had turned the mammoth heel she smoothed it out on her lap, painstakingly, conscious all the time of a tumultuous, unreasonable joy in Lloyd's presence, in the sound of his voice, in his glance, which assured her so unmistakably that she had a right to rejoice in his coming.

She did not see her lover alone for several days. When she did, he caught her hands and said, "Well, Marg'et Ann?" taking up the unsettled question of their lives where they had left it. And Marg'et Ann stood still, with her hands in his, looking down at the snow of the fallen locust-bloom at her feet, and said, —

"When father is well enough to begin preaching again, then I think – perhaps – Lloyd" —

But Lloyd did not wait to hear what she thought, nor trouble himself greatly about the "perhaps."

The minister's injuries were slow to mend. They were all coming to understand that his lameness would be permanent, and there was on the part of the older children a tense, pained curiosity concerning their father's feeling on the subject, which no word of his had thus far served to relieve. There was a grave shyness among them concerning their deepest feelings, which was, perhaps, a sense of the inadequacy of expression rather than the austerity it seemed. Marg'et Ann would have liked to show her sympathy for her father, and no doubt it would have lightened the burdens of both; but any betrayal of filial tenderness beyond the dutiful care she gave him would have startled the minister, and embarrassed them both. Life was a serious thing to them only by reason of its relation to eternity; a constant underrating of this world had made them doubtful of its dignity. Marg'et Ann felt it rather light-minded that she should have a lump in her throat whenever she thought of her father on crutches for the rest of his life. She wondered how Laban felt about it, but it was not likely that she would ever know. Laban had made the crutches himself, a rude, temporary pair at first, but he was at work on others now that were more carefully made and more durable; and she knew from this and the remarks of her father when he tried them that they both understood. It was not worth while to talk about it of course, and yet the household had a dull ache in it that a little talking might have relieved.

Marg'et Ann had begged Lloyd not to speak to her father until the latter was "up and about." It seemed to her unkind to talk of leaving him when he was helpless, and Lloyd was very patient now, and very tractable, working busily to get the old place in readiness for his bride.

Mr. Morrison sat at his table, reading, or writing hurriedly, or gazing absently out into the June sunshine. He was sitting thus one afternoon, tapping the arms of his chair nervously with his thin fingers, when Marg'et Ann brought her work and sat in her mother's chair near him. It was not very dainty work, winding a mass of dyed carpet rags into a huge, madder-colored ball, but there were delicate points in its execution which a restless civilization has hurried into oblivion along with the other lost arts, and Marg'et Ann surveyed her ball critically now and then, to be sure that it was not developing any slovenly one-sidedness under her deft hands. The minister's crutches leaned against the arm of his painted wooden chair with an air of mute but patient helpfulness. Marg'et Ann had cushioned them with patchwork, but he had walked about so much that she already noted the worn places beginning to show under the arms of his faded dressing-gown. He leaned forward a little and glanced toward her, his hand on them now, and she put down her work and went to his side. He raised himself by the arms of his chair, sighing, and took the crutches from her patient hand.

"I am not of much account, child, – not of much account," he said wearily.

Marg'et Ann colored with pain. She felt as a branch might feel when the trunk of the tree snaps.

"I'm sure you're getting on very well, father; the doctor says you'll be able to begin preaching again by fall."

The minister made his way slowly across the room and stood a moment in the open door; then he retraced his halting steps with their thumping wooden accompaniment and seated himself slowly and painfully again. One of the crutches slid along the arm of the chair and fell to the floor. Marg'et Ann went to pick it up. His head was still bowed and his face had not relaxed from the pain of moving. Standing a moment at his side and looking down at him, she noticed how thin and gray his hair had become. She turned away her face, looking out of the window and battling with the cruelty of it all. The minister felt the tenderness of her silent presence there, and glanced up.

"I shall not preach any more, Marg'et Ann, at least not here, not in this way. If I might do something for those down-trodden people, – but that is perhaps not best. The Lord knows. But I shall leave the ministry for a time, – until I see my way more clearly."

His daughter crossed the room, stooping to straighten the braided rug at his feet as she went, and took up her work again. Certainly the crimson ball was a trifle one-sided, or was it the unevenness of her tear-filled vision? She unwound it a little to remedy the defect as her father went on.

"Things do not present themselves to my mind as they once did. I have not decided just what course to pursue, but it would certainly not be honorable for me to occupy the pulpit in my present frame of mind. You've been a very faithful daughter, Marg'et Ann," he broke off, "a good daughter."

He turned and looked at her sitting there winding the great ball with her trembling fingers; her failure to speak did not suggest any coldness to either of them; response would have startled him.

"I have thought much about it," he went on. "I have had time to think under this affliction. Nancy Helen is old enough to be trusted now, and when Laban marries he will perhaps be willing to rent the land. No doubt you could get both the summer and winter schools in the district; that would be a great help. The congregation has not been able to pay much, but it would be a loss" —

He faltered for the first time; there was a shame in mentioning money in connection with his office.

"I have suffered a good deal of distress of mind, child, but doubtless it is salutary – it is salutary."

He reached for his crutches again restlessly, and then drew back, remembering the pain of rising.

Marg'et Ann had finished the ball of carpet rags and laid it carefully in the box with the others. She had taken great pains with the coloring, thinking of the best room in her new home, and Lloyd had a man's liking for red.

And now the old question had come back; it was older than she knew. Doubtless it was right that men should always have opinions and aspirations and principles, and women only ties and duties and heartaches. It seemed cruel, though, just now. She choked back the throbbing pain in her throat that threatened to make itself seen and heard.

"Of course I must do right, Marg'et Ann."

Her father's voice seemed almost pleading.

Of course he must do right. Marg'et Ann had not dreamed of anything else. Only it was a little hard just now.