The Old Peabody Pew: A Christmas Romance of a Country Church

CHAPTER II

The old Meeting House wore an animated aspect when the eventful Friday came, a cold, brilliant, sparkling December day, with good sleighing, and with energy in every breath that swept over the dazzling snowfields.  The sexton had built a fire in the furnace on the way to his morning work—a fire so economically contrived that it would last exactly the four or five necessary hours, and not a second more.  At eleven o’clock all the pillars of the society had assembled, having finished their own household work and laid out on their respective kitchen tables comfortable luncheons for the men of the family, if they were fortunate enough to number any among their luxuries.  Water was heated upon oil-stoves set about here and there, and there was a brave array of scrubbing-brushes, cloths, soap, and even sand and soda, for it had been decided and manifested-by-the-usual-sign-and-no-contrary-minded-and-it-was-a-vote that the dirt was to come off, whether the paint came with it or not.  Each of the fifteen women present selected a block of seats, preferably one in which her own was situated, and all fell busily to work.

“There is nobody here to clean the right-wing pews,” said Nancy Wentworth, “so I will take those for my share.”

“You’re not making a very wise choice, Nancy,” and the minister’s wife smiled as she spoke.  “The infant class of the Sunday-school sits there, you know, and I expect the paint has had extra wear and tear.  Families don’t seem to occupy those pews regularly nowadays.”

“I can remember when every seat in the whole church was filled, wings an’ all,” mused Mrs. Sargent, wringing out her wascloth in a reminiscent mood.  “The one in front o’ you, Nancy, was always called the ‘deef pew’ in the old times, and all the folks that was hard o’ hearin’ used to congregate there.”

“The next pew hasn’t been occupied since I came here,” said the minister’s wife.

“No,” answered Mrs. Sargent, glad of any opportunity to retail neighbourhood news.  “’Squire Bean’s folks have moved to Portland to be with the married daughter.  Somebody has to stay with her, and her husband won’t.  The ’Squire ain’t a strong man, and he’s most too old to go to meetin’ now.  The youngest son has just died in New York, so I hear.”

“What ailed him?” inquired Maria Sharp.

“I guess he was completely wore out takin’ care of his health,” returned Mrs. Sargent.  “He had a splendid constitution from a boy, but he was always afraid it wouldn’t last him.—The seat back o’ ’Squire Bean’s is the old Peabody pew—ain’t that the Peabody pew you’re scrubbin’, Nancy?”

“I believe so,” Nancy answered, never pausing in her labours.  “It’s so long since anybody sat there, it’s hard to remember.”

“It is the Peabodys’, I know it, because the aisle runs right up facin’ it.  I can see old Deacon Peabody settin’ in this end same as if ’twas yesterday.”

“He had died before Jere and I came back here to live,” said Mrs. Burbank.  “The first I remember, Justin Peabody sat in the end seat; the sister that died, next, and in the corner, against the wall, Mrs. Peabody, with a crêpe shawl and a palm-leaf fan.  They were a handsome family.  You used to sit with them sometimes, Nancy; Esther was great friends with you.”

“Yes, she was,” Nancy replied, lifting the tattered cushion from its place and brushing it; “and I with her.—What is the use of scrubbing and carpeting, when there are only twenty pew-cushions and six hassocks in the whole church, and most of them ragged?  How can I ever mend this?”

“I shouldn’t trouble myself to darn other people’s cushions!”

This unchristian sentiment came in Mrs. Miller’s ringing tones from the rear of the church.

“I don’t know why,” argued Maria Sharp.  “I’m going to mend my Aunt Achsa’s cushion, and we haven’t spoken for years; but hers is the next pew to mine, and I’m going to have my part of the church look decent, even if she is too stingy to do her share.  Besides, there aren’t any Peabodys left to do their own darning, and Nancy was friends with Esther.”

“Yes, it’s nothing more than right,” Nancy replied, with a note of relief in her voice, “considering Esther.”

“Though he don’t belong to the scrubbin’ sex, there is one Peabody alive, as you know, if you stop to think, Maria; for Justin’s alive, and livin’ out West somewheres.  At least, he’s as much alive as ever he was; he was as good as dead when he was twenty-one, but his mother was always too soft-hearted to bury him.”

There was considerable laughter over this sally of the outspoken Mrs. Sargent, whose keen wit was the delight of the neighbourhood.

“I know he’s alive and doing business in Detroit, for I got his address a week or ten days ago, and wrote, asking him if he’d like to give a couple of dollars toward repairing the old church.”

Everybody looked at Mrs. Burbank with interest.

“Hasn’t he answered?” asked Maria Sharp.

Nancy Wentworth held her breath, turned her face to the wall, and silently wiped the paint of the wainscoting.  The blood that had rushed into her cheeks at Mrs. Sargent’s jeering reference to Justin Peabody still lingered there for any one who ran to read, but fortunately nobody ran; they were too busy scrubbing.

“Not yet.  Folks don’t hurry about answering when you ask them for a contribution,” replied the president, with a cynicism common to persons who collect funds for charitable purposes.  “George Wickham sent me twenty-five cents from Denver.  When I wrote him a receipt, I said thank you same as Aunt Polly did when the neighbours brought her a piece of beef: ‘Ever so much obleeged, but don’t forget me when you come to kill a pig.’—Now, Mrs. Baxter, you shan’t clean James Bruce’s pew, or what was his before he turned Second Advent.  I’ll do that myself, for he used to be in my Sunday-school class.”

“He’s the backbone o’ that congregation now,” asserted Mrs. Sargent, “and they say he’s goin’ to marry Mrs. Sam Peters, who sings in their choir as soon as his year is up.  They make a perfect fool of him in that church.”

“You can’t make a fool of a man that nature ain’t begun with,” argued Miss Brewster.  “Jim Bruce never was very strong-minded, but I declare it seems to me that when men lose their wives, they lose their wits!  I was sure Jim would marry Hannah Thompson that keeps house for him.  I suspected she was lookin’ out for a life job when she hired out with him.”

“Hannah Thompson may keep Jim’s house, but she’ll never keep Jim, that’s certain!” affirmed the president; “and I can’t see that Mrs. Peters will better herself much.”

“I don’t blame her, for one!” came in no uncertain tones from the left-wing pews, and the Widow Buzzell rose from her knees and approached the group by the pulpit.  “If there’s anything duller than cookin’ three meals a day for yourself, and settin’ down and eatin’ ’em by yourself, and then gettin’ up and clearin’ ’em away after yourself, I’d like to know it!  I shouldn’t want any good-lookin’, pleasant-spoken man to offer himself to me without he expected to be snapped up, that’s all!  But if you’ve made out to get one husband in York County, you can thank the Lord and not expect any more favours.  I used to think Tom was poor comp’ny and complain I couldn’t have any conversation with him, but land, I could talk at him, and there’s considerable comfort in that.  And I could pick up after him!  Now every room in my house is clean, and every closet and bureau drawer, too; I can’t start drawin’ in another rug, for I’ve got all the rugs I can step foot on.  I dried so many apples last year I shan’t need to cut up any this season.  My jelly and preserves ain’t out, and there I am; and there most of us are, in this village, without a man to take steps for and trot ’round after!  There’s just three husbands among the fifteen women scrubbin’ here now, and the rest of us is all old maids and widders.  No wonder the men-folks die, or move away like Justin Peabody; a place with such a mess o’ women-folks ain’t healthy to live in, whatever Lobelia Brewster may say.”

CHAPTER III

Justin Peabody had once faithfully struggled with the practical difficulties of life in Edgewood, or so he had thought, in those old days of which Nancy Wentworth was thinking as she wiped the paint of the Peabody pew.  Work in the mills did not attract him; he had no capital to invest in a stock of goods for store-keeping; school-teaching offered him only a pittance; there remained then only the farm, if he were to stay at home and keep his mother company.

“Justin don’t seem to take no holt of things,” said the neighbours.

“Good Heavens!”  It seemed to him that there were no things to take hold of!  That was his first thought; later he grew to think that the trouble all lay in himself, and both thoughts bred weakness.

The farm had somehow supported the family in the old Deacon’s time, but Justin seemed unable to coax a competence from the soil.  He could, and did, rise early and work late; till the earth, sow crops; but he could not make the rain fall nor the sun shine at the times he needed them, and the elements, however much they might seem to favour his neighbours, seldom smiled on his enterprises.  The crows liked Justin’s corn better than any other in Edgewood.  It had a richness peculiar to itself, a quality that appealed to the most jaded palate, so that it was really worth while to fly over a mile of intervening fields and pay it the delicate compliment of preference.

Justin could explain the attitude of caterpillars, worms, grasshoppers, and potato-bugs toward him only by assuming that he attracted them as the magnet in the toy boxes attracts the miniature fishes.

“Land of liberty! look at ’em congregate!” ejaculated Jabe Slocum, when he was called in for consultation.  “Now if you’d gone in for breedin’ insecks, you could be as proud as Cuffy an’ exhibit ’em at the County Fair!  They’d give yer prizes for size an’ numbers an’ speed, I guess!  Why, say, they’re real crowded for room—the plants ain’t give ’em enough leaves to roost on!  Have you tried ‘Bug Death’?”

“It acts like a tonic on them,” said Justin gloomily.

“Sho! you don’t say so!  Now mine can’t abide the sight nor smell of it.  What ’bout Paris green?”

“They thrive on it; it’s as good as an appetizer.”

“Well,” said Jabe Slocum, revolving the quid of tobacco in his mouth reflectively, “the bug that ain’t got no objection to p’ison is a bug that’s got ways o’ thinkin’ an’ feelin’ an’ reasonin’ that I ain’t able to cope with!  P’r’aps it’s all a leadin’ o’ Providence.  Mebbe it shows you’d ought to quit farmin’ crops an’ take to raisin’ live stock!”

Justin did just that, as a matter of fact, a year or two later; but stock that has within itself the power of being “live” has also rare qualifications for being dead when occasion suits, and it generally did suit Justin’s stock.  It proved prone not only to all the general diseases that cattle-flesh is heir to, but was capable even of suicide.  At least, it is true that two valuable Jersey calves, tied to stakes on the hillside, had flung themselves violently down the bank and strangled themselves with their own ropes in a manner which seemed to show that they found no pleasure in existence, at all events on the Peabody farm.

These were some of the little tragedies that had sickened young Justin Peabody with life in Edgewood, and Nancy Wentworth, even then, realized some of them and sympathized without speaking, in a girl’s poor, helpless way.

Mrs. Simpson had washed the floor in the right wing of the church and Nancy had cleaned all the paint.  Now she sat in the old Peabody pew darning the forlorn, faded cushion with grey carpet-thread: thread as grey as her own life.

The scrubbing-party had moved to its labours in a far corner of the church, and two of the women were beginning preparations for the basket luncheons.  Nancy’s needle was no busier than her memory.  Long years ago she had often sat in the Peabody pew, sometimes at first as a girl of sixteen when asked by Esther, and then, on coming home from school at eighteen, “finished,” she had been invited now and again by Mrs. Peabody herself, on those Sundays when her own invalid mother had not attended service.

Those were wonderful Sundays—Sundays of quiet, trembling peace and maiden joy.

Justin sat beside her, and she had been sure then, but had long since grown to doubt the evidence of her senses, that he, too, vibrated with pleasure at the nearness.  Was there not a summer morning when his hand touched her white lace mitt as they held the hymn-book together, and the lines of the

Rise, my soul, and stretch thy wings,
Thy better portion trace,

became blurred on the page and melted into something indistinguishable for a full minute or two afterward?  Were there not looks, and looks, and looks?  Or had she some misleading trick of vision in those days?  Justin’s dark, handsome profile rose before her: the level brows and fine lashes; the well-cut nose and lovable mouth—the Peabody mouth and chin, somewhat too sweet and pliant for strength, perhaps.  Then the eyes turned to hers in the old way, just for a fleeting glance, as they had so often done at prayer-meeting, or sociable, or Sunday service.  Was it not a man’s heart she had seen in them?  And oh, if she could only be sure that her own woman’s heart had not looked out from hers, drawn from its maiden shelter in spite of all her wish to keep it hidden!

Then followed two dreary years of indecision and suspense, when Justin’s eyes met hers less freely; when his looks were always gloomy and anxious; when affairs at the Peabody farm grew worse and worse; when his mother followed her husband, the old Deacon, and her daughter Esther to the burying-ground in the churchyard.  Then the end of all things came, the end of the world for Nancy: Justin’s departure for the West in a very frenzy of discouragement over the narrowness and limitation and injustice of his lot; over the rockiness and barrenness and unkindness of the New England soil; over the general bitterness of fate and the “bludgeonings of chance.”

He was a failure, born of a family of failures.  If the world owed him a living, he had yet to find the method by which it could be earned.  All this he thought and uttered, and much more of the same sort.  In these days of humbled pride self was paramount, though it was a self he despised.  There was no time for love.  Who was he for a girl to lean upon?—he who could not stand erect himself!