Book: An Alabaster Box

M >> Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and Florence Morse Kingsley >> An Alabaster Box



[Illustration: "Money!" she whispered. "He must have hidden it
before--before--"]


An
Alabaster Box

By

Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
and
Florence Morse Kingsley

Illustrated by
Stockton Mulford

D. Appleton and Company

New York London

1917


......There came a woman, having an alabaster box of ointment, very
precious; and she broke the box.....




Chapter I


"We," said Mrs. Solomon Black with weighty emphasis, "are going to
get up a church fair and raise that money, and we are going to pay
your salary. We can't stand it another minute. We had better run in
debt to the butcher and baker than to the Lord."

Wesley Elliot regarded her gloomily. "I never liked the idea of
church fairs very well," he returned hesitatingly. "It has always
seemed to me like sheer beggary."

"Then," said Mrs. Solomon Black, "we will beg."

Mrs. Solomon Black was a woman who had always had her way. There was
not one line which denoted yielding in her large, still handsome
face, set about with very elaborate water-waves which she had
arranged so many years that her black hair needed scarcely any
attention. It would almost seem as if Mrs. Solomon Black had been
born with water waves.

She spoke firmly but she smiled, as his mother might have done, at
the young man, who had preached his innocent best in Brookville for
months without any emolument.

"Now don't you worry one mite about it," said she. "Church fairs may
be begging, but they belong to the history of the United States of
America, and I miss my guess if there would have been much preaching
of the gospel in a good many places without them. I guess it ain't
any worse to hold church fairs in this country than it is to have the
outrageous goings on in the old country. I guess we can cheat a
little with mats and cakes and things and not stand any more danger
of hell-fire than all those men putting each other's eyes out and
killing everybody they can hit, and spending the money for guns and
awful exploding stuff that ought to go for the good of the world. I
ain't worried one mite about church fairs when the world is where it
is now. You just run right into your study, Mr. Elliot, and finish
your sermon; and there's a pan of hot doughnuts on the kitchen table.
You go through the kitchen and get some doughnuts. We had breakfast
early and you hadn't ought to work too hard on an empty stomach. You
run along. Don't you worry. All this is up to me and Maria Dodge and
Abby Daggett and a few others. You haven't got one blessed thing to
do with it. All you've got to do is to preach as well as you can, and
keep us from a free fight. Almost always there is a fuss when women
get up a fair. If you can preach the gospel so we are all on speaking
terms when it is finished, you will earn your money twice over. Run
along."

Wesley Elliot obeyed. He always obeyed, at least in the literal
sense, when Mrs. Solomon Black ordered him. There was about her a
fairly masterly maternity. She loved the young minister as firmly for
his own good as if he had been her son. She chuckled happily when she
heard him open the kitchen door. "He'll light into those hot
doughnuts," she thought. She loved to pet the boy in the man.

Wesley Elliot in his study upstairs--a makeshift of a study--sat
munching hot doughnuts and reflecting. He had only about one-third of
his sermon written and it was Saturday, but that did not disturb him.
He had a quick-moving mind. He sometimes wondered whether it did not
move too quickly. Wesley was not a conceited man in one sense. He
never had doubt of his power, but he had grave doubts of the merits
of his productions. However, today he was glad of the high rate of
speed of which he was capable, and did not worry as much as he
sometimes did about his landing at the exact goal. He knew very well
that he could finish his sermon, easily, eat his doughnuts, and sit
reflecting as long as he chose. He chose to do so for a long time,
although his reflections were not particularly happy ones. When he
had left the theological seminary a year ago, he had had his life
planned out so exactly that it did not seem possible to him that the
plans could fail. He had graduated at the head of his class. He had
had no doubt of a city church. One of the professors, a rich man with
much influence, had practically promised him one. Wesley went home to
his doting mother, and told her the news. Wesley's mother believed in
much more than the city church. She believed her son to be capable of
anything. "I shall have a large salary, mother," boasted Wesley, "and
you shall have the best clothes money can buy, and the parsonage is
sure to be beautiful."

"How will your old mother look in fine feathers, in such a beautiful
home?" asked Wesley's mother, but she asked as a lovely, much-petted
woman asks such a question. She had her little conscious smile all
ready for the rejoinder which she knew her son would not fail to
give. He was very proud of his mother.

"Why, mother," he said, "as far as that goes, I wouldn't balk at a
throne for you as queen dowager."

"You are a silly boy," said Mrs. Elliot, but she stole a glance at
herself in an opposite mirror, and smiled complacently. She did not
look old enough to be the mother of her son. She was tall and
slender, and fair-haired, and she knew how to dress well on her very
small income. She was rosy, and carried herself with a sweet
serenity. People said Wesley would not need a wife as long as he had
such a mother. But he did not have her long. Only a month later she
died, and while the boy was still striving to play the role of hero
in that calamity, there came news of another. His professor friend
had a son in the trenches. The son had been wounded, and the father
had obeyed a hurried call, found his son dead, and himself died of
the shock on the return voyage. Wesley, mourning the man who had been
his stanch friend, was guiltily conscious of his thwarted ambition.
"There goes my city church," he thought, and flung the thought back
at himself in anger at his own self-seeking. He was forced into
accepting the first opportunity which offered. His mother had an
annuity, which he himself had insisted upon for her greater comfort.
When she died, the son was nearly penniless, except for the house,
which was old and in need of repair.

He rented that as soon as he received his call to Brookville, after
preaching a humiliating number of trial sermons in other places.
Wesley was of the lowly in mind, with no expectation of inheriting
the earth, when he came to rest in the little village and began
boarding at Mrs. Solomon Black's. But even then he did not know how
bad the situation really was. He had rented his house, and the rent
kept him in decent clothes, but not enough books. He had only a
little shelf filled with the absolutely necessary volumes, most of
them relics of his college course. He did not know that there was
small chance of even his meager salary being paid until June, and he
had been ordained in February. He had wondered why nobody said
anything about his reimbursement. He had refrained from mentioning
it, to even his deacons.

Mrs. Solomon Black had revealed the state of affairs, that morning.
"You may as well know," said she. "There ain't a cent to pay you, and
I said when you came that if we couldn't pay for gospel privileges we
should all take to our closets and pray like Sam Hill, and no charge;
but they wouldn't listen to me, though I spoke right out in
conference meeting and it's seldom a woman does that, you know. Folks
in this place have been hanging onto the ragged edge of nothing so
long they don't seem to sense it. They thought the money for your
salary was going to be brought down from heaven by a dove or
something, when all the time, those wicked flying things are going
round on the other side of the earth, and there don't seem as if
there could be a dove left. Well, now that the time's come when you
ought to be paid, if there's any decency left in the place, they
comes to me and says, 'Oh, Mrs. Black, what shall we do?' I said,
'Why didn't you listen when I spoke out in meeting about our not
being able to afford luxuries like gospel preaching?' and they said
they thought matters would have improved by this time. Improved! How,
I'd like to know? The whole world is sliding down hill faster and
faster every minute, and folks in Brookville think matters are going
to improve, when they are sliding right along with the Emperor of
Germany and the King of England, and all the rest of the big bugs. I
can't figure it out, but in some queer, outlandish way that war over
there has made it so folks in Brookville can't pay their minister's
salary. They didn't have much before, but such a one got a little for
selling eggs and chickens that has had to eat them, and the street
railway failed, and the chair factory, that was the only industry
left here, failed, and folks that had a little to pay had to eat
their payings. And here you are, and it's got to be the fair. Seems
queer the war in Europe should be the means of getting up a fair in
Brookville, but I guess it'll get up more'n that before they're
through fighting."

All this had been the preliminary to the speech which sent Wesley
forth for doughnuts, then to his study, ostensibly to finish his
lovely sermon, but in reality to think thoughts which made his young
forehead, of almost boyhood, frown, and his pleasant mouth droop,
then inexplicably smooth and smile. It was a day which no man in the
flush of youth could resist. That June day fairly rioted in through
the open windows. Mrs. Black's muslin curtains danced in the June
breeze like filmy-skirted nymphs. Wesley, whose imagination was
active, seemed to see forced upon his eager, yet reluctant, eyes,
radiant maidens, flinging their white draperies about, dancing a
dance of the innocence which preludes the knowledge of love. Sweet
scents came in through the windows, almond scents, honey scents, rose
scents, all mingled into an ineffable bouquet of youth and the quest
of youth.

Wesley rose stealthily; he got his hat; he tiptoed across the room.
Heavens! how thankful he was for access to the back stairs. Mrs.
Black was sweeping the parlor, and the rear of the house was
deserted. Down the precipitous back stairs crept the young minister,
listening to the sound of the broom on Mrs. Black's parlor carpet. As
long as that regular swish continued he was safe. Through the kitchen
he passed, feeling guilty as he smelled new peas cooking for his
delectation on Mrs. Black's stove. Out of the kitchen door, under the
green hood of the back porch, and he was afield, and the day had him
fast. He did not belong any more to his aspirations, to his high and
noble ambitions, to his steadfast purpose in life. He belonged to the
spring of the planet from which his animal life had sprung. Young
Wesley Elliot became one with June, with eternal youth, with joy
which escapes care, with the present which has nothing to do with the
past or the future, with that day sufficient unto itself, that day
dangerous for those whose feet are held fast by the toils of the
years.

Wesley sped across a field which was like a field of green glory. He
saw a hollow like a nest, blue with violets, and all his thoughts
leaped with irresponsive joy. He crossed a brook on rocky stones, as
if he were crossing a song. A bird sang in perfect tune with his
mood. He was bound for a place which had a romantic interest for him:
the unoccupied parsonage, which he could occupy were he supplied with
a salary and had a wife. He loved to sit on the back veranda and
dream. Sometimes he had company. Brookville was a hot little village,
with a long line of hills cutting off the south wind, but on that
back veranda of the old parsonage there was always a breeze.
Sometimes it seemed mysterious to Wesley, that breeze. It never
failed in the hottest days. Now that the parsonage was vacant, women
often came there with their needlework of an afternoon, and sat and
sewed and chatted. Wesley knew of the custom, and had made them
welcome. But sometimes of a morning a girl came. Wesley wondered if
she would be there that morning. After he had left the field, he
plunged knee-deep through the weedage of his predecessor's garden,
and heart-deep into luxuriant ranks of dewy vegetables which he, in
the intervals of his mental labors, should raise for his own table.
Wesley had an inherent love of gardening which he had never been in a
position to gratify. Wesley was, in fancy, eating his own green peas
and squashes and things when he came in sight of the back veranda. It
was vacant, and his fancy sank in his mind like a plummet of lead.
However, he approached, and the breeze of blessing greeted him like a
presence.

The parsonage was a gray old shadow of a building. Its walls were
stained with past rains, the roof showed depressions, the veranda
steps were unsteady, in fact one was gone. Wesley mounted and seated
himself in one of the gnarled old rustic chairs which defied weather.
From where he sat he could see a pink and white plumage of blossoms
over an orchard; even the weedy garden showed lovely lights under the
triumphant June sun. Butterflies skimmed over it, always in pairs,
now and then a dew-light like a jewel gleamed out, and gave a
delectable thrill of mystery. Wesley wished the girl were there. Then
she came. He saw a flutter of blue in the garden, then a face like a
rose overtopped the weeds. The sunlight glanced from a dark head,
giving it high-lights of gold.

The girl approached. When she saw the minister, she started, but not
as if with surprise; rather as if she had made ready to start. She
stood at the foot of the steps, glowing with blushes, but still not
confused. She smiled with friendly confidence. She was very pretty
and she wore a delicious gown, if one were not a woman, to observe
the lack of fashion and the faded streaks, and she carried a little
silk work-bag.

Wesley rose. He also blushed, and looked more confused than the girl.
"Good morning, Miss Dodge," he said. His hands twitched a little.

Fanny Dodge noted his confusion quite calmly. "Are you busy?" said
she.

"You are laughing at me, Miss Dodge. What on earth am I busy about?"

"Oh," said the girl. "Of course I have eyes, and I can see that you
are not writing; but I can't see your mind, or your thoughts. For all
I know, they may be simply grinding out a sermon, and today is
Saturday. I don't want to break up the meeting." She laughed.

"Come on up here," said Wesley with camaraderie. "You know I am not
doing a blessed thing. I can finish my sermon in an hour after
dinner. Come on up. The breeze is heavenly. What have you got in that
bag?"

"I," stated Fanny Dodge, mounting the steps, "have my work in my bag.
I am embroidering a center-piece which is to be sold for at least
twice its value--for I can't embroider worth a cent--at the fair."
She sat down beside him, and fished out of the bag a square of white
linen and some colored silks.

"Mrs. Black has just told me about that fair," said Wesley. "Say, do
you know, I loathe the idea of it?"

"Why? A fair is no end of fun. We always have them."

"Beggary."

"Nonsense!"

"Yes, it is. I might just as well put on some black glasses, get a
little dog with a string, and a basket, and done with it."

The girl giggled. "I know what you mean," said she, "but your salary
has to be paid, and folks have to be cajoled into handing out the
money." Suddenly she looked troubled. "If there is any to hand," she
added.

"I want you to tell me something and be quite frank about it."

Fanny shot a glance at him. Her lashes were long, and she could look
through them with liquid fire of dark eyes.

"Well?" said she. She threaded a needle with pink silk.

"Is Brookville a very poor village?"

Fanny inserted her pink-threaded needle into the square of linen.

"What," she inquired with gravity, "is the past tense of bust?"

"I am in earnest."

"So am I. But I know a minister is never supposed to know about such
a word as bust, even if he is bust two-thirds of is life. I'll tell
you. First Brookville was bust, now it's busted."

Wesley stared at her.

"Fact," said Fanny, calmly, starting a rose on the linen in a career
of bloom. "First, years ago, when I was nothing but a kid, Andrew
Bolton--you have heard of Andrew Bolton?"

"I have heard him mentioned. I have never understood why everybody
was so down on him, though he is serving a term in prison, I believe.
Nobody seems to like to explain."

"The reason for that is plain enough," stated Fanny. "Nobody likes to
admit he's been made a fool of. The man who takes the gold brick
always tries to hide it if he can't blame it off on his wife or
sister or aunt. Andrew Bolton must have made perfectly awful fools of
everybody in Brookville. They must have thought of him as a little
tin god on wheels till he wrecked the bank and the silk factory, and
ran off with a lot of money belonging to his disciples, and got
caught by the hand of the law, and landed in State's Prison. That's
why they don't tell. Reckon my poor father, if he were alive,
wouldn't tell. I didn't have anything to do with it, so I am telling.
When Andrew Bolton embezzled the town went bust. Now the war in
Europe, through the grinding of wheels which I can't comprehend, has
bankrupted the street railway and the chair factory, and the town is
busted."

"But, as you say, if there is no money, why a fair?" Wesley had paled
a little.

"Oh," replied the girl, "there is always the hoarding instinct to be
taken into account. There are still a lot of stockings and feather
beds and teapots in Brookville. We still have faith that a fair can
mine a little gold out of them for you. Of course we don't know, but
this is a Yankee village, and Yankees never do spend the last cent. I
admit you may get somebody's funeral expenses out of the teapot."

"Good Lord!" groaned Wesley.

"That," remarked the girl, "is almost swearing. I am surprised, and
you a minister."

"But it is an awful state of things."

"Well," said Fanny, "Mrs. B. H. Slocum may come over from Grenoble.
She used to live here, and has never lost her interest in Brookville.
She is rich. She can buy a lot, and she is very good-natured about
being cheated for the gospel's sake. Then, too, Brookville has never
lost its guardian angels."

"What on earth do you mean?"

"What I say. The faith of the people here in guardian angels is a
wonderful thing. Sometimes it seems to me as if all Brookville
considered itself under special guardianship, sort of a
hen-and-chicken arrangement, you know. Anyhow, they do go ahead and
undertake the craziest things, and come out somehow."

"I think," said Wesley Elliot soberly, "that I ought to resign."

Then the girl paled, and bent closer over her work. "Resign!" she
gasped.

"Yes, resign. I admit I haven't enough money to live without a
salary, though I would like to stay here forever." Wesley spoke with
fervor, his eyes on the girl.

"Oh, no, you wouldn't."

"I most certainly would, but I can't run in debt, and--I want to
marry some day--like other young men--and I must earn."

The girl bent her head lower. "Why don't you resign and go away, and
get--married, if you want to?"

"Fanny!"

He bent over her. His lips touched her hair. "You know," he
began--then came a voice like the legendary sword which divides
lovers for their best temporal and spiritual good.

"Dinner is ready and the peas are getting cold," said Mrs. Solomon
Black.

Then it happened that Wesley Elliot, although a man and a clergyman,
followed like a little boy the large woman with the water-waves
through the weedage of the pastoral garden, and the girl sat weeping
awhile from mixed emotions of anger and grief. Then she took a little
puff from her bag, powdered her nose, straightened her hair and,
also, went home, bag in hand, to her own noon dinner.




Chapter II


A church fair is one of the purely feminine functions which will be
the last to disappear when the balance between the sexes is more
evenly adjusted. It is almost a pity to assume that it will finally,
in the nature of things, disappear, for it is charming; it is
innocent with the innocence of very good, simple women; it is at the
same time subtle with that inimitable subtlety which only such women
can achieve. It is petty finance on such a moral height that even the
sufferers by its code must look up to it. Before even woman, showing
anything except a timid face of discovery at the sights of New York
under male escort, invaded Wall Street, the church fair was in full
tide, and the managers thereof might have put financiers to shame by
the cunning, if not magnitude, of their operations. Good Christian
women, mothers of families, would sell a tidy of no use except to
wear to a frayed edge the masculine nerves, and hand-painted plates
of such bad art that it verged on immorality, for prices so above all
reason, that a broker would have been taken aback. And it was all for
worthy objects, these pretty functions graced by girls and matrons in
their best attire, with the products of their little hands offered,
or even forced, upon the outsider who was held up for the ticket.
They gambled shamelessly to buy a new carpet for the church. There
was plain and brazen raffling for dreadful lamps and patent rockers
and dolls which did not look fit to be owned by nice little
girl-mothers, and all for the church organ, the minister's salary and
such like. Of this description was the church fair held in Brookville
to raise money to pay the Reverend Wesley Elliot. He came early, and
haunted the place like a morbid spirit. He was both angry and shamed
that such means must be employed to pay his just dues, but since it
had to be he could not absent himself.

There was no parlor in the church, and not long after the infamous
exit of Andrew Bolton the town hall had been destroyed by fire.
Therefore all such functions were held in a place which otherwise was
a source of sad humiliation to its owner: Mrs. Amos Whittle, the
deacon's wife's unfurnished best parlor. It was a very large room,
and poor Mrs. Whittle had always dreamed of a fine tapestry carpet,
furniture upholstered with plush, a piano, and lace curtains.

Her dreams had never been realized. The old tragedy of the little
village had cropped dreams, like a species of celestial foliage,
close to their roots. Poor Mrs. Whittle, although she did not realize
it, missed her dreams more than she would have missed the furniture
of that best parlor, had she ever possessed and lost it. She had come
to think of it as a room in one of the "many mansions," although she
would have been horrified had she known that she did so. She was one
who kept her religion and her daily life chemically differentiated.
She endeavored to maintain her soul on a high level of orthodoxy,
while her large, flat feet trod her round of household tasks. It was
only when her best parlor, great empty room, was in demand for some
social function like the church fair, that she felt her old dreams
return and stimulate her as with some wine of youth.

The room was very prettily decorated with blossoming boughs, and
Japanese lanterns, and set about with long tables covered with white,
which contained the articles for sale. In the center of the room was
the flower-booth, and that was lovely. It was a circle of green, with
oval openings to frame young girl-faces, and on the circular shelf
were heaped flowers in brilliant masses. At seven o'clock the fair
was in full swing, as far as the wares and saleswomen were concerned.
At the flower-booth were four pretty girls: Fanny Dodge, Ellen Dix,
Joyce Fulsom and Ethel Mixter. Each stood looking out of her frame of
green, and beamed with happiness in her own youth and beauty. They
did not, could not share the anxiety of the older women. The more
anxious gathered about the cake table. Four pathetically bedizened
middle-aged creatures, three too stout, one too thin, put their heads
together in conference. One woman was Mrs. Maria Dodge, Fanny's
mother, one was Mrs. Amos Dix, one was Mrs. Deacon Whittle, and one
was unmarried.

She was the stoutest of the four, tightly laced in an ancient silk,
with frizzed hair standing erect from bulging temples. She was Lois
Daggett, and a tragedy. She loved the young minister, Wesley Elliot,
with all her heart and soul and strength. She had fastened, to
attract his admiration, a little bunch of rose geranium leaves and
heliotrope in her tightly frizzed hair. That little posy had, all
unrecognized, a touching pathos. It was as the aigrette, the splendid
curves of waving plumage which birds adopt in the desire for love.
Lois had never had a lover. She had never been pretty, or attractive,
but always in her heart had been the hunger for love. The young
minister seemed the ideal of all the dreams of her life. He was as a
god to her. She trembled under his occasional glances, his casual
address caused vibrations in every nerve. She cherished no illusions.
She knew he was not for her, but she loved and worshipped, and she
tucked on an absurd little bow of ribbon, and she frizzed tightly her
thin hair, and she wore little posies, following out the primitive
instinct of her sex, even while her reason lagged behind. If once
Wesley should look at that pitiful little floral ornament, should
think it pretty, it would have meant as much to that starved virgin
soul as a kiss--to do her justice, as a spiritual kiss. There was in
reality only pathos and tragedy in her adoration. It was not in the
least earthy, or ridiculous, but it needed a saint to understand
that. Even while she conferred with her friends, she never lost sight
of the young man, always hoped for that one fleeting glance of
approbation.

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