Emancipation Read online

  After Willard entered, Billy, gazing across at the grocery, saw Sam Ellis double up with laughter. He chuckled softly to himself. Esther had ushered the minister into the best parlor. She came hurrying out to her father.

  "The minister has come to tea," she whispered. Her cheeks were softly blushing.

  "Did you ask him?"

  Esther shook her head. "I don't understand it," she whispered, "but he has come. Go into the bedroom, father, and let me brush your hair and coat. You won't have time to shave. Are your hands clean? Of, father! come out in the kitchen and wash your hands."

  When Billy was fairly tidy and back in his chair, he looked across at the grocery. Sam still sat smoking on the piazza. The minister was now in the sitting-room. Billy nodded solemnly, with warning finger raised. Sam nodded solemnly in response.

  Willard Comstock, discoursing to Billy about a recent death in the village, with absent eyes upon Esther, a graceful vision moving about in the next room, saw neither signal. Billy, talking to the minister, saw presently his dear Sam lounge down the street. He pictured him getting his solitary meal in his littered corner of the old colonial house. He wished, with the pathetic wish of age and essential loneliness, to be with him there. What had he--old, with tastes reverting to those of childhood--to do with this fine young clergyman who loved his daughter? Poor old Billy wanted to be in his own tracks of life--those tracks which he and his wife Betsey had followed so easily.

  He did not like the supper which Esther finally served. The dining-table glittered with the best china and silver, and a piece or two of cut-glass. Apple-blossoms in a green bowl decorated the center. Esther had prepared a salad, very pretty, but strange to Billy's old-fashioned taste. The minister praised it. Billy felt a slight scorn. Esther had thin slices of pink ham. Billy liked thick slices, but on account of the guest had to put up with the thin. Billy, silently eating, reflected how fortunate it was that Willard Comstock had a mother. Otherwise he would be obliged to live with Willard and Esther. It would be perfectly peaceful, but the restraint of those bonds of Christian grace would be insupportable.

  The next afternoon Esther went to the sewing society, and Billy, as soon as the coast was clear, started to see Sam. He stole out of the house, locking the kitchen door and putting the key under the mat on the porch, and taking a back road. The main one led by the church in whose chapel the sewing-society was meeting.

  Billy was slightly lame, but he moved quickly. He was afraid that Sam might not be at home, but the other old man met him at the door, his blue eyes gleaming with fond welcome out of his furze of white hair.

  Billy entered, and was blest, to his conviction, with the utmost which earth had to bestow. It was seldom he got such a chance as this. When he entered the room in which Sam Ellis spent most of his time, he looked about him blissfully. It suited him. It was his ideal of perfect comfort. It was the large stately south room of the old mansion. There were paneled walls and a wonderful mantelpiece, and the doors were marvelous. There were pieces of fine old mahogany furniture, and everything had been made completely subservient to the use of the human creature who owned it, and was, to Billy's mind, fulfilling its ultimate destiny.

  The tapestry carpet was fairly wonderful in its accumulation of colors over and above the original patterns. The paneled walls were brown with smoke and drab with dust, and spotted like leopards in bas-relief until they had taken on the aspect of deliberate, although bizarre, decoration. The chairs and the deep old sofa were worn into the exact comfortable needs of human forms. A stovepipe had been fitted into an iron fireboard covering the great fireplace, and there was a cooking-stove. Before it stood a kitchen table. That was covered by a very smooth, clean cloth of linen, and it glittered with an old solid-silver service. The cloth of linen and the bright silver at first seemed curiously at odds with the room, and yet they were not. They were made subservient, as all else there, to the human need.

  Sam Ellis, sole remnant of his family, required perfect cleanliness with regard to his meals, and his bedroom was immaculate. Every week his laundry was carefully attended to. Much of Sam's slender income was spent for cleanliness, although the general aspect of his living-room went far to deny it.

  Dust was everywhere. Sam was philosophical about dust. "Folks are silly, fussin' so about dust," he was wont to remark. "Dust has to be somewhere. When it's layin' on the chairs and tables it's out of mischief. You ain't breathin' it in. What folks want to go round stirrin' up dust for when it's quiet and out of mischief, beats me."

  That afternoon old Billy settled down in his favorite chair, a worn, leather- covered rocker which fitted his old bones with luxuriousness of comfort. He drew a long sigh of content. After a while he filled his pipe, and the two men smoked, and the room was afloat with curling wreaths and eddies of rank smoke. However, Billy's face wore an expression of anxiety. Sam watched him.

  "Didn't pan out the way you wanted it to last night, I reckon," he said at length.

  Billy sniffed disgustedly. "No, it didn't," he grunted. "Too much talk about duty. Nothin' but duty. Land! I wonder whether folks are really so much better than they was when you and I was young. Near as I can recollect, there wasn't anywhere near so much said about duty."

  "Then Esther and Willard think it ain't their duty to get married?"

  Billy shook his head. "I listened. Had to. Esther thinks it's her duty not to tell me things to worrit me. Drat her duty! An' there ain't any way left, if I feel as if I had ought to know things, except to listen. So I listened last night. They was settin' in the best parlor, and the door won't shut tight. I stole down, dreadful still, in my stockin' feet, after they thought I was abed, and I listened. Lord A'mighty, Sam, I ain't the only duty. They are stuck fast ag'in."

  "What else?"

  "Willard's ma."

  Sam leaned back and laughed. "Maria Comstock is just plumb crazy to have Willard get married and leave her in peace with her sister, Mis' Plummer," said he. "She told me so only day before yesterday. She was gettin' along, as spry as you please, down to the store. She stepped out like a young girl, and her black-silk skirts was swishin', and her bunnit strings flyin', and her head up. I stopped and spoke to her. You know Maria and me used to sort of go together when we was children. I've always thought that if somebody else hadn't come up for her, Maria and me might have made a match of it. She was a real pretty girl, and as smart as they make 'em, and she ain't got over it yet. I thought I'd sort of hint about Willard, and she spoke her mind right out. 'Why on earth,' said she, 'Willard and Esther want to act the way they do is beyond me. Near as I can find out, Esther thinks it's her duty not to leave her pa, and she thinks her pa and me wouldn't get along if Willard took him here or she took me there. And we surely would not,' says Maria. 'We surely would not, because I don't want any such arrangement, and I wouldn't stand havin' that old man around a minute.' I'm tellin' you just what she said," stated Sam, apologetically, to Billy. "You know what Maria is."

  "I don't mind," said Billy.

  "'I want Willard to get married, the sooner the better, and leave me and sister Addie Plummer in peace,' says Maria. 'We are livin' in the old Comstock house, anyway, and folks are thinkin' it sort of hard because the minister don't go to live in that nice new parsonage they've built. Willard and Esther can get married, and Esther's pa can have somebody come and keep house for him, if he don't want to live with them and they don't want him.'"

  Sam hesitated and then laughed.

  "What did she say next?" asked Billy.

  "Well, Maria did say she thought you were sort of cranky, and maybe it would work out better for you not to live with them."

  Billy laughed. "Maria and me have got just exactly the same opinions," said he.

  Sam chuckled. "I near snorted right out in her face when she said that. Maria was always smart as a whip, and good-lookin', but, gee whiz! stand out of the way when you hear her petticoats swishin'. But I swan, now she's in the right of it. She says she and her sister can be a heap
more comfortable if Willard gets married. She says their help is gittin' old, and it's nothin' but tend door, and answer the telephone, and entertain ministers exchangin'. She says it ain't any work for elderly women. Then she says they have to entertain a lot besides, and poor folks are always comin' for some charity just at meal-times. Lord! poor Maria Comstock don't want duty done by her any more than you do, Billy. And I've been thinkin' about Serrah Miles. What do you want to bother with her for? Here's this big house, and you and me could git along enough sight better together than either of us could with any woman housekeeper. I have Mis' Doty come in every week, and wash and iron, and that's all we need done. I can cook to beat any woman round here; and I don't want any arrangin' of my belongin's so I can't find a durned thing when I want it. You could rent your house, Billy, and that would give you and Esther a little extra. Of course, it wouldn't cost you nothin' to live here, but money is money."

  "Yes, it is," assented Billy. He sighed. "Tell you what 'tis, Sam: livin' here with you, and both of us doin' jest as we are a mind to, would be too much for this world, I guess. I'd feel as I used to with Betsey. Betsey used to let me smoke all over the house. She said tobacco ashes was clean dirt, and good to keep out moths. I dunno but Betsey would have smoked herself if I'd tried to make her. And I could set anywhere I wanted to, and tip my chair back, and lean my head agin' any wall-paper in the house. And if I put a thing down anywhere, I'd find it right there six months from then. Betsey never picked up my things so I couldn't find 'em. And that 'Landin' of the Pilgrim Fathers' always used to hang with the left side 'way down, and every time I see it hangin' straight it makes me homesick. Esther's a good daughter, though."

  "Lord, yes! she's good enough, but she's too everlastin' stuck on her duty to know when it's barkin' everybody else's shins!"

  "I don't know what to do," said Billy, despondently. "She and Willard talked real decided last night."

  Sam Ellis started up. "There's Eddy Abbott," he said. He rushed to the door and called: "Hullo, Eddy! Eddy, come here a minute."

  Sam admitted the small boy, as pink-faced and gentle as a little girl. "You wait a minute, Eddy," said Sam.

  Eddy stood immovable, waiting. He was an obedient child. He did not even shift his weight from one foot to the other. He did not even stare about the room while Sam wrote two notes at the old secretary.

  "Here, Eddy," said Sam. "You give this one to the minister, and the other to Miss Esther Thomas. She's at the sewing-circle in the vestry. Here, you wait a minute, Eddy." Sam took the lid from an earthen jar which stood on a magnificent old mahogany table, and brought forth two very large brown doughnut twists. "Here, Eddy," said Sam.

  "Thank you," said Eddy. He stowed away the notes carefully in his little coat pocket, took the doughnuts, and walked away eating them.

  "I fried them doughnuts yesterday," said Sam. "I don't want none of your fancy cakes, but I do like good solid doughnuts and pies; and what's more, I can make 'em to suit me better than any woman I've known sence my own mother."

  "What did you say in them notes?"

  "I said somethin' that's goin' to bring duty to a head, jest like a bile," said Sam, and roared at his own joke.

  Billy looked a little alarmed, then he also laughed.

  "Now we'll set back an' wait," said Sam.

  Esther was the first to arrive. She came hurrying down the street. Sam met her at the door.

  "Is father here? What is the matter?" she asked. She was a little out of breath. Sam, looking over her heaving shoulder, draped with soft gray cloth, could see Willard Comstock approaching. He was walking rapidly. Sam's notes had been peremptory.

  "Now don't you be one mite scared, Esther," said Sam. "There ain't anything to be scared about. Your father's in here, and we are goin' to settle things. Why, here's Willard. Hullo, Willard. Walk right in."

  Willard Comstock, tall and pale, and gentle of expression, with a square chin which seemed to denote that gentleness might have to win, at times, in hard battle, did walk in. He and Esther exchanged glances of bewilderment.

  "Nothing is the matter with father, is there?" Esther asked. Her serene voice was a little tremulous.

  "Land, no! He's as right as a cricket. No, don't go in there. That's the room where I live, mostly. I lived there all winter, and I've got my cookin'-stove in there. The spring's so late I ain't moved it out into the kitchen. I'm goin' [illustration omitted] to next week. Here, you come in this room. There's dust, but we are all made of dust and we hadn't ought to mind if we do see it layin' round loose."

  Sam ushered them into a fairly stately apartment. It was very large, the ceiling high, and the woodwork was a masterpiece of domestic architecture, patiently wrought by hands long since folded in the grave. The furniture was covered with red damask. Long curtains of red damask, caught back by gilt scroll-work, hung at the windows. There was a Turkey carpet, and old portraits and engravings. The room was dark and damp.

  Sam opened a window, and a great sighing breath of blooming lilacs from a rank growth outside entered the room. He opened another, and a shaft of sunlight marked by floating dust-motes crossed the room. They all sat down. Sam began to speak.

  "I know all about it," said he. "I know you two young folks, that ain't gittin' any younger whilst you're waitin', want to get married and set up your own home. And I know Esther thinks it's her duty to stay single and take care of her pa. And Willard thinks it's his to stay single and take care of his ma.

  "Now I'm goin' to preach to the minister and the minister's wife. Who be you, either one of you, to set up for knowin' what your duty is before other folks that's older? Esther's father wants her to get married. He thinks the world of her, and he knows she's always devoted her life to him, but--he don't want her to! And Willard's ma; she knows Willard has devoted his life to her, and--she don't want him to!

  "Billy, here, and Maria, both just want their son and daughter to get married and look out for their own interests, and let them alone to look out for theirs. Billy knows he'd be a lot happier livin' here with me, and havin' his harmless little way that ain't goin' to hurt his immortal soul one mite. And Maria knows she's goin' to be a lot happier livin' with her sister than she is with a man messin' 'round, no matter if he is her own son and the salt of the earth. Maria is all worn out playin' the second religious fiddle. She's too old.

  "So both of you, Willard and Esther, have been thinkin' you were doin' your duty and feelin' real miserable over it when you wasn't neither one of you doin' your duty at all. What you haven't neither one of you sensed is that enough sight oftener than folks realize doin' their duty is havin' their own way and lettin' other folks have theirs."

  Willard and Esther looked at each other.

  "It is so," said Sam Ellis, with a magnificent gesture of authority.

  After Willard and Esther had gone, Sam began to make preparations for supper. It was a cold day for May. Sam was to have a hot supper.

  Billy watched him, fairly grinning with delight. "Say, Sam," said he, "s'pose it's settled?"

  "Sure," said Sam. "They'll get married right off and then you and me will bunk together. Here, you peel these onions and slice 'em thin."

  "Fried onions!" gasped Billy.

  "As prime a beefsteak as ever you laid your eyes on and fried onions," proclaimed Sam, "and hot baked potatoes and coffee and doughnuts."

  "I 'ain't had any fried onions since Betsey died," said Billy. "She and I used to have 'em twice a week, regular. Esther would have had 'em if I'd asked her, but I never asked her. It would have been a real trial to her."

  "I ain't sayin' anything against your daughter," said Sam, "but sometimes I've really wondered if many folks spoke the truth when they said they didn't like onions."

  "I guess Esther don't really like 'em," said Billy.

  "Well, I dare say she don't. We do, and we can have 'em every day in the week if we want to. Slice 'em thin, Billy."

  "Beefsteak and fried onions," said Billy, thoughtfully.

>   Sam, on his way to the stove with the beefsteak, looked at Billy, and Billy looked at him. In both faces was the expression of men who have regained freedom and found her dearer than they remembered.

  "I guess now we'll all be happy, and do our duty, and have our own way," said Sam.