Roxy

11. Divining Cups

Intense excitements cannot endure. It isa"mercifnl provision." Human nature strained too long in any direction must find repose in relaxation or change in reaction. As the white heat of the political excitement of " the campaign of '40 " had cooled off, so now the revival excitement slowly but surely subsided. There were brethren unversed in the philosophy of human nature who did nol know that after the summer heat of religious excitement a hibernation is needful and healthy, and who set themselves to prevent the cooling, or the " backsliding " as they termed it. But the ebb tide was too strong for them, they were caught in it themselves, tired nature overstrained in one direction sank into torpor, in them as well as in others. Doubtless this period of reaction was worth quite as much as the period of revival. The winnowing went on rapidly now; the good folks were greatly alarmed to see how much of what they had raked together was mere chaff ; but ever as the wind drove away the chaff, the solid grain became visible.

Among those who proved steadfast was the young lawyer. He did not go out to exhort so much in meetings as before, but then it was corn-planting time and meetings were no longer common in the country. He gave attention to his business, but it was still understood that he meditated some dreadful mission to some outlandish place, Oregon or Texas of Guinea gossips were divided about the exact locality it was away off in that direction somewhere. Mark talked less about it now, ard was not quite so sure of his own mind in the matter as he had been, except while talking to Roxy. He grew more and move fond of talking to Roxy. In conversation with her it was the better Mark who spoke. The lower, the passionate, the vacillating Mark was quite put out of sight. Roxy called out his best, and put him in conceit with himself All that was highest in her transferred itself somehow to him, and he was inclined to give himself credit for originating the impulses with which she inspired him. He liked to look at himself shining in the light of her reflected enthusiasm. She had set up an ideal Mark Bonainy, and the real Mark was so pleased to look at this flattering picture in the mind of the pure-hearted girl, that he came to believe the image of himself which he saw there to be an accurate likeness.

Of course interviews so frequent and so pleasant must grow to something more. It doesn't matter what a young man and a young woman talk about, even sympathetic conversations about missionary labors in Texas or in Greenland are apt to become tender. One enthusiasm translates itself so easily into another! This worship of his real and imaginary goodness, and this stimulus of what was best in him was so agreeable to Bonamy that he began to doubt whether after all it was best to undertake a mission to the Texans single-handed and alone. Good old sisters whose match-making proclivities had not died but had only been sanctified, took occasion to throw out hints on the subject, which greatly encouraged Mark to believe that Roxy was divinely intended and molded to be his helpmate in that great, vast, vague enterprise which should be worthy of the large abilities he had consecrated.

Roxy on her part was a highly imaginative girl. Here vras a large-shouldered, magnificent, Apollo-like fellow, who thought himself something wonderful, and whom his friends thought wonderful. It was easy to take him at the popular estimate, and then to think she had discovered even more than others saw in him. For was it not to her that he revealed his great unsettled plans for suffering and dying for the cross of Christ ? And as he came more and more, the pure-spirited girl began to long that she might somehow share iiis toils and sufferings. The ambition to do some heroic thing had always burned in her heart, and in her it was a pure flame with no taint of selfishness or egotism.

Mark went into Adams's shop one day to have his boots mended.

" So you are going to Texas, are you ? " broke out the shoe-maker, with half-suppressed vehemence.

" Yes."

" Fool's errand fool's errand," muttered the old man as he turned the boots over to look at the soles. Then he looked furtively at Bonamy and was disappointed to find in his face no sign of perturbation. " Fool's errand, I say," sharper than before.

Mark tossed back his black hair, and said with a twinkle:

" So you think, no doubt."

" Think ! think ? " Here the shoe-maker choked for utterance. " I tell you if you were my son I'd --" then he went on turning the boots over and left the sentence unfinished. Perhaps because he could not think what he would do to such a strapping son as Mark ; perhaps because the sentence seemed more frightful in this mysterious state of suspended animation than it could have done with any conceivable penalty at the end.

" You'd spank me and not give me any supper, may be," said Mark, who was determined to be good-natured with Roxy's father.

The old man's face did not relax.

" That shoe needs half-soling," he said, ferociously. '' What makes you run your boots down at the heel ? "

" To make business lively for the shoe-makers."

"And what'll you do when you get to Texas where there are no shoe -makers ? I wish I could patch cracked heads as easy as cracked shoes."

Adams was not averse to Mark's flattering attentions to Roxy, to which he had attached a significance greater than Mark had intended or Roxy suspected. Missionary fever would soon blow over perhaps, and then Mark was sure to " be somebody."

Besides, the shoe-maker was himself meditating a marriage with Miss Moore. Her sign hung next to his own on Main street, and read, "Miss Moore, Millinery and Mantua-maker." Adams may have guessed from the verbal misconstruction of the sign, that the mantua-maker was as much in the market as the millinery ; but at least he had taken pity on her loneliness and Miss Moore had " felt great sympathy for " his loneliness, and so they were both ready to decrease their loneliness by making a joint stock of it. Adams, thinking of marriage himself, could not feel unkind toward a similar weakness in younger people.

There was, however, one person who did not like this growing attachment between Mark Bonamy and Roxy Adams. Twonnet had built other castles for her friend. She was not sentimental, but shrewd, practical, matterof-fact in short she was Swiss. She did not believe in Mark's steadfastness. Besides, her hero was Whittaker, whose serious excellence of character was a source of per petual admiration in her. She was fully conscious of her own general unfitness to aspire to* be the wife of such a man ; she had an apprehension that she abode most of the time under the weight of the minister's displeasure, and t'he plainly saw that in his most kindly moods he treated her as one of those who were doomed to a sort of perpetual and amiable childhood. It was by no great stretch of magnanimity, therefore, that Twonnet set herself to find a way to promote an attachment between Whittaker and Roxy. Next to her own love affair a girl is interested in somebody else's love affair.

But Twonnet saw no way of pushing her design, for Whittaker carefully abstained from going to Adams's house. Twonnet beguiled Roxy into spending evenings at her father's. Whittaker, on such occasions, took the dispensations of Providence kindly, basking in the sun light of Roxy's inspiring presence for a few hours, and lying awake in troubled indecision the entire night thereafter. It was with an increase of hope that Twonnet saw the mutual delight of the two in each other's society, and she was more than ever convinced that she was the humble instrumentality set apart by Providence to bring about a fore ordained marriage. She managed on one pretext or another to leave them alone at times in the old-fashioned parlor, with no witness but the Swiss clock on the wall, the tic-tac of whose long, slow pendulum made the precious moments of communion with Roxy seem longer and more precious to the soul of the preacher. But nothing came of these long-drawn seconds of conversation on indifferent topics nothing ever came but sleepless nights and new conflicts for Whittaker. For how should he marry on his slender salary and with his education yet unpaid for ! After each of these interviews contrived bj Twonnet, the good-hearted maneuverer looked in vain to see him resume his calls at the house of Mr. Adams. But He did not. She could not guess why.

One night Twonnet spent with Roxy. Mark came in, in his incidental way, during the evening, but he did not get on well. The shrewd Twonnet got him to tell of his electioneering experiences, and contrived to make him show the wrong side of his nature all the evening. Roxy was unhappy at this, and so was Mark, but Twonnet felt a mischievous delight in thus turning Mark aside from talking about Roxy's pet enthusiasms, and in showing them the discords which incipient lovers do not care to see.

The girls sat at the breakfast-table a little late the next morning late in relation to village habits, for it was nearly seven o'clock. Twonnet proposed to tell fortunes with coffee-grounds, after the manner of girls. Roxy hesitated a little ; she was scrupulous about trifles, but at Twonnet's entreaty she reversed her cup to try the fortune of her friend.

" I don't see anything, Twonnet, in these grounds," she said, inspecting the inside of her cup, " except except yes I see an animal. I can't tell whether it's a dog or a mule. It has a dog's tail and mule's ears. What does that mean ?"

" Pshaw ! you aren't worth a cent, Roxy, to tell fortunes," and with that Twonnet looked over her shoulder. " Dog's tail ! why that's a sword, don't you see. I am to have a gentleman come to see me who is a military man." "But will he carry his sword up in the air that way as if He were going to cut your head off if you should refuse him ? " asked Roxy, " and what about these ears ? "

" Ears ! that is beastly, Roxy. Those are side-whiskers Now, see me tell your fortune."

With this, Twonnet capsized her cup in the saucer and let it remain inverted for some seconds, then righting it again she beheld the sediment of her coffee streaked up and down the side of the cup in a most unintelligible way. But Twonuet's rendering was fore-determined.

" I see," she began, and then she paused a long time, for in truth it was hard to see anything. " I see "

" Well, what ? " said Roxy, " a dog's tail or sidewhiskers ? "

" I see a young man, rather tall, with curly hair and and broad shoulders." Twonnet now looked steadily in the cup, and spoke with the rapt air of a Pythoness. Had she looked up she would have seen the color increasing in Roxy's cheeks. " But his back is turned, and so I see that you will reject him. There are crooked lines crossing his figure by which I perceive it would have been a great source of trouble to you had you accepted him. There would have been discord and evil."

Here Roxy grew pale, but Twonnet still looked eagerly in the cup.

' I see," she continued, " a tall, serious man. There is a book in front of him. He is a minister. The lines about him are smooth and indicate happiness. His face is toward me and I perceive that "

But here Roxy impatiently wrested the cup from her band and said, " Shut up, you gabbling story-teller ! " Then looking in the cup curiously, she said, " There's nothing of all that there. Just a few streaks of coffeegrounds."

" May be you spoiled it," said the gypsy Twonnet. " You cannot read your own destiny. I read it for you."

" And I read yours," said Roxy ; " an animal with a dog's tail and mule's ears. But don't let's talk any more nonsense, Twonnet, it's a sin."

"More harm comes of religious talk sometimes than o' fooling," retorted Twonnet.

" What do you mean?" demanded Roxy, with anger and alarm.

But Twonnet did not answer except by a significant look from her black eyes. The girls had changed places for a time. It was Twonnet wh< had taken the lead.