13. A Weather-Breeder
Peers into the future are depressing. Twonnet's gypsy gift did not raise Roxy's spirits. By means of divination she had suddenly found, not exactly that she was in love with Mark, but that she was in a fair way to love him. It was painful, too, to know that all the joy she had had in talking with Bonamy was not as she had thought it, purely religious and disinterested. Her sensitive conscience shuddered at the thought of self-deception, and she had been in this case both deceiver and dupe. She had little belief in Twonnet's gift of prophecy but much in her shrewd insight. Was it true, then, that the great, brilliant and self-sacrificing Mark loved her ? This thought would have been enough to plunge her into .loubt and questionings. But Twonnet's evident distrust of her hero vexed and perturbed her. And then to have her other hero suddenly thrown into the opposite scale drove her into a tangle of complex feelings. How did Twonnet know anything about Mr. Whittakers feeling toward her ? Was it likely that he would want to marry a Methodist ?
Alas! just when her life was flowing so smoothly and she seemed to be able to be useful, the whole stream was suddenly perturbed by cross-currents and eddies, and she was thrown into doubts innumerable. Prayer did not seem to do any good ; her thoughts were so distracted i-hat devotion was impossible. This distraction and depression seemed to her the hiding of the Lord's face. She wrote in her diary on that day :
" I am walking in great darkness. I have committed some sin and the Lord has withdrawn from me the light of his countenance. I try to pray, but my thoughts wander. I fear I have set my heart on earthly things. What a sinner I am. Oh Lord ! have mercy I Leave me not in my distress. Show me the right way, and lead me in paths of righteousness for thy name's sake."
The coming of Whittaker that afternoon added to her bewilderment. She did her best to receive him with composure and cordiality, but Twonnet's prophecy had so impressed her beforehand with the purpose of his visit that she looked on him from the first in doubt, indecision and despair. And yet her woman's heart went out toward him as he sat there before her, gentle, manly, unselfish and refined. It was clear to her then that she could love him. But thoughts of Mark Bonamy and his mission intruded. Had Whittaker come a week or two earlier !
While the minister talked, Roxy could not control her fingers at her knitting. Her hands trembled and refused to make those motions which long since had become so habitual as to be almost involuntary. There was one relief ; Bobo sat alongside of her and the poor fellow grew uneasy as he discovered her agitation. She let fall her knitting and pushed the hair from the boy's inquiring face, lavishing on him the pity she felt for her suitor, speaking caressing words to him, which he caught up and repeated like an echo in the tones of tenderness which she used. Whittaker envied the perpetual child these caresses and the pitying love which Roxy gave him. Roxy was much moved by Whittaker's emotion. Her pitiful heart longed not so .nneh to love him for her own sake ae to comfort him for his sake. Some element of compassion must needs have been mingled with the highest love of which she was capable.
The minister came to the love-making rather abruptly. He praised her and his praises were grateful to her, he avowed his love, and love was very sweet to her, but it wap when, having exhausted his praises and his declarations he leaned forward his head on his hand, and said, " Only 'ove me, Roxy, if you can," that she was deeply moved. She ceased her caresses of the boy and looked out of the window in silence, as though she would fain find something there that might show her a way out of the perplexities into which her life had come. Bobo, in whose mind there was always an echo, caught at the last words, and imitating the very tone of the minister, pleaded :
" Only love me, Roxy, if you can."
This was too much for the girl's pent-up emotions, sho caught the lad and pressed him in her arms eagerly, saying or sobbing :
" Yes, I will love you. Bo, God bless you ! "
She had no sooner relaxed her hold than the minister, in whose eyes were tears, put his own arm about the simple lad and embraced him, much to the boy's delight. This act, almost involuntary as it was, touched Roxy's very heart. She was ready in that moment to have given herself to the good man.
But again she looked out of the window, straining her eyes in that blind, instinctive, searching stare, to which we are all prone in time of perplexity. There was nothing without but some pea-vines, climbing and blossoming on the brush which supported them, a square bed of lettuce, and a hop-vine clambering in bewildering luxuriance over the rail fence. The peaceful hen-mother, troubled by no doubts or scruples, scratched diligently in the soft earth, clucking out her content with a world in which there were plenty of angle-worms, and seeming in her placidity to mock at Roxy's perturbation. Why should all these dumb creatures be so full of peace ? Roxy had not learned, that internal conflicts are the heritage of superiority. It is so easy for small-headed stupidity to take no thought for the morrow.
But all that Roxy, with her staring out of the window, could see was that she could not see anything at all.
" Will you tell me, Miss Adams," asked the minister, presently, " whether I am treading where I ought not whether you are engaged ? "
"No, I am not." Roxy was a little startled at his addressing her as " Miss Adams." For in a western village the Christian name is quite the common form of speech to a young person.
There was another long silence, during which Roxy again inquired of the idle-looking pea-vines, and the placid hen, and the great, green hop-vine clambering over the fence. Then she summoned courage to speak :
"Please, Mr. Whittaker, give me time to think and pray for light. Will you wait a week or so ? I cannot see my way."
" I cannot see my way," put in Bobo, pathetically.
"Certainly, Roxy. Good-bye ! "
She held out her hand, he pressed it but without looking at her face, put on his hat, and shook hands with little Bobo, whose sweet infantile face looked after him wistfully.
He was gone and Roxy sighed with relief, But she had only postponed the conflict.
The minister, who had carried away much hope, met Mr. Adams in the street, and, partly because he felt friendly toward everybody and toward all connected with Roxy in particular, he stopped to talk with him ; and he in turn was in one of his most contrary moods, and took pains to disagree with the preacher about everything.
" It is a beautiful day," said Whittaker at last, as he was saying good-bye, resolved perhaps to say one thing which his friend could not controvert.
"Yes, nice day," growled Adams, "but a weatherbreeder."
This contradictoriness in the shoe-maker took all the hopefulness out of Whittaker. The last words seemed ominous. He returned home dejected, and when Twonnet essayed to cheer him and to give him an opportunity for conversation by saying that it was a beautiful day, he Btartled himself by replying, with a sigh :
" Yes, but a weather-breeder."