AN IDYL OF THE WABASH

AN IDYL OF THE WABASH AND OTHER STORIES

BY ANNA NICHOLAS

NEW YORK HURST & COMPANY PUBLISHERS

Copyright 1898 The Bowen Merrill Company Copyright 1912 The Bobbs-Merrill Company An Idyl of the Wabash

TO MY MOTHER

AN IDYL OF THE WABASH

WHEN Miss Callista Rogers first came from her Vermont home to the little Indiana town of Honeyport, on the Wabash, she had a sense of almost perilous adventure—something like that felt by the pioneer women who followed up the ever-advancing and now forever vanished frontier.

“It is so very far away,” she said to her family before starting, “and while, of course, there are no Indians and no danger of having one’s scalp taken, or anything of that sort, still, things will be queer and the people can’t be expected to be like those in Vermont, not having had the same advantages.”

After she reached Honeyport she wrote to her sister that the people were queer, but that they seemed friendly, and she thought she should get along real well. At that time Miss Callista was not much past her first youth, but she had lived [2]long enough to have imbibed the very firm conviction that New England opinions and New England ways were the only opinions and only ways worth considering seriously. Holding such belief, it might naturally have been expected that she would come into conflict with her new associates, but a fair degree of discretion prevented her from airing her views too aggressively, and her wholesome humor and evident kindliness of spirit led her Hoosier friends to be indulgent to such of her unflattering opinions as were inadvertently betrayed and to regard her with considerable favor.

She had come to Indiana to teach school, and to Honeyport through the intercession in her behalf of Deacon Knox, an old family friend at home whose second cousin had married Rev. Calvin Evans, pastor of the Presbyterian Church at Honeyport.

In those days—it was soon after the war—teaching, especially in the rural districts and village communities, was not the complicated and exacting science it has since become. Miss Callista was fairly well grounded in the common English branches; in the way of accomplishments she knew a little music, and as a crowning [3]acquirement had an acquaintance with the rudiments of the Latin language. This last she was not called upon to teach, but the consciousness that she was on familiar terms—hardly a speaking acquaintance, to be sure—with the ancient tongue was a source of infinite satisfaction to her; it gave her a sense of superiority and power.

There were some preliminaries to be undergone before she was officially authorized to teach the young idea of Honeyport, an examination among the rest, but this was not severe, and she stood it successfully. As for the methods of teaching to be adopted, there were no fixed rules as now under the elaborate and inflexible system in vogue. She was free to follow her own judgment, which was for the most part good, being based on New England common sense and a power of adaptation to the pupils’ individual needs which every successful teacher must have. So she taught in one of the two schools of Honeyport very acceptably to the people, who were easy-going and not yet affected by the “higher education” fad.

But Miss Callista did not so easily adapt herself to her new environment in all respects. She did not like the appearance of the town and the [4]surrounding country, to begin with. The country was too level. Her soul yearned for the hills as the souls of those born among them must do till memory fails. She missed the blue distances, the lights and shadows, the feeling of companionship the mountains gave. The prairie was monotonous and the sky shut down too close. The village itself was trying to her sense of thrift and order. She could not free her mind concerning it in her letters home, for she was resolved to give nothing but agreeable impressions to the mother and sister back in the trim and prim but picturesque Vermont town.

To Mrs. Evans, the pastor’s wife, she unburdened her mind when her sensibilities were too deeply outraged. In Mrs. Evans she had found a congenial acquaintance. That lady had lived in Indiana for so many years that she had acquired some of the habits and peculiarities of what Miss Callista called the natives, but she had been born in New England and cherished its traditions. Consequently, she sympathized in a measure with the strictures made by the new teacher, but she was a discreet woman, as became a minister’s wife, and the confidences poured into her ears went no further. Understanding [5]this, Miss Callista felt free to express her true sentiments on all matters. She was especially indignant over the slipshod ways of the village.

“It’s perfectly scandalous,” she said, “the way they let the grass grow in the gutters and the way they let the pigs and cattle run loose in the street. They ought to have more pride. Why, when I rode up Main street in the Paw Paw hack that first day and saw the sidewalks almost covered by high grass, and cows and pigs lying right on the walks, and people stepping around them, I expected to find slovenly housekeeping, too. Like town, like people, I thought. Didn’t turn out jest that way, I’m free to confess. There are some very nice, neat housekeepers here.”

Another peculiarity of the natives excited Miss Callista’s scorn.

“I never see,” she told Mrs. Evans, “such a dowdy set as they be. Why, they don’t care how they look. The women don’t dress up of afternoons, and farmers’ wives don’t put on a fresh dud when they come to town; jest wear their old limpsy calicoes and sunbunnets. The men ain’t a mite better, though, to be sure, that’s [6]the women’s fault. Husbands are much what the wives make ’em, as you know. I don’t set no great store by fashions and folderols myself,” she went on, “but it’s certainly a dreadful shame they don’t slick up more when they go to meeting—particularly the Campbellites. Go over to that church an’ you won’t see a man with a starched shirt bosom. Not that I look at such things, specially, but if you have eyes you must see. Clean enough, all of ’em, mebbe, but no stiffenin’. I’d like to clear starch ’em all once—men, women and children.

“And there is another thing. Folks around here surmise and wonder, but can’t guess one of the main reasons why I set up my own little housekeeping. Of course, in the first place, I wanted to economize, but, Mrs. Evans, another great thing was that I jest wanted something good to eat. I do’ know as I’m so very dainty about my eating, an’ I do’ know but I be. Anyhow, I don’t like the cooking I get at most places. Of course, if you’d felt clear to take me it would a’ been all right s’ far as the table’s concerned, but most places they don’t suit me. They can’t make a good cup o’ tea; they don’t know how to make yeast bread, and not one of ’em can [7]make a decent pie. I will say for ’em, though, that they can fry chicken to beat all creation.”

Miss Callista conceived a peculiar animosity toward the religious sect variously known as “Disciples,” “Christians” and “Campbellites.” Just why was not clear. It may have been due to the fact that she had never heard of the denomination back in Vermont, and being, as she considered, a purely western product, it was, therefore, to be distrusted as somehow unorthodox and subversive of pious principles. The sect was numerously represented in that locality, and the congregation which worshiped in one of the three churches of Honeyport was larger than either the Methodists or Presbyterians could muster.

“I shan’t call ’em Disciples,” sniffed Miss Callista, “jest as if they were as good as the Twelve, an’ I shan’t call ’em Christians. The idear! Jest as if they had a patent on the name. They don’t like to be called Campbellites, but I shall call ’em Campbellites the hull time. How any reasonable human being can believe in the docterns of that church does beat me. An’ there they’ll set an’ listen to jest the scrappiest kind o’ sermons, when, by crossin’ [8]the street, they could hear your husband’s stirrin’ discourses.”

It will be seen from this that Miss Callista was not a woman of broad mind, and that, though she made her opinions plain to the comprehension, they were not expressed in that correct and elegant language so desirable in the teachers of youth. It is but just, however, to say that she was aware of some of these verbal lapses. As she herself remarked:

“Nobody understands grammar, and what is proper language, better than I do, and in school I always take great care to speak correctly. When I come home, though, it’s too much trouble to be thinking of the parts of speech, and I drop into an easier sort o’ talk, as I put on a kitchen apron or an old pair o’ shoes.”

Her idioms and accents she was unconscious of, and therefore could not drop. The born New Englander seldom does. She would say “Indianar,” and “idear,” and “Mariar” to the end of her days. She was quick to detect what she considered errors in others, however.

“‘Bucket!’ Don’t let me hear you say ‘bucket,’” she would tell her pupils. “It’s a ridiculous word; say ‘pail.’ And don’t say [9]you ‘reckon’ or ‘low’ you’ll do so and so; say ‘guess.’”

Miss Callista had come West to teach because, even if she could get a school at her home, with all the eager candidates in competition for every place, better salaries were paid in Indiana. For her own part she would have preferred to stay in Vermont, even with the scant wages of the district school, but she had a mother and sister who needed her earnings, and it was for them she started out to seek a better fortune. The mother was a widow with a tiny home to call her own and an income hardly in proportion; the sister, a fragile girl with the New England scourge, consumption, already making its signs visible. Miss Callista must be the bread winner, and she went bravely about her task. She loved her family and her home; she had none of the self-assertiveness that is needed for those who would get on in the world; she dreaded the separation from her dear ones, and yet it never occurred to her to rebel against fate that made such a trial possible. She did not dream that she was heroic, and yet it is in such actions that the heroism of the latter days is

[10]found—a heroism not less than that which led the knights of old on their crusades.

Many and many a day in her new abiding place homesickness pressed upon her like a tangible weight; her heart ached for a sight of dear faces and familiar scenes; the very sun shining in the heavens took on a forbidding look, and the birds sang a melancholy tune. But if the poor, lonely little woman wept it was when no one knew. She kept a brave face and wrote cheery letters to the invalid at home. Every penny of her salary but that which supplied her own barest needs went to make the life of that invalid easier. She not only made no complaint over her own deprivations and sacrifices; she made the sacrifices gladly and did not know them to be such. Women are often like that. If the beneficiaries accepted the gifts as a matter of course and without appreciation of the life that was being given also, why, that was not unusual either. The human creature is often so.

The years went on until five had passed since Miss Callista had seen the faces of her kin and the blue Vermont hills. At the beginning she had not dreamed that so long a time would elapse before she could return, but one thing [11]and another had delayed her visit. The invalid sister had needed so many things. The malady made inroads and delicacies were wanted to keep up her strength; medicines, too, and the doctor must be paid. Once a famous specialist came up from Boston to see her, and that cost money. This fifth winter just ended had been spent by the ailing one in Florida, but she was now at home again, and a turn of fortune in the shape of a railroad rate war made it suddenly possible for Miss Callista to go to see her and the dear mother. The cost of travel, the rival passenger agents declared, was less than that of staying at home. So, the spring term having just ended, she joyfully went her way.

She was in time for the end. Though it was early June and the sun shone with torrid strength on the Honeyport prairie, and the roses were in bloom, it was not so surely summer but that a wintry blast swept down from the north through the Vermont valleys and undid all the healing wrought by the Florida airs. The ailing sister was cut down as a lily by the frost. She died in Miss Callista’s arms—faithful arms that had scarce time to rest before they held the mother’s weary form while her soul breathed itself away. [12]The mother had lived for the stricken daughter, and that beloved life ended, she, too, was done with earth.

The summer vacation was not over when Miss Callista came back to Honeyport. The charm of her childhood’s home was gone. Later in life the glamour of the mountains would come back to her and her heart would yearn for a sight of them, but now they chilled her and she was glad to return to the once despised village on the Wabash, with the unbroken, shadowless landscape and the level horizon. Out of the old home life were left only memories and a few household goods. When some of these treasures were unloaded at the door of her Indiana home—a heavy oaken secretary, a spindle-legged table, a straight-backed, comfortless-looking chair—the men who lifted them into place wondered that she went to the expense of shipping such old-fashioned furnishings when she might have bought finer ones at home for less money. But the women who saw them did not wonder—women who had found for themselves how the heart clings to inanimate things when they alone are left to speak of the dead.

So Miss Callista, permanently transplanted, [13]settled down in a bit of a cottage next to the Presbyterian parsonage, still occupied by her friends, the Evanses, and resumed her occupation of teaching. There was no one now to save for and deny herself for, but, being an unselfish creature, this only brought her pain. Nevertheless, as time went on life grew more comfortable for her. She indulged in an occasional bit of finery; now and then she went on an excursion somewhere. Once she went to Indianapolis to attend the state fair, and once she went to Chicago and came back dizzy and bewildered, glad to be in the quiet home away from the busy whirl.

The years went on until more than fifteen had passed since she set foot on Hoosier soil. All this time she had not escaped the speculations all normally constituted people are bound to indulge in concerning the matrimonial prospects of their spinster friends. It was assumed that she was not only ready, but anxious to marry when the opportunity and the man offered, and kindly neighbors kept a lookout for both. Miss Callista alone seemed indifferent. Apparently she took no thought of such possibilities. She was polite in a sedate way to the occasional [14]marriageable men who showed a disposition to hover around her, but she gave encouragement to none. Her Honeyport friends suspected that she had wasted her heart on some unappreciative Vermont Yankee, but this was not the case.

The truth was that the marriageable male beings who had come within her range of possibilities had not been quite to her liking. The farmers who constituted the most of these eligibles were too rough and careless in dress, too much given to tobacco chewing and too loudly hilarious in their conversation to please her somewhat fastidious taste. She may not have cherished a definite ideal of the man who would meet her requirements, but she had a clear conception of what would not do. So the years had gone swiftly by, bringing few changes in the routine of her life, or even in her appearance. She was a plump and comely body, and in some respects more attractive than in her younger days, for lines of care and anxiety and homesickness had given way to placid contentment in her work and in every-day affairs. She looked forward to no change in her mode of life or her experiences, but, as so often happens when change comes into an uneventful existence, it comes unexpectedly [15]and creates a complete transformation in the little world.

Mrs. Evans, still her nearest neighbor and closest friend, fell ill and came swiftly down to death’s door. Before she passed through she said to Miss Callista, who was her faithful attendant:

“When I am gone Calvin will marry again after a proper time. He will; oh, yes. It is a man’s way, and it will be Calvin’s way. He will need somebody to look after him. I want you to be the one, and I have told him so. You will know how and will do for him as I would.”

This was said gaspingly between paroxysms of pain, but with all the firmness and decision for which Mrs. Evans was noted when at her best estate. It was the supreme proof of a woman’s faith in another that she could put her husband into her keeping, and, having given it, she closed her eyes and opened them no more.

This last communication made a powerful impression on Miss Callista. It was a startling surprise, but she accepted it unquestioningly as a guide to her future.

What Mrs. Evans wanted Mr. Evans to do had always been done, and she had not the faintest [16]doubt that he would follow his wife’s instructions in this, as he had been accustomed to do in all other matters.

She grieved for her friend’s death, but almost insensibly she began to adjust herself to coming conditions. The bereaved man assumed the conventional appearance of gentle melancholy by which the newly-made widower is so easily recognized, and his earliest sermons had a tenderly pathetic tone that she, in common with the other women of the congregation, considered very touching and appropriate. But even in this sacred stage of his widowerhood she felt herself looking upon him with a new interest and a secret sense of possession. She had been brought up to revere ministers as a class, and had always had a respectful regard for Mr. Evans because of his profession and because he had been kind to her. He was not her ideal of manly beauty, being gaunt of frame and bald of head; moreover, he was twenty years older than she, being nearly sixty. However, she recognized the fact that it was not for her to make age a barrier, since no widower of sixty was likely to consider himself other than desirable even to a maid of twenty.

[17]She also confessed to herself that she had always considered the wife of a minister blessed among women, and that, while she had never hoped to marry one, the sudden and unexpected prospect of doing so was very agreeable indeed. She felt herself fitted to the labor of smoothing life’s pathway for a servant of the Lord. Not that she could assist in sermon-writing, as she had suspected the first Mrs. Evans of doing, but she could minister to his comfort in a more material way. She could take household cares from his shoulders; she could make him presentable to the public; she could keep him posted on many ins and outs of the parish; above all, she could feed him well, and she held that of all men ministers needed to be well fed. She considered it a reasonable proposition that a man could administer a far higher degree of spiritual consolation to his flock when his stomach was comfortably filled than when it was empty or dyspeptic from poor food.