The Story of Miranda - Complete Trilogy (Marcia Schuyler, Phoebe Deane & Miranda). Grace Livingston Hill

and ever there was a settled sadness about the lines of David’s mouth and eyes. They sat around one table now, the evenings when they were at home, for there were still occasional tea-drinkings at their friends’ houses; and there was one night a week held religiously for a formal supper with the aunts, which David kindly acquiesced in—more for the sake of his Aunt Clarinda than the others,—whenever he was not detained by actual business. Then, too, there was the weekly prayer meeting held at “early candle light” in the dim old shadowed church. They always walked down the twilighted streets together, and it seemed to Marcia there was a sweet solemnity about that walk. They never said much to each other on the way. David seemed preoccupied with holy thoughts, and Marcia walked softly beside him as if he had been the minister, looking at him proudly and reverently now and then. David was often called upon to pray in meeting and Marcia loved to listen to his words. He seemed to be more intimate with God than the others, who were mostly old men and prayed with long, rolling, solemn sentences that put the whole community down into the dust and ashes before their Creator.

      Marcia rather enjoyed the hour spent in the sombreness of the church, with the flickering candle light making grotesque forms of shadows on the wall and among the tall pews. The old minister reminded her of the one she had left at home, though he was more learned and scholarly, and when he had read the Scripture passages he would take his spectacles off and lay them across the great Bible where the candle light played at glances with the steel bows, and say: “Let us pray!” Then would come that soft stir and hush as the people took the attitude of prayer. Marcia sometimes joined in the prayer in her heart, uttering shy little petitions that were vague and indefinite, and had to do mostly with the days when she was troubled and homesick, and felt that David belonged wholly to Kate. Always her clear voice joined in the slow hymns that quavered out now and again, lined out to the worshippers.

      Marcia and David went out from that meeting down the street to their home with the hush upon them that must have been upon the Israelites of old after they had been to the solemn congregation.

      But once David had come in earlier than usual and had caught Marcia reading the Scottish Chiefs, and while she started guiltily to be found thus employed he smiled indulgently. After supper he said: “Get your book, child, and sit down. I have some writing to do, and after it is done I will read it to you.” So after that, more and more often, it was a book that Marcia held in her hands in the long evenings when they sat together, instead of some useful employment, and so her education progressed. Thus she read Epictetus, Rasselas, The Deserted Village, The Vicar of Wakefield, Paradise Lost, the Mysteries of the Human Heart, Marshall’s Life of Columbus, The Spy, The Pioneers, and The Last of the Mohicans.

      She had been asked to sing in the village choir. David sang a sweet high tenor there, and Marcia’s voice was clear and strong as a blackbird’s, with the plaintive sweetness of the wood-robin’s.

      Hannah Heath was in the choir also, and jealously watched her every move, but of this Marcia was unaware until informed of it by Miranda. With her inherited sweetness of nature she scarcely credited it, until one Sunday, a few weeks after the departure of Harry Temple, Hannah leaned forward from her seat among the altos and whispered quite distinctly, so that those around could hear—it was just before the service—“I’ve just had a letter from your friend Mr. Temple. I thought you might like to know that his cousin got well and he has gone back to New York. He won’t be returning here this year. On some accounts he thought it was better not.”

      It was all said pointedly, with double emphasis upon the “your friend,” and “some accounts.” Marcia felt her cheeks glow, much to her vexation, and tried to control her whisper to seem kindly as she answered indifferently enough.

      “Oh, indeed! But you must have made a mistake. Mr. Temple is a very slight acquaintance of mine. I have met him only a few times, and I know nothing about his cousin. I was not aware even that he had gone away.”

      Hannah raised her speaking eyebrows and replied, quite loud now, for the choir leader had stood up already with his tuning-fork in hand, and one could hear it faintly twang:

      “Indeed!”—using Marcia’s own word—and quite coldly, “I should have thought differently from what Harry himself told me,” and there was that in her tone which deepened the color in Marcia’s cheeks and caused it to stay there during the entire morning service as she sat puzzling over what Hannah could have meant. It rankled in her mind during the whole day. She longed to ask David about it, but could not get up the courage.

      She could not bear to revive the memory of what seemed to be her shame. It was at the minister’s donation party that Hannah planted another thorn in her heart,—Hannah, in a green plaid silk with delicate undersleeves of lace, and a tiny black velvet jacket.

      She selected a time when Lemuel was near, and when Aunt Amelia and Aunt Hortense, who believed that all the young men in town were hovering about David’s wife, sat one on either side of Marcia, as if to guard her for their beloved nephew—who was discussing politics with Mr. Heath—and who never seemed to notice, so blind he was in his trust of her.

      So Hannah paused and posed before the three ladies, and with Lemuel smiling just at her elbow, began in her affected way:

      “I’ve had another letter from New York, from your friend Mr. Temple,” she said it with the slightest possible glance over her shoulder to get the effect of her words upon the faithful Lemuel, “and he tells me he has met a sister of yours. By the way, she told him that David used to be very fond of her before she was married. I suppose she’ll be coming to visit you now she’s so near as New York.”

      Two pairs of suspicious steely eyes flew like stinging insects to gaze upon her, one on either side, and Marcia’s heart stood still for just one instant, but she felt that here was her trying time, and if she would help David and do the work for which she had become his wife, she must protect him now from any suspicions or disagreeable tongues. By very force of will she controlled the trembling of her lips.

      “My sister will not likely visit us this winter, I think,” she replied as coolly as if she had had a letter to that effect that morning, and then she deliberately looked at Lemuel Skinner and asked if he had heard of the offer of prizes of four thousand dollars in cash that the Baltimore and Ohio railroad had just made for the most approved engine delivered for trial before June first, 1831, not to exceed three and a half tons in weight and capable of drawing, day by day, fifteen tons inclusive of weight of wagons, fifteen miles per hour. Lemuel looked at her blankly and said he had not heard of it. He was engaged in thinking over what Hannah had said about a letter from Harry Temple. He cared nothing about railroads.

      “The second prize is thirty-five hundred dollars,” stated Marcia eagerly, as though it were of the utmost importance to her.

      “Are you thinking of trying for one of the prizes?” sneered Hannah, piercing her with her eyes, and now indeed the ready color flowed into Marcia’s face. Her ruse had been detected.

      “If I were a man and understood machinery I believe I would. What a grand thing it would be to be able to invent a thing like an engine that would be of so much use to the world,” she answered bravely.

      “They are most dangerous machines,” said Aunt Amelia disapprovingly. “No right-minded Christian who wishes to live out the life his Creator has given him would ever ride behind one. I have heard that boilers always explode.”

      “They are most unnecessary!” said Aunt Hortense severely, as if that settled the question for all time and all railroad corporations.

      But Marcia was glad for once of their disapproval and entered most heartily into a discussion of the pros and cons of engines and steam, quoting largely from David’s last article for the paper on the subject, until Hannah and Lemuel moved slowly away. The discussion served to keep the aunts from inquiring further that evening about the sister in New York.

      Marcia begged them to go with her into the kitchen and see the store of good things that had been brought to the minister’s house by his loving parishioners. Bags of flour and meal, pumpkins, corn in the ear, eggs, and nice little pats of butter. A great wooden tub of doughnuts, baskets of apples and quinces, pounds of sugar and tea,