Hillsboro People

by Dorothy Canfield Fisher

I

At the foot of Hemlock Mountain spring came late that year, now a century and a half gone by, as it comes late still to the remote back valley, lying high among the Green Mountains; but when it came it had a savor of enchantment unknown to milder regions. The first day of spring was no uncertain date in Hillsboro, then as now. One morning generally about the middle of May, people woke up with the sun shining in their eyes, and the feeling in their hearts that something had happened in the night. The first one of the family dressed, who threw open the house-door, felt the odor of stirring life go to his head, was the Reverend Mr. Everett himself. In the little community of Puritans, whose isolation had preserved intact the rigidity of faith which had begun to soften somewhat in other parts of New England, there was no one who openly saluted the miracle of resurrection by more than the brief remark, "Warm weather's come"; but sometimes the younger men went back and kissed their wives. It was an event, the first day of spring, in old-time Hillsboro.

In the year of our Lord 1756 this event fell upon a Sabbath, a fact which the Reverend Mr. Everett commemorated by a grim look out at the budding trees, and by taking from his store of sermons a different one from that he had intended to preach. It was his duty to scourge natural man out of the flock committed to his charge by an angry and a jealous God, and he had felt deep within him a damnable stirring of sensual pleasure as the perfumed breath of the new season had blown across his face. If the anointed of the Lord had thus yielded to the insidious wiles of unregenerate nature what greater dangers lay in wait for the weaklings under his care! The face of his son Nathaniel, as he came back from the brook, his slender body leaning sideways from the weight of the dripping bucket, told the shepherd of souls that he must be on his guard against the snares of the flesh.

The boy's thin, dark face, so astonishingly like his father's, was lifted toward the sky as he came stumbling up the path, but his eyes were everywhere at once. Just before he reached the door, he set the bucket down with a cry of ecstasy and darted to the edge of the garden, where the peas were just thrusting green bowed heads through the crumbling earth. He knelt above them breathless, he looked up to the maple-twigs, over which a faint reddish bloom had been cast in the night, beyond to the lower slopes of the mountain, delicately patterned with innumerable white stems of young birch-trees, and clasped his hands to see that a shimmer of green hung in their tops like a mist. His lips quivered, he laid his hand upon a tuft of grass with glossy, lance-like blades, and stroked it.

His father came to the door and called him. "Nathaniel!"

He sprang up with guilty haste and went toward the house. A shriveling change of expression came over him.

The minister began, "A wise son heareth his father's instructions; but a scorner heareth not rebuke."

"I hear you, father."

"Why did you linger in the garden and forget your duty?"

"I—I cannot tell you, father."

"Do you mean you do not know why?"

"I cannot say I do not know."

"Then answer me."

Nathaniel broke out desperately, "I cannot, father—I know no words—I was—it is so warm—the sun shines—the birches are out—I was glad——"

The minister bowed his head sadly. "Aye, even as I thought. Sinful lust of the eye draggeth you down to destruction. You whose salvation even now hangs in the balance, for whose soul I wrestle every night in prayer that you may be brought to the conviction of sin, 'you were glad.' Remember the words, 'If I prefer not Jerusalem above my chief joy, may my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth.'"

Nathaniel made no reply. He caught at the door, looking up wretchedly at his father. When the minister turned away without speaking again, he drew a long breath of relief.

Breakfast was always a silent meal in the Everett house, but on Sabbath mornings the silence had a heavy significance. The preacher was beginning then to work himself up to the pitch of storming fervor which made his sermons so notable, and his wife and son cowered under the unspoken emanations of the passion which later poured so terribly from the pulpit. The Reverend Mr. Everett always ate very heartily on Sabbath mornings, but Nathaniel usually pushed his plate away.

As a rule he walked to church between his father and his mother, like a little child, although he was now a tall lad of sixteen, but to-day he was sent back for a psalm-book, forgotten in the hurry of their early start. When he set out again the rest of the village folk were all in the meeting-house. The sight of the deserted street, walled in by the forest, lying drowsily in the spring sunshine, was like balm to him. He loitered along, free from observation, his eyes shining. A fat, old negro woman sat on a doorstep in the sun, the only other person not in meeting. She was a worn-out slave, from a Connecticut seaport, who had been thrown in for good measure in a sharp bargain driven by the leading man of Hillsboro. A red turban-like cloth was bound above her black face, she rested her puffy black arms across her knees and crooned a monotonous refrain. Although the villagers regarded her as imbecile, they thought her harmless, and Nathaniel nodded to her as he passed. She gave him a rich laugh and a "Good morrow, Marse Natty, good morrow!"

A hen clucking to her chicks went across the road before him. The little yellow balls ran briskly forward on their wiry legs, darting at invisible insects, turning their shiny black eyes about alertly and filling the air with their sweet, thin pipings. Nathaniel stopped to watch them, and as he noticed the pompously important air with which one of the tiny creatures scratched the ground with his ineffectual little feet, cocking his eye upon the spot afterward as if to estimate the amount of progress made, the boy laughed out loud. He started at the sound and glanced around him hurriedly, moving on to the meeting-house from which there now burst forth a harshly intoned psalm. He lingered for a moment at the door, gazing back at the translucent greens of the distant birches gleaming against the black pines. A gust of air perfumed with shad-blossom blew past him, and with this in his nostrils he entered the whitewashed interior and made his way on tiptoe up the bare boards of the aisle.