For the Major: A Novelette

by Constance Fenimore Woolson

She left the room with her usual quick, light step. After she had gone, Sara stood for a few moments with her hands clasped over her eyes. Then she went to the library.

Scar was playing dominoes, Roland against Bayard; and the Major was watching the game. His daughter bent her head, and kissed his forehead; then she sat down beside him, holding his hand in hers, and stroking it tenderly.

"Well, my daughter, you seem to think a good deal of me to-day," said the old man, smiling.

"Not only to-day, but always, papa—always," answered the girl, with emotion.

"Roland is very dull this morning," said the Major, explaining the situation. "He has lost three games, and is going to lose a fourth."

CHAPTER VI.

FAR EDGERLEY was deprived of its rector. Mr. Owen had gone to the coast to attend the Diocesan Convention. But as he had started more than a week before the time of its opening, and had remained a week after its sessions were ended, Mrs. General Hibbard was of the opinion that he was attending to other things as well. She had, indeed, heard a rumor before he came that there was some one (some one in whom he felt an interest) elsewhere. Now it is well known that there is nothing more depressing for a parish than a rector with an interest, large or small, "elsewhere." St. John in the Wilderness was therefore much relieved when its rector returned, with no signs of having left any portion of himself or his interest behind him. And Mrs. General Hibbard lost ground.

Mr. Owen had started eastward on the day after his interview with the two ladies of Carroll Farms; he had started westward on the day after the arrival of a letter from his junior warden. This letter, written in a clear, old-fashioned hand, decorated with much underscoring, was a mixture of the formal phraseology of the warden's youth and that too-modern lightness which he had learned in his later years, and of which Miss Honoria so justly disapproved. He was supposed to be writing about church business. Having finished that (in six lines), he added an epitome of the news of the whole village, from the slippers which Miss Sophy Greer, at the north end of Edgerley Street, was working for him (the rector)—ecclesiastical borders, with the motto "Vestigia nulla retrorsum"—down to the last new duck in the duck-pond at Chapultepec, the south end of it. Among the items was this: "That amusing fellow Dupont is, I am sorry to say, ill, and I suspect seriously. It is a return of the fever he had in New York, I am told. He is at the Cove, and the Walleys are taking care of him. It has leaked out" ("leaked out"—oh, poor Miss Honoria!) "that he has no money, not even enough to pay for his medicines—those musicians are always an improvident lot, you know. But our lovely Madam Carroll, ministering angel that she is, pitying lady of the manor, has supplied everything that has been necessary. I have just heard, as I write these lines, that the poor fellow is no better."

The rector, upon his return, busied himself in attending to the many duties which had accumulated during his absence. He did not go to the Farms immediately; but as he was making no calls for the present—owing to the accumulation—the omission was not noticed. The musician was very ill, and every one was sorry. His poverty was now generally known; but Madam Carroll was doing all that was needful, and the poor wanderer lacked nothing. That was what they called him now—the "poor wanderer;" it was a delicate way of phrasing the fact that he was without means. Far Edgerley people were as far as possible from being mercenary; they had no intention of turning their backs upon Dupont because he was poor. They were poor themselves, and, besides, that had never been the Southern way. They would gladly have helped him now, had there been opportunity, and they looked forward to helping him as far as they were able so soon as he should have recovered his health. But at present Madam Carroll was doing the whole, and the whole was only—could be only—a doctor and medicines.

In all this there was nothing of Sara; that secret, the rector perceived, had been carefully kept. There was nothing, too, of the recent evil story concerning the musician, which he had related to Madam Carroll. But he had been aware that if he himself should be silent, it was probable that nothing of it would reach Far Edgerley, at least for some time. For the mission station was remote, and the mountain people were very proud in their way, proud and reticent. They had, too, an opinion of Far Edgerley which was not unlike the opinion Far Edgerley had of the lower town. Pride in these mountains seemed a matter of altitudes. Owen knew that he was glad that these two hidden things had remained undiscovered; that, at least, was clear in the conflicting feelings that haunted his troubled heart.