Eunice

by Margaret M. Robertson

“Will she be glad?” Fidelia was saying to herself, while she made ready her sister’s tea. “Will she truly be glad? Has she forgiven him, or has she forgotten him? I would give a great deal to know her thoughts this minute. Oh, I hope I shall be with her when he comes to see her first!”

A single word had done this—her sister’s name, spoken by Mrs Everett, when her husband told her that his brother was coming home. They did not know that she heard it. She was greatly startled and a little angry, though she could not have told why. In that friendly neighbourhood she could hardly have lived so many years without hearing some hint of the trial through which her sister had passed in her youth; and imagination came to the help of memory, and made her more angry still. She would not have remained to give the new-comer welcome if he had not taken them all by surprise. She only saw him at the tea-table, where he sat, grave and almost silent, scarcely raising his eyes from his plate. She had not lingered a moment after the tea was over.

She was present at the first meeting between Eunice and Justin Everett, as she had hoped she would be, but it did not tell her much. It took place in unfortunate circumstances. He came up next morning, and, finding no one in the house, passed through into the garden, where he found Deacon Ainsworth and his grandson Jabez discussing with the sisters the important question, “Should Jabez have the garden?”

Jabez had intimated to his grandfather that Miss Eunice would like to see him about business if he could “step up” there some morning pretty soon; and the deacon had lost no time, and Jabez “had thought best to happen along so as to see the thing through,” as he told Fidelia in confidence. They had “talked the matter over” in the house without his help; now they were talking it over with it in the garden. In the house the deacon had got so far as to acknowledge that he saw no vital objection to Miss Eunice letting her garden to his grandson. In the garden he was not so certain. It would need steadiness and perseverance, and these Jabez might fail in, even with himself to keep the boy up to the mark.

“And if he should fail in doing well by you, Miss Eunice, I should rather feel as if you’d expect me to make it good to you. And I don’t know but I should feel as if I ought;” and so on. And then Dr Justin appeared.

The greetings all round were pleasant and cordial; and then it was supposed by Fidelia that the deacon would go away. But he had known Justin Everett all his life, or at least his “youthful years,” as he said, and never doubted that it was his duty and his privilege to give him welcome in his neighbour’s house as if it had been his own. So he rather took matters into his own hand, and “led the meeting,” as Jabez afterwards said. Fidelia was indignant. Eunice was not indignant. She was in her heart grateful to the good deacon for “assisting” at the occasion, though she might not have been quite pleased with his motives.

“I kind o’ wanted to know how it was going to be with Eunice, so I stayed,” he told his wife afterwards; but he owned that he didn’t know much about it after all. “If it had been the old doctor himself, I don’t know how she could have talked any other way to him. Friendly? Oh, yes, she was friendly and cool, but not too cool nor too friendly! Be you certain that Justin Everett’s wife is dead, Asubah?”

“Well, I declare for it! How you talk!” exclaimed Mrs Ainsworth. “As if you don’t know as well as I do that she’s been dead these two years and more! I hope to mercy you didn’t go to saying anything of that kind up there. I should like to see Fidelia Marsh’s eyes if she heard any such insinuations about her sister.”

But the deacon, though he had taken the lead in the conversation, said nothing indiscreet to Fidelia or any one else, and he rose to go at last, but not until Dr Everett came to take his brother away to see a patient.

Jabez in the meantime had, by an effective movement on the onion-bed, taken formal possession of the garden. He did not see, or he did not seem to see, his grandfather set out for home, and continued his work then and afterwards to such good purpose, that he had so strengthened his position as to leave nothing more to be said or done when in a few days his grandfather “stepped up” again, to talk the matter over. Fidelia was for many reasons glad that it was in his hands, but she could not reconcile herself to the deacon for having so utterly spoiled to them all the first visit of Dr Justin.