herself, and had been greatly moved by it; she had told him that this was a sad and unfriendly world.
"But I am sure your brother-in-law's family is much attached to you?" David said, comfortingly.
Then poor Mrs. Smily suddenly began to cry. "Yes; but I am afraid I can't live at my brother-in-law's any longer. His wife is – is tired of me," said the poor little creature.
David was thunderstruck. "Tired? Of you! Oh, impossible!"
Then she opened her poor foolish heart to him. And David was so touched and interested that he could hardly wait to get home to pour it all into Ellen's ears. Ellen was very sympathetic, and made haste to ask Mrs. Smily to tea; and when she came was as kind and pitiful as only dear, kind Ellen could be. But perhaps she took Mrs. Smily's griefs a little less to heart than she might have done had she heard the tale a month before. Just then she was in the whirl of Old Chester hospitality; she was asked out three times in one week to meet the Supply! – and by that time the Supply had reached the point of hoping that he was going to meet Miss Ellen.
Yet, as Mr. Spangler reflected, this was hardly prudent on his part. "For I might become interested," he said to himself, and frowned and sighed. Now, as everybody knows, the outcome of "interest" is only justified by a reasonable affluence. "And," Augustus Spangler reminded himself, "my circumstances are not affluent." Indeed, that warm, pleasant old house in Mercer, and Mary Ann, and his books, and those buttoned-up coats needed every penny of his tiny income. "Therefore," said Mr. Spangler, "it is my duty to put this out of my head with an iron hand." But, all the same, Ellen Baily was like a spray of heliotrope.
For a week, the second week in April, while Old Chester softened into a mist of green, and the crown-imperials shook their clean, bitter fragrance over the bare beds in the gardens – for that week Mr. Spangler thought often of his income, but oftener of Miss Ellen. Reason and sentiment wrestled together in his lazy but affectionate heart; and then, with a mighty effort, sentiment conquered…
"It seems," said Mr. Spangler, nervously, "a little premature, but my sojourn in Old Chester is drawing to a close; I shall not tarry more than another fortnight; so I felt, my dear friend, that I must, before seeking other fields of usefulness, tell you what was in my mind – or may I say heart?"
"You are very kind," Ellen Baily said, breathlessly.
… Mr. Spangler had invited Miss Ellen to walk with him on Saturday afternoon at four. Now, as everybody knows in Old Chester, when a gentleman invites you to walk out with him, you had better make up your mind whether it is to be "yes" or "no" before you start. As for poor Ellen, she did not have to make up her mind; it was made up for her by unconquerable circumstances. If she should "seek other fields of usefulness," she could not take David with her. It was equally clear that she could not leave him behind her. Where would he find his occasional new coat, or even the hat with the blue band, if there were no school in the basement? Compared to love-making and romance, how sordid are questions about coats! Yet, before starting on that Saturday-afternoon walk, poor, pretty Miss Ellen, tying the strings of her many-times retrimmed bonnet under her quivering chin, asked them, and could find no answer except that if he should "say anything," why, then, she must say "no"; but, of course, he wasn't going to say anything. So she tied her washed and ironed brown ribbons into a neat bow, and started down the street with the Reverend Mr. Spangler.
David Baily, watching them from the gate, ruminated over obvious possibilities. Mrs. Barkley had opened his eyes to the fact that Mr. Spangler "was taking notice," and David was not without a certain family pride in a ministerial proposal. "He'll do it this afternoon," said David; and went pottering back into the empty school-room to mend a bench that Ellen told him needed a nail or two. But the room was still and sunny, and Ellen's chair was comfortable; and sitting there to think about the bench, he nodded once or twice, and then dozed for an hour. When he awoke it seemed best to mend the bench the next day; then, yawning, and staring vacantly out of the window, he saw Mrs. Smily, and it seemed only friendly to go out and tell her (confidentially) what was going to happen.
"It will make quite a difference to you, won't it?" Mrs. Smily said.
"Oh," David said, blankly, "that hadn't occurred to me. However," he added, with a little sigh, "my sister's happiness is my first thought."
Mrs. Smily clasped her hands. "Mr. Baily, I do think you are real noble!" she said.
Mr. David stood very erect. "Oh, you mustn't flatter me, ma'am."
"Mr. Baily, I never flatter," Mrs. Smily said, gravely. "I don't think it's right."
And David thought to himself how noble Mrs. Smily was. Indeed, her nobility was so much in his mind that, strangely enough, he quite forgot Ellen's exciting afternoon. He remembered it the next morning, but when he essayed a little joke and a delicate question, the asperity with which the mild Ellen answered him left him gaping with astonishment. Evidently Mr. Spangler had not spoken. David would have been less (or more) than a human brother if he had not smiled a very little at that. "Ellen expected it," he said to himself. "Well, I did myself, and so did Mrs. Barkley." It never occurred to him that the Reverend Mr. Spangler might also have had expectations which left him disappointed and mortified. Yet when a gentleman of Mr. Spangler's age – one, too, whose income barely suffices for his own comfort, and who, added to this, has had his doubts whether the celibacy of the clergy may not be a sacrament of grace – when such a gentleman does make up his mind to offer himself – to offer himself, moreover, to a lady no longer in her first youth, who is pleasing perhaps to the eye, but not, certainly, excessively beautiful, and whose fortune is merely (and most meritoriously, of course) in her character and understanding – it is a blow to pride to be refused. Mr. Spangler found it hard to labor at the sacred desk that morning; yet no one would have thought it, to see the fervor with which, as Old Chester said, he "went through his performances."
But he read the service, hot at heart and hoping that Miss Baily observed how intensely his attention was fixed on things above. When he stood in the chancel waiting for the collection-plates, and saying, in a curious sing-song, absolutely new to Old Chester, "Zaccheus stood forth, and said, Behold, Lord —" his glance, roving over the congregation, rested once on Ellen Baily, and was as carefully impersonal as though she were only a part of the pew in which she sat. Miss Ellen thrilled at that high indifference; it occurred to her that even had David's circumstances been different, she could scarcely have dared to accept the hand of this high creature.
"– the half of all my goods —" said Mr. Spangler. Yes, it was inconceivable, considering what he was offering her, that Ellen Baily could let her brother stand in the way!
All that long, pleasant spring Sunday, Augustus Spangler was very bitter. All that week he was distinctly angry. He said to himself that he was glad that Dr. Lavendar was soon to return; he would, after making his report of the parish, shake the dust of Old Chester from off his feet as witness against Miss Baily, and depart. By the next Sunday he had ceased to be angry, but his pride was still deeply wounded. By Wednesday he had softened to melancholy; he was able to say that it all came from her sense of duty. Unreasonable, of course, but still duty. Then, on Thursday, suddenly, he was startled by a question in his own mind: Was it unreasonable? If she gave up her teaching – "what would that fellow live on?"
That was a very bad moment to the Reverend Mr. Spangler. Pride vanished in honest unhappiness. He began to think again about his income; he had known that to marry a wife meant greater economy; but sacrifices had not seemed too difficult considering that that wife was to be Miss Ellen Baily. But if the wife must be Miss Baily plus– "that fellow"!
"It is out of the question," said poor Mr. Spangler, and arose and paced up and down the study. He was very miserable; and the more miserable he became, the more in love he knew himself to be. "But it is madness to think of the matter further," he told himself, sternly – "madness!"
