mentioned.
In the great oven, since last night, has lain the Sunday supper of baked pork-and-beans, Indian-pudding, and brown bread, all the better the longer they bake, and all unfailing in their character of excellence. In the square room, in the green arm-chair, sits the Colonel, fast asleep.
Four hours ago, he fumed and fretted about barn and cow-house, breakfasted, and had family-prayers. Since then, he has donned his Sabbath array, both mental and bodily. Mentally, having dismissed the cares of the week, he has strictly united himself with his body, and gone to sleep. Bodily, he appears in a suit of hemlock-dyed, with Matherman buttons, knee- and shoe-buckles of silver. His gray hair is neatly composed in a queue, his full cheeks rest on his portly chest, and the outward visibly harmonizes with the inward man. He sleeps soundly now, purposing faithfully to keep awake during the three-and-twenty heads of the minister's discourse. If he finds it too much for him, he means to stand, as he often does. Sometimes he partakes freely of the aromatic stimulants carried by his wife and daughter as bouquets. The southernwood wakes him, and the green seeds of the caraway get him well along through the sermon.
Mrs. Fox steps softly in, rustling in the same black taffeta she always wears, and the same black silk bonnet,—worn just fifty-two days in a year, and carefully pinned and boxed away for all the other three hundred and thirteen.
As fashions did not come to Walton oftener than once in ten years, it followed that apparel among the young people wore very much the expression of individual taste, while among the elders it was wont to assume the cast now irreverently designated by "fossil remains." And, really, it did not much matter. Whatever our country-grandmothers were admired and esteemed for, be sure it was not dress.
As the clock pointed to half-past ten, the door opened quickly, and Dorcas stood on the threshold, like a summer breeze that has stopped one moment its fluttering, and hovers fresh, sweet, and sunny in the morning air. The breath of her presence, if indeed it were not association, roused old Colonel Fox from his sleep. He glanced at her, took the ready arm of his wife, looked again at the clock, and passed out over the flat door-stone with his cocked hat and cane, as became an invalid soldier and a gentleman. Behind them, hymn-book in hand and with downcast eyes, walked Dorcas. Not a word passed between the parents and their only daughter. On Sunday, people were not to think their own thoughts. And familiarity between parents and children, never allowed even on week-days, would have been unpardonable unfitness on the Sabbath.
They reached the church-door just as the minister, with his white wig shedding powder on his venerable back, passed up the broad-aisle. A perfectly decorous throng of the loiterers followed, and the pews rapidly filled. The Colonel and his wife, being persons of consequence, took their way with suitable dignity and deliberation. In the three who turned, about half-way up the broad-aisle, into a square pew, a physiognomist would have seen at one glance the characteristic features of each mind. In the Colonel, choleric, fresh, and warm-hearted, a good lover, and not very good hater. In his wife, "a chronicler of small-beer," with a perfectly negative expression. One might guess she did no harm, and fear she did no good,—that she saved the hire of an upper servant,—that she was an inveterate sewer and cleaner, and would leave the world in time with an epitaph.
On the third figure and face the physiognomist might dwell longer,—but that rather because youth, hope, and inexperience had refused to make any of the life-marks that tell stories in faces. There was abundant room for imagination and prophecy.
A figure not too tall, but full of wavy lines,—two dark-blue eyes, whose full under-lids gave an expression of arch sweetness to the glance,—a delicate complexion of roses and lilies, as suggestive of fading as of blossoming,—features small, and not at all of the Greek pattern,—and the rather large head and slightly developed bust, typical of American rural beauty.
To this summary of youthful charms would be at once added the grace of motion before spoken of, which made Dorcas Fox a favorite with all the young men in Walton, and which gave her a reputation of beauty which in strictness she did not deserve. A little habitual ill-health, and the glamour is gone, with the roses and lilies and the music of motion. In our climate of fierce extremes, both field- and garden-flowers speedily wilt and chill. Dorcas herself had been a thousand times told she was the very picture of her mother at her age. And just to look now at Mrs. Colonel Fox!
A tall young man stood on the doorsteps of the meeting-house, as Dorcas went demurely behind her parents in at the open door. He looked at her with a quick, inquiring glance from his keen Yankee eyes, which she answered with an almost imperceptible nod of her graceful head. She dropped her eyes, and passed on. This young man was Henry Mowers, and he owned the Mowers farm. He was a very good, sensible fellow, and had "kept company," as the country-phrase is, with Dorcas Fox for the last few weeks, having, indeed, had his eye on her ever since the New-Year's sleigh-ride and ball.
After Dorcas had reached her seat in the pew, and adjusted her spotless Sunday chintz and the ribbon that confined her jaunty gypsy-hat over her sunny hair, she raised her eyes carelessly to a pew in a side-aisle. The Dorrs generally occupied it alone; but sometimes Swan Day, when he wasn't in the choir, sat there too.
Swan Day, or, as he might better have been called, Night Raven, kept the country-store in Walton. One naturally thought of afternoon rather than morning at seeing his olive complexion, dark eyes, and thick-clustering black curls. Such romance as was to be had in Walton, without the aid of a circulating library, certainly gathered about Swan Day. An orphan, born of a Creole mother and a British sergeant, he had been left early to his own resources. He had found them sufficient thus far, in a cordial neighborhood like Walton, when industry and temperance were cardinal virtues not carried to excess; and he was rather a favorite among the young women.
The peculiar languor and richness of his complexion,—the dark eyes, soft as an Indian girl's,—the mouth, melting and red as the grapes where under a tropical sun his foreign mother had lain, and, gathering them ripe, had dropped them lazily into his baby mouth: these were new and strange features in the Saxon community where he had accidentally been left on the death of his father, who was shot at Saratoga. The mother lingered awhile, and then dropped away, leaving Swan to thrive in the bracing air in which she had shivered to death.
Many Sundays before this, Swan had looked at Colonel Fox's pew, and, looking, loved.
Dorcas looked occasionally.
All the time, while the minister preached, she twiddled her caraway-stems, sometimes biting a seed in two very softly between her little teeth, and keeping, on the whole, an appearance of exemplary devoutness. When Father Boardman reached "sixthly," she raised her eyes, and saw Henry Mowers looking straight at her. Then she dropped her eyelids at once, sniffed delicately at her bouquet of southernwood, and, gaining strength from its pungency, applied herself to staring once more at the great pine pulpit, where, like a very old sparrow on the house-top, Father Boardman denounced and anathematized at leisure all who did not think as he did. By degrees, all the eyes in Dorcas's neighborhood that had been any length of time in the world were dozing and closing with the full leave of the spirit. Finally, when Father Boardman entered on the "improvement," Dorcas, who had not heard a word, looked again in the direction of the Dorr pew. Henry Mowers had succumbed to Morpheus half an hour before. Still there flamed on the deep, bewitching eyes of Day; and as all the rest in her neighborhood had gone to sleep, and the young girl had really nothing specially to keep herself awake with, she looked up, too, and then down, and then rosily, and timidly, and consciously, and then at him once more. By that time she blushed again, and a smile was just beginning to wake from its sleep in the corner of her mouth, when a rush, a rising, and a general clatter and banging of pew-seats announced the blessed news of suspended instruction.
In the fashion of sixty years ago, the congregation waited reverently, until the pastor walked down the broad-aisle and out at the door, before a soul stirred. Then the men followed, and last of all the women. In the crowd, there were frequent opportunities for whispered words, all the sweeter for the stealing;
