He has carried me here as gently and as carefully as if I were a child."Seeing symptoms of a return of Jeff's distress in his coloring face,she added softly,as if to herself,"It's a great thing to be strong--a greater thing to be strong AND gentle."The voice thrilled through Jeff.But into this dangerous human voice twanged the accents of special spiritual revelation,and called him to himself again,"Be ye wise as sarpints,but harmless as duvs,"said Jeff's aunt,generally,"and let 'em be thankful ez doesn't aboos the stren'th the Lord gives 'em,but be allers ready to answer for it at the bar o'their Maker."Possibly some suggestion in her figure of speech reminded her of Jeff's forgotten duties,so she added in the same breath and tone,"especially when transient customers is waiting for their licker,and Yuba Bill hammerin'on the counter with his glass;and yer ye stand,Jeff,never even takin'up that wet bar-skin--enuff to give that young woman her death."Stammering out an incoherent apology,addressed vaguely to the occupants of the room,but looking toward the languid goddess on the sofa,Jeff seized the bear-skin and backed out the door.Then he flew to his room with it,and then returned to the bar-room;but the impatient William of Yuba had characteristically helped himself and gone off to the stable.Then Jeff stole into the hall and halted before the closed door of the sitting-room.A bold idea of going in again,as became a landlord of the "Half-way House,"with an inquiry if they wished anything further,had seized him,but the remembrance that he had always meekly allowed that duty to devolve upon his aunt,and that she would probably resent it with ural authority and bring him to shame again,stayed his timid knuckles at the door.In this hesitation he stumbled upon his aunt coming down the stairs with an armful of blankets and pillows,attended by their small Indian servant,staggering under a mattress.
"Is everything all right,aunty?"
"Ye kin be thankful to the Lord,Jeff Briggs,that this didn't happen last week when I was down on my back with rheumatiz.But ye're never grateful.""The young lady--is SHE comfortable?"said Jeff,accepting his aunt's previous remark as confirmatory.
"Ez well ez enny critter marked by the finger of the Lord with gallopin'consumption kin be,I reckon.And she,ez oughter be putting off airthly vanities,askin'for a lookin'-glass!And you!
trapesin'through the hall with her on yer shoulder,and dancin'and jouncin'her up and down ez if it was a ball-room!"A guilty recollection that he had skipped with her through the passage struck him with remorse as his aunt went on:"It's a mercy that betwixt you and the wet bar-skin she ain't got her deth!""Don't ye think,aunty,"stammered Jeff,"that--that--my bein'the landlord,yer know,it would be the square thing--just out o'respect,ye know--for me to drop in thar and ask 'em if thar's anythin'they wanted?"His aunt stopped,and resignedly put down the pillows."Sarah,"she said meekly to the handmaiden,"ye kin leave go that mattress.
Yer's Mr.Jefferson thinks we ain't good enough to make the beds for them two city women folks,and he allows he'll do it himself!""No,no!aunty!"began the horrified Jeff;but failing to placate his injured relative,took safety in flight.
Once safe in his own room his eye fell on the bear-skin.It certainly WAS wet.Perhaps he had been careless--perhaps he had imperiled her life!His cheeks flushed as he threw it hastily in the corner.Something fell from it to the floor.Jeff picked it up and held it to the light.It was a small,a very small,lady's slipper.Holding it within the palm of his hand as if it had been some delicate flower which the pressure of a finger might crush,he strode to the door,but stopped.Should he give it to his aunt?
Even if she overlooked this evident proof of HIS carelessness,what would she think of the young lady's?Ought he--seductive thought!--go downstairs again,knock at the door,and give it to its fair owner,with the apology he was longing to make?Then he remembered that he had but a few moments before been dismissed from the room very much as if he were the original proprietor of the skin he had taken.Perhaps they were right;perhaps he WAS only a foolish clumsy animal!Yet SHE had thanked him--and had said in her sweet childlike voice,"It is a great thing to be strong;a greater thing to be strong and gentle."He was strong;strong men had said so.
He did not know if he was gentle too.Had she meant THAT,when she turned her strangely soft dark eyes upon him?For some moments he held the slipper hesitatingly in his hand,then he opened his trunk,and disposing various articles around it as if it were some fragile,perishable object,laid it carefully therein.
This done,he drew off his boots,and rolling himself in his blanket,lay down upon the bed.He did not open his novel--he did not follow up the exciting love episode of his favorite hero--so ungrateful is humanity to us poor romancers,in the first stages of their real passion.Ah,me!'tis the jongleurs and troubadours they want then,not us!When Master Slender,sick for sweet Anne Page,would "rather than forty shillings"he had his "book of songs and sonnets"there,what availed it that the Italian Boccaccio had contemporaneously discoursed wisely and sweetly of love in prose?
I doubt not that Master Jeff would have mumbled some verse to himself had he known any:knowing none,he lay there and listened to the wind.
Did she hear it;did it keep her awake?He had an uneasy suspicion that the shutter that was banging so outrageously was the shutter of her room.Filled with this miserable thought,he arose softly,stole down the staircase,and listened.The sound was repeated.
It was truly the refractory shutter of No.7--the best bedroom adjoining the sitting-room.The next room,No.8,was vacant.
Jeff entered it softly,as softly opened the window,and leaning far out in the tempest,essayed to secure the nocturnal disturber.
But in vain.Cord or rope he had none,nor could he procure either without alarming his aunt--an extremity not to be considered.Jeff was a man of clumsy but forceful expedients.He hung far out of the window,and with one powerful hand lifted the shutter off its hinges and dragged it softly into No.8.Then as softly he crept upstairs to bed.The wind howled and tore round the house;the crazy water-pipe below Jeff's window creaked,the chimneys whistled,but the shutter banged no more.Jeff began to doze.
"It's a great thing to be strong,"the wind seemed to say as it charged upon the defenseless house,and then another voice seemed to reply,"A greater thing to be strong and gentle;"and hearing this he fell asleep.