Books: Janice Meredith

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"As servants?" interrupted Fownes, hotly, as if her words
stung him.

"I'm afraid, Charles," reproved Janice, assuming again a
severe manner, "that you have a very bad temper."

Perhaps the man might have retorted, but instead he let
the anger die from his face, as he fixed his eyes on the floor.
"I have, Miss Janice," he acknowledged sadly, after a
moment's pause, "and 't is the curse of my life."

"You should discipline it," advised Miss Meredith, sagely.
"When I lose my temper, I always read a chapter in the
Bible," she added, with a decidedly "holier than thou" in
her manner.

"How many times hast thou read the good book through,
Miss Janice?" asked Fownes, smiling, and Miss Meredith's
virtuous pose became suddenly an uncomfortable one to the
young lady.

"You were to tell me something about Mr. Meredith,"
she said stiffly.

"After burning the Pope and the bill, 't was suggested by
some to empty the pot of tar on the fire. But objection was
made, because

"Because?" questioned Janice.

"Someone said 't would be needed shortly to properly
season green wood, and therefore must not be wasted."

"You don't think they--?" cried Janice, in alarm.

The servant nodded his head. "The feeling against the
squire is far deeper than you suspect. 'T will find vent in
some violence, I fear, unless he yield to public sentiment."

"He'll never truckle to the country licks and clouted
shoons of Brunswick," asserted Janice, proudly.

"'T will fare the worse for him. 'T is as sensible to run
counter to public opinion as 't is to cut roads over mountains."

"'T is worse still to be a coward," cried Janice, contemptuously.
"I fear, Charles, you are very mean-spirited."

Fownes shrugged his shoulders. "As a servant should be,"
he muttered bitterly.

"Even a servant can do what is right," answered the
girl.

"'T is not a question of right, 't is one of expediency," replied
the bondsman. "A year at court, Miss Janice, would
teach you that in this world 't is of monstrous importance to
know when to bow."

"What do you know of court?" exclaimed Janice.

"Very little," confessed the man. "But I know it teaches
one good lesson in life,--that of submission,--and an important
thing 't is to learn."

"I only bow to those whom I know to be my superiors,"
said Janice, with her head held very erect.

"'T is an easy way for you to avoid bowing," asserted the
groom, smiling.

Again Janice sought a change of subject by saying, "Think
you that is why we are being spied upon?"

"Spied?" questioned the bondsman.

"Last week dadda thought he saw a face one evening at the
parlour window, and two nights ago I looked up suddenly and
saw--Well, mommy said 't was only vapours, but I know I
saw something."

The servant turned his face away from Janice, and coughed.
Then he replied, "Perhaps 't was some one watching you.
Didst make no attempt to find him?"

"Dadda went to the window both times, but could see
nothing."

"He probably had time to hide behind the shrubs," surmised
Charles. "I shall set myself to watching, and I'll
warrant to catch the villain at it if he tries it again." From
the savageness with which he spoke, one would have inferred
that he was bitterly enraged at any one spying through the
parlour window on Miss Meredith's evening hours.

"I wish you would," solicited Janice. "For if it happened
again, I don't know what I should do. Mommy insisted it
was n't a ghost, and scolded me for screaming; but all the same,
it gave me a dreadful turn. I did n't go to sleep for hours."

"I am sorry it frightened you," said the servant, and then
after a moment's hesitation he continued, "'T was I, and if I
had thought for a moment to scare you--"

"You!" cried Janice. "What were you doing there?"

The man looked her in the eyes while he replied in a low
voice, "Looking at paradise, Miss Janice."

"Janice Meredith," said her mother's voice, sternly, "thou
good-for-nothing! Thou'st let the syrup burn, and the smell
is all over the house. Charles, what dost thou mean by loafing
indoors at this hour of the day? Go about thy work."

And paradise dissolved into a pot of burnt syrup.

IX
PARADISE AND ELSEWHERE

While Charles was within hearing, Mrs. Meredith
continued to scold Janice about the burnt syrup,
but this subject was ended with his exit.
"I'm ashamed that a daughter of mine should
allow a servant to be so familiar," Mrs. Meredith began anew.
"'T is a shame on us all, Janice. Hast thou no idea of what
is decent and befitting to a girl of thy station?"

"He was n't familiar," cried Janice, angrily and proudly,
"and you should know that if he had been I--he was telling
me--"

"Yes," cried her mother, "tell me what he was saying
about paradise? Dost think me a nizey, child, not to know
what men mean when they talk about paradise?"

Janice's cheeks reddened, and she replied hotly, "If men
talked to you about paradise, why should n't they talk to me?
I'm sure 't is a pleasant change after the parson's everlasting
and eternal talk of an everlasting and eternal--"

"Don't thee dare say it!" interrupted Mrs. Meredith.
"Thou fallen, sin-eaten child! Go to thy room and stay
there for the rest of the day. 'T is all of a piece that thou
shouldst disgrace us by unseemly conduct with a stable-boy.
Fine talk 't will make for the tavern."

The injustice and yet possible truth in this speech was too
much for Janice to hear, and without an attempt at reply, she
burst into a storm of tears and fled to her room.

Deprived of a listener, Mrs. Meredith sought the squire,
and very much astonished him by a prediction that, "Thy
daughter, Mr. Meredith, is going to bring disgrace on the
family."

"What's to do now?" cried the parent.

"A pretty to do, indeed," his wife assured him. "Dost
want her running off some fine night with thy groom?"

"Tush, Matilda!" responded Mr. Meredith. "'T is
impossible."

"Just what my parents said when thou camest a-courting."

"I was no redemptioner."

"'T was none the less a step-down for me," replied Mrs.
Meredith, calmly. "And I had far less levity than--"

"Nay, Matilda, she often reminds me very--"

"Lambert, I never was light! Or at least never after
I sat under Dr. Edwards and had a call. The quicker we
marry Janice to Mr. McClave, the better 't will be for
her."

"Now, pox me!" cried the squire, "if I'll give my lass to
be made the drudge of another woman's children."

"'T is the very discipline she needs," retorted the wife.
"But for my checking her a moment ago I believe she'd
have spoken disrespectfully of hell!"

"Small wonder!" muttered her husband. "Is 't not
enough to ye Presbyterians to doom one to everlasting
torment in the future life without making this life as bad?"

"'T is the way to be saved," replied Mrs. Meredith. "As
Mr. McClave said to Janice shortly since, 'Be assured that
doing the unpleasant thing is the surest road to salvation, for
tho' it should not find grace in the eyes of a righteously angry
God, yet having been done from no carnal and sinful craving
of the flesh, it cannot increase his anger towards you.' Ah,
Lambert, that man has the true gift."

"Since he's so damned set on being uncarnal," snapped
the squire, "let him go without Janice."

"And have her running off with an indentured servant, as
Anne Loughton did?"

"She'll do nothing of the kind. If ye want a husband for
the lass, let her take Phil."

"A bankrupt."

"Tush! There are acres enough to pay the old squire's
debts three times over. She'd bring Phil enough ready
money to clear it all, and 't is rich mellow land that will
double in value, give it time."

"I tell thee her head 's full of this bond-servant. The two
were in the kitchen just now, talking about paradise, and I
know not what other foolishness."

"That" said Mr. Meredith, with a grin of enjoyment,
"sounds like true Presbyterian doctrine. The Westminster
Assembly seem to have left paradise out of the creation."

"Such flippancy is shameful in one of thy years, Mr.
Meredith," said his wife, sternly, "and canst have but one
ending."

"That is all any of us can have, Patty," replied the squire,
genially.

Mrs. Meredith went to the door, but before leaving the
room, she said, still with a stern, set face, though with a break
in her voice, "Is 't not enough that my four babies are enduring
everlasting torment, but my husband and daughter must
go the same way?"

"There, there, Matilda!" cried the husband. "'T was
said in jest only and was nothing more than lip music. Come
back--" the speech ended there as a door at a distance
banged. "Now she'll have a cry all by herself," groaned the
squire. "'T is a strange thing she took it so bravely when
the road was rough, yet now, when 't is easy pulling, she lets
it fret and gall her."

Then Mr. Meredith looked into his fire, and saw another
young girl, a little more serious than Janice, perhaps, but still
gay-hearted and loved by many. He saw her making a stolen
match with himself; passed in review the long years of alienation
from her family, the struggle with poverty, and, saddest of
all, the row of little gravestones which told of the burial of the
best of her youth. He saw the day finally when, a worn, saddened
woman, she at last was in the possession of wealth, to
find in it no pleasure, yet to turn eagerly, and apparently with
comfort, to the teachings of that strange combination of fire
and logic, Jonathan Edwards. He recalled the two sermons during
Edwards's brief term as president of Nassau Hall, which
moved him so little, yet which had convinced Mrs. Meredith
that her dead babies had been doomed to eternal punishment
and had made her the stern, unyielding woman she was. The
squire was too hearty an animal, and lived too much in the
open air, to be given to introspective thought, but he shook
his head. "A strange warp and woof we weave of the skein,"
he sighed, "that sorrow for the dead should harden us to the
living." Mr. Meredith rose, went upstairs, and rapped at a
door. Getting no reply, after a repetition of the knock, he
went in.

A glance revealed what at first sight looked like a crumpled
heap of clothes upon the bed, but after more careful scrutiny
the mass was found to have a head, very much buried between
two pillows, and the due quantity of arms and legs. Walking
to the bed, the squire put his hand on the bundle.

"There, lass," he said, "'t is nought to make such a pother
about."

"Oh, dadda," moaned Janice, "I am the most unhappy
girl that ever lived."

It is needless to say after this remark that Miss Meredith's
knowledge of the world was not of the largest, and the squire,
with no very great range of experience, smiled a little as he
said--

"Then 't will not make you more miserable to wed the
parson?"

"Dadda!" exclaimed the girl, rolling over quickly, to get
a sight of his countenance. When she found him smiling, the
anxious look on the still red and tear-stained face melted
away, and she laughed merrily. "Think of the life I'd give
the good man! How I would wherrit him! He 'd have to
give up his church to have time enough to preach to me."
Apparently the deep woe alluded to the moment before was
forgotten.

"I've no manner of doubt he'd enjoy the task," declared
the father, with evident pride. "Ah, Jan, many a man would
enter the ministry, if he might be ordained parson of ye."

"The only parson I want is a father confessor," said Janice,
sitting up and giving him a kiss.

"Then what 's this maggot your mother has got in her
head about ye and Charles and paradise?" laughed her
father.

"Indeed, dadda," protested the girl, eagerly, "mommy was
most unjust. I was to stir some syrup, and Charles came into
the kitchen and would talk to me, and as I could n't leave the
pot, I had to listen, and then--well

"I thought as much!" cried the squire, heartily, when
Janice paused. "Where the syrup is, there'll find ye the
flies. But we'll have no horse-fly buzzing about ye. My
fine gentleman shall be taught where he belongs, if it takes
the whip to do it."

"No, dadda," exclaimed Janice. "He spoke but to warn
me of danger to you. He says there 's preparation to tar
and feather you unless you--you do something."

"Foo!" sniffed the squire. "Let them snarl. I'll show
them I'm not a man to be driven by tag, long tail, and
bobby."

"But Charles--" began the girl.

"Ay, Charles," interrupted Mr. Meredith. "I've no doubt
he's one of 'em. 'T is always the latest importations take
the hottest part against the gentry."

"Nay, dadda, I think he--"

"Mark me, that's what takes the tyke to the village so
often."

"He said 't was to drill he went."

"To drill?" questioned the squire. "What meant he by
that?"

"I asked him, and he said 't was quadrille. Dost think he
meant dancing or cards?"

"'T is in keeping that he should be a dancing master or a
card-sharper," asserted Mr. Meredith. "No wonder 't is a disordered
land when 't is used as a catchall for every man not
wanted in England. We'll soon put a finish to his night-walking."

"I don't think he's a villain, dadda, and he certainly
meant kindly in warning us."

"To make favour by tale-bearing, no doubt."

"I'm sure he'd not a thought of it," declared Janice,
with an unconscious eagerness which made the squire knit
his brows.

"Ye speak warmly, child," he said. "I trust your mother
be not justified in her suspicion."

The girl, who meanwhile had sprung off the bed, drew herself
up proudly. "Mommy is altogether wrong," she replied.
"I'd never descend so low."

"I said as much," responded the squire, gleefully.

"A likely idea, indeed!" exclaimed Janice. "As if I'd
have aught to do with a groom! No, I never could shame
the family by that."

"Wilt give me your word to that, Jan?" asked the squire.

"Yes," cried the girl, and then roguishly added, "Why,
dadda, I'd as soon, yes, sooner, marry old Belza, who at
least is a prince in his own country, than see a Byllynge marry
a bond-servant."

X
A COLONIAL CHRISTMAS

For some weeks following the pledge of Janice, the life
at Greenwood became as healthily monotonous as of
yore. Both Mr. and Mrs. Meredith spoke so sharply
to both Sukey and Charles of his loitering about the
kitchen that his visits, save at meal times, entirely ceased.
The squire went further and ordered him to put an end to
his trips to the village, but the man took this command in
sullen silence, and was often absent.

One circumstance, however, very materially lessened the
possible encounters between the bond-servant and the maiden.
This was no less than the setting in of the winter snows, which
put a termination to all the girl's outdoor life, excepting the
attendance at the double church services on Sundays, which
Mrs. Meredith never permitted to be neglected. From the
window Janice sometimes saw the groom playing in the drifts
with Clarion, but that was almost the extent of her knowledge
of his doings. It is to be confessed that she eagerly longed
to join them or, at least, to have a like sport with the dog.
Eighteenth-century etiquette, however, neither countenanced
such conduct in the quality, nor, in fact, clothed them for it.

A point worth noting at this time was connected with one
window of the parlour. Each afternoon as night shut down, it
was Peg's duty to close all the blinds, for colonial windows not
being of the tightest, every additional barricade to Boreas was
welcome, and this the servant did with exemplary care. But
every evening after tea, Janice always walked to a particular
window and, opening the shutter, looked out for a moment, as
if to see what the night promised, before she took her seat at
her tambour frame or sewing. Sometimes one of her parents
called attention to the fact that she had not quite closed the
shutters again, and she always remedied the oversight at once.
Otherwise she never looked at the window during the whole
evening, glance where she might. Presumably she still remembered
the fright her putative ghost had occasioned her,
and chose not to run the chance of another sight of him.
Almost invariably, however, in the morning she blew on the
frost upon the window of her own room and having rubbed
clear a spot, looked below, much as if she suspected ghosts
could leave tracks in the snow. In her behalf it is only fair
to say that the girls of that generation were so shut in as far
as regarded society or knowledge of men that they let their
imaginations question and wander in a manner difficult now
to conceive. At certain ages the two sexes are very much
interested in each other, and if this interest is not satisfied
objectively, it will be subjectively.

Snow, if a jailer, was likewise a defence, and apparently
cooled for a time the heat of the little community against the
squire. Even the Rev. Mr. McClave's flame of love and love
of flame were modified by the depth of the drifts he must
struggle through, in order to discourse on eternal torment
while gazing at earthly paradise. Janice became convinced
that the powers of darkness no longer had singled her out as
their particular prey, and in the peaceful isolation of the winter
her woes, when she thought of them, underwent a change
of grammatical tense which suggested that they had become
things of the past.

One of her tormenting factors was not to be so treated.
Philemon alone made nothing of the change of season, riding
the nine miles between his home and Greenwood by daylight
or by moonlight, as if his feeling for the girl not merely
warmed but lighted the devious path between the drifts. Yet
it was not to make love he came; for he sat a silent, awkward
figure when once within doors, speaking readily enough in
response to the elders, but practically inarticulate whenever
called upon to reply to Janice. Her bland unconsciousness
was a barrier far worse than the snow; and never dreaming
that he was momentarily declaring his love for her in a
manner far stronger than words, he believed her wholly ignorant
of what he felt, and stayed for hours at a time, longing
helplessly for a turn of events which should make it possible
for him to speak.

Philemon was thus engaged or disengaged one December
morning when Peg entered the parlour where the family were
sitting as close to the fire as the intense glow of the hickory
embers would allow, and handing Janice a letter with an air
of some importance, remarked, "Charles he ask me give you
dat." Then, colonial servants being prone to familiarity, and
negro slaves doubly so, Peg rested her weight on one foot,
and waited to learn what this unusual event might portend.
All present instantly fixed their eyes upon Janice, but had
they not done so it is probable that she would have coloured
much as she did, for the girl was enough interested and
enough frightened to be quite unconscious of the eyes upon
her.

"A letter for thee, lass!" exclaimed the squire. "Let 's
have the bowels of it."

The necessity for that very thing was what made the occurrence
so alarming to Janice, for her woman's intuition had at
once suggested, the moment she had seen the bold hand-writing
of the superscription, that it could be from none other
than Evatt, and she had as quickly surmised that her father
and mother would insist upon sight of the missive. Unaware
of what it might contain, she sat with red cheeks, not daring
to break the seal.

"Hast got the jingle brains, child?" asked her mother,
sharply, "that thou dost nothing but stare at it?"

Janice laid the letter in her lap, saying, "'T will wait till I
finish this row." It was certainly a hard fate which forced her
to delay the opening of the first letter she had ever received.

"'T will nothing of the sort," said her mother, reaching out
for the paper. "Art minded to read it on the sly, miss?
There shall be no letters read by stealth. Give it me."

"Oh, mommy," begged the girl, desperately, "I'll show
it to you, but--oh--let me read it first, oh, please!"

"I think 't is best not," replied her mother. "Thy anxiety
has an ill look to it, Janice."

The girl handed the letter dutifully, and with an anxious
attention watched her mother break it open, all pleasure in
the novelty of the occurrence quite overtopped by dread of
what was to come.

"What nonsense is this?" was Mrs. Meredith's anything
but encouraging exclamation. Then she read out--

"'T is unworthy of you, and of your acceptance, but 't is the
fairest gift I could think of, and the best that I could do. If
you will but put it in the frame you have, it may seem more
befitting a token of the feelings that inspired it."

Janice, unable to restrain her curiosity, rose and peered over
her mother's shoulder. From that vantage point she ejaculated,
"Oh, how beautiful she is!"

What she looked at was an unset miniature of a young girl,
with a wealth of darkest brown hair, powdered to a gray, and
a little straight nose with just a suggestion of a tilt to it, giving
the mignon face an expression of pride that the rest of the
countenance by no means aided. For the remaining features,
the mouth was still that of a child, the short upper lip projecting
markedly over the nether one, producing not so much
a pouty look as one of innocence; the eyes were brilliant
black, or at least were shadowed to look it by the long lashes,
and the black eyebrows were slender and delicately arched
upon a low forehead.

"Art a nizey, Janice," cried her mother, "not to know thine
own face?"

"Mommy!" exclaimed the girl. "Is--am I as pretty
as that?"

"'T is vastly flattered," said her mother, quickly. "I should
scarce know it."

"Nay, Matilda," dissented the squire, who was now also
gazing at the miniature. "'T is a good phiz of our lass, and
but does her justice. Who ever sent it ye, Jan?"

"I suppose 't was Mr. Evatt," confessed Janice.

"Let's have sight of the wrapper," said the father. "Nay,
Jan. This has been in no post-rider's bag or 't would bear the
marks."

"Peg, tell Charles to come here," ordered Mrs. Meredith,
and after a five minutes spent by the group in various surmises,
the bond-servant, followed by the still attentive Peg,
entered the room.

"Didst find this letter at the tavern?" demanded the squire.

The groom looked at the wrapper held out to him, and
replied, "Mayhaps."

"And what took ye there against my orders?"

Charles shrugged his shoulders, and then smiled. "Ask
Hennion," he said.

"What means he, Phil?" questioned the squire.

"Now you've been an' told the whole thing," exclaimed
Philemon, looking very much alarmed.

"Not I," replied the servant. "'T is for you to tell it,
man, if 't is to be told."

"Have done with such mingle-mangle talk," ordered Mr.
Meredith, fretfully. "Is 't not enough to have French gibberish
in the world, without--"

"Charles," interrupted Mrs. Meredith, "who gave thee
this letter?"

"Ask Miss Meredith," Fownes responded, again smiling.

"It must be Mr. Evatt," said Janice. Then as the bond-servant
turned sharply and looked at her, she became conscious
that she was colouring. "I wish there was no such
thing as a blush," she moaned to herself,--a wish in which no
one seeing Miss Meredith would have joined.

"'T was not from Mr. Evatt," denied the servant.

Without time for thought, Janice blurted out, "Then 't is
from you?" and the groom nodded his head.

"What nonsense is this?" cried Mr. Meredith. "Dost
mean to say 't is from ye? Whence came the picture?"

"I was the limner," replied Charles.

"What clanker have we here?" exclaimed the squire.

"'T is no lie, Mr. Meredith," answered the servant. "In
England I've drawn many a face, and 't was even said in jest
that I might be a poor devil of an artist if ever I quitted the
ser--quitted service."

"And where got ye the colours?"

"When I went to Princeton with the shoats I found Mr.
Peale painting Dr. Witherspoon, and he gave me the paints
and the ivory."

"Ye'll say I suppose too that ye wrote this," demanded
the squire, indicating the letter.

"I'll not deny it."

"Though ye could not sign the covenant?"

Fownes once more shrugged his shoulders. "'T is a fool
would sign a bond," he asserted.

"Better a fool than a knave," retorted Mr. Meredith, angered
by Charles' manner. "Janice, give the rogue back
the letter and picture. No daughter of Lambert Meredith
accepts gifts from her father's bond-servants."

The man flushed, while evidently struggling to control his
temper, and Janice, both in pity for him, as well as in desire
for possession of the picture, for gifts were rare indeed in
those days, begged--

"Oh, dadda, mayn't I keep it?"

"Mr. Meredith," said Charles, speaking with evident repression,
"the present was given only with the respect--"
he hesitated as if for words and then continued--"the respect
a slave might owe his--his better. Surely on this day it
should be accepted in the same spirit."

"What day mean ye?" asked Mr. Meredith.

The servant glanced at each face with surprise on his own.
When he read a question in all, he asked in turn, "Hast forgotten
't is Christmas?"

Mrs. Meredith, who was still holding the portrait, dropped
it on the floor, as if it were in some manner dangerous.
"Christmas!" she cried. "Janice, don't thee dare touch
the--"