Four Meetings | Page 9

the first things I did on my return was to go
up to Grimwinter to pay a consolatory visit to his poor mother. I found
her in deep affliction, and I sat with her the whole of the morning that
followed my arrival (I had come in late at night), listening to her tearful
descant and singing the praises of my friend. We talked of nothing else,
and our conversation terminated only with the arrival of a quick little
woman who drove herself up to the door in a "carryall," and whom I
saw toss the reins upon the horse's back with the briskness of a startled
sleeper throwing back the bed-clothes. She jumped out of the carryall
and she jumped into the room. She proved to be the minister's wife and

the great town-gossip, and she had evidently, in the latter capacity, a
choice morsel to communicate. I was as sure of this as I was that poor
Mrs. Latouche was not absolutely too bereaved to listen to her. It
seemed to me discreet to retire; I said I believed I would go and take a
walk before dinner.
"And, by the way," I added, "if you will tell me where my old friend
Miss Spencer lives, I will walk to her house."
The minister's wife immediately responded. Miss Spencer lived in the
fourth house beyond the "Baptist church; the Baptist church was the
one on the right, with that queer green thing over the door; they called
it a portico, but it looked more like an old-fashioned bedstead.
"Yes, do go and see poor Caroline," said Mrs. Latouche. "It will refresh
her to see a strange face."
"I should think she had had enough of strange faces!" cried the
minister's wife.
"I mean, to see a visitor," said Mrs. Latouche, amending her phrase.
"I should think she had had enough of visitors!" her companion
rejoined. "But you don't mean to stay ten years," she added, glancing at
me.
"Has she a visitor of that sort?" I inquired, perplexed.
"You will see the sort!" said the minister's wife. "She's easily seen; she
generally sits in the front yard. Only take care what you say to her, and
be very sure you are polite."
"Ah, she is so sensitive?"
The minister's wife jumped up and dropped me a curtsey, a most
ironical curtsey.
"That's what she is, if you please. She's a countess!"

And pronouncing this word with the most scathing accent, the little
woman seemed fairly to laugh in the Countess's face. I stood a moment,
staring, wondering, remembering.
"Oh, I shall be very polite!" I cried; and grasping my hat and stick, I
went on my way.
I found Miss Spencer's residence without difficulty. The Baptist church
was easily identified, and the small dwelling near it, of a rusty white,
with a large central chimney-stack and a Virginia creeper, seemed
naturally and properly the abode of a frugal old maid with a taste for
the picturesque. As I approached I slackened my pace, for I had heard
that some one was always sitting in the front yard, and I wished to
reconnoitre. I looked cautiously over the low white fence which
separated the small garden-space from the unpaved street; but I
descried nothing in the shape of a countess. A small straight path led up
to the crooked doorstep, and on either side of it was a little grass-plot,
fringed with currant-bushes. In the middle of the grass, on either side,
was a large quince-tree, full of antiquity and contortions, and beneath
one of the quince-trees were placed a small table and a couple of chairs.
On the table lay a piece of unfinished embroidery and two or three
books in bright-colored paper covers. I went in at the gate and paused
halfway along the path, scanning the place for some farther token of its
occupant, before whom--I could hardly have said why--I hesitated
abruptly to present myself. Then I saw that the poor little house was
very shabby. I felt a sudden doubt of my right to intrude; for curiosity
had been my motive, and curiosity here seemed singularly indelicate.
While I hesitated, a figure appeared in the open doorway and stood
there looking at me. I immediately recognized Caroline Spencer, but
she looked at me as if she had never seen me before. Gently, but
gravely and timidly, I advanced to the doorstep, and then I said, with an
attempt at friendly badinage,--
"I waited for you over there to come back, but you never came."
"Waited where, sir?" she asked softly, and her light-colored eyes
expanded more than before.

She was much older; she looked tired and wasted.
"Well," I said, "I waited at Havre."
She stared; then she recognized me. She smiled and blushed and
clasped her