The Graysons A Story of Illinois

Excerpt

TURNING THE BIBLE

The place of the beginning of this story was a country neighborhood on a shore, if one may call it so, that divided a forest and prairie in Central Illinois. The date was nearly a lifetime ago. An orange-colored sun going down behind the thrifty orchard of young apple-trees on John Albaugh's farm, put into shadow the front of a dwelling which had stood in wind and weather long enough to have lost the raw look of newness, and to have its tints so softened that it had become a part of the circumjacent landscape. The phebe-bird, locally known as the pewee, had just finished calling from the top of the large barn, and a belated harvest-fly, or singing locust, as the people call him, was yet filling the warm air with the most summery of all summery notes—notes that seem to be felt as well as heard, pushing one another faster and yet faster through the quivering atmosphere, and then dying away by degrees into languishing, long-drawn, and at last barely audible vibrations.

Rachel, the daughter of the prosperous owner of the farm, was tying some jasmine vines to the upright posts that supported the roof of a porch, or veranda, which stretched along the entire front of the house. She wore a fresh calico gown, and she had something the air of one expecting the arrival of guests. She almost always expected company in the evening of a fine day. For the young person whose fortune it is to be by long odds the finest-looking woman in a new country where young men abound, and where women are appreciated at a rate proportioned to their scarcity, knows what it is to be a "reigning belle" indeed. In the vigorous phrase of the country, Rachel was described as "real knock-down handsome"; and, tried by severer standards than those of Illinois, her beauty would have been beyond question. She had the three essentials: eyes that were large and lustrous, a complexion rich and fresh, yet delicately tinted, and features well-balanced and harmonious. Her blonde hair was abundant, and, like everything about her, vital. Her hands and feet were not over-large, and, fortunately, they were not disproportionately small; but just the hands and feet of a well-developed country girl used to activity and the open air. Without being more than ordinarily clever, she had a certain passive intelligence. Her voice was not a fine one, nor had her manners any particular charm except that which comes from the repose of one who understands that she is at her best when silent, and who feels herself easily ahead of rivals without making any exertion. Hers was one of those faces the sight of which quickens the pulses even of an old man, and attracts young men with a fascination as irresistible as it is beyond analysis or description. Many young men were visitors at John Albaugh's hospitable house, and where the young men came the young women were prone to come, and thus Albaugh's became a place of frequent and spontaneous resort for the young people from all the country round.

But it had happened with this much-courted girl, as it has happened to many another like her, that with all the world to choose from, she had tarried single longer than her companions....