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Of course the Widow Stimson never tried to win Deacon Hawkins, nor
any other man, for that matter. A widow doesn't have to try to win a
man; she wins without trying. Still, the Widow Stimson sometimes
wondered why the deacon was so blind as not to see how her fine farm
adjoining his equally fine place on the outskirts of the town might
not be brought under one management with mutual benefit to both
parties at interest. Which one that management might become was a
matter of future detail. The widow knew how to run a farm
successfully, and a large farm is not much more difficult to run
than one of half the size. She had also had one husband, and knew
something more than running a farm successfully. Of all of which the
deacon was perfectly well aware, and still he had not been moved by
the merging spirit of the age to propose consolidation.
This interesting situation was up for discussion at the Wednesday
afternoon meeting of the Sisters' Sewing Society.
"For my part," Sister Susan Spicer, wife of the Methodist minister,
remarked as she took another tuck in a fourteen-year-old girl's
skirt for a ten-year-old—"for my part, I can't see why Deacon
Hawkins and Kate Stimson don't see the error of their ways and
depart from them."
"I rather guess she has," smiled Sister Poteet, the grocer's better
half, who had taken an afternoon off from the store in order to be
present.
"Or is willing to," added Sister Maria Cartridge, a spinster still
possessing faith, hope, and charity, notwithstanding she had been on
the waiting list a long time.
"Really, now," exclaimed little Sister Green, the doctor's wife, "do
you think it is the deacon who needs urging?"
"It looks that way to me," Sister Poteet did not hesitate to affirm.
"Well, I heard Sister Clark say that she had heard him call her
'Kitty' one night when they were eating ice-cream at the Mite
Society," Sister Candish, the druggist's wife, added to the fund of
reliable information on hand.
"'Kitty,' indeed!" protested Sister Spicer. "The idea of anybody
calling Kate Stimson 'Kitty'! The deacon will talk that way to 'most
any woman, but if she let him say it to her more than once, she must
be getting mighty anxious, I think."
"Oh," Sister Candish hastened to explain, "Sister Clark didn't say
she had heard him say it twice.'"
"Well, I don't think she heard him say it once," Sister Spicer
asserted with confidence.
"I don't know about that," Sister Poteet argued. "From all I can see
and hear I think Kate Stimson wouldn't object to 'most anything the
deacon would say to her, knowing as she does that he ain't going to
say anything he shouldn't say."
"And isn't saying what he should," added Sister Green, with a sly
snicker, which went around the room softly.
"But as I was saying—" Sister Spicer began, when Sister Poteet,
whose rocker, near the window, commanded a view of the front gate,
interrupted with a warning, "'Sh-'sh."
"Why shouldn't I say what I wanted to when—" Sister Spicer began.
"There she comes now," explained Sister Poteet, "and as I live the
deacon drove her here in his sleigh, and he's waiting while she
comes in. I wonder what next," and Sister Poteet, in conjunction
with the entire society, gasped and held their eager breaths,
awaiting the entrance of the subject of conversation.
Sister Spicer went to the front door to let her in, and she was
greeted with the greatest cordiality by everybody.
"We were just talking about you and wondering why you were so late
coming," cried Sister Poteet. "Now take off your things and make up
for lost time. There's a pair of pants over there to be cut down to
fit that poor little Snithers boy."
The excitement and curiosity of the society were almost more than
could be borne, but never a sister let on that she knew the deacon
was at the gate waiting. Indeed, as far as the widow could discover,
there was not the slightest indication that anybody had ever heard
there was such a person as the deacon in existence.
"Oh," she chirruped, in the liveliest of humors, "you will have to
excuse me for today. Deacon Hawkins overtook me on the way here, and
here said I had simply got to go sleigh-riding with him. He's
waiting out at the gate now."
"Is that so?" exclaimed the society unanimously, and rushed to the
window to see if it were really true.
"Well, did you ever?" commented Sister Poteet, generally.
"Hardly ever," laughed the widow, good-naturedly, "and I don't want
to lose the chance. You know Deacon Hawkins isn't asking somebody
every day to go sleighing with him. I told him I'd go if he would
bring me around here to let you know what had become of me, and so
he did. Now, good-by, and I'll be sure to be present at the next
meeting. I have to hurry because he'll get fidgety."
The widow ran away like a lively schoolgirl. All the sisters watched
her get into the sleigh with the deacon, and resumed the previous
discussion with greatly increased interest.
But little recked the widow and less recked the deacon. He had
bought a new horse and he wanted the widow's opinion of it, for the
Widow Stimson was a competent judge of fine horseflesh. If Deacon
Hawkins had one insatiable ambition it was to own a horse which
could fling its heels in the face of the best that Squire Hopkins
drove. In his early manhood the deacon was no deacon by a great
deal. But as the years gathered in behind him he put off most of the
frivolities of youth and held now only to the one of driving a fast
horse. No other man in the county drove anything faster except
Squire Hopkins, and him the deacon had not been able to throw the
dust over. The deacon would get good ones, but somehow never could
he find one that the squire didn't get a better. The squire had also
in the early days beaten the deacon in the race for a certain pretty
girl he dreamed about. But the girl and the squire had lived happily
ever after and the deacon, being a philosopher, might have forgotten
the squire's superiority had it been manifested in this one regard
only. But in horses, too—that graveled the deacon.
"How much did you give for him?" was the widow's first query, after
they had reached a stretch of road that was good going and the
deacon had let him out for a length or two.
"Well, what do you suppose? You're a judge."
"More than I would give, I'll bet a cookie."
"Not if you was as anxious as I am to show Hopkins that he can't
drive by everything on the pike."
"I thought you loved a good horse because he was a good horse," said
the widow, rather disapprovingly.
"I do, but I could love him a good deal harder if he would stay in
front of Hopkins's best."
"Does he know you've got this one?"
"Yes, and he's been blowing round town that he is waiting to pick me
up on the road some day and make my five hundred dollars look like a
pewter quarter."
"So you gave five hundred dollars for him, did you?" laughed the
widow.
"Is it too much?"
"Um-er," hesitated the widow, glancing along the graceful lines of
the powerful trotter, "I suppose not if you can beat the squire."
"Right you are," crowed the deacon, "and I'll show him a thing or
two in getting over the ground," he added with swelling pride.
"Well, I hope he won't be out looking for you today, with me in your
sleigh," said the widow, almost apprehensively, "because, you know,
deacon, I have always wanted you to beat Squire Hopkins."
The deacon looked at her sharply. There was a softness in her tones
that appealed to him, even if she had not expressed such agreeable
sentiments. Just what the deacon might have said or done after the
impulse had been set going must remain unknown, for at the crucial
moment a sound of militant bells, bells of defiance, jangled up
behind them, disturbing their personal absorption, and they looked
around simultaneously. Behind the bells was the squire in his sleigh
drawn by his fastest stepper, and he was alone, as the deacon was
not. The widow weighed one hundred and sixty pounds, net—which is
weighting a horse in a race rather more than the law allows.
But the deacon never thought of that. Forgetting everything except
his cherished ambition, he braced himself for the contest, took a
twist hold on the lines, sent a sharp, quick call to his horse, and
let him out for all that was in him. The squire followed suit and
the deacon. The road was wide and the snow was worn down smooth. The
track couldn't have been in better condition. The Hopkins colors
were not five rods behind the Hawkins colors as they got away. For
half a mile it was nip and tuck, the deacon encouraging his horse
and the widow encouraging the deacon, and then the squire began
creeping up. The deacon's horse was a good one, but he was not
accustomed to hauling freight in a race. A half-mile of it was as
much as he could stand, and he weakened under the strain.
Not handicapped, the squire's horse forged ahead, and as his nose
pushed up to the dashboard of the deacon's sleigh, that good man
groaned in agonized disappointment and bitterness of spirit. The
widow was mad all over that Squire Hopkins should take such a mean
advantage of his rival. Why didn't he wait till another time when
the deacon was alone, as he was? If she had her way she never would,
speak to Squire Hopkins again, nor to his wife, either. But her
resentment was not helping the deacon's horse to win.
Slowly the squire pulled closer to the front; the deacon's horse,
realizing what it meant to his master and to him, spurted bravely,
but, struggle as gamely as he might, the odds were too many for him,
and he dropped to the rear. The squire shouted in triumph as he drew
past the deacon, and the dejected Hawkins shrivelled into a heap on
the seat, with only his hands sufficiently alive to hold the lines.
He had been beaten again, humiliated before a woman, and that, too,
with the best horse that he could hope to put against the
ever-conquering squire. Here sank his fondest hopes, here ended his
ambition. From this on he would drive a mule or an automobile. The
fruit of his desire had turned to ashes in his mouth.
But no. What of the widow? She realized, if the deacon did not, that
she, not the squire's horse, had beaten the deacon's, and she was
ready to make what atonement she could. As the squire passed ahead
of the deacon she was stirred by a noble resolve. A deep bed of
drifted snow lay close by the side of the road not far in front. It
was soft and safe and she smiled as she looked at it as though
waiting for her. Without a hint of her purpose, or a sign to disturb
the deacon in his final throes, she rose as the sleigh ran near its
edge, and with a spring which had many a time sent her lightly from
the ground to the bare back of a horse in the meadow, she cleared
the robes and lit plump in the drift. The deacon's horse knew before
the deacon did that something had happened in his favor, and was
quick to respond. With his first jump of relief the deacon suddenly
revived, his hopes came fast again, his blood retingled, he gathered
himself, and, cracking his lines, he shot forward, and three minutes
later he had passed the squire as though he were hitched to the
fence. For a quarter of a mile the squire made heroic efforts to
recover his vanished prestige, but effort was useless, and finally
concluding that he was practically left standing, he veered off from
the main road down a farm lane to find some spot in which to hide
the humiliation of his defeat. The deacon, still going at a clipping
gait, had one eye over his shoulder as wary drivers always have on
such occasions, and when he saw the squire was off the track he
slowed down and jogged along with the apparent intention of
continuing indefinitely. Presently an idea struck him, and he looked
around for the widow. She was not where he had seen her last. Where
was she? In the enthusiasm of victory he had forgotten her. He was
so dejected at the moment she had leaped that he did not realize
what she had done, and two minutes later he was so elated that,
shame on him! he did not care. With her, all was lost; without her,
all was won, and the deacon's greatest ambition was to win. But now,
with victory perched on his horse-collar, success his at last, he
thought of the widow, and he did care. He cared so much that he
almost threw his horse off his feet by the abrupt turn he gave him,
and back down the pike he flew as if a legion of squires were after
him.
He did not know what injury she might have sustained; She might have
been seriously hurt, if not actually killed. And why? Simply to make
it possible for him to win. The deacon shivered as he thought of it,
and urged his horse to greater speed. The squire, down the lane, saw
him whizzing along and accepted it profanely as an exhibition for
his especial benefit. The deacon now had forgotten the squire as he
had only so shortly before forgotten the widow. Two hundred yards
from the drift into which she had jumped there was a turn in the
road, where some trees shut off the sight, and the deacon's anxiety
increased momentarily until he reached this point. From here he
could see ahead, and down there in the middle of the road stood the
widow waving her shawl as a banner of triumph, though she could only
guess at results. The deacon came on with a rush, and pulled up
alongside of her in a condition of nervousness he didn't think
possible to him.
"Hooray! hooray!" shouted the widow, tossing her shawl into the air.
"You beat him. I know you did. Didn't you? I saw you pulling ahead
at the turn yonder. Where is he and his old plug?"
"Oh, bother take him and his horse and the race and everything. Are
you hurt?" gasped the deacon, jumping out, but mindful to keep the
lines in his hand. "Are you hurt?" he repeated, anxiously, though
she looked anything but a hurt woman.
"If I am," she chirped, cheerily, "I'm not hurt half as bad as I
would have been if the squire had beat you, deacon. Now don't you
worry about me. Let's hurry back to town so the squire won't get
another chance, with no place for me to jump."
And the deacon? Well, well, with the lines in the crook of his elbow
the deacon held out his arms to the widow and——. The sisters at the
next meeting of the Sewing Society were unanimously of the opinion
that any woman who would risk her life like that for a husband was
mighty anxious.
How the Widow Won The Deacon
A Classic Funny Story
by
William James Lampton |
