8. CHAPTER VIII.
ANDY.
ANDY was a character in his way. A fall from his
horse upon the ground had injured his head when
he was a boy, and since that time he had been
what his mother called a little queer, while the neighbors
spoke of him as simple Andy, or Mrs. Markham's half-wit,
who did the work of a girl and knit all his own socks. He
was next to Richard in point of age, but he looked younger
than either of his brothers, for his face was round and fair,
and smooth as a girl's. It is true that every Sunday of his life
he made a great parade with lather and shaving-cup, standing
before the glass in his shirt-sleeves, just as the other boys
did, and flourishing his razor around his white throat and
beardless face, to the great amusement of any one who
chanced to see him for the first time.
In his younger days, when the tavern at the Cross Roads
was just opened, Andy had been a sore trial to both mother
and brothers; and many a night, when the rain and sleet
were driving across the prairies, Richard had left the warm
fireside and gone out in the storm after the erring Andy,
who had more than once been found by the roadside, with
his hat jammed into every conceivable shape, his face
scratched, and a tell-tale smell about his breath which contradicted
his assertion “that somebody had knocked him
down.”
Andy had been intemperate, and greatly given to what
the old Colonel in Chicopee had designated as “busts;”
but since the time when the church missionary, young Mr.
Townsend, had come to Olney, and held his first service in
the log school-house, Andy had ceased to frequent the
Cross Roads tavern, and Richard went no more in the
autumnal storms to look for his wayward brother. There
was something in the beautiful simplicity of the church
service which went straight to Andy's heart, and more than
all, there was something in Mr. Townsend's voice, and
manner, and face, which touched a responsive chord in the
breast of the boyish Andy, and when at last the bishop
came to that section of Iowa, his hands were first laid in
blessing on the bowed head of Andy, who knelt to receive
the rite of confirmation in the presence of a large concourse
of people, to most of whom the service and ceremony were
entirely new.
While rejoicing and thanking God for the change, which
she felt was wholly sincere, Mrs. Markham had deeply deplored
the pertinacity with which Andy had clung to his resolve
to join “Mr. Townsend's church or none.” She did
not doubt Mr. Townsend's piety or Andy's either, but she
doubted the Episcopalians generally, because they did not
require of their members more than God himself requires, and
it hurt her sore that Andy should go with them rather than
to her church across the brook, where Father Aberdeen
preached. Andy believed in Mr. Townsend, and in time
he came to believe heart and soul in the church doctrines
as taught by him, and the beautiful consistency of his daily
life was to his mother like a constant and powerful argument
in favor of the church to which he belonged, while to
his brothers it was a powerful argument in favor of the religion
he professed.
That Andy Markham was a Christian no one doubted.
It showed itself in every act of his life; it shone in his
beaming, good-natured face, and made itself heard in the
touching pathos of his voice, when he repeated aloud in his
room the prayers of his church, saying to his mother,
when she objected that his prayers were made up beforehand,
“And for the land's sake, ain't the sams and hims,
which are nothing but prayers set to music, made up beforehand?
A pretty muss you'd have of it if everybody
should strike out for himself, a singin' his own words just
as they popped into his head.”
Mrs. Markham was not convinced, but she let Andy alone
after that, simply remarking that “the Prayer-Book would
not always answer the purpose; there would come a time
when just what he wanted was not there.”
Andy was willing to wait till that time came, trusting to
Mr. Townsend to find for him some way of escape; and so
the matter dropped, and he was free to read his prayers as
much as he pleased. He had heard from Richard that his
new sister was of his way of thinking,—that though not a
member of the church except by baptism, she was an Episcopalian,
and would be married by that form.
It was strange how Andy's great, warm heart went out
toward Ethelyn after that. He was sure to like her; and
on the evening of the bridal, when the clock struck nine,
he had taken his tallow candle to his room, and opening
his prayer-book at the marriage ceremony, had read it carefully
through, even to the saying, “I, Richard, take thee,
Ethelyn,” &c., kneeling at the proper time, and after he
was through, even venturing to improvise a prayer of his
own, in which he asked, not that Ethelyn might be happy
with his brother,—there was no doubt on that point, for
Richard was perfect in his estimation,—but that old Dick
might be happy with her,—that he, Andy, might do his
whole duty by her, and that, if it was right to ask it, she
might bring him something from that famous Boston,
which seemed to him like a kind of paradise, and also that
she need not at once discover that he did not know as much
as old Dick.
This was Andy's prayer, which he had confessed to Mr.
Townsend; and now, all shaven and shorn, with his best
Sunday coat, and a large bandanna in his hand, he came in
to greet his sister. It needed but a glance for Ethelyn to
know the truth, for Andy's face told what he was; but
there was something so kind in his expression and so winning
in his voice, as he called her “Sister Ethie,” that she
unbent to him as she had unbent to no one else; and when
he stooped to kiss her, she did not draw back as she had
from James and John, but promptly put up her lips, and
only winced a little at the second loud, hearty smack which
Andy gave her, his great mouth leaving a wet spot on her
cheek, which she wiped with her handkerchief.
Richard had dreaded the meeting between his polished
wife and his simple brother more than anything else, and
several times he had tried to prepare Ethelyn for it, but he
could not bring himself to say, “Andy is foolish;” for
when he tried to do it Andy's pleading face came up before
him just as it looked on the morning of his departure from
home in June, when Andy had said to him, “Don't tell
her what a shaller critter I am. Let her find it out by her
learning.”
So Richard had said nothing particular of Andy; and
now he watched him anxiously to see the impression he
was making, and, as he saw Ethelyn's manner, he marvelled
greatly at this new phase in her disposition. She did not
feel half so desolate after seeing Andy, and she let him hold
her hand, which he stroked softly, admiring its whiteness,
and evidently comparing it with his own. All the Markhams
had large hands and feet, just as they were all good-looking.
Even Andy had his points of beauty, for his
soft, brown hair was handsomer, if possible, than Richard's,
and more luxuriant, while many a city dandy might have
coveted his white, even teeth, and his dark eyes were very
placid and gentle in their expression.
“Little sister,” he called Ethelyn, who, though not very
short in stature, seemed to him so much younger than he
had expected Dick's wife to be, that he applied the term
“little” as he would to anything which he wished to
pet.
Ethelyn's hat was laid aside by this time, and the basquine,
too, which Andy thought the prettiest coat he had
ever seen, and which Eunice, who was bidden to carry
Ethelyn's things away, tried on before the glass in Ethelyn's
chamber, as she did also the hat, deciding that
Melinda Jones could make her something like them out of
a gray skirt she had at home and one of Tim's palm-leaf
hats.
