"My Lord! Ellen Withington!" he cried, in a shamed and rough remorse. "Couldn't you give me a chance to speak? I don't know what under the light o' the sun made me say that. Only you looked so terrible pretty. But you needn't ha' took it so."
She stood staring at him, fascinated, one brown hand trembling on her heart. Her eyes shot a glance at the door behind him, and he was enraged anew with pity of her.
"You don't know what it is to see a girl as pretty as you be," he went on, as if he scolded her, "and all dressed up to the nines."
She was still looking at him dumbly. She saw beyond him the vista of Sue's broken life.
"Well, then, won't you be friends?" he urged. "Great king! you couldn't be any more offish if I'd done it. You needn't think anything's altered. You're the prettiest creatur' that ever stepped, but I wouldn't give up Sue for the Queen of England. Now will you say it's square?"
So nothing was changed. She could not understand it, but she nodded at him and smiled a little. Her trembling did not cease until he was far upon the road.
When Mrs. Withington came home with her basket of greens, Ellen had supper all ready, and she ran forward and held a corner of her mother's apron while they walked together toward the house.
"You look kind o' peaked," said Mrs. Withington tenderly. "What you got on that old brown thing for?"
"I'm going to weed after supper," Ellen answered. "The garden looks real bad."
Mrs. Withington gazed at her keenly.
"Henry Fox asked if we were goin' to be home this evenin'," she said, with much indifference. "I told him I guessed so."
Ellen held the apron hard.
"O mother!" she whispered; "you see him. I haven't got to, have I?"
"Law! no, child," said the other woman. "I guess you ain't. You're mother's own girl."
So when the dusk came Mrs. Withington sat in the parlor and talked of crops with Henry, wan beside her, while Ellen, safe at the back of the house, weeded a bed of pansies purpling there. A soft after-glow lighted all the windows to flame, and fell full upon the face of one darkflower, quite human in its sombre wistfulness. Ellen knelt and kissed it tremulously.
"You darling one!" she murmured under her breath; and somehow she knew that this was the only sort of kiss she should ever want to give.
Miss Letitia Lamsonsat by the open fire, at a point where she could easily reach the tongs for the adjusting of any vagabond stick, and Cap'n Oliver Drown, in the opposite angle, held dominion over the poker. No one else would Miss Letitia have admitted to partnership in the managing of her fire; but Cap'n Oliver wielded an undisputed privilege. The poker suited him because he had a way, in the heat of friendly dissension, of smashing a stick much before it was ready to drop apart of its own charring; and that Miss Letitia never resented. She herself was gentle and persuasive with a fire; but the cap'n's more impetuous method seemed to belong to him, and she understood, without much thinking about it, that when he blustered a little, even over a hard-working blaze, it was because he must. He was a tempestuously organized creature, of a martial front and a baby heart, most fortunate in his breadth of shoulder, his height, and the readiness of the choleric blood to come into his cheeks, the eagerness of his husky voice to bluster.
These outward tokens of an untrammeled spirit helped him to hold his own among his kind,though his oldest friend, Miss Letty, prized him for different reasons. In her soul she had always regarded him as "real cunning," and had even, when she passed to bring up the dish of apples from the cellar, or a mug of cider, longed to touch the queer lock that would straggle down from his sparsely covered poll in absurd travesty of a baby's tended curl.
Probably no one, and certainly not the captain himself, knew exactly how Miss Letty regarded him. Miss Letty had been forty-seven years old the last November that ever was, as she had just told him, in talking over her forthcoming departure from the house where she had lived all the forty-seven years; and he knew, she added, just how she felt about the place and all that was in it. The cap'n nodded gravely, thinking, if it paid to say so, that he knew how the town looked upon her. She was good as gold, the neighbors said, and at that moment she especially looked it, in a still, serious way. She was a wholesome woman, with nothing showy to commend her and little to remark except the extreme earnestness of her upward glance. From her unconscious humility she seemed to be always gazing up at people, even when their eyes were on a level with hers. It might have indicated a habit of mind.
It was only to-night that the rumor of her goinghad reached Cap'n Oliver, and he had come in to talk it over. Miss Letty's heart quieted as she saw him take her father's capacious armchair and settle on the appliqué cushion, so sacred to him that whenever the cat stole a nap out of it, stray hairs had to be brushed scrupulously off, lest Cap'n Oliver should appear for an evening's gossip.
Miss Letty's house was at the end of a narrow way, bordered by cinnamon-roses and stragglers from old gardens; and some of the neighbors said it would make them as nervous as a witch to be so far from the road. But it did not make Miss Letty nervous. For some reason, perhaps because of long usage, it helped her feel secure.
"Well," she was saying mildly to Cap'n Oliver, "I'm gettin' along in years. What's the use of denyin' it? That's what Ellery said in his letter. 'You're 'most fifty, Aunt Letty,' says he. 'Time to quit livin' alone an' come out here an' let us take care o' you.'"
Cap'n Oliver scowled at the fire as if he found the freshly burning sticks too strong to be smashed, and resented it.
"Well," said he, "I'm fifty-four. Let 'em come to me."
"Now, be you really?" asked Miss Letty, in a pretty surprise, though she knew all the calendar of his life from the day she went to schoolfor the first time and heard him, in the second reader, profusely interpreting a martial declaration to the Romans. "Well, who'd have thought it!"
"I don't know," said Cap'n Oliver, staring into the fire, "as I'm any less of a man because I'm fifty-four years old. S'pose anybody should come to me an' say: 'Now you're fifty-four, cap'n. You better shut up shop an' go an' live in Washington Territory.'"
"It ain't Washington Territory," said Miss Letty, setting him right with a becoming air of humility. "It's Chicago they live to, Ellery an' Mary."
"Be that as it may," said the cap'n, "I've eat off my own plates an' drinked out o' my own cups a good many year, an' if anybody should try to give me a home, I'll bet ye, Letty, I'd be as mad as a hornet. I wisht you'd be mad, too. I'd think more of ye if ye was."
"You've been blest in a good housekeeper," said Miss Letty, in a gentle recall. "It ain't many men left alone as you be that's got anybody strong an' willin' like Sarah Ann Douglas to heft the burden an' lug it right along."
"It ain't Sarah Ann Douglas," said the cap'n. "Sarah Ann's a good girl, worth her weight in gold, an' growin' more valuable every day, but it ain't she that's kep' a roof over my head. I'vekep' it myself because I would have it. So there ye be."
"Well, I dunno how 'tis," said Miss Letty. She was staring placidly into the fire. "But I don't seem to have so much spirit as you have, Oliver. Seems to me, if Ellery an' Mary are goin' to feel worried havin' me livin' on here alone, mebbe I'd better sell off an' go back with 'em. That's the way I look at it."
"You never had any way of your own," said the cap'n.
Miss Letty put out a firm, plump hand and presented him with the poker.
"That stick's 'most fell apart," she said pacifically. "Mebbe you better give it a kind of a knock."
The cap'n did it absently and was soothed by the process. Then Miss Letty laid the shortened pieces together in a workmanlike way, and they blazed afresh.
"What you goin' to do with your things?" asked the cap'n, pointing a broad and expressive thumb about the place.
"Sell 'em off. That's what Ellery wrote. He says I could have an auction mebbe a week 'fore Thanksgivin',—that's about now,—an' then when he an' Mary come we could all go over to cousin Liza's to stay, an' start for Chicago from there. Seems if 'twas all complete."
The cap'n was staring at her.
"You ain't goin' to sell off your things without ay or no?" he inquired. "Don't ye prize 'em—the table you've eat off of an' chairs you've set in sence you were little?"
Miss Letty winced, and then recovered herself.
"Yes," she said, "I do prize 'em. But it seems if they'd got to go."
"Why don't ye take 'em with ye?"
"I couldn't do that, Oliver. Ellery has got his home furnished all complete—oak chamber sets an' I dunno what all. There wouldn't be no room for my old sticks."
The cap'n meditated.
"Letty," said he at length, "if there was anybody you ever set by after your own father an' mother, 'twas my wife Mary."
"Yes," said Letty, with one of her warmly earnest looks. "Mary an' I was always a good deal to one another."
"Well, do you know what she said to me once? 'Twas in her last sickness. She was tracin' back over old times, that year you an' I was together so much, goin' to singin'-school an' all. You had a good voice, Letty—voice like a bird. You recollect that year, don't ye?"
"Yes," said Letty. Her voice trembled a little. "I recollect."
"That was the spring Mary kinder broke downan' went into a decline, an' you journeyed off to Dill River, an' made that long visit. An' when you come back, Mary an' I was engaged. Well, I'm gettin' ahead of my story. What Mary said was, 'Oliver,' says she, 'you don't know half how good Letty is. Nobody knows but me. It's her own fault,' says she. 'She gives up too much, an' it makes the rest of us selfish.'"
"Did she say that?" asked Letty. She was awakened to a vivid recognition of something beyond the outer significance of the words. Then she seemed to lay her momentary emotion aside, as if it were something she could cover out of sight. She laughed a little. "Well," she said, "I guess I don't give up much nowadays. I ain't got so very much to give."
Cap'n Oliver rose and carefully arranged the fire as if there would be no one to do it after he was gone. Miss Letty loved that little custom. It seemed a kind of special service, and often, after he had done it and taken his leave, she went to bed earlier than she had intended because, when his fire had burned out, she could not bear to rearrange it.
"Well," said he, "you bear it in mind, what Mary said. Sometimes you give up too much. You've gi'n up all your life, an' now you're goin' to give up to Ellery an' Mary. You think twice, Letty, that's all I say. Think twice."
He shook hands with her gravely, according to their habit, and she heard his steps along the frozen lane. Then she opened the door softly a crack—this was old custom, too—that she might hear them farther. This time she was sure she actually knew when he turned into the road. She went back to the room and stood for a moment, her hand resting on the table, looking at the orderly fire and then at the chair which seemed to belong more to him than to her father. The cat got up from the lounge where, as she knew perfectly well, she had to content herself when Cap'n Oliver came, stretched, and walked over to the chair as if to assert her ownership. She was gathering her muscles for the easy leap when Miss Letty pounced upon her, gently yet with an involuntary decision.
"Don't you get up there, puss," she said jealously. "Do you think you've got to have a share in everything that's goin'?"
Then she laughed at herself in a gentle shame, lifted puss into the seat of desire, and stroked her ruffled dignity, and still laughing, in that indulgent way, sat down to see the fire out before she went to bed.
The next day Miss Letty set about cleaning her house, the actual first step toward leaving it; and suddenly, as she worked, at a moment she could never identify, it came over her thatthings which had been hers by such long usage that they were as unconsidered as her hand that wrought upon them, were to be hers no more. Then, as she dusted and rubbed, she stopped from time to time, to regard the rooms and their furnishings musingly and wonder if she should remember every smallest touch of their homely charm. She hoped she should at least remember.
All the week she did not see Cap'n Oliver. He was over at the Pinelands, she understood, making his married sister a little visit, as he always did in the fall of the year. If she thought it a little hard that he should be away the last week her home was to wear its accustomed face, she did not say so, even to herself. It seemed to her a poor habit to wish for what was obviously not to be, and all by herself she set upon the day for the sale of her goods and sent for the auctioneer to come.
An auction was a great event throughout the countryside. It ordinarily happened in the spring, as if people had taken all winter to get used to parting with their possessions; and then wagons of every sort came from whatever region the county paper had reached, and families brought their lunches in butter-boxes and went about scrutinizing the household gear that was to come under the hammer, glad at last to know what the house walls had really held; or theyvisited with their neighbors in little groups. But this was a day of fall sunshine and drifting leaves. Miss Letty, standing at an upper window looking out on her pear tree, the leaves leathery brown, felt a twitching of the lips. She gazed farther over her domain, and it seemed to her that it had never been so pleasant before, so mellowed and softened by the last light of the year. She knew there were neighbors in the yard below, and could not bring herself to glance at them. A line of horses stood there, and, she was sure, all the way up the lane, and she remembered that was the way they had stood when her mother was buried.
Then some one laughed out, in a way she knew, and she looked down and saw Cap'n Oliver. He was staring up at her window, as he answered a neighbor's greeting, and he gave a little oblique nod at her, and stumped along up the path. At once she recalled herself to the day, and went downstairs to meet him. It seemed very simple and plain now he had come.
The neighbors standing in the entry stood aside to let her pass, but she could scarcely notice them. It began to seem as if she must reach Cap'n Oliver, and then all would be well. The cap'n was in vigorous condition. His face looked ruddier, and he was shaking her hand and saying, as if she had endowed him with her state of mind:—
"Soon be over, Letty, soon be over. Don't you give it a thought."
"No," said Miss Letty, choking, "I won't. I won't give it a thought."
But at that moment Hiram Jackson, who knew everything and was fervidly anxious to be the earliest herald, came stammering out his eagerness to tell.
"Say, Miss Letty. Say! you can't have no auction. You won't have no auctioneer. Old Blaisdell's wife's sister's dead, down to East Branch, an' he's gone."
Miss Letty, breathless, looked at the cap'n. "Well, there!" she said. It was in her mind that now she might not need to have the auction at all; and again she wondered, since she must have it, how she could ever make up her mind to it again.
"Oh, dear!" she breathed. "I'm sorry."
The cap'n was frowning at her, only because he was so deep in thought. He threw up his head a little, then, bluffly, as if he had reached a clearer decision he meant to follow out.
"Not a word, Letty," said he. "Now don't you speak a word. I'm goin' to auction 'em off myself."
She stared at him, her lips apart, in protest.
"Why, Oliver," she said, "you ain't an auctioneer."
"Well, I shall be after this bout. Now you come straight into the sittin'-room an' set down in the corner underneath the ostrich egg, where I can see you good an' plain. An' if I come to anything you want to bid in, you hold up your finger, an' I'll knock it down to you. You understand, don't ye, Letty?"
It was hard to realize that she did, she looked so like a frightened little animal, turning her head this way and that, as if she longed for leaves to cover her.
"You understand, Letty, don't ye?" the cap'n was asking with great gentleness; and because she saw at last some sign of distress in his face also, she quieted, in a dutiful fashion, and nodded at him.
"Yes," she said, "I'll be where you can see me. But I sha'n't bid nothin' in. I don't prize 'em 'specially more'n I prize everything together. If I can give up an' go out West, I guess I can get along without my furniture. Shouldn't you think so?"
She went hurrying away across the hall and into the sitting-room, and Cap'n Oliver, his head bent a little, stroked his chin and watched her. Then he followed, making his way through the friendly crowd in hall and sitting-room, and mounted the dry-goods box prepared for the auctioneer. He looked about him and smiled a little,partly because people were gazing at him sympathetically, and partly over his own embarrassing plight. For he was a shy man. Nobody knew it but himself, and he was afraid that after to-day everybody would know.
"Well, neighbors," said he, "I feel as if I was runnin' for President or hog-reeve or somethin', or goin' to speak in meetin'. But I ain't. I'm goin' to auction off Letty Lamson's things, an' I ain't been to an auction myself sence I was seventeen an' set on the fence an' chewed gum an' played 'twas tobacker while old Dan'el Cummings's farm was auctioned off down to the last stick o' timber. Well, I don't know 's I could say how 'twas done, nor how it's commonly done now, but I can take a try at it. Now, here's some books Miss Letty's brought down out o' the attic. I don't know what they be, but they look to me as if they might ha' come out of her gran'ther's lib'ry—old Parson Lamson, ye know."
"Yes," said Miss Letty, from the low rocking-chair a neighbor had insisted on giving up to her, "they did. Many's the time I've watched him porin' over 'em winter nights with two candles."
"There, you see! they're Parson Lamson's books. Many a good word he got out of 'em for his sermons, I'll bet ye a dollar. Why, ye recollect how much Parson Lamson done for this town, how he got up sewin'-circles in war-timean' set everybody to scrapin' lint, an' climbed out of his bed after he couldn't hardly stand with rheumatism to say good-by to the boys when they enlisted, an' how he wrote to 'em an' prayed for 'em—why, them books are wuth their weight in gold. How much am I offered for Parson Lamson's books? A dollar-seventy—Why, bless you, Tim Fry, there ain't a book there but's wuth a dollar-seventy taken by itself! Why, I'll start it myself at thirteen—"
"Oh, don't you do it, Cap'n, don't you do it!" called Miss Letty piercingly. "I don't want 'em to bid on gran'ther's books. I want them books myself, if I have to work my fingers to the bone."
The cap'n took out his beautiful colored handkerchief with Joseph and his brethren on it, and wiped his face.
"Gone!" said he, "to Miss Letty Lamson. Now, ladies an' gentlemen, here's a little chair. I know that chair, an' so do you. It's the chair little Letty Lamson used to set in when she wa'n't more'n three year old, an' her mother used to keep her out under the sweet-bough tree in that little rocker whilst she was washin' or churnin'! What?"
He paused, for Miss Letty had waved a frantic hand. The tears were running down her cheeks. The others had before them the pictureof little Letty Lamson swaying and singing to herself, but she saw the brown apple-stems over her head and smelled the bitter-sweetness of the blooms. She saw her mother's plump bare arms as they went up and down with the churn-dasher or in and out of the suds, and felt again the pang of love that used to tell her that mother was the most beautiful creature in the world.
"Why," said she, regardless of her listeners, "I wouldn't part with that chair for a hundred dollars. How ever come you to think I'd part with my little chair?"
The cap'n was looking at her in a frank perplexity.
"The chair," said he, "remains the property of our friend and neighbor, Miss Letty Lamson. Now, ladies an' gentlemen, here's a fire-set—tongs, shovel, an' andirons. That fire-set has been in this very settin'-room as long as I can remember. Summer-times the andirons have been trimmed up with sparrergrass an' the like o' that, an' winter-times they've been shined up complete an' the fire snappin' behind 'em. What am I offered—"
Miss Letty was standing.
"Oh," she cried, "I never meant to put that fire-set in. Why, don't you remember—"
She was facing the cap'n, and the appeal ofher voice and look ran straight to him over the heads of the others, like a message. It bade him recall how he and she had sat together and talked of sad things and happy ones, night after night, for many years. The talks had been mostly cheerful, for the cap'n would have it so, and whenever she felt poorly she had taken pains to put on a lively front, because she reasoned that menfolks hated squally weather. Now, with the passing of the andirons and all they stood for, it looked to her as if a door had shut on that pleasant seclusion where they two had communed together, and there would be no more laughter in the world. "Oliver!" she said, and stopped, because the coming words had choked her.
The cap'n was looking at her over his glasses with extreme benevolence.
"Letty," said he, "I guess you better go upstairs an' sort out some o' the bed-linen an' coverlets. I understood they wa'n't quite ready, an' we shall get to 'em before long. If I come to anything down here I think you set by particularly an' that you can pack up as well as not, I'll bid it in for ye."
The neighbors were nodding in a kindly confirmation, and Miss Letty also understood it to be for the best. She made her way through the friendly aisle cleared for her, and Cap'n Oliverwaited until he heard her on the stairs above. He drew a heavy breath.
"Now," said he, "I guess we can poke along. It ain't to be wondered at anybody should want to bid in their own things, but it's kind of distressin' to an auctioneer that wants to earn his money. Now here's this high-boy. I'll rattle it off before Miss Letty gets time to have a change of heart an' come down again. What am I offered for old Parson Lamson's high-boy, bonnet-top an' old brasses all complete?"
Timothy Fry, a bright-eyed youth in the background, started it at fifteen dollars. Timothy had hitherto, in his twenty years, shown no sign of enthusiasm more sophisticated than that of shooting birds in their season and roaming the woods in a happy vagabondage while the law was on. When he made his bid there was a great turning of heads. Some looked at him, but others fixed the cap'n with a challenging glance, because he and the cap'n were great cronies, and it had been jocosely said they were thick as thieves, and if one lied t'other would swear to it. But Timothy, in his Sunday suit, with a blue tie and an elaborate scarf-pin, looked the picture of innocence, and it was concluded that, although no one had suspected it, he was thinking of setting up housekeeping for himself. The cap'n's face had an earnest absorption.He was evidently occupied only in being auctioneer.
"Pshaw!" he said, with a conversational ruthlessness. "Fifteen dollars! Why, I'd give that myself an' set it up out there at the cross-roads for autos to bid on while they run. Its wuth—well, I wouldn't say what 'twas wuth. Maybe you'd laugh, an' I ain't goin' to be laughed at, if I be an auctioneer."
"Twenty-five," piped up Deacon Eli King, won by the lure of city rivalry.
"Twenty-six," Timothy offered quietly.
"Twenty-eight," trembled Hannah Bond, who lived alone and braided mats for the city trade. She had always wanted a high-boy, but the sound of her own voice made it seem as if bidding might be almost too steep a price to pay for one.
"Twenty-nine," said Timothy.
After that there was very little competition. Nobody wanted a high-boy except for commercial possibilities, and about the time the bidding reached thirty-five dollars a foreshadowing timidity began to overspread the assembly. An autumn wind came up and set the bare woodbine sprays to beating on the window, to the tune of nearing snow. Summer buyers seemed far away. When one considered the drifted leaves and the cold sky, it looked as if full purses and credulous minds were a midsummer dream, never to comeagain. So the high-boy, in this moment of commercial panic, was knocked down to Timothy Fry. Five or six chairs followed, and these also became his.
Then the crowd pressed into the west sitting-room, where there was richer treasure. Here, too, Timothy's unmoved voice beat steadily on, raising every bid, and here, too, he came out victor. In the next room also he swept the field, and now at last the crowd murmurously compared certainties, one woman darkly prophesying he never'd pay for them, because he hadn't a cent—not a cent—laid up, and a man returning that nobody need worry. 'Twas only a joke of Tim's; but Miss Letty'd be the one to suffer. Timothy's eyes and ears were closed to comment. His commercial onslaught continued, and when, in the early dusk, horses were unhitched and there was time for comment at the gate, it was clearly understood that, save for what Miss Letty had bid in at the start, Timothy Fry was the possessor of every stick of furniture, every cup and bowl even, and all the ornaments and articles of common usage in the house. Timothy himself had gone. The men had looked about for him, to rally him on his approaching nuptials, the women for the ruthless cross-questioning his madness had invited; but he had slipped away softly, like the wood-creatureshe hunted. Even Cap'n Oliver, who might be supposed to know his inner mind, had betaken himself to the porch, and stood there, hat in hand, wiping his heated brow.
"Don't ask me," he returned to queries and conclusions in the mass. "I'm nothin' in the world but an auctioneer. Now I've learned the road, I dunno but I shall go right along auctionin' off everything I come acrost. You better be gettin' along home. Mebbe I'll sell your teams right off under your noses, if the fit comes over me."
"Timothy ain't goin' to be married, is he?" inquired aunt Belinda Soule, who sent items to the "County Star."
"S'pose so, sometime," concurred the cap'n jovially. "It's the end o' mortals here below. Dunno but I shall be married myself, if it comes to that."
"When's he goin' to take his furniture away?" continued aunt Belinda, with the persistence of her kind.
"Don't know. Mebbe he ain't goin' to take it. Mebbe he's goin' to marry Letty. 'Pears to me I heard a kind of a rumor she was goin' to marry 'fore long."
Aunt Belinda shook her head at him.
"Don't talk so about a nice respectable woman," said she. "An' she goin' to move away from us an' live nobody knows where. It's a shame."
The cap'n burst into a laugh that aunt Belinda privately thought coarse, and turned back into the house, while she joined a group of matrons and went away home, discoursing volubly.
Cap'n Oliver stopped for a minute at the window in the empty parlor, watching their departing bulk, and then went into the hall, where the tread of many invading feet had left the moist autumn soil, with bits of grass and now and then a yellowed leaf.
"Letty!" he called roundly.
There was a light step above, and then Miss Letty's voice, a very little voice suited to the dusk and stillness, came down the stairs.
"Be they gone?" she faltered.
"Yes," said the cap'n, "they're gone, every confounded one of 'em."
"Did they take the things with 'em?" inquired Miss Letty. "I didn't dast to look. I knew I couldn't help feelin' it if I see 'em all loaded up with things I knew."
"You come down here, Letty," said the cap'n. "I want to say a word to you."
She did come, wondering, her face sodden with tears, and a miserable little ball of a wet handkerchief in her grasp. The cap'n met her at the foot of the stairs and, without warning, took her by the shoulders and shook her slightly, why, he did not know, except perhaps as a warning toput a prettier face on the matter. Then he drew her into his arms with a conclusiveness it would have been difficult to resist, and kissed her soft wet cheeks. He kissed them a good many times, and ended by touching her trembling mouth.
"There," said the cap'n, "I don't know 's I ever kissed you before, Letty, but I expect to a good many times again, off 'n' on."
"Oh, yes, you did once," said Miss Letty, with unexpected frankness and simplicity. "'Twas the eighteenth of November, thirty years ago this very fall."
The cap'n looked at her and broke into a wondering laugh.
"Letty," said he, "you're the beateree, an' I'm a nat'ral-born fool. You're goin' to marry me right off as soon as I can get the license."
"An' live over to your house an' not go to Chicago?" inquired Miss Letty beatifically.
"Course you won't go to Chicago, unless we go together some spring or fall an' make 'em a visit an' show 'em we've got suthin' to live for as well as they have."
"Then I needn't have sold my furniture," said she, with a happy turn of logic.
"Sold your furniture? You ain't sold it. I had Tim Fry bid it all in for me, an' I was goin' to have it crated up an' tell Ellery, when he come, he'd got to let me pay it on to Chicago, whetheror no. An' then when I stood up there like a rooster on a fence, auctionin' of it off, it all come over me 'twa'n't the furniture an' the house I should miss. 'Twas you. I made up my mind then an' there I'd keep ye if I had to hopple ye by the ankle like Tolman's jumpin' steer."
Miss Letty withdrew from him and took a timid step to the west-room door, where, though the dusk was gathering, she could find the familiar shapes of her beloved possessions.
"I don't see how in the world I ever made up my mind I could," she said, a happy tremor in her voice.
It sounded to Cap'n Oliver strangely like a voice out of his past, unquelled by fears and abnegations. It was the voice that used to greet him when, in his splendid blue suit and shining satin tie, he had called for Letty Lamson, some thirty years ago, to take her in his sleigh to singing-school.
"Could what?" he inquired hilariously, out of his dream where the present made the fire on the hearth and the past lent him figures to sit by it.
"Why, get along without my old things."
"I s'pose you never so much as thought you couldn't get along without me," suggested the cap'n, in a kindly rallying.
"Yes," said Miss Letty soberly, "I did think that. I knew I couldn't."
Jerry Nortonstopped for a moment swinging his axe and crashing it into the grain of the tree, and took off his cap to cool his wet forehead. He looked very strong, standing there, equipped with great shoulders, a back as straight as the tree its might was smashing, and the vigor bespoken by red-brown eyes, a sanguine skin, and thick bright hair. He seemed to be regarding the pine trunks against the snow of the hill beyond, and again the tiny tracks nearer by, where a winter animal had flurried; but really all the beauties of the woods were sealed to him.
He was going back five days to his quarrel with Stella Joyce, and scowling as he thought how hateful she had been in her injustice. It was all about the ten-foot strip of land the city man had claimed from Jerry's new building lot through a newly found flaw in the title. Jerry, Stella mourned, had relinquished the land without question.
"I'd have hung on to it and fought him through every court in the country," she had declared, in a passion of reproach. "You're so numb, Jerry! You just go pokin' along from day today, lettin' folks walk over you—and never a word!"
Jerry had been unable, out of his numbness, to explain that he gave up the land because the other man's title to it, he had seen at once, was a valid one; nor could she, on her side, tell him how her wounded feeling was intensified because old aunt Bray, come from the West for a visit, had settled down upon him and his mother, in all likelihood to remain and go into the new house when it was built. But there was no time for either of them to reach pacific reasons when every swift word of hers begot a sullen look from him; and before they knew it they had parted.
Now, while he was retracing the path of their disagreement, lighted by the flaming lamps of her upbraiding, he heard a movement, light enough for a furry creature on its way to covert, and Stella stood before him. She did not look either obstinate or likely to continue any quarrel, however well begun. She was a round little person, complete in her miniature beauties, and now her blue eyes sought him with an extremity of emotion very honest and also timid. She had wrapped herself in a little red shawl, and her hands, holding it tight about her, gave a fantastic impression of being clasped in mute appeal. Jerry looked at her in wonder. For an instant they both stood as still as two wood-creatures surprisinglymet and, so far, undetermined upon the degree of hostility it would be wise to show.
Stella broke the silence. She retreated a little, in doing it, as if words would bring her nearer and she repudiated that degree of intimacy.
"I just want a favor," she said humbly.
Jerry advanced a step as she withdrew, and the interval between them stayed unchanged. Now the trouble in her face had its effect on him, and he forgot for a moment how he hated her.
"Ain't anything the matter, is there?" he asked, in quick concern.
Stella shook her head, but her eyes brimmed over. That evidently annoyed her, and she released the little shawl to lift a hand and brush the tears away.
"Aunt Hill has come," she said.
He had an impulse to tell her, as a piece of news that would once have concerned them both, that his own aunt was making her plans to go West again, and that she had furnished the money for him to buy back the precious strip of land. The city man, seeing how much he prized it, had sold it to him. But while he reflected that now Stella cared nothing about his intimate concerns, she was rushing on.
"And mother's sick," she ended.
"Sho!" said Jerry, in a sympathizing blur. "Real sick?"
"No, nothin' but her rheumatism. But it's in her back this time. She can't move hand nor foot."
"Why, yes," said Jerry, leaning his axe against the trunk of the wounded tree. "Course! you want I should go over 'n' help lift her."
Stella shook her head in definite finality.
"No, I don't either. Aunt Hill 'n' I can manage well enough. I guess mother'd be provoked 'most to death if I run round callin' the menfolks in."
"Well, what is it then?" asked Jerry, in palpable disappointment. "What is 't you want me to do?"
He thought he had never seen her cheeks so red. They made him think of the partridge-berries under the snow. She began her tale, looking indifferently at him as she proceeded, as if to convince them both that there was nothing peculiar in it all.
"Aunt Hill's an awful trial to mother."
Jerry took up his axe in one hand, and began absently chopping off a circle of bark about the tree. Stella was near saying, "Don't you cut your foot!" but she closed her lips upon the friendly caution and continued:—
"There's nothin' she don't get her nose into, and it just wears mother out."
"She's a great talker, seems if I remembered," said Jerry absently, wishing Stella would keepher hands under the shawl and not get them frozen to death. He was about to add that most women did talk too much, but somehow that seemed an unfortunate implication from one as unpopular as he, and he caught himself up in time. Stella was dashing on now, in the course of her obnoxious task.
"If anything's queer, she just goes at mother hard as she can pelt and keeps at her till she finds it out. And mother hates it enough when she's well, but when she's sick it's just awful. And now she's flat on her back."
"Course," said Jerry, in a comprehending sympathy. "Want I should carry your aunt Hill off to the Junction?"
"Why, you can't! She wouldn't go. You couldn't pry her out with a crowbar. She's made up her mind to stay till a week from to-morrow, and till a week from to-morrow she'll stay."
Jerry looked gloomily into the distance. He was feeling his own limitations as a seer.
"Well," he said, venturing a remark likely to involve him in no way, "I s'pose she will."
"Now, see here," said Stella. She spoke with a defiant hardness, the measure of her hatred for what she had to do. "There's one way you could help us out. She asked about you right away, and of course she thought we were—goin' together, same 's we had been."
Here her voice failed her, and he knew the swift color on her cheek was the miserable sign of her shame in such remembrance. It became his task to hearten her.
"Course," said he. "Anybody would."
"Well, I can't tell her. I ain't even told mother yet, and I don't want to till she's on her feet again. And if aunt Hill gets the leastest wind of it she'll hound mother every minute, and mother'll give up, and—well, I just can't do it, that's all."
Jerry was advancing eagerly now, his lips parted for speech; but her task once begun was easier, and she continued:—
"Now, don't you see? I should think you could."
"Yes," said Jerry, in great hopefulness. "Course I do."
"No, you don't either. It's only, she's goin' to be here not quite a week, and it's only one Saturday night."
"Yes," said Jerry, "that's to-morrer night."
"Well, don't you see? If you don't come over, she'll wonder why, and mother'll wonder why, and mother'll ask me, and, oh, dear! dear!"
Jerry thought she really was going to cry, this time, and it seemed to him that these domestic whirlwinds furnished ample reason for it.
"Course!" he said, in whole-hearted miseryfor her. "It's a bad place. A man wouldn't think anything of it, but womenfolks are different. They'd mind it terribly. Anybody could see they would."
Stella looked at him as if personal chastisement would be too light for him.
"Don't you see?" she insisted in a tone of enforced patience. "If you'd only dress up and come over."
Light broke in on him.
"Course I will, Stella," he called, so loudly that she looked over her shoulder to see if perhaps some neighbor, crossing the wood-lot, might have heard. "You just bet I will!"
Then, to his wonderment, she had vanished as softly as she came. Jerry was disappointed. He had thought they were going on talking about the domestic frenzies wrought by aunt Hill, but it seemed that further sociability was to be denied him until to-morrow night. He took up his axe, and went on paying into the heart of the tree. But he whistled now, and omitted to think how much he hated Stella. He was debating whether her scarlet shawl was redder than her cheeks. But Jerry never voiced such wonders. They seemed to him like a pain, or satisfaction over one's dinner, an ultimate part of individual experience.
The next night, early after supper, he tookhis way "down along" to the Joyce homestead lying darkly under leafless elms. There was a light in the parlor, as there had been every night since he began to go with Stella, and his heart beat in recognition, knowing it was for him. He tried the front door to walk in, neighbor-fashion, but it resisted him, and then he let the knocker fall. Immediately a window opened above, and Stella's voice came down to him.
"O Jerry, mother's back is worse, and I feel as if I'd ought to be rubbin' her. You come over another time."
Jerry stood staring up at her, a choking in his throat, and something burning hotly into his eyes. But he found his voice just as the window was sliding down.
"Don't you want I should do somethin'? I should think she'd have to be lifted."
"No," said Stella, quite blithely, "I can do all there is to do. Good-night."
The window closed and he went away. Stella ran downstairs to the bedroom where aunt Hill sat beside her mother, fanning the invalid with a palm-leaf fan. Mrs. Joyce hated to be fanned in wintry weather, but aunt Hill acted upon the theory that sick folks needed air. Aunt Hill was very large, and she creaked as she breathed, because, when she was visiting, even in the country, she put on her black silk of an afternoon.She had thick black hair, smooth under a fictitious gloss, and done in a way to be seen now only in daguerreotypes of long ago, and her dull black eyes were masterful. Mrs. Joyce, gazing miserably up at her daughter, was a shred of a thing in contrast, and Stella at once felt a passionate pity for her.
"There, aunt Hill," she said daringly, "I wouldn't fan mother any more if I's you. Let me see if I can get at you, mother. I'm goin' to rub your back."
Aunt Hill, with a quiver of professional pride wounded to the quick, did lay down the fan on a stand at her elbow. She was listening.
"Where's Jerry?" she demanded. "I don't hear nobody in the fore-room."
Stella was manipulating her mother with a brisk yet tender touch.
"Oh," she said, "I told him he'd have to poke along back to-night. I wanted to rub mother 'fore she got sleepy."
"Now you needn't ha' done that," said Mrs. Joyce from a deep seclusion, her face turned downward into the pillow. "He must be awful disappointed, dressin' himself up an' all, an' 'pearin' out for nothin'."
"Well," said Stella, "there's more Saturday nights comin'."
"I wanted to see Jerry," complained auntHill. "I could ha' set with your mother. Well, I'll go in an' put out the fore-room lamp."
Stella was always being irritated by aunt Hill's officious services in the domestic field, but now she was glad to watch her portly back diminishing through the doorway.
"You needn't ha' done that," her mother was murmuring again. "I feel real tried over it."
"Jerry wanted to know how you were," said Stella speciously. "He's awful sorry you're laid up."
"Well, I knew he'd be," said Mrs. Joyce. "Jerry's a good boy."
The week went by and her back was better; but when Saturday night came, aunt Hill had not gone home. She had, instead, slipped on a round stick in the shed while she was picking up chips nobody wanted, and sprained her ankle slightly. And now she sat by the kitchen fire in a state of deepest gloom, the foot on a chair, and her active mind careering about the house, seeking out conditions to be bettered. She wore her black silk no more, lest in her sedentary durance she should "set it out," and her delaine wrapper with palm-leaves seemed to Stella like the archipelagoes they used to define at school, and inspired her to nervous laughter. It was the early evening, and Mrs. Joyce, not entirely free from her muscular fetters, went back andforth from table to sink, doing the dishes, while Stella moulded bread.
There was a step on the icy walk. Stella stopped an instant, her hands on the cushion of dough, the red creeping into her face. Then she dusted her palms together and went ever so softly but quickly to the front entry, closing the door behind her. Aunt Hill, pricking up her ears, heard the outer door open and the note of a man's voice.
"You see 'f you can tell who that is," she counseled Mrs. Joyce, who presently approached the door and laid a hand on the latch. But it stuck, she thought with wonder. Stella was holding it from the other side.
Jerry, in his Sunday clothes, stood out there on the step, and Stella was facing him. There was a note of concern in her voice when she spoke—of mirth, too, left there by aunt Hill's archipelagoes.
"O Jerry," she said, "I'm awful sorry. You needn't ha' come over to-night."
"She ain't gone, has she?" inquired Jerry, in a voice of perilous distinctness.
"Don't speak so loud. She's got ears like a fox. No, but I could ha' put her off somehow. I never thought of your comin' over to-night."
"Well, I thought of it," said Jerry. "I ain't seen your mother for quite a spell."
"Oh, she's all right now. There! I feel awfully not to ask you in, but aunt Hill's ankle an' all—good-night."
He turned away after a look at the bright knocker that, jumping out at him from the dusk, almost made it seem as if the door had been shut in his face. But he went crunching down the path, and Stella returned, to wash her hands at the sink and resume her moulding.
"Law!" said aunt Hill, "your cheeks are 's red as fire. Who was it out there?"
"Jerry Norton." Stella's voice sank, in spite of her. That unswerving gaze on her cheeks made her feel out in the world, in a strong light, for curiosity to jeer at.
"Jerry Norton?" aunt Hill was repeating in a loud voice. "Well, I'll be whipped if it ain't Saturday night an' you've turned him away ag'in. What's got into you, Stella? I never thought you was one to blow hot an' blow cold when it come to a fellow like Jerry Norton. Good as gold, your mother says he is, good to his mother an' good to his sister, an' now he's took his aunt home to live with 'em."
"I can't 'tend to callers when there's sickness in the house," Stella plucked up spirit to say, and her mother returned wonderingly,—
"Why, it ain't sickness exactly, aunt Hill'sankle ain't. I wish I could ha' got out there. I'd have asked him in."
Before the next Saturday aunt Hill's ankle had knit itself up and she was gone. When Stella and her mother sat down to supper in their wonted seclusion, Stella began her deferred task. She was inwardly excited over it, and even a little breathless. It seemed incredible to her, still, that Jerry and she had parted, and it would, she knew, seem so to her mother when she should be told. She sat eating cup-cake delicately, but with an ostentatious relish, to prove the robustness of her state.
"Mother," she began.
"Little more tea?" asked Mrs. Joyce, holding the teapot poised.
"No. I want to tell you somethin'."
"I guess I'll have me a drop more," said Mrs. Joyce. "Nobody need to tell me it keeps me awake. I lay awake anyway."
Stella took another cup-cake in bravado.
"Mother," she said, "Jerry 'n' I've concluded to give it up."
"Give what up?" asked Mrs. Joyce, finding she had the brew too sweet and pouring herself another drop.
"Oh, everything! We've changed our minds."
Mrs. Joyce set down her cup.
"You ain't broke off with Jerry Norton?"
"Yes. We broke it off together."
"You needn't tell me 'twas Jerry Norton's fault." Mrs. Joyce pushed her cup from her and winked rapidly. "He's as good a boy as ever stepped, an' he sets by you as he does his life."
Stella was regarding her in wonder, a gentle little creature who omitted to say her soul was her own on ordinary days, yet rousing herself, with ruffled feathers, to defend, not her young, but the alien outside the nest.
"If he had give you the mitten, I shouldn't blame him a mite, turnin' him away from the door as you have two Saturday nights runnin'. But he ain't done it. I know Jerry too well for that. His word's as good 's his bond, an' you'll go through the woods an' get a crooked stick at last."
Then she looked across at Stella, as if in amazement over her own fury; but Stella, liking her for it and thrilled by its fervor, laughed out because that was the way emotion took her.
"You can laugh," said her mother, nodding her head, as she rose and began to set away the dishes. "But 'fore you git through with this you'll laugh out o' t'other side o' your mouth, an' so I tell ye."
Upon her words there was a step at the door, and Stella knew the step was Jerry's. Her mother, with the prescience born of ire, knew it too.
"There he is," she said. "Now you go tocuttin' up any didos, things gone as fur as they have, an' you'll repent this night's work the longest day you live. You be a good girl an' go 'n' let him in!"
She had returned to her placidity, a quiet domestic fowl whose feathers were only to be ruffled when some terrifying shadow flitted overhead.
Stella flew to the door and opened it on her lover, standing still and calm, like a figure set there by destiny to conquer her.
"Jerry," she burst forth out of the nervous thrill her mother had awakened in her, "you're botherin' me 'most to death. It's awful not to ask you in when you come to the door, and you a neighbor so. But I can't. You know I can't. It ain't as if you'd come in the day-time. But Saturday night—it's just as if—why, you know what Saturday night is. It's just as if we were goin' together."
Jerry stood there immovable, looking at her. He had shaved and he wore the red tie she had given him. Perhaps it was not so much that she saw him clearly through the early dusk as that she knew from memory how kind his eyes were and what a healthy color flushed his face. It seemed to her at this moment as if Jerry was the nicest person in the world, if only he wouldn't plague her so. But he was speaking out of his persistent quiet.
"I might as well tell you, Stella, an' you might as well make up your mind to it. It ain't to-night only. I'm comin' here every Saturday night."
She was near crying with the vexation of it.
"But you can't, Jerry," she said. "I don't want you to."
"You used to want me to," said he composedly.
"Well, that was when we were—"
"When we were goin' together." He nodded in acceptance of the quibble. "Well, if you wanted me once, a girl like you, you'll want me ag'in. An' anyways, I'm comin'."
Stella felt a curious thrill of pride in him.
"Why, Jerry," she faltered, "I didn't know you took things that way."
He was answering quite simply, as if he had hardly guessed it either.
"Well, I don't know myself how I'm goin' to take things till I've thought 'em out. That's the only way. Then, after ye've made up your mind, ye can stick to it."
Stella fancied there was a great deal in this to think over, but she creaked the door insinuatingly.
"Well," she said, "I'm awful sorry—"
"I won't keep you stan'in' here in the cold. I'll be over ag'in next Saturday night."
Stella went in and sat down by the hearth andcrossed her feet on the head of one of the fire-dogs. She was frowning, and yet she was laughing too. Her mother, moving back and forth, cast inquiring looks at her.
"Well," she ventured at last, "you made it up betwixt ye?"
Stella put down her feet and rose to help.
"Don't you ask me another question," she commanded, rather airily. "It's all over and done with, and I told you so before. Le's pop us some corn by 'n' by."
Before the next Saturday something had happened. Stella walked over to the Street to buy some thread, and Matt Pillsbury brought her home in his new sleigh with the glossy red back and the scrolls of gilt at the corners. Matt was a lithe, animated youth who could do many unexpected and serviceable things: a little singing, a little violin-playing, and tricks with cards. He was younger than Stella, but he reflected, as he drove with her over the smooth road, nobody would ever know it because he was dark and she was fair, and he resolved to let his mustache grow a little longer and curl it more at the ends. Mrs. Joyce was away when this happened, quilting at Deacon White's; but all the next day, which was Saturday, she remained perfectly aware that Stella was making plans, and when at seven o'clock the girl came down in her greenplaid with her gold beads on, Mrs. Joyce drew the breath of peace.
"Well, there," she said, "if you behave as well as you look, you'll do well, an' if Jerry don't say so I'll miss my guess."
Stella was gazing at her, trembling a little, but defiant also.
"Mother," she said, "if Jerry comes, you go to the door and you tell him—oh, my soul! I believe there he is now."
But in the next instant it seemed to her just as well. She could tell him herself. She flew to the door in a whirl. But she got no further than his name. Jerry took her with a hand on either side of her waist and set her back into the entry. Then he shut the door behind him and laid his palms upon her shoulders. She could hear his breath, and it occurred to her to wonder if he had been running, the blood must be pumping so through his heart. He was speaking in a tone she had never heard from any man.
"What's this about your goin' to the sociable with Matt Pillsbury?"
She stiffened and flung back defiance.
"I'm goin', that's all. How'd you know it?"
"I was over to the store an' Lottie Pillsbury come in an' I heard her tell Jane Hunt: 'Brother Matt asked her, an' she says she's goin'.'"
"Well, it's true enough. I expect him along in three-quarters of an hour."
"Well, he won't come." That strange savage thrill in his voice frightened her, and before she could remember they were not going together, she was clinging to his arm.
"O Jerry," she breathed, "you ain't done him any mischief?" But his arms were about her and she was locked to his heart.
"No," he said, "I ain't—yet." He laughed a little. "I stood out in the road till I heard him go into the barn to harness. Then he went back into the house to change his clo'es. An' I walked into the barn an' unblanketed the horse an' slung away the bells an' druv the horse down to the meetin'-house, an' left him there in the sheds."
Stella laughed with the delight of it. She felt wild and happy, and it came to her that a man who could behave like this when he had made up his mind, might be allowed a long time in coming to it. But she tried reproving him.
"O Jerry, the horse'll freeze to death!"
"No, he won't. He's all blanketed. Besides, little Jim Pillsbury's there tendin' the fire for the sociable, an' he'll find him. Now—" his voice took on an added depth of that strange new quality she shivered under—"Matt'll be over here in a minute to tell you he's lost his horse an' can't go. You want me to harness up an' takehim an' you in the old pung, or you want to stay here with me?"
Stella touched his cheek with her finger in a way she had, and he remembered and bent and kissed her.
"All right," he said. "That suits me. We'll stay here. Only, I don't want to put ye to no shame before Matt. That's why I played a trick on him instid o' breakin' his bones."
"O Jerry!" She had not meant to tell him, but it seemed she must. "I wasn't goin' with him alone. Lottie was goin', too. I told him I wouldn't any other way."
WhenClelia May set forth, as she did three and four times in the week, to hurry through the half-mile of pine woods between her house and Sabrina Thorne's, the family usually asked her, with the tolerant smile accorded to old jokes, whether she was going to see her intimate friend. Clelia always answered from a good-natured acceptance of the pleasantry, and went on, not in the least puzzled by the certainty that although she was but twenty-three and Sabrina was sixty, they were in all ways companionable. It had begun when Clelia, a child of ten, had had a temper-fit at home, and started out to join the Shakers. She had met a turkey-gobbler at Sabrina's gate, and, ashamed to cry but too obstinate to run, had stood in blank horror until Sabrina came out and routed the foe. Then Sabrina had taken her in to eat honey and spend an enchanted afternoon. After that Sabrina's house was the delectable land, and Clelia fled to it when she was happy or when the world was against her.
To-day she walked swiftly through the warm incense of the pines. It was hot weather, andinsects vexed the ear with an unwearied trill. But the heat of despair was greater in the girl than any such assault. Her cheeks had each a deep red spot. Her eyes were dark with feeling, and on the long black lashes hung fringing drops. She walked lightly, with springing strides. Beyond the pine woods, in the patch of sunny road bordered by dust-covered hardhack and elder, she paused for a moment, to dash the tears from her eyes. There in the open day she felt as if some prying glance might read her grief. The woods were kinder to it.
Sabrina's house was at the first turning, a gray, weather-beaten dwelling of mellow tones, set within a generous sweep of green. It had a garden in front. Sabrina herself was in the garden now, weeding the balm-bed. Sometimes Clelia thought the garden was almost too sweet after Sabrina had been there stirring up the scents. At least a third of it was given to herbs, and even the touch of a skirt in passing would brush out fragrance from it. There were things there that strangely seemed to have no smell at all; but grown in such rank masses, they contributed mysteriously to the alembic of the year.
Sabrina, risen to her feet now, had a look of youth touched by something that was not so much age as difference. She was slender, and still with a girl's symmetry, the light-footedway of moving, the little sinuous graces of a body unspoiled and delighting in its own uses. Her face had a rounded plumpness, and her cheeks were pink. People said now, as they had in her youth, that Sabrina Thorne had the skin of a baby. One old woman, chiefly engaged in marking down human commodities, always added that it was because of that heart trouble Sabrina had; but nobody listened. Sabrina seemed to have made no concession to time, save that her waving hair was white. In its beauty and abundance, it was a marvel. It sprang thickly up on each side of her parting, and the soft mass of it was wound round and round on the top of her head. She was a beautiful being, neither old nor young.
She stood there smiling at Clelia's approach.
"How do?" she said softly; but when the girl was near enough to betray the trouble of her face, she added, "Whatever is the matter?"
"Come into the house, Sabrina," said Clelia, in a muffled voice. "I can't tell it out here."
Sabrina dropped her trowel on a heap of weeds, and cast her gardening gloves on the top. She led the way to the house, and when they were in the coolness of the big sitting-room with its air of inherited repose, she turned about and spoke again in her round, low voice. "Well?" There was anxiety in the tone.
Clelia, facing her, began to speak with a hard composure.
"Richmond—Richmond Blake—" and her voice broke. She threw herself forward upon Sabrina's shoulder and clasped her with shaking hands. "He has given me up, Sabrina," she moaned, between her sobs. "It is over. He has given me up."
Sabrina led her to the great chair by the window, and forced her into it. Then she knelt beside her and drew the girl's head again to her shoulder. She patted her cheek with little regular beats that had a rhythmic soothing.
"There, there, dear," she kept saying. "There, there!"
Presently Clelia choked down her sobs, and raised her face, tempestuous in its marks of grief.
"I'd just as soon tell you," she said, with a broken hardness, a composure struggled for and then lost. "I'd just as soon anybody would know it. I don't feel as if I'd any use for myself, now he don't prize me. Well, Sabrina, he don't want me any more."
"You sure, dear?" asked Sabrina. "You better be sure."
"We got talking about the land," said Clelia, in a high voice.
"The ten-acre lot?"
"Yes. I said to him: 'There's that man from New York. He's offered you two hundred dollars for it. Why don't you take it?'"
"What's the man from New York want it for?" asked Sabrina, with what seemed a trifling irrelevance.
Clelia answered impatiently.
"I don't know. To build a summer cottage, I suppose. That's what Richmond asked me, and I said I didn't know. Then he said he wasn't going to sell till he knew what he was selling for."
"Well, I call that kinder long-headed, myself," said Sabrina.
"So you might; but the New York man went away that afternoon. 'Well,' says he, before he went, 'that's my offer. Take it or leave it.'"
"But that's nothing to be mad about."
"We didn't stop there. I reminded Rich how far that money would go towards building, and his jaw got set, and he said he couldn't help it. Then I told him I'd be switched if ever I lived with his folks—"
"Oh, dear, dear!" lamented Sabrina. "You didn't say that, did you? Now you mustn't, dear. You mustn't say things folks can't forget."
A gush of tears flooded the girl's cheeks.
"Oh, I didn't mean to!" she cried, in the bitterness of remembering a battle lost. "He knewI didn't mean to. But I got sort of crazy, Sabrina. I did. And I told him at last—" Her eyelids dropped under their weight of tears.
"What did you tell him?"
"I told him he could choose between his folks and me."
"What did he say?"
"He said, 'I'll choose now. It's over.' He got up and walked out of the room. He turned at the door. 'It's over, Clelia,' says he. 'Don't you ever call me back, for I sha'n't come.' And he won't. He ain't that kind."
"Oh, me! oh, me!" moaned Sabrina. She, too, knew he was not that kind.
They sat in silence for a moment, the girl looking straight before her in a dull acquiescence, and Sabrina's pink face settled into aging lines. Suddenly the girl spoke sharply.
"But I can't bear it, Sabrina, I can't bear it. It will kill me—if I don't kill myself."
Sabrina rose slowly, and took a chair at the other window.
"Yes," said she, "you can bear it. Other folks have gone through it before you, an' other folks will again. It's a kind of a sickness there's goin' to be as long as the earth turns round. You've got to bear it."
Her voice struck sharply, and Clelia, called momentarily out of herself, glanced at her witha sudden interest. For the first time since their intimacy, Sabrina looked her age.
Little fine lines seemed to have started out upon her cheeks and forehead. Her eyes had the look of grief. But Clelia's thoughts went back at once to her own trouble. She spoke gravely now, like an older woman.
"It's not because we've quarreled, Sabrina. I'd say I was sorry this minute. But he wouldn't take me back. It shows he don't care. If he'd cared about me, he'd have thought 'twas a little thing; but he's chosen between us, and he won't go back."
"Well," said Sabrina conclusively, "however it turns out, it's here an' you've got to face it. Clelia, I've a good mind to tell you somethin' I ain't ever told anybody."
"Yes," said Clelia indifferently, her mind upon herself. "Yes, tell me."
Sabrina folded her hands upon her lap and set her gaze straight forward, and yet with a removed look, as if she had withdrawn into the past.