"I don't know as you ever knew, Clelia," she said, and Clelia at once thought that it was as if she were reading from a book, "but when I was about your age, I come near bein' married."
"Father said you were much sought after," said Clelia, with a prim shyness not like her ownstormy confession. Sabrina, with her white hair and her young face seemed somehow set apart from love and the sweet uses of it.
"I guess he never knew about that particular one. Nobody knew that. I had as good a time as you've had, Clelia. I liked him the same way. I've thought of it, day in, day out, when I've seen you with Richmond Blake. I've never been so near livin' since as I have when I've seen you an' Richmond together out in that gardin, laughin' an' jokin' in amongst the flowers. Well, he give me up, dear. He give me up."
Her hands took a firmer hold on each other. Her face convulsed into a deeper grief; and Clelia, who had never seen her moved with any emotion that concerned herself alone, gazed at her in awe, with her own passion quieting as she confronted that of one so old, yet living still.
"Did you—have words?" she ventured.
"No, dear, no. I guess we couldn't have had, I felt so humble towards him. I never forgot a minute how good it was to have him like me. No. There was somebody else. You see he was terrible smart. He put himself through college, an' then he met her, an' she was just as smart as he was. Lively, too, I guess. I never see her. But I hadn't anything but my good looks—I was real pretty then. I had that an' a kind of a way of keepin' house an' makin' folks comfortable.Well, I found out he didn't prize me; so I give him his freedom. An' he was glad, dear, he was glad."
She rocked back and forth for a moment, in forgetfulness of any save the long-past moment when she was alive.
"O Sabrina!" breathed the girl.
It recalled her. She straightened, and resumed the habit of an ordered life.
"Now this is what I was comin' to," she said, "the way to bear it. It ain't a light thing. It's a heavy one. A lot o' folks go through with it, an' they take it different ways. Sometimes their minds give out. Folks say they're love-cracked. Sometimes they die. Yes, Clelia, often I've thought that would be the easiest. But there's other ways."
Clelia's tears were dried. She sat upright and looked at the woman opposite. It suddenly seemed to her that she had never known Sabrina. She had seen her nursing the sick or in the garden, smiling over her gentle tasks; but she had not known her. Sabrina spoke now with authority, as if she were passing along the laws of life into hands outstretched for them.
"When it happened to me, mother was sick. She had creepin' paralysis, an' I had to be with her 'most every minute. When I got my letter, I was in the gardin, right there by the spearmintbed. You see I'd written him, dear, to offer him his freedom; but I found out afterwards I must have thought, in the bottom of my heart, he wouldn't take it. Well, I opened the letter. 'Twas a hot summer day like this. He took what I offered him, dear,—he never knew I cared,—an' he was pleased. The letter showed it. I spoke out loud. 'O God,' I says, 'I don't believe it!' Then I heard mother's voice callin' me. She wanted a drink o' water. I begun steppin' in kind o' blinded, to get it for her. Seemed as if 'twas miles across the balm-bed. 'I mustn't fall,' I says to myself. 'I mustn't die till mother does.' And then somethin' put it into my head I needn't believe it nor I needn't give up to it, not till mother died. Then 'twould be time enough to know I'd got a broken heart."
It almost seemed as if she had never faced her grief before. She abandoned herself to the savor of it, the girl forgotten.
"Well, mother died, an' that night after the funeral I set down by the window where I'm settin' now an' says, 'Now I can think it over.' But I knew as well as anything ever was that when I faced it 'twould take away my reason. So I says, 'Mother's things have got to be put away. I'll wait till then.' So I packed up her things, an' sent 'em to her sister out West. Some o' her common ones 't I'd seen her wear, I burntup, so 't nobody shouldn't have 'em. I put her old bunnit into the kitchen stove, an' I can see the cover goin' down on it now. 'Twas thirty-eight year ago this very summer. Then says I, 'I'll face it.' But old Abner Lake had a shock, an' there wa'n't nobody to take care of him less'n they sent him to the town farm, an' folks said he cried night an' day, knowin' what was before him. So I had him moved over here, an' I tended him till he died. An' so 'twas with one an' another. It begun to seem as if folks needed somebody that hadn't anything of her own to keep her; an' then, spells between their wantin' me, I'd say, 'I won't face it till I've cleaned the house,' or 'till I've got the gardin made.' An', Clelia, that was the grief that was goin' to conquer me, if I'd faced it; an' I ain't faced it yet! I ain't believed it!"
A sense of her own youth and her sharp sorrow came at once upon the girl, and she cried out:
"I've got to face it. It won't let me do anything else. It's here, Sabrina. I couldn't help feeling it, if I killed myself trying."
Sabrina's face softened exquisitely.
"I guess 'tis here," she said tenderly. "I guess you do feel it. But, dearie, there's lots of folks walkin' round doin' their work with their hearts droppin' blood all the time. Only you mustn't listen to it. You just say, 'I'll do the things I'vegot to do, an' I'll fix my mind on 'em. I won't cry till to-morrow.' An' when to-morrow comes, you say the same."
Clelia set her mouth in a piteous conformity. But it quivered back.
"I guess you think I'm a coward, Sabrina," she said. "Well, I'll do the best I can. Maybe if 'twas fall I could get a school, and set my mind on that. I can help mother, but she'd rather manage things herself."
Sabrina bent forward, with an eager gesture.
"Dear, there's lots o' things," she said. "The earth's real pretty. You concern yourself with that. You say, 'I won't give up till I've seen the apple-blows once more. I won't give up till I've got the rose-bugs off'n the vines.' An' every night says you to yourself, 'I won't cry till to-morrow.'"
Clelia rose heavily.
"You're real good, Sabrina," she said. Then she added, in a shy whisper, "And I—I won't ever tell."
"You sit right down," returned Sabrina vigorously, rising as she said it. "I'll bring you the peas to shell. They're late ones, an' they're good. You stay, an' this afternoon we'll go out an' pick the elderberries down on the cross-road. I've got to have some wine."
That week and the next Clelia made herselflistlessly busy, and Sabrina was away, nursing a child who was sick of a fever. Clelia was pondering now on her own hurt, now on the story her friend had told her. It seemed like a soothing alternation of grief, sometimes in the pitiless sun-glare of her own loss, and again walking in a darkened yet fragrant valley where the other woman had lived for many years. But on an evening of the third week, she had news that sent her speeding through the Half-Mile Road and in at the door where Sabrina sat resting after a hard day. Clelia was breathless.
"Sabrina," she cried, "Sabrina, Richmond's mother's sick and he's away. He's gone to New York, and she's left all alone with aunt Lucindy."
"What's the matter with her?" asked Sabrina, coming to her feet and beginning to smooth her hair.
"She's feverish, and aunt Lucindy says she's been shaking with the cold."
"You sent for the doctor?"
Sabrina was doing up a little bundle of her night-clothes that had lain on the chair beside her while she rested.
"No."
"Well, you do that, straight off. An' when he comes, he'll tell you what to do an' you do it."
"Can't you go, Sabrina? Can't you go? Aunt Lucindy wanted you."
"No," said Sabrina, tying on her hat, and taking up her bundle. "I only come to pick me up a few things. That little creatur' may not live the night out. But I'll walk along with you, an' step in an' see how things seem."
Once only in the Half-Mile walk did they speak, and then Clelia broke forth throbbingly to the accompaniment of a sudden color in her cheeks.
"I don't know as I want to go into Richmond's house when he's away, now we're not the same."
"Don't make any difference whether it's Richmond's house or whether it ain't, if there's sickness," returned Sabrina briefly. But at the doorstone she paused a moment, to add with some recurrence of the intensity the girl had seen in her that other day: "Ain't you glad you got somethin' to do for him? Ain't youglad? You go ahead an' do what you can, an' call yourself lucky you've got it to do."
And Clelia very humbly did it. Then it was another week, and the two friends had not met; but again at twilight Clelia took her walk, and this time she found Sabrina stretched out on the lounge of the sitting-room. There was a change in her. Pallor had settled upon her face, and her dark eyebrows and lashes stood out startlinglyupon the ashen mask. Clelia hurried up to her and knelt beside the couch.
"What is it, Sabrina?" she whispered. "What is it?"
Sabrina opened her eyes. She smiled languidly, and the girl, noting the patience of her face, was thrilled with fear.
"How's Richmond's mother?" asked Sabrina.
"Better. She's sitting up. I sha'n't be there any more. He's coming home to-night."
"Richmond?"
"Yes. The doctor said there wasn't any need of sending for him, and I'm glad we didn't, now. Sabrina, what's the matter?"
"I had one of my heart-spells, that's all," said Sabrina gently. "There, don't you go to lookin' like that."
"What made you, Sabrina? What made you?"
Sabrina hesitated.
"Well," she said, at length, "I guess I got kinder startled. Deacon Tolman run in an' told what kind of doin's there was goin' to be to-morrow. He was full of it, an' he blurted it all out to once."
"About Senator Gilman coming?"
"Yes."
"And their trimming up the hall for him to speak in, and his writing on it was his boyhood'shome and he shouldn't die happy unless he'd come back and seen it once more?"
"Yes. That's about it."
"Well," said Clelia, in slow wonder, "I don't see what there was about that to give anybody a heart-spell."
Sabrina looked at her for a moment in sharp questioning, followed by relief.
"No," she said softly, "no. But I guess I got kinder startled."
"I'm going to stay with you," said Clelia tenderly. "I'll stay all night."
"There's a good girl. Now there's somebody round, I guess maybe I could drop off to sleep."
At first Clelia was not much alarmed; for though Sabrina was known to have heart-spells, she always came out of them and went on her way with the same gentle impregnability. But in the middle of the night, she suddenly woke Clelia sleeping on the lounge beside her, by saying in a clear tone:—
"Wouldn't it be strange, Clelia?"
"Wouldn't what be strange?" asked the girl, instantly alert.
"Wouldn't it be strange if anybody put off their sorrow all their lives long, an' then died before they got a chance to give way to it?"
"Sabrina, you thinking about those things?"
"Never mind," answered Sabrina soothingly. "I guess I waked up kinder quick."
But again, after she had had a sinking spell, and Clelia had given her some warming drops, she said half-shyly, "Clelia, maybe you'll think I'm a terrible fool; but if I should pass away, there's somethin' I should like to have you do."
Clelia knelt beside her, and put her wet cheek down on the little roughened hand.
"There was that city boarder I took care of, the summer she gi'n out down here," went on Sabrina dreamily. "I liked her an' I liked her clo'es. They were real pretty. She see I liked 'em, an' what should she do when she went back home, but send me a blue silk wrapper all lace and ribbins, just like hers, only nicer. It's in that chist. I never've wore it. But if I should be taken away—I 'most think I'd like to have it put on me."
The cool summer dawn was flowing in at the window. The solemnity of the hour moved Clelia like the strangeness of the time. It hushed her to composure.
"I will," she promised. "If you should go before me, I'll do everything you want. Now you get some sleep."
But after Sabrina had shut her eyes and seemed to be drowsing off, she opened them to say, this time with an imperative strength:—
"But don't you let it spile their good time."
"Whose, Sabrina?"
"The doin's they're goin' to have in the hall. If I should go in the midst of it, don't you tell no more'n you can help. But I guess I can live through one day anyways."
That forenoon she was a little brighter, as one may be with the mounting sun, and Clelia, disregarding all entreaties to see the "doings" at the hall, took faithful care of her. But in the late afternoon while she sat beside the bed and Sabrina drowsed, there was a clear whistle very near. It sounded like a quail outside the window. Clelia flushed red. The sick woman, opening her eyes, saw how she was shaking.
"What is it, dear?" she asked.
"It's Richmond," said Clelia, in a full, moved voice. "It's his whistle."
"You go out to him, dear," urged Sabrina, as if she could not say it fast enough. "You hurry."
And Clelia went, trembling.
When she came back, half an hour later, she walked like a goddess breathing happiness and pride.
"O Sabrina!" She sank down by the bedside and put her head beside Sabrina's cheek. "He was there in the garden. He kissed me right in sight of the road. If 't had been in the face and eyes of everybody, it couldn't have made any difference.'You took care of mother,' he said. 'I like your mother,' I said. 'I'd like to live with her—and aunt Lucindy.' And he said then, Sabrina, he said then, 'We sha'n't have to.' And Sabrina, he's been on to New York to see if he could find out anything about the railroad that's going through to save stopping at the Junction; and he saw Senator Gilman, and that's how the senator came down here. He got talking with Richmond, old times and all, and he just wanted to come. And the railroad's going through the ten-acre pasture, and Richmond'll get a lot of money."
Sabrina's hand rested on the girl's head.
"There, dear," she said movingly. "Didn't I tell you? Don't cry till to-morrow, an' maybe you won't have to then."
Clelia sat up, wiping her eyes and laughing.
"That isn't all," she said. "Senator Gilman wants to see you."
"Me!"
Sabrina rose and sat upright in bed. The color flooded her pale cheeks. Her eyes dilated.
"Yes. He told Richmond you used to go to school together, and he's coming down here on his way to the train. And sick or well, he said, you'd got to see him."
Sabrina had put one shaking hand to her hair. "It's turned white," she whispered.
But Clelia did not hear her. She had opened the chest at the foot of the bed, and taken out a soft package delicately wrapped. She pulled out a score of pins and shook the shimmering folds of the blue dress. Then she glanced at Sabrina still sitting there, the color flooding her cheeks again with their old pinkness.
"Oh!" breathed Clelia, in rapture at the dress, and again at the sweet rose-bloom in Sabrina's face. Then she calmed herself, remembering this was a sick chamber, though every moment the airs of life seemed entering. She brought the dress to the bedside. "You put your arm in, Sabrina," she coaxed.
Sabrina did it. She moved in a daze, and presently she was lying in her bed clothed in blue and white, her soft hair piled above her head, and her eyes wide with some unconfessed emotion. But to Clelia, she was accustomed to look vivid; life was her portion always. The girl sped out of the room, and came back presently, her arms full of summer flowers, tiger-lilies, larkspur, monkshood, and herbs that, being bruised, gave out odors. Sabrina's eyes questioned her. Clelia tossed the flowers in a heap on the table.
"What you doin' that for?" asked Sabrina.
"I don't know," answered the girl, in a whisper. "There's no time to put 'em in water. Iwant to have things pretty, that's all. You take your drops, dear. They've come."
But Sabrina lay there, an image of beauty in a sea of calm.
"I don't want any drops," she said. "I shouldn't think o' dyin' now."
Clelia went out, and presently Sabrina heard her young voice with its note of happiness.
"In this way, sir," she was saying. "Yes, Rich, you stay in the garden. I'll be there."
Senator Gilman, bowing his head under the low lintel, was coming in. He walked up to the bedside, and Sabrina's eyes appraised him. He was a remarkable-looking man, with the flowing profile of a selected type, and thick gray hair tossed back from his fine forehead. He sat down by her.
"Well, Bina," said he.
This was not the voice that had filled the hall that morning or jovially greeted townsmen all the afternoon. It was gently adapted to her state, and Sabrina quieted under its friendliness.
"Couldn't go away without seeing you," said Senator Gilman. "They told me you were sick. I said to myself, 'She'll see me. She'll know 'twould spoil my visit, if I had to go away without it.'"
Sabrina was looking him sweetly in the face, and smiling at him.
"How much time you got?" she asked, like a child.
He took out his watch.
"My train is at five forty-five," he said.
"Then you talk fast."
"What you want to know?" asked her friend.
He had fallen into homely ways of speech, to fit the time.
"You've done real well, ain't you?" asked Sabrina eagerly.
The senator nodded.
"I have, Bina," said he. "I have. I've made money, and I own a grown-up son. He's got all the best of me and the best of all of us, as far back as I can remember—and none of the worst. I'll send him down here to see you."
"He must be smart," said Sabrina. "I've read his book."
"You have? Didn't know there was a copy in town. Nobody else here has heard of it."
"I see it noticed in the paper. I sent for it. I never spoke of it to anybody. I guess I was pretty mean. Folks borrow books, an' then they don't keep 'em nice."
"Bina, you're a dear. They've been telling me how you take care of the whole town. Richmond Blake—he's a likely fellow; he'll get on—he said you were the prettiest woman inthe township. Said his father told him you were the prettiest girl."
Sabrina's little capable right hand went out and drew the sheet over her blue draperies up to her chin.
"You're not cold?" asked the senator solicitously; but she shook her head and answered:—
"You've seen foreign countries, ain't you?"
"Yes. I've seen India and I've seen the Pyramids. I thought about you those times, Bina—how we recited together in geography; and I was the one that went and you were the one to stay at home. But near as I can make out, you've carried the world on your shoulders down here, while I've tried to do the same thing somewhere else—and not so well, Bina—not so well."
Her sweet face clouded. She was jealous of even a hint of failure for him.
"But you've come out pretty fair?" she hesitated anxiously.
"Pretty fair, Bina. It's been a good old world. I've enjoyed it, and I don't know as I shall want to leave it. But now I feel as if I were working for the next generation. The little I've done I can pass over to my son, and I hope he'll do more."
He laid his hand on the garnered sweets beside him. The herbs were uppermost. "Spearmint!"he said. Sabrina nodded, and he ate a leaf. Then one after another he took up the herbs, southernwood and all, and bruised them to get their separate fragrance. It was a keen pleasure to him, and Sabrina saw it and blessed Clelia in her heart. Presently he sat back in his chair and regarded her musingly. A softened look came into his eyes. A smile, all sweetness, overspread his face. It gave him his boyhood's mien.
"I'll tell you what, Bina," he said, "in that first rough-and-tumble before I made my way, you did me a lot of good."
Sabrina lay and looked at him. Even her eyes had a still solemnity.
"You wrote me a little note."
More color surged into her face, but she did not stir.
"I was pretty ambitious then," he went on musingly. "My wife was ambitious, too. That was before we were engaged, you understand. We got kind of carried away by people and money and honors—that kind of thing, you know. Well, that little note, Bina. There wasn't anything particular in it, except at the end you said, 'I sha'n't ever forget to hope you will be good.' It was queer, but it made me feel kind of responsible to you. I thought of you down here in your garden, and—well, I don't know, Bina. I showedthat note to my wife, and she said, 'Bina must be a dear.'"
Sabrina's eyes questioned him.
"Yes," he said frankly. "She's a dear, too—only different. It's been all right, Bina."
"Ain't that good!" she whispered happily. "I'm glad."
He had pulled out his watch, and at that moment Richmond's voice sounded clearer, as the two out there in the garden came to summon him.
"By George!" said Greenleaf Gilman, "I've got to go."
He rose, and took her hand. He stood there for a moment, holding it, and they looked at each other in a faithful trust.
"You take some southernwood," counseled Sabrina, and he laid her hand gently down, to select his posy.
"I wish your wife could have some," Sabrina went on, in a wistful eagerness, "I don't seem to have a thing to send her."
"I'll tell her all about it," said her friend. "I'll tell her you're a dear still, only more so. She'll understand. Good-by, Bina."
When his carriage had left the gate, and Clelia came in with that last look of her lover still mirrored in her eyes, Sabrina lay there floating in her sea of happiness.
"Why, dear," said the girl, drawing the sheet down from the hidden finery. "You cold?"
"I guess not," said Sabrina, smiling up at her.
"Did you keep that pretty lace all covered up? What made you, Sabrina?"
"I don't know 's I could tell exactly," said Sabrina, in her gentle voice. "Now, dear, I'm goin' to get this off an' have my clo'es. I'm better."
"You do feel better, don't you?" assented Clelia joyously, helping her.
That night they supped together at the table, and when the dusk had fallen and Sabrina sat by the window breathing in the evening cool, she said shyly, like a bride:—
"Don't you see, dear, sometimes we put off grief an' we don't need to have it after all."
"I see about me," said the girl tenderly, "but I don't see as anything pleasant has happened to you."
"Why," said Sabrina, in a voice so full and sweet that for the moment it seemed not to be her own hesitating note, "I've had more happiness than most folks have in their whole life. I've had all there is."
Mariana Blake, on her way home from Jake Preble's in the autumn twilight, heard women's voices sounding clearly at a distance, increasing in volume as they neared. She knew the turn of the road would hide her from them for a minute or two to come, and depending on that security she stepped over the wall and crouched behind the undergrowth at the foot of a wild cherry. They were only her neighbors, Sophronia Jackson and Lizzie Ann West, with whom she was on the kindliest terms; but for some reason she felt sensitive to the social eye whenever she was carrying Jake a basket of her excellent cookery or returning with the empty dishes. Other neighbors, it was true, contributed delicacies to his rudimentary housekeeping, though chiefly at festal times like Thanksgiving and Christmas; but Mariana was conscious that she had kept an especial charge over him since his sister died and left him alone. Yet this she was never willing to confess, and though she treasured what she had elected as her responsibility, it was with an exceptional shyness.
The voices came nearer at a steady pace, accompaniedat length by the steady tread of Sophronia's low-heeled shoes and the pattering of Lizzie Ann on the harder side of the road. When they were nearly opposite the old cherry-tree, Sophronia spoke.
"Mercy! I stepped into a hole."
"Can't you remember that hole?" Lizzie Ann inquired, with her inconsequent titter. "I've had that in mind ever since I went to school. I always thought if I was one of the board o' selectmen, I guess I could manage to fill up that hole."
"I guess I shall have to set down here and shake the gravel out o' my shoe," said Sophronia. "You have this nice flat place, and I'll set where I can get my foot up easy."
There was the softest accompanying rustle, and they had both sat down. Mariana, over the wall, gripped her basket with a tenser hand, as if the dishes, of their own accord, might clink. She held her breath, too, smiling because she knew the need of caution would be brief. The instant they were settled, she told herself, they would talk down any such trifling sound as an unconsidered breath. She could foretell exactly what they would say, once they had exhausted the topic of gravel in the shoe. It would be either the new church cushions, or mock mince-pies for the sociable, or the minister's daughter'sold canary that had ceased to sing or to echo the chirping of others, and yet was regarded with a devotion the parishioners could not indorse. Mariana had seen both her friends that day, and each of them had been more keenly alive to these topics than any.
"I don't see what makes you so sure," said Sophronia, in a jerky fashion, accompanying the attempt to draw her foot into the position indicated for unlacing.
"Because I am," said Lizzie Ann. "So you are, too. Mariana Blake never'll marry in the world. She ain't that kind."
"I don't know why she ain't," said her friend, in an argumentative tone of the sort adopted to carry on brilliantly a conversation of which both participants know the familiar moves. "Mariana's a real pretty woman, prettier by far than she was when she's a girl. I know she's gettin' along. She was forty-three last April, but age ain't everything. Look at aunt Grinnell. She married when she's fifty-three, and she was homely 's a hedge fence and hadn't any faculty. Nor she didn't bring him a cent, either."
"Well, nobody'd say Mariana was homely. But she won't marry. Nor she wouldn't if she was eighteen. She ain't that kind."
"There, I've got it laced up," said Sophronia. She seemed to settle into an easier attitude, andMariana could hear the scratch of the heel as she thrust the rehabilitated foot afar from her on the lichened rock. "Well, I guess you're right, but I don't know why it's so, after all. If I was a man, seems if I should think Jake Preble, now, was a real likely fellow to marry."
"Jake Preble!" Such distaste animated the tone of that response that Mariana involuntarily raised herself from her listening posture, and the dishes clinked. "What's that? Didn't you hear suthin'? Why, Jake Preble's a kind of a hind wheel. He goes rollin' along after t'others, never askin' why nor wherefore, and he thinks it's his own free will. He never so much as dreams 'tis the horse that's haulin' him."
"Well, what is 't he thinks 'tis that's haulin' him?" asked Sophronia, who was not imaginative.
"Why, all I mean is, he don't take things for what they're wuth. He believes every goose's a swan till it up and honks, and he's jest as likely to think a swan's a goose."
"You don't mean he ain't suited with Mariana?"
"No, no. I mean Mariana's cosseted him and swep' his path afore him, carryin' his victuals and cleanin' up the house when he's out hayin' or cuttin' wood, till he thinks it ain't so bad to bach it after all. If she'd just let him alone after Hattie died, and starved him out, he'd ha'ntedher place oftener'n she's been over to his, and 'twouldn't ha' been long before he learnt the taste of her apple-pies and where they ought to be made. Now he knows they're to be picked mostly off'n his kitchen table when he comes in from work."
"Mercy, you don't mean to say you think it's all victuals, do you?" inquired Sophronia, with her unctuous laugh. "You never had much opinion o' menfolks, anyways, Lizzie Ann."
"Well, they've got to eat, ain't they?" inquired Lizzie Ann. "That's all I say. Come, ain't you got your shoe on yet? Why, yes, you have. Come along. There's a kind of chill in the air, if 'tis September."
Mariana heard them rising, Sophronia contributing soft thuds of a good-sized middle-aged body and Lizzie with a light scramble suited to her weight.
"Mercy!" said Sophronia, "ain't you stiff?"
Then they went on together, and Mariana heard in the near distance the familiar patter dealing with Sophronia's proficiency in mock mince-pies. They were safely away, but she did not move. The cool September breeze rustled the blackberry-vines on her side of the wall, but it did not chill her. She was hot with some emotion she could not name,—anger, perhaps, though it hardly seemed like that, resentmentthat her friends could talk her over; and some hurt in the very centre of feeling because the shyness of her soul had been invaded. It seemed so simple to carry Jake Preble a pie of her own baking, as natural as for him to cut her wood and shovel paths for her in the worst winter weather. When it was a beautiful clearing-off day after a storm, she loved to sweep her paths herself, and Jake knew it; but he was always near to rescue her when the drifts piled too high. But then Cap'n Hanscom came, too, and he was a widower, and once Sophronia's own husband had taken a hand at the snowy citadel. Angry maidenhood in her kept hurling questions into the deepening dusk. Mariana was learning that in a world of giving in marriage, no woman and no man who have not accorded hostages to fortune can live unchallenged.
When her ireful mood had worn itself away, she got up with the stiffness of the mind's depression intensifying the body's chill, and made her way swiftly toward home. She walked fast, because it seemed to her she could not possibly bear to meet a neighbor. Even through the dusk her tell-tale basket would be visible, the dishes in it clinking to the tune that Mariana was no sort of a woman to marry.
When she reached home, she fled up the path to the door, feeling at every step thefriendliness of the way. The late fall flowers nodded kindly to her through the dark, and underfoot were the stones and hollows of the pathway familiar to her from a life's acquaintanceship.
"My sakes," breathed Mariana.
A man was sitting on her steps, and because Jake was so vividly present to her mind, she almost spoke his name. But it was only Cap'n Hanscom, rising as she neared him, and opening the door gallantly.
"I says to myself, she'll be along in a minute or two," he told her.
The cap'n had a soft voice touched here and there with whimsical tones. When he was absent, Mariana often thought how much she liked his voice; but whenever she saw him she consumed her friendly interest in wishing he wouldn't wear a beard. She was a fastidious woman, and a beard seemed to her untidy.
"You stay here in the settin'-room," said she. "I'll get the lamp."
She slipped through the kitchen into the pantry and put her basket softly down, lest he should hear that shameful clink. Even Cap'n Hanscom could not be allowed, she thought, to know she had been carrying pies to a man who would not marry her because she was not the kind of woman to marry. When she came back,bearing the shining lamp, the cap'n looked at her in a frank approval.
Mariana was a round, pleasant body with pink cheeks, kindly eyes, and, bearing witness to her character, a determined mouth; but now she seemed to be enveloped by some transforming aura. Her auburn hair, touched with gray, had blown about her head in an unusual abandon, her cheeks were flaming, and her eyes had pin-points of light. She set the lamp down on the table with a steady hand and drew the shades. Then she became aware that the cap'n was looking at her. He had a fatherly gaze for everybody, the index of his extreme kindliness, but it had apparently been startled into some keener interest.
"Well," said Mariana, and found that she was speaking irritably. "What's the matter? You look as if you never see anybody before."
She and the cap'n had been schoolfellows, though he was older, and often she treated him with scanty ceremony; now, after she had tossed him that aged formula of banter, she laughed to soften it. But she was still unaccountably angry.
"Well," said the cap'n slowly, "I dunno 's I ever did see just such a kind of a body before."
The words seemed to be echoing from thestolen conversation too warmly alive in her memory. He, too, she thought, was probably considering her a nice proper-looking woman, but one no man would think of marrying.
"Take a chair," she said, and the cap'n went over to the hearth where a careful fire was laid.
"Goin' to touch it off?" he inquired.
Mariana, with a jealous eye, noted that he was looking at the fire, not at her. She wondered if Lizzie Ann West would say a man had to be warmed as well as fed.
"Touch it off," she said, with a disproportioned recklessness. "There's the matches on the mantel-tree."
The cap'n did it, kneeling to adjust the sticks more nicely; and when one fell forward with the burning of the kindling, lifted it and laid it back solicitously. Then with a turkey-wing he swept up the hearth, its specklessness invaded by a rolling bit of coal, put the wing in place, and stood looking down at what seemed to be his own handiwork.
"There!" said he.
He took the big armchair by the hearth, and Mariana drew her little rocker to the other corner. She seated herself in it, her hands rather tensely folded, and the cap'n regarded her mildly.
"Ain't you goin' to sew?" he inquired.
"Why, no," said Mariana, "I dunno 's I be. I dunno 's I feel like sewin' all the time."
"Well, I dunno 's there's any law to make a woman set an' sew," the cap'n ruminated. "Sewin' or knittin', either. Only, I've got so used to seein' you with a piece o' work in your hands, didn't look hardly nat'ral not to." He regarded her again with his kindly stare. "Mariana," said he, "you look like a different creatur'. What is 't's got hold of you?"
"Nothin', I guess," said Mariana. "Maybe I'm mad."
"Mad? What ye mad about?"
"Oh, I dunno. I guess I'm just mad in general. Nothin' particular, as I see."
"Well, if anybody's goin' to be mad it ought to be me," said the cap'n, lifting his brows with that droll look he wore when he intended to indicate that he was fooling. "I guess I've got to wash my own dishes an' bake my own johnny-cake for a spell. Mandy's goin' to leave."
"Mandy goin' to leave! Well, you will be put to 't. What's she leavin' for?"
"Goin' to be married."
"For mercy sakes! Who's Mandy Hill goin' to marry?"
"Goin' to marry the peddler."
"The one from the Pines?"
Cap'n Hanscom nodded.
"He's been round consid'able this fall, but I never so much as thought he'd got anything but carpet-rags in his head. Well, seems he had. Now 't I know it, I realize Mandy's been stockin' up with tin for quite a spell. Seems to me I never see a woman that needed so much tinware, nor took so long to pick it out. I never got it through my noddle she an' the peddler was makin' on 't up between 'em."
"Well, suz," said Mariana. "I never so much as thought Mandy Hill'd ever marry."
"I never did, either," said the cap'n. "But come to that, it'd be queer 'f she didn't sooner or later. Mandy Hill's just the sort of a woman nine men out o' ten'd be possessed to marry. Wonder to me she ain't done it afore."
Mariana shot a glance at him. There was fire in it, kindled of what fuel she knew not; but the flame of it seemed to scorch her. The cap'n was staring at the andirons and did not see it.
"I'd give a good deal," he said musingly, "if I thought I could ever come acrost such a housekeeper as you be, Mariana. But there! that's snarin' a white blackbird."
"Cap'n," said Mariana.
Her tone seemed to leap at him, and he had to look at her.
"Why, Mariana!" he returned. Her face amazed him. It was full of light, but a light thatglittered. "By George," said he, "you looked that minute for all the world jest as your brother Elmer did when Si Thomson struck him in town meetin'. Si was drunk an' Elmer never laid up a thing after the blow was over an' done; but that first minute he looked as if he was goin' to jump. What is it, Mariana?"
"Cap'n," said Mariana. She was used to calling him by his first name in their school-day fashion, but her new knowledge of life seemed for the moment to have made all the world alien to her. "Cap'n, if anybody said you couldn't do a thing, wouldn't you say to yourself you'd be—wouldn't you say you'd do it?"
"Why, I dunno," said the cap'n, wondering. "Mebbe I would if 'twas somethin' I thought best to do."
"No, no. If 'twas somethin'—well, s'pose somebody said you was a Chinyman, wouldn't you prove you wa'n't?"
"Why," said the cap'n mildly, "anybody'd see I wa'n't, minute they looked into my face. Nobody'd say anybody was a Chinyman if they wa'n't."
Mariana was able to laugh a little here, though a tear did run over her cheek in a hateful, betraying way. She wiped it off, but the cap'n saw it.
"See here, Mariana," said he stoutly, "who'sbeen rilin' you up? Somebody has. You tell me, an' I'll kick 'em from here to the state o' Maine."
"Oh, it's nothin'," said Mariana. "Here, you lay on another stick. I was only thinkin' when you spoke of Mandy, what a fool she was to tie herself up to the best man in the world if she could get good wages, nice easy place same as yours is. Well, there, Eben! I do get kind o' blue when the winter comes on and I sit here by the fire watchin' my hair turn gray. If anybody was to offer me a job, I'd take it."
"You would?" said Cap'n Hanscom.
She saw a thought run into his eyes, and hated it. She liked Eben Hanscom, but all the decorous reserves were at once awake in her, bidding him remember that she was not going to scale the trim, tight fence of maidenly tradition. He began rather breathlessly, and she cut him short.
"I'd come and be your housekeeper," said Mariana, hurriedly in her turn, "for three dollars a week, same as you give Mandy, and be glad and thankful. Only I'd want somebody else in the family. I dunno why, but seems if folks would laugh if you and me settled down there together like two old folks—"
"I dunno why they'd laugh," said the cap'n stoutly. His eyes were glowing with the surprise of it and the happy anticipation of Mariana's tidyways. "Nobody laughed at me an' Mandy; leastways if they did, I never got hold on 't."
"Well, you see, Mandy's day begun pretty soon after your wife was taken, and folks were kinder softened down. Anyways, I couldn't do it. 'Tain't that I'm young and 'tain't that I'm a fool, but I'd just like to have one more in the family."
"Aunt Elkins might think she could make a home with us," said the cap'n, pondering. "No, she wouldn't, either, come to think. Her son's sent her her fare to go out to them this winter. Ain't you got some friend, Mariana?"
"No," said Mariana. She was watching him with a steady gaze, as if she had planted a magic seed and looked for its uprising. "If there was only somebody else that's left alone as you and I be," she offered speciously.
The cap'n felt a quick delight over his own cleverness.
"Why," said he, "there's Jake Preble."
"He never'd do it," said Mariana. She shook her head conclusively. "Never 'n the world."
"I bet ye forty dollars," said the cap'n. "He could go over 'n' take care of his stock an' do his choppin', an' come back to a warm house. I'm goin' to ask him. I'm goin' this minute. You set up, an' I'll be back an' tell ye."
"You take it from me," Mariana was callingafter him. "He won't do it and it's noways right he should. You tell him so from me."
"I bet ye forty dollars," cried the cap'n.
The door clanged behind him and he was gone. Mariana had never heard him in such demented haste since the days when one squad of the boys besieged another in the schoolhouse, and Eben Hanscom was deputed to run for reinforcements of those that went home at noon. But she settled down there by the fire and held herself quiet until he should come. She seemed to have shut a gate behind her; but whether she had opened another to lead into the unknown country where women are like their sisters, triumphant over things, she could not tell. At the moment she found herself in a little inclosure where everybody could see her and laugh at her, and she could not answer back.
Before the forestick had burned in two, she heard him coming, but he was not alone. She knew that other step, marking out a longer stride, and the steady inarticulate responses when the cap'n talked. The cap'n opened the door and they walked in. Jake Preble was ahead, a tall, powerful creature in his working-clothes, his thin face with the bright brown eyes interrogating her, his mouth, in spite of him, moving nervously under the mustache.
"What's all this?" said he roughly, approachingher as if, Mariana thought, he owned her.
That air of his had pleased her once: it gave her a curious little thrill of acquiescent loyalty; but now it simply hurt, and the instinct of resentment rose in her. What right had he to own her, she asked herself, when it only made other women scornful of her? She lifted her head and faced him. What he saw in her eyes he could not perhaps have told, but it suddenly quieted him to a surprised humility.
"You goin' over to keep house for him?" he asked, with a motion of his head toward the cap'n, who seemed to be petitioning the god of domesticity lest his new hopes be confounded.
"Yes," said Mariana, "but I ain't goin' unless he can get one or two more. I'm tired to death of settin' down to the table alone. One more wouldn't be no better. Three's the kind of a crowd I like. Two's no company. Don't you say so, cap'n?"
"I prefer to choose my company, that's all I say," the cap'n answered gallantly.
Jake looked from one to the other and then back again. What he saw scarcely pleased him, but it had to be accepted.
"All right," said he. "If you want a boarder, no reason why you shouldn't have one. I'll shut up my place to-morrer."
The red surged up into Mariana's cheeks. She had not known it was easy to cause such gates to open.
"When's Mandy goin'?" she asked indifferently.
"Week from Wednesday," said the cap'n. He was suffused with joy, and Mariana, in one of those queer ways she had of thinking of inapposite things, remembered him as she saw him once when, at the age of fourteen, he sat before a plate of griddle-cakes and saw the syrup-pitcher coming.
"Thursday, then," she said. "I'll be along bright and early."
She rose and set her chair against the wall. That seemed as if they were to go.
"You'd better by half stay where you be in your own home," she called after Jake, shutting the door behind him. "You won't like settin' at other folks' tables. You've set too long at your own."
He came back, and left the cap'n waiting for him in the path. There he stood before her, the gaunt, big shape she had watched and brooded over so many years. Something seemed to be moving in his brain, and he gave it difficult expression.
"Depends on who else's settin' at the table," he remarked, and vanished into the night.
Mariana, moved and wondering, wanted to call after him and ask him what he meant; but she reflected that the women who inspired such speeches probably refrained from insisting too crudely on their value. Then she flew to the bedroom and began to sort her things for packing.
In two weeks she was settled at the cap'n's, and Jake Preble had come to board, doggedly, even sulkily, at first, and then suddenly armed with that quiet acceptance he had ready for all the changes in his life. But Mariana smoothed his path to a pleasant familiarity with the big house and its ways, and he began to look about the room, from his place at the table with his book or paper, wonderingly and even pathetically, as she thought, recalling the time before his sister died when his own house had been full of the warm intimacies of an ordered life. The captain reveled in the comfort of his state. He brought in wood until Mariana had to bid him cease. He built fires and drew water, and his ruddy face shone with contentment. She made his favorite dishes and seemed not to notice when Jake, too, in his shy way, awoke to praise them. She even read aloud to the cap'n on a Sunday night from the life of women who, the title declared, debatably, had "Made India what It is." On such nights of intellectual stress Jake betook himself to the kitchen and ostentatiouslypored over the "Scout in Early New England." The cap'n, who was hospitality itself, trudged out there one night, in the midst of a panegyric on Mrs. Judson, and besought him to come in.
"If you don't like that kind o' readin', Jake, we'll try suthin' else," he conceded generously. "I jest as soon play fox an' geese Sunday nights if anybody wants to. I ain't one to tie up the cat's tail Sunday mornin' so 's she won't play."
"I'll be in byme-by," said Jake, frowningly intent upon his page. "You go on with your readin', cap'n. I'll be in."
But, instead, he walked out and down the road to his own lonely house, and Mariana, though her brain followed him every step of the way, went on reading in the clearest voice, minding her stops as she had been taught when she was accounted the best reader in the class. But in those days of reading-classes her heart had not ached. It ached all the time now. She had shut the gate behind her, and the one she opened led into an unfamiliar country. Mariana had been born to live ingenuously, simply, like the child she was. Woman's wiles were not for her, and the fruit they brought her had a bitter tang. But whether her campaign was a righteous one or not, it was brilliantly successful. She could hardly think that any women, looking on,were laughing at her, even in a kindly way. She had taken her own stand and the world had patently respected it. Immediately on her moving to the cap'n's she had gone out in her best cashmere and made a series of calls, and far and wide she had gayly announced herself as keeping house because she wanted the money; in the spring, she told the neighborhood, she meant to take what she had earned and make a journey to Canada to see cousin Liddy, who had married into a nice family there, and over and over again had written for her to come.
"I guess Eben Hanscom never'll let you step your foot out of his house now he's tolled you into it," Lizzie Ann West remarked incisively one afternoon, when Mariana, after a pleasant call on her, stood in the doorway, saying the last words the visit had not left room for. "He ain't goin' to bite into such pie-crust as yours, day in, day out, and go back to baker's trade."
"I don't make no better pie-crust'n you do," said Mariana innocently.
"Mebbe you don't, but you're on the spot, and there's where you've got the whip-hand. Eben Hanscom ain't goin' to let you go. He's no such fool."
"Well," flashed Mariana, "I'd like to see anybody keep me when I've got ready to go." She was on the doorstep now, and the springwind was bringing her faint, elusive odors. She felt like putting her head up in the air like a lost four-footed creature and snuffing for her home.
"Oh, I guess you'll be glad enough to stay," said Lizzie Ann, with a shrewdness Mariana hated. "The cap'n's takin' to clippin' his beard. He's a nice-lookin' man, younger by ten years than he was when she's alive, and neat 's a pin."
Mariana chose her way back along the muddy road, choking a temptation to turn the corner to her own little house, build a fire there, and let single men fight the domestic battle for themselves. But that night when the spring wind was still moving and she stood on Cap'n Hanscom's doorstone and looked at the dark lilac buds at her hand, the tears came, and the cap'n, bearing in his last armful of wood for the night, saw them and was undone. He went in speechlessly and piled the wood with absent care. He stood a moment in thought, and then he called her.
"Mariana, you come here."
She went obediently.
"You ain't homesick, be you?" the cap'n inquired.
She nodded, like a child.
"I guess so," she responded. "Leastways, if 'tain't that I don't know what 'tis."
The cap'n was looking at her pleadingly, all warm benevolence and anxious care.
"I know how 'tis," he burst forth. "You've give up your home to come here, an' you feel as if you hadn't anything of your own left. Ain't that so, Mariana?"
"I guess so," Mariana returned at random. "Mebbe I'll go down and open my winders to-morrow. I want to look over some o' my things."
The cap'n seemed to be breathing with difficulty. Mariana had heard him speak in meeting, and thus stertorously was he accustomed to announce his faith.
"Mariana," said he, "it's all yours, everything I got. It's your home. You stay here an' enjoy it."
"Oh, no, it ain't," cried Mariana, in a fright. "I've got my own place same 's you have. I'm contented enough, Eben. I just got kinder thinkin'; I often do, come spring o' the year."
"Well, I ain't contented, if you be," said the cap'n valiantly. "I never shall be till you an' me are man an' wife."
"O my soul!" Mariana cried out. "O my soul!"
"What's the matter?" said Jake Preble. He had just come over from his own house with a spray of lilac that was really out, whereas thecap'n's had only budded. Jake had felt a strange thrill of triumph at the haste his bush had made. He thought Mariana ought to see it.
"There's nothin' the matter," she told him in a high, excited voice, "except I've got to go home. I've told Cap'n Hanscom so, and I'll tell you. I ain't goin' to eat another meal in this house. There's plenty cooked," she continued, turning to the cap'n in a wistful haste, "and I'll stop on the way down the road and tell Lizzie Ann West you want she should come and see you through. Don't you stop me, either of you. I'm goin' home."
She ran up the stairs to her room, and tossed her belongings into her trunk. Over the first layer she cried, but then it suddenly came upon her that she was having her own way and that it led into her dear spring garden, and she laughed forthwith. Downstairs the cap'n stood pondering, his eyes on the floor, and Jake regarded him at first keenly and in anger, and then with a slow smile.
"Well," said Jake presently, "I guess I might 's well pack up, too."
"Don't ye do it, Jake," the cap'n besought him hoarsely. "I guess, think it over, she'll make up her mind to stay."
"Guess not," said Jake. It was more cheerfully than he had spoken that winter, the cap'nwonderingly thought. "I'll heave my things together an' go back to the old place."
In a day or two it was all different. They had moved the pieces as if it were some sober game, and now Mariana was in her own little house, warming it to take out the winter chill, and treating it with a tender haste, as if she had somehow done it wrong, and Lizzie Ann had gone to Cap'n Hanscom's. Mariana had hesitated on the doorstone, at her leaving, and there the cap'n bade her good-by, rather piteously and with finality, though they were to be neighbors still.
"Well, Eben," she hesitated. There was something she had meant to say. In spite of decency, in spite of feminine decorum, she had intended to give him a little shove into the path that should lead him, still innocently, to her own blazonment as a woman who could have her little triumphs like the rest. "If you should ever feel to tell Lizzie Ann I was a good housekeeper," she meant to say, "I should be obliged to you." He would do it, she knew, and from that prologue more would follow. The cap'n would go on to say he had besought her to marry him, never guessing, under Lizzie Ann's superior system of investigation, that he had disclosed himself at all. But as she mused absently on his face, another spirit took possession of her, the one that had presided over her humble hearth and welcomedthe two men there in the neighborly visits that seemed so pleasant in remembrance. What did it avail that this or that woman should declare she was unsought? She was ashamed of waging that unworthy war. She found herself speaking without premeditation.
"You know what Lizzie Ann West says about you?"
"She ain't said she won't come?" He was dismayed and frankly terrified.
"She says you're dreadful spruce-lookin' and you're younger'n ever you was."
The cap'n laughed.
"That all?" he inquired. "Well, she must be cross-eyed."
"No," said Mariana, "she ain't cross-eyed; only she thinks you're a terrible likely man."
Then she walked away, and the cap'n watched her, blinking a little with the sun in his eyes and the memory of her Indian pudding.
Mariana did not find her house just as she had left it. It seemed to her a warmer, lighter, cleaner place than she had ever thought it, and, in spite of the winter's closing, as sweet as spring. She went about opening cupboard doors and looking at her china as if each piece were friendly to her, from long association, and moving the mantel ornaments to occupy the old places more exactly. Certain eccentricities ofthe place had been faults; now they were beauties wherein she found no blemish. The worn hollows in the kitchen floor, so hard to wash on a Monday, seemed exactly to fit her feet. And while she stood with her elbows on the window-sash, looking out and planning her garden, Jake Preble came. Mariana was not conscious that she had expected him, but his coming seemed the one note needed to complete recaptured harmony. What she might have prepared to say to him if she had paused to remember Lizzie Ann's ideal of woman's behavior, she did not think. She turned to him, her face running over with pure delight, and put the comprehensive question:—
"Ain't this elegant?"
"You bet it is," said Jake. He did not seem the same man, neither the sombre dullard of the winter, nor the Jake of former years who had fulfilled the routine of his life with no comment on its rigor or its ease. His face was warmly flushed and his eyes shone upon her. "I don't know 's I ever see a nicer place," said he, "except it's mine. Say, Mariana, what you goin' to do?"
"When?" Mariana inquired innocently.
"Now. Right off, to-morrer, next day."
She laughed.
"I'm goin' to start my garden and wash mydishes and hang out clo'es, and then I'm goin' to begin all over again and do the same things; but it'll be my garden and my dishes and my clo'es. And I'm goin' to be as happy as the day is long."
"Say," said Jake, "you don't s'pose you could come over to my house an' do it?"
"Work out some more? Why, I ain't but just over one job. You expect me to take another?"
Mariana was not in the least embarrassed. Lizzie Ann was right, she thought. Men-folks studied their own comfort, and Jake, even, having had a cosy nest all winter, had learned the way of making one of his own. Suddenly she trembled. He was looking at her in a way she wondered at, not as if he were Jake at all, but another like him, from warm, beseeching eyes.
"You shouldn't do a hand's turn if you didn't want to," he was assuring her, with that entreating look. "We'd keep a girl, an' Mondays I'd stay home an' turn the wringer. Mariana, I know you set everything by your house, but you could fix mine over any way you liked. You could throw out a bay-winder if you wanted, or build a cupelow."
"Why," said Mariana, so softly that he bent to hear, "what's set you out to want a housekeeper?"
"It ain't a housekeeper," said Jake. "I've had enough o' housekeepin' long as I live, seein' you fetch an' carry for Eb Hanscom. Why, Mariana, I just love you. I want a wife."
Mariana walked away from him to the window and stood looking out again, only that, instead of the wet garden with the clumps of larkspur feathering up, she seemed to see long beds of flowers in bloom. She even heard the bees humming over them and the tumult of nesting birds. And all the time Jake Preble waited, looking at her back and wondering if after all the losses of his life he was to forfeit Mariana, who, he knew, was life itself.
"Well," said he, in deep despondency, "I s'pose it's no use. I see how you feel about it. Any woman would feel the same."
Mariana turned suddenly, and, seeing she was smiling, he took a hurried step to meet her.
"I 'most forgot you," she said, with a whimsical lilt in her voice. "I was thinkin' how elegant it is when we get home at last."
"Yes," said Jake dejectedly. "I s'pose you're considerin' your own house an' your own gardin-spot's the best there is in the world."
"Why, no," said Mariana, with a little movement toward him. "I wa'n't thinkin' o' my house nor my gardin particular. I guess I was thinkin' o' yours. Leastways, I was thinkin' o'you."