We were going to meet down at the post-office, the whole gang of us, and I had quite a spell to walk. I was going in on Bob Stokes's team. I remember how fast I walked with my hands in my pockets, looking along up at the stars,—the sun was putting them out pretty fast,—and trying not to think of Nancy. But I didn't think of anything else.
It was so early, that there wasn't many folks about to see us off; but Bob Stokes's wife,—she lived nigh the office, just across the road,—she was there to say good-by, kissing of him, and crying on his shoulder. I don't know what difference that should make with Bob Stokes, but I snapped him up well, when he came along, and said good morning.
There were twenty-one of us just, on that gang, in on contract for Dove and Beadle. Dove and Beadle did about the heaviest thing on woodland of anybody, about that time. Good, steady men we were, most of us,—none of your blundering Irish, that wouldn't know a maple from a hickory, with their gin-bottles in their pockets,—but our solid, Down-East Yankee heads, owning their farms all along the river, with schooling enough to know what they were about 'lection day. You didn't catch any ofusvoting your new-fangled tickets when he had meant to go up on Whig, for want of knowing the difference, nor visa vussy. To say nothing of Bob Stokes, and Holt, and me, and another fellow,—I forget his name,—being members in good and reg'lar standing, and paying in our five dollars to the parson every quarter, charitable.
Yes, though I say it that shouldn't say it, we were as fine a looking gang as any in the county, starting off that morning in our red uniform,—Nancy took a sight of pains with my shirt, sewing it up stout, for fear it should bother me ripping, and I with nobody to take a stitch for me all winter. The boys went off in good spirits, singing till they were out of sight of town, and waving their caps at their wives and babies standing in the window along on the way. I didn't sing. I thought the wind blew too hard,—seems to me that was the reason,—I'm sure there must have been a reason, for I had a voice of my own in those days, and had led the choir perpetual for five years.
We weren't going in very deep; Dove and Beadle's lots lay about thirty miles from the nearest house; and a straggling, lonely sort of place that was too, five miles out of the village, with nobody but a dog and a deaf old woman in it. Sometimes, as I was telling you, we had been in a hundred miles from any human creature but ourselves.
It took us two days to get there though, with the oxen; and the teams were loaded down well, with so many axes and the pork-barrels;—I don't know anything like pork for hefting down more than you expect it to, reasonable. It was one of your ugly gray days, growing dark at four o'clock, with snow in the air, when we hauled up in the lonely place. The trees were blazed pretty thick, I remember, especially the pines; Dove and Beadle always had that done up prompt in October. It's pretty work going in blazing while the sun is warm, and the woods like a great bonfire with the maples. I used to like it, but your mother wouldn't hear of it when she could help herself, it kept me away so long.
It's queer, Johnny, how we do remember things that ain't of no account; but I remember, as plainly as if it were yesterday morning, just how everything looked that night, when the teams came up, one by one, and we went to work spry to get to rights before the sun went down.
There were three shanties,—they don't often have more than two or three in one place,—they were empty, and the snow had drifted in; Bob Stokes's oxen were fagged out with their heads hanging down, and the horses were whinnying for their supper. Holt had one of his great brush-fires going,—there was nobody like Holt for making fires,—and the boys were hurrying round in their red shirts, shouting at the oxen, and singing a little, some of them low, under their breath, to keep their spirits up. There was snow as far as you could see,—down the cart-path, and all around, and away into the woods; and there was snow in the sky now, setting in for a regular nor'easter. The trees stood up straight all around without any leaves, and under the bushes it was as black as pitch.
"Five months," said I to myself,—"five months!"
"What in time's the matter with you, Hollis?" says Bob Stokes, with a great slap on my arm; "you're giving that 'ere ox molasses on his hay!"
Sure enough I was, and he said I acted like a dazed creatur, and very likely I did. But I couldn't have told Bob the reason. You see, I knew Nancy was just drawing up her little rocking-chair—the one with the red cushion—close by the fire, sitting there with the children to wait for the tea to boil. And I knew—I couldn't help knowing, if I'd tried hard for it—how she was crying away softly in the dark, so that none of them could see her, to think of the words we'd said, and I gone in without ever making of them up. I was sorry for them then. O Johnny, I was sorry, and she was thirty miles away. I'd got to be sorry five months, thirty miles away, and couldn't let her know.
The boys said I was poor company that first week, and I shouldn't wonder if I was. I couldn't seem to get over it any way, to think I couldn't let her know.
If I could have sent her a scrap of a letter, or a message, or something, I should have felt better. But there wasn't any chance of that this long time, unless we got out of pork or fodder, and had to send down,—which we didn't expect to, for we'd laid in more than usual.
We had two pretty rough weeks' work to begin with, for the worst storms of the season set in, and kept in, and I never saw their like, before or since. It seemed as if there'd never be an end to them. Storm after storm, blow after blow, freeze after freeze; half a day's sunshine, and then at it again! We were well tired of it before they stopped; it made the boys homesick.
However, we kept at work pretty brisk,—lumber-men aren't the fellows to be put out for a snow-storm,—cutting and hauling and sawing, out in the sleet and wind. Bob Stokes froze his left foot that second week, and I was frost-bitten pretty badly myself. Cullen—he was the boss—he was well out of sorts, I tell you, before the sun came out, and cross enough to bite a tenpenny nail in two.
But when the sunisout, it isn't so bad a kind of life, after all. At work all day, with a good hot dinner in the middle; then back to the shanties at dark, to as rousing a fire and tiptop swagan as anybody could ask for. Holt was cook that season, and Holt couldn't be beaten on his swagan.
Now you don't mean to say you don't know what swagan is? Well, well! To think of it! All I have to say is, you don't know what's good then. Beans and pork and bread and molasses,—that's swagan,—all stirred up in a great kettle, and boiled together; and I don't know anything—not even your mother's fritters—I'd give more for a taste of now. We just about lived on that; there's nothing you can cut and haul all day on like swagan. Besides that, we used to have doughnuts,—you don't know what doughnuts are here in Massachusetts; as big as a dinner-plate those doughnuts were, and—well, a little hard, perhaps. They used to have it about in Bangor that we used them for clock pendulums, but I don't know about that.
I used to think a great deal about Nancy nights, when we were sitting up by the fire,—we had our fire right in the middle of the hut, you know, with a hole in the roof to let the smoke out. When supper was eaten, the boys all sat up around it, and told stories, and sang, and cracked their jokes; then they had their backgammon and cards; we got sleepy early, along about nine or ten o'clock, and turned in under the roof with our blankets. The roof sloped down, you know, to the ground; so we lay with our heads in under the little eaves, and our feet to the fire,—ten or twelve of us to a shanty, all round in a row. They built the huts up like a baby's cob-house, with the logs fitted in together. I used to think a great deal about your mother, as I was saying; sometimes I would lie awake when the rest were off as sound as a top, and think about her. Maybe it was foolish, and I'm sure I wouldn't have told anybody of it; but I couldn't get rid of the notion that something might happen to her or to me before five months were out, and I with those words unforgiven.
Then, perhaps, when I went to sleep, I would dream about her, walking back and forth, up and down, in her nightgown and little red shawl, with the great heavy baby in her arms.
So it went along till come the last of January, when one day I saw the boys all standing round in a heap, and talking.
"What's the matter?" says I.
"Pork's given out," says Bob, with a whistle. "Beadle got that last lot from Jenkins there, his son-in-law, and it's sp'ilt. I could have told him that beforehand. Never knew Jenkins to do the fair thing by anybody yet."
"Who's going down?" said I, stopping short. I felt the blood run all over my face, like a woman's.
"Cullen hasn't made up his mind yet," says Bob, walking off.
Now you see there wasn't a man on the ground who wouldn't jump at the chance to go; it broke up the winter for them, and sometimes they could run in home for half an hour, driving by; so there wasn't much of a hope for me. But I went straight to Mr. Cullen.
"Too late! Just promised Jim Jacobs," said he, speaking up quick; it was just business to him, you know.
I turned off, and I didn't say a word. I wouldn't have believed it, I never would have believed it, that I could have felt so cut up about such a little thing. Cullen looked round at me sharp.
"Hilloa, Hollis!" said he. "What's to pay?"
"Nothing, thank you, sir," says I, and walked off, whistling.
I had a little talk with Jim alone. He said he would take good care of anything I'd give him, and carry it straight. So when night came I went and borrowed Mr. Cullen's pencil, and Holt tore me off a bit of clean brown paper he found in the flour-barrel, and I went off among the trees with it alone. I built a little fire for myself out of a huckleberry-bush, and sat down there on the snow to write. I couldn't do it in the shanty, with the noise and singing. The little brown paper wouldn't hold much; but these were the words I wrote,—I remember every one of them,—it is curious now I should, and that more than twenty years ago:—
"Dear Nancy,"—that was it,—"Dear Nancy, I can't get over it, and I take them all back. And if anything happens coming down on the logs—"
I couldn't finish that anyhow, so I just wrote "Aaron" down in the corner, and folded the brown paper up. It didn't look any more like "Aaron" than it did like "Abimelech," though; for I didn't see a single letter I wrote,—not one.
After that I went to bed, and wished I was Jim Jacobs.
Next morning somebody woke me up with a push, and there was the boss.
"Why, Mr. Cullen!" says I, with a jump.
"Hurry up, man, and eat your breakfast," said he; "Jacobs is down sick with his cold."
"Oh!" said I.
"You and the pork must be back here day after to-morrow,—so be spry," said he.
I rather think I was, Johnny.
It was just eight o'clock when I started; it took some time to get breakfast, and feed the nags, and get orders. I stood there, slapping the snow with my whip, crazy to be off, hearing the last of what Mr. Cullen had to say.
They gave me the two horses,—we hadn't but two,—oxen are tougher for going in, as a general thing,—and the lightest team on the ground; it was considerably lighter than Bob Stokes's. If it hadn't been for the snow, I might have put the thing through in two days, but the snow was up to the creatures' knees in the shady places all along; off from the road, in among the gullies, you could stick a four-foot measure down anywhere. So they didn't look for me back before Wednesday night.
"I must have that pork Wednesday night sure," says Cullen.
"Well, sir," says I, "you shall have it Wednesday noon, Providence permitting; and you shall have it Wednesday night anyway."
"You will have a storm to do it in, I'm afraid," said he, looking at the clouds, just as I was whipping up. "You're all right on the road, I suppose?"
"All right," said I; and I'm sure I ought to have been, for the timesI'd been over it.
Bess and Beauty—they were the horses, and of all the ugly nags that ever I saw Beauty was the ugliest—started off on a round trot, slewing along down the hill; they knew they were going home just as well as I did. I looked back, as we turned the corner, to see the boys standing round in their red shirts, with the snow behind them, and the fire and the shanties. I felt a mite lonely when I couldn't see them any more; the snow was so dead still, and there were thirty miles of it to cross before I could see human face again.
The clouds had an ugly look,—a few flakes had fallen already,—and the snow was purple, deep in as far as you could see under the trees. Something made me think of Ben Gurnell, as I drove on, looking along down the road to keep it straight. You never heard about it? Poor Ben! Poor Ben! It was in '37, that was; he had been out hunting up blazed trees, they said, and wandered away somehow into the Gray Goth, and went over,—it was two hundred feet; they didn't find him, not till spring,—just a little heap of bones; his wife had them taken home and buried, and by and by they had to take her away to a hospital in Portland,—she talked so horribly, and thought she saw bones round everywhere.
There is no place like the woods for bringing a storm down on you quick; the trees are so thick you don't mind the first few flakes, till, first you know, there's a whirl of 'em, and the wind is up.
I was minding less about it than usual, for I was thinking of Nannie,—that's what I used to call her, Johnny, when she was a girl, but it seems a long time ago, that does. I was thinking how surprised she'd be, and pleased. I knew she would be pleased. I didn't think so poorly of her as to suppose she wasn't just as sorry now as I was for what had happened. I knew well enough how she would jump and throw down her sewing with a little scream, and run and put her arms about my neck and cry, and couldn't help herself.
So I didn't mind about the snow, for planning it all out, till all at once I looked up, and something slashed into my eyes and stung me,—it was sleet.
"Oho!" said I to myself, with a whistle,—it was a very long whistle, Johnny; I knew well enough then it was no play-work I had before me till the sun went down, nor till morning either.
That was about noon,—it couldn't have been half an hour since I'd eaten my dinner; I eat it driving, for I couldn't bear to waste time.
The road wasn't broken there an inch, and the trees were thin; there'd been a clearing there years ago, and wide, white, level places wound off among the trees; one looked as much like a road as another, for the matter of that. I pulled my visor down over my eyes to keep the sleet out,—after they're stung too much they're good for nothing to see with, and Imustsee, if I meant to keep that road.
It began to be cold. You don't know what it is to be cold, you don't, Johnny, in the warm gentleman's life you've lived. I was used to Maine forests, and I was used to January, but that was what I call cold.
The wind blew from the ocean, straight as an arrow. The sleet blew every way,—into your eyes, down your neck, in like a knife into your cheeks. I could feel the snow crunching in under the runners, crisp, turned to ice in a minute. I reached out to give Bess a cut on the neck, and the sleeve of my coat was stiff as pasteboard before I bent my elbow up again.
If you looked up at the sky, your eyes were shut with a snap as if somebody'd shot them. If you looked in under the trees, you could see the icicles a minute, and the purple shadows. If you looked straight ahead, you couldn't see a thing.
By and by I thought I had dropped the reins, I looked at my hands, and there I was holding them tight. I knew then that it was time to get out and walk.
I didn't try much after that to look ahead; it was of no use, for the sleet was fine, like needles, twenty of 'em in your eye at a wink; then it was growing dark. Bess and Beauty knew the road as well as I did, so I had to trust to them. I thought I must be coming near the clearing where I'd counted on putting up overnight, in case I couldn't reach the deaf old woman's.
There was a man just out of Bangor the winter before, walking just so beside his team, and he kept on walking, some folks said, after the breath was gone, and they found him frozen up against the sleigh-poles. I would have given a good deal if I needn't have thought of that just then. But I did, and I kept walking on.
Pretty soon Bess stopped short. Beauty was pulling on,—Beauty always did pull on,—but she stopped too. I couldn't stop so easily, so I walked along like a machine, up on a line with the creaturs' ears. Ididstop then, or you never would have heard this story, Johnny.
Two paces,—and those two hundred feet shot down like a plummet. A great cloud of snow-flakes puffed up over the edge. There were rocks at my right hand, and rocks at my left. There was the sky overhead. I was in the Gray Goth!
I sat down as weak as a baby. If I didn't think of Ben Gurnell then, I never thought of him. It roused me up a bit, perhaps, for I had the sense left to know that I couldn't afford to sit down just yet, and I remembered a shanty that I must have passed without seeing; it was just at the opening of the place where the rocks narrowed, built, as they build their light-houses, to warn folks to one side. There was a log or something put up after Gurnell went over, but it was of no account, coming on it suddenly. There was no going any farther that night, that was clear; so I put about into the hut, and got my fire going, and Bess and Beauty and I, we slept together.
It was an outlandish name to give it, seems to me, anyway. I don't know what a Goth is, Johnny; maybe you do. There was a great figger up on the rock, about eight feet high; some folks thought it looked like a man. I never thought so before, but that night it did kind of stare in through the door as natural as life.
When I woke up in the morning I thought I was on fire. I stirred and turned over, and I was ice. My tongue was swollen up so I couldn't swallow without strangling. I crawled up to my feet, and every bone in me was stiff as a shingle.
Bess was looking hard at me, whinnying for her breakfast. "Bess," saysI, very slow, "we must get home—to-night—any—how."
I pushed open the door. It creaked out into a great drift, and slammed back. I squeezed through and limped out. The shanty stood up a little, in the highest part of the Goth. I went down a little,—I went as far as I could go. There was a pole lying there, blown down in the night; it came about up to my head. I sunk it into the snow, and drew it up.
Just six feet.
I went back to Bess and Beauty, and I shut the door. I told them I couldn't help it,—something ailed my arms,—I couldn't shovel them out to-day. I must lie down and wait till to-morrow.
I waited till to-morrow. It snowed all day, and it snowed all night. It was snowing when I pushed the door out again into the drift. I went back and lay down. I didn't seem to care.
The third day the sun came out, and I thought about Nannie. I was going to surprise her. She would jump up and run and put her arms about my neck. I took the shovel, and crawled out on my hands and knees. I dug it down, and fell over on it like a baby.
After that, I understood. I'd never had a fever in my life, and it's not strange that I shouldn't have known before.
It came all over me in a minute, I think. I couldn't shovel through. Nobody could hear. I might call, and I might shout. By and by the fire would go out. Nancy would not come. Nancy did not know. Nancy and I should never kiss and make up now.
I struck my arm out into the air, and shouted out her name, and yelled it out. Then I crawled out once more into the drift.
I tell you, Johnny, I was a stout-hearted man, who'd never known a fear. I could freeze. I could burn up there alone in the horrid place with fever. I could starve. It wasn't death nor awfulness I couldn't face,—not that, notthat; but I loved her true, I say,—I loved her true, and I'd spoken my last words to her, my very last; I had left herthoseto remember, day in and day out, and year upon year, as long as she remembered her husband, as long as she remembered anything.
I think I must have gone pretty nearly mad with the fever and the thinking. I fell down there like a log, and lay groaning. "God Almighty! God Almighty!" over and over, not knowing what it was that I was saying, till the words strangled in my throat.
Next day, I was too weak so much as to push open the door. I crawled around the hut on my knees with my hands up over my head, shouting out as I did before, and fell, a helpless heap, into the corner; after that I never stirred.
How many days had gone, or how many nights, I had no more notion than the dead. I knew afterwards; when I knew how they waited and expected and talked and grew anxious, and sent down home to see if I was there, and how she—But no matter, no matter about that.
I used to scoop up a little snow when I woke up from the stupors. The bread was the other side of the fire; I couldn't reach round. Beauty eat it up one day; I saw her. Then the wood was used up. I clawed out chips with my nails from the old rotten logs the shanty was made of, and kept up a little blaze. By and by I couldn't pull any more. Then there were only some coals,—then a little spark. I blew at that spark a long while,—I hadn't much breath. One night it went out, and the wind blew in. One day I opened my eyes, and Bess had fallen down in the corner, dead and stiff. Beauty had pushed out of the door somehow and gone. I shut up my eyes. I don't think I cared about seeing Bess,—I can't remember very well.
Sometimes I thought Nancy was there in the plaid shawl, walking round the ashes where the spark went out. Then again I thought Mary Ann was there, and Isaac, and the baby. But they never were. I used to wonder if I wasn't dead, and hadn't made a mistake about the place that I was going to.
One day there was a noise. I had heard a great many noises, so I didn't take much notice. It came up crunching on the snow, and I didn't know but it was Gabriel or somebody with his chariot. Then I thought more likely it was a wolf.
Pretty soon I looked up, and the door was open; some men were coming in, and a woman. She was ahead of them all, she was; she came in with a great spring, and had my head against her neck, and her arm holding me up, and her cheek down to mine, with her dear, sweet, warm breath all over me; and that was all I knew.
Well, there was brandy, and there was a fire, and there were blankets, and there was hot water, and I don't know what; but warmer than all the rest I felt her breath against my cheek, and her arms about my neck, and her long hair, which she had wrapped all in, about my hands.
So by and by my voice came. "Nannie!" said I.
"O don't!" said she, and first I knew she was crying.
"But I will," says I, "for I'm sorry."
"Well, so am I," says she.
Said I, "I thought I was dead, and hadn't made up, Nannie."
"Odear!" said she; and down fell a great hot splash right on my face.
Says I, "It was all me, for I ought to have gone back and kissed you."
"No, it wasme" said she, "for I wasn't asleep, not any such thing. I peeked out, this way, through my lashes, to see if you wouldn't come back. I meant to wake up then. Dear me!" says she, "to think what a couple of fools we were, now!"
"Nannie," says I, "you can let the lamp smoke all you want to!"
"Aaron—" she began, just as she had begun that other night,—"Aaron—" but she didn't finish, and—Well, well, no matter; I guess you don't want to hear any more, do you?
But sometimes I think, Johnny, when it comes my time to go,—if ever it does,—I've waited a good while for it,—the first thing I shall see will be her face, looking as it looked at me just then.
Calico.
It was about time for the four-o'clock train.
After all, I wonder if it is worth telling,—such a simple, plotless record of a young girl's life, made up of Mondays and Tuesdays and Wednesdays, like yours or mine. Sharley was so exactly like other people! How can it be helped that nothing remarkable happened to her? But you would like the story?
It was about time for the four-o'clock train, then.
Sharley, at the cost of half a sugar-bowl (never mind syntax; you know I mean the sugar, not the glass), had enticed Moppet to betake himself out of sight and out of mind till somebody should signify a desire for his engaging presence; had steered clear of Nate and Methuselah, and was standing now alone on the back doorsteps opposite the chaise-house. One could see a variety of things from those doorsteps,—the chaise-house, for instance, with the old, solid, square-built wagon rolled into it (Sharley passed many a long "mending morning" stowed in among the cushions of that old wagon); the great sweet-kept barn, where the sun stole in warm at the chinks and filtered through the hay; the well-curb folded in by a shadow; the wood-pile, and the chickens, and the kitchen-garden; a little slope, too, with a maple on it and shades of brown and gold upon the grass; brown and golden tints across the hills, and a sky of blue and gold to dazzle one. Then there was a flock of robins dipping southward. There was also the railroad.
Sharley may have had her dim consciousness of the cosey barn and chicken's chirp, of brown and gold and blue and dazzle and glory; but you don't supposethatwas what she had outgeneralled Moppet and stolen the march upon Nate and Methuselah for. The truth is, that the child had need of none of these things—neither skies nor dazzle nor glory—that golden autumn afternoon. Had the railroad bounded the universe just then, she would have been content. For Sharley was only a girl,—a very young, not very happy, little girl,—and Halcombe Dike was coming home to spend the Sunday.
Halcombe Dike,—her old friend Halcombe Dike. She said the words over, apologizing a bit to herself for being there to watch that railroad. Hal used to be good to her when she was bothered with the children and more than half tired of life. "Keep up good courage, Sharley," he would say. For the long summer he had not been here to say it. And to-night he would be here. To-night—to-night! Why should not one be glad when one's old friends come back?
Mrs. Guest, peering through the pantry window, observed—and observed with some motherly displeasure, which she would have expressed had it not been too much trouble to open the window—that Sharley had put on her barbe,—that black barbe with the pink watered ribbons run through it. So extravagant in Sharley! Sharley would fain have been so extravagant as to put on her pink muslin too this afternoon; she had been more than half inclined to cry because she could not; but as it was not orthodox in Green Valley to wear one's "best clothes" on week-days, except at picnics or prayer-meetings, she had submitted, sighing, to her sprigged calico. It would have been worth while, though, to have seen her half an hour ago up in her room under the eaves, considering the question; she standing there with the sleeves of her dressing-sack fallen away from her pink, bare arms, and the hair clinging loose and moist to her bare white neck; to see her smooth the shimmering folds,—there were rose-buds on that muslin,—and look and long, hang it up, and turn away. Why could there not be a little more rose-bud and shimmer in people's lives! "Seems to me it's all calico!" cried Sharley.
Then to see her overturning her ribbon-box! Nobody but a girl knows how girls dream over their ribbons.
"He is coming!" whispered Sharley to the little bright barbe, and to the little bright face that flushed and fluttered at her in the glass,—"He is coming!"
Sharley looked well, waiting there in the calico and lace upon the doorstep. It is not everybody who would look well in calico and lace; yet if you were to ask me, I could not tell you how pretty Sharley is, or if she is pretty at all. I have a memory of soft hair—brown, I think—and wistful eyes; and that I never saw her without a desire to stroke her, and make her pur as I would a kitten.
How stiff and stark and black the railroad lay on its yellow ridge! Sharley drew her breath when the sudden four-o'clock whistle smote the air, and a faint, far trail of smoke puffed through the woods, and wound over the barren outline.
Her mother, seeing her steal away through the kitchen-garden, and down the slope, called after her:—
"Charlotte! going to walk? I wish you'd let the baby go too. Well, she doesn't hear!"
I will not assert that Sharley did not hear. To be frank, she was rather tired of that baby.
There was a foot-path through the brown and golden grass, and Sharley ran over it, under the maple, which was dropping yellow leaves, and down to the knot of trees which lined the farther walls. There was a nook here—she knew just where—into which one might creep, tangled in with the low-hanging green of apple and spruce, and wound about with grape-vines. Stooping down, careful not to catch that barbe upon the brambles, and careful not to soil so much as a sprig of the clean light calico, Sharley hid herself in the shadow. She could see unseen now the great puffs of purple smoke, the burning line of sandy bank, the station, and the uphill road to the village. Oddly enough, some old Scripture words—Sharley was not much in the habit of quoting Scripture—came into her thoughts just as she had curled herself comfortably up beside the wall, her watching face against the grape-leaves: "But what went ye out for to see?" "What went ye out for to see?" She went on, dreamily finishing, "A prophet? Yea, I say unto you, and more than a prophet," and stopped, scarlet. What had prophets to do with her old friend Halcombe Dike?
Ah, but he was coming! he was coming! To Sharley's eyes the laboring, crazy locomotive which puffed him asthmatically up to the little depot was a benevolent dragon,—if there were such things as benevolent dragons,—very horrible, and she was very much afraid of it; but very gracious, and she should like to go out and pat it on the shoulder.
The train slackened, jarred, and stopped. An old woman with thirteen bundles climbed out laboriously. Two small boys turned somersaults from the platform. Sharley strained her wistful eyes till they ached. There was nobody else. Sharley was very young, and very much disappointed, and she cried. The glory had died from the skies. The world had gone out.
She was sitting there all in a heap, her face in her hands, and her heart in her foolish eyes, when a step sounded near, and a voice humming an old army song. She knew it; he had taught it to her himself. She knew the step; for she had long ago trained her slippered feet to keep pace with it. He had stepped from the wrong side of the car, perhaps, or her eager eyes had missed him; at any rate here he was,—a young man, with honest eyes, and mouth a little grave; a very plainly dressed young man,—his coat was not as new as Sharley's calico,—but a young man with a good step of his own,—strong, elastic,—and a nervous hand.
He passed, humming his army song, and never knew how the world lighted up again within a foot of him. He passed so near that Sharley by stretching out her hand could have touched him,—so near that she could hear the breath he drew. He was thinking to himself, perhaps, that no one had come from home to meet him, and he had been long away; but then, it was not his mother's fashion of welcome, and quickening his pace at the thought of her, he left the tangle of green behind, and the little wet face crushed breathless up against the grape-leaves, and was out of sight and knew nothing.
Sharley sprang up and bounded home. Her mother opened her languid eyes wide when the child came in.
"Dear me, Charlotte, how you do go chirping and hopping round, and me with this great baby and my sick-headache!Ican't chirp and hop. You look as if somebody'd set you on fire! What's the matter with you, child?"
What was the matter, indeed! Sharley, in a little spasm of penitence,—one can afford to be penitent when one is happy,—took the baby and went away to think about it. Surely he would come to see her to-night; he did not often come home without seeing Sharley; and he had been long away. At any rate he was here; in this very Green Valley where the days had dragged so drearily without him; his eyes saw the same sky that hers saw; his breath drank the same sweet evening wind; his feet trod the roads that she had trodden yesterday, and would tread again to-morrow. But I will not tell them any more of this,—shall I, Sharley?
She threw her head back and looked up, as she walked to and fro through the yard with the heavy baby fretting on her shoulder. The skies were aflame now, for the sun was dropping slowly. "He is here!" they said. A belated robin took up the word: "He is here!" The yellow maple glittered all over with it: "Sharley, he is here!"
"The butter is here," called her mother relevantly from the house. "The butter is here now, and it's time to see about supper, Charlotte."
"More calico!" said impatient Sharley, and she gave the baby a jerk.
Whether he came or whether he did not come, there was no more time for Sharley to dream that night. In fact, there seldom was any time to dream in Mrs. Guest's household. Mrs. Guest believed in keeping people busy. She was busy enough herself when her head did not ache. When it did, it was the least she could do to see that other people were busy.
So Sharley had the table to set, and the biscuit to bake, and the tea to make, and the pears to pick over; she must run upstairs to bring her mother a handkerchief; she must hurry for her father's clothes-brush when he came in tired, and not so good-humored as he might be, from his store; she must stop to rebuild the baby's block-house, that Moppet had kicked over, and snap Moppet's dirty, dimpled fingers for kicking it over, and endure the shriek that Moppet set up therefor. She must suggest to Methuselah that he could find, perhaps, a more suitable book-mark for Robinson Crusoe than his piece of bread and molasses, and intimate doubts as to the propriety of Nate's standing on the table-cloth and sitting on the toast-rack. And then Moppet was at that baby again, dropping very cold pennies down his neck. They must be made presentable for supper, too, Moppet and Nate and Methuselah,—Methuselah, Nate, and Moppet; brushed and washed and dusted and coaxed and scolded and borne with. There was no end to it. Would there ever be any end to it? Sharley sometimes asked of her weary thoughts. Sharley's life, like the lives of most girls at her age, was one great unanswered question. It grew tiresome occasionally, as monologues are apt to do.
"I'm going to holler to-night," announced Moppet at supper, pausing in the midst of his berry-cake, by way of diversion, to lift the cat up by her tail. "I'm going to holler awful, and make you sit up and tell me about that little boy that ate the giant, and Cinderella,—how she lived in the stove-pipe,—and that man that builded his house out of a bungle of straws: and—well, there's some more, but I don't remember 'em just now, you know."
"O Moppet!"
"I am," glared Moppet over his mug. "You made me put on a clean collar.You see if I don't holler an' holler an' holler an' keep-a-hollerin'!"
Sharley's heart sank; but she patiently cleared away her dishes, mixed her mother's ipecac, read her father his paper, went upstairs with the children, treated Moppet with respect as to his buttons and boot-lacing, and tremblingly bided her time.
"Well," condescended that young gentleman, before his prayers were over, "I b'lieve—give us our debts—I'll keep that hollerin'—forever 'n ever—Namen—till to-morrow night. I ain't a—bit—sleepy, but—" And nobody heard anything more from Moppet.
The coast was clear now, and happy Sharley, with bright cheeks, took her little fall hat that she was trimming, and sat down on the front doorsteps; sat there to wait and watch, and hope and dream and flutter, and sat in vain. Twilight crept up the path, up to her feet, folded her in; the warm color of her plaided ribbons faded away under her eyes, and dropped from her listless fingers; with them had faded her bit of a hope for that night; Hal always came before dark.
"Who cares?" said Sharley, with a toss of her soft, brown head. Somebody did care nevertheless. Somebody winked hard as she went upstairs.
However, she could light a lamp and finish her hat. That was one comfort. It alwaysisa comfort to finish one's hat. Girls have forgotten graver troubles than Sharley's in the excitement of hurried Saturday-night millinery.
A bonnet is a picture in its way, and grows up under one's fingers with a pretty sense of artistic triumph. Besides, there is always the question: Will it be becoming? So Sharley put her lamp on a cricket, and herself on the floor, and began to sing over her work. A pretty sight it was,—the low, dark room with the heavy shadows in its corners; all the light and color drawn to a focus in the middle of it; Sharley, with her head bent—bits of silk like broken rainbows tossed about her—and that little musing smile, considering gravely, Should the white squares of the plaid turn outward? and where should she put the coral? and would it be becoming after all? A pretty, girlish sight, and you may laugh at it if you choose; but there was a prettier woman's tenderness underlying it, just as a strain of fine, coy sadness will wind through a mazourka or a waltz. For who would see the poor little hat to-morrow at church? and would he like it? and when he came to-morrow night,—for of course he would come to-morrow night,—would he tell her so?
When everybody else was in bed and the house still, Sharley locked her door, furtively stole to the bureau-glass, shyly tied on that hat, and more shyly peeped in. A flutter of October colors and two great brown eyes looked back at her encouragingly.
"I should like to be pretty," said Sharley, and asked the next minute to be forgiven for the vanity. "At any rate," by way of modification, "I should like to be pretty to-morrow."
She prayed for Halcombe Dike when she kneeled, with her face hidden in her white bed, to say "Our Father." I believe she had prayed for him now every night for a year. Not that there was any need of it, she reasoned, for was he not a great deal better than she could ever be? Far above her; oh, as far above her as the shining of the stars was above the shining of the maple-tree; but perhaps if she prayed very hard they would give one extra, beautiful angel charge over him. Then, was it not quite right to pray for one's old friends? Besides—besides, they had a pleasant sound, those two words: "OurFather."
"I will be good to-morrow," said Sharley, dropping into sleep. "Mother's head will ache, and I can go to church. I will listen to the minister, and I won't plan out my winter dresses in prayer-time. I won't be cross to Moppet, nor shake Methuselah. I will be good. Hal will help me to be good. I shall see him in the morning,—in the morning."
Sharley's self-knowledge, like the rest of her, was in the bud yet.
Her Sun-day, her one warm, shining day, opened all in a glow. She danced down stairs at ten o'clock in the new hat, in a haze of merry colors. She had got breakfast and milked one cow and dressed four boys that morning, and she felt as if she had earned the right to dance in a haze of anything. The sunlight quivered in through the blinds. The leaves of the yellow maple drifted by on the fresh, strong wind. The church-bells rang out like gold. All the world was happy.
"Charlotte!" Her mother bustled out of the "keeping-room" with her hat on. "I've changed my mind, Sharley, and feel so much better I believe I will go to church. I'll take Methuselah, but Nate and Moppet had better stay at home with the baby. The last time I took Moppet he fired three hymn-books at old Mrs. Perkins,—right into the crown of her bonnet, and in the long prayer, too. That child will be the death of me some day. I guess you'll get along with him, and the baby isn't quite as cross as he was yesterday. You'd just as lief go in the afternoon, I suppose? Pin my shawl on the shoulder, please."
But Sharley, half-way down the stairs, stood still. She was no saint, this disappointed little girl. Her face, in the new fall hat, flushed angrily and her hands dropped.
"O mother! I did want to go! You're always keeping me at home for something. I didwantto go!"—and rushed up stairs noisily, like a child, and slammed her door.
"Dear me!" said her mother, putting on her spectacles to look after her,—"dear me! what a temper! I'm sure I don't see what difference it makes to her which half of the day she goes. Last Sunday she must go in the afternoon, and wouldn't hear of anything else. Well, there's no accounting for girls! Come, Methuselah."
Isthere not any "accounting for girls," my dear madam? What is the matter with those mothers, that they cannot see? Just as if it never made any difference to them which half of the day they went to church! Well, well! we are doing it, all of us, as fast as we can,—going the way of all the earth, digging little graves for our young sympathies, one by one, covering them up close. It grows so long since golden mornings and pretty new bonnets and the sweet consciousness of watching eyes bounded life for us! We have dreamed our dreams; we have learned the long lesson of our days; we are stepping on into the shadows. Our eyes see that ye see not; our ears hear that which ye have not considered. We read your melodious story through, but we have read other stories since, and only itshaec fabula docetremains very fresh. You will be as obtuse as we are some day, young things! It is not neglect; it is not disapproval,—we simply forget. But from such forgetfulness may the good Lord graciously deliver us, one and all!
There! I fancy that I have made for Mrs. Guest—sitting meantime in her cushioned pew (directly behind Halcombe Dike), and comfortably looking over the "Watts and Select" with Methuselah—a better defence than ever she could have made for herself. Between you and me, girls,—though you need not tell your mother,—I think it is better than she deserves.
Sharley, upstairs, had slammed her door and locked it, and was pacing hotly back and forth across her room. Poor Sharley! Sun and moon and stars were darkened; the clouds had returned after the rain. She tore off the new hat and Sunday things savagely; put on her old chocolate-colored morning-dress, with a grim satisfaction in making herself as ugly as possible; pulled down the ribboned chignon which she had braided, singing, half an hour ago (her own, that chignon); screwed her hair under a net into the most unbecoming little pug of which it was capable, and went drearily down stairs. Nate, enacting the cheerful drama of "Jeff Davis on a sour apple-tree," hung from the balusters, purple, gasping, tied to the verge of strangulation by the energetic Moppet. The baby was calmly sitting in the squash-pies.
Halcombe Dike, coming home from church that morning a little in advance of the crowd, saw a "Pre-raphaelite" in the doorway of Mr. Guest's barn, and quietly unlatching the gate came nearer to examine it. It was worth examining. There was a ground of great shadows and billowy hay; a pile of crimson apples struck out by the light through a crack; two children and a kitten asleep together in a sunbeam; a girl on the floor with a baby crawling over her; a girl in a chocolate-colored dress with yellow leaves in her hair,—her hair upon her shoulders, and her eyelashes wet.
"Well, Sharley!"
She looked up to see him standing there with his grave, amused smile.Her first thought was to jump and run; her second, to stand fire.
"Well, Mr. Halcombe! Moppet's stuck yellow leaves all over me; my hair's down; I've got on a horrid old morning-dress; look pretty to see company, don't I?"
"Very, Sharley."
"Besides," said Sharley, "I've been crying, and my eyes are red."
"So I see."
"No, you don't, for I'm not looking at you."
"But I am looking at you."
"Oh!"
"What were you crying about, Sharley!"
"Because my grandmother's dead," said Sharley, after some reflection.
"Ah, yes, I remember! about '36, I think, her tombstone gives as the date of that sad event?"
"I think it's wicked in people to laugh at people's dead grandmothers," said Sharley, severely. "You ought to be at church."
"So I was."
"I wasn't; mother wouldn't—" But her lip quivered, and she stopped. The memory of the new hat and Sunday dress, of the golden church-bells, and hush of happy Sabbath-morning thoughts came up. That he should see her now, in this plight, with her swollen eyes and pouting lips, and her heart full of wicked discontent!
"Wouldn't what, Sharley?"
"Don't!" she pleaded, with a sob; "I'm cross; I can't talk. Besides, I shall cry again, and Iwon'tcry again. You may let me alone, or you may go away. If you don't go away you may just tell me what you have been doing with yourself this whole long summer. Working hard, of course. I don't see but that everybody has to work hard in this world! I hate this world! I suppose you're a rich man by this time?"
The young man looked at the chocolate dress, the yellow leaves, the falling hair, and answered gravely,—a little coldly, Sharley thought,—that his prospects were not encouraging just now. Perhaps they never had been encouraging; only that he in his young ardor had thought so. He was older now, and wiser. He understood what a hard pull was before young architects in America,—any young architect, the best of young architects,—and whether there was a place for him remained to be proved. He was willing to work hard, and to hope long; but he grew a little tired of it sometimes, and so—He checked himself suddenly. "As if," thought Sharley, "he were tired of talking so long to me! He thought my question impertinent." She hid her face in her drooping hair, and wished herself a mile away.
"There was something you once told me about some sort of buildings?" she ventured, timidly, in a pause.
"The Crumpet Buildings. Yes, I sent my proposals, but have not heard from them yet; I don't know that I ever shall. That is a large affair, rather. The name of the thing would be worth a good deal to me if I succeeded. It would give me a start, and—"
"Ough!" exclaimed Sharley. She had been sitting at his feet, with her face raised, and red eyes forgotten, when, splash! an icy stream of water came into her eyes, into her mouth, down her neck, up her sleeves. She gasped, and stood drenched.
"O, it's only a rain-storm," said Moppet, appearing on the scene with his empty dipper. "I got tired of sleeping. I dreamed about three giants. I didn't like it. I wanted something to do. It's onlymyrain-storm, and you needn't mind it, you know."
Dripping Sharley's poor little temper, never of the strongest, quivered to its foundations. She took hold of Moppet without any observation, and shook him just about as hard as she could shake. When she came to her senses her mother was coming in at the gate, and Halcombe Dike was gone.
* * * * *
"I s'pose I've got to 'tend to that hollering to-night," said Moppet, with a gentle sigh.
This was at a quarter past seven. Nate and Methuselah were in bed. The baby was asleep. Moppet had thrown his shoes into the water-pitcher but twice, and run down stairs in his nightgown only four times that evening; and Sharley felt encouraged. Perhaps, after all, he would be still by half past seven; and by half past seven—If Halcombe Dike did not come to-night, something was the matter. Sharley decided this with a sharp little nod.
She had devoted herself to Moppet with politic punctiliousness. Would he lie at his lazy length, with his feet on her clean petticoat, while she bent and puzzled over his knotted shoestrings? Very well. Did he signify a desire to pull her hair down and tickle her till she gasped? She was at his service. Should he insist upon being lulled to slumber by the recounted adventures of Old Mother Hubbard, Red Riding-Hood, and Tommy Tucker? Not those exactly, it being thought proper to keep him in a theologic mood of mind till after sundown, but he should have David and Goliath and Moses in the bulrushes with pleasure; then Moses and Goliath and David again; after that, David and Goliath and Moses, by way of variety. She conducted every Scriptural dog and horse of her acquaintance entirely round the globe in a series of somewhat apocryphal adventures. She ransacked her memory for biblical boys, but these met with small favor. "Pooh!theyweren't any good! They couldn't play stick-knife and pitch-in. Besides, they all died. Besides, they weren't any great shakes. Jack the Giant-Killer was worth a dozen of 'em, sir! Now tell it all over again, or else I won't say my prayers till next winter!"
After some delicate plotting, Sharley manoeuvred him through "Now I lay me," and tucked him up, and undertook a little Sunday-night catechizing, conscientiously enough.
"Has Moppet been a good boy to-day?"
"Well, that's a pretty question! Course I have!"
"But have you had any good thoughts, dear, you know?"
"O yes, lots of 'em! been thinking about Blessingham."
"Who? O, Absalom!"
"O yes, I've been thinking about Blessingham, you know; how he must have looked dreadful funny hanging up there onto his hair, with all the darts 'n things stickin' into him! _Would_n't you like to seen him! No, you needn't go off, 'cause I ain't begun to be asleep yet."
Time and twilight were creeping on together. Sharley was sure that she had heard the gate shut, and that some one sat talking with her mother upon the front doorsteps.
"O Moppet! _Could_n't you go to sleep without me this one night,—not this one night?" and the hot, impatient tears came in the dark.
"O no," said immovable Moppet, "of course I can't; and I 'spect I'm going to lie awake all night too. You'd ought to be glad to stay with your little brothers. The girl in my library-book, she was glad, anyhow."
Sharley threw herself back in the rocking-chair and let her eyes brim over. She could hear the voices on the doorsteps plainly; her mother's wiry tones and the visitor's; it was a man's voice, low and less frequent. Why did not her mother call her? Had not he asked to see her? Had he not? Would nobody ever come up to take her place? Would Moppet never go to sleep? There he was peering at her over the top of the sheet, with two great, mischievous, wide-awake eyes. And time and twilight were wearing on.
Let us talk about "affliction" with our superior, reproving smile! Graves may close and hearts may break, fortunes, hopes, and souls be ruined, but Moppet wouldn't go to sleep; and Sharley in her rocking-chair doubted her mother's love, the use of life, and the benevolence of God.
"I'm lying awake to think about Buriah," observed Moppet, pleasantly."David wanted to marry Buriah's wife. She was a very nice woman."
Silence followed this announcement.
"Sharley? you needn't think I'm asleep,—any such thing. Besides, if you go down you'd better believe I'll holler! See here: s'pose I'd slung my dipper at Hal Dike, jest as David slung the stone at Go-li—"
Another silence. Encouraged, Sharley dried her tears and crept half-way across the floor. Then a board creaked.
"O Sharley! Why don't people shut their eyes when they die? Why, Jim Snow's dorg, he didn't. I punched a frog yesterday. I want a drink of water."
Sharley resigned herself in despair to her fate. Moppet lay broad and bright awake till half past eight. The voices by the door grew silent. Steps sounded on the walk. The gate shut.
"That child has kept me up with him the whole evening long," said Sharley, coming sullenly down. "You didn't even come and speak to him, mother. I suppose Halcombe Dike never asked for me?"
"Halcombe Dike! Law! that wasn't Halcombe Dike. It was Deacon Snow,—the old Deacon,—come in to talk over the revival. Halcombe Dike was at meeting, your father says, with his cousin Sue. Great interest up his way, the Deacon says. There's ten had convictions since Conference night. I wish you were one of the interested, Sharley."
But Sharley had fled. Fled away into the windy, moonless night, down through the garden, out into the sloping field. She ran back and forth through the grass with great leaps, like a wounded thing. All her worry and waiting and disappointment, and he had not come! All the thrill and hope of her happy Sunday over and gone, and he had not come! All the winter to live without one look at him,—and he knew it, and he would not come!
"I don't care!" sobbed Sharley, like a defiant child, but threw up her hands with the worlds and wailed. It frightened her to hear the sound of her own voice—such a pitiful, shrill voice—in the lonely place. She broke into her great leaps again, and so ran up and down the slope, and felt the wind in her face. It drank her breath away from her after a while; it was a keen, chilly wind. She sat down on a stone in the middle of the field, and it came over her that it was a cold, dark place to be in alone; and just then she heard her father calling her from the yard. So she stood up very slowly and walked back.
"You'll catch your death!" fretted her mother, "running round bareheaded in all this damp. You know how much trouble you are when you are sick, too, and I think you ought to have more consideration for me, with all my care. Going to bed? Be sure and not forget to put the baby's gingham apron in the wash."
Sharley lighted her kerosene lamp without reply. It was the little kerosene with the crack in the handle. Some vague notion that everything in the world had cracked came to her as she crept upstairs. She put her lamp out as soon as she was in her room, and locked her door hard. She sat down on the side of the bed and crossed her hands, and waited for her father and mother to come upstairs. They came up by and by and went to bed. The light that shone in through the chink under the door went out. The house was still.
She went over to the window then, threw it wide open, and sat down crouched upon the broad sill. She did not sob now nor wail out. She did not feel like sobbing or wailing. She only wanted to think; she must think, she had need to think. That this neglect of Halcombe Dike's meant something she did not try to conceal from her bitter thoughts. He had not neglected her in all his life before. It was not the habit, either, of this grave young man with the earnest eyes to do or not to do without a meaning. He would put silence and the winter between them. That was what he meant. Sharley, looking out upon the windy dark with straight-lidded eyes, knew that beneath and beyond the silence of the winter lay the silence of a life.
The silence of a life! The wind hushed into a moment's calm while the words turned over in her heart. The branches of a cherry-tree, close under her sight, dropped lifelessly; a homesick bird gave a little, still, mournful chirp in the dark. Sharley gasped.
"It's all because I shook Moppet! That's it. Because I shook Moppet this morning. He used to like me,—yes, he did. He didn't know how cross and ugly I am. No wonder he thought such a cross and ugly thing could never be—could never be—"
She broke off, crimson. "His wife?" She would have said the words without blush or hesitation a week ago. Halcombe Dike had spoken no word of love to her. But she had believed, purely and gravely, in the deeps of her maiden thought, that she was dear to him. Gravely and purely too she had dreamed that this October Sunday would bring some sign to her of their future.
He had been toiling at that business in the city now a long while. Sharley knew nothing about business, but she had fancied that, even though his "prospects" were not good, he must be ready now to think of a home of his own,—at least that he would give her some hope of it to keep through the dreary, white winter. But he had given her nothing to keep through the winter, or through any winter of a wintry life; nothing. The beautiful Sunday was over. He had come, and he had gone. She must brush away the pretty fancy. She must break the timid dream. So that grave, sweet word had died in shame upon her lips. She should not be his wife. She should never be anybody's wife.
The Sunday Night Express shrieked up the valley, and thundered by and away in the dark. Sharley leaned far out into the wind to listen to the dying sound, and wondered what it would seem like to-morrow morning when it carried him away. With its pause one of those sudden hushes fell again upon the wind. The homesick bird fluttered about a little, hunting for its nest.
"Never to be his wife!" moaned Sharley. What did it mean? "Never to be his wife?" She pressed her hands up hard against her two temples, and considered:—
Moppet and the baby, and her mother's headaches; milking the cow, and kneading the bread, and darning the stockings; going to church in old hats,—for what difference was it going to make to anybody now, whether she trimmed them with Scotch plaid or sarcenet cambric?—coming home to talk over revivals with Deacon Snow, or sit down in a proper way, like other old people, in the house with a lamp, and read Somebody's Life and Letters. Never any more moonlight, and watching, and strolling! Never any more hoping, or wishing, or expecting, for Sharley.
She jumped a little off her window-sill; then sat down again. That was it. Moppet, and the baby, and her mother, and kneading, and milking, and darning, for thirty, for forty, for—the dear Lord, who pitied her, only knew how many years.
But Sharley did not incline to think much about the Lord just then. She was very miserable, and very much alone and unhelped. So miserable, so alone and unhelped, that it never occurred to her to drop down right there with her despairing little face on the window-sill and tell Him all about it. O Sharley! did you not think He would understand?
She had made up her mind—decidedly made up her mind—not to go to sleep that night. The unhappy girls in the novels always sit up, you know. Besides, she was too wretched to sleep. Then the morning train went early, at half past five, and she should stay here till it came.
This was very good reasoning, and Sharley certainly was very unhappy,—as unhappy as a little girl of eighteen can well be; and I suppose it would sound a great deal better to say that the cold morning looked in upon her sleepless pain, or that Aurora smiled upon her unrested eyes, or that she kept her bitter watch until the stars grew pale (and a fine chance that would be to describe a sunrise too); but truth compels me to state that she did what some very unhappy people have done before her,—found the window-sill uncomfortable, cramped, neuralgic, and cold,—so undressed and went to bed and to sleep, very much as she would have done if there had been no Halcombe Dike in the world. Sharley was not used to lying awake, and Nature would not be cheated out of her rights in such a round, young, healthful little body.
But that did not make her much the happier when she woke in the cold gray of the dawn to listen for the early train. It was very cold and very gray, not time for the train yet, but she could not bear to lie still and hear the shrill, gay concert of the birds, to watch the day begin, and think how many days must have beginning,—so she crept faintly up and out into the chill. She wandered about for a time in the raw, brightening air. The frost lay crisp upon the short grass; the elder-bushes were festooned with tiny white tassels; the maple-leaves hung fretted with silver; the tangle of apple-trees and spruces was powdered and pearled. She stole into it, as she had stolen into it in the happy sunset-time so long ago—why! was it only day before yesterday?—stole in and laid her cheek up against the shining, wet vines, which melted warm beneath her touch, and shut her eyes. She thought how she would like to shut and hide herself away in a place where she could never see the frescoed frost or brightening day, nor hear the sound of chirping birds, nor any happy thing.
By and by she heard the train coming, and footsteps. He came springing by in his strong, man's way as he had come before. As before, he passed near—how very near!—to the quivering white face crushed up against the vine-leaves, and went his way and knew nothing.
The train panted and raced away, shrieked a little in a doleful, breathless fashion, grew small, grew less, grew dim, died from sight in pallid smoke. The track stood up on its mound of frozen bank, blank and mute, like a corpse from which the soul had fled.
Sharley came into the kitchen at six o'clock. The fire was burning hotly under the boiler. The soiled clothes lay scattered about. Her mother stood over the tubs, red-faced and worried, complaining that Sharley had not come to help her. She turned, when the girl opened the door, to scold her a little. The best of mothers are apt to scold on Monday morning.
Sharley stood still a moment and looked around. She must begin it with a washing-day then, this other life that had come to her. Her heart might break; but the baby's aprons must be boiled—to-day, next week, another week; the years stretched out into one wearisome, endless washing-day. O, the dreadful years! She grew a little blind and dizzy, sat down on a heap of table-cloths, and held up her arms.
"Mother, don't be cross to me this morning,—don'tO mother, mother, mother! I wish there were anybody to help me!"
* * * * *
The battle-fields of life lie in ambush. We trip along on our smiling way and they give no sign. We turn sharp corners where they hide in shadow. No drum-beat sounds alarum. It is the music and the dress-parade to-night, the groaning and the blood to-morrow.
Sharley had been little more than a child, in her unreasoning young joy, when she knotted the barbe at her throat on Saturday night. "I am an old woman now," she said to herself on Monday morning. Not that her saying so proved anything,—except, indeed, that it was her first trouble, and that she was very young to have a trouble. Yet, since she had the notion, she might as well, to all intents and purposes, have shrivelled into the caps and spectacles of a centenarian. "Imaginary griefsarereal." She took, indeed, a grim sort of pleasure in thinking that her youth had fled away, and forever, in thirty-six hours.
However that might be, that October morning ushered Sharley upon battle-ground; nor was the struggle the less severe that, she was so young and so unused to struggling.
I have to tell of nothing new or tragic in the child's days; only of the old, slow, foolish pain that gnaws at the roots of things. Something was the matter with the sunsets and the dawns. Moonrise was an agony. The brown and golden grass had turned dull and dead. She would go away up garret and sit with her fingers in her ears, that she might not hear the frogs chanting in the swamp at twilight.
One night she ran away from her father and mother. It chanced to be an anniversary of their wedding-day; they had kissed each other after tea and talked of old times and blushed a little, their married eyes occupied and content with one another; she felt with a sudden, dreary bitterness that she should not be missed, and so ran out into the field and sat down there on her stone in the dark. She rather hoped that they would wonder where she was before bedtime. It would be a bit of comfort. She was so cold and comfortless. But nobody thought of her; and when she came weakly up the yard at ten o'clock, the door was locked.
For a week she went about her work like a sleepwalker. Her future was settled. Life was over. Why make ado? The suns would set and the moons would rise: let them; there would always be suns to set and moons to rise. There were dinners to get and stockings to mend; there would always be dinners to get and stockings to mend. She was put into the world for the sake of dinners and stockings, apparently. Very well; she was growing used to it; one could grow used to it. She put away the barbe and the pink muslin, locked her ribbon-box into the lower drawer, gave up crimping her hair, and wore the chocolate calico all day. She went to the Thursday-evening conference, discussed the revival with Deacon Snow, and locked herself into her room one night to put the lamp on the bureau before the glass and shake her soft hair down about her colorless, inexpectant face, to see if it were not turning gray. She was disappointed to find it as brown and bright as ever.
But Sharley was very young, and the sweet, persistent hopes of youth were strong in her. They woke up presently with a sting like the sting of a frost-bite.
"O, to think of being an old maid, in a little black silk apron, and having Halcombe Dike's wedding-cards laid upon a shelf!"
She was holding the baby when this "came all over her," and she let him drop into the coal-hod, and sat down to cry.
What had she done that life should shut down before her in such cruel bareness? Was she not young, very young to be unhappy? She began to fight a little with herself and Providence in savage mood; favored the crimped hair and Scotch plaids again, tried a nutting-party and a sewing-circle, as well as a little flirtation with Jim Snow. This lasted for another week. At the end of that time she went and sat down alone one noon on a pile of kindlings in the wood-house, and thought it over.
"Why, I can't!" her eyes widening with slow terror. "Happinesswon'tcome. Ican'tmake it. I can't ever make it. And O, I'm just at the beginning of everything!"
Somebody called her just then to peel the potatoes for dinner. She thought—she thought often in those days—of that fancy of hers about calico-living. Was not that all that was left for her? Little dreary, figures, all just alike, like the chocolate morning-dress? O, the rose-bud and shimmer that might have been waiting somewhere! And O, the rose-bud and shimmer that were forever gone!
The frosted golds of autumn melted into a clear, sharp, silvered winter, carrying Sharley with them, round on her old routine. It never grew any the easier or softer. The girl's little rebellious feet trod it bitterly. She hated the darning and the sweeping and the baking and the dusting. She hated the sound of the baby's worried cry. She was tired of her mother's illnesses, tired of Moppet's mischief, tired of Methuselah's solemnity. She used to come in sometimes from her walk to the office, on a cold, moonlight evening, and stand looking in at them all through the "keeping-room" window,—her father prosing over the state of the flour-market, her mother on the lounge, the children waiting for her to put them to bed; Methuselah poring over his arithmetic in his little-old-mannish way; Moppet tying the baby and the kitten together,—stand looking till the hot, shamed blood shot to her forehead, for thought of how she was wearied of the sight.
"I can't think what's got into Sharley," complained her mother; "she has been as cross as a bear this good while. If she were eight years old, instead of eighteen, I should give her a good whipping and send her to bed!"
Poor Sharley nursed her trouble and her crossness together, in her aggrieved, girlish way, till the light went out of her wistful eyes, and little sharp bones began to show at her wrists. She used to turn them about and pity them. They were once so round and winsome!
Now it was probably a fact that, as for the matter of hard work, Sharley's life was a sinecure compared to what it would be as the wife of Halcombe Dike. Double your toil into itself, and triple it by the measure of responsibility, and there you have your married life, young girls,—beautiful, dim Eden that you have made of it! But there was never an Eden without its serpent, I fancy. Besides, Sharley, like the rest of them, had not thought as far as that.