Rebecca took off her sun-bonnet and hung it on a peg; she got a box from the pantry, and emptied the sugar into in, still keeping her face turned away as best she could from her mother's eyes.
Deborah looked approvingly at the sugar. “It's nigher three pounds than anything else. I guess you were kind of favored, Rebecca. Did William wait on you?”
“Yes, he did.”
“I guess you were kind of favored,” Deborah repeated, and a half-smile came over her grim face.
Rebecca said nothing. She got some butter, and fell to work with a wooden spoon, creaming the butter and sugar in a brown wooden bowl with swift turns of her strong white wrist. Ephraim watched her sharply; he sat by a window stoning raisins. His mother had forbidden him to eat any, as she thought them injurious to him; but he carefully calculated his chances, and deposited many in his mouth when she watched Barney; but his jaws were always gravely set when she turned his way.
Ephraim's face had a curious bluish cast, as if his blood were the color of the juice of a grape. His chest heaved shortly and heavily. The village doctor had told is mother that he had heart-disease, which might prove fatal, although there was a chance of his outgrowing it, and Deborah had set her face against that.
Ephraim's face, in spite of its sickly hue, had a perfect healthiness and naturalness of expression, which insensibly gave confidence to his friends, although it aroused their irritation. A spirit of boyish rebellion and importance looked out of Ephraim's black eyes; his mouth was demure with mischief, his gawky figure perpetually uneasy and twisting, as if to find entrance into small forbidden places. There was something in Ephraim's face, when she looked suddenly at him, which continually led his mother to infer that he had been transgressing. “What have you been doin', Ephraim?” she would call out, sharply, many a time, with no just grounds for suspicion, and be utterly routed by Ephraim's innocent, wondering grin in response.
The boy was set about with restrictions which made his life miserable, but the labor of picking over plums for a cake was quite to his taste. He dearly loved plums, although they were especially prohibited. He rolled one quietly under his tongue, and watched Rebecca with sharp eyes. She could scarcely keep her face turned away from him and her mother too.
“Say, mother, Rebecca's been cryin'!” Ephraim announced, suddenly.
Deborah turned and looked at Rebecca's face bending lower over the wooden bowl; her black lashes rested on red circles, and her lips were swollen.
“I'd like to know what you've been cryin' about,” said Deborah. It was odd that she did not think that Rebecca's grief might be due to the worry over Barney; but she did not for a minute. She directly attributed it to some personal and strictly selfish consideration which should arouse her animosity.
“Nothing,” said Rebecca, with sulky misery.
“Yes, you've been cryin' about something, too. I want to know what 'tis.”
“Nothing. I wish you wouldn't, mother.”
“Did you see William Berry over to the store?”
“I told you I did once.”
“Well, you needn't bite my head off. Did he say anything to you?”
“He weighed out the sugar. I know one thing: I'll never set my foot inside that store again as long as I live!”
“I'd like to know what you mean, Rebecca Thayer.”
“I ain't going to have folks think I'm running after William Berry.”
“I'd like to know who thinks you are. If it's Hannah Berry, she needn't talk, after the way her daughter has chased over here. Mebbe it's all you Rose Berry has been to see, but I've had my doubts. What did Hannah Berry say to you?”
“She didn't say anything. I haven't seen her.”
“What was it, then?”
But Rebecca would not tell her mother what the trouble had been; she could not bring herself to reveal how William had been urged to walk home with her and how coldly he had refused, and finally Deborah, in spite of baffled interest, turned upon her. “Well, I hope you didn't do anything unbecoming,” said she.
“Mother, you know better.”
“Well, I hope you didn't.”
“Mother, I won't stand being talked to so!”
“I rather think I shall talk to you all I think I ought to for your own good,” said Deborah, with fierce persistency. “I ain't goin' to have any daughter of mine doin' anything bold and forward, if I know it.”
Rebecca was weeping quite openly now. “Mother, you know you sent me down to the store yourself; there wasn't anybody else to go,” she sobbed out.
“Your goin' to the store wa'n't anything. I guess you can go to the store to trade off some eggs for sugar when I'm makin' cake without William Berry thinkin' you're runnin' after him, or Hannah Berry thinkin' so either. But there wa'n't any need of your makin' any special talk with him, or lookin' as if you was tickled to death to see him.”
“I didn't. I wouldn't go across the room to see William Berry. You haven't any right to say such things to me, mother.”
“I guess I've got a right to talk to my own daughter. I should think things had come to a pretty pass if I can't speak when I see you doin' out of the way. I know one thing, you won't go to that store again. I'll go myself next time. Have you got that butter an' sugar mixed up?”
“I hope you will go, I'm sure. I don't want to,” returned Rebecca. She had stopped crying, but her face was burning; she hit the spoon with dull thuds against the wooden bowl.
“Don't you be saucy. That's done enough; give it here.”
Deborah finished the cake with a master hand. When she measured the raisins which Ephraim had stoned she cast a sharp glance at him, but he was ready for it with beseechingly upturned sickly face. “Can't I have just one raisin, mother?” he pleaded.
“Yes, you may, if you 'ain't eat any while you was pickin' of 'em over,” she answered. And he reached over a thumb and finger and selected a large fat plum, which he ate with ostentatious relish. Ephraim's stomach oppressed him, his breath came harder, but he had a sense of triumph in his soul. This depriving him of the little creature comforts which he loved, and of the natural enjoyments of boyhood, aroused in him a blind spirit of revolution which he felt virtuous in exercising. Ephraim was absolutely conscienceless with respect to all his stolen pleasures.
Deborah had a cooking-stove. She had a progressive spirit, and when stoves were first introduced had promptly done away with the brick oven, except on occasions when much baking-room was needed. After her new stove was set up in her back kitchen, she often alluded to Hannah Berry's conservative principles with scorn. Hannah's sister, Mrs. Barnard, had told her how a stove could be set up in the tavern any minute; but Hannah despised new notions. “Hannah won't have one, nohow,” said Mrs. Barnard. “I dunno but I would, if Cephas could afford it, and wa'n't set against it. It seems to me it might save a sight of work.”
“Some folks are rooted so deep in old notions that they can't see their own ideas over them,” declared Deborah. Often when she cooked in her new stove she inveighed against Hannah Berry's foolishness.
“If Hannah Berry wants to heat up a whole brick oven and work the whole forenoon to bake a loaf of cake, she can,” said she, as she put the pan of cake in the oven. “Now, you watch this, Rebecca Thayer, and don't you let it burn, and you get the potatoes ready for dinner.”
“Where are you going, mother?” asked Ephraim.
“I'm just goin' to step out a little way.”
“Can't I go too?”
“No; you set still. You ain't fit to walk this mornin'. You know what the doctor told you.”
“It won't hurt me any,” whined Ephraim. There were times when the spirit of rebellion in him made illness and even his final demise flash before his eyes like sweet overhanging fruit, since they were so strenuously forbidden.
“You set still,” repeated his mother. She tied on her own green sun-bonnet, stiffened with pasteboard, and went with it rattling against her ears across the fields to the one where her son was ploughing. The grass was not wet, but she held her dress up high, showing her thick shoes and her blue yarn stockings, and took long strides. Barney was guiding the plough past her when she came up.
“You stop a minute,” she said, authoritatively. “I want to speak to you.”
“Whoa!” said Barney, and pulled up the horse. “Well, what is it?” he said, gruffly, with his eyes upon the plough.
“You go this minute and set the men to work on your house again. You leave the horse here—I'll watch him—and go and tell Sam Plummer to come and get the other men.”
“G'lang!” said Barney, and the horse pulled the plough forward with a jerk.
Mrs. Thayer seized Barney's arm. “You stop!” said she. “Whoa, whoa! Now you look here, Barnabas Thayer. I don't know what you did to make Cephas Barnard order you out of the house, but I know it was something. I ain't goin' to believe it was all about the election. There was something back of that. I ain't goin' to shield you because you're my son. I know jest how set you can be in your own ways, and how you can hang on to your temper. I've known you ever since you was a baby; you can't teach me anything new about yourself. I don't know what you did to make Cephas mad, but I know what you've got to do now. You go and set the men to work on that house again, and then you go over to Cephas Barnard's, and you tell him you're sorry for what you've done. I don't care anything about Cephas Barnard, and if I'd had my way in the first place I wouldn't have had anything to do with him or his folks either; but now you've got to do what's right if you've gone as far as this, and Charlotte's all ready to be married. You go right along, Barnabas Thayer!”
Barnabas stood immovable, his face set past his mother, as irresponsively unyielding as a rock.
“Be you goin'?”
Barnabas did not reply. His mother moved, and brought her eyes on a range with his, and the two faces confronted each other in silence, while it was as if two wills clashed swords in advance of them.
Then Mrs. Thayer moved away. “I ain't never goin' to say anything more to you about it,” she said; “but there's one thing—you needn't come home to dinner. You sha'n't ever sit down to a meal in your father's and mother's house whilst this goes on.”
“G'lang!” said Barnabas. The horse started, and he bent to the plough. His mother stepped homeward over the plough-ridges with stern unyielding steps, as if they were her enemies slain in battle.
Just as she reached her own yard her husband drove in on a rattling farm cart. She beckoned to him, and he pulled the horse up short.
“I've told him he needn't come home to dinner,” she said, standing close to the wheel.
Caleb looked down at her with a scared expression. “Well, I s'pose you know what's best, Deborah,” he said.
“If he can't do what's right he's got to suffer for it,” returned Deborah.
She went into the house, and Caleb drove clanking into the barn.
Before dinner the old man stole off across lots, keeping well out of sight of the kitchen windows lest his wife should see him, and pleaded with Barnabas, but all in vain. The young man was more outspoken with his father, but he was just as firm.
“Your mother's terrible set about it, Barney. You'd better go over to Charlotte's and make up.”
“I can't; it's all over,” Barney said, in reply; and Caleb at length plodded soberly and clumsily home.
After dinner he went out behind the barn, and Rebecca, going to feed the hens, found him sitting under the wild-cherry tree, fairly sobbing in his old red handkerchief.
She went near him, and stood looking at him with restrained sympathy.
“Don't feel bad, father,” she said, finally. “Barney'll get over it, and come to supper.”
“No, he won't,” groaned the old man—“no, he won't. He's jest like your mother.”
The weeks went on, and still Barnabas had not yielded. The story of his quarrel with Cephas Barnard and his broken engagement with Charlotte had become an old one in Pembroke, but it had not yet lost its interest. A genuine excitement was so rare in the little peaceful village that it had to be made to last, and rolled charily under the tongue like a sweet morsel. However, there seemed to be no lack now, for the one had set others in motion: everybody knew how Barnabas Thayer no longer lived at home, and did not sit in his father's pew in church, but in the gallery, and how Richard Alger had stopped going to see Sylvia Crane.
There was not much walking in the village, except to and from church on a Sabbath day; but now on pleasant Sabbath evenings an occasional couple, or an inquisitive old man with eyes sharp under white brows, and chin set ahead like a pointer's, strolled past Sylvia's house and the Thayer house, Barney's new one and Cephas Barnard's.
They looked sharply and furtively to see if Sylvia had a light in her best room, and if Richard Alger's head was visible through the window, if Barney Thayer had gone home and yielded to his mother's commands, if any more work had been done on the new house, and if he perchance had gone a-courting Charlotte again.
But they never saw Richard Alger's face in poor Sylvia's best room, although her candle was always lit, they never saw Barney at his old home, the new house advanced not a step beyond its incompleteness, and Barney never was seen at Charlotte Barnard's on a Sabbath night. Once, indeed, there was a rumor to that effect. A man's smooth dark head was visible at one of the front-room windows opposite Charlotte's fair one, and everybody took it for Barney's.
The next morning Barney's mother came to the door of the new house. “I want to know if it's true that you went over there last night,” she said; her voice was harsh, but her mouth was yielding.
“No, I didn't,” said Barney, shortly, and Deborah went away with a harsh exclamation. Before long she knew and everybody else knew that the man who had been seen at Charlotte's window was not Barney, but Thomas Payne.
Presently Ephraim came slowly across to the garden-patch where Barney was planting. He was breathing heavily, and grinning. When he reached Barney he stood still watching him, and the grin deepened. “Say, Barney,” he panted at length.
“Well, what is it?”
“You've lost your girl; did you know it, Barney?”
Barney muttered something unintelligible; it sounded like the growl of a dog, but Ephraim was not intimidated. He chuckled with delight and spoke again. “Say, Barney, Thomas Payne's got your girl; did you know it, Barney?”
Barney turned threateningly, but he was helpless before his brother's sickly face, and Ephraim knew it. That purple hue and that panting breath had gained an armistice for him on many a battle-field, and he had a certain triumph in it. It was power of a lugubrious sort, certainly, but still it was power, and so to be enjoyed.
“Thomas Payne's got your girl,” he repeated; “he was over there a-courtin' of her last night; a-settin' up along of her.”
Barney took a step forward, and Ephraim fell back a little, still grinning imperturbably. “You mind your own business,” Barney said, between his teeth; and right upon his words followed Ephraim's hoarse chuckle and his “Thomas Payne's got your girl.”
Barney turned about and went on with his planting. Ephraim, standing a little aloof, somewhat warily since his brother's threatening advance, kept repeating his one remark, as mocking as the snarl of a mosquito. “Thomas Payne's got your girl, Barney. Say, did you know it? Thomas Payne's got your girl.”
Finally Ephraim stepped close to Barney and shouted it into his ear: “Say, Barney, Barney Thayer, be you deaf? Thomas Payne has got—your—girl!”But Barney planted on; his nerves were quivering, the impetus to strike out was so strong in his arms that it seemed as if it must by sheer mental force affect his teasing brother, but he made no sign, and said not another word.
Ephraim, worsted at length by silence, beat a gradual retreat. Half-way across the field his panting voice called back, “Barney, Thomas Payne has got your girl,” and ended in a choking giggle. Barney planted, and made no response; but when Ephraim was well out of sight, he flung down his hoe with a groaning sigh, and went stumbling across the soft loam of the garden-patch into a little woody thicket beside it. He penetrated deeply between the trees and underbrush, and at last flung himself down on his face among the soft young flowers and weeds. “Oh, Charlotte!” he groaned out. “Oh, Charlotte, Charlotte!” Barney began sobbing and crying like a child as he lay there; he moved his arms convulsively, and tore up handfuls of young grass and leaves, and flung them away in the unconscious gesturing of grief. “Oh, I can't, I can't!” he groaned. “I—can't—Charlotte! I can't—let any other man have you! No other man shall have you!” he cried out, fiercely, and flung up his head; “you are mine, mine! I'll kill any other man that touches you!” Barney got up, and his face was flaming; he started off with a great stride, and then he stopped short and flung an arm around the slender trunk of a white-birch tree, and pulled it against him and leaned against it as if it were Charlotte, and laid his cheek on the cool white bark and sobbed again like a girl. “Oh, Charlotte, Charlotte!” he moaned, and his voice was drowned out by the manifold rustling of the young birch leaves, as a human grief is overborne and carried out of sight by the soft, resistless progress of nature.
Barney, although his faith in Charlotte had been as strong as any man's should be in his promised wife, had now no doubt but this other man had met with favor in her eyes. But he had no blame for her, nor even any surprise at her want of constancy. He blamed the Lord, for Charlotte as well as for himself. “If this hadn't happened she never would have looked at any one else,” he thought, and his thought had the force of a blow against fate.
This Thomas Payne was the best match in the village; he was the squire's son, good-looking, and college-educated. Barney had always known that he fancied Charlotte, and had felt a certain triumph that he had won her in the face of it. “You might have somebody that's a good deal better off if you didn't have me,” he said to her once, and they both knew whom he meant. “I don't want anybody else,” Charlotte had replied, with her shy stateliness. Now Barney thought that she had changed her mind; and why should she not? A girl ought to marry if she could; he could not marry her himself, and should not expect her to remain single all her life for his sake. Of course Charlotte wanted to be married, like other women. This probable desire of Charlotte's for love and marriage in itself, apart from him, thrilled his male fancy with a certain holy awe and respect, from his love for her and utter ignorance of the attitude of womankind. Then, too, he reflected that Thomas Payne would probably make her a good husband. “He can buy her everything she wants,” he thought, with a curious mixture of gratulation for her and agony on his own account. He thought of the little bonnets he had meant to buy for her himself, and these details pierced his heart like needles. He sobbed, and the birch-tree quivered in a wind of human grief. He saw Charlotte going to church in her bridal bonnet with Thomas Payne more plainly than he could ever see her in life, for a torturing imagination reflects life like a magnifying-glass, and makes it clearer and larger than reality. He saw Charlotte with Thomas Payne, blushing all over her proud, delicate face when he looked at her; he saw her with Thomas Payne's children. “O God!” he gasped, and he threw himself down on the ground again, and lay there, face downward, motionless as if fate had indeed seized him and shaken the life out of him and left him there for dead; but it was his own will which was his fate.
“Barney,” his father called, somewhere out in the field. “Barney, where be you?”
“I'm coming,” Barney called back, in a surly voice, and he pulled himself up and pushed his way out of the thicket to the ploughed field where his father stood.
“Oh, there you be!” said Caleb. Barney grunted something inarticulate, and took up his hoe again. Caleb stood watching him, his eyes irresolute under anxiously frowning brows. “Barney,” he said, at length.
“Well, what do you want?”
“I've jest heard—” the old man began; then he stopped with a jump.
“I don't want to hear what you've heard. Keep it to yourself if you've heard anything!” Barney shouted.
“I didn't know as you knew,” Caleb stammered, apologetically. “I didn't know as you'd heard, Barney.”
Caleb went to the edge of the field, and sat down on a great stone under a wild-cherry tree. He was not feeling very well; his head was dizzy, and his wife had given him a bowl of thoroughwort and ordered him not to work.
Caleb pushed his hat back and passed his hand across his forehead. It was hot, and his face was flushed. He watched his son following up his work with dogged energy as if it were an enemy, and his mind seemed to turn stupid in the face of speculation, like a boy's over a problem in arithmetic.
There was no human being so strange and mysterious, such an unknown quantity, to Caleb Thayer as his own son. He had not one trait of character in common with him—at least, not one so translated into his own vernacular that he could comprehend it. It was to Caleb as if he looked in a glass expecting to see his own face, and saw therein the face of a stranger.
The wind was quite cool, and blew full on Caleb as he sat there. Barney kept glancing at him. At length he spoke. “You'll get cold if you sit there in that wind, father,” he sang out, and there was a rude kindliness in his tone.
Caleb jumped up with alacrity. “I dunno but I shall. I guess you're right. I wa'n't goin' to set here but a minute,” he answered, eagerly. Then he went over to Barney again, and stood near watching him. Barney's hoe clinked on a stone, and he stooped and picked it out of the loam, and threw it away. “There's a good many stone in this field,” said the old man.
“There's some.”
“It was a heap of work clearin' of it in the first place. You wa'n't more'n two year old when I cleared it. My brother Simeon helped me. It was five year before he got the fever an' died.” Caleb looked at his son with anxious pleading which was out of proportion to his words, and seemed to apply to something behind them in his own mind.
Barney worked on silently.
“I don't believe but what—if you was—to go over there—you could get her back again now, away from that Payne fellar,” Caleb blurted out, suddenly; then he shrank back as if from an anticipated blow.
Barney threw a hoeful of earth high in air and faced his father.
“Once for all, father,” said he, “I don't want to hear another word about this.”
“I shouldn't have said nothin', Barney, but I kinder thought—”
“I don't care what you thought. Keep your thoughts to yourself.”
“I know she allers thought a good deal of you, an'—”
“I don't want another word out of your mouth about it, father.”
“Well, I ain't goin' to say nothin' about it if you don't want me to, Barney; but you know how mother feels, an'— Well, I ain't goin' to say no more.”
Caleb passed his hand across his forehead, and set off across the field. Just before he was out of hearing, Barney hailed him.
“Do you feel better'n you did, father?” said he.
“What say, Barney?”
“Do you feel better'n you did this morning?”
“Yes, I feel some better, Barney—some considerable better.” Caleb started to go back to Barney; then he paused and stood irresolute, smiling towards him. “I feel considerable better,” he called again; “my head ain't nigh so dizzy as 'twas.”
“You'd better go home, father, and lay down, and see if you can't get a nap,” called Barney.
“Yes, I guess I will; I guess 'twould be a good plan,” returned the old man, in a pleased voice. And he went on, clambered clumsily over a stone-wall, disappeared behind some trees, reappeared in the open, then disappeared finally over the slope of the hilly field.
It was just five o'clock in the afternoon. Presently a woman came hurrying across the field, with some needle-work gathered up in her arms. She had been spending the afternoon at a neighbor's with her sewing, and was now hastening home to get supper for her husband. She was a pretty woman, and she had not been married long. She nodded to Barney as she hurried past him, holding up her gay-flowered calico skirt tidily. Her smooth fair hair shone like satin in the sun; she wore a little blue kerchief tied over her head, and it slipped back as she ran against the wind. She did not speak to Barney nor smile; he thought her handsome face looked severely at him. She had always known him, although she had not been one of his mates; she was somewhat older.
Barney felt a pang of misery as this fair, severe, and happy face passed him by. He wondered if she had been up to Charlotte's, and if Charlotte or her mother had been talking to her, and if she knew about Thomas Payne. He watched her out of sight in a swirl of gay skirts, her blue and golden head bobbing with her dancing steps; then he glanced over his shoulder at his poor new house, with its fireless chimneys. If all had gone well, he and Charlotte would have been married by this time, and she would have been bestirring herself to get supper for him—perhaps running home from a neighbor's with her sewing as this other woman was doing. All the sweet domestic comfort which he had missed seemed suddenly to toss above his eyes like the one desired fruit of his whole life; its wonderful unknown flavor tantalized his soul. All at once he thought how Charlotte would prepare supper for another man, and the thought seemed to tear his heart like a panther. “He sha'n't have her!” he cried out, quite loudly and fiercely. His own voice seemed to quiet him, and he fell to work again with his mouth set hard.
In half an hour he quitted work, and went up to his house with his hoe over his shoulder like a bayonet. The house was just as the workmen had left it on the night before his quarrel with Cephas Barnard. He had himself fitted some glass into the windows of the kitchen and bedroom, and boarded up the others—that was all. He had purchased a few simple bits of furniture, and set up his miserable bachelor house-keeping. Barney was no cook, and he could purchase no cooked food in Pembroke. He had subsisted mostly upon milk and eggs and a poor and lumpy quality of corn-meal mush, which he had made shift to stir up after many futile efforts.
The first thing which he saw on entering the room to-night was a generous square of light Indian cake on the table. It was not in a plate, the edges were bent and crumbling, and the whole square looked somewhat flattened. Barney knew at once that his father had saved it from his own supper, had slipped it slyly into his pocket, and stolen across the field with it. His mother had not given him a mouthful since she had forbidden him to come home to dinner, and his sister had not dared.
Barney sat down and ate the Indian cake, a solitary householder at his solitary table, around which there would never be any faces but those of his dead dreams. Afterwards he pulled a chair up to an open window, and sat there, resting his elbows on the sill, staring out vacantly. The sun set, and the dusk deepened; the air was loud with birds; there were shouts of children in the distance; gradually these died away, and the stars came out. The wind was damp and sweet; over in the field pale shapes of mist wavered and changed like phantoms. A woman came running noiselessly into the yard, and pressed against the door panting, and knocked. Barney saw the swirl of light skirts around the corner; then the knock came.
[Illustration: “Barney sat staring at vacancy”]
He got up, trembling, and opened the door, and stood there looking at the woman, who held her hooded head down.
“It's me, Barney,” said Charlotte's voice.
“Come in,” said Barney, and he moved aside.
But Charlotte stood still. “I can say what I want to here,” she whispered, panting. “Barney.”
“Well, what is it, Charlotte?”
“Barney.”
Barney waited.
“I've come over here to-night, Barney, to see you,” said Charlotte, with solemn pauses between her words. “I don't know as I ought to; I don't know but I ought to have more pride. I thought at first I never—could—but afterwards I thought it was my duty. Barney, are you going to let—anything like this—come between us—forever?”
“There's no use talking, Charlotte.”
Charlotte's hooded figure stood before him stiff and straight. There was resolution in her carriage, and her pleading tone was grave and solemn.
“Barney,” she said again; and Barney waited, his pale face standing aloof in the dark.
“Barney, do you think it is right to let anything like this come between you and me, when we were almost husband and wife?”
“It's no use talking, Charlotte.”
“Do you think this is right, Barney?”
Barney was silent.
“If you can't answer me I will go home,” said Charlotte, and she turned, but Barney caught her in his arms. He held her close, breathing in great pants. He pulled her hood back with trembling strength, and kissed her over and over, roughly.
“Charlotte,” he half sobbed.
Charlotte's voice, full of a great womanly indignation, sounded in his ear. “Barney, you let me go,” she said, and Barney obeyed.
“When I came here alone this way I trusted you to treat me like a gentleman,” said she. She pulled her hood over her face again and turned to go. “I shall never speak to you about this again,” said she. “You have chosen your own way, and you know best whether it's right, or you're happy in it.”
“I hope you'll be happy, Charlotte,” Barney said, with a great sigh.
“That doesn't make any difference to you,” said Charlotte, coldly.
“Yes, it does; it does, Charlotte! When I heard about Thomas Payne, I felt as if—if it would make you happy. I—”
“What about Thomas Payne?” asked Charlotte, sharply.
“I heard—how he was coming to see you—”
“Do you mean that you want me to marry Thomas Payne, Barney Thayer?”
“I want you to be happy, Charlotte.”
“Do you want me to marry Thomas Payne?”
Barney was silent.
“Answer me,” cried Charlotte.
“Yes, I do,” replied Barney, firmly, “if it would make you happy.”
“You want me to marry Thomas Payne?” repeated Charlotte. “You want me to be his wife instead of yours, and go to live with him instead of you? You want me to live with another man?”
“It ain't right for you not to get married,” Barney said, and his voice was hoarse and strange.
“You want me to get married to another man? Do you know what it means?”
Barney gave a groan that was half a cry.
“Do you?”
“Oh, Charlotte!” Barney groaned, as if imploring her for pity.
“You want me to marry Thomas Payne, and live with him—”
“He'd—make you a good husband. He's—Charlotte—I can't. You've got to be happy. It isn't right—I can't—”
“Well,” said Charlotte, “I will marry him. Good-night, Barney Thayer.” She went swiftly out of the yard.
“Charlotte!” Barney called after her, as if against his will; but she never turned her head.
On the north side of the old tavern was a great cherry orchard. In years back it had been a source of considerable revenue to Silas Berry, but for some seasons his returns from it had been very small. The cherries had rotted on the branches, or the robins had eaten them, for Silas would not give them away. Rose and her mother would smuggle a few small baskets of cherries to Sylvia Crane and Mrs. Barnard, but Silas's displeasure, had he found them out, would have been great. “I ain't a-goin' to give them cherries away to nobody,” he would proclaim. “If folks don't want 'em enough to pay for 'em they can go without.”
Many a great cherry picnic had been held in Silas Berry's orchard. Parties had come in great rattling wagons from all the towns about, and picked cherries and ate their fill at a most overreaching and exorbitant price.
There were no cherries like those in Silas Berry's orchard in all the country roundabout. There was no competition, and for many years he had had it all his own way. The young people's appetite for cherries and their zeal for pleasure had overcome their indignation at his usury. But at last Silas's greed got the better of his financial shrewdness; he increased his price for cherries every season, and the year after the tavern closed it became so preposterous that there was a rebellion. It was headed by Thomas Payne, who, as the squire's son and the richest and most freehanded young man in town, could incur no suspicion of parsimony. Going one night to the old tavern to make terms with Silas for the use of his cherry orchard, for a party which included some of his college friends from Boston and his fine young-lady cousin from New York, and hearing the preposterous sum which Silas stated as final, he had turned on his heel with a strong word under his breath. “You can eat your cherries yourself and be damned,” said Thomas Payne, and was out of the yard with the gay swagger which he had learned along with his Greek and Latin at college. The next day Silas saw the party in Squire Payne's big wagon, with Thomas driving, and the cousin's pink cheeks and white plumed hat conspicuous in the midst, pass merrily on their way to a cherryless picnic at a neighboring pond, and the young college men shouted out a doggerel couplet which the wit of the party had made and set to a rough tune.
“Who lives here?” the basses demanded in grim melody, and the tenors responded, “Old Silas Berry, who charges sixpence for a cherry.”
Silas heard the mocking refrain repeated over and over between shouts of laughter long after they were out of sight.
Rose, who had not been bidden to the picnic, heard it and wept as she peered around her curtain at the gay party. William, who had also not been bidden, stormed at his father, and his mother joined him.
“You're jest a-puttin' your own eyes out, Silas Berry,” said she; “you hadn't no business to ask such a price for them cherries; it's more than they are worth; folks won't stand it. You asked too much for 'em last year.”
“I know what I'm about,” returned Silas, sitting in his arm-chair at the window, with dogged chin on his breast.
“You wait an' see,” said Hannah. “You've jest put your own eyes out.”
And after-events proved that Hannah was right. Silas Berry's cherry orchard was subjected to a species of ostracism in the village. There were no more picnics held there, people would buy none of his cherries, and he lost all the little income which he had derived from them. Hannah often twitted him with it. “You can see now that what I told you was true,” said she; “you put your own eyes out.” Silas would say nothing in reply; he would simply make an animal sound of defiance like a grunt in his throat, and frown. If Hannah kept on, he would stump heavily out of the room, and swing the door back with a bang.
This season Hannah had taunted her husband more than usual with his ill-judged parsimony in the matter of the cherries. The trees were quite loaded with the small green fruit, and there promised to be a very large crop. One day Silas turned on her. “You wait,” said he; “mebbe I know what I'm about, more'n you think I do.”
Hannah scowled with sharp interrogation at her husband's shrewdly leering face. “What be you agoin' to do?” she demanded. But she got no more out of him.
One morning about two weeks before the cherries were ripe Silas went halting in a casual way across the south yard towards his daughter Rose, who was spreading out some linen to bleach. He picked up a few stray sticks on the way, ostentatiously, as if that were his errand.
Rose was spreading out the lengths of linen in a wide sunny space just outside the shade of the cherry-trees. Her father paused, tilted his head back, and eyed the trees with a look of innocent reflection. Rose glanced at him, then she went on with her work.
“Guess there's goin' to be considerable many cherries this year,” remarked her father, in an affable and confidential tone.
“I guess so,” replied Rose, shortly, and she flapped out an end of the wet linen. The cherries were a sore subject with her.
“I guess there's goin' to be more than common,” said Silas, still gazing up at the green boughs full of green fruit clusters.
Rose made no reply; she was down on her knees in the grass stretching the linen straight.
“I've been thinkin',” her father continued, slowly, “that—mebbe you'd like to have a little—party, an' ask some of the young folks, an' eat some of 'em when they get ripe. You could have four trees to pick off of.”
“I should think we'd had enough of cherry parties,” Rose cried out, bitterly.
“I didn't say nothin' about havin' 'em pay anything,” said her father.
Rose straightened herself and looked at him incredulously. “Do you mean it, father?” said she.
“'Ain't I jest said you might, if you wanted to?”
“Do you mean to have them come here and not pay, father?”
“There ain't no use tryin' to sell any of 'em,” replied Silas. “You can talk it over with your mother, an' do jest as you're a mind to about it, that's all. If you want to have a few of the young folks over here when them cherries are ripe, you can have four of them trees to pick off of. I ain't got no more to say about it.”
Silas turned in a peremptory and conclusive manner. Rose fairly gasped as she watched his stiff one-sided progress across the yard. The vague horror of the unusual stole over her. A new phase of her father's character stood between her and all her old memories like a supernatural presence. She left the rest of the linen in the basket and sought her mother in the house. “Mother!” she called out, in a cautious voice, as soon as she entered the kitchen. Mrs. Berry's face looked inquiringly out of the pantry, and Rose motioned her back, went in herself, and shut the door.
“What be you a-shuttin' the door for?” asked her mother, wonderingly.
“I don't know what has come over father.”
“What do you mean, Rose Berry? He 'ain't had another shock?”
“I'm dreadful afraid he's going to! I'm dreadful afraid something's going to happen to him!”
“I'd like to know what you mean?” Mrs. Berry was quite pale.
“Father says I can have a cherry party, and they needn't pay anything.”
Her mother stared at her. “He didn't!”
“Yes, he did.”
They looked in each other's eyes, with silent renewals of doubt and affirmation. Finally Mrs. Berry laughed. “H'm! Don't you see what your father's up to?” she said.
“No, I don't. I'm scared.”
“You needn't be. You ain't very cute. He's an old head. He thinks if he has this cherry party for nothin' folks will overlook that other affair, an' next year they'll buy the cherries again. Mebbe he thinks they'll buy the other trees this year, after the party. How many trees did he say you could have?”
“Four. Maybe that is it.”
“Of course 'tis. Your father's an old head. Well, you'd better ask 'em. They won't see through it, and it'll make things pleasanter. I've felt bad enough about it. I guess Mis' Thayer won't look down on us quite so much if we ask a party here and let 'em eat cherries for nothin'. It's more'n she'd do, I'll warrant.”
“Maybe they won't any of them come,” said Rose.
“H'm! Don't you worry about that. They'll come fast enough. I never see any trouble yet about folks comin' to get anything good that they didn't have to pay for.”
Rose and her mother calculated how many to invite to the party. They decided to include all the available young people in Pembroke.
“We might jest as well while we're about it,” said Hannah, judiciously. “There are cherries enough, and the Lord only knows when your father 'll have another freak like this. I guess it's like an eclipse of the sun, an' won't come again very soon.”
Within a day or two all the young people had been bidden to the cherry party, and, as Mrs. Berry had foretold, accepted. Their indignation was not proof against the prospect of pleasure; and, moreover, they all liked Rose and William, and would not have refused on their account.
The week before the party, when the cherries were beginning to turn red, and the robins had found them out, was an arduous one to little Ezra Ray, a young brother of Tommy Ray, who tended in Silas Berry's store. He was hired for twopence to sit all day in the cherry orchard and ring a cow-bell whenever the robins made excursions into the trees. From earliest dawn when the birds were first astir, until they sought their little nests, did Ezra sit uncomfortably upon a hard peaked rock in the midst of the orchard and jingle his bell.
He was white-headed, and large of his age like his brother. His pale blue eyes were gravely vacant under his thick white thatch; his chin dropped; his mouth gaped with stolid patience. There was no mitigation for his dull task; he was not allowed to keep his vigil on a comfortable branch of a tree with the mossy trunk for a support to his back, lest he might be tempted to eat of the cherries, and turn pal of the robins instead of enemy. He dared not pull down any low bough and have a surreptitious feast, for he understood well that there were likely to be sharp eyes at the rear windows of the house, that it was always probable that old Silas Berry, of whom he was in mortal fear, might be standing at his back, and, moreover, he should be questioned, and had not falsehood for refuge, for he was a good child, and would be constrained to speak the truth.
They would not let him have a gun instead of a bell, although he pleaded hard. Could he have sat there presenting a gun like a sentry on duty, the week, in spite of discomfort and deprivations, would have been full of glory and excitement. As it was, the dulness and monotony of the jingling of the cow-bell made even his stupid childish mind dismal. All the pleasant exhilaration of youth seemed to have deserted the boy, and life to him became as inane and bovine as to the original ringer of that bell grazing all the season in her own shadow over the same pasture-ground.
And more than all, that twopence for which Ezra toiled so miserably was to go towards the weaving of a rag carpet which his mother was making, and for which she was saving every penny. He could not lay it out in red-and-white sugar-sticks at the store. He sat there all the week, and every time there was a whir of little brown wings and the darting flash of a red breast among the cherry branches he rang in frantic haste the old cow-bell. All the solace he obtained was an occasional robin-pecked cherry which he found in the grass, and then Mr. Berry questioned him severely when he saw stains around his mouth and on his fingers.
He was on hand early in the morning on the day of the cherry picnic, trudging half awake, with the taste of breakfast in his mouth, through the acres of white dewy grass. He sat on his rock until the grass was dry, and patiently jingled his cow-bell. It was to young Ezra Ray, although all unwittingly, as if he himself were assisting in the operations of nature. He watched so assiduously that it was as if he dried the dewy grass and ripened the cherries.
When the cherry party began to arrive he still sat on his rock and jingled his bell; he did not know when to stop. But his eyes were upon the assembling people rather than upon the robins. He watched the brave young men whose ignominy of boyhood was past, bearing ladders and tossing up shining tin pails as they came. He watched the girls swinging their little straw baskets daintily; his stupidly wondering eyes followed especially Rebecca Thayer. Rebecca, in her black muslin, with her sweet throat fairly dazzling above the half-low bodice, and wound about twice with a slender gold chain, with her black silk apron embroidered with red roses, and beautiful face glowing with rich color between the black folds of her hair, held the instinctive attention of the boy. He stared at her as she stood talking to another girl with her back quite turned upon all the young men, until his own sister touched him upon the shoulder with a sharp nudge of a bony little hand.
Amelia Ray's face, blonde like her brother's, but sharp with the sharpness of the thin and dark, was thrust into his. “You must go right home now,” declared her high voice. “Mother said so.”
“I'm going to stay and help pick 'em,” said Ezra, in a voice which was not affirmative.
“No, you ain't.”
“I can climb trees.”
“You've got to go right straight home. Mother wants you to wind balls for the rag carpet.”
And then Ezra Ray, with disconsolate gaping face over his shoulder, retreated with awkward lopes across the field, the cow-bell accompanying his steps with doleful notes.
There were about forty young people at the party when all were assembled. They came mostly in couples, although now and then a little group of girls advanced across the field, and young men came singly. Barnabas Thayer came alone, and rather late; Rebecca had come some time before with one of her girl mates who had stopped for her. Barnabas, slender and handsome in his best suit, advancing with a stern and almost martial air, tried not to see Charlotte Barnard; but it was as if her face were the natural focus for his eyes, which they could not escape. However, Charlotte was not talking to Thomas Payne; he was not even very near her. He was already in the top of a cherry-tree picking busily. Barney saw his trim dark head and his bright blue waistcoat among the branches, and his heart gave a guilty throb of relief. But soon he noted that Charlotte had not her basket, and the conviction seized him that Thomas had it and was filling it with the very choicest cherries from the topmost branches, as was indeed the case.
Charlotte never looked at Barney, although she knew well when he came. She stood smiling beside another girl, her smooth fair hair gleaming in the sun, her neck showing pink through her embroidered lace kerchief, and her gleaming head and her neck seemed to survey Barney as consciously as her face. Suddenly the fierceness of the instinct of possession seized him; he said to himself that it was his wife's neck; no one else should see it. He felt like tearing off his own coat and covering her with rude force. It made no difference to him that nearly every other girl there, his sister among the rest, wore her neck uncovered by even a kerchief; he felt that Charlotte should not have done so. The other young men were swarming up the trees with the girls' baskets, but he stood aloof with his forehead knitted; it was as if all his reason had deserted him. All at once there was a rustle at his side, and Rose Berry touched him on the arm; he started, and looked down into her softly glowing little face.
[Illustration: “Charlotte stood beside another girl”]
“Oh, here you are!” said she, and her voice had adoring cadences.
Barney nodded.
“I was afraid you weren't coming,” said she, and she panted softly through her red parted lips.
Rose's crisp pink muslin gown flared scalloping around her like the pink petals of a hollyhock; her slender white arms showed through the thin sleeves. Barney could not look away from her wide-open, unfaltering blue eyes, which suddenly displayed to him strange depths. Charlotte, during all his courtship, had never looked up in his face like that. He could not himself have told why; but Charlotte had never for one moment lost sight of the individual, and the respect due him, in her lover. Rose, in the heart of New England, bred after the precepts of orthodoxy, was a pagan, and she worshipped Love himself. Barney was simply the statue that represented the divinity; another might have done as well had the sculpture been as fine.
“I told you I was coming,” Barney said, slowly, and his voice sounded odd to himself.
“I know you did, but I was afraid you wouldn't.”
Rose still held her basket. Barney reached out for it. “Let me get some cherries for you,” he said.
“Oh, I guess you hadn't better,” Rose returned, holding the basket firmly.
“Why not?”
“I'm—afraid Charlotte won't like it,” Rose said. Her face, upturned to Barney, was full of pitiful seriousness, like a child's.
“Give me the basket,” demanded Barney, and she yielded. She stood watching him as he climbed the nearest tree; then she turned and met Charlotte's stern eyes full upon her. Rose went under the tree herself, pulled down a low branch, and began to eat; several other girls were doing the same. Thomas Payne passed the tree, bearing carefully Charlotte's little basket heaped with the finest cherries. Rose tossed her head defiantly. “She needn't say anything,” she thought.
The morning advanced, the sun stood high, and there was a light wind, which now and then caused the cherry-leaves to smite the faces of the pickers. There were no robins in the trees that morning; there were only swift whirs of little wings in the distance, and sweet flurried calls which were scarcely noted in the merry clamor of the young men and girls.
Silas Berry stood a little aloof, leaning on a stout cane, looking on with an inscrutable expression on his dry old face. He noted everything; he saw Rose talking to Barney; he saw his son William eating cherries with Rebecca Thayer out of one basket; but his expression never changed. The predominant trait in his whole character had seemed to mould his face to itself unchangeably, as the face of a hunting-dog is moulded to his speed and watchfulness.
“Don't Mr. Berry look just like an old miser?” a girl whispered to Rebecca Thayer; then she started and blushed confusedly, for she remembered suddenly that William Berry was said to be waiting upon Rebecca, and she also remembered that Charlotte Barnard, who was within hearing distance, was his niece.
Rebecca blushed, too. “I never thought of it,” she said, in a constrained voice.
“Well, I don't know as he does,” apologized the girl. “I suppose I thought of it because he's thin. I always had an idea that a miser was thin.” Then she slipped away, and presently whispered to another girl what a mistaken speech she had made, and they put their heads together with soft, averted giggles.
The girls had brought packages of luncheon in their baskets, which they had removed to make space for the cherries, and left with Mrs. Berry in the tavern. At noon they sent the young men for them, and prepared to have dinner at a little distance from the trees where they had been picking, where the ground was clean. William and Rose also went up to the tavern, and Rose beckoned to Barney as she passed him. “Don't you want to come?” she whispered, as he followed hesitatingly; “there's something to carry.”
When the party returned, Mrs. Berry was with them, and she and Rose bore between them a small tub of freshly-fried hot doughnuts. Mrs. Berry had utterly refused to trust it to the young men. “I know better than to let you have it,” she said, laughing. “You'd eat all the way there, and there wouldn't be enough left to go round. Me and Rose will carry it; it ain't very heavy.” William and Barney each bore two great jugs of molasses-and-water spiced with ginger.
Silas pulled himself up stiffly when he saw them coming; he had been sitting upon the peaked rock whereon Ezra Ray had kept vigil with the cow-bell. Full of anxiety had he been all day lest they should pick from any except the four trees which he had set apart for them, and his anxiety was greater since he knew that the best cherries were not on those four trees. Silas sidled painfully towards his wife and daughter; he peered over into the tub, but they swung it remorselessly past him, even knocking his shin with its iron-bound side.
“What you got there?” he demanded, huskily.
“Don't you say one word,” returned his wife, with a fierce shake of her head at him.
“What's in them jugs?”
“It's nothing but sweetened water. Don't, father,” pleaded Rose under her breath, her pretty face flaming.
Her mother scowled indomitably at Silas tagging threateningly at her elbow. “Don't you say one word,” she whispered again.
“You ain't goin' to—give 'em—”
“Don't you speak,” she returned, hissing out the “s.”
Silas said no more. He followed on, and watched the doughnuts being distributed to the merry party seated in a great ring like a very garland of youth under his trees; he saw them drink his sweetened water.
“Don't you want some?” asked his wife's defiantly pleasant voice in his ear.
“No, I don't want none,” he returned.
Finally, long before they had finished eating, he went home to the tavern. There was no one in the house. He stole cautiously into the pantry, and there was a reserve of doughnuts in a large milk-pan sitting before the window. Silas crooked his old arm around the pan, carried it painfully across the great kitchen and the entry into the best room, and pushed it far under the bureau. Then he returned, and concealed the molasses-jug in the brick oven. He stood for a minute in the middle of the kitchen floor, chuckling and nodding as if to the familiar and confidential spirit of his own greed; then he went out, and a short way down the road to the cottage house where old Hiram Baxter lived and kept a little shoemaker's shop in the L. He entered, and sat down in the little leather-reeking place with Hiram, and was safe and removed from inquiry when Mrs. Berry returned to the tavern for the remaining doughnuts and to mix more sweetened water. The doughnuts could not be found, but she carried a pail across to the store, got more molasses from the barrel, and so in one point outwitted her husband.
Mrs. Berry was famous for her rich doughnuts, and the first supply had been quite exhausted. William went up to her at once when she returned to the party. “Where's the rest of the doughnuts?” he whispered.
“Your father's hid 'em,” she whispered back. “Hush, don't say anything.”
William scowled and made an exclamation. “The old—”
“Hush!” whispered his mother again; “go up to the house and get the sweetened water. I've mixed another jug.”
“Where is he?” demanded William.
“I dunno. He ain't to the store.”
William strode off across the field, and he searched through the house with an angry stamping and banging of doors, but he could not find his father or the doughnuts. “Father!” he called, in an angry shout, standing in the doorway, “Father!” But there was no reply, and he went back to the others with the jug of sweetened water. Rebecca watched him with furtive, anxious eyes, but he avoided looking at her. When he passed her a tumbler of sweetened water she took it and thanked him fervently, but he did not seem to heed her at all.
After dinner they played romping games under the trees—hunt the slipper, and button, and Copenhagen. Mrs. Barnard and two other women had come over to see the festivity, and they sat at a little distance with Mrs. Berry, awkwardly disposed against the trunks of trees, with their feet tucked under their skirts to keep them from the damp ground.
Copenhagen was the favorite game of the young people, and they played on and on while the afternoon deepened. Clinging to the rope they formed a struggling ring, looping this way and that way as the pursuers neared them. Their laughter and gay cries formed charming discords; their radiant faces had the likeness of one family of flowers, through their one expression. The wind blew harder; the girls' muslin skirts clung to their limbs as they moved against it, and flew out around their heels in fluttering ruffles. The cherry boughs tossed over their heads full of crisp whispers among their dark leaves and red fruit clusters. Over across the field, under the low-swaying boughs, showed the old red wall of the tavern, and against it a great mass of blooming phlox, all vague with distance like purple smoke. Over on the left, fence rails glistened purple in the sun and wind—a bluebird sat on a crumbling post and sang. But the young men and girls playing Copenhagen saw and heard nothing of these things.
They heard only that one note of love which all unwittingly, and whether they would or not, they sang to each other through all the merry game. Charlotte heard it whether she would or not, and so did Barney, and it produced in them as in the others a reckless exhilaration in spite of their sadness. William Berry forgot all his mortification and annoyance as he caught Rebecca's warm fingers on the rope and bent over her red, averted cheek. Barney, when he had grasped Rose's hands, which had fairly swung the rope his way, kissed her with an ardor which had in it a curious, fierce joy, because at that moment he caught a glimpse of Thomas Payne's handsome, audacious face meeting Charlotte's.
Barney had not wished to play, but he played with zeal, only he never seemed to see Charlotte's fingers on the rope, and Charlotte never saw his. The girls' cheeks flushed deeper, their smooth locks became roughened. The laughter waxed louder and longer; the matrons looking on doubled their broad backs with responsive merriment. It became like a little bacchanalian rout in a New England field on a summer afternoon, but they did not know it in their simple hearts.
At six o'clock the mist began to rise, the sunlight streamed through the trees in slanting golden shafts, long drawn out like organ chords. The young people gathered up their pails and baskets and went home, flocking down the road together, calling back farewells to Rose and William and their mother, who stood in front of the tavern watching them out of sight.
They were not quite out of sight when they came to Hiram Baxter's little house, and Silas Berry emerged from the shop door. “Hullo!” he cried out, and they all stopped, smiling at him with a cordiality which had in it a savor of apology. Indeed, Thomas Payne had just remarked, with a hearty chorus of assents, that he guessed the old man wasn't so bad after all.
Silas advanced towards them; he also was smiling. He fumbled in his waistcoat pocket, and drew out a roll of paper which he shook out with trembling fingers. He stepped close to Thomas Payne and extended it.
“What is it?” asked the young man.
Silas smiled up in his face with the ingenuous smile of a child.
“What is it?” Thomas Payne asked again.
The others crowded around.
“It's nothin' but the bill,” replied Silas, in a wheedling whisper. His dry old face turned red, his smile deepened.
“The bill for what?” demanded Thomas Payne, and he seized the paper.
“For the cherries you eat,” replied Silas. “I've always been in the habit of chargin' more, but I've took off a leetle this time.” His voice had a ring of challenge, his eyes were sharp, while his mouth smiled.
Thomas Payne scowled over the bill. The other young men peered at it over his shoulder, and repeated the amount with whistles and half-laughs of scorn and anger. The girls ejaculated to each other in whispers. Silas stood impervious, waiting.
The young men whipped out their purses without a word, but Thomas motioned them back. “I'll pay, and we'll settle afterwards. We can't divide up here,” he said, and he crammed some money hard in Silas's eagerly outstretched hand. “Thank you for your hospitality, Mr. Berry,” said Thomas Payne, his face all flaming and his eyes flashing, but his voice quite steady. “I hope you'll have as good luck selling your cherries next year.”
There was a little exulting titter over the sarcasm among the girls, in which Rebecca did not join; then the party kept on. The indignant clamor waxed loud in a moment; they scarcely waited for the old man's back to be turned on his return to the tavern.
But the young people, crying out all together against this last unparalleled meanness, had not reached the foot of the hill, where some of them separated, when they heard the quick pound of running feet behind them and a hoarse voice calling on Thomas Payne to stop. They all turned, and William came up, pale and breathing hard. “What did you pay him?” he asked of Thomas Payne.
“See here, William, we all know you had nothing to do with it,” Thomas cried out.
“What did you pay him?” William repeated, in a stern gasp.
“It's all right.”
“You tell me what you paid him.”
Thomas Payne blushed all over his handsome boyish face. He half whispered the amount to William, although the others knew it as well as he.
William pulled out his purse, and counted out some money with trembling fingers. “Take it, for God's sake!” said he, and Thomas Payne took it. “We all know that you knew nothing about it,” he said again. The others chimed in with eager assent, but William gave his head a shake, as if he shook off water, and broke away from them all, and pelted up the hill with his heart so bitterly sore that it seemed as if he trod on it at every step.
A voice was crying out behind him, but he never heeded. There were light, hurrying steps after him, and a soft flutter of girlish skirts, but he never looked away from his own self until Rebecca touched his arm. Then he looked around with a start and a great blush, and jerked his arm away.
But Rebecca followed him up quite boldly, and caught his arm again, and looked up in his face. “Don't you feel bad,” said she; “don't you feel bad. You aren't to blame.”
“Isn't he my father?”
“You aren't to blame for that.”
“Disgrace comes without blame,” said William, and he moved on.
Rebecca kept close to his side, clinging to his arm. “It's your father's way,” said she. “He's honest, anyway. Nobody can say he isn't honest.”
“It depends upon what you call honest,” William said, bitterly. “You'd better run back, Rebecca. You don't want them to think you're going with me, and they will. I'm disgraced, and so is Rose. You'd better run back.”
Rebecca stopped, and he did also. She looked up in his face; her mouth was quivering with a kind of helpless shame, but her eyes were full of womanly courage and steadfastness. “William,” said she, “I ran away in the face and eyes of them all to comfort you. They saw me, and they can see me now, but I don't care. And I don't care if you see me; I always have cared, but I don't now. I have always been terribly afraid lest you should think I was running after you, but I ain't afraid now. Don't you feel bad, William. That's all I care about. Don't you feel bad; nobody is going to think any less of you. I don't; I think more.”
William looked down at her; there was a hesitating appeal in his face, as in that of a hurt child. Suddenly Rebecca raised both her arms and put them around his neck; he leaned his cheek down against her soft hair. “Poor William,” she whispered, as if he had been her child instead of her lover.
A girl in the merry party speeding along at the foot of the hill glanced around just then; she turned again, blushing hotly, and touched a girl near her, who also glanced around. Then their two blushing faces confronted each other with significant half-shamed smiles of innocent young girlhood.
They locked arms, and whispered as they went on. “Did you see?” “Yes.” “His head?” “Yes.” “Her arms?” “Yes.” Neither had ever had a lover.
But the two lovers at the top of the hill paid no heed. The party were all out of sight when they went slowly down in the gathering twilight. William left Rebecca when they came opposite her house.
When Rebecca entered the house, her mother was standing over the stove, making milk-toast for supper. The boiling milk steamed up fiercely in her face. “What makes you so long behind the others?” she demanded, without turning, stirring the milk as she spoke.
“I guess I ain't much, am I?” Rebecca said, evasively. She tried to make her voice sound as it usually did, but she could not. It broke and took on faltering cadences, as if she were intoxicated with some subtle wine of the spirit.
Her mother looked around at her. Rebecca's face was full of a strange radiance which she could not subdue before her mother's hard, inquiring gaze. Her cheeks burned with splendid color, her lips trembled into smiles in spite of herself, her eyes were like dark fires, shifting before her mother's, but not paling.
“Ephraim see 'em all go by half an hour ago,” said her mother.
Rebecca made no reply.
“If,” said her mother, “you stayed behind to see William Berry, I can tell you one thing, once for all: you needn't do it again.”
“I had to see him about something,” Rebecca faltered.
“Well, you needn't see him again about anything. You might jest as well understand it first as last: if you've got any idea of havin' William Berry, you've got to give it up.”
“Mother, I'd like to know what you mean!” Rebecca cried out, blushing.
“Look 'round here at me!” her mother ordered, suddenly.
“Don't, mother.”
“Look at me!”
Rebecca lifted her face perforce, and her mother eyed her pitilessly. “You ain't been tellin' of him you'd have him, now?” said she. “Why don't you speak?”
“Not—just.”
“Then you needn't.”
“Mother!”
“You needn't talk. You can jest make up your mind to it. You ain't goin' to marry William Berry. Your brother has had enough to do with that family.”
“Mother, you won't stop my marrying William because Barney won't marry his cousin Charlotte? There ain't any sense in that.”
“I've got my reasons, an' that's enough for you,” said Deborah. “You ain't goin' to marry William Berry.”
“I am, if you haven't got any better reason than that. I won't stand it, mother; it ain't right!” Rebecca cried out.
“Then,” said Deborah, and as she spoke she began spooning out the toast gravy into a bowl with a curious stiff turn of her wrist and a superfluous vigor of muscle, as if it were molten lead instead of milk; and, indeed, she might, from the look in her face, have been one of her female ancestors in the times of the French and Indian wars, casting bullets with the yells of savages in her ears—“then,” said she, “I sha'n't have any child but Ephraim left, that's all!”
“Mother, don't!” gasped Rebecca.
“There's another thing: if you marry William Berry against your parents' wishes, you know what you have to expect. You remember your aunt Rebecca.”
Rebecca twisted her whole body about with the despairing motion with which she would have wrung her hands, flung open the door, and ran out of the room.
Deborah went on spooning up the toast. Ephraim had come in just as she spoke last to Rebecca, and he stood staring, grinning with gaping mouth.