“What's Rebecca done, mother?” he asked, pleadingly, catching hold of his mother's dress.
“Nothin' for you to know. Go an' wash your face an' hands, an' come in to supper.”
“Mother, what's she done?” Ephraim's pleading voice lengthened into a whine. He took more liberties with his mother than any one else dared; he even jerked her dress now by way of enforcing an answer. But she grasped his arm so vigorously that he cried out. “Go out to the pump, an' wash your face an' hands,” she repeated, and Ephraim made a little involuntary run to the door.
As he went out he rolled his eyes over his shoulder at his mother with tragic surprise and reproach, but she paid no attention. When he came in she ignored the great painful sigh which he heaved and the podgy hand clapped ostentatiously over his left side. “Draw your chair up,” said she.
“I dunno as I want any supper. I've got a pain. Oh dear!” Ephraim writhed, with attentive eyes upon his mother; he was like an executioner turning an emotional thumbscrew on her. But Deborah Thayer's emotions sometimes presented steel surfaces. “You can have a pain, then,” said she. “I ain't goin' to let you go to ruin because you ain't well, not if I know it. You've got to mind, sick or well, an' you might jest as well know it. I'll have one child obey me, whether or no. Set up to the table.”
Ephraim drew up his chair, whimpering; but he fell to on the milk-toast with ardor, and his hand dropped from his side. He had eaten half a plateful when his father came in. Caleb had been milking; the cows had been refractory as he drove them from pasture, and he was late.
“Supper's been ready half an hour,” his wife said, when he entered.
“The heifer run down the old road when I was a-drivin' of her home, an' I had to chase her,” Caleb returned, meekly, settling down in his arm-chair at the table.
“I guess that heifer wouldn't cut up so every night if I had the drivin' of her,” remarked Deborah. She filled a plate with toast and passed it over to Caleb.
Caleb set it before him, but he did not begin to eat. He looked at Rebecca's empty place, then at his wife's face, long and pale and full of stern rancor, behind the sugar-bowl and the cream-pitcher.
“Rebecca got home?” he ventured, with wary eyes upon her.
“Yes, she's got home.”
Caleb winked, meekly. “Ain't she comin' to supper?”
“I dunno whether she is or not.”
“Does she know it's ready?” Deborah vouchsafed no reply. She poured out the tea.
Caleb grated his chair suddenly. “I'll jest speak to her,” he proclaimed, courageously.
“She knows it's ready. You set still,” said Deborah. And Caleb drew his chair close again, and loaded his knife with toast, bringing it around to his mouth with a dexterous sidewise motion.
“She ain't sick, is she?” he said, presently, with a casual air.
“No, I guess she ain't sick.”
“I s'pose she eat so many cherries she didn't want any supper,” Caleb said, chuckling anxiously. His wife made no reply. Ephraim reached over slyly for the toast-spoon, and she pushed his hand back.
“You can't have any more,” said she.
“Can't I have jest a little more, mother?”
“No, you can't.”
“I feel faint at my stomach, mother.”
“You can keep on feelin' faint.”
“Can't I have a piece of pie, mother?”
“You can't have another mouthful of anything to eat to-night.”
Ephraim clapped his hand to his side again and sighed, but his mother took no notice.
“Have you got a pain, sonny?” asked Caleb.
“Yes, dreadful. Oh!”
“Hadn't he ought to have somethin' on it?” Caleb inquired, looking appealingly at Deborah.
“He can have some of his doctor's medicine if he don't feel better,” she replied, in a hard voice. “Set your chair back now, Ephraim, and get out your catechism.”
“I don't feel fit to, mother,” groaned Ephraim.
“You do jest as I tell you,” said his mother.
And Ephraim, heaving with sighs, muttering angrily far under his breath lest his mother should hear, pulled his chair back to the window, and got his catechism out of the top drawer of his father's desk, and began droning out in his weak, sulky voice the first question therein: “What is the chief end of man?”
“Now shut the book and answer it,” said his mother, and Ephraim obeyed.
Ephraim was quite conversant with the first three questions and their answers, after that his memory began to weaken; either he was a naturally dull scholar, or his native indolence made him appear so. He had been drilled nightly upon the “Assembly's Catechism” for the past five years, and had had many a hard bout with it before that in his very infancy, when his general health admitted—and sometimes, it seemed to Ephraim, when it had not admitted.
Many a time had the boy panted for breath when he rehearsed those grandly decisive, stately replies to those questions of all ages, but his mother had been obdurate. He could not understand why, but in reality Deborah held her youngest son, who was threatened with death in his youth, to the “Assembly's Catechism” as a means of filling his mind with spiritual wisdom, and fitting him for that higher state to which he might soon be called. Ephraim had been strictly forbidden to attend school—beyond reading he had no education; but his mother resolved that spiritual education he should have, whether he would or not, and whether the doctor would or not. So Ephraim laboriously read the Bible through, a chapter at a time, and he went, step by step, through the wisdom of the Divines of Westminster. No matter how much he groaned over it, his mother was pitiless. Sometimes Caleb plucked up courage and interceded. “I don't believe he feels quite ekal to learnin' of his stint to-night,” he would say, and then his eyes would fall before the terrible stern pathos in Deborah's, as she would reply in her deep voice: “If he can't learn nothin' about books, he's got to learn about his own soul. He's got to, whether it hurts him or not. I shouldn't think, knowin' what you know, you'd say anything, Caleb Thayer.”
And Caleb's old face would quiver suddenly like a child's; he would rub the back of his hand across his eyes, huddle himself into his arm-chair, and say no more; and Deborah would sharply order Ephraim, spying anxiously over his catechism, to go on with the next question.
It was nearly dark to-night when Ephraim finished his stint; he was slower than usual, his progress being somewhat hindered by the surreptitious eating of a hard red apple, which he had stowed away in his jacket-pocket. Hard apples were strictly forbidden to Ephraim as articles of diet, and to eat many during the season required diplomacy.
The boy's jaws worked with furious zeal over the apple during his mother's temporary absences from the room on household tasks, and on her return were mumbling solemnly and innocently the precepts of the catechism, after a spasmodic swallowing. His father was nodding in his chair and saw nothing, and had he seen would not have betrayed him. After a little inefficient remonstrance on his own account, Caleb always subsided, and watched anxiously lest Deborah should discover the misdemeanor and descend upon Ephraim.
To-night, after the task was finished, Deborah sent Ephraim stumbling out of the room to bed, muttering remonstrances, his eyes as wild and restless as a cat's, his ears full of the nocturnal shouts of his play-fellows that came through the open windows.
“Mother, can't I go out an' play ball a little while?” sounded in a long wail from the dusk outside the door.
“You go to bed,” answered his mother. Then the slamming of a door shook the house.
“If he wa'n't sick, I'd whip him,” said Deborah, between tight lips; the spiritual whip which Ephraim held by right of his illness over her seemed to sing past her ears. She shook Caleb with the force with which she might have shaken Ephraim. “You'd better get up an' go to bed now, instead of sleepin' in your chair,” she said, imperatively; and Caleb obeyed, staggering, half-dazed, across the floor into the bedroom. Deborah was only a few years younger than her husband, but she had retained her youthful vigor in much greater degree. She never felt the drowsiness of age stealing over her at nightfall. Indeed, oftentimes her senses seemed to gain in alertness as the day wore on, and many a night she was up and at work long after all the other members of her family were in bed. There came at such times to Deborah Thayer a certain peace and triumphant security, when all the other wills over which her own held contested sway were lulled to sleep, and she could concentrate all her energies upon her work. Many a long task of needle-work had she done in the silence of the night, by her dim oil lamp; in years past she had spun and woven, and there was in a clothes-press up-stairs a wonderful coverlid in an intricate pattern of blue and white, and not a thread of it woven by the light of the sun.
[Illustration: “Many a long task of needle-work had she done”]
None of the neighbors knew why Deborah Thayer worked so much at night; they attributed it to her tireless industry. “The days wa'n't never long enough for Deborah Thayer,” they said—and she did not know why herself.
There was deep in her heart a plan for the final disposition of these nightly achievements, but she confided it to no one, not even to Rebecca. The blue-and-white coverlid, many a daintily stitched linen garment and lace-edged pillow-slip she destined for Rebecca when she should be wed, although she frowned on Rebecca's lover and spoke harshly to her of marriage. To-night, while Rebecca lay sobbing in her little bedroom, the mother knitted assiduously until nearly midnight upon a wide linen lace with which to trim dimity curtains for the daughter's bridal bedstead.
Deborah needed no lamplight for this knitting-work; she was so familiar with it, having knitted yards with her thoughts elsewhere, that she could knit without seeing her needles.
So she sat in the deepening dusk and knitted, and heard the laughter and shouts of the boys at play a little way down the road with a deeper pang than Ephraim had ever felt over his own deprivation.
She was glad when the gay hubbub ceased and the boys were haled into bed. Shortly afterwards she heard out in the road a quick, manly tread and a merry whistle. She did not know the tune, but only one young man in Pembroke could whistle like that. “It's Thomas Payne goin' up to see Charlotte Barnard,” she said to herself, with a bitter purse of her lips in the dark. That merry whistler, passing her poor cast-out son in his lonely, half-furnished house, whose dark, shadowy walls she could see across the field, smote her as sorely as he smote him. It seemed to her that she could hear that flute-like melody even as far as Charlotte's door. In spite of her stern resolution to be just, a great gust of wrath shook her. “Lettin' of him come courtin' her when it ain't six weeks since Barney went,” she said, quite out loud, and knitted fiercely.
But poor Thomas Payne, striding with his harmless swagger up the hill, whistling as loud as might be one of his college airs, need not, although she knew it not and he knew it not himself, have disturbed her peace of mind.
Charlotte, at the cherry party, had asked him, with a certain dignified shyness, if he could come up to her house that evening, and he had responded with alacrity. “Why, of course I can,” he cried, blushing joyfully all over his handsome face—“of course I can, Charlotte!” And he tried to catch one of her hands hanging in the folds of her purple dress, but she drew it away.
“I want to see you a few minutes about something,” she said, soberly; and then she pressed forward to speak to another girl, and he could not get another word with her about it.
Charlotte, after she got home from the party, had changed her pretty new gown for her every-day one of mottled brown calico set with a little green sprig, and had helped her mother get supper.
Cephas, however, was late, and did not come home until just before Thomas Payne arrived. Sarah had begun to worry. “I don't see where your father is,” she kept saying to Charlotte. When she heard his shuffling step on the door-stone she started as if he had been her lover. When he came in she scrutinized him anxiously, to see if he looked ill or disturbed. Sarah Barnard, during all absences of her family, dug busily at imaginary pitfalls for them; had they all existed the town would have been honey-combed.
“There ain't nothin' happened, has there, Cephas?” she said.
“I dunno of anythin' that's happened.”
“I got kind of worried. I didn't know where you was.” Sarah had an air of apologizing for her worry. Cephas made no reply; he did not say where he had been, nor account for his tardiness; he did not look at his wife, standing before him with her pathetically inquiring face. He pulled a chair up to the table and sat down, and Charlotte set his supper before him. It was a plate of greens, cold boiled dock, and some rye-and-Indian bread. Cephas still adhered to his vegetarian diet, although he pined on it, and the longing for the flesh-pots was great in his soul. However, he said no more about sorrel pies, for the hardness and the flavor of those which he had prepared had overcome even his zeal of invention. He ate of them manfully twice; then he ate no more, and he did not inquire how Sarah disposed of them after they had vainly appeared on the table a week. She, with no pig nor hens to eat them, was forced, with many misgivings as to the waste, to deposit them in the fireplace.
“They actually made good kindlin' wood,” she told her sister Sylvia. “Poor Cephas, he didn't have no more idea than a baby about makin' pies.” All Sarah's ire had died away; to-night she set a large plump apple-pie slyly on the table—an apple-pie with ample allowance of lard in the crust thereof; and she felt not the slightest exultation, only honest pleasure, when she saw, without seeming to, Cephas cut off a goodly wedge, after disposing of his dock greens.
“Poor father, I'm real glad he's tastin' of the pie,” she whispered to Charlotte in the pantry; “greens ain't very fillin'.”
Charlotte smiled, absently. Presently she slipped into the best room and lighted the candles. “You expectin' of anybody to-night?” her mother asked, when she came out.
“I didn't know but somebody might come,” Charlotte replied, evasively. She blushed a little before her mother's significantly smiling face, but there was none of the shamed delight which should have accompanied the blush. She looked very sober—almost stern.
“Hadn't you better put on your other dress again, then?” asked her mother.”
“No, I guess this 'll do.”
Cephas ate his pie in silence—he had helped himself to another piece—but he heard every word. After he had finished, he fumbled in his pocket for his old leather purse, and counted over a little store of money on his knee.
Charlotte was setting away the dishes in the pantry when her father came up behind her and crammed something into her hand. She started. “What is it?” said she.
“Look and see,” said Cephas.
Charlotte opened her hand, and saw a great silver dollar. “I thought mebbe you'd like to buy somethin' with it,” said Cephas. He cleared his throat, and went out through the kitchen into the shed. Charlotte was too amazed to thank him; her mother came into the pantry. “What did he give you?” she whispered.
Charlotte held up the money. “Poor father,” said Sarah Barnard, “he's doin' of it to make up. He was dreadful sorry about that other, an' he's tickled 'most to death now he thinks you've got somebody else, and are contented. Poor father, he ain't got much money, either.”
“I don't want it,” Charlotte said, her steady mouth quivering downward at the corners.
“You keep it. He'd feel all upset if you didn't. You'll find it come handy. I know you've got a good many things now, but you had ought to have a new cape come fall; you can't come out bride in a muslin one when snow flies.” Sarah cast a half-timid, half-shrewd glance at Charlotte, who put the dollar in her pocket.
“A green satin cape, lined and wadded, would be handsome,” pursued her mother.
“I sha'n't ever come out bride,” said Charlotte.
“How you talk. There, he's comin' now!”
And, indeed, at that the clang of the knocker sounded through the house. Charlotte took off her apron and started to answer it, but her mother caught her and pinned up a stray lock of hair. “I 'most wish you had put on your other dress again,” she whispered.
Sarah listened with her ear close to the crack of the kitchen door when her daughter opened the outside one. She heard Thomas Payne's hearty greeting and Charlotte's decorous reply. The door of the front room shut, then she set the kitchen door ajar softly, but she could hear nothing but a vague hum of voices across the entry; she could not distinguish a word. However, it was as well that she could not, for her heart would have sunk, as did poor Thomas Payne's.
Thomas, with his thick hair brushed into a shining roll above his fair high forehead, in his best flowered waistcoat and blue coat with brass buttons, sat opposite Charlotte, his two nicely booted feet toeing out squarely on the floor, his two hands on his knees, and listened to what she had to say, while his boyish face changed and whitened. Thomas was older than Charlotte, but he looked younger. It seemed, too, as if he looked younger when with her than at other times, although he was always anxiously steady and respectful, and lost much of that youthful dash which made him questioningly admired by the young people of Pembroke.
Charlotte began at once after they were seated. Her fair, grave face colored, her voice had in it a solemn embarrassment. “I don't know but you thought I was doing a strange thing to ask you to come here to-night,” she said.
“No, I didn't; I didn't think so, Charlotte,” Thomas declared, warmly.
“I felt as if I ought to. I felt as if it was my duty to,” said she. She cast her eyes down. Thomas waited, looking at her with vague alarm. Somehow some college scrapes of his flashed into his head, and he had a bewildered idea the she had found them out and that her sweet rigid innocence was shocked, and she was about to call him to account.
But Charlotte continued, raising her eyes, and meeting his gravely and fairly:
“You've been coming here three Sabbath evenings running, now,” said she.
“Yes, I know I have, Charlotte.”
“And you mean to keep on coming, if I don't say anything to hinder it?”
“You know I do, Charlotte,” replied Thomas, with ardent eyes upon her face.
“Then,” said Charlotte, “I feel as if it was my duty to say this to you, Thomas. If you come in any other way than as a friend, if you come on any other errand than friendship, you must not come here any more. It isn't right for me to encourage you, and let you come here and get your feelings enlisted. If you come here occasionally as a friend in friendship I shall be happy to have you, but you must not come here with any other hopes or feelings.”
Charlotte's solemnly stilted words, and earnest, severe face chilled the young man opposite. His face sobered. “You mean that you can't ever think of me in any other way than as a friend,” he said.
Charlotte nodded. “You know it is not because there's one thing against you, Thomas.”
“Then it is Barney, after all.”
“I was all ready to marry him a few weeks ago,” Charlotte said, with a kind of dignified reproach.
Thomas colored. “I know it, Charlotte; I ought not to have expected—I suppose you couldn't get over it so soon. I couldn't if I had been in your place, and been ready to marry anybody. But I didn't know about girls; I didn't know but they were different; I always heard they got over things quicker. I ought not to have thought— But, oh, Charlotte, if I wait, if you have a little more time, don't you think you will feel different about it?”
Charlotte shook her head.
“But he is such a good-for-nothing dog to treat you the way he does, Charlotte!” Thomas cried out, in a great burst of wrath and jealous love.
“I don't want to hear another word like that, Thomas Payne,” Charlotte said, sternly, and the young man drooped before her.
“I beg your pardon, Charlotte,” said he. “I suppose I ought not to have spoken so, if you— Oh, Charlotte, then you don't think you ever can get over this and think a little bit of me?”
“No,” replied Charlotte, in a steady voice, “I don't think I ever can, Thomas.”
“I don't mean that I am trying to get you away from any other fellow, Charlotte—I wouldn't do anything like that; but if he won't— Oh, Charlotte, are you sure?”
“I don't think I ever can,” repeated Charlotte, monotonously, looking at the wall past Thomas.
“I've always thought so much of you, Charlotte, though I never told you so.”
“You'd better not now.”
“Yes, I'm going to, now. I've got to. Then I'll never say another word—I'll go away, and never say another word.” Thomas got up, and brought his chair close to Charlotte's. “Don't move away,” he pleaded; “let me sit here near you once—I never shall again. I'm going to tell you, Charlotte. I used to look across at you sitting in the meeting-house, Sabbath days, when I was a boy, and think you were the handsomest girl I ever saw. Then I did try to go with you once before I went to college; perhaps you didn't know that I meant anything, but I did. Barney was in the way then a little, but I didn't think much of it. I didn't know that he really meant to go with you. You let me go home with you two or three times—perhaps you remember.”
Charlotte nodded.
“I never forgot,” said Thomas Payne. “Well, father found it out, and he had a talk with me. He made me promise to wait till I got through college before I said anything to you; he was doing a good deal for me, you know. So I waited, and the first thing I knew, when I came home, they said Barney Thayer was waiting on you, and I thought it was all settled and there was nothing more to be done. I made up my mind to bear it like a man and make the best of it, and I did. But this spring when I was through college, and that happened betwixt you and Barney, when he—didn't come back to you, and you didn't seem to mind so much, I couldn't help having a little hope. I waited and kept thinking he'd make up with you, but he didn't, and I knew how determined he was. Then finally I began to make a few advances, but—well, it's all over now, Charlotte. There's only one thing I'd like to ask: if I hadn't waited, as I promised father, would it have made any difference? Did you always like Barney Thayer?”
“Yes; it wouldn't have made any difference,” Charlotte said. There were tears in her eyes.
Thomas Payne arose. “Then that is all,” said he. “I never had any chance, if I had only known. I've got nothing more to say. I want to thank you for asking me to come here to-night and telling me. It was a good deal kinder than to let me keep on coming. That would have been rather hard on a fellow.” Thomas Payne fairly laughed, although his handsome face was white. “I hope it will all come right betwixt you and Barney, Charlotte,” he said, “and don't you worry about me, I shall get on. I'll own this seems a little harder than it was before, but I shall get on.” Thomas brushed his bell hat carefully with his cambric handkerchief, and stowed it under his arm. “Good-bye, Charlotte,” said he, in his old gay voice; “when you ask me, I'll come and dance at your wedding.”
Charlotte got up, trembling. Thomas reached out his hand and touched her smooth fair head softly. “I never touched you nor kissed you, except in games like that Copenhagen to-day,” said he; “but I've thought of it a good many times.”
Charlotte drew back. “I can't, Thomas,” she faltered. She could not herself have defined her reason for refusing her cast-off lover this one comfort, but it was not so much loyalty as the fear of disloyalty which led her to do so. In spite of herself, she saw Barney for an instant beside Thomas to his disadvantage, and her love could not cover him, extend it as she would. The conviction was strong upon her that Thomas was the better man of the two, although she did not love him.
“All right,” said Thomas, “I ought not to have asked it of you, Charlotte. Good-bye.”
As soon as Thomas Payne got out in the dark night air, and the door had shut behind him, he set up his merry whistle. Charlotte stood at the front window, and heard it from far down the hill.
One Sunday evening, about four months after the cherry party, Barnabas Thayer came out of his house and strolled slowly across the road. Then he paused, and leaned up against some pasture bars and looked around him. There was nobody in sight on the road in either direction, and everything was very still, except for the vibrating calls of the hidden insects that come to their flood-tide of life in early autumn.
Barnabas listened to those calls, which had in them a certain element of mystery, as have all things which reach only one sense. They were in their humble way the voices of the unseen, and as he listened they seemed to take on a rhythmic cadence. Presently the drone of multifold vibrations sounded in his ears with even rise and fall, like the mighty breathing of Nature herself. The sun was low, and the sky was full of violet clouds. Barney could see outlined faintly against them the gray sweep of the roof that covered Charlotte's daily life.
Soon the bell for the evening meeting began to ring, and Barney started. People might soon appear on their way to meeting, and he did not want to see them. Barney avoided everybody now; he had been nowhere since the cherry party, not even to meeting. He led the life of a hermit, and seldom met his kind at all, except at the store, where he went to buy the simple materials for his solitary meals.
Barney turned aside from the main road into the old untravelled one leading past Sylvia Crane's house. It appeared scarcely more than a lane; the old wheel-ruts were hidden between green weedy ridges, the bordering stone-walls looked like long green barrows, being overgrown with poison-ivy vines and rank shrubs. For a long way there was no house except Sylvia Crane's. There was one cellar where a house had stood before Barney could remember. There were a few old blackened chimney-bricks still there, the step-stone worn by dead and forgotten feet, and the old lilac-bushes that had grown against the front windows. Two poplar-trees, too, stood where the front yard had met the road, casting long shadows like men. Sylvia Crane's house was just beyond, and Barney passed it with a furtive anxious glance, because Charlotte's aunt lived there. He saw nobody at the windows, but the guardian-stone was quite rolled away from the door, so Sylvia was at home.
Barney walked a little way beyond; then he sat down on the stone-wall, and remained there, motionless. He heard the meeting-bell farther away, then it ceased. The wind was quite crisp and cool, and it smote his back from the northwest. He could smell wild-grapes and the pungent odor of decaying leaves. The autumn was beginning, and over his thoughts, raised like a ghost from the ashes of the summer, stole a vague vision of the winter. He saw for a second the driving slant of the snow-storm over the old drifting road, he saw the white slant of Sylvia's house-roof through it. And at the same time a curious, pleasant desire, which might be primitive and coeval with the provident passion of the squirrels and honey-bees, thrilled him. Then he dismissed it bitterly. What need of winter-stores and provisions for sweet home-comfort in the hearts of freezing storms was there for him? What did he care whether or not he laid in stores of hearth-wood, of garden produce, of apples, just for himself in his miserable solitude? The inborn desire of Northern races at the approach of the sterile winters, containing, as do all desires to insure their fulfilment, the elements of human pleasure, failed suddenly to move him when he remembered that his human life, in one sense, was over.
[Illustration: “He remained there motionless”]
Opposite him across the road, in an old orchard, was a tree full of apples. The low sun struck them, and they showed spheres of rosy orange, as brilliant as Atalanta's apples of gold, against the background of dark violet clouds. Barney looked at this tree, which was glorified for the time almost out of its common meaning as a tree, as he might have looked at a gorgeous procession passing before him, while his mind was engrossed with his own misery, seeming to project before his eyes like a veil.
Presently it grew dusky, and the glowing apples faded; the town-clock struck eight. Barney counted the strokes; then he arose and went slowly back. He had not gone far when he saw at a distance down the road a man and woman strolling slowly towards him. They disappeared suddenly, and he thought they had turned into a lane which opened upon the road just there. He thought to himself, and with no concern, that it might have been his sister Rebecca—something about the woman's gait suggested her—and William Berry. He knew that William was not allowed in his mother's house, and that he and Rebecca met outside. He looked up the dusky lane when he came to it, but he saw nobody.
When he reached Sylvia Crane's house he noticed that the front door was open, and a woman stood there in a dim shaft of candle-light which streamed from the room beyond. He started, for he thought it might be Charlotte; then he saw that it was Sylvia Crane leaning out towards him, shading her eyes with her hand.
He said “Good-evening” vaguely, and passed on. Then he heard a cry of indistinct words behind him, and turned. “What is it?” he called. But still he could not understand what she said, her voice was so broken, and he went back.
When he got quite close to the gate he understood. “You ain't goin' past, Richard? You ain't goin' past, Richard?” Sylvia was wailing over and over, clinging to the old gate-post.
Barney stood before her, hesitating. Sylvia reached out a hand towards him, clutching piteously with pale fingers through the gloom. Barney drew back from the poor hand. “I rather think—you've—made a mistake,” he faltered out.
“You ain't goin' past, Richard?” Sylvia wailed out again. She flung out her lean arm farther towards him. Then she wavered. Barney thought she was going to fall, and he stepped forward and caught hold of her elbow. “I guess you don't feel well, do you, Miss Crane?” he said. “I guess you had better go into the house, hadn't you?”
“I feel—kind of—bad—I—thought you was goin'—past,” gasped Sylvia. Barney supported her awkwardly into the house. At times she leaned her whole trembling weight upon him, and then withdrew herself, all unnerved as she was, with the inborn maiden reticence which so many years had strengthened; once she pushed him from her, then drooped upon his arm again, and all the time she kept moaning, “I thought you was goin' right past, Richard, I thought you was goin' right past.”
And Barney kept repeating, “I guess you've made a mistake, Miss Crane”; but she did not heed him.
When they were inside the parlor he shifted her weight gently on to the sofa, and would have drawn off; but she clung to his arm, and it seemed to him that he was forced to sit down beside her or be rough with her. “I thought you was goin' right past, Richard,” she said again.
“I ain't Richard,” said Barney; but she did not seem to hear him. She looked straight in his face with a strange boldness, her body inclined towards him, her head thrown back. Her thin, faded cheeks were burning, her blue eyes eager, her lips twitching with pitiful smiles. The room was dim with candle-light, but everything in it was distinct, and Sylvia Crane, looking straight at Barney Thayer's face, saw the face of Richard Alger.
Suddenly Barney himself had a curious impression. The features of Richard Alger instead of his own seemed to look back at him from his own thoughts. He dashed his hand across his face with an impatient, bewildered motion, as if he brushed away unseen cobwebs, and stood up. “You have made—” he began again; but Sylvia interrupted him with a weak cry. “Set down here, set down here, jest a minute, if you don't want to kill me!” she wailed out, and she clutched at his sleeve and pulled him down, and before he knew what she was doing had shrunk close to him, and laid her head on his shoulder. She went on talking desperately in her weak voice—strained shrill octaves above her ordinary tone.
“I've had this—sofa ten years,” she said—“ten years, Richard—an' you never set with me on it before, an'—you'd been comin'—here a long while before that came betwixt us last spring, Richard. Ain't you forgiven me yet?”
Barney made no reply.
“Can't you put your arm around me jest once, Richard?” she went on. “You ain't never, an' you've been comin' here a long while. I've had this sofa ten years.”
Barney put his arm around her, seemingly with no volition of his own.
“It's six months to-day sence you came last,” Sylvia said—“it's six whole months; an' when I see you goin' past to-night, it didn't seem as if I could bear it—it didn't seem as if I could bear it, Richard.” Sylvia turned her pale profile closer to Barney's breast and sobbed faintly. “I've watched so long for you,” she sighed out; “all these months I've sat there at the window, strainin' my eyes into the dark. Oh, you don't know, Richard, you won't never know!”
Barney trembled with Sylvia's sobs. He sat with a serious shamefacedness, his arm around the poor bony waist, staring over the faded fair head, which had never lain on any lover's breast except in dreams. For the moment he could not stir; he had a feeling of horror, as if he saw his own double. There was a subtle resemblance which lay deeper than the features between him and Richard Alger. Sylvia saw it, and he saw his own self reflected as Richard Alger in that straining mental vision of hers which exceeded the spiritual one.
“Can't you forgive me, an'—come again the way—you used to?” Sylvia panted out. “I couldn't get home before, that night, nohow. I couldn't, Richard—'twas the night Charlotte an' Barney fell out. They had a dreadful time. I had to stay there. It wa'n't my fault. If Barney had come back, I could have got here in season; but poor Charlotte was settin' out there all alone on the doorstep, an' her father wouldn't let her in, an' Sarah took on so I had to stay. I thought I should die when I got back an' found out you'd been here an' gone. Ain't you goin' to forgive me, Richard?”
Barney suddenly removed his arm from Sylvia's waist, pushed her clinging hands away, and stood up again. “Now, Miss Crane,” he said, “I've got to tell you. You've got to listen, and take it in. I am not Richard Alger; I am Barney Thayer.”
“What?” Sylvia said, feebly, looking up at him. “I don't know what you say, Richard; I wish you'd say it again.”
“I ain't Richard Alger; I am Barney Thayer,” repeated Barney, in a loud, distinct voice. Sylvia's straining, questioning eyes did not leave his face. “You made a mistake,” said Barney.
Sylvia turned her eyes away; she laid her head down on the arm of the hair-cloth sofa, and gasped faintly. Barney bent over her. “Now don't feel bad, Miss Crane,” said he; “I sha'n't ever say a word about this to anybody.”
Sylvia made no reply; she lay there half gasping for breath, and her face looked deathly to Barney.
“Miss Crane, are you sick?” he cried out in alarm. When she did not answer, he even laid hold of her shoulder, and shook her gently, and repeated the question. He did not know if she were faint or dying; he had never seen anybody faint or die. He wished instinctively that his mother were there; he thought for a second of running for her in spite of everything.
“I'll go and get some water for you, Miss Crane,” he said, desperately, and seized the candle, and went with it, flaring and leaving a wake of smoke, out into the kitchen. He presently came back with a dipper of water, and held it dripping over Sylvia. “Hadn't you better drink a little?” he urged. But Sylvia suddenly motioned him away and sat up. “No, I don't want any water; I don't want anything after this,” she said, in a quick, desperate tone. “I can never look anybody in the face again. I can never go to meetin' again.”
“Don't you feel so about it, Miss Crane,” Barney pleaded, his own voice uncertain and embarrassed. “The room ain't very light, and it's dark outside; maybe I do look like him a little. It ain't any wonder you made the mistake.”
“It wa'n't that,” returned Sylvia. “I dunno what the reason was; it don't make any difference. I can't never go to meetin' again.”
“I sha'n't tell anybody,” said Barney; “I sha'n't ever speak of it to any human being.”
Sylvia turned on him with sudden fierceness. “You had better not,” said she, “when you're doin' jest the same as Richard Alger yourself, an' you're makin' Charlotte sit an' watch an' suffer for nothin' at all, jest as he makes me. You had better not tell of it, Barney Thayer, when it was all due to your awful will that won't let you give in to anybody, in the first place, an' when you are so much like Richard Alger yourself that it's no wonder that anybody that knows him body and soul, as I do, took you for him. You had better not tell.”
Again Barney seemed to see before his eyes that image of himself as Richard Alger, and he could no more change it than he could change his own image in the looking-glass. He said not another word, but carried the dipper of water back to the kitchen, returned with the candle, setting it gingerly on the white mantel-shelf between a vase of dried flowers and a mottle-backed shell, and went out of the house. Sylvia did not speak again; but he heard her moan as he closed the door, and it seemed to him that he heard her as he went down the road, although he knew that he could not.
It was quite dark now; all the light came from a pale wild sky. The moon was young, and feebly intermittent with the clouds.
Barney, hastening along, was all trembling and unnerved. He tried to persuade himself that the woman whom he had just left was ill, and laboring under some sudden aberration of mind; yet, in spite of himself, he realized a terrible rationality in it. Little as he had been among the village people of late, and little as he had heard of the village gossip, he knew the story of Richard Alger's desertion of Sylvia Crane. Was he not like Richard Alger in his own desertion of Charlotte Barnard? and had not Sylvia been as little at fault in taking one for the other as if they had been twin brothers? Might there not be a closer likeness between characters than features—perhaps by a repetition of sins and deformities? and might not one now and then be able to see it?
Then the question came, was Charlotte like Sylvia? Was Charlotte even now sitting watching for him with that awful eagerness which comes from a hunger of the heart? He had seen one woman's wounded heart, and, like most men, was disposed to generalize, and think he had seen the wounded hearts of all women.
When he had reached the turn of the road, and had come out on the main one where his house was, and where Charlotte lived, he stood still, looking in her direction. He seemed to see her, a quarter of a mile away in the darkness, sitting in her window watching for him, as Sylvia had watched for Richard.
He set his mouth hard and crossed the road. He had just reached his own yard when there was the pale flutter of a skirt out of the darkness before him, and a little shadowy figure met him with a soft shock. The was a smothered nervous titter from the figure. Barney did not know who it was; he muttered an apology, and was about to pass into his yard when Rose Berry's voice arrested him. It was quite trembling and uncertain; all the laughter had gone out of it.
“Oh, it's you,” said she; “you frightened me. I didn't know who it was.”
Barney felt suddenly annoyed without knowing why. “Oh, is it you, Rose?” he returned, stiffly. “It's a pleasant evening;” then he turned.
“Barney!” Rose said, and her voice sounded as if she were weeping.
Barney stopped and waited.
“I want to know if—you're mad with me, Barney.”
“No, of course I ain't; why?”
“I thought you'd acted kind of queer to me lately.”
Barney stood still, frowning in the darkness. “I don't know what you mean,” he said at length. “I don't know how I've treated you any different from any of the girls.”
“You haven't been to see me, and—you've hardly spoken to me since the cherry party.”
“I haven't been to see anybody,” said Barney, shortly; and he turned away again, but Rose caught his arm. “Then you are sure you aren't mad with me?” she whispered.
“Of course I'm sure,” Barney returned, impatiently.
“It would kill me if you were,” Rose whispered. She pressed close to him; he could feel her softly panting against his side, her head sunk on his shoulder. “I've been worrying about it all these months,” she said in his ear. Her soft curly hair brushed his cheek, but her little transient influence over him was all gone. He felt angry and ashamed.
“I haven't thought anything about it,” he said, brusquely.
Rose sobbed faintly, but she did not move away from him. Suddenly that cruel repulsion which seizes mankind towards reptiles and unsought love seized Barney. He unclasped her clinging hands, and fairly pushed her away from him. “Good-night, Rose,” he said, shortly, and turned, and went up the path to his own door with determined strides.
“Barney!” Rose called after him; but he paid no attention. She even ran up the path after him; but the door shut, and she turned back. She was trembling from head to foot, there was a great rushing in her ears; but she heard a quick light step behind her when she got out on the road, and she hurried on before it with a vague dread.
She almost ran at length; but the footsteps gained on her. A dark skirt brushed her light-colored one, and Charlotte's voice, full of contempt and indignation, said in her ear: “Oh, I thought it was you.”
“I—was coming up—to your—house,” Rose faltered; she could hardly get her breath to speak.
“Why didn't you come, then?” demanded Charlotte. “What made you go to Barney Thayer's?”
“I didn't,” said Rose, in feeble self-defence. “He was out in the road—I—just stopped to—speak to him—”
“You were coming out of his yard,” Charlotte said, pitilessly. “You followed him in there—I saw you. Shame on you!”
“Oh, Charlotte, I haven't done anything out of the way,” pleaded Rose, weakly.
“You have tried your best to get Barney Thayer all the time you have been pretending to be such a good friend to me. I don't know what you call out of the way.”
“Charlotte, don't—I haven't.”
“Yes, you have. I am going to tell you, once for all, what I think of you. You've been a false friend to me; and now when Barney don't notice you, you follow him up as no girl that thought anything of herself would. And you don't even care anything for him; you haven't even that for an excuse.”
“You don't know but what I do!” Rose cried out, desperately.
“Yes, I do know. If anybody else came along, you'd care for him just the same.”
“I shouldn't—Charlotte, I should never have thought of Barney if he—hadn't left you, you know I shouldn't.”
“That's no excuse,” said Charlotte, sternly.
“You said yourself he would never come back to you,” said Rose.
“Would you have liked me to have done so by you, if you had been in my place?”
Rose twitched herself about. “You can't expect him never to marry anybody because he isn't going to marry you,” she said, defiantly.
“I don't—I am not quite so selfish as that. But he won't ever marry anybody he don't like because she follows him up, and I don't see how that alters what you've done.”
Rose began to walk away. Charlotte stood still, but she raised her voice. “I am not very happy,” said she, “and I sha'n't be happy my whole life, but I wouldn't change places with you. You've lowered yourself, and that's worse than any unhappiness.”
Rose fled away in the darkness without another word, and Charlotte crossed the road to go to her Aunt Sylvia's.
Rose, as she went on, felt as if all her dreams were dying within her; a dull vision of the next morning when she should awake without them weighed upon her. She had a childish sense of shame and remorse, and a conviction of the truth of Charlotte's words. And yet she had an injured and bewildered feeling, as if somewhere in this terrible nature, at whose mercy she was, there was some excuse for her.
Rose was nearly home when she began to meet the people coming from meeting. She kept close to the wall, and scudded along swiftly that no one might recognize her. All at once a young man whom she had passed turned and walked along by her side, making a shy clutch at her arm.
“Oh, it's you,” she said, wearily.
“Yes; do you care if I walk along with you?”
“No,” said Rose, “not if you want to.”
An old pang of gratitude came over her. It was only the honest, overgrown boy, Tommy Ray, of the store. She had known he worshipped her afar off; she had laughed at him and half despised him, but now she felt suddenly humble and grateful for even this devotion. She moved her arm that he might hold it more closely.
“It's too dark for you to be out alone,” he said, in his embarrassed, tender voice.
“Yes, it's pretty dark,” said Rose. Her voice shook. They had passed the last group of returning people. Suddenly Rose, in spite of herself, began to cry. She sobbed wildly, and the boy, full of alarm and sympathy, walked on by her side.
“There ain't anything—scared you, has there?” he stammered out, awkwardly, at length.
“No,” sobbed Rose.
“You ain't sick?”
“No, it isn't anything.”
The boy held her arm closer; he trembled and almost sobbed himself with sympathy. Before they reached the old tavern Rose had stopped crying—she even tried to laugh and turn it off with a jest. “I don't know what got into me,” she said; “I guess I was nervous.”
“I didn't know but something had scared you,” said the boy.
They stood on the door-steps; the house was dark. Rose's parents had gone to bed, and William was out. The boy still held Rose's arm. He had adored her secretly ever since he was a child, and he had never dared as much as that before. He had thought of Rose like a queen or a princess, and the thought had ennobled his boyish ignorance and commonness.
“No, I wasn't scared,” said Rose, and something in her voice gave sudden boldness to her young lover.
He released her arm, and put both his arms around her. “I'm sorry you feel so bad,” he whispered, panting.
“It isn't anything,” returned Rose, but she half sobbed again; the boy's round cheek pressed against her wet, burning one. He was several years younger than she. She had half scorned him, but she had one of those natures that crave love for its own sweetness as palates crave sugar.
She wept a little on his shoulder; and the boy, half beside himself with joy and terror, stood holding her fast in his arms.
“Don't feel bad,” he kept whispering. Finally Rose raised herself. “I must go in,” she whispered; “good-night.”
The boy's pleading face, his innocent, passionate lips approached hers, and they kissed each other.
“Don't you—like me a little?” gasped the boy.
“Maybe I will,” Rose whispered back. His face came closer, and she kissed him again. Then, with a murmured “good-night,” she fled into the house, and the boy went down the hill with sweeter dreams in his heart than those which she had lost.
On the Sunday following the one of Barnabas Thayer's call Sylvia Crane appeared at meeting in a black lace veil like a Spanish señorita. The heavily wrought black lace fell over her face, and people could get only shifting glimpses of her delicate features behind it.
Richard Alger glanced furtively at the pale face shrinking austerely behind the net-work of black silk leaves and flowers, and wondered at some change which he felt but could not fathom. He scarcely knew that she had never worn the veil before. And Richard Alger, had he known, could never have fathomed the purely feminine motive compounded of pride and shame which led his old sweetheart to unearth from the depths of a bandbox her mother's worked-lace veil, and tie its narrow black drawing-string with trembling fingers over her own bonnet.
“I'd like to know what in creation you've got that veil on for?” whispered her sister, Hannah Berry, as they went down the aisle after meeting.
“I thought I would,” responded Sylvia's muffled voice behind the veil.
“You've got the flowers right over your eyes. I shouldn't think you could see to walk. You ain't never worn a veil in your life. I can't see what has got into you,” persisted Hannah.
Sylvia edged away from her as soon as she could, and glided down the road towards her own house swiftly, although her knees trembled. Sylvia's knees always trembled when she came out of church, after she had sat an hour and a half opposite Richard Alger. To-day they felt weaker than ever, after her encounter with Hannah. Nobody knew the terror Sylvia had of her sister's discovering how she had called in Barnabas Thayer, and in a manner unveiled her maiden heart to him. When Charlotte had come in that night after Barnabas had gone, and discovered her crying on the sofa, she had jumped up and confronted her with a fierce instinct of concealment.
“There ain't nothin' new the matter,” she said, in response to Charlotte's question; “I was thinkin' about mother; I'm apt to when it comes dusk.” It was the first deliberate lie that Sylvia Crane had ever told in her life. She reflected upon it after Charlotte had gone, and reflected also with fierce hardihood that she would lie again were it necessary. Should she hesitate at a lie if it would cover the maiden reserve that she had cherished so long?
However, Charlotte had suspected more than her aunt knew of the true cause of her agitation. A similar motive for grief made her acute. Sylvia, mourning alone of a Sabbath night upon her hair-cloth sofa, struck an old chord of her own heart. Charlotte dared not say a word to comfort her directly. She condoled with her for the fifteen-years-old loss of her mother, and did not allude to Richard Alger; but going home she said to herself, with a miserable qualm of pity, that poor Aunt Sylvia was breaking her heart because Richard had stopped coming.
“It's harder for Aunt Sylvia because she's older,” thought Charlotte, on her way home that night. But then she thought also, with a sorer qualm of self-pity, that Sylvia had not quite so long a life before her, to live alone. Charlotte had nearly reached her own home that night when two figures suddenly slunk across the road before her. She at once recognized Rebecca Thayer as one of them, and called out “Good-evening, Rebecca!” to her.
Rebecca made only a muttered sound in response, and they both disappeared in the darkness. There was a look of secrecy and flight about it which somehow startled Charlotte, engrossed as she was with her own troubles and her late encounter with Rose.
When she got into the house she spoke of it to her mother. Cephas had gone to bed, and Sarah was sitting up waiting for her.
“I met Rebecca and William out here,” said she, untying her hat, “and I thought they acted real queer.” Sarah cast a glance at the bedroom door, which was ajar, and motioned Charlotte to close it. Charlotte tiptoed across the room and shut the door softly, lest she should awaken her father; then her mother beckoned her to come close, and whispered something in her ear.
Charlotte started, and a great blush flamed out all over her face and neck. She looked at her mother with angry shame. “I don't believe a word of it,” said she; “not a word of it.”
“I walked home from meetin' with Mrs. Allen this evenin',” said her mother, “an' she says it's all over town. She says Rebecca's been stealin' out, an' goin' to walk with him unbeknownst to her mother all summer. You know her mother wouldn't let him come to the house.”
“I don't believe one word of it,” repeated Charlotte.
“Mis' Allen says it's so,” said Sarah. “She says Mis' Thayer has had to stay home from evenin' meetin' on account of Ephraim—she don't like to leave him alone, he ain't been quite so well lately—an' Rebecca has made believe go to meetin' when she's been off with William. Mis' Thayer went to meetin' to-night.”
“Wasn't Mr. Thayer there?”
“Yes, he was there, but he wouldn't know what was goin' on. 'Tain't very hard to pull the wool over Caleb Thayer's eyes.”
“I don't believe one word of it,” Charlotte said, again. When she went up-stairs to bed that whisper of her mother's seemed to sound through and above all her own trouble. It was to her like a note of despair and shame, quite outside her own gamut of life. She could not believe that she heard it at all. Rebecca's face as she had always known her came up before her. “I don't believe one word of it,” she said again to herself.
But that whisper which had shocked her ear had already begun to be repeated all over the village—by furtive matrons, behind their hands, when the children had been sent out of the room; by girls, blushing beneath each other's eyes as they whispered; by the lounging men in the village store; it was sent like an evil strain through the consciousness of the village, until everybody except Rebecca's own family had heard it.
Barnabas saw little of other people, and nobody dared repeat the whisper to him, and they had too much mercy or too little courage to repeat it to Caleb or Deborah. Indeed, it is doubtful if any woman in the village, even Hannah Berry, would have ventured to face Deborah Thayer with this rumor concerning her daughter.
Deborah had of late felt anxious about Rebecca, who did not seem like herself. Her face was strangely changed; all the old meaning had gone out of it, and given place to another, which her mother could not interpret. Sometimes Rebecca looked like a stranger to her as she moved about the house. She said to many that Rebecca was miserable, and was incensed that she got so little sympathy in response. Once when Rebecca fainted in meeting, and had to be carried out, she felt in the midst of her alarm a certain triumph. “I guess folks will see now that I ain't been fussin' over her for nothin',” she thought. When Rebecca revived under a sprinkle of water, out in the vestibule, she said impatiently to the other women bending their grave, concerned faces over her, “She's been miserable for some time. I ain't surprised at this at all myself.”
Deborah watched over Rebecca with a fierce, pecking tenderness like a bird. She brewed great bowls of domestic medicines from nuts and herbs, and made her drink whether she would or not. She sent her to bed early, and debarred her from the night air. She never had a suspicion of the figure slipping softly as a shadow across the north parlor and out the front door night after night.
She never exchanged a word with Rebecca about William Berry. She tried to persuade herself that Rebecca no longer thought much about him; she drove from her mind the fear lest Rebecca's illness might be due to grief at parting from him. She looked at Thomas Payne with a speculative eye; she thought that he would make a good husband for Rebecca; she dreamed of him, and built bridal castles for him and her daughter, as she knitted those yards of lace at night, when Rebecca had gone to bed in her little room off the north parlor. When Thomas Payne went west a month after Charlotte Barnard had refused him, she transferred her dreams to some fine stranger who should come to the village and at once be smitten with Rebecca. She never thought it possible that Rebecca could be persisting in her engagement to William Berry against her express command. Her own obstinacy was incredible to her in her daughter; she had not the slightest suspicion of it, and Rebecca had less to guard against.
As the fall advanced Rebecca showed less and less inclination to go in the village society. Her mother fairly drove her out at times. Once Rebecca, utterly overcome, sank down in a chair and wept when her mother urged her to go to a husking-party in the neighborhood.
“You've got to spunk up an' go, if you don't feel like it,” said her mother. “You'll feel better for it afterwards. There ain't no use in givin' up so. I'm goin' to get you a new crimson woollen dress, an' I'm goin' to have you go out more'n you've done lately.”
“I—don't want a new dress,” returned Rebecca, with wild sobs.
“Well, I'm goin' to get you one to-morrow,” said her mother. “Now go an' wash your face an' do up your hair, an' get ready. You can wear your brown dress, with the cherry ribbon in your hair, to-night.”
“I don't—feel fit to, mother,” moaned Rebecca, piteously.
But Deborah would not listen to her. She made her get ready for the husking-party, and looked at her with pride when she stood all dressed to go, in the kitchen.
“You look better than you've done for some time,” said she, “an' that brown dress don't look bad, either, if you have had it three winters. I'm goin' to get you a nice new crimson woollen this winter. I've had my mind made up to for some time.”
After Rebecca had gone and Ephraim had said his catechism and gone to bed, Deborah sat and knitted, and planned to get the crimson dress for Rebecca the next day.
She looked over at Caleb, who sat dozing by the fire. “I'll go to-morrow, if he ain't got to spend all that last interest-money for the parish taxes an' cuttin' that wood,” said she. “I dunno how much that wood-cuttin' come to, an' he won't know to-night if I wake him up. I can't get it through his head. But I'll buy it to-morrow if there's money enough left.”
But Deborah was forced to wait a few weeks, since it took all the interest-money for the parish taxes and to pay for the wood-cutting. She had to wait until Caleb had sold some of the wood, and that took some time, since seller and purchasers were slow-motioned.
At last, one afternoon, she drove herself over to Bolton in the chaise to buy the dress. She went to Bolton, because she would not go herself to Silas Berry's store and trade with William. She could send Caleb there for household goods, but this dress she would trust no one but herself to purchase.
She had planned that Rebecca should go with her, but the girl looked so utterly wan and despairing that day that she forbore to insist upon it. Caleb would have accompanied her, but she would not let him. “I never did think much of men-folks standin' round in stores gawpin' while women-folks was tradin',” said she. She would not allow Ephraim to go, although he pleaded hard. It was quite a cold day, and she was afraid of the sharp air for his laboring breath.
A little after noon she set forth, all alone in the chaise, slapping the reins energetically over the white horse's back, a thick green veil tied over her bonnet under her chin, and the thin, sharp wedge of face visible between the folds crimsoning in the frosty wind.
While she was gone Rebecca sat beside the window and sewed, Caleb shelled corn in the chimney-corner, and Ephraim made a pretence of helping him. “You set down an' help your father shell corn while I am gone,” his mother had sternly ordered.
Occasionally Ephraim addressed whining remonstrances to his father, and begged to be allowed to go out-of-doors, and Caleb would quiet him with one effectual rejoinder: “You know she won't like it if you do, sonny. You know what she said.”
Caleb, as he shelled the corn with the pottering patience of old age and constitutional slowness, glanced now and then at his daughter in the window. He thought she looked very badly, and he had all the time lately the bewildered feeling of a child who sees in a familiar face the marks of emotions unknown to it.
“Don't you feel as well as common to-day, Rebecca?” he asked once, and cleared his throat.
“I don't feel sick, as I know of, any day,” replied Rebecca, shortly, and her face reddened.
As she sewed she looked out now and then at the wild December day, the trees reeling in the wind, and the sky driving with the leaden clouds. It was too cold and too windy to snow all the afternoon, but towards night it moderated, and the wind died down. When Mrs. Thayer came home it was snowing quite hard, and her green veil was white when she entered the kitchen. She took it off and shook it, sputtering moisture in the fireplace.
“There's goin' to be a hard storm; it's lucky I went to-day,” said she. “I kept the dress under the buffalo-robe, an' that ain't hurt any.”
Deborah waxed quite angry, when she proudly shook out the soft gleaming crimson lengths of thibet, because Rebecca showed so little interest in it. “You don't deserve to have a new dress; you act like a stick of wood,” she said.
Rebecca made no reply. Presently, when she had gone out of the room for something, Caleb said, anxiously, “I guess she don't feel quite so well as common to-night.”
“I'm gettin' most out of patience; I dunno what ails her. I'm goin' to have the doctor if this keeps on,” returned Deborah.
Ephraim, sucking a stick of candy brought to him from Bolton, cast a strange glance at his mother—a glance compounded of shrewdness and terror; but she did not see it.
It snowed hard all night; in the morning the snow was quite deep, and there was no appearance of clearing. As soon as the breakfast dishes were put away, Deborah got out the crimson thibet. She had learned the tailoring and dressmaking trade in her youth, and she always cut and fitted the garments for the family.
She worked assiduously; by the middle of the forenoon the dress was ready to be tried on. Ephraim and his father were out in the barn, she and Rebecca were alone in the house.
She made Rebecca stand up in the middle of the kitchen floor, and she began fitting the crimson gown to her. Rebecca stood drooping heavily, her eyes cast down. Suddenly her mother gave a great start, pushed the girl violently from her, and stood aloof. She did not speak for a few minutes; the clock ticked in the dreadful silence. Rebecca cast one glance at her mother, whose eyes seemed to light the innermost recesses of her being to her own vision; then she would have looked away, but her mother's voice arrested her.
“Look at me,” said Deborah. And Rebecca looked; it was like uncovering a disfigurement or a sore.
“What—ails you?” said her mother, in a terrible voice.
Then Rebecca turned her head; her mother's eyes could not hold her any longer. It was as if her very soul shrank.
“Go out of this house,” said her mother, after a minute.
Rebecca did not make a sound. She went, bending as if there were a wind at her back impelling her, across the kitchen in her quilted petticoat and her crimson thibet waist, her white arms hanging bare. She opened the door that led towards her own bedroom, and passed out.
Presently Deborah, still standing where Rebecca had left her, heard the front door of the house shut. After a few minutes she took the broom from its peg in the corner, went through the icy north parlor, past Rebecca's room, to the front door. The snow heaped on the outer threshold had fallen in when Rebecca opened it, and there was a quantity on the entry floor.
Deborah opened the door again, and swept out the snow carefully; she even swept the snow off the steps outside, but she never cast a glance up or down the road. Then she beat the snow off the broom, and went in and locked the door behind her.
On her way back to the kitchen she paused at Rebecca's little bedroom. The waist of the new gown lay on the bad. She took it out into the kitchen, and folded it carefully with the skirt and the pieces; then she carried it up to the garret and laid it away in a chest.
When Caleb and Ephraim came in from the barn they found Deborah sitting at the window knitting a stocking. She did not look up when they entered.
The corn was not yet shelled, and Caleb arranged his baskets in the chimney-corner, and fell to again. Ephraim began teasing his mother to let him crack some nuts, but she silenced him peremptorily. “Set down an' help your father shell that corn,” said she. And Ephraim pulled a grating chair up to his father, muttering cautiously.
Caleb kept looking at Deborah anxiously. He glanced at the door frequently.
“Where's Rebecca?” he asked at last.
“I dunno,” replied Deborah.
“Has she laid down?”
“No, she ain't.”
“She ain't gone out in the snow, has she?” Caleb said, with deploring anxiety.
Deborah answered not a word. She pursed her lips and knitted.
“She ain't, has she, mother?”
“Keep on with your corn,” said Deborah; and that was all she would say.
Presently she arose and prepared dinner in the same dogged silence. Caleb, and even Ephraim, watched her furtively, with alarmed eyes.
When Rebecca did not appear at the dinner-table Caleb did not say anything about it, but his old face was quite pale. He ate his dinner from the force of habit of over seventy years, during which time he had always eaten his dinner, but he did not taste it consciously.
He made up his mind that as soon as he got up from the table he would go over to Barney's and consult him. After he pushed his chair away he was slipping out shyly, but Deborah stopped him.
“Set down an' finish that corn. I don't want it clutterin' up the kitchen any longer,” said she.
“I thought I'd jest slip out a minute, mother.”
Deborah motioned him towards the chimney-corner and the baskets of corn with a stern gesture, and Caleb obeyed. Ephraim, too, settled down beside his father, and fell to shelling corn without being told. He was quite cowed and intimidated by this strange mood of his mother's, and involuntarily shrank closer to his father when she passed near him.
Caleb and Ephraim both watched Deborah with furtive terror, as she moved about, washing and putting away the dinner-dishes and sweeping the kitchen.
They looked at each other, when, after the after-dinner housework was all done, she took her shawl and hood from the peg, and drew some old wool socks of Caleb's over her shoes. She went out without saying a word. Ephraim waited a few minutes after the door shut behind her; then he ran to the window.
“She's gone to Barney's,” he announced, rolling great eyes over his shoulder at his father; and the old man also went over to the window and watched Deborah plodding through the snow up the street.
It was not snowing so hard now, and the clouds were breaking, but a bitter wind was blowing from the northwest. It drove Deborah along before it, lashing her skirts around her gaunt limbs; but she leaned back upon it, and did not bend.
The road was not broken out, and the snow was quite deep, but she went along with no break in her gait. She went into Barney's yard and knocked at his door. She set her mouth harder when she heard him coming.
Barney opened the door and started when he saw who was there. “Is it you, mother?” he said, involuntarily; then his face hardened like hers, and he waited. The mother and son confronted each other looked more alike than ever.
Deborah opened her mouth to speak twice before she made a sound. She stood upright and unyielding, but her face was ghastly, and she drew her breath in long, husky gasps. Finally she spoke, and Barney started again at her voice.
“I want you to go after William Berry and make him marry Rebecca,” she said.
“Mother, what do you mean?”