There was a silence. The doctor's wife flushed red. Mrs. Ray's sharp face was imperturbable. Deborah, sitting erect in one of her best flag-bottomed chairs, looked as if she were alone in the room.
The doctor's wife cleared her throat. “Mis' Thayer,” she began.
Deborah looked at her with calm expectation.
“Mis' Thayer,” said the doctor's wife, “Mis' Ray and I thought we ought to come over here this afternoon. Mis' Ray heard something last night, an' she came over an' told the doctor, an' he said you ought to know—”
The doctor's wife paused, panting. Then the door opened and Caleb peered in. He bowed stiffly to the two guests; then, with apprehensive glances at his wife, slid into a chair near the door.
“Mis' Ray's Ezra told her last night,” proceeded the doctor's wife, “that the night before your son died he run away unbeknown to you, an' went slidin' down hill. The doctor says mebbe that was what killed him. He said you'd ought to know.”
Deborah leaned forward; her face worked like the breaking up of an icy river. “Be you sure?” said she.
“Ezra told me last night,” interposed Mrs. Ray. “I had a hard time gettin' it out of him; he promised Ephraim he wouldn't tell. But somethin' he said made me suspect, an' I got it out of him. He said Ephraim told him he run away, an' he left him there slidin' when he came home. 'Twas as much as 'leven o'clock then; I remember I give Ezra a whippin' next mornin' for stayin' out so late. But then, of course, whippin' Ezra wa'n't nothin' like whippin' Ephraim.”
“The doctor says most likely that was what killed him, after all, an' you'd ought to know,” said the doctor's wife.
“Be you sure?” said Deborah again.
“Ephraim wa'n't to blame. He never had no show; he never went a-slidin' like the other little fellers,” said Caleb, suddenly, out of his corner; and he snivelled as he spoke.
Deborah turned on him sharply. “Did you know anything about it?” said she.
“He told me on 't that mornin',” said Caleb; “he told me how he'd been a-slidin', an' how he eat some mince-pie.”
“Eat—some—mince-pie!” gasped Deborah, and there was a great light of hope in her face.
“Well,” said the doctor's wife, “if that boy eat mince-pie, an' slid down hill, too, I guess you ain't much call to worry about anything you've done, Mis' Thayer. I know what the doctor has said right along.”
The doctor's wife arose with a certain mild impressiveness, as if some mantle of her husband's authority had fallen upon her. She shook out her ample skirts as if they were redolent of rhubarb and mint. “Well, I guess we had better be going,” said she, and her inflections were like the doctor's.
Mrs. Ray rose also. “Well, we thought you'd ought to know,” said she.
“I'm much obliged to you,” said Deborah.
She went through the kitchen with them. When the door was shut behind them she turned to Caleb, who had shuffled along at her heels. “Oh, father, why didn't you tell me if you knew, why didn't you tell me?” she gasped out.
Caleb stared at her. “Why, mother?” he returned.
“Didn't you know I thought I'd killed him, father? didn't you know I thought I'd killed my son? An' now maybe I haven't! maybe I haven't! O Lord, I thank thee for letting me know before I die! Maybe I haven't killed him, after all!”
“I didn't s'pose it would make any difference,” said Caleb, helplessly.
Suddenly, to the old man's great terror, his wife caught hold of him and clung to him. He staggered a little; his arms hung straight at his sides. “Why, what ails you, mother?” he stammered out. “I didn't tell you, 'cause I thought you'd be blamin' him for 't. Mother, don't you take on so; now don't!”
“I—wish—you'd go an' get Rebecca an' Barney, father,” said Deborah, faintly. She suddenly wavered so that her old husband wavered with her, and they reeled back and forth like two old trees in a wind.
“Why, what ails you, mother, what ails you?” Caleb gasped out. He caught Deborah's arm, and clutched out at something to save himself. Then they sank to the floor together.
Barney had just come up from the field, and was at his own door when his father came panting into the yard. “What is it? what's the matter?” he cried out.
“Mother's fell!” gasped Caleb.
“Fell! has she hurt her?”
“Dunno—she can't get up; come quick!”
As Barney rushed out of the yard he cast a glance up the hill towards Charlotte's house; in every crisis of his life his mind turned involuntarily to her, as if she were another self, to be made acquainted with all its exigencies. But when he came out on the road he met Charlotte herself face to face; she had been over to her Aunt Sylvia's.
“Something is wrong with mother,” Barney said, with a strange appeal. Then he went on, and Charlotte was at his side, running as fast as he. Caleb hurried after them, panting, the tears running down his old cheeks.
“Father says she's fell!” Barney said, as they sped along.
“Maybe she's only fainted,” responded Charlotte's steady, faithful voice.
But Deborah Thayer had more than fainted. It might have been that Ephraim had inherited from her the heart-taint that had afflicted and shortened his life, and it might have been that her terrible experiences of the last few months would have strained her heart to its undoing, had its valves been made of steel.
Barney carried his mother into the bedroom, and laid her on the bed. He and Charlotte worked over her, but she never spoke nor moved again. At last Charlotte laid her hand on Barney's arm. “Come out now,” said she, and Barney followed her out.
When they were out in the kitchen Barney looked in her face. “It's no use, she's gone!” he said, hoarsely. Charlotte nodded. Suddenly she put her arms up around his neck, and drew his head down to her bosom, and held it there, stroking his cheek.
“Oh, Charlotte,” Barney sobbed. Charlotte bent over him, whispering softly, smoothing his hair and cheek with her tender hand.
Caleb had gone for the doctor and Rebecca while they tried to restore Deborah, and had given the alarm on the way. Some women came hurrying in with white faces, staring curiously even then at Barney and Charlotte; but she never heeded them, except to answer in the affirmative when they asked, in shocked voices, if Deborah was dead. She went on soothing Barney, as if he had been her child, with no more shame in it, until he raised his white face from her breast of his own accord.
“Oh, Charlotte, you will stay to-night, won't you?” he pleaded.
“Yes, I'll stay,” said Charlotte. Young as Charlotte was, she had watched with the sick and sat up with the dead many a time. So she and the doctor's wife watched with Deborah Thayer that night. Rebecca came, but she was not strong enough to stay. The next day Charlotte assisted in the funeral preparations. It made a great deal of talk in the village. People wondered if Barney would marry her now, and if she would sit with the mourners at the funeral. But she sat with her father and mother in the south room, and time went on after Deborah died, and Barney did not marry her.
A few days after Deborah's funeral Charlotte had an errand at the store after supper. When she went down the hill the sun had quite set, but there was a clear green light. The sky gave it out, and there seemed to be also a green glow from the earth. Charlotte went down the hill with the evening air fresh and damp in her face. Lilacs were in blossom all about, and their fragrance was so vital and intense that it seemed almost like a wide presence in the green twilight.
She reached Barney's house, and passed it; then she came to the Thayer house. Before that lay the garden. The ranks of pease and beans were in white blossom, and there was a pale shimmer as of a cobweb veil over it.
Charlotte had passed the garden when she heard a voice behind her:
“Charlotte!”
She stopped, and Barney came up.
“Good-evening,” said he.
“Good-evening,” said Charlotte.
“I saw you going by,” said Barney. Then he paused again, and Charlotte waited.
“I saw you going by,” he repeated, “and—I thought I'd like to speak to you. I wanted to thank you for what you did—about mother.”
“You're very welcome,” replied Charlotte.
Barney ground a stone beneath his heel. “I sha'n't ever forget it, and—father won't, either,” he said. His voice trembled, and yet there was a certain doggedness in it.
Charlotte stood waiting. Barney turned slowly away. “Good-night,” he said.
“Good-night,” returned Charlotte, quickly, and she fairly sprang away from him and down the road. Her limbs trembled, but she held her head up proudly. She understood it all perfectly. Barney had meant to inform her that his behavior towards her on the day his mother died had been due to a momentary weakness; that she was to expect nothing further. She went on to the store and did her errand, then went home. As she entered the kitchen her mother came through from the front room. She had been sitting at a window watching for Charlotte to return; she thought Barney might be with her.
“Well, you've got home,” said she, and it sounded like a question.
“Yes,” said Charlotte. She laid her parcels on the table. “I guess I'll go to bed,” she added.
“Why, it's dreadful early to go to bed, ain't it?”
“Well, I'm tired; I guess I'll go.”
The candle-light was dim in the room, but Sarah eyed her daughter sharply. She thought she looked pale.
“Did you meet anybody?” she asked.
“I don't know; there wasn't many folks out.”
“You didn't see Barney, did you?”
“Yes, I met him.”
Charlotte lighted another candle, and opened the door.
“Look here,” said her mother.
“Well?” replied Charlotte, with a sort of despairing patience.
“What did he say to you? I want to know.”
“He didn't say much of anything. He thanked me for what I did about his mother.”
“Didn't he say anything about anything else?”
“No, he didn't.” Charlotte went out, shielding her candle.
“You don't mean that he didn't say anything, after the way he acted that day his mother died?”
“I didn't expect him to say anything.”
“He's treated you mean, Charlotte,” her mother cried out, with a half sob. “He'd ought to be strung up after he acted so, huggin' an' kissin' you right before folk's face and eyes.”
“It was more my fault than 'twas his,” returned Charlotte; and she shut the door.
“Then I should think you'd be ashamed of yourself,” Sarah called after her, but Charlotte did not seem to hear.
“I never see such work, for my part,” Sarah wailed out to herself.
“Mother, you come in here a minute,” Cephas called out of the bedroom. He had gone to bed soon after supper.
“Anythin' new about Barney?” he asked, when his wife stood beside him.
“Barney ain't no more notion of comin' back than he had before, in spite of all the talk. I never see such work,” replied Sarah, in a voice strained high with tears.
“I call it pretty doin's,” assented Cephas. His pale face, with its venerable beard, was closely set about with his white nightcap. He lay staring straight before him with a solemnly reflective air.
“I wish you hadn't brought up 'lection that time, father,” ventured Sarah, with a piteous sniff.
“If the Democratic party had only lived different, an' hadn't eat so much meat, there wouldn't have been any trouble,” returned Cephas, magisterially. “If you go far enough, you'll always get back to that. A man is what he puts into his mouth. Meat victuals is at the bottom of democracy. If there wa'n't any meat eat there wouldn't be any Democratic party, an' there wouldn't be any wranglin' in the state. There'd be one party, jest as there'd ought to be.”
“I wish you hadn't brought it up, father,” Sarah lamented again; “it's most killin' me.”
“If we hadn't both of us been eatin' so much animal food there wouldn't have been any trouble,” repeated Cephas.
“Well, I dunno much about animal food, but I know I'm about discouraged,” said Sarah. And she went back to the kitchen, and sat down in the rocking-chair and cried a long time, with her apron over her face. Her heartache was nearly as sore as her daughter's up-stairs.
Charlotte did not speak to Barney again all summer—indeed, she scarcely ever saw him. She had an occasional half-averted glimpse of his figure across the fields, and that was all. Barney had gone back to the old house to live with his father, and remained there through the summer and fall; but Caleb died in November. He had never been the same since Deborah's death; whether, like an old tree whose roots are no longer so firm in the earth that they can withstand every wind of affliction, the shock itself had shaken him to his fall, or the lack of that strange wontedness which takes the place of early love and passion had enfeebled him, no one could tell. He had seemed to simply stare at life from a sunny place on a stone-wall or a door-step all summer.
When the autumn set in he sat in his old chair by the fire. Caleb had always felt cold since Deborah died. When the bell tolled off his years, one morning in November, nobody felt surprised. People had said to each other for some time that Caleb Thayer was failing.
Barney, after his father died, went back to his own forlorn new house to live, and his sister Rebecca and her husband came to live in the old one. Rebecca went to meeting now every Sunday, wearing her mother's black shawl and a black ribbon on her bonnet, and sitting in her mother's place in the Thayer pew. She never went anywhere else, her rosy color had gone, and she looked old and haggard.
Barney went into his sister's now and then of a Sunday night, and sat with her and William an hour or so. He and William would sometimes warm into quite an animated discussion over politics or theology, while Rebecca sat silently by. Barney went nowhere else, not even to meeting. Sundays he used to watch furtively for Charlotte to go past with her father and mother. Quite often Sylvia Crane used to appear from her road and join them, and walk along with Charlotte. Barney used to look at her moving down the road at Charlotte's side, as at the merest supernumerary on his own tragic stage. But every tragedy has its multiplying glass to infinity, and every actor has his own tragedy. Sylvia Crane that winter, all secretly and silently, was acting her own principal rôle in hers. She had quite come to the end of her small resources, and nobody, except the selectmen of Pembroke, knew it. They were three saturnine, phlegmatic, elderly men, old Squire Payne being the chairman, and they kept her secret well. Sylvia waylaid them in by-places, she stole around to the back door of Squire Payne's house by night, she conducted herself as if it were a guilty intrigue, and all to keep her poverty hid as long as may be.
Old Squire Payne was a widower, a grave old man of few words. He advanced poor Sylvia meagre moneys on her little lands, and he told nobody. There came a day when he gave her the last dollar upon her New England soil, full of old plough-ridges and dried weeds and stones.
Sylvia went home with it in the pocket of her quilted petticoat under her dress skirt. She kept feeling of it to see if it were safe as she walked along. The snow was quite deep, the road was not well broken out, and she plodded forward with bent head, her black skirt gathering a crusty border of snow.
She had to pass Richard Alger's house, but she never looked up. It was six o'clock, and quite dark; it had been dark when she set out at five. The housewives were preparing supper; there was a smell of burning pine-wood in the air, and now and then a savory scent of frying meat. Sylvia had smelled brewing tea and baking bread in Squire Payne's house, and she had heard old Margaret, the Scotch woman who had lived with the squire's family ever since she could remember, stepping around in another room. Old Margaret was almost the only servant, the only regular and permanent servant, in Pembroke, and she enjoyed a curious sort of menial distinction: she dressed well, wore a handsome cashmere shawl which had come from Scotland, and held her head high in the squire's pew. People saluted her with respect, and her isolation of inequality gave her a reversed dignity.
Sylvia had hoped Margaret would not come in while she sat with the squire. She was afraid of her eyes, which flashed keen like a man's under shaggy brows. She did not want her to see the squire counting out the money from his leather purse, although she knew that Margaret would keep her own counsel.
She had been glad enough to escape and not see her appear behind the bulk of the squire in the doorway. Squire Payne was full of laborious courtesy, and always himself aided Sylvia to the door when she came for money, and that always alarmed her. She would drop a meek courtesy on trembling knees and hurry away.
Sylvia had almost reached the old road leading to her own house, when she saw a figure advancing towards her through the dusk. She saw it was a woman by the wide swing of the skirts, and trembled. She felt a presentiment as to who it was. She held her head down and well to one side, she bent over and tried to hurry past, but the figure stopped.
“Is that you, Sylvy Crane?” said her sister, Hannah Berry.
Sylvia did not stop. “Yes, it's me,” she stammered. “Good-evenin', Hannah.”
She tried to pass, but Hannah stood in her way. “What you hurryin' so for?” she asked, sharply; “where you been?”
“Whereyoubeen?” returned Sylvia, trembling.
“Up to Sarah's. Charlotte, she's gone down to Rebecca's. She's terrible thick with Rebecca. Well, I've been to see Rebecca; an' Rose, she's been, an' I ain't nothin' to say. William has got her for a wife, an' we've got to hold up our heads before folks; an' when it comes right down to it, there's a good many folks can't say much. If Charlotte Barnard wants to be thick with Rebecca, she can. Her mother won't say nothin'. She always was as easy as old Tilly; an' as for Cephas, he's either eatin' grass, or he ain't eatin' grass, an' that's all he cares about, unless he gets stirred up about politics, the way he did with Barney Thayer. I dunno but Charlotte thinks she'll get him back again goin' to see Rebecca. I miss my guess but what she sees him there sometimes. I wouldn't have a daughter of mine chasin' a fellar that had give her the mitten; but Charlotte ain't got no pride, nor her mother, neither. Where did you say you'd been, trapesin' through the snow?”
“Has Rose got her things most done?” asked Sylvia, desperately. Distress was awakening duplicity in her simple, straightforward heart. All Hannah Berry's thought slid, as it were, in well-greased grooves; only give one a starting push and it went on indefinitely and left all others behind, and her sister Sylvia knew it.
“Well, she's got 'em pretty near done,” replied Hannah Berry. “Her underclothes are all done, an' the quilts; the weddin'-dress ain't bought yet, an' she's got to have a mantilla. Do you know Charlotte ain't never wore that handsome mantilla she had when she was expectin' to marry Barney?”
“Ain't she?”
“No, she ain't, nor her silk gown neither. I said all I darsed to. I thought mebbe she or Sarah would offer; they both of 'em know how hard it is to get anything out of Silas; but they didn't, an' I wa'n't goin' to ask, nohow. I shall get a new silk an' a mantilla for Rose, an' not be beholden to nobody, if I have to sell the spoons I had when I was married.”
“I don't s'pose they have much to do with,” said Sylvia. She began to gradually edge past her sister.
“Of course they haven't; I know that jest as well as you do. But if Charlotte ain't goin' to get married she don't want any weddin'-gown an' mantilla, an' she won't ever get married. She let Thomas Payne slip, an' there ain't nobody else I can think of for her. If she ain't goin' to want weddin'-clothes, I don't see why she an' her mother would be any poorer for givin' hers away. 'Twouldn't cost 'em any more than to let 'em lay in the chest. Well, I've got to go home; it's supper-time. Where did you say you'd been, Sylvy?”
Sylvia was well past her sister; she pretended not to hear. “You ain't been over for quite a spell,” she called back, faintly.
“I know I ain't,” returned Hannah. “I've been tellin' Rose we'd come over to tea some afternoon before she was married.”
“Do,” said Sylvia, but the cordiality in her voice seemed to overweigh it.
“Well, mebbe we'll come over to-morrow,” said Hannah. “We've got some pillow-slips to trim, an' we can bring them. You'd better ask Sarah an' Charlotte, if she can stay away from Rebecca Thayer's long enough.”
“Yes, I will,” said Sylvia, feebly, over her shoulder.
“We'll come early,” said Hannah. Then the sisters sped apart through the early winter darkness. Poor Sylvia fairly groaned out loud when her sister was out of hearing and she had turned the corner of the old road.
“What shall I do? what shall I do?” she muttered.
Her sisters to tea meant hot biscuits and plum sauce and pie and pound-cake and tea. Sylvia had yet a little damson sauce at the bottom of a jar, although she had not preserved last year, for lack of sugar; but hot biscuits and pie, the pound-cake and tea would have to be provided.
She felt again of the little money-store in her pocket; that was all that stood between her and the poor-house; every penny was a barrier and had its carefully calculated value. This outlay would reduce terribly her little period of respite and independence; yet she hesitated as little as Fouquet planning the splendid entertainment, which would ruin him, for Louis XIII.
Her sisters and nieces must come to tea; and all the food, which was the village fashion and as absolute in its way as court etiquette, must be provided.
“They'll suspect if I don't,” said Sylvia Crane.
She rolled away the stone from the door and entered her solitary house. She lighted her candle and prepared for bed. She did not get any supper. She said to herself with a sudden fierceness, which came over her at times—a mild impulse of rebellion which indicated perhaps some strain from far-off, untempered ancestors, which had survived New England generations—that she did not care if she never ate supper again.
“They're all comin' troopin' in here to-morrow, an' it's goin' to take about all the little I've got left to get victuals for 'em, an' I've got to go without to-night if I starve!” she cried out quite loud and defiantly, as if her hard providence lurked within hearing in some dark recess of the room.
She raked ashes over the coals in the fireplace. “I'll go to bed an' save the fire, too,” she said; “it'll take about all the wood I've got left to-morrow. I've got to heat the oven. Might as well go to bed, an' lay there forever, anyway. If I stayed up till doomsday nobody'd come.”
Sylvia set the shovel back with a vicious clatter; then she struck out—like a wilful child who hurts itself because of its rage and impotent helplessness to hurt aught else—her thin, red hand against the bricks of the chimney. She looked at the bruises on it with bitter exultation, as if she saw in them some evidence of her own freedom and power, even to her own hurt.
When she went to bed she stowed away her money under the feather-bed. She could not go to sleep. Some time in the night a shutter in another room up-stairs banged. She got up, lighted the candle, and trod over the icy floors to the room relentlessly with her bare feet. There was a pane of glass broken behind the shutter, and the wind had loosened the fastening. Sylvia forced the shutter back; in a strange rage she heard another pane of glass crack. “I don't care if every pane of glass in the window is broken,” she muttered, as she hooked the fastening with angry, trembling fingers.
Her thin body in its cotton night-gown, cramped with long rigors of cold, her delicate face reddened as if before a fire, her jaws felt almost locked as she went through the deadly cold of the lonely house back to bed; but that strange rage in her heart enabled her to defy it, and awakened within her something like blasphemy against life and all the conditions thereof, but never against Richard Alger. She never felt one throb of resentment against him. She even wondered, when she was back in bed, if he had bedclothing enough, if the quilts and bed-puffs that his mother had left were not worn out; her own were very thin.
The next day Sylvia heated her brick oven; she went to the store and bought materials, and made pound-cake and pies. While they were baking she ran over and invited Charlotte and her mother. She did not see Cephas; he had gone to draw some wood.
“I'd like to have him come, too,” she said, as she went out; “but I dunno as he'd eat anything I've got for tea.”
“Land! he eats anything when he goes out anywhere to tea,” replied Mrs. Barnard. “He was over to Hannah's a while ago, an' he eat everything. He eats pie-crust with shortenin' now, anyway. He got so he couldn't stan' it without. I guess he'd like to come. He'll have to draw wood some this afternoon, but he can come in time for tea. I'll lay out his clothes on the bed for him.”
“Well, have him come, then,” said Sylvia. Sylvia was nearly out of the yard when Charlotte called after her: “Don't you want me to come over and help you, Aunt Sylvia?” she called out. She stood in the door with her apron flying out in the wind like a blue flag.
“No, I guess not,” replied Sylvia; “I don't need any help. I ain't got much to do.”
“I think Aunt Sylvia looks sick,” Charlotte said to her mother when she went in.
“I thought she looked kind of peaked,” said Sarah. But neither of them dreamed of the true state of affairs: how poor Sylvia Crane, half-starved and half-frozen in heart and stomach, was on the verge of bankruptcy of all her little worldly possessions.
Sylvia's sisters, practical enough in other respects, were singularly ignorant and incompetent concerning any property except the few dollars and cents in their own purses.
They had always supposed Sylvia had enough to live on, as long as she lived at all. They had a comfortable sense of generosity and self-sacrifice, since they had let her have all the old homestead after her mother's death without a word, and even against covert remonstrances on the parts of their husbands.
Silas Berry had once said out quite openly to his wife and Sarah Barnard: “That will had ought to be broke, accordin' to my way of thinkin',” and Hannah had returned with spirit: “It won't ever be broke unless it's against my will, Silas Berry. I know it seems considerable for Sylvy to have it all, but she's took care of mother all those years, an' I don't begrutch it to her, an' she's a-goin' to have it. I don't much believe Richard Alger will ever have her now she's got so old, an' she'd ought to have enough to live on the rest of her life an' keep her comfortable.”
Therefore Sylvia's sisters had a conviction that she was comfortably provided with worldly gear. Mrs. Berry was even speculating upon the probability of her giving Rose something wherewith to begin house-keeping when her marriage with Tommy Ray took place.
The two sisters, with their daughters, came early that afternoon. Mrs. Berry and Rose sewed knitted lace on pillow-slips; Mrs. Barnard and Charlotte were making new shirts for Cephas; Charlotte sat by the window and set beautiful stitches in her father's linen shirt-bosoms, while her aunt Hannah's tongue pricked her ceaselessly as with small goading thorns.
“I s'pose this seems kind of natural to you, don't it, Charlotte, gettin' pillow-slips ready?” said Mrs. Berry.
“I don't know but it does,” answered Charlotte, never raising her eyes from her work. Her mother flushed angrily. She opened her mouth as if to speak, then she shut it again hard.
“Let me see, how many did you make?” asked Mrs. Berry.
“She made two dozen pair,” Charlotte's mother answered for her.
“An' you've got 'em all laid away, yellowin'?”
“I guess they ain't yellowed much,” said Sarah Barnard.
“I don't see when you're ever goin' to use 'em.”
“Mebbe there'd be chances enough to use 'em if some folks was as crazy to take up with 'em as some other folks,” returned Sarah Barnard.
“I'd like to know what you mean?”
“Oh, nothin'. If folks want chances to make pillow-slips bad enough there's generally poor tools enough layin' 'round, that's all.”
“I'd like to know what you mean, Sarah Barnard.”
“Oh, I don't mean nothin',” answered Sarah Barnard. She glanced at her daughter Charlotte and smiled slyly, but Charlotte never returned the glance and smile. She sewed steadily. Rose colored, but she said nothing. She looked very pretty and happy, as she sat there, sewing knitted lace on her wedding-pillows; and she really was happy. Her passionate heart had really satisfied itself with the boyish lover whom she would have despised except for lack of a better. She was and would be happy enough; it was only a question of deterioration of character, and the nobility of applying to the need of love the rules of ordinary hunger and thirst, and eating contentedly the crust when one could not get the pie, of drinking the water when one could not get the wine. Contentment may be sometimes a degradation; but she was happier than she had ever been in her life, although she had a little sense of humiliation when she reflected that Tommy Ray, younger than herself, tending store under her brother, was not exactly a brilliant match for her, and that everybody in the village would think so. So she colored angrily when her aunt Sarah spoke as she did, although she said nothing. But her mother, although she had rebelled in private bitterly against her daughter's choice, was ready enough to take up the cudgels for her in public.
“Well,” said Hannah Berry, “two old maids in the family is about enough, accordin' to my way of thinkin'.”
“It's better to be an old maid than to marry somebody you don't want, jest for the sake of bein' married,” retorted Sarah Barnard, fiercely.
The two sisters clashed like two thorny bushes of one family in a gale the whole afternoon. The two daughters sewed silently, and Sylvia knitted a stocking with scarcely a word until she arose to get tea.
Cephas and Silas both came to tea, which was served in state, with a fine linen table-cloth, and Sylvia's mother's green and white sprigged china. Nobody suspected, as they tasted the damson sauce with the thin silver spoons, as they tilted the green and white teacups to their lips, and ate the rich pound-cake and pie, what a very feast of renunciation and tragedy this was to poor Sylvia Crane. Cephas and Silas, indeed, knew that money had been advanced her by the town upon her estate, but they were far from suspecting, and, indeed, were unwilling to suspect, how nearly it was exhausted and the property lived out. It was only a meagre estimate that the town of Pembroke had made of the Crane ancestral acres. If Silas and Cephas had ever known what it was, they had dismissed it from their minds, they were interested in not knowing. Suppose their wives should want to give her a home and support.
The women knew nothing whatever.
When they went home, an hour after tea, Hannah Berry turned to Sylvia in the doorway. “I suppose you know the weddin' is comin' off pretty soon now,” said she.
“Yes, I s'posed 'twas,” answered Sylvia, trying to smile.
“Well, I thought I'd jest mention it, so you could get your present ready,” said Hannah. She nudged Rose violently as she spoke.
“I don't care; I meant to give her a hint,” she said, chuckling, when they were outside. “She can give you something jest as well as not; she might give you some silver teaspoons, or a table, or sofa. There! she bought that handsome sofa for herself a few years ago, an' she didn't need it more'n nothin' at all. I suppose she thought Richard Alger was comin' steady, but now he's stopped.”
Rose was married in a few weeks. The morning of the wedding-day Sylvia went into Berry's store and called William aside.
“If you can, I wish you'd come 'round by-an'-by with your horse an' your wood-sled,” said she.
“Yes, guess I can; what is it you want?” asked William, eying her curiously. She was very pale; there were red circles around her eyes, and her mouth trembled.
“Oh, it ain't anything, only a little present I wanted to send to Rose,” replied Sylvia.
“Well,” said William, “I'll be along by-an'-by.” He looked after her in a perplexed way as she went out.
Silas was in the back of the store, and presently he came forward. “What she want you to do?” he inquired of his son.
William told him. The old man chuckled. “Hannah give her a hint 'tother day, an' I guess she took it,” he said.
“I thought she looked pretty poorly,” said William—“looked as if she'd been crying or something. How do you suppose that property holds out, father? I heard the town was allowing her on it.”
“Oh, I guess it'll last her as long as she lives,” replied Silas, gruffly. “Your mother had ought to had her thirds in it.”
“I don't know about that,” said William. “Aunt Sylvy had a hard time takin' care of grandmother.”
“She was paid for 't,” returned Silas.
“Richard Alger treated her mean.”
“Guess he sat out considerable firewood an' candle-grease,” assented the old man.
A customer came in then, and Ezra Ray sprang forward. He was all excited over his brother's wedding, and was tending store in his place that day. His mother was making him a new suit to wear to the wedding, and he felt as if the whole affair hung, as it were, upon the buttons of his new jacket and the straps of his new trousers.
“Guess I might as well go over to Aunt Sylvy's now as any time,” said William.
“Don't see what she wanted you to fetch the horse an' sled for,” ruminated Silas. “Mother thought most likely she'd give some silver teaspoons if she give anything.”
William went out to the barn, put the horse in the sled, and drove down the hill towards Sylvia's. When he returned the old thin silver teaspoons of the Crane family were in his coat-pocket, and Sylvia's dearly beloved and fondly cherished hair-cloth sofa was on the sled behind him.
“What in creation did she send them old teaspoons and that old sofa for?” his mother asked, disgustedly.
“I don't know,” replied William, soberly; “but I do know one thing: I hated to take them bad enough. She acted all upset over it. I think she'd better have kept her sofa and teaspoons as long as she lived.”
“Course she was upset givin' away anything,” scolded his mother. “It was jest like her, givin' away a passel of old truck ruther than spend any money. Well, I s'pose you may as well set that sofa in the parlor. It ain't hurt much, anyway.”
Rose and her husband were to live with her parents for the present. She was married that evening. She wore a blue silk dress, and some rose-geranium blossoms and leaves in her hair. Tommy Ray sat by her side on Sylvia's sofa until the company and the minister were all there. Then they stood up and were married.
Sylvia came to the wedding in her best silk gown; she had trembled lest Richard Alger should be there, but he had not been invited. Hannah Berry cherished a deep resentment against him.
“I ain't goin' to have any man that's treated one of my folks as mean as he has set foot in my house to a weddin', not if I know it,” she told Rose.
After the marriage-cake and cider were passed around, the old people sat solemnly around the borders of the rooms, and the young people played games. William and his wife were not there. Hannah had not dared to slight them, but William could not prevail upon Rebecca to go.
Barney, also, had not been invited to the wedding. Mrs. Berry had an open grudge against him on her niece's account, and a covert one on her daughter's. Hannah Berry had a species of loyalty in her nature, inasmuch as she would tolerate ill-treatment of her kin from nobody but her own self.
Charlotte Barnard came with her father and mother, and sat quietly with them all the evening. She was beginning insensibly to rather hold herself aloof from the young people, and avoid joining in their games. She felt older. People had wondered if she would not wear the dress she had had made for her own wedding, but she did not. She wore her old purple silk, which had been made over from one of her mother's, and a freshly-starched muslin collar. The air was full of the rich sweetness of cake; there was a loud discord of laughter and high shrill voices, through which yet ran a subtle harmony of mirth. Laughing faces nodded and uplifted like flowers in the merry romping throngs in the middle of the room, while the sober ones against the walls watched with grave, elderly, retrospective eyes.
As soon as she could, Sylvia Crane stole into her sister's bedroom, where the women's outside garments were heaped high on the bed, got her own, opened the side door softly, and went home. The next day she was going to the poor-house, and nobody but the three selectmen of Pembroke knew it. She had begged them, almost on her knees, to tell nobody until she was there.
That night she rolled away the guardian stone from before the door with the feeling that it was for the last time. All that night she worked. She could not go to bed, she could not sleep, and she had gone beyond any frenzy of sorrow and tears. All her blind and helpless rage against life and the obdurately beneficent force, which had been her conception of Providence, was gone. When the battle is over there is no more need for the fury of combat. Sylvia felt her battle was over, and she felt the peace of defeat.
She was to take a few necessaries to the poor-house with her; she had them to pack, and she also had some cleaning to do.
She had a vague idea that the town, which seemed to loom over her like some dreadful shadowy giant of a child's story, would sell the house, and it must be left in neat order for the inspection of seller and buyer. “I ain't goin' to have the town lookin' over the house an' sayin' it ain't kept decent,” she said. So she worked hard all night, and her candle lit up first one window, then another, moving all over the house like a will-o'-the-wisp.
The man who had charge of the poor-house came for her the next morning at ten o'clock. Sylvia was all ready. At quarter past ten he drove out of the old road where the Crane house stood and down the village street. The man's name was Jonathan Leavitt. He was quite old but hearty, with a stubbly fringe of white beard around a ruddy face. He had come on a wood-sled for the greater convenience of bringing Sylvia's goods. There were a feather-bed, bolster, and pillows, tied up in an old homespun blanket, on the rear of the sled; there was also a red chest, and a great bundle of bedclothing. Sylvia sat in her best rocking-chair just behind Jonathan Leavitt, who drove standing.
“It's a pleasant day for this time of year,” he observed to Sylvia when they started. Sylvia nodded assent.
Jonathan Leavitt had had a fear lest Sylvia might make a disturbance about going. Many a time had it taken hours for him to induce a poor woman to leave her own door-stone; and when at length they had set forth, it was to an accompaniment of shrill, piteous lamentations, so strained and persistent that they seemed scarcely human, and more like the cries of a scared cat being hauled away from her home. Everybody on the road had turned to look after the sled, and Jonathan Leavitt had driven on, looking straight ahead, his face screwed hard, lashing now and then his old horse, with a gruff shout. Now he felt relieved and grateful to Sylvia for going so quietly. He was disposed to be very friendly to her.
“You'd better keep your rockin'-chair kind of stiddy,” he said, when they turned the corner into the new road, and the chair oscillated like an uneasy berth at sea.
Sylvia sat up straight in the chair. She had on her best bonnet and shawl, and her worked lace veil over her face. Her poor blue eyes stared out between the black silk leaves and roses. If she had been a dead woman and riding to her grave, and it had been possible for her to see as she was borne along the familiar road, she would have regarded everything in much the same fashion that she did now. She looked at everything—every tree, every house and wall—with a pang of parting forever. She felt as if she should never see them again in their old light.
The poor-house was three miles out of the village; the road lay past Richard Alger's house. When they drew near it Sylvia bent her head low and averted her face; she shut her eyes behind the black roses. She did not want to know when she passed the house. An awful shame that Richard should see her riding past to the poor-house seized upon her.
The wood-sled went grating on, a chain rattled; she calculated that they were nearly past when there was a jerk, and Jonathan Leavitt cried “Hullo!”
“Where are you going?” shouted another voice. Sylvia knew it. Her heart pounded. She turned her face farther to one side, and did not open her eyes.
Richard Alger came plunging down out of his yard. His handsome face was quite pale under a slight grizzle of beard, he was in his shirt-sleeves, he had on no dicky or stock, and his sinewy throat showed.
“Where you goin'?” he gasped out again, as he came up to the sled.
“I'm a takin' Sylvy home. Why?” inquired Jonathan Leavitt, with a dazed look.
“Home? What are you headed this way for? What are all those things on the sled?”
“She's lived out her place, an' the town's jest took it; guess you didn't know, Richard,” said Jonathan Leavitt. His eyes upon the other man were half shrewdly inquiring, half bewildered.
Sylvia never turned her head. She sat with her eyes closed behind her veil.
[Illustration: “Sylvia never turned her head”]
“Just turn that sled 'round,” said Richard Alger.
“Turn the sled 'round?”
“Yes, turn it 'round!” Richard himself grasped the bay horse by the bit as he spoke. “Back, back!” he shouted.
“What are you doin' on, Richard?” cried the old man; but he pulled his right rein mechanically, and the sled slewed slowly and safely around.
Richard jumped on and stood just beside Sylvia, holding to a stake. “Where d'ye want to go?” asked the old man.
“Back.”
“But the town—”
“I'll take care of the town.”
Jonathan Leavitt drove back. Sylvia opened her eyes a little way, and saw Richard's back. “You'll catch cold without your coat,” she half gasped.
“No, I sha'n't,” returned Richard, but he did not turn his head.
Sylvia did not say any more. She was trembling so that her very thoughts seemed to waver. They turned the corner of the old road, and drove up to her old house. Richard stepped off the sled, and held out his hands to Sylvia. “Come, get off,” said he.
“I dunno about this,” said Jonathan Leavitt. “I'm willin' as far as I'm concerned, Richard, but I've had my instructions.”
“I tell you I'll take care of it,” said Richard Alger. “I'll settle all the damages with the town. Come, Sylvia, get off.”
And Sylvia Crane stepped weakly off the wood-sled, and Richard Alger helped her into the house. “Why, you can't hardly walk,” said he, and Sylvia had never heard anything like the tenderness in his tone. He bent down and rolled away the stone. Sylvia had rolled it in front of the door herself, when she went out, as she supposed, for the last time. Then he opened the door, and took hold of her slender shawled arm, and half lifted her in.
“Go in an' sit down,” said he, “while we get the things in.”
Sylvia went mechanically into her clean, fireless parlor; it was the room where she had always received Richard. She sat down in a flag-bottomed chair and waited.
Richard and Jonathan Leavitt came into the house tugging the feather-bed between them. “We'll put it in the kitchen,” she heard Richard say. They brought in the chest and the bundle of bedding. Then Richard came into the parlor carrying the rocking-chair before him. “You want this in here, don't you?” he said.
“It belongs here,” said Sylvia, faintly. Jonathan Leavitt gathered up his reins and drove out of the yard.
Richard set down the chair; then he went and stood before Sylvia.
“Look here, Sylvia,” said he. Then he stopped and put his hands over his face. His whole frame shook. Sylvia stood up. “Don't, Richard,” she said.
“I never had any idea of this,” said Richard Alger, with a great groaning sob.
“Don't you feel so bad, Richard,” said Sylvia.
Suddenly Richard put is arm around Sylvia, and pulled her close to him. “I'll look out and do better by you the rest of your life, anyhow,” he said. He took hold of Sylvia's veil and pulled it back. Her pale face drooped before him.
“You look—half—starved,” he groaned. Sylvia looked up and saw tears on his rough cheeks.
“Don't you feel bad, Richard,” she said again.
“I'd ought to feel bad,” said Richard, fiercely.
“I couldn't help it, that night you come an' found me gone. It was that night Charlotte had the trouble with Barney. Sarah, she wouldn't let me come home any sooner. I was dreadful upset about it.”
“I've been meaner than sin, an' I don't know as it makes it any better, because I couldn't seem to help it,” said Richard Alger. “I didn't forget you a single minute, Sylvia, an' I was awful sorry for you, an' there wasn't a Sabbath night that I didn't want to come more than I wanted to go to Heaven! But I couldn't, I couldn't nohow. I've always had to travel in tracks, an' no man livin' knows how deep a track he's in till he gets jolted out of it an' can't get back. But I've got into a track now, an' I'll die before I get out of it. There ain't any use in your lookin' at me, Sylvia, but if you can make up your mind to have me, I'll try my best, an' do all I can to make it all up to you in the time that's left.”
“I'm afraid you've had a dreadful hard time, livin' alone so long, an' tryin' to do for yourself,” said Sylvia, pitifully.
“I'm glad I have,” replied Richard, grimly.
He clasped Sylvia closer; her best bonnet was all crushed against his breast. He looked around over her head, as if searching for something.
“Where's the sofa gone?” he asked.
“I gave it to Rose for a weddin' present. I thought I shouldn't ever need it,” Sylvia murmured.
“Well, I've got one, it ain't any matter,” said Richard.
He moved towards the rocking-chair, drawing Sylvia gently along with him.
“Sit down, Sylvia,” said he, softly.
“No, you sit down in the rocking-chair, Richard,” said Sylvia. She reached out and pulled a flag-bottomed chair close and sat down herself. Richard sat in the rocking-chair.
Sylvia untied her bonnet, took it off, and straightened it. Richard watched her. “I want you to have a white bonnet,” said he.
“I'm too old, Richard,” Sylvia replied, blushing.
“No, you ain't,” he said, defiantly; “you've got to have a white bonnet.”
Sylvia looked in his face—and indeed hers looked young enough for a white bonnet; it flushed and lit up, like an old flower revived in a new spring.
Richard leaned over towards her, and the two old lovers kissed each other. Richard moved his chair close to hers, and Sylvia felt his arm coming around her waist. She sat still. “Put your head down on my shoulder,” whispered Richard.
And Sylvia laid her head on Richard's shoulder. She felt as if she were dreaming of a dream.
When Richard Alger went home he wore an old brown shawl of Sylvia's over his shoulders. He had demurred a little. “I can't go down the street with your shawl on, Sylvia,” he had pleaded, but Sylvia insisted.
“You'll catch your death of cold, goin' home in your shirt-sleeves,” she said. “They won't know it's my shawl. Men wear shawls.”
“You've worn this ever since I've known you, Sylvia, an' I ain't given to catchin' cold easy,” said Richard almost pitifully. But he stood still and let Sylvia pin the shawl around his neck. Sylvia seemed to have suddenly acquired a curious maternal authority over him, and he submitted to it as if it were merely natural that he should.
Richard Alger went meekly down the road, wearing the old brown shawl that had often draped Sylvia Crane's slender feminine shoulders when she walked abroad, since she was a young girl. Sylvia had always worn it corner-wise, but she had folded it square for him as making it more of a masculine garment. Two corners waved out stiffly from his square shoulders. He tried to swing his arms unconcernedly under it; once the fringe hit his hand and he jumped.
He was shame-faced when he struck out into the main road, but he did not dream of taking off the shawl. A very passion of obedience and loyalty to Sylvia had taken possession of him. With every submission after long persistency, there is a strong reverse action, as from the sudden cessation of any motion. Richard now yielded in more marked measure than he had opposed. He had borne with his whimsical will against all his sweetheart's dearest wishes during the better part of her life; now he would wear any insignia of bondage if she bade him.
He had gone a short distance on the main road when he met Hannah Berry. She was hurrying along, her face was quite red, and he could hear her pant as she drew near. She looked at him sharply, she fairly narrowed her eyes over the shawl. “Good-mornin',” said she.
Richard said “Good-morning,” gruffly. The shawl blew out against Hannah's shoulder as she passed him. She turned about and stared after him, and he knew it. He went on with dogged chin in the folds of the shawl.
Hannah Berry hurried along to Sylvia Crane's. When she opened the door Sylvia was just coming out of the parlor, and the two sisters met in the entry with a kind of shock.
“Oh, it's you,” murmured Sylvia. Sylvia cast down her eyes before her sister. She tried not to smile. Her hair was tumbled and there were red spots on her cheeks.
“Has he been here all this time?” demanded Hannah.
“He's just gone.”
“I met him out here. What in creation did you rig him up in your old shawl for, Sylvy Crane?”
“He was in his shirt-sleeves, an' I wasn't goin' to have him catch his death of cold,” replied Sylvia with dignity.
“In his shirt-sleeves!”
“Yes, he run out just as he was.”
“Land sakes!” said Hannah. The two women looked at each other. Suddenly Hannah threw out her arms from under her shawl, and clasped Sylvia. “Oh, Sylvy,” she sobbed out, “to think you was settin' out for the poor-house this mornin', an' we havin' a weddin' last night, an' never knowin' it! Why didn't you say anythin' about it, why didn't you, Sylvy?”
“I knew you couldn't do anything, Hannah.”
“Knew I couldn't do anything! Do you suppose me or Sarah would have let all the sister we've got go to the poor-house whilst we had a roof over our heads? We'd took you right in, either one of us.”
“I was afraid Silas an' Cephas wouldn't be willin'.”
“I guess they'd had to be willin'. I told Silas just now that if Richard Alger didn't come forward like a man, you was comin' to my house, an' have the best we've got as long as you lived. Silas, he said he thought you'd ought to earn your own livin', an' I told him there wa'n't any chance for a woman like you to earn your livin' in Pembroke, that you could earn your livin' enough livin' at your own sister's. Oh, Sylvy, I can't stand it, when I think of your startin' out that way, an' never sayin' a word.” Hannah sobbed convulsively on her sister's shoulder. There were tears in Sylvia's eyes, but her face above her sister's head was radiant. “Don't, Hannah,” she said. “It's all over now, you know.”
“Is he—goin' to have you now—Sylvy?”
“I guess so, maybe,” said Sylvia.
“I suppose you'll go to his house, this is so run down.”
“He's goin' to fix this one up.”
“You think you'd rather live here, then? Well, I s'pose I should. I s'pose he's goin' to buy it. The town hadn't ought to ask much. Sylvy Crane, I can't get it through my head, nohow.”
“What?” said Sylvia.
“How you run out this nice place so quick. I thought an' Sarah thought you'd got enough to last you jest as long as you lived, an' have some left to leave then.”
Hannah stood back and looked at her sister sharply.
“I've always been as savin' as I knew how,” said Sylvia.
“Well, I dunno but you have. You got that sofa, that cost considerable. I shouldn't have thought you'd got that, if you'd known how things were, Sylvy.”
“I kinder felt as if I needed it.”
“Well, I guess you might have got along without that, anyhow. Richard's got one, ain't he?”
“Yes, he says he has.”
“I thought I remembered his mother's buyin' one just before his father died. Well, you'll have his sofa, then; if I remember right, it's a better one than yours that you give Rose. Now, Sylvy Crane, you jest put on your hood an' shawl, an' come home with me, an' have some dinner. Have you got anything in the house to eat?”
“I've got a few things,” replied Sylvia, evasively.
“What?”
“Some potatoes an' apples.”
“Potatoes an' apples!” Hannah began to sob again. “To think of your comin' to this,” she wailed. “My own sister not havin' anything in the house to eat, an' settin' out for the poor-house, an' everybody in town knowin' it.”
“Don't feel bad about it, Hannah; it's all over now,” said Sylvia.
“Don't feel bad about it! I guess you'd feel bad about it if you was in my place,” returned Hannah. “I s'pose you think now you've got Richard Alger that there's nothin' else makes any odds. I guess I've got some feelin's. Get your hood and shawl, now do; dinner was all ready when I come away.”
“I guess I'd better not, Hannah,” said Sylvia. It seemed to her that she never would want anything to eat again. She wanted to be alone in her old house, and hug her happiness to her heart, whose starvation had caused her more agony than any other. Now that was appeased she cared for nothing else.
“You come right along,” said Hannah. “I've got a nice roast spare-rib an' turnip an' squash, an' you're goin' to come an' have some of it.”
When Hannah and Sylvia got out on the main road, they heard Sarah Barnard's voice calling them. She was hurrying down the hill. Cephas had just come home with the news. Jonathan Leavitt had spread it over the village from the nucleus of the store where he had stopped on his way home.
Sarah Barnard sat down on the snowy stone-wall among the last year's blackberry vines, and cried as if her heart would break. Finally Hannah, after joining with her awhile, turned to and comforted her.
“Land sake, don't take on so, Sarah Barnard!” said she; “it's all over now. Sylvy's goin' to marry Richard Alger, an' there ain't a man in Pembroke any better off, unless it's Squire Payne. She's goin' to have him right off, an' he's goin' to buy the house an' fix it up, an' she's goin' to have all his mother's nice things, an' she's comin' home with me now, an' have some nice roast spare-rib an' turnip. There ain't nothin' to take on about.”
Hannah fairly pulled Sarah off the stone-wall. “Sylvy an' me have got to go,” said she. “You come down this afternoon, an' we'll all go over to her house, an' talk it over. I s'pose Richard will come to-night. I hope he'll shave first, an' put on his coat. I never see such a lookin' sight as he was when I met him jest now.”
“I didn't see as he looked very bad,” said Sylvia, with dignity.
“It seems as if it would kill me jest to think of it,” sobbed Sarah Barnard, turning tremulously away.
“Don't you feel bad about it any longer, Sarah,” Sylvia said, half absently. Her hair blew out wildly from under her hood over her flushed cheeks; she smiled as if at something visible, past her sister, and past everything around her.
“I tell you there ain't nothin' to be killed about!” Hannah called after Sarah; she caught hold of Sylvia's arm. “Sarah always was kind of hystericky,” said she. “That spare-rib will be all dried up, an' I wouldn't give a cent for it, if you don't come along.”
Richard Alger and Sylvia Crane were married very soon. There was no wedding, and people were disappointed about that. Hannah Berry tried to persuade Sylvia to have one. “I'm willin' to make the cake,” said she. “I've jest been through one weddin', but I'll do it. If I'd been goin' with a feller as long as you have with him, I wouldn't get cheated out of a weddin', anyhow. I'd have a weddin' an' I'd have cake, an' I'd ask folks, especially after what's happened. I'd let 'em see I wa'n't quite so far gone, if I had set out for the poor-house once. I'd have a weddin'. Richard's got money enough. I had real good-luck with Rose's cake, an' I ain't afraid to try yours. I guess I should make it a little mite stiffer than I did hers.”
But Sylvia was obdurate. She did not say much, but she went her own way. She had gained a certain quiet decision and dignity which bewildered everybody. Her sisters had dimly realized that there was something about her out of plumb, as it were. Her nature had been warped to one side by one concentrated and unsatisfied desire. “Seems to me, sometimes, as if Sylvy was kind of queer,” Hannah Berry often said. “I dunno but she's kinder turned on Richard Alger,” Sarah would respond. Now she seemed suddenly to have regained her equilibrium, and no longer slanted doubtfully across her sisters' mental horizons.
She and Richard went to the minister's house early one Sabbath morning, and were married. Then they went to meeting, Sylvia on Richard's arm. They sat side by side in the Alger pew; it was on the opposite side of the meeting-house from Sylvia's old pew. It seemed to her as if she would see her old self sitting there alone, as of old, if she looked across. She fixed her eyes straight ahead, and never glanced at Richard by her side. She held her white-bonneted head up like some gentle flower which had sprung back to itself after a hard wind. She had a new white bridal bonnet, as Richard had wished; it was trimmed with white plumes and ribbons, and she wore a long white-worked veil over her face. The wrought net-work, as delicate as frost, softened all the hard lines and fixed tints, and gave to her face an illusion of girlhood. She wore the two curls over her cheeks. Richard had asked her why she didn't curl her hair as she used to do.
All the people saw Sylvia's white bonnet; it seemed to turn their eyes like a brilliant white spot, which reflected all the light in the meeting-house. But there were a few women who eyed more sharply Sylvia's wedding-gown and mantilla, for she wore the very ones which poor Charlotte Barnard had made ready for her own bridal. Sylvia was just about her niece's height; the gown had needed a little taking in to fit her thinner form, and that was all.
Charlotte's mother had brought them over to Sylvia's one night, all nicely folded in white linen towels.
“Charlotte wants you to have 'em; she says she won't ever need 'em, poor child!” she said, in response to Sylvia's remonstrances. Mrs. Barnard's eyes were red, as if she had been crying. It had apparently been harder for her to give up the poor slighted wedding-clothes than for her daughter. Charlotte had not shed a tear when she took them out of the chest and shook off the sprigs of lavender which she had laid over them; but it seemed to her that she could smell that faint elusive breath of lavender across the meeting-house when Sylvia came in, and the rustle of her bridal-gown was as loud in her ears as if she herself wore it.
“Somebody might just as well have them, and have some good of them,” she had told her mother, and she spoke as if they were the garments of some one who was dead.
“Seems to me, as much as they cost, you'd ought to wear 'em yourself,” said her mother.
“I never shall,” Charlotte said, firmly; “and they might just as well do somebody some good.” Charlotte's New England thrift and practical sense stretched her sentiment on the rack, and she never made a sound.
Barney, watching out from his window that Sunday, caught a flash of green and purple from Sylvia's silken skirt as she turned the corner of the old road with Richard. “She's got on Charlotte's wedding-dress. She's—given it to her,” he said, with a gasp. He had never forgotten it since the day Charlotte had shown it to him. He had pictured her in it, hundreds of times, to his own delight and torment. He had a fierce impulse to rush out and strip his Charlotte's wedding-clothes from this other bride's back.
“She's gone and given it away, and she hasn't got a good silk dress herself; she's wearing her old cloak to meeting,” he half sobbed to himself. He wondered piteously, thinking of his savings and of his property since his father's death, if he might not, at least, buy Charlotte a new silk dress and a mantilla. “I don't believe she'd be mad,” he said; “but I'm afraid her father wouldn't let her wear it.”
The more he thought of it the more it seemed as if he could not bear it, unless he could buy Charlotte the silk dress. “Her clothes ain't as good as mine,” he said, and he thought of his best blue broadcloth suit, and his flowered vest and silk hat. It seemed to him that with all the terrible injury he was doing Charlotte, he also injured her by having better clothes than she, and that that was something which might be set right.
As Barney sat by his window that Sunday afternoon he saw a man coming down the hill. He watched him idly, then his heart leaped and he leaned forward. The man advanced with a careless, stately swing, his head was thrown back, his mulberry-colored coat had a sheen like a leaf in the sun. The man was Thomas Payne. Barney turned white as he watched him. He had not known he was in town, and his jealous heart at once whispered that he had come to see Charlotte. Thomas Payne came opposite the house, then passed out of sight. Barney sat with staring eyes full of miserable questioning upon the road. Had he been to see Charlotte? he speculated. He had come from that direction; but Barney remembered, with a sigh of hope, that Squire Payne had a sister, an old maiden lady, who lived a half-mile beyond Charlotte. Perhaps Thomas Payne had been to see his aunt.
[Illustration: “Thomas Payne advanced with a careless, stately swing”]
All the rest of the day Barney was in an agony of doubt and unrest over the unsettled question. He had been living lately in a sort of wretched peace of remorse and misery; now it was rudely shaken. He walked the floor; at night he could not sleep. He seemed to be in a very torture-chamber of his own making, and the tortures were worse than any enemies could have devised. Suppose Thomas Payne was sitting up with Charlotte this Sunday night. Once he thought, wildly, of going up the hill to see if there was a light in her parlor, but it seemed to him as if the doubt was more endurable than the certainty might be. Suppose Thomas Payne was sitting up with Charlotte; he called to mind all her sweet ways. Suppose she was looking and speaking to Thomas Payne in this way or that way; his imagination threw out pictures before him upon which he could not close his eyes. He saw Thomas Payne's face all glowing with triumph, he saw Charlotte's with the old look that she had worn for him. Charlotte's caresses had been few and maidenly; they all came into his mind like stings. He knew just how she would put her tender arm around this other man's neck, how she would lift grave, willing lips to his. He wished that they had never been for him, for all they seemed worth to him now was this bitter knowledge. His fancy led him on and on to his own torment. There was a bridal mist around Charlotte. He followed the old courses of his own dreams, after his memories were passed, and they caused him worse agony.
The next morning Barney went to the store. It was absolutely necessary for him to go, but he shunned everybody. He had a horrible fear lest somebody should say, “Hallo, Barney, know Thomas Payne's goin' to marry your old girl?” He had planned the very words, and the leer of sly exultation that would accompany it.
But he made his purchase and went out, and nobody spoke to him. He had not seen Thomas Payne in the back part of the store behind the stove. Presently Thomas got up and lounged leisurely out through the store, exchanging a word with one and another on his way. When he got out Barney was going down the road quite a way ahead of him. Thomas Payne kept on in his tracks. There was another man coming towards him, and presently he stood aside to let him pass. “Good-day, Royal,” said Thomas Payne.
“Good-day, Thomas,” returned the other. “When d'ye get home?”
“Day before yesterday. How are you this winter, Royal?”
“Well, I'm pretty fair to middlin'.” The man's face, sunken in his feeble chest far below the level of Thomas's eyes, looked up at him with a sort of whimsical patience. His back was bent like a bow; he had had curvature of the spine for years, from a fall when a young man.
“Glad to hear that,” returned Thomas. The man passed him, walking as if he were vainly trying to straighten himself at every step. He held his knees stiff and threw his elbows back, but his back still curved pitifully, although it seemed as if he were half cheating himself into the belief that he was walking as straight as other men.
Thomas walked on rapidly, lessening the distance between himself and Barney. As he went on he began to have a curious fancy, which he could hardly persuade himself was a fancy. It seemed to him that Barney Thayer was walking like the man whom he had just met, that his back had that same terrible curve.
Thomas Payne stared in strange bewilderment at Barney's back. “It can't be that he has spine disease, that he has got hurt in any way,” he thought to himself. The purpose with which he had started out rather paled in his mind. He walked more rapidly. It certainly seemed to him that Barney's back was bent. He got within hailing distance and called out.
“Hallo!” cried Thomas Payne.
Barney turned around, and it seemed as if he turned with the feeble, crooked motion of the other man. He saw Thomas Payne, and his face was ghastly white, but he stood still and waited.
“How are you?” Thomas said, gruffly, as he came up.
“How are you, Thomas?” returned Barney. He looked at Thomas with a dogged expectancy. He thought he was going to tell him that he was to marry Charlotte.
But Thomas was surveying him still in that strange bewilderment. “Look here, Barney,” said he, bluntly, “have you been sick? I haven't heard of it.”
“No, I haven't,” replied Barney, wonderingly.