“Is that all you’ve got to say about it?” and Bradley fixed his eyes upon her face so that she could not avoid them.
“I guess so. What do you want me to say?”
“Which end of the line you’d rather live at; that’s what’s concerning me now.”
When Jim Bradley’s arm was free once more, the breathing from the ticket office was audible and regular, and the instrument also seemed asleep for a time and ceased its ticking. In fifteen minutes life plans were on their way to being settled, when in the midst of optimistic happiness arose a ghost called Theoretical New England Conscience.
Ten long, slender fingers were linked between ten short, heavy ones, when a few harmless words severed the conjunction. “Tell me, Jim, are you Methodist or Congregational? Ma heard up Telford way that your uncle on your father’s side was a Congregational preacher, and it would seem real suitable, ’cause my father was a deacon.”
Jim Bradley started as if a broken rail had suddenly confronted his engine on a curve, then he answered quietly: “Yes, uncle was. I’m not either, Randy, I’m a Roman Catholic. You see mother was out of Irish stock and she kept to her religion, and I, well, I held to it as long as she lived, and after becauseitheld to me. It’s a good religion for us knock-about men,” he added half-appealingly. “It never forgets you and it’s always there.” But Miranda sat silent and drooping, white to the lips.
Jim Bradley looked at her and tried to give her time; he well knew from his early life just what his statement meant to this girl with the rigid ideas of the hill country; but because he understood, he would not say a word to force his creed upon her if she would do the same, and he told her so. Still she crouched on the bench and the only words that he could get from her were, “What would they all say?” and “Ma would never look at me again,” repeated over and over.
Suddenly the instrument began a vigorous ticking. The woman started and, grasping the key, answered the sounds.
“Anything for me?” asked Bradley, glad to move and break the spell that had fallen over both.
“No—yes—wait a minute,” said the operator, with a puzzled expression on her face, looking at Bradley with eyes that seemed only half awake. “You are to go right on to Bridgeton and take further orders there.”
Putting on coat and hat and turning up the wick of his lantern, Jim once more faced Randy, who stood with her hands clenched in the fringe of her long cape.
“Well, it’s good-night for now,” he said cheerfully; then as her eyes met his he added, “Don’t say it’s good-by, girl; for God’s sake, think it over.”
“It’s—it ought—it must be good-by,” she whispered; “but oh, Jim, I do care, caresomuch; if only something stronger than either of us could decide and say it would be right.”
“Good-night, Randy,” said Jim, and the swing of his lantern was answered by the train’s whistle. When it left the siding, Randy stood on the edge of the platform watching it go out over the trestles and gain speed on the level bit before the bridge, the red and green signal lights blinking at her like harlequin stars.
Sweezy’s boy, who had gone into the hotel for shelter, emerged slowly and then disappeared in the barn to get the horse and sleigh. Still Randy lingered out on the platform end.
The lights were disappearing around the curve and the village lay as silent and dead as if no railway pierced it, few houses showing any light. Suddenly three shrill whistles pierced the air, the signal for down brakes, followed swiftly by a splitting noise, a vibrating crash, and a roar that was muffled almost immediately.
For a brief second Miranda waited for another whistle. None came. Glancing toward the station she saw a couple of lighted lanterns, one red and one plain, that were partly hidden by a baggage truck. Seizing one in either hand, she started down the track, springing lightly between the ice-coated ties. When she reached the beginning of the trestles across the low calf-pastures, she stopped long enough to shake off her heavy cape, that risked her balance, and then flew on.
The bright starlight showed the outline of the bridge ahead, but where was the train with its winking lights? Only one dark hump broke the outline of the trestles. On again over the perilous ice-coated footing that a man in daylight would have hesitated to traverse. What was that? A cry? Yes, a halloo, repeated as continuously as breath would allow.
As the girl drew near, she saw that the obstacle in front was the freight caboose, lying on its side on the bank at the very beginning of the bridge, and from beside or under it, Jim Bradley’s voice was calling.
Feeling her way more carefully now, she answered, “I’m coming, Jim; where are you?” and finding solid earth beneath her feet once more she crept around the end of the car.
An endless minute told it all;somethinghad caused the engine to leave the track when halfway across the bridge, the brakes had not answered, and the six cars had followed their leader into the river, the caboose alone breaking free—wedging and overturning on the bridge. Bradley had sprung from the rear steps only to be pinned fast below the knees, body prone on the frozen earth.
“Oh, Jim! Jim! tell me what to do first! How can I get you out before it kills you?” she cried, for though Conductor Bradley did not groan, in spite of himself his arms would twist in his agony.
“Turn the light under here and see what holds me,” he gasped; “there’s an axe in the caboose if it should be anything you could chop.” Then as she started for the sidewise door he half raised himself on his elbow to clutch her dress, and then dropped, ear to ground.
“No, don’t mind me; take that red lantern and run back as far as you can go above the depot and signal the express—it’s coming—I can hear the growl of it along the ground!”
“But, Jim, it can’t come this half hour yet; it was to pass you at Bridgeton.”
“That woman operator’s made a mistake. It’s coming, I tell you, go!”
“I don’t want to leave you, Jim, I can’t,” wailed the girl.
“ ’Tain’t what we want, Randy, it’s what’s got to be. Go, or if you won’t, don’t come near me, I couldn’t bear you to touch me!” and the man threw one twisting arm across his face, for turn away he could not.
Back over trestles and track flew the girl; past the station, from which suddenly awakened men were stumbling up the track calling; past the overtasked wife of the station master, who was wringing her hands, but all seemed unconscious of any danger save the wrecked freight.
Then a broad pathway of light streamed down the track, almost blinding Randy, who, gaining a firm footing on the side bank and clinging to a telegraph pole, waved the lantern to and fro—to and fro, until a whistle answered the signal and the train came to an abrupt stop, with Randy, her red lantern, and the great, panting engine almost side by side.
In an instant the track was swarming with people; the conductor of the express, by chance an operator, went to the telegraph key to summon help of various kinds, the poor woman who had made the error having utterly collapsed. The crew, armed with pails and axes, hurried to the wrecked freight, for now the smell of burning wood came on the air, while the passengers of the express, satisfied that they had nothing further than a night’s discomfort to fear, were scattered about, filling the little waiting room at the station and Sweezy’s Hotel to overflowing, while looking up the possibilities of food and lodging; fortunately, owing to the storm, the train was but scantily filled.
A woman from one of the day coaches, evidently a lady from quiet mien and tone, dressed in a plain cloth travelling suit, went to the bare and formal hotel parlour, and asked if she could have a room, as she was travelling alone and did not care to pass the night upon the train.
“I’ll fix yer out if possible,” said Sweezy, “but you’ll have to wait a bit in here; I’ve got a lot ter tend to first, and most like there’ll have to be some doubling up.” So saying, he threw open the door between the long “parlour” and a little office in an alcove where there was a stove, leaving Helen Hasleton sitting in the dim light of a single candle, for lamps were at a premium in Hattertown just then.
Choosing the least uncomfortable of the chairs, the woman threw herself back in it, taking off her veil and hat to ease the strain upon her aching head.
People passed to and fro in groups, occasionally glancing in, but she seemed neither to see nor to hear them. At last a familiar voice speaking her name startled her, and she looked up, facing the door; it said:
“Hello, Burt, you didn’t tell us your wife was with you,—thought you were off with the boys alone. Don’t apologize. Everybody gets rattled when they’re held up like this and know that four or five good fellows have come to an end a few feet ahead of them.
“Pretty well tired out, aren’t you, Helen?” and there came into the room her father’s oldest friend and business associate, holding her husband by the arm, and pushing his wife and daughter before him in his eagerness.
After a few minutes’ aimless prattle the party of three left, having decided to spend the night on the train, the elderly man making jocular remarks about leaving the couple to have atête-à-têtein peace.
Complete silence for a moment, and then, that being the last thing the woman’s nerves could endure, she said: “Why did you follow me? What right have you to put me in a position like this after this morning?”
“I did not follow you, for I did not know that you had left Boston.”
“Then it is as Mr. Dale hinted, you were going alone with some men without even telling me.”
“After this morning, what right had you to know?” The blow that she had set in motion, but of which she had not before gauged the full power, struck her squarely between the eyes.
“At least we must assume a part, not make ourselves ridiculous and start a scandal here to-night among people that are almost relations, before,—before things are arranged,” she said, on the verge of tears.
“As you please; creating public comment has never been my plan,” he answered, and drawing a chair to the feeble light, he took a copy of a comic paper from his pocket and at least feigned to read, while the woman closed her eyes, and from holding them closed to keep the angry tears back, finally fell into a sleep of exhaustion where she sat.
An hour passed. Hasleton went out, but as usual, could gather little absolute knowledge of the wreck. He saw his companions playing poker in the parlour car; they, having heard of his wife’s presence and deeming that she had followed him, winked knowingly, and he, having nothing to explain and much to cover, drifted back to the hotel. Seeing that the woman slept, he, in his turn, settled himself as well as might be on the hard sofa, and, cramped and uncomfortable as he was, dozed, being too much bewildered by the condition of things to plan or even think.
Twelve o’clock was called slowly and almost spitefully, it seemed, by the clock in Sweezy’s bar and lunch room; usually this was the signal for closing, but to-night no excise regulations were enforced. Sweezy, having sold all the eatables that could be procured and most of the drinkables, was busying himself disposing of people for the night, as it was not possible to remove the débris and get the track in shape under four or five hours. He had spent a profitable evening and was, consequently, in fine joking humour. Peering into the parlour, he saw the sleeping couple, and not remembering that the woman had entered alone and asked for a room, he awakened them, giving the man a cheerful slap on the back to boot. “Be you folks married?” and upon Hasleton’s giving a sleepy assent, he continued, “All right, then, I kin double you up and that’ll take the last room, and then I’ll make shake-downs in here for half a dozen schoolmarms goin’ to a convention. First to the right at the head of the stairs, sir.” Then, setting a spluttering candle on the table at the woman’s elbow, as if he naturally expected her to take the lead, he disappeared.
Helen Hasleton started to her feet, her face lowering and furious. “You might have prevented this, it’s taking a mean advantage of me,” she fairly hurled the words at him. “You can go upstairs, I shall stay down here with the other women.”
Burt rose with difficulty, stiff and aching in every limb, and taking up the candle, said, “Very well, it seems rude to leave you here among strangers and without a bed, but under the circumstances, I can only obey your wish.”
“Obey!” snapped the woman; “there is no such word, or if there is, I do not understand its meaning. This morning I was to obey you. To-night you offer at once to make a spectacle of me and obey me. Rubbish! Go back to the car with your friends and say there was no room for you here.”
Something moved in the alcove, a long shadow fell upon the floor, followed by the presence of a tall, clean-shaven man in the garments of a priest, who stood for a moment looking from one to the other.
“There is a word obey, and it will always have a meaning until the world falls apart. The question is, whom shall we obey and what,” said a deep but quiet voice in the perfect accents of well-born speech. “If one woman had not obeyed to-night, you two perhaps, as well as all on board the train, would have been lying crushed or burned in the river-bed beyond, dead, distorted, horrible! Jim Bradley, the conductor, pinned in the wreck, was found by the woman he was to marry, frantic of course to rescue him. He told her to leave him, to go back and save this train, and she obeyed. They have carried him to her home and the surgeons are at work; the end I do not know. I have left them but now, and with them the two rites of the Church that best could help, belonging to the two ends of life, marriage that gives her the right to care for him, and to him the last sacrament.
“And yet you stand there, man and woman, and bicker and create falsity from empty words, forgetting that nothing can transpose right and wrong. Shame on you both!”
For several moments no one moved; then Hasleton replaced the candle on the table, as he saw the outlines of the man’s face, young in spite of gauntness and close-cropped gray hair, and in his astonishment almost whispered, “John Anthony!”
“Father John,” corrected the voice calmly, but in a tone that forbade further questioning, though recognition gleamed in his own eyes; for John Anthony had been a college mate of Hasleton’s, who, though always serious, had, ten years before, suddenly, and to the world in general unaccountably, given up the brilliant promise of public life for the priesthood. Two men alone knew that the first motive for his course lay in that it was the only immovable barrier he could place between his nature and temptation,—the mad infatuation of a beautiful married woman, whose husband was his friend.
As all this flashed through Hasleton’s brain, he lowered his gaze and stood with bowed head. A few more seconds passed. The woman’s clenched hands relaxed, and raising her eyes, she met those of Father John that had never moved from her face, and in their depth her woman’s instinct saw both comprehension and the scars of conquered temptation. Then she took the candlestick from the table and crossing the room slowly, went up the narrow, uncarpeted stairs, step by step.
As Hasleton raised his eyes again to Father John’s face, their hands met in a tense clasp that told its tale to each. No words were spoken, and Hasleton, in turn, went up the creaking stairs.
Five years passed, and Hattertown looked much the same as of old. The factory ruins were now but a heap of wood dust where vagrant hens scratched for slugs. The Milk Freight still ran on the siding every evening, but Jim Bradley was not the conductor, neither did Miranda Banks teach the school at the corners.
In one of the offices of an important station of the Sky Line Railroad works a short, thick-set man, to whom many others defer as their manager; his face is strong and cheerful, but after noting his chin lines, very few bigger men would try to browbeat him in spite of the fact that he moves with a crutch, one leg being shortened almost to the thigh.
The working day ends, and going downstairs, the man sees a horse and low buggy driven by a trim woman with glorious ruddy-gold hair turn toward the platform. She, smiling a welcome, moves the tiny girl beside her to make place; and the horse, taking his own head, trots to a quiet by-way apart from the main road that leads past stately country places.
“Where is Jimmy this afternoon? I hope he hasn’t been cutting up, Randy,” said the father, questioningly.
“Oh, no, but we’ve company at home that I left him to entertain. Guess who?”
“Your mother?”
“No, Father John, and only think of it, he’s going to stay two days before he goes up to the Hasletons’ for his usual August visit. On hearing of it, Mrs. Hasleton brought me some flowers and fruit this afternoon, and when she had seen the house, asked me if I would let her John and little Helen come to me of mornings this winter and learn to read and spell with Jimmy. She said that she knew I had taught school in the old-fashioned way, and that she preferred it to kindergarten methods for the boy. Think of my being able to teach the Hasletons’ children anything. Isn’t it splendid, Jim? How pleased Ma will be.”
“I don’t know about that,” said Jim Bradley, closing one hand over those that held the reins, “but I know something, or rather somebody, else that is splendid, even if she couldn’t just at first make up her mind which end of the line she’d live at.”
Miranda Bradley, not one whit abashed, laughed softly. “It wasn’t really a matter for me to decide which end, was it, Jim, since Hasleton Manor Station happens to be almost in the middle?”
Thus it came about that neither the remote hamlet of Hattertown nor a bleak February day was without influence on vital things.
IIITHE VANDOO
MARCH—THE MOON OF SNOW BLINDNESS
MARCH—THE MOON OF SNOW BLINDNESS
“How can you ask me to invite her?” I said, looking up from a letter Evan had a moment before handed me to read, and blinking at him reproachfully; for I had been driving about with father all the afternoon with the brightening March sun reflected by ice-coated March snow in my eyes, until the lids seemed to be controlled by rusty wires and everything was enveloped in rainbow-hued mist through which black spots danced.
“Is it possible that you have read the letter? Hear what she writes: ‘Terry says that you live in the country and that you wouldn’t leave your home for anything in the world. I want to live in the country because I was born in the West and lived on a ranch until I was well grown, and I haven’t yet found a city big enough to give me elbow-room, much less a comb in a twelve-story beehive, which in New York it seems is the only available shelter for people like Terry and myself. Besides, I want room for a riding horse and pasture to turn him out.
“ ‘We’ve been looking at country places ever since we were married last March, for Uncle Sandy has promised to buy me a home when I want to settle, but he doesn’t believe in paying rent; we’ve seen many that would do, but that isn’t what I want. If we buy a house it must be one that can—not only make me buy it as a matter of course, but that will hypnotize me so that I shall never wish, or be able to get away from it again. Uncle Sandy told me long ago that this was the only way to be sure about choosing one’s husband, and I know he’s right, because though there were plenty of men about, I could do very well without them, one and all, until Terry’s horse stepped into a (prairie) dog’s hole, throwing him so that his ankle buckled, and they brought him up to the ranch because Uncle Sandy is a sort of natural bonesetter. That was in March, too. March has always been a good month to me: that’s why, this year, I’m building on striking a home in the month. If we don’t, I foresee a wandering life and bad days for Terry ahead! [“She is certainly frank,” I interjected.]
“ ‘I want to see your place and, if possible, find out what it is that makes you hug it so close, and I want to see it soon; so if you will please engage a room for us at the nearest hotel, Terry and I will go down for Sunday, and I can wait behind a bit and look around the neighbourhood.
“ ‘I’ve been at him about this for a month, but he always forgets to ask when he sees you. Then, too, the poor boy is a bit discouraged; we’ve been to so many places that we know the railway time-tables of all the villages within an hour of the city as well as we know our twice twos. He thinks the only possible way to be satisfied is to inherit a place, and “feel the blood of your people in the soil” as he puts it. But how can we? I’ve no people but Uncle Sandy at the ranch, which is several thousand miles inconvenient to Terry’s work, and his people are in the old country, where, at best, the family nest, though decidedly a last year’s one, was overfull, and dropped him out (he says you’ll appreciate that). So you see, we’ve both got to start and make believe until it seems natural.
“ ‘I hope I’m not putting you to trouble, but in the West we’re always glad to step out for a prospective homesteader.
“ ‘Sincerely, your possible neighbour,
“ ‘Vesta Donelly.’ ”
“I didn’t suppose it would put you out very much to have a jolly sort of girl here for a few days at this dull time of the year,” said Evan, regretfully, rather than apologetically, and dodging the real issue.
“It isn’t the trouble. I would welcome any one with open arms who cared to come here in the first three weeks of March (as to the fourth week, barring a blizzard, my mind goes back to the earth and revels in the task of keeping the temperature of the hot-beds equable, an occupation not naturally appreciated by company). But knowing the country as we do, can you possibly consider March a good month for exploiting real estate? Especially a March like the present, that starts by being snowbound in the fields, and so sloppy in the roads that the wheels of anything but father’s stanhope are mired and won’t go round, while down in the valley the light sleigh almost turned into a boat and floated this morning.
“There is nothing attractive of any kind that I know of for sale, and if there were, it would repel people at this season. Even the Cortrights’ trim, lovely house, standing between the great oaks, looked, this afternoon, like a belated and bedraggled straggler, propped up between two policemen waiting for the patrol wagon to come for it. Besides, at best, this Mrs. Terence Donelly is looking for the impossible with true Western fervour.
“One must grow up with a place and feel rooted in its earth to love it in March; she won’t have the ghost of an idea what the garden means to us by looking at it now, for it isn’t there, only its spirit, and that, like everything dead, is invisible except to the eyes of those that love.
“What is Vesta like? How old is she, and who were her people?” I asked, for optimistic Evan was beginning to look depressed, which is something wholly against the rule.
Terence Donelly was a college chum of Evan’s at Oxford, and is as fascinating and warm-hearted as only a well-bred Irishman knows how to be. He had visited us many times before the Western trip that had buckled into double harness a spirited roadster who had travelled straight and true in single harness without either check-rein or blinders for nearly forty years. Consequently, Mrs. Terence was an object of an interest that became intense upon the thought of meeting her.
“She is small, her hair is light brown and her eyes flash and dance so that I don’t remember anything else about them,” said Evan, slowly, shutting his eyes, as if searching his memory for an accurate picture. “I happen to know that she is twenty-six, though she does not look it by five or six years. I haven’t made up my mind about her disposition; one moment she has an almost pathetic expression as though she needed sympathy and protection, and then her eyes blaze, and she runs her hand through her front hair until it stands on end, and she reminds one of something as unapproachable as a coil of slender live wire.
“Her people? Her father was a Californian, but her mother was an Eastern woman by descent, the daughter of a Judge Morland who came from Massachusetts, and, like many another boy, tired of farm life, taught school to get his education, and then by the same process worked his way out West. Terry has tried to look up the family to please his wife, who seems very lonely in spite of all her independence, but there is no one left. That is why I thought you might cheer her up from the woman’s side of things if they settled here. She is unconventional enough to satisfy you, I’ll warrant, and would be delighted to go up in the attic on a wet day and dream pussy willows, and the fact that hers may be the western species of the tree would be a sort of tonic for the dreams.”
“You must have said something to Terry about his wife’s coming here,” I announced, when he had ended.
“I may have,” Evan answered. “The poor fellow is worried because she is getting restless, and hasn’t a woman friend in New York, and I thought if she could meet the Cortrights and Bradfords, Sukey Latham and the rest, the air might clear in a twinkling.”
“I’ll write to her to-night; imagine you and me, married only a year and living in Chicago or San Francisco, father dead, and not even Aunt Lot or Martha Saunders to turn either against or to, and no home to which to return!Whata wretched time you would be having with me! Nevertheless, upon your head be the failure to find in this neighbourhood the ideal house built around a magnet.”
“Oh, if you once get her here something will be sure to turn up,” said Evan. “She may find a few bits of old furniture, or a bargain in a jug or spoon up at Tucker’s curiosity shop; he’s had a dull season, and the Donellys are keen about getting old Colony things so that when they findthehouse they may have the fittings, as they seem to take it for granted the house will match.”
Father, who had come in while we were talking, stood with his back to the study fire rubbing his hands together as if it were midwinter, while the sleepy dogs only roused enough to wag their tails drowsily, take a comfortable yawn that arched their backs, easing the muscles, then settled down again.
“Is it thawing or freezing?” I asked, crossing the hall to him.
“Both,” he answered, laughing, “one overhead, the other underfoot; a fine climate this, to test the vigour of the New England people. I’ve just come down from the Dearborn farm from visiting old man Becker, who is racked by grippy pains. He says there is more snow in the south meadow than any spring since the old deacon died, and that is forty years and he reckons March is ‘no good to anybody but for plotting and planning.’ He gave me this handbill yesterday, which owing to the weather, it’s several days in advance of its being posted. I was reminded of it by hearing the words ‘bargains in jugs and old spoons’;” and father pulled out a crumpled sheet of paper from his side pocket, which, being spread upon the table, took the form of a tree poster that read as follows:—
“VANDOO! PART I“The entire goods and chattels belonging to the estate of Sarah Dearborn deceased, will be disposed of on the premises by public vandoo on the 12th of March, or if stormy, the first fair day thereafter. Goods will go to the highest bidder and must be paid for at time of purchase and removed within two days.“A list of the property may be seen on the premises.“A grand chance for the friends of the late estimable lady to obtain souvenirs.”“VANDOO! PART II“On Friday, March 15, the real estate belonging to the estate of the late Sarah Dearborn, as follows: Parcel I consisting of one two-story oak-framed dwelling with attic, wood-shed, and buttery, two barns and smaller out-buildings, and seventeen acres of land, the same comprising the homestead and to be sold together. Parcel II, ten acres of woodland situated on the Ridge Road, Parcel III, ten acres of salt meadow, Parcel IV, forty acres of plowed and grass land being known as the South Meadows. These pieces will be sold together or separate to suit the bidder.“Grand chance to secure high land for building lots, with a land boom and a trolley only a few miles away and coming nearer! Come one! come all!“These two important vandoos are under the management of Joshua Hanks, licensed auctioneer and attorney for the Executors.“Oaklands, March, 19—.”
“VANDOO! PART I
“The entire goods and chattels belonging to the estate of Sarah Dearborn deceased, will be disposed of on the premises by public vandoo on the 12th of March, or if stormy, the first fair day thereafter. Goods will go to the highest bidder and must be paid for at time of purchase and removed within two days.
“A list of the property may be seen on the premises.
“A grand chance for the friends of the late estimable lady to obtain souvenirs.”
“VANDOO! PART II
“VANDOO! PART II
“On Friday, March 15, the real estate belonging to the estate of the late Sarah Dearborn, as follows: Parcel I consisting of one two-story oak-framed dwelling with attic, wood-shed, and buttery, two barns and smaller out-buildings, and seventeen acres of land, the same comprising the homestead and to be sold together. Parcel II, ten acres of woodland situated on the Ridge Road, Parcel III, ten acres of salt meadow, Parcel IV, forty acres of plowed and grass land being known as the South Meadows. These pieces will be sold together or separate to suit the bidder.
“Grand chance to secure high land for building lots, with a land boom and a trolley only a few miles away and coming nearer! Come one! come all!
“These two important vandoos are under the management of Joshua Hanks, licensed auctioneer and attorney for the Executors.
“Oaklands, March, 19—.”
“Here is something, I’m sure, that will interest Mrs. Terry,” said Evan, who had followed me; “naturally she will not care for the house, for it is low and rambling, but it will be a chance to go to an auction sale conducted with strict hill-country etiquette, unless I’m mistaken, for even the leading word, ‘Vendue,’ is spelled according to the local pronunciation. It is always as good as a play to hear Hanks conduct a sale, he is all commercial bathos. Don’t you remember going with me, Barbara, to an auction on the Ridge where some one complained that a certain cow was damaged, and not sound as represented because she had a broken horn, and Hanks gave a thrilling account of how the horn was broken and tried to prove added value from the happening?”
“But, father,” I asked, “why is the Dearborn farm to be sold? I thought Miss Sallie had pinched and denied herself even ordinary comforts the last half of her life to leave the place, with a little sum for keeping it up, to some grandnephews.”
“It is one of the many cases that come to us all, and especially into the life of a country doctor, that prove how foolish it is for people to make plans for those who come after them, or pinch or save beyond the ordinary bounds of prudence,” answered father. “I knew Sallie Dearborn for upwards of fifty years. The Lord intended her for a woman to love and be loved, yet a streak of obstinate martyrdom from first to last made her lose her chances of happiness one after another, because to accept them would interfere with some elaborate and prudent plan she had made either for indefinite posterity, or more often merely on general principles of thrift.
“After the old people died, they say that Sallie had a chance to marry a promising young fellow and go out into the world, but to have withdrawn her interest in the land at that time would have hindered her two brothers, and after a controversy that no one understood, the lover went away.
“Presently one brother died, and the other, having married a delicate wife, broke away from the farm to go to the southwest. For years Sallie toiled and scrimped to pay him his portion and keep the place of five generations ‘in the family.’ She has even paid her farmer Becker and his wife withpost obits, that she might leave a money equivalent of the farm in the bank so that the two nephews might have equal portions without selling the homestead and furnishings. The first choice going to the elder, with many directions as to the handing of it down being left to the one who takes it and its quaint furnishings.
“Now, as it turns out, neither man wishes the farm or fixings, nor has sufficient interest in their fate even to bring them here to oversee affairs, and everything available is to be sold without reserve and turned into money!
“Deborah Becker, who lived with Miss Sallie as companion more than helper these forty years, is almost heart-broken, and told me this afternoon that such a happening had never entered Miss Sallie’s head, for that not long before her last illness, she even sent for samples of wall-paper, labelled and put them away in the old mahogany desk of the Squire’s that always stood in the best room; this paper for the guest room, that for the parlour, as a guide for the doing over of the house when ‘one of the boys’ should take it.”
“Timothy Saunders’ saying is true, ‘The future’s a kittle mare that travels best her ain gate and lacking both bit and bridle,’ ” I said, “but yet it is pathetic when one has sacrificed everything to a sort of old country land-pride, to have it come to naught. Didn’t she leave you a letter of some sort, father, that was to remain sealed a year until everything was settled?”
“Yes, Barbara, a sealed letter enclosing a key; the key of the old desk, which the will says is to be disposed of according to directions given me. I hope it may give rise to no complications. Who that saw Sallie Dearborn during the last half of her life would dream that she was once full of woman’s romance crossed with chivalry? These have seen her grim, calculating, measuring every egg or berry that she sold; sending her weekly paper to the Bridgeton Hospital, but first cutting the white margins therefrom, and rolling them into lamplighters to save matches at two cents a box!”
With the prospective “Vandoo” as a motive, I invited Terry Donelly for over a Sunday and his wife for a week’s visit. When she came, of a Saturday after dusk, I found, as Evan had said, that one moment she was tender and almost piteously feminine, so that I was impelled to take her in my arms as I would a child, while in a moment of animation, a flush would mantle her cheeks, too thin for her years, the gray eyes would flash, little bright glints play about her hair, until she was, indeed, like a bundle of lithe, live wires.
At such moments, Terry’s laughing eyes would grow grave, and the banter, which was one of his charms, die on his lips; that she was restless and he apprehensive even through the spell of strong affection, there was no doubt, and on Monday, when Terry left her with me, there was something appealing in his glance and the grip he gave my hand.
The day was fairly pleasant out-of-doors in that a frozen crust made good walking, and, arm in arm, Mrs. Terry and I explored my haunts; I pointed to the stakes and trellises where the garden had been and would be again, and for a moment we sat upon the seat where the “Mother Tree” had been and looked down the walk that had bordered that first garden of the long ago. Would she understand from these bare outlines the why of it, the voiceless potency of that which bound me?
If she did she said nothing until afternoon, when I took her to my attic corner, and building a log fire in the Franklin stove, drew the dumpy old lounge before it and called the dogs to soothe us with their sleepy influence.
At first Mrs. Terry sat upright, hands clasped about her knees, gazing at the fire, and breathing quickly.
“How I love that,” she said; “we have not had these fires since I left the ranch, and I’ve often slept out by one as high as the wall when we’ve been on camping trips.”
Then gradually her breath came slower and more evenly, and she dropped back half against the sweet clover pillows and half against my shoulder.
“When we looked over that rolling icy field beyond the garden this morning, with the dazzling light on the snow, just as it is at home, and I shut my eyes, I could see the ranch, and Uncle Sandy and the boys, and fat Mrs. Malone, the housekeeper, so plainly that I almost put out my hand to touch them. There’s something queer about March; lots of the range cattle get through almost until spring and then give out, and the boys that have held out well all winter often go nearly blind of a sudden. I guess it’s because by March you’ve braced up and stood all you can of winter, and because it’s called spring, you lose nerve and can’t pull the strap up another hole for a fresh grip.”
Then with a sudden movement, burying her face in my shoulder, she half whispered: “That’s the way it is with me; ever since I left the ranch, I’ve kept myself braced so that Terry should not know how homesick I feel. At first I thought it would pass, then I thought if I had a place where I could strike root the pain might wear away, and so I’ve hunted and hunted, but now, to-day, coming here and feeling some one else’s home feeling, but from outside, it’s like March snow to my eyes, I can’t bear it; there’s not another inch to pull up and the saddle girths are slipping, slipping under me, and there’s no help. I must go back!
“I was born in March, I met Terry in March, the next March we were married, and now, oh, Mrs. Evan, unless you can help me and hold me, we shall part, Terry and I, for no fault, and I shall go back to Uncle Sandy in March! No, don’t look at me so hardly, I can feel your eyes right through my hair: you, who have always been at home, can’t judge me. It isn’t that I don’t love Terry better than any one else, but the earth loves you, too, and sometimes it won’t let go. I could not know it would be so until I came away; no one could. Some day it will all be changed, this coming of a man and taking the woman away; he will come to her and stay, for home is more to the one who stays in to keep it.”
As she leaned close to me, I could feel the beating of her heart and with it another sound, a sort of feeble echo as it were. Then I gathered her up and held her close, and told her of those two first years and of my own separation from home and country.
“But after that you came back,” she cried, “and Terry can’t go back with me; we thrashed that out in the beginning, for even Uncle Sandy said there was no opening for a lawyer in a grazing country, because every one settles their own disputes quick, unless they are big enough for the government to butt in, and anyway a lawyer isn’t popular. Well, at last, thank God, I’ve found some one to understand it, some one who has lived through that feeling that pulls you back to where you started.” And Mrs. Terry, clasping her arms around my neck, fell to crying, not passionately, but comfortably, that blessed outlet that Nature has given us women in compensation for much pain we may not avoid.
Gradually the sobs stopped, she was asleep. So, laying her carefully back on the pillows and covering her with an old afghan, I left her to the dreams bred by the singing of the firewood accompanied by a little, whistling snore from Peter, the old hound.
The morning of the sale at the Dearborn farm was mild, as though March was preparing to go out like a lamb that scented green pastures. Two days of rain had washed the snow from the open places, and though the roads ran mud, yet it was the mud of promise.
We made an early start, that Mrs. Terry might have a chance to see the few bits of old furniture likely to attract one who had no association with the family or place; for the Dearborns were of the plain Yankee stock that, aside from a few heirlooms kept most of the time behind drawn blinds, had furnishings of the plainest sort. There was a good tall clock with a ship atop of the pendulum sailing toward a port it never reached, a handsome claw-footed table of mahogany, a chest of drawers, and a dozen chairs of the same wood, patterned diversely, a four-post bed, carved with some skill, a Davenport sofa with carved ends, a hooded cradle, a low-boy, and a work table with heavy brass handles. The silver table ware, worn thin by use, was of a slender pattern, the ends of the handles of spoons and forks being abruptly angled; while of china, outside of the modern ware in daily use, there was a tea-set of Lowestoft with its odd small-necked tea-caddy and helmet cream-pitcher, and a more complete service of blue and white India porcelain.
A bevy of neighbours and one or two dealers, including old Pop Tucker, were buzzing about these things, but what seemed to attract Mrs. Terry far more, were the pitiful little personal articles that belonged intimately to the life of Sallie Dearborn, and that she had never doubted would pass either to her own kin, or, if worthless, be destroyed instead of being exposed for criticism and sale, as the law ordains in the settling of an estate where no friendly hand intervenes.
Worn table-linen tied into bundles, underclothing, much darned stockings, shoes, a well-worn Bible filled with little memory markers bearing names and dates, a book filled with household recipes copied in a stiff, exact handwriting, and lastly, resting on the seat of a chintz-covered chair, as if its owner had left it there for a brief moment while she went to other tasks, was a deep work-basket, big as a peck measure. The inside pockets of this basket were filled with spools, needle-cases, tapes and all such gear; the outside bags held bits of half-finished work, and knitting, the rusty needles sticking from a ball of home-dyed blue-gray yarn, just as they had been laid away; while a thimble of an odd pineapple pattern hung on the top of a long darning needle that occupied the middle of the pincushion.
“This is simply cruel,” whispered Mrs. Terry, the electric wire look reappearing as she rumpled her hair and held the basket close to her as if to protect it. “There is nothing in this basket worth a nickel, unless that dingy thimble is gold, and to have it put up and sold to some one of those old cats yonder, who have been going about pinching and smelling everything, not that they mean to buy, but just to see, as that one with the green porcupine topknot in her hat said a minute ago, ‘what dear Sallie had that set her up so.’
“A lot of a woman’s secrets drop into her work-basket, and mix up with her pens and writing things when she’s alone, and it’s wicked to sell any of these things. I’m going to buy this basket, Mrs. Evan, and wrap it up in a pink paper and bury it if you’ll lend me a spade and the ground isn’t frozen too hard; if not, I’ll burn it.
“I mean to buy that old Bible, too, with all the births and deaths written in. The porcupine woman said she would buy it if it didn’t bring over a dollar, because she hadn’t had a chance to ‘leaf it over well’ and there were dates in it she wanted to write out and there might be letters tucked in somewhere! From what I’ve overheard, Miss Sallie must have had a lover fifty or sixty years ago, who went away, and as no one ever knew why, her friends’ children are still curious about the matter.”
Mr. Hanks’ vigorous pounding on the table in the kitchen, and the ringing of a bell, gathered about him an audience of nearly one hundred people, and the selling began, room by room; for, to save confusion, the large pieces of furniture were sold where they stood.
During the morning the sale dragged, the dealers had everything their own way, and in spite of Mr. Hanks’ pathetic reminiscences concerning each article, from an old pew stove to a five-cent factory-made wooden spoon, the derelicts that did not receive a single bid would have filled a wagon. The afternoon session began in the best room, wherein was the four-poster, the cradle, a good mirror, the work-basket and the tall desk, the fate of which was contained in Miss Sallie’s letter to father.
As we stood in the doorway, a flood of sunlight, coming in through the small, iridescent window-panes, gilded the dust that lay upon everything and lent warmth to the quaint buff wall-paper, festooned with loops of bright flowers and birds of paradise; a brave paper in its day and one that had faded with dignity.
“I don’t know quite what there is about this room,” whispered Mrs. Terry, “but bare as it is and cold, it seems familiar and somehow more homelike to me than any other I have ever seen; I wonder could I have lived in it in dreams?”
Before I could answer, one of the swift changes passed over her, and stepping forward, she said in the perfectly clear, unemotional voice of a business man, “Mr. Hanks, as it is growing late and I must go, would you object to selling the contents of this room as it stands? Wall-paper and all, if it is possible to get it off?” I was amazed and a little worried, for I knew nothing of the length of Mrs. Terry’s purse.
The country folks gasped and whispered among themselves; they did not wish to be cheated out of a moment’s excitement. The dealers began a series of mental calculations, but no real objection being made, Mr. Hanks stroked his chin a moment, muttered something about its being possible that the wall paper being fastened to the house might be real estate, and then said, “The bed must be a separate lot, the desk as is known is not for the sale, but the rest of the fittings I will put up in bulk ‘as is,’ madam, which is a learned and professional term you must know for the way they seem to be to the casual eye, not what perhaps the brush of fancy might paint them.”
The green porcupine lady shut her mouth with the snap of a turtle, murmuring something about the widow’s mite being disdained, as she saw that both the Bible, and the basket containing the thimble that was suspected of being gold, would vanish from her horizon.
Of course I was in no way responsible for Mrs. Terry, yet for one who confessed to being on the eve of running away, to buy a wagon load of furniture seemed hardly rational. When, ten minutes later, Mr. Hanks, after selling the bed and contents of the room for one hundred and fifty dollars, was fairly beaming at his success, and I realized that the furniture must be removed within two days, my heart sank.
Not so Mrs. Terry’s; after giving Hanks a very substantial deposit upon her purchase, she tucked the Bible under one arm, and hugging the basket to her breast, made ready to go.
That evening, after supper, she spread Bible, basket, and herself upon the rug before the den fire and began examining the contents of the old work-basket as a child does a picture puzzle, saying naïvely, “It’s no harm to look at the things before I bury them,” whereat Evan heaved a sigh, and I knew that he was mentally weighing the stability of Terry Donelly’s marriage, though at the same time his eyes twinkled with amusement.
“See,” she continued, “here’s a finished sock wrapped up in paper with something peppery, and the other is all done but a bit of the tip of the toe. I think I’ll finish it if I can get the rust off the needles; yes, it rubs off and the rug polishes them nicely,—there seems to be enough yarn on the ball to finish the toe, though it’s rather mothy; it looks ages old. Can I knit? Oh, yes, I used to knit long stockings for Uncle Sandy out of heather yarn. I knit a pair of golf stockings for Terry last fall, but one foot was shorter than the other, and he said it always drew up his big toe and distracted his attention when he was ‘putting.’ ”
“That carries me back a long way,” said father, who had come across the hall, newspaper in hand, for a little visit and to exchange cigars with Evan, a nightly custom, as he watched Mrs. Terry knitting in the firelight. “When I was a young fellow, not only the old folks, but all the country-bred girls learned to knit as soon as their skirts went down and their hair was put up. Then, when the attentions of one of the young men who took them to and from meeting and singing-school were recognized as serious, when he became ‘steady company’ and privileged to sit in the best room and hold the skein of yarn for her to wind, the girl with many blushes would ask him to write his name with hers on a bit of paper, which folded up, made the centre of a ball of yarn from which she straightway began to knitHima pair of socks to prove her housewifery.”
“What a well-packed idea!” cried Mrs. Terry, rising to her knees, “and perhaps, who knows, the name brought good luck and helped her get both feet alike!”
“I’m not sure about that,” laughed father, “but I do remember that there was a lot of curiosity about those papers and sometimes a girl would steal her rival’s knitting ball to find whose name was inside, and feuds came of it that were worse than tangled yarn.”
“Do you suppose there could possibly be a paper in this ball?” Mrs. Terry cried suddenly, as she squeezed it tight; “it isn’t all yarn, there’s something inside and it isn’t a spool. No, I won’t unwind it, I’ll knit this last inch out,” and the fingers flew, while it seemed as though her strange hair stretched out to look, and pulling away from its pins fairly danced in the firelight.
As the stocking ate up the yarn, I found myself getting nearer to Mrs. Terry, father drew his chair close, and Evan leaned against the fireplace.
“Why are we all so breathlessly interested?” I asked, addressing the ball of yarn as much as anything.
“Because,” answered father, “of the possibility of unearthing romance, and twist, distort, and disguise it as we will, simple love is the most interesting thing to every one of us.”
“Last round,” called Evan, who was watching so closely that Mrs. Terry’s fingers trembled nervously.
The row was finished and bound off, though the rotten yarn had to be pieced three times in the process; then she began to unwind the wisp that remained. Yes, there was a piece of paper inside, brittle and yellow.
Slowly she opened it, for it threatened to tear in shreds, and read in an awestruck voice, “ ‘Surely goodness and mercy will follow me all my days. March the 20th, 1842. Sarah Dearborn and Richard Morland’!”
“Richard Morland was my mother’s father!” she said, scarcely above a whisper; “how did his name come here, Dr. Russell?”
Father held the paper to the lamp, scarcely less excited than Mrs. Terry, who stood with clasped hands and a strange, searching expression in her eyes as they followed him.
“Richard Morland, yes, that is the name,” said father, making sure of every letter. “He once taught school at the old centre village. It was before my time, but it is a matter of record, and some of the old people still speak of him. As I remember the story, the school-teacher always boarded at the Dearborn farm.”
“Then my grandfather once lived in the house where we were, to-day, and probably slept in the four-posted bed and saw the parrots perched in the flowers on the wall the first thing in the morning,” Mrs. Terry said slowly, turning her back to the room and speaking, as it were, to the fire.
“It is very strange, because when I went into the room, it did not seem new to me. I, too, must sleep in the great bed and wake up with the sunshine on that old, old paper.”
“It is a pity that it couldn’t be taken off the wall so that all the fittings might be kept together,” I said thoughtlessly. But the young woman wheeled around swiftly, and putting a hand on either of my shoulders held me off, at the same time that her expression drew me close.
“That paper shall never come off,” she said. “If grandpa had married Miss Sallie, she would have been my grandmother and I should have belonged in the Dearborn homestead. It’s too late for that now, but I’m going to buy the place and manage it that way. Don’t you see, Mrs. Evan? I’ve found my reason, the reason that I wanted to make me stay somewhere until I had taken root and couldn’t get away. Then perhaps I may find out something more from the old place to make me hug it tighter. Anyway, the south pasture is just the place to turn out horses.
“Don’t you think, Dr. Russell, that they might be willing to sell before next week? Please may I use the telephone? I’ll call up Terry, he will be so relieved! And then I must get to work and find out why Miss Sallie wasn’t my grandmother.”
Now the time had come for father to open Miss Sallie’s letter, which said that—the desk and its contents were to become the property of the owner of the house!
“The desk and all the wall-papers Miss Sallie chose for the refurnishings!” cried Mrs. Terry; “it’s actually like having some one to share the responsibility of it all. Ah, you see, Mrs. Evan, I told you that dreary old March is my lucky month; another thirty days and it might have been too late.”
The day that the deed was transferred, father handed Mrs. Terry the key of the old secretary. Whispering to me, “I don’t want even Terry to come up yet, only you must be with me when I open it, for you understand,” she literally pulled me up the narrow stairs.
Dragging up the big arm-chair, she seated herself in it and turned the key slowly in the creaking lock. As the flap fell back, revealing a row of pigeon-holes and two shallow drawers, she whispered, “I don’t know exactly whether I’m opening a treasure chest or a grave!”
After some hesitation, she pulled out a drawer and took from it a bundle of yellow papers, folded lengthwise and tied with a faded blue ribbon. “ ‘Letters from R. M. to S. D., preserved to show my kin how good a man their foolish aunt lost through thinking that land could weigh in the balance with love,’ ” read Mrs. Terry, reddening deeply; “and here is a picture of grandpa cut from black paper, and a queer curl of hair. Ah,nowI see where my inquisitive hair comes from.
“ ‘A letter of advice to my kin if they think to marry, and a request.’ ” Mrs. Terry read this slowly to herself, saying as she did so, “I hope she wants something I can do for her.”
There was a long silence, so long that I looked up rather anxiously at last.
“What is it?” I asked.
“She wants grandpa’s name to be given to the first child that is born in this house,” said Mrs. Terry, in an awestruck tone, “and that seems to me like a loaf and fish miracle, for I wassoafraid that Terry would want to call him for his own people, and his father’s name was Patrick Dennis! Oh, how nice it is to have even a might-have-been grandmother to shoulder such responsibilities!” And once more she threw herself into my arms as she had done the afternoon in the attic, peeping over my shoulder at the hooded mahogany cradle into which the beams of the victorious snow-quelling March sun were shining.
“Something seems to have turned up, or else we have all gone snow-blind,” said Evan that night.