38CHAPTER IIILUCY
In the meantime the being whom Martin had dismissed with this majestic wave of his hand stood in the middle of the Webster kitchen, confronting the critical eyes of its mistress.
“Yes, Aunt Ellen,” the girl was saying, catching the elder woman’s stiff fingers in hers, “I’m Lucy. Do you think I look like Dad? And am I at all what you expected?”
Ellen drew her hands uncomfortably from the impulsive grasp but did not reply immediately. She was far too bewildered to do so.
Lucy was not in the least what she had expected,—that was certain. In the delicate oval face there was no trace of Thomas’s heavily modeled features; nor was Lucy indebted to the Websters for her aureole of golden hair, the purity of her blond skin, or her grave brown eyes. Thomas had been a massively formed, kindly, plain-featured man; but his daughter was beautiful. Even Ellen, who39habitually scoffed at all that was fair and banished the æsthetic world as far from her horizon as possible, was forced to acknowledge this.
In the proudly poised head, the small, swiftly moving hands, and the tiny feet there was a birdlike alertness which was the epitome of action. The supple body, however, lacked the bird’s fluttering uncertainty; rather the figure bespoke a control that had its birth in an absence of all self-consciousness and the obedience of perfectly trained muscles to a compelling will.
Without a shadow of embarrassment Lucy endured her aunt’s inspection.
“Anybody’d think,” commented Ellen to herself in a mixture of indignation and amusement, “that she was a princess comin’ a-visitin’ instead of bein’ a charity orphan.”
Yet although she fumed inwardly at the girl’s attitude, she did not really dislike it. Spirit flashed in the youthful face, and Ellen admired spirit. She would have scorned a cringing, apologetic Webster. Unquestionably in her niece’s calm assurance there was no hint of the dependent.
As she stood serenely in the center of the room, Lucy’s gaze wandered over her aunt’s40shoulder and composedly scanned every detail of the kitchen, traveling from ceiling to floor, examining the spotless shelves, the primly arranged pots and pans, the gleaming tin dipper above the sink. Then the roving eyes came back to the older woman and settled with unconcealed curiosity upon her lined and sharply cut features.
Beneath the intentness of the scrutiny Ellen colored uneasily.
“Well?” she demanded tartly.
Lucy started.
“You seem to have made up your mind about me,” went on the rasping voice. “Am I whatyouexpected?”
“No.”
The monosyllable came quietly.
“What sort of an aunt were you lookin’ for?”
Lucy waited a moment and then replied with childlike directness:
“I thought you’d be more like Dad. And you don’t look in the least like an invalid.”
“You’re disappointed I ain’t sicker, eh?” commented Ellen grimly.
“No, indeed,” answered Lucy. “I’m glad to find you so strong. But it makes me feel41you do not need me as much as I thought you did. You are perfectly able to take care of yourself without my help.”
“Oh, I can take care of myself all right, young woman,” Ellen returned with an acid smile. “I don’t require a nurse—at least not yet.”
Lucy maintained a thoughtful silence.
“I don’t quite understand why you sent for me,” she presently remarked.
“Didn’t I write you I was lonesome?”
“Yes. But you’re not.”
Ellen laughed in spite of herself.
“What makes you so sure of that?”
“You don’t look lonesome.”
Again the elder woman chuckled.
“Mebbe I do, an’ mebbe I don’t,” she responded. “Anyhow, you can’t always judge of how folks feel by the way they look.”
“I suppose not.”
The reply was spoken politely but without conviction.
“An’ besides, I had other reasons for gettin’ you here,” her aunt went on. “I mentioned ’em in my letter.”
“I don’t remember the other reasons.”
Ellen stared, aghast.42
“Why—why—the property,” she managed to stammer.
“Oh, that.”
The words were uttered with an indifference too genuine to be questioned.
“Yes, the property,” repeated Ellen with cutting sarcasm. “Ain’t you interested in money; or have you got so much already that you couldn’t find a use for any more?”
The thrust told. Into the girl’s cheek surged a flame of crimson.
“I haven’t any money,” she returned with dignity. “Dad left me almost penniless. His illness used up all we had. Nevertheless, I was glad to spend it for his comfort, and I can earn more when I need it.”
“Humph.”
“Yes,” went on Lucy, raising her chin a trifle higher, “I am perfectly capable of supporting myself any time I wish to do so.”
“Mebbe you’d rather do that than stay here with me,” her aunt suggested derisively.
“Maybe,” was the simple retort. “I shall see.”
Ellen bit her lip and then for the second time her sense of humor overcame her.
“I guess there’s no doubtin’ you’re a43genuine Webster,” she replied good-humoredly. “I begin to think we shall get on together nicely.”
“I hope so.”
There was a reservation in the words that nettled Ellen.
“Why shouldn’t we?” she persisted.
“I don’t know.”
“Don’t you like your aunt?”
“Not altogether.”
The audacity of the reply appealed to the older woman, and her eyes twinkled. “Not altogether, eh?” she echoed. “Now I’m sorry to hear that because I like you very much.”
Lucy smiled. It was a radiant smile, disclosing prettily formed white teeth and a lurking dimple.
“That’s nice.”
“But you ain’t a-goin’ to return the compliment?”
“Not yet.”
It was long since Ellen had been so highly entertained.
“Well,” she observed with undiminished amusement, “I’ve evidently got to be on my good behavior if I want to keep such an independent young lady as you in the house.”44
“Why shouldn’t I be independent?”
A few moments before Ellen would have met the challenge with derision; but now something caused her to restrain the retort that trembled on her tongue and say instead:
“Of course you’ve got a right to be independent. The folks that ain’t ought to be made way with.”
Her affirmation surprised her. She would not have confessed it, but a strange sense of respect for the girl before her had driven her to utter them.
Lucy greeted the remark graciously.
“That’s what I think,” she replied.
“Then at least we agree on somethin’,” returned Ellen dryly, “an’ mebbe before I put my foot in it an’ lose this bit of your good opinion, I’d better take you up to your room.”
She caught up the heavy satchel from the floor.
“Oh, don’t,” Lucy protested. “Please let me take it. I’m used to carrying heavy things. I am very strong.”
“Strong, are you?” questioned Ellen, without, however, turning her head or offering to surrender the large leather holdall. “An’ how, pray, did you get so strong?” She passed45into the hall and up the stairs as she spoke, Lucy following.
“Oh, driving horses, doing housework, cooking, cleaning, and shooting,” the girl replied. Then as if a forgotten activity had come to her mind as an afterthought, she added gaily: “And sawing wood, I guess.”
“You can do things like that?”
“Yes, indeed. I had to after Mother died and we moved to Bald Mountain where Dad’s mine was. I did all the work for my father and ten Mexicans.”
“You? Why didn’t your father get a woman in?”
Lucy broke into a merry laugh.
“A woman! Why, Aunt Ellen, there wasn’t a woman within twenty miles. It was only a mining camp, you see; just Dad and his men.”
“An’ you mean to tell me you were the sole woman in a place like that?”
Lucy’s silvery laughter floated upward.
“The ten Mexicans who boarded with us were engineers and bosses,” she explained. “There were over fifty miners in the camp besides.”
Stopping midway up the staircase Ellen wheeled and said indignantly:46
“An’ Thomas kep’ you in a settlement like that?”
“Who?”
“Your father.”
“Why not?”
“’Twarn’t no place for a girl.”
“It was the place for me.”
“Why?”
“Because Dad was there.”
Something in the reply left Ellen wordless and made her continue her way upstairs without answering. When she did speak, it was to say in a gentler tone:
“Mebbe you’ll like the room I’m going to give you. It used to belong to your Dad when he was a little boy.”
She lifted the latch of a paneled door and stood looking into a large bedroom. The sun slanted across a bare, painted floor, which was covered by a few braided rugs, old and worn; there was a great four-poster about which were draped chintz curtains, yellowed by age, and between the windows stood a mahogany bureau whose brasses were tarnished by years of service; two stiff ladder-back chairs, a three-cornered washstand, and a few faded photographs in pale gilt frames completed the furnishings.47
With swift step Lucy crossed the room and gazed up at one of the pictures.
“That’s Dad!”
Ellen nodded.
“I’d no idea he was ever such a chubby little fellow. Look at his baby hands and his drum!”
She paused, looking intently at the picture. Then in a far-away tone she added:
“And his eyes were just the same.”
For several minutes she lingered, earnest and reminiscent.
“And is this you, Aunt Ellen?” she asked, motioning toward another time-dimmed likeness hanging over the bed.
“Yes.”
A silence fell upon the room. Ellen fidgeted.
“I’ve changed a good deal since then,” she observed, after waiting nervously for some comment.
“You’ve changed much more than Dad.”
“How?”
Curiosity impelled her to cross to Lucy’s side and examine the photograph.
“Your eyes—your mouth.”
“What about ’em?”48
“I—I—don’t believe I could explain it,” responded Lucy slowly.
“Mebbe you’d have liked me better as a little girl,” grinned her aunt whimsically.
“I—yes. I’m sure I should have liked you as a little girl.”
The reply piqued Ellen. She bent forward and scrutinized the likeness more critically. The picture was of a child in a low-cut print dress and pantalettes,—a resolute figure, all self-assurance and self-will.
It was easy to trace in the face the features of the woman who confronted it: the brows of each were high, broad, and still bordered by smoothly parted hair; the well-formed noses, too, were identical; but the eyes of the little maiden in the old-fashioned gown sparkled with an unmalicious merriment and frankness the woman’s had lost, and the curving mouth of the child was unmarred by bitter lines. Ellen stirred uncomfortably.
As she looked she suddenly became conscious of a desire to turn her glance away from the calm gaze of her youthful self. Yes, the years had indeed left their mark upon her, she inwardly confessed. She did not look like that49now. Lucy was right. Her eyes had changed, and her mouth, too.
“Folks grow old,” she murmured peevishly. “Nobody can expect to keep on looking as they did when they were ten years old.”
Abruptly she moved toward the door.
“There’s water in the pitcher, an’ there’s soap and towels here, I guess,” she remarked. “When you get fixed up, come downstairs; supper’ll be on the table.”
The door banged and she was gone. But as she moved alone about the kitchen she was still haunted by the clear, questioning eyes of the child in the photograph upstairs. They seemed to follow her accusingly, reproachfully.
“Drat old pictures!” she at last burst out angrily. “They’d ought to be burnt up—the whole lot of them! They always set you thinkin’.”
50CHAPTER IVTHE EPISODE OF THE EGGS
The next morning while Ellen stood at the kitchen table slicing bread for breakfast, Lucy, her figure girlish in a blue and white pinafore, appeared in the doorway.
“Good morning, Aunt Ellen,” she said. “You will have to forgive me this once for being late. Everything was so still I didn’t wake up. Your nice feather bed was too comfortable, I’m afraid. But it shan’t happen again. After this I mean to be prompt as the sun, for I’m going to be the one to get the breakfast. You must promise to let me do it. I’d love to. I am quite accustomed to getting up early, and after serving breakfast for twelve, breakfast for two looks like nothing at all.” As she spoke she moved with buoyant step across the room to the table.
“Shan’t I toast the bread?” she inquired.51
“I ain’t a-goin’ to toast it,” returned Ellen in a curt tone. “Hot bread an’ melted butter’s bad for folks, ’specially in the mornin’.”
Lucy smiled. “It never hurts me,” she replied.
“Nor me,” put in her aunt quickly. “I don’t give it a chance to. But whether or no, I don’t have it. When you melt butter all up, you use twice as much, an’ there ain’t no use wastin’ food.”
“I never thought about the butter.”
“Them as has the least in the world is the ones that generally toss the most money away,” the elder woman observed.
The transient kindliness of the night before had vanished, giving place to her customary sharpness of tone. Lucy paid no heed to the innuendo.
“I might make an omelet while I’m waiting,” she suggested pleasantly. “Dad used to think I made quite a nice one.”
“I don’t have eggs in the mornin’, either,” replied Ellen.
“Don’t you like eggs?”
“I don’t eat ’em.”
“How funny! I always have an egg for breakfast.”52
“You won’t here,” came crisply from her aunt.
Lucy failed to catch the gist of the remark.
“Why, I thought you kept hens,” she said innocently.
“I do.”
“Oh, I see. They’re not laying.”
“Yes, they are. I get about four dozen eggs every day,” retorted Ellen. “But I sell ’em instead of eatin’ ’em.”
As comprehension dawned upon Lucy, she was silent.
“Folks don’t need eggs in the mornin’ anyway,” continued Ellen, still on the defensive. “This stuffin’ yourself with food is all habit. Anybody can get into the way of eatin’ more ’n’ more, an’ not know where to stop. Bread an’ coffee an’ oatmeal is all anybody needs for breakfast.”
If she expected a reply from her niece, she was disappointed, for Lucy did not speak.
“When you can get sixty-six cents a dozen for eggs, it’s no time to be eatin’ ’em,” Ellen continued irritably. “You ain’t come to live with a Rockefeller, Miss.”
Receiving no answer to the quip, she drew a chair to the table and sat down.53
“You’d better come an’ get your coffee while it’s hot,” she called to Lucy.
Slowly the girl approached the table and seated herself opposite her aunt.
The window confronting her framed a scene of rare beauty. The Webster farm stood high on a plateau, and beneath it lay a broad sweep of valley, now half-shrouded in the silver mists of early morning. The near-at-hand field and pasture that sloped toward it were gemmed with dew. Every blade of tall grass of the mowing sparkled. Even the long rows of green shoots striping the chocolate earth of the garden flashed emerald in the morning sunlight; beyond the plowed land, through an orchard whose apple boughs were studded with ruby buds, Lucy caught a glimpse of a square brick chimney.
“Who lives in the next house?” she inquired, in an attempt to turn the unpleasant tide of the conversation. If she had felt resentment at her aunt’s remarks, she at least did not show it.
“What?”
“I was wondering who lived in the next house.”
“The Howes.”
“I did not realize last night that you had54neighbors so near at hand,” continued the girl brightly. “Tell me about them.”
“There’s nothin’ to tell.”
“I mean who is in the family?”
“There’s Martin Howe an’ his three sisters, if that’s what you want to know,” snapped Ellen.
Lucy, however, was not to be rebuffed. She attributed her aunt’s ungraciousness to her irritation about the breakfast and, determining to remain unruffled, she went on patiently:
“It’s nice for you to have them so near, isn’t it?”
“It don’t make no difference to me, their bein’ there. I don’t know ’em.” For some reason that Lucy could not fathom, the woman’s temper seemed to be rising, and being a person of tact she promptly shifted the subject.
“No matter about the Howes any more, Aunt Ellen,” she said, smiling into the other’s frowning face. “Tell me instead what you want me to do to help you to-day? Now that I’m here you must divide the work with me so I may have my share.”
Although Ellen did not return the smile, the scowl on her forehead relaxed.55
“You’ll find plenty to keep you busy, I guess,” she returned. “There’s all the housework to be done—dishes, beds, an’ sweepin’; an’ then there’s milk to set an’ skim; eggs to collect an’ pack for market; hens to feed; an’——”
“Goodness me!”
“You ain’t so keen on dividin’ up, eh?”
“Oh, it isn’t that,” returned Lucy quickly. “I was only thinking what a lot you had to do. No wonder you sent for me.”
It was a random remark, but it struck Ellen’s conscience with such aplomb that she flushed, dismayed.
“What do you mean?” she faltered.
As Lucy looked at her aunt, she observed the shifting glance, the crafty smile, the nervous interlacing of the fingers.
“Mean?” she returned innocently. “Why, nothing, Aunt Ellen. We must all work for a living one way or another, I suppose. If I prefer to stay here with you and earn my board there is no disgrace in it, is there?”
“No.”
Nevertheless Ellen was obviously disconcerted. There was an uncanny quality in Lucy that left her with a sense that every56hiding place in her heart was laid bare. Were the girl’s ingenuous observations as ingenuous as they seemed? Or were they the result of an abnormal intuition, a superhuman power for fathoming the souls of others?
Eager to escape the youthful seer, the woman pushed back her chair and rose.
“I must go out an’ see what that boy Tony’s up to,” she said. “While I’m gone you might tidy up round here a bit. There’s the dishes an’ the beds; an’ in the pantry you’ll find the eggs with the cases to pack ’em in. An’ if you get round to it you might sweep up the sittin’ room.”
“All right.”
Drawing on a worn coat Ellen moved toward the door; when, however, her hand was on the knob, she turned and called over her shoulder:
“The washin’s soakin’ in the tubs in the shed. You can hang it out if you like.”
Lucy waited until she saw the angular figure wend its way to the barn. Then she broke into a laugh.
“The old fox! She did get me here to work for her,” she murmured aloud. “Anyway, I don’t have to stay unless I like; and I shan’t,57either. So, Aunt Ellen Webster, you’d better be careful how you treat me.”
With a defiant shake of her miniature fist in the direction her aunt had taken, Lucy turned to attack the duties before her. She washed the dishes and put them away; tripped upstairs and kneaded the billowy feather beds into smoothness; and humming happily, she swept and polished the house until it shone. She did such things well and delighted in the miracles her small hands wrought.
“Now for the eggs!” she exclaimed, opening the pantry door.
Yes, there were the empty cases, and there on the shelf were the eggs that waited to be packed,—dozens of them. It seemed at first glance as if there must be thousands.
“And she wouldn’t let me have one!” ejaculated the girl. “Well, I don’t want them. But I’m going to have an egg for breakfast whether she likes it or not. I’ll buy some. Then I can eat them without thanks to her. I have a little money, and I may as well spend part of it that way as not. I suppose it will annoy her; but I can’t help it. I’m not going to starve to death.”
During this half-humorous, half-angry58soliloquy, Lucy was packing the eggs for market, packing them with extreme care.
“I’d love to smash them all,” she declared, dimpling. “Wouldn’t it be fun! But I won’t. I’ll not break one if I can help it.”
The deft fingers successfully carried out this resolution. When Ellen returned from the garden at noontime, not only was the housework done, but the eggs were in the cases; the clothes swaying on the line; and the dinner steaming on the table. She was in high good humor.
“I forgot to ask you what you had planned for us to have this noon,” explained Lucy. “So I had to rummage through the refrigerator and use my own judgment.”
“Your judgment seems to have been pretty good.”
“I’m glad you think so.”
“The Websters always had good judgment,” the woman observed, as she dropped wearily into a chair. “Yes, you’ve got together a very good meal. It’s most too good, though. Next time you needn’t get so much.”
Lucy regarded her aunt mischievously.
“Probably if I’d been all Webster I59shouldn’t have,” she remarked demurely. “But half of me, you see, is Duquesne, and the Duquesnes were generous providers.”
If Ellen sensed this jocose rebuke, she at least neither resented it nor paid the slightest heed to its innuendo.
“The Duquesnes?” she questioned.
“My mother was a Duquesne.”
“Oh, she was?”
“Didn’t you know that?”
“Yes, I reckon I did at the time your father married, but I’d forgot about it. Thomas an’ I didn’t write much to one another, an’ latterly I didn’t hear from him at all.”
“It was a pity.”
“I dunno as it made much difference,” Ellen said. “Likely he didn’t remember much about his home an’ his relations.”
“Yes, indeed he did,” cried Lucy eagerly. “He used to speak often of my grandparents and the old house, and he hoped I’d come East sometime and see the place where he had lived as a boy. As he grew older and was sick, I think his early home came to mean more to him than any other spot on earth.”
“Queer how it often takes folks to their dyin’ day to get any sense,” declared Ellen60caustically. “Where’d your father pick up your mother, anyway?”
Lucy did not answer.
“I mean where did he get acquainted with her?” amended Ellen hastily.
“You never heard the story?”
“No.”
“Oh, it was the sweetest thing,” began Lucy enthusiastically. “You see, Grandfather Duquesne owned a coal mine up in the mountains, and Dad worked for him. One day one of the cages used in going down into the mine got out of order, and Grandfather gave orders that it was to be fixed right away lest some accident occur and the men be injured. But through a misunderstanding the work was not done, and the next day the cage dropped and killed nine of the miners. Of course the men blamed poor Grandfather for the tragedy, and they marched to his house, intending to drag him out and lynch him. Dad knew the truth, however, and he rushed to the place and held the mob back with his pistol until he could tell them the real facts. At first they were so angry they refused to listen, but by and by they did, and instead of killing Grandfather they went and found the engineers who were to blame.”61
Ellen waited.
“What did they do to them?” she demanded at last.
“Oh, they hung them instead of Grandfather,” answered Lucy simply.
“How many of them?”
“I don’t know. Three or four, I guess.”
It was evident that Lucy was quite indifferent to the fate of the unlucky engineers.
“Mercy on us!” Ellen gasped.
“But their carelessness caused the death of the other men. It was only fair.”
“So that’s the way you settle things in the West?”
“Yes. At least, they did then.”
The mountain-bred girl obviously saw nothing amiss in this swift-footed justice.
“And where did your mother come in?” asked her aunt.
“Why, you see, Grandfather Duquesne afterward made Dad the boss of the mine, and when Mother, a girl of sixteen, came home from the California convent, where she had been at school, she saw him and fell in love with him. Grandfather Duquesne made an awful fuss, but he let her marry him.”62
Lucy threw back her head with one of her rippling laughs.
“He had to,” she added merrily. “Mother’d have married Dad anyway.”
Ellen studied the tea grounds in the bottom of her cup thoughtfully.
How strange it was to picture Thomas the hero of a romance like this! She had heard that once in his life every man became a poet; probably this was Thomas’s era of transformation.
Her reverie was broken by the gentle voice of Lucy, who observed:
“And that’s what I’d do, too.”
“What?” inquired Ellen vaguely. In her reverie about Thomas she had lost the connection.
“Marry the man I loved no matter what anybody said. Wouldn’t you?”
“I—I—don’t know,” stammered Ellen, getting to her feet with embarrassment at having a love affair thrust so intimately upon her. “Mebbe. I must go back now to Tony an’ the weedin’. When you get cleared up round here, there’s plenty of mendin’ to be done. You’ll find that hamper full of stockin’s to be darned.”63
After Ellen had gone out, Lucy did not rise immediately from the table, but sat watching the clouds that foamed up behind the maples on the crest of the nearby hill. A glory of sunshine bathed the earth, and she could see the coral of the apple buds sway against the sky. It was no day to sit within doors and darn socks. All Nature beckoned, and to Lucy, used from birth to being in the open, the alluring gesture was irresistible.
With sudden resolve she sprang up, cleared away the confused remnants of the meal before her, dashed to her room for a scarlet sweater, and fled into the radiant world outside.
She followed the driveway until it joined the road, and then, after hesitating an instant, turned in the direction of the Howe farm. A mischievous light danced in her brown eyes, and a smile curved her lips.
The road along which she passed was bordered on either side by walls of gray stone covered with shiny-leaved ivy and flanked by a checkerboard of pastures roughly dotted with clumps of hardback and boles of protruding rock. Great brakes grew in the shady hollows, and from the woods beyond came the cool, moist perfume of moss and ferns.64
The girl looked about her with delight. Then she began to sing softly to herself and jingle rhythmically the coins in her pocket.
It was nearly a quarter of a mile to the Howes’ gate, and by the time she reached it, her swinging step had given to her cheek a color that even the apple orchard could not rival.
A quick tap on the knocker brought Mary Howe to the door. She was tall, angular, and short-sighted, and she stood regarding her visitor inquisitively, her forehead lined by a network of wrinkles.
“Could you let me have a dozen eggs?” asked Lucy.
Mary looked at the girl in waiting silence.
“I am Miss Webster’s niece,” explained Lucy, with an appealing smile. “We live next door, you know. Aunt Ellen didn’t seem to have any eggs to spare, so——” she stopped, arrested by Mary’s expression.
“Maybe you don’t sell eggs,” she ventured.
“Yes, we do,” Mary contrived to articulate, “but I don’t know—I’m afraid——” She broke off helplessly in the midst of the disjointed sentence and, raising her voice, called: “Eliza, is Jane there?”65
“She’s upstairs. I’ll fetch her down,” responded Eliza, coming to the door. “What is it?”
“It’s Miss Webster’s niece askin’ for eggs.”
“Miss Webster’s niece! Ellen Webster’s?”
The explanation had in it an intonation of terror.
“Yes.”
“My land, Mary! What shall we do? Martin will never——” the awed whisper ceased. “I’ll call Jane,” broke off Eliza hurriedly.
Lucy heard the messenger speed across the floor and run up the stairs.
“I’m afraid I’m making you a great deal of trouble,” she remarked apologetically.
“No.”
“Perhaps you haven’t any eggs to spare.”
Mary did not reply to the words; instead she continued to look with bewilderment at the girl on the doorstep.
“Did Miss Webster send you?” she at last inquired.
Lucy laughed.
“No, indeed,” she answered. “She didn’t even know I was coming. You see, I only66arrived from Arizona last night. I’ve come to live with my aunt. We didn’t seem to agree very well about breakfast this morning so I——”
“Oh!”
The explanation was pregnant with understanding.
“I just thought I’d feel more independent if I——”
A swish of skirts cut short the sentence, and in another moment all three of the Howe sisters were framed in the doorway.
Although a certain family resemblance was characteristic of them, they looked little alike. Eliza, it was true, was less angular than Mary and lacked her firmness of mouth and chin; but nevertheless the Howe stamp was upon her black hair, heavy, bushy brows, and noble cast of forehead. It was Jane’s face, touched by a humor the others could not boast, that instantly arrested Lucy’s attention. It was a fine, almost classic countenance which bespoke high thinking and a respect for its own soul. The eyes were gray and kindly, and in contrast to the undisguised dismay of her sisters, Jane’s attitude was one of unruffled composure.67
“You want some eggs?” she began with directness.
“If you can spare a dozen.”
“I reckon we can.”
“Now, Jane——” interrupted Mary nervously.
“Do be careful, Jane,” chimed in Eliza.
“I have a right to——” but the resolute Jane was not permitted to finish her declaration.
“Martin won’t——” interpolated Mary.
“You know Martin will be dretful put out,” protested Eliza at the same instant.
“I can’t help it if he is,” asserted Jane impatiently. “I ain’t obliged to think as he does, am I?”
“He’ll be—oh, Jane!” Eliza implored.
“I’ll take all the blame.”
“I don’t know what he’ll say,” pleaded Mary.
“Well, I’m going to get the eggs, anyhow,” announced Jane, cutting short further argument by moving away.
During this enigmatic dialogue, Lucy’s mystified gaze traveled from the face of one woman to that of another. What was it all about? And who was this Martin that he should inspire such terror?68
“I’m afraid,” she called to the retreating Jane, “you’d rather not——”
“It’s all right, my dear,” replied Jane cordially. “We’re glad to let you have the eggs. I’ll get them right away. It won’t take me a second.”
She disappeared behind the paneled door at the end of the hall, and presently Mary and Eliza, who had loitered irresolutely, uncertain whether to go or stay, followed her.
Left to herself, Lucy looked idly across the sunny landscape. Against the sky line at the top of the hill she could see a tall, masculine figure delving in the garden.
“That must be Martin-the-Terrible,” she observed. “He doesn’t look like such an ogre.”
The banging of the door heralded Jane’s approach. She held in her hand a neatly tied package, and over her shoulders peered Mary and Eliza.
“The eggs will be sixty-seven cents,” Jane said in a businesslike tone. “That is the regular market price. I’d carry the box this side up if I were you.”
Lucy counted the change into the woman’s palm.69
“You have such a pretty home,” she murmured as she did so.
“We like it,” replied Jane pleasantly.
“I don’t wonder. The view from this porch is beautiful. Sometime I hope you’ll let me come over and see you.”
Lucy heard two faint simultaneous gasps.
“I’d be glad to have you,” came steadily from Jane.
“And I’d like you to come over and see me some day, too—all of you,” went on the girl.
“We don’t have much time for goin’ out,” returned Jane. “There’s such a lot to do that——” she stopped, appearing for the first time to be confused.
“I know there is,” Lucy assented serenely. “I am afraid I have kept you too long from your work as it is. You must forgive me. Thank you very much for the eggs.”
She extended a slender hand, which Jane grasped warmly. A smile passed between the two.
But as Lucy turned down the driveway and the door of the Howe homestead closed, a tragic babel of voices reached her ear, piping in shrill staccato the single word:
“Jane!”
70CHAPTER VA CLASH OF WILLS
When Lucy reached home she found her aunt in the sitting room bending disapprovingly over the basket of undarned stockings.
“I see you haven’t touched these,” she observed, in a chiding tone. “Where’ve you been?”
“I went to get some eggs.”
“Eggs! What for?”
“For my breakfast to-morrow. You said you couldn’t spare any, so I’ve bought some.”
“Where?”
The word expressed mingled wrath and wonder.
“Next door.”
The woman looked puzzled. She thought a moment.
“Where’d you say?” she asked after a pause.
“Next door—at the Howes’.”71
“The Howes’!” Ellen fairly hissed the name. “You went to theHowes’for eggs?”
“Why not?”
With a swift motion her aunt strode forward and snatched the box from Lucy’s light grasp.
“You went to the Howes—to the Howes—an’ told ’em I didn’t give you enough to eat?”
Livid, the woman crowded nearer, clutching the girl’s arm in a fierce, merciless grip; her blue eyes flashed, and her lips trembled with anger.
“I didn’t say you didn’t give me enough to eat,” explained Lucy, trying unsuccessfully to draw away from the cruel fingers that held her.
“What did you tell ’em?”
“I just said you couldn’t spare any eggs for us to use.”
“Spare eggs! I can spare all the eggs I like,” Ellen retorted. “I ain’t a pauper. If I chose I could eat every egg there is in that pantry.” She shook her niece viciously. “I only sell my eggs ’cause I’d rather,” she went on.
“I thought you said we couldn’t afford to have eggs when they where so high,” explained Lucy. “You said they were sixty-six cents a dozen.”72
“I could afford to eat ’em if they was a dollar,” interrupted Ellen, her voice rising. “If they were two dollars!”
“I didn’t understand.”
“’Tain’t your business to understand,” snapped her aunt. “Your business is to do as I say. Think of your goin’ to the Howes—to the Howes of all people—an’ askin’ for eggs! It’ll be nuts for them.The Howes.” The circling fingers loosened weakly.
“I wonder,” she continued, “the Howes sold you any eggs. They wouldn’t ’a’ done it, you may be sure, but to spite me. I reckon they were only too glad to take the chance you offered ’em.”
“They weren’t glad,” protested Lucy indignantly. “They didn’t want to sell the eggs at all, at least two of them didn’t; but the one called Jane insisted on letting me have them.”
“What’d they say?”
“I couldn’t understand,” Lucy replied. “They seemed to be afraid of displeasing somebody called Martin. They said he wouldn’t like it.”
“Martin wouldn’t, eh?” Ellen gave a disagreeable chuckle. “They’re right there.73Martin won’t like it. They’ll be lucky if he doesn’t flay them alive for’ doin’ it.”
“But why, Aunt Ellen? Why?” inquired Lucy.
“Because the Howes hate us, root an’ branch; because they’ve injured an’ insulted us for generations, an’ are keepin’ right on injurin’ an’ insultin’ us. That’s why!” Ellen’s wrath, which had waned a little, again rose to a white heat. “Because they’d go any length to do us harm—every one of ’em.” Again the grip on Lucy’s arm tightened painfully.
Dragging the girl to the window the old woman cried:
“Do you see that pile of stones over there? That’s the wall the Howes built years an’ years ago—built because of the grudge they bore the Websters, likely. Did you ever look on such an eyesore?”
“Why don’t they fix it?” asked Lucy naively.
“Yes, why don’t they? You may well ask that!” returned Ellen with scathing bitterness. “Why don’t they? Because they’re too mean an’ stingy—that’s why. Because they think that by lettin’ it go to ruin an’ makin’ my place look like a dump heap, they can drive me74to spend my money to do it, so’st they can save theirs. Because they’re such lyin’, deceitful critters they actually pretend the wall don’t belong to ’em anyhow—that it’s mine!Mine!That’s why. So they leave it there, lookin’ like the devil’s own playground, hopin’ that some day I’ll get so sick of seem’ it that way that I’ll build it up.”
She choked for breath.
“But I shan’t,” she went on. “I never shall, long’s I live. If I was to be drawn an’ quartered I wouldn’t do it. No. If Martin Howe thinks he’s the only person in the world who can hold out for a principle, he’s mistaken. I’ve got a will that can match his, match his an’ beat it, too, an’ he’ll learn it sometime. I can put up with seein’ that wall just as long as he can.”
A light of understanding began to break in on Lucy’s bewilderment.
“I don’t see——” she began, then halted before her aunt’s stern gaze.
“You don’t see what? Out with it.”
“I don’t see why you couldn’t build it up together.”
“You don’t!” sneered Ellen contemptuously, “You’d help those Howes fix their75wall, I s’pose, same’s you’d go an’ buy their eggs.”
The withering intonation of the words echoed through the room.
“I’m goin’ to tell you right now, Lucy Webster, that if you have a spark of pride, an atom of regard for your father, your grandfather, or your great-grandfather, you’ll put all such notions as that plumb out of your head. You’ll have no dealin’s with the Howes. You’ll just hate ’em as your folks have always hated ’em; an’ you’ll vow from now on that if Heaven ever gives you the chance you’ll get even with ’em.” The tense voice ceased.
Through the stillness the whispers of the great elm on the lawn could be heard blending with the song of a vesper sparrow. Already twilight had folded the valley in mystery until only the peaks of the hills were tipped with light.
Contrasted with the peace of the night, man’s strivings seemed peculiarly out of harmony. But to Ellen’s heart the scene brought no tranquillity.
“Now you know what your duty is,” she concluded, with a final vindictive outburst.76
“If it is my duty,” the girl answered, her eyes still upon the distant landscape.
“Of course it’s your duty. There ain’t no question about that.”
“Each of us must settle with his own conscience what his duty is,” Lucy observed slowly.
“Not if it’s been handed down to him,” put in Ellen quickly. “I guess your duty’s chalked out for you pretty plain; an’ I reckon if you’re any sort of a Webster you’ll do it an’ not go branchin’ off followin’ notions of your own—not after all these years.”
“I don’t believe in keeping up traditions unless they are good ones.”
The older woman’s lips tightened.
“You mean you’d break off from what your folks thought?”
“If I felt it to be right, yes.”
Ellen drew a quick, impatient breath.
“You mean to say you’d set yourself up as knowin’ mor’n your people before you did?”
“I believe each generation grows wiser, or ought to—wiser and kinder.”
“Kindness has nothin’ to do with it.”
“Yes, it has,” persisted Lucy softly. “Unless we become more kind, how is the world ever to become better?”77
“Pish!” ejaculated Ellen. “Now see here. You ain’t comin’ into my house to preach to me. I’m older’n you, an’ I know without bein’ told what I want to do. So long’s you stay under this roof you’ll behave like a Webster—that’s all I’ve got to say. If you ain’t a-goin’ to be a Webster an’ prefer to disgrace your kin, the sooner you get out the better.”
“Very well. I can go.”
There was no bravado in the assertion. Had there been, Ellen would not have felt so much alarmed. It was the fearless sincerity of the remark that frightened her. She had not intended to force a crisis. She had calculated that her bullying tone would cow rather than antagonize her niece. The last result on which she had reckoned was defiance. Instantly her crafty mind recognized that she must conciliate unless she would lose this valuable helper whose toil could be secured without expense.
“Of course I don’t mean—I wouldn’t want you should go away,” she hastened to declare. “I’m just anxious for you to do—well—what’s right,” she concluded lamely.
Lucy saw her advantage.
“Now, Aunt Ellen, we may as well settle this right now,” she asserted. “I am quite78willing to go back to Arizona any time you say the word. I have no desire to remain where I am not wanted. But so long as I do stay here, I must be the one to decide what it is right for me to do. Remember, I am not a child. I have a conscience as well as you, and I am old enough to use it.”
Ellen did not speak. She realized that Greek had met Greek and in the combat of wills she was vanquished. Nevertheless, she was not generous enough to own defeat.
“S’pose we don’t talk about it any more,” she replied diplomatically.
She was retreating toward the door, still smarting under the knowledge of having been vanquished, when her eye fell upon the box of eggs, which, in her excitement, she had forgotten was in her hand. A malicious gleam lighted her face. A second afterward there was a violent crash in the kitchen.
“The eggs!” Lucy heard her cry. “I’ve dropped ’em.”
The eggs had indeed been dropped,—dropped with such a force that even the cooperation of all the king’s horses and all the king’s men would have been useless.
When Lucy reached her side Ellen was79bending over the wreck on the floor, a sly smile on her lips.
“They’re gone, every one of ’em,” she announced with feigned regret. “But it ain’t any matter. You can have all, the eggs you want anytime you want ’em. I ain’t so poverty-stricken that we can’t have eggs—even if they are sixty-six cents a dozen.”
She got a cloth and began to wipe up the unsightly mass at her feet.
“I paid sixty-seven cents for those,” Lucy said.
“Sixty-seven cents! How long have the Howes been gettin’ sixty-seven cents for their eggs, I’d like to know?” Ellen demanded, springing into an upright position.
“I couldn’t say. Jane told me that was the regular market price.”
“Why didn’t I know it?” her aunt burst out. “They must ’a’ gone up a cent, an’ I sellin’ mine at the store for sixty-six! Ain’t it just like that meachin’ Elias Barnes to do me out of a penny a dozen, the skinflint.”
In the face of the present issue, the battle between Howe and Webster was forgotten.
To be cheated out of a cent by Elias Barnes and at the same time to have her business80ability surpassed by that of Martin Howe! No indignity could have equaled it.
“Well, I’ll get even with Elias,” she blustered. “I’m fattening some hogs for him, an’ I’ll tuck what I’ve lost on the eggs right on to ’em. He shall pay that cent one way or ’nother ’fore he gets through. He needs to think to beat me. Sixty-seven cents, and I never knowin’ it!”
Then the words brought still another bitter possibility to the woman’s mind.
“You didn’t mention to the Howes I was gettin’ only sixty-six cents a dozen for eggs, did you?” she asked, wheeling on Lucy.
“No, I didn’t speak of price.”
“That’s good,” said her aunt, slightly mollified. “At least Martin Howe can’t go crowin’ over me—that is, unless Elias Barnes tells him. ’Twould be exactly like Elias to do it. He is just that mean.”
Although Ellen did not own it, Lucy knew that had the case been reversed, she would have been the first to crow unhesitatingly not only over Elias but over Martin. Pityingly she looked at the old woman.
“If you ever get the chance to speak to those Howe women again,” her aunt concluded, with81affected nonchalance, “you might tell ’em we never used their eggs. You could say I smashed ’em. I’d like Martin Howe to know it.”