189CHAPTER XIITHE TEST
Martin had guided his horse round the triangle of sweet-williams and, still torn by conflicting emotions of ecstasy and self-reproach, was proceeding down the driveway when a cry of distress reached his ear:
“Martin—Mr. Howe!”
He turned to see Lucy Webster beckoning frantically to him from the door.
“Come back, please,” she cried. “Hurry!”
That she was excited was evident. Indeed she must have been quite out of her mind to have called him Martin in that shameless fashion. The fact that the name had slipped so spontaneously from her lips and that she hastened to correct her mistake caused the man to speculate with delight as to whether she was wont to think of him by this familiar cognomen. This thought, however, was of minor importance, the flash of an instant. What190chiefly disturbed Martin was the girl’s agitation.
Bringing his horse to a stop, he sped back to where she was standing, and on reaching her side he was startled to see that the face but a short interval before so radiant had blanched to a deathly pallor.
“My aunt!” she whispered in a frightened tone. “Something terrible has happened to her!”
If Lucy entertained any doubts as to whether he would aid her in the present emergency she had either cast them aside or was determined to ignore such a possibility, for she held the door open with the obvious expectation that he would follow her into the house.
A year ago, a month, nay—a week, he would never have consented to cross the Webster threshold, let alone offer any assistance to its mistress; but the siren who beckoned him on had cast such a potent spell over his will that now without open protest, although with a certain inward compunction, he followed her through the hall into the kitchen.
Upon the floor was stretched Ellen Webster—crumpled, helpless, inert—her eyes closed191and her stern face set as in a death mask. How long she had lain there it was impossible to tell. If she had called for succor it had been to empty walls.
As with mingled sensations Martin stood looking down upon her unconscious form, Lucy threw herself upon her knees beside the woman and gently touched her wrists and heart.
“She isn’t dead,” she murmured presently. “She must either have had a fall or some sort of shock. We must get her upstairs and send for a doctor.”
The “we” told Martin that the girl had not even considered the chance of his refusing to come to her assistance.
“Tony is in the village,” she went on, “and I don’t know what I should have done but for you. How fortunate that you were here!”
Was it fortunate? Martin asked himself.
At last the moment for which he had longed and prayed had come,—the moment when the fate of his enemy lay in his hands, and it was within his power to grant or deny succor. There had never been a question in his mind what he would do should this opportunity arise. Had he not declared over and over again that192Ellen Webster might die before he would lift a finger to help her? He had meant it too. All the bitterness of his soul had gone into the vow. And now here he was confronted by the very emergency he had craved from Fortune. The woman he hated was at his mercy. What should he do? Should he stand stanchly by his word and let her life go out into the Beyond when he might perhaps stay its flight? Or should he weakly repudiate his word and call her from the borderland to continue to taunt and torment him? If a doctor were not summoned quickly she might die, and her death be upon his soul. Did he wish to stain himself with this crime,—for crime it would be. Was the revenge worth the hours of self-condemnation that might follow? Who was he that he should judge Ellen Webster and cut off her life before its time? Vengeance is mine: I will repay, saith the Lord.
The phrase rang insistently in Martin’s ears. He tried to stifle it—ignore it—but still the assertion continued to repeat itself within his consciousness. Suppose, tempted by his weaker nature and the appealing eyes of Lucy, he were to yield to his better self and adopt a merciful attitude, might not Ellen be restored193to health and jeer at him to the end of his days for his magnanimity? Hers was not the creed “If thine enemy hunger.” She would call him coward and accuse him of a feeble, intimidated will. Were the case to be reversed, she would never curb her hatred to prolong his existence; of that he was certain. He could see her now bending over him, her thumb turned down with the majestic fearlessness of a Cæsar. She would term her act justice, and she would carry out the sentence without a tremor.
But now that the same chance had come to him, and he saw the old woman stretched before him, her thin white hair snowy against the wooden flooring, a vague pity stirred in his heart. Death must come to us all sometime; but how tragic to have its approach unheralded, granting not an instant in which to raise a prayer to Heaven. No, he could not let his worst foe go down to the grave thus. He was the captain of his own soul, but not of Ellen Webster’s.
He glanced up to find Lucy’s gaze fixed upon him. There was horror and anguish in her eyes, and he realized that she had read aright the temptation that assailed him. She did not speak, she seemed scarcely to breathe:194but the pleading face told him that should he yield to his darker passions and show no pity, she would forever loathe him for his cruelty. Plainly as he saw this, however, it was not to her silent entreaty that he surrendered. Something deeper than love was calling him.
“Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels and have not charity——” How persistently the sentences came to him! They seemed to echo from out his memory—in his mother’s voice—the voice of a vanished past. She had taught him the words when he was a boy, and he had not thought of them since. Why did they now surge into his mind to weaken his resolve and cause him to waver in his intention? He wished he could get away from Lucy’s eyes and the sight of the woman upon the floor. Had his mother lived, she might sometime have been as frail as this and had hair as white. A sob broke from him, and he stooped over his fallen foe.
“Where do you want I should carry her?” he asked, raising the limp body in his arms.
Lucy did not answer at once, and when she did her reply was unsteady.195
“The room is at the head of the stairs,” she said, struggling to speak in her customary tone. “Maybe I’d better go first.”
The hushed intimacy of the tragedy suddenly brought the man and the woman very close together.
She led the way and he followed with his helpless burden. The form he bore was not heavy. In fact, it was so fragile that it seemed impossible that it could harbor so much venom and hatred.
Ellen Webster was, after all, nothing but an old, old woman. Perhaps, he reflected, in a wave of regret, he should have realized this and made allowance for it. Then a reaction from his tense emotion swept over him, and he thought with amusement how angry she would be should she suddenly regain consciousness and find herself within his grasp.
But she did not come to herself, and when he laid her on the bed that Lucy had prepared, she was still as unmindful of his touch as she would have been had the spirit within her really taken flight.
Martin did not linger now. His decision was made.
“I’ll step over home an’ get the other horse196an’ team, an’ fetch the doctor back,” he said quietly.
“I wish you would.”
She did not thank him, accepting the favor with the simplicity of a weaker nature that leans unabashed on a stronger. Her dependence and her confession of it thrilled him with pleasure. She heard him creep cautiously down over the stairs and go out at the side door.
Then she turned her attention to making more comfortable the helpless woman upon the bed. When at length there was nothing more she could do, she sat down to wait the doctor’s coming. The time dragged on. It seemed an eternity before help came.
In the meantime Ellen lay immovable as she had done from the first, her hard, sharp-cut features harder and more sharply defined in their pallor than the girl had realized them to be. In the furrowed brow, the deep-set eyes, the pitiless mouth there was not one gentle line which death could borrow to soften the stamp with which revenge and bitterness had branded her. So she would look in her coffin, Lucy thought with awe. Majesty might come into her face in the last great moment;197but it would be the majesty of hate, not of love.
What a sad, sad ending to a life!
As the girl sat thinking of the friendless, isolated existence of the woman before her, she wondered idly what her aunt would have been, if, while her nature was still plastic, she had married and sacrificed her ego in years of service for others. Ah, she would never then have come to this lonely, embittered old age! Children would have prattled at her knee, and their children would have made glad the silent house. How full of joy and opportunity such an existence would have been!
But these blessings, alas, had not been granted Ellen. Perhaps it had been her own fault. She may deliberately have thrust the gentle visitant, Love, from her dwelling, and once repulsed he may never have sought again for entrance.
Or it might be the woman was one at whose door the god had never knocked. Oh, the pity of it!
For after all did life hold any gift so rare, so supreme, as the perfect devotion of a man and woman who loved one another. It must198be a wonderful thing, that divine miracle of Love.
Dreamily Lucy’s gaze wandered off to the sunny fields, and with solemn realization it came to her that should Ellen die, they and all the Webster lands would be hers, to do with as she pleased. There were so many things she had been powerless to get her aunt to do. The house needed repairs if it were to be preserved for coming generations: certain patches of soil had been worked too long and should be allowed to lie fallow; there were scores of other improvements she would like to see carried out. Now she would be free to better the property as she saw fit. She would talk with Martin Howe about it. He was brimming with all the latest farming methods. She would get him to buy her a cultivator such as he used in his own garden, and a wheel-hoe. He could advise her, too, about plowing buckwheat into the soil. And Martin would know what to do about shingling the barn and cementing the cellar.
In fact, it was amazing to discover how inseparable Martin seemed to be from her plans. He was so strong, so wise, just the type of man a woman could depend upon for sympathy and199guidance. Absently she twisted the ring on her finger.
Her mind had traveled to the events of the morning, to his battle with himself and final victory. How appealing had been his surrender! The stern personality had melted into a tenderness as winning as a child’s.
If he loved a woman and she loved him—— She started guiltily to find Ellen staring at her with vague, troubled eyes.
“Where—where—am—I—?” asked the woman in a weak, quavering voice.
“Upstairs in your own room, Aunt Ellen,” replied Lucy gently.
“How’d I come here?”
“You didn’t feel very well.”
“Yes. I remember now. I fell, didn’t I?”
“I’m afraid so.”
“I was fussin’ at somethin’, an’ it made me dizzy. ’Twas the heat, I guess. Where’d you find me?”
“In the kitchen.”
“An’ you managed to bring me here?”
Her niece hesitated.
“Yes,” she answered firmly.
Ellen paused and with dread the girl awaited her next question. But no question came.200Either the clouded mind was in too vague a mood to grasp details, or the invalid did not care. She seemed to be thinking.
“So I fell,” she repeated at last.
“Yes.”
Again there was a pause, and during the stillness Lucy plainly heard the sound of approaching wagon wheels. It must be Martin with the doctor. She rose softly.
“Where you goin’?” demanded her aunt.
“Just downstairs a minute. I think the doctor——”
“You didn’t send Tony for the doctor!” the invalid exclaimed, a feeble querulousness vibrating in the words.
“Yes; I didn’t know what else to do.”
“He can’t help any.”
“Perhaps he can.”
“I tell you he can’t,” snapped Ellen. “I know well enough what’s the matter with me without bein’ told. I’ve had a shock. My feet are all cold and numb: I can’t feel nothin’ in ’em, nor move ’em. There ain’t no remedy for that. You’re only wastin’ money gettin’ the man here to tell me what I already know. I shan’t see him.”
Lucy waited a moment.201
“I’m sorry I sent for him if you don’t want him,” she said. “But now that he is here, don’t you think he’d better come up? We don’t need to have him come again.”
Ellen did not respond at once. Then with more animation than she had exhibited, she said:
“I s’pose we’ll have to pay him whether he comes up or not, so I may’s well get my money’s worth out of him. Go and fetch him. He’ll likely be tickled to death to see with his own eyes how bad off I am so’st he can go back an’ blab the news in the village. Folks will be thankful to have something new to talk about.”
Lucy could not but smile at the characteristic remark. She went out and soon returned with Doctor Marsh tiptoeing gingerly behind her.
He was a heavy, florid man whom the combination of heat and speed had transformed into a panting mechanism. Mopping the beads of perspiration from his brow, he started to seat himself at Ellen’s bedside, but the woman waved him off.
“Don’t come any nearer,” she called, “and don’t bring that bag of pills and plasters in here, either. I shan’t need nothin’ you’ve got.202I know that well’s you do; an’ I know better’n you do that there ain’t no help for me. You needn’t stay, an’ you needn’t come in. Good mornin’.”
Having delivered herself of this ultimatum at a single breath, Ellen turned her head and closed her eyes.
The doctor looked at her in astonishment but did not move.
“Clip right along home,” reiterated the sick woman without looking at the physician. “My niece’ll pay you as you go out. I reckon you won’t charge more’n half price, since you ain’t done nothin’.”
“I usually have——”
“Mebbe. But this call ain’t like your usual ones, is it?”
“No,” responded the doctor with dignity, “I can’t say that it is.”
“Then you can’t expect to get so much for it,” piped Ellen triumphantly. “My niece will settle with you. Give him a dollar, Lucy—not a cent more. He’ll have fun enough gossipin’ about me to make up the rest of the fee.”
Doctor Marsh, his face a study in outraged decorum, stalked indignantly from the room.203Ellen, peeping from beneath her lids, watched him with satisfaction.
“Has he gone?” she demanded, when Lucy returned.
“Yes.”
“Thank the Lord. The fool doesn’t know anything, anyway. Now you go back downstairs an’ finish up your work. There ain’t no call for you to be idlin’ the day out, even if I am.”
“I don’t like to leave you alone.”
“Pooh, pooh! I can’t no more’n die, an’ if I was to start doin’ that you couldn’t stop me.”
Lucy moved toward the door; then turning she remarked gently:
“I’m so sorry, Aunt Ellen.”
“Eh?”
“I’m sorry you’re ill.”
“Are you?” questioned the old woman, searching the girl’s face with her small, flinty eyes. “Mebbe you are. You generally tell the truth. I guess if you do feel so, you’re the only one; an’ I don’t quite see how even you can be.”
“I am.”
Her aunt fingered the sheet nervously.
“You’re a good girl, Lucy,” she presently204observed in a weary tone. “You won’t lose nothin’ by it, neither.”
Embarrassed, her niece started from the room.
“Come back here a minute,” muttered the woman drowsily. “I want to speak to you.”
Lucy recrossed the threshold and bent over Ellen, who had sunk back on the pillows and was beckoning to her with a feeble, exhausted hand.
“You’ll stay by me, won’t you?” she pleaded in a whisper, for the first time displaying a consciousness of her helpless, dependent condition. “Promise you won’t desert me. I’m leavin’ you the place an’ ten thousand dollars.”
205CHAPTER XIIIMELVINY ARRIVES
When Lucy descended to the kitchen she was surprised to be confronted by Jane Howe.
“Martin told us your aunt was sick, so I came over to see what I could do,” said the visitor softly. “I reckon you’re all up in a heap. Sickness makes a sight of trouble. I know what it is ’cause I’ve had it. Let me take right hold and put the kitchen to rights for you.”
The words were hearty with sincerity, and the woman’s intention of rendering neighborly assistance genuine, for she promptly produced a large pinafore from under her arm and proceeded to put it on.
“You’re just as good as you can be,” Lucy exclaimed. “But indeed I couldn’t think of letting you do my work, especially on such a hot day as this.”
“Why not? Didn’t I just tell you I came to help? If you wasn’t to let me lend a hand when you were in a tight place, I’d feel it206warn’t kind of you,” protested Jane, aggrieved. “Fetch the broom, an’ I’ll go straight to sweepin’ up. My, but you have a fine big kitchen here, haven’t you?”
As she rolled up her sleeves she glanced about.
“It’s a monstrous house though,” she went on a minute later. “You’ll never be able to do all there’ll be to do now, unless you have help. Let alone the work, you never can manage to lift your aunt by yourself. I reckon you’ll have to send for Melviny Grey.”
“And who, pray, is she?”
“Melviny? Ain’t you never heard of Melviny?”
Jane regarded Lucy with astonishment.
“No.”
“Oh, well, that’s because you warn’t born and raised here,” she explained. “Why, Melviny’s one of the institutions of Sefton Falls. Nothin’ goes on in the way of tribulation without Melviny bein’ to it.”
“Oh, I see. She’s a nurse.”
“No, you couldn’t really call her that,” replied Jane thoughtfully. “An’ still I don’t know but you might as well tag her that way as any. ’Twould be hard to tell just what207Melviny is. She ain’t only a nurse, ’cause she’s a dressmaker; an’ she ain’t exactly a dressmaker, ’cause she makes bonnets; besides that she cleans house for folks, puts up pickles, and tends all the new babies. Melviny’s just a sort of present help in time of trouble.”
Lucy smiled.
“I believe, too, she ain’t busy just now—not more’n ordinarily busy, I mean,” Jane hastened to add quickly. “As I remember it, the Bartons’ baby’s just come, an’ the Wheeler one ain’t due yet; so I guess Melviny’s yours for the askin’. An’ if you can get her, you’ll have a whole team.”
“I don’t know whether Aunt Ellen——” began Lucy uneasily, but Jane interrupted her:
“Oh, it ain’t to be expected your aunt will want her,” she cut in serenely. “She won’t want anybody. ’Twill drive her well-nigh crazy to think of spendin’ the money. But ’tain’t right for you to try to do all there is to be done alone, an’ you mustn’t undertake it. Just go right ahead an’ get somebody in, whether your aunt likes it or not. That’s the way I’d do if it was Martin. Besides, ’tain’t as if Melviny was different. She fits in208anywhere. She warn’t ever known not to. She asks no questions an’ has got no opinions. She just sorter goes along as if she was walkin’ in her sleep, turnin’ neither to the right nor to the left. Whatever house she’s in, it’s all the same to her. I believe she’d jog up to a patient with a breakfast tray if the stairs was burnin’ under her. Nothin’ moves her.”
There was a rippling laugh from Lucy.
“We’d have to have somebody like that,” she said.
“You certainly would,” agreed Jane. “That’s why I feel Melviny’s just the one for you.”
“It is so good of you to be interested.”
“Bless your heart, I reckon the whole town’s interested in Miss Webster bein’ took down,” confessed Jane naively. “But I don’t deserve no credit for this plan; ’twas Martin’s idea.”
“Mar—your brother’s?”
“Yes. Martin’s awful upset ’bout your aunt bein’ sick,” announced Jane. “He must ’a’ heard it in the village when he was there this mornin’, for the minute he got back he sent me over to urge you to get somebody in. ’Course he wouldn’t come himself. That would be too much to expect. But he209actually said that if you decided to fetch Melviny he’d go and get her—an’ from him that means a heap. I ’most fell over backwards when he suggested it, for you know how Martin feels toward your aunt.”
Lucy nodded in confusion. She had an uncomfortable sense that she was not being quite frank with Jane.
“Martin would do ’bout anything for you, Miss Lucy,” the woman asserted in a sudden burst of confidence. “I——”
A cry from upstairs cut short the sentence.
“Lucy!”
“Yes, Aunt Ellen, I’ll be right there.”
“Go right up: I’ll finish things here,” whispered Jane hurriedly. “All is, if you want Martin to go for Melviny, you have only to say the word. You can wave a handkerchief out of the window, an’ he’ll understand.”
“Where does Miss Grey——”
“For the land sake don’t call her that. Nobody’d know who you meant, an’ she wouldn’t, either.”
“Well, Melviny, then—where does she live?”
“Down in the valley—King’s Hollow, they call it.”210
“Why, it’s miles!” protested Lucy in dismay. “I can’t send your brother way down there. He’s been doing nothing but errands all day.”
“I know it,” Jane replied. “He’s been to town twice already. He came home this noon with a load of grain an’ then changed horses an’ went right back to the village again ’cause he forgot something. Likely you noticed him drivin’ past.”
The girl colored before Jane’s friendly glance. She longed to tell the whole truth, for by nature she was a person of great frankness. Since, however, Martin had not seen fit to enlighten his sisters, perhaps it was wiser that she should not do so. He may have had his own reasons for keeping them in ignorance.
“Lucy!”
“Yes, I’m coming, Aunt Ellen.”
“Do go along,” implored Jane; “she may suspect something. I’ll leave the house all picked up, tidy as a pin. You won’t forget to wave to Martin if you want him.”
“No. Thank you a thousand times, Ja—Miss Howe.”
“Jane’ll do,” smiled the woman kindly. “I’m more used to it.”211
Catching her visitor’s hand in a quick grasp, Lucy pressed it warmly and then sped up the stairs.
“Whatever have you been putterin’ about so long?” queried Ellen petulantly.
“I was clearing up.”
“That’s good. I guess the place needed it,” sighed her aunt. “I warn’t half through straightenin’ things in the kitchen. I thought I heard you talkin’.”
“Heard me?”
“Probably ’twas a notion. My head kinder buzzes.” Then she suddenly turned suspiciously on the girl, adding sharply:
“You ain’t been over to the Howes’?”
“No.”
“That’s right. An’ don’t you go, neither. We don’t need no help from them.”
A pause followed.
“Did you want me for something?” Lucy at last inquired, after waiting for her aunt to speak.
“Yes, I did.”
Nevertheless Ellen made no further remark for some time. Finally she burst out fretfully:
“I’m almighty afraid I’ll have to hire in somebody, after all.”212
The last two words were peculiarly illuminating.
“You mean somebody to help?”
“Yes,” grumbled the older woman with peevish shrillness. “We’ve got a pull ahead of us; I know that well enough. An’ I s’pose you ain’t got enough muscle to lift me. Likely you couldn’t even raise me up on the pillows if you was to try. How you ever got me upstairs beats all.”
Lucy hastily turned her head aside.
“They do say, though,” continued Ellen, “that sometimes when folks are scat to death they can do things they can’t do any other time. You were scat, I s’pose.”
“Yes, I was.”
“Mebbe you was scat worse when you found I warn’t dead,” chuckled the sick woman disagreeably.
The girl did not reply. Ellen paused; then seemed to regret her ill humor.
“Now ’bout a woman——” She halted abruptly.
“Have you any one in mind?” Lucy asked timidly.
“No,” returned Ellen emphatically, “I haven’t. I hate all the folks in this town about213equally—that is, all except the Howes,” she concluded with significant emphasis.
“Isn’t there a nurse in the village?”
“There’s Melviny Grey.”
“Is she a nurse?” the girl inquired innocently.
“Melviny ain’t never been classified,” retorted Ellen grimly. “She’s neither fish, flesh nor fowl. She’s taught school; laid out the dead; an’ done the Lord only knows what durin’ her lifetime. She can turn her hand to most anything; an’ they do say she’s mum as an oyster, which is a virtue out of the common in a woman.”
“Suppose I see if we can get her?” suggested Lucy.
“Well,” returned Ellen, with a reluctant groan, “I reckon you’ll have to. You can send Tony for her when he gets back, though how he’ll find her I don’t know. You might’s well hunt for a needle in a haystack as to track down Melviny. She’s liable to be most anywheres tendin’ babies or trimmin’ bunnits; an’ Tony’s such a numskull.”
“I guess we can locate her.”
“Well, pack him off anyhow, the minute he gets home; an’ tell him not to do any214unnecessary travelin’, an’ to keep where the ground is smooth if he can. There’s no use wearin’ out Dolly’s new shoes by trapesin’ over the stones in ’em the first thing. Don’t be afraid to speak up good and sharp to Tony. He’s used to it an’ understands it better. Ain’t it the devil’s own luck I should be chained down here like this!”
“Maybe you’ll be better before long.”
“Don’t be a fool,” snarled Ellen. “Of course I shan’t.”
She closed her eyes, and Lucy saw her face first harden into a rebellious frown, then relax into sleep. As soon as the girl was quite sure she would not be heard, she went to the window and, drawing aside the curtain, waved her handkerchief.
Evidently Martin Howe was awaiting the signal, for on receiving it he sprang up from the chopping block where he was sitting and, returning the salute, disappeared into the barn from which he presently emerged with his surrey and bay mare.
Lucy lingered to see him rattle out of the yard and pass over the crest of the hill. Then with a strange sense of comfort and companionship she went back to her aunt’s room. She215sat there until dusk, watching the sleeping woman upon the bed.
Then Melvina arrived. She proved to be a large, placid-faced woman with a countenance from which every human emotion had been eliminated until it was as expressionless as a bronze Buddha. If she had ever known sorrow, delight, affection, surprise, it was so long ago that her reactionary system had forgotten how to reflect these sensations. It was obvious that nothing concerned her outside her immediate calling and that she accepted this with a stoical immovability which was neither to be diverted nor influenced.
Taking Lucy’s hand in a loose, pudgy grasp she remarked:
“A shock?”
“Yes, you see, my aunt——”
“How old is she?”
“A little over seventy-five. I was away and when I——”
“First shock?”
“Yes.”
“Where is she?”
“Upstairs. But before you see her I want to explain that she is a little—well, peculiar. You may find that she——”216
“I shan’t pay no attention,” replied Melvina indifferently. “I’ve seen all sorts—fretters, groaners, whiners, scolders; they’re all one to me. So you needn’t give yourself any uneasiness.”
She spoke in a voice as humdrum and colorless as was her round, flabby face, and Lucy smiled in spite of herself.
“I fancy it isn’t really necessary for me to tell you anything then,” she answered good-humoredly. “Of course you have had a wonderful chance to study personalities.”
“I never had a chance to study anything,” responded Melvina in a matter-of-fact manner. “All I know I’ve picked up as I went along.”
“By study I mean that you have had a wide opportunity to observe human nature,” explained Lucy.
“If by human nature you mean folks, I have,” Melvina said in her habitual monotone.
After answering the remark, however, she made no further attempt at conversation but lapsed into a patient silence, regarding Lucy with her big, faded blue eyes. As she stood there, one gained an impression that she could have stood thus for an indefinite length of217time—forever, if necessary. Not once did her gaze wander to her surroundings, and when Lucy conducted her to the room that had been assigned her she entered it without curiosity.
“I hope you will be comfortable here,” the girl murmured with a hostess’s solicitude.
“I shall be.”
“And if there is anything you want——”
“I’ll ask for it.”
Although there was no rebuke in the utterance, before this monument of composure, Lucy, like David Copperfield in the presence of the waiter, suddenly felt very young.
“Thank you; I wish you would,” she managed to stammer, hastily closing the door.
She reflected with amusement, as she made her retreat, that there were several things she had intended to caution the new nurse not to mention, one being that it was Martin Howe who had brought her hither. But after having once seen Melvina Grey, such warnings became superfluous and absurd. There was no more probability of Melvina’s imparting to Ellen the circumstances of her coming than there was of the rocks on the mountain side breaking into speech and voicing their past history. Therefore she crept downstairs to the218kitchen to prepare supper, pondering as she went as to how Ellen and this strangely stolid attendant would get on together.
“It will be like a storm dashing against granite cliffs,” she thought whimsically. “Well, there is one merciful thing about it—I shall not have to worry about Melviny gossiping or telling tales.”
In this assumption Lucy was quite right. Melvina Grey proved not only to be as dumb as an oyster but even more uncommunicative than that traditionally self-contained bivalve. Notwithstanding her cheery conversation about the weather, the crops, Sefton Falls, the scenery, she never trespassed upon personalities, or offered an observation concerning her immediate environment; nor could she be beguiled into narrating what old Herman Cole died of, or whether he liked his son’s wife or not. This was aggravating, for Melvina had been two years a nurse in the Cole family and was well qualified to clear up these vexed questions. Equally futile, too, were Ellen’s attempts to wring from her lips any confidential information about the Hoyles’ financial tangles, despite the fact that she had been in the house during the tragedy of Samuel Hoyle’s219failure and had welcomed the Hoyle baby into the world.
“Why, the woman’s a clam—that’s what she is!” announced the exasperated patient. “You can get nothin’ out of her. She might as well not know anything if she’s going to be that close-mouthed. I don’t believe hot irons would drag the words out of her. Anyhow, she won’t go retailin’ our affairs all over town after she goes from here; that’s one comfort!”
Lucy endorsed the observation with enthusiasm. It was indeed just as well that Melvina did not report in the sick room all that went on downstairs.
What, for example, would have been Ellen’s feeling had she known that every morning some one of the Howe sisters came stealing across the fields to help with the Webster housework? And what would she have said on discovering that it was her hereditary enemy Martin himself who not only directed the cultivation of her garden but assumed much of its actual work.
Ah, Ellen would have writhed in her bed had such tidings been borne to her. She would, in truth, probably have done far more than writhe had she been cognizant that every evening this220same Mr. Martin Howe, arrayed with scrupulous care, leaped the historic wall and came to sit on the Webster doorstep and discuss problems relative to plowing and planting. And if, as frequently happened, the talk wandered off from cabbages and turnips to sunsets and moon glades, and if sometimes there were conscious intervals when there was no talk at all, who was the wiser? Certainly not Ellen, who in her dim chamber little suspected that the pair who whispered beneath her window had long since become as oblivious to the fact that they were Howe and Webster as were Romeo and Juliet that they were Montague and Capulet.
No, the weeks passed, and Ellen lay in blissful ignorance that the shuttle of Fate, ever speeding to and fro, was subtly entangling in its delicate meshes these heirs of an inherited hatred.
Martin’s sisters saw the romance and rejoiced; and although she gave no sign, Melvina Grey must also have seen it.
As for the man and his beloved, they dwelt apart in an ephemeral world where only the prosaic hours when they were separated were unreal. Their realities were smiles, sighs,221glances,—the thousand and one nothings that make up the joys and agonies of a lover’s existence. Thus the weeks passed.
In the meanwhile, as a result of rest and good care, Ellen steadily became stronger and soon reached a point where it was no empty platitude to assure her that she was really better.
“I do believe we shall have you downstairs yet, Aunt Ellen,” said Lucy gaily. “You are gaining every minute.”
“It’s time I gained,” Ellen retorted with acidity.
“You’re gainin’ all right,” echoed Melvina. “I plan to have you settin’ up soon. Sometime, when you’re havin’ a good day an’ feel real spry, I mean to hist you into a chair an’ let you take a look at the view.”
The date for this innovation came sooner than either Lucy or the optimistic nurse foresaw, for Ellen continued to mend so rapidly that one afternoon, when twilight was deepening into purple, Melvina proposed to attempt the experiment of moving the invalid.
“How’d you like to try settin’ up a spell to-night?” she inquired without preamble. “I’ll get a chair ready, and fix you in it, an’222shove you over to the window so’st you can look out. There ain’t much to see, to be sure; still the change will rest you, an’ mebbe you’ll sleep better after it.”
Ellen did not demur. Melvina had proved herself a trustworthy pilot and demonstrated that her suggestions were worth considering.
“All right,” she replied. “Only hadn’t you better call Lucy?”
“What for?”
“To help you.”
A contemptuous smile curled Melvina’s lips.
“Bless your soul an’ body, I’ve no need of help,” was her answer. “You don’t weigh nothin’, an’ even if you did, I’ve moved so many folks that I wouldn’t hesitate. You ain’t afraid, are you?”
“Mercy, no.”
“There’s no cause for you to be,” went on the nurse reassuringly. “I know what I’m about. All you’ve got to do is to mind what I tell you.”
Ellen’s jaw squared itself.
“I ’spect that’s about all I’ll ever do again,” she returned in a biting tone.
The proposed adventure subsequently223resolved itself into a much simpler undertaking than it had promised, for Ellen was light as a feather and Melvina strong, deft, and experienced. Hence without mishap the invalid was transferred to the big chair and rolled to the window, where she could look out on the valley melting into the shadows of evening.
Had she restricted her observations to the scenery she might have returned to her couch refreshed both in mind and body; but unluckily she chanced to let her glance wander to the garden, and there an astonishing sight met her eyes.
In the seclusion of the lilac hedge stood two figures, that of a man and a woman. The man held in his hand a trowel and was transplanting in the rich brown soil some tender green things which the woman was handing him from a basket. The presence of a stranger who was apparently so much at home within her boundaries was in itself sufficient to arouse Ellen’s curiosity; but what whetted curiosity to indignation was the manner in which the pair were performing the simple task. Even a person blind to romance and deaf to sentiment could not help realizing that the planting was a very immaterial part of the pastoral tableau, and224there was much more significance in the drama than the setting out of young seedlings.
Fascinated, Ellen gazed, her wrath rising.
“Melviny!” she burst out at last, “come here!”
“Yes, Miss Webster.”
“Who’s that out in the garden?”
“Where?”
“Over there near the lilac hedge,” specified Ellen impatiently.
Melvina rubbed her glasses then smothered a little gasp; but she quickly recovered her wonted stolidity.
“It’s Miss Lucy, I reckon,” she said slowly.
“But the man—the man!” persisted Ellen. “Who is he?”
“Oh, the man. That’s Mr. Howe—the one that lives next door.”
“Martin Howe?”
“Yes, I believe they do call him Martin,” responded Melvina imperturbably, resuming her interrupted task of turning the mattress and plumping its feathers into luxurious billows of softness.
Ellen did not speak immediately. When she did it was to ask:
“What’s Martin Howe doin’ on my land?”225
“Helpin’, I s’pose,” Melvina replied with indifference. “He often does.”
“He comes over here an’ works?”
“Yes, marm.”
Ellen brought her fist down on the arm of the chair with an exclamation of anger. Her lips were white, and she trembled. Raising her unsteady finger, she pointed toward the unconscious culprits.
“You go straight out there, Melvina,” she cried, “an’ tell Lucy I want her.”
“Yes, marm.”
“Hurry!”
“Yes.”
She watched while Melvina plodded across the grass and delivered her message. Instantly Lucy dropped the basket and hastened toward the house. Another moment the girl stood before her.
“You’re worse, Aunt Ellen?” she said, panting for breath.
But Ellen ignored the question.
“What’s Martin Howe doin’ in my garden?” she demanded fiercely.
Lucy paled.
“He came over to help me transplant the larkspur.”226
“By what right does he come over here, I’d like to know?”
No reply came.
“Has he been over before?” interrogated Ellen ruthlessly.
“Yes.”
“When?”
“Oh, off an’ on. He’s been trying to help out since you’ve been ill.”
“Help out!” repeated Ellen scornfully. “The coward! He wouldn’t have dared set foot on the place if I’d been well.”
“He isn’t a coward!”
Lucy had drawn herself to her full height and now confronted her aunt with blazing eyes. Ellen, however, was not to be deterred.
“Heisa coward!” she reiterated. “A coward an’ a blackguard! A curse on the Howes—the whole lot of ’em!”
“Stop!”
The intonation of the single word brought Ellen’s harangue to an abrupt cessation.
“You shan’t speak so of Martin Howe or of his family,” cried the girl. “He is no coward. If he had been as small-minded and cruel as you, he would have left you to die on the227floor the day you fell, instead of bringing you upstairs and going for a doctor—you, who have cursed him! You had better know the truth. Did you think it was I who placed you on this bed? I couldn’t have done it. I am not strong enough. It was Martin—Martin Howe!”
Ellen stared stupidly.
“I’d rather have died!” she muttered between clinched teeth.
“Yes, you would,” retorted Lucy. “You would rather have gone down to your grave with bitterness in your soul and a curse upon your lips than to have accepted aid from Martin Howe. You would not have helped him had he been in trouble. You would have been glad to see him suffer—glad!”
The woman listened as if spellbound.
“But Martin Howe is too much of a Christian for that. Yes, you can sneer. He is a Christian and a gentleman. You are not worthy to touch the ground beneath his feet. He would not leave you without help. Since you have been ill, he has given part of each day to working in your garden; and he is busy and tired, too. He’s done it that your crops might not fail. It is Martin Howe that you have to228thank for your harvest, whether you like it or not—Martin Howe!”
Breathlessly she paused.
“You seem to have a terrible high opinion of Martin Howe,” scoffed Ellen, with scathing sarcasm.
“I have.”
“Likely you’re in love with him,” jibed the tormentor.
“Yes, I love him.”
The simple confession came proudly from the girl’s lips.
“An’ he loves you, no doubt,” continued the old woman with a laugh. “At least he’s probably told you so.”
“No, he hasn’t.”
“Oh-ho! He hasn’t, eh?”
“No.”
“An’ never will,” shouted the harpy triumphantly. “He ain’t marryin’ no Websters—don’t you think it for one minute. He’s just makin’ a fool of you. That’s his idea of revenge—your Christian gentleman!”
She rubbed her dank hands together.
“I don’t believe it.”
“You wouldn’t be likely to,” returned Ellen sharply. “I didn’t expect it. No girl is ever229willin’ to believe her lover’s a scoundrel. But mark my words—Martin Howe is playin’ with you—playin’—just the way a cat plays with a mouse. He’s aimin’ to get you into his clutches an’ ruin you—wait an’ see if he ain’t. Oh, he’s a deep one, this gentleman you seem to think so much of!”
“I’ll not believe it,” repeated Lucy hotly.
“You’d marry him, I s’pose,” Ellen hissed.
“If he asked me, yes.”
“You traitor! An’ you a Webster!”
“I don’t care.”
The woman surveyed her niece in silence.
“Well,” she said finally, “you can put your soul at rest. Martin Howe will never marry you—never! He would no more marry anybody of the Webster blood than he’d hang himself. Go on lovin’ him if you want to. No good will come of it.”
With this parting prophecy Ellen shut her lips, and Lucy, throbbing from the stripes of the encounter and seeing further parley fruitless, slipped from the room and fled to the quiet of the still night’s solitude.
After she had gone and Ellen was once more in bed, Melvina tried in vain to quiet the increasing restlessness of her patient, but all230attempts to soothe the invalid were without avail. Tossing from side to side on the pillows, her fingers picking nervously at the coverings, Ellen stared into the darkness, breaking from time to time into fragments of angry dialogue.
The benediction of the evening’s peace, musical with the rustling of leaves and laden with the perfume of blossoming vines, brought no solace to her heart. Presently, unable to endure the silence longer, she started up.
“Melviny,” she called to the woman sitting beside her.
The nurse rose from the deepening gloom and stood erect in the moonlight, her figure throwing upon the whitewashed wall a distorted, specterlike silhouette.
“Yes, marm.”
“Is Lucy still outdoors?”
“Yes.”
Ellen waited an instant; then she said:
“There’s somethin’ in her room I want you should get for me.”
“All right, Miss Webster.”
“It’s a long white envelope. You’ll find it somewheres. It’ll likely be in her desk or the table drawer. It’s sealed with red wax. You’ll know it when you come across it.”231
Although Melvina nodded, she did not move.
“You needn’t be afraid to fetch it,” explained Ellen querulously. “It’s mine. I gave it to Lucy to keep for me.”
“I see.”
Melvina started promptly on her quest.
“Don’t be all night about it,” was Ellen’s parting admonition.
While the messenger was gone, the invalid gave vent to her impatience by drumming rhythmically on the wooden edge of the bedstead, and this measured tattoo increased in speed until it beat time with the feverish bounding of her pulse and the throbbing of her heart.
“Ain’t you found it yet?” she shouted at last.
“Yes, I’ve just come on it. It was under——”
“No matter where it was. Bring it here.”
“I’m comin’.”
Bearing the envelope, Melvina appeared in the doorway.
“Let me see it,” said Ellen.
She took it in her hand and, while Melvina held the candle, examined the package critically.232
“Humph!” she muttered. “It’s good as new.”
For some unaccountable reason she seemed disappointed at the discovery.
“Now run downstairs and put it in the stove,” she commanded excitedly. “Wait till every smitch of it’s burned up an’ then come back.”
“Yes, marm.”
But again Melvina loitered.
“I tell you the thing is mine to do with as I please,” declared Ellen angrily.
“Yes, marm.”
“Ain’t you going?”
“Y-e-s.”
As she heard the nurse’s reluctant step on the stairs, an evil light came into the old woman’s face.
“I’ll fix that!” she whispered aloud.
It took Melvina some time to fulfill her errand, but at length she returned, and the moment she was inside the door Ellen’s shrill query greeted her:
“Well, did you burn it?”
“Yes, marm.”
“Every scrap of it?”
“Yes.”233
“You didn’t leave nothin’?”
“No.”
The woman in the bed drew a satisfied breath.
“That’s all right then. Now get me a drink of water, an’ I’ll go to sleep.”
The sleep she craved, however, did not come, for throughout the night she continued to move unceasingly.
“Your aunt didn’t so much as close her eyes,” announced Melvina to Lucy the next morning, while the two sat at breakfast. Nevertheless, although she advanced this information, with characteristic secretiveness she said nothing of the happenings of the previous evening.
Truly if “Whoso keepeth his mouth and his tongue keepeth his soul from troubles,” Melvina’s eternal serenity of spirit was assured.