It was late when Alex came home, and he did the chores after supper.
Mary Frances and Wattie had gone to singing-school and Matilda was alone
in the kitchen when her husband came in. He sat down on the doorstep,
with his back to her and his head down, and stuck the blade of his
jack-knife into the pine step between his feet. There was a long
silence, and when he spoke his voice had a husky embarrassment.
"There's something I suppose I'd ought to have talked to you about all
this time, Matildy, but somehow I couldn't seem to do it. I had a talk
with Mr. Anderson, and he brought it up before the Session, and they
didn't seem to think anything more need to be said about it. It's all
dead and gone now, and of course you know I've been sorry time and time
and again. I don't suppose I ought to say it, but it wasn't altogether
my fault. She never did act right, but then, of course"--
"_Elick!_"
The man heard his name in a quick gasp behind him. He turned and looked
up. Matilda was standing over him, with a white, distorted face.
"Do you mean--to tell me--that it was _true_?"
She got the words out with an effort. Her chin worked convulsively. She
looked an old, old woman.
"True?"
The man lifted a dazed, questioning face to hers. He groped his way back
through twenty years. This woman had believed in him all the time! He
saw her take two or three steps backward and fall into a chair. They
sat there until the room grew dark. The wind began to blow through the
house, and Alex got up and put out the cat and shut the door. Then he
went to his wife's side.
"Don't you think you'd better go to bed, Matildy?"
She shook her head.
"I suppose there's such a thing as repentance," he went on, with a rasp
in his voice, "and a blotting out of sins, isn't there, Matildy?"
She put out her hand and pushed him away. He went into the bedroom and
shut the door. She could hear him pulling off his boots on the bootjack.
Then he walked about a little in his stocking feet, and presently the
bed-cord squeaked, and she knew he was in bed. Later, she could hear his
heavy breathing. She sat there in the dark until she heard Wattie
whistling; then she got up and lit a candle and opened the door softly.
The boy came loping up the path.
"Mary France's got a beau!" he broke out, with a little snort of
ridicule.
His mother laid her hand on his arm.
"Wattie," she said, "I want you to go out to the barn and harness up old
Doll and the colt. I want you to go with me and Mary Frances over to
grandfather Hazlitt's."
The boy's mouth and eyes grew round.
"To-night?"
"Yes, right away. I don't want you to ask any questions, Wattie. Mother
never yet told you to do anything wrong. Just go out and get the team,
and be as quiet as you can."
The boy "hunched" his shoulders, and started with long, soft strides
toward the barn. His mother heard him begin to whistle again and then
stop abruptly. She stood on the step until she heard voices at the gate,
and Mary Frances came up the walk between the marigolds and zinnias and
stood in the square of light from the door. She met her mother with a
pink, bashful face.
"I want you to go upstairs, Mary Frances, and get your other cloak and
my blanket shawl. Wattie's gone to fetch the horses. You and him and
me's goin' over to grandfather Hazlitt's."
"To grandfather Hazlitt's this time o' night! Is anybody sick?"
"No, there's nobody sick. I don't want you should ask any questions,
Mary Frances. Just get on your things, and do as mother says; and don't
make any more noise than you can help."
The young girl went into the house, and came out presently with her
mother's shawl and bonnet. They could hear the wagon driving around to
the gate.
Matilda went into the kitchen and blew out the candle. Then she closed
the door quietly, and went down the walk with her daughter.
Matilda Randall was not at communion on the next Sabbath. She was "down
sick at her father's," the women said, and they thought it hard that she
should be absent when Alex joined the church.
"I don't doubt it's been quite a cross to her, the way he's held out,"
one of them remarked; "and it seems a pity she couldn't have been there
to partake with him the first time."
But the weary woman, lying so still in her old room in her father's
house, had a heavier cross.
Her mother tiptoed into the room, the morning after her arrival, and
stood beside her until she opened her eyes.
"Elick is outside, Matildy. Shall I tell him to come in?"
She shook her head, and closed her eyes again wearily.
The old woman went out, and confronted her gray-haired husband
helplessly.
"It beats me, Josiah, what he could 'a' said or done that she's took to
heart so, after what she's put up with all these years."
* * * * *
Mr. Anderson preached the funeral sermon very touchingly, when it was
all over. The tears came into his young eyes, and there were treacherous
breaks in his rhetoric as he talked.
"This sister in Israel, whose lovely and self-sacrificing life has just
ended so peacefully, lived to see the dearest wish of her heart
gratified,--the conversion of the husband of her youth to the faith of
her fathers. We are told that some have died of grief, but if this frail
heart ceased to beat from any excess of emotion, it must have been, my
friends, from the fullness of joy,--the joy 'that cometh in the
morning.'"
But Alex Randall knew better.