this, in that cold bedroom, with a stockin'-leg round your throat, an'
all! You want to git your death? Why, 'twas only last night, Marthy, he
had a hemlock sweat, an' all the ginger tea I could git down into him!
An' then I didn't know--"
"Law! let him alone!" said Marthy, with a comfortable, throaty laugh.
"He'll feel twice as well, git some o' them things off his neck. Here,
Cyrus, you reach me down your mug--ain't them your shavin' things up
there?--an' I'll fill it for you. You git him a piece o' flannel,
Mirandy, to put on when he's washed up an' took all that stuff off his
throat. Why, he's got enough wool round there, if 'twas all in yarn, to
knit Old Tobe a pair o' mittins! An' they say one o' his thumbs was
bigger'n the hand o' Providence. You don't want to try all the goodness
out of him, do ye?"
Cyrus gave one swift glance at his wife. "There! you see!" it said
plainly. "I am not without defenders." He took down his shaving-mug,
with an air of some bravado. But Mirandy was no shrew; she was simply
troubled about many things.
"Well," she said, compressing her lips, and wrinkling her forehead in
resignation. "If folks want to kill themselves, I can't hender 'em! But
when he's down ag'in, I shall be the one to take care of him, that's
all. Here, Cyrus, don't you go into that cold bedroom. You shave you
here, if you're determined to do it."
So Cyrus, after honing his razor, with the pleasure of a bored child
provided at last with occupation, betook himself to the glass set in
the lower part of the clock, and there, with much contortion of his
thin visage, proceeded to shave. Mirandy put her potatoes on to boil,
and set the fish on the stove to freshen; then She sat down by the
window, with a great basket beside her, and began to bind shoes.
"Here," said Mrs. Wadleigh, coming to her feet and adjusting her skirt,
"you give me a needle! I've got my thimble right here in my pocket.
It's three months sence I've seen a shoe. I should admire to do a pair
or two. I wish I could promise ye more, but somehow I'm bewitched to
git over home right arter dinner!"
Mrs. Pendleton laid down her work, and leaned back in her chair. Cyrus
turned, cleared his throat, and looked at her.
"Marthy," said the hostess, "you ain't goin' over there to that
lonesome house, this cold snap?"
"Ain't I?" asked Mrs. Wadleigh, composedly, as she trimmed the top of
her shoe preparatory to binding it. "Well, you see'f I ain't!"
"In the fust place," went on Mrs. Pendleton, nervously, "the cross-road
ain't broke out, an' you can't git there. I dunno's a horse could
plough through; an' s'posin' they could, Cyrus ain't no more fit to go
out an' carry you over'n a fly."
"Don't you worry," said Mrs. Wadleigh, binding off one top. "While I've
got my own legs, I don't mean to be beholden to nobody. I've had a
proper nice time all winter, fust with Lucy an' then with Ann,--an' I
tell ye 'tain't everybody that's got two darters married so well!--but
for the last fortnight, I've been in a real tew to come home. They've
kep' me till I wouldn't stay no longer, an' now I've got so near as
this, I guess I ain't goin' to stop for nobody!"
Mrs. Pendleton looked despairingly at her husband; and he, absently
wiping his razor on a bit of paper, looked at her.
"Marthy!" she burst forth. "No, Cyrus, don't you say one word! You
can't go! There's somebody there!"
Mrs. Wadleigh, in turn, put down her work.
"Somebody there!" she ejaculated. "Where?"
"In your house!"
"In my house? What for?"
"I dunno," said Mirandy, unhappily.
"Dunno? Well, what are they doin' there?"
"I dunno that. We only know there's somebody there."
Here the brown-bread kettle boiled over, creating a diversion; and
Mirandy gladly rose to set it further back. A slight heat had come into
Mrs. Wadleigh's manner.
"Cyrus," said she, with emphasis, "I should like to have you speak. I
left that house in your care. I left the key with you, an' I should
like to know who you've been an' got in there."
Cyrus opened his mouth, and then closed it again without saying a word.
He looked appealingly at his wife; and she took up the tale with some
joy, now that the first plunge had been made.
"Well," she said, folding her hands in her apron, and beginning to rock
back and forth, a little color coming into her cheeks, and her eyes
snapping vigorously. "You see, this was the way 'twas. Cyrus, do let me
speak!" Cyrus had ineffectually opened his mouth again. "Wa'n't it in
November you went away? I thought so. Jest after that first sprinklin'
o' snow, that looked as if 'twould lay all winter. Well, we took the
key, an' hung it up inside the clock--an' there 'tis now!--an' once a
week, reg'lar as the day come round, Cyrus went over, an' opened the
winders, an' aired out the house."
Mrs. Wadleigh sat putting her thimble off and on.
"I know all about that," she interposed, "but who's in there now?
That's what I want to find out."
"I'm comin' to that. I don't want to git ahead o' my story. An' so't
went on till it come two weeks ago Friday, an' Cyrus went over jest the
same as ever. An' when he hitched to the gate, he see smoke comin' out
o' the chimbly, an' there was a man's face at one square o' glass." She
paused, enjoying her climax.
"Well? Why don't you go ahead? Mirandy Jane Pendleton, I could shake
you! You can talk fast enough when somebody else wants the floor! How'd
he git in? What'd he say for himself?"
"Why, he never said anything! Cyrus didn't see him."
"Didn't see him? I thought he see him lookin' out the winder!"
"Why, yes! so he did, but he didn't see him to speak to. He jest nailed
up the door, an' come away."
Mrs. Wadleigh turned squarely upon the delinquent Cyrus, who stood,
half-shaven, absently honing his razor.
"Cyrus," said she, with an alarming decision, "will you open your head,
an' tell me what you nailed up that door for? an' where you got your
nails? I s'pose you don't carry 'em round with you, ready for any
door't happens to need nailin' up?"
This fine sarcasm was not lost on Cyrus. He perceived that he had
become the victim of a harsh and ruthless dealing.
"I had the key to the front door with me, an' I thought I'd jest step
round an' nail up t'other one," he said, in the tone of one conscious
of right. "There was some nails in the wood-shed. Then I heard somebody
steppin' round inside, an' I come away."
"You come away!" repeated Mrs. Wadleigh, rising in noble wrath. "You
nailed up the' door an' come away! Well, if you! ain't a weak sister!
Mirandy, you hand me down that key, out o' the clock, while I git my
things!"
She walked sturdily across to the bedroom, and Mirandy followed her,
wringing her hands in futile entreaty.
"My soul, Marthy! you ain't goin' over there! You'll be killed, as sure
as you step foot into the yard. Don't you remember how that hired man
down to Sudleigh toled the whole fam'ly out into the barn, one arter
another, an' chopped their heads off--"
"You gi' me t'other end o' my cloud," commanded Mrs. Wadleigh. "I'm
glad I've got on stockin'-feet. Where's t'other mittin? Oh! there
'tis, down by the sto'-leg. Cyrus, if you knew how you looked with your
face plastered over o' lather, you'd wipe it off, an' hand me down that
key. Can't you move? Well, I guess I can reach it myself."
She dropped the house key carefully into her pocket, and opened the
outer door; both Cyrus and his wife knew they were powerless to stop
her.
"O Marthy, do come back!" wailed Mrs. Pendleton after her. "You 'ain't
had a mite o' dinner, an' you'll never git out o' that house alive!"
"I'd rather by half hitch up myself," began Cyrus; but his wife turned
upon him, at the word, bundled him into the kitchen, and shut the door
upon him. Then she went back to her post in the doorway, and peered
after Mrs. Wadleigh's square figure on the dazzling road, with a
melancholy determination to stand by her to the last. Only when it
occurred to her that it was unlucky to watch a departing friend out of
sight, did she shut the door hastily, and go in to reproach Cyrus and
prepare his dinner.
Mrs. Wadleigh plodded steadily onward. Her face had lost its robustness
of scorn, and expressed only a cheerful determination. Once or twice
her mouth relaxed, in retrospective enjoyment of the scene behind her,
and she gave vent to a scornful ejaculation.
"A man in my house!" she said once, aloud. "I guess we'll see!"
She turned into the cross-road, where stood her dear and lonely
dwelling, with no neighbors on either side for half a mile, and stopped
a moment to gaze about her. The road was almost untravelled, and the
snow lay encrusted over the wide fields, sparkling on the heights and
blue in the hollows. The brown bushes by a hidden stone-wall broke the
sheen entrancingly; here and there a dry leaf fluttered, but only
enough to show how still such winter stillness can be, and a flock of
little brown birds rose, with a soft whirr, and settled further on.
Mrs. Wadleigh pressed her lips together in a voiceless content, and her
eyes took on a new brightness. She had lived quite long enough in the
town. Rounding a sweeping bend, and ploughing sturdily along, though it
was difficult here to find the roadway, she kept her eyes fixed on a
patch of sky, over a low elm, where the chimney would first come into
view. But just before it stepped forward to meet her, as she had seen
it a thousand times, a telltale token forestalled it; a delicate blue
haze crept out, in spiral rings, and tinged the sky.
"He's got a fire!" she exclaimed loudly. "He's there! My soul!" Until
now the enormity of his offence had not penetrated her understanding.
She had heard the fact without realizing it.
The house was ancient but trimly kept, and it stood within a spacious
yard, now in billows and mounds of snow, under which lay the treasures
inherited by the spring. The trellises on either side the door held the
bare clinging arms of jessamine and rose, and the syringa and lilac
bushes reached hardily above the snow. As Mrs. Wadleigh approached the
door, she gave a rapid glance at the hop-pole in the garden, and
wondered if its vine had stood the winter well. That was the third hop
vine she'd had from Mirandy Pendleton! Mounting the front steps, she
drew forth the key, and put it in the door. It turned readily enough,
but though she gave more than one valiant push, the door itself did not
yield. It was evidently barricaded.
"My soul!" said Mrs. Wadleigh.
She stepped back, to survey the possibilities of attack; but at that
instant, glancing up at the window, she had Cyrus Pendleton's own
alarming experience. A head looked out at her, and was quickly
withdrawn. It was dark, unkempt, and the movement was stealthy.
"That's him!" said Mrs. Wadleigh, grimly, and returning to the charge,
she knocked civilly at the door. No answer. Then she pushed again. It
would not yield. She thought of the ladder in the barn, of the small
cellar-window; vain hopes, both of them!
"Look here!" she called aloud. "You let me in! I'm the Widder Wadleigh!
This is my own house, an' I'm real tried stan'in' round here, knockin'
at my own front door. You le'me in, or I shall git my death o' cold!"
No answer; and then Mrs. Wadleigh, as she afterwards explained it, "got
mad." She ploughed her way round the side of the house,--not the side
where she had seen the face, but by the "best-room" windows,--and
stepped softly up to the back door. Cyrus Pendleton's nail was no
longer there. The man had easily pushed it out. She lifted the latch,
and set her shoulder against the panel.
"If it's the same old button, it'll give," she thought. And it did
give. She walked steadily across the kitchen toward the clock-room,
where the man that moment turned to confront her. He made a little run
forward; then, seeing but one woman, he restrained himself. He was not
over thirty years old; a tall, well-built fellow, with very black eyes
and black hair. His features were good, but just now his mouth was set,
and he looked darkly defiant. Of this, however, Mrs. Wadleigh did not
think, for she was in a hot rage.
"What under the sun do you mean, lockin' me out o' my own house?" she
cried, stretching out her reddened hands to the fire. "An' potaters
b'iled all over this good kitchen stove! I declare, this room's a real
hog's nest, an' I left it as neat as wax!"
Perhaps no man was ever more amazed than this invader. He stood staring
at her in silence.
"Can't you shet the door!" she inquired, fractiously, beginning to
untie her cloud. "An' put a stick o' wood in the stove? If I don't git
het through, I shall ketch my death!"
He obeyed, seemingly from the inertia of utter surprise. Midway in the
act of lifting the stove-cover, he glanced at her in sharp, suspicion.
"Where's the rest?" he asked, savagely. "You ain't alone?"
"Well, I guess I'm alone!" returned Mrs. Wadleigh, drawing off her icy
stocking-feet, "an' walked all the way from Cyrus Pendleton's! There
ain't nobody likely to be round," she continued, with grim humor. "I
never knew 'twas such a God-forsaken hole, till I'd been away an' come
back to 't. No, you needn't be scairt! The road ain't broke out, an' if
'twas, we shouldn't have no callers to-day. It's got round there's a
man here, an' I'll warrant the selec'men are all sick abed with colds.
But there!" she added, presently, as the soothing warmth of her own
kitchen stove began to penetrate, "I dunno's I oughter call it a
Godforsaken place. I'm kind o' glad to git back."
There was silence for a few minutes, while she toasted her feet, and
the man stood shambling from one foot to the other and furtively
watching her and the road. Suddenly she rose, and lifted a pot-cover.
"What you got for dinner?" she inquired, genially. "I'm as holler's a
horn!"
"I put some potatoes on," said he, gruffly.
"Got any pork? or have you used it all up?"
"I guess there's pork! I 'ain't touched it. I 'ain't eat anything but
potatoes; an' I've chopped wood for them, an' for what I burnt."
"Do tell!" said Mrs. Wadleigh. She set the potatoes forward, where they
would boil more vigorously. "Well, you go down sullar an' bring me up a
little piece o' pork--streak o' fat an' streak o' lean--an' I'll fry
it. I'll sweep up here a mite while you're gone. Why, I never see such
a lookin' kitchen! What's your name?" she called after him, as he set
his foot on the Upper stair.
He hesitated. "Joe!" he said, falteringly.
"All right, then, Joe, you fly round an' git the pork!" She took down
the broom from its accustomed nail, and began sweeping joyously; the
man, fishing in the pork-barrel, listened meanwhile to the regular
sound above. Once it stopped, and he held his breath for a moment, and
stood at bay, ready to dash up the stairs and past his pursuers, had
she let them in. But it was only her own step, approaching the cellar
door.
"Joe!" she called. "You bring up a dozen apples, Bald'ins. I'll fry
them, too."
Something past one o'clock, they sat down together to as strange a meal
as the little kitchen had ever seen. Bread and butter were lacking, but
there was quince preserve, drawn from some hidden hoard, the apples and
pork, and smoking tea. Mrs. Wadleigh's spirits rose. Home was even
better than her dreams had pictured it. She told her strange guest all
about her darter Lucy and her darter Ann's children; and he listened,
quite dazed and utterly speechless.
"There!" she said at last, rising, "I dunno's I ever eat such a meal
o' victuals in my life, but I guess it's better'n many a poor soldier
used to have. Now, if you've got some wood to chop, you go an' do it,
an' I'll clear up this kitchen; it's a real hurrah's nest, if ever
there was one!"
All that afternoon, the stranger chopped wood, pausing, from time to
time, to look from the shed door down the country road; and Mrs.
Wadleigh, singing "Fly like a Youthful," "But O! their end, their
dreadful end," and like melodies which had prevailed when she "set in
the seats," flew round, indeed, and set the kitchen in immaculate
order. Evidently her guest had seldom left that room. He had slept
there on the lounge. He had eaten his potatoes there, and smoked his
pipe.
When the early dusk set in, and Mrs. Wadleigh had cleared away their
supper of baked potatoes and salt fish, again with libations of quince,
she drew up before the shining stove, and put her feet on the hearth.
"Here!" she called to the man, who was sitting uncomfortably on one
corner of the woodbox, and eying her with the same embarrassed
watchfulness. "You draw up, too! It's the best time o' the day now,
'tween sunset an' dark."
"I guess I'd better be goin'," he returned, doggedly.
"Goin'? Where?"
"I don't know. But I'm goin'."
"Now look here," said Mrs. Wadleigh, with rigor. "You take that chair,
an' draw up to the fire. You do as I tell you!"
He did it.
"Now, I can't hender your goin', but if you do go, I've got a word to
say to you."
"You needn't say it! I don't want nobody's advice."
"Well, you've got to have it jest the same! When you bile potaters,
don't you let 'em run over onto the stove. Now you remember! I've had
to let the fire go down here, an' scrub till I could ha' cried. Don't
you never do such a thing ag'in, wherever you be!"
He could only look at her. This sort of woman was entirely new to his
experience.
"But I've got somethin' else to say," she continued, adjusting her feet
more comfortably. "I ain't goin' to turn anybody out into the snow,
such a night as this. You're welcome to stay, but I want to know what
brought ye here. I ain't one o' them that meddles an' makes, an' if you
'ain't done nothin' out o' the way, an' I ain't called on for a
witness, you needn't be afraid o' my tellin'."
"You will be called on!" he broke in, speaking from a desperation
outside his own control. "It's murder! I've killed a man!" He turned
upon her with a savage challenge in the motion; but her face was set,
placidly forward, and the growing dusk had veiled its meaning.
"Well!" she remarked, at length, "ain't you ashamed to set there
talkin' about it! You must have brass enough to line a kittle! Why
'ain't you been, like a man, an' gi'n yourself up, instid o' livin'
here, turnin' my kitchen upside down? Now you tell me all about it!
It'll do ye good."
"I'm goin'," said the man, breathing hard as he spoke, "I'm goin' away
from here tonight. They never'll take me alive. It was this way. There
was a man over where I lived that's most drunk himself under ground,
but he ain't too fur gone to do mischief. He told a lie about me, an'
lost me my place in the shoe shop. Then one night, I met him goin'
home, an' we had words. I struck him. He fell like an ox. I killed him.
I didn't go home no more. I didn't even see my wife. I couldn't tell
her. I couldn't be took _there_. So I run away. An' when I got starved
out, an' my feet were most froze walkin', I see this house, all shet
up, an' I come here."
He paused; and the silence was broken only by the slow, cosey ticking
of the liberated clock.
"Well!" said Mrs. Wadleigh, at last, in a ruminating tone. "Well! well!
Be you a drinkin' man?"
"I never was till I lost my job," he answered, sullenly. "I had a
little then. I had a little the night he sassed me."
"Well! well!" said Mrs. Wadleigh, again. And then she continued,
musingly: "So I s'pose you're Joe Mellen, an' the man you struck was
Solomon Ray?"
He came to his feet with a spring.
"How'd you know?" he shouted.
"Law! I've been visitin' over Hillside way!" said Mrs. Wadleigh,
comfortably. "You couldn't ha' been very smart not to thought o' that
when I mentioned my darter Lucy, an' where the childern went to school.
No smarter'n you was to depend on that old wooden button! I know all
about that drunken scrape. But the queerest part on't was--Solomon Ray
didn't die!"
"Didn't die!" the words halted, and he dragged them forth. "Didn't
die?"
"Law, no! you can't kill a Ray! They brought him to, an' fixed him up
in good shape. I guess you mellered him some, but he's more scairt than
hurt. He won't prosecute. You needn't be afraid. He said he dared you
to it. There, there now! I wouldn't. My sake alive! le' me git a
light!"
For the stranger sat with his head bowed on the table, and he trembled
like a child.
Next morning at eight o'clock, Mrs. Wadleigh was standing at the door,
in the sparkling light, giving her last motherly injunction to the
departing guest.
"You know where the depot is? An' it's the nine o'clock train you've
got to take. An' you remember what I said about hayin' time. If you
don't have no work by the middle o' May, you drop me a line, an'
perhaps I can take you an' your wife, too; Lucy's childern al'ays make
a sight o' work. You keep that bill safe, an'--Here, wait a minute! You
might stop at Cyrus Pendleton's--it's the fust house arter you pass;
the corner--an' ask 'em to put a sparerib an' a pat o' butter into the
sleigh, an' ride over here to dinner. You tell 'em I'm as much obleeged
to 'em for sendin' over last night to see if I was alive, as if I
hadn't been so dead with sleep I couldn't say so. Good-bye! Now, you
mind you keep tight hold o' that bill, an', spend it prudent!"
"Is Kelup Rivers comin' over here to-night?" suddenly asked Aunt
Melissa Adams, peering over her gold-bowed glasses, and fixing her
small shrewd eyes sharply upon her niece.
Amanda did not look up from her fine hemming, but her thin hand
trembled almost imperceptibly, and she gave a little start, as if such
attacks were not altogether unexpected.
"I don't know," she answered, in a low tone.
"Dunno! why don't ye know?" said her aunt, beginning to sway back and
forth in the old-fashioned rocking-chair, but not once dropping her
eyes from Amanda's face. "Don't he come every Saturday night?"
Amanda took another length, of thread, and this time her hand really
shook.
"I guess so," she answered.
"You guess so? Don't ye know? An' if he's come every Saturday night for
fifteen year, ain't he comin' to-night? I dunno what makes you act as
if you wa'n't sure whether your soul's your own, 'Mandy Green. My
dander al'ays rises when I ask you a civil question an' you put on that
look."
Amanda bent more closely over her sewing. She was a woman of
thirty-five, with a pathetically slender figure, thin blond hair
painstakingly crimped, and anxious blue eyes. Something deprecating lay
in her expression; her days had been uncomplainingly sacrificed to the
comfort of those she loved, and the desire of peace and good-will had
crept into her face and stayed there. Her mother, who looked even
slighter than she, and whose cheeks were puckered by wrinkles, sat by
the window watching the two with a smile of empty content. Old Lady
Green had lost her mind, said the neighbors; but she was sufficiently
like her former self to be a source of unspeakable joy and comfort to
Amanda, who nursed and petted her as if their positions were reversed,
and protected her from the blunt criticism of the literal-tongued
neighborhood with a reverential awe belonging to the old days when the
fifth commandment was written and obeyed.
"Gold-bowed," said Mrs. Green, with a look of unalloyed delight,
pointing to her sister-in-law's spectacles; and Aunt Melissa repeated
indulgently,--
"Yes, yes, gold-bowed. I'll let you take 'em a spell, arter I've set my
heel. It'll please her, poor creatur'!" she added, in an audible aside
to Amanda. Since the time when Mrs. Green's wits had ceased to work
normally, she had treated her sympathetically, but from a lofty
eminence. Aunt Melissa was perhaps too prosperous. She sat there,
swaying back and forth, in her thin black silk trimmed with narrow rows
of velvet, her heavy chin sunk upon a broad collar, worked in her
youth, and she seemed to Mrs. Green a vision of majesty and delight,
but to Amanda a virtuous censor, necessarily to be obeyed, yet whose
presence made the summer day intolerable. Even her purple cap-ribbons
bespoke terror to the evil-doer, and her heavy face was set, as a
judgment, toward the doom of the man who knew not how to account for
his actions. She began speaking again, and Amanda involuntarily gave a
little start, as at a lightning flash.
"I says to myself when I drove off, this mornin': 'I'll have a little
talk with 'Mandy. I don' go there to spend a day more'n four times a
year, an' like as not she'll be glad to have somebody to speak to,
seen' 's her mother's how she is.'"
Amanda gave a quick look at Mrs. Green; but the old lady was busily
pleating the hem of her apron and then smoothing it out again. Aunt
Melissa rocked, and went on:--