halves, an' go racin' an' trottin' from the other place over here day
in an' day out. An' when his Uncle Nat died, two year ago, then was the
time for him to come over here an' marry 'Mandy an' carry on the farm.
But no, he'd rather hang round the old place, an' sleep in the
ell-chamber, an' do their chores for his board, an' keep on a-runnin'
over here.' An' when young Nat married, I says to myself, 'That'll make
him speak.' But it didn't--an' you 're a laughin'-stock, 'Mandy Green,
if ever there was one. Every time the neighbors see him steppin' by
Saturday nights, all fixed up, with that brown coat on he's had sence
the year one, they have suthin' to say, 'Goin' over to 'Mandy's,'
that's what they say. An' on'y last Saturday one on 'em hollered out to
me, when I was pickin' a mess o' pease for Sunday, 'Wonder what
'Mandy'll answer when he gits round to askin' of her?' I hadn't a word
to say. 'You better go to _him_,' says I, at last."
Amanda had put down her sewing in her lap, and was looking steadfastly
out of the window, with eyes brimmed by two angry tears. Once she wiped
them with a furtive movement of the white garment in her lap; her
cheeks were crimson. Aunt Melissa had lashed herself into a cumulative
passion of words.
"An' I says to myself, 'If there ain't nobody else to speak to 'Mandy,
I will,' I says, when I was combin' my hair this mornin'. 'She 'ain't
got no mother,' I says, 'nor as good as none, an' if she 'ain't spunk
enough to look out for herself, somebody's got to look out for her.'
An' then it all come over me--I'd speak to Kelup himself, an' bein'
Saturday night, I knew I should ketch him here."
"O Aunt Melissa!" gasped Amanda, "you wouldn't do that!"
"Yes, I would, too!" asserted Aunt Melissa, setting her firm lips. "You
see if I don't, an' afore another night goes over my head!"
But while Amanda was looking at her, paralyzed with the certainty that
no mortal aid could save her from this dire extremity, there came an
unexpected diversion. Old Lady Green spoke out clearly and decidedly
from her corner, in so rational a voice that it seemed like one calling
from the dead.
"'Mandy, what be you cryin' for? You come here an' tell me what 'tis,
an' I'll see to't. You'll spile your eyes, 'Mandy, if you take on so."
"There, there, ma'am! 'tain't anything," said Amanda, hurrying over to
her chair and patting her on the shoulder. "We was just havin' a little
spat,--Aunt Melissa an' me; but we've got all over it. Don't you want
to knit on your garter a little while now?"
But the old lady kept her glazed eyes fixed on Amanda's face.
"Be you well to-day, 'Mandy?" she said, wistfully. "If you ain't well,
you must take suthin'."
"There, there! don't you make a to-do, an' she'll come round all
right," said Aunt Melissa, moving her chair about so that it faced the
old lady. "I'll tell her suthin' to take up her mind a little." And she
continued, in the loud voice which was her concession to Mrs. Green's
feebleness of intellect, "They've got a boarder over to the
Blaisdells'."
Mrs. Green sat up straight in her chair, smoothed her apron, and looked
at her sister with grateful appreciation.
"Do tell!" she said, primly.
"Yes, they have. Name's Chapman. They thought he was a book agent fust.
But he's buyin' up old dishes an' all matter o' truck. He wanted my
andirons, an' I told him if I hadn't got a son in a Boston store, he
might ha' come round me, but I know the vally o' things now. You don't
want to sell them blue coverlids o' yourn, do ye?"
Aunt Melissa sometimes asked the old lady questions from a sense of the
requirements of conversation, and she was invariably startled when they
elicited an answer.
"Them coverlids I wove myself, fifty-five years ago come next spring,"
said Mrs. Green, firmly. "Sally Ann Mason an' me used to set up till
the clock struck twelve that year, spinnin' an' weavin'. Then we had a
cup or two o' green tea, an' went to bed."
"Well, you wove 'em, an' you don't want to sell 'em," said Aunt
Melissa, her eyes on her work. "If you do, 'Lijah he'll take 'em right
up to Boston for you, an' I warrant he'll git you a new white spread
for every one on 'em."
"That was the year afore I was married," continued Old Lady Green. "I
had a set o' white chiny with lavender sprigs, an' my dress was
changeable. He had a flowered weskit. 'Mandy, you go into the
clo'es-press in my bedroom an' git out that weskit, an' some o' them
quilts, an' my M's an' O's table-cloths."
Amanda rose and hurried into the bedroom, in spite of Aunt Melissa's
whispered comment: "What makes you go to overhaulin' things? She'll
forgit it in a minute."
While she was absent, a smart wagon drove up to the gate, and a young
man alighted from it, hitched his horse, and knocked at the front door.
Aunt Melissa saw him coming, and peered at him over her glasses with an
unrecognizing stare.
"'Mandy!" she called, "'Mandy, here's a pedler or suthin'! If he's got
any essences, you ask him for a little bottle o' pep'mint."
Amanda dropped the pile of coverlets on the sofa, and went to the front
door. Presently she reappeared, and with her, smoothly talking her
down, came the young man. His eyes lighted first on the coverlets, with
a look of cheerful satisfaction.
"Got all ready for me, didn't you?" he asked, briskly. "Heard I was
coming, I guess."
He was a man of an alert Yankee type, with waxed blond mustache and
eye-glasses; he was evidently to be classed among those who have
exchanged their country honesty for a veneer of city knowingness.
"For the land's sake!" ejaculated Aunt Melissa, as soon as she had him
at short range, "you're the one down to Blaisdell's that's buyin' up
all the old truck in the neighborhood. Well, you won't git my
andirons!"
He had begun to unfold the blue coverlets and examine them with a
practised eye, while Amanda stood by, painfully conscious that some
decisive action might be required of her; and her mother sat watching
the triumph of her quilts in pleased importance.
"They ain't worth much," he said, dropping them, with a conclusive air.
"Fact is, they ain't worth anything, unless any body's got a fancy for
such old stuff. I'll tell you what, I'll give you fifty cents apiece
for the lot! How many are there here--four? Two dollars, then."
Amanda took a hasty step forward.
"But we don't want to sell our coverlids!" she said, indignantly,
casting an appealing glance at Aunt Melissa.
"I guess they don't want to git rid on 'em," said that lady,
"'specially at such a price. They're wuth more 'n that to cover up the
squashes when the frost comes."
"Mother wove 'em herself," exclaimed Amanda, irrelevantly. It began to
seem to her as if the invader might pack up her mother's treasures and
walk off with them.
"Well, then, I s'pose they're hers to do as she likes with?" he said,
pleasantly, tipping back, in his chair, and beginning to pare his nails
with an air of nicety that fascinated Amanda into watching him.
"They're hers, I s'pose?" he continued, looking suddenly and keenly up
at her.
"Why, yes," she answered, "they're mother's, but she don't want to
sell. She sets by 'em."
"Just like me, for all the world," owned the stranger, "Now there's
plenty of folks that wouldn't care a Hannah Cook about such old truck,
but it just hits me in the right spot. Mother's doughnuts, mother's
mince-pies, I say! Can't improve on _them_! And when my wife and I
bought our little place, I said to her, 'We'll have it all furnished
with old-fashioned goods.' And here I am, taking, time away from my
business, riding round the country, and paying good money for what's no
use to anybody but me."
"What is your business?" interrupted Aunt Melissa.
"Oh, insurance--a little of everything--Jack-of-all-trades!" Then he
turned to Old Mrs. Green, and asked, abruptly, "What'll you take for
that clock?"
The old lady followed his alert forefinger until her eyes rested on the
tall eight-day clock in the corner. She straightened herself in her
chair, and spoke with pride:--
"That was Jonathan's gre't-uncle Samwell's. He wound it every Sunday
night, reg'lar as the day come round. I've rubbed that case up till I
sweat like rain. 'Mandy she rubs it now."
"Well, what'll you take?" persisted he, while Amanda, in wordless
protest, stepped in front of the clock. "Five dollars?"
"Five dollars," repeated the old lady, lapsing into senseless
iteration. "Yes, five dollars."
But Aunt Melissa came to the rescue.
"Five dollars for that clock?" she repeated, winding her ball, and
running the needles into it with a conclusive stab. "Well, I guess
there ain't any eight-day clocks goin' out o' _this_ house for five
dollars, if they go at all! 'Mandy, why don't you speak up, an' not
stand there like a chicken with the pip?"
"Oh, all right, all right!" said the visitor, shutting his knife with a
snap, and getting briskly on his feet. "I don't care much about buying.
That ain't a particularly good style of clock, anyway. But I like old
things. I may drop in again, just to take a look at 'em. I suppose
you're always at home?" he said to Amanda, with his hand on the door.
"Yes; but sometimes I go to Sudleigh with butter. I go Monday
afternoons most always, after washin'."
With a cheerful good-day he was gone, and Amanda drew a long breath of
relief.
"Well, some folks have got enough brass to line a kittle," said Aunt
Melissa, carefully folding her knitting-work in a large silk
handkerchief. "'Mandy, you'll have to git supper a little earlier'n
common for me. I told Hiram to come by half arter six. Do you s'pose
Kelup'll be round by that time? I'll wait all night afore I'll give up
seein' him."
"I don't know, Aunt Melissa," said Amanda, nervously clearing the table
of its pile of snowy cloth, and taking a flying glance from the window.
She looked like a harassed animal, hunted beyond its endurance; but
suddenly a strange light of determination flashed into her face.
"Should you just as lieves set the table," she asked, in a tone of
guilty consciousness, "while I start the kitchen fire? You know where
things are." Hardly waiting for an assent, she fled from the room, and
once in the kitchen, laid the fire in haste, with a glance from the
window to accompany every movement. Presently, by a little path through
the field, came a stocky man in blue overalls and the upper garment
known as a jumper. He was bound for the pigpen in the rear of the barn;
and there Amanda flew to meet him, stopping only to throw an apron over
her head. They met at the door. He was a fresh-colored man, with honest
brown eyes and a ring of whiskers under the chin. He had a way of
blushing, and when Amanda came upon him thus unannounced, he colored to
the eyes.
"Why, you're all out o' breath!" he said, in slow alarms.
"O Caleb!" she cried, looking at him with imploring eyes. "I'll feed
the pigs to-night."
Caleb regarded her in dull wonderment. Then he set down the pail he had
taken.
"Ain't there any taters to bile?" he asked, solving the difficulty in
his own way; "or 'ain't you skimmed the milk? I'd jest as soon wait."
"You better not wait," answered Amanda, almost passionately, her thin
hair blowing about her temples. "You better go right back. I'd ruther
do it myself; I'd a good deal ruther."
Caleb turned about. He took a few steps, then stopped, and called
hesitatingly over his shoulder, "I thought maybe I'd come an' set a
spell to-night."
Then, indeed, Amanda felt her resolution, crack and quiver. "I guess
you better come some other night," she said, in a steady voice, though
her face was wet with tears. And Caleb walked away, never once looking
back. Amanda stayed only to wipe her eyes, saying meanwhile to her
sorry self, "Oh, I dunno how I can get along! I dunno!" Then she
hurried back to the house, to find the kettle merrily singing, and Aunt
Melissa standing at the kitchen cupboard, looking critically up and
down the shelves.
"If you've got two sets o' them little gem-pans, you might lend me
one," she remarked; and Amanda agreed, not knowing what she gave.
The supper was eaten and the dishes were washed, Aunt Melissa meantime
keeping a strict watch from the window.
"Is it time for Kelup?" she asked, again and again; and finally she
confronted the guilty Amanda with the challenge, "Do you think Kelup
ain't comin'?"
"I--guess not," quavered Amanda, her cheeks scarlet, and her small,
pathetic hands trembling. She was not more used to _finesse_ than to
heroic action.
"Do you s'pose there's any on 'em sick down to young Nat's?" asked Aunt
Melissa; and Amanda was obliged to take recourse again to her shielding
"I guess not." But at length Uncle Hiram drove up in the comfortable
carry-all; and though his determined spouse detained him more than
three-quarters of an hour, sitting beside him like a portly
Rhadamanthus, and scanning the horizon for the Caleb who never came, he
finally rebelled, shook the reins, and drove off, Aunt Melissa meantime
screaming over her shoulder certain vigorous declarations, which
evidently began with the phrase, "You tell Kelup--"
Then Amanda went into the house, and sat down by the window in the
gathering dusk, surveying the wreckage of her dream. The dream was even
more precious in that it had grown so old. Caleb was a part of her
every-day life, and for fifteen years Saturday had brought a little
festival, wherein the commonplace man with brown eyes had been
high-priest. He would not come to-night. Perhaps he never would come
again. She knew what it was to feel widowed.
Sunday passed; and though Caleb fed the pigs and did the barn-work as
usual, he spoke but briefly. Even in his customary salutation of "How
dee?" Amanda detected a change of tone, and thereafter took flight
whenever she heard his step at the kitchen door. So Monday forenoon
passed; Caleb brought water for her tubs and put out her clothes-line,
but they had hardly spoken. The intangible monster of a
misunderstanding had crept between them. But when at noon he asked as
usual, though without looking at her, "Goin' to Sudleigh with the
butter to-day?" Amanda had reached the limit of her endurance. It
seemed to her that she could no longer bear this formal travesty of
their old relations, and she answered in haste,--
"No, I guess not."
"Then you don't want I should set with your mother?"
"No!" And again Caleb turned away, and plodded soberly off to young
Nat's.
"I guess I must be crazy," groaned poor Amanda, as she changed her
washing-dress for her brown cashmere. "The butter's got to go, an' now
I shall have to harness, an' leave ma'am alone. Oh, I wish Aunt
Melissa'd never darkened these doors!"
Everything went wrong with Amanda, that day. The old horse objected to
the bits, and occupied twenty minutes in exasperating protest; the
wheels had to be greased, and she lost a butter-napkin in the well.
Finally, breathless with exertion, she went in to bid her mother
good-by, and see that the matches were hidden and the cellar door
fastened.
"Now, ma'am," she said, standing over the little old woman and speaking
with great distinctness, "don't you touch the stove, will you? You jest
set right here in your chair till I come back, an' I'll bring you a
good parcel o' pep'-mints. Here's your garter to knit on, an' here's
the almanac. Don't you stir now till I come."
And so, with many misgivings, she drove away.
When, Amanda came back, she did not stay to unharness, but hurried up
to the kitchen door, and called, "You all right, ma'am?" There was no
answer, and she stepped hastily across the floor. As she opened the
sitting-room door, a low moaning struck her ear. The old lady sat
huddled together in, her chair, groaning at intervals, and looking
fixedly at the corner of the room.
"O ma'am, what is it? Where be you hurt?" cried Amanda, possessed by an
anguish of self-reproach. But the old lady only continued her moaning;
and then it was that Amanda noticed her shrivelled and shaking fingers
tightly clasped upon a roll of money in her lap.
"Why, ma'am, what you got?" she cried; but even as she spoke, the
explanation flashed upon her, and she looked up at the corner of the
room. The eight-day clock was gone.
"Here, ma'am, you let me have it," she said, soothingly; and by dint of
further coaxing, she pulled the money from the old lady's tense
fingers. There were nine dollars in crisp new bills. Amanda sat looking
at them in unbelief and misery.
"O my!" she whispered, at length, "what a world this is! Ma'am, did you
tell him he might have 'em?"
"I dunno what Jonathan'll do without that clock," moaned the old lady.
"I see it carried off myself."
"Did you tell him he might?" cried Amanda, loudly.
"I dunno but I did, but I never'd ha' thought he'd ha' done it. I dunno
what time 'tis now;" and she continued her low-voiced lamenting.
"O my Lord!" uttered Amanda, under her breath. Then she roused herself
to the present exigency of comfort. "You come an' set in the kitchen a
spell," she said, coaxingly, "an' I'll go an' get the things back."
Old Lady Green looked at her with that unquestioning trust which was
the most pathetic accompaniment of her state. "You'll git 'em back,
'Mandy, won't ye?" she repeated, smiling a little and wiping her eyes.
"That's a good gal! So't we can tell what time 'tis."
Amanda led her into the kitchen, and established her by the window. She
shut the door of the denuded sitting-room, and, giving her courage no
time to cool, ran across lots to the Blaisdells', the hated money
clasped tightly in her hand. The family was at supper, and the stranger
with them, when she walked in at the kitchen door. She hurried up to
her enemy, and laid the little roll of bills by his plate. Her cheeks
were scarlet, her thin hair-flying.
"Here's your money," she said, in a strained, high voice, "an' I want
our things. You hadn't ought to gone over there an' talked over an old
lady that--that--"
There she stopped. Amanda had never yet acknowledged that her mother
was not in her "perfect mind." Chapman took out a long pocket-book, and
for a moment her courage stood at flood-tide; she thought he was about
to accept the money and put it away. But no! He produced a slip of
white paper and held it up before her. She bent forward and examined
it,--a receipt signed by her mother's shaking hand.
"But it ain't right!" she cried, helpless in her dismay. "Cap'n Jabez,
you speak to him! You know how 'tis about mother! She wouldn't any more
ha' sold that clock than she'd ha' sold--me!"
Captain Jabez looked at his plate in uncomfortable silence. He was a
just man, but he hated to interfere.
"Well, there!" he said, at length, pushing his chair back to leave the
table. "It don't seem jestly right to me, but then he's got the resate,
an' your mother signed it--an' there 'tis!"
"An' you won't do anything?" cried Amanda, passionately, turning back
to the stranger. "You mean to keep them things?"
He was honestly sorry for her, as the business man for the
sentimentalist, but he had made a good bargain, and he held it sacred.
"I declare, I wish it hadn't happened so," he said, good-naturedly.
"But the old lady'll get over it. You buy her a nice bright little
nickel clock that'll strike the half-hours, and she'll be tickled to
death to watch it."
Amanda turned away and walked out of the house.
"Here," called Chapman, "come back and get your money!" But she hurried
on. "Well, I'll leave it with Captain Jabez," he called again, "and you
can come over and get it. I'm going in the morning, early."
Amanda was passing the barn, and there, through the open door, she saw
the old clock pathetically loaded on the light wagon, protected by
burlap, and tied with ropes. The coverlets lay beside it. A sob rose in
her throat, but her eyes were dry, and she hurried across lots home. At
the back door she found Caleb unharnessing the horse. She had forgotten
their misunderstanding in the present practical emergency.
"O Caleb," she began, before she had reached him, "ma'am's sold the
clock an' some coverlids, an' I can't get 'em back!"
"Cap'n Jabez said she had, this arternoon," said Caleb, slowly, tying a
trace. "I dunno's the old lady's to blame. Seem's if she hadn't ought
to be left alone."
"But how'm I goin' to get 'em back?" persisted Amanda, coming close to
him, her poor little face pinched and eager. "He jest showed me the
receipt, all signed. How'm I goin' to get the things, Caleb?"
"If he's got the receipt, an' the things an' all, an' she took the
money, I dunno's you can get 'em," said Caleb, "unless you could prove
in a court o' law that she wa'n't in her right mind. I dunno how that
would work."
Amanda stood looking him in the face. For the first time in all her
gentle life she was questioning masculine superiority, and its present
embodiment in Caleb Rivers.
"Then you don't see's anything can be done?" she asked, steadily.
"Why, no," answered Caleb, still reflecting. "Not unless you should go
to law."
"You'd better give the pigs some shorts," said Amanda, abruptly. "I
sha'n't bile any taters, to-night."
She walked into the house; and as Caleb watched her, it crossed his
mind that she looked very tall. He had always thought of her as a
little body.
Amanda set her lips, and went about her work. From time to time, she
smiled mechanically at her mother; and the old lady, forgetful of her
grief now that she was no longer reproached by the empty space on, the
wall, sat content and sleepy after her emotion. She was willing to go
to bed early; and when Amanda heard her breathing peacefully, she sat
down by the kitchen window to wait. The dusk came slowly, and the
whippoorwill sang from the deep woods behind the house.
That night at ten o'clock, Caleb Rivers was walking stolidly along the
country road, when his ear became aware of a strangely familiar
sound,--a steadily recurrent creak. It was advancing, though
intermittently. Sometimes it ceased altogether, as if the machinery
stopped to rest, and again it began fast and shrill. He rounded a bend
of the road, and came full upon a remarkable vision. Approaching him
was a wheelbarrow, with a long object balanced across it, and, wheeling
it, walked a woman. Caleb was nearly opposite her before his brain
translated the scene. Then he stopped short and opened his lips.
"'Mandy," he cried, "what under the heavens be you a-doin'?"
But Amanda did not pause. Whatever emotion the meeting caused in her
was swiftly vanquished, and she wheeled on. Caleb turned and walked by
her side. When he had recovered sufficiently from his surprise, he laid
a hand upon her wrist.
"You set it down, an' let me wheel a spell," he said.
But Amanda's small hands only grasped the handles more tightly, and she
went on. Caleb had never in his life seen a necessity for passionate
remonstrance, but now the moment had come.
"'Mandy," he kept repeating, at every step, "you give me holt o' them
handles! Why, 'Mandy, I should think you was crazy!"
At length, Amanda dropped the handles with a jerk, and turning about,
sat down on the edge of the wheelbarrow, evidently to keep the right of
possession. Then she began to speak in a high, strained voice, that
echoed sharply through the country stillness.
"If you've got to know, I'll tell you, an' you can be a witness, if you
want to. It won't do no hurt in a court o' law, because I shall tell
myself. I've gone an' got our clock an' our coverlids from where they
were stored in the Blaisdells' barn. The man's got his money, an' I've
took our things. That's all I've done, an' anybody can know it that's a
mind to."
Then she rose, lifted the handles, and went on, panting. Caleb walked
by her side.
"But you ain't afraid o' me, 'Mandy?" he said, imploringly. "Jest you
let me wheel it, an' I won't say a word if I never set eyes on you
ag'in. Jest you let me wheel, 'Mandy."
"There ain't anybody goin' to touch a finger to it but me," said
Amanda, shortly. "If anybody's got to be sent to jail for it, it'll be
me. I can't talk no more. I 'ain't got any breath to spare."
But the silence of years had been broken, and Caleb kept on.
"Why, I was goin' over to Blaisdell's myself to buy 'em back. Here's my
wallet an' my bank-book. Don't that prove it? I was goin' to pay any
price he asked. I set an' mulled over it all the evenin'. It got late,
an' then I started. It al'ays has took me a good long spell to make up
my mind to things. I wa'n't to blame this arternoon because I couldn't
tell what was best to do all of a whew!"