eloquently, but she said nothing. She reached the gate of the farmyard,
and wheeled in, panting painfully as she ascended the rise of the
grassy driveway. She toiled round to the back door; and then Caleb saw
that she had prepared for her return by leaving the doors of the
cellar-case open, and laying down a board over the steps. She turned
the wheelbarrow to descend; and Caleb, seeing his opportunity, ran
before to hold back its weight. Amanda did not prevent him; she had no
breath left for remonstrance. When the clock was safely in the cellar,
she went up the steps again, hooked the bulkhead door, and turned, even
in the darkness, unerringly to the flight of stairs.
"You wait till I open the door into the kitchen," she said. "There's a
light up there."
And Caleb plodded up the stairs after her with his head down, amazed
and sorrowful.
"You can stay here," said Amanda, opening the outside door without
looking at him. "I'm goin' back to Cap'n Blaisdell's."
She hurried out into the moonlit path across lots, and Caleb followed.
They entered the yard, and Amanda walked up to the window belonging to
the best bedroom. It was wide open, and she rapped on it loudly, and
then turned her back.
"Hello!" came a sleepy voice from within.
"I've got to speak to you," called Amanda. "You needn't get up. Be you
awake?"
"I guess so," said the voice, this time several feet nearer the window.
"What's up?"
"I've been over an' got our clock an' the rest of our things," said
Amanda, steadily. "An', you've got your money. I've carried the things
home an' fastened 'em up. They're down cellar under the arch, an' I'm
goin' to set over 'em till I drop afore anybody lays a finger on 'em
again. An' you can go to law if you're a mind to; _but I've got our
things_!"
There was a silence. Amanda felt that the stranger's eyes were fastened
upon her back, and she tried not to tremble. Caleb knew they were, for
he and the man faced each other.
"Well, now, you know you've as good as stole my property," began
Chapman; but at that instant, Caleb's voice broke roughly upon the air.
"You say that ag'in," said he, "an' I'll horsewhip you within an inch
of your life. You touch them things ag'in, an' I'll break every bone in
your body. I dunno whose they be, accordin' to rights, but by gum!--"
and he stopped, for words will fail where a resolute heart need not.
There was again a silence, and the stranger spoke: "Well, well!" he
said, good-naturedly. "I guess we'll have to call it square. I don't
often do business this way; but if you'll let me alone, I'll let you
alone. Good luck to you!"
Amanda's heart melted. "You're real good!" she cried, and turned
impulsively; but when she faced the white-shirted form at the window,
she ejaculated, "Oh, my!" and fled precipitately round the corner of
the house.
Side by side, the two took their way across lots again. Amanda was
shaking all over, with weariness and emotion spent. Suddenly a strange
sound at her side startled her into scrutiny of Caleb's face.
"Why, Caleb Rivers!" she exclaimed, in amazement, "you ain't cryin'?"
"I dunno what I'm doin'," said Caleb, brushing off two big tears with
his jumper sleeve, "an' I don't much care. It ain't your harnessin' for
yourself an' feedin' the pigs, an' my not comin' Saturday night, but
it's seein' you wheelin' that great thing all alone. An' you're so
little, 'Mandy! I never thought much o' myself, an' it al'ays seemed
kind o' queer you could think anything _of_ me; but I al'ays s'posed
you'd let me do the heft o' the work, an' not cast me off!"
"I 'ain't cast you off, Caleb," said Amanda, faintly, and in spite of
herself her slender figure turned slightly but still gratefully toward
him. And that instant, for the first time in all their lives, Caleb's
arms were upholding her, and Amanda had received her crown. Caleb had
kissed her.
"Say, 'Mandy," said he, when they parted, an hour later, by the syringa
bush at the back door, "the world won't come to an end if you don't
iron of a Tuesday. I was thinkin' we could ketch Passon True about ten
o'clock better'n we could in the arternoon."
JOINT OWNERS IN SPAIN.
The Old Ladies' Home, much to the sorrow of its inmates, "set back from
the road." A long, box-bordered walk led from the great door down to
the old turnpike, and thickly bowering lilac-bushes forced the eye to
play an unsatisfied hide-and-seek with the view. The sequestered old
ladies were quite unreconciled to their leaf-hung outlook; active life
was presumably over for them, and all the more did they long to "see
the passing" of the little world which had usurped their places. The
house itself was very old, a stately, square structure, with pillars on
either side of the door, and a fanlight above. It had remained
unpainted now for many years, and had softened into a mellow
lichen-gray, so harmonious and pleasing in the midst of summer's vital
green, that the few artists who ever heard of Tiverton sought it out,
to plant umbrella and easel in the garden, and sketch the stately
relic; photographers, also, made it one of their accustomed haunts. Of
the artists the old ladies disapproved, without a dissenting voice. It
seemed a "shaller" proceeding to sit out there in the hot sun for no
result save a wash of unreal colors on a white ground, or a few hasty
lines indicating no solid reality; but the photographers were their
constant delight, and they rejoiced in forming themselves into groups
upon, the green, to be "took" and carried away with the house.
One royal winter's day, there was a directors' meeting in the great
south room, the matron's parlor, a sprat bearing the happy charm of
perfect loyalty to the past, with its great fireplace, iron dogs and
crane, its settle and entrancing corner cupboards. The hard-working
president of the board was speaking hastily and from a full heart,
conscious that another instant's discussion might bring the tears to
her eyes:--
"May I be allowed to say--it's irrelevant, I know, but I should like
the satisfaction of saying it--that this is enough to make one vow
never to have anything to do with an institution of any sort, from this
time forth for evermore?"
For the moment had apparently come when a chronic annoyance must be
recognized as unendurable. They had borne with the trial, inmates and
directors, quite as cheerfully as most ordinary people accept the
inevitable; but suddenly the tension had become too great, and the
universal patience snapped. Two of the old ladies, Mrs. Blair and Miss
Dyer, who were settled in the Home for life, and who, before going
there, had shown no special waywardness of temper, had proved utterly
incapable of living in peace with any available human being; and as the
Home had insufficient accommodations, neither could be isolated to
fight her "black butterflies" alone. No inmate, though she were cousin
to Hercules, could be given a room to herself; and the effect of this
dual system on these two, possibly the most eccentric of the number,
had proved disastrous in the extreme. Each had, in her own favorite
fashion, "kicked over the traces," as the matron's son said in
town-meeting (much to the joy of the village fathers), and to such
purpose that, to continue the light-minded simile, very little harness
was left to guide them withal. Mrs. Blair, being "high sperited," like
all the Coxes from whom she sprung, had now so tyrannized over the last
of her series of room-mates, so browbeaten and intimidated her, that
the latter had actually taken to her bed with a slow-fever of
discouragement, announcing that "she'd rather go to the poor-farm and
done with it than resk her life there another night; and she'd like to
know what had become of that hunderd dollars her nephew Thomas paid
down in bills to get her into the Home, for she'd be thankful to them
that laid it away so antic to hand it back afore another night went
over her head, so't she could board somewheres decent till 'twas gone,
and then starve if she'd got to!"
If Miss Sarah Ann Dyer, known also as a disturber of the public peace,
presented a less aggressive front to her kind, she was yet, in her own
way, a cross and a hindrance to their spiritual growth. She, poor
woman, lived in a scarcely varying state of hurt feeling; her tiny
world seemed to her one close federation, existing for the sole purpose
of infringing on her personal rights; and though she would not take the
initiative in battle, she lifted up her voice in aggrieved lamentation
over the tragic incidents decreed for her alone. She had perhaps never
directly reproached her own unhappy room-mate for selecting a
comfortable chair, for wearing squeaking shoes, or singing "Hearken, ye
sprightly," somewhat early in the morning, but she chanted those ills
through all her waking hours in a high, yet husky tone, broken by
frequent sobs. And therefore, as a result of these domestic whirlwinds
and too stagnant pools, came the directors' meeting, and the helpless
protest of the exasperated president. The two cases were discussed for
an hour longer, in the dreary fashion pertaining to a question which
has long been supposed to have but one side; and then it remained for
Mrs. Mitchell, the new director, to cut the knot with the energy of one
to whom a difficulty is fresh.
"Has it ever occurred to you to put them together?" asked she. "They
are impossible people; so, naturally, you have selected the very
mildest and most Christian women to endure their nagging. They can't
live with the saints of the earth. Experience has proved that. Put them
into one room, and let them fight it out together."
The motion was passed with something of that awe ever attending a
Napoleonic decree, and passed, too, with the utmost good-breeding; for
nobody mentioned the Kilkenny cats. The matron compressed her lips and
lifted her brows, but said nothing; having exhausted her own resources,
she was the more willing to take the superior attitude of good-natured
scepticism.
The moving was speedily accomplished; and at ten o'clock, one morning,
Mrs. Blair was ushered into the room where her forced colleague sat by
the window, knitting. There the two were left alone. Miss Dyer looked
up, and then heaved a tempestuous sigh over her work, in the manner of
one not entirely surprised by its advent, but willing to suppress it,
if such alleviation might be. She was a thin, colorless woman, and
infinitely passive, save at those times when her nervous system
conflicted with the scheme of the universe. Not so Mrs. Blair. She had
black eyes, "like live coals," said her awed associates; and her skin
was soft and white, albeit wrinkled. One could even believe she had
reigned a beauty, as the tradition of the house declared. This morning,
she held her head higher than ever, and disdained expression except
that of an occasional nasal snort. She regarded the room with the air
of an impartial though exacting critic; two little beds covered with
rising-sun quilts, two little pine bureaus, two washstands. The
sunshine lay upon the floor, and in that radiant pathway Miss Dyer sat.
"If I'd ha' thought I should ha' come to this," began Mrs. Blair, in
the voice of one who speaks perforce after long sufferance, "I'd ha'
died in my tracks afore I'd left my comfortable home down in Tiverton
Holler. Story-'n'-a-half house, a good sullar, an' woods nigh-by full
o' sarsaparilla an' goldthread! I've moved more times in this
God-forsaken place than a Methodist preacher, fust one room an' then
another; an' bad is the best. It was poor pickin's enough afore, but
this is the crowner!"
Miss Dyer said nothing, but two large tears rolled down and dropped on
her work. Mrs. Blair followed their course with gleaming eyes endowed
with such uncomfortable activity that they seemed to pounce with every
glance.
"What under the sun be you carryin' on like that for?" she asked,
giving the handle of the water-pitcher an emphatic twitch to make it
even with the world. "You 'ain't lost nobody, have ye, sence I moved in
here?"
Miss Dyer put aside her knitting with ostentatious abnegation, and
began rocking herself back and forth in her chair, which seemed not of
itself to sway fast enough, and Mrs. Blair's voice rose again, ever
higher and more metallic:--
"I dunno what you've got to complain of more'n the rest of us. Look at
that dress you've got on,--a good thick thibet, an' mine's a cheap,
sleazy alpaca they palmed off on me because they knew my eyesight ain't
what it was once. An' you're settin' right there in the sun, gittin'
het through, an' it's cold as a barn over here by the door. My land! if
it don't make me mad to see anybody without no more sperit than a wet
rag! If you've lost anybody, why don't ye say so? An' if it's a mad
fit, speak out an' say that! Give me anybody that's got a tongue in
their head, _I_ say!"
But Miss Dyer, with an unnecessary display of effort, was hitching her
chair into the darkest corner of the room, the rockers hopelessly
snarling her yarn at every move.
"I'm sure I wouldn't keep the sun off'n anybody," she said, tearfully.
"It never come into my head to take it up, an' I don't claim no share
of anything. I guess, if the truth was known, 'twould be seen I'd been
used to a house lookin' south, an' the fore-room winders all of a glare
o' light, day in an' day out, an' Madeira vines climbin' over 'em, an'
a trellis by the front door; but that's all past an' gone, past an'
gone! I never was one to take more 'n belonged to me; an' I don't care
who says it, I never shall be. An' I'd hold to that, if 'twas the last
word I had to speak!"
This negative sort of retort had an enfeebling effect upon Mrs. Blair.
"My land!" she exclaimed, helplessly. "Talk about my tongue! Vinegar's
nothin' to cold molasses, if you've got to plough through it."
The other sighed, and leaned her head upon her hand in an attitude of
extreme dejection. Mrs. Blair eyed her with the exasperation of one
whose just challenge has been refused; she marched back and forth
through the room, now smoothing a fold of the counterpane, with vicious
care, and again pulling the braided rug to one side or the other, the
while she sought new fuel for her rage. Without, the sun was lighting
snowy knoll and hollow, and printing the fine-etched tracery of the
trees against a crystal sky. The road was not usually much frequented
in winter time, but just now it had been worn by the week's sledding
into a shining track, and several sleighs went jingling up and down.
Tiverton was seizing the opportunity of a perfect day and the best of
"going," and was taking its way to market. The trivial happenings of
this far-away world had thus far elicited no more than a passing glance
from Mrs. Blair; she was too absorbed in domestic warfare even to peer
down through the leafless lilac-boughs, in futile wonderment as to
whose bells they might be, ringing merrily past. On one journey about
the room, however, some chance arrested her gaze. She stopped,
transfixed.
"Forever!" she cried. Her nervous, blue-veined hands clutched at her
apron and held it; she was motionless for a moment. Yet the picture
without would have been quite devoid of interest to the casual eye; it
could have borne little significance save to one who knew the inner
life history of the Tiverton Home, and thus might guess what slight
events wrought all its joy and pain. A young man had set up his camera
at the end of the walk, and thrown the cloth over his head, preparatory
to taking the usual view of the house. Mrs. Blair recovered from her
temporary inaction. She rushed to the window, and threw up the sash.
Her husky voice broke strenuously upon the stillness:--
"Here! you keep right where you be! I'm goin' to be took! You wait till
I come!"
She pulled down the window, and went in haste to the closet, in the
excess of her eagerness stumbling recklessly forward into its depths.
"Where's my bandbox?" Her voice came piercingly from her temporary
seclusion. "Where'd they put it? It ain't here in sight! My soul!
where's my bunnit?"
These were apostrophes thrown off in extremity of feeling; they were
not questions, and no listener, even with the most friendly disposition
in the world, need have assumed the necessity of answering. So, wrapped
in oblivion to all earthly considerations save that of her Own inward
gloom, the one person who might have responded merely swayed back and
forth, in martyrized silence. But no such spiritual withdrawal could
insure her safety. Mrs. Blair emerged from the closet, and darted
across the room with the energy of one stung by a new despair. She
seemed about to fall upon the neutral figure in the corner, but seized
the chair-back instead, and shook it with such angry vigor that Miss
Dyer cowered down in no simulated fright.
"Where's my green bandbox?'" The words were emphasized by cumulative
shakes, "Anybody that's took that away from me ought to be b'iled in
ile! Hangin''s too good for 'em, but le' me git my eye on 'em an' they
shall swing for 't! Yes, they shall, higher 'n Gil'roy's kite!"
The victim put both trembling hands to her ears.
"I ain't deef!" she wailed.
"Deef? I don't care whether you're deef or dumb, or whether you're
nummer'n a beetle! It's my bandbox I'm arter. Isr'el in Egypt! you
might grind some folks in a mortar an' you couldn't make 'em speak!"
It was of no use. Intimidation had been worse than hopeless; even
bodily force would not avail. She cast one lurid glance at the supine
figure, and gave up the quest in that direction as sheer waste of time.
With new determination, she again essayed the closet, tossing shoes and
rubbers behind her in an unsightly heap, quite heedless of the
confusion of rights and lefts. At last, in a dark corner, behind a blue
chest, she came upon her treasure. Too hurried now for reproaches, she
drew it forth, and with trembling fingers untied the strings. Casting
aside the cover, she produced a huge scoop bonnet of a long-past date,
and setting it on her head, with the same fevered haste, tied over it
the long figured veil destined always to make an inseparable part of
her state array. She snatched her stella shawl from the drawer, threw
it over her shoulders, and ran out of the room.
Miss Dyer was left quite bewildered by these erratic proceedings, but
she had no mind to question them; so many stories were rife in the Home
of the eccentricities embodied in the charitable phrase "Mis' Blair's
way" that she would scarcely have been amazed had her terrible
room-mate chosen to drive a coach and four up the chimney, or saddle
the broom for a midnight revel. She drew a long breath of relief at the
bliss of solitude, closed her eyes, and strove to regain the lost
peace, which, as she vaguely remembered, had belonged to her once in a
shadowy past.
Silence had come, but not to reign. Back flew Mrs. Blair, like a
whirlwind. Her cheeks wore each a little hectic spot; her eyes were
flaming. The figured veil, swept rudely to one side, was borne
backwards on the wind of her coming, and her thin hair, even in those
few seconds, had become wildly disarranged.
"He's gone!" she announced, passionately. "He kep' right on while I was
findin' my bunnit. He come to take the house, an' he'd ha' took me an'
been glad. An' when I got that plaguy front door open, he was jest
drivin' away; an' I might ha' hollered till I was black in the face,
an' then I couldn't ha' made him hear."
"I dunno what to say, nor what not to," remarked Miss Dyer, to her
corner. "If I speak, I'm to blame; an' so I be if I keep still."
The other old lady had thrown herself into a chair, and was looking
wrathfully before her.
"It's the same man that come from Sudleigh last August," she said,
bitterly. "He took the house then, an' said he wanted another view when
the leaves was off; an' that time I was laid up with my stiff ankle,
an' didn't git into it, an' to-day my bunnit was hid, an' I lost it
ag'in."
Her voice changed. To the listener, it took on an awful meaning.
"An' I should like to know whose fault it was. If them that owns the
winder, an' set by it till they see him comin', had spoke up an' said,
'Mis' Blair, there's the photograph man. Don't you want to be took?' it
wouldn't ha' been too late! If anybody had answered a civil question,
an' said, 'Your bunnit-box sets there behind my blue chist,' it
wouldn't ha' been too late then! An' I 'ain't had my likeness took
sence I was twenty year old, an' went to Sudleigh Fair in my changeable
_visite_ an' leghorn hat, an' Jonathan wore the brocaded weskit he
stood up in, the next week Thursday. It's enough to make a minister
swear!"
Miss Dyer rocked back and forth.
"Dear me!" she wailed. "Dear me suz!"
The dinner-bell rang, creating a blessed diversion. Miss Blair,
rendered absent-minded by her grief, went to the table still in her
bonnet and veil; and this dramatic entrance gave rise to such morbid
though unexpressed curiosity that every one forbore, for a time, to
wonder why Miss Dyer did not appear. Later, however, when a tray was
prepared and sent up to her (according to the programme of her bad
days), the general commotion reached an almost unruly point, stimulated
as it was by the matron's son, who found an opportunity to whisper one
garrulous old lady that Miss Dyer had received bodily injury at the
hands of her roommate, and that Mrs. Blair had put on her bonnet to be
ready for the sheriff when he should arrive. This report, judiciously
started, ran like prairie fire; and the house was all the afternoon in
a pleasant state of excitement. Possibly the matron will never know why
so many of the old ladies promenaded the corridors from dinnertime
until long after early candlelight, while a few kept faithful yet
agitated watch from the windows. For interest was divided; some
preferred to see the sheriff's advent, and others found zest in the
possibility of counting the groans of the prostrate victim.
When Mrs. Blair returned to the stage of action, she was much refreshed
by her abundant meal and the strong tea which three times daily
heartened her for battle. She laid aside her bonnet, and carefully
folded the veil. Then she looked about her, and, persistently ignoring
all the empty chairs, fixed an annihilating gaze on one where the
dinner-tray still remained.
"I s'pose there's no need o' my settin' down," she remarked, bitingly.
"It's all in the day's work. Some folks are waited on; some ain't. Some
have their victuals brought to 'em an' pushed under their noses, an'
some has to go to the table; when they're there, they can take it or
leave it. The quality can keep their waiters settin' round day in an'
day out, fillin' up every chair in the room. For my part, I should
think they'd have an extension table moved in, an' a snowdrop cloth
over it!"
Miss Dyer had become comparatively placid, but now she gave way to
tears.
"Anybody can move that waiter that's a mind to," she said, tremulously.
"I would myself, if I had the stren'th; but I 'ain't got it. I ain't a
well woman, an' I 'ain't been this twenty year. If old Dr. Parks was
alive this day, he'd say so. 'You 'ain't never had a chance,' he says
to me. 'You've been pull-hauled one way or another sence you was born.'
An' he never knew the wust on't, for the wust hadn't come."
"Humph!" It was a royal and explosive note. It represented scorn for
which Mrs. Blair could find no adequate utterance. She selected the
straightest chair in the room, ostentatiously turned its back to her
enemy, and seated herself. Then, taking out her knitting, she strove to
keep silence; but that was too heavy a task, and at last she broke
forth, with renewed bitterness,--
"To think of all the wood I've burnt up in my kitchen stove an'
air-tight, an' never thought nothin' of it! To think of all the wood
there is now, growin' an' rottin' from Dan to Beersheba, an' I can't
lay my fingers on it!"
"I dunno what you want o' wood. I'm sure this room's warm enough."
"You don't? Well, I'll tell ye. I want some two-inch boards, to nail up
a partition in the middle o' this room, same as Josh Marden done to
spite his wife. I don't want more'n my own, but I want it mine."
Miss Dyer groaned, and drew an uncertain hand across her forehead.
"You wouldn't have no gre't of an outlay for boards," she said,
drearily. "'Twouldn't have to be knee-high to keep me out. I'm no hand
to go where I ain't wanted; an' if I ever was, I guess I'm cured on't
now."