Sylvia Crane's house was the one in which her grandmother had been
born, and was the oldest house in the village. It was known as the
"old Crane place." It had never been painted, it was shedding its
flapping gray shingles like gray scales, the roof sagged in a mossy
hollow before the chimney, the windows and doors were awry, and the
whole house was full of undulations and wavering lines, which gave it
a curiously unreal look in broad daylight. In the moonlight it was
the shadowy edifice built of a dream.
As Sylvia and Charlotte came to the front door it seemed as if they
might fairly walk through it as through a gray shadow; but Sylvia
stooped, and her shoulders strained with seemingly incongruous force,
as if she were spending it to roll away a shadow. On the flat
doorstep lay a large round stone, pushed close against the door.
There were no locks and keys in the old Crane place; only bolts.
Sylvia could not fasten the doors on the inside when she went away,
so she adopted this expedient, which had been regarded with favor by
her mother and grandmother before her, and illustrated natures full
of gentle fallacies which went far to make existence comfortable.
Always on leaving the house alone the Crane women had bolted the side
door, which was the one in common use, gone out the front one, and
laboriously rolled this same round stone before it. Sylvia reasoned
as her mother and grandmother before her, with the same simplicity:
"When the stone's in front of the door, folks must know there ain't
anybody to home, because they couldn't put it there if they was."
And when some neighbor had argued that the evil-disposed might roll
away the stone and enter at will, Sylvia had replied, with the
innocent conservatism with which she settled an argument, "Nobody
ever did."
To-night she rolled away the stone to the corner of the door-step,
where it had lain through three generations when the Crane women were
at home, and sighed with regret that she had defended the door with
it. "I wish I hadn't put the stone up," she thought. "If I hadn't,
mebbe he'd gone in an' waited." She opened the door, and the gloom of
the house, deeper than the gloom of the night, appeared. "You wait
here a minute," she said to Charlotte, "an' I'll go in an' light a
candle."
Charlotte waited, leaning against the door-post. There was a flicker
of fire within. Then Sylvia held the flaring candle towards her.
"Come in," she said; "the candle's lit."
There was a bed of coals on the hearth in the best room; Sylvia had
made a fire there before going over to her sister's, but it had
burned low. The glow of the coals and the smoky flare of the candle
lighted the room uncertainly, scattering and not dispelling the
shadows. There was a primly festive air in the room. The
flag-bottomed chairs stood by twos, finely canted towards each other,
against the wall; the one great hair-cloth rocker stood
ostentatiously in advance of them, facing the hearth fire; the long
level of the hair-cloth sofa gleamed out under stiff sweeps of the
white fringed curtains at the window behind it. The books on the
glossy card-table were set canting towards each other like the
chairs, and with their gilt edges towards the light. And Sylvia had
set also on the table a burnished pitcher of a rosy copper-color full
of apple blossoms.
She looked at it when she had set the candle on the shelf. It seemed
to her that all the light in the room centred on it, and it shone in
her eyes like a copper lamp.
Charlotte also glanced at it. "Why, Richard must have come while you
were over to our house," she said.
"It don't make any odds if he did," returned Sylvia, with a faint
blush and a bridle. Sylvia was much younger than her sister. Standing
there in the dim light she did not look so much older than her niece.
Her figure had the slim angularity and primness which are sometimes
seen in elderly women who are not matrons, and she had donned a
little white lace cap at thirty, but her face had still a delicate
bloom, and the wistful wonder of expression which belongs to youth.
However, she never thought of Charlotte as anything but a child as
compared with herself. Sylvia felt very old, and the more so that she
grudged her years painfully. She stirred up the fire a little,
holding back her shiny black silk skirt carefully. Charlotte stood
leaning against the shelf, looking moodily down at the fire.
"I wouldn't feel bad if I was you, Charlotte," Sylvia ventured,
timidly.
"I guess we'd better go to bed pretty soon," returned Charlotte. "It
must be late."
"Had you rather sleep with me, Charlotte, or sleep in the spare
chamber?"
"I guess I'll go in the spare chamber."
"Well, I'll get you a night-gown."
Both of their faces were sober, but perfectly staid. They bade each
other good-night without a quiver; but Charlotte, after she had said
her dutiful and unquestioning prayer, and lay folded in Sylvia's
ruffled night-gown in the best bed, shook with great sobs. "Poor
Barney!" she kept muttering. "Poor Barney! poor Barney!"
The doors were all open, and once she thought she heard a sob from
below, then concluded she must be mistaken. But she was not, for
Sylvia Crane was lamenting as sorely as the younger maiden up-stairs.
"Poor Richard!" she repeated, piteously. "Poor Richard! There he
came, and the stone was up, and he had to go away."
The faces which were so clear to the hearts of both women, as if they
were before their eyes, had a certain similarity. Indeed, Richard
Alger and Barnabas Thayer were distantly related on the mother's
side, and people said they looked enough alike to be brothers. Sylvia
saw the same type of face as Charlotte, only Richard's face was
older, for he was six years older than she.
"If I hadn't put the stone up," she moaned, "maybe he would have
thought I didn't hear him knock, an' he'd come in an' waited. Poor
Richard, I dunno what he thought! It's the first time it's happened
for eighteen years."
Sylvia, as she lay there, looked backward, and it seemed to her that
the eighteen years were all made up of the Sunday nights on which
Richard Alger had come to see her, as if they were all that made them
immortal and redeemed them from the dead past. She had endured grief,
but love alone made the past years stand out for her. Sylvia, in
looking back over eighteen years, forgot the father, mother, and
sister who had died in that time; their funeral trains passed before
her eyes like so many shadows. She forgot all their cares and her
own; she forgot how she had nursed her bedridden mother for ten
years; she forgot everything but those blessed Sunday nights on which
Richard Alger had come. She called to mind every little circumstance
connected with them--how she had adorned the best room by slow
degrees, saving a few cents at a time from her sparse income, because
he sat in it every Sunday night; how she had had the bed which her
mother and grandmother kept there removed because the fashion had
changed, and the guilty audacity with which she had purchased a
hair-cloth sofa to take its place.
That adorning of the best room had come to be a religion with Sylvia
Crane. As faithfully as any worshipper of the Greek deity she laid
her offerings, her hair-cloth sofa and rocker, her copper-gilt
pitcher of apple blossoms, upon the altar of love.
Sylvia recalled, sobbing more piteously in the darkness, sundry
dreams, which had never been realized, of herself and Richard sitting
side by side and hand in hand, as confessed lovers, on that sofa.
Richard Alger, during all those eighteen years, had never made love
to Sylvia, unless his constant attendance upon Sabbath evenings could
be so construed, as it was in that rural neighborhood, and as Sylvia
was fain to construe it in her innocent heart.
It is doubtful if Sylvia, in her perfect decorum and long-fostered
maiden reserve, fairly knew that Richard Alger had never made love to
her. She scarcely expected her dreams of endearments to be realized;
she regarded them, except in desperate moods, with shame. If her old
admirer had, indeed, attempted to sit by her side upon that
hair-cloth sofa and hold her hand, she would have arisen as if
propelled by stiff springs of modest virtue. She did not fairly know
that she was not made love to after the most honorable and orthodox
fashion without a word of endearment or a caress; for she had been
trained to regard love as one of the most secret of the laws of
nature, to be concealed, with shamefaced air, even from herself; but
she did know that Richard had never asked her to marry him, and for
that she was impatient without any self-reserve; she was even
confidential with her sister, Charlotte's mother.
"I don't want to say anything outside," she once said, "but I do
think it would be a good deal better for him if we was settled down.
He ain't half taken care of since his mother died."
"He's got money enough," returned Mrs. Barnard.
"That can't buy everything."
"Well, I don't pity him; I pity you," said Mrs. Barnard.
"I guess I shall get along a while longer, as far as that goes,"
Sylvia had replied to her sister, with some pride. "I ain't worried
on my account."
"Women don't worry much on their own accounts, but they've got
accounts," returned Mrs. Barnard, with more contempt for her sister
than she had ever shown for herself. "You're gettin' older, Sylvy."
"I know it," Sylvia had replied, with a quick shrinking, as if from a
blow.
The passing years, as they passed for her, stung her like swarming
bees, with bitter humiliation; but never for herself, only for
Richard. Nobody knew how painfully she counted the years, how she
would fain have held time back with her thin hands, how futilely and
pitifully she set her loving heart against it, and not for herself
and her own vanity, but for the sake of her lover. She had come, in
the singleness of her heart, to regard herself in the light of a
species of coin to be expended wholly for the happiness and interest
of one man. Any depreciation in its value was of account only as it
affected him.
Sylvia Crane, sitting in the meeting-house of a Sunday, used to watch
the young girls coming in, as radiant and flawless as new flowers, in
their Sunday bests, with a sort of admiring envy, which could do them
no harm, but which tore her own heart.
When she should have been contrasting the wickedness of her soul with
the grace of the Divine Model, she was contrasting her fading face
with the youthful bloom of the young girls. "He'd ought to marry one
of them," she thought; "he'd ought to, by good rights." It never
occurred to Sylvia that Richard also was growing older, and that he
was, moreover, a few years older than she. She thought of him as an
immortal youth; his face was the same to her as when she had first
seen it.
When it came before a subtler vision than her bodily one, there in
the darkness and loneliness of this last Sunday night, it wore the
beauty and innocent freshness of a child. If Richard Alger could have
seen his own face as the woman who loved him saw it, he could never
have doubted his own immortality.
"There he came, an' the stone was up, an' he had to go away," moaned
Sylvia, catching her breath softly. Many a time she had pitied
Richard because he had not the little womanly care which men need;
she had worried lest his stockings were not darned, and his food not
properly cooked; but to-night she had another and strange anxiety.
She worried lest she herself had hurt him and sent him home with a
heavy heart.
Sylvia had gone about for the last few days with her delicate face as
irresponsibly calm as a sweet-pea; nobody had dreamed of the turmoil
in her heart. On the Wednesday night before she had nearly reached
the climax of her wishes. Richard had come, departing from his usual
custom--he had never called except on Sunday before--and remained
later. It was ten o'clock before he went home. He had been very
silent all the evening, and had sat soberly in the great best
rocking-chair, which was, in a way, his throne of state, with Sylvia
on the sofa on his right. Many a time she had dreamed that he came
over there and sat down beside her, and that night it had come to
pass.
Just before ten o'clock he had arisen hesitatingly; she thought it
was to take leave, but she sat waiting and trembling. They had sat in
the twilight and young moonlight all the evening. Richard had checked
her when she attempted to light a candle. That had somehow made the
evening seem strange, and freighted with consequences; and besides
the white light of the moon, full of mystic influence, there was
something subtler and more magnetic, which could sway more than the
tides, even the passions of the human heart, present, and they both
felt it.
Neither had said much, and they had been sitting there nearly two
hours, when Richard had arisen, and moved curiously, rather as if he
was drawn than walked of his own volition, over to the sofa. He sank
down upon it with a little cough. Sylvia moved away a little with an
involuntary motion, which was pure maidenliness.
"It's getting late," remarked Richard, trying to make his voice
careless, but it fell in spite of him into deep cadences.
"It ain't very late, I guess," Sylvia had returned, tremblingly.
"I ought to be going home."
Then there was silence for a while. Sylvia glanced sidewise, timidly
and adoringly, at Richard's smoothly shaven face, pale as marble in
the moonlight, and waited, her heart throbbing.
[Illustration: "Sylvia glanced timidly at Richard's smoothly-shaven
face"]
"I've been coming here a good many years," Richard observed finally,
and his own voice had a solemn tremor.
Sylvia made an almost inarticulate assent.
"I've been thinking lately," said Richard; then he paused. They could
hear the great clock out in the kitchen tick. Sylvia waited, her very
soul straining, although shrinking at the same time, to hear.
"I've been thinking lately," said Richard again, "that--maybe--it
would be wise for--us both to--make some different arrangement."
Sylvia bent her head low. Richard paused for the second time. "I have
always meant--" he began again, but just then the clock in the
kitchen struck the first stroke of ten. Richard caught his breath and
arose quickly. Never in his long courtship had he remained as late as
that at Sylvia Crane's. It was as if a life-long habit struck as well
as the clock, and decided his times for him.
"I must be going," said he, speaking against the bell notes. Sylvia
arose without a word of dissent, but Richard spoke as if she had
remonstrated.
"I'll come again next Sunday night," said he, apologetically.
Sylvia followed him to the door. They bade each other good-night
decorously, with never a parting kiss, as they had done for years.
Richard went out of sight down the white gleaming road, and she went
in and to bed, with her heart in a great tumult of expectation and
joyful fear.
She had tried to wait calmly for Sunday night. She had done her neat
household tasks as usual, her face and outward demeanor were sweetly
unruffled, but her thoughts seemed shivering with rainbows that
constantly dazzled her with sweet shocks when her eyes met them. Her
feet seemed constantly flying before her into the future, and she
could scarcely tell where she might really be, in the present or in
her dreams, which had suddenly grown so real.
On Sunday morning she had curled her soft fair hair, and arranged
with trepidation one long light curl outside her bonnet on each side
of her face. Her bonnet was tied under her chin with a green ribbon,
and she had a little feathery green wreath around her face inside the
rim. Her wide silk skirt was shot with green and blue, and rustled as
she walked up the aisle to her pew. People stared after her without
knowing why. There was no tangible change in her appearance. She had
worn that same green shot silk many Sabbaths; her bonnet was three
summers old; the curls drooping on her cheeks were an innovation, but
the people did not recognize the change as due to them. Sylvia
herself had looked with pleased wonder at her face in the glass; it
was as if all her youthful beauty had suddenly come up, like a
withered rose which is dipped in a vase.
"I sha'n't look so terrible old side of him when I go out bride," she
reflected, happily, smiling fondly at herself. All the way to meeting
that Sunday morning she saw her face as she had seen it in the glass,
and it was as if she walked with something finer than herself.
Richard Alger sat with the choir in a pew beside the pulpit, at right
angles with the others. He had a fine tenor voice, and had sung in
the choir ever since he was a boy. When Sylvia sat down in her place,
which was in full range of his eyes, he glanced at her without
turning his head; he meant to look away again directly, so as not to
be observed, but her face held him. A color slowly flamed out on his
pale brown cheeks; his eyes became intense and abstracted. A soprano
singer nudged the girl at her side; they both glanced at him and
tittered, but he did not notice it.
Sylvia knew that he was looking at her, but she never looked at him.
She sat soberly waving a little brown fan before her face; the light
curls stirred softly. She wondered what he thought of them; if he
considered them too young for her, and silly; but he did not see them
at all. He had no eye for details. And neither did she even hear his
fine tenor, still sweet and powerful, leading all the other male
voices when the choir stood up to sing. She thought only of Richard
himself.
After meeting, when she went down the aisle, several women had spoken
to her, inquired concerning her health, and told her, with wondering
eyes, that she looked well. Richard was far behind her, but she did
not look around. They very seldom accosted each other, unless it was
unavoidable, in any public place. Still, Sylvia, going out with
gentle flounces of her green shot silk, knew well that Richard's eyes
followed her, and his thought was close at her side.
After she got home from meeting that Sunday, Sylvia Crane did not
know how to pass the time until the evening. She could not keep
herself calm and composed as was her wont on the Sabbath day. She
changed her silk for a common gown; she tried to sit down and read
the Bible quietly and with understanding, but she could not. She
turned to Canticles, and read a page or two. She had always believed
loyally and devoutly in the application to Christ and the Church; but
suddenly now, as she read, the restrained decorously chanting New
England love-song in her maiden heart had leaped into the fervid
measures of the oriental King. She shut the Bible with a clap. "I
ain't giving the right meaning to it," she said, sternly, aloud.
She put away the Bible, went into the pantry, and got out some bread
and cheese for her luncheon, but she could eat nothing. She picked
the apple blossoms and arranged them in the copper-gilt pitcher on
the best-room table. She even dusted off the hair-cloth sofa and
rocker, with many compunctions, because it was Sunday. "I know I
hadn't ought to do it to-day," she murmured, apologetically, "but
they do get terrible dusty, and need dusting every day, and he is
real particular, and he'll have on his best clothes."
Finally, just before twilight, Sylvia, unable to settle herself, had
gone over to her sister's for a little call. Richard never came
before eight o'clock, except in winter, when it was dark earlier.
There was a certain half-shamefaced reserve about his visits. He knew
well enough that people looked from their windows as he passed, and
said, facetiously, "There goes Richard Alger to court Sylvy Crane."
He preferred slipping past in a half-light, in which he did not seem
so plain to himself, and could think himself less plain to other
people.
Sylvia, detained at her sister's by the quarrel between Cephas and
Barnabas, had arisen many a time to take leave, all palpitating with
impatience, but her sister had begged her, in a distressed whisper,
to remain.
"I guess you can get along without Richard Alger one Sunday evening,"
she had said finally, quite aloud, and quite harshly. "I guess your
own sister has just as much claim on you as he has. I dunno what's
going to be done. I don't believe Charlotte's father will let her in
the house to-night."
Poor Sylvia had sunk back in her chair. To her sensitive conscience
the duty nearest at hand seemed always to bark the loudest, and the
precious moments had gone by until she knew that Richard had come,
found the stone before the door, and gone away, and all her sweet
turmoil of hope and anticipation had gone for naught.
Sylvia, lying there awake that night, her mind carrying her back over
all that had gone before, had no doubt that this was the end of
everything. Not originally a subtle discerner of character, she had
come insensibly to know Richard so well that certain results from
certain combinations of circumstances in his life were as plain and
inevitable to her as the outcome of a simple sum in mathematics.
"He'd got 'most out of his track for once," she groaned out softly,
"but now he's pushed back in so hard he can't get out again if he
wants to. I dunno how he's going to get along."
Sylvia, with the roof settling over her head, with not so much upon
her few sterile acres to feed her as to feed the honey-bees and
birds, with her heart in greater agony because its string of joy had
been strained so high and sweetly before it snapped, did not lament
over herself at all; neither did she over the other woman who lay
up-stairs suffering in a similar case. She lamented only over Richard
living alone and unministered to until he died.
When daylight came she got up, dressed herself, and prepared
breakfast. Charlotte came down before it was ready. "Let me help get
breakfast," she said, with an assumption of energy, standing in the
kitchen doorway in her pretty mottled purple delaine. The purple was
the shade of columbine, and very becoming to Charlotte. In spite of
her sleepless night, her fine firm tints had not faded; she was too
young and too strong and too full of involuntary resistance. She had
done up her fair hair compactly; her chin had its usual proud lift.
Sylvia, shrinking as if before some unseen enemy as she moved about,
her face all wan and weary, glanced at her half resentfully. "I guess
she 'ain't had any such night as I have," she thought. "Girls don't
know much about it."
"No, I don't need any help," she replied, aloud. "I 'ain't got
anything to do but to stir up an Injun cake. You've got your best
dress on. You'd better go and sit down."
"It won't hurt my dress any." Charlotte glanced down half scornfully
at her purple skirt. It had lost all its glory for her. She was not
even sure that Barney had seen it.
"Set down. I've got breakfast 'most ready," Sylvia said, again, more
peremptorily than she was wont, and Charlotte sat down in the
hollow-backed cherry rocking-chair beside the kitchen window, leaned
her head back, and looked out indifferently between the lilac-bushes.
The bushes were full of pinkish-purple buds. Sylvia's front yard
reached the road in a broad slope, and the ground was hard, and green
with dampness under the shade of a great elm-tree. The grass would
never grow there over the roots of the elm, which were flung out
broadly like great recumbent limbs over the whole yard, and were
barely covered by the mould.
Across the street, seen under the green sweep of the elm, was an
orchard of old apple-trees which had blossomed out bravely that
spring. Charlotte looked at the white and rosy masses of bloom.
"I guess there wasn't any frost last night, after all," she remarked.
"I dunno," responded Sylvia, in a voice which made her niece look
around at her. There was a curious impatient ring in it which was
utterly foreign to it. There was a frown between Sylvia's gentle
eyes, and she moved with nervous jerks, setting down dishes hard, as
if they were refractory children, and lashing out with spoons as if
they were whips. The long, steady strain upon her patience had not
affected her temper, but this last had seemed to bring out a certain
vicious and waspish element which nobody had suspected her to
possess, and she herself least of all. She felt this morning disposed
to go out of her way to sting, and as if some primal and evil
instinct had taken possession of her. She felt shocked at herself,
but all the more defiant and disposed to keep on.
"Breakfast is ready," she announced, finally; "if you don't set right
up an' eat it, it will be gettin' cold. I wouldn't give a cent for
cold Injun cake."
Charlotte arose promptly and brought a chair to the table, which
Sylvia always set punctiliously in the centre of the kitchen as if
for a large family.
"Don't scrape your chair on the floor that way; it wears 'em all
out," cried Sylvia, sharply.
Charlotte stared at her again, but she said nothing; she sat down and
began to eat absently. Sylvia watched her angrily between her own
mouthfuls, which she swallowed down defiantly like medicine.
"It ain't much use cookin' things if folks don't eat 'em," said she.
"I am eating," returned Charlotte.
"Eatin'? Swallowin' down Injun cake as if it was sawdust! I don't
call that eatin'. You don't act as if you tasted a mite of it!"
"Aunt Sylvy, what has got into you?" said Charlotte.
"Got into me? I should think you'd talk about anything gettin' into
me, when you set there like a stick. I guess you 'ain't got all there
is to bear."
"I never thought I had," said Charlotte.
"Well, I guess you 'ain't."
They went on swallowing their food silently; the great clock ticked
slowly, and the spring birds called outside; but they heard neither.
The shadows of the young elm leaves played over the floor and the
white table-cloth. It was much warmer that morning, and the shadows
were softer.
Before they had finished breakfast, Charlotte's mother came,
advancing ponderously, with soft thuds, across the yard to the side
door. She opened it and peered in.
"Here you be," said she, scanning both their faces with anxious and
deprecating inquiry.
"Can't you come in, an' not stand there holdin' the door open?"
inquired Sylvia. "I feel the wind on my back, and I've got a bad pain
enough in it now."
Mrs. Barnard stepped in, and shut the door quickly, in an alarmed
way.
"Ain't you feelin' well this mornin', Sylvy?" said she.
"Oh yes, I'm feelin' well enough. It ain't any matter how I feel, but
it's a good deal how some other folks do."
Sarah Barnard sank into the rocking-chair, and sat there looking at
them hesitatingly, as if she did not dare to open the conversation.
Suddenly Sylvia arose and went out of the kitchen with a rush,
carrying a plate of Indian cake to feed the hens. "I can't set here
all day; I've got to do something," she announced as she went.
When the door had closed after her, Mrs. Barnard turned to Charlotte.
"What's the matter with her?" she asked, nodding towards the door.
"I don't know."
"She ain't sick, is she? I never see her act so. Sylvy's generally
just like a lamb. You don't s'pose she's goin' to have a fever, do
you?"
"I don't know."
Suddenly Charlotte, who was still sitting at the table, put up her
two hands with a despairing gesture, and bent her head forward upon
them.
"Now don't, you poor child," said her mother, her eyes growing
suddenly red. "Didn't he even turn round when you called him back
last night?"
Charlotte shook her bowed head dumbly.
"Don't you s'pose he'll ever come again?"
Charlotte shook her head.
"Mebbe he will. I know he's terrible set."
"Who's set?" demanded Sylvia, coming in with her empty plate.
"Oh, I was jest sayin' that I thought Barney was kinder set," replied
her sister, mildly.
"He ain't no more set than Cephas," returned Sylvia.
"Cephas ain't set. It's jest his way."
Sylvia sniffed. She looked scornfully at Charlotte, who had raised
her head when she came in, but whose eyes were red. "Folks had better
been created without ways, then," she retorted. "They'd better have
been created slaves; they'd been enough sight happier an' better off,
an' so would other folks that they have to do with, than to have so
many ways, an' not sense enough to manage 'em. I don't believe in
free-will, for my part."
"Sylvy Crane, you ain't goin' to deny one of the doctrines of the
Church at your time of life?" demanded a new voice. Sylvia's other
sister, Hannah Berry, stood in the doorway.
Sylvia ordinarily was meek before her, but now she faced her. "Yes, I
be," said she; "I don't approve of free-will, and I ain't afraid to
say it."
Sylvia had always been considered very unlike Mrs. Hannah Berry in
face and character. Now, as she stood before her, a curious
similarity appeared; even her voice sounded like her sister's.
"What on earth ails you, Sylvy?" asked Mrs. Berry, ignoring suddenly
the matter in hand.
"Nothin' ails me that I know of. I don't think much of free-will, an'
I ain't goin' to say I do when I don't."
"Then all I've got to say is you'd ought to be ashamed of yourself.
Why, I should think you was crazy, Sylvy Crane, settin' up yourself
agin' the doctrines of the Word. I'd like to know what you know about
them."
"I know enough to see how they work," returned Sylvia, undauntedly,
"an' I ain't goin' to pretend I'm blind when I can see."
Sylvia's serene arc of white forehead was shortened by a distressed
frown, her mild mouth dropped sourly at the corners, and the lips
were compressed. Her white cap was awry, and one of yesterday's curls
hung lankly over her left cheek.
"You look an' act like a crazy creature," said Hannah Berry, eying
her with indignant amazement. She walked across the room to another
rocking-chair, moving with unexpected heaviness. She was in reality
as stout as her sister Sarah Barnard, but she had a long, thin, and
rasped face, which misled people.
"Now," said she, looking around conclusively, "I ain't come over here
to argue about free-will. I want to know what all this is about?"
"All what?" returned Mrs. Barnard, feebly. She was distinctly afraid
of her imperious sister, yet she was conscious of a quiver of
resentment.
"All this fuss about Barney Thayer," said Hannah Berry.
"How did you hear about it?" Mrs. Barnard asked with a glance at
Charlotte, who was sitting erect with her cheeks very red and her
mouth tightly closed.
"Never mind how I heard," replied Hannah. "I did hear, an' that's
enough. Now I want to know if you're really goin' to set down like an
old hen an' give up, an' let this match between Charlotte an' a good,
smart, likely young man like Barnabas Thayer be broken off on account
of Cephas Barnard's crazy freaks?"
Sarah stiffened her neck. "There ain't no call for you to speak that
way, Hannah. They got to talkin' over the 'lection."
"The 'lection! I'd like to know what business they had talkin' about
it Sabbath night anyway? I ain't blamin' Barnabas so much; he's
younger an' easier stirred up; but Cephas Barnard is an old man, an'
he has been a church-member for forty year, an' he ought to know
enough to set a better example. I'd like to know what difference it
makes about the 'lection anyway? What odds does it make which one is
President if he rules the country well? An' that they can't tell till
they've tried him awhile anyway. I guess they don't think much about
the country; it's jest to have their own way about it. I'd like to
know what mortal difference it's goin' to make to Barney Thayer or
Cephas Barnard which man is President? He won't never hear of them,
an' they won't neither of them make him rule any different after he's
chose. It's jest like two little boys--one wants to play marbles
'cause the other wants to play puss-in-the-corner, an' that's all the
reason either one of 'em's got for standin' out. Men ain't got any
too much sense anyhow, when you come right down to it. They don't
ever get any too much grown up, the best of 'em. I'd like to know
what Cephas Barnard has got to say because he's drove a good, likely
young man like Barnabas Thayer off an' broke off his daughter's
match? It ain't likely she'll ever get anybody now; young men like
him, with nice new houses put up to go right to housekeepin' in as
soon as they are married, don't grow on every bush. They ain't quite
so thick as wild thimbleberries. An' Charlotte ain't got any money
herself, an' her father ain't got any to build a house for her. I'd
like to know what he's got to say about it?"
Mrs. Barnard put up her apron and began to weep helplessly.
"Don't, mother," said Charlotte, in an undertone. But her mother
began talking in a piteous wailing fashion.
"You hadn't ought to talk so about Cephas," she moaned. "He's my
husband. I guess you wouldn't like it if anybody talked so about your
husband. Cephas ain't any worse than anybody else. It's jest his way.
He wa'n't any more to blame than Barney; they both got to talkin'. I
know Cephas is terrible upset about it this mornin'; he 'ain't really
said so in so many words, but I know by the way he acts. He said this
mornin' that he didn't know but we were eatin' the wrong kind of
food. Lately he's had an idea that mebbe we'd ought to eat more meat;
he's thought it was more strengthenin', an' we'd ought to eat things
as near like what we wanted to strengthen as could be. I've made a
good deal of bone soup. But now he says he thinks mebbe he's been
mistaken, an' animal food kind of quickens the animal nature in us,
an' that we'd better eat green things an' garden sass."
"I guess garden sass will strengthen the other kind of sass that
Cephas Barnard has got in him full as much as bone soup has,"
interrupted Hannah Berry, with a sarcastic sniff.
"I dunno but he's right," said Mrs. Barnard. "Cephas thinks a good
deal an' looks into things. I kind of wish he'd waited till the
garden had got started, though, for there ain't much we can eat now
but potatoes an' turnips an' dandelion greens."
"If you want to live on potatoes an' turnips an' dandelion greens,
you can," cried Hannah Berry; "What I want to know is if you're goin'
to settle down an' say nothin', an' have Charlotte lose the best
chance she'll ever have in her life, if she lives to be a hundred--"
Charlotte spoke up suddenly; her blue eyes gleamed with steely light.
She held her head high as she faced her aunt.
"I don't want any more talk about it, Aunt Hannah," said she.
"Hey?"
"I don't want any more talk about it."
"Well, I guess you'll have more talk about it; girls don't get jilted
without there is talk generally. I guess you'll have to make up your
mind to it, for all you put on such airs with your own aunt, who left
her washin' an' come over here to take your part. I guess when you
stand out in the road half an hour an' call a young man to come back,
an' he don't come, that folks are goin' to talk some. Who's that
comin' now?"
"It's Cephas," whispered Mrs. Barnard, with a scared glance at
Charlotte.
Cephas Barnard entered abruptly, and stood for a second looking at
the company, while they looked back at him. His eyes were stolidly
defiant, but he stood well back, and almost shrank against the door.
There seemed to be impulses in Hannah's and Sylvia's faces
confronting his.
He turned to his wife. "When you comin' home?" said he.
"Oh, Cephas! I jest ran over here a minute. I--wanted to
see--if--Sylvy had any emptins. Do you want me an' Charlotte to come
now?"
Cephas turned on his heel. "I think it's about time for you both to
be home," he grunted.
Sarah Barnard arose and looked with piteous appeal at Charlotte.
Charlotte hesitated a second, then she arose without a word, and
followed her mother, who followed Cephas. They went in a procession
of three, with Cephas marching ahead like a general, across the yard,
and Sylvia and Hannah stood at a window watching them.
"Well," said Hannah Berry, "all I've got to say is I'm thankful I
'ain't got a man like that, an' you ought to be mighty thankful you
'ain't got any man at all, Sylvy Crane."