When Rebecca entered the house, her mother was standing over the
stove, making milk-toast for supper. The boiling milk steamed up
fiercely in her face. "What makes you so long behind the others?" she
demanded, without turning, stirring the milk as she spoke.
"I guess I ain't much, am I?" Rebecca said, evasively. She tried to
make her voice sound as it usually did, but she could not. It broke
and took on faltering cadences, as if she were intoxicated with some
subtle wine of the spirit.
Her mother looked around at her. Rebecca's face was full of a strange
radiance which she could not subdue before her mother's hard,
inquiring gaze. Her cheeks burned with splendid color, her lips
trembled into smiles in spite of herself, her eyes were like dark
fires, shifting before her mother's, but not paling.
"Ephraim see 'em all go by half an hour ago," said her mother.
Rebecca made no reply.
"If," said her mother, "you stayed behind to see William Berry, I can
tell you one thing, once for all: you needn't do it again."
"I had to see him about something," Rebecca faltered.
"Well, you needn't see him again about anything. You might jest as
well understand it first as last: if you've got any idea of havin'
William Berry, you've got to give it up."
"Mother, I'd like to know what you mean!" Rebecca cried out,
blushing.
"Look 'round here at me!" her mother ordered, suddenly.
"Don't, mother."
"Look at me!"
Rebecca lifted her face perforce, and her mother eyed her pitilessly.
"You ain't been tellin' of him you'd have him, now?" said she. "Why
don't you speak?"
"Not--just."
"Then you needn't."
"Mother!"
"You needn't talk. You can jest make up your mind to it. You ain't
goin' to marry William Berry. Your brother has had enough to do with
that family."
"Mother, you won't stop my marrying William because Barney won't
marry his cousin Charlotte? There ain't any sense in that."
"I've got my reasons, an' that's enough for you," said Deborah. "You
ain't goin' to marry William Berry."
"I am, if you haven't got any better reason than that. I won't stand
it, mother; it ain't right!" Rebecca cried out.
"Then," said Deborah, and as she spoke she began spooning out the
toast gravy into a bowl with a curious stiff turn of her wrist and a
superfluous vigor of muscle, as if it were molten lead instead of
milk; and, indeed, she might, from the look in her face, have been
one of her female ancestors in the times of the French and Indian
wars, casting bullets with the yells of savages in her ears--"then,"
said she, "I sha'n't have any child but Ephraim left, that's all!"
"Mother, don't!" gasped Rebecca.
"There's another thing: if you marry William Berry against your
parents' wishes, you know what you have to expect. You remember your
aunt Rebecca."
Rebecca twisted her whole body about with the despairing motion with
which she would have wrung her hands, flung open the door, and ran
out of the room.
Deborah went on spooning up the toast. Ephraim had come in just as
she spoke last to Rebecca, and he stood staring, grinning with gaping
mouth.
"What's Rebecca done, mother?" he asked, pleadingly, catching hold of
his mother's dress.
"Nothin' for you to know. Go an' wash your face an' hands, an' come
in to supper."
"Mother, what's she done?" Ephraim's pleading voice lengthened into a
whine. He took more liberties with his mother than any one else
dared; he even jerked her dress now by way of enforcing an answer.
But she grasped his arm so vigorously that he cried out. "Go out to
the pump, an' wash your face an' hands," she repeated, and Ephraim
made a little involuntary run to the door.
As he went out he rolled his eyes over his shoulder at his mother
with tragic surprise and reproach, but she paid no attention. When he
came in she ignored the great painful sigh which he heaved and the
podgy hand clapped ostentatiously over his left side. "Draw your
chair up," said she.
"I dunno as I want any supper. I've got a pain. Oh dear!" Ephraim
writhed, with attentive eyes upon his mother; he was like an
executioner turning an emotional thumbscrew on her. But Deborah
Thayer's emotions sometimes presented steel surfaces. "You can have a
pain, then," said she. "I ain't goin' to let you go to ruin because
you ain't well, not if I know it. You've got to mind, sick or well,
an' you might jest as well know it. I'll have one child obey me,
whether or no. Set up to the table."
Ephraim drew up his chair, whimpering; but he fell to on the
milk-toast with ardor, and his hand dropped from his side. He had
eaten half a plateful when his father came in. Caleb had been
milking; the cows had been refractory as he drove them from pasture,
and he was late.
"Supper's been ready half an hour," his wife said, when he entered.
"The heifer run down the old road when I was a-drivin' of her home,
an' I had to chase her," Caleb returned, meekly, settling down in his
arm-chair at the table.
"I guess that heifer wouldn't cut up so every night if I had the
drivin' of her," remarked Deborah. She filled a plate with toast and
passed it over to Caleb.
Caleb set it before him, but he did not begin to eat. He looked at
Rebecca's empty place, then at his wife's face, long and pale and
full of stern rancor, behind the sugar-bowl and the cream-pitcher.
"Rebecca got home?" he ventured, with wary eyes upon her.
"Yes, she's got home."
Caleb winked, meekly. "Ain't she comin' to supper?"
"I dunno whether she is or not."
"Does she know it's ready?" Deborah vouchsafed no reply. She poured
out the tea.
Caleb grated his chair suddenly. "I'll jest speak to her," he
proclaimed, courageously.
"She knows it's ready. You set still," said Deborah. And Caleb drew
his chair close again, and loaded his knife with toast, bringing it
around to his mouth with a dexterous sidewise motion.
"She ain't sick, is she?" he said, presently, with a casual air.
"No, I guess she ain't sick."
"I s'pose she eat so many cherries she didn't want any supper," Caleb
said, chuckling anxiously. His wife made no reply. Ephraim reached
over slyly for the toast-spoon, and she pushed his hand back.
"You can't have any more," said she.
"Can't I have jest a little more, mother?"
"No, you can't."
"I feel faint at my stomach, mother."
"You can keep on feelin' faint."
"Can't I have a piece of pie, mother?"
"You can't have another mouthful of anything to eat to-night."
Ephraim clapped his hand to his side again and sighed, but his mother
took no notice.
"Have you got a pain, sonny?" asked Caleb.
"Yes, dreadful. Oh!"
"Hadn't he ought to have somethin' on it?" Caleb inquired, looking
appealingly at Deborah.
"He can have some of his doctor's medicine if he don't feel better,"
she replied, in a hard voice. "Set your chair back now, Ephraim, and
get out your catechism."
"I don't feel fit to, mother," groaned Ephraim.
"You do jest as I tell you," said his mother.
And Ephraim, heaving with sighs, muttering angrily far under his
breath lest his mother should hear, pulled his chair back to the
window, and got his catechism out of the top drawer of his father's
desk, and began droning out in his weak, sulky voice the first
question therein: "What is the chief end of man?"
"Now shut the book and answer it," said his mother, and Ephraim
obeyed.
Ephraim was quite conversant with the first three questions and their
answers, after that his memory began to weaken; either he was a
naturally dull scholar, or his native indolence made him appear so.
He had been drilled nightly upon the "Assembly's Catechism" for the
past five years, and had had many a hard bout with it before that in
his very infancy, when his general health admitted--and sometimes, it
seemed to Ephraim, when it had not admitted.
Many a time had the boy panted for breath when he rehearsed those
grandly decisive, stately replies to those questions of all ages, but
his mother had been obdurate. He could not understand why, but in
reality Deborah held her youngest son, who was threatened with death
in his youth, to the "Assembly's Catechism" as a means of filling his
mind with spiritual wisdom, and fitting him for that higher state to
which he might soon be called. Ephraim had been strictly forbidden to
attend school--beyond reading he had no education; but his mother
resolved that spiritual education he should have, whether he would or
not, and whether the doctor would or not. So Ephraim laboriously read
the Bible through, a chapter at a time, and he went, step by step,
through the wisdom of the Divines of Westminster. No matter how much
he groaned over it, his mother was pitiless. Sometimes Caleb plucked
up courage and interceded. "I don't believe he feels quite ekal to
learnin' of his stint to-night," he would say, and then his eyes
would fall before the terrible stern pathos in Deborah's, as she
would reply in her deep voice: "If he can't learn nothin' about
books, he's got to learn about his own soul. He's got to, whether it
hurts him or not. I shouldn't think, knowin' what you know, you'd say
anything, Caleb Thayer."
And Caleb's old face would quiver suddenly like a child's; he would
rub the back of his hand across his eyes, huddle himself into his
arm-chair, and say no more; and Deborah would sharply order Ephraim,
spying anxiously over his catechism, to go on with the next question.
It was nearly dark to-night when Ephraim finished his stint; he was
slower than usual, his progress being somewhat hindered by the
surreptitious eating of a hard red apple, which he had stowed away in
his jacket-pocket. Hard apples were strictly forbidden to Ephraim as
articles of diet, and to eat many during the season required
diplomacy.
The boy's jaws worked with furious zeal over the apple during his
mother's temporary absences from the room on household tasks, and on
her return were mumbling solemnly and innocently the precepts of the
catechism, after a spasmodic swallowing. His father was nodding in
his chair and saw nothing, and had he seen would not have betrayed
him. After a little inefficient remonstrance on his own account,
Caleb always subsided, and watched anxiously lest Deborah should
discover the misdemeanor and descend upon Ephraim.
To-night, after the task was finished, Deborah sent Ephraim stumbling
out of the room to bed, muttering remonstrances, his eyes as wild and
restless as a cat's, his ears full of the nocturnal shouts of his
play-fellows that came through the open windows.
"Mother, can't I go out an' play ball a little while?" sounded in a
long wail from the dusk outside the door.
"You go to bed," answered his mother. Then the slamming of a door
shook the house.
"If he wa'n't sick, I'd whip him," said Deborah, between tight lips;
the spiritual whip which Ephraim held by right of his illness over
her seemed to sing past her ears. She shook Caleb with the force with
which she might have shaken Ephraim. "You'd better get up an' go to
bed now, instead of sleepin' in your chair," she said, imperatively;
and Caleb obeyed, staggering, half-dazed, across the floor into the
bedroom. Deborah was only a few years younger than her husband, but
she had retained her youthful vigor in much greater degree. She never
felt the drowsiness of age stealing over her at nightfall. Indeed,
oftentimes her senses seemed to gain in alertness as the day wore on,
and many a night she was up and at work long after all the other
members of her family were in bed. There came at such times to
Deborah Thayer a certain peace and triumphant security, when all the
other wills over which her own held contested sway were lulled to
sleep, and she could concentrate all her energies upon her work. Many
a long task of needle-work had she done in the silence of the night,
by her dim oil lamp; in years past she had spun and woven, and there
was in a clothes-press up-stairs a wonderful coverlid in an intricate
pattern of blue and white, and not a thread of it woven by the light
of the sun.
[Illustration: "Many a long task of needle-work had she done"]
None of the neighbors knew why Deborah Thayer worked so much at
night; they attributed it to her tireless industry. "The days wa'n't
never long enough for Deborah Thayer," they said--and she did not
know why herself.
There was deep in her heart a plan for the final disposition of these
nightly achievements, but she confided it to no one, not even to
Rebecca. The blue-and-white coverlid, many a daintily stitched linen
garment and lace-edged pillow-slip she destined for Rebecca when she
should be wed, although she frowned on Rebecca's lover and spoke
harshly to her of marriage. To-night, while Rebecca lay sobbing in
her little bedroom, the mother knitted assiduously until nearly
midnight upon a wide linen lace with which to trim dimity curtains
for the daughter's bridal bedstead.
Deborah needed no lamplight for this knitting-work; she was so
familiar with it, having knitted yards with her thoughts elsewhere,
that she could knit without seeing her needles.
So she sat in the deepening dusk and knitted, and heard the laughter
and shouts of the boys at play a little way down the road with a
deeper pang than Ephraim had ever felt over his own deprivation.
She was glad when the gay hubbub ceased and the boys were haled into
bed. Shortly afterwards she heard out in the road a quick, manly
tread and a merry whistle. She did not know the tune, but only one
young man in Pembroke could whistle like that. "It's Thomas Payne
goin' up to see Charlotte Barnard," she said to herself, with a
bitter purse of her lips in the dark. That merry whistler, passing
her poor cast-out son in his lonely, half-furnished house, whose
dark, shadowy walls she could see across the field, smote her as
sorely as he smote him. It seemed to her that she could hear that
flute-like melody even as far as Charlotte's door. In spite of her
stern resolution to be just, a great gust of wrath shook her.
"Lettin' of him come courtin' her when it ain't six weeks since
Barney went," she said, quite out loud, and knitted fiercely.
But poor Thomas Payne, striding with his harmless swagger up the
hill, whistling as loud as might be one of his college airs, need
not, although she knew it not and he knew it not himself, have
disturbed her peace of mind.
Charlotte, at the cherry party, had asked him, with a certain
dignified shyness, if he could come up to her house that evening, and
he had responded with alacrity. "Why, of course I can," he cried,
blushing joyfully all over his handsome face--"of course I can,
Charlotte!" And he tried to catch one of her hands hanging in the
folds of her purple dress, but she drew it away.
"I want to see you a few minutes about something," she said, soberly;
and then she pressed forward to speak to another girl, and he could
not get another word with her about it.
Charlotte, after she got home from the party, had changed her pretty
new gown for her every-day one of mottled brown calico set with a
little green sprig, and had helped her mother get supper.
Cephas, however, was late, and did not come home until just before
Thomas Payne arrived. Sarah had begun to worry. "I don't see where
your father is," she kept saying to Charlotte. When she heard his
shuffling step on the door-stone she started as if he had been her
lover. When he came in she scrutinized him anxiously, to see if he
looked ill or disturbed. Sarah Barnard, during all absences of her
family, dug busily at imaginary pitfalls for them; had they all
existed the town would have been honey-combed.
"There ain't nothin' happened, has there, Cephas?" she said.
"I dunno of anythin' that's happened."
"I got kind of worried. I didn't know where you was." Sarah had an
air of apologizing for her worry. Cephas made no reply; he did not
say where he had been, nor account for his tardiness; he did not look
at his wife, standing before him with her pathetically inquiring
face. He pulled a chair up to the table and sat down, and Charlotte
set his supper before him. It was a plate of greens, cold boiled
dock, and some rye-and-Indian bread. Cephas still adhered to his
vegetarian diet, although he pined on it, and the longing for the
flesh-pots was great in his soul. However, he said no more about
sorrel pies, for the hardness and the flavor of those which he had
prepared had overcome even his zeal of invention. He ate of them
manfully twice; then he ate no more, and he did not inquire how Sarah
disposed of them after they had vainly appeared on the table a week.
She, with no pig nor hens to eat them, was forced, with many
misgivings as to the waste, to deposit them in the fireplace.
"They actually made good kindlin' wood," she told her sister Sylvia.
"Poor Cephas, he didn't have no more idea than a baby about makin'
pies." All Sarah's ire had died away; to-night she set a large plump
apple-pie slyly on the table--an apple-pie with ample allowance of
lard in the crust thereof; and she felt not the slightest exultation,
only honest pleasure, when she saw, without seeming to, Cephas cut
off a goodly wedge, after disposing of his dock greens.
"Poor father, I'm real glad he's tastin' of the pie," she whispered
to Charlotte in the pantry; "greens ain't very fillin'."
Charlotte smiled, absently. Presently she slipped into the best room
and lighted the candles. "You expectin' of anybody to-night?" her
mother asked, when she came out.
"I didn't know but somebody might come," Charlotte replied,
evasively. She blushed a little before her mother's significantly
smiling face, but there was none of the shamed delight which should
have accompanied the blush. She looked very sober--almost stern.
"Hadn't you better put on your other dress again, then?" asked her
mother."
"No, I guess this 'll do."
Cephas ate his pie in silence--he had helped himself to another
piece--but he heard every word. After he had finished, he fumbled in
his pocket for his old leather purse, and counted over a little store
of money on his knee.
Charlotte was setting away the dishes in the pantry when her father
came up behind her and crammed something into her hand. She started.
"What is it?" said she.
"Look and see," said Cephas.
Charlotte opened her hand, and saw a great silver dollar. "I thought
mebbe you'd like to buy somethin' with it," said Cephas. He cleared
his throat, and went out through the kitchen into the shed. Charlotte
was too amazed to thank him; her mother came into the pantry. "What
did he give you?" she whispered.
Charlotte held up the money. "Poor father," said Sarah Barnard, "he's
doin' of it to make up. He was dreadful sorry about that other, an'
he's tickled 'most to death now he thinks you've got somebody else,
and are contented. Poor father, he ain't got much money, either."
"I don't want it," Charlotte said, her steady mouth quivering
downward at the corners.
"You keep it. He'd feel all upset if you didn't. You'll find it come
handy. I know you've got a good many things now, but you had ought to
have a new cape come fall; you can't come out bride in a muslin one
when snow flies." Sarah cast a half-timid, half-shrewd glance at
Charlotte, who put the dollar in her pocket.
"A green satin cape, lined and wadded, would be handsome," pursued
her mother.
"I sha'n't ever come out bride," said Charlotte.
"How you talk. There, he's comin' now!"
And, indeed, at that the clang of the knocker sounded through the
house. Charlotte took off her apron and started to answer it, but her
mother caught her and pinned up a stray lock of hair. "I 'most wish
you had put on your other dress again," she whispered.
Sarah listened with her ear close to the crack of the kitchen door
when her daughter opened the outside one. She heard Thomas Payne's
hearty greeting and Charlotte's decorous reply. The door of the front
room shut, then she set the kitchen door ajar softly, but she could
hear nothing but a vague hum of voices across the entry; she could
not distinguish a word. However, it was as well that she could not,
for her heart would have sunk, as did poor Thomas Payne's.
Thomas, with his thick hair brushed into a shining roll above his
fair high forehead, in his best flowered waistcoat and blue coat with
brass buttons, sat opposite Charlotte, his two nicely booted feet
toeing out squarely on the floor, his two hands on his knees, and
listened to what she had to say, while his boyish face changed and
whitened. Thomas was older than Charlotte, but he looked younger.
It seemed, too, as if he looked younger when with her than at other
times, although he was always anxiously steady and respectful, and
lost much of that youthful dash which made him questioningly admired
by the young people of Pembroke.
Charlotte began at once after they were seated. Her fair, grave face
colored, her voice had in it a solemn embarrassment. "I don't know
but you thought I was doing a strange thing to ask you to come here
to-night," she said.
"No, I didn't; I didn't think so, Charlotte," Thomas declared,
warmly.
"I felt as if I ought to. I felt as if it was my duty to," said she.
She cast her eyes down. Thomas waited, looking at her with vague
alarm. Somehow some college scrapes of his flashed into his head, and
he had a bewildered idea the she had found them out and that her
sweet rigid innocence was shocked, and she was about to call him to
account.
But Charlotte continued, raising her eyes, and meeting his gravely
and fairly:
"You've been coming here three Sabbath evenings running, now," said
she.
"Yes, I know I have, Charlotte."
"And you mean to keep on coming, if I don't say anything to hinder
it?"
"You know I do, Charlotte," replied Thomas, with ardent eyes upon her
face.
"Then," said Charlotte, "I feel as if it was my duty to say this to
you, Thomas. If you come in any other way than as a friend, if you
come on any other errand than friendship, you must not come here any
more. It isn't right for me to encourage you, and let you come here
and get your feelings enlisted. If you come here occasionally as a
friend in friendship I shall be happy to have you, but you must not
come here with any other hopes or feelings."
Charlotte's solemnly stilted words, and earnest, severe face chilled
the young man opposite. His face sobered. "You mean that you can't
ever think of me in any other way than as a friend," he said.
Charlotte nodded. "You know it is not because there's one thing
against you, Thomas."
"Then it is Barney, after all."
"I was all ready to marry him a few weeks ago," Charlotte said, with
a kind of dignified reproach.
Thomas colored. "I know it, Charlotte; I ought not to have
expected--I suppose you couldn't get over it so soon. I couldn't if I
had been in your place, and been ready to marry anybody. But I didn't
know about girls; I didn't know but they were different; I always
heard they got over things quicker. I ought not to have thought--
But, oh, Charlotte, if I wait, if you have a little more time, don't
you think you will feel different about it?"
Charlotte shook her head.
"But he is such a good-for-nothing dog to treat you the way he does,
Charlotte!" Thomas cried out, in a great burst of wrath and jealous
love.
"I don't want to hear another word like that, Thomas Payne,"
Charlotte said, sternly, and the young man drooped before her.
"I beg your pardon, Charlotte," said he. "I suppose I ought not to
have spoken so, if you-- Oh, Charlotte, then you don't think you ever
can get over this and think a little bit of me?"
"No," replied Charlotte, in a steady voice, "I don't think I ever
can, Thomas."
"I don't mean that I am trying to get you away from any other fellow,
Charlotte--I wouldn't do anything like that; but if he won't-- Oh,
Charlotte, are you sure?"
"I don't think I ever can," repeated Charlotte, monotonously, looking
at the wall past Thomas.
"I've always thought so much of you, Charlotte, though I never told
you so."
"You'd better not now."
"Yes, I'm going to, now. I've got to. Then I'll never say another
word--I'll go away, and never say another word." Thomas got up, and
brought his chair close to Charlotte's. "Don't move away," he
pleaded; "let me sit here near you once--I never shall again. I'm
going to tell you, Charlotte. I used to look across at you sitting
in the meeting-house, Sabbath days, when I was a boy, and think you
were the handsomest girl I ever saw. Then I did try to go with you
once before I went to college; perhaps you didn't know that I meant
anything, but I did. Barney was in the way then a little, but I
didn't think much of it. I didn't know that he really meant to go
with you. You let me go home with you two or three times--perhaps you
remember."
Charlotte nodded.
"I never forgot," said Thomas Payne. "Well, father found it out, and
he had a talk with me. He made me promise to wait till I got through
college before I said anything to you; he was doing a good deal for
me, you know. So I waited, and the first thing I knew, when I came
home, they said Barney Thayer was waiting on you, and I thought it
was all settled and there was nothing more to be done. I made up my
mind to bear it like a man and make the best of it, and I did. But
this spring when I was through college, and that happened betwixt you
and Barney, when he--didn't come back to you, and you didn't seem to
mind so much, I couldn't help having a little hope. I waited and
kept thinking he'd make up with you, but he didn't, and I knew how
determined he was. Then finally I began to make a few advances,
but--well, it's all over now, Charlotte. There's only one thing I'd
like to ask: if I hadn't waited, as I promised father, would it have
made any difference? Did you always like Barney Thayer?"
"Yes; it wouldn't have made any difference," Charlotte said. There
were tears in her eyes.
Thomas Payne arose. "Then that is all," said he. "I never had any
chance, if I had only known. I've got nothing more to say. I want to
thank you for asking me to come here to-night and telling me. It was
a good deal kinder than to let me keep on coming. That would have
been rather hard on a fellow." Thomas Payne fairly laughed, although
his handsome face was white. "I hope it will all come right betwixt
you and Barney, Charlotte," he said, "and don't you worry about me, I
shall get on. I'll own this seems a little harder than it was before,
but I shall get on." Thomas brushed his bell hat carefully with his
cambric handkerchief, and stowed it under his arm. "Good-bye,
Charlotte," said he, in his old gay voice; "when you ask me, I'll
come and dance at your wedding."
Charlotte got up, trembling. Thomas reached out his hand and touched
her smooth fair head softly. "I never touched you nor kissed you,
except in games like that Copenhagen to-day," said he; "but I've
thought of it a good many times."
Charlotte drew back. "I can't, Thomas," she faltered. She could not
herself have defined her reason for refusing her cast-off lover this
one comfort, but it was not so much loyalty as the fear of disloyalty
which led her to do so. In spite of herself, she saw Barney for an
instant beside Thomas to his disadvantage, and her love could not
cover him, extend it as she would. The conviction was strong upon her
that Thomas was the better man of the two, although she did not love
him.
"All right," said Thomas, "I ought not to have asked it of you,
Charlotte. Good-bye."
As soon as Thomas Payne got out in the dark night air, and the door
had shut behind him, he set up his merry whistle. Charlotte stood at
the front window, and heard it from far down the hill.