On the Sunday following the one of Barnabas Thayer's call Sylvia
Crane appeared at meeting in a black lace veil like a Spanish
señorita. The heavily wrought black lace fell over her face, and
people could get only shifting glimpses of her delicate features
behind it.
Richard Alger glanced furtively at the pale face shrinking austerely
behind the net-work of black silk leaves and flowers, and wondered at
some change which he felt but could not fathom. He scarcely knew that
she had never worn the veil before. And Richard Alger, had he known,
could never have fathomed the purely feminine motive compounded of
pride and shame which led his old sweetheart to unearth from the
depths of a bandbox her mother's worked-lace veil, and tie its narrow
black drawing-string with trembling fingers over her own bonnet.
"I'd like to know what in creation you've got that veil on for?"
whispered her sister, Hannah Berry, as they went down the aisle after
meeting.
"I thought I would," responded Sylvia's muffled voice behind the
veil.
"You've got the flowers right over your eyes. I shouldn't think you
could see to walk. You ain't never worn a veil in your life. I can't
see what has got into you," persisted Hannah.
Sylvia edged away from her as soon as she could, and glided down the
road towards her own house swiftly, although her knees trembled.
Sylvia's knees always trembled when she came out of church, after she
had sat an hour and a half opposite Richard Alger. To-day they felt
weaker than ever, after her encounter with Hannah. Nobody knew the
terror Sylvia had of her sister's discovering how she had called in
Barnabas Thayer, and in a manner unveiled her maiden heart to him.
When Charlotte had come in that night after Barnabas had gone, and
discovered her crying on the sofa, she had jumped up and confronted
her with a fierce instinct of concealment.
"There ain't nothin' new the matter," she said, in response to
Charlotte's question; "I was thinkin' about mother; I'm apt to when
it comes dusk." It was the first deliberate lie that Sylvia Crane had
ever told in her life. She reflected upon it after Charlotte had
gone, and reflected also with fierce hardihood that she would lie
again were it necessary. Should she hesitate at a lie if it would
cover the maiden reserve that she had cherished so long?
However, Charlotte had suspected more than her aunt knew of the true
cause of her agitation. A similar motive for grief made her acute.
Sylvia, mourning alone of a Sabbath night upon her hair-cloth sofa,
struck an old chord of her own heart. Charlotte dared not say a
word to comfort her directly. She condoled with her for the
fifteen-years-old loss of her mother, and did not allude to Richard
Alger; but going home she said to herself, with a miserable qualm of
pity, that poor Aunt Sylvia was breaking her heart because Richard
had stopped coming.
"It's harder for Aunt Sylvia because she's older," thought Charlotte,
on her way home that night. But then she thought also, with a sorer
qualm of self-pity, that Sylvia had not quite so long a life before
her, to live alone. Charlotte had nearly reached her own home that
night when two figures suddenly slunk across the road before her. She
at once recognized Rebecca Thayer as one of them, and called out
"Good-evening, Rebecca!" to her.
Rebecca made only a muttered sound in response, and they both
disappeared in the darkness. There was a look of secrecy and flight
about it which somehow startled Charlotte, engrossed as she was with
her own troubles and her late encounter with Rose.
When she got into the house she spoke of it to her mother. Cephas had
gone to bed, and Sarah was sitting up waiting for her.
"I met Rebecca and William out here," said she, untying her hat, "and
I thought they acted real queer." Sarah cast a glance at the bedroom
door, which was ajar, and motioned Charlotte to close it. Charlotte
tiptoed across the room and shut the door softly, lest she should
awaken her father; then her mother beckoned her to come close, and
whispered something in her ear.
Charlotte started, and a great blush flamed out all over her face and
neck. She looked at her mother with angry shame. "I don't believe a
word of it," said she; "not a word of it."
"I walked home from meetin' with Mrs. Allen this evenin'," said her
mother, "an' she says it's all over town. She says Rebecca's been
stealin' out, an' goin' to walk with him unbeknownst to her mother
all summer. You know her mother wouldn't let him come to the house."
"I don't believe one word of it," repeated Charlotte.
"Mis' Allen says it's so," said Sarah. "She says Mis' Thayer has had
to stay home from evenin' meetin' on account of Ephraim--she don't
like to leave him alone, he ain't been quite so well lately--an'
Rebecca has made believe go to meetin' when she's been off with
William. Mis' Thayer went to meetin' to-night."
"Wasn't Mr. Thayer there?"
"Yes, he was there, but he wouldn't know what was goin' on. 'Tain't
very hard to pull the wool over Caleb Thayer's eyes."
"I don't believe one word of it," Charlotte said, again. When she
went up-stairs to bed that whisper of her mother's seemed to sound
through and above all her own trouble. It was to her like a note of
despair and shame, quite outside her own gamut of life. She could not
believe that she heard it at all. Rebecca's face as she had always
known her came up before her. "I don't believe one word of it," she
said again to herself.
But that whisper which had shocked her ear had already begun to be
repeated all over the village--by furtive matrons, behind their
hands, when the children had been sent out of the room; by girls,
blushing beneath each other's eyes as they whispered; by the lounging
men in the village store; it was sent like an evil strain through the
consciousness of the village, until everybody except Rebecca's own
family had heard it.
Barnabas saw little of other people, and nobody dared repeat the
whisper to him, and they had too much mercy or too little courage to
repeat it to Caleb or Deborah. Indeed, it is doubtful if any woman in
the village, even Hannah Berry, would have ventured to face Deborah
Thayer with this rumor concerning her daughter.
Deborah had of late felt anxious about Rebecca, who did not seem like
herself. Her face was strangely changed; all the old meaning had gone
out of it, and given place to another, which her mother could not
interpret. Sometimes Rebecca looked like a stranger to her as she
moved about the house. She said to many that Rebecca was miserable,
and was incensed that she got so little sympathy in response. Once
when Rebecca fainted in meeting, and had to be carried out, she felt
in the midst of her alarm a certain triumph. "I guess folks will see
now that I ain't been fussin' over her for nothin'," she thought.
When Rebecca revived under a sprinkle of water, out in the vestibule,
she said impatiently to the other women bending their grave,
concerned faces over her, "She's been miserable for some time. I
ain't surprised at this at all myself."
Deborah watched over Rebecca with a fierce, pecking tenderness like a
bird. She brewed great bowls of domestic medicines from nuts and
herbs, and made her drink whether she would or not. She sent her to
bed early, and debarred her from the night air. She never had a
suspicion of the figure slipping softly as a shadow across the north
parlor and out the front door night after night.
She never exchanged a word with Rebecca about William Berry. She
tried to persuade herself that Rebecca no longer thought much about
him; she drove from her mind the fear lest Rebecca's illness might be
due to grief at parting from him. She looked at Thomas Payne with a
speculative eye; she thought that he would make a good husband for
Rebecca; she dreamed of him, and built bridal castles for him and her
daughter, as she knitted those yards of lace at night, when Rebecca
had gone to bed in her little room off the north parlor. When Thomas
Payne went west a month after Charlotte Barnard had refused him, she
transferred her dreams to some fine stranger who should come to the
village and at once be smitten with Rebecca. She never thought it
possible that Rebecca could be persisting in her engagement to
William Berry against her express command. Her own obstinacy was
incredible to her in her daughter; she had not the slightest
suspicion of it, and Rebecca had less to guard against.
As the fall advanced Rebecca showed less and less inclination to go
in the village society. Her mother fairly drove her out at times.
Once Rebecca, utterly overcome, sank down in a chair and wept when
her mother urged her to go to a husking-party in the neighborhood.
"You've got to spunk up an' go, if you don't feel like it," said her
mother. "You'll feel better for it afterwards. There ain't no use in
givin' up so. I'm goin' to get you a new crimson woollen dress, an'
I'm goin' to have you go out more'n you've done lately."
"I--don't want a new dress," returned Rebecca, with wild sobs.
"Well, I'm goin' to get you one to-morrow," said her mother. "Now go
an' wash your face an' do up your hair, an' get ready. You can wear
your brown dress, with the cherry ribbon in your hair, to-night."
"I don't--feel fit to, mother," moaned Rebecca, piteously.
But Deborah would not listen to her. She made her get ready for the
husking-party, and looked at her with pride when she stood all
dressed to go, in the kitchen.
"You look better than you've done for some time," said she, "an' that
brown dress don't look bad, either, if you have had it three winters.
I'm goin' to get you a nice new crimson woollen this winter. I've had
my mind made up to for some time."
After Rebecca had gone and Ephraim had said his catechism and gone to
bed, Deborah sat and knitted, and planned to get the crimson dress
for Rebecca the next day.
She looked over at Caleb, who sat dozing by the fire. "I'll go
to-morrow, if he ain't got to spend all that last interest-money for
the parish taxes an' cuttin' that wood," said she. "I dunno how much
that wood-cuttin' come to, an' he won't know to-night if I wake him
up. I can't get it through his head. But I'll buy it to-morrow if
there's money enough left."
But Deborah was forced to wait a few weeks, since it took all the
interest-money for the parish taxes and to pay for the wood-cutting.
She had to wait until Caleb had sold some of the wood, and that took
some time, since seller and purchasers were slow-motioned.
At last, one afternoon, she drove herself over to Bolton in the
chaise to buy the dress. She went to Bolton, because she would not go
herself to Silas Berry's store and trade with William. She could send
Caleb there for household goods, but this dress she would trust no
one but herself to purchase.
She had planned that Rebecca should go with her, but the girl looked
so utterly wan and despairing that day that she forbore to insist
upon it. Caleb would have accompanied her, but she would not let him.
"I never did think much of men-folks standin' round in stores gawpin'
while women-folks was tradin'," said she. She would not allow Ephraim
to go, although he pleaded hard. It was quite a cold day, and she was
afraid of the sharp air for his laboring breath.
A little after noon she set forth, all alone in the chaise, slapping
the reins energetically over the white horse's back, a thick green
veil tied over her bonnet under her chin, and the thin, sharp wedge
of face visible between the folds crimsoning in the frosty wind.
While she was gone Rebecca sat beside the window and sewed, Caleb
shelled corn in the chimney-corner, and Ephraim made a pretence of
helping him. "You set down an' help your father shell corn while I am
gone," his mother had sternly ordered.
Occasionally Ephraim addressed whining remonstrances to his father,
and begged to be allowed to go out-of-doors, and Caleb would quiet
him with one effectual rejoinder: "You know she won't like it if you
do, sonny. You know what she said."
Caleb, as he shelled the corn with the pottering patience of old age
and constitutional slowness, glanced now and then at his daughter in
the window. He thought she looked very badly, and he had all the time
lately the bewildered feeling of a child who sees in a familiar face
the marks of emotions unknown to it.
"Don't you feel as well as common to-day, Rebecca?" he asked once,
and cleared his throat.
"I don't feel sick, as I know of, any day," replied Rebecca, shortly,
and her face reddened.
As she sewed she looked out now and then at the wild December day,
the trees reeling in the wind, and the sky driving with the leaden
clouds. It was too cold and too windy to snow all the afternoon, but
towards night it moderated, and the wind died down. When Mrs. Thayer
came home it was snowing quite hard, and her green veil was white
when she entered the kitchen. She took it off and shook it,
sputtering moisture in the fireplace.
"There's goin' to be a hard storm; it's lucky I went to-day," said
she. "I kept the dress under the buffalo-robe, an' that ain't hurt
any."
Deborah waxed quite angry, when she proudly shook out the soft
gleaming crimson lengths of thibet, because Rebecca showed so little
interest in it. "You don't deserve to have a new dress; you act like
a stick of wood," she said.
Rebecca made no reply. Presently, when she had gone out of the room
for something, Caleb said, anxiously, "I guess she don't feel quite
so well as common to-night."
"I'm gettin' most out of patience; I dunno what ails her. I'm goin'
to have the doctor if this keeps on," returned Deborah.
Ephraim, sucking a stick of candy brought to him from Bolton, cast a
strange glance at his mother--a glance compounded of shrewdness and
terror; but she did not see it.
It snowed hard all night; in the morning the snow was quite deep, and
there was no appearance of clearing. As soon as the breakfast dishes
were put away, Deborah got out the crimson thibet. She had learned
the tailoring and dressmaking trade in her youth, and she always cut
and fitted the garments for the family.
She worked assiduously; by the middle of the forenoon the dress was
ready to be tried on. Ephraim and his father were out in the barn,
she and Rebecca were alone in the house.
She made Rebecca stand up in the middle of the kitchen floor, and she
began fitting the crimson gown to her. Rebecca stood drooping
heavily, her eyes cast down. Suddenly her mother gave a great start,
pushed the girl violently from her, and stood aloof. She did not
speak for a few minutes; the clock ticked in the dreadful silence.
Rebecca cast one glance at her mother, whose eyes seemed to light the
innermost recesses of her being to her own vision; then she would
have looked away, but her mother's voice arrested her.
"Look at me," said Deborah. And Rebecca looked; it was like
uncovering a disfigurement or a sore.
"What--ails you?" said her mother, in a terrible voice.
Then Rebecca turned her head; her mother's eyes could not hold her
any longer. It was as if her very soul shrank.
"Go out of this house," said her mother, after a minute.
Rebecca did not make a sound. She went, bending as if there were a
wind at her back impelling her, across the kitchen in her quilted
petticoat and her crimson thibet waist, her white arms hanging bare.
She opened the door that led towards her own bedroom, and passed out.
Presently Deborah, still standing where Rebecca had left her, heard
the front door of the house shut. After a few minutes she took the
broom from its peg in the corner, went through the icy north parlor,
past Rebecca's room, to the front door. The snow heaped on the outer
threshold had fallen in when Rebecca opened it, and there was a
quantity on the entry floor.
Deborah opened the door again, and swept out the snow carefully; she
even swept the snow off the steps outside, but she never cast a
glance up or down the road. Then she beat the snow off the broom, and
went in and locked the door behind her.
On her way back to the kitchen she paused at Rebecca's little
bedroom. The waist of the new gown lay on the bad. She took it out
into the kitchen, and folded it carefully with the skirt and the
pieces; then she carried it up to the garret and laid it away in a
chest.
When Caleb and Ephraim came in from the barn they found Deborah
sitting at the window knitting a stocking. She did not look up when
they entered.
The corn was not yet shelled, and Caleb arranged his baskets in the
chimney-corner, and fell to again. Ephraim began teasing his mother
to let him crack some nuts, but she silenced him peremptorily. "Set
down an' help your father shell that corn," said she. And Ephraim
pulled a grating chair up to his father, muttering cautiously.
Caleb kept looking at Deborah anxiously. He glanced at the door
frequently.
"Where's Rebecca?" he asked at last.
"I dunno," replied Deborah.
"Has she laid down?"
"No, she ain't."
"She ain't gone out in the snow, has she?" Caleb said, with deploring
anxiety.
Deborah answered not a word. She pursed her lips and knitted.
"She ain't, has she, mother?"
"Keep on with your corn," said Deborah; and that was all she would
say.
Presently she arose and prepared dinner in the same dogged silence.
Caleb, and even Ephraim, watched her furtively, with alarmed eyes.
When Rebecca did not appear at the dinner-table Caleb did not say
anything about it, but his old face was quite pale. He ate his dinner
from the force of habit of over seventy years, during which time he
had always eaten his dinner, but he did not taste it consciously.
He made up his mind that as soon as he got up from the table he would
go over to Barney's and consult him. After he pushed his chair away
he was slipping out shyly, but Deborah stopped him.
"Set down an' finish that corn. I don't want it clutterin' up the
kitchen any longer," said she.
"I thought I'd jest slip out a minute, mother."
Deborah motioned him towards the chimney-corner and the baskets of
corn with a stern gesture, and Caleb obeyed. Ephraim, too, settled
down beside his father, and fell to shelling corn without being told.
He was quite cowed and intimidated by this strange mood of his
mother's, and involuntarily shrank closer to his father when she
passed near him.
Caleb and Ephraim both watched Deborah with furtive terror, as she
moved about, washing and putting away the dinner-dishes and sweeping
the kitchen.
They looked at each other, when, after the after-dinner housework was
all done, she took her shawl and hood from the peg, and drew some old
wool socks of Caleb's over her shoes. She went out without saying a
word. Ephraim waited a few minutes after the door shut behind her;
then he ran to the window.
"She's gone to Barney's," he announced, rolling great eyes over his
shoulder at his father; and the old man also went over to the window
and watched Deborah plodding through the snow up the street.
It was not snowing so hard now, and the clouds were breaking, but a
bitter wind was blowing from the northwest. It drove Deborah along
before it, lashing her skirts around her gaunt limbs; but she leaned
back upon it, and did not bend.
The road was not broken out, and the snow was quite deep, but she
went along with no break in her gait. She went into Barney's yard and
knocked at his door. She set her mouth harder when she heard him
coming.
Barney opened the door and started when he saw who was there. "Is it
you, mother?" he said, involuntarily; then his face hardened like
hers, and he waited. The mother and son confronted each other looked
more alike than ever.
Deborah opened her mouth to speak twice before she made a sound. She
stood upright and unyielding, but her face was ghastly, and she drew
her breath in long, husky gasps. Finally she spoke, and Barney
started again at her voice.
"I want you to go after William Berry and make him marry Rebecca,"
she said.
"Mother, what do you mean?"
"I want you to go after William Berry and make him marry Rebecca."
"Mother!"
"Rebecca is gone. I turned her out of the house this mornin'. I don't
know where she is. Go and find her, and make William Berry marry
her."
"Mother, before the Lord, I don't know what you mean!" Barney cried
out. "You didn't turn Rebecca out of the house in all this storm!
What did you turn her out for? Where is she?"
"I don't know where she is. I turned her out because I wouldn't have
her in the house. You brought it all on us; if you hadn't acted so I
shouldn't have felt as I did about her marryin'. Now you can go an'
find her, and get William Berry an' make him marry her. I ain't got
anything more to do with it."
Deborah turned, and went out of the yard.
"Mother!" Barney called after her, but she kept on. He stood for a
second looking after her retreating figure, struggling sternly with
the snow-drifts, meeting the buffets of the wind with her head up;
then he went in, and put on his boots and his overcoat.
Barney had heard not one word of the village gossip, and the
revelation in his mother's words had come to him with a great shock.
As he went up the hill to the old tavern he could hardly believe that
he had understood her rightly. Once he paused and turned, and was
half inclined to go back. He was as pure-minded as a girl, and almost
as ignorant; he could not believe that he knew what she meant.
Barney hesitated again before the store; then he opened the great
clanging door and went in. A farmer, in a blue frock stiff with snow,
had just completed his purchases and was going out. William, who had
been waiting upon him, was quite near the door behind the counter. At
the farther end of the store could be seen the red glow of a stove
and Tommy Ray's glistening fair had. Some one else, who had shrunk
out of sight when Barney entered, was also there.
Barney saw no one but William. He looked at him, and all his
bewilderment gathered itself into a point. He felt a sudden fierce
impulse to spring at him.
William looked at Barney, and his faced changed in a minute. He took
up his hat, and came around the counter. "Did you want to see me?" he
said, hoarsely.
"Come outside," said Barney. And the two men went out, and stood in
the snow before the store.
"Where is Rebecca?" said Barney. He looked at William, and again the
savage impulse seized him. William did not shrink before it.
[Illustration: "'Where is Rebecca?' said Barney"]
"What do you mean?" he returned. His lips were quite stiff and white,
but he looked back at Barney.
"Don't you know where she is?"
"Before God I don't, Barney. What do you mean?"
"She left home this morning. Mother turned her out."
"Turned her out!" repeated William.
"Come with me and find her and marry her, or I'll kill you," said
Barney, and he lashed out suddenly with his fist in William's face.
"You won't need to, for I'll kill myself if I don't," William gasped
out. Then he turned and ran.
"Where are you going?" Barney shouted, rushing after him, in a fury.
"To put the horse in the cutter," William called back. And, indeed,
he was headed towards the barn. Barney followed him, and the two men
put the horse between the shafts. Once William asked, hoarsely, "Any
idea which way?" and Barney shook his head.
"What time did she go?"
"Some time this forenoon."
William groaned.
The horse was nearly harnessed when Tommy Ray came running out from
the store, and beckoned to Barney. "Rose says she see her going up
the turnpike this morning," he said, in a low voice. "She was up in
her chamber that looks over the turnpike, and she see somebody goin'
up the turnpike. She thought it looked like Rebecca, but she supposed
it must be Mis' Jim Sloane. It must have been Rebecca."
"What time was it?" William asked, thrusting his white face between
them. The boy turned aside with a gesture of contempt and dislike.
"About half-past ten," he answered, shortly. Then he turned on his
heel and went back to the store. Rose was peering around the
half-open door with a white, shocked face. Somehow she had fathomed
the cause of the excitement.
"We'll go up the turnpike, then," said Barney. William nodded. The
two men sprang into the cutter, and the snow flew in their faces from
the horse's hoofs as they went out the barn door.
The old tavern stood facing the old turnpike road to Boston, but the
store and barn faced on the new road at its back, and people
generally approached the tavern by that way.
William and Barney had to drive down the hill; then turn the corner,
and up the hill again on the old turnpike.
There was not a house on that road for a full mile. William urged the
horse as fast as he could through the fresh snow. Both men kept a
sharp lookout at the sides of the road. The sun was out now, and the
snow was blinding white; the north wind drove a glittering spray as
sharp and stinging as diamond-dust in their faces.
Once William cried out, with a dry sob, "My God, she'll freeze in
this wind, if she's out in it!"
And Barney answered, "Maybe it would be better for her if she did."
William looked at him for the first time since they started. "See
here, Barney," he said, "God knows it's not to shield myself--I'm
past that; but I've begged her all summer to be married. I've been
down on my knees to her to be married before it came to this."
"Why wouldn't she?"
"I don't know, oh, I don't know! The poor girl was near distracted.
Her mother forbade her to marry me, and held up her Aunt Rebecca, who
married against her parents' wishes and hung herself, before her, all
the time. Your trouble with Charlotte Barnard brought it all about.
Her mother never opposed it before. I begged her to marry me, but she
was afraid, or something, I don't know what."
"Can't you drive faster?" said Barney.
William had been urging the horse while he spoke, but now he shook
the whip over him again.
Mrs. Jim Sloane's house was a long, unpainted cottage quite near the
road. The woman who lived alone there was under a kind of indefinite
ban in the village. Her husband, who had died several years before,
had been disreputable and drunken, and the mantle of his disgrace had
seemed to fall upon his wife, if indeed she was not already provided
with such a mantle of her own. Everybody spoke slightingly of Mrs.
Jim Sloane. The men laughed meaningly when they saw her pass, wrapped
in an old plaid shawl, which she wore summer and winter, and which
seemed almost like a uniform. Stories were told of her dirt and
shiftlessness, of the hens which roosted in her kitchen. Poor Mrs.
Jim Sloane, in her blue plaid shawl, tramping frequently from her
solitary house through the village, was a byword and a mocking to all
the people.
When William and Barney came abreast of her house they saw the blue
flutter of Mrs. Jim Sloane's shawl out before, above the blue dazzle
of the snow.
"Hullo!" she was crying out in her shrill voice, and waving her hand
to them to stop.
William pulled the horse up short, and the woman came plunging
through the snow close to his side.
"She's in here," she said, with a knowing smile. The faded fair hair
blew over her eyes; she pushed it back with a coquettish gesture;
there was a battered prettiness about her thin pink-and-white face,
turning blue in the sharp wind.
"When did she get here?" asked Barney.
"This forenoon. She fell down out here, couldn't get no farther. I
came out an' got her into the house. Didn't know but she was done to;
but I fixed her up some hot drink an' made her lay down. I s'posed
you'd be along." She smiled again.
William jumped out of the cutter, and tied the horse to an old
fence-post. Then he and Barney followed the woman into the house.
Barney looked at the old blue plaid shawl with utter disgust and
revulsion. He had always felt a loathing for the woman, and her being
a distant relative on his father's side intensified it.
Mrs. Sloane threw open the door, and bade them enter, as if to a
festival. "Walk right in," said she.
There was a wild flutter of hens as they entered. Mrs. Sloane drove
them before her. "The hen-house roof fell in, an' I have to keep 'em
in here," she said, and shooed them and shook her shawl at them,
until they alighted all croaking with terror upon the bed in the
corner.
Then she looked inquiringly around the room. "Why," she cried, "she's
gone; she was settin' here in this rockin'-chair when I went out. She
must have run when she see you comin'!"
Mrs. Sloane hustled through a door, the tattered fringes of her shawl
flying, and then her voice, shrilly expostulating, was heard in the
next room.
The two men waited, standing side by side near the door in a shamed
silence. They did not look at each other.
Presently Mrs. Sloane returned without her shawl. Her old cotton gown
showed tattered and patched, and there were glimpses of her sharp
white elbows at the sleeves. "She won't come out a step," she
announced. "I can't make her. She's takin' on terribly."
William made a stride forward. "I'll go in and see her," he said,
hoarsely; but Mrs. Jim Sloane stood suddenly in his way, her slender
back against the door.
"No, you ain't goin' in," said she, "I told her I wouldn't let you go
in."
William looked at her.
"She's dreadful set against either one of you comin' in, an' I told
her you shouldn't," she said, firmly. She smoothed her wild locks
down tightly over her ears as she spoke. All the coquettish look was
gone.
William turned around, and looked helplessly at Barney, and Barney
looked back at him. Then Barney put on his hat, and shrugged himself
more closely into his great-coat.
"I'll go and get the minister," he said.
Mrs. Sloane thrust her chin out alertly. "Goin' to get her married
right off?" she asked, with a confidential smile.
Barney ignored her. "I guess it's the best way to do," he said,
sternly, to William; and William nodded.
"Well, I guess 'tis the best way," Mrs. Sloane said, with cheerful
assent. "I don't b'lieve you could hire her to come out of that room
an' go to the minister's, nohow. She's terrible upset, poor thing."
As Barney went out of the door he cast a look full of involuntary
suspicion back at William, and hesitated a second on the threshold.
Mrs. Sloane intercepted the look. "I'll look out he don't run away
while you're gone," she said; then she laughed.
William's white face flamed up suddenly, but he made no reply. When
Barney had gone he drew a chair up close to the hearth, and sat
there, bent over, with his elbows on his knees. Mrs. Sloane sat down
on the foot of the bed, close to the door of the other room, as if
she were mounting guard over it. She kept looking at William, and
smiling, and opening her mouth to speak, then checking herself.
"It's a pretty cold day," she said, finally.
William grunted assent without looking up. Then he motioned with his
shoulder towards the door of the other room. "Ain't it cold in
there?" he half whispered.
"I rolled her all up in my shawl; I guess she won't ketch cold; it's
thick," responded the woman, effusively, and William said no more. He
sat with his chin in his hands and his eyes fixed absently. The fire
was smoking over a low, red glow of coals, the chimney-place yawned
black before him, the hearth was all strewn with pots and kettles,
and the shelf above it was piled high with a vague household litter.
It had leaked around the chimney, and there was a great discolored
blotch on the wall above the shelf, and the ceiling. Two or three
hens came pecking around the kettles at William's feet.
To this young man, brought up in the extreme thrift and neatness of a
typical New England household, this strange untidiness, as he viewed
it through his strained mental state, seemed to have a deeper
significance, and reveal the very shame and squalor of the soul
itself, and its own existence and thoughts, by material images.
He might from his own sensations, as he sat there, have been actually
translated into a veritable hell, from the utter strangeness of the
atmosphere which his thoughts seemed to gasp in. William had never
come fully into the atmosphere of his own sin before, but now he had,
and somehow the untidy pots and kettles on the hearth made it more
real. He was conscious as he sat there of very little pity for the
girl in the other room, of very little love for her, and also of very
little love or pity for himself; he felt nothing but a kind of
horror. He saw suddenly the alien side of life, and the alien side of
his own self, which he would always have kept faced out towards
space, away from all eyes, like the other side of the moon, and that
was for the time all he could grasp.
Once or twice Mrs. Sloane volunteered a remark, but he scarcely
responded, and once he heard absently her voice and Rebecca's in the
other room. Otherwise he sat in utter silence, except for the low
chuckle of the hens and the taps of their beaks against the iron
pots, until Barney came with the minister and the minister's wife.
Barney had taken the minister aside, and asked him, stammeringly, if
he thought his wife would come. He could not bear the thought of the
Sloane woman's being a witness at his sister's wedding. The minister
and his wife were both very young, and had not lived long in
Pembroke. They looked much alike: the minister's small, pale, peaked
face peered with anxious solicitude between the folds of the great
green scarf which he tied over his cap, and his wife looked like him
out of her great wadded green silk hood, when they got into the
sleigh with Barney.
The minister had had a whispered conference with his wife, and now
she never once let her eyes rest on either of the two men as they
slid swiftly along over the new snow. Her heart beat loudly in her
ears, her little thin hands were cold in her great muff. She had
married very young, out of a godly New England minister's home. She
had never known anything like this before, and a sort of general
shame of femininity seemed to be upon her.
When she followed her husband into Mrs. Sloane's house she felt
herself as burdened with shame--as if she stood in Rebecca's place.
Her little face, all blue with the sharp cold, shrank, shocked and
sober, into the depths of her great hood. She stood behind her
husband, her narrow girlish shoulders bending under her thick
mantilla, and never looked at the face of anybody in the room.
She did not see William at all. He stood up before them as they
entered; they all nodded gravely. Nobody spoke but Mrs. Sloane,
vibrating nervously in the midst of her clamorous hens, and Barney
silenced her.
"We'll go right in," he said, in a stern, peremptory tone; then he
turned to William. "Are you ready?" he asked.
William nodded, with his eyes cast down. The party made a motion
towards the other room, but Mrs. Sloane unexpectedly stood before the
door.
"I told her there shouldn't nobody come in," said she, "an' I ain't
goin' to have you all bustin' in on her without she knows it. She's
terrible upset. You wait a minute."
Mrs. Sloane's blue eyes glared defiantly at the company. The
minister's wife bent her hooded head lower. She had heard about Mrs.
Sloane, and felt as if she were confronted by a woman from Revelation
and there was a flash of scarlet in the room.
"Go in and tell her we are coming," said Barney. And Mrs. Sloane
slipped out of the room cautiously, opening the door only a little
way. Her voice was heard, and suddenly Rebecca's rang out shrill in
response, although they could not distinguish the words. Mrs. Sloane
looked out. "She says she won't be married," she whispered.
"You let me see her," said Barney, and he took a stride forward, but
Mrs. Sloane held the door against him.
"You can't," she whispered again. "I'll talk to her some more. I can
talk her over, if anybody can."
Barney fell back, and again the door was shut and the voices were
heard. This time Rebecca's arose into a wail, and they heard her cry
out, "I won't, I won't! Go away, and stop talking to me! I won't! Go
away!"
William turned around, and hid his face against the corner of the
mantel-shelf. Barney went up and clapped him roughly on the shoulder.
"Can't you go in there and make her listen to reason?" he said.
But just then Mrs. Sloane opened the door again. "You can walk right
in now," she announced, smiling, her thin mouth sending the lines of
her whole face into smirking upward curves.
The whole company edged forward solemnly. Mrs. Sloane was following,
but Barney stood in her way. "I guess you'd better not come in," he
said, abruptly.
Mrs. Sloane's face flushed a burning red. "I guess," she began, in a
loud voice, but Barney shut the door in her face. She ran noisily,
stamping her feet like an angry child, to the fireplace, caught up a
heavy kettle, and threw it down on the hearth. The hens flew up with
a great clamor and whir of wings; Mrs. Sloane's shrill, mocking laugh
arose above it. She began talking in a high-pitched voice, flinging
out vituperations which would seem to patter against the closed door
like bullets. Suddenly she stopped, as if her ire had failed her, and
listened intently to a low murmur from the other room. She nodded her
head when it ceased.
The door opened soon, and all except Rebecca came out. They stood
consulting together in low voices, and Mrs. Sloane listened. They
were deciding where to take Rebecca.
All at once Mrs. Sloane spoke. Her voice was still high-pitched with
anger.
"If you want to know where to take her to, I can tell you," said she.
"I'd keep her here an' welcome, but I s'pose you think I ain't good
enough, you're all such mighty particular folks, an' ain't never had
no disgrace in your own families. William Berry can't take her to his
home to-night, for his mother wouldn't leave a whole skin on either
of 'em. Her own mother has turned her out, an' Barney can't take her
in. She's got to go somewhere where there's a woman; she's terrible
upset. There ain't no other way but for you an' Mis' Barnes to take
her home to-night, an' keep her till William gets a place fixed to
put her in." Mrs. Sloane turned to the minister and his wife,
regarding them with a mixture of defiance, sarcasm, and appeal.
They looked at each other hesitatingly. The minister's wife paled
within her hood, and her eyes reddened with tears.
"I shouldn't s'pose you'd need any time to think on it, such good
folks as you be," said Mrs. Sloane. "There ain't no other way. She's
got to be where there's a woman."
Mrs. Barnes turned her head towards her husband. "She can come, if
you think she ought to," she said, in a trembling voice.
The sun was setting when the party started. William led Rebecca out
through the kitchen--a muffled, hesitating figure, whose very
identity seemed to be lost, for she wore Mrs. Sloane's blue plaid
shawl pinned closely over her head and face--and lifted her into his
cutter with the minister and his wife. Then he and Barney walked
along, plodding through the deep snow behind the cutter. The sun was
setting, and it was bitterly cold; the snow creaked and the trees
swung with a stiff rattle of bare limbs in the wind.
The two men never spoke to each other. The minister drove slowly, and
they could always see Mrs. Jim Sloane's blue plaid shawl ahead.
When they reached the Caleb Thayer house, Barney stopped and William
followed on alone after the sleigh.
Barney turned into the yard, and his father was standing in the barn
door, looking out.
"Tell mother she's married," Barney sang out, hoarsely. Then he went
back to the road, and home to his own house.