out by that insinuating index. It was true. Elbridge was driving her two
cows out of the yard, and her husband stood by, watching him. She walked
quietly into the entry, and Josiah laid his old hands together in the
rapturous certainty that she was going to open the door, and send her
anger forth. But Amelia only took down his butternut coat from the nail,
and returned with it, holding it ready for him to insert his arms.
"Here's your coat," said she, with that strange, deceptive calmness.
"Stan' up, an' I'll help you put it on."
Josiah looked at her with helplessly open mouth, and eyes so vacuous
that Amelia felt, even at that moment, the grim humor of his plight.
"I was in hopes he'd harness up"--he began, but she ruthlessly cut him
short.
"Stan' up! Here, put t' other arm in fust. This han'kercher yours? Goes
round your neck? There 't is. Here's your hat. Got any mittens? There
they be, in your pocket. This way. This is the door you come in, an'
this is the door you'll go out of." She preceded him, her head thrown
up, her shoulders back. Amelia had no idea of dramatic values, but she
was playing an effective part. She reached the door and flung it open,
but Josiah, a poor figure in its huddled capes, still stood abjectly in
the middle of the kitchen. "Come!" she called peremptorily. "Come,
Josiah Pease! Out you go." And Josiah went, though, contrary to his
usual habit, he did not talk. He quavered uncertainly down the steps,
and Amelia called a halt. "Josiah Pease!"
He turned, and looked up at her. His mouth had dropped, and he was
nothing but a very helpless old child. Vicious as he was, Amelia
realized the mental poverty of her adversary, and despised herself for
despising him. "Josiah Pease!" she repeated. "This is the end. Don't you
darken my doors ag'in. I've done with you,--egg an' bird!" She closed
the door, shutting out Josiah and the keen spring wind, and went back to
the window, to watch him down the drive. His back looked poor and mean.
It emphasized the pettiness of her victory. Even at that moment, she
realized that it was the poorer part of her which had resented attack on
a citadel which should be impregnable as time itself. Just then Enoch
stepped into the kitchen behind her, and his voice jarred upon her
tingling nerves.
"Well," said he, more jovially than he was wont to speak, "I guess I've
made a good trade for ye. Company gone? Come here an' se' down while I
eat, an' I'll tell ye all about it."
Amelia turned about and walked slowly up to him, by no volition of her
conscious self. Again love, that august creature, veiled itself in an
unjust anger, because it was love and nothing else.
"You've made a good bargain, have you?" she repeated. "You've sold my
cows, an' had 'em drove off the place without if or but. That's what you
call a good bargain!" Her voice frightened her. It amazed the man who
heard. These two middle-aged people were waking up to passions neither
had felt in youth. Life was strong in them because love was there.
"Why, 'Melia!" said the man. "Why, 'Melia!"
Amelia was hurried on before the wind of her destiny. Her voice grew
sharper. Little white stripes, like the lashes from a whip, showed
themselves on her cheeks. She seemed to be speaking from a dream, which
left her no will save that of speaking.
"It's been so ever sence you set foot in this house. Have I had my say
once? Have I been mistress on my own farm? No! You took the head o'
things, an' you've kep' it. What's mine is yours."
Her triumph over Josiah seemed to be strangely repeated; the scene was
almost identical. The man before her stood with his hands hanging by his
sides, the fingers limp, in an attitude of the profoundest patience. He
was thinking things out. She knew that. Her hurrying mind anticipated
all he might have said, and would not. And because he had too abiding a
gentleness to say it, the insanity of her anger rose anew. "I'm the
laughin'-stock o' the town," she went on bitterly. "There ain't a man or
woman in it that don't say I've married a tramp."
Enoch winced, with a sharp, brief quiver of the lips; but before she
could dwell upon the sight, to the resurrection of her tenderness, he
turned away from her, and went over to the bench.
"I guess I'll move this back where't was," he said, in a very still
voice, and Amelia stood watching him, conscious of a new and bitterer
pang: a fierce contempt that he could go on with his poor, methodical
way of living, when greater issues waited at the door. He moved the
bench into its old place, gathered up the clock, with its dismantled
machinery, and carried it into the attic. She heard his step on the
stairs, regular and unhalting, and despised him again; but in all those
moments, the meaning of his movements had not struck her. When he came
back, he brought in the broom; and while he swept up the fragments of
his work, Amelia stood and watched him. He carried the dustpan and broom
away to their places, but he did not reenter the room. He spoke to her
from the doorway, and she could not see his face.
"I guess you won't mind if I leave the clock as 't is. It needs some new
cogs, an' if anybody should come along, he wouldn't find it any the
worse for what I've done. I've jest thought it over about the cows, an'
I guess I'll leave that, too, jest as it is. I made you a good bargain,
an' when you come to think it over, I guess you'd ruther it'd stan' so
than run the resk of havin' folks make a handle of it. Good-by, 'Melia.
You've been good to me,--better'n anybody ever was in the world."
She heard his step, swift and steady, through the shed and out at the
door. He was gone. Amelia turned to the window, to look after him, and
then, finding he had not taken the driveway, she ran into the bedroom,
to gaze across the fields. There he was, a lonely figure, striking
vigorously out. He seemed glad to go; and seeing his haste, her heart
hardened against him. She gave a little disdainful laugh.
"Well," said Amelia, "_that's_ over. I'll wash my dishes now."
Coming back into the kitchen, with an assured step, she moved calmly
about her work, as if the world were there to see. Her pride enveloped
her like a garment. She handled the dishes as if she scorned them, yet
her method and care were exquisite. Presently there came a little
imperative pounding at the side door. It was Rosie. She had forgotten
the cloudy atmosphere of the house, and being cold, had come, in all her
old, imperious certainty of love and warmth, to be let in. Amelia
stopped short in her work, and an ugly frown roughened her brow. Josiah
Pease, with all his evil imaginings, seemed to be at her side, his lean
forefinger pointing out the baseness of mankind. In that instant, she
realized where Enoch had gone. He meant to take the three o'clock train
where it halted, down at the Crossing, and he had left the child behind.
Tearing off her apron, she threw it over her head. She ran to the door,
and, opening it, almost knocked the child down, in her haste to be out
and away. Rosie had lifted her frosty face in a smile of welcome, but
Amelia did not see it. She gathered the child in her arms, and hurried
down the steps, through the bars, and along the narrow path toward the
pine woods. The sharp brown stubble of the field merged into the thin
grasses of the greener lowland, and she heard the trickling of the
little dark brook, where gentians lived in the fall, and where, still
earlier, the cardinal flower and forget-me-not crowded in lavish color.
She knew every inch of the way; her feet had an intelligence of their
own. The farm was a part of her inherited life; but at that moment, she
prized it as nothing beside that newly discovered wealth which she was
rushing to cast away. Rosie had not striven in the least against her
capture. She knew too much of life, in some patient fashion, to resist
it, in any of its phases. She put her arms about Amelia's neck, to cling
the closer, and Amelia, turning her face while she staggered on, set her
lips passionately to the little sleeve.
"You cold?" asked she--"_dear_?" But she told herself it was a kiss of
farewell.
She stepped deftly over the low stone wall into the Marden woods, and
took the slippery downward path, over pine needles. Sometimes a rounded
root lay above the surface, and she stumbled on it; but the child only
tightened her grasp. Amelia walked and ran with the prescience of those
without fear; for her eyes were unseeing, and her thoughts hurrying
forward, she depicted to herself the little drama at its close. She
would be at the Crossing and away again, before the train came in;
nobody need guess her trouble. Enoch must be there, waiting. She would
drop the child at his side,--the child he had deserted,--and before he
could say a word, turn back to her desolate home. And at the thought,
she kissed the little sleeve again, and thought how good it would be if
she could only be there again, though alone, in the shielding walls of
her house, and the parting were over and done. She felt her breath come
chokingly.
"You'll have to walk a minute," she whispered, setting the child down at
her side. "There's time enough. I can't hurry."
At that instant, she felt the slight warning of the ground beneath her
feet, shaken by another step, and saw, through the pines, her husband
running toward her. Rosie started to meet him, with a little cry, but
Amelia thrust her aside, and hurried swiftly on in advance, her eyes
feeding upon his face. It had miraculously changed. Sorrow, the great
despair of life, had eaten into it, and aged it more than years of
patient want. His eyes were like lamps burned low, and the wrinkles
under them had guttered into misery. But to Amelia, his look had all
the sweet familiarity of faces we shall see in Paradise. She did not
stop to interpret his meeting glance, nor ask him to read hers. Coming
upon him like a whirlwind, she put both her shaking hands on his
shoulders, and laid her wet face to his.
"Enoch! Enoch!" she cried sharply, "in the name of God, come home with
me!"
She felt him trembling under her hands, but he only put up his own, and
very gently loosed the passionate grasp. "There! there!" he said, in a
whisper. "Don't feel so bad. It's all right. I jest turned back for
Rosie. Mebbe you won't believe it, but I forgot all about her."
He lowered his voice, for Rosie had gone close to him, and laid her
hands clingingly upon his coat. She did not understand, but she could
wait. A branch had almost barred the path, and Amelia, her dull gaze
fallen, noted idly how bright the moss had kept, and how the scarlet
cups enriched it. Her strength would not sustain her, void of his, and
she sank down on the wood, her hands laid limply in her lap. "Enoch,"
she said, from her new sense of the awe of life, "don't lay up anything
ag'inst me. You couldn't if you knew."
"Knew what?" asked Enoch gently. He did not forget that circumstance had
laid a blow at the roots of his being; but he could not turn away while
she still suffered.
Amelia began, stumblingly,--
"He talked about you. I couldn't stan' it."
"Did you believe it?" he queried sternly.
"There wa'n't anything to believe. That's neither here nor there.
But--Enoch, if anybody should cut my right hand off--Enoch"--Her voice
fell brokenly. She was a New England woman, accustomed neither to
analyze nor talk. She could only suffer in the elemental way of dumb
things who sometimes need a language of the heart. One thing she knew.
The man was hers; and if she reft herself away from him, then she must
die.
He had taken Rosie's hand, and Amelia was aware that he turned away.
"I don't want to bring up anything," he said hesitatingly, "but I
couldn't stan' bein' any less'n other men would, jest because the woman
had the money, an' I hadn't. I dunno's 't was exactly fair about the
cows, but somehow you kind o' set me at the head o' things, in the
beginnin', an' it never come into my mind"--
Amelia sat looking wanly past him. She began to see how slightly
argument would serve. Suddenly the conventions of life fell away from
her and left her young.
"Enoch," she said vigorously, "you've got to take me. Somehow, you've
got to. Talkin' won't make you see that what I said never meant no more
than the wind that blows. But you've got to keep me, or remember, all
your life, how you murdered me by goin' away. The farm's come between
us. Le's leave it! It's 'most time for the cars. You take me with you
now. If you tramp, I'll tramp. If you work out, so 'll I. But where you
go, I've got to go, too."
Some understanding of her began to creep upon him; he dropped the
child's hand, and came a step nearer. Enoch, in these latter days of his
life, had forgotten how to smile; but now a sudden, mirthful gleam
struck upon his face, and lighted it with the candles of hope. He stood
beside her, and Amelia did not look at him.
"Would you go with me, 'Melia?" he asked.
"I'm goin'," said she doggedly. Her case had been lost, but she could
not abandon it. She seemed to be holding to it in the face of righteous
judgment.
"S'pose I don't ask you?"
"I'll foller on behind."
"Don't ye want to go home, an' lock up, an' git a bunnit?"
She put one trembling hand to the calico apron about her head.
"No."
"Don't ye want to leave the key with some o' the neighbors?"
"I don't want anything in the world but you," owned Amelia shamelessly.
Enoch bent suddenly, and drew her to her feet. "'Melia," said he, "you
look up here."
She raised her drawn face and looked at him, not because she wished, but
because she must. In her abasement, there was no obedience which she
would deny him. But she could only see that he was strangely happy, and
so the more removed from her own despair. Enoch swiftly passed his arm
about her, and turned her homeward. He laughed a little. Being a man, he
must laugh when that bitter ache in the throat presaged more bitter
tears.
"Come, 'Melia," said he, "come along home, an' I'll tell you all about
the cows. I made a real good bargain. Come, Rosie."
Amelia could not answer. It seemed to her as if love had dealt with her
as she had not deserved; and she went on, exalted, afraid of breaking
the moment, and knowing only that he was hers again. But just before
they left the shadow of the woods, he stopped, holding her still, and
their hearts beat together.
"'Melia," said he brokenly, "I guess I never told you in so many words,
but it's the truth: if God Almighty was to make me a woman, I'd have her
you, not a hair altered. I never cared a straw for any other. I know
that now. You're all there is in the world."
When they walked up over the brown field, the sun lay very warmly there
with a promise of spring fulfilled. The wind had miraculously died, and
soft clouds ran over the sky in flocks. Rosie danced on ahead, singing
her queer little song, and Enoch struggled with himself to speak the
word his wife might wish.
"'Melia," said he at last, "there ain't anything in my life I couldn't
tell you. I jest ain't dwelt on it, that's all. If you want to have me
go over it--"
"I don't want anything," said Amelia firmly. Her eyes were suffused, and
yet lambent. The light in them seemed to be drinking up their tears. Her
steps, she knew, were set within a shining way. At the door only she
paused and fixed him with a glance. "Enoch," said she threateningly,
"whose cows were them you sold to-day?"
He opened his lips, but she looked him down. One word he rejected, and
then another. His cheeks wrinkled up into obstinate smiling, and he made
the grimace of a child over its bitter draught.
"'Melia, it ain't fair," he complained. "No, it ain't. I'll take one of
'em, if you say so, or I'll own it don't make a mite o' difference whose
they be. But as to lyin'--"
"Say it!" commanded Amelia. "Whose were they?"
"Mine!" said Enoch. They broke into laughter, like children, and held
each other's hands.
"I ain't had a mite o' dinner," said Amelia happily, as they stepped
together into the kitchen. "Nor you! An' Rosie didn't eat her pie. You
blaze up the fire, an' I'll fry some eggs."
THE MORTUARY CHEST
"Now we've got red o' the men-folks," said Mrs. Robbins, "le's se' down
an' talk it over." The last man of all the crowd accustomed to seek the
country store at noontime was closing the church door behind him as she
spoke. "Here, Ezry," she called after him, "you hurry up, or you won't
git there afore cockcrow to-morrer, an' I wouldn't have that letter miss
for a good deal."
Mrs. Robbins was slight, and hung on wires,--so said her neighbors. They
also remarked that her nose was as picked as a pin, and that anybody
with them freckles and that red hair was sure to be smart. You could
always tell. Mrs. Robbins knew her reputation for extreme acuteness, and
tried to live up to it.
"Law! don't you go to stirrin' on him up," said Mrs. Solomon Page
comfortably, putting on the cover of her butter-box, which had contained
the family lunch. "If the store's closed, he can slip the letter into
the box, an' three cents with it, an' they'll put a stamp on in the
mornin'."
By this time, there was a general dusting of crumbs from Sunday gowns, a
settling of boxes and baskets, and the feminine portion of the East
Tiverton congregation, according to ancient custom, passed into the pews
nearest the stove, and arranged itself more compactly for the midday
gossip. This was a pleasant interlude in the religious decorum of the
day; no Sunday came when the men did not trail off to the store for
their special council, and the women, with a restful sense of sympathy
alloyed by no disturbing element, settled down for an exclusively
feminine view of the universe. Mrs. Page took the head of the pew, and
disposed her portly frame so as to survey the scene with ease. She was a
large woman, with red cheeks and black, shining hair. One powerful arm
lay along the back of the pew, and, as she talked, she meditatively beat
the rail in time. Her sister, Mrs. Ellison, according to an intermittent
custom, had come over from Saltash to attend church, and incidentally to
indulge in a family chat. It was said that Tilly rode over about jes' so
often to get the Tiverton news for her son Leonard, who furnished local
items to the Sudleigh "Star;" and, indeed, she made no secret of sitting
down in social conclave with a bit of paper and a worn pencil in hand,
to jog her memory. She, too, had smooth black hair, but her dark eyes
were illumined by no steadfast glow; they snapped and shone with alert
intelligence, and her great forehead dominated the rest of her face,
scarred with a thousand wrinkles by intensity of nature rather than by
time. A pleasant warmth had diffused itself over the room, so cold
during the morning service that foot-stoves had been in requisition.
Bonnet strings were thrown back and shawls unpinned. The little world
relaxed and lay at ease.
"What's the news over your way, sister?" asked Mrs. Ellison, as an
informal preliminary.
"Tilly don't want to give; she'd ruther take," said Mrs. Baxter, before
the other could answer. "She's like old Mis' Pepper. Seliny Hazlitt went
over there, when she was fust married an' come to the neighborhood, an'
asked her if she'd got a sieve to put squash through. Poor Seliny! she
didn't know a sieve from a colander, in them days."
"I guess she found out soon enough," volunteered Mrs. Page. "_He_ was
one o' them kind o' men that can keep house as well as a woman. I'd
ruther live with a born fool."
"Well, old Mis' Pepper she ris up an' smoothed down her apron (recollect
them little dots she used to wear?--made her look as broad as a barn
door!), an' she says, 'Yes, we've got a sieve for flour, an' a sieve for
meal, an' a sieve for rye, an' a sieve for blue-monge, an' we could have
a sieve for squash if we was a mind to, _but I don't wish to lend_.'
That's the way with Tilly. She's terrible cropein' about news, but she
won't lend."
"How's your cistern?" asked Mrs. John Cole, who, with an exclusively
practical turn of mind, saw no reason why talk should be consecutive.
"Got all the water you want?"
"Yes," said Mrs. Page; "that last rain filled it up higher'n it's been
sence November."
But Mrs. Ellison was not to be thrown off the track.
"Ain't there been consid'able talk over here about Parson Bond?" she
asked.
Miss Sally Ware, a plump and pleasing maiden lady, whose gold beads lay
in a crease especially designed for them, stirred uneasily in her seat
and gave her sisters an appealing glance. But she did not speak, beyond
uttering a little dissentient noise in her throat. She was loyal to her
minister. An embarrassed silence fell like a vapor over the assemblage.
Everybody longed to talk; nobody wanted the responsibility of beginning.
Mrs. Page was the first to gather her forces.
"Now, Tilly," said she, with decision, "you ain't comin' over here to
tole us into haulin' our own pastor over the coals, unless you'll say
right out you won't pass it on to Saltash folks. As for puttin' it in
the paper, it ain't the kind you can."
Tilly's eyes burned.
"I guess I know when to speak an' when not to," she remarked. "Now don't
beat about the bush; the men-folks'll be back to-rights. I never in my
life give Len a mite o' news he couldn't ha' picked up for himself."
"Well, some master silly pieces have got into the paper, fust an' last,"
said Mrs. Robbins. "Recollect how your Len come 'way over here to git
his shoes cobbled, the week arter Tom Brewer moved int' the Holler, an'
folks hadn't got over swappin' the queer things he said? an' when Tom
got the shoes done afore he promised, Len says to him, 'You're better'n
your word.' 'Well,' says Tom, 'I flew at 'em with all the venom o' my
specie.' An' it wa'n't a fortnight afore that speech come out in a New
York paper, an' then the Sudleigh 'Star' got hold on 't, an' so 't went.
If folks want that kind o' thing, they can git a plenty, _I_ say." She
set her lips defiantly, and looked round on the assembled group. This
was something she had meant to mention; now she had done it.
The informal meeting was aghast. A flavor of robust humor was accustomed
to enliven it, but not of a sort to induce dissension.
"There! there!" murmured Sally Ware. "It's the Sabbath day!"
"Well, nobody's breakin' of it, as I know of," said Mrs. Ellison. Her
eyes were brighter than usual, but she composed herself into a careful
disregard of annoyance. When desire of news assailed her, she could
easily conceal her personal resentments, cannily sacrificing small
issues to great. "I guess there's no danger o' Parson Bond's gittin'
into the paper, so long's he behaves himself; but if anybody's got eyes,
they can't help seein'. I hadn't been in the Bible class five minutes
afore I guessed how he was carryin' on. Has he begun to go with Isabel
North, an' his wife not cold in her grave?"
"Well, I think, for my part, he does want Isabel," said Mrs. Robbins
sharply, "an' I say it's a sin an' a shame. Why, she ain't twenty, an'
he's sixty if he's a day. My soul! Sally Ware, you better be settin'
your cap for my William Henry. He's 'most nineteen."
Miss Ware flushed, and her plump hands tightened upon each other under
her shawl. She was never entirely at ease in the atmosphere of these
assured married women; it was always a little bracing.
"Well, how's she take it?" asked Tilly, turning from one to the other.
"Tickled to death, I s'pose?"
"Well, I guess she ain't!" broke in a younger woman, whose wedding
finery was not yet outworn. "She's most sick over it, and so she has
been ever since her sister married and went away. I believe she'd hate
the sight of him, if 't wasn't the minister; but _'t is_ the minister,
and when she's put face to face with him, she can't help saying yes and
no."
"I dunno'," said Mrs. Page, with her unctuous laugh. "Remember the
party over to Tiverton t' other night, an' them tarts? You see, Rosanna
Maria Pike asked us all over; an' you know how flaky her pie-crust is.
Well, the minister was stan'in' side of Isabel when the tarts was
passed. He was sort o' shinin' up to her that night, an' I guess he felt
a mite twittery; so when the tarts come to him, he reached out kind o'
delicate, with his little finger straight out, an' tried to take one.
An' a ring o' crust come off on his finger. Then he tried it ag'in, an'
got another ring. Everybody'd ha' laughed, if it hadn't been the
minister; but Isabel she tickled right out, an' says, 'You don't take
jelly, do you, Mr. Bond?' An' he turned as red as fire, an' says, 'No, I
thank you.'"