Tolman's, to spend the day. I'm in hopes she's got b'iled dish. You look
here!" She opened the bag, and searched portentously, the while Letty,
in some unworthy interest, regarded the smooth, thick hair under her
large poke-bonnet. Debby had an original fashion of coloring it; and
this no one had suspected until her little grandson innocently revealed
the secret. She rubbed it with a candle, in unconscious imitation of an
actor's make-up, and then powdered it with soot from the kettle. "I
believe to my soul she does!" said Letty to herself.
But Debby, breathing hard, had taken something from the bag, and was
holding it out on the end of a knotted finger.
"There!" she said, "ain't that your'n? Vianna said 't was your
engagement ring."
Letty flushed scarlet, and snatched the ring tremblingly. She gave an
involuntary look at the barn, where David was whistling a merry stave.
"Oh, my!" she breathed. "Where'd you find it?"
"Well, that's the question!" returned Debby triumphantly. "Where'd ye
lose it?"
But Letty had no mind to tell. She slipped the ring on her finger, and
looked obstinate.
"Can't I get you somethin' to put in your bag?" she asked cannily. Debby
was diverted, though only for the moment.
"I should like a mite o' pork," she answered, lowering her voice and
giving a glance, in her turn, at the barn. "I s'pose ye don't want _him_
to know of it?"
"I should like to be told why!" flamed Letty, in an indignation
disproportioned to its cause. Debby had unconsciously hit the raw. "Do
you s'pose I'd do anything David can't hear?"
"Law, I didn't know," said Debby, as if the matter were of very little
consequence. "Mis' Peleg Chase, she gi'n me a beef-bone, t' other day,
an' she says, 'Don't ye tell _him_!' An' Mis' Squire Hill gi'n me a
pail o' lard; but she hid it underneath the fence, an' made me come for
't after dark. I dunno how you're goin' to git along with men-folks, if
ye offer 'em the whip-hand. They'll take it, anyways. Well, don't you
want to know where I come on this ring?"
Letty had taken a few hasty steps toward the house. "Yes, I do," owned
she, turning about. "Where was it?"
"Well, Sammy was in swimmin', an' he dove into the Old Hole, to see'f't
had any bottom to 't. Vianna made him vow he wouldn't go in whilst he
had that rash; but he come home with his shirt wrong side out, an' she
made him own up. But he'd ha' told anyway, he was so possessed to show
that ring. He see suthin' gleamin' on a willer root nigh the bank, an'
he dove, an' there 't was. I told Sammy mebbe you'd give him suthin'
for't, an' he said there wa'n't nothin' in the world he wanted but a
mite o' David's solder, out in the shed-chamber."
"He shall have it," said Letty hastily. "I'll get it now. Don't you say
anything!" And then she knew she had used the formula she detested, and
that she was no better than Mrs. Peleg Chase, or the wife of Squire
Hill.
She ran frowning into the house, and down and up from kitchen to cellar.
Presently she reappeared, panting, with a great tin pan borne before
her like a laden salver. She set it down at Debby's feet, and began
packing its contents into the yawning bag.
"There!" she said, working with haste. "There's the solder, all of it.
And here's some of our sweet corn. We planted late."
Debby took an ear from the pan, and, tearing open the husk, tried a
kernel with a critical thumb.
"Tough, ain't it?" she remarked, disparagingly. "Likely to be, this time
o' year. Is that the pork?"
It was a generous cube, swathed in a fresh white cloth.
"Yes, it is," said Letty breathlessly, thrusting it in and shutting the
bag. "There!"
"Streak o' fat an' streak o' lean?" inquired Debby remorselessly.
"It's the best we've got; that's all I can say. Now I've got to speak to
David before he harnesses. Good-by!"
In a fever of impatience, she fled away to the barn.
"Well, if ever!" ejaculated Debby, lifting the bag and turning slowly
about, to take her homeward path. "Great doin's, _I_ say!" And she made
no reply when Letty, prompted by a tardy conscience, stopped in the barn
doorway and called to her, "Tell Sammy I'm much obliged. Tell him I
shall make turn-overs to-morrow." Debby was thinking of the pork, and
the likelihood of its being properly diversified.
Letty swept into the barn like a hurrying wind. The horses backed, and
laid their ears flat, and David, grooming one of them, gentled him and
inquired of him confidentially what was the matter.
"Oh, David, come out here! please come out!" called Letty breathlessly.
"I've got to see you."
David appeared, with some wonderment on his face, and Letty precipitated
herself upon him, mindless of curry-comb and horse-hairs and the fact
that she was presently to do butter. "David," she cried, "I can't stand
it. I've got to tell you. You know this ring?"
David looked at it, interested and yet perplexed.
"Seems if I'd seen you wear it," said he.
Letty gave way, and laughed hysterically.
"Seems if you had!" she repeated. "I've wore it over a year. There ain't
a girl in town but knows it. I showed it to 'em all. I told 'em 't was
my engagement ring."
David looked at it, and then at her. She seemed to him a little mad. He
could quiet the horses, but not a woman, in so vague an exigency.
"What made you tell 'em that?" he asked, at a venture.
"Don't you see? There wasn't one of 'em that was engaged but had a
ring--and presents, David--and they knew I never had anything, or I'd
have showed 'em."
David was not a dull man; he had very sound views on the tariff, and,
though social questions might thrive outside his world, the town blessed
him for an able citizen. But he felt troubled; he was condemned, and it
was the world's voice which had condemned him.
"I don't know's I ever did give you anything, Letty," he said, with a
new pain stirring in his face. "I don't b'lieve I ever thought of it. It
wasn't that I begrudged anything."
"Oh, my soul, no!" cried Letty, in an agony of her own. "I knew how 't
was. It wa'n't your way, but they didn't know that. And I couldn't have
'em thinkin' what they did think, now could I? So I bought me--David, I
bought me that high comb I used to wear, and--and a blue
handkerchief--and a thimble--and--and--this ring. And I said you give
'em to me. And I trusted to chance for your never findin' it out. But I
always hated the things; and as soon as we were married, I broke the
comb, and burnt up the handkerchief, and hammered the thimble into a
little wad, and buried it. But I didn't dare to stop wearin' the ring,
for fear folks would notice. Then t' other day I felt so about it I knew
the time had come, and I went down to the Old Hole and threw it in. And
now that hateful Sammy's found it and brought it back, and I've sent
him your solder, and Debby's promised me she wouldn't tell you about the
pork, and I--I'm no better than the rest of 'em that lie and lie and
don't let their men-folks know!" Letty was sobbing bitterly, and David
drew her into his arms and laid his cheek down on her hair. His heart
was aching too. They had all the passionate sorrow of children over some
grief not understood.
"Why didn't you tell me?" he asked at length.
"When?" said Letty chokingly.
"Then--when folks expected things--before we were married."
"Oh, David, I couldn't!"
"No," said David sadly, "I s'pose you couldn't."
Letty had been holding one hand very tightly clenched. It was a plump
hand, with deep dimples and firm, short fingers. She unclasped it, and
stretched out toward him a wet, pink palm.
"There!" she said despairingly. "There's the ring."
Again David felt his inadequacy to the situation. "Don't you want to
wear it?" he hesitated. "It's real pretty. What's that red stone?"
"I hate it!" cried Letty viciously. "It's a garnet. Oh, David, don't you
ever let me set eyes on it again!"
David took it slowly from her hand. He drew out his pocket-book, opened
it, and dropped the ring inside. "There!" he said, "I guess't won't do
me no hurt to come acrost it once in a while." Then they kissed each
other again, like two children; Letty's tears wet his face, and he felt
them bitterer than if they had been his own.
But for Letty the air had cleared. Now, she felt, there was no trouble
in her path. She had all the irresponsible joy of one who has had a
secret, and feels the burden roll away. She was like Christian without
his pack. She put her hands on David's shoulders, and looked at him
radiantly.
"Oh, I'm so glad!" she cried. "I'm just as wicked as I was before; but
it don't seem to make any difference, now you know it!"
Though David also smiled, he was regarding her with a troubled wonder.
He never expected to follow these varying moods. They were like
swallow-flights, and he was content to see the sun upon their wings. So
he drove thoughtfully off, and Letty went back to her work with a
singing heart. She was not quite sure that it was right to be happy
again, all at once, but she could not still her blood. To be forgiven,
to find herself free from the haunting consciousness that she could
deceive the creature to whom she held such passionate allegiance--this
was enough to shape a new heaven and a new earth. Her simple household
duties took on the significance of noble ceremonies. She sang as she
went about them, and the words were those of a joyous hymn. She seemed
to be serving in a temple, making it clean and fragrant in the name of
love.
* * * * *
Saturday was a day born of heavenly intentions. Letty ran out behind the
house, where the ground rose abruptly, and looked off, entranced, into
the blue distance. It was the stillest day of all the fall. Not a breath
stirred about her; but in the maple grove at the side of the house,
where the trees had turned early under the chill of an unseasonable
night, yellow leaves were sifting down without a sound. Goldenrod was
growing dull, clematis had ripened into feathery spray, and she knew how
the closed gentians were painting great purple dashes by the side of the
road. "Oh!" she cried aloud, in rapture. It was her wedding day; a year
ago the sun had shone as warmly and benignantly as he was shining now,
and the same haze had risen, like an exhalation, from the hills. She saw
a special omen in it, and felt herself the child of happy fortune, to be
so mothered by the great blue sky. Then she ran in to give David his
breakfast, and tell him, as they sat down, that it was their wedding
morning. As she went, she tore a spray of blood-red woodbine from the
wall, and bound it round her waist.
But David was not ready for breakfast; he was talking with a man at the
barn, and half an hour later came hurrying in to his retarded meal.
"I've got to eat an' run," said he; "Job Fisher kep' me. It's about that
ma'sh. But the time wa'n't wasted. He'll sell ten acres for twenty
dollars less'n he said last week. Too bad to keep you waitin'! You'd
ought to eat yours while 't was hot."
Letty, with a little smile all to herself, sat demurely down and poured
coffee; this was no time to talk of anniversaries. David ate in haste,
and said good-by.
"I'm goin' down the lot to get my withes," said he. "Whilst I'm gone,
you put me up a mite o' luncheon. I sha'n't lay off to come home till
night."
"Oh, David!" said Letty, with a little cry. Then the same knowing smile
crept over her face. "No, I sha'n't," added she willfully. "I'm goin' to
bring it to you."
"Fetch me my dinner? Why, it's a mile and a half 'cross lots! I guess
you won't!"
"You go right along, David," said Letty decisively. "I don't want to
hear another word. I ain't seen the Long Pastur' this summer, and I'm
comin'. Good-by!" She disappeared down the cellar stairs with the
butter-plate poised on a pyramid of dishes, and David, having no time to
argue, went off to his work.
About ten o'clock Letty took her way down to the Long Pasture; she was a
very happy woman, and she could hold her happiness before her face,
regarding it frankly and with a full delight. The material joys of life
might seem to escape her; but she could have them, after all. The great
universe, warm with sun and warm with love, was on her side. Even the
day seemed something tangible in gracious being; and as Letty trudged
along, her basket on her arm, she reasoned upon her own riches and owned
she had enough. David was not like anybody else; but he was better than
anybody else, and he was hers. Even his faults were dearer than other
men's virtues. She heard the sound of his axe upon the stakes, breaking
the lovely stillness with a significance lovelier still.
"David!" she called, long before reaching the little brook that runs
beneath the bank, and he leaped the fence and came to meet her. "David!"
she repeated, and looked up in his face with eyes so solemn and so full
of light that he held her still a moment to look at her.
"Letty," he said, "you're real pretty!" And then they both laughed, and
walked on together through the shade.
The day knit up its sweet, long minutes full of the serious beauty of
the woods. David worked hard, and for a time Letty lingered near him;
then she strayed away, and came back to him, from moment to moment,
with wonderful treasures. Now it was cress from the spring, now a
palm-full of partridge berries, or a cluster of checkerberry leaves for
a "cud," or a bit of wood-sorrel. By and by the fall stillness gave out
a breath of heat, and the sun stood high overhead. Letty spread out her
dinner, and David made her a fire among the rocks. The smoke rose in a
blue efflorescence; and with the sweet tang of burning wood yet in the
air, they sat down side by side, drinking from one cup, and smiling over
the foolish nothings of familiar talk. At the end of the meal, Letty
took a parcel from the basket, something wrapped in a very fine white
napkin. She flushed a little, unrolling it, and her eyes deepened.
"What's all this?" asked David, sniffing the air. "Fruit-cake?"
Letty nodded without looking at him; there was a telltale quivering in
her face. She divided the cake carefully, and gave her husband half.
David had lain back on a piny bank; and as he ate, his eyes followed the
treetops, swaying a little now in a rhythmic wind. But Letty ate her
piece as if it were sacramental bread. She put out her hand to him, and
he stroked the short, faithful fingers, and then held them close. He
smiled at her; and for a moment he mused again over that starry light in
her eyes. Then his lids fell, and he had a little nap, while Letty sat
and dreamed back over the hours, a year and more ago, when her mother's
house smelled of spices, and this cake was baked for her wedding day.
When they went home again, side by side, the fencing was all done, and
David had an after-consciousness of happy playtime. He carried the
basket, with his axe, and Letty, like an untired little dog, took brief
excursions of discovery here and there, and came back to his side with
her weedy treasures. Once--was it something in the air?--he called to
her:--
"Say, Letty, wa'n't it about this kind o' weather the day we were
married?"
But Letty gave a little cry, and pointed out a frail white butterfly on
a mullein leaf. "See there, David! how cold he looks! I'd like to take
him along. He'll freeze to-night." David forgot his question, and she
was glad. Some inner voice was at her heart, warning her to leave the
day unspoiled. Her joy lay in remembering; it seemed a small thing to
her that he should forget.
"We've had a real good time," he said, as he gave her the basket at the
kitchen door. "Now, as soon as thrashin' 's done, we'll go to Star
Pond."
After supper they covered up the squashes, for fear of a frost; and then
they stood for a moment in the field, and looked at the harvest moon,
risen in a great effrontery of splendor.
"Letty," asked David suddenly, "shouldn't you like to put on your little
ring? It's right here in my pocket."
"No! no!" said Letty hastily. "I never want to set eyes on it again."
"I guess I'll get you another one 't you could wear. I looked t' other
day when I went to market; but there was so many I didn't das't to make
a choice unless you was with me."
Letty clung to him passionately. "Oh, David," she cried, with a break in
her voice, "I don't want any rings. I want just you."
David put out one hand and softly touched the little blue kerchief about
her head. "Anyway," he said, "we won't have any more secrets from one
another, will we?"
Letty gave a little start, and she caught her breath before answering:--
"No, we won't--not unless they're nice ones!"
A LAST ASSEMBLING
This happened in what Dilly Joyce, in deference to a form of speech, was
accustomed to call her young days; though really her spirit seemed to
renew itself with every step, and her body was to the last a willing
instrument. She lived in a happy completeness which allowed her to carry
on the joys of youth into the maturity of years. But things did happen
to her from twenty to thirty-five which could never happen again. When
Dilly was a girl, she fell in love, and was very heartily and honestly
loved back again. She had been born into such willing harmony with
natural laws, that this in itself seemed to belong to her life. It
partook rather of the faithfulness of the seasons than of human tragedy
or strenuous overthrow. Even so early she felt great delight in natural
things; and when her heart turned to Jethro Moore, she had no doubt
whatever of the straightness of its path. She trusted all the primal
instincts without knowing she trusted them. She was thirsty; here was
water, and she drank. Jethro was a little older than she, the son of a
minister in a neighboring town. His father had marked out his plan of
life; but Jethro had had enough to do with the church on hot summer
Sundays, when "fourthly" and "sixthly" lulled him into a pleasing coma,
and when even the shimmer of Mrs. Chase's shot silk failed to awaken his
deep eyes to their accustomed delight in fabric and color. To him, the
church was a concrete and very dull institution: to his father, it was a
city set on a hill, whence a shining path led direct to God's New
Jerusalem. Therefore it was easy enough for the boy to say he preferred
business, and that he wanted uncle Silas to take him into his upholstery
shop; and he never, so long as he lived, understood his father's tragic
silence over the choice. He had broken the succession in a line of
priests; but it seemed to him that he had simply told what he wanted to
do for a living. So he went away to the city, and news came flying back
of his wonderful fitness for the trade. He understood colors, fabrics,
design; he had been sent abroad for ideas, and finally he was dispatched
to the Chicago house, to oversee the business there. Thus it was many
years before Dilly met him again; but they remained honestly faithful,
each from a lovely simplicity of nature, but a simplicity quite
different in kind. Jethro did not grow rich very fast (uncle Silas saw
to that), but he did prosper; and he was ready to marry his girl long
before she owned herself ready to marry him. She took care of a
succession of aged relatives, all afflicted by a strange and interesting
diversity of trying diseases; and then, after the last death, she
settled down, quite poor, in a little house on the Tiverton Road, and
"went out nussin'," the profession for which her previous life had
fitted her. With a careless generosity, she made over to her brother the
old farmhouse where they were born, because he had a family and needed
it. But he died, and was soon followed by his wife and child; and now
Dilly was quite alone with the house and the family debts. The time had
come, wrote Jethro, for them to marry. She was free, at last, and he had
enough. Would she take him, now? Dilly answered quite frankly and from a
serenity born of faith in the path before her and a certainty that no
feet need slip. She was ready, she wrote. She hoped he was willing she
should sell the old place, to pay Tom's debts. That would leave her
without a cent; but since he was coming for her, and she needn't go to
Chicago alone, she didn't know that there was anything to worry about.
He would buy her ticket. There was an ineffable simplicity about Dilly.
She had no respect whatever for money, save as a puzzling means to a few
necessary ends. And now the place had been sold, and Jethro was coming
in a month. Meanwhile Dilly was to pack up the few family effects she
could afford to keep, and the rest would go by auction.
Little as she was accustomed to dread experiences which came in the
inevitable order of nature, she did think of the last day and night in
the old house as something of an ordeal. People felt that the human
meant very little to Dilly; but that was not true. It was only true that
she held herself remote from personal intimacies; but all the fine,
invisible bonds of race and family took hold of her like irresistible
factors, and welded her to the universe anew.
As she started out from her little house, this summer morning, and began
her three-mile walk to the old homestead, she felt as if some solemn
event in her life were about to happen; her heart beat higher, and
brought about the suffocating feeling of a hand laid upon the throat.
She was a slight creature, with a delicate face and fine black hair. Her
slender body seemed all made for action, and the poise of an assured
motion dwelt in it and wrapped about its angularity like a gracious
charm. She was walking down a lane, her short skirts brushed by the
morning dew. She chose to go 'cross lots, not because in this case it
was nearer than the road, but because it seemed impossible to go another
way. Yet never in her life had she seen less of the outward garment of
things than she was seeing this morning. A flouting bobolink flew from
stake to stake in front of her, and bubbled out in melody. She heard a
scythe swishing in a neighboring field, and the musical call of the
mowing-machine afar, and she did not look up. Dumb to the beautiful
outer world, she was broad awake to human souls: the souls of the
Joyces, alive so long before her and stretching back into an unknown
past. They had lived, one after another, in the old house, since
colonial times; and now, after this quiet act of a concluding drama,
Dilly was going to lower the curtain, and sweep them from the stage.
Her mind was peopled with figures. She thought of Jethro, too. He seemed
to be coming ever nearer and nearer. She could hear his tread marching
into her life, and could see his face. It was very moving, as she
remembered it. A long line of scholarly forbears had dowered him with a
refinement and grace quite startling in this unornamented spot, and some
old Acadian ancestor had lent him beauty. His eyes were dark, and they
held an unfathomable melancholy. The line of his forehead and nose ran
haughtily and yet delicate; and even after years of absence, Dilly
sometimes caught her breath when she thought of the way his head was set
upon his shoulders. She had never in her life seen a man or woman who
was entirely beautiful, and he saturated her longing like a prodigal
stream.
She was a little dazed when she climbed the low stone wall, crossed the
road, and came into the grassy wilderness of the Joyce back yard. Nature
had triumphed riotously, as she will when niggardly thrift is away. The
grass lay rich and shining, lodged by last night's shower, and gate and
cellar-case were choked by it. The cinnamon roses bloomed in a spicy
hardiness of pink, and the gnarled apple-trees had shed their broken
branches, and were covered with little green buttons of fruit. Dilly
stopped to look about her, and her eyes filled. The tears were hot; they
hurt her, and so recalled her to the needs of life.