through the open shed, and fitted her key in the lock. The door sagged;
but she pushed it open and stepped in. The deserted kitchen lay there in
desolate order, and the old Willard clock slept upon the wall. Dilly
hastily pushed a chair before it (this was the only chair old Daniel
Joyce would allow the children to climb in) and wound the clock. It
began ticking slowly, with the old, remembered sound. Somehow it seemed
beautiful to Dilly that the clock should speak with the voice of all
those years agone; it was a kind of loyalty which appealed to the soul
like a piercing miracle. Then she ran through to the sitting-room, and
started the old eight-day in the corner; and the house breathed and was
alive again. She threw open the windows, all save those on the Dilloway
side (lest kindly neighbors should discover she was at home), and the
soft rose-scented air flooded the rooms like an invisible presence, and
bore out the smell of age upon gracious wings. Now, Dilly worked fast
and steadily, lest some human thing should come upon her. She tied up
bedclothes, and opened long-closed cupboards. She made careful piles of
clothing from the attic; and finally, her mind a little tired, she sat
down on the floor and began looking over papers and daguerreotypes from
her father's desk. Just as she had lost herself in the ancient history
of which they were the signs, there came a knock at the back door. So
assured had become her idea of a continued housekeeping, that the
summons did not seem in the least strange. The house lived again; it had
thrown open its arms to human kind.
"Come in!" she called; and a light step sounded in the kitchen and
crossed the sill. It was a man, dark-eyed and very handsome. "Oh!"
murmured Dilly, catching her breath and holding both hands clasped upon
the papers in her lap. "Jethro!"
The stranger was much moved, and his black eyes deepened. He looked at
her kindly, perhaps lovingly, too. "Yes," he said, at last. "So you'd
know me?"
Dilly got lightly up, and the papers fell about her in a shower; yet she
made no motion toward him. "Oh, yes," she said softly, "I should know
you. You ain't changed at all."
That was not true. He looked ten years older than his real age; yet time
had only dowered him with a finer grace and charm. All the lines in his
face were those of gentleness and truth. His mouth had the old delicate
curves. One meeting him that day might have said, with a throb of
involuntary homage, "How beautiful he must have been when he was young!"
But to Dilly he bore even a more subtile distinction than in that
far-away time; he had ripened into something harmonizing with her own
years. He came forward a little, and held out both hands; but Dilly did
not take them, and he dropped the left one. Then she laid her fingers
lightly in his, and they greeted each other like old acquaintances. A
flush rose in her smooth brown cheek. Her eyes grew bright with that
startled questioning which is of the woods. He looked at her the more
intently, and his breath quickened. She had none of the blossomy charm
of more robust womanhood; but he recognized the old gypsy element which
had once bewitched him, and felt he loved her still.
"Well," he said, and his voice shook a little, "are you glad to see me?"
Dilly moved back, and sat down in her mother's little sewing-chair by
the desk. "I don't know as I can tell," she answered. "This is a strange
day."
Jethro nodded. "I meant to surprise you," he said. "So I never wrote I
was coming on so soon. I was real disappointed to find your house shut
up; but the neighbors told me where you'd gone, and what you'd gone for.
Then I walked over here."
Dilly's face brightened all over with a responsive smile. "Did you come
through the woods?" she asked. "What made you?"
"Why, I knew you'd go that way," he answered. "I thought you'd get
wool-gathering over some weed or another, and maybe I'd overtake you."
They both laughed, and the ice was broken. Dilly got briskly up and
gathered a drawer-full of papers into her apron.
"I can't stop workin'," she said. "I want to fix it so's not to stay
here more'n one night. Now you talk! I know what these are. I can run
'em over an' listen too."
"I think't was real good of you to turn in the place to Tom's folks,"
said Jethro, also seating himself, and, as Dilly saw with a start, as if
it were an omen, in her father's great chair. "Not that you'll ever need
it, Dilly. You won't want for a thing. I've done real well."
Dilly's long fingers assorted papers and laid them at either side, with
a neat precision. She looked up at him then, and her eyes had again the
quick, inquiring glance of some wild creature in a situation foreign to
its habits.
"Well," she said, "well! I guess I don't resk anything. An' if I
did--why, I'd resk it!"
Jethro bent forward a little. He was smiling, and Dilly met the glance,
half fascinated. She wondered that she could forget his smile; and yet
she had forgotten it. Like running water, it was never twice the same.
"Dilly," said he, much moved, "you'll have a good time from this out, if
ever a woman did. You'll keep house in a brick block, where the cars run
by your door, and you can hire two girls."
"Oh, my!" breathed Dilly. A quick look of trouble darkened her face, as
a shadow sweeps across the field.
"What is it?" asked Jethro, in some alarm. "Don't you like what I said?"
Dilly smiled, though her eyes were still apprehensive.
"It ain't that," she answered slowly, striving in her turn to be kind.
"Only I guess I never happened to think before just how't would be. I
never spec'lated much on keepin' house."
"But somebody'd have to keep it," said Jethro good-naturedly, smiling on
her. "We can get good help. You'll like to have a real home table, and
you can invite company every day, if you say so. I never was close,
Dilly,--you know that. I sha'n't make you account for things."
Dilly got up, and, still holding her papers in her apron, walked
swiftly to the window. There she stood, a moment, looking out into the
orchard, where the grass lay tangled under the neglected, happy trees.
Her eyes traveled mechanically from one to another. She knew them all.
That was the "sopsyvine," its red fruitage fast coming on; there was the
Porter she had seen her father graft; and down in the corner grew the
August sweet. Life out there looked so still and sane and homely. She
knew no city streets,--yet the thought of them sounded like a pursuit.
She turned about, and came back to her chair.
"I guess I never dreamt how you lived, Jethro," she said gently. "But it
don't make no matter. You're contented with it."
"I ain't a rich man," said Jethro, with some quiet pride; "but I've got
enough. Yes, I like my business; and city life suits me. You'll fall in
with it, too."
Then silence settled between them; but that never troubled Dilly. She
was used to long musings on her walks to and from her patients, and in
her watching beside their beds. Conversation seemed to her a very
spurious thing when there is nothing to say.
"What you thinking about?" he asked suddenly.
Dilly looked up at him with her bright, truth-telling glance. "I was
thinkin'," she answered, with a clarity never ruthless, because it was
so sweet,--"I was thinkin' you make me homesick, somehow or another."
Jethro looked at her doubtfully, and then, as she smiled at him, he
smiled also.
"I don't believe it's me," he said, confidently. "It's because you're
going over things here. It's the old house."
"Maybe," said Dilly, nodding and tying her last bundle of papers. "But I
don't know. I never had quite such feelin's before. It's the nearest to
bein' afraid of anything I've come acrost. I guess I shall have to run
out into the lot an' take my bearin's."
Jethro got up, put his hands in his pockets, and walked about the room.
He was very gentle, but he did at heart cherish the masculine theory
that the unusual in woman is never to be judged by rules.
"But it is a queer kind of a day," owned Dilly, pushing in the last
drawer. "Why, Jethro!" She faced him, and her voice broke in excitement.
"You don't know, I ain't begun to tell you, how queer it seems to me.
Why, I've dreaded this day for weeks! but when it come nigh, it begun to
seem to me like a joyful thing. I felt as if they all knew of it: them
that was gone. It seemed as if they stood 'round me, ready to uphold me
in what I was doin'. I shouldn't be surprised if they were all here now.
I don't feel a mite alone."
Her voice shook with excitement; her eyes were big and black. Jethro
came up to her, and laid a kindly hand on her shoulder. It was a fine
hand, long and shapely, and Dilly, looking down at it, remembered, with
a strange regretfulness, how she had once loved its lines.
"There, poor girl!" he said, "you're tired thinking about it. No wonder
you've got fancies. I guess the ghosts won't trouble us. There's nothing
here worse than ourselves." And again, in spite of the Joyces, Dilly
felt homesick and alone.
There came a soft thudding sound upon the kitchen floor, and she turned,
alert, to listen. This was Mrs. Eli Pike in her carpet slippers; she had
stood so much over soap-making that week that her feet had taken to
swelling. She was no older than Dilly, but she had seemed matronly in
her teens. She looked very large, as she padded forward through the
doorway, and her pink face and double chin seemed to exude kindliness as
she came.
"There, Dilly Joyce! if this ain't jest like you!" she exclaimed. "Creep
in here an' not let anybody know! Why, Jethro, that you? Recognize you!
Well, I guess I should!"
She included them both in a neighborly glance, and Dilly was very
grateful. Yet it seemed to her that now, at last, she might break down
and cry. The tone of olden friendliness was hard to bear, when no other
voices answered. She could endure the silent house, but not the
intercourse of a life so sadly changed.
"There!" continued Mrs. Pike, with a nod, "I guess I know! You're tired
to pieces with this pickin' and sortin', an' you're comin' over to
dinner, both on ye. Eli's dressed a hin. I had to wring her neck. _He_
wouldn't ha' done it; you know that, Dilly! An' I've been beatin' up
eggs. Now don't you say one word. You be there by twelve. Jethro, you
got a watch? You see 't she starts, now!" And Mrs. Pike marched away
victorious, her apron over her head, and waving one hand before her as
she went. She had once been stung by bees, on just such a morning as
this, and she had a set theory that they infested all strange dooryards.
Dilly felt as if even the Joyces could not save her day in its solemn
significance unless, indeed, they should appear in their proper persons.
She thought of her bread and butter and boiled eggs, lying in her little
bundle, and the simple meal seemed as unattainable as if it were some
banquet dreamed of in delirium. It was of one piece with cars going by
the house, and two maid-servants to correct. To Dilly, a car meant a
shrieking monster propelled by steam: yet not even that drove her to
such insanity of revulsion as the two servants. They alone made her
coming life seem like one eternal school, with the committee ever on
the platform, and no recess. But she worked very meekly and soberly, and
Jethro took off his coat and helped her; then, just before twelve, they
washed their hands and went across the orchard to Mrs. Pike's.
The rest of the day seemed to Dilly like a confused though not an
unfamiliar dream. She knew that the dinner was very good, and that it
choked her, so that Mrs. Pike, alert in her first pride of housekeeping,
was quite cordially harsh with her for not eating more; and that Jethro
talked about Chicago; and Eli Pike, older than his wife and graver, said
"Do tell!" now and again, and seemed to picture in his mind the outlines
of city living. She escaped from the table as soon as possible, under
pretext of the work to be done, and slipped back to the empty house; and
there Jethro found her, and began helping her again.
The still afternoon settled down in its grooves of beauty, and its very
loveliness gave Dilly a pain at the heart. She remembered that this was
the hour when her mother used to yawn over her long seam, or her
knitting, and fall asleep by the window, while the bees droned outside
in the jessamine, and a humming-bird--there had always been one, year
after year, and Dilly could never get over the impression that it was
the same bird--hovered on his invisible perch and thrilled his wings
divinely. Then the day slipped over an unseen height, and fell into a
sheltered calm. The work was not done, and they had to go over to Mrs.
Pike's again to supper, and to spend the night. Dilly longed to stretch
herself on the old kitchen lounge in her own home; but Mrs. Pike told
her plainly that she was crazy, and Jethro, with a kindly authority,
bade her yield. And because words were like weapons that returned upon
her to hurt her anew, she did yield, and talked patiently to one and
another neighbor as they came in to see Jethro, and to inquire when he
meant to be married.
"Soon," said Jethro, with assurance. "As soon as Dilly makes up her
mind."
All that evening, Eli Pike sat on the steps, where he could hear the
talk in the sitting-room without losing the whippoorwill's song from the
Joyce orchard, and Dilly longed to slip out and sit quietly beside him.
He would know. But she could only be civil and grateful, and when half
past eight came, take her lamp and go up to bed. Jethro was given the
best chamber, because he had succeeded and came from Chicago; but Dilly
had a little room that looked straight out across the treetops down to
her own home.
At first, after closing the door behind her, she felt only the great
blessedness of being alone. She put out the light and threw herself, as
she was, face downwards on the bed. There she lay for long moments,
suffering; and this was one of the few times in her life when she was
forced to feel that human pain which is like a stab in the heart. For
she was one of those wise creatures who give themselves long spaces of
silence, and so heal them quickly of their wounds, like the sage little
animals that slip away from combat, to cure their hurt with leaves.
Presently, a great sense of rest enfolded her, a rest ineffably precious
because it was so soon to be over. It was like great riches lent only
for a time. Outside this familiar quiet was the world, thrilled by a
terrifying life pressing upon her and calling. She longed to put her
hands before her eyes, and shut out the possibility of meeting its
garish glory; she did cover her ears, lest its cry should pierce them
and she could not resist. And so she lay there shivering, until a
strange inviting that was peace and not commotion seemed to approach her
from another side, and her inner self became conscious of unheard
voices. They were not clamorous, but sweet, and they drowned her will,
and drew her to themselves. She got softly up, and, going to the
darkened window, looked out across the orchard. There, in the greenness,
lay the old house. It called on her to come. It seemed to Dilly that she
could not make haste enough to be there. She slipped softly down the
narrow stairway, and across the kitchen, where the shadows of the
moonlit windows lay upon the floor. A great excitement thrilled her
blood; and though quite safe from discovery, she was not wholly at ease
until she had entered the orchard path, and knew her feet were wet with
dew, and heard the whippoorwill, so near now that she might have
startled him from his neighboring tree. No other bird note could have
fitted her mood so well. The wild melancholy of his tone, his home in
the night, and the omens blended with his song seemed to remove him from
the world as she herself was removed; and she hastened on with a fine
exaltation, fitted her key again in the lock, and shut the door behind
her.
As soon as Dilly had entered the sitting-room, where the old desk stood
in its place, and the clock was ticking, she felt as if all her
confusion and trouble were over. She smiled to herself in the darkness.
She had come home, and it was very good. They had begun with the attic,
in their rearranging, and this room remained unchanged. It had been her
wish to keep it, in its sweet familiarity, unaltered till the last. She
drew forward her father's chair, and sat down in it, with luxurious
abandonment, to rest. Her mother's little cricket was by her side, and
she put her feet on it and exhaled a long sigh of content. Her eyes
rested on the dark cavern which was the fireplace; and there fell upon
her a sweet sense of completed bliss, as if it were alight and she could
watch the dancing flames. And suddenly Dilly was aware that the Joyces
were all about her.
She had been sure, in her coming through the woods, that they knew and
cared; now she was certain that, in some fashion, they recognized their
bondage and loyalty to the place, as she recognized her own, and that
they upheld her to her task. She thought them over, as she sat there,
and saw their souls more keenly than if she had met them, men and women,
face to face. There was the shoe-maker among them, who, generations
back, was sitting on his bench when news came of the battle of
Lexington, and who threw down hammer and last, and ran wildly out into
the woods, where he stayed three days and nights, calling with a loud
voice upon Almighty God to save him from ill-doing. Then he had drowned
himself in a little brook too shallow for the death of any but a
desperate man. He had been the disgrace of the Joyces; they dared not
think of him, and they know, even to this day, that he is remembered
among their townsmen as the Joyce who was a coward, and killed himself
rather than go to war. But here he stood--was it the man, or some secret
intelligence of him?--and Dilly, out of all his race, was the one to
comprehend him. She saw, with a thrill of passionate sympathy, how he
had believed with all his soul in the wickedness of war, and how the
wound to his country so roused in him the desire of blood that he fled
away and prayed his God to save him from mortal guilt,--and how, finding
that he saw with an overwhelming delight the red of anticipated
slaughter, and knew his traitorous feet were bearing him to the ranks,
he chose the death of the body rather than sin against the soul. And
Dilly was glad; the blood in her own veins ran purer for his sake.
There was old Delilah Joyce, who went into a decline for love, and
wasted quite away. She had been one of those tragic fugitives on the
island of being, driven out into the storm of public sympathy to be
beaten and undone; for she was left on her wedding day by her lover, who
vowed he loved her no more. But now Dilly saw her without the pathetic
bravery of her silken gown which was never worn, and knew her for a
woman serene and glad. That very day she had unfolded the gown in the
attic, where it had lain, year upon year, wrapped about by the poignant
sympathy of her kin, a perpetual reminder of the hurts and faithlessness
of life. It had become a relic, set aside from modern use. She felt now
as if she could even wear it herself, though silk was not for her, or
deck some little child in its shot and shimmering gayety. For it came
to her, with a glad rush of acquiescent joy, that all his life, the man,
though blinded by illusion, had been true to her whom he had left; and
that, instead of being poor, she was very rich. It was from that moment
that Dilly began to understand that the soul does not altogether weld
its own bonds, but that they lie in the secret core of things, as the
planet rushes on its appointed way.
There was Annette Joyce, who married a Stackpole, and, to the disgust of
her kin, clung to him through one debauch after another, until the world
found out that Annette "couldn't have much sense of decency herself, or
she wouldn't put up with such things." But on this one night Dilly found
out that Annette's life had been a continual laying hold of Eternal
Being, not for herself, but for the creature she loved; that she had
shown the insolence and audacity of a thousand spirits in one, besieging
high heaven and crying in the ear of God: "I demand of Thee this soul
that Thou hast made." And somehow Dilly knew now that she was of those
who overcome.
So the line stretched on, until she was aware of souls of which she had
never heard; and she knew that, faulty as their deeds might be, they had
striven, and the strife was not in vain. She felt herself to be one drop
in a mighty river, flowing into the water which is the sum of life; and
she was content to be absorbed in that great stream. There was human
comfort in the moment, too; for all about her were those whom she had
seen with her bodily eyes, and their presence brought an infinite cheer
and rest. Dilly felt the safety of the universe; she smiled lovingly
over the preciousness of all its homely ways. She thought of the
twilights when she had sat on the doorstone, eating huckleberries and
milk, and seeing the sun drop down the west; she remembered one night
when her little cat came home, after it had been lost, and felt the warm
touch of its fur against her hand. She saw how the great chain of things
is held by such slender links, and how there is nothing that is not most
sacred and most good. The hum of summer life outside the window seemed
to her the life in her own veins, and she knew that nothing dwells apart
from anything else, and that, whether we wot of it or not, we are of one
blood.
The night went on to that solemn hush that comes before the dawn. Dilly
felt the presence of the day, and what it would demand of her; but now
she did not fear. For Jethro, too, had been with her; and at last she
understood his power over her and could lay it away like a jewel in a
case, a precious thing, and yet not to be worn. She saw him, also, in
his stream of being, as she was swept along through hers, and knew how
that old race had given him a beauty which was not his, but
theirs,--and how, in the melancholy of his eyes, she loved a soul long
passed, and in the wonder of his hand the tender lines of other hands,
waving to fiery action. He was an inheritor; and she had loved, not him,
but his inheritance.
Now it was the later dusk of night, and the cocks crowed loudly in a
clear diminuendo, dying far away. Dilly pressed her hands upon her eyes,
and came awake to the outer world. She looked about the room with a warm
smile, and reviewed, in feeling, her happy night. It was no longer hard
to dismantle the place. The room, the house, the race were hers forever;
she had learned the abidingness of what is real. When she closed the
door behind her, she touched the casing as if she loved it, and,
crossing the orchard, she felt as if all the trees could say: "We know,
you and we!"
As she entered the Pike farmyard, Eli was just going to milking, with
clusters of shining pails.
"You're up early," said he. "Well, there's nothin' like the mornin'!"
"No," answered Dilly, smiling at him with the radiance of one who
carries good news, "except night-time! There's a good deal in that!" And
while Eli went gravely on, pondering according to his wont, she ran up
to smooth her tumbled bed.
After breakfast, while Mrs. Pike was carrying away the dishes, Dilly
called Jethro softly to one side.
"You come out in the orchard. I want to speak to you."
Her voice thrilled with something like the gladness of confidence, and
Jethro's own face brightened. Dilly read that vivid anticipation, and
caught her breath. Though she knew it now, the old charm would never be
quite gone. She took his hand and drew him forward. She seemed like a
child, unaffected and not afraid. Out in the path, under the oldest tree
of all, she dropped his hand and faced him.
"Jethro," she said, "we can't do it. We can't get married."
He looked at her amazed. She seemed to be telling good news instead of
bad. She gazed up at him smilingly. He could not understand.
"Don't you care about me?" he asked at length, haltingly; and again
Dilly smiled at him in the same warm confidence.
"Oh, yes," she said eagerly. "I do care, ever and ever so much. But it's
your folks I care about. It ain't you. I've found it all out, Jethro.
Things don't al'ays belong to us. Sometimes they belong to them that
have gone before; an' half the time we don't know it."
Jethro laid a gentle hand upon her arm. "You're all tired out," he said
soothingly. "Now you give up picking over things, and let me hire
somebody. I'll be glad to."
But Dilly withdrew a little from his touch. "You're real good, Jethro,"
she answered steadily. She had put aside her exaltation, and was her old
self, full of common-sense and kindly strength. "But I don't feel tired,
an' I ain't a mite crazed. All you can do is to ride over to town with
Eli--he's goin' after he feeds the pigs--an' take the cars from there.
It's all over, Jethro. It is, truly. I ain't so sorry as I might be; for
it's borne in on me you won't care this way long. An' you needn't, dear;
for nothin' between us is changed a mite. The only trouble is, it ain't
the kind of thing we thought."
She looked in his eyes with a long, bright farewell glance, and turned
away. She had left behind her something which was very fine and
beautiful; but she could not mourn. And all that morning, about the
house, she sang little snatches of song, and was content. The Joyces had
done their work, and she was doing hers.
THE WAY OF PEACE