by cold, and eaten their noon dinner in high spirits, retailing to the
less fortunate women-folk the stories swapped on the march. Then, as one
man, they succumbed to the drowsiness induced by a morning of wind in
the face, and sat by the stove under some pretense of reading the county
paper, but really to nod and doze, waking only to put another stick of
wood on the fire. So passed all the day before Christmas, and in the
evening the shining lamps were lighted (each with a strip of red flannel
in the oil, to give color), and the neighborhood rested in the tranquil
certainty that something had really come to pass, and that their
communication with the world was reëstablished.
Susan Peavey sat by the fire, knitting on a red mitten, and the young
schoolmaster presided over the other hearth corner, reading very hard,
at intervals, and again sinking into a drowsy study of the flames. There
was an impression abroad in Tiverton that the schoolmaster was going to
be somebody, some time. He wrote for the papers. He was always receiving
through the mail envelopes marked "author's proofs," which, the
postmistress said, indicated that he was an author, whatever proofs
might be. She had an idea they might have something to do with
photographs; perhaps his picture was going into a book. It was very well
understood that teaching school at the Hollow, at seven dollars a week,
was an interlude in the life of one who would some day write a
spelling-book, or exercise senatorial rights at Washington. He was a
long-legged, pleasant looking youth, with a pale cheek, dark eyes, and
thick black hair, one lock of which, hanging low over his forehead, he
twisted while he read. He kept glancing up at Miss Susan and smiling at
her, whenever he could look away from his book and the fire, and she
smiled back. At last, after many such wordless messages, he spoke.
"What lots of red mittens you do knit! Do you send them all away to that
society?"
Miss Susan's needles clicked.
"Every one," said she.
She was a tall, large woman, well-knit, with no superfluous flesh. Her
head was finely set, and she carried it with a simple unconsciousness
better than dignity. Everybody in Tiverton thought it had been a great
cross to Susan Peavey to be so overgrown. They conceded that it was a
mystery she had not turned out "gormin'." But that was because Susan had
left her vanity behind with early youth, in the days when, all legs and
arms, she had given up the idea of beauty. Her face was strong-featured,
overspread by a healthy color, and her eyes looked frankly out, as if
assured of finding a very pleasant world. The sick always delighted in
Susan's nearness; her magnificent health and presence were like a
supporting tide, and she seemed to carry outdoor air in her very
garments. The schoolmaster still watched her. She rested and fascinated
him at once by her strength and homely charm.
"I shall call you the Orphans' Friend," said he.
She laid down her work.
"Don't you say one word," she answered, with an air of abject
confession. "It don't interest me a mite! I give because it's my bounden
duty, but I'll be whipped if I want to knit warm mittens all my life,
an' fill poor barrels. Sometimes I wisht I could git a chance to provide
folks with what they don't need ruther'n what they do."
"I don't see what you mean," said the schoolmaster. "Tell me."
Miss Susan was looking at the hearth. A warmer flush than that of
firelight alone lay on her cheek. She bent forward and threw on a pine
knot. It blazed richly. Then she drew the cricket more securely under
her feet, and settled herself to gossip.
"Anybody'd think I'd most talked myself out sence you come here to
board," said she, "but you're the beatemest for tolin' anybody on. I
never knew I had so much to say. But there! I guess we all have, if
there's anybody 't wants to listen. I never've said this to a livin'
soul, an' I guess it's sort o' heathenish to think, but I'm tired to
death o' fightin' ag'inst poverty, poverty! I s'pose it's there, fast
enough, though we're all so well on 't we don't realize it; an' I'm
goin' to do my part, an' be glad to, while I'm above ground. But I guess
heaven'll be a spot where we don't give folks what they need, but what
they don't."
"There is something in your Bible," began the schoolmaster hesitatingly,
"about a box of precious ointment." He always said "your Bible," as if
church members held a proprietary right.
"That's it!" replied Miss Susan, brightening. "That's what I al'ays
thought. Spill it all out, I say, an' make the world smell as sweet as
honey. My! but I do have great projicks settin' here by the fire alone!
Great projicks!"
"Tell me some!"
"Well, I dunno's I can, all of a piece, so to speak; but when it gits
along towards eight o'clock, an' the room's all simmerin', an' the moon
lays out on the snow, it does seem as if we made a pretty poor spec' out
o' life. We don't seem to have no color in it. Why, don't you remember
'Solomon in all his glory'? I guess 't wouldn't ha' been put in jest
that way if there wa'n't somethin' in it. I s'pose he had crowns an'
rings an' purple velvet coats an' brocade satin weskits, an' all manner
o' things. Sometimes seems as I could see him walkin' straight in
through that door there." She was running a knitting needle back and
forth through her ball of yarn as she spoke, without noticing that some
one had been stamping the snow from his feet on the doorstone outside.
The door, after making some bluster of refusal, was pushed open, and on
the heels of her speech a man walked in.
"My land!" cried Miss Susan, aghast. Then she and the schoolmaster, by
one accord, began to laugh.
But the man did not look at them until he had scrupulously wiped his
feet on the husk mat, and stamped them anew. Then he turned down the
legs of his trousers, and carefully examined the lank green carpet-bag
he had been carrying.
"I guess I trailed it through some o' the drifts," he remarked. "The
road's pretty narrer, this season o' the year."
"You give us a real start," said Susan. "We thought be sure 't was
Solomon, an' mebbe the Queen o' Sheba follerin' arter. Why, Solon Slade,
you ain't walked way over to Tiverton Street!"
"Yes, I have," asserted Solon. He was a slender, sad-colored man,
possibly of her own age, and he spoke in a very soft voice. He was
Susan's widowed brother-in-law, and the neighbors said he was clever,
but hadn't no more spunk'n a wet rag.
Susan had risen and laid down her knitting. She approached the table and
rested one hand on it, a hawk-like brightness in her eyes.
"What you got in that bag?" asked she.
Solon was enjoying his certainty that he held the key to the situation.
"I got a mite o' cheese," he answered, approaching the fire and
spreading his hands to the blaze.
"You got anything else? Now, Solon, don't you keep me here on
tenter-hooks! You got a letter?"
"Well," said Solon, "I thought I might as well look into the post-office
an' see."
"You thought so! You went a-purpose! An' you walked because you al'ays
was half shackled about takin' horses out in bad goin'. You hand me over
that letter!"
Solon approached the table, a furtive twinkle in his blue eyes. He
lifted the bag and opened it slowly. First, he took out a wedge-shaped
package.
"That's the cheese," said he. "Herb."
"My land!" ejaculated Miss Susan, while the schoolmaster looked on and
smiled. "You better ha' come to me for cheese. I've got a plenty, tansy
an' sage, an' you know it. I see it! There! you gi' me holt on 't!" It
was a fugitive white gleam in the bottom of the bag; she pounced upon it
and brought up a letter. Midway in the act of tearing it open, she
paused and looked at Solon with droll entreaty. "It's your letter, by
rights!" she added tentatively.
"Law!" said he, "I dunno who it's directed to, but I guess it's as much
your'n as anybody's."
Miss Susan spread open the sheets with an air of breathless delight. She
bent nearer the lamp. "'Dear father and auntie,'" she began.
"There!" remarked Solon, in quiet satisfaction, still warming his hands
at the blaze. "There! you see _'t is_ to both."
"My! how she does run the words together! Here!" Miss Susan passed it to
the schoolmaster. "You read it. It's from Jenny. You know she's away to
school, an' we didn't think best for her to come home Christmas. I knew
she'd write for Christmas. Solon, I told you so!"
The schoolmaster took the letter, and read it aloud. It was a simple
little message, full of contentment and love and a girl's new delight in
life. When he had finished, the two older people busied themselves a
moment without speaking, Solon in picking up a chip from the hearth, and
Susan in mechanically smoothing the mammoth roses on the side of the
carpet-bag.
"Well, I 'most wish we'd had her come home," said he at last, clearing
his throat.
"No, you don't either," answered Miss Susan promptly. "Not with this
snow, an' comin' out of a house where it's het up, into cold beds an'
all. Now I'm goin' to git you a mite o' pie an' some hot tea."
She set forth a prodigal supper on a leaf of the table, and Solon
silently worked his will upon it, the schoolmaster eating a bit for
company. Then Solon took his way home to the house across the yard, and
she watched at the window till she saw the light blaze up through his
panes. That accomplished, she turned back with a long breath and began
clearing up.
"I'm worried to death to have him over there all by himself," said she.
"S'pose he should be sick in the night!"
"You'd go over," answered the schoolmaster easily.
"Well, s'pose he couldn't git me no word?"
"Oh, you'd know it! You're that sort."
Miss Susan laughed softly, and so seemed to put away her recurrent
anxiety. She came back to her knitting.
"How long has his wife been dead?" asked the schoolmaster.
"Two year. He an' Jenny got along real well together, but sence
September, when she went away, I guess he's found it pretty dull
pickin'. I do all I can, but land! 't ain't like havin' a woman in the
house from sunrise to set."
"There's nothing like that," agreed the wise young schoolmaster. "Now
let's play some more. Let's plan what we'd like to do to-morrow for all
the folks we know, and let's not give them a thing they need, but just
the ones they'd like."
Miss Susan put down her knitting again. She never could talk to the
schoolmaster and keep at work. It made her dreamy, exactly as it did to
sit in the hot summer sunshine, with the droning of bees in the air.
"Well," said she, "there's old Ann Wheeler that lives over on the
turnpike. She don't want for nothin', but she keeps her things packed
away up garret, an' lives like a pig."
"'Sold her bed and lay in the straw.'"
"That's it, on'y she won't sell nuthin'. I'd give her a house all
winders, so 't she couldn't help lookin' out, an' velvet carpets 't
she'd got to walk on."
"Well, there's Cap'n Ben. The boys say he's out of his head a good deal
now; he fancies himself at sea and in foreign countries."
"Yes, so they say. Well, I'd let him set down a spell in Solomon's
temple an' look round him. My sake! do you remember about the temple?
Why, the nails was all gold. Don't you wish we'd lived in them times?
Jest think about the wood they had--cedars o' Lebanon an' fir-trees. You
know how he set folks to workin' in the mountains. I've al'ays thought
I'd like to ben up on them mountains an' heard the axes ringin' an'
listened to the talk. An' then there was pomegranates an' cherubim, an'
as for silver an' gold, they were as common as dirt. When I was a little
girl, I learnt them chapters, an' sometimes now, when I'm settin' by the
fire, I say over that verse about the 'man of Tyre, skillful to work in
gold, and in silver, in brass, in iron, in stone, and in timber, in
purple, in blue, and in fine linen, and in crimson.' My! ain't it rich?"
She drew a long breath of surfeited enjoyment. The schoolmaster's eyes
burned under his heavy brows.
"Then things smelt so good in them days," continued Miss Susan. "They
had myrrh an' frankincense, an' I dunno what all. I never make my
mincemeat 'thout snuffin' at the spice-box to freshen up my mind. No
matter where I start, some way or another I al'ays git back to Solomon.
Well, if Cap'n Ben wants to see foreign countries, I guess he'd be glad
to set a spell in the temple. Le's have on another stick--that big one
there by you. My! it's the night afore Christmas, ain't it? Seems if I
couldn't git a big enough blaze. Pile it on. I guess I'd as soon set the
chimbly afire as not!"
There was something overflowing and heady in her enjoyment. It
exhilarated the schoolmaster, and he lavished stick after stick on the
ravening flames. The maple hardened into coals brighter than its own
panoply of autumn; the delicate bark of the birch flared up and
perished.
"Miss Susan," said he, "don't you want to see all the people in the
world?"
"Oh, I dunno! I'd full as lieves set here an' think about 'em. I can fix
'em up full as well in my mind, an' perhaps they suit me better'n if I
could see 'em. Sometimes I set 'em walkin' through this kitchen, kings
an' queens an' all. My! how they do shine, all over precious stones. I
never see a di'mond, but I guess I know pretty well how 't would look."
"Suppose we could give a Christmas dinner,--what should we have?"
"We'd have oxen roasted whole, an' honey--an'--but that's as fur as I
can git."
The schoolmaster had a treasury of which she had never learned, and he
said musically:--
... "'a heap Of candied apple, quince, and plum, and gourd; With jellies
soother than the creamy curd, And lucid syrops, tinct with cinnamon;
Manna and dates, in argosy transferr'd From Fez; and spicéd dainties,
every one, From silken Samarcand to cedar'd Lebanon.'"
"Yes, that has a real nice sound. It ain't like the Bible, but it's
nice."
They sat and dreamed and the fire flared up into living arabesques and
burnt blue in corners. A stick parted and fell into ash, and Miss Susan
came awake. She had the air of rousing herself with vigor.
"There!" said she, "sometimes I think it's most sinful to make believe,
it's so hard to wake yourself up. Arter all this, I dunno but when Solon
comes for the pigs' kittle to-morrer, I shall ketch myself sayin',
'Here's the frankincense!'"
They laughed together, and the schoolmaster rose to light his lamp. He
paused on his way to the stairs, and came back to set it down again.
"There are lots of people we haven't provided for," he said. "We haven't
even thought what we'd give Jenny."
"I guess Jenny's got her heart's desire." Miss Susan nodded sagely.
"I've sent her a box, with a fruit-cake an' pickles and cheese. She's
all fixed out."
The schoolmaster hesitated, and turned the lamp-wick up and down. Then
he spoke, somewhat timidly, "What should you like to give her father?"
Miss Susan's face clouded with that dreamy look which sometimes settled
upon her eyes like haze.
"Well," said she, "I guess whatever I should give him 'd only make him
laugh."
"Flowers--and velvet--and honey--and myrrh?"
"Yes," answered Miss Susan with gravity. "Perhaps it's jest as well some
things ain't to be had at the shops."
The schoolmaster took up his lamp again and walked to the door.
"We never can tell," he said. "It may be people want things awfully
without knowing it. And suppose they do laugh! They'd better laugh than
cry. _I_ should give all I could. Good-night."
Miss Susan banked up the fire and set her rising of dough on the hearth,
after a discriminating peep to see whether it was getting on too fast.
After that, she covered her plants by the window and blew out the light,
so that the moon should have its way. She lingered for a moment, looking
out into a glittering world. Not a breath stirred. The visible universe
lay asleep, and only beauty waked. She was aching with a tumultuous
emotion--the sense that life might be very fair and shining, if we only
dared to shape it as it seems to us in dreams. The loveliness and
repose of the earth appealed to her like a challenge; they alone made it
seem possible for her also to dare.
Next morning, she rose earlier than usual, while the schoolmaster was
still fast bound in sleep. She stayed only to start her kitchen fire,
and then stood motionless a moment for a last decision. The great white
day was beginning outside with slow, unconscious royalty. The pale
winter dawn yielded to a flush of rose; nothing in the aspect of the
heavens contradicted the promise of the night before. It seemed to her a
wonderful day, dramatic, visible in peace, because, on that morning, all
the world was thinking of the world and not of individual desires. She
went to the bureau drawer in the sitting-room and looked, a little
scornfully, at two packages hidden there. Handkerchiefs for the
schoolmaster, stockings and gloves for Solon! Shutting the drawer, she
hurried out into the kitchen, snatching her scissors from the
work-basket by the way. She gave herself no time to think, but went up
to her flower-stand and began to cut the geranium blossoms and the rose.
The fuchsias hung in flaunting grace. They were dearer to her than all.
She snipped them recklessly, and because the bunch seemed meagre still,
broke the top from her sweet-scented geranium and disposed the flowers
hastily in the midst. Her posy was sweet-smelling and good; it spoke to
the heart. Putting a shawl over her head, she rolled the flowers in her
apron from the frost, and stepped out into the brilliant day. The little
cross-track between her house and the other was snowed up; but she took
the road and, hurrying between banks of carven whiteness, went up
Solon's path to the side door. She walked in upon him where he was
standing over the kitchen stove, warming his hands at the first blaze.
Susan's cheeks were red with the challenge of the stinging air, but she
had the look of one who, living by a larger law, has banished the
foolishness of fear. She walked straight up to him and proffered him her
flowers.
"Here, Solon," she said, "it's Christmas. I brought you these."
Solon looked at her and at them, in slow surprise. He put out both hands
and took them awkwardly.
"Well!" he said. "Well!"
Susan was smiling at him. It seemed to her at that moment that the world
was a very rich place, because you may take all you want and give all
you choose, while nobody is the wiser.
"Well," remarked Solon again, "I guess I'll put 'em into water." He laid
them down on a chair. "Susan, do you remember that time I walked over to
Pine Hill to pick you some mayflowers, when you was gittin' over the
lung fever?"
She nodded.
"Susan," said he desperately, "what if I should ask you to forgit old
scores an' begin all over?"
"I ain't laid up anything," answered Susan, looking him full in the face
with her brilliant smile.
"There's suthin' I've wanted to tell ye, this two year. I never s'posed
you knew, but that night I kissed your sister in the entry an' asked
her, I thought 'twas you."
"Yes, I knew that well enough. I was in the buttery and heard it all.
There, le's not talk about it."
Solon came a step nearer.
"But will you, Susan?" he persisted. "Will you? I know Jenny'd like it."
"I guess she would, too," said Susan. "There! we don't need to talk no
further! You come over to breakfast, won't you? I'm goin' to fry
chicken. It's Christmas mornin'." She nodded at him and went out,
walking perhaps more proudly than usual down the shining path. Solon,
regardless of his cooling kitchen, stood at the door and watched her.
Solon never said very much, but he felt as if life were beginning all
over again, just as he had wished to make it at the very start. He
forgot his gray hair and furrowed face, just as he forgot the cold and
snow. It was the spring of the year.
When Miss Susan entered her kitchen, the schoolmaster had come down and
was putting a stick of wood into the stove.
"Merry Christmas!" he called, "and here's something for you."
A long white package lay on the table at the end where her plate was
always set. She opened it with delicate touches, it seemed so precious.
"My sake!" said she. "It's a fan!" She lifted it out, and the fragrance
of an Eastern wood filled all the room. She swept open the feathers.
They were white and wonderful.
"It was never used except by one very beautiful woman," said the
schoolmaster, without looking at her. "She was a good deal older than I;
but somehow she seemed to belong to me. She died, and I thought I should
like to have you keep this."
Susan was waving it back and forth before her face, stirring the air to
fragrance. Her eyes were full of dreams. "My! ain't it rich!" she
murmured. "The Queen o' Sheba never had no better. An' Solon's comin'
over to breakfast."
A SECOND MARRIAGE
Amelia Porter sat by her great open fireplace, where the round,
consequential black kettle hung from the crane, and breathed out a
steamy cloud to be at once licked up and absorbed by the heat from a
snatching flame below. It was exactly a year and a day since her
husband's death, and she had packed herself away in his own corner of
the settle, her hands clasped across her knees, and her red-brown eyes
brooding on the nearer embers. She was not definitely speculating on her
future, nor had she any heart for retracing the dull and gentle past.
She had simply relaxed hold on her mind; and so, escaping her, it had
gone wandering off into shadowy prophecies of the immediate years. For,
as Amelia had been telling herself for the last three months, since she
had begun to outgrow the habit of a dual life, she was not old. Whenever
she looked in the glass, she could not help noting how free from
wrinkles her swarthy face had been kept, and that the line of her mouth
was still scarlet over white, even teeth. Her crisp black hair, curling
in those tight fine rolls which a bashful admirer had once commended as
"full of little jerks," showed not a trace of gray. All this evidence
of her senses read her a fair tale of the possibilities of the morrow;
and without once saying, "I will take up a new life," she did tacitly
acknowledge that life was not over.
It was a "snapping cold" night of early spring, so misplaced as to bring
with it a certain dramatic excitement. The roads were frozen hard, and
shone like silver in the ruts. All day sleds had gone creaking past, set
to that fine groaning which belongs to the music of the year. The
drivers' breath ascended in steam, the while they stamped down the
probability of freezing, and yelled to Buck and Broad until that inner
fervor raised them one degree in warmth. The smoking cattle held their
noses low, and swayed beneath the yoke.
Amelia, shut snugly in her winter-tight house, had felt the power of the
day without sharing its discomforts; and her eyes deepened and burned
with a sense of the movement and warmth of living. To-night, under the
spell of some vague expectancy, she had sat still for a long time, her
sewing laid aside and her room scrupulously in order. She was waiting
for what was not to be acknowledged even to her own intimate self. But
as the clock struck nine, she roused herself, and shook off her mood in
impatience and a disappointment which she would not own. She looked
about the room, as she often had of late, and began to enumerate its
possibilities in case she should desire to have it changed. Amelia never
went so far as to say that change should be; she only felt that she had
still a right to speculate upon it, as she had done for many years, as a
form of harmless enjoyment. While every other house in the neighborhood
had gone from the consistently good to the prosperously bad in the
matter of refurnishing, John Porter had kept his precisely as his
grandfather had left it to him. Amelia had never once complained; she
had observed toward her husband an unfailing deference, due, she felt,
to his twenty years' seniority; perhaps, also, it stood in her own mind
as the only amends she could offer him for having married him without
love. It was her father who made the match; and Amelia had succumbed,
not through the obedience claimed by parents of an elder day, but from
hot jealousy and the pique inevitably born of it. Laurie Morse had kept
the singing-school that winter. He had loved Amelia; he had bound
himself to her by all the most holy vows sworn from aforetime, and then,
in some wanton exhibit of power--gone home with another girl. And for
Amelia's responsive throb of feminine anger, she had spent fifteen years
of sober country living with a man who had wrapped her about with the
quiet tenderness of a strong nature, but who was not of her own
generation either in mind or in habit; and Laurie had kept a
music-store in Saltash, seven miles away, and remained unmarried.