HOW THE SECOND LINE CAME IN HER FOREHEAD
IT was when Grandfather died that the second line came across
Grandmother’s clear forehead. Sometimes—when she was playing with the
children, for example—it was so faint one hardly noticed it; but again
it would be deep, a line of thought—or was it pain?—drawn straight as
by a ruler. Manuel noticed it one day, and spoke of it.
“You look troubled, Grandmother. What is it?”
“I have lost my best friend, Manuel,” said Grandmother. “I may well
look troubled; yet it is not trouble either, only sorrow, for missing
him, and for wishing I had done more for him.”
“No one could have done more,” said Manuel; “you were an angel to him.”
He was silent a moment; then he said, “You used to call me your best
friend—once. Shall I call you Pitia again, Grandmother?”
Something in his tone—or was it something _not_ there?—drew the line
deeper across the white forehead. She waited a moment before she spoke,
and then answered carefully, keeping an even tone:
“Perhaps ‘Grandmother’ is better, Manuel; we are all used to it, you
know. Why should we change?”
“As you please!” said Manuel; and whether there was more regret or
relief in his voice, who shall say? He lingered a moment, hesitating,
with words on his lips which seemed to hang, unready for utterance; and
Grandmother stood very still, only her breath fluttering a little; but
he need not see that, and did not.
Suddenly from the garden came a voice, clear, shrill, imperious;
Rachel’s voice. “Manuel, where are you? I want you! come, quick.”
Manuel gave one glance at the still face; hesitated a moment; then
muttering something about “Back soon!” he went out.
Little Grandmother stood very still. Sounds crept through her
ears,—the clock ticking, the old cat purring on the hearth, the
song-sparrow singing loud and clear in the apple-tree outside the
sitting-room window,—but she did not heed them. Her eyes were wide
open, fixed on the door through which Manuel had gone. It formed a
lovely picture, blossoming trees, waving grass (winter had come and
gone since Grandfather died), gay flower-beds; but she did not see
them. Only when two figures crossed the space, a girl in a scarlet
dress, a man at her side, looking down as she laughed up in his face,
Grandmother shivered a little, and went over to where the great
work-basket stood, and caught up her sewing with a kind of passion. “I
have you!” she said. “You are mine, good little stitches dear, kind,
good little stitches!”
If I have not said much about Manuel, it is because there is not very
much to say. He was a handsome lad, and a merry one. His laziness did
not show much till after Grandfather’s death, for he feared and loved
the old man, and did his best to please him. How he should have made
the effort to cross the Continent in search of Grandmother was one of
the things that could not be understood. It was like a fire of straw,
as Mrs. Peace said; it burned up bright, but there were no coals left.
Mrs. Peace had little patience with Manuel. He had been boarding with
her now for two years, and had never once, so she said, wiped his
feet as they should be wiped when he came into the house. Also she
pronounced him lazy, shiftless, careless, and selfish.
“If he marries Rachel,” she said, “there’ll be a pair of ’em, and a
precious pair, too. I’m going to give him a piece of my mind before I
sleep to-night.”
“That’s a real pretty skirt of Rachel’s, mother,” said Anne. “Don’t you
want I should stroke the gathers?”
“You may stroke the gathers, Anne, but you can’t stroke me,” said her
mother gently. “I tell you I am going to give that fellow a piece of my
mind. Yes, it is a pretty dress, and it’s the third Rachel Merion has
had this spring, and if you’ll tell me when Grandmother has had a new
dress, I’ll give you the next ninepence that’s coined.”
“Grandmother always looks like a picture, I’m sure,” said Anne.
“I’ve no special patience with Grandmother,” said Mrs. Peace, “nor yet
with you, Anne Peace. If the Lord had meant for us to be angels here,
it’s likely he would have provided us with wings and robes, ’cordin’
to. When I see an angel in a calico dress goin’ round askin’ folks
won’t they please wipe their feet on her and save their carpets, I want
to shake her.”
“Shake Grandmother?” said Anne, opening great eyes of reproach.
“There’s Manuel now!” said Widow Peace. “You might take this waist home
to Mis’ Wyman, if you’ve a mind to, Anne.”
It is not known precisely what Mrs. Peace said to Manuel Santos. Anne,
on her return from Mrs. Wyman’s, met him coming out, in a white flame
of rage. He glared at her, and muttered something under his breath, but
made no articulate reply.
“Chatterin’ mad, he was!” Mrs. Peace said calmly, in answer to Anne’s
anxious questions. “Fairly chatterin’ mad. I don’t know, Anne, whether
I’ve done harm or good, but something had to be done, and there’s times
when harm is better than nothing.”
“Why, Mother Peace!” exclaimed Anne, aghast. “How you talk!”
“It don’t sound pretty, does it?” said the widow; “but I believe it’s a
fact. Something will happen now, you see if it don’t.”
Something did happen. Manuel, still white and inarticulate with rage,
met Rachel in the garden, on his way to the house; Rachel in her red
dress, with scarlet poppies in her hair and hands. She was waiting for
him, perhaps; certainly, at sight of him, the color and light flashed
into her face in a way that might have moved a stronger man than Manuel.
“Manuel!” she cried. “What’s the matter? what makes you look so queer?
are you sick, Manuel?”
“Yes!” cried the man roughly. “I am sick! sick of this place, sick of
these people. I am going away, back to the west, where a man can live
without being watched and spied upon and stung by ants and wasps.”
“Going away! Manuel!” the poppies dropped from the girl’s hands, the
rich color fled from her cheeks. “If you go,” she said simply, “I shall
die.” Rachel had never learned to govern herself.
Well, after that there was only one way out of it—at least for a man
like Manuel. Among all these cold, thin-blooded Eastern folk, here was
one whose blood ran warm and swift and red like his own. No satin lily
that a man dared not touch, but a bright poppy like those in her hair,
fit and ready to be gathered. Yet when he passed the white lilies, with
his arm round the girl, his promised wife—even while he looked down at
the rapture of her face and thrilled at the thrill in her voice—the
fragrance of the lilies seemed a tangible thing, like a thorn that
pierced him.
At the garden door they parted. He had to see to the stock, he said;
would Rachel tell Grandmother?
Rachel ran into the house, calling Grandmother. There was no answer;
but listening she heard the sound of the wheel in the big empty chamber
overhead. She ran up-stairs, still calling. Grandmother was spinning
wool—she loved to spin—at the great wool-wheel, stepping lightly
back and forward; but at the first sound of Rachel’s voice below she
stopped, and put her hand to her heart. She was standing so when the
girl rushed in, panting and radiant.
“Grandmother! why didn’t you answer? didn’t you hear me?” She never
waited for an answer but ran on in a torrent of speech. “Grandmother,
I’ve been hateful to you, and I’m sorry. Do you hear? I’m sorry,
sorry; I’m so happy now, I mean to be good, good all the time. Do you
know what’s going to happen, Grandmother? guess! I’ll give you three
guesses—no, I won’t, I won’t give you one! I must tell you. I am going
to marry Manuel. Grandmother, are you glad? You are so good, I suppose
you’ll be glad. I should hate you, I should kill you, if it were you
who were going to marry Manuel. Do you know”—she caught her breath a
moment, then laughed on, the laugh rippling through her speech—“do you
know, Grandmother, I have been jealous of you. I’ve always been jealous
I guess; first because of Grandfather—poor old Grandfather, what a
pity he isn’t alive to know!—and then—and lately—oh, Grandmother,
I didn’t know—I didn’t know but he might care about you. Are you
laughing? it is funny, isn’t it?” But Grandmother was not laughing.
“I might have known!” the girl went on, “I needn’t have been afraid,
need I, Grandmother? You aren’t like other folks, you’ve never lived;
you don’t know what life is, do you, Grandmother? I’d be sorry for you
if I wasn’t so glad for myself, so glad, so glad! Do you think I’m
crazy? I want to kiss you, little Grandmother! What’s the matter? did
my pin scratch you?”
Grandmother had given a cry as the girl flung her arms round her; a
little low cry, instantly silent.
“Yes—dear,” she said quietly, but with that little flutter in her
voice that one who loved her might have noticed; “I think it must have
been the pin. Oh, Rachel,” she said, “I hope you will be so happy, so
happy! I hope there will never be anything but happiness for you and
Manuel, my dear.”
Rachel opened her dark eyes wide. “Why, of course there won’t!” she
said.
“Grandmother’s all right!” she said an hour later, when she had run to
meet her lover in the dewy orchard, and they were coming home together
in the sunset light; “she’s all right. She didn’t say much—I don’t
know as I gave her a chance, Manuel. I had so much to say myself; but
she was real pleased, and wished me joy. She’s good, Grandmother is. I
mean never to be hateful to her again if I can help it. How sweet those
lilies smell, Manuel!”
“Is she happy, do you think?” said Manuel; it seemed to say itself,
without will of his.
“Who? Grandmother? of course she is! You don’t expect her to cry all
her life for an old man, do you? She’s as happy as a person can be who
has never lived. Hush! hear her singing this minute!”
Yes! hear her singing, in the quiet twilight garden where she walks
alone.
“‘Oh! brother, tell me here
Why hold that soul so dear?’
‘Because, alas! since e’er ’twas born,
I feel the piercing of its thorn.’”