She poured it as if it were poison, and Josiah became conscious of her
tragic self-control.
"You ain't eat a thing," said he, with an ostentatious kindliness. He
bent forward a little, with the air of inviting a confidence. "Got
suthin' on your mind, ain't you, 'Melia?" he whispered. "Kind o'
worried? Find he's a drinkin' man?"
Amelia was not to be beguiled, even by that anger which veils itself as
justice. She looked at him steadily, with scorching eyes.
"You ain't took any sugar," said she. "There 't is, settin' by you.
Help yourself."
Josiah addressed himself to his tea, and then Amelia poured him another
cup. She had some fierce satisfaction in making it good and strong. It
seemed to her that she was heartening her adversary for the fray, and
she took pleasure in doing it effectually. So great was the spirit
within her that she knew he could not be too valiant, for her keener
joy in laying him low. Then they rose from the table, and Josiah took
his old place by the stove, while Amelia began carrying the dishes to
the sink. Her mind was a little hazy now; her next move must depend on
his, and cousin Josiah, somewhat drowsy from his good dinner, was not
at once inclined to talk. Suddenly he raised his head snakily from
those sunken shoulders, and pointed a lean finger to the window.
"'Melia!" cried he sharply. "I'll be buttered if he ain't been and
traded off both your cows. My Lord! be you goin' to stan' there an' let
them two cows go?"
Amelia gave one swift glance from the window, following the path marked
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 'tis. 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 rather 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.