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.
"There!" she said, "I mustn't do so!"--and she walked straight forward
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 shoemaker 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.