Amelia Maxwell sat by the front-chamber window of the great house
overlooking the road, and her own "story-an'-a-half" farther toward the
west. Every day she was alone under her own roof, save at the times when
old lady Knowles of the great house summoned her for work at fine sewing
or braiding rags. All Amelia's kin were dead. Now she was used to their
solemn absence, and sufficiently at one with her own humble way of life,
letting her few acres at the halves, and earning a dollar here and there
with her clever fingers. She was but little over forty, yet she was
aware that her life, in its keener phases, was already done. She had had
her romance and striven to forget it; but out of that time pathetic
voices now and then called to her, and old longings awoke, to breathe
for a moment and then sleep again.
Amelia seemed, even to old lady Knowles, who knew her best, a cheerful,
humorous body; but only Amelia saw the road by which her serenity had
come. Chiefly it was through an inexplicable devotion to the great
house. She could not remember a time when it was not wonderful to her.
While she was a little girl, living alone with her mother, she used to
sit on the doorstone with her bread and milk at bedtime, and think of
the great house, how grand it was and large. There was a wonderful way
the sun had of falling, at twilight, across the pillars of its porch
where the elm drooped sweetly, and in the moonlight it was like a fairy
city. But the morning was perhaps the best moment of all. The great
house was painted a pale yellow, and when Amelia awoke with the sun in
her little unshaded chamber, she thought how dark the blinds were there,
with such a solemn richness in their green. The flower-beds in front
were beautiful to her; but the back garden, lying alongside the orchard,
and stretching through tangles of sweet-william and rose, was an
enchanted spot to play in. The child that was, used to wander there and
feel very rich. Now, a woman, she sat in the great house sewing, and
felt rich again. As it happened, for one of the many times it came to
her, she was thinking what the great house had done for her. Old lady
Knowles had, in her stately way, been a kind of patron saint, and in
that summer, years ago, when Amelia's romance died and she had drooped
like a starving plant, Rufus, the old lady's son, had seemed to see her
trouble and stood by her. He did not speak of it. He only took her for
long drives, and made his cheerful presence evident in many ways, and
when he died, with a tragic suddenness, Amelia used selfishly to feel
that he had lived at least long enough to keep her from failing of that
inner blight.
On this day when old lady Knowles had gone with Ann, her faithful help,
to see the cousin to whom she made pilgrimage once a year, Amelia
resolved to enjoy herself to the full. She laid down her sewing, from
time to time, to look about her at the poppy-strewn paper, the four-post
bed and flowered tester, the great fireplace with its shining dogs, and
the Venus and Cupid mirror. Over and over again she had played that the
house was hers, and to-day, through some heralding excitement in the
air, it seemed doubly so. She sat in a dream of housewifely possession,
conning idly over the pleasant things she might do before the day was
over. There was cold tongue for her dinner, Ann had told her, and a
clear soup, if she liked to heat it. She might cook vegetables if she
chose. And there was the best of tea to be made out of the china caddy,
and rich cake in the parlor crock. After one such glad deliberation, she
caught her sewing guiltily up from her lap and began to set compensating
stitches. But even then her conscience slept unstirred. Old lady Knowles
was in no hurry for the work, she knew, and she would make up for her
dreaming in the account of her day.
There was a sound without. The gate swung softly shut and a man came up
the path. Amelia, at the glance, rose quickly, dropped her sewing, and
hurried out and down the stairs. The front door was open, she knew, and
though there was never anything to be afraid of, still the house was in
her charge. At the door she met him, just lifting his hand to touch the
knocker. He was a tall, weedy fellow of something more than her own age,
with light hair and blue eyes and a strangely arrested look, as if he
obstinately, and against his own advantage, continued to keep young.
Amelia knew him at once, as he did her, though it was twenty years since
they had met.
"Why, Jared Beale!" she faltered.
He was much moved. The flush came quickly to his face in a way she had
known, and his eyes softened.
"I should ha' recognized ye anywheres, Milly," he asserted.
She still stood looking at him, unable to ask him in or to make apology
for the lack.
"I went straight to your house from the train," he said. "'Twas all shut
up. Don't anybody live there now?"
"Yes," answered Amelia, "somebody lives there." The red had come into
her cheeks, and her eyes burned brightly. Then as he looked at her
hesitatingly, in the way he used to look, she trembled a little.
"Come in, Jared," she said, retreating a hospitable space. "Come right
in."
She stood aside, and then, when he stepped over the sill, led the way
into the dining-room, where there was a cool green light from the
darkened blinds, and the only window open to the sun disclosed a
trembling grapevine and a vista down the garden path. Amelia drew
forward a chair, with a decided motion.
"Sit down," she said, and busied herself with opening a blind.
When she took her own chair opposite him, she found that he had laid his
hat beside him on the floor, and, with the tips of his fingers together,
was bending forward in an attitude belonging to his youth. He was
regarding her with the slightly blurred look of his near-sighted eyes,
and she began hastily to speak.
"You stayin' round these parts?"
"No," said Jared, "no. I had to come east on business. There was some
property to be settled up in Beulah, so I thought I'd jest step down
here an' see how things were."
"Beulah!" she repeated. "Why, that's fifty miles from here!"
"Yes," returned Jared. "It's a matter o' fifty mile. Fact is," he said
uneasily, "I didn't know how you was fixed. It's kinder worried me."
A flush ran into her face, to the roots of her pretty hair; yet her
frank eyes never left him. Then her evasive speech belied her look.
"I get along real well. I s'pose you knew mother wa'n't with me now?"
"I ain't heard a word from here for seventeen year," he said, half
bitterly, as if the silence had been hard to bear. "There's no way for
me to hear now. The last was from Tom Merrick. He said you'd begun to
go with Rufus Knowles."
Amelia trembled over her whole body.
"That was a good while ago," she ventured.
"Yes, 'twas. A good many things have come an' gone. An' now Rufus is
dead--I see his death in an old paper--an' here you be, his widder,
livin' in the old house."
"Why!" breathed Amelia, "why!" She choked upon the word, but before she
could deny it he had begun again, in gentle reminiscence.
"'Twon't harm nobody to talk over old times a mite, Amelia. Mebbe that's
what I come on for, though I thought 'twas to see how you was fixed. I
thought mebbe I should find you livin' kinder near the wind, an' mebbe
you'd let me look out for you a mite."
The tears came into Amelia's eyes. She looked about her as if she owned
the room, the old china, and the house.
"That's real good of you, Jared," she said movingly. "I sha'n't ever
forget it. But you see for yourself. I don't want for nothin'."
"I guess we should ha' thought 'twas queer, when you went trottin' by to
school," he said irrelevantly, "if anybody'd told you you'd reign over
the old Knowles house."
"Yes," said Amelia softly, again looking about her, this time with love
and thankfulness, "I guess they would. You leave your wife well?" she
asked suddenly, perhaps to suggest the reality of his own house of life.
Jared shook his head.
"She ain't stepped a step for seven year."
"Oh, my!" grieved Amelia. "Won't she ever be any better?"
"No. We've had all the doctors, eclectic an' herb besides, an' they
don't give her no hope. She was a great driver. We laid up money steady
them years before she was took down. She knew how to make an' she knew
how to save."
His face settled into lines of brooding recollection. Immediately Amelia
was aware that those years had been bitter to him, and that the fruit of
them was stale and dry. She cut by instinct into a pleasant by-path.
"You play your fiddle any now?"
He started out of his maze at life.
"No," he owned, "no!" as if he hardly remembered such a thing had been.
"I dropped that more'n fifteen year ago."
"Seems if my feet never could keep still when you played 'Money Musk,'"
avowed Amelia, her eyes shining. "'The Road to Boston,' too! My! wa'n't
that grand!"
"'Twas mostly dance-music I knew," said Jared. "She never liked it," he
added, in a burst of weary confidence.
"Your wife?"
"She was a church member, old-fashioned kind. Didn't believe in dancin'.
'The devil's tunes,' she called 'em. Well, mebbe they were; but I kinder
liked 'em myself."
"Well," said Amelia, in a safe commonplace, "I guess there's some harm
in 'most everything. It's 'cordin' to the way you take it." Then one of
her quick changes came upon her. The self that played at life when real
life failed her, and so kept youth alive, awoke to shine in her eyes and
flush her pretty cheek. She looked about the room, as if to seek
concurrence from the hearthside gods. "Jared," she said, "you goin' to
stay round here long?"
He made an involuntary motion toward his hat.
"No, oh, no," he answered. "I'm goin' 'cross lots to the Junction. I
come round the road. I guess 'tain't more'n four mile along by the pine
woods an' the b'ilin' spring," he added, smiling at her. "Leastways it
didn't use to be. I thought if I could get the seven-o'clock, 'twould
take me back to Boston so 's I could ketch my train to-night. She's
kinder dull, out there alone," he ended, wearily. "'Twas some o' her
property I come to settle up. She'll want to hear about it. I never was
no kind of a letter-writer."
Amelia rose.
"I'll tell you what, then," she said, with a sweet decision, "you stay
right here an' have dinner. I'm all alone to-day."
"Ain't old lady Knowles--" He paused decorously, and Amelia laughed. It
seemed to her as if old lady Knowles and the house would always be
beneficently there because they always had been.
"Law, yes," she said. "She's alive. So's old Ann. They've gone to
Wareham, to spend the day."
Jared threw back his head and laughed.
"If that don't make time stand still," he said, "nothin' ever did. Why,
when we was in the Third Reader old lady Knowles an' Ann harnessed up
one day in the year an' drove over to Wareham to spend the day."
"Yes," Amelia sparkled back at him, "'tis so. They look pretty much the
same, both of 'em."
"They must be well along in years?"
Amelia had begun putting up the leaves of the mahogany dining-table. She
laughed, a pretty ripple.
"Well, anyway," she qualified, "old Pomp ain't gone with 'em. He's
buried out under the August sweet. They've got an old white now. 'Twas
the colt long after you left here." She had gone to the dresser and
pulled open a drawer. Those were the every-day tablecloths, fine and
good; but in the drawer above, she knew, was the best damask, snowdrops
and other patterns more wonderful, with birds and butterflies. She
debated but a moment, and then pulled out a lovely piece that shone with
ironing. "I'll tell you what it is, Jared," she said, returning to
spread it on the table with deft touches, "it's we that change, as well
as other folks. Ever think o' that? Ever occur to you old lady Knowles
wa'n't much over sixty them days when we used to call her old? 'Twas
because we were so young ourselves. She don't seem much different to me
now from what she did then."
"There's a good deal in that," said Jared, rising. "Want I should draw
you up some water out o' the old well?"
"Yes. I shall want some in a minute. I'll make us a cup o' coffee. You
like that."
Jared drew the water, and after he had brought it to her he went out
into the back garden; and, while she moved back and forth from pantry to
table, she caught glimpses of him through the window as he went about
from the bees to the flower-beds, in a reminiscent wandering. Once he
halted under the sweet-bough and gave one branch a shake, and then, with
an unerring remembrance, he crossed the sward to the "sopsy-vine" by the
wall.
Amelia could not get over the wonder of having him there. Strangely, he
had not changed. Even his speech had the old neighborly tang. Whether he
had returned to it as to a never-forgotten tune, she could not know; but
it was in her ears, awakening touches of old harmony. Yet these things
she dared not dwell upon. She put them aside in haste to live with after
he should be gone.
Her preparations were swiftly made, lest she should lose a moment of his
stay, and presently she went to the door and summoned him.
"Dinner's ready, Jared!"
It sounded as if she had said it every day, and she knew why; the words
and others like them, sweet and commonplace, were inwoven with the
texture of her dreams.
Jared came in, an eager look upon his face, as if he also were in a
maze, and they sat down at the table, where the viands were arranged in
a beautiful order. Jared laid down his knife and fork.
"Well," said he, "old Ann ain't lost her faculty. This tastes for all
the world just as old lady Knowles's things used to when I come over
here to weed the garden an' stayed to dinner."
Amelia lifted a thankful look.
"I'm proper glad you've come back, Jared," she said simply. "I never had
any expectation of seein' you again, leastways not in this world."