"What is?"
"Why--" then he paused, as if to set his thought in order. "I can't tell
jest what I mean. Only folks can be here to-day an' there to-morrer. An'
they can be all of a bloom of health, or handsome as a pictur'--an' lo
ye! they're changed!"
A cold certainty settled upon her heart. The first wife had, then, been
handsome. Lydia did not know whether acquired knowledge was a boon or
not. Eben had risen, and was standing with his hands in his pockets,
still looking into space. It seemed to her that he was miles away.
"An' I dunno which is the worst," he was saying, "to have 'em come down
with a long sickness, or drop off sudden. I do, too. It's worse to see
'em suffer. But when they give right up afore your face an' eyes--"
He stopped, and Lydia thought he shuddered. Again she knew. The first
wife had died suddenly, and the memory of the shock was too keen upon
him to admit of speech. But he shook off reflection as if it had been
the dust of the hour. Now he turned to her, and the sweet recognition
of his glance was warming her anew. "Don't you go an' play me any such
trick," he said, with the whimsical creases deepening in his cheeks.
Yet she thought his eyes were wet.
"What?"
"Dyin'."
A new tenderness was born in her at the moment, seeing what he had
endured.
"No," she wanted to say, "I hope you won't have to go through that
twice." But she only shook her head brightly at him. "Come," said she,
"it's time to harness up."
"I'll drive down through that cross-road," said Eben, "an' then I've
finished up all them little byways. Byme-by, when we feel like settin'
out for good, we can pike right along the old Boston road, an' that'll
take us to aunt Phebe's, an' so on home. But we won't start out till
we're good an' ready. I guess you got kinder tired afore."
"I'm ready now," said Lydia. The color was in her cheeks. She felt
dauntless. At once, born somehow from this sober talk, she felt a
melting championship of him, as if life had hurt him too keenly and she
was there to make it up to him. Henceforth she meant to be first and
second wife in one.
"Hooray!" called Eben. He tossed up his hat; and the tavern-keeper's
wife, making pies by the kitchen window, smiled at him and shook her
rolling-pin. "Then we'll start off to-morrer, bright an' early. I don't
know how you feel, Mis' Jakes, but I'm possessed to git home."
Lydia, for her part, was soberly glad, yet there was a part of her
anticipation that was incredible to her. For even after her spiritual
uplift of the moment before, the first thought that throbbed into her
mind, like a temptation, was that of the album on the centre-table.
They drove off in the morning brightness, and Eben declared he had a
good mind to give away his remaining essences and put for home as hard
as he could pelt.
"We might cut right across country," he tempted himself. "No matter 'f
we planned suthin' different. But then we couldn't see aunt Phebe."
"You're real fond of her, ain't you?" asked Lydia absently. She was
wondering if aunt Phebe would speak of his first wife.
"She was mother's only sister," said Eben, in the deeper tone attendant
on his mother's name. "She took care of mother in her last days. I guess
we never had a mite o' family trouble but aunt Phebe was there about as
soon as she could board the train."
"Eben," said his wife, in her timid way of stealing on his confidence.
It seemed now like a shy fashion of convincing him that she was worthy,
if he would but let her, to know his heart.
"What is it?"
"Don't you think some things--some troubles--are too hard to be talked
about?"
"I guess they be," assented Eben.
"We keep thinkin' an' thinkin' 'em over, but we can't speak. Mebbe
'twould be better for us if we could."
"Mebbe 'twould." Then he pulled out his pipe, as he did when the chariot
of his affections neared an emotional pass. Eben was willing to graze a
wheel by that abyss, but he skillfully avoided falling over.
They were climbing a long hill; and the horse, head down, sagged
sleepily along, pulling faithfully. But at the top he halted, as if it
seemed he knew what was below, and waited for their wonder. Lydia's eyes
were closed, and Eben had drawn the first puff at his pipe.
"There," said he, "what think o' that?"
Lydia opened her eyes and gave a little cry. They seemed to be at the
top of everything,--winding roads, like ribbons, patches of green that
were ample woods, three dotted villages, and, full flare in their faces,
the sunset sky. The red and gold of it had spread and lavished until
the eye, to rest itself, was almost forced, for a calming glimpse, back
again to the cold blue east. Lydia looked and could not speak. Eben knew
too much even to glance at her. He felt all the wonder of it, and the
pride, for it seemed to him that it was, in a way, his sky, because it
was so much nearer home. They stayed there in silence while the beauty
changed but never faded, and the horse dropped his head, to rest.
"Well," said Eben at last, dryly, "I dunno 's ever I see such a sky as
that, unless 'twas some I used to see with my first wife."
For the first time he seemed cruel. A bitter thought shot up in Lydia's
heart that at every feast there was to be the unbidden guest. She closed
her eyes, and when she opened them again, the sky had faded and the air
was chill.
"I guess you're gittin' tired again," said Eben tenderly. "Well, we'll
be to aunt Phebe's by eight, an' she'll put you straight to bed."
The tears had wet her cheeks. They were the first she had shown him, and
he looked at them with dismay. "Hullo!" he cried, "hullo!" It was actual
terror in his voice. "'Tain't so bad as that!"
Lydia straightened herself in the buggy and wiped away the tears with an
impatient hand.
"I guess 'twas the sunset," she said tremulously. "I never see such a
sky."
"That all?" Eben was much relieved. Then he touched up the horse, and
told him what a lot of oats were waiting in aunt Phebe's barn. "If
that's all," he said, giving his mind to Lydia again, "you'll have to
spend most o' your time in salt water. That's the kind o' sunsets we're
goin' to have every night arter we get home. The doctor's ordered 'em."
Lydia made herself laugh, and they talked no more until they drove up to
a prosperous white house on the outskirts of the first village, and aunt
Phebe came to meet them. It was all a joyous tumult that night, and
Lydia went to bed early, with a confused sense that aunt Phebe was very
kind and that she had gold-bowed glasses and shook the floor when she
walked, and that the supper was a product of expert cooking. Eben was
uproariously gay, in the degree of approaching home, and took aunt Phebe
about the waist to waltz with her, whereupon she cuffed him with a
futile hand, remarking:--
"Eben Jakes, I'd be ashamed!"
Lydia had a sense of being in a homely paradise where everything was
pleasantly at one, yet that she, companioned by the unclassified memory
of a woman whose place she held, had no part in the general harmony.
Next morning she overslept, and found herself alone. She heard Eben's
whistle from the barn and the guffaw of the hired men, to whom he was
telling pleasant tales, and there were women's voices from the kitchen,
and the fragrance of frying ham. She dressed in haste, and when she went
down the breakfast-table was ready, in great abundance, and everybody
waiting by their plates: Eben, aunt Phebe and her mild, soft-spoken
husband, and Sarah, the spectacled spinster daughter, who looked
benevolently dignified enough to be her mother's mother.
"Late? I guess not," said aunt Phebe, sinking into the chair behind the
coffee-pot. "Folks get up here when they're a mind to, an' when it comes
to Eben's wife--well, you can't say no more'n that in this house."
Lydia took her place rather shyly, but when Eben had found her hand
under the tablecloth and given it a welcoming squeeze, she felt more
than half at home. Aunt Phebe passed coffee, and beamed, and forgot to
serve herself in pressing food upon the others; but when the first pause
came, she leaned back and smiled at her new niece. Lydia looked up. She
met the smile and liked it. Aunt Phebe seemed a good deal more than a
mother to the nice spinster daughter. She looked as if there were
mother-stuff enough in her to pass around and nourish and bless the
world. Aunt Phebe was speaking.
"Now," said she, "I didn't have more'n half a glimpse at you last
night, Lyddy, such a surprise an' all, an' I had this mornin' to look
for'ard to. An' now I'm goin' to take my time an' see for myself what
kind of a wife Eben's be'n an' picked out."
She was laughing richly all through the words, and Lydia, though she was
blushing, liked the sound of it. She felt quite equal to the scrutiny.
She knew the days of driving had given her a color, and she was not
unconscious of her new blue waist. Then, too, Eben's hand was again on
hers under the friendly cloth. Aunt Phebe looked, took off her glasses,
pretended to wipe them, and looked again.
"Well, Eben," said she judicially, "I'll say this for ye, you've done
well."
"Pretty good-lookin' old lady, I think myself," said Eben, with a proud
carelessness. "Course she's nothin' to what my first wife was at her
age; but then, nobody'd expect that kind o' luck twice. Aunt Phebe,
here's my cup. You make it jest like the first, or you'll hear from me."
Lydia drooped over her plate. If Eben had sought her hand then, she
would have snatched it away from him. All the delicate instincts within
her felt suddenly outraged. At last she acknowledged to herself, in a
flash, how coarse-minded he must be to mingle the present with his
sacred past. But she started and involuntarily looked up. The spinster
cousin was giggling like a girl.
"Now you've got back," she was saying to Eben. "Now I know it's you,
sure enough. He took that up when he wa'n't hardly out o' pinafores,"
she said to Lydia.
"What?" Lydia managed, through her anger at him.
"Comparin' everything with his first wife. Where'd he get it, mother?"
"Why," said aunt Phebe, "there was that old Simeon Spence that used to
come round clock-mendin'. He was forever tellin' what his first wife
used to do, an' Eben he ketched it up, an' then, when we laughed at him,
he done it the more. Land o' love, Lyddy, you chokin'?"
Lydia was sobbing and laughing together, and Eben turned in a panic from
his talk with uncle Sim, to pound her back.
"No, no," she kept saying. "I'm all right. No! no!"
"Suthin' went the wrong way," commiserated aunt Phebe, when they were
all in their places again and Lydia had wiped her eyes.
"Yes," said Lydia joyously, as if choking were a very happy matter. "It
went the wrong way. Eben, you pass aunt Phebe my cup."
And while the coffee was coming she sought out Eben's hand again and
turned to gaze at him with such tell-tale eyes that the spinster cousin,
blushing a little, looked at once away, and wondered how it would seem
to be so foolish and so fond.