On the day set for Dixie's wedding Henley had occasion to go to the
little express office, adjoining the old-fashioned brick car-shed in the
village, to see about a shipment of produce which had been incorrectly
marked. And as he was returning he saw the girl seated in her wagon in
the open space between the station and the hotel.
Henley knew what it meant. She had come to meet her lover. She happened
to have her glance fixed on some point in the opposite direction from
him and did not know that he was near. He hesitated for an instant, and
then decided that he would not intrude upon her privacy. There was
something in her attitude of bland and helpless expectancy that probed
the deepest fount of his sympathy.
"Poor, brave little woman!" he mused, as he turned his back upon the
scene and moved on toward his store. "She's having her dream like all
the rest. She may get a fair cut of the cards, and she may not. He ain't
very promising material from the looks of his picture, but it wouldn't
be fair to judge him by that. He may do his part, and the Lord knows she
needs help. I'm too big a failure in the marrying line to object or
offer advice."
Reaching his desk, he applied himself to the writing of some letters
pertaining to his intended trip to Texas, but the pathetic sight he had
of the girl at the station thrust itself between him and his task. She
was his faithful friend. He loved her almost as if she had been a
sister; she had confided in him; only he and she and her little family
knew of what was to take place to-day. How strange to think that she
would no longer be as she was! The wife of a man she had never seen, of
a man whose full name Henley had not even heard.
Just then the still air was stirred by the sportive whippoorwill's call
with which the young engineer of that particular train always announced
with the locomotive's whistle his approach to Chester, and later there
was a sound of escaping steam and the slow clanging of a bell as the
train drew up in the shed. Only a moment's pause, and the train was off
again.
It occurred to Henley that as his store was on the most direct way to
her home Dixie would naturally drive past it on her return, so he went
to the front, taking pains to stand back a few feet from the entrance
that his position might not appear to be by design. He was glad that
Cahews and Pomp were busy in the rear, and he became conscious of the
hope that no stray customer would interrupt him at what seemed such a
grave and important moment. Time passed, and still old Bob and the
ramshackle wagon were not in sight. Henley cautiously ventured to the
door, whence he glanced down the street. He saw the wagon. It was now at
the door of the post-office, but no one was in it. With his hip-joint
loose the animal swayed and sagged against one of the shafts, the reins
hanging from his rump to the ground.
"They've stopped to get the mail," Henley said in his tight throat;
"they'll be out in a minute. I'll take one peep at 'im, anyway."
But Dixie emerged from the narrow doorway of the little building alone.
She was reading a letter, and she groped slowly across the sidewalk to
the wagon, where she stood till she had finished it. Even at that
distance Henley could see that she was pale, and he fancied that her
hand and step were unsteady as she mounted to the spring seat and
reached for the reins. Henley receded farther into the store, actuated
by a vague intuition that she might not care to be seen, and he was glad
that he had not intruded upon her, for, as she drove past the store, she
did not glance toward it, but instead looked steadily in the opposite
direction.
"The fellow didn't come, and she's had bad news besides," Henley mused,
and he now stood in the doorway and looked after the shackly vehicle as
it moved slowly away in the beating sunshine. "She's bad hit by
something or other," he said, anxiously. "I've never seen her look like
that before. Some'n has gone wrong."
He did not see her for three days. On the evening of the third day he
was standing at the door of his barn. It was growing dark. The coming
night had robed the mountain-peaks in gray, and put them out of sight.
Old Wrinkle was singing "How firm a foundation, ye saints of the Lord!"
as he trudged back to the house, swinging his empty swill-pail. The door
of Dixie Hart's cottage opened, and in a narrow frame of firelight she
stood peering out toward him. Then he saw that she was coming. She moved
swiftly, and with a sure step, till she paused at the fence which
separated her land from his.
"I've been wanting to see you, Alfred," she said, in a low, changed
voice. "I had no excuse to go to the store, and--well, I didn't think
that was exactly the place, anyway to--to say what I had to say. You
haven't spoke about what I told you to anybody--I know in reason that
you haven't, but--"
"I'd cut off my right arm first," he declared, earnestly. "What you said
that day was as sacred to me as if it had come from on high and my very
salvation depended on it."
"I knew that," she said, softly. "I only said that to--to sort o' get
started. I'm all upset, Alfred; I'll get right after a while, but things
are all crooked now. I've had trouble--I reckon a girl might call it
that and still have self-respect. I've had heaps of unexpected trouble."
"I was afraid some'n had gone wrong," Henley found himself able to say,
"not hearing any more, you see, about--about what you talked of that
day."
"I'm going to tell you, and then dismiss it," Dixie said, her pretty lip
twitching, the dark curves under her eyes lending sharp contrast to
their fathomless lustre. "I had everything ready, and went to meet him,
but he didn't come. I went to the post-office and got a letter. He
was--was taken sick--so the letter said. He was pretty bad off. In fact,
Alfred, the truth is, he's dead; the--the fellow is dead."
Her head was down; she had folded her arms on the top rail of the fence,
and she rested her brow on them. He was wondering if she was crying and
what there was for him to say, when she suddenly, and quite dry-eyed,
looked up and said: "But that must be a secret, too. Nobody knows about
it except my home folks, and nobody must. I'd give plumb up if Carrie
Wade was to flaunt that in my face and start it going over hill and
dale."
"It's too bad," Henley ventured, as nearly upon what he considered
consolation as his knowledge of her rather questionable bereavement
would justify. "What was his complaint?"
"You mean, what ailded him?" Dixie asked, an incongruous flush battling
with the pallor of her face and becoming observable even in the
starlight. "Why, you see, Alfred, I didn't get full particulars--a body
never can, you know, at a time like that--and in just a letter--but you
can depend upon it that it was sudden."
"Maybe it was what they say is so common now," Henley pursued,
awkwardly--"heart failure."
"Or weakness of the backbone." He was sure that she smiled impulsively,
for she quickly covered her mouth with her hand and lowered her head to
the fence again, and for a moment he stood staring at her and wondering
if the calamity had caused her to be hysterical. Suddenly she looked up
again and said:
"I reckon you think I ought to act different--that I ought to cry and
take on--but I can't. You must make what allowance you can. You see, I
never saw him in my life, and, well, it was just a wild-goose chase that
started in nothing and ended the same way."
"I see," Henley ventured, "but I'm sorry. Death is bad enough, in any
case, but to be called away without a minute's notice and on the eve
of--"
"Well, you needn't be sorry for me--you needn't waste pity on me," Dixie
broke in with irrelevant warmth. "You'll find me doing business at the
same old stand, man or no man. If we can just keep this silly caper from
getting out I'll be thankful. So far, I've got along by myself, and,
outside of wanting to flaunt a husband in Carrie Wade's face, I don't
know as I'll be particularly disappointed. I can keep on at the plough
and hoe, rain or shine, and--" Her voice had trailed away into
indistinctness, and he saw her lower lip quivering. She suddenly turned
and hurried away.
He saw her vanish in the lighted doorway, and he stood overwhelmed with
blended perplexity and sympathy.
"She's trying to keep a stiff upper lip, but she's hit, and hit
hard--harder'n I thought possible in her case," he mused. "She never saw
the feller, but she may have had a sort of a idea in her head of what he
was like, an' the loss is as keen as if she had knowed him a long time,
maybe keener, for the gloss hain't been rubbed off by actual
acquaintance, as it has been off of me and most other married folks. I
reckon my wife has put the gloss back on Dick Wrinkle, if it was ever
off, and I've got a rival in the spirit-world that nothing earthly
could ever hope to match. They say absence works that way, and when I
get to Texas maybe she will look back on all I've done to keep peace and
harmony betwixt us and appreciate me more than she is doing now. I say
maybe, for, on t'other hand, she may be glad to have me away, and when I
get back I may find that her whole heart is in the empty grave she is
bent on digging and adorning at such a great outlay."