Eastman, after another pause.
"Why, that's what I meant to tell you. Do you know, after I saw you, and
we decided to go there for our holiday, I began to think it over, and I
haven't been there since we went together the last time."
"Why, Mary Leonard! I had an idea you'd been there time and again,
though you said you hadn't seen the old place for a long time."
"Well, I was surprised myself when I realized it. But the next year my
cousins all moved away, and I've thought of it over and over, but I
haven't _been_. I dare say if we'd lived in the same town we'd have
gone together before this, but we haven't, and there it is."
"That's thirty-five years ago, Mary," said Lucy Eastman, thoughtfully.
"Thirty-five years! I declare, it still makes me jump to hear about
thirty-five years--just as if I hadn't known all about 'em!" and Mary
Leonard laughed her comfortable laugh again. "You don't say it's
thirty-five years, Lucy! I guess you're right, though."
There was a moment's pause, and the laugh died away into a little sigh.
"We didn't think then--we didn't really _think_--we'd ever be talking
about what happened thirty-five years ago, did we, Lucy? We didn't think
we'd have interest enough to care."
"No," said Lucy, soberly, "we didn't."
"And I care just as much as I ever did about things," went on the other,
thoughtfully, "only there seem more doors for satisfaction to come in at
nowadays. It isn't quite the same sort of satisfaction, perhaps, that
it used to be, not so pressed down and running over, but there's more of
it, after all, and it doesn't slip out so easily."
"No, the bottom of things doesn't fall out at once, as it used to, and
leave nothing in our empty hands."
"That sounds almost sad. Don't you be melancholy, Lucy Eastman."
"I'm not, Mary--I'm not a bit. I'm only remembering that I used to be."
"We used to go to the well with a sieve instead of a pitcher; that's
really the difference," said Mary Leonard. "We've learned not to be
wasteful, that's all."
"What fun we used to have," said Lucy, her eyes shining, "visiting your
cousins!"
"It _was_ fun!" said the other. "Do you remember the husking party at
the Kendals' barn?"
"Of course I do, and the red ears that that Chickering girl was always
finding! I think she picked them out on purpose, so that Tom Endover
would kiss her. It was just like those Chickerings!" There was a gentle
venom in Lucy Eastman's tones that made Mary Leonard laugh till the
tears came into her eyes.
"Minnie Chickering wasn't the only girl that Tom Endover kissed, if I
remember right," she said, with covert intention.
"Well, he put the red ear into my hands himself, and I just husked it
without thinking anything about it," retorted Lucy Eastman, with spirit.
"Of course you did, of course you did," asseverated Mary Leonard,
whereupon the other laughed too, but with reservation.
"And do you remember old Miss Pinsett's, where we used to go to act
charades?"
"Yes, indeed, in the old white house at the foot of the hill, with a
cupola. She seemed so old; I wonder how old she was?"
"Perhaps we shouldn't think her so old to-day. People used to wear caps
earlier then than they do now. I think when they were disappointed in
love they put on caps! Miss Pinsett had been disappointed in love, so
they said."
"They will have old maids disappointed in love," said Lucy, with some
asperity. "They will have me--some people--and I never was."
"I know you weren't. But I don't think it's as usual as it was to say
that about old maids. It's more the fashion now to be disappointed in
marriage."
There had been several stops at the stations along the road. The day was
wearing on. Suddenly Lucy Eastman turned to her companion.
"Mary," she said, "let's play we were girls again, and going to
Englefield just as we used to go--thirty-five years ago. Let's pretend
that we're going to do the same things and see the same people and have
the same fun. We're off by ourselves, just you and I, and why shouldn't
we? We're the same girls, after all," and she smiled apologetically.
"Of course we are. We'll do it," said Mary Leonard, decidedly; "let's
pretend."
But, having made the agreement, it was not so easy to begin. The stream
of reminiscence had been checked, and a chasm of thirty-five years is
not instantly bridged, even in thought.
"I hope they won't meet us at the station," said Mary Leonard, after a
while, in a matter-of-fact voice. "We know the way so well there is no
need of it."
"I hope not. I feel just like walking up myself," answered Lucy. "We can
send our trunks by the man that comes from the hotel, just as usual, and
it'll be cool walking toward evening."
"I'm glad we put off coming till the fall. The country's beautiful, and
there isn't so much dust in case we"--she hesitated a moment--"in case
we go on a picnic."
"Yes," replied Lucy, readily; "to the old fort. I hope we'll have a
picnic to the old fort. I guess all the girls will like to go. It's just
the time to take that drive over the hill."
"If we go," said Mary Leonard, slowly and impressively, "you'll have to
drive with Samuel Hatt."
"Oh, I went with him last time," broke in Lucy, apprehensively. "It's
your turn."
"But you know I just won't," said Mary Leonard, her eyes sparkling, and
the dimples that, like Miss Jessie Brown, she had not left off,
appearing and disappearing. "And somebody _has_ to go with him."
"Perhaps they won't ask him."
"Oh, but they will. They always do, on account of his horses. It
wouldn't be a picnic without Samuel Hatt."
Just then the train drew up at a small station. Lucy Eastman started as
she read the name of the place as it passed before her eyes.
"Mary," said she, "this is where Mr. Hatt always used to get on the
train. There are the Hatt Mills, and he goes up and down every
day,--don't you remember? And how we were--we are--always afraid we'll
meet him on the train."
"Of course," said Mary Leonard, leaning forward and scanning the
platform with its row of idlers and its few travellers. "Well, he isn't
here now. We are going to escape him this time. But my heart was in my
mouth! I don't want Samuel Hatt to be the first Englefield person we
meet."
They looked up with careless curiosity at the people who entered the
train. There was a little girl with a bunch of common garden flowers
following close behind a tired-looking woman, who had been, obviously,
"spending the day;" a florid old gentleman with gold spectacles, who
revealed a bald head as he removed his hat and used it for a fan,--they
had seen him hurrying to the platform just before the train moved out;
a commercial traveller, and a schoolboy.
"No," said Mary Leonard, "he isn't here this time."
The florid old gentleman took a seat in front of them and continued to
fan himself. The conductor came through the car.
"Warm spell we're having for October, Mr. Hatt," he said, as he punched
the commutation-ticket that was offered him.
Mary Leonard and Lucy Eastman gazed spellbound at the back of Mr. Hatt's
bald head. They were too amazed to look away from it at each other.
"It--it must be his father," gasped Lucy Eastman. "He looks--a
little--like him."
"Then it's his father come back!" returned Mary in an impatient whisper.
"His father died before we ever went to Englefield; and, don't you
remember, he was always fanning himself?"
Their fascinated gaze left the shiny pink surface of Samuel Hatt's head,
and their eyes met.
"I hope he won't see us," giggled Lucy.
"I hope not. Let's look the other way."
In a few minutes Mr. Hatt rose slowly and portentously, and, turning,
made a solemn but wavering way down the car to greet a man who sat just
across the aisle from Mary Leonard. Both the women avoided his eyes,
blushing a little and with the fear of untimely mirth about their lips.
As he talked with their neighbor, however, they ventured to look at him,
and as he turned to go back his slow, deliberate glance fell upon them,
rested a moment, and, without a flicker of recognition, passed on, and
he resumed his place.
There was almost a shadow in the eyes that met again, as the women
turned towards one another.
"I--I know it's funny," said Lucy, a little tremulously, "but I don't
quite like it that we look to him just as he does to us."
"We have hair on our heads," said Mary Leonard. "But," she added, less
aggressively, "we needn't have worried about his speaking to us."
"Englefield," shouted the brakeman, and the train rumbled into a covered
station. Mary Leonard started to her feet, and then paused and looked
down at her companion. This Englefield! This the quiet little place
where the man from the hotel consented to look after their trunks while
their cousins drove them up in the wagon--this noisy station with two or
three hotel stages and shouting drivers of public carriages!
"Lucy," said she, sitting down again in momentary despair, "we've gone
back thirty-five years, but we forgot to take Englefield with us!"
It did not take long, however, to adapt themselves to the new
conditions. They arranged to stay at the inn that was farthest from the
centre of things, and the drive out restored some of the former look of
the place. It was near sunset; the road looked pink before them as they
left the city. The boys had set fire to little piles of early fallen
leaves along the sides of the streets, and a faint, pungent smoke hung
about and melted into the twilight, and the flame leaped forth vividly
now and then from the dusky heaps. As they left the paved city for the
old inn which modern travel and enterprise had left on the outskirts,
the sky showed lavender through a mistiness that was hardly palpable
enough for haze. The browns and reds of the patches of woods in the near
distance seemed the paler, steadier reproduction of the flames behind
them. Low on the horizon the clouds lay in purple waves, deepening and
darkening into brown.
"Mary," said Lucy Eastman, in a low tone, laying her hand on her
companion's arm, "it's just the way it looked when we came the first
time of all; do you remember?"
"Remember? It's as if it were yesterday! Oh, Lucy, I don't know about a
new heaven, but I'm glad, I'm glad it isn't a 'new earth' quite yet!"
There was a mistiness in the eyes of the women that none of the changes
they had marked had brought there. They were moved by the sudden sweet
recognition that seemed sadder than any change.
The next morning they left the house early, that they might have long
hours in which to hunt up old haunts and renew former associations.
Again the familiar look of things departed as they wandered about the
wider, gayer streets. The house in which Mary Leonard's cousins had
lived had been long in other hands, and the occupants had cut down the
finest of the old trees to make room for an addition, and a woman whose
face seemed provokingly foreign to the scene came out with the air of a
proprietor and entered her carriage as they passed.
At another place which they used to visit on summer afternoons, and
which had been approached by a little lane, making it seem isolated and
distant, the beautiful turf had been removed to prepare a bald and
barren tennis court, and they reached it by an electric car. Even the
little candy-shop had become a hardware store.
"Of course, when one thinks of the Gibraltars and Jackson balls, it does
not seem such a revolution," said Mary Leonard; but she spoke forlornly,
and did not care much for her own joke. It looked almost as if their
holiday was to be turned into a day of mourning; there was depression in
the air of the busy, bustling active streets, through which the
gray-haired women wandered, handsome, alert, attentive, but haunted by
the sense of familiarity that made things unfamiliar and the knowledge
of every turn and direction that yet was not knowledge, but ignorance.
"Look here, Lucy Eastman," said Mary Leonard at last, stopping
decisively in front of what used to be the Baptist Church, but which
was now a business block and a drug-store where you could get peach
phosphate, "we can't stand this any longer. Let's get into a carriage
right away and go to the old fort; that can't have changed much; it used
to be dismantled, and I don't believe they've had time, with all they've
done here, to--to mantle it again."
They moved towards a cab-stand--of course it was an added grievance that
there was a cab-stand--but the wisdom of the prudent is to understand
his way.
"Mary," said Lucy Eastman, detaining her, "wait a minute. Do you think
we might--it's a lovely day--and--there's a grocer right there--and
dinner is late at the hotel"--She checked her incoherence and looked
wistfully at Mary Leonard.
"Lucy, I think we might do anything, if you don't lose your mind first.
What is it, for pity's sake, that you want to do?"
"Take our luncheon; we always used to, you know. And we can have a hot
dinner at the hotel when we come back."
Without replying, Mary Leonard led the way to the grocer's, and they
bought lavish supplies there and at the bakery opposite. Then they
called the cab.
"Do you remember, Lucy, we used to have to think twice about calling a
cab, when we used to travel together, on account of the expense," said
Mary Leonard, as they waited for it to draw up at the curbstone.
"Yes," answered Lucy; "we don't have to now." And then they both sighed
a little.
But their smiles returned as they drove into the enclosure of the old
fort. There they lay in the peaceful sun--the gray stones, the few
cannon-balls, sunk in the caressing grass, with here and there a rusty
gun, like a once grim, sharp-tongued, cruel man who has fallen somehow
into an amiable senility.
"I read an article in one of the magazines about our coast defences,"
said Lucy Eastman, breathlessly; "how they ought to be strengthened and
repaired and all, and I was quite excited about it and wanted to give a
little money towards it, but I wouldn't for anything now, enemy or no
enemy."
"Nor I, either," said Mary Leonard, after she had dismissed the driver
with orders to call for them later in the day. They walked on over the
crisp dry grass, and seated themselves on a bit of the fallen masonry.
The reaches of the placid river lay before them, and the hum of the
alert cricket was in their ears. Now and then a bird flew
surreptitiously from one bush to another, with the stealthy, swift
motion of flight in autumn, so different from the heedless, fluttering,
hither-and-yon vagaries of the spring and early summer. The time for
frivolity is over; the flashes of wings have a purpose now; the
possibility of cold is in the air, and what is to be done must be done
quickly.
"We almost always used to come in summer," said Lucy Eastman, "but I
think it's every bit as pretty in the fall."
"So do I," assented Mary Leonard, as she looked down into a hollow where
the purple asters grew so thick that in the half-dusk of the shadow they
looked like magnified snowflakes powdered thickly on the sward. "And it
hasn't changed an atom," she went on, as her eyes roamed over the
unevenness of this combination of man's and nature's handiwork. "It's
just as quiet and disorderly and upset and peaceful as it was then."
"Yes, look up there;" and Lucy Eastman pointed to the higher ramparts,
on the edge of which the long grass wavered in the wind with the
glancing uncertainty of a conflagration. "The last time I was here I
remember saying that that looked like a fire."
After they had eaten their luncheon, which brought with it echoes of
the laughter which had accompanied the picnic supper eaten in that very
corner years ago, they seated themselves in a sheltered spot to wait. It
really seemed as if the old gray walls retained some of the spirit of
those earlier days, so gentle, so mirth-inspiring was the sunshine that
warmed them.
"I'm so glad we came," said Mary,--they had both said it before,--as the
sunny peace penetrated their very souls.
Four o'clock brought the cab, and they drove down the long hills,
looking back often for a final glimpse of the waving grass and the gray
stones. As they turned a sharp corner and lost sight of the old fort,
Mary Leonard glanced furtively at her companion. Her own eyes for the
second time that day were not quite clear, and she was not sorry to
detect an added wistfulness in Lucy Eastman's gaze.
"Lucy," said she, and her voice shook a little, "I'm tired."
"So am I," murmured Lucy.
"And I don't ever remember to have been tired after a picnic at the old
fort before."
"No more do I," said Lucy; and it was a moment before their sadness, as
usual, trembled into laughter.
"Lucy Eastman," said Mary Leonard, suddenly, "this is the street that
old Miss Pinsett used to live on--lives on, I mean. What do you say?
Shall we stop and see Miss Pinsett?" The dimples had come back again,
and her eyes danced.
Lucy caught her breath.
"Oh, Mary, if only she--" her sentence was left unfinished.
"I'll find out," said Mary Leonard, and put her head out of the window.
"Driver," she called out, "stop at Miss Pinsett's."
The driver nodded and drove on, and she sank back pleased with her own
temerity.
The cab stopped in front of the same square white house, with the
cupola, and the same great trees in the front yard. Mary Leonard and
Lucy Eastman clasped each other's hands in silent delight as they walked
up the box-bordered path.
"Tell Miss Pinsett that Lucy Eastman and--and Mary Greenleaf have come
to see her," they said to the elderly respectable maid. Then they went
into the dim shaded parlor and waited. There were the old piano and the
Japanese vases, and the picture of Washington which they had always
laughed at because he looked as if he were on stilts and could step
right across the Delaware, and they could hear their hearts beat, for
there was a rustle outside the door--old Miss Pinsett's gowns always
rustled--and it opened.
"Why, _girls_!" exclaimed old Miss Pinsett as she glided into the room.
Mary Leonard and Lucy Eastman declared, then and afterward, that she
wasn't a day older than when they said good-by to her thirty-five years
ago. She wore the same gray curls and the same kind of cap. Also, they
both declared that this was the climax, and that they should have wept
aloud if it had not been so evident that to Miss Pinsett there was
nothing in the meeting but happiness and good fortune, so they did not.
"Why, girls," said old Miss Pinsett again, clasping both their hands,
"how glad I am to see you, and how well you are both looking!"
Then she insisted on their laying off their things, and they laid them
off because they always had when she asked them.
"You've grown stout, Mary Greenleaf," said old Miss Pinsett.
"I know I have," she answered, "and I'm not Mary Greenleaf, though I
sent that name up to you--I'm Mary Leonard."
"I wondered if neither of you were married."
"I'm a widow, Miss Pinsett," said Mary Leonard, soberly. "My husband
only lived three years."
"Poor girl, poor girl!" said Miss Pinsett, patting her hand, and then
she looked at the other.
"I'm Lucy Eastman still," she said; "just the same Lucy Eastman."
"And a very good thing to be, too," said Miss Pinsett, nodding her
delicate old head kindly. "But," and she scanned her face, "but, now
that I look at you, not quite the same Lucy Eastman--not quite the
same."
"Older and plainer," she sighed.
"Of all the nonsense!" exclaimed old Miss Pinsett. "You're not quite so
shy, that's all, my dear."
"I'm shy now," asserted Lucy.
"Very likely, but not quite so shy as you were, for all that. Don't tell
me! I've a quick eye for changes, and so I can see changes in you two
when it may be another wouldn't."
Before the excitement of her welcome had been subdued into mere
gladness, there was a discreet tap at the door, and the respectable
maid came in with a tray of sherry-glasses and cake. Mary Leonard and
Lucy Eastman looked at each other brimming over with smiles. It was the
same kind of cake, and might have been cut off the same loaf.
"Never any cake like yours," said Mary Leonard.
"I remember you like my cake," said old Miss Pinsett, smiling; "take a
bigger piece, child."
They wanted to know many things about the people and the town, all of
which Miss Pinsett could tell them.
The shadows grew longer, the room dimmer, and Miss Pinsett had the maid
throw open the blinds to let in the western sunlight. A shaft of
illumination fell across one of the Japanese vases, and a dragon
blinked, and the smooth round head of a mandarin gleamed. There was an
old-fashioned trumpet-creeper outside the window.
"But we must go," exclaimed Mary Leonard at last, rising and taking up
her bonnet. "Oh, no, thank you, we must not stay. Miss Pinsett; we are
going to-morrow, and we are tired with all the pleasure of to-day, and
we have so much--so much to talk over. We shall talk all night, as we
used to, I am afraid."
"But before you go, girls," said Miss Pinsett, laying a fragile, white
slender hand on each, "you must sing for me some of the songs you used
to sing--you know some very pretty duets."
Mary Leonard and Lucy Eastman paused, amazed, and looked into each
other's faces in dismay. Sing?--had they ever sung duets? They had not
sung a note for years, except in church.
"But I don't know any songs, Miss Pinsett," stammered Mary Leonard.
"I have forgotten all I ever knew," echoed Lucy Eastman.
"No excuses, now--no excuses! You were always great for excuses, but
you would always sing for me. I want 'County Guy,' to begin with."
By a common impulse the visitors moved slowly towards the piano; they
would try, at least, since Miss Pinsett wanted them to. Lucy seated
herself and struck a few uncertain chords. Possibly the once familiar
room, Mary Leonard at her side, Miss Pinsett listening in her own
high-backed chair, the scent of the mignonette in the blue
bowl--possibly one or all of these things brought back the old tune.
"Ah, County Guy,
The hour is nigh,
The sun has left the lea."
The sweet, slender voice floated through the room, and Mary Leonard's
deeper contralto joined and strengthened it.
"Now, I will have 'Flow Gently, Sweet Afton,'" said Miss Pinsett, quite
as if it were a matter of course. And they sang "Flow Gently, Sweet
Afton." It was during the last verse that the parlor door opened
softly, and a tall, fine-looking man, erect, with beautiful silver
curling hair, and firm lines about the handsome, clean-shaven mouth,
appeared on the threshold and stood waiting. As the singing finished,
Miss Pinsett shook her head at him.
"You were always coming in and breaking up the singing, Tom Endover,"
she said.
The two women left the piano and came forward.
"You used to know Mary Greenleaf,--she's Mrs. Leonard now,--and Lucy
Eastman, Tom," she went on.
Apparently Mr. Endover was not heeding the introduction, but was coming
towards them with instant recognition and outstretched hand. They often
discussed afterward if he would have known them without Miss Pinsett.
Mary Leonard thought he would, but Lucy Eastman did not always agree
with her.
"You don't have to tell me who they are," he said, grasping their hands
cordially. "Telling Tom Endover who Mary Greenleaf and Lucy Eastman are,
indeed!" There was a mingling of courteous deference and frank, not to
be repressed, good comradeship in his manner which was delightful. Mary
Leonard's dimples came and went, and delicate waves of color flowed and
ebbed in Lucy Eastman's soft cheeks.
"I'm too old always to remember that there's no telling a United States
senator anything," retorted Miss Pinsett, with a keen glance from her
dimmed but penetrating eyes.
"As to that, I don't believe I'd ever have been a United States senator
if it wasn't for what you've told me, Miss Pinsett," laughed Endover.
"I'm always coming here to be taken down, Mary," he went on; "she does
it just as she used to."
Mary Leonard caught her breath a little at the sound of her Christian
name, but "I didn't know there was any taking you down, Tom Endover,"
she retorted before she thought; and they all laughed.
They found many things to say in the few minutes longer that they
stayed, before Mr. Endover took them out and put them in their cab. He
insisted upon coming the next morning to take them to the station in his
own carriage, and regretted very much that his wife was out of town, so
that she could not have the pleasure of meeting his old friends.