My husband's cousin had come up from the city, slightly more fagged and
sardonic than usual, and as he stretched himself out in the big
porch-chair he was even more caustic than was his wont about the bareness
and emotional sterility of the lives of our country people.
"Perhaps they had, a couple of centuries ago, when the Puritan
hallucination was still strong, a certain fierce savor of religious
intolerance; but now that that has died out, and no material prosperity
has come to let them share in the larger life of their century, there is a
flatness, a mean absence of warmth or color, a deadness to all emotions
but the pettiest sorts--"
I pushed the pitcher nearer him, clinking the ice invitingly, and directed
his attention to our iris-bed as a more cheerful object of contemplation
than the degeneracy of the inhabitants of Vermont. The flowers burned on
their tall stalks like yellow tongues of flame. The strong, sword-like
green leaves thrust themselves boldly up into the spring air like a
challenge. The plants vibrated with vigorous life.
In the field beyond them, as vigorous as they, strode Adoniram Purdon
behind his team, the reins tied together behind his muscular neck, his
hands grasping the plow with the masterful sureness of the successful
practitioner of an art. The hot, sweet spring sunshine shone down on
'Niram's head with its thick crest of brown hair, the ineffable odor of
newly turned earth steamed up about him like incense, the mountain stream
beyond him leaped and shouted. His powerful body answered every call made
on it with the precision of a splendid machine. But there was no elation
in the grimly set face as 'Niram wrenched the plow around a big stone, or
as, in a more favorable furrow, the gleaming share sped steadily along
before the plowman, turning over a long, unbroken brown ribbon of earth.
My cousin-in-law waved a nervous hand toward the sternly silent figure as
it stepped doggedly behind the straining team, the head bent forward, the
eyes fixed on the horses' heels.
"There!" he said. "There is an example of what I mean. Is there another
race on earth which could produce a man in such a situation who would not
on such a day sing, or whistle, or at least hold up his head and look at
all the earthly glories about him?"
I was silent, but not for lack of material for speech. 'Niram's reasons
for austere self-control were not such as I cared to discuss with a man of
my cousin's mental attitude. As we sat looking at him the noon whistle
from the village blew and the wise old horses stopped in the middle of a
furrow. 'Niram unharnessed them, led them to the shade of a tree, and put
on their nose-bags. Then he turned and came toward the house.
"Don't I seem to remember," murmured my cousin under his breath, "that,
even though he is a New-Eng-lander, he has been known to make up errands
to your kitchen to see your pretty Ev'leen Ann?"
I looked at him hard; but he was only gazing down, rather cross-eyed, on
his grizzled mustache, with an obvious petulant interest in the increase
of white hairs in it. Evidently his had been but a chance shot. 'Niram
stepped up on the grass at the edge of the porch. He was so tall that he
overtopped the railing easily, and, reaching a long arm over to where I
sat, he handed me a small package done up in yellowish tissue-paper.
Without hat-raisings, or good-mornings, or any other of the greetings
usual in a more effusive civilization, he explained briefly:
"My stepmother wanted I should give you this. She said to thank you for
the grape-juice." As he spoke he looked at me gravely out of deep-set blue
eyes, and when he had delivered his message he held his peace.
I expressed myself with the babbling volubility of one whose manners have
been corrupted by occasional sojourns in the city. "Oh, 'Niram!" I cried
protestingly, as I opened the package and took out an exquisitely
wrought old-fashioned collar. "Oh, 'Niram! How _could_ your stepmother
give such a thing away? Why, it must be one of her precious old relics. I
don't _want_ her to give me something every time I do some little thing
for her. Can't a neighbor send her in a few bottles of grape-juice without
her thinking she must pay it back somehow? It's not kind of her. She has
never yet let me do the least thing for her without repaying me with
something that is worth ever so much more than my trifling services."
When I had finished my prattling, 'Niram repeated, with an accent of
finality, "She wanted I should give it to you."
The older man stirred in his chair. Without looking at him I knew that his
gaze on the young rustic was quizzical and that he was recording on the
tablets of his merciless memory the ungraceful abruptness of the other's
action and manner.
"How is your stepmother feeling to-day, 'Niram?" I asked.
"Worse."
'Niram came to a full stop with the word. My cousin covered his satirical
mouth with his hand.
"Can't the doctor do anything to relieve her?" I asked.
'Niram moved at last from his Indian-like immobility. He looked up under
the brim of his felt hat at the skyline of the mountain, shimmering
iridescent above us. "He says maybe 'lectricity would help her some. I'm
goin' to git her the batteries and things soon's I git the rubber bandages
paid for."
There was a long silence. My cousin stood up, yawning, and sauntered away
toward the door. "Shall I send Ev'leen Ann out to get the pitcher and
glasses?" he asked in an accent which he evidently thought very humorously
significant.
The strong face under the felt hat turned white, the jaw muscles set hard,
but for all this show of strength there was an instant when the man's eyes
looked out with the sick, helpless revelation of pain they might have had
when 'Niram was a little boy of ten, a third of his present age, and less
than half his present stature. Occasionally it is horrifying to see how a
chance shot rings the bell.
"No, no! Never mind!" I said hastily. "I'll take the tray in when I go."
Without salutation or farewell 'Niram Purdon turned and went back to his
work.
The porch was an enchanted place, walled around with starlit darkness,
visited by wisps of breezes shaking down from their wings the breath of
lilac and syringa, flowering wild grapes, and plowed fields. Down at the
foot of our sloping lawn the little river, still swollen by the melted
snow from the mountains, plunged between its stony banks and shouted its
brave song to the stars.
We three middle-aged people--Paul, his cousin, and I--had disposed our
uncomely, useful, middle-aged bodies in the big wicker chairs and left
them there while our young souls wandered abroad in the sweet, dark glory
of the night. At least Paul and I were doing this, as we sat, hand in
hand, thinking of a May night twenty years before. One never knows what
Horace is thinking of, but apparently he was not in his usual captious
vein, for after a long pause he remarked, "It is a night almost
indecorously inviting to the making of love."
My answer seemed grotesquely out of key with this, but its sequence was
clear in my mind. I got up, saying: "Oh, that reminds me--I must go and
see Ev'leen Ann. I'd forgotten to plan to-morrow's dinner."
"Oh, everlastingly Ev'leen Ann!" mocked Horace from his corner. "Can't you
think of anything but Ev'leen Ann and her affairs?"
I felt my way through the darkness of the house, toward the kitchen, both
doors of which were tightly closed. When I stepped into the hot, close
room, smelling of food and fire, I saw Ev'leen Ann sitting on the straight
kitchen chair, the yellow light of the bracket-lamp beating down on her
heavy braids and bringing out the exquisitely subtle modeling of her
smooth young face. Her hands were folded in her lap. She was staring at
the blank wall, and the expression of her eyes so startle and shocked me
that I stopped short and would have retreated if it had not been too late.
She had seen me, roused herself, and said quietly, as though continuing
conversation interrupted the moment before:
"I had been thinking that there was enough left of the roast to make
hash-balls for dinner"--"hash-balls" is Ev'leen Ann's decent Anglo-Saxon
name for croquette--"and maybe you'd like a rhubarb pie."
I knew well enough she had been thinking of no such thing, but I could as
easily have slapped a reigning sovereign on the back as broken in on the
regal reserve of Ev'leen Ann in her clean gingham.
"Well, yes, Ev'leen Ann," I answered in her own tone of reasonable
consideration of the matter; "that would be nice, and your pie-crust is so
flaky that even Mr. Horace will have to be pleased."
"Mr. Horace" is our title for the sardonic cousin whose carping ways are
half a joke, and half a menace in our family.
Ev'leen Ann could not manage the smile which should have greeted this
sally. She looked down soberly at the white-pine top of the kitchen table
and said, "I guess there is enough sparrow-grass up in the garden for a
mess, too, if you'd like that."
"That would taste very good," I agreed, my heart aching for her.
"And creamed potatoes," she finished bravely, thrusting my unspoken pity
from her.
"You know I like creamed potatoes better than any other kind," I
concurred.
There was a silence. It seemed inhuman to go and leave the stricken young
thing to fight her trouble alone in the ugly prison, her work-place,
though I thought I could guess why Ev'leen Ann had shut the doors so
tightly. I hung near her, searching my head for something to say, but she
helped me by no casual remark. Niram is not the only one of our people who
possesses so the full the supreme gift of silence. Finally I mentioned the
report of a case of measles in the village, and Ev'leen Ann responded in
kind with the news that her Aunt Emma had bought a potato-planter. Ev'leen
Ann is an orphan, brought up by a well-to-do spinster aunt, who is
strong-minded and runs her own farm. After a time we glided by way of
similar transitions to the mention of his name.
"'Niram Purdon tells me his stepmother is no better," I said. "Isn't it
too bad?" I thought it well for Ev'leen Ann to be dragged out of her black
cave of silence once in a while, even if it could be done only by force.
As she made no answer, I went on. "Everybody who knows Niram thinks it
splendid of him to do so much for his stepmother."
Ev'leen Ann responded with a detached air, as though speaking of a matter
in China: "Well, it ain't any more than what he should. She was awful good
to him when he was little and his father got so sick. I guess 'Niram
wouldn't ha' had much to eat if she hadn't ha' gone out sewing to earn it
for him and Mr. Purdon." She added firmly, after a moment's pause, "No,
ma'am, I don't guess it's any more than what 'Niram had ought to do."
"But it's very hard on a young man to feel that he's not able to marry," I
continued. Once in a great while we came so near the matter as this.
Ev'leen Ann made no answer. Her face took on a pinched look of sickness.
She set her lips as though she would never speak again. But I knew that a
criticism of 'Niram would always rouse her, and said: "And really, I think
'Niram makes a great mistake to act as he does. A wife would be a help to
him. She could take care of Mrs. Purdon and keep the house."
Ev'leen Ann rose to the bait, speaking quickly with some heat: "I guess
'Niram knows what's right for him to do! He can't afford to marry when he
can't even keep up with the doctor's bills and all. He keeps the house
himself, nights and mornings, and Mrs. Purdon is awful handy about taking
care of herself, for all she's bedridden. That's her way, you know. She
can't bear to have folks do for her. She'd die before she'd let anybody do
anything for her that she could anyways do for herself!"
I sighed acquiescingly. Mrs. Purdon's fierce independence was a rock on
which every attempt at sympathy or help shattered itself to atoms. There
seemed to be no other emotion left in her poor old work-worn shell of a
body. As I looked at Ev'leen Ann it seemed rather a hateful
characteristic, and I remarked, "It seems to me it's asking a good deal of
'Niram to spoil his life in order that his stepmother can go on pretending
she's independent."
Ev'leen Ann explained hastily: "Oh, 'Niram doesn't tell her anything
about--She doesn't know he would like to--he don't want she should be
worried--and, anyhow, as 'tis, he can't earn enough to keep ahead of all
the: doctors cost."
"But the right kind of a wife--a good, competent girl--could help out by
earning something, too."
Ev'leen Ann looked at me forlornly, with no surprise. The idea was
evidently not new to her. "Yes, ma'am, he could. But 'Niram says he ain't
the kind of man to let his wife go out working." Even while she drooped
under the killing verdict of his pride she was loyal to his standards
and uttered no complaint. She went on, 'Niram wants Aunt Em'line to have
things the way she wants 'em, as near as he can give 'em to her--and it's
right she should."
"Aunt Emeline?" I repeated, surprised at her absence of mind. "You mean
Mrs. Purdon, don't you?"
Ev'leen Ann looked vexed at her slip, but she scorned to attempt any
concealment. She explained dryly, with the shy, stiff embarrassment our
country people have in speaking of private affairs: "Well, she _is_ my
Aunt Em'line, Mrs. Purdon is, though I don't hardly ever call her that.
You see, Aunt Emma brought me up, and she and Aunt Em'line don't have
anything to do with each other. They were twins, and when they were girls
they got edgeways over 'Niram's father, when 'Niram was a baby and his
father was a young widower and come courting. Then Aunt Em'line married
him, and Aunt Emma never spoke to her afterward."
Occasionally, in walking unsuspectingly along one of our leafy lanes, some
such fiery geyser of ancient heat uprears itself in a boiling column. I
never get used to it, and started back now.
"Why, I never heard of that before, and I've known your Aunt Emma and Mrs.
Purdon for years!"
"Well, they're pretty old now," said Ev'leen Ann listlessly, with the
natural indifference of self-centered youth to the bygone tragedies of the
preceding generation.
"It happened quite some time ago. And both of them were so touchy, if
anybody seemed to speak about it, that folks got in the way of letting it
alone. First Aunt Emma wouldn't speak to her sister because she'd married
the man she'd wanted, and then when Aunt Emma made out so well farmin' and
got so well off, why, then Mrs. Purdon wouldn't try to make it up because
she was so poor. That was after Mr. Purdon had had his stroke of paralysis
and they'd lost their farm and she'd taken to goin' out sewin'--not but
what she was always perfectly satisfied with her bargain. She always acted
as though she'd rather have her husband's old shirt stuffed with straw
than any other man's whole body. He was a real nice man, I guess, Mr.
Purdon was."
There I had it--the curt, unexpanded chronicle of two passionate lives.
And there I had also the key to Mrs. Purdon's fury of independence. It was
the only way in which she could defend her husband against the charge, so
damning in her world, of not having provided for his wife. It was the only
monument she could rear to her husband's memory. And her husband had been
all there was in life for her!
I stood looking at her young kinswoman's face, noting the granite under
the velvet softness of its youth, and divining the flame underlying the
granite. I longed to break through her wall and to put my arms about her,
and on the impulse of the moment I cast aside the pretense of casualness
in our talk.
"Oh, my dear!" I said. "Are you and 'Niram always to go on like this?
Can't anybody help you?"
Ev'leen Ann looked at me, her face suddenly old and gray. "No, ma'am; we
ain't going to go on this way. We've decided, 'Niram and I have, that it
ain't no use. We've decided that we'd better not go places together any
more or see each other. It's too--If 'Niram thinks we can't"--she flamed
so that I knew she was burning from head to foot--"it's better for us
not--" She ended in a muffled voice, hiding her face in the crook of
her arm.
Ah, yes; now I knew why Ev'leen Ann had shut out the passionate breath of
the spring night!
I stood near her, a lump in my throat, but I divined the anguish of her
shame at her involuntary self-revelation, and respected it. I dared do no
more than to touch her shoulder gently.
The door behind us rattled. Ev'leen Ann sprang up and turned her face
toward the wall. Paul's cousin came in, shuffling a little, blinking his
eyes in the light of the unshaded lamp, and looking very cross and tired.
He glanced at us without comment as he went over to the sink. "Nobody
offered me anything good to drink," he complained, "so I came in to get
some water from the faucet for my nightcap."
When he had drunk with ostentation from the tin dipper he went to the
outside door and flung it open.
"Don't you people know how hot and smelly it is in here?" he said, with
his usual unceremonious abruptness.
The night wind burst in, eddying, and puffed out the lamp with a breath.
In an instant the room was filled with coolness and perfumes and the
rushing sound of the river. Out of the darkness came Ev'leen Ann's young
voice. "It seems to me," she said, as though speaking to herself, "that I
never heard the Mill Brook sound loud as it has this spring."
I woke up that night with the start one has at a sudden call. But there
had been no call. A profound silence spread itself through the sleeping
house. Outdoors the wind had died down. Only the loud brawl of the river
broke the stillness under the stars. But all through the silence and this
vibrant song there rang a soundless menace which brought me out of bed and
to my feet before I was awake. I heard Paul say, "What's the matter?" in a
sleepy voice, and "Nothing," I answered, reaching for my dressing-gown and
slippers. I listened for a moment, my head ringing with all the
frightening tales of the morbid vein of violence which runs through the
character of our reticent people. There was still no sound. I went along
the hall and up the stairs to Ev'leen Ann room, and I opened the door
without knocking. The room was empty.
Then how I ran! Calling loudly for Paul to join me, I ran down the two
flights of stairs, out of the open door and along the hedged path which
leads down to the little river. The starlight was clear. I could see
everything as plainly as though in early dawn. I saw the river, and
saw--Ev'leen Ann!
There was a dreadful moment of horror, which I shall never remember very
clearly, and then Ev'leen Ann and I--both very wet--stood on the bank,
shuddering in each other's arms.
Into our hysteria there dropped, like a pungent caustic the arid voice of
Horace, remarking, "Well, are you two people crazy, or are you walking in
your sleep?" I could feel Ev'leen Ann stiffen in my arms, and I nearly
stepped back from her in astonished admiration as I heard her snatch at
the straw thus offered, and still shuddering horribly from head to foot,
force herself to say quite connectedly: "Why--yes--of course--I've always
heard about my grandfather Parkman's walking in his sleep. Folks _said_
'twould come out in the family some time."
Paul was close behind Horace--I wondered a little at his not being
first--and with many astonished and inane ejaculations, such as people
always make on startling occasions, we made our way back into the house to
hot blankets and toddies. But I slept no more that night. Some time after
dawn, however, I did fall into a troubled unconsciousness full of bad
dreams, and only awoke when the sun was quite high. I opened my eyes
to see Ev'leen Ann about to close the door. "Oh, did I wake you up?" she
said. "I didn't mean to. That little Harris boy is here with a letter for
you."
She spoke with a slightly defiant tone of self-possession. I tried to play
up to her interpretation of her role. "The little Harris boy?" I said,
sitting up in bed. "What in the world is he bringing me a letter for?"
Ev'leen Ann, with her usual clear perception of the superfluous in
conversation, vouchsafed no opinion on a matter where she had no
information, but went downstairs and brought back the note. It was of four
lines, and--surprisingly enough--from old Mrs. Purdon, who asked me
abruptly if I would have my husband take me to see her. She specified, and
underlined the specification, that I was to come "right off, and in the
automobile." Wondering extremely at this mysterious bidding I sought out
Paul, who obediently cranked up our small car and carried me off. There
was no sign of Horace about the house, but some distance on the other side
of the village we saw his tall, stooping figure swinging along the road.
He carried a cane and was characteristically occupied in violently
switching off the heads from the wayside weeds as he walked. He refused
our offer to take him in, alleging that he was out for exercise and to
reduce his flesh--an ancient jibe at his bony frame which made him for an
instant show a leathery smile.
There was, of course, no one at Mrs. Purdon's to let us into the tiny,
three-roomed house, since the bedridden invalid spent her days there alone
while 'Niram worked his team on other people's fields. Not knowing what we
might find, Paul stayed outside in the car, while I stepped inside in
answer to Mrs. Purdon's "Come _in_, why don't you!" which sounded quite as
dry as usual. But when I saw her I knew that things were not as usual.
She lay flat on her back, the little emaciated wisp of humanity, hardly
raising the piecework quilt enough to make the bed seem occupied, and to
account for the thin, worn old face on the pillow. But as I entered the
room her eyes seized on mine, and I was aware of nothing but them and some
fury of determination behind them. With a fierce heat of impatience at my
first natural but quickly repressed exclamation of surprise she explained
briefly that she wanted Paul to lift her into the automobile and take her
into the next township to the Hulett farm. "I'm so shrunk away to nothin',
I know I can lay on the back seat if I crook myself up," she said, with a
cool accent but a rather shaky voice. Seeming to realize that even her
intense desire to strike the matter-of-fact note could not take the place
of any and all explanation of her extraordinary request, she added,
holding my eyes steady with her own: "Emma Hulett's my twin sister. I
guess it ain't so queer, my wanting to see her."
I thought, of course, we
were to be used as the medium for some strange, sudden family
reconciliation, and went out to ask Paul if he thought he could carry the
old invalid to the car. He replied that, so far as that went, he could
carry so thin an old body ten times around the town, but that he refused
absolutely to take such a risk without authorization from her doctor. I
remembered the burning eyes of resolution I had left inside, and sent him
to present his objections to Mrs. Purdon herself.
In a few moments I saw
him emerge from the house with the old woman in his arms. He had evidently
taken her up just as she lay. The piecework quilt hung down in long folds,
flashing its brilliant reds and greens in the sunshine, which shone so
strangely upon the pallid old countenance, facing the open sky for the
first time in years.
We drove in silence through the green and gold lyric of the spring day,
an elderly company sadly out of key with the triumphant note of eternal
youth which rang through all the visible world. Mrs. Purdon looked at
nothing, said nothing, seemed to be aware of nothing but the purpose in
her heart, whatever that might be. Paul and I, taking a leaf from our
neighbors' book, held, with a courage like theirs, to their excellent
habit of saying nothing when there is nothing to say. We arrived at the
fine old Hulett place without the exchange of a single word.
"Now carry me in," said Mrs. Purdon briefly, evidently hoarding her
strength.
"Wouldn't I better go and see if Miss Hulett is at home?" I asked.
Mrs. Purdon shook her head impatiently and turned her compelling eyes on
my husband, I went up the path before them to knock at the door, wondering
what the people in the house would possibly be thinking of us There was no
answer to my knock. "Open the door and go in," commanded Mrs. Purdon from
out her quilt.
There was no one in the spacious, white-paneled hall and no sound in all
the big, many-roomed house.
"Emma's out feeding the hens," conjectured Mrs. Purdon, not, I fancied,
without a faint hint of relief in her voice. "Now carry me up-stairs to
the first room on the right."
Half hidden by his burden, Paul rolled wildly inquiring eyes at me; but he
obediently staggered up the broad old staircase, and, waiting till I had
opened the first door to the right, stepped into the big bedroom.
"Put me down on the bed, and open them shutters," Mrs. Purdon commanded.
She still marshaled her forces with no lack of decision, but with a
fainting voice which made me run over to her quickly as Paul laid her down
on the four-poster. Her eyes were still indomitable, but her mouth hung
open slackly and her color was startling. "Oh, Paul, quick! quick! Haven't
you your flask with you?"
Mrs. Purdon informed me in a barely audible whisper, "In the corner
cupboard at the head of the stairs," and I flew down the hallway. I
returned with a bottle, evidently of great age. There was only a little
brandy in the bottom, but it whipped up a faint color into the sick
woman's lips.
As I was bending over her and Paul was thrusting open the shutters,
letting in a flood of sunshine and flecky leaf-shadows, a firm, rapid step
came down the hall, and a vigorous woman, with a tanned face and a clean,
faded gingham dress, stopped short in the doorway with an expression of
stupefaction.
Mrs. Purdon put me on one side, and although she was physically incapable
of moving her body by a hair's breadth, she gave the effect of having
risen to meet the newcomer. "Well, Emma, here I am," she said in a queer
voice, with involuntary quavers in it. As she went on she had it more
under control, although in the course of her extraordinarily succinct
speech it broke and failed her occasionally. When it did, she drew in her
breath with an audible, painful effort, struggling forward steadily in
what she had to say. "You see, Emma, it's this way: My 'Niram and your
Ev'leen Ann have been keeping company--ever since they went to school
together--you know that's well as I do, for all we let on we didn't, only
I didn't know till just now how hard they took it. They can't get married
because 'Niram can't keep even, let alone get ahead any, because I cost so
much bein' sick, and the doctor says I may live for years this way, same's
Aunt Hettie did. An' 'Niram is thirty-one, an' Ev'leen Ann is
twenty-eight, an' they've had 'bout's much waitin' as is good for folks
that set such store by each other. I've thought of every way out of
it--and there ain't any. The Lord knows I don't enjoy livin' any, not so's
to notice the enjoyment, and I'd thought of cutting my throat like Uncle
Lish, but that'd make 'Niram and Ev'leen Ann feel so--to think why I'd
done it; they'd never take the comfort they'd ought in bein' married; so
that won't do. There's only one thing to do. I guess you'll have to take
care of me till the Lord calls me. Maybe I won't last so long as the
doctor thinks."
When she finished, I felt my ears ringing in the silence. She had walked
to the sacrificial altar with so steady a step, and laid upon it her
precious all with so gallant a front of quiet resolution, that for an
instant I failed to take in the sublimity of her self-immolation. Mrs.
Purdon asking for charity! And asking the one woman who had most reason to
refuse it to her.
Paul looked at me miserably, the craven desire to escape a scene written
all over him. "Wouldn't we better be going, Mrs. Purdon?" I said uneasily.
I had not ventured to look at the woman in the doorway.
Mrs. Purdon motioned me to remain, with an imperious gesture whose
fierceness showed the tumult underlying her brave front. "No; I want you
should stay. I want you should hear what I say, so's you can tell folks,
if you have to. Now, look here, Emma," she went on to the other, still
obstinately silent; "you must look at it the way 'tis. We're neither of us
any good to anybody, the way we are--and I'm dreadfully in the way of the
only two folks we care a pin about--either of us. You've got plenty to do
with, and nothing to spend it on. I can't get myself out of their way by
dying without going against what's Scripture and proper, but--" Her steely
calm broke. She burst out in a screaming, hysterical voice: "You've just
_got_ to, Emma Hulett! You've just _got_ to! If you don't, I won't never
go back to 'Niram's house! I'll lie in the ditch by the roadside till the
poor-master comes to git me--and I'll tell everybody that it's because my
own twin sister, with a house and a farm and money in the bank, turned me
out to starve--" A fearful spasm cut her short. She lay twisted and limp,
the whites of her eyes showing between the lids.
"Good God, she's gone!" cried Paul, running to the bed.
I was aware that the woman in the doorway had relaxed her frozen
immobility and was between Paul and me as we rubbed the thin, icy hands
and forced brandy between the flaccid lips. We all three thought her dead
or dying, and labored over her with the frightened thankfulness for one
another's living presence which always marks that dreadful moment. But
even as we fanned and rubbed, and cried out to one another to open the
windows and to bring water, the blue lips moved to a ghostly whisper: "Em,
listen--" The old woman went back to the nickname of their common youth.
"Em--your Ev'leen Ann--tried to drown herself--in the Mill Brook last
night ... That's what decided me--to--" And then we were plunged into
another desperate struggle with Death for the possession of the battered
old habitation of the dauntless soul before us.
"Isn't there any hot water in the house?" cried Paul, and "Yes, yes; a
tea-kettle on the stove!" answered the woman who labored with us. Paul,
divining that she meant the kitchen, fled down-stairs. I stole a look at
Emma Hulett's face as she bent over the sister she had not seen in thirty
years, and I knew that Mrs. Purdon's battle was won. It even seemed that
she had won another skirmish in her never-ending war with death, for a
little warmth began to come back into her hands.
When Paul returned with the tea-kettle, and a hot-water bottle had been
filled, the owner of the house straightened herself, assumed her rightful
position as mistress of the situation, and began to issue commands. "You
git right in the automobile, and go git the doctor," she told Paul.
"That'll be the quickest. She's better now, and your wife and I can keep
her goin' till the doctor gits here."
As Paul left the room she snatched something white from a bureau-drawer,
stripped the worn, patched old cotton nightgown from the skeleton-like
body, and, handling the invalid with a strong, sure touch, slipped on a
soft, woolly outing-flannel wrapper with a curious trimming of zigzag
braid down the front. Mrs. Purdon opened her eyes very slightly, but shut
them again at her sister's quick command, "You lay still, Em'line, and
drink some of this brandy." She obeyed without comment, but after a pause
she opened her eyes again and looked down at the new garment which clad
her. She had that moment turned back from the door of death, but her first
breath was used to set the scene for a return to a decent decorum.
"You're still a great hand for rick-rack work, Em, I see," she murmured in
a faint whisper. "Do you remember how surprised Aunt Su was when you made
up a pattern?"
"Well, I hadn't thought of it for quite some time," returned Miss Hulett,
in exactly the same tone of everyday remark. As she spoke she slipped her
arm under the other's head and poked the pillow up to a more comfortable
shape. "Now you lay perfectly still," she commanded in the hectoring tone
of the born nurse; "I'm goin' to run down and make you up a good hot cup
of sassafras tea."
I followed her down into the kitchen and was met by the same refusal to
be melodramatic which I had encountered in Ev'leen Ann. I was most anxious
to know what version of my extraordinary morning I was to give out to the
world, but hung silent, positively abashed by the cool casualness of the
other woman as she mixed her brew. Finally, "Shall I tell 'Niram--What
shall I say to Ev'leen Ann? If anybody asks me--" I brought out with
clumsy hesitation.
At the realization that her reserve and family pride were wholly at the
mercy of any report I might choose to give, even my iron hostess faltered.
She stopped short in the middle of the floor, looked at me silently,
piteously, and found no word.
I hastened to assure her that I would attempt no hateful picturesqueness
of narration. "Suppose I just say that you were rather lonely here, now
that Ev'leen Ann has left you, and that you thought it would be nice to
have your sister come to stay with you, so that 'Niram and Ev'leen Ann can
be married?"
Emma Hulett breathed again. She walked toward the stairs with the steaming
cup in her hand. Over her shoulder she remarked, "Well, yes, ma'am; that
would be as good a way to put it as any, I guess."
'Niram and Ev'leen Ann were standing up to be married. They looked very
stiff and self-conscious, and Ev'leen Ann was very pale. 'Niram's big
hands, bent in the crook of a man who handles tools, hung down by his new
black trousers. Ev'leen Ann's strong fingers stood out stiffly from one
another. They looked hard at the minister and repeated after him in low
and meaningless tones the solemn and touching words of the marriage
service. Back of them stood the wedding company, in freshly washed and
ironed white dresses, new straw hats, and black suits smelling of camphor.
In the background, among the other elders, stood Paul and Horace and I--my
husband and I hand in hand; Horace twiddling the black ribbon which holds
his watch, and looking bored. Through the open windows into the stuffiness
of the best room came an echo of the deep organ note of midsummer.
"Whom God hath joined together--" said the minister, and the epitome of
humanity which filled the room held its breath--the old with a wonder upon
their life-scarred faces, the young half frightened to feel the stir of
the great wings soaring so near them.
Then it was all over. 'Niram and Ev'leen Ann were married, and the rest of
us were bustling about to serve the hot biscuit and coffee and chicken
salad, and to dish up the ice-cream. Afterward there were no citified
refinements of cramming rice down the necks of the departing pair or tying
placards to the carriage in which they went away. Some of the men went out
to the barn and hitched up for 'Niram, and we all went down to the gate to
see them drive off. They might have been going for one of their Sunday
afternoon "buggy-rides" except for the wet eyes of the foolish women and
girls who stood waving their hands in answer to the flutter of Ev'leen
Ann's handkerchief as the carriage went down the hill.
We had nothing to say to one another after they left, and began soberly to
disperse to our respective vehicles. But as I was getting into our car a
new thought suddenly struck me.
"Why," I cried, "I never thought of it before! However in the world did
old Mrs. Purdon know about Ev'leen Ann--that night?"
Horace was pulling at the door, which was badly adjusted and shut hard. He
closed it with a vicious slam. "_I_ told her," he said crossly.