|They arrived in New York at six o’clock that evening. Amos met them at
the train. They hardly recognized him in his silk hat, long overcoat,
stylish necktie, and kid gloves. Joel did not approve of what he
considered a rather dudish dress, but he overlooked that when he saw how
happy the young man was at the sight of his mother.
“I wish I could invite you to my house, Mr. Lowry,” said Amos,
cordially, “but the truth is, we have only a small flat, and there is
hardly room for you.”
“Oh, never mind me,” said Joel. “I’m a-goin’ to a tavern nigh whar I do
my tradin’. I ’ll tell you good day now, but I ’ll run in an’ see ef Mis’
Gibbs has any word to send back when I start home.”
He did not see her again for a week. He had concluded his purchases, and
was ready to return South, when he decided to look her up. Finding her
was more difficult than he had imagined. After several hours’ search on
the east side of the city, she being on the west, he finally reached
the big building which contained Amos’s flat. Here he became involved in
another mystery, for he found the front door, a glistening plate-glass
affair, firmly locked, and no bell in sight. He stood in the tiled
vestibule for several minutes deliberating on what was best to do.
Fortunately, he saw a policeman passing, and hailed him.
“I’ve got a friend a-livin’ somewhar in this shebang,” he said; “but you
may hang me ef I know how to git at ‘im.”
“Is his name on one of the letter-boxes?” asked the policeman.
“What letter-boxes?” questioned Joel. “I hain’t seed no names.”
With an amused aspect of countenance the policeman mounted the steps and
went into the vestibule. Here he opened some wooden doors in the wall,
disclosing to view a long row of letter-boxes with the cards of their
owners beneath them.
“Who’s your friend?” he asked, kindly.
“Amos Gibbs. I’ve knowed ’im ever sence he was a little--”
“There,” interrupted the policeman. “I pushed the button. That rang a
bell inside, and they will open the door by electricity if anybody is at
home. When you hear the latch clicking, push the door open and go in.”
He disappeared down the street, and then Joel was roused from apathetic
helplessness by a rapid clicking in the lock. He opened the door and
went in. It was fortunate that Amos lived on the first floor, or even
then Joel would not have known how to proceed farther. As it was,
another door at the end of the heavily carpeted hall opened and a
servant girl in white cap and apron put out her head.
“Yes,” she said, in answer to his inquiry. Mrs. Gibbs was at home,
He followed her into a little parlor facing the street, with a single
window. It was furnished more neatly than any room Joel had ever been
in. The polished hardwood floor was covered with rugs of various
kinds and sizes, and the room contained a bookcase, an upright piano,
pictures, and pieces of bric-a-brac such as the store-keeper had never
seen.
Mrs. Gibbs entered from the dining-room in the rear. Her hair was done
up in a new style, which made her head appear larger than usual, and she
wore a shining black silk gown that added height, dignity, and youth to
her general aspect. She gave him her hand, and her whole attire rustled
as she sat down.
“Well, you got heer at last,” she said. “I ‘lowed you never would come.
I’ve been lookin’ fer you every day. I hain’t hardly done anything else
sence I got heer.”
Joel stared, flushed, and tensely folded his hands anew. It seemed to
him that he would not have suffered such a dire lack of words if she had
not been looking so fine. It was as if his stalwart masculinity were
a glaring misfit among the dainty gewgaws about him. He was mortally
afraid the slender gilded chair he was sitting on would break under his
two hundred weight. He had never imagined that dress could make such a
change in the appearance of any one. The only features about her which
seemed natural were her voice and a triangular bit of her wrinkled face
which showed through her low-parted hair.
“I come as soon as I got through,” he heard himself say; and then he
cleared his throat from a great depth as an apology for the frailty of
his tone.
“I kin see you think I’m a sight to behold,” she laughed, merrily.
“Sally fixed me up this-a-way: She fluted my hair with a hot curlin’
fork, an’ combed it like the New York women’s. She hain’t done one thing
sence I come but haul out dresses an’ fixin’s that used to belong to ‘er
dead mother, an’ try ’em on me, an’ they’ve kept me on the move tell I’d
give a sight fer jest one little nap whar thar wasn’t so much clatter.
Last night they give me a old woman’s party. Joel, jest think of a
person o’ my age a-settin’ up tell ‘leven o’clock talkin’ to a gang o’
gray-haired women like a passel o’ hens jest off the’r nests! An’ jest
when I ‘lowed they was all goin’ home, Sally passed around things to eat
an’ drink.”
“They wanted to make you have a good time,” ventured the storekeeper.
The widow lowered her voice, and threw a furtive glance toward the
dining-room.
“But it ain’t the way to make a woman o’ my raisin’ enjoy a visit,” she
said, cautiously. “I don’t dare to say a word, fer Amos seems tickled to
death over all that Sally gits up; but, Joel, I’m mighty nigh dead. Like
a born idiot, I told ’em in my last letter that I’d stay three months,
an’ now, as the Lord is my help an’ stay, I don’t believe I can make out
another week.”
Her voice faltered. Moisture glistened in her eyes.
“I hope it ain’t as bad as that,” remarked Joel, in a tone of vast
sympathy.
“It’s jest awful,” whimpered the widow. “I make so many fool blunders.
‘Tother day they wanted me to go to Brooklyn with ‘em, an’ I jest lied
out o’ goin’; an’ as they wanted to take the hired gal along to watch
the baby, I agreed to stay at home an’ ‘tend to the house. My Lord,
Joel, ef you’ve never been alone in one o’ these contraptions, don’t you
ever try it. The hired gal showed me all the different arrangements,
an’ what I was to do. When the bell in the back rings you must press
the button in the kitchen, an’ when the bell in the front rings, it’s
somebody at the side door in the hall. An’ when you hear a shrill
whistle out ’n the talkin’-tube in the kitchen, you have to open the
end an’ blow an’ then holler through an’ ax what’s wanted. Then ef it’s
groceries, ur milk, ur peddlers’ stuff, ur what not, you have to go to
the dumb-waiter that fetches things up through a hole in the wall like a
well-bucket an’ take the things off. I had a lots o’ trouble. I was busy
all the while the family was off at that dumb-waiter. Like a born fool,
I didn’t know it tuk stuff to other folks, too, an’ I thought it would
save time to set at the dumb-waiter with the door open, an’ take off the
things without waitin’ fer ’em to whistle. You never seed the like in
all yore life! Before I’d been thar a hour, the kitchen was liter’ly
filled with all manner o’ stuff, beer, bad-smellin’ cheese, and oodlin’s
an’ oodlin’s o’ milk in bottles. After a while I heerd a fearful racket
inside the dumb-waiter. People all the way to the top was a-yellin’ out
that somebody had stole the’r things, and the landlord was a-bouncin’
about like a rubber ball, an’ talkin’ of callin’ in the police. Finally
he come in an’ axed me about it. He fixed it all right fer me, and
delivered the goods to their rightful owners, an’ promised not to tell
Amos nur Sally what I’d done.”
“You did sorter have a time of it,” said Joel. “I’m no hand myse’f to
understand new fixin’s. It’s been chilly the last day or so, an’ when
I went to my room in the tavern t’other night I noticed that it was
powerful warm after I went to bed. I got up an’ struck a light, but thar
wasn’t a sign of a fireplace in the room, an’ it was so hot I ‘lowed
thar might be a conflagration a-smolderin’ som ‘ers. So I put on my
things an’ went down to the office. They explained to me that the heat
comes frum a furnace below, an’ runs into the rooms through holes in the
floor. They come up an’ shet mine off so as I could sleep.”
“It’s a heap nicer our way,” said the widow, without a smile at his
misadventure. “I tell you, Joel, I jest can’t stand it. I want to go
back. When are you a-goin’?”
“In the mornin’.”
She fumbled in the pocket of her skirt and took out her handkerchief,
placing it to her eyes.
“Oh, I’m heartily sick of it all!” she whimpered. “You are the fust rail
natural thing I’ve laid eyes on sence I come. Sally is mighty cleanly,
an’ I’d ax you to clean the mud off ’n yore feet, but it’s the fust muddy
feet I’ve seen in so long I want to look at ‘em.”
Joel glanced down at his boots and flushed. “I never noticed ‘em,” he
stammered. “I had sech a time a-gittin’ in this shebang.”
“Lord, it don’t matter, Joel! I’m jest a-thinkin’ about you a-goin’
home. I simply cayn’t stand it; an’ yet Amos an’ Sally would feel bad ef
I went so soon. Amos was sayin’ last night that they would make me have
sech a good time that I’d never want to leave ‘em; but la me! this is
the fust rail work I’ve done in many a day.
“Well, I must go, I reckon,” Joel said, rising awkwardly and taking his
hat from the floor by his chair. “I’m sorry, too, to go back an’ leave
you feelin’ so miserable. I wish I could do some ‘n’ to comfort you, but
I can’t, I reckon. Good-bye--take keer of yorese’f.”
V
|When he arrived home two days later, Betsey found him, as she thought,
peculiarly reticent about his trip, and all her efforts to get him to
speak of how Mrs. Gibbs was pleased were fruitless. One afternoon
two weeks after his return she ran into his store, where he was busy
weighing smoked bacon which he was purchasing from a customer.
“What you reckon, Joel?” she asked. “What you reckon has happened?”
“I don’t know,” he said, looking up from the paper on which he was
figuring.
“Mis’ Gibbs’s got back.”
“You cayn’t mean it, sister!”
Betsey leaned against the counter, and the hardware in the showcase
rattled. Joel’s face had paled. He called his clerk to him, and told him
to settle with the customer, and walked to the door with Betsey.
“Yes,” she said. “She got home in Jeff Woods’s hack about a hour ago.
All the neighbors is over there now. She acts so quar! She hain’t seemed
to keer a speck about the cow, nur the cat, nur the chickens. As soon
as she got ’er things off, she jest sot down an’ drooped. She don’t look
well. The general opinion is that Amos an’ his wife have sent ’er home,
fer she won’t talk about them. She acts mighty funny. Jest as I started
out I happened to remark that you’d be astonished to heer she was back,
an’ I never seed sech a quar look in a body’s face. But,” she concluded
after a pause, “they couldn’t ‘a’ treated ’er so awful bad, fer she’s
got dead loads o’ finery.”
That night Joel closed up his store earlier than usual, and when he came
into the sitting-room he brought an armful of big logs and put them in
the chimney. Then before a roaring fire he sat reflectively, without
reading the paper he had brought with him, as was his wont. Betsey
sat in the chimney-corner knitting, and looking first at him and then
peering through the window toward Mrs. Gibbs’s cottage.
“Brother Joel,” she said, suddenly. “You are a-actin’ quar, too. You
must know some ‘n’ about what happened to Mis’ Gibbs, ur why don’t you go
over thar an’ see ’er like the rest o’ the neighbors? They’ve all been
but you. She ’ll think strange of it.”
“I don’t see what good I could do,” he answered; and he began to punch
the fire, causing a stream of sparks to mount upward with a fusillade of
tiny explosions.
Betsey knitted silently for a few minutes longer, then she rose and
stood at the window.
“She’s got ’er lamp on the table an’ a paper in ’er lap, but she hain’t
a-readin’ of it,” said Betsey. “It looks jest like she’s a-goin’ to
commence ’er lonely broodin’ life over ag’in. Some ‘n’ seems wrong with
‘er, as good an’ sweet as she is. She kinder fancied she’d be happy with
Amos, an’ mebby when she got ’im with ’er she begun to pine fer her ole
home. Now she’s back, an’ I reckon she hardly knows what she does want.
I say, perhaps that may be her fix.”
“Mebby it is,” admitted the storekeeper, briefly.
Betsey turned on him quickly. There was a peculiar aggressive sparkle in
her eyes, a set look of determination on her face.
“Brother Joel,” she said, “you’ve jest got to have a grain of common
sense. You’ve got to go over thar this minute an’ see ‘er. Ef you don’t
she ain’t a-goin’ to sleep a wink. I know women, an’ I’ve knowed Mis’
Gibbs a long time.”
Joel drew his feet from the fire and wedged his heels under the rung
of his chair. The muscles of his face were twitching. There was no
mistaking Betsey’s tone. She sat down near him and laid her thin,
tremulous hand on his knee.
“Do as I tell you, brother. Don’t be back’ard. You can’t hide nothin’.”
Joel rose. He tried to smile indifferently as he went to a little mirror
on the wall and brushed his hair and beard.
“You must wish me good luck, then, sister,” he said, huskily. “I ain’t
no ways shore what she will do about me.”
After he had gone out Betsey took up an album and opened it at a
collection of tintype pictures. On one of these her eyes rested long and
mistily. Then she kissed it, wiped her eyes, and went to bed. Two hours
later she heard the front door close and her brother creeping to his
room.
“Oh, Joel!” she called out. “Come to my door a minute.”
His boots made a loud clatter in the dead stillness of the house, as he
approached.
“Was it all right, brother?”
“You bet it was, Betsey!” He stood in the doorway. The darkness hid his
face, but there was a note of boundless joy in his tone.
“I thought it would be, but I don’t yet understand why she come back so
quick.”
“She don’t like city folks’ ways,” answered the storekeeper; “an’
then--”
“An’ then what?” broke in Betsey, impatiently.
“Well, you see, the--the notion seemed to strike both of us when we was
travelin’ together, an’--an’ she admitted that she was a leetle grain
afeered that ef we didn’t see one another ag’in fer three months that
the notion might wear off. Railly, she’s tickled to death, fur now she
says she kin give Amos an’ Sally a sensible reason fer wantin’ to git
back home.”
Betsey was silent so long that Joel began to wonder if she had fallen
asleep. Finally she said:
“Go to bed now, Joel. She’s the very woman fer you. I hain’t never had
no rail happiness in my life sence Jim died, but I want them I love to
git all they kin.”