“Well, I've come to say good-by,” said Mrs. Field.
Amanda had one side of her front hair between her lips while she twisted the other; she took it out. “Good-by, Mis' Field,” she said. “I'll do the best I can for Lois. How soon do you s'pose you'll be back?”
“It's accordin' to how I get along. I've been tellin' Lois she ain't goin' to school to-day. She's afraid Mr. Starr will put Ida in if she don't; but there ain't no need of her worryin'; mebbe a way will be opened. I want you to lookout she don't go. There ain't no need of it.”
“I'll do the best I can,” said Amanda, with a doubtful glance at Lois.
Lois said nothing, but her pale little mouth contracted obstinately. She and Amanda followed her mother to the door. The departing woman said good-by, and went down the steps over the terraces. She never looked back. She went on out the gate, and turned into the long road. She had a mile walk to the railroad station.
Amanda and Lois went back into the sitting-room.
“When did she tell you she was going?” Lois asked suddenly.
“Last night.”
“She didn't tell me till this morning.”
Lois held her head high, but her eyes were surprised and pitiful, and the corners of her mouth drooped. She faced about to the window with a haughty motion, and watched her mother out of sight, a gaunt, dark old figure disappearing under low green elm branches.
Chapter III
It was many years since Mrs. Field had taken any but the most trivial journeys. Elliot was a hundred and twenty miles away. She must go to Boston; then cross the city to the other depot, where she would take the Elliot train. This elderly unsophisticated woman might very reasonably have been terrified at the idea of taking this journey alone, but she was not. She never thought of it.
The latter half of the road to the Green River station lay through an unsettled district. There were acres of low birch woods and lusty meadow-lands. This morning they were covered with a gold-green dazzle of leaves. To one looking across them, they almost seemed played over by little green flames; now and then a young birch tree stood away from the others, and shone by itself like a very torch of spring. Mrs. Field walked steadily through it. She had never paused to take much thought of the beauty of nature; to-day a tree all alive and twinkling with leaves might, for all her notice, have been naked and stiff with frost.
She did not seem to walk fast, but her long steps carried her over the ground well. It was long before train-time when she came in sight of the little station with its projecting piazza roofs. She entered the ladies' room and bought her ticket, then she sat down and waited. There were two other women there—middle-aged countrywomen in awkward wool gowns and flat straw bonnets, with a certain repressed excitement in their homely faces. They were setting their large, faithful, cloth-gaitered feet a little outside their daily ruts, and going to visit some relatives in a neighboring town; they were almost overcome by the unusualness of it.
Jane Field was a woman after their kind, and the look on their faces had its grand multiple in the look on hers. She had not only stepped out of her rut, but she was going out of sight of it forever.
She sat there stiff and silent, her two feet braced against the floor, ready to lift her at the signal of the train, her black leather bag grasped firmly in her right hand.
The two women eyed her furtively. One nudged the other. “Know who that is?” she whispered. But neither of them knew. They were from the adjoining town, which this railroad served as well as Green River.
Sometimes Mrs. Field looked at them, but with no speculation; the next moment she looked in the same way upon the belongings of the little country depot—the battered yellow settees, the time-tables, the long stove in its tract of littered sawdust, the man's face in the window of the ticket-office.
“Dreadful cross-lookin', ain't she?” one of the women whispered in the other's ear.
Jane heard the whisper, and looked at them. The women gave each other violent pokes, they reddened and tittered nervously, then they tried to look out of the window with an innocent and absent air. But they need not have been troubled. Jane, although she heard the whisper perfectly, did not connect it with herself at all. She never thought much about her own appearance; this morning she had as little vanity as though she were dead.
When the whistle of the train sounded, the women all pushed anxiously out on the platform.
“Is this the train that goes to Boston?” Mrs. Field asked one of the other two.
“I s'pose so,” she replied, with a reciprocative flutter. “I'm goin' to ask so's to be sure. I'm goin' to Dale.”
“I always ask,” her friend remarked, with decision.
When the train stopped, Mrs. Field inquired of a brakeman. She was hardly satisfied with his affirmative answer. “Are you the conductor?” said she, sternly peering.
The young fellow gave a hurried wave of his hand toward the conductor, “There he is, ma'am.”
Mrs. Field asked him also, then she hoisted herself into the car. When she had taken her seat, she put the same question to a woman in front of her.
It was a five-hours' ride to Boston. Mrs. Field sat all the while in her place with her bag in her lap, and never stirred. There was a look of rigid preparation about her, as if all her muscles were strained for an instant leap.
Two young girls in an opposite seat noticed her and tittered. They had considerable merriment over her, twisting their pretty silly faces, and rolling their blue eyes in her direction, and then averting them with soft repressed chuckles.
Occasionally Mrs. Field looked over at them, thought of her Lois, and noted their merriment gravely. She never dreamed that they were laughing at her. If she had, she would not have considered it twice.
It was four o'clock when Mrs. Field arrived in Boston. She had been in the city but once before, when she was a young girl. Still she set out with no hesitation to walk across the city to the depot where she must take the cars for Elliot. She could not afford a carriage, and she would not trust herself in a street car. She knew her own head and her old muscles; she could allow for their limitations, and preferred to rely upon them.
Every few steps she stopped and asked a question as to her route, listening sharply to the reply. Then she went straight enough, speeding between the informers like guide-posts. This old provincial threaded the city streets as unappreciatively as she had that morning the country one. Once in a while the magnificence of some shop window, a dark flash of jet, or a flutter of lace on a woman's dress caught her eye, but she did not see it. She had nothing in common with anything of that kind; she had to do with the primal facts of life. Coming as she was out of the country quiet, she was quite unmoved by the thundering rush of the city streets. She might have been deaf and blind for all the impression it had upon her. Her own nature had grown so intense that it apparently had emanations, and surrounded her with an atmosphere of her own impenetrable to the world.
It was nearly five o'clock when she reached her station, and the train was ready. It was half-past five when she arrived in Elliot. She got off the train and stalked, as if with a definite object, around the depot platform. She did not for one second hesitate or falter. She went up to a man who was loading some trunks on a wagon, and asked him to direct her to Lawyer Tuxbury's office. Her voice was so abrupt and harsh that the man started.
“Cross the track, an' go up the street till you come to it, on the right-hand side,” he answered. Then he stared curiously after her as she went on.
Lawyer Tuxbury's small neat sign was fastened upon the door of the L of a large white house. There was a green yard, and some newly started flower-beds. In one there was a clump of yellow daffodils. Two yellow-haired little girls were playing out in the yard. They both stood still, staring with large, wary blue eyes at Mrs. Field as she came up the path. She never glanced toward them.
She stood like a black-draped statue before the office door, and knocked. Nobody answered.
She knocked again louder. Then a voice responded “Come in.” Mrs. Field turned the knob carefully, and opened the door. It led directly into the room. There was a dull oil-cloth carpet, some beetling cases of heavy books, a few old arm-chairs, and one battered leather easy-chair. A great desk stood against the farther wall, and a man was seated at it, with his back toward the door. He had white hair, to which the sunlight coming through the west window gave a red-gold tinge.
Mrs. Field stood still, just inside the door. Apart from anything else, the room itself had a certain awe-inspiring quality for her. She had never before been in a lawyer's office. She was fully possessed with the rural and feminine ignorance and holy fear of all legal appurtenances. From all her traditions, this office door should have displayed a grinning man or woman trap, which she must warily shun.
She eyed the dusty oil-cloth—the files of black books—the chairs—the man at the desk, with his gilded white head. He wrote on steadily, and never stirred for a minute. Then he again sang out, sharply, “Come in.”
He was deaf, and had, along with his insensibility to sounds, that occasional abnormal perception of them which the deaf seem sometimes to possess. He often heard sounds when none were recognizable to other people.
Now, evidently having perceived no result from his first response, he had heard this second knock, which did not exist except in his own supposition and the waiting woman's intent. She had, indeed, just at this point said to herself that she would slip out and knock again if he did not look around. She had not the courage to speak. It was almost as if the deaf lawyer, piecing out his defective ears with a subtler perception, had actually become aware of her intention, which had thundered upon him like the knock itself.
Mrs. Field made an inarticulate response, and took a grating step forward. The old man turned suddenly and saw her. She stood back again; there was a shrinking stiffness about her attitude, but she looked him full in the face.
“Why, good-day!” he exclaimed. “Good-day, madam. I didn't hear you come in.”
Mrs. Field murmured a good-day in return.
“Take a seat, madam.” The lawyer had risen, and was advancing toward her. He was a small, sharp-eyed man, whose youthful agility had crystallized into a nervous pomposity. Suddenly he stopped short; he had passed a broad slant of dusty sunlight which had lain between him and his visitor, and he could see her face plainly. His own elongated for a second, his under jaw lopped, and his brows contracted. Then he stepped forward. “Why, Mrs. Maxwell!” said he; “how do you do?”
“I'm pretty well, thank you,” replied Mrs. Field. She tried to bow, but her back would not bend.
“I am delighted to see you,” said the lawyer. “I recognize you perfectly now. I should have before, if the sun had not been in my eyes. I never forget a face.”
He took her by the hand, and shook it up and down effusively. Then he pushed forward the leather easy-chair with gracious insinuation. Mrs. Field sat down, bolt-upright, on the extreme verge of it.
The lawyer drew a chair to her side, seated himself, leaned forward until his face fronted hers, and talked. His manner was florid, almost bombastic. He had a fashion of working his face a good deal when he talked. He conversed quite rapidly and fluently, but was wont to interlard his conversation with what seemed majestically reflective pauses, during which he leaned back in his chair and tapped the arm slowly. In fact his flow of ideas failed him for a moment, his mind being so constituted that they came in rapid and temporary bursts, geyser fashion. He inquired when Mrs. Field arrived, was kindly circumstantial as to her health, touched decorously but not too mournfully upon the late Thomas Maxwell's illness and decease. He alluded to the letter which he had written her, mentioning as a singular coincidence that at the moment of her entrance he was engaged in writing another to her, to inquire if the former had been received.
He spoke in terms of congratulation of the property to which she had fallen heir, and intimated that further discussion concerning it, as a matter of business, had better be postponed until morning. Daniel Tuxbury was very methodical in his care for himself, and was loath to attend to any business after six o'clock.
Mrs. Field sat like a bolt of iron while the lawyer talked to her. Unless a direct question demanded it, she never spoke herself. But he did not seem to notice it; he had enough garnered-in complacency to delight himself, as a bee with its own honey. He rarely realized it when another person did not talk.
After one of his pauses, he sprang up with alacrity. “Mrs. Maxwell, will you be so kind as to excuse me for a moment?” said he, and went out of the office with a fussy hitch, as if he wore invisible petticoats. Mrs. Field heard his voice in the yard.
When he returned there was an old lady following in his wake. Mrs. Field saw her before he did. She came with a whispering of silk, but his deaf ears did not perceive that. He did not notice her at all until he had entered the office, then he saw Mrs. Field looking past him at the door, and turned himself.
He went toward her with a little flourish of words, but the old lady ignored him entirely. She held up her chin with a kind of ancient pertness, and eyed Mrs. Field. She was a small, straight-backed woman, full of nervous vibrations. She stood apparently still, but her black silk whispered all the time, and loose ends of black ribbon trembled. The black silk had an air of old gentility about it, but it was very shiny; there were many bows, but the ribbons were limp, having been pressed and dyed. Her face, yellow and deeply wrinkled, but sharply vivacious, was overtopped by a bunch of purple flowers in a nest of rusty black lace and velvet.
So far Mrs. Field had maintained a certain strained composure, but now her long, stern face began flushing beneath this old lady's gaze.
“I conclude you know this lady,” said the lawyer, with a blandly facetious air to the new-comer.
At that she stepped forward promptly, with a jerk as if to throw off her irresolution, and a certain consternation. “Yes, I s'pose I do,” said she, in a voice like a shrill high chirp. “It's Mis' Maxwell, ain't it—Edward's wife? How do you do, Esther? I hadn't seen you for so long, I wasn't quite sure, but I see who you are now. How do you do?”
“I'm pretty well, thank you,” said Mrs. Field, with a struggle, putting her twisted hand into the other woman's, extended quiveringly in a rusty black glove.
“When did you come to town, Esther?”
“Jest now.”
“Let me see, where from? I can't seem to remember the name of the place where you've been livin'. I know it, too.”
“Green River.”
“Oh, yes, Green River. Well, I'm glad to see you, Esther. You ain't changed much, come to look at you; not so much as I have, I s'pose. I don't expect you'd know me, would you?”
“I—don't know as I would.” Mrs. Field recoiled from a lie even in the midst of falsehood.
The old lady's face contracted a little, but she could spring above her emotions. “Well, I don't s'pose you would, either,” responded she, with fine alacrity. “I've grown old and wrinkled and yellow, though I ain't gray,” with a swift glance at Mrs. Field's smooth curves of white hair. “You turned gray pretty young, didn't you, Esther?”
“Yes, I did.”
The old lady's front hair hung in dark-brown spirals, a little bunch of them against either cheek, outside her bonnet. She set them dancing with a little dip of her head when she spoke again. “I thought you did,” said she. “Well, you're comin' over to my house, ain't you, Esther? You'll find a good many changes there. My daughter Flora and I are all that's left now, you know, I s'pose.”
Mrs. Field moved her head uncertainly. This old woman, with her straight demands for truth or falsehood, was torture to her.
“I suppose you'll come right over with me pretty soon,” the old lady went on. “I don't want to hurry you in your business with Mr. Tuxbury, but I suppose my nephew will be home, and—”
“I'm jest as much obliged to you, but I guess I'd better not. I've made some other plans,” said Mrs. Field.
“Oh, we are going to keep Mrs. Maxwell with us to-night,” interposed the lawyer. He had stood by smilingly while the two women talked.
“I'm jest as much obliged, but I guess I'd better not,” repeated Mrs. Field, looking at both of them.
The old lady straightened herself in her flimsy silk draperies. “Well, of course, if you've got other plans made, I ain't goin' to urge you, Esther,” said she; “but any time you feel disposed to come, you'll be welcome. Good-evenin', Esther. Good-evenin', Mr. Tuxbury.” She turned with a rustling bob, and was out the door.
The lawyer pressed forward hurriedly. “Why, Mrs. Maxwell, weren't you coming in? Isn't there something I can do for you?” said he.
“No, thank you,” replied the old lady, shortly. “I've got to go home; it's my tea-time. I was goin' by, and I thought I'd jest look in a minute; that was all. It wa'n't anything. Good-evenin'.” She was half down the walk before she finished speaking. She never looked around.
The lawyer turned to Mrs. Field. “Mrs. Henry Maxwell was not any too much please to see you sitting here,” he whispered, with a confidential smile. “She wouldn't say anything; she's as proud as Lucifer; but she was considerably taken aback.”
Mrs. Field nodded. She felt numb. She had not understood who this other woman was. She knew now—the mother of the young woman who was the rightful heir to Thomas Maxwell's property.
“The old lady has been pretty anxious,” Mr. Tuxbury went on. “She's been in here a good many times—made excuses to come in and see if I had any news. She has been twice as much concerned as her daughter about it. Well, she has had a pretty hard time. That branch of the family lost a good deal of property.”
Mrs. Field rose abruptly. “I guess I'd better be goin',” said she. “It must be your tea-time. I'll come in again to-morrow.”
The lawyer put up his hand deprecatingly. “Mrs. Maxwell, you will, of course, stay and take tea with us, and remain with us to-night.”
“I'm jest as much obliged to you for invitin' me, but I guess I'd better be goin'.”
“My sister is expecting you. You remember my sister, Mrs. Lowe. I've just sent word to her. You had better come right over to the house with me now, and to-morrow morning we can attend to business. You must be fatigued with your journey.”
“I'm real sorry if your sister's put herself out, but I guess I'd better not stay.”
The lawyer turned his ear interrogatively. “I beg your pardon, but I didn't quite understand. You think you can't stay?”
“I'm—much obliged to your sister an' you for invitin' me, but—I guess—I'd better—not.”
“Why—but—Mrs. Maxwell! Just be seated again for a moment, and let me speak to my sister; perhaps she—”
“I'm jest as much obliged to her, but I feel as if I'd better be goin'.” Mrs. Field stood before him, mildly unyielding. She seemed to waver toward his will, but all the time she abided toughly in her own self like a willow bough. “But, Mrs. Maxwell, what can you do?” said the lawyer, his manner full of perplexity, and impatience thinly veiled by courtesy. “The hotel here is not very desirable, and—”
“Can't I go right up to—the house?”
“The Maxwell house?”
“Yes, sir; if there ain't anything to hinder.”
Mr. Tuxbury stared at her. “Why, I don't know that there is really anything to hinder,” he said, slowly. “Although it is rather— No, I don't know as there is any actual objection to your going. I suppose the house belongs to you. But it is shut up. I think you would find it much pleasanter here, Mrs. Maxwell.” His eyebrows were raised, his mouth pursed up.
“I guess I'd better go, if I can jest as well as not; if I can get into the house.” Mrs. Field spoke with deprecating persistency.
Mr. Tuxbury turned abruptly toward his desk, and began fumbling in a drawer. She stood hesitatingly watchful. “If you would jest tell me where I'd find the key,” she ventured to remark. She had a vague idea that she would be told to look under a parlor blind for the key, that being the innocent country hiding-place when the house was left alone.
“I have the key, and I will go to the house with you myself directly.”
“I hate to make you so much trouble. I guess I could find it myself, if—”
“I will be ready immediately, Mrs. Maxwell,” said the lawyer, in a smoothly conclusive voice which abashed her.
She stood silently by the door until he was ready. He took her black bag peremptorily, and they went side by side down the street. He held his head well back, his lips were still tightly pursed, and he swung his cane with asperity. His important and irascible nature was oddly disturbed by this awkwardly obstinate old woman stalking at his side in her black clothes. Feminine opposition, even in slight matters, was wont to aggravate him, but in no such degree as this. He found it hard to recover his usual courtesy of manner, and indeed scarcely spoke a word during the walk. He could not himself understand his discomposure. But Mrs. Field did not seem to notice. She walked on, with her stern, impassive old face set straight ahead. Once they met a young girl who made her think of Lois, her floating draperies brushed against her black gown, for a second there was a pale, innocent little face looking up into her own.
It was not a very long walk to the Maxwell house.
“Here we are,” said the lawyer, coldly, and unlatched a gate, and held it open with stiff courtesy for his companion to pass.
They proceeded in silence up the long curve of walk which led to the front door. The walk was brown and slippery with pine needles. Tall old pine trees stood in groups about the yard. There were also elm and horse-chestnut trees. The horse-chestnuts were in blossom, holding up their white bouquets, which showed dimly. It was now quite dusky.
Back of the trees the house loomed up. It was white and bulky, with fluted cornices and corner posts, and a pillared porch to the front door. Mrs. Field passed between the two outstanding pillars, which reared themselves whitely over her, like ghostly sentries, and stood waiting while Mr. Tuxbury fitted the key to the lock.
It took quite a little time; he could not see very well, he had forgotten his spectacles in his impatient departure. But at last he jerked open the door, and a strange conglomerate odor, the very breath of the life of the old Maxwell house, steamed out in their faces.
All bridal and funeral feasts, all daily food, all garments which had hung in the closets and rustled through the rooms, every piece of furniture, every carpet and hanging had a part in it.
The rank and bitter emanations of life, as well as spices and sweet herbs and delicate perfumes, went to make up the breath which smote one in the face upon the opening of the door. Still it was not a disagreeable, but rather a suggestive and poetical odor, which should affect one like a reminiscent dream. However, the village people sniffed at it, and said “How musty that old house is!”
That was what Daniel Tuxbury said now. “The house is musty,” he remarked, with stately nose in the air.
Mrs. Field made no response. She stepped inside at once. “I'm much obliged to you,” said she.
The lawyer looked at her, then past her into the dark depths of the house. “You can't see,” said he, “you must let me go in with you and get a light.” He spoke in a tone of short politeness. He was in his heart utterly out of patience with this strange, stiff old woman.
“I guess I can find one. I hate to make you so much trouble.”
Mr. Tuxbury stepped forward with decision, and began fumbling in his pocket for a match. “Of course you cannot find one in the dark, Mrs. Maxwell,” said he, with open exasperation.
She said nothing more, but stood meekly in the hall until a light flared out from a room on the left. The lawyer had found a lamp, he was himself somewhat familiar with the surroundings, but on the way to it he stumbled over a chair with an exclamation. It sounded like an oath to Mrs. Field, but she thought she must be mistaken. She had never in her life heard many oaths, and when she did had never been able to believe her ears.
“I hope you didn't hurt you,” said she, deprecatingly, stepping forward.
“I am not hurt, thank you.” But the twinge in the lawyer's ankle was confirming his resolution to say nothing more to her on the subject of his regret and unwillingness that she should choose to refuse his hospitality, and spend such a lonely and uncomfortable night. “I won't say another word to her about it,” he declared to himself. So he simply made arrangements with her for a meeting at his office the next morning to attend to the business for which there had been no time to-night, and took his leave.
“I never saw such a woman,” was his conclusion of the story, which he related to his sister upon his return home. His sister was a widow, and just then her married daughter and two children were visiting her.
“I wish you'd let me know she wa'n't comin',” said she. “I cut the fruit cake an' opened a jar of peach, an' I've put clean sheets on the front chamber bed. It's made considerable work for nothin'.” She eyed, as she spoke, the two children, who were happily eating the peach preserve. She and her brother were both quite well-to-do, but she had a parsimonious turn.
“I'd like to know what she'll have for supper,” she remarked further.
“I didn't ask her,” said the lawyer, dryly, taking a sip of his sauce. He was rather glad of the peach himself.
“I shouldn't think she'd sleep a wink, all alone in that great old house. I know I shouldn't,” observed the children's mother. She was a fair, fleshy, quite pretty young woman.
“That woman would sleep on a tomb-stone if she set out to,” said the lawyer. His speech, when alone with his own household, was more forcible and not so well regulated. Indeed, he did not come of a polished family; he was the only educated one among them. His sister, Mrs. Low, regarded him with all the deference and respect which her own decided and self-sufficient character could admit of, and often sounded his praises in her unrestrained New England dialect.
“She seemed like a real set kind of a woman, then?” said she now.
“Set is no name for it,” replied her brother.
“Well, if that's so, I guess old Mr. Maxwell wa'n't so far wrong when he didn't have her down here before,” she remarked, with a judicial air. Her spectacles glittered, and her harsh, florid face bent severely over the sugar-bowl and the cups and saucers.
The lamp-light was mellow in the neat, homely dining-room, and there was a soft aroma of boiling tea all about. The pink and white children ate their peach sauce in happy silence, with their pretty eyes upon the prospective cake.
“I suppose there must be some bed made up in all that big house,” remarked their mother; “but it must be awful lonesome.”
Of the awful lonesomeness of it truly, this smiling, comfortable young soul had no conception. At that moment, while they were drinking their tea and talking her over, Jane Field sat bolt-upright in one of the old flag-bottomed chairs in the Maxwell sitting-room. She had dropped into it when the lawyer closed the door after him, and she never stirred afterward. She sat there all night.
The oil was low in the lamp which the lawyer had lighted, and left standing on the table between the windows. She could see distinctly for a while the stately pieces of old furniture standing in their places against the walls. Just opposite where she sat was one of lustreless old mahogany, extending the width of the wall between two doors, rearing itself upon slender legs, set with multitudinous drawers, and surmounted by a clock. A piece of furniture for which she knew no name, an evidence of long-established wealth and old-fashioned luxury, of which she and her plain folk, with their secretaries and desks and bureaus, had known nothing. The clock had stopped at three o'clock. Mrs. Field thought to herself that it might have been the hour on which old Mr. Maxwell died, reflecting that souls were more apt to pass away in the wane of the night. She would have like to wind the clock, and set the hands moving past that ghostly hour, but she did not dare to stir. She gazed at the large, dull figures sprawling over the old carpet, at the glimmering satiny scrolls on the wall-paper. On the mantel-shelf stood a branching gilt candlestick, filled with colored candles, and strung around with prisms, which glittered feebly in the low lamp-light. There was a bulging, sheet-iron wood stove—the Maxwells had always eschewed coal; beside it lay a little pile of sticks, brought in after the chill of death had come over the house. There were a few old engravings—a head of Washington, the Landing of the Pilgrims, the Webster death-bed scene, and one full-length portrait of the old statesman, standing majestically, scroll in hand, in a black frame.
As the oil burned low, the indistinct figures upon the carpet and wall-paper grew more indistinct, the brilliant colors of the prisms turned white, and the fine black and white lights in the death-bed picture ran together.
Finally the lamp went out. Mrs. Field had spied matches over on the shelf, but she did not dare to rise to cross the room to get them and find another lamp. She did not dare to stir.
After her light went out, there was still a pale glimmer upon the opposite wall, and the white face of the silent clock showed out above the cumbersome shadow of the great mahogany piece. The glimmer came from a neighbor's lamp shining through a gap in the trees. Soon that also went out, and the old woman sat there in total darkness.
She folded her hands primly, and held up her bonneted head in the darkness, like some decorous and formal caller who might expect at any moment to hear the soft, heavy step of the host upon the creaking stair and his voice in the room. She sat there so all night.
Gradually this steady-headed, unimaginative old woman became possessed by a legion of morbid fancies, which played like wild fire over the terrible main fact of the case—the fact that underlay everything—that she had sinned, that she had gone over from good to evil, and given up her soul for a handful of gold. Many a time in the night, voices which her straining fancy threw out, after the manner of ventriloquism, from her own brain, seemed actually to vibrate through the house, footsteps pattered, and garments rustled. Often the phantom noises would swell to a very pandemonium surging upon her ears; but she sat there rigid and resolute in the midst of it, her pale old face sharpening out into the darkness. She sat there, and never stirred until morning broke.
When it was fairly light, she got up, took off her bonnet and shawl, and found her way into the kitchen. She washed her face and hands at the sink, and went deliberately to work getting herself some breakfast. She had a little of her yesterday's lunch left; she kindled a fire, and made a cup of tea. She found some in a caddy in the pantry. She set out her meal on the table and drew a chair before it. She had wound up the kitchen clock, and she listened to its tick while she ate. She took time, and finished her slight repast to the last crumb. Then she washed the dishes, and swept and tidied the kitchen.
When that was done it was still too early for her to go to the lawyer's office. She sat down at an open kitchen window and folded her hands. Outside was a broad, green yard, inclosed on two sides by the Maxwell house and barn. A drive-way led to the barn, and on the farther side a row of apple-trees stood. There was a fresh wind blowing, and the apple blossoms were floating about. The drive was quite white with them in places, and they were half impaled upon the sharp green blades of grass.
Over through the trees Mrs. Field could see the white top of a market wagon in a neighboring yard, and the pink dress of a woman who stood beside it trading. She watched them with a dull wonder. What had she now to do with market wagons and daily meals and housewifely matters? That fair-haired woman in the pink dress seemed to her like a woman of another planet.
This narrow-lived old country woman could not consciously moralize. She was no philosopher, but she felt, without putting it into thoughts, as if she had descended far below the surface of all things, and found out that good and evil were the root and the life of them, and the outside leaves and froth and flowers were fathoms away, and no longer to be considered.
At ten o'clock she put on her bonnet and shawl, and set out for the lawyer's office. She locked the front door, put the key under a blind, and proceeded down the front walk into the street.
The spring was earlier here than in Green River. She started at a dancing net-work of leaf shadows on the sidewalk. They were the first she had seen that season. There was a dewy arch of trees overhead, and they were quite fully leaved out. Mr. Tuxbury was in his office when she got there. He rose promptly and greeted her, and pushed forward the leather easy-chair with his old courtly flourish.
“I suppose that old stick of a woman will be in pretty soon,” he had remarked to his sister at breakfast-time.
“Well, you'll keep on the right side of her, if you know which side your bread is buttered,” she retorted. “You don't want her goin' to Sam Totten's.”
Totten was the other lawyer of Elliot.
“I think I am quite aware of all the exigencies of the case,” Daniel Tuxbury had replied, lapsing into stateliness, as he always did when his sister waxed too forcible in her advice.
But when Mrs. Field entered his office, every trace of his last night's impatience had vanished. He inquired genially if she had passed a comfortable night, and on being assured that she had, pressed her to drink a cup of coffee which he had requested his sister to keep warm. This declined, with her countrified courtesy, so shy that it seemed grim, he proceeded, with no chill upon his graciousness, to business.
Through the next two hours Mrs. Field sat at the lawyer's desk, and listened to a minute and wearisome description of her new possessions. She listened with very little understanding. She did not feel any interest in it. She never opened her mouth except now and then for a stiff assent to a question from the lawyer.
A little after twelve o'clock he leaned back in his chair with a conclusive sigh, and fixed his eyes reflectively upon the ceiling. “Well, Mrs. Maxwell,” said he, “I think that you understand pretty well now the extent and the limitations of your property.”
“Yes, sir,” said she.
“It is all straight enough. Maxwell was a good business man; he kept his affairs in excellent order. Yes, he was a very good business man.”
Suddenly the lawyer straightened himself, and fixed his eyes with genial interest upon his visitor; business over, he had a mind for a little personal interview to show his good-will. “Let me see, Mrs. Maxwell, you had a sister, did you not?” said he.
“Yes, sir.”
“Is she living?”
“No, sir.” Mrs. Field said it with a gasping readiness to speak one truth.
“Let me see, what was her name?” asked the lawyer. “No; wait a moment; I'll tell you. I've heard it.” He held up a hand as if warding off an answer from her, his face became furrowed with reflective wrinkles. “Field!” cried he, suddenly, with a jerk, and beamed at her. “I thought I could remember it,” said he. “Yes, your sister's name was Field. When did she die, Mrs. Maxwell?”
“Two years ago.”
There was a strange little smothered exclamation from some one near the office door. Mrs. Field turned suddenly, and saw her daughter Lois standing there.
Chapter IV
There Lois stood. Her small worn shoes hesitated on the threshold. She was gotten up in her poor little best—her dress of cheap brown wool stuff, with its skimpy velvet panel, her hat trimmed with a fold of silk and a little feather. She had curled her hair over her forehead, and tied on a bit of a lace veil. Distinct among all this forlorn and innocent furbishing was her face, with its pitiful, youthful prettiness, turning toward her mother and the lawyer with a very clutch of vision.
Mrs. Field got up. “Oh, it's you, Lois,” she said, calmly. “You thought you'd come too, didn't you?”
Lois gasped out something.
Her mother turned to the lawyer. “I'll make you acquainted with Miss Lois Field,” said she. “Lois, I'll make you acquainted with Mr. Tuxbury.”
The lawyer was looking surprised, but he rose briskly to the level of the situation, and greeted the young girl with ready grace. “Your sister's daughter, I conclude,” he said, smilingly, to Mrs. Field.
Mrs. Field set her mouth hard. She looked defiantly at him and said not one word. There was a fierce resolve in her heart that, come what would, she would not tell this last lie, and deny her daughter before her very face.
But the lawyer did not know she was silent. Not having heard any response, with the vanity of a deaf man, he assumed that she had given one, and so concealed his uncertainty.
“Yes, so I thought,” said he, and went on flourishingly in his track of gracious reception.
Lois kept her eyes fixed on his like some little timid animal which suspects an enemy, and watches his eyes for the first impetus of a spring. Once or twice she said, “Yes, sir,” faintly.
“Your niece does not look very strong,” Mr. Tuxbury said to Mrs. Field.
“She ain't been feelin' very well this spring. I've been considerable worried about her,” she answered, with harsh decision.
“Ah, I am very sorry to hear that. Well, she will soon recuperate if she stays here. Elliot is considered a very healthy place. We shall soon have her so hearty and rosy that her old friends won't be able to recognize her.” He bowed with a smiling flourish to Lois.
Her lips trembled with a half-smile in response, but she looked more frightened than ever.
“Now, Mrs. Maxwell,” said the lawyer, “you and your niece must positively remain and dine with us to-day, can't you?”
“I'm afraid it will put your sister out.”
“Oh, no, indeed.” The lawyer, however, had a slightly nonplussed expression. “She will be delighted. I will run over to the house, then, and tell her that you will stay, shall I not?”
“I hate to make her extra work,” said Mrs. Field. That was her rural form of acceptance.
“You will not, I assure you. Don't distress yourself about that, Mrs. Maxwell.”
Nevertheless, he was quite ill at ease as he traversed the yard. In his life with his sister there were exigencies during which he was obliged to descend from his platform of superiority. He foresaw the approach of one now.
Dinner was already served when he entered the dining-room, and his sister was setting the chairs around the table. They kept no servant.
“They are going to stay to dinner, I expect,” he remarked, in a appealingly confidential tone.
His sister faced him with a jerk. She was very red from bending over the kitchen fire. “Who's goin' to stay? What do you mean, Daniel?”
“Why, Mrs. Maxwell and her niece.”
“Her niece? I didn't know she had any niece. How did she get here?”
“She came this noon; followed along after her aunt, I suppose. I don't think she knew she was coming. She acted kind of surprised, I thought.”
“You don't mean they're comin' in here to dinner?”
“I couldn't very well help asking them, you know.” His tone was soft and conciliatory, and he kept a nervous eye upon his sister's face.
“Couldn't help askin' 'em! I ruther guess I could 'a' helped askin' 'em!”
“Jane, I hadn't any idea they'd stay.”
“Well, you've gone an' done it, that's all I've got to say. Here they didn't come last night, when I got all ready for 'em, an' now they're comin', an' everything we've got is a picked-up dinner; there ain't enough of anything to go round. Flora!”
Her daughter Flora came in from the kitchen, with the children, in blue gingham aprons, at her heels.
“What is it, mother?” said she.
“Nothin', only your uncle Daniel has asked that Maxwell woman an' her niece to dinner, an' they're goin' to stay.”
“My goodness! there isn't a thing for dinner!” said Flora, with a half-giggle. She was so young and healthy and happy that she could still see the joke in an annoyance.
Her uncle looked at her beseechingly. “Can't you manage somehow?” said he. “I'll go down to the store and buy something.”
“Down to the store!” repeated his sister, contemptuously. “It's one o'clock now.”
He looked at the kitchen clock, visible through the open door, and saw that it indicated half-past twelve, but he said nothing.
Flora was frowning reflectively, while her cheeks dimpled. “I tell you what I'll do, mother,” said she. “I'll go over to Mrs. Bennett's and borrow a pie. I think we can get along if we have a pie.”
“I ain't goin' round the neighborhood borrowin'; that ain't the way I'm accustomed to doin'.”
“Land, mother! I'd just as soon ask Mrs. Bennett as not. She borrowed that bread in here the other night.”
“There ain't enough steak to go round; there's jest that little piece we had left from yesterday, an' there ain't enough stew,” said her mother, with persistent wrath.
“Well, if folks come in unexpectedly, they'll have to take what we've got and make the best of it.” Flora tied a hat on over her light hair as she spoke. “I don't see any other way for them,” she added, laughingly, going out of the door.
“It's all very well for folks to be easy,” said her mother, with a sniff, “but when she's had as much as I've had, I guess she won't take it any easier than I do. I s'pose now I've got to take all these things off, an' put on a clean table-cloth.”
“That one doesn't look very bad,” ventured her brother, timidly.
“No, I shouldn't think it did! Look at that great coffee stain you got on it this mornin'! Havin' a couple of perfect strangers come in to dinner makes more work than a man knows anything about. Children, you take off the knives, an' pile 'em up on the other table. Be real careful.”
“I wonder if the parlor's so I can ask them in there?” Mr. Tuxbury remarked, edging toward the door.
“I s'pose so. I ain't been in there this mornin'; I s'pose it's all right unless the children have been in an' cluttered it up.”
“No, we ain't, gramma, we ain't,” proclaimed the children in a shrill shout. They danced around the table, removing the knives and forks; their innocent, pinky faces were full of cherubic glee. This occasion was, metaphorically speaking, a whole flock of jubilant infantile larks for them. They loved company with all their souls, and they also felt always a pleasant titillation of their youthful spirits when they saw their grandmother in perturbation. Unless, indeed, they themselves were the cause of it, when it acquired a personal force which rendered it not so entertaining.
Soon, however, a remark of their grandmother's caused their buoyant spirits to realize that there was a force of gravitation for all here below.
“I don't know but you children will have to wait,” said she.
There was an instantaneous wail of dismay, the pinky faces elongated, the blue eyes scowled sulkily. “Oh, gramma, we don't want to wait! Can't we sit down with the others? Say, gramma, can't we? Can't we sit down with the others?”
“Of course you can sit down with the others. Don't make such a racket, children.” That was their mother coming in, good-natured and triumphant, with the pie.
“I don't know whether they can or not,” said their grandmother. “I ain't put in an extra leaf; this table-cloth wa'n't long enough, an' I wa'n't goin' to have the big table-cloth to do up for all the Maxwells in creation.”
“Oh, there's room enough,” Flora said, easily. “I can squeeze them in beside me. Put the napkins round, children, and stop teasing. Didn't I get a beautiful pie?”
“What kind is it?”
“Squash.”
“An' our squashes are all gone, an' I've got to buy one to pay her back. I should have thought you'd known better, Flora.”
“It was all the kind she had. I couldn't help it. Squashes don't cost much, mother.”
“They cost something, an' I've got all them dried apples to use up for pies.”
“Have they come in?” asked Flora, with happy unconcern about the cost of squashes and the utilization of dried apples.
“Yes, I s'pose so. I thought I heard Daniel taking 'em in the front door. I s'pose they're in the parlor.”
“You ought to go in a minute, hadn't you?”
“I s'pose so,” replied Mrs. Lowe, with a sigh of fierce resignation.
“I'll finish setting the things on the table, and you go in. Take off your apron.”
“This dress don't look fit.”
“Yes, it does, too; it's clean. Run along.”
Mrs. Lowe smoothed her sparse hair severely at the kitchen looking-glass; then she advanced upon the parlor with the air of a pacific grenadier. The children were following slyly in her wake, but their mother caught sight of them and pulled them back.
Mr. Tuxbury had been sitting in the parlor with his guests, trying his best to entertain them. He had gotten out the photograph album for Lois, and a book of views in the Holy Land for her mother. If he had felt in considerable haste to escape from his sister's indignation and return to his visitors, they had been equally anxious for him to come.
When Mrs. Field and her daughter were left alone in the office, their first sensation was that of actual terror of each other.
Mrs. Field concealed hers well enough. She sat up without a tremor in her unbending back, and looked out of the office door, which the lawyer had left open. Just opposite the door, out on the sidewalk, two men stood talking. She kept her eyes fastened upon them.
“What time did you start?” said she presently, in a harsh voice, which seemed to rudely shock the stillness. She did not turn her eyes.
“I—came—on the first—train,” answered Lois, pantingly. Once in a while she stole furtive, wildly questioning glances at her mother, but her mother never met them. She continued to look at the talking men on the sidewalk.
“Mother,” began Lois finally, in a desperate voice. But just then Mr. Tuxbury had reappeared, and conducted them to his parlor.
The parlor had lace curtains and a Brussles carpet, and looked ornate to Mrs. Field and Lois. The chairs were covered with green plush. The two women sat timidly on the yielding cushions, and gazed during the pauses at the large flower pattern on the carpet. All this fine furniture was, in fact, Mrs. Lowe's; when she had given up her own home, and come to live with her brother, she had brought it with her.
Both of the guests arose awkwardly, Mrs. Field first and Lois after her, when Mrs. Lowe entered, and the lawyer introduced them.
“I'm happy to make your acquaintance,” said Mrs. Field.
“I believe I've seen you two or three times when you was here years ago,” said Mrs. Lowe, standing before her straight and tall in her faded calico gown, which fitted her uncompromisingly like a cuirass. Mrs. Lowe's gowns, no matter how thin and faded, always fitted her in that way. Stretched over her long flat-chested figure, they seemed to acquire the consistency of armor. “You ain't changed any as I can see,” she went on, as she got scarcely any response to her first remark. “I should have known you anywhere. It's a pleasant day, ain't it?”
“Real pleasant,” replied Mrs. Field. Mrs. Lowe sat down in one of the plush chairs. To seat herself for a few minutes before announcing dinner was, she supposed, a matter of etiquette. She held up her long rasped chin with a curt air, and, in spite of herself, her voice also was curt. She was too thorough a New England woman to play with any success softening lights over the steel of her character. She disdained to, and she was also unable to. She was not pleased to receive these unexpected guests, and she showed it.
As soon as she thought it decently practicable, she gave a significant look at her brother and arose. “I guess we'll walk out to dinner now,” said she, with solemn embarrassment. Mrs. Lowe had nothing of her brother's ease of manner; indeed, she entertained a covert scorn for it. “Daniel can be dreadful smooth an' fine when he sets out,” she sometimes remarked to her daughter. The lawyer's suave manner seemed to her downrightness to border upon affectation. She, however, had a certain respect for it as the probable outcome of his superior education.
She marched ahead stiffly now, and left her brother to his flourishing seconding of her announcement. Flora and the children received them beamingly when they entered the dining-room. Flora was quite sure that she remembered Mrs. Maxwell, she was glad to see her, and she was glad to see Lois, and they would please sit right “here,” and “here.” She had taken off the children's pinafores and washed their faces, and they stood aloof in little starched and embroidered frocks, with their cheeks pinker than ever.
Flora seated one on each side of her, as she had said. “Now, you must be good and not tease,” she whispered admonishingly, and their blue eyes stared back at her with innocent gravity, and they folded their small hands demurely.
Nevertheless, it was through them that the whole dignity of the meal was lost. If they had not been present, it would have passed off with a strong undercurrent of uneasiness and discomfort, yet with composure. Mr. Tuxbury would have helped the guests to beefsteak, and the rest of the family would have preferred the warmed-up veal stew. Or had the guests looked approvingly at the stew, the scanty portion of beefsteak would have satisfied the furthest desires of the family. But the perfect understanding among the adults did not extend to the two little girls. They leaned forward, with their red lips parted, and watched their uncle anxiously as he carved the beefsteak. There was evidently not much of it, and their anxiety grew. When it was separated into three portions, two of which were dispensed to the guests, and the other, having been declined by their grandmother and mother, was appropriated by their uncle, anxiety lapsed into certainty.
“I want some beefsteak!” wailed each, in wofully injured tones.
Mr. Tuxbury set his mouth hard, and pushed his plate with a jerk toward his niece. Her face was very red, but she took it—she was aware there was no other course open—divided the meat impartially, and gave each child a piece with a surreptitious thump.
Mr. Tuxbury, with a moodily knitted forehead and a smiling mouth, asked the guests miserably if they would have some veal stew. It was perfectly evident that if they accepted, there would be nothing whatever left for the family to eat. They declined in terrified haste; indeed, both Lois and her mother had been impelled to pass their portions of beefsteak over to the children, but they had not dared.
The children wished for veal stew also, and when they had eaten their meagre spoonfuls, clamored persistently for more.
“There isn't any more,” whispered their mother, with two little vigorous side-shakes. “If you don't keep still, I shall take you away from the table. Ain't you ashamed?”
Then the little girls pouted and sniffed, but warily, lest the threat be carried into effect.
The rest of the family tried to ignore the embarrassing situation and converse easily with the guests, but it was a difficult undertaking.
Lois bent miserably over her plate, and every question appeared to shock her painfully. She seemed an obstinately bashful young girl, to whom it was useless to talk. Mrs. Field replied at length to all interrogations with a certain quiet hardness, which had come into her manner since her daughter's arrival, but she never started upon a subject of her own accord.
It was a relief to every one when the meagre dinner lapsed into the borrowed pie. Mrs. Low cut it carefully into the regulation six pieces, while the children as carefully counted the people and watched the distribution. The result was not satisfactory. The older little girl, whose sense of injury was well developed, set up a shrill demand.
“I want a piece of Mis' Bennett's pie,” said she. “Mother, I want a piece of Mis' Bennett's pie!”
The younger, viewing the one piece of pie remaining in the plate and her clamorous sister, raised her own jealous little pipe. “I want a piece of Mis' Bennett's pie,” she proclaimed, pulling her mother's sleeve. “Mother, can't I have a piece of Mis' Bennett's pie?”
Flora's face was very red, and her mouth was twitching. She hastily pushed her own pie to the elder child, and gave the last piece on the plate to the younger. Their grandmother frowned on them like a rock, but they ate their pie unconcernedly.
“I think Mis' Bennett's pie is a good deal better than grandma's,” said the younger little girl, smacking her lips contemplatively; and Flora gave a half-chuckle, while her mother's severity of mien so deepened that she seemed to cast an actual shadow.
“Now, Flora, I tell you what 'tis,” said she, when the meal was at last over and the guests were gone—they took their leave very soon afterward—“if you don't punish them children, I shall.”
There was a wail of terror from the little girls. “Oh, mother, you do it, you do it!” cried they.
Flora giggled audibly.
“You'll just spoil them children,” said her mother, severely; “you ought to be ashamed of yourself, Flora.”
Flora tried to draw her face into gravity. “Go right upstairs, children,” said she. “It's so funny, I can't help it,” she whispered, with another furtive giggle.
“I don't see anything very funny in children's actin' the way they have all dinner-time.”
The children thumped merrily over the stairs. It was clear that they stood in no great fear of their mother's chastisement. They knew by experience that her hand was very soft, and the force of its fall tempered by mirth and tender considerateness; their grandmother's fleshless and muscular old palm was another matter.
Soon after Flora followed them there was a series of arduous cries, apparently maintained more from a childish sense of the fitness of things than from any actual stress of pain. They soon ceased.
“She ain't half whipped 'em,” Mrs. Lowe, who was listening downstairs, said to herself.
The lawyer was in his office; he had intrenched himself there as soon as possible, covering his retreat with the departure of his guests.
Mrs. Field and Lois, removed from it all the distance of tragedy from comedy, were walking up the street to the Maxwell house. Mrs. Field stalked ahead with her resolute stiffness; Lois followed after her, keeping always several paces behind. No matter how often Mrs. Field, sternly conscious of it, slackened her own pace, Lois never gained upon her.
When they reached the gate at the entrance of the Maxwell grounds, and Mrs. Field stopped, Lois spoke up.
“What place is this?” said she, in a defiantly timorous voice.
“The Maxwell house,” replied her mother, shortly, turning up the walk.
“Are you going in here?”
“Of course I am.”
“Well, I ain't going in one step.”
Mrs. Field turned and faced her. “Lois,” said she, “if you want to go away an' desert the mother that's showin' herself willin' to die for you, you can.”
Lois said not another word. She turned in at the gate, with her eyes fixed upon her mother's face.
“I'll tell you about it when we get up to the house,” said her mother, with appealing conciliation.
Lois slunk mutely behind her again. Her eyes were full of the impulse of flight when she watched her mother unlock the house door, but she followed her in.
Her mother led the way into the sitting-room. “Sit down,” said she.
And Lois sat down in the nearest chair. She never took her eyes off her mother.
Mrs. Field took off her bonnet and shawl. She folded the shawl carefully in the creases, and laid it on the table. She pulled up a curtain. Then she turned, and confronted steadily her daughter's eyes. The whole house to her was full of the clamor of their questioning. “Now, Lois,” said Mrs. Field, “I'm goin' to tell you about this. I s'pose you think it's funny.”
“I don't know what to think of it,” said Lois, in a dry voice.
“I don't s'pose you do. Well, I'm goin' to tell you. You know, I s'pose, that Mr. Tuxbury took me for your aunt Esther. You heard him call me Mis' Maxwell?”
Lois nodded; her dilated eyes never wavered from her mother's face.
“I s'pose you heard what he was sayin' to me when you come in. Lois, I didn't tell him I was your aunt Esther. The minute I come in, he took me for her, an' Mis' Henry Maxwell come into his office, an' she did, and so did Mr. Tuxbury's sister. I wa'n't goin' to tell them I wa'n't her.”
The impulse of flight in Lois' watchful eyes became so strong that it seemed almost to communicate to her muscles. With her face still turned toward her mother, she appeared to be fleeing from her.
Mrs. Field stood her ground stanchly. “No, I wa'n't,” she went on. “An' I'll tell you why. I'm goin' to have that fifteen hundred dollars of your poor father's earnin's that I lent your uncle out of this property, an' this is all the way to do it, an' I'm goin' to do it.”
“I thought,” gasped Lois—“I thought maybe it belonged to us anyway if Aunt Esther was dead.”
“It didn't. The money was all left to old Mr. Maxwell's niece in case Esther died first.”
“Couldn't you have asked the lawyer about the fifteen hundred dollars? Wouldn't he have given you some? O mother!”
“I was goin' to if he hadn't took me for her, but it wouldn't have done any good. They wouldn't have been obliged to pay it, an' folks ain't fond of payin' over money when they ain't obliged to. I'd been a fool to have asked him after he took me for her.”
“Then—you'd got this—all planned?”
Her mother took her up sharply.
“No, I hadn't got it all planned,” said she. “I don't deny it come into my head. I knew how much folks said I looked like Esther, but I didn't go so far as to plan it; there needn't anybody say I did.”
“You ain't going to take the money?”
“I'm goin' to take that fifteen hundred dollars out of it.”
“Mother, you ain't going to stay here, and make folks think you're Aunt Esther?”
“Yes, I am.”
Then all Lois' horror and terror manifested themselves in one cry—“O mother!”
Mrs. Field never flinched. “If you want to act so an' feel so about it, you can,” said she. “Your mother is some older than you, an' she knows what is right jest about as well as you can tell her. I've thought it all over. That fifteen hundred dollars was money your poor father worked hard to earn. I lent it to your uncle Edward, an' he lost it. I never see a dollar of it afterward. He never paid me a cent of interest money. It ain't anything more'n fair that I should be paid for it out of his father's property. If poor Esther had lived, the money'd gone to her, an' she'd paid me fast enough. Now the way's opened for me to get it, I ain't goin' to let it go. Talk about it's bein' right, if it ain't right to stoop down an' pick up anybody's just dues, I don't know what right is, for my part.”
“Mother!”
“What say?”
“You ain't going to live here in this house, and not go back to Green River?”
“I don't see any need of goin' back to Green River. This is a 'nough sight prettier place than Green River. Now you're down here, I don't see any sense in layin' out money to go back at all. Mandy'll send our things down.”
“You don't mean to stay right along here in this house, and not go back to Green River at all?”
“I don't see why it ain't jest as well. You'd better take off your things an' lay down a little while on that sofa there, an' get rested.”
Lois seldom cried, but she burst out now in a piteous wail. “O mother,” sobbed she, “what does it mean? I can't— What does it mean? Oh, I'm so frightened! Mother, you frighten me so! What does it mean?”
Her mother went up to her, and stood close at her side. “Lois,” said she, with trembling solemnity, “can't you trust mother?”
“O mother, I don't know! I don't know! You frighten me dreadfully.” Lois shrank away from her mother as she wept.
Mrs. Field stood over her, but she did not offer to touch her. Indeed, this New England mother and daughter rarely or never caressed each other. “Lois, dear child, mother don't want you to feel so. Oh, you dear child, you dear child, you don't know what mother's goin' through. But it ain't anything to you. Lois, you remember that; it ain't anything you've done. It's all my doin's. I'm jest goin' to get that money back. An' it's right I should. Don't you worry nothin' about it. Now take your hat off, an' let mother tuck you up on the sofa.”
Lois, sobbing still, began pulling off her hat mechanically. Her mother got a pillow, and she lay down on the sofa, turning her face to the wall with another outburst of tears. Her mother spread her black shawl carefully over her.
“Now you lay here still, an' get rested,” said she. “I'm goin' out in the kitchen, an' see if I can't start up a fire an' get something for supper.”
Mrs. Field went out of the room. Soon her tall black figure sped stealthily past the windows out of the yard. She found a grocery store, and purchased some small necessaries. There were groceries already in the pantry at the Maxwell house. She had spied them, but would not touch a single article. She bought some tea, and when she returned, replaced the drawing she had taken that morning from the Maxwell caddy.
The old woman's will, always vigorous, never giving place to another except through its own choice, now whipped by this great stress into a fierce impetus, carried her daughter's, strong as it was for a young girl, before it. Lois lay quietly on the sofa. When her mother called her, she went out in the kitchen and ate her supper.
They retired early. Lois lay on the sofa until her mother came in and stood over her with a lighted lamp.
“I guess you'd better get up and go to bed now, Lois,” said she. “I'm goin' myself, if it is early. I'm pretty tired.”
And Lois stirred herself wearily and got up.
There were two adjoining bedrooms opening out of the sitting-room. Mrs. Field had prepared the beds that afternoon. “I thought we'd better sleep in here,” said she, leading the way to them.
Lois had the inner room. After the lamp was blown out and everything was dark, her mother heard a soft stir and the pat of a naked foot in there, then she heard the door swing to with a cautious creak and the bolt slide. She knew with a great pang, that Lois had locked her door against her mother.
Chapter V
Elliot was only a little way from the coast, and sometimes seemed to be pervaded by the very spirit of the sea. The air would be full of salt vigor, the horizon sky take on the level, out-reaching blue of a water distance, and the clouds stand one way like white sails.
The next morning Lois sat on the front door-step of the Maxwell house, between the pillars of the porch. She bent over, leaning her elbows on her knees, making a cup of her hands, in which she rested her little face. She could smell the sea, and also the pines in the yard. There were many old pine trees, and their soft musical roar sounded high overhead. The spring air in Green River had been full of sweet moisture and earthiness from these steaming meadow-lands. Always in Green River, above the almond scent of the flowering trees and the live breath of the new grass, came that earthy, moist odor, like a reminder of the grave. Here in Elliot one smelled the spring above the earth.
The gate clicked, and a woman came up the curving path with a kind of clumsy dignity. She was tall and narrow-shouldered, but heavy-hipped; her black skirt flounced as she walked. She stopped in front of Lois, and looked at her hesitatingly. Lois arose.
“Good-mornin',” said the woman. Her voice was gentle; she cleared her throat a little after she spoke.
“Good-morning,” returned Lois, faintly.
“Is Mis' Maxwell to home?”
Lois stared at her.
“Is Mis' Maxwell to home? I heard she'd come here to live,” repeated the woman, in a deprecating way. She smoothed down the folds of her over-skirt. Lois started; the color spread over her face and neck. “No, she isn't at home,” she said sharply.
“Do you know when she will be?”
“No, I don't.”
The woman's face also was flushed. She turned about with a little flirt, when suddenly a door slammed somewhere in the house. The woman faced about, with a look of indignant surprise.
Lois said nothing. She opened the front door and went into the house, straight through to the kitchen, where her mother was preparing breakfast. “There's a woman out there,” she said.
“Who is it?”
“I don't know. She wants to see—Mrs. Maxwell.”
Lois looked full at her mother; her eyes were like an angel's before evil. Mrs. Field looked back at her. Then she turned toward the door.
Lois caught hold of her mother's dress. Mrs. Field twitched it away fiercely, and passed on into the sitting-room. The woman stood there waiting. She had followed Lois in.
“How do you do, Mis' Maxwell?” she said.
“I'm pretty well, thank you,” replied Mrs. Field, looking at her with stiff inquiry.
The woman had a pale, pretty face, and stood with a sturdy set-back on her heels. “I guess you don't know me, Mis' Maxwell,” said she, smiling deprecatingly.
Mrs. Field tried to smile, but her lips were too stiff. “I guess I—don't,” she faltered.
The smile faded from the woman's face. She cast an anxious glance at her own face in the glass over the mantel-shelf; she had placed herself so she could see it. “I ain't got quite so much color as I used to have,” she said, “but I ain't thought I'd changed much other ways. Some days I have more color. I know I ain't this mornin'. I ain't had very good health. Maybe that's the reason you don't know me.”