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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Pembroke, by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Pembroke
+       A Novel
+
+Author: Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
+
+Release Date: December 31, 2005 [EBook #17428]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PEMBROKE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Jeff Kaylin
+
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber's Note:
+The images for this text were scanned from the 1894 edition.
+
+
+
+
+Pembroke
+
+Mary E. Wilkins
+
+Harper & Brothers Publishers; New York: 1900
+
+
+[Illustration: "'It's beautiful,' Rose said"]
+
+
+Introductory Sketch
+
+
+_Pembroke_ was originally intended as a study of the human will in
+several New England characters, in different phases of disease and
+abnormal development, and to prove, especially in the most marked
+case, the truth of a theory that its cure depended entirely upon the
+capacity of the individual for a love which could rise above all
+considerations of self, as Barnabas Thayer's love for Charlotte
+Barnard finally did.
+
+While Barnabas Thayer is the most pronounced exemplification of this
+theory, and while he, being drawn from life, originally suggested the
+scheme of the study, a number of the other characters, notably
+Deborah Thayer, Richard Alger, and Cephas Barnard, are instances of
+the same spiritual disease. Barnabas to me was as much the victim of
+disease as a man with curvature of the spine; he was incapable of
+straightening himself to his former stature until he had laid hands
+upon a more purely unselfish love than he had ever known, through his
+anxiety for Charlotte, and so raised himself to his own level.
+
+When I make use of the term abnormal, I do not mean unusual in any
+sense. I am far from any intention to speak disrespectfully or
+disloyally of those stanch old soldiers of the faith who landed upon
+our inhospitable shores and laid the foundation, as on a very rock of
+spirit, for the New England of to-day; but I am not sure, in spite of
+their godliness, and their noble adherence, in the face of obstacles,
+to the dictates of their consciences, that their wills were not
+developed past the reasonable limit of nature. What wonder is it that
+their descendants inherit this peculiarity, though they may develop
+it for much less worthy and more trivial causes than the exiling
+themselves for a question of faith, even the carrying-out of personal
+and petty aims and quarrels?
+
+There lived in a New England village, at no very remote time, a man
+who objected to the painting of the kitchen floor, and who quarrelled
+furiously with his wife concerning the same. When she persisted, in
+spite of his wishes to the contrary, and the floor was painted, he
+refused to cross it to his dying day, and always, to his great
+inconvenience, but probably to his soul's satisfaction, walked around
+it.
+
+A character like this, holding to a veriest trifle with such a
+deathless cramp of the will, might naturally be regarded as a notable
+exception to a general rule; but his brethren who sit on church steps
+during services, who are dumb to those whom they should love, and
+will not enter familiar doors because of quarrels over matters of
+apparently no moment, are legion. _Pembroke_ is intended to portray a
+typical New England village of some sixty years ago, as many of the
+characters flourished at that time, but villages of a similar
+description have existed in New England at a much later date, and
+they exist to-day in a very considerable degree. There are at the
+present time many little towns in New England along whose pleasant
+elm or maple shaded streets are scattered characters as pronounced as
+any in Pembroke. A short time since a Boston woman recited in my
+hearing a list of seventy-five people in the very small Maine village
+in which she was born and brought up, and every one of the characters
+which she mentioned had some almost incredibly marked physical or
+mental characteristic.
+
+However, this state of things--this survival of the more prominent
+traits of the old stiff-necked ones, albeit their necks were
+stiffened by their resistance of the adversary--can necessarily be
+known only to the initiated. The sojourner from cities for the summer
+months cannot often penetrate in the least, though he may not be
+aware of it, the reserve and dignified aloofness of the dwellers in
+the white cottages along the road over which he drives. He often
+looks upon them from the superior height of a wise and keen student
+of character; he knows what he thinks of them, but he never knows
+what they think of him or themselves. Unless he is a man of the
+broadest and most democratic tendencies, to whom culture and the
+polish of society is as nothing beside humanity, and unless he
+returns, as faithfully as the village birds to their nests, to his
+summer home year after year, he cannot see very far below the
+surfaces of villages of which Pembroke is typical. Quite naturally,
+when the surfaces are broken by some unusual revelation of a
+strongly serrate individuality, and the tale thereof is told
+at his dinner-table with an accompaniment of laughter and
+exclamation-points, he takes that case for an isolated and by no
+means typical one, when, if the truth were told, the village windows
+are full of them as he passes by.
+
+However, this state of things must necessarily exist, and has
+existed, in villages which, like Pembroke, have not been brought much
+in contact with outside influences, and have not been studied or
+observed at all by people not of their kind by birth or long
+familiarity. In towns which have increased largely in population, and
+have become more or less assimilated with a foreign element, these
+characters do not exist in such a large measure, are more isolated in
+reality, and have, consequently, less claim to be considered types.
+But there have been, and are to-day in New England, hundreds of
+villages like Pembroke, where nearly every house contains one or more
+characters so marked as to be incredible, though a writer may be
+prevented, for obvious reasons, from mentioning names and proving
+facts.
+
+There is often to a mind from the outside world an almost repulsive
+narrowness and a pitiful sordidness which amounts to tragedy in the
+lives of such people as those portrayed in _Pembroke_, but quite
+generally the tragedy exists only in the comprehension of the
+observer and not at all in that of the observed. The pitied would
+meet pity with resentment; they would be full of wonder and wrath if
+told that their lives were narrow, since they have never seen the
+limit of the breadth of their current of daily life. A singing-school
+is as much to them as a symphony concert and grand opera to their
+city brethren, and a sewing church sociable as an afternoon tea.
+Though the standard of taste of the simple villagers, and their
+complete satisfaction therewith, may reasonably be lamented, as also
+their restricted view of life, they are not to be pitied, generally
+speaking, for their unhappiness in consequence. It may be that the
+lack of unhappiness constitutes the real tragedy.
+
+
+
+Chapter I
+
+
+At half-past six o'clock on Sunday night Barnabas came out of his
+bedroom. The Thayer house was only one story high, and there were no
+chambers. A number of little bedrooms were clustered around the three
+square rooms--the north and south parlors, and the great kitchen.
+
+Barnabas walked out of his bedroom straight into the kitchen where
+the other members of the family were. They sat before the hearth fire
+in a semi-circle--Caleb Thayer, his wife Deborah, his son Ephraim,
+and his daughter Rebecca. It was May, but it was quite cold; there
+had been talk of danger to the apple blossoms; there was a crisp
+coolness in the back of the great room in spite of the hearth fire.
+
+Caleb Thayer held a great leather-bound Bible on his knees, and was
+reading aloud in a solemn voice. His wife sat straight in her chair,
+her large face tilted with a judicial and argumentative air, and
+Rebecca's red cheeks bloomed out more brilliantly in the heat of the
+fire. She sat next her mother, and her smooth dark head with its
+carven comb arose from her Sunday kerchief with a like carriage. She
+and her mother did not look alike, but their motions were curiously
+similar, and perhaps gave evidence to a subtler resemblance in
+character and motive power.
+
+Ephraim, undersized for his age, in his hitching, home-made clothes,
+twisted himself about when Barnabas entered, and stared at him with
+slow regard. He eyed the smooth, scented hair, the black satin vest
+with a pattern of blue flowers on it, the blue coat with brass
+buttons, and the shining boots, then he whistled softly under his
+breath.
+
+"Ephraim!" said his mother, sharply. She had a heavy voice and a
+slight lisp, which seemed to make it more impressive and more
+distinctively her own. Caleb read on ponderously.
+
+"Where ye goin', Barney?" Ephraim inquired, with a chuckle and a
+grin, over the back of his chair.
+
+"Ephraim!" repeated his mother. Her blue eyes frowned around his
+sister at him under their heavy sandy brows.
+
+Ephraim twisted himself back into position. "Jest wanted to know
+where he was goin'," he muttered.
+
+Barnabas stood by the window brushing his fine bell hat with a white
+duck's wing. He was a handsome youth; his profile showed clear and
+fine in the light, between the sharp points of his dicky bound about
+by his high stock. His cheeks were as red as his sister's.
+
+When he put on his hat and opened the door, his mother herself
+interrupted Caleb's reading.
+
+"Don't you stay later than nine o'clock, Barnabas," said she.
+
+The young man murmured something unintelligibly, but his tone was
+resentful.
+
+"I ain't going to have you out as long as you were last Sabbath
+night," said his mother, in quick return. She jerked her chin down
+heavily as if it were made of iron.
+
+Barnabas went out quickly, and shut the door with a thud.
+
+[Illustration: "Barnabas went out quickly"]
+
+"If he was a few years younger, I'd make him come back an' shut that
+door over again," said his mother.
+
+Caleb read on; he was reading now one of the imprecatory psalms.
+Deborah's blue eyes gleamed with warlike energy as she listened: she
+confused King David's enemies with those people who crossed her own
+will.
+
+Barnabas went out of the yard, which was wide and deep on the south
+side of the house. The bright young grass was all snowed over with
+cherry blossoms. Three great cherry-trees stood in a row through the
+centre of the yard; they had been white with blossoms, but now they
+were turning green; and the apple-trees were in flower.
+
+There were many apple-trees behind the stone-walls that bordered the
+wood. The soft blooming branches looked strangely incongruous in the
+keen air. The western sky was clear and yellow, and there were a few
+reefs of violet cloud along it. Barnabas looked up at the apple
+blossoms over his head, and wondered if there would be a frost. From
+their apple orchard came a large share of the Thayer income, and
+Barnabas was vitally interested in such matters now, for he was to be
+married the last of June to Charlotte Barnard. He often sat down with
+a pencil and slate, and calculated, with intricate sums, the amounts
+of his income and their probable expenses. He had made up his mind
+that Charlotte should have one new silk gown every year, and two new
+bonnets--one for summer and one for winter. His mother had often
+noted, with scorn, that Charlotte Barnard wore her summer bonnet with
+another ribbon on it winters, and, moreover, had not had a new bonnet
+for three years.
+
+"She looks handsomer in it than any girl in town, if she hasn't,"
+Barnabas had retorted with quick resentment, but he nevertheless felt
+sensitive on the subject of Charlotte's bonnet, and resolved that she
+should have a white one trimmed with gauze ribbons for summer, and
+one of drawn silk, like Rebecca's, for winter, only the silk should
+be blue instead of pink, because Charlotte was fair.
+
+Barnabas had even pondered with tender concern, before he bought his
+fine flowered satin waistcoat, if he might not put the money it would
+cost into a bonnet for Charlotte, but he had not dared to propose it.
+Once he had bought a little blue-figured shawl for her, and her
+father had bade her return it.
+
+"I ain't goin' to have any young sparks buyin' your clothes while you
+are under my roof," he had said.
+
+Charlotte had given the shawl back to her lover. "Father don't feel
+as if I ought to take it, and I guess you'd better keep it now,
+Barney," she said, with regretful tears in her eyes.
+
+Barnabas had the blue shawl nicely folded in the bottom of his little
+hair-cloth trunk, which he always kept locked.
+
+After a quarter of a mile the stone-walls and the spray of apple
+blossoms ended; there was a short stretch of new fence, and a new
+cottage-house only partly done. The yard was full of lumber, and a
+ladder slanted to the roof, which gleamed out with the fresh pinky
+yellow of unpainted pine.
+
+Barnabas stood before the house a few minutes, staring at it. Then he
+walked around it slowly, his face upturned. Then he went in the front
+door, swinging himself up over the sill, for there were no steps, and
+brushing the sawdust carefully from his clothes when he was inside.
+He went all over the house, climbing a ladder to the second story,
+and viewing with pride the two chambers under the slant of the new
+roof. He had repelled with scorn his father's suggestion that he have
+a one-story instead of a story-and-a-half house. Caleb had an
+inordinate horror and fear of wind, and his father, who had built the
+house in which he lived, had it before him. Deborah often descanted
+indignantly upon the folly of sleeping in little tucked-up bedrooms
+instead of good chambers, because folks' fathers had been scared to
+death of wind, and Barnabas agreed with her. If he had inherited any
+of his father's and grandfather's terror of wind, he made no
+manifestation of it.
+
+In the lower story of the new cottage were two square front rooms
+like those in his father's house, and behind them the great kitchen
+with a bedroom out of it, and a roof of its own.
+
+Barnabas paused at last in the kitchen, and stood quite still,
+leaning against a window casement. The windows were not in, and the
+spaces let in the cool air and low light. Outside was a long reach of
+field sloping gently upward. In the distance, at the top of the hill,
+sharply outlined against the sky, was a black angle of roof and a
+great chimney. A thin column of smoke rose out of it, straight and
+dark. That was where Charlotte Barnard lived.
+
+Barnabas looked out and saw the smoke rising from the chimney of the
+Barnard house. There was a little hollow in the field that was quite
+blue with violets, and he noted that absently. A team passed on the
+road outside; it was as if he saw and heard everything from the
+innermost recesses of his own life, and everything seemed strange and
+far off.
+
+He turned to go, but suddenly stood still in the middle of the
+kitchen, as if some one had stopped him. He looked at the new
+fireless hearth, through the open door into the bedroom which he
+would occupy after he was married to Charlotte, and through others
+into the front rooms, which would be apartments of simple state, not
+so closely connected with every-day life. The kitchen windows would
+be sunny. Charlotte would think it a pleasant room.
+
+"Her rocking-chair can set there," said Barnabas aloud. The tears
+came into his eyes; he stepped forward, laid his smooth boyish cheek
+against a partition wall of this new house, and kissed it. It was a
+fervent demonstration, not towards Charlotte alone, nor the joy to
+come to him within those walls, but to all life and love and nature,
+although he did not comprehend it. He half sobbed as he turned away;
+his thoughts seemed to dazzle his brain, and he could not feel his
+feet. He passed through the north front room, which would be the
+little-used parlor, to the door, and suddenly started at a long black
+shadow on the floor. It vanished as he went on, and might have been
+due to his excited fancy, which seemed substantial enough to cast
+shadows.
+
+"I shall marry Charlotte, we shall live here together all our lives,
+and die here," thought Barnabas, as he went up the hill. "I shall lie
+in my coffin in the north room, and it will all be over," but his
+heart leaped with joy. He stepped out proudly like a soldier in a
+battalion, he threw back his shoulders in his Sunday coat.
+
+The yellow glow was paling in the west, the evening air was like a
+cold breath in his face. He could see the firelight flickering upon
+the kitchen wall of the Barnard house as he drew near. He came up
+into the yard and caught a glimpse of a fair head in the ruddy glow.
+There was a knocker on the door; he raised it gingerly and let it
+fall. It made but a slight clatter, but a woman's shadow moved
+immediately across the yard outside, and Barnabas heard the inner
+door open. He threw open the outer one himself, and Charlotte stood
+there smiling, and softly decorous. Neither of them spoke. Barnabas
+glanced at the inner door to see if it were closed, then he caught
+Charlotte's hands and kissed her.
+
+"You shouldn't do so, Barnabas," whispered Charlotte, turning her
+face away. She was as tall as Barnabas, and as handsome.
+
+"Yes, I should," persisted Barnabas, all radiant, and his face
+pursued hers around her shoulder.
+
+"It's pretty cold out, ain't it?" said Charlotte, in a chiding voice
+which she could scarcely control.
+
+"I've been in to see our house. Give me one more kiss. Oh,
+Charlotte!"
+
+"Charlotte!" cried a deep voice, and the lovers started apart.
+
+"I'm coming, father," Charlotte cried out. She opened the door and
+went soberly into the kitchen, with Barnabas at her heels. Her
+father, mother, and Aunt Sylvia Crane sat there in the red gleam of
+the firelight and gathering twilight. Sylvia sat a little behind the
+others, and her face in her white cap had the shadowy delicacy of one
+of the flowering apple sprays outside.
+
+"How d'ye do?" said Barnabas in a brave tone which was slightly
+aggressive. Charlotte's mother and aunt responded rather nervously.
+
+"How's your mother, Barnabas?" inquired Mrs. Barnard.
+
+"She's pretty well, thank you."
+
+Charlotte pulled forward a chair for her lover; he had just seated
+himself, when Cephas Barnard spoke in a voice as sudden and gruff as
+a dog's bark. Barnabas started, and his chair grated on the sanded
+floor.
+
+"Light the candle, Charlotte," said Cephas, and Charlotte obeyed. She
+lighted the candle on the high shelf, then she sat down next
+Barnabas. Cephas glanced around at them. He was a small man, with a
+thin face in a pale film of white locks and beard, but his black eyes
+gleamed out of it with sharp fixedness. Barnabas looked back at him
+unflinchingly, and there was a curious likeness between the two pairs
+of black eyes. Indeed, there had been years ago a somewhat close
+relationship between the Thayers and the Barnards, and it was not
+strange if one common note was repeated generations hence.
+
+Cephas had been afraid lest Barnabas should, all unperceived in the
+dusk, hold his daughter's hand, or venture upon other loverlike
+familiarity. That was the reason why he had ordered the candle
+lighted when it was scarcely dark enough to warrant it.
+
+But Barnabas seemed scarcely to glance at his sweetheart as he sat
+there beside her, although in some subtle fashion, perhaps by some
+finer spiritual vision, not a turn of her head, nor a fleeting
+expression on her face, like a wind of the soul, escaped him. He saw
+always Charlotte's beloved features high and pure, almost severe, but
+softened with youthful bloom, her head with fair hair plaited in a
+smooth circle, with one long curl behind each ear. Charlotte would
+scarcely have said he had noticed, but he knew well she had on a new
+gown of delaine in a mottled purple pattern, her worked-muslin
+collar, and her mother's gold beads which she had given her.
+
+Barnabas kept listening anxiously for the crackle of the hearth fire
+in the best room; he hoped Charlotte had lighted the fire, and they
+should soon go in there by themselves. They usually did of a Sunday
+night, but sometimes Cephas forbade his daughter to light the fire
+and prohibited any solitary communion between the lovers.
+
+"If Barnabas Thayer can't set here with the rest of us, he can go
+home," he proclaimed at times, and he had done so to-night. Charlotte
+had acquiesced forlornly; there was nothing else for her to do. Early
+in her childhood she had learned along with her primer her father's
+character, and the obligations it imposed upon her.
+
+"You must be a good girl, and mind; it's your father's way," her
+mother used to tell her. Mrs. Barnard herself had spelt out her
+husband like a hard and seemingly cruel text in the Bible. She
+marvelled at its darkness in her light, but she believed in it
+reverently, and even pugnaciously.
+
+The large, loosely built woman, with her heavy, sliding step, waxed
+fairly decisive, and her soft, meek-lidded eyes gleamed hard and
+prominent when her elder sister, Hannah, dared inveigh against
+Cephas.
+
+"I tell you it is his way," said Sarah Barnard. And she said it as if
+"his way" was the way of the King.
+
+"His way!" Hannah would sniff back. "His way! Keepin' you all on rye
+meal one spell, an' not lettin' you eat a mite of Injun, an' then
+keepin' you on Injun without a mite of rye! Makin' you eat nothin'
+but greens an' garden stuff, an' jest turnin' you out to graze an'
+chew your cuds like horned animals one spell, an' then makin' you
+live on meat! Lettin' you go abroad when he takes a notion, an' then
+keepin' you an' Charlotte in the house a year!"
+
+"It's his way, an' I ain't goin' to have anything said against it,"
+Sarah Barnard would retort stanchly, and her sister would sniff back
+again. Charlotte was as loyal as her mother; she did not like it if
+even her lover intimated anything in disfavor of her father.
+
+No matter how miserable she was in consequence of her acquiescence
+with her father's will, she sternly persisted.
+
+To-night she knew that Barnabas was waiting impatiently for her
+signal to leave the rest of the company and go with her into the
+front room; there was also a tender involuntary impatience and
+longing in every nerve of her body, but nobody would have suspected
+it; she sat there as calmly as if Barnabas were old Squire Payne, who
+sometimes came in of a Sabbath evening, and seemed to be listening
+intently to her mother and her Aunt Sylvia talking about the spring
+cleaning.
+
+Cephas and Barnabas were grimly silent. The young man suspected that
+Cephas had prohibited the front room; he was indignant about that,
+and the way in which Charlotte had been summoned in from the entry,
+and he had no diplomacy.
+
+Charlotte, under her calm exterior, grew uneasy; she glanced at her
+mother, who glanced back. It was to both women as if they felt by
+some subtle sense the brewing of a tempest. Charlotte unobtrusively
+moved her chair a little nearer her lover's; her purple delaine skirt
+swept his knee; both of them blushed and trembled with Cephas's black
+eyes upon them.
+
+Charlotte never knew quite how it began, but her father suddenly
+flung out a dangerous topic like a long-argued bone of contention,
+and he and Barnabas were upon it. Barnabas was a Democrat, and Cephas
+was a Whig, and neither ever forgot it of the other. None of the
+women fairly understood the point at issue; it was as if they drew
+back their feminine skirts and listened amazed and trembling to this
+male hubbub over something outside their province. Charlotte grew
+paler and paler. She looked piteously at her mother.
+
+"Now, father, don't," Sarah ventured once or twice, but it was like a
+sparrow piping against the north wind.
+
+Charlotte laid her hand on her lover's arm and kept it there, but he
+did not seem to heed her. "Don't," she said; "don't, Barnabas. I
+think there's going to be a frost to-night; don't you?" But nobody
+heard her. Sylvia Crane, in the background, clutched the arms of her
+rocking-chair with her thin hands.
+
+Suddenly both men began hurling insulting epithets at each other.
+Cephas sprang up, waving his right arm fiercely, and Barnabas shook
+off Charlotte's hand and was on his feet.
+
+"Get out of here!" shouted Cephas, in a hoarse voice--"get out of
+here! Get out of this house, an' don't you ever darse darken these
+doors again while the Lord Almighty reigns!" The old man was almost
+inarticulate; he waved his arms, wagged his head, and stamped; he
+looked like a white blur with rage.
+
+"I never will, by the Lord Almighty!" returned Barnabas, in an awful
+voice; then the door slammed after him. Charlotte sprang up.
+
+"Set down!" shouted Cephas. Charlotte rushed forward. "You set down!"
+her father repeated; her mother caught hold of her dress.
+
+"Charlotte, do set down," she whispered, glancing at her husband in
+terror. But Charlotte pulled her dress away.
+
+"Don't you stop me, mother. I am not going to have him turned out
+this way," she said. Her father advanced threateningly, but she set
+her young, strong shoulders against him and pushed past out of the
+door. The door was slammed to after her and the bolt shot, but she
+did not heed that. She ran across the yard, calling: "Barney! Barney!
+Barney! Come back!" Barnabas was already out in the road; he never
+turned his head, and kept on. Charlotte hurried after him. "Barney,"
+she cried, her voice breaking with sobs--"Barney, do come back. You
+aren't mad at me, are you?" Barney never turned his head; the
+distance between them widened as Charlotte followed, calling. She
+stopped suddenly, and stood watching her lover's dim retreating back,
+straining with his rapid strides.
+
+"Barney Thayer," she called out, in an angry, imperious tone, "if
+you're ever coming back, you come now!"
+
+But Barney kept on as if he did not hear. Charlotte gasped for breath
+as she watched him; she could scarcely help her feet running after
+him, but she would not follow him any farther. She did not call him
+again; in a minute she turned around and went back to the house,
+holding her head high in the dim light.
+
+She did not try to open the door; she was sure it was locked, and she
+was too proud. She sat down on the flat, cool door-stone, and
+remained there as dusky and motionless against the old gray panel of
+the door as the shadow of some inanimate object that had never moved.
+
+The wind began to rise, and at the same time the full moon, impelled
+softly upward by force as unseen as thought. Charlotte's fair head
+gleamed out abruptly in the moonlight like a pale flower, but the
+folds of her mottled purple skirt were as vaguely dark as the foliage
+on the lilac-bush beside her. All at once the flowering branches on a
+wide-spreading apple-tree cut the gloom like great silvery wings of a
+brooding bird. The grass in the yard was like a shaggy silver fleece.
+Charlotte paid no more attention to it all than to her own breath, or
+a clock tick which she would have to withdraw from herself to hear.
+
+A low voice, which was scarcely more than a whisper, called her, a
+slender figure twisted itself around the front corner of the house
+like a vine. "Charlotte, you there?" Charlotte did not hear. Then the
+whisper came again. "Charlotte!"
+
+Charlotte looked around then.
+
+A slender white hand reached out in the gloom around the corner and
+beckoned. "Charlotte, come; come quick."
+
+Charlotte did not stir.
+
+"Charlotte, do come. Your mother's dreadful afraid you'll catch cold.
+The front door is open."
+
+Charlotte sat quite rigid. The slender figure began moving towards
+her stealthily, keeping close to the house, advancing with frequent
+pauses like a wary bird. When she got close to Charlotte she reached
+down and touched her shoulder timidly. "Oh, Charlotte, don't you feel
+bad? He'd ought to know your father by this time; he'll get over it
+and come back," she whispered.
+
+"I don't want him to come back," Charlotte whispered fiercely in
+return.
+
+Sylvia stared at her helplessly. Charlotte's face looked strange and
+hard in the moonlight. "Your mother's dreadful worried," she
+whispered again, presently. "She thinks you'll catch cold. I come out
+of the front door on purpose so you can go in that way. Your father's
+asleep in his chair. He told your mother not to unbolt this door
+to-night, and she didn't darse to. But we went past him real still to
+the front one, an' you can slip in there and get up to your chamber
+without his seeing you. Oh, Charlotte, do come!"
+
+Charlotte arose, and she and Sylvia went around to the front door.
+Sylvia crept close to the house as before, but Charlotte walked
+boldly along in the moonlight. "Charlotte, I'm dreadful afraid he'll
+see you," Sylvia pleaded, but Charlotte would not change her course.
+
+Just as they reached the front door it was slammed with a quick puff
+of wind in their faces. They heard Mrs. Barnard's voice calling
+piteously. "Oh, father, do let her in!" it implored.
+
+"Don't you worry, mother," Charlotte called out. "I'll go home with
+Aunt Sylvia."
+
+"Oh, Charlotte!" her mother's voice broke in sobs.
+
+"Don't you worry, mother," Charlotte repeated, with an unrelenting
+tone in the comforting words. "I'll go right home with Aunt Sylvia.
+Come," she said, imperatively to her aunt, "I am not going to stand
+here any longer," and she went out into the road, and hastened down
+it, as Barnabas had done.
+
+"I'll take her right home with me," Sylvia called to her sister in a
+trembling voice (nobody knew how afraid she was of Cephas); and she
+followed Charlotte.
+
+Sylvia lived on an old road that led from the main one a short
+distance beyond the new house, so the way led past it. Charlotte went
+on at such a pace that Sylvia could scarcely keep up with her. She
+slid along in her wake, panting softly, and lifting her skirts out of
+the evening dew. She was trembling with sympathy for Charlotte, and
+she had also a worry of her own. When they reached the new house she
+fairly sobbed outright, but Charlotte went past in her stately haste
+without a murmur.
+
+"Oh, Charlotte, don't feel so bad," mourned her aunt. "I know it will
+all come right." But Charlotte made no reply. Her dusky skirts swept
+around the bushes at the corner of the road, and Sylvia hurried
+tremulously after her.
+
+Neither of them dreamed that Barnabas watched them, standing in one
+of the front rooms of his new house. He had gone in there when he
+fled from Cephas Barnard's, and had not yet been home. He recognized
+Charlotte's motions as quickly as her face, and knew Sylvia's voice,
+although he could not distinguish what she said. He watched them turn
+the corner of the other road, and thought that Charlotte was going to
+spend the night with her aunt--he did not dream why. He had resolved
+to stay where he was in his desolate new house, and not go home
+himself.
+
+A great grief and resentment against the whole world and life itself
+swelled high within him. It was as if he lost sight of individual
+antagonists, and burned to dash life itself in the face because he
+existed. The state of happiness so exalted that it became almost
+holiness, in which he had been that very night, flung him to lower
+depths when it was retroverted. He had gone back to first causes in
+the one and he did the same in the other; his joy had reached out
+into eternity, and so did his misery. His natural religious bent,
+inherited from generations of Puritans, and kept in its channel by
+his training from infancy, made it impossible for him to conceive of
+sympathy or antagonism in its fullest sense apart from God.
+
+Sitting on a pile of shavings in a corner of the north room, he
+fairly hugged himself with fierce partisanship. "What have I done to
+be treated in this way?" he demanded, setting his face ahead in the
+darkness; and he did not see Cephas Barnard's threatening
+countenance, but another, gigantic with its vague outlines, which his
+fancy could not limit, confronting him with terrible negative power
+like a stone image. He struck out against it, and the blows fell back
+on his own heart.
+
+"What have I done?" he demanded over and over of this great immovable
+and silent consciousness which he realized before him. "Have I not
+kept all thy commandments from childhood? Have I ever failed to
+praise thee as the giver of my happiness, and ask thy blessing upon
+it? What have I done that it should be taken away? It was given to me
+only to be taken away. Why was it given to me, then?--that I might be
+mocked? Oh, I am mocked, I am mocked!" he cried out, in a great rage,
+and he struck out in the darkness, and his heart leaped with futile
+pain. The possibility that his misery might not be final never
+occurred to him. It never occurred to him that he could enter Cephas
+Barnard's house again, ask his pardon, and marry Charlotte. It seemed
+to him settled and inevitable; he could not grasp any choice in the
+matter.
+
+Barnabas finally threw himself back on the pile of shavings, and lay
+there sullenly. Great gusts of cold wind came in at the windows at
+intervals, a loose board somewhere in the house rattled, the trees
+outside murmured heavily.
+
+"There won't be a frost," Barnabas thought, his mind going apace on
+its old routine in spite of its turmoil. Then he thought with the
+force of an oath that he did not care if there was a frost. All the
+trees this spring had blossomed only for him and Charlotte; now there
+was no longer any use in that; let the blossoms blast and fall!
+
+
+
+Chapter II
+
+
+Sylvia Crane's house was the one in which her grandmother had been
+born, and was the oldest house in the village. It was known as the
+"old Crane place." It had never been painted, it was shedding its
+flapping gray shingles like gray scales, the roof sagged in a mossy
+hollow before the chimney, the windows and doors were awry, and the
+whole house was full of undulations and wavering lines, which gave it
+a curiously unreal look in broad daylight. In the moonlight it was
+the shadowy edifice built of a dream.
+
+As Sylvia and Charlotte came to the front door it seemed as if they
+might fairly walk through it as through a gray shadow; but Sylvia
+stooped, and her shoulders strained with seemingly incongruous force,
+as if she were spending it to roll away a shadow. On the flat
+doorstep lay a large round stone, pushed close against the door.
+There were no locks and keys in the old Crane place; only bolts.
+Sylvia could not fasten the doors on the inside when she went away,
+so she adopted this expedient, which had been regarded with favor by
+her mother and grandmother before her, and illustrated natures full
+of gentle fallacies which went far to make existence comfortable.
+
+Always on leaving the house alone the Crane women had bolted the side
+door, which was the one in common use, gone out the front one, and
+laboriously rolled this same round stone before it. Sylvia reasoned
+as her mother and grandmother before her, with the same simplicity:
+"When the stone's in front of the door, folks must know there ain't
+anybody to home, because they couldn't put it there if they was."
+
+And when some neighbor had argued that the evil-disposed might roll
+away the stone and enter at will, Sylvia had replied, with the
+innocent conservatism with which she settled an argument, "Nobody
+ever did."
+
+To-night she rolled away the stone to the corner of the door-step,
+where it had lain through three generations when the Crane women were
+at home, and sighed with regret that she had defended the door with
+it. "I wish I hadn't put the stone up," she thought. "If I hadn't,
+mebbe he'd gone in an' waited." She opened the door, and the gloom of
+the house, deeper than the gloom of the night, appeared. "You wait
+here a minute," she said to Charlotte, "an' I'll go in an' light a
+candle."
+
+Charlotte waited, leaning against the door-post. There was a flicker
+of fire within. Then Sylvia held the flaring candle towards her.
+"Come in," she said; "the candle's lit."
+
+There was a bed of coals on the hearth in the best room; Sylvia had
+made a fire there before going over to her sister's, but it had
+burned low. The glow of the coals and the smoky flare of the candle
+lighted the room uncertainly, scattering and not dispelling the
+shadows. There was a primly festive air in the room. The
+flag-bottomed chairs stood by twos, finely canted towards each other,
+against the wall; the one great hair-cloth rocker stood
+ostentatiously in advance of them, facing the hearth fire; the long
+level of the hair-cloth sofa gleamed out under stiff sweeps of the
+white fringed curtains at the window behind it. The books on the
+glossy card-table were set canting towards each other like the
+chairs, and with their gilt edges towards the light. And Sylvia had
+set also on the table a burnished pitcher of a rosy copper-color full
+of apple blossoms.
+
+She looked at it when she had set the candle on the shelf. It seemed
+to her that all the light in the room centred on it, and it shone in
+her eyes like a copper lamp.
+
+Charlotte also glanced at it. "Why, Richard must have come while you
+were over to our house," she said.
+
+"It don't make any odds if he did," returned Sylvia, with a faint
+blush and a bridle. Sylvia was much younger than her sister. Standing
+there in the dim light she did not look so much older than her niece.
+Her figure had the slim angularity and primness which are sometimes
+seen in elderly women who are not matrons, and she had donned a
+little white lace cap at thirty, but her face had still a delicate
+bloom, and the wistful wonder of expression which belongs to youth.
+
+However, she never thought of Charlotte as anything but a child as
+compared with herself. Sylvia felt very old, and the more so that she
+grudged her years painfully. She stirred up the fire a little,
+holding back her shiny black silk skirt carefully. Charlotte stood
+leaning against the shelf, looking moodily down at the fire.
+
+"I wouldn't feel bad if I was you, Charlotte," Sylvia ventured,
+timidly.
+
+"I guess we'd better go to bed pretty soon," returned Charlotte. "It
+must be late."
+
+"Had you rather sleep with me, Charlotte, or sleep in the spare
+chamber?"
+
+"I guess I'll go in the spare chamber."
+
+"Well, I'll get you a night-gown."
+
+Both of their faces were sober, but perfectly staid. They bade each
+other good-night without a quiver; but Charlotte, after she had said
+her dutiful and unquestioning prayer, and lay folded in Sylvia's
+ruffled night-gown in the best bed, shook with great sobs. "Poor
+Barney!" she kept muttering. "Poor Barney! poor Barney!"
+
+The doors were all open, and once she thought she heard a sob from
+below, then concluded she must be mistaken. But she was not, for
+Sylvia Crane was lamenting as sorely as the younger maiden up-stairs.
+"Poor Richard!" she repeated, piteously. "Poor Richard! There he
+came, and the stone was up, and he had to go away."
+
+The faces which were so clear to the hearts of both women, as if they
+were before their eyes, had a certain similarity. Indeed, Richard
+Alger and Barnabas Thayer were distantly related on the mother's
+side, and people said they looked enough alike to be brothers. Sylvia
+saw the same type of face as Charlotte, only Richard's face was
+older, for he was six years older than she.
+
+"If I hadn't put the stone up," she moaned, "maybe he would have
+thought I didn't hear him knock, an' he'd come in an' waited. Poor
+Richard, I dunno what he thought! It's the first time it's happened
+for eighteen years."
+
+Sylvia, as she lay there, looked backward, and it seemed to her that
+the eighteen years were all made up of the Sunday nights on which
+Richard Alger had come to see her, as if they were all that made them
+immortal and redeemed them from the dead past. She had endured grief,
+but love alone made the past years stand out for her. Sylvia, in
+looking back over eighteen years, forgot the father, mother, and
+sister who had died in that time; their funeral trains passed before
+her eyes like so many shadows. She forgot all their cares and her
+own; she forgot how she had nursed her bedridden mother for ten
+years; she forgot everything but those blessed Sunday nights on which
+Richard Alger had come. She called to mind every little circumstance
+connected with them--how she had adorned the best room by slow
+degrees, saving a few cents at a time from her sparse income, because
+he sat in it every Sunday night; how she had had the bed which her
+mother and grandmother kept there removed because the fashion had
+changed, and the guilty audacity with which she had purchased a
+hair-cloth sofa to take its place.
+
+That adorning of the best room had come to be a religion with Sylvia
+Crane. As faithfully as any worshipper of the Greek deity she laid
+her offerings, her hair-cloth sofa and rocker, her copper-gilt
+pitcher of apple blossoms, upon the altar of love.
+
+Sylvia recalled, sobbing more piteously in the darkness, sundry
+dreams, which had never been realized, of herself and Richard sitting
+side by side and hand in hand, as confessed lovers, on that sofa.
+Richard Alger, during all those eighteen years, had never made love
+to Sylvia, unless his constant attendance upon Sabbath evenings could
+be so construed, as it was in that rural neighborhood, and as Sylvia
+was fain to construe it in her innocent heart.
+
+It is doubtful if Sylvia, in her perfect decorum and long-fostered
+maiden reserve, fairly knew that Richard Alger had never made love to
+her. She scarcely expected her dreams of endearments to be realized;
+she regarded them, except in desperate moods, with shame. If her old
+admirer had, indeed, attempted to sit by her side upon that
+hair-cloth sofa and hold her hand, she would have arisen as if
+propelled by stiff springs of modest virtue. She did not fairly know
+that she was not made love to after the most honorable and orthodox
+fashion without a word of endearment or a caress; for she had been
+trained to regard love as one of the most secret of the laws of
+nature, to be concealed, with shamefaced air, even from herself; but
+she did know that Richard had never asked her to marry him, and for
+that she was impatient without any self-reserve; she was even
+confidential with her sister, Charlotte's mother.
+
+"I don't want to say anything outside," she once said, "but I do
+think it would be a good deal better for him if we was settled down.
+He ain't half taken care of since his mother died."
+
+"He's got money enough," returned Mrs. Barnard.
+
+"That can't buy everything."
+
+"Well, I don't pity him; I pity you," said Mrs. Barnard.
+
+"I guess I shall get along a while longer, as far as that goes,"
+Sylvia had replied to her sister, with some pride. "I ain't worried
+on my account."
+
+"Women don't worry much on their own accounts, but they've got
+accounts," returned Mrs. Barnard, with more contempt for her sister
+than she had ever shown for herself. "You're gettin' older, Sylvy."
+
+"I know it," Sylvia had replied, with a quick shrinking, as if from a
+blow.
+
+The passing years, as they passed for her, stung her like swarming
+bees, with bitter humiliation; but never for herself, only for
+Richard. Nobody knew how painfully she counted the years, how she
+would fain have held time back with her thin hands, how futilely and
+pitifully she set her loving heart against it, and not for herself
+and her own vanity, but for the sake of her lover. She had come, in
+the singleness of her heart, to regard herself in the light of a
+species of coin to be expended wholly for the happiness and interest
+of one man. Any depreciation in its value was of account only as it
+affected him.
+
+Sylvia Crane, sitting in the meeting-house of a Sunday, used to watch
+the young girls coming in, as radiant and flawless as new flowers, in
+their Sunday bests, with a sort of admiring envy, which could do them
+no harm, but which tore her own heart.
+
+When she should have been contrasting the wickedness of her soul with
+the grace of the Divine Model, she was contrasting her fading face
+with the youthful bloom of the young girls. "He'd ought to marry one
+of them," she thought; "he'd ought to, by good rights." It never
+occurred to Sylvia that Richard also was growing older, and that he
+was, moreover, a few years older than she. She thought of him as an
+immortal youth; his face was the same to her as when she had first
+seen it.
+
+When it came before a subtler vision than her bodily one, there in
+the darkness and loneliness of this last Sunday night, it wore the
+beauty and innocent freshness of a child. If Richard Alger could have
+seen his own face as the woman who loved him saw it, he could never
+have doubted his own immortality.
+
+"There he came, an' the stone was up, an' he had to go away," moaned
+Sylvia, catching her breath softly. Many a time she had pitied
+Richard because he had not the little womanly care which men need;
+she had worried lest his stockings were not darned, and his food not
+properly cooked; but to-night she had another and strange anxiety.
+She worried lest she herself had hurt him and sent him home with a
+heavy heart.
+
+Sylvia had gone about for the last few days with her delicate face as
+irresponsibly calm as a sweet-pea; nobody had dreamed of the turmoil
+in her heart. On the Wednesday night before she had nearly reached
+the climax of her wishes. Richard had come, departing from his usual
+custom--he had never called except on Sunday before--and remained
+later. It was ten o'clock before he went home. He had been very
+silent all the evening, and had sat soberly in the great best
+rocking-chair, which was, in a way, his throne of state, with Sylvia
+on the sofa on his right. Many a time she had dreamed that he came
+over there and sat down beside her, and that night it had come to
+pass.
+
+Just before ten o'clock he had arisen hesitatingly; she thought it
+was to take leave, but she sat waiting and trembling. They had sat in
+the twilight and young moonlight all the evening. Richard had checked
+her when she attempted to light a candle. That had somehow made the
+evening seem strange, and freighted with consequences; and besides
+the white light of the moon, full of mystic influence, there was
+something subtler and more magnetic, which could sway more than the
+tides, even the passions of the human heart, present, and they both
+felt it.
+
+Neither had said much, and they had been sitting there nearly two
+hours, when Richard had arisen, and moved curiously, rather as if he
+was drawn than walked of his own volition, over to the sofa. He sank
+down upon it with a little cough. Sylvia moved away a little with an
+involuntary motion, which was pure maidenliness.
+
+"It's getting late," remarked Richard, trying to make his voice
+careless, but it fell in spite of him into deep cadences.
+
+"It ain't very late, I guess," Sylvia had returned, tremblingly.
+
+"I ought to be going home."
+
+Then there was silence for a while. Sylvia glanced sidewise, timidly
+and adoringly, at Richard's smoothly shaven face, pale as marble in
+the moonlight, and waited, her heart throbbing.
+
+[Illustration: "Sylvia glanced timidly at Richard's smoothly-shaven
+face"]
+
+"I've been coming here a good many years," Richard observed finally,
+and his own voice had a solemn tremor.
+
+Sylvia made an almost inarticulate assent.
+
+"I've been thinking lately," said Richard; then he paused. They could
+hear the great clock out in the kitchen tick. Sylvia waited, her very
+soul straining, although shrinking at the same time, to hear.
+
+"I've been thinking lately," said Richard again, "that--maybe--it
+would be wise for--us both to--make some different arrangement."
+
+Sylvia bent her head low. Richard paused for the second time. "I have
+always meant--" he began again, but just then the clock in the
+kitchen struck the first stroke of ten. Richard caught his breath and
+arose quickly. Never in his long courtship had he remained as late as
+that at Sylvia Crane's. It was as if a life-long habit struck as well
+as the clock, and decided his times for him.
+
+"I must be going," said he, speaking against the bell notes. Sylvia
+arose without a word of dissent, but Richard spoke as if she had
+remonstrated.
+
+"I'll come again next Sunday night," said he, apologetically.
+
+Sylvia followed him to the door. They bade each other good-night
+decorously, with never a parting kiss, as they had done for years.
+Richard went out of sight down the white gleaming road, and she went
+in and to bed, with her heart in a great tumult of expectation and
+joyful fear.
+
+She had tried to wait calmly for Sunday night. She had done her neat
+household tasks as usual, her face and outward demeanor were sweetly
+unruffled, but her thoughts seemed shivering with rainbows that
+constantly dazzled her with sweet shocks when her eyes met them. Her
+feet seemed constantly flying before her into the future, and she
+could scarcely tell where she might really be, in the present or in
+her dreams, which had suddenly grown so real.
+
+On Sunday morning she had curled her soft fair hair, and arranged
+with trepidation one long light curl outside her bonnet on each side
+of her face. Her bonnet was tied under her chin with a green ribbon,
+and she had a little feathery green wreath around her face inside the
+rim. Her wide silk skirt was shot with green and blue, and rustled as
+she walked up the aisle to her pew. People stared after her without
+knowing why. There was no tangible change in her appearance. She had
+worn that same green shot silk many Sabbaths; her bonnet was three
+summers old; the curls drooping on her cheeks were an innovation, but
+the people did not recognize the change as due to them. Sylvia
+herself had looked with pleased wonder at her face in the glass; it
+was as if all her youthful beauty had suddenly come up, like a
+withered rose which is dipped in a vase.
+
+"I sha'n't look so terrible old side of him when I go out bride," she
+reflected, happily, smiling fondly at herself. All the way to meeting
+that Sunday morning she saw her face as she had seen it in the glass,
+and it was as if she walked with something finer than herself.
+
+Richard Alger sat with the choir in a pew beside the pulpit, at right
+angles with the others. He had a fine tenor voice, and had sung in
+the choir ever since he was a boy. When Sylvia sat down in her place,
+which was in full range of his eyes, he glanced at her without
+turning his head; he meant to look away again directly, so as not to
+be observed, but her face held him. A color slowly flamed out on his
+pale brown cheeks; his eyes became intense and abstracted. A soprano
+singer nudged the girl at her side; they both glanced at him and
+tittered, but he did not notice it.
+
+Sylvia knew that he was looking at her, but she never looked at him.
+She sat soberly waving a little brown fan before her face; the light
+curls stirred softly. She wondered what he thought of them; if he
+considered them too young for her, and silly; but he did not see them
+at all. He had no eye for details. And neither did she even hear his
+fine tenor, still sweet and powerful, leading all the other male
+voices when the choir stood up to sing. She thought only of Richard
+himself.
+
+After meeting, when she went down the aisle, several women had spoken
+to her, inquired concerning her health, and told her, with wondering
+eyes, that she looked well. Richard was far behind her, but she did
+not look around. They very seldom accosted each other, unless it was
+unavoidable, in any public place. Still, Sylvia, going out with
+gentle flounces of her green shot silk, knew well that Richard's eyes
+followed her, and his thought was close at her side.
+
+After she got home from meeting that Sunday, Sylvia Crane did not
+know how to pass the time until the evening. She could not keep
+herself calm and composed as was her wont on the Sabbath day. She
+changed her silk for a common gown; she tried to sit down and read
+the Bible quietly and with understanding, but she could not. She
+turned to Canticles, and read a page or two. She had always believed
+loyally and devoutly in the application to Christ and the Church; but
+suddenly now, as she read, the restrained decorously chanting New
+England love-song in her maiden heart had leaped into the fervid
+measures of the oriental King. She shut the Bible with a clap. "I
+ain't giving the right meaning to it," she said, sternly, aloud.
+
+She put away the Bible, went into the pantry, and got out some bread
+and cheese for her luncheon, but she could eat nothing. She picked
+the apple blossoms and arranged them in the copper-gilt pitcher on
+the best-room table. She even dusted off the hair-cloth sofa and
+rocker, with many compunctions, because it was Sunday. "I know I
+hadn't ought to do it to-day," she murmured, apologetically, "but
+they do get terrible dusty, and need dusting every day, and he is
+real particular, and he'll have on his best clothes."
+
+Finally, just before twilight, Sylvia, unable to settle herself, had
+gone over to her sister's for a little call. Richard never came
+before eight o'clock, except in winter, when it was dark earlier.
+There was a certain half-shamefaced reserve about his visits. He knew
+well enough that people looked from their windows as he passed, and
+said, facetiously, "There goes Richard Alger to court Sylvy Crane."
+He preferred slipping past in a half-light, in which he did not seem
+so plain to himself, and could think himself less plain to other
+people.
+
+Sylvia, detained at her sister's by the quarrel between Cephas and
+Barnabas, had arisen many a time to take leave, all palpitating with
+impatience, but her sister had begged her, in a distressed whisper,
+to remain.
+
+"I guess you can get along without Richard Alger one Sunday evening,"
+she had said finally, quite aloud, and quite harshly. "I guess your
+own sister has just as much claim on you as he has. I dunno what's
+going to be done. I don't believe Charlotte's father will let her in
+the house to-night."
+
+Poor Sylvia had sunk back in her chair. To her sensitive conscience
+the duty nearest at hand seemed always to bark the loudest, and the
+precious moments had gone by until she knew that Richard had come,
+found the stone before the door, and gone away, and all her sweet
+turmoil of hope and anticipation had gone for naught.
+
+Sylvia, lying there awake that night, her mind carrying her back over
+all that had gone before, had no doubt that this was the end of
+everything. Not originally a subtle discerner of character, she had
+come insensibly to know Richard so well that certain results from
+certain combinations of circumstances in his life were as plain and
+inevitable to her as the outcome of a simple sum in mathematics.
+"He'd got 'most out of his track for once," she groaned out softly,
+"but now he's pushed back in so hard he can't get out again if he
+wants to. I dunno how he's going to get along."
+
+Sylvia, with the roof settling over her head, with not so much upon
+her few sterile acres to feed her as to feed the honey-bees and
+birds, with her heart in greater agony because its string of joy had
+been strained so high and sweetly before it snapped, did not lament
+over herself at all; neither did she over the other woman who lay
+up-stairs suffering in a similar case. She lamented only over Richard
+living alone and unministered to until he died.
+
+When daylight came she got up, dressed herself, and prepared
+breakfast. Charlotte came down before it was ready. "Let me help get
+breakfast," she said, with an assumption of energy, standing in the
+kitchen doorway in her pretty mottled purple delaine. The purple was
+the shade of columbine, and very becoming to Charlotte. In spite of
+her sleepless night, her fine firm tints had not faded; she was too
+young and too strong and too full of involuntary resistance. She had
+done up her fair hair compactly; her chin had its usual proud lift.
+
+Sylvia, shrinking as if before some unseen enemy as she moved about,
+her face all wan and weary, glanced at her half resentfully. "I guess
+she 'ain't had any such night as I have," she thought. "Girls don't
+know much about it."
+
+"No, I don't need any help," she replied, aloud. "I 'ain't got
+anything to do but to stir up an Injun cake. You've got your best
+dress on. You'd better go and sit down."
+
+"It won't hurt my dress any." Charlotte glanced down half scornfully
+at her purple skirt. It had lost all its glory for her. She was not
+even sure that Barney had seen it.
+
+"Set down. I've got breakfast 'most ready," Sylvia said, again, more
+peremptorily than she was wont, and Charlotte sat down in the
+hollow-backed cherry rocking-chair beside the kitchen window, leaned
+her head back, and looked out indifferently between the lilac-bushes.
+The bushes were full of pinkish-purple buds. Sylvia's front yard
+reached the road in a broad slope, and the ground was hard, and green
+with dampness under the shade of a great elm-tree. The grass would
+never grow there over the roots of the elm, which were flung out
+broadly like great recumbent limbs over the whole yard, and were
+barely covered by the mould.
+
+Across the street, seen under the green sweep of the elm, was an
+orchard of old apple-trees which had blossomed out bravely that
+spring. Charlotte looked at the white and rosy masses of bloom.
+
+"I guess there wasn't any frost last night, after all," she remarked.
+
+"I dunno," responded Sylvia, in a voice which made her niece look
+around at her. There was a curious impatient ring in it which was
+utterly foreign to it. There was a frown between Sylvia's gentle
+eyes, and she moved with nervous jerks, setting down dishes hard, as
+if they were refractory children, and lashing out with spoons as if
+they were whips. The long, steady strain upon her patience had not
+affected her temper, but this last had seemed to bring out a certain
+vicious and waspish element which nobody had suspected her to
+possess, and she herself least of all. She felt this morning disposed
+to go out of her way to sting, and as if some primal and evil
+instinct had taken possession of her. She felt shocked at herself,
+but all the more defiant and disposed to keep on.
+
+"Breakfast is ready," she announced, finally; "if you don't set right
+up an' eat it, it will be gettin' cold. I wouldn't give a cent for
+cold Injun cake."
+
+Charlotte arose promptly and brought a chair to the table, which
+Sylvia always set punctiliously in the centre of the kitchen as if
+for a large family.
+
+"Don't scrape your chair on the floor that way; it wears 'em all
+out," cried Sylvia, sharply.
+
+Charlotte stared at her again, but she said nothing; she sat down and
+began to eat absently. Sylvia watched her angrily between her own
+mouthfuls, which she swallowed down defiantly like medicine.
+
+"It ain't much use cookin' things if folks don't eat 'em," said she.
+
+"I am eating," returned Charlotte.
+
+"Eatin'? Swallowin' down Injun cake as if it was sawdust! I don't
+call that eatin'. You don't act as if you tasted a mite of it!"
+
+"Aunt Sylvy, what has got into you?" said Charlotte.
+
+"Got into me? I should think you'd talk about anything gettin' into
+me, when you set there like a stick. I guess you 'ain't got all there
+is to bear."
+
+"I never thought I had," said Charlotte.
+
+"Well, I guess you 'ain't."
+
+They went on swallowing their food silently; the great clock ticked
+slowly, and the spring birds called outside; but they heard neither.
+The shadows of the young elm leaves played over the floor and the
+white table-cloth. It was much warmer that morning, and the shadows
+were softer.
+
+Before they had finished breakfast, Charlotte's mother came,
+advancing ponderously, with soft thuds, across the yard to the side
+door. She opened it and peered in.
+
+"Here you be," said she, scanning both their faces with anxious and
+deprecating inquiry.
+
+"Can't you come in, an' not stand there holdin' the door open?"
+inquired Sylvia. "I feel the wind on my back, and I've got a bad pain
+enough in it now."
+
+Mrs. Barnard stepped in, and shut the door quickly, in an alarmed
+way.
+
+"Ain't you feelin' well this mornin', Sylvy?" said she.
+
+"Oh yes, I'm feelin' well enough. It ain't any matter how I feel, but
+it's a good deal how some other folks do."
+
+Sarah Barnard sank into the rocking-chair, and sat there looking at
+them hesitatingly, as if she did not dare to open the conversation.
+
+Suddenly Sylvia arose and went out of the kitchen with a rush,
+carrying a plate of Indian cake to feed the hens. "I can't set here
+all day; I've got to do something," she announced as she went.
+
+When the door had closed after her, Mrs. Barnard turned to Charlotte.
+
+"What's the matter with her?" she asked, nodding towards the door.
+
+"I don't know."
+
+"She ain't sick, is she? I never see her act so. Sylvy's generally
+just like a lamb. You don't s'pose she's goin' to have a fever, do
+you?"
+
+"I don't know."
+
+Suddenly Charlotte, who was still sitting at the table, put up her
+two hands with a despairing gesture, and bent her head forward upon
+them.
+
+"Now don't, you poor child," said her mother, her eyes growing
+suddenly red. "Didn't he even turn round when you called him back
+last night?"
+
+Charlotte shook her bowed head dumbly.
+
+"Don't you s'pose he'll ever come again?"
+
+Charlotte shook her head.
+
+"Mebbe he will. I know he's terrible set."
+
+"Who's set?" demanded Sylvia, coming in with her empty plate.
+
+"Oh, I was jest sayin' that I thought Barney was kinder set," replied
+her sister, mildly.
+
+"He ain't no more set than Cephas," returned Sylvia.
+
+"Cephas ain't set. It's jest his way."
+
+Sylvia sniffed. She looked scornfully at Charlotte, who had raised
+her head when she came in, but whose eyes were red. "Folks had better
+been created without ways, then," she retorted. "They'd better have
+been created slaves; they'd been enough sight happier an' better off,
+an' so would other folks that they have to do with, than to have so
+many ways, an' not sense enough to manage 'em. I don't believe in
+free-will, for my part."
+
+"Sylvy Crane, you ain't goin' to deny one of the doctrines of the
+Church at your time of life?" demanded a new voice. Sylvia's other
+sister, Hannah Berry, stood in the doorway.
+
+Sylvia ordinarily was meek before her, but now she faced her. "Yes, I
+be," said she; "I don't approve of free-will, and I ain't afraid to
+say it."
+
+Sylvia had always been considered very unlike Mrs. Hannah Berry in
+face and character. Now, as she stood before her, a curious
+similarity appeared; even her voice sounded like her sister's.
+
+"What on earth ails you, Sylvy?" asked Mrs. Berry, ignoring suddenly
+the matter in hand.
+
+"Nothin' ails me that I know of. I don't think much of free-will, an'
+I ain't goin' to say I do when I don't."
+
+"Then all I've got to say is you'd ought to be ashamed of yourself.
+Why, I should think you was crazy, Sylvy Crane, settin' up yourself
+agin' the doctrines of the Word. I'd like to know what you know about
+them."
+
+"I know enough to see how they work," returned Sylvia, undauntedly,
+"an' I ain't goin' to pretend I'm blind when I can see."
+
+Sylvia's serene arc of white forehead was shortened by a distressed
+frown, her mild mouth dropped sourly at the corners, and the lips
+were compressed. Her white cap was awry, and one of yesterday's curls
+hung lankly over her left cheek.
+
+"You look an' act like a crazy creature," said Hannah Berry, eying
+her with indignant amazement. She walked across the room to another
+rocking-chair, moving with unexpected heaviness. She was in reality
+as stout as her sister Sarah Barnard, but she had a long, thin, and
+rasped face, which misled people.
+
+"Now," said she, looking around conclusively, "I ain't come over here
+to argue about free-will. I want to know what all this is about?"
+
+"All what?" returned Mrs. Barnard, feebly. She was distinctly afraid
+of her imperious sister, yet she was conscious of a quiver of
+resentment.
+
+"All this fuss about Barney Thayer," said Hannah Berry.
+
+"How did you hear about it?" Mrs. Barnard asked with a glance at
+Charlotte, who was sitting erect with her cheeks very red and her
+mouth tightly closed.
+
+"Never mind how I heard," replied Hannah. "I did hear, an' that's
+enough. Now I want to know if you're really goin' to set down like an
+old hen an' give up, an' let this match between Charlotte an' a good,
+smart, likely young man like Barnabas Thayer be broken off on account
+of Cephas Barnard's crazy freaks?"
+
+Sarah stiffened her neck. "There ain't no call for you to speak that
+way, Hannah. They got to talkin' over the 'lection."
+
+"The 'lection! I'd like to know what business they had talkin' about
+it Sabbath night anyway? I ain't blamin' Barnabas so much; he's
+younger an' easier stirred up; but Cephas Barnard is an old man, an'
+he has been a church-member for forty year, an' he ought to know
+enough to set a better example. I'd like to know what difference it
+makes about the 'lection anyway? What odds does it make which one is
+President if he rules the country well? An' that they can't tell till
+they've tried him awhile anyway. I guess they don't think much about
+the country; it's jest to have their own way about it. I'd like to
+know what mortal difference it's goin' to make to Barney Thayer or
+Cephas Barnard which man is President? He won't never hear of them,
+an' they won't neither of them make him rule any different after he's
+chose. It's jest like two little boys--one wants to play marbles
+'cause the other wants to play puss-in-the-corner, an' that's all the
+reason either one of 'em's got for standin' out. Men ain't got any
+too much sense anyhow, when you come right down to it. They don't
+ever get any too much grown up, the best of 'em. I'd like to know
+what Cephas Barnard has got to say because he's drove a good, likely
+young man like Barnabas Thayer off an' broke off his daughter's
+match? It ain't likely she'll ever get anybody now; young men like
+him, with nice new houses put up to go right to housekeepin' in as
+soon as they are married, don't grow on every bush. They ain't quite
+so thick as wild thimbleberries. An' Charlotte ain't got any money
+herself, an' her father ain't got any to build a house for her. I'd
+like to know what he's got to say about it?"
+
+Mrs. Barnard put up her apron and began to weep helplessly.
+
+"Don't, mother," said Charlotte, in an undertone. But her mother
+began talking in a piteous wailing fashion.
+
+"You hadn't ought to talk so about Cephas," she moaned. "He's my
+husband. I guess you wouldn't like it if anybody talked so about your
+husband. Cephas ain't any worse than anybody else. It's jest his way.
+He wa'n't any more to blame than Barney; they both got to talkin'. I
+know Cephas is terrible upset about it this mornin'; he 'ain't really
+said so in so many words, but I know by the way he acts. He said this
+mornin' that he didn't know but we were eatin' the wrong kind of
+food. Lately he's had an idea that mebbe we'd ought to eat more meat;
+he's thought it was more strengthenin', an' we'd ought to eat things
+as near like what we wanted to strengthen as could be. I've made a
+good deal of bone soup. But now he says he thinks mebbe he's been
+mistaken, an' animal food kind of quickens the animal nature in us,
+an' that we'd better eat green things an' garden sass."
+
+"I guess garden sass will strengthen the other kind of sass that
+Cephas Barnard has got in him full as much as bone soup has,"
+interrupted Hannah Berry, with a sarcastic sniff.
+
+"I dunno but he's right," said Mrs. Barnard. "Cephas thinks a good
+deal an' looks into things. I kind of wish he'd waited till the
+garden had got started, though, for there ain't much we can eat now
+but potatoes an' turnips an' dandelion greens."
+
+"If you want to live on potatoes an' turnips an' dandelion greens,
+you can," cried Hannah Berry; "What I want to know is if you're goin'
+to settle down an' say nothin', an' have Charlotte lose the best
+chance she'll ever have in her life, if she lives to be a hundred--"
+
+Charlotte spoke up suddenly; her blue eyes gleamed with steely light.
+She held her head high as she faced her aunt.
+
+"I don't want any more talk about it, Aunt Hannah," said she.
+
+"Hey?"
+
+"I don't want any more talk about it."
+
+"Well, I guess you'll have more talk about it; girls don't get jilted
+without there is talk generally. I guess you'll have to make up your
+mind to it, for all you put on such airs with your own aunt, who left
+her washin' an' come over here to take your part. I guess when you
+stand out in the road half an hour an' call a young man to come back,
+an' he don't come, that folks are goin' to talk some. Who's that
+comin' now?"
+
+"It's Cephas," whispered Mrs. Barnard, with a scared glance at
+Charlotte.
+
+Cephas Barnard entered abruptly, and stood for a second looking at
+the company, while they looked back at him. His eyes were stolidly
+defiant, but he stood well back, and almost shrank against the door.
+There seemed to be impulses in Hannah's and Sylvia's faces
+confronting his.
+
+He turned to his wife. "When you comin' home?" said he.
+
+"Oh, Cephas! I jest ran over here a minute. I--wanted to
+see--if--Sylvy had any emptins. Do you want me an' Charlotte to come
+now?"
+
+Cephas turned on his heel. "I think it's about time for you both to
+be home," he grunted.
+
+Sarah Barnard arose and looked with piteous appeal at Charlotte.
+
+Charlotte hesitated a second, then she arose without a word, and
+followed her mother, who followed Cephas. They went in a procession
+of three, with Cephas marching ahead like a general, across the yard,
+and Sylvia and Hannah stood at a window watching them.
+
+"Well," said Hannah Berry, "all I've got to say is I'm thankful I
+'ain't got a man like that, an' you ought to be mighty thankful you
+'ain't got any man at all, Sylvy Crane."
+
+
+
+Chapter III
+
+
+When Cephas Barnard and his wife and daughter turned into the main
+road and came in sight of the new house, not one of them appeared to
+even glance at it, yet they all saw at once that there were no
+workmen about, and they also saw Barnabas himself ploughing with a
+white horse far back in a field at the left of it.
+
+[Illustration: "They came in sight of the house"]
+
+They all kept on silently. Charlotte paled a little when she caught
+sight of Barney, but her face was quite steady. "Hold your dress up a
+little higher; the grass is terrible wet," her mother whispered once,
+and that was all that any of them said until they reached home.
+
+Charlotte went at once up-stairs to her own chamber, took off her
+purple gown, and hung it up in her closet, and got out a common one.
+The purple gown was part of her wedding wardrobe, and she had worn it
+in advance with some misgivings. "I dunno but you might jest as well
+wear it a few Sundays," her mother had said; "you're goin' to have
+your silk dress to come out bride in. I dunno as there's any sense in
+your goin' lookin' like a scarecrow all the spring because you're
+goin' to get married."
+
+So Charlotte had put on the new purple dress the day before; now it
+looked, as it hung in the closet, like an effigy of her happier self.
+
+When Charlotte went down-stairs she found her mother showing much
+more spirit than usual in an altercation with her father. Sarah
+Barnard stood before her husband, her placid face all knitted with
+perplexed remonstrance. "Why, I can't, Cephas," she said. "Pies can't
+be made that way."
+
+"I know they can," said Cephas.
+
+"They can't, Cephas. There ain't no use tryin'. It would jest be a
+waste of the flour."
+
+"Why can't they, I'd like to know?"
+
+"Folks don't ever make pies without lard, Cephas."
+
+"Why don't they?"
+
+"Why, they wouldn't be nothin' more than-- You couldn't eat them
+nohow if they was made so, Cephas. I dunno how the sorrel pies would
+work. I never heard of anybody makin' sorrel pies. Mebbe the Injuns
+did; but I dunno as they ever made pies, anyway. Mebbe the sorrel, if
+it had some molasses on it for juice, wouldn't taste very bad; I
+dunno; but anyway, if the sorrel did work, the other wouldn't. I
+can't make pies fit to eat without any lard or any butter or anything
+any way in the world, Cephas."
+
+"I know you can make 'em without," said Cephas, and his black eyes
+looked like flint. Mrs. Barnard appealed to her daughter.
+
+"Charlotte," said she, "you tell your father that pies can't be made
+fit to eat without I put somethin' in 'em for short'nin'."
+
+"No, they can't, father," said Charlotte.
+
+"He wants me to make sorrel pies, Charlotte," Mrs. Barnard went on,
+in an injured and appealing tone which she seldom used against
+Cephas. "He's been out in the field, an' picked all that sorrel," and
+she pointed to a pan heaped up with little green leaves on the table,
+"an' I tell him I dunno how that will work, but he wants me to make
+the pie-crust without a mite of short'nin', an' I can't do that
+nohow, can I?"
+
+"I don't see how you can," assented Charlotte, coldly.
+
+Cephas went with a sudden stride towards the pantry. "I'll make 'em
+myself, then," he cried.
+
+Mrs. Barnard gasped, and looked piteously at her daughter. "What you
+goin' to do, Cephas?" she asked, feebly.
+
+Cephas was in the pantry rattling the dishes with a fierce din. "I'm
+a-goin' to make them sorrel pies myself," he shouted out, "if none of
+you women folks know enough to."
+
+"Oh, Cephas, you can't!"
+
+Cephas came out, carrying the mixing-board and rolling-pin like a
+shield and a club; he clapped them heavily on to the table.
+
+Mrs. Barnard stood staring aghast at him; Charlotte sat down, took
+some lace edging from her pocket, and began knitting on it. She
+looked hard and indifferent.
+
+"Oh, Charlotte, ain't it dreadful?" her mother whispered, when Cephas
+went into the pantry again.
+
+"I don't care if he makes pies out of burrs," returned Charlotte,
+audibly, but her voice was quite even.
+
+"I don't b'lieve but what sorrel would do some better than burrs,"
+said her mother, "but he can't make pies without short'nin' nohow."
+
+Cephas came out of the pantry with a large bowl of flour and a spoon.
+"He 'ain't sifted it," Mrs. Barnard whispered to Charlotte, as though
+Cephas were not there; then she turned to him. "You sifted the flour,
+didn't you, Cephas?" said she.
+
+"You jest let me alone," said Cephas, grimly. "I'm goin' to make
+these pies, an' I don't need any help. I've picked the sorrel, an'
+I've got the brick oven all heated, an' I know what I want to do, an'
+I'm goin' to do it!"
+
+"I've got some pumpkin that would make full as good pies as sorrel,
+Cephas. Mebbe the sorrel will be real good. I ain't sayin' it won't,
+though I never heard of sorrel pies; but you know pumpkin is good,
+Cephas."
+
+"I know pumpkin pies have milk in 'em," said Cephas; "an' I tell you
+I ain't goin' to have anything of an animal nature in 'em. I've been
+studyin' into it, an' thinkin' of it, an' I've made up my mind that
+I've made a mistake along back, an' we've ate too much animal food.
+We've ate a whole pig an' half a beef critter this winter, to say
+nothin' of eggs an' milk, that are jest as much animal as meat,
+accordin' to my way of thinkin'. I've reasoned it out all along that
+as long as we were animals ourselves, an' wanted to strengthen
+animal, that it was common-sense that we ought to eat animal. It
+seemed to me that nature had so ordered it. I reasoned it out that
+other animals besides man lived on animals, except cows, an' they,
+bein' ruminatin' animals, ain't to be compared to men--"
+
+"I should think we'd be somethin' like 'em if we eat that," said Mrs.
+Barnard, pointing at the sorrel, with piteous sarcasm.
+
+"It's the principle I'm thinkin' about," said Cephas. He stirred some
+salt into the flour very carefully, so not a dust fell over the brim
+of the bowl.
+
+"Horses don't eat meat, neither, an' they don't chew their cuds,"
+Mrs. Barnard argued further. She had never in her life argued with
+Cephas; but sorrel pies, after the night before, made her wildly
+reckless.
+
+Cephas got a gourdful of water from the pail in the sink, and carried
+it carefully over to the table. "Horses are the exception," he
+returned, with dignified asperity. "There always are exceptions. What
+I was comin' at was--I'd been kind of wrong in my reasonin'. That is,
+I 'ain't reasoned far enough. I was right so far as I went."
+
+Cephas poured some water from the gourd into the bowl of flour and
+began stirring.
+
+Sarah caught her breath. "He's makin'--paste!" she gasped. "He's jest
+makin' flour paste!"
+
+"Jest so far as I went I was right," Cephas resumed, pouring in a
+little more water with a judicial air. "I said Man was animal, an' he
+is animal; an' if you don't take anything else into account, he'd
+ought to live on animal food, jest the way I reasoned it out. But
+you've got to take something else into account. Man is animal, but he
+ain't all animal. He's something else. He's spiritual. Man has
+command over all the other animals, an' all the beasts of the field;
+an' it ain't because he's any better an' stronger animal, because he
+ain't. What's a man to a horse, if the horse only knew it? but the
+horse don't know it, an' there's jest where Man gets the advantage.
+It's knowledge an' spirit that gives Man the rule over all the other
+animals. Now, what we want is to eat the kind of things that will
+strengthen knowledge an' spirit an' self-control, because the first
+two ain't any account without the last; but there ain't no kind of
+food that's known that can do that. If there is, I 'ain't never heard
+of it."
+
+Cephas dumped the whole mass of paste with a flop upon the
+mixing-board, and plunged his fists into it. Sarah made an
+involuntary motion forward, then she stood back with a great sigh.
+
+"But what we can do," Cephas proceeded, "is to eat the kind of things
+that won't strengthen the animal nature at the expense of the
+spiritual. We know that animal food does that; we can see how it
+works in tigers an' bears. Now, it's the spiritual part of us we want
+to strengthen, because that is the biggest strength we can get, an'
+it's worth more. It's what gives us the rule over animals. It's
+better for us to eat some other kind of food, if we get real weak and
+pindlin' on it, rather than eat animal food an' make the animal in us
+stronger than the spiritual, so we won't be any better than wild
+tigers an' bears, an' lose our rule over the other animals."
+
+Cephas took the rolling-pin and brought it heavily down upon the
+sticky mass on the board. Sarah shuddered and started as if it had
+hit her. "Now, if we can't eat animal food," said Cephas, "what other
+kind of food can we eat? There ain't but one other kind that's known
+to man, an' that's vegetable food, the product of the earth. An'
+that's of two sorts: one gets ripe an' fit to eat in the fall of the
+year, an' the other comes earlier in the spring an' summer. Now, in
+order to carry out the plans of nature, we'd ought to eat these
+products of the earth jest as near as we can in the season of 'em.
+Some had ought to be eat in the fall an' winter, an' some in the
+spring an' summer. Accordin' to my reasonin', if we all lived this
+way we should be a good deal better off; our spiritual natures would
+be strengthened, an' we should have more power over other animals,
+an' better dispositions ourselves."
+
+"I've seen horses terribly ugly, an' they don't eat a mite of meat,"
+said Sarah, with tremulous boldness. Her right hand kept moving
+forward to clutch the rolling-pin, then she would draw it back.
+
+"'Ain't I told ye once horses were the exceptions?" said Cephas,
+severely. "There has to be exceptions. If there wa'n't any exceptions
+there couldn't be any rule, an' there bein' exceptions shows there is
+a rule. Women can't ever get hold of things straight. Their minds
+slant off sideways, the way their arms do when they fling a stone."
+
+Cephas brought the rolling-pin down upon the paste again with fierce
+impetus. "You'll break it," Sarah murmured, feebly. Cephas brought it
+down again, his mouth set hard; his face showed a red flush through
+his white beard, the veins on his high forehead were swollen and his
+brows scowling. The paste adhered to the rolling-pin; he raised it
+with an effort; his hands were helplessly sticky. Sarah could
+restrain herself no longer. She went into the pantry and got a dish
+of flour, and spooned out some suddenly over the board and Cephas's
+hands. "You've got to have some more flour," she said, in a desperate
+tone.
+
+Cephas's black eyes flashed at her. "I wish you would attend to your
+own work, an' leave me alone," said he. But at last he succeeded in
+moving the rolling-pin over the dough as he had seen his wife move
+it.
+
+"He ain't greasin' the pie-plates," said Sarah, as Cephas brought a
+piece of dough with a dexterous jerk over a plate; "there ain't much
+animal in the little mite of lard it takes to grease a plate."
+
+Cephas spread handfuls of sorrel leaves over the dough; then he
+brought the molasses-jug from the pantry, raised it, and poured
+molasses over the sorrel with an imperturbable air.
+
+Sarah watched him; then she turned to Charlotte. "To think of eatin'
+it!" she groaned, quite openly; "it looks like p'ison."
+
+Charlotte made no response; she knitted as one of the Fates might
+have spun. Sarah sank down on a chair, and looked away from Cephas
+and his cookery, as if she were overcome, and quite done with all
+remonstrance.
+
+Never before had she shown so much opposition towards one of her
+husband's hobbies, but this galloped so ruthlessly over her own
+familiar fields that she had plucked up boldness to try to veer it
+away.
+
+Somebody passed the window swiftly, the door opened abruptly, and
+Mrs. Deborah Thayer entered. "_Good_-mornin'," said she, and her
+voice rang out like a herald's defiance.
+
+Sarah Barnard arose, and went forward quickly. "Good-mornin'," she
+responded, with nervous eagerness. "Good-mornin', Mis' Thayer. Come
+in an' set down, won't you?"
+
+"I 'ain't come to set down," responded Deborah's deep voice.
+
+She moved, a stately high-hipped figure, her severe face almost
+concealed in a scooping green barège hood, to the centre of the
+floor, and stood there with a pose that might have answered for a
+statue of Judgment. She turned her green-hooded head slowly towards
+them all in turn. Sarah watched her and waited, her eyes dilated.
+Cephas rolled out another pie, calmly. Charlotte knitted fast; her
+face was very pale.
+
+"I've come over here," said Deborah Thayer, "to find out what my son
+has done."
+
+There was not a sound, except the thud of Cephas's rolling-pin.
+
+"Mr. Barnard!" said Deborah. Cephas did not seem to hear her.
+
+"Mr. Barnard!" she said, again. There was that tone of command in her
+voice which only a woman can accomplish. It was full of that maternal
+supremacy which awakens the first instinct of obedience in man, and
+has more weight than the voice of a general in battle. Cephas did not
+turn his head, but he spoke. "What is it ye want?" he said, gruffly.
+
+"I want to know what my son has done, an' I want you to tell me in so
+many words. I ain't afraid to face it. What has my son done?"
+
+Cephas grunted something inarticulate.
+
+"What?" said Deborah. "I can't hear what you say. I want to know what
+my son has done. I've heard how you turned him out of your house last
+night, and I want to know what it was for. I want to know what he has
+done. You're an old man, and a God-fearing one, if you have got your
+own ideas about some things. Barnabas is young, and apt to be
+headstrong. He ain't always been as mindful of obedience as he might
+be. I've tried to do my best by him, but he don't always carry out my
+teachin's. I ain't afraid to say this, if he is my son. I want to
+know what he's done. If it's anything wrong, I shall be jest as hard
+on him as the Lord for it. I'm his mother, but I can see his faults,
+and be just. I want to know what he has done."
+
+Charlotte gave one great cry. "Oh, Mrs. Thayer, he hasn't done
+anything wrong; Barney hasn't done anything wrong!"
+
+But Deborah quite ignored her. She kept her eyes fixed upon Cephas.
+"What has my son done?" she demanded again. "If he's done anything
+wrong I want to know it. I ain't afraid to deal with him. You ordered
+him out of your house, and he didn't come home at all last night. I
+don't know where he was. He won't speak a word this mornin' to tell
+me. I've been out in the field where he's to work ploughin', and I
+tried to make him tell me, but he wouldn't say a word. I sat up and
+waited all night, but he didn't come home. Now I want to know where
+he was, and what he's done, and why you ordered him out of the house.
+If he's been swearin', or takin' anything that didn't belong to him,
+or drinkin', I want to know it, so I can deal with him as his mother
+had ought to deal."
+
+"He hasn't been doing anything wrong!" Charlotte cried out again;
+"you ought to be ashamed of yourself talking so about him, when
+you're his mother!"
+
+Deborah Thayer never glanced at Charlotte. She kept her eyes fixed
+upon Cephas. "What has he done?" she repeated.
+
+"I guess he didn't do much of anything," Mrs. Barnard murmured,
+feebly; but Deborah did not seem to hear her.
+
+Cephas opened his mouth as if perforce. "Well," he said, slowly, "we
+got to talkin'--"
+
+"Talkin' about what?"
+
+"About the 'lection. I think, accordin' to my reasonin', that what we
+eat had a good deal to do with it."
+
+"What?"
+
+"I think if you'd kept your family on less meat, and given 'em more
+garden-stuff to eat Barney wouldn't have been so up an' comin'. It's
+what he's eat that's made him what he is."
+
+Deborah stared at Cephas in stern amazement. "You're tryin' to make
+out, as near as I can tell," said she, "that whatever my son has done
+wrong is due to what he's eat, and not to original sin. I knew you
+had queer ideas, Cephas Barnard, but I didn't know you wa'n't sound
+in your faith. What I want to know is, what has he done?"
+
+Suddenly Charlotte sprang up, and pushed herself in between her
+father and Mrs. Thayer; she confronted Deborah, and compelled her to
+look at her.
+
+"I'll tell you what he's done," she said, fiercely. "I know what he's
+done; you listen to me. He has done nothing--nothing that you've got
+to deal with him for. You needn't feel obliged to deal with him. He
+and father got into a talk over the 'lection, and they had words
+about it. He didn't talk any worse than father, not a mite. Father
+started it, anyway, and he knew better; he knew just how set Barney
+was on his own side, and how set he was on his; he wanted to pick a
+quarrel."
+
+"Charlotte!" shouted Cephas.
+
+"You keep still, father," returned Charlotte, with steady fierceness.
+"I've never set myself up against you in my whole life before; but
+now I'm going to, because it's just and right. Father wanted to pick
+a quarrel," she repeated, turning to Deborah; "he's been kind of
+grouty to Barney for some time. I don't know why; he took a notion
+to, I suppose. When they got to having words about the 'lection,
+father begun it. I heard him. Barney answered back, and I didn't
+blame him; I would, in his place. Then father ordered him out of the
+house, and he went. I don't see what else he could do. And I don't
+blame him because he didn't go home if he didn't feel like it."
+
+"Didn't he go away from here before nine o'clock?" demanded Deborah,
+addressing Charlotte at last.
+
+"Yes, he did, some time before nine; he had plenty of time to go home
+if he wanted to."
+
+"Where was he, then, I'd like to know?"
+
+"I don't know, and I wouldn't lift my finger to find out. I am not
+afraid he was anywhere he hadn't ought to be, nor doin' anything he
+hadn't ought to."
+
+"Didn't you stand out in the road and call him back, and he wouldn't
+come, nor even turn his head to look at you?" asked Deborah.
+
+"Yes, I did," returned Charlotte, unflinchingly. "And I don't blame
+him for not coming back and not turning his head. I wouldn't if I'd
+been in his place."
+
+"You'll have to uphold him a long time, then; I can tell you that,"
+said Deborah. "He won't never come back if he's said he won't. I know
+him; he's got some of me in him."
+
+"I'll uphold him as long as I live," said Charlotte.
+
+"I wonder you ain't ashamed to talk so."
+
+"I am not."
+
+Deborah looked at Charlotte as if she would crush her; then she
+turned away.
+
+"You're a hard woman, Mrs. Thayer, and I pity Barney because he's got
+you for a mother," Charlotte said, in undaunted response to Deborah's
+look.
+
+"Well, you'll never have to pity yourself on that account," retorted
+Deborah, without turning her head.
+
+The door opened softly, and a girl of about Charlotte's age slipped
+in. Nobody except Mrs. Barnard, who said, absently, "How do you do,
+Rose?" seemed to notice her. She sat down unobtrusively in a chair
+near the door and waited. Her blue eyes upon the others were so
+intense with excitement that they seemed to blot out the rest of her
+face. She had her blue apron tightly rolled about both hands.
+
+Deborah Thayer, on her way to the door, looked at her as if she had
+been a part of the wall, but suddenly she stopped and cast a glance
+at Cephas. "What be you makin'?" she asked, with a kind of scorn at
+him, and scorn at her own curiosity.
+
+Cephas did not reply, but he looked ugly as he slapped another piece
+of dough heavily upon a plate.
+
+Deborah, as if against her will, moved closer to the table and bent
+over the pan of sorrel. She smelled of it; then she took a leaf and
+tasted it, cautiously. She made a wry face. "It's sorrel," said she.
+"You're makin' pies out of sorrel. A man makin' pies out of sorrel!"
+
+She looked at Cephas like a condemning judge. He shot a fiery glance
+at her, but said nothing. He sprinkled the sorrel leaves in the pie.
+
+"Well," said Deborah, "I've got a sense of justice, and if my son, or
+any other man, has asked a girl to marry him, and she's got her
+weddin' clothes ready, I believe in his doin' his duty, if he can be
+made to; but I must say if it wa'n't for that, I'd rather he'd gone
+into a family that was more like other folks. I'm goin' to do the
+best I can, whether you go half way or not. I'm goin' to try to make
+my son do his duty. I don't expect he will, but I shall do all I can,
+tempers or no tempers, and sorrel pies or no sorrel pies."
+
+Deborah went out, and shut the door heavily after her.
+
+
+
+Chapter IV
+
+
+After Deborah Thayer had shut the door, the young girl sitting beside
+it arose. "I didn't know she was in here, or I wouldn't have come
+in," she said, nervously.
+
+"That don't make any odds," replied Mrs. Barnard, who was trembling
+all over, and had sunk helplessly into a rocking-chair, which she
+swayed violently and unconsciously.
+
+Cephas opened the door of the brick oven, and put in a batch of his
+pies, and the click of the iron latch made her start as if it were a
+pistol-shot.
+
+Charlotte got up and went out of the room with a backward glance and
+a slight beckoning motion of her head, and the girl slunk after her
+so secretly that it seemed as if she did not see herself. Cephas
+looked sharply after them, but said nothing; he was like a
+philosopher in such a fury of research and experiment that for the
+time he heeded thoroughly nothing else.
+
+The young girl, who was Rose Berry, Charlotte's cousin, followed her
+panting up the steep stairs to her chamber. She was a slender little
+creature, and was now overwrought with nervous excitement. She fairly
+gasped for breath when she sat down in the little wooden chair in
+Charlotte's room. Charlotte sat on the bed. The two girls looked at
+each other--Rose with a certain wary alarm and questioning in her
+eyes, Charlotte with a dignified confidence of misery.
+
+"I didn't sleep here last night," Charlotte said, at length.
+
+"You went over to Aunt Sylvy's, didn't you?" returned Rose, as if
+that were all the matter in hand.
+
+Charlotte nodded, then she looked moodily past her cousin's face out
+of the window.
+
+"You've heard about it, I suppose?" said Charlotte.
+
+"Something," replied Rose, evasively.
+
+"I don't see how it got out, for my part. I don't believe he told
+anybody."
+
+Rose flushed all over her little eager face and her thin neck. She
+opened her mouth as if to speak, then shut it with a catch of her
+breath.
+
+"I can't imagine how it got out," repeated Charlotte.
+
+Rose looked at Charlotte with a painful effort; she clutched her
+hands tightly into fists as she spoke. "I was coming up here 'cross
+lots last night, and I heard you out in the road calling Barney," she
+said, as if she forced out the words.
+
+"Rose Berry, you didn't tell!"
+
+"I went home and told mother, that's all. I didn't think that it
+would do any harm, Charlotte."
+
+"It'll be all over town, that's all. It's bad enough, anyway."
+
+"I don't believe it'll get out; I told mother not to tell."
+
+"Mrs. Thayer knew."
+
+"Maybe Barney told her."
+
+"Rose Berry, you know better. You know Barney wouldn't do such a
+thing."
+
+"No; I don't s'pose he would."
+
+"Don't suppose! Don't you know?"
+
+"Yes, of course I do. I know Barney just as well as you do,
+Charlotte. Oh, Charlotte, don't feel bad. I wouldn't have told mother
+if I'd thought. I didn't mean to do any harm. I was all upset myself
+by it. Don't cry, Charlotte."
+
+"I ain't going to cry," said Charlotte, with spirit. "I've stopped
+cryin'." She wiped her eyes forcibly with her apron, and gave her
+head a proud toss. "I know you didn't mean to do any harm, Rose, and
+I suppose it would have got out anyway. 'Most everything does get out
+but good deeds."
+
+"I truly didn't mean to do any harm, Charlotte," Rose repeated.
+
+"I know you didn't. We won't say any more about it."
+
+"I was just running over across lots last night," Rose said. "I
+supposed you'd be in the front room with Barney, but I thought I'd
+see Aunt Sarah. I'd got terrible lonesome; mother had gone to sleep
+in her chair, and father had gone to bed. When I got out by the
+stone-wall next the wood I heard you; then I ran right back. Don't
+you--suppose he'll ever come again, Charlotte?"
+
+"No," said Charlotte.
+
+"Oh, Charlotte!" There was a curious quality in the girl's voice, as
+if some great hidden emotion in her heart tried to leap to the
+surface and make a sound, although it was totally at variance with
+the import of her cry. Charlotte started, without knowing why. It was
+as if Rose's words and her tone had different meanings, and
+conflicted like the wrong lines with a tune.
+
+"I gave it up last night," said Charlotte. "It's all over. I'm goin'
+to pack my wedding things away."
+
+"I don't see what makes you so sure."
+
+"I know him."
+
+"But I don't see what you've done, Charlotte; he didn't quarrel with
+you."
+
+"That don't make any odds. He can't get married to me now without he
+breaks his will, and he can't. He can't get outside himself enough to
+break it. I've studied it all out. It's like ciphering. It's all
+over."
+
+"Charlotte."
+
+"What is it?"
+
+"Why--couldn't you go somewhere else to get married? What's the need
+of his comin' here, if he's been ordered out, and he's said he
+wouldn't?"
+
+"That's just the letter of it," returned Charlotte, scornfully. "Do
+you suppose he could cheat himself that way, or I'd have him if he
+could? When Barney Thayer went out of this house last night, and said
+what he did, he meant that it was all over, that he was never going
+to marry me, nor have anything more to do with us, and he's going to
+stand by it. I am not finding any fault with him. I've made up my
+mind that it's all over, and I'm going to pack away my weddin'
+things."
+
+"Oh, Charlotte, you take it so calm!"
+
+"What do you want me to do?"
+
+"If it was anybody else, I should think they didn't care."
+
+"Maybe I don't."
+
+"I couldn't bear it so, anyhow! I couldn't!" Rose cried out, with
+sudden passion. "I wouldn't bear it. I'd go down on my knees to him
+to come back!" Rose flung back her head and looked at Charlotte with
+a curious defiance; her face grew suddenly intense, and seemed to
+open out into bloom and color like a flower. The pupils of her blue
+eyes dilated until they looked black; her thin lips looked full and
+red; her cheeks were flaming; her slender chest heaved. "I would,"
+said she; "I don't care, I would."
+
+Charlotte looked at her, and a quivering flush like a reflection was
+left on her fair, steady face.
+
+"I would," said Rose again.
+
+"It wouldn't do any good."
+
+"It would if he cared anything about you."
+
+"It would if he could give up to the care. Barney Thayer has got a
+terrible will that won't always let him do what he wants to himself."
+
+"I don't believe he's enough of a fool to put his own eyes out."
+
+"You don't know him."
+
+"I'd try, anyway."
+
+"It wouldn't do any good."
+
+"I don't believe you care anything about him, Charlotte Barnard!"
+Rose cried out. "If you did, you couldn't give him up so easy for
+such a silly thing. You sit there just as calm. I don't believe but
+what you'll have another fellow on the string in a month. I know one
+that's dying to get you."
+
+"Maybe I shall," replied Charlotte.
+
+"Won't you, now?" Rose tried to speak archly, but her eyes were
+fiercely eager.
+
+"I can't tell till I get home from the grave," said Charlotte. "You
+might wait till I did, Rose." She got up and went to dusting her
+bureau and the little gilt-framed mirror behind it. Her lips were
+shut tightly, and she never looked at her cousin.
+
+"Now don't get mad, Charlotte," Rose said. "Maybe I ought not to have
+spoken so, but it did seem to me you couldn't care as _much_-- It
+does seem to me I couldn't settle down and be so calm if I was in
+your place, and all ready to be married to anybody. I should want to
+do something."
+
+"I should, if there was anything to do," said Charlotte. She stopped
+dusting and leaned against the wall, reflecting. "I wish it was a
+real mountain to move," said she; "I'd do it."
+
+"I'd go right down in the field where he is ploughing, and I'd make
+him say he'd come to see me to-night."
+
+"I called him back last night--you heard me," said Charlotte, with
+slow bitterness. Her square delicate chin dipped into the muslin
+folds of her neckerchief; she looked steadily at the floor and bent
+her brow.
+
+"I'd call him again."
+
+"You would, would you?" cried Charlotte, straightening herself. "You
+would stand out in the road and keep on calling a man who wouldn't
+even turn his head? You'd keep on calling, and let all the town
+hear?"
+
+"Yes, I would. I would! I wouldn't be ashamed of anything if I was
+going to marry him. I'd go on my knees before him in the face and
+eyes of the whole town."
+
+"Well, I wouldn't," said Charlotte.
+
+"I would, if I was sure he thought as much of me as I did of him."
+
+Charlotte looked at her proudly. "I'm sure enough of that," said she.
+
+Rose winced a little. "Then I wouldn't mind what I did," she
+persisted, stubbornly.
+
+"Well, I would," said Charlotte; "but maybe I don't care. Maybe all
+this isn't as hard for me as it would be for another girl."
+Charlotte's voice broke, but she tossed her head back with a proud
+motion; she took up the dusting-cloth and fell to work again.
+
+"Oh, Charlotte!" said Rose; "I didn't mean that. Of course I know you
+care. It's awful. It was only because I didn't see how you could seem
+so calm; it ain't like me. Of course I know you feel bad enough
+underneath. Your wedding-clothes all done and everything. They are
+pretty near all done, ain't they, Charlotte?"
+
+"Yes," said Charlotte. "They're--pretty near--done." She tried to
+speak steadily, but her voice failed. Suddenly she threw herself on
+the bed and hid her face, and her whole body heaved and twisted with
+great sobs.
+
+"Oh, poor Charlotte, don't!" Rose cried, wringing her own hands; her
+face quivered, but she did not weep.
+
+"Maybe I don't care," sobbed Charlotte; "maybe--I don't care."
+
+"Oh, Charlotte!" Rose looked at Charlotte's piteous girlish shoulders
+shaken with sobs, and the fair prostrate girlish head. Charlotte all
+drawn up in this little heap upon the bed looked very young and
+helpless. All her womanly stateliness, which made her seem so
+superior to Rose, had vanished. Rose pulled her chair close to the
+bed, sat down, and laid her little thin hand on Charlotte's arm, and
+Charlotte directly felt it hot through her sleeve. "Don't,
+Charlotte," Rose said; "I'm sorry I spoke so."
+
+"Maybe I don't care," Charlotte sobbed out again. "Maybe I don't."
+
+"Oh, Charlotte, I'm sorry," Rose said, trembling. "I do know you
+care; don't you feel so bad because I said that."
+
+Rose tightened her grasp on Charlotte's arm; her voice changed
+suddenly. "Look here, Charlotte," said she, "I'll do anything in the
+world I can to help you; I promise you that, and I mean it, honest."
+
+Charlotte reached around a hand, and clasped her cousin's.
+
+"I'm sorry I spoke so," Rose said.
+
+"Never mind," Charlotte responded, chokingly. She sobbed a little
+longer from pure inertia of grief; then she raised herself, shaking
+off Rose's hand. "It's all right," said she; "I needn't have minded;
+I know you didn't mean anything. It was just--the last straw,
+and--when you said that about my wedding-clothes--"
+
+"Oh, Charlotte, you did speak about them yourself first," Rose said,
+deprecatingly.
+
+"I did, so nobody else would," returned Charlotte. She wiped her
+eyes, drooping her stained face away from her cousin with a kind of
+helpless shame; then she smoothed her hair with the palms of her
+hands. "I know you didn't mean any harm, Rose," she added, presently.
+"I got my silk dress done last Wednesday; I wanted to tell you."
+Charlotte tried to smile at Rose with her poor swollen lips and her
+reddened eyes.
+
+"I'm sorry I said anything," Rose repeated; "I ought to have known it
+would make you feel bad, Charlotte."
+
+"No, you hadn't. I was terrible silly. Don't you want to see my
+dress, Rose?"
+
+"Oh, Charlotte! you don't want to show it to me?"
+
+"Yes, I do. I want you to see it--before I pack it away. It's in the
+north chamber."
+
+Rose followed Charlotte out of the room across the passageway to the
+north chamber. Charlotte had had one brother, who had died some ten
+years before, when he was twenty. The north chamber had been his
+room, the bureau drawers were packed with his clothes, and the silk
+hat which had been the pride of his early manhood hung on the nail
+where he had left it, and also his Sunday coat. His mother would not
+have them removed, but kept them there, with frequent brushings, to
+guard against dust and moths.
+
+Always when Charlotte entered this small long room, which was full of
+wavering lines from its uneven floor and walls and ceiling and the
+long arabesques on its old blue-and-white paper, whose green paper
+curtains with fringed white dimity ones drooping over them were
+always drawn, and in summertime when the windows were open undulated
+in the wind, she had the sense of a presence, dim, but as positive as
+the visions she had used to have of faces in the wandering design of
+the old wall-paper when she had studied it in her childhood. Ever
+since her brother's death she had had this sense of his presence in
+his room; now she thought no more of it than of any familiar figure.
+All the grief at his death had vanished, but she never entered his
+old room that the thought of him did not rise up before her and stay
+with her while she remained.
+
+Now, when she opened the door, and the opposite green and white
+curtains flew out in the draught towards her, they were no more
+evident than this presence to which she now gave no thought, and
+pushed by her brother's memory without a glance.
+
+Rose followed her to the bed. A white linen sheet was laid over the
+chintz counterpane. Charlotte lifted the sheet.
+
+"I took the last stitch on it Wednesday night," she said, in a hushed
+voice.
+
+"Didn't he come that night?"
+
+"I finished it before he came."
+
+"Did he see it?"
+
+Charlotte nodded. The two girls stood looking solemnly at the silk
+dress.
+
+"You can't see it here; it's too dark," said Charlotte, and she
+rolled up a window curtain.
+
+"Yes, I can see better," said Rose, in a whisper. "It's beautiful,
+Charlotte."
+
+The dress was spread widely over the bed in crisp folds. It was
+purple, plaided vaguely with cloudy lines of white and delicate
+rose-color. Over it lay a silvery lustre that was the very light of
+the silken fabric.
+
+Rose felt it reverently. "How thick it is!" said she.
+
+"Yes, it's a good piece," Charlotte replied.
+
+"You thought you'd have purple?"
+
+"Yes, he liked it."
+
+"Well, it's pretty, and it's becoming to you."
+
+Charlotte took up the skirt, and slipped it, loud with silken
+whispers, over her head. It swept out around her in a great circle;
+she looked like a gorgeous inverted bell-flower.
+
+"It's beautiful," Rose said.
+
+Charlotte's face, gazing downward at the silken breadths, had quite
+its natural expression. It was as if her mind in spite of herself
+would stop at old doors.
+
+"Try on the waist," pleaded Rose.
+
+Charlotte slipped off her calico waist, and thrust her firm white
+arms into the flaring silken sleeves of the wedding-gown. Her neck
+arose from it with a grand curve. She stood before the glass and
+strained the buttons together, frowning importantly.
+
+"It fits you like a glove," Rose murmured, admiringly, smoothing
+Charlotte's glossy back.
+
+"I've got a spencer-cape to wear over my neck to meeting," Charlotte
+said, and she opened the upper-most drawer in the chest and took out
+a worked muslin cape, and adjusted it carefully over her shoulders,
+pinning it across her bosom with a little brooch of her brother's
+hair in a rim of gold.
+
+"It's elegant," said Rose.
+
+"I'll show you my bonnet," said Charlotte. She went into a closet and
+emerged with a great green bandbox.
+
+Rose bent over, watching her breathlessly as she opened it. "Oh!" she
+cried. "Oh, Charlotte!"
+
+Charlotte held up the bonnet of fine Dunstable straw, flaring in
+front, and trimmed under the brim with a delicate lace ruche and a
+wreath of feathery white flowers. Bows of white gauze ribbon stood up
+from it stiffly. Long ribbon strings floated back over her arm as she
+held it up.
+
+"Try it on," said Rose.
+
+Charlotte stepped before the glass and adjusted the bonnet to her
+head. She tied the strings carefully under her chin in a great square
+bow; then she turned towards Rose. The fine white wreath under the
+brim encircled her face like a nimbus; she looked as she might have
+done sitting a bride in the meeting-house.
+
+"It's beautiful," Rose said, smiling, with grave eyes. "You look real
+handsome in it, Charlotte." Charlotte stood motionless a moment, with
+Rose surveying her.
+
+"Oh, Charlotte," Rose cried out, suddenly, "I don't believe but what
+you'll have him, after all!" Rose's eyes were sharp upon Charlotte's
+face. It was as if the bridal robes, which were so evident, became
+suddenly proofs of something tangible and real, like a garment left
+by a ghost. Rose felt a sudden conviction that the quarrel was but a
+temporary thing; that Charlotte would marry Barney, and that she knew
+it.
+
+A change came over Charlotte's face. She began untying the bonnet
+strings.
+
+"Sha'n't you?" repeated Rose, breathlessly.
+
+"No, I sha'n't."
+
+Charlotte took the bonnet off and smoothed the creases carefully out
+of the strings.
+
+"If I were you," Rose cried out, "I'd feel like tearing that bonnet
+to pieces!"
+
+Charlotte replaced it in the bandbox, and began unfastening her
+dress.
+
+"I don't see how you can bear the sight of them. I don't believe I
+could bear them in the house!" Rose cried out again. "I would put
+that dress in the rag-bag if it was mine!" Her cheeks burned and her
+eyes were quite fierce upon the dress as Charlotte slipped it off and
+it fell to the floor in a rustling heap around her.
+
+"I don't see any sense in losing everything you have ever had because
+you haven't got anything now," Charlotte returned, in a stern voice.
+She laid the shining silk gown carefully on the bed, and put on her
+cotton one again. Her face was quite steady.
+
+Rose watched her with the same sharp question in her eyes. "You know
+you and Barney will make it up," she said, at length.
+
+"No, I don't," returned Charlotte. "Suppose we go down-stairs now.
+I've got some work I ought to do."
+
+Charlotte pulled down the green paper shades of the windows, and went
+out of the room. Rose followed. Charlotte turned to go down-stairs,
+but Rose caught her arm.
+
+"Wait a minute," said she. "Look here, Charlotte."
+
+"What is it?"
+
+"Charlotte," said Rose again; then she stopped.
+
+Charlotte turned and looked at her. Rose's eyes met hers, and her
+face had a noble expression.
+
+"You write a note to him, and I'll carry it," said Rose. "I'll go
+down in the field where he is, on my way home."
+
+Tears sprang into Charlotte's eyes. "You're real good, Rose," she
+said; "but I can't."
+
+"Hadn't you better?"
+
+"No; I can't. Don't let's talk any more about it."
+
+Charlotte pushed past Rose's detaining hand, and the girls went
+down-stairs. Mrs. Barnard looked around dejectedly at them as they
+entered the kitchen. Her eyes were red, and her mouth drooping; she
+was clearing the débris of the pies from the table; there was a smell
+of baking, but Cephas had gone out. She tried to smile at Rose. "Are
+you goin' now?" said she.
+
+"Yes; I've got to. I've got to sew on my muslin dress. When are you
+coming over, Aunt Sarah? You haven't been over to our house for an
+age."
+
+"I don't care if I never go anywhere!" cried Sarah Barnard, with
+sudden desperation. "I'm discouraged." She sank in a chair, and flung
+her apron over her face.
+
+"Don't, mother," said Charlotte.
+
+"I can't help it," sobbed her mother. "You're young and you've got
+more strength to bear it, but mine's all gone. I feel worse about you
+than if it was myself, an' there's so much to put up with besides. I
+don't feel as if I could put up with things much longer, nohow."
+
+"Uncle Cephas ought to be ashamed of himself!" Rose cried out.
+
+Sarah stood up. "Well, I don't s'pose I have so much to put up with
+as some folks," she said, catching her breath as if it were her
+dignity. "Your Uncle Cephas means well. It did seem as if them sorrel
+pies were the last straw, but I hadn't ought to have minded it."
+
+"You haven't got to eat sorrel pies, have you?" Rose asked, in a
+bewildered way.
+
+"I don't s'pose they'll be any worse than some other things we eat,"
+Sarah answered, scraping the pie-board again.
+
+"I don't see how you can."
+
+"I guess they won't hurt us any," Sarah said, shortly, and Rose
+looked abashed.
+
+"Well, I must be going," said she.
+
+As she went out, she looked hesitatingly at Charlotte. "Hadn't you
+better?" she whispered. Charlotte shook her head, and Rose went out
+into the spring sunlight. She bent her head as she went down the road
+before the sweet gusts of south wind; the white apple-trees seemed to
+sing, for she could not see the birds in them.
+
+Rose's face between the green sides of her bonnet had in it all the
+quickened bloom of youth in spring; her eyes had all the blue
+surprise of violets; she panted softly between red swelling lips as
+she walked; pulses beat in her crimson cheeks. Her slender figure
+yielded to the wind as to a lover. She passed Barney Thayer's new
+house; then she came opposite the field where he was at work
+ploughing, driving a white horse, stooping to his work in his blue
+frock.
+
+Rose stood still and looked at him; then she walked on a little way;
+then she paused again. Barney never looked around at her. There was
+the width of a field between them.
+
+Finally Rose went through the open bars into the first field. She
+crossed it slowly, holding up her skirts where there was a wet gleam
+through darker grass, and getting a little nosegay of violets with a
+busy air, as if that were what she had come for. She passed through
+the other bars into the second field, and Barney was only a little
+way from her. He did not glance at her then. He was ploughing with
+the look that Cadmus might have worn preparing the ground for the
+dragon's teeth.
+
+Rose held up her skirts, and went along the furrows behind him.
+"Hullo, Barney," she said, in a trembling voice.
+
+"Hullo," he returned, without looking around, and he kept on, with
+Rose following.
+
+"Barney," said she, timidly.
+
+"Well?" said Barney, half turning, with a slight show of courtesy.
+
+"Do you know if Rebecca is at home?"
+
+"I don't know whether she is or not."
+
+Barney held stubbornly to his rocking plough, and Rose followed.
+
+"Barney," said she, again.
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Stop a minute, and look round here."
+
+"I can't stop to talk."
+
+"Yes, you can; just a minute. Look round here."
+
+Barney stopped, and turned a stern, miserable face over his shoulder.
+
+"I've been up to Charlotte's," Rose said.
+
+"I don't know what that is to me."
+
+"Barney Thayer, ain't you ashamed of yourself?"
+
+"I can't stop to talk."
+
+"Yes, you can. Look here. Charlotte feels awfully."
+
+Barney stood with his back to Rose; his very shoulders had a dogged
+look.
+
+"Barney, why don't you make up with her?"
+
+Barney stood still.
+
+"Barney, she feels awfully because you didn't come back when she
+called you last night."
+
+Barney made no reply. He and the white horse stood like statues.
+
+"Barney, why don't you make up with her? I wish you would." Rose's
+voice was full of tender inflections; it might have been that of an
+angel peace-making.
+
+Barney turned around between the handles of the plough, and looked at
+her steadily. "You don't know anything about it, Rose," he said.
+
+Rose looked up in his face, and her own was full of fine pleading.
+"Oh, Barney," she said, "poor Charlotte does feel so bad! I know that
+anyhow."
+
+"You don't know how I am situated. I can't--"
+
+"Do go and see her, Barney."
+
+"Do you think I'm going into Cephas Barnard's house after he's
+ordered me out?"
+
+"Go up the road a little way, and she'll come and meet you. I'll run
+ahead and tell her."
+
+Barney shook his head. "I can't; you don't know anything about it,
+Rose." He looked into Rose's eyes. "You're real good, Rose," he said,
+as if with a sudden recognition of her presence.
+
+Rose blushed softly, a new look came into her eyes, she smiled up at
+him, and her face was all pink and sweet and fully set towards him,
+like a rose for which he was a sun.
+
+"No, I ain't good," she whispered.
+
+"Yes, you are; but I can't. You don't know anything about it." He
+swung about and grasped his plough-handles again.
+
+"Barney, do stop a minute," Rose pleaded.
+
+"I can't stop any longer; there's no use talking," Barney said; and
+he went on remorselessly through the opening furrow. Just before he
+turned the corner Rose made a little run forward and caught his arm.
+
+"You don't think I've done anything out of the way speaking to you
+about it, do you, Barney?" she said, and she was half crying.
+
+"I don't know why I should think you had; I suppose you meant all
+right," Barney said. He pulled his arm away softly, and jerked the
+right rein to turn the horse. "G'lang!" he cried out, and strode
+forward with a conclusive air.
+
+Rose stood looking after him a minute; then she struck off across the
+field. Her knees trembled as she stepped over the soft plough-ridges.
+
+When she was out on the road again she went along quickly until she
+came to the Thayer house. She was going past that when she heard some
+one calling her name, and turned to see who it was.
+
+Rebecca Thayer came hurrying out of the yard with a basket on her
+arm. "Wait a minute," she called, "and I'll go along with you."
+
+
+
+Chapter V
+
+
+Rebecca, walking beside Rose, looked like a woman of another race.
+She was much taller, and her full, luxuriant young figure looked
+tropical beside Rose's slender one. Her body undulated as she walked,
+but Rose moved only with forward flings of delicate limbs.
+
+"I've got to carry these eggs down to the store and get some sugar,"
+said Rebecca.
+
+Rose assented, absently. She was full of the thought of her talk with
+Barney.
+
+"It's a pleasant day, ain't it?" said Rebecca.
+
+"Yes, it's real pleasant. Say, Rebecca, I'm awful afraid I made
+Barney mad just now."
+
+"Why, what did you do?"
+
+"I stopped in the field when I was going by. I'd been up to see
+Charlotte, and I said something about it to him."
+
+"How much do you know about it?" Rebecca asked, abruptly.
+
+"Charlotte told me this mornin', and last night when I was going to
+her house across lots I saw Barney going, and heard her calling him
+back. I thought I'd see if I couldn't coax him to make up with her,
+but I couldn't."
+
+"Oh, he'll come round," said Rebecca.
+
+"Then you think it'll be made up?" Rose asked, quickly.
+
+"Of course it will. We're having a terrible time about poor Barney.
+He didn't come home last night, and it's much as ever he's spoken
+this morning. He wouldn't eat any breakfast. He just went into his
+room, and put on his other clothes, and then went out in the field to
+work. He wouldn't tell mother anything about it. I never saw her so
+worked up. She's terribly afraid he's done something wrong."
+
+"He hasn't done anything wrong," returned Rose. "I think your mother
+is terrible hard on him. It's Uncle Cephas; he just picked the
+quarrel. He hasn't never more'n half liked Barney. So you think
+Barney will make up with Charlotte, and they'll get married, after
+all?"
+
+"Of course they will," Rebecca replied, promptly. "I guess they won't
+be such fools as not to for such a silly reason as that, when
+Barney's got his house 'most done, and Charlotte has got all her
+wedding-clothes ready."
+
+"Ain't Barney terrible set?"
+
+"He's set enough, but I guess you'll find he won't be this time."
+
+"Well, I'm sure I hope he won't be," Rose said, and she walked along
+silently, her face sober in the depths of her bonnet.
+
+They came to Richard Alger's house on the right-hand side of the
+road, and Rebecca looked reflectively at the white cottage with its
+steep peak of Gothic roof set upon a ploughed hill. "It's queer how
+he's been going with your aunt Sylvy all these years," she said.
+
+"Yes, 'tis," assented Rose, and she too glanced up at the house. As
+they looked, a man came around the corner with a basket. He was about
+to plant potatoes in his hilly yard.
+
+"There he is now," said Rose.
+
+They watched Richard Alger coming towards them, past a great tree
+whose new leaves were as red as flowers.
+
+"What do you suppose the reason is?" Rebecca said, in a low voice.
+
+"I don't know. I suppose he's got used to living this way."
+
+"I shouldn't think they'd be very happy," Rebecca said; and she
+blushed, and her voice had a shamefaced tone.
+
+"I don't suppose it makes so much difference when folks get older,"
+Rose returned.
+
+"Maybe it don't. Rose."
+
+"What is it?"
+
+"I wish you'd go into the store with me."
+
+Rose laughed. "What for?"
+
+"Nothing. Only I wish you would."
+
+"You afraid of William?" Rose peered around into Rebecca's bonnet.
+
+Rebecca blushed until tears came to her eyes. "I'd like to know what
+I'd be afraid of William Berry for," she replied.
+
+"Then what do you want me to go into the store with you for?"
+
+"Nothing."
+
+"You're a great ninny, Rebecca Thayer," Rose said, laughing, "but
+I'll go if you want me to. I know William won't like it. You run away
+from him the whole time. There isn't another girl in Pembroke treats
+him as badly as you do."
+
+"I don't treat him badly."
+
+"Yes, you do. And I don't believe but what you like him, Rebecca
+Thayer; you wouldn't act so silly if you didn't."
+
+Rebecca was silent. Rose peered around in her face again. "I was only
+joking. I think a sight more of you for not running after him, and so
+does William. You haven't any idea how some of the girls act chasing
+to the store. Mother and I have counted 'em some days, and then we
+plague William about it, but he won't own up they come to see him. He
+acts more ashamed of it than the girls do."
+
+"That's one thing I never would do--run after any fellow," said
+Rebecca.
+
+"I wouldn't either."
+
+Then the two girls had reached the tavern and the store. Rose's
+father, Silas Berry, had kept the tavern, but now it was closed,
+except to occasional special guests. He had gained a competency, and
+his wife Hannah had rebelled against further toil. Then, too, the
+railroad had been built through East Pembroke instead of Pembroke,
+the old stage line had become a thing of the past, and the tavern was
+scantily patronized. Still, Silas Berry had given it up with great
+reluctance; he cherished a grudge against his wife because she had
+insisted upon it, and would never admit that business policy had
+aught to do with it.
+
+The store adjoining the tavern, which he had owned for years, he
+still retained, but his son William had charge of it. Silas Berry was
+growing old, and the year before had had a slight shock of paralysis,
+which had made him halt and feeble, although his mind was as clear as
+ever. However, although he took no active part in the duties of the
+store, he was still there, and sharply watchful for his interests,
+the greater part of every day.
+
+The two girls went up the steps to the store piazza. Rose stepped
+forward and looked in the door. "Father's in there, and Tommy Ray,"
+she whispered. "You needn't be afraid to go in." But she entered as
+she spoke, and Rebecca followed her.
+
+There was one customer in the great country store, a stout old man,
+on the grocery side. His broad red face turned towards them a second,
+then squinted again at some packages on the counter. He was haggling
+for garden seeds. William Berry, who was waiting upon him, did not
+apparently look at his sister and Rebecca Thayer, but Rebecca had
+entered his heart as well as the store, and he saw her face deep in
+his own consciousness.
+
+Tommy Ray, the great white-headed boy who helped William in the
+store, shuffled along behind the counter indeterminately, but the
+girls did not seem to see him. Rose was talking fast to Rebecca. He
+lounged back against the shelves, stared out the door, and whistled.
+
+Out of the obscurity in the back of the store an old man's narrow
+bristling face peered, watchful as a cat, his body hunched up in a
+round-backed arm-chair.
+
+"Mr. Nims will go in a minute," Rose whispered, and presently the old
+farmer clamped past them out the door, counting his change from one
+hand to the other, his lips moving.
+
+William Berry replaced the seed packages which the customer had
+rejected on the shelves as the girls approached him.
+
+"Rebecca's got some eggs to sell," Rose announced.
+
+[Illustration: "'Rebecca's got some eggs to sell'"]
+
+William Berry's thin, wide-shouldered figure towered up behind the
+counter; he smiled, and the smile was only a deepening of the
+pleasant intensity of his beardless face, with its high pale forehead
+and smooth crest of fair hair. The lines in his face scarcely
+changed.
+
+"How d'ye do?" said he.
+
+"How d'ye do?" returned Rebecca, with fluttered dignity. Her face
+bloomed deeply pink in the green tunnel of her sun-bonnet, her black
+eyes were as soft and wary as a baby's, her full red lips had a
+grave, innocent expression.
+
+"How many dozen eggs have you got, Rebecca?" Rose inquired, peering
+into the basket.
+
+"Two; mother couldn't spare any more to-day," Rebecca replied, in a
+trembling voice.
+
+"How much sugar do you give for two dozen eggs, William?" asked Rose.
+
+William hesitated; he gave a scarcely perceptible glance towards the
+watchful old man, whose eyes seemed to gleam out of the gloom in the
+back of the store. "Well, about two pounds and a half," he replied,
+in a low voice.
+
+Rebecca set her basket of eggs on the counter.
+
+"How many pound did you tell her, William?" called the old man's
+hoarse voice.
+
+William compressed his lips. "About two and a half, father."
+
+"How many?"
+
+"Two and a half."
+
+"How many dozen of eggs?"
+
+"Two."
+
+"You ain't offerin' of her two pound of sugar for two dozen eggs?"
+
+"I said two pounds and a half of sugar, father," said William. He
+began counting the eggs.
+
+"Be you gone crazy?"
+
+"Never mind," whispered Rebecca. "That's too much sugar for the eggs.
+Mother didn't expect so much. Don't say any more about it, William."
+Her face was quite steady and self-possessed now, as she looked at
+William, frowning heavily over the eggs.
+
+"Give Rebecca two pounds of sugar for the eggs, father, and call it
+square," Rose called out.
+
+Silas Berry pulled himself up a joint at a time; then he came forward
+at a stiff halt, his face pointing out in advance of his body. He
+entered at the gap in the counter, and pressed close to his son's
+side. Then he looked sharply across at Rebecca. "Sugar is fourteen
+cents a pound now," said he, "an' eggs ain't fetchin' more'n ten
+cents a dozen. You tell your mother."
+
+"Father, I told her I'd giver her two and a half pounds for two
+dozen," said William; he was quite pale. He began counting the eggs
+over again, and his hands trembled.
+
+"I'll take just what you're willing to give," Rebecca said to Silas.
+
+"Sugar is fourteen cents a pound, an' eggs is fetchin' ten cents a
+dozen," said the old man; "you can have a pound and a half of sugar
+for them eggs if you can give me a cent to boot."
+
+Rebecca colored. "I'm afraid I haven't got a cent with me," said she;
+"I didn't fetch my purse. You'll have to give me a cent's worth less
+sugar, Mr. Berry."
+
+"It's kinder hard to calkilate so close as that," returned Silas,
+gravely; "you had better tell your mother about it, an' you come back
+with the cent by-an'-by."
+
+"Why, father!" cried Rose.
+
+William shouldered his father aside with a sudden motion. "I'm
+tending to this, father," he said, in a stern whisper; "you leave it
+alone."
+
+"I ain't goin' to stan' by an' see you givin' twice as much for eggs
+as they're worth 'cause it's a gal you're tradin' with. That wa'n't
+never my way of doin' business, an' I ain't goin' to have it done in
+my store. I shouldn't have laid up a cent if I'd managed any such
+ways, an' I ain't goin' to see my hard earnin's wasted by you. You
+give her a pound and a half of sugar for them eggs and a cent to
+boot."
+
+"You sha'n't lose anything by it, father," said William, fiercely.
+"You leave me alone."
+
+The sugar-barrel stood quite near. William strode over to it, and
+plunged in the great scoop with a grating noise. He heaped it
+recklessly on some paper, and laid it on the steelyards.
+
+"Don't give me more'n a pound and a half," Rebecca said, softly.
+
+"Keep still," Rose whispered in her ear.
+
+Silas pushed forward, and bent over the steelyards. "You've weighed
+out nigh three," he began. Then his son's face suddenly confronted
+his, and he stopped talking and stood back.
+
+Almost involuntarily at times Silas Berry yielded to the combination
+of mental and superior physical force in his son. While his own mind
+had lost nothing of its vigor, his bodily weakness made him
+distrustful of it sometimes, when his son towered over him in what
+seemed the might of his own lost strength and youth, brandishing his
+own old weapons.
+
+William tied up the sugar neatly; then he took the eggs from
+Rebecca's basket, and put the parcel in their place. Silas began
+lifting the eggs from the box in which William had put them, and
+counted them eagerly.
+
+"There ain't but twenty-three eggs here," he called out, as Rebecca
+and Rose turned away, and William was edging after them from behind
+the counter.
+
+"I thought there were two dozen," Rebecca responded, in a distressed
+voice.
+
+"Of course there are two dozen," said Rose, promptly. "You 'ain't
+counted 'em right, father. Go along, Rebecca; it's all right."
+
+"I tell ye it ain't," said Silas. "There ain't but twenty-three. It's
+bad enough to be payin' twice what they're wuth for eggs, without
+havin' of 'em come short."
+
+"I tell you I counted 'em twice over, and they're all right. You keep
+still, father," said William's voice at his ear, in a fierce whisper,
+and Silas subsided into sullen mutterings.
+
+William had meditated following Rebecca to the door; he had even
+meditated going farther; but now he stood back behind the counter,
+and began packing up some boxes with a busy air.
+
+"Ain't you going a piece with Rebecca, and carry her basket,
+William?" Rose called back, when the two girls reached the door.
+
+Rebecca clutched her arm. "Oh, don't," she gasped, and Rose giggled.
+
+"Ain't you, William?" she said again.
+
+Rebecca hurried out the door, but she heard William reply coldly that
+he couldn't, he was too busy. She was half crying when Rose caught up
+with her.
+
+"William wanted to go bad enough, but he was too upset by what father
+said. You mustn't mind father," Rose said, peering around into
+Rebecca's bonnet. "Why, Rebecca, what is the matter?"
+
+"I didn't go into that store a step to see William Berry. You know I
+didn't," Rebecca cried out, with sudden passion. Her voice was hoarse
+with tears; her face was all hot and quivering with shame and anger.
+
+"Why, of course you didn't," Rose returned, in a bewildered way. "Who
+said you did, Rebecca?"
+
+"You know I didn't. I hated to go to the store this morning. I told
+mother I didn't want to, but she didn't have a mite of sugar in the
+house, and there wasn't anybody else to send. Ephraim ain't very
+well, and Doctor Whiting says he ought not to walk very far. I had to
+come, but I didn't come to see William Berry, and nobody has any call
+to think I did."
+
+"I don't know who said you did. I don't know what you mean, Rebecca."
+
+"You acted as if you thought so. I don't want William Berry seeing me
+home in broad daylight, when I've been to the store to trade, and you
+needn't think that's what I came for, and he needn't."
+
+"Good land, Rebecca Thayer, he didn't, and I was just in fun. He'd
+have come with you, but he was so mad at what father said that he
+backed out. William's just about as easy upset as you are. I didn't
+mean any harm. Say, Rebecca, come into the house a little while,
+can't you? I don't believe your mother is in any great hurry for the
+sugar." Rose took hold of Rebecca's arm, but Rebecca jerked herself
+away with a sob, and went down the road almost on a run.
+
+"Well, I hope you're touchy enough, Rebecca Thayer," Rose called out,
+as she stood looking after her. "Folks will begin to think you did
+come to see William if you make such a fuss when nobody accuses you
+of it, if you don't look out."
+
+Rebecca hastened trembling down the road. She made no reply, but she
+knew that Rose was quite right, and that she had attacked her with
+futile reproaches in order to save herself from shame in her own
+eyes. Rebecca knew quite well that in spite of her hesitation and
+remonstrances, in spite of her maiden shrinking on the threshold of
+the store, she had come to see William Berry. She had been glad,
+although she had turned a hypocritical face towards her own
+consciousness, that Ephraim was not well enough and she was obliged
+to go. Her heart had leaped with joy when Rose had proposed William's
+walking home with her, but when he refused she was crushed with
+shame. "He thought I came to see him," she kept saying to herself as
+she hurried along, and there was no falsehood that she would not have
+sworn to to shield her modesty from such a thought on his part.
+
+When she got home and entered the kitchen, she kept her face turned
+away from her mother. "Here's the sugar," she said, and she took it
+out of the basket and placed it on the table.
+
+"How much did he give you?" asked Deborah Thayer; she was standing
+beside the window beating eggs. Over in the field she could catch a
+glimpse of Barnabas now and then between the trees as he passed with
+his plough.
+
+"About two pounds."
+
+"That was doin' pretty well."
+
+Rebecca said nothing. She turned to go out of the room.
+
+"Where are you going?" her mother asked, sharply. "Take off your
+bonnet. I want you to beat up the butter and sugar; this cake ought
+to be in the oven."
+
+Deborah's face, as she beat the eggs and made cake, looked as full of
+stern desperation as a soldier's on the battle-field. Deborah never
+yielded to any of the vicissitudes of life; she met them in fair
+fight like enemies, and vanquished them, not with trumpet and spear,
+but with daily duties. It was a village story how Deborah Thayer
+cleaned all the windows in the house one afternoon when her first
+child had died in the morning. To-day she was in a tumult of wrath
+and misery over her son; her mouth was so full of the gall of
+bitterness that no sweet on earth could overcome it; but she made
+sweet cake.
+
+Rebecca took off her sun-bonnet and hung it on a peg; she got a box
+from the pantry, and emptied the sugar into in, still keeping her
+face turned away as best she could from her mother's eyes.
+
+Deborah looked approvingly at the sugar. "It's nigher three pounds
+than anything else. I guess you were kind of favored, Rebecca. Did
+William wait on you?"
+
+"Yes, he did."
+
+"I guess you were kind of favored," Deborah repeated, and a
+half-smile came over her grim face.
+
+Rebecca said nothing. She got some butter, and fell to work with a
+wooden spoon, creaming the butter and sugar in a brown wooden bowl
+with swift turns of her strong white wrist. Ephraim watched her
+sharply; he sat by a window stoning raisins. His mother had forbidden
+him to eat any, as she thought them injurious to him; but he
+carefully calculated his chances, and deposited many in his mouth
+when she watched Barney; but his jaws were always gravely set when
+she turned his way.
+
+Ephraim's face had a curious bluish cast, as if his blood were the
+color of the juice of a grape. His chest heaved shortly and heavily.
+The village doctor had told is mother that he had heart-disease,
+which might prove fatal, although there was a chance of his
+outgrowing it, and Deborah had set her face against that.
+
+Ephraim's face, in spite of its sickly hue, had a perfect healthiness
+and naturalness of expression, which insensibly gave confidence to
+his friends, although it aroused their irritation. A spirit of boyish
+rebellion and importance looked out of Ephraim's black eyes; his
+mouth was demure with mischief, his gawky figure perpetually uneasy
+and twisting, as if to find entrance into small forbidden places.
+There was something in Ephraim's face, when she looked suddenly at
+him, which continually led his mother to infer that he had been
+transgressing. "What have you been doin', Ephraim?" she would call
+out, sharply, many a time, with no just grounds for suspicion, and be
+utterly routed by Ephraim's innocent, wondering grin in response.
+
+The boy was set about with restrictions which made his life
+miserable, but the labor of picking over plums for a cake was quite
+to his taste. He dearly loved plums, although they were especially
+prohibited. He rolled one quietly under his tongue, and watched
+Rebecca with sharp eyes. She could scarcely keep her face turned away
+from him and her mother too.
+
+"Say, mother, Rebecca's been cryin'!" Ephraim announced, suddenly.
+
+Deborah turned and looked at Rebecca's face bending lower over the
+wooden bowl; her black lashes rested on red circles, and her lips
+were swollen.
+
+"I'd like to know what you've been cryin' about," said Deborah. It
+was odd that she did not think that Rebecca's grief might be due to
+the worry over Barney; but she did not for a minute. She directly
+attributed it to some personal and strictly selfish consideration
+which should arouse her animosity.
+
+"Nothing," said Rebecca, with sulky misery.
+
+"Yes, you've been cryin' about something, too. I want to know what
+'tis."
+
+"Nothing. I wish you wouldn't, mother."
+
+"Did you see William Berry over to the store?"
+
+"I told you I did once."
+
+"Well, you needn't bite my head off. Did he say anything to you?"
+
+"He weighed out the sugar. I know one thing: I'll never set my foot
+inside that store again as long as I live!"
+
+"I'd like to know what you mean, Rebecca Thayer."
+
+"I ain't going to have folks think I'm running after William Berry."
+
+"I'd like to know who thinks you are. If it's Hannah Berry, she
+needn't talk, after the way her daughter has chased over here. Mebbe
+it's all you Rose Berry has been to see, but I've had my doubts. What
+did Hannah Berry say to you?"
+
+"She didn't say anything. I haven't seen her."
+
+"What was it, then?"
+
+But Rebecca would not tell her mother what the trouble had been; she
+could not bring herself to reveal how William had been urged to walk
+home with her and how coldly he had refused, and finally Deborah, in
+spite of baffled interest, turned upon her. "Well, I hope you didn't
+do anything unbecoming," said she.
+
+"Mother, you know better."
+
+"Well, I hope you didn't."
+
+"Mother, I won't stand being talked to so!"
+
+"I rather think I shall talk to you all I think I ought to for your
+own good," said Deborah, with fierce persistency. "I ain't goin' to
+have any daughter of mine doin' anything bold and forward, if I know
+it."
+
+Rebecca was weeping quite openly now. "Mother, you know you sent me
+down to the store yourself; there wasn't anybody else to go," she
+sobbed out.
+
+"Your goin' to the store wa'n't anything. I guess you can go to the
+store to trade off some eggs for sugar when I'm makin' cake without
+William Berry thinkin' you're runnin' after him, or Hannah Berry
+thinkin' so either. But there wa'n't any need of your makin' any
+special talk with him, or lookin' as if you was tickled to death to
+see him."
+
+"I didn't. I wouldn't go across the room to see William Berry. You
+haven't any right to say such things to me, mother."
+
+"I guess I've got a right to talk to my own daughter. I should think
+things had come to a pretty pass if I can't speak when I see you
+doin' out of the way. I know one thing, you won't go to that store
+again. I'll go myself next time. Have you got that butter an' sugar
+mixed up?"
+
+"I hope you will go, I'm sure. I don't want to," returned Rebecca.
+She had stopped crying, but her face was burning; she hit the spoon
+with dull thuds against the wooden bowl.
+
+"Don't you be saucy. That's done enough; give it here."
+
+Deborah finished the cake with a master hand. When she measured the
+raisins which Ephraim had stoned she cast a sharp glance at him, but
+he was ready for it with beseechingly upturned sickly face. "Can't I
+have just one raisin, mother?" he pleaded.
+
+"Yes, you may, if you 'ain't eat any while you was pickin' of 'em
+over," she answered. And he reached over a thumb and finger and
+selected a large fat plum, which he ate with ostentatious relish.
+Ephraim's stomach oppressed him, his breath came harder, but he had a
+sense of triumph in his soul. This depriving him of the little
+creature comforts which he loved, and of the natural enjoyments of
+boyhood, aroused in him a blind spirit of revolution which he felt
+virtuous in exercising. Ephraim was absolutely conscienceless with
+respect to all his stolen pleasures.
+
+Deborah had a cooking-stove. She had a progressive spirit, and when
+stoves were first introduced had promptly done away with the brick
+oven, except on occasions when much baking-room was needed. After her
+new stove was set up in her back kitchen, she often alluded to Hannah
+Berry's conservative principles with scorn. Hannah's sister, Mrs.
+Barnard, had told her how a stove could be set up in the tavern any
+minute; but Hannah despised new notions. "Hannah won't have one,
+nohow," said Mrs. Barnard. "I dunno but I would, if Cephas could
+afford it, and wa'n't set against it. It seems to me it might save a
+sight of work."
+
+"Some folks are rooted so deep in old notions that they can't see
+their own ideas over them," declared Deborah. Often when she cooked
+in her new stove she inveighed against Hannah Berry's foolishness.
+
+"If Hannah Berry wants to heat up a whole brick oven and work the
+whole forenoon to bake a loaf of cake, she can," said she, as she put
+the pan of cake in the oven. "Now, you watch this, Rebecca Thayer,
+and don't you let it burn, and you get the potatoes ready for
+dinner."
+
+"Where are you going, mother?" asked Ephraim.
+
+"I'm just goin' to step out a little way."
+
+"Can't I go too?"
+
+"No; you set still. You ain't fit to walk this mornin'. You know what
+the doctor told you."
+
+"It won't hurt me any," whined Ephraim. There were times when the
+spirit of rebellion in him made illness and even his final demise
+flash before his eyes like sweet overhanging fruit, since they were
+so strenuously forbidden.
+
+"You set still," repeated his mother. She tied on her own green
+sun-bonnet, stiffened with pasteboard, and went with it rattling
+against her ears across the fields to the one where her son was
+ploughing. The grass was not wet, but she held her dress up high,
+showing her thick shoes and her blue yarn stockings, and took long
+strides. Barney was guiding the plough past her when she came up.
+
+"You stop a minute," she said, authoritatively. "I want to speak to
+you."
+
+"Whoa!" said Barney, and pulled up the horse. "Well, what is it?" he
+said, gruffly, with his eyes upon the plough.
+
+"You go this minute and set the men to work on your house again. You
+leave the horse here--I'll watch him--and go and tell Sam Plummer to
+come and get the other men."
+
+"G'lang!" said Barney, and the horse pulled the plough forward with a
+jerk.
+
+Mrs. Thayer seized Barney's arm. "You stop!" said she. "Whoa, whoa!
+Now you look here, Barnabas Thayer. I don't know what you did to make
+Cephas Barnard order you out of the house, but I know it was
+something. I ain't goin' to believe it was all about the election.
+There was something back of that. I ain't goin' to shield you because
+you're my son. I know jest how set you can be in your own ways, and
+how you can hang on to your temper. I've known you ever since you was
+a baby; you can't teach me anything new about yourself. I don't know
+what you did to make Cephas mad, but I know what you've got to do
+now. You go and set the men to work on that house again, and then you
+go over to Cephas Barnard's, and you tell him you're sorry for what
+you've done. I don't care anything about Cephas Barnard, and if I'd
+had my way in the first place I wouldn't have had anything to do with
+him or his folks either; but now you've got to do what's right if
+you've gone as far as this, and Charlotte's all ready to be married.
+You go right along, Barnabas Thayer!"
+
+Barnabas stood immovable, his face set past his mother, as
+irresponsively unyielding as a rock.
+
+"Be you goin'?"
+
+Barnabas did not reply. His mother moved, and brought her eyes on a
+range with his, and the two faces confronted each other in silence,
+while it was as if two wills clashed swords in advance of them.
+
+Then Mrs. Thayer moved away. "I ain't never goin' to say anything
+more to you about it," she said; "but there's one thing--you needn't
+come home to dinner. You sha'n't ever sit down to a meal in your
+father's and mother's house whilst this goes on."
+
+"G'lang!" said Barnabas. The horse started, and he bent to the
+plough. His mother stepped homeward over the plough-ridges with stern
+unyielding steps, as if they were her enemies slain in battle.
+
+Just as she reached her own yard her husband drove in on a rattling
+farm cart. She beckoned to him, and he pulled the horse up short.
+
+"I've told him he needn't come home to dinner," she said, standing
+close to the wheel.
+
+Caleb looked down at her with a scared expression. "Well, I s'pose
+you know what's best, Deborah," he said.
+
+"If he can't do what's right he's got to suffer for it," returned
+Deborah.
+
+She went into the house, and Caleb drove clanking into the barn.
+
+Before dinner the old man stole off across lots, keeping well out of
+sight of the kitchen windows lest his wife should see him, and
+pleaded with Barnabas, but all in vain. The young man was more
+outspoken with his father, but he was just as firm.
+
+"Your mother's terrible set about it, Barney. You'd better go over to
+Charlotte's and make up."
+
+"I can't; it's all over," Barney said, in reply; and Caleb at length
+plodded soberly and clumsily home.
+
+After dinner he went out behind the barn, and Rebecca, going to feed
+the hens, found him sitting under the wild-cherry tree, fairly
+sobbing in his old red handkerchief.
+
+She went near him, and stood looking at him with restrained sympathy.
+
+"Don't feel bad, father," she said, finally. "Barney'll get over it,
+and come to supper."
+
+"No, he won't," groaned the old man--"no, he won't. He's jest like
+your mother."
+
+
+
+Chapter VI
+
+
+The weeks went on, and still Barnabas had not yielded. The story of
+his quarrel with Cephas Barnard and his broken engagement with
+Charlotte had become an old one in Pembroke, but it had not yet lost
+its interest. A genuine excitement was so rare in the little peaceful
+village that it had to be made to last, and rolled charily under the
+tongue like a sweet morsel. However, there seemed to be no lack now,
+for the one had set others in motion: everybody knew how Barnabas
+Thayer no longer lived at home, and did not sit in his father's pew
+in church, but in the gallery, and how Richard Alger had stopped
+going to see Sylvia Crane.
+
+There was not much walking in the village, except to and from church
+on a Sabbath day; but now on pleasant Sabbath evenings an occasional
+couple, or an inquisitive old man with eyes sharp under white brows,
+and chin set ahead like a pointer's, strolled past Sylvia's house and
+the Thayer house, Barney's new one and Cephas Barnard's.
+
+They looked sharply and furtively to see if Sylvia had a light in her
+best room, and if Richard Alger's head was visible through the
+window, if Barney Thayer had gone home and yielded to his mother's
+commands, if any more work had been done on the new house, and if he
+perchance had gone a-courting Charlotte again.
+
+But they never saw Richard Alger's face in poor Sylvia's best room,
+although her candle was always lit, they never saw Barney at his old
+home, the new house advanced not a step beyond its incompleteness,
+and Barney never was seen at Charlotte Barnard's on a Sabbath night.
+Once, indeed, there was a rumor to that effect. A man's smooth dark
+head was visible at one of the front-room windows opposite
+Charlotte's fair one, and everybody took it for Barney's.
+
+The next morning Barney's mother came to the door of the new house.
+"I want to know if it's true that you went over there last night,"
+she said; her voice was harsh, but her mouth was yielding.
+
+"No, I didn't," said Barney, shortly, and Deborah went away with a
+harsh exclamation. Before long she knew and everybody else knew that
+the man who had been seen at Charlotte's window was not Barney, but
+Thomas Payne.
+
+Presently Ephraim came slowly across to the garden-patch where Barney
+was planting. He was breathing heavily, and grinning. When he reached
+Barney he stood still watching him, and the grin deepened. "Say,
+Barney," he panted at length.
+
+"Well, what is it?"
+
+"You've lost your girl; did you know it, Barney?"
+
+Barney muttered something unintelligible; it sounded like the growl
+of a dog, but Ephraim was not intimidated. He chuckled with delight
+and spoke again. "Say, Barney, Thomas Payne's got your girl; did you
+know it, Barney?"
+
+Barney turned threateningly, but he was helpless before his brother's
+sickly face, and Ephraim knew it. That purple hue and that panting
+breath had gained an armistice for him on many a battle-field, and he
+had a certain triumph in it. It was power of a lugubrious sort,
+certainly, but still it was power, and so to be enjoyed.
+
+"Thomas Payne's got your girl," he repeated; "he was over there
+a-courtin' of her last night; a-settin' up along of her."
+
+Barney took a step forward, and Ephraim fell back a little, still
+grinning imperturbably. "You mind your own business," Barney said,
+between his teeth; and right upon his words followed Ephraim's hoarse
+chuckle and his "Thomas Payne's got your girl."
+
+Barney turned about and went on with his planting. Ephraim, standing
+a little aloof, somewhat warily since his brother's threatening
+advance, kept repeating his one remark, as mocking as the snarl of a
+mosquito. "Thomas Payne's got your girl, Barney. Say, did you know
+it? Thomas Payne's got your girl."
+
+Finally Ephraim stepped close to Barney and shouted it into his ear:
+"Say, Barney, Barney Thayer, be you deaf? Thomas Payne has
+got--your--_girl!"_ But Barney planted on; his nerves were quivering,
+the impetus to strike out was so strong in his arms that it seemed as
+if it must by sheer mental force affect his teasing brother, but he
+made no sign, and said not another word.
+
+Ephraim, worsted at length by silence, beat a gradual retreat.
+Half-way across the field his panting voice called back, "Barney,
+Thomas Payne has got your girl," and ended in a choking giggle.
+Barney planted, and made no response; but when Ephraim was well out
+of sight, he flung down his hoe with a groaning sigh, and went
+stumbling across the soft loam of the garden-patch into a little
+woody thicket beside it. He penetrated deeply between the trees and
+underbrush, and at last flung himself down on his face among the soft
+young flowers and weeds. "Oh, Charlotte!" he groaned out. "Oh,
+Charlotte, Charlotte!" Barney began sobbing and crying like a child
+as he lay there; he moved his arms convulsively, and tore up handfuls
+of young grass and leaves, and flung them away in the unconscious
+gesturing of grief. "Oh, I can't, I can't!" he groaned.
+"I--can't--Charlotte! I can't--let any other man have you! No other
+man shall have you!" he cried out, fiercely, and flung up his head;
+"you are mine, mine! I'll kill any other man that touches you!"
+Barney got up, and his face was flaming; he started off with a great
+stride, and then he stopped short and flung an arm around the slender
+trunk of a white-birch tree, and pulled it against him and leaned
+against it as if it were Charlotte, and laid his cheek on the cool
+white bark and sobbed again like a girl. "Oh, Charlotte, Charlotte!"
+he moaned, and his voice was drowned out by the manifold rustling of
+the young birch leaves, as a human grief is overborne and carried out
+of sight by the soft, resistless progress of nature.
+
+Barney, although his faith in Charlotte had been as strong as any
+man's should be in his promised wife, had now no doubt but this other
+man had met with favor in her eyes. But he had no blame for her, nor
+even any surprise at her want of constancy. He blamed the Lord, for
+Charlotte as well as for himself. "If this hadn't happened she never
+would have looked at any one else," he thought, and his thought had
+the force of a blow against fate.
+
+This Thomas Payne was the best match in the village; he was the
+squire's son, good-looking, and college-educated. Barney had always
+known that he fancied Charlotte, and had felt a certain triumph that
+he had won her in the face of it. "You might have somebody that's a
+good deal better off if you didn't have me," he said to her once, and
+they both knew whom he meant. "I don't want anybody else," Charlotte
+had replied, with her shy stateliness. Now Barney thought that she
+had changed her mind; and why should she not? A girl ought to marry
+if she could; he could not marry her himself, and should not expect
+her to remain single all her life for his sake. Of course Charlotte
+wanted to be married, like other women. This probable desire of
+Charlotte's for love and marriage in itself, apart from him, thrilled
+his male fancy with a certain holy awe and respect, from his love for
+her and utter ignorance of the attitude of womankind. Then, too, he
+reflected that Thomas Payne would probably make her a good husband.
+"He can buy her everything she wants," he thought, with a curious
+mixture of gratulation for her and agony on his own account. He
+thought of the little bonnets he had meant to buy for her himself,
+and these details pierced his heart like needles. He sobbed, and the
+birch-tree quivered in a wind of human grief. He saw Charlotte going
+to church in her bridal bonnet with Thomas Payne more plainly than he
+could ever see her in life, for a torturing imagination reflects life
+like a magnifying-glass, and makes it clearer and larger than
+reality. He saw Charlotte with Thomas Payne, blushing all over her
+proud, delicate face when he looked at her; he saw her with Thomas
+Payne's children. "O God!" he gasped, and he threw himself down on
+the ground again, and lay there, face downward, motionless as if fate
+had indeed seized him and shaken the life out of him and left him
+there for dead; but it was his own will which was his fate.
+
+"Barney," his father called, somewhere out in the field. "Barney,
+where be you?"
+
+"I'm coming," Barney called back, in a surly voice, and he pulled
+himself up and pushed his way out of the thicket to the ploughed
+field where his father stood.
+
+"Oh, there you be!" said Caleb. Barney grunted something
+inarticulate, and took up his hoe again. Caleb stood watching him,
+his eyes irresolute under anxiously frowning brows. "Barney," he
+said, at length.
+
+"Well, what do you want?"
+
+"I've jest heard--" the old man began; then he stopped with a jump.
+
+"I don't want to hear what you've heard. Keep it to yourself if
+you've heard anything!" Barney shouted.
+
+"I didn't know as you knew," Caleb stammered, apologetically. "I
+didn't know as you'd heard, Barney."
+
+Caleb went to the edge of the field, and sat down on a great stone
+under a wild-cherry tree. He was not feeling very well; his head was
+dizzy, and his wife had given him a bowl of thoroughwort and ordered
+him not to work.
+
+Caleb pushed his hat back and passed his hand across his forehead. It
+was hot, and his face was flushed. He watched his son following up
+his work with dogged energy as if it were an enemy, and his mind
+seemed to turn stupid in the face of speculation, like a boy's over a
+problem in arithmetic.
+
+There was no human being so strange and mysterious, such an unknown
+quantity, to Caleb Thayer as his own son. He had not one trait of
+character in common with him--at least, not one so translated into
+his own vernacular that he could comprehend it. It was to Caleb as if
+he looked in a glass expecting to see his own face, and saw therein
+the face of a stranger.
+
+The wind was quite cool, and blew full on Caleb as he sat there.
+Barney kept glancing at him. At length he spoke. "You'll get cold if
+you sit there in that wind, father," he sang out, and there was a
+rude kindliness in his tone.
+
+Caleb jumped up with alacrity. "I dunno but I shall. I guess you're
+right. I wa'n't goin' to set here but a minute," he answered,
+eagerly. Then he went over to Barney again, and stood near watching
+him. Barney's hoe clinked on a stone, and he stooped and picked it
+out of the loam, and threw it away. "There's a good many stone in
+this field," said the old man.
+
+"There's some."
+
+"It was a heap of work clearin' of it in the first place. You wa'n't
+more'n two year old when I cleared it. My brother Simeon helped me.
+It was five year before he got the fever an' died." Caleb looked at
+his son with anxious pleading which was out of proportion to his
+words, and seemed to apply to something behind them in his own mind.
+
+Barney worked on silently.
+
+"I don't believe but what--if you was--to go over there--you could
+get her back again now, away from that Payne fellar," Caleb blurted
+out, suddenly; then he shrank back as if from an anticipated blow.
+
+Barney threw a hoeful of earth high in air and faced his father.
+
+"Once for all, father," said he, "I don't want to hear another word
+about this."
+
+"I shouldn't have said nothin', Barney, but I kinder thought--"
+
+"I don't care what you thought. Keep your thoughts to yourself."
+
+"I know she allers thought a good deal of you, an'--"
+
+"I don't want another word out of your mouth about it, father."
+
+"Well, I ain't goin' to say nothin' about it if you don't want me to,
+Barney; but you know how mother feels, an'-- Well, I ain't goin' to
+say no more."
+
+Caleb passed his hand across his forehead, and set off across the
+field. Just before he was out of hearing, Barney hailed him.
+
+"Do you feel better'n you did, father?" said he.
+
+"What say, Barney?"
+
+"Do you feel better'n you did this morning?"
+
+"Yes, I feel some better, Barney--some considerable better." Caleb
+started to go back to Barney; then he paused and stood irresolute,
+smiling towards him. "I feel considerable better," he called again;
+"my head ain't nigh so dizzy as 'twas."
+
+"You'd better go home, father, and lay down, and see if you can't get
+a nap," called Barney.
+
+"Yes, I guess I will; I guess 'twould be a good plan," returned the
+old man, in a pleased voice. And he went on, clambered clumsily over
+a stone-wall, disappeared behind some trees, reappeared in the open,
+then disappeared finally over the slope of the hilly field.
+
+It was just five o'clock in the afternoon. Presently a woman came
+hurrying across the field, with some needle-work gathered up in her
+arms. She had been spending the afternoon at a neighbor's with her
+sewing, and was now hastening home to get supper for her husband. She
+was a pretty woman, and she had not been married long. She nodded to
+Barney as she hurried past him, holding up her gay-flowered calico
+skirt tidily. Her smooth fair hair shone like satin in the sun; she
+wore a little blue kerchief tied over her head, and it slipped back
+as she ran against the wind. She did not speak to Barney nor smile;
+he thought her handsome face looked severely at him. She had always
+known him, although she had not been one of his mates; she was
+somewhat older.
+
+Barney felt a pang of misery as this fair, severe, and happy face
+passed him by. He wondered if she had been up to Charlotte's, and if
+Charlotte or her mother had been talking to her, and if she knew
+about Thomas Payne. He watched her out of sight in a swirl of gay
+skirts, her blue and golden head bobbing with her dancing steps; then
+he glanced over his shoulder at his poor new house, with its fireless
+chimneys. If all had gone well, he and Charlotte would have been
+married by this time, and she would have been bestirring herself to
+get supper for him--perhaps running home from a neighbor's with her
+sewing as this other woman was doing. All the sweet domestic comfort
+which he had missed seemed suddenly to toss above his eyes like the
+one desired fruit of his whole life; its wonderful unknown flavor
+tantalized his soul. All at once he thought how Charlotte would
+prepare supper for another man, and the thought seemed to tear his
+heart like a panther. "He sha'n't have her!" he cried out, quite
+loudly and fiercely. His own voice seemed to quiet him, and he fell
+to work again with his mouth set hard.
+
+In half an hour he quitted work, and went up to his house with his
+hoe over his shoulder like a bayonet. The house was just as the
+workmen had left it on the night before his quarrel with Cephas
+Barnard. He had himself fitted some glass into the windows of the
+kitchen and bedroom, and boarded up the others--that was all. He had
+purchased a few simple bits of furniture, and set up his miserable
+bachelor house-keeping. Barney was no cook, and he could purchase no
+cooked food in Pembroke. He had subsisted mostly upon milk and eggs
+and a poor and lumpy quality of corn-meal mush, which he had made
+shift to stir up after many futile efforts.
+
+The first thing which he saw on entering the room to-night was a
+generous square of light Indian cake on the table. It was not in a
+plate, the edges were bent and crumbling, and the whole square looked
+somewhat flattened. Barney knew at once that his father had saved it
+from his own supper, had slipped it slyly into his pocket, and stolen
+across the field with it. His mother had not given him a mouthful
+since she had forbidden him to come home to dinner, and his sister
+had not dared.
+
+Barney sat down and ate the Indian cake, a solitary householder at
+his solitary table, around which there would never be any faces but
+those of his dead dreams. Afterwards he pulled a chair up to an open
+window, and sat there, resting his elbows on the sill, staring out
+vacantly. The sun set, and the dusk deepened; the air was loud with
+birds; there were shouts of children in the distance; gradually these
+died away, and the stars came out. The wind was damp and sweet; over
+in the field pale shapes of mist wavered and changed like phantoms. A
+woman came running noiselessly into the yard, and pressed against the
+door panting, and knocked. Barney saw the swirl of light skirts
+around the corner; then the knock came.
+
+[Illustration: "Barney sat staring at vacancy"]
+
+He got up, trembling, and opened the door, and stood there looking at
+the woman, who held her hooded head down.
+
+"It's me, Barney," said Charlotte's voice.
+
+"Come in," said Barney, and he moved aside.
+
+But Charlotte stood still. "I can say what I want to here," she
+whispered, panting. "Barney."
+
+"Well, what is it, Charlotte?"
+
+"Barney."
+
+Barney waited.
+
+"I've come over here to-night, Barney, to see you," said Charlotte,
+with solemn pauses between her words. "I don't know as I ought to; I
+don't know but I ought to have more pride. I thought at first I
+never--could--but afterwards I thought it was my duty. Barney, are
+you going to let--anything like this--come between us--forever?"
+
+"There's no use talking, Charlotte."
+
+Charlotte's hooded figure stood before him stiff and straight. There
+was resolution in her carriage, and her pleading tone was grave and
+solemn.
+
+"Barney," she said again; and Barney waited, his pale face standing
+aloof in the dark.
+
+"Barney, do you think it is right to let anything like this come
+between you and me, when we were almost husband and wife?"
+
+"It's no use talking, Charlotte."
+
+"Do you think this is right, Barney?"
+
+Barney was silent.
+
+"If you can't answer me I will go home," said Charlotte, and she
+turned, but Barney caught her in his arms. He held her close,
+breathing in great pants. He pulled her hood back with trembling
+strength, and kissed her over and over, roughly.
+
+"Charlotte," he half sobbed.
+
+Charlotte's voice, full of a great womanly indignation, sounded in
+his ear. "Barney, you let me go," she said, and Barney obeyed.
+
+"When I came here alone this way I trusted you to treat me like a
+gentleman," said she. She pulled her hood over her face again and
+turned to go. "I shall never speak to you about this again," said
+she. "You have chosen your own way, and you know best whether it's
+right, or you're happy in it."
+
+"I hope you'll be happy, Charlotte," Barney said, with a great sigh.
+
+"That doesn't make any difference to you," said Charlotte, coldly.
+
+"Yes, it does; it does, Charlotte! When I heard about Thomas Payne, I
+felt as if--if it would make you happy. I--"
+
+"What about Thomas Payne?" asked Charlotte, sharply.
+
+"I heard--how he was coming to see you--"
+
+"Do you mean that you want me to marry Thomas Payne, Barney Thayer?"
+
+"I want you to be happy, Charlotte."
+
+"Do you want me to marry Thomas Payne?"
+
+Barney was silent.
+
+"Answer me," cried Charlotte.
+
+"Yes, I do," replied Barney, firmly, "if it would make you happy."
+
+"You want me to marry Thomas Payne?" repeated Charlotte. "You want me
+to be his wife instead of yours, and go to live with him instead of
+you? You want me to live with another man?"
+
+"It ain't right for you not to get married," Barney said, and his
+voice was hoarse and strange.
+
+"You want me to get married to another man? Do you know what it
+means?"
+
+Barney gave a groan that was half a cry.
+
+"Do you?"
+
+"Oh, Charlotte!" Barney groaned, as if imploring her for pity.
+
+"You want me to marry Thomas Payne, and live with him--"
+
+"He'd--make you a good husband. He's--Charlotte--I can't. You've got
+to be happy. It isn't right--I can't--"
+
+"Well," said Charlotte, "I will marry him. Good-night, Barney
+Thayer." She went swiftly out of the yard.
+
+"Charlotte!" Barney called after her, as if against his will; but she
+never turned her head.
+
+
+
+Chapter VII
+
+
+On the north side of the old tavern was a great cherry orchard. In
+years back it had been a source of considerable revenue to Silas
+Berry, but for some seasons his returns from it had been very small.
+The cherries had rotted on the branches, or the robins had eaten
+them, for Silas would not give them away. Rose and her mother would
+smuggle a few small baskets of cherries to Sylvia Crane and Mrs.
+Barnard, but Silas's displeasure, had he found them out, would have
+been great. "I ain't a-goin' to give them cherries away to nobody,"
+he would proclaim. "If folks don't want 'em enough to pay for 'em
+they can go without."
+
+Many a great cherry picnic had been held in Silas Berry's orchard.
+Parties had come in great rattling wagons from all the towns about,
+and picked cherries and ate their fill at a most overreaching and
+exorbitant price.
+
+There were no cherries like those in Silas Berry's orchard in all the
+country roundabout. There was no competition, and for many years he
+had had it all his own way. The young people's appetite for cherries
+and their zeal for pleasure had overcome their indignation at his
+usury. But at last Silas's greed got the better of his financial
+shrewdness; he increased his price for cherries every season, and the
+year after the tavern closed it became so preposterous that there was
+a rebellion. It was headed by Thomas Payne, who, as the squire's son
+and the richest and most freehanded young man in town, could incur no
+suspicion of parsimony. Going one night to the old tavern to make
+terms with Silas for the use of his cherry orchard, for a party which
+included some of his college friends from Boston and his fine
+young-lady cousin from New York, and hearing the preposterous sum
+which Silas stated as final, he had turned on his heel with a strong
+word under his breath. "You can eat your cherries yourself and be
+damned," said Thomas Payne, and was out of the yard with the gay
+swagger which he had learned along with his Greek and Latin at
+college. The next day Silas saw the party in Squire Payne's big
+wagon, with Thomas driving, and the cousin's pink cheeks and white
+plumed hat conspicuous in the midst, pass merrily on their way to a
+cherryless picnic at a neighboring pond, and the young college men
+shouted out a doggerel couplet which the wit of the party had made
+and set to a rough tune.
+
+"Who lives here?" the basses demanded in grim melody, and the tenors
+responded, "Old Silas Berry, who charges sixpence for a cherry."
+
+Silas heard the mocking refrain repeated over and over between shouts
+of laughter long after they were out of sight.
+
+Rose, who had not been bidden to the picnic, heard it and wept as she
+peered around her curtain at the gay party. William, who had also not
+been bidden, stormed at his father, and his mother joined him.
+
+"You're jest a-puttin' your own eyes out, Silas Berry," said she;
+"you hadn't no business to ask such a price for them cherries; it's
+more than they are worth; folks won't stand it. You asked too much
+for 'em last year."
+
+"I know what I'm about," returned Silas, sitting in his arm-chair at
+the window, with dogged chin on his breast.
+
+"You wait an' see," said Hannah. "You've jest put your own eyes out."
+
+And after-events proved that Hannah was right. Silas Berry's cherry
+orchard was subjected to a species of ostracism in the village. There
+were no more picnics held there, people would buy none of his
+cherries, and he lost all the little income which he had derived from
+them. Hannah often twitted him with it. "You can see now that what I
+told you was true," said she; "you put your own eyes out." Silas
+would say nothing in reply; he would simply make an animal sound of
+defiance like a grunt in his throat, and frown. If Hannah kept on, he
+would stump heavily out of the room, and swing the door back with a
+bang.
+
+This season Hannah had taunted her husband more than usual with his
+ill-judged parsimony in the matter of the cherries. The trees were
+quite loaded with the small green fruit, and there promised to be a
+very large crop. One day Silas turned on her. "You wait," said he;
+"mebbe I know what I'm about, more'n you think I do."
+
+Hannah scowled with sharp interrogation at her husband's shrewdly
+leering face. "What be you agoin' to do?" she demanded. But she got
+no more out of him.
+
+One morning about two weeks before the cherries were ripe Silas went
+halting in a casual way across the south yard towards his daughter
+Rose, who was spreading out some linen to bleach. He picked up a few
+stray sticks on the way, ostentatiously, as if that were his errand.
+
+Rose was spreading out the lengths of linen in a wide sunny space
+just outside the shade of the cherry-trees. Her father paused, tilted
+his head back, and eyed the trees with a look of innocent reflection.
+Rose glanced at him, then she went on with her work.
+
+"Guess there's goin' to be considerable many cherries this year,"
+remarked her father, in an affable and confidential tone.
+
+"I guess so," replied Rose, shortly, and she flapped out an end of
+the wet linen. The cherries were a sore subject with her.
+
+"I guess there's goin' to be more than common," said Silas, still
+gazing up at the green boughs full of green fruit clusters.
+
+Rose made no reply; she was down on her knees in the grass stretching
+the linen straight.
+
+"I've been thinkin'," her father continued, slowly, "that--mebbe
+you'd like to have a little--party, an' ask some of the young folks,
+an' eat some of 'em when they get ripe. You could have four trees to
+pick off of."
+
+"I should think we'd had enough of cherry parties," Rose cried out,
+bitterly.
+
+"I didn't say nothin' about havin' 'em pay anything," said her
+father.
+
+Rose straightened herself and looked at him incredulously. "Do you
+mean it, father?" said she.
+
+"'Ain't I jest said you might, if you wanted to?"
+
+"Do you mean to have them come here and not pay, father?"
+
+"There ain't no use tryin' to sell any of 'em," replied Silas. "You
+can talk it over with your mother, an' do jest as you're a mind to
+about it, that's all. If you want to have a few of the young folks
+over here when them cherries are ripe, you can have four of them
+trees to pick off of. I ain't got no more to say about it."
+
+Silas turned in a peremptory and conclusive manner. Rose fairly
+gasped as she watched his stiff one-sided progress across the yard.
+The vague horror of the unusual stole over her. A new phase of her
+father's character stood between her and all her old memories like a
+supernatural presence. She left the rest of the linen in the basket
+and sought her mother in the house. "Mother!" she called out, in a
+cautious voice, as soon as she entered the kitchen. Mrs. Berry's face
+looked inquiringly out of the pantry, and Rose motioned her back,
+went in herself, and shut the door.
+
+"What be you a-shuttin' the door for?" asked her mother, wonderingly.
+
+"I don't know what has come over father."
+
+"What do you mean, Rose Berry? He 'ain't had another shock?"
+
+"I'm dreadful afraid he's going to! I'm dreadful afraid something's
+going to happen to him!"
+
+"I'd like to know what you mean?" Mrs. Berry was quite pale.
+
+"Father says I can have a cherry party, and they needn't pay
+anything."
+
+Her mother stared at her. "He didn't!"
+
+"Yes, he did."
+
+They looked in each other's eyes, with silent renewals of doubt and
+affirmation. Finally Mrs. Berry laughed. "H'm! Don't you see what
+your father's up to?" she said.
+
+"No, I don't. I'm scared."
+
+"You needn't be. You ain't very cute. He's an old head. He thinks if
+he has this cherry party for nothin' folks will overlook that other
+affair, an' next year they'll buy the cherries again. Mebbe he thinks
+they'll buy the other trees this year, after the party. How many
+trees did he say you could have?"
+
+"Four. Maybe that is it."
+
+"Of course 'tis. Your father's an old head. Well, you'd better ask
+'em. They won't see through it, and it'll make things pleasanter.
+I've felt bad enough about it. I guess Mis' Thayer won't look down on
+us quite so much if we ask a party here and let 'em eat cherries for
+nothin'. It's more'n she'd do, I'll warrant."
+
+"Maybe they won't any of them come," said Rose.
+
+"H'm! Don't you worry about that. They'll come fast enough. I never
+see any trouble yet about folks comin' to get anything good that they
+didn't have to pay for."
+
+Rose and her mother calculated how many to invite to the party. They
+decided to include all the available young people in Pembroke.
+
+"We might jest as well while we're about it," said Hannah,
+judiciously. "There are cherries enough, and the Lord only knows when
+your father 'll have another freak like this. I guess it's like an
+eclipse of the sun, an' won't come again very soon."
+
+Within a day or two all the young people had been bidden to the
+cherry party, and, as Mrs. Berry had foretold, accepted. Their
+indignation was not proof against the prospect of pleasure; and,
+moreover, they all liked Rose and William, and would not have refused
+on their account.
+
+The week before the party, when the cherries were beginning to turn
+red, and the robins had found them out, was an arduous one to little
+Ezra Ray, a young brother of Tommy Ray, who tended in Silas Berry's
+store. He was hired for twopence to sit all day in the cherry orchard
+and ring a cow-bell whenever the robins made excursions into the
+trees. From earliest dawn when the birds were first astir, until they
+sought their little nests, did Ezra sit uncomfortably upon a hard
+peaked rock in the midst of the orchard and jingle his bell.
+
+He was white-headed, and large of his age like his brother. His pale
+blue eyes were gravely vacant under his thick white thatch; his chin
+dropped; his mouth gaped with stolid patience. There was no
+mitigation for his dull task; he was not allowed to keep his vigil on
+a comfortable branch of a tree with the mossy trunk for a support to
+his back, lest he might be tempted to eat of the cherries, and turn
+pal of the robins instead of enemy. He dared not pull down any low
+bough and have a surreptitious feast, for he understood well that
+there were likely to be sharp eyes at the rear windows of the house,
+that it was always probable that old Silas Berry, of whom he was in
+mortal fear, might be standing at his back, and, moreover, he should
+be questioned, and had not falsehood for refuge, for he was a good
+child, and would be constrained to speak the truth.
+
+They would not let him have a gun instead of a bell, although he
+pleaded hard. Could he have sat there presenting a gun like a sentry
+on duty, the week, in spite of discomfort and deprivations, would
+have been full of glory and excitement. As it was, the dulness and
+monotony of the jingling of the cow-bell made even his stupid
+childish mind dismal. All the pleasant exhilaration of youth seemed
+to have deserted the boy, and life to him became as inane and bovine
+as to the original ringer of that bell grazing all the season in her
+own shadow over the same pasture-ground.
+
+And more than all, that twopence for which Ezra toiled so miserably
+was to go towards the weaving of a rag carpet which his mother was
+making, and for which she was saving every penny. He could not lay it
+out in red-and-white sugar-sticks at the store. He sat there all the
+week, and every time there was a whir of little brown wings and the
+darting flash of a red breast among the cherry branches he rang in
+frantic haste the old cow-bell. All the solace he obtained was an
+occasional robin-pecked cherry which he found in the grass, and then
+Mr. Berry questioned him severely when he saw stains around his mouth
+and on his fingers.
+
+He was on hand early in the morning on the day of the cherry picnic,
+trudging half awake, with the taste of breakfast in his mouth,
+through the acres of white dewy grass. He sat on his rock until the
+grass was dry, and patiently jingled his cow-bell. It was to young
+Ezra Ray, although all unwittingly, as if he himself were assisting
+in the operations of nature. He watched so assiduously that it was as
+if he dried the dewy grass and ripened the cherries.
+
+When the cherry party began to arrive he still sat on his rock and
+jingled his bell; he did not know when to stop. But his eyes were
+upon the assembling people rather than upon the robins. He watched
+the brave young men whose ignominy of boyhood was past, bearing
+ladders and tossing up shining tin pails as they came. He watched the
+girls swinging their little straw baskets daintily; his stupidly
+wondering eyes followed especially Rebecca Thayer. Rebecca, in her
+black muslin, with her sweet throat fairly dazzling above the
+half-low bodice, and wound about twice with a slender gold chain,
+with her black silk apron embroidered with red roses, and beautiful
+face glowing with rich color between the black folds of her hair,
+held the instinctive attention of the boy. He stared at her as she
+stood talking to another girl with her back quite turned upon all the
+young men, until his own sister touched him upon the shoulder with a
+sharp nudge of a bony little hand.
+
+Amelia Ray's face, blonde like her brother's, but sharp with the
+sharpness of the thin and dark, was thrust into his. "You must go
+right home now," declared her high voice. "Mother said so."
+
+"I'm going to stay and help pick 'em," said Ezra, in a voice which
+was not affirmative.
+
+"No, you ain't."
+
+"I can climb trees."
+
+"You've got to go right straight home. Mother wants you to wind balls
+for the rag carpet."
+
+And then Ezra Ray, with disconsolate gaping face over his shoulder,
+retreated with awkward lopes across the field, the cow-bell
+accompanying his steps with doleful notes.
+
+There were about forty young people at the party when all were
+assembled. They came mostly in couples, although now and then a
+little group of girls advanced across the field, and young men came
+singly. Barnabas Thayer came alone, and rather late; Rebecca had come
+some time before with one of her girl mates who had stopped for her.
+Barnabas, slender and handsome in his best suit, advancing with a
+stern and almost martial air, tried not to see Charlotte Barnard; but
+it was as if her face were the natural focus for his eyes, which they
+could not escape. However, Charlotte was not talking to Thomas Payne;
+he was not even very near her. He was already in the top of a
+cherry-tree picking busily. Barney saw his trim dark head and his
+bright blue waistcoat among the branches, and his heart gave a guilty
+throb of relief. But soon he noted that Charlotte had not her basket,
+and the conviction seized him that Thomas had it and was filling it
+with the very choicest cherries from the topmost branches, as was
+indeed the case.
+
+Charlotte never looked at Barney, although she knew well when he
+came. She stood smiling beside another girl, her smooth fair hair
+gleaming in the sun, her neck showing pink through her embroidered
+lace kerchief, and her gleaming head and her neck seemed to survey
+Barney as consciously as her face. Suddenly the fierceness of the
+instinct of possession seized him; he said to himself that it was his
+wife's neck; no one else should see it. He felt like tearing off his
+own coat and covering her with rude force. It made no difference to
+him that nearly every other girl there, his sister among the rest,
+wore her neck uncovered by even a kerchief; he felt that Charlotte
+should not have done so. The other young men were swarming up the
+trees with the girls' baskets, but he stood aloof with his forehead
+knitted; it was as if all his reason had deserted him. All at once
+there was a rustle at his side, and Rose Berry touched him on the
+arm; he started, and looked down into her softly glowing little face.
+
+[Illustration: "Charlotte stood beside another girl"]
+
+"Oh, here you are!" said she, and her voice had adoring cadences.
+
+Barney nodded.
+
+"I was afraid you weren't coming," said she, and she panted softly
+through her red parted lips.
+
+Rose's crisp pink muslin gown flared scalloping around her like the
+pink petals of a hollyhock; her slender white arms showed through the
+thin sleeves. Barney could not look away from her wide-open,
+unfaltering blue eyes, which suddenly displayed to him strange
+depths. Charlotte, during all his courtship, had never looked up in
+his face like that. He could not himself have told why; but Charlotte
+had never for one moment lost sight of the individual, and the
+respect due him, in her lover. Rose, in the heart of New England,
+bred after the precepts of orthodoxy, was a pagan, and she worshipped
+Love himself. Barney was simply the statue that represented the
+divinity; another might have done as well had the sculpture been as
+fine.
+
+"I told you I was coming," Barney said, slowly, and his voice sounded
+odd to himself.
+
+"I know you did, but I was afraid you wouldn't."
+
+Rose still held her basket. Barney reached out for it. "Let me get
+some cherries for you," he said.
+
+"Oh, I guess you hadn't better," Rose returned, holding the basket
+firmly.
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"I'm--afraid Charlotte won't like it," Rose said. Her face, upturned
+to Barney, was full of pitiful seriousness, like a child's.
+
+"Give me the basket," demanded Barney, and she yielded. She stood
+watching him as he climbed the nearest tree; then she turned and met
+Charlotte's stern eyes full upon her. Rose went under the tree
+herself, pulled down a low branch, and began to eat; several other
+girls were doing the same. Thomas Payne passed the tree, bearing
+carefully Charlotte's little basket heaped with the finest cherries.
+Rose tossed her head defiantly. "She needn't say anything," she
+thought.
+
+The morning advanced, the sun stood high, and there was a light wind,
+which now and then caused the cherry-leaves to smite the faces of the
+pickers. There were no robins in the trees that morning; there were
+only swift whirs of little wings in the distance, and sweet flurried
+calls which were scarcely noted in the merry clamor of the young men
+and girls.
+
+Silas Berry stood a little aloof, leaning on a stout cane, looking on
+with an inscrutable expression on his dry old face. He noted
+everything; he saw Rose talking to Barney; he saw his son William
+eating cherries with Rebecca Thayer out of one basket; but his
+expression never changed. The predominant trait in his whole
+character had seemed to mould his face to itself unchangeably, as the
+face of a hunting-dog is moulded to his speed and watchfulness.
+
+"Don't Mr. Berry look just like an old miser?" a girl whispered to
+Rebecca Thayer; then she started and blushed confusedly, for she
+remembered suddenly that William Berry was said to be waiting upon
+Rebecca, and she also remembered that Charlotte Barnard, who was
+within hearing distance, was his niece.
+
+Rebecca blushed, too. "I never thought of it," she said, in a
+constrained voice.
+
+"Well, I don't know as he does," apologized the girl. "I suppose I
+thought of it because he's thin. I always had an idea that a miser
+was thin." Then she slipped away, and presently whispered to another
+girl what a mistaken speech she had made, and they put their heads
+together with soft, averted giggles.
+
+The girls had brought packages of luncheon in their baskets, which
+they had removed to make space for the cherries, and left with Mrs.
+Berry in the tavern. At noon they sent the young men for them, and
+prepared to have dinner at a little distance from the trees where
+they had been picking, where the ground was clean. William and Rose
+also went up to the tavern, and Rose beckoned to Barney as she passed
+him. "Don't you want to come?" she whispered, as he followed
+hesitatingly; "there's something to carry."
+
+When the party returned, Mrs. Berry was with them, and she and Rose
+bore between them a small tub of freshly-fried hot doughnuts. Mrs.
+Berry had utterly refused to trust it to the young men. "I know
+better than to let you have it," she said, laughing. "You'd eat all
+the way there, and there wouldn't be enough left to go round. Me and
+Rose will carry it; it ain't very heavy." William and Barney each
+bore two great jugs of molasses-and-water spiced with ginger.
+
+Silas pulled himself up stiffly when he saw them coming; he had been
+sitting upon the peaked rock whereon Ezra Ray had kept vigil with the
+cow-bell. Full of anxiety had he been all day lest they should pick
+from any except the four trees which he had set apart for them, and
+his anxiety was greater since he knew that the best cherries were not
+on those four trees. Silas sidled painfully towards his wife and
+daughter; he peered over into the tub, but they swung it
+remorselessly past him, even knocking his shin with its iron-bound
+side.
+
+"What you got there?" he demanded, huskily.
+
+"Don't you say one word," returned his wife, with a fierce shake of
+her head at him.
+
+"What's in them jugs?"
+
+"It's nothing but sweetened water. Don't, father," pleaded Rose under
+her breath, her pretty face flaming.
+
+Her mother scowled indomitably at Silas tagging threateningly at her
+elbow. "Don't you say one word," she whispered again.
+
+"You ain't goin' to--give 'em--"
+
+"Don't you speak," she returned, hissing out the "s."
+
+Silas said no more. He followed on, and watched the doughnuts being
+distributed to the merry party seated in a great ring like a very
+garland of youth under his trees; he saw them drink his sweetened
+water.
+
+"Don't you want some?" asked his wife's defiantly pleasant voice in
+his ear.
+
+"No, I don't want none," he returned.
+
+Finally, long before they had finished eating, he went home to the
+tavern. There was no one in the house. He stole cautiously into the
+pantry, and there was a reserve of doughnuts in a large milk-pan
+sitting before the window. Silas crooked his old arm around the pan,
+carried it painfully across the great kitchen and the entry into the
+best room, and pushed it far under the bureau. Then he returned, and
+concealed the molasses-jug in the brick oven. He stood for a minute
+in the middle of the kitchen floor, chuckling and nodding as if to
+the familiar and confidential spirit of his own greed; then he went
+out, and a short way down the road to the cottage house where old
+Hiram Baxter lived and kept a little shoemaker's shop in the L. He
+entered, and sat down in the little leather-reeking place with Hiram,
+and was safe and removed from inquiry when Mrs. Berry returned to the
+tavern for the remaining doughnuts and to mix more sweetened water.
+The doughnuts could not be found, but she carried a pail across to
+the store, got more molasses from the barrel, and so in one point
+outwitted her husband.
+
+Mrs. Berry was famous for her rich doughnuts, and the first supply
+had been quite exhausted. William went up to her at once when she
+returned to the party. "Where's the rest of the doughnuts?" he
+whispered.
+
+"Your father's hid 'em," she whispered back. "Hush, don't say
+anything."
+
+William scowled and made an exclamation. "The old--"
+
+"Hush!" whispered his mother again; "go up to the house and get the
+sweetened water. I've mixed another jug."
+
+"Where is he?" demanded William.
+
+"I dunno. He ain't to the store."
+
+William strode off across the field, and he searched through the
+house with an angry stamping and banging of doors, but he could not
+find his father or the doughnuts. "Father!" he called, in an angry
+shout, standing in the doorway, "Father!" But there was no reply, and
+he went back to the others with the jug of sweetened water. Rebecca
+watched him with furtive, anxious eyes, but he avoided looking at
+her. When he passed her a tumbler of sweetened water she took it and
+thanked him fervently, but he did not seem to heed her at all.
+
+After dinner they played romping games under the trees--hunt the
+slipper, and button, and Copenhagen. Mrs. Barnard and two other women
+had come over to see the festivity, and they sat at a little distance
+with Mrs. Berry, awkwardly disposed against the trunks of trees, with
+their feet tucked under their skirts to keep them from the damp
+ground.
+
+Copenhagen was the favorite game of the young people, and they played
+on and on while the afternoon deepened. Clinging to the rope they
+formed a struggling ring, looping this way and that way as the
+pursuers neared them. Their laughter and gay cries formed charming
+discords; their radiant faces had the likeness of one family of
+flowers, through their one expression. The wind blew harder; the
+girls' muslin skirts clung to their limbs as they moved against it,
+and flew out around their heels in fluttering ruffles. The cherry
+boughs tossed over their heads full of crisp whispers among their
+dark leaves and red fruit clusters. Over across the field, under the
+low-swaying boughs, showed the old red wall of the tavern, and
+against it a great mass of blooming phlox, all vague with distance
+like purple smoke. Over on the left, fence rails glistened purple in
+the sun and wind--a bluebird sat on a crumbling post and sang. But
+the young men and girls playing Copenhagen saw and heard nothing of
+these things.
+
+They heard only that one note of love which all unwittingly, and
+whether they would or not, they sang to each other through all the
+merry game. Charlotte heard it whether she would or not, and so did
+Barney, and it produced in them as in the others a reckless
+exhilaration in spite of their sadness. William Berry forgot all his
+mortification and annoyance as he caught Rebecca's warm fingers on
+the rope and bent over her red, averted cheek. Barney, when he had
+grasped Rose's hands, which had fairly swung the rope his way, kissed
+her with an ardor which had in it a curious, fierce joy, because at
+that moment he caught a glimpse of Thomas Payne's handsome, audacious
+face meeting Charlotte's.
+
+Barney had not wished to play, but he played with zeal, only he never
+seemed to see Charlotte's fingers on the rope, and Charlotte never
+saw his. The girls' cheeks flushed deeper, their smooth locks became
+roughened. The laughter waxed louder and longer; the matrons looking
+on doubled their broad backs with responsive merriment. It became
+like a little bacchanalian rout in a New England field on a summer
+afternoon, but they did not know it in their simple hearts.
+
+At six o'clock the mist began to rise, the sunlight streamed through
+the trees in slanting golden shafts, long drawn out like organ
+chords. The young people gathered up their pails and baskets and went
+home, flocking down the road together, calling back farewells to Rose
+and William and their mother, who stood in front of the tavern
+watching them out of sight.
+
+They were not quite out of sight when they came to Hiram Baxter's
+little house, and Silas Berry emerged from the shop door. "Hullo!" he
+cried out, and they all stopped, smiling at him with a cordiality
+which had in it a savor of apology. Indeed, Thomas Payne had just
+remarked, with a hearty chorus of assents, that he guessed the old
+man wasn't so bad after all.
+
+Silas advanced towards them; he also was smiling. He fumbled in his
+waistcoat pocket, and drew out a roll of paper which he shook out
+with trembling fingers. He stepped close to Thomas Payne and extended
+it.
+
+"What is it?" asked the young man.
+
+Silas smiled up in his face with the ingenuous smile of a child.
+
+"What is it?" Thomas Payne asked again.
+
+The others crowded around.
+
+"It's nothin' but the bill," replied Silas, in a wheedling whisper.
+His dry old face turned red, his smile deepened.
+
+"The bill for what?" demanded Thomas Payne, and he seized the paper.
+
+"For the cherries you eat," replied Silas. "I've always been in the
+habit of chargin' more, but I've took off a leetle this time." His
+voice had a ring of challenge, his eyes were sharp, while his mouth
+smiled.
+
+Thomas Payne scowled over the bill. The other young men peered at it
+over his shoulder, and repeated the amount with whistles and
+half-laughs of scorn and anger. The girls ejaculated to each other in
+whispers. Silas stood impervious, waiting.
+
+The young men whipped out their purses without a word, but Thomas
+motioned them back. "I'll pay, and we'll settle afterwards. We can't
+divide up here," he said, and he crammed some money hard in Silas's
+eagerly outstretched hand. "Thank you for your hospitality, Mr.
+Berry," said Thomas Payne, his face all flaming and his eyes
+flashing, but his voice quite steady. "I hope you'll have as good
+luck selling your cherries next year."
+
+There was a little exulting titter over the sarcasm among the girls,
+in which Rebecca did not join; then the party kept on. The indignant
+clamor waxed loud in a moment; they scarcely waited for the old man's
+back to be turned on his return to the tavern.
+
+But the young people, crying out all together against this last
+unparalleled meanness, had not reached the foot of the hill, where
+some of them separated, when they heard the quick pound of running
+feet behind them and a hoarse voice calling on Thomas Payne to stop.
+They all turned, and William came up, pale and breathing hard. "What
+did you pay him?" he asked of Thomas Payne.
+
+"See here, William, we all know you had nothing to do with it,"
+Thomas cried out.
+
+"What did you pay him?" William repeated, in a stern gasp.
+
+"It's all right."
+
+"You tell me what you paid him."
+
+Thomas Payne blushed all over his handsome boyish face. He half
+whispered the amount to William, although the others knew it as well
+as he.
+
+William pulled out his purse, and counted out some money with
+trembling fingers. "Take it, for God's sake!" said he, and Thomas
+Payne took it. "We all know that you knew nothing about it," he said
+again. The others chimed in with eager assent, but William gave his
+head a shake, as if he shook off water, and broke away from them all,
+and pelted up the hill with his heart so bitterly sore that it seemed
+as if he trod on it at every step.
+
+A voice was crying out behind him, but he never heeded. There were
+light, hurrying steps after him, and a soft flutter of girlish
+skirts, but he never looked away from his own self until Rebecca
+touched his arm. Then he looked around with a start and a great
+blush, and jerked his arm away.
+
+But Rebecca followed him up quite boldly, and caught his arm again,
+and looked up in his face. "Don't you feel bad," said she; "don't you
+feel bad. You aren't to blame."
+
+"Isn't he my father?"
+
+"You aren't to blame for that."
+
+"Disgrace comes without blame," said William, and he moved on.
+
+Rebecca kept close to his side, clinging to his arm. "It's your
+father's way," said she. "He's honest, anyway. Nobody can say he
+isn't honest."
+
+"It depends upon what you call honest," William said, bitterly.
+"You'd better run back, Rebecca. You don't want them to think you're
+going with me, and they will. I'm disgraced, and so is Rose. You'd
+better run back."
+
+Rebecca stopped, and he did also. She looked up in his face; her
+mouth was quivering with a kind of helpless shame, but her eyes were
+full of womanly courage and steadfastness. "William," said she, "I
+ran away in the face and eyes of them all to comfort you. They saw
+me, and they can see me now, but I don't care. And I don't care if
+you see me; I always have cared, but I don't now. I have always been
+terribly afraid lest you should think I was running after you, but I
+ain't afraid now. Don't you feel bad, William. That's all I care
+about. Don't you feel bad; nobody is going to think any less of you.
+I don't; I think more."
+
+William looked down at her; there was a hesitating appeal in his
+face, as in that of a hurt child. Suddenly Rebecca raised both her
+arms and put them around his neck; he leaned his cheek down against
+her soft hair. "Poor William," she whispered, as if he had been her
+child instead of her lover.
+
+A girl in the merry party speeding along at the foot of the hill
+glanced around just then; she turned again, blushing hotly, and
+touched a girl near her, who also glanced around. Then their two
+blushing faces confronted each other with significant half-shamed
+smiles of innocent young girlhood.
+
+They locked arms, and whispered as they went on. "Did you see?"
+"Yes." "His head?" "Yes." "Her arms?" "Yes." Neither had ever had a
+lover.
+
+But the two lovers at the top of the hill paid no heed. The party
+were all out of sight when they went slowly down in the gathering
+twilight. William left Rebecca when they came opposite her house.
+
+
+
+Chapter VIII
+
+
+When Rebecca entered the house, her mother was standing over the
+stove, making milk-toast for supper. The boiling milk steamed up
+fiercely in her face. "What makes you so long behind the others?" she
+demanded, without turning, stirring the milk as she spoke.
+
+"I guess I ain't much, am I?" Rebecca said, evasively. She tried to
+make her voice sound as it usually did, but she could not. It broke
+and took on faltering cadences, as if she were intoxicated with some
+subtle wine of the spirit.
+
+Her mother looked around at her. Rebecca's face was full of a strange
+radiance which she could not subdue before her mother's hard,
+inquiring gaze. Her cheeks burned with splendid color, her lips
+trembled into smiles in spite of herself, her eyes were like dark
+fires, shifting before her mother's, but not paling.
+
+"Ephraim see 'em all go by half an hour ago," said her mother.
+
+Rebecca made no reply.
+
+"If," said her mother, "you stayed behind to see William Berry, I can
+tell you one thing, once for all: you needn't do it again."
+
+"I had to see him about something," Rebecca faltered.
+
+"Well, you needn't see him again about anything. You might jest as
+well understand it first as last: if you've got any idea of havin'
+William Berry, you've got to give it up."
+
+"Mother, I'd like to know what you mean!" Rebecca cried out,
+blushing.
+
+"Look 'round here at me!" her mother ordered, suddenly.
+
+"Don't, mother."
+
+"Look at me!"
+
+Rebecca lifted her face perforce, and her mother eyed her pitilessly.
+"You ain't been tellin' of him you'd have him, now?" said she. "Why
+don't you speak?"
+
+"Not--just."
+
+"Then you needn't."
+
+"Mother!"
+
+"You needn't talk. You can jest make up your mind to it. You ain't
+goin' to marry William Berry. Your brother has had enough to do with
+that family."
+
+"Mother, you won't stop my marrying William because Barney won't
+marry his cousin Charlotte? There ain't any sense in that."
+
+"I've got my reasons, an' that's enough for you," said Deborah. "You
+ain't goin' to marry William Berry."
+
+"I am, if you haven't got any better reason than that. I won't stand
+it, mother; it ain't right!" Rebecca cried out.
+
+"Then," said Deborah, and as she spoke she began spooning out the
+toast gravy into a bowl with a curious stiff turn of her wrist and a
+superfluous vigor of muscle, as if it were molten lead instead of
+milk; and, indeed, she might, from the look in her face, have been
+one of her female ancestors in the times of the French and Indian
+wars, casting bullets with the yells of savages in her ears--"then,"
+said she, "I sha'n't have any child but Ephraim left, that's all!"
+
+"Mother, don't!" gasped Rebecca.
+
+"There's another thing: if you marry William Berry against your
+parents' wishes, you know what you have to expect. You remember your
+aunt Rebecca."
+
+Rebecca twisted her whole body about with the despairing motion with
+which she would have wrung her hands, flung open the door, and ran
+out of the room.
+
+Deborah went on spooning up the toast. Ephraim had come in just as
+she spoke last to Rebecca, and he stood staring, grinning with gaping
+mouth.
+
+"What's Rebecca done, mother?" he asked, pleadingly, catching hold of
+his mother's dress.
+
+"Nothin' for you to know. Go an' wash your face an' hands, an' come
+in to supper."
+
+"Mother, what's she done?" Ephraim's pleading voice lengthened into a
+whine. He took more liberties with his mother than any one else
+dared; he even jerked her dress now by way of enforcing an answer.
+But she grasped his arm so vigorously that he cried out. "Go out to
+the pump, an' wash your face an' hands," she repeated, and Ephraim
+made a little involuntary run to the door.
+
+As he went out he rolled his eyes over his shoulder at his mother
+with tragic surprise and reproach, but she paid no attention. When he
+came in she ignored the great painful sigh which he heaved and the
+podgy hand clapped ostentatiously over his left side. "Draw your
+chair up," said she.
+
+"I dunno as I want any supper. I've got a pain. Oh dear!" Ephraim
+writhed, with attentive eyes upon his mother; he was like an
+executioner turning an emotional thumbscrew on her. But Deborah
+Thayer's emotions sometimes presented steel surfaces. "You can have a
+pain, then," said she. "I ain't goin' to let you go to ruin because
+you ain't well, not if I know it. You've got to mind, sick or well,
+an' you might jest as well know it. I'll have one child obey me,
+whether or no. Set up to the table."
+
+Ephraim drew up his chair, whimpering; but he fell to on the
+milk-toast with ardor, and his hand dropped from his side. He had
+eaten half a plateful when his father came in. Caleb had been
+milking; the cows had been refractory as he drove them from pasture,
+and he was late.
+
+"Supper's been ready half an hour," his wife said, when he entered.
+
+"The heifer run down the old road when I was a-drivin' of her home,
+an' I had to chase her," Caleb returned, meekly, settling down in his
+arm-chair at the table.
+
+"I guess that heifer wouldn't cut up so every night if I had the
+drivin' of her," remarked Deborah. She filled a plate with toast and
+passed it over to Caleb.
+
+Caleb set it before him, but he did not begin to eat. He looked at
+Rebecca's empty place, then at his wife's face, long and pale and
+full of stern rancor, behind the sugar-bowl and the cream-pitcher.
+
+"Rebecca got home?" he ventured, with wary eyes upon her.
+
+"Yes, she's got home."
+
+Caleb winked, meekly. "Ain't she comin' to supper?"
+
+"I dunno whether she is or not."
+
+"Does she know it's ready?" Deborah vouchsafed no reply. She poured
+out the tea.
+
+Caleb grated his chair suddenly. "I'll jest speak to her," he
+proclaimed, courageously.
+
+"She knows it's ready. You set still," said Deborah. And Caleb drew
+his chair close again, and loaded his knife with toast, bringing it
+around to his mouth with a dexterous sidewise motion.
+
+"She ain't sick, is she?" he said, presently, with a casual air.
+
+"No, I guess she ain't sick."
+
+"I s'pose she eat so many cherries she didn't want any supper," Caleb
+said, chuckling anxiously. His wife made no reply. Ephraim reached
+over slyly for the toast-spoon, and she pushed his hand back.
+
+"You can't have any more," said she.
+
+"Can't I have jest a little more, mother?"
+
+"No, you can't."
+
+"I feel faint at my stomach, mother."
+
+"You can keep on feelin' faint."
+
+"Can't I have a piece of pie, mother?"
+
+"You can't have another mouthful of anything to eat to-night."
+
+Ephraim clapped his hand to his side again and sighed, but his mother
+took no notice.
+
+"Have you got a pain, sonny?" asked Caleb.
+
+"Yes, dreadful. Oh!"
+
+"Hadn't he ought to have somethin' on it?" Caleb inquired, looking
+appealingly at Deborah.
+
+"He can have some of his doctor's medicine if he don't feel better,"
+she replied, in a hard voice. "Set your chair back now, Ephraim, and
+get out your catechism."
+
+"I don't feel fit to, mother," groaned Ephraim.
+
+"You do jest as I tell you," said his mother.
+
+And Ephraim, heaving with sighs, muttering angrily far under his
+breath lest his mother should hear, pulled his chair back to the
+window, and got his catechism out of the top drawer of his father's
+desk, and began droning out in his weak, sulky voice the first
+question therein: "What is the chief end of man?"
+
+"Now shut the book and answer it," said his mother, and Ephraim
+obeyed.
+
+Ephraim was quite conversant with the first three questions and their
+answers, after that his memory began to weaken; either he was a
+naturally dull scholar, or his native indolence made him appear so.
+He had been drilled nightly upon the "Assembly's Catechism" for the
+past five years, and had had many a hard bout with it before that in
+his very infancy, when his general health admitted--and sometimes, it
+seemed to Ephraim, when it had not admitted.
+
+Many a time had the boy panted for breath when he rehearsed those
+grandly decisive, stately replies to those questions of all ages, but
+his mother had been obdurate. He could not understand why, but in
+reality Deborah held her youngest son, who was threatened with death
+in his youth, to the "Assembly's Catechism" as a means of filling his
+mind with spiritual wisdom, and fitting him for that higher state to
+which he might soon be called. Ephraim had been strictly forbidden to
+attend school--beyond reading he had no education; but his mother
+resolved that spiritual education he should have, whether he would or
+not, and whether the doctor would or not. So Ephraim laboriously read
+the Bible through, a chapter at a time, and he went, step by step,
+through the wisdom of the Divines of Westminster. No matter how much
+he groaned over it, his mother was pitiless. Sometimes Caleb plucked
+up courage and interceded. "I don't believe he feels quite ekal to
+learnin' of his stint to-night," he would say, and then his eyes
+would fall before the terrible stern pathos in Deborah's, as she
+would reply in her deep voice: "If he can't learn nothin' about
+books, he's got to learn about his own soul. He's got to, whether it
+hurts him or not. I shouldn't think, knowin' what you know, you'd say
+anything, Caleb Thayer."
+
+And Caleb's old face would quiver suddenly like a child's; he would
+rub the back of his hand across his eyes, huddle himself into his
+arm-chair, and say no more; and Deborah would sharply order Ephraim,
+spying anxiously over his catechism, to go on with the next question.
+
+It was nearly dark to-night when Ephraim finished his stint; he was
+slower than usual, his progress being somewhat hindered by the
+surreptitious eating of a hard red apple, which he had stowed away in
+his jacket-pocket. Hard apples were strictly forbidden to Ephraim as
+articles of diet, and to eat many during the season required
+diplomacy.
+
+The boy's jaws worked with furious zeal over the apple during his
+mother's temporary absences from the room on household tasks, and on
+her return were mumbling solemnly and innocently the precepts of the
+catechism, after a spasmodic swallowing. His father was nodding in
+his chair and saw nothing, and had he seen would not have betrayed
+him. After a little inefficient remonstrance on his own account,
+Caleb always subsided, and watched anxiously lest Deborah should
+discover the misdemeanor and descend upon Ephraim.
+
+To-night, after the task was finished, Deborah sent Ephraim stumbling
+out of the room to bed, muttering remonstrances, his eyes as wild and
+restless as a cat's, his ears full of the nocturnal shouts of his
+play-fellows that came through the open windows.
+
+"Mother, can't I go out an' play ball a little while?" sounded in a
+long wail from the dusk outside the door.
+
+"You go to bed," answered his mother. Then the slamming of a door
+shook the house.
+
+"If he wa'n't sick, I'd whip him," said Deborah, between tight lips;
+the spiritual whip which Ephraim held by right of his illness over
+her seemed to sing past her ears. She shook Caleb with the force with
+which she might have shaken Ephraim. "You'd better get up an' go to
+bed now, instead of sleepin' in your chair," she said, imperatively;
+and Caleb obeyed, staggering, half-dazed, across the floor into the
+bedroom. Deborah was only a few years younger than her husband, but
+she had retained her youthful vigor in much greater degree. She never
+felt the drowsiness of age stealing over her at nightfall. Indeed,
+oftentimes her senses seemed to gain in alertness as the day wore on,
+and many a night she was up and at work long after all the other
+members of her family were in bed. There came at such times to
+Deborah Thayer a certain peace and triumphant security, when all the
+other wills over which her own held contested sway were lulled to
+sleep, and she could concentrate all her energies upon her work. Many
+a long task of needle-work had she done in the silence of the night,
+by her dim oil lamp; in years past she had spun and woven, and there
+was in a clothes-press up-stairs a wonderful coverlid in an intricate
+pattern of blue and white, and not a thread of it woven by the light
+of the sun.
+
+[Illustration: "Many a long task of needle-work had she done"]
+
+None of the neighbors knew why Deborah Thayer worked so much at
+night; they attributed it to her tireless industry. "The days wa'n't
+never long enough for Deborah Thayer," they said--and she did not
+know why herself.
+
+There was deep in her heart a plan for the final disposition of these
+nightly achievements, but she confided it to no one, not even to
+Rebecca. The blue-and-white coverlid, many a daintily stitched linen
+garment and lace-edged pillow-slip she destined for Rebecca when she
+should be wed, although she frowned on Rebecca's lover and spoke
+harshly to her of marriage. To-night, while Rebecca lay sobbing in
+her little bedroom, the mother knitted assiduously until nearly
+midnight upon a wide linen lace with which to trim dimity curtains
+for the daughter's bridal bedstead.
+
+Deborah needed no lamplight for this knitting-work; she was so
+familiar with it, having knitted yards with her thoughts elsewhere,
+that she could knit without seeing her needles.
+
+So she sat in the deepening dusk and knitted, and heard the laughter
+and shouts of the boys at play a little way down the road with a
+deeper pang than Ephraim had ever felt over his own deprivation.
+
+She was glad when the gay hubbub ceased and the boys were haled into
+bed. Shortly afterwards she heard out in the road a quick, manly
+tread and a merry whistle. She did not know the tune, but only one
+young man in Pembroke could whistle like that. "It's Thomas Payne
+goin' up to see Charlotte Barnard," she said to herself, with a
+bitter purse of her lips in the dark. That merry whistler, passing
+her poor cast-out son in his lonely, half-furnished house, whose
+dark, shadowy walls she could see across the field, smote her as
+sorely as he smote him. It seemed to her that she could hear that
+flute-like melody even as far as Charlotte's door. In spite of her
+stern resolution to be just, a great gust of wrath shook her.
+"Lettin' of him come courtin' her when it ain't six weeks since
+Barney went," she said, quite out loud, and knitted fiercely.
+
+But poor Thomas Payne, striding with his harmless swagger up the
+hill, whistling as loud as might be one of his college airs, need
+not, although she knew it not and he knew it not himself, have
+disturbed her peace of mind.
+
+Charlotte, at the cherry party, had asked him, with a certain
+dignified shyness, if he could come up to her house that evening, and
+he had responded with alacrity. "Why, of course I can," he cried,
+blushing joyfully all over his handsome face--"of course I can,
+Charlotte!" And he tried to catch one of her hands hanging in the
+folds of her purple dress, but she drew it away.
+
+"I want to see you a few minutes about something," she said, soberly;
+and then she pressed forward to speak to another girl, and he could
+not get another word with her about it.
+
+Charlotte, after she got home from the party, had changed her pretty
+new gown for her every-day one of mottled brown calico set with a
+little green sprig, and had helped her mother get supper.
+
+Cephas, however, was late, and did not come home until just before
+Thomas Payne arrived. Sarah had begun to worry. "I don't see where
+your father is," she kept saying to Charlotte. When she heard his
+shuffling step on the door-stone she started as if he had been her
+lover. When he came in she scrutinized him anxiously, to see if he
+looked ill or disturbed. Sarah Barnard, during all absences of her
+family, dug busily at imaginary pitfalls for them; had they all
+existed the town would have been honey-combed.
+
+"There ain't nothin' happened, has there, Cephas?" she said.
+
+"I dunno of anythin' that's happened."
+
+"I got kind of worried. I didn't know where you was." Sarah had an
+air of apologizing for her worry. Cephas made no reply; he did not
+say where he had been, nor account for his tardiness; he did not look
+at his wife, standing before him with her pathetically inquiring
+face. He pulled a chair up to the table and sat down, and Charlotte
+set his supper before him. It was a plate of greens, cold boiled
+dock, and some rye-and-Indian bread. Cephas still adhered to his
+vegetarian diet, although he pined on it, and the longing for the
+flesh-pots was great in his soul. However, he said no more about
+sorrel pies, for the hardness and the flavor of those which he had
+prepared had overcome even his zeal of invention. He ate of them
+manfully twice; then he ate no more, and he did not inquire how Sarah
+disposed of them after they had vainly appeared on the table a week.
+She, with no pig nor hens to eat them, was forced, with many
+misgivings as to the waste, to deposit them in the fireplace.
+
+"They actually made good kindlin' wood," she told her sister Sylvia.
+"Poor Cephas, he didn't have no more idea than a baby about makin'
+pies." All Sarah's ire had died away; to-night she set a large plump
+apple-pie slyly on the table--an apple-pie with ample allowance of
+lard in the crust thereof; and she felt not the slightest exultation,
+only honest pleasure, when she saw, without seeming to, Cephas cut
+off a goodly wedge, after disposing of his dock greens.
+
+"Poor father, I'm real glad he's tastin' of the pie," she whispered
+to Charlotte in the pantry; "greens ain't very fillin'."
+
+Charlotte smiled, absently. Presently she slipped into the best room
+and lighted the candles. "You expectin' of anybody to-night?" her
+mother asked, when she came out.
+
+"I didn't know but somebody might come," Charlotte replied,
+evasively. She blushed a little before her mother's significantly
+smiling face, but there was none of the shamed delight which should
+have accompanied the blush. She looked very sober--almost stern.
+
+"Hadn't you better put on your other dress again, then?" asked her
+mother."
+
+"No, I guess this 'll do."
+
+Cephas ate his pie in silence--he had helped himself to another
+piece--but he heard every word. After he had finished, he fumbled in
+his pocket for his old leather purse, and counted over a little store
+of money on his knee.
+
+Charlotte was setting away the dishes in the pantry when her father
+came up behind her and crammed something into her hand. She started.
+"What is it?" said she.
+
+"Look and see," said Cephas.
+
+Charlotte opened her hand, and saw a great silver dollar. "I thought
+mebbe you'd like to buy somethin' with it," said Cephas. He cleared
+his throat, and went out through the kitchen into the shed. Charlotte
+was too amazed to thank him; her mother came into the pantry. "What
+did he give you?" she whispered.
+
+Charlotte held up the money. "Poor father," said Sarah Barnard, "he's
+doin' of it to make up. He was dreadful sorry about that other, an'
+he's tickled 'most to death now he thinks you've got somebody else,
+and are contented. Poor father, he ain't got much money, either."
+
+"I don't want it," Charlotte said, her steady mouth quivering
+downward at the corners.
+
+"You keep it. He'd feel all upset if you didn't. You'll find it come
+handy. I know you've got a good many things now, but you had ought to
+have a new cape come fall; you can't come out bride in a muslin one
+when snow flies." Sarah cast a half-timid, half-shrewd glance at
+Charlotte, who put the dollar in her pocket.
+
+"A green satin cape, lined and wadded, would be handsome," pursued
+her mother.
+
+"I sha'n't ever come out bride," said Charlotte.
+
+"How you talk. There, he's comin' now!"
+
+And, indeed, at that the clang of the knocker sounded through the
+house. Charlotte took off her apron and started to answer it, but her
+mother caught her and pinned up a stray lock of hair. "I 'most wish
+you had put on your other dress again," she whispered.
+
+Sarah listened with her ear close to the crack of the kitchen door
+when her daughter opened the outside one. She heard Thomas Payne's
+hearty greeting and Charlotte's decorous reply. The door of the front
+room shut, then she set the kitchen door ajar softly, but she could
+hear nothing but a vague hum of voices across the entry; she could
+not distinguish a word. However, it was as well that she could not,
+for her heart would have sunk, as did poor Thomas Payne's.
+
+Thomas, with his thick hair brushed into a shining roll above his
+fair high forehead, in his best flowered waistcoat and blue coat with
+brass buttons, sat opposite Charlotte, his two nicely booted feet
+toeing out squarely on the floor, his two hands on his knees, and
+listened to what she had to say, while his boyish face changed and
+whitened. Thomas was older than Charlotte, but he looked younger.
+It seemed, too, as if he looked younger when with her than at other
+times, although he was always anxiously steady and respectful, and
+lost much of that youthful dash which made him questioningly admired
+by the young people of Pembroke.
+
+Charlotte began at once after they were seated. Her fair, grave face
+colored, her voice had in it a solemn embarrassment. "I don't know
+but you thought I was doing a strange thing to ask you to come here
+to-night," she said.
+
+"No, I didn't; I didn't think so, Charlotte," Thomas declared,
+warmly.
+
+"I felt as if I ought to. I felt as if it was my duty to," said she.
+She cast her eyes down. Thomas waited, looking at her with vague
+alarm. Somehow some college scrapes of his flashed into his head, and
+he had a bewildered idea the she had found them out and that her
+sweet rigid innocence was shocked, and she was about to call him to
+account.
+
+But Charlotte continued, raising her eyes, and meeting his gravely
+and fairly:
+
+"You've been coming here three Sabbath evenings running, now," said
+she.
+
+"Yes, I know I have, Charlotte."
+
+"And you mean to keep on coming, if I don't say anything to hinder
+it?"
+
+"You know I do, Charlotte," replied Thomas, with ardent eyes upon her
+face.
+
+"Then," said Charlotte, "I feel as if it was my duty to say this to
+you, Thomas. If you come in any other way than as a friend, if you
+come on any other errand than friendship, you must not come here any
+more. It isn't right for me to encourage you, and let you come here
+and get your feelings enlisted. If you come here occasionally as a
+friend in friendship I shall be happy to have you, but you must not
+come here with any other hopes or feelings."
+
+Charlotte's solemnly stilted words, and earnest, severe face chilled
+the young man opposite. His face sobered. "You mean that you can't
+ever think of me in any other way than as a friend," he said.
+
+Charlotte nodded. "You know it is not because there's one thing
+against you, Thomas."
+
+"Then it is Barney, after all."
+
+"I was all ready to marry him a few weeks ago," Charlotte said, with
+a kind of dignified reproach.
+
+Thomas colored. "I know it, Charlotte; I ought not to have
+expected--I suppose you couldn't get over it so soon. I couldn't if I
+had been in your place, and been ready to marry anybody. But I didn't
+know about girls; I didn't know but they were different; I always
+heard they got over things quicker. I ought not to have thought--
+But, oh, Charlotte, if I wait, if you have a little more time, don't
+you think you will feel different about it?"
+
+Charlotte shook her head.
+
+"But he is such a good-for-nothing dog to treat you the way he does,
+Charlotte!" Thomas cried out, in a great burst of wrath and jealous
+love.
+
+"I don't want to hear another word like that, Thomas Payne,"
+Charlotte said, sternly, and the young man drooped before her.
+
+"I beg your pardon, Charlotte," said he. "I suppose I ought not to
+have spoken so, if you-- Oh, Charlotte, then you don't think you ever
+can get over this and think a little bit of me?"
+
+"No," replied Charlotte, in a steady voice, "I don't think I ever
+can, Thomas."
+
+"I don't mean that I am trying to get you away from any other fellow,
+Charlotte--I wouldn't do anything like that; but if he won't-- Oh,
+Charlotte, are you sure?"
+
+"I don't think I ever can," repeated Charlotte, monotonously, looking
+at the wall past Thomas.
+
+"I've always thought so much of you, Charlotte, though I never told
+you so."
+
+"You'd better not now."
+
+"Yes, I'm going to, now. I've got to. Then I'll never say another
+word--I'll go away, and never say another word." Thomas got up, and
+brought his chair close to Charlotte's. "Don't move away," he
+pleaded; "let me sit here near you once--I never shall again. I'm
+going to tell you, Charlotte. I used to look across at you sitting
+in the meeting-house, Sabbath days, when I was a boy, and think you
+were the handsomest girl I ever saw. Then I did try to go with you
+once before I went to college; perhaps you didn't know that I meant
+anything, but I did. Barney was in the way then a little, but I
+didn't think much of it. I didn't know that he really meant to go
+with you. You let me go home with you two or three times--perhaps you
+remember."
+
+Charlotte nodded.
+
+"I never forgot," said Thomas Payne. "Well, father found it out, and
+he had a talk with me. He made me promise to wait till I got through
+college before I said anything to you; he was doing a good deal for
+me, you know. So I waited, and the first thing I knew, when I came
+home, they said Barney Thayer was waiting on you, and I thought it
+was all settled and there was nothing more to be done. I made up my
+mind to bear it like a man and make the best of it, and I did. But
+this spring when I was through college, and that happened betwixt you
+and Barney, when he--didn't come back to you, and you didn't seem to
+mind so much, I couldn't help having a little hope. I waited and
+kept thinking he'd make up with you, but he didn't, and I knew how
+determined he was. Then finally I began to make a few advances,
+but--well, it's all over now, Charlotte. There's only one thing I'd
+like to ask: if I hadn't waited, as I promised father, would it have
+made any difference? Did you always like Barney Thayer?"
+
+"Yes; it wouldn't have made any difference," Charlotte said. There
+were tears in her eyes.
+
+Thomas Payne arose. "Then that is all," said he. "I never had any
+chance, if I had only known. I've got nothing more to say. I want to
+thank you for asking me to come here to-night and telling me. It was
+a good deal kinder than to let me keep on coming. That would have
+been rather hard on a fellow." Thomas Payne fairly laughed, although
+his handsome face was white. "I hope it will all come right betwixt
+you and Barney, Charlotte," he said, "and don't you worry about me, I
+shall get on. I'll own this seems a little harder than it was before,
+but I shall get on." Thomas brushed his bell hat carefully with his
+cambric handkerchief, and stowed it under his arm. "Good-bye,
+Charlotte," said he, in his old gay voice; "when you ask me, I'll
+come and dance at your wedding."
+
+Charlotte got up, trembling. Thomas reached out his hand and touched
+her smooth fair head softly. "I never touched you nor kissed you,
+except in games like that Copenhagen to-day," said he; "but I've
+thought of it a good many times."
+
+Charlotte drew back. "I can't, Thomas," she faltered. She could not
+herself have defined her reason for refusing her cast-off lover this
+one comfort, but it was not so much loyalty as the fear of disloyalty
+which led her to do so. In spite of herself, she saw Barney for an
+instant beside Thomas to his disadvantage, and her love could not
+cover him, extend it as she would. The conviction was strong upon her
+that Thomas was the better man of the two, although she did not love
+him.
+
+"All right," said Thomas, "I ought not to have asked it of you,
+Charlotte. Good-bye."
+
+As soon as Thomas Payne got out in the dark night air, and the door
+had shut behind him, he set up his merry whistle. Charlotte stood at
+the front window, and heard it from far down the hill.
+
+
+
+Chapter IX
+
+
+One Sunday evening, about four months after the cherry party,
+Barnabas Thayer came out of his house and strolled slowly across the
+road. Then he paused, and leaned up against some pasture bars and
+looked around him. There was nobody in sight on the road in either
+direction, and everything was very still, except for the vibrating
+calls of the hidden insects that come to their flood-tide of life in
+early autumn.
+
+Barnabas listened to those calls, which had in them a certain element
+of mystery, as have all things which reach only one sense. They were
+in their humble way the voices of the unseen, and as he listened they
+seemed to take on a rhythmic cadence. Presently the drone of
+multifold vibrations sounded in his ears with even rise and fall,
+like the mighty breathing of Nature herself. The sun was low, and the
+sky was full of violet clouds. Barney could see outlined faintly
+against them the gray sweep of the roof that covered Charlotte's
+daily life.
+
+Soon the bell for the evening meeting began to ring, and Barney
+started. People might soon appear on their way to meeting, and he
+did not want to see them. Barney avoided everybody now; he had been
+nowhere since the cherry party, not even to meeting. He led the life
+of a hermit, and seldom met his kind at all, except at the store,
+where he went to buy the simple materials for his solitary meals.
+
+Barney turned aside from the main road into the old untravelled one
+leading past Sylvia Crane's house. It appeared scarcely more than a
+lane; the old wheel-ruts were hidden between green weedy ridges, the
+bordering stone-walls looked like long green barrows, being overgrown
+with poison-ivy vines and rank shrubs. For a long way there was no
+house except Sylvia Crane's. There was one cellar where a house had
+stood before Barney could remember. There were a few old blackened
+chimney-bricks still there, the step-stone worn by dead and forgotten
+feet, and the old lilac-bushes that had grown against the front
+windows. Two poplar-trees, too, stood where the front yard had met
+the road, casting long shadows like men. Sylvia Crane's house was
+just beyond, and Barney passed it with a furtive anxious glance,
+because Charlotte's aunt lived there. He saw nobody at the windows,
+but the guardian-stone was quite rolled away from the door, so Sylvia
+was at home.
+
+Barney walked a little way beyond; then he sat down on the
+stone-wall, and remained there, motionless. He heard the meeting-bell
+farther away, then it ceased. The wind was quite crisp and cool, and
+it smote his back from the northwest. He could smell wild-grapes and
+the pungent odor of decaying leaves. The autumn was beginning, and
+over his thoughts, raised like a ghost from the ashes of the summer,
+stole a vague vision of the winter. He saw for a second the driving
+slant of the snow-storm over the old drifting road, he saw the white
+slant of Sylvia's house-roof through it. And at the same time a
+curious, pleasant desire, which might be primitive and coeval with
+the provident passion of the squirrels and honey-bees, thrilled him.
+Then he dismissed it bitterly. What need of winter-stores and
+provisions for sweet home-comfort in the hearts of freezing storms
+was there for him? What did he care whether or not he laid in stores
+of hearth-wood, of garden produce, of apples, just for himself in his
+miserable solitude? The inborn desire of Northern races at the
+approach of the sterile winters, containing, as do all desires to
+insure their fulfilment, the elements of human pleasure, failed
+suddenly to move him when he remembered that his human life, in one
+sense, was over.
+
+[Illustration: "He remained there motionless"]
+
+Opposite him across the road, in an old orchard, was a tree full of
+apples. The low sun struck them, and they showed spheres of rosy
+orange, as brilliant as Atalanta's apples of gold, against the
+background of dark violet clouds. Barney looked at this tree, which
+was glorified for the time almost out of its common meaning as a
+tree, as he might have looked at a gorgeous procession passing before
+him, while his mind was engrossed with his own misery, seeming to
+project before his eyes like a veil.
+
+Presently it grew dusky, and the glowing apples faded; the town-clock
+struck eight. Barney counted the strokes; then he arose and went
+slowly back. He had not gone far when he saw at a distance down the
+road a man and woman strolling slowly towards him. They disappeared
+suddenly, and he thought they had turned into a lane which opened
+upon the road just there. He thought to himself, and with no concern,
+that it might have been his sister Rebecca--something about the
+woman's gait suggested her--and William Berry. He knew that William
+was not allowed in his mother's house, and that he and Rebecca met
+outside. He looked up the dusky lane when he came to it, but he saw
+nobody.
+
+When he reached Sylvia Crane's house he noticed that the front door
+was open, and a woman stood there in a dim shaft of candle-light
+which streamed from the room beyond. He started, for he thought it
+might be Charlotte; then he saw that it was Sylvia Crane leaning out
+towards him, shading her eyes with her hand.
+
+He said "Good-evening" vaguely, and passed on. Then he heard a cry of
+indistinct words behind him, and turned. "What is it?" he called. But
+still he could not understand what she said, her voice was so broken,
+and he went back.
+
+When he got quite close to the gate he understood. "You ain't goin'
+past, Richard? You ain't goin' past, Richard?" Sylvia was wailing
+over and over, clinging to the old gate-post.
+
+Barney stood before her, hesitating. Sylvia reached out a hand
+towards him, clutching piteously with pale fingers through the gloom.
+Barney drew back from the poor hand. "I rather think--you've--made a
+mistake," he faltered out.
+
+"You ain't goin' past, Richard?" Sylvia wailed out again. She flung
+out her lean arm farther towards him. Then she wavered. Barney
+thought she was going to fall, and he stepped forward and caught
+hold of her elbow. "I guess you don't feel well, do you, Miss Crane?"
+he said. "I guess you had better go into the house, hadn't you?"
+
+"I feel--kind of--bad--I--thought you was goin'--past," gasped
+Sylvia. Barney supported her awkwardly into the house. At times she
+leaned her whole trembling weight upon him, and then withdrew
+herself, all unnerved as she was, with the inborn maiden reticence
+which so many years had strengthened; once she pushed him from her,
+then drooped upon his arm again, and all the time she kept moaning,
+"I thought you was goin' right past, Richard, I thought you was goin'
+right past."
+
+And Barney kept repeating, "I guess you've made a mistake, Miss
+Crane"; but she did not heed him.
+
+When they were inside the parlor he shifted her weight gently on to
+the sofa, and would have drawn off; but she clung to his arm, and it
+seemed to him that he was forced to sit down beside her or be rough
+with her. "I thought you was goin' right past, Richard," she said
+again.
+
+"I ain't Richard," said Barney; but she did not seem to hear him. She
+looked straight in his face with a strange boldness, her body
+inclined towards him, her head thrown back. Her thin, faded cheeks
+were burning, her blue eyes eager, her lips twitching with pitiful
+smiles. The room was dim with candle-light, but everything in it was
+distinct, and Sylvia Crane, looking straight at Barney Thayer's face,
+saw the face of Richard Alger.
+
+Suddenly Barney himself had a curious impression. The features of
+Richard Alger instead of his own seemed to look back at him from his
+own thoughts. He dashed his hand across his face with an impatient,
+bewildered motion, as if he brushed away unseen cobwebs, and stood
+up. "You have made--" he began again; but Sylvia interrupted him with
+a weak cry. "Set down here, set down here, jest a minute, if you
+don't want to kill me!" she wailed out, and she clutched at his
+sleeve and pulled him down, and before he knew what she was doing had
+shrunk close to him, and laid her head on his shoulder. She went on
+talking desperately in her weak voice--strained shrill octaves above
+her ordinary tone.
+
+"I've had this--sofa ten years," she said--"ten years, Richard--an'
+you never set with me on it before, an'--you'd been comin'--here a
+long while before that came betwixt us last spring, Richard. Ain't
+you forgiven me yet?"
+
+Barney made no reply.
+
+"Can't you put your arm around me jest once, Richard?" she went on.
+"You ain't never, an' you've been comin' here a long while. I've had
+this sofa ten years."
+
+Barney put his arm around her, seemingly with no volition of his own.
+
+"It's six months to-day sence you came last," Sylvia said--"it's six
+whole months; an' when I see you goin' past to-night, it didn't seem
+as if I could bear it--it didn't seem as if I could bear it,
+Richard." Sylvia turned her pale profile closer to Barney's breast
+and sobbed faintly. "I've watched so long for you," she sighed out;
+"all these months I've sat there at the window, strainin' my eyes
+into the dark. Oh, you don't know, Richard, you won't never know!"
+
+Barney trembled with Sylvia's sobs. He sat with a serious
+shamefacedness, his arm around the poor bony waist, staring over the
+faded fair head, which had never lain on any lover's breast except in
+dreams. For the moment he could not stir; he had a feeling of horror,
+as if he saw his own double. There was a subtle resemblance which
+lay deeper than the features between him and Richard Alger. Sylvia
+saw it, and he saw his own self reflected as Richard Alger in that
+straining mental vision of hers which exceeded the spiritual one.
+
+"Can't you forgive me, an'--come again the way--you used to?" Sylvia
+panted out. "I couldn't get home before, that night, nohow. I
+couldn't, Richard--'twas the night Charlotte an' Barney fell out.
+They had a dreadful time. I had to stay there. It wa'n't my fault.
+If Barney had come back, I could have got here in season; but poor
+Charlotte was settin' out there all alone on the doorstep, an' her
+father wouldn't let her in, an' Sarah took on so I had to stay. I
+thought I should die when I got back an' found out you'd been here
+an' gone. Ain't you goin' to forgive me, Richard?"
+
+Barney suddenly removed his arm from Sylvia's waist, pushed her
+clinging hands away, and stood up again. "Now, Miss Crane," he said,
+"I've got to tell you. You've got to listen, and take it in. I am
+not Richard Alger; I am Barney Thayer."
+
+"What?" Sylvia said, feebly, looking up at him. "I don't know what
+you say, Richard; I wish you'd say it again."
+
+"I ain't Richard Alger; I am Barney Thayer," repeated Barney, in a
+loud, distinct voice. Sylvia's straining, questioning eyes did not
+leave his face. "You made a mistake," said Barney.
+
+Sylvia turned her eyes away; she laid her head down on the arm of the
+hair-cloth sofa, and gasped faintly. Barney bent over her. "Now don't
+feel bad, Miss Crane," said he; "I sha'n't ever say a word about this
+to anybody."
+
+Sylvia made no reply; she lay there half gasping for breath, and her
+face looked deathly to Barney.
+
+"Miss Crane, are you sick?" he cried out in alarm. When she did not
+answer, he even laid hold of her shoulder, and shook her gently, and
+repeated the question. He did not know if she were faint or dying; he
+had never seen anybody faint or die. He wished instinctively that his
+mother were there; he thought for a second of running for her in
+spite of everything.
+
+"I'll go and get some water for you, Miss Crane," he said,
+desperately, and seized the candle, and went with it, flaring and
+leaving a wake of smoke, out into the kitchen. He presently came back
+with a dipper of water, and held it dripping over Sylvia. "Hadn't you
+better drink a little?" he urged. But Sylvia suddenly motioned him
+away and sat up. "No, I don't want any water; I don't want anything
+after this," she said, in a quick, desperate tone. "I can never look
+anybody in the face again. I can never go to meetin' again."
+
+"Don't you feel so about it, Miss Crane," Barney pleaded, his own
+voice uncertain and embarrassed. "The room ain't very light, and it's
+dark outside; maybe I do look like him a little. It ain't any wonder
+you made the mistake."
+
+"It wa'n't that," returned Sylvia. "I dunno what the reason was; it
+don't make any difference. I can't never go to meetin' again."
+
+"I sha'n't tell anybody," said Barney; "I sha'n't ever speak of it to
+any human being."
+
+Sylvia turned on him with sudden fierceness. "You had better not,"
+said she, "when you're doin' jest the same as Richard Alger yourself,
+an' you're makin' Charlotte sit an' watch an' suffer for nothin' at
+all, jest as he makes me. You had better not tell of it, Barney
+Thayer, when it was all due to your awful will that won't let you
+give in to anybody, in the first place, an' when you are so much like
+Richard Alger yourself that it's no wonder that anybody that knows
+him body and soul, as I do, took you for him. You had better not
+tell."
+
+Again Barney seemed to see before his eyes that image of himself as
+Richard Alger, and he could no more change it than he could change
+his own image in the looking-glass. He said not another word, but
+carried the dipper of water back to the kitchen, returned with the
+candle, setting it gingerly on the white mantel-shelf between a vase
+of dried flowers and a mottle-backed shell, and went out of the
+house. Sylvia did not speak again; but he heard her moan as he closed
+the door, and it seemed to him that he heard her as he went down the
+road, although he knew that he could not.
+
+It was quite dark now; all the light came from a pale wild sky. The
+moon was young, and feebly intermittent with the clouds.
+
+Barney, hastening along, was all trembling and unnerved. He tried to
+persuade himself that the woman whom he had just left was ill, and
+laboring under some sudden aberration of mind; yet, in spite of
+himself, he realized a terrible rationality in it. Little as he had
+been among the village people of late, and little as he had heard of
+the village gossip, he knew the story of Richard Alger's desertion
+of Sylvia Crane. Was he not like Richard Alger in his own desertion
+of Charlotte Barnard? and had not Sylvia been as little at fault
+in taking one for the other as if they had been twin brothers?
+Might there not be a closer likeness between characters than
+features--perhaps by a repetition of sins and deformities? and might
+not one now and then be able to see it?
+
+Then the question came, was Charlotte like Sylvia? Was Charlotte even
+now sitting watching for him with that awful eagerness which comes
+from a hunger of the heart? He had seen one woman's wounded heart,
+and, like most men, was disposed to generalize, and think he had seen
+the wounded hearts of all women.
+
+When he had reached the turn of the road, and had come out on the
+main one where his house was, and where Charlotte lived, he stood
+still, looking in her direction. He seemed to see her, a quarter of a
+mile away in the darkness, sitting in her window watching for him, as
+Sylvia had watched for Richard.
+
+He set his mouth hard and crossed the road. He had just reached his
+own yard when there was the pale flutter of a skirt out of the
+darkness before him, and a little shadowy figure met him with a soft
+shock. The was a smothered nervous titter from the figure. Barney did
+not know who it was; he muttered an apology, and was about to pass
+into his yard when Rose Berry's voice arrested him. It was quite
+trembling and uncertain; all the laughter had gone out of it.
+
+"Oh, it's you," said she; "you frightened me. I didn't know who it
+was."
+
+Barney felt suddenly annoyed without knowing why. "Oh, is it you,
+Rose?" he returned, stiffly. "It's a pleasant evening;" then he
+turned.
+
+"Barney!" Rose said, and her voice sounded as if she were weeping.
+
+Barney stopped and waited.
+
+"I want to know if--you're mad with me, Barney."
+
+"No, of course I ain't; why?"
+
+"I thought you'd acted kind of queer to me lately."
+
+Barney stood still, frowning in the darkness. "I don't know what you
+mean," he said at length. "I don't know how I've treated you any
+different from any of the girls."
+
+"You haven't been to see me, and--you've hardly spoken to me since
+the cherry party."
+
+"I haven't been to see anybody," said Barney, shortly; and he turned
+away again, but Rose caught his arm. "Then you are sure you aren't
+mad with me?" she whispered.
+
+"Of course I'm sure," Barney returned, impatiently.
+
+"It would kill me if you were," Rose whispered. She pressed close to
+him; he could feel her softly panting against his side, her head sunk
+on his shoulder. "I've been worrying about it all these months," she
+said in his ear. Her soft curly hair brushed his cheek, but her
+little transient influence over him was all gone. He felt angry and
+ashamed.
+
+"I haven't thought anything about it," he said, brusquely.
+
+Rose sobbed faintly, but she did not move away from him. Suddenly
+that cruel repulsion which seizes mankind towards reptiles and
+unsought love seized Barney. He unclasped her clinging hands, and
+fairly pushed her away from him. "Good-night, Rose," he said,
+shortly, and turned, and went up the path to his own door with
+determined strides.
+
+"Barney!" Rose called after him; but he paid no attention. She even
+ran up the path after him; but the door shut, and she turned back.
+She was trembling from head to foot, there was a great rushing in her
+ears; but she heard a quick light step behind her when she got out on
+the road, and she hurried on before it with a vague dread.
+
+She almost ran at length; but the footsteps gained on her. A dark
+skirt brushed her light-colored one, and Charlotte's voice, full of
+contempt and indignation, said in her ear: "Oh, I thought it was
+you."
+
+"I--was coming up--to your--house," Rose faltered; she could hardly
+get her breath to speak.
+
+"Why didn't you come, then?" demanded Charlotte. "What made you go to
+Barney Thayer's?"
+
+"I didn't," said Rose, in feeble self-defence. "He was out in the
+road--I--just stopped to--speak to him--"
+
+"You were coming out of his yard," Charlotte said, pitilessly. "You
+followed him in there--I saw you. Shame on you!"
+
+"Oh, Charlotte, I haven't done anything out of the way," pleaded
+Rose, weakly.
+
+"You have tried your best to get Barney Thayer all the time you have
+been pretending to be such a good friend to me. I don't know what you
+call out of the way."
+
+"Charlotte, don't--I haven't."
+
+"Yes, you have. I am going to tell you, once for all, what I think of
+you. You've been a false friend to me; and now when Barney don't
+notice you, you follow him up as no girl that thought anything of
+herself would. And you don't even care anything for him; you haven't
+even that for an excuse."
+
+"You don't know but what I do!" Rose cried out, desperately.
+
+"Yes, I do know. If anybody else came along, you'd care for him just
+the same."
+
+"I shouldn't--Charlotte, I should never have thought of Barney if
+he--hadn't left you, you know I shouldn't."
+
+"That's no excuse," said Charlotte, sternly.
+
+"You said yourself he would never come back to you," said Rose.
+
+"Would you have liked me to have done so by you, if you had been in
+my place?"
+
+Rose twitched herself about. "You can't expect him never to marry
+anybody because he isn't going to marry you," she said, defiantly.
+
+"I don't--I am not quite so selfish as that. But he won't ever marry
+anybody he don't like because she follows him up, and I don't see how
+that alters what you've done."
+
+Rose began to walk away. Charlotte stood still, but she raised her
+voice. "I am not very happy," said she, "and I sha'n't be happy my
+whole life, but I wouldn't change places with you. You've lowered
+yourself, and that's worse than any unhappiness."
+
+Rose fled away in the darkness without another word, and Charlotte
+crossed the road to go to her Aunt Sylvia's.
+
+Rose, as she went on, felt as if all her dreams were dying within
+her; a dull vision of the next morning when she should awake without
+them weighed upon her. She had a childish sense of shame and remorse,
+and a conviction of the truth of Charlotte's words. And yet she had
+an injured and bewildered feeling, as if somewhere in this terrible
+nature, at whose mercy she was, there was some excuse for her.
+
+Rose was nearly home when she began to meet the people coming from
+meeting. She kept close to the wall, and scudded along swiftly that
+no one might recognize her. All at once a young man whom she had
+passed turned and walked along by her side, making a shy clutch at
+her arm.
+
+"Oh, it's you," she said, wearily.
+
+"Yes; do you care if I walk along with you?"
+
+"No," said Rose, "not if you want to."
+
+An old pang of gratitude came over her. It was only the honest,
+overgrown boy, Tommy Ray, of the store. She had known he worshipped
+her afar off; she had laughed at him and half despised him, but now
+she felt suddenly humble and grateful for even this devotion. She
+moved her arm that he might hold it more closely.
+
+"It's too dark for you to be out alone," he said, in his embarrassed,
+tender voice.
+
+"Yes, it's pretty dark," said Rose. Her voice shook. They had passed
+the last group of returning people. Suddenly Rose, in spite of
+herself, began to cry. She sobbed wildly, and the boy, full of alarm
+and sympathy, walked on by her side.
+
+"There ain't anything--scared you, has there?" he stammered out,
+awkwardly, at length.
+
+"No," sobbed Rose.
+
+"You ain't sick?"
+
+"No, it isn't anything."
+
+The boy held her arm closer; he trembled and almost sobbed himself
+with sympathy. Before they reached the old tavern Rose had stopped
+crying--she even tried to laugh and turn it off with a jest. "I don't
+know what got into me," she said; "I guess I was nervous."
+
+"I didn't know but something had scared you," said the boy.
+
+They stood on the door-steps; the house was dark. Rose's parents had
+gone to bed, and William was out. The boy still held Rose's arm. He
+had adored her secretly ever since he was a child, and he had never
+dared as much as that before. He had thought of Rose like a queen or
+a princess, and the thought had ennobled his boyish ignorance and
+commonness.
+
+"No, I wasn't scared," said Rose, and something in her voice gave
+sudden boldness to her young lover.
+
+He released her arm, and put both his arms around her. "I'm sorry you
+feel so bad," he whispered, panting.
+
+"It isn't anything," returned Rose, but she half sobbed again; the
+boy's round cheek pressed against her wet, burning one. He was
+several years younger than she. She had half scorned him, but she had
+one of those natures that crave love for its own sweetness as palates
+crave sugar.
+
+She wept a little on his shoulder; and the boy, half beside himself
+with joy and terror, stood holding her fast in his arms.
+
+"Don't feel bad," he kept whispering. Finally Rose raised herself. "I
+must go in," she whispered; "good-night."
+
+The boy's pleading face, his innocent, passionate lips approached
+hers, and they kissed each other.
+
+"Don't you--like me a little?" gasped the boy.
+
+"Maybe I will," Rose whispered back. His face came closer, and she
+kissed him again. Then, with a murmured "good-night," she fled into
+the house, and the boy went down the hill with sweeter dreams in his
+heart than those which she had lost.
+
+
+
+Chapter X
+
+
+On the Sunday following the one of Barnabas Thayer's call Sylvia
+Crane appeared at meeting in a black lace veil like a Spanish
+señorita. The heavily wrought black lace fell over her face, and
+people could get only shifting glimpses of her delicate features
+behind it.
+
+Richard Alger glanced furtively at the pale face shrinking austerely
+behind the net-work of black silk leaves and flowers, and wondered at
+some change which he felt but could not fathom. He scarcely knew that
+she had never worn the veil before. And Richard Alger, had he known,
+could never have fathomed the purely feminine motive compounded of
+pride and shame which led his old sweetheart to unearth from the
+depths of a bandbox her mother's worked-lace veil, and tie its narrow
+black drawing-string with trembling fingers over her own bonnet.
+
+"I'd like to know what in creation you've got that veil on for?"
+whispered her sister, Hannah Berry, as they went down the aisle after
+meeting.
+
+"I thought I would," responded Sylvia's muffled voice behind the
+veil.
+
+"You've got the flowers right over your eyes. I shouldn't think you
+could see to walk. You ain't never worn a veil in your life. I can't
+see what has got into you," persisted Hannah.
+
+Sylvia edged away from her as soon as she could, and glided down the
+road towards her own house swiftly, although her knees trembled.
+Sylvia's knees always trembled when she came out of church, after she
+had sat an hour and a half opposite Richard Alger. To-day they felt
+weaker than ever, after her encounter with Hannah. Nobody knew the
+terror Sylvia had of her sister's discovering how she had called in
+Barnabas Thayer, and in a manner unveiled her maiden heart to him.
+When Charlotte had come in that night after Barnabas had gone, and
+discovered her crying on the sofa, she had jumped up and confronted
+her with a fierce instinct of concealment.
+
+"There ain't nothin' new the matter," she said, in response to
+Charlotte's question; "I was thinkin' about mother; I'm apt to when
+it comes dusk." It was the first deliberate lie that Sylvia Crane had
+ever told in her life. She reflected upon it after Charlotte had
+gone, and reflected also with fierce hardihood that she would lie
+again were it necessary. Should she hesitate at a lie if it would
+cover the maiden reserve that she had cherished so long?
+
+However, Charlotte had suspected more than her aunt knew of the true
+cause of her agitation. A similar motive for grief made her acute.
+Sylvia, mourning alone of a Sabbath night upon her hair-cloth sofa,
+struck an old chord of her own heart. Charlotte dared not say a
+word to comfort her directly. She condoled with her for the
+fifteen-years-old loss of her mother, and did not allude to Richard
+Alger; but going home she said to herself, with a miserable qualm of
+pity, that poor Aunt Sylvia was breaking her heart because Richard
+had stopped coming.
+
+"It's harder for Aunt Sylvia because she's older," thought Charlotte,
+on her way home that night. But then she thought also, with a sorer
+qualm of self-pity, that Sylvia had not quite so long a life before
+her, to live alone. Charlotte had nearly reached her own home that
+night when two figures suddenly slunk across the road before her. She
+at once recognized Rebecca Thayer as one of them, and called out
+"Good-evening, Rebecca!" to her.
+
+Rebecca made only a muttered sound in response, and they both
+disappeared in the darkness. There was a look of secrecy and flight
+about it which somehow startled Charlotte, engrossed as she was with
+her own troubles and her late encounter with Rose.
+
+When she got into the house she spoke of it to her mother. Cephas had
+gone to bed, and Sarah was sitting up waiting for her.
+
+"I met Rebecca and William out here," said she, untying her hat, "and
+I thought they acted real queer." Sarah cast a glance at the bedroom
+door, which was ajar, and motioned Charlotte to close it. Charlotte
+tiptoed across the room and shut the door softly, lest she should
+awaken her father; then her mother beckoned her to come close, and
+whispered something in her ear.
+
+Charlotte started, and a great blush flamed out all over her face and
+neck. She looked at her mother with angry shame. "I don't believe a
+word of it," said she; "not a word of it."
+
+"I walked home from meetin' with Mrs. Allen this evenin'," said her
+mother, "an' she says it's all over town. She says Rebecca's been
+stealin' out, an' goin' to walk with him unbeknownst to her mother
+all summer. You know her mother wouldn't let him come to the house."
+
+"I don't believe one word of it," repeated Charlotte.
+
+"Mis' Allen says it's so," said Sarah. "She says Mis' Thayer has had
+to stay home from evenin' meetin' on account of Ephraim--she don't
+like to leave him alone, he ain't been quite so well lately--an'
+Rebecca has made believe go to meetin' when she's been off with
+William. Mis' Thayer went to meetin' to-night."
+
+"Wasn't Mr. Thayer there?"
+
+"Yes, he was there, but he wouldn't know what was goin' on. 'Tain't
+very hard to pull the wool over Caleb Thayer's eyes."
+
+"I don't believe one word of it," Charlotte said, again. When she
+went up-stairs to bed that whisper of her mother's seemed to sound
+through and above all her own trouble. It was to her like a note of
+despair and shame, quite outside her own gamut of life. She could not
+believe that she heard it at all. Rebecca's face as she had always
+known her came up before her. "I don't believe one word of it," she
+said again to herself.
+
+But that whisper which had shocked her ear had already begun to be
+repeated all over the village--by furtive matrons, behind their
+hands, when the children had been sent out of the room; by girls,
+blushing beneath each other's eyes as they whispered; by the lounging
+men in the village store; it was sent like an evil strain through the
+consciousness of the village, until everybody except Rebecca's own
+family had heard it.
+
+Barnabas saw little of other people, and nobody dared repeat the
+whisper to him, and they had too much mercy or too little courage to
+repeat it to Caleb or Deborah. Indeed, it is doubtful if any woman in
+the village, even Hannah Berry, would have ventured to face Deborah
+Thayer with this rumor concerning her daughter.
+
+Deborah had of late felt anxious about Rebecca, who did not seem like
+herself. Her face was strangely changed; all the old meaning had gone
+out of it, and given place to another, which her mother could not
+interpret. Sometimes Rebecca looked like a stranger to her as she
+moved about the house. She said to many that Rebecca was miserable,
+and was incensed that she got so little sympathy in response. Once
+when Rebecca fainted in meeting, and had to be carried out, she felt
+in the midst of her alarm a certain triumph. "I guess folks will see
+now that I ain't been fussin' over her for nothin'," she thought.
+When Rebecca revived under a sprinkle of water, out in the vestibule,
+she said impatiently to the other women bending their grave,
+concerned faces over her, "She's been miserable for some time. I
+ain't surprised at this at all myself."
+
+Deborah watched over Rebecca with a fierce, pecking tenderness like a
+bird. She brewed great bowls of domestic medicines from nuts and
+herbs, and made her drink whether she would or not. She sent her to
+bed early, and debarred her from the night air. She never had a
+suspicion of the figure slipping softly as a shadow across the north
+parlor and out the front door night after night.
+
+She never exchanged a word with Rebecca about William Berry. She
+tried to persuade herself that Rebecca no longer thought much about
+him; she drove from her mind the fear lest Rebecca's illness might be
+due to grief at parting from him. She looked at Thomas Payne with a
+speculative eye; she thought that he would make a good husband for
+Rebecca; she dreamed of him, and built bridal castles for him and her
+daughter, as she knitted those yards of lace at night, when Rebecca
+had gone to bed in her little room off the north parlor. When Thomas
+Payne went west a month after Charlotte Barnard had refused him, she
+transferred her dreams to some fine stranger who should come to the
+village and at once be smitten with Rebecca. She never thought it
+possible that Rebecca could be persisting in her engagement to
+William Berry against her express command. Her own obstinacy was
+incredible to her in her daughter; she had not the slightest
+suspicion of it, and Rebecca had less to guard against.
+
+As the fall advanced Rebecca showed less and less inclination to go
+in the village society. Her mother fairly drove her out at times.
+Once Rebecca, utterly overcome, sank down in a chair and wept when
+her mother urged her to go to a husking-party in the neighborhood.
+
+"You've got to spunk up an' go, if you don't feel like it," said her
+mother. "You'll feel better for it afterwards. There ain't no use in
+givin' up so. I'm goin' to get you a new crimson woollen dress, an'
+I'm goin' to have you go out more'n you've done lately."
+
+"I--don't want a new dress," returned Rebecca, with wild sobs.
+
+"Well, I'm goin' to get you one to-morrow," said her mother. "Now go
+an' wash your face an' do up your hair, an' get ready. You can wear
+your brown dress, with the cherry ribbon in your hair, to-night."
+
+"I don't--feel fit to, mother," moaned Rebecca, piteously.
+
+But Deborah would not listen to her. She made her get ready for the
+husking-party, and looked at her with pride when she stood all
+dressed to go, in the kitchen.
+
+"You look better than you've done for some time," said she, "an' that
+brown dress don't look bad, either, if you have had it three winters.
+I'm goin' to get you a nice new crimson woollen this winter. I've had
+my mind made up to for some time."
+
+After Rebecca had gone and Ephraim had said his catechism and gone to
+bed, Deborah sat and knitted, and planned to get the crimson dress
+for Rebecca the next day.
+
+She looked over at Caleb, who sat dozing by the fire. "I'll go
+to-morrow, if he ain't got to spend all that last interest-money for
+the parish taxes an' cuttin' that wood," said she. "I dunno how much
+that wood-cuttin' come to, an' he won't know to-night if I wake him
+up. I can't get it through his head. But I'll buy it to-morrow if
+there's money enough left."
+
+But Deborah was forced to wait a few weeks, since it took all the
+interest-money for the parish taxes and to pay for the wood-cutting.
+She had to wait until Caleb had sold some of the wood, and that took
+some time, since seller and purchasers were slow-motioned.
+
+At last, one afternoon, she drove herself over to Bolton in the
+chaise to buy the dress. She went to Bolton, because she would not go
+herself to Silas Berry's store and trade with William. She could send
+Caleb there for household goods, but this dress she would trust no
+one but herself to purchase.
+
+She had planned that Rebecca should go with her, but the girl looked
+so utterly wan and despairing that day that she forbore to insist
+upon it. Caleb would have accompanied her, but she would not let him.
+"I never did think much of men-folks standin' round in stores gawpin'
+while women-folks was tradin'," said she. She would not allow Ephraim
+to go, although he pleaded hard. It was quite a cold day, and she was
+afraid of the sharp air for his laboring breath.
+
+A little after noon she set forth, all alone in the chaise, slapping
+the reins energetically over the white horse's back, a thick green
+veil tied over her bonnet under her chin, and the thin, sharp wedge
+of face visible between the folds crimsoning in the frosty wind.
+
+While she was gone Rebecca sat beside the window and sewed, Caleb
+shelled corn in the chimney-corner, and Ephraim made a pretence of
+helping him. "You set down an' help your father shell corn while I am
+gone," his mother had sternly ordered.
+
+Occasionally Ephraim addressed whining remonstrances to his father,
+and begged to be allowed to go out-of-doors, and Caleb would quiet
+him with one effectual rejoinder: "You know she won't like it if you
+do, sonny. You know what she said."
+
+Caleb, as he shelled the corn with the pottering patience of old age
+and constitutional slowness, glanced now and then at his daughter in
+the window. He thought she looked very badly, and he had all the time
+lately the bewildered feeling of a child who sees in a familiar face
+the marks of emotions unknown to it.
+
+"Don't you feel as well as common to-day, Rebecca?" he asked once,
+and cleared his throat.
+
+"I don't feel sick, as I know of, any day," replied Rebecca, shortly,
+and her face reddened.
+
+As she sewed she looked out now and then at the wild December day,
+the trees reeling in the wind, and the sky driving with the leaden
+clouds. It was too cold and too windy to snow all the afternoon, but
+towards night it moderated, and the wind died down. When Mrs. Thayer
+came home it was snowing quite hard, and her green veil was white
+when she entered the kitchen. She took it off and shook it,
+sputtering moisture in the fireplace.
+
+"There's goin' to be a hard storm; it's lucky I went to-day," said
+she. "I kept the dress under the buffalo-robe, an' that ain't hurt
+any."
+
+Deborah waxed quite angry, when she proudly shook out the soft
+gleaming crimson lengths of thibet, because Rebecca showed so little
+interest in it. "You don't deserve to have a new dress; you act like
+a stick of wood," she said.
+
+Rebecca made no reply. Presently, when she had gone out of the room
+for something, Caleb said, anxiously, "I guess she don't feel quite
+so well as common to-night."
+
+"I'm gettin' most out of patience; I dunno what ails her. I'm goin'
+to have the doctor if this keeps on," returned Deborah.
+
+Ephraim, sucking a stick of candy brought to him from Bolton, cast a
+strange glance at his mother--a glance compounded of shrewdness and
+terror; but she did not see it.
+
+It snowed hard all night; in the morning the snow was quite deep, and
+there was no appearance of clearing. As soon as the breakfast dishes
+were put away, Deborah got out the crimson thibet. She had learned
+the tailoring and dressmaking trade in her youth, and she always cut
+and fitted the garments for the family.
+
+She worked assiduously; by the middle of the forenoon the dress was
+ready to be tried on. Ephraim and his father were out in the barn,
+she and Rebecca were alone in the house.
+
+She made Rebecca stand up in the middle of the kitchen floor, and she
+began fitting the crimson gown to her. Rebecca stood drooping
+heavily, her eyes cast down. Suddenly her mother gave a great start,
+pushed the girl violently from her, and stood aloof. She did not
+speak for a few minutes; the clock ticked in the dreadful silence.
+Rebecca cast one glance at her mother, whose eyes seemed to light the
+innermost recesses of her being to her own vision; then she would
+have looked away, but her mother's voice arrested her.
+
+"Look at me," said Deborah. And Rebecca looked; it was like
+uncovering a disfigurement or a sore.
+
+"What--ails you?" said her mother, in a terrible voice.
+
+Then Rebecca turned her head; her mother's eyes could not hold her
+any longer. It was as if her very soul shrank.
+
+"Go out of this house," said her mother, after a minute.
+
+Rebecca did not make a sound. She went, bending as if there were a
+wind at her back impelling her, across the kitchen in her quilted
+petticoat and her crimson thibet waist, her white arms hanging bare.
+She opened the door that led towards her own bedroom, and passed out.
+
+Presently Deborah, still standing where Rebecca had left her, heard
+the front door of the house shut. After a few minutes she took the
+broom from its peg in the corner, went through the icy north parlor,
+past Rebecca's room, to the front door. The snow heaped on the outer
+threshold had fallen in when Rebecca opened it, and there was a
+quantity on the entry floor.
+
+Deborah opened the door again, and swept out the snow carefully; she
+even swept the snow off the steps outside, but she never cast a
+glance up or down the road. Then she beat the snow off the broom, and
+went in and locked the door behind her.
+
+On her way back to the kitchen she paused at Rebecca's little
+bedroom. The waist of the new gown lay on the bad. She took it out
+into the kitchen, and folded it carefully with the skirt and the
+pieces; then she carried it up to the garret and laid it away in a
+chest.
+
+When Caleb and Ephraim came in from the barn they found Deborah
+sitting at the window knitting a stocking. She did not look up when
+they entered.
+
+The corn was not yet shelled, and Caleb arranged his baskets in the
+chimney-corner, and fell to again. Ephraim began teasing his mother
+to let him crack some nuts, but she silenced him peremptorily. "Set
+down an' help your father shell that corn," said she. And Ephraim
+pulled a grating chair up to his father, muttering cautiously.
+
+Caleb kept looking at Deborah anxiously. He glanced at the door
+frequently.
+
+"Where's Rebecca?" he asked at last.
+
+"I dunno," replied Deborah.
+
+"Has she laid down?"
+
+"No, she ain't."
+
+"She ain't gone out in the snow, has she?" Caleb said, with deploring
+anxiety.
+
+Deborah answered not a word. She pursed her lips and knitted.
+
+"She ain't, has she, mother?"
+
+"Keep on with your corn," said Deborah; and that was all she would
+say.
+
+Presently she arose and prepared dinner in the same dogged silence.
+Caleb, and even Ephraim, watched her furtively, with alarmed eyes.
+
+When Rebecca did not appear at the dinner-table Caleb did not say
+anything about it, but his old face was quite pale. He ate his dinner
+from the force of habit of over seventy years, during which time he
+had always eaten his dinner, but he did not taste it consciously.
+
+He made up his mind that as soon as he got up from the table he would
+go over to Barney's and consult him. After he pushed his chair away
+he was slipping out shyly, but Deborah stopped him.
+
+"Set down an' finish that corn. I don't want it clutterin' up the
+kitchen any longer," said she.
+
+"I thought I'd jest slip out a minute, mother."
+
+Deborah motioned him towards the chimney-corner and the baskets of
+corn with a stern gesture, and Caleb obeyed. Ephraim, too, settled
+down beside his father, and fell to shelling corn without being told.
+He was quite cowed and intimidated by this strange mood of his
+mother's, and involuntarily shrank closer to his father when she
+passed near him.
+
+Caleb and Ephraim both watched Deborah with furtive terror, as she
+moved about, washing and putting away the dinner-dishes and sweeping
+the kitchen.
+
+They looked at each other, when, after the after-dinner housework was
+all done, she took her shawl and hood from the peg, and drew some old
+wool socks of Caleb's over her shoes. She went out without saying a
+word. Ephraim waited a few minutes after the door shut behind her;
+then he ran to the window.
+
+"She's gone to Barney's," he announced, rolling great eyes over his
+shoulder at his father; and the old man also went over to the window
+and watched Deborah plodding through the snow up the street.
+
+It was not snowing so hard now, and the clouds were breaking, but a
+bitter wind was blowing from the northwest. It drove Deborah along
+before it, lashing her skirts around her gaunt limbs; but she leaned
+back upon it, and did not bend.
+
+The road was not broken out, and the snow was quite deep, but she
+went along with no break in her gait. She went into Barney's yard and
+knocked at his door. She set her mouth harder when she heard him
+coming.
+
+Barney opened the door and started when he saw who was there. "Is it
+you, mother?" he said, involuntarily; then his face hardened like
+hers, and he waited. The mother and son confronted each other looked
+more alike than ever.
+
+Deborah opened her mouth to speak twice before she made a sound. She
+stood upright and unyielding, but her face was ghastly, and she drew
+her breath in long, husky gasps. Finally she spoke, and Barney
+started again at her voice.
+
+"I want you to go after William Berry and make him marry Rebecca,"
+she said.
+
+"Mother, what do you mean?"
+
+"I want you to go after William Berry and make him marry Rebecca."
+
+"Mother!"
+
+"Rebecca is gone. I turned her out of the house this mornin'. I don't
+know where she is. Go and find her, and make William Berry marry
+her."
+
+"Mother, before the Lord, I don't know what you mean!" Barney cried
+out. "You didn't turn Rebecca out of the house in all this storm!
+What did you turn her out for? Where is she?"
+
+"I don't know where she is. I turned her out because I wouldn't have
+her in the house. You brought it all on us; if you hadn't acted so I
+shouldn't have felt as I did about her marryin'. Now you can go an'
+find her, and get William Berry an' make him marry her. I ain't got
+anything more to do with it."
+
+Deborah turned, and went out of the yard.
+
+"Mother!" Barney called after her, but she kept on. He stood for a
+second looking after her retreating figure, struggling sternly with
+the snow-drifts, meeting the buffets of the wind with her head up;
+then he went in, and put on his boots and his overcoat.
+
+Barney had heard not one word of the village gossip, and the
+revelation in his mother's words had come to him with a great shock.
+As he went up the hill to the old tavern he could hardly believe that
+he had understood her rightly. Once he paused and turned, and was
+half inclined to go back. He was as pure-minded as a girl, and almost
+as ignorant; he could not believe that he knew what she meant.
+
+Barney hesitated again before the store; then he opened the great
+clanging door and went in. A farmer, in a blue frock stiff with snow,
+had just completed his purchases and was going out. William, who had
+been waiting upon him, was quite near the door behind the counter. At
+the farther end of the store could be seen the red glow of a stove
+and Tommy Ray's glistening fair had. Some one else, who had shrunk
+out of sight when Barney entered, was also there.
+
+Barney saw no one but William. He looked at him, and all his
+bewilderment gathered itself into a point. He felt a sudden fierce
+impulse to spring at him.
+
+William looked at Barney, and his faced changed in a minute. He took
+up his hat, and came around the counter. "Did you want to see me?" he
+said, hoarsely.
+
+"Come outside," said Barney. And the two men went out, and stood in
+the snow before the store.
+
+"Where is Rebecca?" said Barney. He looked at William, and again the
+savage impulse seized him. William did not shrink before it.
+
+[Illustration: "'Where is Rebecca?' said Barney"]
+
+"What do you mean?" he returned. His lips were quite stiff and white,
+but he looked back at Barney.
+
+"Don't you know where she is?"
+
+"Before God I don't, Barney. What do you mean?"
+
+"She left home this morning. Mother turned her out."
+
+"Turned her out!" repeated William.
+
+"Come with me and find her and marry her, or I'll kill you," said
+Barney, and he lashed out suddenly with his fist in William's face.
+
+"You won't need to, for I'll kill myself if I don't," William gasped
+out. Then he turned and ran.
+
+"Where are you going?" Barney shouted, rushing after him, in a fury.
+
+"To put the horse in the cutter," William called back. And, indeed,
+he was headed towards the barn. Barney followed him, and the two men
+put the horse between the shafts. Once William asked, hoarsely, "Any
+idea which way?" and Barney shook his head.
+
+"What time did she go?"
+
+"Some time this forenoon."
+
+William groaned.
+
+The horse was nearly harnessed when Tommy Ray came running out from
+the store, and beckoned to Barney. "Rose says she see her going up
+the turnpike this morning," he said, in a low voice. "She was up in
+her chamber that looks over the turnpike, and she see somebody goin'
+up the turnpike. She thought it looked like Rebecca, but she supposed
+it must be Mis' Jim Sloane. It must have been Rebecca."
+
+"What time was it?" William asked, thrusting his white face between
+them. The boy turned aside with a gesture of contempt and dislike.
+"About half-past ten," he answered, shortly. Then he turned on his
+heel and went back to the store. Rose was peering around the
+half-open door with a white, shocked face. Somehow she had fathomed
+the cause of the excitement.
+
+"We'll go up the turnpike, then," said Barney. William nodded. The
+two men sprang into the cutter, and the snow flew in their faces from
+the horse's hoofs as they went out the barn door.
+
+The old tavern stood facing the old turnpike road to Boston, but the
+store and barn faced on the new road at its back, and people
+generally approached the tavern by that way.
+
+William and Barney had to drive down the hill; then turn the corner,
+and up the hill again on the old turnpike.
+
+There was not a house on that road for a full mile. William urged the
+horse as fast as he could through the fresh snow. Both men kept a
+sharp lookout at the sides of the road. The sun was out now, and the
+snow was blinding white; the north wind drove a glittering spray as
+sharp and stinging as diamond-dust in their faces.
+
+Once William cried out, with a dry sob, "My God, she'll freeze in
+this wind, if she's out in it!"
+
+And Barney answered, "Maybe it would be better for her if she did."
+
+William looked at him for the first time since they started. "See
+here, Barney," he said, "God knows it's not to shield myself--I'm
+past that; but I've begged her all summer to be married. I've been
+down on my knees to her to be married before it came to this."
+
+"Why wouldn't she?"
+
+"I don't know, oh, I don't know! The poor girl was near distracted.
+Her mother forbade her to marry me, and held up her Aunt Rebecca, who
+married against her parents' wishes and hung herself, before her, all
+the time. Your trouble with Charlotte Barnard brought it all about.
+Her mother never opposed it before. I begged her to marry me, but she
+was afraid, or something, I don't know what."
+
+"Can't you drive faster?" said Barney.
+
+William had been urging the horse while he spoke, but now he shook
+the whip over him again.
+
+Mrs. Jim Sloane's house was a long, unpainted cottage quite near the
+road. The woman who lived alone there was under a kind of indefinite
+ban in the village. Her husband, who had died several years before,
+had been disreputable and drunken, and the mantle of his disgrace had
+seemed to fall upon his wife, if indeed she was not already provided
+with such a mantle of her own. Everybody spoke slightingly of Mrs.
+Jim Sloane. The men laughed meaningly when they saw her pass, wrapped
+in an old plaid shawl, which she wore summer and winter, and which
+seemed almost like a uniform. Stories were told of her dirt and
+shiftlessness, of the hens which roosted in her kitchen. Poor Mrs.
+Jim Sloane, in her blue plaid shawl, tramping frequently from her
+solitary house through the village, was a byword and a mocking to all
+the people.
+
+When William and Barney came abreast of her house they saw the blue
+flutter of Mrs. Jim Sloane's shawl out before, above the blue dazzle
+of the snow.
+
+"Hullo!" she was crying out in her shrill voice, and waving her hand
+to them to stop.
+
+William pulled the horse up short, and the woman came plunging
+through the snow close to his side.
+
+"She's in here," she said, with a knowing smile. The faded fair hair
+blew over her eyes; she pushed it back with a coquettish gesture;
+there was a battered prettiness about her thin pink-and-white face,
+turning blue in the sharp wind.
+
+"When did she get here?" asked Barney.
+
+"This forenoon. She fell down out here, couldn't get no farther. I
+came out an' got her into the house. Didn't know but she was done to;
+but I fixed her up some hot drink an' made her lay down. I s'posed
+you'd be along." She smiled again.
+
+William jumped out of the cutter, and tied the horse to an old
+fence-post. Then he and Barney followed the woman into the house.
+Barney looked at the old blue plaid shawl with utter disgust and
+revulsion. He had always felt a loathing for the woman, and her being
+a distant relative on his father's side intensified it.
+
+Mrs. Sloane threw open the door, and bade them enter, as if to a
+festival. "Walk right in," said she.
+
+There was a wild flutter of hens as they entered. Mrs. Sloane drove
+them before her. "The hen-house roof fell in, an' I have to keep 'em
+in here," she said, and shooed them and shook her shawl at them,
+until they alighted all croaking with terror upon the bed in the
+corner.
+
+Then she looked inquiringly around the room. "Why," she cried, "she's
+gone; she was settin' here in this rockin'-chair when I went out. She
+must have run when she see you comin'!"
+
+Mrs. Sloane hustled through a door, the tattered fringes of her shawl
+flying, and then her voice, shrilly expostulating, was heard in the
+next room.
+
+The two men waited, standing side by side near the door in a shamed
+silence. They did not look at each other.
+
+Presently Mrs. Sloane returned without her shawl. Her old cotton gown
+showed tattered and patched, and there were glimpses of her sharp
+white elbows at the sleeves. "She won't come out a step," she
+announced. "I can't make her. She's takin' on terribly."
+
+William made a stride forward. "I'll go in and see her," he said,
+hoarsely; but Mrs. Jim Sloane stood suddenly in his way, her slender
+back against the door.
+
+"No, you ain't goin' in," said she, "I told her I wouldn't let you go
+in."
+
+William looked at her.
+
+"She's dreadful set against either one of you comin' in, an' I told
+her you shouldn't," she said, firmly. She smoothed her wild locks
+down tightly over her ears as she spoke. All the coquettish look was
+gone.
+
+William turned around, and looked helplessly at Barney, and Barney
+looked back at him. Then Barney put on his hat, and shrugged himself
+more closely into his great-coat.
+
+"I'll go and get the minister," he said.
+
+Mrs. Sloane thrust her chin out alertly. "Goin' to get her married
+right off?" she asked, with a confidential smile.
+
+Barney ignored her. "I guess it's the best way to do," he said,
+sternly, to William; and William nodded.
+
+"Well, I guess 'tis the best way," Mrs. Sloane said, with cheerful
+assent. "I don't b'lieve you could hire her to come out of that room
+an' go to the minister's, nohow. She's terrible upset, poor thing."
+
+As Barney went out of the door he cast a look full of involuntary
+suspicion back at William, and hesitated a second on the threshold.
+Mrs. Sloane intercepted the look. "I'll look out he don't run away
+while you're gone," she said; then she laughed.
+
+William's white face flamed up suddenly, but he made no reply. When
+Barney had gone he drew a chair up close to the hearth, and sat
+there, bent over, with his elbows on his knees. Mrs. Sloane sat down
+on the foot of the bed, close to the door of the other room, as if
+she were mounting guard over it. She kept looking at William, and
+smiling, and opening her mouth to speak, then checking herself.
+
+"It's a pretty cold day," she said, finally.
+
+William grunted assent without looking up. Then he motioned with his
+shoulder towards the door of the other room. "Ain't it cold in
+there?" he half whispered.
+
+"I rolled her all up in my shawl; I guess she won't ketch cold; it's
+thick," responded the woman, effusively, and William said no more. He
+sat with his chin in his hands and his eyes fixed absently. The fire
+was smoking over a low, red glow of coals, the chimney-place yawned
+black before him, the hearth was all strewn with pots and kettles,
+and the shelf above it was piled high with a vague household litter.
+It had leaked around the chimney, and there was a great discolored
+blotch on the wall above the shelf, and the ceiling. Two or three
+hens came pecking around the kettles at William's feet.
+
+To this young man, brought up in the extreme thrift and neatness of a
+typical New England household, this strange untidiness, as he viewed
+it through his strained mental state, seemed to have a deeper
+significance, and reveal the very shame and squalor of the soul
+itself, and its own existence and thoughts, by material images.
+
+He might from his own sensations, as he sat there, have been actually
+translated into a veritable hell, from the utter strangeness of the
+atmosphere which his thoughts seemed to gasp in. William had never
+come fully into the atmosphere of his own sin before, but now he had,
+and somehow the untidy pots and kettles on the hearth made it more
+real. He was conscious as he sat there of very little pity for the
+girl in the other room, of very little love for her, and also of very
+little love or pity for himself; he felt nothing but a kind of
+horror. He saw suddenly the alien side of life, and the alien side of
+his own self, which he would always have kept faced out towards
+space, away from all eyes, like the other side of the moon, and that
+was for the time all he could grasp.
+
+Once or twice Mrs. Sloane volunteered a remark, but he scarcely
+responded, and once he heard absently her voice and Rebecca's in the
+other room. Otherwise he sat in utter silence, except for the low
+chuckle of the hens and the taps of their beaks against the iron
+pots, until Barney came with the minister and the minister's wife.
+
+Barney had taken the minister aside, and asked him, stammeringly, if
+he thought his wife would come. He could not bear the thought of the
+Sloane woman's being a witness at his sister's wedding. The minister
+and his wife were both very young, and had not lived long in
+Pembroke. They looked much alike: the minister's small, pale, peaked
+face peered with anxious solicitude between the folds of the great
+green scarf which he tied over his cap, and his wife looked like him
+out of her great wadded green silk hood, when they got into the
+sleigh with Barney.
+
+The minister had had a whispered conference with his wife, and now
+she never once let her eyes rest on either of the two men as they
+slid swiftly along over the new snow. Her heart beat loudly in her
+ears, her little thin hands were cold in her great muff. She had
+married very young, out of a godly New England minister's home. She
+had never known anything like this before, and a sort of general
+shame of femininity seemed to be upon her.
+
+When she followed her husband into Mrs. Sloane's house she felt
+herself as burdened with shame--as if she stood in Rebecca's place.
+Her little face, all blue with the sharp cold, shrank, shocked and
+sober, into the depths of her great hood. She stood behind her
+husband, her narrow girlish shoulders bending under her thick
+mantilla, and never looked at the face of anybody in the room.
+
+She did not see William at all. He stood up before them as they
+entered; they all nodded gravely. Nobody spoke but Mrs. Sloane,
+vibrating nervously in the midst of her clamorous hens, and Barney
+silenced her.
+
+"We'll go right in," he said, in a stern, peremptory tone; then he
+turned to William. "Are you ready?" he asked.
+
+William nodded, with his eyes cast down. The party made a motion
+towards the other room, but Mrs. Sloane unexpectedly stood before the
+door.
+
+"I told her there shouldn't nobody come in," said she, "an' I ain't
+goin' to have you all bustin' in on her without she knows it. She's
+terrible upset. You wait a minute."
+
+Mrs. Sloane's blue eyes glared defiantly at the company. The
+minister's wife bent her hooded head lower. She had heard about Mrs.
+Sloane, and felt as if she were confronted by a woman from Revelation
+and there was a flash of scarlet in the room.
+
+"Go in and tell her we are coming," said Barney. And Mrs. Sloane
+slipped out of the room cautiously, opening the door only a little
+way. Her voice was heard, and suddenly Rebecca's rang out shrill in
+response, although they could not distinguish the words. Mrs. Sloane
+looked out. "She says she won't be married," she whispered.
+
+"You let me see her," said Barney, and he took a stride forward, but
+Mrs. Sloane held the door against him.
+
+"You can't," she whispered again. "I'll talk to her some more. I can
+talk her over, if anybody can."
+
+Barney fell back, and again the door was shut and the voices were
+heard. This time Rebecca's arose into a wail, and they heard her cry
+out, "I won't, I won't! Go away, and stop talking to me! I won't! Go
+away!"
+
+William turned around, and hid his face against the corner of the
+mantel-shelf. Barney went up and clapped him roughly on the shoulder.
+"Can't you go in there and make her listen to reason?" he said.
+
+But just then Mrs. Sloane opened the door again. "You can walk right
+in now," she announced, smiling, her thin mouth sending the lines of
+her whole face into smirking upward curves.
+
+The whole company edged forward solemnly. Mrs. Sloane was following,
+but Barney stood in her way. "I guess you'd better not come in," he
+said, abruptly.
+
+Mrs. Sloane's face flushed a burning red. "I guess," she began, in a
+loud voice, but Barney shut the door in her face. She ran noisily,
+stamping her feet like an angry child, to the fireplace, caught up a
+heavy kettle, and threw it down on the hearth. The hens flew up with
+a great clamor and whir of wings; Mrs. Sloane's shrill, mocking laugh
+arose above it. She began talking in a high-pitched voice, flinging
+out vituperations which would seem to patter against the closed door
+like bullets. Suddenly she stopped, as if her ire had failed her, and
+listened intently to a low murmur from the other room. She nodded her
+head when it ceased.
+
+The door opened soon, and all except Rebecca came out. They stood
+consulting together in low voices, and Mrs. Sloane listened. They
+were deciding where to take Rebecca.
+
+All at once Mrs. Sloane spoke. Her voice was still high-pitched with
+anger.
+
+"If you want to know where to take her to, I can tell you," said she.
+"I'd keep her here an' welcome, but I s'pose you think I ain't good
+enough, you're all such mighty particular folks, an' ain't never had
+no disgrace in your own families. William Berry can't take her to his
+home to-night, for his mother wouldn't leave a whole skin on either
+of 'em. Her own mother has turned her out, an' Barney can't take her
+in. She's got to go somewhere where there's a woman; she's terrible
+upset. There ain't no other way but for you an' Mis' Barnes to take
+her home to-night, an' keep her till William gets a place fixed to
+put her in." Mrs. Sloane turned to the minister and his wife,
+regarding them with a mixture of defiance, sarcasm, and appeal.
+
+They looked at each other hesitatingly. The minister's wife paled
+within her hood, and her eyes reddened with tears.
+
+"I shouldn't s'pose you'd need any time to think on it, such good
+folks as you be," said Mrs. Sloane. "There ain't no other way. She's
+got to be where there's a woman."
+
+Mrs. Barnes turned her head towards her husband. "She can come, if
+you think she ought to," she said, in a trembling voice.
+
+The sun was setting when the party started. William led Rebecca out
+through the kitchen--a muffled, hesitating figure, whose very
+identity seemed to be lost, for she wore Mrs. Sloane's blue plaid
+shawl pinned closely over her head and face--and lifted her into his
+cutter with the minister and his wife. Then he and Barney walked
+along, plodding through the deep snow behind the cutter. The sun was
+setting, and it was bitterly cold; the snow creaked and the trees
+swung with a stiff rattle of bare limbs in the wind.
+
+The two men never spoke to each other. The minister drove slowly, and
+they could always see Mrs. Jim Sloane's blue plaid shawl ahead.
+
+When they reached the Caleb Thayer house, Barney stopped and William
+followed on alone after the sleigh.
+
+Barney turned into the yard, and his father was standing in the barn
+door, looking out.
+
+"Tell mother she's married," Barney sang out, hoarsely. Then he went
+back to the road, and home to his own house.
+
+
+
+Chapter XI
+
+
+Barney went to see Rebecca the next day, but the minister's wife came
+to the door and would not admit him. She puckered her lips painfully,
+and a blush shot over her face and little thin throat as she stood
+there before him. "I guess you had better not come in," said she,
+nervously. "I guess you had better wait until Mrs. Berry gets settled
+in her house. Mr. Berry is going to hire the old Bennett place. I
+guess it would be pleasanter."
+
+Barney turned away, blushing also as he stammered an assent. Always
+keenly alive to the shame of the matter, it seemed as if his sense of
+it were for the moment intensified. The minister's wife's whole
+nature seemed turned into a broadside of mirrors towards Rebecca's
+shame and misery, and it was as if the reflection was multiplied in
+Barney as he looked at her.
+
+Still, he could not take the shame to his own nature as she could,
+being a woman. He looked back furtively at the house as he went down
+the road, thinking he might catch a glimpse of poor Rebecca at the
+window.
+
+But Rebecca kept herself well hid. After William had hired the old
+Bennet house and established her there, she lived with curtains down
+and doors bolted. Never a neighbor saw her face at door or window,
+although all the women who lived near did their housework with eyes
+that way. She would not go to the door if anybody knocked. The caller
+would hear her scurrying away. Nobody could gain admittance if
+William were not at home.
+
+Barney went to the door once, and her voice sounded unexpectedly loud
+and piteously shrill in response to his knock.
+
+"You can't come in! go away!" cried Rebecca.
+
+"I don't want to say anything hard to you," said Barney.
+
+"Go away, go away!" repeated Rebecca, and then he heard her sob.
+
+"Don't cry," pleaded Barney, futilely, through the door. But he heard
+his sister's retreating steps and her sobs dying away in the
+distance.
+
+He went away, and did not try to see her again.
+
+Rose went to see Rebecca, stealing out of a back door and scudding
+across snowy fields lest her mother should espy her and stop her. But
+Rebecca had not come to the door, although Rose had stood there a
+long time in a bitter wind.
+
+"She wouldn't let me in," she whispered to her brother in the store,
+when she returned. She was friendly to him in a shamefaced, evasive
+sort of way, and she alone of his family. His father and mother
+scarcely noticed him.
+
+"Much as ever as she'll let me in, poor girl," responded William,
+looking miserably aside from his sister's eyes and weighing out some
+meal.
+
+"She wouldn't let mother in if she went there," said Rose. She felt a
+little piqued at Rebecca's refusing her admittance. It was as if all
+her pity and generous sympathy had been thrust back upon her, and her
+pride in it swamped.
+
+"There's no danger of her going there," William returned, bitterly.
+
+And there was not. Hannah Berry would have set herself up in a
+pillory as soon as she would have visited her son's wife. She
+scarcely went into a neighbor's lest she should hear some allusion to
+it.
+
+Rebecca's father often walked past her house with furtive, wistful
+eyes towards the windows. Once or twice when nobody was looking he
+knocked timidly, but he never got any response. He always took a
+circuitous route home, that his wife might not know where he had
+been. Deborah never spoke of Rebecca; neither Caleb nor Ephraim dared
+mention her name in her hearing.
+
+Although Deborah never asked a question, and although people were shy
+of alluding to Rebecca, she yet seemed to know, in some occult and
+instinctive fashion, all about her.
+
+When a funeral procession passed the Thayer house one afternoon
+Deborah knew quite well whose little coffin was in the hearse,
+although she could scarcely have said that anybody had told her.
+
+Caleb came to her after dinner, with a strange, defiant air. "I want
+a clean dicky, mother; I'm agoin'," said he. And Deborah got out the
+old man's Sunday clothes for him without a word. She even brushed his
+hair with hard, careful strokes, and helped him on with his
+great-coat; but she never said a word about Rebecca and her baby's
+funeral.
+
+"They had some white posies on it," Caleb volunteered, tremblingly,
+when he got home.
+
+Deborah made no reply.
+
+"There was quite a lot there," added Caleb.
+
+"Go an' bring me in some kindlin' wood," said Deborah.
+
+Ephraim stood by, staring alternately at his father and mother. He
+had watched the funeral procession pass with furtive interest.
+
+"It won't hurt you none to make a few lamp-lighters," said his
+mother. "You set right down here, an' I'll get you some paper."
+
+Ephraim clapped his hand to his side, and rolled his eyes agonizingly
+towards his mother, but she took no notice. She got some paper out of
+the cupboard, and Ephraim sat down and began quirling it into long
+spirals with a wretched sulky air.
+
+Since his sister's marriage Ephraim had had a sterner experience than
+had ever fallen to his lot before. His mother redoubled her
+discipline over him. It was as if she had resolved, since all her
+vigorous training had failed in the case of his sister, that she
+would intensify it to such purpose that it should not fail with him.
+
+So strait and narrow was the path in which Ephraim was forced to
+tread those wintry days, so bound and fettered was he by precept and
+admonition, that it seemed as if his very soul could do no more than
+shuffle along where his mother pointed.
+
+A scanty and simple diet had Ephraim, and it seemed to him not so
+much from a solicitude for his health as from a desire to mortify his
+flesh for the good of his spirit. Ephraim obeyed perforce; he was
+sincerely afraid of his mother, but he had within him a dogged and
+growing resentment against those attempts to improve his spirit.
+
+Not a bit of cake was he allowed to taste. When the door of a certain
+closet in which pound-cake for possible guests was always kept in a
+jar, and had been ever since Ephraim could remember, was opened, the
+boy's eyes would fairly glare with desire. "Jest gimme a little
+scrap, mother," he would whine. He had formerly, on rare occasions,
+been allowed a small modicum of cake, but now his mother was
+unyielding. He got not a crumb; he could only sniff hungrily at the
+rich, spicy, and fruity aroma which came forth from the closet, and
+swallow at it vainly and unsatisfactorily with straining palate.
+
+Ephraim was not allowed a soft-stoned plum from a piece of mince-pie;
+the pie had always been tabooed. He was not even allowed to pick over
+the plums for the pies, unless under the steady watch of his mother's
+eyes. Once she seemed to see him approach a plum to his mouth when
+her back was towards him.
+
+"What are you doing, Ephraim?" she said, and her voice sounded to the
+boy like one from the Old Testament. He put the plum promptly into
+the bowl instead of his mouth.
+
+"I ain't doin' nothin', mother," said he; but his eyes rolled
+alarmedly after his mother as she went across the kitchen. That
+frightened Ephraim. He was a practical boy and not easily imposed
+upon, but it really seemed to him that his mother had seen him, after
+some occult and uncanny fashion, from the back of her head. A vague
+and preposterous fancy actually passed through his bewildered boyish
+brain that the little, tightly twisted knob of hair on the back of a
+feminine head might have some strange visual power of its own.
+
+He never dared taste another plum, even if the knob of hair directly
+faced him.
+
+Every day Ephraim had a double task to learn in his catechism, for
+Deborah held that no labor, however arduous, which savored of the
+Word and the Spirit could work him bodily ill. If Ephraim had been
+enterprising and daring enough, he would have fairly cursed the
+Westminster divines, as he sat hour after hour, crooking his boyish
+back painfully over their consolidated wisdom, driving the letter of
+their dogmas into his boyish brain, while the sense of them utterly
+escaped him.
+
+There was one whole day during which Ephraim toiled, laboriously
+conning over the majestic sentences in loud whispers, and received
+thereby only a vague impression and maudlin hope that he himself
+might be one of the elect of which they treated, because he was so
+strenuously deprived of plums in this life, and might therefore
+reasonably expect his share of them in the life to come.
+
+That day poor Ephraim--glancing between whiles at some boys out
+coasting over in a field, down a fine icy slope, hearing now and then
+their shouts of glee--had a certain sense of superiority and
+complacency along with the piteous and wistful longing which always
+abode in his heart.
+
+"Maybe," thought Ephraim, half unconsciously, not framing the thought
+in words to his mind--"maybe if I am a good boy, and don't have any
+plums, nor go out coasting like them, I shall go to heaven, and maybe
+they won't." Ephraim's poor purple face at the window-pane took on a
+strange, serious expression as he evolved his childish tenet of
+theology. His mother came in from another room. "Have you got that
+learned?" said she, and Ephraim bent over his task again.
+
+Ephraim had not been quite as well as usual this winter, and his
+mother had been more than usually anxious about him. She called the
+doctor in finally, and followed him out into the cold entry when he
+left. "He's worse than he has been, ain't he?" she said, abruptly.
+
+The doctor hesitated. He was an old man with a moderate manner. He
+buttoned his old great-coat, redolent of drugs, closer, his breath
+steamed out in the frosty entry. "I guess you had better be a little
+careful about getting him excited," he said at last, evasively. "You
+had better get along as easy as you can with him." The doctor's
+manner implied more than his words; he had his own opinion of Deborah
+Thayer's sternness of rule, and he had sympathy with Rebecca.
+
+Deborah seemed to have an intuition of it, for she looked at him, and
+raised her voice after a manner which would have become the Deborah
+of the scriptures.
+
+"What would you have me do?" she demanded. "Would you have me let him
+have his own way if it were for the injury of his soul?" It was
+curious that Deborah, as she spoke, seemed to look only at the
+spiritual side of the matter. The idea that her discipline was
+actually necessary for her son's bodily weal did not occur to her,
+and she did not urge it as an argument.
+
+"I guess you had better be a little careful and get along as easy as
+you can," repeated the doctor, opening the door.
+
+"That ain't all that's to be thought of," said Deborah, with stern
+and tragic emphasis, as the doctor went out.
+
+"What did the doctor say, mother?" Ephraim inquired, when she went
+into the room again. He looked half scared, half important, as he sat
+in the great rocking-chair by the fire. He breathed short, and his
+words were disconnected as he spoke.
+
+His mother, for answer, took the catechism from the shelf, and
+extended it towards him with a decisive thrust of her arm.
+
+"It is time you studied some more," said she.
+
+Ephraim jerked himself away from the proffered book. "I don't want to
+study any more now, mother," he whined.
+
+"Take it," said Deborah.
+
+Caleb was paring apples for pies on the other side of the hearth.
+Ephraim looked across at him desperately. "I want to play holly-gull
+with father," he said.
+
+"Ephraim!"
+
+"Can't I play holly-gull with father jest a little while?"
+
+"You take this book and study your lesson," said Deborah, between
+nearly closed lips.
+
+Ephraim began to weep; he took the book with a vicious snatch and an
+angry sob. "Won't never let me do anythin' I want to," he cried,
+convulsively.
+
+"Not another word," said Deborah. Ephraim bent over his catechism
+with half-suppressed sobs. He dared not weep aloud. Deborah went into
+the pantry with the medicine-bottle which the doctor had left; she
+wanted a spoon. Caleb caught hold of her dress as she was passing
+him.
+
+"What is it?" said she.
+
+"Look here, jest a minute, mother."
+
+"I can't stop, father; Ephraim has got to have his medicine."
+
+"Jest look here a minute, mother."
+
+Deborah bent her head impatiently, and Caleb whispered. "No, he
+can't; I told him he couldn't," she said aloud, and passed on into
+the pantry.
+
+Caleb looked over at Ephraim with piteous and helpless sympathy.
+"Never you mind, sonny," he said, cautiously.
+
+"She--makes--" began Ephraim with a responsive plaint; but his mother
+came out of the pantry, and he stopped short. Caleb dropped a pared
+apple noisily into the pan.
+
+"You'll dent that pan, father, if you fling the apples in that way,"
+said Deborah. She had a thick silver spoon, and she measured out a
+dose of the medicine for Ephraim. She approached him, extending the
+spoon carefully. "Open your mouth," commanded she.
+
+"Oh, mother, I don't want to take it!"
+
+"Open your mouth!"
+
+"Oh, mother--I don't--want to--ta-ke it!"
+
+"Now, sonny, I wouldn't mind takin' of it. It's real good medicine
+that the doctor left you, an' father's payin' consid'able for it. The
+doctor thinks it's goin' to make you well," said Caleb, who was
+looking on anxiously.
+
+"Open your mouth and _take_ it!" said Deborah, sternly. She presented
+the spoon at Ephraim as if it were a bayonet and there were death at
+the point.
+
+"Oh, mother," whimpered Ephraim.
+
+"Mebbe mother will let you have a little taste of lasses arter it, if
+you take it real good," ventured Caleb.
+
+"No, he won't have any lasses after it," said Deborah. "I'm a-tendin'
+to him, father. Now, Ephraim, you take this medicine this minute, or
+I shall give you somethin' worse than medicine. Open your mouth!" And
+Ephraim opened his mouth as if his mother's will were a veritable
+wedge between his teeth, swallowed the medicine with a miserable
+gulp, and made a grotesque face of wrath and disgust. Caleb,
+watching, swallowed and grimaced at the same instant that his son
+did. There were tears in his old eyes as he took up another apple to
+pare.
+
+Deborah set the bottle on the shelf and laid the spoon beside it.
+"You've got to take this every hour for a spell," said she, "an' I
+ain't goin' to have any such work, if you be sick; you can make up
+your mind to it."
+
+And make up his mind to this unwelcome dose Ephraim did. Once an hour
+his mother stood over him with the spoon, and the fierce odor of the
+medicine came to his nostrils; he screwed his eyes tight, opened his
+mouth, and swallowed without a word. There were limits to his
+mother's patience which Ephraim dared not pass. He had only vague
+ideas of what might happen if he did, but he preferred to be on the
+safe side. So he took the medicine, and did not lift his voice
+against it, although he had his thoughts.
+
+It did seem as if the medicine benefited him. He breathed more easily
+after a while, and his color was more natural. Deborah felt
+encouraged; she even went down upon her stiff knees after her family
+were in bed, and thanked the Lord from the depths of her sorely
+chastened but proud heart. She did not foresee what was to come of
+it; for that very night Ephraim, induced thereto by the salutary
+effect of the medicine, which removed somewhat the restriction of his
+laboring heart upon his boyish spirits, perpetrated the crowning act
+of revolt and rebellion of his short life.
+
+The moon was bright that night. The snow was frozen hard. The long
+hills where the boys coasted looked like slopes of silver. Ephraim
+had to go to bed at eight. He lay, well propped up on pillows, in his
+little bedroom, and he could hear the shouts of the coasting boys.
+Now that he could breathe more easily the superiority of his enforced
+deprivation of such joys no longer comforted him as much as it had
+done. His curtain was up, and the moonlight lay on his bed. The
+mystic influence of that strange white orb which moves the soul of
+the lover to dream of love and yearnings after it, which saddens with
+sweet wounds the soul who has lost it forever, which increases the
+terrible freedom of the maniac, and perhaps moves the tides,
+apparently increased the longing in the heart of one poor boy for all
+the innocent hilarity of his youth which he had missed.
+
+Ephraim lay there in the moonlight, and longed as he had never longed
+before to go forth and run and play and halloo, to career down those
+wonderful shining slants of snow, to be free and equal with those
+other boys, whose hearts told off their healthy lives after the
+Creator's plan.
+
+The clock in the kitchen struck nine, then ten. Caleb and Deborah
+went to bed, and Ephraim could hear his father's snores and his
+mother's heavy breathing from a distant room. Ephraim could not go to
+sleep. He lay there and longed for the frosty night air, the sled,
+and the swift flight down the white hill as never lover longed for
+his mistress.
+
+At half-past ten o'clock Ephraim rose up. He dressed himself in the
+moonlight--all except his shoes; those he carried in his hand--and
+stole out in his stocking-feet to the entryway, where his warm coat
+and cap, which he so seldom wore, hung. Ephraim pulled the cap over
+his ears, put on the coat, cautiously unbolted the door, and stepped
+forth like a captive from prison.
+
+He sat down on the doorstep and put on his shoes, tying them with
+trembling, fumbling fingers. He expected every minute to hear his
+mother's voice.
+
+Then he ran down the yard to the wood shed. It was so intensely cold
+that the snow did not yield to his tread, but gave out quick sibilant
+sounds. It seemed to him like a whispering multitude called up by his
+footsteps, and as if his mother must hear.
+
+He knew where Barney's old sled hung in the woodshed, and the
+woodshed door was unlocked.
+
+Presently a boyish figure fled swiftly out of the Thayer yard with a
+bobbing sled in his wake. He expected every minute to hear the door
+or window open; but he cleared the yard and dashed up the road, and
+nobody arrested him.
+
+[Illustration: "A boyish figure fled swiftly out of the Thayer yard"]
+
+Ephraim knew well the way to the coasting-hill, which was considered
+the best in the village, although he had never coasted there himself,
+except twice or thrice, surreptitiously, on another boy's sled, and
+not once this winter. He heard no more shouts; the frosty air was
+very still. He thought to himself that the other boys had gone home,
+but he did not care.
+
+However, when he reached the top of the hill there was another boy
+with his sled. He had been all ready to coast down, but had seen
+Ephraim coming, and waited.
+
+"Hullo!" he called.
+
+"Hullo!" returned Ephraim, panting.
+
+Then the boy stared. "It ain't you, Ephraim Thayer!" he demanded.
+
+"Why ain't it me?" returned Ephraim, with a manful air, swaggering
+back his shoulders at the other boy, who was Ezra Ray.
+
+"Why, I didn't know your mother ever let you out," said Ezra, in a
+bewildered fashion. In fact, the vision of Ephraim Thayer out with a
+sled, coasting, at eleven o'clock at night, was startling. Ezra
+remembered dazedly how he had heard his mother say that very
+afternoon that Ephraim was worse, that the doctor had been there last
+Saturday, and she didn't believe he would live long. He looked at
+Ephraim standing there in the moonlight almost as if he were a
+spirit.
+
+"She ain't let me for some time; I've been sick," admitted Ephraim,
+yet with defiance.
+
+"I heard you was awful sick," said Ezra.
+
+"I was; but the doctor give me some medicine that cured me."
+
+Ephraim placed his sled in position and got on stiffly. The other boy
+still watched. "She know you're out to-night?" he inquired, abruptly.
+
+Ephraim looked up at him. "S'pose you think you'll go an' tell her,
+if she don't," said he.
+
+"No, I won't, honest."
+
+"Hope to die if you do?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Well, then, I run out of the side door."
+
+"Both on 'em asleep?"
+
+Ephraim nodded.
+
+Ezra Ray whistled. "You'll get a whippin' when your mother finds it
+out."
+
+"No, I sha'n't. Mother can't whip me, because the doctor says it
+ain't good for me. You goin' down?"
+
+"Can't go down but once. I've got to go home, or mother 'll give it
+to me."
+
+"Does she ever whip you?"
+
+"Sometimes."
+
+"Mine don't," said Ephraim, and he felt a superiority over Ezra Ray.
+He thought, too, that his sled was a better one. It was not painted,
+nor was it as new as Ezra's, but it had a reputation. Barney had won
+many coasting laurels with it in his boyhood, and his little brother,
+who had never used it himself, had always looked upon it with
+unbounded faith and admiration.
+
+He gathered up his sled-rope, spurred himself into a start with his
+heels, and went swiftly down the long hill, gathering speed as he
+went. Poor Ephraim had an instinct for steering; he did not swerve
+from the track. The frosty wind smote his face, his breath nearly
+failed him, but half-way down he gave a triumphant whoop. When he
+reached the foot of the hill he had barely wind enough to get off his
+sled and drag it to one side, for Ezra Ray was coming down.
+
+Ezra did not slide as far as Ephraim had done. Ephraim watched
+anxiously lest he should. "That sled of yours ain't no good," he
+panted, when Ezra had stopped several yards from where he stood.
+
+"Guess it ain't quite so fast as yours," admitted Ezra. "That's your
+brother's, ain't it?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Well, that sled can't be beat in town. Mine's 'bout as good as any,
+'cept that. I've always heard my brother say that your brother's sled
+was the best one he ever see."
+
+Ephraim stood looking at his brother's old battered but distinguished
+sled as if it had been a blood-horse. "Guess it can't be beat," he
+chuckled.
+
+"No sir, it can't," said Ezra. He started off past Ephraim down the
+road, with his sled trailing at his heels.
+
+"Hullo!" called Ephraim, "ain't you goin' up again?"
+
+"Can't, got to go home."
+
+"Less try it jest once more, an' see if you can't go further."
+
+"No, I can't, nohow. Mother won't like it as 'tis."
+
+"Whip you?"
+
+"'Spect so; don't mind it if she does." Ezra brought a great show of
+courage to balance the other's immunity from danger. "Don't mind
+nothin' 'bout a little whippin'," he added, with a brave and
+contemptuous air. He whistled as he went on.
+
+Ephraim stood watching him. He had enough brave blood in his veins to
+feel that this contempt of a whipping was a greater thing than not
+being whipped. He felt an envious admiration of Ezra Ray, but that
+did not prevent his calling after him:
+
+"Ezra!"
+
+"What say?"
+
+"You ain't goin' to tell my mother?"
+
+"Didn't I say I wasn't? I don't tell fibs. Hope to die if I do."
+
+Ezra's brave whistle, as cheerfully defiant of his mother's
+prospective wrath as the note of a bugler advancing to the charge,
+died away in the distance. For Ephraim now began the one unrestrained
+hilarity of his whole life. All by himself in the white moonlight and
+the keen night air he climbed the long hill, and slid down over and
+over. He ignored his feeble and laboring breath of life. He trod
+upon, he outspeeded all infirmities of the flesh in his wild triumph
+of the spirit. He shouted and hallooed as he shot down the hill. His
+mother could not have recognized his voice had she heard it, for it
+was the first time that the boy had ever given full cry to the
+natural voice of youth and his heart. A few stolen races, and sorties
+up apple-trees, a few stolen slides had poor Ephraim Thayer had; they
+had been snatched in odd minutes, at the imminent danger of
+discovery; but now he had the wide night before him; he had broken
+over all his trammels, and he was free.
+
+Up and down the hill went Ephraim Thayer, having the one playtime of
+his life, speeding on his brother's famous sled against bondage and
+deprivation and death. It was after midnight when he went home; all
+the village lights were out; the white road stretched before him, as
+still and deserted as a road through solitude itself. Ephraim had
+never been out-of-doors so late before, he had never been so alone in
+his life, but he was not afraid. He was not afraid of anything in the
+lonely night, and he was not afraid of his mother at home. He thought
+to himself exultantly that Ezra Ray had been no more courageous than
+he, although, to be sure, he had not a whipping to fear like Ezra.
+His heart was full of joyful triumph that he was not wholly guilty,
+since it was the outcome of an innocent desire.
+
+As he walked along he tipped up his face and stared with his stupid
+boyish eyes at the stars paling in the full moonlight, and the great
+moon herself overriding the clouds and the stars. It made him think
+of the catechism and the Commandments, and then a little pang of
+terror shot through him, but even that did not daunt him. He did not
+look up at the stars again, but bent his head and trudged on, with
+the sled-rope pulling at his weak chest.
+
+When he reached his own yard he stepped as carefully as he could;
+still he was not afraid. He put the sled back in the shed; then he
+stole into the house. He took off his shoes in the entry, and got
+safely into his own room. He was in his night-gown and all ready for
+bed when another daring thought struck him.
+
+Ephraim padded softly on his bare feet out through the kitchen to the
+pantry. Every third step or so he stopped and listened to the heavy
+double breathing from the bedroom beyond. So long as that continued
+he was safe. He listened, and then slid on a pace or two as noiseless
+as a shadow in the moonlight.
+
+Ephraim knew well where the mince-pies were kept. There was a long
+row of them covered with towels on an upper shelf.
+
+Ephraim hoisted himself painfully upon a meal-bucket, and clawed a
+pie over the edge of the shelf. He could scarcely reach, and there
+was quite a loud grating noise. He stood trembling on the bucket and
+listened, but the double breathing continued. Deborah had been
+unusually tired that night; she had gone to bed earlier, and slept
+more soundly.
+
+Ephraim broke a great jagged half from the mince-pie; then replaced
+it with another grating slide. Again he listened, but his mother had
+not been awakened.
+
+Ephraim crept back to his bedroom. There he sat on the edge of his
+bed and devoured his pie. The rich spicy compound and the fat plums
+melted on his tongue, and the savor thereof delighted his very soul.
+Then Ephraim got into bed and pulled the quilts over him. For the
+first and only occasion in his life he had had a good time.
+
+The next morning Ephraim felt very ill, but he kept it from his
+mother. He took his medicine of his own accord several times, and
+turned his head from her, that she might not notice his laboring
+breath.
+
+In the middle of the forenoon Deborah went out. She had to drive over
+to Bolton to get some sugar and tea. She would not buy anything now
+at Berry's store. Caleb had gone down to the lot to cut a little
+wood; he had harnessed the horse for her before he went. It was a
+cold day, and she wrapped herself up well in two shawls and a thick
+veil over her hood. When she was all ready she gave Ephraim his
+parting instructions, rearing over him with stern gestures, like a
+veiled justice.
+
+"Now," said she, "you listen to what I tell you. When your father
+comes in you tell him I want him to set right down and finish parin'
+them apples. They are spoilin', an' I'm goin' to make 'em into sauce.
+You tell him to set right down and go to work on 'em; he can get 'em
+done by the time I get home, an' I can make the sauce this afternoon.
+You set here an' take your medicine an' learn your catechism. You can
+study over the Commandments, too; you ain't got 'em any too well. Do
+you hear?"
+
+"Yes, ma'am," said Ephraim. He looked away from his mother as he
+spoke, and his panting breath clouded the clear space on the frosty
+window-pane. He sat beside the window in the rocking-chair.
+
+"Mind you tell your father about them apples," repeated his mother as
+she went out.
+
+"Yes, ma'am," said Ephraim. He watched his mother drive out of the
+yard, guiding the horse carefully through the frozen ridges of the
+drive. Presently he took another spoonful of his medicine. He felt a
+little easier, but still very ill. His father came a few minutes
+after his mother had gone. He heard him stamping in through the back
+door; then his frost-reddened old face looked in on Ephraim.
+
+"Mother gone?" said he.
+
+"She's jest gone," replied Ephraim. His father came in. He looked at
+the boy with a childish and anxious sweetness. "Don't you feel quite
+as well as you did?" he inquired.
+
+"Dunno as I do."
+
+"Took your medicine reg'lar?"
+
+Ephraim nodded.
+
+"I guess it's good medicine," said Caleb; "it come real high; I guess
+the doctor thought consid'ble of it. I'd take it reg'lar if I was
+you. I thought you looked as if you didn't feel quite so well as
+common when I come in."
+
+Caleb took off his boots and tended the fire. Ephraim began to feel a
+little better; his heart did not beat quite so laboriously.
+
+He did not say a word to his father about paring the apples. Caleb
+went into the pantry and came back eating a slice of mince-pie.
+
+"I found there was a pie cut, and I thought mother wouldn't mind if I
+took a leetle piece," he remarked, apologetically. He would never
+have dared take the pie without permission had his wife been at home.
+"She ain't goin' to be home till arter dinner-time, an' I began to
+feel kinder gone," added Caleb. He stood by the fire, and munched the
+pie with a relish slightly lessened by remorse. "Don't you want
+nothin'" he asked of Ephraim. "Mebbe a little piece of pie wouldn't
+hurt you none."
+
+Caleb's ideas of hygienic food were primitive. He believed, as
+innocently as if he had lived in Eden before the Prohibition, that
+all food which he liked was good for him, and he applied his theory
+to all mankind. He had deferred to Deborah's imperious will, but he
+had never been able to understand why she would not allow Ephraim to
+eat mince-pie or anything else which his soul loved and craved.
+
+"No, guess I don't," Ephraim replied. He gazed moodily out of the
+window. "Father," said he, suddenly.
+
+"What say, sonny?"
+
+"I eat some of that pie last night."
+
+"Mother give it to you?"
+
+"No; I clim up on the meal-bucket, an' got it in the night."
+
+"You might have fell, an' then I dunno what mother'd ha' said to
+you," said Caleb.
+
+"An' I did somethin' else."
+
+"What else did you do?"
+
+"I went out a-coastin' after you an' her was asleep."
+
+"You didn't, now?"
+
+"Yes, I did."
+
+"An' we didn't neither on us wake up?"
+
+"You was a-snorin' the whole time."
+
+"I don't s'pose you'd oughter have done it, Ephraim," said Caleb, and
+he tried to make his tone severe.
+
+"I never went a-coastin' in my whole life before," said Ephraim; "it
+ain't fair."
+
+"I dunno what mother 'd say if she was to find out about it," said
+Caleb, and he shook his head.
+
+"Ezra Ray was the only one that was out there, an' he said he
+wouldn't tell."
+
+"Well, mebbe he won't, mebbe he won't. I guess you most hadn't
+oughter gone unbeknownst to your mother, sonny."
+
+"Barney's sled jest beat Ezra's all holler."
+
+"It did, hey? That allers was a good sled," returned the old man,
+chuckling.
+
+Caleb went into the pantry again, and returned rattling a handful of
+corn. "Want a game of holly-gull?" he asked. "I've got a leetle time
+to spare now while mother's gone."
+
+"Guess so," replied Ephraim. He dragged his chair forward to the
+hearth; he and his father sat opposite each other and played the old
+childish game of holly-gull. Ephraim was very fond of the game, and
+would have played it happily hour after hour had not Deborah esteemed
+it a sinful waste of time. When Caleb held up his old fist, wherein
+he had securely stowed a certain number of kernels of corn, and
+demanded, "Holly-gull, hand full, passel how many?" Ephraim's spirit
+was thrilled with a fine stimulation, of which he had known little in
+his life. If he guessed the number of kernels right and confiscated
+the contents of his father's hand, he felt the gratified ambition of
+a successful financier; if he lost, his heart sank, only to bound
+higher with new hope for the next chance. A veritable gambling game
+was holly-gull, but they gambled for innocent Indian-corn instead of
+the coin of the realm, and nobody suspected it. The lack of value of
+the stakes made the game quite harmless and unquestioned in public
+opinion.
+
+The waste of time was all Deborah's objection to the game. Caleb and
+Ephraim said not a word about it to each other, but both kept an
+anxious ear towards Deborah's returning sleigh-bells.
+
+At last they both heard the loud, brazen jingle entering the yard,
+and Caleb gathered all the corn together and stowed it away in his
+pocket. Then he stood on the hearth, looking like a guilty child.
+Ephraim went slowly over to the window; he did not feel quite so well
+again.
+
+Deborah's harsh "Whoa!" sounded before the door; presently she came
+in, her garments radiating cold air, her arms full of bundles.
+
+"What you standin' there for, father?" she demanded of Caleb. "Why
+didn't you come out an' take some of these bundles? Why ain't you
+goin' out an' puttin' the horse up instead of standin' there
+starin'?"
+
+"I'm goin' right off, mother," Caleb answered, apologetically; and he
+turned his old back towards her and scuffled out in haste.
+
+"Put on your cap!" Deborah called after him.
+
+She laid off her many wraps, her hood and veil, and mufflers and
+shawls, folded them carefully, and carried them into her bedroom, to
+be laid in her bureau drawers. Deborah was very orderly and
+methodical.
+
+"Did you take your medicine?" she asked Ephraim as she went out of
+the room.
+
+"Yes, ma'am," said he. He did not feel nearly as well; he kept his
+face turned from his mother. Ephraim was accustomed to complain
+freely, but now the coasting and the mince-pie had made him patient.
+He was quite sure that his bad feelings were due to that, and suppose
+his mother should suspect and ask him what he had been doing! He was
+also terrified by the thought of the holly-gull and her unfulfilled
+order about the apple-paring. He sat very still; his heart shook his
+whole body, which had grown thin lately. He looked very small, in
+spite of his sturdy build.
+
+Deborah was gone quite a while; she had left some work unfinished in
+her bedroom that morning. Caleb returned before she did, and pulled
+up a chair close to the fire. He was holding his reddened fingers out
+towards the blaze to warm them when Deborah came in.
+
+She looked at him, then around the room, inquiringly.
+
+"Where did you put the apples?" said she to Caleb.
+
+Caleb stared around at her. "What apples, mother?" he asked, feebly.
+
+"The apples I left for you to pare. I want to put 'em on before I get
+dinner."
+
+"I ain't heard nothin' about apples, mother."
+
+"Ain't you pared any apples this forenoon?"
+
+"I didn't know as you wanted any pared, mother."
+
+Deborah turned fiercely on Ephraim.
+
+"Ephraim Thayer, look here!" said she. Ephraim turned his poor blue
+face slowly; his breath came shortly between his parted lips; he
+clapped one hand to his side. "Didn't you tell your father to pare
+them apples, the way I told you to?" she demanded.
+
+Ephraim dropped his chin lower.
+
+"Answer me!"
+
+"No, ma'am."
+
+"What have you been a-doin' of?"
+
+"Playin'."
+
+"Playin' what?"
+
+"Holly-gull."
+
+Deborah stood quite still for a moment. Her mouth tightened; she grew
+quite pale. Ephraim and Caleb watched her. Deborah strode across the
+room, out into the shed.
+
+"I guess she won't say much; don't you be scared, Ephraim," whispered
+Caleb.
+
+But Ephraim, curious to say, did not feel scared. Suddenly his mother
+seemed to have lost all her terrifying influence over him. He felt
+very strange, and as if he were sinking away from it all through deep
+abysses.
+
+His mother came back, and she held a stout stick in her right hand.
+Caleb gasped when he saw it. "Mother, you ain't goin' to whip him?"
+he cried out.
+
+"Father, you keep still!" commanded Deborah. "Ephraim, you come with
+me!"
+
+She led the way into Ephraim's little bedroom, and he stumbled up and
+followed her. He saw the stick before him in his mother's hand; he
+knew she was going to whip him, but he did not feel in the least
+disturbed or afraid. Ezra Ray could not have faced a whipping any
+more courageously than Ephraim. But he staggered as he went, and his
+feet met the floor with strange shocks, since he had prepared his
+steps for those deep abysses.
+
+He and his mother stood together in his little bedroom. She, when she
+faced him, saw how ill he looked, but she steeled herself against
+that. She had seen him look as badly before; she was not to be
+daunted by that from her high purpose. For it was a high purpose to
+Deborah Thayer. She did not realize the part which her own human will
+had in it.
+
+She lifted up her voice and spoke solemnly. Caleb, listening, all
+trembling, at the kitchen door, heard her.
+
+"Ephraim," said his mother, "I have spared the rod with you all my
+life because you were sick. Your brother and your sister have both
+rebelled against the Lord and against me. You are all the child I've
+got left. You've got to mind me and do right. I ain't goin' to spare
+you any longer because you ain't well. It is better you should be
+sick than be well and wicked and disobedient. It is better that your
+body should suffer than your immortal soul. Stand still."
+
+Deborah raised her stick, and brought it down. She raised it again,
+but suddenly Ephraim made a strange noise and sunk away before it,
+down in a heap on the floor.
+
+Caleb heard him fall, and came quickly.
+
+"Oh, mother," he sobbed, "is he dead? What ails him?"
+
+"He's got a bad spell," said Deborah. "Help me lay him on the bed."
+Her face was ghastly. She spoke with hoarse pulls for breath, but she
+did not flinch. She and Caleb laid Ephraim on his bed; then she
+worked over him for a few minutes with mustard and hot-water--all the
+simple remedies in which she was skilled. She tried to pour a little
+of the doctor's medicine into his mouth, but he did not swallow, and
+she wiped it away.
+
+"Go an' get Barney to run for the doctor, quick!" she told Caleb at
+last. Caleb fled, sobbing aloud like a child, out of the house.
+Deborah closed the boy's eyes, and straightened him a little in the
+bed. Then she stood over him there, and began to pray aloud. It was a
+strange prayer, full of remorse, of awful agony, of self-defense of
+her own act, and her own position as the vicar of God upon earth for
+her child. "I couldn't let him go astray too!" she shrieked out. "I
+couldn't, I couldn't! O Lord, thou knowest that I couldn't! I
+would--have lain him upon--the altar, as Abraham laid Isaac! Oh,
+Ephraim, my son, my son, my son!"
+
+Deborah prayed on and on. The doctor and a throng of pale women came
+in; the yard was full of shocked and staring people. Deborah heeded
+nothing; she prayed on.
+
+Some of the women got her into her own room. She stayed there, with a
+sort of rigid settling into the spot where she was placed and she
+pleaded with the Lord for upholding and justification until the
+daylight faded, and all night. The women, Mrs. Ray and the doctor's
+wife, who watched with poor Ephraim, heard her praying all night
+long. They sat in grave silence, and their eyes kept meeting with
+shocked significance as they listened to her. Now and then they wet
+the cloth on Ephraim's face. About two o'clock Mrs. Ray tiptoed into
+the pantry, and brought forth a mince-pie. "I found one that had been
+cut on the top shelf," she whispered. She and the doctor's wife ate
+the remainder of poor Ephraim's pie.
+
+The two women stayed next day and assisted in preparations for the
+funeral. Deborah seemed to have no thought for any of her household
+duties. She stayed in her bedroom most of the time, and her praying
+voice could be heard at intervals.
+
+Some other women came in, and they went about with silent efficiency,
+performing their services to the dead and setting the house in order;
+but they said very little to Deborah. When she came out of her room
+they eyed her with a certain grim furtiveness, and they never said a
+word to her about Ephraim.
+
+It was already known all over the village that she had been whipping
+Ephraim when he died. Poor old Caleb, when the neighbors had come
+flocking in, had kept repeating with childish sobs, "Mother hadn't
+ought to have whipped him! mother hadn't ought to have whipped him!"
+
+"Did Mrs. Thayer whip that boy?" the doctor had questioned, sharply,
+before all the women, and Caleb had sobbed back, hoarsely, "She was
+jest a-whippin' of him; I told her she hadn't ought to."
+
+That had been enough. "She whipped him," the women repeated to each
+other in shocked pantomime. They all knew how corporal punishment had
+been tabooed for Ephraim.
+
+The Thayer house was crowded the afternoon of the funeral. The decent
+black-clad village people, with reddening eyes and mouths drooping
+with melancholy, came in throngs into the snowy yard. The men in
+their Sunday gear tiptoed creaking across the floors; the women,
+feeling for their pocket-handkerchiefs, padded softly and heavily
+after them, folded in their black shawls like mourning birds.
+
+[Illustration: "The Thayer house was crowded the afternoon of the
+funeral"]
+
+Caleb and Deborah and Barney sat in the north parlor, where Ephraim
+lay. Deborah's hoarse laments, which were not like the ordinary
+hysterical demonstrations of feminine grief, being rather a stern
+uprising and clamor of herself against her own heart, filled the
+house.
+
+The minister had to pray and speak against it; scarcely any one
+beyond the mourners' room could hear his voice. It was a hard task
+that the poor young minister had. He was quite aware of the feeling
+against Deborah, and it required finesse to avoid jarring that, and
+yet display the proper amount of Christian sympathy for the
+afflicted. Then there were other difficulties. The minister had
+prayed in his closet for a small share of the wisdom of Solomon
+before setting forth.
+
+The people in the other rooms leaned forward and strained their ears.
+The minister's wife sat beside her husband with bright spots of color
+in her cheeks, her little figure nervously contracted in her chair.
+They had had a discussion concerning the advisability of his
+mentioning the sister and daughter in his prayer, and she had pleaded
+with him strenuously that he should not.
+
+When the minister prayed for the afflicted "sister and daughter, who
+was now languishing upon a bed of sickness," his wife's mouth
+tightened, her feet and hands grew cold. It seemed to her that her
+own tongue pronounced every word that her husband spoke. And there
+was, moreover, a little nervous thrill through the audience. Oddly
+enough, everybody seemed to hear that portion of the minister's
+prayer quite distinctly. Even one old deaf man in the farthest corner
+of the kitchen looked meaningly at his neighbor.
+
+The service was a long one. The village hearse and the line of black
+covered wagons waited in front of the Thayer house over an hour.
+There had been another fall of snow the night before, and now the
+north wind blew it over the country. Outside ghostly spirals of snow
+raised from the new drifts heaped along the road-sides like graves,
+disappeared over the fields, and moved on the borders of distant
+woods, while in-doors the minister held forth, and the choir sang
+funeral hymns with a sweet uneven drone of grief and consolation.
+
+When at last the funeral was over and the people came out, they bent
+their heads before this wild storm which came from the earth instead
+of the sky.
+
+The cemetery was a mile out of the village; when the procession came
+driving rapidly home it was nearly sunset, and the thoughts of the
+people turned from poor Ephraim to their suppers. It is only for a
+minute that death can blur life for the living. Still, when the
+evening smoke hung over the roofs the people talked untiringly of
+Ephraim and his mother.
+
+As time went on the dark gossip in the village swelled louder. It was
+said quite openly that Deborah Thayer had killed her son Ephraim. The
+neighbors did not darken her doors. The minister and his wife called
+once. The minister offered prayer and spoke formal words of
+consolation as if he were reading from invisible notes. His wife sat
+by in stiff, scared silence. Deborah nodded in response; she said
+very little.
+
+Indeed, Deborah had become very silent. She scarcely spoke to Caleb.
+For hours after he had gone to bed the poor bewildered old man could
+hear his wife wrestling in prayer with the terrible angel of the Lord
+whom she had evoked by the stern magic of grief and remorse. He could
+hear her harsh, solemn voice in self-justification and agonized
+appeal. After a while he learned to sleep with it still ringing in
+his ears, and his heavy breathing kept pace with Deborah's prayer.
+
+Deborah had not the least doubt that she had killed her son Ephraim.
+
+There was some talk of the church's dealing with her, some women
+declared that they would not go to meeting if she did; but no
+stringent measures were taken, and she went to church every Sunday
+all the rest of the winter and during the spring.
+
+It was an afternoon in June when the doctor's wife and Mrs. Ray went
+into Deborah Thayer's yard. They paused hesitatingly before the door.
+
+"I think you're the one that ought to tell her," said Mrs. Ray.
+
+"I think it's your place to, seeing as 'twas your Ezra that knew
+about it," returned the doctor's wife. Her voice sounded like the hum
+of a bee, being full of husky vibrations; her double chin sank into
+her broad heaving bosom, folded over with white plaided muslin.
+
+"Seems to me it belongs to you, as long as you're the doctor's wife,"
+said Mrs. Ray. She was very small and lean beside the soft bulk of
+the other woman, but there was a sort of mental uplifting about her
+which made her unconscious of it. Mrs. Ray had never considered
+herself a small woman; she seemed always to see the tops of other
+women's heads.
+
+The doctor's wife looked at her dubiously, panting softly all over
+her great body. It was a warm afternoon. The low red and white
+rose-bushes sprayed all around the step-stone, and they were full of
+roses. The doctor's wife raised the brass knocker. "Well, I'd just as
+lieves," said she, resignedly. "She'd ought to be told, anyway; the
+doctor said so." The knocker fell with a clang of brass.
+
+Deborah opened the door at once. "Good-afternoon," said she.
+
+"We thought we'd come over a few minutes, it's so pleasant this
+afternoon," said the doctor's wife.
+
+"Walk in," said Deborah. She aided them in through the kitchen to the
+north parlor. She always entertained guests there on warm afternoons.
+
+The north parlor was very cool and dark; the curtains were down, and
+undulated softly like sails. Deborah placed the big haircloth
+rocking-chair for the doctor's wife, and Mrs. Ray sat down on the
+sofa.
+
+There was a silence. The doctor's wife flushed red. Mrs. Ray's sharp
+face was imperturbable. Deborah, sitting erect in one of her best
+flag-bottomed chairs, looked as if she were alone in the room.
+
+The doctor's wife cleared her throat. "Mis' Thayer," she began.
+
+Deborah looked at her with calm expectation.
+
+"Mis' Thayer," said the doctor's wife, "Mis' Ray and I thought we
+ought to come over here this afternoon. Mis' Ray heard something last
+night, an' she came over an' told the doctor, an' he said you ought
+to know--"
+
+The doctor's wife paused, panting. Then the door opened and Caleb
+peered in. He bowed stiffly to the two guests; then, with
+apprehensive glances at his wife, slid into a chair near the door.
+
+"Mis' Ray's Ezra told her last night," proceeded the doctor's wife,
+"that the night before your son died he run away unbeknown to you,
+an' went slidin' down hill. The doctor says mebbe that was what
+killed him. He said you'd ought to know."
+
+Deborah leaned forward; her face worked like the breaking up of an
+icy river. "Be you sure?" said she.
+
+"Ezra told me last night," interposed Mrs. Ray. "I had a hard time
+gettin' it out of him; he promised Ephraim he wouldn't tell. But
+somethin' he said made me suspect, an' I got it out of him. He said
+Ephraim told him he run away, an' he left him there slidin' when he
+came home. 'Twas as much as 'leven o'clock then; I remember I give
+Ezra a whippin' next mornin' for stayin' out so late. But then, of
+course, whippin' Ezra wa'n't nothin' like whippin' Ephraim."
+
+"The doctor says most likely that was what killed him, after all, an'
+you'd ought to know," said the doctor's wife.
+
+"Be you sure?" said Deborah again.
+
+"Ephraim wa'n't to blame. He never had no show; he never went
+a-slidin' like the other little fellers," said Caleb, suddenly, out
+of his corner; and he snivelled as he spoke.
+
+Deborah turned on him sharply. "Did you know anything about it?" said
+she.
+
+"He told me on 't that mornin'," said Caleb; "he told me how he'd
+been a-slidin', an' how he eat some mince-pie."
+
+"Eat--some--mince-pie!" gasped Deborah, and there was a great light
+of hope in her face.
+
+"Well," said the doctor's wife, "if that boy eat mince-pie, an' slid
+down hill, too, I guess you ain't much call to worry about anything
+you've done, Mis' Thayer. I know what the doctor has said right
+along."
+
+The doctor's wife arose with a certain mild impressiveness, as if
+some mantle of her husband's authority had fallen upon her. She shook
+out her ample skirts as if they were redolent of rhubarb and mint.
+"Well, I guess we had better be going," said she, and her inflections
+were like the doctor's.
+
+Mrs. Ray rose also. "Well, we thought you'd ought to know," said she.
+
+"I'm much obliged to you," said Deborah.
+
+She went through the kitchen with them. When the door was shut behind
+them she turned to Caleb, who had shuffled along at her heels. "Oh,
+father, why didn't you tell me if you knew, why didn't you tell me?"
+she gasped out.
+
+Caleb stared at her. "Why, mother?" he returned.
+
+"Didn't you know I thought I'd killed him, father? didn't you know I
+thought I'd killed my son? An' now maybe I haven't! maybe I haven't!
+O Lord, I thank thee for letting me know before I die! Maybe I
+haven't killed him, after all!"
+
+"I didn't s'pose it would make any difference," said Caleb,
+helplessly.
+
+Suddenly, to the old man's great terror, his wife caught hold of him
+and clung to him. He staggered a little; his arms hung straight at
+his sides. "Why, what ails you, mother?" he stammered out. "I didn't
+tell you, 'cause I thought you'd be blamin' him for 't. Mother, don't
+you take on so; now don't!"
+
+"I--wish--you'd go an' get Rebecca an' Barney, father," said Deborah,
+faintly. She suddenly wavered so that her old husband wavered with
+her, and they reeled back and forth like two old trees in a wind.
+
+"Why, what ails you, mother, what ails you?" Caleb gasped out. He
+caught Deborah's arm, and clutched out at something to save himself.
+Then they sank to the floor together.
+
+Barney had just come up from the field, and was at his own door when
+his father came panting into the yard. "What is it? what's the
+matter?" he cried out.
+
+"Mother's fell!" gasped Caleb.
+
+"Fell! has she hurt her?"
+
+"Dunno--she can't get up; come quick!"
+
+As Barney rushed out of the yard he cast a glance up the hill towards
+Charlotte's house; in every crisis of his life his mind turned
+involuntarily to her, as if she were another self, to be made
+acquainted with all its exigencies. But when he came out on the road
+he met Charlotte herself face to face; she had been over to her Aunt
+Sylvia's.
+
+"Something is wrong with mother," Barney said, with a strange appeal.
+Then he went on, and Charlotte was at his side, running as fast as
+he. Caleb hurried after them, panting, the tears running down his old
+cheeks.
+
+"Father says she's fell!" Barney said, as they sped along.
+
+"Maybe she's only fainted," responded Charlotte's steady, faithful
+voice.
+
+But Deborah Thayer had more than fainted. It might have been that
+Ephraim had inherited from her the heart-taint that had afflicted and
+shortened his life, and it might have been that her terrible
+experiences of the last few months would have strained her heart to
+its undoing, had its valves been made of steel.
+
+Barney carried his mother into the bedroom, and laid her on the bed.
+He and Charlotte worked over her, but she never spoke nor moved
+again. At last Charlotte laid her hand on Barney's arm. "Come out
+now," said she, and Barney followed her out.
+
+When they were out in the kitchen Barney looked in her face. "It's no
+use, she's gone!" he said, hoarsely. Charlotte nodded. Suddenly she
+put her arms up around his neck, and drew his head down to her bosom,
+and held it there, stroking his cheek.
+
+"Oh, Charlotte," Barney sobbed. Charlotte bent over him, whispering
+softly, smoothing his hair and cheek with her tender hand.
+
+Caleb had gone for the doctor and Rebecca while they tried to restore
+Deborah, and had given the alarm on the way. Some women came hurrying
+in with white faces, staring curiously even then at Barney and
+Charlotte; but she never heeded them, except to answer in the
+affirmative when they asked, in shocked voices, if Deborah was dead.
+She went on soothing Barney, as if he had been her child, with no
+more shame in it, until he raised his white face from her breast of
+his own accord.
+
+"Oh, Charlotte, you will stay to-night, won't you?" he pleaded.
+
+"Yes, I'll stay," said Charlotte. Young as Charlotte was, she had
+watched with the sick and sat up with the dead many a time. So she
+and the doctor's wife watched with Deborah Thayer that night. Rebecca
+came, but she was not strong enough to stay. The next day Charlotte
+assisted in the funeral preparations. It made a great deal of talk in
+the village. People wondered if Barney would marry her now, and if
+she would sit with the mourners at the funeral. But she sat with her
+father and mother in the south room, and time went on after Deborah
+died, and Barney did not marry her.
+
+
+
+Chapter XII
+
+
+A few days after Deborah's funeral Charlotte had an errand at the
+store after supper. When she went down the hill the sun had quite
+set, but there was a clear green light. The sky gave it out, and
+there seemed to be also a green glow from the earth. Charlotte went
+down the hill with the evening air fresh and damp in her face. Lilacs
+were in blossom all about, and their fragrance was so vital and
+intense that it seemed almost like a wide presence in the green
+twilight.
+
+She reached Barney's house, and passed it; then she came to the
+Thayer house. Before that lay the garden. The ranks of pease and
+beans were in white blossom, and there was a pale shimmer as of a
+cobweb veil over it.
+
+Charlotte had passed the garden when she heard a voice behind her:
+
+"Charlotte!"
+
+She stopped, and Barney came up.
+
+"Good-evening," said he.
+
+"Good-evening," said Charlotte.
+
+"I saw you going by," said Barney. Then he paused again, and
+Charlotte waited.
+
+"I saw you going by," he repeated, "and--I thought I'd like to speak
+to you. I wanted to thank you for what you did--about mother."
+
+"You're very welcome," replied Charlotte.
+
+Barney ground a stone beneath his heel. "I sha'n't ever forget it,
+and--father won't, either," he said. His voice trembled, and yet
+there was a certain doggedness in it.
+
+Charlotte stood waiting. Barney turned slowly away. "Good-night," he
+said.
+
+"Good-night," returned Charlotte, quickly, and she fairly sprang away
+from him and down the road. Her limbs trembled, but she held her head
+up proudly. She understood it all perfectly. Barney had meant to
+inform her that his behavior towards her on the day his mother died
+had been due to a momentary weakness; that she was to expect nothing
+further. She went on to the store and did her errand, then went home.
+As she entered the kitchen her mother came through from the front
+room. She had been sitting at a window watching for Charlotte to
+return; she thought Barney might be with her.
+
+"Well, you've got home," said she, and it sounded like a question.
+
+"Yes," said Charlotte. She laid her parcels on the table. "I guess
+I'll go to bed," she added.
+
+"Why, it's dreadful early to go to bed, ain't it?"
+
+"Well, I'm tired; I guess I'll go."
+
+The candle-light was dim in the room, but Sarah eyed her daughter
+sharply. She thought she looked pale.
+
+"Did you meet anybody?" she asked.
+
+"I don't know; there wasn't many folks out."
+
+"You didn't see Barney, did you?"
+
+"Yes, I met him."
+
+Charlotte lighted another candle, and opened the door.
+
+"Look here," said her mother.
+
+"Well?" replied Charlotte, with a sort of despairing patience.
+
+"What did he say to you? I want to know."
+
+"He didn't say much of anything. He thanked me for what I did about
+his mother."
+
+"Didn't he say anything about anything else?"
+
+"No, he didn't." Charlotte went out, shielding her candle.
+
+"You don't mean that he didn't say anything, after the way he acted
+that day his mother died?"
+
+"I didn't expect him to say anything."
+
+"He's treated you mean, Charlotte," her mother cried out, with a half
+sob. "He'd ought to be strung up after he acted so, huggin' an'
+kissin' you right before folk's face and eyes."
+
+"It was more my fault than 'twas his," returned Charlotte; and she
+shut the door.
+
+"Then I should think you'd be ashamed of yourself," Sarah called
+after her, but Charlotte did not seem to hear.
+
+"I never see such work, for my part," Sarah wailed out to herself.
+
+"Mother, you come in here a minute," Cephas called out of the
+bedroom. He had gone to bed soon after supper.
+
+"Anythin' new about Barney?" he asked, when his wife stood beside
+him.
+
+"Barney ain't no more notion of comin' back than he had before, in
+spite of all the talk. I never see such work," replied Sarah, in a
+voice strained high with tears.
+
+"I call it pretty doin's," assented Cephas. His pale face, with its
+venerable beard, was closely set about with his white nightcap. He
+lay staring straight before him with a solemnly reflective air.
+
+"I wish you hadn't brought up 'lection that time, father," ventured
+Sarah, with a piteous sniff.
+
+"If the Democratic party had only lived different, an' hadn't eat so
+much meat, there wouldn't have been any trouble," returned Cephas,
+magisterially. "If you go far enough, you'll always get back to that.
+A man is what he puts into his mouth. Meat victuals is at the bottom
+of democracy. If there wa'n't any meat eat there wouldn't be any
+Democratic party, an' there wouldn't be any wranglin' in the state.
+There'd be one party, jest as there'd ought to be."
+
+"I wish you hadn't brought it up, father," Sarah lamented again;
+"it's most killin' me."
+
+"If we hadn't both of us been eatin' so much animal food there
+wouldn't have been any trouble," repeated Cephas.
+
+"Well, I dunno much about animal food, but I know I'm about
+discouraged," said Sarah. And she went back to the kitchen, and sat
+down in the rocking-chair and cried a long time, with her apron over
+her face. Her heartache was nearly as sore as her daughter's
+up-stairs.
+
+Charlotte did not speak to Barney again all summer--indeed, she
+scarcely ever saw him. She had an occasional half-averted glimpse of
+his figure across the fields, and that was all. Barney had gone back
+to the old house to live with his father, and remained there through
+the summer and fall; but Caleb died in November. He had never been
+the same since Deborah's death; whether, like an old tree whose roots
+are no longer so firm in the earth that they can withstand every wind
+of affliction, the shock itself had shaken him to his fall, or the
+lack of that strange wontedness which takes the place of early love
+and passion had enfeebled him, no one could tell. He had seemed to
+simply stare at life from a sunny place on a stone-wall or a
+door-step all summer.
+
+When the autumn set in he sat in his old chair by the fire. Caleb had
+always felt cold since Deborah died. When the bell tolled off his
+years, one morning in November, nobody felt surprised. People had
+said to each other for some time that Caleb Thayer was failing.
+
+Barney, after his father died, went back to his own forlorn new house
+to live, and his sister Rebecca and her husband came to live in the
+old one. Rebecca went to meeting now every Sunday, wearing her
+mother's black shawl and a black ribbon on her bonnet, and sitting in
+her mother's place in the Thayer pew. She never went anywhere else,
+her rosy color had gone, and she looked old and haggard.
+
+Barney went into his sister's now and then of a Sunday night, and sat
+with her and William an hour or so. He and William would sometimes
+warm into quite an animated discussion over politics or theology,
+while Rebecca sat silently by. Barney went nowhere else, not even to
+meeting. Sundays he used to watch furtively for Charlotte to go past
+with her father and mother. Quite often Sylvia Crane used to appear
+from her road and join them, and walk along with Charlotte. Barney
+used to look at her moving down the road at Charlotte's side, as at
+the merest supernumerary on his own tragic stage. But every tragedy
+has its multiplying glass to infinity, and every actor has his own
+tragedy. Sylvia Crane that winter, all secretly and silently, was
+acting her own principal rôle in hers. She had quite come to the end
+of her small resources, and nobody, except the selectmen of Pembroke,
+knew it. They were three saturnine, phlegmatic, elderly men, old
+Squire Payne being the chairman, and they kept her secret well.
+Sylvia waylaid them in by-places, she stole around to the back door
+of Squire Payne's house by night, she conducted herself as if it were
+a guilty intrigue, and all to keep her poverty hid as long as may be.
+
+Old Squire Payne was a widower, a grave old man of few words. He
+advanced poor Sylvia meagre moneys on her little lands, and he told
+nobody. There came a day when he gave her the last dollar upon her
+New England soil, full of old plough-ridges and dried weeds and
+stones.
+
+Sylvia went home with it in the pocket of her quilted petticoat under
+her dress skirt. She kept feeling of it to see if it were safe as she
+walked along. The snow was quite deep, the road was not well broken
+out, and she plodded forward with bent head, her black skirt
+gathering a crusty border of snow.
+
+She had to pass Richard Alger's house, but she never looked up. It
+was six o'clock, and quite dark; it had been dark when she set out at
+five. The housewives were preparing supper; there was a smell of
+burning pine-wood in the air, and now and then a savory scent of
+frying meat. Sylvia had smelled brewing tea and baking bread in
+Squire Payne's house, and she had heard old Margaret, the Scotch
+woman who had lived with the squire's family ever since she could
+remember, stepping around in another room. Old Margaret was almost
+the only servant, the only regular and permanent servant, in
+Pembroke, and she enjoyed a curious sort of menial distinction: she
+dressed well, wore a handsome cashmere shawl which had come from
+Scotland, and held her head high in the squire's pew. People saluted
+her with respect, and her isolation of inequality gave her a reversed
+dignity.
+
+Sylvia had hoped Margaret would not come in while she sat with the
+squire. She was afraid of her eyes, which flashed keen like a man's
+under shaggy brows. She did not want her to see the squire counting
+out the money from his leather purse, although she knew that Margaret
+would keep her own counsel.
+
+She had been glad enough to escape and not see her appear behind the
+bulk of the squire in the doorway. Squire Payne was full of laborious
+courtesy, and always himself aided Sylvia to the door when she came
+for money, and that always alarmed her. She would drop a meek
+courtesy on trembling knees and hurry away.
+
+Sylvia had almost reached the old road leading to her own house, when
+she saw a figure advancing towards her through the dusk. She saw it
+was a woman by the wide swing of the skirts, and trembled. She felt a
+presentiment as to who it was. She held her head down and well to one
+side, she bent over and tried to hurry past, but the figure stopped.
+
+"Is that you, Sylvy Crane?" said her sister, Hannah Berry.
+
+Sylvia did not stop. "Yes, it's me," she stammered. "Good-evenin',
+Hannah."
+
+She tried to pass, but Hannah stood in her way. "What you hurryin' so
+for?" she asked, sharply; "where you been?"
+
+"Where _you_ been?" returned Sylvia, trembling.
+
+"Up to Sarah's. Charlotte, she's gone down to Rebecca's. She's
+terrible thick with Rebecca. Well, I've been to see Rebecca; an'
+Rose, she's been, an' I ain't nothin' to say. William has got her for
+a wife, an' we've got to hold up our heads before folks; an' when it
+comes right down to it, there's a good many folks can't say much. If
+Charlotte Barnard wants to be thick with Rebecca, she can. Her mother
+won't say nothin'. She always was as easy as old Tilly; an' as for
+Cephas, he's either eatin' grass, or he ain't eatin' grass, an'
+that's all he cares about, unless he gets stirred up about politics,
+the way he did with Barney Thayer. I dunno but Charlotte thinks
+she'll get him back again goin' to see Rebecca. I miss my guess but
+what she sees him there sometimes. I wouldn't have a daughter of mine
+chasin' a fellar that had give her the mitten; but Charlotte ain't
+got no pride, nor her mother, neither. Where did you say you'd been,
+trapesin' through the snow?"
+
+"Has Rose got her things most done?" asked Sylvia, desperately.
+Distress was awakening duplicity in her simple, straightforward
+heart. All Hannah Berry's thought slid, as it were, in well-greased
+grooves; only give one a starting push and it went on indefinitely
+and left all others behind, and her sister Sylvia knew it.
+
+"Well, she's got 'em pretty near done," replied Hannah Berry. "Her
+underclothes are all done, an' the quilts; the weddin'-dress ain't
+bought yet, an' she's got to have a mantilla. Do you know Charlotte
+ain't never wore that handsome mantilla she had when she was
+expectin' to marry Barney?"
+
+"Ain't she?"
+
+"No, she ain't, nor her silk gown neither. I said all I darsed to. I
+thought mebbe she or Sarah would offer; they both of 'em know how
+hard it is to get anything out of Silas; but they didn't, an' I
+wa'n't goin' to ask, nohow. I shall get a new silk an' a mantilla for
+Rose, an' not be beholden to nobody, if I have to sell the spoons I
+had when I was married."
+
+"I don't s'pose they have much to do with," said Sylvia. She began to
+gradually edge past her sister.
+
+"Of course they haven't; I know that jest as well as you do. But if
+Charlotte ain't goin' to get married she don't want any weddin'-gown
+an' mantilla, an' she won't ever get married. She let Thomas Payne
+slip, an' there ain't nobody else I can think of for her. If she
+ain't goin' to want weddin'-clothes, I don't see why she an' her
+mother would be any poorer for givin' hers away. 'Twouldn't cost 'em
+any more than to let 'em lay in the chest. Well, I've got to go home;
+it's supper-time. Where did you say you'd been, Sylvy?"
+
+Sylvia was well past her sister; she pretended not to hear. "You
+ain't been over for quite a spell," she called back, faintly.
+
+"I know I ain't," returned Hannah. "I've been tellin' Rose we'd come
+over to tea some afternoon before she was married."
+
+"Do," said Sylvia, but the cordiality in her voice seemed to
+overweigh it.
+
+"Well, mebbe we'll come over to-morrow," said Hannah. "We've got some
+pillow-slips to trim, an' we can bring them. You'd better ask Sarah
+an' Charlotte, if she can stay away from Rebecca Thayer's long
+enough."
+
+"Yes, I will," said Sylvia, feebly, over her shoulder.
+
+"We'll come early," said Hannah. Then the sisters sped apart through
+the early winter darkness. Poor Sylvia fairly groaned out loud when
+her sister was out of hearing and she had turned the corner of the
+old road.
+
+"What shall I do? what shall I do?" she muttered.
+
+Her sisters to tea meant hot biscuits and plum sauce and pie and
+pound-cake and tea. Sylvia had yet a little damson sauce at the
+bottom of a jar, although she had not preserved last year, for lack
+of sugar; but hot biscuits and pie, the pound-cake and tea would have
+to be provided.
+
+She felt again of the little money-store in her pocket; that was all
+that stood between her and the poor-house; every penny was a barrier
+and had its carefully calculated value. This outlay would reduce
+terribly her little period of respite and independence; yet she
+hesitated as little as Fouquet planning the splendid entertainment,
+which would ruin him, for Louis XIII.
+
+Her sisters and nieces must come to tea; and all the food, which was
+the village fashion and as absolute in its way as court etiquette,
+must be provided.
+
+"They'll suspect if I don't," said Sylvia Crane.
+
+She rolled away the stone from the door and entered her solitary
+house. She lighted her candle and prepared for bed. She did not get
+any supper. She said to herself with a sudden fierceness, which came
+over her at times--a mild impulse of rebellion which indicated
+perhaps some strain from far-off, untempered ancestors, which had
+survived New England generations--that she did not care if she never
+ate supper again.
+
+"They're all comin' troopin' in here to-morrow, an' it's goin' to
+take about all the little I've got left to get victuals for 'em, an'
+I've got to go without to-night if I starve!" she cried out quite
+loud and defiantly, as if her hard providence lurked within hearing
+in some dark recess of the room.
+
+She raked ashes over the coals in the fireplace. "I'll go to bed an'
+save the fire, too," she said; "it'll take about all the wood I've
+got left to-morrow. I've got to heat the oven. Might as well go to
+bed, an' lay there forever, anyway. If I stayed up till doomsday
+nobody'd come."
+
+Sylvia set the shovel back with a vicious clatter; then she struck
+out--like a wilful child who hurts itself because of its rage and
+impotent helplessness to hurt aught else--her thin, red hand against
+the bricks of the chimney. She looked at the bruises on it with
+bitter exultation, as if she saw in them some evidence of her own
+freedom and power, even to her own hurt.
+
+When she went to bed she stowed away her money under the feather-bed.
+She could not go to sleep. Some time in the night a shutter in
+another room up-stairs banged. She got up, lighted the candle, and
+trod over the icy floors to the room relentlessly with her bare feet.
+There was a pane of glass broken behind the shutter, and the wind had
+loosened the fastening. Sylvia forced the shutter back; in a strange
+rage she heard another pane of glass crack. "I don't care if every
+pane of glass in the window is broken," she muttered, as she hooked
+the fastening with angry, trembling fingers.
+
+Her thin body in its cotton night-gown, cramped with long rigors of
+cold, her delicate face reddened as if before a fire, her jaws felt
+almost locked as she went through the deadly cold of the lonely house
+back to bed; but that strange rage in her heart enabled her to defy
+it, and awakened within her something like blasphemy against life and
+all the conditions thereof, but never against Richard Alger. She
+never felt one throb of resentment against him. She even wondered,
+when she was back in bed, if he had bedclothing enough, if the quilts
+and bed-puffs that his mother had left were not worn out; her own
+were very thin.
+
+The next day Sylvia heated her brick oven; she went to the store and
+bought materials, and made pound-cake and pies. While they were
+baking she ran over and invited Charlotte and her mother. She did not
+see Cephas; he had gone to draw some wood.
+
+"I'd like to have him come, too," she said, as she went out; "but I
+dunno as he'd eat anything I've got for tea."
+
+"Land! he eats anything when he goes out anywhere to tea," replied
+Mrs. Barnard. "He was over to Hannah's a while ago, an' he eat
+everything. He eats pie-crust with shortenin' now, anyway. He got so
+he couldn't stan' it without. I guess he'd like to come. He'll have
+to draw wood some this afternoon, but he can come in time for tea.
+I'll lay out his clothes on the bed for him."
+
+"Well, have him come, then," said Sylvia. Sylvia was nearly out of
+the yard when Charlotte called after her: "Don't you want me to come
+over and help you, Aunt Sylvia?" she called out. She stood in the
+door with her apron flying out in the wind like a blue flag.
+
+"No, I guess not," replied Sylvia; "I don't need any help. I ain't
+got much to do."
+
+"I think Aunt Sylvia looks sick," Charlotte said to her mother when
+she went in.
+
+"I thought she looked kind of peaked," said Sarah. But neither of
+them dreamed of the true state of affairs: how poor Sylvia Crane,
+half-starved and half-frozen in heart and stomach, was on the verge
+of bankruptcy of all her little worldly possessions.
+
+Sylvia's sisters, practical enough in other respects, were singularly
+ignorant and incompetent concerning any property except the few
+dollars and cents in their own purses.
+
+They had always supposed Sylvia had enough to live on, as long as she
+lived at all. They had a comfortable sense of generosity and
+self-sacrifice, since they had let her have all the old homestead
+after her mother's death without a word, and even against covert
+remonstrances on the parts of their husbands.
+
+Silas Berry had once said out quite openly to his wife and Sarah
+Barnard: "That will had ought to be broke, accordin' to my way of
+thinkin'," and Hannah had returned with spirit: "It won't ever be
+broke unless it's against my will, Silas Berry. I know it seems
+considerable for Sylvy to have it all, but she's took care of mother
+all those years, an' I don't begrutch it to her, an' she's a-goin' to
+have it. I don't much believe Richard Alger will ever have her now
+she's got so old, an' she'd ought to have enough to live on the rest
+of her life an' keep her comfortable."
+
+Therefore Sylvia's sisters had a conviction that she was comfortably
+provided with worldly gear. Mrs. Berry was even speculating upon the
+probability of her giving Rose something wherewith to begin
+house-keeping when her marriage with Tommy Ray took place.
+
+The two sisters, with their daughters, came early that afternoon.
+Mrs. Berry and Rose sewed knitted lace on pillow-slips; Mrs. Barnard
+and Charlotte were making new shirts for Cephas; Charlotte sat by the
+window and set beautiful stitches in her father's linen shirt-bosoms,
+while her aunt Hannah's tongue pricked her ceaselessly as with small
+goading thorns.
+
+"I s'pose this seems kind of natural to you, don't it, Charlotte,
+gettin' pillow-slips ready?" said Mrs. Berry.
+
+"I don't know but it does," answered Charlotte, never raising her
+eyes from her work. Her mother flushed angrily. She opened her mouth
+as if to speak, then she shut it again hard.
+
+"Let me see, how many did you make?" asked Mrs. Berry.
+
+"She made two dozen pair," Charlotte's mother answered for her.
+
+"An' you've got 'em all laid away, yellowin'?"
+
+"I guess they ain't yellowed much," said Sarah Barnard.
+
+"I don't see when you're ever goin' to use 'em."
+
+"Mebbe there'd be chances enough to use 'em if some folks was as
+crazy to take up with 'em as some other folks," returned Sarah
+Barnard.
+
+"I'd like to know what you mean?"
+
+"Oh, nothin'. If folks want chances to make pillow-slips bad enough
+there's generally poor tools enough layin' 'round, that's all."
+
+"I'd like to know what you mean, Sarah Barnard."
+
+"Oh, I don't mean nothin'," answered Sarah Barnard. She glanced at
+her daughter Charlotte and smiled slyly, but Charlotte never returned
+the glance and smile. She sewed steadily. Rose colored, but she said
+nothing. She looked very pretty and happy, as she sat there, sewing
+knitted lace on her wedding-pillows; and she really was happy. Her
+passionate heart had really satisfied itself with the boyish lover
+whom she would have despised except for lack of a better. She was and
+would be happy enough; it was only a question of deterioration of
+character, and the nobility of applying to the need of love the rules
+of ordinary hunger and thirst, and eating contentedly the crust when
+one could not get the pie, of drinking the water when one could not
+get the wine. Contentment may be sometimes a degradation; but she was
+happier than she had ever been in her life, although she had a little
+sense of humiliation when she reflected that Tommy Ray, younger than
+herself, tending store under her brother, was not exactly a brilliant
+match for her, and that everybody in the village would think so. So
+she colored angrily when her aunt Sarah spoke as she did, although
+she said nothing. But her mother, although she had rebelled in
+private bitterly against her daughter's choice, was ready enough to
+take up the cudgels for her in public.
+
+"Well," said Hannah Berry, "two old maids in the family is about
+enough, accordin' to my way of thinkin'."
+
+"It's better to be an old maid than to marry somebody you don't want,
+jest for the sake of bein' married," retorted Sarah Barnard,
+fiercely.
+
+The two sisters clashed like two thorny bushes of one family in a
+gale the whole afternoon. The two daughters sewed silently, and
+Sylvia knitted a stocking with scarcely a word until she arose to get
+tea.
+
+Cephas and Silas both came to tea, which was served in state, with a
+fine linen table-cloth, and Sylvia's mother's green and white
+sprigged china. Nobody suspected, as they tasted the damson sauce
+with the thin silver spoons, as they tilted the green and white
+teacups to their lips, and ate the rich pound-cake and pie, what a
+very feast of renunciation and tragedy this was to poor Sylvia Crane.
+Cephas and Silas, indeed, knew that money had been advanced her by
+the town upon her estate, but they were far from suspecting, and,
+indeed, were unwilling to suspect, how nearly it was exhausted and
+the property lived out. It was only a meagre estimate that the town
+of Pembroke had made of the Crane ancestral acres. If Silas and
+Cephas had ever known what it was, they had dismissed it from their
+minds, they were interested in not knowing. Suppose their wives
+should want to give her a home and support.
+
+The women knew nothing whatever.
+
+When they went home, an hour after tea, Hannah Berry turned to Sylvia
+in the doorway. "I suppose you know the weddin' is comin' off pretty
+soon now," said she.
+
+"Yes, I s'posed 'twas," answered Sylvia, trying to smile.
+
+"Well, I thought I'd jest mention it, so you could get your present
+ready," said Hannah. She nudged Rose violently as she spoke.
+
+"I don't care; I meant to give her a hint," she said, chuckling, when
+they were outside. "She can give you something jest as well as not;
+she might give you some silver teaspoons, or a table, or sofa. There!
+she bought that handsome sofa for herself a few years ago, an' she
+didn't need it more'n nothin' at all. I suppose she thought Richard
+Alger was comin' steady, but now he's stopped."
+
+Rose was married in a few weeks. The morning of the wedding-day
+Sylvia went into Berry's store and called William aside.
+
+"If you can, I wish you'd come 'round by-an'-by with your horse an'
+your wood-sled," said she.
+
+"Yes, guess I can; what is it you want?" asked William, eying her
+curiously. She was very pale; there were red circles around her eyes,
+and her mouth trembled.
+
+"Oh, it ain't anything, only a little present I wanted to send to
+Rose," replied Sylvia.
+
+"Well," said William, "I'll be along by-an'-by." He looked after her
+in a perplexed way as she went out.
+
+Silas was in the back of the store, and presently he came forward.
+"What she want you to do?" he inquired of his son.
+
+William told him. The old man chuckled. "Hannah give her a hint
+'tother day, an' I guess she took it," he said.
+
+"I thought she looked pretty poorly," said William--"looked as if
+she'd been crying or something. How do you suppose that property
+holds out, father? I heard the town was allowing her on it."
+
+"Oh, I guess it'll last her as long as she lives," replied Silas,
+gruffly. "Your mother had ought to had her thirds in it."
+
+"I don't know about that," said William. "Aunt Sylvy had a hard time
+takin' care of grandmother."
+
+"She was paid for 't," returned Silas.
+
+"Richard Alger treated her mean."
+
+"Guess he sat out considerable firewood an' candle-grease," assented
+the old man.
+
+A customer came in then, and Ezra Ray sprang forward. He was all
+excited over his brother's wedding, and was tending store in his
+place that day. His mother was making him a new suit to wear to the
+wedding, and he felt as if the whole affair hung, as it were, upon
+the buttons of his new jacket and the straps of his new trousers.
+
+"Guess I might as well go over to Aunt Sylvy's now as any time," said
+William.
+
+"Don't see what she wanted you to fetch the horse an' sled for,"
+ruminated Silas. "Mother thought most likely she'd give some silver
+teaspoons if she give anything."
+
+William went out to the barn, put the horse in the sled, and drove
+down the hill towards Sylvia's. When he returned the old thin silver
+teaspoons of the Crane family were in his coat-pocket, and Sylvia's
+dearly beloved and fondly cherished hair-cloth sofa was on the sled
+behind him.
+
+"What in creation did she send them old teaspoons and that old sofa
+for?" his mother asked, disgustedly.
+
+"I don't know," replied William, soberly; "but I do know one thing: I
+hated to take them bad enough. She acted all upset over it. I think
+she'd better have kept her sofa and teaspoons as long as she lived."
+
+"Course she was upset givin' away anything," scolded his mother. "It
+was jest like her, givin' away a passel of old truck ruther than
+spend any money. Well, I s'pose you may as well set that sofa in the
+parlor. It ain't hurt much, anyway."
+
+Rose and her husband were to live with her parents for the present.
+She was married that evening. She wore a blue silk dress, and some
+rose-geranium blossoms and leaves in her hair. Tommy Ray sat by her
+side on Sylvia's sofa until the company and the minister were all
+there. Then they stood up and were married.
+
+Sylvia came to the wedding in her best silk gown; she had trembled
+lest Richard Alger should be there, but he had not been invited.
+Hannah Berry cherished a deep resentment against him.
+
+"I ain't goin' to have any man that's treated one of my folks as mean
+as he has set foot in my house to a weddin', not if I know it," she
+told Rose.
+
+After the marriage-cake and cider were passed around, the old people
+sat solemnly around the borders of the rooms, and the young people
+played games. William and his wife were not there. Hannah had not
+dared to slight them, but William could not prevail upon Rebecca to
+go.
+
+Barney, also, had not been invited to the wedding. Mrs. Berry had an
+open grudge against him on her niece's account, and a covert one on
+her daughter's. Hannah Berry had a species of loyalty in her nature,
+inasmuch as she would tolerate ill-treatment of her kin from nobody
+but her own self.
+
+Charlotte Barnard came with her father and mother, and sat quietly
+with them all the evening. She was beginning insensibly to rather
+hold herself aloof from the young people, and avoid joining in their
+games. She felt older. People had wondered if she would not wear the
+dress she had had made for her own wedding, but she did not. She wore
+her old purple silk, which had been made over from one of her
+mother's, and a freshly-starched muslin collar. The air was full of
+the rich sweetness of cake; there was a loud discord of laughter and
+high shrill voices, through which yet ran a subtle harmony of mirth.
+Laughing faces nodded and uplifted like flowers in the merry romping
+throngs in the middle of the room, while the sober ones against the
+walls watched with grave, elderly, retrospective eyes.
+
+As soon as she could, Sylvia Crane stole into her sister's bedroom,
+where the women's outside garments were heaped high on the bed, got
+her own, opened the side door softly, and went home. The next day she
+was going to the poor-house, and nobody but the three selectmen of
+Pembroke knew it. She had begged them, almost on her knees, to tell
+nobody until she was there.
+
+That night she rolled away the guardian stone from before the door
+with the feeling that it was for the last time. All that night she
+worked. She could not go to bed, she could not sleep, and she had
+gone beyond any frenzy of sorrow and tears. All her blind and
+helpless rage against life and the obdurately beneficent force, which
+had been her conception of Providence, was gone. When the battle is
+over there is no more need for the fury of combat. Sylvia felt her
+battle was over, and she felt the peace of defeat.
+
+She was to take a few necessaries to the poor-house with her; she had
+them to pack, and she also had some cleaning to do.
+
+She had a vague idea that the town, which seemed to loom over her
+like some dreadful shadowy giant of a child's story, would sell the
+house, and it must be left in neat order for the inspection of seller
+and buyer. "I ain't goin' to have the town lookin' over the house an'
+sayin' it ain't kept decent," she said. So she worked hard all night,
+and her candle lit up first one window, then another, moving all over
+the house like a will-o'-the-wisp.
+
+The man who had charge of the poor-house came for her the next
+morning at ten o'clock. Sylvia was all ready. At quarter past ten he
+drove out of the old road where the Crane house stood and down the
+village street. The man's name was Jonathan Leavitt. He was quite old
+but hearty, with a stubbly fringe of white beard around a ruddy face.
+He had come on a wood-sled for the greater convenience of bringing
+Sylvia's goods. There were a feather-bed, bolster, and pillows, tied
+up in an old homespun blanket, on the rear of the sled; there was
+also a red chest, and a great bundle of bedclothing. Sylvia sat in
+her best rocking-chair just behind Jonathan Leavitt, who drove
+standing.
+
+"It's a pleasant day for this time of year," he observed to Sylvia
+when they started. Sylvia nodded assent.
+
+Jonathan Leavitt had had a fear lest Sylvia might make a disturbance
+about going. Many a time had it taken hours for him to induce a poor
+woman to leave her own door-stone; and when at length they had set
+forth, it was to an accompaniment of shrill, piteous lamentations, so
+strained and persistent that they seemed scarcely human, and more
+like the cries of a scared cat being hauled away from her home.
+Everybody on the road had turned to look after the sled, and Jonathan
+Leavitt had driven on, looking straight ahead, his face screwed hard,
+lashing now and then his old horse, with a gruff shout. Now he felt
+relieved and grateful to Sylvia for going so quietly. He was disposed
+to be very friendly to her.
+
+"You'd better keep your rockin'-chair kind of stiddy," he said, when
+they turned the corner into the new road, and the chair oscillated
+like an uneasy berth at sea.
+
+Sylvia sat up straight in the chair. She had on her best bonnet and
+shawl, and her worked lace veil over her face. Her poor blue eyes
+stared out between the black silk leaves and roses. If she had been a
+dead woman and riding to her grave, and it had been possible for her
+to see as she was borne along the familiar road, she would have
+regarded everything in much the same fashion that she did now. She
+looked at everything--every tree, every house and wall--with a pang
+of parting forever. She felt as if she should never see them again in
+their old light.
+
+The poor-house was three miles out of the village; the road lay past
+Richard Alger's house. When they drew near it Sylvia bent her head
+low and averted her face; she shut her eyes behind the black roses.
+She did not want to know when she passed the house. An awful shame
+that Richard should see her riding past to the poor-house seized upon
+her.
+
+The wood-sled went grating on, a chain rattled; she calculated that
+they were nearly past when there was a jerk, and Jonathan Leavitt
+cried "Hullo!"
+
+"Where are you going?" shouted another voice. Sylvia knew it. Her
+heart pounded. She turned her face farther to one side, and did not
+open her eyes.
+
+Richard Alger came plunging down out of his yard. His handsome face
+was quite pale under a slight grizzle of beard, he was in his
+shirt-sleeves, he had on no dicky or stock, and his sinewy throat
+showed.
+
+"Where you goin'?" he gasped out again, as he came up to the sled.
+
+"I'm a takin' Sylvy home. Why?" inquired Jonathan Leavitt, with a
+dazed look.
+
+"Home? What are you headed this way for? What are all those things on
+the sled?"
+
+"She's lived out her place, an' the town's jest took it; guess you
+didn't know, Richard," said Jonathan Leavitt. His eyes upon the other
+man were half shrewdly inquiring, half bewildered.
+
+Sylvia never turned her head. She sat with her eyes closed behind her
+veil.
+
+[Illustration: "Sylvia never turned her head"]
+
+"Just turn that sled 'round," said Richard Alger.
+
+"Turn the sled 'round?"
+
+"Yes, turn it 'round!" Richard himself grasped the bay horse by the
+bit as he spoke. "Back, back!" he shouted.
+
+"What are you doin' on, Richard?" cried the old man; but he pulled
+his right rein mechanically, and the sled slewed slowly and safely
+around.
+
+Richard jumped on and stood just beside Sylvia, holding to a stake.
+"Where d'ye want to go?" asked the old man.
+
+"Back."
+
+"But the town--"
+
+"I'll take care of the town."
+
+Jonathan Leavitt drove back. Sylvia opened her eyes a little way, and
+saw Richard's back. "You'll catch cold without your coat," she half
+gasped.
+
+"No, I sha'n't," returned Richard, but he did not turn his head.
+
+Sylvia did not say any more. She was trembling so that her very
+thoughts seemed to waver. They turned the corner of the old road, and
+drove up to her old house. Richard stepped off the sled, and held out
+his hands to Sylvia. "Come, get off," said he.
+
+"I dunno about this," said Jonathan Leavitt. "I'm willin' as far as
+I'm concerned, Richard, but I've had my instructions."
+
+"I tell you I'll take care of it," said Richard Alger. "I'll settle
+all the damages with the town. Come, Sylvia, get off."
+
+And Sylvia Crane stepped weakly off the wood-sled, and Richard Alger
+helped her into the house. "Why, you can't hardly walk," said he, and
+Sylvia had never heard anything like the tenderness in his tone. He
+bent down and rolled away the stone. Sylvia had rolled it in front of
+the door herself, when she went out, as she supposed, for the last
+time. Then he opened the door, and took hold of her slender shawled
+arm, and half lifted her in.
+
+"Go in an' sit down," said he, "while we get the things in."
+
+Sylvia went mechanically into her clean, fireless parlor; it was the
+room where she had always received Richard. She sat down in a
+flag-bottomed chair and waited.
+
+Richard and Jonathan Leavitt came into the house tugging the
+feather-bed between them. "We'll put it in the kitchen," she heard
+Richard say. They brought in the chest and the bundle of bedding.
+Then Richard came into the parlor carrying the rocking-chair before
+him. "You want this in here, don't you?" he said.
+
+"It belongs here," said Sylvia, faintly. Jonathan Leavitt gathered up
+his reins and drove out of the yard.
+
+Richard set down the chair; then he went and stood before Sylvia.
+
+"Look here, Sylvia," said he. Then he stopped and put his hands over
+his face. His whole frame shook. Sylvia stood up. "Don't, Richard,"
+she said.
+
+"I never had any idea of this," said Richard Alger, with a great
+groaning sob.
+
+"Don't you feel so bad, Richard," said Sylvia.
+
+Suddenly Richard put is arm around Sylvia, and pulled her close to
+him. "I'll look out and do better by you the rest of your life,
+anyhow," he said. He took hold of Sylvia's veil and pulled it back.
+Her pale face drooped before him.
+
+"You look--half--starved," he groaned. Sylvia looked up and saw tears
+on his rough cheeks.
+
+"Don't you feel bad, Richard," she said again.
+
+"I'd ought to feel bad," said Richard, fiercely.
+
+"I couldn't help it, that night you come an' found me gone. It was
+that night Charlotte had the trouble with Barney. Sarah, she wouldn't
+let me come home any sooner. I was dreadful upset about it."
+
+"I've been meaner than sin, an' I don't know as it makes it any
+better, because I couldn't seem to help it," said Richard Alger. "I
+didn't forget you a single minute, Sylvia, an' I was awful sorry for
+you, an' there wasn't a Sabbath night that I didn't want to come more
+than I wanted to go to Heaven! But I couldn't, I couldn't nohow. I've
+always had to travel in tracks, an' no man livin' knows how deep a
+track he's in till he gets jolted out of it an' can't get back. But
+I've got into a track now, an' I'll die before I get out of it. There
+ain't any use in your lookin' at me, Sylvia, but if you can make up
+your mind to have me, I'll try my best, an' do all I can to make it
+all up to you in the time that's left."
+
+"I'm afraid you've had a dreadful hard time, livin' alone so long,
+an' tryin' to do for yourself," said Sylvia, pitifully.
+
+"I'm glad I have," replied Richard, grimly.
+
+He clasped Sylvia closer; her best bonnet was all crushed against his
+breast. He looked around over her head, as if searching for
+something.
+
+"Where's the sofa gone?" he asked.
+
+"I gave it to Rose for a weddin' present. I thought I shouldn't ever
+need it," Sylvia murmured.
+
+"Well, I've got one, it ain't any matter," said Richard.
+
+He moved towards the rocking-chair, drawing Sylvia gently along with
+him.
+
+"Sit down, Sylvia," said he, softly.
+
+"No, you sit down in the rocking-chair, Richard," said Sylvia. She
+reached out and pulled a flag-bottomed chair close and sat down
+herself. Richard sat in the rocking-chair.
+
+Sylvia untied her bonnet, took it off, and straightened it. Richard
+watched her. "I want you to have a white bonnet," said he.
+
+"I'm too old, Richard," Sylvia replied, blushing.
+
+"No, you ain't," he said, defiantly; "you've got to have a white
+bonnet."
+
+Sylvia looked in his face--and indeed hers looked young enough for a
+white bonnet; it flushed and lit up, like an old flower revived in a
+new spring.
+
+Richard leaned over towards her, and the two old lovers kissed each
+other. Richard moved his chair close to hers, and Sylvia felt his arm
+coming around her waist. She sat still. "Put your head down on my
+shoulder," whispered Richard.
+
+And Sylvia laid her head on Richard's shoulder. She felt as if she
+were dreaming of a dream.
+
+
+
+Chapter XIII
+
+
+When Richard Alger went home he wore an old brown shawl of Sylvia's
+over his shoulders. He had demurred a little. "I can't go down the
+street with your shawl on, Sylvia," he had pleaded, but Sylvia
+insisted.
+
+"You'll catch your death of cold, goin' home in your shirt-sleeves,"
+she said. "They won't know it's my shawl. Men wear shawls."
+
+"You've worn this ever since I've known you, Sylvia, an' I ain't
+given to catchin' cold easy," said Richard almost pitifully. But he
+stood still and let Sylvia pin the shawl around his neck. Sylvia
+seemed to have suddenly acquired a curious maternal authority over
+him, and he submitted to it as if it were merely natural that he
+should.
+
+Richard Alger went meekly down the road, wearing the old brown shawl
+that had often draped Sylvia Crane's slender feminine shoulders when
+she walked abroad, since she was a young girl. Sylvia had always worn
+it corner-wise, but she had folded it square for him as making it
+more of a masculine garment. Two corners waved out stiffly from his
+square shoulders. He tried to swing his arms unconcernedly under it;
+once the fringe hit his hand and he jumped.
+
+He was shame-faced when he struck out into the main road, but he did
+not dream of taking off the shawl. A very passion of obedience and
+loyalty to Sylvia had taken possession of him. With every submission
+after long persistency, there is a strong reverse action, as from the
+sudden cessation of any motion. Richard now yielded in more marked
+measure than he had opposed. He had borne with his whimsical will
+against all his sweetheart's dearest wishes during the better part of
+her life; now he would wear any insignia of bondage if she bade him.
+
+He had gone a short distance on the main road when he met Hannah
+Berry. She was hurrying along, her face was quite red, and he could
+hear her pant as she drew near. She looked at him sharply, she fairly
+narrowed her eyes over the shawl. "Good-mornin'," said she.
+
+Richard said "Good-morning," gruffly. The shawl blew out against
+Hannah's shoulder as she passed him. She turned about and stared
+after him, and he knew it. He went on with dogged chin in the folds
+of the shawl.
+
+Hannah Berry hurried along to Sylvia Crane's. When she opened the
+door Sylvia was just coming out of the parlor, and the two sisters
+met in the entry with a kind of shock.
+
+"Oh, it's you," murmured Sylvia. Sylvia cast down her eyes before her
+sister. She tried not to smile. Her hair was tumbled and there were
+red spots on her cheeks.
+
+"Has he been here all this time?" demanded Hannah.
+
+"He's just gone."
+
+"I met him out here. What in creation did you rig him up in your old
+shawl for, Sylvy Crane?"
+
+"He was in his shirt-sleeves, an' I wasn't goin' to have him catch
+his death of cold," replied Sylvia with dignity.
+
+"In his shirt-sleeves!"
+
+"Yes, he run out just as he was."
+
+"Land sakes!" said Hannah. The two women looked at each other.
+Suddenly Hannah threw out her arms from under her shawl, and clasped
+Sylvia. "Oh, Sylvy," she sobbed out, "to think you was settin' out
+for the poor-house this mornin', an' we havin' a weddin' last night,
+an' never knowin' it! Why didn't you say anythin' about it, why
+didn't you, Sylvy?"
+
+"I knew you couldn't do anything, Hannah."
+
+"Knew I couldn't do anything! Do you suppose me or Sarah would have
+let all the sister we've got go to the poor-house whilst we had a
+roof over our heads? We'd took you right in, either one of us."
+
+"I was afraid Silas an' Cephas wouldn't be willin'."
+
+"I guess they'd had to be willin'. I told Silas just now that if
+Richard Alger didn't come forward like a man, you was comin' to my
+house, an' have the best we've got as long as you lived. Silas, he
+said he thought you'd ought to earn your own livin', an' I told him
+there wa'n't any chance for a woman like you to earn your livin' in
+Pembroke, that you could earn your livin' enough livin' at your own
+sister's. Oh, Sylvy, I can't stand it, when I think of your startin'
+out that way, an' never sayin' a word." Hannah sobbed convulsively on
+her sister's shoulder. There were tears in Sylvia's eyes, but her
+face above her sister's head was radiant. "Don't, Hannah," she said.
+"It's all over now, you know."
+
+"Is he--goin' to have you now--Sylvy?"
+
+"I guess so, maybe," said Sylvia.
+
+"I suppose you'll go to his house, this is so run down."
+
+"He's goin' to fix this one up."
+
+"You think you'd rather live here, then? Well, I s'pose I should. I
+s'pose he's goin' to buy it. The town hadn't ought to ask much. Sylvy
+Crane, I can't get it through my head, nohow."
+
+"What?" said Sylvia.
+
+"How you run out this nice place so quick. I thought an' Sarah
+thought you'd got enough to last you jest as long as you lived, an'
+have some left to leave then."
+
+Hannah stood back and looked at her sister sharply.
+
+"I've always been as savin' as I knew how," said Sylvia.
+
+"Well, I dunno but you have. You got that sofa, that cost
+considerable. I shouldn't have thought you'd got that, if you'd known
+how things were, Sylvy."
+
+"I kinder felt as if I needed it."
+
+"Well, I guess you might have got along without that, anyhow.
+Richard's got one, ain't he?"
+
+"Yes, he says he has."
+
+"I thought I remembered his mother's buyin' one just before his
+father died. Well, you'll have his sofa, then; if I remember right,
+it's a better one than yours that you give Rose. Now, Sylvy Crane,
+you jest put on your hood an' shawl, an' come home with me, an' have
+some dinner. Have you got anything in the house to eat?"
+
+"I've got a few things," replied Sylvia, evasively.
+
+"What?"
+
+"Some potatoes an' apples."
+
+"Potatoes an' apples!" Hannah began to sob again. "To think of your
+comin' to this," she wailed. "My own sister not havin' anything in
+the house to eat, an' settin' out for the poor-house, an' everybody
+in town knowin' it."
+
+"Don't feel bad about it, Hannah; it's all over now," said Sylvia.
+
+"Don't feel bad about it! I guess you'd feel bad about it if you was
+in my place," returned Hannah. "I s'pose you think now you've got
+Richard Alger that there's nothin' else makes any odds. I guess I've
+got some feelin's. Get your hood and shawl, now do; dinner was all
+ready when I come away."
+
+"I guess I'd better not, Hannah," said Sylvia. It seemed to her that
+she never would want anything to eat again. She wanted to be alone in
+her old house, and hug her happiness to her heart, whose starvation
+had caused her more agony than any other. Now that was appeased she
+cared for nothing else.
+
+"You come right along," said Hannah. "I've got a nice roast spare-rib
+an' turnip an' squash, an' you're goin' to come an' have some of it."
+
+When Hannah and Sylvia got out on the main road, they heard Sarah
+Barnard's voice calling them. She was hurrying down the hill. Cephas
+had just come home with the news. Jonathan Leavitt had spread it over
+the village from the nucleus of the store where he had stopped on his
+way home.
+
+Sarah Barnard sat down on the snowy stone-wall among the last year's
+blackberry vines, and cried as if her heart would break. Finally
+Hannah, after joining with her awhile, turned to and comforted her.
+
+"Land sake, don't take on so, Sarah Barnard!" said she; "it's all
+over now. Sylvy's goin' to marry Richard Alger, an' there ain't a man
+in Pembroke any better off, unless it's Squire Payne. She's goin' to
+have him right off, an' he's goin' to buy the house an' fix it up,
+an' she's goin' to have all his mother's nice things, an' she's
+comin' home with me now, an' have some nice roast spare-rib an'
+turnip. There ain't nothin' to take on about."
+
+Hannah fairly pulled Sarah off the stone-wall. "Sylvy an' me have got
+to go," said she. "You come down this afternoon, an' we'll all go
+over to her house, an' talk it over. I s'pose Richard will come
+to-night. I hope he'll shave first, an' put on his coat. I never see
+such a lookin' sight as he was when I met him jest now."
+
+"I didn't see as he looked very bad," said Sylvia, with dignity.
+
+"It seems as if it would kill me jest to think of it," sobbed Sarah
+Barnard, turning tremulously away.
+
+"Don't you feel bad about it any longer, Sarah," Sylvia said, half
+absently. Her hair blew out wildly from under her hood over her
+flushed cheeks; she smiled as if at something visible, past her
+sister, and past everything around her.
+
+"I tell you there ain't nothin' to be killed about!" Hannah called
+after Sarah; she caught hold of Sylvia's arm. "Sarah always was kind
+of hystericky," said she. "That spare-rib will be all dried up, an' I
+wouldn't give a cent for it, if you don't come along."
+
+Richard Alger and Sylvia Crane were married very soon. There was no
+wedding, and people were disappointed about that. Hannah Berry tried
+to persuade Sylvia to have one. "I'm willin' to make the cake," said
+she. "I've jest been through one weddin', but I'll do it. If I'd been
+goin' with a feller as long as you have with him, I wouldn't get
+cheated out of a weddin', anyhow. I'd have a weddin' an' I'd have
+cake, an' I'd ask folks, especially after what's happened. I'd let
+'em see I wa'n't quite so far gone, if I had set out for the
+poor-house once. I'd have a weddin'. Richard's got money enough. I
+had real good-luck with Rose's cake, an' I ain't afraid to try yours.
+I guess I should make it a little mite stiffer than I did hers."
+
+But Sylvia was obdurate. She did not say much, but she went her own
+way. She had gained a certain quiet decision and dignity which
+bewildered everybody. Her sisters had dimly realized that there was
+something about her out of plumb, as it were. Her nature had been
+warped to one side by one concentrated and unsatisfied desire. "Seems
+to me, sometimes, as if Sylvy was kind of queer," Hannah Berry often
+said. "I dunno but she's kinder turned on Richard Alger," Sarah would
+respond. Now she seemed suddenly to have regained her equilibrium,
+and no longer slanted doubtfully across her sisters' mental horizons.
+
+She and Richard went to the minister's house early one Sabbath
+morning, and were married. Then they went to meeting, Sylvia on
+Richard's arm. They sat side by side in the Alger pew; it was on the
+opposite side of the meeting-house from Sylvia's old pew. It seemed
+to her as if she would see her old self sitting there alone, as of
+old, if she looked across. She fixed her eyes straight ahead, and
+never glanced at Richard by her side. She held her white-bonneted
+head up like some gentle flower which had sprung back to itself after
+a hard wind. She had a new white bridal bonnet, as Richard had
+wished; it was trimmed with white plumes and ribbons, and she wore a
+long white-worked veil over her face. The wrought net-work, as
+delicate as frost, softened all the hard lines and fixed tints, and
+gave to her face an illusion of girlhood. She wore the two curls over
+her cheeks. Richard had asked her why she didn't curl her hair as she
+used to do.
+
+All the people saw Sylvia's white bonnet; it seemed to turn their
+eyes like a brilliant white spot, which reflected all the light in
+the meeting-house. But there were a few women who eyed more sharply
+Sylvia's wedding-gown and mantilla, for she wore the very ones which
+poor Charlotte Barnard had made ready for her own bridal. Sylvia was
+just about her niece's height; the gown had needed a little taking in
+to fit her thinner form, and that was all.
+
+Charlotte's mother had brought them over to Sylvia's one night, all
+nicely folded in white linen towels.
+
+"Charlotte wants you to have 'em; she says she won't ever need 'em,
+poor child!" she said, in response to Sylvia's remonstrances. Mrs.
+Barnard's eyes were red, as if she had been crying. It had apparently
+been harder for her to give up the poor slighted wedding-clothes than
+for her daughter. Charlotte had not shed a tear when she took them
+out of the chest and shook off the sprigs of lavender which she had
+laid over them; but it seemed to her that she could smell that faint
+elusive breath of lavender across the meeting-house when Sylvia came
+in, and the rustle of her bridal-gown was as loud in her ears as if
+she herself wore it.
+
+"Somebody might just as well have them, and have some good of them,"
+she had told her mother, and she spoke as if they were the garments
+of some one who was dead.
+
+"Seems to me, as much as they cost, you'd ought to wear 'em
+yourself," said her mother.
+
+"I never shall," Charlotte said, firmly; "and they might just as well
+do somebody some good." Charlotte's New England thrift and practical
+sense stretched her sentiment on the rack, and she never made a
+sound.
+
+Barney, watching out from his window that Sunday, caught a flash of
+green and purple from Sylvia's silken skirt as she turned the corner
+of the old road with Richard. "She's got on Charlotte's
+wedding-dress. She's--given it to her," he said, with a gasp. He had
+never forgotten it since the day Charlotte had shown it to him. He
+had pictured her in it, hundreds of times, to his own delight and
+torment. He had a fierce impulse to rush out and strip his
+Charlotte's wedding-clothes from this other bride's back.
+
+"She's gone and given it away, and she hasn't got a good silk dress
+herself; she's wearing her old cloak to meeting," he half sobbed to
+himself. He wondered piteously, thinking of his savings and of his
+property since his father's death, if he might not, at least, buy
+Charlotte a new silk dress and a mantilla. "I don't believe she'd be
+mad," he said; "but I'm afraid her father wouldn't let her wear it."
+
+The more he thought of it the more it seemed as if he could not bear
+it, unless he could buy Charlotte the silk dress. "Her clothes ain't
+as good as mine," he said, and he thought of his best blue broadcloth
+suit, and his flowered vest and silk hat. It seemed to him that with
+all the terrible injury he was doing Charlotte, he also injured her
+by having better clothes than she, and that that was something which
+might be set right.
+
+As Barney sat by his window that Sunday afternoon he saw a man coming
+down the hill. He watched him idly, then his heart leaped and he
+leaned forward. The man advanced with a careless, stately swing, his
+head was thrown back, his mulberry-colored coat had a sheen like a
+leaf in the sun. The man was Thomas Payne. Barney turned white as he
+watched him. He had not known he was in town, and his jealous heart
+at once whispered that he had come to see Charlotte. Thomas Payne
+came opposite the house, then passed out of sight. Barney sat with
+staring eyes full of miserable questioning upon the road. Had he been
+to see Charlotte? he speculated. He had come from that direction; but
+Barney remembered, with a sigh of hope, that Squire Payne had a
+sister, an old maiden lady, who lived a half-mile beyond Charlotte.
+Perhaps Thomas Payne had been to see his aunt.
+
+[Illustration: "Thomas Payne advanced with a careless, stately
+swing"]
+
+All the rest of the day Barney was in an agony of doubt and unrest
+over the unsettled question. He had been living lately in a sort of
+wretched peace of remorse and misery; now it was rudely shaken. He
+walked the floor; at night he could not sleep. He seemed to be in a
+very torture-chamber of his own making, and the tortures were worse
+than any enemies could have devised. Suppose Thomas Payne was sitting
+up with Charlotte this Sunday night. Once he thought, wildly, of
+going up the hill to see if there was a light in her parlor, but it
+seemed to him as if the doubt was more endurable than the certainty
+might be. Suppose Thomas Payne was sitting up with Charlotte; he
+called to mind all her sweet ways. Suppose she was looking and
+speaking to Thomas Payne in this way or that way; his imagination
+threw out pictures before him upon which he could not close his eyes.
+He saw Thomas Payne's face all glowing with triumph, he saw
+Charlotte's with the old look that she had worn for him. Charlotte's
+caresses had been few and maidenly; they all came into his mind like
+stings. He knew just how she would put her tender arm around this
+other man's neck, how she would lift grave, willing lips to his. He
+wished that they had never been for him, for all they seemed worth to
+him now was this bitter knowledge. His fancy led him on and on to his
+own torment. There was a bridal mist around Charlotte. He followed
+the old courses of his own dreams, after his memories were passed,
+and they caused him worse agony.
+
+The next morning Barney went to the store. It was absolutely
+necessary for him to go, but he shunned everybody. He had a horrible
+fear lest somebody should say, "Hallo, Barney, know Thomas Payne's
+goin' to marry your old girl?" He had planned the very words, and the
+leer of sly exultation that would accompany it.
+
+But he made his purchase and went out, and nobody spoke to him. He
+had not seen Thomas Payne in the back part of the store behind the
+stove. Presently Thomas got up and lounged leisurely out through the
+store, exchanging a word with one and another on his way. When he got
+out Barney was going down the road quite a way ahead of him. Thomas
+Payne kept on in his tracks. There was another man coming towards
+him, and presently he stood aside to let him pass. "Good-day, Royal,"
+said Thomas Payne.
+
+"Good-day, Thomas," returned the other. "When d'ye get home?"
+
+"Day before yesterday. How are you this winter, Royal?"
+
+"Well, I'm pretty fair to middlin'." The man's face, sunken in his
+feeble chest far below the level of Thomas's eyes, looked up at him
+with a sort of whimsical patience. His back was bent like a bow; he
+had had curvature of the spine for years, from a fall when a young
+man.
+
+"Glad to hear that," returned Thomas. The man passed him, walking as
+if he were vainly trying to straighten himself at every step. He held
+his knees stiff and threw his elbows back, but his back still curved
+pitifully, although it seemed as if he were half cheating himself
+into the belief that he was walking as straight as other men.
+
+Thomas walked on rapidly, lessening the distance between himself and
+Barney. As he went on he began to have a curious fancy, which he
+could hardly persuade himself was a fancy. It seemed to him that
+Barney Thayer was walking like the man whom he had just met, that his
+back had that same terrible curve.
+
+Thomas Payne stared in strange bewilderment at Barney's back. "It
+can't be that he has spine disease, that he has got hurt in any way,"
+he thought to himself. The purpose with which he had started out
+rather paled in his mind. He walked more rapidly. It certainly seemed
+to him that Barney's back was bent. He got within hailing distance
+and called out.
+
+"Hallo!" cried Thomas Payne.
+
+Barney turned around, and it seemed as if he turned with the feeble,
+crooked motion of the other man. He saw Thomas Payne, and his face
+was ghastly white, but he stood still and waited.
+
+"How are you?" Thomas said, gruffly, as he came up.
+
+"How are you, Thomas?" returned Barney. He looked at Thomas with a
+dogged expectancy. He thought he was going to tell him that he was to
+marry Charlotte.
+
+But Thomas was surveying him still in that strange bewilderment.
+"Look here, Barney," said he, bluntly, "have you been sick? I haven't
+heard of it."
+
+"No, I haven't," replied Barney, wonderingly.
+
+Thomas's eyes were fixed upon his back. "I didn't know but you had
+got hurt or something," said he.
+
+Barney shook his head. Thomas thought to himself that his back was
+certainly curved. "I guess I'll walk along with you a little way,"
+said he; "I've got something I wanted to say. For God's sake, Barney,
+you are sick!"
+
+"No, I ain't sick."
+
+"You are white as death."
+
+"There's nothing the matter with me," Barney half gasped. He turned
+and walked on, and his back still bent like a bow to Thomas Payne's
+eyes.
+
+Thomas went on silently until they had passed a house just beyond.
+Then he stopped again. "Look here, Barney," said he.
+
+"Well," said Barney. He stopped, but he did not turn or face Thomas.
+He only presented to him that curved, or semblance of a curved, back.
+
+"I want to speak to you about Charlotte Barnard," said Thomas Payne,
+abruptly. Barney waited without a word.
+
+"I suppose you'll think it's none of my business, and in one way it
+isn't," said Thomas, "but I am going to say it for her sake; I have
+made up my mind to. It seems to me it's time, if anybody cares
+anything about her. What are you treating Charlotte Barnard so for,
+Barnabas Thayer? It's time you gave an account to somebody, and you
+can give it to me."
+
+Barney did not answer.
+
+"Speak, you miserable coward!" shouted Thomas Payne, with a sudden
+threatening motion of his right arm.
+
+Then Barney turned, and Thomas started back at the sight of his face.
+"I can't help it," he said.
+
+"Can't help it, you--"
+
+"I can't, before God, Thomas."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+Barney raised his right hand and pointed past Thomas.
+"You--met--Royal Bennet just--now," he gasped, hoarsely.
+
+Thomas nodded.
+
+"You--saw--his--back?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Well, something like that ails me. I--can't help it--before God."
+
+"You don't mean--" Thomas said, and stopped, looking at Barney's
+back.
+
+"I mean that's why I can't--help it."
+
+"Have you hurt your back?" Thomas asked, in a subdued tone.
+
+"I've hurt my soul," said Barney. "It happened that Sunday night
+years ago. I--can't get over it. I am bent like his back."
+
+"I should think you'd better get over it, then, if that's all,"
+Thomas Payne said, roughly.
+
+"I--can't, any more than he can."
+
+"Do you mean your back's hurt? For God's sake talk sense, Barney!"
+Thomas cried out, in bewilderment.
+
+"It's more than my back; it's me."
+
+Thomas stared at Barney; a horror as of something uncanny and
+abnormal stole over him. Was the man's back curved, or had he by some
+subtle vision a perception of some terrible spiritual deformity, only
+symbolized by a curved spine? In a minute he gave an impatient stamp,
+and tried to shake himself free from the vague pity and horror which
+the other had aroused.
+
+"Do you know that you are ruining the life of the best woman that
+ever lived?" he demanded, fiercely.
+
+Barney looked at him, and suddenly there was a flash as of something
+noble in his face.
+
+"Look here, Thomas," he said, brokenly, in hoarse gasps. "Last night
+I--went mad, almost, because--I thought--maybe you'd been to
+see--her. I--saw you coming down the hill. I thought--I'd die
+thinking of--you--with her. I can't tell you--what I've been through,
+what I've suffered, and--what I suffer right along. I know I ain't to
+be pitied. I know--there ain't any pity--anywhere for anything--like
+this. I don't pity--myself. But it's awful. If you could get a sight
+of it, you'd know."
+
+Again to Thomas Payne, looking at the other, it was as if he saw a
+pale agonized face staring up at him from the midst of a curved mass
+of deformity. He shuddered.
+
+"I don't know what to make of you, Barney Thayer," he said, looking
+away.
+
+"There's one thing--I want to say," Barney went on. "I think there's
+enough of a man left in me--I--think I've got strength enough to say
+it. She--ought to be happy. I don't want her--wasting her whole
+life--God knows--I don't--no matter what it does--to me. I--wish--
+See here, Thomas. I know you--like her. Maybe she'll--turn to you. It
+seems as if she must. I hope you will--oh, for God's sake, be--good
+to her, Thomas!"
+
+Thomas Payne's face was as white as Barney's. He turned to go.
+"There's no use talking this way. You know Charlotte Barnard as well
+as I do," he said. "You know she's one of the women that never love
+any man but one. I don't want another man's wife, if she'd have me."
+Suddenly he faced Barney again. "For God's sake, Barney," he cried
+out, "be a man and go back to her, and marry her!"
+
+Barney shook his head; with a kind of a sob he turned around and went
+his way without another word. Thomas Payne said no more; he stared
+after Barney's retreating figure, and again the look of bewilderment
+and horror was in his face.
+
+That afternoon he asked his father, with a casual air, if he had
+heard anything about Barney Thayer getting his back injured in any
+way.
+
+"Why, no, I can't say as I have," returned the squire.
+
+"I saw him this morning, and I thought his back looked as if it was
+growing like Royal Bennet's. I dare say I imagined it," said Thomas.
+Then he went out of the room whistling.
+
+But, during his few weeks' stay in Pembroke, he put the same question
+to one and another, with varying results. Some said at once, with a
+sudden look of vague horror, that it was so. That Barney Thayer was
+indeed growing deformed; that they had noticed it. Others scouted the
+idea. "Saw him this morning, and he's as straight as he ever was,"
+they said.
+
+Whether Barney Thayer's back was, indeed, bowed into that terrible
+spinal curve or not, Thomas Payne could not tell by any agreement of
+witnesses. If some, gifted with acute spiritual insight, really
+perceived that dreadful warping of a diseased will, and clothed it
+with a material image for their own grosser senses; or if Barney,
+through dwelling upon his own real but hidden infirmity, had actually
+come unconsciously to give it a physical expression, and walked at
+times through the village with his back bent like his spirit,
+although not diseased, Thomas Payne could only speculate. He finally
+began to adopt the latter belief, as he himself, sometimes on meeting
+Barney, thought that he walked as erect as he ever had.
+
+Thomas Payne stayed several weeks in Pembroke, and he did not go to
+see Charlotte. Once he met her in the street, and stopped and shook
+hands with gay heartiness.
+
+"He's got over caring about me," Charlotte thought to herself with a
+strange pang, which shocked and shamed her. "Most likely he's got
+somebody out West, where he is," she said to herself firmly; that she
+ought to be glad if he had, and that she was; and yet she was not,
+although she never owned it to herself, and was stanchly loyal to her
+old love.
+
+Charlotte herself often fancied uneasily that Barney's back was
+growing like Royal Bennet's. She watched him furtively when she
+could. Then she would say to herself, another time, that she must
+have imagined it.
+
+Thomas Payne went away the first of May. That evening Charlotte sat
+on the door-step in the soft spring twilight. Her mother had just
+come home from her sister Hannah Berry's. "Thomas Payne went this
+afternoon," her mother said, standing before her.
+
+"Did he?" said Charlotte.
+
+"You might have had him if you hadn't stuck to a poor stick that
+ain't fit to tie your shoes up!" Sarah cried out, with sudden
+bitterness. Her voice sounded like Hannah Berry's. Charlotte knew
+that was just what her aunt Hannah had said about it.
+
+"I don't ask him to tie my shoes up," returned Charlotte.
+
+"You can stan' up for him all you want to," said her mother. "You
+know he's a poor tool, an' he's treatin' you mean. You know he can't
+begin to come up to a young man like Thomas Payne."
+
+"Thomas Payne don't want me, and I don't want him; don't talk any
+more about it, mother."
+
+"I think somebody ought to talk about it," said her mother, and she
+pushed roughly past Charlotte into the house.
+
+Charlotte sat on the door-step a long while. "If Thomas Payne has got
+anybody out West, I guess she'll be glad to see him," she thought.
+The fancy pained her, and yet she seemed to see Thomas Payne and
+Barney side by side, the one like a young prince--handsome and
+stately, full of generous bravery--the other vaguely crouching
+beneath some awful deformity, pitiful yet despicable in the eyes of
+men, and her whole soul cleaved to her old lover. "What we've got is
+ours," she said to herself.
+
+As she sat there a band of children went past, with a shrill, sweet
+clamor of voices. They were out hanging May-baskets and bunches of
+anemones. That was the favorite sport of the village children during
+the month of May. The woods were full of soft, innocent, seeking
+faces, bending over the delicate bells nodding in the midst of whorls
+of dark leaves. Every evening, after sundown, there were mysterious
+bursts of laughter and tiny scamperings around doors, and great balls
+of bloom swinging from the latchets when they were opened; but no
+person in sight, only soft gurgles of mirth and delight sounded
+around a corner of darkness.
+
+After Charlotte went to bed that night she thought she heard somebody
+at the south door. "It is the children with some may-flowers," she
+thought. But presently she reflected that it was very late for the
+children to be out.
+
+After a little while she got up, and stole down-stairs to the door,
+feeling her way through the dark house.
+
+She opened the south door cautiously, and put her hand out. There
+were no flowers swinging from the latch as she half expected. Her
+bare feet touched something on the door-step; she stooped, and there
+was a great package.
+
+Charlotte took it up, and went noiselessly back to her room with it.
+She lighted a candle, and unfastened the paper wrappings. She gave a
+little cry. There were yards of beautiful silk shimmering with lilac
+and silver and rose-color, and there was also a fine lace mantle.
+
+Charlotte looked at them; she was quite pale and trembling. She
+folded the silk and lace again carefully, and put them in a chest out
+of sight. Then she went back to bed, and lay there crying wildly.
+
+"Poor Barney! poor Barney!" she sobbed to herself.
+
+The next evening, after Cephas and Sarah had gone to bed, Charlotte
+crept out of the house with the package under her shawl. It was still
+early. She ran nearly all the way to Barney Thayer's house; she was
+afraid of meeting somebody, but she did not.
+
+She knocked softly on Barney's door, and heard him coming to open it
+at once. When he saw her standing there he gave a great start, and
+did not say anything. Charlotte thought he did not recognize her in
+the dusk.
+
+"It's me, Barney," she said.
+
+"I know you," said Barney. She held out the package to him. "I've
+brought this back," said she.
+
+Barney made no motion to take it from her.
+
+"I can't take it," she said, firmly.
+
+Suddenly Barney threw up his hands over his face. "Can't you take
+just that much from me, Charlotte? Can't you let me do as much as
+that for you?" he groaned out.
+
+"No, I can't," said Charlotte. "You must take it back, Barney."
+
+"Oh, Charlotte, can't you--take that much from me?"
+
+"I can take nothing from you as things are," Charlotte replied.
+
+"I wanted you to have a dress. I saw you had given the other away. I
+didn't think--there was any harm in buying it for you, Charlotte."
+
+"It isn't your place to buy dresses for me as things are," said
+Charlotte. She extended the package, and he took it, as if by force.
+She heard him sob.
+
+"You must never try to do anything like this again," she said. "I
+want you to understand it, Barney."
+
+Then she went away, and left him standing there holding his discarded
+gift.
+
+
+
+Chapter XIV
+
+
+After a while the village people ceased to have the affairs of Barney
+Thayer and Charlotte Barnard particularly upon their minds. As time
+went on, and nothing new developed in the case, they no longer dwelt
+upon it. Circumstances, like people, soon show familiar faces, and
+are no longer stared after and remarked. The people all became
+accustomed to Barney living alone in his half-furnished house season
+after season, and to Charlotte walking her solitary maiden path. They
+seldom spoke of it among themselves; sometimes, when a stranger came
+to town, they pointed out Barney and Charlotte as they would have any
+point of local interest.
+
+"Do you see that house?" a woman bent on hospitable entertainment
+said as she drove a matronly cousin from another village down the
+street; "the one with the front windows boarded up, without any step
+to the front door? Well, Barney Thayer lives there all alone. He's
+old Caleb Thayer's son, all the son that's left; the other one died.
+There was some talk of his mother's whippin' him to death. She died
+right after, but they said afterwards that she didn't, that he run
+away one night, an' went slidin' downhill, an' that was what killed
+him; he'd always had heart trouble. I dunno; I always thought Deborah
+Thayer was a pretty good woman, but she was pretty set. I guess
+Barney takes after her. He was goin' with Charlotte Barnard years
+ago--I guess 'twas as much as nine or ten years ago, now--an' they
+were goin' to be married. She was all ready--weddin'-dress an' bonnet
+an' everything--an' this house was 'most done an' ready for them to
+move into; but one Sunday night Barney he went up to see Charlotte,
+an' he got into a dispute with her father about the 'lection, an' the
+old man he ordered Barney out of the house, an' Barney he went out,
+an' he never went in again--couldn't nobody make him. His mother she
+talked; it 'most killed her; an' I guess Charlotte said all she
+could, but he wouldn't stir a peg.
+
+"He went right to livin' in his new house, an' he lives there now; he
+ain't married, an' Charlotte ain't. She's had chances, too. Squire
+Payne's son, he wanted her bad."
+
+The visiting cousin's mild, interrogative face peered out around the
+black panel of the covered wagon at Barney's poor house; her
+spectacles glittered at it in the sun. "I want to know!" said she,
+with the expression of strained, entertained amiability which she
+wore through her visit.
+
+When they passed the Barnard house the Pembroke woman partly drew
+rein again; the old horse meandered in a zigzag curve, with his head
+lopping. "That's where Charlotte Barnard lives," she said. Suddenly
+she lowered her voice. "There she is now, out in the yard," she
+whispered.
+
+Again the visiting cousin peered out. "She's good-lookin', ain't
+she?" she remarked, cautiously viewing Charlotte's straight figure
+and fair face as she came towards them out of the yard.
+
+"She ain't so good-lookin' as she used to be," rejoined the other
+woman. "I guess she's goin' down to her aunt Sylvy's--Sylvy Crane as
+was. She married Richard Alger a while ago, after she'd been goin'
+with him over twenty year. He's fixed up the old Crane place. It got
+dreadful run down, an' Sylvy she actually set out for the poor-house,
+an' Richard he stopped Jonathan Leavitt, he was carryin' of her over
+there, an' he brought her home, an' married her right off. That
+brought him to the point. Sylvy lives on the old road; we can drive
+round that way when we go home, an' I'll show you the place."
+
+When they presently drove down the green length of the old road, the
+visiting cousin spied interestedly at Sylvia's house and Sylvia's own
+delicate profile frilled about with lace, drooping like the raceme of
+some white flower in one of the windows.
+
+"That's her at the window," whispered the Pembroke woman, "an'
+there's Richard out there in the bean-poles." Just then Richard
+peered out at them from the green ranks of the beans at the sound of
+their wheels, and the Pembroke woman nodded, with a cough.
+
+They drove slowly out of the old road into the main-travelled one,
+and presently passed the old Thayer house. A woman's figure fled
+hurriedly up the yard into the house as they approached. There was a
+curious shrinking look about her as she fled, her very clothes, her
+muslin skirts, her light barège shawl, her green bonnet, seemed to
+slant away before the eyes of the two women who were watching her.
+
+The Pembroke woman leaned close to her cousin's ear, and whispered
+with a sharp hiss of breath. The cousin started and colored red all
+over her matronly face and neck. She stared with a furtive shamed air
+at poor Rebecca hastening into her house. The door closed after her
+with a quick slam.
+
+It was always to Rebecca, years beyond her transgression, admitted
+ostensibly to her old standing in the village, as if an odor of
+disgrace and isolation still clung to her, shaken out from her every
+motion from the very folds of her garments. It came in her own
+nostrils wherever she went, like a miserable emanation of her own
+personality. She always shrank back lest others noticed it, and she
+always would. She particularly shunned strangers. The sight of a
+strange woman clothed about with utter respectability and strictest
+virtue intimidated her beyond her power of self-control, for she
+always wondered if she had been told about her, and realized that, if
+she had, her old disgrace had assumed in this new mind a hideous
+freshness.
+
+After the door had slammed behind Rebecca the two women drove home,
+and the guest was presently feasted on company-fare for supper, and
+all these strange tragedies and histories to which she had listened
+had less of a savor in her memory, than the fine green tea and the
+sweet cake on her tongue. The hostess, too, did not have them in mind
+any longer; she pressed the plum-cake and hot biscuits and honey on
+her cousin, in lieu of gossip, for entertainment. The stories were
+old to her, except as she found a new listener to them, and they had
+never had any vital interest for her. They had simply made her
+imagination twang pleasantly, and now they could hardly stir the old
+vibrations.
+
+It seemed sometimes as if their hard story must finally grow old, and
+lose its bitter savor to Charlotte and Barney themselves. Sometimes
+Charlotte's mother looked at her inquiringly and said to herself, "I
+don't believe she ever thinks about it now." She told Cephas so, and
+the old man nodded. "She's a fool if she does," he returned, gruffly.
+
+Cephas had never told anybody how he had gone once to Barney Thayer's
+door, and there stood long and delivered himself of a strange
+harangue, wherein the penitence and desire for peace had been thinly
+veiled by a half-wild and eccentric philosophy; but the gist of which
+had been the humble craving for pardon of an old man, and his
+beseeching that his daughter's lover, separated from her by his own
+fault, should forget it and come back to her.
+
+"I haven't got anything to say about it," Barney had replied, and the
+old man had seemed to experience a sudden shock and rebound, as from
+the unexpected face of a rock in his path.
+
+However, he still hoped that Barney would relent and come. The next
+Sunday evening he had himself laid the parlor fire all ready for
+lighting, and hinted that Charlotte should change her dress. When
+nobody came he looked more crestfallen than his daughter; she
+suspected, although he never knew it.
+
+Charlotte had never learned any trade, but she had a reputation for
+great natural skill with her needle. Gradually, as she grew older,
+she settled into the patient single-woman position as assister at
+feasts, instead of participator. When a village girl of a younger
+generation than herself was to be married, she was in great demand
+for the preparation of the bridal outfit and the finest needle-work.
+She would go day after day to the house of the bride-elect, and sew
+from early morning until late night upon the elaborate quilts, the
+dainty linen, and the fine new wedding-gowns.
+
+She bore herself always with a steady cheerfulness; nobody dreamed
+that this preparing others for the happiness which she herself had
+lost was any trial to her. Nobody dreamed that every stitch which she
+set in wedding-garments took painfully in a piece of her own heart,
+and that not from envy. Her faithful needle, as she sewed, seemed to
+keep her old wounds open like a harrow, but she never shrank. She saw
+the sweet, foolish smiles and blushes of happy girls whose very wits
+were half astray under the dazzle of love; she felt them half tremble
+under her hands as she fitted the bridal-gowns to their white
+shoulders, as if under the touch of their lovers.
+
+They walked before her and met her like doppelgängers, wearing the
+self-same old joy of her own face, but she looked at them
+unswervingly. It is harder to look at the likeness of one's joy than
+at one's old sorrow, for the one was dearer. If Charlotte's task
+whereby she earned her few shillings had been the consoling and
+strengthening of poor forsaken, jilted girls, instead of the arraying
+of brides, it would have been a happier and an easier one.
+
+But she sat sewing fine, even stitches by the light of the evening
+candle, hearing the soft murmur of voices from the best rooms, where
+the fond couples sat, smiling like a soldier over her work. She
+pinned on bridal veils and flowers, and nobody knew that her own face
+instead of the bride's seemed to smile mockingly at her through the
+veil.
+
+She was much happier, although she would have sternly denied it to
+herself, when she was watching with the sick and putting her
+wonderful needle-work into shrouds, for it was in request for that
+also.
+
+Except for an increase in staidness and dignity, and a certain
+decorous change in her garments, Charlotte Barnard did not seem to
+grow old at all. Her girlish bloom never faded under her sober
+bonnet, although ten years had gone by since her own marriage had
+been broken off.
+
+Barney used to watch furtively Charlotte going past. He knew quite
+well when she was helping such and such a girl get ready to be
+married. He saw her going home, a swift shadowy figure, after dark,
+with her few poor shillings in her pocket. That she should go out to
+work filled him with a fierce resentment. With a childish and
+masculine disregard for all except bare actualities, he could not see
+why she need to, why she could not let him help her. He knew that
+Cephas Barnard's income was very meagre, that Charlotte needed her
+little earnings for the barest necessaries; but why could she not let
+him give them to her?
+
+Barney was laying up money. He had made his will, whereby he left
+everything to Charlotte, and to her children after her if she
+married. He worked very hard. In summer he tilled his great farm, in
+winter he cut wood.
+
+The winter of the tenth year after his quarrel with Charlotte was a
+very severe one--full of snow-storms and fierce winds, and bitterly
+cold. All winter long the swamps were frozen up, and men could get
+into them to cut wood. Barney went day after day and cut the wood in
+a great swamp a mile behind his house. He stood from morning until
+night hewing down the trees, which had gotten their lusty growth from
+the graves of their own kind. Their roots were sunken deep among and
+twined about the very bones of their fathers which helped make up the
+rich frozen soil of the great swamp. The crusty snow was three feet
+deep; the tall blackberry vines were hooped with snow, set fast at
+either end like snares: it was hard work making one's way through
+them. The snow was over the heads of those dried weeds which did not
+blow away in the autumn, but stayed on their stalks with that
+persistency of life that outlives death; but all the sturdy bushes,
+which were almost trees, the swamp-pinks and the wild-roses, waxed
+gigantic, lost their own outlines, and stretched out farther under
+their loads of snow.
+
+Barney hewed wood in the midst of this white tangle of trees and
+bushes and vines, which were like a wild, dumb multitude of
+death-things pressing ever against him, trying to crowd him away.
+When he hit them as he passed, they swung back in his face with a
+semblance of life. If a squirrel chattered and leaped between some
+white boughs, he started as if some dead thing had come to life, for
+it seemed like the voice and motion of death rather than of life.
+
+Half a mile away at the right other wood-cutters were at work. When
+the wind was the right way he could now and then hear the strokes of
+their axes and a shout. Often as he worked alone, swinging his axe
+steadily with his breath in a white cloud before his face, he amused
+himself miserably--as one might with a bitter sweetmeat--with his old
+dreams.
+
+He had no dreams in the present; they all belonged to the past, and
+he dreamed them over as one sings over old songs. Sometimes it seemed
+quite possible that they still belonged to his life, and might still
+come true.
+
+Then he would hear a hoarse shout through the still air from the
+other side of the swamp, and he would know suddenly that Charlotte
+would never wait in his home yonder, while he worked, and welcome him
+home at night.
+
+The other wood-cutters had families. They had to pass his lot on
+their way out to the open road. Barney would either retreat farther
+among the snowy thickets, or else work with such fury that he could
+seem not to see them as they filed past.
+
+Often he did not go home at noon, and ate nothing from morn until
+night. He cut wood many days that winter when the other men thought
+the weather too severe and sat huddled over their fires in their
+homes, shoving their chairs this and that way at their wives'
+commands, or else formed chewing and gossiping rings within the
+glowing radius of the red-hot store stove.
+
+"See Barney Thayer goin' cross lots with his axe as I come by," one
+said to another, rolling the tobacco well back into his grizzled
+cheek.
+
+"Works as if he was possessed," was the reply, in a
+half-inarticulate, gruff murmur.
+
+"Well, he can if he wants to," said still another. "I ain't goin' to
+work out-doors in any such weather as this for nobody, not if I know
+it, an' I've got a wife an' eight children, an' he ain't got nobody."
+And the man cast defiant eyes at the great store-windows, dim with
+thick blue sheaves of frost.
+
+On a day like that Barney seemed to be hewing asunder not only the
+sturdy fibres of oak and hemlock, but the terrible sinews of frost
+and winter, and many a tree seemed to rear itself over him
+threatening stiffly like an old man of death. Only by fierce contest,
+as it were, could he keep himself alive, but he had a certain delight
+in working in the swamp during those awful arctic days. The sense
+that he could still fight and conquer something, were it only the
+simple destructive force of nature, aroused in him new self-respect.
+
+Through snow-storms Barney plunged forth to the swamp, and worked all
+day in the thick white slant of the storm, with the snow heaping
+itself upon his bowed shoulders.
+
+People prophesied that he would kill himself; but he kept on day
+after day, and had not even a cold until February. Then there came a
+south rain and a thaw, and Barney went to the swamp and worked two
+days knee-deep in melting snow. Then there was a morning when he
+awoke as if on a bed of sharp knives, and lay alone all day and all
+that night, and all the next day and that night, not being able to
+stir without making the knives cut into his vitals.
+
+Barney lay there all that time, and his soul became fairly bound into
+passiveness with awful fetters of fiery bone and muscle; sometimes he
+groaned, but nobody heard him. The last night he felt as if his whole
+physical nature was knitting about him and stifling him with awful
+coils of pain. The tears rolled over his cheeks. He prayed with
+hoarse gasps, and he could not tell if anybody heard him. A dim light
+from a window in the Barnard house on the hill lay into the kitchen
+opposite his bedroom door. He thought of Charlotte, as if he had been
+a child and she his mother. The maternal and protecting element in
+her love was all that appealed to him then, and all that he missed or
+wanted. "Charlotte, Charlotte," he mumbled to himself with his
+parched, quivering lips.
+
+At noon the next day Cephas Barnard came home from the store; he had
+been down to buy some molasses. When he entered his kitchen he set
+the jug down on the table with a hard clap, then stood still in his
+wet boots.
+
+Sarah and Charlotte were getting dinner, both standing over the
+stove. Sarah glanced at Cephas furtively, then at Charlotte; Cephas
+never stirred. A pool of water collected around his boots, his brows
+bent moodily under his cap.
+
+"Why don't you set down, Cephas, an' take off your boots?" Sarah
+ventured at length, timidly.
+
+"Folks are fools," grunted Cephas.
+
+"I dunno what you mean, Cephas."
+
+Cephas got the boot-jack out of the corner, sat down, and began
+jerking off the wet boots with sympathetic screws of his face.
+
+Sarah stood with a wooden spoon uplifted, eying him anxiously.
+Charlotte went into the pantry.
+
+"There 'ain't anythin' happened, has there, Cephas?" said Sarah,
+presently.
+
+Cephas pulled off the second boot, and sat holding his blue yarn
+stocking-feet well up from the wet floor. "There ain't no need of
+havin' the rheumatiz, accordin' to my way of thinkin'," said he.
+
+"Who's got the rheumatiz, Cephas?"
+
+"If folks lived right they wouldn't have it."
+
+"You 'ain't got it, have you, Cephas?"
+
+"I 'ain't never had a tech of it in my life except once, an' then
+'twas due to my not drinkin' enough."
+
+"Not drinkin' enough?"
+
+"Yes, I didn't drink enough water. Folks with rheumatiz had ought to
+drink all the water they can swaller. They had ought to drink more'n
+they eat."
+
+"I dunno what you mean, Cephas."
+
+"It stands to reason. I've worked it all out in my mind. Rheumatiz
+comes on in wet weather, because there's too much water an' damp
+'round. Now, if there's too much water outside, you can kind of even
+it up by takin' more water inside. The reason for any sickness
+is--the balance ain't right. The weight gets shifted, an' folks begin
+to topple, then they're sick. If it goes clean over, they die. The
+balance has got to be kept even if you want to be well. When the
+swamps are fillin' up with water, an' there's too much moisture in
+the outside air, an' too much pressure of it on your bones an'
+joints, if you swallow enough water inside it keeps things even. If
+Barney Thayer had drunk a gallon of water a day, he might have worked
+in the wet swamp till doomsday an' he wouldn't have got the
+rheumatiz."
+
+"Has Barney Thayer got the rheumatiz, Cephas?"
+
+Charlotte's pale face appeared in the pantry door.
+
+"Yes, he has got it bad. 'Ain't stirred out of his bed since night
+before last; been all alone; nobody knew it till William Berry went
+in this forenoon. Guess he'd died there if he'd been left much
+longer."
+
+"Who's with him now?" asked Charlotte, in a quick, strained voice.
+
+"The Ray boy is sittin' with him, whilst William is gone to the North
+Village to see if he can get somebody to come. There's a widow woman
+over there that goes out nussin', Silas said, an' they hope they can
+get her. The doctor says he's got to have somebody."
+
+"Rebecca can't do anything, of course," said Sarah, meditatively; "he
+'ain't got any of his own folks to come, poor feller."
+
+Charlotte crossed the kitchen floor with a resolute air.
+
+"What are you goin' to do, Charlotte?" her mother asked in a
+trembling voice.
+
+Charlotte turned around and faced her father and mother. "I shouldn't
+think you'd ask me," said she.
+
+"You ain't--goin'--over--?"
+
+"Of course I am going over there. Do you suppose I am going to let
+him lie there and suffer all alone, with nobody to take care of him?"
+
+"There's--the woman--comin'."
+
+"She can't come. I know who the woman is. They tried to get her when
+Squire Payne's sister died last week. Aunt Sylvy told me about it.
+She was engaged 'way ahead."
+
+"Oh, Charlotte! I'm afraid you hadn't ought to go," her mother said,
+half crying.
+
+"I've got to go, mother," Charlotte said, quietly. She opened the
+door.
+
+"You come back here!" Cephas called after her in a great voice.
+
+Charlotte turned around. "I am going, father," said she.
+
+"You ain't goin' a step."
+
+"Yes, I am."
+
+"Oh, Charlotte! I'll go over," sobbed her mother.
+
+"You haven't gone a step out-doors for a month with your own lame
+knee. I am the one to go, and I am going."
+
+"You ain't goin' a step."
+
+"Oh, Charlotte! I'm afraid you hadn't better," wailed Sarah.
+
+Charlotte stood before them both. "Look here, father and mother,"
+said she. "I've never gone against your wishes in my life, but now
+I'm going to. It's my duty to. I was going to marry him once."
+
+"You didn't marry him," said Cephas.
+
+"I was willing to marry him, and that amounts to the same thing for
+any woman," said Charlotte. "It is just as much my duty to go to him
+when he's sick; I am going. There's no use talking, I am going."
+
+"You needn't come home again, then," said her father.
+
+"Oh, Cephas!" Sarah cried out. "Charlotte, don't go against your
+father's wishes! Charlotte!"
+
+But Charlotte shut the door and hurried up-stairs to her room. Her
+mother followed her, trembling. Cephas sat still, dangling his
+stocking-feet clear of the floor. He had an ugly look on his face.
+Presently he heard the two women coming down-stairs, and his wife's
+sobbing, pleading voice; then he heard the parlor door shut;
+Charlotte had gone through the house, and out the front door.
+
+Sarah came in, sniffing piteously. "Oh, Cephas! don't you be hard on
+the poor child; she felt as if she had got to go," she said,
+chokingly.
+
+Cephas got up, went padding softly and cautiously in his
+stocking-feet across the floor to the sink, and took a long drink
+with loud gulps out of the gourd in the water-pail.
+
+"I don't want to have no more talk about it; I've said my say," said
+he, with a hard breath, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.
+
+Charlotte, with a little bundle under her arm, hastened down the
+hill. When she reached Barney's house she went around and knocked at
+the side door. As she went into the yard she could see dimly a
+white-capped woman's head in a south window of the Thayer house
+farther down the road, and she knew that Rebecca's nurse was watching
+her. Rebecca's second baby was a week old, so she could do nothing
+for her brother.
+
+Charlotte knocked softly and waited. She heard a loud clamping step
+across the floor inside, and a whistle. A boy opened the door and
+stood staring at her, half abashed, half impudently important, his
+mouth still puckered with the whistle.
+
+"Is there anybody here but you, Ezra?" asked Charlotte.
+
+The boy shook his head.
+
+"I have come to take care of Mr. Thayer now," said Charlotte.
+
+She entered, and Ezra Ray stood aside, rolling his eyes after her as
+she went through the kitchen. He whistled again half involuntarily, a
+sudden jocular pipe on the brink of motion, like a bird. Charlotte
+turned and shook her head at him, and he stopped short. He sat down
+on a chair near the door, and dangled his feet irresolutely.
+
+Charlotte went into the bedroom where Barney lay, a rigidly twisted,
+groaning heap under a mass of bed-clothing, which Ezra Ray had kept
+over him with energy. She bent over him. "I've come to take care of
+you, Barney," said she. His eyes, half dazed in his burning face,
+looked up at her with scarcely any surprise.
+
+[Illustration: "'I've come to take care of you'"]
+
+Charlotte laid back some of the bedclothes whose weight was a
+torture, and straightened the others. She worked about the house
+noiselessly and swiftly. She was skilful in the care of the sick; she
+had had considerable experience. Soon everything was clean and in
+order; there was a pleasant smell of steeping herbs through the
+house. Charlotte had set an old remedy of her mother's steeping over
+the fire--a harmless old-wives' decoction, with which to supplement
+the doctor's remedies, and give new courage to the patient's mind.
+
+Barney came to think that this remedy which Charlotte prepared was of
+more efficacy than any which the doctor mixed in his gallipots. That
+is, when he could think at all, and his mind and soul was able to
+reassert itself over his body. He had a hard illness, and after he
+was out of bed he could only sit bent miserably over in a
+quilt-covered rocking-chair beside the fire. He could not straighten
+himself up without agonizing pain. People thought that he never
+would, and he thought so himself. His grandfather, his mother's
+father, had been in a similar condition for years before his death.
+People called that to mind, and so did Barney. "He's goin' to be the
+way his grandfather Emmons was," the men said in the store. Barney
+could dimly remember that old figure bent over almost on all-fours
+like a dog; its wretched, grizzled face turned towards the earth with
+a brooding sternness of contemplation. He wondered miserably where
+his grandfather's old cane was, when he should be strong enough in
+his pain-locked muscles to leave his rocking-chair and crawl about in
+the spring sunshine. It used to be in the garret of the old house. He
+thought that he would ask Rebecca or William to look for it some day.
+He hesitated to speak about it. He half dreaded to think that the
+time was coming when he would be strong enough to move about, for
+then he was afraid Charlotte would leave him and go home. He had been
+afraid that she would when he left his bed. He had a childishly
+guilty feeling that he had perhaps stayed there a little longer than
+was necessary on that account. One Sunday the doctor had said quite
+decisively to Charlotte, "It won't hurt him any to be got up a little
+while to-morrow. It will be better for him. You can get William to
+come in and help." Charlotte had come back from the door and reported
+to Barney, and he had turned his face away with a quivering sigh.
+
+"Why, what is the matter? Don't you want to be got up?" asked
+Charlotte.
+
+"Yes," said Barney, miserably.
+
+"What is the matter?" Charlotte said, bending over him. "Don't you
+feel well enough?"
+
+Barney gave her a pitiful, shamed look like a child. "You'll go,
+then," he half sobbed.
+
+Charlotte turned away quickly. "I shall not go as long as you need
+me, Barney," she said, with a patient dignity.
+
+Barney did not dream against what odds Charlotte had stayed with him.
+Her mother had come repeatedly, and expostulated with her out in the
+entry when she went away.
+
+"It ain't fit for you to stay here, as if you was married to him,
+when you ain't, and ain't ever goin' to be, as near as I can make
+out," she said. "William can get that woman over to the North Village
+now, or I can come, or your aunt Hannah would come for a while, till
+Rebecca gets well enough to see to him a little. She was sayin'
+yesterday that it wa'n't fit for you to stay here."
+
+"I'm here, and I'm going to stay here till he's better than he is
+now," said Charlotte.
+
+"Folks will talk."
+
+"I can't help it if they do. I'm doing what I think is right."
+
+"It ain't fit for an unmarried woman like you to be takin' care of
+him," said her mother, and a sudden blush flamed over her old face.
+
+Charlotte did not blush at all. "William comes in every day," she
+said, simply.
+
+"I think he could get along a while now with what William does an'
+what we could cook an' bring in," pleaded her mother. "I'd come over
+every day an' set a while; I'd jest as lieves as not. If you'd only
+come home, Charlotte. Your father didn't mean anythin' when he said
+you shouldn't. He asked me jest this mornin' when you was comin'."
+
+"I ain't coming till he's well enough so he don't need me," said
+Charlotte. "There's no use talking, mother. I must go back now; he'll
+wonder what we're talking about;" and she shut the door gently upon
+her mother, still talking.
+
+Her aunt Hannah came, and her aunt Sylvia, quaking with gentle fears.
+She even had to listen to remonstrances from William Berry, honestly
+grateful as he was for her care of his brother-in-law.
+
+"I ain't quite sure that it's right for you to stay here, Charlotte,"
+he said, looking away from her uncomfortably. "Rebecca says--'Hadn't
+you better let me go for that woman again?'"
+
+"I think I had better stay for the present," Charlotte replied.
+
+"Of course--I know you do better for him--than anybody else could,
+but--"
+
+"How is Rebecca?" asked Charlotte.
+
+"She is getting along pretty well, but it's slow. She's kind of
+worried about you, you know. She's had considerable herself to bear.
+It's hard to have folks--" William stopped short, his face burning.
+
+"I am not afraid, if I know I am doing what is right," said
+Charlotte. "You tell Rebecca I am coming in to see her as soon as I
+can get a chance."
+
+One contingency had never occurred to Barney in his helpless clinging
+to Charlotte. He had never once dreamed that people might talk
+disparagingly about her in consequence. He had, partly from his
+isolated life, partly from natural bent, a curious innocence and
+ignorance in his conception of human estimates of conduct. He had not
+the same vantage-points with many other people, and indeed in many
+cases seemed to hold the identical ones which he had chosen when a
+child and first observed anything.
+
+If now and then he overheard a word of expostulation, he never
+interpreted it rightly. He thought that people considered it wrong
+for Charlotte to do so much for him, and weary herself, when he had
+treated her so badly. And he agreed with them.
+
+He thought that he should never stand upright again. He went always
+before his own mental vision bent over like his grandfather, his face
+inclined ever downward towards his miserable future.
+
+Still, as he sat after William had gotten him up in the morning,
+bowed over pitifully in his chair, there was at times a strange look
+in his eyes as he watched Charlotte moving about, which seemed
+somehow to give the lie to his bent back. Often Charlotte would start
+as she met this look, and think involuntarily that he was quite
+straight; then she would come to her old vision with a shock, and see
+him sitting there as he was.
+
+At last there came a day when the minister and one of the deacons of
+the church called and asked to see Charlotte privately. Barney looked
+at them, startled and quite white. They sat with him quite a long
+while, when, after many coercive glances between the deacon and the
+minister, the latter had finally arisen and made the request, in a
+trembling, embarrassed voice.
+
+Charlotte led them at once into the unfinished front parlor, with its
+boarded-up windows. Barney heard her open the front door to give them
+light and air. He sat still and waited, breathing hard. A terrible
+dread and curiosity came over him. It seemed as if his soul
+overreached his body into that other room. Without overhearing a
+word, suddenly a knowledge quite foreign to his own imagination
+seemed to come to him.
+
+Presently he heard the front door shut, then Charlotte came in alone.
+She was very pale, but she had a sweet, exalted look as her eyes met
+Barney's.
+
+"Have they gone?" he asked, hoarsely.
+
+Charlotte nodded.
+
+"What--did they want?"
+
+"Never mind," said Charlotte.
+
+"I want to know."
+
+"It is nothing for you to worry about."
+
+"I know," said Barney.
+
+"You didn't hear anything?" Charlotte cried out in a startled voice.
+
+"No, I didn't hear, but I know. The church--don't--think you ought
+to--stay here. They are--going to--take it--up. I never--thought of
+that, Charlotte. I never thought of that."
+
+"Don't you worry anything about it." Charlotte had never touched him,
+except to minister to his illness, since she had been there. Now she
+went close, and smoothed his hair with her tender hands. "Don't you
+worry," she said again.
+
+Barney looked up in her face. "Charlotte."
+
+"What is it?"
+
+"I--want you--to go--home."
+
+Charlotte started. "I shall not go home as long as you need me," she
+said. "You need not think I mind what they say."
+
+"I--want you to go home."
+
+"Barney!"
+
+"I mean what--I say. I--want you to go--now."
+
+"Not now?"
+
+"Yes, now."
+
+Charlotte drew back; her lips wore a white line. She went out into
+the front south room, where she had slept. She did not come back.
+Barney listened until he heard the front door shut after her. Then he
+waited fifteen minutes, with his eyes upon the clock. Then he got up
+out of his chair. He moved his body as if it were some piece of
+machinery outside himself, as if his will were full of dominant
+muscles. He got his hat off the peg, where it had hung for weeks; he
+went out of the house and out of the yard.
+
+His sister Rebecca was moving feebly up the road with her little baby
+in her arms. She was taking her first walk out in the spring
+sunshine. The nurse had gone away the week before. Her face was clear
+and pale. All her sweet color was gone, but her eyes were radiant,
+and she held up her head in the old way. This new love was lifting
+her above her old memories.
+
+She stared wonderingly over the baby's little downy head at her
+brother. "It can't be Barney," she said out loud to herself. She
+stood still in the road, staring after him with parted lips. The baby
+wailed softly, and she hushed it mechanically, her great, happy,
+startled eyes fixed upon her brother.
+
+Barnabas went on up the hill to Charlotte Barnard's. The spring was
+advancing. All the trees were full of that green nebula of life which
+comes before the blossom. Little wings, bearing birds and songs, cut
+the air. A bluebird shone on a glistening fence-rail, like a jewel on
+a turned hand. Over across the fields red oxen were moving down
+plough-ridges, the green grass was springing, the air was full of
+that strange fragrance which is more than fragrance, since it strikes
+the thoughts, which comes in the spring alone, being the very odor
+thrown off by the growing motion of life and the resurrection.
+
+Barney Thayer went slowly up the hill with a curious gait and strange
+gestures, as if his own angel were wrestling with himself, casting
+him off with strong motions as of wings.
+
+He fought, as it were, his way step by step. He reached the top of
+the hill, and went into the yard of the Barnard house. Sarah Barnard
+saw him coming, and shrieked out, "There's Barney, there's Barney
+Thayer comin'! He's walkin', he's walkin' straight as anybody!"
+
+When Barney reached the door, they all stood there--Cephas and Sarah
+and Charlotte. Barney stood before them all with that noble bearing
+which comes from humility itself when it has fairly triumphed.
+
+Charlotte came forward, and he put his arm around her. Then he looked
+over her head at her father. "I've come back," said he.
+
+"Come in," said Cephas.
+
+And Barney entered the house with his old sweetheart and his old
+self.
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Pembroke, by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
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