Jane Field A Novel / Freeman, Mary Eleanor Wilkins, 1852-1930

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Title: Jane Field
       A Novel

Author: Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

Release Date: February 18, 2006 [EBook #17790]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK JANE FIELD ***




Produced by Jeff Kaylin and Andrew Sly






Jane Field

A Novel

By

Mary E. Wilkins

  Author of "A Humble Romance, and other stories"
  "A New England Nun, and other stories"
  "Young Lucretia, and other stories"

Illustrated

New York

Harper & Brothers Publishers




Chapter I


Amanda Pratt's cottage-house was raised upon two banks above the
road-level. Here and there the banks showed irregular patches of
yellow-green, where a little milky-stemmed plant grew. It had come up
every spring since Amanda could remember.

There was a great pink-lined shell on each side of the front
door-step, and the path down over the banks to the road was bordered
with smaller shells. The house was white, and the front door was dark
green, with an old-fashioned knocker in the centre.

There were four front windows, and the roof sloped down to them; two
were in Amanda's parlor, and two were in Mrs. Field's. She rented
half of her house to Mrs. Jane Field.

There was a head at each of Amanda's front windows. One was hers, the
other was Mrs. Babcock's. Amanda's old blond face, with its folds of
yellow-gray hair over the ears and sections of the softly-wrinkled,
pinky cheeks, was bent over some needle-work. So was Mrs. Babcock's,
darkly dim with age, as if the hearth-fires of her life had always
smoked, with a loose flabbiness about the jaw-bones, which seemed to
make more evident the firm structure underneath.

Amanda was sewing a braided rug; her little veiny hands jerked the
stout thread through with a nervous energy that was out of accord
with her calm expression and the droop of her long slender body.

"It's pretty hard sewin' braided mats, ain't it?" said Mrs. Babcock.

"I don't care how hard 'tis if I can get 'em sewed strong," replied
Amanda, and her voice was unexpectedly quick and decided. "I never
had any feelin' that anything was hard, if I could only do it."

"Well, you ain't had so much hard work to do as some folks. Settin'
in a rockin'-chair sewin' braided mats ain't like doin' the housework
for a whole family. If you'd had the cookin' to do for four
men-folks, the way I have, you'd felt it was pretty hard work, even
if you did make out to fill 'em up."  Mrs. Babcock smiled, and showed
that she did not forget she was company, but her tone was quite
fierce.

"Mebbe I should," returned Amanda, stiffly.

There was a silence.

"Let me see, how many mats does that make?" Mrs. Babcock asked,
finally, in an amiable voice.

"Like this one?"

"Yes."

"This makes the ninth."

Mrs. Babcock scrutinized the floor. It was almost covered with
braided rugs, and they were all alike.

"I declare I don't see where you'll put another in here," said she.

"I guess I can lay 'em a little thicker over there by the what-not."

"Well, mebbe you can; but I declare I shouldn't scarcely think you
needed another. I shouldn't think your carpet would wear out till the
day of judgment. What made you have them mats all jest alike?"

"I like 'em better so," replied Amanda, with dignity.

"Well, of course, if you do there ain't nothin' to say; it's your
carpet an' your mats," returned Mrs. Babcock, with grim apology.

There were two curious features about Amanda Pratt's parlor: one was
a gentle monotony of details; the other, a certain savor of the sea.
It was like holding a shell to one's ear to enter Amanda's parlor.
There was a faint suggestion of far-away sandy beaches, the breaking
of waves, and the rush of salt winds. In the centre of the
mantel-shelf stood a stuffed sea-gull; on either side shells were
banked. The fire-place was flanked by great branches of coral, and on
the top of the air-tight stove there stood always in summer-time,
when there was no fire, a superb nautilus shell, like a little pearl
vessel. The corner what-not, too, had its shelves heaped with shells
and coral and choice bits of rainbow lava from volcanic islands.
Between the windows, instead of the conventional mahogany cardtable,
stood one of Indian lacquer, and on it was a little inlaid cabinet
that was brought from over seas. The whole room in this little inland
cottage, far beyond the salt fragrance of the sea, seemed like one of
those marine fossils sometimes found miles from the coast. It
indicated the presence of the sea in the lives of Amanda's race. Her
grandfather had been a seafaring man, and so had her father, until
late in life, when he had married an inland woman, and settled down
among waves of timothy and clover on her paternal acres.

Amanda was like her mother, she had nothing of the sea tastes in her
nature. She was full of loyal conservatism toward the marine
ornaments of her parlor, but she secretly preferred her own braided
rugs, and the popular village fancy-work, in which she was quite
skilful. On each of her chairs was a tidy, and the tidies were all
alike; in the corners of the room were lambrequins, all worked after
the same pattern in red worsted and beads. On one wall hung a group
of pictures framed in cardboard, four little colored prints of
crosses twined with flowers, and they were all alike. "Why didn't you
get them crosses different?" many a neighbor had said to her--these
crosses, with some variation of the entwining foliage, had been very
popular in the rural neighborhood--and Amanda had replied with quick
dignity that she liked them better the way she had them. Amanda
maintained the monotony of her life as fiercely as her fathers had
pursued the sea. She was like a little animal born with a rebound to
its own track, from whence no amount of pushing could keep it long.

Mrs. Babcock glanced sharply around the room as she sewed; she was
anxious to divert Amanda's mind from the mats. "Don't the moths ever
git into that stuffed bird over there?" she asked suddenly,
indicating the gull on the shelf with a side-wise jerk of her head.

"No; I ain't never had a mite of trouble with 'em," replied Amanda.
"I always keep a little piece of camphor tucked under his wing
feathers."

"Well, you're lucky. Mis' Jackson she had a stuffed canary-bird all
eat up with 'em. She had to put him in the stove; couldn't do nothin'
with him. She felt real bad about it. She'd thought a good deal of
the bird when he was alive, an' he was stuffed real handsome, an'
settin' on a little green sprig. She use to keep him on her parlor
shelf; he was jest the right size. It's a pity your bird is quite so
big, ain't it?"

"I s'pose he's jest the way he was made," returned Amanda shortly.

"Of course he is. I ain't findin' no fault with him; all is, I
thought he was kind of big for the shelf; but then birds do perch on
dreadful little places."  Mrs. Babcock, full of persistency in
exposing herself to rebuffs, was very sensitive and easily cowed by
one. "Let me see--he's quite old. Your grandfather bought him, didn't
he?" said she, in a mollifying tone.

Amanda nodded. "He's a good deal older than I am," said she.

"It's queer how some things that ain't of no account really in the
world last, while others that's worth so much more don't," Mrs.
Babcock remarked, meditatively. "Now, there's that bird there,
lookin' jest as nice and handsome, and there's the one that bought
him and brought him home, in his grave out of sight."

"There's a good many queer things in this world," rejoined Amanda,
with a sigh.

"I guess there is," said Mrs. Babcock. "Now you can jest look round
this room, an' see all the things that belonged to your folks that's
dead an' gone, and it seems almost as if they was immortal instead of
them. An' it's goin' to be jest the same way with us; the clothes
that's hangin' up in our closets are goin' to outlast us. Well,
there's one thing about it--this world ain't _our_ abidin'-place."

Mrs. Babcock shook her head resolutely, and began to fold up her
work. She rolled the unbleached cloth into a hard smooth bundle, with
the scissors, thimble, and thread inside, and the needle quilted in.

"You ain't goin'?" said Amanda.

"Yes, I guess I must. I've got to be home by half-past five to get
supper, an' I thought I'd jest look in at Mis' Field's a minute. Do
you s'pose she's to home?"

"I shouldn't wonder if she was. I ain't seen her go out anywhere."

"Well, I dun'no' when I've been in there, an' I dun'no' but she'd
think it was kinder queer if I went right into the house and didn't
go near her."

Amanda arose, letting the mat slide to the floor, and went into the
bedroom to get Mrs. Babcock's bonnet and light shawl.

"I wish you wouldn't be in such a hurry," said she, using the village
formula of hospitality to a departing guest.

"It don't seem to me I've been in much of a hurry. I've stayed here
the whole afternoon."

Suddenly Mrs. Babcock, pinning on her shawl, thrust her face close to
Amanda's. "I want to know if it's true Lois Field is so miserable?"
she whispered.

"Well, I dun'no'. She don't look jest right, but she an' her mother
won't own up but what she's well."

"Goin' the way Mis' Maxwell did, ain't she?"

"I dun'no'. I'm worried about her myself--dreadful worried. Lois is a
nice girl as ever was."

"She ain't give up her school?"

Amanda shook her head.

"I shouldn't think her mother'd have her."

"I s'pose she feels as if she'd got to."  Mrs. Babcock dropped her
voice still lower. "They're real poor, ain't they?"

"I guess they ain't got much."

"I s'pose they hadn't. Well, I hope Lois ain't goin' down. I heard
she looked dreadful. Mis' Jackson she was in yesterday, talkin' about
it. Well, you come over an' see me, Mandy. Bring your sewin' over
some afternoon."

"Well, mebbe I will. I don't go out a great deal, you know."

The two women grimaced to each other in a friendly fashion, then
Amanda shut her door, and Mrs. Babcock pattered softly and heavily
across the little entry, and opened Mrs. Field's door. She pressed
the old brass latch with a slight show of ceremonious hesitancy, but
she never thought of knocking. There was no one in the room, which
had a clean and sparse air. The chairs all stood back against the
walls, and left in the centre a wide extent of faded carpet, full of
shadowy gray scrolls.

Mrs. Babcock stood for a moment staring in and listening.

There was a faint sound of a voice seemingly from a room beyond. She
called, softly, "Mis' Field!"  There was no response. She advanced
then resolutely over the stretch of carpet toward the bedroom door.
She opened it, then gave a little embarrassed grunt, and began
backing away.

Mrs. Field was in there, kneeling beside the bed, praying.
She started and looked up at Mrs. Babcock with a kind of
solemn abashedness, her long face flushed. Then she got up.
"Good-afternoon," said she.

"Good-afternoon," returned Mrs. Babcock. She tried to smile and
recover her equanimity. "I've been into Mandy Pratt's," she went on,
"an' I thought I'd jest look in here a minute before I went home, but
I wouldn't have come in so if I'd known you was--busy."

"Come out in the other room an' sit down," said Mrs. Field.

Mrs. Babcock's agitated bulk followed her over the gray carpet, and
settled into the rocking-chair at one of the front windows. Mrs.
Field seated herself at the other.

"It's been a pleasant day, ain't it?" said she.

"Real pleasant. I told Mr. Babcock this noon that I was goin' to git
out somewheres this afternoon come what would. I've been cooped up
all the spring house-cleanin', an' now I'm goin' to git out. I
dun'no' when I've been anywhere. I ain't been into Mandy's sence
Christmas that I know of--I ain't been in to set down, anyway; an'
I've been meanin' to run in an' see you all winter, Mis' Field."  All
the trace of confusion now left in Mrs. Babcock's manner was a weak
volubility.

"It's about all anybody can do to do their housework, if they do it
thorough," returned Mrs. Field. "I s'pose you've been takin' up
carpets?"

"Took up every carpet in the house. I do every year. Some folks
don't, but I can't stand it. I'm afraid of moths, too. I s'pose
you've got your cleanin' all done?"

"Yes, I've got it about done."

"Well, I shouldn't think you could do so much, Mis' Field, with your
hands."

Mrs. Field's hands lay in her lap, yellow and heavily corrugated, the
finger-joints in great knots, which looked as if they had been tied
in the bone. Mrs. Babcock eyed them pitilessly.

"How are they now?" she inquired. "Seems to me they look worse than
they used to."

Mrs. Field regarded her hands with a staid, melancholy air. "Well, I
dun'no'."

"Seems to me they look worse. How's Lois, Mis' Field?"

"She's pretty well, I guess. I dun'no' why she ain't."

"Somebody was sayin' the other day that she looked dreadfully."

Mrs. Field had heretofore held herself with a certain slow dignity.
Now her manner suddenly changed, and she spoke fast. "I dun'no' what
folks mean talkin' so," said she. "Lois ain't been lookin' very well,
as I know of, lately; but it's the spring of the year, an' she's
always apt to feel it."

"Mebbe that is it," replied the other, with a doubtful inflection.
"Let's see, you called it consumption that ailed your sister, didn't
you, Mis' Field?"

"I s'pose it was."

Mrs. Babcock stared with cool reflection at the other woman's long,
pale face, with its high cheek-bones and deep-set eyes and wide,
drooping mouth. She was deliberating whether or not to ask for some
information that she wanted. "Speakin' of your sister," said she
finally, with a casual air, "her husband's father is livin', ain't
he?"

"He was the last I knew."

"I s'pose he's worth considerable property?"

"Yes, I s'pose he is."

"Well, I want to know. Somebody was speakin' about it the other day,
an' they said they thought he did, an' I told 'em I didn't believe
it. He never helped your sister's husband any, did he?"

Mrs. Field did not reply for a moment. Mrs. Babcock was leaning
forward and smiling ingratiatingly, with keen eyes upon her face.

"I dun'no' as he did. But I guess Edward never expected he would
much," said she.

"Well, I told 'em I didn't believe he did. I declare! it seemed
pretty tough, didn't it?"

"I dun'no'. I thought of it some along there when Edward was sick."

"I declare, I should have thought you'd wrote to him about it."

Mrs. Field said nothing.

"Didn't you ever?" Mrs. Babcock asked.

"Well, yes; I wrote once when he was first taken sick."

"An' he didn't take any notice of it?"

Mrs. Field shook her head.

"He's a regular old skinflint, ain't he?" said Mrs. Babcock.

"I guess he's a pretty set kind of a man."

"Set! I should call it more'n set. Now, Mis' Field, I'd really like
to know something. I ain't curious, but I've heard so many stories
about it that I'd really like to know the truth of it once. Somebody
was speakin' about it the other day, an' it don't seem right for
stories to be goin' the rounds when there ain't no truth in 'em. Mis'
Field, what was it set Edward Maxwell's father agin' him?"  Mrs.
Babcock's voice sank to a whisper, she leaned farther forward, and
gazed at Mrs. Field with crafty sweetness.

Mrs. Field looked out of the window.

"Well, I s'pose it was some trouble about money matters."

"Money matters?"

"Yes, I s'pose so."

"Mis' Field, _what did he do?"_

Mrs. Field did not reply. She looked out of the window at the green
banks in front. Her face was inscrutable.

Mrs. Babcock drew herself up. "Course I don't want you to tell me
nothin' you don't want to," said she, with injured dignity. "I ain't
pryin' into things that folks don't want me to know about; it wa'n't
never my way. All is, I thought I'd like to know the truth of it,
whether there was anything in them stories or not."

"Oh, I'd jest as soon tell you," rejoined Mrs. Field quietly. "I was
jest a-thinkin'. As near as I can tell you, Mis' Babcock, Edward's
father he let him have some money, and Edward he speculated with it
on something contrary to his advice, an' lost it, an' that made the
trouble."

"Was that all?" asked Mrs. Babcock, with a disappointed air.

"Yes, I s'pose it was."

"I want to know!"  Mrs. Babcock leaned back with a sigh. "Well,
there's another thing," she said presently. "Somebody was sayin' the
other day that you thought Esther caught the consumption from her
husband. I wanted to know if you did."

Mrs. Field's face twitched. "Well," she replied, "I dun'no'. I've
heard consumption was catchin', an' she was right over him the whole
time."

"Well, I don't know. I ain't never been able to take much stock in
catchin' consumption. There was Mis' Gay night an' day with Susan for
ten years, an' she's jest as well as anybody. I should be afraid
'twas a good deal likelier to be in your family. Does Lois cough?"

"None to speak of."

"Well, there's more kinds of consumption than one."

Mrs. Babcock made quite a long call. She shook Mrs. Field's hand
warmly at parting. "I want to know, does Lois like honey?" said she.

"Yes, she's real fond of it."

"Well, I'm goin' to send her over a dish of it. Ours was uncommon
nice this year. It's real good for a cough."

On her way home Mrs. Babcock met Lois Field coming from school
attended by a little flock of children. Mrs. Babcock stopped, and
looked sharply at her small, delicately pretty face, with its pointed
chin and deep-set blue eyes.

"How are you feelin' to-night, Lois?" she inquired, in a tone of
forcible commiseration.

"I'm pretty well, thank you," said Lois.

"Seems to me you're lookin' pretty slim. You'd ought to take a little
vacation."  Mrs. Babcock surveyed her with a kind of pugnacious pity.

Lois stood quite erect in the midst of the children. "I don't think I
need any vacation," said she, smiling constrainedly. She pushed
gently past Mrs. Babcock, with the children at her heels.

"You'd better take a little one," Mrs. Babcock called after her.

Lois kept on as if she did not hear. Her face was flushed, and her
head seemed full of beating pulses.

One of the children, a thin little girl in a blue dress, turned
around and grimaced at Mrs. Babcock; another pulled Lois' dress.
"Teacher, Jenny Whitcomb is makin' faces at Mis' Babcock," she
drawled.

"Jenny!" said Lois sharply; and the little girl turned her face with
a scared nervous giggle. "You mustn't ever do such a thing as that
again," said Lois. She reached down and took the child's little
restive hand and led her along.

Lois had not much farther to go. The children all clamored, "Good-by,
teacher!" when she turned in at her own gate.

She went in through the sitting-room to the kitchen, and settled down
into a chair with her hat on.

"Well, so you've got home," said her mother; she was moving about
preparing supper. She smiled anxiously at Lois as she spoke.

Lois smiled faintly, but her forehead was frowning. "Has that Mrs.
Babcock been here?" she asked.

"Yes. Did you meet her?"

"Yes, I did; and I'd like to know what she meant telling me I'd ought
to take a vacation, and I looked bad. I wish people would let me
alone tellin' me how I look."

"She meant well, I guess," said her mother, soothingly. "She said she
was goin' to send you over a dish of her honey."

"I don't want any of her honey. I don't see what folks want to send
things in to me, as if I were sick, for."

"Oh, I guess she thought I'd like some too," returned her mother,
with a kind of stiff playfulness. "You needn't think you're goin' to
have all that honey."

"I don't want any of it," said Lois. The window beside which she sat
was open; under it, in the back yard, was a little thicket of mint,
and some long sprays of sweetbrier bowing over it. Lois reached out
and broke off a piece of the sweetbrier and smelled it.

"Supper's ready," said her mother, presently; and she took off her
hat and went listlessly over to the table.

The table, covered with a white cloth, was set back against the wall,
with only one leaf spread. There were bread and butter and custards
and a small glass dish of rhubarb sauce for supper.

Lois looked at the dish. "I didn't know the rhubarb was grown," said
she.

"I managed to get enough for supper," replied her mother, in a casual
voice.

Nobody would have dreamed how day after day she had journeyed stiffly
down to the old garden spot behind the house to watch the progress of
the rhubarb, and how triumphantly she had brought up those green and
rosy stalks. Lois had always been very fond of rhubarb.

She ate it now with a keen relish. Her mother contrived that she
should have nearly all of it; she made a show of helping herself
twice, but she took very little. But it was to her as if she also
tasted every spoonful which her daughter ate, and as if it had the
flavor of a fruit of Paradise and satisfied her very soul.

After supper Lois began packing up the cups and saucers.

"Now you go in the other room an' set down, an' let me take care of
the dishes," said Mrs. Field, timidly.

Lois faced about instantly. "Now, mother, I'd just like to know what
you mean?" said she. "I guess I ain't quite so far gone but what I
can wash up a few dishes. You act as if you wanted to make me out
sick in spite of myself."

"I thought mebbe you was kind of tired," said her mother,
apologetically.

"I ain't tired. I'm jest as well able to wash up the supper dishes as
I ever was."  Lois carried the cups and saucers to the sink with a
resolute air, and Mrs. Field said no more. She went into her bedroom
to change her dress; she was going to evening meeting.

Lois washed and put away the dishes; then she went into the
sitting-room, and sat down by the open window. She leaned her cheek
against the chairback and looked out; a sweet almond fragrance of
cherry and apple blossoms came into her face; over across the fields
a bird was calling. Lois did not think it tangibly, but it was to her
as if the blossom scent and the bird call came out of her own future.
She was ill, poor, and overworked, but she was not unhappy, for her
future was yet, in a way, untouched; she had not learned to judge of
it by hard precedent, nor had any mistake of hers made a miserable
certainty of it. It still looked to her as fair ahead as an untrodden
field of heaven.

She was quite happy as she sat there; but when her mother, in her
black woollen dress, entered, she felt instantly nervous and fretted.
Mrs. Field said nothing, but the volume and impetus of her anxiety
when she saw her daughter's head in the window seemed to actually
misplace the air.

Presently she went to the window, and leaned over to shut it.

"Don't shut the window, mother," said Lois.

"I'm dreadful afraid you'll catch cold, child."

"No, I sha'n't, either. I wish you wouldn't fuss so, mother."

Mrs. Field stood back; the meeting bell began to ring.

"Goin' to meetin', mother?" Lois asked, in a pleasanter voice.

"I thought mebbe I would."

"I guess I won't go. I want to sew some on my dress this evenin'."

"Sha'n't you mind stayin' alone, if I go?"

"Mind stayin' alone? of course I sha'n't. You get the strangest ideas
lately, mother."

Mrs. Field put on her black bonnet and shawl, and started. The bell
tolled, and she passed down the village street with a stiff
steadiness of gait. She felt eager to go to meeting to-night. This
old New England woman, all of whose traditions were purely orthodox,
was all unknowingly a fetich-worshipper in a time of trouble. Ever
since her daughter had been ill, she had had a terrified impulse in
her meeting-going. It seemed to her that if she stayed away, Lois
might be worse. Unconsciously her church attendance became a species
of spell, or propitiation to a terrifying deity, and the wild
instinct of the African awoke in the New England woman.

When she reached the church the bell had stopped ringing, and the
vestry windows were parallelograms of yellow light; the meeting was
in the vestry.

Mrs. Field entered, and took a seat well toward the front. The room
was half filled with people, and the mass of them were elderly and
middle-aged women. There were rows of their homely, faded, and
strong-lined faces set in sober bonnets, a sprinkling of solemn old
men, a few bright-ribboned girls, and in the background a settee or
two of smart young fellows. Right in front of Mrs. Field sat a pretty
girl with roses in her hat. She was about Lois' age, and had been to
school with her.

Mrs. Field, erect and gaunt, with a look of goodness so settled and
pre-eminent in her face that it had almost the effect of a smile, sat
and listened to the minister. He was a young man with boyish
shoulders, and a round face, which he screwed nervously as he talked.
He was vehement, and strung to wiriness with new enthusiasm; he
seemed to toss the doctrines like footballs back and forth before the
eyes of the people.

Mrs. Field listened intently, but all the time it was as if she were
shut up in a corner with her own God and her own religion. There are
as many side chapels as there are individual sorrows in every church.

After the minister finished his discourse, the old men muttered
prayers, with long pauses between. Now and then a young woman played
a gospel tune on a melodeon, and a woman in the same seat with Mrs.
Field led the singing. She was past middle age, but her voice was
still sweet, although once in a while it quavered. She had sung in
the church choir ever since she was a child, and was the prima donna
of the village. The young girl with roses in her hat who sat in front
of Mrs. Field also sang with fervor, although her voice was little
more than a sweetly husky breath. She kept her eyes, at once bold and
timid, fixed upon the young minister as she sang.

When meeting was done, and Mrs. Field arose, the girl spoke to her.
She had a pretty blush on her round cheeks, and she smiled at Mrs.
Field in the same way that she would soon smile at the young
minister.

"How's Lois to-night, Mrs. Field?" said she.

"She's pretty well, thank you, Ida."

"I heard she was sick."

"Oh, no, she ain't sick. The spring weather has made her feel kind of
tired out, that's all. It 'most always does."

"Well, I'm glad she isn't sick," said the girl, her radiant absent
eyes turned upon the minister, who was talking with some one at the
desk. "She wasn't out to meeting, and I didn't know but she might
be."

"She thought she wouldn't--" began Mrs. Field, but the girl was gone.
The minister had started down the other aisle, and she met him at the
door.

Several other people inquired for Lois as Mrs. Field made her way
out; some had heard she was ill in bed. She had an errand to do at
the store on her way home; when she reached it she went in, and stood
waiting at the counter.

There were a number of men lounging about the large, rank,
becluttered room, and there were several customers. The village
post-office was in one corner of the store. There were only two
clerks besides the proprietor, who was postmaster as well. Mrs. Field
had to wait quite a while; but at last she had made her purchases,
and was just stepping out the door, when a voice arrested her. "Mis'
Field," it said.

She turned, and saw the postmaster coming toward her with a letter in
his hand. The lounging men twisted about and stared lazily. The
postmaster was a short, elderly man with shelving gray whiskers, and
a wide, smiling mouth, which he was drawing down solemnly.

"Mis' Field, here's a letter I want you to look at; it come this
mornin'," he said, in a low voice.

Mrs. Field took the letter. It was directed, in a fair round hand, to
Mrs. Esther Maxwell; that had been her dead sister's name. She stood
looking at it, her face drooping severely. "It was sent to my
sister," said she.

"I s'posed so. Well, I thought I'd hand it to you."

Mrs. Field nodded gravely, and put the letter in her pocket. She was
again passing out, when somebody nudged her heavily. It was Mrs.
Green, a woman who lived in the next house beyond hers.

"Jest wait a minute," she said, "an' I'll go along with you."

So Mrs. Field stood back and waited, while her neighbor pushed
forward to the counter. After a little she drew the letter from her
pocket and studied the superscription. The post-mark was Elliot. She
supposed the letter to be from her dead sister's father-in-law, who
lived there.

"I may jest as well open it an' see what it is while I'm waitin',"
she thought.

She tore open the envelope slowly and clumsily with her stiff
fingers, and held up the letter so the light struck it. She could not
read strange writing easily, and this was a nearly illegible scrawl.
However, after the first few words, she seemed to absorb it by some
higher faculty than reading. In a short time she had the gist of the
letter. It was from a lawyer who signed himself Daniel Tuxbury. He
stated formally that Thomas Maxwell was dead; that he had left a will
greatly to Esther Maxwell's advantage, and that it would be advisable
for her to come to Elliot at an early date if possible. Inclosed was
a copy of the will. It was dated several years ago. All Thomas
Maxwell's property was bequeathed without reserve to his son's widow,
Esther Maxwell, should she survive him. In case of her decease before
his own, the whole was to revert to his brother's daughter, Flora
Maxwell.

Jane Field read the letter through twice, then she folded it,
replaced it in the envelope, and stood erect by the store door. She
could see Mrs. Green's broad shawled back among the customers at the
calico counter. Once in a while she looked around with a beseeching
and apologetic smile.

Mrs. Field thought, "I won't say a word to her about it."  However,
she was conscious of no evil motive; it was simply because she was
naturally secretive. She looked pale and rigid.

Mrs. Green remarked it when she finally approached with her parcel of
calico.

"Why, what's the matter, Mis' Field?" she exclaimed. "You ain't sick,
be you?"

"No. Why?"

"Seems to me you look dreadful pale. It was too bad to keep you
standin' there so long, but I couldn't get waited on before. I think
Mr. Robbins had ought to have more help. It's too much for him with
only two clerks, an' the post-office to tend, too. I see you got a
letter."  Mrs. Field nodded. The two women went down the steps into
the street.

"How's Lois to-night?" Mrs. Green asked as they went along.

"I guess she's about as usual. She didn't say but what she was."

"She ain't left off her school, has she?"

"No," replied Mrs. Field, stiffly, "she ain't."

Suddenly Mrs. Green stopped and laid a heavy hand on Mrs. Field's
arm. "Look here, Mis' Field, I dun'no' as you'll thank me for it, but
I'm goin' to speak real plain to you, the way I'd thank anybody to if
'twas my Jenny. I'm dreadful afraid you don't realize how bad Lois
is, Mis' Field."

"Mebbe I don't."  Mrs. Field's voice sounded hard.

The other woman looked perplexedly at her for a moment, then she went
on:

"Well, if you do, mebbe I hadn't ought to said anything; but I was
dreadful afraid you didn't, an' then when you come to, perhaps when
'twas too late, you'd never forgive yourself. She hadn't ought to
teach school another day, Mis' Field."

"I dun'no how it's goin' to be helped," Mrs. Field said again, in her
hard voice.

"Mis' Field, I know it ain't any of my business, an' I don't know but
you'll think I'm interferin'; but I can't help it nohow when I think
of--my Abby, an' how--she went down. _Ain't_ you got anybody that
could help you a little while till she gets better an' able to work?"

"I dun'no' of anybody."

"Wouldn't your sister's husband's father? Ain't he got considerable
property?"

Mrs. Field turned suddenly, her voice sharpened, "I've asked him all
I'm ever goin' to--there! I let Esther's husband have fifteen hundred
dollars that my poor husband saved out of his hard earnin's, an' he
lost it in his business; an' after he died I wrote to his father, an'
I told him about it. I thought mebbe he'd be willin' to be fair, an'
pay his son's debts, if he didn't have much feelin'. There was Esther
an' Lois an' me, an' not a cent to live on, an' Esther she was
beginnin' to be feeble. But he jest sent me back my letter, an' he'd
wrote on the back of it that he wa'n't responsible for any of his
son's debts. I said then I'd never go to him agin, and I didn't; an'
Esther didn't when she was sick an' dyin'; an' I never let him know
when she died, an' I don't s'pose he knows she is dead to this day."

"Oh, Mis' Field, you didn't have to lose all that money!"

"Yes, I did, every dollar of it."

"I declare it's wicked."

"There's a good many things that's wicked, an' sometimes I think some
things ain't wicked that we've always thought was. I don't know but
the Lord meant everybody to have what belonged to them in spite of
everything."

Mrs. Green stared. "I guess I don't know jest what you mean, Mis'
Field."

"I meant everybody ought to have what's their just due, an' I believe
the Lord will uphold them in it. I've about come to the conclusion
that folks ought to lay hold of justice themselves if there ain't no
other way, an' that's what we've got hands for."  Suddenly Mrs.
Field's manner changed. "I know Lois hadn't ought to be teachin'
school as well as you do," said she. "I ain't said much about it, it
ain't my way, but I've known it all the time."

"She'd ought to take a vacation, Mis' Field, an' get away from here
for a spell. Folks say Green River ain't very healthy. They say these
low meadow-lands are bad. I worried enough about it after my Abby
died, thinkin' what might have been done. It does seem to me that if
something was done right away, Lois might get up; but there ain't no
use waitin'. I've seen young girls go down; it seems sometimes as if
there wa'n't nothin' more to them than flowers, an' they fade away in
a day. I've been all through it. Mis' Field, you don't mind my
speakin' so, do you? Oh, Mis' Field, don't feel so bad! I'm real
sorry I said anythin'."

Mrs. Field was shaking with great sobs. "I ain't--blamin' you," she
said, brokenly.

Mrs. Green got out her own handkerchief. "Mis' Field, I wouldn't have
spoken a word, but--I felt as if something ought to be done, if there
could be; an'--I thought--so much about my--poor Abby. Lois always
makes me think of her; she's jest about her build; an'--I didn't know
as you--realized."

"I realized enough," returned Mrs. Field, catching her breath as she
walked on.

"Now I hope you don't feel any worse because I spoke as I did," Mrs.
Green said, when they reached the gate of the Pratt house.

"You ain't told me anything I didn't know," replied Mrs. Field.

Mrs. Green felt for one of her distorted hands; she held it a second,
then she dropped it. Mrs. Field let it hang stiffly the while. It was
a fervent demonstration to them, the evidence of unwonted excitement
and the deepest feeling. When Mrs. Field entered her sitting-room,
the first object that met her eyes was Lois' face. She was tilted
back in the rocking-chair, her slender throat was exposed, her lips
were slightly parted, and there was a glassy gleam between her
half-open eyelids. Her mother stood looking at her.

Suddenly Lois opened her eyes wide and sat up. "What are you standing
there looking at me so for, mother?" she said, in her weak, peevish
voice.

"I ain't lookin' at you, child. I've jest come home from meetin'. I
guess you've been asleep."

"I haven't been asleep a minute. I heard you open the outside door."

Mrs. Field's hand verged toward the letter in her pocket. Then she
began untying her bonnet.

Lois arose, and lighted another lamp. "Well, I guess I'll go to bed,"
said she.

"Wait a minute," her mother returned.

Lois paused inquiringly.

"Never mind," her mother said, hastily. "You needn't stop. I can tell
you jest as well to-morrow."

"What was it?"

"Nothin' of any account. Run along."




Chapter II


The next morning Lois had gone to her school and her mother had not
yet shown the letter to her. She went about as usual, doing her
housework slowly and vigorously. Mrs. Field's cleanliness was
proverbial in this cleanly New England neighborhood. It almost
amounted to asceticism; her rooms, when her work was finished, had
the bareness and purity of a nun's cell. There was never any bloom of
dust on Mrs. Field's furniture; there was only the hard, dull glitter
of the wood. Her few chairs and tables looked as if waxed; the paint
was polished in places from her doors and window-casings; her
window-glass gave out green lights like jewels; and all this she did
with infinite pains and slowness, as there was hardly a natural
movement left in her rheumatic hands. But there was in her nature an
element of stern activity that must have its outcome in some
direction, and it took the one that it could find. Jane had used to
take in sewing before her hands were diseased. In her youth she had
learned the trade of a tailoress; when ready-made clothing, even for
children, came into use, she made dresses. Her dresses had been
long-waisted and stiffly boned, with high, straight biases, seemingly
fitted to her own nature instead of her customers' forms; but they
had been strongly and faithfully sewed, and her stitches held fast as
the rivets on a coat of mail. Now she could not sew. She could knit,
and that was all, besides her housework, that she could do.

This morning, while dusting a little triangular what-not that stood
in a corner of her sitting-room, she came across a small box that
held some old photographs. The box was made of a kind of
stucco-work--shells held in place by a bed of putty. Amanda Pratt had
made it and given it to her. Mrs. Field took up this box and dusted
it carefully; then she opened it, and took out the photographs one by
one.

After a while she stopped; she did not take out any more, but she
looked intently at one; then she replaced all but that one, got
painfully up from the low foot-stool where she had been sitting, and
went out of her room across the entry to Amanda's, with the
photograph in her hand.

Amanda sat at her usual window, sewing on her rug. The sunlight came
in, and her shadow, set in a bright square, wavered on the floor; the
clock out in the kitchen ticked. Amanda looked up when Mrs. Field
entered. "Oh, it's you?" said she. "I wondered who was comin'. Set
down, won't you?"

Mrs. Field went over to Amanda and held out the photograph. "I want
to see if you can tell me who this is."

Amanda took the photograph and held it toward the light. She
compressed her lips and wrinkled her forehead. "Why, it's you, of
course--ain't it?"

Mrs. Field made no reply; she stood looking at her.

"Why, ain't it you?" Amanda asked, looking from the picture to her in
a bewildered way.

"No; it's Esther."

"Esther?"

"Yes, it's Esther."

"Well, I declare! When was it took?"

"About ten years ago, when she was in Elliot."

"Well, all I've got to say is, if anybody had asked me, I'd have said
it was took for you yesterday. Why, Mis' Field, what's the matter?"

"There ain't anything the matter."

"Why, you look dreadfully."

Mrs. Field's face was pale, and there was a curious look about her
whole figure. It seemed as if shrinking from something, twisting
itself rigidly, as a fossil tree might shrink in a wind that could
move it.

"I feel well 'nough," said she. "I guess it's the light."

"Well, mebbe 'tis," replied Amanda, still looking anxiously at her.
"Of course you know if you feel well, but you do look dreadful white
to me. Don't you want some water, or a swaller of cold tea?"

"No, I don't want a single thing; I'm well enough."  Mrs. Field's
tone was almost surly. She held out her hand for the photograph. "I
must be goin'," she continued; "I ain't got my dustin' done. I jest
come across this, an' I thought I'd show it to you, an' see what you
said."

"Well, I shouldn't have dreamed but what it was yours; but then you
an' your sister did look jest alike. I never could tell you apart
when you first came here."

"Folks always said we looked alike. We always used to be took for
each other when we was girls, an' I think we looked full as much
alike after our hair begun to turn. Mine was a little lighter than
hers, an' that made some difference betwixt us before. It didn't show
when we was both gray."

"I shouldn't have thought 'twould. Well, I must say, I shouldn't
dream but what that picture was meant for you."

Mrs. Field took her way out of the room.

"How's Lois this mornin'?" Amanda called after her.

"About the same, I guess."

"I saw her goin' out of the yard this mornin', an' I thought she
walked dreadful weak."

"I guess she don't walk any too strong."

When Mrs. Field was in her own room she stowed away the photograph in
the shell box; then she got a little broom and brushed the shell-work
carefully; she thought it looked dusty in spite of her rubbing.

When the dusting was done it was time for her to get her dinner
ready. Indeed, there was not much leisure for Mrs. Field all day. She
seldom sat down for long at a time. From morning until night she kept
up her stiff resolute march about her house.

At half-past twelve she had the dinner on the table, but Lois did not
come. Her mother went into the sitting-room, sat down beside a
window, and watched. The town clock struck one. Mrs. Field went
outdoors and stood by the front gate, looking down the road. She saw
a girl coming in the distance with a flutter of light skirts, and she
exclaimed with gladness, "There she is!"  The girl drew nearer, and
she saw it was Ida Starr in a dress that looked like Lois'.

The girl stopped when she saw Mrs. Field at the gate. "Good-morning,"
said she.

"Good-mornin', Ida."

"It's a beautiful day."

Mrs. Field did not reply; she gazed past her down the road, her face
all one pale frown.

The girl looked curiously at her. "I hope Lois is pretty well this
morning?" she said, in her amiable voice.

Mrs. Field responded with a harsh outburst that fairly made her start
back.

"No," she cried out, "she ain't well; she's sick. She wa'n't fit to
go to school. She couldn't hardly crawl out of the yard. She ain't
got home, an' I'm terrible worried. I dun'no' but she's fell down."

"Maybe she just thought she wouldn't come home."

"No; that ain't it. She never did such a thing as that without saying
something about it; she'd know I'd worry."

Mrs. Field craned her neck farther over the gate, and peered down the
road. Beside the gate stood two tall bushes, all white with flowers
that grew in long white racemes, and they framed her distressed face.

"Look here, Mrs. Field," said the girl, "I'll tell you what I'll do.
The school-house isn't much beyond my house; I'll just run over there
and see if there's anything the matter; then I'll come back right
off, and let you know."

"Oh, will you?"

"Of course I will. Now don't you worry, Mrs. Field; I don't believe
it's anything."

The girl nodded back at her with her pretty smile; then she sped away
with a light tilting motion. Mrs. Field stood a few minutes longer,
then she went up the steps into the house. She opened Amanda Pratt's
door instead of her own, and went through the sitting-room to the
kitchen, from whence she could hear the clink of dishes.

"Lois ain't got home yet," said she, standing in the doorway.

Amanda set down the dish she was wiping. "Mis' Field, what do you
mean?"

"What I say."

"Ain't she got home yet?"

"No, she ain't."

"Why, it's half-past one o'clock! She ain't comin'; it's time for
school to begin. Look here, Mis' Field, I guess she felt kind of
tired, an' thought she wouldn't come."

Mrs. Field shook her head with a sort of remorselessness toward all
comfort. "She's fell down."

"Oh, Mis' Field! you don't s'pose so?"

"The Starr girl's gone to find out."

Mrs. Field turned to go.

"Hadn't you better stay here till she comes?" asked Amanda,
anxiously.

"No; I must go home."  Suddenly Mrs. Field looked fiercely around.
"I'll tell you what 'tis, Mandy Pratt, an' you mark my words! I ain't
goin' to stan' this kind of work much longer! I ain't goin' to see
all the child I've got in the world murdered; for that's what it
is--it's murder!"

Mrs. Field went through the sitting-room with a stiff rush, and
Amanda followed her.

"Oh, Mis' Field, don't take on so--don't!" she kept saying.

Mrs. Field went through the house into her own kitchen. The little
white-laid table stood against the wall; the tea-kettle steamed and
rocked on the stove; the room was full of savory odors. Mrs. Field
set the tea-kettle back where it would not boil so hard. These little
household duties had become to her almost as involuntary as the tick
of her own pulses. No matter what hours of agony they told off, the
pulses ticked; and in every stress of life she would set the
tea-kettle back if it were necessary. Amanda stood in the door,
trembling. All at once there was a swift roll of wheels in the yard
past the window. "Somebody's come!" gasped Amanda. Mrs. Field rushed
to the back door, and Amanda after her. There was a buggy drawn up
close to the step, and a man was trying to lift Lois out.

Mrs. Field burst out in a great wail. "Oh, Lois! Lois! She's
dead--she's dead!"

"No, she ain't dead," replied the man, in a drawling, jocular tone.
"She's worth a dozen dead ones--ain't you, Lois? I found her layin'
down side of the road kind of tuckered out, that's all, and I thought
I'd give her a lift. Don't you be scared, Mis' Field. Now, Lois, you
jest rest all your heft on me."

Lois' pale face and little reaching hands appeared around the wing of
the buggy. Amanda ran around to the horse's head. He did not offer to
start; but she stood there, and said, "Whoa, whoa," over and over, in
a pleading, nervous voice. She was afraid to touch the bridle; she
had a great terror of horses.

The man, who was Ida Starr's father, lifted Lois out, and carried her
into the house. She struggled a little.

"I can walk," said she, in a weakly indignant voice.

Mr. Starr carried her into the sitting-room and laid her down on the
sofa. She raised herself immediately, and sat up with a defiant air.

"Oh, dear child, do lay down," sobbed her mother.

She put her hand on Lois' shoulder and tried to force her gently
backward, but the girl resisted.

"Don't, mother," said she. "I don't want to lie down."

Amanda had run into her own room for the camphor bottle. Now she
leaned over Lois and put it to her nose. "Jest smell of this a
little," she said. Lois pushed it away feebly.

"I guess Lois will have to take a little vacation," said Mr. Starr.
"I guess I shall have to see about it, and let her have a little
rest."

He was one of the school committee.

"I don't need any vacation," said Lois, in a peremptory tone.

"I guess we shall have to see about it," repeated Mr. Starr. There
was an odd undertone of decision in his drawling voice. He was a
large man, with a pleasant face full of double curves. "Good-day,"
said he, after a minute. "I guess I must be goin'."

"Good-day," said Lois. "I'm much obliged to you for bringing me
home."

"You're welcome."

Amanda nodded politely when he withdrew, but Mrs. Field never looked
at him. She stood with her eyes fixed upon Lois.

"What are you looking at me so for, mother?" said Lois, impatiently,
turning her own face away.

Mrs. Field sank down on her knees before the sofa. "Oh, my child!"
she wailed. "My child! my child!"

She threw her arms around the girl's slender waist, and clung to her
convulsively. Lois cast a terrified glance up at Amanda.

"Does she think I ain't going to get well?" she asked, as if her
mother were not present.

"Of course she don't," replied Amanda, with decision. She stooped and
took hold of Mrs. Field's shoulders. "Now look here, Mis' Field,"
said she, "you ain't actin' like yourself. You're goin' to make Lois
sick, if she ain't now, if you go on this way. You get up an' make
her a cup of tea, an' get her somethin' to eat. Ten chances to one,
that's all that ailed her. I don't believe she's eat enough to-day to
keep a cat alive."

"I know all about it," moaned Mrs. Field. "It's jest what I expected.
Oh, my child! my child! I have prayed an' done all I could, an' now
it's come to this. I've got to give up. Oh, my child! my child!"

It was to this mother as though her daughter was not there, although
she held her in her arms. She was in that abandon of grief which is
the purest selfishness.

Amanda fairly pulled her to her feet. "Mis' Field, I'm ashamed of
you!" said she, severely. "I should think you were beside yourself.
Here's Lois better--"

"No, she ain't better. I know."

Mrs. Field straightened herself, and went out into the kitchen.

Lois looked again at Amanda, in a piteous, terrified fashion. "Oh,"
said she, "you don't think I'm so very sick, do you?"

"Very sick? No; of course you ain't. Your mother got dreadful nervous
because you didn't come home. That's what made her act so. You look a
good deal better than you did when you first came in."

"I feel better," said Lois. "I never saw mother act so in my life."

"She got all wrought up, waitin'. If I was you, I'd lay down a few
minutes, jest on her account. I think it would make her feel easier."

"Well, I will, if you think I'd better; but there ain't a mite of
need of it."

Lois laid her head down on the sofa arm.

"That's right," said Amanda. "You can jest lay there a little while.
I'm goin' out to tell your mother to make you a cup of tea. That'll
set you right up."

Amanda found Mrs. Field already making the tea. She measured it out
carefully, and never looked around. Amanda stepped close to her.

"Mis' Field," she whispered, "I hope you wa'n't hurt by what I said.
I meant it for the best."

"I sha'n't give way so again," said Mrs. Field. Her face had a
curious determined expression.

"I hope you don't feel hurt?"

"No, I don't. I sha'n't give way so again."  She poured the boiling
water into the teapot, and set it on the stove.

Amanda looked at a covered dish on the stove hearth. "What was you
goin' to have for dinner?" said she.

"Lamb broth. I'm goin' to heat up some for her. She didn't eat hardly
a mouthful of breakfast."

"That's jest the thing for her. I'll get out the kettle and put it on
to heat. I dun'no' of anything that gits cold any quicker than lamb
broth, unless it's love."

Amanda put on a cheerful air as she helped Mrs. Field. Presently the
two women carried in the little repast to Lois.

"She's asleep," whispered Amanda, who went first with the tea.

They stood looking at the young girl, stretched out her slender
length, her white delicate profile showing against the black arm of
the sofa.

Her mother caught her breath. "She's got to be waked up; she's got to
have some nourishment, anyhow," said she. "Come, Lois, wake up, and
have your dinner."

Lois opened her eyes. All the animation and defiance were gone from
her face. She was so exhausted that she made no resistance to
anything. She let them raise her, prop her up with a pillow, and
nearly feed her with the dinner. Then she lay back, and her eyes
closed.

Amanda went home, and Mrs. Field went back to the kitchen to put away
the dinner dishes. She had eaten nothing herself, and now she poured
some of the broth into a cup, and drank it down with great gulps
without tasting it. It was simply filling of a necessity the lamp of
life with oil.

After her housework was done, she sat down in the kitchen with her
knitting. There was no sound from the other room.

The latter part of the afternoon Amanda came past the window and
entered the back door. She carried a glass of foaming beer. Amanda
was famous through the neighborhood for this beer, which she
concocted from roots and herbs after an ancient recipe. It was
pleasantly flavored with aromatic roots, and instinct with agreeable
bitterness, being an innocently tonic old-maiden brew.

"I thought mebbe she'd like a glass of my beer," whispered Amanda. "I
came round the house so's not to disturb her. How is she?"

"I guess she's asleep. I ain't heard a sound."

Amanda set the glass on the table. "Don't you think you'd ought to
have a doctor, Mis' Field?" said she.

It seemed impossible that Lois could have heard, but her voice came
shrilly from the other room: "No, I ain't going to have a doctor;
there's no need of it. I sha'n't like it if you get one, mother."

"No, you sha'n't have one, dear child," her mother called back. "She
was always jest so about havin' a doctor," she whispered to Amanda.

"I'll take in the beer if she's awake," said Amanda.

Lois looked up when she entered. "I don't want a doctor," said she,
pitifully, rolling her blue eyes.

"Of course you sha'n't have a doctor if you don't want one," returned
Amanda, soothingly. "I thought mebbe you'd like a glass of my beer."

Lois drank the beer eagerly, then she sank back and closed her eyes.
"I'm going to get up in a minute, and sew on my dress," she murmured.

But she did not stir until her mother helped her to bed early in the
evening.

The next day she seemed a little better. Luckily it was Saturday, so
there was no worry about her school for her. She would not lie down,
but sat in the rocking-chair with her needle-work in her lap. When
any one came in, she took it up and sewed. Several of the neighbors
had heard she was ill, and came to inquire. She told them, with a
defiant air, that she was very well, and they looked shocked and
nonplussed. Some of them beckoned her mother out into the entry when
they took leave, and Lois heard them whispering together.

The next day, Sunday, Lois seemed about the same. She said once that
she was going to church, but she did not speak of it again. Mrs.
Field went. She suggested staying at home, but Lois was indignant.

"Stay at home with me, no sicker than I am! I should think you were
crazy, mother," said she.

So Mrs. Field got out her Sunday clothes and went to meeting. As soon
as she had gone, Lois coughed; she had been choking the cough back.
She stood at the window, well back that people might not see her, and
watched her mother pass down the street with her stiff glide. Mrs.
Field's back and shoulders were rigidly steady when she walked; she
might have carried a jar of water on her head without spilling it,
like an Indian woman. Lois, small and slight although she was, walked
like her mother. She held herself with the same resolute stateliness,
when she could hold herself at all. The two women might, as far as
their carriage went, have marched in a battalion with propriety.

Lois felt a certain relief when her mother had gone. Even when Mrs.
Field made no expression of anxiety, there was a covert distress
about her which seemed to enervate the atmosphere, and hinder the
girl in the fight she was making against her own weakness. Lois had a
feeling that if nobody would look at her nor speak about her illness,
she could get well quickly of herself.

As for Mrs. Field, she was no longer eager to attend meeting; she
went rather than annoy Lois. She was present at both the morning and
afternoon services. They still had two services in Green River.

Jane Field, sitting in her place in church through the long sermons,
had a mental experience that was wholly new to her. She looked at the
white walls of the audience-room, the pulpit, the carpet, the pews.
She noted the familiar faces of the people in their Sunday gear, the
green light stealing through the long blinds, and all these
accustomed sights gave her a sense of awful strangeness and
separation. And this impression did not leave her when she was out on
the street mingling with the homeward people; every greeting of an
old neighbor strengthened it. She regarded the peaceful village
houses with their yards full of new green grass and flowering bushes,
and they seemed to have a receding dimness as she neared some awful
shore. Even the click of her own gate as she opened it, the sound of
her own feet on the path, the feel of the door-latch to her hand--all
the little common belongings of her daily life were turned into so
many stationary landmarks to prove her own retrogression and fill her
with horror.

To-day, when people inquired for Lois, her mother no longer gave her
customary replies. She said openly that her daughter was real
miserable, and she was worried about her.

"I guess she's beginning to realize it," the women whispered to each
other with a kind of pitying triumph. For there is a certain
aggravation in our friends' not owning to even those facts which we
deplore for them. It is provoking to have an object of pity balk.
Mrs. Field's assumption that her daughter was not ill had half
incensed her sympathizing neighbors; even Amanda had marvelled
indignantly at it. But now the sudden change in her friend caused her
to marvel still more. She felt a vague fear every time she thought of
her. After Lois had gone to bed that Sunday night, her mother came
into Amanda's room, and the two women sat together in the dusk. It
was so warm that Amanda had set all the windows open, and the room
was full of the hollow gurgling of the frogs--there was some low
meadow-land behind the house.

"I want to know what you think of Lois?" said Mrs. Field, suddenly;
her voice was high and harsh.

"Why, I don't know, hardly, Mis' Field."

"Well, I know. She's runnin' down. She won't ever be any better,
unless I can do something. She's dyin' for the want of a little
money, so she can stop work an' go away to some healthier place an'
rest. She is; the Lord knows she is."  Mrs. Field's voice was solemn,
almost oratorical.

Amanda sat still; her long face looked pallid and quite unmoved in
the low light; she was thinking what she could say.

But Mrs. Field went on; she was herself so excited to speech and
action, the outward tendency of her own nature was so strong, that
she failed to notice the course of another's. "She is," she repeated,
argumentatively, as if Amanda had spoken, or she was acute enough to
hear the voice behind silence; "there ain't any use talkin'."

There was a pause, a soft wind came into the room, the noise of the
frogs grew louder, a whippoorwill called; it seemed as if the wide
night were flowing in at the windows.

"What I want to know is," said Mrs. Field, "if you will take Lois in
here to meals, an' look after her a week or two. Be you willin' to?"

"You ain't goin' away, Mis' Field?"  There was a slow and contained
surprise in Amanda's tone.

"Yes, I be; to-morrow mornin', if I live, on the early train. I be,
if you're willin' to take Lois. I don't see how I can leave her any
other way as she is now. You sha'n't be any loser by it, if you'll
take her."

"Where be you goin', Mis' Field?"

"I don't want you to say anything about it. I don't want it all over
town."

"I sha'n't say anything."

"Well, I'm goin' down to Elliot."

"You be?"

"Yes, I be. Old Mr. Maxwell's dead. I had a letter a night or two
ago."

Amanda gasped, "He's dead?"

"Yes."

"What was the matter, do you know?"

"They called it paralysis. It was sudden."

Amanda hesitated. "I s'pose--you know anything about--his property?"
said she.

"Yes; he left it all to my sister."

"Why, Mis' Field!"

"Yes; he left every cent of it to her."

"Oh, ain't it dreadful she's dead?"

"It's all been dreadful right along," said Mrs. Field.

"Of course," said Amanda, "I know she's better off than she'd be with
all the money in the world; it ain't that; but it would do so much
good to the livin'. Why, look here, Mis' Field, I dun'no' anything
about law, but won't you have it if your sister's dead?"

"I'm goin' down there."

"It seems as if you'd ought to have somethin' anyway, after all
you've done, lettin' his son have your money an' everything."

Amanda spoke with stern warmth. She had known about this grievance of
her neighbor's for a long time.

"I'm goin' down there," repeated Mrs. Field.

"I would," said Amanda.

"I hate to leave Lois," said Mrs. Field; "but I don't see any other
way."

"I'll take her," said Amanda, "if you're willin' to trust her with
me."

"I've got to," replied Mrs. Field.

"Well, I'll do the best I can," replied Amanda.

She was considerably shaken. She felt her knees tremble. It was as if
she were working a new tidy or rug pattern. Any variation of her
peaceful monotony of existence jarred her whole nature like heavy
wheels, and this was a startling one.

She wondered how Mrs. Field could bring herself to leave Lois. It
seemed to her that she must have hopes of all the old man's property.

After Mrs. Field had gone home, and she, primly comfortable in her
starched and ruffled dimities, lay on her high feather-bed between
her smooth sheets, she settled it in her own mind that her neighbor
would certainly have the property. She wondered if she and Lois would
go to Elliot to live, and who would live in her tenement. The change
was hard for her to contemplate, and she wept a little. Many a
happiness comes to its object with outriders of sorrows to others.

Poor Amanda bemoaned herself over the changes that might come to her
little home, and planned nervously her manner of living with Lois
during the next week. Amanda had lived entirely alone for over twenty
years; this admitting another to her own territory seemed as grave a
matter to her as the admission of foreigners did to Japan. Indeed,
all her kind were in a certain way foreigners to Amanda; and she was
shy of them, she had so withdrawn herself by her solitary life, for
solitariness is the farthest country of them all.

Amanda did not sleep much, and it was very early in the morning--she
was standing before the kitchen looking-glass, twisting the rosettes
of her front hair--when Mrs. Field came in to say good-by. Mrs. Field
was gaunt and erect in her straight black clothes. She had her black
veil tied over her bonnet to protect it from dust, and the black
frame around her strong-featured face gave her a rigid, relentless
look, like a female Jesuit. Lois came faltering behind her mother.
She had a bewildered air, and she looked from her mother to Amanda
with appealing significance, but she did not speak.

"Well, I've come to say good-by," said Mrs. Field.

Amanda had one side of her front hair between her lips while she
twisted the other; she took it out. "Good-by, Mis' Field," she said.
"I'll do the best I can for Lois. How soon do you s'pose you'll be
back?"

"It's accordin' to how I get along. I've been tellin' Lois she ain't
goin' to school to-day. She's afraid Mr. Starr will put Ida in if she
don't; but there ain't no need of her worryin'; mebbe a way will be
opened. I want you to lookout she don't go. There ain't no need of
it."

"I'll do the best I can," said Amanda, with a doubtful glance at
Lois.

Lois said nothing, but her pale little mouth contracted obstinately.
She and Amanda followed her mother to the door. The departing woman
said good-by, and went down the steps over the terraces. She never
looked back. She went on out the gate, and turned into the long road.
She had a mile walk to the railroad station.

Amanda and Lois went back into the sitting-room.

"When did she tell you she was going?" Lois asked suddenly.

"Last night."

"She didn't tell me till this morning."

Lois held her head high, but her eyes were surprised and pitiful, and
the corners of her mouth drooped. She faced about to the window with
a haughty motion, and watched her mother out of sight, a gaunt, dark
old figure disappearing under low green elm branches.




Chapter III


It was many years since Mrs. Field had taken any but the most trivial
journeys. Elliot was a hundred and twenty miles away. She must go to
Boston; then cross the city to the other depot, where she would take
the Elliot train. This elderly unsophisticated woman might very
reasonably have been terrified at the idea of taking this journey
alone, but she was not. She never thought of it.

The latter half of the road to the Green River station lay through an
unsettled district. There were acres of low birch woods and lusty
meadow-lands. This morning they were covered with a gold-green dazzle
of leaves. To one looking across them, they almost seemed played over
by little green flames; now and then a young birch tree stood away
from the others, and shone by itself like a very torch of spring.
Mrs. Field walked steadily through it. She had never paused to take
much thought of the beauty of nature; to-day a tree all alive and
twinkling with leaves might, for all her notice, have been naked and
stiff with frost.

She did not seem to walk fast, but her long steps carried her over
the ground well. It was long before train-time when she came in sight
of the little station with its projecting piazza roofs. She entered
the ladies' room and bought her ticket, then she sat down and waited.
There were two other women there--middle-aged countrywomen in awkward
wool gowns and flat straw bonnets, with a certain repressed
excitement in their homely faces. They were setting their large,
faithful, cloth-gaitered feet a little outside their daily ruts, and
going to visit some relatives in a neighboring town; they were almost
overcome by the unusualness of it.

Jane Field was a woman after their kind, and the look on their faces
had its grand multiple in the look on hers. She had not only stepped
out of her rut, but she was going out of sight of it forever.

She sat there stiff and silent, her two feet braced against the
floor, ready to lift her at the signal of the train, her black
leather bag grasped firmly in her right hand.

The two women eyed her furtively. One nudged the other. "Know who
that is?" she whispered. But neither of them knew. They were from the
adjoining town, which this railroad served as well as Green River.

Sometimes Mrs. Field looked at them, but with no speculation; the
next moment she looked in the same way upon the belongings of the
little country depot--the battered yellow settees, the time-tables,
the long stove in its tract of littered sawdust, the man's face in
the window of the ticket-office.

"Dreadful cross-lookin', ain't she?" one of the women whispered in
the other's ear.

Jane heard the whisper, and looked at them. The women gave each other
violent pokes, they reddened and tittered nervously, then they tried
to look out of the window with an innocent and absent air. But they
need not have been troubled. Jane, although she heard the whisper
perfectly, did not connect it with herself at all. She never thought
much about her own appearance; this morning she had as little vanity
as though she were dead.

When the whistle of the train sounded, the women all pushed anxiously
out on the platform.

"Is this the train that goes to Boston?" Mrs. Field asked one of the
other two.

"I s'pose so," she replied, with a reciprocative flutter. "I'm goin'
to ask so's to be sure. I'm goin' to Dale."

"I always ask," her friend remarked, with decision.

When the train stopped, Mrs. Field inquired of a brakeman. She was
hardly satisfied with his affirmative answer. "Are you the
conductor?" said she, sternly peering.

The young fellow gave a hurried wave of his hand toward the
conductor, "There he is, ma'am."

Mrs. Field asked him also, then she hoisted herself into the car.
When she had taken her seat, she put the same question to a woman in
front of her.

It was a five-hours' ride to Boston. Mrs. Field sat all the while in
her place with her bag in her lap, and never stirred. There was a
look of rigid preparation about her, as if all her muscles were
strained for an instant leap.

Two young girls in an opposite seat noticed her and tittered. They
had considerable merriment over her, twisting their pretty silly
faces, and rolling their blue eyes in her direction, and then
averting them with soft repressed chuckles.

Occasionally Mrs. Field looked over at them, thought of her Lois, and
noted their merriment gravely. She never dreamed that they were
laughing at her. If she had, she would not have considered it twice.

It was four o'clock when Mrs. Field arrived in Boston. She had been
in the city but once before, when she was a young girl. Still she set
out with no hesitation to walk across the city to the depot where she
must take the cars for Elliot. She could not afford a carriage, and
she would not trust herself in a street car. She knew her own head
and her old muscles; she could allow for their limitations, and
preferred to rely upon them.

Every few steps she stopped and asked a question as to her route,
listening sharply to the reply. Then she went straight enough,
speeding between the informers like guide-posts. This old provincial
threaded the city streets as unappreciatively as she had that morning
the country one. Once in a while the magnificence of some shop
window, a dark flash of jet, or a flutter of lace on a woman's dress
caught her eye, but she did not see it. She had nothing in common
with anything of that kind; she had to do with the primal facts of
life. Coming as she was out of the country quiet, she was quite
unmoved by the thundering rush of the city streets. She might have
been deaf and blind for all the impression it had upon her. Her own
nature had grown so intense that it apparently had emanations, and
surrounded her with an atmosphere of her own impenetrable to the
world.

It was nearly five o'clock when she reached her station, and the
train was ready. It was half-past five when she arrived in Elliot.
She got off the train and stalked, as if with a definite object,
around the depot platform. She did not for one second hesitate or
falter. She went up to a man who was loading some trunks on a wagon,
and asked him to direct her to Lawyer Tuxbury's office. Her voice was
so abrupt and harsh that the man started.

"Cross the track, an' go up the street till you come to it, on the
right-hand side," he answered. Then he stared curiously after her as
she went on.

Lawyer Tuxbury's small neat sign was fastened upon the door of the L
of a large white house. There was a green yard, and some newly
started flower-beds. In one there was a clump of yellow daffodils.
Two yellow-haired little girls were playing out in the yard. They
both stood still, staring with large, wary blue eyes at Mrs. Field as
she came up the path. She never glanced toward them.

She stood like a black-draped statue before the office door, and
knocked. Nobody answered.

She knocked again louder. Then a voice responded "Come in."  Mrs.
Field turned the knob carefully, and opened the door. It led directly
into the room. There was a dull oil-cloth carpet, some beetling cases
of heavy books, a few old arm-chairs, and one battered leather
easy-chair. A great desk stood against the farther wall, and a man
was seated at it, with his back toward the door. He had white hair,
to which the sunlight coming through the west window gave a red-gold
tinge.

Mrs. Field stood still, just inside the door. Apart from anything
else, the room itself had a certain awe-inspiring quality for her.
She had never before been in a lawyer's office. She was fully
possessed with the rural and feminine ignorance and holy fear of all
legal appurtenances. From all her traditions, this office door should
have displayed a grinning man or woman trap, which she must warily
shun.

She eyed the dusty oil-cloth--the files of black books--the
chairs--the man at the desk, with his gilded white head. He wrote on
steadily, and never stirred for a minute. Then he again sang out,
sharply, "Come in."

He was deaf, and had, along with his insensibility to sounds, that
occasional abnormal perception of them which the deaf seem sometimes
to possess. He often heard sounds when none were recognizable to
other people.

Now, evidently having perceived no result from his first response, he
had heard this second knock, which did not exist except in his own
supposition and the waiting woman's intent. She had, indeed, just at
this point said to herself that she would slip out and knock again if
he did not look around. She had not the courage to speak. It was
almost as if the deaf lawyer, piecing out his defective ears with a
subtler perception, had actually become aware of her intention, which
had thundered upon him like the knock itself.

Mrs. Field made an inarticulate response, and took a grating step
forward. The old man turned suddenly and saw her. She stood back
again; there was a shrinking stiffness about her attitude, but she
looked him full in the face.

"Why, good-day!" he exclaimed. "Good-day, madam. I didn't hear you
come in."

Mrs. Field murmured a good-day in return.

"Take a seat, madam."  The lawyer had risen, and was advancing toward
her. He was a small, sharp-eyed man, whose youthful agility had
crystallized into a nervous pomposity. Suddenly he stopped short; he
had passed a broad slant of dusty sunlight which had lain between him
and his visitor, and he could see her face plainly. His own elongated
for a second, his under jaw lopped, and his brows contracted. Then he
stepped forward. "Why, Mrs. Maxwell!" said he; "how do you do?"

"I'm pretty well, thank you," replied Mrs. Field. She tried to bow,
but her back would not bend.

"I am delighted to see you," said the lawyer. "I recognize you
perfectly now. I should have before, if the sun had not been in my
eyes. I never forget a face."

He took her by the hand, and shook it up and down effusively. Then he
pushed forward the leather easy-chair with gracious insinuation. Mrs.
Field sat down, bolt-upright, on the extreme verge of it.

The lawyer drew a chair to her side, seated himself, leaned forward
until his face fronted hers, and talked. His manner was florid,
almost bombastic. He had a fashion of working his face a good deal
when he talked. He conversed quite rapidly and fluently, but was wont
to interlard his conversation with what seemed majestically
reflective pauses, during which he leaned back in his chair and
tapped the arm slowly. In fact his flow of ideas failed him for a
moment, his mind being so constituted that they came in rapid and
temporary bursts, geyser fashion. He inquired when Mrs. Field
arrived, was kindly circumstantial as to her health, touched
decorously but not too mournfully upon the late Thomas Maxwell's
illness and decease. He alluded to the letter which he had written
her, mentioning as a singular coincidence that at the moment of her
entrance he was engaged in writing another to her, to inquire if the
former had been received.

He spoke in terms of congratulation of the property to which she had
fallen heir, and intimated that further discussion concerning it, as
a matter of business, had better be postponed until morning. Daniel
Tuxbury was very methodical in his care for himself, and was loath to
attend to any business after six o'clock.

Mrs. Field sat like a bolt of iron while the lawyer talked to her.
Unless a direct question demanded it, she never spoke herself. But he
did not seem to notice it; he had enough garnered-in complacency to
delight himself, as a bee with its own honey. He rarely realized it
when another person did not talk.

After one of his pauses, he sprang up with alacrity. "Mrs. Maxwell,
will you be so kind as to excuse me for a moment?" said he, and went
out of the office with a fussy hitch, as if he wore invisible
petticoats. Mrs. Field heard his voice in the yard.

When he returned there was an old lady following in his wake. Mrs.
Field saw her before he did. She came with a whispering of silk, but
his deaf ears did not perceive that. He did not notice her at all
until he had entered the office, then he saw Mrs. Field looking past
him at the door, and turned himself.

He went toward her with a little flourish of words, but the old lady
ignored him entirely. She held up her chin with a kind of ancient
pertness, and eyed Mrs. Field. She was a small, straight-backed
woman, full of nervous vibrations. She stood apparently still, but
her black silk whispered all the time, and loose ends of black ribbon
trembled. The black silk had an air of old gentility about it, but it
was very shiny; there were many bows, but the ribbons were limp,
having been pressed and dyed. Her face, yellow and deeply wrinkled,
but sharply vivacious, was overtopped by a bunch of purple flowers in
a nest of rusty black lace and velvet.

So far Mrs. Field had maintained a certain strained composure, but
now her long, stern face began flushing beneath this old lady's gaze.

"I conclude you know this lady," said the lawyer, with a blandly
facetious air to the new-comer.

At that she stepped forward promptly, with a jerk as if to throw off
her irresolution, and a certain consternation. "Yes, I s'pose I do,"
said she, in a voice like a shrill high chirp. "It's Mis' Maxwell,
ain't it--Edward's wife? How do you do, Esther? I hadn't seen you for
so long, I wasn't quite sure, but I see who you are now. How do you
do?"

"I'm pretty well, thank you," said Mrs. Field, with a struggle,
putting her twisted hand into the other woman's, extended quiveringly
in a rusty black glove.

"When did you come to town, Esther?"

"Jest now."

"Let me see, where from? I can't seem to remember the name of the
place where you've been livin'. I know it, too."

"Green River."

"Oh, yes, Green River. Well, I'm glad to see you, Esther. You ain't
changed much, come to look at you; not so much as I have, I s'pose. I
don't expect you'd know me, would you?"

"I--don't know as I would."  Mrs. Field recoiled from a lie even in
the midst of falsehood.

The old lady's face contracted a little, but she could spring above
her emotions. "Well, I don't s'pose you would, either," responded
she, with fine alacrity. "I've grown old and wrinkled and yellow,
though I ain't gray," with a swift glance at Mrs. Field's smooth
curves of white hair. "You turned gray pretty young, didn't you,
Esther?"

"Yes, I did."

The old lady's front hair hung in dark-brown spirals, a little bunch
of them against either cheek, outside her bonnet. She set them
dancing with a little dip of her head when she spoke again. "I
thought you did," said she. "Well, you're comin' over to my house,
ain't you, Esther? You'll find a good many changes there. My daughter
Flora and I are all that's left now, you know, I s'pose."

Mrs. Field moved her head uncertainly. This old woman, with her
straight demands for truth or falsehood, was torture to her.

"I suppose you'll come right over with me pretty soon," the old lady
went on. "I don't want to hurry you in your business with Mr.
Tuxbury, but I suppose my nephew will be home, and--"

"I'm jest as much obliged to you, but I guess I'd better not. I've
made some other plans," said Mrs. Field.

"Oh, we are going to keep Mrs. Maxwell with us to-night," interposed
the lawyer. He had stood by smilingly while the two women talked.

"I'm jest as much obliged, but I guess I'd better not," repeated Mrs.
Field, looking at both of them.

The old lady straightened herself in her flimsy silk draperies.
"Well, of course, if you've got other plans made, I ain't goin' to
urge you, Esther," said she; "but any time you feel disposed to come,
you'll be welcome. Good-evenin', Esther. Good-evenin', Mr. Tuxbury."
She turned with a rustling bob, and was out the door.

The lawyer pressed forward hurriedly. "Why, Mrs. Maxwell, weren't you
coming in? Isn't there something I can do for you?" said he.

"No, thank you," replied the old lady, shortly. "I've got to go home;
it's my tea-time. I was goin' by, and I thought I'd jest look in a
minute; that was all. It wa'n't anything. Good-evenin'."  She was
half down the walk before she finished speaking. She never looked
around.

The lawyer turned to Mrs. Field. "Mrs. Henry Maxwell was not any too
much please to see you sitting here," he whispered, with a
confidential smile. "She wouldn't say anything; she's as proud as
Lucifer; but she was considerably taken aback."

Mrs. Field nodded. She felt numb. She had not understood who this
other woman was. She knew now--the mother of the young woman who was
the rightful heir to Thomas Maxwell's property.

"The old lady has been pretty anxious," Mr. Tuxbury went on. "She's
been in here a good many times--made excuses to come in and see if I
had any news. She has been twice as much concerned as her daughter
about it. Well, she has had a pretty hard time. That branch of the
family lost a good deal of property."

Mrs. Field rose abruptly. "I guess I'd better be goin'," said she.
"It must be your tea-time. I'll come in again to-morrow."

The lawyer put up his hand deprecatingly. "Mrs. Maxwell, you will, of
course, stay and take tea with us, and remain with us to-night."

"I'm jest as much obliged to you for invitin' me, but I guess I'd
better be goin'."

"My sister is expecting you. You remember my sister, Mrs. Lowe. I've
just sent word to her. You had better come right over to the house
with me now, and to-morrow morning we can attend to business. You
must be fatigued with your journey."

"I'm real sorry if your sister's put herself out, but I guess I'd
better not stay."

The lawyer turned his ear interrogatively. "I beg your pardon, but I
didn't quite understand. You think you can't stay?"

"I'm--much obliged to your sister an' you for invitin' me, but--I
guess--I'd better--not."

"Why--but--Mrs. Maxwell! Just be seated again for a moment, and let
me speak to my sister; perhaps she--"

"I'm jest as much obliged to her, but I feel as if I'd better be
goin'."  Mrs. Field stood before him, mildly unyielding. She seemed
to waver toward his will, but all the time she abided toughly in her
own self like a willow bough. "But, Mrs. Maxwell, what _can_ you do?"
said the lawyer, his manner full of perplexity, and impatience thinly
veiled by courtesy. "The hotel here is not very desirable, and--"

"Can't I go right up to--the house?"

"The Maxwell house?"

"Yes, sir; if there ain't anything to hinder."

Mr. Tuxbury stared at her. "Why, I don't know that there is really
anything to hinder," he said, slowly. "Although it is rather-- No, I
don't know as there is any actual objection to your going. I suppose
the house belongs to you. But it is shut up. I think you would find
it much pleasanter here, Mrs. Maxwell."  His eyebrows were raised,
his mouth pursed up.

"I guess I'd better go, if I can jest as well as not; if I can get
into the house."  Mrs. Field spoke with deprecating persistency.

Mr. Tuxbury turned abruptly toward his desk, and began fumbling in a
drawer. She stood hesitatingly watchful. "If you would jest tell me
where I'd find the key," she ventured to remark. She had a vague idea
that she would be told to look under a parlor blind for the key, that
being the innocent country hiding-place when the house was left
alone.

"I have the key, and I will go to the house with you myself
directly."

"I hate to make you so much trouble. I guess I could find it myself,
if--"

"I will be ready immediately, Mrs. Maxwell," said the lawyer, in a
smoothly conclusive voice which abashed her.

She stood silently by the door until he was ready. He took her black
bag peremptorily, and they went side by side down the street. He held
his head well back, his lips were still tightly pursed, and he swung
his cane with asperity. His important and irascible nature was oddly
disturbed by this awkwardly obstinate old woman stalking at his side
in her black clothes. Feminine opposition, even in slight matters,
was wont to aggravate him, but in no such degree as this. He found it
hard to recover his usual courtesy of manner, and indeed scarcely
spoke a word during the walk. He could not himself understand his
discomposure. But Mrs. Field did not seem to notice. She walked on,
with her stern, impassive old face set straight ahead. Once they met
a young girl who made her think of Lois, her floating draperies
brushed against her black gown, for a second there was a pale,
innocent little face looking up into her own.

It was not a very long walk to the Maxwell house.

"Here we are," said the lawyer, coldly, and unlatched a gate, and
held it open with stiff courtesy for his companion to pass.

They proceeded in silence up the long curve of walk which led to the
front door. The walk was brown and slippery with pine needles. Tall
old pine trees stood in groups about the yard. There were also elm
and horse-chestnut trees. The horse-chestnuts were in blossom,
holding up their white bouquets, which showed dimly. It was now quite
dusky.

Back of the trees the house loomed up. It was white and bulky, with
fluted cornices and corner posts, and a pillared porch to the front
door. Mrs. Field passed between the two outstanding pillars, which
reared themselves whitely over her, like ghostly sentries, and stood
waiting while Mr. Tuxbury fitted the key to the lock.

It took quite a little time; he could not see very well, he had
forgotten his spectacles in his impatient departure. But at last he
jerked open the door, and a strange conglomerate odor, the very
breath of the life of the old Maxwell house, steamed out in their
faces.

All bridal and funeral feasts, all daily food, all garments which had
hung in the closets and rustled through the rooms, every piece of
furniture, every carpet and hanging had a part in it.

The rank and bitter emanations of life, as well as spices and sweet
herbs and delicate perfumes, went to make up the breath which smote
one in the face upon the opening of the door. Still it was not a
disagreeable, but rather a suggestive and poetical odor, which should
affect one like a reminiscent dream. However, the village people
sniffed at it, and said "How musty that old house is!"

That was what Daniel Tuxbury said now. "The house is musty," he
remarked, with stately nose in the air.

Mrs. Field made no response. She stepped inside at once. "I'm much
obliged to you," said she.

The lawyer looked at her, then past her into the dark depths of the
house. "You can't see," said he, "you must let me go in with you and
get a light."  He spoke in a tone of short politeness. He was in his
heart utterly out of patience with this strange, stiff old woman.

"I guess I can find one. I hate to make you so much trouble."

Mr. Tuxbury stepped forward with decision, and began fumbling in his
pocket for a match. "Of course you cannot find one in the dark, Mrs.
Maxwell," said he, with open exasperation.

She said nothing more, but stood meekly in the hall until a light
flared out from a room on the left. The lawyer had found a lamp, he
was himself somewhat familiar with the surroundings, but on the way
to it he stumbled over a chair with an exclamation. It sounded like
an oath to Mrs. Field, but she thought she must be mistaken. She had
never in her life heard many oaths, and when she did had never been
able to believe her ears.

"I hope you didn't hurt you," said she, deprecatingly, stepping
forward.

"I am not hurt, thank you."  But the twinge in the lawyer's ankle was
confirming his resolution to say nothing more to her on the subject
of his regret and unwillingness that she should choose to refuse his
hospitality, and spend such a lonely and uncomfortable night. "I
won't say another word to her about it," he declared to himself. So
he simply made arrangements with her for a meeting at his office the
next morning to attend to the business for which there had been no
time to-night, and took his leave.

"I never saw such a woman," was his conclusion of the story, which he
related to his sister upon his return home. His sister was a widow,
and just then her married daughter and two children were visiting
her.

"I wish you'd let me know she wa'n't comin'," said she. "I cut the
fruit cake an' opened a jar of peach, an' I've put clean sheets on
the front chamber bed. It's made considerable work for nothin'."  She
eyed, as she spoke, the two children, who were happily eating the
peach preserve. She and her brother were both quite well-to-do, but
she had a parsimonious turn.

"I'd like to know what she'll have for supper," she remarked further.

"I didn't ask her," said the lawyer, dryly, taking a sip of his
sauce. He was rather glad of the peach himself.

"I shouldn't think she'd sleep a wink, all alone in that great old
house. I know I shouldn't," observed the children's mother. She was a
fair, fleshy, quite pretty young woman.

"That woman would sleep on a tomb-stone if she set out to," said the
lawyer. His speech, when alone with his own household, was more
forcible and not so well regulated. Indeed, he did not come of a
polished family; he was the only educated one among them. His sister,
Mrs. Low, regarded him with all the deference and respect which her
own decided and self-sufficient character could admit of, and often
sounded his praises in her unrestrained New England dialect.

"She seemed like a real set kind of a woman, then?" said she now.

"Set is no name for it," replied her brother.

"Well, if that's so, I guess old Mr. Maxwell wa'n't so far wrong when
he didn't have her down here before," she remarked, with a judicial
air. Her spectacles glittered, and her harsh, florid face bent
severely over the sugar-bowl and the cups and saucers.

The lamp-light was mellow in the neat, homely dining-room, and there
was a soft aroma of boiling tea all about. The pink and white
children ate their peach sauce in happy silence, with their pretty
eyes upon the prospective cake.

"I suppose there must be some bed made up in all that big house,"
remarked their mother; "but it must be awful lonesome."

Of the awful lonesomeness of it truly, this smiling, comfortable
young soul had no conception. At that moment, while they were
drinking their tea and talking her over, Jane Field sat bolt-upright
in one of the old flag-bottomed chairs in the Maxwell sitting-room.
She had dropped into it when the lawyer closed the door after him,
and she never stirred afterward. She sat there all night.

The oil was low in the lamp which the lawyer had lighted, and left
standing on the table between the windows. She could see distinctly
for a while the stately pieces of old furniture standing in their
places against the walls. Just opposite where she sat was one of
lustreless old mahogany, extending the width of the wall between two
doors, rearing itself upon slender legs, set with multitudinous
drawers, and surmounted by a clock. A piece of furniture for which
she knew no name, an evidence of long-established wealth and
old-fashioned luxury, of which she and her plain folk, with their
secretaries and desks and bureaus, had known nothing. The clock had
stopped at three o'clock. Mrs. Field thought to herself that it might
have been the hour on which old Mr. Maxwell died, reflecting that
souls were more apt to pass away in the wane of the night. She would
have like to wind the clock, and set the hands moving past that
ghostly hour, but she did not dare to stir. She gazed at the large,
dull figures sprawling over the old carpet, at the glimmering satiny
scrolls on the wall-paper. On the mantel-shelf stood a branching gilt
candlestick, filled with colored candles, and strung around with
prisms, which glittered feebly in the low lamp-light. There was a
bulging, sheet-iron wood stove--the Maxwells had always eschewed
coal; beside it lay a little pile of sticks, brought in after the
chill of death had come over the house. There were a few old
engravings--a head of Washington, the Landing of the Pilgrims, the
Webster death-bed scene, and one full-length portrait of the old
statesman, standing majestically, scroll in hand, in a black frame.

As the oil burned low, the indistinct figures upon the carpet and
wall-paper grew more indistinct, the brilliant colors of the prisms
turned white, and the fine black and white lights in the death-bed
picture ran together.

Finally the lamp went out. Mrs. Field had spied matches over on the
shelf, but she did not dare to rise to cross the room to get them and
find another lamp. She did not dare to stir.

After her light went out, there was still a pale glimmer upon the
opposite wall, and the white face of the silent clock showed out
above the cumbersome shadow of the great mahogany piece. The glimmer
came from a neighbor's lamp shining through a gap in the trees. Soon
that also went out, and the old woman sat there in total darkness.

She folded her hands primly, and held up her bonneted head in the
darkness, like some decorous and formal caller who might expect at
any moment to hear the soft, heavy step of the host upon the creaking
stair and his voice in the room. She sat there so all night.

Gradually this steady-headed, unimaginative old woman became
possessed by a legion of morbid fancies, which played like wild fire
over the terrible main fact of the case--the fact that underlay
everything--that she had sinned, that she had gone over from good to
evil, and given up her soul for a handful of gold. Many a time in the
night, voices which her straining fancy threw out, after the manner
of ventriloquism, from her own brain, seemed actually to vibrate
through the house, footsteps pattered, and garments rustled. Often
the phantom noises would swell to a very pandemonium surging upon her
ears; but she sat there rigid and resolute in the midst of it, her
pale old face sharpening out into the darkness. She sat there, and
never stirred until morning broke.

When it was fairly light, she got up, took off her bonnet and shawl,
and found her way into the kitchen. She washed her face and hands at
the sink, and went deliberately to work getting herself some
breakfast. She had a little of her yesterday's lunch left; she
kindled a fire, and made a cup of tea. She found some in a caddy in
the pantry. She set out her meal on the table and drew a chair before
it. She had wound up the kitchen clock, and she listened to its tick
while she ate. She took time, and finished her slight repast to the
last crumb. Then she washed the dishes, and swept and tidied the
kitchen.

When that was done it was still too early for her to go to the
lawyer's office. She sat down at an open kitchen window and folded
her hands. Outside was a broad, green yard, inclosed on two sides by
the Maxwell house and barn. A drive-way led to the barn, and on the
farther side a row of apple-trees stood. There was a fresh wind
blowing, and the apple blossoms were floating about. The drive was
quite white with them in places, and they were half impaled upon the
sharp green blades of grass.

Over through the trees Mrs. Field could see the white top of a market
wagon in a neighboring yard, and the pink dress of a woman who stood
beside it trading. She watched them with a dull wonder. What had she
now to do with market wagons and daily meals and housewifely matters?
That fair-haired woman in the pink dress seemed to her like a woman
of another planet.

This narrow-lived old country woman could not consciously moralize.
She was no philosopher, but she felt, without putting it into
thoughts, as if she had descended far below the surface of all
things, and found out that good and evil were the root and the life
of them, and the outside leaves and froth and flowers were fathoms
away, and no longer to be considered.

At ten o'clock she put on her bonnet and shawl, and set out for the
lawyer's office. She locked the front door, put the key under a
blind, and proceeded down the front walk into the street.

The spring was earlier here than in Green River. She started at a
dancing net-work of leaf shadows on the sidewalk. They were the first
she had seen that season. There was a dewy arch of trees overhead,
and they were quite fully leaved out. Mr. Tuxbury was in his office
when she got there. He rose promptly and greeted her, and pushed
forward the leather easy-chair with his old courtly flourish.

"I suppose that old stick of a woman will be in pretty soon," he had
remarked to his sister at breakfast-time.

"Well, you'll keep on the right side of her, if you know which side
your bread is buttered," she retorted. "You don't want her goin' to
Sam Totten's."

Totten was the other lawyer of Elliot.

"I think I am quite aware of all the exigencies of the case," Daniel
Tuxbury had replied, lapsing into stateliness, as he always did when
his sister waxed too forcible in her advice.

But when Mrs. Field entered his office, every trace of his last
night's impatience had vanished. He inquired genially if she had
passed a comfortable night, and on being assured that she had,
pressed her to drink a cup of coffee which he had requested his
sister to keep warm. This declined, with her countrified courtesy, so
shy that it seemed grim, he proceeded, with no chill upon his
graciousness, to business.

Through the next two hours Mrs. Field sat at the lawyer's desk, and
listened to a minute and wearisome description of her new
possessions. She listened with very little understanding. She did not
feel any interest in it. She never opened her mouth except now and
then for a stiff assent to a question from the lawyer.

A little after twelve o'clock he leaned back in his chair with a
conclusive sigh, and fixed his eyes reflectively upon the ceiling.
"Well, Mrs. Maxwell," said he, "I think that you understand pretty
well now the extent and the limitations of your property."

"Yes, sir," said she.

"It is all straight enough. Maxwell was a good business man; he kept
his affairs in excellent order. Yes, he was a very good business
man."

Suddenly the lawyer straightened himself, and fixed his eyes with
genial interest upon his visitor; business over, he had a mind for a
little personal interview to show his good-will. "Let me see, Mrs.
Maxwell, you had a sister, did you not?" said he.

"Yes, sir."

"Is she living?"

"No, sir."  Mrs. Field said it with a gasping readiness to speak one
truth.

"Let me see, what was her name?" asked the lawyer. "No; wait a
moment; I'll tell you. I've heard it."  He held up a hand as if
warding off an answer from her, his face became furrowed with
reflective wrinkles. "Field!" cried he, suddenly, with a jerk, and
beamed at her. "I thought I could remember it," said he. "Yes, your
sister's name was Field. When did she die, Mrs. Maxwell?"

"Two years ago."

There was a strange little smothered exclamation from some one near
the office door. Mrs. Field turned suddenly, and saw her daughter
Lois standing there.




Chapter IV


There Lois stood. Her small worn shoes hesitated on the threshold.
She was gotten up in her poor little best--her dress of cheap brown
wool stuff, with its skimpy velvet panel, her hat trimmed with a fold
of silk and a little feather. She had curled her hair over her
forehead, and tied on a bit of a lace veil. Distinct among all this
forlorn and innocent furbishing was her face, with its pitiful,
youthful prettiness, turning toward her mother and the lawyer with a
very clutch of vision.

Mrs. Field got up. "Oh, it's you, Lois," she said, calmly. "You
thought you'd come too, didn't you?"

Lois gasped out something.

Her mother turned to the lawyer. "I'll make you acquainted with Miss
Lois Field," said she. "Lois, I'll make you acquainted with Mr.
Tuxbury."

The lawyer was looking surprised, but he rose briskly to the level of
the situation, and greeted the young girl with ready grace. "Your
sister's daughter, I conclude," he said, smilingly, to Mrs. Field.

Mrs. Field set her mouth hard. She looked defiantly at him and said
not one word. There was a fierce resolve in her heart that, come what
would, she would not tell this last lie, and deny her daughter before
her very face.

But the lawyer did not know she was silent. Not having heard any
response, with the vanity of a deaf man, he assumed that she had
given one, and so concealed his uncertainty.

"Yes, so I thought," said he, and went on flourishingly in his track
of gracious reception.

Lois kept her eyes fixed on his like some little timid animal which
suspects an enemy, and watches his eyes for the first impetus of a
spring. Once or twice she said, "Yes, sir," faintly.

"Your niece does not look very strong," Mr. Tuxbury said to Mrs.
Field.

"She ain't been feelin' very well this spring. I've been considerable
worried about her," she answered, with harsh decision.

"Ah, I am very sorry to hear that. Well, she will soon recuperate if
she stays here. Elliot is considered a very healthy place. We shall
soon have her so hearty and rosy that her old friends won't be able
to recognize her."  He bowed with a smiling flourish to Lois.

Her lips trembled with a half-smile in response, but she looked more
frightened than ever.

"Now, Mrs. Maxwell," said the lawyer, "you and your niece must
positively remain and dine with us to-day, can't you?"

"I'm afraid it will put your sister out."

"Oh, no, indeed."  The lawyer, however, had a slightly nonplussed
expression. "She will be delighted. I will run over to the house,
then, and tell her that you will stay, shall I not?"

"I hate to make her extra work," said Mrs. Field. That was her rural
form of acceptance.

"You will not, I assure you. Don't distress yourself about that, Mrs.
Maxwell."

Nevertheless, he was quite ill at ease as he traversed the yard. In
his life with his sister there were exigencies during which he was
obliged to descend from his platform of superiority. He foresaw the
approach of one now.

Dinner was already served when he entered the dining-room, and his
sister was setting the chairs around the table. They kept no servant.

"They are going to stay to dinner, I expect," he remarked, in a
appealingly confidential tone.

His sister faced him with a jerk. She was very red from bending over
the kitchen fire. "Who's goin' to stay? What do you mean, Daniel?"

"Why, Mrs. Maxwell and her niece."

"Her niece? I didn't know she had any niece. How did she get here?"

"She came this noon; followed along after her aunt, I suppose. I
don't think she knew she was coming. She acted kind of surprised, I
thought."

"You don't mean they're comin' in here to dinner?"

"I couldn't very well help asking them, you know."  His tone was soft
and conciliatory, and he kept a nervous eye upon his sister's face.

"Couldn't help askin' 'em! I ruther guess I could 'a' helped askin'
'em!"

"Jane, I hadn't any idea they'd stay."

"Well, you've gone an' done it, that's all I've got to say. Here they
didn't come last night, when I got all ready for 'em, an' now they're
comin', an' everything we've got is a picked-up dinner; there ain't
enough of anything to go round. Flora!"

Her daughter Flora came in from the kitchen, with the children, in
blue gingham aprons, at her heels.

"What is it, mother?" said she.

"Nothin', only your uncle Daniel has asked that Maxwell woman an' her
niece to dinner, an' they're goin' to stay."

"My goodness! there isn't a thing for dinner!" said Flora, with a
half-giggle. She was so young and healthy and happy that she could
still see the joke in an annoyance.

Her uncle looked at her beseechingly. "Can't you manage somehow?"
said he. "I'll go down to the store and buy something."

"Down to the store!" repeated his sister, contemptuously. "It's one
o'clock now."

He looked at the kitchen clock, visible through the open door, and
saw that it indicated half-past twelve, but he said nothing.

Flora was frowning reflectively, while her cheeks dimpled. "I tell
you what I'll do, mother," said she. "I'll go over to Mrs. Bennett's
and borrow a pie. I think we can get along if we have a pie."

"I ain't goin' round the neighborhood borrowin'; that ain't the way
I'm accustomed to doin'."

"Land, mother! I'd just as soon ask Mrs. Bennett as not. She borrowed
that bread in here the other night."

"There ain't enough steak to go round; there's jest that little piece
we had left from yesterday, an' there ain't enough stew," said her
mother, with persistent wrath.

"Well, if folks come in unexpectedly, they'll have to take what we've
got and make the best of it."  Flora tied a hat on over her light
hair as she spoke. "I don't see any other way for them," she added,
laughingly, going out of the door.

"It's all very well for folks to be easy," said her mother, with a
sniff, "but when she's had as much as I've had, I guess she won't
take it any easier than I do. I s'pose now I've got to take all these
things off, an' put on a clean table-cloth."

"That one doesn't look very bad," ventured her brother, timidly.

"No, I shouldn't think it did! Look at that great coffee stain you
got on it this mornin'! Havin' a couple of perfect strangers come in
to dinner makes more work than a man knows anything about. Children,
you take off the knives, an' pile 'em up on the other table. Be real
careful."

"I wonder if the parlor's so I can ask them in there?" Mr. Tuxbury
remarked, edging toward the door.

"I s'pose so. I ain't been in there this mornin'; I s'pose it's all
right unless the children have been in an' cluttered it up."

"No, we ain't, gramma, we ain't," proclaimed the children in a shrill
shout. They danced around the table, removing the knives and forks;
their innocent, pinky faces were full of cherubic glee. This occasion
was, metaphorically speaking, a whole flock of jubilant infantile
larks for them. They loved company with all their souls, and they
also felt always a pleasant titillation of their youthful spirits
when they saw their grandmother in perturbation. Unless, indeed, they
themselves were the cause of it, when it acquired a personal force
which rendered it not so entertaining.

Soon, however, a remark of their grandmother's caused their buoyant
spirits to realize that there was a force of gravitation for all here
below.

"I don't know but you children will have to wait," said she.

There was an instantaneous wail of dismay, the pinky faces elongated,
the blue eyes scowled sulkily. "Oh, gramma, we don't want to wait!
Can't we sit down with the others? Say, gramma, can't we? Can't we
sit down with the others?"

"Of course you can sit down with the others. Don't make such a
racket, children."  That was their mother coming in, good-natured and
triumphant, with the pie.

"I don't know whether they can or not," said their grandmother. "I
ain't put in an extra leaf; this table-cloth wa'n't long enough, an'
I wa'n't goin' to have the big table-cloth to do up for all the
Maxwells in creation."

"Oh, there's room enough," Flora said, easily. "I can squeeze them in
beside me. Put the napkins round, children, and stop teasing. Didn't
I get a beautiful pie?"

"What kind is it?"

"Squash."

"An' our squashes are all gone, an' I've got to buy one to pay her
back. I should have thought you'd known better, Flora."

"It was all the kind she had. I couldn't help it. Squashes don't cost
much, mother."

"They cost something, an' I've got all them dried apples to use up
for pies."

"Have they come in?" asked Flora, with happy unconcern about the cost
of squashes and the utilization of dried apples.

"Yes, I s'pose so. I thought I heard Daniel taking 'em in the front
door. I s'pose they're in the parlor."

"You ought to go in a minute, hadn't you?"

"I s'pose so," replied Mrs. Lowe, with a sigh of fierce resignation.

"I'll finish setting the things on the table, and you go in. Take off
your apron."

"This dress don't look fit."

"Yes, it does, too; it's clean. Run along."

Mrs. Lowe smoothed her sparse hair severely at the kitchen
looking-glass; then she advanced upon the parlor with the air of a
pacific grenadier. The children were following slyly in her wake, but
their mother caught sight of them and pulled them back.

Mr. Tuxbury had been sitting in the parlor with his guests, trying
his best to entertain them. He had gotten out the photograph album
for Lois, and a book of views in the Holy Land for her mother. If he
had felt in considerable haste to escape from his sister's
indignation and return to his visitors, they had been equally anxious
for him to come.

When Mrs. Field and her daughter were left alone in the office, their
first sensation was that of actual terror of each other.

Mrs. Field concealed hers well enough. She sat up without a tremor in
her unbending back, and looked out of the office door, which the
lawyer had left open. Just opposite the door, out on the sidewalk,
two men stood talking. She kept her eyes fastened upon them.

"What time did you start?" said she presently, in a harsh voice,
which seemed to rudely shock the stillness. She did not turn her
eyes.

"I--came--on the first--train," answered Lois, pantingly. Once in a
while she stole furtive, wildly questioning glances at her mother,
but her mother never met them. She continued to look at the talking
men on the sidewalk.

"Mother," began Lois finally, in a desperate voice. But just then Mr.
Tuxbury had reappeared, and conducted them to his parlor.

The parlor had lace curtains and a Brussles carpet, and looked ornate
to Mrs. Field and Lois. The chairs were covered with green plush. The
two women sat timidly on the yielding cushions, and gazed during the
pauses at the large flower pattern on the carpet. All this fine
furniture was, in fact, Mrs. Lowe's; when she had given up her own
home, and come to live with her brother, she had brought it with her.

Both of the guests arose awkwardly, Mrs. Field first and Lois after
her, when Mrs. Lowe entered, and the lawyer introduced them.

"I'm happy to make your acquaintance," said Mrs. Field.

"I believe I've seen you two or three times when you was here years
ago," said Mrs. Lowe, standing before her straight and tall in her
faded calico gown, which fitted her uncompromisingly like a cuirass.
Mrs. Lowe's gowns, no matter how thin and faded, always fitted her in
that way. Stretched over her long flat-chested figure, they seemed to
acquire the consistency of armor. "You ain't changed any as I can
see," she went on, as she got scarcely any response to her first
remark. "I should have known you anywhere. It's a pleasant day, ain't
it?"

"Real pleasant," replied Mrs. Field. Mrs. Lowe sat down in one of the
plush chairs. To seat herself for a few minutes before announcing
dinner was, she supposed, a matter of etiquette. She held up her long
rasped chin with a curt air, and, in spite of herself, her voice also
was curt. She was too thorough a New England woman to play with any
success softening lights over the steel of her character. She
disdained to, and she was also unable to. She was not pleased to
receive these unexpected guests, and she showed it.

As soon as she thought it decently practicable, she gave a
significant look at her brother and arose. "I guess we'll walk out to
dinner now," said she, with solemn embarrassment. Mrs. Lowe had
nothing of her brother's ease of manner; indeed, she entertained a
covert scorn for it. "Daniel _can_ be dreadful smooth an' fine when
he sets out," she sometimes remarked to her daughter. The lawyer's
suave manner seemed to her downrightness to border upon affectation.
She, however, had a certain respect for it as the probable outcome of
his superior education.

She marched ahead stiffly now, and left her brother to his
flourishing seconding of her announcement. Flora and the children
received them beamingly when they entered the dining-room. Flora was
quite sure that she remembered Mrs. Maxwell, she was glad to see her,
and she was glad to see Lois, and they would please sit right "here,"
and "here."  She had taken off the children's pinafores and washed
their faces, and they stood aloof in little starched and embroidered
frocks, with their cheeks pinker than ever.

Flora seated one on each side of her, as she had said. "Now, you must
be good and not tease," she whispered admonishingly, and their blue
eyes stared back at her with innocent gravity, and they folded their
small hands demurely.

Nevertheless, it was through them that the whole dignity of the meal
was lost. If they had not been present, it would have passed off with
a strong undercurrent of uneasiness and discomfort, yet with
composure. Mr. Tuxbury would have helped the guests to beefsteak, and
the rest of the family would have preferred the warmed-up veal stew.
Or had the guests looked approvingly at the stew, the scanty portion
of beefsteak would have satisfied the furthest desires of the family.
But the perfect understanding among the adults did not extend to the
two little girls. They leaned forward, with their red lips parted,
and watched their uncle anxiously as he carved the beefsteak. There
was evidently not much of it, and their anxiety grew. When it was
separated into three portions, two of which were dispensed to the
guests, and the other, having been declined by their grandmother and
mother, was appropriated by their uncle, anxiety lapsed into
certainty.

"I want some beefsteak!" wailed each, in wofully injured tones.

Mr. Tuxbury set his mouth hard, and pushed his plate with a jerk
toward his niece. Her face was very red, but she took it--she was
aware there was no other course open--divided the meat impartially,
and gave each child a piece with a surreptitious thump.

Mr. Tuxbury, with a moodily knitted forehead and a smiling mouth,
asked the guests miserably if they would have some veal stew. It was
perfectly evident that if they accepted, there would be nothing
whatever left for the family to eat. They declined in terrified
haste; indeed, both Lois and her mother had been impelled to pass
their portions of beefsteak over to the children, but they had not
dared.

The children wished for veal stew also, and when they had eaten their
meagre spoonfuls, clamored persistently for more.

"There isn't any more," whispered their mother, with two little
vigorous side-shakes. "If you don't keep still, I shall take you away
from the table. Ain't you ashamed?"

Then the little girls pouted and sniffed, but warily, lest the threat
be carried into effect.

The rest of the family tried to ignore the embarrassing situation and
converse easily with the guests, but it was a difficult undertaking.

Lois bent miserably over her plate, and every question appeared to
shock her painfully. She seemed an obstinately bashful young girl, to
whom it was useless to talk. Mrs. Field replied at length to all
interrogations with a certain quiet hardness, which had come into her
manner since her daughter's arrival, but she never started upon a
subject of her own accord.

It was a relief to every one when the meagre dinner lapsed into the
borrowed pie. Mrs. Low cut it carefully into the regulation six
pieces, while the children as carefully counted the people and
watched the distribution. The result was not satisfactory. The older
little girl, whose sense of injury was well developed, set up a
shrill demand.

"I want a piece of Mis' Bennett's pie," said she. "Mother, I want a
piece of Mis' Bennett's pie!"

The younger, viewing the one piece of pie remaining in the plate and
her clamorous sister, raised her own jealous little pipe. "I want a
piece of Mis' Bennett's pie," she proclaimed, pulling her mother's
sleeve. "Mother, can't I have a piece of Mis' Bennett's pie?"

Flora's face was very red, and her mouth was twitching. She hastily
pushed her own pie to the elder child, and gave the last piece on the
plate to the younger. Their grandmother frowned on them like a rock,
but they ate their pie unconcernedly.

"I think Mis' Bennett's pie is a good deal better than grandma's,"
said the younger little girl, smacking her lips contemplatively; and
Flora gave a half-chuckle, while her mother's severity of mien so
deepened that she seemed to cast an actual shadow.

"Now, Flora, I tell you what 'tis," said she, when the meal was at
last over and the guests were gone--they took their leave very soon
afterward--"if you don't punish them children, I shall."

There was a wail of terror from the little girls. "Oh, mother, you do
it, you do it!" cried they.

Flora giggled audibly.

"You'll just spoil them children," said her mother, severely; "you
ought to be ashamed of yourself, Flora."

Flora tried to draw her face into gravity. "Go right upstairs,
children," said she. "It's so funny, I can't help it," she whispered,
with another furtive giggle.

"I don't see anything very funny in children's actin' the way they
have all dinner-time."

The children thumped merrily over the stairs. It was clear that they
stood in no great fear of their mother's chastisement. They knew by
experience that her hand was very soft, and the force of its fall
tempered by mirth and tender considerateness; their grandmother's
fleshless and muscular old palm was another matter.

Soon after Flora followed them there was a series of arduous cries,
apparently maintained more from a childish sense of the fitness of
things than from any actual stress of pain. They soon ceased.

"She ain't half whipped 'em," Mrs. Lowe, who was listening
downstairs, said to herself.

The lawyer was in his office; he had intrenched himself there as soon
as possible, covering his retreat with the departure of his guests.

Mrs. Field and Lois, removed from it all the distance of tragedy from
comedy, were walking up the street to the Maxwell house. Mrs. Field
stalked ahead with her resolute stiffness; Lois followed after her,
keeping always several paces behind. No matter how often Mrs. Field,
sternly conscious of it, slackened her own pace, Lois never gained
upon her.

When they reached the gate at the entrance of the Maxwell grounds,
and Mrs. Field stopped, Lois spoke up.

"What place is this?" said she, in a defiantly timorous voice.

"The Maxwell house," replied her mother, shortly, turning up the
walk.

"Are you going in here?"

"Of course I am."

"Well, I ain't going in one step."

Mrs. Field turned and faced her. "Lois," said she, "if you want to go
away an' desert the mother that's showin' herself willin' to die for
you, you can."

Lois said not another word. She turned in at the gate, with her eyes
fixed upon her mother's face.

"I'll tell you about it when we get up to the house," said her
mother, with appealing conciliation.

Lois slunk mutely behind her again. Her eyes were full of the impulse
of flight when she watched her mother unlock the house door, but she
followed her in.

Her mother led the way into the sitting-room. "Sit down," said she.

And Lois sat down in the nearest chair. She never took her eyes off
her mother.

Mrs. Field took off her bonnet and shawl. She folded the shawl
carefully in the creases, and laid it on the table. She pulled up a
curtain. Then she turned, and confronted steadily her daughter's
eyes. The whole house to her was full of the clamor of their
questioning. "Now, Lois," said Mrs. Field, "I'm goin' to tell you
about this. I s'pose you think it's funny."

"I don't know what to think of it," said Lois, in a dry voice.

"I don't s'pose you do. Well, I'm goin' to tell you. You know, I
s'pose, that Mr. Tuxbury took me for your aunt Esther. You heard him
call me Mis' Maxwell?"

Lois nodded; her dilated eyes never wavered from her mother's face.

"I s'pose you heard what he was sayin' to me when you come in. Lois,
I didn't tell him I was your aunt Esther. The minute I come in, he
took me for her, an' Mis' Henry Maxwell come into his office, an' she
did, and so did Mr. Tuxbury's sister. I wa'n't goin' to tell them I
wa'n't her."

The impulse of flight in Lois' watchful eyes became so strong that it
seemed almost to communicate to her muscles. With her face still
turned toward her mother, she appeared to be fleeing from her.

Mrs. Field stood her ground stanchly. "No, I wa'n't," she went on.
"An' I'll tell you why. I'm goin' to have that fifteen hundred
dollars of your poor father's earnin's that I lent your uncle out of
this property, an' this is all the way to do it, an' I'm goin' to do
it."

"I thought," gasped Lois--"I thought maybe it belonged to us anyway
if Aunt Esther was dead."

"It didn't. The money was all left to old Mr. Maxwell's niece in case
Esther died first."

"Couldn't you have asked the lawyer about the fifteen hundred
dollars? Wouldn't he have given you some? O mother!"

"I was goin' to if he hadn't took me for her, but it wouldn't have
done any good. They wouldn't have been obliged to pay it, an' folks
ain't fond of payin' over money when they ain't obliged to. I'd been
a fool to have asked him after he took me for her."

"Then--you'd got this--all planned?"

Her mother took her up sharply.

"No, I hadn't got it all planned," said she. "I don't deny it come
into my head. I knew how much folks said I looked like Esther, but I
didn't go so far as to plan it; there needn't anybody say I did."

"You ain't going to take the money?"

"I'm goin' to take that fifteen hundred dollars out of it."

"Mother, you ain't going to stay here, and make folks think you're
Aunt Esther?"

"Yes, I am."

Then all Lois' horror and terror manifested themselves in one cry--"O
mother!"

Mrs. Field never flinched. "If you want to act so an' feel so about
it, you can," said she. "Your mother is some older than you, an' she
knows what is right jest about as well as you can tell her. I've
thought it all over. That fifteen hundred dollars was money your poor
father worked hard to earn. I lent it to your uncle Edward, an' he
lost it. I never see a dollar of it afterward. He never paid me a
cent of interest money. It ain't anything more'n fair that I should
be paid for it out of his father's property. If poor Esther had
lived, the money'd gone to her, an' she'd paid me fast enough. Now
the way's opened for me to get it, I ain't goin' to let it go. Talk
about it's bein' right, if it ain't right to stoop down an' pick up
anybody's just dues, I don't know what right is, for my part."

"Mother!"

"What say?"

"You ain't going to live here in this house, and not go back to Green
River?"

"I don't see any need of goin' back to Green River. This is a 'nough
sight prettier place than Green River. Now you're down here, I don't
see any sense in layin' out money to go back at all. Mandy'll send
our things down."

"You don't mean to stay right along here in this house, and not go
back to Green River at all?"

"I don't see why it ain't jest as well. You'd better take off your
things an' lay down a little while on that sofa there, an' get
rested."

Lois seldom cried, but she burst out now in a piteous wail. "O
mother," sobbed she, "what does it mean? I can't-- What does it mean?
Oh, I'm so frightened! Mother, you frighten me so! What does it
mean?"

Her mother went up to her, and stood close at her side. "Lois," said
she, with trembling solemnity, "can't you trust mother?"

"O mother, I don't know! I don't know! You frighten me dreadfully."
Lois shrank away from her mother as she wept.

Mrs. Field stood over her, but she did not offer to touch her.
Indeed, this New England mother and daughter rarely or never caressed
each other. "Lois, dear child, mother don't want you to feel so. Oh,
you dear child, you dear child, you don't know what mother's goin'
through. But it ain't anything to you. Lois, you remember that; it
ain't anything you've done. It's all my doin's. I'm jest goin' to get
that money back. An' it's right I should. Don't you worry nothin'
about it. Now take your hat off, an' let mother tuck you up on the
sofa."

Lois, sobbing still, began pulling off her hat mechanically. Her
mother got a pillow, and she lay down on the sofa, turning her face
to the wall with another outburst of tears. Her mother spread her
black shawl carefully over her.

"Now you lay here still, an' get rested," said she. "I'm goin' out in
the kitchen, an' see if I can't start up a fire an' get something for
supper."

Mrs. Field went out of the room. Soon her tall black figure sped
stealthily past the windows out of the yard. She found a grocery
store, and purchased some small necessaries. There were groceries
already in the pantry at the Maxwell house. She had spied them, but
would not touch a single article. She bought some tea, and when she
returned, replaced the drawing she had taken that morning from the
Maxwell caddy.

The old woman's will, always vigorous, never giving place to another
except through its own choice, now whipped by this great stress into
a fierce impetus, carried her daughter's, strong as it was for a
young girl, before it. Lois lay quietly on the sofa. When her mother
called her, she went out in the kitchen and ate her supper.

They retired early. Lois lay on the sofa until her mother came in and
stood over her with a lighted lamp.

"I guess you'd better get up and go to bed now, Lois," said she. "I'm
goin' myself, if it is early. I'm pretty tired."

And Lois stirred herself wearily and got up.

There were two adjoining bedrooms opening out of the sitting-room.
Mrs. Field had prepared the beds that afternoon. "I thought we'd
better sleep in here," said she, leading the way to them.

Lois had the inner room. After the lamp was blown out and everything
was dark, her mother heard a soft stir and the pat of a naked foot in
there, then she heard the door swing to with a cautious creak and the
bolt slide. She knew with a great pang, that Lois had locked her door
against her mother.




Chapter V


Elliot was only a little way from the coast, and sometimes seemed to
be pervaded by the very spirit of the sea. The air would be full of
salt vigor, the horizon sky take on the level, out-reaching blue of a
water distance, and the clouds stand one way like white sails.

The next morning Lois sat on the front door-step of the Maxwell
house, between the pillars of the porch. She bent over, leaning her
elbows on her knees, making a cup of her hands, in which she rested
her little face. She could smell the sea, and also the pines in the
yard. There were many old pine trees, and their soft musical roar
sounded high overhead. The spring air in Green River had been full of
sweet moisture and earthiness from these steaming meadow-lands.
Always in Green River, above the almond scent of the flowering trees
and the live breath of the new grass, came that earthy, moist odor,
like a reminder of the grave. Here in Elliot one smelled the spring
above the earth.

The gate clicked, and a woman came up the curving path with a kind of
clumsy dignity. She was tall and narrow-shouldered, but heavy-hipped;
her black skirt flounced as she walked. She stopped in front of Lois,
and looked at her hesi