"The fact is," said he, "they"re all terrible set ag"inst it. They say you"re gittin" along in years. So you be. So are we all. But they will have it, it ain"t right for you to live on here alone. Mary says she should be scairt to death. She wants you should come an" make it your home with us."
"Yes, I dunno but Mary would be scairt," said Lucy Ann placidly. "But I ain"t. She"s real good to ask me; but I can"t do it, no more"n she could leave you an" the children an" come over here to stay with me. Why, John, this is my home!"
Her voice sank upon a note of pa.s.sion. It trembled with memories of dewy mornings and golden eves. She had not grown here, through all her youth and middle life, like moss upon a rock, without fitting into the hollows and softening the angles of her poor habitation. She had drunk the sunlight and the rains of one small spot, and she knew how both would fall. The place, its sky and clouds and breezes, belonged to her: but she belonged to it as well.
John stood between two wills, his own and that of those who had sent him. Left to himself, he would not have hara.s.sed her. To him, also, wedded to a hearth where he found warmth and peace, it would have been sweet to live there always, though alone, and die by the light of its dying fire. But Mary thought otherwise, and in matters of worldly judgment he could only yield.
"I don"t want you should make a mistake," said he. "Mebbe you an" I don"t look for"ard enough. They say you"ll repent it if you stay, an"
there"ll be a hurrah-boys all round. What say to makin" us a visit?
That"ll kind o" stave it off, an" then we can see what"s best to be done."
Lucy Ann put her hands to her delicate throat, where her mother"s gold beads lay lightly, with a significant touch. She, like John, had an innate gentleness of disposition. She distrusted her own power to judge.
"Maybe I might," said she faintly. "Oh, John, do you think I"ve got to?"
"It needn"t be for long," answered John briefly, though he felt his eyes moist with pity of her. "Mebbe you could stay a month?"
"Oh, I couldn"t do that!" cried Lucy Ann, in wild denial. "I never could in the world. If you"ll make it a fortnight, an" harness up yourself, an" bring me home, mebbe I might."
John gave his word, but when he took his leave of her, she leaned forward into the dark, where the impatient horse was fretting, and made her last condition.
"You"ll let me turn the key on things here jest as they be? You won"t ask me to break up nuthin"?"
"Break up!" repeated John, with the intensity of an oath. "I guess you needn"t. If anybody puts that on you, you send "em to me."
So Lucy Ann packed her mother"s dresses into a little hair trunk that had stood in the attic unused for many years, and went away to make her visit. When she drove up to the house, sitting erect and slender in her mother"s cashmere shawl and black bonnet, Mary, watching from the window, gave a little cry, as at the risen dead. John had told her about Lucy Ann"s transformation, but she put it all aside as a crazy notion, not likely to last: now it seemed less a pathetic masquerade than a strange bypath taken by nature itself.
The children regarded it with awe, and half the time called Lucy Ann "grandma." That delighted her. Whenever they did it, she looked up to say, with her happiest smile,--
"There! that"s complete. You"ll remember grandma, won"t you? We mustn"t ever forget her."
Here, in this warm-hearted household, anxious to do her service in a way that was not her own, she had some happiness, of a tremulous kind; but it was all built up of her trust in a speedy escape. She knit mittens, and sewed long seams; and every day her desire to fill the time was irradiated by the certainty that twelve hours more were gone. A few more patient intervals, and she should be at home. Sometimes, as the end of her visit drew nearer, she woke early in the morning with a sensation of irresponsible joy, and wondered, for an instant, what had happened to her. Then it always came back, with an inward flooding she had scarcely felt even in her placid youth. At home there would be so many things to do, and, above all, such munificent leisure! For there she would feel no need of feverish action to pa.s.s the time. The hours would take care of themselves; they would fleet by, while she sat, her hands folded, communing with old memories.
The day came, and the end of her probation. She trembled a good deal, packing her trunk in secret, to escape Mary"s remonstrances; but John stood by her, and she was allowed to go.
"You"ll get sick of it," called Mary after them. "I guess you"ll be glad enough to see the children again, an" they will you. Mind, you"ve got to come back an" spend the winter."
Lucy Ann nodded happily. She could agree to anything sufficiently remote; and the winter was not yet here.
The first day in the old house seemed to her like new birth in Paradise.
She wandered about, touching chairs and tables and curtains, the manifest symbols of an undying past. There were loving duties to be done, but she could not do them yet. She had to look her pleasure in the face, and learn its lineaments.
Next morning came brother Ezra, and Lucy Ann hurried to meet him with an exaggerated welcome. Life was never very friendly to Ezra, and those who belonged to him had to be doubly kind. They could not change his luck, but they might sweeten it. They said the world had not gone well with him; though sometimes it was hinted that Ezra, being out of gear, could not go with the world. All the rivers ran away from him, and went to turn some other mill. He was ungrudging of John"s prosperity, but still he looked at it in some disparagement, and shook his head. His cheeks were channeled long before youth was over; his feet were weary with honest serving, and his hands grown hard with toil. Yet he had not arrived, and John was at the goal before him.
"We heard you"d been stayin" with John"s folks," said he to Lucy Ann.
"Leastways, Abby did, an" she thinks mebbe you"ve got a little time for us now, though we ain"t nothin" to offer compared to what you"re used to over there."
"I"ll come," said Lucy Ann promptly. "Yes, I"ll come, an" be glad to."
It was part of her allegiance to the one who had gone.
"Ezra needs bracin"," she heard her mother say, in many a sick-room gossip. "He"s got to be flattered up, an" have some grit put into him."
It was many weeks before Lucy Ann came home again. Cousin Rebecca, in Saltash, sent her a cordial letter of invitation for just as long as she felt like staying; and the moneyed cousin at the Ridge wrote in like manner, following her note by a telegram, intimating that she would not take no for an answer. Lucy Ann frowned in alarm when the first letter came, and studied it by daylight and in her musings at night, as if some comfort might lurk between the lines. She was tempted to throw it in the fire, not answered at all. Still, there was a reason for going. This cousin had a broken hip, she needed company, and the flavor of old times. The other had married a "drinkin" man," and might feel hurt at being refused. So, fortifying herself with some inner resolution she never confessed, Lucy Ann set her teeth and started out on a visiting campaign. John was amazed. He drove over to see her while she was spending a few days with an aunt in Sudleigh.
"When you been home last, Lucy Ann?" asked he.
A little flush came into her face, and she winked bravely.
"I ain"t been home at all," said she, in a low tone. "Not sence August."
John groped vainly in mental depths for other experiences likely to illuminate this. He concluded that he had not quite understood Lucy Ann and her feeling about home; but that was neither here nor there.
"Well," he remarked, rising to go, "you"re gittin" to be quite a visitor."
"I"m tryin" to learn how," said Lucy Ann, almost gayly. "I"ve been a-cousinin" so long, I sha"n"t know how to do anything else."
But now the middle of November had come, and she was again in her own house. Cousin t.i.tcomb had brought her there and driven away, concerned that he must leave her in a cold kitchen, and only deterred by a looming horse-trade from staying to build a fire. Lucy Ann bade him good-by, with a grat.i.tude which was not for her visit, but all for getting home; and when he uttered that terrifying valedictory known as "coming again,"
she could meet it cheerfully. She even stood in the door, watching him away; and not until the rattle of his wheels had ceased on the frozen road, did she return to her kitchen and stretch her shawled arms pathetically upward.
"I thank my heavenly Father!" said Lucy Ann, with the fervency of a great experience.
She built her fire, and then unpacked her little trunk, and hung up the things in the bedroom where her mother"s presence seemed still to cling.
"I"ll sleep here now," she said to herself. "I won"t go out of this no more."
Then all the little homely duties of the hour cried out upon her, like children long neglected; and, with the luxurious leisure of those who may prolong a pleasant task, she set her house in order. She laid out a programme to occupy her days. The attic should be cleaned to-morrow. In one day? Nay, why not three, to hold Time still, and make him wait her pleasure? Then there were the chambers, and the living-rooms below. She felt all the excited joy of youth; she was tasting antic.i.p.ation at its best.
"It"ll take me a week," said she. "That will be grand." She could hardly wait even for the morrow"s sun; and that night she slept like those of whom much is to be required, and who must wake in season. Morning came, and mid-forenoon, and while she stepped about under the roof where dust had gathered and bitter herbs told tales of summers past, John drove into the yard. Lucy Ann threw up the attic window and leaned out.
"You put your horse up, an" I"ll be through here in a second," she called. "The barn"s open."
John was in a hurry.
"I"ve got to go over to Sudleigh, to meet the twelve o"clock," said he.
"Harold"s comin". I only wanted to say I"ll be over after you the night before Thanksgivin". Mary wants you should be sure to be there to breakfast. You all right? Cephas said you seemed to have a proper good time with them."
John turned skillfully on the little green and drove away. Lucy Ann stayed at the window watching him, the breeze lifting her gray curls, and the sun smiling at her. She withdrew slowly into the attic, and sank down upon the floor, close by the window. She sat there and thought, and the wind still struck upon her unheeded. Was she always to be subject to the tyranny of those who had set up their hearth-stones in a more enduring form? Was her home not a home merely because there were no men and children in it? She drew her breath sharply, and confronted certain problems of the greater world, not knowing what they were. To Lucy Ann they did not seem problems at all. They were simply touches on the individual nerve, and she felt the pain. Her own inner self throbbed in revolt, but she never guessed that any other part of nature was throbbing with it. Then she went about her work, with the patience of habit. It was well that the attic should be cleaned, though the savor of the task was gone.
Next day, she walked to Sudleigh, with a basket on her arm. Often she sent her little errands by the neighbors; but to-day she was uneasy, and it seemed as if the walk might do her good. She wanted some soda and some needles and thread. She tried to think they were very important, though some sense of humor told her grimly that household goods are of slight use to one who goes a-cousining. Her day at John"s would be prolonged to seven; nay, why not a month, when the winter itself was not too great a tax for them to lay upon her? In her deserted house, soda would lose its strength, and even cloves decay. Lucy Ann felt her will growing very weak within her; indeed, at that time, she was hardly conscious of having any will at all.
It was Sat.u.r.day, and John and Ezra were almost sure to be in town. She thought of that, and how pleasant it would be to hear from the folks: so much pleasanter than to be always facing them on their own ground, and never on hers. At the grocery she came upon Ezra, mounted on a wagon-load of meal-bags, and just gathering up the reins.
"Hullo!" he called. "You didn"t walk?"
"Oh, I jest clipped it over," returned Lucy Ann carelessly. "I"m goin"
to git a ride home. I see Marden"s wagon when I come by the post-office."