"Begin now," replied Amelia faintly. Her breath choked her. He stretched out his arms to her in sudden pa.s.sion. His hands touched her sleeves and, with an answering rapidity of motion, she drew back. She shrank within herself, and her face gathered a look of fright. "No! no! no!"
she cried strenuously.
His arms fell at his sides, and he looked at her in amazement.
"What"s the matter?" he demanded.
Amelia had retreated, until she stood now with one hand on the table.
She could not look at him, and when she answered, her voice shook.
"There"s nothin" the matter," she answered. "Only you mustn"t--yet."
A shade of relief pa.s.sed over his face, and he smiled.
"There, there!" he said, "never you mind. I understand. But if I come over the last of the week, I guess it will be different. Won"t it be different, Milly?"
"Yes," she owned, with a little sob in her throat, "it will be different."
Thrown out of his niche of easy friendliness with circ.u.mstance, he stood there in irritated consciousness that here was some subtile barrier which he had not foreseen. Ever since John Porter"s death, there had been strengthening in him a joyous sense that Milly"s life and his own must have been running parallel all this time, and that it needed only a little widening of channels to make them join. His was no cra.s.s certainty of finding her ready to drop into his hand; it was rather a childlike, warm-hearted faith in the permanence of her affection for him, and perhaps, too, a shrewd estimate of his own lingering youth compared with John Porter"s furrowed face and his fifty-five years. But now, with this new whiffling of the wind, he could only stand rebuffed and recognize his own perplexity.
"You do care, don"t you, Milly?" he asked, with a boy"s frank ardor.
"You want me to come again?"
All her own delight in youth and the warm naturalness of life had rushed back upon her.
"Yes," she answered eagerly. "I"ll tell you the truth. I always did tell you the truth. I do want you to come."
"But you don"t want me to-night!" He lifted his brows, pursing his lips whimsically; and Amelia laughed.
"No," said she, with a little defiant movement of her own crisp head, "I don"t know as I do want you to-night!"
Laurie shook himself into his coat. "Well," he said, on his way to the door, "I"ll be round Sat.u.r.day, whether or no. And Milly," he added significantly, his hand on the latch, "you"ve got to like me then!"
Amelia laughed. "I guess there won"t be no trouble!" she called after him daringly.
She stood there in the biting wind, while he uncovered the horse and drove away. Then she went shaking back to her fire; but it was not altogether from cold. The sense of the consistency of love and youth, the fine justice with which nature was paying an old debt, had raised her to a stature above her own. She stood there under the mantel, and held by it while she trembled. For the first time, her husband had gone utterly out of her life. It was as though he had not been.
"Sat.u.r.day!" she said to herself. "Sat.u.r.day! Three days till then!"
Next morning, the spring a.s.serted itself,--there came a whiff of wind from the south and a feeling of thaw. The sled-runners began to cut through to the frozen ground, and about the tree-trunks, where thin crusts of ice were sparkling, came a faint musical sound of trickling drops. The sun was regnant, and little brown birds flew cheerily over the snow and talked of nests.
Amelia finished her housework by nine o"clock, and then sat down in her low rocker by the south window, sewing in thrifty haste. The sun fell hotly through the panes, and when she looked up, the glare met her eyes.
She seemed to be sitting in a golden shower, and she liked it. No sunlight ever made her blink, or screw her face into wrinkles. She throve in it like a rose-tree. At ten o"clock, one of the slow-moving sleds, out that day in premonition of a "spell o" weather," swung laboriously into her yard and ground its way up to the side-door. The sled was empty, save for a rocking-chair where sat an enormous woman enveloped in shawls, her broad face surrounded by a pumpkin hood. Her dark brown front came low over her forehead, and she wore spectacles with wide bows, which gave her an added expression of benevolence. She waved a mittened hand to Amelia when their eyes met, and her heavy face broke up into smiles.
"Here I be!" she called in a thick, gurgling voice, as Amelia hastened out, her ap.r.o.n thrown over her head. "Didn"t expect me, did ye? n.o.body looks for an old rheumatic creatur". She"s more out o" the runnin" "n a last year"s bird"s-nest."
"Why, aunt Ann!" cried Amelia, in unmistakable joy. "I"m tickled to death to see you. Here, Amos, I"ll help get her out."
The driver, a short, thick-set man of neutral, ashy tints and a sprinkling of hair and beard, trudged round the oxen and drew the rocking-chair forward without a word. He never once looked in Amelia"s direction, and she seemed not to expect it; but he had scarcely laid hold of the chair when aunt Ann broke forth:--
"Now, Amos, ain"t you goin" to take no notice of "Melia, no more"n if she wa"n"t here? She ain"t a b.u.mp on a log, nor you a born fool."
Amos at once relinquished his sway over the chair, and stood looking abstractedly at the oxen, who, with their heads low, had already fallen into that species of day-dream whereby they compensate themselves for human tyranny. They were waiting for Amos, and Amos, in obedience to some inward resolve, waited for commotion to cease.
"If ever I was ashamed, I be now!" continued aunt Ann, still with an expression of settled good-nature, and in a voice all jollity though raised conscientiously to a scolding pitch. "To think I should bring such a creatur" into the world, an" set by to see him treat his own relations like the dirt under his feet!"
Amelia laughed. She was exhilarated by the prospect of company, and this domestic whirlpool had amused her from of old.
"Law, aunt Ann," she said, "you let Amos alone. He and I are old cronies. We understand one another. Here, Amos, catch hold! We shall all get our deaths out here, if we don"t do nothin" but stand still and squabble."
The immovable Amos had only been awaiting his cue. He lifted the laden chair with perfect ease to one of the piazza steps, and then to another; when it had reached the topmost level, he dragged it over the sill into the kitchen, and, leaving his mother sitting in colossal triumph by the fire, turned about and took his silent way to the outer world.
"Amos," called aunt Ann, "do you mean to say you"re goin" to walk out o"
this house without speakin" a civil word to anybody? Do you mean to say that?"
"I don"t mean to say nothin"," confided Amos to his worsted m.u.f.fler, as he took up his goad, and began backing the oxen round.
Undisturbed and not at all daunted by a reply for which she had not even listened, aunt Ann raised her voice in cheerful response: "Well, you be along "tween three an" four, an" you"ll find me ready."
"Mercy, aunt Ann!" said Amelia, beginning to unwind the visitor"s wraps, "what makes you keep houndin" Amos that way? If he hasn"t spoke for thirty-five years, it ain"t likely he"s goin" to begin now."
Aunt Ann was looking about her with an expression of beaming delight in unfamiliar surroundings. She laughed a rich, unctuous laugh, and stretched her hands to the blaze.
"Law," she said contentedly, "of course it ain"t goin" to do no good.
Who ever thought "t would? But I"ve been at that boy all these years to make him like other folks, an" I ain"t goin" to stop now. He never shall say his own mother didn"t know her duty towards him. Well, "Melia, you _air_ kind o" snug here, arter all! Here, you hand me my bag, an" I"ll knit a st.i.tch. I ain"t a mite cold."
Amelia was bustling about the fire, her mind full of the possibilities of a company dinner.
"How"s your limbs?" she asked, while aunt Ann drew out a long stocking, and began to knit with an amazing rapidity of which her fat fingers gave no promise.
"Well, I ain"t allowed to forgit "em very often," she replied comfortably. "Rheumatiz is my cross, an" I"ve got to bear it. Sometimes I wish "t had gone into my hands ruther "n my feet, an" I could ha" got round. But there! if "t ain"t one thing, it"s another. Mis" Eben Smith"s got eight young ones down with the whoopin"-cough. Amos dragged me over there yisterday; an" when I heerd "em tryin" to see which could bark the loudest, I says, "Give me the peace o" Jerusalem in my own house, even if I don"t stir a step for the next five year no more"n I have for the last." I dunno what "t would be if I hadn"t a darter. I"ve been greatly blessed."
The talk went on in pleasant ripples, while Amelia moved back and forth from pantry to table. She brought out the mixing-board, and began to put her bread in the pans, while the tin kitchen stood in readiness by the hearth. The sunshine flooded all the room, and lay insolently on the paling fire; the Maltese cat sat in the broadest shaft of all, and, having lunched from her full saucer in the corner, made her second toilet for the day.
""Melia," said aunt Ann suddenly, looking down over her gla.s.ses at the tin kitchen, "ain"t it a real cross to bake in that thing?"
"I always had it in mind to buy me a range," answered Amelia reservedly, "but somehow we never got to it."
"That"s the only thing I ever had ag"inst John. He was as grand a man as ever was, but he did set everything by such truck. Don"t turn out the old things, I say, no more"n the old folks; but when it comes to makin"
a woman stan" quiddlin" round doin" work back side foremost, that beats me."
"He"d have got me a stove in a minute," burst forth Amelia in haste, "only he never knew I wanted it!"
"More fool you not to ha" said so!" commented aunt Ann, unwinding her ball. "Well, I s"pose he would. John wa"n"t like the common run o" men.
Great strong creatur" he was, but there was suthin" about him as soft as a woman. His mother used to say his eyes "d fill full o" tears when he broke up a settin" hen. He was a good husband to you,--a good provider an" a good friend."
Amelia was putting down her bread for its last rising, and her face flushed.
"Yes," she said gently, "he _was_ good."