Chapter 12

Nancy Wetherby never rocked her grandson again, but for days she haunted the nursery, happy if she could but tie the baby's moccasins or hold his brush or powder-puff; yet a week had scarcely passed when John's wife said to her:

"Mother, dear, I wouldn't tire myself so trotting upstairs each day to the nursery. There isn't a bit of need--Mary and Betty can manage quite well. You fatigue yourself too much!" And to the old lady's denials John's wife returned, with a tinge of sharpness: "But, really, mother, I'd rather you didn't. It frets the nurses and--forgive me--but you know you _will_ forget and talk to him in 'baby-talk'!"

The days came and the days went, and Nancy Wetherby stayed more and more closely to her rooms. She begged one day for the mending-basket, but her daughter-in-law laughed and kissed her.

"Tut, tut, mother, dear!" she remonstrated. "As if I'd have you wearing your eyes and fingers out mending a paltry pair of socks!"

"Then I--I'll knit new ones!" cried the old lady, with sudden inspiration.

"Knit new ones--stockings!" laughed Margaret Wetherby. "Why, dearie, they never in this world would wear them--and if they would, I couldn't let you do it," she added gently, as she noted the swift clouding of the eager face. "Such tiresome work!"

Again the old eyes filled with tears; and yet--John's wife was kind, so very kind!

It was a cheerless, gray December morning that John Wetherby came into his mother's room and found a sob-shaken little figure in the depths of the sumptuous, satin-damask chair. "Mother, mother,--why, mother!" There were amazement and real distress in John Wetherby's voice.

"There, there, John, I--I didn't mean to--truly I didn't!" quavered the little old lady.

John dropped on one knee and caught the fluttering fingers. "Mother, what is it?"

"It--it isn't anything; truly it isn't," urged the tremulous voice.

"Is any one unkind to you?" John's eyes grew stern. "The boys, or--Margaret?"

The indignant red mounted to the faded cheek. "John! How can you ask? Every one is kind, kind, so very kind to me!"

"Well, then, what is it?"

There was only a sob in reply. "Come, come," he coaxed gently.

For a moment Nancy Wetherby's breath was held suspended, then it came in a burst with a rush of words.

"Oh, John, John, I'm so useless, so useless, so dreadfully useless! Don't you see? Not a thing, not a person needs me. The kitchen has the cook and the maids. The baby has two or three nurses. Not even this room needs me--there's a girl to dust it each day. Once I slipped out of bed and did it first--I did, John; but she came in, and when I told her, she just curtsied and smiled and kept right on, and--she didn't even skip _one chair_! John, dear John, sometimes it seems as though even my own self doesn't need me. I--I don't even put on my clothes alone; there's always some one to help me!"

"There, there, dear," soothed the man huskily. "I need you, indeed I do, mother." And he pressed his lips to one, then the other, of the wrinkled, soft-skinned hands.

"You don't--you don't!" choked the woman. "There's not one thing I can do for you! Why, John, only think, I sit with idle hands all day, and there was so much once for them to do. There was Eben, and the children, and the house, and the missionary meetings, and--"

On and on went the sweet old voice, but the man scarcely heard. Only one phrase rang over and over in his ears, "There's not one thing I can do for you!" All the interests of now--stocks, bonds, railroads--fell from his mind and left it blank save for the past. He was a boy again at his mother's knee. And what had she done for him then? Surely among all the myriad things there must be one that he might single out and ask her to do for him now! And yet, as he thought, his heart misgave him.

There were pies baked, clothes made, bumped foreheads bathed, lost pencils found; there were--a sudden vision came to him of something warm and red and very soft--something over which his boyish heart had exulted. The next moment his face lighted with joy very like that of the years long ago.

"Mother!" he cried. "I know what you can do for me. I want a pair of wristers--red ones, just like those you used to knit!"

* * * * *

It must have been a month later that John Wetherby, with his two elder sons, turned the first corner that carried him out of sight of his house. Very slowly, and with gentle fingers, he pulled off two bright red wristers. He folded them, patted them, then tucked them away in an inner pocket.

"Bless her dear heart!" he said softly. "You should have seen her eyes shine when I put them on this morning!"

"I can imagine it," said one of his sons in a curiously tender voice. The other one smiled, and said whimsically, "I can hardly wait for mine!" Yet even as he spoke his eyes grew dim with a sudden moisture.

Back at the house John's mother was saying to John's wife: "Did you see them on him, Margaret?--John's wristers? They did look so bright and pretty! And I'm to make more, too; did you know? Frank and Edward want some; John said so. He told them about his, and they wanted some right away. Only think, Margaret," she finished, lifting with both hands the ball of red worsted and pressing it close to her cheek, "I've got two whole pairs to make now!"

The Giving Thanks of Cyrus and Huldah

For two months Cyrus Gregg and his wife Huldah had not spoken to each other, yet all the while they had lived under the same roof, driven to church side by side, and attended various festivities and church prayer-meetings together.

The cause of the quarrel had been an insignificant something that speedily lost itself in the torrent of angry words that burst from the lips of the irate husband and wife, until by night it would have been difficult for either the man or the woman to tell exactly what had been the first point of difference. By that time, however, the quarrel had assumed such proportions that it loomed in their lives larger than anything else; and each had vowed never to speak to the other until that other had made the advance.

On both sides they came of a stubborn race, and from the first it was a battle royally fought. The night of the quarrel Cyrus betook himself in solitary state to the "spare-room" over the parlor. After that he slept on a makeshift bed that he had prepared for himself in the shed-chamber, hitherto sacred to trunks, dried corn, and cobwebs.

For a month the two sat opposite to each other and partook of Huldah's excellent cooking; then one day the woman found at her plate a piece--of brown paper on which had been scrawled:

If I ain't worth speakin' to I ain't worth cookin' for. Hereafter I'll take care of myself.

A day later came the retort. Cyrus found it tucked under the shed-chamber door.

Huldah's note showed her "schooling." It was well written, carefully spelled, and enclosed in a square white envelope.

_Sir_ [it ran stiffly]: I shall be obliged if you do not chop any more wood for me. Hereafter I shall use the oil stove. HULDAH PENDLETON GREGG.

Cyrus choked, and peered at the name with suddenly blurred eyes: the "Huldah Pendleton" was fiercely black and distinct; the "Gregg" was so faint it could scarcely be discerned.

"Why, it's 'most like a d'vorce!" he shivered.

If it had not been so pitiful, it would have been ludicrous--what followed. Day after day, in one corner of the kitchen, an old man boiled his potatoes and fried his unappetizing eggs over a dusty, unblacked stove; in the other corner an old woman baked and brewed over a shining idol of brass and black enamel--and always the baking and brewing carried to the nostrils of the hungry man across the room the aroma of some dainty that was a particular favorite of his own.

The man whistled, and the woman hummed--at times; but they did not talk, except when some neighbor came in; and then they both talked very loud and very fast--to the neighbor. On this one point were Cyrus Gregg and his wife Huldah agreed; under no circumstances whatever must any gossiping outsider know.

One by one the weeks had passed. It was November now, and very cold. Outdoors a dull gray sky and a dull brown earth combined into a dismal hopelessness. Indoors the dull monotony of a two-months-old quarrel and a growing heartache made a combination that carried even less of cheer.

Huldah never hummed now, and Cyrus seldom whistled; yet neither was one whit nearer speaking. Each saw this, and, curiously enough, was pleased. In fact, it was just here that, in spite of the heartache, each found an odd satisfaction.

"By sugar--but she's a spunky one!" Cyrus would chuckle admiringly, as he discovered some new evidence of his wife's shrewdness in obtaining what she wanted with yet no spoken word.

"There isn't another man in town who could do it--and stick to it!" exulted Huldah proudly, her eyes on her husband's form, bent over his egg-frying at the other side of the room.

Not only the cause of the quarrel, but almost the quarrel itself, had now long since been forgotten; in fact, to both Cyrus and his wife it had come to be a sort of game in which each player watched the other's progress with fully as much interest as he did his own. And yet, with it all there was the heartache; for the question came to them at times with sickening force--just when and how could it possibly end?

It was at about this time that each began to worry about the other. Huldah shuddered at the changeless fried eggs and boiled potatoes; and Cyrus ordered a heavy storm window for the room where Huldah slept alone. Huldah slyly left a new apple pie almost under her husband's nose one day, and Cyrus slipped a five-dollar bill beneath his wife's napkin ring. When both pie and greenback remained untouched, Huldah cried, and Cyrus said, "Gosh darn it!" three times in succession behind the woodshed door.

A week before Thanksgiving a letter came from the married daughter, and another from the married son. They were good letters, kind and loving; and each closed with a suggestion that all go home at Thanksgiving for a family reunion.

Huldah read the letters eagerly, but at their close she frowned and looked anxious. In a moment she had passed them to Cyrus with a toss of her head. Five minutes later Cyrus had flung them back with these words trailing across one of the envelopes:

Write um. Tell um we are sick--dead--gone away--anything! Only don't let um come. A if _we_ wanted to Thanksgive!

Huldah answered the letters that night. She, too, wrote kindly and lovingly; but at the end she said that much as she and father would like to see them, it did not seem wise to undertake to entertain such a family gathering just now. It would be better to postpone it.

Both Huldah and Cyrus hoped that this would end the subject of Thanksgiving; but it did not. The very next day Cyrus encountered neighbor Wiley in the village store. Wiley's round red face shone like the full moon.

"Well, well, Cy, what ye doin' down your way Thanksgivin'--eh?" he queried.

Cyrus stiffened; but before he could answer he discovered that Wiley had asked the question, not for information, but as a mere introduction to a recital of his own plans.

"We're doin' great things," announced the man. "Sam an' Jennie an' the hull kit on 'em's comin' home an' bring all the chicks. Tell ye what, Cy, we _be_ a-Thanksgivin' this year! Ain't nothin' like a good old fam'ly reunion, when ye come right down to it."

"Yes, I know," said Cyrus gloomily. "But we--we ain't doin' much this year."

A day later came Huldah's turn. She had taken some calf's-foot jelly to Mrs. Taylor in the little house at the foot of the hill. The Widow Taylor was crying.

"You see, it's Thanksgiving!" she sobbed, in answer to Huldah's dismayed questions.

"Thanksgiving!"

"Yes. And last year I had--_him_!"

Huldah sighed, and murmured something comforting, appropriate; but almost at once she stopped, for the woman had turned searching eyes upon her.

"Huldah Gregg, do you appreciate Cyrus?"

Huldah bridled angrily, but there was no time for a reply, for the woman answered her own question, and hurried on wildly.

"No. Did I appreciate my husband? No. Does Sally Clark appreciate her husband? No. And there don't none of us do it till he's gone--gone--gone!"

As soon as possible Huldah went home. She was not a little disconcerted. The "gone--gone--gone" rang unpleasantly in her ears, and before her eyes rose a hateful vision of unappetizing fried eggs and boiled potatoes. As to her not appreciating Cyrus--that was all nonsense; she had always appreciated him, and that, too, far beyond his just deserts, she told herself angrily.

There was no escaping Thanksgiving after that for either Huldah or Cyrus. It looked from every eager eye, and dropped from every joyous lip, until, of all the world Huldah and Cyrus came to regard themselves as the most forlorn, and the most abused.

It was then that to Huldah came her great idea; she would cook for Cyrus the best Thanksgiving dinner he had ever eaten. Just because he was obstinate was no reason why he should starve, she told herself; and very gayly she set about carrying out her plans. First the oil stove, with the help of a jobman, was removed to the unfinished room over the kitchen, for the chief charm of the dinner was to be its secret preparation. Then, with the treasured butter-and-egg money the turkey, cranberries, nuts, and raisins were bought and smuggled into the house and upstairs to the chamber of mystery.

Two days before Thanksgiving Cyrus came home to find a silent and almost empty kitchen. His heart skipped a beat and his jaw fell open in frightened amazement; then a step on the floor above sent the blood back to his face and a new bitterness to his heart.

"So I ain't even good enough ter stay with!" he muttered. "Fool!--fool!" he snarled, glaring at the oblong brown paper in his arms. "As if she'd care for this--now!" he finished, flinging the parcel into the farthest corner of the room.

Unhappy Cyrus! To him, also, had come a great idea. Thanksgiving was not Christmas, to be sure, but if he chose to give presents on that day, surely it was no one's business but his own, he argued. In the brown paper parcel at that moment lay the soft, shimmering folds of yards upon yards of black silk--and Huldah had been longing for a new black silk gown. Yet it was almost dark when Cyrus stumbled over to the corner, picked up the parcel, and carried it ruefully away to the shed-chamber.

Thanksgiving dawned clear and unusually warm. The sun shone, and the air felt like spring. The sparrows twittered in the treetops as if the branches were green with leaves.

To Cyrus, however, it was a world of gloom. Upstairs Huldah was singing--singing!--and it was Thanksgiving. He could hear her feet patter, patter on the floor above, and the sound had a cheery self-reliance that was maddening. Huldah was happy, evidently--and it was Thanksgiving! Twice he had walked resolutely to the back stairs with a brown-paper parcel in his arms; and twice a quavering song of triumph from the room above had sent him back in defeat. As if she could care for a present of his!

Suddenly, now, Cyrus sprang forward in his chair, sniffing the air hungrily. Turkey! Huldah was roasting turkey, while he--

The old man dropped back in his seat and turned his eyes disconsolately on the ill-kept stove--fried eggs and boiled potatoes are not the most toothsome prospect for a Thanksgiving dinner, particularly when one has the smell of a New England housewife's turkey in one's nostrils.

For a time Cyrus sat motionless; then he rose to his feet, shuffled out of the house, and across the road to the barn.

In the room above the kitchen, at that moment, something happened. Perhaps the old hands slipped in their eagerness, or perhaps the old eyes judged a distance wrongly. Whatever it was, there came a puff of smoke, a sputter, and a flare of light; then red-yellow flames leaped to the flimsy shade at the window, and swept on to the century-seasoned timbers above.

With a choking cry, Huldah turned and stumbled across the room to the stairway. Out at the barn door Cyrus, too, saw the flare of light at the window, and he, too, turned with a choking cry.

They met at the foot of the stairway.

"Huldah!"

"Cyrus!"

It was as if one voice had spoken, so exactly were the words simultaneous. Then Cyrus cried:

"You ain't hurt?"

"No, no! Quick--the things--we must get them out!"

Obediently Cyrus turned and began to work; and the first thing that his arms tenderly bore to safety was an oblong brown-paper parcel.

From all directions then came the neighbors running. The farming settlement was miles from a town or a fire-engine. The house was small, and stood quite by itself; and there was little, after all, that could be done, except to save the household goods and gods. This was soon accomplished, and there was nothing to do but to watch the old house burn.

Cyrus and Huldah sat hand in hand on an old stone wall, quite apart from their sympathetic neighbors, and--talked. And about them was a curious air of elation, a buoyancy as if long-pent forces had suddenly found a joyous escape.

"'T ain't as if our things wan't all out," cried Cyrus; his voice was actually exultant.

"Or as if we hadn't wanted to build a new one for years," chirruped his wife.

"Now you can have that 'ere closet under the front stairs, Huldah!"

"And you can have the room for your tools where it'll be warm in the winter!"

"An' there'll be the bow-winder out of the settin' room, Huldah!"

"Yes, and a real bathroom, with water coming right out of the wall, same as the Wileys have!"

"An' a tub, Huldah--one o' them pretty white chiny ones!"

"Oh, Cyrus, ain't it almost too good to be true!" sighed Huldah: then her face changed. "Why, Cyrus, it's gone," she cried with sudden sharpness.

"What's gone?"

"Your dinner--I was cooking such a beautiful turkey and all the fixings for you."

A dull red came into the man's face.

"For--me?" stammered Cyrus.

"Y-yes," faltered Huldah; then her chin came up defiantly.

The man laughed; and there was a boyish ring to his voice.

"Well, Huldah, I didn't have any turkey, but I did have a tidy little piece o' black silk for yer gown, an' I saved it, too. Mebbe we could eat that!--eh?"

It was not until just as they were falling asleep that night in Deacon Clark's spare bedroom that Mr. and Mrs. Gregg so much as hinted that there ever had been a quarrel.

Then, under cover of the dark, Cyrus stammered:

"Huldah, did ye sense it? Them 'ere words we said at the foot of the stairs was spoke--exactly--_together_!"

"Yes, I know, dear," murmured Huldah, with a little break in her voice. Then:

"Cyrus, ain't it wonderful--this Thanksgiving, for us?"

Downstairs the Clarks were talking of poor old Mr. and Mrs. Gregg and their "sad loss;" but the Clarks did not--know.

A New England Idol

The Hapgood twins were born in the great square house that set back from the road just on the outskirts of Fairtown. Their baby eyes had opened upon a world of faded portraits and somber haircloth furniture, and their baby hands had eagerly clutched at crystal pendants on brass candlesticks gleaming out of the sacred darkness that enveloped the parlor mantel.

When older grown they had played dolls in the wonderful attic, and made mud pies in the wilderness of a back yard. The garden had been a fairyland of delight to their toddling feet, and the apple trees a fragrant shelter for their first attempts at housekeeping.

From babyhood to girlhood the charm of the old place grew upon them, so much so that the thought of leaving it for homes of their own became distasteful to them, and they looked with scant favor upon the occasional village youths who sauntered up the path presumably on courtship bent.

The Reverend John Hapgood--a man who ruled himself and all about him with the iron rod of a rigid old-school orthodoxy--died when the twins were twenty; and the frail little woman who, as his wife, had for thirty years lived and moved solely because he expected breath and motion of her, followed soon in his footsteps. And then the twins were left alone in the great square house on the hill.

Miss Tabitha and Miss Rachel were not the only children of the family. There had been a son--the first born, and four years their senior. The headstrong boy and the iron rule had clashed, and the boy, when sixteen years old, had fled, leaving no trace behind him.

If the Reverend John Hapgood grieved for his wayward son the members of his household knew it not, save as they might place their own constructions on the added sternness to his eyes and the deepening lines about his mouth. "Paul," when it designated the graceless runaway, was a forbidden word in the family, and even the Epistles in the sacred Book, bearing the prohibited name, came to be avoided by the head of the house in the daily readings. It was still music in the hearts of the women, however, though it never passed their lips; and when the little mother lay dying she remembered and spoke of her boy. The habit of years still fettered her tongue and kept it from uttering the name.

"If--he--comes--you know--if he comes, be kind--be good," she murmured, her breath short and labored. "Don't--punish," she whispered--he was yet a lad in her disordered vision. "Don't punish--forgive!"

Years had passed since then--years of peaceful mornings and placid afternoons, and Paul had never appeared. Each purpling of the lilacs in the spring and reddening of the apples in the fall took on new shades of loveliness in the fond eyes of the twins, and every blade of grass and tiny shrub became sacred to them.

On the 10th of June, their thirty-fifth birthday, the place never had looked so lovely. A small table laid with spotless linen and gleaming silver stood beneath the largest apple-tree, a mute witness that the ladies were about to celebrate their birthday--the 10th of June being the only day that the solemn dignity of the dining-room was deserted for the frivolous freedom of the lawn.

Rachel came out of the house and sniffed the air joyfully.

"Delicious!" she murmured. "Somehow, the 10th of June is specially fine every year."

In careful, uplifted hands she bore a round frosted cake, always the chief treasure of the birthday feast. The cake was covered with the tiny colored candies so dear to the heart of a child. Miss Rachel always bought those candies at the village store, with the apology:--

"I want them for Tabitha's birthday cake, you know. She thinks so much of pretty things."

Tabitha invariably made the cake and iced it, and as she dropped the bits of colored sugar into place, she would explain to Huldy, who occasionally "helped" in the kitchen:--

"I wouldn't miss the candy for the world--my sister thinks so much of it!"

So each deceived herself with this pleasant bit of fiction, and yet had what she herself most wanted.

Rachel carefully placed the cake in the center of the table, feasted her eyes on its toothsome loveliness, then turned and hurried back to the house. The door had scarcely shut behind her when a small, ragged urchin darted in at the street gate, snatched the cake, and, at a sudden sound from the house, dashed out of sight behind a shrub close by.

The sound that had frightened the boy was the tapping of the heels of Miss Tabitha's shoes along the back porch. The lady descended the steps, crossed the lawn and placed a saucer of pickles and a plate of dainty sandwiches on the table.

"Why, I thought Rachel brought the cake," she said aloud. "It must be in the house; there's other things to get, anyway. I'll go back."