Part 10

Gradually, however, as my Aunt passed from the tid-bits to the more substantial portions of her task, getting out the shoulders, the hams for smoking, the pieces for salting down in the brine-barrel, my enthusiasm languished a trifle. The lamp grew heavy as I changed it from hand to hand, holding the free fingers at a respectful distance over the chimney-top for warmth, and shuffling my feet about. It was truly very cold. I strove to divert myself by smiling at the big shadow my bustling Aunt cast against the house side of the shed, and by moving the lamp to affect its proportions, but broke out into yawns instead. A mouse ran swiftly across the scantling just under the lean-to roof. At the same time I thought I caught the muffled sound of distant rapping, as if at our own rarely used front door. I was too sleepy to decide whether I had really heard a noise or not.

All at once I roused myself with a start. The lamp had nearly slipped from my hands, and the horror of what might have happened frightened me into wakefulness.

"The Perkins girls keep on calling me 'Wise child.' They yell it after me all the while," I said, desperately clutching at a subject which I hoped would interest my Aunt. I had spoken to her about it a week or so before, and it had stirred her quite out of her wonted stern calm. If anything would induce her to talk now, it would be this.

"They do, eh?" she said, with an alert sharpness of voice, which dwindled away into a sigh. Then, after a moment, she added, "Well, never you mind. You just keep right on, tending to your own affairs, and studying your lessons, and in time it'll be you who can laugh at them and all their low-down lot. They only do it to make you feel bad. Just don't you humor them."

"But I don't see," I went on, "why—what do they call me 'wise child' _for_? I asked Hi Budd, up at the Corners, but he only just chuckled and chuckled to himself, and wouldn't say a word."

My Aunt suspended work for the moment, and looked severely down upon me. "Well! Ira Clarence Blodgett!" she said, with grim emphasis, "I am ashamed of you! I thought you had more pride! The idea of talking about things like that with a coarse, rough, hired man—in a barn!"

To hear my full name thus pronounced, syllable by syllable, sent me fairly weltering, as it were, under Aunt Susan's utmost condemnation. It was the punishment reserved for my gravest crimes. I hung my head, and felt the lamp wagging nervelessly in my hands. I could not deny even her speculative impeachment as to the barn; it was blankly apparent in my mind that the fact of the barn made matters much worse.

"I was helping him wash their two-seated sleigh," I submitted, weakly. "He asked me to."

"What does that matter?" she asked, peremptorily. "What business have you got going around talking with men about me?"

"Why, it wasn't about you at all, Aunt Susan," I put in more confidently. "I said the Perkins girls kept calling me 'wise child,' and I asked Hi——"

Aunt Susan sighed once more, and interrupted me to inspect the wick of the lamp. Then she turned again to her work, but less spiritedly now. She took up the cleaver with almost an air of sadness.

"You don't understand—yet," she said. "But don't make it any harder for me by talking. Just go along and say nothing to nobody. People will think more of you."

My mind strove in vain to grapple with this suggested picture of myself, moving about in perpetual dumbness, followed everywhere by universal admiration. The lamp would _not_ hold itself straight.

All at once we both distinctly heard the sound of footsteps close outside. The noise of crunching on the dry, frozen snow came through the thin clap-boards with sharp resonance. Aunt Susan ceased cutting and listened.

"I heard somebody rapping at the front door a spell ago," I ventured to whisper. My Aunt looked at me, and probably realized that I was too sleepy to be accountable for my actions. At all events she said nothing, but moved toward the low door of the shed, cleaver in hand.

"Who's there?" she called out in shrill, belligerent tones; and this demand she repeated, after an interval of silence, when an irresolute knocking was heard on the door.

We heard a man coughing immediately outside the door. I saw Aunt Susan start at the sound—almost as if she recognized it. A moment later this man, whoever he was, mastered his cough sufficiently to call out, in a hesitating way:

"Is that you, Susan?"

Aunt Susan raised her chin on the instant, her nostrils drawn in, her eyes flashing like those of a pointer when he sees a gun lifted. I had never seen her so excited. She wheeled round once, and covered me with a swift, penetrating, comprehensive glance, under which my knees smote together, and the lamp lurched perilously. Then she turned again, glided toward the door, halted, moved backward two or three steps—looked again at me, and this time spoke.

"Well, I _swan_!" was what she said, and I felt that she looked it.

"Susan! Is that you?" came the voice again, hoarsely appealing. It was not the voice of any neighbor. I made sure I had never heard it before. I could have smiled to myself at the presumption of any man calling my Aunt by her first name, if I had not been too deeply mystified.

"I've been directed here to find Miss Susan Pike," the man outside explained, between fresh coughings.

"Well, then, mog your boots out of this as quick as ever you can!" my Aunt replied, with great promptitude. "You won't find her here!"

"But I _have_ found her!" the stranger protested, with an accent of wearied deprecation. "Don't you know me, Susan? I am not strong, this cold air is very bad for me."

"I say 'get out!'" my Aunt replied, sharply. Her tone was unrelenting enough, but I noted that she had tipped her head a little to one side, a clear sign to me that she was opening her mind to argument. I felt certain that presently I should see this man.

And, sure enough, after some further parley, Susan went to the door, and, with a half-defiant gesture, knocked the hook up out of the staple.

"Come along then, if you must!" she said, in scornful tones. Then she marched back till she stood beside me, angry resolution written all over her face and the cleaver in her hand.

A tall, dark figure, opaque against a gleaming background of moonlight and snowlight, was what I for a moment saw in the frame of the open doorway. Then, as he entered, shut and hooked the door behind him, and stood looking in a dazed way over at our lamplit group, I saw that he was a slender, delicately featured man, with a long beard of yellowish brown and gentle eyes. He was clad as a soldier, heavy azure-hued caped overcoat and all, and I already knew enough of uniforms—cruel familiarity of my war-time infancy—to tell by his cap that he was an officer. He coughed again before a word was spoken He looked the last man in the world to go about routing up peaceful households of a winter's night.

"Well, now—what is your business?" demanded Aunt Susan. She put her hand on my shoulder as she spoke, something I had never known her to do before. I felt confused under this novel caress, and it seemed only natural that the stranger, having studied my Aunt's face in a wistful way for a moment, should turn his gaze upon me. I was truly a remarkable object, with Aunt Susan's hand on my shoulder.

"I could make no one hear at the other door. I saw the light through the window here, and came around," the stranger explained. He sent little straying glances at the remains of the pig and at the weapon my Aunt held at her side, but for the most part looked steadily at me.

"That doesn't matter," said Aunt Susan, coldly. "What do you want, now that you _are_ here? Why did you come at all? What business had you to think that I ever wanted to lay eyes on you again? How could you have the courage to show your face here—in _my_ house?"

The man's shoulders shivered under their cape, and a wan smile curled in his beard. "You keep your house at a very low temperature," he said with grave pleasantry. He did not seem to mind Aunt Susan's hostile demeanor at all.

"I was badly wounded last September," he went on, quite as if that was what she had asked him, "and lay at the point of death for weeks. Then they sent me North, and I have been in the hospital at Albany ever since. One of the nurses there, struck by my name, asked me if I had any relatives in her village—that is, Juno Mills. In that way I learned where you were living. I suppose I ought not to have come—against doctor's orders—the journey has been too much—I have suffered a good deal these last two hours."

I felt my Aunt's hand shake a little on my shoulder. Her voice, though, was as implacable as ever.

"There is a much better reason than that why you should not have come," she said, bitterly.

The stranger was talking to her, but looking at me. He took a step toward me now, with a softened sparkle in his eyes and an outstretched hand. "This—this then is the boy, is it?" he asked.

With a gesture of amazing swiftness Aunt Susan threw her arm about me, and drew me close to her side, lamp and all. With her other hand she lifted and almost brandished the cleaver.

"No, you don't!" she cried. "You don't touch him! He's mine! I've worked for him day and night ever since I took him from his dying mother's breast. I closed her eyes. I forgave her. Blood is thicker'n water after all. She was my sister. Yes, I forgave poor Emmeline, and I kissed her before she died. She gave the boy to me, and he's mine! Mine, do you hear?—_mine?_"

"My dear Susan——" our visitor began.

"Don't 'dear Susan' me! I heard it once—once too often. Oh, never again! You left me to run away with her. I don't speak of that. I forgave that when I forgave her. But that was the least of it. You left her to herself for months before she died. You've left the boy to himself ever since. You can't begin now. I've worked my fingers to the bone for him—you can't make me stop now."

"I went to California," he went on in a low voice, speaking with difficulty. "We didn't get on together as smoothly as we might perhaps, but I had no earthly notion of deserting her. I was ill myself, lying in yellow-fever quarantine off Key West, at the very time she died. When I finally got back you and the child were both gone. I could not trace you. I went to the war. I had made money in California. It is trebled now. I rose to be Colonel—I have a Brigadier's brevet in my pocket now. Yet I give you my word I never have desired anything so much, all the time, as to find you again—you and the boy."

My Aunt nodded her head comprehendingly. I felt from the tremor of her hand that she was forcing herself against her own desires to be disagreeable.

"Yes, that war," was what she said. "I know about that war! The honest men that go get killed. But you—_you_ come back!"

The man frowned wearily, and gave a little groan of discouragement. "Then this is final, is it? You don't wish to speak with me; you really desire to keep the boy—you are set against my ever seeing him—touching him. Why, then, of course—of course—excuse my——"

And then for the first time I saw a human being tumble in a dead swoon. My little brain, dazed and bewildered by the strange new things I was hearing, lagged behind my eyes in following the sudden pallor on the man's face—lagged behind my ears in noting the tell-tale quaver and gasp in his voice. Before I comprehended what was toward—lo! there was no man standing in front of me at all.

Like a flash Aunt Susan snatched the lamp from my grasp and flung herself upon her knees beside the limp and huddled figure. After a momentary inspection of the white, bearded face, she set the lamp down on the frozen earth floor and took his head upon her lap.

"Take the lamp, run to the buttery, and bring the bottle of hartshorn!" she commanded me, hurriedly. "Or, no—wait—open the door—that's it—walk ahead with the light!"

The strong woman stood upright as she spoke, her shoulders braced against the burden she bore in her arms. Unaided, with slow steps, she carried the senseless form of the soldier into the living room, and held it without rest of any sort, the while I, under her direction, wildly tore off quilts, blankets, sheets, and feather-tick from my bed and heaped them up on the floor beside the stove. Then, when I had spread them to her liking, she bent and gently laid him down.

"_Now_ get the hartshorn," she said. I heard her putting more wood on the fire, but when I returned with the phial she sat once again with the stranger's head upon her knee. She was softly stroking the fine, waving brown hair upon his brow, but her eyes were lifted, looking dreamily at far-away things. I could have sworn to the beginnings of a smile about her parted lips. It was not like my Aunt Susan at all.

"Come here, Ira," I heard her say at last, after a long time had been spent in silence. I walked over and stood at her shoulder, looking down upon the pale face upturned against the black of her worn dress. The blue veins just discernible in temples and closed eyelids, the delicately turned features, the way his brown beard curled, the fact that his breathing was gently regular once more—these are what I saw. But my Aunt seemed to demand that I should see more.

"Well?" she asked, in a tone mellowed beyond all recognition. "Don't you—don't you see who it is?"

I suppose I really must have had an idea by this time. But I remember that I shook my head.

My Aunt positively did smile this time. "The Perkins girls were wrong," she said; "there isn't the least smitch of a 'wise child' about _you_!"

There was another pause. Emboldened by consciousness of a change in the emotional atmosphere, I was moved to lay my hand upon my Aunt's shoulder. The action did not seem to displease her, and we remained thus for some minutes, watching together this strange addition to our family party.

Finally she told me to get on my cap, comforter, and mittens, and run over to Dr. Peabody's and fetch him back with me. The purport of my mission oppressed me.

"Is he going to die then?" I asked.

Aunt Susan laughed outright. "You little goose," she said; "do you think the doctors kill people _every_ time?"

And, laughing again, with a trembling softness in her voice and tears upon her black eyelashes, she lifted her face to mine—and kissed me!

* * * * *

No fatality dogged good old Doctor Peabody's big footsteps through the snow that night. I fell asleep while he was still at my Aunt's house, but not before the stranger had recovered consciousness, and was sitting up in the large rocking-chair, and it was clearly understood that he was soon to be well again.

The kindly, garrulous doctor did more than reassure our little household. He must have spent most of the night going about reassuring the other households of Juno Mills. At all events, when I first went out next morning—while our neighbors were still eating their buckwheat cakes and pork fat by lamplight—everybody seemed to know that my father, the distinguished Colonel Blodgett, had returned from the war on sick leave, and was lying ill at the house of his sister-in-law. I felt at once the altered attitude of the village toward me. Important citizens who had never spoken to me before—dignified and portly men in blue cutaway coats with brass buttons, and high stiff hats of shaggy white silk—stopped now to lay their hands on the top of my head and ask me how my father, the Colonel, was getting along. The grocer's hired man gave me a Jackson ball and two molasses cookies the very first time I saw him. Even the Perkins girls, during the course of the afternoon, strolled over to our front gate, and, instead of hurling enigmatic objurgations at me, invited me to come out and play. The butcher of his own accord came and finished cutting up the pig.

These changes came back to me as one part of the great metamorphosis which the night's events had wrought. Another part was the definite disappearance of the stern-faced, tirelessly toiling old maid I had known all my life as Aunt Susan. In her place there was now a much younger woman, with pleasant lines about her pretty mouth, and eyes that twinkled when they looked at me, and who paid no attention to the loom whatever, but bustled cheerily about the house instead, thinking only of good things for us to eat.

I remember that I marked my sense of the difference by abandoning the old name of Aunt Susan, and calling her now just "Auntie." And one day, in the mid-spring, after she and her convalescent patient had returned from their first drive together into the country round about, she told me, as she took off her new bonnet in an absent-minded way, and looked meditatively at the old disused loom, and then bent down to brush my forehead with her warm lips—she told me that henceforth I was to call her Mother.

NEW NOVELS AND SHORT STORIES.

_In Uniform Binding. Each One Dollar._

A POUND OF CURE.

By W. H. BISHOP.

A striking novel of life at Monte Carlo. It embodies a curious picture of the growth of the gambling spirit upon a young married man, whose only fault is his weakness in the presence of alluring pleasure. In addition to the very remarkable plot, the book is noteworthy for the delicate and picturesque descriptions of the scenery around Monte Carlo. Mr. Bishop's easy and very accurate English style adds to the effectiveness of the book as a work of art.

SALEM KITTREDGE, AND OTHER STORIES.

By BLISS PERRY.

Salem Kittredge is a story about a theological student, a pretty girl with active sympathies, and a young man addicted to drink. How these characters stood affected by each other during a season at Bar Harbor, is told with much spirit and skill. The other stories are crisp and interesting, full of keen character drawing and a quick sense of human nature.

"'Salem Kittredge' is one of the best short stories we have read recently. There are eight other stories in the volume, all good."—_Boston Advertiser._

TALES OF THE MAINE COAST.

By NOAH BROOKS.

Including "Pansy Pegg," "The Apparition of Joe Murch," "A Hereditary Barn," "The Phantom Sailor," "The Waif of Nautilus Island," "A Century Ago," etc., all dealing with the romantic life of the people, and all full of local color.

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS, Publishers, 153–157 Fifth Avenue, NEW YORK CITY.