Chapter 15

"Well, I dunno where to begin. The long an' short of it was, dear, James he got kind o' uneasy on land, an' then he was tried with me, an' then he told me, one night, when he spoke out, that he didn't care about me as he used to, an' he never should, an' we couldn't live no longer under the same roof. He was goin' off the next day to sea, or to the devil, he said, so he needn't go crazy seein' Mary Ann Worthen's face lookin' at him all the time. It ain't any use tryin' to tell how I felt. Some troubles ain't no more 'n a dull pain, an' some are like cuts an' gashes. You can feel your heart drop, drop, like water off the eaves. Mine dropped for a good while arter that. Well, you see I'd been through the fust stages of it. I'd been eat up by jealousy, an' I'd slaved like a dog to git him back; but now it had got beyond such folderol. He was in terrible trouble, an' I'd got to git him out. An' I guess 'twas then that I begun to feel as if I was his mother, instid of his wife. 'Jim,' says I, (somehow I have to Say 'James,' now we're separated!) 'don't you fret. I'll go off an' leave ye, an' you can get clear o' me accordin' to law, if you want to. I'm sure you can. I sha'n't care.' He turned an' looked at me, as if I was crazed or he was himself, 'You won't care?' he says. 'No,' says I, 'I sha'n't care.' I said it real easy, for 'twas true. Somehow, I'd got beyond carin'. My heart dropped blood, but I couldn't bear to have him in trouble. 'They al'ays told me I was cut out for an old maid,' I says, 'an' I guess I be. Housekeepin' 's a chore, anyway. You let all the stuff set right here jest as we've had it, an' ask Cap'n Fuller to come an' bring his chist; an' I'll settle down in the Willer Brook house an' make button-holes. It's real pretty work.' You see, the reason I was so high for it was 't I knew if he went to sea, he'd git in with a swearin', drinkin' set, as he did afore, an' in them days such carryin's-on were dretful to me. If I'd known he'd marry, I dunno what course I should ha' took; for nothin' could ha' made that seem right to me, arter all had come and gone. But I jest thought how James was a dretful handy man about the house, an' I knew he set by Cap'n Fuller. The Cap'n 'ain't no real home, you know, an' I thought they'd admire to bach it together."

"Did you ever wonder whether you had done right? Did you ever think it would have been better for him to keep his promises to you? For him to be unhappy?"

A shade of trouble crossed her face.

"I guess I did!" she owned. "At fust, I was so anxious to git out o' his way, I never thought of anything else; but when I got settled down here, an' had all my time for spec'latin' on things, I was a good deal put to 't whether I'd done the best anybody could. But I didn't reason much, in them days; I jest felt. All was, I couldn't bear to have James tied to me when he'd got so's to hate me. Well, then he married--"

"Was she a good woman?"

"Good enough, yes; a leetle mite coarse-grained, but well-meanin' all through. Well, now, you know the neighbors blamed me for lettin' her have my things. Why, bless you, I didn't need 'em! An' Jim had used 'em so many years, he'd ha' missed 'em if they'd been took away. Then he never was forehanded, an' how could he ha' furnished a house all over ag'in, I'd like to know? The neighbors never understood. The amount of it was, they never was put in jest such a place, any of 'em."

"O Nancy, Nancy!" I said, "you cared for just one thing, and it was gone. You didn't care for the tables and chairs that were left behind!"

Two tears came, and dimmed her bright blue eyes. Her firm, delicate mouth quivered.

"Yes," she said, "you see how 'twas. I knew you would. Well, arter he was married, there was a spell when 'twas pretty tough. Sometimes I couldn't hardly help goin' over there by night an' peekin' into the winder, an' seein' how they got along. I went jest twice. The fust time was late in the fall, an' she was preservin' pears by lamplight. I looked into the kitchin winder jest as she was bendin' over the stove, tryin' the syrup, an' he was holdin' the light for her to see. I dunno what she said, but 'twas suthin' that made 'em both laugh out, an' then they turned an' looked at one another, proper pleased. I dunno why, but it took right hold o' me, an' I started runnin' an' I never stopped till I got in, here an' onto my own bed. I thought 'twould ha' been massiful if death had took me that night, but I'm glad it didn't, dear, I'm glad it didn't! I shouldn't ha' seen ye, if it had, an' there's a good many things I shouldn't ha' had time to study out. You jest put a mite o' cayenne pepper in that cup, an' turn some hot water on it. It kind o' warms me up."

After a moment's rest, she began again.

"The next time I peeked was the last, for that night they'd had some words, an' they both set up straight as a mack'rel, an' wouldn't speak to one another. That hurt me most of anything. I never've got over the feelin' that I was James's mother, an' that night I felt sort o' bruised all through, as if some stranger'd been hurtin' him. So I never went spyin' on 'em no more. I felt as if I couldn't stan' it. But when I went to help her with the work, that time he was sick, I guess the neighbors thought I hadn't any sense of how a right-feelin' woman ought to act. I guess they thought I was sort o' coarse an' low, an' didn't realize what I'd, been through. Dear, don't you never believe it. The feelin' that's between husband an' wife's like a live creatur', an' when he told me that night that he didn't prize me no more, he wounded it; an' when he married the other woman, he killed it dead. If he'd ha' come back to me then, an' swore he was the same man I married, I could ha' died for him, jest as I would this minute, but he never should ha' touched me. But suthin' had riz up in the place o' the feelin' I had fust, so't I never could ha' helped doin' for him, any more'n if he'd been my own child."

"'In the resurrection, they neither marry nor are given in marriage!'"

"I guess that's it," said Nancy. "On'y you have to live through a good deal afore you understand it. Well, now, dear, I'm nearin' the end. There's one thing that's come to me while I've been livin' through this, that I 'ain't never heard anybody mention; an' I want you to remember it, so's you can tell folks that are in great trouble, the way I've been. I've been thinkin' on't out that there's jest so much of everything in the world,--so much gold, so much silver, so many di'monds. You can't make no more nor no less. All you can do is to pass 'em about from hand to hand, so't sometimes here'll be somebody that's rich, an' then it'll slip away from him, an' he'll be poor. Now, accordin' to my lights, it's jes' so with love. There's jest so much, an' when it's took away from you, an' passed over to somebody else, it's alive, it's there, same as ever it was. So 't you ain't goin' to say it's all holler an' empty, this world. You're goin' to say, 'Well, it's som'er's, if 'tain't with me!'"

Nancy had straightened herself, without the support of her pillows. Her eyes were bright. A faint flush had come upon her cheeks. A doctor would have told me that my devoted friendship had not saved me from being a wretched nurse.

"My home was broke up," she went on, "but there's a nice, pretty house there jest the same. There's a contented couple livin' in it, an' what if the wife ain't me? It ain't no matter. P'r'aps it's a lot better that somebody else should have it, somebody that couldn't git along alone; an' not me, that can see the rights o' things. Jest so much love, dear--don't you forgit that--no matter where 'tis! An' James could take his love away from me, but the Lord A'mighty himself can't take mine from him. An' so 'tis, the world over. You can al'ays love folks, an' do for 'em, even if your doin' 's only breakin' your heart an' givin' 'em up. An' do you s'pose there's any sp'ere o' life where I sha'n't be allowed to do somethin' for James? I guess not, dear, I guess not, even if it's only keepin' away from him."

Nancy lived three days, in a state of delighted content with us and our poor ministrations; and only once did we approach the subject of that solemn night. As the end drew near, I became more and more anxious to know if she had a wish unfulfilled, and at length I ventured to ask her softly, when we were alone,--

"Would you like to see him?"

Her bright eyes looked at me, in a startled way.

"No, dear, no," she said, evidently surprised that I could ask it. "Bless you, no!"

STROLLERS IN TIVERTON

In Tiverton, when reminiscences are in order, we go back to one very rich year; then the circus and strolling players came to town, and the usual camp-meeting was followed by an epidemic of scarlet fever, which might have stood forth as the judgment of heaven, save that the newly converted were stricken first and undoubtedly fared hardest. Hiram Cole said it was because they'd "got all their nerve-juice used up, hollerin' hallelujah." But that I know not. This theory of nerve-juice, was a favorite one with Hiram: he contended that it had a powerful hand in determining the results of presidential elections; and, indeed, in swaying the balance of power among the nations of the earth.

Even in the early spring, there had been several cases of fever at Sudleigh; and so, when the circus made application for a license to take possession of the town, according to olden custom, the public authorities very wisely refused. Tiverton, however, was wroth at this arbitrary restriction. For more years than I can say, she had driven over to Sudleigh "to see the caravan;" and now, through some crack-brained theory of contagion, the caravan was to be barred out. We never really believed that the town-fathers had taken their highhanded measure on account of scarlet fever. We saw in it some occult political significance, and referred ominously to the butter we carried there on Saturdays, and to the possibility that, if they cast us off, a separation might affect them far more seriously than it would us. But to our loud-voiced delight, the caravan, finding that it was to be within hailing distance, and unwilling to pass on without further tribute, extended the sceptre to Tiverton herself; and Brad Freeman joyfully discussed the project of making a circus ground of his old race-course, which, he declared, he had purposed planting with tobacco. We never knew whether to believe this or not, though we had many times previously gone over Brad's calculation, by which he figured that he could sell at least three tons of fine-cut from one summer's produce. To that specious logic, we always listened with unwilling admiration; but when we could shake off the glamour inseparable from a problem made to come out right, we were accustomed to turn to one another, demanding with cold scepticism, "Where'd he git his seed?"

In spite of the loss of this potential crop, however, Brad was magnanimously willing to let his field; and Tiverton held her head high, in the prospect of having a circus of her own. We intimated that it would undoubtedly be fair weather, owing to our superior moral desert as compared with that of Sudleigh, which was annually afflicted with what had long been known as "circus-weather." For Sudleigh had sinned, and Nature was thenceforth deputed to pay her back, in good old Hebrew style. One circus-day--before the war, as I believe--Sudleigh fenced up the spring in a corner of her grounds, and with a foolish thrift sold ice-water to the crowd, at a penny a glass. Tiverton was furious, and so, apparently, were the just heavens; for every circus-day thereafter it rained, in a fashion calculated to urge any forehanded Noah into immediate action. We of Tiverton never allowed our neighbor to forget her criminal lapse. When, on circus-afternoon, we met one of the rival township, dripping as ourselves, we said, with all the cheerfulness of conscious innocence,--

"Water enough for everybody, to-day! Guess ye won't have to peddle none out!"

"Seems to be comin' down pretty fast! You better build a platfoam over that spring! Go hard with ye if't overflowed!"

Strange to say, Sudleigh seemed to regard these time-licensed remarks with little favor; she even intimated that they smacked of the past, and were wearisome in her nostrils. But not for that did we halt in their distribution. Moreover, we flaunted our domestic loyalty by partaking of no Sudleigh fluid within the grounds. We carried tea, coffee, lemonade, milk, an ambitious variety of drinks, in order that even our children might be spared the public disgrace of tasting Sudleigh water; and it was a part of our excellent fooling to invite every Sudleighian to drink with us. Even the virtues, however, spare their votaries no pang; and in every family, this unbending fealty resulted in the individual members' betaking themselves to the pump or well, immediately on getting home, even before attempting to unharness. About five o'clock, on circus-afternoon, there would be a general rumbling of buckets and creaking of sweeps, while a chorus rose to heaven, "My! I was 'most choked!"

But our _fête_-day dawned bright and speckless. We rose before three o'clock, every man, woman and child of us, to see the procession come into town. It would leave the railway at Sudleigh, and we had a faint hope of its forming in regulation style, and sweeping into Tiverton, a blaze of glittering chariots surmounted by queens of beauty, of lazy beasts of the desert sulking in their cages, and dainty-stepping horses, ridden by bold amazons. For a time, the expectation kept us bright and hopeful, although most of us had only taken a "cold bite" before starting; but as the eastern saffron pencilled one line of light and the bird chorus swelled in piercing glory, we grew cross and all unbefitting the smiling morn. Only Dilly Joyce looked sunshiny as ever, for she had no domestic cares to beckon her; she and Nance Pete, who was in luck that day, having a full pipe. Dilly had nestled into a rock, curved in the form of a chair, and lay watching the eastern sky, a faint smile of pleasure parting her lips when the saffron hardened into gold.

"Nice, dear, ain't it?" she said, as I paused a moment near her, "I al'ays liked the side o' the road. But it's kind o' disturbin' to have so much talk. I dunno's you can help it, though, where there's so many people. Most o' the time, I'm better on't to home, but I did want to see an elephant near to!"

The sky broadened into light, and the birds jeered at us, poor, draggled folk who lived in boxes and were embarrassed by the morn. The men grew nervous, for milking-time was near, and in imagination I have no doubt they heard the lowing of reproachful kine.

"Well, 'tain't no use," said Eli Pike, rising from the stone-wall, and stretching himself, with decision. "I've got to 'tend to them cows, whether or no!" And he strolled away on the country-road, without a look behind. Most of the other men, as in honor bound, followed him; and the women, with loud-voiced protest against an obvious necessity, trailed after them, to strain the milk. Only we who formed the gypsy element were left behind.

"I call it a real shame!" announced Mrs. Pike, gathering her summer shawl about her shoulders, and stepping away with an offended dignity such as no delinquent elephant could have faced. "I warrant ye, they wouldn't ha' treated Sudleigh so. They wouldn't ha' dared!"

"I dunno's Sudleigh's any more looked up to'n we be," said Caleb Rivers, who had been so tardy in bestirring himself that he formed a part of the women's corps. "I guess, if the truth was known, Tiverton covers more land'n Sudleigh does, on'y Sudleigh's all humped up together into a quart bowl. I guess there's countries that 'ain't heard o' Sudleigh, an' wouldn't stan' much in fear if they had!"

And so Tiverton dispersed, unamiably, and with its public pride hurt to the quick. I tried to take pattern by Dilly Joyce, and steal from nature a little of the wonderful filial enjoyment which came to her unsought. When Dilly watched the sky, I did, also; when she brightened at sound of a bird hitherto silent, I tried to set down his notes in my memory; and when she closed her eyes, and shut out the world, to think it over, I did the same. But the result was different. Probably Dilly opened hers again upon the lovely earth, but I drifted off into dreamland, and only awoke, two hours after, to find the scenes marvellously changed. It was bright, steady morning, the morning come to stay. Tiverton had performed its dairy rites, and returned again, enlivened by a cup of tea; and oh, incredible joy! there was a grunting and panting, a swaying of mighty flanks. The circus was approaching, from Sudleigh way. Instantly I was alert and on my feet, for it would have been impossible to miss the contagion of the general joy. I knew how we felt, not as individuals, but as Tivertonians alone. We were tolerant potentates, waiting, in gracious majesty, to receive a deputation from the farther East. It grieves me much to stop here and confess, with a necessary honesty, that this was but a sorry circus, gauged by the conventional standards; else, I suppose, it had never come to Tiverton at all. The circus-folk had evidently dressed for travelling, not for us. The chariots, some of them still hooded in canvas, were very small and tarnished. There were but three elephants, two camels, and a most meagre display of those alluring cages made to afford even the careless eye a sudden, quickening glimpse of restless, tawny form, or slothful hulk within. Yet why depreciate the raw material whereof Fancy has power divine to build her altogether perfect heights? Here was the plain, homely setting of our plainer lives, and right into the midst of it had come the East. The elephants affected us most; we probably thought little about the immemorial mystery, the vague, occult tradition wrapped in that mouse-colored hide; but even to our dense Western imagination such quickening suggestion was vividly apparent. We knew our world; usually it seemed to us the only one, even when we looked at the stars. But at least one other had been created, and before us appeared its visible sign,--my lord the elephant! There he was, swaying along, conscious philosopher, conscious might, yet holding his omniscience in the background, and keeping a wary eye out for the peanuts with which we simple country souls had not provided ourselves. There was one curious thing about it all. We had seen the circus at Sudleigh, as I have said, yet the fact of entertaining it within our borders made it seem exactly as if we had never laid eyes upon it before. This was our caravan, and God Almighty had created the elephant for us. Dilly Joyce slipped her hand quickly in mine and pressed it hard. She was quite pale. Yet it was she who acted upon the first practical thought. She recovered herself before my lord went by, took a ginger cookie from her pocket, and put it into Davie Tolman's hand.

"Here," she said, pushing him forward, "you go an' offer it to him. He'll take it. See'f he don't!"

Davie accepted the mission with joy, and persisted in it until he found himself close beside that swaying bulk, and saw the long trunk curved enticingly toward him. Then he uttered one explosive howl, and fell back on the very toes of us who were pressing forward to partake, by right of sympathy, in the little drama.

"Lordy Massy, keep still!" cried out Nance Pete; and she snatched him up bodily, and held him out to the elephant. I believe my own pang at that moment to have been general. I forgot that elephants are not carnivorous, and shuddered back, under the expectation of seeing Davie devoured, hide and hair. But Nance had the address to stiffen the little arm, and my lord took the cookie, still clutched in the despairing hand, and passed on. Then Davie wiped his eyes, after peeping stealthily about to see whether any one was disposed to jeer at him, and took such courage that he posed, ever after, as the hero of the day.

The procession had nearly passed us when we saw a sight calculated to animate us anew with a justifiable pride. Sudleigh itself, its young men and maidens, old men and children, was following the circus into our town. It would not have a circus of its own, forsooth, but it would share in ours! We, as by one consent, assumed an air of dignified self-importance. We were the hosts of the day; we bowed graciously to such of our guests as we knew, and, with a mild tolerance, looked over the heads of those who were unfamiliar. Yet nothing checked our happy companionship with the caravan; still we followed by the side of the procession, through tangles of blackberry vine, and over ditch and stubble. Some of the boys mounted the walls, and ran wildly, dislodging stones as they went, and earning no reproof from the fathers who, on any other day, would have been alive to a future mowing and the clashing of scythe and rock. There was, moreover, an impression abroad that our progress could by no means be considered devoid of danger.

"S'pose that fellar should rise up, an' wrench off them bars!" suggested Heman Blaisdell, pointing out one cage where a great creature, gaudy in stripes, paced back and forth, throwing us an occasional look of scorn and great despite. "I wouldn't give much for my chances! Nor for anybody else's!"

"My soul an' body!" ejaculated a woman. "I hope they don't forgit to lock them cages up! Folks git awful careless when they do a thing every day! I forgot to shet up the hins last week, an' that was the night the skunk got in."

"I'm glad Brad brought his gun," said another, in the tone of one who would have crossed herself had there been a saint to help. And thereafter we kept so thickly about Brad, walking with his long free stride, that his progress became impeded, and he almost fell over us. Suddenly, from the front, a man's voice rose in an imperative cry,--

"Turn round! turn round!"

Quite evidently the mandate was addressed to us, and we turned in a mass, fleeing back into Sudleigh's very arms. For a moment, it was like Sparta and Persia striving in the Pass; then Sudleigh turned also, such as were on foot, and fled with us. We pressed up the bank, as soon as we could collect our errant wits; some of us, with a sense of coming calamity, mounted the very wall, and there we had a moment to look about us. The caravan was keeping steadily on, like fate and taxes, and facing it stood a carryall attached to a frightened horse. On the front seat, erect in her accustomed majesty, sat Aunt Melissa Adams; and Uncle Hiram, ever a humble charioteer, was by her side. They, too, had driven out to see the circus, but alas! it had not struck them that they might meet it midway, with no volition of drawing up at the side of the road and allowing it to pass. The old horse, hardened to the vicissitudes of many farming seasons, had necessarily no acquaintance with the wild beasts of the Orient; no past experience, tucked away in his wise old head, could explain them in the very least. He plunged and reared; he snorted with fear, and Aunt Melissa began to emit shrieks of such volume and quality that the mangy lion, composing himself to sleep in his cage, rose, and sent forth a cry that Tiverton will long remember. We did not stop to explain our forebodings, but we were sure that, in some mysterious way, Aunt Melissa was doomed, and that she had brought her misfortune on herself. A second Daniel, she had no special integrity to stand her in need. And still the circus advanced, and the horse snorted and backed. He was a gaunt old beast, but in his terror, one moment of beauty dignified him beyond belief. His head was high, his eyes were starting.