Chapter 2

Mrs. Pike came ponderously to her feet, and followed, with the heavy, swaying motion of one grown fleshy and rheumatic. She was not in the least concerned about Eli's change of mood. He was a gentle soul, and she had always been able to guide him in paths of her own choosing. Moreover, the present undertaking was one involving his own good fortune, and she meant to tolerate no foolish scruples which might interfere with its result. For Eli, though he had lived all his life within easy driving distance of the ocean, had never seen it, and ever since his boyhood he had cherished one darling plan,--some day he would go to the shore, and camp out there for a week. This, in his starved imagination, was like a dream of the Acropolis to an artist stricken blind, or as mountain outlines to the dweller in a lonely plain. But the years had flitted past, and the dream never seemed nearer completion. There were always planting, haying, and harvesting to be considered; and though he was fairly prosperous, excursions were foreign to his simple habit of life. But at last, his wife had stepped into the van, and organized an expedition, with all the valor of a Francis Drake.

"Now, don't you say one word, father," she had said. "We're goin' down to the beach, Sereno, an' Hattie, an' you an' me, an' we're goin' to camp out. It'll do us all good."

For days before the date of the excursion, Eli had been solemn and tremulous, as with joy; but now, on the eve of the great event, he shrank back from it, with an undefined notion that it was like death, and that he was not prepared. Next morning, however, when they all rose and took their early breakfast, preparatory to starting at five, he showed no sign of indecision, and even went about his outdoor tasks with an alacrity calculated, as his wife approvingly remarked, to "for'ard the v'y'ge." He had at last begun to see his way clear, and he looked well satisfied when his daughter Hattie and Sereno, her husband, drove into the yard, in a wagon cheerfully suggestive of a wandering life. The tents and a small hair-trunk were stored in the back, and the horse's pail swung below.

"Well, father," called Hattie, her rosy face like a flower under the large shade-hat she had trimmed for the occasion, "guess we're goin' to have a good day!"

He nodded from the window, where he was patiently holding his head high and undergoing strangulation, while his wife, breathing huskily with haste and importance, put on his stock.

"You come in, Hattie, an' help pack the doughnuts into that lard-pail on the table," she called. "I guess you'll have to take two pails. They ain't very big."

At length, the two teams were ready, and Eli mounted to his place, where he looked very slender beside his towering mate. The hired man stood leaning on the pump, chewing a bit of straw, and the cats rubbed against his legs, with tails like banners; they were all impressed by a sense of the unusual.

"Well, good-by, Luke," Mrs. Pike called, over her shoulder; and Eli gave the man a solemn nod, gathered up the reins, and drove out of the yard. Just outside the gate, he pulled up.

"Whoa!" he called, and Luke lounged forward. "Don't you forgit them cats! Git up, Doll!" And this time, they were gone.

For the first ten miles of the way, familiar in being the road to market, Eli was placidly cheerful. The sense that he was going to do some strange deed, to step into an unknown country, dropped away from him, and he chatted, in his intermittent, serious fashion, of the crops and the lay of the land.

"Pretty bad job up along here, ain't it, father?" called Sereno, as they passed a sterile pasture where two plodding men and a yoke of oxen were redeeming the soil from its rocky fetters.

"There's a good deal o' pastur', in some places, that ain't fit for nothin' but to hold the world together," returned Eli; and then he was silent, his eyes fixed on Doll's eloquent ears, his mouth working a little. For this progress through a less desirable stratum of life caused him to cast a backward glance over his own smooth, middle-aged road.

"We've prospered, 'ain't we, Maria?" he said, at last; and his wife, unconsciously following his thoughts, in the manner of those who have lived long together, stroked her black silk _visite_, and answered, with a well-satisfied nod:

"I guess we 'ain't got no cause to complain."

The roadside was parched under an August sun; tansy was dust-covered, and ferns had grown ragged and gray. The jogging horses left behind their lazy feet a suffocating cloud.

"My land!" cried Mrs. Pike, "if that ain't goldenrod! I do b'lieve it comes earlier every year, or else the seasons are changin'. See them elderberries! Ain't they purple! You jest remember that bush, an' when we go back, we'll fill some pails. I dunno when I've made elderberry wine."

Like her husband, she was vaguely excited; she began to feel as if life would be all holidays. At noon, they stopped under the shadow of an elm-tree which, from its foothold in a field, completely arched the road; and there they ate a lunch of pie and doughnuts, while the horses, freed from their headstalls, placidly munched a generous feed of oats, near by. Hattie and her mother accepted this picnicking with an air of apologetic amusement; and when one or two passers-by looked at them, they smiled a little at vacancy, with the air of wishing it understood that they were by no means accustomed to such irregularities.

"I guess they think we're gypsies," said Hattie, as one carriage rolled past.

"Well, they needn't trouble themselves," returned her mother, rising with difficulty to brush the crumbs from her capacious lap. "I guess I've got as good an extension-table to home as any on 'em."

But Eli ate sparingly, and with a preoccupied and solemn look.

"Land, father!" exclaimed his wife, "you 'ain't eat no more'n a bird!

"I guess I'll go over to that well," said he, "an' git a drink o' water. I drink more'n I eat, if I ain't workin'." But when he came back, carefully bearing a tin pail brimming with cool, clear water, his face expressed strong disapprobation, and he smacked his lips scornfully.

"Terrible flat water!" he announced. "Tastes as if it come out o' the cistern." But the others could find no fault with it, and Sereno drained the pail.

"Pretty good, I call it," he said; and Mrs. Pike rejoined,--

"You always was pretty particular about water, father."

But Eli still shook his head, and ejaculated, "Brackish, brackish!" as he began to put the bit in Doll's patient mouth. He was thinking, with a passion of loyalty, of the clear, ice-cold water at home, which had never been shut out, by a pump, from the purifying airs of heaven, but lay where the splashing bucket and chain broke, every day, the image of moss and fern. His throat grew parched and dry with longing.

When they were within three miles of the sea, it seemed to them that they could taste the saltness of the incoming breeze; the road was ankle-deep in dust; the garden flowers were glaring in their brightness. It was a new world. And when at last they emerged from the marsh-bordered road upon a ridge of sand, and turned a sudden corner, Mrs. Pike faced her husband in triumph.

"There, father!" she cried. "There 'tis!"

But Eli's eyes were fixed on the dashboard in front of him. He looked pale.

"Why, father," said she, impatiently, "ain't you goin' to look? It's the sea!"

"Yes, yes," said Eli, quietly; "byme-by. I'm goin' to put the horses up fust."

"Well, I never!" said Mrs. Pike; and as they drew up on the sandy tract where Sereno had previously arranged a place for their tents, she added, almost fretfully, turning to Hattie, "I dunno what's come over your father. There's the water, an' he won't even cast his eyes at it."

But Hattie understood her father, by some intuition of love, though not of likeness.

"Don't you bother him, ma," she said. "He'll make up his mind to it pretty soon. Here, le's lift out these little things, while they're unharnessin', and then they can get at the tents."

Mrs. Pike's mind was diverted by the exigencies of labor, and she said no more; but after the horses had been put up at a neighboring house, and Sereno, red-faced with exertion, had superintended the tent-raising, Hattie slipped her arm through her father's, and led him away.

"Come, pa," she said, in a whisper; "le's you and me climb over on them rocks."

Eli went; and when they had picked their way over sand and pools to a headland where the water thundered below, and salt spray dashed up in mist to their feet, he turned and looked at the sea. He faced it as a soul might face Almighty Greatness, only to be stricken blind thereafter; for his eyes filled painfully with slow, hot tears. Hattie did not look at him, but after a while she shouted in his ear, above the outcry of the surf,--

"Here, pa, take my handkerchief. I don't know how 'tis about you, but this spray gets in my eyes."

Eli took it obediently, but he did not speak; he only looked at the sea. The two sat there, chilled and quite content, until six o'clock, when Mrs. Pike came calling to them from the beach, with dramatic shouts, emphasized by the waving of her ample apron,--

"Supper's ready! Sereno's built a bum-fire, an' I've made some tea!"

Then they slowly made their way back to the tents, and sat down to the evening meal. Sereno seemed content, and Mrs. Pike was bustling and triumphant; the familiar act of preparing food had given her the feeling of home.

"Well, father, what think?" she asked, smiling exuberantly, as she passed him his mug of tea. "Does it come up to what you expected?"

Eli turned upon her his mild, dazed eyes.

"I guess it does," he said, gently.

That night, they sat upon the shore while the moon rose and laid in the water her majestic pathway of light. Eli was the last to leave the rocks, and he lay down on his hard couch in the tent, without speaking.

"I wouldn't say much to father," whispered Hattie to her mother, as they parted for the night. "He feels it more 'n we do."

"Well, I s'pose he is some tired," said Mrs. Pike, acquiescing, after a brief look of surprise. "It's a good deal of a jaunt, but I dunno but I feel paid a'ready. Should you take out your hair-pins, Hattie?"

She slept soundly and vocally, but her husband did not close his eyes. He looked, though he could see nothing, through the opening in the tent, in the direction where lay the sea, solemnly clamorous, eternally responsive to some infinite whisper from without his world. The tension of the hour was almost more than he could bear; he longed for morning, in sharp suspense, with a faint hope that the light might bring relief. Just as the stars faded, and one luminous line pencilled the east, he rose, smoothed his hair, and stepped softly out upon the beach. There he saw two shadowy figures, Sereno and Hattie. She hurried forward to meet him.

"You goin' to see the sunrise, too, father?" she asked. "I made Sereno come. He's awful mad at bein' waked up."

Eli grasped her arm.

"Hattie," he said, in a whisper, "don't you tell. I jest come out to see how 'twas here, before I go. I'm goin' home,--I'm goin' _now_."

"Why, father!" said Hattie; but she peered more closely into his face, and her tone changed. "All right," she added, cheerfully. "Sereno'll go and harness up."

"No; I'm goin' to walk."

"But, father--"

"I don't mean to breakup your stayin' here, nor your mother's. You tell her how 'twas. I'm goin' to walk."

Hattie turned and whispered to her husband for a moment. Then she took her father's hand.

"I'll slip into the tent and put you up somethin' for your breakfast and luncheon," she said. "Sereno's gone to harness; for, pa, you must take one horse, and you can send Luke back with it Friday, so's we can get the things home. What do we want of two horses down here, at two and ninepence a day? I guess I know!"

So Eli yielded; but before his wife appeared, he had turned his back on the sea, where the rose of dawn was fast unfolding. As he jogged homeward, the dusty roadsides bloomed with flowers of paradise, and the insects' dry chirp thrilled like the song of angels. He drove into the yard just at the turning of the day, when the fragrant smoke of many a crackling fire curls cheerily upward, in promise of the evening meal.

"What's busted?" asked Luke, swinging himself down from his load of fodder-corn, and beginning to unharness Doll.

"Oh, nothin'," said Eli, leaping, from the wagon as if twenty years had been taken from his bones. "I guess I'm too old for such jaunts. I hope you didn't forgit them cats."

AFTER ALL.

"The land o' gracious!" said Mrs. Lothrop Wilson, laying down her "drawing-in hook" on the rug stretched between two chairs in the middle of the kitchen, and getting up to look from the window. "If there ain't Lucindy comin' out o' the Pitmans' without a thing on her head, an' all them little curls a-flyin'! An' the old Judge ain't cold in his grave!"

"I guess the Judge won't be troubled with cold, any to speak of, arter this," said her husband from the window, where he sat eating his forenoon lunch of apple-pie and cheese. He was a cooper, and perhaps the pleasantest moment in his day was that when he slipped out of his shop, leaving a bit of paper tacked on the door to say he was "on errands," and walked soberly home for his bite and sup. "If he ain't good an' warm about now, then the Scriptur's ain't no more to be depended on than a last year's almanac."

"Late Wilson, I'm ashamed of you," retorted his wife, looking at him with such reproof that, albeit she had no flesh to spare, she made herself a double chin. "An' he your own uncle, too! Well, he _was_ nigh, I'll say that for him; an' if he'd had his way, the sun'd ha' riz an' set when he said the word. But Lucindy's his only darter, an' if she don't so much as pretend to be a mourner, I guess there ain't nobody that will. There! don't you say no more! She's comin' in here!"

A light step sounded on the side piazza, and Lucindy came in, with a little delicate, swaying motion peculiar to her walk. She was a very slender woman, far past middle life, with a thin, smiling face, light blue eyes, shining with an eager brightness, and fine hair, which escaped from its tight twist in little spiral curls about the face.

"How do, Jane?" she said, in an even voice, stirred by a pleasant, reedy thrill. "How do, Lote?"

Lothrop pushed forward a chair, looking at her with an air of great kindliness. There was some slight resemblance between them, but the masculine type seemed entirely lacking in that bright alertness so apparent in her. Mrs. Wilson nodded, and went back to her drawing-in. She was making a very red rose with a pink middle.

"I dunno's I can say I'm surprised to see you, Lucindy," she began, with the duteous aspect of one forced to speak her disapproval, "for I ketched you comin' out o' the Pitmans' yard."

"Yes," said Lucindy, smiling, and plaiting her skirt between her nervous fingers. "Yes, I went in to see if they'd let me take Old Buckskin a spell to-morrow."

"What under the sun--" began Mrs. Wilson; but her husband looked at her, and she stopped. He had become so used to constituting himself Lucindy's champion in the old Judge's day, now just ended, that he kept an unremitting watch on any one who might threaten her peace. But Lucindy evidently guessed at the unspoken question.

"I should have come here, if I'd expected to drive," she said. "But I thought maybe your horse wa'n't much used to women, and I kind o' dreaded to be the first one to try him with a saddle."

Mrs. Wilson put down her hook again, and leaned back in her chair. She looked from her husband to Lucindy, without speaking. But Lucindy went on, with the innocent simplicity of a happy child.

"You know I was always possessed to ride horseback," she said, addressing herself to Lothrop, "and father never would let me. And now he ain't here, I mean to try it, and see if 'tain't full as nice as I thought."

"Lucindy!" burst forth Mrs. Wilson, explosively, "ain't you goin' to pay no respect to your father's memory?"

Lucindy turned to her, smiling still, but with a hint of quizzical shrewdness about her mouth.

"I guess I ain't called on to put myself out," she said, simply, yet not irreverently. "Father had his way in pretty much everything while he was alive. I always made up my mind if I should outlive him, I'd have all the things I wanted then, when young folks want the most. And you know then I couldn't get 'em."

"Well!" said Mrs. Wilson. Her tone spoke volumes of conflicting commentary.

"You got a saddle?" asked Lucindy, turning to her cousin. "I thought I remembered you had one laid away, up attic. I suppose you'd just as soon I'd take it?"

He was neither shocked nor amused. He had been looking at her very sadly, as one who read in every word the entire tragedy of a repressed and lonely life.

"Yes, we have, Lucindy," he said, gently, quieting his wife by a motion of the hand, "but 'tain't what you think. It's a man's saddle. You'd have to set straddle.

"Oh!" said Lucindy, a faint shade of disappointment clouding her face. "Well, no matter! I guess they've got one down to the Mardens'. Jane, should you just as soon come round this afternoon, and look over some bunnit trimmin's with me? I took two kinds of flowers home from Miss West's, and I can't for my life tell which to have."

"Ain't you goin' to wear black?" Mrs. Wilson spoke now in double italics.

"Oh, no! I don't feel called on to do that. I always liked bright colors, and I don't know's 'twould be real honest in me to put on mournin' when I didn't feel it."

"'Honor thy father'--" began Jane, in spite of her husband's warning hand; but Lucindy interrupted her, with some perplexity.

"I have, Jane, I have! I honored father all my life, just as much as ever I could. I done everything he ever told me, little and big! No, though, there's one thing I never fell in with. I did cheat him once. I don't know but I'm sorry for that, now it's all past and gone!"

Her cousin had been drumming absently on the window-sill, but he looked up with awakened interest. Mrs. Wilson, too, felt a wholesale curiosity, and she, at least, saw no reason for curbing it.

"What was it, Lucindy?" she asked. "The old hunks!" she repeated to herself, like an anathema.

Lucindy began her confession, with eyes down-dropped and a faltering voice.

"Father wanted I should have my hair done up tight and firm. So I pretended I done the best I could with it. I told him these curls round my face and down in my neck was too short, and I couldn't pin 'em up. But they wa'n't curls, and they wouldn't ha' been short if I hadn't cut 'em. For every night, and sometimes twice a day, I curled 'em on a pipe-stem."

"Ain't them curls nat'ral, Lucindy?" cried Mrs. Wilson. "Have you been fixin' 'em to blow round your face that way, all these years?"

"I begun when I was a little girl," said Lucindy, guiltily. "It did seem kind o' wrong, but I took real pleasure in it!"

Lothrop could bear no more. He wanted to wipe his eyes, but he chose instead to walk straight out of the room and down to his shop. His wife could only express a part of her amazement by demanding, in a futile sort of way,--

"Where'd you get the pipe?"

"I stole the first one from a hired man we had," said Lucindy, her cheeks growing pink. "Sometimes I had to use slate-pencils."

There was no one else to administer judgment, and Mrs. Wilson felt the necessity.

"Well," she began, "an' you can set there, tellin' that an' smilin'--"

"My smilin' don't mean any more'n some other folks' cryin', I guess," said Lucindy, smiling still more broadly. "I begun that more'n thirty years ago. I looked into the glass one day, and I see the corners of my mouth were goin' down. Sharper 'n, vinegar, I was! So I says to myself, 'I can smile, whether or no. Nobody can't help that!' And I did, and now I guess I don't know when I do it."

"Well!"

Lucindy rose suddenly and brushed her lap, as if she dusted away imaginary cares.

"There!" she exclaimed, "I've said more this mornin' than I have for forty year! Don't you lead me on to talk about what's past and gone! The only thing is, I mean to have a good time now, what there is left of it. Some things you can't get back, and some you can. Well, you step round this afternoon, won't you?"

"I dunno's I can. John's goin' to bring Claribel up, to spend the arternoon an' stay to supper."

"Why, dear heart! that needn't make no difference. I should admire to have her, too. I'll show her some shells and coral I found this mornin', up attic."

Lucindy had almost reached the street when she turned, as with a sudden resolution, and retraced her steps.

"Jane," she called, looking in at the kitchen window. "It's a real bright day, pretty as any 't ever I see. Don't you worry for fear o' my disturbin' them that's gone, if I do try to ketch at somethin' pleasant. If they're wiser now, I guess they'll be glad I had sense enough left to do it!"

That afternoon, Mrs. Wilson, in her best gingham and checked sunbonnet, took her way along the village street to the old Judge Wilson house. It was a colonial mansion, sitting austerely back in a square yard. In spite of its prosperity, everything about it wore a dreary air, as if it were tired of being too well kept; for houses are like people, and carry their own indefinable atmosphere with them. Mrs. Wilson herself lived on a narrower and more secluded street, though it was said that her husband, if he had not defied the old Judge in some crucial matter, might have studied law with him, and possibly shared his speculations in wool. Then he, too, might have risen to be one of the first men in the county, instead of working, in his moderate fashion, for little more than day's wages. Claribel, a pale, dark-eyed child, also dressed in her best gingham, walked seriously by her grandmother's side. Lucindy was waiting for them at the door.

"I declare!" she called, delightedly. "I was 'most afraid you'd forgot to come! Well, Claribel, if you 'ain't grown! They'll have to put a brick on your head, or you'll be taller'n grandma."

Claribel submitted to be kissed, and they entered the large, cool sitting-room, where they took off their things.

"You make yourself at home, Jane," said Lucindy, fluttering about, in pleasant excitement. "I ain't goin' to pay you a mite of attention till I see Claribel fixed. Now, Claribel, remember! you can go anywheres you're a mind to. And you can touch anything there is. You won't find a thing a little girl can hurt. Here, you come here where I be, and look across the entry. See that big lamp on the table? Well, if you unhook them danglin' things and peek through 'em, you'll find the brightest colors! My, how pretty they be! I've been lookin' through 'em this mornin'. I used to creep in and do it when I was little," she continued, in an aside to Mrs. Wilson. "Once I lost one." A strange look settled on her face; she was recalling a bitter experience. "There!" she said, releasing Claribel with a little hug, "now run along! If you look on the lower shelf of the what-not, you'll see some shells and coral I put there for just such a little girl."

Claribel walked soberly away to her playing.

"Don't you hurt nothin'!" called Mrs. Wilson; and Claribel responded properly,--

"No, 'm."

"There!" said Lucindy, watching the precise little back across the hall, "Now le's talk a mite about vanity. You reach me that green box behind your chair. Here's the best flowers Miss West had for what I wanted. Here's my bunnit, too. You see what you think."

She set the untrimmed bonnet on her curls, and laid first a bunch of bright chrysanthemums against it, and then some strange lavender roses. The roses turned her complexion to an ivory whiteness, and her anxious, intent expression combined strangely with that undesirable effect.