Chapter 8

"I'm goin'," said the man, breathing hard as he spoke, "I'm goin' away from here tonight. They never'll take me alive. It was this way. There was a man over where I lived that's most drunk himself under ground, but he ain't too fur gone to do mischief. He told a lie about me, an' lost me my place in the shoe shop. Then one night, I met him goin' home, an' we had words. I struck him. He fell like an ox. I killed him. I didn't go home no more. I didn't even see my wife. I couldn't tell her. I couldn't be took _there_. So I run away. An' when I got starved out, an' my feet were most froze walkin', I see this house, all shet up, an' I come here."

He paused; and the silence was broken only by the slow, cosey ticking of the liberated clock.

"Well!" said Mrs. Wadleigh, at last, in a ruminating tone. "Well! well! Be you a drinkin' man?"

"I never was till I lost my job," he answered, sullenly. "I had a little then. I had a little the night he sassed me."

"Well! well!" said Mrs. Wadleigh, again. And then she continued, musingly: "So I s'pose you're Joe Mellen, an' the man you struck was Solomon Ray?"

He came to his feet with a spring.

"How'd you know?" he shouted.

"Law! I've been visitin' over Hillside way!" said Mrs. Wadleigh, comfortably. "You couldn't ha' been very smart not to thought o' that when I mentioned my darter Lucy, an' where the childern went to school. No smarter'n you was to depend on that old wooden button! I know all about that drunken scrape. But the queerest part on't was--Solomon Ray didn't die!"

"Didn't die!" the words halted, and he dragged them forth. "Didn't die?"

"Law, no! you can't kill a Ray! They brought him to, an' fixed him up in good shape. I guess you mellered him some, but he's more scairt than hurt. He won't prosecute. You needn't be afraid. He said he dared you to it. There, there now! I wouldn't. My sake alive! le' me git a light!"

For the stranger sat with his head bowed on the table, and he trembled like a child.

Next morning at eight o'clock, Mrs. Wadleigh was standing at the door, in the sparkling light, giving her last motherly injunction to the departing guest.

"You know where the depot is? An' it's the nine o'clock train you've got to take. An' you remember what I said about hayin' time. If you don't have no work by the middle o' May, you drop me a line, an' perhaps I can take you an' your wife, too; Lucy's childern al'ays make a sight o' work. You keep that bill safe, an'--Here, wait a minute! You might stop at Cyrus Pendleton's--it's the fust house arter you pass; the corner--an' ask 'em to put a sparerib an' a pat o' butter into the sleigh, an' ride over here to dinner. You tell 'em I'm as much obleeged to 'em for sendin' over last night to see if I was alive, as if I hadn't been so dead with sleep I couldn't say so. Good-bye! Now, you mind you keep tight hold o' that bill, an', spend it prudent!"

"Is Kelup Rivers comin' over here to-night?" suddenly asked Aunt Melissa Adams, peering over her gold-bowed glasses, and fixing her small shrewd eyes sharply upon her niece.

Amanda did not look up from her fine hemming, but her thin hand trembled almost imperceptibly, and she gave a little start, as if such attacks were not altogether unexpected.

"I don't know," she answered, in a low tone.

"Dunno! why don't ye know?" said her aunt, beginning to sway back and forth in the old-fashioned rocking-chair, but not once dropping her eyes from Amanda's face. "Don't he come every Saturday night?"

Amanda took another length, of thread, and this time her hand really shook.

"I guess so," she answered.

"You guess so? Don't ye know? An' if he's come every Saturday night for fifteen year, ain't he comin' to-night? I dunno what makes you act as if you wa'n't sure whether your soul's your own, 'Mandy Green. My dander al'ays rises when I ask you a civil question an' you put on that look."

Amanda bent more closely over her sewing. She was a woman of thirty-five, with a pathetically slender figure, thin blond hair painstakingly crimped, and anxious blue eyes. Something deprecating lay in her expression; her days had been uncomplainingly sacrificed to the comfort of those she loved, and the desire of peace and good-will had crept into her face and stayed there. Her mother, who looked even slighter than she, and whose cheeks were puckered by wrinkles, sat by the window watching the two with a smile of empty content. Old Lady Green had lost her mind, said the neighbors; but she was sufficiently like her former self to be a source of unspeakable joy and comfort to Amanda, who nursed and petted her as if their positions were reversed, and protected her from the blunt criticism of the literal-tongued neighborhood with a reverential awe belonging to the old days when the fifth commandment was written and obeyed.

"Gold-bowed," said Mrs. Green, with a look of unalloyed delight, pointing to her sister-in-law's spectacles; and Aunt Melissa repeated indulgently,--

"Yes, yes, gold-bowed. I'll let you take 'em a spell, arter I've set my heel. It'll please her, poor creatur'!" she added, in an audible aside to Amanda. Since the time when Mrs. Green's wits had ceased to work normally, she had treated her sympathetically, but from a lofty eminence. Aunt Melissa was perhaps too prosperous. She sat there, swaying back and forth, in her thin black silk trimmed with narrow rows of velvet, her heavy chin sunk upon a broad collar, worked in her youth, and she seemed to Mrs. Green a vision of majesty and delight, but to Amanda a virtuous censor, necessarily to be obeyed, yet whose presence made the summer day intolerable. Even her purple cap-ribbons bespoke terror to the evil-doer, and her heavy face was set, as a judgment, toward the doom of the man who knew not how to account for his actions. She began speaking again, and Amanda involuntarily gave a little start, as at a lightning flash.

"I says to myself when I drove off, this mornin': 'I'll have a little talk with 'Mandy. I don' go there to spend a day more'n four times a year, an' like as not she'll be glad to have somebody to speak to, seen' 's her mother's how she is.'"

Amanda gave a quick look at Mrs. Green; but the old lady was busily pleating the hem of her apron and then smoothing it out again. Aunt Melissa rocked, and went on:--

"I says to myself: 'Here they let Kelup carry on the farm at the halves, an' go racin' an' trottin' from the other place over here day in an' day out. An' when his Uncle Nat died, two year ago, then was the time for him to come over here an' marry 'Mandy an' carry on the farm. But no, he'd rather hang round the old place, an' sleep in the ell-chamber, an' do their chores for his board, an' keep on a-runnin' over here.' An' when young Nat married, I says to myself, 'That'll make him speak.' But it didn't--an' you 're a laughin'-stock, 'Mandy Green, if ever there was one. Every time the neighbors see him steppin' by Saturday nights, all fixed up, with that brown coat on he's had sence the year one, they have suthin' to say, 'Goin' over to 'Mandy's,' that's what they say. An' on'y last Saturday one on 'em hollered out to me, when I was pickin' a mess o' pease for Sunday, 'Wonder what 'Mandy'll answer when he gits round to askin' of her?' I hadn't a word to say. 'You better go to _him_,' says I, at last."

Amanda had put down her sewing in her lap, and was looking steadfastly out of the window, with eyes brimmed by two angry tears. Once she wiped them with a furtive movement of the white garment in her lap; her cheeks were crimson. Aunt Melissa had lashed herself into a cumulative passion of words.

"An' I says to myself, 'If there ain't nobody else to speak to 'Mandy, I will,' I says, when I was combin' my hair this mornin'. 'She 'ain't got no mother,' I says, 'nor as good as none, an' if she 'ain't spunk enough to look out for herself, somebody's got to look out for her.' An' then it all come over me--I'd speak to Kelup himself, an' bein' Saturday night, I knew I should ketch him here."

"O Aunt Melissa!" gasped Amanda, "you wouldn't do that!"

"Yes, I would, too!" asserted Aunt Melissa, setting her firm lips. "You see if I don't, an' afore another night goes over my head!"

But while Amanda was looking at her, paralyzed with the certainty that no mortal aid could save her from this dire extremity, there came an unexpected diversion. Old Lady Green spoke out clearly and decidedly from her corner, in so rational a voice that it seemed like one calling from the dead.

"'Mandy, what be you cryin' for? You come here an' tell me what 'tis, an' I'll see to't. You'll spile your eyes, 'Mandy, if you take on so."

"There, there, ma'am! 'tain't anything," said Amanda, hurrying over to her chair and patting her on the shoulder. "We was just havin' a little spat,--Aunt Melissa an' me; but we've got all over it. Don't you want to knit on your garter a little while now?"

But the old lady kept her glazed eyes fixed on Amanda's face.

"Be you well to-day, 'Mandy?" she said, wistfully. "If you ain't well, you must take suthin'."

"There, there! don't you make a to-do, an' she'll come round all right," said Aunt Melissa, moving her chair about so that it faced the old lady. "I'll tell her suthin' to take up her mind a little." And she continued, in the loud voice which was her concession to Mrs. Green's feebleness of intellect, "They've got a boarder over to the Blaisdells'."

Mrs. Green sat up straight in her chair, smoothed her apron, and looked at her sister with grateful appreciation.

"Do tell!" she said, primly.

"Yes, they have. Name's Chapman. They thought he was a book agent fust. But he's buyin' up old dishes an' all matter o' truck. He wanted my andirons, an' I told him if I hadn't got a son in a Boston store, he might ha' come round me, but I know the vally o' things now. You don't want to sell them blue coverlids o' yourn, do ye?"

Aunt Melissa sometimes asked the old lady questions from a sense of the requirements of conversation, and she was invariably startled when they elicited an answer.

"Them coverlids I wove myself, fifty-five years ago come next spring," said Mrs. Green, firmly. "Sally Ann Mason an' me used to set up till the clock struck twelve that year, spinnin' an' weavin'. Then we had a cup or two o' green tea, an' went to bed."

"Well, you wove 'em, an' you don't want to sell 'em," said Aunt Melissa, her eyes on her work. "If you do, 'Lijah he'll take 'em right up to Boston for you, an' I warrant he'll git you a new white spread for every one on 'em."

"That was the year afore I was married," continued Old Lady Green. "I had a set o' white chiny with lavender sprigs, an' my dress was changeable. He had a flowered weskit. 'Mandy, you go into the clo'es-press in my bedroom an' git out that weskit, an' some o' them quilts, an' my M's an' O's table-cloths."

Amanda rose and hurried into the bedroom, in spite of Aunt Melissa's whispered comment: "What makes you go to overhaulin' things? She'll forgit it in a minute."

While she was absent, a smart wagon drove up to the gate, and a young man alighted from it, hitched his horse, and knocked at the front door. Aunt Melissa saw him coming, and peered at him over her glasses with an unrecognizing stare.

"'Mandy!" she called, "'Mandy, here's a pedler or suthin'! If he's got any essences, you ask him for a little bottle o' pep'mint."

Amanda dropped the pile of coverlets on the sofa, and went to the front door. Presently she reappeared, and with her, smoothly talking her down, came the young man. His eyes lighted first on the coverlets, with a look of cheerful satisfaction.

"Got all ready for me, didn't you?" he asked, briskly. "Heard I was coming, I guess."

He was a man of an alert Yankee type, with waxed blond mustache and eye-glasses; he was evidently to be classed among those who have exchanged their country honesty for a veneer of city knowingness.

"For the land's sake!" ejaculated Aunt Melissa, as soon as she had him at short range, "you're the one down to Blaisdell's that's buyin' up all the old truck in the neighborhood. Well, you won't git my andirons!"

He had begun to unfold the blue coverlets and examine them with a practised eye, while Amanda stood by, painfully conscious that some decisive action might be required of her; and her mother sat watching the triumph of her quilts in pleased importance.

"They ain't worth much," he said, dropping them, with a conclusive air. "Fact is, they ain't worth anything, unless any body's got a fancy for such old stuff. I'll tell you what, I'll give you fifty cents apiece for the lot! How many are there here--four? Two dollars, then."

Amanda took a hasty step forward.

"But we don't want to sell our coverlids!" she said, indignantly, casting an appealing glance at Aunt Melissa.

"I guess they don't want to git rid on 'em," said that lady, "'specially at such a price. They're wuth more 'n that to cover up the squashes when the frost comes."

"Mother wove 'em herself," exclaimed Amanda, irrelevantly. It began to seem to her as if the invader might pack up her mother's treasures and walk off with them.

"Well, then, I s'pose they're hers to do as she likes with?" he said, pleasantly, tipping back, in his chair, and beginning to pare his nails with an air of nicety that fascinated Amanda into watching him. "They're hers, I s'pose?" he continued, looking suddenly and keenly up at her.

"Why, yes," she answered, "they're mother's, but she don't want to sell. She sets by 'em."

"Just like me, for all the world," owned the stranger, "Now there's plenty of folks that wouldn't care a Hannah Cook about such old truck, but it just hits me in the right spot. Mother's doughnuts, mother's mince-pies, I say! Can't improve on _them_! And when my wife and I bought our little place, I said to her, 'We'll have it all furnished with old-fashioned goods.' And here I am, taking, time away from my business, riding round the country, and paying good money for what's no use to anybody but me."

"What is your business?" interrupted Aunt Melissa.

"Oh, insurance--a little of everything--Jack-of-all-trades!" Then he turned to Old Mrs. Green, and asked, abruptly, "What'll you take for that clock?"

The old lady followed his alert forefinger until her eyes rested on the tall eight-day clock in the corner. She straightened herself in her chair, and spoke with pride:--

"That was Jonathan's gre't-uncle Samwell's. He wound it every Sunday night, reg'lar as the day come round. I've rubbed that case up till I sweat like rain. 'Mandy she rubs it now."

"Well, what'll you take?" persisted he, while Amanda, in wordless protest, stepped in front of the clock. "Five dollars?"

"Five dollars," repeated the old lady, lapsing into senseless iteration. "Yes, five dollars."

But Aunt Melissa came to the rescue.

"Five dollars for that clock?" she repeated, winding her ball, and running the needles into it with a conclusive stab. "Well, I guess there ain't any eight-day clocks goin' out o' _this_ house for five dollars, if they go at all! 'Mandy, why don't you speak up, an' not stand there like a chicken with the pip?"

"Oh, all right, all right!" said the visitor, shutting his knife with a snap, and getting briskly on his feet. "I don't care much about buying. That ain't a particularly good style of clock, anyway. But I like old things. I may drop in again, just to take a look at 'em. I suppose you're always at home?" he said to Amanda, with his hand on the door.

"Yes; but sometimes I go to Sudleigh with butter. I go Monday afternoons most always, after washin'."

With a cheerful good-day he was gone, and Amanda drew a long breath of relief.

"Well, some folks have got enough brass to line a kittle," said Aunt Melissa, carefully folding her knitting-work in a large silk handkerchief. "'Mandy, you'll have to git supper a little earlier'n common for me. I told Hiram to come by half arter six. Do you s'pose Kelup'll be round by that time? I'll wait all night afore I'll give up seein' him."

"I don't know, Aunt Melissa," said Amanda, nervously clearing the table of its pile of snowy cloth, and taking a flying glance from the window. She looked like a harassed animal, hunted beyond its endurance; but suddenly a strange light of determination flashed into her face. "Should you just as lieves set the table," she asked, in a tone of guilty consciousness, "while I start the kitchen fire? You know where things are." Hardly waiting for an assent, she fled from the room, and once in the kitchen, laid the fire in haste, with a glance from the window to accompany every movement. Presently, by a little path through the field, came a stocky man in blue overalls and the upper garment known as a jumper. He was bound for the pigpen in the rear of the barn; and there Amanda flew to meet him, stopping only to throw an apron over her head. They met at the door. He was a fresh-colored man, with honest brown eyes and a ring of whiskers under the chin. He had a way of blushing, and when Amanda came upon him thus unannounced, he colored to the eyes.

"Why, you're all out o' breath!" he said, in slow alarms.

"O Caleb!" she cried, looking at him with imploring eyes. "I'll feed the pigs to-night."

Caleb regarded her in dull wonderment. Then he set down the pail he had taken.

"Ain't there any taters to bile?" he asked, solving the difficulty in his own way; "or 'ain't you skimmed the milk? I'd jest as soon wait."

"You better not wait," answered Amanda, almost passionately, her thin hair blowing about her temples. "You better go right back. I'd ruther do it myself; I'd a good deal ruther."

Caleb turned about. He took a few steps, then stopped, and called hesitatingly over his shoulder, "I thought maybe I'd come an' set a spell to-night."

Then, indeed, Amanda felt her resolution, crack and quiver. "I guess you better come some other night," she said, in a steady voice, though her face was wet with tears. And Caleb walked away, never once looking back. Amanda stayed only to wipe her eyes, saying meanwhile to her sorry self, "Oh, I dunno how I can get along! I dunno!" Then she hurried back to the house, to find the kettle merrily singing, and Aunt Melissa standing at the kitchen cupboard, looking critically up and down the shelves.

"If you've got two sets o' them little gem-pans, you might lend me one," she remarked; and Amanda agreed, not knowing what she gave.

The supper was eaten and the dishes were washed, Aunt Melissa meantime keeping a strict watch from the window.

"Is it time for Kelup?" she asked, again and again; and finally she confronted the guilty Amanda with the challenge, "Do you think Kelup ain't comin'?"

"I--guess not," quavered Amanda, her cheeks scarlet, and her small, pathetic hands trembling. She was not more used to _finesse_ than to heroic action.

"Do you s'pose there's any on 'em sick down to young Nat's?" asked Aunt Melissa; and Amanda was obliged to take recourse again to her shielding "I guess not." But at length Uncle Hiram drove up in the comfortable carry-all; and though his determined spouse detained him more than three-quarters of an hour, sitting beside him like a portly Rhadamanthus, and scanning the horizon for the Caleb who never came, he finally rebelled, shook the reins, and drove off, Aunt Melissa meantime screaming over her shoulder certain vigorous declarations, which evidently began with the phrase, "You tell Kelup--"

Then Amanda went into the house, and sat down by the window in the gathering dusk, surveying the wreckage of her dream. The dream was even more precious in that it had grown so old. Caleb was a part of her every-day life, and for fifteen years Saturday had brought a little festival, wherein the commonplace man with brown eyes had been high-priest. He would not come to-night. Perhaps he never would come again. She knew what it was to feel widowed.

Sunday passed; and though Caleb fed the pigs and did the barn-work as usual, he spoke but briefly. Even in his customary salutation of "How dee?" Amanda detected a change of tone, and thereafter took flight whenever she heard his step at the kitchen door. So Monday forenoon passed; Caleb brought water for her tubs and put out her clothes-line, but they had hardly spoken. The intangible monster of a misunderstanding had crept between them. But when at noon he asked as usual, though without looking at her, "Goin' to Sudleigh with the butter to-day?" Amanda had reached the limit of her endurance. It seemed to her that she could no longer bear this formal travesty of their old relations, and she answered in haste,--

"No, I guess not."

"Then you don't want I should set with your mother?"

"No!" And again Caleb turned away, and plodded soberly off to young Nat's.

"I guess I must be crazy," groaned poor Amanda, as she changed her washing-dress for her brown cashmere. "The butter's got to go, an' now I shall have to harness, an' leave ma'am alone. Oh, I wish Aunt Melissa'd never darkened these doors!"

Everything went wrong with Amanda, that day. The old horse objected to the bits, and occupied twenty minutes in exasperating protest; the wheels had to be greased, and she lost a butter-napkin in the well. Finally, breathless with exertion, she went in to bid her mother good-by, and see that the matches were hidden and the cellar door fastened.

"Now, ma'am," she said, standing over the little old woman and speaking with great distinctness, "don't you touch the stove, will you? You jest set right here in your chair till I come back, an' I'll bring you a good parcel o' pep'-mints. Here's your garter to knit on, an' here's the almanac. Don't you stir now till I come."

And so, with many misgivings, she drove away.

When, Amanda came back, she did not stay to unharness, but hurried up to the kitchen door, and called, "You all right, ma'am?" There was no answer, and she stepped hastily across the floor. As she opened the sitting-room door, a low moaning struck her ear. The old lady sat huddled together in, her chair, groaning at intervals, and looking fixedly at the corner of the room.

"O ma'am, what is it? Where be you hurt?" cried Amanda, possessed by an anguish of self-reproach. But the old lady only continued her moaning; and then it was that Amanda noticed her shrivelled and shaking fingers tightly clasped upon a roll of money in her lap.

"Why, ma'am, what you got?" she cried; but even as she spoke, the explanation flashed upon her, and she looked up at the corner of the room. The eight-day clock was gone.

"Here, ma'am, you let me have it," she said, soothingly; and by dint of further coaxing, she pulled the money from the old lady's tense fingers. There were nine dollars in crisp new bills. Amanda sat looking at them in unbelief and misery.

"O my!" she whispered, at length, "what a world this is! Ma'am, did you tell him he might have 'em?"

"I dunno what Jonathan'll do without that clock," moaned the old lady. "I see it carried off myself."

"Did you tell him he might?" cried Amanda, loudly.

"I dunno but I did, but I never'd ha' thought he'd ha' done it. I dunno what time 'tis now;" and she continued her low-voiced lamenting.

"O my Lord!" uttered Amanda, under her breath. Then she roused herself to the present exigency of comfort. "You come an' set in the kitchen a spell," she said, coaxingly, "an' I'll go an' get the things back."

Old Lady Green looked at her with that unquestioning trust which was the most pathetic accompaniment of her state. "You'll git 'em back, 'Mandy, won't ye?" she repeated, smiling a little and wiping her eyes. "That's a good gal! So't we can tell what time 'tis."