Chapter 10

At first, after closing the door behind her, she felt only the great blessedness of being alone. She put out the light and threw herself, as she was, face downwards on the bed. There she lay for long moments, suffering; and this was one of the few times in her life when she was forced to feel that human pain which is like a stab in the heart. For she was one of those wise creatures who give themselves long spaces of silence, and so heal them quickly of their wounds, like the sage little animals that slip away from combat, to cure their hurt with leaves. Presently, a great sense of rest enfolded her, a rest ineffably precious because it was so soon to be over. It was like great riches lent only for a time. Outside this familiar quiet was the world, thrilled by a terrifying life pressing upon her and calling. She longed to put her hands before her eyes, and shut out the possibility of meeting its garish glory; she did cover her ears, lest its cry should pierce them and she could not resist. And so she lay there shivering, until a strange inviting that was peace and not commotion seemed to approach her from another side, and her inner self became conscious of unheard voices. They were not clamorous, but sweet, and they drowned her will, and drew her to themselves. She got softly up, and, going to the darkened window, looked out across the orchard. There, in the greenness, lay the old house. It called on her to come. It seemed to Dilly that she could not make haste enough to be there. She slipped softly down the narrow stairway, and across the kitchen, where the shadows of the moonlit windows lay upon the floor. A great excitement thrilled her blood; and though quite safe from discovery, she was not wholly at ease until she had entered the orchard path, and knew her feet were wet with dew, and heard the whippoorwill, so near now that she might have startled him from his neighboring tree. No other bird note could have fitted her mood so well. The wild melancholy of his tone, his home in the night, and the omens blended with his song seemed to remove him from the world as she herself was removed; and she hastened on with a fine exaltation, fitted her key again in the lock, and shut the door behind her.

As soon as Dilly had entered the sitting-room where the old desk stood in its place, and the clock was ticking, she felt as if all her confusion and trouble were over. She smiled to herself in the darkness. She had come home, and it was very good. They had begun with the attic, in their rearranging, and this room remained unchanged. It had been her wish to keep it, in its sweet familiarity, unaltered till the last. She drew forward her father's chair, and sat down in it, with luxurious abandonment, to rest. Her mother's little cricket was by her side, and she put her feet on it and exhaled a long sigh of content.

Her eyes rested on the dark cavern which was the fireplace; and there fell upon her a sweet sense of completed bliss, as if it were alight and she could watch the dancing flames. And suddenly Dilly was aware that the Joyces were all about her.

She had been sure, in her coming through the woods, that they knew and cared; now she was certain that, in some fashion, they recognized their bondage and loyalty to the place, as she recognized her own, and that they upheld her to her task. She thought them over, as she sat there, and saw their souls more keenly than if she had met them, men and women, face to face. There was the shoemaker among them, who, generations back, was sitting on his bench when news came of the battle of Lexington, and who threw down hammer and last, and ran wildly out into the woods, where he stayed three days and nights, calling with a loud voice upon Almighty God to save him from ill-doing. Then he had drowned himself in a little brook too shallow for the death of any but a desperate man. He had been the disgrace of the Joyces; they dared not think of him, and they know, even to this day, that he is remembered among their townsmen as the Joyce who was a coward, and killed himself rather than go to war. But here he stood--was it the man, or some secret intelligence of him?--and Dilly, out of all his race, was the one to comprehend him. She saw, with a thrill of passionate sympathy, how he had believed with all his soul in the wickedness of war, and how the wound to his country so roused in him the desire of blood that he fled away and prayed his God to save him from mortal guilt,--and how, finding that he saw with an overwhelming delight the red of anticipated slaughter, and knew his traitorous feet were bearing him to the ranks, he chose the death of the body rather than sin against the soul. And Dilly was glad; the blood in her own veins ran purer for his sake.

There was old Delilah Joyce, who went into a decline for love, and wasted quite away. She had been one of those tragic fugitives on the island of being, driven out into the storm of public sympathy to be beaten and undone; for she was left on her wedding day by her lover, who vowed he loved her no more. But now Dilly saw her without the pathetic bravery of her silken gown which was never worn, and knew her for a woman serene and glad. That very day she had unfolded the gown in the attic, where it had lain, year upon year, wrapped about by the poignant sympathy of her kin, a perpetual reminder of the hurts and faithlessness of life. It had become a relic, set aside from modern use. She felt now as if she could even wear it herself, though silk was not for her, or deck some little child in its shot and shimmering gayety. For it came to her, with a glad rush of acquiescent joy, that all his life, the man, though blinded by illusion, had been true to her whom he had left; and that, instead of being poor, she was very rich. It was from that moment that Dilly began to understand that the soul does not altogether weld its own bonds, but that they lie in the secret core of things, as the planet rushes on its appointed way.

There was Annette Joyce, who married a Stackpole, and to the disgust of her kin, clung to him through one debauch after another, until the world found out that Annette "couldn't have much sense of decency herself, or she wouldn't put up with such things." But on this one night Dilly found out that Annette's life had been a continual laying hold of Eternal Being, not for herself, but for the creature she loved; that she had shown the insolence and audacity of a thousand spirits in one, besieging high heaven and crying in the ear of God: "I demand of Thee this soul that Thou hast made." And somehow Dilly knew now that she was of those who overcome.

So the line stretched on, until she was aware of souls of which she had never heard; and she knew that, faulty as their deeds might be, they had striven, and the strife was not in vain. She felt herself to be one drop in a mighty river, flowing into the water which is the sum of life; and she was content to be absorbed in that great stream. There was human comfort in the moment, too; for all about her were those whom she had seen with her bodily eyes, and their presence brought an infinite cheer and rest. Dilly felt the safety of the universe; she smiled lovingly over the preciousness of all its homely ways. She thought of the twilights when she had sat on the doorstone, eating huckleberries and milk, and seeing the sun drop down the west; she remembered one night when her little cat came home, after it had been lost, and felt the warm touch of its fur against her hand. She saw how the great chain of things is held by such slender links, and how there is nothing that is not most sacred and most good. The hum of summer life outside the window seemed to her the life in her own veins, and she knew that nothing dwells apart from anything else, and that, whether we wot of it or not, we are of one blood.

The night went on to that solemn hush that comes before the dawn. Dilly felt the presence of the day, and what it would demand of her; but now she did not fear. For Jethro, too, had been with her; and at last she understood his power over her and could lay it away like a jewel in a case, a precious thing, and yet not to be worn. She saw him, also, in his stream of being, as she was swept along through hers, and knew how that old race had given him a beauty which was not his, but theirs,--and how, in the melancholy of his eyes, she loved a soul long passed, and in the wonder of his hand the tender lines of other hands, waving to fiery action. He was an inheritor; and she had loved, not him, but his inheritance.

Now it was the later dusk of night, and the cocks crowed loudly in a clear diminuendo, dying far away. Dilly pressed her hands upon her eyes, and came awake to the outer world. She looked about the room with a warm smile, and reviewed, in feeling, her happy night. It was no longer hard to dismantle the place. The room, the house, the race were hers forever; she had learned the abidingness of what is real. When she closed the door behind her, she touched the casing as if she loved it, and, crossing the orchard, she felt as if all the trees could say: "We know, you and we!" As she entered the Pike farmyard, Eli was just going to milking, with clusters of shining pails.

"You're up early," said he. "Well, there's nothin' like the mornin'!"

"No," answered Dilly, smiling at him with the radiance of one who carries good news, "except night-time! There's a good deal in that!" And while Eli went gravely on, pondering according to his wont, she ran up to smooth her tumbled bed.

After breakfast, while Mrs. Pike was carrying away the dishes, Dilly called Jethro softly to one side.

"You come out in the orchard. I want to speak to you."

Her voice thrilled with something like the gladness of confidence, and Jethro's own face brightened. Dilly read that vivid anticipation, and caught her breath. Though she knew it now, the old charm would never be quite gone. She took his hand and drew him forward. She seemed like a child, unaffected and not afraid. Out in the path, under the oldest tree of all, she dropped his hand and faced him.

"Jethro," she said, "we can't do it. We can't get married."

He looked at her amazed. She seemed to be telling good news instead of bad. She gazed up at him smilingly. He could not understand.

"Don't you care about me?" he asked at length, haltingly; and again Dilly smiled at him in the same warm confidence.

"Oh, yes," she said eagerly. "I do care, ever and ever so much. But it's your folks I care about. It ain't you. I've found it all out, Jethro. Things don't al'ays belong to us. Sometimes they belong to them that have gone before; an' half the time we don't know it."

Jethro laid a gentle hand upon her arm. "You're all tired out," he said soothingly. "Now you give up picking over things, and let me hire somebody. I'll be glad to."

But Dilly withdrew a little from his touch. "You're real good, Jethro," she answered steadily. She had put aside her exaltation, and was her old self, full of common-sense and kindly strength. "But I don't feel tired, an' I ain't a mite crazed. All you can do is to ride over to town with Eli--he's goin' after he feeds the pigs--an' take the cars from there. It's all over, Jethro. It is, truly. I ain't so sorry as I might be; for it's borne in on me you won't care this way long. An' you needn't, dear; for nothin' between us is changed a mite. The only trouble is, it ain't the kind of thing we thought."

She looked in his eyes with a long, bright farewell glance, and turned away. She had left behind her something which was very fine and beautiful; but she could not mourn. And all that morning, about the house, she sang little snatches of song, and was content. The Joyces had done their work, and she was doing hers.

THE WAY OF PEACE

It was two weeks after her mother's funeral when Lucy Ann Cummings sat down and considered. The web of a lifelong service and devotion still clung about her, but she was bereft of the creature for whom it had been spun. Now she was quite alone, save for her two brothers and the cousins who lived in other townships, and they all had homes of their own. Lucy Ann sat still, and thought about her life. Brother Ezra and brother John would be good to her. They always had been. Their solicitude redoubled with her need, and they had even insisted on leaving Annabel, John's daughter, to keep her company after the funeral. Lucy Ann thought longingly of the healing which lay in the very loneliness of her little house; but she yielded, with a patient sigh. John and Ezra were men-folks, and doubtless they knew best. A little more than a week had gone when school "took up," rather earlier than had been intended, and Annabel went away in haste, to teach. Then Lucy Ann drew her first long breath. She had resisted many a kindly office from her niece, with the crafty innocence of the gentle who can only parry and never thrust. When Annabel wanted to help in packing away grandma's things, aunt Lucy agreed, half-heartedly, and then deferred the task from day to day. In reality, Lucy Ann never meant to pack them away at all. She could not imagine her home without them; but that, Annabel would not understand, and her aunt pushed aside the moment, reasoning that something is pretty sure to happen if you put things off long enough. And something did; Annabel went away. It was then that Lucy Ann took a brief draught of the cup of peace.

Long before her mother's death, when they both knew how inevitably it was coming, Lucy Ann had, one day, a little shock of surprise. She was standing before the glass, coiling her crisp gray hair, and thinking over and over the words the doctor had used, the night before, when he told her how near the end might be. Her delicate face fell into deeper lines. Her mouth dropped a little at the corners; her faded brown eyes were hot with tears, and stopping to wipe them, she caught sight of herself in the glass.

"Why," she said aloud, "I look jest like mother!"

And so she did, save that it was the mother of five years ago, before disease had corroded the dear face, and patience wrought its tracery there.

"Well," she continued, smiling a little at the poverty of her state, "I shall be a real comfort to me when mother's gone!"

Now that her moment of solitude had struck, grief came also. It glided in, and sat down by her, to go forth no more, save perhaps under its other guise of a patient hope. She rocked back and forth in her chair, and moaned a little to herself.

"Oh, I never can bear it!" she said pathetically, under her breath. "I never can bear it in the world!"

The tokens of illness were all put away. Her mother's bedroom lay cold in an unsmiling order. The ticking of the clock emphasized the inexorable silence of the house. Once Lucy Ann thought she heard a little rustle and stir. It seemed the most natural thing in the world, coming from the bedroom, where one movement of the clothes had always been enough to summon her with flying feet. She caught her breath, and held it, to listen. She was ready, undisturbed, for any sign. But a great fly buzzed drowsily on the pane, and the fire crackled with accentuated life. She was quite alone. She put her hand to her heart, in that gesture of grief which is so entirely natural when we feel the stab of destiny; and then she went wanly into the sitting-room, looking about her for some pretense of duty to solace her poor mind. There again she caught sight of herself in the glass.

"Oh, my!" breathed Lucy Ann. Low as they were, the words held a fullness, of joy.

Her face had been aging through these days of grief; it had grown more and more like her mother's. She felt as if a hand had been stretched out to her, holding a gift, and at that moment something told her how to make the gift enduring. Running over to the little table where her mother's work-basket stood, as it had been, undisturbed, she took out a pair of scissors, and went back to the glass. There she let down her thick gray hair, parted it carefully on the sides, and cut off lock after lock about her face. She looked a caricature of her sober self. But she was well used to curling hair like this, drawing its crisp silver into shining rings; and she stood patiently before the glass and coaxed her own locks into just such fashion as had framed the older face. It was done, and Lucy Ann looked at herself with a smile all suffused by love and longing. She was not herself any more; she had gone back a generation, and chosen a warmer niche. She could have kissed her face in the glass, it was so like that other dearer one. She did finger the little curls, with a reminiscent passion, not daring to think of the darkness where the others had been shut; and, at that instant, she felt very rich. The change suggested a more faithful portraiture, and she went up into the spare room and looked through the closet where her mother's clothes had been hanging so long, untouched. Selecting a purple thibet, with a little white sprig, she slipped off her own dress, and stepped into it. She crossed a muslin kerchief on her breast, and pinned it with the cameo her mother had been used to wear. It was impossible to look at herself in the doing; but when the deed was over, she went again to the glass and stood there, held by a wonder beyond her will. She had resurrected the creature she loved; this was an enduring portrait, perpetuating, in her own life, another life as well.

"I'll pack away my own clo'es to-morrer," said Lucy Ann to herself. "Them are the ones to be put aside."

She went downstairs, hushed and tremulous, and seated herself again, her thin hands crossed upon her lap; and there she stayed, in a pleasant dream, not of the future, and not even of the past, but face to face with a recognition of wonderful possibilities. She had dreaded her loneliness with the ache that is despair; but she was not lonely any more. She had been allowed to set up a little model of the tabernacle where she had worshiped; and, having that, she ceased to be afraid. To sit there, clothed in such sweet familiarity of line and likeness, had tightened her grasp upon the things that are. She did not seem to herself altogether alive, nor was her mother dead.

They had been fused, by some wonderful alchemy; and instead of being worlds apart, they were at one. So, John Cummings, her brother, stepping briskly in, after tying his horse at the gate, came upon her unawares, and started, with a hoarse, thick cry. It was in the dusk of evening; and, seeing her outline against the window, he stepped back against the wall and leaned there a moment, grasping at the casing with one hand. "Good God!" he breathed, at last, "I thought 't was mother!"

Lucy Ann rose, and went forward to meet him.

"Then it's true," said she. "I'm so pleased. Seems as if I could git along, if I could look a little mite like her."

John stood staring at her, frowning in his bewilderment.

"What have you done to yourself?" he asked. "Put on her clo'es?"

"Yes," said Lucy Ann, "but that ain't all. I guess I do resemble mother, though we ain't any of us had much time to think about it. Well, I _am_ pleased. I took out that daguerreotype she had, down Saltash way, though it don't favor her as she was at the end. But if I can take a glimpse of myself in the glass, now and then, mebbe I can git along."

They sat down together in the dark, and mused over old memories. John had always understood Lucy Ann better than the rest.

When she gave up Simeon Bascom to stay at home with her mother, he never pitied her much; he knew she had chosen the path she loved. The other day, even, some one had wondered that she could have heard the funeral service so unmoved; but he, seeing how her face had seemed to fade and wither at every word, guessed what pain was at her heart. So, though his wife had sent him over to ask how Lucy Ann was getting on, he really found out very little, and felt how painfully dumb he must be when he got home. Lucy Ann was pretty well, he thought he might say. She'd got to looking a good deal like mother.

They took their "blindman's holiday," Lucy Ann once in a while putting a stick on the leaping blaze, and, when John questioned her, giving a low-toned reply. Even her voice had changed. It might have come from that bedroom, in one of the pauses between hours of pain, and neither would have been surprised.

"What makes you burn beech?" asked John, when a shower of sparks came crackling at them.

"I don't know," she answered. "Seems kind o' nat'ral. Some of it got into the last cord we bought, an' one night it snapped out, an' most burnt up mother's nightgown an' cap while I was warmin' 'em. We had a real time of it. She scolded me, an' then she laughed, an' I laughed--an' so, when I see a stick or two o' beech, to-day, I kind o' picked it out a-purpose."

John's horse stamped impatiently from the gate, and John, too, knew it was time to go. His errand was not done, and he balked at it.

"Lucy Ann," said he, with the bluntness of resolve, "what you goin' to do?"

Lucy Ann looked sweetly at him through the dark. She had expected that. She smoothed her mother's dress with one hand, and it gave her courage.

"Do?" said she; "why, I ain't goin' to do nothin'. I've got enough to pull through on."

"Yes, but where you goin' to live?"

"Here."

"Alone?"

"I don't feel so very much alone," said she, smiling to herself. At that moment she did not. All sorts of sweet possibilities had made themselves real. They comforted her, like the presence of love.

John felt himself a messenger. He was speaking for others that with which his soul did not accord.

"The fact is," said he, "they're all terrible set ag'inst it. They say you're gittin' along in years. So you be. So are we all. But they will have it, it ain't right for you to live on here alone. Mary says she should be scairt to death. She wants you should come an' make it your home with us."

"Yes, I dunno but Mary would be scairt," said Lucy Ann placidly. "But I ain't. She's real good to ask me; but I can't do it, no more'n she could leave you an' the children an' come over here to stay with me. Why, John, this is my home!"

Her voice sank upon a note of passion It trembled with memories of dewy mornings and golden eves. She had not grown here, through all her youth and middle life, like moss upon a rock, without fitting into the hollows and softening the angles of her poor habitation. She had drunk the sunlight and the rains of one small spot, and she knew how both would fall. The place, its sky and clouds and breezes, belonged to her: but she belonged to it as well.

John stood between two wills, his own and that of those who had sent him. Left to himself, he would not have harassed her. To him, also, wedded to a hearth where he found warmth and peace, it would have been sweet to live there always, though alone, and die by the light of its dying fire. But Mary thought otherwise, and in matters of worldly judgment he could only yield.

"I don't want you should make a mistake," said he. "Mebbe you an' I don't look for'ard enough. They say you'll repent it if you stay, an' there'll be a hurrah-boys all round. What say to makin' us a visit? That'll kind o' stave it off, an' then we can see what's best to be done."

Lucy Ann put her hands to her delicate throat, where her mother's gold beads lay lightly, with a significant touch. She, like John, had an innate gentleness of disposition. She distrusted her own power to judge.

"Maybe I might," said she faintly. "Oh, John, do you think I've got to?"

"It needn't be for long," answered John briefly, though he felt his eyes moist with pity of her. "Mebbe you could stay a month?"

"Oh, I couldn't do that!" cried Lucy Ann, in wild denial. "I never could in the world. If you'll make it a fortnight, an' harness up yourself, an' bring me home, mebbe I might."