Chapter 14

"If ever I was ashamed, I be now!" continued aunt Ann, still with an expression of settled good-nature, and in a voice all jollity though raised conscientiously to a scolding pitch. "To think I should bring such a creatur' into the world, an' set by to see him treat his own relations like the dirt under his feet!"

Amelia laughed. She was exhilarated by the prospect of company, and this domestic whirlpool had amused her from of old.

"Law, aunt Ann," she said, "you let Amos alone. He and I are old cronies. We understand one another. Here, Amos, catch hold! We shall all get our deaths out here, if we don't do nothin' but stand still and squabble."

The immovable Amos had only been awaiting his cue. He lifted the laden chair with perfect ease to one of the piazza steps, and then to another; when it had reached the top-most level, he dragged it over the sill into the kitchen, and, leaving his mother sitting in colossal triumph by the fire, turned about and took his silent way to the outer world.

"Amos," called aunt Ann, "do you mean to say you're goin' to walk out o' this house without speakin' a civil word to anybody? Do you mean to say that?"

"I don't mean to say nothin'," confided Amos to his worsted muffler, as he took up his goad, and began backing the oxen round.

Undisturbed and not at all daunted by a reply for which she had not even listened, aunt Ann raised her voice in cheerful response: "Well, you be along 'tween three an' four, an' you'll find me ready."

"Mercy, aunt Ann!" said Amelia, beginning to unwind the visitor's wraps, "what makes you keep houndin' Amos that way? If he hasn't spoke for thirty-five years, it ain't likely he's goin' to begin now."

Aunt Ann was looking about her with an expression of beaming delight in unfamiliar surroundings. She laughed a rich, unctuous laugh, and stretched her hands to the blaze.

"Law," she said contentedly, "of course it ain't goin' to do no good. Who ever thought 't would? But I've been at that boy all these years to make him like other folks, an' I ain't goin' to stop now. He never shall say his own mother didn't know her duty towards him. Well, 'Melia, you _air_ kind o' snug here, arter all! Here, you hand me my bag, an' I'll knit a stitch. I ain't a mite cold."

Amelia was bustling about the fire, her mind full of the possibilities of a company dinner.

"How's your limbs?" she asked, while aunt Ann drew out a long stocking, and began to knit with an amazing rapidity of which her fat fingers gave no promise.

"Well, I ain't allowed to forgit 'em very often," she replied comfortably. "Rheumatiz is my cross, an' I've got to bear it. Sometimes I wish 't had gone into my hands ruther 'n my feet, an' I could ha' got round. But there! if 't ain't one thing, it's another. Mis' Eben Smith's got eight young ones down with the whoopin'-cough. Amos dragged me over there yisterday; an' when I heerd 'em tryin' to see which could bark the loudest, I says, 'Give me the peace o' Jerusalem in my own house, even if I don't stir a step for the next five year no more 'n I have for the last.' I dunno what 't would be if I hadn't a darter. I've been greatly blessed."

The talk went on in pleasant ripples, while Amelia moved back and forth from pantry to table. She brought out the mixing-board, and began to put her bread in the pans, while the tin kitchen stood in readiness by the hearth. The sunshine flooded all the room, and lay insolently on the paling fire; the Maltese cat sat in the broadest shaft of all, and, having lunched from her full saucer in the corner, made her second toilet for the day.

"'Melia," said aunt Ann suddenly, looking down over her glasses at the tin kitchen, "ain't it a real cross to bake in that thing?"

"I always had it in mind to buy me a range," answered Amelia reservedly, "but somehow we never got to it."

"That's the only thing I ever had ag'inst John. He was as grand a man as ever was, but he did set everything by such truck. Don't turn out the old things, I say, no more 'n the old folks; but when it comes to makin' a woman stan' quiddlin' round doin' work back side foremost, that beats me."

"He'd have got me a stove in a minute," burst forth Amelia in haste, "only he never knew I wanted it!"

"More fool you not to ha' said so!" commented aunt Ann, unwinding her ball. "Well, I s'pose he would. John wa'n't like the common run o' men. Great strong creatur' he was, but there was suthin' about him as soft as a woman. His mother used to say his eyes'd fill full o' tears when he broke up a settin' hen. He was a good husband to you,--a good provider an' a good friend."

Amelia was putting down her bread for its last rising, and her face flushed.

"Yes," she said gently, "he _was_ good."

"But there!" continued aunt Ann, dismissing all lighter considerations, "I dunno's that's any reason why you should bake in a tin kitchen, nor why you should need to heat up the brick oven every week, when 'twas only done to please him, an' he ain't here to know. Now, 'Melia, le's see what you could do. When you got the range in, 'twould alter this kitchen all over. Why don't you tear down that old-fashioned mantelpiece in the fore-room?"

"I could have a marble one," responded Amelia in a low voice. She had taken her sewing again, and she bent her head over it as if she were ashamed. A flush had risen in her cheeks, and her hand trembled.

"Wide marble! real low down!" confirmed aunt Ann, in a tone of triumph. "So fur as that goes, you could have a marble-top table." She laid down her knitting, and looked about her, a spark of excited anticipation in her eyes. All the habits of a lifetime urged her on to arrange and rearrange, in pursuit of domestic perfection. People used to say, in her first married days, that Ann Doby wasted more time in planning conveniences about her house than she ever saved by them "arter she got 'em." In her active years, she was, in local phrase, "a driver." Up and about early and late, she directed and managed until her house seemed to be a humming hive of industry and thrift. Yet there was never anything too urgent in that sway. Her beaming good-humor acted as a buffer between her and the doers of her will; and though she might scold, she never rasped and irritated. Nor had she really succumbed in the least to the disease which had practically disabled her. It might confine her to a chair and render her dependent upon the service of others, but over it, also, was she spiritual victor. She could sit in her kitchen and issue orders; and her daughter, with no initiative genius of her own, had all aunt Ann's love of "springin' to it." She cherished, besides, a worshipful admiration for her mother; so that she asked no more than to act as the humble hand under that directing head. It was Amos who tacitly rebelled. When a boy in school, he virtually gave up talking, and thereafter opened his lips only when some practical exigency was to be filled. But once did he vouchsafe a reason for that eccentricity. It was in his fifteenth year, as aunt Ann remembered well, when the minister had called; and Amos, in response to some remark about his hope of salvation, had looked abstractedly out of the window.

"I'd be ashamed," announced aunt Ann, after the minister had gone,--"Amos, I _would_ be ashamed, if I couldn't open my head to a minister o' the gospel!"

"If one head's open permanent in a house, I guess that fills the bill," said Amos, getting up to seek the woodpile. "I ain't goin' to interfere with nobody else's contract."

His mother looked after him with gaping lips, and, for the space of half an hour, spoke no word.

To-day she saw before her an alluring field of action; the prospect roused within her energies, never incapable of responding to a spur.

"My soul, 'Melia!" she exclaimed, looking about the kitchen with a dominating eye, "how I should like to git hold o' this house! I al'ays did have a hankerin' that way, an' I don't mind tellin' ye. You could change it all round complete."

"It's a good house," said Amelia evasively, taking quick, even stitches, but listening hungrily to the voice of outside temptation. It seemed to confirm all the long-suppressed ambitions of her own heart.

"You 're left well on 't," continued aunt Ann, her shrewd blue eyes taking on a speculative look. "I'm glad you sold the stock. A woman never undertakes man's work but she comes out the little end o' the horn. The house is enough, if you keep it nice. Now, you've got that money laid away, an' all he left you besides. You could live in the village, if you was a mind to."

A deep flush struck suddenly into Amelia's cheek. She thought of Saltash and Laurie Morse.

"I don't want to live in the village," she said sharply, thus reproving her own errant mind. "I like my home."

"Law, yes, of course ye do," replied aunt Ann easily, returning to her knitting. "I was only spec'latin'. The land, 'Melia, what you doin' of? Repairin' an old coat?"

Amelia bent lower over her sewing. "'Twas his," she answered in a voice almost inaudible. "I put a patch on it last night by lamplight, and when daytime come, I found it was purple. So I'm takin' it off, and puttin' on a black one to match the stuff."

"Goin' to give it away?"

"No, I ain't," returned Amelia, again with that sharp, remonstrant note in her voice. "What makes you think I'd do such a thing as that?"

"Law, I didn't mean no harm. You said you was repairin' on 't,--that's all."

Amelia was ashamed of her momentary outbreak. She looked up and smiled sunnily.

"Well, I suppose it _is_ foolish," she owned,--"too foolish to tell. But I've been settin' all his clothes in order to lay 'em aside at last. I kind o' like to do it."

Aunt Ann wagged her head, and ran a knitting-needle up under her cap on a voyage of discovery.

"You think so now," she said wisely, "but you'll see some time it's better by fur to give 'em away while ye can. The time never'll come when it's any easier. My soul, 'Melia, how I should like to git up into your chambers! It's six year now sence I've seen 'em."

Amelia laid down her work and considered the possibility.

"I don't know how in the world I could h'ist you up there," she remarked, from an evident background of hospitable good-will.

"H'ist me up? I guess you couldn't! You'd need a tackle an' falls. Amos has had to come to draggin' me round by degrees, an' I don't go off the lower floor. Be them chambers jest the same, 'Melia?"

"Oh, yes, they're just the same. Everything is. You know he didn't like changes."

"Blue spread on the west room bed?"

"Yes."

"Spinnin'-wheels out in the shed chamber, where his gran'mother Hooper kep' 'em?"

"Yes."

"Say, 'Melia, do you s'pose that little still's up attic he used to have such a royal good time with, makin' essences?"

Amelia's eyes filled suddenly with hot, unmanageable tears.

"Yes;" she said; "we used it only two summers ago. I come across it yesterday. Seemed as if I could smell the peppermint I brought in for him to pick over. He was too sick to go out much then."

Aunt Ann had laid down her work again, and was gazing into vistas of rich enjoyment.

"I'll be whipped if I shouldn't like to see that little still!"

"I'll go up and bring it down after dinner," said Amelia soberly, folding her work and taking off her thimble. "I'd just as soon as not."

All through the dinner hour aunt Ann kept up an inspiring stream of question and reminiscence.

"You _be_ a good cook, 'Melia, an' no mistake," she remarked, breaking her brown hot biscuit. "This your same kind o' bread, made without yeast?"

"Yes," answered Amelia, pouring the tea. "I save a mite over from the last risin'."

Aunt Ann smelled the biscuit critically. "Well, it makes proper nice bread," she said, "but seems to me that's a terrible shif'less way to go about it. However'd you happen to git hold on't? You wa'n't never brought up to't."

"His mother used to make it so. 'T was no great trouble, and 't would have worried him if I'd changed."

When the lavender-sprigged china had been washed and the hearth swept up, the room fell into its aspect of afternoon repose. The cat, after another serious ablution, sprang up into a chair drawn close to the fireplace, and coiled herself symmetrically on the faded patchwork cushion. Amelia stroked her in passing. She liked to see puss appropriate that chair; her purr from it renewed the message of domestic content.

"Now," said Amelia, "I'll get the still."

"Bring down anything else that's ancient!" called aunt Ann. "We've pretty much got red o' such things over t'our house, but I kind o' like to see 'em."

When Amelia returned, she staggered under a miscellaneous burden: the still, some old swifts for winding yarn, and a pair of wool-cards.

"I don't believe you know so much about cardin' wool as I do," she said, in some triumph, regarding the cards with the saddened gaze of one who recalls an occupation never to be resumed. "You see, you dropped all such work when new things come in. I kept right on because he wanted me to."

Aunt Ann was abundantly interested and amused.

"Well, now, if ever!" she repeated over and over again. "If this don't carry me back! Seems if I could hear the wheel hummin' an' gramma Balch steppin' back an' forth as stiddy as a clock. It's been a good while sence I've thought o' such old days."

"If it's old days you want"--began Amelia, and she sped upstairs with a fresh light of resolution in her eyes.

It was a long time before she returned,--so long that aunt Ann exhausted the still, and turned again to her thrifty knitting. Then there came a bumping noise on the stairs, and Amelia's shuffling tread.

"What under the sun be you doin' of?" called her aunt, listening, with her head on one side. "Don't you fall, 'Melia! Whatever't is, I can't help ye."

But the stairway door yielded to pressure from within: and first a rim of wood appeared, and then Amelia, scarlet and breathless, staggering under a spinning-wheel.

"Forever!" ejaculated aunt Ann, making one futile effort to rise, like some cumbersome fowl whose wings are clipped. "My land alive! you'll break a blood-vessel, an' then where'll ye be?"

Amelia triumphantly drew the wheel to the middle of the floor, and then blew upon her dusty hands and smoothed her tumbled hair. She took off her apron and wiped the wheel with it rather tenderly, as if an ordinary duster would not do.

"There!" she said. "Here's some rolls right here in the bedroom. I carded them myself, but I never expected to spin any more."

She adjusted a roll to the spindle, and, quite forgetting aunt Ann, began stepping back and forth in a rhythmical march of feminine service. The low hum of her spinning filled the air, and she seemed to be wrapped about by an atmosphere of remoteness and memory. Even aunt Ann was impressed by it; and once, beginning to speak, she looked at Amelia's face, and stopped. The purring silence continued, lulling all lesser energies to sleep, until Amelia, pausing to adjust her thread, found her mood broken by actual stillness, and gazed about her like one awakened from dreams.

"There!" she said, recalling herself. "Ain't that a good smooth thread? I've sold lots of yarn. They ask for it in Sudleigh."

"'Tis so!" confirmed aunt Ann cordially. "An' you've al'ays dyed it yourself, too!"

"Yes, a good blue; sometimes tea-color. There, now, you can't say you ain't heard a spinnin'-wheel once more!"

Amelia moved the wheel to the side of the room, and went gravely back to her chair. Her energy had fled, leaving her hushed and tremulous. But not for that did aunt Ann relinquish her quest for the betterment of the domestic world. Her tongue clicked the faster as Amelia's halted. She put away her work altogether, and sat, with wagging head and eloquent hands, still holding forth on the changes which might be wrought in the house: a bay window here, a sofa there, new chairs, tables, and furnishings. Amelia's mind swam in a sea of green rep, and she found herself looking up from time to time at her mellowed four walls, to see if they sparkled in desirable yet somewhat terrifying gilt paper.

At four o'clock, when Amos swung into the yard with the oxen, she was remorsefully conscious of heaving a sigh of relief; and she bade him in to the cup of tea ready for him by the fire with a sympathetic sense that too little was made of Amos, and that perhaps only she, at that moment, understood his habitual frame of mind. He drank his tea in silence, the while aunt Ann, with much relish, consumed doughnuts and cheese, having spread a wide handkerchief in her lap to catch the crumbs. Amos never varied in his rôle of automaton; and Amelia talked rapidly, in the hope of protecting him from verbal avalanches. But she was not to succeed. At the very moment of parting, aunt Ann, enthroned in her chair, with a clogging stick under the rockers, called a halt, just as the oxen gave' their tremulous preparatory heave.

"Amos!" cried she, "I'll be whipped if you've spoke one word to 'Melia this livelong day! If you ain't ashamed, I be! If you can't speak, I can!"

Amos paused, with his habitual resignation to circumstances, but Amelia sped forward and clapped him cordially on the arm; with the other hand, she dealt one of the oxen a futile blow.

"Huddup, Bright!" she called, with a swift, smiling look at Amos. Even in kindness she would not do him the wrong of an unnecessary word. "Good-by, aunt Ann! Come again!"

Amos turned half about, the goad over his shoulder. His dull-seeming eyes had opened to a gleam of human feeling, betraying how bright and keen they were. Some hidden spring had been touched, though only they would tell its story. Amelia thought it was gratitude. And then aunt Ann, nodding her farewells in assured contentment with herself and all the world, was drawn slowly out of the yard.

When Amelia went indoors and warmed her chilled hands at the fire, the silence seemed to her benignant. What was loneliness before had miraculously translated itself into peace. That worldly voice, strangely clothing her own longings with form and substance, had been stilled; only the clock, rich in the tranquillity of age, ticked on, and the cat stretched herself and curled up again. Amelia sat down in the waning light and took a last stitch in her work; she looked the coat over critically with an artistic satisfaction, and then hung it behind the door in its accustomed place, where it had remained undisturbed now for many months. She ate soberly and sparingly of her early supper, and then, leaving the lamp on a side-table, where it brought out great shadows in the room, she took a little cricket and sat down by the fire. There she had mused many an evening which seemed to her less dull than the general course of her former life, while her husband occupied the hearthside chair and told her stories of the war. He had a childlike clearness and simplicity of speech, and a self-forgetful habit of reminiscence. The war was the war to him, not a theatre for boastful individual action; but Amelia remembered now that he had seemed to hold heroic proportions in relation to that immortal past. One could hardly bring heroism into the potato-field and the cow-house; but after this lapse of time, it began to dawn upon her that the man who had fought at Gettysburg and the man who marked out for her the narrow rut of an unchanging existence were one and the same. And as if the moment had come for an expected event, she heard again the jangling of bells without, and the old vivid color rushed into her cheeks, reddened before by the fire-shine. It was as though the other night had been a rehearsal, and as if now she knew what was coming. Yet she only clasped her hands more tightly about her knees and waited, the while her heart hurried its time. The knocker fell twice, with a resonant clang. She did not move. It beat again, the more insistently. Then the heavy outer door was pushed open, and Laurie Morse came in, looking exactly as she knew he would look--half angry, wholly excited, and dowered with the beauty of youth recalled. He took off his cap and stood before her.

"Why didn't you come?" he asked imperatively. "Why didn't you let me in?"

The old wave of irresponsible joy rose in her at his presence; yet it was now not so much a part of her real self as a delight in some influence which might prove foreign to her. She answered him, as she was always impelled to do, dramatically, as if he gave her the cue, calling for words which might be her sincere expression, and might not.

"If you wanted it enough, you could get in," she said perversely, with an alluring coquetry in her mien. "The door was unfastened."

"I did want to enough," he responded. A new light came into his eyes. He held out his hands toward her. "Get up off that cricket!" he commanded. "Come here!"

Amelia rose with a swift, feminine motion, but she stepped backward, one hand upon her heart. She thought its beating could be heard.

"It ain't Saturday," she whispered.

"No, it ain't But I couldn't wait. You knew I couldn't. You knew I'd come to-night."

The added years had had their effect on him; possibly, too, there had been growing up in him the strength of a long patience. He was not an heroic type of man; but noting the sudden wrinkles in his face and the firmness of his mouth, Amelia conceived a swift respect for him which she had never felt in the days of their youth.

"Am I goin' to stay," he asked sternly, "or shall I go home?"

As if in dramatic accord with his words, the bells jangled loudly at the gate. Should he go or stay?

"I suppose," said Amelia faintly, "you're, goin' to stay."

Laurie laid down his cap, and pulled off his coat. He looked about impatiently, and then, moving toward the nail by the door, he lifted the coat to place it over that other one hanging there. Amelia had watched him absently, thinking only, with a hungry anticipation, how much she had needed him; but as the garment touched her husband's, the real woman burst through the husk of her outer self, and came to life with an intensity that was pain. She sprang forward.

"No! no!" she cried, the words ringing wildly in her own ears. "No! no! don't you hang it there! Don't you! don't you!" She swept him aside, and laid her hands upon the old patched garment on the nail. It was as if they blessed it, and as if they defended it also. Her eyes burned with the horror of witnessing some irrevocable deed.

Laurie stepped back in pure surprise. "No, of course not," said he. "I'll put it on a chair. Why, what's the matter, Milly? I guess you're nervous. Come back to the fire. Here, sit down where you were, and let's talk."

The cat, roused by a commotion which was insulting to her egotism, jumped down from the cushion, stretched into a fine curve, and made a silhouette of herself in a corner of the hearth. Amelia, a little ashamed, and not very well understanding what it was all about, came back, with shaking limbs, and dropped upon the settle, striving now to remember the conventionalities of saner living. Laurie was a kind man. At this moment, he thought only of reassuring her. He drew forward the chair left vacant by the cat, and beat up the cushion.

"There," said he, "I'll take this, and we'll talk."

Amelia recovered herself with a spring. She came up straight and tall, a concluded resolution in every muscle. She laid a hand upon his arm.

"Don't you sit there!" said she. "Don't you!"

"Why, Amelia!" he ejaculated, in a vain perplexity. "Why, Milly!"

She moved the chair back out of his grasp, and turned to him again.