Homespun Tales

The letter was from Mite Shapley, but Rose could read only half of it to Mrs. Brooks, little beside the news that the Waterman barn, the finest barn in the whole township, had been struck by lightning and burned to the ground. Stephen was away at the time, having taken Rufus to Portland, where an operation on his eyes would shortly be performed at the hospital, and one of the neighbors was sleeping at the River Farm and taking care of the cattle; still the house might not have been saved but for one of Alcestis Crambry’s sudden bursts of common sense, which occurred now quite regularly. He succeeded not only in getting the horses out of the stalls, but gave the alarm so promptly that the whole neighborhood was soon on the scene of action. Stephen was the only man, Mite reminded Rose, who ever had any patience with, or took any pains to teach, Alcestis, but he never could have expected to be rewarded in this practical way. The barn was only partly insured; and when she had met Stephen at the station next day, and condoled with him on his loss, he had said: “Oh, well, Mite, a little more or less does n’t make much difference just now.”

“The rest would n’t interest you, Mrs. Brooks,” said Rose, precipitately preparing to leave the room.

“Something about Claude, I suppose,” ventured that astute lady. “I think Mite kind of fancied him. I don’t believe he ever gave her any real encouragement; but he’d make love to a pump, Claude Merrill would, and so would his father before him. How my sister Abby made out to land him we never knew, for they said he’d proposed to every woman in the town of Bingham, not excepting the wooden Indian girl in front of the cigar-store, and not one of ‘em but our Abby ever got a chance to name the day. Abby was as set as the everlastin’ hills, and if she’d made up her mind to have a man he could n’t wriggle away from her nohow in the world. It beats all how girls do run after these slick-haired, sweet-tongued, Miss Nancy kind o’ fellers, that ain’t but little good as beaux an’ worth less than nothing as husbands.”

Rose scarcely noticed what Mrs. Brooks said, she was too anxious to read the rest of Mite Shapley’s letter in the quiet of her own room.

Stephen looks thin and pale [so it ran on], but he does not allow anybody to sympathize with him. I think you ought to know something that I have n’t told before for fear of hurting your feelings; but if I were in your place I’d like to hear everything, and then you’ll know how to act when you come home. Just after you left, Stephen ploughed up all the land in front of your new house,—every inch of it, all up and down the road, between the fence and the front doorstep,—and then he planted corn where you were going to have your flower-beds. He has closed all the blinds and hung a “To Let” sign on the large elm at the gate. Stephen never was spiteful in his life, but this looks a little like spite. Perhaps he only wanted to save his self-respect and let people know that everything between you was over forever. Perhaps he thought it would stop talk once and for all. But you won’t mind, you lucky girl, staying nearly three months in Boston! [So Almira purled on in violet ink, with shaded letters.] How I wish it had come my way, though I’m not good at rubbing rheumatic patients, even when they are his aunt. Is he as devoted as ever? And when will it be? How do you like the theater? Mother thinks you won’t attend; but, by what he used to say, I am sure church members in Boston always go to amusements.

Your loving friend,Almira Shapley.

P.S. They say Rufus’s doctor’s bills here, and the operation and hospital expenses in Portland, will mount up to five hundred dollars. Of course Stephen will be dreadfully hampered by the toss of his barn, and maybe he wants to let your house that was to be, because he really needs money. In that case the dooryard won’t be very attractive to tenants, with corn planted right up to the steps and no path left! It’s two feet tall now, and by August (just when you were intending to move in) it will hide the front windows. Not that you’ll care, with a diamond on your engagement finger!

The letter was more than flesh and blood could stand, and Rose flung herself on her bed to think and regret and repent, and, if possible, to sob herself to sleep.

She knew now that she had never admired and respected Stephen so much as at the moment when, under the reproach of his eyes, she had given him back his ring. When she left Edgewood and parted with him forever she had really loved him better than when she had promised to marry him.

Claude Merrill, on his native Boston heath, did not appear the romantic, inspiring figure he had once been in her eyes. A week ago she distrusted him; tonight she despised him.

What had happened to Rose was the dilation of her vision. She saw things under a wider sky and in a clearer light. Above all, her heart was wrung with pity for Stephen—Stephen, with no comforting woman’s hand to help him in his sore trouble; Stephen, bearing his losses alone, his burdens and anxieties alone, his nursing and daily work alone. Oh, how she felt herself needed! Needed! that was the magic word that unlocked her better nature. “Darkness is the time for making roots and establishing plants, whether of the soil or of the soul,” and all at once Rose had become a woman: a little one, perhaps, but a whole woman—and a bit of an angel, too, with healing in her wings. When and how had this metamorphosis come about? Last summer the fragile brier-rose had hung over the river and looked at its pretty reflection in the placid surface of the water. Its few buds and blossoms were so lovely, it sighed for nothing more. The changes in the plant had been wrought secretly and silently. In some mysterious way, as common to soul as to plant life, the roots had gathered in more nourishment from the earth, they had stored up strength and force, and all at once there was a marvelous fructifying of the plant, hardiness of stalk, new shoots everywhere, vigorous leafage, and a shower of blossoms.

But everything was awry: Boston was a failure; Claude was a weakling and a flirt; her turquoise ring was lying on the river-bank; Stephen did not love her any longer; her flower-beds were ploughed up and planted in corn; and the cottage that Stephen had built and she had furnished, that beloved cottage, was to let.

She was in Boston; but what did that amount to, after all? What was the State House to a bleeding heart, or the Old South Church to a pride wounded like hers?

At last she fell asleep, but it was only by stopping her ears to the noises of the city streets and making herself imagine the sound of the river rippling under her bedroom windows at home. The backyards of Boston faded, and in their place came the banks of the Saco, strewn with pine-needles, fragrant with wild flowers. Then there was the bit of sunny beach, where Stephen moored his boat. She could hear the sound of his paddle. Boston lovers came a-courting in the horse-cars, but hers had floated downstream to her just at dusk in a birch-bark canoe, or sometimes, in the moonlight, on a couple of logs rafted together.

But it was all over now, and she could see only Stephen’s stern face as he flung the despised turquoise ring down the river-bank.

XIII. A Country Chevalier

It was early in August when Mrs. Wealthy Brooks announced her speedy return from Boston to Edgewood.

“It’s jest as well Rose is comin’ back,” said Mr. Wiley to his wife. “I never favored her goin’ to Boston, where that rosy-posy Claude feller is. When he was down here he was kep’ kind o’ tied up in a box-stall, but there he’s caperin’ loose round the pastur’.”

“I should think Rose would be ashamed to come back, after the way she’s carried on,” remarked Mrs. Wiley, “but if she needed punishment I guess she’s got it bein’ comp’ny-keeper to Wealthy Ann Brooks. Bein’ a church member in good an’ reg’lar standin’, I s’pose Wealthy Ann’ll go to heaven, but I can only say that it would be a sight pleasanter place for a good many if she did n’t.”

“Rose has be’n foolish an’ flirty an’ wrong-headed,” allowed her grandfather; “but it won’t do no good to treat her like a hardened criminile, same’s you did afore she went away. She ain’t hardly got her wisdom teeth cut, in love affairs! She ain’t broke the laws of the State o’ Maine, nor any o’ the ten commandments; she ain’t disgraced the family, an’ there’s a chance for her to reform, seein’ as how she ain’t twenty year old yet. I was turrible wild an’ hot-headed myself afore you ketched me an’ tamed me down.”

“You ain’t so tame now as I wish you was,” Mrs. Wiley replied testily.

“If you could smoke a clay pipe ‘t would calm your nerves, mother, an’ help you to git some philosophy inter you; you need a little philosophy turrible bad.”

“I need patience consid’able more,” was Mrs. Wiley’s withering retort.

“That’s the way with folks,” said Old Kennebec reflectively, as he went on peacefully puffing. “If you try to indoose ‘em to take an int’rest in a bran’-new virtue, they won’t look at it; but they ‘ll run down a side street an’ buy half a yard more o’ some turrible old shop-worn trait o’ character that they’ve kep’ in stock all their lives, an’ that everybody’s sick to death of. There was a man in Gard’ner—”

But alas! the experiences of the Gardiner man, though told in the same delightful fashion that had won Mrs. Wiley’s heart many years before, now fell upon the empty air. In these years of Old Kennebec’s “anecdotage,” his pipe was his best listener and his truest confidant.

Mr. Wiley’s constant intercessions with his wife made Rose’s home-coming somewhat easier, and the sight of her own room and belongings soothed her troubled spirit, but the days went on, and nothing happened to change the situation. She had lost a lover, that was all, and there were plenty more to choose from, or there always had been; but the only one she wanted was the one who made no sign. She used to think that she could twist Stephen around her little finger; that she had only to beckon to him and he would follow her to the ends of the earth. Now fear had entered her heart. She no longer felt sure, because she no longer felt worthy, of him, and feeling both uncertainty and unworthiness, her lips were sealed and she was rendered incapable of making any bid for forgiveness.

So the little world of Pleasant River went on, to all outward seeming, as it had ever gone. On one side of the stream a girl’s heart was longing, and pining, and sickening, with hope deferred, and growing, too, with such astonishing rapidity that the very angels marveled! And on the other, a man’s whole vision of life and duty was widening and deepening under the fructifying influence of his sorrow.

The corn waved high and green in front of the vacant riverside cottage, but Stephen sent no word or message to Rose. He had seen her once, but only from a distance. She seemed paler and thinner, he thought,—the result, probably, of her metropolitan gayeties. He heard no rumor of any engagement and he wondered if it were possible that her love for Claude Merrill had not, after all, been returned in kind. This seemed a wild impossibility. His mind refused to entertain the supposition that any man on earth could resist falling in love with Rose, or, having fallen in, that he could ever contrive to climb out. So he worked on at his farm harder than ever, and grew soberer and more careworn daily. Rufus had never seemed so near and dear to him as in these weeks when he had lived under the shadow of threatened blindness. The burning of the barn and the strain upon their slender property brought the brothers together shoulder to shoulder.

“If you lose your girl, Steve,” said the boy, “and I lose my eyesight, and we both lose the barn, why, it’ll be us two against the world, for a spell!”

The “To Let” sign on the little house was an arrant piece of hypocrisy. Nothing but the direst extremity could have caused him to allow an alien step on that sacred threshold. The ploughing up of the flower-beds and planting of the corn had served a double purpose. It showed the too curious public the finality of his break with Rose and her absolute freedom; it also prevented them from suspecting that he still entered the place. His visits were not many, but he could not bear to let the dust settle on the furniture that he and Rose had chosen together; and whenever he locked the door and went back to the River Farm, he thought of a verse in the Bible: “Therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the Garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken.”

It was now Friday of the last week in August.

The river was full of logs, thousands upon thousands of them covering the surface of the water from the bridge almost up to the Brier Neighborhood. The Edgewood drive was late, owing to a long drought and low water; but it was to begin on the following Monday, and Lije Dennett and his under boss were looking over the situation and planning the campaign. As they leaned over the bridge-rail they saw Mr. Wiley driving clown the river road. When he caught sight of them he hitched the old white horse at the corner and walked toward them, filling his pipe the while in his usual leisurely manner. “We’re not busy this forenoon,” said Lije Dennett. “S’pose we stand right here and let Old Kennebec have his say out for once. We’ve never heard the end of one of his stories, an’ he’s be’n talkin’ for twenty years.”

“All right,” rejoined his companion, with a broad grin at the idea. “I’m willin’, if you are; but who’s goin’ to tell our fam’lies the reason we’ve deserted ‘em? I bate yer we shan’t budge till the crack o’ doom. The road commissioner’ll come along once a year and mend the bridge under our feet, but Old Kennebec’ll talk straight on till the day o’ jedgment.”

Mr. Wiley had one of the most enjoyable mornings of his life, and felt that after half a century of neglect his powers were at last appreciated by his fellow citizens.

He proposed numerous strategic movements to be made upon the logs, whereby they would move more swiftly than usual. He described several successful drives on the Kennebec, when the logs had melted down the river almost by magic, owing to his generalship; and he paid a tribute, in passing, to the docility of the boss, who on that occasion had never moved a single log without asking his advice.

From this topic he proceeded genially to narrate the life-histories of the boss, the under boss, and several Indians belonging to the crew,—histories in which he himself played a gallant and conspicuous part. The conversation then drifted naturally to the exploits of river-drivers in general, and Mr. Wiley narrated the sorts of feats in log-riding, pick-pole-throwing, and the shooting of rapids that he had done in his youth. These stories were such as had seldom been heard by the ear of man; and, as they passed into circulation instantaneously, we are probably enjoying some of them to this day.

They were still being told when a Crambry child appeared on the bridge, bearing a note for the old man. Upon reading it he moved off rapidly in the direction of the store, ejaculating: “Bless my soul! I clean forgot that saleratus, and mother’s settin’ at the kitchen table with the bowl in her lap, waitin’ for it! Got so int’rested in your list’nin’ I never thought o’ the time.”

The connubial discussion that followed this breach of discipline began on the arrival of the saleratus, and lasted through supper; and Rose went to bed almost immediately afterward for very dullness and apathy. Her life stretched out before her in the most aimless and monotonous fashion. She saw nothing but heartache in the future; and that she richly deserved it made it none the easier to bear.

Feeling feverish and sleepless, she slipped on her gray Shaker cloak and stole quietly downstairs for a breath of air. Her grandfather and grandmother were talking on the piazza, and good humor seemed to have been restored. “I was over to the tavern tonight,” she heard him say, as she sat down at a little distance. “I was over to the tavern tonight, an’ a feller from Gorham got to talkin’ an’ braggin’ ‘bout what a stock o’ goods they kep’ in the store over there. ‘An’,’ says I, ‘I bate ye dollars to doughnuts that there hain’t a darn thing ye can ask for at Bill Pike’s store at Pleasant River that he can’t go down cellar, or up attic, or out in the barn chamber an’ git for ye.’ Well, sir, he took me up, an’ I borrered the money of Joe Dennett, who held the stakes, an’ we went right over to Bill Pike’s with all the boys follerin’ on behind. An’ the Gorham man never let on what he was going to ask for till the hull crowd of us got inside the store. Then says he, as p’lite as a basket o’ chips, ‘Mr. Pike, I’d like to buy a pulpit if you can oblige me with one.’

“Bill scratched his head an’ I held my breath. Then says he, ‘’Pears to me I’d ought to hev a pulpit or two, if I can jest remember where I keep ‘em. I don’t never cal’late to be out o’ pulpits, but I’m so plagued for room I can’t keep ‘em in here with the groc’ries. Jim (that’s his new store boy), you jest take a lantern an’ run out in the far corner o’ the shed, at the end o’ the hickory woodpile, an’ see how many pulpits we’ve got in stock!’ Well, Jim run out, an’ when he come back he says, ‘We’ve got two, Mr. Pike. Shall I bring one of ‘em in?’

“At that the boys all bust out laughin’ an’ hollerin’ an’ tauntin’ the Gorham man, an’ he paid up with a good will, I tell ye!”

“I don’t approve of bettin’,” said Mrs. Wiley grimly, “but I’ll try to sanctify the money by usin’ it for a new wash-boiler.”

“The fact is,” explained Old Kennebec, somewhat confused, “that the boys made me spend every cent of it then an’ there.”

Rose heard her grandmother’s caustic reply, and then paid no further attention until her keen ear caught the sound of Stephen’s name. It was a part of her unhappiness that since her broken engagement no one would ever allude to him, and she longed to hear him mentioned, so that perchance she could get some inkling of his movements.

“I met Stephen tonight for the first time in a week,” said Mr. Wiley. “He kind o’ keeps out o’ my way lately. He’s goin’ to drive his span into Portland tomorrow mornin’ and bring Rufus home from the hospital Sunday afternoon. The doctors think they’ve made a success of their job, but Rufus has got to be bandaged up a spell longer. Stephen is goin’ to join the drive Monday mornin’ at the bridge here, so I’ll get the latest news o’ the boy. Land! I’ll be turrible glad if he gets out with his eyesight, if it’s only for Steve’s sake. He’s a turrible good fellow, Steve is! He said something tonight that made me set more store by him than ever. I told you I hed n’t heard an unkind word ag’in’ Rose sence she come home from Boston, an’ no more I hev till this evenin’. There was two or three fellers talkin’ in the post-office, an’ they did n’t suspicion I was settin’ on the steps outside the screen door. That Jim Jenkins, that Rose so everlastin’ly snubbed at the tavern dance, spoke up, an’ says he: ‘This time last year Rose Wiley could ‘a’ hed the choice of any man on the river, an’ now I bet ye she can’t get nary one.’

“Steve was there, jest goin’ out the door, with some bags o’ coffee an’ sugar under his arm.

“‘I guess you’re mistaken about that,’ he says, speakin’ up jest like lightnin’; ‘so long as Stephen Waterman’s alive, Rose Wiley can have him, for one; and that everybody’s welcome to know.’

“He spoke right out, loud an’ plain, jest as if he was readin’ the Declaration of Independence. I expected the boys would everlastin’ly poke fun at him, but they never said a word. I guess his eyes flashed, for he come out the screen door, slammin’ it after him, and stalked by me as if he was too worked up to notice anything or anybody. I did n’t foller him, for his long legs git over the ground too fast for me, but thinks I, ‘Mebbe I’ll hev some use for my lemonade-set after all.’”

“I hope to the land you will,” responded Mrs. Wiley, “for I’m about sick o’ movin’ it round when I sweep under my bed. And I shall be glad if Rose an’ Stephen do make it up, for Wealthy Ann Brooks’s gossip is too much for a Christian woman to stand.”

XIV. Housebreaking

Where was the pale Rose, the faded Rose, that crept noiselessly down from her room, wanting neither to speak nor to be spoken to? Nobody ever knew. She vanished forever, and in her place a thing of sparkles and dimples flashed up the stairway and closed the door softly. There was a streak of moon-shine lying across the bare floor, and a merry ghost, with dressing-gown held prettily away from bare feet, danced a gay fandango among the yellow moonbeams. There were breathless flights to the open window, and kisses thrown in the direction of the River Farm. There were impressive declamations at the looking-glass, where a radiant creature pointed to her reflection and whispered, “Worthless little pig, he loves you, after all!”

Then, when quiet joy had taken the place of mad delight, there was a swoop down upon the floor, an impetuous hiding of brimming eyes in the white counterpane, and a dozen impassioned promises to herself and to something higher than herself, to be a better girl.

The mood lasted, and deepened, and still Rose did not move. Her heart was on its knees before Stephen’s faithful love, his chivalry, his strength. Her troubled spirit, like a frail boat tossed about in the rapids, seemed entering a quiet harbor, where there were protecting shores and a still, still evening star. Her sails were all torn and drooping, but the harbor was in sight, and the poor little weather-beaten craft could rest in peace.

A period of grave reflection now ensued, under the bedclothes, where one could think better. Suddenly an inspiration seized her, an inspiration so original, so delicious, and above all so humble and praiseworthy, that it brought her head from her pillow, and she sat bolt upright, clapping her hands like a child.

“The very thing!” she whispered to herself gleefully. “It will take courage, but I’m sure of my ground after what he said before them all, and I’ll do it. Grandma in Biddeford buying church carpets, Stephen in Portland—was ever such a chance?”

The same glowing Rose came downstairs, two steps at a time, next morning, bade her grandmother goodbye with suspicious pleasure, and sent her grandfather away on an errand which, with attendant conversation, would consume half the day. Then bundles after bundles and baskets after baskets were packed into the wagon,—behind the seat, beneath the seat, and finally under the lap-robe. She gave a dramatic flourish to the whip, drove across the bridge, went through Pleasant River village, and up the leafy road to the little house, stared the “To Let” sign scornfully in the eye, alighted, and ran like a deer through the aisles of waving corn, past the kitchen windows, to the back door.

“If he has kept the big key in the old place under the stone, where we both used to find it, then he has n’t forgotten me—or anything,” thought Rose.

The key was there, and Rose lifted it with a sob of gratitude. It was but five minutes’ work to carry all the bundles from the wagon to the back steps, and another five to lead old Tom across the road into the woods and tie him to a tree quite out of the sight of any passer-by.

When, after running back, she turned the key in the lock, her heart gave a leap almost of terror, and she started at the sound of her own footfall. Through the open door the sunlight streamed into the dark room. She flew to tables and chairs, and gave a rapid sweep of the hand over their surfaces.

“He has been dusting here,—and within a few days, too,” she thought triumphantly.

The kitchen was perfection, as she always knew it would be, with one door opening to the shaded road and the other looking on the river; windows, too, framing the apple-orchard and the elms. She had chosen the furniture, but how differently it looked now that it was actually in place! The tiny shed had piles of split wood, with great boxes of kindlings and shavings, all in readiness for the bride, who would do her own cooking. Who but Stephen would have made the very wood ready for a woman’s home-coming; and why had he done so much in May, when they were not to be married until August? Then the door of the bedroom was stealthily opened, and here Rose sat down and cried for joy and shame and hope and fear. The very flowered paper she had refused as too expensive! How lovely it looked with the white chamber set! She brought in her simple wedding outfit of blankets, bed-linen, and counterpanes, and folded them softly in the closet; and then for the rest of the morning she went from room to room, doing all that could remain undiscovered, even to laying a fire in the new kitchen stove.