the summer boarders had gone, and marshmead was settling down to a peace enhanced by affluence. though the exodus had come earlier than usual this year, because the hiltons were sailing for germany and the dennys due at the catskills, not one among their country entertainers had complained. marshmead approved, from a careless dignity, when people brought money into the town, but it always relapsed into its own customs with a contented sigh after the jolt of inexplicable requirements and imported ways. this year had been an especially fruitful one. the boarders had given a fancy dress party with amateur vaudeville combined, for the benefit of the old church, and martha waterman now, as she toiled up the hill to a meeting of the circle, held the resultant check in one of her plump freckled hands. martha was chief mover in all capable deeds, a warm, silent woman who called children "lamb," plied them with pears, and knew the inner secrets of rich cookery. she was portly, and her thin skin gave confirmation to her own frequent complaint of feeling the heat; but [286]though the day had been more sultry than it was, she would not have foregone the pleasure of endowing the circle with its new accession toward the meeting-house fund.
the circle had been founded in war time when women scraped lint and sewed with a passionate zeal. martha was a little girl then, wondering what the excitement was really about, though, since it had lasted through her own brief period, she took it that war was a permanent condition, like bread or weather. now she often mused over those old days and thought how marvelous it was that she could ever have been young enough to see no significance in that time of blood and pain. in these middle years of hers the circle was a different affair, but it kept its loyal being. to-day it met in the basement of the church, and there, when martha went plodding in, nearly all the other members were assembled. sometimes they sewed for sufferers from varying disasters, but to-day their hands were idle, and a buzz of talk saluted her. they looked up as one woman when she entered.
"there she is," called two or three, and lydia vesey, the little dressmaker, as sharp and unexpected as the slash of her own too-impulsive scissors, came forward with a run.
"you got it?" she inquired.
mrs. waterman laughed richly, and set her [287]umbrella in the corner. then, still holding one hand closed upon the check, she untied her hat and fanned herself with it during the relief of sinking into a seat.
"do let me get my breath," she besought, yet as if she prolonged the moment for the sake of the dramatic weight the tale demanded. "seems if i never experienced such a day as this. it's hotter'n any fall i ever see."
"you look very warm, martha," said ellen bayliss, in her gentle way. she was sitting by the window, bending over an embroidered square, the sun on her soft curls and delicate cheek unveiling the look of middle life, yet doing something kindly, too; for though he showed the withered texture of her skin, he brought out the last fleck of gold in her hair, and balanced sadness with some bloom. ellen had been accounted a beauty, and her niece nellie was a beauty now, of a more radiant type. she was the rose of life, but aunt ellen had the fragrance of roses in a jar.
"you sewin', ellen?" martha inquired, as if she were willing to shift the topic from what would exact continued speech from her, and at least defer her colleagues' satisfaction. "you're the only one that's brought their thimble, i'll be bound."
"it's only this same centrepiece," ellen answered, [288]holding it up. "mrs. hilton told me if i'd send it after her, she'd give me three dollars for it. i thought i could turn the money into the fund."
"you got it?" lydia vesey cried again, as if she could not possibly crowd her interest under, and this time she had re?nforcements from without. mrs. daniel pray, who was almost a giantess and bent laboriously over to accommodate her height to her husband's, took off her glasses and laid them on her declivitous lap, the better to fix martha with her dull, small eyes.
"i'll be whipped if i believe you've got it, after all," she offered discontentedly. "mebbe they're goin' to send by mail."
martha looked at her a moment, apparently in polite consideration, but really wondering, as she often did, if anything would thicken the hair at mrs. pray's parting. she frequently, out of the strength of her address and capability, had these moments of musing over what could be done.
"speak up, marthy, can't ye?" ended mrs. pray irritably, now putting on her glasses again as if, having tried one way, she would essay another. "didn't you see mis' hilton at the last, or didn't they give it to you?"
martha unclosed her hand and extended it to [289]them impartially, the check, face uppermost, held between thumb and finger. they bent forward to peer. some rose and looked over the shoulders of the nearer ones, and glasses were sought and hastily mounted upon noses.
"well, there," said mrs. hanscom, the wife of the grain-dealer who always stipulated for cash payment before he would deliver a bag at the barn door, "it ain't bills, as i see."
"it's just as good." ellen bayliss looked up from her sewing to throw this in, with her air of deprecating courtesy. "a check's the same as money any day. i have two, twice a year, from my stock. all you have to do is to write your name on the back and turn 'em into the bank."
"well, all i want to know is, what's it come to?" lydia vesey said. "course it's just the same as money. i've had checks myself, days past. once i done over miss tenny's black mohair an' sent it after her, an' she mailed me back a check,—same day, i guess it was. how much's it come to, marthy?"
"see for yourself," said martha. she laid it, still face upward, on the table. "it's as much yours as 'tis mine, i guess, if i be treasurer. forty-three dollars an' twenty-seven cents."
there was a chorused sigh.
"well, i call that a good haul," said ann [290]bartlett, whose father had been sexton for thirty-eight years, and who, in consequence, looked upon herself as holding some subtly intimate relation with the church, so that when the old carpet was "auctioned off" she insisted on darning the breadths before they were put up for sale. "what money can do! just one evenin', an' them few folks dressed up to kill an' payin' that in for their ice-cream an' tickets at the door."
"we made the ice-cream," said martha, as one stating a fact to be justly remembered.
"we paid ourselves in, too," said lydia sharply. "i guess our money's good as anybody's, an' i guess it'll count up as quick an' go as fur."
"course it will," said martha, in a mollifying tone. "but 'tis an easy way of makin' a dollar, just as ann says. there they got up a fancy-dress party an' enjoyed themselves, an' it's brought in all this. 'twa'n't hard work for 'em. 'twas a kind o' play."
"well, i guess they did enjoy it," said mrs. pray gloomily. she had settled her glasses on her nose again, and now, with her finger, went following the bows round under her hair, to be sure they "canted right." "i guess they wouldn't ha' done it if they hadn't."
"there's one thing mis' hilton says to me when she passed me the check," martha brought [291]out, in sudden recollection. "'now here's this money we made for you,' she says. 'use it anyways you want, so 's you use it for the church. but,' she says, 'why don't you make up your minds now you'll give some kind of an entertainment after we're gone, a harvest festival,' she says, 'or the like o' that? then you could do your paintin',' she says, 'an' get you a new melodeon for the sunday school, or whatever 'tis you want. we've showed you the way,' she says. 'now you go ahead an' see what you can do.'"
lydia vesey looked as if she might, in another instant, cap the suggestion by a satirical climax, and ellen bayliss rested her sewing hand on her knee and glanced thoughtfully about as if to ask, in her still, earnest way, what her own part could be in such an enterprise. but a step came hurrying down the stairs, the step of a heavy body lightly carried, and caddie musgrave came in at a flying pace. it was caddie who, with the help of her silent husband, kept the big boarding-house on the hill. no need to talk to her about summer boarders, she was wont to say. she knew 'em, egg an' bird. take 'em as folks an' nobody was better, but 'twas boarders she meant. they might seem different, fust sight, but shake 'em up in a peck measure, an' you couldn't tell t'other from which.
[292]"i guess you're tired," said ellen bayliss, in her gentle fashion, taking a stolen glance from the embroidery and returning again at once to her careful stitches.
"tired!" said caddie. she dropped into a chair and leaned her head back with ostentatious weariness. "i guess i be. an' yet i told charlie 'fore they went i never'd say i was tired again in all my born days, only let me get rid of 'em this time."
"how'd you manage with 'em this season?" asked mrs. pray, as if her question concerned the importation of some alien plant.
caddie opened her eyes and came to a posture more adapted to sustaining her end of the conversational burden.
"why, they're all right," she owned, "good as gold, take 'em on their own ground. i found out they were good as gold that winter i went up an' passed sunday with mis' denny. but take 'em together, boardin', an' what one don't think of t'other will. this summer 'twas growin' fleshy, an' if they didn't harp on that one string—well, suz!"
mrs. pray nodded her head solemnly.
"i said that," she returned. "i said that to jonathan when i come home from the circle the day they was here talkin' over the fund an' settlin' what they'd do. i come home an' says to [293]jonathan wipin' his hands on the roller-towel there by the back door, i says, 'what's everybody got ag'inst growin' old, an' growin' hefty, too, for that matter?' i says. 'seems if folks don't talk about nothin' else.'"
martha put in her assuaging word.
"well, i guess human natur' ain't changed much. i guess nobody ever hankered after gettin' stiff j'ints an' losin' their eyesight an' so. 'twould be a queer kind of a shay that was lookin' for'ard to goin' to pieces while 'twas travelin' along. mis' denny's niece that reads in public read me that piece once. i thought 'twas about the cutest that ever was."
ellen bayliss had laid her sewing on her knee, and now she looked up in an impulsive haste, the color in her cheeks and a quick moving note in her voice.
"it isn't growing old that's the trouble. it's talking about it. why, the night after that meeting of the circle—" she stopped here, and her eyes, widening and growing darker in a way they had, gave her face almost a look of terror.
"what is it, ellen?" asked martha waterman kindly. "you tell it right out."
"why," said ellen, "this is all 'twas. that night at supper, my nellie kept staring at me across the table. 'what is 't, nellie?' i says, at last. then she colored up and says, not as if she [294]wanted to, but as if she couldn't help it, 'i hope i shall look like you sometime, aunt ellen.' you see how 'twas. she meant, when she was old. she never in her life had thought anything about me being old, and they'd put it into her head."
a pained look settled upon her face, and before she took up her sewing again she glanced from one to another as if to ask them if they really understood. there was a little warm murmur of assent. ellen was beloved, and there was, besides, a concurrent strain of sympathy through the assembly who had known all her past. they remembered how colonel hadley had "gone with her" awhile when she was teaching school at district number four, and how ellen had faded out, the summer he was married to kate leighton, of the leightons on the hill. now his nephew, clyde, was going with ellen's niece in a way that vividly mirrored the old time, and they had heard that the colonel, when he came for one of his brief visits in the summer, had somehow put a check to love's beginning. at least, clyde had seen nellie only once after his uncle went away, and had speedily closed the old house and followed him.
"there, ellen," said lydia vesey, from a rare softness. "i guess nobody'd ever say 't you was growin' old. they'd only think you was [295]sort o' palin' out, that's all, same 's a white dress is different from a pink one."
"well, now, i'll say my say, an' done with it," remarked caddie musgrave, with her accustomed violence. "i'm ready to grow old when my time comes, an' if i get there by the road some have took before me, i guess i sha'n't be put under the sod by any vote o' town-meetin'. as i look back, seems to me 'most all them that's gone before us has had their uses to the last. think o' gramma jakes! why, she hadn't chick nor child of her own left to bless her, an' see how she was looked up to, an' how every little tot in town thought he's made if he could be sent to gramma jakes's to do an arrant, an' she give him a pep'mint or a cooky. 'twa'n't the pep'mint though. 'twas because she was a real sweet nice old lady, that's what 'twas."
"yes, i remember gramma jakes," said anna dutton, from the corner. she was a round, pink, near-sighted little person, who had tried to cure herself of stammering by speaking very slowly, and now scarcely talked at all because she had found how unwilling her more robust and loquacious neighbors were to give her the right of way in her hindering course. "seems if i could see her now standin' there on her front porch, her little handkercher round her neck—"
[296]caddie broke in upon this reminiscence, according to a custom so established that anna dutton only kept her mouth open for an instant, as if the opportunity for speech might return to her, and then quite calmly settled back with an air of pleased attention.
"they're afraid o' gettin' old an' they're afraid o' gettin' fleshy," caddie announced. "well, there's no crime in gettin' old, now is there? an' if there is, you can't put a stop to 't in any court o' law. an' as for bein' fleshy, if you be you be, an' you might as well turn to an' have your clo'es made bigger an' say no more."
mrs. pray presented her mite with her accustomed severity of gloom, as if she had selected the words most carefully and wished to have it understood that they were the choicest she had to offer.
"i was fryin' doughnuts, a week ago saturday, an' mis' denny come along with that lady friend o' hers that's down here over sunday. i offered 'em each a warm doughnut, an' they was possessed to take it. they'd been walkin' quite a spell, an' they'd called for a drink o' water. they said 'twas the time in the forenoon when they drinked. but they looked at the doughnuts good an' hard, an' they says: 'no. it's fattenin',' says they. 'it's fattenin'.'"
"yes," said caddie, with a scornful cadence, [297]"i'll warrant they did. that's what they said about two things out o' three, soon 's the hands moved round to meal-time. 'it's fattenin'!' oh, i'm sick an' tired to death of it! i ain't goin' to be dead till i be dead, thinkin' about it all the time, not if i can keep my thoughts inside o' me an' my tongue in my head. so there!"
"well, now," said martha waterman, with the mildness calculated to smooth a troubled situation, "hadn't we better be gettin' round to thinkin' what we'll do to earn us a mite more money for the fund? seems if, now they've done so well by us, we'd ought to up an' show what we can do—a harvest festival, mebbe, or a sociable for all, an' charge for tickets."
one woman had not spoken. she was a thin, dark-eyed creature, with a gypsy face and a quantity of gray hair wound about on the top of her head. this was isabel martin, who was allowed her erratic way because she took it, and because, it had always been said, "you never could tell what isabel would do next, only she never meant the least o' harm." she had come softly in while the others were talking, and drawn ellen's work out of her hand, with a swift, pretty smile at her. "rest your eyes," she had whispered her, and sat by, taking quick, deft stitches, while ellen, unconscious until then of being tired, had dropped her lids and leaned [298]her head against the casing, with a faint smile of pleasant restfulness. now isabel put the work back into ellen's hand with an accurate haste, and looked up at the group about her.
"i'll tell you what to do," she said. her voice thrilled with urging and suggestive mischief. it was a compelling voice, and they turned at once.
"if there ain't isabel," said martha waterman. "i didn't see you come in."
"le' 's give a fancy dress party of our own," said isabel.
"dress ourselves up to the nines, an' put on paint an' powder, an' send off to the stores to hire clo'es an' wigs?" inquired caddie. "no, sir, none o' that for me. i've seen what it comes to, money an' labor, too. i've just been through it, lookin' on, an' i wouldn't do it not if the church never see a brush o' paint nor a shingle, an' we had to play on a jew's-harp 'stead of a melodeon. no!"
ann bartlett gave a little murmur here.
"i never heard of anybody's bringin' a jew's-harp into the meetin'-house," she said, as a kind of official protest. "i guess we could get us some kind of a melodeon, 'fore we done such a thing as that."
isabel was going on in that persuasive voice; it seemed to call the town to her to do her bidding.
[299]"no, we ain't goin' to do it their way. we're goin' to do it our way. they've set out to see how young they can be. le' 's see 'f we can't beat 'em seein' how old we can be. le' 's dress up like the oldest that ever was, an' act as if we liked it."
the electrifying meaning ran over them like a wave. they caught the splendid significance of it. they were to offer, in the guise of jesting, their big protest against the folly of sickening over youth by showing how fearlessly they were dancing on toward age. it was more than bravado, more than repudiation of the cowards who hesitated at the onward step. it was loyal and passionate upholding of the state of those who were already old, and of those who had continued their beneficent lives into the time when there is no pleasure in the years, and yet had given honor and blessing through them all. they fell to laughing together, and two or three cried a little on the heels of merriment.
"i dunno what mother'd say," whispered hannah call, whose mother, old and yet regnant as the best housekeeper in town and a repository of all the most valuable recipes, had died that year. "i guess she'd say we was possessed."
"we be," said isabel recklessly. "that's the only fun there is, bein' possessed. if you ain't [300]one way, you'd better be another. it's the way's the only thing to see to."
"i said i was sick o' paint an' powder," said caddie. "well, so i be, but i'll put flour in my hair so 't's as white as the drifted snow. i've got aunt hope's gre't horn spe'tacles."
"i guess i could borrer one o' gramma ellsworth's gounds," said mrs. pray. a light rarely seen there had come into her dull eyes. isabel, with that prescience she had about the minds of people, knew what it meant. mrs. pray, though she was contemplating the garb of eld, was unconsciously going back to youth and the joy of playing. "she ain't quite my figger, but i guess 'twill do."
lydia vesey gave her a kindly look, yet scathing in its certainty of professional strictures.
"there ain't nobody that ever i see that's anywhere near your figger," she said, in the neighborly ruthlessness that was perfectly understood among them. "but you hand the gound over to me, an' i can fix it."
"everybody flour their hair," cried isabel, with the mien of inciting them deliriously.
"everybody that's got plates, take 'em out," added martha, the administrative, catching the infection and going a step beyond.
"why, we can borrer every stitch we want," [301]said lydia vesey. "borrer of the dead an' borrer of the livin'. i know every rag o' clo'es that's been made in this town, last thirty years. there's enough laid away in camphire, of them that's gone, to fit out three-four old ladies' homes."
"it'll be like the resurrection," said ellen bayliss, with that little breathless catch in her voice.
"what you mean by that, ellen?" asked martha gently.
"i know what she means," said isabel, while ellen, the blood running into her cheeks, looked helplessly as if she wished she had not spoken. "she means we're goin' to dress ourselves up in the things of them that's gone, a good many of 'em, an' we can't help takin' on the ways of folks that wore 'em. we can't anyways help glancin' back an' kinder formin' ourselves on old folks we've looked up to. seems if the dead would walk."
sometimes people shuddered at isabel's queer sayings, but at this every one felt moved in a solemn way. it seemed beautiful to have the dead walk, so it was in the remembrance of the living.
"shall we let the men in?" asked caddie anxiously. "i dunno what they'll say 'f we don't." her silent husband was the close partner of her life. to marshmead it seemed as if he [302]might as well have been born dumb, but caddie never omitted tribute to his great qualities.
"mercy, yes," said isabel, "if they'll dress up. not else. they've got to be gran'ther graybeards every one of 'em, or they don't come. you tell 'em so."
"you going home, aunt ellen?" came a fresh voice from the doorway. "i've been staying after school, and i thought maybe you'd be tired and like me to call for you."
it was nellie lake, a vision of youth and sweet unconsciousness. she stood there in the doorway, hat and parasol in hand, crowned by her yellow hair, and in the prettiest pose of deprecating grace. aunt ellen smiled at her with loving pride, and yet wistfully, too. nellie had called for her many times, just to walk home together, but never because aunt ellen might be tired. the infection of age was in the air, and nellie lake had caught it.
"come in, nellie," she said. "no, i don't feel specially tired, but maybe i'll go along in a minute."
"want to come to an old folks' party?" called isabel, who was reading all these thoughts as swiftly as if they were signals to herself alone. "want to dress up, an' flour your hair, an' put on spe'tacles, an' come an' play with us old folks?"
[303]the girl's face creased up delightfully.
"a fancy dress!" she said. "what can i be?"
"you'll be an old lady," said isabel, "or you won't come."
"is it for the fund?" asked nellie.
"well, yes, i suppose it's for the fund, some," isabel conceded. "but take it by an' large, it's for fun."
the night of the masquerade was soft and still, lighted by the harvest moon. everywhere the fragrance of grapes enriched the air, and the dusty bitterness of things ripening. the little town hall was gay with lights, a curious blending of the west and east; for the boarders had left japanese lanterns behind them, and their grotesque prettiness contrasted strangely with bowery goldenrod and asters and the red of maple leaves. colonel hadley, standing a moment at the doorway in his evening walk, this first night of his stay, when he had come with his nephew to look out some precious old books in the attic, and perhaps the more actually to draw clyde away again after the errand was done, thought he had never seen such abandonment to a wild pleasure, even in his early days at marshmead. for it was pleasure, though it seemed to be the festival of the old. men and [304]women bent with years and yet straightening themselves when their muscles ached, were promenading the hall, not sedately, according to the wont of marshmead social gatherings, to fulfill a terrifying rite, but gayly, as if only by premeditation did they withstand the beckoning of the dance.
at the end of the hall, in a bower of light and greenery, sat a row of others who were apparently set apart for some honor or special service. from time to time the ranks broke, and one group after another stayed to talk with them, and always with the air of giving pleasure by their deference and heartening. suddenly the colonel's eyes smarted with the sudden tears of a recognition which seemed to touch not only life as it innocently rioted here to-night, but all life, his own in the midst of it. at once he knew. these were the very old, and those who had lived through their fostering were paying them beautiful tribute.
at that moment his nephew, boyishly changed, but not disguised, in old judge hadley's coat and knee-breeches, stepped out of the moving line, a lady with him, and came to him. clyde, too, was flushed with the strangeness of it all, and the joyous certainty that now for an evening, if only that, nellie lake was with him. the colonel looked at her and looked again, and [305]she dropped her eyes in a pretty, serious modesty.
"ellen!" he said involuntarily.
then she laughed.
"that's my aunt," she told him. "i'm elinor. i'm nell. i tried to look like auntie. i guess i do."
"no," said the colonel sharply, "you don't look like ellen bayliss. you've made up too old."
yet she had not, and he knew it. she had only put a little powder on her hair and drawn its curling richness into a seemly knot. she had whitened the bloom of her cheeks, and taken on that little pathetic droop of the shoulders he remembered in ellen bayliss the day he saw her in his last hurried trip to marshmead. he had not spoken to her then. she had passed the station as he was driving away, and he had felt a pang he deadened with some anodyne of grim endurance, to see how youth could wilt into a dowerless middle age.
"i guess you haven't seen aunt ellen," said nellie innocently. "i'm just as she is every day, but she's made up to-night to be like grandma, or the picture of aunt sue that died."
there she was. she had left the moving line for a moment, and the minister, in robe and bands of an ancient time, devised by ann bartlett [306]and made by lydia vesey, had bowed and left her for some of his multifarious social claims. a chair was beside her, but she only rested one hand on the back of it and leaned her head against the wall. she was in a faded brocade unearthed from some dark corner lydia vesey knew the secret of, and she was age itself, beautiful, delicate, acquiescent age, all sadness and a wistful grace. the colonel looked at her, savagely almost, with the pain of it, and then back again at the girl who seemed to be picturing the first sad stage of undefended maidenhood. at that moment he knew he had put something wonderful away from him, those years ago, when he ceased to court the look in ellen's eyes and turned to a robuster fortune. at the time, he had told himself, in his way of escaping the difficult issue, that the pang of leaving her was his alone. she, in her innocence of love, could hardly feel the death of what lived so briefly. now, as it sometimes happened when his anodyne ceased to work, he knew he had snipped the blossom of her life and she had borne no fruit of ecstasy; and in the instant of sharp regret it came upon him that no other woman, through him, should tread the way of love denied. he stooped to nellie, standing there before him, and kissed her on the cheek. whether in this blended love and pain he was [307]kissing ellen or the girl, he did not know, but he saw how clyde started and grew luminous, and what it meant to both of them.
"how did you know it?" clyde was asking. "we are engaged. i wrote to her to-day. i was going to tell you, but i couldn't. you knew it, didn't you? you're a brick."
the girl flushed through her powder, and her eyes sent him a starry gratitude. but now the colonel hardly cared whether they had acted without his knowledge or whether they were grateful for his sanction. he and they and ellen bayliss seemed to be in a world alone, bound together by ties that might last—would last, he knew; but the mist cleared away from his eyes, and the vision of life to come faded, and he saw things as they were before, and chiefly ellen standing there unconscious of him. he walked over to her.
"ellen," he said bluffly, holding out his hand, "i've got only a minute, but i want to speak to you if i don't to anybody else."
she straightened and gazed at him, startled out of her part into a life half joy, half terror. he had taken her hand and held it warmly.
"ellen," he said, "they're engaged, that boy and girl. did you know it?"
"no," she answered faintly, but with candor. [308]"no. i've discouraged it. i thought of you." she paused, too kind to him for more.
"i didn't know," he said. "i hadn't seen her. how should i know she was like you? how should i know if he lost her he mightn't be making a mistake? yes, they're engaged. i sha'n't be at the wedding. i'm going abroad, but i shall send my blessing. to you, too, ellen. good-by. god bless you."
then he had walked out of the hall, as alien, with his middle-aged robustness, as the mortal in fairy revelry; and ellen, knowing her towns-people were looking at her in kindly interest, stood with dignity and yet a curious new consciousness of treasured happiness, as if she had a secret to think over, and a solving of perplexities.
isabel martin dropped out of her place, where she had been talking with andrew hall, and, forgetting in her haste the consistency of her part, ran over to her. isabel, out of her abiding mischief, had dressed herself for a dullard's part. she had thought at first of being an old witch-woman and telling fortunes, but instead she had put on pious black alpaca and a portentous cap, and dropped her darting glances. to andrew hall, who was a portly quaker in the dress of uncle ephraim long since dead, she seemed as sweet as girlhood and as restful as his [309]own mother. andrew had been her servitor for almost as many years as they had lived; but she had so flouted him, so called upon him for impossible chivalries, out of the wantonness of her fancy, that he had sometimes confided to himself, in the darkest of nights when he woke to think of her, that isabel martin was enough to make you hang yourself, and he wished he never had set eyes on her. yet she was the major part of his life, and andrew knew it. now he followed her more slowly, and was by at the instant of her saying,—
"o ellen, you couldn't go over across the orchard, could you, an' see if maggie l.'s got the water boilin' for the coffee? i'm 'most afraid to go alone."
ellen, waking from her dream, looked at her and smiled. she knew isabel's tender purposes. this was meant to take her away from curious though tolerant eyes and give her a moment to wipe out the world of dreaming for the world of men.
"no," she said softly. "you don't need to."
"you let me go," said andrew gallantly. "i can see if it's bilin' an' come back an' tell ye."
"you!" said isabel, abjuring her disguise, to rally him. "you'd be afraid. come, ellen."
she linked an arm in ellen's, and falling at once into her part of sober age, paced with her [310]from the hall. andrew, constrained in a way he hardly understood himself, was following them, but in their woman's community of silent understanding they took no notice of him. outside, the night was soft and welcoming, unreal after the light and color, an enchanted wilderness of moonlight splendor. they had crossed the road to the bench under the old poplar, and there ellen sat down and drew a breath of excitement and gladness to be free to think. the moonlight seemed still brighter, sifting down the sky-spaces, and the two women together looked up at it through the poplar branches and were exalted by that inexplicable sense of the certainty that things come true. dreams—that was what their minds were seeking passionately—and dreams come true.
"ain't it wonderful?" isabel asked softly.
"yes," said ellen, in the same hushed tone, "it's wonderful."
"i'll leave you here by yourself an' run acrost the orchard," said isabel, in her other careless voice. "when i come back, i'll stop here an' we'll go in together. why, andrew, you here?"
"you said you was afraid," he answered. "i'll go acrost with you."
"all right," said isabel, with her kindest laugh, not the teasing one that made him hate her while he thought how bright and dear she [311]was. "come take gran'ma acrost the orchard. don't let anything happen to her."
they stepped over the wall and made their way along the little path by the grape arbor. the fragrance of fruit was sweet, and the world seemed filled with it.
"it's a pretty time o' year," said andrew tremblingly.
"yes."
"a kind of a time same 's this is to-night makes it seem as if life was pretty short. be past before you know it."
"yes."
she, too, spoke tremulously, and his heart went out to her.
"o isabel," he said, "when you're like this, same as you are to-night, there ain't a livin' creatur' that's as nice as you be."
isabel laughed. it was an echo of her flouting laugh, yet there was a little catch in the middle of it.
"there!" he said, with discontentment. "now you're just as you be half the time, an' i could shake you for it. sometimes seems to me i could kill you."
"why don't you?" isabel asked him, softly yet teasingly too, in a way that suddenly made her dearer. "if you don't see no use o' my livin', why don't you kill me?"
[312]"what you cryin' for?" andrew besought her, in an agony of trouble. "o isabel, what you cryin' for?"
"i ain't cryin'," she said, "but if i am i guess it's for ellen bayliss, an' things—" she had never heard of "the tears of mortal things," and so she could not tell him.
"ellen bayliss? what's the matter of ellen bayliss?"
"oh, she gets tired so quick, that's all."
"don't you get tired," said andrew. "don't you let anything happen to you. o isabel!"
the moonlight and the fragrance and old love constrained them, and they had kissed each other, and each knew they were to live together now, and sharpness would be put away perhaps; or, if it were not quite, andrew would understand, knowing other things, too, and smile at it.
when they went back to the bench ellen was gone, but in the hall they found her dancing with clyde, and almost, it seemed, clad in the flying mantle of her youth.
"it's virginny reel," cried andrew, the infection of the night upon him. "there's another set here. come."
"wait a minute," said isabel, her hand upon his arm. "look at the platform. where's the old folks gone?"
the platform was deserted. the old folks, too, [313]were dancing. martha waterman caught the recognition of it in isabel's eyes, pointed at the empty seats of eld, and nodded gayly. she sped out of her place and, losing no step, danced up to isabel and andrew.
"i dunno which's the youngest, old or young," she cried, "nor they don't either. we're goin' to have some country dancin' an' then serve the coffee an' sing 'auld lang syne,' an' it's my opinion we sha'n't be home 'fore two o'clock. ain't it just grand!"
