Tiverton Tales Part 19

"Well, I hadn't any expectation o' your bein' here," said Ezra. "I meant to ride round to-morrer. We want you to spend Thanksgivin' Day with us.

I'll come over arter you."

"Oh, Ezra!" said Lucy Ann, quite sincerely, with her concession to his lower fortunes, "why didn't you say so! John's asked me."

"The dogs!" said Ezra. It was his deepest oath. Then he drew a sigh.

"Well," he concluded, "that's our luck. We al'ays come out the leetle end o' the horn. Abby'll be real put out. She 'lotted on it. Well, John's inside there. He's buyin' up 'bout everything there is. You'll git more'n you would with us."

He drove gloomily away, and Lucy Ann stepped into the store, musing. She was rather sorry not to go to Ezra's, if he cared. It almost seemed as if she might ask John to let her take the plainer way. John would understand. She saw him at once where he stood, prosperous and hale, in his great-coat, reading items from a long memorandum, while Jonathan Stevens weighed and measured. The store smelled of spice, and the clerk that minute spilled some cinnamon. Its fragrance struck upon Lucy Ann like a call from some far-off garden, to be entered if she willed. She laid a hand on her brother's arm, and her lips opened to words she had not chosen:--

"John, you shouldn't ha' drove away so quick, t' other day. You jest flung out your invitation an' run. You never give me no time to answer.

Ezra's asked me to go there."

"Well, if that ain't smart!" returned John. "Put in ahead, did he? Well, I guess it's the fust time he ever got round. I'm terrible sorry, Lucy.

The children won't think it's any kind of a Thanksgivin' without you.

Somehow they've got it into their heads it's grandma comin'. They can't seem to understand the difference."

"Well, you tell 'em I guess grandma's kind o' pleased for me to plan it as I have," said Lucy Ann, almost gayly. Her face wore a strange, excited look. She breathed a little faster. She saw a pleasant way before her, and her feet seemed to be tending toward it without her own volition. "You give my love to 'em. I guess they'll have a proper nice time."

She lingered about the store until John had gone, and then went forward to the counter. The storekeeper looked at her respectfully. Everybody had a great liking for Lucy Ann. She had been a faithful daughter, and now that she seemed, in so mysterious a way, to be growing like her mother, even men of her own age regarded her with deference.

"Mr. Stevens," said she, "I didn't bring so much money with me as I might if I'd had my wits about me. Should you jest as soon trust me for some Thanksgivin' things?"

"Certain," replied Jonathan. "Clean out the store, if you want. Your credit's good." He, too, felt the beguilement of the time.

"I want some things," repeated Lucy Ann, with determination. "Some cinnamon an' some mace--there! I'll tell you, while you weigh."

It seemed to her that she was buying the spice islands of the world; and though the money lay at home in her drawer, honestly ready to pay, the recklessness of credit gave her an added joy. The store had its market, also, at Thanksgiving time, and she bargained for a turkey. It could be sent her, the day before, by some of the neighbors. When she left the counter, her arms and her little basket were filled with bundles. Joshua Marden was glad to take them.

"No, I won't ride," said Lucy Ann. "Much obliged to _you_. Jest leave the things inside the fence. I'd ruther walk. I don't git out any too often."

She took her way home along the brown road, stepping lightly and swiftly, and full of busy thoughts. Flocks of birds went whirring by over the yellowed fields. Lucy Ann could have called out to them, in joyous understanding, they looked so free. She, too, seemed to be flying on the wings of a fortunate wind.

All that week she scrubbed and regulated, and took a thousand capable steps as briskly as those who work for the home-coming of those they love. The neighbors dropped in, one after another, to ask where she was going to spend Thanksgiving. Some of them said, "Won't you pa.s.s the day with us?" but Lucy Ann replied blithely:--

"Oh, John's invited me there!"

All that week, too, she answered letters, in her cramped and careful hand; for cousins had bidden her to the feast. Over the letters she had many a troubled pause, for one cousin lived near Ezra, and had to be told that John had invited her; and to three others, dangerously within hail of each, she made her excuse a turncoat, to fit the time. Duplicity in black and white did hurt her a good deal, and she sometimes stopped, in the midst of her slow transcription, to look up piteously and say aloud:--

"I hope I shall be forgiven!" But by the time the stamp was on, and the pencil ruling erased, her heart was light again. If she had sinned, she was finding the path intoxicatingly pleasant.

Through all the days before the festival, no house exhaled a sweeter savor than this little one on the green. Lucy Ann did her miniature cooking with great seriousness and care. She seemed to be dwelling in a sacred isolation, yet not altogether alone, but with her mother and all their bygone years. Standing at her table, mixing and tasting, she recalled stories her mother had told her, until, at moments, it seemed as if she not only lived her own life, but some previous one, through that being whose blood ran with hers. She was realizing that ineffable sense of possession born out of knowledge that the enduring part of a personality is ours forever, and that love is an unquenched fire, fed by memory as well as hope.

On Thanksgiving morning, Lucy Ann lay in bed a little later, because that had been the family custom. Then she rose to her exquisite house, and got breakfast ready, according to the unswerving programme of the day. Fried chicken and mince pie: she had had them as a child, and now they were scrupulously prepared. After breakfast, she sat down in the suns.h.i.+ne, and watched the people go by to service in Tiverton Church.

Lucy Ann would have liked going, too; but there would be inconvenient questioning, as there always must be when we meet our kind. She would stay undisturbed in her seclusion, keeping her festival alone. The morning was still young when she put her turkey in the oven, and made the vegetables ready. Lucy Ann was not very fond of vegetables, but there had to be just so many--onions, turnips, and squash baked with mola.s.ses--for her mother was a Cape woman, preserving the traditions of dear Cape dishes. All that forenoon, the little house throbbed with a curious sense of expectancy. Lucy Ann was preparing so many things that it seemed as if somebody must surely keep her company; but when dinner-time struck, and she was still alone, there came no lull in her antic.i.p.ation. Peace abode with her, and wrought its own fair work. She ate her dinner slowly, with meditation and a thankful heart. She did not need to hear the minister's careful catalogue of mercies received. She was at home; that was enough.

After dinner, when she had done up the work, and left the kitchen without spot or stain, she went upstairs, and took out her mother's beautiful silk poplin, the one saved for great occasions, and only left behind because she had chosen to be buried in her wedding gown. Lucy Ann put it on with careful hands, and then laid about her neck the wrought collar she had selected the day before. She looked at herself in the gla.s.s, and arranged a gray curl with anxious scrutiny. No girl adorning for her bridal could have examined every fold and line with a more tender care. She stood there a long, long moment, and approved herself.

"It's a wonder," she said reverently. "It's the greatest mercy anybody ever had."

The afternoon waned, though not swiftly; for Time does not always gallop when happiness pursues. Lucy Ann could almost hear the gliding of his rhythmic feet. She did the things set aside for festivals, or the days when we have company. She looked over the photograph alb.u.m, and turned the pages of the "Ladies' Wreath." When she opened the case containing that old daguerreotype, she scanned it with a little distasteful smile, and then glanced up at her own image in the gla.s.s, nodding her head in thankful peace. She was the enduring portrait. In herself, she might even see her mother grow very old. So the hours slipped on into dusk, and she sat there with her dream, knowing, though it was only a dream, how sane it was, and good. When wheels came rattling into the yard, she awoke with a start, and John's voice, calling to her in an inexplicable alarm, did not disturb her. She had had her day. Not all the family fates could take it from her now. John kept calling, even while his wife and children were climbing down, unaided, from the great carryall. His voice proclaimed its own story, and Lucy Ann heard it with surprise.

"Lucy! Lucy Ann!" he cried. "You here? You show yourself, if you're all right."

Before they reached the front door, Lucy Ann had opened it and stood there, gently welcoming.

"Yes, here I be," said she. "Come right in, all of ye. Why, if that ain't Ezra, too, an' his folks, turnin' into the lane. When 'd you plan it?"

"Plan it! we didn't plan it!" said Mary testily. She put her hand on Lucy Ann's shoulder, to give her a little shake; but, feeling mother's poplin, she forbore.

Lucy Ann retreated before them into the house, and they all trooped in after her. Ezra's family, too, were crowding in at the doorway; and the brothers, who had paused only to hitch the horses, filled up the way behind. Mary, by a just self-election, was always the one to speak.

"I declare, Lucy!" cried she, "if ever I could be tried with you, I should be now. Here we thought you was at Ezra's, an' Ezra's folks thought you was with us; an' if we hadn't harnessed up, an' drove over there in the afternoon, for a kind of a surprise party, we should ha'

gone to bed thinkin' you was somewhere, safe an' sound. An' here you've been, all day long, in this lonesome house!"

"You let me git a light," said Lucy Ann calmly. "You be takin' off your things, an' se' down." She began lighting the tall astral lamp on the table, and its prisms danced and swung. Lucy Ann's delicate hand did not tremble; and when the flame burned up through the s.h.i.+ning chimney, more than one started, at seeing how exactly she resembled grandma, in the days when old Mrs. c.u.mmings had ruled her own house. Perhaps it was the royalty of the poplin that enwrapped her; but Lucy Ann looked very capable of holding her own. She was facing them all, one hand resting on the table, and a little smile flickering over her face.

"I s'pose I was a poor miserable creatur' to git out of it that way,"

said she. "If I'd felt as I do now, I needn't ha' done it. I could ha'

spoke up. But then it seemed as if there wa'n't no other way. I jest wanted my Thanksgivin' in my own home, an' so I throwed you off the track the best way I could. I dunno's I lied. I dunno whether I did or not; but I guess, anyway, I shall be forgiven for it."

Ezra spoke first: "Well, if you didn't want to come"--

"Want to come!" broke in John. "Of course she don't want to come! She wants to stay in her own home, an' call her soul her own--don't you, Lucy?"

Lucy Ann glanced at him with her quick, grateful smile.

"I'm goin' to, now," she said gently, and they knew she meant it.

But, looking about among them, Lucy Ann was conscious of a little hurt unhealed; she had thrown their kindness back.

"I guess I can't tell exactly how it is," she began hesitatingly; "but you see my home's my own, jest as yours is. You couldn't any of you go round cousinin', without feelin' you was tore up by the roots. You've all been real good to me, wantin' me to come, an' I s'pose I should make an awful towse if I never was asked; but now I've got all my visitin'

done up, cousins an' all, an' I'm goin' to be to home a spell. An' I do admire to have company," added Lucy Ann, a bright smile breaking over her face. "Mother did, you know, an' I guess I take arter her. Now you lay off your things, an' I'll put the kettle on. I've got more pies 'n you could shake a stick at, an' there's a whole loaf o' fruit-cake, a year old."

Mary, taking off her shawl, wiped her eyes surrept.i.tiously on a corner of it, and Abby whispered to her husband, "Dear creatur'!" John and Ezra turned, by one consent, to put the horses in the barn; and the children, conscious that some mysterious affair had been settled, threw themselves into the occasion with an irresponsible delight. The room became at once vocal with talk and laughter, and Lucy Ann felt, with a swelling heart, what a happy universe it is where so many bridges lie between this world and that unknown state we call the next. But no moment of that evening was half so sweet to her as the one when little John, the youngest child of all, crept up to her and pulled at her poplin skirt, until she bent down to hear.

"Grandma," said he, "when 'd you get well?"

THE EXPERIENCE OF HANNAH PRIME

Tiverton Hollow had occasionally an evening meeting; this came about naturally whenever religious zeal burned high, or when the congregation felt, with some uneasiness, that it had remained too long aloof from spiritual things. To-night, the schoolhouse had been designated for an a.s.sembling place, and the neighborhood trooped thither, animated by an excited importance, and doing justice to the greatness of the occasion by "dressing up." Farmers had laid aside their ordinary mood, with overalls and jumpers, and donned an uncomfortable solemnity, an enforced att.i.tude of theological reflection, with their stocks. Wives had urged their patient fingers into cotton gloves, and in cashmere shawls, and bonnets retrimmed with reference to this year's style, pressed into the uncomfortable chairs, and folded their hands upon the desks before them in a sweet seriousness not unmingled with the desire of thriftily completing a duty no less exigent than pickle-making, or the work of spring and fall. Last came the boys, clattering with awkward haste over the dusty floor which had known the touch of their bare feet on other days. They looked about the room with some awe and a puzzled acceptance of its being the same, yet not the same. It was their own. There were the maps of North and South America; the yellowed evergreens, relic of "Last Day," still festooned the windows, and an intricate "sum," there explained to the uncomprehending admiration of the village fathers, still adorned the blackboard. Yet the room had strangely transformed itself into an alien temple, invaded by theology and the breath of an unknown world. But though sobered, they were not cast down; for the occasion was enlivened, in their case, by a heaven-defying profligacy of intent. Every one of them knew that Sammy Forbes had in his pocket a pack of cards, which he meant to drop, by wicked but careless design, just when Deacon Pitts led in prayer, and that Tom Drake was master of a concealed pea-shooter, which he had sworn, with all the a.s.severations held sacred by boys, to use at some dramatic moment. All the band were aware that neither of these daring deeds would be done. The prospective actors themselves knew it; but it was a darling joy to contemplate the remote possibility thereof.

Deacon Pitts opened the meeting, reminding his neighbors how precious a privilege it is for two or three to be gathered together. His companion had not been able to come. (The entire neighborhood knew that Mrs.

Pitts had been laid low by an attack of erysipelas, and that she was, at the moment, in a dark bedroom at home, helpless under elderblow.)

"She lays there on a bed of pain," said the deacon. "But she says to me, 'You go. Better the house o' mournin' than the house o' feastin',' she says. Oh, my friends! what can be more blessed than the counsel of an aged and feeble companion?"