The Mettle of the Pasture Part 26

"_You_ go in. The porch isn't dark; but I'll stay here with her!"

"Please."

When he had gone, Miss Anna leaned over and lifting the bouquet from the sticking cherry seed tossed it into the yard--tossed it _far_.

Harriet came out into the porch looking wonderfully fresh. "How do you do, Anna?" she said with an accent of new cordiality, established cordiality.

The accent struck Miss Anna's ear as the voice of the bouquet. She had at once discovered also that Harriet was beautifully dressed--even to the point of wearing her best gloves.

"Oh, good morning, Harriet," she replied, giving the yellow bowl an unnecessary shake and speaking quite incidentally as though the visit were not of the slightest consequence. She did not invite Harriet to be seated. Harriet seated herself.

"Aren't you well, Anna?" she inquired with blank surprise.

"I am always well."

"Is any one ill, Anna?"

"Not to my knowledge."

Harriet knew Miss Anna to have the sweetest nature of all women.

She realized that she herself was often a care to her friend. A certain impulse inspired her now to give a.s.surance that she had not come this morning to weigh her down with more troubles.

"Do you know, Anna, I never felt so well! Marguerite's ball really brought me out. I have turned over a new leaf of destiny and I am going out more after this. What right has a woman to give up life so soon? I shall go out more, and I shall read more, and be a different woman, and cease worrying you. Aren't women reading history now? But then they are doing everything. Still that is no reason why I should not read a little, because my mind is really a blank on the subject of the antiquities. Of course I can get the ancient Hebrews out of the Bible; but I ought to know more about the Greeks and Romans. Now oughtn't I?"

"You don't want to know anything about the Greeks and the Romans, Harriet," said Miss Anna. "Content yourself with the earliest Hebrews. You have gotten along very well without the Greeks and the Romans--for--a--long--time."

Harriet understood at last; there was no mistaking now. She was a very delicate instrument and much used to being rudely played upon.

Her friend's reception of her to-day had been so unaccountable that at one moment she had suspected that her appearance might be at fault. Harriet had known women to turn cold at the sight of a new gown; and it had really become a life principle not to dress even as well as she could, because she needed the kindness that flows out so copiously from new clothes to old clothes. But it was embarra.s.sment that caused her now to say rather aimlessly:

"I believe I feel overdressed. What possessed me?"

"Don't overdress again," enjoined Miss Anna in stern confidence.

"Never try to change yourself in anyway. I like you better as you are--a--great--deal--better."

"Then you shall have me as you like me, Anna dear," replied Harriet, faithfully and earnestly, with a faltering voice; and she looked out into the yard with a return of an expression very old and very weary. Fortunately she was short-sighted and was thus unable to see her bouquet which made such a burning blot on the green gra.s.s, with the ribbon trailing beside it and the card still holding on as though determined to see the strange adventure through to the end.

"Good-by, Anna," she said, rising tremblingly, though at the beginning of her visit.

"Oh, good-by, Harriet," replied Miss Anna, giving a cheerful shake to the yellow bowl.

As Harriet walked slowly down the street, a more courageously dressed woman than she had been for years, her chin quivered and she shook with sobs heroically choked back.

Miss Anna went into the library and sat down near the door. Her face which had been very white was scarlet again: "What was it you did--tell me quickly. I cannot stand it."

He came over and taking her cheeks between his palms turned her face up and looked down into her eyes. But she shut them quickly.

"What do you suppose I did? Harriet and I sat for half an hour in another room. I don't remember what I did; but it could not have been anything very bad: others were all around us."

She opened her eyes and pushed him away harshly: "I have wounded Harriet in her most sensitive spot; and then I insulted her after I wounded her," and she went upstairs.

Later he found the bouquet on his library table with the card stuck in the top. The flowers stayed there freshly watered till the petals strewed his table: they were not even dusted away.

As for Harriet herself, the wound of the morning must have penetrated till it struck some deep flint in her composition; for she came back the next day in high spirits and severely underdressed--in what might be called toilet reduced to its lowest terms, like a common fraction. She had restored herself to the footing of an undervalued intercourse. At the sight of her Miss Anna sprang up, kissed her all over the face, was atoningly cordial with her arms, tried in every way to say: "See, Harriet, I bare my heart! Behold the dagger of remorse!"

Harriet saw; and she walked up and took the dagger by the handle and twisted it to the right and to the left and drove it in deeper and was glad.

"How do you like this dress, Anna?" she inquired with the sweetest solicitude. "Ah, there is no one like a friend to bring you to your senses! You were right. I am too old to change, too old to dress, too old even to read: thank you, Anna, as always."

Many a wound of friends.h.i.+p heals, but the wounder and the wounded are never the same to each other afterward. So that the two comrades were ill at ease and welcomed a diversion in the form of a visitor. It happened to be the day of the week when Miss Anna received her supply of dairy products from the farm of Ambrose Webb. He came round to the side entrance now with two s.h.i.+ning tin buckets and two l.u.s.treless eyes.

The old maids stood on the edge of the porch with their arms wrapped around each other, and talked to him with nervous gayety.

He looked up with a face of dumb yearning at one and then at the other, almost impartially.

"Aren't you well, Mr. Webb?" inquired Miss Anna, bending over toward him with a healing smile.

"Certainly I am well," he replied resentfully. "There is nothing the matter with me. I am a sound man."

"But you were certainly groaning," insisted Miss Anna, "for I heard you; and you must have been groaning about _something_."

He dropped his eyes, palpably crestfallen, and sc.r.a.ped the bricks with one foot.

Harriet nudged Miss Anna not to press the point and threw herself gallantly into the breach of silence.

"I am coming out to see you sometime, Mr. Webb," she said threateningly; "I want to find out whether you are taking good care of my calf. Is she growing?"

"Calves always grow till they stop," said Ambrose, axiomatically.

"How high is she?"

He held his hand up over an imaginary back.

"Why, that is _high_! When she stops growing, Anna, I am going to sell her, sell her by the pound. She is my beef trust. Now don't forget, Mr. Webb, that I am coming out some day."

"I'll be there," he said, and he gave her a peculiar look.

"You know, Anna," said Harriet, when they were alone again, "that his wife treats him shamefully. I have heard mother talking about it. She says his wife is the kind of woman that fills a house as straw fills a barn: you can see it through every crack. That accounts for his heavy expression, and for his dull eyes, and for the groaning. They say that most of the time he sits on the fences when it is clear, and goes into the stable when it rains."

"Why, I'll have to be kinder to him than ever," said Miss Anna.

"But how do you happen to have a calf, Harriet?" she added, struck by the practical fact.

"It was the gift of my darling mother, my dear, the only present she has made me that I can remember. It was an orphan, and you wouldn't have it in your asylum, and my mother was in a peculiar mood, I suppose. She amused herself with the idea of making me such a present. But Anna, watch that calf, and see if thereby does not hang a tale. I am sure, in some mysterious way, my destiny is bound up with it. Calves do have destinies, don't they, Anna?"

"Oh, don't ask _me_, Harriet! Inquire of their Creator; or try the market-house."

It was at the end of this visit that Harriet as usual imparted to Miss Anna the freshest information regarding affairs at home: that Isabel had gone to spend the summer with friends at the seash.o.r.e, and was to linger with other friends in the mountains during autumn; that her mother had changed her own plans, and was to keep the house open, and had written for the Fieldings--Victor's mother and brothers and sisters--to come and help fill the house; that everything was to be very gay.

"I cannot fathom what is under it all," said Harriet, with her hand on the side gate at leaving. "But I know that mother and Isabel have quarrelled. I believe mother has transferred her affections--and perhaps her property. She has rewritten her will since Isabel went away. What have I to do, Anna, but interest myself in other people's affairs? I have none of my own. And she never calls Isabel's name, but pets Victor from morning till night.

And her expression sometimes! I tell you, Anna, that when I see it, if I were a bird and could fly, gunshot could not catch me. I see a summer before me! If there is ever a chance of my doing _anything_, don't be shocked if I do it;" and in Harriet's eyes there were two mysterious sparks of hope--two little rising suns.