The Life of Nancy Part 10

She thought of Albert, and the next moment the tears came into her old eyes. John was a lover, too.

"My first husband was just such a tall, straight young man as you be,"

she said as they drove along. "The flower he first give me was a rose."

A SECOND SPRING.

I.

The Haydon farm was only a few miles from the sea, and the spring wind, which had been blowing from the south all day, had gone into the east. A chilly salt fog had begun to come in, creeping along where a brook wound among the lower fields, like a ghostly serpent that was making its way to shelter across the country.

The old Haydon house stood on high rising land, with two great walnut-trees at one side, and a tall, thin, black-looking spruce in front that had lost its mate. A comfortable row of round-headed old apple-trees led all the way up a long lane from the main road. This lane and the s.p.a.cious side yard were scarred by wheel ruts, and the fresh turf was cut up by the stamping feet of many horses. It was the evening of a sad day,--the evening after Israel Haydon's wife's funeral. Many of the people who were present had far to go, and so the funeral feast had been served early.

The old place looked deserted. The dandelions, which had shone so bright in the gra.s.s that morning, were all shut up, and the syringa bushes in the front yard seemed to have taken back their rash buds, and to have grown as gray as winter again. The light was failing fast out of doors; there was a lamp lighted in the kitchen, and a figure kept pa.s.sing between it and the window.

Israel Haydon lingered as long as he could over his barn-work. Somehow it seemed lonely in the barn, and as long as he could see or feel his way about, he kept himself busy over the old horse and cow, accepting their inexpressive companions.h.i.+p, and serving their suppers with unusual generosity. His sensations, even of grief, were not very distinct to him; there was only a vague sense of discomfort, of being disturbed in his quiet course. He had said to many of his friends that afternoon, "I do' know why 't is, but I can't realize nothing about it," and spoken sincerely; but his face was marked with deep lines; he was suffering deeply from the great loss that had befallen him.

His wife had been a woman of uncommon social gifts and facilities, and he had missed her leaders.h.i.+p in the great occasion that was just over.

Everybody had come to him for directions, and expected from him the knowledge of practical arrangements that she had always shown in the forty years of their married life. He had forgotten already that it was a worn-out and suffering woman who had died; the remembrance of long weeks of illness faded from his mind. It appeared to him as if, in her most active and busy aspect, she had suddenly vanished out of the emergencies and close dependence of their every-day lives.

Mr. Haydon crossed the yard slowly, after he had locked the barn door and tried the fastening, and then gone back to try it again. He was glad to see the cheerfulness of the lighted kitchen, and to remember that his own sister and the sister of his wife were there in charge and ready to companion him. He could not help a feeling of distress at the thought of entering his lonely home; suddenly the fact of their being there made everything seem worse. Another man might have loitered on the step until he was chilly and miserable, but poor Mr. Haydon only dropped his hand for a moment by his side, and looked away down the lane; then, with bent head, he lifted the latch as he always did, and went in. It seemed as if he consciously shouldered the burden of his loneliness in that dreary moment, and never could stand upright again.

The season of his solitary life began with more cheer than could have been expected. The two women were waiting for him placidly, and did not seem to be curious how he might be bearing this great disaster.

They had cleared away all signs of the great company, and the kitchen looked as it always did; it had not occurred to them to occupy the more formal sitting-room. The warmth of the fire was pleasant; a table was spread with supper. One of the women was bringing the teapot from the stove, and the other was placidly knitting a blue yarn stocking.

It seemed as if Martha Haydon herself might at any moment come out of the pantry door or up the cellar stairs.

"We was just about ready for you, Isr'el," said his sister-in-law Stevens, glancing at him eagerly. "We didn't stop to take anything ourselves this afternoon, and we didn't suppose 't was so you could; an' we thought we'd just make a quiet cup o' tea when we had everything put to rights, and could set down an' enjoy it. Now you draw right up to the table; that's clever; 't will do us all good."

The good woman bore some likeness to her sister just departed; Israel had never noticed it so much before. She had a comfortable, motherly way, and his old face twitched in spite of himself as he bent over the br.i.m.m.i.n.g and smoking cup that she handed across the square table.

"I declare!" said his own sister, Mrs. Abby Martin. "We could reckon what a sight o' folks there was here this afternoon by the times we had to make new tea, if there wa'n't no other way. I don't know's I ever see a larger gathering on such an occasion. Mis' Stevens an' me was trying to count 'em. There was twenty-six wagons. .h.i.tched in the yard an' lane, so William said, besides all that come afoot; an' a few had driven away before they made the count."

"I'd no idea of there bein' so many," said Israel sadly. "Well, 't was natural for all who knew her to show respect. I felt much obliged to the folks, and for Elder Wall's excellent remarks."

"A number spoke their approval to him in my hearing. He seemed pleased that everything pa.s.sed off well," said sister Martin. "I expect he wanted to do the best he could. Everybody knows she was always a good friend to him. I never see anybody that set so by her minister.

William was telling of me he'd been very attentive all through her sickness. Poor William! He does mourn, but he behaved very pretty, I thought. He wanted us to tell you that he'd be over to-morrow soon's he could. He wanted dreadful to stop with ye overnight, but we all know what it is to run a milk farm."

"I'd b'en glad if 't was so he could be here with us to-night, an' his wife with him," said the old man, pus.h.i.+ng away his cup. The remnants of the afternoon feast, with which the table was spread, failed to tempt his appet.i.te. He rose and took his old wooden armchair by the stove, and clasped his hands before him. The long brown fingers began to play mechanically upon each other. It was strange how these trivial, unconscious habits continued in spite of the great change which had shaken his life to its foundations.

II.

At noon the next day Israel Haydon and his son William came up across the field together. They had on their every-day clothes, and were talking about every-day matters as they walked along. Mr. Haydon himself had always looked somewhat unlike a farmer, even though there had been no more diligent and successful tiller of the soil in the town of Atfield. He never had bought himself a rougher suit of clothes or a coa.r.s.e hat for haying, but his discarded Sunday best in various states of decadence served him for barn and field. It was proverbial that a silk hat lasted him five years for best and ten for common; but whatever he might be doing, Israel Haydon always preserved an air of unmistakable dignity. He was even a little ministerial in his look; there had been a minister in the family two or three generations back.

Mr. Haydon and his wife had each inherited some money. They were by nature thrifty, and now their only son was well married, with a good farm of his own, to which Israel had added many acres of hay land and tillage, saying that he was getting old, and was going to take the rest of his life easily. In this way the old people had thrown many of their worldly cares upon their son's broad shoulders. They had paid visits each summer to their kindred in surrounding towns, starting off in their Sunday chaise with sober pleasure, serene in their prosperity, and free from any dark antic.i.p.ations, although they could not bring themselves to consent to any long absence, and the temptation of going to see friends in the West was never dangerous to their peace of mind. But the best of their lives was apparently still before them, when good Martha Haydon's strength mysteriously failed; and one dark day the doctor, whom Israel Haydon had anxiously questioned behind the wood-pile, just out of sight from his wife's window--the doctor had said that she never would be any better. The downfall of his happiness had been swift and piteous. William Haydon was a much larger and rosier man than his father had ever been; the old man looked shrunken as they crossed the field together. They had prolonged their talk about letting the great south field lie fallow, and about some new Hereford cattle that the young farmer had just bought, until nothing more was left to say on either side. Then there came a long pause, when each waited for the other to speak. William grew impatient at last.

"Have you got any notion what it's best to do, sir?" he began boldly; then, finding that his father did not answer, he turned to look at him, and found that the drawn face was set in silent despair.

"I've always been forehanded; I never was caught so unprepared before," he faltered. "'T has been my way, as you know, to think out things beforehand, but it come to the very last before I could give it up 'bout your mother's gettin' better; an' when I did give up, 't wa'n't so I could think o' anything. An' here's your aunts got their families dependin' on 'em, and wantin' to git away soon as may be. I don't know which way to look."

"Marilla and I should be thankful if you'd come and stop 'long of us this winter"--the younger man began, eagerly.

"No, no!" said his father sternly. "I ain't goin' to live in the chimbly-corner of another man's house. I ain't but a little past sixty-seven. I've got to stand in my lot an' place. 'T wouldn't be neither your house nor mine, William," he said, in a softer tone.

"You're a good son; your mother always said you was a good son."

Israel Haydon's voice broke, and William Haydon's eyes filled with tears, and they plodded along together in the soft spring gra.s.s.

"I've gone over everything I wish I could forget--all the bothering tricks I played her, 'way back when I was a boy," said the young man, with great feeling. "I declare, I don't know what to do, I miss her so."

"You was an only child," said the father solemnly; "we done the best we could by ye. She often said you was a good son, and she wa'n't surprised to see ye prosper. An' about Marilly, 'long at the first, when you was courtin' her, 't was only that poor mother thought n.o.body wa'n't quite good enough for her boy. She come to set everything by Marilly."

The only dark chapter in the family history was referred to for the last time, to be forgotten by father and son. The old people had, after all, gloried in their son's bravery in keeping to his own way and choice. The two farms joined. Marilla and her mother were their next neighbors; the mother had since died.

"Father," exclaimed William Haydon suddenly, as they neared the barn, "I do' know now but I've thought o' the very one!"

"What d'ye mean?" said the old man, startled a little by such vehemence.

"'T ain't n.o.body I feel sure of getting," explained the son, his ardor suddenly cooling. "I had Maria Durrant in my mind--Marilla's cousin.

Don't you know, she come and stopped with us six weeks that time Marilla was so dyin' sick and we hadn't been able to get proper help; and what a providence Maria Durrant was! Mother said one day that she never saw so capable a woman."

"I don't stand in need of nursin'," said the old man, grumbling, and taking a defensive att.i.tude of mind. "What's the use, anyway, if you can't get her? I'll contrive to get along somehow. I always have."

William flushed quickly, but made no answer, out of regard to the old man's bereaved and wounded state. He always felt like a schoolboy in his father's presence, though he had for many years been a leader in neighborhood matters, and was at that moment a selectman of the town of Atfield. If he had answered back and entered upon a lively argument it probably would have done the old man good; anything would have seemed better than the dull hunger in his heart, the impossibility of forming new habits of life, which made a wall about his very thoughts.

After a surly silence, when the son was needlessly repentant and the father's face grew cloudy with disapproval, the two men parted.

William had made arrangements to stay all the afternoon, but he now found an excuse for going to the village, and drove away down the lane. He had not turned into the highroad before he wished himself back again, while Israel Haydon looked after him reproachfully, more lonely than ever, in the sense that something had come between them, though he could not tell exactly what. The spring fields lay broad and green in the suns.h.i.+ne; there was a cheerful sound of frogs in the lower meadow.

"Poor mother! how she did love early weather like this!" he said, half aloud. "She'd been getting out to the door twenty times a day, just to have a look. An' how she'd laugh to hear the frogs again! Oh, poor me!

poor me!" For the first time he found himself in tears. The grim old man leaned on the fence, and tried to keep back the sobs that shook his bent shoulders. He was half afraid and half ashamed, but there he stood and cried. At last he dried his eyes, and went slowly into the house, as if in hope of comfort as well as shelter.

The two sisters were busy in an upper room. They had seen William Haydon drive away, and their sympathy had been much moved by the sight of his father's grief. They stood at a window watching him from behind the curtain.

"He feels it much as anybody could," said Mrs. Stevens, not without a certain satisfaction in this tribute to her own dear sister. "Somehow or 'nother your brother is so methodical and contained, Mis' Martin, that I shouldn't have looked to see him give way like other men."

"He never was one that could show his feelin's," answered Mrs. Martin.

"I never saw him shed tears before as I know of, but many's the time he hasn't been able to control his voice to speak. I wonder what made William hurry off so? His back looked kind o' provoked. They couldn't have had no words; whatever it was, they couldn't had no words so soon as this; an' William 's always respectful."

"'T ain't that either," she added, a moment later. "I've seen sights o' folks in trouble, and I don't know what nor why it is, but they always have to get through with a fractious spell before they can get to work again. They'll hold up an' 'pear splendid, and then something seems to let go, an' everything goes wrong, an' every word plagues 'em. Now Isr'el's my own poor brother, an' you know how I set by him, Mis' Stevens; but I expect we'll have to walk soft to get along with him for a week or two to come. Don't you go an' be too gentle, neither. Treat him just's you would anyway, and he'll fetch himself into line the quicker. He always did have days when he wouldn't say nothing to n.o.body. It does seem's if I ought to be the one to stop longer with him, an' be the most help; but you know how I'm situated.

And then 't is your sister's things that's to be looked over, and you and Marilla is the proper ones."

"I wish 't was so you could stop," Mrs. Stevens urged honestly. "I feel more acquainted with you than I do with Marilly. But I shall do my best, as I shall want those who come to do for my things when I'm past an' gone. I shall get William to come an' help us; he knows more about his mother's possessions than anybody, I expect. She made a kind of girl of him, for company's sake, when he was little; and he used to sew real pretty before his fingers got too big. Don't you recall one winter when he was house-bound after a run o' scarlet fever? He used to work worsted, and knit some, I believe he did; but he took to growin' that spring, and I chanced to ask him to supply me with a couple o' good holders, but I found I'd touched dignity. He was dreadful put out. I suppose he was mos' too manly for me to refer to his needlework. Poor Marthy! how she laughed! I only said that about the holders for the sake o' sayin' somethin', but he remembered it against me more than a year."

The two aunts laughed together. "Boys is boys, ain't they?" observed Mrs. Stevens, with great sagacity.

"Men is boys," retorted Mrs. Martin. "The more you treat 'em like boys, the better they think you use 'em. They always want motherin', an' somebody to come to. I always tell folks I've got five child'n, counting Mr. Martin the youngest. The more bl.u.s.ter they have, the more boys they be. Now Marthy knew that about brother Isr'el, an' she always ruled him by love an' easin' of him down from them high perches he was always settin' upon. Everything was always right with her an'

all wrong with him when they was young, but she could always say the right word."