Country Neighbors Part 29

"It's real handsome," said Mrs. John C. "How many pieces be there? This is the whole on 't, as I remember it."

"Jest as you see it. Yes, 'tis handsome. Mother set the world by it."

"I dunno but I'd ruther have the wuth on 't," said Mrs. John C., as she had said many times before.

"Well," agreed Ann, "I dunno but father would. He wa'n't doin' very well that year. I was a little mite of a thing then, an' I remember it all as if 'twa'n't but yesterday. Father come in, an' he says: 'Well, I guess I've saved the judge a pretty good smash-up. That span o' colts run away down the river road.' 'Who's in the carriage?' says mother. 'He drivin'

himself?' 'No,' says father. 'He'd jest lifted Annie in, an' there was a paper blew along the road, an' they started.' 'Annie?' says mother, 'that little mite? He don't deserve to have a child. Why, father,' says she, lookin' up over her gla.s.ses,--mother had near-sighted eyes,--'your clo's are all tore off o' you, an' there's your hand all bleedin'.'

Father begun to wash himself up at the sink, an' while he stood there, in walked the judge. He was white as a cloth. 'Barstow,' says he, 'you name anything you want that's in my power to git ye, an' you shall have it.' 'Twas a pretty hard year for father, as I told ye, but he never asked favors from n.o.body. I can see jest how he looked when he turned round an' answered. Father was a real handsome man. 'Much obleeged, judge,' says he. 'I don't want nothin' I can't git for myself.' The judge looked kinder hurt, but he turned to mother. 'Mis' Barstow,' says he, 'can't you think o' some kind of a keepsake you'd like?' Mother spoke up as quick as a wink. 'I want a little mite of a silver pitcher for cream,' says she. 'I see one when I was a little girl.' 'You shall have it,' says the judge; an' 'twa'n't a week afore this set come, all marked complete. I never see anybody quite so tickled as mother was; an'

father he kinder laughed. He couldn't help it, to think how she got ahead of him."

"Well," said the visitor again, "it's as handsome as ever I see." She got slowly on her feet. "There! I guess I must be movin' along. We're goin' up to the street right arter dinner, an' I must have it early.

Don't you want to send?"

"I'd like some mola.s.ses."

"Well, we'll drive this way an' call an' git the jug. Come over an' see us, won't you?"

"Yes, I will. You come again."

When she was gone, Ann, under the suggestion of an early dinner, set about getting her own. She had some calf's head from the day before, and she warmed it up with herbs. The kitchen smelled delightfully, and as she set out the food on her bare table, always scoured white to save the use of a cloth, she felt the richness of her own comfortable life. She ate peacefully, sitting there in the sun and watching her s.h.i.+ning silver, and just as she was finis.h.i.+ng there came a knock at the door.

"Walk right in," called Ann; but as n.o.body responded, she got up and opened the door herself. A young man stood on the broad stone, shabby, dust-covered, and with a tired face. The face was sullen, too. He looked as if life had been uncivil to him and he hated it. Ann felt a little shock, like a quicker heart-beat. It was in some subtle way like the face of her brother Will, who had died in his reckless youth.

"Gi' me a bite o' suthin' to eat," he said, as if it were a formula he had often used. "I ain't had a meal for a week."

"Ma.s.sy sakes! yes," said Ann. "Come right in. Here, you set there, an'

I'll warm it up a mite. I didn't have no potaters to-day,--I was in a kind of a hurry,--but I guess you can make out with bread."

He took the chair and watched her while she set on the spider again and warmed her savory dish. Ann filled the kettle at the same time. She judged that he might like a cup of tea, and told herself she would sit down and take it with him. But when the food was before him, he addressed himself to it, tacitly rejecting all her attempts to whip up conversation.

"You travelin' far?" asked Ann, over her own cup of tea, when she had skimmed the top of the milk for him.

"Not very."

He frowned a little, and bent to his occupation. His hunger bore out what he had said. He cleared the dishes and drained the teapot. Then he rose, took his hat, and, without a look at Ann, jerked out a "much obliged," and was gone.

"Well," said Ann, smiling to herself ruefully, thinking of to-morrow's dinner, "talk about folks that eat an' run!"

But, was.h.i.+ng the dishes and trying meantime to plan her happy afternoon, she could not put away the memory of her brother's eyes and one tumbling lock of hair; whispers from the past were clamorous at her ear.

Presently there was the sound of wheels, and Mrs. John C., perched beside her meagre husband, called from the door:--

"Here we be, Ann. Where's your jug? What if you should clap on your bunnit an' ride along to the street?"

She spoke cordially, judging that on such a spring day everybody was better out of the woods and upon the highway.

"No," said Ann. "I got too much to do. I'm goin' into the pines arter some goldthread an' sarsaparil'. 'Most time for spring bitters. But I'm obleeged to ye for takin' the jug."

Half an hour later Ann closed the door behind her and, with a little basket on her arm and a kitchen knife to dig with, wandered away to her dear retreat. There she worked less than she had expected, the suns.h.i.+ne was so beguiling. She found many spring treasures, the sort she came upon year after year, and always with the same delighted wonder. A new leaf or a budding plant was enough to send Ann off into vistas of quiet joy. Spring clouds were thick, when she walked home, in a tumultuous white flock, and she liked them as well as the blue they covered. The earth was very satisfying to Ann. The air had made her hungry, and with a smile at her own haste, she drew out her little table and began to set it.

Suddenly she stopped, as if a hand had grasped her heart. The room was different. A spot of brightness had gone out of it. The silver tea-set was not there. She hurried into the sitting-room, wild with hope that she might have set it away; but the place was empty. Ann went back into the kitchen, and sank down because her knees refused to hold her. Not once did she think of the value of what she had lost, but only as it linked the past to her own solitary days. The tea-set had been a kind of household deity, the memorial of her father's courage and her mother's happiness, a brighter sun of life than any that could rise again. She sat there still; her heart beat heavily.

"Ann!" It was Mrs. John C.'s voice from the wagon. "Come git your jug."

Ann rose and went weakly out.

"There 'tis in the back o' the wagon," said Mrs. John C. "John'd git out, but the colt's possessed to start, an' I don't like to be left with the reins. Mercy, Ann! what's the matter o' you? You feel sick?"

Ann had dragged out the heavy jug, but there was no strength in her lean arms, and she swayed almost to the ground.

"No," she said, in a dull quiet, "I ain't sick; my silver tea-set's gone."

"Gone! gone where?"

"I don't know," said Ann, in the same despairing way, "unless somebody's stole it."

"John, do you hear that?" cried Mrs. John C., in high excitement. "That silver tea-set's gone. It's the one Ann sets her life by, an' it's wuth I dunno what. Can't you do suthin'?"

John C. looked about him with a vague solemnity.

"Anybody could git into these woods," he said, "an' you'd have hard work to find out where."

"Hard work!" repeated Mrs. John C., in extreme scorn. "I guess 't'll be hard work, but so's a good many things. Don't set there talkin'. Don't you worry, Ann! We'll stir up the neighbors, an' 'f your tea-set's anywheres above ground, we'll have it back, or I'll miss my guess. Come, John, come. Le' 's git along."

Power and vengeance breathed from all her portly frame, and so they drove away, she even, as Ann saw, in her dull bewilderment, putting out a hand to shake the whip in its socket, and John C. holding in the plunging colt.

Ann wearily tugged in the mola.s.ses-jug and put it in its place. Then she sat down by the window, trembling, not to think over what had happened, but to bear her loss as she might. From the first moment of discovering it, she had had no hope. Tragic things of this sort were strangers to her simple life, and now that one had come, she knew no depth of experience to draw from. Sickness she could bear, or death if it should come, because they were factors of the common lot; but it had never occurred to her that so resplendent a thing as a silver tea-set could belong to any one and then be reft away.

The dusk gathered and thickened. The frogs were peeping down by the old willows, and for the first time in her life the melancholy of early spring lay cold upon her heart. It was perhaps eight o'clock when she heard a hand at the door.

"Ann!" called Mrs. John C. "Ann, you there?"

Ann rose heavily.

"Come in," she said. "I'll light up."

When she had set the lamp on the table and lighted it with a trembling hand, Mrs. John C., waiting to find a chair, gazed at her in wonder. Ann looked stricken. Her hair was disordered, her eyes were sunken, and suddenly she was old. Mrs. John C. spoke gently, moved out of her energetic sweep and swing.

"Law, Ann! don't you take it so terrible hard. 'Tain't wuth it, even a tea-set ain't. What should you say if I told you they'd got onto the track on 't?"

"No," said Ann, out of her dull endurance, "they won't ever do that.

When a thing o' that kind's gone, it's gone. Don't do no good to make a towse about it. I sha'n't ever see it again."

"Well, I guess I'd make a towse," said Mrs. John C., robustly. "If you won't, I will for ye. Mebbe you're nearer gittin' it back than you think. I told John I wa'n't goin' to wait a minute. I run over to tell ye." Then Ann listened, though as one still without hope. "Sam Merrill'd been down the gully road, fencin'," continued Mrs. John C., now with an exuberant relish of her news, "an' when he was comin' home along by the old Pelton house he sees a kind of a tramp goin' in there. He was youngish, Sam said, an' he had on a light coat, an' the pockets on 't bulged. What do you think o' that? Minute he said it, I says to myself, 'That's Ann's tea-set.'"

All at once there came a picture before Ann's eyes: not the tramp with the bulging pockets, as he sought the hospitality of the ruined house, but the same tramp as he stood on her doorstone and asked for food. The whole event was clear to her. She called herself a fool for not having known at once.

"Sam say anything more about him?" she asked eagerly. "What he had on?"

"No. Come to think of it, yes, he did, too. Said he had on an old straw hat with a red an' blue band round it. Sam said he noticed that because 'twas so early for a straw. Said it looked more like a child's hat.