Читать книгу The Gayworthys - Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney - Страница 14

"The world is so full of other folks," said Joanna, wearily.

She was sitting by the pleasant garden-window in Rebecca's room. A great cherry-tree, full of fruit and birds, tossed its wide arms up against the house-front, and almost grew in at every opening. She looked out into its green intricacies and watched the robins, that feasted fearlessly, even when she reached a hand to the hither bough, and gathered, half absently, for herself, a dinner or two out of their crimson store.

Down-stairs, the house was shaded, open, clean and cool, from end to end. The early country dinner was over, and cleared away. Huldah was turning cheeses in the cheese-room. Mrs. Vorse was taking her after-dinner nap. Say and Gershom were down in the garden, on a great rock, over which a plum-tree hung. Mrs. Gair had been gone to Selport a week or more. Say was left there with her aunts, until September. A box of clothing, with books and toys, had come up by the stage the night before. Among the rest, was that unfailing childish delight, "Swiss Family Robinson"; and for Gershom, a present from thoughtful Aunt Jane, a copy of Dana's "Two Years before the Mast." These books, and Say's life-size linen baby, kept the children abundant company down there on the great, green-canopied, granite divan.

There had been question, among the sisters, of plans for the remainder of the day. Mrs. Prue had said that somebody ought to go and see Mrs. Rockwood. Mrs. Prue rarely paid visits. "Somebody" meant the girls, of course, who were responsible for the social department in family affairs. Dutiful, compliant Rebecca repeated the suggestion, up-stairs.

"We ought to go and see Mrs. Rockwood, Joanna."

"Dear me! and her third boy! I can't. I never know what to say to people in affliction. Besides, we should have to admire the baby. People are always astonished if you're not fond of babies—and peaches. But they do come so done up in flannel!"

"Dear Joanna," said Rebecca, laughing, "don't be absurd. It will seem unkind if we don't go soon. As if we took no interest."

"Well, maybe we don't; just at this moment, at least. Perhaps, another day, we should. But people take for granted that we're interested all the time, and we pretend we are. And so we have to act up to it, whether or no, and hate it accordingly. The world's absurd. And, oh, dear! it's so full of other folks!"

Here is where we took Joanna up.

Rebecca said nothing for a moment. Dear and intimate as the sisters were, it was sometimes a puzzle for one to comprehend the other. Joanna's moods might mean nothing but absurdity and waywardness, or they might cover feeling that called for a deep sympathy. Rebecca could not tell. On points of feeling, Joanna never would be voluntarily communicative. To her, strong-thoughted, secret-hearted, masked with an impervious whimsicality that few would know how to approach with earnestness, the world would be likely, all her life, to seem filled only with "other folks."

Rebecca brought, presently, an open book, and laid it on the window-sill before her sister. These words were marked upon the page. "As Thou, Father, art in me, and I in Thee, that they, also, may be one in us."

"That is how it ought to be," she said.

"And just how it always isn't," said Joanna, leaning her head upon her right hand, with the searching look in her eyes of one striving to solve a problem, and gently pushing the Bible from her, with her left. "And these pretenses only hinder it."

"They ought not to be pretenses. Wherever there are Christians, there should be Christian love and sympathy, shouldn't there?"

"It's no use to talk in the potential mood. The present indicative contradicts it flatly. At least, among the Hilbury Christians. Take Mrs. Prouty. That woman aggravates me so, with her perfections! Why, the rest of the world, you'd think, was only made to be an offset to her righteousness. She's so faithful among the faithless, and always in such a small way! She darns her stockings—Wednesday night—on the right side; and it isn't evangelical to darn them on the wrong. And not to get the clothes dried Monday, when her wash is over, is nothing less than Anti-Christ. It's mint, anise, and cummin,—gnats and needles' eyes. There isn't any room for Christian sympathy. And then look at Mrs. Fairbrother; with her whining ways and beautiful submission to her troubles and "chastenings". Other people are chastened too, I suppose. But she believes Providence keeps a special rod in pickle for her, and doesn't do much else of importance but discipline and pity her. I'm tired of going about among such people."

Rebecca stood, now, at the toilet, brushing out the soft, delicate cloud of her dark hair. She folded it back from her face, and wound it into the usual simple knot behind, keeping silence, waiting for the querulous mood to pass. Joanna sat, listlessly plucking leaves and cherries, through the window; biting either, as it happened, indifferently. Presently, she roused and turned.

"I'm cross, Becsie, I know; and wicked. But it seems sometimes as if the world were all wrong. We must do something, I suppose. There are those books Jane left to be taken over to Wealthy. She always manages to leave that for us. Let's take the children, and walk over. If anybody, but you, can set me straight when I'm crooked, it's Wealthy Hoogs. She's real, and strong."

"Wealthy, healthy, and wise," assented Rebecca, playfully.

"I don't know about the wise. What did she marry Jaazaniah for?"

Down on the rock, under the pleasant shade of the plum-tree, two other little lives were getting in their separate fashion, whatever the world had for them, to-day. Say had set her doll upon a moss throne, in a high cleft, and crowned her with golden buttercups, and built a bower of asparagus plumes about her, and put in her hand a peeled willow twig, for a wand. This was her fairy queen of the grotto. And, mutely, lest Gershom should wake to consciousness of what she was about, and ridicule her, she was performing her favorite fairy tale of the Immortal Fountain. The asparagus, tossing its feathers of green,—the beans, winding their scarlet blossoms around the tall poles,—the growing corn, standing in stately rows, putting forth its young tassels,—these, filling with their ranks the long garden upon one side, were the fairy troops she essayed, according to the story, successively, to pass. The Immortal Fountain was supposed to be hidden in the vine-covered summer-house at the farther end.

Gershom, outstretched upon his back, lay utterly heedless of it all. He was rounding the Horn, in the forecastle of the Pilgrim.

Say came back to her fairy queen, after a breeze had swept the corn-patch, and refused her passage by the crossing of its blades. Gershom at the end of the chapter, flung down the book, and came back, also, from far Pacific seas.

"I've never seen anything but Hilbury rocks," he cried. "Say! how does the sea look? Come and tell me."

According to the spirit of the story, the corn-fairies should unhesitatingly have lowered their green blades, the next time, on Say's approach; so readily did she abandon her pantomime at the boy's call.

"The sea? Why, down at the wharf, where the Pearl comes in, it's black and dirty; and you're afraid all the time of falling in. But up on Harbor Hill, where papa takes me to walk sometimes, it looks wide and blue, and sparkles, way off, up against the edge of the sky. And you can see the vessels sailing. But I think it's prettier here."

"Poh! that's because you're a girl. I'm tired of hills and trees. I want to see the sea. And I mean to, sometime."

"Well, you're coming to Selport to see us, you know. And then, when the Pearl comes in, we'll go down to the wharf, and get oranges and pineapples."

"I don't care for the oranges. But I want to see the ship, and the captain, and the sailors."

"Well, they'll be there. And we can sit in the cabin."

"I shall go up the masts. To the very top."

"No, indeed! You'll fall."

"I shan't do any such thing. Can't I climb a tree? I brought home a crow's nest, last spring, off the top of a pine, higher than any mast. I wonder if grandpa'll let me go?"

"Of course he will. I'll ask him."

And Say skipped away, past the green fairies, and the scarlet fairies, and between the whispering corn-blades, triumphantly, and up to the golden sunflowers, that shook their radiant heads at her, and sent her back.

She took up Gershom's book. "That isn't pretty," she said, "'The Swiss Family Robinson' is nice. Mamma reads it to me. And I've got a story in my Girl's Own Book, about a little boy and girl that went away to sea in a ship, and got lost among the savages."

There was ample present provision for Gershom's newly awakened craving. Aunt Jane had made her selections well. Yet, who could blame her, if the boy, like all boys, should grow restless, and feel a longing to see the world?

Aunt Rebecca, with her dainty white sun-bonnet and large green parasol, came down the garden path and announced to the children the plan for the afternoon. A walk to cousin Wealthy's was the crown and acme of Hilbury delights to Say. Even Gershom, after a little balancing, let himself incline to the single thing that could have persuaded him away from his sea-story. Yet Say, after all, of the whole party, was the only one to whom came, unalloyed, the perfect joy of the golden summer, that day, among the hills.

Around by the high-road, it was a long, toilsome, unsheltered walk to Wealthy Hoogs's. The way they took,—down Hartshorne's lane, through the wild, ferny pasture, out by the pond side, and around its margin, to the opposite slopes, up which a woodpath led them to Jaazaniah's hillside farm,—this was purely fair and fragrant, green and still.

Joanna kept her face very straightforward, and her parasol lowered carefully against the side that was not sunny, as they passed down the lane; divining, somehow, without directly looking, that it was Gabriel who stood high up on the loaded hay-rigging out there at the left, pitching its perfumed freight, in mighty trusses, through the great barn-window. The footsteps of the sisters fell noiseless; but the children leaped, and laughed, and shouted. Gabriel never turned. After they had well gone by, he paused, though, and took breath, leaning upon his fork; his face toward the way that they had followed. Then he glanced round, westwardly, and raised his hand toward the sun; and then set himself, with more stalwart strain than ever, to his work again.

Down in the edge of the pasture, the Gayworthys met Mrs. Hartshorne, among the raspberry bushes.

"Well, now, I declare! You hain't called in and missed me, have you? You've been as scarce, lately, as eggs in January. I was telling father, last night, that I hadn't laid eyes on one of you, except at meeting, since Miss Gair went. And—speaking of meeting—I guess I've got some news for you. Parson Fairbrother was in, a minute, this morning; and what do you think he says?"

"Stacy Lawton's 'found a hope,' I suppose."

"How came you to guess, right off?"

"I thought she'd been looking for it."

"Well, yes, the parson says she's been in a very interesting state of mind for some weeks; and he's very much encouraged. He thinks there's an increasing seriousness among the young people. But that isn't all; though, to be sure, that's what we ought to care the most about;" and Mrs. Hartshorne's round, cheery face lengthened a little, duly, for an instant, as she spoke, but sprang back to its jolly lines, by irresistible native elasticity, and lightened with a simple, womanly sympathy and delight as she went on.

"There's more coming of it. Only it isn't to be talked of quite yet, and so you mustn't tell. But it looks as if there was work ready-laid out for her, and he as good as said so. I shan't mention any names."

"O no. It isn't worth while. It's been pretty plain that there was one thing depending on another."

"So, she's made sure of him! I knew she would, before she quite committed herself. And that's religion! with some people. I know yours, Becsie, is a better sort."

It was, and it needed to be.

Joanna said the last words as she left Mrs. Hartshorne and joined her sister, who had moved forward, and was disentangling Say's dress from the raspberry stems, among which the child had plunged, eagerly, after the fruit.

Rebecca had had an instant's time. It is all we need, at some crises, for hiding away our secrets between ourselves and Heaven. Her sweet face was, apparently, unchanged, as she turned, now, toward Joanna.

"We must not judge," she said. "And perhaps she has only had given her just what she needs to keep her fixed. God takes different ways."

And so they passed on; their feet following the same track; yet one of the twain, from that moment, entering, silently, without human sign, a path marked for her only. God's way. One taken, and the other left. How long?

They came down to the edge of the great pond. Away off, eastwardly and southwardly, it swept, shaping itself among the hills, its limit untraceable except just here about them. A light rippling line whispered up the mimic beach,—the hill they had just come down lay behind them against the southwest sky, and the birches and alders that fringed its base, shaded the calm water and its pebbly margin. They always sat down here to rest. It was a wonderful stillness. Nothing moved but the lazy-lapping water, and the tremulous birch leaves, and the little sandpiper that scampered along the wave-mark. Even the children could not begin at once to play. They sat down upon the pebbles, and dipped up water in their palms to drink.

Gershom, his mind stirred with new thoughts, looked out upon the shining expanse and upon the blue distant hills that shut it in, and wondered with himself where in the world was room left for the great sea.

The sisters talked no more. Each soul went its own way in the quietness. Only Say was supremely happy, with the water and the sky and the white clouds sailing about in both. Only Say had not come yet to look further than things visible, as, except from the fairy lore, she peopled the scene itself.

Well, that was all. They sat and rested there. And after fifteen minutes they got up and went on their way; and neither one knew what lines, in those few moments, life might have written for another.

They went half a mile around, to where a pasture-path led up again—more rocky and shaded this time—along the unfenced hillside of the Hoogs's dairy farm.

Away up here, apart from all neighborhood, in the little red house built against a steep of granite, lived Cousin Wealthy. Between summer and winter—between churn and spinning-wheel her life vibrated. Her husband Jaazaniah lived here too, of course. Whatever may be to be said about him will say itself. If Wealthy Hoogs, "hungry for books," full of keen thought, energetic to a pre-eminence even among Yankee notables, had lived the high-pressure life of modern society,—if her Yankee "smartness" had taken a purely æsthetic turn,—which having never happened was no less a mercy to herself, perhaps, than to Jaazaniah, she might have discovered, as so many gifted beings seem destined to do, that there was something unresponsive in her sphere, that she had not found—I am half ashamed to use the word—her "affinity"; that she was a mismatched, misplaced woman. Apparently, she was; yet she comprehended nothing of this jargon; she had, seemingly, poor creature, never found it out; she lived here simply, where she had been put; made and packed her butter, wove her homespun, and loved faithfully,—and forbearingly, for the most part,—were it praise worth a woman's having to say more? the man whose name and home she shared.

If Wealthy Hoogs could have been spirited from her secluded mountain home, and set down bodily in a "cultivated circle,"—face to face even with such a one as soul to soul stood secretly her counterpart,—I think neither one nor the other of them, nor any among the congenial spirits near, who through fleshly eyes should behold her apparition, would at once have recognized the kin. Perhaps, for the strengthening and consolation of "misplaced" existence, in whatever sphere, the same conclusion might, in its behalf, be safely reached. It is quite possible that He who sets answering souls apart, shrouding them from each other's ken with unlike exteriors of form and phase, and joins by circumstance them of less correspondent mold, knows most clearly the fitness of His own work, and the fullness of His times.

Wealthy was a spare, "long-favored" woman. Her pale hair grew high upon her forehead, and could only be adjusted in the straightest of straight lines. Her rather small gray eyes were set in close neighborhood on either side the thin-bridged nose. This perhaps added, in effect, to the wonderful keenness of their glance. They pierced you with their intensity. They seemed always penetrating through things and people, to Artesian depths, searching after that she thirsted for. Sailors, they say, who daily strain their vision to the very earth-verge, come to attain a marvelous long-sightedness. Peering out, from her remote isolation, through such avenues of thought as opened themselves toward the world of things and thoughts that lay like a dream in the distance, reaching her spiritual treasures from afar,—she grew to place all whereon she looked instinctively, as it were, at long range and focus. So she got into her face the expression that people say, "looks through you."

"There's a great deal besides common smartness in Wealthy Hoogs," said her town's-folk. "And how on earth," it was not seldom added, with Yankee significance of incompleteness, "she ever came to take up with that Jaazaniah!"

They found her to-day, on the little square, open platform, that, by way of stoop, was built against the angle of the house, under the shade of a great oak. She had a broad wooden tray upon her lap, in which she was cutting up a pure white mass of cheese-curd. Jaazaniah sat by; his chair—one useless foreleg gone—tilted up against the red shingles. He whittled a stick, and whistled. It would be time, presently, to go after the caows. That duty impending absolved the interval of time. Wealthy chopped on, following her own solitary thoughts, feeling a certain habitual comfort of having him at her elbow.

Voices first, and then heads, coming suddenly in view up the abrupt path, brought the visitors to their knowledge. Then there was voluble country welcome, and "laying off things." Say was made free of the curd-trough, and pecked away, eagerly, at the dainty white bits, like a bird lit in a seeded field.

"It's kind of an extra job, to-day, this cheese," explained Wealthy. "I don't mostly keep such work about into the afternoon. But I took a notion to set it after I'd got my butter out o' my hands. We had a famous churning, didn't we, Jez?"

"Eleven pounds, and jest as yaller as gold. Guess't would do ye good to see the pats," said Jaazaniah, complacently. "Lucky ye come to-day, for Wealthy'n me's goin' down to Winthorpe to-morrow, with sixty weight."

"Come in," says Wealthy, proud of her dairy, and especially of this new churning, as a brain-worker might be of a last successful poem. "It's Lineback's cream; and you wouldn't think she'd ate anything but buttercups."

If Wealthy's dairy was not poetry, it was very near it. Right up against the solid cool cliff, that formed one wall,—looking out, by its single shaded window, upon a rare panorama of hill-pasture, and meadow, with the gleaming pond stretched far below,—redolent with a mingling of the cool mountain smell of rock and moss, and the fragrance of churned cowslips and clover, that had given up their essence into the golden rolls and pats that were ranged on shelf, or stored in boxes,—musical with the gurgle and plash of spring-water, that came in by a cleverly fixed spout, and flowed constantly through the large shallow, wooden receptacle wherein Wealthy worked and molded,—there was such breath of purity, such suggestion of all delight of life and growth that culminated here, as no written word can give the feeling of.

Say drew long breaths as she entered. "I should like to live here," she said.

"I'll keep you," answered Wealthy Hoogs, with one of her long, asking looks. Say thought it sharp, and shrank away, half changing her mind. In this little hillside home there had never been a child.

"We've brought some books that Jane left for you," said Joanna. "She would have come up, but she hadn't time. And it's been so very hot."

"I know it has. This is the first comfortable breezy day for most a fortnight. And I'm thoroughly obliged. It's a great thing to get a book up here. Specially, when the winter nights come on."

"There's something among them—a book of traveler's stories—that we thought Jaazaniah might like."

"Maybe he will. But he never took no great to readin'; more'n a chapter in the Bible of a Sunday, or the newspaper once a week, or the Almanac. Sometimes I wish't he would. It seems like goin' off and leavin' him all alone, when he sits here, and I get into a book. I'm clear lost for awhile, that's a fact. But then he's always glad to see me back again, and that's one good of goin' away, however you do it."

"Don't you ever read aloud to him?"

"Well, I used to try that, now and then. But it didn't do much good. I had to keep nudgin' him up all the time, or he'd be sure to go sleep. He ain't one of the sort that can stand bein' read to. We ain't much alike in some things, and I suppose it isn't best to be. He's just as clever as the day is long; and you know that as well as I do."

Wealthy finished her sentence with a certain sudden, short defiance, as if she thrust down, with averted mental vision, some buried-alive thought that lifted itself now and then.

"If he got lost, as I do, there'd be no knowing when we should ever come across one another again. But he's a kind of anchor for me. He's always right there, and I know just where to find him."

With this bit of wifely philosophy, Wealthy led the way out again, toward the house front, where Jaazaniah whittled and whistled still, with interjectional sentences of conversation with Gershom, and glances at the descending afternoon sun.

"You might think, to see him sittin' there, that he was lazy. His mother used to tell him he was. But I know better. He's busy thinkin'. He isn't one that tells his thoughts much; but they come out, once in a while, in a way that would surprise you. And you ought to see him at a thing, when he once gets a going. He's slow to begin, that's all. Come, Jez, make haste and get the cows home, and the milkin' done, while I get this cheese into the press. The folks'll stay to supper, of course. And then, Jez, what if you take the boat and row the children across the pond?"

"Jest what I was a thinkin' of," responded Jaazaniah, slowly, shutting up his jack-knife, and coming down, skilfully, on the one forward leg of his chair.

"I told you so," said Wealthy, triumphantly, as he moved away. "He always gets ahead of me, after all's said and done. I've got into the way of always feelin' a kind of care of him, and remindin' him of things; but, half the time, there ain't really any need of it. I suppose it's partly because his mother's memory grew so short in her last days, and I had to look after her considerable; and when anybody's been used to doin',—no matter what it is,—they can't shake off the habit very easy.—Do you know what I think of every time I look at that old apple-tree, over there on the knoll? I do have curious thoughts about things sometimes. Well, it seems to me it's just like the cares people have laid upon 'em, and by and by get so's't they can't do without 'em. You see it grows right out from under a rock that happened to lay just there, and nobody ever moved it away. In the first of it, I suppose, it was a pretty hard chance. But it crept round, and climbed up, at last, into a tree. And now just look how the rock over its roots keeps it balanced! Why, if anybody should pry up that stone now, and heave it away, you can see, by the cant of the whole trunk, that it wouldn't hold itself up a minute!—And here I am, standing, moralizing, with the cheese-tray in my hands," she cried, interrupting herself. "It's clear I want something to hold me down!"

It was pretty clearly suggested to the minds of her listeners how this want of hers had been permanently provided for, as slow-moving, literal Jaazaniah came out of the dairy, his arms strung with milk pails, and took his plodding way down the path toward the barnyard, wrinkling his brows in the level-glancing afternoon sunlight, with never an apparent out-glancing of any light within, kindled of all those heavenly shafts illumined.

"We all get that, one way or another, I suppose," said Rebecca, thoughtfully. "It's well when we can see the good."

"All the same," said Joanna, quickly, "I can't help wanting to give the rock a hoist. And I think, in the beginning, somebody ought to have done it. At any rate, people needn't plant themselves in that fashion.—You're just buried alive here, Wealthy Hoogs, and I can't help saying so. Nobody to speak to month in and month out, except Jaazaniah, and he won't talk back."

"Maybe I like that best, when I get a going," replied Wealthy, with a touch of quiet humor. "Besides, there's more in folks than what gets said. There's all sorts of hindrances; things don't always seem to correspond. It's just as it is with children. They want to say great grown-up words sometimes, but they don't dare. When I was four years old, I told my mother once, that I wished I was fifteen, so's't I could say 'probable.' Clo'es is considerable. If Jaazaniah ever does come out more than ordinary, it's on a Sunday, when he's dressed and shaved, and gets the rough off a little. I don't doubt, if he wore a black suit every day, and kep' his hands clean, and his chin smooth, like a minister, he might talk like one. He's got a soul, and thoughts. It comes out in his whistlin'. He couldn't make such music as he does, out of nothin'. You never heard it, nor nobody else, as I have. Why, when we're sittin' here, all alone, sometimes, as we were just now, before you come along, he'll go on so, that I hold my breath for fear of stoppin' him. It's like all the Psalms and Revelations to listen to it. There's something between us then, that's more than talk.—No, I don't care what folks think about it; nor I don't care whether it ever comes out any plainer as long as we both live; but I know I was no fool in takin' Jaazaniah. The rough'll come off sometime,—over Jordan if it don't here,—and then, all I'm afraid of is, whether or no I shall make out to keep up with him."

If you haven't cared for this little passing glimpse at Wealthy Hoogs' life, inner and outer, it has been very easy for you to skip it; but, however it may be with this, my poor presentment, if she had come to you as an episode in your own actual experience, I am very sure you would have done no such thing.

The tea-drinking was such as could only have been had in just that spot, and from just those simply hospitable hands. The sun was lowering slowly to the horizon, lessened everywhere, in those regions, by the multitudinous hills,—when Jaazaniah helped the children and Aunt Rebecca carefully into his little boat, and put off from the shore at the foot of the descent. Joanna refused to go. She would rather, she said, walk round the head of the pond, in the twilight; and there wasn't room to take all safely. They wouldn't get across before she should come. They meant to have a row up the bend, first.

Joanna Gayworthy had a battle to fight,—after her own fashion. She must have it out with herself, and she must be left alone to do it. She wanted to stand up, face to face, with this great blank future that opened itself out before her, and see what its emptiness was like, and grapple with its phantoms, and put them down, once for all, if it might be.

There is a point we each come to, once,—and Joanna, whether she understood it or not, had reached it,—when a woman's life rounds itself out about her as the firmament, and in like manner resolves itself to her vision. One sun,—the rest a thronging huddle in a far ecliptic. Her sun had hidden itself below the horizon, Night was teaching her the secret of her day. Until Kate Purcell and her brother had come to Deepwater, there had never been a thought of doubt or loss to prompt her look up and discover whence her daylight came. It lessened, all at once; she turned her back upon it, and could find nothing in the whole wide horizon, suddenly, but sharp-eyed, impertinent little far-off, self-sphered stars.

Gabriel Hartshorne had come no nearer than the garden fence, on some farm errand, since the Sunday I have told you of. Joanna was fractious and unreasonable; nobody knew why,—herself least of all, perhaps; nothing was worth while; the world was full of "other folks."

She had longed to get off, alone, somewhere; there had been no chance for it; Mrs. Gair's stay, her departure, the hundred little put-off things that had to be done to bring the family back into the ordinary grooves again,—all had teased and prevented her till it had become unbearable. Now, she would be left.

So she stood there by the water-side, as the little boat passed round the bend, Rebecca, with her calm face turned toward her as she sat in the bow, floating away into the placid shadows, and out of sight, leaving her to the wild solitude that hushed itself around her into waiting silence. How should she know?

Ah, me! the mute histories that run side by side! The hearts that seem to touch, whose electric currents never blend with the spark of inmost recognition!

"I should like to know how people come to bear their lives!"—It was in this wise she began the fight. "A whole winter, shut up there, with Jaazaniah Hoogs! Ten, twenty, sixty winters, perhaps!—" Joanna gave a little gasping scream, to herself, at the imagination. "And there's Prue! And Jane isn't much better, whatever she supposes.—And I wonder what I'm coming to!—I shall have Becsie for awhile, maybe,—she's all I've got,—and then—somehow—she'll slip away from me, as she did just now; she's too good for us, I'm afraid; or perhaps some prowling missionary will come along, as they do in the memoirs, and carry her off to the tigers and anacondas. And then I shall take care of father; but I can't keep him forever; and Gershie'll grow up, and go away, and Prue'll go after him; and I'm tough, and I shall live through it all, and grow fat,—that's what it turns to with people like me,—and nobody'll really know anything about it, or care for me;—and I shall just be 'old Miss Gayworthy' for forty years after I shall wish I was dead and gone!—Well! the world must always be full of other folks, I suppose; and I shall be one of 'em,—that's all!"

And with this she hardened her heart fiercely against herself, and walked on; punching great holes in the gravelly path with the stick of her parasol, and supposing that so, since she no longer worded them mentally, she put down thoughts. But they kept seething, confusedly,—the something in her short past, that she would not look at or acknowledge, except as she did it once, to her own sudden surprise, in the involuntary exclamation, "I wish I could just be angry enough not to care!" mingling and alternating with the dreary touches imagination laid upon that picture of the coming years.

By and by—she hardly knew it—the harsh, wild fancies began to soften; a furtive, unshaped suggestion crept in among them, that other lives too must go on; that there would always be something to know, and to think of, and to care for, if she pleased, however secretly; to be true to, however hopelessly. That lines not identical might yet run a great way parallel; that it would be hard if they should never cross or coincide; that people born into this world contemporaneously, couldn't get off the planet, or into another generation; that, set at first in propinquity with like local ties and interests, they would scarcely drift away from each other into utter incognizance and separation; that they might, even, grow old before each other's eyes, and in a comfortable friendliness; and that she shouldn't very much mind being "old Miss Gayworthy" if only——, and just then her thoughts took definite form, and flashed off to Deepwater; and she "didn't believe there was anything in that Purcell story; they were all off, now, and nothing seemed to have come of it. But why didn't Gabriel so much as turn his head to-day?" She knew he hadn't, for she had heard the whish of every truss of hay that he had thrust in, without pause, at the barn-chamber window, until they had got round where he couldn't see; and here she caught herself up indignantly, and leaped to her feet from the fallen log whereon, at the turn of the path, she had seated herself mechanically, wondering how ever she had come round to that again.

Just then a little boat—not Jaazaniah's—came up to view along the opposite shore, and veered this way.

I said she was at the turn of the path. Here, the bank became abrupt and broken, and the shore-path ended for a space. A little track bent off into the woods, and followed the curve around the head of the pond, which leaned itself coquettishly this side,—touching again, farther on, the strip of pebbly beach, and there offering choice of road,—by shore or on, within the fringe of wood, to the point where they had first struck the pond, this afternoon, at the foot of Farmer Hartshorne's pasture.

Joanna gave a flashing glance at boat and oarsman, sweeping, with vigorous stroke, toward her.

"Does he think, I wonder, I shall stand here for him to come and fetch me?" And the light muslin dress, that against the green had been an unwitting signal for his guidance, vanished from the rower's sight among the trees.

Quick as thought the boat's bow turned. It was a race.

If Joanna could only get past the turning first! But the little feet that hurried so along the mossy way, stood but small chance against the lusty sweep of oars that shot the light craft with such rapid impulse, along the inner line, toward the point of meeting. She could catch frequent glimpses out between the trees, and note its progress. She could measure odds, and she knew that she was worsted. That he must know it, too, and that to leave the path, and to dash away into the woods, as for an instant she felt temptation to do, would not only cause great uneasiness to her sister, but would be to those other eyes absurd and manifest flight. Since there was no help for it, then, she would keep her dignity, at least. So she walked slowly, again,—very slowly,—and gathered breath; and came out, leisurely enough at last, upon the narrow beach where Gabriel Hartshorne sat waiting in his boat, and confronted him, as one who knew no cause for shrinking.

The young man sprang ashore.

"I was determined to find you, Joanna. I had something to say. I should have been glad to have rowed you over."

"I wanted the walk, thank you. And now I must make haste, for I have been longer than I meant, and I daresay the others have crossed the pond below."

"No," answered Gabriel. "The children were getting lilies in the bend when I came up."

He had lain about upon the water, watching, a full hour past, for the poor reward of these five minutes. He would not have them shortened, now.

Joanna walked on, replying nothing.

"You're offended, Joanna, and I suppose I can guess why. But there hasn't been any reason. I can't explain everything. If I could——"

"I am sure I wouldn't give you the trouble. I don't know why I should be supposed to be offended; and I certainly can't pretend to call you to account."

What strange, wayward words rush to the lips when the heart is fullest! These translated nothing of Joanna's self. Her sky was filling again with light. The whole east crimsoned with a coming joy. The impertinent stars faded out of her thought, and were forgotten. She could have sung, like a bird at dawn. And yet she answered frowardly. There was a curious delight in such very utterance. Like a child, she meant to be good in a minute; she meant to let herself be happy; but the last ebullitions of a relenting naughtiness,—the last throbs of an expiring pain,—there is a pleasure of perversity—a sweetness of torture—in the very prolonging of these.

Gabriel answered to her words.

"I wish I could show you my whole mind, this minute," said the young man, earnestly. "You wouldn't—that is, I hope not—find anything in it that would offend you. I told you I couldn't explain. Things haven't gone, lately, quite as they used to, between us. I only want to ask you to believe it isn't my fault. We've always been good friends, haven't we, Joanna?"

That nearly spoiled the whole. A little while ago, compounding meekly with fate, Joanna could have borne to be "old Miss Gayworthy," for a certain comfortable friendliness that might still be hers; now, was this all?

Had he pursued her so, to say only this? That he would like to say something better, if he could? Joanna felt inclined to be rather more indignant than ever. Spite of her capricious flight, the great solitude wherein she sat and dreamed had been so blithely broken by the coming of his boat! Such a thrill recalled her to the present,—such a nameless hope stirred suddenly,—and over the hard, lonely years she had looked out on, fell such a happy mist, once more, shutting her back into her youth again!

The first words, too, that had infringed, with a manly wilfulness, the silence that had lain between them, giving her a safe feeling in her own little petulance, that might be indulged, since, without humiliation to herself, it should presently be overborne,—meant they nothing more than this?

She felt very like the child, who discovers, after his naughtiness, that he may be as good as he pleases, yet it chiefly concerns himself; the world is to go on very much as it has always done before.

He only wanted to be friends, then.

"Of course," she answered, coldly. "There's no need to make a special talk about it.—When are you going to Winthorpe?"

"To study? I don't know. I'm afraid all that is put off for some time. Father seems to need me at home. Things don't look altogether clear, ahead. I may have to give up the law, after all, and stick to the farm."

"There they are,—coming round the point. They did cross below. We must make haste and meet them. It is getting late."

"Joanna!" exclaimed Gabriel, suddenly, placing himself before her in the narrow path,—"if it was fair and right to ask—as things are—I would ask you—."

It was a blundering beginning; but he would have blundered on, blessedly, if she had let him; which of course she didn't.

"Better not!" she interposed, hurriedly; putting a full stop, so, after this, his third dash. "Don't you remember what we used to say at school, when we opened our noon-baskets? 'Those that ask, shan't have; those that don't ask, don't want?' It always makes me contrary-minded, when folks come asking things!"

She put one foot on a great stone that lay in the water, and sprang past him, keeping on her way. He could but follow.

"It's clear she means to hold me off," was his thought.

"What in the world did he begin with a capital IF for?" was hers. "And why shouldn't it be 'fair and right,'—unless he's gone and made it wrong?"

Thrums again. This thread broke. Many things were to happen afterward to prevent its joining. But how should Joanna know that? She went home gayer hearted than for long past.

It would come right, somehow; she did not truly believe there was anything wrong, despite her captious coquetry. He would begin again, sometime; before long; without the capital IF; and say his lesson better.

There was a little quick restlessness in her manner, as she sat and chatted with Prue and the doctor, taking their tea together. She sang as she washed up the cups and plates, afterward; when that was done, she sang softly, still to herself, standing out by the doorstone in the great maple shade.

Rebecca complained that the sun had given her a headache, and betook herself quietly, with her pain, to bed.