Jane Field Part 31

"Well, if you can't, don't cry, little girl. There's nothing to cry about. I can stand it. All the trouble is, it does seem to me that I could take care of you better than any other fellow on earth, but maybe that's my conceit, and you'll find somebody else that will do better than I. Now don't cry." Francis pulled her hat off gently, and patted her head. His face was quite white, but he tried to smile.

"Don't cry, dear," he said again. "It was nothing you could help. I didn't much suppose you liked me. There's nothing much in me to like.

I'm an ordinary kind of a fellow."

Francis got up and walked off a little way.

Lois sobbed harder. Finally she stole a glance at him between her fingers. She could see his profile quite pale and stern as he stood on the edge of the terrace. She made a little inarticulate call, and he turned quickly.

"What is it, Lois?" he asked, coming toward her.

"I didn't say--I--didn't like you," she whispered faintly.

"Lois!"

"I didn't say so."

"Lois, do you? Answer me quick."

She hid her face again.

"Lois, you must answer me now."

"I like you well enough, but I can't marry you."

"Lois, is there any fellow in Green River that wants you? Is that the reason?"

She shook her head. "I can't ever marry anybody," she said, and her voice was suddenly quite firm. She wiped her eyes.

Francis sat down beside her. "O Lois, you do love me, after all?"

"I can't marry you," said she.

"Why not, dear?"

"I can't. You mustn't ask me why."

Francis looked down at her half laughing. "Some dreadful obstacle in the way?"

She nodded solemnly.

Francis put his arm around her. "Oh, my dear," he said, "don't you know obstacles go for nothing if you do like me, after all? Wait a little and you'll find out. O Lois, are you sure you do like me? You are so pretty."

"I can't," repeated Lois, trembling.

"Suppose this obstacle were removed, dear, you would then?"

"It never can be."

"But if it were, you would? Yes, of course you would. Then I shall remove it, you depend upon it, I shall, dear. Lois, I liked you the minute I saw you, and, it's terribly conceited, but I do believe you liked me a little. Dear, if it ever can be, I'll take care of you all my life."

The two sat there together, and the long summer afternoon pa.s.sed humming and singing with bees and birds, and breathing sweetly through the pine branches. They themselves were as a fixed heart of love in the midst of it, and all around them in their graves lay the dead who had known and gone beyond it all, but n.o.body could tell if they had forgotten.

Chapter X

When Lois left home that afternoon her mother had been in her bedroom changing her dress. When she came out she had on her best black dress, her black shawl and gloves, and her best bonnet. The three women stared at her. She stood before them a second without speaking.

The strange look, for which Lois had watched her face, had appeared.

"Why, what is the matter, Mis' Field?" cried Mrs. Babc.o.c.k. "Where be you going?"

"I'm goin' out a little ways," replied Mrs. Field. Then she raised her voice suddenly. "I've got something to say to all of you before I go," said she. "I've been deceivin' you, and everybody here in Elliot. When I came down here, they all took me for my sister, Esther Maxwell, and I let them think so. They've all called me Esther Maxwell here. That's how I got the money. Old Mr. Maxwell left it to Flora Maxwell if my sister didn't outlive him. I shouldn't have had a cent. I stole it. I thought my daughter would die if we didn't have it an' get away from Green River; but that wa'n't any excuse. Edward Maxwell had that fifteen hundred dollars of my husband's, an' I never had a cent of it; but that wa'n't any excuse. I thought I'd jest stay here an' carry it out till I got the money back; but that wa'n't any excuse. I ain't spent a cent of the money; it's all put away just as it was paid in, in a sugar-bowl in the china closet; but that ain't any excuse. I took it on myself to do justice instead of the Lord, an' that ain't for any human bein' to do. I ain't Esther Maxwell. I'm brought up short. I ain't Esther Maxwell!" Her voice rose to a stern shriek.

The three women stared at her, then at each other. Their faces were white. Amanda was catching her breath in faint gasps. Jane Field rushed out of the room. The door closed heavily after her.

Three wild, pale faces huddled together in a window watched her out of the yard. Mrs. Babc.o.c.k called weakly after her to come back, but she kept on. She went out of the yard and down the street. At the first house she stopped, went up to the door and rang the bell. When a woman answered her ring, she looked at her and said, "I ain't Esther Maxwell!" Then she turned and went down the walk between the rows of marigolds and asters, and the woman stood staring after her for a minute, then ran in, and the windows filled with wondering faces.

Jane Field stopped at the next house with the same message. After she left a woman pelted across the yard in a panic to compare notes with her neighbors. She kept on down the street, and she stopped at every door and said, "I ain't Esther Maxwell."

Now and then somebody tried to delay her to question her and obtain an explanation, but she broke away. There was about her a terrible mental impetus which intimidated. People stood instinctively out of her way, as before some rushing force which might overwhelm them.

Daniel Tuxbury followed her out to the street; then he fell back.

Mrs. Jane Maxwell caught hold of her dress, but she let go, and leaned trembling over her iron gate looking after the relentless black figure speeding to the next door.

She went on and on, all the summer afternoon, and canva.s.sed the little village with her remorse and confession of crime. Finally the four words which she said at the doors seemed almost involuntary.

They became her one natural note, the expression of her whole life.

It was as if she had never said any others. At last, going along the street, she repeated them to everybody she met. Some she had told before, but she did not know it. She said them to a little girl in a white frock, with her hair freshly curled, carrying a doll, and she ran away crying with fright. She said them to three barefooted boys loping along in the dust, with berry-pails, and they laughed and turned around and mocked her, calling the words after her. When she went up the path to the Maxwell house, she said them where the shadow of a pine-tree fell darkly in front of her like the shadow of a man.

She said them when she stood before the door of the house whose hospitality she had usurped. There was a little crowd at her heels, but she did not notice them until she was entering the door. Then she said the words over to them: "I ain't Esther Maxwell."

She entered the sitting-room, the people following. There were her three old friends and neighbors, the minister and his wife, Daniel Tuxbury, his sister and her daughter, Mrs. Jane Maxwell and her daughter, and her own Lois. She faced them all and said it again: "I ain't Esther Maxwell."

The lawyer jerked himself forward; his face was twitching. "This woman's mind is affected," he declared with loud importance. "She is Esther Maxwell. I will swear to it in any court. I recognize her, and I never forget a face."

"I ain't Esther Maxwell," said Jane Field, in her voice that was as remorseless and conclusive as fate.

Lois pressed forward and clung to her.

"Mother!" she moaned; "mother!"

Then for once her mother varied her set speech. "Lois wa'n't to blame," she said; "I want you to know it, all of you. Lois wa'n't to blame. She didn't know until after I'd done it. She wanted to tell, but I told her they'd put me in prison. Lois wa'n't to blame. I ain't Esther Maxwell."

"O mother, don't, don't!" Lois sobbed.

She hung about her mother's neck, and pressed her lips to that pale wrinkled face, whose wrinkles seemed now to be laid in stone. Not a muscle of Jane Field's face changed. She kept repeating at intervals, in precisely the same tone, her terrible under-chord to all the excitement about her: "I ain't Esther Maxwell."

Some of the women were crying. Amanda Pratt sat sewing fast, with her mouth set. She clung to her familiar needle as if it were a rope to save her from destruction. Francis Arms had come in, and stood close to Lois and her mother.