Meadow Grass: Tales of New England Life Part 16

Caleb regarded her in dull wonderment. Then he set down the pail he had taken.

"Ain't there any taters to bile?" he asked, solving the difficulty in his own way; "or 'ain't you skimmed the milk? I'd jest as soon wait."

"You better not wait," answered Amanda, almost pa.s.sionately, her thin hair blowing about her temples. "You better go right back. I'd ruther do it myself; I'd a good deal ruther."

Caleb turned about. He took a few steps, then stopped, and called hesitatingly over his shoulder, "I thought maybe I'd come an' set a spell to-night."

Then, indeed, Amanda felt her resolution, crack and quiver. "I guess you better come some other night," she said, in a steady voice, though her face was wet with tears. And Caleb walked away, never once looking back. Amanda stayed only to wipe her eyes, saying meanwhile to her sorry self, "Oh, I dunno how I can get along! I dunno!" Then she hurried back to the house, to find the kettle merrily singing, and Aunt Melissa standing at the kitchen cupboard, looking critically up and down the shelves.

"If you've got two sets o' them little gem-pans, you might lend me one," she remarked; and Amanda agreed, not knowing what she gave.

The supper was eaten and the dishes were washed, Aunt Melissa meantime keeping a strict watch from the window.

"Is it time for Kelup?" she asked, again and again; and finally she confronted the guilty Amanda with the challenge, "Do you think Kelup ain't comin'?"

"I--guess not," quavered Amanda, her cheeks scarlet, and her small, pathetic hands trembling. She was not more used to _finesse_ than to heroic action.

"Do you s'pose there's any on 'em sick down to young Nat's?" asked Aunt Melissa; and Amanda was obliged to take recourse again to her shielding "I guess not." But at length Uncle Hiram drove up in the comfortable carry-all; and though his determined spouse detained him more than three-quarters of an hour, sitting beside him like a portly Rhadamanthus, and scanning the horizon for the Caleb who never came, he finally rebelled, shook the reins, and drove off, Aunt Melissa meantime screaming over her shoulder certain vigorous declarations, which evidently began with the phrase, "You tell Kelup--"

Then Amanda went into the house, and sat down by the window in the gathering dusk, surveying the wreckage of her dream. The dream was even more precious in that it had grown so old. Caleb was a part of her every-day life, and for fifteen years Sat.u.r.day had brought a little festival, wherein the commonplace man with brown eyes had been high-priest. He would not come to-night. Perhaps he never would come again. She knew what it was to feel widowed.

Sunday pa.s.sed; and though Caleb fed the pigs and did the barn-work as usual, he spoke but briefly. Even in his customary salutation of "How dee?" Amanda detected a change of tone, and thereafter took flight whenever she heard his step at the kitchen door. So Monday forenoon pa.s.sed; Caleb brought water for her tubs and put out her clothes-line, but they had hardly spoken. The intangible monster of a misunderstanding had crept between them. But when at noon he asked as usual, though without looking at her, "Goin' to Sudleigh with the b.u.t.ter to-day?" Amanda had reached the limit of her endurance. It seemed to her that she could no longer bear this formal travesty of their old relations, and she answered in haste,--

"No, I guess not."

"Then you don't want I should set with your mother?"

"No!" And again Caleb turned away, and plodded soberly off to young Nat's.

"I guess I must be crazy," groaned poor Amanda, as she changed her washing-dress for her brown cashmere. "The b.u.t.ter's got to go, an' now I shall have to harness, an' leave ma'am alone. Oh, I wish Aunt Melissa'd never darkened these doors!"

Everything went wrong with Amanda, that day. The old horse objected to the bits, and occupied twenty minutes in exasperating protest; the wheels had to be greased, and she lost a b.u.t.ter-napkin in the well.

Finally, breathless with exertion, she went in to bid her mother good-by, and see that the matches were hidden and the cellar door fastened.

"Now, ma'am," she said, standing over the little old woman and speaking with great distinctness, "don't you touch the stove, will you? You jest set right here in your chair till I come back, an' I'll bring you a good parcel o' pep'-mints. Here's your garter to knit on, an' here's the almanac. Don't you stir now till I come."

And so, with many misgivings, she drove away.

When, Amanda came back, she did not stay to unharness, but hurried up to the kitchen door, and called, "You all right, ma'am?" There was no answer, and she stepped hastily across the floor. As she opened the sitting-room door, a low moaning struck her ear. The old lady sat huddled together in, her chair, groaning at intervals, and looking fixedly at the corner of the room.

"O ma'am, what is it? Where be you hurt?" cried Amanda, possessed by an anguish of self-reproach. But the old lady only continued her moaning; and then it was that Amanda noticed her shrivelled and shaking fingers tightly clasped upon a roll of money in her lap.

"Why, ma'am, what you got?" she cried; but even as she spoke, the explanation flashed upon her, and she looked up at the corner of the room. The eight-day clock was gone.

"Here, ma'am, you let me have it," she said, soothingly; and by dint of further coaxing, she pulled the money from the old lady's tense fingers. There were nine dollars in crisp new bills. Amanda sat looking at them in unbelief and misery.

"O my!" she whispered, at length, "what a world this is! Ma'am, did you tell him he might have 'em?"

"I dunno what Jonathan'll do without that clock," moaned the old lady.

"I see it carried off myself."

"Did you tell him he might?" cried Amanda, loudly.

"I dunno but I did, but I never'd ha' thought he'd ha' done it. I dunno what time 'tis now;" and she continued her low-voiced lamenting.

"O my Lord!" uttered Amanda, under her breath. Then she roused herself to the present exigency of comfort. "You come an' set in the kitchen a spell," she said, coaxingly, "an' I'll go an' get the things back."

Old Lady Green looked at her with that unquestioning trust which was the most pathetic accompaniment of her state. "You'll git 'em back, 'Mandy, won't ye?" she repeated, smiling a little and wiping her eyes.

"That's a good gal! So't we can tell what time 'tis."

Amanda led her into the kitchen, and established her by the window. She shut the door of the denuded sitting-room, and, giving her courage no time to cool, ran across lots to the Blaisdells', the hated money clasped tightly in her hand. The family was at supper, and the stranger with them, when she walked in at the kitchen door. She hurried up to her enemy, and laid the little roll of bills by his plate. Her cheeks were scarlet, her thin hair-flying.

"Here's your money," she said, in a strained, high voice, "an' I want our things. You hadn't ought to gone over there an' talked over an old lady that--that--"

There she stopped. Amanda had never yet acknowledged that her mother was not in her "perfect mind." Chapman took out a long pocket-book, and for a moment her courage stood at flood-tide; she thought he was about to accept the money and put it away. But no! He produced a slip of white paper and held it up before her. She bent forward and examined it,--a receipt signed by her mother's shaking hand.

"But it ain't right!" she cried, helpless in her dismay. "Cap'n Jabez, you speak to him! You know how 'tis about mother! She wouldn't any more ha' sold that clock than she'd ha' sold--me!"

Captain Jabez looked at his plate in uncomfortable silence. He was a just man, but he hated to interfere.

"Well, there!" he said, at length, pushing his chair back to leave the table. "It don't seem jestly right to me, but then he's got the resate, an' your mother signed it--an' there 'tis!"

"An' you won't do anything?" cried Amanda, pa.s.sionately, turning back to the stranger. "You mean to keep them things?"

He was honestly sorry for her, as the business man for the sentimentalist, but he had made a good bargain, and he held it sacred.

"I declare, I wish it hadn't happened so," he said, good-naturedly.

"But the old lady'll get over it. You buy her a nice bright little nickel clock that'll strike the half-hours, and she'll be tickled to death to watch it."

Amanda turned away and walked out of the house.

"Here," called Chapman, "come back and get your money!" But she hurried on. "Well, I'll leave it with Captain Jabez," he called again, "and you can come over and get it. I'm going in the morning, early."

Amanda was pa.s.sing the barn, and there, through the open door, she saw the old clock pathetically loaded on the light wagon, protected by burlap, and tied with ropes. The coverlets lay beside it. A sob rose in her throat, but her eyes were dry, and she hurried across lots home. At the back door she found Caleb unharnessing the horse. She had forgotten their misunderstanding in the present practical emergency.

"O Caleb," she began, before she had reached him, "ma'am's sold the clock an' some coverlids, an' I can't get 'em back!"

"Cap'n Jabez said she had, this arternoon," said Caleb, slowly, tying a trace. "I dunno's the old lady's to blame. Seem's if she hadn't ought to be left alone."

"But how'm I goin' to get 'em back?" persisted Amanda, coming close to him, her poor little face pinched and eager. "He jest showed me the receipt, all signed. How'm I goin' to get the things, Caleb?"

"If he's got the receipt, an' the things an' all, an' she took the money, I dunno's you can get 'em," said Caleb, "unless you could prove in a court o' law that she wa'n't in her right mind. I dunno how that would work."

Amanda stood looking him in the face. For the first time in all her gentle life she was questioning masculine superiority, and its present embodiment in Caleb Rivers.

"Then you don't see's anything can be done?" she asked, steadily.

"Why, no," answered Caleb, still reflecting. "Not unless you should go to law."