Men, Women, and Ghosts Part 30

It was an outlandish name to give it, seems to me, anyway. I don't know what a Goth is, Johnny; maybe you do. There was a great figger up on the rock, about eight feet high; some folks thought it looked like a man. I never thought so before, but that night it did kind of stare in through the door as natural as life.

When I woke up in the morning I thought I was on fire. I stirred and turned over, and I was ice. My tongue was swollen up so I couldn't swallow without strangling. I crawled up to my feet, and every bone in me was stiff as a shingle.

Bess was looking hard at me, whinnying for her breakfast. "Bess," says I, very slow, "we must get home--to-night--_any_--how."

I pushed open the door. It creaked out into a great drift, and slammed back. I squeezed through and limped out. The shanty stood up a little, in the highest part of the Goth. I went down a little,--I went as far as I could go. There was a pole lying there, blown down in the night; it came about up to my head. I sunk it into the snow, and drew it up.

Just six feet.

I went back to Bess and Beauty, and I shut the door. I told them I couldn't help it,--something ailed my arms,--I couldn't shovel them out to-day. I must lie down and wait till to-morrow.

I waited till to-morrow. It snowed all day, and it snowed all night. It was snowing when I pushed the door out again into the drift. I went back and lay down. I didn't seem to care.

The third day the sun came out, and I thought about Nannie. I was going to surprise her. She would jump up and run and put her arms about my neck. I took the shovel, and crawled out on my hands and knees. I dug it down, and fell over on it like a baby.

After that, I understood. I'd never had a fever in my life, and it's not strange that I shouldn't have known before.

It came all over me in a minute, I think. I couldn't shovel through.

n.o.body could hear. I might call, and I might shout. By and by the fire would go out. Nancy would not come. Nancy did not know. Nancy and I should never kiss and make up now.

I struck my arm out into the air, and shouted out her name, and yelled it out. Then I crawled out once more into the drift.

I tell you, Johnny, I was a stout-hearted man, who'd never known a fear.

I could freeze. I could burn up there alone in the horrid place with fever. I could starve. It wasn't death nor awfulness I couldn't face,--not that, not _that_; but I loved her true, I say,--I loved her true, and I'd spoken my last words to her, my very last; I had left her _those_ to remember, day in and day out, and year upon year, as long as she remembered her husband, as long as she remembered anything.

I think I must have gone pretty nearly mad with the fever and the thinking. I fell down there like a log, and lay groaning. "G.o.d Almighty!

G.o.d Almighty!" over and over, not knowing what it was that I was saying, till the words strangled in my throat.

Next day, I was too weak so much as to push open the door. I crawled around the hut on my knees with my hands up over my head, shouting out as I did before, and fell, a helpless heap, into the corner; after that I never stirred.

How many days had gone, or how many nights, I had no more notion than the dead. I knew afterwards; when I knew how they waited and expected and talked and grew anxious, and sent down home to see if I was there, and how she--But no matter, no matter about that.

I used to scoop up a little snow when I woke up from the stupors. The bread was the other side of the fire; I couldn't reach round. Beauty eat it up one day; I saw her. Then the wood was used up. I clawed out chips with my nails from the old rotten logs the shanty was made of, and kept up a little blaze. By and by I couldn't pull any more. Then there were only some coals,--then a little spark. I blew at that spark a long while,--I hadn't much breath. One night it went out, and the wind blew in. One day I opened my eyes, and Bess had fallen down in the corner, dead and stiff. Beauty had pushed out of the door somehow and gone. I shut up my eyes. I don't think I cared about seeing Bess,--I can't remember very well.

Sometimes I thought Nancy was there in the plaid shawl, walking round the ashes where the spark went out. Then again I thought Mary Ann was there, and Isaac, and the baby. But they never were. I used to wonder if I wasn't dead, and hadn't made a mistake about the place that I was going to.

One day there was a noise. I had heard a great many noises, so I didn't take much notice. It came up crunching on the snow, and I didn't know but it was Gabriel or somebody with his chariot. Then I thought more likely it was a wolf.

Pretty soon I looked up, and the door was open; some men were coming in, and a woman. She was ahead of them all, she was; she came in with a great spring, and had my head against her neck, and her arm holding me up, and her cheek down to mine, with her dear, sweet, warm breath all over me; and that was all I knew.

Well, there was brandy, and there was a fire, and there were blankets, and there was hot water, and I don't know what; but warmer than all the rest I felt her breath against my cheek, and her arms about my neck, and her long hair, which she had wrapped all in, about my hands.

So by and by my voice came. "Nannie!" said I.

"O don't!" said she, and first I knew she was crying.

"But I will," says I, "for I'm sorry."

"Well, so am I," says she.

Said I, "I thought I was dead, and hadn't made up, Nannie."

"O _dear_!" said she; and down fell a great hot splash right on my face.

Says I, "It was all me, for I ought to have gone back and kissed you."

"No, it was _me_" said she, "for I wasn't asleep, not any such thing. I peeked out, this way, through my lashes, to see if you wouldn't come back. I meant to wake up then. Dear me!" says she, "to think what a couple of fools we were, now!"

"Nannie," says I, "you can let the lamp smoke all you want to!"

"Aaron--" she began, just as she had begun that other night,--"Aaron--"

but she didn't finish, and--Well, well, no matter; I guess you don't want to hear any more, do you?

But sometimes I think, Johnny, when it comes my time to go,--if ever it does,--I've waited a good while for it,--the first thing I shall see will be her face, looking as it looked at me just then.

Calico.

It was about time for the four-o'clock train.

After all, I wonder if it is worth telling,--such a simple, plotless record of a young girl's life, made up of Mondays and Tuesdays and Wednesdays, like yours or mine. Sharley was so exactly like other people! How can it be helped that nothing remarkable happened to her?

But you would like the story?

It was about time for the four-o'clock train, then.

Sharley, at the cost of half a sugar-bowl (never mind syntax; you know I mean the sugar, not the gla.s.s), had enticed Moppet to betake himself out of sight and out of mind till somebody should signify a desire for his engaging presence; had steered clear of Nate and Methuselah, and was standing now alone on the back doorsteps opposite the chaise-house. One could see a variety of things from those doorsteps,--the chaise-house, for instance, with the old, solid, square-built wagon rolled into it (Sharley pa.s.sed many a long "mending morning" stowed in among the cushions of that old wagon); the great sweet-kept barn, where the sun stole in warm at the c.h.i.n.ks and filtered through the hay; the well-curb folded in by a shadow; the wood-pile, and the chickens, and the kitchen-garden; a little slope, too, with a maple on it and shades of brown and gold upon the gra.s.s; brown and golden tints across the hills, and a sky of blue and gold to dazzle one. Then there was a flock of robins dipping southward. There was also the railroad.

Sharley may have had her dim consciousness of the cosey barn and chicken's chirp, of brown and gold and blue and dazzle and glory; but you don't suppose _that_ was what she had outgeneralled Moppet and stolen the march upon Nate and Methuselah for. The truth is, that the child had need of none of these things--neither skies nor dazzle nor glory--that golden autumn afternoon. Had the railroad bounded the universe just then, she would have been content. For Sharley was only a girl,--a very young, not very happy, little girl,--and Halcombe Dike was coming home to spend the Sunday.

Halcombe Dike,--her old friend Halcombe Dike. She said the words over, apologizing a bit to herself for being there to watch that railroad. Hal used to be good to her when she was bothered with the children and more than half tired of life. "Keep up good courage, Sharley," he would say.

For the long summer he had not been here to say it. And to-night he would be here. To-night--to-night! Why should not one be glad when one's old friends come back?

Mrs. Guest, peering through the pantry window, observed--and observed with some motherly displeasure, which she would have expressed had it not been too much trouble to open the window--that Sharley had put on her barbe,--that black barbe with the pink watered ribbons run through it. So extravagant in Sharley! Sharley would fain have been so extravagant as to put on her pink muslin too this afternoon; she had been more than half inclined to cry because she could not; but as it was not orthodox in Green Valley to wear one's "best clothes" on week-days, except at picnics or prayer-meetings, she had submitted, sighing, to her sprigged calico. It would have been worth while, though, to have seen her half an hour ago up in her room under the eaves, considering the question; she standing there with the sleeves of her dressing-sack fallen away from her pink, bare arms, and the hair clinging loose and moist to her bare white neck; to see her smooth the shimmering folds,--there were rose-buds on that muslin,--and look and long, hang it up, and turn away. Why could there not be a little more rose-bud and shimmer in people's lives! "Seems to me it's all calico!" cried Sharley.

Then to see her overturning her ribbon-box! n.o.body but a girl knows how girls dream over their ribbons.

"He is coming!" whispered Sharley to the little bright barbe, and to the little bright face that flushed and fluttered at her in the gla.s.s,--"He is coming!"

Sharley looked well, waiting there in the calico and lace upon the doorstep. It is not everybody who would look well in calico and lace; yet if you were to ask me, I could not tell you how pretty Sharley is, or if she is pretty at all. I have a memory of soft hair--brown, I think--and wistful eyes; and that I never saw her without a desire to stroke her, and make her pur as I would a kitten.

How stiff and stark and black the railroad lay on its yellow ridge!

Sharley drew her breath when the sudden four-o'clock whistle smote the air, and a faint, far trail of smoke puffed through the woods, and wound over the barren outline.

Her mother, seeing her steal away through the kitchen-garden, and down the slope, called after her:--