Way Down East Part 6

The days of Anna's waiting lagged. She lost all count of time and season. Each day was painfully like its predecessor, a period of time to be gone through with, as best she could. She realized after her mother's death what the gentle companionship had been to her, what a prop the frail mother had become in her hour of need. For a great change had come over the querulous invalid with the beginning of her daughter's troubles, the grievances of the woman of the world were forgotten in the anxiety of the mother, and never by look or word did she chide her daughter, or make her affliction anything but easier to bear by her gentle presence.

Anna, sunk in the stupor of her own grief, did not realize the comfort of her mother's presence until it was too late. She shrank from the strangers with whom they made their little home--a middle aged shopkeeper and his wife, who had been glad enough to rent them two unused rooms in their house at a low figure. They were not lacking in sympathy for young "Mrs. Lennox," but their disposition to ask questions made Anna shun them as she would have an infection. After her mother's death, they tried harder than ever to be kind to her, but the listless girl, who spent her days gazing at nothing, was hardly aware of their comings and goings.

"If you would only try to eat a bit, my dear," said the corpulent Mrs.

Smith, bustling into Anna's room. "And land sakes, don't take on so.

There you set in that chair all day long. Just rouse yourself, my dear; there ain't no trouble, however bad, but could be wuss."

To this dismal philosophy, Anna would return a wan smile, while she felt her heart almost break within her.

"And, Mrs. Lennox, don't mind what I say to you. I am old enough to be your grandmother, but if you have quarreled with any one, don't be too s.p.u.n.ky now about making up. s.p.u.n.k is all right in its place, but its place ain't at the bedside of a young woman who's got to face the trial of her life. If you have quarreled with any one--your--your husband, say, now is the time to make it up, since your ma is gone."

The old woman looked at her with a strange mixture of motherliness and curiosity. As she said to her husband a dozen times a day, "her heart just ached for that pore young thing upstairs," but this tender solicitude did not prevent her ears from aching, at the same time, to hear Anna's story.

"Thank you very much for your kind interest, Mrs. Smith; but really, you must let me judge of my own affairs." There was a dignity about the girl that brooked no further interference.

"That's right, my dear, and I wouldn't have thought of suggesting it, but you do seem that young--well, I must be going down to put the potatoes on for dinner. If you want anything, just ring your bell."

There was not the least resentment cherished by the corpulent Mrs.

Smith. The girl's answer confirmed her opinion from the first. "She would not send for her husband, because there wasn't no husband to send for." She mentioned her convictions to her husband and added she meant to write to sister Eliza that very night.

"Sister Eliza has an uncommon light hand with babies and that pore young thing'll be hard pushed to pay the doctor, let alone a nurse."

These essentially feminine details regarding the talents of Sister Eliza, did not especially interest Smith, who continued his favorite occupation--or rather, joint occupations, of whittling and expectorating. Nevertheless, the letter to Sister Eliza was written, and not a minute sooner than was necessary; for, the little soul that was to bring with it forgetfulness for all the agony through which its mother had lived during that awful year, came very soon after the arrival of Sister Eliza.

Anna had felt in those days of waiting that she could never again be happy; that for her "finis" had been written by the fates. But, as she lay with the dark-haired baby on her breast, she found herself planning for the little girl's future; even happy in the building of those heavenly air-castles that young mothers never weary of building. She felt the necessity of growing strong so that she could work early and late, for baby must have everything, even if mother went without.

Sometimes a fleeting likeness to Sanderson would flit across the child's face, and a spasm of pain would clutch at Anna's heart, but she would forget it next moment in one of baby's most heavenly smiles.

She could think of him now without a shudder; even a lingering remnant of tenderness would flare up in her heart when she remembered he was the baby's father. Perhaps he would see the child sometime, and her sweet baby ways would plead to him more eloquently than could all her words to right the wrong he had done, and so the days slipped by and the little mother was happy, after the long drawn out days of waiting and misery. She would sing the baby to sleep in her low contralto voice, and feel that it mattered not whether the world smiled or frowned on her, so long as baby approved.

But this blessed state of affairs was not long to continue. Anna, as she grew stronger, felt the necessity of seeking employment, but to this the baby proved a formidable obstacle. No one would give a young woman, hampered with a child, work. She would come back to the baby at night worn out in mind and body, after a day of fruitless searching.

These long trips of the little mother, with the consequent long absence and exhaustion on her return, did not improve the little one's health, and almost before Anna realized it was ailing, the baby sickened and died. It was her cruelest blow. For the child's sake she had taken up her interest in life, made plans; and was ready to work her fingers to the bone, but it was not to be and with the first falling of the clods on the little coffin, Anna felt the last ray of hope extinguished from her heart.

CHAPTER IX.

ON THE THRESHOLD OF SHELTER.

Alas! To-day I would give everything To see a friend's face, or hear voice That had the slightest tone of comfort in it.--_Longfellow_.

About two miles from the town of Belden, N. H., stands an irregular farm house that looks more like two dwellings forced to pa.s.s as one. One part of it is all gables, and tile, and chimney corners, and antiquity, and the other is square, slated, and of the newest cut, outside and in.

The farm is the property of Squire Amasa Bartlett, a good type of the big man of the small place. He was a contented and would have been a happy man--or at least thought he would have been--if the dearest wish of his life could have been realized. It was that his son, Dave, and his wife's niece, Kate, should marry. Kate was an orphan and the Squire's ward.

She owned the adjoining land, that was farmed with the Squire's as one.

So that Cupid would not have come to them empty handed; but the young people appeared to have little interest in each other apart from that cousinly affection which young people who are brought together would in all probability feel for each other.

Dave was a handsome, dark-eyed young man, whose silence pa.s.sed with some for sulkiness; but he was not sulky--only deep and thoughtful, and perhaps a little more devoid of levity than becomes a young man of twenty-five. He had great force of character--you might have seen that from his grave brow, and felt it in his simple speech and manner, that was absolutely free from affectation.

Dave was his mother's idol, but his utter lack of worldliness, his inability to drive a shrewd bargain sometimes annoyed his father, who was a just, but an undeniably hard man, who demanded a hundred cents for his dollar every day in the year.

Kate, whom the family circle hoped would one day be David's wife, was all blonde hair, blue eyes and high spirits, so that the little blind G.o.d, aided by the Squire's strategy, propinquity and the universal law of the attraction of opposites, should have had no difficulty in making these young people fall in love--but Destiny, apparently, decided to make them exceptions to all rules.

Kate was fond of going to Boston to visit a schoolmate, and the Squire, who looked with small favor on these visits, was disposed to attribute them to Dave's lack of ardor.

"Confound it, Looizy," he would say to his wife, "if Dave made it more lively for Kate she would not be fer flying off to Boston every time she got a chance."

And Mrs. Bartlett had no answer. Having a woman's doubtful gift of intuition, she was afraid that the wedding would never take place, and also having a woman's tact she never annoyed her husband by saying so.

Kate, who had been in Boston for two months, was coming home about the middle of July, and a little flutter of preparation went all over the farm.

Dave had said at breakfast that he regretted not being able to go to Wakefield to meet Kate, but that he would be busy in the north field all day. Hi Holler, the Bartlett ch.o.r.e boy, had been commissioned to go in his stead, and Hi's toilet, in consequence, had occupied most of the morning.

Mrs. Bartlett was churning in the shadow of the wide porch, the Squire was mending a horse collar with wax thread, and fussing about the heat and the slowness of Hi Holler, who was always punctually fifteen minutes late for everything.

"Confound it, Looizy, what's keeping that boy; the train'll get in before he's started. Here you, Hi, what's keeping you?"

The delinquent stood in the doorway, his broad face rippling with smiles; he had spent time on his toilet, but he felt that the result justified it.

His high collar had already begun to succ.u.mb to the day, and the labor involved in greasing his boots, which were much in evidence, owing to the brevity of the white duck trousers that needed but one or two more washings, with the accompanying process of shrinking, to convert them into knickerbockers. Bear's grease had turned his ordinary curling brown hair into a damp, shining ma.s.s that dripped in tiny rills, from time to time, down on his coat collar, but Hi was happy. Beau Brummel, at the height of his sartorial fame, never achieved a more self-satisfying toilet.

The Squire adjusted his spectacles. "What are you dressing up like that on a week day for, Hi? Off with you now; and if you ain't in time for them cars you'll catch 'Hail Columbia' when you get back."

"Looizy," said the Squire, as soon as Hi was out of hearing, "why didn't Dave go after Katie? Yes, I know about the hay. Hay is hay, but it ought not to come first in a man's affections."

"You'd better let 'em alone, Amasy; if they're going to marry they will without any help from us; love affairs don't seem to prosper much, when old folks interfere."

"Looizy, it's my opinion that Dave's too shy to make up to women folks.

I don't think he'll even get up the courage to ask Kate to marry him."

"Well, I never saw the man yet who was too bashful to propose to the right woman." And a great deal of decision went into the churning that accompanied her words.

"Mebbe so, mebbe so," said the Squire. He felt that the vagaries of the affections was too deep a subject for him. "Anyhow, Looizy, I don't want no old maids and bachelors potterin' round this farm getting cranky notions in their heads. Look at the professor. Why, a good woman would have taken the nonsense out of him years ago."

Mrs. Bartlett did not have to go far to look at the professor. He was flying about her front garden at that very moment in an apparently distracted state, crouching, springing, hiding back of bushes and reappearing with the startling swiftness of magic. The Bartletts were quite used to these antics on the part of their well-paying summer boarder. He was chasing b.u.t.terflies--a manifestly insane proceeding, of course, but if a man could afford to pay ten dollars a week for summer board in the State of New Hampshire, he could afford to chase b.u.t.terflies.

Professor Sterling was an old young man who had given up his life to entomology; his collection of b.u.t.terflies was more vital to him than any living issue; the Bartletts regarded him as a mild order of lunatic, whose madness might have taken a more dangerous form than making up long names for every-day common bugs.

"Look at him, just look at him, Looizy, sweating himself a day like this, over a common dusty miller. It beats all, and with his money."

"Well, it's a harmless amus.e.m.e.nt," said the kindly Louisa, "there's a heap more harmful things that a man might chase than b.u.t.terflies."

The stillness of the midsummer day was broken by the sound of far-off singing. It came in full-toned volume across the fields, the high soaring of women's voices blended with the deeper harmony of men.

"What's that?" said the Squire testily, looking in the direction of the strawberry beds, from whence the singing came.

"It's only the berry-pickers, father," said David, coming through the field gate and going over to the well for a drink.