Chapter II: Front Matter (2)

The man she saw was yet far off, plodding across the valley toward her hillside; and as he had taken that walk nearly every evening for a dozen years, it should have ceased to surprise her. Yet as shadows thickened among rock and naked trees, it was always a satisfaction to turn and look back from that particular point and exclaim, “Yonder comes Lanson Bundle!”

Wilda’s log-house had a clearing and some acres of trees around it, standing like a German principality or an oasis in the midst of Alanson Bundle’s great farm. The Bundles had vainly tried in times past to buy out the Coons. But Alanson had other views. He had courted Wilda twelve years, and he calculated in time to wear her out. She could not go on forever raising patches of truck in the summer, and quilting and sewing in the winter.

Alanson was not uncomfortable while he waited. His aunt kept house for him at his homestead, where he had several barns, a milk-house, a smoke-house and all modern conveniences around him. He felt his value with everybody but Wilda. The youngest girls showed him no discouragement. There was a sonorous pomp about his singing in meeting which affected every rural nature, while his Adam’s apple, like a sensitive lump of mercury, trembled up and down its inclosure. Some folks thought Alanson Bundle ought to have been a preacher. He would look so nice standing in a pulpit, with his hair sleeked up in a straight roach, saying, “Hence we discover, my brethren.” But Wilda Coon never had made any fuss over him. And for that reason he followed her with abject service.

In that early year of the fifties a great many people about the Rocky Fork had locks on their doors. But a tow latch-string hung out for Wilda Coon, and with it she lifted the wooden latch of her dwelling. At night, for security, she would draw the string inside, and slip a wooden bar into staples across the thick board portal.

The tight-chinked cabin had the strangest interior on the Rocky Fork. There was only one room, and the hollow of the roof rose up in a cavernous arch without joists. Two wooden bars were, indeed, set high across one corner, but they served as roosts for chickens who had already taken to them for the night, and who stirred quavering as Wilda shut the door and emptied a gourd.

Before the fire, yet not too near it, was a trundle-bed which could be pushed anywhere on wheels.

She dropped her hood and shawl upon a chair and slipped toward the trundle-bed, motioning back a great mastiff who kept guard at the hearth. He sat down again and licked his lips; the glory of burning logs in the fireplace was enough to content any dog, for that cabin seemed to have the sunset imprisoned within it. Calico curtains on the four-paned windows hid darkening woods outside.

“O Sweetness!” whispered Wilda, bending over the trundle-bed and scarcely daring to touch the patchwork quilt. Her eyes were full of kisses and fondling for her only baby, the helpless being who reversed for her the maternal relations. It was a little old woman, whose apple face had shriveled into puckers only around the corners of the eyes and mouth. A dimity nightcap tied it in, almost covering white silk threads of hair. This helpless mother, lying in the dead alive state we now call paralysis, and the Rocky Forkers then called palsy, was the secret delight of Wilda’s heart, and Alanson Bundle’s only rival. But she concealed her fondness like a crime. The name of Sweetness was sacred to that hollow cabin. Bounce could make no remark about it, and he was the only safe auditor in an age when excess of loving was considered weakness.

Wilda hung her supper kettles on the hooks of the crane, and made biscuits, and raked out coals to bake them in a Dutch oven. Alanson Bundle would not appear until the evening meal was over. He pottered around in his woods or went across the ridge to look after cattle.

The log-house was exquisite with cleanness, even in that corner where the fowls roosted. No cobwebs or dust marred the rich brown of its upper depth. The floor and stone hearth were scoured white. Wilda’s spinning-wheel stood beside one wall. Her own apartment was an oblong space curtained with homespun which had been dyed a dull red. Some red and gilt chairs, a pine table and a red and gilt cushioned settee on rockers, furnished the house. The log wall between hearth and door held gay trappings of tinware and pewter, all shining in the mighty blaze.

The table was spread and a perfume of coffee filled the place. Wilda had turned the fried eggs and lifted them carefully to a platter before she heard the usual sounds her mother made to call her.

Sweetness was wide awake and smiling like a baby. The Rocky Fork people said she had her faculties but couldn’t make no use of them. Unabated intelligence looked through her eyes and her face never distorted itself, although she could not talk.

“Have you been lonesome to-day, Sweetness? No? Have you slept much? Yes? That’s good. Did Speckle and Banty sit on Bounce’s back and keep you company? They’ve gone to roost now. They’re going to wake up about midnight and crow for Christmas, and wake you up--the bad chickens.--Now supper’s ready. Folks round here thinks I starve you because you never eat in the middle of the day. ’Tain’t no use for me to say anything. But if you don’t want me to be clean disgraced, you must eat hearty when you do eat.”

She fed the helpless being with long and patient use of a spoon. The fire roared. Bounce rose up and yawned, stretching his limbs, to hint that his own plate had been empty since morning. But Wilda never hurried this important part of her day’s business. The food which she must eat became overdone. She sat on the trundle-bed, giving her mother with the spoon meat all the life and doings of that small world on the Rocky Fork.

“Gutteridges were going to have a turkey-roast to-morrow. The presiding elder was at their house. Yes, their sewing was done; she finished Mandy’s black quilted petticoat to-day. Mandy and ’Lizabeth both had new shawls that their father had paid six dollars apiece for, at the woolen factory in Newark; stripes and crossbars. Ridenour’s little boy was so he could sit up; the doctor thought the fever was broke. The Bankses were all going to take dinner at granny’s. And some folks said one of Harris’s girls was to be married to-morrow, but it might be all talk. There wasn’t much chance of snow, but it was a cold night outside. Didn’t Sweetness hear the wind across the roof? It was a good thing our clapboards were on so tight.”

So this one-sided conversation went on until the little old woman was quite filled. Then Wilda made her snug, as if attending an infant, and fed Bounce, and sat down alone at the table.

Scarcely were the clean pewter and crockery in place again, and the wheel set out where the table had been, and Wilda bundled ready to go out, when a knock sounded on the door.

She opened it, and exclaimed as she always did,--

“Well, I declare! here’s Lanson. Come in, Lanson, and take a chair.”

“Gimme your milk bucket,” responded Alanson.

“I was just starting to milk, Lanson. Don’t you bother yourself with it to-night.”

But he took her pail. And Wilda, smiling, laid off her wraps and made the hearth very clean, and plumped up the settee cushions.

When Alanson handed the frothing pail into the door, without putting foot over the threshold, he glanced at the fireplace.

“Want another log brought in to-night?”

“Law, Lanson! that one ain’t half burnt.”

“But it’ll settle down before another twenty-four hours. I ’low I’d better fetch a few sticks.”

So he came in laden with sections of trees, and built them handily upon the structure of the fire.

“Do you want ary bucket of water?” was his next inquiry.

“No, I’m obleeged to you, Lanson,” replied Wilda. “I fetched a big gourdful from the spring as I come uphill. It saves steps.”

Alanson now unbelted and took off his butternut-colored wamus, and Wilda hung it with his hat on a peg. He had a fine black blanket shawl for meeting, but he was not so reckless as to scratch it through hill underbrush every evening.

Feeling himself now ready for society, Alanson walked over to the trundle-bed and greeted the invalid.

“Good even’, Mis’ Coon; it’s right wintry outdoors.”

She gave him an approving smile. He sat down in the settee and rocked himself, while Wilda pulled a long thread from her spindle, stepped back and gave the wheel a whirl. The trundle-bed, as usual, stood between her and her besieger. A hum, rising and rising like some sweet tune through the pines, filled the room. The great wheel blurred all its spokes, and found them again, and slackened to a slow revolution, as Wilda came back to the spindle.

“How’s your aunt to-day?” she inquired.

“Middling,” replied Alanson. Again the music of the spinning arose. Alanson warmed his feet and hands, and felt comforted after his tramp through the vast chill woods.

When the silent companionship which he enjoyed with Wilda had quite filled its measure, he took from his pocket and unfolded a large newspaper.

“I’ll light a candle,” said Wilda, with that eagerness for romance which the simplest lives manifest.

“’Tisn’t needed,” said Alanson. What was a candle’s star to that blazing sun in the fireplace? He turned his shoulder so the light fell upon the “Saturday Evening Post,” and read a harrowing installment about some Bride of the Wilderness. There was domestic bliss in this snug cabin, the wind-song of the wheel, and the winter night with its breath of Christmas. Alanson droned on in a high key, the mother watching him as long as she was able to resist so many monotones. She went to sleep before Wilda’s stint of spinning was done, and before Alanson read with impressive voice, “To be con-tin-u-ed.”

That wary inspection of each other which people of that time called courting had varied its routine so little for twelve years betwixt this pair, that Alanson felt bound to make his usual remark as Wilda sat down to knit.

“Well, folks is still talking about us getting married, Wilda.”

“Let them talk,” said Wilda, putting her hair behind her ear, and smiling while she looked at Sweetness.

“I come here pretty regular. Don’t you think it’s about time we set the day?”

Wilda answered, without moving her eyes from the trundle-bed, “Don’t you think we better let well enough alone, Lanson?”

“Well, now, ’tisn’t well enough,” argued Alanson, and to the sylvan mind there is accumulated force in an oft-used argument. “You’ve got these woods lots and the house and a cow”--

“Yes, I’m well fixed,” murmured Wilda.

--“but you have to leave your mother and go out among the neighbors to airn a living. How do you know sometime the house won’t burn down?”

“I am jub’ous about it often,” owned Wilda, biting the end of a knitting-needle. But catching the yarn over her little finger she drove it ahead with her work.

“Then eventually she might die.”

“I’ve thought of that,” sighed Wilda. “And I’ve thought what’d become of her if I’s to be taken and her left. Then who’d let her pet rooster and hen--that she’s just as tickled with as a child--roost in the house, and clean after them without fretting her?”

Alanson glanced at Speckle and Banty sticking like balls to their perch, and he volunteered some discreet possibilities.

“When folks begins to get used to such things before they’re too old and sot in their ways, seems to me like chickens in the house would be natteral enough--though not brought up to it.”

Whenever Alanson made this great concession, Wilda always fell back upon her observations of marriage.

“But there’s Mary Jane Willey. She had fifteen hundred dollars in her own right, and was well fixed with bedding and goods--six chairs and a bread-trough and a cupboard. And all that didn’t satisfy her, but she must have a man to speckalate with her money and lose it; and now he’s took to drinking, her and her children are like to go on the county.”

Alanson interlaced his fingers across his chest and set his thumbs to whirling.

“She ought to got a man like me,” he observed humorously.

Then the topic was usually diverted into the lives of other Rocky Forkers until Alanson felt it was time to go home.

But to-night, after drawing out his silver watch by its steel log-chain, he lingered uneasily instead of rising from the settee and saying, “Well, I better be moseying towards home.”

The flashing of Wilda’s needles went on. She had a leather stall pinned to her waist, in which she braced and steadied the most rampant needle as he led the gallop around the stocking. Sweetness slept as a spirit may sleep who has escaped the bounds of care, her sunken little mouth and wrinkled eye-corners steadily smiling.

“Going to have any Christmas up here to-morrow?” inquired Alanson, with a sheepish look at Wilda.

“I got a Christmas gift for her,” replied Wilda fondly. Alanson understood the pronouns which always stood for mother.

“Well, now, it’s funny,” said he. “But I got something for her, too.”

“Why, Lanson! What ever put you up to do such a thing?” Wilda paused with her needle held back in mid plunge.

“’Tisn’t much,” apologized Alanson, and he brought his wamus from the peg to the hearth. Wilda had noticed it was laden when she hung it up, but she always discreetly overlooked the apples he brought until he made his offering.

There were no apples in the wamus pockets this time. Alanson took out two packets, and opened one which he laid on Wilda’s knee. It was a pound of red hearts.

“The other’s for her,” he said “and it’s all white ones.”

“Why, Lanson Bundle!” exclaimed Wilda.

But he had yet another paper, and it disclosed the yellow coats of tropical fruit.

“What’s them?” breathed Wilda, bending over in admiration. “Why, Lanson Bundle! If them ain’t lemons and oranges! Where in this world did you get them?”

“I sent clean to Fredericktown for them,” confessed the suitor with an apologetic grin. “I thought her being bedfast so steady all the time, she’d like something out of the common.”

“You are _real_ clever,” spoke Wilda with trembling voice. “She’ll be so tickled! I been making her two fine caps with hem-stitching around the border;--but this does beat all!”

“I done something else,” Alanson ventured on, “that you’ll think is simple;--I’ve never seen such a thing, but I’ve read about it. Coming along through the pines I took my jack-knife out and cut a little one off close to the ground; and it’s laying outside the door.”

“What for, Lanson?”

“A Christmas-tree.”

“What’s that?”

“Why, in a foreign place they call Germany, I’ve read they take an evergreen and make it stand like it growed in the house, and hang gifts on it, and if I don’t disremember, they fix candles into it and light them.”

“I should think that would be pretty,” said Wilda in some excitement. “Law, Lanson! If we could fix it at the foot of her trundle-bed!”

Alanson thought they could fix it, and he set vigorously about the task. He ran out to the ash-hopper and brought in the keg which in summer time caught the lye. The evergreen tree, beautifully straight, and tasseled at the top, he fastened in the keg ingeniously, without clamor of nails and pounding.

Then maid and bachelor trimmed the Christmas-tree for their old sleeping child. A dexterous use of string hung all the hearts to the boughs, as well as oranges and lemons. One cap was put on the top tassel, and the other dropped from a branch by its ties. Wilda brought out her candle box and recklessly cut the moulded tallow into short tapers. This part of the decoration greatly taxed both Alanson and her. But they finally pinned all the tapers in place, and concluded to light the wicks for a trial.

Alanson carried a brand from point to point. Wilda was frightened at the beauty of the thing and their unusual occupation. Her eyes and cheeks were vivid. She had never been so wildly excited in her life before. Thought and resolution, which had battled for years, bounded forward with the bounding of her blood.

“Lanson Bundle!” she laughed, “what do you suppose folks would say if they peeked in and seen us at this!”

“I ’low they’d want to have a Christmas-tree themselves,” responded the bachelor. “You and me will have one next year at our own house, won’t we, Wilda?”

“Well, I don’t know but we will. I don’t know as I can hold out much longer. You’re a real good man, Lanson, and if I’ve got to get married, there ain’t nobody I’d have as quick as you.”

At that admission Alanson laid the brand on the fire, wiped his lips carefully with a red cotton handkerchief, and came expectantly round the Christmas-tree. But with the recoil of a middle-aged girl from dropping man a word of encouragement, Wilda flew behind the trundle-bed and kept her lover warned by an uplifted palm.

“I haven’t made up my mind to no kissing yet, Lanson Bundle! I ain’t used to kissing anybody but her.”

Alanson looked at the little mother in the trundle-bed, and she opened her eyes, disturbed by such scampering. The pet chickens were roused also, and Speckle crowed on his perch with a vigor which belongs only to the midnight of Christmas eve.

“Look there, Sweetness,” Wilda whispered kneeling. “Do you see what Lanson’s fixed for you? That’s a Christmas-tree.”

The mother’s eyes caught the Christmas-tree, and snapped with astonishment and delight. The tapers were dripping tallow, but firelight shone through the boughs, and all the wonderful hearts and yellow fruit hung like a fairy picture. Her grateful look finally sought Alanson, and he also knelt down, at the opposite side of the trundle-bed, and with reverence which brought a rush of tears to Wilda’s eyes, kissed Sweetness on the forehead.

Wilda furtively gathered her tears on her finger-tips, and hid them in her linsey dress, but she said impressively to Alanson,--

“Now, that kiss will make you a better man all your life.”

SERENA

TIME, 1860

Serena Hedding drove through the gateway of her father’s farm, while her little son held the creaking gate open. Her vehicle was a low buggy, with room at the back for a sack of nubbins, which the scrawny white horse would appreciate on his return trip. The driver was obliged to cluck encouragement to him as he paused, with his head down, in the gateway; and before he had taken ten steps forward, before Milton could stick the pin back in the post-hole and scamper to his seat at her left side, she lived her girlhood over. She saw her father holding that gate open for camp-meeting or protracted-meeting folks to drive in to dinner with him. She saw Milton Hedding ride through to court her, and the scowl her father gave him; and the buggy which waited for her in the woods one afternoon, herself getting into it, and Milton whipping up his horse to carry her away forever.

The road wound, folding on itself, through dense woods. Nothing had changed about the road. She noticed that the old log among the haw saplings remained untouched. That log was a link binding her childhood to her girlhood. She sat on it to baste up the hem of her ridiculously long dress before going to school, her dinner-basket waiting near; and, coming home in the evening, she there ripped the basting out, lest Aunt Lindy should notice that her skirt did not flop against her heels, as proper skirts had done in Aunt Lindy’s childhood. Seated on that log, she and Milton had talked of the impossibility of their marriage, and decided to run away.

It was so near sunset that the woods were in mellow twilight. She heard the cows lowing away off, and a loaded wagon rumbling over the Feeder bridge. The loamy incense of this ancestral land was so sweet that it pained her. Soon the house would come in sight, and seem to strike her on the face. If they had altered it any, she did not know it. Was her father’s sick-bed downstairs, or did Aunt Lindy keep him above the narrow staircase? The slippery-elm tree she used to wound for its juicy strips started out at the roadside to give her a scarry welcome. Her fingers brushed her cheeks, and drew the black sunbonnet farther over them.

“What’s the matter, mother?” inquired her light-haired boy. “Are you feared grandfather’s worse?”

“I hope he ain’t,” replied Serena. Then the house, on its rising ground, appeared, crossed by trees. It had a yard in which lilac bushes and tall hollyhocks bordered the path. The gate opened into an orchard, and the orchard was guarded from the lane by bars, which Serena’s little boy let down, and they drove in.

Her father’s barn was one of those immense structures which early Ohio farmers built to indicate their wealth. It had always seemed bursting with hay and grain, and the stamp of horses resounded from its basement stables.

Serena looked piteously at the house. Vehicles of various kinds were fastened all along the fence. Still, no solemn voice or sound of singing reached her ear. It had long been the Jeffries custom to hold services over their dead at the house. No feather-bed hung across the garden palings; neither was the hideous cooling-board standing up anywhere, like a wooden tombstone. But the whole neighborhood was there. He must be very low indeed.

The youthful widow and her boy alighted, and tied their horse in a humble corner near the woodpile. Nobody came out to receive them. That was another bad sign. She was cramped by her long ride. If her suspense had not been so great she must have felt a pang of shame at the shabby appearance of her son and herself, on this first return from exile.

The house dog barked, waking suddenly from his meditations to learn who they were and what they wanted. But he recollected that a great many strangers had been coming and going recently, and considering his duty done, trotted back, and stretched himself to snap flies.

Serena felt obliged to go around to the front of the house, though the back doorstep showed the wear of her childish feet. But as she passed the first rosebush, Milty trotting in the white path behind her, a woman came from the back porch, holding a handkerchief over her cap, the ribbons of which flew back on each side of her neck. The light glared on her spectacles. She was as trim and quick as a young girl. Her dress, cape, and apron were of the same material, and her waist was fastened in front with a spiky row of pins.

“Serene Heddin’!” she exclaimed, with the spring in her voice which Serena remembered comparing to the clip of a mouse-trap, “you’re not goin’ into the front door to scare your father to death in his last moments.”

“Oh, Aunt Lindy,” said the shabby widow, lifting her hands, “is he as bad as that?”

“He’s been struck with death all the afternoon. You come in this way.”

“Can’t I see him?” asked Mrs. Hedding, climbing over the back doorstone like a suddenly exhausted pilgrim, her face quivering under streams of tears.

Through open doors she recognized in the parlor and sitting-room groups of old neighbors, waiting in that hush with which they always accompanied one another to the brink of death. A woman came from among them, whispering,--

“Who’s this, Lindy?” and immediately informing herself: “Why, Sereny Jeffr’s! Have you got here? Come right in to your pap. He’s pretty nigh gone.”

“It won’t do no good, Sister McGafferty,” said Aunt Lindy. “He won’t know her, and ’twill disturb him. She was postin’ in at the front door when I caught her,” declared Aunt Lindy, as if speaking of a thief.

Sister McGafferty, a comfortable, large woman in blue spectacles, the presiding elder’s wife, and therefore a person of authority, still beckoned Serena in, and she passed Aunt Lindy, followed by her barefooted boy. The round-posted bedstead was drawn out from the wall, and under its sheet and many colored quilt lay the old farmer, his mouth open, his eyes glazed, his narrow brows and knotty features wearing a ghastly pallor. But behind the solemn terror of that face was her father.

Aunt Lindy followed, and twitched her elbow, thereby creating a faction in Serena Hedding’s favor among the spectators. They were all well-to-do people, who noticed her dejected attitude toward the world, and had always disapproved of her thriftless match. But they said within themselves that Lindy Miller was going too far when she tried to pull a daughter away from her dying father.

“Ain’t you ’shamed to disturb his last peaceful minutes!” Aunt Lindy hissed with force.

But the returned culprit fastened such desperate interest on the unseeing eyes of her father that Aunt Lindy’s interruption was as remote to her as the gambols of loose horses in the pasture.

If there had now been time and opportunity, Serena could not argue her case with him. He never had allowed that. She could not tell how true and happy her marriage was, in spite of his disapproval and its accompanying poverty. She had suffered, but her heart had ripened so that she could discern and love the good in human nature across its narrow bounds. Words or expressions did not occur to her; but a thousand living thoughts swarmed in her mind. If he would look at her again with reconciliation in his eyes, she could be satisfied, and bear all her future trials like benedictions. Never a loving father, he was, until her disobedience, a fairly kind one. He was a very religious man of the old sort, believing seriousness to be the primary principle of godliness, and levity a fermentation of the inward Satan. He always paid his quarterage and contributed to foreign missions, while every successive preacher on the circuit used his house as home. The deep grooves making a triangle of his upper lip showed how constant and sad his meditations had been. Yet this old farmer was in some matters timid and self-distrustful, and so fond of peace and quiet as to yield his rights for them.

“Father,” pleaded Serena Hedding, bending closer to him. “Father!” Unconsciously she repeated the name like a cry. The hum of the bee-hives against the garden palings could be heard. Did a ray dart across his leaden brain from the afternoon his only child, in short coats, poked a stick in the bee-hives, and, feeling the results of her folly, wailed thus to him? Did he imagine himself again dropping the rake and leaping the fence to run with her from her tormentors? A flicker grew through the glazing of his eyes, and became a steady light, a look, a tender gaze, a blessing. She clasped her hands, and rocked before him in ecstasy. He knew her, and revealed, midway over the silent chasm of death, how unalterably close and dear she was to him. In that small eternity of time they were knitted together as never before. His eyes began to glaze again, and she remembered Milty. Pushing the child forward, she cried again, “My boy, father! See my boy!”

The old man saw him. That rigid face was too set to smile, but with the image of his child’s child on his eyes, the hope of future generations of his blood, he passed away.

A little time was allowed for the wailing that rises around every death-bed. The overtaxed young widow rocked her son against her, while he gazed about him in awe. Aunt Lindy stood by the bedpost, burying her face in her apron. Her son, Hod Miller, a huge creature, very black-eyed, bright-complexioned, and having the appearance of possessing no immortal soul, sat near the foot of the bed, with his legs crossed and his shoulders hung forward, looking respectfully concerned. There were no other near relatives except Jesse Jeffries and his wife, who covered their faces while this elder brother lay in the first dignity of death.

Then a quiet bustle began. Sister McGafferty took Serena Hedding out of the parlor, and made her lie down on the sitting-room straw-tick lounge, and smell camphor. Milty wandered out-of-doors, and was grateful to a neighbor’s boy, forbidden the house and enjoined to watch the horses, who told him, after an exchange of scrutiny, that he dursn’t take a dare which ’ud reach the medder fence first. The men took charge of the body. They closed the parlor doors, and, with basins of water, clean linen, and the new store suit Aunt Lindy’s forethought had ready in the house, performed those solemn rites to which all our flesh must humbly come. One mounted a horse and rode to Millersport for the undertaker. Little Jimmy Holmes, who was a middle-aged man, but had a father known as Old or Big Jimmy, was informed by his wife that he could go home now, and look after the milkin’ and feedin’; she would stay here and tend to things. Into her capable hands Aunt Lindy appeared to resign the house, while Little Jimmy and their son, Little Jimmy’s Jimmy, drove into the pleasant dusk.

After inquiring about the date of the funeral, and detailing watchers for the intervening nights, the other neighbors slowly dispersed in squads. Lights appeared about the house, and the kitchen and cellar yielded up their prepared good things.

Before they reached home the neighbors began to speculate about the disposition of the property. They said Moses Jeffr’s had been a hard worker, and his sister Lindy had been a hard worker, and she had kept his house for more than twenty year: ’twouldn’t be no more than right for him to leave her well off. She had been savin’ with what her man left her, and Hod Miller had done a son’s part by the old man. Money goes to them that lays up. Some said Mr. Jeffr’s had cut off Sereny with a cent in his will. Sereny ought to knowed better than to done as she did. It was a pity, specially as she was left a widow-woman, with a little boy to raise. But when a person makes their bed, they got to lie in it. How tickled Mr. Jeffr’s was when Sereny was a little girl experiencin’ religion! He never thought then she would go and run off. She had a good home, and he would have done well by her.

On the other hand, there was folks-talk among the Serena faction, whose hearts melted toward the girl when she rocked before her father. They said there never would have been any trouble between Moses Jeffr’s and his daughter if Lindy Miller hadn’t managed things. Milt Heddin’ was a good feller, only he hadn’t the knack of gettin’ along. But he could have worked the farm as well as Hod Miller. They wanted Sereny to have her rights. It was a scandal and a shame if that big, able-bodied feller, with land of his own, could turn her off the home place.

Serena wandered about the house, which strangers seemed to possess, crying over familiar objects. She had large violet eyes, and was once considered as pretty a girl as came to meeting, though her lips were too prominent and full. She looked shabby and piteous. Sister McGafferty combed her hair for her, while her trembling, work-worn hands lay in her lap.

“They’ve borried a black bonnet and dress for you, Sister Sereny,” said the elder’s wife, who had been around the circuit when this sorrowful creature was a shy child.

“I might have worn a better dress and bonnet. But when word came, I felt so bad I didn’t think of anything. They didn’t let me know until he was near gone.”

Milty spent his time out-of-doors. He approved of the barn, and did not approve of Aunt Lindy. His mother had said, “Aunt Lindy, this is my boy.”

And Aunt Lindy had said, “He looks spindlin’, like the Heddin’s. I hope you’re raisin’ him to obedience. Children set on their own way gives their parents plenty of sorrow to sup.”

This spry great-aunt’s glasses detected him if he touched a daguerreotype among the glaring, upright array on the sitting-room table, or ventured too near the fine men and women pasted on the fire-screen.

She took him to see his grandfather after the laying-out, turned back the ghastly sheet, which was stretched between two chairs, removed cloths from the dead man’s face, and warned the boy to prepare for death. He never afterwards inhaled the pungent odor of camphor without turning faint.

At table he and his mother huddled together, feeling scarcely welcome to the abundant food. Little Jimmy Holmes’s wife, with a number of helpers, kept the table burdened with every country luxury, but Aunt Lindy saw that the best was reserved until the great final dinner on the day of the funeral.

That day was considered a credit to Moses Jeffries. It was one of the largest funerals ever known in those parts. The weather was pleasant, and summer work so well advanced that everybody could feel the pressure of neighborly duty. Carriages and fine horses nearly filled the orchard space in front of the house; the yard was darkened with standing men in their best black clothes. Not half the people could get into the house, to say nothing of getting into the parlor. There Elder McGafferty lifted his hands, praying and preaching over the old farmer, who looked so unused to his collar and neck-cloth and brand-new suit when they took off his coffin-lid.

A number of men wandered down by the barn; the hymn-singing came to them faint and plaintive, in gusts of couplets, just as the preacher lined the words.

One of them remarked that old Mr. Jeffr’s left things in pretty good shape, and he s’posed Hod Miller wouldn’t alter them much. Another thought that Serene Heddin’ would come in for a sheer, if not all. A man may be put out with his children, but he’ll favor them when it comes to such serious business as makin’ a will. Hod Miller had bought and sold and made money on that farm, enough to pay for his work. He oughtn’t to stand in Sereny’s light.

“What’s she been doin’ since her man died?” inquired the first speaker, shaving off long whittlings from a piece of pine.

“Workin’ out, ’pears like I heard. She got a place near Lancaster, where they’d let her keep her boy with her. It’s my opinion,” said the second speaker, suddenly spitting a flood, and letting his spiky chin work up and down with slow rumination, “that old Lindy kept her away from her pap as long as she could, for fear there’d be a makin’ up.”

“Oh, sho! The old man was very set in his ways. He didn’t need bully-raggin’ to make up his mind and keep it made up. Hod Miller might marry the widder now, and that’d settle all claims.”

“I don’t believe she’d have him,” said the chewer, smiling slowly. “Jesse Jeffr’s, he thinks Sereny’s all right. He claims he seen the will.”

The whittler scoffed at such claims. Jesse Jeffries was held in light esteem by his old neighbors. He sold his farm, and had such a hankering for town life as to settle in Millersport, the Deep Cut of the Ohio canal, and lose every cent of it in grocery-keeping. What Jesse Jeffries said or did thereafter was of small importance. His record slew him.

There was bustle at the front of the house. Both men squinted in the sun, and watched a long black object with shining dots upon it coming through the door, borne by stout young farmers. The men in the yard raised their hats. After the coffin came Serena, on her Uncle Jesse’s arm. He shuffled along uncomfortably, as if not used to showing such attention to the women-folks. After them came Hod Miller and his mother, and Jesse Jeffries’ wife with Serena’s boy. Sister McGafferty considered this the proper order of procession, and had so managed it. Streams of people gushed from all the outlets of the house; the carriages filled and were arrayed in line; the long black serpent trailed down through the woods; and the women remaining to prepare dinner stood and counted, until they declared it beat everything. It was a pleasant sensation to be at such a populous funeral.

When Jesse Jeffries foretold the contents of the will he did not speak without authority, for it had been left in his hands. After a hearty dinner, at which many tablefuls of neighbors assisted, he importantly called the possible heirs together, and their factions sat by to listen.

Aunt Lindy was neither nervous nor bowed with grief. She had done her duty, and knew what her deserts were. Her son Hod tipped back in his chair, and twitched his shirt-collar. He wanted to have the thing over, and was not without doubts of his succeeding to the estate. If it came to him he meant to hold to it. His hands were as strong as a vise, and typified his grip on property. Serena might try to break the will, but if she lawed until Judgment Day he would not give her a cent he was not obliged to give her. Women-folks were a sort of cattle he had no fancy for.

Curious eyes watched Serena, and speculated on her emotions. She was pale and quiet. Her son stood beside her.

The testator’s brother broke the seal, and began to read.

The testator, after stating his sanity and general ability to execute such a document, giving the numbers of his various lands and enumerating his parcels of property in the tedious and high-sounding repetition prescribed by law, bequeathed it all to his beloved daughter Serena Jeffries, and her heirs, the said Serena being enjoined to pay a stated annuity to her aunt, the testator’s beloved sister, and to make over to her certain chattels particularly named; also a legacy of five hundred dollars to her cousin, Howard Miller.

Sister McGafferty poked the camphor bottle toward Serena, but it was declined.

Still the poor girl could not believe this. Disinheritance had been so long accepted as part of the penalty of her marriage that she scarcely thought of it as injustice. But to have the homestead for her own was a rise which made her dizzy.

After gazing on her with satisfaction through his glasses, Uncle Jesse turned the paper over, and rapidly read a small codicil, which nevertheless choked him. He knew nothing about this part of the will. It destroyed Serena Hedding’s claims, on account of her disobedience, and made Howard Miller unconditional heir.

So that settled the matter. Serena turned whiter. It was a shock, after realizing one instant the possession of competence.

“I ’low Mozy must have put that on the day he took it away to have more added, he said,” remarked Uncle Jesse huskily. His good wife, who was all cap-rim and beak, with a thin neck and general air of scrawniness, sat with her claws crossed in silent sympathy. Jesse and his wife did not find Lindy a congenial sister.

“Well,” remarked Aunt Lindy, turning her head so the light fell in a sheet of glare upon her spectacles, “I’m satisfied. That is, I will be when I’ve said what I’m goin’ to say. I’m a plain speaker, and tell my mind. Things has turned out right. Sereny Heddin’ left her pap, and we stayed by him. She’s got her reward, and we’ve got our’n. I hope you don’t take no exceptions to his will, Sereny?”

Sereny replied in a low voice that she did not take any.

“To show that I’m fair-minded and want to do right by you,” said Aunt Lindy, raising her voice to the tone she used in speaking-meeting when exhorting sinners, “I’ll give you your mother’s spinnin’-wheel that stands in the smoke-house. You ought to have something to remember her by.”

Little Jimmy Holmes’s wife nudged the woman next to her, and whispered, with a curving mouth, “Just the idy! And all Sereny’s mother’s spoons, and her quilts and coverlids she had wove! And the girl never having any settin’-out in the first place!”

Serena climbed the staircase, to take off her borrowed mourning, and put on her own shabby weeds for her ride back into the world. She passed presses stacked with household linen. The precious things of her childhood, seen and handled in this trying visit, seemed so heart-breakingly precious because Hod Miller’s future wife would throw them about as common. She would like to have the yellow, leather-bound copy of “Alonzo and Melissa,” the novel of the house, always considered unwholesome by the elders, and as surely read with sly zest by the children. The coverlet with her mother’s name woven into it had never been intended for anybody but the daughter of the house. It was unendurable to go away from home this second time, and into perpetual exile.

“Now I wisht they’d find a later will,” said Little Jimmy Holmes’s wife, tying on her bonnet in the best bedroom. The persons who had lingered to support the family through the ordeal of will-reading were driving off, one after another. “Oh, but Aunt Lindy’ll carry things before her! Is she anywhere near? I don’t want her to hear me.”

“Things don’t turn out that way except in novel-stories,” observed another woman, with her mouth full of pins. “They don’t find wills hid around in stockin’s or Bibles. I declare, I’m real sorry for Sereny. I don’t see how old Mr. Jeffr’s can lay easy in his grave, turnin’ his own child out to give place to a big, hearty feller, with money in his own right.”

“I always thought so much of Serene,” said Little Jimmy Holmes’s wife. “We was taken into full church membership on the same day; and we used to run together and swap dinners at the Gum College. Aunt Lindy was so hard on her. I’ve asked Serene to go home with me and stay as long as she wanted to. But she has to take that horse and buggy back. And I don’t think she could stand it, so near the old home.”

“Now what do you think?” said Jesse Jeffries’ wife, coming in, with her black-mitted hands pressed together. “Things is willed to Sereny, after all.”

The bedroom resounded with ejaculations.

“How do you make that out?” inquired Little Jimmy Holmes’s wife. “I’d give all my yearlin’ calves to have it so.”

“There was another piece wrote on to the paper, that Jesse missed. ’Pears like Mozy cut her off, and then repented, and went right to another lawyer and had it fixed, for it’s in two different handwrites. Things stands just as they did in the first.”

“I’m sorry Lindy gets her yearly portion,” said Mrs. Holmes, in an irreverent aside. “Let me get out of this crowd: I’m goin’ to hug Serene.”

“I _thought_ ’twas a great pity,” exclaimed the woman with pins in her mouth, bestowing them rapidly about her bonnet ribbons, “if Sereny couldn’t have the homestead to bring up her boy in!”

“You said folks never found new wills!” observed a neighbor triumphantly.

“Well,” retorted the woman, turning her face from side to side to get her chin set properly in the bonnet ribbons, “they _didn’t_ find any. Jesse Jeffr’s only fooled around and didn’t read all of the first one. They might ’a’ knowed _Jesse Jeffr’s_ ’ud make a mess of it. _He_ don’t know how to do a thing right.”

This opinion was shielded from the ear of Mrs. Jesse. She was busy nodding her leghorn bonnet and exchanging parting civilities with several old neighbors.

But Little Jimmy Holmes’s wife had flown upstairs, and interfered with Jesse Jeffries and Sister McGafferty and a number of others. Serena lay upon a bed, and the air reeked with camphor.

“She’s overcome like,” explained Uncle Jesse.

“Let me get to her,” said Mrs. Holmes. Having got to her, Mrs. Holmes raised Serena’s head on her arm, and began to laugh.

“She’s comin’ out of it now,” observed Sister McGafferty. “All of you’d better go downstairs except Sister Holmes and me. Let her be without disturbin’ a while. We’ll have plenty of other chances to enjoy Sister Heddin’s company.”

The neighbors and Jesse went submissively downstairs, but Little Jimmy Holmes’s wife kept on laughing with some effort, as if she felt afraid of ending in a sob.

“Oh, I’m so glad you’ll be in the neighborhood again, Serene!” she said. “Things wouldn’t never been right in this world if they’d turned out the other way. Don’t look at me like you’s thinkin’ of the dead. But rouse up and feel better. There’s your Aunt Lindy and Hod standin’ at the gate: I can see ’em through the winder. They’re talkin’ mighty serious, and she don’t look so well satisfied as she did. But you must do well by her, Sereny. Give her the old spinnin’-wheel that stands in the smoke-house!”

ROSE DAY

TIME, 1875

“I do believe this is rose day,” said Infant, standing on the top step of the veranda in delight.

“I _know_ it’s soap-boiling day,” asserted her twin sister, who had been baptized Marilla Victoria when she was baptized Infanta Isabella, quite forty years before. These twins entered the world at a period when flowery, daring names were the extreme of fashion, and previous to a rebound to plain and strong Ann, Elizabeth, Mary, Hannah, Jane, and their various combinations. Infant came very near being labeled Lovey Lucilla, and she felt thankful for her escape, and even attached to her diminutive.

Belle would never have suited her (she was not belle), while Infant did not shame her (she was more or less an infant at any age). She was slender, blue-eyed, and smooth-skinned, so smooth that wrinkles could scarcely make their indentation. And it never ceased to be appropriate for her to wear her hair in a braid down her back, tied with ribbons the color of the dress she wore. Infant herself could not separate the gray hair from the blond, nor did she care whether it was all blond or all gray. She scampered over a fence and swung in the cherry-trees. Her long tranced girlhood never ended; and the slow life of the farm, simple as grass and wholesome as new milk, kept up the illusion that time was eternity. In their neighborhood these twins had been the Baldwin girls when they first toddled into meeting, when they went off to be educated at an expensive school, when they came back to paint and to play on a grand piano, when their parents died and they took charge of the farm; and the Baldwin girls would probably be their title when they should become contemporary with all living grandmothers.

Occasionally Infant received a shock from the growth of young children. It was so astonishing to see a creature who was a baby but a short time ago, shooting aloft, long-armed and long-legged, and announcing itself in the teens. Such phenomena did not astonish Rilla, however. She resented them. Though she had the same fair complexion and comely make as her sister, a deadly drop of acid had been added to her nature. Her shoulders were bent. She loved to hear people talked about, and to lift the corners of her nose with scorn. She felt abused by much that had happened to her on this planet, and yet too insignificant in her own personality to take it out of the human race as she desired to do. The freedom, ease, and scope of mature unmarried womanhood were in no wise appreciated by her. These traits made Rilla an uncomfortable house-mate, especially in winter, when the twins were snowed in with their books and trim housekeeping. Still, Infant loved Rilla’s sourness along with Rilla. There was strong diversion in being scolded, and she always felt such a delicious warmth around her heart when she made it up with Rilla and gave her a handsome present, or took double turns at the cooking.

Rilla was very parsimonious, and felt bound to distort herself with aged gowns and long-hoarded hats. But Infant felt unhappy in any color except that tint of gray which has the thought of wine in it. On this very rose day, though it was early in the morning, she wore a clinging gray challie dress. And a good background it would be for all the roses Infant could hang upon it.

Nothing made Rilla lift the corners of her nose higher than Infant’s flower days. But as Rilla would be lifting her nose anyhow, and could really scent no harm in these silent festivals, Infant continued to observe them year after year, and to afford her sister that triumphant sense of superiority which we all have upon beholding others’ absurdities.

There was crocus day, when the first flowers broke the sod and made heavenly beauty in the dark spring. Infant decked herself with them, and put them on the dinner-table. More abundantly satisfactory, however, was lilac day. It took a critical eye to discern the exact date. If the lilacs browned about the edges, then, alas! lilac day had slipped past. They were not to be gathered too soon, either, if their full soul of fragrance was to be enjoyed. On lilac day Infant walked under burdens of lavender bloom. The walls, the pictures, breathed lilacs. And at night she went to sleep crushing her face into a nest of bunches, so that she had lilac dreams, and drew the sweetness into herself, like an Eastern woman absorbing roses.

But the best day of all was rose day. Before it arrived she had always ready a posy of poems from Keats, Wordsworth, Jean Ingelow, and Whittier, and read them in the morning while the dew was on the world. The Baldwin girls cultivated a great many roses. Rilla could hardly miss from her rose-water and home-made attar and rose preserves the heaps which Infant cut for her nonsense.

There was not a nicer day in the year than rose day, if Rilla would only abstain from boiling soap on that date. The sisters had inherited seventy-five thousand dollars apiece, but they made their own soap every spring of refuse fats and the lye of wood-ashes. It could have been made cold in the cellar, if that way had not been too easy for Rilla. She held it a movable festival, like rose day, and no one will ever gauge the degree of satisfaction she felt in haling her flower-wreathed sister up to the vile-smelling caldron to keep the stirrer going while she set about other duties. Rilla honored pioneer custom and her grandmother’s memory by performing her soap incantations in the oldest, mouldiest, most completely shattered garment she possessed. This was a red wool delaine, so abased from its ruby tone that the drippings of the lye gourd could find little remaining space to burn or spot.

They boiled soap in a huge iron kettle in the chip yard. The blue wood smoke would envelop Rilla and her tarnished tatters as she ladled and tested, until she looked witch-like to passers along the road. Her unhappy victim, the slim woman in gray, with a rope of roses wound spirally around her from head to foot, a burden of roses on her bosom, and roses studded thickly along the band of her hat, sat on the corded wood as far as Rilla would allow from the soap, alternately inhaling their odor and rejecting the alkali steam. If Infant had to stir the soap, she would have a long-handled stirrer. The hot sun, beating on the chip yard and her huge hat, smote also the roses, and amidst their dying fragrance she had sad thoughts on the disappointments of life. So there was nothing but the morning of rose day which Rilla did not spoil.

But this anniversary Infant felt a sudden uplifting of courage within herself when her twin announced the soap orgy.

“_My_ soap-boiling will not come any more on rose day,” she put forth strongly. “And I think I will pay Enos Robb’s wife to make up my share of the fat and lye after this, Rilla.”

“I would,” said Rilla sarcastically, “particularly as Enos Robb and his wife and children don’t batten on us already. Give them the piano and the best parlor chairs and the solid coffee service while you are about it.”