Phoebe Deane (13 page)

He went out drawing a long breath as if he had accomplished an unpleasant task, and left Phoebe wondering about her own mother, and trying to get a little glimpse into her possible sorrows and joys through the words that Albert had spoken. Somehow that sentence in her birthday letter came back to her: " Unless you can marry a man to whom you can look up and honor next to God it is better not to marry at all, believe your mother, child. I say it lovingly, for I have seen much sorrow and would protect you."

Had her father been hard to live with? Phoebe put the thought from her and was half glad she could not answer it. Her own life was enough of a problem without going back and sorrowing for her mother's. But it made her heart throb with a sense of a fuller understanding of her mother's life and warnings.

Emmeline did not come downstairs until dinner time, and her manner was freezing. Phoebe was glad that the work was all done carefully, even to the scrubbing of the back steps, and that the dinner was more than usually inviting. But Emmeline seemed not to see anything, and her manner remained as severe as when she first entered the kitchen. She poured the coffee, and drank a cup of it herself, and ate a bit of bread, but would not touch anything else on the table. She waited on the children with ostentatious care, but would not respond to the solicitations of her anxious husband, who urged this and that dainty upon her. Hank even suggested that the hot biscuits were nicer than usual. But that remark had to be lived down by Hank, for Emmeline usually made the biscuits, and Phoebe had made these. She did not condescend to even look at him in response.

Phoebe was glad when the last bit of pumpkin pie and cheese had disappeared and she could rise from her chair and go about the after-dinner work. Glad, too, that Emmeline went away again and left her to herself, for so she could more quickly finish up.

She was just hanging up her wiping towels when Emmeline came downstairs with the look of a martyr on her face, and the quilting frames in her hand. Over her shoulder was thrown her latest achievement in patchwork, a brilliant combination of reds and yellows and white known as the " rising sun " pattern. It was a large quilt, and would be quite a job to put on the frames. It was a Herculean task for one person without an assistant.

Phoebe stopped with an exclamation of dismay.

" You're not going to put that on the frames to-day, Emmeline? I thought you were saving that for next month!"

Emmeline's grim mouth remained shut for several seconds. At last she snapped out: " I don't know that it makes any difference what you thought. This is a free country and I've surely a right to do what I please in my own house."

" But, Emmeline, I can't help you this afternoon!"

" I don't know that I've asked you! "

" But you can't do it alone! "

"Indeed! What makes you think I can't! Go right along to your tea-party and take your ease. I was brought up to work, thank fortune, and a few burdens more or less can't make much difference. I'm not a lady of leisure and means like you."

Phoebe stood a minute watching Emmeline's stubby, determined fingers as they fitted a wooden peg into its socket like a period to the conversation. It seemed dreadful to go away and leave Emmeline to put up that quilt alone, but what was she to do? There seemed to be no law in the universe that would compel her to give up her first invitation out to tea in order that Emmeline might finish that quilt this particular week. It was plain that she had brought it down on purpose to hold her at home. Indignation boiled within her. If she had slipped stealthily away this would not have happened, but she had done her duty in telling Emmeline, and she felt perfectly justified in going. It wasn't as if she had invited herself. It would not be polite, now she had accepted the invitation, not to go. So, with sudden determination Phoebe left the kitchen and went up to dress.

With swift fingers she fastened the buff merino, put her hair in order, and tied on her locket, but nowhere was the little brown velvet bow to be found that belonged to her hair. She had not missed it before, for on Sunday she had worn her bonnet, and had dressed in a hurry. In perplexity she looked over her neat boxes of scant finery, but could not find it. She had to hurry away without it. She went out the other door, for she could not bear the sight of Emmeline putting up that sunrise bedquilt all alone. The thought of it seemed to cloud the sun and spoil the anticipation of her precious afternoon.

Once out in the crisp autumn air she drew a long breath of relief. It was so good to get away from the gloomy atmosphere that had been cramping her life for so many years. In a lonely place in the road between farm-houses she uttered a soft little scream under her breath. She felt as if she must do something to let out the agony of wrath and longing and hurt and indignity that were trying to burst her soul. Then she walked on to the town with demure dignity, and the people in the passing carryalls and farm wagons never suspected that she was aught but a happy maiden with thoughts busy with the joys of life.

The autumn days were lingering in sunny deep-blue haze, though the reds were changing into brown, and in the fields were gathering huddled groups of cornshocks like old crones, waving skeleton arms in the breeze, and whispering weird gossip. A rusty-throated cricket in the thicket by the way piped out his monotonous dirge to the summer now deceased. A flight of birds sprang into sight across the sky, calling and chattering to one another of a warmer climate. An old red cow stood in her well-grazed meadow, snuffed the short grass, and, looking at Phoebe as she passed, bawled a gentle protest at the decline of fresh vegetables. Everything spoke of autumn and the winter that was to come. But Phoebe, every step she took from home, grew lighter and lighter hearted, and could only think of the happy time she was to have.

It was not that she was thinking of the stranger, for there was no possibility of meeting him. The Bristol place, a fine old Colonial house behind a tall white fence and high privet hedge with a glimpse of a wonderful garden set off with dark borders of box through the imposing gateway, was over near the Presbyterian church. It was not near the Spaf- fords' house. She felt the freer and happier because there was no question of him to trouble her careful conscience.

Miranda had gone to the window that looked up the road towards the Deanes at least twenty times since the dinner dishes were washed. She was more nervous over the success of this her first tea-party than over anything she had ever done. She was beginning to be afraid that her guest would not arrive.

Everything was in train for supper. There was to be stewed chicken, with " riz biscuits" and honey, raspberry preserves, spiced peaches, fruitcake and caraway-seed cookies with delectable sugary tops. The tea was to be served in the very thinnest of the blue china cups. It was with difficulty that Marcia had suppressed a multitude of varieties of pickles and jellies and preserves and cakes, for Miranda could not understand why it wasn't " skimpin'" to have so few dishes upon the table.

" Gran'ma was never half satisfied ef you could see the tablecloth much between dishes," she was wont to say, dubiously. But Marcia tried patiently to explain that it was not refined to load the table with too many varieties, and Miranda, half convinced, gave it up, thinking Marcia sweet, but " inexperienced."

Miranda, fidgeting from window to door and back again to the kitchen, came at last to the library where sat Marcia with her work, watching a frolic between Eose and her kitten outside the window.

" Say, Mrs. Marcia," she began, ingratiatingly, " you'll find out what troubles that poor little thing, and see ef you can't help her, won't you? She's your size an' kind, more'n she is mine, an' you ought to be able to give her some help. You needn't think you've got to tell out to me every thing you find out. I shan't ask. I can find out enough fer my own use when I'm needed, but I think she needs you this time. When there's any use fer me I seem always to kind o' feel it in the air."

"Bless your heart, Miranda, I don't believe you care much for any one unless they need helping!" exclaimed Marcia, laughing. " What makes you so sure Phoebe Deane needs helping?"

" Oh, I know," said Miranda, mysteriously, " an' so will you when you look at her real hard. There she comes now. Don't you go an' tell I said nothing 'bout her. You jes' make her tell you. She's that sweet an' so are you that you two can't help pourin' out your perfume to each other like two flowers."

" But trouble isn't perfume, Miranda."

" H'm! Flowers smells all the sweeter when you crush 'em a little, don't they? There, you set right still where you be, I'll go to the door. Don't you stir. I want her to see you lookin' that way with the sun across the top o' your pretty hair. She'll like it, I know she will."

Marcia sat quite still as she was hidden, with the madonna smile upon her lips that David loved so well, smiling over Miranda's strange fancies, yet never thinking of herself as a picture against the window panes. In a moment more Phoebe Deane stood in the doorway, with Miranda beside her, looking from one to another of the two sweet girl-faces in deep admiration, and noting with delight that Phoebe fully appreciated the loveliness of her " Mrs. Marcia."

CHAPTER X

The afternoon was one of unalloyed bliss to Phoebe. She laid aside her troubles with her bonnet and mantilla, and basked in the sunlight of Marcia's smile. Here was something she had never known, the friendship of another girl not much older than herself; for Marcia, though she had grown in heart and intellect during her five years of beautiful companionship with David Spafford, had not lost the years she had skipped by her early marriage, but kept their memory fresh in her heart. Perhaps it was the girl in her that had attracted her to Phoebe Deane.

They fell into happy converse at once, Phoebe begging for a seam to sew on the frock of pale blue merino that Marcia was making for Rose, all exquisitely braided with white silk braid in a rosebud pattern.

They talked about their mothers, these two who had known so little of real mothering; and Marcia, because she had felt it herself, understood the wistfulness in Phoebe's tone when she spoke of her loneliness and her longing for her mother. Then Phoebe, with a half-apologetic flush, told of her mother's birthday letter and the buff merino, and Marcia smoothed down the soft folds of the skirt reverently, half wistfully, and told Phoebe it was beautiful, just like a present and a letter from heaven. Then she kissed her gently and made her come out where little Rose was playing. There they frolicked until the child was Phoebe's devoted slave, and then they all went back to the big stately parlor, where Miranda had a great fire of logs blazing, and there in a deep easy chair Phoebe was ensconced with Rose cuddled in her lap playing with her locket, and having it tied at will about her own dimpled neck.

While this was going on Marcia played exquisite music on her pianoforte, which to the ear of the girl, who had seldom heard any music in her life save the singing in church or singing-school, seemed entrancing. She almost forgot the charming child in her lap, forgot to look about on the beautiful room so full of interesting things, forgot even to think, as she listened, and her very soul responded to the music, which seemed to be calling a great comfort across the immense distances that separated her from things she loved.

Then suddenly the music ceased and Marcia sprang up, saying in a glad voice, " Oh, there is David!" and went to the door to let him in.

Phoebe exclaimed in dismay that it was so late, and the beautiful afternoon was at an end, but she forgot her disappointment in wonder over Marcia's joy at her husband's coming. It brought back to her the subject that had been uppermost in her thoughts ever since the night when Hiram Green had dared to follow her to the orchard. Somehow she had grown up with very little halo about the institution of marriage. It had seemed to her a kind of necessary arrangement, but never anything that gave great joy. The married people whom she knew did not seem greatly to rejoice in one another's presence. Indeed, they often seemed to be a hindrance each to the other. She had never cherished many bright dreams of any such state for herself, as most girls do. Life had been too dully tinted since her little girlhood for her to indulge fancies. Therefore it was a revelation to her to see how much these two rare souls cared for one another. It was not that they displayed their affection by any act of endearment, but she saw it in the glance of each, in a sudden lighting of the eye, the involuntary cadence of the voice, the evident pleasure of yielding each to the other, aye, rather preferring one another; the constant presence of joy as a guest in that house, because of the presence of the other. One could never feel that way about Hiram Green— —no one could,—it would be impossible! Wait! Had not that been the very thing possessed by his poor crushed little wife? But how could she feel it when it was not returned? She began to think over the married households she knew, but then she knew so few of them intimately. There was Granny McVane. Did the old 'Squire feel so about her? And did she spring to meet him at the door after all these years of life with its hardness? There was something about the sweet meek face in its ruffled cap that made Phoebe think it possible. And there was Albert. Of course Emmeline did not feel so, for Emmeline was not that kind of a woman, but might not a different woman have felt that for Albert? He was kind and gentle to women. Too slow and easy to gain real respect, yet—yes, she felt that it might be possible for some women to feel real joy in his presence. There lurked a possibility that he felt so toward Emmeline, in some degree; but Hiram Green, with his chair tilted back against the wall, and his hat drawn down over his narrow eyes, above his cruel mouth! Never! He was utterly incapable of so beautiful a feeling. If he only might in some way pass out of her horizon forever it would be a great relief.