Autumn Part 5

"I'd wait."

"'Twouldn't help any. I want so much, Tom . . . you couldn't give me all I want."

He said, "What is it I couldn't give you?"

"I don't know, Tom . . . I want what other people have . . .

experiences . . ."

At his bitter laugh, she was filled with pity for herself. "Is it so funny?" she asked. "I don't care."

"Whatever's got into you, Ann?"

"I don't know there's anything got into me beyond I don't want to grow old--and dry. . . ."

"I don't see as you can help it any."

But Anna was tipsy with youth: she swore she'd be dead before she was old.

"Hush, Ann."

"Why should I hush?" she asked. "It's the truth."

"It's a lie, that's what it is," said Thomas.

"Do you hate me, Tom?" she said. And she sat looking steadily before her.

"I don't know what's got into you. You act so queer."

"I want to be happy," she whispered.

"Then . . . you can do as you like for all of me."

But as they rode along in silence, wrapped in mist, she drew closer to him, all her reckless spirit gone. "There . . . you've made me cry,"

she said, and put her hand, cold and moist, into his.

"Aren't you going to kiss me, Tom?"

He slapped the reins bitterly across his horse's back. "What's the good of that?" he asked, in turn.

"Perhaps," she said faintly, "there isn't any. Oh, I don't know . . .

what's the difference?"

And so they rode on in silence, with pale cheeks and strange thoughts.

IV

MR. JEMINY BUILDS A HOUSE OUT OF BOXES

Mr. Jeminy liked to call on Mrs. Wicket, whose little cottage, at the edge of the village, on the way to Milford, had belonged to Eben Wicket for nearly fifty years. Now it belonged to the widow of Eben's son, John. Mr. Jeminy remembered John Wicket as a boy in school. He was a rogue; his head was already so full of mischief, that it was impossible to teach him anything. So he was not much wiser when he left school, than when he entered it. However, Mr. Jeminy was satisfied with his instruction. "With more knowledge," the old schoolmaster thought to himself, "he might do a great deal of harm in the world. So perhaps it is just as well for him to be ignorant." And he consoled himself with this reflection.

A year later John Wicket ran away from home, taking with him the money which his father kept in a stone jug in the kitchen. Old Mr. Wicket refused to send after him. "I didn't need the money," he said, "and I don't need him. Well, they're both gone."

But after a while, since his son was no longer there to plague him, he began to feel proud of him. "An out and out scamp," he said, with relish. "Never seen the like."

John Wicket was gone for three years, no one knew where. At last Eben received news of him again. His son, who had been living all this time in a nearby village, fell from a ladder and broke his neck. "Just,"

said Eben Wicket, "as I expected."

No one, however, expected to see his widow come to live with her father-in-law. The old man himself went to fetch her and her year-old child. She proved to be a small, plain body, with an air of fright about her, as though life had surprised her. Out of respect for Eben, as they put it, the gossips went to call. They found her shy, and inclined to be silent; they drank their tea, and examined her with curiosity, while she, for her part, seemed to want to hide away.

"As who wouldn't, in her place," said Mrs. Ploughman.

It was agreed that, having married an out-and-out rascal, she ought to be willing to spend the remainder of her life quietly. So she was left to herself, which seemed, on the face of it, to be about what she wanted. She tended Eben's house, drove the one cow to pasture, and sang to little Juliet from morning till night the songs she remembered from her own childhood.

During that time no one had any fault to find with her, excepting old Mrs. Crabbe, who thought she should have called her child Mary instead of Juliet. "It's not a proper name," she said to Mrs. Tomkins. "It isn't in the Bible, Mrs. Tomkins. You'd do as well to call the child Salomy. Salomy's in the Bible."

When Eben Wicket died, early in 1917, he left his house and about an acre of land to his daughter-in-law. She was poor; still, she had enough to get along on. She was young, but every one thought of her as a woman whose life was over. So when Noel Ploughman took to keeping company with her, the gossips were all aflitter. It was June; the regulars were on their way to France; and what with the war, and Mrs.

Wicket, the village had plenty to talk about. Old Mrs. Ploughman said nothing, but regarded her friends with a gloomy and thoughtful air. On the other hand, Miss Beal, the dressmaker, saw no reason to keep her opinions to herself. "It's a scandal," she said to her friend Mrs.

Grumble; "what with Eben Wicket scarcely cold in his grave, and John a thief, with his neck broke and heaven only knows what else besides."

Nevertheless, that summer Noel Ploughman's sober, honest face was often to be seen in Mrs. Wicket's garden patch, among the beans and the lettuces. Who can say what they found in one another to admire? In his company she was both happy and regretful, while he, seeing her by turns quiet and gay, could not determine which he found more charming.

They talked over the weather together, and discussed the crops. Love comes slowly in the north; there is time for every one to take a hand in it. August pa.s.sed without either having mentioned what was in their hearts. Then Mrs. Ploughman made up her mind to put an end to it. One day, when Noel was in Milford, she came to call on Mrs. Wicket. One can imagine what she said to the young woman, who was already a mother and a widow. The next day Mrs. Wicket appeared in her garden, pale and composed. Those who had occasion to pa.s.s the little cottage at the edge of the village, remarked that she no longer hummed under her breath the gay tunes of her childhood.

"Her sin has found her out," said Miss Beal. "She's fallen by the way."

"You'd think," said Mrs. Crabbe, "she'd behave herself a speck, after the life she's had."

Mrs. Grumble also was of the opinion that Mrs. Wicket had done wrong in allowing herself to care for Noel Ploughman. For it seemed to the gossips that Mrs. Wicket's life was, by rights, no longer her own to do with. She was the earthly remains of a sinner; she had no right to enjoy herself.

Two days later Noel Ploughman enlisted, "for the duration of the war."

His grandmother accepted the congratulations of Mrs. Crabbe and the sympathy of Mrs. Barly with equal satisfaction. It seemed to her that she had done her duty as she saw it. But when Noel was killed in France a year later, she felt that Mrs. Wicket had killed him. "Now,"

she croaked to Mrs. Crabbe, "I hope she's satisfied."

She seemed to be; she took the news of Noel's death with curious calm.

It was almost as if she had been expecting it, looking for it . . . one might have thought she had been waiting for it. . . . After a while, she began to sing again. Her voice, as she crooned to Juliet, was musical, but quavery. It provoked the good women of the village, who began to think that perhaps, after all, she had "had her way."

"There's this much about it," said Miss Beal; "no one else will have him now."

Mrs. Grumble agreed with her. She disliked Mrs. Wicket because Mr.

Jeminy liked her. He pitied the young woman who had had the misfortune to marry a thief, and he forgave her for wanting to be happy, because it did not seem to him that to have been the wife of a good-for-nothing was much to settle down on. In his opinion, life owed her more than she had got.

"She is simple and kind," he said to Mrs. Grumble. "She has had very little to give thanks for."

"She'll have more, then, if she can," replied Mrs. Grumble with a toss of her head as though to say, "it's you who are simple."

And she looked the other way, when they met on the road. Mr. Jeminy, on the other hand, often went to call at the little house at the edge of the village. The young widow, who had no other callers, felt that one friend was enough when he talked as much as Mr. Jeminy. While he laid open before her the great books of the past, illuminating their pages with his knowledge and reflections, she listened with an air of tranquil pleasure. She counted the st.i.tches on her sewing, and answered "sakes alive," in the pauses.