Rose O' the River Part 8

"Bill scratched his head an' I held my breath. Then says he, 'Pears to me I'd ought to hev a pulpit or two, if I can jest remember where I keep 'em. I don't never cal'late to be out o' pulpits, but I'm so plagued for room I can't keep 'em in here with the groc'ries. Jim (that's his new store boy), you jest take a lantern an' run out in the far corner o'

the shed, at the end o' the hickory woodpile, an' see how many pulpits we've got in stock!' Well, Jim run out, an' when he come back he says, 'We've got two, Mr. Pike. Shall I bring one of 'em in?'

"At that the boys all bust out laughin' an' hollerin' an' tauntin' the Gorham man, an' he paid up with a good will, I tell ye!"

"I don't approve of bettin'," said Mrs. Wiley grimly, "but I'll try to sanctify the money by usin' it for a new wash-boiler."

"The fact is," explained old Kennebec, somewhat confused, "that the boys made me spend every cent of it then an' there."

Rose heard her grandmother's caustic reply, and then paid no further attention until her keen ear caught the sound of Stephen's name. It was a part of her unhappiness that since her broken engagement no one would ever allude to him, and she longed to hear him mentioned, so that perchance she could get some inkling of his movements.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "AS LONG AS STEPHEN WATERMAN'S ALIVE, ROSE WILEY CAN HAVE HIM"]

"I met Stephen to-night for the first time in a week," said Mr. Wiley.

"He kind o' keeps out o' my way lately. He's goin' to drive his span into Portland tomorrow mornin' and bring Rufus home from the hospital Sunday afternoon. The doctors think they've made a success of their job, but Rufus has got to be bandaged up a spell longer. Stephen is goin' to join the drive Monday mornin' at the bridge here, so I'll get the latest news o' the boy. Land! I'll be turrible glad if he gets out with his eyesight, if it's only for Steve's sake. He's a turrible good fellow, Steve is! He said something to-night that made me set more store by him than ever. I told you I hedn't heard an unkind word ag'in' Rose sence she come home from Boston, an' no more I hev till this evenin: There was two or three fellers talkin' in the post-office, an' they didn't suspicion I was settin' on the steps outside the screen door. That Jim Jenkins, that Rose so everlastin'ly snubbed at the tavern dance, spoke up, an' says he: 'This time last year Rose Wiley could 'a' hed the choice of any man on the river, an' now I bet ye she can't get nary one.'

"Steve was there, jest goin' out the door, with some bags o' coffee an'

sugar under his arm.

"'I guess you're mistaken about that,' he says, speakin' up jest like lightnin'; 'so long as Stephen Waterman's alive, Rose Wiley can have him, for one; and that everybody's welcome to know.'

"He spoke right out, loud an' plain, jest as if he was readin' the Declaration of Independence. I expected the boys would everlastin'ly poke fun at him, but they never said a word. I guess his eyes flashed, for he come out the screen door, slammin' it after him, and stalked by me as if he was too worked up to notice anything or anybody. I didn't foiler him, for his long legs git over the ground too fast for me, but thinks I, 'Mebbe I'll hev some use for my lemonade-set after all.'"

"I hope to the land you will," responded Mrs. Wiley, "for I'm about sick o' movin' it round when I sweep under my bed. And I shall be glad if Rose an' Stephen do make it up, for Wealthy Ann Brooks's gossip is too much for a Christian woman to stand."

HOUSEBREAKING

Where was the pale Rose, the faded Rose, that crept noiselessly down from her room, wanting neither to speak nor to be spoken to? n.o.body ever knew. She vanished forever, and in her place a thing of sparkles and dimples flashed up the stairway and closed the door softly. There was a streak of moons.h.i.+ne lying across the bare floor, and a merry ghost, with dressing-gown held prettily away from bare feet, danced a gay fandango among the yellow moonbeams. There were breathless flights to the open window, and kisses thrown in the direction of the River Farm. There were impressive declamations at the looking-gla.s.s, where a radiant creature pointed to her reflection and whispered, "Worthless little pig, he loves you, after all!"

Then, when quiet joy had taken the place of mad delight, there was a swoop down upon the floor, an impetuous hiding of br.i.m.m.i.n.g eyes in the white counterpane, and a dozen impa.s.sioned promises to herself and to something higher than herself, to be a better girl.

The mood lasted, and deepened, and still Rose did not move. Her heart was on its knees before Stephen's faithful love, his chivalry, his strength. Her troubled spirit, like a frail boat tossed about in the rapids, seemed entering a quiet harbor, where there were protecting sh.o.r.es and a still, still evening star. Her sails were all torn and drooping, but the harbor was in sight, and the poor little weather-beaten craft could rest in peace.

A period of grave reflection now ensued,--under the bedclothes, where one could think better. Suddenly an inspiration seized her,--an inspiration so original, so delicious, and above all so humble and praiseworthy, that it brought her head from her pillow, and she sat bolt upright, clapping her hands like a child.

"The very thing!" she whispered to herself gleefully. "It will take courage, but I'm sure of my ground after what he said before them all, and I'll do it. Grandma in Biddeford buying church carpets, Stephen in Portland--was ever such a chance?"

The same glowing Rose came downstairs, two steps at a time, next morning, bade her grandmother good-by with suspicious pleasure, and sent her grandfather away on an errand which, with attendant conversation, would consume half the day. Then bundles after bundles and baskets after baskets were packed into the wagon,--behind the seat, beneath the seat, and finally under the lap-robe. She gave a dramatic flourish to the whip, drove across the bridge, went through Pleasant River village, and up the leafy road to the little house, stared the "To Let" sign scornfully in the eye, alighted, and ran like a deer through the aisles of waving corn, past the kitchen windows, to the back door.

"If he has kept the big key in the old place under the stone, where we both used to find it, then he hasn't forgotten me--or anything," thought Rose.

The key was there, and Rose lifted it with a sob of grat.i.tude. It was but five minutes' work to carry all the bundles from the wagon to the back steps, and another five to lead old Tom across the road into the woods and tie him to a tree quite out of the sight of any pa.s.ser-by.

When, after running back, she turned the key in the lock, her heart gave a leap almost of terror, and she started at the sound of her own footfall. Through the open door the sunlight streamed into the dark room. She flew to tables and chairs, and gave a rapid sweep of the hand over their surfaces.

"He has been dusting here,--and within a few days, too," she thought triumphantly.

The kitchen was perfection, as she always knew it would be, with one door opening to the shaded road and the other looking on the river; windows, too, framing the apple-orchard and the elms. She had chosen the furniture, but how differently it looked now that it was actually in place! The tiny shed had piles of split wood, with great boxes of kindlings and shavings, all in readiness for the bride, who would do her own cooking. Who but Stephen would have made the very wood ready for a woman's home-coming; and why had he done so much in May, when they were not to be married until August? Then the door of the bedroom was stealthily opened, and here Rose sat down and cried for joy and shame and hope and fear. The very flowered paper she had refused as too expensive! How lovely it looked with the white chamber set! She brought in her simple wedding outfit of blankets, bed-linen, and counterpanes, and folded them softly in the closet; and then for the rest of the morning she went from room to room, doing all that could remain undiscovered, even to laying a fire in the new kitchen stove.

This was the plan. Stephen must pa.s.s the house on his way from the River Farm to the bridge, where he was to join the river-drivers on Monday morning. She would be out of bed by the earliest peep of dawn, put on Stephen's favorite pink calico, leave a note for her grandmother, run like a hare down her side of the river and up Stephen's, steal into the house, open blinds and windows, light the fire, and set the kettle boiling. Then with a sharp knife she would cut down two rows of corn, and thus make a green pathway from the front kitchen steps to the road.

Next, the false and insulting "To Let" sign would be forcibly tweaked from the tree and thrown into the gra.s.s. She would then lay the table in the kitchen, and make ready the nicest breakfast that two people ever sat down to. And oh, would two people sit down to it; or would one go off in a rage and the other die of grief and disappointment?

Then, having done all, she would wait and palpitate, and palpitate and wait, until Stephen came. Surely no property-owner in the universe could drive along a road, observe his corn leveled to the earth, his sign removed, his house open, and smoke issuing from his chimney, without going in to surprise the rogue and villain who could be guilty of such vandalism.

And when he came in?

Oh, she had all day Sunday in which to forecast, with mingled dread and gladness and suspense, that all-important, all-decisive first moment!

All day Sunday to frame and unframe penitent speeches. All day Sunday!

Would it ever be Monday? If so, what would Tuesday bring? Would the sun rise on happy Mrs. Stephen Waterman of Pleasant River, or on miserable Miss Rose Wiley of the Brier Neighborhood?

THE DREAM ROOM

Long ago, when Stephen was a boy of fourteen or fifteen, he had gone with his father to a distant town to spend the night. After an early breakfast next morning his father had driven off for a business interview, and left the boy to walk about during his absence. He wandered aimlessly along a quiet side street, and threw himself down on the gra.s.s outside a pretty garden to amuse himself as best he could.

After a few minutes he heard voices, and, turning, peeped through the bars of the gate in idle, boyish curiosity. It was a small brown house; the kitchen door was open, and a table spread with a white cloth was set in the middle of the room. There was a cradle in a far corner, and a man was seated at the table as though he might be waiting for his breakfast.

There is a kind of sentiment about the kitchen in New England, a kind of sentiment not provoked by other rooms. Here the farmer drops in to spend a few minutes when he comes back from the barn or field on an errand.

Here, in the great, clean, sweet, comfortable place, the busy housewife lives, sometimes rocking the cradle, sometimes opening and shutting the oven door, sometimes stirring the pot, darning stockings, paring vegetables, or mixing goodies in a yellow bowl. The children sit on the steps, stringing beans, sh.e.l.ling peas, or hulling berries; the cat sleeps on the floor near the wood-box; and the visitor feels exiled if he stays in sitting-room or parlor, for here, where the mother is always busy, is the heart of the farm-house.

There was an open back door to this kitchen, a door framed in morning-glories, and the woman (or was she only girl?) standing at the stove was pretty,--oh, so pretty in Stephen's eyes! His boyish heart went out to her on the instant. She poured a cup of coffee and walked with it to the table; then an unexpected, interesting thing happened--something the boy ought not to have seen, and never forgot.

The man, putting out his hand to take the cup, looked up at the pretty woman with a smile, and she stooped and kissed him.

Stephen was fifteen. As he looked, on the instant he became a man, with a man's hopes, desires, ambitions. He looked eagerly, hungrily, and the scene burned itself on the sensitive plate of his young heart, so that, as he grew older, he could take the picture out in the dark, from time to time, and look at it again. When he first met Rose, he did not know precisely what she was to mean to him; but before long, when he closed his eyes and the old familiar picture swam into his field of vision, behold, by some spiritual chemistry, the pretty woman's face had given place to that of Rose!

All such teasing visions had been sternly banished during this sorrowful summer, and it was a thoughtful, sober Stephen who drove along the road on this mellow August morning. The dust was deep; the goldenrod waved its imperial plumes, making the humble waysides gorgeous; the river chattered and sparkled till it met the logs at the Brier Neighorhood, and then, lapsing into silence, flowed steadily under them till it found a vent for its spirits in the das.h.i.+ng and splas.h.i.+ng of the falls.

Haying was over; logging was to begin that day; then harvesting; then wood-cutting; then eternal successions of plowing, sowing, reaping, haying, logging, harvesting, and so on, to the endless end of his days.

Here and there a red or a yellow branch, painted only yesterday, caught his eye and made him s.h.i.+ver. He was not ready for winter; his heart still craved the summer it had missed.

h.e.l.lo! What was that? Corn-stalks p.r.o.ne on the earth? Sign torn down and lying flat in the gra.s.s? Blinds open, fire in the chimney?

He leaped from the wagon, and, flinging the reins to Alcestis Crambry, said, "Stay right here out of sight, and don't you move till I call you!" and striding up the green pathway, flung open the kitchen door.

A forest of corn waving in the doorway at the back, morning-glories clambering round and round the window-frames, table with s.h.i.+ning white cloth, kettle humming and steaming, something bubbling in a pan on the stove, fire throwing out sweet little gleams of welcome through the open damper. All this was taken in with one incredulous, rapturous twinkle of an eye; but something else, too: Rose of all roses, Rose of the river, Rose of the world, standing behind a chair, her hand pressed against her heart, her lips parted, her breath coming and going! She was glowing like a jewel, glowing with the extraordinary brilliancy that emotion gives to some women. She used to be happy in a gay, sparkling way, like the shallow part of the stream as it chatters over white pebbles and bright sands. Now it was a broad, steady, full happiness like the deeps of the river under the sun.

"Don't speak, Stephen, till you hear what I have to say. It takes a good deal of courage for a girl to do as I am doing; but I want to show how sorry I am, and it's the only way." She was trembling, and the words came faster and faster. "I've been very wrong and foolish, and made you very unhappy, but I haven't done what you would have hated most. I haven't been engaged to Claude Merrill; he hasn't so much as asked me. I am here to beg you to forgive me, to eat breakfast with me, to drive me to the minister's and marry me quickly, quickly, before anything happens to prevent us, and then to bring me home here to live all the days of my life. Oh, Stephen dear, honestly, honestly, you haven't lost anything in all this long, miserable summer. I've suffered, too, and I'm better worth loving than I was. Will you take me back?"

Rose had a tremendous power of provoking and holding love, and Stephen of loving. His was too generous a nature for revilings and complaints and reproaches.

The sh.o.r.es of his heart were strewn with the wreckage of the troubled summer, but if the tide of love is high enough, it washes such things out of remembrance. He just opened his arms and took Rose to his heart, faults and all, with joy and grat.i.tude; and she was as happy as a child who has escaped the scolding it richly deserved, and who determines, for very thankfulness' sake, never to be naughty again.