Country Neighbors Part 19

"She ain't said she won't come?" He was dismayed and frankly terrified.

"She says you're dreadful spruce-lookin' and you're younger'n ever you was."

The cap'n laughed.

"That all?" he inquired. "Well, she must be cross-eyed."

"No," said Mariana, "she ain't cross-eyed; only she thinks you're a terrible likely man."

Then she walked away, and the cap'n watched her, blinking a little with the sun in his eyes and the memory of her Indian pudding.

Mariana did not find her house just as she had left it. It seemed to her a warmer, lighter, cleaner place than she had ever thought it, and, in spite of the winter's closing, as sweet as spring. She went about opening cupboard doors and looking at her china as if each piece were friendly to her, from long a.s.sociation, and moving the mantel ornaments to occupy the old places more exactly. Certain eccentricities of the place had been faults; now they were beauties wherein she found no blemish. The worn hollows in the kitchen floor, so hard to wash on a Monday, seemed exactly to fit her feet. And while she stood with her elbows on the window-sash, looking out and planning her garden, Jake Preble came. Mariana was not conscious that she had expected him, but his coming seemed the one note needed to complete recaptured harmony.

What she might have prepared to say to him if she had paused to remember Lizzie Ann's ideal of woman's behavior, she did not think. She turned to him, her face running over with pure delight, and put the comprehensive question:--

"Ain't this elegant?"

"You bet it is," said Jake. He did not seem the same man, neither the sombre dullard of the winter, nor the Jake of former years who had fulfilled the routine of his life with no comment on its rigor or its ease. His face was warmly flushed and his eyes shone upon her. "I don't know 's I ever see a nicer place," said he, "except it's mine. Say, Mariana, what you goin' to do?"

"When?" Mariana inquired innocently.

"Now. Right off, to-morrer, next day."

She laughed.

"I'm goin' to start my garden and wash my dishes and hang out clo'es, and then I'm goin' to begin all over again and do the same things; but it'll be my garden and my dishes and my clo'es. And I'm goin' to be as happy as the day is long."

"Say," said Jake, "you don't s'pose you could come over to my house an'

do it?"

"Work out some more? Why, I ain't but just over one job. You expect me to take another?"

Mariana was not in the least embarra.s.sed. Lizzie Ann was right, she thought. Men-folks studied their own comfort, and Jake, even, having had a cosy nest all winter, had learned the way of making one of his own.

Suddenly she trembled. He was looking at her in a way she wondered at, not as if he were Jake at all, but another like him, from warm, beseeching eyes.

"You shouldn't do a hand's turn if you didn't want to," he was a.s.suring her, with that entreating look. "We'd keep a girl, an' Mondays I'd stay home an' turn the wringer. Mariana, I know you set everything by your house, but you could fix mine over any way you liked. You could throw out a bay-winder if you wanted, or build a cupelow."

"Why," said Mariana, so softly that he bent to hear, "what's set you out to want a housekeeper?"

"It ain't a housekeeper," said Jake. "I've had enough o' housekeepin'

long as I live, seein' you fetch an' carry for Eb Hanscom. Why, Mariana, I just love you. I want a wife."

Mariana walked away from him to the window and stood looking out again, only that, instead of the wet garden with the clumps of larkspur feathering up, she seemed to see long beds of flowers in bloom. She even heard the bees humming over them and the tumult of nesting birds. And all the time Jake Preble waited, looking at her back and wondering if after all the losses of his life he was to forfeit Mariana, who, he knew, was life itself.

"Well," said he, in deep despondency, "I s'pose it's no use. I see how you feel about it. Any woman would feel the same."

Mariana turned suddenly, and, seeing she was smiling, he took a hurried step to meet her.

"I 'most forgot you," she said, with a whimsical lilt in her voice. "I was thinkin' how elegant it is when we get home at last."

"Yes," said Jake dejectedly. "I s'pose you're considerin' your own house an' your own gardin-spot's the best there is in the world."

"Why, no," said Mariana, with a little movement toward him. "I wa'n't thinkin' o' my house nor my gardin particular. I guess I was thinkin' o'

yours. Leastways, I was thinkin' o' _you_."

PARTNERS

"I guess I shall fetch it," said Newell Bond.

He was sitting on the doorstep, in the summer dusk, with Dorcas Lee. She knew just how his gaunt, large-featured face looked, with its hawk-like glance, and the color, as he spoke, mounting to his forehead. There were two kinds of Bonds, the red and the black. The red Bonds had the name of carrying out their will in all undertakings, and Newell was one. Dorcas was on the step above him, her splendid shoulders disdaining the support of the casing, and her head, with its heavy braids, poised with an unconscious pride, no more spirited by daylight than here in the dark where no one saw. She answered in her full, rich voice:--

"Of course you will, if you want to bad enough."

"If I want to?" repeated Newell. "Ain't I acted as if 'twas the one thing I did want?"

Over and over they had dwelt upon the great purpose of his life, sometimes to touch it here and there with delicate implication, and often to sit down, by an unspoken consent, for long, serious talks.

To-night Newell spoke from a reminiscent mood. There were times when, in an ingenuous egoism, he had to take down the book of his romance and read a page. But only to Dorcas. She was his one confidant; she understood.

"I don't know 's Alida's to blame," he meditated. "She's made that way."

Immediately Dorcas, in her sympathetic mind, was regarding a picture of Alida Roe as she saw her without illusion of pa.s.sion or prejudice--a delicate, pale girl with a sweet complexion, and slender hands that were ever trembling upon fine work for her own adornment. She had known Alida at school and at home, in dull times and bright, and she had a vision, when her name was mentioned, of something as frail as cobwebs, with all their beauty. Whenever Newell Bond had begun to sound the praises of his chosen maid, she had set her mind seriously to considering what he could see in Alida. But it was never of any use. Alida always remained to her impalpable and vain. Now she answered patiently, according to her wont:--

"Of course she's made that way."

It was like a touch to keep the machinery going, and he responded:--

"You see, I hadn't asked her to set the day. It was kind of understood between us. An' then Clayton Rand come along an' begun to s.h.i.+ne up to her, spendin' money like water, an' her mother was bewitched by it. So she orders Alida to throw me over an' take up with t'other man. I don't know 's Alida's to blame."

"Do you s'pose they're engaged?" asked Dorcas, for the hundredth time.

He was silent for a moment, brooding. Then he answered, as he always did:--

"That's more'n I can make out. But if they are, I'll break it. Give me time enough, an' I'll do it when they're walkin' into the meetin'-house, if I don't afore."

Dorcas felt old and tired. All her buoyant life seemed to settle to a level where she must foster the youth of others and starve her own.

"Well," she said gently, "you've done pretty well this year, sellin'

house-lots an' all."

"I've done well this year an' I'm goin' to keep on," said Newell, in that dogged way he had. Often it heartened her, but never when it touched upon his weary chase. Then it seemed to her like some rus.h.i.+ng force that should be used to turn a mill, wandering away into poor meadows, to be dried and lost. But he was ending as he always did: "Clayton Rand won't marry so long 's his mother's alive, no matter how much money he's got. An' while Alida's waitin' for him, I'll lay up what I can, an' I bet you I get her yet."

"You goin' to pick peas in the mornin'?" asked Dorcas.

She had heard the clock striking, and it counseled her to remember how early their days began.