'Paints? What ever are you talking about, Em?'

She had bent over her sewing again, and he could not see her face as she answered, 'When Minnie and I were little girls, I reckon we never had any secrets from each other, at all. I know I talked about things to her I never could have told anybody else. She was that way with me, too.

Well, she always said she wanted to paint, and I wanted to play. She was always copying every picture she saw. I remember she did one picture called A yard of Roses, from a calendar. It was so good you couldn't have told the difference. Don't you remember the time she took the prize at the art exhibit at the country fair, with a picture she had copied, called The Storm? One of the judges said it just made him shiver to look at it, it was so real.'

'Come to think of it, I believe I do recollect something about Min having queer notions. I know us boys used to think she was stuck-up.

What did she mean about the vow and about this picture being of you, by her?'

For a moment there was only the little click of her thimble against the needle. Then she said, 'I guess I can't make it clear to you, Jake.

Minnie always did have her own way of putting things. We had lots of fancies, as we used to call them. But I suppose she was thinking about our old dreams. If they'd come true, she might have painted me, sitting like that.'

'It don't look much like you, even when you was young,' was the reply of the man, not given to 'fancies'; 'but what is it about the vow?'

'I don't know,' said his wife shortly.

It was one of the few lies she had ever told her husband. Just why, having told him so much, she couldn't tell him that Minnie Jackson and she had promised each other that, no matter what happened, nothing should keep them from realizing their ambitions, and that each year they would give a report to each other on their birthday, she could not have said. But suddenly her throat contracted and she could not see the patch on the coat.

'How this lamp does smoke!' she said, as she brushed her hand over her eyes.

'Well,' yawned her husband, 'I guess most folks, leastwise most girls, have silly notions when they're young. Who'd ever think to see you now, that you ever had any such ideas? You're a good wife for a farmer, Em.

There ain't a better woman anywhere, than you.'

It was one of the few times in all the years of their marriage that he had praised her. Jacob Black had never been one to question life or to marvel at its wonders. For him, it held no wonders. The spell of life had caught him when he was young. He had 'fallen in love' with Emmeline Mead and he had married her. She had borne him eight children. Five of them had lived. If Jacob Black had thought about it at all, which he did not, he would have said that was the way life went. One was young. Then one grew old. When one was young, one married, and probably there were children.

The wing of romance had brushed him so lightly in its pa.s.sing, that at the time it had brought to him no yearning for an unknown rapture, no wonder at the mystery of life. After twenty-one years, if he had given it any thought whatsoever, he would have said that their marriage 'had turned out well.' Em had been a good wife; she had risen at daylight and worked until after dark. She wasn't foolish about money. She never went to town unless there was something to take her there. She went to church, of course, and when it was her turn, she entertained the Ladies'

Aid. Such recreations were to be expected. Yes, Em had been a good wife.

But then, he had been a good husband. He never drank. He was a church member. He always hired a woman to do the housework, for two weeks, when there was a new baby. He let Em have the b.u.t.ter and chicken money.

The clock struck nine.

'I'm going to bed,' he said, 'there's lots to do to-morrow. Nearly through your mending?'

'No. Anyhow, I guess I'll wait up for John and Victoria to come home.'

'Better not, if you're tired. John may get in early, but probably Vic will be mooning along.'

'What?' she cried. 'What do you mean by that, Jake Black?'

'Say, Em, are you blind? Can't you see there's something between her and Jim? Haven't you noticed that it isn't John he comes to see now? Haven't you seen how Vic spruces up nights when, he's coming over?'

The woman dropped her sewing in her lap. The needle ran into her thumb.

Mechanically, she pulled it out. She was so intent, looking at him, trying to grasp his meaning, that she did not notice the drops of blood which fell on her mending. When she spoke, it was with difficulty.

'O Jake, it can't be. It just can't be.'

'Why can't it?'

'Why, he's not good enough for Victoria.'

'Not good enough? Why, what's the matter with Jim? I never heard a word against him and I've known him ever since he was a little shaver. He's steady as can be, and a hard worker.'

'I know all that. I wasn't thinking about such things. I was thinking about--oh, about--other things.'

'Other things? Well, what on earth is the matter with the other things?

Forman's place is as good as any hereabouts, and it's clear, and only three children to be divided among. There's money in the bank, too, I'll bet.'

'But Victoria is so young, Jake. Why, she's just a girl!'

'She's old as you was, when we got married, Em.'

He went into the kitchen for another drink of water. When he came through the room, he bent over to pick up his shoes.

'Say, Em,' he said, 'you surely don't mean what you've been saying, do you, about Jim not being good enough for Vic? 'Cause it ain't likely that she'll ever get another chance as good.'

She did not answer. The man looking at her, the man who had lived with her for more than twenty years, did not know that a sudden rage against life was in her heart. He did not know that the lost dreams of her youth were crying out in her against the treachery of life. He did not know that the bandage which the years had mercifully bound across her eyes had fallen away, and that she was seeing the everlasting tragedy of the conflict between dreams and life. He did not know that, in that moment, she was facing the supreme sorrow of motherhood in the knowledge that the beloved child cannot be spared the disillusions of the years.

He only knew that she was worried.

'Don't you be giving Vic any of your queer notions,' he said, in a voice which was almost harsh.

Jacob Black was an easygoing man. But he had set his heart on seeing his daughter the wife of Jim Forman. Did not the Forman farm join his on the southeast?

Until she heard him walking around in their bedroom overhead, she sewed on. Then she laid down her work. She picked up the picture. It was small, but she held it clutched in both hands, as though it were heavy.

It would not have mattered to her if she had known that critics of art scoffed at the picture. To her it was more than a masterpiece; it was a miracle. Had she not felt like the pictured saint, when she had sat at the organ, years ago? She, too, had raised her eyes in just that way; and if actual roses had not fallen on the keys, the mystical ones of hopes too fragile for words, and beauties only dreamed of, had fallen all about her. There was a time when she had played the little organ in church. How her soul had risen on the chords which she struck for the Doxology, which always came just before the benediction! Even after Victoria was born, she had played the organ for a time. Then the babies came fast, and when one has milking to do and dishes to wash and one's fingers are needle-p.r.i.c.ked, it is hard to find the keys. Also, when one works from daylight till dark, one wants only rest. There is a sleep too deep for dreams.

It was years since Emmeline Black had dreamed except in the terms of her motherhood. For herself, the dream had gone. She did not rebel. She accepted. It was the way of life with women like her. She would not have said her life was hard. Jacob Black had been a good husband to her. Only a fool, having married a poor farmer, could expect that the dreams of a romantic girl would ever come true. Once she had expected it, of course.

That was when Jacob Black had seemed as a prince to Emmeline Mead. She had felt the wing of romance as it brushed past her. But that was long ago. She did not like the routine of her life. But neither did she hate it. For herself, it had come to seem the natural, the expected thing.

But for Victoria--

Her dreams had not all gone when Victoria was born. That first year of her marriage, it had seemed like playing at being a housekeeper to do the work for Jacob and herself. She had loved her garden, and often, just because she had loved to be with him and because she loved the smell of the earth and the growing things which came from it, she had gone into the fields with her husband. Then, when the year was almost gone, her baby was born. She had loved the other children as they came, and she had grieved for the girls and the boy who had died; but Victoria was the child of her dreams. The other children had been named for aunts and uncles and grandfathers, and so had satisfied family pride. But that first baby had been named for a queen.

None of the boys cared for music. They 'took after' the Black family.

But Victoria, so Emmeline felt, belonged to her. She had always been able to play by ear, and her voice was sweet and true. The b.u.t.ter-and-egg money for a long time had gone for music lessons for Victoria. When the girl was twelve, her mother had begun a secret fund.

Every week she pilfered a few pennies from her own small income and put them away. Some time Victoria was to go to the city and have lessons from the best teacher there. For five years she did not purchase a thing for herself to wear, except now and then a dress pattern of calico. That was no real sacrifice to her. The hard thing was to deny pretty clothes to Victoria.

Then a year of sickness came. She tried to forget the little sum of money hidden away. Surely their father could pay the bills. If she had spent the b.u.t.ter-and-egg money, as he had thought she had done, he would have had to pay them alone. But when the doctor said that Henry must be taken to the county seat for an operation, there was no thought of questioning her duty. Her husband had been surprised and relieved when she gave him her little h.o.a.rd. It was another proof that he had a good wife, and one who was not foolish about money.

At last, her sewing was finished. She went into the kitchen and began to set the bread. But her thoughts were not on it. She was thinking of Emmeline Mead and her dreams, and how they had failed her. She had expected Victoria Black to redeem those dreams. And now Victoria was to marry and go the same hard way toward drab middle-age. She heard some one step on the front porch. There was a low murmur of voices for a moment and a little half-stifled laugh. Then the door opened.

'Mother, is that you?' came something which sounded half-whisper, half-laugh from the door.

She raised her eyes from the bread-pan. She smiled. But she could not speak. It seemed as if the fingers of some world-large hand had fastened around her heart. To her Victoria had always been the most beautiful, the most wonderful being, on earth. But she had never seen this Victoria before. The girl was standing in the door--eyes shining, lips trembling, her slim young body swaying as if to some hidden harmony.

Then she leaped across the kitchen, and threw her strong arms round her mother.

'I'm so glad you're up and alone! O mother, I had to see you to-night. I couldn't have gone to bed without talking to you. I was thinking it was a blessed thing father always sleeps so hard, for I could tip-toe in and get you and he'd never know the difference.' She stifled a little laugh and went on, 'Come on, outdoors. It is too lovely to stay inside.' She drew her mother, who had not yet spoken, through the door. 'I guess, mother,' she said, as if suddenly shy when the confines of the kitchen were left behind for the star-lighted night, 'that you know what it is, don't you?'

For answer, Emmeline Black sobbed.

'Don't, mother, don't. You mustn't mind. Just think how near home I'll be! Isn't that something to be glad about?'