"O Jerry!" She had not meant to tell him, but it seemed she must. "I wasn't goin' with him alone. Lottie was goin', too. I told him I wouldn't any other way."

A GRIEF DEFERRED

When Clelia May set forth, as she did three and four times in the week, to hurry through the half-mile of pine woods between her house and Sabrina Thorne's, the family usually asked her, with the tolerant smile accorded to old jokes, whether she was going to see her intimate friend.

Clelia always answered from a good-natured acceptance of the pleasantry, and went on, not in the least puzzled by the certainty that although she was but twenty-three and Sabrina was sixty, they were in all ways companionable. It had begun when Clelia, a child of ten, had had a temper-fit at home, and started out to join the Shakers. She had met a turkey-gobbler at Sabrina's gate, and, ashamed to cry but too obstinate to run, had stood in blank horror until Sabrina came out and routed the foe. Then Sabrina had taken her in to eat honey and spend an enchanted afternoon. After that Sabrina's house was the delectable land, and Clelia fled to it when she was happy or when the world was against her.

To-day she walked swiftly through the warm incense of the pines. It was hot weather, and insects vexed the ear with an unwearied trill. But the heat of despair was greater in the girl than any such a.s.sault. Her cheeks had each a deep red spot. Her eyes were dark with feeling, and on the long black lashes hung fringing drops. She walked lightly, with springing strides. Beyond the pine woods, in the patch of sunny road bordered by dust-covered hardhack and elder, she paused for a moment, to dash the tears from her eyes. There in the open day she felt as if some prying glance might read her grief. The woods were kinder to it.

Sabrina's house was at the first turning, a gray, weather-beaten dwelling of mellow tones, set within a generous sweep of green. It had a garden in front. Sabrina herself was in the garden now, weeding the balm-bed. Sometimes Clelia thought the garden was almost too sweet after Sabrina had been there stirring up the scents. At least a third of it was given to herbs, and even the touch of a skirt in pa.s.sing would brush out fragrance from it. There were things there that strangely seemed to have no smell at all; but grown in such rank ma.s.ses, they contributed mysteriously to the alembic of the year.

Sabrina, risen to her feet now, had a look of youth touched by something that was not so much age as difference. She was slender, and still with a girl's symmetry, the light-footed way of moving, the little sinuous graces of a body unspoiled and delighting in its own uses. Her face had a rounded plumpness, and her cheeks were pink. People said now, as they had in her youth, that Sabrina Thorne had the skin of a baby. One old woman, chiefly engaged in marking down human commodities, always added that it was because of that heart trouble Sabrina had; but n.o.body listened. Sabrina seemed to have made no concession to time, save that her waving hair was white. In its beauty and abundance, it was a marvel.

It sprang thickly up on each side of her parting, and the soft ma.s.s of it was wound round and round on the top of her head. She was a beautiful being, neither old nor young.

She stood there smiling at Clelia's approach.

"How do?" she said softly; but when the girl was near enough to betray the trouble of her face, she added, "Whatever is the matter?"

"Come into the house, Sabrina," said Clelia, in a m.u.f.fled voice. "I can't tell it out here."

Sabrina dropped her trowel on a heap of weeds, and cast her gardening gloves on the top. She led the way to the house, and when they were in the coolness of the big sitting-room with its air of inherited repose, she turned about and spoke again in her round, low voice. "Well?" There was anxiety in the tone.

Clelia, facing her, began to speak with a hard composure.

"Richmond--Richmond Blake--" and her voice broke. She threw herself forward upon Sabrina's shoulder and clasped her with shaking hands. "He has given me up, Sabrina," she moaned, between her sobs. "It is over. He has given me up."

Sabrina led her to the great chair by the window, and forced her into it. Then she knelt beside her and drew the girl's head again to her shoulder. She patted her cheek with little regular beats that had a rhythmic soothing.

"There, there, dear," she kept saying. "There, there!"

Presently Clelia choked down her sobs, and raised her face, tempestuous in its marks of grief.

"I'd just as soon tell you," she said, with a broken hardness, a composure struggled for and then lost. "I'd just as soon anybody would know it. I don't feel as if I'd any use for myself, now he don't prize me. Well, Sabrina, he don't want me any more."

"You sure, dear?" asked Sabrina. "You better be sure."

"We got talking about the land," said Clelia, in a high voice.

"The ten-acre lot?"

"Yes. I said to him: 'There's that man from New York. He's offered you two hundred dollars for it. Why don't you take it?'"

"What's the man from New York want it for?" asked Sabrina, with what seemed a trifling irrelevance.

Clelia answered impatiently.

"I don't know. To build a summer cottage, I suppose. That's what Richmond asked me, and I said I didn't know. Then he said he wasn't going to sell till he knew what he was selling for."

"Well, I call that kinder long-headed, myself," said Sabrina.

"So you might; but the New York man went away that afternoon. 'Well,'

says he, before he went, 'that's my offer. Take it or leave it.'"

"But that's nothing to be mad about."

"We didn't stop there. I reminded Rich how far that money would go towards building, and his jaw got set, and he said he couldn't help it.

Then I told him I'd be switched if ever I lived with his folks--"

"Oh, dear, dear!" lamented Sabrina. "You didn't say that, did you? Now you mustn't, dear. You mustn't say things folks can't forget."

A gush of tears flooded the girl's cheeks.

"Oh, I didn't mean to!" she cried, in the bitterness of remembering a battle lost. "He knew I didn't mean to. But I got sort of crazy, Sabrina. I did. And I told him at last--" Her eyelids dropped under their weight of tears.

"What did you tell him?"

"I told him he could choose between his folks and me."

"What did he say?"

"He said, 'I'll choose now. It's over.' He got up and walked out of the room. He turned at the door. 'It's over, Clelia,' says he. 'Don't you ever call me back, for I sha'n't come.' And he won't. He ain't that kind."

"Oh, me! oh, me!" moaned Sabrina. She, too, knew he was not that kind.

They sat in silence for a moment, the girl looking straight before her in a dull acquiescence, and Sabrina's pink face settled into aging lines. Suddenly the girl spoke sharply.

"But I can't bear it, Sabrina, I can't bear it. It will kill me--if I don't kill myself."

Sabrina rose slowly, and took a chair at the other window.

"Yes," said she, "you can bear it. Other folks have gone through it before you, an' other folks will again. It's a kind of a sickness there's goin' to be as long as the earth turns round. You've got to bear it."

Her voice struck sharply, and Clelia, called momentarily out of herself, glanced at her with a sudden interest. For the first time since their intimacy, Sabrina looked her age.

Little fine lines seemed to have started out upon her cheeks and forehead. Her eyes had the look of grief. But Clelia's thoughts went back at once to her own trouble. She spoke gravely now, like an older woman.

"It's not because we've quarreled, Sabrina. I'd say I was sorry this minute. But he wouldn't take me back. It shows he don't care. If he'd cared about me, he'd have thought 'twas a little thing; but he's chosen between us, and he won't go back."

"Well," said Sabrina conclusively, "however it turns out, it's here an'

you've got to face it. Clelia, I've a good mind to tell you somethin' I ain't ever told anybody."

"Yes," said Clelia indifferently, her mind upon herself. "Yes, tell me."

Sabrina folded her hands upon her lap and set her gaze straight forward, and yet with a removed look, as if she had withdrawn into the past.

"I don't know as you ever knew, Clelia," she said, and Clelia at once thought that it was as if she were reading from a book, "but when I was about your age, I come near bein' married."