CHAPTER EIGHT.

MRS STONE.

Mrs Stone did not tell her story straight on as she sat waiting there on the mountain side, but with many a break and pause, and with now and then an exclamation of wonder or indignation at her own foolishness, or the foolishness of some one else. But she told it quietly--making no moan for herself, though the troubles of her life had been neither light nor few.

"Yes, I have had a share of trouble, but no more than my share; and, take it altogether, I have had considerable enjoyment, too. There was Eunice--I could never tell the comfort I took with her when she was a little child. I was only a child myself--little more than twelve or thirteen years old--when my sister Myra let me go to take care of Eunice for a spell, when she came home, a motherless baby, to live with her grandmother Peabody on the hill. Her grandmother was a busy woman in those days, with many duties at home and elsewhere; and Eunice was a healthy, happy little creature; and after awhile she was mostly left to me night and day for years; and I did my very best for her, and we were very happy together till your father married again and took her home.

"I ought by rights to have gone with her, as they all wanted to have me; but sister Myra was married by this time, and lived on father's old place, and she wanted me to come and make my home with her, as I had a good right to do, seeing the farm was as much mine as hers, by our father's will. So I tried it a spell. She had two babies by this time, and I was good with babies, and could have helped her, and been contented after awhile.

"But Ezra Stone, Myra's husband, wasn't--well, he was peculiar. He was close--he came from a stingy family, and I don't suppose he was more to blame for his stinginess than other folks are for being extravagant--he inherited it. Well, he thought I wasn't needed there: he thought his wife hadn't any too much to do with her babies, and her cows, and her housework--no more than other folks had, he said; and he said I might do better for myself some where else. And he kept at it in his worrying way, till he rather wore us out at last. And so, when Squire Peabody came over one day to say that his wife was sick and much in need of help, Myra said I had better go. I'd have a better time than I'd ever be likely to have in her house; and maybe after awhile I might be able to help her and the children more than I could now. So I went, and I stayed there till--well, till I was married."

There was a long pause here, and Mrs Stone spoke very softly when she went on again.

"I didn't see so much of Myra after that, as I ought to have done. I used to see her Sundays at meetings, and we met at some of the neighbours' houses sometimes; but I did not go often to her house. I knew she wasn't very happy. She was different from her husband. She had a big heart and a free hand, and hated his small ways. She was nervous too, and high strung; and when she had anything on her mind, it had to come out when occasion called for it. Yes, she could say hard things!

"But what she said touched her husband just as the water in the brook touches the stones in its bed. It never moved him; and she wore herself out at last. She had held out through a good deal for the sake of her boys; and when she gave up at last, the end was pretty near. I was with her the last few weeks. She hadn't strength to say much, but it was--'My boys, Ruby! Keep them in mind and help them all you can,'

whenever we were alone together.

"I think if she had asked me to come and take care of them, and make my home with them, I must have done it. But she didn't. Ezra's mother was living there then, and his sister Susan, and I wasn't needed. But I did pity those pretty slender boys, and the baby between them all. But I couldn't do anything about it, and I didn't see much of them for a good while.

"Well, next June I got a letter, which I knew was from Ezra before I opened it; and I said to myself, 'He wants me to sell out my share of the farm, or maybe sign off altogether for the benefit of Myra's boys.

I have been expecting it all along, and I shan't do it.'

"But I was mistaken. That hadn't come yet. It was a queer composition, that letter. It was to tell me that there was going to be a picnic at the Peak for two or three of the Sunday schools in the neighbourhood; and two of his boys were to be there, and wouldn't I go and see them?

There might be a good many easier ways to see them, I thought, than to go up the mountain to do it. However, some of the neighbours were going, so I said I would go."

There was another pause here.

"I was in some trouble about that time myself. I never said anything to anybody, and I don't suppose anybody suspected it. I had lost my sister lately, and that might well account for having less to say than usual.

But I had lost another friend--one that would have been more than a friend if he had lived. We were not to say engaged. We hadn't even kept company much; but when Jim Sedley died down there at Lowell it went hard with me, and for awhile the world seemed to have come to an end for me.

"But I went to the picnic with the rest, and I saw the boys and had a little talk with them, just long enough to find out that they missed their mother dreadfully, and that they were much in need of a mother's care; and my heart ached for the little fellows; and, when they were called away to join in some play with the rest, I slipped off into the woods, so as to get away from the talk, and to think it all over by myself. But thinking didn't help me much. There was one thing I could do. I could marry Ezra Stone, and so try to be a mother to them; and as the thought was in my mind I heard Ezra's voice close to me. I would have hid myself or run away if I could have done it, for I was afraid that I would do or say something that I would be sorry for all my life.

But I couldn't get away; and there was Ezra saying how glad he was to see me, and that he had come to the Peak on purpose, and a lot more of the same kind.

"I was thinking about it all as I sat down there this morning," said Mrs Stone after a little pause. "A hundred times in the days that followed I asked myself whether I could believe that the Lord was taking care of me that day, according to His promise. It was a great while before I could see it so. But I expect He was, though I never should have married Ezra Stone if I hadn't gone up the Peak that day. At least I don't believe I should.

"He didn't begin about that, but about business. His sister Susan was going to be married to Nathan Pease, whose farm joined father's old place; and he wanted to buy it, and would I be willing to sell my half of it? I never had calculated much on anything which was likely to come to me from the place; but Myra had always advised me to hold on to my share, and so I said I should have to think about it before I could say whether I would sell or not.

"There is no call to tell you all his talk. He didn't seem to care about the place since Myra had gone, he said; and there did not seem to be much chance for him and his boys at the East. What he wanted to do was to take what he had and go West with them. There was the best of land to be had there cheap, and no such hard work needed, and a better climate. He knew just the place he could have out there in Wisconsin, and with a little money he could do well for his boys and himself; and he ended by asking if I would go West with him and help him do for Myra's boys?

"He knew pretty well what my opinion of him was. I didn't need to say anything about that. My sister hadn't been much more than six months in her grave, and I didn't waste words upon him. But all the time it was borne in upon me that it had got to be, and that it would come to that at last.

"'It isn't so much a wife that I want as a mother for Myra's children,'

he said; 'and I hope, when you come to think of it, you'll see it your duty to come West with them. If you change your mind, you can let me know.'

"'It isn't very likely,' said I; but all the time I felt that I would be as likely to go as not. I told him I would talk over business matters with Squire Peabody, and that I would sign any papers the squire told me to sign, when the right time came; but I let him understand that I meant to have the full value of my share. It would, I thought, be as safe for Myra's boys in my hands as in his, though I didn't just say that to him.

"Well, he went away, and I sat there thinking it all over, just on the spot where I sat to-day when you and the other girls were looking through Dr Justin's spy-gla.s.s; and I told myself that I hadn't much of anything to look forward to, and that, after all, I might as well do one thing as another. Life didn't seem worth much to me, but I might make my life worth something to Myra's boys. There is always duty left when hope is gone, and if I owed duty to any one, surely it was to my sister's children--so I reasoned. I would wait and see.

"Well, the children came back, and had something more to eat, and sang some hymns, and then it was time to go. The boys kept close to me as we all went down to the place where the trains were waiting; and the poor little fellows cried, and did seem so forlorn when they went away, that I just couldn't get them out of my thoughts for a long time.

"I didn't think the sale of the farm would come off for awhile, but I was mistaken. Ezra came over to see the squire one day in October, and they talked it over, and matters were settled, and papers signed, and my share of the price of the land made over to me; and Ezra was to go away at the end of the month. The boys were to be left till spring, till he could make some kind of a home for them, and he said he depended more on me than on any one else to see that they were well done by till then: 'For they are more and nearer to you than to any one else except myself,' he said.

"'It is not likely that I can do much for them while they are in your mother's keeping,' I said.

"'Oh, mother thinks everything of you!' he said, with a foolish laugh; 'and you've got your share all right. Squire Peabody has seen to that.'

"That was the first winter that Mrs Peabody's health began to fail. It wasn't long before your father died, and the squire took her South for the winter, and the house was left to my care; and they said, if I liked, I might have one or two of Myra's children to keep me company.

So I went over and got Jim, the eldest, so as to give him a chance at our winter school, and the baby, as everybody called him, though he was nearly four years old.

"You've heard me tell about my Davie before. I needn't say much about him. The very first feeling of rest and comfort that had come to me, after months of lonesome pain, came the first time he fell asleep in my arms, with his little chapped hand upon my cheek: it was like the coming back of the time when I had baby Eunice to care for; but it was different; too, in some ways. Jim was as good and as bright a boy as need be, and we had a happy winter together.

"Well, in the spring the squire and his wife came home, and she seemed better. They hadn't been home long when a letter came from Ezra, saying he wanted the boys to be sent out to him. He couldn't, without considerable loss of time, go for them, but there were chances every day of people coming West, who would look after them all they needed. A chance of any one willing to trouble himself with the care of four boys, one of them little more than a baby, wasn't likely to come very soon, and the summer was over before we heard again; and all that time Jim and Davie had stayed on with me. Then there came another letter, saying that the boys were to be sent on alone. Nothing would be likely to happen to them, as they needn't change cars more than once before they reached Chicago, and he would meet them there.

"Then I wrote, saying the rest of them might go so, and I would keep Davie for some better chance; or, if his father said so, I would keep him altogether, and do for him till he was old enough to do for himself.

Well, quicker than ever an answer came before, a letter came, saying 'No!'--Davie must come with the rest. He saw his way clear to do well by all his boys. Farming was a better thing out West than in New England. He wanted all his boys.

"Afterwards I thought of two or three ways I might have taken to keep the child with me, but n.o.body encouraged me much to undertake it; and I saw no better way at the time than just to go with them myself a part of the way, especially as a gentleman, who had to do with western railroads, offered me a free ticket to Chicago and back. The squire and Mrs Peabody said all they could to put me off the notion.

"'Ruby,' said she, 'if you go, you'll marry Ezra Stone.'

"'That's his idea, anyway,' said the squire; 'and Ruby, don't you do it.'

"'I know Ezra Stone,' said I, thinking all the time that what they said might be true. And so it was.

"Ezra met us at Chicago; and as soon as I saw his face I felt sick at the thought of letting Myra's children go off with him alone. 'What kind of a woman will he put over them?' said I to myself.

"Well, you know all about it. I did marry him, right there in Chicago.

He didn't say much. Nothing he could have said would have had much influence with me one way or another. But I saw Myra's eyes looking at me every time that Jim or the baby smiled at me, and I couldn't let them all go away alone to I didn't know who or what. No, he didn't say much; and afterwards he rather twitted me with being ready the minute I was asked. I don't suppose I should have done any different if I had known just all that was before me. I wasn't a free agent in the matter.

"Yes--oh, yes!--I laid the matter before the Lord, or I thought I did.

I knew that I wasn't going to have any easy time, and that it wasn't my own pleasure I was seeking; and that made me feel as though I was just trying to do my duty, and that the Lord would see me through. Yes, I was self-willed about it. I was faithless, I suppose, and afraid just to leave the boys in G.o.d's hands. Oh, yes, He did see me through; and more than made up for the trouble I had to endure, and I wouldn't have anything different from all that He sent me! But I am making a long story, and there isn't really much to tell.

"The next three years was just a dead level. Nothing happened but just summer and winter, and seed-time and harvest. But such harvests! Full and rich beyond any experience we had ever had of harvests. High prices were given too, and much money must have come in. But with that part of it the boys and I had nothing to do. There was nothing but hard work, early and late, to show as far as we were concerned.

"I did my best for them. I kept them at their books, Sundays and rainy days, and winter evenings; and they were smart boys and learnt well.

They were good boys and pleasant-natured, taking after their mother, and I took comfort with them in many ways. They were good boys to work too.

There wasn't a lazy bone in one of them; and, while they did the work that was expected of them, everything went well between them and their father. He let them pretty much alone at other times. His heart was set on just one thing, and that was making money, and the more he got the more he wanted. He didn't spare himself, and he didn't spare any one else, if the chance to make a dollar came along.

"Jim was doing the work of a man before he was fifteen; and every year brought more to be done, for more land was taken up as fast as it could be paid for. Ezra did have wonderful success. After the narrow stony fields of the old place, it was a sight to see the scores of acres of wheat growing so full and strong. It was threshed right there on the ground, and sometimes it was sold there; and if he had only been content with moderate success, he might have been living now, and well-to-do.

"I blame myself when I think of those times--the times that came after the first three years. I think maybe, if I had done differently, things might have turned out differently for us all. In this third spring my Eunice was born--my only baby, and while she stayed with us she made the world a better place for us all. The boys did think everything of her, and her father too. But she died of croup. If we had had a doctor near us, or if I had known better how to deal with it, she might have lived, I thought, and that made it very hard to bear. Ezra felt so about it too, and we had a dark winter.

"But spring came, and the work had to be done. We couldn't get all the help we wanted; and from daylight till dark Jim and his brothers had to be in the fields. Even little Davie had his share to do; and, though they were not inclined to shirk their work, it was hard for them, and they did sometimes complain. I complained for them, but I might just as well have held my tongue, and I did after awhile. They grew fast. Jim was as tall as his father when he was sixteen, and if he had had any chance he would have been a strong man in a few years. But he was slim and stooping, and had little flesh on his bones, and I worried about him a good deal; and one day I asked his father how many acres of wheat he supposed it would take to pay for the life and health of a boy like Jim.

"'He's _my_ boy,' said he, 'and not yours, and it ain't worth while for you to make the calculation. I know all about it.'

"'He is my boy more than yours,' said I, 'if love means anything. I can't make you answer me, but some time pretty soon you'll have to answer his Maker and yours, and you'd best reckon up in time, for as sure as you go on as you are going now, you'll have to bury him; and that's my last word.'