"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."

XIV. 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 moon-shine 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 goodbye 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 has n'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 happy on Mrs. Stephen Waterman of Pleasant River, or miserable Miss Rose Wiley of the Brier Neighborhood?

XV. 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 farmhouse.

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 Neighborhood, and then, lapsing into silence, flowed steadily under them till it found a vent for its spirits in the dashing and splashing of the falls.

Haying was over; logging was to begin that day; then harvesting; then wood-cutting; then eternal successions of ploughing, 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 shiver. 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, he 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, the table with shining white cloth, the kettle humming and steaming, something bubbling in a pan on the stove, the 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, with 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 have n't done what you would have hated most. I have n't been engaged to Claude Merrill; he has n'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 have n'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 deserves, and who determines, for very thankfulness' sake, never to be naughty again.

"You don't know what you've done for me, Stephen," she whispered, with her face hidden on his shoulder. "I was just a common little p.r.i.c.kly rosebush when you came along like a good gardener and 'grafted in'

something better; the something better was your love, Stephen dear, and it's made everything different. The silly Rose you were engaged to long ago has disappeared somewhere; I hope you won't be able to find her under the new leaves."

"She was all I wanted," said Stephen.

"You thought she was," the girl answered, "because you did n't see the p.r.i.c.kles, but you'd have felt them some time. The old Rose was a selfish thing, not good enough for you; the new Rose is going to be your wife, and Rufus's sister, and your mother's daughter, all in one."

Then such a breakfast was spread as Stephen, in his sorry years of bachelor existence, had forgotten could exist; but before he broke his fast he ran out to the wagon and served the astonished Alcestis with his wedding refreshments then and there, bidding him drive back to the River Farm and bring him a package that lay in the drawer of his shaving-stand,--a package placed there when hot youth and love and longing had inspired him to hurry on the marriage day.

"There's an envelope, Alcestis," he cried, "a long envelope, way, way back in the corner, and a small box on top of it. Bring them both and my wallet too, and if you find them all and get them to me safely you shall be bridesmaid and groomsman and best man and usher and maid of honor at a wedding, in less than an hour! Off with you! Drive straight and use the whip on Dolly!"

When he re-entered the kitchen, flushed with joy and excitement, Rose put the various good things on the table and he almost tremblingly took his seat, fearing that contact with the solid wood might wake him from this entrancing vision.

"I'd like to put you in your chair like a queen and wait on you," he said with a soft boyish stammer; "but I am too dazed with happiness to be of any use."

"It's my turn to wait upon you, and I--Oh! how I love to have you dazed," Rose answered. "I'll be at the table presently myself; but we have been housekeeping only three minutes, and we have nothing but the tin coffee-pot this morning, so I'll pour the coffee from the stove."

She filled a cup with housewifely care and brought it to Stephen's side.

As she set it down and was turning, she caught his look,--a look so full of longing that no loving woman, however busy, could have resisted it; then she stooped and kissed him fondly, fervently.

Stephen put his arm about her, and, drawing her down to his knee, rested his head against her soft shoulder with a sigh of comfort, like that of a tired child. He had waited for it ten years, and at last the dream room had come true.