"I wish you'd let me know she wa'n't comin'," said she. "I cut the fruit cake an' opened a jar of peach, an' I've put clean sheets on the front chamber bed. It's made considerable work for nothin'." She eyed, as she spoke, the two children, who were happily eating the peach preserve. She and her brother were both quite well-to-do, but she had a parsimonious turn.

"I'd like to know what she'll have for supper," she remarked further.

"I didn't ask her," said the lawyer, dryly, taking a sip of his sauce. He was rather glad of the peach himself.

"I shouldn't think she'd sleep a wink, all alone in that great old house. I know I shouldn't," observed the children's mother. She was a fair, fleshy, quite pretty young woman.

"That woman would sleep on a tomb-stone if she set out to," said the lawyer. His speech, when alone with his own household, was more forcible and not so well regulated. Indeed, he did not come of a polished family; he was the only educated one among them. His sister, Mrs. Low, regarded him with all the deference and respect which her own decided and self-sufficient character could admit of, and often sounded his praises in her unrestrained New England dialect.

"She seemed like a real set kind of a woman, then?" said she now.

"Set is no name for it," replied her brother.

"Well, if that's so, I guess old Mr. Maxwell wa'n't so far wrong when he didn't have her down here before," she remarked, with a judicial air. Her spectacles glittered, and her harsh, florid face bent severely over the sugar-bowl and the cups and saucers.

The lamp-light was mellow in the neat, homely dining-room, and there was a soft aroma of boiling tea all about. The pink and white children ate their peach sauce in happy silence, with their pretty eyes upon the prospective cake.

"I suppose there must be some bed made up in all that big house,"

remarked their mother; "but it must be awful lonesome."

Of the awful lonesomeness of it truly, this smiling, comfortable young soul had no conception. At that moment, while they were drinking their tea and talking her over, Jane Field sat bolt-upright in one of the old flag-bottomed chairs in the Maxwell sitting-room.

She had dropped into it when the lawyer closed the door after him, and she never stirred afterward. She sat there all night.

The oil was low in the lamp which the lawyer had lighted, and left standing on the table between the windows. She could see distinctly for a while the stately pieces of old furniture standing in their places against the walls. Just opposite where she sat was one of l.u.s.treless old mahogany, extending the width of the wall between two doors, rearing itself upon slender legs, set with mult.i.tudinous drawers, and surmounted by a clock. A piece of furniture for which she knew no name, an evidence of long-established wealth and old-fashioned luxury, of which she and her plain folk, with their secretaries and desks and bureaus, had known nothing. The clock had stopped at three o'clock. Mrs. Field thought to herself that it might have been the hour on which old Mr. Maxwell died, reflecting that souls were more apt to pa.s.s away in the wane of the night. She would have like to wind the clock, and set the hands moving past that ghostly hour, but she did not dare to stir. She gazed at the large, dull figures sprawling over the old carpet, at the glimmering satiny scrolls on the wall-paper. On the mantel-shelf stood a branching gilt candlestick, filled with colored candles, and strung around with prisms, which glittered feebly in the low lamp-light. There was a bulging, sheet-iron wood stove--the Maxwells had always eschewed coal; beside it lay a little pile of sticks, brought in after the chill of death had come over the house. There were a few old engravings--a head of Washington, the Landing of the Pilgrims, the Webster death-bed scene, and one full-length portrait of the old statesman, standing majestically, scroll in hand, in a black frame.

As the oil burned low, the indistinct figures upon the carpet and wall-paper grew more indistinct, the brilliant colors of the prisms turned white, and the fine black and white lights in the death-bed picture ran together.

Finally the lamp went out. Mrs. Field had spied matches over on the shelf, but she did not dare to rise to cross the room to get them and find another lamp. She did not dare to stir.

After her light went out, there was still a pale glimmer upon the opposite wall, and the white face of the silent clock showed out above the c.u.mbersome shadow of the great mahogany piece. The glimmer came from a neighbor's lamp shining through a gap in the trees. Soon that also went out, and the old woman sat there in total darkness.

She folded her hands primly, and held up her bonneted head in the darkness, like some decorous and formal caller who might expect at any moment to hear the soft, heavy step of the host upon the creaking stair and his voice in the room. She sat there so all night.

Gradually this steady-headed, unimaginative old woman became possessed by a legion of morbid fancies, which played like wild fire over the terrible main fact of the case--the fact that underlay everything--that she had sinned, that she had gone over from good to evil, and given up her soul for a handful of gold. Many a time in the night, voices which her straining fancy threw out, after the manner of ventriloquism, from her own brain, seemed actually to vibrate through the house, footsteps pattered, and garments rustled. Often the phantom noises would swell to a very pandemonium surging upon her ears; but she sat there rigid and resolute in the midst of it, her pale old face sharpening out into the darkness. She sat there, and never stirred until morning broke.

When it was fairly light, she got up, took off her bonnet and shawl, and found her way into the kitchen. She washed her face and hands at the sink, and went deliberately to work getting herself some breakfast. She had a little of her yesterday's lunch left; she kindled a fire, and made a cup of tea. She found some in a caddy in the pantry. She set out her meal on the table and drew a chair before it. She had wound up the kitchen clock, and she listened to its tick while she ate. She took time, and finished her slight repast to the last crumb. Then she washed the dishes, and swept and tidied the kitchen.

When that was done it was still too early for her to go to the lawyer's office. She sat down at an open kitchen window and folded her hands. Outside was a broad, green yard, inclosed on two sides by the Maxwell house and barn. A drive-way led to the barn, and on the farther side a row of apple-trees stood. There was a fresh wind blowing, and the apple blossoms were floating about. The drive was quite white with them in places, and they were half impaled upon the sharp green blades of gra.s.s.

Over through the trees Mrs. Field could see the white top of a market wagon in a neighboring yard, and the pink dress of a woman who stood beside it trading. She watched them with a dull wonder. What had she now to do with market wagons and daily meals and housewifely matters?

That fair-haired woman in the pink dress seemed to her like a woman of another planet.

This narrow-lived old country woman could not consciously moralize.

She was no philosopher, but she felt, without putting it into thoughts, as if she had descended far below the surface of all things, and found out that good and evil were the root and the life of them, and the outside leaves and froth and flowers were fathoms away, and no longer to be considered.

At ten o'clock she put on her bonnet and shawl, and set out for the lawyer's office. She locked the front door, put the key under a blind, and proceeded down the front walk into the street.

The spring was earlier here than in Green River. She started at a dancing net-work of leaf shadows on the sidewalk. They were the first she had seen that season. There was a dewy arch of trees overhead, and they were quite fully leaved out. Mr. Tuxbury was in his office when she got there. He rose promptly and greeted her, and pushed forward the leather easy-chair with his old courtly flourish.

"I suppose that old stick of a woman will be in pretty soon," he had remarked to his sister at breakfast-time.

"Well, you'll keep on the right side of her, if you know which side your bread is b.u.t.tered," she retorted. "You don't want her goin' to Sam Totten's."

Totten was the other lawyer of Elliot.

"I think I am quite aware of all the exigencies of the case," Daniel Tuxbury had replied, lapsing into stateliness, as he always did when his sister waxed too forcible in her advice.

But when Mrs. Field entered his office, every trace of his last night's impatience had vanished. He inquired genially if she had pa.s.sed a comfortable night, and on being a.s.sured that she had, pressed her to drink a cup of coffee which he had requested his sister to keep warm. This declined, with her countrified courtesy, so shy that it seemed grim, he proceeded, with no chill upon his graciousness, to business.

Through the next two hours Mrs. Field sat at the lawyer's desk, and listened to a minute and wearisome description of her new possessions. She listened with very little understanding. She did not feel any interest in it. She never opened her mouth except now and then for a stiff a.s.sent to a question from the lawyer.

A little after twelve o'clock he leaned back in his chair with a conclusive sigh, and fixed his eyes reflectively upon the ceiling.

"Well, Mrs. Maxwell," said he, "I think that you understand pretty well now the extent and the limitations of your property."

"Yes, sir," said she.

"It is all straight enough. Maxwell was a good business man; he kept his affairs in excellent order. Yes, he was a very good business man."

Suddenly the lawyer straightened himself, and fixed his eyes with genial interest upon his visitor; business over, he had a mind for a little personal interview to show his good-will. "Let me see, Mrs.

Maxwell, you had a sister, did you not?" said he.

"Yes, sir."

"Is she living?"

"No, sir." Mrs. Field said it with a gasping readiness to speak one truth.

"Let me see, what was her name?" asked the lawyer. "No; wait a moment; I'll tell you. I've heard it." He held up a hand as if warding off an answer from her, his face became furrowed with reflective wrinkles. "Field!" cried he, suddenly, with a jerk, and beamed at her. "I thought I could remember it," said he. "Yes, your sister's name was Field. When did she die, Mrs. Maxwell?"

"Two years ago."

There was a strange little smothered exclamation from some one near the office door. Mrs. Field turned suddenly, and saw her daughter Lois standing there.

Chapter IV

There Lois stood. Her small worn shoes hesitated on the threshold.

She was gotten up in her poor little best--her dress of cheap brown wool stuff, with its skimpy velvet panel, her hat trimmed with a fold of silk and a little feather. She had curled her hair over her forehead, and tied on a bit of a lace veil. Distinct among all this forlorn and innocent furbishing was her face, with its pitiful, youthful prettiness, turning toward her mother and the lawyer with a very clutch of vision.

Mrs. Field got up. "Oh, it's you, Lois," she said, calmly. "You thought you'd come too, didn't you?"

Lois gasped out something.

Her mother turned to the lawyer. "I'll make you acquainted with Miss Lois Field," said she. "Lois, I'll make you acquainted with Mr.

Tuxbury."