Ann's voice quavered a little, but she set her mouth harder.

The large man nudged his wife and whispered something. He drew the back of his rough hand across his eyes. The three little blue-clad girls stood toeing in, dangling their cotton-gloved hands.

"I thought you might have sent word by the butcher," said the little woman. Her manner was softer, but she wanted to cover her defeat well.

"I couldn't think of butchers and all the wherewithals," said Ann, with stern dignity. "I didn't think Abel's relations would lay it up against me if I didn't."

The large man's face worked; tears rolled down his great cheeks. He pulled out a red handkerchief and wiped his eyes.

"You'd ought to had a white handkerchief, father," whispered the little woman; then she turned to Ann. "I'm sure I don't want to lay up anything," said she.

"I don't think you have any call to," responded Ann. "I haven't anything more to say. If you feel like staying to supper I shall be glad to have you, but I don't feel as if I had strength to urge anybody."

The large man sobbed audibly in his red handkerchief. His wife cast an impatient glance at him. "Well, if that is the way it was, of course we shall all be happy to stay and have a cup of tea," said she. "We've got a long ride before us, and I don't feel quite as well as common this spring. Of course I didn't understand how it happened, and I felt kind of hurt; it was only natural. I see how it was, now.

'Lisha, hadn't you better slip out and see how the horse is standing?" The little woman thrust her own white handkerchief into her husband's hand as he started. "You put that red one under the wagon seat," she whispered loud in his ear. Then she and the little girls in blue returned to their chairs. The rest of the company had been listening with furtive attention. Jerome had been trembling with indignation at his mother's side. He looked at the large man, and wondered impatiently why he did not shake that small woman, since he was able. There was as yet no leniency on the score of s.e.x in the boy. He would have well liked to fly at that little wrathful body who was attacking his mother, and also blaming him for not riding those ten miles to notify her of the funeral. He scowled hard at her and the three little girls after they had returned to their seats. One of the girls, a pretty child with red curls, caught his frown, and stared at him with scared but fascinated blue eyes.

Supper was announced shortly. Belinda Lamb, instigated by Paulina Maria, stood in the door and said, with melancholy formality, "Will you come out now and have a little refreshment before you go home?"

Ann did not stir. The others went out lingeringly, holding back for politeness' sake; she sat still with her black veil over her face and her black gloved hands crossed in her lap. Paulina Maria came to her and tried to induce her to remove her bonnet and have some tea with the rest, but she shook her head. "I want to just sit here and keep still till they're gone," said she.

She sat there. Some of the others came and added their persuasions to Paulina Maria's, but she was firm. Jerome remained beside his mother; Elmira had been bidden to go into the other room and help wait upon the company.

"There's room for Jerome at the table, if you ain't coming," said Paulina Maria to Ann; but Jerome answered for himself.

"I'll wait till that crowd are gone," said he, with a fierce gesture.

"You wouldn't speak that way if you were my boy," said Paulina Maria.

Jerome muttered under his breath that he wasn't her boy. Paulina Maria cast a stern glance at him as she went out.

"Don't you be saucy, Jerome Edwards," Ann said, in a sharp whisper through her black veil. "She's done a good deal for us."

"I'd like to kill the whole lot!" said the boy, clinching his little fist.

"Hold your tongue! You're a wicked, ungrateful boy!" said his mother; but all the time she had a curious sympathy with him. Poor Ann was seized with a strange unreasoning rancor against all that decorously feeding company in the other room. There are despairing moments, when the happy seem natural enemies of the miserable, and Ann was pa.s.sing through them. As she sat there in her gloomy isolation of widowhood, her black veil and her dark thoughts coloring her whole outlook on life, she felt a sudden fury of blindness against all who could see.

Had she been younger, she would have given vent to her emotion like Jerome. Her son seemed the very expression of her own soul, although she rebuked him.

The people were a long time at supper. The funeral cake was sweet to their tongues, and the tea mildly exhilarating. When they came at last to bid farewell to Ann there was in their faces a pleasant unctuousness which they could not wholly veil with sympathetic sorrow. The childish old lady was openly hilarious. "That was the best cup o' tea I ever drinked," she whispered loud in Ann's ear.

Jerome gave a scowl of utter contempt at her. When they were all gone, and the last covered wagon had rolled out of the yard, Ann allowed Paulina Maria to divest her of her bonnet and gloves and bring her a cup of tea. Jerome and Elmira ate their supper at one end of the disordered table; then they both worked hard, under the orders of Paulina Maria, to set the house in order. It was quite late that night before Jerome was at liberty to creep off to his own bed up in the slanting back chamber. Paulina Maria and Belinda Lamb had gone home, and the bereaved family were all alone in the house. Jerome's boyish heart ached hard, but he was worn out physically, and he soon fell asleep.

About midnight he awoke with a startling sound in his ears. He sat up in bed and listened, straining ears and eyes in the darkness. Out of the night gloom and stillness below came his mother's voice, raised loud and hoa.r.s.e in half-accusatory prayer, not caring who heard, save the Lord.

"What hast thou done, O Lord?" demanded this daring and pitiful voice. "Why hast thou taken away from me the husband of my youth?

What have I done to deserve it? Haven't I borne patiently the yoke Thou laidst upon me before? Why didst Thou try so hard one already broken on the wheel of Thy wrath? Why didst Thou drive a good man to destruction? O Lord, give me back my husband, if Thou art the Lord!

If Thou art indeed the Almighty, prove it unto me by working this miracle which I ask of Thee! Give me back Abel! give him back!"

Ann's voice arose with a shriek; then there was silence for a little s.p.a.ce. Presently she spoke again, but no longer in prayer--only in bitter, helpless lament. She used no longer the formal style of address to a Divine Sovereign; she dropped into her own common vernacular of pain.

"It ain't any use! it ain't any use!" she wailed out. "If there is a G.o.d He won't hear me, He won't help me, He won't bring him back. He only does His own will forever. Oh, Abel, Abel, Abel! Oh, my husband!

Where are you? where are you? Where is the head that I've held on my breast? Where are the lips I have kissed? I couldn't even see him laid safe in his grave--not even that comfort! Oh, Abel, Abel, my husband, my husband! my own flesh and my own soul, torn away from me, and I left to draw the breath of life! Abel, Abel, come back, come back, come back!"

Ann Edwards's voice broke into inarticulate sobs and moans; then she did not speak audibly again. Jerome lay back in his bed, cold and trembling. Elmira, in the next chamber, was sound asleep, but he slept no more that night. A revelation of the love and sorrow of this world had come to him through his mother's voice. He was shamed and awed and overwhelmed by this glimpse of the nakedness of nature and that mighty current which swept him on with all mankind. The taste of knowledge was all at once upon the boy's soul.

Chapter V

The next morning Jerome arose at dawn, and crept down-stairs noiselessly on his bare feet, that he might not awake his mother.

However, still as he was, he had hardly crossed the threshold of the kitchen before his mother called to him from her bedroom, the door of which stood open.

"Who's that?" called Ann Edwards, in a strained voice; and Jerome knew that she had a wild hope that it was his father's step she heard instead of his. The boy caught his breath, hesitating a second, and his mother called again: "Who's that? Who's that out in the kitchen?"

"It's only me," answered Jerome, with that most pitiful of apologies in his tone--the apology for presence and very existence in the stead of one more beloved.

His mother drew a great shuddering sigh. "Come in here," she called out, harshly, and Jerome went into the bedroom and stood beside her bed. The curtain was not drawn over the one window, and the little homely interior was full of the pale dusk of dawn. This had been Ann Edwards's bridal chamber, and her children had been born there. The face of that little poor room was as familiar to Jerome as the face of his mother. From his earliest memory the high bureau had stood against the west wall, near the window, and a little round table, with a white towel and a rosewood box on it, in the corner at the head of the great high-posted bedstead, which filled the rest of the room, with scant pa.s.sageway at the foot and one side. Ann's little body scarcely raised the patchwork quilt on the bed; her face, sunken in the feather pillows, looked small and weazened as a sick child's in the dim light. She reached out one little bony hand, clutched Jerome's poor jacket, and pulled him close. "What's goin' to be done?" she demanded, querulously. "What's goin' to be done? Do you know what's goin' to be done, Jerome Edwards?"

The boy stared at her, and her sharply questioning eyes struck him dumb.

Ann Edwards had always been the dominant spirit in her own household.

The fact that she was so, largely on masculine sufferance, had never been fully recognized by herself or others. Now, for the first time, the stratum of feminine dependence and helplessness, which had underlain all her energetic a.s.sertion, was made manifest, and poor little Jerome was spurred out of his boyhood into manhood to meet this new demand.

"What's goin' to be done?" his mother cried again. "Why don't you speak, Jerome Edwards?"

Then Jerome drew himself up, and a new look came into his face. "I've been thinkin' of it over," he said, soberly, "an'--I've got a plan."

"What's goin' to be done?" Ann raised herself in bed by her clutch at her son's arm. Then she let go, and rocked herself to and fro, hugging herself with her little lean arms, and wailing weakly.

"What's goin' to be done? Oh, oh! what's goin' to be done? Abel's dead, he's dead, and Doctor Prescott, he holds the mortgage. We 'ain't got any money, or any home. What's goin' to be done? What's goin' to be done? Oh, oh, oh, oh!"

Jerome grasped his mother by the shoulder and tried to force her back upon her pillows. "Come, mother, lay down," said he.

"I won't! I won't! I never will. What's goin' to be done? What's goin' to be done?"

"Mother, you lay right down and stop your cryin'," said Jerome; and his mother started, and hushed, and stared at him, for his voice sounded like his father's. The boy's wiry little hands upon her shoulders, and his voice like his father's, constrained her strongly, and she sank back; and her face appeared again, like a thin wedge of piteous intelligence, in the great feather pillow.

"Now you lay still, mother," said Jerome, and to his mother's excited eyes he looked taller and taller, as if in very truth this sudden leap of his boyish spirit into the stature of a man had forced his body with it. He straightened the quilt over his mother's meagre shoulders. "I'm goin' to start the fire," said he, "and put on the hasty-pudding, and when it's all ready I'll call Elmira, and we'll help you up."

"What's goin' to be done?" his mother quavered again; but this time feebly, as if her fierce struggles were almost hushed by contact with authority.

"I've got a plan," said Jerome. "You just lay still, mother, and I'll see what's best."

Ann Edwards's eyes rolled after the boy as he went out of the room, but she lay still, obediently, and said not another word. An unreasoning confidence in this child seized upon her. She leaned strongly upon what, until now, she had held the veriest reed--to her own stupefaction and with doubtful content, but no resistance. Jerome seemed suddenly no longer her son; the memory of the time when she had cradled and swaddled him failed her. The spirit of his father awakened in him filled her at once with strangeness and awed recognition.

She heard the boy pattering about in the kitchen, and, in spite of herself, the conviction that his father was out there, doing the morning task which had been his for so many years, was strong upon her.

When at length Jerome and Elmira came and told her breakfast was ready, and a.s.sisted her to rise and dress, she was as unquestioningly docile as if the relationship between them were reversed. When she was seated in her chair she even forbore, as was her wont, to start immediately with sharp sidewise jerks of her rocker, but waited until her children pushed and drew her out into the next room, up to the breakfast-table. There were, moreover, no sharp commands and chidings as to the household tasks that morning. Jerome and Elmira did as they would, and their mother sat quietly and ate her breakfast.

Elmira kept staring at her mother, and then glancing uneasily at Jerome. Her pretty face was quite pale that morning, and her eyes looked big. She moved hesitatingly, or with sharp little runs of decision. She went often to the window and stared down the road--still looking for her father; for hope dies hard in youth, and she had words of triumph at the sight of him all ready upon her tongue. Her mother's strange demeanor frightened her, and made her almost angry. She was too young to grasp any but the more familiar phases of grief, and revelations of character were to her revolutions.