"Who's goin' to play?"

"Brad Freeman an' Jont Marshall agreed to play fust an' second fiddle."

Heman paused a moment, and straightened himself with an air of conscious pride; then he added,--

"They've asked me to play the ba.s.s-viol."

The Widder had no special objections to this arrangement, but it did strike her as an innovation; and when she had no other reason for disapproval, she still believed in it on general principles. So altogether effective a weapon should never rust from infrequent use!

"Well!" she announced. "I never heard of such carryin's-on,--never!"

Heman was lighting a small kerosene lamp. The little circle of light seemed even brilliant in the dusky room; it affected him with a relief so sudden and manifest as to rouse also a temporary irritation at having endured the previous gloom even for a moment.

"'Ain't you got no oil in the house?" he exclaimed, testily. "I wish you'd light up, evenin's, an' not set here by one taller candle!"

He had ventured on this remonstrance before, the only one he permitted himself against his housekeeper's ways, and at the instant of making it, he realized its futility.

"The gre't lamp's all full," said the Widder, warming her ap.r.o.n and pressing it to her poulticed face. "You can light it, if you've got the heart to. That was poor Mary's lamp, an' hard as I've tried, I never could bring myself to put a match to that wick. How many evenin's I've seen her set by it, rockin' back'ards an' for'ards,--an' her needle goin' in an' out! She was a worker, if ever there was one, poor creatur'! At it all the time, jes' like a silk-worm."

Heman was perfectly familiar with this explanation; from long repet.i.tion, he had it quite by heart. Possibly that was why he did not wait for its conclusion, but tramped stolidly away to his bedroom, where he had begun to kick off his shoes by the time his sister-in-law reached a period.

The Widder had a fresh poultice waiting by the fire. She applied it to her cheek, did up her face in an old flannel petticoat, and then, having covered the fire, toiled up to bed. It was a wearisome journey, for she carried a heavy soapstone which showed a tendency to conflict with the candle, and she found it necessary to hold together most of her garments; these she had "loosened a mite by the fire," according to custom on cold nights, after Heman had left her the field.

Next day, Heman went away into the woods chopping, and carried his dinner of doughnuts and cheese, with a chunk of bean-porridge frozen into a ball, to be thawed out by his noontime fire. He returned much earlier than usual, and the Widder was at the window awaiting him. The swelling in her cheek had somewhat subsided; and the bandage, no longer distended by a poultice beneath, seemed, in comparison, a species of holiday device. She was very impatient. She watched Heman, as he went first to the barn; and even opened the back door a crack to listen for the rattling of chains, the signal of feeding or watering.

"What's he want to do that now for?" she muttered, closing the door again, as the cold struck her cheek. "He'll have to feed 'em ag'in, come night!"

But at last he came, and, according to his silent wont, crossed the kitchen to the sink, to wash his hands. He was an un.o.bservant man, and it did not occur to him that the Widder had on her Tyc.o.o.n rep, the gown she kept "for nice." Indeed, he was so unused to looking at her that he might well have forgotten her outward appearance. He was only sure of her size; he knew she cut off a good deal of light. One sign, however, he did recognize; she was very cheerful, with a hollow good-nature which had its meaning.

"I got your shavin'-water all ready," she began. "Don't you burn ye when ye turn it out."

It had once been said of the Widder Poll that if she could hold her tongue, the devil himself couldn't get ahead of her. But fortune had not gifted her with such endurance, and she always spoke too often and too soon.

"Brad Freeman's been up here," she continued, eying Heman, as she drew out the supper-table and put up the leaves. "I dunno's I ever knew anybody so took up as he is with that concert, an' goin' to the vestry to sing to-night, an' all. He said he'd call here an' ride 'long o'

you, an' I told him there'd be plenty o' room, for you'd take the pung."

If Heman felt any surprise at her knowledge of his purpose, he did not betray it. He poured out his shaving-water, and looked about him for an old newspaper.

"I ain't goin' in the pung," he answered, without glancing at her. "The shoe's most off'n one o' the runners now."

The Widder Poll set a pie on the table with an emphasis unconsciously embodying her sense that now, indeed, had come the time for remedies.

"I dunno what you can take," she remarked, with that same foreboding liveliness. "Three on a seat, an' your ba.s.s-viol, too!"

Heman was lathering his cheeks before the mirror, where a sinuous Venus and a too-corpulent Cupid disported themselves in a green landscape above the gla.s.s. "There ain't goin' to be three," he said, patiently.

"T'others are goin' by themselves."

The Widder took up her stand at a well-chosen angle, and looked at him in silence. He paid no attention to her, and it was she who, of necessity, broke into speech.

"_Well!_ I've got no more to say. Do you mean to tell me you'd go off playin' on fiddles an' ba.s.s-viols, an' leave me, your own wife's sister, settin' here the whole evenin' long, all swelled up with the toothache?"

Heman often felt that he had reached a state of mind where nothing could surprise him, but this point of view was really unexpected. He decided, however, with some scorn, that the present misunderstanding might arise from a confusion of terms in the feminine mind.

"This ain't the concert," he replied, much as if she had proposed going to the polls. "It's the rehearsal. That means where you play the tunes over. The concert ain't comin' off for a month."

And now the Widder Poll spoke with the air of one injured almost beyond reparation.

"I'd like to know what difference that makes! If a man's goin' where he can't take his womenfolks, I say he'd better stay to home! an' if there's things goin' on there't you don't want me to git hold of, I tell you, Heman Blaisdell, you'd better by half stop shavin' you now, an' take yourself off to bed at seven o'clock! Traipsin' round playin'

the fiddle at your age! Ain't I fond o' music?"

"No, you ain't!" burst forth Heman, roused to brief revolt where his beloved instrument was concerned. "You don't know Old Hunderd from Yankee Doodle!"

The Widder walked round the table and confronted him as he was turning away from the gla.s.s, shaving-mug in hand.

"You answer me one question! I know who's goin' to be there, an' set in the chorus an' sing alto. Brad Freeman told me, as innercent as a lamb.

Heman Blaisdell, you answer me? Be you goin' to bring anybody here to this house, an' set her in poor Mary's place? If you be, I ought to be the fust one to know it."

Heman looked at the shaving-mug for a moment, as if he contemplated dashing it to the floor. Then he tightened his grasp on it, like one putting the devil behind him.

"No, I ain't," he said, doggedly, adding under his breath, "not unless I'm drove to 't."

"I dunno who could ha' done more," said the Widder, so patently with the air of continuing for an indefinite period that Heman reached up for his hat. "Where you goin'? Mercy sakes alive! don't you mean to eat no supper, now I've got it all ready?"

But Heman pushed his way past her and escaped, muttering something about "feedin' the critters." Perhaps the "critters" under his care were fed oftener than those on farms where the ingle-nook was at least as cosey as the barn.

These slight skirmishes always left Heman with an uneasy sense that somehow he also must be to blame, though he never got beyond wondering what could have been done to avert the squall. When he went back into the kitchen, however,--the "critters" fed, and his own nerves soothed by pitchforking the haymow with the vigor of one who a.s.saults a citadel,--he was much relieved at finding the atmosphere as clear as usual; and as the early twilight drew on, he became almost happy at thought of; the vivid pleasure before him. Never, since his wife died, had he played his ba.s.s-viol in public; but he had long been in the habit of "slying off" upstairs to it, as to a tryst with lover or friend whom the world denied. The Widder Poll, though she heard it wailing and droning thence, never seriously objected to it; the practice was undoubtedly "shaller," but it kept him in the house.

They ate supper in silence; and then, while she washed the dishes, Heman changed his clothes, and went to the barn to harness. He stood for a moment, irresolute, when the horse was ready, and then backed him into the old blue pung. A queer little smile lurked at the corners of his mouth.

"I guess the shoe'll go once more," he muttered. "No, I ain't goin' to marry ag'in! I said I ain't, an' I ain't. But I guess I can give a neighbor a lift, if I want to!"

Brad Freeman was waiting near the tack door when Heman led the horse out of the barn. He was lank and lean, and his thick red hair strayed low over the forehead. His army overcoat was rent here and there beyond the salvation which lay in his wife's patient mending, and his old fur cap showed the skin in moth-eaten patches; yet Heman thought, with a wondering protest, how young he looked, how free from care.

"Hullo, Heman!" called Brad.

"How are ye?" responded Heman, with a cordiality Brad never failed to elicit from his brother man.

Heman left the horse standing, and opened the back door.

He stopped short. An awful vision confronted him,--the Widder Poll, clad not only in the Tyc.o.o.n rep, but her best palm-leaf shawl, her fitch tippet, and pumpkin hood; her face was still bandaged, and her head-gear had been enwound by a green _barege_ veil. She stepped forward with an alertness quite unusual in one so accustomed to remembering her weight of mortal flesh.

"Here!" she called, "you kind o' help me climb in. I ain't so spry as I was once. You better give me a real boost. But, land! I mustn't talk. I wouldn't git a mite of air into that tooth for a dollar bill."

Heman stepped into the house for his ba.s.s-viol, and brought it out with an extremity of tender care; he placed it, enveloped in its green baize covering, in the bottom of the pung. Some ludicrous a.s.sociation between the baize and the green _barege_ veil struck Brad so forcibly that he gave vent to a chuckle, sliding cleverly into a cough. He tried to meet Heman's eye, but Heman only motioned him to get in, and took his own place without a word. Brad wondered if he could be ill; his face had grown yellowish in its pallor, and he seemed to breathe heavily.

Midway in their drive to the vestry, they pa.s.sed a woman walking briskly along in the snowy track. She was carrying her singing-books under one arm, and holding her head high with that proud lift which had seemed, more than anything else, to keep alive her girlhood's charm.

"There's Roxy," said Brad. "Here, Heman, you let me jump out, an' you give her a lift." But Heman looked straight before him, and drove on.

By the time they entered Tiverton Street, the vestry was full of chattering groups. Heman was the last to arrive. He made a long job of covering the horse, inside the shed, resolved that nothing should tempt him to face the general mirth at the Widder's entrance. For he could not deceive himself as to the world's amused estimate of her guardianship and his submission. He had even withdrawn from the School Board, where he had once been proud to figure, because, entering the schoolroom one day at recess, he had seen, on a confiscated slate at the teacher's desk, a rough caricature representing "Heman and his Ma."