CHAPTER II

THE MYRTLE BUDS IN MISS LUCY'S GARDEN

"No spring or summer's beauty hath such grace, As I have seen in one autumnal face."

For more than a half-hour old Milton James had limped up and down the gravelled drive that led through the grove of poplars in front of the lead-colored, one-and-a-half storied house that was his home, alternately watching the fat old bay mare and three cows that pulled at the fodder scattered in the pasture field over the fence, and the muddy road that ran across the foot of the avenue and disappeared over the hill beyond.

"Lucy Ann beats ever'theng a stayin'," he muttered, irritably pulling at his spa.r.s.e white beard; "jest now in sight, and hit nigh twelve o'clock!"

The dark object at length resolved itself into an old-fashioned and much mud-bespattered buggy, drawn by the counterpart of the bay in the pasture, and driven by a woman in black.

"Lucy Ann, don't drive ag'in the gate-post!"

With a hand that slightly trembled, both from weakness and nervous irritability, the tall old man, leaning on his stick, his bald head shining in the December sun, held open the side gate of the yard, while his daughter, measuring the s.p.a.ce between the white-washed gate posts with an anxious eye, drove cautiously in.

To a person of fifty years, agility is ordinarily a stranger. Miss Lucy, carefully protecting her new black etamine dress skirt from the wheel, climbed slowly out of the buggy, and gathered up the numerous bundles from the floor of the vehicle. Then, while her father fumbled with the straps of the harness, she lingered for a moment, watching him.

"Pa," she ventured in the apologetic manner of one who expects a rebuff, "spose'n you let _me_ help take out old Maud. I'm afraid you'll hurt your bad knee."

"Naw, I won't," answered her father testily: "you'd better jest take them thar bundles in the house, and put on your ever' day clothes and holp Nancy about the dinner! Nancy's been a workin' hard all the time you've been a gaddin' about town."

When Miss Lucy came out of the front bedroom into the sitting-room behind it, an imaginary speck of dust on a pane of gla.s.s in the door of the tall cherry "press" filled with gay-colored dishes, caught her eye.

She rubbed the gla.s.s carefully with a corner of her ap.r.o.n, and catching up the little hearth-broom, stooped to brush up a microscopic cinder that had fallen from the grate on the green and red striped rag carpet.

Her sister greeted her with a look of reproach.

"Do you think, Lucy, I ain't done no cleanin' up while you was gone?"

she asked.

Both the Misses James were alike tall, but what was angularity in the uncompromisingly erect figure of Miss Nancy, who had never known a sick day, was slenderness and delicacy in her elder sister. Miss Nancy's rugged face found no redeeming beauty in her eyes, which were gray and cold as the foundation stones of the house, and carried in their depths a perpetual look of rebuke to the world in general, and to her sister in particular; but the irregularity of Miss Lucy's features seemed akin to beauty in the light of her dark-blue eyes, shining with loving kindness,--eyes that despite their owner's years, held a look of singularly childlike innocence, and a sort of timidity that appeals to the chivalry of men.

According to Mrs. Doggett, the James' nearest neighbor, for whom spinsterhood in one she did not admire required a just reproof, but in a friend necessitated an explanation and an apology, "Miss Nancy's never had any notice as I ever heerd tell of, but to the best o' my belief, Miss Lucy'd 'a' been married long ago, ef hit hadn't 'a' been fer skeer o' them old thengs,"--the "old thengs" in question being Miss Nancy and her father.

"How do you like Pa's overcoat, Nancy?" asked Miss Lucy, opening the great bundle she had laid on the middle star of the sitting-room bed, and holding up the garment. Miss Nancy looked at the neat gray beaver with cold disapproval.

"Why'n't you git black?" she demanded: "you wanted a black one, didn't you, Pa?"

The old man looked at the coat and then over his steel-rimmed spectacles at his elder daughter whose hand went up to her face in a nervous, defensive movement,--an acquired gesture that told of a life lived under the lash of rebuke.

"I taken this one, Pa, because I got it cheap; it was a young man's overcoat, left over from last spring. Jest see how fine quality it is, and Pa, I wisht you'd look at the linin'!"

Mr. James fingered the soft nap of the garment, and examined its handsome lining with reluctant eyes.

"Yes," he admitted grudgingly, "hit _is_ fine quality. A blind hog will stumble on an acorn sometimes!"

Miss Lucy helped him into the coat.

"Wall," he grumbled triumphantly, "I knowed thar'd be somethin' wrong.

Hit don't fit: I hain't a goin' to torment myse'f squez in sech tight armholes as them is! You'll jest have to take hit back! Go to town one day to git thengs,--go to town next day to swap 'em! I thenk next time you start out to town, you'd better let Nancy--a person with some jedgement, go with you to keep you from actin' like a chicken with hit's head off!"

"Ef you'd jest go along and try a coat on, Pa, like I want you to, you might git a better fit and be better suited too," remonstrated Miss Lucy mildly, although her lips trembled, as she carefully folded the coat, and laid it on a bottom shelf of the press, and smoothed the wrinkle on the bed where the bundle had lain. "And Pa," she added, "Brother and Sister Avery's a comin' out this evenin' to stay all night. I told 'em you'd be awful glad,--you got so lonesome a settin' 'round since you'd had the rheumatism so bad and the doctor told you not to work any."

"Why'n't you git some crackers, Lucy, ef you knowed comp'ny was comin'?"

asked Miss Nancy. "We won't have no time to bake no lightbread between now and the time they git here, and we ought to have somethin' to eat with the beef soup."

"I did," replied Miss Lucy following her sister to the big, low-ceiled kitchen whose woodwork, cupboard shelves, biscuit board, and puncheon floor were alike white and immaculate with much scrubbing. Miss Nancy emptied the sugar into its jar and poured out the crackers.

"Why'n't you git square crackers?" she grumbled, as the round soda biscuits rattled in the tin can.

"They didn't have none, Nancy, where I took the b.u.t.ter, no kind but the round ones," explained Miss Lucy: "I didn't have no time to go nowhere else then, it was so late, and I had to go around through Plumville to get the money the colored woman owed me on the last dress I made her. I wanted to order that safety razor for Pa for Christmas, with the money."

She lowered her voice, so the old man, partially deaf, could not hear.

"Then I wouldn't go back through town; I thought I ought to save the mare all the pullin' I could. The apples I took made a right heavy load goin'--"

"I don't thenk you tried to save her much," broke in her father tartly, laying a scant armful of stovewood by the little cracked stove whose high polish would have led even a stove-dealer to strike off ten years from its real age: "that thar mar's mighty nigh into the thumps. I lay you driv' her too fast!"

"Why, Pa, I walked her all the way back from town." Miss Lucy's voice was gently deprecative.

"Wall, hit's a good theng you did, because she's got a shoe off, and her foot's all turned up like a cheer rocker now."

"The stock seems to be enjoyin' their stalks. Who foddered for you today, Pa?" ventured Miss Lucy, thinking to divert his thoughts.

"Whar's your mem'ry, Lucy Ann?" fretted Mr. James. "Didn't I go down to Doggett's yistiddy and git Marshall to promise to come? He's the only one o' the Doggetts that I can ever git to do anytheng fer me. He's been about more'n the others, a workin' up thar in Ohawo, and he's learnt the value of a promise. Old Man Doggett'll promise you anytheng when he hain't got no notion he's goin' to have time to do hit,--he's so afeerd o' bein' disagreeable, then he'll tell you he hated hit awful, but he jest possible couldn't come!"

"It's a pity more people ain't afraid of bein' disagreeable," thought Miss Lucy with a sigh: "if they was, this'd be a pleasenter world."

To Miss Lucy, the minister and his bride were creatures far above ordinary clay. Months before his marriage, the young man, quite alone in the world, had made the gentle Miss Lucy the confidant of his hopes and fears, and the marriage of the handsome and magnetic young lover to the pretty sweetheart, whose wealth and social position had threatened to be unsurmountable barriers, was a romance dear to her heart. She went about her work of preparing for the expected guests in a glow of pleasure, but the charmed spell of her thoughts was presently broken by a call from Miss Nancy in the kitchen.

"Lucy Ann, I know you've done had time to change them spreads and shams, and 'tain't no use a puttin' _all_ the ever'day thengs away! Mother used to say, 'n.o.body can't put hand on nary ever'day towel when comp'ny's around. Lucy's hid 'em all,' and hit looks like you're bent on keepin'

up your reputation. Come on here and bake them pies, ef you're a goin'

to!"

Miss Lucy sighed, and went about the task of pie making with the ready skill of one whose fingers had fashioned pastries before they measured the length of the bowl of the spoon with which she mixed them.

"Pa, I had a new boy to help me milk this evenin'."

This bit of information imparted by Miss Lucy, when after the early supper, while Miss Nancy attended to the dishes, she and her father sat around the sitting-room grate with their guests, was met by an infectious trill of laughter from the minister's wife.

"O Glen," she gurgled, "you would have been a widower this evening if the milk-bucket had not saved me! I went on the wrong side of Miss Lucy's black cow and raised her ire. _She_ raised her _foot_, Miss Lucy said, but I think it must have been her _feet_!"

"I am afraid you won't do for a ch.o.r.e boy," laughed her husband, "if you begin by antagonizing the cows. Have you in view any more suitable boy, Miss Lucy?"

The question of a small boy to be paid for his services in food and in raiment, was a constant and unsettled one in the James family. Five youths had been its portion in one year, and the last one had left by the light of the moon two weeks before.

"No," Miss Lucy looked away from her father as she spoke: "Cousin Becky Willis told me where she thought I could get one, and I tried today, but the childern are all goin' to school--"