CHAPTER XVII
NIGHT
The brown horse had a dull day of it. No cheery remarks, no snatches of song, no cracking of the whip about his responsive ears. He whinnied remonstrance and inquiry now and then, but received no reply. Calvin Parks drove moodily along, his shoulders up to his ears, his head sunk between them, his eyes staring straight ahead. He could hardly even bring his mind to trade, and Mrs. Weazel got five cents off the price of her marshmallows, and was straightway consumed with anguish because she had not tried for ten.
"What's wrong with you, Cal?" asked Si Slocum at the Corners. "Didn't the Pie-fillene set good?"
"That's all right!" said Calvin briefly.
"I was clearin' out a lot of old samples," Si went on, "and Phrony come meechin' and beseechin', the way she does, and I give her the whole bunch. I mistrusted she'd try 'em on you. Come in, won't ye?"
"I'm in a hurry!" replied Calvin. "Here's the goods you ordered; all right, be they?"
"Look so!" said Si; "and taste so!" he added, attacking a cinnamon stick. "Ah! what's your hurry, Cal? Come in and set a bit! It's New Year's Day, you know, and a holiday by rights."
"I know; and I wish you a happy New Year!" said Calvin soberly; "but I must be moseyin' along. Gitty up, hossy!"
"He looks bad!" said the storekeeper, shaking his head as he watched Calvin's retreating figure. "Well, I should think he would, if all they say is true about him and Phrony Marlin. I was bound I'd get in a hint about her and her ways; he's too good a sort to be grabbed by them cattle; but he shut me right up."
It was night when Calvin reached the Marlin gate. Silently he came, for some hundred yards back he had got out and taken the sleigh-bells from Hossy's neck, to the great astonishment of the worthy animal. The snow was soft and deep, and there was no sound as Calvin drove past the house. At the barn door he paused, and seemed to reflect; started to drive in, then checked the horse and got out of the sleigh. Hastily bringing an armful of straw, he cast it down on the barn floor, spreading it thick and soft where the iron-shod hoofs must tread. Then, without a sound, he led the good beast in, rubbed him down, washed his feet, and gave him his supper.
All the while, though he spoke no word aloud, one phrase was saying itself over and over in his mind; the same phrase that old Ivory Cheeseman had spoken as he looked after him in the morning.
"Where did she get the money?"
The stairs which led to his attic room went up from the shed. Coming in silently, his foot was on the lowest step when he heard voices in the kitchen, one of them speaking his own name. Involuntarily he paused.
"S'pose the Cap'n should find it out!" said the old woman's creaking voice.
"He won't find it out!" barked her daughter. "It's all wopsed up in a bunch, I tell you, and stuffed into the wallet anyhow. He don't know how much he's got. Hark! was that the sleigh-bells?"
"Dust and ashes!" creaked the old woman. "I never thought a child of mine would be a thief, but I don't know as it matters. Hell-fire lights easy!"
"I ain't a thief!" said Phrony fiercely. "I'm only takin' what's my own, or will be when we're man and wife."
"Jesus'll kerry me through!" Mrs. Marlin piped. "Who knows you ever will be, darlin'? He's no fool, the Cap'n ain't, for all his easy ways. You may go too fur. Jordan's rollin' past, rollin' past!"
"Let it roll!" cried the other woman savagely. "If you'll only hold your tongue, mother, I can fix it all right. Do you want the mortgage foreclosed, and us both on the town? You leave this to me! Mebbe he ain't a fool, but he's as good as one for soft-heartedness. If I can't get round that man – hark! was that the bells?"
Calvin Parks stole noiselessly up the stairs. Slipping off his shoes, he crept across the garret room to the cupboard; groped with trembling hands for the wallet, found it, and brought it out; lighted the lamp and hastily counted the money it contained. One hundred dollars – two hundred – three hundred! He counted again and again; there was no mistake. He thrust the money into his bosom and stood up; his face showed white under the tan.
"She has taken two hundred dollars!" He said. "Poor miserable creatur'!"
He stood perfectly still for some minutes, thinking rapidly. Then, creeping swiftly about the room, light and noiseless as a cat for all his great height, he gathered together his few belongings; the daguerreotype of his mother (saved from the burning house at the risk of his boyish life), the Testament she gave him, Longfellow's poems, and his few clothes; and packed them all hastily but neatly in his old valise. When all was done he paused again; then finding a scrap of paper, he sat down and wrote hurriedly;
"I shall not do anything about the money unless you try to follow me; mebbe you need it more than I do; but you had best take back the bunnet, for you will never need that. Wishin' you well and more wisdom, from
"C. Parks.
"P. S. You be good to the old woman, or I will tell."
Put out the light now, Calvin! creep softly, softly, down the rickety stairs, testing each board as you go, lest it creak. Out to the barn, where the good brown horse is dozing peacefully. He has had a good supper and a good rest; he is fit for the ten miles that lie between you and safety. Stow the bells under the seat, muffling them carefully in the horse-blanket lest any faintest jingle betray you. Now softly, softly, out over the snow, out past the silent house where the two women are watching for you behind closed shutters; out to the open road, and away!
CHAPTER XVIII
MORNING
The sun was not yet up, but the sky was brightening in lovely pale tints, pearl and opal and rose, when Mary Sands opened the shed door and tripped lightly down the path to the barn. She unbarred the great doors, and entering the dim, fragrant place, was greeted by a five-fold whinny from the stalls, and a trampling of twenty friendly hoofs.
"Good morning, hossies!" she said cheerily. "I expect you're surprised to see me. I've got to get breakfast for all hands this mornin', and I'm goin' to begin with you. Mornin', colty! mornin', marey! mornin', John! mornin', old hoss! Oh! you naughty old hoss, who ever would have thought of your actin' that way at your time of life! I was surprised – my goodness! who's this in the box-stall? Calvin Parks's Hossy? What upon earth! Why, you darlin', where's your master?"
Hossy's explanations, though fervid, and accompanied by agreeable rubbings of a soft brown nose on her shoulder, were not lucid, and Mary gazed about her in bewilderment.
"You never run away, hossy?" she asked; "you wouldn't do that! Then – where is he?"
Just then a golden finger of sunshine slanted through the dusty window and fell on the harness-room door, which stood slightly ajar. Mary Sands ran to the door and peeped in. There, in the one chair tilted back, his feet on the stove, his head against the farther wall, sat Calvin Parks, sound asleep.
"Oh! you blessed creatur'!" cried Mary under her breath. She stood looking at him, taking swift note of his appearance.
"He's sick!" she said; "or he's been through the wars somehow. He looks completely tuckered out. There! he is not fit to be round alone, and that's the livin' truth. Oh dear! 'tis cold as a stone here; he'll get his death. Calvin! Mr. Parks! Wake up, won't you? Wake up!"
Now Calvin Parks had been dreaming, a thing that seldom occurred in the simple organism of his brain. He dreamed that he was on a lonely road, with high, rocky banks on either side; and that he was pursued by two black hooded snakes with glittering eyes, that reared and hissed on either side of him, and darted at him as he sped along. He tried to cry out, but found no voice. As he panted on in terror and anguish, thinking every moment to feel the venomed fangs in his flesh, suddenly a bird came flying down, a blue bird with a white breast, and took the evil creatures one after the other and flung them far from his path. And as he looked, still panting and breathless, the bird turned into Mary Sands in her blue dress and white apron, and she cried – "Wake up, Calvin Parks! wake up!"
He opened his eyes, dim and bewildered with sleep. The vision was still before him, the trim blue and white figure, the pretty brown hair, the hazel eyes full of anxious tenderness. Still bewildered, still only half awake, he opened his arms and gathered the little figure into them. "My woman!" he said. "My woman, before God and while I live."
"Oh! yes, Calvin!" said Mary Sands; and she hid her head on his broad breast and sobbed, a little happy sob.
So they stood for a moment, heaven as near to their middle-aged hearts as to any boy and girl lovers under the sun; then suddenly Calvin put her from him with a quick movement, and stepped back.
"I forgot!" he cried. "Mary, I forgot. I – I spoke too soon."
"Too soon!" echoed Mary Sands.
"I've no right to you yet!" he cried. "I thought I had; I forgot last night. Mary, I won't ask for you till I have a right to. Yesterday I had the right, or thought I had; to-day I haven't. You – you'd better forget what I said – no! don't forget one word of it, but – but put it away till – some day – " his voice broke, and he turned away with something like a sob.
Mary Sands eyed him keenly; then she spoke in her usual quiet cheerful tone.
"Mr. Parks, would you just as lives light a fire in the stove? It's perishin' cold here."
Calvin started, and flung himself furiously at the pile of kindlings in the corner.
"That shows!" he muttered, as he stuffed them into the stove with a reckless hand. "That shows the kind I am, lettin' you freeze while I talk foolishness. Here!" He took off his coat, and would have wrapped it round her, but she put it back quietly and decidedly.
"You put that coat on again, Mr. Parks. I'll wrap this robe round me; there! now I'm warm as toast, and I should be pleased if you would sit down on that bucket and tell me what's happened; why you come here in the dead of night, and – and all about it."
Calvin sat down on the bucket and looked at her helplessly.
"Mary," he said, "you know I've marked you for mine this long while back."
"Yes!" said Mary simply. "I know that, Calvin."
"I said I wouldn't ask you to take no such rollin' stone as I've been, until I had something laid by. I put a figger to it. I thought if I had five hundred dollars in the bank and the route doin' well, as it has been right along lately, I could ask you to believe that – that I'd stopped rollin' and rovin', and you might regard me as a stiddy character, and one that was – not worthy of you, not by a long chalk – but aimin' so to be, and with a beginnin' made that way. Mary, yesterday mornin' I had that five hundred dollars, and I was the happiest man in the State of Maine. I was comin' to you to-day, after puttin' it in the bank, and – well, no need to tell you what I was goin' to say."
"I thought you had said it!" said Mary meekly; and there was a twinkle in her voice, though she kept her eyes resolutely cast down.
Calvin groaned. "Don't!" he said. "Don't rub it in, Mary! Last night – I lost pretty near the half of it. Don't ask me how; it's gone, and I've got to airn it over again. Now – " he spoke rapidly, stumbling over his words, his eyes fixed imploringly on her. "I've got to get away, Mary. I can't stay round here just yet awhile. I made up my mind last night, drivin' over here from that – that place. I'm goin' a-rollin' and a-rovin' once more, till I get that money back."
"Is that so?" asked Mary quietly. "Where was you thinkin' of goin', Calvin?"
"I'm goin' back to the Mary Sands!" he said. "She's in port, loadin' up with lumber for Floridy, and the skipper wants to make a change. I – I'll be glad to see the Mary again, and I expect they'll take me on; what say?"
"I expect they will!" said Mary dryly.
Then, all in a moment, she was laughing and crying on his shoulder.
"Calvin!" she cried. "Calvin, you foolish creatur'! you don't need to go to Bath to find the Mary Sands. I'm Mary Sands!"
"You!" said Calvin Parks.
She glanced up at him, and broke down again in laughter and tears.
"You needn't look like a stone image!" she cried. "'Tis so! I've been Mary Sands right along. It sounded so comical your callin' me Hands, I wouldn't let Cousins tell you. If I've stopped them once I have twenty times. Besides, you was so mad at a woman's bein' owner of your schooner, I couldn't help but laugh every time I thought of it. I s'pose I've been foolish about it, but it's been a kind of play to me all this time. Calvin, you make me act real forth-puttin', but – if you won't speak for yourself – there! will you be master of the Mary Sands, afloat and shore?"
She held out her hands with a pretty gesture. Calvin grasped them so hard that she cried out, and his face, white again under its brown, set in dogged lines of gentle obstinacy, the most hopeless kind.
"I can't!" he said. "Mary, all the more I can't because you are a rich woman. You see that, don't you? I'm sure you must see that, Mary. Soon as ever I've aimed that money again – "
"Oh! plague take the money," cried Mary, her patience giving way. "Give it to the cat; she's fitter to take care of it than you are, Calvin Parks. There! you do try me. You ain't fit to live alone, no more than – and my goodness gracious me!" she cried, her voice changing suddenly; "if I hadn't clean forgotten Cousins! Calvin, you've got to stay by us, you've just plain and simple got to! Hush! hold your obstinate tongue and listen to me. Cousin Sam had an accident yesterday. He was out with the old hoss of all, and they met the snow-plough, and if that old creatur' didn't leap over the stone wall and smash the sleigh to kindlin' wood! Cousin Sam's all stove up inside, he thinks, but I'm in hopes not. There's no bones broke, and I guess all he got was a good shakin' up; but anyway, he's in bed, and can't move hand or foot. And I can't take care of him and Cousin Sim, and keep house, and see to the stock and poultry too, Calvin Parks; now I can't! I've got to have help!"
At this moment a jingling of bells was heard outside; Mary stepped to the window. "Who on earth comes here?" she exclaimed. "Of all the queer-lookin' turnouts – do look here, Calvin!"
Calvin looked. In an old-fashioned high-backed sleigh, drawn by an ancient white horse, sat a little old man so wrapped in furs that only the tip of a frosty nose could be seen. He was waving whip and reins wildly, and shouting "Somebody come! somebody come!"
"Gosh!" said Calvin Parks. He ran out, and Mary Sands followed him wondering.
"Mr. Cheeseman, I want to know if this is you!"
"I got it!" gasped the old man.
"You got it!" repeated Calvin. "You've got your everlastin', I expect, out this time o' day at your age. You come in to the fire, sir!"
Without more ado, he lifted the old man in his arms, carried him bodily into the little room, and set him down in the chair. Mr. Cheeseman was still breathless with frost and excitement, and gasped painfully, his eyes starting from his head.
"I got it!" he repeated. "I got it, Calvin!"
"Fetch your breath, old gentleman," said Calvin soothingly. "You ain't got that, anyway. What is it you have got? the rheumatiz?"
"The money!" cried the old candy-maker. "Your money, friend Calvin, every cent of it, except what was spent, and that warn't much."
Calvin stood as if turned to stone.
"What do you mean?" he faltered.
"I mistrusted all along!" cried Mr. Cheeseman. "I kep' askin' myself all day yesterday, where did she get that money? I never slep' last night for askin' it. Suddin, along about four o'clock this mornin', by the livin' Jingo, I see the whole contraption. I got up that minute of time, hitched up old Major, and drove straight out there to tell you what I suspicioned. You warn't there. They was awake, the two of 'em, and scared at your bein' out all night as they thought, and when I called and knocked they come down, and a sight they was. Talk of witches! 'Where's Calvin Parks?' I says; and they made answer you hadn't come in, and they'd sat up 'most all night for you, and was scairt to death, and all the rest of it. 'Show me his room!' I says. They made objections to that, and I just cleared 'em to one side and stomped up, and they after me. When they see your things were gone, Phrony give a screech fit to wake the dead, and the old woman set up a gibberin' about Jordan rollin' past, and dust and ashes, and I don't know what all. My eye and Phrony's lit on this paper" – he held out a crumpled scrap – "the same moment, and we run for it together, but I got my claws in it first, and read it out loud. Then, 'Miss Marlin,' I says, quiet like, 'I'll take that money!' 'What money?' she says, and added language that ain't fit for this lady to hear.
"'You know what money!' I says. 'I'm a special constable, and my team is outside. You'll hand me that money or see the inside of the lock-up within half an hour!' I says. She used awful language then; gorry! if you'll excuse the expression, ma'am, I never heard such language, and I'm no chicken. But the old woman throws up her hands, and screeches out, 'A jidgment, Phrony! a jidgment! Jesus walkin' on the waves, and Jordan rollin' past! Git it out of the bureau drawer!'
"I'm old, ma'am, but I'm tol'able spry. I got to the door and into the front room before Phrony did; and when she see me at the bureau she gave one awful yell and fell down in some kind of fit. I took the money. The old woman was kind of clawin' the air over her, and sayin' 'Dust and ashes! dust and ashes! hell fire's lightin' up!' 'Twarn't no agreeable sight, and I come away. And – and here's the money, friend Calvin, and I wish you joy with it."
Calvin Parks took the money with a dazed look.
"Mr. Cheeseman," he said, "I don't know what to say to you. There don't seem to be anything to say that'll express what I feel – "
"You might introduce me to this lady!" said the old man with a frosty twinkle.
"Darn my hide!" cried Calvin Parks. "Somebody put me under the pump, will they? Mr. Ivory Cheeseman, let me make you acquainted with Mis' Calvin Parks as is to be! her present name is Ha – Sands!"
"Miss Hassands," said Mr. Cheeseman with a magnificent bow, "I am pleased to meet you, I'm sure!"
Mary became rather hysterical at this, and it was necessary for Calvin to soothe and quiet her; Mr. Cheeseman meanwhile inspected the harnesses critically, and expressed his opinion that they was a first-rate set out, and no mistake.
While they were thus occupied, the barn door was suddenly flung open, and a thin, peevish voice cried, "Cousin! Cousin Mary! where in time have you got to?"
The trio started and turned. In the doorway stood Mr. Simeon Sill, in carpet slippers and overcoat, the latter displaying a valance of flowered dressing-gown. A woollen shawl was tied over his head, and from it his eyes peered disconsolately.
"Where have you got to?" he repeated querulously. "Breakfast time, and the kittle bilin' over, and no table set, and Sam'l waitin' – "
At this moment he caught sight of the three conspirators, and stopped open-mouthed, his eyes goggling in his head.
"Oh! Cousin Sim, you'll get cold!" cried Mary Sands, hastily smoothing her hair. "Do go back to the house! I'm comin' right in."
"Mornin', Sim!" said Calvin Parks genially. "Come out to see the stock, have ye? I call that smart, now!"
"Mr. Simeon Sill, I believe!" said Mr. Cheeseman with dignity. "Pleased to make your acquaintance, sir!"
Mr. Sim looked from one to another, still gaping; and finally his gaze fixed itself sternly on Mary Sands.
"I don't know what's goin' on in my barn," he said, "nor I don't know what dum foolishness you folks is up to; but I give you to understand that my brother Sam'l is waitin' for his med'cine!"