Mary E. Wilkins Freeman - Jane Field

M >> Mary E. Wilkins Freeman >> Jane Field

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Lois opened her eyes. All the animation and defiance were gone from
her face. She was so exhausted that she made no resistance to
anything. She let them raise her, prop her up with a pillow, and
nearly feed her with the dinner. Then she lay back, and her eyes
closed.

Amanda went home, and Mrs. Field went back to the kitchen to put away
the dinner dishes. She had eaten nothing herself, and now she poured
some of the broth into a cup, and drank it down with great gulps
without tasting it. It was simply filling of a necessity the lamp of
life with oil.

After her housework was done, she sat down in the kitchen with her
knitting. There was no sound from the other room.

The latter part of the afternoon Amanda came past the window and
entered the back door. She carried a glass of foaming beer. Amanda
was famous through the neighborhood for this beer, which she
concocted from roots and herbs after an ancient recipe. It was
pleasantly flavored with aromatic roots, and instinct with agreeable
bitterness, being an innocently tonic old-maiden brew.

"I thought mebbe she'd like a glass of my beer," whispered Amanda. "I
came round the house so's not to disturb her. How is she?"

"I guess she's asleep. I ain't heard a sound."

Amanda set the glass on the table. "Don't you think you'd ought to
have a doctor, Mis' Field?" said she.

It seemed impossible that Lois could have heard, but her voice came
shrilly from the other room: "No, I ain't going to have a doctor;
there's no need of it. I sha'n't like it if you get one, mother."

"No, you sha'n't have one, dear child," her mother called back. "She
was always jest so about havin' a doctor," she whispered to Amanda.

"I'll take in the beer if she's awake," said Amanda.

Lois looked up when she entered. "I don't want a doctor," said she,
pitifully, rolling her blue eyes.

"Of course you sha'n't have a doctor if you don't want one," returned
Amanda, soothingly. "I thought mebbe you'd like a glass of my beer."

Lois drank the beer eagerly, then she sank back and closed her eyes.
"I'm going to get up in a minute, and sew on my dress," she murmured.

But she did not stir until her mother helped her to bed early in the
evening.

The next day she seemed a little better. Luckily it was Saturday, so
there was no worry about her school for her. She would not lie down,
but sat in the rocking-chair with her needle-work in her lap. When
any one came in, she took it up and sewed. Several of the neighbors
had heard she was ill, and came to inquire. She told them, with a
defiant air, that she was very well, and they looked shocked and
nonplussed. Some of them beckoned her mother out into the entry when
they took leave, and Lois heard them whispering together.

The next day, Sunday, Lois seemed about the same. She said once that
she was going to church, but she did not speak of it again. Mrs.
Field went. She suggested staying at home, but Lois was indignant.

"Stay at home with me, no sicker than I am! I should think you were
crazy, mother," said she.

So Mrs. Field got out her Sunday clothes and went to meeting. As soon
as she had gone, Lois coughed; she had been choking the cough back.
She stood at the window, well back that people might not see her, and
watched her mother pass down the street with her stiff glide. Mrs.
Field's back and shoulders were rigidly steady when she walked; she
might have carried a jar of water on her head without spilling it,
like an Indian woman. Lois, small and slight although she was, walked
like her mother. She held herself with the same resolute stateliness,
when she could hold herself at all. The two women might, as far as
their carriage went, have marched in a battalion with propriety.

Lois felt a certain relief when her mother had gone. Even when Mrs.
Field made no expression of anxiety, there was a covert distress
about her which seemed to enervate the atmosphere, and hinder the
girl in the fight she was making against her own weakness. Lois had a
feeling that if nobody would look at her nor speak about her illness,
she could get well quickly of herself.

As for Mrs. Field, she was no longer eager to attend meeting; she
went rather than annoy Lois. She was present at both the morning and
afternoon services. They still had two services in Green River.

Jane Field, sitting in her place in church through the long sermons,
had a mental experience that was wholly new to her. She looked at the
white walls of the audience-room, the pulpit, the carpet, the pews.
She noted the familiar faces of the people in their Sunday gear, the
green light stealing through the long blinds, and all these
accustomed sights gave her a sense of awful strangeness and
separation. And this impression did not leave her when she was out on
the street mingling with the homeward people; every greeting of an
old neighbor strengthened it. She regarded the peaceful village
houses with their yards full of new green grass and flowering bushes,
and they seemed to have a receding dimness as she neared some awful
shore. Even the click of her own gate as she opened it, the sound of
her own feet on the path, the feel of the door-latch to her hand--all
the little common belongings of her daily life were turned into so
many stationary landmarks to prove her own retrogression and fill her
with horror.

To-day, when people inquired for Lois, her mother no longer gave her
customary replies. She said openly that her daughter was real
miserable, and she was worried about her.

"I guess she's beginning to realize it," the women whispered to each
other with a kind of pitying triumph. For there is a certain
aggravation in our friends' not owning to even those facts which we
deplore for them. It is provoking to have an object of pity balk.
Mrs. Field's assumption that her daughter was not ill had half
incensed her sympathizing neighbors; even Amanda had marvelled
indignantly at it. But now the sudden change in her friend caused her
to marvel still more. She felt a vague fear every time she thought of
her. After Lois had gone to bed that Sunday night, her mother came
into Amanda's room, and the two women sat together in the dusk. It
was so warm that Amanda had set all the windows open, and the room
was full of the hollow gurgling of the frogs--there was some low
meadow-land behind the house.

"I want to know what you think of Lois?" said Mrs. Field, suddenly;
her voice was high and harsh.

"Why, I don't know, hardly, Mis' Field."

"Well, I know. She's runnin' down. She won't ever be any better,
unless I can do something. She's dyin' for the want of a little
money, so she can stop work an' go away to some healthier place an'
rest. She is; the Lord knows she is." Mrs. Field's voice was solemn,
almost oratorical.

Amanda sat still; her long face looked pallid and quite unmoved in
the low light; she was thinking what she could say.

But Mrs. Field went on; she was herself so excited to speech and
action, the outward tendency of her own nature was so strong, that
she failed to notice the course of another's. "She is," she repeated,
argumentatively, as if Amanda had spoken, or she was acute enough to
hear the voice behind silence; "there ain't any use talkin'."

There was a pause, a soft wind came into the room, the noise of the
frogs grew louder, a whippoorwill called; it seemed as if the wide
night were flowing in at the windows.

"What I want to know is," said Mrs. Field, "if you will take Lois in
here to meals, an' look after her a week or two. Be you willin' to?"

"You ain't goin' away, Mis' Field?" There was a slow and contained
surprise in Amanda's tone.

"Yes, I be; to-morrow mornin', if I live, on the early train. I be,
if you're willin' to take Lois. I don't see how I can leave her any
other way as she is now. You sha'n't be any loser by it, if you'll
take her."

"Where be you goin', Mis' Field?"

"I don't want you to say anything about it. I don't want it all over
town."

"I sha'n't say anything."

"Well, I'm goin' down to Elliot."

"You be?"

"Yes, I be. Old Mr. Maxwell's dead. I had a letter a night or two
ago."

Amanda gasped, "He's dead?"

"Yes."

"What was the matter, do you know?"

"They called it paralysis. It was sudden."

Amanda hesitated. "I s'pose--you know anything about--his property?"
said she.

"Yes; he left it all to my sister."

"Why, Mis' Field!"

"Yes; he left every cent of it to her."

"Oh, ain't it dreadful she's dead?"

"It's all been dreadful right along," said Mrs. Field.

"Of course," said Amanda, "I know she's better off than she'd be with
all the money in the world; it ain't that; but it would do so much
good to the livin'. Why, look here, Mis' Field, I dun'no' anything
about law, but won't you have it if your sister's dead?"

"I'm goin' down there."

"It seems as if you'd ought to have somethin' anyway, after all
you've done, lettin' his son have your money an' everything."

Amanda spoke with stern warmth. She had known about this grievance of
her neighbor's for a long time.

"I'm goin' down there," repeated Mrs. Field.

"I would," said Amanda.

"I hate to leave Lois," said Mrs. Field; "but I don't see any other
way."

"I'll take her," said Amanda, "if you're willin' to trust her with
me."

"I've got to," replied Mrs. Field.

"Well, I'll do the best I can," replied Amanda.

She was considerably shaken. She felt her knees tremble. It was as if
she were working a new tidy or rug pattern. Any variation of her
peaceful monotony of existence jarred her whole nature like heavy
wheels, and this was a startling one.

She wondered how Mrs. Field could bring herself to leave Lois. It
seemed to her that she must have hopes of all the old man's property.

After Mrs. Field had gone home, and she, primly comfortable in her
starched and ruffled dimities, lay on her high feather-bed between
her smooth sheets, she settled it in her own mind that her neighbor
would certainly have the property. She wondered if she and Lois would
go to Elliot to live, and who would live in her tenement. The change
was hard for her to contemplate, and she wept a little. Many a
happiness comes to its object with outriders of sorrows to others.

Poor Amanda bemoaned herself over the changes that might come to her
little home, and planned nervously her manner of living with Lois
during the next week. Amanda had lived entirely alone for over twenty
years; this admitting another to her own territory seemed as grave a
matter to her as the admission of foreigners did to Japan. Indeed,
all her kind were in a certain way foreigners to Amanda; and she was
shy of them, she had so withdrawn herself by her solitary life, for
solitariness is the farthest country of them all.

Amanda did not sleep much, and it was very early in the morning--she
was standing before the kitchen looking-glass, twisting the rosettes
of her front hair--when Mrs. Field came in to say good-by. Mrs. Field
was gaunt and erect in her straight black clothes. She had her black
veil tied over her bonnet to protect it from dust, and the black
frame around her strong-featured face gave her a rigid, relentless
look, like a female Jesuit. Lois came faltering behind her mother.
She had a bewildered air, and she looked from her mother to Amanda
with appealing significance, but she did not speak.

"Well, I've come to say good-by," said Mrs. Field.

Amanda had one side of her front hair between her lips while she
twisted the other; she took it out. "Good-by, Mis' Field," she said.
"I'll do the best I can for Lois. How soon do you s'pose you'll be
back?"

"It's accordin' to how I get along. I've been tellin' Lois she ain't
goin' to school to-day. She's afraid Mr. Starr will put Ida in if she
don't; but there ain't no need of her worryin'; mebbe a way will be
opened. I want you to lookout she don't go. There ain't no need of
it."

"I'll do the best I can," said Amanda, with a doubtful glance at
Lois.

Lois said nothing, but her pale little mouth contracted obstinately.
She and Amanda followed her mother to the door. The departing woman
said good-by, and went down the steps over the terraces. She never
looked back. She went on out the gate, and turned into the long road.
She had a mile walk to the railroad station.

Amanda and Lois went back into the sitting-room.

"When did she tell you she was going?" Lois asked suddenly.

"Last night."

"She didn't tell me till this morning."

Lois held her head high, but her eyes were surprised and pitiful, and
the corners of her mouth drooped. She faced about to the window with
a haughty motion, and watched her mother out of sight, a gaunt, dark
old figure disappearing under low green elm branches.

Chapter III

It was many years since Mrs. Field had taken any but the most trivial
journeys. Elliot was a hundred and twenty miles away. She must go to
Boston; then cross the city to the other depot, where she would take
the Elliot train. This elderly unsophisticated woman might very
reasonably have been terrified at the idea of taking this journey
alone, but she was not. She never thought of it.

The latter half of the road to the Green River station lay through an
unsettled district. There were acres of low birch woods and lusty
meadow-lands. This morning they were covered with a gold-green dazzle
of leaves. To one looking across them, they almost seemed played over
by little green flames; now and then a young birch tree stood away
from the others, and shone by itself like a very torch of spring.
Mrs. Field walked steadily through it. She had never paused to take
much thought of the beauty of nature; to-day a tree all alive and
twinkling with leaves might, for all her notice, have been naked and
stiff with frost.

She did not seem to walk fast, but her long steps carried her over
the ground well. It was long before train-time when she came in sight
of the little station with its projecting piazza roofs. She entered
the ladies' room and bought her ticket, then she sat down and waited.
There were two other women there--middle-aged countrywomen in awkward
wool gowns and flat straw bonnets, with a certain repressed
excitement in their homely faces. They were setting their large,
faithful, cloth-gaitered feet a little outside their daily ruts, and
going to visit some relatives in a neighboring town; they were almost
overcome by the unusualness of it.

Jane Field was a woman after their kind, and the look on their faces
had its grand multiple in the look on hers. She had not only stepped
out of her rut, but she was going out of sight of it forever.

She sat there stiff and silent, her two feet braced against the
floor, ready to lift her at the signal of the train, her black
leather bag grasped firmly in her right hand.

The two women eyed her furtively. One nudged the other. "Know who
that is?" she whispered. But neither of them knew. They were from the
adjoining town, which this railroad served as well as Green River.

Sometimes Mrs. Field looked at them, but with no speculation; the
next moment she looked in the same way upon the belongings of the
little country depot--the battered yellow settees, the time-tables,
the long stove in its tract of littered sawdust, the man's face in
the window of the ticket-office.

"Dreadful cross-lookin', ain't she?" one of the women whispered in
the other's ear.

Jane heard the whisper, and looked at them. The women gave each other
violent pokes, they reddened and tittered nervously, then they tried
to look out of the window with an innocent and absent air. But they
need not have been troubled. Jane, although she heard the whisper
perfectly, did not connect it with herself at all. She never thought
much about her own appearance; this morning she had as little vanity
as though she were dead.

When the whistle of the train sounded, the women all pushed anxiously
out on the platform.

"Is this the train that goes to Boston?" Mrs. Field asked one of the
other two.

"I s'pose so," she replied, with a reciprocative flutter. "I'm goin'
to ask so's to be sure. I'm goin' to Dale."

"I always ask," her friend remarked, with decision.

When the train stopped, Mrs. Field inquired of a brakeman. She was
hardly satisfied with his affirmative answer. "Are you the
conductor?" said she, sternly peering.

The young fellow gave a hurried wave of his hand toward the
conductor, "There he is, ma'am."

Mrs. Field asked him also, then she hoisted herself into the car.
When she had taken her seat, she put the same question to a woman in
front of her.

It was a five-hours' ride to Boston. Mrs. Field sat all the while in
her place with her bag in her lap, and never stirred. There was a
look of rigid preparation about her, as if all her muscles were
strained for an instant leap.

Two young girls in an opposite seat noticed her and tittered. They
had considerable merriment over her, twisting their pretty silly
faces, and rolling their blue eyes in her direction, and then
averting them with soft repressed chuckles.

Occasionally Mrs. Field looked over at them, thought of her Lois, and
noted their merriment gravely. She never dreamed that they were
laughing at her. If she had, she would not have considered it twice.

It was four o'clock when Mrs. Field arrived in Boston. She had been
in the city but once before, when she was a young girl. Still she set
out with no hesitation to walk across the city to the depot where she
must take the cars for Elliot. She could not afford a carriage, and
she would not trust herself in a street car. She knew her own head
and her old muscles; she could allow for their limitations, and
preferred to rely upon them.

Every few steps she stopped and asked a question as to her route,
listening sharply to the reply. Then she went straight enough,
speeding between the informers like guide-posts. This old provincial
threaded the city streets as unappreciatively as she had that morning
the country one. Once in a while the magnificence of some shop
window, a dark flash of jet, or a flutter of lace on a woman's dress
caught her eye, but she did not see it. She had nothing in common
with anything of that kind; she had to do with the primal facts of
life. Coming as she was out of the country quiet, she was quite
unmoved by the thundering rush of the city streets. She might have
been deaf and blind for all the impression it had upon her. Her own
nature had grown so intense that it apparently had emanations, and
surrounded her with an atmosphere of her own impenetrable to the
world.

It was nearly five o'clock when she reached her station, and the
train was ready. It was half-past five when she arrived in Elliot.
She got off the train and stalked, as if with a definite object,
around the depot platform. She did not for one second hesitate or
falter. She went up to a man who was loading some trunks on a wagon,
and asked him to direct her to Lawyer Tuxbury's office. Her voice was
so abrupt and harsh that the man started.

"Cross the track, an' go up the street till you come to it, on the
right-hand side," he answered. Then he stared curiously after her as
she went on.

Lawyer Tuxbury's small neat sign was fastened upon the door of the L
of a large white house. There was a green yard, and some newly
started flower-beds. In one there was a clump of yellow daffodils.
Two yellow-haired little girls were playing out in the yard. They
both stood still, staring with large, wary blue eyes at Mrs. Field as
she came up the path. She never glanced toward them.

She stood like a black-draped statue before the office door, and
knocked. Nobody answered.

She knocked again louder. Then a voice responded "Come in." Mrs.
Field turned the knob carefully, and opened the door. It led directly
into the room. There was a dull oil-cloth carpet, some beetling cases
of heavy books, a few old arm-chairs, and one battered leather
easy-chair. A great desk stood against the farther wall, and a man
was seated at it, with his back toward the door. He had white hair,
to which the sunlight coming through the west window gave a red-gold
tinge.

Mrs. Field stood still, just inside the door. Apart from anything
else, the room itself had a certain awe-inspiring quality for her.
She had never before been in a lawyer's office. She was fully
possessed with the rural and feminine ignorance and holy fear of all
legal appurtenances. From all her traditions, this office door should
have displayed a grinning man or woman trap, which she must warily
shun.

She eyed the dusty oil-cloth--the files of black books--the
chairs--the man at the desk, with his gilded white head. He wrote on
steadily, and never stirred for a minute. Then he again sang out,
sharply, "Come in."

He was deaf, and had, along with his insensibility to sounds, that
occasional abnormal perception of them which the deaf seem sometimes
to possess. He often heard sounds when none were recognizable to
other people.

Now, evidently having perceived no result from his first response, he
had heard this second knock, which did not exist except in his own
supposition and the waiting woman's intent. She had, indeed, just at
this point said to herself that she would slip out and knock again if
he did not look around. She had not the courage to speak. It was
almost as if the deaf lawyer, piecing out his defective ears with a
subtler perception, had actually become aware of her intention, which
had thundered upon him like the knock itself.

Mrs. Field made an inarticulate response, and took a grating step
forward. The old man turned suddenly and saw her. She stood back
again; there was a shrinking stiffness about her attitude, but she
looked him full in the face.

"Why, good-day!" he exclaimed. "Good-day, madam. I didn't hear you
come in."

Mrs. Field murmured a good-day in return.

"Take a seat, madam." The lawyer had risen, and was advancing toward
her. He was a small, sharp-eyed man, whose youthful agility had
crystallized into a nervous pomposity. Suddenly he stopped short; he
had passed a broad slant of dusty sunlight which had lain between him
and his visitor, and he could see her face plainly. His own elongated
for a second, his under jaw lopped, and his brows contracted. Then he
stepped forward. "Why, Mrs. Maxwell!" said he; "how do you do?"

"I'm pretty well, thank you," replied Mrs. Field. She tried to bow,
but her back would not bend.

"I am delighted to see you," said the lawyer. "I recognize you
perfectly now. I should have before, if the sun had not been in my
eyes. I never forget a face."

He took her by the hand, and shook it up and down effusively. Then he
pushed forward the leather easy-chair with gracious insinuation. Mrs.
Field sat down, bolt-upright, on the extreme verge of it.

The lawyer drew a chair to her side, seated himself, leaned forward
until his face fronted hers, and talked. His manner was florid,
almost bombastic. He had a fashion of working his face a good deal
when he talked. He conversed quite rapidly and fluently, but was wont
to interlard his conversation with what seemed majestically
reflective pauses, during which he leaned back in his chair and
tapped the arm slowly. In fact his flow of ideas failed him for a
moment, his mind being so constituted that they came in rapid and
temporary bursts, geyser fashion. He inquired when Mrs. Field
arrived, was kindly circumstantial as to her health, touched
decorously but not too mournfully upon the late Thomas Maxwell's
illness and decease. He alluded to the letter which he had written
her, mentioning as a singular coincidence that at the moment of her
entrance he was engaged in writing another to her, to inquire if the
former had been received.

He spoke in terms of congratulation of the property to which she had
fallen heir, and intimated that further discussion concerning it, as
a matter of business, had better be postponed until morning. Daniel
Tuxbury was very methodical in his care for himself, and was loath to
attend to any business after six o'clock.

Mrs. Field sat like a bolt of iron while the lawyer talked to her.
Unless a direct question demanded it, she never spoke herself. But he
did not seem to notice it; he had enough garnered-in complacency to
delight himself, as a bee with its own honey. He rarely realized it
when another person did not talk.

After one of his pauses, he sprang up with alacrity. "Mrs. Maxwell,
will you be so kind as to excuse me for a moment?" said he, and went
out of the office with a fussy hitch, as if he wore invisible
petticoats. Mrs. Field heard his voice in the yard.

When he returned there was an old lady following in his wake. Mrs.
Field saw her before he did. She came with a whispering of silk, but
his deaf ears did not perceive that. He did not notice her at all
until he had entered the office, then he saw Mrs. Field looking past
him at the door, and turned himself.

He went toward her with a little flourish of words, but the old lady
ignored him entirely. She held up her chin with a kind of ancient
pertness, and eyed Mrs. Field. She was a small, straight-backed
woman, full of nervous vibrations. She stood apparently still, but
her black silk whispered all the time, and loose ends of black ribbon
trembled. The black silk had an air of old gentility about it, but it
was very shiny; there were many bows, but the ribbons were limp,
having been pressed and dyed. Her face, yellow and deeply wrinkled,
but sharply vivacious, was overtopped by a bunch of purple flowers in
a nest of rusty black lace and velvet.

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