The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 74, December, 1863

"Poor little Ann! she"—

No! not even to himself would he say, "She likes me"; but his face grew suddenly fiery red, and he lashed Jerry spitefully.

A damp, sharp air was blowing up from the bay that evening, when the milk-wagon rumbled up the lane towards home. Only on the high tree-tops the sun lingered; beneath were broad sweeps of brown shadows cooling into night. The lindens shook out fresh perfume into the dew and quiet. The few half-tamed goats that browse on the hills hunted some dark corner under the pines to dampen out in the wet grass the remembrance of the scorching day. Here and there passed some laborer going home in his shirt-sleeves, fanning off the hot dust with his straw hat, glad of the chance to stop at the cart-wheel and gossip with Andy.

"Ye 'r' late, Fawcett. What news from town?"

So that it was nearly dark before he came under the shadow of the great oak by his own gate. The Quaker was walking backwards and forwards along the lane. Andy stopped to look at her, therefore; for she was usually so quiet and reticent in her motion.

"What kept thee all day, Andrew?" catching the shaft. "Was summat wrong? One ill, maybe?"—her lips parched and stiff.

"What ails ye, Jane?"—holding out his hand, as was their custom when they met. "No. No one ailin'; only near baked with th' heat. I was wi' old Joe,"—lowering his voice. "He took me home,—to his hole, that is; I stayed there, ye see. Well, God help us all! Come up, Jerry! D' ye smell yer oats? Eh! the basket ye've got? No, he'd touch none of it. It's not victual he's livin' on, this day. I wish 'n this matter was done with."

He drove on slowly: something had sobered the Will-o'-the-wisp in Andy's brain, and all that was manly in him looked out, solemn and pitying. The woman was standing by the barn-door when he reached it, watching his lips for a stray word as a dog might, but not speaking. He unhitched the horse, put him in his stall, and pushed the wagon under cover,—then stopped, looking at her uncertainly.

"I—I don't like to talk of this, I hardly know why. But I'm goin' to stay with him to-morrow,—till th' trial's done with."

"Yes, Andrew."

"I wish 'n he hed a friend," he said, after a pause, breaking off bits of the sunken wall. "Not like me, Jane," raising his voice, and trying to speak carelessly. "Like himself. I'm so poor learned, I can't do anything for sech as them. Like him. Jane," after another silence, "I've seen IT."

She looked at him.

"The engine. Jane"—

"I know."

She turned sharply and walked away, the bluish light of the first moonbeams lighting up her face and shoulders suddenly as she went off down the wall. Was it that which brought out from the face of the middle-aged working woman such a strange meaning of latent youth, beauty, and passion? God only knows when the real childhood comes into a life, how early or late; but one might fancy this woman had waited long for hers, and it was coming to-night, the coarse hardness of look was swept away so suddenly. The great thought and hope of her life surged up quick, uncontrollably; her limbs shook, the big, mournful animal eyes were wet with tears, her very horny hands worked together uncertainly and helpless as a child's. On the face, too, especially about the mouth, such a terror of pain, such a hungry wish to smile, to be tender, that I think a baby would have liked to put up its lips then to be kissed, and have hid its face on her neck.

"Summat ails her, sure," said Andy, stupidly watching her a moment or two, and then going in to kick off his boots and eat his supper, warm on the range.

The moonlight was cold; he shut it out, and sat meditating over his cigar for an hour or two before the Quaker came in. When she did, he went to light her night-lamp for her,—for he had an odd, old-fashioned courtesy about him to women or the aged. He noticed, as he did it, that her hair had fallen from the close, thin cap, and how singularly soft and fine it was. She stood by the window, drawing her fingers through the long, damp folds, in a silly, childish way.

"Good night, Andrew," as he gave it to her.

"Good night."

She looked at him gravely.

"I wish, lad—Would thee say, 'God bless thee, Jane'? It's long since as I've heard that, an' there's no one but thee t' 'll say it."

The boy was touched.

"Often I thinks it, Jane,—often. Ye've been good to me these six years. I was nothin' but a beggar's brat when ye took me in. I mind that, though ye think I forget, when I'm newly rigged out sometimes. God bless ye! yes, I'll say it: God knows I will."

She went out into the little passage. He heard her hesitate there a minute. It was a double house: the kitchen and sitting-room at one side of the narrow hall; at the other, Jane's chamber, and a room which she usually kept locked. He had heard her there at night sometimes, for he slept above it, and once or twice had seen the door open in the daytime, and looked in. It held, he saw, better furniture than the rest of the house: a homespun carpet of soft, grave colors, thick drab curtains, a bedstead, one or two bookcases, filled and locked, of which Jane made as little use, he was sure, as she could of the fowling-piece and patent fishing-rod which he saw in one corner. There were no shams, no cheap makeshifts in the Quaker's little house, in any part of it; but this room was the essence of cleanness and comfort, Andy thought. He never asked questions, however: some ingredient in his poor hodge-podge of a brain keeping him always true to this hard test of good breeding. So to-night, though he heard her until near eleven o'clock moving restlessly about in this room, he hesitated until then, before he went to speak to her.

"She's surely sick," he said, with a worried look, lighting his candle. "Women are the Devil for nerves."

Coming to the open door, however, he found her only busy in rubbing the furniture with a bit of chamois-skin. She looked up at him, her face very red, and the look in her face that children have when going out for a holiday.

"How does thee think it looks, Andy?" her voice strangely low and rapid.

He looked at her curiously.

"I'm makin' it ready, thee knows. Pull to this shutter for me, lad. A good many years I've been makin' it ready"—

"You shiver so, ye'd better go to bed, Jane."

"Yes. Only the white valance is to put to the bed; I'm done then,"—going on silently for a while.

"I've been so long at it,"—catching her breath. "Hard scrapin', the first years. We'd only a lease on the place at first. It's ours now, an' it's stocked, an'—Don't thee think the house is snug itself, Andrew? Thee sees other houses. Is't home-like lookin'? Good for rest"—

"Yes, surely. What are you so anxious an' wild about, Jane? It's yer own house."

"I'm not anxious,"—trying to calm herself. "Mine, is it, lad? All mine; nobody sharin' in it."

She laughed. In all these years he had never heard her laugh before; it was low and full-hearted,—a live, real laugh. Somehow, all comfort, home, and frolic in the coming years were promised in it.

"Mine?" folding up her duster. "Well, lad, thee says so. Daily savin' of the cents got it. Maybe thee thought me a hard woman?"—with an anxious look. "I kept all the accounts of it in that blue book I burned to-night. Nobody must know what it cost. No. Thee'd best go to sleep, lad. I've an hour's more work, I think. There'll be no time for it to-morrow, bein' the last day."

He did not like to leave her so feverish and unlike herself.

"Well, good night, then."

"Good night, Andrew. Mine, eh?"—her face flushing. "Thee'll know to-morrow. Thee thinks it looks comfortable?"—holding his hand anxiously. "Heartsome? Mis' Hale called the place that the other day. I was so glad to hear that! Well, good night. I think it does."

And she went back to her work, while Andy made his way up-stairs, puzzled and sleepy.

The next day was cool and grave for intemperate August. Very seldom a stream of fresh sunshine broke through the gray, mottling the pavements with uncertain lights. Summer was evidently tired of its own lusty life, and had a mind to put on a cowl of hodden-gray, and call itself November. The pale, pleasant light toned in precisely, however, to the meaning of Arch and Walnut Streets, where the old Quaker family-life has rooted itself into the city, and looks out on the passers-by in such a sober, cheerful fashion. There was one house, low down in Arch, that would have impressed you as having grown more sincerely than the others out of the character of its owner. There was nothing bigoted or purse-proud or bawbling in the habit of the man who built it; from the massive blocks in the foundation, to the great horse-chestnuts in front, and the creeping ivy over pictures and bookshelves, there was the same constant hint of a life liberal, solid, graceful. It had its whim of expression, too, in the man himself,—a small man, lean, stoop-shouldered, with gray hair and whiskers, wearing a clergyman's black suit and white cravat: his every motion was quiet, self-poised, intelligent; a quizzical, kind smile on the mouth, listening eyes, a grave forehead; a man who had heard other stories than any in your life,—of different range, yet who waited, helpful, for yours, knowing it to be something new and full of an eternal meaning. It was Dr. Bowdler, rector of an Episcopal church, a man of more influence out of the Church than any in it. He was in the breakfast-room now, trimming the hanging-baskets in the window, while his niece finished her coffee: he "usually saved his appetite for dinner, English fashion; cigars until then,"—poohing at all preaching of hygiene, as usual, as "stuff."

There were several other gentlemen in the room,—waiting, apparently, for something,—reading the morning papers, playing with the Newfoundland dog that had curled himself up in the patch of sunshine by the window, or chatting with Miss Defourchet. None of them, she saw, were men of cultured leisure: one or two millionnaires, burly, stubby-nosed fellows, with practised eyes and Port-hinting faces: the class of men whose money was made thirty years back, who wear slouched clothes, and wield the coarser power in the States. They came out to the talk fit for a lady, on the open general field, in a lumbering, soggy way, the bank-note smell on every thought. The others, more unused to society, caught its habit better, she thought, belonging as they did to a higher order: they were practical mechanicians, and their profession called, she knew, for tolerably powerful and facile faculties of brain. The young lady, who was waiting too, though not so patiently as the others, amused herself in drawing them out and foiling them against each other, with a good deal of youthful tact, and want of charity, for a while. She grew tired at last.

"They are long coming, uncle," she said, rising from her chair.

"They are here, Mary: putting up the model in the back lobby for the last hour. Did you think it would be brought in here?"

"I don't know. Mr. Aikens is not here,"—glancing at the timepiece uneasily.

"He's always slow," said one of the machinists, patting the dog's head. "But I will rely more on his judgment of the engine than on my own. He'll not risk a dollar on it, either, if there's a chance of its proving a failure."

"It cannot be a failure," she said, impatiently, her peremptory brown eyes lighting.

"It has been tried before," said her uncle, cautiously,—"or the same basis of experiment,—substitution of compressed air for steam,—and it did not succeed. But it is the man you reason from, Mary, not the machine."

"I don't understand anything about the machine," in a lower voice, addressing the man she knew to possess most influence in the party. "But this Starke has given his life to it, and a life worth living, too. All the strength of soul and body that God gave him has gone into that model out yonder. He has been dragging it from place to place for years, half starving, to get it a chance of trial"—

"All which says nothing for the wheels and pulleys," dryly interrupted the man, with a critical look at her flushing and paling face.