Chapter 4

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_ Chapter IV

There Lois stood. Her small worn shoes hesitated on the threshold. She was gotten up in her poor little best--her dress of cheap brown wool stuff, with its skimpy velvet panel, her hat trimmed with a fold of silk and a little feather. She had curled her hair over her forehead, and tied on a bit of a lace veil. Distinct among all this forlorn and innocent furbishing was her face, with its pitiful, youthful prettiness, turning toward her mother and the lawyer with a very clutch of vision.

Mrs. Field got up. "Oh, it's you, Lois," she said, calmly. "You thought you'd come too, didn't you?"

Lois gasped out something.

Her mother turned to the lawyer. "I'll make you acquainted with Miss Lois Field," said she. "Lois, I'll make you acquainted with Mr. Tuxbury."

The lawyer was looking surprised, but he rose briskly to the level of the situation, and greeted the young girl with ready grace. "Your sister's daughter, I conclude," he said, smilingly, to Mrs. Field.

Mrs. Field set her mouth hard. She looked defiantly at him and said not one word. There was a fierce resolve in her heart that, come what would, she would not tell this last lie, and deny her daughter before her very face.

But the lawyer did not know she was silent. Not having heard any response, with the vanity of a deaf man, he assumed that she had given one, and so concealed his uncertainty.

"Yes, so I thought," said he, and went on flourishingly in his track of gracious reception.

Lois kept her eyes fixed on his like some little timid animal which suspects an enemy, and watches his eyes for the first impetus of a spring. Once or twice she said, "Yes, sir," faintly.

"Your niece does not look very strong," Mr. Tuxbury said to Mrs. Field.

"She ain't been feelin' very well this spring. I've been considerable worried about her," she answered, with harsh decision.

"Ah, I am very sorry to hear that. Well, she will soon recuperate if she stays here. Elliot is considered a very healthy place. We shall soon have her so hearty and rosy that her old friends won't be able to recognize her." He bowed with a smiling flourish to Lois.

Her lips trembled with a half-smile in response, but she looked more frightened than ever.

"Now, Mrs. Maxwell," said the lawyer, "you and your niece must positively remain and dine with us to-day, can't you?"

"I'm afraid it will put your sister out."

"Oh, no, indeed." The lawyer, however, had a slightly nonplussed expression. "She will be delighted. I will run over to the house, then, and tell her that you will stay, shall I not?"

"I hate to make her extra work," said Mrs. Field. That was her rural form of acceptance.

"You will not, I assure you. Don't distress yourself about that, Mrs. Maxwell."

Nevertheless, he was quite ill at ease as he traversed the yard. In his life with his sister there were exigencies during which he was obliged to descend from his platform of superiority. He foresaw the approach of one now.

Dinner was already served when he entered the dining-room, and his sister was setting the chairs around the table. They kept no servant.

"They are going to stay to dinner, I expect," he remarked, in a appealingly confidential tone.

His sister faced him with a jerk. She was very red from bending over the kitchen fire. "Who's goin' to stay? What do you mean, Daniel?"

"Why, Mrs. Maxwell and her niece."

"Her niece? I didn't know she had any niece. How did she get here?"

"She came this noon; followed along after her aunt, I suppose. I don't think she knew she was coming. She acted kind of surprised, I thought."

"You don't mean they're comin' in here to dinner?"

"I couldn't very well help asking them, you know." His tone was soft and conciliatory, and he kept a nervous eye upon his sister's face.

"Couldn't help askin' 'em! I ruther guess I could 'a' helped askin' 'em!"

"Jane, I hadn't any idea they'd stay."

"Well, you've gone an' done it, that's all I've got to say. Here they didn't come last night, when I got all ready for 'em, an' now they're comin', an' everything we've got is a picked-up dinner; there ain't enough of anything to go round. Flora!"

Her daughter Flora came in from the kitchen, with the children, in blue gingham aprons, at her heels.

"What is it, mother?" said she.

"Nothin', only your uncle Daniel has asked that Maxwell woman an' her niece to dinner, an' they're goin' to stay."

"My goodness! there isn't a thing for dinner!" said Flora, with a half-giggle. She was so young and healthy and happy that she could still see the joke in an annoyance.

Her uncle looked at her beseechingly. "Can't you manage somehow?" said he. "I'll go down to the store and buy something."

"Down to the store!" repeated his sister, contemptuously. "It's one o'clock now."

He looked at the kitchen clock, visible through the open door, and saw that it indicated half-past twelve, but he said nothing.

Flora was frowning reflectively, while her cheeks dimpled. "I tell you what I'll do, mother," said she. "I'll go over to Mrs. Bennett's and borrow a pie. I think we can get along if we have a pie."

"I ain't goin' round the neighborhood borrowin'; that ain't the way I'm accustomed to doin'."

"Land, mother! I'd just as soon ask Mrs. Bennett as not. She borrowed that bread in here the other night."

"There ain't enough steak to go round; there's jest that little piece we had left from yesterday, an' there ain't enough stew," said her mother, with persistent wrath.

"Well, if folks come in unexpectedly, they'll have to take what we've got and make the best of it." Flora tied a hat on over her light hair as she spoke. "I don't see any other way for them," she added, laughingly, going out of the door.

"It's all very well for folks to be easy," said her mother, with a sniff, "but when she's had as much as I've had, I guess she won't take it any easier than I do. I s'pose now I've got to take all these things off, an' put on a clean table-cloth."

"That one doesn't look very bad," ventured her brother, timidly.

"No, I shouldn't think it did! Look at that great coffee stain you got on it this mornin'! Havin' a couple of perfect strangers come in to dinner makes more work than a man knows anything about. Children, you take off the knives, an' pile 'em up on the other table. Be real careful."

"I wonder if the parlor's so I can ask them in there?" Mr. Tuxbury remarked, edging toward the door.

"I s'pose so. I ain't been in there this mornin'; I s'pose it's all right unless the children have been in an' cluttered it up."

"No, we ain't, gramma, we ain't," proclaimed the children in a shrill shout. They danced around the table, removing the knives and forks; their innocent, pinky faces were full of cherubic glee. This occasion was, metaphorically speaking, a whole flock of jubilant infantile larks for them. They loved company with all their souls, and they also felt always a pleasant titillation of their youthful spirits when they saw their grandmother in perturbation. Unless, indeed, they themselves were the cause of it, when it acquired a personal force which rendered it not so entertaining.

Soon, however, a remark of their grandmother's caused their buoyant spirits to realize that there was a force of gravitation for all here below.

"I don't know but you children will have to wait," said she.

There was an instantaneous wail of dismay, the pinky faces elongated, the blue eyes scowled sulkily. "Oh, gramma, we don't want to wait! Can't we sit down with the others? Say, gramma, can't we? Can't we sit down with the others?"

"Of course you can sit down with the others. Don't make such a racket, children." That was their mother coming in, good-natured and triumphant, with the pie.

"I don't know whether they can or not," said their grandmother. "I ain't put in an extra leaf; this table-cloth wa'n't long enough, an' I wa'n't goin' to have the big table-cloth to do up for all the Maxwells in creation."

"Oh, there's room enough," Flora said, easily. "I can squeeze them in beside me. Put the napkins round, children, and stop teasing. Didn't I get a beautiful pie?"

"What kind is it?"

"Squash."

"An' our squashes are all gone, an' I've got to buy one to pay her back. I should have thought you'd known better, Flora."

"It was all the kind she had. I couldn't help it. Squashes don't cost much, mother."

"They cost something, an' I've got all them dried apples to use up for pies."

"Have they come in?" asked Flora, with happy unconcern about the cost of squashes and the utilization of dried apples.

"Yes, I s'pose so. I thought I heard Daniel taking 'em in the front door. I s'pose they're in the parlor."

"You ought to go in a minute, hadn't you?"

"I s'pose so," replied Mrs. Lowe, with a sigh of fierce resignation.

"I'll finish setting the things on the table, and you go in. Take off your apron."

"This dress don't look fit."

"Yes, it does, too; it's clean. Run along."

Mrs. Lowe smoothed her sparse hair severely at the kitchen looking-glass; then she advanced upon the parlor with the air of a pacific grenadier. The children were following slyly in her wake, but their mother caught sight of them and pulled them back.

Mr. Tuxbury had been sitting in the parlor with his guests, trying his best to entertain them. He had gotten out the photograph album for Lois, and a book of views in the Holy Land for her mother. If he had felt in considerable haste to escape from his sister's indignation and return to his visitors, they had been equally anxious for him to come.

When Mrs. Field and her daughter were left alone in the office, their first sensation was that of actual terror of each other.

Mrs. Field concealed hers well enough. She sat up without a tremor in her unbending back, and looked out of the office door, which the lawyer had left open. Just opposite the door, out on the sidewalk, two men stood talking. She kept her eyes fastened upon them.

"What time did you start?" said she presently, in a harsh voice, which seemed to rudely shock the stillness. She did not turn her eyes.

"I--came--on the first--train," answered Lois, pantingly. Once in a while she stole furtive, wildly questioning glances at her mother, but her mother never met them. She continued to look at the talking men on the sidewalk.

"Mother," began Lois finally, in a desperate voice. But just then Mr. Tuxbury had reappeared, and conducted them to his parlor.

The parlor had lace curtains and a Brussles carpet, and looked ornate to Mrs. Field and Lois. The chairs were covered with green plush. The two women sat timidly on the yielding cushions, and gazed during the pauses at the large flower pattern on the carpet. All this fine furniture was, in fact, Mrs. Lowe's; when she had given up her own home, and come to live with her brother, she had brought it with her.

Both of the guests arose awkwardly, Mrs. Field first and Lois after her, when Mrs. Lowe entered, and the lawyer introduced them.

"I'm happy to make your acquaintance," said Mrs. Field.

"I believe I've seen you two or three times when you was here years ago," said Mrs. Lowe, standing before her straight and tall in her faded calico gown, which fitted her uncompromisingly like a cuirass. Mrs. Lowe's gowns, no matter how thin and faded, always fitted her in that way. Stretched over her long flat-chested figure, they seemed to acquire the consistency of armor. "You ain't changed any as I can see," she went on, as she got scarcely any response to her first remark. "I should have known you anywhere. It's a pleasant day, ain't it?"

"Real pleasant," replied Mrs. Field. Mrs. Lowe sat down in one of the plush chairs. To seat herself for a few minutes before announcing dinner was, she supposed, a matter of etiquette. She held up her long rasped chin with a curt air, and, in spite of herself, her voice also was curt. She was too thorough a New England woman to play with any success softening lights over the steel of her character. She disdained to, and she was also unable to. She was not pleased to receive these unexpected guests, and she showed it.

As soon as she thought it decently practicable, she gave a significant look at her brother and arose. "I guess we'll walk out to dinner now," said she, with solemn embarrassment. Mrs. Lowe had nothing of her brother's ease of manner; indeed, she entertained a covert scorn for it. "Daniel _can_ be dreadful smooth an' fine when he sets out," she sometimes remarked to her daughter. The lawyer's suave manner seemed to her downrightness to border upon affectation. She, however, had a certain respect for it as the probable outcome of his superior education.

She marched ahead stiffly now, and left her brother to his flourishing seconding of her announcement. Flora and the children received them beamingly when they entered the dining-room. Flora was quite sure that she remembered Mrs. Maxwell, she was glad to see her, and she was glad to see Lois, and they would please sit right "here," and "here." She had taken off the children's pinafores and washed their faces, and they stood aloof in little starched and embroidered frocks, with their cheeks pinker than ever.

Flora seated one on each side of her, as she had said. "Now, you must be good and not tease," she whispered admonishingly, and their blue eyes stared back at her with innocent gravity, and they folded their small hands demurely.

Nevertheless, it was through them that the whole dignity of the meal was lost. If they had not been present, it would have passed off with a strong undercurrent of uneasiness and discomfort, yet with composure. Mr. Tuxbury would have helped the guests to beefsteak, and the rest of the family would have preferred the warmed-up veal stew. Or had the guests looked approvingly at the stew, the scanty portion of beefsteak would have satisfied the furthest desires of the family. But the perfect understanding among the adults did not extend to the two little girls. They leaned forward, with their red lips parted, and watched their uncle anxiously as he carved the beefsteak. There was evidently not much of it, and their anxiety grew. When it was separated into three portions, two of which were dispensed to the guests, and the other, having been declined by their grandmother and mother, was appropriated by their uncle, anxiety lapsed into certainty.

"I want some beefsteak!" wailed each, in wofully injured tones.

Mr. Tuxbury set his mouth hard, and pushed his plate with a jerk toward his niece. Her face was very red, but she took it--she was aware there was no other course open--divided the meat impartially, and gave each child a piece with a surreptitious thump.

Mr. Tuxbury, with a moodily knitted forehead and a smiling mouth, asked the guests miserably if they would have some veal stew. It was perfectly evident that if they accepted, there would be nothing whatever left for the family to eat. They declined in terrified haste; indeed, both Lois and her mother had been impelled to pass their portions of beefsteak over to the children, but they had not dared.

The children wished for veal stew also, and when they had eaten their meagre spoonfuls, clamored persistently for more.

"There isn't any more," whispered their mother, with two little vigorous side-shakes. "If you don't keep still, I shall take you away from the table. Ain't you ashamed?"

Then the little girls pouted and sniffed, but warily, lest the threat be carried into effect.

The rest of the family tried to ignore the embarrassing situation and converse easily with the guests, but it was a difficult undertaking.

Lois bent miserably over her plate, and every question appeared to shock her painfully. She seemed an obstinately bashful young girl, to whom it was useless to talk. Mrs. Field replied at length to all interrogations with a certain quiet hardness, which had come into her manner since her daughter's arrival, but she never started upon a subject of her own accord.

It was a relief to every one when the meagre dinner lapsed into the borrowed pie. Mrs. Low cut it carefully into the regulation six pieces, while the children as carefully counted the people and watched the distribution. The result was not satisfactory. The older little girl, whose sense of injury was well developed, set up a shrill demand.

"I want a piece of Mis' Bennett's pie," said she. "Mother, I want a piece of Mis' Bennett's pie!"

The younger, viewing the one piece of pie remaining in the plate and her clamorous sister, raised her own jealous little pipe. "I want a piece of Mis' Bennett's pie," she proclaimed, pulling her mother's sleeve. "Mother, can't I have a piece of Mis' Bennett's pie?"

Flora's face was very red, and her mouth was twitching. She hastily pushed her own pie to the elder child, and gave the last piece on the plate to the younger. Their grandmother frowned on them like a rock, but they ate their pie unconcernedly.

"I think Mis' Bennett's pie is a good deal better than grandma's," said the younger little girl, smacking her lips contemplatively; and Flora gave a half-chuckle, while her mother's severity of mien so deepened that she seemed to cast an actual shadow.

"Now, Flora, I tell you what 'tis," said she, when the meal was at last over and the guests were gone--they took their leave very soon afterward--"if you don't punish them children, I shall."

There was a wail of terror from the little girls. "Oh, mother, you do it, you do it!" cried they.

Flora giggled audibly.

"You'll just spoil them children," said her mother, severely; "you ought to be ashamed of yourself, Flora."

Flora tried to draw her face into gravity. "Go right upstairs, children," said she. "It's so funny, I can't help it," she whispered, with another furtive giggle.

"I don't see anything very funny in children's actin' the way they have all dinner-time."

The children thumped merrily over the stairs. It was clear that they stood in no great fear of their mother's chastisement. They knew by experience that her hand was very soft, and the force of its fall tempered by mirth and tender considerateness; their grandmother's fleshless and muscular old palm was another matter.

Soon after Flora followed them there was a series of arduous cries, apparently maintained more from a childish sense of the fitness of things than from any actual stress of pain. They soon ceased.

"She ain't half whipped 'em," Mrs. Lowe, who was listening downstairs, said to herself.

The lawyer was in his office; he had intrenched himself there as soon as possible, covering his retreat with the departure of his guests.

Mrs. Field and Lois, removed from it all the distance of tragedy from comedy, were walking up the street to the Maxwell house. Mrs. Field stalked ahead with her resolute stiffness; Lois followed after her, keeping always several paces behind. No matter how often Mrs. Field, sternly conscious of it, slackened her own pace, Lois never gained upon her.

When they reached the gate at the entrance of the Maxwell grounds, and Mrs. Field stopped, Lois spoke up.

"What place is this?" said she, in a defiantly timorous voice.

"The Maxwell house," replied her mother, shortly, turning up the walk.

"Are you going in here?"

"Of course I am."

"Well, I ain't going in one step."

Mrs. Field turned and faced her. "Lois," said she, "if you want to go away an' desert the mother that's showin' herself willin' to die for you, you can."

Lois said not another word. She turned in at the gate, with her eyes fixed upon her mother's face.

"I'll tell you about it when we get up to the house," said her mother, with appealing conciliation.

Lois slunk mutely behind her again. Her eyes were full of the impulse of flight when she watched her mother unlock the house door, but she followed her in.

Her mother led the way into the sitting-room. "Sit down," said she.

And Lois sat down in the nearest chair. She never took her eyes off her mother.

Mrs. Field took off her bonnet and shawl. She folded the shawl carefully in the creases, and laid it on the table. She pulled up a curtain. Then she turned, and confronted steadily her daughter's eyes. The whole house to her was full of the clamor of their questioning. "Now, Lois," said Mrs. Field, "I'm goin' to tell you about this. I s'pose you think it's funny."

"I don't know what to think of it," said Lois, in a dry voice.

"I don't s'pose you do. Well, I'm goin' to tell you. You know, I s'pose, that Mr. Tuxbury took me for your aunt Esther. You heard him call me Mis' Maxwell?"

Lois nodded; her dilated eyes never wavered from her mother's face.

"I s'pose you heard what he was sayin' to me when you come in. Lois, I didn't tell him I was your aunt Esther. The minute I come in, he took me for her, an' Mis' Henry Maxwell come into his office, an' she did, and so did Mr. Tuxbury's sister. I wa'n't goin' to tell them I wa'n't her."

The impulse of flight in Lois' watchful eyes became so strong that it seemed almost to communicate to her muscles. With her face still turned toward her mother, she appeared to be fleeing from her.

Mrs. Field stood her ground stanchly. "No, I wa'n't," she went on. "An' I'll tell you why. I'm goin' to have that fifteen hundred dollars of your poor father's earnin's that I lent your uncle out of this property, an' this is all the way to do it, an' I'm goin' to do it."

"I thought," gasped Lois--"I thought maybe it belonged to us anyway if Aunt Esther was dead."

"It didn't. The money was all left to old Mr. Maxwell's niece in case Esther died first."

"Couldn't you have asked the lawyer about the fifteen hundred dollars? Wouldn't he have given you some? O mother!"

"I was goin' to if he hadn't took me for her, but it wouldn't have done any good. They wouldn't have been obliged to pay it, an' folks ain't fond of payin' over money when they ain't obliged to. I'd been a fool to have asked him after he took me for her."

"Then--you'd got this--all planned?"

Her mother took her up sharply.

"No, I hadn't got it all planned," said she. "I don't deny it come into my head. I knew how much folks said I looked like Esther, but I didn't go so far as to plan it; there needn't anybody say I did."

"You ain't going to take the money?"

"I'm goin' to take that fifteen hundred dollars out of it."

"Mother, you ain't going to stay here, and make folks think you're Aunt Esther?"

"Yes, I am."

Then all Lois' horror and terror manifested themselves in one cry--"O mother!"

Mrs. Field never flinched. "If you want to act so an' feel so about it, you can," said she. "Your mother is some older than you, an' she knows what is right jest about as well as you can tell her. I've thought it all over. That fifteen hundred dollars was money your poor father worked hard to earn. I lent it to your uncle Edward, an' he lost it. I never see a dollar of it afterward. He never paid me a cent of interest money. It ain't anything more'n fair that I should be paid for it out of his father's property. If poor Esther had lived, the money'd gone to her, an' she'd paid me fast enough. Now the way's opened for me to get it, I ain't goin' to let it go. Talk about it's bein' right, if it ain't right to stoop down an' pick up anybody's just dues, I don't know what right is, for my part."

"Mother!"

"What say?"

"You ain't going to live here in this house, and not go back to Green River?"

"I don't see any need of goin' back to Green River. This is a 'nough sight prettier place than Green River. Now you're down here, I don't see any sense in layin' out money to go back at all. Mandy'll send our things down."

"You don't mean to stay right along here in this house, and not go back to Green River at all?"

"I don't see why it ain't jest as well. You'd better take off your things an' lay down a little while on that sofa there, an' get rested."

Lois seldom cried, but she burst out now in a piteous wail. "O mother," sobbed she, "what does it mean? I can't-- What does it mean? Oh, I'm so frightened! Mother, you frighten me so! What does it mean?"

Her mother went up to her, and stood close at her side. "Lois," said she, with trembling solemnity, "can't you trust mother?"

"O mother, I don't know! I don't know! You frighten me dreadfully." Lois shrank away from her mother as she wept.

Mrs. Field stood over her, but she did not offer to touch her. Indeed, this New England mother and daughter rarely or never caressed each other. "Lois, dear child, mother don't want you to feel so. Oh, you dear child, you dear child, you don't know what mother's goin' through. But it ain't anything to you. Lois, you remember that; it ain't anything you've done. It's all my doin's. I'm jest goin' to get that money back. An' it's right I should. Don't you worry nothin' about it. Now take your hat off, an' let mother tuck you up on the sofa."

Lois, sobbing still, began pulling off her hat mechanically. Her mother got a pillow, and she lay down on the sofa, turning her face to the wall with another outburst of tears. Her mother spread her black shawl carefully over her.

"Now you lay here still, an' get rested," said she. "I'm goin' out in the kitchen, an' see if I can't start up a fire an' get something for supper."

Mrs. Field went out of the room. Soon her tall black figure sped stealthily past the windows out of the yard. She found a grocery store, and purchased some small necessaries. There were groceries already in the pantry at the Maxwell house. She had spied them, but would not touch a single article. She bought some tea, and when she returned, replaced the drawing she had taken that morning from the Maxwell caddy.

The old woman's will, always vigorous, never giving place to another except through its own choice, now whipped by this great stress into a fierce impetus, carried her daughter's, strong as it was for a young girl, before it. Lois lay quietly on the sofa. When her mother called her, she went out in the kitchen and ate her supper.

They retired early. Lois lay on the sofa until her mother came in and stood over her with a lighted lamp.

"I guess you'd better get up and go to bed now, Lois," said she. "I'm goin' myself, if it is early. I'm pretty tired."

And Lois stirred herself wearily and got up.

There were two adjoining bedrooms opening out of the sitting-room. Mrs. Field had prepared the beds that afternoon. "I thought we'd better sleep in here," said she, leading the way to them.

Lois had the inner room. After the lamp was blown out and everything was dark, her mother heard a soft stir and the pat of a naked foot in there, then she heard the door swing to with a cautious creak and the bolt slide. She knew with a great pang, that Lois had locked her door against her mother. _

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