Part 39 (1/2)

”I didn't know,” he said. ”I hadn't seen her. How should I know she was like you? How should I know if he lost her he mightn't be making a mistake? Yes, they're engaged. I sha'n't be at the wedding. I'm going abroad, but I shall send my blessing. To you, too, Ellen. Good-by. G.o.d bless you.”

Then he had walked out of the hall, as alien, with his middle-aged robustness, as the mortal in fairy revelry; and Ellen, knowing her towns-people were looking at her in kindly interest, stood with dignity and yet a curious new consciousness of treasured happiness, as if she had a secret to think over, and a solving of perplexities.

Isabel Martin dropped out of her place, where she had been talking with Andrew Hall, and, forgetting in her haste the consistency of her part, ran over to her. Isabel, out of her abiding mischief, had dressed herself for a dullard's part. She had thought at first of being an old witch-woman and telling fortunes, but instead she had put on pious black alpaca and a portentous cap, and dropped her darting glances. To Andrew Hall, who was a portly Quaker in the dress of uncle Ephraim long since dead, she seemed as sweet as girlhood and as restful as his own mother.

Andrew had been her servitor for almost as many years as they had lived; but she had so flouted him, so called upon him for impossible chivalries, out of the wantonness of her fancy, that he had sometimes confided to himself, in the darkest of nights when he woke to think of her, that Isabel Martin was enough to make you hang yourself, and he wished he never had set eyes on her. Yet she was the major part of his life, and Andrew knew it. Now he followed her more slowly, and was by at the instant of her saying,--

”O Ellen, you couldn't go over across the orchard, could you, an' see if Maggie L.'s got the water boilin' for the coffee? I'm 'most afraid to go alone.”

Ellen, waking from her dream, looked at her and smiled. She knew Isabel's tender purposes. This was meant to take her away from curious though tolerant eyes and give her a moment to wipe out the world of dreaming for the world of men.

”No,” she said softly. ”You don't need to.”

”You let me go,” said Andrew gallantly. ”I can see if it's bilin' an'

come back an' tell ye.”

”You!” said Isabel, abjuring her disguise, to rally him. ”You'd be afraid. Come, Ellen.”

She linked an arm in Ellen's, and falling at once into her part of sober age, paced with her from the hall. Andrew, constrained in a way he hardly understood himself, was following them, but in their woman's community of silent understanding they took no notice of him. Outside, the night was soft and welcoming, unreal after the light and color, an enchanted wilderness of moonlight splendor. They had crossed the road to the bench under the old poplar, and there Ellen sat down and drew a breath of excitement and gladness to be free to think. The moonlight seemed still brighter, sifting down the sky-s.p.a.ces, and the two women together looked up at it through the poplar branches and were exalted by that inexplicable sense of the certainty that things come true.

Dreams--that was what their minds were seeking pa.s.sionately--and dreams come true.

”Ain't it wonderful?” Isabel asked softly.

”Yes,” said Ellen, in the same hushed tone, ”it's wonderful.”

”I'll leave you here by yourself an' run acrost the orchard,” said Isabel, in her other careless voice. ”When I come back, I'll stop here an' we'll go in together. Why, Andrew, you here?”

”You said you was afraid,” he answered. ”I'll go acrost with you.”

”All right,” said Isabel, with her kindest laugh, not the teasing one that made him hate her while he thought how bright and dear she was.

”Come take gran'ma acrost the orchard. Don't let anything happen to her.”

They stepped over the wall and made their way along the little path by the grape arbor. The fragrance of fruit was sweet, and the world seemed filled with it.

”It's a pretty time o' year,” said Andrew tremblingly.

”Yes.”

”A kind of a time same 's this is to-night makes it seem as if life was pretty short. Be past before you know it.”

”Yes.”

She, too, spoke tremulously, and his heart went out to her.

”O Isabel,” he said, ”when you're like this, same as you are to-night, there ain't a livin' creatur' that's as nice as you be.”

Isabel laughed. It was an echo of her flouting laugh, yet there was a little catch in the middle of it.

”There!” he said, with discontentment. ”Now you're just as you be half the time, an' I could shake you for it. Sometimes seems to me I could kill you.”