"what's that dry-goods case in the front entry?" asked elihu meade.
he had sunk into his particular chair by the kitchen stove, and was drawing off his boots with the luxurious slowness of one whose day's work is done and who may sit by expectant while fragrant warm delights are simmering for supper. his wife, amarita by name, stood at the stove, piloting apple turnovers in a pool of fat. at a first glance she and her husband seemed an ill-matched pair, he with a thin face and precise patch of whisker at the ear, a noticeable and general meagreness of build, and she dark and small, with a face flashing vivid intelligence. elihu's mother—a large, loosely made, blond old lady—sat by the window, out of range of the lamplight even, knitting by feeling, and doubling her pleasures through keeping her glance out of the window, where a new moon hung.
while she felt the warmth of indoor comfort wafting about her, amarita cast up a hesitating yet altogether happy look at her husband. she [342]knew from old habit that she must choose her time of approach, but the warmth and the plenitude of supper and her own inner enchantment with what she had to tell convinced her against reason that the time was now.
"why," she began, "you see 'twas this way."
mrs. meade the elder, known as "old mis' meade," gave a majestic clearing of her throat. she brought her gaze indoors and bent a frowning glance on the two at the stove. a shade of vexation passed over her face, grotesquely elongating the downward-dropping lines.
"rita," she called, in what seemed warning, "you come here a minute. ain't i dropped a stitch?"
rita responded at once, bending over the stocking ostentatiously displayed.
"you let me take it to the light," she began; but old mis' meade laid thumb and finger on her apron, and having caught her daughter-in-law's eye, made mysterious grimaces at her. amarita, the knitting in her hand, stared frankly back, and the old lady, forced to be explicit, bade her in a mumbling tone:—
"wait till he's through his supper. it's no time now. there!" she continued, with a calculated clearness, "you give it back. i guess i didn't drop it, after all. your fat's burnin'. ketch it off, elihu, won't ye?"
[343]the imperiled fat made a diversion, and then supper was on the table, and old mis' meade moved away from the window and brought her great bulk over to partake of turnovers. there was a long silence while tea was passed and the turnovers were pronounced upon by the acquisition that is more eloquent than words. but after elihu had finished his fifth and last, he pushed his cup away with solemn satisfaction and asked his wife across the table:—
"what's that packin'-case out in the front entry?"
old mis' meade gave a smothered ejaculation of discouragement, but amarita looked up with the brightest eyes.
she was having a moment of perfect domestic peace, when all she did seemed to bear fruitage in the satisfaction of hunger and kindred needs, and it innocently seemed to her as if her compensating pleasure was about to come. she gazed straight at her husband, her eyes darkening with the pleasure in them.
"why," said she, "that's the 'master minds of history.'"
elihu bent a frowning brow upon her.
"the 'master minds of history,'" she repeated. "the agent was here this afternoon—"
"you don't think the mice'll git at them pies up in the blue chist, do ye?" inquired old mis' [344]meade, fatuous in a desperate seeking to direct the talk.
amarita gave her a passing glance of wonder.
"why, no," she said. "they couldn't get in to save their little souls. you see"—she turned again to elihu—"the agent was here this afternoon—"
old mis' meade almost groaned, and went away to her bedroom, as if she could not endure the hearing of the coming contest or to see the slain.
"what agent?" asked elihu.
he had gone back to his seat by the fire, and amarita, answering, stood with her hand upon the devastated table.
"why, the book agent. he come in a buggy, and he had this set with him."
"set o' what?"
"why, set o' books. he's takin' orders for 'em, and this was a set he brought along under the seat, thinkin' somebody, the minister or somebody that knew what's what, would buy it right out. there's twelve volumes, and they're a dollar and eighty-seven a volume, and there's illustrations, and it's all printed in the clearest type."
she paused, flushed and expectant, and elihu stared at her.
"a dollar and eighty-seven cents!" he repeated. [345]"you ain't gone and put your name down for twelve books, a dollar and eighty-seven cents apiece?"
"why, no," said amarita. "course i ain't. i didn't have the money, and so i told him. i would, in a minute, if i'd had it."
"well, what's the packin'-case here for?" inquired elihu slowly, while his mind labored.
"why, he was possessed to leave it. 'you look over the volumes,' he says, 'and read 'em all you want to, and if you don't feel to subscribe then, it sha'n't cost you a cent.' and he's comin' along here pretty soon, and he's goin' to call, and if we don't conclude to keep 'em, he'll take 'em right back."
"my king!" said elihu. he looked at her in complete discouragement, and amarita returned his gaze with one bespeaking a conviction of her own innocence. "don't ye know no better'n that? take 'em away! all the takin' away he'll do'll be in a hog's eye. he'll say you bought 'em, and ain't paid for 'em, and 'long about the first o' the month he'll send in a bill for twelve books at a dollar and eighty-seven cents apiece."
amarita made a picture of childlike misery. her eyes had the piteous look of coming tears, and she swallowed once or twice before speech was possible.
[346]"o elihu," she breathed, "you don't really s'pose that, do you?"
"course he will," said elihu. "that's the way they do—come drivin' along a time o' day when there's no menfolks to home, and take in the womenfolks. they know women ain't got no business trainin'. how do they know it? because they've tried it over 'n' over, and every time they've come out ahead."
the tears were dropping now, and amarita walked hastily away to conceal them, and got down her dish-pan, although the table was not yet cleared. by the time she had turned from the sink again, a shadow of her hopefulness came wanly back.
"i don't believe he's that kind of a fellow," she faltered. "he talked real fair. i thought i should admire to look 'em over. i thought maybe we could read some out loud in the evenin', while your mother knit."
"'talk fair!' course he talked fair," said elihu. "that's a part on 't. i'll bet a dollar if you's in a court o' law you couldn't remember what he said."
"i could the sense of it."
"that's it! why, don't ye know, when anything's business, it's got to be jest so and no other way? 'tain't surprisin' you shouldn't. womenfolks ain't called on to do brain work, [347]any to speak of—well, keep school they may, and a matter o' that—but when it comes to business—d'ye have any witnesses?"
"no," said amarita, in a small voice.
"well, you've done about as bad for yourself as ye could, fur 's i can see. now, you hearken to me. you leave that packin'-case where he set it, and don't you move it so much as a hair to the right or the left, and don't you lift the cover. and if that feller ever darkens these doors, you come and call me."
then elihu rose and took a candle and went off to his desk in the sitting-room, and amarita cleared the table with swift, sweeping motions, as if she longed to hurl the dishes from her. old mis' meade came heavily back from her bedroom.
"well," said she, in the scorn sprung from experience, "i never seen sich actions. terrible time, an' nobody to it! what made ye tell him?"
amarita returned no answer. she was washing dishes now, with no noise, setting down each article softly, yet with the same air of longing to destroy.
"witnesses!" old mis' meade grumbled, settling to her work by the window. "if elihu's the size he used to be, i'd show him how much womenfolks knew about business. if you want [348]one o' them books to read to-night, you step into the front entry an' pick ye out one. i'll stand by ye."
still amarita made no answer. she was not thinking of the books. swift as wood-creatures coursing on the track of prey, her mind was racing over the field of her life with elihu and pinning down the mistakes he had made. she had never seemed to see them, but not one of them had escaped her. there was the day when a traveling salesman had sold him the onion seed that never came up, and the other one when he had bought old white of the peddler, and seen him go lame after a two-mile drive, and when he dated a note on sunday and the school-teacher had laughed. at first amarita had not merely ignored his errors. she had, indeed, shut her eyes upon them and turned quickly away; but as it became apparent that elihu was keeping a record of her impulsive, random deeds and drawing data from them, so she began to see the list of his, and turned to it now and then, when he found her foolish, to read it over in a passionate self-comparison.
when the dishes were done she sat down to her sewing, outwardly calm, but conscious of that hot flush in her cheeks and of her quickly beating heart. old mis' meade muttered a little as she knit, and cast her son a hostile glance [349]from time to time. but elihu was happily impervious to criticism. he spread a sheet of paper on the table, and sat down to it with the air of a schoolboy who is about to square his elbows and perhaps put out a rhythmic tongue.
"where's my two-foot rule?" he inquired of amarita.
"in your t'other trousers," she answered, sewing swiftly, without looking up.
elihu glanced at her in a mild surprise, and his mother chuckled. she was devoted to her son, and more or less overshadowed by his prerogative as "menfolks" born to absorb the cream of things; but the elderly good sense in her was alive to the certainty that if amarita had not been so yielding, elihu would never have been so bumptious.
after he had risen and gone off rather helplessly to seek his t'other trousers, amarita did glance after him with a tentative movement from her chair. it almost seemed as if she repented and meant to go on the quest herself. old mis' meade, translating this, held her breath and waited; but amarita only sighed and took a needleful of thread. then elihu returned with the rule and a stubby pencil, and all the evening long he drew lines and held the paper at arm's length and frowned at what he saw. old mis' meade was in the habit of going to bed before [350]the others, and to-night she paused, candle in hand, to interrogate him.
"elihu!"
"what say?" her son returned. he was again regarding the rectangular patterns on his page, in some dissatisfaction and yet with pleasure, too. it was the look of one who makes.
"what under the sun you doin' of?" asked the old lady. "what you rulin' off? makes me as nervous as a witch."
elihu laid down his paper from that removed survey and leaned back in his chair. it seemed to add some richness to his task to have it noticed.
"well," said he, "there's goin' to be a town meetin' next wednesday, to take a vote on that money judge green left for the old folks' home."
"yes, yes," said his mother. "i know that. come, hurry up. this candle's in a draught."
"well," said elihu, "we've talked it over, more or less, most on us, and we've come to the conclusion it's only a bill o' cost to go hirin' city architects to plan out the job. all we want's a good square house, and i thought i'd draw out a plan o' one and submit it to the meetin'."
"o elihu!" said amarita, in a tone of generous awe. "you think you could?"
"think?" said elihu. "no, i don't think. i [351]know it. mebbe i couldn't draw out a house with cubelows and piazzas and jogs and the like o' that, but that ain't what we've got in mind. it's a good old-fashioned house, and i s'pose any man of us could do it, only nobody's got the nerve to try. so i took it into my head to be the one."
"well," said his mother skeptically, "mebbe you can an' mebbe you can't. good-night, all."
but amarita leaned forward across the table, her eager eyes upon the paper. she had forgotten her resentment. it was happiness to her to see elihu doing what he liked and succeeding in it.
"o elihu," said she, "show it to me, won't you? tell me what the rooms are."
but he was rolling up his work.
"no," he said; "wait till i get a little further along. then i will. i'm going to the street and buy me a sheet or two o' cardboard to-morrer."
but they talked cozily about it for a half-hour, and when elihu rose to wind the clock they were both convinced that he was a great man indeed.
all that week elihu worked over his plan, and when he had at last set it accurately down on the cover of a bandbox, as a preliminary to drafting it out fair and large, he showed it to his wife. they had put their heads together over [352]it at the table, when elihu caught sight of simeon eldridge bringing him a cord of pine limbs.
"you wait a minute," he adjured amarita. "i got to help him unload. i'll show it to you when i come in."
but amarita pored over it by herself, and old mis' meade, at the window, knit and watched for the passing. it was a bright day, and it seemed reasonable that at least two wagons might go by.
"don't you want i should bring it over there," said amarita, at length, "and let you look at it?"
"law, no!" old mis' meade responded, with the ruthlessness of one whose mind is not on futures. "i guess i can wait till they've begun to hew out their underpinnin'."
"ain't it remarkable he can do a thing like that?"
"he ain't done it yet," said the old lady sagely. "i'll b'lieve it when i'm called to the raisin'."
amarita flushed.
"i don't see what does make you cry him down so," she declared, with a rare resentment. "seems if you didn't want to allow he can do the least thing out o' the common."
"well," said the old lady, "i dunno 's he can. [353]there, amarita!" she threw caution from her as far as it would fly. "i guess i set by elihu enough, an' more too, but it does go ag'inst the grain to see you makin' out he's the greatest man that ever stepped. 'twon't be long before ye can't live with him. can't either of us!"
amarita was silent, staring straight at the old lady, who glanced up presently and blinked at her.
"you goin' to let them books set there in the front entry?" she inquired, as if her point of attack had shifted.
"why, yes, i s'pose so," faltered amarita.
"don't ye want to peek into 'em an' see what they be?"
"why, yes; but i don't want to do anything to get elihu into trouble about 'em. i s'pose i was kinder foolish to believe what the man said."
"foolish!" retorted the old lady, with vigor. "course you was foolish. everybody's foolish one time out o' three. that's about the only thing there's no patent on."
"well, i s'pose folks do get into trouble doin' things wrong-end-to," said amarita.
she felt as if she were defending elihu in his censorship.
"why, yes! nobody says they don't. let 'em git in an' let 'em git out ag'in. it ain't doin' foolish things or not doin' 'em i complain of. it's [354]elihu's settin' himself up to be the only human creatur' that never stepped inside of a glass house. law! if he did but know it, he's got a ninety-nine-year lease o' one, an' if he could git it into his head how plain i can glimpse him through the walls, a surpriseder man you never'd see. elihu's as good a boy as ever stepped; but if he could be took down a peg—an' i shouldn't care if 'twas before the whole township, too—he'd be worth more by half than he is to-day. law! you'd ought to seen him a hundred years ago or more, arter i gi'n him a good spankin'. butter wouldn't melt in his mouth."
"oh, don't! he's comin'," amarita begged her.
but he was not coming, and for an hour amarita dwelt upon the plans. her eyes grew bright and her cheeks flushed. once she pushed her pretty hair back from her forehead and looked up at the old lady, as if she had impulsive things to say. but she did not speak, and turning back to the plans, she went absorbedly over them again. old mis' meade watched her scornfully, and yet tenderly, too. if ever a woman was a fool over a man, she reasoned, amarita was that fool; but in her heart she would not have had it otherwise.
now that the plans were virtually finished, elihu sat over them at an hour's stretch, testing [355]and measuring in an extreme of accuracy. amarita watched him, with that bright anticipation in her face; and old mis' meade, her eyes intermittently upon them, thought the long thoughts of age, half scornful, half sympathizing, and wondered again how any woman could be so lost in admiration over a man.
at last it was the day appointed for town meeting, and elihu was at his task for the last time, making a fair copy for his townsmen's eyes. it was about four in the afternoon, and the smell of hot apple-sauce was in the air. amarita meant to have supper early, so that she could give her mind untrammeled to getting her husband into his bosomed shirt and starting him on his quest. but as she moved back and forth at her tasks she watched him, and her eyes glittered. old mis' meade noted the excitement of her air and the double tinge of color in her cheeks.
"what's the matter, rita?" she asked kindly, when amarita stood for a moment by the table between the front windows, frowning with the care she was giving to sewing a button on a wristband. "ain't you kinder feverish?"
amarita started—almost, it might have been, with some inner consciousness not to be given away.
"oh no," said she. "i ain't feverish, mother [356]meade. maybe i'm kinder flurried, elihu's goin' out and all."
"goin' to take the womenfolks along with ye, elihu?" called the old lady, a satirical note beating into her voice.
elihu looked up absently from his paper.
"why," said he, with a leniency slightly tinctured by the impatience responsive to a foolish question, "it's jest a town meetin', same as any other. we're goin' to take action on the old folks' home."
"take action?" repeated old mis' meade. "oh, that's it, is it? well, rita 'n' i'll stay to home an' take action on the 'master minds o' history.' this is as good a night as any. mebbe there's a few womenfolks in there—enough for pepper 'n' salt—if they ain't bound for town meetin'."
elihu drew the long breath which is the due of happily completed toil. he began to roll up his plans. amarita ran to him and looked over his shoulder.
"you got 'em done?" she asked.
the red in her cheeks had heightened. her voice came huskily. old mis' meade glanced at her, a sharp and quick survey. elihu indulgently unrolled his paper and spread it on the desk.
"yes," said he, "i got 'em done."
"o elihu!" breathed his wife. she bent above [357]the page, and in the fever of her interest seemed to pounce on it and scurry over it. "you goin' to show it to the town meetin'?"
"course i be," said elihu, with a modest pride. "that's what i made it for."
amarita straightened.
"well," said she. her voice was hard through what might have been an accepted purpose. "you may as well shave you. we'll have supper early."
supper was a silent meal that night. elihu was pondering on his triumph as a valuable citizen, and what amarita thought no one could at that moment have foretold. she did not eat, but she drank her tea in hasty swallows, and burned her mouth with it. that, the old lady guessed, was why the tears came once or twice into her eyes. amarita, her mother-in-law judged, had been staying indoors too much through the snowy weather, while elihu worked on his plans. there had been no sleigh-rides, only the necessary driving to the street.
old mis' meade had a little scheme in view, and now she brought it forth; it was a species of compensation for stay-at-homes during the absence of their lawful head for his two or three hours of civic duty.
"what if you should bring in a good big knot 'fore you go," she adjured him, "an' rita 'n' i'll [358]have us a fire in the fireplace. i dunno why, but seems if i didn't want to set in the kitchen to-night. then by the time you come home there'll be a good bed o' coals, an' you can toast your feet 'fore you go to bed."
there was a whirling half-hour of preparation, while old mis' meade washed the supper dishes and amarita flew light-footedly about from kitchen to bedroom to get her lord into his public clothes. elihu forgot the knot, and brought it in after he had assumed the garb of ceremony; and then he had to be fussily brushed from possible sawdust, while amarita, an anxious frown on her brow, wondered why mother meade always would distract him at the most important points. the fire was laid, but elihu was one of those who believe in their own personal magic over a blaze, and he had to adjust the knot and touch off the kindling and watch the result a minute, to be sure the chimney had not caught. by the time he had harnessed and had appeared again to wash his hands and don his greatcoat, two other sleighs had gone by, bearing town fathers to the trysting-place. amarita was nervous. she knew elihu liked to be beforehand with his duties. but at last, his roll of plans in hand, he was proceeding down the path, slipping a little, for the thaw had made it treacherous, to the gate where the horse was [359]hitched, and amarita, at the sitting-room window, watched him. old mis' meade came up behind her, and she too watched.
elihu was uncovering the horse. amarita turned from her mother-in-law with a noiseless rush and flew out of the front door and down the slippery path.
"elihu!" she called, with all the voice excitement left her. "elihu, you come here. i've got to speak to you."
elihu left the horse and came with long strides up the path, taking, as he hurried, glances at the roof.
"roarin', is it?" he asked. "you think the chimbley's ketched?"
the roll of plans stuck out from his coat pocket. that was all amarita could see. she laid hands upon him and drew him into the entry. there she shut the door and then stood with her grasp upon the other door, leading into the sitting-room, and held it tight. she was afraid mother meade might come out to see what was the matter. amarita leaned against the casing. in spite of the brightness of her eyes, she looked faint and sick. it seemed to be her grasp upon the latch that kept her now from falling.
"o elihu!" she said. he was questioning her with puzzled eyes. "o elihu! i've been awful mean to you." her hold on the latch relaxed, [360]and she sat down on the packing-case between them. "when i told you about the box the man left, and you seemed to think i didn't know enough to come in when it rained, i said next time you made any kind of a mistake i'd let it go, no matter who's goin' to laugh at you. and when it come to your plans"—she stopped here, and elihu absently put his hand to the roll in his pocket—"when it come to them, i said you might show 'em to the minister and the doctor and everybody else. but, elihu, there ain't—o elihu, you ain't put a single closet in that house!"
elihu stood there in silence, and amarita sat on the packing-case, feeling her heart beat. it seemed a long time before she heard his voice.
"there! there!" he was saying. "you open that door and i'll look in an' see if the chimbley's ketched."
in a moment amarita followed him. she heard mother meade moving about the kitchen, and elihu was just dropping his roll of paper on the fire. she gave a little cry, but he only said, in what seemed to her a very kind voice, almost the voice of courting days,—
"you run out and fetch me in the hammer and screw-driver, whilst i listen to this chimbley."
[361]when she came droopingly back with the tools, elihu was explicitly cheerful.
"there!" he said. "that's safe enough. we'll burn it out, come wet weather." then he strode into the hall, and she heard two or three blows and the splintering of soft wood. "here's your books," elihu was calling to her. "you two take 'em out, and if 'tain't too late after i come home, i'll read a page. i guess we can foot the bill when it comes in."
