CHAPTER XIX
"'LIZABETH"
A very old man leaned over, touching a cane-bottomed rocking chair with his carpet slipper. "Seems sort er more sociable like to see a little female chair a-rockin'," he remarked to himself, for the room was otherwise unoccupied, and even the house itself.
It was a December night and snowing hard. By and by the old man got up, and crossing over to a side window where the blind had not yet been pulled down, stood there for a moment frowning and saying impatiently: "Ef that don't beat all!" for mingling with the noises outside there sounded a faint and monotonous crying.
He was an uncommonly tall old man with a head like a highly polished billiard ball rising above a fringe of thin white hair; he had a straggly beard, while over his dim blue eyes the eyebrows arched like cornices.
Finally he shuffled back toward his place by the kitchen fire, and there getting down the family Bible commenced to read, first stuffing both fingers in his ears, although every now and then partially removing one to make observations. He was reading the twenty-second chapter of St. Matthew:
"For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels of God in heaven." However, on the third reading he shut up his book, keeping three bunches of pressed flowers inside to mark the place, and half humorously and half with the irritability of old age, sighed: "I don't feel as ef I could stand it a inch longer. What mortal use is there in me tryin' to make myself at all comfortable this evenin' with that noise eternally pesterin' me? Seems like it has always been my experience a man has got to give in first an' last."
Then wrapped in the faded splendour of a once gorgeous silk dressing-gown the old man disappeared into his bedroom, returning with a shawl crossed over his shoulders and a knitted muffler tied about his head. On opening his door he listened again for a moment, but, as the crying had not ceased, waded across his yard through the snow in his carpet slippers until he knocked with his big blue-veined old hand hard against the locked back door of a cottage adjoining his.
At first there was no answer except a continuing of the sniffling, snuffling noises which only made the visitor rap more vehemently, when at length the door opened and there stood a woman holding a lantern above her head.
"Uncle Ambrose Thompson, what kin you want o' me this time o' night?" she asked; "it's goin' on nine o'clock! You ain't sick?"
Uncle Ambrose shook his head, surveying his neighbour sympathetically, but oh, so disparagingly! She was so plainly an old-time old maid, flat in the chest and angular, a hard and bony structure, with a face that was equally barren save that its desert waste had lately been swept by a storm.
"No, I ain't sick, child," Uncle Ambrose answered, "but you are—heartsick. And what's more it seems likely I can't stand that noise you keep on a-makin'. You come over and set by my kitchen fire a space and kind er talk things out with me. I reckon I ain't altogether lost my soothin' powers!"
Before his glowing fire the old host comfortably placed two rocking chairs side by side. For the past seven years Ambrose Thompson had been a widower for the third time and, since Peachy's death, having come back home from the Red Farm, had lived all alone in his once rose-coloured cottage, looked after only by his neighbours.
Picking up a crazy quilt cushion from his chair, the old man surveyed it tenderly. "This was my Em'ly's make," he explained; "seems, 'Lizabeth Horton, that you and me 're most like strangers, havin' lived side by side only a little piece like seven years. Em'ly she was the second of my three wives." And then thoughtfully passing his hand backward over his high bald crown, Uncle Ambrose smiled in a kind of slow and puzzled fashion.
"No, now I've done mixed things up a bit; I'm gittin' a little oncertain these days. Em'ly wasn't never the sewin' one," he continued, "besides, this crazy quiltin' business was most too new fashioned fer my Em'ly. I kin recollect now bringin' that sofy cushion in from the farm, so it must 'a' been Peachy's. Funny how I keep puttin' everything on to Em'ly these days!"
Then seeing that his caller's red-rimmed eyes had been yearning toward the coffee pot at the back of his stove, the old man put it down before her with a nicked but brightly flowered cup and saucer, and afterward, settling himself in his own place, peacefully began smoking, finding a kind of unholy joy in the old maid's horrified glances about his untidy but nobly littered kitchen.
"S'pose you go ahead now 'n tell me just what ails you?" Uncle Ambrose suggested after a reasonably sustaining pause.
And straightway Elizabeth returned to the slow and monotonous weeping that had so disturbed his nerves for the past few hours. However, he let her alone for a time, and except for moving restlessly about in his chair and biting hard on his pipe stem made no other signs until at last he placed a trembling hand on her bowed shoulder. "'Lizabeth Horton, there is some women that just nachurally runs away to tears, but I wouldn't waste myself entirely ef I was you. Seems like when a female has cried 's long as you have, she must need something to fill up the places that has gone dry on the inside; so you take another cup of coffee; it may be bitter but it's liquid. I ain't sayin' I ain't used to women's weepin', but I'm gittin' older an'——"
Elizabeth at this gulped down her second dose. "I hadn't ought to cry so much, Uncle Ambrose," she apologized, "but you must know I'm havin' to give up my little home and it most breaks my heart."
Uncle Ambrose looked meditatively about his ancient and patched fourteen-foot-square kitchen, and his dim eyes shone with the never failing pride of possession. "These cottages ain't so bad," he said defensively. "I been living in mine off'n on fer most seventy years, and I kin remember when yours and old Mrs. Barrows', now deceased, was built like it. Still I am obleeged to say there may be finer places; more'n likely now this nephew's house is stylisher where you're bein' took in to live. Seems like I've done heard it's in a su-burb and sets up on a hill. Kind er onnecessary Pennyrile's havin' a su-burb, but mebbe you're thinkin' the young folks won't be good to you when you go up there to dwell."
Now that her crying had ceased the old maid's face looked gray.
"It ain't that I ain't goin' to a good home, Uncle Ambrose," she explained, "and I suppose they'll be as good to me as they can to a piece of furniture that don't fit in and ain't nowheres needed in their house. I can't expect a man to understand, but when a woman don't never marry and hasn't a husband or children of her own, seems like all she has to set store by is just things, havin' a home of her own. I done my best to keep mine since mother died and her pension stopped, by picklin' and preservin', but somehow I can't manage it." And now the woman's voice held the quiet acceptance of defeat which is sadder than any protest of tears.
She was looking into her lap at her knotted, hardworking and yet unsuccessful hands as she spoke, or else she would have seen the light of the understanding she denied in the old face opposite hers, which had not, I think, failed any woman in nearly threescore years.
"I've done smelt your efforts, 'Lizabeth," Uncle Ambrose murmured kindly. "They've often come right through the boards of my side wall. I wisht I knowed some way to help you out, but I can't somehow see it."
Nevertheless when Elizabeth had made her old neighbour as comfortable for the night as she knew how by putting fresh coals on his fire and by fastening down his windows, and had said good night, still he continued sitting in the same place, wearing a look of uncomfortable gravity, until by and by hobbling once more into his bedroom he returned with a small daguerreotype in his hand and for a long while kept studying it, with his lips moving silently, and then suddenly said aloud: "Whatever on this earth am I goin' to do 'bout that old maid, Em'ly honey? She's poor and lonesome and she's scaired, and, moreover, she's powerful homely." And then just for an instant piercing the mists over his old eyes the immortal light of laughter flickered.
"I reckon you think I've done earned a trifle of repose from worryin' on females, don't you, honey?" he inquired as he made his solitary way toward bed.