XII. A SECRET ERRAND.
“Say not ‘small event’! Why ‘small’?
Costs it more pain than this, ye call
A ‘great event,’ should come to pass,
Than that? Untwine me from the mass
Of deeds which make up life, one deed
Power shall fall short in or exceed!”
—Robert Browning.
On the lounge in the sitting-room, Judith lay cuddled up with a rare ailment for her, a throbbing headache; Aunt Affy had brought a pillow from her own entry bedroom, and bathed her forehead with Florida water; then brushed her hair for a long time and told her a story about her far-away girlhood, “when Becky and Cephas and I had our good times. Not that we don’t have good times now; Becky has hers up yonder, and poor Cephas and I do the best we can for each other down here.”
Judith wondered why she should say “poor Cephas”; he had laughing eyes, and a merry laugh, and everything that happened to him seemed just the very best thing that could happen.
Aunt Rody had brewed a bowl of bitter stuff and stood threateningly near while Judith lifted her dizzy head and forced herself to taste it.
“More,” urged Aunt Rody.
She tasted again.
“More,” insisted Aunt Rody.
She tasted several times with a look of pitiful appeal that Aunt Rody resisted.
“More,” commanded Aunt Rody.
“I can’t,” sobbed Judith, but she obeyed, and Aunt Rody set the yellow bowl on a chair by the sofa, that she might taste it whenever she felt like it.
Homesick Judith hid her face in the small pillow as soon as she was left alone, and cried; she cried for her mother not a year dead, for her father whom she scarcely remembered, for the pretty room she had with her mother in her own city home, for her picture of the Madonna with the child, that Aunt Rody declared popish and would not suffer, even in Judith’s own room; then she cried because Miss Kenney had not come yesterday, as she half promised, and then because Aunt Rody had made Cephas say that she should not run about in the fields with him, but stay in the house these wonderful days and sew carpet rags; and then, if she cried about anything she cried in her sleep; a soft step was in the room, the lightest touch covered her with Aunt Affy’s fleecy white shawl.
“Sit down,” whispered Aunt Affy’s voice, “she is fast asleep; she is a good sleeper, we shall not disturb her; I shouldn’t wonder if she had fits of home-sickness; she never tells; we are all old folks; Rody thinks she doesn’t need any more schooling because she can do sums and writes such a handsome hand, so she doesn’t go to school—and doesn’t know many young folks. Rody never did understand young folks, you know that.”
“I should think you knew that,” replied the other whispering, indignant voice. “So Cephas is back again; he was gone five years, wasn’t he?”
“Five this last time, three the other time.”
Judith stirred, pushed the white wool away from her face, and listened.
“He was good to go,” replied the still indignant voice.
Judith made a soft rustle; Aunt Affy did not heed it.
“Yes, he was good,” assented Aunt Affy’s sweet, old voice, “he is always ready to do the thing that’s happiest for me. He was so homesick and wrote such heart-rending letters that I couldn’t stand it. Rody sniffed, as she has always sniffed at us, but she said he might come back if we were both so set on it, so shamelessly set on it.”
Judith’s little protesting groan was not noticed; then she shut her eyes and listened, because she could not help it.
“It’s a burning shame, and the sister you have been to her, too. You took your money and bought your sisters out that you might keep the old place for Rody.”
“I wanted it for myself, too,” was Aunt Affy’s honest reply.
“But you could have taken your money and married Cephas—”
“But, you see, she never could bear the thought of my marrying at all; she doesn’t dislike Cephas so much, but she wants me all to herself. She doesn’t like men, I’ll allow that; she never had any kind of happy experience herself, unless it happened before I was born, and she doesn’t know. After Becky died, Cephas and I had to comfort each other; Rody never was a great hand at comforting, and the other girls were all dead or married. She had been a mother to me all my life; I was a two week’s old baby left in her care; and Becky was only two years old; we were her two babies.”
“You had whippings and scoldings enough thrown in, I’ll be bound,” was the visitor’s tart rejoinder.
“The scoldings are thrown in now,” said Aunt Affy, with the glimmer of a smile; “I am only a girl to her; I shall never grow up to her; not old enough to be married, sixty years old as I am. Cephas told her yesterday that he would fix up the old house with his own money, he has considerable laid by, and she dared him to pull off a shingle or drive a nail. He said she should always be the head of the house, and she said there was no need for him to tell her that. You see that we could not be happy in making her old age unhappy. She is so old that defiance might kill her; she is eighty-four.”
“I’d let it kill her then,” said Miss Affy’s life-long friend.
“No, you wouldn’t. Your sister is your sister, and she is all the mother I ever knew. Cephas and I jog on together like two old married folks. She says we will be glad when she is under the sod and we can have our own way.”
“She might let you have it now, and then you wouldn’t be glad,” urged Jean Draper’s mother.
“She cannot let us have it; her own will is too strong for her; when she gives up to us she will die.”
“Then I’d do it anyway,” counselled the other voice.
“We did talk of that, but we are afraid to—she is so old,” whispered Aunt Affy, feeling faint with the very thought of it.
“Well, it’s an old folks’ romance, and I didn’t know old folks had any,” said the woman who was married at sixteen.
But the girl on the lounge with her face in the pillow had listened; she had listened and learned something Aunt Affy would not have told her for the world.
How could she ever look into Aunt Affy’s face again? And, oh, how could she ever love Aunt Rody?
She groaned, and Aunt Affy came to her and asked if she felt worse. The neighbor went out on tiptoe; Aunt Rody came from the kitchen to stand threateningly near while Aunt Affy coaxed mouthful by mouthful the draining of the bitter bowl.
While Aunt Rody was taking her nap that afternoon Jean Draper knocked on the open kitchen door. Judith and Aunt Affy were washing dishes together at the kitchen sink; Judith gave a cry of pleased surprise at the sound of the knock and the vision of the girl in the doorway.
“O, Jean, I wished for you,” she said, with the longing for young companionship in her heart.
“And I wanted you. I am going to see Miss Marion on a secret errand, and I can’t do it without you. Can you spare her, Miss Affy?”
“If her head will let her go,” began Miss Affy, doubtfully.
“Oh, that’s well,” cried Judith, joyfully, “but what will Aunt Rody say?” she questioned in dismay.
“I will take care of that,” promised Aunt Affy, anticipating with dread the half hour’s scolding the permission would bring upon herself.
“You are making her a gad-about just like yourself,” the monologue would begin.
“Are you sure, Aunt Affy, dear?” asked Judith, anxiously.
“Yes, sure. Run away and put on your new gingham.”