II.
At noon the next day Israel Haydon and his son William came up across the field together. They had on their every-day clothes, and were talking about every-day matters as they walked along. Mr. Haydon himself had always looked somewhat unlike a farmer, even though there had been no more diligent and successful tiller of the soil in the town of Atfield. He never had bought himself a rougher suit of clothes or a coarse hat for haying, but his discarded Sunday best in various states of decadence served him for barn and field. It was proverbial that a silk hat lasted him five years for best and ten for common; but whatever he might be doing, Israel Haydon always preserved an air of unmistakable dignity. He was even a little ministerial in his look; there had been a minister in the family two or three generations back. Mr. Haydon and his wife had each inherited some money. They were by nature thrifty, and now their only son was well married, with a good farm of his own, to which Israel had added many acres of hay land and tillage, saying that he was getting old, and was going to take the rest of his life easily. In this way the old people had thrown many of their worldly cares upon their son's broad shoulders. They had paid visits each summer to their kindred in surrounding towns, starting off in their Sunday chaise with sober pleasure, serene in their prosperity, and free from any dark anticipations, although they could not bring themselves to consent to any long absence, and the temptation of going to see friends in the West was never dangerous to their peace of mind. But the best of their lives was apparently still before them, when good Martha Haydon's strength mysteriously failed; and one dark day the doctor, whom Israel Haydon had anxiously questioned behind the wood-pile, just out of sight from his wife's window—the doctor had said that she never would be any better. The downfall of his happiness had been swift and piteous. William Haydon was a much larger and rosier man than his father had ever been; the old man looked shrunken as they crossed the field together. They had prolonged their talk about letting the great south field lie fallow, and about some new Hereford cattle that the young farmer had just bought, until nothing more was left to say on either side. Then there came a long pause, when each waited for the other to speak. William grew impatient at last.
"Have you got any notion what it's best to do, sir?" he began boldly; then, finding that his father did not answer, he turned to look at him, and found that the drawn face was set in silent despair.
"I've always been forehanded; I never was caught so unprepared before," he faltered. "'T has been my way, as you know, to think out things beforehand, but it come to the very last before I could give it up 'bout your mother's gettin' better; an' when I did give up, 't wa'n't so I could think o' anything. An' here's your aunts got their families dependin' on 'em, and wantin' to git away soon as may be. I don't know which way to look."
"Marilla and I should be thankful if you'd come and stop 'long of us this winter"—the younger man began, eagerly.
"No, no!" said his father sternly. "I ain't goin' to live in the chimbly-corner of another man's house. I ain't but a little past sixty-seven. I've got to stand in my lot an' place. 'T wouldn't be neither your house nor mine, William," he said, in a softer tone. "You're a good son; your mother always said you was a good son."
Israel Haydon's voice broke, and William Haydon's eyes filled with tears, and they plodded along together in the soft spring grass.
"I've gone over everything I wish I could forget—all the bothering tricks I played her, 'way back when I was a boy," said the young man, with great feeling. "I declare, I don't know what to do, I miss her so."
"You was an only child," said the father solemnly; "we done the best we could by ye. She often said you was a good son, and she wa'n't surprised to see ye prosper. An' about Marilly, 'long at the first, when you was courtin' her, 't was only that poor mother thought nobody wa'n't quite good enough for her boy. She come to set everything by Marilly."
The only dark chapter in the family history was referred to for the last time, to be forgotten by father and son. The old people had, after all, gloried in their son's bravery in keeping to his own way and choice. The two farms joined. Marilla and her mother were their next neighbors; the mother had since died.
"Father," exclaimed William Haydon suddenly, as they neared the barn, "I do' know now but I've thought o' the very one!"
"What d'ye mean?" said the old man, startled a little by such vehemence.
"'T ain't nobody I feel sure of getting," explained the son, his ardor suddenly cooling. "I had Maria Durrant in my mind—Marilla's cousin. Don't you know, she come and stopped with us six weeks that time Marilla was so dyin' sick and we hadn't been able to get proper help; and what a providence Maria Durrant was! Mother said one day that she never saw so capable a woman."
"I don't stand in need of nursin'," said the old man, grumbling, and taking a defensive attitude of mind. "What's the use, anyway, if you can't get her? I'll contrive to get along somehow. I always have."
William flushed quickly, but made no answer, out of regard to the old man's bereaved and wounded state. He always felt like a schoolboy in his father's presence, though he had for many years been a leader in neighborhood matters, and was at that moment a selectman of the town of Atfield. If he had answered back and entered upon a lively argument it probably would have done the old man good; anything would have seemed better than the dull hunger in his heart, the impossibility of forming new habits of life, which made a wall about his very thoughts.
After a surly silence, when the son was needlessly repentant and the father's face grew cloudy with disapproval, the two men parted. William had made arrangements to stay all the afternoon, but he now found an excuse for going to the village, and drove away down the lane. He had not turned into the highroad before he wished himself back again, while Israel Haydon looked after him reproachfully, more lonely than ever, in the sense that something had come between them, though he could not tell exactly what. The spring fields lay broad and green in the sunshine; there was a cheerful sound of frogs in the lower meadow.
"Poor mother! how she did love early weather like this!" he said, half aloud. "She'd been getting out to the door twenty times a day, just to have a look. An' how she'd laugh to hear the frogs again! Oh, poor me! poor me!" For the first time he found himself in tears. The grim old man leaned on the fence, and tried to keep back the sobs that shook his bent shoulders. He was half afraid and half ashamed, but there he stood and cried. At last he dried his eyes, and went slowly into the house, as if in hope of comfort as well as shelter.
The two sisters were busy in an upper room. They had seen William Haydon drive away, and their sympathy had been much moved by the sight of his father's grief. They stood at a window watching him from behind the curtain.
"He feels it much as anybody could," said Mrs. Stevens, not without a certain satisfaction in this tribute to her own dear sister. "Somehow or 'nother your brother is so methodical and contained, Mis' Martin, that I shouldn't have looked to see him give way like other men."
"He never was one that could show his feelin's," answered Mrs. Martin. "I never saw him shed tears before as I know of, but many's the time he hasn't been able to control his voice to speak. I wonder what made William hurry off so? His back looked kind o' provoked. They couldn't have had no words; whatever it was, they couldn't had no words so soon as this; an' William 's always respectful."
"'T ain't that either," she added, a moment later. "I've seen sights o' folks in trouble, and I don't know what nor why it is, but they always have to get through with a fractious spell before they can get to work again. They'll hold up an' 'pear splendid, and then something seems to let go, an' everything goes wrong, an' every word plagues 'em. Now Isr'el's my own poor brother, an' you know how I set by him, Mis' Stevens; but I expect we'll have to walk soft to get along with him for a week or two to come. Don't you go an' be too gentle, neither. Treat him just's you would anyway, and he'll fetch himself into line the quicker. He always did have days when he wouldn't say nothing to nobody. It does seem's if I ought to be the one to stop longer with him, an' be the most help; but you know how I'm situated. And then 't is your sister's things that's to be looked over, and you and Marilla is the proper ones."
"I wish 't was so you could stop," Mrs. Stevens urged honestly. "I feel more acquainted with you than I do with Marilly. But I shall do my best, as I shall want those who come to do for my things when I'm past an' gone. I shall get William to come an' help us; he knows more about his mother's possessions than anybody, I expect. She made a kind of girl of him, for company's sake, when he was little; and he used to sew real pretty before his fingers got too big. Don't you recall one winter when he was house-bound after a run o' scarlet fever? He used to work worsted, and knit some, I believe he did; but he took to growin' that spring, and I chanced to ask him to supply me with a couple o' good holders, but I found I'd touched dignity. He was dreadful put out. I suppose he was mos' too manly for me to refer to his needlework. Poor Marthy! how she laughed! I only said that about the holders for the sake o' sayin' somethin', but he remembered it against me more than a year."
The two aunts laughed together. "Boys is boys, ain't they?" observed Mrs. Stevens, with great sagacity.
"Men is boys," retorted Mrs. Martin. "The more you treat 'em like boys, the better they think you use 'em. They always want motherin', an' somebody to come to. I always tell folks I've got five child'n, counting Mr. Martin the youngest. The more bluster they have, the more boys they be. Now Marthy knew that about brother Isr'el, an' she always ruled him by love an' easin' of him down from them high perches he was always settin' upon. Everything was always right with her an' all wrong with him when they was young, but she could always say the right word."
"She was a good-feelin' woman; she did make him a good wife, if I say it that shouldn't o' my own sister," sighed Mrs. Stevens. "She was the best o' housekeepers, was Marthy. I never went over so neat a house. I ain't got the gift myself. I can clear up, Mis' Martin, but I can't remain cleared up."
The two sisters turned to their pathetic work of looking over the orderly closets and making solemn researches into the suspected shelters of moths. Much talk of the past was suggested by the folding of blankets; and as they set back the chairs, and brushed the floors that were made untidy by the funeral guests of the day before, they wondered afresh what would become of Israel Haydon, and what plan he would make for himself; for Mrs. Martin could only stay with him for a few days, and Mrs. Stevens was obliged to return as soon as possible to her busy household and an invalid daughter. As long as they could stay the house went on as usual, and Israel Haydon showed no apprehension of difficulties ahead. He took up the routine of his simple fashion of life, and when William asked if he should bring his team to plough, he received the surprised answer that all those things were settled when they talked about them earlier in the spring. Of course he should want potatoes, and it was high time they were planted. A boy arrived from the back country who had lived at the farm the summer before,—a willing, thick-headed young person in process of growth,—and Israel Haydon took great exception to his laziness and inordinate appetite, and threatened so often to send him back where he came from that only William's insistence that they had entered into an engagement with poor Thomas, and the women's efforts toward reconciliation, prevailed.
When sister Martin finally departed, bag and baggage, she felt as if she were leaving her brother to be the prey of disaster. He was sternly self-reliant, and watched her drive away down the lane with something like a sense of relief. The offending Thomas was standing by, expecting rebuke almost with an air of interest; but the old man only said to him, in an apologetic and friendly way, "There! we've got to get along a spell without any women folks, my son. I haven't heard of any housekeeper to suit me, but we'll get along together till I do."
"There's a great sight o' things cooked up, sir," said Thomas, with shining eyes.
"We'll get along," repeated the old man. "I won't have you take no liberties, but if we save the time from other things, we can manage just as well as the women. I want you to sweep out good, night an' morning, an' fetch me the wood an' water, an' I'll see to the housework." There was no idea of appointing Thomas as keeper of the pantry keys, and a shadow of foreboding darkened the lad's hopeful countenance as the master of the house walked away slowly up the yard.