III.
It was the month of June; the trees were in full foliage; there was no longer any look of spring in the landscape, and the air and sky belonged to midsummer. Mrs. Israel Haydon had been dead nearly two months.
On a Sunday afternoon the father and son sat in two old splint-bottomed chairs just inside the wood-house, in the shade. The wide doors were always thrown back at that time of the year, and there was a fine view across the country. William Haydon could see his own farm spread out like a green map; he was scanning the boundaries of the orderly fences and fields and the stretches of woodland and pasture. He looked away at them from time to time, or else bent over and poked among the wood-house dust and fine chips with his walking-stick. "There's an old buckle that I lost one day ever so many years ago," he exclaimed suddenly, and reached down to pick it up. William was beginning to look stout and middle-aged. He held out the rusty buckle to his father, but Israel Haydon sat stiffly upright, and hardly gave a glance at the useless object.
"I thought Elder Wall preached an excellent discourse this morning." William made further attempt to engage his father's interest and attention, but without avail.
"I wish you'd tell me what's the matter with you, sir," said the troubled son, turning squarely, and with honest kindness in his look. "It hurts my feelings, father. If I've put you out, I want to make amends. Marilla's worried to death for fear it's on her account. We both set everything by you, but you hold us off; and I feel, when I try to be company for you, as if you thought I belonged in jail, and hadn't no rights of any kind. Can't you talk right out with me, sir? Ain't you well?"
"There! don't run on, boy," said the old man sadly. "I do the best I can; you've got to give me time. I'm dreadful hard pushed losin' of your mother. I've lost my home; you ain't got the least idea what it is, William."
His old face quivered, and William rose hastily and went a step or two forward, making believe that he was looking after his horse. "Stand still, there!" he shouted to the placid creature, and then came back and reached out his hand to his father.
Israel took hold of it, but looked up, a little puzzled. "You ain't going yet?" he asked. "Why, you've only just come."
"I want you to ride over with me to supper to-night. I want you to see how well that piece o' late corn looks, after all your saying I might's well lay it down to turnips. Come, father; the horse's right here, and 't will make a change for you. Ain't you about got through with them pies aunt Martin left you when she went away? Come; we're goin' to have a hearty supper, and I want ye."
"I don't know but I will," said Israel Haydon slowly. "We've got on pretty well—no, we ain't, neither. I ain't comfortable, and I can't make nothin' o' that poor shoat of a boy. I'm buying o' the baker an' frying a pan o' pork the whole time, trying to fill him up. I never was so near out o' pork this time o' year, not since I went to housekeepin'."
"I heard he'd been tellin' round the neighborhood that he was about starved," said William plainly. "Our folks always had the name o' being good providers."
"How'd your mother use to wash up the cups an' things to make 'em look decent?" asked Mr. Haydon suddenly; there was the humility of broken pride in his tone. "I can't seem to find nothin' to do with, anywhere about the house. I s'posed I knew where everything was. I expect I've got out all poor mother's best things, without knowin' the difference. Except there ain't nothin' nowhere that looks right to me," he added.
William stooped to pick something out of the chips. "You'll have to ask Marilla," he said. "It mortifies me to have you go on in such a way. Now, father, you wouldn't hear to anybody that was named to you, but if you go on this way much longer you'll find that any housekeeper's better than none."
"Why, I've only been waiting to hear of a proper person," said Israel Haydon, turning an innocent and aggrieved countenance upon his son. "My house is in a terrible state, now I can tell you."
William looked away and tried to keep his face steady.
"What do you find to laugh at?" asked the poor father, in the tone of a schoolmaster.
"Don't you know I spoke of somebody to you? I believe 't was the very day after the funeral," said William persuasively. "Her name is Maria Durrant."
"I remember the person well; an excellent, sensible woman, no flummery, and did remarkable well in case of sickness at your house," said Mr. Haydon, with enthusiasm, stepping briskly toward the wagon after he had shut and fastened the wood-house doors and put the padlock key in his pocket. "What of her? You said there was no chance of getting her, didn't you?"
"I was afraid so; but she's left her brother's folks now, and come to stop a little while with Marilla. She's at the house this minute; came last night. You know, Marilla's very fond of having her cousins come to stop with her," apologized the son, in fear lest his simple plot should be discovered and resented. "You can see if she's such a person as you want. I have been thinking all day that she might do for a time, anyway."
"Anybody'll do," said Mr. Haydon suddenly. "I tell ye, William, I'm drove to the wall. I feel to covet a good supper; an' I'm ashamed to own it, a man o' my property! I'll observe this Miss Durrant, an' speak with her after tea; perhaps she'd have the sense to come right over to-morrow. You an' Marilla can tell her how I've been situated. I wa'n't going to have no such persons in my house as were recommended," he grumbled on cheerfully. "I don't keep a town-farm for the incapable, nor do I want an old grenadier set over me like that old maid Smith. I ain't going to be turned out of my own house."
They drove along the road slowly, and presently the ever-interesting subject of crops engaged their further attention. When they turned into William Haydon's side yard a pleasant-faced, middle-aged woman, in a neat black dress and a big clean white apron, sat on the piazza with Marilla and the children. Israel Haydon's heart felt lighter than it had for many a week. He went and shook hands with Maria Durrant, with more than interest and approval; there was even a touch of something like gallantry in his manner. William Haydon glanced at his wife and gave an unconscious sigh of relief.
The next morning Miss Durrant helped with the early work, talking with William's wife as she went to and fro busily in the large kitchen, and listening to all that could be said of the desperate state of affairs at the old farm. The two women so doubled their diligence by working together that it was still early in the day when Maria, blushing noticeably, said that she thought there was no use in waiting until afternoon, as old Mr. Haydon had directed. There must be plenty to do; and the sooner the house was put to rights and some cooking got under way the better. She had her old calico dress all on, and she deemed it best to go over and go right to work.
"There! I don't know what to say, Maria," said Marilla Haydon doubtfully. "Father Haydon's such a set person."
"So be I," rejoined Maria. "And who knows how bad those rooms need airing! I've thought of twenty things that ought to be done right off, before night. Or I could work a spell in the gardin if he don't seem to want me in the house. Now, wa'n't it affectin' to hear him let on that he'd gone an' made poor Mis' Haydon's flower gardin same's he'd always done? It showed real feelin', didn't it? I am goin' to take holt over there as if 't was for her as well as for him. That time I was here so long, when you was so sick, I did just admire Mis' Haydon. She was a beautiful-looking woman, and so pretty-behaved; quiet, but observin'. I never saw a man age as William's father has; it made my heart ache when I first caught sight of him driving into the yard last night."
"He revived up conversin' with you an' makin' such a good hearty tea," suggested Marilla, disappearing in the pantry. "I ain't never felt free with father Haydon, but I do respect him," she added presently. "Well, now, go right over, Maria, if you feel moved to. I don't know but what you're wise. P'r'aps William an' I'll walk over, after supper's put away. I guess you've got a busy day before you."
She stood at the open door and watched Maria Durrant go away, a few minutes later, with a plump bundle under one arm.
"I should think you were going to seek your fortune," she called merrily, as the good woman turned into the road; but Maria wagged her head with a cheerful nod, and did not deign to look back. "I ought to have given her some bread to tuck under the other arm, like the picture of Benjamin Franklin. I dare say they do need bread; I ought to have thought of it," said Marilla anxiously, as she returned to the pantry.
"But there! Father Haydon's got as far along in housekeeping as stopping the baker; an' he was put out because I sent things too soon, before aunt Martin's provisions were gone. I'll risk cousin Maria to get along."
The new housekeeper trod the little footpath at the road edge with a firm step. She was as eager and delighted as if she were bent on a day's pleasuring. A truly sympathetic, unselfish heart beat in her breast; she fairly longed to make the lonely, obstinate old man comfortable. Presently she found herself going up the long Haydon lane in the shade of the apple-trees. The great walnut-trees at the other side of the house were huge and heavy with leaves; there was a general floweriness and pleasantness over all growing things; but the tall thin spruce that towered before the front door looked black and solitary, and bore a likeness to old Mr. Haydon himself. Such was the force of this comparison that Miss Durrant stopped and looked at it with compassion.
Then her eyes fell upon the poor flower bed overgrown with weeds, through which the bachelor's-buttons and London-pride were pushing their way into bloom. "I guess I'll set a vine to grow up that tree; 't would get sun enough, an' look real live and pretty," she decided, surveying the situation; then she moved on, with perhaps less eagerness in her gait, and boldly entered the side door of the house. She could hear the sound of an axe in the shed, as if some one were chopping up kindlings. When she caught sight of the empty kitchen she dropped her bundle into the nearest chair, and held up her hands in what was no affectation of an appearance of despair.