When the maids had left, after their good-by to Madam Fulton, giving the keys into her hand, she sat awhile in the silent house, and took a comfortable nap. It was amazing, she thought, as she sank off, what a lessening of tension it was to have Electra gone. When she awoke, it was still quiet and Billy Stark had not come. He was to run down from town, his last preparations made; the country minister was to meet them at the Grant house, and there they would be married. Then they would take the late afternoon train, and, in due course, sail for Liverpool. Even Bessie Grant did not guess they were to be married; but she, Madam Fulton knew, was ready for the last trump and welcoming evangels, and that prepared her for all lesser things.
It seemed a little chilly in the house, shut up as it was for the flitting, all except the room where Madam Fulton sat, and she took her chair out of doors, not pausing on the veranda, but going on to the garden beds. It would be pleasant, she thought, to sit there in the sun with the bees humming on their way, and take her last look at the place. As well as she knew she was going to leave it, she knew she should return to it no more. It was not only that her age made it improbable,—for she had no doubt of Billy's ability to run over a dozen times yet; it was some inward certainty that told her she was going for good. It pleased her in every way. She liked new peoples and untried lands.
Yet, as she sat there, old faces crowded upon her, and they were pleasant to behold. Her husband was not there. With his death he seemed to have withdrawn into a remote place where no summons could reach him, even if she wished to call. And she had never wished it. But these were faces scarcely remembered in her daytime mood, very clear in the sunlight and with no possibility of mistake. One was like her own, only where hers sparkled with irony and discontent, this was softer and more sweet. "Why," said Madam Fulton aloud, "mother!" It gave her no surprise. Nothing seemed disturbing in this calm world, where things were throbbing warmly and, she knew at last, for the general good. Then she reflected that this was probably the effect of happiness because she was going to marry Billy Stark. It must be love, she thought, instead of their gay friendship. Youth and age were perhaps not so unlike after all, when one shut one's eyes and sat in the garden in the sun.
Billy Stark faded out of her musings, and the forgotten faces came the more clearly, all smiling, all bearing a mysterious benediction. She found herself recalling old memories with them, doings that had been once of great importance, but of later years had been packed into the rubbish hole of childish things. There was the summer day when she had lost the stolen prism from the parlor lamp, and mother had looked at her gravely for a moment and then smiled, seeing that tears were coming, and said it was no matter. Mother had never known that the tears were all for the loss of the red and blue lights in the prism, and somehow her kindness had not mattered then, because it could not bring the colors back. But now it seemed to the old lady in the garden that mother had been very kind indeed. "Don't mind it," the sweet face seemed to be saying. "Don't mind anything." And as she listened, she was restored to the pleasant usages of some morning land where one could be reassured in a blest authority that made it so.
It seemed a long time that she sat there in this pleasant company, so far removed from the conditions of her own life that it was actually, at moments, as if she were in another country. But forms began to fade, and, mingled with their going, was the sense that another personality was thrusting itself into their circle, and, being more solid than they, was pushing them out. Billy Stark was calling, in his kindly tone,—
"Florrie! wake up, child."
Her eyes came open.
"Yes," she said, "that's what mother was just calling me." She winked, and rubbed her eyes. "My stars, Billy," said she, "I've been dreaming."
Billy pulled up a garden chair. He looked at her with a tender consideration. Florrie was pretty tired, he thought. She had worn herself out with these forced hurryings. Now he had no doubts about his ability to take care of her, or his wish to do it. Billy was one who, having made up his mind to a thing, cast care behind him, and if it climbed up on the saddle-bow, he promptly knocked it off again. That was why he proposed to be hearty for twenty years to come.
"Shall we turn the key in the door, and be poking over to Bessie Grant's?" he asked. "We'll call here for your trunks, on the way to the train."