"I guess you won't mind if I leave the clock as 't is. It needs some new cogs, an' if anybody should come along, he wouldn't find it any the worse for what I've done. I've jest thought it over about the cows, an' I guess I'll leave that, too, jest as it is. I made you a good bargain, an' when you come to think it over, I guess you'd ruther it'd stan' so than run the resk of havin' folks make a handle of it. Good-by, 'Melia. You've been good to me,—better'n anybody ever was in the world."
She heard his step, swift and steady, through the shed and out at the door. He was gone. Amelia turned to the window, to look after him, and then, finding he had not taken the driveway, she ran into the bedroom, to gaze across the fields. There he was, a lonely figure, striking vigorously out. He seemed glad to go; and seeing his haste, her heart hardened against him. She gave a little disdainful laugh.
"Well," said Amelia, "that's over. I'll wash my dishes now."
Coming back into the kitchen, with an assured step, she moved calmly about her work, as if the world were there to see. Her pride enveloped her like a garment. She handled the dishes as if she scorned them, yet her method and care were exquisite. Presently there came a little imperative pounding at the side door. It was Rosie. She had forgotten the cloudy atmosphere of the house, and being cold, had come, in all her old, imperious certainty of love and warmth, to be let in. Amelia stopped short in her work, and an ugly frown roughened her brow. Josiah Pease, with all his evil imaginings, seemed to be at her side, his lean forefinger pointing out the baseness of mankind. In that instant, she realized where Enoch had gone. He meant to take the three o'clock train where it halted, down at the Crossing, and he had left the child behind. Tearing off her apron, she threw it over her head. She ran to the door, and, opening it, almost knocked the child down, in her haste to be out and away. Rosie had lifted her frosty face in a smile of welcome, but Amelia did not see it. She gathered the child in her arms, and hurried down the steps, through the bars, and along the narrow path toward the pine woods. The sharp brown stubble of the field merged into the thin grasses of the greener lowland, and she heard the trickling of the little dark brook, where gentians lived in the fall, and where, still earlier, the cardinal flower and forget-me-not crowded in lavish color. She knew every inch of the way; her feet had an intelligence of their own. The farm was a part of her inherited life; but at that moment, she prized it as nothing beside that newly discovered wealth which she was rushing to cast away. Rosie had not striven in the least against her capture. She knew too much of life, in some patient fashion, to resist it, in any of its phases. She put her arms about Amelia's neck, to cling the closer, and Amelia, turning her face while she staggered on, set her lips passionately to the little sleeve.
"You cold?" asked she—"dear?" But she told herself it was a kiss of farewell.
She stepped deftly over the low stone wall into the Marden woods, and took the slippery downward path, over pine needles. Sometimes a rounded root lay above the surface, and she stumbled on it; but the child only tightened her grasp. Amelia walked and ran with the prescience of those without fear; for her eyes were unseeing, and her thoughts hurrying forward, she depicted to herself the little drama at its close. She would be at the Crossing and away again, before the train came in; nobody need guess her trouble. Enoch must be there, waiting. She would drop the child at his side,—the child he had deserted,—and before he could say a word, turn back to her desolate home. And at the thought, she kissed the little sleeve again, and thought how good it would be if she could only be there again, though alone, in the shielding walls of her house, and the parting were over and done. She felt her breath come chokingly.
"You'll have to walk a minute," she whispered, setting the child down at her side. "There's time enough. I can't hurry."
At that instant, she felt the slight warning of the ground beneath her feet, shaken by another step, and saw, through the pines, her husband running toward her. Rosie started to meet him, with a little cry, but Amelia thrust her aside, and hurried swiftly on in advance, her eyes feeding upon his face. It had miraculously changed. Sorrow, the great despair of life, had eaten into it, and aged it more than years of patient want. His eyes were like lamps burned low, and the wrinkles under them had guttered into misery. But to Amelia, his look had all the sweet familiarity of faces we shall see in Paradise. She did not stop to interpret his meeting glance, nor ask him to read hers. Coming upon him like a whirlwind, she put both her shaking hands on his shoulders, and laid her wet face to his.
"Enoch! Enoch!" she cried sharply, "in the name of God, come home with me!"
She felt him trembling under her hands, but he only put up his own, and very gently loosed the passionate grasp. "There! there!" he said, in a whisper. "Don't feel so bad. It's all right. I jest turned back for Rosie. Mebbe you won't believe it, but I forgot all about her."