Tiverton Tales

by Alice Brown

A LAST ASSEMBLING

This happened in what Dilly Joyce, in deference to a form of speech, was accustomed to call her young days; though really her spirit seemed to renew itself with every step, and her body was to the last a willing instrument. She lived in a happy completeness which allowed her to carry on the joys of youth into the maturity of years. But things did happen to her from twenty to thirty-five which could never happen again. When Dilly was a girl, she fell in love, and was very heartily and honestly loved back again. She had been born into such willing harmony with natural laws, that this in itself seemed to belong to her life. It partook rather of the faithfulness of the seasons than of human tragedy or strenuous overthrow. Even so early she felt great delight in natural things; and when her heart turned to Jethro Moore, she had no doubt whatever of the straightness of its path. She trusted all the primal instincts without knowing she trusted them. She was thirsty; here was water, and she drank. Jethro was a little older than she, the son of a minister in a neighboring town. His father had marked out his plan of life; but Jethro had had enough to do with the church on hot summer Sundays, when "fourthly" and "sixthly" lulled him into a pleasing coma, and when even the shimmer of Mrs. Chase's shot silk failed to awaken his deep eyes to their accustomed delight in fabric and color. To him, the church was a concrete and very dull institution: to his father, it was a city set on a hill, whence a shining path led direct to God's New Jerusalem. Therefore it was easy enough for the boy to say he preferred business, and that he wanted uncle Silas to take him into his upholstery shop; and he never, so long as he lived, understood his father's tragic silence over the choice. He had broken the succession in a line of priests; but it seemed to him that he had simply told what he wanted to do for a living. So he went away to the city, and news came flying back of his wonderful fitness for the trade. He understood colors, fabrics, design; he had been sent abroad for ideas, and finally he was dispatched to the Chicago house, to oversee the business there. Thus it was many years before Dilly met him again; but they remained honestly faithful, each from a lovely simplicity of nature, but a simplicity quite different in kind. Jethro did not grow rich very fast (uncle Silas saw to that), but he did prosper; and he was ready to marry his girl long before she owned herself ready to marry him. She took care of a succession of aged relatives, all afflicted by a strange and interesting diversity of trying diseases; and then, after the last death, she settled down, quite poor, in a little house on the Tiverton Road, and "went out nussin'," the profession for which her previous life had fitted her. With a careless generosity, she made over to her brother the old farmhouse where they were born, because he had a family and needed it. But he died, and was soon followed by his wife and child; and now Dilly was quite alone with the house and the family debts. The time had come, wrote Jethro, for them to marry. She was free, at last, and he had enough. Would she take him, now? Dilly answered quite frankly and from a serenity born of faith in the path before her and a certainty that no feet need slip. She was ready, she wrote. She hoped he was willing she should sell the old place, to pay Tom's debts. That would leave her without a cent; but since he was coming for her, and she needn't go to Chicago alone, she didn't know that there was anything to worry about. He would buy her ticket. There was an ineffable simplicity about Dilly. She had no respect whatever for money, save as a puzzling means to a few necessary ends. And now the place had been sold, and Jethro was coming in a month. Meanwhile Dilly was to pack up the few family effects she could afford to keep, and the rest would go by auction.

Little as she was accustomed to dread experiences which came in the inevitable order of nature, she did think of the last day and night in the old house as something of an ordeal. People felt that the human meant very little to Dilly; but that was not true. It was only true that she held herself remote from personal intimacies; but all the fine, invisible bonds of race and family took hold of her like irresistible factors, and welded her to the universe anew.

As she started out from her little house, this summer morning, and began her three-mile walk to the old homestead, she felt as if some solemn event in her life were about to happen; her heart beat higher, and brought about the suffocating feeling of a hand laid upon the throat. She was a slight creature, with a delicate face and fine black hair. Her slender body seemed all made for action, and the poise of an assured motion dwelt in it and wrapped about its angularity like a gracious charm. She was walking down a lane, her short skirts brushed by the morning dew. She chose to go 'cross lots, not because in this case it was nearer than the road, but because it seemed impossible to go another way. Yet never in her life had she seen less of the outward garment of things than she was seeing this morning. A flouting bobolink flew from stake to stake in front of her, and bubbled out in melody. She heard a scythe swishing in a neighboring field, and the musical call of the mowing-machine afar, and she did not look up. Dumb to the beautiful outer world, she was broad awake to human souls: the souls of the Joyces, alive so long before her and stretching back into an unknown past. They had lived, one after another, in the old house, since colonial times; and now, after this quiet act of a concluding drama, Dilly was going to lower the curtain, and sweep them from the stage.

Her mind was peopled with figures. She thought of Jethro, too. He seemed to be coming ever nearer and nearer. She could hear his tread marching into her life, and could see his face. It was very moving, as she remembered it. A long line of scholarly forbears had dowered him with a refinement and grace quite startling in this unornamented spot, and some old Acadian ancestor had lent him beauty. His eyes were dark, and they held an unfathomable melancholy. The line of his forehead and nose ran haughtily and yet delicate; and even after years of absence, Dilly sometimes caught her breath when she thought of the way his head was set upon his shoulders. She had never in her life seen a man or woman who was entirely beautiful, and he saturated her longing like a prodigal stream.

She was a little dazed when she climbed the low stone wall, crossed the road, and came into the grassy wilderness of the Joyce back yard. Nature had triumphed riotously, as she will when niggardly thrift is away. The grass lay rich and shining, lodged by last night's shower, and gate and cellar-case were choked by it. The cinnamon roses bloomed in a spicy hardiness of pink, and the gnarled apple-trees had shed their broken branches, and were covered with little green buttons of fruit. Dilly stopped to look about her, and her eyes filled. The tears were hot; they hurt her, and so recalled her to the needs of life.

"There!" she said, "I mustn't do so!"—and she walked straight forward through the open shed, and fitted her key in the lock. The door sagged; but she pushed it open and stepped in. The deserted kitchen lay there in desolate order, and the old Willard clock slept upon the wall. Dilly hastily pushed a chair before it (this was the only chair old Daniel Joyce would allow the children to climb in) and wound the clock. It began ticking slowly, with the old, remembered sound. Somehow it seemed beautiful to Dilly that the clock should speak with the voice of all those years agone; it was a kind of loyalty which appealed to the soul like a piercing miracle. Then she ran through to the sitting-room, and started the old eight-day in the corner; and the house breathed and was alive again. She threw open the windows, all save those on the Dilloway side (lest kindly neighbors should discover she was at home), and the soft rose-scented air flooded the rooms like an invisible presence, and bore out the smell of age upon gracious wings. Now, Dilly worked fast and steadily, lest some human thing should come upon her. She tied up bedclothes, and opened long-closed cupboards. She made careful piles of clothing from the attic; and finally, her mind a little tired, she sat down on the floor and began looking over papers and daguerreotypes from her father's desk. Just as she had lost herself in the ancient history of which they were the signs, there came a knock at the back door. So assured had become her idea of a continued housekeeping, that the summons did not seem in the least strange. The house lived again; it had thrown open its arms to human kind.

"Come in!" she called; and a light step sounded in the kitchen and crossed the sill. It was a man, dark-eyed and very handsome. "Oh!" murmured Dilly, catching her breath and holding both hands clasped upon the papers in her lap. "Jethro!"

The stranger was much moved, and his black eyes deepened. He looked at her kindly, perhaps lovingly, too. "Yes," he said, at last. "So you'd know me?"

Dilly got lightly up, and the papers fell about her in a shower; yet she made no motion toward him. "Oh, yes," she said softly, "I should know you. You ain't changed at all."