CHAPTER XXXVII.
DARK STORMS AND DARK MEMORIES.
Hush! be silent—let the storm sweep by!
Its howlings fill me with unuttered dread!
This shuddering soul hugs its dark mystery,
Oh, trouble not the ashes of the dead!
While uncle Nathan and Mary were conversing on the porch, the two women within doors remained comparatively silent, till the storm rose almost to a hurricane. The gloominess of the night seemed to oppress them, and they sat before the hearth till the fire had nearly smouldered out, leaving only a couple of large pointed brands of what had been a back-log, protruding from a bed of ashes, that grew whiter and deeper with each coal that crumbled away from the original stock.
With her calf-skin shoes planted on each foot of the andiron, and her dress just enough lifted to reveal a glimpse of her blue yarn stockings, aunt Hannah sat gazing on the embers, with a countenance that grew stern and troubled as the storm raged more and more fiercely. Her knitting-work lay upon the stand beside her; three of the needles formed a triangle, and the fourth was thrust through the stocking, in a way that betokened a strange tumult in the owner, for never, save when it was the sign of some great calamity, had aunt Hannah been known to lay down her knitting except at the seam-stitch.
That some bitter trouble weighed upon her now was certain, for the thoughts that possessed her seemed bowing her person forward. She stooped heavily toward the fire, with her long, flail-like arms clasped around her knees, not rocking back and forth as seemed most natural to the position, but immovable as the andiron upon which her feet rested, and sombre as the storm that shook the windows and howled down the chimney.
Salina occupied the other andiron. Her leathern shoes were tinged with mud about the soles, and a spot or two had settled on her white yarn stockings, which were gingerly exposed at the ankles. But while aunt Hannah stooped forward, bowed down by thought, Salina sat upright as a church-steeple, with one elbow planted on each knee, and her sharp chin resting in the palms of her hands. Faint flashes from the fire now and then gleamed across her hair, firing it up with ferocious redness; and her eyes were bent upon the broken back-log, as if defying it to a competition, while her feet were planted on the andiron.
At last, when the storm grew so fierce that it rocked the old house to its foundations, and gusts of rain came sweeping down the chimney, the two women looked into each other's eyes.
"Did you ever see anything like it!" said Salina.
It was an exclamation only, but aunt Hannah answered as if her thoughts had been questioned.