"So!" Esther discovered the ulterior motive in Matthew's invitation and Matthew, recognizing her smartness, hated her the more. Millie gave her a glance which promised that she should know what was to be known.
For two days Matthew continued his ploughing, then a driving rain made outdoor work impossible. In such weather he busied himself in the barn or, when he had figuring to do, in the kitchen. It had been a pleasure to him to lift his eyes and see Millie sitting by the window or Ellen moving quietly about. He often called Ellen to look over a sum which he could check in no other way and she sometimes discovered mistakes.
Now he found it impossible to sit in the house which was filled with incessant clamor of tongues. Millie's laugh rang as loud as Esther's. Esther had brought an accumulation of neighborhood gossip gathered during the many months when Millie had been deprived of this form of entertainment, and the stories lost nothing by her telling. When Matthew and Millie were in their room at night, Millie repeated others which Esther had told in his absence. It was pleasant, she thought, to be married and to have in consequence no reserves whatever.
"But I don't like to hear such things," Matthew interrupted her gravely. "I've never been used to anything like this. My father—"
Millie turned on her side with a contemptuous "Ach, you!"
Matthew lay very still. The cloudy night was soundless; no cock crowed or distant dog barked and even the oak trees did not whisper. He pretended to be asleep, but he was kept awake by a vague, apprehensive unhappiness. Suddenly he heard a strange, uncanny sound, a queer sort of metallic death-rattle. He sat up. Millie had heard nothing; her breathing was the soft, even breathing of sleep. He slipped from bed and went out into the hall. Everything was perfectly still and the warm air was scented with the comfortable odor of bread sponge. Nothing stirred. Yet the strange noise had been unmistakable.
Then he was aware of something out of the common. The house did not seem natural, something was amiss. Suddenly the intense silence offered an explanation. The old clock whose loud tick had not failed as long as he could remember had run down! Since his father's death Ellen had wound it each morning, but he had forgotten it.
He felt himself shaken with a chill. He was not superstitious, but there was something ominous about the ceasing of motion which had been continuous for so many years. He returned to his bed but could not sleep. The wind was rising; he could hear its whisper among the dead and dying leaves. Sometimes in her little girlhood Ellen had been frightened by the noise in the oak trees and had crept into his bed for comfort. He had not known when she came, but he found her there, sweet and drowsy, when he woke.
Then the voice of the wind became more importunate than the thought of Ellen. It was, like the ticking of the clock, a part of his childhood. Shivering though he was, he rose and looked out at the dark wall of trees. If they were gone there would be a silence at night like the silence in the house at this moment. He saw the bare ground with its ugly stumps. His intention to fell the grove became suddenly incredible. The tears began to run down his cheeks. Before he returned to bed he knelt and prayed, but his prayer did not ease his discomfort. Like Millie he had come to the end of an era.
To his eyes the abode of Mrs. Lebber looked more forbidding than it had to Ellen, who tolerated it as a merely temporary abode. Having been received with cold surprise by Mrs. Sassaman, he sat down to wait.