Mahala, to ease her own fear and because she credited Rebecca with little more mentality than a child, answered truly: “Martin Moreland broke her heart, Becky; broke it recklessly and deliberately; broke it with malice and through long-pursued purpose.”
At the mention of that name, Rebecca stiffened. A look of deep concentration came into her eyes. Again she seemed on the verge of going into a violent attack. Her brow began to cloud, to draw down in threatening darkness.
She muttered ominously: “Martin Moreland, Martin Moreland, breaker of women’s hearts, and the hearts that he breaks never can be mended!”
Afraid of her in violent moments, Mahala began patting her arm. In an effort to try to distract her attention, she begged her to listen to a bird of black and gold singing on a knotty old cherry tree, to watch big butterflies hovering over white phlox, to see the little growing things being choked by weeds.
After they had finished their lunch and rested for a long time, they started back toward Ashwater. They made a notable pair, Rebecca with her round, childish face, the white flag waving with her every step; Mahala, thinned and whitened with suffering and hard work, her arms filled with white and purple phlox. Beside the road, whenever they passed Canadian anemones, cone flowers, or any beautiful wilding, Mahala paused to gather a few; and when they reached the cemetery, she divided her fragrant burden in halves, and going in, she knelt beside her father’s grave and scattered one portion over it, and burying her face above the spot where she imagined Mahlon Spellman’s heart was resting, she sobbed as if her own would break.
After a long time, Rebecca’s hand lifted her; she stood up and their eyes met. Rebecca’s were clear and bright. She smiled at Mahala and then she said a strange thing: “Oh, the blessing, the beautiful blessing of tears! Mine all dried up long ago when I was young and pretty like you. But when you say your prayers to-night, remember to thank God for the surcease of tears.”
Mahala stood very still. She resolved that when she went home, for the first time she would probe Jemima’s memory to the depths. These were the thoughts and the words of a cultured woman. She remembered at that minute that she never had heard any one say who Rebecca Sampson was, or where she came from, or why she had no relatives. For herself she decided in that minute that there were two things that she knew. Rebecca had been a girl of radiant beauty; she had been cultured and was accustomed to proper forms of speech and carefully selected, meaningful words, and it seemed to Mahala, as they went down the road together, that from things she could recall, sharply accentuated by what she had been told occurred after her passing into the church the night of Commencement, that she might be able to point a finger very straightly toward the source that had wrecked the life of so fair a woman as Rebecca Sampson.
When Mahala reached home she was hungry and tired. With inborn fastidiousness she bathed and changed her clothing. She sat beside her mother’s bed and told her of the day. She tried to paint the desperate old house and stable as they were, but she found herself saying that the beams and the partitions were of substantial wood, that the foundations were solid. When she came to the orchard, she realized that she was talking more of the bluebirds that twittered through the branches than she was of the cavities in which they were nesting. She was more concerned with the hair-like grass carpeting its floor than she was with the borers burrowing in its branches. She realized, too, that she was talking more of the many kinds of dear home flowers that marched in procession, hugging closely to the old house, than she was of the building itself. She deliberately embedded in her mother’s brain the thought that here was a refuge, that here was a home that might be made into a sanctuary for them; that she might end her days among the bluebirds in the shelter of the pink boughs of the old orchard. For the first time since disaster had laid violent hands upon her, Elizabeth Spellman remembered that she was not an old woman. She was scarcely middle aged. She had been much younger than the husband upon whom she had leaned so confidently. The thought that there was something in the world that was really theirs, to which they had a right, was the first heartening thing that had happened. The hope that she might once again preside in a home of her own, provided by Mahlon, beautified by even a few of her former possessions, was such a tonic as nothing else in the world could have been short of resurrection and complete repossession.
When at last she had composed herself for sleep, Mahala slipped from her mother’s room and going to her own, threw herself upon her bed, and without knowing exactly why, for the second time that day, she indulged in the luxury of unrestrained tears, tears that made her realize that Rebecca’s words had been true. Tears were a blessing; they were a relief; they did wash the ache from the heart, ease brain strain, and encourage the soul. They were a soothing balm devised by a Great Healer for the comfort of earth’s creatures.
Exhausted, she arose and began undressing, when she heard some one knocking at the side door. She remembered that Jemima had gone to attend the evening church services and probably was late visiting with some of her friends. She tried to think who it might be that was knocking at her door at that hour. The thought came to her that possibly some of the friends who had deserted her in her extremity might have regretted it. Maybe Edith Williams had remembered her and slipped to the side door to avoid disturbing the invalid. Maybe Susanna had come to extend to her a few words of love and loyalty.