Thus rebuffed, Si meandered sadly into the cow-yard, shaking his head as he came. Seeing us seated on an upturned plough, over by the fence, from which point we had a perfect view of the red barn, he sauntered toward us, and, halting at our side, looked to see if there was room enough for him to sit also. But Marcellus, in quite a casual way, remarked, “Oh! wheeled the milk over to the house, already, Si?” and at this the doleful man lounged off again in new despondency, got out the wheelbarrow, and, with ostentatious groans of travail hoisted a can upon it and started off.
“He’s takin’ advantage of Arphaxed’s being so worked up to play ‘ole soldier’ on him,” said Mar-cellus. “All of us have to stir him up the whole time to keep him from takin’ root somewhere. I told him this afternoon ’t if there had to be any settin’ around under the bushes an’ cryin’, the fam’ly ’ud do it.”
We talked in hushed tones as we sat there watching the shut doors of the red barn, in boyish conjecture about what was going on behind them. I recall much of this talk with curious distinctness, but candidly it jars now upon my maturer nerves. The individual man looks back upon his boyhood with much the same amused amazement that the race feels in contemplating the memorials of its own cave-dwelling or bronze period. What strange savages we were! In those days Marcellus and I used to find our very highest delight in getting off on Thursdays, and going over to Dave Bushnell’s slaughter-house, to witness with stony hearts, and from as close a coign of vantage as might be, the slaying of some score of barnyard animals—the very thought of which now revolts our grown-up minds. In the same way we sat there on the plough, and criticised old Arphaxed’s meanness in excluding us from the red barn, where the men-folks were coming in final contact with the “pride of the family.” Some of the cows wandering toward us began to “moo” with impatience for the pasture, but Mar-cellus said there was no hurry.
All at once we discovered that Aunt Em was standing a few yards away from us, on the other side of the fence. We could see her from where we sat by only turning a little—a motionless, stout, upright figure, with a pail in her hand, and a sternly impassive look on her face. She, too, had her gaze fixed upon the red barn, and, though the declining sun was full in her eyes, seemed incapable of blinking, but just stared coldly, straight ahead.
Suddenly an unaccustomed voice fell upon our ears. Turning, we saw that a black-robed woman, with a black wrap of some sort about her head, had come up to where Aunt Em stood, and was at her shoulder. Marcellus nudged me, and whispered, “It’s S’reny. Look out for squalls!” And then we listened in silence.
“Won’t you speak to me at all, Emmeline?” we heard this new voice say.
Aunt Em’s face, sharply outlined in profile against the sky, never moved. Her lips were pressed into a single line, and she kept her eyes on the barn.
“If there’s anything I’ve done, tell me,” pursued the other. “In such an hour as this—when both our hearts are bleeding so, and—and every breath we draw is like a curse upon us—it doesn’t seem a fit time for us—for us to—” The voice faltered and broke, leaving the speech unfinished.
Aunt Em kept silence so long that we fancied this appeal, too, had failed. Then abruptly, and without moving her head, she dropped a few ungracious words as it were over her shoulder. “If I had anything special to say, most likely I’d say it,” she remarked.
We could hear the sigh that Serena drew. She lifted her shawled head, and for a moment seemed as if about to turn. Then she changed her mind, apparently, for she took a step nearer to the other.