Of course, no one is to suppose that John Maynard failed.
It was summer again, and lavish rains had kept to July the fresh luxuriance of June. The frame house stood nearly as it was when its builder finished it. The walls had changed their bright yellow tint for gray, and a few stones had fallen from the top of the chimney—that was all. The forest still gathered close about, and only a few patches of cultivated land had displaced the stumps and stones. A hop-vine draped the porch at the back of the house, and a group of tall sunflowers grew near one of the open curtainless windows.
Civilization had passed by on the other side, and, though not really so remote, was still invisible. Twice a day, with a low rumble, as of distant thunder, a train of cars passed by through the valley beyond the woods.
There was no sound of childish voices, no glimpse of a child anywhere about. The air bore no more intelligent burden than the low colloquial dropping of a brook over its pebbly bed, the buzzing of bees about a hive, and a rustling of leaves in the faint stir of air that was more a respiration than a breath. The only sign of human life to be seen without was a frail thread of blue smoke that rose from the chimney, and disappeared in the sky.
Inside, on the white floor of the kitchen, the shadows of the sunflowers lay as if painted there, only now and then stirring slightly, as the air breathed on the wide, golden-rayed shields outside. In the chimney-corner, almost as silent as a shadow, an old woman sat in a rocking-chair, knitting, and thinking. The two small windows, with crossing light, made one corner of the room bright; but where this woman sat, her face could be seen plainly only by firelight.
It was a rudely-featured face—one seldom sees finely moulded features in the backwoods—but it showed fortitude, good sense, and that unconscious integrity which is so far nobler than the conscious. The gray hair was drawn tightly back, and fastened high on the head with a yellow horn comb; the tall, spare figure was clad in a gown of dark-blue calico covered with little white dots, and [pg 219] a checked blue-and-white apron tied on with white tape strings, and the hands that held the knitting were bony, large-jointed, and large-veined.
The stick of wood that had been smouldering on the andirons bent in the middle, where a little flickering flame had been gnawing industriously for some time. The flame brightened, and made a dive into this break, where it found a splinter. The stick bent yet more, then suddenly snapped in two, one end dropping into the coals, the other end standing upright in the corner.
“Bless me!” muttered the old woman, dropping her work with a start. “There's a stranger! I wonder who it is.”
She sat gazing dreamily at the brand a moment, and, as her face half settled again, it became evident that the expression was one of profound melancholy as well as thoughtfulness. The lifted eyelids, and the start that roused without brightening, showed that.
After a moment's reverie, she drew a long sigh, and, before resuming her work, took the long iron tongs that leaned in the corner, and most inhospitably tossed the figurative stranger into the coals.