"We might get like 'em," she insisted. "How can you tell? Folks just do get that way or they just don't. How can you tell?"
"I s'pose that's so, ain't it?" said Allen, thoughtfully.
"Mother's got a picture of the Hubbelthwaits when they was married," Chris pursued. "Her in white an' slippers and bracelets, and him slick as a kitten's foot. Think of her now, Allen, with bracelets. And him drunk all the time, 'most. How can you tell how things'll turn out? Oh, Allen, I am! I'm afraid."
He bent to her face and laid his own against hers, glowing and cold and with fresh, warm lips.
"Let's just try to be happy and keep ourselves happy," he said.
The troubled woman was still in her face, but at his touch the fears went a little away, and the valley lights being already left behind among the echoes of the bells, they forgot both the lights and their shadows and drifted back to talk about the new house and the presents, and the dinners and suppers and breakfasts together. For these were the stuff of which the time was made. As it was made, too, of that shadowy, hovering fear for the future, and the tragic pity of their errand, and of sad conjecture about the little stray child whom Sarah Ernestine had brought.
"That ain't it a'ready, is it?" Christopha exclaimed when they saw Jacob's cottage.
"It just is—it's 'leven o'clock now," Allen answered, and gave the horse to the old man; and they two went within.
The light in the room, like the lights back in the valley, was as if some great outside influence here and there should part the darkness to win a little stage for a scene of the tragedy: in the valley, for the drunkenness at the Hubbelthwaits', the poverty at the Howells', the ill nature at the Moneys'; and here, in Jacob's cottage, for death. There was no doubt of the quality of the hour in the cottage. The room was instinct with the outside touch. Already it was laid upon the woman in the bed, and with a mystery and authority not unlike that which had come upon Christopha in her marriage hour and was upon her still.
The woman knew Allen, smiled at him, made him understand her thankfulness that he had come. At Christopha she looked kindly and quite without curiosity. Some way, that absence of curiosity at what was so vital to him gripped Allen's heart, and without his knowing the process, showed him the nature of death. The neighbour who had been with the sick woman slipped outside, and as she went she patted Chris's shoulder; and Allen felt that she understood, and he was dumbly grateful to her.