Richard Alger one Sunday evening,” she had said finally, quite aloud, and quite harshly. “I guess your own sister has just as much claim on you as he has. I dunno what's going to be done. I don't believe Charlotte's father will let her in the house to-night.”
Poor Sylvia had sunk back in her chair. To her sensitive conscience the duty nearest at hand seemed always to bark the loudest, and the precious moments had gone by until she knew that Richard had come, found the stone before the door, and gone away, and all her sweet turmoil of hope and anticipation had gone for naught.
Sylvia, lying there awake that night, her mind carrying her back over all that had gone before, had no doubt that this was the end of everything. Not originally a subtle discerner of character, she had come insensibly to know Richard so well that certain results from certain combinations of circumstances in his life were as plain and inevitable to her as the outcome of a simple sum in mathematics. “He'd got 'most out of his track for once,” she groaned out softly, “but now he's pushed back in so hard he can't get out again if he wants to. I dunno how he's going to get along.”
Sylvia, with the roof settling over her head, with not so much upon her few sterile acres to feed her as to feed the honey-bees and birds, with her heart in greater agony because its string of joy had been strained so high and sweetly before it snapped, did not lament over herself at all; neither did she over the other woman who lay up-stairs suffering in a similar case. She lamented only over Richard living alone and unministered to until he died.
When daylight came she got up, dressed herself, and prepared breakfast. Charlotte came down before it was ready. “Let me help get breakfast,” she said, with an assumption of energy, standing in the kitchen doorway in her pretty mottled purple delaine. The purple was the shade of columbine, and very becoming to Charlotte. In spite of her sleepless night, her fine firm tints had not faded; she was too young and too strong and too full of involuntary resistance. She had done up her fair hair compactly; her chin had its usual proud lift.
Sylvia, shrinking as if before some unseen enemy as she moved about, her face all wan and weary, glanced at her half resentfully. “I guess she 'ain't had any such night as I have,” she thought. “Girls don't know much about it.”
“No, I don't need any help,” she replied, aloud. “I 'ain't got anything to do but to stir up an Injun cake. You've got your best dress on. You'd better go and sit down.”
“It won't hurt my dress any.” Charlotte glanced down half scornfully at her purple skirt. It had lost all its glory for her. She was not even sure that Barney had seen it.
“Set down. I've got breakfast 'most ready,” Sylvia said, again, more peremptorily than she was wont, and Charlotte sat down in the hollow-backed cherry rocking-chair beside the kitchen window, leaned her head back, and looked out indifferently between the lilac-bushes. The bushes were full of pinkish-purple buds. Sylvia's front yard reached the road in a broad slope, and the ground was hard, and green with dampness under the shade of a great elm-tree. The grass would never grow there over the roots of the elm, which were flung out broadly like great recumbent limbs over the whole yard, and were barely covered by the mould.
Across the street, seen under the green sweep of the elm, was an orchard of old apple-trees which had blossomed out bravely that spring. Charlotte looked at the white and rosy masses of bloom.
“I guess there wasn't any frost last night, after all,” she remarked.
“I dunno,” responded Sylvia, in a voice which made her niece look around at her. There was a curious impatient ring in it which was utterly foreign to it. There was a frown between Sylvia's gentle eyes, and she moved with nervous jerks, setting down dishes hard, as if they were refractory children, and lashing out with spoons as if they were whips. The long, steady strain upon her patience had not affected her temper, but this last had seemed to bring out a certain vicious and waspish element which nobody had suspected her to possess, and she herself least of all. She felt this morning disposed to go out of her way to sting, and as if some primal and evil instinct had taken possession of her. She felt shocked at herself, but all the more defiant and disposed to keep on.
“Breakfast is ready,” she announced, finally; “if you don't set right up an' eat it, it will be gettin' cold. I wouldn't give a cent for cold Injun cake.”
Charlotte arose promptly and brought a chair to the table, which Sylvia always set punctiliously in the centre of the kitchen as if for a large family.
“Don't scrape your chair on the floor that way; it wears 'em all out,” cried Sylvia, sharply.
Charlotte stared at her again, but she said nothing; she sat down and began to eat absently. Sylvia watched her angrily between her own mouthfuls, which she swallowed down defiantly like medicine.
“It ain't much use cookin' things if folks don't eat 'em,” said she.
“I am eating,” returned Charlotte.
“Eatin'? Swallowin' down Injun cake as if it was sawdust! I don't call that eatin'. You don't act as if you tasted a mite of it!”
“Aunt Sylvy, what has got into you?” said Charlotte.
“Got into me? I should think you'd talk about anything gettin' into me, when you set there like a stick. I guess you 'ain't got all there is to bear.”
“I never thought I had,” said Charlotte.
“Well, I guess you 'ain't.”
They went on swallowing their food silently; the great clock ticked slowly, and the spring birds called outside; but they heard neither. The shadows of the young elm leaves played over the floor and the white table-cloth. It was much warmer that morning, and the shadows were softer.
Before they had finished breakfast, Charlotte's mother came, advancing ponderously, with soft thuds, across the yard to the side door. She opened it and peered in.
“Here you be,” said she, scanning both their faces with anxious and deprecating inquiry.
“Can't you come in, an' not stand there holdin' the door open?” inquired Sylvia. “I feel the wind on my back, and I've got a bad pain enough in it now.”
Mrs. Barnard stepped in, and shut the door quickly, in an alarmed way.
“Ain't you feelin' well this mornin', Sylvy?” said she.
“Oh yes, I'm feelin' well enough. It ain't any matter how I feel, but it's a good deal how some other folks do.”
Sarah Barnard sank into the rocking-chair, and sat there looking at them hesitatingly, as if she did not dare to open the conversation.
Suddenly Sylvia arose and went out of the kitchen with a rush, carrying a plate of Indian cake to feed the hens. “I can't set here all day; I've got to do something,” she announced as she went.
When the door had closed after her, Mrs. Barnard turned to Charlotte.
“What's the matter with her?” she asked, nodding towards the door.
“I don't know.”
“She ain't sick, is she? I never see her act so. Sylvy's generally just like a lamb. You don't s'pose she's goin' to have a fever, do you?”
“I don't know.”
Suddenly
