Phoebe Deane E-Book

Grace Livingston Hill

• Herausgeber: Classica Libris
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Beschreibung

Beautiful young Phoebe was desperate! Cruel and cunning Hiram Greene had declared his intention to marry her. At first, Phoebe didn’t take Hiram seriously. After all, he couldn’t force her into marriage. Then Hiram launched a shrewd campaign of deceit and lies about Phoebe. Soon everyone around her, even her family, seemed determined to make her give in to Hiram. Could she stop what Hiram had started before it was too late? Or would she lose everything—her freedom, her happiness, and her wonderful new friendship with handsome Nathaniel Graham?

Leseprobe

Grace Livingston Hill

PHOEBE DEANE

Copyright

First published in 1909

Copyright © 2019 Classica Libris

Chapter 1

The night was hot and dark, for the moon rose late. The perfume of the petunia bed hung heavy in the air, and the katydids and crickets kept up a continual symphony in the orchard close to the house. Its music floated in at the open window, and called to the girl alluringly, as she sat in the darkened upper room patiently rocking Emmeline’s baby to sleep in the little wooden cradle.

She had washed the supper dishes. The tea towels hung smoothly on the little line in the woodshed, the milk pans stood in a shining row ready for the early milking, and the kitchen, swept and garnished and dark, had settled into its nightly repose. The day had been long and full of hard work, but now as soon as the baby slept Phoebe would be free for a while before bedtime.

Unconsciously her foot tapped faster on the rocker in her impatience to be out, and the baby stirred and opened his round eyes at her, murmuring sleepily:

“Pee-bee, up-e-knee! Pee-bee, up-e-knee!” Which being interpreted was a demand to be taken up on Phoebe’s knee. But Phoebe, knowing from experience that she would be tied for the evening if she acceded to this request, toned her rocking into a sleepy motion, and the long lashes suddenly dropped again upon the fat little cheeks. At last the baby was asleep.

With careful touch Phoebe slowed the rocking until the motion was scarcely perceptible, waiting a minute in hushed attention to hear the soft regular breathing after the cradle had stopped. Then she rose noiselessly from her chair, and poised on tiptoe over the cradle, to listen once more and be sure, before she stole softly from the room.

As she reached the door the baby heaved a long, deep sigh, doubtless of satisfaction with its toys in dreamland, and Phoebe paused, her heart standing still for an instant lest, after all, that naughty baby would waken and demand to be taken up. How many times had she just reached the door, on other hot summer nights, and been greeted by a loud cry which served to bring Emmeline to the foot of the stairs, with: “I declare, Phoebe Deane! I should think if you would half try you could keep that poor child from crying all night!” and Phoebe would be in for an hour or two of singing, and rocking and amusing the fretful baby.

But the baby slept on, and Phoebe stepped cautiously over the creaking boards in the floor, and down the stairs lightly, scarcely daring yet to breathe. Like a fairy she slipped past the sitting-room door, scarcely daring to glance in lest she would be seen, yet carrying with her the perfect mental picture of the room and its occupants as she glided out into the night.

Albert, her half-brother, was in the sitting-room. She could see his outline through the window: Albert, with his long, thin, kindly-careless face bent over the village paper he had brought home just before supper. Emmeline sat over by the table close to the candle, with her sharp features intent upon the hole in Johnny’s stocking. She had been threading her needle as Phoebe passed the door, and the fretful lines between her eyes were intensified by the effort to get the thread into the eye of the needle.

Hiram Green was in the sitting-room also. He was the neighbor whose farm adjoined Albert Deane’s on the side next the village. He was sitting opposite the hall door, his lank form in a splint-bottomed chair tilted back against the wall. His slouch hat was drawn down over his eyes and his hands were in his pockets. He often sat so with Albert in the evening. Sometimes Emmeline called Phoebe in and gave her some darning or mending, and then Phoebe had to listen to Hiram Green’s dull talk, to escape which she had fallen into the habit of slipping out into the orchard after her work was done. But it was not always that she could elude the vigilance of Emmeline, who seemed to be determined that Phoebe should not have a moment to herself, day or night.

Phoebe wore a thin white frock—that was one of Emmeline’s grievances, those thin white frocks that Phoebe would insist on wearing afternoons, so uneconomical and foolish; besides, they would wear out some time. Emmeline felt that Phoebe should keep her mother’s frocks till she married, and so save Albert having to spend so much on her setting out. Emmeline had a very poor opinion of Phoebe’s dead mother; her frocks had been too fine and too daintily trimmed to belong to a sensible woman, Emmeline thought.

Phoebe flashed across the path of light that fell from the door and into the orchard like some winged creature. She loved the night with its sounds and its scents and its darkness—darkness like velvet, with depths for hiding and a glimpse of the vaulted sky set with far-away stars. Soon the summer would be gone, the branches would be bare against the stark whiteness of the snow, and all her solitude and dreaming would be over until the spring again. She cherished every moment of the summer as if it were worth rich gold. She loved to sit on the fence that separated the orchard from the meadow, and wonder what the rusty-throated crickets were saying as they chirped or moaned. She liked to listen to the argument about Katy, and wonder over and over again what it was that Katy-did and why she did it, and whether she really did it at all as the little green creatures in the branches declared, for all the world the way people were picked to pieces at the sewing bees. That was just the way they used to talk about that young Mrs. Spafford. Nobody was safe from gossip—for they said Mrs. Spafford belonged to the old Schuyler family. When she came a bride to the town, how cruel tongues were, and how babbling and irresponsible, like the katydids!

The girl seated herself in her usual place, leaning against the high crotch of the two upright rails which supported that section of fence. It was cool and delicious here, with the orchard for screening and the wide pasture meadow for scenery. The sky was powdered with stars, the fragrant breath of the pasture fanned her cheek, the tree-toads joined in the nightly concert, with a deep frog-bass keeping time. A stray night-owl with a piccolo note, the far-away bleat of a sheep, and the deep sweet moo-oo of a cow thrilled along her sensitive soul as some great orchestra might have done. Then, suddenly, there came a discordant crackle of the apple branches and Hiram Green stepped heavily out from the shadows and stood beside her.

Phoebe had never liked Hiram Green since the day she had seen him shove his wife out of his way and say to her roughly, “Aw, shut up, can’t you? Women are forever talking about what they don’t understand!” She had watched the faint color flicker into the white-cheeked wife’s face and then flicker out whitely again as she tried to laugh his roughness off before Phoebe, but the girl had never forgotten it. She had been but a little girl, then, very shy and quiet, almost a stranger in the town, for her mother had just died and she had come to live with the half-brother who had been married so long that he was almost a stranger to her. Hiram Green had not noticed the young girl then, and had treated his wife as if no one were present. But Phoebe had remembered. She had grown to know and love the sad wife, to watch her gentle, patient ways with her boisterous boys, and her blowsy little girl who looked like Hiram and had none of her mother’s delicacy; and her heart used to fill with indignation over the rude ways of the coarse man with his wife.

Hiram Green’s wife had been dead a year. Phoebe had been with her for a week before she died, and watched the stolid husband with never a shadow of anxiety in his eyes while he told the neighbors that “Annie would be all right in a few days. It was her own fault, anyway, that she got down sick. She would drive over to see her mother when she wasn’t able.” He neglected to state that she had been making preserves and jelly for his special benefit, and had prepared dinner for twelve men who were harvesting for a week. He did not state that she only went to see her mother once in six months, and it was her only holiday.

Phoebe had listened, and inwardly fumed over the blindness and hardness of his nature. When Annie died he blamed her as he had always done, and hinted that he guessed now she was sorry she hadn’t listened to him and been content at home. As if any kind of heaven wouldn’t be better than Hiram Green’s house to his poor disappointed wife.

But Phoebe had stood beside the dying woman as her life flickered out and heard her say: “I ain’t sorry to go, Phoebe, for I’m tired. I’m that tired that I’d rather rest through eternity than do anything else. I don’t think Hiram’ll miss me much, and the children ain’t like me. They never took after me, only the baby that died. They didn’t care when I went away to mothers. I don’t think anybody in the world’ll miss me, unless it’s mother, and she has the other girls, and never saw me much anyway now. Maybe the baby that died’ll want me.”

And so the weary eyes had closed, and Phoebe had been glad to fold the thin, work-worn hands across her breast and feel that she was at rest. The only expression of regret that Hiram gave was, “It’s going to be mighty unhandy, her dying just now. Harvesting ain’t over yet, and the meadow lot ought to be cut before it rains or the hull thing’ll be lost.” Then Phoebe felt a fierce delight in the fact that everything had to stop for Annie. Whether Hiram would or no, for very decency’s sake, the work must stop and the forms of respect must be gone through with even though his heart was not in it. The rain came, too, to do Annie honor, and before the meadow lot was cut.

The funeral over, the farm work had gone on with doubled vigor, and Phoebe overheard Hiram tell Albert that “burying Annie had been mighty expensive ’count o’ that thunder-storm coming so soon, it spoiled the whole south meadow; and it was just like Annie to upset everything. If she had only been a little more careful and not gone off to her mother’s on pleasure, she might have kept up a little longer till harvest was over.”

Phoebe had been coming into the sitting-room with her sewing when Hiram said that—it was a fall evening, not six weeks after Annie had been laid to rest—and she looked indignantly at her brother to see if he would not give Hiram a rebuke; but he only leaned back against the wall and said, “Such things were to be expected in the natural course of life,” he supposed. Phoebe turned her chair so that she would not have to look at Hiram. She despised him. She wished she knew how to show him what a despicable creature he was, but as she was only a young girl she could do nothing but turn her back. Perhaps Phoebe never realized how effective that method might be. At least she never knew that all that evening Hiram Green watched the back of her shining head, its waves of bright hair bound about with a ribbon, and conforming to the beautiful shape of her head with exquisite grace. He studied the shapely shoulders and graceful movements of the indignant girl as she patiently mended Johnny’s stockings, let down the hem of Alma’s linsey-woolsey, and set a patch on the seat of Bertie’s trousers, with her slender capable ringers. He remembered that Annie had been “pretty” when he married her, and it gratified him to feel that he had given her this tribute in his thoughts. He felt himself to be a truly sorrowful widower. At the same time he could see the good points in the girl Phoebe, even though she sat with her indignant shoulders toward him. In fact, the very sauciness of those shoulders, as the winter went by, attracted him more and more. Annie had never dared be saucy nor indifferent. Annie had loved him from the first and had unfortunately let him know it too soon and too often. It was a new experience to have someone indifferent to him. He rather liked it, knowing as he did that he had always had his own way when he got ready for it.

As the winter went by Hiram had more and more spent his evenings with the Deanes and Phoebe had more and more spent her evenings with Johnny, or the cradle, or in her own room—anything as an excuse to get away from the constant unwelcome companionship. Then Emmeline had objected to the extravagance of an extra candle; and moreover, Phoebe’s room was cold. It was not that there was not plenty of wood stored in the Deane wood-house, or that there was need for rigid economy, but Emmeline was “thrifty,” and could see no sense in a girl wasting a candle when one light would do for all, so the days went by for Phoebe full of hard work, and constant companionship, and the evenings also with no leisure, and no seclusion. Phoebe had longed and longed for the spring to come, when she might get out into the night alone, and take long deep breaths that were all her own, for it seemed as if even her breathing were ordered and supervised.

But through it all, strange to say, it had never once entered Phoebe’s head that Hiram was turning his thoughts toward her, and so, when he came and stood there beside her in the darkness he startled her merely because he was something she disliked, and she shrank from him as one would shrink from a snake in the grass.

Then Hiram came closer to her and her heart gave one warning thud of alarm as she shrank away from him.

“Phoebe,” he said, boldly, putting out his hand to where he supposed her hands would be in the darkness—though he did not find hers, “ain’t is about time you and I was comin’ to an understandin’?”

Phoebe slid off the fence and backed away in the darkness. She knew the location of every apple-tree and could have led him a chase through their labyrinths if she had chosen. Her heart froze within her for fear of what might be coming, and she felt she must not run away, but stay and face it whatever it was.

“What do you mean?” asked Phoebe, her voice full of antagonism.

“Mean?” said Hiram, sidling after her. “I mean it’s time we set up a partnership. I’ve waited long enough. I need somebody to look after the children. You suit me pretty well, and I guess you’d be well enough fixed with me.”

Hiram’s air of assurance made Phoebe’s heart chill with fear. For a moment she was speechless with horror and indignation.

Taking her silence as a favorable indication Hiram drew near her and once more tried to find her hands in the darkness.

“I’ve always liked you, Phoebe,” he said, insinuatingly. “Don’t you like me?”

“No, No, No!” almost screamed Phoebe, snatching her hands away. “Don’t ever dare to think of such a thing again!”

Then she turned and vanished in the dark like a wraith of mist, leaving the crestfallen Hiram alone, feeling very foolish and not a little astonished. He had not expected his suit to be met quite in this way.

“Phoebe, is that you?” called Emmeline’s metallic voice, as she lifted her sharp eyes to peer into the darkness of the entry. “Albert, I wonder if Hiram went the wrong way and missed her?”

But Phoebe, keen of instinct, light of foot, drifted like a breath past the door, and was up in her room before Emmeline decided whether she had heard anything or not, and Albert went on reading his paper.

Phoebe sat alone in her little kitchen chamber, with the button on the door fastened, and faced the situation, looking out into the night. She kept very still that Emmeline might not know she was there. She almost held her breath for a time, for it seemed as if Hiram had so much assurance that he almost had the power to draw her from her room against her will. Her indignation and fear were beyond all possible need of the occasion. Yet every time she thought of the hateful sound of his voice as he made his cold-blooded proposition, the fierce anger boiled within her, so that she wished over and over again that she might have another opportunity to answer him and make her refusal more emphatic. Yet, when she thought of it, what could she say more than “No”? Great waves of hate surged through her soul for the man who had treated one woman so that she was glad to die, and now wanted to take her life and crush it out. With the intensity of a very young girl she took up the cause of the dead Annie, and felt like fighting for her memory.

By and by she heard Albert and Emmeline shutting up the house for the night. Hiram did not come back as she feared he might.

He half started to come, then thought better of it, and felt his way through the orchard to the other fence and climbed lumberingly over it into the road. His self-love had been wounded and he did not care to appear before his neighbors tonight. Moreover, he felt a little dazed and wanted to think things over and adjust himself to Phoebe’s point of view. He felt a half resentment toward the Deanes for Phoebe’s action, as if the rebuff she had given him had been their fault somehow. They should have prepared her better. They understood the situation fully. There had often been an interchange of remarks between them on the subject and Albert had responded by a nod and wink. It was tacitly understood that it would be a good thing to have the farms join, and keep them “all in the family.” Emmeline, too, had often given some practical hints about Phoebe’s capabilities as a housewife and mother to his wild little children. It was Emmeline who had given the hint tonight as to Phoebe’s hiding-place. He began to feel as if Emmeline had somehow tricked him. He resolved to stay away from the Deanes for a long time—perhaps a week, or at any rate two or three days—certainly one day, at least. Then he began to wonder if perhaps after all Phoebe was not just flirting with him. Surely she could not refuse him in earnest. His farm was as pretty as any in the county, and everyone knew he had money in the bank. Surely, Phoebe was only being coy for a time. After all, perhaps, it was natural for a girl to be a little shy. It was a way they had, and if it pleased them to hold off a little, why it showed they would be all the more sensible afterward. Now Annie had always been a great one for sweet speeches. “Soft-soap” he had designated it after their marriage. Perhaps he ought to have made a little more palaver about it to Phoebe, and not have frightened her. But pooh! It was a good sign. A bad beginning made a good ending generally. Maybe it was a good thing that Phoebe wasn’t just ready to fall into his arms, the minute he asked her, then she wouldn’t be always bothering around, clinging to him and sobbing in that maddening way that Annie had.

By the time he had reached home he had reasoned himself into complaisance again, and was pretty well satisfied with himself. As he closed the kitchen door he reflected that perhaps he might fix things up a bit about the house in view of a new mistress. That would probably please Phoebe, and he certainly did need a wife. Then Hiram went to bed and slept soundly.

Emmeline came to Phoebe’s door before she went to bed, calling softly, “Phoebe, are you in there?” and tapping on the door two or three times. When no answer came from the breathless girl in the dark behind the buttoned door, Emmeline lifted the latch and tried to open the door, but when she found it resisted her, she turned away and said to Albert in a fretful tone:

“I s’pose she’s sound asleep, but I don’t see what call she has to fasten her door every night. It looks so unsociable, as if she was afraid we weren’t to be trusted. I wonder you don’t speak to her about it.”

But Albert only yawned good-naturedly, and said: “I don’t see how it hurts you any.”

“It hurts my self-respect,” said Emmeline in an injured tone, as she shut her own door with a click.

Far into the night sat Phoebe, looking out of the window on the world which she loved, but could not enjoy any more. The storm of rage and shame and hatred passed, and left her weak and miserable and lonely. At last she put her head down on the window-sill and cried out softly: “Oh, mother, mother, mother! If you were only here tonight! You would take me away where I would never see his hateful face again.”

The symphony of the night wailed on about her, as if echoing her cry in sobbing, throbbing chords, growing fainter as the moon arose, with now and then a hint of a theme of comfort, until there came a sudden hush. Then softly, tenderly, the music changed into the night’s lullaby. All the world slept, and Phoebe slept, too.

Chapter 2

Phoebe was late coming down stairs the next morning. Emmeline was already in the kitchen rattling the pots and pans significantly. Emmeline always did that when Phoebe was late, as her room was directly over the kitchen, and the degree of her displeasure could be plainly heard.

She looked up sharply as Phoebe entered and eyed the girl keenly. There were dark circles under Phoebe’s eyes, but otherwise her spirits had arisen with the morning light, and she almost wondered at the fear that had possessed her the night before. She felt only scorn now for Hiram Green, and was ready to protect herself. She went straight at her work without a word. Emmeline had long ago expressed herself with regard to the “Good-morning” with which the child Phoebe used to greet her when she came down in the morning. Emmeline said it was “a foolish waste of time, and only stuck-up folks used it. It was all of a piece with dressing up at home with no one to see you, and curling your hair,” this with a meaning look at Phoebe’s bright waves. Emmeline’s light, fady hair was straight as a die.

They worked in silence. The bacon was spluttering to the eggs, and Phoebe was taking up the mush when Emmeline asked:

“Didn’t Hiram find you last night?” She cast one of her sideways searching looks at the girl as if she would look her through and through.

Phoebe started and dropped the spoon back into the mush where it sank with a sigh and a mutter. There was something enlightening in Emmeline’s tone. Phoebe saw it at once. The family had been aware of Hiram’s intention! Her eyes flashed one spark of anger, then she turned abruptly back to the kettle and went on with her work.

“Yes,” she answered, inscrutably. Emmeline was always irritated at the difficulty with which she found out anything from Phoebe.

“Well, I didn’t hear you come in,” she complained, “you must have been out a long time.”

Wary Emmeline. She had touched the spring that opened the secret.

“I wasn’t out five minutes in all.”

“You don’t say!” said Emmeline, in surprise. “Why, I thought you said Hiram found you.”

Phoebe put the cover on the dish of mush and set it on the table before she deigned any reply. Then she came over and stood beside Emmeline calmly and spoke in a cool, clear voice:

“Emmeline, did Hiram Green tell you what he was coming out to the orchard for last night?”

“For mercy’s sake, Phoebe, don’t put on heroics! I’m not blind, I hope. One couldn’t very well help seeing, what Hiram Green wants. Did you think you were the only member of the family with eyes?”

When Emmeline looked up from cutting the bread at the conclusion of these remarks she was startled to see Phoebe’s face. It was white as marble even to the lips, and her great beautiful eyes shone like two luminous stars.

“Emmeline, did you and Albert know what Hiram Green wanted of me, and did you let him come out there to find me after you knew that?”

Her voice was very calm and low. It reminded one of some coolly flowing river, with unknown depths in its shadowed bosom. Emmeline was awed by it for a moment. She laid down the bread-knife and stood and stared. Phoebe was small and dainty, with features cut like a cameo, and a singularly sweet, childlike expression when her face was in repose. That she was rarely beautiful her family had never noticed, though sometimes Albert liked to watch her as she sat sewing. She seemed to him a pleasant thing to have around, like a bright posy-bed. Emmeline thought her too frail-looking and pale. But for the moment the delicate girl was transformed. Her face shone with a light of righteous anger, and her eyes blazed dark with feeling. Two spots of lovely rose-color glowed upon her cheeks. The morning sun had just reached the south window by the table where Emmeline had been cutting bread, and it laid its golden fingers over the bright waves of brown hair in a halo round her head, as if the sun would sanction her righteous wrath. She looked like some beautiful, injured saint, and before the intensity of the maiden’s emotion her sister-in-law fairly quailed.

“Fer the land! Phoebe! Now don’t!” said Emmeline, in a tone conciliatory. “What if I did know? Was that any sin? You must remember your brother and I are looking to your best interests, and Hiram is considered a real fine ketch.”

Slowly Phoebe’s righteous wrath sank again into her heart. The fire went out of her eyes, and in its place came ice that seemed to pierce Emmeline till she felt like shrinking away.

“You’re the queerest girl I ever saw,” said Emmeline, fretfully restive under Phoebe’s gaze. “What’s the matter with you? Didn’t you ever expect to have any beaux?”

Phoebe shivered as if a north blast had struck her at that last word.

“Did you mean, then,” she said, coldly, in a voice that sounded as if it came from very far away, “that you thought that I would ever be willing to marry Hiram Green? Did you and Albert talk it over and think that?”

Emmeline found it hard to answer the question, put in a tone which seemed to imply a great offence. Phoebe lived on a plane far too high for Emmeline to even try to understand without a great effort. The effort wearied her.

“Well, I should like to know why you shouldn’t marry him!” declared Emmeline, impatiently. “There’s plenty of girls would be glad to get him.” Emmeline glanced hurriedly out of the window and saw Albert and the hired man coming to breakfast. It was time the children were down. Alma came lagging into the kitchen, asking to have her frock buttoned, and Johnny and Bertie were heard scuffling in the rooms overhead. There was no time for further conversation. Emmeline was about to dismiss the subject, but Phoebe stepped between her and the little girl and laid her small supple hands on Emmeline’s stout rounding shoulders, looking her straight in the eyes.

“Emmeline, how can you possibly be so unkind as to think such a thing for me when you know how Annie suffered?”

“Oh, fiddlesticks!” said Emmeline, shoving the girl away roughly. “Annie was a milk-and-water baby who wanted to be coddled. The right woman could wind Hiram Green around her little finger. You’re a little fool if you think about that. Annie’s dead and gone and you’ve no need to trouble with her. Come, put the things on the table while I button Alma. I’m sure there never was as silly a girl as you are in this world. Anybody’d think you was a princess in disguise instead of a poor orphan dependent on her brother, and he only a half at that!”

With which parting shot Emmeline slammed the kitchen door and called to the two little boys in a loud, harsh tone.

The crimson rose in Phoebe’s cheeks till it covered face and neck in a sweet, shamed tide and threatened to bring the tears into her eyes. Her very soul seemed wrenched from its moorings at the cruel reminder of her dependence upon the bounty of this coarse woman and her husband. Phoebe felt as if she must leave the house at once never to return, only there was no place—no place in this wide world for her to go.

Then Albert appeared in the kitchen door with the hired man behind him, and the sense of her duty made her turn to work, that old, blessed refuge for those who are turned out of their bits of Edens for a time. She hurried to take up the breakfast, while the two men washed their faces at the pump and dried them on the long roller-towel that hung from the inside of the door.

“Hello, Phoebe,” called Albert, as he turned to surrender his place at the comb and the looking-glass. “I say, Phoebe, you’re looking like a rose this morning. What makes your cheeks so red? Anybody been kissing you this early?”

This pleasantry was intended as a joke. Albert had never said anything of the sort to her before. She felt instinctively that Emmeline had been putting ideas about her and Hiram into his head. It almost brought the tears to have Albert speak in this way. He was so uniformly kind to her and treated her as if she were still almost a child. She hated jokes of this sort, and it was all the worse because of the presence of Alma and the hired man. Alma grinned knowingly, and went over where she could look into Phoebe’s face. Henry Williams, with the freedom born of his own social equality—he being the son of a neighboring farmer who had hired himself out for the season as there were more brothers at home than were needed—turned and stared admiringly at Phoebe.

“Say, Phoebe,” put in Henry, “you do look real pretty this morning, now if I do say it. I never noticed before how handsome your eyes were. What’s that you said about kissing, Albert? I wouldn’t mind taking the job, if it’s going. How about it, Phoebe?”

Pleasantry of this sort was common in the neighborhood, but Phoebe had never joined in it, and she had always looked upon it as unrefined, and a form of amusement that her mother would not have liked. Now when it was directed toward her, and she realized that it trifled with the most sacred and personal relations of life, it filled her with horror.

“Please don’t, Albert!” she said, with trembling lips in a low voice, “Don’t! I don’t like it.” And Alma saw with wonder, and gloated over the fact, that there were tears in Aunt Phoebe’s eyes. That would be something to remember and tell. Aunt Phoebe usually kept her emotions to herself with the door shut too tight for Alma to peep in.

“Not?” said Albert, perplexed. “Well, course I won’t if you don’t like it. I was only telling you how bright and pretty you looked and making you know how nice it was to have you around. Sit down, child, and let’s have breakfast. Where’s your mother, Alma?”

Emmeline entered with a flushed face, and a couple of cowed and dejected small boys held firmly by the shoulders.

Somewhat comforted by Albert’s assurance, Phoebe was able to finish her work and sit down at the table; but although she busied herself industriously in putting on the baby’s bib, spreading Johnny’s bread, handing Alma the syrup-jug, and preventing her from emptying its entire contents over her personal breakfast, inside and out, she ate nothing herself: for every time she raised her eyes she found a battalion of other eyes staring at her.

Emmeline was looking her through, in puzzled annoyance and chagrin, taking in the fact that her well-planned matchmaking was not running as smoothly as had been expected. Albert was studying her in the astonishing discovery that the thin, sad little half-sister he had brought into his home, who had seemed so lifeless and colorless and unlike the bouncing pretty girls of the neighborhood, had suddenly become beautiful, and was almost a woman. Several times he opened his mouth to say this in the bosom of his family, and then the dignified poise of the lovely head, or a something in the stately set of the small shoulders, or a pleading look in the large soft eyes raised to him, held him quiet; and his own eyes tried to tell her again that he would not say it if she did not like it.

Alma was staring at her between mouthfuls of mush, and thinking how she would tell about those tears, and how perhaps she would taunt Aunt Phoebe with them sometime when she tried to “boss,” when may was out to a sewing-bee. “Ehh! I saw you cry once, Aunt Phoebe! Ehh! Right before folks. EHH-HH! Cry baby! You had great big tears in your eyes, when my pa teased you. I saw um. Eh-hh-hh!” How would that sound? Alma felt the roll of the taunt now, and wished it were time to try it. She knew she could make Aunt Phoebe writhe sometime, and that was what she had always wanted to do, for Aunt Phoebe was always discovering her best laid plans and revealing them to Emmeline, and Alma longed sorely for revenge.

But the worst pair of eyes of all were those of Henry Williams, bold, and intimate, who sat directly opposite her. He seemed to feel that the way had been opened to him by Albert Deane’s words, and was only waiting his opportunity to enter in. He had been admiring Phoebe ever since he came there, early in the spring, and wondering that no one seemed to think her of much account, but somehow her quiet dignity had always kept him at a distance. But now he felt he was justified in making more free with her.

“Did you hear that singing-school was going to open early this fall, Phoebe?” he asked, after many clearings of his throat.

“No,” said Phoebe, without looking up. That was rather disappointing to him, for it had taken him a long time to think up that subject, and it was too much to have it disposed of so quickly, without even a glimpse of her eyes.

“Do you usually ’tend?” he asked again, after a pause filled in by Alma and the little boys in a squabble for the last scrap of mush and molasses.

“No!” said Phoebe again, her eyes still down.

“Phoebe didn’t go because there wasn’t anyone for her to come home with, before, Hank, but I guess there’ll be plenty now,” said Emmeline, with a meaningful laugh.

“Yes,” said Phoebe, now looking up calmly without a flicker of the anger she was feeling. “Hester McVane and Polly said they were going this winter. If I decide to go I’m going with them. Emmeline, if you’re going to dry those apples today I’d better begin them. Excuse me, please.”

“You haven’t eaten any breakfast, Aunt Phoebe! Ma, Aunt Phoebe never touched a bite!” announced Alma, gleefully.

“I’m not hungry this morning,” said Phoebe, truthfully, and went in triumph from the room, having baffled the gaze of the man and the child, and wrested the dart from her sister-in-law’s arrow. It was hard on the man, for he had decided to ask Phoebe if she would go to singing-school with him. He had been a long time making up his mind as to whether he wouldn’t rather ask Harriet Woodgate, but now he had decided on Phoebe he did not like to be balked in the asking. He sought her out in the wood-shed where she sat, and gave his invitation, but she only made her white fingers fly the faster round the apple she was peeling as she answered: “Thank you, it won’t be necessary for you to go with me if I decide to go.” Then as she perceived by his prolonged “H’m-m-m!” that he was about to urge his case she arose hastily, exclaiming: “Emmeline, did you call me? I’m coming,” and vanished into the kitchen. The hired man looked after her wistfully and wondered if he had not better ask Harriet Woodgate after all.

Phoebe was not a weeping girl. Ever since her mother died she had lived a life of self-repression, hiding her inmost feelings from the world, for her world since then had not proved to be a sympathetic one. When annoyances came she buried them in her heart and grieved over them in silence, for she quickly perceived that there was no one in this new atmosphere who would understand her sensitive nature.

Refinements and culture had been hers that these new relatives did not know nor understand. What to her had been necessities were to them foolish nonsense. She looked at Albert wistfully sometimes, for she felt if it were not for Emmeline she might perhaps in time make him understand and change a little in some ways. But Emmeline resented any suggestions she made to Albert, especially when he good-naturedly tried to please her. Emmeline resented almost everything about Phoebe. She had resented her coming in the first place. Albert was grown up and living away from home when his father married Phoebe’s mother, a delicate, refined woman, far different from himself. Emmeline felt that Albert had no call to take the child in at all for her to bring up when she was not a “real relation.” Besides, Emmeline had an older sister of her own who would have been glad to come and live with them and help with the work, but of course there was no room nor excuse for her with Phoebe there, and they could not afford to have them both, though Albert was ready to take in any stray chick or child that came along. It was only Emmeline’s forbidding attitude that kept him from adopting all the lonely creatures, be they animal or human, that appealed to his sympathy. There were a great many nice points about Albert, and Phoebe recognized them gratefully, the more as she grew older, though he would come to the table in his shirt-sleeves and eat his pie with his knife.

But in spite of her nature this morning Phoebe had much ado to keep from crying. The annoyances increased as the day grew, and if it had not been for her work she would have felt desperate. As it was she kept steadily at it, conquering everything that came in her way. The apples fairly flew out of their coats into the pan, and Emmeline, glancing into the back shed, noting the set of the forbidding young shoulders, and the undaunted tilt of the head, also the fast diminishing pile of apples on the floor and the multiplying quarters in the pans, forbore to disturb her. Emmeline was far-seeing, and she was anxious to have those apples off her mind. With Phoebe in that mood she knew it would be done before she could possibly get around to help. There was time enough for remarks later; meantime perhaps it was just as well to let my lady alone until she came to her senses a little.

The old stone sun-dial by the side door shadowed the hour of eleven, and the apples were almost gone from the pile on the floor, when Emmeline came into the back shed with a knife and sat down to help. She looked at Phoebe sharply as she seated herself with a show of finishing things up in a hurry, but she intended, and Phoebe knew she did, to have it out with the girl before her.

Phoebe did not help her to begin. Her fingers flew faster than ever, though they ached with the motion, and the juicy knife against her sensitive skin made every nerve cry out to be released. With set lips she went on with her work, though she longed to fling the apple away and run out to the fields for a long, deep breath.

Emmeline had pared two whole apples before she began, in a conciliatory tone. She had eyed Phoebe furtively several times, but the girl might have been a sphinx, or some lovely mountain wrapped about with mist, for all she could read of her mood. This was what Emmeline could not stand, this distant, proud silence that would not mix with other folk. She longed to break through it by force, and reduce the pride to the dust. It would do her heart good to see Phoebe humbled for once, she often told herself.

“Phoebe, I don’t see what you find to dislike so in Hiram Green,” she began. “He’s a good man. He always attends church on Sundays.”

“I would respect him more if he was a good man in his home on week-days. Anybody can be good once a week before people. A man needs to be good at home in his family.”

“Well, now, he pervides well for his family. Look at his comfortable home, and his farm. There isn’t a finer in this county. He has his name up all round this region for the fine stock he raises. You can’t find a barn like his anywhere. It’s the biggest and most expensive in this town.”

“He certainly has a fine barn,” said Phoebe, “but I don’t suppose he expects his family to live in it. He takes better care of his stock than he does of his family. Look at the house—”

Phoebe’s eyes waxed scornful, and Emmeline marveled. She was brought up to think a barn a most important feature of one’s possessions.

“His house is away back from the road out of sight,” went on Phoebe, “Annie used to hunger for a sight of people going by on the road when she sat down to sew in the afternoon, but there was that great barn right out on the road, and straight in front of the house. He ought to have put the barn back of the house. And the house is a miserable affair. Low, and ugly, and with two steps between the kitchen and the shed, enough to kill one who does the work. He ought to have built Annie a pleasant home up on that lovely little knoll of maples, where she could have seen out and down the road, and have had a little company now and then. She might have been alive today if she had one-half the care and attention that Hiram gave the stock!” Phoebe’s words were bitter and vehement.

“It sounds dreadful silly for a girl of your age to be talking like that. You don’t know anything about Annie, and if I was you I wouldn’t think about her. As for the barn, I should think a wife would be proud to have her husband’s barn the nicest one in the county. Of course the barn had to have the best place. That’s his business. I declare you do have the queerest notions!”

Nevertheless she set it down in her mind that she would give Hiram a hint about the house.

Phoebe did not reply. She was peeling the last apple, and as soon as it lay meekly in quarters with the rest she shoved back her chair and left the room. Emmeline felt that she had failed again to make any impression on her sister-in-law. It maddened her almost to distraction to have a girl like that around her, a girl who thought everything beneath her and who criticized the customs of the entire neighborhood. She was an annoyance and a reproach. Emmeline felt she would like to get rid of her if it could be done in a legitimate way.

At dinner Henry Williams looked at Phoebe meaningly and asked if she made the pie. Phoebe had to own that she did.

“It tastes like you, nice and sweet,” he declared, gallantly. Whereat Albert laughed, and Alma leaned forward to look into her aunt’s flaming face, impudently.

“Betsy Green says she thinks her pa is going to get her a new ma,” she remarked, knowingly, when the laugh had subsided. “And Betsy says she bet she knows who ’tis, too!”

“You shut up!” remarked Emmeline to her offspring, in a low tone, giving Alma a dig under the table. But Phoebe hastily drew back her chair and fled from the table.

There was a moment of uncomfortable silence after Phoebe left the room. Emmeline felt that things had gone too far. Albert asked what was the matter with Phoebe, but instead of answering him Emmeline yanked Alma from the table and out into the wood-shed, where a whispered scolding was administered as a sort of obligato solo to the accompaniment of some stinging cuts from a little switch that hung conveniently on the wall.

Alma returned to the table chastened outwardly, but inwardly vowing vengeance on her aunt, her anger in no wise softened by the disappearance of her piece of pie with Bertie. Her mother told her she deserved to lose her pie, and she determined to get even with Aunt Phoebe even if another switching happened.

Phoebe did not come down stairs again that afternoon. Emmeline hesitated about sending for her, and finally decided to wait until she came. The unwilling Alma was pressed into service to dry the dishes, and the long, yellow, sunny afternoon dragged drowsily on, while Phoebe lay upon her bed up in her kitchen chamber, and pressed her aching eyeballs hard with her cold fingers, wondering why so many tortures were coming to her all at once.

Chapter 3

Hiram Green kept his word to himself and did not go to see Phoebe for two evenings. By that time Emmeline had begun to wonder what in the world Phoebe had said to him to keep him away when he seemed so anxious to get her; and Phoebe, with the hopefulness of youth, had decided that her trouble in that direction was over. But the third evening he arrived promptly, attired with unusual care, and asked Emmeline if he might see Phoebe alone.

It happened that Phoebe had finished her work in the kitchen and gone up to rock the baby to sleep. Emmeline swept the younger children out of the sitting-room with alacrity, and called Albert sharply to help her with something in the kitchen, sending Alma up at once with a carefully worded message to Phoebe. Emmeline was relieved to see Hiram again. She knew by his face that he meant business this time, and she hoped to see Phoebe conquered at once.

“Ma says you please,” the word sounded strangely on Alma’s unloving lips, “come down to the settin’-room now—to once,” she added.

The baby was just dropping asleep and roused of course at Alma’s boisterous tone. Phoebe nodded, and shoved the child from the room, keeping the cradle going all the time. The naughty little girl delighted to have authority behind her evil doing, and called loudly:

“Well, ma wants you right off, so, and I don’t care!” as she thumped down stairs with her copper-toed shoes.

The baby gave a crow of glee and arose to the occasion in his cradle, but Phoebe resolutely disregarded the call below, and went on rocking until the little restless head was still on its pillow again. Then she stole softly down to the sitting-room, her eyes blinded by the darkness where she had been sitting, and explained quietly as she entered the room, “I couldn’t come sooner. Alma woke the baby again.”

Hiram, quite mollified by the gentle tone of explanation, arose, blandly answering: “Oh, that’s all right. I’m glad to see you now you’re here,” and went forward with the evident intention of taking both her hands in his.

Phoebe rubbed her blinded eyes and looked up in horror! Knowing Alma stood behind the crack of the door and watched it all with wicked joy.

“I beg your pardon, Mr. Green, I thought Emmeline was in here. She sent for me. Excuse me, I must find her.”

“Oh, that’s all right!” said Hiram, easily, putting out his hand and shutting the door sharply in Alma’s impudent face, thereby almost pinching her inquisitive nose in the crack. “She don’t expect you, Emmeline don’t. She sent for you to see me. I asked her could I see you alone. She understands all about us, Emmeline does. She won’t come in here for a while. She knows I want to talk to you.”

Cold chills crept down Phoebe’s nerves and froze her heart and finger-tips. Had the horror returned upon her with redoubled vigor, and with her family behind it? Where was Albert? Would he not help her? Then she realized that she must help herself and at once, for it was evident that Hiram Green meant to press his suit energetically. He was coming towards her with his hateful, confident smile. He stood between her and the door of retreat. Besides, what good would it do to run away? She had tried that once and it did not work. She must speak to him decidedly and end the matter. She summoned all her dignity and courage and backed over to the other side of the room, where a single chair stood.

“Won’t you sit down, Mr. Green?” she said, trying to get the tremble out of her voice.

“Why, yes, I will; let’s sit right here together,” he said, sitting down at one end of the couch and making room for her. “Come, you sit here beside me, Phoebe, and then we can talk better. It’s more sociable.”

Phoebe sat down on the chair opposite him.

“I would rather sit here, Mr. Green,” she said.

“Well, of course, if you’d rather,” he said, reluctantly, “but it seems to be kind of unsociable. And say, Phoebe, I wish you wouldn’t ’mister’ me anymore. Can’t you call me Hiram?”

“I would rather not.”

“Say, Phoebe, that sounds real unfriendly,” blamed Hiram, in a tone which suggested he would not be trifled with much longer.

“Did you wish to speak to me, Mr. Green?” said Phoebe, her clear eyes looking at him steadily over the candle-light, with the bearing of a queen.

“Well, yes,” he said, straightening up, and hitching a chair around to the side nearer to her. “I thought we better talk that matter over a little that I was mentioning to you several nights ago.”

“I don’t think that is necessary, Mr. Green,” answered Phoebe, quickly, “I thought I made you understand that that was impossible.”

“Oh, I didn’t take account of what you said that night,” said Hiram. “I saw you was sort of upset, not expecting me out there in the dark, so I thought I better come round again after you had plenty chance to think over what I said.”

“I couldn’t say anything different if I thought over it a thousand years,” declared Phoebe, with characteristic emphasis. Hiram Green was not thin-skinned, and did not need saving. It was just as well to tell the truth and be done with it.

But the fellow was in no wise daunted. He rather admired Phoebe the more for her vehemence, for here was a prize that promised to be worth his winning. For the first time as he looked at her he felt his blood stir with a sense of pleasure such as one feels in a well matched race, where one is yet sure of winning.

“Aw, git out!” scouted Hiram, pleasantly. “That ain’t the way to talk. Course you’re young yet, and ain’t had much experience, but you certainly had time enough to consider the matter all this year I been comin’ to see you.”

Phoebe arose with two red spots burning on her cheeks.

“Coming to see me!” she gasped. “You didn’t come to see me!”

“Aw, git out now, Phoebe. You needn’t pretend you didn’t know I was comin’ to see you. Who did you s’pose I was comin’ to see, then?”

“I supposed of course you were coming to see Albert,” said Phoebe, her voice settling into that deep calm that betokened she was overwhelmed.

“Albert! You s’posed I was comin’ to see Albert every night! Aw, yes, you did a whole lot! Phoebe, you’re a sly one. You must of thought I was gettin’ fond of Albert!”

“I did not think anything about it,” said Phoebe, haughtily, “and you may be sure, Mr. Green, if I had dreamed of such a thing I would have told you it was useless.”

There was something in her tone and manner that ruffled the self-assurance of Hiram Green. Up to this minute he had persuaded himself that Phoebe was but acting the part of a coy and modest maiden who wished to pretend that she never dreamed that he was courting her. Now a suspicion began to glimmer in his consciousness that perhaps, after all, she was honest, and had not suspected his attentions. Could it be possible that she did not care for them, and really wished to dismiss him? Hiram could not credit such a thought. Yet as he looked at the firm set of her lips he was bewildered.

“What on the earth makes you keep sayin’ that?” he asked, in an irritated tone. “What’s your reason for not wantin’ to marry me?”

“There are so many reasons that I wouldn’t know where to begin,” answered the girl, shortly.

Hiram gave his shoulders a little shake, as if to rouse himself. Had he heard her words aright?

“What reasons?” he growled, frowning. He began to feel that Phoebe was trifling with him. He would make her understand that he would not endure much of that.

Phoebe looked troubled. She wished he would not insist on further talk, but she was too honest and too angry not to tell the exact truth.

“The first and greatest reason of all is that I do not love you, and never could,” she said, vehemently, looking him straight in the eyes.

“Shucks!” said Hiram, laughing. “I don’t mind that a mite. In fact, I think it’s an advantage. Folks mostly get over it when they do feel that sentimental kind of way. It don’t last but a few weeks, anyhow, and it’s better to begin on a practical basis I think. That was the trouble with Annie, she was so blamed sentimental she hadn’t time to get dinner. I think you an’ I’d get along much better. You’re practical and a good worker. We could make things real prosperous over to the farm—”

Phoebe arose quickly and interrupted him.

“Mr. Green, you must please stop talking this way. It is horrible! I don’t want to listen to any more of it.”