"It's queer about dyin'," he said at last.
She answered him tumultuously:—
"What is?"
"Why—" then he paused, as if to set his thought in order. "I can't tell jest what I mean. Only folks can be here to-day an' there to-morrer. An' they can be all of a bloom of health, or handsome as a pictur'—an' lo ye! they're changed!"
A cold certainty settled upon her heart. The first wife had, then, been handsome. Lydia did not know whether acquired knowledge was a boon or not. Eben had risen, and was standing with his hands in his pockets, still looking into space. It seemed to her that he was miles away.
"An' I dunno which is the worst," he was saying, "to have 'em come down with a long sickness, or drop off sudden. I do, too. It's worse to see 'em suffer. But when they give right up afore your face an' eyes—"
He stopped, and Lydia thought he shuddered. Again she knew. The first wife had died suddenly, and the memory of the shock was too keen upon him to admit of speech. But he shook off reflection as if it had been the dust of the hour. Now he turned to her, and the sweet recognition of his glance was warming her anew. "Don't you go an' play me any such trick," he said, with the whimsical creases deepening in his cheeks.
Yet she thought his eyes were wet.
"What?"
"Dyin'."
A new tenderness was born in her at the moment, seeing what he had endured.
"No," she wanted to say, "I hope you won't have to go through that twice." But she only shook her head brightly at him. "Come," said she, "it's time to harness up."
"I'll drive down through that cross-road," said Eben, "an' then I've finished up all them little byways. Byme-by, when we feel like settin' out for good, we can pike right along the old Boston road, an' that'll take us to aunt Phebe's, an' so on home. But we won't start out till we're good an' ready. I guess you got kinder tired afore."
"I'm ready now," said Lydia. The color was in her cheeks. She felt dauntless. At once, born somehow from this sober talk, she felt a melting championship of him, as if life had hurt him too keenly and she was there to make it up to him. Henceforth she meant to be first and second wife in one.
"Hooray!" called Eben. He tossed up his hat; and the tavern-keeper's wife, making pies by the kitchen window, smiled at him and shook her rolling-pin. "Then we'll start off to-morrer, bright an' early. I don't know how you feel, Mis' Jakes, but I'm possessed to git home."
Lydia, for her part, was soberly glad, yet there was a part of her anticipation that was incredible to her. For even after her spiritual uplift of the moment before, the first thought that throbbed into her mind, like a temptation, was that of the album on the centre-table.
They drove off in the morning brightness, and Eben declared he had a good mind to give away his remaining essences and put for home as hard as he could pelt.
"We might cut right across country," he tempted himself. "No matter 'f we planned suthin' different. But then we couldn't see aunt Phebe."
"You're real fond of her, ain't you?" asked Lydia absently. She was wondering if aunt Phebe would speak of his first wife.
"She was mother's only sister," said Eben, in the deeper tone attendant on his mother's name. "She took care of mother in her last days. I guess we never had a mite o' family trouble but aunt Phebe was there about as soon as she could board the train."
"Eben," said his wife, in her timid way of stealing on his confidence. It seemed now like a shy fashion of convincing him that she was worthy, if he would but let her, to know his heart.
"What is it?"
"Don't you think some things—some troubles—are too hard to be talked about?"
"I guess they be," assented Eben.
"We keep thinkin' an' thinkin' 'em over, but we can't speak. Mebbe 'twould be better for us if we could."
"Mebbe 'twould." Then he pulled out his pipe, as he did when the chariot of his affections neared an emotional pass. Eben was willing to graze a wheel by that abyss, but he skillfully avoided falling over.
They were climbing a long hill; and the horse, head down, sagged sleepily along, pulling faithfully. But at the top he halted, as if it seemed he knew what was below, and waited for their wonder. Lydia's eyes were closed, and Eben had drawn the first puff at his pipe.
"There," said he, "what think o' that?"
Lydia opened her eyes and gave a little cry. They seemed to be at the top of everything—winding roads, like ribbons, patches of green that were ample woods, three dotted villages, and, full flare in their faces, the sunset sky. The red and gold of it had spread and lavished until the eye, to rest itself, was almost forced, for a calming glimpse, back again to the cold blue east. Lydia looked and could not speak. Eben knew too much even to glance at her. He felt all the wonder of it, and the pride, for it seemed to him that it was, in a way, his sky, because it was so much nearer home. They stayed there in silence while the beauty changed but never faded, and the horse dropped his head, to rest.
"Well," said Eben at last, dryly, "I dunno 's ever I see such a sky as that, unless 'twas some I used to see with my first wife."
For the first time he seemed cruel. A bitter thought shot up in Lydia's heart that at every feast there was to be the unbidden guest. She closed her eyes, and when she opened them again, the sky had faded and the air was chill.
"I guess you're gittin' tired again," said Eben tenderly. "Well, we'll be to aunt Phebe's by eight, an' she'll put you straight to bed."
The tears had wet her cheeks. They were the first she had shown him, and he looked at them with dismay. "Hullo!" he cried, "hullo!" It was actual terror in his voice. "'Tain't so bad as that!"
Lydia straightened herself in the buggy and wiped away the tears with an impatient hand.
"I guess 'twas the sunset," she said tremulously. "I never see such a sky."
"That all?" Eben was much relieved. Then he touched up the horse, and told him what a lot of oats were waiting in aunt Phebe's barn. "If that's all," he said, giving his mind to Lydia again, "you'll have to spend most o' your time in salt water. That's the kind o' sunsets we're goin' to have every night arter we get home. The doctor's ordered 'em."
Lydia made herself laugh, and they talked no more until they drove up to a prosperous white house on the outskirts of the first village, and aunt Phebe came to meet them. It was all a joyous tumult that night, and Lydia went to bed early, with a confused sense that aunt Phebe was very kind and that she had gold-bowed glasses and shook the floor when she walked, and that the supper was a product of expert cooking. Eben was uproariously gay, in the degree of approaching home, and took aunt Phebe about the waist to waltz with her, whereupon she cuffed him with a futile hand, remarking:—
"Eben Jakes, I'd be ashamed!"
Lydia had a sense of being in a homely paradise where everything was pleasantly at one, yet that she, companioned by the unclassified memory of a woman whose place she held, had no part in the general harmony. Next morning she overslept, and found herself alone. She heard Eben's whistle from the barn and the guffaw of the hired men, to whom he was telling pleasant tales, and there were women's voices from the kitchen, and the fragrance of frying ham. She dressed in haste, and when she went down the breakfast-table was ready, in great abundance, and everybody waiting by their plates: Eben, aunt Phebe and her mild, soft-spoken husband, and Sarah, the spectacled spinster daughter, who looked benevolently dignified enough to be her mother's mother.
"Late? I guess not," said aunt Phebe, sinking into the chair behind the coffee-pot. "Folks get up here when they're a mind to, an' when it comes to Eben's wife—well, you can't say no more'n that in this house."
Lydia took her place rather shyly, but when