The Play House

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Title:     The Play House
Author: Alice Brown [More Titles by Brown]

Amelia Maxwell sat by the front-chamber window of the great house overlooking the road, and her own "story-an'-a-half" farther toward the west. Every day she was alone under her own roof, save at the times when old lady Knowles of the great house summoned her for work at fine sewing or braiding rags. All Amelia's kin were dead. Now she was used to their solemn absence, and sufficiently at one with her own humble way of life, letting her few acres at the halves, and earning a dollar here and there with her clever fingers. She was but little over forty, yet she was aware that her life, in its keener phases, was already done. She had had her romance and striven to forget it; but out of that time pathetic voices now and then called to her, and old longings awoke, to breathe for a moment and then sleep again.

Amelia seemed, even to old lady Knowles, who knew her best, a cheerful, humorous body; but only Amelia saw the road by which her serenity had come. Chiefly it was through an inexplicable devotion to the great house. She could not remember a time when it was not wonderful to her. While she was a little girl, living alone with her mother, she used to sit on the doorstone with her bread and milk at bedtime, and think of the great house, how grand it was and large. There was a wonderful way the sun had of falling, at twilight, across the pillars of its porch where the elm drooped sweetly, and in the moonlight it was like a fairy city. But the morning was perhaps the best moment of all. The great house was painted a pale yellow, and when Amelia awoke with the sun in her little unshaded chamber, she thought how dark the blinds were there, with such a solemn richness in their green. The flower-beds in front were beautiful to her; but the back garden, lying alongside the orchard, and stretching through tangles of sweet-william and rose, was an enchanted spot to play in. The child that was, used to wander there and feel very rich. Now, a woman, she sat in the great house sewing, and felt rich again. As it happened, for one of the many times it came to her, she was thinking what the great house had done for her. Old lady Knowles had, in her stately way, been a kind of patron saint, and in that summer, years ago, when Amelia's romance died and she had drooped like a starving plant, Rufus, the old lady's son, had seemed to see her trouble and stood by her. He did not speak of it. He only took her for long drives, and made his cheerful presence evident in many ways, and when he died, with a tragic suddenness, Amelia used selfishly to feel that he had lived at least long enough to keep her from failing of that inner blight.

On this day when old lady Knowles had gone with Ann, her faithful help, to see the cousin to whom she made pilgrimage once a year, Amelia resolved to enjoy herself to the full. She laid down her sewing, from time to time, to look about her at the poppy-strewn paper, the four-post bed and flowered tester, the great fireplace with its shining dogs, and the Venus and Cupid mirror. Over and over again she had played that the house was hers, and to-day, through some heralding excitement in the air, it seemed doubly so. She sat in a dream of housewifely possession, conning idly over the pleasant things she might do before the day was over. There was cold tongue for her dinner, Ann had told her, and a clear soup, if she liked to heat it. She might cook vegetables if she chose. And there was the best of tea to be made out of the china caddy, and rich cake in the parlor crock. After one such glad deliberation, she caught her sewing guiltily up from her lap and began to set compensating stitches. But even then her conscience slept unstirred. Old lady Knowles was in no hurry for the work, she knew, and she would make up for her dreaming in the account of her day.

There was a sound without. The gate swung softly shut and a man came up the path. Amelia, at the glance, rose quickly, dropped her sewing, and hurried out and down the stairs. The front door was open, she knew, and though there was never anything to be afraid of, still the house was in her charge. At the door she met him, just lifting his hand to touch the knocker. He was a tall, weedy fellow of something more than her own age, with light hair and blue eyes and a strangely arrested look, as if he obstinately, and against his own advantage, continued to keep young.

Amelia knew him at once, as he did her, though it was twenty years since they had met.

"Why, Jared Beale!" she faltered.

He was much moved. The flush came quickly to his face in a way she had known, and his eyes softened.

"I should ha' recognized ye anywheres, Milly," he asserted.

She still stood looking at him, unable to ask him in or to make apology for the lack.

"I went straight to your house from the train," he said. "'Twas all shut up. Don't anybody live there now?"

"Yes," answered Amelia, "somebody lives there." The red had come into her cheeks, and her eyes burned brightly. Then as he looked at her hesitatingly, in the way he used to look, she trembled a little.

"Come in, Jared," she said, retreating a hospitable space. "Come right in."

She stood aside, and then, when he stepped over the sill, led the way into the dining-room, where there was a cool green light from the darkened blinds, and the only window open to the sun disclosed a trembling grapevine and a vista down the garden path. Amelia drew forward a chair, with a decided motion.

"Sit down," she said, and busied herself with opening a blind.

When she took her own chair opposite him, she found that he had laid his hat beside him on the floor, and, with the tips of his fingers together, was bending forward in an attitude belonging to his youth. He was regarding her with the slightly blurred look of his near-sighted eyes, and she began hastily to speak.

"You stayin' round these parts?"

"No," said Jared, "no. I had to come east on business. There was some property to be settled up in Beulah, so I thought I'd jest step down here an' see how things were."

"Beulah!" she repeated. "Why, that's fifty miles from here!"

"Yes," returned Jared. "It's a matter o' fifty mile. Fact is," he said uneasily, "I didn't know how you was fixed. It's kinder worried me."

A flush ran into her face, to the roots of her pretty hair; yet her frank eyes never left him. Then her evasive speech belied her look.

"I get along real well. I s'pose you knew mother wa'n't with me now?"

"I ain't heard a word from here for seventeen year," he said, half bitterly, as if the silence had been hard to bear. "There's no way for me to hear now. The last was from Tom Merrick. He said you'd begun to go with Rufus Knowles."

Amelia trembled over her whole body.

"That was a good while ago," she ventured.

"Yes, 'twas. A good many things have come an' gone. An' now Rufus is dead--I see his death in an old paper--an' here you be, his widder, livin' in the old house."

"Why!" breathed Amelia, "why!" She choked upon the word, but before she could deny it he had begun again, in gentle reminiscence.

"'Twon't harm nobody to talk over old times a mite, Amelia. Mebbe that's what I come on for, though I thought 'twas to see how you was fixed. I thought mebbe I should find you livin' kinder near the wind, an' mebbe you'd let me look out for you a mite."

The tears came into Amelia's eyes. She looked about her as if she owned the room, the old china, and the house.

"That's real good of you, Jared," she said movingly. "I sha'n't ever forget it. But you see for yourself. I don't want for nothin'."

"I guess we should ha' thought 'twas queer, when you went trottin' by to school," he said irrelevantly, "if anybody'd told you you'd reign over the old Knowles house."

"Yes," said Amelia softly, again looking about her, this time with love and thankfulness, "I guess they would. You leave your wife well?" she asked suddenly, perhaps to suggest the reality of his own house of life.

Jared shook his head.

"She ain't stepped a step for seven year."

"Oh, my!" grieved Amelia. "Won't she ever be any better?"

"No. We've had all the doctors, eclectic an' herb besides, an' they don't give her no hope. She was a great driver. We laid up money steady them years before she was took down. She knew how to make an' she knew how to save."

His face settled into lines of brooding recollection. Immediately Amelia was aware that those years had been bitter to him, and that the fruit of them was stale and dry. She cut by instinct into a pleasant by-path.

"You play your fiddle any now?"

He started out of his maze at life.

"No," he owned, "no!" as if he hardly remembered such a thing had been. "I dropped that more'n fifteen year ago."

"Seems if my feet never could keep still when you played 'Money Musk,'" avowed Amelia, her eyes shining. "'The Road to Boston,' too! My! wa'n't that grand!"

"'Twas mostly dance-music I knew," said Jared. "She never liked it," he added, in a burst of weary confidence.

"Your wife?"

"She was a church member, old-fashioned kind. Didn't believe in dancin'. 'The devil's tunes,' she called 'em. Well, mebbe they were; but I kinder liked 'em myself."

"Well," said Amelia, in a safe commonplace, "I guess there's some harm in 'most everything. It's 'cordin' to the way you take it." Then one of her quick changes came upon her. The self that played at life when real life failed her, and so kept youth alive, awoke to shine in her eyes and flush her pretty cheek. She looked about the room, as if to seek concurrence from the hearthside gods. "Jared," she said, "you goin' to stay round here long?"

He made an involuntary motion toward his hat.

"No, oh, no," he answered. "I'm goin' 'cross lots to the Junction. I come round the road. I guess 'tain't more'n four mile along by the pine woods an' the b'ilin' spring," he added, smiling at her. "Leastways it didn't use to be. I thought if I could get the seven-o'clock, 'twould take me back to Boston so 's I could ketch my train to-night. She's kinder dull, out there alone," he ended, wearily. "'Twas some o' her property I come to settle up. She'll want to hear about it. I never was no kind of a letter-writer."

Amelia rose.

"I'll tell you what, then," she said, with a sweet decision, "you stay right here an' have dinner. I'm all alone to-day."

"Ain't old lady Knowles--" He paused decorously, and Amelia laughed. It seemed to her as if old lady Knowles and the house would always be beneficently there because they always had been.

"Law, yes," she said. "She's alive. So's old Ann. They've gone to Wareham, to spend the day."

Jared threw back his head and laughed.

"If that don't make time stand still," he said, "nothin' ever did. Why, when we was in the Third Reader old lady Knowles an' Ann harnessed up one day in the year an' drove over to Wareham to spend the day."

"Yes," Amelia sparkled back at him, "'tis so. They look pretty much the same, both of 'em."

"They must be well along in years?"

Amelia had begun putting up the leaves of the mahogany dining-table. She laughed, a pretty ripple.

"Well, anyway," she qualified, "old Pomp ain't gone with 'em. He's buried out under the August sweet. They've got an old white now. 'Twas the colt long after you left here." She had gone to the dresser and pulled open a drawer. Those were the every-day tablecloths, fine and good; but in the drawer above, she knew, was the best damask, snowdrops and other patterns more wonderful, with birds and butterflies. She debated but a moment, and then pulled out a lovely piece that shone with ironing. "I'll tell you what it is, Jared," she said, returning to spread it on the table with deft touches, "it's we that change, as well as other folks. Ever think o' that? Ever occur to you old lady Knowles wa'n't much over sixty them days when we used to call her old? 'Twas because we were so young ourselves. She don't seem much different to me now from what she did then."

"There's a good deal in that," said Jared, rising. "Want I should draw you up some water out o' the old well?"

"Yes. I shall want some in a minute. I'll make us a cup o' coffee. You like that."

Jared drew the water, and after he had brought it to her he went out into the back garden; and, while she moved back and forth from pantry to table, she caught glimpses of him through the window as he went about from the bees to the flower-beds, in a reminiscent wandering. Once he halted under the sweet-bough and gave one branch a shake, and then, with an unerring remembrance, he crossed the sward to the "sopsy-vine" by the wall.

Amelia could not get over the wonder of having him there. Strangely, he had not changed. Even his speech had the old neighborly tang. Whether he had returned to it as to a never-forgotten tune, she could not know; but it was in her ears, awakening touches of old harmony. Yet these things she dared not dwell upon. She put them aside in haste to live with after he should be gone.

Her preparations were swiftly made, lest she should lose a moment of his stay, and presently she went to the door and summoned him.

"Dinner's ready, Jared!"

It sounded as if she had said it every day, and she knew why; the words and others like them, sweet and commonplace, were inwoven with the texture of her dreams.

Jared came in, an eager look upon his face, as if he also were in a maze, and they sat down at the table, where the viands were arranged in a beautiful order. Jared laid down his knife and fork.

"Well," said he, "old Ann ain't lost her faculty. This tastes for all the world just as old lady Knowles's things used to when I come over here to weed the garden an' stayed to dinner."

Amelia lifted a thankful look.

"I'm proper glad you've come back, Jared," she said simply. "I never had any expectation of seein' you again, leastways not in this world."

Jared spoke irrelevantly:--

"There's a good many things I've wanted to talk over with you, 'Melia, from time to time. Now there's Arthur."

Amelia nodded.

"He ain't done very well, has he?" she inquired. "I never knew much about him after he moved away; but seems if I heard he'd took to drink."

"That's it. Arthur was as good a boy as ever stepped, but he got led away when he wa'n't old enough to know t'other from which. Well, I've always stood by him, 'Melia. Folks say he's only an adopted brother. 'What you want to hang on to him for, an' send good money after bad?' That's what they say. Well, what if he is an adopted brother? Father an' mother set by him, an' I set by him, too."

He had a worried look, and his tone rang fretfully, as if it continued a line of dreary argument.

"Of course you set by him, Jared," said Amelia, almost indignantly. "I shouldn't feel the same towards you if you didn't."

Jared was deep in the relief of his pathetic confidences.

"Arthur married young, an' folks said he'd no business to, nothin' to live on, an' his habits bein' what they were. Well, I couldn't dispute that. But when he got that fall, so 't he laid there paralyzed, I wanted to take the cars an' go right on to York State an' see him. I didn't. I couldn't get away; but I sent him all I could afford to, an' I'm goin' to keep on sendin' jest as long as I'm above ground. An' I've made my will an' provided for him."

His voice had a fractious tone, as if he combated an unseen tyrant. Amelia dared not speak. At a word, she felt, he might say too much. Now Jared was looking at her in a bright appeal, as if, sure as he was of her sympathy, he besought the expression of it.

"There ain't a soul but you knows I've made my will, 'Melia," he said. "There's suthin' in it for you, too."

Amelia shrank, and her eyes betrayed her terror; it was as if she could carry on their relation together quite happily, but as soon as the judgment of the world were challenged she must hide it away, like a treasure in a box.

"No, Jared!" she breathed. "No, oh, no! Don't you do such a thing as that."

Jared laughed a little, but half sadly.

"Seems kinder queer to me now," he owned, "now I see you settin' here, only to put out your hand an' take a thing if you want it. Did Rufus leave a will?"

Amelia shrank still smaller.

"No," she trembled; "no, he didn't leave a will."

"Well, I sha'n't change mine, 'Melia." He spoke with an ostentatious lightness, but Amelia was aware that his mind labored in heavy seas of old regret, buoyed by the futile hope of compensating her age for the joys her youth had lacked. "I guess I'll let it stand as 'tis, an', long as you don't need what I've left ye, why, you can put it into some kind o' folderol an' enjoy it. You was always one to enjoy things."

They sat a long time at the table, and Jared took, as he said, more coffee than was good for him, and praised the making of it. Then he followed her about as she cleared away, and helped her a little with an awkward hand. Amelia left the dishes in the sink.

"I won't clear up till night," she said. "We ain't talked out yet."

She led the way into the garden, and under the grape-trellis, where the tall lilac-hedge shut them from the sight of passers-by, she gave him old lady Knowles's great armchair, and took the little one that was hers when she came over to sit a while with her old friend. The talk went wandering back as if it sought the very sources of youth and life; but somehow it touched commonplaces only. Yet Amelia had the sense, and she was sure he had, too, of wandering there hand in hand, of finding no surprises, but only the old things grown more dear, the old loyalties the more abiding.

Suddenly he spoke, haltingly, voicing her own conviction.

"Don't seem but a minute, 'Melia, sence we set talkin' things over, much as we do now. Seems if we hadn't been so fur separated all these years."

"No," said Amelia, with her beautiful sincerity, "I don't believe we have been, Jared. Maybe that's how it is when folks die. We can't see 'em nor speak to 'em, but maybe they go right along bein' what we like best. I know 'tis so with mother. Seems if, if she walked in here this minute, we shouldn't have so very many stitches to take up. Sometimes I've thought all I should say would be, 'Well, mother, you've got back, ain't you?' Kinder like that."

The beautiful afternoon light lay on the grass and turned the grapevine to a tender green. Jared looked upon the land as if he were treasuring it in his heart for a day of loss. When the sun was low, and green and red were flaming in the west, he rose.

"Well, 'Melia," he said, "I've seen you. Now I'll go."

Amelia stirred, too, recalled to service.

"I want to make you a cup o' tea," she said. "You get me a pail o' fresh water, Jared. 'Twon't take but a minute."

He followed her about, this time, while she set the table; and again they broke bread together. When he rose from his chair now, it was for good.

"Well, 'Melia," he said; and she gave him her hand.

She went with him to the door, and stood there as he started down the path. Half-way he hesitated, and then came back to her. His eyes were soft and kindly.

"'Melia," he said, "I ain't told you the half, an' I dunno 's I can tell it now. I never knew how things were with you. I've laid awake nights, wonderin'. You never was very strong. 'Why,' says I to myself many a night when I'd hear the wind blowin' ag'inst the winder, 'mebbe she's had to go out to work. Mebbe she ain't got a place to lay her head.'"

He was rushing on in a full tide of confidence, and she recalled him. She leaned forward to him, out of the doorway of her beautiful house, and spoke in an assuring tone.

"Don't you worry no more, Jared. I'm safe an' well content, an' you ain't got nothin' to regret. An' when we meet again,--I guess 'twon't be here, dear, it'll be t'other side,--why, we'll sit down an' have another dish o' talk."

Then they shook hands again, and Jared walked away. When he looked back from the top of Schoolma'am Hill, she was still in the doorway, and she waved her hand to him.

After that last glimpse of him, Amelia went soberly about the house, setting it in order. When her dishes were washed and she had fed old Trot, the cat, forgotten all day, she rolled up the fine tablecloth and left it behind the porch-door, where she could take it on her way home. Then she sat down on the front steps and waited for old lady Knowles. Amelia did not think very much about her day. It was still a possession to be laid aside and pondered over all the hours and days until she died. For there would be no other day like it.

The dusk fell and the sounds of night began to rise in their poignant summoning of memory and hope. The past and the present seemed one to her in a beautiful dream; yet it was not so much a dream as life itself, a warm reality. Presently there came the slow thud of horse's feet, and the chaise turned in at the yard. Old lady Knowles was in it, sitting prettily erect, as she had driven away, and Ann was peering forward, as she always did, to see if the house had burned down in their absence. John Trueman, who lived "down the road," was lounging along behind. They had called him as they passed, and bade him come to "tend the horse." Amelia rose and shook herself free from the web of her dream. She hurried forward and at the horse-block offered old lady Knowles her hand.

"Anything happened?" asked old Ann, making her way past to the kitchen.

Amelia only smiled at her, but she followed old lady Knowles in at the porch-door.

"We've had a very enjoyable day, Amelia," said the old lady, untying her bonnet-strings. "Suppose you lay this on the table. Ann must brush it before it's put away. What is it? Child, child, what is it?"

Amelia had taken a fold of her old friend's skirt. It would have seemed to her a liberty to touch her hand.

"Mis' Knowles," she said, "I've had company. 'Twas somebody to see me, an' I got dinner here, an' supper, too, an' I used your best tablecloth, an' I'm goin' to do it up so 't Ann won't know. An' I acted for all the world as if 'twas my own house."

Old lady Knowles laughed a little. She had never been a woman to whom small things seemed large, and now very few things were of any size at all.

"Who was it, Amelia?" she asked. "Who was your company?"

There was a moment's silence, and Amelia heard her own heart beat. But she answered quietly,--

"'Twas Jared Beale."

There was silence again while old lady Knowles thought back over the years. When she spoke, her voice was very soft and kindly.

"You are a good girl, Amelia. You've always been a good girl. Run home, child, now, and come to-morrow. Good-night."

Amelia, out in the path a moment afterwards, the tablecloth under her arm, could hardly believe in what had surely happened to her. Old lady Knowles had bent forward to her; her soft lips had touched Amelia's cheek.

[The end]
Alice Brown's short story: Play House

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