Laura Richards
Mrs. Tree

CHAPTER XIII.
LIFE IN DEATH

"Drive to Miss Dane's!" said Mrs. Tree.

"Drive where?" asked old Anthony, pausing with one foot on the step of the ancient carryall.

"To Miss Dane's!"

"Well, I snum!" said old Anthony.

The Dane Mansion, as it was called, stood on the outskirts of the village; a gaunt, gray house, standing well back from the road, with dark hedges of Norway spruce drawn about it like a funeral scarf. The panelled wooden shutters of the front windows were never opened, and a stranger passing by would have thought the house uninhabited; but all Elmerton knew that behind those darkling hedges and close shutters, somewhere in the depths of the tall many-chimneyed house, lived – "if you can call it living!" Mrs. Tree said – Miss Virginia Dane. Miss Dane was a contemporary of Mrs. Tree's, – indeed, report would have her some years older, – but she had no other point of resemblance to that lively potentate. She never left her house. None of the present generation of Elmertonians had ever seen her face; and to the rising generation, the boys and girls who passed the outer hedge, if dusk were coming on, with hurried step and quick affrighted glances, she was a kind of spectre, a living phantom of the past, probably terrible to look upon, certainly dreadful to think of. These terrors were heightened by the knowledge, diffused one hardly knew how, that Miss Dane was a spiritualist, and that in her belief at least, the silent house was peopled with departed Danes, the brothers and sisters of whom she was the last remaining one.

Things being thus, it was perhaps not strange that old Anthony, usually the most discreet of choremen, was driven by surprise to the extent of "snumming" by the order he received. He allowed himself no further comment, however, but flecked the fat brown horse on the ear with his whip, and said "Gitty up!" with more interest than he usually manifested.

Mrs. Tree was arrayed in her India shawl, and crowned with the bird-of-paradise bonnet, from which swept an ample veil of black lace. She sat bolt upright in the carriage, her stick firmly planted in front of her, her hands crossed on its crutch handle, and her whole air was one of uncompromising energy.

"Shall I knock?" said Anthony, glancing up at the blind house-front with an expression which said plainly enough "It won't be any use."

"No, I'm going to get out. Here, help me! the other side, ninnyhammer! You have helped me out on the wrong side for forty years, Anthony Barker; I must be a saint after all, or I never should have stood it."

The old lady mounted the granite steps briskly, and knocked smartly on the door with the top of her stick. After some delay it was opened by a grim-looking elderly woman with a forbidding squint.

"How do you do, Keziah? I am coming in. You may wait for me, Anthony."

"I don't know as Miss Dane feels up to seein' company, Mis' Tree," said the grim woman, doubtfully, holding the door in her hand.

"Folderol!" said Mrs. Tree, waving her aside with her stick. "She's in her sitting-room, I suppose. To be sure! How are you, Virginia?"

The room Mrs. Tree entered was gaunt and gray like the house itself; high-studded, with blank walls of gray paint, and wintry gleams of marble on chimneypiece and furniture. Gaunt and gray, too, was the figure seated in the rigid high-backed chair, a tall old woman in a black gown and a close muslin cap like that worn by the Shakers, with a black ribbon bound round her forehead. Her high features showed where great beauty, of a masterful kind, had once dwelt; her sunken eyes were cold and dim as a steel mirror that has lain long buried and has forgotten how to give back the light.

These eyes now dwelt upon Mrs. Tree, with recognition, but no warmth or kindliness in their depths.

"How are you, Virginia?" repeated the visitor. "Come, shake hands! you are alive, you know, after a fashion; where's the use of pretending you are not?"

Miss Dane extended a long, cold, transparent hand, and then motioned to a seat.

"I am well, Marcia," she said, coldly. "I have been well for the past fifteen years, since we last met."

"I made the last visit, I remember," said Mrs. Tree, composedly, hooking a gray horsehair footstool toward her with her stick, and settling her feet on it. "You gave me to understand then that I need not come again till I had something special to say, so I have stayed away."

"I have no desire for visitors," said Miss Dane. She spoke in a hollow, inward monotone, which somehow gave the impression that she was in the habit of talking to herself, or to something that made no response. "My soul is fit company for me."

"I should think it might be!" said Mrs. Tree.

"Besides, I am surrounded by the Blessed," Miss Dane went on. "This room probably appears bare and gloomy to your eyes, Marcia, but I see it peopled by the Blessed, in troops, crowding about me, robed and crowned."

"I hope they enjoy themselves," said Mrs. Tree. "I will not interrupt you or them more than a few minutes, Virginia. I want to ask if you have made your will. A singular question, but I have my reasons for asking."

"Certainly I have; years ago."

"Have you left anything to Mary Jaquith – Mary Ashton?"

"No!" A spark crept into the dim gray eyes.

"So I supposed. Did you know that she was poor, and blind?"

There was a pause.

"I did not know that she was blind," Miss Dane said, presently. "For her poverty, she has herself to thank."

"Yes! she married the man she loved. It was a crime, I suppose. You would have had her live on here with you all her days, and turn to stone slowly."

"I brought Mary Ashton up as my own child," Miss Dane went on; and there was an echo of some past emotion in her deathly voice. "She chose to follow her own way, in defiance of my wishes, of my judgment. She sowed the wind, and she has reaped the whirlwind. We are as far apart as the dead and the living."

"Just about!" said Mrs. Tree. "Now, Virginia Dane, listen to me! I have come here to make a proposal, and when I have made it I shall go away, and that is the last you will see of me in this world, or most likely in the next. Mary Ashton married a scamp, as other women have done and will do to the end of the chapter. She paid for her mistake, poor child, and no one has ever heard a word of complaint or repining from her. She got along – somehow; and now her boy, Will, has come home, and means to be a good son, and will be one, too, and see her comfortable the rest of her days. But – Will wants to marry. He is engaged to Andrew Bent's daughter, a sweet, pretty girl, born and grown up while you have been sitting here in your coffin, Virginia Dane. Now – they won't take any more help from me, and I like 'em for it; and yet I want them to have more to do with. Will is clerk in the post-office, and his salary would give the three of them skim milk and red herrings, but not much more. I want you to leave them some money, Virginia."

There was a pause, during which the two pairs of eyes, the dim gray and the fiery black, looked into each other.

"This is a singular request, Marcia," said Miss Dane, at last. "I believe I have never offered you advice as to the bestowal of your property; nor, if I remember aright, is Mary Ashton related to you in any way."

"Cat's foot!" said Mrs. Tree, shortly. "Don't mount your high horse with me, Jinny, because it won't do any good. I don't know or care anything about your property; you may leave it to the cat for aught I care. What I want is to give you some of mine to leave to William Jaquith, in case you die first."

She then made a definite proposal, to which Miss Dane listened with severe attention.

"And suppose you die first," said the latter. "What then?"

"Oh, my will is all right, I have left him money enough. But there's no more prospect of my dying than there was twenty years ago. I shall live to be a hundred."

"I also come of a long-lived family," said Miss Dane.

"I thought the Blessed might get tired of waiting, and come and fetch you," said Mrs. Tree, dryly; "besides, you haven't so far to go as I have. Seriously, one of us must in common decency go before long, Virginia; it is hardly respectable for both of us to linger in this way. Now, if you will only listen to reason, when the time does come for either of us, Willy Jaquith is sure of comfort for the rest of his days. What do you say?"

Miss Dane was silent for some time. Finally:

"I will consider the matter," she said, coldly. "I cannot answer you at this moment, Marcia. You have broken in upon the current of my thoughts, and disturbed the peace of my soul. I will communicate with you by writing, when my decision is reached; no second interview will be necessary."

"I'm glad you think so," said Mrs. Tree, rising. "I wasn't intending to come again. You knew that Phœbe Blyth was dead?"

"I knew that Phœbe had passed out of this sphere," replied Miss Dane. "Keziah learned it from the purveyor."

She paused a moment, and then added, "Phœbe was with me last night."

"Was she?" said Mrs. Tree, grimly. "I'm sorry to hear it. Phœbe was a good woman, if she did have her faults."

"You may be glad to hear that she is in a blessed state at present," the cold monotone went on. "She came with my sisters Sophia and Persis; Timothea was also with them, and inquired for you."

"H'm!" said Mrs. Tree.

"I have no wish to rouse your animosity, Marcia," continued Miss Dane, after another pause, "and I am well aware of your condition of hardened unbelief; but we are not likely to meet again in this sphere, and since you have sought me out in my retirement, I feel bound to tell you, that I have received several visits of late from your husband, and that he is more than ever concerned about your spiritual welfare. If you wish it, I will repeat to you what he said."

The years fell away from Marcia Darracott like a cloak. She made two quick steps forward, her little hands clenched, her tiny figure towering like a flame.

"You dare– " she said, then stopped abruptly. The blaze died down, and the twinkle came instead into her bright eyes. She laughed her little rustling laugh, and turned to go. "Good-by, Jinny," she said; "you don't mean to be funny, but you are. Ethan Tree is in heaven; but if you think he would come back from the pit to see you – te hee! Good-by, Jinny Dane!"

Mrs. Tree sat bolt upright again all the way home, and chuckled several times.

"Now, that woman's jealousy is such," she said, aloud, "that, rather than have me do for her niece, she'll leave her half her fortune and die next week, just to spite me." (In point of fact, this prophecy came almost literally to pass, not a week, but a month later.)

"Yes, Anthony, a very pleasant call, thank ye. Help me out; the other side, old step-and-fetch-it! I believe you were a hundred years old when I was born. Yes, that's all. Direxia Hawkes, give him a cup of coffee; he's got chilled waiting in the cold. No, I'm warm enough; I had something to warm me."

In spite of this last declaration, when little Mrs. Bliss came in half an hour later to see the old lady, she found her with her feet on the fender, sipping hot mulled wine, and declaring that the marrow was frozen in her bones.

"I have been sitting in a tomb," she said, in answer to the visitor's alarmed inquiries, "talking to a corpse. Did you ever see Virginia Dane?"

Mrs. Bliss opened her blue eyes wide. "Oh, no, Mrs. Tree. I didn't know that any one ever saw Miss Dane. I thought she was – "

"She is dead," said Mrs. Tree. "I have been talking with her corpse, I tell you, and I don't like corpses. You are alive and warm, and I like you. Tell me some scandal."

"Oh, Mrs. Tree!"

"Well, tell me about the baby, then. I suppose there's no harm in my asking that. If I live much longer, I sha'n't be allowed to talk about anything except gruel and nightcaps. How's the baby?"

"Oh, he is so well, Mrs. Tree, and such a darling! He looks like a perfect beauty in that lovely cloak. I must bring him round in it to show to you. It is the handsomest thing I ever saw, and it didn't look a bit yellow after it was pressed."

"I got it in Canton," said Mrs. Tree. "My baby – I never had but one – was born in the China seas. Here's her coral."

She motioned toward her lap, and Mrs. Bliss saw that a small chest of carved sandalwood lay open on her knees, full of trinkets and odds and ends.

"It is very pretty," said little Mrs. Bliss, lifting the coral and bells reverently.

"Her name was Lucy," said Mrs. Tree. "She married Arthur Blyth, cousin to the girls, and died when little Arthur was born. You may have that for your baby; I'm keeping Arthur's for little Vesta's child. If you thank me, you sha'n't have it."

CHAPTER XIV.
TOMMY CANDY, AND THE LETTER HE BROUGHT

"How do you do, Thomas Candy?" said Mrs. Tree.

"How-do-you-do-Missis-Tree-I'm-pretty-well-thank-you-and-hope-you-are-the-same!" replied Tommy Candy, in one breath.

"Humph! you shake hands better than you did; but remember to press with the palm, not pinch with the fingers! Now, what do you want?"

"I brung you a letter," said Tommy Candy. "I was goin' by the post-office, and Mr. Jaquith hollered to me and said bring it to you, and so I brung it."

"I thank you, Thomas," said the old lady, taking the letter and laying it down without looking at it. "Sit down! There are burnt almonds in the ivory box. Humph! I hear very bad accounts of you, Tommy Candy."

Tommy looked up from an ardent consideration of the relative size of the burnt almonds; his face was that of a freckled cherub who knew not sin.

"What is all this about Isaac Weight and Timpson Boody, the sexton? I hear you were at the bottom of the affair."

The freckled cherub vanished; instead appeared an imp, with a complex and illuminating grin pervading even the roots of his hair.

"Ho!" he chuckled. "I tell ye, Mis' Tree, I had a time! I tell ye I got even with old Booby and Squashnose Weight, too, that time. Ho! ha! Yes'm, I did."

"You are an extremely naughty boy!" said Mrs. Tree, severely. "Sit there – don't wriggle in your cheer; you are not an eel, though I admit you are the next thing to it – and tell me every word about it, do you hear?"

"Every word?" echoed Tommy Candy.

"Every word."

Their eyes met; and, if twinkle met twinkle, still her brows were severe, and her cap simply awful. Tommy Candy chuckled again. "I tell ye!" he said.

He reflected a moment, nibbling an almond absently, then leaned forward, and, clasping his hands over both knees, began his tale.

"Old Booby's ben pickin' on me ever sence I can remember. I don't git no comfort goin' to meetin', he picks on me so. Ever anybody sneezes, or drops a hymn-book, or throws a lozenger, he lays it to me, and he ketches me after meetin' and pulls my ears. Last Sunday he took away every lozenger I had, five cents' wuth, jest because I stuck one on Doctor Pottle's co't in the pew front of our'n. So then I swowed I'd have revenge, like that feller in the poetry-book you lent me. So next day after school I seed him – well, saw him – come along with his glass-settin' tools, and go to work settin' some glass in one of the meetin'-house winders. Some o' them little small panes got broke somehow – yes'm, I did, but I never meant to, honest I didn't. I was jest tryin' my new catapult, and I never thought they'd have such measly glass as all that. Well, so I see – saw him get to work, and I says to Squashnose Weight – we was goin' home from school together – I says, 'Let's go up in the gallery!' Old Booby had left the door open, and 'twas right under the gallery that he was to work. So we went up; and I had my pocket full of split peas – no'm, I didn't have my bean-blower along; I'd known better than to take it into the meetin'-house, anyway; and we slipped in behind old Booby's back and got up into the gallery, and I slid the winder up easy, and we commenced droppin' peas down on his head. He's bald as a bedpost, you know, and to see them peas hop up and roll off – I tell ye, 'twas sport! Old Booby didn't know what in thunder was the matter at first. First two or three he jest kind o' shooed with his hand – thought it was hossflies, mebbe, or June-bugs; but we went on droppin' of 'em, and they hopped and skipped off his head like bullets, and bumby he see one on the ground. He picked it up and looked it all over, and then he looked up. You know how he opens his mouth and sort o' squinnies up his eyes? Mis' Tree, I couldn't help it, no way in the world; I jest dropped a handful of peas right down into his mouth. 'Twa'n't no great of a shot, for he opened the spread of a quart dipper; but Squashnose he sung out 'Gee whittakers!' and raised up his head, and old Booby saw him. Well, the way he dropped his tools and put for the door was a caution. We thought we could get down before he reached the gallery stairs, but I caught my pants on a nail, and Squashnose got his foot wedged in between two benches, and, by the time we got loose, we heard old Booby comin' poundin' up the stairs like all possessed. There wa'n't nothin' to do then but cut and run up the belfry ladder. We slipped off our shoes and stockin's, and thought mebbe we could get up without him hearin' us, but he did hear, and up he come full chisel, puffin' and cussin' like all creation.

"We waited – there wa'n't nothin' else to do; and I meant – I reely did, Mis' Tree – to own up and say I was sorry and take my lickin'; but that Squashnose Weight – he makes me tired! – the minute he see old Booby's bald head comin' up the ladder, he hollers out, 'Tommy Candy did it, Mr. Boody! Tommy Candy did it; he's got his pocket full of 'em now. I see him!'

"Well, you bet I was mad then! I got holt of him and give his head one good ram against the wall; and then when old Booby stepped up into the loft, I dropped down on all fours and run between his legs, and upset him onto Squashnose, and clum down the ladder and run home. That was every livin' thing I done, Mis' Tree, honest it was; and they blame it all on me, the lickin' Squashnose got, and all. I give him a good one, too, next day. I druther be me than him, anyway."

"Humph!" said Mrs. Tree. She did not look at Tommy, but held the Chinese screen before her face. "Did – did your father whip you well, Tommy?"

"Yes'm, he did so, the best lickin' I had this year; I dono but the best I ever had, but 'twas wuth it!"

When Master Candy left Mrs. Tree he had a neat and concise little lecture passing through his head, on its way from one ear to the other, and in his pocket an assortment of squares of fig-paste, red and white. The red, as Mrs. Tree pointed out to him, had nuts in them.

Left alone, the old lady put down the screen, and let the twinkle have its own way. She shook her head two or three times at the fire, and laughed a little rustling laugh.

"Solomon Candy! Solomon Candy!" she said. "A chip of the old block!"

Then she took up her letter.

Half an hour later Miss Vesta, coming in for her daily visit (for Miss Phœbe's death had brought the aunt and niece even nearer together than they were before), found her aunt in a state of high indignation. She began to speak the moment Miss Vesta entered the room.

"Vesta, don't say a word to me! do you hear? not a single word! I will not put up with it for an instant; understand that once and for all!"

"Dear Aunt Marcia," said Miss Vesta, mildly, "I may say good morning, surely? What has put you about to-day?"

"I have had a letter. The impudence of the woman, writing to me! Now, Vesta, don't look at me in that way, for you have some sense, if not much, and you know perfectly well it was impudent. Folderol! don't tell me! her dear aunt, indeed! I'll dear-aunt her, if she tries to set foot in this house."

Miss Vesta's puzzled brow cleared. "Oh," she said, "I see, Aunt Marcia. You also have had a letter from Maria."

"Read it!" said Mrs. Tree. "I'd take it up with the tongs, if I were you."

Miss Vesta did not think it necessary to obey this injunction, but unfolded the square of scented paper which her aunt indicated, and read as follows:

"My dear Aunt:– I was much grieved to hear of poor Phœbe's death. It seems very strange that I was not informed of her illness; being her own first cousin, it would have been natural and gratifying for me to have shared the last sad hours with you and Vesta; but malice is no part of my nature, and I am quite ready to overlook the neglect. You and Vesta must miss Phœbe sadly, and be very lonely, and I feel it a duty that I must not shirk to come and show you both that to me, at least, blood is thicker than water. One drop of Darracott blood, I always say, is enough to establish a claim on me. It is a long time since I have been in Elmerton, and I should like above all things to bring my two sweet girls, to show them their mother's early home, and present them to their venerable relation. I think you would find them not inferior, to say the least, to some others who have been more put forward to catch the eye. A violet by a mossy stone has always been my idea of a young woman. However, my daughters' engagements are so numerous, and they are so much sought after, that it will be impossible for me to bring them at present; later I shall hope to do so. I propose to divide my visit impartially between you and poor Vesta, but shall go to her first, being the one in affliction, since such we are bidden to visit.

"Looking forward with great pleasure to my visit with you, and hoping that this may find you in the enjoyment of such a measure of health as your advanced years may allow, I am, my dear Aunt,

"Your affectionate niece,

"Maria Darracott Pryor."

"When you have finished it, you may put it into the fire," said Mrs. Tree. "Bah! what did she say to you? Cat! I don't mean you, Vesta."

But Miss Vesta, with all her dove-like qualities, had something of the wisdom of the serpent, and had no idea of repeating what Mrs. Pryor had said to her. Several phrases rose to her mind, – "Aunt Marcia's few remaining days on earth," "precarious spiritual condition of which reports have reached me," "spontaneous distribution of family property," etc., – and she rejoiced in being able to say calmly, "I did not bring the letter with me, Aunt Marcia. Maria speaks of her intended visit, and seems to look forward with much pleasure to – "

"Vesta Blyth," said Mrs. Tree, "look me in the eye!"

"Yes, dear Aunt Marcia," said the little lady. Her soft brown eyes met fearlessly the black sparks which gleamed from under Mrs. Tree's eyebrows. She smiled, and laid her hand gently on that of the elder woman.

"There is no earthly use in your smiling at me, Vesta," the old lady went on. "I see nothing whatever to smile about. I wish simply to say, as I have said before, that after I am dead you may do as you please; but I am not dead yet, and while I live, Maria Darracott sets no foot in this house."

"Dear Aunt Marcia!"

"No foot in this house!" repeated Mrs. Tree. "Not the point of her toe, if she had a point. She was born splay-footed, and I suppose she'll die so. Not the point of her toe!"

Miss Vesta was silent for a moment. If she were only like Phœbe! She must try her best to do as Phœbe would have wished.

"Aunt Marcia," she said, "you have always been so near and dear – so very near and so infinitely dear and kind, to us, – especially to Nathaniel and me, and to Nathaniel's children, – that I fear you sometimes forget the fact that Maria is precisely the same relation to you that we are."

"Cat's foot, fiddlestick, folderol, fudge!" remarked Mrs. Tree, blandly.

"Dear Aunt Marcia, do not speak so, I beg of you. Only think, Uncle James, Maria's father, was your own brother."

"His wife wasn't my own sister!" said Mrs. Tree, grimly. Then she blazed out suddenly. "Vesta Blyth, you are a good girl, and I am very fond of you; but I know what I am about, and I behave as I intend to behave. My brother James was a good man, though I never could understand the ground he took about the Copleys. He had no more right to them – but that is neither here nor there. His wife was a cat, and her mother before her was a cat, and her daughter after her is a cat. I don't like cats, and I never have had them in this house, and I never will. That's all there is to it. If that woman comes here, I'll set the parrot on her."

"Scat!" said the parrot, waking from a doze and ruffling his feathers. "Quousque tandem, O Catilina? Vesta, Vesta, don't you pester!"

Miss Vesta sighed. "Then – what will you say to Maria, Aunt Marcia?"

"I sha'n't say anything to her!" replied the old lady, snappishly.

"Surely you must answer her letter, dear."

"Must I! 'Must got bust,' they used to say when I was a girl."

"Surely you will answer it?" said Miss Vesta, altering the unlucky form of words.

"Nothing of the sort! She has had the impudence to write to me, and she can answer herself."

"She cannot very well do that, Aunt Marcia."

"Then she can go without.

 
"'Tiddy hi, toddy ho,
Tiddy hi hum,
Thus was it when Barbara Popkins was young!'"
 

Miss Vesta sighed again; it was always a bad sign when Mrs. Tree began to sing.

"Very well, Aunt Marcia," she said, after a pause, rising. "I will answer for both, then. I will say that – "

"Say that I am blind, deaf, and dumb!" her aunt commanded. "Say that I have the mumps and the chicken-pox, and am recommended absolute retirement. Say I have my sins to think about, and have no time for anything else. Say anything you like, Vesta, but run along now, like a good girl, and let me get smoothed out before that poor little parson comes to see me. He's coming at five. Last time I scared him out of a year's growth – te-hee! – and he has none to spare, inside or out. Good-by, my dear."