A Lantern in Her Hand

by Bess Streeter Aldrich

  “Stealing?” A sharp pang of apprehension went through Abbie. She and Grandma Deal turned to each other in mutual fright.

  “Yes, sir, . . . stealin’.” Grandpa Deal’s forehead was puckered in agony.

  “My boy stole?” Grandma’s little worried face took on an added anxiety.

  “Twas at Savannah. Provisions was one ear of corn to the man. There was transports layin’ right out there in sight off the coast with food on for our boys. Couldn’t get in ’til fortifications fell. ’N’ then my boy . . .” His voice shook in mock sorrow. “My boy went to the corral,” the eyes began to twinkle, “ ’n’ stole two ears of corn from some army mules ’n’ boiled the corn for supper.”

  Grandma was provoked. “You ain’t got no call to be scarin’ me that way,” she sputtered. “You ain’t got no call to spend your life jokin’.”

  “Oh, come, now, Ma. Better to laugh than to cry. Will maybe’ll be remorse-stricken all the days o’ his life,—to hear the brayin’ in his conscience of them poor, helpless, skinny, mouse-colored government mules.”

  When Abbie was starting for school, Grandpa casually followed her out. “Had a good visit with Will.” He cocked one eye up at the well-sweep.

  “Did you?”

  “Yep. He wanted to know how all the Iowa folks was.”

  “Did he?”

  “Yep. More specifically, he wanted to know how all the Blackhawk folks was.”

  “Did he?”

  “Yep. Collectively, he wanted to know how all the folks in our community was.”

  “Did he?”

  “Yep. Individually, he wanted to know how you was.”

  “Oh, . . . did he?”

  “Yep. He says to me,” . . . Grandpa carelessly picked up a handful of snow and threw it at a rooster. “If I can rec’lect his words exact, they was, ‘How’s my Abbie-girl’?”

  Abbie walked over the crusted snow in a maze of conflicting emotions,—behind the hard little stays of her waist a burning letter from Ed Matthews and plans for her future,—in her heart, the memory of Will Deal’s one kiss, more poignant than either.

  A new minister and his wife came to the growing town that fall and made a round of calls among the country folk. They were Vermont people. The Reverend Ezra Whitman was dignified, pompous, a little pedantic. Mrs. Whitman was refined, soft-spoken, a graduate of a girls’ seminary. She took a great interest in Abbie, so that the young teacher began going into town to see her. She found that Mrs. Whitman was something of an artist. The little new frame house in which the couple lived held several oil paintings that seemed the acme of art to Abbie, and there was always an unfinished canvas on an easel. The paints fascinated the girl. She longed to get her hands on them. Something in her eyes must have flashed its unspoken message, for one day Mrs. Whitman asked her if she would like to try her hand with the brush. It thrilled her beyond words. Crudely enough, but with some intuitive knowledge, she did a little clump of trees on a piece of waste canvas.

  “I’ll never be satisfied until I can do it well,” she said. From that time on, at Mrs. Whitman’s invitation, she began painting with her, riding over to town when she could, tramping the two and one-half miles through slush or mud when there was no other way to go.

  “It’s your voice, though, that shows the greater promise,” Mrs. Whitman told her. “I wish I could help you with that, too. Mr. Whitman’s sister will know what to tell you when she comes. She teaches voice in my old seminary.”

  And when the sister came, and heard Abbie, she was enthusiastic. “It’s good,” she told them all. “It’s more than good. It’s splendid. You can do really big things with it. You must try sometime to come East for lessons.”

  But Abbie was too bashful to tell her that already she had an opportunity to go to New York to study. Her praise had its influence in Abbie’s decision. If her voice was really as good as Mrs. Whitman thought—— And so, on the day in April that Lee surrendered, Abbie Mackenzie surrendered, too. She wrote the letter to Ed Matthews that she would marry him. When she had sent it over to town to be mailed she went to her old grassy knoll in the clearing to sing. But she did not seem to sing well. Something seemed lacking. The melody sounded flat, unlovely, like a song from which the soul had fled.

  In the weeks that followed, Abbie felt restless, nervous and a little sad. She told herself that it was on account of Lincoln’s assassination. And indeed, some of it was, for the whole settlement mourned. But not all of her mood was due to the President’s tragic death.

  On a day in May, with the honey-locusts all in bloom, she stood at the door of the schoolhouse, and watched the train from the east shriek its way across Grandpa Deal’s newly planted corn-fields. She washed her blackboard, set her desk to rights, locked the schoolhouse, and started home. And, quite suddenly, she saw some one coming down the lane. Abbie stood still, her heart pounding tumultuously with the uncertainty of the figure’s identity. The world was a lovely painting of sunshine, blue skies, honey-locusts, bees on the blossoms,—a palpitating, throbbing world of spring.

  Will Deal in his blue soldier’s suit was coming toward her. She could not take her eyes from his face. He was smiling, questioningly, a little quizzically, and with something that was infinitely more tender. He slipped the knapsack from his back and held out his arms. Swiftly, lightly, Abbie went to him.

  “Oh, Will, don’t let me, . . . don’t let me do it,” Abbie began sobbing a little wildly, almost hysterically. For two years Abbie Mackenzie had not shed a tear and now she was crying wildly in Will Deal’s arms. Will held her close, smoothed her hair back from her creamy-white forehead.

  “Do what, Abbie-girl?” He was all gentleness, all desirous of understanding.

  “Marry Ed Matthews.”

  Will caught her fiercely, held her closer, kissed her red lips, laid his face to her cheek that was like Mayflower petals. And Abbie thought of ships that come home to the harbor.

  “I should say I won’t. He could buy me in the draft . . . but he can’t buy my Abbie.”

  “I was afraid all the time, Will.”

  Will held her close,—smoothed her red-brown hair.

  “Afraid of what, Abbie-girl?”

  “I don’t know. Just afraid.”

  “You’re not afraid with me?”

  “Not with you, Will. Why is that?”

  “Because I love you and you love me.”

  “Yes, that’s it . . . and I’m not afraid.”

  “Of life with me, Abbie-girl?”

  “Not of anything, Will, with you.”

  “And you’ll always love me?”

  “Always, Will, . . . in this life and the next.”

  The afternoon sun rays lengthened across the fields. The honey-locusts dropped in the lane. The bees made noisy forages into the hearts of the blossoms. Will and Abbie lingered, all the melody of life a-tune, all the heaven that they desired, there in the lane under the honey-locusts.

  CHAPTER VII

  They were married on a winter’s day of 1865, when Abbie was not quite nineteen and Will was twenty-three. The day was mild, even warm, a phenomenon for that time of year. “A weather-breeder,” every one called it. A few men shed their coats and worked in their shirt-sleeves during the middle of the day, so that they might tell of it in years to come.

  Maggie Mackenzie and Abbie and Mary set the furniture out of the log house, so there would be room for the guests. Janet’s two children were designated as a committee to keep the chickens off the various pieces, but so excited were the youngsters over the elaborate culinary preparations, that during a period of the abandonment of their posts, an old hen flew up on top of the high boy and laid an egg in the work-basket.

  Abbie had made two new dresses from cloth sent out from Chicago. One was a wine-colored merino, the other a brown alpaca, both made fashionably full over hoop-skirts, with panniers at the side. A new little hat, the shape of a butterbowl, with ribbon bows on it, added much to her pride.

  Toward even
ing of the great day, Abbie was all of a-flutter because there were so many things to do. There was still water to be heated in a boiler on the stove and the washtub to be brought in for her bath. She had to skim a pan of milk, so that she could make the skin of her face and hands soft with cream. And she nearly forgot the flour she was to brown in the oven with which to powder her body. Basil, fifteen now, helped take the hot water on its perilous journey up the loft ladder with the saplings nailed across for steps, and lifted up the wooden tub on his strong young shoulder.

  In spite of the unusually warm day, it was a little chilly for one’s ablutions in the loft room, but Abbie was young and vigorous and used to it. She put on her muslin chemise and pantalets and her tight little stays, holding her breath until she could lace them so that her two hands could almost span her waist. Into her bosom she slipped a little netting sack of dried rose petals, which smelled faintly and tantalizingly of by-gone Junes. Then over her head she dropped and fastened the long collapsible hoop-skirt, with its nineteen bands of white covered wires. There were three white muslin petticoats, starched almost to chinaware stiffness and ruffled to the knees. Abbie and her mother had hemmed seventy-two yards of ruffles by hand. Grandma Deal had one of the Howe stitching machines, but not all families could afford one. Then, at last, she put on her wine-colored merino with its countless rows of flutings of the same material and side panniers.

  She was patting her hair into place and pulling out the long shoulder curl, when her mother came puffingly, slowly, up the loft ladder. Mother was getting old now. She was forty-seven,—heavy and placid. Her fat round face in its white cap with strings tied under her two chins, appeared in the loft opening. Abbie went over to her and took her hand, so that she would not fall. She saw that her mother had the calf-skin covered box in her hand.

  It was several moments before Maggie Mackenzie could talk, puffingly, after the climb. “Abbie, I want ye to have the pearls. I’m savin’ the fan for Mary. Janet has the breast-pin, you know, and Belle the shawl. Belle always stuck ’n’ hung fer the shawl. And the pearls are fer you. Yell ne’er starve as long as ye have ’em.” She opened the little hairy-skinned chest and took out a small velvet box and from it the pearls themselves. She twined them through her short stubby fingers, their creamy shimmer incongruous in the plump peasant hand. “They were Basil’s fine mother’s. After she died, . . . Basil gave ’em to me in the days of wealth. Sure, but it wasn’t the wealth that brought us happiness. Many’s the time I’ve hated it . . . longin’ for a little house somewhere, . . . out of the wind ’n’ rain, . . . ’n’ not many things at all, at all. . . .”

  There were tears in Abbie’s brown eyes when she took them. She held their creamy luster in the palm of her firm young hand. Into her mind came that old admiration for Isabelle Anders-Mackenzie. The touch of the jewels seemed to bring her near, to call up the vision of the lovely lady who was wearing them in the wide gold frame,—the lovely lady with the sweeping velvet and the long flowing plume and the fingers that tapered at the ends. Some day she was going to be like her. Some day she, too, would be lovely and gracious and wealthy. All of life was before her. All the future was hers. And that future now held Will, with his steady gray eyes,—Will Deal who was like a quiet harbor. Song, soft and meltingly tender came to her lips:

  “Oh, the Lady of the Lea,

   Fair and young and gay was she,”

  She held the pearls up to the wine-colored merino and looked in the small oblong glass.

  “Beautiful exceedingly,

   The Lady of the Lea.”

  Then she turned to her mother. Her face was flushed, tender. “Thank you, Mother, . . . so much, . . . I’ll keep them always. But with the dark dress and the high neck, . . . I’ll just not wear them to-night. After awhile when Will and I are wealthy, I’ll wear them. And maybe we’ll have, . . .” Some reticences existing at the time, the blood swept Abbie’s face, “. . . maybe we’ll have a daughter some day and she can wear them on her wedding night, . . . in white satin . . . and all the things that go with it . . .”

  Abbie swept across the dingy loft room, her hoops swinging in wiry bounces. She knelt down by her mother’s chair, her skirts forming a huge circular mound, and laid her head against the older woman’s. “And besides, Mother, you understand, don’t you . . . when you follow your heart you don’t need pearls to make you happy?”

  It was time now. Abbie went down the ladder with the saplings nailed across for steps. She had to go backward so that her hoops could navigate the descension with some degree of modesty. The fiddlers were playing, “The Girl I Left Behind Me.” Will, looking big and fine and handsome, was there in the black suit Grandma Deal had made him. Grandpa Deal, with his one arm and the kindly twinkle in his ice-blue eyes, was there,—joking. Grandma Deal, in a black cap with black strings tied under the face that was covered with the faint tracing of hosts of wrinkles, was there. She was nervous, fretful, scolding. Why didn’t the men stand back? Why didn’t they shut that door? Where was that preacher keeping himself? A thousand mental worries like a thousand gnats irritating the peace of her mind. Whole families had come in wagons. Regina Deal and her beau and Dr. and Mrs. Matthews were the only ones who had come in high-top buggies. When the doctor and his wife came in, there was a little buzz of excitement, some whispering that they wondered whether or not it was true that young Dr. Ed had wanted Abbie.

  A solemn hush fell on the company.

  “Inasmuch as we are gathered here together in the sight of the Lord.” Suddenly, Abbie wanted to halt the ceremony. There seemed nothing in her mind but that odd thought of a wind rushing by, a wind she could not stop,—Time, going by,—Time which she could not stay. Stop Time for a minute, until she could think what queer thing was happening to her.

  “Do you take this woman, . . . sickness, . . . health, . . . ’til death, . . .” What a queer thing to talk about now,—death,—when it was life that was before them. “. . . this man . . . lawfully wedded husband . . .?”

  “I do.” But, oh Will . . . Will . . . who are you? Do I know you?

  And then, quite suddenly, Abbie Mackenzie was Abbie Deal. The fiddlers played “Money Musk,” and “Turkey in the Straw.” The company danced,—square dances of intricate design. Grandpa Deal wanted to take a partner, but Grandma Deal said no, it was foolish for an old man, fifty-five. But Maggie O’Conner Mackenzie danced,—alone, lightly and puffingly, in the middle of the floor, to:

  “Oh the days of the Kerry dancing,

   Oh the days when my heart was young.”

  There were biscuits and chickens and cakes and cider to be eaten from tables formed by putting long boards over saw-horses. And then, more dancing.

  Will Deal’s dark serious face bent low above Abbie’s creamy-petaled, flushed one. A long row of love-apples stood in the window.

  CHAPTER VIII

  Will and Abbie drove to Grandpa Deal’s in a two-wheeled cart behind an old white mare. So slowly did they drive that several passed them on the river road,—Grandpa and Grandma Deal and Louise in a lumber-wagon with a fine big team, and Regina Deal and her beau in the new high-top buggy. Grandpa laughed and called out some saucy jokes, but Grandma told him to hush his foolishness and ’tend to his driving.

  Will and Abbie had the front bedroom of the big five-roomed log-house for their own. In the weeks that followed, Will went about the regular farm work for his father, and Abbie put her young shoulder to the wheel of the housework. For Will’s sake she tried to meet his mother’s petty nagging with forbearance. But it wore on her like the constant dripping of water on a stone. Grandma Deal was a chronic grumbler and a born pessimist. She saw bad signs in Nature’s most ordinary activities. If a dog ate grass, if a bird flew through the house, if the moon rose from a cloud, the direst things were about to happen. And life meant nothing to her, apparently, but work. The first break of day and the last ray of sunlight saw her at the hard tasks of the housework. And when all other duties seemed done, she immediat
ely brought out a box of intricate quilt blocks, The Rose of Sharon and The Star of Bethlehem, The Rising Sun or the Log Cabin. For Grandpa Deal, Abbie had nothing but love. His Yankee drollness could always bring a bubbling laugh to her lips and his stump of an arm gave her added tenderness toward him. Looking at the two, she used to wonder how he could keep so cheerful. He never crossed Grandma, never argued with her in any way but jovially, never lost his temper. “Now, Mother,” he would say, “can’t you see the funny side of that?”

  “No, I can’t,” she would retort, “and neither could you if you’d stop your foolish jokin’ and keep your mind on your work.”

  It never went into a quarrel. When it approached one, Grandpa would go whistling out to the barn to work. Yes, Abbie loved Will’s father better than his mother. In the same way did she enjoy and dislike Louise and Regina. Louise was energetic, pleasant, peace-loving. Regina was selfish, a mischief-maker and a shirk. The young farmer with whom Regina was now keeping company had come first to see Louise. Although Abbie knew little of the circumstances, she felt quite definitely sure that Regina had maneuvered the transposition with adroitness.

  All spring, Abbie, fearful that the family might think she was not doing her part, took more than her share of the household duties. She helped boil the maple sap down into sugar, swept and dusted, baked and cooked, and took over the entire care of the chickens. Louise worked with her faithfully, but Regina slipped out from under the tasks with all the agility of an eel.

  And then Abbie was not well, . . .

  “She’s not doing her share,” Abbie overheard Grandma’s sputtering. “I told you it was too good to be true. I said all the time it wouldn’t last.”

  “Now, Mother,” Grandpa’s voice came gently, patiently, “I think I know what’s the matter. You wouldn’t want her to overdo.”