A Lantern in Her Hand

by Bess Streeter Aldrich

  Mack put an arm around his mother and patted her shoulder awkwardly. “Why, Mother, dear! Katherine, we shouldn’t have . . . I never thought, Mother . . . only the pleasure . . .”

  They all closed around her, making comments. Jimmie Buchanan and Wentworth stood off, a little embarrassed.

  The others all explained it volubly to each other.

  “It was too much of a surprise . . .”

  “Yes, she’s too old to have a surprise sprung . . .”

  “The trip up here was too much for mother at her age.”

  “It’s those weeks of sewing. I told her that quilt was too much . . .”

  “No,—it’s the whole excitement together.”

  Laura Deal came through the little knot. “It isn’t any of those reasons, is it, Grandma?” she said. “I know what it is . . . but I don’t know how to say it.”

  Abbie dried her eyes. “I’m all right now.” She even smiled at them. “My, my, Kathie, tears on your wedding day. Whatever will you think? How selfish of me,—I’m that ashamed! But when I saw . . . when I saw the lovely lady that I used to dream about . . . it just came over me . . . in a sort of wave . . . all the wonderful things I planned to do when I was young . . . and never did.”

  CHAPTER XXXV

  Abbie was back in her bedroom and dressed, now, for the wedding, in the lavender silk with the lace collar from Vienna. Margaret had dressed her hair and Isabelle had manicured her nails and Grace had powdered her skin,—with Abbie a little uncertain of the outcome as though, in her excitement, Grace might have purchased gunpowder by mistake.

  She loved the beauty of everything connected with the affair, but she was tired. It was queer how much more she could stand around home than when she was away. The work in the house, the care of the chickens and flowers,—the whole responsibility of the home place was not so tiring as something unusual and out of the ordinary like this.

  It was nearly time to go to the church when there was a little movement outside the door and she heard Katherine’s voice, “I want to see grandmother.”

  The door opened and Katherine stood on the threshold, in the exquisite whiteness of filmy lace, her eyes luminous, her face softened.

  “My . . . my!” Abbie Deal raised her hands in admiration, “you take my breath away. You look like her, Kathie . . . but you’re even lovelier.”

  With a swift little movement of the short lacy skirt, Katherine was across the floor and down by her grandmother. She caught Abbie Deal’s wrinkled old hands in her firm young ones. “Granny . . . I wanted to see you a minute. You’ve not liked me a lot of times, I know. We’ve been miles apart most of the time . . . but I wanted to come in and tell you that nothing really counts but Jimmie. Oh, Granny, I’d go with Jimmie . . . just as you did with grandfather. I’d live on pumpkin seeds, you know.” She was laughing a little, with moist eyes. “And dig a house in the side of a tree, just as you did . . . you know . . . all those things I’ve heard you tell about . . . Oh, heavens, I’m going to cry and I’m all made up, but Granny . . . I wanted you to know . . . that, after all, I’m just a lot of things you think I’m not . . . Oh, you won’t understand . . .”

  Abbie Deal patted the lacy shoulders and with gentle old fingers touched the upturned face. “Why of course, Kathie, . . . of course, dear, . . . Grandma understands, the clock hands go round . . . and Grandma understands . . .”

  The wedding was all that the wedding of Mackenzie Deal’s daughter would be,—a thing of extravagant simplicity. There were beribboned pews, soft lights, and chaste white tapers in silver candelabra against green palms. There was the organ’s mellow voice and the rich contralto one of the bride’s aunt, Isabelle Deal Rhodes, the well-known Chicago singer. There was Mackenzie Deal with his bald head and his horn-rimmed glasses and a lump in his throat. There was Mrs. Mackenzie Deal in her orchid and silver lace, a little too concerned over the details of the affair to think of her emotions. There were all the Deal relatives, well-groomed and prosperous-looking. And there was old Abbie Deal, sunk down low in the pew, the lavender silk dress with its lace collar from Vienna over her pudding-bag body, a knot of white hair at the nape of her neck, her tapering, gnarled fingers trembling with age in her lap.

  The bride was at the altar now,—lovely Katherine, in her white lace and satin, with the heirloom of pearls around her neck. Old Abbie’s thoughts went over the cycle of one hundred and thirty-five years. Satin and pearls in a Scottish mansion,—a peasant dress and a head-shawl in an Irish hut,—a wine-colored hoop-skirted merino in a log cabin,—a navy-blue silk in a cottonwood and pine farmhouse,—white lace and satin and the pearls again in their beautiful modern setting.

  “Do you take this man . . . for better . . . for worse . . . death do you part?”

  “I do.”

  The same solemn question, solemnly answered. Would it be as faithfully kept? Abbie wondered.

  And now it was all over. Katherine and Jimmie had left for the east. The big house had been quietly put to rights by two soft-footed maids. The whole Deal clan was gathering in the sun-room with its striking green and black and orchid English chintz hangings, and its fountain spraying over cool ferns and rocks.

  Emma was bustling about hospitably, seeing that every one was comfortable. “Come on in, Donald. Sit here, Grace.”

  Standing in the doorway, Abbie heard Margaret coaxing Fred Jr.’s youngest with “Come to Grandma, Baby.” It was still hard for Abbie to remember that two of her children were grandparents.

  Then they saw her standing in the doorway.

  “Come in, Mother.”

  “Sit here, Mother.”

  “No,—over here, Mother.”

  Mack brought a cushion, Isabelle a stool.

  “Are you comfortable, Mother?”

  How they thought of her bodily comfort,—always her physical needs. Not one ever said, “Are you sad, Mother?” or “How does your mind feel?” or “Does anything hurt your heart?”

  Abbie, sitting in the big ivory chair with cushions at her back, found herself slipping away from the group, standing apart from it, looking at the members of it in a detached way. How efficient they all were,—and how smart,—and how easily they did things. They went hither and yon, either for business or pleasure affairs,—into Chicago, down south . . . sometimes abroad. Mack, now, was saying something about going down to New York the last of the week.

  “I had a chance . . .” For the first time Abbie Deal spoke. Her voice cracked a little because of its age. From the depths of the big chair it cracked in its earnestness. “I had a chance to go to New York once.”

  Grace looked up quickly and then walked over to Isabelle. She spoke very low and turned her head so that her mother might not hear: “See! That’s what I’ve been telling you. I’ve noticed that in her quite a little lately. Just detached sentences like that with no special meaning. It would just kill me if her mind . . . at the last. . . . But she does that quite often, now. ‘Well, well, the clock hands go ‘round,’ she’ll say, right out of a clear sky. Or, ‘Dear, dear, the winds blew it all away.’ And now this one, ‘I had a chance to go to New York, once,’ . . . childish, that way.”

  In the big chair, Abbie Deal was chuckling a little to herself, shaking with silent laughter.

  “What’s the joke, Mother?” Mack spoke from across the room.

  “Nothing much. I was just wondering about all of you . . . now . . . if I had gone.”

  “See . . .?” Grace was grave in her anxiety, “. . . like that.”

  Abbie Deal sat looking out at the family gathered there in the beautiful sun-parlor, sat there with half-closed eyes like an old Buddha looking out on the generations. Eighty years of living were behind her,—most of them spent in fighting,—fighting the droughts, the snows, the hot winds, the prairie fires, the blizzards,—fighting for the children’s physical and mental and spiritual development, fighting to make a civilization on the raw prairie. Bending her back to the toil, hiding her heart’s disappointments, g
iving her all in service, she was like an old mother partridge who had plucked all the feathers from her breast for the nest of her young.

  Old Abbie Deal, so near the borderland now that she held intercourse with both worlds, sat there looking out through half-closed eyes at the children and the grandchildren and the great-grandchildren.

  “Well, Will . . . there they all are. What do you think of them? I did the best I could.”

  You did well, Abbie-girl.

  CHAPTER XXXVI

  Grace Deal, in her roadster, went back to summer school early in the morning. John Deal and his family left about the same time for Cedartown. Isabelle and Harrison Rhodes were remaining in Omaha for a few days’ visit at Mack’s, before making the rounds of the other homes. Abbie rode back with Margaret and Dr. Baker.

  On the way, Margaret asked: “Don’t you want to go on up to Lincoln with us for a few days, Mother?”

  “No. Oh, no,” Abbie said hastily. “I’m tired and I’ll be real glad to get home again.”

  When the big car stopped under the Lombardy poplars near the sitting-room porch of the old farmhouse, Margaret got out with her mother and helped her up the short walk to the house.

  “I just can’t bear to leave you here alone, Mother. Don’t you want me to stay all night with you? Fred could run out and get me to-morrow or I could go in on the morning train.”

  “No. Oh, no. I’m all right. I’m just tired from the excitement. When you’re used to being alone you don’t mind it a bit.”

  “Promise me you would call some one on the phone the first minute you didn’t feel well.”

  “I promise. I would call Christine. She’s got a phone in now, but she certainly begrudges the money. Anyway, I won’t be alone much more this summer. Isabelle will be here next week, and Grace will be home again soon, and Laura is going to come and stay a few days.”

  When they had gone, Abbie Deal opened some of the windows to air out the house. She had a whimsical notion that the things seemed glad to have her back,—the table where old Doc Matthews had rolled his pills, the walnut cupboard, Will’s corner what-not. There was something human about them as though they shared her thoughts,—as though, having come up through the years with her, they held the same memories.

  She fed her chickens, watered the sweet-peas, picked the dried leaves off her geraniums, and went over the whole yard as though to greet every bush and shrub after her absence.

  For the next few days she went slowly about her household duties with the same little sense of pleasure she always experienced after she had been to one of the children’s homes. How could old women bear to sit around with folded hands? What mattered it that the children all had such nice houses, there would never be any real home for her but the old wing-and-upright set in the cedars and poplars.

  By Friday night she had accomplished a lot of extra small tasks, setting an old hen that was foolishly wanting to raise a family out of season, gathering some early poppy-seeds and putting fresh papers on her pantry shelves. At five-thirty she started her supper. As she worked she tried to hum an old tune she had known when she was young, an old song she had not thought of for years and years, until Isabelle had sung it over the radio in the winter:

  “Oh . . . the La . . . dy of . . . the Lea,

   Fair and . . . young and . . . gay was . . . she”

  She had to make long pauses between the syllables to get her breath.

  “Beau . . . tiful . . . exceed . . . ingly

   The La . . . dy of . . . the Lea.”

  Her voice cracked and went up or down without her volition, so that even though her mind heard the song, her ear scarcely recognized the melody.

  “Many . . . a woo . . . er sought her . . . hand

   For she . . . had gold . . . and she . . . had land,

   Every . . . thing . . . la la . . . la la”

  She had forgotten what the words were right there.

  “The La . . . dy of . . . the Lea.”

  She was completely out of breath, so that she had to sit down a few minutes before starting to put her dishes on the kitchen table. As she sat looking at the old table, she suddenly wished that she could pull it out, put in all the leaves, set the places for the children and then call them in from play,—not the prosperous grown people she had been with so recently in Omaha, but just as they were when they were little. Queer how plainly she could see them in her mind: Mack’s merry round face with its sprinkling of freckles, Margaret’s long dark pig-tail, her gray eyes and her laughter, Isabelle’s reddish-brown curls and her big brown eyes, Grace’s square little body with her apron-strings always untied, John’s serious face,—a sort of little old man who did not want to be hugged. How real they seemed to her. One could almost imagine that it was they who were playing, “Run, Sheep Run” out there now instead of the neighbor children.

  Abbie Deal had never forbidden the north-end children access to her yard, and their high-pitched voices calling “Going-east . . . going west . . .” came to her now from the region of the cottonwood windbreak. Yes, it sounded for all the world like her own children out there.

  As she got up and went about her supper, putting a little piece of meat on to cook, her mind slipped to the fact that she had promised to make a short talk on the following week at the sixtieth anniversary of the founding of the city of Lincoln. She must begin to think of what she could say. There was plenty to talk about but she dreaded the speaking. She hoped her voice wouldn’t quaver and break. That was the trouble of being old. Your body no longer obeyed you. It did unruly and unreasonable things. An eye suddenly might not see for a moment. Your knees gave out at the wrong time, so that when you thought you were walking north, you might find yourself going a little northwest. Your brain, too, had that same flighty trick. You might be speaking of something and forget it temporarily,—your mind going off at a little to the northwest, too, so to speak.

  She glanced up to see what time it was, and discovered that the clock had stopped. Whatever had happened to the faithful old thing? It must be wearing out, for she was sure she had wound it.

  She opened the door with the little brown church painted on the glass, and reached for the key. Suddenly,—so suddenly that it was like a flash,—a queer feeling came over Abbie Deal. It was unlike any she had ever experienced,—a tightening of the throat and chest as of cold icy hands upon her. She tried to take her arms down from their stretched position, but it was almost impossible to move them for the pain. In a moment the icy hands released their hold upon her as quickly as they had clutched at her, but they left her so weak and shaken that she started into her bedroom holding onto the backs of the chairs.

  She lay down on her bed to get herself in hand. There was a sharp pain now in the back of her head and it seemed a little hard to breathe. For a moment she wondered if it could be that her time to die had come. No, that could not be. She was a little sick, but she had been so many times. “I never do die,” she said to herself and smiled a little at the humor of it.

  The sun’s rays slanted along the floor from the west sitting-room windows. The meat was cooking, for the air was filled with the odor of it. Robins were singing outside in the poplars. The neighbors’ children ran across the yard with cries of “All’s out’s in free.” They would trample the grass a little, but children were worth more than grass anyway. She must not get sick, for she was planning to go to something in a few days. For a few moments she could not think what it was, and then she remembered. It was the old settlers’ meeting in Lincoln. There would be a lot of old folks there and they would tell their reminiscences all day. No doubt she would be bored to distraction. Old people usually bored her. No, that was not right. Something was wrong with that thought. She was not young. She was old. She, herself, was one of the old settlers. How strange! Well, she would go. Her mind seemed not quite under control. She tried hard to think whether she was to go in the big shining sedan on the straight graveled roads or in the creaking wagon through the long swaying
grass. Blow . . . wave . . . ripple . . . dip. Blow . . . wave . . . ripple . . . dip. She felt ill. It was the swaying of the prairie grass that made her ill.

  If she were taken sick she had promised to do something,—something with the little brown box at the side of the bed. Suddenly, she remembered . . . call Christine. That was it. Good old Christine! . . . Old friends . . . were best. Maybe she ought to call Christine in the little brown box. Her arm slipped around the rolled silk quilt at the foot of the bed. Such a soft silk quilt . . . and an old patched quilt in front of a sheep-shed for a door. There it was again,—her mind going northwest.

  The sun slanted farther across the carpet. Whoever was frying that meat, was letting it burn. The children shouted very close to the house: “Run, sheep, run.” It was nice to know the children were all well and out there playing,—Mack and Margaret, John and Isabelle, Grace and the baby. She hoped they were taking good care of the baby,—the baby with a face like a little white rose. She would let them play on until she got to feeling better, and then she would get up and finish supper.

  That queer thought of death intruded itself again, but she reasoned, slowly and simply, with it. If death were near she would be frightened. Death was her enemy. All her life she had hated death and feared it. It had taken her mother, and Will and the baby and countless old friends. But Death was not near. The children playing outdoors, the sun slanting over the familiar carpet, the meat frying for supper,—all the old simple things to which she was accustomed, reassured her. A warm feeling of contentment slipped over her to hear the children’s happy voices. “All’s out’s in free,” they called. It was almost time for Will to come in to his supper. It was the nicest part of the day—the robins singing in the poplars—the meat cooking—the supper table set—every one coming home—the whole family around the table—all—Will—the children. She must wind the clock before they came in. You—couldn’t—stop—Time—