Maria's tall, gaunt figure moved about the hot kitchen restlessly, untired, though the heat rose in waves from the dull red top of the stove and eddied dizzily out of the door, spreading over the flat stone that served as a step. Two cicadas disputed, unceasing, insistent, in the pear-tree beside the door, and, as Maria went out to lay some disk towels on the grass, the screen door squeaked and slammed behind her. Wasps were buzzing over the fallen and squashy pears, and she frowned at the mess they made on the gravel as she shifted her apron to wipe her moist forehead.
A hen cackled loudly and stepped proudly out of the henhouse. Maria's somber eyes brightened, and with a quick, furtive look back at the house she hurried over to the chicken-yard. Her long figure bent awkwardly into the low door, and she blinked in the sudden dark as she groped for the egg. She fairly gloated over it as she carried it tenderly back to the kitchen, and she spent a long time in the closet putting it away. You would have thought she was hiding it. You would have thought so more strongly ahd you seen her startled jump and quick exit when a querulous voice called her name. But she answered quietly enough, "Yes, mother."
"Hurry up and help me get your father out on the porch!"
Maria went in the direction of the voice. The room she entered was shadowy and dim; in it her mother was fussing nervously around a wheel chair in which sat the bowed figure of a man. Maria grasped the handle of the chair and gently guided it down the hall.
"Will you open the door, mother?" she asked.
The older woman brushed past the chair and jerked the door open roughly, letting it slam noisily behind them. Maria took her father down the long veranda to a spot around the corner of the house where a group of tall old pines made a still collness, and there she busied herself in quiet care for his comfort.
It was a grand figure of a man who sat there, his lion-like head bowed on his breast, his sightless eyes closed. The strong hands that lay on the arms of the chair were knotted with rheumatism and his face was lined with pain. Just now his mouth was drawn with the suffering caused by the moving, but, as he realized Maria's care, a smile of wonderful sweetness softened the sharp lines. Gently she fanned the heavy hair from his damp forehead and arranged his cushions comfortably. Her long, roughened fingers were marvelously skilful as they busied themselves about him, and there was a gentle sweetness in her voice that had not been there when she talked with her mother. And as she bent over him there was a fleeting little look on her plain, middle-eged face that made it very like his.
But the look fled quickly when she went back to the kitchen and met her mother entering from the outer door, her face flushed and cross.
"Where's that egg?" demanded Mrs. Wood.
Maria began to get her bread ready for the oven.
"What egg?" she asked impassively.
"The egg that hen laid a space ago. I heard her cackle."
"There has n't been an egg for two weeks."
"Maria Wood, I want that egg! You know I can't eat much, and I ain't had an egg for most a month, because you've taken the few we've had for your father. What's the use of wasting eggs on him when he can't rightly enjoy anything he eats? Maria, I want that egg!" She was almost whining now.
Maria said nothing, but calmly settled her bread in the pans and put them in the oven. Her mouth was stern and a red spot burned on either cheek. Her mother glared helplessly a moment and then flounced out of the room, muttering complaints as she went. Maria heard the front door banged and a heavy rocking-chair being dragged noisily down the piazza. She could see as plainly as if she had been there the sudden quiver of pain that passed through her father's body and the shadow that slipped over his face at his wife's approach. Her lips were a thin straight line as she heard her mother's complaining voice begin its daily monologue of all the small gossip and vexations of the village. With all the doors and windows open, she could hear plainly what was said on the veranda, and custom made the scene only too vivid and present. She could see the paralyzed strong man sitting there, helpless, unwilling to listen, yet always gentle and patient. Sometimes he gazed off into the pine branches he could not see, and the peace in his face showed that he heard nothing.
In the kitchen the stove was growing hotter, and the sun was growing hotter, and close by a man was cutting the grass. The locusts had forsaken dialogue for large choruses, and the hens were very noisy. As Maria worked on without a pause, you would have wondered how her face had ever looked like her father's. The strain was telling, and the rebellious complaint of her mother's discontented eyes and mouth were creeping over the daughter's face. She hardly knew what it was to be tired, this gaunt, tall woman, but something in her was beginning to give way.
Suddenly she sat down, weakly. A dry, helpless sob broke from her lips and she seemed crushed in her chair by a tremendous weight. But even as she gave up, she heard her father's voice as he spoke to her mother. She could not distinguish the words, but the calm, controlled tones, soft and quiet, brought back with a rush the thing she had lost, and she rose to her work with new determination.
When the boy, bringing a basket of pears from the garden, stumbled on the sill and sent them all flying, she stooped without a word of reproof to help him gather them up. As she straightened herself, red from the effort, she heard steps on the gravel, and a young girl came down the path, cool and sweet under her sunshade.
"Good-morning!" she cried, and Maria's answering greeting had a genuine welcome in it.
"Mother could n't come this morning, so she sent me."
"Father likes to hear you read. I'm glad you came."
"How is he to-day?"
"The pain's pretty bad. The heat makes him weak, and I guess nobody slept last night."
"I know. Was n't it awful? But we'll surely have some thunder soon and then things will be better. Where is he, around on the piazza?"
"Yes, where the pine trees are. He likes them, and it's coolest there."
Maria listened as she went around, and her eyes brightened at the quiet pleasure in her father's greeting. The rustling of the paper was soon followed by the even-toned voice that the old man loved to hear.
Suddenly the querulous tone sof Mrs. Wood interrupted.
"Has your mamma done any peaches yet?"
The trivial, irrelevant question opened the way, and Mrs. Wood clung tenaciously to the conversation. Catharine answered the volley of questions quietly and respectfully, but with evident distress growing in her voice, as she made fruitless attempts to resume the reading. Mrs. Wood was extremely interested in all Mrs. Townsend's domestic affairs, and, seeing that there was no way out of it, Catharine made as interesting and amusing as possible her mother''s recent experience with one of the village girls. She addressed herself to Mr. Wood, while satisfying his wife's curiosity, and he chuckled delightedly at the spirited account.
She stopped at last with a dismayed exclamation.
"Oh, dear! I'm so sorry, but I have an engagement that I just can't break. I wish I could finish the paper, Mr. Wood. You were so interested in that article. But you'll read to him, won't you, Mrs. Wood? I know you read beautifully." Her tone was winning and Mrs. Wood coughed importantly as she took the paper. She rustled it noisily as Catharine went away and coughed again.
"Shall I read, James?"
"If you would, Martha, and are not too tired," he answered gently.
So she read, creaking back and forth in her rocker and sniffing at the end of every other line. After a minute she threw down the paper, exclaiming that it was mail time and she was going to the store. Her husband said nothing.
From the kitchen Maria watched her mother saunter complacently up the street. Then she went out to her father. The sun had crept around so that it was not very cool any longer even by the pines, and he had slipped down uncomfortably among his cushions. A bit of his favorite heliotrope, which Catharine always brought him, was squeezed and crushed in his knotted fingers. His voice was feeble as he begged to be taken indoors, and the red spots burned again on Maria's cheeks as she complied with the request. She fixed him in bed as comfortably as was possible and brought him a cool drink of milk and egg. He tried obediently to drink it, but pushed away the glass after a swallow. There was nothing she could do, so Maria carried away the scarcely tasted drink, and, with a strange expression on her face, set it down on the kitchen table. When she cleared up the dishes caused by its preparation, she crushed to little bits the shell of the egg she had so carefully treasured.
The room was so hot in the sweltering noon blaze that everything seemed to sizzle and she had to gasp for breath.
It was time to get lunch, but she knew it would be a long time before her mother could tear herself away from the fascinating gossip of the store, and she could not bear the thought of food for herself. But she forced herself to swallow a morsel of bread and drank a cup of steaming tea feverishly. Then she went back to her father and sat patiently fanning through all the long hours of the hot afternoon.
The steady heat sapped the invalid's strength visibly, and after a breathless night he was too weak to get up at all. A long August drought had begun and for days there was not a drop of rain. The grass turned slowly brown, and the insects grew noisier and noisier. All day the sky was an unvarying blue dazzle; at night it was filled with stars that seemed to pant. Mrs. Wood's discontent grew; with Maria she was sharp, and scolded, and, when sympathizing friends called to inquire for her husband, she was plaintive, with the air of a woman interestingly afflicted and unfortunate, and, folding her arms, creaked back and forth in her favorite rocker. Then her husband in his darkened room would set his teeth to control the nervous pain which shot through his body at every creak.
One morning, when her mother's complaining had been unusually long and irritating, Maria's quiet composure fled, and she flashed out a sharp reply. The sound of her own voice startled her, it was so like her mother's, and she stopped as suddenly as she had begun. That afternoon she heard the same tone in her voice when the grocer's boy made a careless mistake in the order. It frightened her, for it came more frequently as the hot, trying days went by, until it seemd like an evil spirit which she could not drive away. Only in her father's room did she feel secure from it.
Catharine went home after one of her morning visits and remarked to her mother how like Mrs. Wood Miss Maria was growing to look. Others noticed it, too, and some who had thought her like her father wondered that they had ever seen any resemblance. A few wondered casually if Miss Maria were going to break down, for though she could not possibly get any thinner, her face was growing to have a haggard look that was new to it.
Then the wells began to go dry, and the inexhaustible one owned by Mr. Wood was called on to supply an increasing number of the villagers. All day long the pump wailed as strange hands jerked it up and down and the birds flocked thirstily about the damp spot on the ground.
Every one was searching the sky for signs of rain, and the old men of the village were drawing upon their fancy for tales of past droughts. One afternoon puffy white clouds appeared low on the horizon; there was hopeful talk of thunder and relief; but the clouds disappeared long before the sun set in a round, red glow, and the night settle down heavy with oppressiveness.
Things had gone wrong all day. The milk had soured, a horse had succumbed to the heat, and some of the preserves carefully put up in the early summer had spoiled and, bursting out of their jars, had scattered themselves odiferously over the pantry shelves. Maria felt that she had reached the extreme limit of her endurance. In the afternoon there had been a long wrangle with her mother, after which, with a sick feeling in her heart, she had rushed through her work and fled desperately to the quiet security of her father's room.
When it grew dark she threw open the blinds, but there was no coolness in the night air and not a breeze was stirring. Pale flashes of heat lightning fitfully illuminated the room, lighting up the two still figures and the rhythmic, unceasing swaying of the great palm-leaf fan in Maria's hand. Countless insects filled th edarkness with nervous noise, and somewhere in the direction of the village a phonograph was screaming shrilly. The noises seemed to Maria like the rasping of a file across her taut nerves. It had been only within the last week or two that the strong, gaunt woman had realized her possession of nerves, and she resented the knowledge, for it humiliated her. She was fighting inwardly an angry battle with those same nerves, and it did not help her much when a cat yowled woefully in the garden. Beside her the sick man lay in a stupor, worn and weak. In the next room his wife lay, tossing, but asleep. Maria stared into the dark and fanned.
Suddenly she held her breath, for she thought she heard a dim, distance-muffled roll of thunder. She prayed wordlessly, and after an interminable wait she heard a real rumble. The pines signed with a soft stirring, and a tiny breath of coolness seemed to touch the air. Tears of relief started in Maria's eyes, and she silently gave thanks as the storm came slowly nearer. The flashes grew brighter and more frequent, disclosing the sick man's white face to Maria's watching eyes. Suddenly she was startled, so that she rose and made a light. Between two flashes a change had come over the worn face, and she realized, with a sudden clutch at her heart, that the relief had come too late. The strength which the long heat had been draining was almost gone, and it was going faster now.
Her first impulse was to call her mother, and she started from the room. But her father stirred and spoke softly. She came back quickly, thinking he wanted her, but he gave no heed to the controlled "Yes, father," which she spoke as calmly as if no choking lump were filling her throat. His hand moved feebly over the coverlet, as if seeking something, till she laid her own upon it. Then he smiled and seemed satisfied. When he spoke again, the daughter distinguished enough of the words to know that he thought he was speaking to his wife. He was speaking with the affectionate confidence which had not been in his voice for months, not since his misfortunes had withered the love which the shallow nature of Martha Wood held for him. Maria felt at her heart an almost physical pain, a pain she had known more than once in the past months.
It was her mother who was in the next room, tossing and muttering confusedly in her sleep; it was her father's wife, and that father was dying. Maria started again to get her, but she had not the strength to pull away from the feeble grasp that held her hand, and just then her mother, with sleepy crossness, exclaimed:-
"Oh, James, it's such a nuisance!"
Maria sat down by the bed, and did not stir again till the slacked grasp of her father's hand told her that the life was gone from it. Then she slipped down on her knees, and with a soft rush in the pines the rain came down.
She felt very weak, with the relaxing of the strain, and the coolness of the air crept through her aching body like newly wakened life. With the soothing of her physical body she felt a new strength stilling her soul. It seemed as if something evil had been purged out of her. When, mingled with the odor of damp earth, she breathed the fragrance of the pine needles, she remembered her father's face as he had gazed, unseeing, into the green shadowed trees, and in her inmost heart she was glad.
A loud crash woke her mother, and she called querulously for Maria. Maria went with no feeling in her heart save a deep and tender pity. The peevish, childish fear of the storm which distressed Mrs. Wood had no longer any power to arouse vexation in the daughter, and she soothed with a wonderful patience the turbulent outburst of grief which her news occasioned.
When she finally had seen the older woman asleep, she went to her room and lay down on the bed. She was inexpressibly tired, but the weariness was all in her body, and somehow a great restfulness had come upon her soul, so that gradually the gentle persistence of the rain lulled her to sleep.
When she went to the door in the morning and stood breathing deeply in the early freshness of the cool air, for the first time in weeks she felt some vigor in the beginning of a new day. The rain still glistened on the wet grass, and the birds splashed in the little pools. The sweet-pea hedge had blossomed newly in a sunrise of pink loveliness, and, when Maria detected the sweetness of the heliotrope bed in the corner, she smiled. When she smiled, her face was very like her father's.
The look lingered while she busied herself with the regular routine of the morning work, until it changed oddly whe, above the chattering of the birds and the clucking of the chickens, she heard again the happy cackle of the self-satisfied hen. Very slowly she went out to get the egg, and she came back with it slowly. Then she carefully prepared a dainty breakfast on a tray and took it up to her mother. The egg was part of the breakfast.
When she entered the room, Mrs. Wood stirred and opened her eyes, heavy with sleep. A startled look came into them for a moment and she exclaimed: -
"Land sakes! You looked enough like your father to scare the living senses out of me!"
Then full consciousness began to come to her, and she whimpered, while Maria patiently mothered her.