A sleepy, contented little town, overshadowed by giant elms, sprawled out along the banks of a winding river, surrounded for miles by undulating woodlands—that is how I remember Sheba. The houses were for the most part of timber, and nearly all of them were painted white. They sat each in its unfenced garden, comfortably separate from neighbors, with a green lawn flowing from the roadway all about it, and a nosegay of salvias, hollyhocks, and lavender, making cheerfulness beside the piazza. I suppose unkind things happened there, but they have left no mark on my memory. When I think of Sheba there comes to me the sound of bees humming, woodpeckers tapping, frogs croaking, and the sight of blue indolent smoke curling above quiet gables, butterflies sailing over flowers, a nodding team of oxen on a sunlit road hauling fagots into town and, after sunset hour, the indigo silence of dusk beneath orchards where apples are dropping and fireflies blink with the eyes of goblins.
Sheba was one of those old New England towns from which the hurry of life has departed; it cared more for its traditions than for its future, and sat watching the present like a gray spectacled grandmother, pleased to be behind the times, with its worn hands folded.
I arrived there with only a small sum of money and the price of my return passage. I had limited my funds purposely, so that I might not be tempted to prolong my visit.
The day after my arrival my calculations were upset; I discovered that the Carpenter house was shut, and that Mr. and Mrs. Carpenter had not yet returned from the coast. This made me careful. I was unwilling to draw on my bank in London lest my whereabouts should be discovered, which would necessitate awkward explanations to my family and the association of Vi’s name with doubtful circumstances.
In my search for cheap lodgings I had a strange stroke of luck. Randall Carpenter’s house stood in an old-world street, which at this time of the year was a tunnel through foliage. I waited until the gardeners had departed. Evening came; pushing open the gate, I entered the grounds.
I passed down a rough path under apple-trees, where fruit kept falling. In stables to the left, horses chafed in their stalls and snorted. To the right in the vegetable garden, birds of brilliant plumage flashed and darted, and fat gray squirrels sat up quivering to watch me. Overhead, near and far, the air vibrated with incessant twittering. The golden haze of sunset was over everything; the whole world seemed enkindled. The path descended to low, flat meadows where haymaking was in progress. Farm implements stood carelessly about, ready for the morrow. In one field the hay was cocked, in another gathered, in a third the cutting had commenced. I told myself I was with her, and shivered at the aching loneliness of reality.
Circling the meadows was a narrow stream, which at a little distance joined the main river; on the farther side stood scattered cottages, with gardens straggling down a hill to its banks. In one of these a gray-haired woman was working. She wore a sunbonnet and print-dress of lavender. In my idleness I threw myself down in the grass and observed her. She grew conscious that she was being watched, and cast sly glances across her shoulder. At first I thought she was suspicious of my trespassing; she came lower down the hill and nodded in shy friendly fashion.
“Good-evening,” I called to her over the stream.
She drew herself erect and eyed me. “Guess you’re a stranger?” she questioned, having found something foreign in my English accent.
I told her that I was, and then, for the sake of conversation, asked her if she knew of any rooms to rent. “Guess I do,” she called back, “me and my sisters have one room to spare.”
That was how I came to take lodgings with the three Misses Januaries. I paid them ten dollars weekly and had everything found. My room lay at the back; from my window I could see much of what went on in Randall Carpenter’s grounds.
From the three Misses Januaries I learnt many things. They were decayed ladies and eked out a livelihood by bringing home piece-work to do for the jewelry factories. Every other day Miss Priscilla, the eldest, went to deliver the finished task and to take further orders. Miss Priscilla was proud, angular, and bent. Miss Julia was round and jolly, but crippled with rheumatism. Miss Lucy, the youngest, had a weak spine and was never dressed; day after day she lay between white sheets dreamily smiling, small as a child, making hardly any mound in the bed.
At first they hid from me the fact that they worked. Then they pretended that they did it to occupy their leisure. Sewing was so useless, Miss Priscilla said. At last they admitted the truth to the extent of letting me sit with them in Miss Lucy’s bedroom, even allowing me to help them with the fastening of the interminable links that went to the making of one chain-bag.
It was during these meetings that they gossiped of their neighbors and themselves. By delicate manouvering I would lead the conversation round to Vi. I found that for them Sheba was the one and only town, and Randall Carpenter was its richest citizen. He stood behind all its thriving institutions. He was president of the Sheba National Bank. He had controlling interest in the jewelry factory. He owned the cotton-works. He had been Senator at Washington. Vi was the social leader and the mirror of local fashion. They spoke of her as though she embodied for them all that is meant by romance. They told me the story, which I had already heard, of how Randall Carpenter had saved her father from ruin.
While such matters were being discussed and fresh details added, Miss Lucy would smile up at the ceiling, with her thin arms stretched straight out and her fingers plucking at the coverlet. I discovered later that long years before, Randall Carpenter had kept company with her; then her spine trouble had commenced and their money had gone from them, and it had been ended. As a middle-aged bachelor he had married Vi, and now Miss Lucy re-lived her own girlhood in listening to stories of Vi’s reported happiness.
Three weeks after my arrival in Sheba Vi returned. The evening before I had seen from my window that lights had sprung up in the house; early next morning I saw Dorrie in the garden, a white, diminutive, butterfly figure fluttering beneath the boughs. After breakfast I saw Vi come out, walking with a portly man. An eighth of a mile separated us—by listening intently I could hear her voice when she called, “Dorrie, Dorrie.”
Twice I came near to her, though she did not know it. One Sunday morning I waited till service had commenced, and followed her to church. I slipped into a seat at the back. There were few people present. From where I sat I could get a clear view of her and her husband across empty pews. Mr. Carpenter was a squarely-built, kindly-looking man—unimaginative and mildly corpulent. His face was clean-shaven and ruddy. He had an air of benevolent prosperity; his hair was grizzled, the top of his head was bald and polished. When he offered me the plate in taking the collection, I noticed that his fingers were podgy. I remembered Vi’s continually reiterated assertion that he was so kind to her. I knew what she had meant—kind, but lacking subtlety in expressing the affections. I judged that he was the sort of person to whom life had scattered largesse—he had never been tested, and consequently accepted all good fortune as something merited. His wide shrewd eyes had a steely gleam of justice; the puckered eye-lids promised humor. He was lovable rather than likable—a big boy, a mixture of na?ve self-complacency and masterfulness. Before the benediction was pronounced, I left.
This was the first time I had seen him at close quarters. I had come prepared to find faults in the man; I was surprised at my lack of anger. His comfortable amiability disarmed me.
The second time I came near to her was at nightfall. It was November. A touch of frost had nipped the leaves to blood-red; the Indian Summer had commenced. The air was pungent with the walnut fragrance of decaying foliage; violet mist trailed in shreds from thickets, like a woman’s scarf torn from her throat in the passage. I had wandered out into the country. An aimless restlessness was on me—a sense of defiant self-dissatisfaction.
Occupied with my thoughts, I was strolling moodily along with hands in pockets, when I chanced to look up. She was coming down the road towards me. She was alone; her trim, clean-cut figure made a silhouette against the twilight. She was whistling like a boy as she approached; her skirt was short to the ankles; she carried a light cane in her hand. I wanted to stand still till she had come up with me and then to catch her in my arms before she was aware. For a moment I halted irresolute; then I turned into the woods to the left.
I could not understand how she could be so near to me and not know it. It seemed to me that I would raise clenched hands against the coffin-lid, were she to approach me, though I was buried deep underground.
As the year drew towards a close my uncertainty of mind became a torture. I knew that I ought to return to England; I was breaking the promise I had made to myself. My friends must be getting anxious. By this time Sir Charles must have heard of my disappearance. I was imperiling my future by stopping. Worse still, the longer I lived near Vi, the more difficult was I making it for myself to take up the threads of my old life without her. I continually set dates for my departure, and I continually postponed them. At last I booked my passage some way ahead for the first week in January. In order to prevent myself from alterin............