A LEAF.
There was a sunny old grave-yard half a mile from the town, where the people of Bowersville laid their dead under the long grass and tangle of wild-creeping vines, and the whole country-side gathered there when they lowered the old man into his place at his wife's side. His neighbors sang his funeral hymn and performed the last offices for him with kindly hands, and when they turned away and left him there was not a man or woman of them who did not feel that they had lost a friend.
They were very good to Louisiana. Aunt 'Nervy and Aunt Ca'line deserted their families that they might stay with her until all was over, doing their best to give her comfort. It was Aunt 'Nervy who first thought of sending for the girl cousin to whom the trunkful of clothes had been given.
"Le's send for Leander's Jenny, Ca'line," she said. "Mebbe it'd help her some to hev a gal nigh her. Gals kinder onderstands each other, an' Jenny was allus powerful fond o' Lowizyanny."
So Jenny was sent for and came. From her lowly position as one of the fifteen in an "onfort'nit" family she had adored and looked up to Louisiana all her life. All the brightest days in her experience had been spent at Uncle Elbert's with her favorite cousin. But there was no brightness about the house now. When she arrived and was sent upstairs to the pretty new room Louisiana occupied she found the girl lying upon the bed. She looked white and slender in her black dress; her hands were folded palm to palm under her check, and her eyes were wide open.
Jenny ran to her and knelt at her side. She kissed her and began to cry.
"Oh!" she sobbed, "somehow I didn't ever think I should come here and not find Uncle Elbert. It don't seem right—it makes it like a strange place."
Then Louisiana broke into sobs, too.
"It is a strange place!" she cried—"a strange place—a strange place! Oh, if one old room was left—just one that I could go into and not feel so lonely!"
But she had no sooner said it than she checked herself.
"Oh, I oughtn't to say that!" she cried. "I wont say it. He did it all for me, and I didn't deserve it."
"Yes, you did," said Jenny, fondling her. "He was always saying what a good child you had been—and that you had never given him any trouble."
"That was because he was so good," said Louisiana. "No one else in the whole world was so good. And now he is gone, and I can never make him know how grateful I was and how I loved him."
"He did know," said Jenny.
"No," returned Louisiana. "It would have taken a long, long life to make him know all I felt, and now when I look back it seems as if we had been together such a little while. Oh! I thought the last night we talked that there was a long life before us—that I should be old before he left me, and we should have had all those years together."
After the return from the grave-yard there was a prolonged discussion held among the heads of the different branches of the family. They gathered at one end of the back porch and talked of Louisiana, who sat before the log fire in her room upstairs.
"She aint in the notion o' leavin' the place," said Aunt 'Nervy. "She cried powerful when I mentioned it to her, an' wouldn't hear to it. She says over an' over ag'in 'Let me stay in the home he made for me, Aunt Ca'line.' I reckon she's a kind o' notion Elbert 'lowed fur her to be yere when he was gone."
"Wa-al now," said Uncle Leander, "I reckon he did. He talked a heap on it when he was in a talkin' way. He's said to me 'I want things to be jest as she'd enjoy 'em most—when she's sorter lonesome, es she will be, mebbe.' Seemed like he hed it in his mind es he warnt long fur this world. Don't let us cross her in nothin'. He never did. He was powerful tender on her, was Elbert."
"I seed Marthy Lureny Nance this mornin'," put in Aunt Ca'line, "an' I told her to come up an' kinder overlook things. She haint with no one now, an' I dessay she'd like to stay an' keep house."
"I don't see nothin' ag'in it," commented Uncle Steve, "if Louisianny don't. She's a settled woman, an's bin married, an' haint no family to pester her sence Nance is dead."
"She was allers the through-goin' kind," said Aunt 'Nervy. "Things 'll be well looked to—an' she thought a heap o' Elbert. They was raised together."
"S'pos'n ye was to go in an' speak to Louisianny," suggested Uncle Steve.
Louisiana, being spoken to, was very tractable. She was willing to do anything asked of her but go away.
"I should be very glad to have Mrs. Nance here, Aunt Minerva," she said. "She was always very kind, and father liked her. It won't be like having a strange face near me. Please tell her I want her to come and that I hope she will try to feel as if she was at home."
So Marthy Lureny Nance came, and was formally installed in her position. She was a tall, strongly-built woman, with blue eyes, black hair, and thick black eyebrows. She wore, when she arrived, her best alpaca gown and a starched and frilled blue sun-bonnet. When she presented herself to Louisiana she sat down before her, removed this sun-bonnet with a scientific flap and hung it on the back of her chair.
"Ye look mighty peak-ed, Louisianny," she said. "Mighty peak-ed."
"I don't feel very well," Louisiana answered, "but I suppose I shall be better after a while."
"Ye're takin' it powerful hard, Louisianny," said Mrs. Nance, "an' I don't blame ye. I aint gwine to pester ye a-talkin'. I jest come to say I 'lowed to do my plum best by ye, an' ax ye whether ye liked hop yeast or salt risin'?"
At the end of the week Louisiana and Mrs. Nance were left to themselves. Aunt 'Nervy and Aunt Ca'line and the rest had returned to their respective homes, even Jenny had gone back to Bowersville where she boarded with a relation and went to school.
The days after this seemed so long to Louisiana that she often wondered how she lived through them. In the first passion of her sorrow she had not known how they passed, but now that all was silence and order in the house, and she was alone, she had nothing to do but to count the hours. There was no work for her, no one came in and out for whom she might invent some little labor of love; there was no one to watch for, no one to think of. She used to sit for hours at her window watching the leaves change their color day by day, and at last flutter down upon the grass at the least stir of wind. Once she went out and picked up one of these leaves and taking it back to her room, shut it up in a book.
"Everything has happened to me since the day it was first a leaf," she said. "I have lived just as long as a leaf. That isn't long."
When the trees were bare, she one day remembered the books she had sent for when at the Springs, and she went to the place where she had put them, brought them out and tried to feel interested in them again.
"I might learn a great deal," she said, "if I persevered. I have so much time."
But she had not read many pages before the tears began to roll down her cheeks.
"If he had lived," she said, "I might have read them to him and it would have pleased him so. I might have done it often if I had thought less about myself. He would have learned, too. He thought he was slow, but he would have learned, too, in a little while, and he would have been so proud."
She was very like her father in the simple tenderness of her nature. She grieved with the hopeless passion of a child for the unconscious wrong she had done.
It was as she sat trying to fix her mind upon these books that there came to her the first thought of a plan which was afterwards of some vague comfort to her. She had all the things which had furnished the old parlor taken into one of the unused rooms—the chairs and tables, the carpet, the ornaments and pictures. She spent a day in placing everything as she remembered it, doing all without letting any one assist her. After it was arranged she left the room, and locked the door taking the key with her.
"No one shall go in but myself," she said. "It belongs to me more than all the rest."
"I never knowed her to do nothin' notionate but thet," remarked Mrs. Nance, in speaking of it afterwards. "She's mighty still, an' sits an' grieves a heap, but she aint never notionate. Thet was kinder notionate fer a gal to do. She sets store on 'em 'cos they was her pappy's an' her ma's, I reckon. It cayn't be nothin' else, fur they aint to say stylish, though they was allers good solid-appearin' things. The picters was the on'y things es was showy."
"She's mighty pale an' slender sence her pappy died," said the listener.
"Wa-al, yes, she's kinder peak-ed," admitted Mrs. Nance. "She's kinder peak-ed, but she'll git over it. Young folks allers does."
But she did not get over it as soon as Mrs. Nance had expected, in view of her youth. The days seemed longer and lonelier to her as the winter advanced, though they were really so much shorter, and she had at last been able to read and think of what she read. When the snow was on the ground and she could not wander about the place she grew paler still.
"Louisianny," said Mrs. Nance, coming in upon her one day as she stood at the window, "ye're a-beginnin' to look like ye're Aunt Melissy."
"Am I?" answered Louisiana. "She died when she was young, didn't she?"
"She wasn't but nineteen," grimly. "She hed a kind o' love-scrape, an' when the feller married Emmerline Ruggles she jest give right in. They hed a quarrel, an' he was a sperrity kind o' thing an' merried Emmerline when he was mad. He cut off his nose to spite his face, an' a nice time he hed of it when it was done. Melissy was a pretty gal, but kinder consumpshony, an' she hedn't backbone enough to hold her up. She died eight or nine months after they'd quarreled. Mebbe she'd hev died anyhow, but thet sorter hastened it up. When folks is consumpshony it don't take much to set 'em off."
"I don't think I am 'consumpshony,'" said Louisiana.
"Lord-a-massy, no!" briskly, "an' ye'd best not begin to think it. I wasn't a meanin' thet. Ye've kinder got into a poor way steddyin' 'bout yere pappy, an' it's tellin' on ye. Ye look as if thar wasn't a thing of ye—an' ye don't take no int'russ. Ye'd oughter stir round more."
"I'm going to 'stir round' a little as soon as Jake brings the buggy up," said Louisiana. "I'm going out."
"Whar?"
"Toward town."
For a moment Mrs. Nance looked at her charge steadily, but at length her feelings were too much for her. She had been thinking this matter over for some time.
"Louisianny," she said, "you're a-gwine to the grave-yard, thet's whar ye're a-gwine an' thar aint no sense in it. Young folks hedn't ought to hold on to trouble thataway—'taint nat'ral. They don't gin'rally. Elbert 'd be ag'in it himself ef he knowed—an' I s'pose he does. Like as not him an' Ianthy's a-worryin' about it now, an' Lord knows ef they air it'll spile all their enjoyment. Kingdom come won't be nothin' to 'em if they're oneasy in their minds 'bout ye. Now an' ag'in it's 'peared to me that mebbe harps an' crowns an' the company o' 'postles don't set a body up all in a minnit an' make 'em forgit their flesh an' blood an' nat'ral feelin's teetotally—an' it kinder troubles me to think o' Elbert an' Ianthy worryin' an' not havin' no pleasure. Seems to me ef I was you I'd think it over an' try to cheer up an' take int'russ. Jest think how keerful yer pappy an' ma was on ye an' how sot they was on hevin' ye well an' happy."
Louisiana turned toward her. Her eyes were full of tears.
"Oh!" she whispered, "do you—do you think they know?"
Mrs. Nance was scandalized.
"Know!" she echoed. "Wa-al now, Louisianny, ef I didn't know yer raisin', an' thet ye'd been brought up with members all yer life, it'd go ag'in me powerful to hear ye talk thetaway. Ye know they know, an' thet they'll take it hard, ef they aint changed mightily, but, changed or not, I guess thar's mighty few sperrits es haint sense enough to see yer a-grievin' more an' longer than's good fur ye."
Louisiana turned to her window again. She rested her forehead against the frame-work and looked out for a little while. But at last she spoke.
"Perhaps you are right," she said. "It is true it would have hurt them when they were here. I think—I'll try to—to be happier."
"It's what'll please 'em best, if ye do, Louisianny," commented Mrs. Nance.
"I'll try," Louisiana answered. "I will go out now—the cold air will do me good, and when I come back you will see that I am—better."
"Wa-al," advised Mrs. Nance, "ef ye go, mind ye put on a plenty—an' don't stay long."
The excellent woman stood on the porch when the buggy was brought up, and having tucked the girl's wraps round her, watched her driven away.
"Mebbe me a-speakin's I did'll help her," she said. "Seems like it kinder teched her an' sot her thinkin'. She was dretfle fond of her pappy an' she was allers a purty peaceable advise-takin' little thing—though she aint so little nuther. She's reel tall an' slim."