Book: A Spinner in the Sun

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A SPINNER IN THE SUN

BY

MYRTLE REED

1906







Contents

I. "THE FIRE WAS KIND"
II. MISS MEHITABLE
III. THE PEARLS
IV. "FROM THE DEPTHS OF HIS LOVE"
V. ARAMINTA
VI. PIPES O' PAN
VII. THE HONOUR OF THE SPOKEN WORD
VIII. PIPER TOM
IX. HOUSECLEANING
X. RALPH'S FIRST CASE
XI. THE LOOSE LINK
XII. A GREY KITTEN
XIII. THE RIVER COMES INTO ITS OWN
XIV. A LITTLE HOUR OF TRIUMPH
XV. THE STATE OF ARAMINTA'S SOUL
XVI. THE MARCH OF THE DAYS
XVII. LOVED BY A DOG
XVIII. UNDINE
XIX. IN THE SHADOW OF THE CYPRESS
XX. THE SECRET OF THE VEIL
XXI. THE POPPIES CLAIM THEIR OWN
XXII. FORGIVENESS
XXIII. UNDINE FINDS HER SOUL
XXIV. TELLING AUNT HITTY
XXV. REDEEMED
XXVI. THE LIFTING OF THE VEIL




A Spinner in the Sun




I

"The Fire was Kind"

The little house was waiting, as it had waited for many years. Grey
and weather-worn, it leaned toward the sheltering hillside as though to
gather from the kindly earth some support and comfort for old age.
Five-and-twenty Winters had broken its spirit, five-and-twenty Springs
had not brought back the heart of it, that had once gone out, with
dancing feet and singing, and had returned no more.

For a quarter of a century, the garden had lain desolate. Summers came
and went, but only a few straggling blooms made their way above the
mass of weeds. In early Autumn, thistles and milkweed took possession
of the place, the mournful purple of their flowering hiding the garden
beneath trappings of woe. And at night, when the Autumn moon shone
dimly, frail ghosts of dead flowers were set free from the thistles and
milkweed. The wind of Indian Summer, itself a ghost, convoyed them
about the garden, but they never went beyond it. Each year the panoply
of purple spread farther, more surely hiding the brave blooms beneath.

Far down the path, beside the broken gate, a majestic cypress cast
portentous gloom. Across from it, and quite hiding the ruin of the
gate, was a rose-bush, which, every June, put forth one perfect white
rose. Love had come through the gate and Love had gone out again, but
this one flower was left behind.

Brambles grew about the doorstep, and the hinges of the door were deep
in rust. No friendly light gleamed at night from the lattice, a beacon
to the wayfarer or a message of cheer to the disheartened, since the
little house was alone. The secret spinners had hung a drapery of
cobwebs before the desolate windows, as though to veil the loneliness
from passers-by. No fire warmed the solitary hearth, no gay and
careless laughter betrayed the sleeping echoes into answer. Within the
house were only dreams, which never had come true.

A bit of sewing yet lay upon the marble-topped table in the
sitting-room, and an embroidery frame, holding still a square of fine
linen, had fallen from a chair. An open book was propped against the
back of the chair, and a low rocker, facing it, was swerved sharply
aside. The evidence of daily occupation, suddenly interrupted, was all
there--a quiet content, overlaid by a dumb, creeping paralysis.

The March wind blew fiercely through the night and the little house
leaned yet more toward the sheltering hill. Afar, in the village, a
train rumbled into the station; the midnight train from the city by
which the people of Rushton regulated their watches and clocks.
Strangely enough, it stopped, and more than one good man, turning
uneasily upon his pillow, wondered if the world might have come to its
end.

Half an hour afterward, a lone figure ascended the steep road which led
to the house. A woman, fearless of the night, because Life had already
done its worst to her, stumbled up the stony, overgrown way. The moon
shone fitfully among the flying clouds, and she guided herself by its
uncertain gleams, pausing now and then, in complete darkness, to wait
for more light.

Ghost-like, a long white chiffon veil trailed behind her, too securely
fastened to her hat to be blown away. Even in the night, she watched
furtively and listened for approaching footsteps, one hand holding the
end of her veil in such a way that she might quickly hide her face.

Outside the gate she paused, irresolute. At the last moment, it seemed
as if she could never enter the house again. A light snow had fallen
upon the dead garden, covering its scarred face with white. Miss
Evelina noted quickly that her garden, too, was hidden as by chiffon.

A gust of wind made her shiver--or was it the veiled garden? Nerving
herself to her necessity, she took up her satchel and went up the path
as one might walk, with bared feet, up a ladder of swords. Each step
that took her nearer the house hurt her the more, but she was not of
those who cry out when hurt. She set her lips more firmly together and
continued upon her self-appointed way.

When she reached the house, she already had the key in her uncertain
fingers. The rusty lock yielded at length and the door opened noisily.
Her heart surged painfully as she entered the musty darkness. It was
so that Miss Evelina came home, after five-and-twenty years.

The thousand noises of an empty house greeted her discordantly. A
rattling window was answered by a creaking stair, a rafter groaned
dismally, and the scurrying feet of mice pattered across a distant
floor.

Fumbling in her satchel, Miss Evelina drew out a candle and a box of
matches. Presently there was light in the little house--a faint
glimmering light, which flickered, when the wind shook the walls, and
twinkled again bravely when it ceased.

She took off her wraps, and, through force of habit, pinned the
multitudinous folds of her veil to her hair, forgetting that at
midnight, and in her own house, there were none to see her face.

Then she made a fire, for the body must be warmed, though the heart is
dead, and the soul stricken dumb. She had brought with her a box
containing a small canister of tea, and she soon had ready a cup of it,
so strong that it was bitter.

With her feet upon the hearth and the single candle flickering upon the
mantel shelf, she sat in the lonely house and sipped her tea. Her
well-worn black gown clung closely to her figure, and the white chiffon
veil, thrown back, did not wholly hide her abundant hair. The horror
of one night had whitened Miss Evelina's brown hair at twenty, for the
sorrows of Youth are unmercifully keen.

"I have come back," she thought. "I have come back through that door.
I went out of it, laughing, at twenty. At forty-five, I have come
back, heart-broken, and I have lived.

"Why did I not die?" she questioned, for the thousandth time. "If
there had been a God in Heaven, surely I must have died."

The flames leaped merrily in the fireplace and the discordant noises of
the house resolved themselves into vague harmony. A cricket, safely
ensconced for the Winter in a crevice of the hearth, awoke in the
unaccustomed warmth, piping a shrill and cheery welcome, but Miss
Evelina sat abstractedly, staring into the fire.

After all, there had never been anything but happiness in the
house--the misery had been outside. Peace and quiet content had dwelt
there securely, but the memory of it brought no balm now.

As though it were yesterday, the black walnut chair, covered with
haircloth, stood primly against the wall. Miss Evelina had always
hated the chair, and here, after twenty-five years, it confronted her
again. She mused, ironically, upon the permanence of things usually
considered transient and temporary. Her mother's sewing was still upon
the marble-topped table, but the hands that held it were long since
mingled with the dust. Her own embroidery had apparently but just
fallen from the chair, and the dream that had led to its
fashioning--was only a dream, from which she awoke to enduring agony.
With swift hatred, she turned her back upon the embroidery frame, and
hid her face in her hands.

Time, as time, had ceased to exist for her. She suffered until
suffering brought its own far anodyne--the inability to sustain it
further,--then she slept, from sheer weariness. Before dawn, usually,
she awoke, sufficiently rested to suffer again. When she felt faint,
she ate, scarcely knowing what she ate, for food was as dust and ashes
in her mouth.

In the bag that hung from her belt was a vial of laudanum, renewed from
time to time as she feared its strength was waning. She had been
taught that it was wicked to take one's own life, and that God was
always kind. Not having experienced the kindness, she began to doubt
the existence of God, and was immediately face to face with the idea
that it could not be wrong to die if one was too miserable to live.
Her mind revolved perpetually in this circle and came continually back
to a compromise. She would live one more day, and then she would free
herself. There was always a to-morrow when she should be free, but it
never came.

The fire died down and the candle had but a few minutes more to burn.
It was the hour of the night when life is at its lowest--when souls
pass out into the great Beyond. Miss Evelina took the vial from her
reticule and uncorked it. The bitter, pungent odour came as sweet
incense to her nostrils. No one knew she had come. No one would ever
enter her door again. She might die peacefully in her own house, and
no one would know until the walls crumbled to dust--perhaps not even
then. And Miss Evelina had a horror of a grave.

She drew a long breath of the bitterness. The silken leaves of the
poppies--flowers of sleep--had been crushed into this. The lees must
be drained from the Cup of Life before the Cup could be set aside.
Every one came to this, sooner or later. Why not choose? Why not
drain the Cup now? When it had all been bitter, why hesitate to drink
the lees?

The monstrous and incredible passion of the race was slowly creeping
upon her. Her eyes gleamed and her cheeks burned. The hunger for
death at her own hands and on her own terms possessed her frail body to
the full. "If there had been a God in Heaven," she said, aloud,
"surely I must have died!"

The words startled her and her hand shook so that some of the laudanum
was spilled. It was long since she had heard her own voice in more
than a monosyllabic answer to some necessary question. Inscrutably
veiled in many folds of chiffon, she held herself apart from the world,
and the world, carelessly kind, had left her wholly to herself.

Slowly, she put the cork tightly into the vial and slipped it back into
her bag. "Tomorrow," she sighed; "to-morrow I shall set myself free."

The fire flickered and without warning the candle went out, in a gust
of wind which shook the house to its foundations. Stray currents of
air had come through the crevices of the rattling windows and kept up
an imperfect ventilation. She took another candle from her satchel,
put it into a candlestick of blackened brass, and slowly ascended the
stairs.

She went to her own room, though her feet failed her at the threshold
and she sank helplessly to the floor. Too weak to stand, she made her
way on her knees to her bed, leaving the candle in the hall, just
outside her door. As she had suspected, it was hardest of all to enter
this room.

A pink and white gown of dimity, yellowed, and grimed with dust, yet
lay upon her bed. Cobwebs were woven over the lace that trimmed the
neck and sleeves. Out of the fearful shadows, mute reminders of a lost
joy mocked her from every corner of the room.

She knelt there until some measure of strength came back to her, and,
with it, a mad fancy. "To-night," she said to herself, "I will be
brave. For once I will play a part, since to-morrow I shall be free.
To-night, it shall be as though nothing had happened--as though I were
to be married to-morrow and not to--to Death!"

She laughed wildly, and, even to her own ears, it had a fantastic,
unearthly sound. The empty rooms took up the echo and made merry with
it, the sound dying at last into a silence like that of the tomb.

She brought in the candle, took the dimity gown from the bed, and shook
it to remove the dust. In her hands it fell apart, broken, because it
was too frail to tear. She laid it on a chair, folding it carefully,
then took the dusty bedding from her bed and carried it into the hall,
dust and all. In an oaken chest in a corner of her room was her store
of linen, hemmed exquisitely and embroidered with the initials: "E. G."

She began to move about feverishly, fearing that her resolution might
fail. The key of the chest was in a drawer in her dresser, hidden
beneath a pile of yellowed garments. Her hands, so long nerveless,
were alive and sentient now. When she opened the chest, the scent of
lavender and rosemary, long since dead, struck her like a blow.

The room swam before her, yet Miss Evelina dragged forth her linen
sheets and pillow-slips, musty, but clean, and made her bed. Once or
twice, her veil slipped down over her face, and she impatiently pushed
it back. The candle, burning low, warned her that she must make haste,

In one of the smaller drawers of her dresser was a nightgown of
sheerest linen, wonderfully stitched by her own hands. She hesitated a
moment, then opened the drawer.

Tiny bags of sweet herbs fell from the folds as she shook it out. It
was yellowed and musty and as frail as a bit of fine lace, but it did
not tear in her hands. "I will wear it," she thought, grimly, "as I
planned to do, long ago."

At last she stood before her mirror, the ivory-tinted lace falling away
from her neck and shoulders. Her neck was white and firm, but her
right shoulder was deeply, hideously scarred. "Burned body and burned
soul," she muttered, "and this my wedding night!"

For the first time in her life, she pitied herself, not knowing that
self-pity is the first step toward relief from overpowering sorrow.
When detachment is possible, the long, slow healing has faintly, but
surely, begun.

She unpinned her veil, took down her heavy white hair, and braided it.
There was no gleam of silver, even in the light--it was as lustreless
as a field of snow upon a dark day. That done, she stood there,
staring at herself in the mirror, and living over, remorselessly, the
one day that, like a lightning stroke, had blasted her life.

Her veil slipped, unheeded, from her dresser to the floor. Leaning
forward, she studied her face, that she had once loved, then swiftly
learned to hate. Even on the street, closely veiled, she would not
look at a shop window, lest she might see herself reflected in the
plate glass, and she had kept the mirror, in her room covered with a
cloth,

Since the day she left the hospital, where they all had been so kind to
her, no human being, save herself, had seen her face. She had prayed
for death, but had not been more than slightly ill, upborne, as she
was, by a great grief which sustained her as surely as an ascetic is
kept alive by the passion of his faith. She hungered now for the sight
of her face as she hungered for death, and held the flaring candle
aloft that she might see better.

Then a wave of impassioned self-pity swept her like flame. "The fire
was kind," she said, stubbornly, as though to defend herself from it.
"It showed me the truth."

She leaned yet closer to the glass, holding the dripping candle on
high. "The fire was kind," she insisted again. Then the floodgates
opened, and for the first time in all the sorrowful years, she felt the
hot tears streaming over her face. Her hand shook, but she held her
candle tightly and leaned so close to the mirror that her white hair
brushed its cracked surface.

"The fire was kind," sobbed Miss Evelina. "Oh, but the fire was kind!"




II

Miss Mehitable

The slanting sunbeams of late afternoon crept through the cobwebbed
window, and Miss Evelina stirred uneasily in her sleep. The mocking
dream vanished and she awoke to feel, as always, the iron, icy hand
that unmercifully clutched her heart. The room was cold and she
shivered as she lay beneath her insufficient covering.

At length she rose, and dressed mechanically, avoiding the mirror, and
pinning her veil securely to her hair. She went downstairs slowly,
clinging to the railing from sheer weakness. She was as frail and
ghostly as some disembodied spirit of Grief.

Soon, she had a fire. As the warmth increased, she opened the rear
door of the house to dispel the musty atmosphere. The March wind blew
strong and clear through the lonely rooms, stirring the dust before it
and swaying the cobwebs. Suddenly, Miss Evelina heard a footstep
outside and instinctively drew down her veil.

Before she could close the door, a woman, with a shawl over her head,
appeared on the threshold, peered curiously into the house, then
unhesitatingly entered.

"For the land's sake!" cried a cheery voice. "You scared me most to
death! I saw the smoke coming from the chimney and thought the house
was afire, so I come over to see."

Miss Evelina stiffened, and made no reply.

"I don't know who you are," said the woman again, mildly defiant, "but
this is Evelina Grey's house."

"And I," answered Miss Evelina, almost inaudibly, "am Evelina Grey."

"For the land's sake!" cried the visitor again. "Don't you remember
me? Why, Evelina, you and I used to go to school together. You----"

She stopped, abruptly. The fact of the veiled face confronted her
stubbornly. She ransacked her memory for a forgotten catastrophe, a
quarter of a century back. Impenetrably, a wall was reared between
them.

"I--I'm afraid I don't remember," stammered Miss Evelina, in a low
voice, hoping that the intruder would go.

"I used to be Mehitable Smith, and that's what I am still, having been
spared marriage. Mehitable is my name, but folks calls me Hitty--Miss
Hitty," she added, with a slight accent on the "Miss."

"Oh," answered Miss Evelina, "I remember," though she did not remember
at all.

"Well, I'm glad you've come back," went on the guest, politely.
Altogether in the manner of one invited to do so, she removed her shawl
and sat down, furtively eyeing Miss Evelina, yet affecting to look
carelessly about the house.

She was a woman of fifty or more, brisk and active of body and kindly,
though inquisitive, of countenance. Her dark hair, scarcely touched
with grey, was parted smoothly in the exact centre and plastered down
on both sides, as one guessed, by a brush and cold water. Her black
eyes were bright and keen, and her gold-bowed spectacles were
habitually worn half-way down her nose. Her mouth and chin were
indicative of great firmness--those whose misfortune it was to differ
from Miss Hitty were accustomed to call it obstinacy. People of
plainer speech said it was "mulishness."

Her gown was dark calico, stiffly starched, and made according to the
durable and comfortable pattern of her school-days. "All in one
piece," Miss Hitty was wont to say. "Then when I bend over, as folks
that does housework has to bend over, occasionally, I don't come apart
in the back. For my part, I never could see sense in wearing clothes
that's held by a safety-pin in the back instead of good, firm cloth,
and, moreover, a belt that either slides around or pinches where it
ain't pleasant to be pinched, ain't my notion of comfort. Apron
strings is bad enough, for you have to have 'em tight to keep from
slipping." Miss Hitty had never worn corsets, and had the straight,
slender figure of a boy.

The situation became awkward. Miss Evelina still stood in the middle
of the room, her veiled face slightly averted. The impenetrable
shelter of chiffon awed Miss Mehitable, but she was not a woman to give
up easily when embarked upon the quest for knowledge. Some unusual
state of mind kept her from asking a direct question about the veil,
and meanwhile she continually racked her memory.

Miss Evelina's white, slender hands opened and closed nervously. Miss
Hitty set her feet squarely on the floor, and tucked her immaculate
white apron closely about her knees. "When did you come?" she demanded
finally, with the air of the attorney for the prosecution.

"Last night," murmured Miss Evelina.

"On that late train?"

"Yes."

"I heard it stop, but I never sensed it was you. Seemed to me I heard
somebody go by, too, but I was too sleepy to get up and see. I thought
I must be dreaming, but I was sure I heard somebody on the walk. If
I'd known it was you, I'd have made you stop at my house for the rest
of the night, instead of coming up here alone."

"Very kind," said Miss Evelina, after an uncomfortable pause.

"You might as well set down," remarked Miss Hitty, with a new
gentleness of manner. "I'm going to set a spell."

Miss Evelina sat, helplessly, in the hair-cloth chair which she hated,
and turned her veiled face yet farther away from her guest. Seeing
that her hostess did not intend to talk, Miss Hitty began a
conversation, if anything wholly one-sided may be so termed.

"I live in the same place," she said. "Ma died seventeen years ago on
the eighteenth of next April, and left the house and the income for me.
There was enough to take care of two, and so I took my sister's child,
Araminta, to bring up. You know my poor sister got married. She ought
to have known better, but she didn't. She just put her head into the
noose, and it slipped up on her, as I told her it would, both before
and after the ceremony. Having seen all the trouble men make in the
world, I sh'd think women would know enough to keep away from 'em, but
they don't--that is, some women don't." Miss Hitty smoothed her stiff
white apron with an air of conscious virtue.

"Araminta was only a year old when her ma got enough of marrying and
went to her reward in Heaven. What she 'd been through would have
tried the patience of a saint, and Barbara wasn't no saint. None of
the Smith family have ever grown wings here on earth, but it's my
belief that we'll all be awarded our proper plumage in Heaven.

"He--" the pronoun was sufficiently definite to indicate Araminta's
hapless father--"was always tracking dirt into the clean kitchen, and
he had an appetite like a horse. Barbara would make a cake to set away
for company, and he'd gobble it all up at one meal just as if 't was a
doughnut. She was forever cooking and washing dishes and sweeping up
after him. When he come into the house, she'd run for the broom and
dustpan, and follow him around, sweeping up, and if you'll believe me,
the brute scolded her for it. He actually said once, in my presence,
that if he'd known how neat she was, he didn't believe he'd have
married her. That shows what men are--if it needs showing. It's no
wonder poor Barbara died. I hope there ain't any brooms in Heaven and
that she's havin' a good rest now.

"Araminta's goin' on nineteen, and she's a sensible girl, if I do say
it as shouldn't. She's never spoke to a man except to say 'yes' and
'no.' I've taught her to steer clear of 'em, and even when she was
only seven years old, she'd run if she saw one coming. She knows they
're pizen and I don't believe I'll ever have any cause to worry about
Minty.

"I've got the minister boarding with me," pursued Miss Hitty,
undaunted, and cheerfully taking a fresh start. "Ministers don't
count, and I must say that, for a man, Mr. Thorpe is very little
trouble. He wipes his feet sometimes for as much as five minutes when
he's coming in, and mostly, when it's pleasant weather, he's out. When
he's in, he usually stays in his room, except at meals. He don't eat
much more 'n a canary, and likes what he eats, and don't need hardly
any pickin' up after, though a week ago last Saturday he left a collar
layin' on the bureau instead of putting it into his bag.

"I left it right where 't was, and Sunday morning he put it where it
belonged. He's never been married and he's learned to pick up after
himself. I wouldn't have had him, on Araminta's account, only that
there wasn't no other place for him to stay, and it was put to me by
the elders as being my Christian duty. I wouldn't have took him,
otherwise, and we've never had an unmarried minister before.

"Besides, Mr. Thorpe ain't pleasing the congregation, and I don't know
that he'll stay long. He's been here six months and three Sundays
over, and I've been to every single service, church and Sunday-school
and prayer-meeting, and he ain't never said one word about hell. It's
all of the joys of Heaven and a sure reward in the hereafter for
everybody that's done what they think is right--nothing much, mind you,
about what is right. Why, when Mr. Brewster was preaching for us, some
of the sinners would get up and run right out of the church when he got
started on hell and the lost souls writhin' in the flames. That was a
minister worth having.

"But Mr. Thorpe, now, he doesn't seem to have no sense of the duties of
his position. Week before last, I heard of his walkin' along the river
with Andy Rogers--arm in arm, if you'll believe me, with the worst
drunkard and chicken thief in town. The very idea of a minister
associatin' with sinners! Mr. Brewster would never have done that.
Why, Andy was one of them that run out of the church the day the
minister give us that movin' sermon on hell, and he ain't never dared
to show his face in a place of worship since.

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