Widdershins Part 32

"It is not so. Keep still in your chair," she ordered, "and I will tell you when--"

It was a curious thing that followed. As if all the will went out of her, Aunt Rachel sat very still; and presently her hands fluttered and dropped. The gipsy sat with her own hands folded over the mat on her knees. Several minutes pa.s.sed; then, slowly, once more that sweetest of smiles stole over Aunt Rachel's cheeks. Once more her head dropped. Her hands moved. Noiselessly on the rockers that the gipsy had padded with felt the chair began to rock. Annabel lifted one hand.

"_Dovo se li_" she said. "It is there."

Aunt Rachel did not appear to hear her. With that ineffable smile still on her face, she rocked....

Then, after some minutes, there crossed her face such a look as visits the face of one who, waking from sleep, strains his faculties to recapture some blissful and vanis.h.i.+ng vision....

"_Jal_--it is gone," said the gipsy woman.

Aunt Rachel opened her eyes again. She repeated dully after Annabel:

"It is gone."

"Ghosts," the gipsy whispered presently, "are of the dead. Therefore it must have lived."

But again Aunt Rachel shook her head. "It never lived."

"You were young, and beautiful?..."

Still the shake of the head. "He died on the eve of his wedding. They took my white garments away and gave me black ones. How then could it have lived?"

"Without the kiss, no.... But sometimes a woman will lie through her life, and at the graveside still will lie.... Tell me the truth."

But they were the same words that Aunt Rachel repeated: "He died on the eve of his wedding; they took away my wedding garments...." From her lips a lie could hardly issue. The gipsy's face became grave....

She broke another long silence.

"I believe," she said at last. "It is a new kind--but no more wonderful than the other. The other I have seen, now I have seen this also. Tell me, does it come to any other chair?"

"It was his chair; he died in it," said Aunt Rachel.

"And you--shall you die in it?"

"As G.o.d wills."

"Has ... _other life_ ... visited it long?"

"Many years; but it is always small; it never grows."

"To their mothers babes never grow. They remain ever babes.... None other has ever seen it?"

"Except yourself, none. I sit here; presently it creeps into my arms; it is small and warm; I rock, and then... it goes."

"Would it come to another chair?"

"I cannot tell. I think not. It was his chair."

Annabel mused. At the other end of the room Flora was now bestowed on Jack, the disreputable sailor. The gipsy's eyes rested on the bridal party....

"Yet another might see it--"

"None has."

"No; but yet.... The door does not always shut behind us suddenly.

Perhaps one who has toddled but a step or two over the threshold might, by looking back, catch a glimpse.... What is the name of the smallest one?"

"Angela."

"That means 'angel'... Look, the doll who died yesterday is now being married.... It may be that Life has not yet sealed the little one's eyes.

Will you let Annabel ask her if she sees what it is you hold in your arms?"

Again the voice was soft and wheedling....

"No, Annabel," said Aunt Rachel faintly.

"Will you rock again?"

Aunt Rachel made no reply.

"Rock..." urged the cajoling voice.

But Aunt Rachel only turned the betrothal ring on her finger. Over at the altar Jack was leering at his new-made bride, past decency; and little Angela held the wooden horse's head, which had parted from its body.

"Rock, and comfort yourself--" tempted the voice.

Then slowly Aunt Rachel rose from her chair.

"No, Annabel," she said gently. "You should not have spoken. When the snow melts you will go, and come no more; why then did you speak? It was mine. It was not meant to be seen by another. I no longer want it. Please go."

The swarthy woman turned her almond eyes on her once more.

"You cannot live without it," she said as she also rose....

And as Jack and his bride left the church on the reheaded horse, Aunt Rachel walked with hanging head from the apartment.

III

Thenceforward, as day followed day, Aunt Rachel rocked no more; and with the packing and partial melting of the snow the gipsies up at the caravans judged it time to be off about their business. It was on the morning of Christmas Eve that they came down in a body to the Abbey Farm to express their thanks to those who had befriended them; but the bailiff was not there. He and the farm men had ceased work, and were down at the church, practising the carols. Only Aunt Rachel sat, still and knitting, in the black walnut chair; and the children played on the floor.

A night in the toy-box had apparently bred discontent between Jack and Flora--or perhaps they sought to keep their countenances before the world; at any rate, they sat on opposite sides of the room, Jack keeping boon company with the lead soldiers, his spouse reposing, her lead-balanced eyes closed, in the broken clockwork motor-car. With the air of performing some vaguely momentous ritual, the children were kissing one another beneath the bunch of mistletoe that hung from the centre beam. In the intervals of kissing they told one another in whispers that Aunt Rachel was not very well, and Angela woke Flora to tell her that Aunt Rachel had Brown t.i.tus also.

"Stay you here; I will give the lady dear our thanks," said Annabel to the group of gipsies gathered about the porch; and she entered the great hall-kitchen. She approached the chair in which Aunt Rachel sat.

There was obeisance in the bend of her body, but command in her long almond eyes, as she spoke.