A Dissatisfied Soul

IT was when Elder Lincoln was supplying the pulpit of the old Union MeetingHouse in Franconia. He was a Congregationalist, but was always styled Elder, as was also any clergyman of any denomination; it was, and is now, considered there the fit and proper title for a minister. There were three places of worship in the village representing as many denominations, called colloquially by the residents the Congo, the Freewill, and the Second-Ad, these names being “short” for the Congregationalist, Freewill Baptist, and Second-Adventist churches.

The Congregationalists and plain Baptists held their services in the same house of worship, each taking its turn, yearly I think, in providing a clergyman. Elder Lincoln was the choice of the Congos at that time, a dear, simplehearted old man whom we loved well.

We were sitting together, the good Elder and I, on the piazza of the little inn — it was when uncle Eben kept it — and talking quietly of many things. I do not recall just how it came about, but I know that our conversation at last veered around to the subject of the soul s immortality, its condition immediately after it left the body, possible probation, and the intermediate state, technically so called. In the midst of this talk I saw an odd look upon the face of the Elder, a sort of whimsical smile, as if he were thinking of something not so grave as the topic of which we talked, and when he spoke, his words seemed strangely irrelevant. “Do you know,” he asked, “who has taken the old mill-house on the Landaff road, the one, you know, where Captain Noyes lived?” I did not know; I had heard that somebody had lately moved into the old house, but had not heard the name of the new occupant.

“Well,” said the Elder, still with that quaint smile upon his face, “before you form any definite opinions upon this subject of the intermediate state you should talk with the good woman who lives in that old house.” He would not explain further, save to tell me that Mrs. Weaver of Bradford had taken the house, that she was an elderly woman, practically alone in the world, anxious to know her new neighbors and to make new friends.

It was largely owing to this hint that, soon after our Sunday evening talk, I came to know Mrs. Apollos Weaver, to gain her friendship and confidence, and to hear her strange story.

It was not told me all at one time, but intermittently as the summer days went by. Yet every word of the tale was spoken in the old mill-house, and I never pass that ancient brown dwelling, standing high above the road on its steep, grassy bank, with the two tall elms in front, the big lilac bush at the door, and the cinnamon rosebushes straggling down to the road, that I do not think of Mrs. Weaver and her story.

It was not in reply to any question of mine that she told it, for, notwithstanding Elder Lincoln’s suggestion, I somehow shrank from asking her directly about her theological views and beliefs. I had received a telegram one day relating to a business matter, and as I sat with Mrs. Weaver at the open door of the millhouse, I spoke of it, and of the nervous dread the sight of one of those dull yellow envelopes always brought me.

“Yes,”she said, “they ’re scary things, any way you take it; but sometimes the writing one is worse than getting one. I never shall forget, as long as I live, the time I tried and tried, till I thought I should go crazy trying, to put just the right words, and not more than ten of them, into a telegraph to John Nelson. Over and over I went with it, saying the words to myself, and trying to pick out something that would sort of break the news easy, and yet have him sense it without any mistake: ‘ Maria has come back, don’t be scared, all well here.’ No, the first part of that was too dreadful sudden. ‘ Don’t be surprised to hear Maria is with us now!’ Oh no, how could he help being surprised, and how could I help making him so ?

“For you see, Maria was dead and buried, and had been for three whole weeks!

“John Nelson had stood by her dying bed at the very end; he’d been at the funeral, one of the mourners, being her own half-brother and her nighest relation. He was the last one of the family to view the remains, and had stayed behind with Mr. Weaver and one of the neighbors to see the grave filled up. So to hear she was staying with us now would be amazing enough to him, however I could break it or smooth it down. It was amazing to us, and is now to look back at, only we sort of got used to it after a spell, as you do to anything.

“ Maria Bliven was n’t a near relation of ours, being only my first husband’s sister, — I was Mrs. Bliven when I married Mr. Weaver, you know, — but she had lived with us off and on for years, and she’d been buried from our house. Mr. Weaver’d been real good about having her there, though lots of men would n’t have been, she belonging, as you might say, to another dispensation, my first husband’s relations. The fact was, she did n’t stay to our house long enough at a time for anybody to get tired of her, — never stayed anywheres long enough for that. She was the fittiest, restlessest, changeablest person I ever saw or heard of; and never, never quite satisfied. A week in one place was enough, and more than enough, for Maria. She’d fidget and fuss and walk up and down, and twitch her feet and wiggle her fingers, and make you too nervous for anything, if she had to stay in one spot twenty-four hours, I was going to say. So always just as I was going to be afraid Mr. Weaver would get sick of seeing Maria around and having a distant relation like her at the table every meal, she’d come down some morning with her carpet-bag in her hand, and say she guessed she’d go over to Haverhill and spend a few days with Mrs. Deacon Colby, or she’d take the cars for Newbury or Fairlee to visit with the Bishops or Captain Sanborn’s folks, and sometimes as far as Littleton to Jane Spooner’s. Then Mr. Weaver and me, we’d have a nice quiet spell all to ourselves, and just when we were ready for a change and a mite of company and talk, Maria would come traipsing back. Something did n’t suit her, and she was n’t satisfied, but she’d always have lots of news to tell, and we were glad to see her.

“ Off and on, off and on, that was Maria all over, and more off than on. Why, the time she got her last sickness — the last one, I mean, before the time I’m telling you about — it was her getting so restless after she’d been staying three or four days with aunt Ellen Bragg over to Piermont, and starting for home in a driving snowstorm. She got chilled through and through, took lung fever, and only lived about ten days.

“We did everything we could for her, had the best doctor in the neighborhood, and nursed her day and night. Mr. Weaver was real kind, she being only a distant relation, but nothing could raise her up, and she died. We had a real nice funeral, Elder Fuller attending it, and we buried her in our own lot next to Mr. Bliven. It seemed dreadful quiet, and so queer to think that this time she’d gone for good and all, and that she’d got to stay now where she was, and not keep coming back in her restless, changing kind of way whether she was satisfied or not. I really did miss her, and I believe Mr. Weaver did, too, though he would n’t own it.

“ And here she was, and here was I half crazy over making up a telegraph to tell John Nelson about it.

“She’d been gone just exactly three weeks to a day, she having died the 11th of March, and it being now the second day of April.

“ I was sitting at the window about ten o’clock in the forenoon peeling potatoes for dinner. I ’d brought them into the sitting-room because it had a better lookout and was lighter and pleasanter in the morning. It was an early spring that year, though it came out real wintry afterwards, and the grass was starting up, and the buds showing on the trees, and somehow I got thinking about Maria. She was always glad when it came round spring, and she could get about more and visit with folks, and I was thinking where she was, and how she could ever stand it with her changing ways, to stay put, as you might say. Just then I looked out from the window over towards the river and the bridge, and I saw a woman coming. The minute I saw her I says to myself, * She walks something like Maria Bliven.’ She was coming along pretty quick, though not exactly hurrying, and she had somehow a real Bliven way about her. She came straight on in the direction of our house, and the closer she came, the more she walked like Maria. I did n’t think it was her, of course, but it gave me a queer feeling to see anybody that favored her so much. The window was open, and I got nearer and nearer to it, and at last stretched my head out and stared down the street, a potato in one hand and the knife in the other. The sun was warm when you were out in it, exercising, and I saw the woman untying her bonnet-strings and throwing them back. Dear me! that was a real Bliven trick. I’d seen Maria do it herself fifty times. She was getting pretty nigh now, and the first thing I knew she looked up at the house and nodded her head just as Maria used to when she came home from visiting. Then in a minute I saw her plain as day. It was Maria Bliven, sure enough; there was no mistaking her.

“I see by your face what you are thinking about; it’s what strikes every soul I ever tell this to. You ’re wondering why I take this so cool, as if it was n’t anything so much out of the common. Well, first place, it all happened a good many years ago, and I’ve gone through a heap of things since then, good and bad both, enough to wear off some of the remembering. And again, somehow, I took it kind of cool even then. It appeared to come about so natural, just in the course of things, as you might say, and only what you might have expected from Maria with her fitty, unsatisfied ways. And then — well, you ’ll see it yourself as I go on — there was something about Maria and the way she took it, and seemed to expect us to take it, that kept us from getting excited or scared or so dreadful amazed.

“Why, what do you think was the first and only single remark I made as she came in at the door just as she had come in fifty times before after visiting a spell ? I says, ‘Why, good-morning, Maria, you’ve come back. ’ And she says, ‘ Goodmorning, Lyddy; yes, I have.’

“That was all, outside, I mean, for I won’t deny there was a swimmy feeling in my head and a choky feeling down my throat, and a sort of trembly feeling all over as I see Maria drop into a chair and push her bonnet-strings a mite further back. She sat there a few minutes, I don’t recollect just how long, and I don’t seem to remember what either one of us said. Appears to me Maria made some remark about its being warm weather for the beginning of April, and that I said t was so. Then sometimes I seem to remember that I asked her if she’d walked all the way or got a lift any part of it. But it don’t hardly appear as if I could have said such a foolish thing as that, and anyways, I don’t recollect what she answered. But I know she got up pretty soon and said she guessed she’d go up and take off her things, and she went.

“There was one potato dished up that day for dinner with the skin on, and it must have been the one I was holding when I first caught sight of Maria down the road. So that goes to show I was a good deal flustered and upset, after all. The first thing was to tell Mr. Weaver. He was in the barn, and out I went. I did n’t stop to break the news then, but gave it to him whole, right -out. ‘Polios,’ I says, all out of breath, ‘Maria Bliven’s come back. She’s in her bedroom this minute, taking off her things.’ I never can bring back to my mind what he said first. He took it kind of calm and cool, as he always took everything that ever happened since I first knew him. And in a minute he told me to go and telegraph to John Nelson. You see, besides John’s being Maria’s nearest relation, he had charge of the little property she’d left, and so’t was pretty important he should know right off that she had n’t left it for good.

“Now I’ve got back to where I begun about that telegraph. Well, I sent it, and John came over from Hanover next day. I can’t go on in a very regular, straightahead way with this account now, but I ’ll tell what went on as things come into my head, or I ’ll answer any questions you want to ask, as you appear so interested. Everything went on natural and in the old way after the first. Of course, folks found out pretty quick. Bradford’s a small place now, and’t was smaller then, and I don’t suppose there was a man, woman, or child there that did n’t know within twenty-four hours that Maria had come back. There was some talk naturally, but not as much as you’d think. Folks dropped in, and when they’d see her looking about as she did before she left, and we going on just the same, why, they got used to it themselves, and the talk most stopped.

“But though they thought she was the same as she used to be, I knew she was n’t. It’s hard to put it into words to make you understand, but Maria had n’t been many hours in the house before I saw she was dreadful changed. First place, she did n’t talk near so much. Before she left she was a great hand to tell about all her doings after she’d been on one of her visits. She’d go all over it to Mr. Weaver and me, and it was real interesting. But she never said one single word now about anything that had happened since we saw her last, where she’d been, what she’d done, or anything. She and me, we were together by ourselves a great deal, more than ever before, in fact, for somehow the neighbors did n’t come in as much as they used to. Maria was always pleasant to them, but though they said she was just the same as ever, with nothing queer or alarming about her, I saw they did n’t feel quite at home with her now, and did n’t drop in so often. But sit together, she and me, hours at a time as we might, never one word of what I could n’t help hankering to know passed Maria’s lips. Why did n’t I ask her, you say ? Well, I don’t know. Seems to me now, as I think it all over, that I would do it if I could only have the chance again. You would n’t hardly believe how I wish and wish now it’s too late that I had asked her things I’m just longing to know about, now I’m growing old and need to look ahead a little, and particular now Mr. Weaver’s gone, and I’m so hungry to know something about him, we having lived together most fifty years, you know. But there was something about Maria that kept me from asking. And sometimes I think there was something that kept her from telling. I feel sure she was on the point of making some statement sometimes, but she could n’t; the words would n’t come; there did n’t seem to be any way of putting the information into words she knew, or that was used in our part of the country, anyway. Dear me, what lots of times I’ve heard her begin something this way, ‘When I first got there, I’ — ‘Before I come back, I’ — Oh, how I’d prick up my ears and most stop breathing to hear! But she’d just stop, seem to be a-thinking about something way, way off, and never, never finish her remarks. Yes, I know you wonder I did n’t question her about things. As I said before, I can’t hardly explain why I did n’t. But there was something about her looks and her ways, something that, spite of her being the old Maria Bliven I had lived in and out with so many years, somehow made her most like a stranger that I could n’t take liberties with.

“ Mr. Weaver and me, of course, we talked about it when we were all by ourselves, mostly at night, when it was still and dark. It did seem real strange and out of the common someways. Neither one of us had ever had anything like it happen before to anybody we knew or heard of. Folks who’d died, generally, — no, always, I guess, up to this time, — died for good, and stayed dead. We were brought up Methodists; we were both professors, and knew our Bibles and the doctrines of the church pretty well. We knew about two futures for the soul, — the joyful, happy one for the good and faithful, and the dreadful one for the wicked. And we’d always been learnt that to one of these localities the soul went the very minute, or second, it left the body. That there were folks that held different opinions, and thought there was a betwixt and between district where you stayed on the road, where even the good and faithful might rest and take breath before going into the wonderful glory prepared for them, and where the poor, mistaken, or ignorant, or careless souls would be allowed one more chance of choosing the right, we did n’t know that. I never’d heard of that doctrine then, though a spell after that I hardly heard anything else.

“ I don’t know as I told you about Elder Janeway from down South somewhere coming to board with us one summer. He was writing a book called Probation, and he had a way of reading out loud what he was writing in a preaching kind of way, so that you could n’t help hearing it all, even if you wanted to. And all day long, while I sat sewing or knitting, or went about my work, baking and ironing and all, I’d hear that solemn, rumbling voice of his going on about the ‘place of departed spirits,’ the Scripture proofs of there being such a place, what it was like, how long folks stayed there, and I don’t know what all. That was just before I came down with the fever that I most died with, as I was telling you the other day, and they say this talk of the Elder’s appeared to run in my mind when I was light headed and wandering, and I’d get dreadful excited about it.

“ But at the time I was telling about I had n’t heard this, so Mr. Weaver and I would talk it over, and wonder and guess and suppose. ‘Oh, Folios,’ I whispered one night, ‘you don’t presume Maria is a —ghost ? ’ ‘ No more than you be,’ says Mr. Weaver, trying to whisper, but not doing it very well, his voice naturally being a bass one. ‘Ghosts,’ he says, ‘are all in white, and go about in a creepy way, allowing there are any such things, which I don’t.’ ‘But what else can she be, Polios,’ I says, ‘she having died and been buried, and now back again? Where’s she, or her soul or spirit, been these three weeks, since that?’

“‘Well, come to that, I don’t know,’ Mr. Weaver would say. And he did n’t. No more did I.

“ Where had she come from that morning when she appeared so unexpected as I sat peeling the potatoes ? Not a single soul had seen her, as far as we could find out, before the very minute I catched sight of her at the turn of the road. Folks had been at their windows or doors, or in their yards all along that very road for miles back, and on the two different roads that come into the main one there were plenty of houses full of people, but nobody, not one of them, saw her go by. There was Almy Woolett, whose whole business in life was to know who passed her house, and what they did it for. She was at her front window every minute that forenoon, and it looked right out on the road, not fifteen foot back of where I first saw Maria, and she never saw her.

“Then, as to what clothes she came in, folks have asked me about that, and I can’t give them a mite of satisfaction. For the life of me I can’t remember what she had on before she went up to her room and took off her things. I’m certain sure she was n’t wearing what she went away in, for that was a shroud. In those days, you know, bodies was laid out in regular appropriate burying things, made for the occasion, instead of being dressed all up like living beings, as they do nowadays. And Maria did n’t come back in that way, or I might have thought her a ghost sure enough. Sometimes I seem to recollect that she had on something sort of grayish, not black or white, but just about the color of those clouds out there, just over the mill, almost the color of nothing, you might say. But there, I ain’t sure, it’s so long ago. But I know she had on something I never’d seen her wear before, and she never wore again, for when she came downstairs she was dressed in her old blue gingham, with a white tie apron. I own up I did look about everywheres I could think of for the things she came in, but I could n’t find them high nor low. Not a sign of them was there in her bedroom, in the closet or chest of drawers, or her little leather trunk, and I’m certain sure they was n’t anywheres in the house when I ransacked for them, and that was n’t two hours after Maria came back.

“It’s only little specks of things I can tell you about that happened after this, anything, I mean, that had to do with her queer experience. I watched her close, and took notice of the least thing that seemed to bear on that. She complained a good deal of being lonesome, and when I recommended her going out more and visiting with the neighbors, she’d say so sorrowful and sad, ‘There ain’t anybody of my kind here, not a single one; I’m all alone in the world.’ And, take it one way, she was.

“One day she and me were sitting together in the kitchen, and one of Billy Lane’s boys came to the door to borrow some saleratus. After he’d gone, I says to Maria, ‘I told you, did n’t I, that Billy Lane died last month ? He died of lockjaw, and it came on so sudden and violent he was n’t able to tell how he hurt himself. They found a wound on his foot, but don’t know how it came.’ ‘Oh,’ say, Maria, as quiet and natural as you please, ‘he told me he stepped on a rusty nail down by the new fence.’ I was just going to speak up quick, and ask how in the world he could have told her that, when he did n t die till a week after she did, when she started, put on one of her queer looks, and says, ‘ There, I forgot to shut my blinds, and it’s real sunny,’ and went upstairs.

“The first death that we had in Bradford after her coming back was little Susan Garret. We’d heard she was sick, but did n’t know she was dangerous, and were dreadful surprised when Mr. Weaver came in to supper and told us she was dead. I felt sorry for Mrs. Garret, a widow with only one other child, and that a sickly boy, but I must say I was surprised to see how Maria took it to heart. She turned real white, kept twisting her hands together, and sort of moaning out, ‘Oh, I wish I’d knowed she was going, I wish I’d knowed. If she’d only wait just a minute for me,’ and crazy, nervy things like that. I had to get her upstairs and give her some camphor and make her lay down, she was so excited like. She did n’t calm down right away, and when I heard her say sort of to herself, ‘Oh, if I could only a seen her!’ I says, ‘Why, Maria, you can see her. We’ll run right over there now. I guess they’ve laid the poor child out by this time, and they’ll let us see the body. ’ Such a look as Maria gave me, real scornful, as you might say, as she says,‘That! see that! What good would it do to see that I want to know.’ Why, I tell you it made me feel for a minute as if a body was of no account at all, leastways in Maria’s opinion. And yet she’d used hers to come back in anyways! ’T was quite a spell before she cooled down, and she never explained why it worked her up so, and I’m sure I don’t know. Whether it was because she thought little Susan had gone to the place she herself had come away from, and wished she had known in time to go back along with her just for company, or again, whether she felt bad because she had n’t had a chance to give the child some advice or directions that would have helped her along on the road that Maria knew and nobody else probably in all that county did know, why, I have n’t an idea.

“I believe I told you a ways back that after she got home Maria all the time had a kind of look and way as if she’d done something she had n’t ought to done, or was somewhere she had n’t any business to be, somehow as if she belonged somewhere else.

“ In the old days she was n’t ever satisfied long at a time in any place, but she was always pleased to get back, leastways for a spell. But from the minute she came this time she was troubled and worried. And that grew on her. She was always sort of listening and watching, as if she expected something to happen, starting at the least bit of noise, and jumping if anybody knocked or even came by the gate. She got dreadful white, and so poor she did n’t weigh no more than a child, and such little trifling things worked her up. For instance, we had heard a spell before, Mr. Weaver and me, that Mr. Tewksbury over at South Newbury was dead, and we believed it, not knowing anything to the contrary. But one day Mr. Weaver came in and he says, ‘Lyddy, you recollect we heard the other day that Silas Tewksbury was dead? Well, I met him just now coming over the bridge.’ Maria was in the room, and first thing we knew she gave a kind of screech, and put her two hands together, and she says, ‘Oh no, no, no, not another of us! I thought ’t was only me. Oh, deary, deary me, that ’s what they meant. They said it would n’t end with me; they begged me not to try; and now I Ve started it, and it won’t never stop. They’ll all come back, all, every single one of ’em,’ and she cried and moaned till we were at our wits’ ends what to do. It was n’t till she found out that Mr. Tewksbury had n’t ever died at all, but’t was his brother at White River Junction that was taken off, that she got quiet.

“So it went on, Maria sort of wearing out with worrying and grieving about something she could n’t seem to tell us about except by little hintings and such, and Mr. Weaver and me, we wondering and surmising and talking all alone nights in whispers. We did n’t understand it, of course, but we’d made up our minds on one or two points, and agreed on them. Maria had never been to heaven, we felt sure of that. There were lots of reasons for that belief, but one is enough. Nobody, even the most discontented and changeablest being ever made, would leave that place of perfect rest and peace for this lonesome, dying, changing world, now would they ? And as for the other locality, why, I just know certain, certain sure she’d never been there. That would have showed in her face, and her talk, and her ways. If it is one little mite like what I’ve always been learnt it is, one minute, one second spent there would alter you so dreadfully you’d never be recognized again by your nighest and dearest. And Maria was a good woman, a Christian woman. Her biggest fault was only her fretting and finding fault, and wanting to change about and find something better. Oh no, no; wherever Maria Bliven had come from that morning in April it was n’t from that place of punishment, we felt sure of that, Mr. Weaver and me. As I said once before, we had n’t heard then that there was any other place for the dead to go to. But from things Maria let drop, and the way she behaved, and our own thinking and studying over it, we began to come to this, that maybe there was a stopping-place on the road before it forked, — to put it into this world’s sort of talk, — where folks could rest and straighten out their beliefs and learn what to expect, how to look at things, and try and be tried. Last summer I heard a new word, and it struck me hard. Mrs. Deacon Spinner told me her son had gone off to learn new ways of farming and gardening and such. She said they had places nowadays where they learnt boys all that and they called them ‘Experiment Stations.’ The minute I heard that I says to myself, ‘ That’s the name! That’s what the place where Maria came back from, and that Elder Janeway knew so much about, had ought to be called, an Experiment Station.’ But at that time, in Maria’s day, I’d never heard of this name no more than I had of Elder Janeway, and the place or state he was always writing and talking about. But, after all, I don’t believe 1 care to go back on what ma and pa and all the good folks of, old times held on those subjects. There was n’t any mincing matters those days; ’t was the very best or the very worst for everybody as soon as they departed this life, and no complaints made. I’m certain sure any of those ancestors of mine, particular on the Wells side — that was pa’s, you know — would have taken the worst, and been cheerful about it, too, rather than have had the whole plan upset and a half-and-half place interduced. But then, if there ain’t such a locality, where in the world did Maria come from that time ? I tell you, it beats me.

“Now this very minute something comes into my head that I have n’t told you about, that I don’t believe I ever told anybody about; I don’t know as I can tell it now. It is like a sound that comes to you from way, way off, that you think you catch, and then it’s gone. It was just only a word Maria used two or three times after she came back, a dreadful, dreadful curious word. It was n’t like any word I ever heard spoke or read in a book; ’t was n’t anything I can shape out in my mind to bring back now. First time I heard it she was sitting on the doorstep at night, all by herself. It was a nice night with no moon, but thousands of shining little stars, and the sky so sort of dark bluish and way, way off. Maria did n’t know I was nigh, but I was, and I was peeking at her as she sat there. She looked up right overhead at the sky, and the shining and the blue, and then she spoke that word, that curious, singular word. I say she spoke it, and that I heard it, but somehow that don’t make it plain what I mean. Seem’s if she only meant it, thought it, and I sort of catched it, felt it— Oh, that sounds like crazy talk, I know, but I can’t do any better. Somehow I knew without using my ears that she was saying or thinking a word, the strangest, meaningest, oh, the curiousest word! And once she said it in her sleep when I went into her room in the night, and another time as she sat by her own grave in the little burying-ground, and I had followed her there unbeknownst. I tell you, that was n’t any word they use in Vermont, or in the United States, or anywheres in this whole living world. It was a word Maria brought back, I’m certain sure from — well, wherever she’d been that time.

“ Well, it was wearing to see Maria those days, growing poorer and poorer, and bleacheder and bleacheder, and failing up steady as the days went by. And one day just at dusk, when she and me were sitting by ourselves, I mustered up courage to speak out. ‘Maria,’ Isays, ‘you don’t appear to be satisfied these times.’

“ ‘Satisfied!’ she says, ‘course I ain’t. Was I ever satisfied in all my born days ? Was n’t that the trouble with me from the beginning ? Ain’t it that got me into all this dreadful trouble ? Deary, deary me, if I’d only a stayed where ’ — She shut up quick and sudden, looking so mournful and sorry and wore out that I could n’t hold in another minute, and I burst out, ‘Maria, if you feel that way about it, and I can see myself it’s just killing you, why in the world don’t you — go back again ? ’ I was scared as soon as I’d said it, but Maria took it real quiet. ’Don’t you suppose I’ve thought of that myself ? ’ she says. ‘ I ain’t thought of much else lately, I tell you. But as far’s I know, and I know a lot more than you do about it, there ain’t but just one way to go there, and that,’ she says, speaking kind of low and solemn, ‘that is — the way — I went before. And I own up, Lyddy,’ says she, ‘I’m scaret o’ that way, and I scursely dast to do it again.’ ‘But,’ I says, getting bolder when I saw she was n’t offended at ray speaking, ‘you say yourself you ain’t sure. Maybe there is some other way of getting back; there’s that way — well, that way you came from there, you know.’

“ ‘That’s different,’ says Maria. But I saw she was thinking and studying over something all the evening, and after she went to her bedroom she was walking about, up and down, up and down, the biggest part of the night. In the morning when it got to be nigh on to seven o’clock, and she not come down, I felt something had happened, and went up to her room. She was n’t there. The bed was made up, and everything fixed neat and nice, and she had gone away.

“‘Oh, dear,’ I says to Mr. Weaver, ‘ that poor thing has started off all alone, weak as she is, to find her way back.’ ‘Back where?’ says Polios. Just as if I knew.

“ But we both agreed on one point. We could n’t do anything. We felt to realize our own ignorance, and that this was a thing Maria must cipher out by herself, or with somebody that was way, way above us to help her. It was a dreadful long day, I tell you. I could n’t go about my work as if nothing had happened, and I could n’t get out of my head for one single minute that poor woman on her curious, lonesome travels. Would she find the road ? I kept a-thinking to myself, and was it a hard, dark one like the one everybody else had to go on before they got to the afterwards-life, a valley full of shadows, according to Scripture, with a black, deep river to ford, a ‘swelling flood,’ as the hymn says ?

“Well, the day went by somehow,— most days do, however slow they seem to drag along, — and the night came on. Though we did n’t mean to meddle or interfere in this matter, Mr. Weaver and me, we had asked a few questions of folks who dropped in or went by that day. Maria had been seen by people all along the same road she had come home by that other time, and on both the roads that joined it. Two or three, seeing how beat out and white she looked, had offered her a ride, but whichever direction they were going she had alw ays answered the same thing, that she was n’t going their way. It was nigh nine o’clock, and we were just shutting up the house for the night, when I heard steps outside and the gate screaked.

“I felt in a minute that it was Maria, and I opened the door as quick as I could. There she was trying to get up the steps, and looking just ready to drop and die right there and then. It took Polios and me both to get her in and upstairs. It was n’t any time for questions, but when Mr. Weaver had gone, and I was getting her to bed, I says, as I saw her white face with that dreadful look of disappointedness, ‘You poor thing, you’re all beat out.’ ‘Yes,’ she whispers, her voice most gone she was so wore out, ‘and I could n’t find the road. There ain’t but one, — leastways to go there by, — and that’s the way I went first-off. I’d oughter known it. I’d oughter known it.’

“ I could n’t bear to see her so sorrowful and troubled, and I said what I could to comfort her by using Scripture words and repeating the promises made there about that dark valley and the deep waters, and the help and company provided for the journey. But that mournful look never left her face, and she kept a-whispering, ‘ That’s for once; not a word about the second time. Mebbe there ain’t any provision for the second time.’ And what could I say ?

“ I believe I have n’t told you how much time the poor woman spent those days in the graveyard, sitting by her own grave. I can’t get over that, even after all these years, that queer, uncommon sight of a person watching over their own burying place, weeding it and watering it as if their own nighest friend lay there. I don’t see why, either. I don’t even know whether her body was there. Folks don’t have two, and she’d brought one back, and was in it now. And, as far as we could see, it was the very same body she wore when she died, and that we’d buried next to Mr. BHven. Anyway, she appeared to like that place, and showed a lot of interest in taking care of it. There was n’t any headstone. We had ordered one, but it had n’t come home when she returned, and we had told Mr. Stevens to keep it a spell till we fixed what to do about it. I was glad it was n’t up. I can’t think of anything that would be more trying than to see your own gravestone with your name and age and day you died, with a consoling verse, all cut out plain on it. I know, one time, I saw her putting a bunch of sweet-williams on that grave. She looked sort of ashamed when she saw I was watching her, and she says, a mite bashful, ‘You know they was always her favorite posies.’ ‘Whose?’ I asked, just to see what she’d say. But she was so busy fixing the sweet-williams she did n’t take any notice.

“ Maria failed up after this right along, and pretty soon she was that weak she could n’t get as far as the graveyard, hardly even down to the gate. And I says to Mr. Weaver that she need n’t worry about finding the way back to where she belonged, for she’d just go as she went the other time if she did n’t flesh up and get a little ruggeder. One day, when I went into her room, she says to me, ‘Lyddy, I want help, and mebbe I can get it in the old way we used to try. You fetch me the big Bible and let me open it without looking, and put my finger on a verse and then you read it out. Mebbe they ’ll take that way of telling me what to do, just mebbe.’

“I never approved of that kind of getting help, it always seemed like tempting Providence, but I felt I must do most anything that would help satisfy that poor woman, and I got the Bible, She opened it, her lean hands shaking, and she laid one of her bony fingers on a passage. I must say it took my breath away when I saw how appropriate it was, how pat it came in. ’T was in Ezekiel, and it went this way: ‘He shall not return by the gate whereby he came in.’

“Maria give a sort of cry and laid her head back against the pillow on the big chair she was sitting in. ‘There, there,’ she says, all shaking and weak, T most knew it afore, and now I’m certain sure. I’ve got to go — the — old — way.’

“Aud so she did. After all, I was n’t with her when she went, and it was n’t from our house she started. I got run down and pindling from taking care of her and studying how to help her out of her troubles. So Mr. Weaver wrote to John Nelson, and after a spell it was fixed that he should take Maria over to his house in Hanover, and he did. It was a hard journey for her, so weak as she was, and she did n’t stand it very well. But she had one more journey to take, the one she’d been dreading so long, and trying to put off.

“It was n’t so dreadful hard, I guess, after all, for they said she fell asleep at the last like a baby. Just before she went, she says very quiet and calm, all the worry and fret gone out of her voice, she says to John and Harriet, who was standing by the bed, ‘I’m dreadful tired, and I guess I’ll drowse off a mite. And mebbe I’ll be let to go in my sleep.’ Then in a minute she says slow and sleepy, her eyes shut up, ‘And if I do, wherever they carry me this time, I guess when I wake up I shall — be — satisfied,’ and she dropped off.

“ I guess she was, for she went for good that time and stayed. She was buried there in Hanover in John’s lot. We all thought’t was best. It would have been awk’ard about the old grave, you know, whether to open it or not, and what to do about the coffin. So we thought ’t was better to start all over again as if ’t was the first time, with everything bran-new, and nothing second-handed, and we did. But Maria Bliven’s the only person I know that’s got two graves. There’s only one headstone, though, for we took the one we’d ordered before from Mr. Stevens, he altering the reading on it a little to suit the occasion. You see, the first time we’d had on it a line that was used a good deal on gravestones then, ‘Gone forever.’ That did n’t turn out exactly appropriate, so we had it cut out, and this time we had on — Elder Fuller put it into our heads — that Scripture verse, a good deal like Maria’s dying words, though I don’t believe she knew she was quoting when she said it, ‘I shall be satisfied.’ ”

“Well,” said good Elder Lincoln one July day as we met on the Lisbon road, “have you heard Mrs. Weaver’s account of Maria Bliven’s unexpected return?”

The Elder had been at Streeter Pond fishing for pickerel, for he belonged to that class styled by dear old Jimmy Whitcher “fishin’ministers.” He had not met with great success that day, but he had been all the morning in the open, and there was about him a breezy, woodsy, free look which seemed to dissipate shadows, doubts, and dreads. “Yes,” I replied, “I have heard it all. What in the world do you make of it ?”

“Well, I don’t make anything of it,” said the Elder. “There’s no conspicuous moral to that story. Mrs. Weaver did not make the most of her opportunities, and we do not gain much new light from her account. Old Cephas Janeway, who wrote a ponderous work on Probation which nobody read, was largely responsible, I guess, for the feverish dream of the old woman. But to her it’s all true, real, something that actually happened. And, do you know, somehow I almost believe it myself as I listen to the homely details, and it brings ‘thoughts beyond the reaches of our souls.’ ”

He was silent a minute, then taking up his fishing basket, very light in weight that day, he raised the lid, looked with unseeing eyes at its contents, and said absently, “I can’t help wishing I had met Maria after she came back. There is just one thing” — He did not complete the sentence, and I saw that his thoughts were far away. With a good-by word which I know he did not hear, I turned aside, leaving him there in the dusty road.