Late Love

I

THE lot of Jacob Gruber was a hard one until he and his wife, Lena, were admitted to the Home for the Aged. It was not the struggle against poverty that made it hard, for when he was idle Jacob was unhappy; it was the ill health and complaining nature of his wife. Lena was a cumbrous woman of seventy who nursed a faulty digestion and countless other ailments of a more recondite nature, most of which she attributed to an uncertain gall bladder. Despite her constant suffering, however, she steadfastly refused to consult a doctor, preferring to experiment with home remedies and the less well-known patent medicines. More than once Jacob had come in tired and hungry from his puttering about the little house and garden, or from doing one of the odd jobs for which his friends and neighbors occasionally employed him, to find the kitchen table littered with dried herbs and cold infusions and Lena standing over the stove peering greedily into a skillet at some unsavory concoction; but not a trace of food was there anywhere, although it lacked but a few minutes of mealtime. And, as many times as he had come upon her in this way, Jacob never wholly got over feeling uncomfortable and wanting to go out again quietly without disturbing her; for when he did disturb her it was always the same. She would start and look up guiltily, first at him and then at the clock.

‘ Ach, Jake, you here already so soon again! ’ There would be a note of hurt, almost of accusation, in her voice. ‘My, my, it seems like I only just finished the breakfast dishes, and here it is time for dinner!’

The alert and strange look would have died out of her eyes by then, and she would press the tips of her stubby fingers between her breasts and the muscles of her face would sag.

‘Ach, Jake,’ she would begin in a wheedling voice, ‘can’t you find something for yourself this noon, and tonight I get you something good what you like?’ Her fingertips would press in harder against her midriff. ‘I guess I don’t eat anything myself. It’s that gas again — it lays like a stone in my stomach.’ She would wave the tiny spoon toward her brew. ‘ I think maybe this, it bring it up. Only I can’t leave it now or it all boils away.’

She would look pleadingly at Jacob then, and he would take off his cap wearily.

‘All right, Lena,’ he would sigh, shaking his head a little, ‘you go ahead. Don’t you bother about me; I find something.’

Lena’s gratitude would be almost breathless. ‘And you wait, Jake, you see what I get you for your supper — something good what you like!’

Jacob would smile wanly and nod his head skeptically and go about preparing his own dinner, but Lena would have turned back to the stove, fluttering over her heal-all, making up for lost time.

II

When Lena got into the Home, she had to content herself with patented products, because the matron would not allow the inmates in the kitchen, nor would she have any surreptitious cooking going on in the bedrooms. Lena did not dare, either, to enlarge too much upon her afflictions in the matron’s presence, else then surely a doctor would have been called in and everything would have been up with her ill health. She had to keep her bottles carefully concealed, too, for the matron was a progressive woman who believed only in authorized diagnosis and prescription. It was hard in a way for Lena, but there were compensations in this new life that more than made up for slight inconveniences. Here at the Home she had no duties beyond making up her own bed and Jacob’s in the morning and keeping their room reasonably neat and occasionally helping to dry the dishes. And there were several congenial and trustworthy women among the inmates who would listen attentively and sympathetically while Lena sat with folded hands retailing — in the matron’s absence, of course — the woes of a delicate constitution; while at night there was always Jacob to slap her back gently when she was ‘distressed.’

At first Jacob did not much favor the idea of going into a Home for the Aged. After all, even if Lena was seventy and not so well any more, — although she had been ailing ever since their first child was born forty-four years before, — he was only sixty-eight and had never felt better in his whole life. And, if he did n’t have steady work any more, they owned their own home, which he had worked so hard to make attractive and comfortable with a glassed-in porch and a flower garden; and he could raise enough vegetables to last them the year round, what with Lena putting up bit by bit every day during the summer; and his small savings account, augmented now and then by a gift from the children as they could spare it, took care of the rest. Then there were his odd jobs that brought in enough anyway to keep Lena supplied with her bottles and drugs and medicinal herbs. And now he must give it all up — sell everything and turn over the proceeds to strangers, and just as he was thinking of buying a few chickens, too! But it was a new Home for the Aged, modern and up-todate, and Lena could talk of nothing else but being admitted to it. The children backed her up, too, saying over and over again that it would be all for the best, that it would ease their minds to have Mama and him permanently taken care of.

‘But we are all right, Mama and me, as we are,’ Jacob would argue. ‘We got enough; we ask nobody for nothing.’

His oldest daughter, Hedwig, would sigh then and spread her hands and lift her proud shoulders and look helplessly at her mother. Zella, the youngest, would intervene in her soft-spoken way; she was Jacob’s favorite child.

‘Now don’t be mulish, Papa,’ she would begin with a little laugh, ‘and listen to reason. You know how you used to scold us for not hearing everything out.’ She would lean forward and take his hand or stroke the back of his head. ‘There in the Home you and Mama will have nothing to worry about, nothing at all ever, and you will be safe for always. Think of it, just! For always, for the rest of your lives!’

Jacob would smile a little grimly and nod his head in a tired way. ’Ja, that I know, Zella Herzchen, but that is not living — to be so safe. That is only an easy way to die!’

In the end, however, Jacob was defeated, as he always had been, and Lena and the children won out.

III

Once the unpleasant business of parting with his possessions was past, however, and he had accustomed himself to his new existence in the Home, Jacob began to enjoy life and to know it as never before. He was still his own master for the most part; he could work or be idle as he chose — there were more than enough odd jobs about the institution for anyone as handy as he. Except in the night he was fairly free now of Lena’s complainings. And, best of all, living in a small community close to people of the same age made for sociability, a thing which hitherto he had rarely known and therefore but vaguely missed.

The Home was in the country, with a small farm attached to it and acres and acres of woodland. That, perhaps, made Jacob happiest of all, because it brought back his youth in Germany and the almost forgotten associations of those remote and simple days before his father and mother had forsaken their dark-soiled fields to come to America. He was always puttering about the outhouses, putting up a shelf here or repairing a hinge there, and in the spring he helped with the planting, and with the harvesting in the fall. There was nothing to which he could not turn his hand; and when the Overseers came one day on a tour of inspection, and inquired about all the unauthorized improvements and were told that Mr. Gruber was responsible for them, they were all very pleased.

After that everyone treated Jacob with even greater respect, even the awe-inspiring matron. That made Jacob expand and assert himself, — for the first time in his life, really, — and he began to feel freer and less helpless than ever before. His appetite improved, and now he could always be sure of having his meals on time, and very good meals they were! He was putting on weight, too. And as for sleeping, sometimes Lena had to worry along in the night without his aid, for they slept in twin beds now and she could no longer prod him without getting up, and getting up was almost always too much of an exertion for Lena.

Jacob was wise, though; he did not allow himself to become tied down or responsible for any but the most negligible tasks. Now that he had tasted the fruits of freedom, he meant to keep part of himself and of his time always private and apart for their enjoyment. So every day, with no regard for the weather, he explored the woods behind the Home, where the gentle silence, broken only by the wind and the birds, at once soothed and stirred him. At first, because real woods were unfamiliar to him, Jacob felt oppressed and timid in their cool gloom, and the silence seemed heavy and foreboding; the darting of a partridge or a pheasant startled him nearly to the point of flight; and the close-grown trunks were formal and unfriendly, resentful almost, not intimate and full of welcome like the open, sun-drenched fields. But as he went back time and time again and grew accustomed to them, he no longer shrank from them, for he realized that they were not really formidable, but just dignified; and he began to feel himself more of a man in their presence, to grow bigger somehow, to be filled with a vigor that was almost daring, and with deep unspoken thoughts.

When he came back in the early evening from his rambles, so full was he of what he had seen, and especially of what he had felt, that he must seek out someone and unburden himself; for this fullness was too much to bear alone. And, since there was no one nearer to Jacob than Lena, he sought her out and strove to unloose upon her the hurting plenty of his heart and spirit. But as he opened his lips his tongue clove to the roof of his mouth, and there were no words in his brain. A burning radiance seared him inside until it seemed to him that everyone must see it in his eyes and partake of it there, yet Lena looked at him dully as always; and Jacob was helpless and humbled in that moment. Then suddenly he took heart, remembering that, if a man cannot speak, at least he must feel; so he sat down beside Lena and took one of her hands between both his own and pressed it lightly and tenderly. Lena’s eyes widened to a stare.

‘Jake Gruber, what’s the matter with you, then? Why now, all of a sudden, this holding my hand?’ She drew away from him and laughed a little in her consternation.

Jacob passed one hand sheepishly across his eyes. ‘Ach, I don’t know, Lena, I felt —’ he faltered.

’Ja, you felt — well, that was all over a long, long time ago!’ She withdrew her hand and stroked it as if his touch had soiled it in some way. ‘Now you pull yourself together and go upstairs and get me my capsules — only don’t let her catch you.’ Lena nodded slyly in the direction of the matron’s office.

Jacob rose, glad of this opportunity to escape from his wife. ‘Maybe I am getting a little childish,’ he thought as he mounted the stairs, but he felt somehow that he was only growing wise.

After that Jacob was careful to restrain his feelings, powerful and deep and conflicting though they were, for he was by nature shy, and if Lena took the trouble to rebuff him, then he could not bring himself to talk to anyone. Sometimes in the past he had confided in Zella about little things, but never about anything so big and hard and impractical as this, his new joy. She had always been kind and understanding at such times, so he thought he would try her again. He took her aside one day when she came out to the Home to make her fortnightly visit. She held his hand all of her own accord and that made it easier, so that with her he even found he could say something, simple and inadequate as it was. As she listened, though, perplexity kept growing in her face and she stroked the back of Jacob’s hand in a way that made him uncomfortable; and afterward, when he had quite finished, she linked his arm through hers and took him back into the sun parlor where Lena was.

‘Did you know, Mama,’ she began, and there was a faint suggestion in her voice of mingled amusement and concern that Jacob did not like, ‘did you know we got a poet in our family?’

And then, in the autumn of the second year of Jacob and Lena in the Home for the Aged, Miss Rachel came.

IV

Miss Rachel Ordway was sixtyseven, and a lady in every way. She was one of those people about whom others say, ‘She has never had any life of her own, you know ’ — and it was true; she had n’t. The youngest of a large family of handsome and popular brothers and sisters, she had been the plain one. She lacked even the distinction of ugliness; she was just plain. So when her sisters were having their many beaus and going to parties and getting married, and when her brothers were sowing their wild oats and getting married, too, Miss Rachel sat at home and read aloud to her father and mother and did exquisite needlework and wrote countless letters and learned to be useful.

Then, when the last of her brothers and sisters had been well married and she was left alone with her father and mother in their big house, one day Miss Rachel’s father went out into the barn and hanged himself. It had taken all he had, and more besides, to marry his children so well. From that moment life started in to be hard for Miss Rachel, and to become increasingly hard every year until she was admitted to the Home for the Aged. To be sure, as long as her mother lived — and she lived almost forty years after her husband’s death — they managed to get along simply and frugally on some money her mother had of her own and on what they were able to realize from the sale of the big house and on the contributions made from time to time by the married children. Soon, however, some of them began to see that they had not married so well after all, and they could spare very little; and then some of them died and their families forgot all about Miss Rachel and her mother; so that when at last Miss Rachel’s mother died, Miss Rachel was quite relieved, because for a long time she had seen poverty coming. She found herself some employment as housekeeper for an old man who had no one in the world. Miss Rachel was quite happy and content in her new life, but before long her old man had to die, too, leaving all his money to the Odd Fellows.

When Miss Rachel looked for another job, she could not find one because everyone thought she was too old to be able to work any more. That hurt Miss Rachel, because she had never before thought of herself as old and because she was strong and willing and gay in her mind. Her brothers were all dead now, and only her oldest sister, who lived in Seattle, was left, but she was hard pressed, too, and thinking seriously of going into a Home. So Miss Rachel looked helplessly about her, struggling the while against defeat, until at last she made herself recognize her predicament and gave in and placed her application at the Home for the Aged. Fortunately for her, there was a vacancy almost at once, and in the autumn, feeling low and humbled in spirit, she entered.

Miss Rachel was not very enthusiastic about her new life in the Home. Most of all, she did not like the inactivity of it. If she could only have been the matron with something to do all the time, it would have been very well, but the enforced leisure of the women inmates irked her, lady though she was. Leisure was a worthy and desirable thing — Miss Rachel had always conceded that; but it was what you were able to do with it that mattered most, and the facilities of the Home for indulging Miss Rachel’s conception of leisurely privileges were inadequate. Of course, she could read and take short walks and listen sometimes to good music over the radio, but she had no one to talk to, and talking, according to Miss Rachel, — really talking and saying something, — was more valuable than anything in the world. And there was no one at the Home who was equal to her kind of talking, Miss Rachel admitted frankly, not even the matron.

In short, Miss Rachel was a snob, — she had owned up to that long before, — but she was not the kind of snob who consciously condescended to people or snubbed them. On the contrary, those who were not her equals liked her immensely, and in their dealings with her they had always found her generous and considerate and friendly. The trouble was that all the inmates of the Home seemed to Miss Rachel to fall far short of her standards, so that anything more than mere acquaintance with them bored her; and, since she had no work to do, she was lonely.

V

Because the Home had been but recently founded and, owing to inadequate means, had not yet been completely furnished, its inmates had been permitted to bring in with them a few of their choicer pieces of furniture that would help in outfitting the living rooms. The Overseers preferred to have only the more practical pieces, like comfortable chairs and sofas and tables and bookcases, but occasionally a concession was made to sentiment and something quite useless and only decorative was allowed to come in. It was just such a concession that permitted Miss Rachel to bring with her an exquisite old music box, together with more than half a hundred perforated metal disks. Miss Rachel prized it highly, for it had been in her family as long as she could remember and its clear thin music had always been associated in her heart with the gay things out of the past.

The music box did not arrive from the storehouse in the city until several weeks after Miss Rachel had come to the Home to live, and on the evening after it had been permanently installed in one corner of the main living room all the inmates came in after supper and examined it. Miss Rachel stood modestly by and watched them and listened to their admiring comments, and most of them were admiring, for the music box was a very beautiful piece of craftsmanship.

At last someone among them looked up and asked Miss Rachel if she would n’t play something for them, so she came forward and looked through the disks and chose ‘The Beautiful Blue Danube.’

As the delicate peal of the music shot out and across the room and then unfolded itself like a silver fan, everyone sat down and listened self-consciously. Miss Rachel remained standing in front of the music box; her small figure swayed a little with the lift of the waltz melody, and at the corners of her demure mouth was a smile just beginning.

Thus a few minutes passed, and then, starting out of her reverie, Miss Rachel turned round and looked at the faces of those who were seated. At sight of their deep, serious listening, her lips parted and she broke out in a bright, unconscious laugh.

‘But this is a gay piece!’ she cried in her young voice. ‘It’s meant for dancing! ’

The encircling faces were startled and embarrassed. One of the women stirred uneasily and exchanged a meaning glance with Lena Gruber.

‘Did you hear me?’ cried Miss Rachel, and her eyes were shining. ‘Dancing! Surely someone here can still dance.’

Now all of them shifted in their chairs, and someone coughed, and an old man cleared his throat, and Lena looked at Jacob.

‘My husband, here,’ she began, and looked back at Miss Rachel, ‘ he was a good waltzer once.’

Miss Rachel darted forward and seized Jacob’s hand and pulled him up out of his deep chair.

‘Then he must dance with me!’ She spoke excitedly, and then, remembering herself, lowered her voice and turned toward Lena: ‘Or with you, perhaps — yes? ’

‘With me?’ Lena threw back her head and laughed ironically. ‘One step only and I would be dead standing up! With me — ach ja! ’ — and she laughed again.

Jacob was half standing and half sitting, and his face was twisted and red with shame. He kept his eyes lowered.

‘Ach, Jake, go on!’ urged Lena, bending forward. ‘Go dance with the lady — you say always you are so young!’

Someone applauded and Jacob looked up at Miss Rachel; there was something in her eyes that almost frightened him, it was so desperate. So pleading, too, and yet so imperious that without knowing quite what was happening he stood up very straight and put one arm deliberately around Miss Rachel’s waist and took her hand firmly and began to dance.

VI

A few days later Miss Rachel, muffled to the ears in an old mackintosh, was taking what she called her ‘constitutional’ along the broad verandah of the Home when Jacob came out, also muffled up, for his daily walk in the woods. They greeted each other pleasantly and Jacob started down the steps toward the side lawn.

‘Off for a walk, too, are you?’ Miss Rachel called out after him.

Jacob turned and stood still and nodded. ‘Ja, I go every afternoon to the woods.’ He paused, and added wistfully, ‘It’s nice in there.’

‘It must be,’ sighed Miss Rachel. ‘Now especially, with the leaves turned. I wish I might walk there, instead of back and forth and back and forth across this porch.’

To Jacob there was something almost desperate again about Miss Rachel when she said ‘back and forth and back and forth’; he dug his hands deep into his pockets and studied the toe of one of his heavy shoes.

‘Well,’ began Jacob shyly, ‘why don’t you?’

‘Oh-h, I’m not used to the woods,’ laughed Miss Rachel, ‘and I guess I ’m afraid I might get lost — or something.’

Jacob looked up at her intently. ‘I don’t think it, Miss Rachel, I don’t think you would get lost, but— but if you are afraid at first, you—’ Jacob hesitated and then blurted out, ‘You could come along with me.’

Now it was Miss Rachel who thrust her hands deep into her pockets and surveyed her stout high-laced shoes; then she looked at the windows of the main living room where all the old ladies were sitting and being dull.

‘Thank you,’ she announced decisively, and followed Jacob down the steps. ‘I will.’

If the woods had been an exciting experience for Jacob before, alone by himself, now with someone beside him — and someone who was a little timid and unsure of herself — they were doubly so. But they were exciting now in a different way. No longer did their silent dignity rush in and seem to submerge him, for now, somehow, he was not just taking in but giving out, too. It was as if the woods spoke to him in a new and strange language that he had learned a little of and so could translate in part. No longer was his fullness more than a pleasant hurt inside him, and his joy was deeper than ever before.

For Miss Rachel, trying gallantly to keep pace with Jacob’s unconsciously long steps, this first real walk was a mingled experience. As with Jacob in the beginning, real woods like these were something new and unfamiliar and vaguely terrifying; they were something to live up to, no matter how grand a person you might be, and these many isolated years Miss Rachel had found little enough to live up to. She saw now that it had been demoralizing not to have enough things and people to live up to, that it had, all unawares, slackened her standards and altered her sense of values. She wondered why it was that, as she and Jacob penetrated more deeply into the still dusk of the crowded trees, she felt an urgent desire that was almost panic to turn back; and she wondered, too, why it was that, remembered from the depths of these lonely clearings, the Home and its unexciting life seemed desirable and inviting. And then, because Miss Rachel never shirked thinking things out for herself, she came by her own reasoning and knowing to the truth: that life behind her at the Home was easy and effortless, and therefore boring; while here, to understand and grasp this splendid mystery took hard work — hard work of the muscles and of the mind, of the striving spirit and of the heart.

They had come in their swift walking to a fallen log across the path, and Jacob turned to help Miss Rachel over it. She lifted her small face upward to him questioningly, — Miss Rachel had forgotten about being helped, it had been so long since those days, — and her seamy cheeks were flushed and her lips were parted from her hard breathing. Jacob, perceiving her tiredness, stayed her with a gentle gesture from mounting the log and motioned her to sit down upon it instead; his eyes were guilty and smiling.

’Ach, Miss Rachel, I guess maybe I walk you too fast, heh?’

Jacob lowered his glance and looked apologetic.

Miss Rachel laughed and tried to catch her breath to reply.

‘No, Mr. Gruber, no — honestly you don’t!’ gasped Miss Rachel, and her eyes filled with tears and she buried her face in her hands and began to cry.

Jacob’s eyes widened with concern, and he sat down beside her. ‘ Ach, what have I done, Miss Rachel, what have I done!’ Jacob was close to crying himself. ‘ Why — why did n’t you say something to me, why — ? ’ Speechless, he groped for one of Miss Rachel’s hands and struggled with the glove on it, and when at last he had got it off, he stroked the back of her hand with feeling.

Miss Rachel stifled her crying then and pressed Jacob’s hand hard and looked at him through her tears. ‘I — I’m sorry, Mr. Gruber,’ she sobbed, ‘ I guess I felt — ’

‘Ja, ja, I know,’ said Jacob kindly, and he could not take his hand away. ‘I, too, I feel sometimes alone.’

After a little while, when Miss Rachel had dried her eyes with her free hand, they went silently back, and all the way to the edge of the woods they held each to the other’s hand and were afraid.

‘You come maybe to-morrow again? ’ asked Jacob hesitantly as he took his leave of Miss Rachel to go to the barn and help with the milking.

Miss Rachel nodded her head quickly without looking at him and buried her chin deep in her coat, then walked swiftly back toward the Home — and Jacob knew she was crying again.

VII

The next afternoon Jacob sat a long time in his room before changing into his warm clothes and heavy shoes; he was perplexed and worried. He was perplexed because he could not make up his mind whether these new and unaccustomed complications that had come into his still, uneventful way of life were real and trustworthy or whether they were, as Lena and Zella doubtless thought, only the indications of approaching senility. He was worried because, now that Miss Rachel had come to participate in them, they must of necessity become graver by reason of their tangibility. Deep within himself, however, there was an unwavering conviction of the essential rightness of what was going on, and that now, late as it was, the pattern of his fulfillment was being accomplished; but could he ever convince those others to whom this fullness had never revealed itself? Jacob was doubtful, and he had to acknowledge that, in the eyes of all save Miss Rachel, so long as he continued in this new and hard process of realizing dignity and selfhood he must always seem a sentimental dotard, and that this new-found, swift-grown understanding between another and himself — and that other a woman — must remain for the rest of his small world a secret. But secrets, to Jacob’s way of thinking, had no place in truth.

The walk that afternoon was quiet and slow and friendly, so far removed from the memory even of yesterday that Jacob began to wonder whether his ponderous worry and perplexity had not been unnecessary. He and Miss Rachel were just one old man and one old woman out of several who just happened to enjoy a walk in the woods of an afternoon, and who, instead of going each alone, had availed themselves of the comfort and conversation of each other’s company. That thought was a relief to Jacob, yet it made him feel empty, too, and aimless.

When they reached the fallen log, it was Miss Rachel who detained Jacob and indicated that he should sit down. They sat in silence for many minutes, one at each end of the log, looking before them with quiet eyes; presently Miss Rachel turned and looked kindly toward Jacob.

‘Mr. Gruber,’ she began in a clear, low voice, ‘I’ve done a lot of thinking since yesterday.’

Jacob, without looking at her, nodded his head slowly.

‘Maybe because I cried yesterday you thought I was unhappy. . . . Well, I was n’t. I cried really because I was happier than I can ever remember.’ Miss Rachel looked down at her gloves and was silent for a little. ‘I found something yesterday that I looked for long ago, and because I could n’t find it then I thought it did n’t exist, so I guess I just forgot about it. Of course, somewhere inside of me, way down deep, I still must have known that it did, but so many years went by that I seemed to myself past the time for finding it, and I suppose I stopped looking. It was not unhappiness, Mr. Gruber, that made me cry yesterday; it was the shock of finding something.’ Miss Rachel laughed a little. ‘I don’t say it very well, I know, but do you understand me a little, Mr. Gruber?’

For answer Jacob looked full at Miss Rachel and smiled, and his face was lined with worry again, but his emptiness was filled.

‘Because I’ve found it now, and because, ’ — Miss Rachel hesitated, — ‘well, because we have n’t either of us got such a long time left to enjoy it, I for my part don’t mean to give it up!’ Miss Rachel tossed her head, and her thin pink nostrils fluttered with the quickness of her breathing.

’I, too, I don’t give it up, Miss Rachel! ’ Jacob rose excitedly and came over to where Miss Rachel was sitting.

‘Only we have to be careful, Mr. Gruber,’ said Miss Rachel, ‘or there is bound to be talk, especially with your wife here.’

Jacob shook his head and frowned.

‘I know,’ Miss Rachel answered his unspoken objection, ‘there should n’t be, of course, but all the wide world lies between should and is.’

‘But, Miss Rachel,’ pleaded Jacob, ‘where can we go, what can we do?’

Miss Rachel looked up at Jacob in his helplessness.

‘But I said, did n’t I, that I’d done a lot of thinking since yesterday?’ She took his hand and drew him down beside her. ‘Now you know as well as I do, Mr. Gruber, that these woods would stand a lot of cleaning up.’ Miss Rachel’s voice was businesslike and full of energy. ‘ It would n’t be a bad idea, either, to thin out some of these paths and maybe cut through a few new ones — you know, just in case there is somebody who likes to walk and still can.’ Miss Rachel winked mischievously at Jacob. ‘Well, you’re the man to do it, are n’t you? And surely no one will stop you. Is n’t the matron and are n’t the Overseers always crowing over “Mr. Gruber’s improvements ” ? ’

‘But, Miss Rachel,’ asked Jacob dubiously, ‘where do you come in?’

Miss Rachel laughed in her warm feeling.

‘You may know the woods, Mr. Gruber, but you don’t know people very well, I’m afraid. Why, I can still go walking, can’t I ? Sometimes I will walk in the open and sometimes I will walk in the woods — but mostly in the woods, of course, because there is more shelter here and it is easier going and, oh, for ever so many reasons.’ Miss Rachel looked meaningly at Jacob. ‘But you will be hard at work, so that people cannot find nearly so much to talk about, can they, now?’

Jacob’s eyes were shining; already he was making plans.

‘And then,’ Miss Rachel went on, ‘if I felt up to it, I might help you a little now and then — you know, gathering up the fagots and the lighter stuff.’

Jacob nodded his head vigorously. ‘ Ja, I know, I see now! ’ He took Miss Rachel’s hand and looked intently into her eyes. ‘It makes no matter what we are doing — it is only so we are not always alone.’

Miss Rachel bit her lip and pressed Jacob’s big hand with her small one. ‘We’d better go back,’ she said rising, ‘or maybe I might cry again.’

VIII

The long winter passed swiftly. The work in the woods went all too fast and the walks in the woods were all too few for Miss Rachel and Jacob, but they lived richly in their activity and were wise to know their joy with no thought for its lasting. And when at last the spring came, Miss Rachel and Jacob had shaken off the long, lonely past and had closed their eyes tight against what was bound to come too soon; the present was all they could manage. Jacob thought now of Lena and her crotchets as of a child long and irretrievably spoiled, and treated her kindly, and Miss Rachel had become the best-loved inmate in the Home for the Aged, for everyone felt in her presence that he was more than he really was. And then the shadow of spring advanced upon this joy.

‘I don’t like to say it,’ said Jacob one day to Miss Rachel as they stood together feeding a great bonfire of fagots and dead leaves, ‘I don’t like even to think it, Miss Rachel — but soon it must be all over, no? Then comes the planting and the farmer, — he will need me, — and all summer we can have no fires —’ He trailed off.

Miss Rachel did not reply, but stood looking into the heart of the flames.

Then, early in March, Miss Rachel had word that her sister in Seattle had died. All winter she had been on the waiting list of the Eastern Star Home, but there were no vacancies in all that time and she had been twelfth on the list. Miss Rachel was shocked by the news of her sister’s death and kept to her room for many days, her mind and heart filled with unexpected memories. Jacob was lonely again in her absence and cut off, and his work went slowly, for he, too, was remembering and the years seemed long and too many. Then the joyous winter seemed only a dream in the long sleep of living, and about him the world was as before, full of a sameness.

Late one afternoon, a fortnight after Miss Rachel had had her sad news, she came again to Jacob in the woods, where in these last days he was reluctantly making an end of his work. Because of the dusk and the quietness of her step on the spongy earth Jacob did not know she was there until he saw the firelight on her shoes. Startled at first, he looked up at her in surprise, and then, when he saw who it was, a gentleness overspread his features and there was joy in his eyes. In her hand Miss Rachel fluttered a letter, and she seemed nervous and out of breath.

‘Miss Rachel!’ Jacob rose from stooping over the fire and could say nothing more for the happiness in his heart.

Miss Rachel clutched his arm and looked anxiously about as if someone might have followed her, and when she spoke her voice was almost a hoarse whisper.

‘Jacob,’ — in her excitement and for the first time she called him that, — ‘Jacob, here — this letter!’ Miss Rachel found it difficult to speak coherently. ‘It is from my sister’s lawyer — in Seattle. She left me ten thousand dollars!’

For a long minute Jacob looked at the letter in Miss Rachel’s hand and then reached for it and opened it slowly and stooped again over the fire to read it. When he had finished, he refolded it carefully and handed it back without taking his eyes from the crackling fagots and the smouldering leaves. In the firelight his brown beaten face was stunned, and above him stood Miss Rachel, motionless and pale; and their hearts were filled with the same wonder.

A few nights later, after Lena was in bed and Jacob had put out the light, Jacob sat down on the edge of Lena’s bed for a few moments before getting into bed himself.

‘Lena,’ he began, and the darkness gave him daring, ‘what would you do if I died, what?’

Lena heaved her great bulk on to one elbow. ‘Ach, Jake, what next? It’s you what better go and see a doctor!’

Jacob chuckled. ‘No, Lena, honest now — how would you feel? ’

Lena lay down again; she had a cramp in her arm. ‘Well, Hanswurst, how should I feel, what should I do?’ She drew the covers up around the back of her neck and burrowed her head deeper into her pillow. ‘I feel bad for a while and then I forget and get over it — what else, then ? ’

Jacob was silent for a moment. ‘And would n’t you ever remember again, Lena?’ he asked finally.

‘Not so like you mean,’ said Lena firmly, turning her head a little toward Jacob. ‘That only makes it hard all over again. Now go to bed and stop your foolishness or you have to get me a sleeping pill! ’

Jacob got up then and climbed slowly into bed, but he did not go to sleep for a long time.

IX

The north-bound express roared through the warm spring night, and in the day coach Jacob turned to Miss Rachel, who was peering out of the window. He held a thick nickelplated watch in one hand.

‘About an hour now, then we cross the border,’ he announced cheerfully.

Miss Rachel looked at the watch and spoke barely above a whisper. ‘Oh, Jacob, I’m so afraid,’ she began for the hundredth time. ‘What if they find us?’

‘Well, and what of it?’ Jacob made his calm reply. ‘We are in Canada; they can’t make us come back — I don’t think it.’ He hastened then to reassure her: ‘Anyway, they don’t make us; it would be too hard for everybody.’

‘But your wife, Jacob?’

Jacob smiled quietly. ‘Ach, Lena, she makes no fuss — this gives her only an excuse to take more medicines! ’

They sat for a time in silence, Jacob and Miss Rachel, full of plans and sometimes a little afraid.

‘We can live a long time on ten thousand dollars, can’t we, Jacob?’ asked Miss Rachel finally.

Jacob nodded his head confidently. ‘And what you think, Rachel?’ he asked, adding proudly, ‘You think I can’t still earn a little?’

Miss Rachel smiled gently up at him and looked out of the window again. She could see nothing but dark shapes and a light now and then, but she did it because she was sure then that they were moving and on their way. After a time she heard Jacob chuckling to himself and she turned to him.

‘What is it, Jacob?’ she asked softly.

‘I was thinking,’ Jacob answered gayly, ‘ how our names, yours and mine, Jacob and Rachel — they are like in the Bible, no?’

Miss Rachel blinked and cocked her head. ‘So they are!’

‘Only that Jacob, he had it easy; only fourteen years he had to wait for his Rachel. . . . But this one here,’ he patted his chest, ‘he waited longer, no?’