CHAPTER XII.
The Ann Serrup of whom the sewing circle had whispered, was one of those melancholy scapegoats found, alas! in nearly every rural community, and lost in cities among myriads of her kind. She had lived in the Brixton parish all her life, but had lately come with her shame to a little house within the precincts of Dole. Left at thirteen the only sister among four drunken brothers much older than herself, the only gospel preached at—not to—her had been the terrorism of consequences. Like all false gospels this one had proved a broken reed—and not only broken but empoisoned. The unfathered child of this poor girl had been born about a year prior to her appearance in Dole.
Mabella’s heart went out to the forlorn creature, and a few days after the memorable meeting at Mrs. Winder’s she set forth to visit her, leaving Dorothy in charge of Temperance. It was a calm, sweet season. The shadow of white clouds lay upon the earth, and as Mabella walked along the country roads the chrism of the gentle day seemed to be laid uponher aching heart. For a space, in consideration of the needs of the poor creature to whom she was going, Mabella forgot the shadows which dogged her own steps.
She was going on a little absent-mindedly, when at a sudden turn in the road she came upon Vashti, who had paused and was standing looking, great-eyed, across the fields to where the sun smote the windows of Lanty’s house.
“Well, Mabella,” she said, taking the initiative in the conversation as became the “preacher’s wife.” “Where are you going?”
“I’m going to see Ann Serrup,” said Mabella. “I’ve wished to do so for some time—how plainly you can see our house from here.”
“Yes—how’s Lanty?”
“He’s very well—haven’t you seen him lately?—he looks splendid.”
“I didn’t mean his looks,” said Vashti with emphasis.
“Well, one’s looks are generally the sign of how one feels,” said Mabella bravely, although she winced beneath Vashti’s regard. “And Vashti, Dorothy can speak, she——”
Vashti broke in with the inconsiderateness of a childless woman.
“Do you know anything about Ann Serrup? Is she penitent?”
“I—I don’t know,” said Mabella hesitatingly (shehad heard most unpromising accounts of Ann’s state of mind, “Fair rampageous,” Temperance had said), “she has suffered a great deal.”
“She has sinned a great deal,” said Vashti sententiously.
They walked on almost in silence, and ere long stood before the low-lying, desolate dwelling.
A girl came to the open door as they drew near—poorly but neatly clad, and with tightly rolled hair. A girl in years—a woman in experience. A child stood tottering beside her.
“Come in,” she said to them before they had time to speak, “come in and set down.”
She picked up the child, and unceremoniously tucking him under one arm, set two chairs side by side; then put the baby down and stood as one before her accusers. Her brows were a little sullen; her mouth irresolute. Her expression discontented and peevish, as of one weary of uncomprehended rebuke. The baby clutched her dress, and eyed the visitors placidly, quite unaware that his presence was disgraceful.
Mabella looked at the little figure standing tottering upon its uncertain legs; the little dress was so grotesquely ill-made; the sleeves were little square sacks; the skirt was as wide at the neck as at the hem. She thought of her well-clad Dorothy and her heart went out to the desolate pair.
The mother, tired of Vashti’s cold, condemnatoryscrutiny, began to shift uneasily from one foot to the other.
“What’s your baby’s name?” asked Mabella, her sympathies urging her to take precedence of the preacher’s wife.
“Reuben,” said Ann.
“Reubenwhat?” demanded Vashti in sepulchral tones.
“Jest Reuben—Reuben was my father’s name”—then with fretful irritation—“jest Reuben.”
“Is your childdeformed?” asked Vashti suddenly, eyeing with disfavour the little chest and shoulders where the ill-made frock stuck out so pitifully.
“Deformed!” cried Ann, the pure mother in her aroused; “there ain’t a better-shaped baby in Dole than my Reub.”
She sat down upon the floor, and, it seemed to Mabella, with two movements, unclothed the child, and holding him out cried indignantly—
“Look at him, Missus Martin, look at him! and if you know what a baby’s like when you see one you’ll know he’s jest perfect—ain’t he, Missus Lansing? Ain’t he? You know, don’t you?”
Vashti glared in fixed disapproval at the baby, who regarded her not at all, but after a leisurely and contemplative survey of himself began to investigate the marvels of his feet, becoming as thoroughly absorbed in the mysteries of his own toes as we older infants do in our theories. “He’s a beautiful baby—I’m sureyou are very proud of him,” said Mabella kindly. Then her gaze rested upon the two poor garments which had formed all the baby’s costume. Tears filled her eyes as she saw the scrap of red woollen edging sewn clumsily upon the little yellow cotton shirt.
“I’m afraid you are not used to sewing much,” she said, “it was the clothes which spoiled the baby.”
Ann, who, unstable as water, never remained in the same mood for ten minutes together, began to cry softly, rocking back and forth sometimes.
“Oh, I wisht I was dead! I do. I never was learned nothing. ’Scuse me if I spoke up to you, Missus Martin, but I’m that ignerent! And you the preacher’s lady too! My! I dunno how I came t’ be so bad. I guess I’m jest real condemned bad; but I haint had no chance, I haint; never a mother, not so much as a grandma. Nothing but a tormented old aunt. And brothers! Lord! I’m sick of brotherses and men. I jest can’t abear the sight of a man, and I’m that ignerent. Lord! I can’t make clo’es for Reub, now he is here.” Then vehemently—“I am jest dead sick of men.”
“But, think,” said Mabella soothingly, “when Reuben is a man he’ll look after you and take care of you.”
“Yes—I s’pose he will,” said Ann, drying her eyes; then, with a sudden change of mood, she began smiling bravely. “Say—he’s that knowin’! Youwouldn’t believe it; if I’m agoin’ out in a hurry I give him sometimes an old sugar rag, but he knows the difference, right smart he does, and he jest won’t touch it if ’taint new filled; and”—with a touch of awe as at a more subtle phenomenon—“he yawned like a big person when he was two days old.”
“Why, so did my baby,” said Mabella in utter astonishment that another baby had done anything so extraordinary.
“Are you coming, Mabella?” said Vashti austerely from the doorway.
Direst disapproval darkened her countenance. Ann’s mutable face clouded at the words.
“Yes, I’m coming,” said Mabella hastily to Vashti, then she turned to Ann. “I will send you some patterns to cut his dress by,” she said. “It’s very hard at first; Temperance helped me; I’ll mark all the pieces so that you’ll know how to place them,” then she went close to Ann and put a trembling hand upon her arm.
“Ann,” she said, “promise that you’ll never do anything wicked again—promise you’ll never make your baby ashamed of you.”
“No, I won’t; I’ve had enough of all that—you’ll be sure to send a pattering with a yoke?” inquired Ann eagerly.
Poor Ann! Her one virtue of neatness was for the moment degraded to a vice; she so thoroughly slighted the spirit of Mabella’s speech. But Mabella,out of the depths of her motherly experience, pardoned this.
“Yes, I will send the nicest patterns I have,” she said.
“Soon?”
“Soon—and Ann—you’ll come to church next Sunday?”
Ann began to whimper.
“Oh, I hate t’ be a poppyshow! and all the girls do stare so, and——”
“Ann,” said Mabella pleadingly, “you’ll come?”
“Yes, I’ll come, Missus Lansing, being as you want me to,” then another swift change of mood overtook the poor, variable creature.
“They kin stare if they want to! I could tell things! Some of ’em ain’t no better nor me if all was known. I’ll jest come to spite ’em out. You see—I’ll be there.”
“I shall be so glad,” said Mabella gently, having the rare wisdom to ignore side issues. “I’ll see you, then.”
“Oh, Lor’,” said Ann, whimpering again, “ye won’t want to see me when other folkses are around, and I s’pose you’ve got a white dress and blue ribbings for church, or red bows, like as not. Lor’! Lor’! what ’tis to be born lucky. ‘Better lucky nor rich,’ I’ve heard said ofting and ofting, and it’s true, dreadful true. I never had no luck; neither had mother; she never could cook anything without burning it,and when she dyed ’twas allus streaky! I’ve heard Aunt Ann say that ofting and ofting; heisa fine baby, isn’t he?” she broke off abruptly.
“Yes, indeed,” said Mabella heartily. “Good-bye, Ann,” and stooping she kissed the girl and went out and down the path. Ann stood gazing after her.
“She kissed me,” she said dully, then in an echo-like voice repeated “kissed me.”
The old clock ticked loudly, the kettle sang on the fire, the baby fell over with a soft thud upon the floor. Ann sat down beside him, and clasping him to her breast cried bitterly to herself, and as has been often the case, the mother’s sobs lullabyed the child to a soft and peaceful sleep. She rose, with the art which comes with even unblessed motherhood, without waking the child, and laid him down gently.
“I know she won’t send a pattering with a yoke,” she said in the tone of one who warns herself against hoping too much.
Meanwhile Mabella sped after Vashti; she overtook her in about a mile.
“Goodness, Vashti,” said Mabella; “I’m sure you need not have hurried so! I’m all out of breath catching up.”
“Well, I couldn’t stand it any longer,” said Vashti.
“Stand what?” demanded Mabella, a little irritated by Vashti’s ponderosity of manner.
“That exhibition,” said Vashti with a gesture to the forlorn house, which somehow looked pitiablynaked and unsheltered. “It was disgusting! To go about petting people like that is putting a premium upon vice.”
Mabella laughed.
“You dear old Vashti,” she said, “you said that as if you had been the preacher himself—what the world could I say to her? standing there with that poor child.” A sudden break interrupted her speech. “Oh, Vashti,” she said, “isn’t it terrible? Think of that baby; what a difference between it and Dorothy! And so poor—so very poor; without even a name; Vashti—you’re a lot cleverer than me; you don’t think, do you, that they will be judged alike? You don’t think there will be one rule for all? There will be allowances made, won’t there?”
“I wonder at you, Mabella,” said Vashti, “putting yourself in a state over that girl and her brat! It’s easy seeing you’ve precious little to trouble you or you’d never carry on about Ann Serrup; a bad lot the Serrups are, root and branch; bad they are and bad they’ll be. The Ethiopian don’t change his spots! and as for crying and carrying on about her! take care, Mabella, that you are not sent something to cry for—take care.” The last ominous words uttered in Vashti’s full rich voice made Mabella tremble. Ah—she knew andVashti knewhow great cause she already had to weep.
“How can you talk to me like that?” she said to Vashti passionately; “how can you? One wouldthink you would be glad to see me in trouble. If it’s any satisfaction to you to know it I may as well tell you that——” Mabella arrested her speech with crimson cheeks. What had she been about to do? To betray Lanty for the sake of stinging Vashti into shame.
“Dear me,” said Vashti coolly; “you are growing very uncertain, Mabella!”
“Yes, I know,” stammered Mabella. “Forgive me, Vashti.”
“Oh! It doesn’t matter about my forgiveness,” said Vashti; “but it’s a pity to let yourself get into that excitable state.”
They were near the spot where their ways parted.
Mabella looked at Vashti, a half inclination to confide in her cousin came to her. It would be such a help to have a confidant, but her wifely allegiance rose to forbid any confidences regarding her husband’s lapses; she must bear the burden alone. A lump tightened her throat as she closed her lips resolutely. These little victories seem small but they are costly.
“Good-bye, Mabella,” said Vashti; “come over and have tea with us soon.”
“I’ll come over after dinner and stay awhile with you,” said Mabella, “but I won’t stay to supper.”
“Oh, why?” said Vashti. “Lanty can come in on his way home from Brixton; if he turns off at the cross road he can come straight up Winder’s lane to the parsonage. He’s often at Brixton, isn’t he?”
“Yes,” said Mabella, once more calm in herrôleof defender. “Yes, but I’ll come over some day after dinner; Lanty likes supper at home. He’s often tired after being in Brixton. I’ll bring Dorothy and come over soon for a little visit.”
“Well, you might as well come all of you for supper,” said Vashti; and somehow by a subtle intonation of the voice she conveyed to Mabella the fact that her unconsciousness was only feigned.
As Mabella went towards home the lump in her throat dissolved in tears; she allowed herself the rare luxury of self-pity for a little space, then with the instinctive feeling that she must not give footing to such weakness she pulled herself together, and went forward where Lanty waited at the gate.
When Vashti turned away from Mabella to take the little path to the parsonage, her heart also was wrung by regret and pain; she had made Mabella feel, but how gladly she would have exchanged her empty heartache for the honour of suffering for Lanty’s misdeeds. Lanty Lansing was very handsome, very winning, with that masterful tenderness and tender tyranny which women love; but it is doubtful if he (or many other men) deserved the love which these two women lavished upon him. And it must be said for Vashti that whatever her faults were, she loved her cousin well and constantly. His excesses rent her very heart; if she saw in them a hope of vengeance upon Mabella she yetdeplored them sincerely. The hate which was growing in her heart against Mabella was intensified a thousand-fold by the thought that she did not, in some way, drag Lanty back from the pit. Had she been his wife she would have saved him in spite of himself. The thought that the village was sneering and whispering about her idol made her eyes venomous, and in this mood she entered the house. Sidney was waiting for her and suddenly there swept across the woman’s soul a terrible sense of the relentless Destiny which she was working out. As in a mirror she saw herself, not the free and imperious creature she had imagined, but a serf, shackled hand and foot, so that her feet trod the devious path prepared for them from time immemorial, and her hands wrought painfully at a fabric whose fashion and design were fixed by other power than her own.
And Sidney, with his pale spiritual face, his unearthly exalted eyes, his eager-winged soul, was bound to her side. His footsteps were constrained to hers, only it seemed that whereas the path was chosen for her, his way was simply outlined by her will; she remembered the strange incident which had taken her away from the sewing circle. Again she experienced the thrill, half of fear, half of mad unreasoning triumph, which had held her very heart in suspense when Sidney had said, “You wished me to come at five.” Could it be that whilst his mind was passive, whilst he slept the sleep her wavinghands induced, whilst his faculties were seemingly numbed by the artificial slumber, could it be that he could yet grasp her desires and awake to fulfil them? The simplest knowledge of hypnotic suggestion would at once have given her incalculable command over Sidney. As it was, she could only grope forward in the darkness of half fearful and hesitating ignorance. In her advance to the knowledge that Sidney, whilst in this sleep, was amenable to suggestion (although she did not phrase it thus) she had skipped one step which would have given her the key to the whole; she had seen that he would carry out, whilst awake, a wish of hers expressed whilst he slept. She did not know that he would have been a mere automaton in her hands whilst he was in the hypnotic sleep, but she told herself that she must measure and ascertain exactly the control she had over her husband; thus nearly every day she cast the spell of deep slumber upon him and gradually, little by little, she discovered the potency of suggestion.
It must be said that Sidney was entirely acquiescent to her will. The old weird fables of people hypnotised against their wills have long since been relegated to the limbo of forgotten and discredited myths; and while it is certainly true that each hypnosis leaves the subject more susceptible to hypnotic influence, it is utter rubbish to think that influence can be acquired arbitrarily without the concurrenceof the subject. But Sidney had given himself up to the subtle delight of these dreamless slumbers as the hasheesh-eater delivers himself to the intoxication of his drugged dreams.
Sidney’s mind was torn by perpetual self-questionings; not about his own personal salvation, but about his responsibility towards the people of Dole. The more he studied the Bible the more deeply he was impressed by the marvellous beauty of the Christ story. Never surely had man realized more keenly than Sidney did the ineffable pathos and self-sacrifice of the Carpenter of Galilee. Often as he passed the little carpenter-shop where Nathan Peck came twice a week, he entered and stood watching Nathan planing the boards, and as the long wooden ribbons curled off before the steel, and the odour of the wood came to his nostrils, quick with that aroma of the forest which obtains even at the core of the oak, there surged about Sidney’s heart all the emotions of yearning and hope, and sorrow and despair which long, long ago had lifted ThatOtherfrom a worker in wood to be a Saviour of Souls; and he went forth from the little carpenter-shop as one who has partaken of a sacrament. And often he stood upon the little hill above Dole, his eyes full of tears, remembering that immortal, irrepressible outburst of yearning, “O, Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how often would I have gathered thy children together, as a hen doth gather her brood under her wings andye would not!”—the poignancy of this plaint wrung Sidney’s very soul. And how sweet it seemed to Sidney to steal away from all these questions and questionings, to fall asleep with Vashti’s eyes looking, as it seemed to him, deep down into his very soul, seeing the turmoil there and easing it with the balm of her confidence and strength—to awaken with the knowledge that there was something Vashti wished done, something he could do. Thus, whereas the occasions of Sidney’s acute headaches had been formerly the only opportunity Vashti had had of experimenting with this new and wonderful force which she so dimly understood, now it was a daily occurrence for Sidney to cast himself down upon the green leather couch and seek from Vashti the gift of sleep.
Thus, gradually, surely, Vashti won an ascendency over this man which made him in every sense her tool. Happily she did not know the full extent of her power. But if knowledge is power, certainly power brings knowledge, and thus it was that ere long Vashti was turning over in her mind the different ways and manners in which she could apply this power of hers. Thus equipped with her own unfaltering resolution and having the energy of a second person at her command, Vashti brooded over her plans.
The night after Mabella’s visit to Ann Serrup, Lanty was at home, and seated before the opendoor, was coaxing plaintive melodies from out the old fiddle, which having been regarded as a godless and profane instrument for several generations in his father’s family, had at last fallen upon happy days and into appreciative hands, for Lanty Lansing could bring music out of any instrument, although, of course, he had never been taught a note. The old fiddle under Lanty’s curving bow whispered and yearned and moaned and pleaded—the dusk fell and still he played on and on—till Mabella, having put Dorothy to bed, came out to sit upon the doorstep before his chair, resting her head against his knee. The fiddle was put down. For a little the two sat in silence. Afterwards the scene came back to them and helped them when they had sore need.
“Lanty,” said Mabella, “will you do something for me to-morrow?”
“What is it?”
“Oh, Lanty!” reproachfully.
“Of course I’ll do it; but I can’t, can I, unless I have some slight idea.”
“Well, you are right there,” she said; “I thought you were going to object! Well, you know Ann Serrup?”
“I know her, yes; a precious bad lot she is too!” Lanty’s face clouded.
“Lanty, dear, wasn’t that just a man’s word? She’s a woman, you know, and Lanty, I’ve been to see her, and it’s all so forlorn; and she’s so—so—oh,Lanty! And Vashti was there and she asked if her baby wasdeformed, fancy that! And it was the poor little scraps of clothes which made the child look queer. But it was the sort of queerness which makes you cry, and Lanty, I said I would send her some patterns, and you’ll take them over to-morrow morning, won’t you?”
“But, girlie,” he began; just then Dorothy gave a sleepy cry.
Lanty and Mabella rose as by one impulse and went into the twilight of the room where the child’s cot was. But their baby slept serenely and smiled as she slept.
“The angels are whispering to her,” said Mabella. The old sweet mother fable which exists in all lands.
“Yes,” said Lanty. A tremor shaking his heart as he wondered why this heaven of wife and child was his.
As they passed into the other room they saw the child’s clothes upon a chair in a soft little heap like a nest; and all at once there rushed over Mabella’s tender heart all the misery of that other mother, and before Lanty knew it, Mabella was in his arms crying as if her heart would break.
“Oh, Lanty, Lanty,” she sobbed; “think of poor Ann Serrup! When her baby cries in the night who goes with her to look after it?”
“There, there,” said Lanty, searching distractedly for soothing arguments; “don’t, Mabella, don’t; I’lltake the traps over first thing in the morning.” And presently Mabella was comforted, and peace rested like a dove upon the roof-tree.
So early next morning Lanty departed with the parcel. In due time he arrived before the little house. The house door stood open—humbly eager to be entered. Early as it was Ann was up, and came to the door looking neat and tidy. She took the parcel with the undisguised eagerness of a child. Lanty turned away, letting his horse walk down the lane-like road. He was not much given to theorizing; a good woman was a good one, a bad one a bad one in his estimation, but this morning he found himself puzzling uneasily over the whys and wherefores. It is an old, old puzzle, and like the conundrum of Eternity, has baffled all generations, since the patriarch of Uz set forth that one vessel is created to honour and another to dishonour. So Lanty found no solution, and was tightening his reins to lift his horse into a gallop when he heard someone calling, and turning, saw Ann speeding in pursuit. She reached him somewhat blown and decidedly incoherent as to speech.
“She has sent the yoke pattering, and a white apron and heaps of things! There ain’t nothing but real lady in Mis’ Lansing! Sakes! I wisht the preacher’s wife could see Reub now! I’ll take him to church next Sunday, and if he squalls I can’t help it And here—take this and keep it—and don’t lethim harm me, will you? And I never meant no harm to you personal, but he was for ever pestering me, and he said he was coming over early this morning for ’em, and for me to sign ’em; but Lor’! I didn’t have no ink—and don’t tell Mis’ Lansing, she’s a lovely lady, and I didn’t mean no harm, and he said there wouldn’t be no law business, because you’d give me heaps of money, ’cause being as you drank, people would believe anything of you; and Lor’! hear that baby! Mind you don’t tell Mis’ Lansing”—with which Ann turned and fled back to console her child. Lanty, much mystified, opened the thin packet of papers. An instant’s scrutiny sent him into a blind mad rage, which made him curse aloud in a way not good to hear.
For before him, writ fairly forth in black and white, was a horrible and utterly baseless accusation, purporting to be sworn to by Ann Serrup, and witnessed by Hemans, the machine agent of Brixton.
The witness had signed his name prematurely before Ann, and had written faintly in pencil “Sign here” for her benefit and guidance.
Lanty gathered the import of the papers and put them securely in his pocket.
He was just opposite a thicket of wild plums, shooting up through them was a slim and lithe young hickory. Lanty flung the roan’s bridle over a fence fork, cut the young hickory, and remounting went on his way. Only he turned away from Dole, andproceeded slowly towards Brixton, and presently, just as he entered the shadow of Ab Ranger’s wood by the roadside, he saw a blaze-faced sorrel appear round the bend and he rejoiced, for he knew that his enemy was given into his hand....
Hemans was sorely bruised when Lanty flung him from him with a final blow and a final curse. He tossed aside the short fragment of the young hickory which remained in his grasp.
Lanty’s fury had lent him strength, and he had well-nigh fulfilled the promise made in the first generosity of rage to thrash Hemans “within an inch of his life.”
“And now,” said Lanty, addressing Hemans with a few words unavailable for quotation. “And now, open your lips if you dare! If you so much as mention my name, I’ll cram the words and your teeth down your throat. Remember, too, that I have something in my pocket which would send you where you’d have less chance to prowl. And, mind you, don’t try to take it out of Ann Serrup. If you do I’ll finish your business once for all. Paugh! Vermin like you should be knocked on the head out of hand. If I stay I’ll begin on you again——.” Lanty swung himself up on the roan.
“Don’t make any mistake as to my intentions,” he called over his shoulder. “I’ve given you one warning, but you won’t get two.”
Hemans lay groaning upon the ground, and justabout that time Ann, having dressed her baby in the white pinafore Mabella had sent, came to her door, and, leaning against it, looked forth at the morning.
She thought of Hemans and the papers.
“The fat’s in the fire now,” she said, smiling inanely, divided between vague curiosity over the outcome and gratification over the baby’s appearance in its new finery.
Lanty had given Hemans salutary punishment, but his heart sickened within him.
He knew what a leech Hemans would have proved if he had once got a hold upon him; and if he had refused to be blackmailed——?
Lanty knew well with what insidious, untraceable persistency a scandal springs and grows and spreads in the country. He knew how hard it is to kill, how difficult to locate, like trying to catch mist in one’s hands. He had heard often that wicked proverb which says, “Where there’s smoke there must be some fire.” A man has often self-possession to extricate himself from a danger, the retrospect of which makes him nearly die of fear. And so it was with Lanty, as there grew upon him the sense of what a calamity might have overtaken him.
How Mabella might have been tortured by this horrible falsehood. Mabella, his wife, who blushed still like the girl that she was! It was a very tender greeting he gave his wife and child when he reached home, and he made Mabella very happy by hisaccount of Ann’s delight over her gift. And then he strode off to his fields, and all day long he remembered two things—that Mabella’s charity to the poor disgraced girl had already brought its blessing back to the giver, and that one phrase of Ann’s, “being as you drank.”
Lanty had never realized fully before what he was doing. But his eyes opened. He could look forward to the future, but the thought of the past gave him a sense of helplessness which made his heart ache.
With every honest effort of his hands that day he registered a vow. The peril he had escaped had opened his eyes to the other dangers which threatened the heaven, which he had thought he possessed so securely, of wife and child.
The real purification of Lanty’s life from the sporadic sin which had beset him took place that day as he worked in his fields, but his friends and neighbours always thought the change dated from another day a few weeks later.
For although we have learned our lesson well, yet Destiny, like a careful schoolmaster, takes us by the hand, and leading us over sharp flints and through thorny thickets, revises the teachings of our sufferings.