The wind died down; it was very still and dark. The dew fell. Presently Homer Wilson rose, and, still in the dark, found his way softly upstairs. His thick brown hair was laden with the night damps, but even the first heavy dews of spring do not leave long, glistening, smarting furrows on the cheeks—do not fall in slow-wrung, scalding drops upon clinched hands, do not linger in salt traces about the lips they touch.
When Homer Wilson avowed conversion in the little Methodist Church, his mother confided to Mrs. Deans that she was exceedingly glad thereat. "I can let him go to the city with an easier mind, now that I know he's got religion," she said. Homer had gone to the anxious-seat the night before, during the revival meeting, had been prayed over, and sung over, and had avowed, in a few jerky, hesitating sentences, that "he felt better—happier—there is a load off my mind—I—" But his testimony had been interrupted at this point, greatly to his own relief and his mother's wrath, by enthusiastic Sister Warner beginning to sing, in a high, shrill treble:
"Once I was blind,But now I can see;The Light of the World is Jesus."
Homer retired from the meeting feeling a little dazed. He knew he had done what was expected of him, and believed it was the right thing to do, but was a bit confused as to the impulse which had prompted him to take the step.
The next morning he started for the commercial college, where he was about to take a course. He was alert to the possibilities of life, and was clear-headed enough to see that without education his chances were nil.
He had gone, winter after winter, to the village school, and had a wide reputation among the villagers as a mathematician.
"It's pretty hard to fool Homer Wilson on figgers," was the general verdict.
He was too progressive to dream of spending his life in that little hamlet, so he saved all his earnings, and at last had enough to cover the low expenses of a two-year course at the business college—an institution which, among its numerous advantages, promised "to secure good situations for such of the students as shall obtain our diploma."
When Homer Wilson started from the village, he was a good specimen of the country Hercules; tall, sinewy, resolute, with unflinching will and bulldog courage. His conversion, if it had not sprung from his inmost soul or stirred the deepest depths of his heart, had at least awakened and strengthened his better resolutions; his mind was eager to receive the knowledge that he knew meant power. His hopes were high, his heart and temper generous.
He metHershortly after he commenced his course. Her brother was attending the college and took Homer to his home one night. Homer thought her perfection, for his standard of comparison was not high. She had fluffy yellow hair, and pretty eyes, and pretty ways, and pretty speeches galore. She was winning and cordial, and he thought her absurd questions about country ways and country doings very entertaining. She was bright and quick and quite charmed this keen young man, who, for all his shrewdness, proved an easy prey to these trivial acts which girls of her caste exercise so unsparingly. He confided to her all his ambitions, and she listened eagerly.
Perhaps he gave her a rather too glowing account of the farm at home. The peaches and grapes were, perhaps, hardly so plentiful, and certainly were not so easily obtained. The harvests were, perhaps, not quite so golden, the garden perhaps not so lovely, as he depicted it, nor his father so admirable, nor his mother so benevolently kind to everybody. But he had left home for the first time, and, after all, despite his ambitions, his heart was yet in the country, with the fields, the sun, the birds and the trees.
Under these circumstances a man is prone to forget the tedious process of planting and nursing and cultivating the peach trees until they are fit for fruiting—to overlook the ploughing and sowing and harrowing, and the long days of toil before the fields "whiten to the harvest," and to think and speak of both fruit and grain as springing, with all the beauty of spontaneity, from the gracious Mother Earth. And his listener, if she be a selfish, shallow creature, unthinking and unheeding, is prone to think only of results, and not at all of the toil they represent.
So life slipped along with Homer Wilson, studying and loving and writing home. Then came a summer day when he tookHerfor a day's trip to his home in Jamestown. His mother had outdone herself preparing country dainties. It was the time of strawberries, and there were strawberries and cream, and strawberry shortcake, and crullers, and pies, and boiled ham, and the sun was shining, andShefluttered about, genuinely pleased with many things and affecting to be delighted by everything.
Old Mr. Wilson had been at his best. Mrs. Wilson was urbane in a new dress, and Homer strode about, showingHerthe farm, erect and happily excited. It was the halcyon day of his life. In the evening there was the trip back to the city, Homer taking care of the basket of strawberries his mother had bestowed uponHer.
That night she promised to marry him. He wrote to his people, and his mother returned a somewhat unintentionally lugubrious epistle, conveying their good wishes and consent.
Weeks and months sped, and Homer had never been home since that day. His old people did not take that amiss, for travelling, as they knew, cost money.
But there came a day when his course was completed, the coveted diploma bestowed upon him, and a situation secured for him as bookkeeper in a lumber-yard, at thirty-five dollars a month. He made up his mind to go home for a day or two before starting work. He reached the village elate—fortune seemed within his grasp.
His father was surly and harassed-looking; his mother's face looked older and with genuine lines of trouble about the lips, far more significant than the peevish wrinkles of self-pity that creased her brow.
He soon learned the cause of these things. The mortgage, which had always seemed as much a matter of course to him as the taxes or the road-work, was about to be foreclosed. The man who had lent them the money would not renew it; he hinted that he feared for his interest, as it seemed there was no young man to take hold of the place, and in the event of the property deteriorating he feared for his principal.
The old people before this dilemma seemed numbed. They could think of no expedient, and were apparently incapable of deciding what course to pursue.
Homer listened to it all in sick wonder that he had not been told, rejoicing inwardly that he had cost them nothing at least for two years back, though he also realized with bitterness that he had helped them none. He went to his old room that night to fight a hard battle with himself, and to conquer—to give up his ambitions, which, humble as they seem, were yet great to him; to relinquish the joy of seeingHerdaily; to return to the old, hopeless struggle of striving to make ends meet, to bend his energies to the circumscribed field of making the most of the few acres of the old farm; to come back and be called a failure by his friends; to have to wait a long, long time before he could call Her "wife." But while that last idea held the bitterest thought of all, in it also lay the kernel of the hope which was to keep his heart alive. He felt he had a sure and certain hope of a happy future, no matter how long deferred, and he remembered, with a pang of pity, that his father and mother had only a past.
His brothers and sisters were all married long since, and each had struggle enough to keep the wolf from the door. No help from any one but himself could relieve his old people.
The dawn found him resolved. He told his father and mother at the breakfast-table. They were both delighted, but did not know very well how to express it. To a stranger's mind there might have been some doubt as to whether they appreciated the sacrifice or not. They did not in full. No one save, perhaps, a woman who loved him could have known the magnitude of his renunciation.
His father and he went that day to see the old man who held the mortgage. He was a shrewd old miser, and was fain to secure himself in every way against anxiety and loss. He insisted that the new mortgage should be made out in Homer's name. He wanted this open-browed, strong, resolute young man for his debtor, and not the vacillating old man, who looked as if no responsibility would trouble him long. So the farm was transferred to Homer's name, and the mortgage also.
Homer resumed his old life unfalteringly. He wrote and toldHerall about his change of plans, and she replied to his letters regularly. Her letters were not very satisfying; women of her fibre are not usually very fascinating on paper. So Homer felt trebly the sacrifice he was making, for he attributed none of his sense of loss to the lack of real feeling in her letters. On the contrary, he thought those letters, with their stilted beginning and spidery writing, the sweetest of all epistles; and thought to himself how altogether lovely she was, when even such letters as these left him unsatisfied and with heart-hunger unappeased.
Homer was not one to put his hand to the plough and then draw back. He threw into his work all the energy of his resolute will, and backed it by the severest physical toil he was capable of. It was up-hill and disheartening work, but he toiled on. He had disappointments enough and to spare, but he wrote them all down toHer, and forgot them when he read that she was "so sorry."
He had progressive ideas which sometimes worried him sorely, for it was trying to see others availing themselves of modern appliances for cultivating, etc., while Homer felt bound to struggle on with the old implements his father possessed, which called for double the expenditure of labor and time, and even then did not yield satisfactory results.
In the spring, too, it took the heart out of him to walk the rows of his peach orchard and find a third of the trees killed, girdled by the teeth of the field-mice. Homer's heart almost failed him when he discovered this last mishap, for he was oppressed by the knowledge that he could have prevented it. It was true that he could not afford the expensive shields of metal for his trees that some of his neighbors had, but if, immediately after that heavy snowstorm of last winter, he had gone out and tramped the snow tightly round each tree, then they would not have been girdled; for the snow, if left undisturbed, never clings close to a peach tree; there is always a space between, and the mice creep round and round the tree in this space, gnawing it to the height of the snow. The peach trees next the fence, where the snow had drifted, were girdled completely up to a height of three or four feet.
Homer had visitedHerin the winter. The week after the heavy snowstorm had been spent with her. His mother reminded him of this, and he flung out of the house angrily. He was fairly sick over the loss of his trees, and to have anything cold said about Her was too much. He wroteHerall about it; perhaps in his desperate longing for sympathy, loving sympathy and comprehension, he depicted the disaster as even more serious than it really was.
He waited for her letter eagerly. It came. Her frivolous, mercenary soul had taken fright. She sheltered herself behind the old excuse for disloyalty—worn thread-bare by women of all stations. She wrote that she felt she "did not love him as she should if she was to be his wife."
He had sent the little Home-boy to the Post-Office for the letter; he brought it to the field where Homer was planting out tomato-plants. Homer Wilson read his letter twice or thrice, put it carefully in its envelope, and then safely in his pocket. He went on with his task—slowly—slowly, though, with none of the tremulous haste with which he had been exhausting himself for months. He packed the roots with soil; it was some relief, the hard, resistent pressure of the earth; there was something left to battle against, if nothing left to fight for. So he continued his row, feeling a fierce wrath if one of the shaky little plants would not stand straight, and hushing the Home-boy's chatter with a terrible, pale look.
He completed his task, and went about his other work in an atmosphere of enforced calm that was torture. By some chance none of his tasks that day called for any output of physical strength. It was a day of small things, trivial tasks which maddened him by their helpless need for patience, not strength.
But the weariest hours pass, and night fell over the village as a veil. Then he wrote to Her a few straightforward, manly lines, setting her free; telling her she had acted rightly if she did not love him. Then he lay down for another night of poignant thought. He recalled Her visit to the farm, and remembered how impatient he had felt when his mother maundered on about sending back the basket the strawberries went in. He had felt a little ashamed of his mother's thrift just then.
When the morning came Homer was ready for work, but there had been a distinct decadence in him during the night that was past. He had no longer anything to live for but money; he rose to search for this only good with eager, greedy eyes. For this poor countryman had come of a long race of penurious, grasping men and women, and that mercenary craving for money and land had been latent in his nature since his birth. When he went to the business college it stirred within him vaguely, and might then have developed, but better ambitions ousted it. But these aspirations were gone, and in their place flourished—grown to its full height in a single night—the Upas Tree of Greed.
He told his people next day. His mother promptly said, "I knowed how it would be! A big-feeling, handless creature, idle and good for nothing! With her airified ways and her notions; I told you so all along, Homer," etc., etc. But Homer, ere even the second word was spoken, was out of the house and striding along with black brows to his tomatoes. The row he had planted the day before looked limp; by night they were yellow—withered—dead. In replanting them he found each stalk broken clean off below the earth; he had indulged his strength too much in packing the earth about them. Day by day the change in him went on—gradually, almost imperceptibly, but startlingly apparent, had any one contrasted the Homer of the present with the man of the past. It was very pitiful. Worst of all, he was conscious himself of the change, but could not analyze it, so could do nothing to arrest the atrophy of his soul.
He began to prosper by fits and starts; later more steadily. He had a balance at the end of the summers now, and invested it in better stock, new implements and fine varieties of fruit. He hid his aching heart under an offensively blustering manner, and was so morbidly afraid of any one knowing his secret that he was too carelessly gay—too full of pointless jests. Often, after a gathering of the village young people, he strolled home under the stars, dazed and wondering, his throat harsh with much speech, his head aching with tuneless laughter. Was he really the man who had chattered on so a few minutes since? he asked himself. And the other young people said, among themselves, "Homer Wilson does like to show off so!"
It was an anguish to him when he saw, now and then, a young man leave the village, win what he considered success, and come back smiling, content, and well dressed, for a brief holiday; then back to the world outside again.
His temper became irascible. When his horses were refractory he was unmerciful; but after any outbreak against a dumb animal his stifled manhood rose against this last, worst outrage against it. But the horses did not recall the extra feeding and light work as they did the blow, and they shrank and shivered and started nervously when he approached. He noted this, and it cut him to the heart, or stung him into dull wrath against them, as his mood was.
The farm did better and better, and well it might; all the honest and generous part of a man's nature was being sunk in it. He began to pay the principal of the loan in instalments; at last he had the farm clear.
His brothers and sisters murmured against him. Homer had stolen their birthright, they whispered; he had got hold of the farm just when the hard times were past; he had wheedled the old people into giving it all to him, they said, and they each and every one had worked as hard as he had, and besides he had all his own way, while they had had to work under the old man's orders.
So the boys came home with their families, and paid long visits and impressed upon the old man how Homer had "bested him." And the girls returned with their children, and condoled with their mother. They departed, leaving the old man morose, irritable and repining, the old woman in tearful self-pity; and Homer saw it all and smiled grimly, but said no word.
So the old people saw grudgingly his hard-won success, although they shared it fully, and spoke of their other children always with the prefix "poor," as if contrasting Homer's prosperous and happy lot with theirs.
He had, after all, a grim sense of humor, and this Jacob-like light in which his family viewed him filled him with sneering mirth. Verily they were a miserable tribe of Esaus. But the mirth died out at last, leaving a residuum of rage against his kin, who so persistently misjudged him, and one bitter night he lay and cursed the resolution which had brought him back to rescue his old people from the slough of despond.
With the acknowledgment of this regret, the disintegration of his soul would seem to be complete.
"And oh, the carven mouth, with all its greatIntensity of longing frozen fastIn such a smile as well may designateThe slowly murdered heart, that, to the last,Conceals each newer wound, and back at fateThrobs Love's eternal lie:—'Lo, I can wait!'"
"And all that now is left me, is to bear."
That night in the darkness, Homer Wilson's lip curled as he thought of his mother's too ready fears for him, nor could he refrain a sneer at the idea of Mrs. Deans' disinterested benevolence. But after that, he set himself to slumber, but in vain. Sleep, that
"Comfortable bird,That broodeth o'er the troubled sea of the mindTill it is hush'd and smooth,"
would not bestow its benison upon his tired brain and weary heart, for he was haunted by the memory of Myron Holder's hopeless face.
It had been, these past years, no unusual thing for this poor countryman to lie the long nights through, tortured by the vision of a woman's face: but it had ever been a fair, pretty, laughing face that had thus enthralled him within the bounds of painful thought; a face that by its brightness cast a shadow upon every other vision that strove to tempt him to forget; a face he had worshipped, and thought on tenderly, as his own; a face he had striven to imagine old; a face he had even dared to think of, dead, and always—always as his own precious possession.
But this night his reverie was no selfish one of bygone bliss, or present pain, or future hopelessness; it was wholly of a woman's pale face, carven cameo-like against a night of hair, and exceeding sorrowful. He recalled Myron Holder as she had been, a plump and pretty girl; one whom all the boys in Jamestown had liked, but who had been kept rigidly away from all the village gatherings by her grandmother. He recalled the cadence of her voice, softened always and made richer than the strident Jamestown voice by the English accent she had inherited. He remembered having heard her singing once as he drove past the little hop-clad cottage; as he thought of it, the words came back to him in part:
"Where the bee sucks, there suck I;In a cowslip's bell I lie.* * * * * *Merrily, merrily, shall I live nowUnder the blossom that hangs on the bough."
He recollected how a rippling laugh prolonged the song. He had caught a glimpse of her that day; she was standing beneath a cherry tree—her upstretched arms held a blossomed bough, and she gave it little jerks in time to her singing—the white petals of the cherry blooms showered down upon her hair in fragrant snow. Her grandmother called her in—scolding her as an "idle maid"; Myron had fled into the house still laughing, and with the cherry blooms clinging to her dark hair; and as Homer drove on, he thought what a light-hearted girl she was. That was in the first year of his sacrifice—now he caught his breath as he mentally compared the girl beneath the cherry tree finishing her song with thrills of laughter with the woman standing mute in the moonlight as he had so late beheld her.
How utterly incongruous it seemed to think of Myron Holder now in connection with that heart-whole girl. How much she had lost! That day when he heard her laughter and her singing, he had compared Myron for a moment toHer,—now, alas! she was more like him. This set him off into another train of thought: How much he too had lost! He began to wonder dimly if he had been guilty of any cowardice. A phrase of Jed Holder's came back to him; he was full of trite saws, that little English broom-maker, and when any one lost their courage before misfortune, he used to say they "let their bone go with the dog." Had not he—Homer—let slip some of his self-respect before the loss of his love? He hazily perceived the difference between self-respect and self-seeking, but he could not condemn himself just yet; he began to dissuade himself from this dissatisfaction with himself; he recounted his achievements—the paying off the mortgage—restocking the farm—planting the new orchard—and reshingling the barn—sinking the cistern—his successful experiments—his prudential management—his economy; he marshalled all these arguments against the feeble voice that strove to speak of a narrowed mind, a hardened heart, a bitter spirit, and for the nonce stilled it, only stilled it, however; happily for Homer Wilson, it was not yet stifled utterly.
It was pitiable, but natural in one so generous as in reality Homer was, that he should overlook completely his real claims to credit: his patience with his whining mother, his generosity to his father, his tolerance of his ungrateful brothers and sisters. He attained a quasi-self-content after a time, but still tossed restlessly. At last he could endure it no longer; he sprang up, dressed, and going to his window, drew aside the curtain and looked forth toward the village. The dusk of night had given way to the cold darkness of the hour before dawn; as he looked, a dull yellow light illumined the panes of one low window, then it faded out to reappear outside the house; it went (for at that distance its feeble glow did not reveal the hand that bore it)—it went waveringly along some hundred yards, then was lowered, and vanished. There was a space of darkness, then the light was raised, and proceeded back to the house; it vanished round the corner, gleamed a moment from the window, and again journeyed forth in the dusk, again was lowered—again lost to sight—again its feeble gleam traced its pathway toward the dwelling.
Homer Wilson knew by the location what house sent forth this wandering light, and following a swift impulse, ran downstairs, pulled on an old pair of soft shoes, let himself out quietly, and sped along the highway to the village.
The streets were silent, the dwellings dark, Jamestown still slumbered. As he reached the house where the light was, he entered the garden through a gap in the dilapidated fence, walked along in the darkest shadow until he came to the corner at the point where the light's journeyings ceased, and stood there hidden by an overgrown bush of privet; and then he saw the light come forth: it was a queer old lantern Myron Holder carried, one, indeed, brought from England. It had lighted her mother's happy footsteps along Kentish lanes; but how differently that long dead Myron had sped! "Merry heart makes light foot," her husband used to say; alas, that their child should lack that happy impetus! Myron advanced slowly, unsteadily almost—the four little panes of the lantern lighted dimly by the end of a tallow candle. She carried in her other hand a large pail.
Homer could not understand her errand, creeping forth thus in the sleeping night. She came nearer and nearer, and at last he understood.
She reached the old well (the best well in Jamestown, and the deepest); set down her lantern, and taking the handle of the windlass began to lower the bucket; creak—creak went the wooden windlass; at last there came a faint splash, and Myron painfully rewound the chain; she emptied the well bucket into her pail, lifted it (throwing, as Homer thought, all her physical strength into the lifting of the heavy pail, and seeming to move by the force of her will alone), and bending far over, proceeded to the house. He traced her footsteps by the lantern's gleam to the kitchen door; he heard the plash of water, and then once more the weary light emerged. Myron Holder was carrying the water for her grandmother's washing before starting for her mile's walk and subsequent day's work at Deans'. Homer Wilson's familiarity with household affairs told him this—whispered also something of her motherhood and its demands upon her, with which this cruel toil so ill accorded.
He was only a young countrymen, rough and not refined to careful phrase.
"It's damnable!" he said below his breath, and ground his heel into the sand.
As she approached the well a second time, he waited till she set down her lantern and pail, and then stepped forth from the shadow—a tall, strong figure in the gloom, uttering her name softly:
"Myron—Myron Holder!"
For a heart-beat she stood rigid, then her hands clasped: an instant thus she stood, and then stretched forth her arms with an infinitude of yearning helplessness, an agony of tenderness and pleading, a world of relief in the gesture.
"You have come," she said.
"YOU HAVE COME!""YOU HAVE COME!"
In all his after-life, Homer Wilson never forgot the awful accent in which these words—meant-to-be-welcoming words to the man for whom she had suffered so much—were uttered. Horrified at the cruel mistake he had caused, he stood for a moment motionless; the next, he had sprung forward—for Myron Holder fathomed her mistake and fell without a sound.
Homer caught her before she touched the ground, and holding her in his arms, distraught with self-reproach, strove to awaken her by calling her name.
"Myron—Myron," he whispered, with all the intensity of suppressed feeling, "Myron—Myron."
Her eyes unclosed; she did not stir, nor flush, nor speak. She only looked at him out of eyes which were terrible in their tragic despair; eyes which seemed to accuse him of his manhood, that rendered him akin to her betrayer.
As Homer Wilson looked upon that pallid face, which the wan light of dawn illumined palely, his soul was suddenly smitten with self-contempt. What was the grief before which he had abased himself? What was it to endure beside open shame? Life had seemed to him almost insupportable, endurable only because he felt he had not merited the pain. What must it be to this woman, knowing she had bought contempt at the price of her own folly?
He recalled with what morbid care he had concealed the pangs he felt; how he had dreaded lest any eye discern his pain. What must it be to endure, not only sorrow and desertion and betrayal, but to endure it all openly; to meet in every eye a question, to hear on every lip a sneer, to know that every heart held scorn?
This is the doom that has driven hermits to the desert, that has tempted women to—
"From the world's bitter wind,Seek shelter in the shadow of the tomb,"
These thoughts did not formulate themselves in his brain; they rushed upon him—instantaneous impressions—and vanished, leaving ineffable compassion in his heart, as he looked at the anguished face of Myron Holder. She was weakly trying to steady herself, and at last said in a lifeless voice, "I can stand alone now."
"Forgive me, Myron," said Homer, too much moved to feel any awkwardness; "forgive me—I frightened you."
"No," she said, "you did not frighten me; I thought——" She paused.
"You thought——" He began, but hesitated.
"I thought you werehe" she said, in breathless tones. Homer shuddered at the inflection of the words. In such accents might one acknowledge Death's dominion over one well-beloved. He threw off the chill at his heart and caught her hands.
"Myron," he said, "who is he?"
"I cannot tell you," she answered.
"Tell me," he urged; "tell me, and be he far or near, high or low, I will bring him to you."
"I cannot tell you," she repeated. Then for once moved beyond her self-control, "Oh, that I could!"
"Why can't you?" he asked hotly. "It is but common justice—let him bear his part."
"I promised," she replied simply, regaining her calm, the momentary glow of impatience dying out of her voice.
"Promised!" he echoed. "What's a promise given tohimworth? Nothing—absolutely nothing. Promised! He did some fine promising, I dare swear. A promise to him!"
"I promised," she said again; then pushing back her head a little that she might look him in the face (for she was hardly of the common height of women), she went on: "I promised, and I will keep my promise; he will come, and I can wait." In an instant her head sank. Her own words had brought before her a terrible mirage of what that waiting meant. He let fall her hands, and stepped back a pace. The action seemed to break the bond that had held at bay the memory of the world. Constraint fell upon Homer Wilson, and Myron's face burned in the dusky light.
"Did you want anything?" she asked in uncertain tones.
"No," he answered. "I saw your light from the window at home, and I came to see what work was going on so early."
"I always do what I can before I go to Mrs. Deans'," she said; "this is wash-day."
"You will kill yourself," he cried angrily. "What's your grandmother thinking of?"
Myron's head sank. "I deserve it all, you know," she said. "I——"
"You've no call to kill yourself," retorted Homer hotly. "Mrs. Deans is an old wretch, and your grandmother's a——"
"She's good to my baby," said Myron, checking his speech with a gesture. He recalled the child's existence, and, moved by an odd impulse, said gently:
"How is your child, Myron?"
She glanced at him with a gratitude so intense that he flushed and moved uneasily—as one accredited with a worthy deed he has not done.
"Oh, so well," she said. "He——" She paused, her face flaming. "Oh, do go——"
"Let me carry that pailful for you?" he asked, hesitatingly.
"No—no—do go!" she returned.
Both were now painfully constrained and eager to be alone.
"Well, I may as well be going, then," said Homer; and turning, made toward the gap in the fence, through which he had entered the garden. Once on the street, he quickly ran across the two streets of the village, and made his way through the fields, reaching his own barns just as his mother came to the kitchen door. She was looking toward the village, and saying shrilly to her husband:
"What did I tell you? Up and gone at this time! Fine doings these, I must say! Oh, I knowed it by the way he spunked up last night when I jest was giving him a hint to look out for her. I tell ye no such woman as that sets her foot in these doors; no, not if he laws on it. I tell ye——"
"Did you want me, mother?" asked Homer, showing himself at the stable-door, curry-comb and brush in hand.
"Oh, you're there, be ye?" said his mother, with a gasp of surprise.
"Yes," said Homer; "do you want me?"
"No; oh, no. I was just looking at the morning," said his mother, and vanished.
"Just got back in time," soliloquized Homer, contemptuously, as he went back to his work.
Left alone, Myron Holder stood a moment motionless. Then she took a few steps forward, into the shadow of the bush that but lately had held for her such cruel delusion. The mists of the morning that still lingered about the bush parted at her passage and clung round her, chill shreds of vapor.
The evanescent flush died out of her face; her eyes were dazed with pain—she locked her hands (stained with the rust of the windlass chain) and wrung them cruelly; now she pressed her quivering lips together—now they parted in shuddering respirations. How many tides of hope had swelled within her heart! How stony were the shores on which they had spent themselves! How salt the memory of their floods! But never a wave of them all had risen so high as this one, which had swept her forward to the very haven of hope only to leave her fast upon the sands of despair.
She looked from side to side, with pitiable helplessness in her eyes, over the desolate garden. Each bush seemed a mocking sentinel appointed to watch her misery; nay, to her stricken heart each seemed the abiding place of some new cheat that in time would issue forth to delude and torture her. Unfailing tears gathered in her eyes; she let her face fall in her hands and breathed forth a name—
"Like the yearning cry of some bewildered birdAbove an empty nest";
but more softly than any plaint of bird was that name uttered, whispered so faintly that no cadence of its sound trembled even amidst the leaves that brushed her down-bent head.
Presently Myron Holder stood erect, her face masked by a patience more poignant than pain, more sublime than sorrow, more dreadful than despair.
Not all heroic souls are cast in heroic shapes. There was something in this woman's hard-wrought hands, and simple garb, and weary eyes, and tender mouth—nay, in the undefinable meekness of her attitude, that belied her courage. She filled her pail and bore it to the house, setting her face as resolutely toward her fate as she set her hand to carrying the heavy pail; and, heavy as her burden was, she rebelled no more against bearing it than she did against the weight of the pail that she herself had filled.
"Earth has seenLove's brightest roses on the scaffold bloom,Mingling with freedom's fadeless laurels there."
But easier indeed were it to lay Love's roses in full blossom on a scaffold than to cherish them, as this woman did and other women have done, in the wastes of a betrayed trust—their blossoms dyed a frightful scarlet by the blood of a breaking heart. Love's roses grow in bitter soil ofttimes; their petals are soon spent, but their thorns are amaranthine.
"We rest—a dream has power to poison sleep;We rise—one wandering thought pollutes the day."
"Life, like a dome of many-colored glass,Stains the white radiance of eternityUntil death tramples it to fragments."
"The silent workings of the dawns" were past, and the whole sky pearled to an exquisite soft grayness when Myron Holder set out that day to go to Mrs. Deans'. The road swam dizzily before her; the snake fence zig-zagged wildly; the trees whirled round; the very stones appeared as if rolling over and over in awkward gambols; the wayside cows loomed gigantic to her uncertain vision. Her head throbbed heavily—her knees trembled; the physical reaction following supreme mental effort had set in, and her nerves, denied outward expression of the strain put upon them, were racking her frame sorely. She persevered, however, holding a wavering course from one side of the road to the other; at last she reached the little graveyard of Jamestown, wedged in between the farms of Mr. White and Mr. Deans. Its picket-fence was garlanded with long trails of the native virgin-bower clematis, just putting forth its first leaf-buds. The hepaticas, their blossoms past, showed circular clumps of broad, green leaves, standing erect on downy stalks over the prostrate copper-colored ones of last year; the blood-root had lost all its white petals, and its spear-pointed seed-pods and single, broad, green leaves stood in thick masses, like miniature stands of arms, spear and shield; but the trilliums were nodding their triune-leaved blossoms; the wild phlox swayed daintily its cluster of fragile azure blooms; the meadow violets were clustered in dark-blue masses; the bracken ferns were uncoiling their fuzzy fronds; the May apples (mandrake) were pointing through the mellow soil, like so many small wax candles. Now and then a pungent odor came to her as she trod upon the fresh-springing pennyroyal, or bruised the stems of the mint that grew everywhere.
She was late already, as she knew, but was moved to go to see her father's sleeping-place. She went slowly between the graves, carefully avoiding treading on any of them. Her father had told her of the ill-luck that follows the foot that treads upon a grave and the hand that casts away bread. By what fearful sacrilege had this woman purchased her fate?
Her eyes were clearing now; and as she stood beside her father's grave, she looked upon it steadily enough. She felt a rapt sense of his presence—he had been very good to her in his absent-minded way. If he had lived! The woman found herself grateful that he died before. She rested her thoughts here to ask herself a question: If her father had lived, would she have lost herself? She held her breath for an instant—then turned and sped from his grave. She felt that her gaze defiled it—for, throbbing in each artery, tingling through every vein, poisoning her heart, she felt her whole being rise to affirm its shame—to give the damning answer "Yes" to that poignant self-interrogation.
She was certainly late that morning, and Mrs. Deans met her with flushed face and angry eyes.
"Well, this is a nice time of day! 'Laziness is much worth when it's well guided.' It would seem to me, Myron Holder, as if you'd try to make some return for the favors I've shown you, and what I've done for you, and what I've put up with. Time and time again, I've said to myself, says I, 'Let her go—what's the good of her? What's the good of keeping a dog and doing your own barking?' But being sorry for you, I never said nothing. But now, I tell you, Myron Holder, this thing's got to quit—either you can come here in decent time, or you can stay home!" Then, in a more insulting tone of voice, she asked: "What time did ye start this morning? I'll ask your grandmother. Pretty doings these, loitering along the roads! I'd have thought you'd had enough of that. Well, don't look at me like that! You're too good to be spoken to, I suppose; it's a pity you didn't do some blushing before now! It's rather late in the day for such delikit feelings—you what? Stopped in the graveyard? I wouldn't wonder, nothing more likely; were you alone? Well 'twasn't your fault, if you were. I guess Jed Holder thinks himself lucky to be rid of the world and such doings as yours. Poor Jed! Little did he know what shame he was leaving behind him. How your grandmother stands it and how she abides that brat,Ican't see. One thing I've always said: 'Don't bring me no such brats as them, for I won't be concerned with no such doings!' But there, what's the use of talking? I never say nothing, but I think a lot. I guess your mother must have been a beauty from all I hear tell. Certainly you didn't get your bad blood off Jed Holder, and you must have took it somewhere. 'Like mother, like child'—well—none of such worry for me!" Then, stepping aside suddenly, and thus clearing the passage she had hitherto barred, she went on: "What are you standing looking at? Ain't you going to scrub to-day, or are you come visiting? I'm sorry if you have"—here a fine sarcasm echoed in her tone—"because I can't go and set down and entertain you, for I have my bread and butter to earn. But don't mind me—go right into the setting-room and make yourself at home."
Myron having availed herself of the first opportunity to move from under Mrs. Deans' insulting glances, had already divested herself of her sunbonnet, and was getting cloths and water for her scrubbing. Soon she escaped from Mrs. Deans' eyes, but the sound of her jibing tongue came harshly to her in every pause of her work.
The forenoon passed. After dinner the hired man brought the newspaper in and gave it to Mrs. Deans. She looked at the price of butter and eggs, and passed it to her husband.
He sat blinking by the half-open window: upon the window-sill was a bottle of sarsaparilla, a patch-work pin-cushion, and two or three potatoes Homer Wilson had brought to the Deans as samples—he being agent for a seedsman. Mrs. Deans brought out a big canvas-bag of carpet-balls, and, placing two chairs back to back, began winding the balls into huge skeins. She was going to dye them. Mrs. Deans worked away with her hanks, tying them carefully in separate strands, so that they would dye equally. Mr. Deans read his paper, its leaves rustling in his tremulous fingers. The sound of Myron Holder's scrubbing came raspingly through the air. The bound girl was out in the "yard" raking together dead leaves, bits of old bones, and emptied sarsaparilla bottles, making it tidy for the summer.
"Well, Jane!" ejaculated Henry Deans, in a tone of pleased surprise, "who d'ye think's dead?"
"Who? Old Mrs. White? Is it her? Or Mrs. Warner's sister up in Ovid? She was took terrible bad a week ago Friday. It's young Emmons! I know it! But say, isn't he owing for that last cord of wood? I never seen anything like it, the way people cheat! It's something awful! But I'll have that four dollars, though, out of Mame Emmons. If she can afford flannel at fifty cents a yard (and Ann White saw her pricing it), she can afford to pay her debts. Well, them Emmonses always was shiftless, but——"
"It ain't Emmons, though Homer Wilson says he looks most terrible bad; it's Follett!"
"You don't say!" said Mrs. Deans; "you don't say! When was he took?"
"It don't tell," answered her husband, screwing his eyes horribly as he read the obituary over again. "It don't tell—oh—yes it does! 'Caught a heavy cold a month ago and settled on his lungs.' Well, he's gone, then."
"Not much loss, his kind ain't," said Mrs. Deans contemptuously.
"Wonder if he forgot me before he went?" said her husband, with a reflective enjoyment. "That was a pretty good one, wasn't it, Jane?"
"Yes; no mistake about it, Henry, you hit the nail on the head that time. I declare it does beat all how time flies. Just think! it's six years full since then——"
"Six years full—no, seven," assented Mr. Deans.
"No, six," said his wife; "it was just the year before your accident."
"So 'twas." A pause, then he said, "I think I'll have some sarsaparilly, Jane."
Mrs. Deans got a spoon from the table-drawer, drew out the gummy cork, and gave him a spoonful.
"Better have a taste yourself," he suggested.
"Don't know but I will," she said, and helped herself to a dram.
The cork was replaced; silence fell upon the pair. Henry Deans and his wife had partaken of the closest communion they knew. Mrs. Deans left her rags presently to go out to superintend the placing of some new chicken-coops, and Mr. Deans dozed off into a pleasurable reverie, evoked by the death of Dan Follett.
Around the name of Dan Follett clustered the recollections of Mr. Deans' happiest achievement—for, using Dan Follett as an unworthy instrument, he had purged Jamestown of malt and spirituous liquors and brought the village within the temperance fold.
It was thus: Dan Follett had come to "keep tavern" in the old Black Horse Inn. This was a quaint brick building that stood at the corner of the Front Street nearest the lake. It had but a narrow frontage on the Front Street, but stretched back, a long building, on the side street. From the corner of the inn hung a sign-board, depending from an iron rod. The sign was a jet black horse, rampant, with the legend, "Black Horse Inn." The front of the inn, rising abruptly, as it did, from the side-walk, was more quaint than inviting, but the side view was very hospitable, for all along the side street a veranda (floored with oak and roofed by the second story of the inn, which overhung it) extended, approached by broad, generous steps. It was an old, old building, with queer nooks and corners in it, quaint brass newel-posts in the stairway, odd sideboards built into the walls, and dark, hardwood floors. It was by far the oldest building in Jamestown, and the huge, untidy willow tree before the door had grown from a switch thrown down by one of the soldiers, when he and his comrades departed after their long billet in Jamestown.
Jamestown was not called Jamestown in those days, but Kingsville. Times had changed with the village, and its name with them; but the Black Horse Inn remained unchanged—only the bricks had reddened the mortar between them, so that its walls were all one dark, rich red. "Many a summer's silent fingering" had wrought a green lace-work of ivy over the front and at the corners, and about the chimneys a vivid green stain showed the minute mosses that were gathering there. It was having indeed a green old age; and if the second story was beginning to sag a little between the centre-posts, it conveyed no hint of decay, or lack of safety. The droop only showed a kindly and protective attitude towards the open-armed chairs that stood on the veranda beneath.
In the little garden behind the inn, long neglected and overrun, were bushes of acrid wormwood, stray wisps of thyme, straggling roots of rosemary, and bushes of flowering currants. In the spring, from among its springing grasses came whiffs of perfume; for the English violets, planted long, long ago, had spread through and through the tangle of weeds, unkempt grass, and untrimmed bushes.
The one ambition that had lived in Jed Holder's saddened breast after he came to Jamestown was to be able to rent the Black Horse Inn. But it was only a vague, purposeless wish to possess the right of that little square garden, amid whose desolation he discerned the traces of an English hand. Like so many of Jed's dreams, this one never materialized.
To this house, then, came Dan Follett—displayed his license to sell "wine, beer, malt and other spirituous liquors," set out some hospitable armchairs, erected a horse-trough before the door, and, having assumed a huge and glistening white apron, strode about, a jolly, good-natured, guardian spirit. His rubicund face was always beaming, his little eyes always blinking away tears of laughter. There was but little trade in Jamestown, but Follet managed to make ends meet, for the lake was noted for its fishing, and parties of fishermen were right glad to find a place where they could leave their horses and refresh themselves. But Dan Follett and Dan Follett's business were sore rocks of offence in the eyes of the Jamestown brethren.
At "after meeting" many plans were discussed for the discomfiture of Dan Follett, and, incidentally, the devil. Many a "class meeting" evolved an indignation caucus which dealt with the enormity of Dan Follett's calling, which was cited, with many epithets, as the cause of every evil under the sun. But of all this righteous indignation jolly Dan Follett took no heed, and was as ready to lend his stout brown horse to Mr. Deans or Mr. White when their own "odd" horse was busy as he was to hire it to the few fishermen who fancied a ride along the lake shore.
Henry Deans brooded long over this unholy thing in their midst, and finally hit upon a plan to put the devil, in the person of Dan Follett, to some discomfiture. Mr. Deans was senior deacon in the Methodist Church and, as such, took it upon himself to provide the bread and wine for sacramental purposes. One Saturday, the day before the spring communion, Mrs. Deans stood admiring her bread.
"I reckon Ann White'll open her eyes when she tastes that to-morrow," she said. "There's nothing like making your own yeast—good hop-yeast. I don't take no account with salt-rising bread; may be sure enough, but hops for me every time."
These audible meditations were interrupted by a tramp's voice at the open door—a forlorn-looking object, asking for something to eat. Mrs. Deans gave him some good advice about idleness, drinking, and begging, and sent him off. Then she turned her face to the bread again, separating the loaves carefully, and wrapping two of them up in clean towels. A verse flitted through her mind about taking the children's bread and giving it to the dogs; it struck her as apposite, but her good memory, strangely enough, failed to recall anything about "a cup of cold water."
"Them tramps!" soliloquized Mrs. Deans. "A likely thing I was goin' to break into the bread for the Lord's table for the like of him!" She was just putting the bread into the tin on the pantry floor, where she kept it, when a sudden thought made her drop the bread and stand upright.
"I declare!" she said. "Henry'll never remember the wine! I forgot to tell him when he went away! What in the world will we do now? Borrow it of Ann White I won't; that's settled. Well, if it don't beat all!"
Henry Deans returned from the Saturday market about three o'clock; Mrs. Deans met him in the yard and asked him, before the horses stopped:
"Did you remember the wine?"
A slow smile crept over Henry Deans' face. He pulled up his horses deliberately.
"Did you remember the wine?" asked his wife again.
"Yes, I remembered it," he answered, still smiling slowly.
"Well," said Mrs. Deans, "why didn't you say so at first? I've just been nearly out of my mind a-worrying about it all day. Where is it? Hand it here and I'll take it in."
"I haven't got it yet," said her husband, descending nimbly from his perch, and then, for it was dangerous to prolong a joke too far with his wife, he went and whispered in her ear.
Mrs. Deans' face slowly became irradiate with a joyful and appreciative glow.
"Well, Henry," she said, "you're no slouch, I tell you; I always knew your head was level."
"Guess that'll sicken him, eh?" chuckled Henry Deans, and began to unbuckle his harness-straps.
For the rest of the afternoon Henry Deans and his wife went about in smiling content, chuckling irrepressibly if they chanced to meet.
They had supper at six. Night was already setting in, for the days were not at their longest yet. About half-past seven, Henry Deans got his hat, and, his wife letting him softly out of the front door, took his way to the village. He soon reached its outskirts. Down the unlighted back street he went, across the short transverse one, until the side door of the Black Horse Inn was reached. Dan Follett answered his knock in person. There was a short colloquy between the two; then Dan went his way to the darkened bar-room, and, having declined an invitation to go inside, Henry Deans waited. Presently Dan returned with a bottle and, after a generous demur, accepted the money which Mr. Deans insisted on paying, saying:
"I'm not a church-goer myself, Mr. Deans, but I wouldn't begrudge giving a little now and again;" then after repeating his invitation, bade Mr. Deans a cheery "Good-night," and closed the door.
Henry Deans went home, hardly able to restrain his mirth. From far down the road he saw a narrow slit of light, showing the front door ajar for him. He slipped inside, to be immediately greeted by his wife.
"Did you get it?" she asked, breathlessly.
"I got it, and him, too," said Henry Deans; and they laughed together, as they put the bread and wine for the Lord's table in a basket.
The next day, a sweet and sunshiny Sunday, the mystery of the Lord's Supper was yet again enacted in Jamestown—the symbolic wine, clear and ruddy as heart's blood; the bread, white as an infant's brow.
Next day Henry Deans drove to the market town. On Tuesday Dan Follett was served with a summons to appear before the Court to show why he had broken the law by selling a bottle of wine to one Henry Deans in unlawful hours.
Follett's rage was intense, and could only be gauged by the height of Henry Deans' satisfaction. Of course Follett was fined. He had no defence and offered none, but was fain to relieve his mind by attempting to thrash Deans, which only resulted in his being laid under bonds to keep the peace. The whole affair had completely sickened Follett of Jamestown. He departed to new scenes, and the Black Horse Inn again was tenantless.
The exploit covered Henry Deans with glory, and he bore the honor with the conscious front of one who feels he is not overestimated. Dan Follett was dead now, and Henry Deans slept the sleep of the just in musing over his memories. And from the lonely garden of the Black Horse Inn the English sweet violets sent up their fragrance to the unperceiving night.
"Oh, yet we trust that somehow goodWill be the final goal of ill,To pangs of nature, sins of will,Defects of doubt and taints of blood."
Next day, early in the afternoon, Mrs. Deans put away her sewing, and, donning a black bonnet and a large broche shawl folded corner-wise, betook herself out of the house. She went quietly, even sneakingly—this caution was exercised with an object. Mrs. Deans did not want the bound girl to know she had gone. Such knowledge would be too conducive to a sinful peace of mind.
Mrs. Deans took her way to the village, intent on getting some dye from the store. She hesitated before the gate of the Holder cottage, then, assuming a look calculated to show the beholder that the milk of human kindness had in her case turned to cream, she entered the garden. Partly out of a desire to show old Mrs. Holder that this was really a neighborly visit, and partly to come upon her unawares if possible and see what she was doing, and also to have an opportunity of seeing the child without asking to see it, Mrs. Deans followed the little footpath round to the back door. It was open. The small kitchen was scrupulously clean; some washtubs stood in one corner full of soapy water, awaiting the return of Myron to empty them. Mrs. Holder had deferred her washing, evidently. A line hung diagonally across one corner of the room, and upon it a row of little ill-shaped garments hung drying, fluttered by the slight breeze from the open door. The rest of the scanty washing Mrs. Deans could see in the garden; old Mrs. Holder never hung a garment of the child's outside.
Mrs. Deans scrutinized all these things, standing at the open door, but not knowing where Mrs. Holder might be; and fearful lest the sharp-eyed old Englishwoman had already seen her spying out the land, she felt impelled to knock. This she did, and in a moment Mrs. Holder came from the front room. Seeing Mrs. Deans, she greeted her with the nearest approach to warmth she was capable of displaying, and placed a wooden rocking-chair for her, sitting down herself in a narrow high-backed wooden chair, bolt upright and with her arms folded. Presently she let fall her hands into her lap, twisting them nervously, one within the other; they were bleached an unhealthy pallor, and their palms and fingers tips crinkled like crape, from her washing.
"And how are you, Mrs. Deans?" she asked. Her voice held a strong English accent.
"Oh, well; for which I ought to be thankful," returned Mrs. Deans. "Considering them as is took that is unprepared,weought to be grateful thatwe'respared, for it would seem as if them thatisready would go the first. Dan Follett died last Thursday. How do you find yourself, Mrs. Holder?"
"Not well—not at all well," returned the old woman, her voice querulous. "I was took cruel queer last night, a-gasping after breath as wouldn't come. I'm nigh tired enough o' living, if I could die mind-easy, but I can't."
"Yes," said Mrs. Deans, pursing her lips and shaking her head, "we all have our troubles; but you have had a terrible affliction, and, as I have often said to Henry, 'Old Mrs. Holder does take it terrible hard.'"
"It do be hard," said Mrs. Holder. Then came a pause.
Mrs. Deans was in certain ways clever; she knew the futility of attempting to force Mrs. Holder's confidence, therefore she contented herself with a lugubrious shake of her head, a sympathetic expression of eye, and murmured:
"Yes—it's terrible hard!"
"Yes," began Mrs. Holder, almost reflectively, "to think as it should come to me, being afraid o' being buried, due to not knowing who's going to lay along o' me. It do seem main hard"—here the speaker's tones grew hard and her beady eyes venomous—"but I'll find a way somehow. Myron Kind's daughter and her bastard brat don't never lay alongside o' my son and me."
Light now dawned upon Mrs. Deans. She fully appreciated Mrs. Holder's attitude in the matter; she rose to the occasion.
"It's the lot up in the cemetery that's worrying you," she said. "Well, so 'twould me, to think a young one sich as that was going to be next hand, touching me in my grave!"
At that moment there came a sound from the adjoining bedroom, the door was ajar, a chubby hand reached through the opening, and pulled the door wide, and the next instant, Myron's baby, roused from his sleep by the sound of their voices, came out, and, walking totteringly across the floor, took hold of his grandmother's dress, and stood eying Mrs. Deans with the frank impertinence of babyhood.
His yellow hair was tossed and tangled; his blue eyes, a little heavy yet from sleep, were placid and happy; his face was round and dimpled, one cheek flushed a deep rose from the pressure of the pillow. He looked indeed perfect as any cherubic picture. However such children as he may develop—undoubtedly the blond, rosy, dimpled type is the ideal baby.
There was something grotesque in these two women: their souls grimed with the dust of their own sins, their hearts hardened beneath a crust of their own self-seeking lusts, their bodies calloused by the world, defiled by their own passions, fearing contamination, living or dead, from too near vicinity to that child.
"Run away, My," said his grandmother, giving him a little push. The baby stood still a moment. A gray cat peeped in at the door, and then withdrew its head; with a gurgle of laughter, the child trotted after it.
Mrs. Deans had been eying him steadily since his appearance.
"Now, who does that young one look like?" said she with emphasis, as if to force an answer by her earnestness.
"Nobody," said Mrs. Holder. "He do be 'witched, I think. I never see a child like him afore. You could always see a likeness in some trick or other, but that young one has no tricks with him; them's his ways, such as you've seen: eat—smile—sleep."
"Well, it beats all," said Mrs. Deans, feeling exasperated.
A trill of inarticulate laughter interrupted them, and the baby appeared at the door, the gray cat in his arms, wriggling to free itself. It did. Putting its hind legs against the baby's breast, it sprang out of his arms; the recoil sent the boy down, but he picked himself up and again began the pursuit.
"Now, Mrs. Holder, you was telling me about the cemetery lot," said Mrs. Deans.
"Yes;" returned her hostess. "It's this way: there's four graves in the lot, and only one took up. I can't abear to think on it; to think whether I will or no that I have to lie wi' such a lot an' rise wi' 'em at the day."
"Well," said Mrs. Deans, in a meditative voice, "well"—a long pause, then she added: "Now, if 'twasn't for offending you, Mrs. Holder, I think I can see my way!"
"I'll be right glad if you do," said Mrs. Holder, eagerly; "it's vexing me sore."
"Well," began Mrs. Deans, "it's this way. I've done a lot of business, one way and another, and I'm used to seeing through things, and this is what I would suggest, Mrs. Holder—not that I want to make or meddle with other folks' business, but being always willing to do what I can to help along, and what I would suggest is this: Get Muir to call here and fix it with him, so as he'll do whatever's necessary when the time comes; and you give him half the lot for it, so, if anything happens, why everything'll be done up proper; and then he'll stake off half the lot and you needn't be scared; he'll not let it out of his hands. That's what I would suggest, Mrs. Holder, not that I pretend to be anything more than common—but I've done a heap of business in my time."
"It do seem fair wonderful, Mrs. Deans," said Mrs. Holder, her face lighting with an ugly expression of gratified malice; "it do be fair wonderful, the mind you have; but how'll I get word to Muir? I don't want Myron to know, of course, and I won't go down street with My flaunting the family shame—and there I be fair stuck."
"I'm passing Muir's as I go to the store," said Mrs. Deans, rising. "Oh, no thanks, please; don't thank me. We must all do what we can to help other folks along, you know, in this world, and I don't take it no trouble to do my share."
"Well, I take it rare kindly," returned the old woman.
"Oh," said her guest, pausing, "I meant specially to ask you about Myron; she was terrible late yesterday morning. I spoke to her about it, and she spunked up dreadful; got 's red 's fire and never said a word. I thought it my duty to tell you, Mrs. Holder, being anxious for her good and knowing you couldn't look after her, when she was out of jour sight."
"She was late yesterday morning in starting," said Mrs. Holder, "but I be fair ashamed she should show herself like that to you, after your goodness to her, and bearing with her, as you have done. Oh, Myron has her mother's ways—sulky she is, and close-mouthed." (Alas! was this all the memory left of Myron Kind's gentleness and sweet patience!) "You can see what I have to put up with day in and day out. Come here, My!" This to the child, as she saw him going along the path.
"Yes, you have your own times, I'll warrant," said Mrs. Deans. "What did you call the young one?"
"My," replied Mrs. Holder. "That's what she always calls it, and I'm bound it's most fitting, being near her own name. I fair hate that name, Mrs. Deans. Myron's mother took my son away from me and she brought me shame; it's fit and well to call the brat that too."
"Yes, indeed, you're right there," agreed Mrs. Deans, at once relieved and disappointed; relieved that her Gamaliel was left in undisturbed possession of his name, disappointed that Myron Holder had not given some more definite name to her child—Homer, for instance.
Mrs. Deans took her way down street, filled with righteous self-congratulation. The scheme of debarring Myron Holder from ever lying beside her father seemed to her most admirable. Doubtless, from a strictly legal point of view, there might have been difficulties in the way, but who was going to tell Myron that? Mrs. Deans smiled to think of Myron's surprise when she found out. Myron Holder had never done Mrs. Deans any injury, but the latter cherished against her that inexplicable hatred, that alien from rhyme or reason, sometimes fearfully fostered in the human heart. This feeling, mature and enfranchised, made the streets of Paris red with blood; has nerved the hand that hurled a bomb; has steadied the aim of the assassin and, developed by heredity and indulged by training and opportunity, has made the Thugs a people. To inflict what others endure with pain is their life.
Half-way down the street Mrs. Deans paused before a door overshadowed by a green painted veranda, supported by spindling posts; upon each side of the door was a window. In one was displayed a mortuary wreath, made of white stucco flowers and a star formed of six nickel-plated coffin-plates, tastefully disposed against a black background, the same being the beaver covering stripped from one of Mr. Muir's defunct tall hats. In the other window was placed a small coffin. This cheerful display was intended to indicate that the Jamestown undertaker was to be found within.
As Mrs. Deans entered a bell hung over the top of the door rang, and as its note died away in a harsh tinkle steps began to come from the rear of the shop—slow, solemn footsteps, the echo of one dying away before the other succeeded it, which gave a sepulchral effect to the tread of Mr. Muir. They were indeed a fitting herald of the little undertaker's appearance, which distinctly suggested his vocation.
He was short and broad, without being in the least stout. He had a sandy colored beard, so shaggy as to be almost woolly, and which he wore parted in the middle and brushed on either side into the semblance of a gigantic Dundreary. He wore habitually a broadcloth suit, and of these he had always three, one in the last stages of dilapidation that he wore when doing his "chores" in the morning, attending to his two spare-ribbed black horses, oiling the wheels of the hearse, etc.; another he wore when he "kept shop," and when attending to the private offices of his profession; the third was the holiest, and reserved for his public functions at the funerals. The suit always consisted of a frock coat, which fell below his knees and hung around him in folds; a waistcoat buttoned up to the neck, and a pair of trousers that were always too short, but which made up in width for that deficiency. An odd little bird of ill-omen he was. His face was settled into an expression of unalleviated gloom; his features had assumed an attitude of mournful resignation. From this funereal countenance his eyes shone forth strangely—little bright eyes, keen and acquisitive.
He advanced, rubbing his hands slowly together. "Mrs. Deans," he said, and bowed.
This bow was an acquirement much thought of in Jamestown. What more palliating to bereaved feelings than to behold Mr. Muir, in all the black glory of grief, ushering in the funeral guests with a succession of these bows! He had a clever knack of including the "remains" in each of these genuflections, which were always performed at the door of the room where the dead lay. His appearance upon these official occasions was little less than sublime; the way in which he removed his tall hat from his head was in itself a poem—hardly ostentatious, yet most impressive—exalting the act to a ceremonial and dignifying the performance unspeakably.
Mrs. Deans never cared much for Mr. Muir. The little man's eye held a certain proprietary look that chilled one's blood; it was as though he viewed one in the light of prospective "remains"—as who should say, "Go your way in your own fashionnow; some day you will gomyway inmyfashion." A tape-line always showed itself from one of his pockets, and this in itself brought as grewsome a suggestion as any one cared to contemplate.
"How d'ye do, Mr. Muir?" said Mrs. Deans. "How d'ye do? How's the world treating you these days?"
"Oh, well, very well," replied Mr. Muir solemnly, still rubbing his hands together; then he nodded towards the rear of the shop: "Will you go in?" he asked. This was Mr. Muir's way of inviting customers to inspect the coffins.
"No, not to-day," said Mrs. Deans hastily. "I haven't called about any work for you, Mr. Muir, but on business."
Mr. Muir looked puzzled, the terms evidently bearing some relation to each other in his estimation.
"It's for old Mrs. Holder," went on Mrs. Deans.
"If it's to do any burying for her, I won't do it unless the council guarantees it," interrupted Mr. Muir, with decision. "Here I have waited and waited for Jed's money, and only got the last of it last week—got it by fifty centses. It ain't satisfying, getting a bill in fifty-cent pieces; it ain't business. They get the coffin in a lump; they ought to pay in a lump. No, I can't do it, Mrs. Deans, not meaning to disoblige you, though; and I hope you won't hold it against me and keep back the favor of your business. Of course doing for you and doing for such as Holders is two stories. Now, for you or your husband, something more after the style of General——"
Mrs. Deans broke in hastily. Once upon a time, Mr. Muir had travelled seven hundred miles to see the funeral of a great general. That funeral was to Mr. Muir what a visit to Rome is to an artist; and his description of it was a story to outlast the passing of the pageant it pictured. All Jamestown knew the story, and Mrs. Deans felt that prompt action alone could save her.
"It don't concern burying people at all, Mr. Mnir, but burying ground." Mrs. Deans gurgled over her own joke. "And I'll just tell you about it, if you'll wait a minute. You see," looking confidential, "it's like this: Mrs. Holder takes it terrible hard about Myron's goings-on, and when she dies she can't bear to think her and her young one is going to be put right a-touching her, as you may say, which ain't to be wondered at when one considers the importance of the thing." Mrs. Deans paused for breath and to give this time to have due effect upon Mr. Muir, who was once known to complain because people spent more on marrying than on burying.
Mr. Muir nodded his approval, and Mrs. Deans continued:
"That being the case, Mr. Muir, as I said, it ain't to be wondered at that Mrs. Holder is uneasy and wants to fix it so she 'n' her son'll be undisturbed. So, having asked me about the matter, I siggested to her that you could fix it, if any one could; and so she wants you to call up to see her, because she can't leave My, and she won't bring him out."
"Who's My?" asked Mr. Muir.
"Why, that's the young one! Didn't you know? That's more of Myron Holder's slyness. But pshaw! What's the use of talking? Them kind's all alike. But fancy naming it after herself! Well, as I said, old Mrs. Holder, she wanted you should come up to see her and make a trade. Now, I hope you'll go, Mr. Muir, being as I specially siggested t' her that you could help her out."