Mr. Warner took care always to be ready to leave when she came. He had a painful recollection of a day when he loitered about the Post-Office longer than usual, and came out at length, mailbag over his shoulders, to find Ann the centre of an admiring group that applauded her whilst she gave a full, particular (and, be it whispered, true) account of the Warner family history.
In every little village there are certain stock stories that are told about certain families. If it be a scandal-monging little hole, the stories usually have a tang to them.
The tales about the Warner family were particularly spicy ones, the men being notoriously cruel to their horses and "close-fisted" in their dealings. Some of the women were not all they ought to be, and the whole family connection so penurious as to be but one remove from misers.
Ann was giving a veritable epic illustrative of each of these family failings, and had just got to the point bearing upon their cruelty to their horses.
"The bones of the horses the Warners killed stopped up the drains in Jamestown." Turning, she whipped up the bit of felt saddle-cloth under the harness of the mail-wagon horse, and showed the galled patch on its back; then she drew attention to the raw places on the shoulders that Warner had smeared with black wagon-grease, to render them less noticeable. Warner was furious, and would right gladly have left her there, but he did not know how far her tongue had taken her or how far it could go, and he felt it safer to insist upon her getting into the wagon.
Then her mood changed. She insisted he was her best and only friend, embraced him from behind with one arm round his neck until she nearly strangled him, whilst she strove to give him a drink from her black bottle with the other; wept because she could not climb over into the front seat beside him, and finally subsided into maudlin tears of repentance and retrospect, mingled with pious ejaculations of thanks for the comfort she had that day received.
Warned by this experience, Warner was always ready, waiting for her when she appeared, and had acquired some skill in persuading her to mount into the wagon immediately upon her arrival. Her untimely demonstrations of affection, however, were never to be guarded against, and his flesh crept upon his bones until he was clear of the town and out into the country. It was decidedly a trial to have Ann for a passenger, only there was one saving mercy about it—afterward Warner had fifty cents more. To the Warner mind that meant a great deal.
It was a popular saying in Jamestown that "a Warner would take a kicking for a quarter any day."
Without these occasional exhilarations Ann grew morose and vindictive. She glowered at My as he played about the floor, gave Myron a myriad pin-pointed stings anent his existence, saying, with pious unction, that whatever little she had to be thankful for, she never should cease being grateful that she was decent, and relieved the tension upon her feelings by an active and aggressive warfare against Clem.
Clem returned her complimentary attentions in kind, and exhausted his ingenuity in planning to torment Ann. There were several battles royal between the two that marked the history of their warfare, as great victories star a campaign. There was the evening, when they all sat round the little table drawn up close to the fire, and Clem, nodding his head with drowsy satisfaction, took the first morsel of a plug of chewing tobacco Homer had given him. Clem half-closed his eyes and gave himself up to its enjoyment. Myron rose softly, to carry the sleeping baby to bed. Ann's eyes wandered malignantly from Clem's contented countenance to the plug of tobacco (so near her hand), and from thence all round the room. She looked longingly at the fire, but shook her head; discovery would be too prompt. Her eyes fell upon a tub of water, set close to the fire to prevent its freezing against the morrow. Her face lighted—an evil inspiration had come to her.
Slowly—slowly—she put forth her hand. Clem's eyelids wavered—she withdrew it swiftly—there was a pause. Again her itching fingers approached the square of tobacco—again were withdrawn before a flicker of those eyes. Another breath—then carefully, stealthily, she grabbed the tobacco, withdrew her hand, and, bending far over, slid her prize into the tub of water.
Then, to all appearance, sleep suddenly overpowered her. Her head began to nod, her eyes to close, she breathed heavily, and her relaxed hand fell limply by her side.
Clem rose presently to build a new fire, and, being extravagantly inclined because of his plentitude of tobacco, ejected his "chew" into the ashes, and, after putting on the wood, returned to his seat and put out his hand for his tobacco.
Myron entered at that moment from the bedroom. The fire crackled as it caught the new fuel; old Ann sat like a nodding mandarin, oblivious (outwardly) of everything. Clem's astonishment at its disappearance was great. Nevertheless he did not grow wrathful until he had turned out his many pockets and bestrewn the table with their varied contents. He banged each article viciously upon the table, but Ann still slept. She was somewhat overdoing her rôle, and Clem's smouldering wrath flamed up into active indignation as she sat there calm amidst the storm.
"Get up!" he said. "Get up, you stovepipe, and let me see if it ain't under your chair? You know something about it, I'll swear you do! If 'twas a glass of gin, I'll warrant you'd scent it out! Get up, will you?" Saying this, he jerked her chair aside by the back, so that Ann, who was feigning all the languor of one suddenly aroused from deep sleep, slid off the chair to the floor. She improved the occasion, however, by knocking the chair over on Clem's corns as she rose. Clem gave a frightful oath, and Ann stood erect, with a jeering laugh. Myron, anxious to preserve peace, joined Clem in his hunt, whilst Ann stood by.
"Call me stovepipe, will you?" she asked. "Stovepipe indeed, and me the best figger of a woman in the village in my time! Stovepipe! With my waist, too! Stovepipe indeed!" An indignant snort rounded off her sentence.
The little kitchen was so bare that any search was either easy or hopeless. Myron and Clem searched and searched, going over and over the same ground, as the wisest of us do when we look for something lost—for pleasure in old pain, for joy in bygone voices, for hope in withered joys.
Ann waxed more and more derisive.
"If 'twas a spoonful of whiskey, now," she began, plagiarizing and paraphrasing his own words to her; "if 'twas a spoonful of whiskey now, I'll go bail you'd nose it out. You'd ha' run ag'in it long ago. You're better at getting whiskey than at getting clean jugs to put it in, though."
Clem turned to glare at her, and stubbed his toes against the tub. He cast his eyes down, with a curse, but his gaze was held by something which, even as he looked, sank to the bottom, thoroughly saturated.
In a moment he had it out—his tobacco, bloated out of all semblance to its dark-brown self. One glance was enough. With accurate aim, he flung it with all his might at Ann's triumphant countenance.
It struck her across the lips, parted for another gibe. She subsided, sputtering, and Clem, gathering up his belongings from the table with one sweep into his handkerchief, flung himself out of the room.
Myron's life was passed in a continual jar and fret because of these quarrels. She strove to interpose herself as much as possible between them, for Ann's malice grew more and more venomous, and Clem's dislike threatened to break bounds, and from speech become blows. Ann was persistent in her demands for "somethin' warmin'," and do what she could Myron could not satisfy them.
But their bitter words did not sting as her grandmother's had done. Love has a strong potency in pain and pleasure.
There is poison upon the tongue of a friend when it turns against us. No dart pricks so deep as one launched by a hand we love. Gall and wormwood are mingled in the draught when the bitter cup is pressed to our lips by the hand that has tended us in childhood. No thorns are so sharp set to pierce our feet as those implanted in our path by one we love.
Some years ago there was a marvellous tale told of a woman in the mountains of Africa, wondrous old and beautiful, and exceeding wise. We are told that by the touch of her finger-tipSheblanched a snowy streak athwart a girl's dark locks. Later, with another malignant gesture, she reft the girl of life, so that she fell dead in an instant.
Myron Holder's soul was being blanched by the pointing fingers of her world. Would they stop there? Or would the cruel allegory be completed? Would those merciless mockers not cease until, deprived of life and hope, Myron Holder faltered and fell to what they pictured her? For there was every chance she might.
Her face had gained a pale and—inapplicable as the word seems—lofty beauty. Her eyes held within their depths the secret of all pain, and the storehouses of such knowledge are often more beautiful than those that garner gayer truths. Her lips, softened by the love of her child, were warm and red; his kisses kept them so amid the pallor of her face, like a little hearth in a waste of snow. So small and sweet the mouth was, so tremulous, so shrinking, it seemed the pallor of cheek and chin encroached upon it daily. It did not seem a month for speech: there was but space for sobs and kisses, and yet—it had had kisses, and kisses leave strange savors sometimes, and it had parted in many a sob. Who, then, could tell if the pressure of those lips brought pain or pleasure? And what man but would dare all to know?
Behind her lids lay love, too, gleaming through the veil of her sorrows, as the reflected sun shines from a well. At present it was all for her child—later?
Nowadays, when on every side they talk so much of the force of "suggestion," it almost makes us wonder if our fellows' lives are not a reflex of our conception of them—if a consensus of opinion that a person is guilty does not tend to make him what we assume him to be.
It would seem the Jamestown people did the best they could to aid the devil, whom they professed to sacrifice, when, with the pointed forks of malice, they thrust Myron Holder forward to his fires. Each time Homer Wilson came to sit in the cottage his heart ached more and more for this woman. Against the background of Ann's slovenly form and Clem's squalid coarseness she shone like a jewel in a rough clasp. Each time he departed the wrench was greater, but he could not deny himself the pleasure of seeing her. As for her, his visits were the only alleviation of her life, his visits and My. For the child was beginning to talk now, and pattered after her every step. She had taught him a meaningless baby jingle—"Mama's My," she said; "My's mama," answered My—and when he got to know it well, he would chatter it out in swift alternation with her, until the simple words, expressive of the absolute inviolate bond that united them, pierced her soul with a sense of their isolation, and she caught him to her as of old Hagar may have pressed Ishmael to her dishonored bosom.
But out of Homer's visits fresh spite and scandal sprung. For old Ann, denied money for gin, grew bitter and revengeful, and took to going from kitchen to kitchen with the song of her sorrows. Finding her welcome and entertainment proportioned exactly to the amount of news she had to tell, she did her best, like a good laborer, to be worthy of her hire.
Every incident of Myron's life was noted and enhanced by Ann's evil imaginings—was bruited from lip to lip. Myron knew this. In the old days, whatever bitterness had awaited her within the walls of the cottage, they had at least shielded her from the curious eye and whispering lip of the village. They did so no longer. Her last refuge was taken from her. She felt she lived in a veritable glass house, pierced by day and night by relentless eyes. The knowledge made her restless and ill at ease.
Ann did her best, as has been said, to deserve the welcome she received at Mrs. Dean's, Mrs. White's, Mrs. Warner's, and the other houses she went to. She crawled up from her warm couch to listen at Myron's door at night, and crept back, shivering with cold, and angry that Myron did not justify the vileness of her suspicions.
The "long glories of the winter moon" sent shafts of pale light to illumine both the sleepers and the listener. Within the chamber were the two shamed ones—the sinful mother, the child of sin. The two faces close together, both calm—for one heart was ignorant of the world and its cruelty, and the other for a brief space oblivious. Two hands were hidden, close clasped, beneath the coverlet; two lay palms up, so that the moonshine lit them palely—the one pink-palmed, unscarred, unstained; the other so worn, so hard, having lifted such heavy loads and borne such bitter burdens, having been stung by flowers that change to undying nettles, having so often shielded shamed eyes, having so often pressed against a breaking heart, having so often been raised in fruitless supplication, so often wrung in despair.
Without the door the listener, tremulous with eagerness, leant, holding her breath, and longing for the confirmation of her evil thoughts. She caught only the cadence of the breathing of mother and child—a music sweet to the old gods long ago, they say, and sacred still to us, the incense of love's devotion and sacrifice of suffering.
And is the offering less sacred because ascending from an altar differing in shape from the law's design? In what strange quality were these commingling breaths lacking that they should rise in vain?
Love bestows upon many things its own immortality. Why not upon the air, that gives it life? The air that has been breathed by the mutual lips of love can never again commingle with the grosser ether of our earthly atmosphere. It ascends afar, and perchance shall form the winey atmosphere of that fabled Land of Compensation, where, we are told, "the crooked shall be made straight."
"All the secret of the springMoved in the chambers of the blood."
"Lovely springA brief sweet thing,Is swift on the wing."
QUEEN ELEANOR—"...SomeFlowers, they say, if one pluck deep enough.Bleed as you gather."BOUCHARD—"That means love, I think.You gather it, and there's the blood at root."
Winter was softening to spring. It was the dismal transition period, when half-frozen mud and icy slush take the place of snow. The deep drifts of the winter were gone; only in the fence-corners there yet remained darkened icy ridges, showing their outline.
The fields were bare, but the discolored snow still lay in patches on the roads, where it had been beaten hard. The world never looks so desolate and disreputable as at this time, when the earth, looking up inquiringly to a comfortless sun, pleads—or so it would seem—for heat, that its nakedness may be clothed with verdure.
The tree-tops in the woodlands clashed together, and the blows seemed to start the sap within them, for their buds began to swell, and all along their branches the satiny receptacles, wherein were coiled the first leaves, glistened.
The sugar maples sparkled night and morning with tiny icicles, where the sweet sap that oozed out at noon froze in the colder breath of evening. Every schoolboy in Jamestown had swollen lips from eating these icicles—dainty morsels they were, too, their flavor the very essence of sweetness.
All the trees in the forest seemed to stand at "attention," awaiting the command of the sun to leap to life. Only the low-growing witch-hazel, that uncanny tree, associated with the Black Art from time immemorial, had taken upon itself to bedeck its limbs with fuzzy little yellow and brown tufts of bloom.
But none of the other trees followed its example. They waited the heat of the sun. From all accounts, the root of the witch-hazel seeks less celestial fires to draw its life from. At any rate, this overwise tree knows all subterranean secrets, all the wonders of the water, all the wind's weird whisperings. Passed along the surface of the earth, does it not divine where, far beneath, the hidden springs gush forth? Launched upon the water, does it not stop and tremble where the drowned one lies? Before the coming of the storm, do its leaves not dance, and nod, and rustle, though moved by no perceptible influence save the intoxication of their own evil sap? Besides, what magical mysteries, what eerie orgies, does it not share with hairs from black cats' tails, and moss from gravestones, and teeth of dead people? Ugh! It is no wonder that its deep, deep roots know where to seek for warmth.
The moss upon the rocks that faced the lake front was vividly green. Last year's dead leaves had rotted beneath the snows, and the empty seed-vessels of the tall weeds served as bells for the jesting wind.
Whatever suggestions of bygone beauty, whatever anticipations of unborn flowers lurked in the woods, the village at this time looked depressingly squalid. Relying upon the snow's charity in covering a multitude of sins, the untidy housekeepers had imposed upon it. Now they were shamed. The melting snow left exposed all the debris of the winter. Heaps of tea-leaves cast forth by careless hands beside the doors, ashes flung out hastily, bones, broken crockery, and the heads of decapitated chickens bestrewed the streets.
Outwardly, at least, Jamestown had been quite a decent village before the snow melted; now, it showed like a hypocrite from whom the robe has been torn away.
With the first break in the winter weather, the men began to "go over" the fences, rebuilding those the snow had broken, replacing the rails and boards that the wind had torn off, and sinking new posts where the frosts had heaved the old ones out of the earth.
Clem Humphries had long been impatient to leave Myron's and get out of the reach of Ann's irritating tongue, and his eager search for work got the reward of being hired by Mr. White to bore post-holes.
He stuck to his task until he earned a few dollars; then his long-saved thirst drove him to town. The money went for the old purpose, and Clem got gloriously drunk. A sudden brief but biting spring frost setting in, he was found next morning in Mr. White's barnyard, lying by the strawstack, his fingers clasping rigidly an empty bottle, his long boots frozen to his feet.
They carried him in beside the kitchen stove, cut off his boots, and by noon old Clem was as sprightly as ever; only he cursed sulphurously when he saw the wreck they had made of his foot-gear. This was particularly annoying to him, because he knew that had he "only had sense enough, he could have got a good quart more of rye for them very boots they cut up, as if they weren't worth a cent."
Many men might have suffered from this experience, but alcohol has great preservative qualities and old Clem's system was saturated with it.
Clem being now "off the township" and exposed to all the inclemencies of Fortune's variable winds, it behooved him to supply himself with a new suit of religion, as the snake takes to himself a new skin. This he did. He spoke piously of his failings, his experiences, his backslidings and beliefs, so that Mrs. White held him in godly commiseration, as one sore beset by the enemy.
So Clem fed and fattened, whined diligently, and worked as little as he could help, and laughed in his sleeve at them all.
Mrs. Deans said to Homer Wilson, with sneering emphasis:
"If you should see that Myron Holder, Homer, I wish you'd tell her I want to speak to her."
"Very well," said Homer, unmoved.
"Will you be likely to see her?" pursued Mrs. Deans.
"Yes," said Homer, in a matter-of-course tone. "Oh, yes, of course I'll see her."
"Still, after all," Mrs. Deans hesitated with a fine show of prayerful reflection, "maybe I hadn't ought to ask you to call there? There's no use making things worse than they are, and I'd never forgive myself if I thought I put you in the way of wrongdoing."
"I don't understand," said Homer, calmly. "Is there anything wrong about your message?"
"Not about my message," answered Mrs. Deans; "but, after all that's come and gone, I dare say you would not like to go to the Holder place. Well, I don't know as I blame you. It's terrible discouragin' to be mixed up with such a story; but there, never mind, I can send Maley. No one would think anything of his going."
"Make your mind easy, Mrs. Deans," said Homer, contemptuously. "Ann Lemon, I am sure, has let you know that I am in the habit of going to Myron's as often as she'll let me. I'll be very glad of your message as an excuse to go again."
With this Homer departed, leaving Mrs. Deans as nearly dumbstruck as it was possible for her to be.
That afternoon Myron stood knocking at Mrs. Deans' kitchen-door, holding My by the hand, whilst he struggled to get away to the collie dog which lay on the porch, its front paws crossed in an attitude of dignified leisure.
From the poultry-yard came the mingled babble of the fowls' cries. A thin blue banner of smoke uncoiled in a long spiral from behind the house. It diffused an aroma of herbs and withered grass: the rakings of the garden were being burned. Gamaliel and the hired men were opening a ditch in the field next the house. Their coarse voices and coarser laughing came clearly through the spring air. A sparrow flew down and, laden with a long straw, flew up again to the woodshed eaves, where its mate proceeded to help it to weave the straw into the walls of their nest. The old cat, thinner now than in the winter, looked up at their toiling malignantly. Every now and then the eye was conscious of a dark speck above the line of direct vision, as the swallows soared in long sweeps over the building.
The sky was bright, but not very warm; and when one of the many floating clouds interposed a veil betwixt its rays and the earth, there came a quick sense of chill. The men's voices grew higher and more confused. Then, clear above the murmur that they made, came shrill whistles and shouts of "Bob! Bob!" The collie sprang up, and, throwing dignity to the wind, wriggled between the boards of the garden fence and darted across the field, to enjoy presently a hilarious chase after a pair of water-rats that the men had found in the stopped up drain.
It was a spring day—all delicate sunshine and shimmering shadow, all soft with tints of mother-o'-pearl, with hints of after-heats and breaths of bygone bitterness. Above floated "the wind-stirred robe of roseate gray," and beneath the earth lay murmurous, sentient, expectant, and eager, with little streams finding their way to the lake, each seeming the bearer of sweeter secrets than we know.
"O water, thou that wanderest, whispering,Thou keep'st thy counsel to the last!What spell upon thy bosom should Love cast,His message thence to wring?"
A spring day—yet somewhat sad, and strange with the uncertainty of unfulfilled dreams. It was but one minor note in Nature's glad interlude between "winter's rains and ruins" and summer's languorous perfections, fleeting to the eye, elusive to the memory, but lingering long in the heart.
Myron knocked and waited. Presently Liz opened the door. She had a knife in one hand, a potato in the other, and her fingers were stained a deep brown. Liz was cutting seed-potatoes, and even as she walked back to her place by the window, dexterously sliced the potato she held into angled bits, preserving in each an eye for growth to spring from. Mrs. Deans came, and when Myron left she had arranged for another summer's toil under her benign influence.
Mrs. Deans had decided to raise poultry more extensively than ever this year, and, berate Myron as she might, she recognized fully how valuable her faithful services were. Mrs. Deans proposed that My should be left with Ann Lemon during the day, but Myron said humbly but very decidedly that the child must come with her. Mrs. Deans demurred, but read Myron's pale determination aright, and finally consented. It gave her an excuse, however, for still further reducing the meagre pay she had given Myron the summer before.
Myron had been prepared for this, and did not grumble when Mrs. Deans named the lower wage, whereat Mrs. Deans was wroth with herself that she had not said still less.
Ann Lemon went back to her own house, and Myron once more went back and forth to the village. The winter had changed her. She no longer shrank from before the gaze of those cold eyes that met hers daily. Instead, she met their glances with firm lips and unmoved eye, not boldly, not appealingly, but with an acceptance of rebuke and scorn that was stronger in its endurance than wrath, with a patience more pathetic than any appeal.
No smile ever moved her lips, no anger ever raised her voice. If tears ever dimmed her eyes, they were unseen. If any ray of hope yet flickered within her breast, it was well hidden; its fires never flushed her cheeks nor troubled her eyes, and those humble eyes were "deeper than the depth of waters stilled at even."
The spring advanced. Each evening whispered of a new beauty, each night saw the birth of a new mystery, each morning revealed it in nature's mirror, each day bespoke some completion of beauty, some fulfillment of hope.
Spring—"all bloom and desire"—is not the time for love to end. It is rather the growing time of every tender joy, and Homer Wilson found himself hoping against hope. He contrived to meet Myron very often now, in the early mornings or late twilight, as she traversed the road between the village and Mrs. Deans'. He had done what he could to dissuade her from going to Mrs. Deans', but a refusal to do so meant a full acceptance of his aid. Myron held back her hand from such overwhelming alms. Homer had done, therefore, what he could for her—ploughed the little lot about her house and planted it with potatoes and vegetables for her, and mended the fence and piled great heaps of split wood in the woodshed.
He pleaded with her sometimes, but to no avail—at least none that was perceptible to him. The water beating against a rock does not realize its own victories; but we see the honeycombed cells that attest its persistence, and predict that some day the water will have won a way for itself over the fragments of the rocky barrier. But the springs run dry sometimes, and the rock remains unconquered, but barren and parched, thirsting for the water that loved it once. To each successive plea Myron felt it harder and harder to say "No."
When Homer asked for her love, his face shone with that seraphic light that never yet "has shone on land or sea," and she felt it very bitter to banish it. Sometimes he touched her to tears. Sometimes, dry-eyed, she begged him so piteously to desist that he felt himself a cur to have urged her.
Indeed, in those calm spring weeks his heart was the abode of perpetual conflict, the place of passion and pain, the home of love and longing—
"O fretted heart, tossed to and fro,Rest was nearer than thou wist."
Through all these turbulent times Homer bore himself well. He had again the old genial manner, the old patience, the old generosity. His people presumed upon his unfaltering good-temper, and made their demands more and more exacting. He gave all they sought of his time, trouble, and money, and to their reproaches replied not again.
Upon every subject under the sun he heard them patiently, save the one subject next his heart. That he held sacred.
His mother had said to him one day:
"You'll never marry her, Homer?"
"God knows I'm afraid I won't," he said.
"Do you mean to say——" began his mother.
"There is nothing but this to say," he answered, very quietly, but in a voice that silenced her; "I would give my right hand—my life—everything—if I could persuade Myron Holder to marry me."
So he left her; but his mother's incredulous exclamation, "You'll never marry her!" cankered in his heart like a bitter prophecy.
Afterwards, when Mrs. Wilson thought over all the days and doings of her son, she thought of this also, and told the conversation to her neighbors, and they all then looked upon Myron Holder as one who, having gotten a man's soul, would not let him assoil himself by marrying her.
But this was after.
The old rag peddler going his rounds stopped once more at Mrs. Deans' door. Little My trotted out from the kitchen, and the old peddler eyed him with the longing gaze of a childless man. Mrs. Deans bargained for her pie-plates, and My stood gazing reflectively at the big black horse.
"Say, Mrs. Deans," said the ragman, "whose young one is that?"
"Oh," answered Mrs. Deans, feelingly, "that's Myron Holder's brat!"
"You don't say! Well, 'taint much like the Holders. I knowed Jed," he added, after a pause.
That night the ragman drove home, his van heavily laden, and his wife helped him to bestow the canvas sacks in the barn, and later looked over his stock of tins and ran over the book. She was a queer little figure. Her dress was of dark woollen stuff that they gave her husband at the shoddy-mills. It was curiously and lavishly adorned with buttons: there were rows of buttons on the sleeves from wrist to elbow, a veritable breast-plate of them on the bodice; they jingled on her shoulders and glistened on her skirts.
In a deep-down corner of her miserly little soul there lurked a taste for finery. Denied legitimate expression by her miserliness, it found vent in this barbaric adorning of her gowns. The pearl and crockery buttons she did not use—those she sewed on cards to resell; but all the fancy metal ones she found on the rags, being unsalable, she appropriated toward the decoration of her penurious person, and let her fancy run riot in the arrangement of them.
"Where's the little red tin mug?" she asked her husband, as she pored over his ragged daybook. "I don't see it in the van, and I don't see it marked in the sales."
Her husband shifted uneasily.
"I give it to Myron Holder's young one. He was playing about the wagon at Deans'."
"You did!" said his wife. "You did! What for?"
"I knowed Jed," began her husband, apologetically; but he was cut short by a contemptuous snub from his wife.
This was the chronicling of a little incident that gladdened Myron's heart inexpressibly.
In Myron's mind there was slowly forming an idea at this time—an idea of change. It was but dimly shadowed forth yet; but when the time came for it to take definite shape, it did so at once, and was so well established that it seemed the settled and legitimate conclusion of long reasoning. In the mean time the thought only came to her hazily—sometimes in the pauses of her work when she heard Mrs. Deans speaking of the town; sometimes when, in the early morning, she saw far away across the lake the smoke of a steamer; sometimes when, at noontide, the whistle of far-off trains smote through the air, or when, returning to the village at night, she noted the telegraph-poles, with their single wire. They seemed to incline from the village—away from its self-righteous roof-trees and censorious chimneys; away and above its babbling doorsteps and carping streets—and to point out into a wider, freer, unknown world.
Often she turned to look along the way they pointed. They took her eyes eastward, and at night the eastern prospect is dull and gray. From this forbidding outlook she would turn her eyes, with a shudder, and they would fall upon the trees of Deans' woodland, illumined by the sun which set behind them.
But if the eastern gray made her despond, the western glow behind those trees made her despair. She withdrew her gaze and hastened to the blank twilight of the village.
It was summer, and Homer Wilson, walking through his fields, was thinking of Myron Holder. He had gone early to town that morning, and as he passed the cottage she issued, with little My, from the door.
The dew lay heavy on the grass; the silence was stirred by the singing of birds; the haze that lay over the land presaged a day of intense heat. The fires were being lighted in the village, and the first smoke was lingering lazily above the roofs. The hopvines about the cottage glistened at every point with drops of dew, and, as the sparrows twittered through the tendrils, they sent sparkling little showers down. The morning-glories that Myron had planted beneath the window were covered with their cup-like blooms. There is no flower on earth more beautiful in delicate fragility of texture, in purity of tint, in shape and translucent color than a morning-glory with the dew upon it.
It was a morning to live and love in. And it seemed to Homer Wilson that the whole gracious aspect of the day was completed by the forms of Myron and her boy as they stood without the gate.
His heart yearned for her as he helped her into the wagon by his side. At Mrs. Deans' he lifted her down, holding her for an instant in his arms. The keen "possessive pang" that thrilled him shook his spirit with its sacred sweetness.
And to-night he was going to her with yet another prayer upon his lips.
The sultry day had fulfilled the prophecy of the misty morning. The air was heavy with odors. Every weed and grass, each flower and vine, each bush and tree, had given its quota of perfume to form the frankincense that nature offers to the midsummer moon. The exhalations from a million tiny cells mingled together in that odorous oblation.
And as he crossed the fields Homer saw the moon, round and red, rising slowly over the lake. Slowly—slowly—it rose, paling as it attained the higher heavens, until it soared—
"In voluptuous whiteness, Juno-like,A passionate splendor"—
most worthy to be worshipped.
As Homer knocked at Myron's door the moon veiled itself behind some close-wreathed clouds, so that from the dimness of the cloudy sky Homer passed within the doorway.
* * * * * *
The moon was still obscured when he emerged, so that his face was hid. But before him there stretched, at last seen with clear eyes, the definite dreariness of a solitary life. Behind him he knew a woman lay prone upon a bare floor, sobbing and wrestling with the evil of her own nature, with hard-wrought hands half-outstretched to him—half-withdrawn, to cover her shamed eyes. Within his breast he bore the memory, not of rejection or of rebuke, but the echo of a plea for mercy—the broken syllables of a woman's voice raised in an appeal for help against her own weakness.
Nor had it been made in vain. For Homer Wilson, in the moment of that supreme temptation, had risen superior to himself—had put aside his own strength to help her weakness—had overcome his passion with his love. He had uttered a passionate word or two of comprehension, offered an incoherent pledge of aid—comfort—approval—and then, stumbling out of the door, hastened away, disregarding, for her sake, the cry of "Homer—Homer!" that seemed to follow him.
* * * * * *
Each of us has a wilderness and a temptation therein, although oft we pass through it, unrecking of the devils that attend us until they have stolen all they sought. Sometimes our wilderness is a perfumed garden, through which insidious devils dog our laggard footsteps. Sometimes it is a shaded pleasaunce, through which we tread with stately steps, unwitting of the derisive demons that smile as they mock our pageantry of pride. With retrospective agony, we turn to gaze upon the mirages of these scenes, as one views sunlit seas where wrecks have been, and cry aloud, "Here much precious treasure was lost!" But there are other wildernesses wherein we wander, consciously beset with Evil Spirits whose faces we know.
It was thus with Myron Holder. Her wilderness was indeed "a land of sand and thorns," thorns whose acrid sap was sucked from salt pools of tears. And the Spectre Demon that beset her there was the Devil of her own passion. By day it lingered round her steps, tempting her with suggestions of the Lethean draught its pleasures would bring, whispering to her how excusable she would be if she yielded to its allurements; for it did not fail to point out that she had no debt of kindness to repay with worthiness.
All day she fought against this Tempting One, who speedily enleagued all the other evils of her nature to aid him.
The battle raged fiercely, the bright light in her eyes, the flaming cheeks and trembling hands attesting the strife. One night, when the heat of summer made even the night winds sultry, when all nature was in the full height of its development, when the fields were deep in grass and the clover heavy with bloom—on such a night the door of a hop-clad cottage in Jamestown opened softly and closed as gently, and through the sleeping streets and out into the country a wild figure sped. She, for it was a woman, with flushed cheeks and loose-coiled hair, advanced a short distance along the highway, and then, swiftly climbing the fence, made her way diagonally across the fields of dew-drenched grass—across one field, another, and another—holding her slanting course as steadily and unswervingly as though she followed a beaten track.
As she ran, the spirit of the night and the intoxicating odor of flowers and grasses entered into her and steeped her senses in a delirium of freedom. She sprang on—now running, now half-dancing, once going a rod or two in the old childish "hippety-hop" fashion.
She reached the boundary of Deans' woodland, and plunged into its shadows with as little hesitation as she had entered the field of clover. She threaded the wood swiftly, her eyes fixed straight before her, never seeming to see the obstacles which opposed her path, although she avoided them unerringly.
Bats whose eyes have been pierced out exercise this same blind avoidance of obstacles, and it was only this woman's heart that had been wounded.
She held on her way.
At length she saw a far-off gleam of water, and knew she had all but reached her destination.
On she went, and, pushing through the dense mass of witch-hazel bushes that grew along the top of the lake bank, jumped. It seemed a leap to destruction, for Deans' woods bounded the lake here with high, precipitous cliffs; but the path to that spot was marked by her heart-blood, and she had made no error in following it. She had a drop of four feet or so; and then she stood upon a long, narrow, jutting ledge, surrounded by the tops of the trees that grew below it on the bank proper. From the top of the bank it was almost invisible—entirely so, unless the looker penetrated the witch-hazel hedge. From the lake it was plainly seen.
Here, then, she paused, looking forth over the water, and being scorned by the moon—
"For so it is, with past delightsShe taunts men's brains and makes them mad."
* * * * * *
She stood upon the rocky point and held out her clasped hands despairingly. Her hair, loosened by many a tugging branch, fell about her in wild disorder—now blown across her flushed cheeks, wild eyes and parted lips; now wrenched back by the high wind, its whole weight streaming behind her; now framing her face in dusky convolutions.
In the mute agony of her gesture, she seemed a fit emblem of despairing grief—the grief of Psyche for Adonis.
The moon broke from the embrace of its clouds and sailed high up into the night, then faded towards the horizon.
And still she stood, outwearing her passion by her patience. About her surged all the weird melodies that loneliness and night and despair smite from the heart-strings. The blood sang in her ears, a monotonousobligatoto those piercing notes.
* * * * * *
She looked out into the night. Her eyes demanded from it some balm to soothe their burning; her heart some solace for its pain. Her soul cried out against the silence without, which seemed such a maddening environment to the fightings within. Her whole being demanded an answering emotion from some one or something.
"Shake out, carols!Solitary here—the night's carols!Carols of lonesome love! Death's carols!Carols under that lagging, yellow, waning moon—Oh, under that moon where she drops almost down into the sea!Oh, reckless, despairing carols!"
But the moon was mute, the night silent, and she was alone. She could not analyze her own emotions, nor vivisect her own soul; could not separate shreds of Desire, fibres of loneliness, tissues of misery, until she had disintegrated the whole mass of Despair that was crushing her.
She could but suffer.
* * * * * *
She lay prone upon the ledge of rock, her hands clutching the short, glossy mountain grass; resisting the wooing of the airy space below that called her to oblivion, purchased by one leap outward—a leap—no, one single step—out into the kindly air.
How small a price at which to buy immunity from those thorny roads she trod with bleeding feet, alone! Alone? Ah! Little My! ... The leaves were stirring with the morning's breath; the birds had not begun to sing yet, but were moving restlessly upon the branches and uttering their first waking calls—those ineffably sad heraldings of earliest dawn or latest night!
"Ah, sad and strange as in dark summer dawns,The earliest pipe of half-awakened birds!"
The world lay silent under a reflectionless moonstone dome of gray when Myron Holder, with dew-drenched skirts and hair, relaxed limbs and pallid cheeks, entered the house where her child yet slept. Of the night's turmoil there was no trace save the signs of physical exhaustion. Her face was calm, her lips firm; her eyes shone undimmed with tears, unblurred by passion.
"Yea, then were all things laid within the scale—Pleasure and lust, love and desire of fame,Kindness, and hope, and folly, all the taleTold in a moment—as across him cameThat sudden flash, bright as the lightning flame,Showing the wanderer on the waste how heHas gone astray 'mid dark and misery."
Outwardly the lives of Myron Holder and Homer Wilson gave no sign of these conflicts. It is the petty worries and every-day griefs of life that traces lines upon the brow. A fretful discontent often leaves a wrinkle when a great grief obscures itself behind the placidity of despair.
Myron Holder's face now shone in unaltered—and it seemed unalterable—calm. That wild night had not been spent in vain. Self-poised, if humble, her life seemed centred calmly at last.
As for Homer Wilson; it was different with him. His heart was still parched with the "thirst that thirsteth on," but he no longer sought for draughts to slake it. His attitude approximated that of those who, dying of some dreadful disease, accept their fate and, looking the inevitable in the face, long for the end.
One day he found in his pocket the old bullet he had picked up from the crevice in the rock. He turned it over, wondering where he got it; then remembering, a bitter thought crossed his mind that he was like that bullet. His life-impetus gone, he was but a thing for the sun to scorn. Myron, no longer trembling for herself, felt a deep tenderness spring within her heart for Homer, and sought to show him in every way that he was her only friend and that she trusted him.
Myron had almost made up her mind to leave Jamestown, and a little incident that occurred one day strengthened this thought to a resolution. The school-house was quite near the Holder cottage: the playground bordered one side of the cottage garden; a fence of slackly hung wires was between them; beyond the fence in the playground was a little ditch with heaped-up sides, on which grew many yellow buttercups. This was a favorite haunt for the younger school children, and their voices came in mingled cadences across Myron's rows of vegetables.
One day in later summer Myron was at home from Mrs. Deans', having by that lady's desire brought the weekly washing from the farm, to do it in the cottage. The windows were flung high, and through the rising steam from her wash tubs Myron's eyes followed My's golden head as he trotted about the garden. Looking up once, she saw him standing by the fence, holding to one swaying wire and peering through at the children in the playground. A momentary pang shot through her heart—he seemed so isolated there; and yet the barrier that separated him from the other Jamestown children was so slight—just a slack-wire fence—that any one could see through, that hung irregularly between its supports, now so low that it could be stepped over, again so high it seemed impassable, only where it was so lofty the spaces between the wires were wide enough to creep through.
The sunlight shone on both sides the same. The buttercups straggled through to the vegetables, seeming by their persistence to wish to bloom there, and the singing of the catbird in the elm tree was as sweet to My's ears as to Sammy Warner's upon the other side.
Nature made no difference; nevertheless there was a barrier. My was effectually severed from the rest of the village, but he himself had not recognized that yet, and the next time Myron looked up she saw My had gone through the fence and had seated himself beside the others.
They had taken their places in an irregular row among the buttercups, jostling and nudging each other, saying "Gimme elbow room," and "Quit pushin'," as they settled themselves comfortably to the business of the moment.
This was the time-honored trial to decide which of them liked butter, ascertained by holding a spray of buttercups against the throat, so that the reflection was cast upon the uptilted chin. The taste for butter is proportionate to the yellowness of the reflection.
Little Jenny Muir was judge and the rest jury, craning their necks forward to look as she passed from one to the other, holding a bunch of buttercups against their chests whilst they tilted their chins far back. The dull blues, washed-out reds, and russet browns of the children's frocks enhanced the brilliant yellow of the flowers. The shadows of the big pear tree, glossy of leaf but barren of fruit, modulated the sunshine, so that the whole group showed in a soft, subdued glow, an idyl of child life not unlovely, for the heads in the row were not yet bent to the dust to search for money, nor lifted to heaven in self-righteous conceit. Time had not dulled the childish gold to brown, nor deadened the flaxen heads to lustreless drab.
My placed himself at the end of the row, his head a golden period at the end of the human sentence that spoke of life's beginnings. With unembarrassed childish mimicry, he emulated the gestures and laughter of the others.
Myron's heart lightened. She wondered for a moment if My might not in time merge his life with those others and be no longer solitary. The hope soon vanished. Looking out again, she saw My sitting alone, his head tilted far back as he waited for his turn. Just disappearing down the slight decline to the school-house, she saw the other children, their hands held over their mouths, their faces red with suppressed laughter, stepping with elaborate pretence of quiet, and turning now and then to look over their shoulders at My, sitting alone, his face patiently uptilted to the sun, unconscious of his loneliness. Beside him lay the bunch of buttercups, flung down as Jenny Muir clapped her hands over her mouth and fled across the soft sward.
In a moment Myron was out of the house, running down the path to the fence side. Ere she reached it, My's tired little neck relaxed, and he looked about him wonderingly, the light fading from his face. His eyes were filled with tears, and his lips quivered when his mother called him. There was a hasty scramble over the ditch, a struggle through the fence, and My was back on his mother's side of the barrier. That straggling fence was, after all, not so easily crossed.
My had forgotten the whole affair ten minutes after, as he excitedly chased grasshoppers along the paths; but all day long the laughter of the playing children smote Myron's heart like the crack of a whip that stings.
After that day it became a matter of conscience for Myron to play the "buttercup game" with My, and a feverish eagerness fairly consumed her to get away from a place where even the children were cruel. She began to scrimp and save every penny she could, hoarding her meagre gatherings in the bottom of the old clock-case that stood on the shelf beside the window.
* * * * * *
It was late autumn. Between the tree-tops were skyey lakes of blue more brilliant than any blue of summer sky, more evanescent than any of spring. The sun shone through the tree-tops with an ineffable, clear, cold light, displaying every fibre in their leaves and imparting to them a fragility wholly sad.
A light uncertain wind rippled through the sumachs, giving their leaves a delicate, lateral movement, as though upon some aerial lyre they harped their own requiem, touching its invisible strings lightly with blood-tipped fingers, for the autumn coloring stained the green.
Between the boughs of the trees glistened those huge octagonal webs that the wood-spiders spin so persistently at this season. There was no sound of birds, only the cheerless shrilling of the autumnal crickets and the dry rustle of dead leaves as the few grasshoppers left alive hopped torpidly from place to place till they came to the spot to die.
The katydids, that six weeks before had prophesied so cheerily the frost that was to kill them, lay here and there, little pale-green corpses, wrapped in their lace-like wings.
The tall weeds by the pathway, that in summer had disguised themselves with blossoms of different colors and shapes, now stood confessed, with panicles of burs crowning their dishonored heads.
It was upon such a day that Homer walked through his woods, searching for a young hickory tree suitable to cut down for axe-handles. His heart, caught in the embrace of the surrounding silence, suddenly stilled its throbbing to a steadier rhythm than it had known of late. He thought out clearly the motive that must actuate his life, the inspiration that must point his path.
Passion was indeed eliminated from his heart, but not forgotten. They tell us that when an arm or leg is amputated, one still feels shadowy aches and ghostly pangs, intensifying the desolate sense of incompleteness and loss. The maiming of one part of the body may preserve the whole alive, but yet one looks back with anguished regret to the days when he stood complete.
Homer Wilson was learning that each must "dree his ain weird," and the only complaint he made against his Fate was that he could not alter Myron's.
Night fell soon and swiftly now. The sun seemed glad to sink out of sight. Its feeble rays brought no heat to the leaves it had called to life. The sad silence of the trees seemed a mute reproach against the light that brought forth but could not sustain, their foliage.
That evening in the chill twilight, Homer overtook Myron and her boy returning from Mrs. Deans'. Slackening his pace, he walked with them to the village. The air was very quiet, "silent as a nun breathless with adoration." As they passed along the road there came an earthy breath from the fresh-turned soil in the fields, where they had been lifting the potatoes and the turnips. It had none of the fresh fruitiness of spring: instead it was redolent with sad suggestions, an atmosphere in which one involuntarily lowered the voice and stilled a laugh.
They passed the little graveyard where the virgin bower clematis, already denuded of leaves, garlanded the pickets with brittle, bare, brown branches, softened here and there by the downy whorls of seed. Myron was telling Homer of her wish to leave Jamestown, and asking his advice. He had long felt this to be one possible solution of the position, but there were points that troubled him sorely. It was obvious that the best that could happen to Myron would be the return of the man for whom she had suffered so much. Homer confessed to himself that he had no hope that he would return, but yet had grown very uncertain and humble about his own judgment, and he thought Myron still believed in her betrayer's return. If he should return and Myron be gone? Would that not afford him a somewhat tenable excuse for continued infidelity? Suppose he should return and inquire for Myron Holder in the village? Homer sickened to think of the distorted picture that would then be drawn of her patient life.
As has been said, Homer had not a shadow of hope that he would return, but he thought Myron had. Sharpened as Homer's perceptions were by pain and love, they were not yet keen enough to grasp clearly how slight a shred of hope remained of all her brave fabric of belief. He could not understand how much of Myron's faithfulness was due to her own womanhood, how little now to any hope of reparation. He therefore hesitated when, laying everything before him, she asked him to decide.
As they neared the village they walked yet more slowly. They had much to say, and since that midsummer night Homer had never entered the cottage door. There seemed to issue from its portals forever a voice calling, "Homer, Homer," a voice whose infinite longings and needs shook his soul with a sense of his own impotency.
Little My wearied, and Homer raised him in his arms. So they made their way to the cottage—they two alone, for the child slept, and a strange loneliness lay over the quiet road and empty street. Myron took My within doors, and, coming out, she and Homer paced, side by side, up and down the little centre path. On either side were vegetables and withering grass, and down in the far corner the huge yellow globes of the pumpkins showed solidly through the dusk.
"Indeed, Myron dear, it would be easier for you if you went," he said, as they stood together in the shadow of the elm tree; "and later on My might have a happier time. For my part, I would have spoken of it long since, only—only——" He paused, and added in lower tones, "I knew the hope you lived in."
She bent toward him and said, very quietly but steadily, "I have no vestige of that hope left, Homer."
He looked down at her, an eagerness that strove against repression in his eyes.
"No," she continued, "My and I must hold our way alone. Tell me, then, Homer, do you think it would be ever so little easier if we went away from here?"
Her eyes held his, pleadingly, and filled with tears. It was one of the rare times when she felt self-pity.
"Yes, dear," he said, taking her hands, that fluttered nervously; "yes, we will make it easier—we will find a way for you to leave all this behind. You shall go and lose yourself, so that their prying eyes shall never find you, their itching ears never hear of you, their lying lips have nothing to tell of you—only, Myron, you will never try to hide from me, will you?"
"Oh, Homer!" she cried, "I would be lost indeed then. Oh, no! I could not bear to have you forget me."
His face lighted in the dusk with a happiness that had long been a stranger—a chastened light, perhaps, when compared with the radiance evoked by his first love, but a steadier flame, lit in the heart, not in the eyes alone.
"Well, I will think it all out, Myron; to-morrow will surely find me with a way planned for you. I wish, indeed, that I too could go with you, that I also could find a road out of Jamestown."
He said good-night, and turned to go. He was almost at the gate when she ran after him.
"Wait a moment, Homer," she called softly; "wait!"
He turned quickly.
"You know how I think of you?" she asked. "You know you are my only friend—my dear friend—my brother? You know this? Do you think that going away from Jamestown will make up for not seeing you? I am afraid—I—I—I think, Homer, I will stay."
Homer gave a little laugh, so sweet these words were to him.
"My dear, you shall go away, and yet shall see me too, sometimes. I could not stand it to be without a sight of My and you now and then."
She clasped her hands.
"Oh, could I see you sometimes? Then think hard to-night, Homer, and find out the way to-morrow."
There was another good-night, and they parted.
The next day Myron, having been sent to the village by Mrs. Deans, went to the grocery store to buy some things for herself, for it was Saturday, and she did not go to Mrs. Deans' on Sunday. Whilst she stood waiting until Mrs. Wilson was served, My ran in and out of the door, a little, tottering figure, clad in a queerly made blue and white checked pinafore. Mrs. Wilson did her shopping leisurely, discoursing upon the pros and cons of asthma the while, for which she strongly recommended the smoking of cigars made of mullein-leaves. She turned from the counter at length, and, passing Myron Holder with uplifted chin, made her way to the door. It was encumbered with an open barrel of salt mackerel, by which stood little My, balancing slowly back and forth on his uncertain feet, the sun glinting on his yellow head. Mrs. Wilson pushed the little form roughly aside and went out. My swayed and fell, striking his head on the step.
Hot anger flushed Myron's cheeks at the incident. She picked up the boy, soothed him with a word or two, and gave him a biscuit from the bag the groceryman was weighing for her. My trotted off to the door, and presently crossed the threshold into the street.
Myron Holder was just opening the shiny old purse to pay for her small purchase when a confused sound of shouting and exclamations came to her. Through the hum of voices sounded the thud-thud of flying hoof-beats. Her eyes sought My. He was not there!
She and the groceryman reached the door in an instant. The street seemed thronged with people. Mrs. Wilson had just emerged from Mrs. Warner's, and stood with her at the door.
Homer Wilson was about to untie his team, that stood before the harness-shop just opposite the grocery store.
At the same moment that Myron emerged from the store Homer turned his eyes to the street. He saw and understood what Myron's anguished eyes had perceived at the first glance. In the middle of the sandy street, the biscuit in one hand, the corner of his pinafore in the other, his head shining in the sun which bedazzled his eyes, stood little My.
Thundering down the street, almost upon the child already, came Disney's great black horse, its huge head outstretched, its nostrils distended—two glowing scarlet pits—its lips drawn back, exposing the gleaming teeth flecked with blood-stained foam, flinging its forefeet out so madly that the glitter of its shoes could be seen from the front. Shreds of its harness clung to it and lashed it to greater fury.
Without a second's hesitation, Myron Holder rushed to her child—to death, as she doubted not. But another form sprang forward also. Homer Wilson darted diagonally across the street until he was directly in the pathway of the horse, but a yard or two beyond My. He had not time to steady himself before the brute was upon him. He grasped at the distended nostrils of the horse, caught them, but in a sliding grip,—the horse reared upright. There came two sounds—of hoofs, striking not on the resonant roadway, but with the horrible echoless blow that falls upon flesh, and then the horse swept on; but only one of his shoes was shining now, the rest were dim with blood and dust.
HE HAD NO TIME TO STEADY HIMSELF BEFORE THE BRUTE WAS UPON HIM.HE HAD NO TIME TO STEADY HIMSELF BEFORE THE BRUTEWAS UPON HIM.
Myron snatched her child out of the way as the horse passed by a hand's breadth, and in a moment she was kneeling by Homer's side.
He was dying, but a flicker of life bespoke the want that could only go out with life. She raised his head from the dust and kissed him on the mouth. He opened his eyes; they met hers, and an ineffable and unearthly radiance overspread his face.
That was all. He had found his way out of Jamestown. Myron's was still to seek.
He was quite dead when the others reached him. His chest was battered in, and the calk of one hind shoe had pierced through the thick brown hair and brought death.
"He has outsoared the shadow of our night,Envy, and calumny, and hate, and pain;And that unrest which men miscall delightCan touch him not and torture not again.From the contagion of the world's slow stainHe is secure; and now can never mournA heart grown cold, a head grown gray in vain."
Myron knelt by him, calling his name and imploring him to answer her. Rough hands pushed her aside. She fell, half-dazed. When she came to herself, My was crying by her, and a slow throng was moving towards Homer's wagon, where it stood before the harness-shop.
Myron rose and ran after them, but was met by a frightful figure of rage. The mother of the dead man, who had witnessed his death, rushed at her, shrieking out names of which "murderess" was the least hard, and would have struck her, but some one caught the upraised arm and bade Myron, with a curse, be gone.
Affrighted and bewildered, she caught up My and fled to the cottage.
Homer Wilson was carried in due time to the little graveyard. There followed a great train of slowly moving vehicles, for the Wilson family connection was a large one, and his tragic death drew people to come through morbid curiosity. Mr. Prew preached and prayed at length, and the throng lingered long about the grave.
Away behind the stone wall that flanked the far side of the graveyard two figures stood hidden, watching the funeral rites from afar.
Myron had been refused admittance to the Wilson home when she had gone to plead for one look at Homer's face. She had been forbidden to enter the graveyard. But they could not prevent her bringing My through the desolate fields to watch with baby eyes the burial of the man who had saved his life.
There were many black-clad figures that day in the graveyard—many wet eyes—many lamenting lips; but the real mourners stood afar off, as we are told they did one day long ago when a cross with a living Burden was upreared upon a hill.
Mrs. Wilson wept that Homer had been "took unprepared." But who can tell what penitence or prayer purged his soul when, between the hoof-beats, he looked death in the eyes? Who can say there was not time for both plea and pardon in those seconds—if, indeed, there be One to whom prayers go, from whom pardons come—if there be One to whom a thousand years are but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night?
Well, all these things are for us to strive with, and few there be that bring back any trophy of truth from that warfare; yet "still we peer beyond with craving face."
As for Homer Wilson—
"Peace, peace!—he doth not sleep;He hath awakened from the dream of life."
"The road to death is life, the gate of life is death;We who wake shall sleep, we shall wax who wane.Let us not vex our souls for stoppage of a breath,The fall of a river that turneth not again."
"All things are vain that wax and wane,For which we waste our breath;Love only doth not wane and is not vain—Love only outlives death."
The winter set in—a dreary, desolate winter of wind and rain, mud and slush. The snow never lay upon the ground for two days together, and the air, unpurified by frosts, hung heavy and dank over the land.
A black New Year makes a green graveyard, says the old proverb; and the wisdom of these old saws was demonstrated yet again that year in Jamestown, for there was much sickness. There was hardly a family that had not lost a member, scarcely a house in which there was no illness.
"There's a turrible lot of sickness," said Mrs. Deans to Mrs. Wilson one day at the church door.
"Yes, a turrible sight of it," agreed Mrs. Wilson. "The old folks is droppin' fast; but what's an ordinary sickness to what I've bore with?"
"That's so," said Mrs. Deans. "But a living sorrow's worse than a dead one, they say; and it's turrible when one's own flesh and blood goes wrong."
"Yes," replied Mrs. Wilson; "but it's turrible discouragin' when they're cut down in the midst and no one can say, 'What doest Thou?'"
Mrs. Wilson's tone implied that there might be some consolation if she were permitted to "talk back" at the Lord. Mrs. Deans noticed this and said warningly:
"Don't murmur; whatever you do, don't murmur; we can't tell what a day may bring forth. Look at me, what I have to put up with—Henry all crippled up and not able to earn salt for his bread. No, don't murmur, whatever you do."
"I ain't a-murmuring," said Mrs. Wilson, somewhat aggrieved. "I'm sure it ain't Homer; it's his soul I'm thinking on. Might's well be took off in a fiery chariot as killed the way he was."
"Oh, it's discouragin', I'm bound to say it is," condescended Mrs. Deans. "Enough to take the ambition out of one altogether. I suppose you haven't heard about old Mr. Carroll, have you?"
"Why, no," said Mrs. Wilson, abruptly suspending the task of sniffling into her handkerchief under pretence of weeping. "Why, no; you don't tell me he's sick?"
"Yes, it seems he was taken last night with spasms, and they say he might have died and no one been the wiser; but one of that Dedham tribe he was always feeding up came over to beg something, and there he laid on the floor."
"Well, for the land's sake!" ejaculated Mrs. Wilson.
"Yes, I'm going over after dinner. I sent Myron Holder over to do what's needed this morning. They say the only words the old man's spoke sence he was took was to tell them to send to town for a doctor."
Here Mrs. Wilson and Mrs. Deans parted, each joining different groups and spreading the news of Mr. Carroll's seizure.
The women resolved to go and see the ins and outs of his house for themselves—sickness is such an admirable excuse for impertinent curiosity to gratify itself.
The men speculated as to what would become of his property. There had been a story at the time he bought the property, some hint of family trouble, some whisper that he had "money back of him"—a hazy tale that he had come to hide from some sorrow that pursued him. But all conjecture was so vague that, instead of giving birth to any definite idea, it died away, only to be aroused when the village wondered at some act of generosity upon his part.
Old Carroll lived among them quietly—paying his taxes, going his own way and expressing himself freely upon every subject but his own affairs.
A week after his seizure he died, and a lawyer's clerk came from town and took possession of the house and charge of the funeral—in very different fashion from what his neighbors expected, for the body was taken away and sent to the great city, which in their eyes typified Babylon with all its sin and splendor.
The lawyer's clerk spoke with much deference of the dead man, and signified that the name of Carroll was high in the land; whereat the villagers bethought themselves that they had entertained an angel unawares, and were inclined to accuse the dead man of "doing" them.
Mrs. Deans boasted much of the intimacy of her husband with the old soldier, and speedily forgot the latter's impious sneers at foreign missions.
The farm was advertised for sale, and Disney bought the land he had so long worked on shares. Disney and his family moved into the empty house. Conjecture and interest gradually died away.
In the great city a woman with brittle, dyed hair and simpering lips and powdered throat laughed as, turning over a trunk full of odds and ends packed by the lawyer's clerk, she came upon a miniature set in pearls—laughed and looked at the picture long; but the laugh died as she noted the freshness of the pictured face. Crossing the room, she set the miniature against her own cheek and leaned close to a mirror, comparing the two. And presently she cast the painting from her and fled from the mirror with widened eyes.
"I am old—old!" she said. "He is dead, and I am old! It is this room, which is too light—it is glaring—horrible!" And she drew even closer the shades of silk, through which the light shone with a soft roseate glow. Then she searched for and found the picture where it had fallen on a soft rug, and again went to the mirror.