CHAPTER III.
"It is a wild and miserable world,
Thorny and full of care,
Which every friend can make his prey at will."
"Know how sublime a thing it is
To suffer and be strong."
Beneath the quietness of Myron Holder's manner there raged a very chaos of reckless, despairing thought. It is undeniable that at this time no maternal love warmed her heart towards her child.
There was one night—one dreadful night—whose memory stained forever even the dark pages of her retrospect. A night through the long hours of which she lay and thought of death—not to herself—but to the sleeping infant at her side. All the tales she had ever heard of desperate women's crimes came to her, assailing her weakened will and tired brain with insidious suggestions of safety, and freedom, and immunity from blame.
Pallid, she rose in the early dawn. As she passed the old English mirror in its shabby gilt frame, she caught a fleeting glimpse of burning cheeks, cracking parched lips and bloodshot eyes. She withdrew her glance shuddering.
It was very early in the morning. She crossed the kitchen, and softly opening the door looked forth upon the unawakened world. The air was somewhat chilly, but sweet and soft. A heavy dew spread a pearly film over the grass, broken here and there by a silvery shield, where the spider webs held the moisture: gossamers they are in these early morning hours when the world is pure and quiet,—shreds of the Madonna's winding sheet, as we all know. But what are they when the dew is gone and they are laden with the dust and soot and grime of the long hot day? Gossamers still?
Down between the trees she could see the dull glimmer of the lake, awaiting the sun to strike it into silver; a few pale stars lingered, loath to bid the world good-by before the moon, which, a wraith-like orb, still soared on high, white and diaphanous. All was calm, passionless, and pure. As Myron Holder looked there grew within her soul a sick shuddering against the woman of the past night. She saw herself vile where all was holy, passionate where all was peace. And from her soul, a plea, indefinite in aspiration, and vaguely voyaging to some unknown haven, went forth, that her old heart might be vouchsafed to her, her own suffering, fearing, trusting, loving, betrayed heart, instead of this throbbing centre of pain with its bitter blood of despair and hate.
Slow resolutions began to stir in her heart: she would go through the world "spending and being spent" for others: she would be patient to her grandmother, always remembering she had shamed her: she would be true and faithful and self-sacrificing in every relation she assumed to others; she would be sympathetic to all and she would die soon, very soon, she thought, and the village would mourn her and at last speak of her with loving kindness. Poor Myron! Like "many mighty men," she did not realize the utter barrenness of a posthumous joy or understand how diffident Death can be when wooed.
Her mood was jarred by the child's cry and the grandmother's querulous complaint. She turned from the morning just as the sun's rays shot across the lake.
As soon as she was able to do so she resumed her work—bending over her toil, a patient figure in a worn blue print gown and dark sunbonnet, a humble mark she seemed for public scorn: yet all the scandal and spite of the scurrilous little village played about her.
As Mrs. Disney expressed it, old Mrs. Holder "took it most terrible hard": therefore the village matrons contracted a habit of running in at all hours to the little hop-clad house and condoling with Mrs. Holder, and with her speculating as to the identity of the child's father.
Now and then these zealous comforters rather overdid the matter, notably when Mrs. Weaver, with a view of exonerating Mrs. Holder from all blame and relieving her of all responsibility for Myron's behavior, remarked that "It did seem as if bad was born in some people."
Old Mrs. Holder rose at that, and speedily made Mrs. Weaver aware that Myron's badness was purely sporadic, and that heredity had nothing to do with it. She did not express herself in this way, but conveyed the same idea much more forcibly.
It is possible that, being Myron's grandmother, she felt a slight reflection from Mrs. Weaver's well-meant suggestion that Myron had inherited vice as her birthright; be that as it may, she speedily made Mrs. Weaver aware that if there was any truth in such an idea, she herself must be in a perilous state: the old Englishwoman had managed to glean pretty accurate data about the Jamestown people, and she knew that Mrs. Weaver's mother had "tript in her time." Mrs. Weaver called no more upon Mrs. Holder, but the others showed no abatement of their zeal.
These good Jamestown women had a pleasant habit of sitting with Mrs. Holder until Myron's form appeared at noon or night. They gazed at her while she opened the gate, trod the little path past the front door, and until she turned the corner: when Vice in the person of Myron entered the back door, Virtue embodied in one or more of Jamestown's matrons fled from the front door, hearing, ere the gate was reached, the first measures of the jeremiad with which her grandmother greeted her. There was little wonder that Myron Holder grew morbidly nervous and supersensitive. She would scarce have been responsible for any deed, however evil.
All the morning the anticipated agony of the ordeal of walking up the path, under these scathing eyes, oppressed and tortured her. No martyr ever contemplated with greater dread the red-hot ploughshares than Myron Holder did those few yards of red trodden earth, bordered by fox grass and burdock leaves.
Through the long hours of the slow afternoons she braced herself for the return home at night, but she did not try to elude any of the humiliations of her position. The garden gate was terrible to her as the surgeon's knife to the sufferer—for the hasp was loosened and twisted, the gate had to be lifted before it could be opened, and sometimes she was kept fumbling with the fastening until the blood swam before her eyes in a red mist.
Doubtless she should have considered all these painful contingencies and walked more heedfully, but the thought, which the Jamestown matrons often quoted, did not, as they seemed to think it should, dull the pain of the thousand stings she received daily—it only pressed them home. There are many
"Dainty themes of grief
In sadness to outlast the morn;"
but the tale of Myron Holder's expiation is not one of them—it is a sordid theme, yet, being human, not too sordid to be writ out. It is a painful relation; but when one woman lived it, we may not shrink from contemplating it, nor hesitate to view step by step the way one woman trod.
The first summer of her child's life wore away. Autumn came before Myron Holder was goaded into any demonstration of her suffering.
She was one day working for Mr. Disney, who worked old Mr. Carroll's place on shares. It was the time of the apple harvest. All day long they had been picking, gathering, sorting, and carrying the heavy fruit. Between Mr. Carroll and Mr. Disney was waged a continual war of wits, each endeavoring to get the better of the other. The afternoon was far spent when old Mr. Carroll came, limping out, bent and thin, only his erectness of poise when he stood still evidencing the old soldier.
The fruit had been divided into two long heaps, alike in their dimensions, but, as all the pickers knew, of widely different quality.
The grass was sere and yellowed, the sapless apple leaves fell in rustling showers at the lightest breath of wind, and now and then an apple fell with a dull sound upon the earth. The brown side of the drive-house formed a neutral background into which all the sombre tints of the little scene blended, save the brilliant reds and yellows of the two long piles of apples.
"Well, Mr. Disney—got the apples sorted?" asked Mr. Carroll with affected geniality. Mr. Disney, a shallow-witted man, was betrayed by the smile on the lips into disregard of the cold eyes, and replied with rash effusiveness:
"Yes—picked, sorted, divided, sold, almost cooked and eaten." Old Mr. Carroll's smile froze.
"Which is my pile?" he asked with an indescribable intonation of sarcastic contempt, which pierced even Disney's denseness and made a slow red gather to his cheeks as he answered—"That one."
"Then I'll take this one," replied Mr. Carroll, indicating the other. Disney faltered then—wanted to re-divide—and managed to confuse himself completely. Mr. Carroll listened contemptuously; his keen old eyes had discerned the mud on the apples in the heap assigned to him, and he had decided, rightly enough, that they were windfalls.
Disney's half-hearted plea for a re-division was manifestly absurd, and the caustic old man enjoyed a pleasant half-hour in ridiculing the idea. For once he had his enemy fairly "on the hip."
The end of it was that presently, when Mr. Warner drove past, he saw old Mr. Carroll enthroned upon an upturned bushel basket, his cynical old eyes gleaming with amusement, his feet shifting restlessly with delight, his tongue irritating Disney almost beyond endurance.
He had placed himself on the side of the drive-house door and demanded that his apples be carried in then and there. Disney longed to refuse, but his agreement provided that he perform all the labor of harvesting and storing Mr. Carroll's share. There was nothing for it, therefore, but to obey the irascible old man, who, in numerous playful ways, made the carrying in of the fruit a weariness of the flesh to Disney. He stopped him to pull stray wisps of grass out of his pails, or to examine a purely imaginary blemish in an apple. He let his cane slip down so that Disney tripped over it. He took one of the pails, and pretended to fix one of the handles, which was perfectly secure as it was—and all the time he talked, gently, irritatingly, making the most innocent of pauses for replies that Disney felt he must make, but which he made as briefly as possible.
The afternoon waned; finally the last apple of the heap was transferred to the drive-house. Then Mr. Carroll rose, trying his best to conceal the stiffness of his joints from Disney, locked the drive-house door and limped off to his lonely house, solitary but triumphant.
A little later he watched the departure of the disgusted Disney and his pickers—Myron Holder dragging wearily home alone, body and heart alike aching; the rest slyly nudging one another, with meaning looks at Disney's sullen face.
Still later, when Mr. Carroll blew out his yellow wax candle, he pushed aside the limp white blind, raised the many-paned window and looked forth into the moonlight. It was very clear and quiet. Disney's pile of apples lay roughly outlined beneath its covering of old sacks. Mr. Carroll looked at it amusedly—as he looked a stray apple, left swinging unseen, fell. As the sound reached his ears a malevolent smile irradiated his face. Still smiling, he put the window down, let the blind fall and sought sleep.
That night Myron Holder traversed the road home in the deepest dejection; forced to endure all day the covert sneers of the other pickers, with extreme bodily weariness added to her mental burden, helpless as a fly from which a wanton hand has torn the wings, she felt, as she trod her solitary way home, utterly despairing.
Ere she was fairly within the doors her grandmother's taunting words met her. Roused from her long apathy of mute endurance, she tore her sunbonnet from her head and flashed one dreadful look of rage and defiance at the old woman—such a look as made Mrs. Holder' stagger back, holding up her hand as if to shield herself from a blow. Terrified at the turmoil in her own breast, Myron turned and fled into her room. She saw the boy's little form upon the blue and white checked counterpane of her bed, she rushed up to the couch, her hands were clenched, her heart seemed throbbing in her throat. Dreadful thoughts circled about her, wild and diverse, but all hung upon the one axis of pain. Half in delirium, she bent over the child. It looked up at her and smiled, and stirred feebly, but yet as if its impulses made towards her. With a cry she caught it to her bosom.
There was one creature that yet smiled upon her. Thereafter, from day to day, throughout the long winter, her adoration of her child waxed stronger and stronger.
Every instant she could spare from her toiling she held it in her arms. On Sunday, when good Jamestown people did no extra work, Myron Holder had her only pleasure. For then she shut herself into her room with the child, whispering to it, caressing it, soothing it when awake, and during its long sleep holding it with loving avarice in her arms, too greedy of the cherished weight to relinquish it to the couch.
Her grandmother managed even from this tenderness to distill some bitter drops to add to Myron's cup. She dwelt long and eloquently upon the wrong Myron had done the child. Slowly the winter passed, and Mrs. Deans once more hired Myron Holder to come to the farm daily. The child was left with old Mrs. Holder, while Myron earned a subsistence for all three.
What Myron Holder endured daily no words can tell. By what written sign may we symbolize the agony of a heart, bruised and pierced and crushed day after day? By what language express the torture of a pure soul, stifled in a chrysalis of shame?
Some souls may be purified by fire, doubtless, as the old Greeks cleansed their asbestos fabrics; but we should be wary how we thrust our fellows into the furnace, for no base tissue will stand the fire, and a soul, to emerge unsmirched and undestroyed, must be of strong fibre indeed.