CHAPTER VI.
"And oh, the carven mouth, with all its great
Intensity of longing frozen fast
In such a smile as well may designate
The slowly murdered heart, that, to the last,
Conceals each newer wound, and back at fate
Throbs 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 mind
Till 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 now
Under 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 to Her,—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!"
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 were he" 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 to him worth? 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 bird
Above 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 seen
Love'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.