CHAPTER XII.
"Lo! where is the beginning, where the end,
Of living, loving, longing?"
"But were there ever any
Writhed not at passed joy?
To know the change and feel it,
When there is none to heal it,
Nor numbed sense to steal it,
Was never said in rhyme."
It was late summer. The whirring of reaping-machines sounded upon every side; the roads were strewn with grain from the harvest wagons; the air was murmurous with insects; the ground, parched and thirsty; the grass, sere and harsh; the leaves, laden with dust; the birds sang only in the hours of earliest dawn or in the twilight. At noontide, the horses' flanks dripped sweat, and the men's faces and necks were blistered with the heat. The cows stood knee deep in the ponds, and flicked at the flies with their long tails. The ponds were low, and their wide margins of mud were alive with tiny frogs, that hopped about in thousands. Upon the surface of the water was a glaze of curious animalculæ, as red as blood. Clumps of bullrushes and tasselled tufts of reeds grew in the water, and dragon-flies flitted through the green stems, like darting flashes of blue light. The Jamestown children called them darning-needles; and being assured of their propensity for sewing one's ears up, viewed them with serious apprehension. Often the birds, their breasts panting with heat, came to the ponds, and, fluttering to the margin, splashed the water over their little backs. They were timid, though, and liked better to find a spot where the deep imprint of a hoof was filled with water than to bathe in the ponds.
The little streams by the roadside had long since disappeared, and the famous stream on the Wilson farm, that welled up from the "living rock," stole along so sluggishly that it scarce stirred the watercresses that grew along its course.
It was the culmination of the year's endeavors: a hard season on man and beast; from day-dawn to dark was heard the shouting of men, the trampling of horses, the noise of machines—a feverish season, the fruition of a twelvemonth's expectancy.
"A good harvest, and fine harvest weather," said one and all.
It was natural that these weeks of incessant labor should tell upon the men—indeed many of them looked utterly worn out, with red rims encircling their eyes, and faces from which each drop of moisture seemed to have oozed; but Homer Wilson, during the excessive heats of that summer, looked worse than any of his neighbors. His blue jeans hung loose upon him; and when he threw aside his smock, his shoulders seemed sharp and thin under his shirt. The outline of his strong jaw was clearly defined, and by reason of the lack of superfluous flesh the contour of his head was strikingly apparent, and suggested almost unpleasantly the dominant force of his character. His eyes were sunken; and although at the end of a long day's work his face might grow ashen, his muscles twitch nervously, and his strong fingers tremble, yet the fire in his eyes remained undimmed.
He could not sleep. At night he used to go to the lake—very solitary then, when the fishing season was past—and plunging into the water swim far out in the moonlight. Sometimes he beat his arms upon the water at each stroke, striving to communicate his own excitement to the water, that shone up with such maddening placidity to the stars. Sometimes he would swim out until the shore behind him was but a dimness, seeming as unsubstantial as the clouds; then, turning on his back, he would float there, silent, his eyes searching the sky. The harvest moon—
"The loveliest moon that ever silver'd o'er
A shell for Neptune's goblet; she did soar
So passionately bright,"
floated above him. Silence was upon the face of the water, and he, in the embrace of the wave and the night, was alone indeed.
"The lidless train of planets" passed him by; the moon drew a mantle of mist about her and sailed away. A premonitory shiver crept along his limbs; he reached the shore, chilled to the bone; but the heat at his heart still parched him with thirst, for there had awakened within him a great longing for loving eyes, a great hunger for woman's touches, a great dread of his own solitariness, a great disgust of himself. He was realizing slowly, numbly, his own decadence, groping for some rope by which he might pull himself up out of the abyss into which he had fallen.
It is doubtless nobler to dispense with the rope and climb out of the pit unaided; the rockiest precipice may be hewn into painful steps, but in shifting sands who can form a stairway?
"Seems to me, Homer," said Mrs. Wilson one day, as she stood moulding her bread in the early morning, "seems to me you need something; now there's yarbs just hanging up and spilin' for the want of drinking; there ain't anything more buildin' than yarbs is—'The yarbs of the field,' it says in the Bible, which means all yarbs, and I have them mostly there." Here she glanced at the long row of paper bags which, tied round the stems of the dried plants, hung along one side of the kitchen. "Maybe it's ague workin' on you, or m'laria you're sickening for; I'll make up some boneset agin noon and——"
"Don't make any brews for me, mother," said Homer. "I don't need any; it's the heat." He was putting oatmeal into the water-pails for the men to take to the field.
"There," said his mother, "I knowed it! I'd no hope as you'd be led by me in this any more'n anything else. Well, it's to be expected, I suppose. I know who the nursin' and settin' up will fall on, but I kin stand it; I've had to bear with a good deal in my time, and the Lord 'll give me strength for this, too—but it does seem hard." She sniffed, and, wiping away an imaginary tear with her floury apron, left a smudge of white upon her rubicund countenance.
"It is hard," said Homer, very quietly, and went out, pails in hand, to where the horses stood ready harnessed for the day. The hired men were sticking branches of walnut leaves on their bridles and in the backhands, and bathing their flanks and breasts with smartweed oil, to keep off the flies.
Homer gave the men their pail of oatmeal and water, and went to his own team. As he passed his horses, he put out his hand to take the nearest one by the bridle. It started and swerved nervously from his extended hand. His face lowered for an instant; the next moment it flushed as though his swarthy cheek felt the impatient blow he had given the horse the day before. He took the lid off his pail and let the horses drink the contents, giving them the pail alternately; each pushed its nose down through the cool water to get at the meal at the bottom, making a great sucking as it did so, and resisting stubbornly the efforts of the other to usurp the pail. They made short work of the draught, but were loath to give up the pail, and stretched their noses after Homer as he hung it upon a fence-stake. He took their bridles and proceeded to the field, their harness-chains clinking, the leaves on their heads and backs rustling, their noses quivering as they licked at the grains of oatmeal sticking to their bits.
Homer was reaping the west field. A forty-acre expanse of growing grain it had been a few days before, but now it was all down save a little square in the hollow, at one corner of which stood the self-binder, an ungainly affair, with its windmill-like arrangement for pushing the sheaves along.
The shocks of grain stood round and round this square of standing wheat, as if they fain would protect it from the fate that had laid them low; but Homer and his horses threaded their ranks, and soon the lumbering machine was in motion, leaving a track of prostrate sheaves that presently the men would take in pairs, and, putting eight together, leave them for the sun to dry.
Through all that long forenoon Homer thought of his mother. It was not "yarb tea" he needed, but
"To take in draughts of life from the gold fount
Of kind and passionate looks."
The heat grew intense. The horses were panting, the sweat lathering from beneath the harness-straps; a stifling dust was rising from the wheels and covering Homer's face with a grayish veil; the grasshoppers fled in thousands before the machine; the grain gleamed dizzily golden in the sun. It was just the color of her hair—perhaps the feverishness of the heat made the thought unpleasant. That hair had been bright enough to drive him almost mad, but it was not brightness he wanted now, nor gayety, nor laughter; he wanted the benison of calm eyes, the shadow of cool hair, the tenderness of tears, the strength of a tried soul, and out of this chaos of longing was slowly evolved a figure.
Beginning with a dark cloud, that hovered for a time before him and then floated away fragment by fragment till all was gone save enough to halo round a pale and steadfast face, with dark locks of hair, and the face at first only outlined by the curving tresses, gradually assumed features—dark eyes and
"most tender brows,
Meant for men's lips, to make them glad of God
Who gives them such to kiss"—
pale, sorrowful lips, and a chin which told of strength to endure, yet pleaded most eloquently against a test; and then came patient shoulders and the bosom of a mother. He gazed at this figure long—or so it seemed. It eased his eyes, and the heat was really blinding; even this vision could not blot it out. He closed his eyes. The next moment frightful sounds confused his ears, he felt a sharp pain in his head, heard a cry—surely from the lips he had just seen in his waking dream.... With a great gasp, Homer Wilson came back from his momentary swoon to find himself lying on the ground, his machine a few yards in advance, and Myron Holder bending with tears raining down her white lace.
"Oh, Homer—Homer," she cried, "are you killed?"
"What is it, Myron?" he said, and tried to put his hand to where the pain was—but failing to reach his head, it faltered and fell upon one of Myron's arms, over which it closed. He realized that her arm was under his head, and that he was leaning heavily upon her. He tried to gather himself together, but one of his feet was held fast. He looked at her inquiringly. At that moment she was the source of life—knowledge—everything to him. The blood was streaming from a cut in his temple. She replied to his unspoken question promptly.
"The reins are tangled round your feet," she said. "Oh, I thought I couldn't get here in time! I thought they would surely drag you to death; and you fell so near the wheels, I——" here she gave way to a paroxysm of tears. She tried to stifle them. The sight set Homer's manhood for a moment again upon its throne. He untied the neckerchief he wore, clumsily dried her tears, and then applied it to his own head. She rose. Just then two men came in sight; they had been on their way home to dinner. Turning at the gate, they had seen something was wrong, and hastened back. As they approached, Myron snatched up her sunbonnet from where it had fallen and tied it on with trembling fingers.
"How was it, Homer? What's up?" called the men as they drew near. Homer's evanescent strength was gone; he was supporting himself on one elbow, upon which he seemed to be whirling, as on a pivot. He looked at Myron, and she answered for him:
"I was looking for Mrs. Deans' turkeys; they've strayed," she said. "As I came over the knoll, I saw him drop the reins and fall; I ran as hard as I could and stopped the horses; they were dragging him; he must have struck on a stone when he fell." She paused; her voice was trembling. "It's the sun," she said; and, turning, was over the crest of the knoll, her sunbonnet disappearing among the stacks on the opposite side, before the men made any comment.
As she disappeared, Homer's long-tried elbow gave way, and his head sank upon the stubble.
The men untied the leather rein from his foot, tied up his head as well as they could, steadied him as he rose to his feet, and helped him to mount the gray horse.
A day's rest set him right. The touch of sunstroke had been neutralized by the cut, whose bleeding had relieved the pressure on the brain and in a measure from his heart, for he no longer battled with intangible desires and maddening uncertainties of purpose; he yearned with his whole heart for the clasp of Myron's Holder's arms.
His mother heard the story of his accident and by whom a much more serious one was averted. She was thoroughly enraged and excited. She harped upon the one string until Homer's new-found store of patience reached an end, and he was fain to betake himself out of doors in the evenings until sleep stilled his mother's tongue.
It was a week or so after his fall—the wound on his temple had already healed in the wholesome skin—when, one night as dusk fell, he was beset with desire to see Myron. The vision he had had in the field returned to him often now; that strange vision—compound of reality and dream, part wrought of the needs of his own heart, part woven of the glimpses his reeling eyes caught of the woman's figure in the distance. As he had emerged from the chaos of indefinite yearnings to a definite desire, so he had put aside all women for one woman; to his credit be it told, he thought of Myron Holder as she was—the disgraced mother of a fatherless child. He could draw no fine distinction between letter and spirit, deduce no hair-splitting arguments to bear out his views, being only a rough countryman, unused to subtle mental processes. But he decided for himself that it was not muttered rites and outward forms that made the mother, but all the dolorous agonies of maternity. Which of them had this woman not endured? What jot or tittle of woman's horrible heritage had not been hers? And what more holy than a mother?
"God knows," he said to himself, as he strode along that night to the village, "a woman needs to be pretty bad before she's not good enough for the average man!" He had reached the fence round the Holder cottage—that fence in which the gaps grew greater and greater as old Mrs. Holder used the pickets for kindling-wood—and was just about to enter quietly, when Gamaliel Deans drove up. He recognized Homer and called out:
"Hi, there! Ho! What are you lookin' for?"
"A lift out to old Carroll's," said Homer promptly, cursing Gamaliel in his heart.
"Well, I'm yer man, then," said Gamaliel. "I'm just goin' for the vet. The sorrel mare's bad—sunstroke."
"Too bad," said Homer, springing into the light wagon. "Who was driving her?"
"I was—worse luck," said Gamaliel, sulkily. "I seen her stagger, but I thought she could make it to the end of the swathe; but she dropped in her tracks, and there she's laid since, with us pouring water on her head. It don't seem to do her much good, though, and she was beginning to kick out when I hitched up and started."
"Well," said Homer, and he had a grim satisfaction in saying it, "if she was beginning to strike out, you may as well go home, for she'll die!"
"I guess she will," said Gamaliel, philosophically; "but things was gettin' pretty hot round there, and I thought it safe to make tracks. Marm's in a regular ramp over it!"
"No wonder," said Homer severely; "she's a fine mare."
The twinkling lights of Mr. Carroll's window were in view. They neared them swiftly. Gamaliel half-pulled up and Homer sprang out.
"So 'long!" said Gamaliel. "This is a matter of life and death, ye know," he added, chuckling at his own wit. He drove on quickly, speculating as to whether the mare was dead. She was.
Homer meanwhile stood a moment irresolute, as the wagon disappeared. He had spoken upon impulse when, in answer to Gamaliel's inquiry, he said he was going to Mr. Carroll's. It was the first name that entered his head, and chosen for that reason.
Homer had once gone a great deal to old Mr. Carroll's, but never had resumed the visits since his return to the farm. He shrank morbidly from observation then, and old Mr. Carroll's eyes were sharp. This night, however, he decided to go in; he feared no man's eyes now. He rapped at the door and waited. He could hear the tapping of the old man's cane, then saw a light beneath the door, as Mr. Carroll called out in well-rounded tones for so old a man:
"Who goes there?"
"Homer Wilson!" shouted Homer.
"Pass Homer Wilson!" said the old soldier, and pulling back the simple bolt, let his visitor enter. Through a dusky narrow hall, to a room with very heavy wooden rafters and whitewashed walls, he led the way.
Those walls were a great saving of paper to him, Mr. Carroll was wont to say; and that there was reason in his statement could be readily seen, for all the farm accounts, the taxes, the mill accounts, the dates of any events he wished to remember, with any stray memorandum of a chance reflection or idea he wished to see in words, were pencilled upon the walls.
On the last night of the old year, Mr. Carroll had the walls whitewashed, and began a "clean sheet with four big pages," as he said, every New-Year's.
One of his pleasantest reflections was that he had never yet needed to begin the new year with any debts staring him in the face, "and no one owing me, either," he would say, as though that too were a triumph; but certain people said old Mr. Carroll was a fool in this; he was so set on carrying out his whim that he whitewashed over accounts that were still due him, because, of course, it was for his own selfish gratification, and not from any generosity that he forgave certain needy families the little debts they owed for flour, and hams, and chicken-feed!
Mrs. Deans considered this sinful; and, impelled by her usual sense of self-sacrificing duty, spoke to him upon the subject once, saying, to clinch her argument, that "he'd have more money for foreign missions, if he didn't throw his substance away on those miserable, ailing, complaining paupers over Stedham way." But Carroll had speedily brought the discussion to a close by demanding, with some heat, what possible interest he could have in "a batch of naked niggers, ma'am"—an irreverent way of referring to the interesting heathen, surely.
"Sit down, Homer; sit down!" said his host, pushing a chair toward him with a gesture of genuine hospitality; "sit down, and we'll have a glass of something."
He went to a cupboard, whose diamond-shaped glass panes were backed by faded green silk, produced an old-fashioned heavy glass decanter, two glasses, some sugar and old silver spoons—talking all the time. His lameness necessitated several trips to the cupboard, and as he brought each object and set it down on the table he would pause a moment, feign a start, and say—"Tut—tut—how forgetful I am!" and jauntily journey back, until he had all the requisites for a brewing of hot whiskey. So well he did the little by-play that he almost believed himself that it was forgetfulness that caused him to make repeated trips for the few articles and not the necessity for a cane, which left him only one free hand.
"A cold drink for a cold day, and a hot drink for a hot day; that's my idea," said the old man, settling himself into his chair with a suppressed twinge as he twisted his lame leg. "So now, you put a match to the fire, and we'll see if it's a good one."
Homer lit the fire, already laid, and the copper kettle placed upon the stove soon began to sing. Homer had talked readily enough at first, but he was growing absent-minded, his thoughts wandering back to that dilapidated cottage in the village. Presently the glasses of hot whiskey steamed between them. During the process of concoction Mr. Carroll related, with many strong expressions and much richness of detail, the idiocy of Male Deans, by whom he had sent to town for lump sugar. Lump sugar was an unknown commodity to Male, and he insisted there was no such thing, and declared Mr. Carroll couldn't "get the laugh on him that way." At last Mr. Carroll resorted to strategy. He wrote out a list of things he wanted from the grocery store, and smuggling loaf sugar in at the bottom of the list, gave it to Male and told him the grocery man would have all ready for him as he passed from the mill. So he got the lump sugar. Homer was a little hazy himself as to the existence of, or necessity for, lump sugar, but evidently it was of vital import to Mr. Carroll.
"Yes," the old man said, splashing another lump into his second glass of hot whiskey, "the ass! I've no doubt he'd put filthy loose sugar in this—floor-sweepings." Then came silence. Homer felt he must say something; he cast about for a subject; an accident of the day suggested itself.
"We killed a copperhead snake in the rye, to-day," he said; "the first I've seen in years. I was cutting a road round the field for the machine with the cradle, and it darted at me. I killed it with a fence-rail. It was an ugly beggar, and a good three-foot long."
"A snake!" said old Carroll. "A snake! There's many kinds of snakes. Copperheads are dangerous, and rattlesnakes are, but there's worse snakes than either. You killed it with a stick? Did I ever tell you about the man I knew who killed so many snakes?"
"No," said Homer, looking at him, for his tone was strange. "No. Who was he?"
"He was a man," said Mr. Carroll, looking fixedly at his guest, "he was a man that overcame many snakes of many different kinds, and how he fared at last I'll tell you."
He rose, snuffed the two candles, snipping off their wicks adroitly with a pair of old brass snuffers, and sat down, again fixing his gaze upon Homer's face. The tinderwood fire in the stove had died away to a mere glow of crisping embers; the kettle sang in dying cadence; its steam and the steam from the glasses floated athwart Homer's vision of Mr. Carroll's body, seeming to give greater keenness to the alert face, and the eyes which, always bright, seemed to glint to-night with absolute brilliancy.
"It was some time ago," said Mr. Carroll, "that this man I speak of used to kill the snakes. He had a peculiar dislike to all snakes, for a friend of his had had the life squeezed out of him in the folds of a serpent, and another friend had been bitten by one, so that he too died, having first gone mad; and another had the very breath of life sucked from him by a sly snake, so that he died—died himself, body and soul, and never knew it: only his friends saw the corpse of his old self, and knew their friend to be gone from their midst and only his semblance left, and they rejoiced much when at last this semblance died also, and they could bury it decently, like other corpses.
"There was no wonder my friend hated snakes.
"He waged war upon them; and it was his method when he found one, to take it by the tail and, with a sudden jerk, snap its head off. He killed a great many in this way; and it was always his habit to search for the head. He longed to look into the eyes, and learn wherein the power lay by which they deceived and deluded men until they stung them; but he never could find the head. Between disappointment at this, and despair because the more snakes he destroyed the more there seemed to be, my friend grew very sad. He had a horrible pain at his heart too, that no drug could ease. Time went on and the pain grew no better—it even shot through his head sometimes; but my friend persevered, and no snake escaped him.
"Well, one day he was walking in his garden, under his own trees, within his own walls, where it would be thought no snake could come, when a snake, more brilliant in color than any he had ever seen, crossed his path. For the first time, he understood a little of the feeling that makes a man spare a snake because it is beautiful; but he put the thought from him, and, catching it by the tail, jerked off its head and flung aside the body. Then he began to search for the head, feeling if he could but look into the jewel eyes of that snake that all the mystery of men's delusions would be revealed to him; and, knowing the secret of their delusions, surely he could dispel them.
"He bent to his search, but felt such a great pain in his heart that he stood up, casting his eyes down upon himself, for the pain was so great it seemed his heart would burst the bonds of his ribs; and as he looked, he saw the swelled eyes and forked tongue of the snake's head, for it had fastened on his breast above his heart. He looked again; it was gone. With wild haste, he tore off his coat.
"It was not there. His waistcoat—no sign of it. He dragged his clothing from him till he stood like Adam in the garden, and then he knew that that snake's head and all the others were in his own heart. Standing naked in his garden, he felt the snakes in his heart, and knew that his labor for mankind was vain—knew that not till he could rend and read his own living heart would he understand and dispel the delusions of men. The disappointment made him mad. It was the disappointment, nothing else—not the pain of the snakes, for many men have snakes in their breasts, she snakes, that amuse themselves by seeing how tight they can tie their hair about the heart."
The old man drained his glass. Homer was glad there was a little left in his tumbler—he swallowed it hastily.
"Rattlesnake oil is a grand thing for weak eyes," Mr. Carroll said, composedly; "and for horses' eyes it hasn't any equal."
"That's true," said Homer, "but it's pretty expensive—five dollars an ounce."
"Yes," returned his host, "old Dargo used to try out the oil and then eat the cracklings; but the best oil for medicine is got after letting the snake hang a while."
"So they say," said Homer; "but I never could bring myself to have anything more to do with a snake than to smash it with the first thing I could catch hold of."
They talked on a little longer, then Homer rose. "I must be getting along," he said; "I've quite a walk before me."
"Well, come back soon," said Mr. Carroll, lighting him to the door with a wavering candle. Homer had his hand on the latch, when the old man said suddenly:
"Hold the candle a minute." He felt in his pocket, and drew forth a small black case, opened it, and thrust it before Homer's eyes. "Look at it," he said, "look at it well, and then you'll know a snake the next time you see one—one of the dangerous kind, not a simple copperhead, or a gentle rattler." In the midst of the glow of a golden background, dimmed here and there by a pearl, was a painted face—fair enough to woo a king, false enough to sell a kingdom. Homer looked, and somehow understood all its beauty and treachery.
"LOOK AT IT," HE SAID, "LOOK AT IT WELL!"
Mr. Carroll shut the case with a snap, took the candle, and Homer let himself out.
"Good-night, Homer," called the old man. "Come back soon."
"Good-night. I will," said Homer, and the door closed between them.