The Untempered Wind

by Joanna E. Wood

CHAPTER XIII.

"Pleasure is oft a visitant, but pain
Clings cruelly to us—"

"Whoso encamps
To take a fancied city of delight—
Oh, what a wretch is he!"

Church was in. That meant that all the respected and self-respecting people of Jamestown had come forth, morally and physically clothed in their best, and bestowed themselves as comfortably as circumstances permitted in the wooden pews of Jamestown's only church.

From the preacher's desk, the congregation looked like a human theme with variations, the original motif being a stolid, expressionless mask of flesh, unanimated, immobile, with rudely carven features, and no decided tints. Upon this primitive scale nature had rung every change her shackled hands could compass; but between the highest note, struck perhaps in Ossie Annie Abbie Maria White, whose face was inoffensive, and the lowest personified by old Ann Lemon, whose countenance was a mere mass of flesh, there was but a short thought. The men were sandy-haired, meagre, undersized; or heavy, florid, dark, with lack-lustre eyes and coarse lips.

It was a delightful autumnal day—a day more provocative of tears than laughter, more suggestive of retrospect than anticipation; a day to dream old dreams, feel old heartaches, read old books, tell old tales, hear bygone singing, recall lost voices; a pure, sweet day—the air rarefied by the first touch of frost; a day, in short, to remind one of the sweet, the sad, the strange in life; but withal, a day to perfect the tint on the apples, mellow the juices of the late grapes, and promising a "fine spell of good weather for the fall ploughing," as each male member of the congregation had said to each other male member that morning.

Mother Earth got but little rest at the hands of these eager seekers. Hardly had her bosom been shorn of its crop of a yellow grain before the keen ploughshares were again plunged into the soil and it was lacerated afresh, and the man looked best content that morning behind whose plough there lay the greatest number of brown furrows, for the fall ploughing was of great furtherance when the rush of the spring came on; so the horses, loosed from the lumbering reaping machine, were yoked to the plough, that most graceful of all farmer's implements, and strained at their collars as it turned the furrow, sending its earthy fragrance to mingle with the fruity savor from the vineyards.

Light mists, prophetic of the later haze, floated in shreds and wisps across the fields, and gathered and lingered about the trunks of the trees in the woodland.

The birds were silent, and daily V-shaped flights of ducks and wild geese passed over the village, winging their way to the south.

Service went on in the church, to the staid and sedate measure of well-understood and long-established usage.

Ann Lemon was nodding off the intoxication of the night before in a pew well to the front. Ann felt she needed to assert her religious feelings lest there be some doubt of their existence.

Behind her sat Mr. and Mrs. White, young Ann, and Bing—the first three mentioned of the family looking as gloomy and downcast as their self-complacency permitted. Bing blinked wickedly in his corner, making sly swoops at the sluggish flies, and tearing them in bits when he captured any.

Across the aisle Clem Humphries flourished. Clem was one of those world-worn wrecks that are cast away and left stranded in nearly every small village the world over. How they drift there no one knows; whence they come no one cares; why they stay they could not tell themselves. Fate rattles us all in her dice-box, and we lie where we fall.

Clem was by turns a fisherman, Mr. Muir's assistant, a knife-grinder, a peddler; he had superior skill in making axe-handles, and out of wire he could twist and twine the cunningest of traps. He was acute and wise in his day and generation—at heart a scoffing old vagabond; yet he professed to be most religious, and evidenced it in the same way as the people about him did, by going to church with painful regularity, where he sat, a sore rock of offence to Mrs. Deans, for Clem was fain to relieve the tedium of the service and aggravate Mrs. Deans (whom he hated) by a succession of tricks that irritated her almost beyond endurance.

Mrs. Deans sat immediately behind Clem, and pursed her already pursed-up mouth, sniffed her already pinched-in nose, and glared at him fiercely from her chronically inflamed eye, but all to no effect. He was full of offence, and Mrs. Deans had several times accused him in after-meeting of "conduct misbecoming in a Christian," but Clem had answered to the charge so volubly, so diplomatically, so humbly that the rest of the church members, and particularly Mr. Prew, the minister (to whom Clem always ostentatiously removed his hat), decided that Mrs. Deans had "a pick" at Clem, and regretted a little that such a pious woman should stain her noble record by such complaints as she made against this humble follower.

He had an evil habit of setting his stout stick upright beside him in the pew, balancing it with a skill all the boys of Jamestown emulated in vain, and then placing his hat upon it, so that in full sight of the congregation, it stood perilously balanced, but never falling, during the entire time of service.

A strange minister had once been sadly disconcerted by the sight of the immovable hat in that pew. He could see nothing of what supported it, and could hardly restrain his wrath at the irreverence of the dwarfish individual who sat covered in the Lord's house. Animated by the thought, he seized the sword of the Spirit and began to fight against this evil one. He dilated upon the perils of irreverence until the majority of his listeners dared hardly breathe. He thundered forth the denunciation of the wicked and stubborn of heart until all the women wept, led by Ann Lemon, who, by reason of excessive piety and much gin, had no nerves left at all, and who showed her emotion by a series of subdued howls. He exhausted vituperation and himself, and sat down—a beaten man, for the hat was unmoved, whilst Clem beside it was rolling up his eyes and trying to induce a tear—an effort beyond even his art.

When the preacher discovered the true state of affairs, which he did when he saw Clem pick up the cane and its burden, carry it to the door, give it a jerk, bending his head at the same time, and so receive the hat at his own peculiar angle, he felt as if all good was but a dream and a delusion.

Clem every Sunday produced a large and not over-clean handkerchief tied in many intricate knots. These he untied painfully and laboriously with teeth and fingers, until he reached the last, which, when untied, disclosed a copper cent, which was his weekly contribution. This performance he made an absolute torment to Mrs. Deans, but with the cent he made her life a burden. He dropped it, and scrambled around on his hands and knees for it. He polished it on his trousers until it seemed as if he might wear the fabric through. Worst of all, he put it on the back of the seat before him, where Mrs. Wilson's plump back must inevitably knock it off. Mrs. Wilson, despite her many trials and the multitude of diseases she believed were concealed about her person, was very stout, and therefore subject to all the fatigues incident to bearing such a burden of flesh. In spite of this, however, Mrs. Wilson was animated by an eager desire to do her duty as became a "mother in Israel," and by her deportment convey the impressive lesson of example to the less holy members of the flock. With this end in view, she strove to attain an upright and rigid position of an uncomfortable piety; but the flesh is weak. Presumably the weakness increases in ratio to the flesh, for before the first prayer was over Mrs. Wilson was beginning to settle. When the preacher announced his text, she usually took a fresh grip of her failing resolution, and assumed a ramrod-like pose, but it was of short duration. She gradually collapsed, her shoulders drooped, the back of the pew dented further and further into the broad black expanse that leaned against it.

Clem's penny crept nearer and nearer the edge as the encroaching back advanced. Presently Mrs. Wilson, worn out in her efforts to listen to the sermon and fight against her own lassitude at one and the same time, gave way, and, with a sigh, leaned back restfully. The penny flew off, and Clem, whilst apparently gazing at the preacher so attentively as to be oblivious of all else, reached forward and caught it adroitly, to place it again in jeopardy, and then again to lose sight of its peril. This performance, being repeated a half-dozen times during one service, enraged Mrs. Deans beyond expression. One unlucky day, she prodded Clem in the back with a rigid forefinger, and upon his turning round, which he did with an exaggerated start that vibrated through the whole congregation, she made a sharp gesture of withdrawal, and gazing at the offending penny, just then trembling on the edge, left the rest to Clem's understanding—a perilous thing to do, for Clem chose to interpret the signal in quite a different way than she intended.

Down Mrs. Wilson's black merino back there strayed a long light brown hair. To Mrs. Deans' consternation, Clem reached gingerly forward, took the hair, and, with the suddenness Mrs. Deans' gesture had indicated, withdrew his hand. Now the hair had merely strayed, and was not lost from Mrs. Wilson's knot, hence the sharp jerk brought a smothered exclamation and a sudden start from her—a start which sent the detestable copper spinning. Clem caught the coin dexterously with one hand, whilst he turned to offer Mrs. Deans the hair with the other. That worthy woman looked positively apoplectic, and, giving Clem just one look, turned her attention markedly to the preacher. Clem turned, with a fine expression of bewildered disappointment upon his face, replaced the hair on Mrs. Wilson's shoulder and the coin on the ledge, and lost himself in pious meditation.

This occurred some time before this autumn Sunday, but Mrs. Deans had suffered in silence since then. She was prone to leave church with her temper thoroughly on edge. Clem was surpassing himself that day: he wore a long-tailed coat of the fashion of many years before, and, when he arrived, which he did just as the first psalm was announced, he deliberately stood up, and, pulling round first one coat-tail and then the other, emptied them of a multitude of small articles—tobacco, pipes, balls of twine, lead sinkers, little twists of wire, a big jack-knife, stray nails, and a varied assortment of bits of iron and buttons. Having put these all on the seat beside him, he deposited himself with the air of a man who puts aside worldly things to listen to better. Hardly was he seated before he imagined the flies were troubling him. He made several spasmodic slaps at his bald head, and then drawing forth his handkerchief, folded it carefully in four and laid it on the top of his head. Thus adorned, he rose to sing, knelt to pray, and finally listened with reverential attention to the sermon.

"Few are thy days, and full of woe,
O man, of woman born;
Thy doom is written, 'Dust thou art
And shalt to dust return.'"

So they sang; and the wailing air, upborne by the harsh, untrained voices, reverberated from the bare walls of the church, its jangling cadence pierced by one pure and bell-like voice, for Bing White, with the heart of a vulture, had the voice of a lark.

One passing outside smiled—half amusedly, half sadly—as he heard the singing, and went on his way with the music following him in ever fainter notes, forcing itself upon him.

* * * * * *

On Sunday Myron Holder had her only relaxation. Her grandmother, preserving the prejudices of the little Kentish village from which she had come, detested all other religions save the Episcopal. Her folks had all been strong for Church and State, and she scorned the idea of going to the Methodist church, or, as she contemptuously said, "to chapel." Her vocabulary knew no more derisive epithet than "a Methody." This in itself was enough to isolate the Holders in the midst of a community that regarded Episcopalians as being "next door to out-and-out Catholics," and Catholics as surely doomed. As Mrs. Holder did not go to church herself, neither did she allow Myron to go after the work for the day was done, so she was free to lavish her heart on her child. It was her custom, whilst church was in and the streets empty, to take the boy and go out into the fields or lanes with him, severing herself from the house that had held such agony for her and from the woman whose stinging tongue kept her wound raw. Once with her boy—alone in the air and sunshine—she gave herself up to introspective soul-searchings. Upon one side she set herself, and upon the other all things good; in the great gulf between there hovered the shade of the man to whom she owed her misery. In the abandonment of her self-abasement, she did not place herself even upon his level, whilst as for little My—he shone amongst the holiest of those things to which it seemed to her she was herself in such direct opposition and contradiction. The great marvel of her life was this child, who owed its existence to her. She looked at it with eyes of adoration—touched it almost humbly, as the Madonna we are told of may have tended the Christ-child on her breast. The child seemed to embody all the dead delight of her own girlhood, to have absorbed all the peace, all the calm, all the gayety she had lost. There seemed no varying moods to cross its baby mind; it was the embodiment of trusting love.

Myron, in the face of this miracle, this perfect blossom which sunned itself in her eyes only and expanded beneath her tenderness, was bewildered and amazed. She began to ponder over the matter, and presently to wonder if there was any phase of the entire situation that made her less blameless—to ask herself in what way she could possibly obliterate shame from her record for his sake.

"Are your garments spotless?
Are they white as snow?
Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?"

The words came to her as a personal and crushing query as the congregation energetically sang them. Little My clapped his hands and laughed delightedly; the music pleased him. So Myron stood outside until the voices died away, and the murmur of prayer succeeded; then taking My up in her arms, that they might make greater speed, she went rapidly out of the village. She turned to her left, and, going a short distance along the road, lifted My over the fence into Mr. Warner's grass meadow. Through the centre of this field ran a deep ditch, to carry off the surface drainage in spring. Its course was marked by a thick growth of low-growing shrubs, among which grew short stubby oaks, whilst here and there great graceful elms sprang up in lofty columns, crowned with drooping branches; parasitic vines, sucking the life-juice of the tree they adorned, crept up these elms; their delicate leaves, already scarlet, showed vividly against the gray bark of the trees, and looked like thin streams of blood trickling down. Particularly was this the case where, upon one of the elms, the creeping-vine had reached the point where a branch had been broken off by the wind. The semblance was thus complete: there was the wound—there the blood, and above, the sighing leaves deplored the pain. At the foot of this tree was a huge and brightly green mound, which, as Myron approached, seemed almost artificial, so close were the leaves set, so impenetrably were the tendrils woven together; for this mound was formed of two oak trees over which, completely hiding them, grew a huge wild grape vine, forming a perfect canopy of dense green, and, more honest than the vine that sapped the elm tree, the grapevine, by its luxuriant growth and the vigor of its stem and branches, seemed to proclaim its settled purpose to smother the trees that supported it if possible.

To this Myron bent her footsteps. Pressing into the shrubs some distance below, she won her way through them until she came to the foot of the elm tree, and entered the green tent formed by the grapevine. Between the trunks of the two scrubby oaks was a space of heavy green grass, which, springing up before the vine leaves had shut off the sun, kept green and fresh in their shadow through all the heats of summer. Here she and her child sat down; they were completely shielded from observation—the grape garlands at their backs, before them the masses of shrubs on the other side of the ditch.

Myron took a biscuit from her pocket and gave it to the boy, and then, clasping her hands about her knees, lost herself in dreams. She had cast aside her sun-bonnet, and the light, with difficulty piercing the shade, shone upon her in pearly lights and gleams—a colder radiance than shone elsewhere.

The soft characterless face of the young girl had been frozen into the enforced calm of passionless despair. Her face gave a strange impression, as of features that would remain unchanged no matter how long time endured for their possessor; as if the voice of pain and shame had bade her life stand still, nor evidence its aging in her countenance. No network of wrinkles, no deep marks of care, could have been half so sad as these youthful outlines veiled by such grief. Her eyes were heavy; her mouth would have been bitter, but that the patience of the face belied all bitterness save that of self-contempt. Underneath this mask of arrested life, vivifying it with tragic meaning and rendering it inexpressibly sad, burned an intense suppressed expectancy, as of one who doth

"Espy
A hope beyond the shadow of a dream."

This lent her face the artistic value of motive, and transformed what might, without it, have been but a sad-faced woman, such as the world holds in countless thousands, into a creature of tragic force.

Myron pondered in the shadow, whilst her child played at her side. It was very still. The child's soft breathing as he plucked at the soft grass was the only sound that broke the listening silence; opposite her was a little maple tree; a single leaf near the top was whirling round and round, caught in some miniature tempest that left unmoved the leaves on either side. In the midst of universal calm, this lonely leaf was tossed and troubled, singled out for unrest, as Myron Holder had been set apart for pain. But Myron's thoughts were not upon the leaf, albeit she saw it fluttering. She was struggling against a futile wrath, which welled up in her heart and at times nearly mastered reason—a hot rage against herself—him—the village. Her cheeks flushed—her hands involuntarily closed.

Why had this lot been meted out to her? In what was she different from these other women whose fault had been no less than hers? Why was continual bitterness her portion whilst they dwelt at ease? Simply because, though tardily, their children had been given a name. She felt a bitter wish spring up within her breast that all those jibing at her were such as she; that all those cruel women might feel the touch of shame; that they might be brought low, and taste the bitter bread that was her portion, and drink the cup they held to her lips. And then she sank into an evil dream. In it she beheld herself sitting in the judgment seat of respectability and meting out judgment to those who so lately had been her judges; for, in her dream, he had returned and justified her; she had risen, and all the rest had fallen; and as they toiled along the thorny path her feet had known, she beheld herself pass by on the other side. How she would withdraw from them (her eyes grew cold)! How she would avert her head (her lips were scornful)! How she would look them up and down with contemptuous condemnation, and turn and whisper her verdict into willing ears. That would bring the blood to their cheeks. That would—she paused, arresting her thoughts with a sudden knowledge of their shame; the cold eyes filled with tears, the scornful lips drooped and trembled; she realized the horrible wickedness of her own thoughts—thoughts—no hope, she owned to herself, and crying aloud, "I am wicked, shameless!" she flung herself upon her face in the grass and wept out the bitterness of her soul. The child crept to her side and strove to turn her face toward him; she kept it hidden, but stretched forth her arm and clasped his little form.

My, frightened at the silence with which his overtures were met and at his mother's unusual attitude, and shaken by her sobs, began to cry. Myron roused herself, and taking him in her arms, held him to her breast, rocking back and forth in the abandonment of her grief. The motion soothed and reassured the already drowsy child, and in a few moments he slept, whilst his mother, stilling her sobs that she might not disturb his slumber, bent above him a face wrung by pain.

She mused over her late vision of retaliation. With what cruelty had she hit upon the mode of showing her revenge! Alas, the lesson had been well taught her, for she had known the averted gaze, the scornful lip, the contemptuous regard. She had simply chosen those means from which she herself had suffered moat keenly. There came back to her the memory of an early morning, when, standing in the doorway, she had looked out into the dawn and had seen

"The horizontal sun
Heave his bright shoulders o'er the edge of the world,"

and had vowed herself to the service of others, and to the atonement of her sin, and hoped for an early death.

Here, under the cold rays, of the autumnal sun, and abased before the memory of her late musings, she renewed those vows and scourged her soul with stripes of self-reproach.

When My woke, they went forth from their refuge, across the fields, up the street to the village; the streets were empty. A shambling figure in the distance, bespeaking Clem Humphries by the length of the coat-tails and the thinness of the legs, was making toward the lake. It was indeed Clem, going to indulge in a little surreptitious sport as an antidote to the sermon. Clem looked upon his churchgoing as one of his many professions, like the making of wire snares and the digging of graves. "Only," he said to himself as he reflected upon the matter, "give me a grave to dig for choice."

Homer Wilson passed the church that day just as they were singing that lugubrious paraphrase. He smiled a little to himself, and went on, saying, "Very cheerful that—very; but they haven't anymore idea of returning to dust than I have, at least not for a while." But it seemed he could not get beyond the echo of the singing. The voices followed him far through the rarefied air; there came to him little snatches of the gloomy words, persistently forcing themselves upon him. He quickened his pace, and was soon beyond the farthest-reaching note, and yet it seemed to vibrate in his ears. Once clear of the village, he struck across country.

The sorrel showed red, the ragweed white, between the short stalks of the yellow stubble; here and there in the lanes and by the gateways were spots of bright green verdure, looking unhealthily brilliant among these dull browns and yellows.

This was where the over-ripe grain, falling to earth, had sprung up to wither at the touch of the first frost. Homer frowned a little at this. It bespoke careless management, and the instinct of the farmer was strong in him; but his brow speedily cleared, for his thoughts were of far other things. His walk was very silent; the earth had indeed "grown mute of song," and all these resting fields were dumb; no crisping cricket, no whirring insect, no singing bird, nothing disturbed the serenity of the hour. It seemed a hiatus in the processes of nature—a suspension of all activity, a breathless pause of ecstasy or pain, like the instant before a first kiss or the moment before a final farewell.

Under these conditions thought was easy, and Homer went on and on, his mind dwelling upon the one all-absorbing theme.

"Myron—Myron," he said once, aloud, but his voice seemed at fret with the quietude, and he walked on swiftly, to escape its cheerless echo. Presently he found himself entering the woodland, and knew he was a full ten miles from Jamestown. A straight course through the woodland brought him to the margin of the lake, which bayed in here in a sharp curve.

Close to the margin lay great prostrate logs, whitened by wind and weather till they looked like huge bleached bones. Beyond these were stones and a narrow strip of gravelly beach, broken here and there by boulders, against which the water lapped softly in a thousand ripples, wearing away the rock into tiny cells, and honey-combing them with gentle but resistless touches. Stretching out into the water, a succession of large stones showed their stubborn heads, leading by irregular steps out to where the last one, large enough to be a tiny rocky islet, showed two feet high above the encircling water.

Homer made his way across these perilous stepping-stones, until he reached the largest; sitting down, he sank into a reverie so profound that he scarcely seemed to breathe. His face grew pale as he sat there minute after minute, the water lap-lapping among the rocks, the trees silent behind him, the sky mute above. Once he murmured a few words, paraphrased with no thought of irreverence: "As a lamb before its shearer is dumb, so she opened not her mouth." His voice faltered in what might have been a sob, but was resolutely forced back.

The sun began to fall behind the trees before Homer rose. As he did so, he cast a look at the rock upon which he had been resting; there, caught in a crevice, lay an old-fashioned bullet. He picked it up and looked at it lying in his palm. One could scarcely imagine it speeding through the air upon a hurtful mission. It had wandered on to find a victim, until, its impetus spent, it had fallen ingloriously to lie upon this rock, mocked by the sunlight which it had been meant to darken forever for some living creature. Homer slipped it into his pocket and began to make his way shoreward, leaping lightly from stone to stone. As he sprang to land again, he said between his teeth, "I'd like to hear any she-cat in the crowd open her lips to my wife!" It will be seen his reverie had developed its subject.

Homer held his way home happily, his eyes alight, his face aglow with his old generous spirit. He was once more the Homer of the past. Realizing this, he recognized the debt he owed Myron Holder, and paid homage to that strong soul whose mute endurance of ignominy and betrayal had shamed his own sleeping soul into life. It is plain to us that Myron Holder's shame was Homer Wilson's salvation. It is an ugly thought, but inevitable, that such instances may not be rare. But may not that virtue we hold "too high and good for human nature's daily food"—may not even that be bought too dear? What an ugly complexion it would put upon our intolerant attitude to those fallen ones, if we dreamed for one moment that our immaculate virtue was preserved by their vice! It would be hard to ask us to renounce heaven, but if heaven for one meant hell for another, it were at least well for us not to blow the fire.

But Homer Wilson was not thinking of any generalizations; he was simply concerned with the debt he owed Myron Holder and how to pay it; for, and be it told with no thought of disparaging Homer Wilson, he felt he would bestow an inestimable benefit upon Myron Holder by making her his wife. He believed he would, at one blow, free her from the shackles of shame. He never thought of the woman-soul that strove to justify itself by rigid adherence to those vows that had seemed so sacred, uttered, as they were, by lips that were almost divine to the listening heart they had betrayed.

It must be remembered that Homer was nothing but a plain countryman. It was therefore natural that he should look upon himself somewhat in the light of a deliverer when he considered himself in relation to Myron; and yet, inarticulate but existent, there was a hesitancy in his heart, not born of self-conceit or paltry self-seeking, but rooted in the knowledge of his own weakness in time of trial. But he put aside all this; and as he pushed on towards Jamestown mused happily upon the happiness that was his, for he loved Myron Holder. Poor Homer!

"Whoso encamps
To take a fancied city of delight,
Oh, what a wretch is he!"