CHAPTER XV.
"This above all—to thine own self be true;
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man."
"Though Allah and Earth pardon Sin, remaineth forever Remorse."
Winter lay white over the land—a bitter winter. The road, beaten to a glassy whiteness, glistened between unbroken plains of dull, lustreless white, for the fences were hidden by the heaviest snowfall ever known in Jamestown. The cold was intense; for twenty days the icicles had hung unmelted in the sun. The crows, tamed by hunger, flapped their sluggish wings over the barnyards. Here and there in the fields a black blotch showed where one of them had fallen, half-starved, half-frozen.
The foxes, grown bold amid the silence, came to pillage the henroosts in broad daylight. The rabbits, traced by their uneven tracks in the snow, were easy game; numbed by the cold, they were quickly overtaken. The sparrows clustered close together in the barns, winning their way in at every cranny.
The last year of Jed Holder's life, he had one day run into the cottage, excitedly calling to Myron and his mother to "Come out and see the sparrow—a real little English sparrow, a regular old-fashioned little spadger." Tears ran over his thin, browned face as he watched it upon the sharp ridge of the cottage roof. He could not cut his wood that day for listening to the familiar fluttering of its wings as it flitted hither and thither in the cottage garden, pushing its way inquisitively into the thickest branches of the privet bushes and bustling out indignantly when it found nothing there worthy of its impertinent scrutiny.
It eyed Jed with much friendliness. Two English exiles indeed these were—banished from the red-tiled cottages, the hop orchards, the old meadows, the sunken lanes, the hawthorns, the hollies; but in a few days there came another fluttering sparrow, and resemblance ceased between Jed and the important, bustling bird, busy now in building the nest. Ere the summer was gone there was a chattering little flight of them to swoop down among the placid hens and snatch the grain from their very mouths.
Now these birds were regarded by the farmers as a pest, and an overzealous government offered a bounty for their little feathered heads. Clem Humphries proved himself a valiant hunter of this puny prey. He boiled barley and then drew a stiff bristle through each grain. The sparrows ate and died, and Clem drank their blood-money.
But they still flourished. The cats waged war against them, and many a palpitant little breast was torn by their pointed teeth. The old Maltese cat at Deans' had perpetually a downy feather sticking to his cruel mouth, and his strong paws were ever stained with red. An ugly brute he was: half of one ear was gone; from the other, hung a tiny blue wool tassel fastened through a hole like an earring; his nose was always scarred and torn, and of his tail only an inch or two survived the teeth of the dogs with which he had waged war.
He lay in wait for the sparrows by the hour at the doorstep of the henhouse, and with depressed back and evil eye stole between the fowls as they pecked at the grain; then came a pounce, the hens flounced about hysterically, and the cat, with his captive, came out to sit in the woodshed and devour it at his leisure. The first time he caught a bird, he had tried to torment it after the tender manner of his kind; but at the first toss with his paws the terrified bird had soared far beyond his most vaulting ambition. But, alas, evil minds learn wisdom soon. It was long since then, and now he always gave them short shrift.
It was a bitter winter. The horses and cows were covered with exceptionally long hair, and the dogs were shaggy as bears. The hens straggled about with bleeding, frozen combs; the yellow feet of the ducks were white from frostbites; the turkeys' wings drooped dejectedly, and many died; the geese were disconsolate, their white plumage soiled and unsightly, for there was no water for them to bathe in.
The snowbirds twittered cheerily for a short space at noontide, but vanished as the day waned. Only where any crumbs or grain might be likely to fall, their tiny footprints were woven in delicate tracery on the snow.
The gulls flew over the village, until, their wings wearied, they turned them again to the lake, to rest upon a cake of ice. A long rest it proved to many, for their feet froze to the ice, and they uttered their hoarse cries as they strove in vain to rise.
It was a bitter winter. Every pond in Jamestown was frozen solid to the bottom. All day long there were slow processions of cattle passing to and from the lake.
The pumps were all frozen, and a great boiler stood on every kitchen stove, melting snow for household uses. The rats swarmed in the houses and the barns. Each person had tales to tell of frozen noses, frostbitten ears, numbed fingers, aching feet. Mrs. Wilson brewed "yarbs" and drank them all day long. Henry Deans grew stiffer and stiffer, and seemed shrunk to a mere shell. Bing White had already killed enough sparrows to buy him a pair of skates.
But in the midst of all the winter's white desolation, there glowed the hearth fires of home. Used to the cold, these hardy farmer folk defied it; and if they might not brave its blasts, stayed warm and close indoors.
There were tea-meetings and socials, temperance meetings and the half-yearly revivals, shooting matches with poultry as the prize, and raffles for turkeys. Then there was the threshing to be done, and the pig-killing, and next summer's fuel to cut in the woods.
The women sewed carpet-rags, patched quilts, and knitted mittens and heavy socks of homemade yarn. It was a terrible winter, and it was going hard with Myron Holder.
She had to endure all the rigors of the cold, all the solitude of shame, all the privations of poverty, all the terrors of night's loneliness, all the anxieties of motherhood, all the regrets of remorse, all the hopelessness of dead Hope, all the apprehensions of want: this in a solitary cottage, creaking at every blast, shivering in every wind, swaying in every storm.
Think of it, you holy women, who fare delicately, sleeping on soft couches, guarded and consoled, caressed and kept from all evil! For you are like Myron Holder in one thing: Not in suffering, nor shame, nor sorrow; not perhaps in humbleness of heart, nor meekness of spirit, nor in courage, in patience, in faithfulness, nor in hopelessness; not in poverty, nor in endurance; but with her you share, despite yourselves, a common womanhood. Remember that!
Remember also she bore upon her brow the marks of motherhood's crown of thorns. Remember who with tears washed Jesus' feet, and do not forget to whom, we are told, He said, "Neither do I condemn thee."
Homer Wilson, in defiance of his mother, public opinion, and Myron's own objections, had taken her ample wood for the winter. Old Mr. Carroll had given her a supply of flour and a ham, and hired her to clean up his house and whitewash his kitchen walls against the New Year.
She milked Mrs. Warner's cows at night and morn, receiving for this service a small can of milk daily. This was for My. No drop softened the harsh mullein tea she drank herself. Her life was inexpressibly desolate. The wind whistling over the cottage brought her the loneliness of the lost. Sometimes for days she saw no one to speak to, and, worse than all, she began to lack the necessaries of life. Flour means much, so does a ham; but for a woman and a young child more is needed. My began to look white, and at times his face had that expression we called "peaked."
Seeing this, Myron took a resolution. It cost her much, for her grandmother had often spoken of the disgrace of "going on the parish," as she put it; but the sight of My's face was too much for his mother, and she resolved to apply to the council for township aid.
It was a bitter day's cold when she came to this resolution. Pile the wood as high as she might in the stove, she could not banish the rime from the windows. The latch of the door stuck to her fingers every time she opened it. A tiny slanting rift of snow lay in the little bedroom, where it had crept in through the badly jointed windows.
It was Saturday. On Saturday nights the youths of Jamestown went courting. As twilight deepened into night, she heard the frequent jingle of sleigh-bells. They tingled through her heart and awakened a new loneliness in her breast. She sat always in the dark now, for oil cost money. She had but a lampful in the house, and that must be kept in case of emergency. The light from the hearth of the wood fire shot forth dusky little flashes into the darkness of the room. These feeble shafts were not strong enough to banish the hosts of shadows, but they so far prevailed as to leave them lurking in the corners of the room only. But there they held silent carnival—mocking at the lonely woman sitting silent within the wavering circle of the feeble light, stretching out impalpable arms to embrace her, extending icy fingers to touch her, waving their draperies over her head, and always biding their time, until weariness should drive her to her bed; then they sallied forth in their strength, and danced and gestured about her until sleep closed her eyes to fears.
My slept upon her knees. The sound of the latest sleigh-bells dying away left the silence seeming still more profound, as a momentary light intensifies the succeeding darkness. She heard footsteps crunching on the snow; then a knock.
"Come in," she said.
Despite herself, she felt a momentary hope flicker in her heart.
The door opened and, entering, Homer said:
"It's me, Myron; Homer Wilson."
So faint had been her hope that she scarce felt a sting in relinquishing it.
"Yes," she said. "Wait until I light the lamp."
She did so, and Homer came forward into the light, his broad shoulders seeming to fill the room as he stood, clad in a rough frieze coat that enveloped him from shoulder to heel. He took it off silently, laid it over the chair she had placed for him, and, going at once to her side, put his hands upon her shoulders.
"Well, Myron," he said, "do you remember asking what you could do to repay me for what I had done?"
"Yes," she said, knowing that her time of trial had come.
"Then," he said, bending over her, his face flushing, his tones vibrant, "I can tell you in a moment." He paused, to steady his voice. "Will you marry me, Myron?"
There was a moment of breathless suspense—an instant of absolute silence.
"No," she said, firmly enough; but her hands closed tremblingly upon his sleeve.
"Myron!" he ejaculated. "Myron! You do not mean it! Why—I love you, Myron!" he broke forth, with passion; "I will have you! Do you think I would be bad to you? Do you think I would be unkind to the boy? I can't stand to see you live like this!" He glanced at the bare room, which suddenly seemed to show all its gaunt corners, all its angles, all the scantiness of its meagre comforts. It was the very skeleton of a home.
"Myron!" He stopped—she was looking at him with words upon her lips.
"Listen," she said. "Do not be angry with me, but tell me one thing: Would you ask Suse Weaver to marry you, or Jenny Church, or Eliza Disney?"
"Why, Myron, they're married already," said he, in a maze.
"So am I," said Myron, throwing back her head so that her eyes met his, whilst the color flooded her face, giving it a dangerous and triumphant charm. "So am I. When he bade me be silent, he bade me be true. He swore that he would be. He explained to me how little the saying of marriage vows meant. He said it was the keeping of them that made the marriage. I have kept them. I believed his promise under the sky, whilst we were alone, was as true and binding as mine when I said I would be silent and do all he wished me to; and he taught me to see that in this twofold faith lay the real marriage, and not in words spoken before people. He told me the stars were truer witnesses than men. That heaven was nearer there, among the trees, than in the churches; and it did seem near—so near I almost entered in. I believed we were married as sacredly as though Mr. Prew had married us. Believing that, I gave myself to him. He has been false to his promise, but I will never be to mine. I thought myself married then. I will hold myself in marriage bonds until he comes—or death. For the rest, let him look to it!"
As she had spoken, Homer's face changed with her changing words, but the resignation of her last words inspired no calm in him; it woke instead a fierce resentment. He was to lose her. She was to continue to suffer the old ignominy; the village was still to have its victim—and all for a brute who had deliberately deluded and deserted her. Homer's next speech began with an impatient oath, but half stifled.
"Myron," he said, his tones so determined as to be almost harsh, "have you not realized yet how false his promises were? How wrong his persuasions? How utterly false and untrue all this fine talk about the 'stars as witnesses' and 'heaven being near' was? The stars are very convenient witnesses for curs of his stamp, being silent in face of any perjury. Do you not see the pit he prepared for you? Do you not fall, pierced by the stakes at the bottom? Do you not see that his promises are all lies? Can you not understand, then, that the rest of his twaddle was no better? Why will you continue to bind yourself with a wisp of straw? Your hands are free—give them to me!"
"I realize all—I see everything," she cried, "and feel—God! what have I not felt? But—oh, Homer, don't you see how it is? I could not kiss my child—I could not endure to see my own face as I bend over the well, if I thought of another man. Don't you see I would then be vile?"
"No, I don't," said Homer. "Marry me—you and the boy will have my name, and let me hear man or woman say one word against it!"
"I can't," she said.
"Marry me," he urged. "Let me take care of you. Let me show you what a man is. Let me give you a heart and a home. You are lonely, you will be lonely no more; defenseless, I will protect you; sad, I will make you happy; shamed, I will compel them to respect you. Myron"—he held out his arms—"marry me!"
Myron Holder had thought of this hour ever since the day of her grandmother's funeral. Her thoughts had all been of his pain. She had never realized how it might mean almost intolerable temptation to herself.
The contrast between the picture his words presented and her own life was poignant. She stayed a moment, gazing at that brighter scene, then put it by and turned herself to the reality that she had accepted as her bounden duty.
The sense of sacrifice with which she did this showed her how strong was the sorcery of the thought.
"No," she said.
"Myron," said Homer, paling, "don't you understand? I will take My as my own. I will give him a name in very truth. I—for My's sake, Myron!"
It was the supreme temptation. In a moment Myron saw what it meant, the materialization of her evil dream in the meadow—the stilling of the scandal that else must attach itself forever to My; the ending of all her own shame and solitude, or as much of it, at least, as appeared to other's eyes. But sorrow and shame teach subtle truths; etched clear upon the metal of this woman's soul, burned deep upon the tablets of her heart, their acids had graven the symbols of their teachings. Myron had battled against many fears, and knew, with the absolute certainty of conviction, that after the first triumph there would come a bitter reaction. She knew she would be forever at war with her own conscience. She knew that life held no prize high enough to pay for infidelity. There came suddenly athwart the dreary room the mirage of another scene: A wide stretch of sky and water, blended in a far-off blue, a mass of tossing tree-tops, a scent of fresh green ferns and flowering grasses, a swimming sense of light, exhilaration, freedom.... Homer was speaking. She did not hear his words; his voice was but an obligato to other tones that struck across it. She paid no more heed to Homer's voice than she had done that day to the rustle of the leaves, the whispering of the water far below....
"Trust me," a voice was saying in her ear. "Trust me, I will never leave you; believe me, I will never fail you. Why do you distrust me? You do not love me. Do you not understand this is the real church, more holy than any building made with hands. Do you not understand it is the mutual faith makes marriage, and not mere maundering words? Don't you? ... So long as you are true to me, you are in very truth my wife?" ... The voice ceased there, it had said enough.
The sky, the water, the tree-tops, and the fresh fragrance of the woodland weeds passed in an instant; but they had left behind an unfaltering resolution.
"No," she said; and so brief a time had sufficed for that retrospective vision that Homer did not remark any delay in her reply. Only his heart shrank, for something in her tone bespoke the finality of her decision.
The disappointment was cruel. He dropped into a chair and buried his face in his hands. She knelt before him, and pulling his hands from his face clasped them close against her breast. She looked up into his face from eyes that spoke of tears held back by bitterness.
"You understand, Homer?" she said. "If I cannot justify myself in my own eyes, I shall go mad. To do so, I must indeed remain as I am. I must act as though I were in very truth his wife. What does a wife do for her husband? Give up all? Have not I? Suffer? I have suffered. Obey him? I have obeyed him. Be true to him? I have chosen him before myself. Trust him? I have. I have trusted and waited. I will wait to the end."
She ceased.
Homer's eyes left her face, to look about the desolate room. The wood fire was dying for lack of attention, and the air was growing colder.
"But how am I to make it easier for you?" he asked, at length.
"You can't make it easier for me," she said. "'I have made my own bed,' as grandmother often said, and must lie on it. I went against the world's ways, and I suppose it's only right now to expect the world to be against me. No one can help me but him."
"Who is he, Myron?" asked Homer; and she saw a sly, venomous look light his eyes.
"Homer!" she said, her voice holding reproach and interrogation.
"Yes, I would," he said. "I would kill him as readily as I would set my heel on a snake. Widows marry!" There was an ugly emphasis on the word, an emphasis that held unconsciously somewhat of the derision of a sneer. But the sneer was turned against his own impotence.
"You are frightening me," said Myron, and the words brought him to himself.
He rose, drawing her to her feet beside him. "You are right, of course, Myron," he said. "But—this is the second time I have loved—you remember the girl I brought to the farm one day? Well, I loved her. She and I were to have been married, but I had to come back to the farm, and she changed her mind. Since then I have been a fool—worse, indeed. I have set aside everything for the sake of money. I was fast getting to be such another as old Haines or Jacob Latshem—all pocket and no heart. But I saw your courage, and it made me think shame of myself. You saved me—I thought to save you. It would seem as if I had offered you another shame. You know how little I care what people say of you! Poor girl, they can't say worse than they have done. So, will you let me do what I can to make things better for you? You know I have plenty. Will you let me be your friend, to help you, comfort you, and to see you and talk with you, as friend does with friend?"
"Dare you?" she asked.
"Try me," he answered.
She held out her hand. He took it. It trembled in his grasp.
"To think," she said, "of my having a friend!" The smile that lit her face transfigured it.
Homer put from him the desire that swelled within his heart to take her in his arms, and began, to talk of her position.
"You can't go on like this," he said.
"If it was only summer," sighed Myron.
"I'll tell you what," he went on, after a moment. "Clem Humphries and Ann Lemon have both applied for help to the township. They'll have to be boarded somewhere. Supposing I get them sent to you to board. The township would allow something for yourself also." Then he added, hastily, "Won't you let me give you enough to put you through the winter? Do, Myron."
"No," she said, answering his last proposition first, "but I would be so glad if they'd let me work for Clem and Ann."
"Well, I'll see about it," said Homer.
A day or two after that, the council, of which Homer was a member, met, and the applications of Ann Lemon and Clem Humphries were laid before them. Homer rose and made a formal proposition on the lines which he had suggested to Myron. It was carried at once. Mr. White was the other Jamestown member of the council, and he was much more concerned about getting home to take his cattle to the lake to water them than about anything else. He made no objection, and the other members of the council had matters relative to their own districts that they were anxious to have considered. The council meetings were open to every one, and the school-house was crowded with village people. Homer observed the looks that passed from one to another, and could not beat back the blood that reddened his swarthy cheeks as he put the formal motion before the council "on behalf of one Myron Holder."
"What about the kid? Don't it need any allowance?" a voice said in the corner of the room, and another answered, "Oh, Homer'll attend to that." A roar of laughter followed. Homer grew white enough when he heard this, and turned a look toward the corner whence the voices had come that made the group occupying it stir and shift about uneasily and start fragmentary conversations among themselves, as if to disarm that bitter look and disavow the speech that provoked it.
In this group Homer discerned Gamaliel Deans and Lou Disney, the latter the bully of the county. Lou and Gamaliel had been running together all winter, and rumor spoke not very flatteringly of their errands.
The meeting dragged along wearisomely to an end, and the men thronged out from the close, warm schoolroom, where the air was heavy with the fumes of tobacco and reeking with the moisture evaporating from the coats hung against the wall, for it had been snowing when the meeting began.
Night was just beginning to fall. It had ceased to snow, and the air was keen with intense frost, that crackled under foot and squeaked beneath the runners of the sleighs.
There was much stretching and talking and laughing as they went out, and Homer, among the first, heard his own name uttered, followed by a laugh. Then he heard Lou Disney's voice in a disjointed sentence—
"Pretty cheeky, that! First"—Homer lost the words here—"and then ask the council to keep 'em."
Homer turned in an instant, flinging himself through the crowd with the relentless impetus of fury. He swept the throng aside regardless of any obstacle, and seized Lou Disney's throat whilst the words still lingered on his lips, choking in that first fierce grasp the laugh that gurgled up to echo its own wit.
In a silence that appalled the crowd, used at such a time to much speech and few blows, Homer tore him from the door, to which, with the instinct of a fighter, he had put his back. Pressing him backward through the throng, Homer loosed him, with a curse, when fairly outside the straggling group.
"Now," said Homer, "eat your words, Disney, this minute—every lying syllable of them—or I'll thrash the soul out of you!"
Disney was no coward. The words had not left Homer's lips before he was tearing off his coat. The next moment they rushed at each other.
The fight was so fierce, so furious, so short, that few there could afterwards tell the story of it. Disney was the bigger man, and quite as clever with his hands as Homer; but the latter's arm was nerved by every insult Myron Holder had endured. As Disney sprang forward, he uttered her name, coupled with an epithet that simply maddened Homer. There was no resisting the fury of his attack.... Many hands dragged Homer from the man he had knocked insensible and bade fair to kill, if left alone.
He stood trembling, a great bruise darkening on his face, showing where Disney's first savage blow, aimed at the jaw, had fallen. Presently Gamaliel drove Lou off in his cutter, and the throng melted away. Clem Humphries lifted Homer's coat and brought it to him. The old sinner's face glowed with excitement and gratification.
CLEM LIFTED HOMER'S COAT AND BROUGHT IT TO HIM.
"You punched him well and he needed it bad," said he. "Never seen a man suffering for a licking more'n Lou Disney was; and he got the cure for his complaint without asking twice, he did. There's something," he went on, keeping pace with Homer, as the latter began to move away, "there's something so satisfying in seeing a man get what he wants, and get it like that, too, and—you should have seen Male Deans' eyes, sticking out like door-knobs, the boiled idiot!"
Clem paused in disgust, then went on again: "Why didn't you lick him, too? That would have been oncommon satisfactory!"
"There," said Homer hastily, "shut up, Clem! I'm going home." Whereupon he lengthened his stride and set forward at a pace which left Clem far behind, to make his way towards the other end of the village, with much complacency. His wicked old heart was full of pleasure. He had danced from one foot to the other, howling out a stream of encouragement and curses during the progress of the brief fight; had protested vigorously against the hands that pulled Homer from Disney, and had pushed Gamaliel Deans forward with all his might in Homer's way, hoping to enjoy a continuance of the battle. Failing this, he had gone along behind Disney and Gamaliel for some distance, reviling them as they drove off, until, remembering his religious principles, he had arrested himself in the delivery of a choice gibe, to slink behind the school-house corner until the crowd was gone.
"He woke up the wrong dog that time," chuckled Clem, thinking of Lou Disney, "and got bit."
Clem had a bitter grudge against Gamaliel Deans and every one connected with him. The day of old Mrs. Holder's funeral Clem had searched over all the barns he knew, in the hope of finding an empty jug that he could take to get his dollar's worth of whiskey in. But luck was against him. The cider-jars that had figured at the last threshings had seemingly all been carried away. He was quite disconsolate when, in the late afternoon, he returned to Mr. Muir's. He had hardly arrived there before Mrs. Muir sent him on an errand to Mrs. Deans. Having dispatched his message, Clem sought the barn, and the first thing his eyes lit upon was a fat and capacious brown jug. Gamaliel was in the barn mending harness, and to Clem's request replied that he might take it, adding that it was used at the last threshing.
Clem returned to the village late, partook of the somewhat meagre supper Mrs. Muir tendered him, and, going out at once, got his jug, rinsed it at the pump, and with it under his arm, trudged off to town to get it filled.
Now, unfortunately for Clem, it had not contained cider, but black oil, for the threshing machine. There was a thick coating of the oil within it, but the cold had fastened it stiff to the sides, and Clem's somewhat perfunctory wash with the icy water from the pump did not remove it. All unconscious of this, Clem proceeded upon his errand, got his whiskey, and started for Jamestown.
Manfully he resisted the temptation to take a drink. Clem knew his own weakness and the strength of his appetite when whetted by a taste. He hugged the jug close to him and trudged on. At length he reached Jamestown, and ensconced himself in the hay in Mr. Muir's stable-loft. But the alcohol had acted very differently from the water. It had completely dissolved the oil and incorporated it with itself. Clem's first long mouthful was his last.
The mixture was atrocious. Clem cursed till he exhausted himself, arose and broke the jug into the smallest fragments, and ever after hated Gamaliel Deans with a holy hatred, being firmly convinced that he had been intentionally tricked. Thus it was that Clem's delight was so genuine as he made his way to Mr. Muir's barn, where for the present his headquarters were. He entered, and, with a view to a supper of snacks from Mrs. Muir, proceeded to attend to the wants of the two black horses and the piebald mare, stopping to slap his brown old hands on his thin legs every now and then, ejaculating, "The boiled idiot!"—a pet expression of Clem's, not inexpressive of mental softness.
Clem moved about stiffly, and it was some time before he sought Mrs. Muir's kitchen door, his knobby old hands stiffened and glazed from holding the handle of the hay-fork. But not only had Clem accomplished his tasks in the barn, but eaten his supper, warmed himself and crawled off to his bed in the hay before Homer Wilson arrested his headlong walk. He had gone far beyond his farm—far, far beyond the farthest light of Jamestown. But at last, his strength leaving him suddenly, he paused and, reeling, turned towards home. It took him hours to retrace his steps.
The late dawn of the next wintry day fell upon Homer as he had flung himself down upon his bed, fully dressed, and with shining drops drying upon the livid bruise that disfigured his face.