CHAPTER XVI.
"Piteous my rhyme is
What while I muse of love and pain,
Of love misspent, of love in vain,
Of love that is not loved again;
And is this all, then?
As long as time is,
Love loveth. Time is but a span,
The dalliance space of dying man;
And is this all immortals can?
The gain was small, then.
"Love loves forever;
And finds a sort of joy in pain,
And gives with naught to take again,
And loves too well to end in vain;
Is the gain small, then?
Love laughs at 'never,'
Outlives our life, exceeds the span
Appointed to mere mortal man:
All which love is, and does, and can,
Is all in all, then."
The talk that grew out of the fight at the school-house, the scandal that succeeded the talk, the gossip that spread the scandal, occupied the attention of the whole village for weeks, and the darkest shade possible was cast upon Homer's share of the affair. Every one felt it a species of self-justification to rail at Homer and excuse Disney, who had a devoted following among the young men of his own age and calibre. His manner was more fortunate than Homer's, though his intentions were far from being so generous.
Certain mental preoccupations had kept Homer somewhat apart from the men of his own age in the district—first, his ambitious dreams of a course at the commercial college, which led him to try to keep up his studies during the long summers when he was kept out of school to work; then came his absence in the city, when all his knowledge of the village filtered from the unready pen of his mother.
Upon his return to the farm his eyes were yet blinded by the glamour of her hair, so that he found it sweeter to lie upon the grass, with his hands beneath his head, gazing up at the skies and thinking of her, than to join in any of the young people's enjoyments. He saw her eyes in every star, her hair in every moonbeam, her form in every graceful cloud. He felt her breath in every zephyr, he heard her voice in the rippling of the leaves, her laugh in the babble of the brook or the lapping of the lake.
Enchanted thus with his own imaginings, he made no effort to grasp the swiftly slipping cable of sympathy with his fellows. When his visions were dispelled and desecrated by her infidelity, well—he had made one or two futile snatches at the vanishing strand that had bound his heart and interests to those of his old school friends. But either it sped too fast from him, or he strove to grasp it too rudely, for he withdrew his hands from the task and found himself loath to make an effort in that direction again. This piteous outreaching for sympathy that is withdrawn sears the soul deeply, even as sliding ropes sear the hands; and yet we must not shrink from the lifeline that is to save us from the flames. We must endure the hurt to escape the greater peril. And it is better to live, even with torn and bleeding palms, than to shrivel in agonizing flames or suffocate in smothering smoke.
Withdrawn from temptation, Homer did not go forth to seek it, for he was nauseated of all desire. Thus there was no danger of his soul consuming in the evil fire of his own passions. But how nearly he had succumbed to the miasmatic exhalation that rose from the Slough of Despond into which his faculties had sunk! Now, indeed, he was winning his way out.
"Men may rise on stepping-stones
Of their dead selves to higher things."
But it is a painful progress, for each stone must be won from the strong edifice erected by ourselves to bar our way, of which each block is a passion, a sin or a folly, cemented together by selfishness and self-indulgence, based upon self-pity, garrisoned by prideful spirits that mock at our efforts. Driven from the ramparts, they throng about our feet to jostle us from our hard-won stepping-stones.
The Sir Galahads of life are much to be admired, and yet shall we not crown those also, who, having fallen, have again found firm footing—those strong souls, overcome once, that have struggled through all this and at last sprung to shore? Let us hope, at least, that they find those long-sought shores flowerful and pleasant.
Alas! Homer Wilson looked but upon a barren prospect, waste and drear, disappointing as the alkali lakes that mock the wanderer dying of thirst in the desert. Therefore it was not much wonder that he grew sad-faced and silent.
Had the woman he loved been happy, his life would not have been wholly desolate, for his love was of that unselfish type that desires rather the happiness of its beloved than its own gratification. But from Myron's desolate heart-fires there could come no joyful radiance. The only light her life diffused across his path was a pale glimmer of dying hope, that illumined the sorrows of their separate ways. Myron was indeed relieved from the pressure of actual want, for Clem Humphries and Ann Lemon were domiciled with her; but of comfort or peace of heart she had none.
Neither Clem nor Ann had ever been compelled before to seek township aid, and, with the perversity of human nature, they agreed in associating Myron with their downfall, and persisted in regarding her as being in some way responsible for it. They both were devoted to stimulants—Clem's choice being whiskey, Ann's gin. When the monthly instalments of money from the council arrived, they both, with one accord, set to work to wheedle some of it from Myron, with a view of gratifying their spirituous desires. In this, however, they were entirely balked. Beneath Myron's meekness and patience an iron will was strengthening.
Homer had said: "Don't give either of them any money. I'll give Clem tobacco when he needs it, but don't you begin giving them the money, or there'll be no stop to it."
That was enough. No persuasion moved Myron after that, either to yielding or to anger.
"She be a fair devil for obstinateness," said Clem upon one of these occasions.
"Yes," agreed Ann, venomously, "and who be she to lord it over the likes of us? We're decent, if we be poor."
It was, however, only upon these occasions that Clem and Ann agreed at all. They quarrelled continually, taunting each other with a fondness for liquor, and each making mock of the hypocrisy the other displayed in going to church, much upon the principle of one negro calling another a "black nigger."
The remarks they indulged in were, to say the least, personal, and each displayed a fiendish aptitude for finding out the weak spots in the other's armor.
Ann still cherished the shreds and patches of youthful vanities, mouldy remnants of adornment with which she disfigured herself on high days and holidays. She had a little house in the village, and a lot with some plum trees upon it. In summer she made shift to live very comfortably, what with the plums, and her chickens, and odd days' work. Indeed, she might easily have saved sufficient to keep her during the winter, but Ann was not of those who "go to the ant," and, after due consideration of her ways, become wise.
Her habit was, when she had a few dollars by her, to adorn herself with her best, go to town in the mail-wagon, get as much gin as she could for the money, and then give herself over to the enjoyment of her purchase. Upon these days it was no small excitement for the Jamestown children to watch the going and returning of Mr. Warner and his mail-wagon.
Long before mail-time Ann might be seen arranging her finery. She wore a black merino skirt, draggled into a tattered fringe at the bottom, and stained here and there by the drops that fell more swiftly as Ann's hand grew less steady. By some chance, she had once bought some bright blue ribbon from a peddler. She put two rows of this round her black skirt. Unfortunately the ribbon proved too short for the two rows, so that in the second one there was a hiatus of some twelve inches between the ends of the ribbon. This to some people might have been a somewhat insurmountable difficulty, but not to Ann. Catching her skirt just at that point where the ribbon failed to connect, she raised it gracefully with one hand, displaying the edge of a red flannel petticoat and a goodly length of robust limb. It is not recorded that she was ever seen so drunk as to forget herself sufficiently to loose her hold of the skirt, although upon several occasions she was carried helpless into her house, laid upon her bed, and left, as the good Samaritans of Jamestown expressed it, to "sober up and be ashamed of herself." Her bodice was only an ordinary calico one, but she covered its deficiencies by a black cashmere tippet of antiquated shape and ample size. It had a tassel between the shoulders, and certain lonely sparkles here and there showed that in the days of its youth and beauty it had been be-bugled. At the neck of this she pinned a knot of faded magenta ribbon, fastening it with a shell pin.
But the crowning glory of Ann's holiday toilet was her "front." This "front" was the only bit of false hair in Jamestown, and was regarded as an unholy thing, a direct manifestation of "the Devil and his works." Mrs. Deans always declared that Mrs. Wilson had "as good as owned up" that she would like a similar front; and indeed Mrs. Wilson, good woman, had been moved almost to defiance of public opinion by the evil fascinations of that sinful scrap of tousled hair. As a matter of fact, Ann's "front" was somewhat the worse for wear; the parting was a parting indeed, and several curls being gone at one side, there was a bare spot, where the black-net foundation showed. But Ann's bleared eyes looked out right jauntily from beneath this lopsided coiffure.
Perched upon her head was a bonnet. Originally covered with red silk, it had grown glossy and dark from much wear. Upon one side of it was stuck grotesquely a shapeless knot of black crape—limp, rusty, soiled by mud and weather, yet a symbol still of the loss of husband and child, and of a deeper loss than this—the loss of hope, the loss of self-respect, the loss of self-control, and the triumph of an evil appetite.
For long ago Ann had had a husband and a bonny daughter, and she herself was a big, buxom woman, fresh-colored and wholesome. But her husband died, and the daughter was carried home dead to her one day, with the water that had drowned her dripping from her long hair and leaving a dotted line upon the floor as it ran from the hand that hung over the edge of the rude bier.
Ann never "picked up" after that. Despite the admonitions of her Christian neighbors and their warnings against sinful repining, she yet dwelt ever upon her loss, seeking oblivion when she could in drink. Well, she was wrong, of course, but "the heart knoweth its own bitterness," and in the empty niches of her heart there perhaps lurked the shadow of an excuse for her.
In a certain old neckerchief, mottled with gay colors and bordered with purple, were tied a few tawdry relics, a string of black wooden beads, a knot of discolored blue ribbon that had clung to a tress of the drowned girl's hair, a dark pipe with the tobacco still in it, a waistcoat barred with bright stripes of yellow, a heavy plated watchguard—these were all that remained to Ann of the joy of life, and yet upon them fell as bitter tears as ever dimmed a diamond-set portrait or a pearl-clasped lock of hair.
This woman, for whose coming husband and child had once watched, was now an amusing spectacle for Jamestown boys. As Mr. Warner drove along the street Ann would go out and await his coming in all the dignity of conscious grandeur. She never started for town until she had enough to pay for her ride there and back, besides the money for her gin, for, as she often said, she wasn't much of a hand at walking.
Before getting into the mail-wagon, which was simply an ordinary two-seated light wagon, with a flat canopy upheld at the corners by iron rods, she paid Mr. Warner fifty cents, which was the fare to town and back. Then she mounted to the back seat, where she sat enthroned, her feet upon the canvas mail bag.
She enjoyed the drive thoroughly, nodding with much affability to every one they met, irrespective of whether she knew them or not, and saying, "Poor crittur! Who be he, I wonder. He don't know me," when any one failed to return her salute.
At the door of the Post-Office Ann got out, having paid no heed to the gingerly hints Mr. Warner had given her about getting out when they came to the town limits.
"Wouldn't you like to stretch a bit, Mrs. Lemon, before we get into town?" he would say, tentatively.
"No, I ain't a mite stiffened up to-day," she would reply.
"Because I'll stop and let you out if you'd rather," Mr. Warner continued.
"Oh, I wouldn't put you to no trouble," Ann demurred, politely.
"It wouldn't be no trouble," he would feebly protest.
But Ann only said: "I'm all right, Mr. Warner. No rheumatics in my knees, thank Providence and red flannels! I can sit, walk, or ride with the best of them yet." Then, animated by sudden concern for him: "But look here, if you're crippled up, jest get out and walk alongside and I'll drive. Do now, just reach the reins acrost here. I can drive as straight as a string."
But this ordering of affairs was still less to his liking; so, resigning himself to the inevitable and comforting himself with the thought of the fifty cents, he drove on to the Post-Office.
Here Ann alighted, and then began making inquiries as to the precise time of leaving, which side of the street he would be on, whether any one else was going, besides many other details that suggested themselves to her as legitimate excuses for prolonging the conversation, during which she surveyed Warner haughtily. Finally she sailed off, with, a last imperative injunction "to be punkshul."
When she returned, she was usually pretty far gone. She rolled in her walk, and fiery glances shot from her eyes. The tippet was usually screwed around, so that the tassel depended like an epaulet upon one shoulder, and the magenta ribbon did duty upon the other. Her bonnet had a trick, that amounted to a habit, of cocking itself hilariously over one ear, and the "front" usually pointed straight at the other.
Mr. Warner took care always to be ready to leave when she came. He had a painful recollection of a day when he loitered about the Post-Office longer than usual, and came out at length, mailbag over his shoulders, to find Ann the centre of an admiring group that applauded her whilst she gave a full, particular (and, be it whispered, true) account of the Warner family history.
In every little village there are certain stock stories that are told about certain families. If it be a scandal-monging little hole, the stories usually have a tang to them.
The tales about the Warner family were particularly spicy ones, the men being notoriously cruel to their horses and "close-fisted" in their dealings. Some of the women were not all they ought to be, and the whole family connection so penurious as to be but one remove from misers.
Ann was giving a veritable epic illustrative of each of these family failings, and had just got to the point bearing upon their cruelty to their horses.
"The bones of the horses the Warners killed stopped up the drains in Jamestown." Turning, she whipped up the bit of felt saddle-cloth under the harness of the mail-wagon horse, and showed the galled patch on its back; then she drew attention to the raw places on the shoulders that Warner had smeared with black wagon-grease, to render them less noticeable. Warner was furious, and would right gladly have left her there, but he did not know how far her tongue had taken her or how far it could go, and he felt it safer to insist upon her getting into the wagon.
Then her mood changed. She insisted he was her best and only friend, embraced him from behind with one arm round his neck until she nearly strangled him, whilst she strove to give him a drink from her black bottle with the other; wept because she could not climb over into the front seat beside him, and finally subsided into maudlin tears of repentance and retrospect, mingled with pious ejaculations of thanks for the comfort she had that day received.
Warned by this experience, Warner was always ready, waiting for her when she appeared, and had acquired some skill in persuading her to mount into the wagon immediately upon her arrival. Her untimely demonstrations of affection, however, were never to be guarded against, and his flesh crept upon his bones until he was clear of the town and out into the country. It was decidedly a trial to have Ann for a passenger, only there was one saving mercy about it—afterward Warner had fifty cents more. To the Warner mind that meant a great deal.
It was a popular saying in Jamestown that "a Warner would take a kicking for a quarter any day."
Without these occasional exhilarations Ann grew morose and vindictive. She glowered at My as he played about the floor, gave Myron a myriad pin-pointed stings anent his existence, saying, with pious unction, that whatever little she had to be thankful for, she never should cease being grateful that she was decent, and relieved the tension upon her feelings by an active and aggressive warfare against Clem.
Clem returned her complimentary attentions in kind, and exhausted his ingenuity in planning to torment Ann. There were several battles royal between the two that marked the history of their warfare, as great victories star a campaign. There was the evening, when they all sat round the little table drawn up close to the fire, and Clem, nodding his head with drowsy satisfaction, took the first morsel of a plug of chewing tobacco Homer had given him. Clem half-closed his eyes and gave himself up to its enjoyment. Myron rose softly, to carry the sleeping baby to bed. Ann's eyes wandered malignantly from Clem's contented countenance to the plug of tobacco (so near her hand), and from thence all round the room. She looked longingly at the fire, but shook her head; discovery would be too prompt. Her eyes fell upon a tub of water, set close to the fire to prevent its freezing against the morrow. Her face lighted—an evil inspiration had come to her.
Slowly—slowly—she put forth her hand. Clem's eyelids wavered—she withdrew it swiftly—there was a pause. Again her itching fingers approached the square of tobacco—again were withdrawn before a flicker of those eyes. Another breath—then carefully, stealthily, she grabbed the tobacco, withdrew her hand, and, bending far over, slid her prize into the tub of water.
Then, to all appearance, sleep suddenly overpowered her. Her head began to nod, her eyes to close, she breathed heavily, and her relaxed hand fell limply by her side.
Clem rose presently to build a new fire, and, being extravagantly inclined because of his plentitude of tobacco, ejected his "chew" into the ashes, and, after putting on the wood, returned to his seat and put out his hand for his tobacco.
Myron entered at that moment from the bedroom. The fire crackled as it caught the new fuel; old Ann sat like a nodding mandarin, oblivious (outwardly) of everything. Clem's astonishment at its disappearance was great. Nevertheless he did not grow wrathful until he had turned out his many pockets and bestrewn the table with their varied contents. He banged each article viciously upon the table, but Ann still slept. She was somewhat overdoing her rôle, and Clem's smouldering wrath flamed up into active indignation as she sat there calm amidst the storm.
"Get up!" he said. "Get up, you stovepipe, and let me see if it ain't under your chair? You know something about it, I'll swear you do! If 'twas a glass of gin, I'll warrant you'd scent it out! Get up, will you?" Saying this, he jerked her chair aside by the back, so that Ann, who was feigning all the languor of one suddenly aroused from deep sleep, slid off the chair to the floor. She improved the occasion, however, by knocking the chair over on Clem's corns as she rose. Clem gave a frightful oath, and Ann stood erect, with a jeering laugh. Myron, anxious to preserve peace, joined Clem in his hunt, whilst Ann stood by.
"Call me stovepipe, will you?" she asked. "Stovepipe indeed, and me the best figger of a woman in the village in my time! Stovepipe! With my waist, too! Stovepipe indeed!" An indignant snort rounded off her sentence.
The little kitchen was so bare that any search was either easy or hopeless. Myron and Clem searched and searched, going over and over the same ground, as the wisest of us do when we look for something lost—for pleasure in old pain, for joy in bygone voices, for hope in withered joys.
Ann waxed more and more derisive.
"If 'twas a spoonful of whiskey, now," she began, plagiarizing and paraphrasing his own words to her; "if 'twas a spoonful of whiskey now, I'll go bail you'd nose it out. You'd ha' run ag'in it long ago. You're better at getting whiskey than at getting clean jugs to put it in, though."
Clem turned to glare at her, and stubbed his toes against the tub. He cast his eyes down, with a curse, but his gaze was held by something which, even as he looked, sank to the bottom, thoroughly saturated.
In a moment he had it out—his tobacco, bloated out of all semblance to its dark-brown self. One glance was enough. With accurate aim, he flung it with all his might at Ann's triumphant countenance.
It struck her across the lips, parted for another gibe. She subsided, sputtering, and Clem, gathering up his belongings from the table with one sweep into his handkerchief, flung himself out of the room.
Myron's life was passed in a continual jar and fret because of these quarrels. She strove to interpose herself as much as possible between them, for Ann's malice grew more and more venomous, and Clem's dislike threatened to break bounds, and from speech become blows. Ann was persistent in her demands for "somethin' warmin'," and do what she could Myron could not satisfy them.
But their bitter words did not sting as her grandmother's had done. Love has a strong potency in pain and pleasure.
There is poison upon the tongue of a friend when it turns against us. No dart pricks so deep as one launched by a hand we love. Gall and wormwood are mingled in the draught when the bitter cup is pressed to our lips by the hand that has tended us in childhood. No thorns are so sharp set to pierce our feet as those implanted in our path by one we love.
Some years ago there was a marvellous tale told of a woman in the mountains of Africa, wondrous old and beautiful, and exceeding wise. We are told that by the touch of her finger-tip She blanched a snowy streak athwart a girl's dark locks. Later, with another malignant gesture, she reft the girl of life, so that she fell dead in an instant.
Myron Holder's soul was being blanched by the pointing fingers of her world. Would they stop there? Or would the cruel allegory be completed? Would those merciless mockers not cease until, deprived of life and hope, Myron Holder faltered and fell to what they pictured her? For there was every chance she might.
Her face had gained a pale and—inapplicable as the word seems—lofty beauty. Her eyes held within their depths the secret of all pain, and the storehouses of such knowledge are often more beautiful than those that garner gayer truths. Her lips, softened by the love of her child, were warm and red; his kisses kept them so amid the pallor of her face, like a little hearth in a waste of snow. So small and sweet the mouth was, so tremulous, so shrinking, it seemed the pallor of cheek and chin encroached upon it daily. It did not seem a month for speech: there was but space for sobs and kisses, and yet—it had had kisses, and kisses leave strange savors sometimes, and it had parted in many a sob. Who, then, could tell if the pressure of those lips brought pain or pleasure? And what man but would dare all to know?
Behind her lids lay love, too, gleaming through the veil of her sorrows, as the reflected sun shines from a well. At present it was all for her child—later?
Nowadays, when on every side they talk so much of the force of "suggestion," it almost makes us wonder if our fellows' lives are not a reflex of our conception of them—if a consensus of opinion that a person is guilty does not tend to make him what we assume him to be.
It would seem the Jamestown people did the best they could to aid the devil, whom they professed to sacrifice, when, with the pointed forks of malice, they thrust Myron Holder forward to his fires. Each time Homer Wilson came to sit in the cottage his heart ached more and more for this woman. Against the background of Ann's slovenly form and Clem's squalid coarseness she shone like a jewel in a rough clasp. Each time he departed the wrench was greater, but he could not deny himself the pleasure of seeing her. As for her, his visits were the only alleviation of her life, his visits and My. For the child was beginning to talk now, and pattered after her every step. She had taught him a meaningless baby jingle—"Mama's My," she said; "My's mama," answered My—and when he got to know it well, he would chatter it out in swift alternation with her, until the simple words, expressive of the absolute inviolate bond that united them, pierced her soul with a sense of their isolation, and she caught him to her as of old Hagar may have pressed Ishmael to her dishonored bosom.
But out of Homer's visits fresh spite and scandal sprung. For old Ann, denied money for gin, grew bitter and revengeful, and took to going from kitchen to kitchen with the song of her sorrows. Finding her welcome and entertainment proportioned exactly to the amount of news she had to tell, she did her best, like a good laborer, to be worthy of her hire.
Every incident of Myron's life was noted and enhanced by Ann's evil imaginings—was bruited from lip to lip. Myron knew this. In the old days, whatever bitterness had awaited her within the walls of the cottage, they had at least shielded her from the curious eye and whispering lip of the village. They did so no longer. Her last refuge was taken from her. She felt she lived in a veritable glass house, pierced by day and night by relentless eyes. The knowledge made her restless and ill at ease.
Ann did her best, as has been said, to deserve the welcome she received at Mrs. Dean's, Mrs. White's, Mrs. Warner's, and the other houses she went to. She crawled up from her warm couch to listen at Myron's door at night, and crept back, shivering with cold, and angry that Myron did not justify the vileness of her suspicions.
The "long glories of the winter moon" sent shafts of pale light to illumine both the sleepers and the listener. Within the chamber were the two shamed ones—the sinful mother, the child of sin. The two faces close together, both calm—for one heart was ignorant of the world and its cruelty, and the other for a brief space oblivious. Two hands were hidden, close clasped, beneath the coverlet; two lay palms up, so that the moonshine lit them palely—the one pink-palmed, unscarred, unstained; the other so worn, so hard, having lifted such heavy loads and borne such bitter burdens, having been stung by flowers that change to undying nettles, having so often shielded shamed eyes, having so often pressed against a breaking heart, having so often been raised in fruitless supplication, so often wrung in despair.
Without the door the listener, tremulous with eagerness, leant, holding her breath, and longing for the confirmation of her evil thoughts. She caught only the cadence of the breathing of mother and child—a music sweet to the old gods long ago, they say, and sacred still to us, the incense of love's devotion and sacrifice of suffering.
And is the offering less sacred because ascending from an altar differing in shape from the law's design? In what strange quality were these commingling breaths lacking that they should rise in vain?
Love bestows upon many things its own immortality. Why not upon the air, that gives it life? The air that has been breathed by the mutual lips of love can never again commingle with the grosser ether of our earthly atmosphere. It ascends afar, and perchance shall form the winey atmosphere of that fabled Land of Compensation, where, we are told, "the crooked shall be made straight."