CHAPTER XVIII.
"Yea, then were all things laid within the scale—
Pleasure and lust, love and desire of fame,
Kindness, and hope, and folly, all the tale
Told in a moment—as across him came
That sudden flash, bright as the lightning flame,
Showing the wanderer on the waste how he
Has gone astray 'mid dark and misery."
Outwardly the lives of Myron Holder and Homer Wilson gave no sign of these conflicts. It is the petty worries and every-day griefs of life that traces lines upon the brow. A fretful discontent often leaves a wrinkle when a great grief obscures itself behind the placidity of despair.
Myron Holder's face now shone in unaltered—and it seemed unalterable—calm. That wild night had not been spent in vain. Self-poised, if humble, her life seemed centred calmly at last.
As for Homer Wilson; it was different with him. His heart was still parched with the "thirst that thirsteth on," but he no longer sought for draughts to slake it. His attitude approximated that of those who, dying of some dreadful disease, accept their fate and, looking the inevitable in the face, long for the end.
One day he found in his pocket the old bullet he had picked up from the crevice in the rock. He turned it over, wondering where he got it; then remembering, a bitter thought crossed his mind that he was like that bullet. His life-impetus gone, he was but a thing for the sun to scorn. Myron, no longer trembling for herself, felt a deep tenderness spring within her heart for Homer, and sought to show him in every way that he was her only friend and that she trusted him.
Myron had almost made up her mind to leave Jamestown, and a little incident that occurred one day strengthened this thought to a resolution. The school-house was quite near the Holder cottage: the playground bordered one side of the cottage garden; a fence of slackly hung wires was between them; beyond the fence in the playground was a little ditch with heaped-up sides, on which grew many yellow buttercups. This was a favorite haunt for the younger school children, and their voices came in mingled cadences across Myron's rows of vegetables.
One day in later summer Myron was at home from Mrs. Deans', having by that lady's desire brought the weekly washing from the farm, to do it in the cottage. The windows were flung high, and through the rising steam from her wash tubs Myron's eyes followed My's golden head as he trotted about the garden. Looking up once, she saw him standing by the fence, holding to one swaying wire and peering through at the children in the playground. A momentary pang shot through her heart—he seemed so isolated there; and yet the barrier that separated him from the other Jamestown children was so slight—just a slack-wire fence—that any one could see through, that hung irregularly between its supports, now so low that it could be stepped over, again so high it seemed impassable, only where it was so lofty the spaces between the wires were wide enough to creep through.
The sunlight shone on both sides the same. The buttercups straggled through to the vegetables, seeming by their persistence to wish to bloom there, and the singing of the catbird in the elm tree was as sweet to My's ears as to Sammy Warner's upon the other side.
Nature made no difference; nevertheless there was a barrier. My was effectually severed from the rest of the village, but he himself had not recognized that yet, and the next time Myron looked up she saw My had gone through the fence and had seated himself beside the others.
They had taken their places in an irregular row among the buttercups, jostling and nudging each other, saying "Gimme elbow room," and "Quit pushin'," as they settled themselves comfortably to the business of the moment.
This was the time-honored trial to decide which of them liked butter, ascertained by holding a spray of buttercups against the throat, so that the reflection was cast upon the uptilted chin. The taste for butter is proportionate to the yellowness of the reflection.
Little Jenny Muir was judge and the rest jury, craning their necks forward to look as she passed from one to the other, holding a bunch of buttercups against their chests whilst they tilted their chins far back. The dull blues, washed-out reds, and russet browns of the children's frocks enhanced the brilliant yellow of the flowers. The shadows of the big pear tree, glossy of leaf but barren of fruit, modulated the sunshine, so that the whole group showed in a soft, subdued glow, an idyl of child life not unlovely, for the heads in the row were not yet bent to the dust to search for money, nor lifted to heaven in self-righteous conceit. Time had not dulled the childish gold to brown, nor deadened the flaxen heads to lustreless drab.
My placed himself at the end of the row, his head a golden period at the end of the human sentence that spoke of life's beginnings. With unembarrassed childish mimicry, he emulated the gestures and laughter of the others.
Myron's heart lightened. She wondered for a moment if My might not in time merge his life with those others and be no longer solitary. The hope soon vanished. Looking out again, she saw My sitting alone, his head tilted far back as he waited for his turn. Just disappearing down the slight decline to the school-house, she saw the other children, their hands held over their mouths, their faces red with suppressed laughter, stepping with elaborate pretence of quiet, and turning now and then to look over their shoulders at My, sitting alone, his face patiently uptilted to the sun, unconscious of his loneliness. Beside him lay the bunch of buttercups, flung down as Jenny Muir clapped her hands over her mouth and fled across the soft sward.
In a moment Myron was out of the house, running down the path to the fence side. Ere she reached it, My's tired little neck relaxed, and he looked about him wonderingly, the light fading from his face. His eyes were filled with tears, and his lips quivered when his mother called him. There was a hasty scramble over the ditch, a struggle through the fence, and My was back on his mother's side of the barrier. That straggling fence was, after all, not so easily crossed.
My had forgotten the whole affair ten minutes after, as he excitedly chased grasshoppers along the paths; but all day long the laughter of the playing children smote Myron's heart like the crack of a whip that stings.
After that day it became a matter of conscience for Myron to play the "buttercup game" with My, and a feverish eagerness fairly consumed her to get away from a place where even the children were cruel. She began to scrimp and save every penny she could, hoarding her meagre gatherings in the bottom of the old clock-case that stood on the shelf beside the window.
* * * * * *
It was late autumn. Between the tree-tops were skyey lakes of blue more brilliant than any blue of summer sky, more evanescent than any of spring. The sun shone through the tree-tops with an ineffable, clear, cold light, displaying every fibre in their leaves and imparting to them a fragility wholly sad.
A light uncertain wind rippled through the sumachs, giving their leaves a delicate, lateral movement, as though upon some aerial lyre they harped their own requiem, touching its invisible strings lightly with blood-tipped fingers, for the autumn coloring stained the green.
Between the boughs of the trees glistened those huge octagonal webs that the wood-spiders spin so persistently at this season. There was no sound of birds, only the cheerless shrilling of the autumnal crickets and the dry rustle of dead leaves as the few grasshoppers left alive hopped torpidly from place to place till they came to the spot to die.
The katydids, that six weeks before had prophesied so cheerily the frost that was to kill them, lay here and there, little pale-green corpses, wrapped in their lace-like wings.
The tall weeds by the pathway, that in summer had disguised themselves with blossoms of different colors and shapes, now stood confessed, with panicles of burs crowning their dishonored heads.
It was upon such a day that Homer walked through his woods, searching for a young hickory tree suitable to cut down for axe-handles. His heart, caught in the embrace of the surrounding silence, suddenly stilled its throbbing to a steadier rhythm than it had known of late. He thought out clearly the motive that must actuate his life, the inspiration that must point his path.
Passion was indeed eliminated from his heart, but not forgotten. They tell us that when an arm or leg is amputated, one still feels shadowy aches and ghostly pangs, intensifying the desolate sense of incompleteness and loss. The maiming of one part of the body may preserve the whole alive, but yet one looks back with anguished regret to the days when he stood complete.
Homer Wilson was learning that each must "dree his ain weird," and the only complaint he made against his Fate was that he could not alter Myron's.
Night fell soon and swiftly now. The sun seemed glad to sink out of sight. Its feeble rays brought no heat to the leaves it had called to life. The sad silence of the trees seemed a mute reproach against the light that brought forth but could not sustain, their foliage.
That evening in the chill twilight, Homer overtook Myron and her boy returning from Mrs. Deans'. Slackening his pace, he walked with them to the village. The air was very quiet, "silent as a nun breathless with adoration." As they passed along the road there came an earthy breath from the fresh-turned soil in the fields, where they had been lifting the potatoes and the turnips. It had none of the fresh fruitiness of spring: instead it was redolent with sad suggestions, an atmosphere in which one involuntarily lowered the voice and stilled a laugh.
They passed the little graveyard where the virgin bower clematis, already denuded of leaves, garlanded the pickets with brittle, bare, brown branches, softened here and there by the downy whorls of seed. Myron was telling Homer of her wish to leave Jamestown, and asking his advice. He had long felt this to be one possible solution of the position, but there were points that troubled him sorely. It was obvious that the best that could happen to Myron would be the return of the man for whom she had suffered so much. Homer confessed to himself that he had no hope that he would return, but yet had grown very uncertain and humble about his own judgment, and he thought Myron still believed in her betrayer's return. If he should return and Myron be gone? Would that not afford him a somewhat tenable excuse for continued infidelity? Suppose he should return and inquire for Myron Holder in the village? Homer sickened to think of the distorted picture that would then be drawn of her patient life.
As has been said, Homer had not a shadow of hope that he would return, but he thought Myron had. Sharpened as Homer's perceptions were by pain and love, they were not yet keen enough to grasp clearly how slight a shred of hope remained of all her brave fabric of belief. He could not understand how much of Myron's faithfulness was due to her own womanhood, how little now to any hope of reparation. He therefore hesitated when, laying everything before him, she asked him to decide.
As they neared the village they walked yet more slowly. They had much to say, and since that midsummer night Homer had never entered the cottage door. There seemed to issue from its portals forever a voice calling, "Homer, Homer," a voice whose infinite longings and needs shook his soul with a sense of his own impotency.
Little My wearied, and Homer raised him in his arms. So they made their way to the cottage—they two alone, for the child slept, and a strange loneliness lay over the quiet road and empty street. Myron took My within doors, and, coming out, she and Homer paced, side by side, up and down the little centre path. On either side were vegetables and withering grass, and down in the far corner the huge yellow globes of the pumpkins showed solidly through the dusk.
"Indeed, Myron dear, it would be easier for you if you went," he said, as they stood together in the shadow of the elm tree; "and later on My might have a happier time. For my part, I would have spoken of it long since, only—only——" He paused, and added in lower tones, "I knew the hope you lived in."
She bent toward him and said, very quietly but steadily, "I have no vestige of that hope left, Homer."
He looked down at her, an eagerness that strove against repression in his eyes.
"No," she continued, "My and I must hold our way alone. Tell me, then, Homer, do you think it would be ever so little easier if we went away from here?"
Her eyes held his, pleadingly, and filled with tears. It was one of the rare times when she felt self-pity.
"Yes, dear," he said, taking her hands, that fluttered nervously; "yes, we will make it easier—we will find a way for you to leave all this behind. You shall go and lose yourself, so that their prying eyes shall never find you, their itching ears never hear of you, their lying lips have nothing to tell of you—only, Myron, you will never try to hide from me, will you?"
"Oh, Homer!" she cried, "I would be lost indeed then. Oh, no! I could not bear to have you forget me."
His face lighted in the dusk with a happiness that had long been a stranger—a chastened light, perhaps, when compared with the radiance evoked by his first love, but a steadier flame, lit in the heart, not in the eyes alone.
"Well, I will think it all out, Myron; to-morrow will surely find me with a way planned for you. I wish, indeed, that I too could go with you, that I also could find a road out of Jamestown."
He said good-night, and turned to go. He was almost at the gate when she ran after him.
"Wait a moment, Homer," she called softly; "wait!"
He turned quickly.
"You know how I think of you?" she asked. "You know you are my only friend—my dear friend—my brother? You know this? Do you think that going away from Jamestown will make up for not seeing you? I am afraid—I—I—I think, Homer, I will stay."
Homer gave a little laugh, so sweet these words were to him.
"My dear, you shall go away, and yet shall see me too, sometimes. I could not stand it to be without a sight of My and you now and then."
She clasped her hands.
"Oh, could I see you sometimes? Then think hard to-night, Homer, and find out the way to-morrow."
There was another good-night, and they parted.
The next day Myron, having been sent to the village by Mrs. Deans, went to the grocery store to buy some things for herself, for it was Saturday, and she did not go to Mrs. Deans' on Sunday. Whilst she stood waiting until Mrs. Wilson was served, My ran in and out of the door, a little, tottering figure, clad in a queerly made blue and white checked pinafore. Mrs. Wilson did her shopping leisurely, discoursing upon the pros and cons of asthma the while, for which she strongly recommended the smoking of cigars made of mullein-leaves. She turned from the counter at length, and, passing Myron Holder with uplifted chin, made her way to the door. It was encumbered with an open barrel of salt mackerel, by which stood little My, balancing slowly back and forth on his uncertain feet, the sun glinting on his yellow head. Mrs. Wilson pushed the little form roughly aside and went out. My swayed and fell, striking his head on the step.
Hot anger flushed Myron's cheeks at the incident. She picked up the boy, soothed him with a word or two, and gave him a biscuit from the bag the groceryman was weighing for her. My trotted off to the door, and presently crossed the threshold into the street.
Myron Holder was just opening the shiny old purse to pay for her small purchase when a confused sound of shouting and exclamations came to her. Through the hum of voices sounded the thud-thud of flying hoof-beats. Her eyes sought My. He was not there!
She and the groceryman reached the door in an instant. The street seemed thronged with people. Mrs. Wilson had just emerged from Mrs. Warner's, and stood with her at the door.
Homer Wilson was about to untie his team, that stood before the harness-shop just opposite the grocery store.
At the same moment that Myron emerged from the store Homer turned his eyes to the street. He saw and understood what Myron's anguished eyes had perceived at the first glance. In the middle of the sandy street, the biscuit in one hand, the corner of his pinafore in the other, his head shining in the sun which bedazzled his eyes, stood little My.
Thundering down the street, almost upon the child already, came Disney's great black horse, its huge head outstretched, its nostrils distended—two glowing scarlet pits—its lips drawn back, exposing the gleaming teeth flecked with blood-stained foam, flinging its forefeet out so madly that the glitter of its shoes could be seen from the front. Shreds of its harness clung to it and lashed it to greater fury.
Without a second's hesitation, Myron Holder rushed to her child—to death, as she doubted not. But another form sprang forward also. Homer Wilson darted diagonally across the street until he was directly in the pathway of the horse, but a yard or two beyond My. He had not time to steady himself before the brute was upon him. He grasped at the distended nostrils of the horse, caught them, but in a sliding grip,—the horse reared upright. There came two sounds—of hoofs, striking not on the resonant roadway, but with the horrible echoless blow that falls upon flesh, and then the horse swept on; but only one of his shoes was shining now, the rest were dim with blood and dust.
HE HAD NO TIME TO STEADY HIMSELF BEFORE THE BRUTE
WAS UPON HIM.
Myron snatched her child out of the way as the horse passed by a hand's breadth, and in a moment she was kneeling by Homer's side.
He was dying, but a flicker of life bespoke the want that could only go out with life. She raised his head from the dust and kissed him on the mouth. He opened his eyes; they met hers, and an ineffable and unearthly radiance overspread his face.
That was all. He had found his way out of Jamestown. Myron's was still to seek.
He was quite dead when the others reached him. His chest was battered in, and the calk of one hind shoe had pierced through the thick brown hair and brought death.
"He has outsoared the shadow of our night,
Envy, and calumny, and hate, and pain;
And that unrest which men miscall delight
Can touch him not and torture not again.
From the contagion of the world's slow stain
He is secure; and now can never mourn
A heart grown cold, a head grown gray in vain."
Myron knelt by him, calling his name and imploring him to answer her. Rough hands pushed her aside. She fell, half-dazed. When she came to herself, My was crying by her, and a slow throng was moving towards Homer's wagon, where it stood before the harness-shop.
Myron rose and ran after them, but was met by a frightful figure of rage. The mother of the dead man, who had witnessed his death, rushed at her, shrieking out names of which "murderess" was the least hard, and would have struck her, but some one caught the upraised arm and bade Myron, with a curse, be gone.
Affrighted and bewildered, she caught up My and fled to the cottage.
Homer Wilson was carried in due time to the little graveyard. There followed a great train of slowly moving vehicles, for the Wilson family connection was a large one, and his tragic death drew people to come through morbid curiosity. Mr. Prew preached and prayed at length, and the throng lingered long about the grave.
Away behind the stone wall that flanked the far side of the graveyard two figures stood hidden, watching the funeral rites from afar.
Myron had been refused admittance to the Wilson home when she had gone to plead for one look at Homer's face. She had been forbidden to enter the graveyard. But they could not prevent her bringing My through the desolate fields to watch with baby eyes the burial of the man who had saved his life.
There were many black-clad figures that day in the graveyard—many wet eyes—many lamenting lips; but the real mourners stood afar off, as we are told they did one day long ago when a cross with a living Burden was upreared upon a hill.
Mrs. Wilson wept that Homer had been "took unprepared." But who can tell what penitence or prayer purged his soul when, between the hoof-beats, he looked death in the eyes? Who can say there was not time for both plea and pardon in those seconds—if, indeed, there be One to whom prayers go, from whom pardons come—if there be One to whom a thousand years are but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night?
Well, all these things are for us to strive with, and few there be that bring back any trophy of truth from that warfare; yet "still we peer beyond with craving face."
As for Homer Wilson—
"Peace, peace!—he doth not sleep;
He hath awakened from the dream of life."