I
“Well, for my part, I could never, never forgive a man who did such a thing!”
It was late in the afternoon of a clear, cold day in December when Charity Holmes, sitting in the midst of a spicy mound of evergreen on Farmer Ralston’s kitchen floor, and looking up from her work with a bright flush on her pretty cheeks, made this severe remark. Of the three other women in the room, two, the farmer’s daughters, young girls like herself, were quite of her opinion; but the fourth, a white-haired old lady with lavender bows on her cap and sunshine in her motherly face, patted the nearest indignant girl’s shoulder reprovingly, and remarked:
“There, there, dears; don’t be so hard. We’re all of us human, and drink’s a terrible thing. Sometimes it don’t seem any more a man’s fault than tumbling into a hole in the road.”
“But if he has dug the hole himself, grandmother”—
Any further argument was interrupted at this point by the appearance of an immense bundle of evergreen at one of the windows, entirely blocking up its small, frosty panes. Presently an honest and merry face showed itself down at one corner.
“It’s Tom, with more green!” cried the two Ralston girls, jumping up and running to the porch door to let in the big brother.
Charity stayed behind with grandmother, but Tom’s eyes found her in a twinkling. How demurely she sat there, tying away with all her might, while the awkward fellow made a great to-do piling up his load beside her, and managed to get hold of somebody’s hand down among the princess-pines, and—then something happened behind grandmother’s back that made somebody’s fresh young cheeks pinker than ever.
“Tom, Tom!” cried Charity, shaking her head as soberly as if she hadn’t been the cause of his mischief.
“Yes, ma’am,” answered innocent Tom. “Want some more?”
“Now, Tom, if you’re really going to stay you must work in good earnest. Just pick out some good long strings of ‘creeping Jenny’ and lay them right beside me—so!”
Thereupon Tom, great, breezy, good-natured Tom, doubled himself up on the floor, boots and all, and pretended to immerse himself, body and mind, in the complicated task assigned him, meanwhile blundering in the most absurd manner, and continually mistaking that bewildering little hand for the delicate vines, and at the same time winking at grandmother, thereby confusing her and making her feel that she was an accomplice; and in fact conducting himself altogether so outrageously that the girls ended by pelting him with evergreens until he escaped to the woodshed, where the ringing blows of his axe soon gave notice that he was making ready for the blaze in the great fireplace that was to brighten the long winter evening before them.
Charity was the daughter of a neighbor. She and Tom Ralston had played together since they were babies; then, leaving the district school, and entering upon the heavier duties of life, they had grown bashful, and kept away from each other just long enough to find out that they could not possibly do so any longer. So they were engaged, to the quiet satisfaction of both families. The marriage was to be on New Year’s and the young folks were working hard on their evergreen trimming, which Tom had promised to take up to the city, a dozen miles away, and sell for them, the day before Christmas. Charity was to go with him, as she had a few little purchases to make; and besides, she had never seen the city at this “holiday season,” when it is at its merriest.
Swiftly the full, busy days flew by. The evening before they were to start, Tom was walking home with Charity. As they reached the little plot of ground before her house they looked up into the starlit, moonlit sky. At least Charity did. I am afraid Tom was finding moon and stars and no end of things more precious to him in the grave brown eyes so near his own.
“No, Tom,” said she, answering his look, “I’m just thinking about—up there! and all we can be to each other and the rest of the world.”
“My darling! I wish I were a good man, I wish I were stronger! If it were not for you!”—
He checked himself, and she could feel the brace of his muscles under the coatsleeve where her hand rested, as if he were even then fighting with some invisible foe. A light cloud came over the moon’s face, and the road and fields, covered with new-fallen snow, looked colder than before. She shivered, and drew more closely to his side. He was quick to read her thoughts, this big, clumsy fellow, and he spoke instantly.
“I know, Rita,” he said, softly, stroking her hand and using the pet name that he had made for her when they were children; “I know you’ll stand by me through everything. And, whatever evil things I have in me, with you at my side, I’ll try to put down. Heaven help me!”
He took off his cap, and Charity thought she never saw him look so noble and humble and manly as he did then. The moon, too, was out again, and its light rested like a benediction on his broad forehead, whose veins stood out strangely to-night.
A moment later and he was gone. Charity watched him striding away across the field until he was out of sight. As she turned to her own home she noticed his tracks and the dark blotches they made on the pure, white surface of the snow before her door. Somehow they troubled her, and, without thinking, she made a little futile brush at the nearest footprint with the corner of her shawl, thus only enlarging and making it more unsightly than before. Then, with a nervous laugh at her own foolish fancies, she entered the house.