The Story of a Country Town

by E. W. Howe

“Before I go I want to say that I was wrong; that I am repentant, and that my last breath will be spent in supplicating mercy for my crime against your mother. I was always a man of few words, and my heart was always stubborn, and I cannot make more of a confession than this. She was a good woman, and I was a bad man, and while she was brave and noble, and always true, I was everything I should not have been.”

I could make no reply, though he looked at me as if expecting one.

“It may be of profit to you, who are young, to know that I have been punished for my offence. If I have had a moment’s peace since I went away; if I have had an hour’s sound and refreshing sleep; if I have not been in hell all the while, may God strike me dead: Day and night, night and day, always, everywhere, my crime has taken the shape of a demon, and taunted me; I have not looked into a book that I did not find accusing words staring at me; I have not heard a sound which did not mock me, and wherever I have gone I have heard the people telling what should be done with a man who ran away from his wife. If I avoided them they hunted me up, and told of a patient wife who was mourning for her runaway husband; God, the world seems to be full of such cases! However secretly I moved from place to place I met people who seemed to say: ‘There he goes; there he goes; a man who has run away from his wife. Hate him; beat him; he is a coward; he is dangerous.’ If I went into a church, the minister seemed to point at me and say: ‘Put that man out; he has disgraced us. Put him out, I say, and hurry him from this honorable neighborhood. He is the man who has brought reproach on the church; put him out; put him out.’ If I slept out in the fields to avoid them, the wind always blew from the direction of Twin Mounds, and there were moans in it which came from this house. The very cattle ran away from me, as if to say: ‘He has been unjust to a woman; he will probably kill us; get up there, all of you, and run for your lives.’ This is the life I have led, and which I have deserved. It is the price of discontent; if you have a trace of it in your nature, root it out! Be contented, though it kills you!”

He said this in great excitement, and, getting up, began slowly to wrap the comforter about his neck, and knowing his determined nature I felt that it would be impossible for me to persuade him to stay. Never in my life had I offered him a suggestion, and even in his present broken condition I was afraid of him.

“You probably remember,” he said, pausing in the process of wrapping himself up, “that every year since I have been away a stranger has sent you money for your paper; first from one place and then from another. That stranger was your father, so that I know what a good son you have been, and how hard you have worked to support your mother, who was so cruelly neglected by me. I am satisfied that you have conducted my affairs with good judgment, and that I have been missed but little.”

He got up at this and began to button his great-coat about him, and to wrap his scarf around his neck and head.

“Whether it is your judgment that I should or should not, I am going away again, and will never come back. I am not wanted here, though I see you would insist on my staying, but it is useless. I have made up my mind.”

I had stepped before him, but he pushed me aside, and walked toward the door.

“Listen to me a moment,” I said, taking hold of him. “You are poor and old; I am young, and have ready money. If you will not remain here, as Heaven knows I desire you should, take it with you. I have no one to care for now, and you need it. I will ask it on my knees if it will move you. It is all yours, and I shall feel guilty all my life if you refuse this request, fearing you are poor and in need of it.”

“Rather than that,” he answered, “I would live again in this town, where every man is my enemy and accuser. No, I will take none of the money; my needs are few and easily satisfied. But if you will grant me your forgiveness”—there was more tenderness in his voice as he said it than I had ever heard before—“I will take that.”