The Story of a Country Town

by E. W. Howe

I take a kind of delight in finding out how unfortunate I am, and once I wrung a confession from her that she thought it extremely probable that I would be lost, but that all knowledge of it would be blotted out of her memory, and forget in her happiness that I had ever lived. If Mateel’s religion turns out to be true, I think it will be a part of my punishment to be permitted to look into heaven, and see her happy, without a care or thought of me. I don’t think it would be possible to save such a man, but it may become necessary to properly punish my wickedness to place Bragg by her side, in Paradise, that I may contemplate them walking lovingly together.

The skeleton which has found its way into my closet is very noisy now. I think some one, out of consideration for me, has been trying to chain him up, but he has broken loose, and drags his fetters about in the most dismal manner. Either that, or he has company, and I am honored with two skeletons. If other people have but one, I think I shall eventually have two, if I have not now, and be compelled to enlarge my closet. I have occasionally courageously unlocked my skeleton, and tried to look him out of countenance, but he is so indifferent, and I am so unhappy, that I have never succeeded. He is the most impudent skeleton that ever took up an abode in a man’s house against his will, and its grinning, malicious face I cannot lock up, for it follows me about the mill at my work, and walks before me into the dark cellar, and into the lonely loft. Once I thought I saw his tracks in the flour dust, but I found it was only where my unmanly tears had fallen. After I have attacked him, he is more noisy than ever at night, and rattles about so much that I acknowledge his power by thinking my disgrace all over, and admitting that there is no hope.

The affairs of men are so small that I wonder they can be serious about them. I wonder about this every time I meet a grave and thoughtful man, and then I remember that I am grave and thoughtful. I have no doubt that, if I were told of a case similar to my own, I should say the man ought to dismiss it without a curse, and never think of it again, but somehow I cannot do it, though I have tried earnestly and honestly. I had so little peace and content as a boy, and expected so much from my marriage, that I cannot resign myself to a life without hope and without happiness. I suppose the people would laugh at my troubles if they knew them, and I call their affairs trivial, so that altogether we have a very contemptuous opinion of each other. Many of those who come to the mill look at me curiously already, and I suppose it is being said that I am queer, or that I am subject to fits of despondency, which is the first symptom of a crazy man. Next to the original difficulty, I dread most to be called queer, for I never heard it said of a man I respected. But this will probably be added to my other troubles, for when once a man becomes involved in trouble’s web, everything goes against him.

I am only unhappy because I expected the home I built with so much care to be pleasant, but it is not. I expected no more than this, and I would have been a willing slave to insure that result, but there is not the slightest prospect of it now.

Jo Erring.

CHAPTER XXV.
THE SEA GIVES UP ITS DEAD.

MY mother was never strong, and her health seemed to be rapidly failing, but she was perceptibly revived by the presence of Agnes. When I told her that Agnes would now live there all the time, and never go away again, she expressed great pleasure, and for days was not content to be out of her company, but followed her slowly around the house as she went about her work. We were like three children again, suddenly released from restraint, but when we spoke in the evening of the happy years we should spend together, my mother became thoughtful at once, and would say no more that night.

Her step was slower than it had ever been; and she walked more feebly, but she still kept up the lonely vigils in her own room at night, and the light was always burning, casting its rays across the deserted street like a pitying star. If I became restless in my bed from thinking of her pale face, and went softly down the stairs to her door, I found her quietly seated in the low chair, as if waiting for a step in the street and a hand on the door. She no longer came to my room at night, as she had done when we were alone, but she apologized for it once because of growing weakness, and believing that she dreaded to be alone, I sometimes lay down on her bed and slept there, but if I awoke in the night, I found her in the old corner, with her head bowed low, and wrapped in deep meditation.

The coming of Agnes brightened the lonely house, which had always been cold and cheerless, as if it were very old, and were inhabited only by very old people, and I was more content than I had been, until I remembered that my mother was slowly dying of a broken heart. This thought came to me whenever we were spending the evening pleasantly together, and often I went away to hide my tears. When I talked to Agnes about it, which I often did before and after she came there to live, I saw by her troubled face that she shared my fears, and that she, too, had marked the faltering steps and whitening hairs. Though we resolved over and over again to do more for her comfort and happiness, and be more watchful of her, she was always just the same—silent and sorrowful, with a look in her white face of worry and sorrow. Whenever she opened a door, or looked into a box or drawer, she seemed to find something to remind her of her husband,—an article of wearing apparel, a scrap of paper on which he had written,—and this she kept in her hand, and carried about, holding it until she took her place in the low chair for the night, where it remained the subject of her thoughts. We both called her mother, and though we were anxious that she should commend us, she seemed shy, as if she were in the way, and Agnes told me that once when she put her hand lovingly on her head, and said we were good children, she did it timidly, fearful of giving offence. She still slept a little during the day—or, at least, she would darken her room when no one was around, and lie down—but we never found her asleep at night, and believed that she never left her chair.