The Untempered Wind

by Joanna E. Wood

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.