Down Mrs. Wilson's black merino back there strayed a long light brown hair. To Mrs. Deans' consternation, Clem reached gingerly forward, took the hair, and, with the suddenness Mrs. Deans' gesture had indicated, withdrew his hand. Now the hair had merely strayed, and was not lost from Mrs. Wilson's knot, hence the sharp jerk brought a smothered exclamation and a sudden start from her—a start which sent the detestable copper spinning. Clem caught the coin dexterously with one hand, whilst he turned to offer Mrs. Deans the hair with the other. That worthy woman looked positively apoplectic, and, giving Clem just one look, turned her attention markedly to the preacher. Clem turned, with a fine expression of bewildered disappointment upon his face, replaced the hair on Mrs. Wilson's shoulder and the coin on the ledge, and lost himself in pious meditation.
This occurred some time before this autumn Sunday, but Mrs. Deans had suffered in silence since then. She was prone to leave church with her temper thoroughly on edge. Clem was surpassing himself that day: he wore a long-tailed coat of the fashion of many years before, and, when he arrived, which he did just as the first psalm was announced, he deliberately stood up, and, pulling round first one coat-tail and then the other, emptied them of a multitude of small articles—tobacco, pipes, balls of twine, lead sinkers, little twists of wire, a big jack-knife, stray nails, and a varied assortment of bits of iron and buttons. Having put these all on the seat beside him, he deposited himself with the air of a man who puts aside worldly things to listen to better. Hardly was he seated before he imagined the flies were troubling him. He made several spasmodic slaps at his bald head, and then drawing forth his handkerchief, folded it carefully in four and laid it on the top of his head. Thus adorned, he rose to sing, knelt to pray, and finally listened with reverential attention to the sermon.
"Few are thy days, and full of woe,
O man, of woman born;
Thy doom is written, 'Dust thou art
And shalt to dust return.'"
So they sang; and the wailing air, upborne by the harsh, untrained voices, reverberated from the bare walls of the church, its jangling cadence pierced by one pure and bell-like voice, for Bing White, with the heart of a vulture, had the voice of a lark.
One passing outside smiled—half amusedly, half sadly—as he heard the singing, and went on his way with the music following him in ever fainter notes, forcing itself upon him.
* * * * * *
On Sunday Myron Holder had her only relaxation. Her grandmother, preserving the prejudices of the little Kentish village from which she had come, detested all other religions save the Episcopal. Her folks had all been strong for Church and State, and she scorned the idea of going to the Methodist church, or, as she contemptuously said, "to chapel." Her vocabulary knew no more derisive epithet than "a Methody." This in itself was enough to isolate the Holders in the midst of a community that regarded Episcopalians as being "next door to out-and-out Catholics," and Catholics as surely doomed. As Mrs. Holder did not go to church herself, neither did she allow Myron to go after the work for the day was done, so she was free to lavish her heart on her child. It was her custom, whilst church was in and the streets empty, to take the boy and go out into the fields or lanes with him, severing herself from the house that had held such agony for her and from the woman whose stinging tongue kept her wound raw. Once with her boy—alone in the air and sunshine—she gave herself up to introspective soul-searchings. Upon one side she set herself, and upon the other all things good; in the great gulf between there hovered the shade of the man to whom she owed her misery. In the abandonment of her self-abasement, she did not place herself even upon his level, whilst as for little My—he shone amongst the holiest of those things to which it seemed to her she was herself in such direct opposition and contradiction. The great marvel of her life was this child, who owed its existence to her. She looked at it with eyes of adoration—touched it almost humbly, as the Madonna we are told of may have tended the Christ-child on her breast. The child seemed to embody all the dead delight of her own girlhood, to have absorbed all the peace, all the calm, all the gayety she had lost. There seemed no varying moods to cross its baby mind; it was the embodiment of trusting love.
Myron, in the face of this miracle, this perfect blossom which sunned itself in her eyes only and expanded beneath her tenderness, was bewildered and amazed. She began to ponder over the matter, and presently to wonder if there was any phase of the entire situation that made her less blameless—to ask herself in what way she could possibly obliterate shame from her record for his sake.
"Are your garments spotless?
Are they white as snow?
Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?"
The words came to her as a personal and crushing query as the congregation energetically sang them. Little My clapped his hands and laughed delightedly; the music pleased him. So Myron stood outside until the voices died away, and the murmur of prayer succeeded; then taking My up in her arms, that they might make greater speed, she went rapidly out of the village. She turned to her left, and, going a short distance along the road, lifted My over the fence into Mr. Warner's grass meadow. Through the centre of this field ran a deep ditch, to carry off the surface drainage in spring. Its course was marked by a thick growth of low-growing shrubs, among which grew short stubby oaks, whilst here and there great graceful elms sprang up in lofty columns, crowned with drooping branches; parasitic vines, sucking the life-juice of the tree they adorned, crept up these elms; their delicate leaves, already scarlet, showed vividly against the gray bark of the trees, and looked like thin streams of blood trickling down. Particularly was this the case where, upon one of the elms, the creeping-vine had reached the point where a branch had been broken off by the wind. The semblance was thus complete: there was the wound—there the blood, and above, the sighing leaves deplored the pain. At the foot of this tree was a huge and brightly green mound, which, as Myron approached, seemed almost artificial, so close were the leaves set, so impenetrably were the tendrils woven together; for this mound was formed of two oak trees over which, completely hiding them, grew a huge wild grape vine, forming a perfect canopy of dense green, and, more honest than the vine that sapped the elm tree, the grapevine, by its luxuriant growth and the vigor of its stem and branches, seemed to proclaim its settled purpose to smother the trees that supported it if possible.