Once he had humbly wondered why the tall and still handsome Susan had given herself to him; but for years he had too well known her motives, and slowly, by degrees, there had been revealed to his simplicity the true nature of the wife he had taken. It did not destroy, it scarcely lessened, his attachment. The poor fellow had by birthright a great fortune in capacity to love. No one had cared for him, and when he found this single love of a sad life, it was not in his construction to be capable of change.
“Halloa, Susie! Why, I’ll do that!” he cried cheerfully.
She stopped short, and, turning, faced him. “You ain’t man enough even to cut wood for a woman.” And again she struck to right and left with masculine vigor. “Get out, or I’ll let you have it,” she said, whirling the ax around her head as he fell back. And still the vigor and force of the woman pleased him, despite the sense that he was being ill used.
“But I’ve been doin’ somethin’ for you that’ll please you a heap.”
She ceased to chop as he spoke, and, standing, faced him.
“You can’t fool me. You’ve been after drink. I know you. Get in and make the bed, it ain’t been made all day; and there’s a pair of socks needs darning.” She laughed. “Pretty dear, he is!”
The sarcasm was thrown away. He stared at her a moment in dull wonder, and went in, and tossed up the pillows, and turned the corn-husk mattress, and propped a broken chair against the wall, and did his best to make it all look like the neat order in Dorothy’s cabin. Next he took a half-loaf of stale bread, and went out the back door and into the woods.
It was now dusk. Avoiding the road, he strode with a woodman’s skill through the deeper forest, over a hill-top, and thus down to the river, and so at last found himself above the clearings. Here he came upon the dugout he had hidden in the alders two days before. He got in and poled up-stream in the darkness, passing the burnt lands, and coming at length to a deserted flat. It had once been a good pasture, but some change had taken place in the channel, and now in the spring the waters always went over it. Where coarse undergrowth had sprung up, the ice of the April floods had torn long lanes of ravage. The dead or half-dead bushes were bent southward, and weighted with a ragged tangle of leaves and twigs caught in the angular branchings of the stems: a desolate place, and wild enough in the uncertain evening light.
Beyond the ruined cabin, which the changes of the river curves had made untenable, he crossed the inland road. He might easily have come by it, but had wisely avoided even this small chance of being seen. On the farther side was an oblong, white frame-building, the Methodist chapel. Once in a month it was used in its turn for service by the lean minister. It was likely that no one would be near it for two weeks, and, in fact, here the road ended.
Joe got over into the graveyard and looked about him. There were three or four heavy slabs of gray stone, and a dozen or two of unmarked graves, over which he stumbled with a curse. He looked around and listened. Only the hoarse roar of the rapids reached his ear, and he saw the moon just over the tree-tops. The light aiding him, he came at last on the simple, white, upright slab set over the child’s grave. He seized it, with no hesitation, and began to rock it sideways, to and fro. At last it was loosened, and, with no more thought than he would have given the felling of a pine, he tore it out, and with difficulty hoisted it on his back, and set out toward the river. It was easily lifted over the low stone wall of the graveyard, but as he set it on the top of the fence beyond the road, and began to climb over, the rail broke and he fell, the heavy marble tumbling on his foot so as to cut the instep. He sat down, with an oath, and took off his boot. He was in great pain. The boot was torn, as he found, and half full of blood. It was an hour before he could get it on again and walk at all.