He thought bitterly of these things as he stood leaning upon the graveyard fence. His life was a graveyard, a tangle of weeds, a plat of purposes overgrown with rank despair. He had struggled since he could remember. All his life had been one terrible struggle. And now, he knew that it was useless, he understood that the evil was hereditary, and to conquer it, or rather to free himself from it, there was but one alternative. He glanced down at the rifle resting against his knee. He did not intend to endure the torture any very great while longer. He possessed the instincts of a gentleman,—the cravings of a beast. The former had won him something of friends and sympathy,—and love. The latter had cost him all the other had won. For coming across the little graveyard in a straight line with the shadows of the old cedars, her arms full of the greens and tender wild blossoms of the mountain, was the one woman he had loved. She had done her best to “reform” him. The world called it a “reform.” If reform meant a new birth, that was the proper name for it, he thought, as he watched her coming down the shadow-line, and tried to think of her as another man’s wife; this woman he loved, and who had loved him.
He saw her stop beside a little mound, kneel down, and carefully dividing her flowers, place the half of them upon a child’s grave. Her face was wet with tears when she arose, and crossing over to the tall, yellow shaft, placed the remainder of the offering at its base. She stood a moment, as if studying the odd inscription. And when she turned away he saw that the tears were gone, and a hopeless patience gave the sweet face a tender beauty.
“‘Oh, Shiloh! Shiloh!’”
He heard her repeat the melancholy words as she moved away from the old shaft, and opening the gate he waited until she should pass out.
“Donald!”
“I couldn’t help it, Alice. You are going away to-morrow; it is the last offence. You will forgive it because it is the last.”
“You ought not to follow me in this way, it isn’t honorable. See! I have been to put some flowers on my little baby’s grave.” She glanced back, as she stood, her hand upon the gate, at the little flower-bedecked grave where two months before she had buried her only child.
“You shared your treasures with the other,” he said, indicating the tall shaft.
“I always do,” said she. “There is something about that grave that touches me with singular pity. I feel as if it were myself who is buried there. I think the girl must have died of a broken heart.”
“Have you never heard the story?” said Donald. “I suppose it might be called a broken heart, although the doctors gave it the more agreeable title of ‘heart disease.’ It is very well for the world that doctors do not call things by their right name always. Now, if I should be found dead to-morrow morning in my little room at Dan, the doctors would pronounce me a victim of ‘apoplexy,’ or ‘heart failure.’ That would be very generous of the doctors so far as I am concerned. But would it not be more generous to struggling humanity to say the truth: ‘This man died of delirium tremens,—killed himself with whiskey. Now you other sots take warning.’”