“Charity, I have done you and myself a great wrong. I shall try to do better. God knows how hard I shall try—am trying! Will you forgive me? Will you help me?”
After all, she was hardly prepared for this, and though she began bravely enough with, “Mr. Ralston,” she soon broke down altogether. “Of course,” she told him, “the wedding must be postponed indefinitely. Further than that—I can’t tell what—O Tom! how could”—she began afresh, but stopped at his look, and slowly walked out of the room and house.
V
Slowly the long weeks of late winter succeeded each other, alike monotonous, gray and dreary. Tom Ralston worked, at first manfully, then doggedly, on the farm, fighting with a strong will against public opinion and private temptation. Everybody had heard of his fall. Young girls eyed him curiously from the opposite side of the road, and the frequenters of the village store gathered at night to sit around the stove, heels in air, and bring out stories of old Major Ralston, two or three generations back, whose dissipations had been town talk; and the gossips gravely wagged their heads and said: “’Twas bound to crop out sooner or later.”
So passed the icy months, and song-sparrows and bluebirds began to flit among the naked boughs like dreams of spring. Following them came the robins, plump and cheery embodiments of summer. One morning in April the maples and oaks stretched out their arms, full of rosy and restless baby leaves born in the night. The heats of July parched the land; September laid her gentle hand upon its brow until it was refreshed and slept.
Still Tom Ralston worked on, through sun and shower, seed-time and harvest, beginning at last to win approving nods and kindly smiles and words from his self-appointed critics. Still Charity, with heavy heart, went about her routine of household duties, from which all the sweetness, the vague looking forward, the pretty, girlish longing which had of late clothed them were gone. When she met Tom, as she was often obliged to, she spoke not coldly indeed, but as to a mere acquaintance. Right or wrong, she had conscientiously chosen her course, and she would keep it to the end. She would never marry a man who might become a drunkard, and perhaps leave his curse to be inherited by his innocent children.
