AND THE WILLARD FAMILIES STRIKE THEIR BALANCES
If we could write upon his gravestun’s face
A list of what he’d done to help this place,
We’d have a roll of honour to his fame,
But we should publish all our village shame.
There’d be a list of heirs and all their fights;
The sorrows and the heart-aches over rights;
There’d be the frowns, the snarls, the sneers and scorn
Out of the leavin’s of our dead men born.
There’d be the threats and mutt’rin’s of divorce
And all the griefs that spring from Trouble’s source.
‘Twas better that this calendar was crossed
With note:--“By order of J. Brown nol pressed.”
That’s how it’s been with her ever sence she come to,” said Mrs. Arad
Tolman, with a jab of her head toward the closed door of an inner
room. There were moanings and cries on the other side of the door as
incoherent as the laments of an animal in distress.
Mrs. Tolman was busy over a brew of herbs that simmered in a little
saucepan on the Kleber Willard cook stove. Ranged around the kitchen
walls sat men and women. Some of the folks in the yard had hurried home
when the tempest broke. Others had taken shelter in the house, making
the storm an excuse for their curiosity.
“Sylvene and the Squire is doin’ what they can with her,” went on Mrs.
Tolman, stirring at the brew, “but she is in a turrible to-do, now I can
tell you! She don’t seem to mind the tunk on her head. That ain’t’ her
lamentation. But the way she’s takin’ on about them childern is enough
to melt a heart of stone. It was the first thing she began dingin’ away
about when she come to--just as if she smelt trouble in the air.”
“What’s been told her about the childern?” inquired Marriner Amazeen,
gazing at the closed door with pity on his seamed face.
“Only that they’ve been took care of at the neighbour’s till mornin’.
But you can’t stuff that excuse down a mother’s thro’t. Talkin’ and
tellin’ don’t fool ’em.”
“They’ve gone to Kingdom Come in that old dory, along with the Judge,
and she senses it,” said Uncle Buck, from his corner. “Them sensin’s is
mysterious, but they’re so.”
The lightnings were now fluttering in far-flung sheets that lit up the
kitchen windows palely. The worst of the tempest was over. But the wind
bellowed without and the rain sprayed fiercely upon the dripping panes.
“First it’s the childern and then it’s whiff over and a-takin’ on about
Klebe--‘poor, darlin’ Klebe,’ she calls him, ‘out there in the storm and
the rain.’ Well, I’d poor darlin’ a man o’ mine that fetched me a clip
like that and then run away.”
“Howsomever, Myry’s allus been quite a nagger--quite a nagger at usyal
times,” observed Uncle Buck, with mild reproof. “She prob’ly realises
now, when her eyes is open by her trouble, that a man can’t be hectored
only about so fur.”
Several men in the kitchen looked at their wives with significance in
their gaze.
A woman was beginning a dissertation on her views of the marriage
situation when there came a beating of wet feet on the stoop without,
and a man trudged in, soggy and dripping. The blast threw a fistful of
water at his back as he slammed the door behind him.
“They’ve got Klebe,” he announced briefly, standing close to the stove.
“How’s the woman?”
“’Tain’t the outside of her head now--it’s the inside of her heart
that’s ailin’,” said Mrs. Tolman. “She wants her childern and her
husband, spite of what he’s done to her.”
“They caught him up in the Bunganuck woods,” explained the man, replying
to rapid questions. “Purday took him and done a good job at it. And the
whole pack and possy of ’em was draggleder’n wet mushrats. They’re
dryin’ Klebe off down in the s’lectmen’s office now, and I reckon
they’ll keep him here to-night and take him to jail ter-morrer.”
“Has he been told about the children?”
“Yas, had to tell him. He’s been fightin’ like a cattymaran ever since
he was took, and Purday got tuckered out and told him so’s to break his
sperit. And it done it quick, now, I can tell ye!”
“Northin’ from outside?” The question was put with a glance seaward
and a mournful inflection of the voice, as though with certainty of the
worst.
“Northin’.” The reply was equally mournful.
The little group lowered their heads and sat in silence as at a funeral.
In the hush the door of the inner room opened, and Squire Phin came into
the kitchen.
“Have you brought news?” he asked anxiously, putting his hand on the
shoulder of the new arrival.
The man repeated his story.
While the Squire stood there with head down, pondering, there was a
commotion in the other room. Again the door opened, and a comely woman
whose features were twisted by grief and suffering appeared. A cloth
was wrapped around her forehead, and her lips were swollen from sobbing.
Though Sylvena Willard strove with all her gentle strength to restrain
her, the woman tore away and came into the kitchen.
“Bring me my children,” she cried, staring from one to the other with
eyes glazed and sunken by woe. “Where’s Klebe? Send him after the
children. Something has happened. What is it? Don’t drive me mad,
neighbours! What is it?”
Her voice rose in a shriek. She ran first to one man and then to
another-, clasping her thin hands around their arms. The men were
unresponsive and embarrassed. Hysteria was upon her.
Squire Phin, with his strong hands and his comforting words, was at last
able to draw her away toward the inner room.
“Oh, Phineas Look,” she wailed, “tell me where my babies are.”
“They are in God’s hands, child,” he replied, his heart in his tones.
“Take courage. I am goin’ away now to bring some one. Take courage.”
While she stared at him with frightened, puzzled gaze he put her into
Sylvena Willard’s arms.
“Do your best with her, Sylvie, until I come back,” he whispered. “I am
going to get Kleber. The awful load that has come upon this household is
one that husband and wife should bear together. Do your best with her,
little woman! For I shall be gone a bit of a while. I am going to tell
your brother a story that he needs to hear.”
He hurried away.
During the long hour that elapsed the stricken woman sat in the kitchen
close by the outer door, motionless and speechless, her eyes fixed on
the latch. All of Sylvena’s coaxings could not draw her back to the
inner room.
The Squire came first into the room. Behind him was Captain Kleber
Willard, and jostling at his back were Deputy Sheriff Purday and his
helper, alert and officious. They wore the air of officers who knew that
this method of handling a prisoner was not regular, but who had been
overmastered by the Squire’s authority. With the group was another man,
the venerable pastor of the village church, whom they had overtaken
making his way with a lantern along the tempest-strewn street toward the
house of mourning.
Willard stepped inside the door, his knees bending lifelessly at each
step, his head wagging low between his shoulders.
His bloodshot eyes rolled shamefacedly from countenance to countenance.
The solemn regard of his neighbours shifted to the worn floor. They had
no consolation for him. His face began to pucker with the grimace of the
strong man who is trying to hold back the tears.
“Where are our little ones, Kleber?” His wife had thrown herself upon
him. She screamed the question over and over.
“Squire Look--Parson Emmons--some one--oh, for God’s sake--tell her!”
His sobs choked him. With his arm about his wife he stumbled away to a
corner of the room, dragging her with him, and while the neighbours sat
silent and sympathetic, the women sobbing softly, the men grinding
their rough knuckles into their palms, the husband and the wife, their
foreheads against the wall, washed away in the first tears they had ever
shed in a common woe all the wrack of the petty quarrels, the little
heart-burnings, the frettings and the misunderstandings--all so mean and
small in this shadow of the mightiest tragedy in their lives.
After many, many minutes they were quiet, and clung to each other like
people in the dark, afraid.
Captain Willard trembled until his teeth rattled together. He
was nerving himself to face the picture of his guilt and his
ingratitude--his crime! That was it! His crime.
It was a picture on which the true light had been shed by Squire Phineas
Look, whispering to him in a corner of the selectmen’s office.
For some minutes the lawyer and the clergyman had been conversing apart
in an undertone, and now the minister came along to the husband and wife
and gently drew them away from the corner.
“Kleber and Myra,” he said, “it was not many years ago that I stood
before you in this house in the presence of almost the same neighbours
who are here now, and I joined your hands in wedlock. I have watched
with sorrow and disappointment the wretched troubles that have come into
your home life--needless troubles, foolish troubles. This is not a time
for a sermon. But it is a time for a friend to speak a word to you. I
could have said much to you before, but I refrained, for I realised that
your hearts were stubborn and froward, never having been touched by the
softness of true love and forbearance. It is the cruel and chastening
hand of trouble that does it now. I believe that now your home and your
hearts are swept clean of the anger and pride and selfishness and the
little vices that ruin homes. I believe that you are now willing to
shoulder together the awful burden that has been placed upon you.”
The woman’s face grew white, and she swayed into her husband’s arms.
Willard stood gasping for his breath.
“I married your bodies once before, Kleber and Myra. To-night I am going
to marry your hearts and your souls, for, God pity you both, you cannot
stand alone and bear this horror.”
The people in the kitchen were too raptly engaged to hear the outside
door open. The Squire stood in the shadow near it, and a soft “Hist!”
engaged his attention.
Hiram’s head was thrust through the opening. He was bareheaded, his
clothing was in shreds, and the lamplight shed feeble gleams on a
hideous black and blue circle around his sound eye.
When the Squire advanced on tiptoe Hiram seized his arm, pulled him
outside and, softly as he had opened it, he closed the door.
“I’ve got ’em,” he whispered excitedly. “It was a God-awful trip,
Phin, but I got ’em! It was old Hime for ’em!”
“You saved them!” gasped his brother.
“Sounder’n nuts. But there wa’n’t no time to spare. Old Judge flat on
his back in the dory and them two little children huddled down side
of him squealin’ for him to wake up! Heard ’em above the roar of the
wind, Phin! I guess it was God’s way of leadin’ me to ’em. I’ve got
’em waitin’ ’round the corner of the house here. When the old Judge
come to the second time he was right as a trivet. Didn’t have no idee
how he happened to be out in that dory. Kind o’ dreamed he was runnin’
away from a devil or somethin’ and savin’ the children--and I don’t
blame him for thinkin’ it was the devil, for that Klebe----”
“Hush, brother,” said the Squire gently; “there have been strange
heart-stirrings about here to-day.”
“You’re right, Phin,” replied the showman heartily. “I guess mine’s been
stirred, too. ’Cause when I undertook to thank Nymp’ Bodfish at the
wharf after we got back for havin’ been so kind and gentlemanly as to
take me down the bay and save the Judge and the young ones, he drawed
off and got in one pelt at my eye, and I didn’t chase him nor want to.
I tell ye, I’ve got jest as good a disposition as any one when I’ve got
half a chance to show it.”
He poked the puffiness under his eye and muttered to himself:
“I guess I reelly am gettin’ to be pretty fair-minded, ’cause if he’d
a-blacked the two of ’em I’m willin’ to acknowledge that he wouldn’t
have been more’n half square with me for what I’ve done to him.”
The suddenness of this news of rescue had dizzied the Squire for a
moment, but he now pushed his brother toward the corner of the house
with a slap on the back that made Hiram cringe.
“Bring them in, Hime! This is your triumph!” He threw open the kitchen
door with a slam that brought the eyes of all in the kitchen around with
a startled snap. The minister paused. The father and mother stared in
affright.
“Bring them along, brother!” shouted the Squire joyously. “Here’s Hero
Hiram Look,” he announced, “and his salvage from the sea!”
One child was asleep in the Judge’s arms. The other clung to Hiram’s
hand and blinked at the light streaming from the open door. The mother
screamed and would have dashed upon them, but the Squire gently held her
back.
“Wait, this is a wedding!” he cried. “Hands together this way! God bless
you and yours. Now, Brother Hime, bring the wedding presents.”
“I ain’t a very extry lookin’ sight to come to a weddin’,” said the
showman, “but I didn’t come to your first one, Klebe, and I didn’t send
no present. All is, I’ve tried to square myself at this second one,
and my best wishes for everlastin’ happiness goes along with ’em,” he
added wistfully.
He put the sleeping child into the mother’s arms and stood back to let
the Judge advance toward his son with the light of forgiveness in his
eyes.
“Oh, father!” wept Kleber, stumbling forward and dragging himself on his
knees toward the old man. “I didn’t know! I didn’t know until the Squire
told me.”
“Stand up, my boy,” said the Judge, putting out his trembling hand. “All
of us know better now, and some knowledge is bought at cruel prices.”
It was without a word that Hiram took the hand that Kleber Willard put
out to him when he turned from his father after a time. But as they
stood there clinging to each other Hiram leaned forward with a flash of
humour that relieved the situation, whispering:
“That black eye, Klebe, is the dot, period, full stop, set down after
the very last fight of my whole life, and I got it for your sake.”
“Come, people!” called the Squire from the doorway. “Come away with me
now. The wedding is over. The night is getting late and the stars are
out again.”
He smiled across the room at Sylvena as he said it.
Then he began with jocular pokings to push the folks out of the door,
and even subjected Deputy-Sheriff Purday to that treatment when the
zealous officer came along to have a private word with him.
“But look-a-here, Squire,” protested Purday, hanging back, “Klebe is
really under arrest, you know, and you understand what the law is.”
“Deputy,” the Squire said, holding him by the arm a moment, “under the
circumstances the highest law I know of is this: ‘What God hath joined
together let no man put asunder.’”
He pointed to the mother and the father with the children between them.
“The grand jury of human hearts returns no indictment. Go home.”
He pushed Purday out behind the last straggler and slammed the door and
bolted it on the inside.