storm, had cried herself into a worse one with her fear of the
lightning, and with the fact that, for the first time, her husband had
failed to appear and to sustain her through the thunderous trial, and
when, later, one of the nurses happening into the room, had mentioned
Mr. Claxton’s return, and she saw that he had designedly left her
to suffer alone, indignation dried her tears; and having satisfied
herself that the children were safely upon their pillows, she made
her own toilet for the night, and went to bed with her wrath, to fall
asleep instantly with her fatigue.
But Mr. Claxton was tired himself--a man is not hooted at by little
boys without some wear and tear of the sensibilities. He did not
attempt to wake his wife, but followed her example, and slept soundly
till just before daybreak, when, in the gray dawn, he was disturbed by
one of those little noises that disturb nobody but a householder. It
was only a faint and rather pleasant murmur--an incessant drip, drip,
drip; but there was no occasion for such a murmur, since it was not
raining then, and he listened anxiously to discover the cause of it.
It was not long before he surmised that it came from the overflow of
the tank in the roof. That was a matter easily remedied by opening the
pipes, though some slight damage had already been done, and he rose to
investigate the matter with some inward grumbling about there never
being anybody but himself to see to such things. Having concluded his
investigation, and having done all there was to be done at present,
he was so thoroughly awakened that it did not seem worthwhile to go
back to bed again; so he dressed himself for the day noiselessly, and
went out to the stables for his horse. The overflow of the tank had
suggested to him the advisability of a visit to the great reservoir
between the hills, and an inspection of the state in which the
thunder-storm had left it. It occurred to him, too, that thus early he
might surprise the keeper off duty, which idea had an alluring relish
to him; and then it would be a pleasant morning ride, and he would be
back to find breakfast ready, and his wife perhaps amiable, and the
domestic storm as well blown over as the thunder-storm.
As Mr. Claxton rode forth the sun had just sent a blush over all the
skies in advance of his coming, and the world was at that heavenly
hour before the full yellow lustre pours over the edge when all the
softer shades of color--the pure pale roses and grays and purples--seem
striving to convince you how much lovelier they are than the brilliant
gold and azure of broad day; the birds were warbling full-throated
still, and all the boughs were glittering with dew and with the last
drops of the night’s shower, till the whole earth looked as if it had
been freshly made that morning. I don’t know that Mr. Claxton thought
precisely that it was a special demonstration on the part of Nature in
honor of his early ride, when the colors grew more and more gorgeous
and the grand transformation scene finally sublimated itself into one
central spot of ruby fire, out of which the sun came rolling up in
majesty; but he certainly had an idea that the common people turning
out to their work did not have such sunrises every morning, and he
rode forward briskly, with a gratified sense of being in a species
of partnership with Nature--if she got up the show, he got up the
appreciation, and if the sunrise was the greatest thing in that valley,
he, at any rate, was the next greatest.
It was a pretty path, in its steep ascent, up which he rode, a
bridle-path where the velvet sward, with its sparkling cobwebs, only
half disclosed the traces of old footprints, every here and there
turning out of its way to wind round some huge mossy bowlder. Overhead
the young birches and maples were waving their boughs, as if groping
for the light that fell on the treetops far above, now tossing the dew
down on him from the brink of some sheer face of rock, now shaking in
the sweet wind in cranny and crevice of the cool wet wall upon the
other side, and yet in shadow. At one point the path descended into a
little hollow, a green dimple of fern and brake; then it rose rapidly,
and passed beneath a group of gigantic oaks that had braved the storms
of centuries, the Century Oaks they were called, indeed, their roots
twisting into the ribs of the solid rock itself; and at length it
came out beside the brook that went leaping down the hill from the
gateway on the east side of the reservoir, fuller that morning than
he remembered to have seen it--now dark and strong, and now, where a
sunbeam touched it, a swift sheet of foam and rainbows. “It takes such
a storm as yesterday’s to swell a brook like this,” said Mr. Claxton
to himself, as his horse’s feet left the velvet sward and began to
clatter over the pebbles, and the great face of the reservoir, with the
green sod of its bank, rose over the wood like the vast base of some
mighty unbuilt tower. “We must have an immense backwater now,” he said;
“enough to run the mills if there should be a drought till the fall.
I’ll take one good look at the dam before I go, if it does spoil the
waffles.”
It was just as Mr. Claxton uttered these words, half aloud, that a
shiver ran from head to hoof through the good beast that bore him,
and which stood still with planted feet and head erect so suddenly as
nearly to dismount his rider. Mr. Claxton looked on this side and on
that for the object of alarm, saw nothing, and sprang to the ground.
The shiver was in the ground: a thrill, a slow and terrible thrill, was
pulsing through the earth, that seemed to shake like a shaking breast,
that was rising to meet him--to meet him who was trembling like a reed
himself.
For what was this? The end of the world? He gave one look at the awful
glory up there at the crest of the hill, the awful deathly glory of the
bristling, rushing, monstrous thing smitten with the full splendor of
the risen sun, and then threw himself into the saddle again, wheeled
about, and spurred his horse down the valley like a madman. But the
muffled thunder of his horse’s hoofs in his ears was drowned by a
louder sound--a dull growl, a hollow roar, a whistling of all the winds
that blow in heaven; and fast as he fled a fierce foe followed faster.
In the great Claxton house upon its knoll, with the trees softly
bending and bowing below it, the morning light had gently entered,
and it fell upon the portrait of Mr. Claxton just as Mrs. Claxton was
opening her eyes. It was a handsome portrait of him, with all that
bright and ruddy comeliness that made his youth so imposing to her. It
seemed to her at that moment that the face was smiling on her as it
used to do at the time when she hung the picture at the foot of her
bed, that it might be the first object on which her eyes should open.
In a forgetful recurrence of the old emotion she did not immediately
call up the events of later days, and was smiling back at it, when all
at once memory resumed its play, and she turned to behold the other
pillow vacant.
It was something like dismay that overcame Mrs. Claxton, for seldom
had Mr. Claxton’s displeasure survived a night’s sleep. “He has gone
away in anger, then!” she exclaimed. But directly her own anger ran to
the rescue. “If I had shown a proper spirit in the first place,” she
said, “he would never have presumed to abuse me so. I had rather be a
kitchen-girl than such a slave as he makes me. The sport of all the
kitchen girls! I had rather die than live so any more! I don’t care
what happens if I can only escape from this. Nothing can be worse!”
And with such ejaculations hovering round her like Venus’s doves, Mrs.
Claxton bathed and dressed, and, fresh and fair as any flower, for all
her troubles, went to find her babies.
But the babies were lovely enough to distract her thoughts for the
time; and it was only after a frolic with them, in all their dimpling
rosiness and laughter, that, somewhat softened, she went down with
them clinging about her, Henrietta ushering the procession, and the
baby astride her shoulder, to find the breakfast on the table, and Mr.
Claxton she knew not where. He had saddled the red horse himself, the
man said, to get a plumber, maybe, for the pipes had been leaking from
the pressure.
From the pressure. Mrs. Claxton glanced up at the window, half
startled, yet her face bright with a hovering triumph on the point of
pouncing. Then he had probably gone up to see after the reservoir,
she thought--not so sure of the dam after all! And she went to the
window to look up the valley road. Yes, there was an object discernible
against the bare face of rock, moving far up the hill, just beyond the
Century Oaks; it was going up--no, it was standing still; now it had
just turned about. A horse and rider. Yes, without doubt, that was Mr.
Claxton: he had been up there to see his pet construction, but hunger
was recalling him to breakfast: he hardly deserved that she should
keep it hot for him. Now she could see plainer. Oh yes, that was Mr.
Claxton and the red horse. But why were they coming so fast? Was there
a gust up there? It looked as though a thick whirlwind were behind
him. Mrs. Claxton lifted her eyes to the sky, looking for clouds; as
she did so, they rested one second on the top of the hill. In that
second--great God in heaven!--in that second she saw the whole east
side of the reservoir move out in one mass, and a flood, a stupendous
volume of water, pour in one prodigious leap, this instant transfigured
in the sunshine like a supernal apparition, and the next instant
precipitating itself, a dark and horrible torrent of clay and water and
stone and tree, tumbling and boiling down the valley, stripping bare
the rock behind it, driving the earth before!
One shrill cry from Mrs. Claxton’s lips, “It has come at last!” one
bewildered look for somebody to lean on, and that was all the weakness
she allowed herself. Immediately she had summoned the servants, and had
the outside hands all rushing into the kitchen from garden and stable,
two of them sent back to bring the long ladder into the main hall, and
the others hurrying to bolt doors and drop windows and put up shutters.
“Up-stairs now!” cried Mrs. Claxton, seizing her baby, just as the
alarm-bell of the mills began to ring. “If the water comes so high,
we can retreat to the roof. No, no”--as the girls began to cry and
show hysterical tendencies--“we are safe. The house must stand. It is
stone. The walls are thick; and the force will be partly spent before
the flood reaches us. It isn’t we who will suffer; it is your master,
who is out in the way somewhere; it is our neighbors whose houses
stand in the plain. Plant the ladder beneath a second-story window,
Thomas--quick, I say!--that they may see the wisdom of running here.
You simpletons! Can water run up the ladder?”
“She’s the right stuff,” said Thomas to Jane. And she was hardly obeyed
when the neighbors were seen running for the knoll and springing up
the terraces, men with their mothers, and women with their children,
people saving themselves wherever they chanced to be, tripping and
falling and fainting and dragged along, unable to make for the hills on
the valley sides, and seeking the nearest security as it was offered by
the great Claxton house upon its terraced knoll, thronging at last into
the doorway which Thomas stood ready to close, and scattering through
the upper rooms, these in a dumb horror, with wringing hands, and those
with sobs and screams and cries for one another.
They were still running for the house when some were seen to fall as
if prostrated by a furious wind behind them. There was a moment of
intense stillness in the house, as the gazing groups beheld it, and
into that stillness crept the whisper, the muffled rumble and roll, the
wide roar of the open flood-gates. Thomas slammed the door, and sprang
up the stairway after his mistress and the rest. “Say your prayers,”
said he, putting his arms round Jane, who hid her head in them, “for
here it comes!” And with the word they saw a wall of water pushing
down the valley, too swift to break and fall--yellow and polished as a
jewel through all its burnished front, its crest curling in a terrible
foam of ruin, where toppled uprooted trees, struggling, drowning
men, crashed roof and rafter, and capsized dwelling--and in another
heart-beat the whole wide valley was afloat, and the flood was upon
them, billowing and bellowing and surging on over the main road, over
the hay field, across the gardens, up the knoll, the waters piling
themselves like light from terrace to terrace. Would they rise higher?
Would the house go, too? There was not time to ask it before they were
foaming up the lawns, were rushing round the door-steps, were carrying
away the ladder, were pouring through the windows. A shock--it was
a long beam swirling in the torrent and grazing the house. Another
shock--the ground vibrating to it--and they saw the great mills swing
and totter and fall in a cloud of wreck, and wash away. And then one
long tremor that made the hair stand on end: the shoulder of the great
water was pressing full on them. One dizzy, swimming moment--they felt
the strong stones and timbers quiver, felt them lift and strain and
rise and settle, and then, with a great cry of joy, they saw that the
house, opposing its angle to the tide, had divided its volume, and the
waters flowed on either side and left it safe.
It was not a half-hour since Mrs. Claxton had seen the bursting of
the reservoir before she gathered her children into her own room and
shut the door, leaving the rest of the house to its sudden guests
and the watchers of the passing and subsiding flood, that she might
betake herself to her knees. She and her children were safe; but her
husband--God alone knew where he was! She did not fall on her knees,
though; she walked up and down the room like a wild woman, stopping at
every turn to embrace one child or another, to exclaim in misery with
a storm of tears. A half-hour ago she had seen him turn about, dashing
homeward with that horror behind him--dashing homeward to save himself
perhaps, perhaps to save her and the children. Now the waters must
have gone over him. He must have fallen before them. And the terror
and agony he had endured in that dreadful moment when he saw there was
no help for him rose before her like clouds of darkness and enveloped
her. One hour passed, and another; the nurses had come in and taken
the frightened twins; the baby fell asleep, and little Henrietta kept
awe-struck guard over him. But Mrs. Claxton saw nothing that occurred.
She was realizing what her bereavement would be; she was seeing all
the mistakes of her life suddenly, as if lightning had stamped the
whole thing on her; she was suffering a torture of remorse; she was
thinking how her husband might possibly have escaped, wondering about
him, contriving for him; she was crying out that she should never see
his face again; she was falling upon the bed and hiding her face in
his pillow, and wetting it with scalding tears. Yes, she had told him
she rued the hour she ever laid eyes on him--well, perhaps she would
never lay eyes on him again! And then a striking clock seemed to be
tolling a knell. The baby awoke and cried; little Henrietta tugged and
pulled it off the bed, and, clasping it in her chubby arms, lugged it,
in a fashion, from the room: her mother never noticed her. She had sat
down to listen for the clock again. Clang, clang, clang, it measured
out noon: now it was impossible that he should have escaped and not
be there. Yes, she was free--free from all her troubles; she was no
longer a slave; the mistress of her own house at last. But oh, to what
purpose! There was no more a skeleton in that house, only in its stead
a fearful phantom to rise and shake its gory locks at her. For it
was she who had caused her husband’s death, if he were dead; and she
started up to walk the floor again in a suspense that was worse than
certainty. It was her sharp anger--yes, yes, it was her contentious
tongue of yesterday--that drove him forth this morning. Ah, great
Heaven! but for her wicked words he would have been at home when the
reservoir burst; he would be safe and thankful now. She had murdered
him, and she had murdered her own peace--her own words were the flaming
swords that shut her out of hope and happiness forever. She loved
him. And she had lost him. Oh, what was a little matter of every day
to contend about, beside the great love of a life, the praise, the
encouragement, the sympathy, the tenderness!--and she remembered how he
had seemed to adore her once; how she had leaned on him and believed in
him once; what warmth there used to be in his smile, what comfort in
his presence. And she should never have them again. She had shut him
out from the light of day, from home, from children, from life. He had
left her, too, in anger; he had gone out without kissing her; he was
unreconciled with her in death!
“Oh, do not let it be death!” she cried. “Spare him, Lord! save him!
Do not let it be too late! Give me back my husband!” She flung herself
down in wild supplication, yearning and agonized, praying for him in a
passion of prayer, and growing still and silent in that ecstasy as if
she were turning to stone.
There was movement and bustle now about the house, for the waters
had passed, leaving only their slime behind them, thick mud on carpet
and floor, ropy filth on wall and wainscot, and the people had left
shelter, and were wading through the knee-deep mud in search of the
spot that had been home. The servants were already beginning to see if
there were any possibility of setting things to rights where the tide
had flowed through below-stairs, crushing partitions and sweeping doors
before it, and wondering where to find the shovels, when in the going
and coming a poor creature staggered into the door, and, just as Thomas
came picking his way along in high boots, fell on the floor at his
feet--a poor creature, bruised and bleeding and in rags, caked with the
ooze and mire, a noisome and disgusting wretch more vile than anything
else on earth.
“Look here, you!” said Thomas, touching him with the end of his stick.
“Get out of this, will you? It’s no place for to be lying about drunk,
and no day neither. Get out, I say, or I’ll set the mastiffs on you.
Here, Towser! here, Dash!” And in a moment the snarl of the dogs was
heard as they made for the despicable object.
“Thomas!” cried a feeble voice, as the poor creature rose on one elbow.
“Oh, good Lord above us, Thomas!” cried Jane, on the stairs. “Don’t you
know who it is?”
And in a moment the other men had been called, and among them they got
that sorry fusion of humanity and alluvial deposit up the stairs and
into the bath-room.
But nothing of all this stir did Mrs. Claxton hear. In that ecstasy of
petitioning she was lost to all that went on; listening for some voice
out of heaven, she heard no earthly sound. There was a chorus from the
children outside, but she did not hear it; the door opened again, but
she did not know it; and then two arms were about her, two tired and
trembling arms, and a face over which the tears were pouring was beside
her own. She started back quaking as if it were an apparition; and then
she flung herself upon her husband’s neck.
“Oh, He has heard me! He has heard me!” she cried.
“My darling,” he was murmuring, “can you ever forgive me?”
“Oh, my dear one,” she was sobbing, “how are you and God ever going to
forgive me?”
“I saw it all,” he said, presently, as she sat on the bedside where he
lay, “while I was buffeting that water, and just as I had given up and
was swept into the arms of the old Century Oak--the only one of them
that stands now, Caroline. I was nothing but a mote, a speck, in that
great surge, and all my arrogance and evil pride, all my abuse of you,
seemed to be bearing me down into the flood. Oh, my child, I prayed to
Heaven to save me that I might be a better husband to you! And when I
came to the door my own dogs didn’t know me.” And Mr. Claxton cried
again.
It was some mornings after that, when things were in a degree restored
to place, and the family breakfasting together alone for the first
time, that Mr. Claxton gazed smilingly at his wife, and thought, with
a little self-congratulation, that he really was a better husband to
her than he had been, as she beamed back at him all smiles and velvet
blushes. He had never seen himself as he was, he thought, before that
calamity overtook him; it had needed what they call an act of God to
open his eyes. And now--Between ourselves, I don’t believe he became an
angel all at once, for that despotic principle was bred in his bone,
and Noah’s flood itself could not have washed it out. I should not be
surprised if he were still apt to be found a very exasperating man, and
I imagine that she was always liable to the reproach of the vixens,
though if that temper of hers ever struck fire again, remembrance of
one morning’s agony could not but quench the spark.
“How happy we are!” said he. “I don’t feel prepared to call the
accident a calamity, after all--that is, so far as we are concerned,”
said Mr. Claxton, checking himself. “People have supposed us enviable
beings for a good while, Caroline, never dreaming of the skeleton in
our closet. But in the future we shall be enviable indeed.”
“Why, so we are now!” exclaimed Mrs. Claxton.
“That old bickering of ours was a sad skeleton to carry about--it was
like a babe in the arms to you, wasn’t it?”
“I made as much of it!” she said.
“Well, let us thank God that there is nothing to hold its bones
together; let us thank God, my love, that there is no longer a skeleton
in the house, and that we have buried it--”
“Fathoms deep,” she cried.
“--in the mire of the flood.”
And at that Mrs. Claxton looked at him, and her lips began to tremble
and her eyes to fill, and she forsook her chair and ran to her husband,
who, once ready to be shocked at such an indecorum, now clasped her in
his arms with tender whispers, stroked her hair a moment as her head
rested on his breast, and then led her back to her seat with a lofty
sort of courtesy, but paused to kiss the tears off her cheek.
And Miss Henrietta, recalling the scene in after-years, wondered what
in the world the skeleton could have been over whose burial her father
and mother were making such an ado.
THE TRAGIC STORY OF BINNS
THE TRAGIC STORY OF BINNS
There is no use in making any pretences about it. It was no dark and
splendid young pirate fascinated by a rosy rustic maiden. It was no
foreign prince in disguise attracted by the grace of an unfettered
shape balancing water-pails at the spring, and ready to override all
the conventions of society and make the girl his wife. It was Binns,
the butcher-boy.
A scrap of a fellow he was; so short, so slight, so pale, so
insignificant, that it seemed as if, should he take off his long blue
blouse, there would really be nothing left of him--but his freckles.
And Roxy, she was half again his height, and buxom and blooming, not to
say blowsy, deep-colored, and altogether with a great deal of her.