"Maybe papa would give you some money," she said again. "He
is such a good man, my papa is."
I burst into a laugh. The little lass's fear came back, and
she turned and ran away.
I have not moved from the spot since she left me. I have
carefully cleaned and loaded the weapon I have carried so
long--the instrument in my hand of God's vengeance. Before
another sun rises it will be over.
I sit and look at the cottage the child pointed out. I can
see that it is neat and comfortable. The sun is going down,
and the windows on this side are red as blood. So is all the
snow between this place and that. I shall wait until night.
I feel no fear, no remorse; and yet, if the child had not
had _his_ eyes----
* * * * *
Meanwhile the men who were waiting for Dixon's return became a little
restive, as the minutes dragged along and he did not appear. Even
those ready means of beguiling time common to men of their stamp--the
telling of highly-seasoned and _apropos_ stories interspersed with
frequent libations, began to pall. Some of them stole away to their
neglected dinners, returning shortly with a renewed sense of wonder as
they still found him absent.
And the stark figure lay there in their midst, itself for the time
forgotten in the stories and conjectures its presence had evoked, the
faint smile frozen on its unshaven lips, the half-open eyes fixed
seemingly upon the door with a terrible intentness.
At last one of the men who was near a window overlooking the street,
said:
"He's comin'!" and a moment or two later, "I swear, he's paler'n the
dead man his self!"
"Mebbe it's his long-lost brother!" suggested the vagabond Shanks, who
was given to pleasantries of this sort.
"He was always that a way!" declared another. "They's men as can't
look at a corpse without turnin' white around the gills, an' Dixon's
one on 'em! I've seen him a-fore. An' he ain't no coward, neither!"
"No! _He_ ain't no coward!" chorused the others, and a moment or two
later Dixon pushed open the door and came in. Every man's eye was
drawn to his face, but he saw no one. He looked straight before him
into space.
"Buckey," he said, addressing that worthy in one of his many
capacities, that of undertaker, "I knew this--man. Make arrangements
to have the--the body brought to my house, at once, and to have the
funeral from there to-morrow morning."
He paused a moment, a kind of click in his throat, and then added,
"Let every man and woman who knows me be present."
He turned and went out, and they saw him, with his head sunk on his
breast, walking homeward.
At the appointed hour the small front room of Dixon's cottage was
filled with men and women, drawn thither in part through deference to
his expressed desire, in part through curiosity excited by the rumors
which had filled the air since the day before.
The body of the stranger, now shrouded and coffined, rested upon a
bier in the centre of the room. At its head sat the minister of the
one church of which the town could boast.
The people were very silent, even more so than the occasion seemed to
warrant, but they studied each other's faces furtively, as if each
sought in the other some clue to the mystery which was to himself
impenetrable.
They were plain, hard-working people, and, for the most part, decent,
law-abiding citizens. The man in whose house they were assembled had
been with them for years. What he had been before he came among them
they had never asked. It may be that some of them had something in
their own past they would fain have forgotten. He had won their
respect and confidence, and in time their affection, for, as has been
said, he was generous, brave and helpful. He had been their chosen
leader. They had honored him with such small honors as they had to
bestow, and as his reputation as a political writer and speaker
spread, other and higher honors were more than hinted at.
To-day they were disturbed and restless, as if under the shadow of
some impending change or calamity. They waited in a tense, constrained
silence for what might happen. At length a door opened noiselessly and
Dixon stood before them. A thrill ran through every breast as they saw
him. A score of years might have passed over him, and not have wrought
the change of this one night. The assured carriage, the look of
strength and power and pride had vanished. The broad shoulders
stooped. The hair was matted over his brow, the features pinched and
livid.
He let his eyes wander over the faces of those present a moment; then,
in a strained, husky voice, began speaking.
"You who have been my friends," he said, "who for years have given me
your respect and confidence and support, look at the man lying there
in his coffin! _That is my work!_"
He paused. Every face blanched perceptibly. No one moved, but all
hung, with parted lips, upon the next words that strange, toneless
voice might utter. It began again:
"That man was my friend, and I was his; but he possessed one thing I
wanted--the love of a woman, his betrothed wife. Up to the time I
began to covet this woman's love, I was as truly his friend as he was
mine. Up to the hour when the devil put it into my power to swear away
his good name I had never dreamed of being false to him, though I had
reason to believe that the woman I loved cared for him only as a
sister might, and I might have fairly won her. He was accused of a
crime, and my word might have cleared him. Instead of that, it
convicted him. On my false testimony he went, an innocent man, to
prison, and I came with the woman I had perjured my soul to win as my
wife to this country.
"For years I tried to forget. I could not. My sin followed me day and
night, and poisoned every moment of my existence. At last I made up my
mind to go back to the old place and give myself up, and make amends
for what I had done. I left my wife and child here, and worked my
passage back to England. I was too late. Justice had been done so far
as human law could do it. The real criminals had been found, and he I
had wronged was free. And he had gone to America. I knew what for. He
was slow to anger, but, when once aroused, his anger was terrible. I
knew that he was seeking me, and I knew that he would find me. From
that time I never lay down to sleep but my last thought was, 'It may
be to-morrow!' I never rose in the morning that I did not say to
myself, 'Perhaps it may be to-day!' For years I have lived with this
spectre of vengeance at my elbow. What my life has been since I came
among you, you think you know. What it really has been, no mortal man
can guess. At last, what was to be came to pass. He found me."
A shudder shook the speaker, and he was silent an instant. Then he
continued:
"He found me. I have read in his own hand-writing _how_ he found me,
and all the history of his ruined life. He has stood at my window with
my life in his hands, and at the last moment--God alone knows why,
perhaps for the sake of the woman he loved and her child--he has
spared my life. I have seen the print of his feet where he must have
stood outside in the bitter cold looking in upon my warmth and
comfort. I have found the very weapon with which he would have taken
my life lying at my door where he must have flung it, and I have
traced his steps where he must have fled across the field to hide
himself in the darkness, only to die almost within a stone's-throw of
this house. He had sworn to meet me face to face, and it was to
be--like this! The hand of God was in it. I might have kept silent.
The secret was in my hands alone. No human law could reach me now that
his tongue is silent; but lying there, as he lay yesterday, dead, in
rags, he has spoken as no living man could speak! He has accused and
convicted and sentenced me, as no human law could have done!"
He ceased as abruptly as he had began. He stood there, broken,
self-accused, in a humiliation so deep, a despair so utter, that the
sternest of his listeners was moved to a compassion which fought
desperately with the horror his story had inspired. Involuntarily,
unconsciously, those nearest him had shrunk away until he stood apart,
alone, at the foot of the coffin, from which the dead, half-opened
eyes seem to hold him in a stony, unrelenting stare.
For a time there was a complete, terrible silence. Then the minister,
who had sat all this time at the head of the coffin, his venerable
head bowed upon his hands, rose, and went across the room, his mild
face illumined with a look of divine pity. He laid his withered hands
upon Dixon's folded arms, and spoke:
"'When I kept silence my bones waxed old. Day and night Thy hand was
heavy upon me.
"'Mine iniquities are gone over my head, as a heavy burden they are
too heavy for me. I am troubled. I am bowed down greatly. My sorrow is
continually before me. I will declare my iniquity. I will be sorry for
my sin. Forsake me not, O Lord! Make haste to help me, O Lord, my
salvation!'"
All heads were bowed. From the corner where the women sat together
came the sound of suppressed sobbing.
The minister went back to his place, and folding his hands above the
coffin, said:
"Let us pray."
When the prayer was ended, the coffin was closed, and, followed by the
entire assemblage, was borne to the place prepared for it.
The day was mild. A dense, soft snow was falling, through which the
figures of men and women moved with phantasmal noiselessness. Dixon
walked foremost by the side of the clergyman. When all was over, he
raised his eyes from the icy clods of the new-made grave. The
venerable man stood silent at its foot. Otherwise he was alone.
At the door of his cottage, the old man, too, left him, with a strong,
long hand-pressure. He stood for some time before the door. The air
was thick with the great flakes of snow, the footprints beneath the
window and across the frozen field were already hidden from sight,
but he knew that they were there, and always would be.
At last, very slowly and heavily, he turned and went into the house.
It was cold and silent. The door of the front room stood open, and the
chairs were as the people had left them. He went into the room and
tried to restore things to their customary appearance. With a visible
shudder he crossed the middle of the room where the coffin had stood,
and threw open the windows. Then he went out, closing the door
carefully. In the passage he listened a moment, but it was still
silent. He knew that the child had been sent to a neighbor's, and that
he should find his wife in her own room.
He found her sitting by the window. She did not move as he entered,
and he stood near her for some moments waiting vainly for some sign
that she was aware of his presence. Then he spoke her name.
She turned slightly toward him. That was all.
Dixon threw himself upon a chair near her, with a groan.
"Barbara!" he cried, in a voice of anguish, "Barbara! Is this all you
have to give me?"
She turned toward him a wan, drawn face with dazed, tearless eyes that
seemed to look at him as from afar off.
"I trusted you so completely," she said, her words falling as slowly
and coldly as the snowflakes outside, "so completely! I never knew
that such things _could_ be! I shall never forgive myself that I
believed him guilty, never! I shall never forgive myself that I helped
to drive him to despair. I shall never forgive----"
"Don't say it, Barbara! For _God's_ sake, don't say it!" her husband
cried, throwing himself at her feet, and burying his face upon her
lap. He felt her whole body recoil from his touch, and shrank back,
hiding his face upon his arms.
"I was such a child," she went on, "such a foolish, weak child--but I
might have known better. I shall never forgive myself!"
Dixon groaned aloud. "But I am ready, quite ready," she continued in
the same voice.
"Ready?"
He started up, and stared at her wildly. He feared for her reason.
"Yes," she said, "ready to go with you, away from here, anywhere, at
any time. You cannot stay here?"
There was something in her voice and face impossible to describe--a
deadly apathy, an icy coldness, a stony acceptance of a hopeless
situation.
For the first time in twenty-four hours the color returned to Dixon's
face. His eyes flashed, his teeth were set, as he sprang to his feet.
In that instant he set his face against the power that would fling him
into bottomless abysses of shame and ruin.
"I _will_ stay here!" he said, fiercely. "I will _not_ fly again! The
worst that could happen _has_ happened. Where should I go to escape
my fate? Why should I attempt it? No! I swear to live my life here,
and to live it as a man should live with God's help, and _yours_,
Barbara!" he implored. "Will you drive me to despair? Will you forsake
me, or will you help me?"
A shiver shook the woman's slight form, and she passed her hand across
her eyes once or twice, before reaching it toward him. A piteous smile
quivered across her lips, but her eyes did not seek his.
He seized her hand, and again threw himself before her.
"I am your wife, Jamie," she said, gently. "Your wife, for better or
for worse. Whatever I can do to help you, I will do."
Then at last the eyes of the two met in a long, long gaze, and in that
moment Dixon read his fate.
Everything else might, and did, come back to him--the esteem and
confidence of his fellow-men, worldly success, aye, and the blessing
of God upon the work to which he dedicated the best portion of his
remaining years--the raising up of the fallen and unfortunate; all
these things came to him in time, but one thing he forever missed--the
old look of perfect, unquestioning trust in one woman's eyes, the eyes
of the woman for whose sake he had sinned.