LEFT ALONE
Mary Warren, alone in the little cabin, found herself in a new world
whose existence she had never dreamed--that subjective and subconscious
land which bridges the forgotten genesis of things to the usual and
busy world of the senses, in which we pass our daily lives. Indeed,
never before had she known what human life really is, how far out of
perspective, how selfish, how distorted. Now, alone in the darkness,
back in the chaos and the beginning, she saw for the first time how
small a thing is life and how ill it is for the most part lived. A fly
buzzed loudly on the window pane--a bold, bronzed, lustrous fly, no
doubt, she said to herself, pompous and full of himself--buzzed again
and again, until the drone of his wings blurred, grew confused, ceased.
She wondered if he had found a web.
The darkness oppressed her like a velvet pall. She strained her eyes,
trying in spite of all to pierce it, beat at it, picked at it, to get
it from around her head; and only paused at length, her face beaded,
because she knew that way madness lay.
Time was a thing now quite out of her comprehension. Night and day,
all the natural and accustomed divisions of time, were gone for her.
She felt at the hands of her little watch, but found her mind
confused--she could not remember whether it was the stem or the hinge
which meant noon or midnight.
A thousand new doubts and fears of her newly created world assailing
her, she felt rather than saw the flood of the sunlight when she
stepped to the door gropingly, and stood, stick in hand, looking out.
Yes, that was the sun. But it was hard to reason which way was north,
which way lay the east, which was her home.
Home? She had no home! These years, she had known no home but the
single room which she had occupied with Annie Squires. And now even
that was gone. And even if it were not gone, she had no means of going
back to it--her money was almost exhausted. And this black world was
not the earth, this new covering of her soul was not life. Oh, small
enough seemed Mary Warren to her own self now.
She stumbled back to her seat behind the table, near the bunk, and
tried to take up her knitting again. The silence seemed to her so
tremendous that she listened intently for some sound, any sound. Came
only the twitter of a little near-by bird, the metallic clank of a
meadow lark far off across the meadows. They at least were friendly,
these birds. She could have kissed them, held them close to her, these
new friends.
But why did he not come back--the man? What was going to happen if he
did come back? How long would all this last? Must it come to death,
or to the acceptance of terror or of shame, as the price of life?
She began to face her problem with a sort of stolid courage or
resolution--she knew not what to call it. She was at bay--that was the
truth of it. There must be some course of action upon which presently
she must determine. What could it be? How could she take arms against
her new, vast sea of troubles, so far more great than falls to the
average woman, no matter how ill, how afflicted, how unfit for the
vast, grim conflict which ends at last at the web?
One way out would be to end life itself. Her instinct, her religious
training, her principles, her faith, rebelled against that thought.
No--no! That was not right. Her life, even her faint, pulsing,
crippled life, was a sacred trust to her. She must guard it, not
selfishly, but because it was right to do so. She could feel the
sunshine outside, could hear the birds singing. They said that life
still existed, that she also must live on, even if there were no sound
of singing in her own heart ever again.
Then she must go back to the East, whence she had come?--Even if
great-hearted Annie would listen to that and take her back, where was
the money for the return passage? How could she ask this man for
money, this man whom she had so bitterly deceived? No, her bridges
were burned.
What then was left? Only the man himself. And in what capacity?
Husband; or what? And if not a husband, what?
. . . No, she resolved. She would accept duty as the price of life,
which also was a duty; but she would never relax what always to her had
meant life, had been a part of her, the principles ingrained in her
teachings and her practices, ever since she was a child. No, it was
husband or nothing.
And surely he had been all that he had said he would be. He _was_
kindly, he _was_ chivalrous, he had proved that. She wondered how he
looked. And what had she now to offer for perfection in a man? Was
she not reduced to the bargain counter, in the very basement of life?
If so, what must be her bargain here?
And then she recalled the refusal of Sim Gage himself to think of
marriage. He had said he was not good enough for her. How could she
then marry him, even if she so wished? Must she woo him and persuade
him, argue with him? All her own virginal soul, all the sanctity of
her life, rebelled against that thought also.
Object, matrimony! What a cruel jest it all had been. What a terrible
dilemma, this into which it all had resolved itself. Object, matrimony!
So if this man--so she reasoned again, wearily--if this man who had
been kind at least, even if uncouth, was willing to take her with all
her stories told, and all shortcomings known and understood--if he was
willing to take chances and be content--was that indeed the only way
out for her, Mary Warren?
What made it all most bitter, most difficult, most horrible for her was
the strength of her own soul. Was it the _right_ thing to do--was it
the courageous and valiant thing to do? Those were the two questions
which alone allowed her to face that way for an answer; and they were
the very two which drove her hardest. Could she not do much, if in the
line of duty? Sacrifice was no new thing for women. . . . And the
war! . . . This was not a time for little thoughts.
Such are some of the questions a woman must ask and answer, because she
is a woman. They are asked and answered every day of the world;
perhaps not often so cruelly as here in this little cabin.
She began, weakly, to try to resign herself to some frame of mind by
which she could entertain the bare, brutal thought of this alternative.
She had come more than a thousand miles to meet this man by plan, by
arrangement. Oh, no (so she argued), it could not be true that there
was but one man for one woman, one woman for a man, in all the world.
Annie must have been right. Propinquity did it--was that not why men
and women nearly always married in their own village, their own social
circle? Well, then, here was propinquity. Object, matrimony! Would
propinquity solve all this at last, as though this were a desert
island, they two alone remaining? God!
Was it indeed true, asked Mary Warren, in her bitter darkness, that the
rude doctrine of material ideas alone must rule the world now in this
strange, new, inchoate, revolutionary age? Was it indeed true that
sentiment, the emotions, the tenderer things of life, a woman's
immeasurable inheritance--must all these things go also into the
discards of the world's vast bloody bargain counter?
She remembered Annie's rude but well-meant words, back there where they
once crudely struggled with these great questions. "What's the use of
trying to change the world, Sis?" she had said. "Something's going
wrong every minute of the day and night--something's coming up all the
time that ought to be different. But we ain't got nothing to do with
running the world--just running our own two lives is enough for us."
Hours or moments later--she could not have told which--she raised her
head suddenly. What was it that she had heard? There was a cough, a
footfall in the yard.
Oh, then he was coming home! Why not have the whole thing out now,
over once and for all? Why not speak plainly and have it done? He had
not been so terrible. He was an ignorant man, but not unkind, not
brutal.
She felt the light in the door darken, knew that some one was standing
there. But something, subconscious, out of her new, dark
world--something, she could not tell what--told her this was not Sim
Gage.
She reached out her hand instinctively. By mere chance it fell upon
the heavy revolver in its holster which Sim had hung upon the pole at
the head of her bed. She caught it out, drew back into the room,
toward the head of the bed, and stumbling into her rude box chair, sat
there, the revolver held loosely in her hand. She knew little of its
action.
She heard a heavy step on the floor, that did not sound familiar, a
clearing of the throat which was yet more unfamiliar, a laugh which was
the last thing needed. This man had no business there, else he would
not have laughed.
"Who's there?" she called out, tremulously. "Who are you?" She turned
on him her sightless eyes, a vast terror in her soul.
"Good morning," said a throaty voice. She could fairly hear him grin.
"How's everything this morning? Where's your man this morning?"
"He's--just across in the meadows--he'll be back soon," said Mary
Warren.
"Is that so? I seen him ten miles down the road just a while back.
Now, look here, woman----"
He had come fully into the room, and now he saw in her lap the weapon.
Half unconsciously she raised it.
"Look out!" he called. "It may be loaded. Drop it!"
"Come a step further, and I'll shoot!" said Mary Warren. And then,
although he did not know that she was sightless, he saw on her face
that look which might well warn him. Any ruffian knows that a woman is
more apt to shoot than is a man.
This ruffian paused now half way inside the door and looked about him.
A grin spread across his wide, high-cheeked face. He reached down
silently to the stout spruce stick, charred at one end, that stood
between him and the stove. Grasping it he advanced on tiptoe, silent
as a cat, toward the woman. He was convinced that her sight was poor,
almost convinced that she did not see at all, because she made no move
when he stopped, the stick drawn back. With a swift sweep he struck
the barrel of the revolver a blow so forceful that it was cast quite
across the room. He sprang upon it at once.
Mary Warren cried out, drew back as far as she could. The impact of
the blow had crushed a finger of the hand that held the weapon. She
wrung her hands, held up the bloody finger. "Who are you--what do you
want?" she moaned.
"That's what you get when you run against a real one," sneered the
voice of the man, who now stood fully within the little room. "Just
keep quiet now."
"What do you mean? What are you going to do?" She felt about again
for some weapon, anything, but could find nothing.
"That's a purty question to ask, ain't it now?" sneered her assailant.
She could catch the reek of raw spirits around him as he stood near by.
She shuddered.
"Sim!" she called out aloud at last. "Sim! Sim!"
The name caused a vast mirth in her captor. "Sim! Sim!" he mocked
her. "Lot o' help Sim'd be if he was here, wouldn't he? As though I
cared for that dirty loafer. He's going to git all that's comin' to
_him_. Aw, Sim! He'll leave us Soviet sabcats alone. We're thinkers.
We're free men. We run our own government, and we run our own selves,
too."
The liquor had made the man loquacious. He must boast. She tried to
guess what he might mean.
But something in the muddled brain of the man retained recollection of
an earlier purpose. "Stay inside, you!" he said. "I got work to do.
If you go outside I'll kill you. Do you hear me?"
She heard his feet passing, heard them upon the scattered boards near
the door, then muffled in the grass. She could not guess what he was
about.
He went to the edge of the standing grass beyond the dooryard, and
began sowing, broadcast, spikes, nails, bits of iron, intended to ruin
the sickle blades of the mowers when they came to work. Even he thrust
a spike or bolt here or there upright in the ground to catch a blade.
Mary Warren where she sat knew none of this, but she heard a sound
presently which she could not mistake--the crackling of fire! The
scent of it came to her nostrils. The man had fired the meager
remnants of Sim Gage's hay stacks.
She heard next a shot or two, but could not tell what they meant. She
could not know that he was firing into the dumb, gaunt cattle which
hung about the ricks.
Then later she heard something which caused her very soul to shiver,
made her blood run ice--the shrieking scream of a horse in death
agony--the hoarser braying of a mule, both dying amid fire! She did
not understand it, could not have guessed it; but he had set fire also
to the stables. Brutal to the last extreme, he left the animals penned
to die in the flames, and laughed at their agony.
Again and again the awful sounds came to her. She was hysterical when
she heard his footstep approach once more, shrieked aloud for mercy.
He mocked her.
"Stop it! Cut it out, I say. Come on now--do you want to stay here
and burn up in the house?"
"I can't see--I'm blind," was all she could manage to say.
"Blind, huh?" He laughed now uproariously. "Well, it's a good thing
you was blind, or else you might of seen Sim Gage! Did you ever see
Sim? What made you come here? What did you come for?"
"I'm his housekeeper. He employed me----"
"Employed you? For what?--for housekeeping? It looks like it, don't
it? Where did you come from, gal?"
"East--Ohio--Cleveland," she spoke almost unconsciously and truthfully.
"Cleveland? Plenty of our people there too still in the iron works.
Cleveland? And how come you out here?"
"I'm ill--I'm a blind woman. Can't you leave me alone? Are you any
man at all?"
He remained unmoved, phlegmatic. "So? Nice talk about you and Sim
Gage! Was you two married? I know you ain't. You come out to marry
him, though, didn't you?"
"Yes."
"When?"
"Next week--he's gone for the minister to-day." She said anything, the
first thing.
"That's a lie," said the coarse voice of the man she could not see. "I
seen him ten mile down toward the dam, I tell you, with Wid Gardner,
and Nels Jensen's folks, below, said they was going for a doctor, not a
preacher. He wouldn't marry no blind woman like you, no ways."
She sank back, limp, her face in her bloody hands, as she lay against
the edge of the bed.
"Come now," said he. "We got no time to waste. We'll see what the
other fellers think. Housekeeper--huh! You said you wasn't married to
him. You never will be, now."
"You brute!" she cried, with the courage of the cornered thing, the
courage of the prisoner bound to the stake for torture. "You brute!"
She could hear him chuckle throatily. "You don't know me--I'm Big
Aleck, general of the Soviet brothers in this county." He juggled
phrases he never had understood.
"You ought to hang!" she panted. "You will hang, some day."
[Illustration: "You ought to hang!" said she.]
"You better look a little out, gal, I tell you that. You come along
out to the camp, and I'll see how you like that!"
She felt his iron grasp fall upon her wrist. He dragged her across the
floor as though she weighed nothing. She had been wholly helpless,
even if in possession of all her faculties and all her senses. He
flung her from him upon the grass, laughing as she rose and tried to
run, bringing up in the willows, which she could not see. She could
hear the flames crackling at the hay ricks on beyond. By this time the
sounds from the burning barn mercifully had ceased, but she heard him
now at some further work. He was trying to light the battered edge of
the door with a match, but it would not burn.
"Where's the oil, gal?" he demanded.
"We've got none," said she, guessing his purpose of firing the house
now.
He made no answer but a grunt, and finding the ax at the wood pile
nearby, began to hack at the jamb of the door, so that a series of
chips stood out from it, offering better food for flames. She heard
him again strike a match--caught the faint smell of burning pine.
"Come on!" Again she felt his hand. He dragged her, her feet
stumbling in the grass. She could hear horses snorting, so there was
some vehicle here, she supposed. He flung her up to the seat, jerked
loose the halters, and climbed in as the team plunged forward. Had any
one seen the careening wagon, seen the upflung arm of a woman swaying
in the grasp of the man who sat beside her in the seat--had any one
heard the laugh of the man, the shrieks of the woman, struggling and
calling,--he must have thought that two drunken human beings instead of
one were endeavoring to show the astonished sky how bestial life may be
even here in America in an undone day.