Across the table at the evening meal Henley saw his wife regarding him
stealthily as she served the food to him and the others. Her look had a
queer, shifting, probing quality, which at any other time would have
inspired investigation, but she failed to rivet his attention to-night.
There were other things to think of--things as new and startling as the
dawn of day must have appeared to the opening eyes of the first man. And
all this had come to him. All these years he had groped in darkness,
seeking and never finding till the dreams of youth were dead. But now
all was lightness, full comprehension, and joy--joy which all but
stifled in its clinging embrace of restitution.
After supper, with a cigar which he forgot to light, he evaded the
tentative chatter of old Wrinkle and sought a rustic seat under a tree
in the yard. Over the meadow, and piercing the shadows which enveloped
him, shone a light from Dixie Hart's kitchen. He fancied that he saw her
at work, her strong, lithe form and glorious face emitting cheer,
courage, and hope to her helpless charges. He wondered if she was
recalling, as he would to the day of his death, the heavenly words she
had spoken at parting. The touch of her velvet lips still lay on his
hand, sending through his every vein streams of sheer ecstasy. Overhead
the sky arched, star-sprinkled, calm, and as full of its untold story as
at the dawn of time.
Inside the kitchen near by Mrs. Henley and Mrs. Wrinkle were washing
dishes. Wrinkle came from a rear door, a swill-pail in hand, and,
bending under its weight, he trudged down to his pigpen at the barn. The
clattering in the kitchen ceased; the light went out, to appear again in
Mrs. Henley's room. Her transported husband saw her through an
uncurtained window. At another time he might have wondered over her
present occupation, for, standing before a mirror, she was giving
unwonted attention to her toilet. She was fastening a flowing scarf
about her neck, pulling at the bow to make it hang to her fancy. She
applied white powder to her cheeks and the faintest hint of pink,
carefully brushing her hair and pulling down her scant bangs as he could
not remember having seen her do since their marriage. Next she threw a
light shawl over her shoulders, experimentally drawing it up under her
sharp chin, as she viewed the effect in the glass, and then settling it,
with final approval, and in easier fashion, farther back upon her
shoulders. He saw her raise her candle and turn her head in various
ways, her eyes fixed on her twisting image. Then, with a smile of
content, she blew out the candle. He saw the tiny red spark which
remained on the wick standing guard where she had left it. She must be
going to spend the evening somewhere and would demand his company,
Henley reflected, in dismay at the thought of his present fancies being
disturbed in such a prosaic way. Or perhaps she had taken a sudden whim
to go to prayer-meeting--this thought prompted by the dismal clanging of
a cast-iron church-bell at Chester. In that case there was a chance of
escape, for she would ask Mrs. Wrinkle to accompany her.
Suddenly she appeared on the porch, and came down the steps and tripped
lightly across the grass to him. He was conscious of the strange, almost
weird, alteration in her manner, and was therefore partially prepared
for the change in her voice and intonation.
"Is that you, Alfred?" she inquired, playfully. "I thought you might be
here, it is so close inside. You can always catch a breeze on this spot
if one is stirring at all."
"Yes, it's me," he answered, pulling his glance from the light across
the meadow and letting it rest on her face. "Are you going out
somewhere?"
She gave a little mechanical laugh. "Just because I put on this white
shawl?" she jested, her thin right hand toying with her bangs. "No,
there's no place to go that I know of, and if there _was_ I don't feel
in the humor for it to-night. Somehow I felt like I wanted to talk to
you. I hope Ma and Pa will go to bed; they are getting to be lots of
bother in one way and another. They mean well, the dear things, but they
are old and childish."
She sat down on the seat beside him and rested her elbow on its back,
her face toward him. "I saw you walking home with Dixie Hart this
evening," she remarked. "Did she say how that boy is getting on?"
"Why"--there was just the faintest pause on Henley's part; he was
conscious that he caught his breath, and that a warm, objectionable
flush was stealing over him--"why, I think he is mending purty fast.
I--I reckon there is no secret about it--Miss Dixie says she's adopted
him by process of law."
"Good gracious! You don't say! Why, that makes _three_ on her hands.
Well, she's a remarkable girl, Alfred, _and she's pretty_. Don't you
think so?" She was toying with the fringe of her shawl, and yet she
seemed to hang upon his answer as she gazed straight at him.
"Y-e-s," Henley said. "She really has undertaken a lot, but I reckon
she'll pull through, someway or other."
"Pa says she's managed to get out of old Welborne's debt," Mrs. Henley
went on, taking her knee in her hands and lifting her foot from the
ground and swinging it to and fro. "Lots of folks thought he'd finally
sell her out of house and home. I didn't think, myself, that she'd ever
pay out, but she seems to have succeeded. I give her full credit for all
she is, Alfred. I'm not the sort of woman that underrates another just
to be doing it. She's a stanch friend of yours. It is a good deal for me
to admit, but she gave me a straight talk once that set me to thinking.
I've never let on, but what she said made a deep impression on me."
The speaker paused, as if waiting for her words to take root and sprout
in his comprehension, but he said nothing--only sat staring at her, as
if trying to divine her subtle drift.
"It was while you was away, Alfred," she continued, "and--and there was
so much talk about what I was doing at that time, you remember, to--to
show respect for Dick's memory. For a girl as young as she is, she said
some powerful strong things. She thought I wasn't acting right toward
you, and told me so to my face. I went on with my plans, but I've often
thought of her advice. You may have noticed that I hain't talked as much
about the--the monument as I did, and I haven't been to see it as often
as I used to. Dixie Hart made me look at it from the outside to some
extent, and with that I began to be more considerate of you. I saw you
wasn't the same as you was at first--I might say, as you was all along
when you and Dick was both taking me out, and as you was--for that
matter--just before and after me and you got married. In fact, Alfred,
you are getting to be a sort o' puzzle to me. Even to-night at supper
you seemed to be in some sort of far-off dream or other. You'd lift up a
fork or a spoon and hold it a long time before you'd put it in your
mouth, and once I caught you gazing straight at me with the blankest
look I ever saw on a human face. You don't seem the same. I don't mean
that you haven't got a _healthy_ look, for that would bother me a lot,
but you are--well, you are just different."
"Don't you worry," Henley heard himself saying, aghast at the cliffs and
chasms ahead of him. "Don't worry about me if I seem to have my mind off
at times. I've made some trades lately, and got the best end of 'em. I'm
a natural trader--a born trader, Hettie. They say it is like a mild form
of gambling. Just yesterday I made a deal with an old chap--"
"I don't want to talk about trading and swapping, and the like," the
woman broke in, firmly. "Besides, no sort of ordinary business ever made
a man look like you've looked lately. You used to be sorter active and
nervous, but now you set and brood with an odd, reddish look on your
face. It ain't natural. It looks like you've resigned yourself to--to
something that you didn't exactly like before, and it don't please me to
see you that way. Pa's noticed it and mentioned it two or three times."
"There's nothing in the world the matter with me," Henley declared,
actually alarmed at the incongruity of his position.
"Alfred," the woman said, contritely, and she bent forward and peered up
into his face, "you are a sight better man than I am a woman, and--"
"Shucks!"
"You may say shucks if you want to, but wait till I get through. I
reckon, as women go, in the general run, I'm a queer sort of female. I
never was just like other girls. For one thing, I always wanted what was
out of my reach; not getting a thing, or even having doubts about it,
always made me want it more than anything else. I reckon that is why
Dick kind o' fascinated me: the girls was all after him, and he seemed a
sort of prize to be had at any cost. Even after we was married, as maybe
you know, he kept me worried with his attentions to some of the old
crowd of girls. But enough of that. When he died and you come back,
begging, as you did, to have me consider you, I finally give in and took
you. But that wasn't all. I had stood up before a preacher in the house
of God and agreed to be your wife and helpmeet, but, as I now see it, I
didn't do my duty by you. I made the mistake, I reckon, of thinking too
much about what I owed to the dead and gone, and I went so far as to do
things in public that actually driv' you away from home and caused folks
to laugh at you and make remarks. Dixie Hart was right; I wasn't toting
fair with you, and I want to tell you to-night, Alfred, that I see my
error, and--and I am plumb sorry."
He turned upon her resolutely. She was looking down, and he fancied she
was about to shed such tears as she had often shed early in their
married life when Dick Wrinkle's name was mentioned. He had none of the
old chivalrous sympathy which such a demonstration had once evoked, nor
any of the old indulgence for a love which he had hoped to see die, and
yet, just from his passionate contact with Dixie Hart, he was full of
comprehension and pity for his wife's plight--at least, as he now saw
it.
"Listen to me, Hettie," he began, and his voice shook with deep feeling.
"You've been right all along. Don't you bother about that. It was _me_
that was crooked. In this life folks don't love in the highest and best
way but once--not but once in a lifetime. Dick Wrinkle was your first
and only abiding fancy. The feeling that made you turn me down and take
him when you was a girl and I was a big blockhead of a boy was born of
God in heaven. I was the one that was making a mistake when I come and
begged you to marry me while that pure thing was still alive in your
heart. A love like that never dies; it is too sweet and glorious to die.
I see now, too, that you was plumb right about wanting to take care of
his mammy and daddy, and about wanting that sermon preached, and about
erecting a lasting monument to commemorate his name. You had to do all
them things because they was part and parcel of you yourself, and the
constancy God planted in you. I can say honestly that I'm glad you still
love him. You wouldn't be a high sort of a woman if you did change.
Death can't separate folks that love; they go on and on--side by side,
hand in hand, heart to heart--through all eternity."
She actually gasped. She rose, and stood staring toward the door, a deep
frown on her face; she shrugged her shoulders; she clinched her fists;
she rapped the ground sharply with her foot; then she slowly bent down
over him, resting her thin left hand on his broad shoulder while she
peered with a stare of would-be incredulity into his enraptured face.
"Look at me, Alfred!" she cried, in a rasping tone. "_You know you don't
mean one single word of all you've just said!_"
"Why, I do," he insisted, blandly. "As God is my judge, I do. There
ain't no such thing as _two_ loves--a first and a second. When the real
thing comes to a body he knows it. A feller could be blinded for a time,
I reckon, in hot-blooded youth, while he was in close pursuit of a thing
that kept slipping away from him, as was my case when Dick and me was
going nip and tuck to see which could get ahead; but the genuine, real
thing is as different as--as day from night."
She drew herself up straight, and heaved a deep, lingering sigh. "I
don't believe you mean a word of what you say," she repeated. "It ain't
natural for a man who is as jealous as--as you always have been
even--even of the dead--to set up and talk that way."
"Jealous?" he said, half musingly. "I don't think I'm a jealous man.
Anyways, I don't think a feller would have the right to be jealous of a
man that was dead and under ground. As I look at it now, I don't think a
man has a right, in the best sense, to marry a widow; and in the same
way a widower has no right to lay aside his past memories if they are
the right sort. They ought to be his best company in his loneliness. Of
course, now that you and me are linked together by law and religion, we
owe it to the community we live in to do our duty and make the best--I
mean, to live along as friendly and harmoniously as we can."
She sank down to the seat again, and sat staring at him fixedly.
Presently, seeing that he was not going to resume speaking, she said: "I
believe, on my soul, Alfred, you have plumb lost your senses. I may or
may not be responsible for it; you may have let all this talk about Dick
and my--my thinking about him prey on your mind till it is unhinged.
Why, what I done about his grave and memory wasn't anything but respect
that was due to him, and has nothing to do with our agreement. You've
hurt my feelings, Alfred--you actually have."
She rose suddenly, and, with her handkerchief to her eyes, she started
toward the door. She moved slowly, as if she expected him to call her
back, as he had frequently done in the past; but he seemed to be
oblivious of her presence and not to have heard her last plaintive
appeal, for he sat gazing at the light in Dixie Hart's cottage like an
unwakable man. She came slowly back, now with stiff, indignant
strides--strides which dug deeply into the unoffending turf.
"You certainly are either crazy or a plumb fool!" she fired at him. "You
said once that folks hinted that I was cracked in the upper story from
the way I acted, but the shoe is on the other foot now. If folks don't
say you are out of your head it is because they ain't here to listen to
your meandering. A man that will set up and hint to a wife who he loves,
and always has loved, that he's willing for her to still care for and
cherish another person--I say a man like that is in need of a doctor's
advice."
"Well, I was just trying to justify you and your acts," Henley answered
in pained retaliation, "and to show you that I had no ill-will in any
shape or form. You loved Dick in the right sort of way, and I'm just man
enough to lay no obstacle whatever in your track. In the next life you
and Dick will be reunited, and all things will be made straight. I don't
want to fuss with you over it, Hettie. This life is too beautiful, if it
is looked at right, to waste time in jowering. You and me can live in
harmony from now on if you'll just be reasonable and not fly off the
handle when a feller is doing his level best to arrive at some sort of
common meeting-ground. All these years I've been fretting and trying to
run a race with a dead man when I could have been in more active
business. I've give in at last, and I'm going to stay give in. The truth
is, I'm just beginning to live. For the first time in my life I'm in
sympathy with true, natural-born, well-mated lovers. If they are tied
together, all well and good; but if they are parted by some hook or
crook, then they are to be pitied, but still they've got the
satisfaction of knowing--well, of knowing what they know--that's all."
"Well, I know _one_ thing," Mrs. Henley said, and she turned away,
angrily. "I know you are simply daft--you've lost every grain of sense
you ever had."
"I might have known she'd twist the thing all upside-down and never see
it right," Henley mused, as he watched her ascend the steps, cross the
porch, and disappear in the house. "I thought that view would hit her
just right, but, contrary as she always was, she sees fit to disagree. I
reckon if she knew everything there _would_ be a row. Huh, I wouldn't
risk that with her. She can hold her funeral conclaves, and build
monuments to another fellow as high as a church-steeple, and expects me
to swallow the dose, but just let me kind o' look about a little, and
I'm a fit subject for a madhouse."