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version by Al Haines.
HE FELL IN LOVE WITH HIS WIFE
by
Edward P. Roe
CONTENTS
Chapter
I Left Alone
II A Very Interested Friend
III Mrs. Mumpson Negotiates and Yields
IV Domestic Bliss
V Mrs. Mumpson Takes up Her Burdens
VI A Marriage?
VII From Home to the Street
VIII Holcroft's View of Matrimony
IX Mrs. Mumpson Accepts Her Mission
X A Night of Terror
XI Baffled
XII Jane
XIII Not Wife, But Waif
XIV A Pitched Battle
XV "What is to Become of Me?"
XVI Mrs. Mumpson's Vicissitudes
XVII A Momentous Decision
XVIII Holcroft Gives His Hand
XIX A Business Marriage
XX Uncle Jonathan's Impression of the Bride
XXI At Home
XXII Getting Acquainted
XXIII Between the Past and Future
XXIV Given Her Own Way
XXV A Charivari
XXVI "You Don't Know"
XXVII Farm and Farmer Bewitched
XXVIII Another Waif
XXIX Husband and Wife in Trouble
XXX Holcroft's Best Hope
XXXI "Never!"
XXXII Jane Plays Mouse to the Lion
XXXIII "Shrink From YOU?"
Chapter I.
Left Alone
The dreary March evening is rapidly passing from murky gloom to
obscurity. Gusts of icy rain and sleet are sweeping full against a man
who, though driving, bows his head so low that he cannot see his
horses. The patient beasts, however, plod along the miry road,
unerringly taking their course to the distant stable door. The highway
sometimes passes through a grove on the edge of a forest, and the trees
creak and groan as they writhe in the heavy blasts. In occasional
groups of pines there is sighing and moaning almost human in
suggestiveness of trouble. Never had Nature been in a more dismal
mood, never had she been more prodigal of every element of discomfort,
and never had the hero of my story been more cast down in heart and
hope than on this chaotic day which, even to his dull fancy, appeared
closing in harmony with his feelings and fortune. He is going home,
yet the thought brings no assurance of welcome and comfort. As he
cowers upon the seat of his market wagon, he is to the reader what he
is in the fading light--a mere dim outline of a man. His progress is
so slow that there will be plenty of time to relate some facts about
him which will make the scenes and events to follow more intelligible.
James Holcroft is a middle-aged man and the owner of a small, hilly
farm. He had inherited his rugged acres from his father, had always
lived upon them, and the feeling had grown strong with the lapse of
time that he could live nowhere else. Yet he knew that he was, in the
vernacular of the region, "going down-hill." The small savings of
years were slowly melting away, and the depressing feature of this
truth was that he did not see how he could help himself. He was not a
sanguine man, but rather one endowed with a hard, practical sense which
made it clear that the down-hill process had only to continue
sufficiently long to leave him landless and penniless. It was all so
distinct on this dismal evening that he groaned aloud.
"If it comes to that, I don't know what I'll do--crawl away on a night
like this and give up, like enough."
Perhaps he was right. When a man with a nature like his "gives up,"
the end has come. The low, sturdy oaks that grew so abundantly along
the road were types of his character--they could break, but not bend.
He had little suppleness, little power to adapt himself to varied
conditions of life. An event had occurred a year since, which for
months, he could only contemplate with dull wonder and dismay. In his
youth he had married the daughter of a small farmer. Like himself, she
had always been accustomed to toil and frugal living. From childhood
she had been impressed with the thought that parting with a dollar was
a serious matter, and to save a dollar one of the good deeds rewarded
in this life and the life to come. She and her husband were in
complete harmony on this vital point. Yet not a miserly trait entered
into their humble thrift. It was a necessity entailed by their meager
resources; it was inspired by the wish for an honest independence in
their old age.
There was to be no old age for her. She took a heavy cold, and almost
before her husband was aware of her danger, she had left his side. He
was more than grief-stricken, he was appalled. No children had blessed
their union, and they had become more and more to each other in their
simple home life. To many it would have seemed a narrow and even a
sordid life. It could not have been the latter, for all their hard
work, their petty economies and plans to increase the hoard in the
savings bank were robbed of sordidness by an honest, quiet affection
for each other, by mutual sympathy and a common purpose. It
undoubtedly was a meager life, which grew narrower with time and habit.
There had never been much romance to begin with, but something that
often wears better--mutual respect and affection. From the first,
James Holcroft had entertained the sensible hope that she was just the
girl to help him make a living from his hillside farm, and he had not
hoped for or even thought of very much else except the harmony and good
comradeship which bless people who are suited to each other. He had
been disappointed in no respect; they had toiled and gathered like
ants; they were confidential partners in the homely business and
details of the farm; nothing was wasted, not even time. The little
farmhouse abounded in comfort, and was a model of neatness and order.
If it and its surroundings were devoid of grace and ornament, they were
not missed, for neither of its occupants had ever been accustomed to
such things. The years which passed so uneventfully only cemented the
union and increased the sense of mutual dependence. They would have
been regarded as exceedingly matter-of-fact and undemonstrative, but
they were kind to each other and understood each other. Feeling that
they were slowly yet surely getting ahead, they looked forward to an
old age of rest and a sufficiency for their simple needs. Then, before
he could realize the truth, he was left alone at her wintry grave;
neighbors dispersed after the brief service, and he plodded back to his
desolate home. There was no relative to step in and partially make
good his loss. Some of the nearest residents sent a few cooked
provisions until he could get help, but these attentions soon ceased.
It was believed that he was abundantly able to take care of himself,
and he was left to do so. He was not exactly unpopular, but had been
much too reticent and had lived too secluded a life to find uninvited
sympathy now. He was the last man, however, to ask for sympathy or
help; and this was not due to misanthropy, but simply to temperament
and habits of life. He and his wife had been sufficient for each
other, and the outside world was excluded chiefly because they had not
time or taste for social interchanges. As a result, he suffered
serious disadvantages; he was misunderstood and virtually left to meet
his calamity alone.
But, indeed he could scarcely have met it in any other way. Even to
his wife, he had never formed the habit of speaking freely of his
thoughts and feelings. There had been no need, so complete was the
understanding between them. A hint, a sentence, reveled to each other
their simple and limited processes of thought. To talk about her now
to strangers was impossible. He had no language by which to express
the heavy, paralyzing pain in his heart.
For a time he performed necessary duties in a dazed, mechanical way.
The horses and live stock were fed regularly, the cows milked; but the
milk stood in the dairy room until it spoiled. Then he would sit down
at his desolate hearth and gaze for hours into the fire, until it sunk
down and died out. Perhaps no class in the world suffers from such a
terrible sense of loneliness as simple-natured country people, to whom
a very few have been all the company they required.
At last Holcroft partially shook off his stupor, and began the
experiment of keeping house and maintaining his dairy with hired help.
For a long year he had struggled on through all kinds of domestic
vicissitude, conscious all the time that things were going from bad to
worse. His house was isolated, the region sparsely settled, and good
help difficult to be obtained under favoring auspices. The few
respectable women in the neighborhood who occasionally "lent a hand" in
other homes than their own would not compromise themselves, as they
expressed it, by "keepin' house for a widower." Servants obtained from
the neighboring town either could not endure the loneliness, or else
were so wasteful and ignorant that the farmer, in sheer desperation,
discharged them. The silent, grief-stricken, rugged-featured man was
no company for anyone. The year was but a record of changes, waste,
and small pilferings. Although he knew he could not afford it, he tried
the device of obtaining two women instead of one, so that they might
have society in each other; but either they would not stay or else he
found that he had two thieves to deal with instead of one--brazen,
incompetent creatures who knew more about whisky than milk, and who
made his home a terror to him.
Some asked good-naturedly, "Why don't you marry again?" Not only was
the very thought repugnant, but he knew well that he was not the man to
thrive on any such errand to the neighboring farmhouses. Though
apparently he had little sentiment in his nature, yet the memory of his
wife was like his religion. He felt that he could not put an ordinary
woman into his wife's place, and say to her the words he had spoken
before. Such a marriage would be to him a grotesque farce, at which
his soul revolted.
At last he was driven to the necessity of applying for help to an Irish
family that had recently moved into the neighborhood. The promise was
forbidding, indeed, as he entered the squalid abode in which were
huddled men, women, and children. A sister of the mistress of the
shanty was voluble in her assurances of unlimited capability.
"Faix I kin do all the wourk, in doors and out, so I takes the notion,"
she had asserted.
There certainly was no lack of bone and muscle in the big, red-faced,
middle-aged woman who was so ready to preside at his hearth and glean
from his diminished dairy a modicum of profit; but as he trudged home
along the wintry road, he experienced strong feelings of disgust at the
thought of such a creature sitting by the kitchen fire in the place
once occupied by his wife.
During all these domestic vicissitudes he had occupied the parlor, a
stiff, formal, frigid apartment, which had been rarely used in his
married life. He had no inclination for the society of his help; in
fact, there had been none with whom he could associate. The better
class of those who went out to service could find places much more to
their taste than the lonely farmhouse. The kitchen had been the one
cozy, cheerful room of the house, and, driven from it, the farmer was
an exile in his own home. In the parlor he could at least brood over
the happy past, and that was about all the solace he had left.
Bridget came and took possession of her domain with a sangfroid which
appalled Holcroft from the first. To his directions and suggestions,
she curtly informed him that she knew her business and "didn't want no
mon around, orderin' and interferin'."
In fact, she did appear, as she had said, capable of any amount of
work, and usually was in a mood to perform it; but soon her male
relatives began to drop in to smoke a pipe with her in the evening. A
little later on, the supper table was left standing for those who were
always ready to "take a bite."--The farmer had never heard of the camel
who first got his head into the tent, but it gradually dawned upon him
that he was half supporting the whole Irish tribe down at the shanty.
Every evening, while he shivered in his best room, he was compelled to
hear the coarse jests and laughter in the adjacent apartment. One night
his bitter thoughts found expression: "I might as well open a free
house for the keeping of man and beast."
He had endured this state of affairs for some time simply because the
woman did the essential work in her offhand, slapdash style, and left
him unmolested to his brooding as long as he did not interfere with her
ideas of domestic economy. But his impatience and the sense of being
wronged were producing a feeling akin to desperation. Every week there
was less and less to sell from the dairy; chickens and eggs
disappeared, and the appetites of those who dropped in to "kape Bridgy
from bein' a bit lonely" grew more voracious.
Thus matters had drifted on until this March day when he had taken two
calves to market. He had said to the kitchen potentate that he would
take supper with a friend in town and therefore would not be back
before nine in the evening. This friend was the official keeper of the
poorhouse and had been a crony of Holcroft's in early life. He had
taken to politics instead of farming, and now had attained to what he
and his acquaintances spoke of as a "snug berth." Holcroft had
maintained with this man a friendship based partly on business
relations, and the well-to-do purveyor for paupers always gave his old
playmate an honest welcome to his private supper table, which differed
somewhat from that spread for the town's pensioners.
On this occasion the gathering storm had decided Holcroft to return
without availing himself of his friend's hospitality, and he is at last
entering the lane leading from the highway to his doorway. Even as he
approaches his dwelling he hears the sound of revelry and readily
guesses what is taking place.
Quiet, patient men, when goaded beyond a certain point, are capable of
terrible ebullitions of anger, and Holcroft was no exception. It
seemed to him that night that the God he had worshiped all his life was
in league with man against him. The blood rushed to his face, his
chilled form became rigid with a sudden passionate protest against his
misfortunes and wrongs. Springing from the wagon, he left his team
standing at the barn door and rushed to the kitchen window. There
before him sat the whole tribe from the shanty, feasting at his
expense. The table was loaded with coarse profusion. Roast fowls
alternated with fried ham and eggs, a great pitcher of milk was flanked
by one of foaming cider, while the post of honor was occupied by the
one contribution of his self-invited guests--a villainous-looking jug.
They had just sat down to the repast when the weazen-faced patriarch of
the tribe remarked, by way of grace, it may be supposed, "Be jabers,
but isn't ould Holcroft givin' us a foine spread the noight! Here's
bad luck to the glowerin' ould skinflint!" and he poured out a bumper
from the jug.
The farmer waited to see and hear no more. Hastening to a parlor
window, he raised it quietly and clambered in; then taking his rusty
shotgun, which he kept loaded for the benefit of the vermin that
prowled about his hen-roost, he burst in upon the startled group.
"Be off!" he shouted. "If you value your lives, get out of that door,
and never show your faces on my place again. I'll not be eaten out of
house and home by a lot of jackals!"
His weapon, his dark, gleaming eyes, and desperate aspect taught the
men that he was not to be trifled with a moment, and they slunk away.
Bridget began to whine, "Yez wouldn't turn a woman out in the noight
and storm."
"You are not a woman!" thundered Holcroft, "you are a jackal, too! Get
your traps and begone! I warn the whole lot of you to beware! I give
you this chance to get off the premises, and then I shall watch for you
all, old and young!"
There was something terrible and flame-like in his anger, dismaying the
cormorants, and they hastened away with such alacrity that Bridget went
down the lane screaming, "Sthop, I tell yees, and be afther waitin' for
me!"
Holcroft hurled the jug after them with words that sounded like an
imprecation. He next turned to the viands on the table with an
expression of loathing, gathered them up, and carried them to the hog
pen. He seemed possessed by a feverish impatience to banish every
vestige of those whom he had driven forth, and to restore the apartment
as nearly as possible to the aspect it had worn in former happy years.
At last, he sat down where his wife had been accustomed to sit,
unbuttoned his waistcoat and flannel shirt, and from against his naked
breast took an old, worn daguerreotype. He looked a moment at the
plain, good face reflected there, them, bowing his head upon it,
strong, convulsive sobs shook his frame, though not a tear moistened
his eyes.
How long the paroxysm would have lasted it were hard to say, had not
the impatient whinnying of his horses, still exposed to the storm,
caught his attention. The lifelong habit of caring for the dumb
animals in his charge asserted itself. He went out mechanically,
unharnessed and stabled them as carefully as ever before in his life,
then returned and wearily prepared himself a pot of coffee, which, with
a crust of bread, was all the supper he appeared to crave.