ANOTHER CHRISTMAS DAY
IN the Hartman house on Christmas Day there was feasting, but no
rejoicing. Cassie Hartman was fully as able a cook as Grandmother
Gaumer, and she roasted as large a turkey and prepared almost as many
delicacies as Grandmother Gaumer and Bevy Schnepp prepared for their
great party. On the kitchen settle were gifts, a gold breastpin set with
a handsome diamond, a heavy gold watch-chain, a boy's suit, a gun, and a
five-dollar gold-piece. There were on them no affectionate inscriptions,
no good wishes. The breastpin was for Cassie, the watch-chain for John
Hartman, the other articles for David. There were no gifts from
outsiders--few Millerstonians would have ventured to offer gifts to the
rich Hartmans. In the parlor windows hung holly wreaths, the only bought
wreaths in Millerstown.
The Hartmans had asked no guests to their feast. John had long since
separated himself from the friends of his youth; as for Cassie, the
thought of the footprints of Christmas guests on her flag walk and her
carefully scrubbed porches would have made the day even more
uncomfortable than it was. Moreover, one could not entertain Christmas
company in the kitchen, however fine that kitchen might be, and in this
wintry weather fires would have to be made in the parlor and the
dining-room.
"Company would track dust so for me," Cassie would have said if any one
had suggested that some companions of his own age might do David good
and might not be a bad thing for his elders. "When you have fires, you
have ashes, and I would then have to clean my house in the middle of
winter when you cannot clean the carpets right."
Cassie Hartman was a beautiful woman, how beautiful Millerstown, which
set a higher value upon mere prettiness than upon beauty, did not know.
Her figure was tall and full and she bore herself with grace and
dignity. Her face with its even features and its full gray eyes was the
face of an austere saint, although her eyes, lifting when you addressed
her, seemed rather to hide her real character than reveal it. But her
character was austere and reserved, of that you were sure.
If Cassie's soul was a consecrated one, the gods to whom one would have
assigned her worship were Cleanliness and Order. The very progress of
her husband and son about the house annoyed her because it was masculine
and untidy. David knew better than to enter the kitchen with muddy
shoes, but his father was not so careful; therefore both trod upon an
upper layer of slightly worn rag carpet, superimposed upon the bright
and immaculate lower layer. In all other details but one of the
management of her house Cassie had her way. Her husband refused
stubbornly to leave the great walnut bed and the large room in which he
slept for a smaller room at the back of the house, as Cassie wished, so
that the great best bedrooms might be garnished day and night with their
proper spreads and counterpanes and shams.
Each of Cassie's days and hours had its appointed task. She could have
told how her time would be spent from now on until the last hour before
her passing, when the preacher would come in the proper Lutheran fashion
to give her the communion. The Church required no such ceremony, but
Cassie was a formalist in religion and required it for herself.
So the three Hartmans ate alone in their broad kitchen, John Hartman at
one end of the table, Cassie far away at the other, and David midway
between them. John Hartman's eyes were hardly lifted above his food; he
was an intolerably silent person. Cassie's eyes roved everywhere, from
her stove, which she could scarcely wait to blacken, toward her husband
who ate carelessly, and toward her son, who devoured his drumstick with
due regard for the clean cloth. The cloth was spotless and would
probably remain spotless, for an extra white cover had been laid beneath
the plates of John and David. But to-morrow it would go into the tub,
none the less. It was too good to be used every day, and it could not be
put away bearing even the slight wrinkles produced by unfolding. Cassie
had no more to say than her husband. There was really nothing for Cassie
to say. Her mental processes involved herself and her house, they
responded to no inspiration from without.
As for little David, he said nothing either. Katy Gaumer had been right
when she said that David was a cross boy. David was cross and sullen.
To-day, however, he was only solemn. David was deeply concerned about
his sins. He was not only a sinner in general, but he had sinned in a
very particular way, and he was unhappy. The turkey did not taste as a
Christmas turkey should, and his second slice of mince-pie was bitter.
When John Hartman had eaten all he could, he rose and put on his coat
and went out to his great barn to feed his stock. He went silently, as
was his wont.
When David had finished the last morsel of pie which he was able to
swallow, he, too, put on his hat and went toward the door, moving
silently and slouchingly. There he stood and nervously kicked the sill.
His eyes, gray like his mother's, looked out from under frowning,
knitted brows; he thrust his hands deep into his pockets and looked down
at the floor. This was Christmas Day; his parents had treated him
generously; he was convinced that he ought to confess to them his great
wickedness. He felt as though he might cry, and as though crying, if he
had a shoulder to lean on, would be a soothing and healing operation.
The assault of Katy Gaumer had sunk deep into his heart, as was natural
since he thought of Katy night and day, since he saw her wherever she
went in her red dress, now scolding, now laughing, and perpetually in
motion. He had fled to the attic of the schoolroom yesterday because she
had not spoken to him or looked at him, had even passed him with her
weight planted for an instant heavily on his foot without even
acknowledging his presence. And to the attic she had followed him and
had there taunted and insulted him! She had no business to say that he
was cross and ugly; he would be nice enough to her if she would return
the compliment. As for Grandmother Gaumer's cakes, he had better cakes
at home than Grandmother Gaumer could bake!
David's heart was sore, and David was inexpressibly lonely and
miserable. He was now certain that he would be happy if he could confess
his sins to his mother.
He forgot the last occasion of his appeal to her. Then his finger had
been cut, and he had been dizzy and had seized hold of her, and the
blood had fallen down on her new silk dress. He forgot her reproof; he
remembered only that he needed some sort of human tenderness. His father
did not often speak to him, but women were made, or should be made, of
different stuff from men. He had seen Susannah Kuhns sit with her great
Ollie upon her lap, and Ollie was older than he was by a year. He had
heard Katy Gaumer, who had been so outrageously cruel to him, cry over a
sick kitten, and Katy was herself often rocked like a baby on
Grandmother Gaumer's knee.
David forgot now not only the cut finger, but other repulses. He had no
claim on Grandmother Gaumer's embrace, and he would have hated to have
to sit on Susannah Kuhns's knee, but upon this tall, beautiful person
sitting by the table, he had a claim. Moreover, her embraces would have
been pleasant.
"Mom!" said David.
Cassie's eyes were now on the dishes before her. She liked to plan her
mode of attack upon a piece of work, and then proceed swiftly, keeping
her mind a blank to everything but the pleasure of seeing order grow
where disorder had been. Thus she liked to go through her fine house,
sweeping the rich carpets, polishing the carved furniture, letting the
sunlight in only long enough to show each infamous dust mote. Cassie was
in the midst of such planning now; she saw the dishes neatly piled, the
hot suds in the pan, her sleeves rolled above her elbows. She did not
answer David, did not even hear him.
"Mom!" said David again. He did not know now exactly what he had meant
to say. The necessity for confession had dwindled to a necessity for the
sound of his mother's voice. It was dismal to live in a house with
companions who seemed deaf and blind to one's existence. She _must_
speak to him!
At the second call, Cassie looked at her son. Cassie recognized dirt and
disorder, but she did not recognize any need of the human soul. The
needs of her own soul had been, Cassie thought, cruelly denied. At any
rate, its power of perception had failed.
"You stamp on that sill again and I'll have to scrub it, David! To spoil
things on Christmas!"
Cassie's voice contained no threat of punishment; it was merely mildly
exclamatory. The tone of it was not vibrant but wooden. It might have
been rich and beautiful in youth; now it expressed no emotion; it was
flat, empty. She did not ask David what he wanted, or why he addressed
her; she did not even wonder why he stopped in the doorway and stared at
her. She only frowned at him, until he closed the door, himself outside.
David had all the clothes he could wear, all the food he could eat; he
had the finest house, the richest father and the most capable mother in
Millerstown; what more could he wish to make him happy? His mother did
not speculate as to whether he was happy or not.
David crossed the yard in the freshly fallen snow and slammed the gate
behind him. Then he went toward the mountain road, and started to climb,
passing the house of the Koehlers, where William sat on one side of the
stove and Alvin on the other, the one muttering to himself, the other
half asleep. David kicked the snow as he walked, his head bent lower and
lower on his breast. He could see Katy Gaumer like a sprite in her red
dress with her flashing eyes and her pointing finger; he could see her
smiling at Alvin Koehler, whom he hated without dreaming that in that
son of a demented and dishonest father Katy Gaumer could have any
possible interest.
As he started up the steepest part of the hill, he began to talk aloud.
"I want her!" said poor little David. "I want Katy! I want Katy!"
Presently David left the road, and climbing over the worm fence into the
woodland, struck off diagonally among the trees. Still far above him, at
the summit of the little mountain, there was a rough pile of rocks which
formed a tiny cairn or cave. Before it was a small platform, parapeted
by a great boulder. Generations past had named the spot, without any
apparent reason, the "Sheep Stable." It was a favorite resort of David
Hartman. Here, in secret, far above Millerstown, he carried on the
wicked practices which he had meant to confess to his mother. From the
little plateau one could look for miles and miles over a wide, rich,
beautiful plain, could see the church spires of a dozen villages, the
smoke curling upward from three or four great blast furnaces, set in the
midst of wide fields, and could look far beyond the range of hills which
bounded the view of William Koehler on his lower level, to another
range. The Pennsylvania German made his home only in fertile spots. When
other settlers passed the thickly forested lands because of the great
labor of felling the trees and preparing the soil, he selected the
sections bearing the tallest trees and had as his own the fertile land
forever.
David did not look out over the wide, pure expanse upon which a few
flakes were still falling and beyond which the sun would soon sink
gorgeously, nor did he see the purple shadows under the pine trees, nor
observe the glancing motions of a squirrel, watching him from a bough
near by. He determined, desperately, firmly, that he would repent no
more; he would now return to his evil ways and get from them what
satisfaction he could.
He crept on hands and knees into the little cave and felt round under a
mass of dried leaves until his hands encountered the instruments of his
evil practices. Then David drew them forth, a stubby pipe, which he had
smoked once and which had made him deathly ill, and a pack of cards,
about whose mysterious and delightful use he knew nothing. He sat with
them in his hands on the sloping rock, wishing, poor little David, that
he knew how to be wickeder than he was!
Having fed his stock, John Hartman tramped for a little while round his
fields in the snow, then he returned to the kitchen and sat down by the
window with a newspaper. Cassie lay asleep on the settle. Custom forbade
her working on Christmas Day, and she never read, even the almanac. At
her, her husband looked once or twice inscrutably, then he laid his head
on the back of his tall chair and slept also. It was a scene at which
Katy Gaumer would have pointed as proof of the unutterable stupidity of
Millerstown.
When her husband slept, Cassie opened her eyes and looked at him with as
steady a gaze as that which he had bent upon her. Her mouth set itself
in a firm, straight line, her eyes deepened and darkened, her hands,
folded upon her breast, grasped her flesh. Surely between these two was
some great barrier of offense, given or suffered, of strange, wounded
pride, or insufferable humiliation! Presently Cassie's lids fell; she
turned her cheek against the hard back of the old settle and so fell
asleep also.
John Hartman owned four farms and a great stretch of woodland and a
granite quarry on the far side of the mountain and two farms and two
peach orchards and an apple orchard on this. A generation ago a large
deposit of fine iron ore had been discovered upon a tract of land owned
by his father. The deposit was not confined to his fields, but extended
to the lands of his neighbors. But while they sold ore and spent their
money, John Hartman's father, as shrewd a business man as his son, sold
and saved, and laid the foundation of his fortune. In a few years the
discovery of richer, more easily mined deposits in the West and the
cheap importation of foreign ores made the Millerstown ore for the time
not worth the mining. Hartman the elder then covered his mine breaches
and planted timber, and the growth set above the treasure underground
was now thick and valuable. John Hartman was also a director in a county
bank; he owned the finest, largest house in Millerstown; he had a
handsome and a capable wife, and a son who was strong in body and who
had a good mind. Apparently his position in life was secure, his comfort
certain.
John Hartman, however, was neither comfortable nor secure. The long-past
accusations of a poor, half-crazed workingman filled his waking hours
with apprehension and his nights with remorse. Of William Koehler and
his accusation John Hartman was afraid, for William's accusation was, at
least in part, true.
John Hartman had been walking away from the church on that bright
November day years ago, when his own David and Alvin Koehler were little
children and Katy Gaumer not much more than a baby. He had upon him, as
William had said, an air of guilt; he had refused to reply to William's
shouted greeting; he was at that moment rapidly becoming, if he was not
already, what William called him, a thief.
On that November day, a little while before William had shouted at him,
he had come down the pike and had seen William leave the church to get
the boards for his platform, and had thereupon entered the church with
no other impulse than the vague motions of a man sick at heart. A sin of
his earlier youth had risen suddenly from the grave where he thought it
buried, and now confronted him. In his pocket lay an accusing,
threatening letter, written with pale ink upon poor paper in an ignorant
way. The amount of money which it demanded, large as it was, did not
trouble him, since he was already possessor of his inheritance and
growing daily richer; it was the horror of the discovery of his sin.
Once cured of his obsession he had become a devout man, had taken
pleasure in the services of the church of his fathers, attending all her
meetings and contributing to all her causes. He had married a good woman
from a neighboring village, who knew nothing of the year he had spent
away from Millerstown; he had had a son; he was wholly happy.
He had gone during the latter part of the year which he spent away from
home, as a way of escaping from himself, to Europe. He had been only a
few weeks ashore, but he had seen during that time civilizations
different from anything he had dreamed of. He was most moved by great
churches--he saw Notre Dame of Amiens and Notre Dame of Paris--and by
the few great English estates of which he caught glimpses in his rapid
journey to Liverpool. That was the way a man should live, planted in one
place, like a great oak tree, the center of a wide group--a wife,
children, dependents. He should have his garden, his woodland, his great
house, his stables, his beautiful horses; he should pass the home place
on to a son who would perpetuate his name. With such a home and with a
worthy church to worship in, a man could ask for nothing else in the
world.
Repentant, healed, John Hartman had returned to Millerstown. There he
had married and had built his house, with great rooms at the front and
smaller rooms at the back for the servants who should make his wife's
life easy and dignified and should help to care for the little brothers
and sisters whom David was to have. Cassie had had a hard youth; her
father had been a disgrace to his children; she was quiet and stern and
not hopeful, even though John Hartman had lifted her to so high a place,
of very great happiness in this life. But Cassie's nature had seemed to
change in the glow of John Hartman's affection and in the enjoyment of
the luxuries with which he surrounded her. She became less silent; she
met her husband at times with a voluntary caress, which opened in his
heart new springs of happiness.
But here, into this blessed peace and security, into this great
planning, fell, like a dangerous explosive, the threatening letter.
Almost beside himself with fright, worn with three nights' sleepless
vigil, confused with the numerous plans for ridding himself of his
persecutor which he made only to reject, and aware that an immediate
answer must be sent, John Hartman approached the church where William
Koehler had been working.
The open door seemed to invite him to take refuge within. He kept
constantly touching the letter in his pocket. He meant to destroy it,
but it bore an address which he dared not lose. He had been sitting by
the roadside on a fallen log, holding the letter in his hand and writing
absent-mindedly upon it.
In the church he saw William's half-finished work and the curious key in
the little cupboard. As an elder, he had a right to open the door and to
take out the beautiful silver vessels, the extravagance of one
generation which had become the pride of the next. It seemed for an
instant as though a touch of the holy things might give him peace.
Untying the cord of the heavy bag as he laid it on top of William's
half-finished wall, he lifted out the silver chalice.
But the sight of the beautiful vessel gave him no relief, and the cool,
smooth surface made him shiver. He grasped it suddenly and involuntarily
cried out, "Oh, what shall I do! What _shall_ I do!"
The grip of his hand was so strong that the cup slipped from his fingers
and striking the top of William's wall, bounded into the dark aperture
which the building of the wall had made. He reached frantically after
it, and the gray bag, containing the pitcher and paten, struck by his
elbow, followed the silver cup.
For an instant the accident drove the more serious trouble from John
Hartman's mind. He had great reverence for the sacred vessels and he was
afraid that the fall had bruised their beautiful surfaces. He tried to
reach the bag, which lay uppermost, but it was just beyond the tips of
his fingers at the longest reach of his arm. He would have to get
William Koehler to help him, much as he disliked to confess to such
carelessness. William would be shocked and horrified.
Then, suddenly, John Hartman gave a sharp cry. In his struggle to reach
the gray bag, the letter had dropped from his pocket. He had not put it
back into its envelope after his last anguished reading; he could see it
now as it lay spread out below him in the darkness. His frantic eyes
seemed to read each word on the dim page. "Your wife will know about it,
and your little boy and all the country." If he called William to help
him, William might read the letter. Even if William made no actual
effort to decipher it, a single glance might reveal that some one was
threatening John Hartman.
He thought that he heard William coming through the new Sunday School
room and in panic, and without stopping to reason beyond the swift
conclusion that if William's attention were not called to them, he would
not see the bag and the letter far down in the narrow pit, he turned and
locked the cupboard door and went out the door of the church and down
the road. He did not reflect that William might easily discover that the
communion set was gone, that he might accidentally drop his trowel into
the deep hole and in reaching it find the dreadful letter, and that he
might give an alarm, and all be lost; his only thought was to get away.
He remembered dimly that he had brushed aside a little child in his rush
to the church door. When he reached the door, he held himself back from
running by a mighty effort and walked slowly down the pike, little Katy
Gaumer toddling fearfully behind him. It was easy to pretend that he did
not hear William call. Already he had planned how he would restore the
silver to its place. He knew that William was engaged that afternoon to
work at Zion Church; therefore the wall would not be closed that day.
At night he would go to the church with a hoe or rake and lift out the
sacred vessels and the dreadful letter, whose very proximity to them was
sacrilege. If the pitcher and the chalice and the plate had suffered
harm, he would explain that he had taken them to the jeweler to be
polished, and he would then have them repaired.
But William postponed his work at Zion Church, and that night, when John
Hartman stole back to replace the silver, the wall was finished and the
mortar set.
That night, also, John Hartman learned with absolute certainty that his
persecutor was dead, and his persecution at an end.
"They do not know that the communion set is gone," thought he.
"To-morrow I will find a way."
But in a sort of stupor, from which he roused himself now and then to
make wild and fruitless plans, John Hartman let the days go by. The blow
he had received had affected him not only mentally, but physically, and
he was slow to recover from it, past though the danger was. He went
about his farms, he looked earnestly upon his wife, he clasped his
little boy in his arms to assure himself that his two treasures were
real.
But the more certain he became that the ghost of the past was laid, the
more terribly did the present specter rise to harass him. Communion
Sunday was approaching, the loss of the communion service would be
discovered. There were moments when the distracted man prayed for a
miracle. He had been delivered from that other terror by an act of
Providence which was almost a miracle; would he not be similarly saved
in a situation in which he was innocent?
He thought of going at night and tearing the wall down and restoring the
service to its place, leaving the strange vandalism a mystery to
horrified Millerstown. How happy he should be to pay for the rebuilding
of the wall! But the task was too difficult, discovery too probable.
As the days passed, another way out of his trouble occurred to him. He
would go to William Koehler and tell him all his misery. William was a
good-natured, quiet soul, who could be persuaded to silence, or who
might set a price upon silence, if silence were a salable commodity.
William could easily find an excuse for doing his work over; it was well
known that he was foolishly particular. It never occurred to John that
suspicion of theft would probably fall upon honest, simple William, who
had had the key of the cupboard and who had been the whole day alone in
the church. He got no farther than his own terrible problem. He had
dropped the silver into the wall; both letter and silver were there
convicting him; he must find a way to get them both out and to put the
silver in its place.
But he allowed day after day to pass and did not visit William. William
was, after all, only a day laborer of the stupid family of Koehlers and
John was a property owner and an elder in the church; it would be
intolerably humiliating to make such a confession. Communion Sunday was
still two weeks away; there would be time for him to make some other
plan.
When Communion Sunday morning came, John had still no plan. Moving as in
a trance, he went with his wife to church, to find the congregation
gathered into wondering, distressed groups. The door of the little
cupboard was open, and beside it was the smooth, newly painted wall. It
was too late for John to ask William Koehler for help in his difficulty.
He did not realize that all about him his fellow church members were
whispering about William; he did not hear that William was accused, he
was so dazed by the fortunate complications of his own situation. They
did not dream of his agency! He would replace the set with a much more
beautiful one. This generation would pass away long before the wall
would be taken down and then the letter would be utterly destroyed by
age or dampness. He said to himself that God had been very good to him;
he even dared to thank Him during the confused, uneasy service which the
pastor conducted upon his return from the house of William Koehler.
And if William were accused, William had only to deny that he had seen
the communion service or that he had even opened the door! He might, if
worse came to worst, let them search his house. John wished
patronizingly that he could give William a little advice. He pitied
William.
By night this pity had changed to hate. For like the wildcats, whose
leap from above he had feared as a child when he walked the mountain
road, so William leaped upon him with his charge.
"You took it!" insisted William. "You stole the communion set!"
Here was ruin, indeed! But Cassie thought the man mad; she paid no
attention to his frantic words; she was concerned only about the state
of her snow-tracked floor. Hope leaped in the breast of John Hartman. No
living soul would believe such an accusation against him!
When William had gone, John put on his coat and went to the house of the
preacher. He even forced himself to use one of Millerstown's interesting
idioms, one of the last humorous expressions of John Hartman's life.
"William Koehler came to me and accused me of stealing the communion
service," said he. "There is one rafter too few or too many in his
little house."
The preacher shook his head.
"There is something very wrong with poor William," said he sorrowfully.
With a firm step John Hartman returned to his house. When it was time
for the evening service he went to church as was his custom.
John Hartman's bank account increased steadily; he added field to field
and orchard to orchard. His great safe in the dining-room held papers of
greater and greater value; his great Swiss barns with their deep
forebays and their mammoth haylofts were enlarged; his orchards bent
under their weight of fruit. But John Hartman did not say to his soul,
"Take thine ease, eat, drink, and be merry." With his soul poor John
held a different sort of converse.
Desperately he tried to fix his mind upon his many affairs, so that he
might shut out the recollection of William Koehler and the sound of his
mad voice. He was afraid for a long time that he, John Hartman, might
rise suddenly in church and make rash confession, or that he might point
out to his fellow directors in the bank the black-bearded, sharp-eyed
face, which he saw looking at him over their shoulders, or that he might
shout out upon the street his secret.
Gradually he succeeded in thinking only of his work. The sudden
appearance of William Koehler gave him a strange trembling of the limbs
and an oppression about the heart, that was all. William made no further
accusation for a long time, and encounters could be avoided. Long before
William had begun to pray aloud, dropping down in front of the
post-office or at a street corner, Millerstown had become certain that
he was crazy. His unintelligible prayers betrayed nothing.
But, slowly, as his mind turned itself a little from its own
wretchedness, poor Hartman became aware of an enemy in his own
household. To his caresses his wife ceased to respond; she had become
once more the silent, cold woman of their earliest married life, whom he
had chosen because she and the woman who had victimized him were as far
apart as the poles in character and disposition. At first poor Hartman
thought that she felt his neglect of her during the weeks of his misery;
he tried now to be all the more tender and affectionate. If he could
only find here a refuge, if he could only lay before her his wretched
state! But confession to Cassie was impossible; one had only to look
upon her to see that!
Presently Hartman decided that she believed William's accusation, and he
became enraged with her because she would believe that to which no one
else in Millerstown would give an instant's credence. "Let her believe!"
said he then in his despair. She became in his mind a partner of William
against him. Let each do his worst; they could convict him of nothing.
In reality it was Hartman's earlier sin which was no more his secret. He
had delayed too long in answering the demand for money and a letter had
been written to Cassie also, and Cassie had hardened her heart against
him, hardened her heart even against her child. Cassie had had a sad
life; her heart was only a little softened as yet by her happiness.
"I will not care," cried poor Cassie. "I will henceforth set my heart
on nothing!"
Cassie was a woman of mighty will; her youth had trained her to
strength. When her child climbed her knee, she put him away from her;
when she remembered John Hartman's hopes for the occupation of the many
rooms he had built in his house, she shook her head with a deep,
choking, indrawn breath. It could never, never be!
But the human heart must have some object for its care or it will cease
to beat. Upon her possessions, her house, her carpets, her furniture,
Cassie set now her affection. These inanimate things had no power to
deceive, to betray, to torture. Gradually they became so precious that
her great rooms were like shrines, into which she went but seldom, but
to which her heart turned as she sat alone by her kitchen window with
her sewing or lay awake by her husband's side in the great wonderfully
bedecked walnut bed which, to her thinking, human use profaned.
Thus, in the same house, eating at the same table, sitting side by side
in church, watching their son grow into a young manhood which was as
silent as their middle age, the guilty man and the unforgiving woman had
lived side by side for almost fifteen years this Christmas Day. John
Hartman had built no great church, rising like a cathedral on the
hillside. He had not even presented the church with a communion service,
being afraid of rousing suspicion. He had gathered great store for
himself--an object in life toward which he had never aimed.
Millerstown suspected nothing, neither of the sin of John Hartman's
youth, nor of his strange connection with the disappearance of the
communion service, nor of poor Cassie's aching, hardening heart.
Millerstown, like the rest of the world, accepted people as they were;
it did not seek for excuses or explanations or springs of action. John
Hartman was a silent and taciturn man--few persons remembered that he
had been otherwise. Cassie was so unpleasantly particular about her
belongings that she would not invite her neighbors to quiltings and
apple-butter boilings, and so inhumanly unsocial that she would not
attend those functions at other houses. There was an end of the
Hartmans.
Gradually a second change came over John Hartman. His horror of
discovery became a horror of his sin; he was bowed with grief and
remorse.
"He has gone crazy over it!" he lamented. "William Koehler has gone
crazy over it. I wish"--poor Hartman spoke with agony--"I wish he had
proved it against me. Then it would all have been over long ago!"
When William Koehler's wife died, John Hartman struggled terribly with
himself, but could not bring himself to make confession. From an upper
window he watched the little cortège leave the house on the hill; he saw
William lift his little boy into the carriage; he saw the cortège
disappear in the whirling snow. But still he was silent.
When William in his insanity mortgaged his little house in order to pay
dishonest and thieving men to watch John Hartman, John Hartman secured
the mortgage and treasured it against the time when he would prove to
William that he had tried to do well by him. John Hartman also bought
other mortgages. When Oliver Kuhns, the elder, squandered his little
inheritance in the only spree of his life, John Hartman helped him to
keep the whole matter from Millerstown and restored to him his house.
When one of the Fackenthals, yielding to a mad impulse to speculate,
used the money of the school board and lost it, John Hartman gave him
the money in secret. Proud Emma Loos never knew that her husband had
wasted her little patrimony before he died. Sarah Benner never
discovered that for days threat of prison hung over her son and that
John Hartman helped him to make good what he had stolen.
But John Hartman's benefactions did not ease his soul. He came to see
clearly that he must have peace of mind or he would die. He no longer
thought of the disgrace to his wife and son; his thoughts had been for
so long fixed upon himself that he could put himself in the place of no
one else.
"To-morrow I will make this right," he would say, and forever,
"To-morrow, to-morrow!"
But the years passed and William Koehler grew more mad and John Hartman
more rich and more silent, and the silver service lay deep in the pit
between the church and the Sunday School. The little building was solid,
it was amply large, it would serve many generations. Katy Gaumer,
brushed out of his path by John Hartman as he sought the door that
November day, recalled nothing of the incident except that her childish
dignity had been wounded. It was Katy herself who said that nothing ever
happened in Millerstown!
Presently the beating of John Hartman's pulse quickened; it became
difficult for him to draw a long, free, comfortable breath. Dr. Benner,
whom he consulted, said that he must eat less and must walk more. John
Hartman said to himself that now, before another day passed, he would go
to the little house on the mountain-side and begin to set right the
awful wrong of his youth. But still he planned to go to-morrow instead
of to-day. Finally, one afternoon in May, he had his horse put into the
buggy and drove slowly up the mountain road.