The increasing heat of the latter days of July, the dust, the dried-up
garden, and the mosquitos helped the young wife’s faltering will, so
that she felt physically convinced that a change was imperative. And
there was also another and a powerful motive for care of her health.
She said to her husband next morning at breakfast:
“I have arranged with Mrs. Averill that we leave a week from to-day, on
the evening train.”
“I am glad it is settled, Constance. I shall be happier when you are
breathing the good salt air.”
“It had to be, I suppose.”
“Yes, it had to be.”
She was silent for a moment, and then said:
“George, Thomas Wilson has asked me—it was Coffin who brought the
message—if I would go to see him to-day.”
“Well, why not? But I do not like you to be in those clearings alone.”
“Coffin will be there.”
“That will answer, I suppose. What else is there?”
“He wants me to read the Bible to him. His wife cannot read, or reads
badly. These people are amazingly uneducated. Why cannot he get a
preacher? I was foolish to say yes.”
“Well, dear?”
“Surely, George, you must understand me.”
He saw her difficulty at once, and said, smiling: “You may trust me
always to understand you. You know, dear, my own feeling in regard to
freedom of belief and, indeed, of unbelief. You know, too, what I desire
and never urge. I see your difficulty, but there is no need for you to
pretend anything. He will ask no questions. The Bible is a book—or,
rather, many books. We have read much of it together.”
It was true. Without any concealed intention on his part, and purely as
noble literature, they had read at times, in their evenings alone, much
of the great Hebrew poetry, as they had also read much of the best
English prose and verse.
“Yes, I know,” she returned; “but this is so different, George. What am
I to read to a dying man? I went there once. It was horrible—so slovenly
and dirty and ill-smelling; and I never before saw a man dying. It was
dreadful. It seemed to me so unnatural.”
The thought struck him as singular. “That is,” he returned, “only
because in the ordinary ways of life to see a death is rare for most
people. I have seen thousands die. To me, for four years, death was ever
near, a sadly common event. It is what may precede death that I
dread,—long illness, the loss of competence,—but not death. I hope that,
when I die, my twilight may be brief.”
“Please don’t,” she said. “But what _am_ I to read?”
“Well, then, to settle your mind, dear, read him the fourteenth chapter
of John, and take my little Bible with you. I doubt if there be a Bible
in the whole settlement.”
“Thank you, George.”
“Shall I go with you? I should be very glad to go.”
“Oh, no, no.” She felt that this would have embarrassed her.
“Remember, the fourteenth of John. It is very beautiful. Have you never
read it?”
“Never.”
The reply shocked him. In spite of what he knew of her life, it also
surprised him. For the moment he had been puzzled by her question; but
the chapter he named was a favorite of his own, and he would, after all,
have been unable to name any other more suitable.
In the afternoon she found Coffin waiting at the foot of the bluff. He
walked with her past the busy cotton-presses, and then out of the wood
on to the cleared lands with their broken fences and half-burned stumps.
“Wait for me here,” she said, and went on to Wilson’s log cabin. The
woman and her children were absent. By the dim light within she saw, as
she paused at the door, the broken chairs, the open press with soiled
gowns, and the lean chickens picking up the crumbs lying about the dirty
floor. The air was heavy with the odors of uncared-for illness. As she
approached the rude bed, Wilson said, trying to sit up, “There’s a
chair, ma’am. Set down. Not that one; it’s broke.”
She took the hot, dry hand, and feeling a keen desire to run away, sat
down beside him, saying, as she put her basket on the table, “I brought
you some soup. I hope you are better.”
“No, ma’am; and I never will be no better. The doctor you sent told my
wife I couldn’t hold out long. She’s awful troubled about the funeral.
We talked it over, and I reckon it won’t cost much. I told her so. Tom
will make the coffin.”
She was seeing a new aspect of life—the crude business of death among
the poor. It shocked a woman who, in her abounding health and immense
vitality, had little more realization of decay and death than has the
normal animal.
She murmured softly, “Do not worry; we will take care of all that.”
“Thank you,” he said; “that’s mighty good of you. I can’t talk long; it
makes me cough.” Then, after a brief pause, he said: “I’ve been thinking
a heap about things. I ain’t been a bad man, but I killed a man in
Tennessee. You see, he shot Brother Bill a week before. Seems to me it
was—yes, it was Christmas eve, and snowing. I got him comin’ out of his
barn. Now I want to know. My wife fetched a preacher here. He’s a
Methody. He said I’d got to repent of that man, or I’d go to hell. I
didn’t want him any more. I don’t repent. If a man was to kill your man,
you wouldn’t forgive him, now would you?”
“I would not,” she replied.
“I knowed you would say something like that, and it’s a real comfort.
The other notion ain’t natural.”
The woman sat still in thought, while he coughed until he was exhausted.
What would George have said? Why did men confess to her? She had been
reinforcing a dying man’s undying hatred. And yet, how could she lie?
At last he whispered hoarsely: “Sometimes in the night I ain’t easy
about it. It’s a kind of muddle, life is. You don’t ever get things
cleared up. Did you fetch the Book? I used to like mother to read the
stories in it when I was a little chap. When father was dying she read
out of it, and now I’m going too. Would you read some?”
She opened the Bible where Trescot had left a marker, and read in tones
which gathered pathetic sweetness as she went on near to the end of the
chapter, when he stopped her. “Seems to me I remember that,” he said;
“must have heard it once in church up in the hills. What’s that about
the Holy Ghost? That’s what bothered me when I was a young fellow. I
took religion bad, once; but that about the Holy Ghost used to kind of
scare me of nights. What does that mean?”
Constance paused, searching the page for an answer. It was a childlike
creature who lay gasping under the soiled sheet, and yet it was a man;
and she felt that out of her larger life she owed him an answer. But
what to say she knew not.
For a moment she sat still, glad that he was unable to recognize her
embarrassment. Then, her eye wandering over the page, she said: “Perhaps
this may help you. ‘The Holy Ghost, the Comforter.’”
“There can’t be no comfort in what a man can’t understand. I don’t know
as that—”
A cruel spell of coughing stopped him; and the agony of vain effort
shook the rickety bed until it creaked sharply. For some reason, this
strangely affected her. It seemed an inanimate expression of the extent
of discomfort and wretchedness. At last, worn out, he groaned, “My God,
that’s awful!” as he wiped away the blood on his lips and the gray
tangle of his beard; and then, with recurrent reflection: “But there’s a
heap of things a man can’t understand.”
She shared his conviction as she sat with her glove on the open page,
penciled here and there by a hand she loved. She murmured, “Yes, yes,”
and read on. “‘Peace I leave with you; my peace I give unto you: not as
the world giveth, give I unto you.’”
“Won’t you say that again?” he murmured feebly.
The clear tones of a voice often spoken of for its charm repeated the
promise. She was close to tears as she continued:
“‘Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.’”
She was emotionally too much disturbed to go on, and made a brief pause
to regain her command of speech, relieved by the strange comments which
gave her time.
“That about being afraid, now, that’s curious-like. I’ve been troubled
pretty often, but I don’t know as I ever was afraid.”
She made no reply, but read on, as one may do automatically, with one
half-conscious mind on the text, and with one other mind perplexed by
thoughts of death and life—the sudden sense of the sweet values of
mystery in love and friendship and religion, of which George had spoken.
She read on to the end, not taking in the meaning of the three verses
which followed.
“Is that all, ma’am?”
“Yes; that is all.”
“Thank you.” He lay on his back, silent, the sweat on his forehead, his
cheeks red, his eyes closed. What were his thoughts? There on the edge
of the grave was this rude, half-civilized man of the woods, without
education, with his creed of an eye for an eye, and here the woman of
another world, with every gift and every chance that wealth had given,
and both alike bewildered over the simple words of a promise which
neither could comprehend nor yet know how to use.
The flies buzzed in and out and settled on the hot face undisturbed,
until she began to fan them away.
“I wasn’t asleep,” he said feebly, opening his eyes: “I was a-thinking.”
So, too, was she.
“I was thinking,” he repeated, “that maybe you wouldn’t mind saying a
prayer. You won’t need to kneel down, the floor’s that filthy; it’s them
chickens, and my wife’s wore out.”
The voice was very earnest in its appeal. “I might get some help.”
Constance sat up, in her perplexity fanning him more rapidly. She was
helpless, stranded, full of pity. Was this a time for deceit? To whom
could she pray? She felt for the man in his hour of doubt and pain,
putting forth yearning hands for a sure hold on something. Would such an
hour ever come to her?
He felt vaguely her hesitation, and with the gentleness of the
mountain-man said: “Maybe you ain’t used to praying in company.”
“No, no,” she said, glad of the frailest pretense; “I am not; and the
room is close, I must get outside.” It was true. She had the keenest
sensitiveness to evil odors. Her head swam, and saying, “I will come
again; I must get into the air,” she stood up and emptied her basket of
fruit, lemons, and the bottle of soup. “You must need ice. I will send
it to-morrow—no, to-night. Coffin will bring it.”
He thanked her, and again she had to touch the hot, dry hand, as he
pleaded: “This isn’t any kind of place for folks like you, ma’am; but
the angels might be like you—I don’t ask no better. You will come again,
won’t you?”
“I will; certainly I will,” she said, and went out.
“A sad kind of angel you are, Constance Trescot,” she murmured, as she
drank in the fresh pine-scented air. She had a pained sense of
incompleteness, of incompetence, of failure.
Her uncle’s views, which were nourished by the pleasure of being in
opposition to his own world, had kept her ignorant of all that Susan
knew so well. Constance had felt no need of it for herself or for
others. With all her many resources, her education, her acceptance by a
man like Trescot on terms of intellectual equality, she had shrunk away
defeated, unable to answer helpfully a simple, uneducated woodsman. She
moved on into the forest, deep in thought, followed by her doglike
guardian. Presently, as she went past the cotton-presses, she was aware
of coming steps and met Mr. Greyhurst. He turned and went with her.
Seeing whence she had come, he said, with some seriousness: “These
clearings are rather lonesome places for ladies, Mrs. Trescot; and, now
that the blacks are free, not altogether safe. You must pardon my
frankness. Mr. Trescot may not fully comprehend the risks the North has
brought on us.”
It was said kindly, and as she felt he was not without reason, she
replied: “You are no doubt right; but when I come here among these poor
people I ask my garden helper, Coffin, to follow me.”
“So I see, but he is a wild fellow, like the rest,—oh, I suppose,
trustworthy in a way. I should think you would find these people
interesting. They are mostly men who have drifted down from the mountain
country.”
“Yes, I like them. This time I went to take a sick man some luxuries.”
“You are very good. These people—and, in fact, most of our people—are
too poor to be able to help one another.”
“Oh, these are trifles any one can afford.”
“Perhaps. I called on you again yesterday, but was unlucky. Will you
allow me to say one thing?”
She laughed. “Being ignorant, I must, I suppose, be generous. What is
it?”
He went on, with a manner so timid and unassured as to be in marked
contrast with his athletic build and ordinary self-assertive carriage.
“We have been so long accustomed to regard Mr. Hood as a sort of
despotic landlord, standing in our way here in St. Ann, that your
appearance as representing him rather startled our good ladies.”
“I trust they were agreeably startled. Are we so surprising?”
“Oh, I said you, Mrs. Trescot; men are never surprising.”
“Indeed! I have often found them so. I think, however, when my uncle
comes in the fall for that tiresome trial, you will find one man who
will pass as agreeably surprising. I want him to come because we wish
him to know St. Ann and all these delightful people. Besides, he is a
great friend of the South—what at home we called a Copperhead. He could
do a great deal to help this town; and, once here on the spot, he may be
brought to see that even in business it is often the best policy to be
generous.”
“You will pardon me, Mrs. Trescot, if I say that he has hardly been
that, or even just.”
“Perhaps not; but we trust that in the end St. Ann will not have to
regret our coming or our influence with him. In business my uncle loves
to be what he calls exact; outside of it he is the prey of everybody who
wants help.”
“That is unusual,” he returned; “but, unfortunately, this is all
business.”
“Yes; but, after all, Mr. Greyhurst, it is hard for a man to escape from
the tyranny of his own temperament. My uncle is always in the
opposition, and for that reason I think he really enjoys a legal
battle.”
“It is often a costly luxury.”
“Yes; but he does not care about that.”
“What you say about the difficulty of escape from the despotism of
temperament—ah! that is sadly true. No one knows that better than I. I
envy Mr. Trescot his entire self-control. I think the bar is scarcely a
good education in amiability.”
“If,” she laughed, “my husband degenerates in St. Ann I shall run away.
I think General Averill is a poor illustration of the influence of the
practice of the law.”
“Oh, the general! No one is like Averill. He has the tenderness of a
woman. He is impossible as an example.”
“Cannot a man make himself what he really wants to be?”
He glanced at her with interest, and returned gaily, “Can a woman?”
“No,” she said; “no.”
“Neither can I, Mrs. Trescot, more’s the pity.”
He was once more on the point of one of those easy confessions, which,
for some occult reason of sex sympathies, men, as I have said, are so
apt to confide to the charity of women. Young as she was, she was
prepared for it, and not liking the too personal turn the talk had
taken, she said:
“You have told me what folks think of us in St. Ann, but you have never
asked—no one has—what we think of St. Ann.”
“Well,” he said, “that might be worth while.”
“We like it and the people.”
She was scarcely accurate, to state it in no worse way.
“That is pleasant; I accept my share.”
“I must leave the partition to you,” she said lightly. “What a big
river-steamer!”
“Yes; the _Stonewall Jackson_, a new boat.”
“How warm it is!” She raised her parasol as they came out on the bluff.
“Is it always as warm as this in your July weather?”
They went on talking of every-day matters. In the main street she said:
“I must leave you here; I have to make a call and do some shopping.”
He took it to be a dismissal, and, raising his hat, left her.
He walked on, absorbed in thought. The woman had a calming influence
upon his uncertain temper. Most women so affected him. With men his
self-esteem was always on the watch for slights. It made his associates
uncomfortably careful. He was at times aware of their reserve, and,
without fully understanding the cause, resented it. He felt it in his
business, and most of all with Trescot, who, although very desirous of
keeping on good terms with him, found it increasingly difficult. That
morning, in Averill’s office, Greyhurst had returned to the question of
an amicable settlement of Hood’s claim to own the water-front at the
bend. Trescot had once more made the reply that it lay with Mr. Hood,
and that he had himself failed to move him. Greyhurst had lost his
temper and made his disbelief so plain that nothing except Averill’s
very positive interference and indorsement of Trescot’s statement had
saved an open quarrel. Greyhurst had reluctantly apologized, and Trescot
had been exasperatingly good-humored.
As Greyhurst walked on he said, with returning remembrance of his
annoyance: “Damn the man! I was a fool to talk of it,—a child,—but his
cold-blooded ways are hard to stand.” As he murmured his condemnation of
Trescot, a big black fellow, much in liquor, hustled him. He struck him
savagely and went on. The man gathered himself up, and following him,
said meekly: “I didn’t go to do it, massa.”
“Oh, go to the devil!” exclaimed Greyhurst. “Get out, or you’ll get a
bullet through you!”
He had made himself angry about one man, and another had suffered. A
minute later he was sorry for his brutal haste. His life was full of
such regrets; but this was a minor one, and did not trouble him long.
X
By and by, her errands done, Constance called at her husband’s office,
and they walked homeward together.
He told her that he had heard from her uncle. He had once more declined
to yield assent to any of Trescot’s proposals. The squatters must go.
Constance laughed. “Wait till I have him here. I know a way.”
“Upon my word, dear, I begin to respect your legal resources; but they
are, so far, rather costly. You have provided for Coffin. How much it
will require to get the rest to leave we do not know. As for the use of
the machinery of the law to turn them out to shift for themselves—I will
throw up the whole business rather than do that.”
“Indeed, I should, George, if it came to that; but it will not; there
will be no occasion.”
“Well, I trust not. I have had a long talk with Greyhurst this morning
in Averill’s office. I never knew so peculiar a man. He told me that he,
at least, had had no hand in that club business. When I thanked him and
said that I had never for a moment supposed the Confederate officers had
been in it, he said some of them had, and would have told me who they
were if I had not said I did not wish to know their names. He laughed,
and remarked that it was as well not to know, because I might feel
obliged to call them to account. I said in reply that I had no malice
about the blackballing, and that in a case of even graver injury I
should not feel justified in avenging myself by shooting a man, and that
a bullet in the shoulder was, in my case, a pretty positive peacemaker.
“As he made no reply, I went on to say that I had never desired to be a
member of the club, and was therefore quite easy in mind. When Averill
asked him at what time in October he thought our case would come up, he
said he did not know, and that it never ought to come up at all; and
when I said that was my desire, but that it would have to go to trial,
he quite suddenly lost his temper, and said that I ought to be able to
bring about a settlement. And then there was more of it, and worse.”
“What did you say, George?”
“Oh, Averill interfered, and I said I should do everything possible; and
indeed I shall. He went away in a curious sullen humor, and, upon my
word, he is like some rude, undisciplined boy; but I think he has brains
enough to know that he has a bad case. If he knew all I know, he would
give it up, although that is not Averill’s opinion.”
“I met him in the woods as I came from Wilson’s. He was pretty sharply
critical of Uncle Rufus, and was rather intimate in his talk about
himself.”
“Was he? I should not have thought him a man to do that.”
“It surprised me less than it does you, for men have a queer way of
opening their minds to women.”
“I am sure you said what was right. How is poor Wilson?”
“I was wrong to go, George.”
Realizing what must have happened, and not altogether sorry, he said:
“What was your trouble, my love? Did you read to him?”
“Yes; I read to him, and oh, George, he asked me questions.”
“What, dear?”
She hesitated, and then said: “It was dreadful. He asked me what was the
Holy Ghost, what kind of a Ghost. It was awful. How did I know? How does
any one know? Your Bible is a tangle of mysteries.”
“It is answered in the same chapter, Constance.”
“Answered?”
“Yes; it is the Comforter.”
“I said that.”
“It is also called the Spirit of Truth, Constance. That which is as old
as the world, as old as He who made it, the Spirit before which science
bends in worship, that on which the world of morals rests. Isn’t that
simple enough?”
“Yes,” she said doubtfully.
“Was that all, dear?”
“Oh, no, no; he asked me to pray for him.”
He looked at her. She was troubled, tearful; he hardly knew what to say,
and at last wisely put the question by. “We will talk of that at another
time, not now; it is a large question.”
“I did not do it.”
“No; you were right.”
“Thank you, George.”
To know that, thinking, believing as he did, he was able to put himself
in her position affected her deeply. She was about to go on and say
something of the man’s confession and his creed of unforgiveness, but
recalling what she too had said in reply, she was silent.
The next week she went away to her old home with the general and Mrs.
Averill. The day after her arrival she wrote to Trescot:
“DEAR GEORGE:
“I am sitting on the great rock at sunset, and it seems as though the
waves I love are glad of my coming. A mad gale is hurling them on the
rocks below me, and far away there is a wild turmoil of waters about
Little Misery Islands. The air is sweet and salt, and it wants only
the sunshine of the love I miss every hour.
“I found Susan well and utterly unchanged. Why should she not
be?—only that I have changed, and am wiser and a larger person than
when you first knew me. What your dear love and company have done for
me I know full well. The atmosphere of my old home seems to me other
than it was. I think I shall understand Susan better. Once I used to
think her narrow. Uncle Rufus is thinner than thin, with a wilted
autumnal look, and the same delicate features, and the same meek
violence in his opinions. I refused to be taken in the toils of an
invitation to discuss his Western affairs, but it will have to be
soon or late, though I shall not be serious with him until we are in
St. Ann. Then he may look out. And now I must go. I hear voices in
the garden.
“Constantly your constant
“CONSTANCE.
“Isn’t that pretty, sir?
“P.S.—Tell me all the news, big and little. How are Wilson and Coffin
and my cat? The Averills were most kind, and will be here very soon
for a visit.
“P.S.—I am writing a second P.S.,—almost in the dark. Far away to
right, Marblehead Light is flashing at intervals over the stormy
water. There is another, a lesser one, far to the left. I like it
better. It is, sir, if you please, constant, like me.”
She wrote daily, and a week later said:
“I can see that dear, grave face when I tell you that I went to
church last Sunday with Susan. I am not going to pretend I went for
any reason except because I love you, but that is not reason, for my
love is all of me—body, soul, and mind. Is that a riddle, sir? I
_had_ to tell Susan that I went because it would please you. She put
on one of her queer looks, and said it was creditable to my sense of
the humorous. I did not like that. I do not think that even you can
understand the absolute negation from childhood of all thought about
this vast matter of religion. Since I came, a little girl, to
Eastwood, I have been imprisoned within the bounds of my uncle’s
belief, or unbelief, and only of late years did I slowly apprehend
that his attitude was purely due to the joy of standing up against
other people’s beliefs. But think, dear, what this ignorance,
ridicule, and denial did with a childhood like mine. Susan said once
you cannot even teach manners without forms, nor make a child
religious and reverent without forms. Is that so? I had a wicked
little joy when uncle saw me go out to church with Susan. He said, as
if it were a tragedy, ‘And this is the end,’ and, as Susan says,
twinkled away. He does not walk like other people, but only from his
knees—really an absurd little person, as he appears to me now, with a
queer way of suddenly saying unexpected things. He told me once, when
I was fifteen, that I was a fine animal. I was furious, but I think I
know now what he meant.
“The Averills came and were made much of. Since the general was here
uncle has spoken of you to our friends with a newly acquired pride,
to the vast amusement of Susan. You are to understand that when, in
October, you have the help of a man with some knowledge of business
everything will be settled. I said, ‘Better, then, uncle, not to
discuss things with an ignorant woman’; and with this he was
contented for half a day.
“Whenever it is possible I go out in our cat-boat, and oh, to sail
with a mad east wind driving the fog in your face! Do you like that?
Nature is never too riotous for me—and then these summer evenings by
the sea; what a blithe playmate! I used to like best to be alone on
the shore or in the woods; but now, ah! to have you, and cry, ‘Look
at this, George; and see that.’
“You say I am making you vain. I leave you to imagine how much I love
you, how emptied is life without you. My uncle concerns himself with
everything, from the dairy and the butter to my poor little every-day
letters to you. ‘Absurd waste of paper,’ he says; and then, with his
inconsequent felicity, ‘What would I do if you were dead?’ I said:
‘Do? I should kill myself in the hope to find you—oh, somewhere!’ Do
you know, he laughed, and said: ‘Just so, just so. I do not doubt
it.’ Then he went on: ‘Once you had a doll and it fell into the well.
You were caught trying to climb down the chain to get it; and then,
when you were punished, you said you would starve until some one got
that doll.’ It was true. At last I scared him so that a man went down
and got it. There was not much doll left, but it was my doll. He went
on, and I learned more about my obstinate ways, until I fled away,
leaving him talking, until, as I presume, he discovered that he was
alone.
“Yesterday we had a dense fog. It rolled in from the sea in gray
masses. An east wind drove it landward. I went to the shore and lay
on the rocks just above the sea. The fog shut out the islands, and at
last was like a gray wall about me. You know how the sea of a bright
day seems to explain itself, when from far away the waves rise and
gather and grow and break on the shore; but now you could not see
twenty feet, and the great rollers came as if out of nowhere and
tumbled at my feet. Somewhere out at sea a steamer screamed as if
lost. Oh, but I wanted you! You would have said things of it all I
cannot say. I can only see and enjoy and badly describe.
“C.T.”
A few days before she returned to St. Ann one of his replies to her
daily letters ran thus:
“Yes, the rooms will be in order for your uncle and our welcome
Susan. Mrs. Averill has been sending me a lot of things—I presume
owing to your distrust of my capacity to keep house. I have at least
laid in a stock of patience for use when your uncle comes, and have
got out and dusted my other unused virtues. I received last week a
kind note from Colonel La Grange, with a check for my settlement of
the damaged cotton. You may guess how much—enough to make it easier
to deal with your uncle.
“You ask in your last whom I see, and would like to know what I do
all day. You ask if I have made any new friends. I scent the wicked
weed jealousy in the garden of love. Fie for shame! More people have
been able this year to get away. I see no women except Mrs. Averill,
and if you are jealous of any woman it must be of Rosalind or Portia
or Lady Macbeth. I have been refreshing myself with the company of
these ladies in your absence. Horses are so plenty that I have been
able to ride a few times with La Grange, and I begin to think of the
joy of some day riding with you.
“Poor Wilson is dead; and, as you desired, I took care of the
funeral. The rest may keep. Everything goes well, and there are still
flowers,—oh, in abundance! I hear that the rector is not well and has
given up. A young man named Kent has taken his place. I had some
distant relatives named Kent. I never saw them. You may tell Susan
that La Grange, who knows Mr. Kent, says he is young and very
good-looking. That is all my news. Do take care of yourself.”
“Poor Susan!” thought Constance; “I think she prefers them old. I
imagine Susan in a mild clerical flirtation!”