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THE WALL BETWEEN
* * * * *
By Sara Ware Bassett
The Taming Of Zenas Henry
The Wayfarers at The Angel's
The Harbor Road
The Wall Between
* * * * *
[Illustration: And now, by some miracle, here were the blossoms of
Martin's raising. Frontispiece. _See page 159._]
THE WALL BETWEEN
by
SARA WARE BASSETT
With Frontispiece by Norman Price
Boston
Little, Brown, and Company
1920
Copyright, 1920,
by Sara Ware Bassett.
All rights reserved
Published August, 1920
"Such are the miracles men call lives."
--Edward Rowland Sill.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I A Modern Richelieu 1
II The Howes 20
III Lucy 38
IV The Episode of the Eggs 50
V A Clash of Wills 70
VI Ellen Encounters an Enigma 82
VII The Unraveling of the Mystery 95
VIII When the Cat's Away 109
IX Jane Makes a Discovery 135
X A Temptation 147
XI The Crossing of the Rubicon 163
XII The Test 189
XIII Melviny Arrives 205
XIV A Piece of Diplomacy 234
XV Ellen's Vengeance 246
XVI Lucy Comes to a Decision 258
XVII The Great Alternative 270
XVIII Love Triumphant 290
THE WALL BETWEEN
CHAPTER I
A MODERN RICHELIEU
The Howe and Webster farms adjoined, lying on a sun-flooded, gently
sloping New Hampshire hillside. Between them loomed The Wall. It was not a
high wall. On the contrary, its formidableness was the result of tradition
rather than of fact. For more than a century it had been an estranging
barrier to neighborliness, to courtesy, to broad-mindedness; a barrier to
friendship, to Christian charity, to peace.
The builder of the rambling line of gray stone had long since passed away,
and had he not acquired a warped importance with the years, his memory
would doubtless have perished with him. All unwittingly, alas, he had
become a celebrity. His was the fame of omission, however, rather than of
commission. Had he, like artist or sculptor, but affixed his signature to
his handiwork, then might he have sunk serenely into oblivion, "unwept,
unhonored, and unsung." But unfortunately he was a modest creature.
Instead, he had stepped nameless into the silence of the Hereafter,
leaving to those who came after him not only the sinister boundary his
hands had reared, but also a feud that had seethed hotly for generations.
If within the narrow confines of his last resting place he had ever been
conscious of the dissension for which he was responsible and had been
haunted by a desire to utter the magic word he had neglected to speak in
life, he at least gave no sign. His lips remained sealed in death, and his
spirit was never seen to walk abroad. Possibly he retired into his shroud
with this finality because he never found it imperative, as did Hamlet's
ghost, to admonish posterity to remember him.
Only too well was he remembered!
The Howes and Websters who followed him hurled against the sounding board
of heaven the repeated questions of who built the wall, and whose duty was
it to repair it. Great-grandfather Jabez Howe quibbled with
Great-grandfather Abiatha Webster for a lifetime, and both went down into
the tomb still quibbling over the enigma. Afterward Grandfather Nathan
Howe and Grandfather Ebenezer Webster took up the dispute, and they, too,
were gathered into the Beyond without ever reaching a conclusion. Their
children then wrangled and argued and slandered one another, and, like
their forbears, retired from the field in impotent rage, leaving the
combat a draw.
In the meantime the outlines of the ancient landmark became less
clear-cut. Rocks toppled from its summit; yawning gaps marred its sharp
edges; and at its base vines and growing things began to creep defiantly
in and out the widening fissures that rent its foundation. Almost
imperceptibly year by year dissolution went on, the crude structure
melting into picturesqueness and taking on the gentle charm of a ruin
until Martin Howe and Ellen Webster, its present-day guardians, beheld it
an ignominious heap of stone that lay crumbling amid woodbine and
clematis.
Far more beautiful was it in this half-concealed dilapidation than ever it
had been in the pride of its perfection. Then it had stood boldly out
against the landscape, naked and aggressive; to-day, clothed in Nature's
soft greenery, it had become so dim a heritage that it might easily have
receded into the past and been forgotten had not the discord of which it
had become the symbol been wilfully fanned into flame.
As in a bygone age one runner passed a lighted torch on to another, so did
one generation of Howes and Websters bequeath to the next the embers of a
wrath that never died. Each faction disclaimed all responsibility for the
wall, and each refused to lay hand to it.
Adamantine as was the lichen-covered heap of granite, it was of far more
mutable a quality than were the dispositions of those who had so
stubbornly let it fall into decay. Time's hand had softened the harsh
stone into mellow beauty; but the flintlike characters of the Howes and
Websters remained uncompromising as of yore.
And now that Martin Howe and Ellen Webster reigned in their respective
homesteads, neither one of them was any more graciously inclined toward
raising the fallen boundary to its pristine glory than had been their
progenitors. But for their obstinacy they might have agreed to dispense
with the wall altogether, since long ago it had become merely an empty
emblem of restriction, and without recourse to it each knew beyond
question where the dividing line between the estates ran; moreover, as
both families shunned the other's land as if it were plague-ridden
territory there was scant temptation for them to invade each other's
domains. But the man and the woman had inherited too much of the blood of
the original stock to consider entering into an armistice.
They had, it is true, bettered their predecessors to the extent of
exchanging a stilted greeting when they met; but this perfunctory
salutation was usually hurtled across the historic borderline and was
seldom concluded without some reference to it. For Ellen Webster was an
aggravating old woman dowered with just enough of the harpy never to be
able to leave her antagonist in peace if she saw him at work in his
garden.
"Mornin', Martin," she would call.
"Good mornin', Miss Webster."
"So you're plowin' up a new strip of land."
"Yes, marm."
"I s'pose you know it would save you a deal of cartin' if you was to use
the stones you're gettin' out to fix up your wall."
Then the hector would watch the brick-red color steal slowly from the
man's cheek up to his forehead.
To pile the stones on the heap so near at hand would, he recognized, have
saved both time and trouble; nevertheless, he would have worked until he
dropped in his tracks rather than have yielded to the temptation.
_His_ wall, indeed! The impudence of the vixen!
Angry in every fiber of his body, he would therefore wheel upon his
tormentor and flash out:
"When you see me tinkerin' your tumbledown wall, Miss Ellen Webster, I'll
be some older than I am now. I've work enough of my own to do without
takin' in repairs for my neighbors."
At that he would hear a malicious chuckle.
For some such response Ellen always waited. She liked to see the fire of
rage burn itself through Martin's tan and feel that she had the power to
kindle it. He never disappointed her. Sometimes, to be sure, she had to
prod him more than once, but eventually his retort, sharp as the sting of
an insect, was certain to come. From it she derived a half-humorous,
half-vindictive satisfaction, for she was a keen student of human nature,
and no one knew better than she that after the cutting words had left his
lips proud-spirited young Martin scorned himself for having been goaded
into uttering them.
A tantalizing creature, Ellen Webster!
Silent, penurious, shrewd to the margin of dishonesty; unrelenting as the
rock-fronted fastnesses of her native hills; good-humored at times and
even possessed of swift moods of tenderness that disarmed and
appealed--such she was. She stood straight as a spruce despite the burden
of her years, and a suggestion of girlhood's bloom still colored her
cheek; but the features of her crafty countenance were tightly drawn; the
blue eyes glinted with metallic light; and the mouth was saved from
cruelty only by its upward curve of humor.
She had been an only daughter who since her teens had nursed invalid
parents until death had claimed them and left her mistress of the
homestead where she now lived. There had, it is true, been a boy; but in
his early youth he had shaken the New Hampshire dust from off his feet
and gone West, from which Utopia he had for a time sent home to his sister
occasional and peculiarly inappropriate gifts of Mexican saddles,
sombreros, leggings, and Indian blankets. He had received but scant
gratitude, however, for these well-intentioned offerings. It had always
been against the traditions of the Websters to spend money freely and
Ellen, a Webster to the core, resented his lack of prudence; furthermore
the articles were useless and cluttered up the house. Possibly the more
open-handed Thomas understood the implied rebuke in the meager thanks
awarded him and was hurt by it; at any rate, he ceased sending home
presents, and by and by Ellen lost trace of him altogether. Years of
silence, unbroken by tidings of any sort, followed. Ellen had almost
forgotten she had a brother when one day a letter arrived announcing his
death.
The event brought to the sister no grief, for years ago Thomas had passed
out of her life. Nevertheless the message left behind it an aftermath of
grim realizations that stirred her to contemplate the future from quite a
new angle. She had never before considered herself old. Now she suddenly
paused and reflected upon her seventy-five years and the uncertainty of
the stretch of days before her.
Through the window she could see her prosperous lands, her garden upon the
southern slope of the hill where warm sun kissed into life its lushly
growing things; her pasture pierced by jagged rocks, and cattle-trampled
stretches of rough turf; her wood lot where straight young pines and oak
saplings lifted their reaching crests toward the sky; her orchard, the
index of her progenitor's foresight. All these had belonged to the
Websters for six generations, and she could not picture them the property
of any one bearing another name; nor could she endure the thought of the
wall being sometime rebuilt by an outsider.
What was to be the fate of her possessions after she was gone? Suppose a
stranger purchased the estate. Or, worse than all, suppose that after she
was dead Martin Howe was to buy it in. The Howes had always wanted more
land.
Imagine Martin Howe plowing up the rich loam of her fields, invading with
his axe the dim silences of her wood lot, enjoying the fruit of her
orchard, driving his herds into her pasture! Fancy his feet grating upon
the threshold of her home, his tread vibrating on her stairways! The
irony of it!
Martin was young. At least, he was not old. He could not be more than
forty. He might marry sometime. Many a man more unapproachable even than
Martin Howe did marry.
And if he should marry, what would be more likely than that he would give
to his maiden sisters--Mary, Eliza, and Jane--the Howe farm and take for
his own abode the more spacious homestead of the Websters?
Ellen's brows contracted fiercely; then her mouth twisted into a crooked
smile.
What a retribution if, after all, it should be Martin whose fate it was to
rebuild the wall! Why, such a revenge would almost compensate for the
property falling into his hands! Suppose it should become his lot to cut
away the vines and underbrush; haul hither the great stones and hoist them
into place! And if while he toiled at the hateful task and beads of sweat
rolled from his forehead, a sympathetic and indulgent Providence would but
permit her to come back to earth and, standing at his elbow, jeer at him
while he did it! Ah, that would be revenge indeed!
Then the mocking light suddenly died from the old woman's eyes. Maybe
Martin would not buy the farm, after all.
Or if he did, he might perhaps leave the wall to crumble into extinction,
so that the rancor and bitterness of the Howes and Websters would come to
an end, and the enmity of a hundred years be wasted!
Would not such an inglorious termination of the feud go down to history as
a capitulation of the Websters? Why, the broil had become famous
throughout the State. For decades it had been a topic of gossip and
speculation until the Howe and Webster obstinacy had become a byword,
almost an adage. To have the whole matter peter out now would be
ignominious.
No. Though worms destroyed her mortal body, the hostility bred between the
families should not cease. Nor should her ancestral home ever become the
prey of her enemies, either.
Rising decisively, Ellen took from the mahogany secretary the letter she
had received a few days before from Thomas's daughter and reread it
meditatively.
Twice she scanned its pages. Then she let it drop into her lap. Again her
eyes wandered to the stretch of land outside across which slanted the
afternoon shadows.
The day was very still. Up from the tangle of brakes in the pasture came
the lowing of cattle. A faint sweetness from budding apple trees filled
the room. Radiating, narrowing away toward the sky line, row after row of
low green shoots barred the brown earth of the hillside with the promise
of coming harvest. It was a goodly sight,--that plowed land with its lines
of upspringing seeds. A goodly sight, too, were the broad mowings stirring
gently with the sweep of the western breeze.
Ellen regarded the panorama before her musingly. Then she seated herself
at the old desk and with deliberation began to write a reply to her
brother's child.
She was old, she wrote, and her health was failing; at any time she might
find herself helpless and ill. There was no one to care for her or bear
her company. If Lucy would come to Sefton Falls and live, her aunt would
be glad to give her a home.
"As yet," concluded the diplomat, with a Machiavelian stroke of the pen,
"I have made no will; but I suppose I shall not be able to take the
Webster lands and money with me into the next world. You are my only
relative. Think well before making your decision."
After she had signed and blotted the terse missive, Ellen perused its
lines, and her sharp eyes twinkled. It was a good letter, a capital
letter! Without actually promising anything, it was heavy with insidious
bribery.
Be the girl of whatsoever type she might, some facet of the note could not
fail to lure her hither. If a loyal Webster, family obligation would be
the bait; if conscientious, plain duty stared her in the face; if
mercenary, dreams of an inherited fortune would tempt her. The trap was
inescapable.
In the meantime to grant a home to her orphan flesh and blood would appeal
to the outside world as an act of Christian charity, and at the same time
would save hiring the help she had for some time feared she would be
driven to secure,--a fact that did not escape the woman's cunning mind.
She was not so strong as formerly, and of late the toil of the farm taxed
her endurance. There was milking, sewing, the housework, and the care of
the chickens; enough to keep ten pairs of hands busy, let alone one. Oh,
Lucy should earn her board, never fear!
As nearly as the aunt could calculate, her niece must now be about twenty
years old,--a fine, vigorous age! Doubtless, too, the girl was of buxom
Western build, for although Thomas had not married until late in life, his
wife had been a youthful woman of the mining country. This Lucy was
probably a strapping lass, who in exchange for her three meals would turn
off a generous day's work. Viewed from every standpoint the scheme was an
inspiration.
Ellen hoped it would not fail. Now that she had made up her mind to carry
through the plan, she could not brook the possibility of being thwarted.
Once more she took the letter from its envelope and read it. Yes, it was
excellent. Were she to write it all over again she could not improve it.
Therefore she affixed the stamp and address and, summoning Tony, the
Portuguese lad who slaved for her, she sent him to the village to mail
it.
For two weeks she awaited an answer, visiting the post office each day
with a greater degree of interest than she had exhibited toward any
outside event for a long stretch of years.
Her contact with the world was slight and infrequent. Now and then she was
obliged to harness up and drive to the village for provisions; to have the
horse shod; or to sell her garden truck; but she never went unless forced
to do so. A hermit by nature, she had no friends and wanted none.
Her only neighbors were the Howes, and beyond the impish pleasure she
derived from taunting Martin, they had no interest for her. The sisters
were timid, inoffensive beings enough; but had they been three times as
inoffensive they were nevertheless Howes; moreover, Ellen did not care for
docile people. She was a fighter herself and loved a fighter. That was the
reason she had always cherished a covert admiration for Martin. His temper
appealed to her; so did his fearlessness and his mulish attitude toward
the wall. Such qualities she understood. But with these cringing sisters
of his who allowed him to tyrannize over them she had nothing in common.
Had she not seen them times without number watch him out of sight and then
leap to air his blankets, beat his coat, or perform some service they
dared not enact in his presence? Bah! Thank Heaven she was afraid of
nobody and was independent of her fellow men.
Save for the assistance of the hard-worked Tony whom she paid--paid
sparingly she confessed, but nevertheless _paid_--she attended to her own
plowing, planting, and harvesting, and was beholden to nobody. The world
was her natural enemy. To outwit it; to beat it at a bargain; to conquer
where it sought to oppress her; to keep its whining dogs of pain, poverty,
and loneliness ever at bay; to live without obligation to it; and die
undaunted at leaving it,--this was her ambition.
The note she had mailed to her niece was the first advance she had made
toward any human being within her memory; and this was not the cry of a
dependent but rather the first link in a plot to outgeneral circumstances
and place the future within her own control. She prided herself that for
half a century she had invariably got the better of whosoever and
whatsoever she had come in contact with. What was death, then, but an
incident, if after it she might still reign and project her will into the
universe even from the estranging fastnesses of the grave?
Therefore the answer from Lucy was of greater import than was any ordinary
letter. It would tell her whether the initial step in her conspiracy to
triumph over Destiny was successful. What wonder that her aged fingers
trembled as she tore open the envelope of the message and spread the snowy
paper feverishly on the table?
Summit, Arizona,
May 5, 1917.
Dear Aunt Ellen:
I can't tell you what a surprise it was to hear from you, and how
much greater a surprise it was to have you ask me to come and live
with you.
I had decided to go abroad and do Red Cross work, and was about to
accept a position that had been offered me when your letter arrived.
("Humph!" murmured Ellen.)
But you write that you are alone in the world and not very well, and
this being the case, I feel my place is with you.
You are my only relative, and I should be a very poor-spirited
Webster indeed did I not acknowledge that your claim comes before any
other. Therefore I shall be glad to come to New Hampshire and avail
myself of your hospitality. I presume you have found, as I have, that
living entirely for one's self is not very satisfactory after all.
Since my father's death I have had no one to look after and have
felt lonely, useless, and selfish in consequence.
I am certain that in attempting to make you happy, I shall find
happiness myself, and I assure you that I will do all I can to be
helpful.
If all goes well I should arrive at Sefton Falls in about ten days.
In the meantime, I send my warmest thanks for your kindness and the
affectionate greetings of
Your niece,
Lucy Harmon Webster.
After she had finished reading the letter, Ellen sat tapping her foot
impatiently upon the floor. She was nettled, angry.
She did not at all relish having this child turn the tables on her charity
and make of it a favor. As for the girl's sentimental nonsense about its
not being satisfactory to live alone, what was she talking about? Living
alone was the most satisfactory thing in the world. Did it not banish all
the friction of opposing wills and make of one a monarch? No, she did not
like the letter, did not like it.
If this Lucy were sincere, she showed herself to be of that affectionate,
conscientious, emotional type Ellen so cordially detested; besides, she
held her head too high. If on the other hand, she were shamming, and were
in reality endowed with a measure of the Howe shrewdness, that was
another matter.
Her aunt laughed indulgently at the girl's youthful attempt at subterfuge.
She hoped she was humbugging. Worldly wisdom was an admirable trait. Had
not the Websters always been famed for their business sagacity? She would
far rather find Thomas's daughter blessed with a head than with a heart.
But the letter proved that the child was still a novice at the wiles of
the world, dissemble as she would.
Had she been older and more discerning, she would have realized she had
not actually been promised anything, and she would not have been decoyed
into journeying hundreds of miles from home to pursue the wraith of an
ephemeral fortune.