OUT IN THE SNOW.
The stricken man arose, wearily, and turned his face towards the town.
How could he go home, with that fierce son ready to receive him with
bitterness and reproach? How meet the wistful look of his wife, which
had questioned him so often but never upbraided him? These things had
not troubled him much when his brain was misty with drink; but, now that
his thoughts were unnaturally keen, and his conscience awake, he had no
courage to go home. Nay, such had been the effect of his son’s sneer,
that he began to shrink from the impulses of religion which had led him
to the meeting that night. True enough he was only an old broken down
drunkard. What business had he to hope any thing from prayer? Had not
the Almighty drawn a vail of clouds across the sky that he might know
that his term of grace had passed away forever?
He stood, hopelessly thinking over these painful fancies, with his hands
loosely locked and hanging down, like a child waiting to be led away.
Then he lifted his face slowly, and looked towards the town. A single
light shone from its terraces of snow,—a reddish, evil-looking light,
that burned later than any other in Norwich. As a wild beast grows
frantic at the sight of blood, the old man felt the influence of the
fatal gleam. A fiercer thirst seized upon him. His brain began to burn
with feverish desire; great drops of perspiration trembled on his
forehead, notwithstanding a sharp wind turned them cold as they rose.
Eager and famished, forgetting God and man, he turned upon the track
that was leading him home. Keen desire gave him vigor: he walked heavily
along the highway, muttering to himself like a lunatic that had escaped
his keepers.
The light grew broader and more lurid. Like the eye of a fiend, it
blinked and blazed, and lured him on. The frozen breath melted on the
fever of his lips, and his chest heaved with wolfish appetite.
He had reached the slopes of the town. The tavern stood on one of the
numerous ridges of the hills, sheltered by an old willow-tree. The rusty
hinges of a sign creaked on one of the lower branches, and the naked
boughs whispered drearily, welcoming the old man back with dismal sighs.
A great fire blazed through the bar-room windows, and he already saw the
shadows of his old friends moving against the glass.
“They will be glad to see me, at any rate,” he said, rubbing his hands
eagerly. “I wonder who will treat when they get me back from—from—oh, my
God! from the meeting.”
That instant a light hand was laid on his shoulder, and a low voice,
full of kindness, made him turn. It was his wife, the home-angel, whom a
pitying Saviour had sent to bring the old man back.
They stood together in the light which streamed from the bar-room
windows. The riot of many voices came coarsely toward them. The sign
shrieked overhead as if it were a fiend, to whom the presence of a
creature so pure gave terrible pain. Her delicate face was bright with
the frost, and softened with compassion. There was something of the old
girlish look in her eyes, so earnest and full of love; something, too,
in the dress; for she had wrapped herself in Hannah’s scarlet cloak, and
the hood looked richly warm around her forehead and against her cheek.
“Anna!” he said, tenderly, “Anna!”
“Yes, husband, I am here. Don’t think it strange. But this is your
birthday; so I sat up waiting. Hagar would make some coffee against you
came home. It was so hot and nice I got impatient, and came out to meet
you; for Hagar don’t like her good things to go to waste.”
“Poor Anna! And so you came all this way?”
“Oh, it’s nothing, Ben. You have walked farther than this after me many
a time, besides climbing the hills when you got here.”
“Ah, that’s when we were courting, Anna, and the road seemed short!”
“But the love which made it short hasn’t changed, though we are getting
old, Ben. Come, put your arm around me as you did in those old times,
and let’s go home. It is cold here. Ah, now I am warmer! This is
comfortable. See how clear the road shines since the clouds went off. It
looked likely to snow when I came out; now the stars are bright as
diamonds, and the whole road shines like silver.”
The old man lifted his eyes, and a thousand stars smiled down upon him,
brighter and more pure by far than the red glare which had beckoned him
through the tavern windows. His look fell slowly to the face of his
wife. She had nestled close to his side, and, clinging to his arm,
pointed down the path of snow as it wound off homeward under the smiling
heavens.
“That is our way,” she said, softly. “You must find it now, for I am
tired of looking down.”
Her cloak fluttered open with the wind. He folded it tenderly around
her, and held it in place with his arm. Her heart swelled. She
remembered the old times, when that was the fashion in which they had
often walked together when alone under the stars.
After all, the power of good is stronger than that of evil,—and oh, how
much more beautiful! This gentle woman, who possessed scarcely more than
the strength of a child, had won her husband from a terrible temptation
with a few loving words, uttered with tact as well as tenderness. The
thirst of a tyrant habit, and the anguish of a great trouble, were both
forgotten under her sweet allurements.
“And do you know where I have been this evening?”
“No. I met Benedict; but he was riding fast and did not see who it was,
I think.”
“Oh, you met him,—our son?”
“Yes, husband, our first-born,” she said, tenderly.
“How we used to love the child! You remember, Anna?”
“Used to love him! How we _do_ love him! Who could help it,—he is so
brave and strong? I feel like a child by his side.”
“And so you are, Anna.”
“Like a child that has a little fear mixed with its love. Do you know,
husband, I am always afraid of doing something that he does not like.
And so is Hannah, I am sure. But then he is so perfect.”
“Anna, would it kill you if he were not? If he had faults—if——”
“Ah, husband, we all have faults! What a terrible thing if we ceased to
love one another because of that!”
“Yes, I know how good you are,—how much you can forgive. You need not
tell me so. I feel it here.”
“Oh, I didn’t mean that; but then it is so pleasant to be walking with
you in this way, and chatting about the children! Of course, Benedict
has faults; but what of that. You and I mustn’t see them, you know.”
“Yes, it is possible to forgive faults, even such as mine have been,
because, perhaps, you think it a duty.”
The little woman shook her head, and muttered,
“No, no. She had nothing to forgive. He had come home with her
pleasantly, and that was enough of happiness for one night. Indeed, she
loved him dearly, and always should, no matter what came or went.”
But he clung to the first idea with a tenacity that surprised her.
“Could she forgive a crime in one she loved,—a great crime, for
instance, such as murder, or—or—well, there was no worse crime than
that? Could she forgive murder in her husband or her son,—of course he
meant nothing serious; but could she?”
“Yes; she could forgive even that, and—and——”
The husband drew a deep breath; but, noticing her hesitation, he
questioned her again.
“And what, Anna?”
“And die!” she answered, in a solemn whisper.
His face clouded again, and they walked on some moments without
speaking. Then he broke away from the subject altogether, and told her
where he had been that evening, and of his interview with Leonard at
“the falls.”
He felt her arm steal around him from under her cloak as he went on, and
when he looked down into her face the tears were falling over it.
“I knew it would come before the end,” she said. “From the glow at my
heart these few days back I felt that it was near.”
When he told her of his great temptation, and of the weakness which had
followed it, she began to sob and murmur words of meek thankfulness that
she had gone forth as the wish arose. It was like an interposition of
heaven, she said; and the reward was that long, happy walk, so unlike
any thing they had known for years.
The husband sighed drearily. There was a heaviness at his heart which
she must never know, or she might “forgive and die.” He did not mention
having met his son that night; and she, sweet soul, was quite
unconscious that bitter strife lay between them.
They reached home at length, and found Hagar sitting up in the kitchen,
with two old-fashioned china cups and saucers set out on a round stand,
where a snow-white cloth had been spread. She had been impatiently
snuffing the candle, and making herself uncomfortable for more than an
hour, and was ready to give her master and mistress a piece of her mind
which would mean something when they came in.
But when Mrs. Arnold appeared, muffled in her red cloak, from which she
shook the frost with a smile, the house-slave relented, and, instead of
expressing her mind, according to promise, she helped Mr. Arnold off
with his greatcoat, giving him an approving glance, as she hung it up;
and, uncovering a dish in one corner of the fire-place, revealed the
plump bosoms of a pair of quails that lay snugly nestled there. Then she
took a coffee-pot, with a conical top, from the other corner, and began
to pour the contents out,—“good and strong,” as she said, while the
master and mistress sat down to enjoy a supper which the sharp air and a
long walk had rendered doubly acceptable.
“Where is our son?” inquired Mrs. Arnold, as she drew her seat to the
table, and began to carve the quails. “Go call him, Hagar. The girls are
in bed long ago, but he must be up yet.”
Hagar drew herself up, looking very like a black bantam when its mate is
disturbed, and observed, in her choicest language, that “Mr. Ben had
turned up his nose at her invitation to wait till his parents came in,
and went up-stairs, stamping with his boots like a trooper, without so
much as saying, ‘No, thank you,’—a piece of business that she was sartin
Dan would a made a touse about, if he hadn’t been in the barn shelling
corn, and consecantly hadn’t known nothing about it. She hadn’t a doubt
but young Mass’ Arnold was a-bed and asleep, and she didn’t want to
disturb no gemman’s depose,—not she.”
“Never mind, I will go myself, Hagar,” said Mrs. Arnold. “Just bring
another cup and saucer.”
With these words she stole away up-stairs, smiling back upon her
husband,—whom she considered doubly her property since the night’s
rescue,—and hoping that Benedict would be in a condition to come down
and share her happiness, not to speak of a little feminine triumph that
broke up from the depths of her innocent heart at the conquest which she
had achieved over the Evil One.
She stole softly into her son’s room. His candle was out, but she could
see by the starlight reflected over the snow that he was in bed, with
his face turned to the wall. She bent over him, holding her breath; but,
when he did not move, she pressed a kiss, light as a roseleaf, on his
forehead, tucked up the blue and white counterpane with a sigh of
content, and stole away.
She was followed by his glittering eyes; for he had turned his head to
look after her with a touch of remorse. What if his father should
confide in her? By what horrible mismanagement was the old man let into
his secret? This was a source of continual anxiety which made him almost
hate his father, and quite fear his mother; for he would have died
rather than that good woman should know him as he was. When she left
that kiss on his forehead, and tucked up his bed in the old-fashioned
way, he felt the tears steal to his eyes, and murmured something which
betrayed the tender regrets that her gentleness and loving faith awoke
in his heart.
“Mother!” he said, calling her.
She came back and sat down on the side of the bed, glad to hear his
voice. “Well, my son!”
“Did you wish to speak with me about any thing?”
“Yes, Benedict. I wanted to tell you how happy I am,—how good the Lord
has been. Oh, my son, I shall never have the sorrow of seeing you
condemn father again. He has come back to his old self, and this is his
birthday.”
“Mother!” said the young man, quickly, “did you ever know my father
break a promise?”
“Break a promise? No, indeed. They could never kill his good principles
so far as that.”
“And you think he loves me?”
“Think he loves you,—you, his only son! What a question! Better than his
life, I’m sure.”
“I suppose it’s a wild sort of question, but I have had little knowledge
of him these late years.”
“No. He has not been quite himself; but that is all over now. He is a
changed man,—no, not a changed man, but his old self again. We shall
live to be proud of him yet, Benedict. That is what I came up for. I
want you to forget what you saw in that room when he was asleep there. I
thought it was my duty to let you know every thing then: but, since,
what I did has troubled me dreadfully. It was wrong to betray my
husband’s fault; my cheek grows hot when I think of it. I will beg his
pardon before we go to sleep this night. If you hadn’t been in bed I’d a
done it before you both; but somehow I cannot forgive myself.”
Arnold had not been listening to this womanly speech: deeper and darker
thoughts occupied him. At last he said, very abruptly,
“Mother, send him up here before he goes to bed. My father, I mean.”
“Yes, my son; but speak kindly to him,—of course you will, though.”
“Yes, mother, I will. That is the best way, you think, to control,—to
influence him?”
“Oh, yes,—only be respectful and good-natured. Now, I’ll go down and
pour out his coffee.”
The mother hastened down-stairs and settled herself by the little table;
while her husband, with childlike delight, drained the strong coffee in
his cup; and talked pleasantly with Hagar, who, woman-like, gave out
stray enticements for the praise which her fine cooking had so well
deserved.
With the craving appetite and the weary soul both appeased, Mr. Arnold
began to feel once more as the master of his own house. There was an
atmosphere of respect about him which awoke all the dignity that had
been so nearly dead in his nature.
When the supper was over, and Hagar began to mutter about raking up the
fire, Mrs. Arnold told her husband that Benedict was awake, and wanted
to see him before he went to bed.
The old man turned pale at this, and began to tremble; but he strode
up-stairs, heavily, and went into his son’s room.
From that night Arnold ceased to sneer at or revile his father; on the
contrary, his demeanor became more than respectful. Not servile—that to
his nature was impossible,—but he was at all times on the alert to help
or defend his father. Yet there was a sort of reserve between them all
the time. In this world, a secret which gives one man power over another
always brings with it the curse of alienation.
A week after this Arnold and his guests were ready to go away. The visit
had been both pleasant and eventful to the young people; but love, which
is strong in most cases, cannot control time or circumstance: so, with
many a regretful sigh, the party broke up.
That night Arnold managed to see Amy alone. She was very sad,—this
unacknowledged wife,—and the young man was himself greatly depressed.
They had been talking earnestly. The loving eloquence was still in her
eyes, and her lips quivered like those of a grieved infant.
“Oh, if you would only let me tell my father and mother I wouldn’t
care!” she said, clinging to him, and pleading with her innocent eyes so
earnestly that even he was moved to kiss away the tears that trembled in
them.
“Be still, child. To no living soul shall you breathe a secret of mine.
I must have obedience or nothing.”
Amy drew a deep sob, and drooped into a submissive attitude. “Well,” she
said,—“well, it is my duty. You are my husband.”
Arnold frowned and grew thoughtful.
“Are you offended with me, Benedict?” whispered the young wife, leaning
her arm softly on his shoulder.
“No, Amy; but I feel unsafe. This promise is not enough. You mean to
keep it, I know. But will you be strong enough?”
“I will,—I will! Don’t look so black.”
He looked up suddenly. “You would keep an oath, I know.”
She blanched white, and began to tremble. “An oath, Benedict!”
“Yes. Come here,—put your two hands between mine. What on earth makes
you so white? There, kneel down. Well, well, stand up; it makes no
difference. Now swear before the God, who is our only witness, never to
tell any living mortal that you and I are man and wife till I give you
permission.”
“I—I——” She attempted to go on, but the words froze on her lips, and
holding out her arms imploringly, she fainted.