"Pleasure is oft a visitant, but pain
Clings cruelly to us--"
"Whoso encamps
To take a fancied city of delight--
Oh, what a wretch is he!"
Church was in. That meant that all the respected and self-respecting
people of Jamestown had come forth, morally and physically clothed in
their best, and bestowed themselves as comfortably as circumstances
permitted in the wooden pews of Jamestown's only church.
From the preacher's desk, the congregation looked like a human theme
with variations, the original motif being a stolid, expressionless mask
of flesh, unanimated, immobile, with rudely carven features, and no
decided tints. Upon this primitive scale nature had rung every change
her shackled hands could compass; but between the highest note, struck
perhaps in Ossie Annie Abbie Maria White, whose face was inoffensive,
and the lowest personified by old Ann Lemon, whose countenance was a
mere mass of flesh, there was but a short thought. The men were
sandy-haired, meagre, undersized; or heavy, florid, dark, with
lack-lustre eyes and coarse lips.
It was a delightful autumnal day--a day more provocative of tears than
laughter, more suggestive of retrospect than anticipation; a day to
dream old dreams, feel old heartaches, read old books, tell old tales,
hear bygone singing, recall lost voices; a pure, sweet day--the air
rarefied by the first touch of frost; a day, in short, to remind one of
the sweet, the sad, the strange in life; but withal, a day to perfect
the tint on the apples, mellow the juices of the late grapes, and
promising a "fine spell of good weather for the fall ploughing," as
each male member of the congregation had said to each other male member
that morning.
Mother Earth got but little rest at the hands of these eager seekers.
Hardly had her bosom been shorn of its crop of a yellow grain before
the keen ploughshares were again plunged into the soil and it was
lacerated afresh, and the man looked best content that morning behind
whose plough there lay the greatest number of brown furrows, for the
fall ploughing was of great furtherance when the rush of the spring
came on; so the horses, loosed from the lumbering reaping machine, were
yoked to the plough, that most graceful of all farmer's implements, and
strained at their collars as it turned the furrow, sending its earthy
fragrance to mingle with the fruity savor from the vineyards.
Light mists, prophetic of the later haze, floated in shreds and wisps
across the fields, and gathered and lingered about the trunks of the
trees in the woodland.
The birds were silent, and daily V-shaped flights of ducks and wild
geese passed over the village, winging their way to the south.
Service went on in the church, to the staid and sedate measure of
well-understood and long-established usage.
Ann Lemon was nodding off the intoxication of the night before in a pew
well to the front. Ann felt she needed to assert her religious
feelings lest there be some doubt of their existence.
Behind her sat Mr. and Mrs. White, young Ann, and Bing--the first three
mentioned of the family looking as gloomy and downcast as their
self-complacency permitted. Bing blinked wickedly in his corner,
making sly swoops at the sluggish flies, and tearing them in bits when
he captured any.
Across the aisle Clem Humphries flourished. Clem was one of those
world-worn wrecks that are cast away and left stranded in nearly every
small village the world over. How they drift there no one knows;
whence they come no one cares; why they stay they could not tell
themselves. Fate rattles us all in her dice-box, and we lie where we
fall.
Clem was by turns a fisherman, Mr. Muir's assistant, a knife-grinder, a
peddler; he had superior skill in making axe-handles, and out of wire
he could twist and twine the cunningest of traps. He was acute and
wise in his day and generation--at heart a scoffing old vagabond; yet
he professed to be most religious, and evidenced it in the same way as
the people about him did, by going to church with painful regularity,
where he sat, a sore rock of offence to Mrs. Deans, for Clem was fain
to relieve the tedium of the service and aggravate Mrs. Deans (whom he
hated) by a succession of tricks that irritated her almost beyond
endurance.
Mrs. Deans sat immediately behind Clem, and pursed her already
pursed-up mouth, sniffed her already pinched-in nose, and glared at him
fiercely from her chronically inflamed eye, but all to no effect. He
was full of offence, and Mrs. Deans had several times accused him in
after-meeting of "conduct misbecoming in a Christian," but Clem had
answered to the charge so volubly, so diplomatically, so humbly that
the rest of the church members, and particularly Mr. Prew, the minister
(to whom Clem always ostentatiously removed his hat), decided that Mrs.
Deans had "a pick" at Clem, and regretted a little that such a pious
woman should stain her noble record by such complaints as she made
against this humble follower.
He had an evil habit of setting his stout stick upright beside him in
the pew, balancing it with a skill all the boys of Jamestown emulated
in vain, and then placing his hat upon it, so that in full sight of the
congregation, it stood perilously balanced, but never falling, during
the entire time of service.
A strange minister had once been sadly disconcerted by the sight of the
immovable hat in that pew. He could see nothing of what supported it,
and could hardly restrain his wrath at the irreverence of the dwarfish
individual who sat covered in the Lord's house. Animated by the
thought, he seized the sword of the Spirit and began to fight against
this evil one. He dilated upon the perils of irreverence until the
majority of his listeners dared hardly breathe. He thundered forth the
denunciation of the wicked and stubborn of heart until all the women
wept, led by Ann Lemon, who, by reason of excessive piety and much gin,
had no nerves left at all, and who showed her emotion by a series of
subdued howls. He exhausted vituperation and himself, and sat down--a
beaten man, for the hat was unmoved, whilst Clem beside it was rolling
up his eyes and trying to induce a tear--an effort beyond even his art.
When the preacher discovered the true state of affairs, which he did
when he saw Clem pick up the cane and its burden, carry it to the door,
give it a jerk, bending his head at the same time, and so receive the
hat at his own peculiar angle, he felt as if all good was but a dream
and a delusion.
Clem every Sunday produced a large and not over-clean handkerchief tied
in many intricate knots. These he untied painfully and laboriously
with teeth and fingers, until he reached the last, which, when untied,
disclosed a copper cent, which was his weekly contribution. This
performance he made an absolute torment to Mrs. Deans, but with the
cent he made her life a burden. He dropped it, and scrambled around on
his hands and knees for it. He polished it on his trousers until it
seemed as if he might wear the fabric through. Worst of all, he put it
on the back of the seat before him, where Mrs. Wilson's plump back must
inevitably knock it off. Mrs. Wilson, despite her many trials and the
multitude of diseases she believed were concealed about her person, was
very stout, and therefore subject to all the fatigues incident to
bearing such a burden of flesh. In spite of this, however, Mrs. Wilson
was animated by an eager desire to do her duty as became a "mother in
Israel," and by her deportment convey the impressive lesson of example
to the less holy members of the flock. With this end in view, she
strove to attain an upright and rigid position of an uncomfortable
piety; but the flesh is weak. Presumably the weakness increases in
ratio to the flesh, for before the first prayer was over Mrs. Wilson
was beginning to settle. When the preacher announced his text, she
usually took a fresh grip of her failing resolution, and assumed a
ramrod-like pose, but it was of short duration. She gradually
collapsed, her shoulders drooped, the back of the pew dented further
and further into the broad black expanse that leaned against it.
Clem's penny crept nearer and nearer the edge as the encroaching back
advanced. Presently Mrs. Wilson, worn out in her efforts to listen to
the sermon and fight against her own lassitude at one and the same
time, gave way, and, with a sigh, leaned back restfully. The penny
flew off, and Clem, whilst apparently gazing at the preacher so
attentively as to be oblivious of all else, reached forward and caught
it adroitly, to place it again in jeopardy, and then again to lose
sight of its peril. This performance, being repeated a half-dozen
times during one service, enraged Mrs. Deans beyond expression. One
unlucky day, she prodded Clem in the back with a rigid forefinger, and
upon his turning round, which he did with an exaggerated start that
vibrated through the whole congregation, she made a sharp gesture of
withdrawal, and gazing at the offending penny, just then trembling on
the edge, left the rest to Clem's understanding--a perilous thing to
do, for Clem chose to interpret the signal in quite a different way
than she intended.
Down Mrs. Wilson's black merino back there strayed a long light brown
hair. To Mrs. Deans' consternation, Clem reached gingerly forward,
took the hair, and, with the suddenness Mrs. Deans' gesture had
indicated, withdrew his hand. Now the hair had merely strayed, and was
not lost from Mrs. Wilson's knot, hence the sharp jerk brought a
smothered exclamation and a sudden start from her--a start which sent
the detestable copper spinning. Clem caught the coin dexterously with
one hand, whilst he turned to offer Mrs. Deans the hair with the other.
That worthy woman looked positively apoplectic, and, giving Clem just
one look, turned her attention markedly to the preacher. Clem turned,
with a fine expression of bewildered disappointment upon his face,
replaced the hair on Mrs. Wilson's shoulder and the coin on the ledge,
and lost himself in pious meditation.
This occurred some time before this autumn Sunday, but Mrs. Deans had
suffered in silence since then. She was prone to leave church with her
temper thoroughly on edge. Clem was surpassing himself that day: he
wore a long-tailed coat of the fashion of many years before, and, when
he arrived, which he did just as the first psalm was announced, he
deliberately stood up, and, pulling round first one coat-tail and then
the other, emptied them of a multitude of small articles--tobacco,
pipes, balls of twine, lead sinkers, little twists of wire, a big
jack-knife, stray nails, and a varied assortment of bits of iron and
buttons. Having put these all on the seat beside him, he deposited
himself with the air of a man who puts aside worldly things to listen
to better. Hardly was he seated before he imagined the flies were
troubling him. He made several spasmodic slaps at his bald head, and
then drawing forth his handkerchief, folded it carefully in four and
laid it on the top of his head. Thus adorned, he rose to sing, knelt
to pray, and finally listened with reverential attention to the sermon.
"Few are thy days, and full of woe,
O man, of woman born;
Thy doom is written, 'Dust thou art
And shalt to dust return.'"
So they sang; and the wailing air, upborne by the harsh, untrained
voices, reverberated from the bare walls of the church, its jangling
cadence pierced by one pure and bell-like voice, for Bing White, with
the heart of a vulture, had the voice of a lark.
One passing outside smiled--half amusedly, half sadly--as he heard the
singing, and went on his way with the music following him in ever
fainter notes, forcing itself upon him.
* * * * * *
On Sunday Myron Holder had her only relaxation. Her grandmother,
preserving the prejudices of the little Kentish village from which she
had come, detested all other religions save the Episcopal. Her folks
had all been strong for Church and State, and she scorned the idea of
going to the Methodist church, or, as she contemptuously said, "to
chapel." Her vocabulary knew no more derisive epithet than "a
Methody." This in itself was enough to isolate the Holders in the
midst of a community that regarded Episcopalians as being "next door to
out-and-out Catholics," and Catholics as surely doomed. As Mrs. Holder
did not go to church herself, neither did she allow Myron to go after
the work for the day was done, so she was free to lavish her heart on
her child. It was her custom, whilst church was in and the streets
empty, to take the boy and go out into the fields or lanes with him,
severing herself from the house that had held such agony for her and
from the woman whose stinging tongue kept her wound raw. Once with her
boy--alone in the air and sunshine--she gave herself up to
introspective soul-searchings. Upon one side she set herself, and upon
the other all things good; in the great gulf between there hovered the
shade of the man to whom she owed her misery. In the abandonment of
her self-abasement, she did not place herself even upon his level,
whilst as for little My--he shone amongst the holiest of those things
to which it seemed to her she was herself in such direct opposition and
contradiction. The great marvel of her life was this child, who owed
its existence to her. She looked at it with eyes of adoration--touched
it almost humbly, as the Madonna we are told of may have tended the
Christ-child on her breast. The child seemed to embody all the dead
delight of her own girlhood, to have absorbed all the peace, all the
calm, all the gayety she had lost. There seemed no varying moods to
cross its baby mind; it was the embodiment of trusting love.
Myron, in the face of this miracle, this perfect blossom which sunned
itself in her eyes only and expanded beneath her tenderness, was
bewildered and amazed. She began to ponder over the matter, and
presently to wonder if there was any phase of the entire situation that
made her less blameless--to ask herself in what way she could possibly
obliterate shame from her record for his sake.
"Are your garments spotless?
Are they white as snow?
Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?"
The words came to her as a personal and crushing query as the
congregation energetically sang them. Little My clapped his hands and
laughed delightedly; the music pleased him. So Myron stood outside
until the voices died away, and the murmur of prayer succeeded; then
taking My up in her arms, that they might make greater speed, she went
rapidly out of the village. She turned to her left, and, going a short
distance along the road, lifted My over the fence into Mr. Warner's
grass meadow. Through the centre of this field ran a deep ditch, to
carry off the surface drainage in spring. Its course was marked by a
thick growth of low-growing shrubs, among which grew short stubby oaks,
whilst here and there great graceful elms sprang up in lofty columns,
crowned with drooping branches; parasitic vines, sucking the life-juice
of the tree they adorned, crept up these elms; their delicate leaves,
already scarlet, showed vividly against the gray bark of the trees, and
looked like thin streams of blood trickling down. Particularly was
this the case where, upon one of the elms, the creeping-vine had
reached the point where a branch had been broken off by the wind. The
semblance was thus complete: there was the wound--there the blood, and
above, the sighing leaves deplored the pain. At the foot of this tree
was a huge and brightly green mound, which, as Myron approached, seemed
almost artificial, so close were the leaves set, so impenetrably were
the tendrils woven together; for this mound was formed of two oak trees
over which, completely hiding them, grew a huge wild grape vine,
forming a perfect canopy of dense green, and, more honest than the vine
that sapped the elm tree, the grapevine, by its luxuriant growth and
the vigor of its stem and branches, seemed to proclaim its settled
purpose to smother the trees that supported it if possible.
To this Myron bent her footsteps. Pressing into the shrubs some
distance below, she won her way through them until she came to the foot
of the elm tree, and entered the green tent formed by the grapevine.
Between the trunks of the two scrubby oaks was a space of heavy green
grass, which, springing up before the vine leaves had shut off the sun,
kept green and fresh in their shadow through all the heats of summer.
Here she and her child sat down; they were completely shielded from
observation--the grape garlands at their backs, before them the masses
of shrubs on the other side of the ditch.
Myron took a biscuit from her pocket and gave it to the boy, and then,
clasping her hands about her knees, lost herself in dreams. She had
cast aside her sun-bonnet, and the light, with difficulty piercing the
shade, shone upon her in pearly lights and gleams--a colder radiance
than shone elsewhere.
The soft characterless face of the young girl had been frozen into the
enforced calm of passionless despair. Her face gave a strange
impression, as of features that would remain unchanged no matter how
long time endured for their possessor; as if the voice of pain and
shame had bade her life stand still, nor evidence its aging in her
countenance. No network of wrinkles, no deep marks of care, could have
been half so sad as these youthful outlines veiled by such grief. Her
eyes were heavy; her mouth would have been bitter, but that the
patience of the face belied all bitterness save that of self-contempt.
Underneath this mask of arrested life, vivifying it with tragic meaning
and rendering it inexpressibly sad, burned an intense suppressed
expectancy, as of one who doth
"Espy
A hope beyond the shadow of a dream."
This lent her face the artistic value of motive, and transformed what
might, without it, have been but a sad-faced woman, such as the world
holds in countless thousands, into a creature of tragic force.
Myron pondered in the shadow, whilst her child played at her side. It
was very still. The child's soft breathing as he plucked at the soft
grass was the only sound that broke the listening silence; opposite her
was a little maple tree; a single leaf near the top was whirling round
and round, caught in some miniature tempest that left unmoved the
leaves on either side. In the midst of universal calm, this lonely
leaf was tossed and troubled, singled out for unrest, as Myron Holder
had been set apart for pain. But Myron's thoughts were not upon the
leaf, albeit she saw it fluttering. She was struggling against a
futile wrath, which welled up in her heart and at times nearly mastered
reason--a hot rage against herself--_him_--the village. Her cheeks
flushed--her hands involuntarily closed.
Why had this lot been meted out to her? In what was she different from
these other women whose fault had been no less than hers? Why was
continual bitterness her portion whilst they dwelt at ease? Simply
because, though tardily, their children had been given a name. She
felt a bitter wish spring up within her breast that all those jibing at
her were such as she; that all those cruel women might feel the touch
of shame; that they might be brought low, and taste the bitter bread
that was her portion, and drink the cup they held to her lips. And
then she sank into an evil dream. In it she beheld herself sitting in
the judgment seat of respectability and meting out judgment to those
who so lately had been her judges; for, in her dream, he had returned
and justified her; she had risen, and all the rest had fallen; and as
they toiled along the thorny path her feet had known, she beheld
herself pass by on the other side. How she would withdraw from them
(her eyes grew cold)! How she would avert her head (her lips were
scornful)! How she would look them up and down with contemptuous
condemnation, and turn and whisper her verdict into willing ears. That
would bring the blood to their cheeks. That would--she paused,
arresting her thoughts with a sudden knowledge of their shame; the cold
eyes filled with tears, the scornful lips drooped and trembled; she
realized the horrible wickedness of her own thoughts--thoughts--no
hope, she owned to herself, and crying aloud, "I am wicked, shameless!"
she flung herself upon her face in the grass and wept out the
bitterness of her soul. The child crept to her side and strove to turn
her face toward him; she kept it hidden, but stretched forth her arm
and clasped his little form.
My, frightened at the silence with which his overtures were met and at
his mother's unusual attitude, and shaken by her sobs, began to cry.
Myron roused herself, and taking him in her arms, held him to her
breast, rocking back and forth in the abandonment of her grief. The
motion soothed and reassured the already drowsy child, and in a few
moments he slept, whilst his mother, stilling her sobs that she might
not disturb his slumber, bent above him a face wrung by pain.
She mused over her late vision of retaliation. With what cruelty had
she hit upon the mode of showing her revenge! Alas, the lesson had
been well taught her, for she had known the averted gaze, the scornful
lip, the contemptuous regard. She had simply chosen those means from
which she herself had suffered moat keenly. There came back to her the
memory of an early morning, when, standing in the doorway, she had
looked out into the dawn and had seen
"The horizontal sun
Heave his bright shoulders o'er the edge of the world,"
and had vowed herself to the service of others, and to the atonement of
her sin, and hoped for an early death.
Here, under the cold rays, of the autumnal sun, and abased before the
memory of her late musings, she renewed those vows and scourged her
soul with stripes of self-reproach.
When My woke, they went forth from their refuge, across the fields, up
the street to the village; the streets were empty. A shambling figure
in the distance, bespeaking Clem Humphries by the length of the
coat-tails and the thinness of the legs, was making toward the lake.
It was indeed Clem, going to indulge in a little surreptitious sport as
an antidote to the sermon. Clem looked upon his churchgoing as one of
his many professions, like the making of wire snares and the digging of
graves. "Only," he said to himself as he reflected upon the matter,
"give me a grave to dig for choice."
Homer Wilson passed the church that day just as they were singing that
lugubrious paraphrase. He smiled a little to himself, and went on,
saying, "Very cheerful that--very; but they haven't anymore idea of
returning to dust than I have, at least not for a while." But it
seemed he could not get beyond the echo of the singing. The voices
followed him far through the rarefied air; there came to him little
snatches of the gloomy words, persistently forcing themselves upon him.
He quickened his pace, and was soon beyond the farthest-reaching note,
and yet it seemed to vibrate in his ears. Once clear of the village,
he struck across country.
The sorrel showed red, the ragweed white, between the short stalks of
the yellow stubble; here and there in the lanes and by the gateways
were spots of bright green verdure, looking unhealthily brilliant among
these dull browns and yellows.
This was where the over-ripe grain, falling to earth, had sprung up to
wither at the touch of the first frost. Homer frowned a little at
this. It bespoke careless management, and the instinct of the farmer
was strong in him; but his brow speedily cleared, for his thoughts were
of far other things. His walk was very silent; the earth had indeed
"grown mute of song," and all these resting fields were dumb; no
crisping cricket, no whirring insect, no singing bird, nothing
disturbed the serenity of the hour. It seemed a hiatus in the
processes of nature--a suspension of all activity, a breathless pause
of ecstasy or pain, like the instant before a first kiss or the moment
before a final farewell.
Under these conditions thought was easy, and Homer went on and on, his
mind dwelling upon the one all-absorbing theme.
"Myron--Myron," he said once, aloud, but his voice seemed at fret with
the quietude, and he walked on swiftly, to escape its cheerless echo.
Presently he found himself entering the woodland, and knew he was a
full ten miles from Jamestown. A straight course through the woodland
brought him to the margin of the lake, which bayed in here in a sharp
curve.
Close to the margin lay great prostrate logs, whitened by wind and
weather till they looked like huge bleached bones. Beyond these were
stones and a narrow strip of gravelly beach, broken here and there by
boulders, against which the water lapped softly in a thousand ripples,
wearing away the rock into tiny cells, and honey-combing them with
gentle but resistless touches. Stretching out into the water, a
succession of large stones showed their stubborn heads, leading by
irregular steps out to where the last one, large enough to be a tiny
rocky islet, showed two feet high above the encircling water.
Homer made his way across these perilous stepping-stones, until he
reached the largest; sitting down, he sank into a reverie so profound
that he scarcely seemed to breathe. His face grew pale as he sat there
minute after minute, the water lap-lapping among the rocks, the trees
silent behind him, the sky mute above. Once he murmured a few words,
paraphrased with no thought of irreverence: "As a lamb before its
shearer is dumb, so she opened not her mouth." His voice faltered in
what might have been a sob, but was resolutely forced back.
The sun began to fall behind the trees before Homer rose. As he did
so, he cast a look at the rock upon which he had been resting; there,
caught in a crevice, lay an old-fashioned bullet. He picked it up and
looked at it lying in his palm. One could scarcely imagine it speeding
through the air upon a hurtful mission. It had wandered on to find a
victim, until, its impetus spent, it had fallen ingloriously to lie
upon this rock, mocked by the sunlight which it had been meant to
darken forever for some living creature. Homer slipped it into his
pocket and began to make his way shoreward, leaping lightly from stone
to stone. As he sprang to land again, he said between his teeth, "I'd
like to hear any she-cat in the crowd open her lips to my wife!" It
will be seen his reverie had developed its subject.
Homer held his way home happily, his eyes alight, his face aglow with
his old generous spirit. He was once more the Homer of the past.
Realizing this, he recognized the debt he owed Myron Holder, and paid
homage to that strong soul whose mute endurance of ignominy and
betrayal had shamed his own sleeping soul into life. It is plain to us
that Myron Holder's shame was Homer Wilson's salvation. It is an ugly
thought, but inevitable, that such instances may not be rare. But may
not that virtue we hold "too high and good for human nature's daily
food"--may not even that be bought too dear? What an ugly complexion
it would put upon our intolerant attitude to those fallen ones, if we
dreamed for one moment that our immaculate virtue was preserved by
their vice! It would be hard to ask us to renounce heaven, but if
heaven for one meant hell for another, it were at least well for us not
to blow the fire.
But Homer Wilson was not thinking of any generalizations; he was simply
concerned with the debt he owed Myron Holder and how to pay it; for,
and be it told with no thought of disparaging Homer Wilson, he felt he
would bestow an inestimable benefit upon Myron Holder by making her his
wife. He believed he would, at one blow, free her from the shackles of
shame. He never thought of the woman-soul that strove to justify
itself by rigid adherence to those vows that had seemed so sacred,
uttered, as they were, by lips that were almost divine to the listening
heart they had betrayed.
It must be remembered that Homer was nothing but a plain countryman.
It was therefore natural that he should look upon himself somewhat in
the light of a deliverer when he considered himself in relation to
Myron; and yet, inarticulate but existent, there was a hesitancy in his
heart, not born of self-conceit or paltry self-seeking, but rooted in
the knowledge of his own weakness in time of trial. But he put aside
all this; and as he pushed on towards Jamestown mused happily upon the
happiness that was his, for he loved Myron Holder. Poor Homer!
"Whoso encamps
To take a fancied city of delight,
Oh, what a wretch is he!"