"Martha Sloan is goin' the way o' Jim," said Deems Lennon to his wife.
"See," and he pointed through the open window toward the cemetery. "I
seen her before Jim's stone, beggin' on her knees an' mumblin' with her
hands stretched out. She been that way a number o' times when I come
upon her as I was fixin' up the graves."
Mrs. Lennon, a stout, pleasant-faced woman, looked in the direction
indicated by her husband. Together they watched Martha Sloan,
white-haired, thin, and bent, making her way up the cemetery path. She
was nervous and her walk was broken by little, sudden pauses in which
she looked about.
"Poor soul," said Mrs. Lennon, "she's afraid. She ain't been herself
sence Dorothy died. Losin' the two children right after Jim has broken
her up completely."
"She's afraid for herself," said her husband. "If you heard her up there
by that stone you'd have thought she was speakin' to some one alive, to
some one who could do her things."
"Oh well, that's enough to make any one queer," Mrs. Lennon said. Then
she stopped, and watched the figure on the hillside.
"Look," said Mrs. Lennon, "look at her. She's down on her knees."
Deems stood by her near the window.
"That's it," he exclaimed. "That's exactly what she's been doing now for
some time. I heard her speak. I don't know where she got the idea. She
thinks Jim's following her--reaching out for her--trying to grasp her. I
heard her plead. I don't know what'll come of it."
They were both startled when, as suddenly as Martha Sloan had knelt, she
rose from her place before the gravestone and, moving in nervous haste,
ran down the pathway.
"Deems, we must go to her," said Mrs. Lennon. "Maybe we can do something
for her." And as they both hurried into the kitchen and out of the
house, Martha Sloan, panting and white-faced with fright, rushed to the
house.
"Deems," she gasped. "Deems, it's Jim. He's reaching out. He's reaching
out to seize me."
"Martha, calm yourself," said Deems, taking Martha Sloan's shaking hand
in his. "That ain't right. You're sensible. You mustn't think so much of
it. You must keep your mind away."
"That's right, Martha," Mrs. Lennon said, as she helped Martha Sloan
into the house. "You mustn't keep thinking of Jim, and keep going up
there all the time. There's many things waiting for you at home, and
when you're through there why don't you come over to us?"
But Martha Sloan, either not hearing or not heeding the words of Deems
and his wife, sat huddled, nervously whispering, more to herself than to
her friends. "It's Jim. It's his hand reaching out to me. He took
Dorothy. He took Joseph, and he's reaching out now to me. He can't stand
having me living."
She was nervous and in the power of a fear that was stronger than her
will. She sat uneasily looking about her as if knowing that she was safe
in the house of friends, but as if feeling herself momentarily in the
presence of something strange and frightful. She cast frightened looks
about her, at the room, at Mrs. Lennon, and at Deems. She looked at them
in silence as if she did not know how to speak to them until, prompted
by great uneasiness, she spoke in a loud whisper, "Take me home. Take me
home, Deems. I want to get away."
Deems slipped into his coat, said to his wife, "I'll be back soon,"
then, helping Martha from the chair, walked out with her.
"Come now, Martha, you know us well enough. We're your friends, aren't
we? And we tell you there's nothing to fear. It's all your believing.
There's nothing after you. There's nothing you need fear."
"You don't know. It was he took my two children. He took Dorothy. When
they laid her out in the parlor, I could just see him standing at her
head. He was cruel when he lived. He beat them; Dorothy and Joseph, they
hated him. And when they laid out Joseph after his fall, when the bridge
gave way, Jim was standing by his head, and his eyes were laughing at me
like he'd say, 'I took him, but now there's you.' And he's trying for me
now."
Deems was pleased that she was speaking. He hoped that in conversing she
would find respite from her thoughts.
"No, Martha," he said, "that wasn't Jim took Dorothy and Joseph. You
know there's a God that gives and takes. Their years were run. Can't you
see, Martha?"
"It was Jim who took. He couldn't see them living. When he lived he
couldn't see them growing up to be themselves. He took them like he took
me from you. D' you remember, Deems, how he came and in no time I was
his? He owned me completely."
Deems was silent. There was no arguing. Even now there was vividly alive
in his mind, and, he knew, in the minds of the other villagers, the
recollection of that sense of possession which went with Jim Sloan. He
recalled that William Carrol had hanged himself when he could not pay
Jim Sloan the debt he owed him. It was true that Jim Sloan had owned his
children as if they were pieces of property. The whole village had
learned to know this fact soon after these children had grown up. Deems,
recalling his feelings for Martha Sloan, remembered now the amazement,
the astonishment, with which he had viewed the change that came over
Martha immediately after her marriage to Jim Sloan.
She had been light-hearted and joyful as if overflowing with the
vitality natural to the country about the village. There had been
gladness in her laugh. Immediately after her marriage all this had
changed.
Martha had been wont to run lightly about her father's house. Her
movements had become suddenly freighted with a seriousness that was not
natural to her. Her laughter quieted to a restrained smile which in turn
gave way to a uniform seriousness. The whole village noted and remarked
the change. "He is older than she," they said, "and is making her see
things as he does."
When they reached the house, Martha, without a word, left Deems and
hurried in. Deems turned away, looking back and shaking his head, the
while he mumbled to himself, "There's no good in this. There's no good
for Martha."
He was struck motionless when suddenly he beheld Martha by the window.
He had thought her slightly composed when she had left him, for her
manner was more quiet than it had been. Now he was startled. Out of the
window she leaned, her eyes fastened on the distant gravestone--white,
large, and dominating--a shaft that rose upright like a gigantic spear
on the crest of the hill. He watched her face and head and saw that her
movements were frightened. As she moved her head--it seemed she was
following something with her eyes which, look as closely as he could, he
failed to make out--there was a jerkiness of movement that showed her
alert and startled.
From the musty, dark parlor Martha looked out on the cemetery. There,
clear in the evening light, stood the large white stone--a terrible
symbol that held her. To her nervous mind, alive with the creations of
her fear, it seemed she could read the lines,
JAMES SLOAN
BORN SEPT. 14, 1857
DIED NOV. 12, 1915
and below it, stamped clearly and illumined by her fright,
HIS FAITHFUL WIFE
MARTHA SLOAN
BORN AUG. 9, 1871. DIED----
At the thought of the word "Died," followed by the dash, she recoiled.
The dash reaching out to her--reaching to her--swept into her mind all
the graspingness of James which had squeezed the sweetness out of
life--all the hardness which had marked his possession of her. Was it
her mind, prodded by terror, that visualized it? There, seeming to
advance from the hill, from the cemetery, from the very gravestone which
was beginning to blot and blurr in her vision, she saw a hand--his hand!
It was coming--coming to her, to crush what of life was left in her.
Even in her own mind, it was a miracle that she had survived Jim's
tenacity. When Jim had died, she began suddenly to recover her former
manner of life. She began to win back to herself. It was as if, the
siege of Winter having lifted, the breath and warmth of Spring might now
again prevail.
Then had come the horrors of uncontrollable dreams followed by the death
by fire of Dorothy. That had shaken her completely.
She recalled their rescuing Dorothy, how they had dragged her out of the
fire, her clothes all burned off. They had sought to nurse her back to
health, and in the week before her daughter died she had learned
something of what had happened the night of the fire. In her sleep
Dorothy had heard herself called and she thought it was her father's
voice. She had arisen when she seemed to see beside her her father as he
had looked in life.
She had followed him to the barn and suddenly he had told her that he
had come back to take her with him as he had promised to before his
death. In her struggle to escape him she had flung the lantern. In the
parlor they had laid out Dorothy--a blackened, burnt frame.
All her care and love and solicitude she concentrated on Joseph. She
thought that perhaps by an intenser, all embracing love for Joseph she
would be enabled to defeat the spell that she felt hanging over her
life. Then, when it seemed that life would begin anew to take on a
definite meaning--Joseph, grown up, was giving purpose to it--she
remembered that some one had knocked timidly on the door and had
announced in a frightened voice: "Mrs. Sloan! There's been a terrible
accident, the bridge fell----?" She remembered that she had screamed,
"My Joseph! My boy!" and then had found herself in the parlor, the body
laid out on the couch.
She remembered suddenly that the parlor had seemed to contain the
presence of Jim. She had looked up to see dimly what seemed the figure
and face of her dead husband. In the eyes that seemed to be laughing she
read the threat, "I took him, but now there's you."
As these recollections flooded and flowed through her mind, a frightened
nervousness seized upon Martha, standing by the window. Somehow she was
being held by a fear to move. Something seemed to have robbed her of the
strength and resolution to turn from the window.
There came to her the impression that there was some one in the room
with her. The feeling grew subtly upon her and added to her fear of
turning around. So she kept her eyes looking out of the window up at
where the shaft of the gravestone stood. But, more clearly now than
before, she sensed something that seemed to reach out from the
gravestone and carry to her, and at the same time there grew the feeling
that the presence in the room was approaching her.
She was held in fright. All her nervous impulses impelled her to flight.
Like a whip that was descending over her head, came the mirage from the
gravestone until, in a mad, wild attempt to evade it, she flung about in
the room as if to dash across and away from the window. Suddenly she was
halted in her passage by the presence of Jim. The dim parlor was somehow
filled with a sense of his being there, and in the dusk near the
mantelpiece and at the head of the couch, there stood in shadowy outline
her husband, come back.
"Jim!" she uttered, in a frightened gasp, and threw her hands outward to
protect herself from his purpose. But she saw clearly the shadowy face
and eyes that said unmistakably, "I have come for you."
She was terror-bound. There was no advance, for moving forward meant
coming closer to that presence, meant walking into his very grasp.