conductor's face, as the sickly yellow flare struck on it, with a
curious sensation. He wondered if he had a wife and five children; if he
ever thought of running away from them; what he would think of a man who
did; what most people would think; what she would think.
She!--ah, she
had it all to find out yet.
"There's no place like home,"
said Tommy's little fiddle,
"O, no place like home."
Now this fiddle of Tommy's may have had a crack or so in it, and I
cannot assert that Tommy never struck a false note; but the man in the
corner was not fastidious as a musical critic; the sickly light was
flickering through the car, the quiver on the red flats was quite out of
sight, the train was shrieking away into the west,--the baleful, lonely
west,--which was dying fast now out there upon the sea, and it is a fact
that his hat went slowly down over his face again, and that his face
went slowly down upon his arm.
There, in the lighted home out upon the flats, that had drifted by
forever, she sat waiting now. It was about time for him to be in to
supper; she was beginning to wonder a little where he was; she was
keeping the coffee hot, and telling the children not to touch their
father's pickles; she had set the table and drawn the chairs; his pipe
lay filled for him upon the shelf over the stove. Her face in the light
was worn and white,--the dark rings very dark; she was trying to hush
the boys, teasing for their supper; begging them to wait a few minutes,
only a few minutes, he would surely be here then. She would put the baby
down presently, and stand at the window with her hands--
Annie's hands
once were not so thin--raised to shut out the light,--
watching,
watching.
The children would eat their supper; the table would stand untouched,
with his chair in its place; still she would go to the window, and stand
watching, watching. O, the long night that she must stand watching, and
the days, and the years!
"Sweet, sweet home,"
played Tommy.
By and by there was no more of "Sweet Home."
"How about that cove with his head lopped down on his arms?" speculated
Tommy, with a businesslike air.
He had only stirred once, then put his face down again.
But he was
awake, awake in every nerve; and listening, to the very curve of his
fingers. Tommy knew that; it being part of his trade to learn how to use
his eyes.
The sweet, loyal passion of the music--it would take worse playing than
Tommy's to drive the sweet, loyal passion out of Annie Laurie--grew
above the din of the train:--
"'T was there that Annie Laurie
Gave me her promise true."
She used to sing that, the man was thinking,--this other Annie of his
own. Why, she had been his own, and he had loved her once. How he had
loved her! Yes, she used to sing that when he went to see her on Sunday
nights, before they were married,--in her pink, plump, pretty days.
Annie used to be very pretty.
"Gave me her promise true,"
hummed the little fiddle.
"That's a fact," said poor Annie's husband, jerking the words out under
his hat, "and kept it too, she did."
Ah, how Annie had kept it! The whole dark picture of her married
years,--the days of work and pain, the nights of watching, the patient
voice, the quivering mouth, the tact and the planning and the trust for
to-morrow, the love that had borne all things, believed all things,
hoped all things, uncomplaining,--rose into outline to tell him how she
had kept it.
"Her face is as the fairest
That e'er the sun shone on,"
suggested the little fiddle.
That it should be darkened forever, the sweet face! and that he should
do it,--he, sitting here, with his ticket bought, bound for Colorado.
"And ne'er forget will I,"
murmured the little fiddle.
He would have knocked the man down who had told him twenty years ago
that he ever should forget; that he should be here to-night, with his
ticket bought, bound for Colorado.
But it was better for her to be free from him. He and his cursed
ill-luck were a drag on her and the children, and would always be. What
was that she had said once?
"Never mind, Jack, I can bear anything as long as I have you."
And here he was, with his ticket bought, bound for Colorado.
He wondered if it were ever too late in the day for a fellow to make a
man of himself. He wondered--
"And she's a' the world to me,
And for bonnie Annie Laurie
I'd lay me down and dee,"
sang the little fiddle, triumphantly.
Harmon shook himself, and stood up. The train was slackening; the
lights of a way-station bright ahead. It was about time for supper and
his mother, so Tommy put down his fiddle and handed around his faded
cap.
The merchant threw him a penny, and returned to his tax list. The old
lady was fast asleep with her mouth open.
"Come here," growled Harmon, with his eyes very bright.
Tommy shrank
back, almost afraid of him.
"Come here," softening, "I won't hurt you. I tell you, boy, you don't
know what you've done to-night."
"Done, sir?" Tommy couldn't help laughing, though there was a twinge of
pain at his stout little heart, as he fingered the solitary penny in the
faded cap. "Done? Well, I guess I've waked you up, sir, which was about
what I meant to do."
"Yes, that is it," said Harmon, very distinctly, pushing up his hat,
"you've waked me up. Here, hold your cap."
They had puffed into the station now, and stopped. He emptied his purse
into the little cap, shook it clean of paper and copper alike, was out
of the car and off the train before Tommy could have said Jack Robinson.
"My eyes!" gasped Tommy, "that chap had a ticket for New York, sure!
Methuselah! Look a here! One, two, three,--must have been crazy; that's
it, crazy."
"He'll never find out," muttered Harmon, turning away from the station
lights, and striking back through the night for the red flats and home.
"He'll never find out what he has done, nor, please God, shall she."
It was late when he came in sight of the house; it had been a long tramp
across the tracks, and hard; he being stung by a bitter wind from the
east all the way, tired with the monotonous treading of the sleepers,
and with crouching in perilous niches to let the trains go by.
She stood watching at the window, as he had known that she would stand,
her hands raised to her face, her figure cut out against the warm light
of the room.
He stood still a moment and looked at her, hidden in the shadow of the
street, thinking his own thoughts. The publican, in the old story,
hardly entered the beautiful temple with more humble step than he his
home that night.
She sprang to meet him, pale with her watching and fear.
"Worried, Annie, were you? I haven't been drinking; don't be
frightened,--no, not the theatre, either, this time.
Some business,
dear; business that delayed me. I'm sorry you were worried, I am, Annie.
I've had a long walk. It is pleasant here. I believe I'm tired, Annie."
He faltered, and turned away his face.
"Dear me," said Annie, "why, you poor fellow, you are all tired out.
Sit right up here by the fire, and I will bring the coffee. I've tried
so hard not to let it boil away, you don't know, Jack, and I was so
afraid something had happened to you."
Her face, her voice, her touch, seemed more than he could bear for a
minute, perhaps. He gulped down his coffee, choking.
"Annie, look here." He put down his cup, trying to smile and make a jest
of the words. "Suppose a fellow had it in him to be a rascal, and nobody
ever knew it, eh?"
"I should rather not know it, if I were his wife," said Annie, simply.
"But you couldn't care anything more for him, you know, Annie?"
"I don't know," said Annie, shaking her head with a little perplexed
smile, "you would be just Jack, _any how_."
Jack coughed, took up his coffee-cup, set it down hard, strode once or
twice across the room, kissed the baby in the crib, kissed his wife, and
sat down again, winking at the fire.
"I wonder if He had anything to do with sending him," he said,
presently, under his breath.
"Sending whom?" asked puzzled Annie.
"Business, dear, just business. I was thinking of a boy who did a little
job for me to-night, that's all."
And that is all that she knows to this day about the man sitting in the
corner, with his hat over his eyes, bound for Colorado.
One of the Elect.
"Down, Muff! down!"
Muff obeyed; he took his paws off from his master's shoulders with an
injured look in his great mute eyes, and consoled himself by growling at
the cow. Mr. Ryck put a sudden stop to a series of gymnastic exercises
commenced between them, by throwing the creature's hay down upon her
horns; then he watered his horse, fed the sheep, took a look at the
hens, and closed all the doors tightly; for the night was cold, so cold
that he shivered, even under that great bottle-green coat of his: he was
not a young man.
"Pretty cold night, Muff!" Muff was not blest with a forgiving
disposition; he maintained a dignified silence. But his master did not
feel the slight. Something, perhaps the cold, made him careless of the
dog to-night.
The house was warm, at least; the light streamed far out of the kitchen
window, down almost to the orchard. He passed across it, showing his
figure a little stooping, and the flutter of gray hair from under his
hat; then into the house. His wife was busied about the room, a pleasant
room for a kitchen, with the cleanest of polished floors and whitened
tables; the cheeriest of fires, the home-like faces of blue and white
china peeping through the closet door; a few books upon a little shelf,
with an old Bible among them; the cosey rocking-chair that always stood
by the fire, and a plant or two in the south window. He came in,
stamping off the snow; Muff crawled behind the stove, and gave himself
up to a fit of metaphysics.
"Cold, Amos?"
"Of course. What else should I be, woman?"
His wife made no reply. His unusual impatience only saddened her eyes a
little. She was one of those women who would have borne a life-long
oppression with dumb lips. Amos Ryck was not an unkind husband, but it
was not his way to be tender; the years which had whitened his hair had
brought him stern experiences: life was to him a battle, his horizon
always that about a combatant. But he loved her.
"Most ready to sit down, Martha?" he said at last, more gently.
"In a minute, Amos."
She finished some bit of evening work, her step soft about the room.
Then she drew up the low rocking-chair with its covering of faded
crimson chintz, and sat down by her husband.
She did this without noise; she did not sit too near to him; she took
pains not to annoy him by any feminine bustle over her work; she chose
her knitting, as being always most to his fancy; then she looked up
timidly into his face. But there was a frown, slight to be sure, but
still a frown, upon it, neither did he speak. Some gloomy, perhaps some
bitter thought held the man. A reflection of it might have struck across
her, as she turned her head, fixing her eyes upon the coals.
The light on her face showed it pale; the lines on her mouth were deeper
than any time had worn for her husband; her hair as gray as his, though
he was already a man of grave, middle age, when the little wife--hardly
past her sixteenth birthday--came to the farm with him.
Perhaps it is these silent women--spiritless, timid souls, like this
one,--who have, after all, the greatest capacity for suffering. You
might have thought so, if you had watched her. Some infinite mourning
looked out of her mute brown eyes. In the very folding of her hands
there was a sort of stifled cry, as one whose abiding place is in the
Valley of the Shadow.
A monotonous sob of the wind broke at the corners of the house; in the
silence between the two, it was distinctly heard. Martha Ryck's face
paled a little.
"I wish--" She tried to laugh. "Amos, it cries just like a baby."
"Nonsense!"
Her husband rose impatiently, and walked to the window.
He was not given
to fancies; all his life was ruled and squared up to a creed. Yet I
doubt if he liked the sound of that wind much better than the woman. He
thrummed upon the window-sill, then turned sharply away.
"There's a storm up, a cold one too."
"It stormed when--"
But Mrs. Ryck did not finish her sentence. Her husband, coming back to
his seat, tripped over a stool,--a little thing it was, fit only for a
child; a bit of dingy carpet covered it: once it had been bright.
"Martha, what _do_ you keep this about for? It's always in the way!"
setting it up angrily against the wall.
"I won't, if you'd rather not, Amos."
The farmer took up an almanac, and counted out the time when the
minister's salary and the butcher's bill were due; it gave occasion for
making no reply.
"Amos!" she said at last. He put down his book.
"Amos, do you remember what day it is?"
"I'm not likely to forget." His face darkened.
"Amos," again, more timidly, "do you suppose we shall ever find out?"
"How can I tell?"
"Ever know anything,--just a little?"
"We know enough, Martha."
"Amos! Amos!" her voice rising to a bitter cry, "we don't know enough!
God's the only one that knows enough. He knows whether she's alive, and
if she's dead he knows, and where she is; if there was ever any hope,
and if her mother--"
"Hope, Martha, for _her_!"
She had been looking into the fire, her attitude unchanged, her hands
wrung one into the other. She roused at that, something in her face as
if one flared a sudden light upon the dead.
"What ails you, Amos? You're her father; you loved her when she was a
little, innocent child."
When she was a child, and innocent,--yes. _That_ was long ago. He
stopped his walk across the room, and sat down, his face twitching
nervously. But he had nothing to say,--not one word to the patient woman
watching him there in the firelight, not one for love of the child who
had climbed upon his knee and kissed him in that very room, who had
played upon that little faded cricket, and wound her arms about the
mother's neck, sitting just so, as she sat now. Yet he _had_ loved her,
the pure baby. That stung him. He could not forget it, though he might
own no fathership to the wanderer.
Amos Ryck was a respectable man; he had the reputation of an honest,
pious farmer to maintain. Moreover, he was a deacon in the church. His
own life, stern in its purity, could brook no tenderness toward
offenders. His own child was as shut out from his forgiveness as he
deemed her to be from the forgiveness of his God. Yet you would have
seen, in one look at the man, that this blow with which he was smitten
had cleft his heart to its core.
This was her birthday,--hers whose name had not passed his lips for
years. Do you think he had once forgotten it since its morning? Did not
the memories it brought crowd into every moment? Did they not fill the
very prayers in which he besought a sin-hating God to avenge him of all
his enemies?
So many times the child had sat there at his feet on this day, playing
with some birthday toy,--he always managed to find her something, a doll
or a picture-book; she used to come up to thank him, pushing back her
curls, her little red lips put up for a kiss. He was very proud of
her,--he and the mother. She was all they had,--the only one. He used to
call her "God's dear blessing," softly, while his eyes grew dim; she
hardly heard him for his breaking voice.
She might have stood there and brought back all those dead birthday
nights, so did he live them over. But none could know it; for he did not
speak, and the frown knotted darkly on his forehead.
Martha Ryck looked
up at last into her husband's face.
"Amos, if she _should_ ever come back!" He started, his eyes freezing.
"She won't! She--"
Would he have said "she _shall_ not?" God only knew.
"Martha, you talk nonsense! It's just like a woman.
We've said enough
about this. I suppose He who's cursed us has got his own reasons for it.
We must bear it, and so must she."
He stood up, stroking his beard nervously, his eyes wandering about the
room; he did not, or he could not, look at his wife.
Muff, rousing from
his slumbers, came up sleepily to be taken some notice of. She used to
love the dog,--the child; she gave him his name in a frolic one day; he
was always her playfellow; many a time they had come in and found her
asleep with Muff's black, shaggy sides for a pillow, and her little pink
arms around his neck, her face warm and bright with some happy dream.
Mr. Ryck had often thought he would sell the creature; but he never had.
If he had been a woman, he would have said he could not.
Being a man, he
argued that Muff was a good watch-dog, and worth keeping.
"Always in the way, Muff!" he muttered, looking at the patient black
head rubbed against his knee. He was angry with the dog at that moment;
the next he had repented; the brute had done no wrong.
He stooped and
patted him. Muff returned to his dreams content.
"Well, Martha," he said, coming up to her uneasily, "you look tired."
"Tired? No, I was only thinking, Amos."
The pallor of her face, its timid eyes and patient mouth, the whole
crushed look of the woman, struck him freshly. He stooped and kissed her
forehead, the sharp lines of his face relaxing a little.
"I didn't mean to be hard on you, Martha; we both have enough to bear
without that, but it's best not to talk of what can't be helped,--you
see."
"Yes."
"Don't think anything more about the day; it's not--it's not really good
for you; you must cheer up, little woman."
"Yes, Amos."
Perhaps his unusual tenderness gave her courage; she stood up, putting
both arms around his neck.
"If you'd only try to love her a little, after all, my husband! He would
know it; He might save her for it."
Amos Ryck choked, coughed, and said it was time for prayers. He took
down the old Bible in which his child's baby-fingers used to trace their
first lessons after his own, and read, not of her who loved much and was
forgiven, but one of the imprecatory Psalms.
When Mrs. Ryck was sure that her husband was asleep that night, she rose
softly from her bed, unlocked, with noiseless key, one of her bureau
drawers, took something from it, and then felt her way down the dark
stairs into the kitchen.
She drew a chair up to the fire, wrapped her shawl closely about her,
and untied, with trembling fingers, the knots of a soft silken
handkerchief in which her treasures were folded.
Some baby dresses of purest white; a child's little pink apron; a pair
of tiny shoes, worn through by pattering feet; and a toy or two all
broken, as some impatient little fingers had left them; she was such a
careless baby! Yet they never could scold her, she always affected such
pretty surprises, and wide blue-eyed penitence: a bit of a queen she was
at the farm.
Was it not most kindly ordered by the Infinite Tenderness which pitieth
its sorrowing ones, that into her still hours her child should come so
often only as a child, speaking pure things only, touching her mother so
like a restful hand, and stealing into a prayer?
For where was ever grief like this one? Beside this sorrow, death was
but a joy. If she might have closed her child's baby-eyes, and seen the
lips which had not uttered their first "Mother!"
stilled, and laid her
away under the daisies, she would have sat there alone that night, and
thanked Him who had given and taken away.
But _this_,--a wanderer upon the face of the earth,--a mark, deeper
seared than the mark of Cain, upon the face which she had fondled and
kissed within her arms; the soul to which she had given life, accursed
of God and man,--to measure this, there is no speech nor language.
Martha Ryck rose at last, took off the covers of the stove, and made a
fresh blaze which brightened all the room, and shot its glow far into
the street. She went to the window to push the curtain carefully aside,
stood a moment looking out into the night, stole softly to the door,
unlocked it, then went upstairs to bed.
The wind, rising suddenly that night, struck sharply through the city.
It had been cold enough before, but the threatened storm foreboded that
it would be worse yet before morning. The people crowded in a warm and
brilliant church cast wandering glances from the preacher to the painted
windows, beyond which the night lay darkly, thought of the ride home in
close, cushioned carriages, and shivered.
So did a woman outside, stopping just by the door, and looking in at the
hushed and sacred shelter. Such a tempe