"We"ve spent eighteen hundred dollars in one year. I earn fifteen hundred a year and there"s six hundred in the bank. We"ve just one year and two months to live. We"d better begin to repent," he said to himself.
Then presently he began to wonder what the use of it all was. He had given Nannie shelter and protection--that was all there was to it.
They were no more to each other than strangers. He had done his utmost, and she was as far away from him as ever; that made an end of hope; he might as well give it up. At that moment there was nothing he would have liked better. What with the care and perplexity he had endured over women, cows, and hens, he was more than ready to wash his hands of the entire lot.
But Steve was unaccustomed to following inclination when duty pointed in another direction, so although he was apparently doing that now, yet he had no other thought than of returning to his post by-and-by.
He walked on in an aimless sort of fashion, merely because he did not know what else to do just then, and soon found himself near the cottage whose glorified windows attracted him on his tramp some time ago. It was dull enough now, for the departing sunlight streamed in another direction, leaving the little house in shadow. Steve would have pa.s.sed it without a thought had not a woman"s cry caught his ear--a bitter, wailing cry, on which came words as bitter:
"Oh, I"m sick of it all! Would G.o.d that I were dead!"
Without meaning to intrude on private grief, Steve stood stock-still.
There was something so horrible in the contrast between a cry of such lawless despair and the idea of the contentment and happiness for which that little house should stand that it fairly paralyzed the man"s steps, just as the motion of the heart is arrested by a shock.
The cottage stood on the edge of the woods. Just now these were bare and gaunt, and the steep-sided ravine to the left seemed to-day a barren crack in a gloomy landscape.
It was all of it unbearable, unendurable. Anything was better than this, and Steve turned with relief in the direction of a familiar train whistle, hurried to the station, and soon was speeding toward his former bachelor quarters.
How desolate the old building looked when he reached it! The sun had sunk below the tall chimney tops, and the narrow street lay in gloomy shadow. Nothing daunted, however, Steve entered, and forgetful of the custom of the building, he stepped to the elevator shaft. It was dark, but looking far up he thought he could discern a faint glimmer of the sunset. Some lines he once read came to him:
"The emptying tide of life has drained the iron channel dry; Strange winds from the forgotten day Draw down, and dream, and sigh:"
They were pa.s.sing and repa.s.sing him--these winds. A sigh, a certain coolness, a faint whisper--that was all as they entered the shaft and sped upward like ghosts of a busy world.
Steve turned and ran rapidly up the stairs. He could hardly fit his key, he was in such haste to escape from that lonesome hallway. Day was pa.s.sing out by the western gate when he entered his room, and it would seem that heaven, in all its untold beauty, had come forth to greet her. Such a sky! It fairly overwhelmed him, and he turned to the east, as one seeks shelter in the shadow from a too brilliant light.
Even the east was whispering the story, but gently and in cadences fit for weak human senses, just as winds in the tall tree-tops faintly repeat the harmonies of heaven.
To and fro Steve walked in the s.p.a.cious lonesome apartments. Was his present solitude an earnest of his future? Was he forever to be denied the warm human clasp of another"s hand? Was he doomed evermore to see the oncoming of the night from out some deserted room?
The west was fading now. Day had pa.s.sed and carried light and sunshine with her. The clouds were moving hither and yonder restlessly, and in their ghostly pa.s.sage they took on weird shapes.
Steve watched them with a strange interest--an interest just tinged with superst.i.tion, half rejecting, half receiving their import, something as one watches the shifting of cards in the hands of a wizard.
He looked out over the waters of the lake, but the east was leaden now; her lips were sealed; she had pa.s.sed silently into the night.
Even in the west there was but a fitful glowing, and the clouds came and went.
The room had grown black--insupportable! Steve could not endure it--he must light it in some way. A lamp would not do. It was a warm evening, wonderfully warm for that season, but he must have firelight.
He looked about him and soon found kindling and fuel, for he had as yet disturbed none of the room"s furnishings. His lease was not spent; he could use the place for storage for quite a time yet.
The warmth of the cheery flame was welcome to him, for despite the heat of the evening he felt a chilliness which he did not know meant fever. It was not among possibilities that a man of Steve"s fine sensitive fiber could do violence to his idea of right without disaster to his physical being. He had fled from his post of duty, he felt himself to be a deserter, and this deflection was necessarily accompanied by physical disturbance.
As he sat beside the bright blaze he heard Randolph telling of his successful wooing and saw him tilted back in his chair against the opposite wall of the chimney. Then he stepped from out the ingle-nook and stood in a little old cemetery. They were putting mother and Mary into the same grave, and he thought the gravediggers cruel because they hurled the clods of earth so heavily upon them.
The cemetery was growing colder now, and he wakened, oppressed with the dreariness of it all. He replenished his failing fire and then sat down to dream again, but this time he was not alone, for Nannie sat by the cheery little blaze--not across the way, but close by his side.
She had all her brilliant beauty, all her tantalizing, bewitching ways, but he no longer feared to touch her; no longer feared to smooth back the tangled curls and kiss the dear, piquant face, for the drawbridge was down, the gates were flung open, and Castle Delight was his at last.
It was a great moment for Steve. Now he had life and had it abundantly; now he had wife and hearthstone.
He wakened again in a cold, dark room, and he saw gleaming through the blackness a tearful, wistful face which he knew was Nannie"s. She was in trouble--she wanted something, she was calling him in weird, spirit fashion, and he must go!
XV
When Nannie went out into the garden she saw old Hayseed leaning over the fence contemplating some of the ruins of Steve"s vegetables. Glad of any diversion, she opened a conversation on the subject of Mr.
Seymour, of whose death she had heard that day. In far-away times, old Hayseed had known Mr. Seymour"s father.
"I didn"t think he could die," said Nannie. "He was always trying to, but I didn"t think he was really sick enough."
"He hed ter die ter vindercate hisself," said Hayseed. "Some folks, yer know, hez ter live ter set "emselves right, but this one "bleeged ter die. He was allers goin" on erbout his bein" out o" health, an"
n.o.body believed him, so he was "bleeged ter die. Mrs. Seymour"s young woman was tellin" me she tho"t he died to spite folks that wouldn"t "low he was sick. She said he was mean enough to do anything."
"He was; mean as he could be!" exclaimed Nannie. "He was so little and so narrow-minded, and he had no excuse for it either, for he had a good education and he"d been all over the world."
"Well, now, once in awhile ye see a prune that won"t swell. Ye put "em all in water alike, an" most on "em gits fat an" smooth, but this one stays small an" shriveled up. There"s no accountin" fer ther difference."
Nannie turned and walked toward the house. She was restless and felt at a loss to know what to do with herself. Since her caper in the garden Steve had left her absolutely to her own way, and she had found, as folks will soon or late, that nothing could be more dreary.
She finally started over to see her cousins, the Misfits, but on her way thither she had occasion to pa.s.s the house of some plain folk by the name of Meader, and she suddenly decided to go in there. It was the same house from which Steve had heard that anguished wail, and when Nannie entered, shortly after Steve had pa.s.sed on, she found Mrs.
Meader weeping bitterly. The woman was so far gone in misery that she did not resent Nannie"s entrance or her question.
"What is the matter?"
"Oh, I can"t stand it no longer. He don"t give me nothin" to git anything with, an" we can"t live on nothin". Whenever he gits mad he plagues me by keepin" everything out o" my han"s, an" he won"t answer when I ask him fer anything. I"d like to know if a woman an" five children kin live without money! Before I was married I used to earn some. I had enough to live on, but now, what with the cookin", an"
washin" an" nussin" all these babies, I ain"t no time ter earn a livin"!"
"I should say you _were_ earning it! You earn more than he does!"
exclaimed Nannie hotly.
"He don"t look at it that way," sobbed the woman. "He"s ferever makin"
me feel so beholten ter him fer every penny an" ter-day when I needed some money awful fer tea an" I went ter his pocket an" got it, he went on so afore ther children it seems like I can"t never look them in ther face agin. He said--he said"--she stammered amid her sobs--"thet I was a thief--a low-down common thief--that"s what he said, and the children heard him."
Nannie rose from her chair with clinched hands and a flaming face.
"Where is he?" she asked under her breath.
"He"s gone ter ther grocery. He ain"t working ter-day. He said he"d "tend ter the spendin" of the money. I couldn"t be trusted with it. He said thet, he did, afore the children."
And she broke down again.
Just then the man himself came walking in.
"What"s up now?" he asked when he saw Nannie"s face.
"You are!" she blazed, "and you"re a contemptible brute!"
His face flushed. He looked both ashamed and angry, but a man in his position is at a loss to know what to do when attacked by a woman outside his family. He had enough pride to shrink from this invasion of his affairs, but he did not know just how to resent it.