Part 8

After what seemed days of anguish she found herself in the stifling atmosphere of the railroad station, where she would have to wait two hours for a homeward-bound train. She shrank into a corner and tried to forget herself in sleep, but every faculty was on the alert with an unnatural tension. Women with tired faces and illy dressed babies sank upon the seats about her and silently waited for their trains, or in jarring, monotonous voices, and the minor keys always used by late passengers, discussed the ailments of their neighbors and the high price of goods. A crowd of rough fellows sauntered by outside the windows and filled the air with coarse jokes and snatches of ribald song. Charity clenched her little hands that Tom had kissed under the princess-pine and endured it all, with her eyes on the grimy face of the clock, until the train backed into the station and bore her away.

At a little before midnight she reached her own home. While she stood on the worn door-stone, her whole frame trembling from exhaustion and the long agony of that evening, her eyes fell on Tom’s footprints of the night before. For one moment a hard look came into her face; then she suddenly stooped, kissed the light snow as if it had been a cold, dead face, and moaning, “O Tom, Tom, how could you!” with a sob like that of a hurt child, turned and went in out of the night. And this was her Christmas Eve.

IV

When Charity awoke next morning the sun was shining cheerfully in upon the smooth yellow floor of her little room and its mats of braided rags. The sky was of the bluest and the earth of the whitest; a flock of sparrows were wishing each other Merry Christmas in the boughs of an old appletree near by; the cattle in the barn, contentedly ruminating over their morning allowance of hay, seemed rehearsing to each other the old story of the manger and the wonderful night in Palestine. As these pleasant sights and sounds stole in upon the girl’s senses, a happy smile broke upon her lips and she felt at peace with the whole world. Then came, like a flash of red lightning out of the sparkling blue sky, the memory of the preceding day. Her brain reeled under the shock of returning recollection, as, one by one, every kindly evasive word of her informants came back to her. But Charity was a girl of quick impulses and decided action. In five minutes she had made up her mind what to do. Half an hour later she was standing behind grandmother’s chair at Farmer Ralston’s with white face and set lips. The family, she found, were somewhat concerned about Tom’s absence, but they had not been in any real alarm, as he might have changed his plans and remained in the city, leaving Charity with her friends for the night. Now they crowded about her, all asking questions at once, and growing momently more frightened at her silence. She managed to tell them that Tom had not kept his appointment--that she could learn nothing definite about him--that she had guessed from what little information she had been able to obtain, that he had been taken sick and carried to the hospital--or somewhere; it was nothing serious, she was sure, and at any rate she was going up to the city that morning on the train to find out all about it. Tom’s father was too old and feeble to undertake the trip, and his sister had better not leave home that day--Christmas. She could do better alone, as she knew the streets pretty well (here her voice failed her a little), and besides, it would only worry Tom to see them all coming. So she went as she wished to, alone.

Arriving in the city, she examined a directory in the nearest drug store and copied off the numbers and localities of all the police stations in the city proper. Then she found her way without much trouble to the market and asked the tall, broad-shouldered policeman on duty there for directions to the nearest station. He looked down pityingly on the young girl, appealing to him with her white face and eyes that betrayed her suffering on that glad Christmas morning.

“Nothing serious, is it, miss? A fight, maybe, or something o’ that sort?”

“Oh, no, sir! I only want to see if--if--somebody”--

The kind-hearted officer guessed her trouble immediately.

“I see, I see,” said he, softening his voice still more. “He didn’t get home last night after he was paid off. Well, I guess you’ll find it all right; anyway, I hope you will. Take your first turn to the left, and two blocks further you’ll come to my station. Tell the sergeant you saw Brown, and that I sent you to him for information.”

Charity thanked him with a grateful look that was better than words, and moved with rapid steps along the icy sidewalk in the direction indicated. She was courteously received at the station, but no one knew anything about Tom. Nor did they in the next station she visited, nor in the third or fourth. It was now nearly noon, and people were beginning to sit down to their Christmas dinners. The table at Farmer Ralston’s was always a jolly place, and at Christmas time the fun was uproarious. Charity had been invited every year since she could remember, and she gave a little gulp as she thought of the row of bright, laughing faces that would have been gathered in the old kitchen, still sweet with the resinous odors of the evergreen that had lain there in piles in those last happy days that now seemed ages ago. Wearily she mounted the granite steps of Station Five and repeated her question. The lieutenant, a brisk, wiry man, with a heavy gray moustache and little, piercing eyes, cast a quick glance at her and consulted his book. Presently he gave a little nod, and raising his voice, called out, “Norcross, here a minute!”

A uniformed officer in an adjoining room opened himself like a kind of long jack-knife, rose from the bench where he had been reclining and stood at the walnut rail in front of his superior, awaiting orders. The lieutenant took a key from the rack at his side and handed it to Norcross.

“This lady wants to see No. 3. Show her down.”

The officer bowed respectfully and led the way down a flight of stone steps into what at first appeared to be a sort of cellar, with grated windows near the ceiling on one side and a row of iron-barred doors on the other.

“There,” said the officer, pointing.

Charity paused a moment and pressed her hand against her heart; for a moment she could not have spoken, it beat so fiercely. Then she advanced across the brick floor, and standing by the door of Cell No. 3, looked in through the bars.

At first she could see nothing, but, as her eyes became accustomed to the dim light, she could distinguish at one side a narrow iron bed, and lying motionless upon it, his head buried in his arms, a crumpled, stained, wretched figure--yes, Tom!

The rustle of the girl’s dress fell upon his ear. He raised his head slightly, recognized the sound, turned away again without looking her in the face, and shook with such a tempest of sobs that Charity trembled and could not speak the grave, deliberate words she had prepared on the way.

“Landlord, fill the flowing bowl!”

sang some poor creature shrilly, two or three doors away. How Charity remembered all these things afterward! While the officer stepped aside to quiet the noisy prisoner she forced herself at last to speak.

“Mr. Ralston”--Tom started, and she saw his grasp tighten on the iron rail of the bed, “I have come to take you away from this place. I shall send for the bail commissioner at once” (she had learned her lesson well, poor child!), “so that you can catch the two o’clock train. No!” she went on quickly, checking him with a gesture as he was about to speak, “you mustn’t stay here another night, nor another hour. It would kill your father if he knew it, and we couldn’t answer his questions to-night.”

The strong man bowed his head again, without a word. She hesitated an instant, then left him, and walked across the floor and up the stone stairway with a firm step. Tom looked after her wistfully, but she did not even glance toward his cell. Within half an hour he was sent for, and found Charity, with the commissioner and the sergeant, sitting behind the rail, in the room above. The bail was quickly arranged, the officer handed over a jack-knife and a few coppers he had taken from Tom’s pockets the night before, and told him he could go where he pleased until nine o’clock the next morning, when the court opened.

There was a constrained silence for a moment in the little office. At last Tom raised his eyes, with a look in them half questioning, half appealing, to the girl’s white face, at the same time involuntarily extending his hand toward her. For the first time in his life he found no response in the brown eyes, staring stonily out of the barred windows.

His hand slowly dropped to his side. With a dazed look he turned first to the officers, then to Charity, as if he did not understand. Still there was no response in the brown eyes, staring stonily out of the barred windows. Still Tom stood there helplessly, not quite understanding it all. Glancing at his stained and rumpled clothes he brushed them a little, mechanically, passed his hand over his forehead once or twice, then turned humbly toward the door, passed out bareheaded and was gone.

How Charity found her way home she never knew. When she entered her own little chamber at dusk and buried her aching head in her pillow, she had a vague recollection of wandering about the gay city streets for hours, of finally seeking the railroad station, of cooling her hot forehead against the frosty pane of the car, and watching the snowflakes that came faster and faster from the darkening sky. Tom had come home, the station-master had told her carelessly, and that was all she cared to know.

How he endured the ignominy of appearing and paying his fine in the municipal court the next day, she did not ask; nor did she even see him for a week. After the excitement of that gloomy Christmas came, with the reaction, a complete nervous exhaustion, which mercifully spared her the torture of questioning eyes and tongues until beyond New Year’s--that should have been her wedding-day.

Meanwhile she wavered irresolutely between one and another course of action. Now she felt she must cry out to him to forgive her own cruel hardness in his time of trouble; now the Puritan blood she had inherited asserted itself, and her face grew hard again as she thought of his weakness.

The meeting could be put off no longer. It came, and in the same dear old kitchen where they had worked together. The man looked straight into her eyes and said, quietly:

“Charity, I have done you and myself a great wrong. I shall try to do better. God knows how hard I shall try--am trying! Will you forgive me? Will you help me?”

After all, she was hardly prepared for this, and though she began bravely enough with, “Mr. Ralston,” she soon broke down altogether. “Of course,” she told him, “the wedding must be postponed indefinitely. Further than that--I can’t tell what--O Tom! how could”--she began afresh, but stopped at his look, and slowly walked out of the room and house.

V

Slowly the long weeks of late winter succeeded each other, alike monotonous, gray and dreary. Tom Ralston worked, at first manfully, then doggedly, on the farm, fighting with a strong will against public opinion and private temptation. Everybody had heard of his fall. Young girls eyed him curiously from the opposite side of the road, and the frequenters of the village store gathered at night to sit around the stove, heels in air, and bring out stories of old Major Ralston, two or three generations back, whose dissipations had been town talk; and the gossips gravely wagged their heads and said: “’Twas bound to crop out sooner or later.”

So passed the icy months, and song-sparrows and bluebirds began to flit among the naked boughs like dreams of spring. Following them came the robins, plump and cheery embodiments of summer. One morning in April the maples and oaks stretched out their arms, full of rosy and restless baby leaves born in the night. The heats of July parched the land; September laid her gentle hand upon its brow until it was refreshed and slept.

Still Tom Ralston worked on, through sun and shower, seed-time and harvest, beginning at last to win approving nods and kindly smiles and words from his self-appointed critics. Still Charity, with heavy heart, went about her routine of household duties, from which all the sweetness, the vague looking forward, the pretty, girlish longing which had of late clothed them were gone. When she met Tom, as she was often obliged to, she spoke not coldly indeed, but as to a mere acquaintance. Right or wrong, she had conscientiously chosen her course, and she would keep it to the end. She would never marry a man who might become a drunkard, and perhaps leave his curse to be inherited by his innocent children.

It was five days before Christmas when Charity, having finished her daily tasks, stole away to spend the last hour or two of the short winter afternoon in her favorite walk, an old logging-path through the pine woods. The air was deliciously clear and sweet. Overhead, a flock of chickadees called to her merrily, and hung upside down among the tasseled boughs in search of insects and other small bird food. Not an anxious search, by any means; rather a contented one, on the whole, as if they were quite sure their daily bread had been given them, and they were only to see that it was not wasted. Charity half unconsciously took note of their happy little movements to and fro, as, for the hundredth time, she went over and over the arguments against forgiving Tom. She had just reached the triumphant “lastly,” in her course of reasoning, when, suddenly startled by the breaking of a twig, she glanced up, to see the subject of her syllogisms not twenty feet away, gathering evergreen. Like the rushing waters of a great tide, sweeping away her artificial landmarks and barriers, came the overwhelming conviction that it was she, and not the man before her, who needed forgiveness.

At the sound of her dress, Tom, too, had started up, as he did in the cell a year ago; but presently went on with his task, stooping low over a refractory vine of princess pine.

“It was the least I could do,” he said humbly, and with evident effort. “I shall take it up to the city myself and sell it for the girls.”

Something in her very silence, or perhaps a slight exclamation that escaped her lips, made him look up. She stood there, alternately paling and flushing, with a look in her eyes he had not seen for many a long day. He sprang to his feet, but she put out her hand to check him.

“Tom,” she began, with quivering lip, “dear Tom, can you forgive”--

What was the use of her hand then! If she had been surrounded by Napoleon’s Old Guard I believe Tom would have got at her somehow. Forgive her! Bless you, if you had seen him for the next five minutes, or had heard them talk as they walked home together beneath the pines, you would have been puzzled to know which forgave or which was forgiven, or which had done right or wrong, or whether either had ever doubted the other for an instant of their lives.

“‘Suffereth long and is kind,’” whispered grandmother that night, stroking the girl’s brown hair.

Of course Tom went home with her afterward, in the old way, and made footprints again before her door, while the moon smiled to itself and poured down its silvery blessing upon them.

So they had a merry Christmas after all, and a New Year’s wedding, on which occasion grandmother was resplendent in fresh ribbons, and the girls laughed and cried by turns.

The hard, dreary year of Tom’s struggle is long since past, but as Christmastide draws nigh and the wreaths are hung at the windows, Charity Ralston, the dearest and brightest little woman in all the country, looks fondly into her husband’s strong, manly face, and lays her cheek upon his shoulder in a way that tells him she remembers. He, too, has never forgotten, and, standing there in the twilight, with the sweet Christmas incense of the evergreen about them, he tells her again how he endured, and hoped, and loved, and ends by holding her close in his arms, while she whispers, “Merry Christmas, Tom!”

XI

THROUGH THE STORM

I

“’Lisbeth, ’Lisbeth, what ye doin’ out there?”

It was a sharp, high-strung voice, yet not loud nor ill-natured. The speaker stood at an open door between the kitchen and an outer porch, the latter built of rough boards and showing little wet streaks on the floor, where the storm had thrust in its snowy fingers the night before. The silence of the place was broken at intervals by a regular series of dull blows, lasting two or three minutes and interspersed with muffled splashings.

“’Lisbeth, can’t ye leave off churnin’ a minute? I want my specs.”

“All right, father, I’ll find ’em for ye: ’s--almost--come!” The last words were emphasized by such an energetic pounding that the window-sashes, with their small, old-fashioned panes, rattled like cymbals.

“There! there! ye needn’t knock the bottom out’n the churn,” said the first speaker, with a movement among the wrinkles of his face that betokened a smile. “I c’n hold on a spell longer, I guess. Jest bring me in a mug o’ the buttermilk when ye’ve got threw.” The keen air swept through the porch and lifted the leaves of a yellow-covered almanac that hung against the wall. The old man took it down from its nail, and closed the door with a shiver. “Wind’s shiftin’ back,” he mused. “Soon’s ever I git my glasses I’ll see what the almanac says. ’T ain’t much use fer Wesley to break out the road, even ’f the Hill-folks _is_ comin’. ’Twill be over the walls ’fore the train’s in.” He walked slowly to a pile of wood that lay near the fireplace, paused before it a moment, with a shrewd look, whistling in a sort of whisper, then picked out a stout birch stick with the bark hanging in strips and laid it with great deliberation on the fire, which was already crackling and roaring up the chimney in a broad blaze and sending its generous glow to the farthest corner of the room.

A few moments later the door opened and showed a quiet little figure and a cheery face that irresistibly suggested Thanksgiving, Christmas, comfort, and reliableness, all in one. It was evident that if her forty years or so had brought her many sorrows they had given a wonderful inward peace and strength that is not afraid of evil tidings. She was dressed plainly, with her sleeves rolled up to the elbows. “Here’s your milk, father; and there’s your glasses now, right on top of your head,” she said, stooping forward a little and speaking in loud, clear tones.

“Lor’ sakes! so they be. I declare, I’m gittin’ so forgitful, ’n’ I can’t hear no one ’bout the house but you, ’Lisbeth. Strange how my hearin’ ’s failed me this year! If’t wa’n’t for you”--Here his voice quavered a little, but he was happily interrupted by the entrance of a broad-shouldered, clear-eyed young fellow, who advanced to the fire, and, holding out his hands to its genial warmth, stamped off upon the brick hearth a few bits of snow that had clung to his stout boots.

“Well, grandfather, we’ve got a ‘spell o’ weather’ this time,” he shouted. “Old Bonny Beag has her nightcap on, and I saw two or three flakes as I came in. ’Lisbeth,” he continued, “the visitors up at the Hill won’t any _more_ than get there to-day, I guess. Sam Fifield, down at the depot, says he has orders to have a pung ready for a lot of boxes and a sleigh for the women and children that are coming down to Christmas. I’ve broken out as far as the Corner; beyond that it’s good roading for quite a piece. The steers are as near being tired out as ever I saw them. Breakfast ’most ready?”

In a few minutes more the table was pulled out from the wall, and a chip thrust under one of its feet to offset the unevenness of the floor. Upon the spotless cloth were set three blue china plates, with pictures of stately castles rising from lambent seas and numerous swans disporting themselves therein; then came brown-jacketed potatoes, a big pot of coffee, a pile of yesterday’s doughnuts, an apple pie with one piece cut out, a plate of smoking hot biscuit, and a dish of golden butter. A small platter, containing two or three slices of “frizzled” pork, was placed by the old man’s plate.

Meanwhile, the starry flakes came faster and faster. Some of the more adventurous alighted on the kitchen window and gazed in until they were finally melted at the sight. A few ventured down into the well, and, drifting against the mossy stones, gave to the slender ferns that peeped from the chinks the food they had gathered in the skies; others found their way through a broad crack into the barn and fell noiselessly upon the floor with its hayseed carpet, thereupon causing much wonderment and grave discussion among the fowls, who were exchanging views in low tones on the topics of the morning. If you had been in the woods, you would have heard the tick-ticking of the tiny crystals, like the dancing of myriads of fairy feet, upon the dry leaves which still clung to the oak and beech.

So fell the snowflakes over meadow and fallow, wood and hill, bringing the materials that should be built up into corn and wheat during the coming year and thus provide food for thousands who would then be reciting their prayers for daily bread, without a thought that the answers had begun so many months before.

Now, either by a preconcerted plan or by an impulse of the moment, one of the most daring of the advance guard of the storm resolved to have a wild ride before he gave up his substance to winds and earth; and so it came about that a chubby nose, which had previously been flattened against one of the plate-glass windows of a Pullman car on a northbound train, suddenly withdrew itself, and a childish voice exclaimed, “Oh, Miss Amory, it’s snowing! it’s snowing! Here’s a little mite of a flake on the window. Oh, mamma, won’t it be nice sleighing for Santa Claus! He can come right on the tops of the trees: I saw a lot that looked just like frosted cake.”

“Yes, dear; yes, dear,” said the quiet lady in the next chair, glancing up from her “Seaside” pamphlet. “Only don’t speak so loud, Maurice. You will disturb the other people in the car.”

“Miss Amory,” persisted the boy, but in lower tones, “won’t you go out and coast with me, and take a great, long, long sleigh-ride to-morrow?”

“Yes, Maurice, if mamma would like me to,” replied the one addressed, a little wearily. She had not yet quite schooled herself to her position, this young governess, and the constant reference of even such trifles as the boy’s request to a higher authority still jarred on her spirits. She had not, indeed, like most paper heroines, been accustomed to the luxuries of wealth, with phalanxes of servants devoting themselves exclusively to her service and amusement, but she had enjoyed the comforts of a well-to-do New England home, the independence of American girlhood, and the priceless blessing of a mother who understood her thoroughly and was always ready to sympathize with her daughter’s pleasures and troubles alike, to counsel or remain silent, as the case might be, and to help her out of all her girlish perplexities, from the choice of a ribbon to the treatment of an importunate suitor. It was a brave thing, this setting her face resolutely to the world, and she had accordingly made up her mind at the start to look for and meet every unpleasant concomitant to her new position without a murmur.