Chapter 11
"That was about four o'clock, and it wasn't more than two hours till we heard a horse gallopin' way up the pike. I'd jest washed the supper dishes, and me and Abram was out on the back porch, and I had the baby in my arms. There was somethin' in the sound o' the horse's hoofs that told me he was carryin' bad news, and I jumped up, and says I, 'Abram, some awful thing has happened.' And he says, 'Jane, are you crazy?' I could hear the sound o' the gallopin' comin' nearer and nearer, and I rushed out to the front gate with Abram follerin' after me. We looked up the road, and there was Sam Amos gallopin' like mad on that young bay mare of his. The minute he saw us he hollered out to Abram: 'Git ready as quick as you can, and go to town! Harvey Andrews has had an apoplectic stroke, and I want you to bring the undertaker out here right away.'
"I turned around to say, 'What did I tell you?' But before I could git the words out, Abram was off to saddle and bridle old Moll. That was always Abram's way. If there was anything to be done, he did it, and the talkin' and questionin' come afterwards.
"Sam stopped at the gate and got off a minute to give his horse a breathin' spell. He said he was passin' Harvey's place about five o'clock and he heard a child screamin'. 'At first,' says he, 'I didn't pay any attention to it, I'm so used to hearin' children holler. But after I got past the house I kept hearin' the child, and somethin' told me to turn back and find out what was the matter. I went in,' said he, 'and follered the sound till I come to the stable-yard, and there was Harvey, lyin' on the ground stone dead, and Mary standin' over him lookin' like a crazy woman, and the children, pore little things, screamin' and cryin' and scared half to death.'
"The horse and buggy was standin' there, and Mary must 'a' found the body when she come back from town.
"'I got her and the children to the house,' says he; 'and then I started out to get some person to help me move the body, and, as luck would have it,' says he, 'I met the Crawford boys comin' from town, and between us we managed to get the corpse up to the house and laid it on the big settee in the front hall. And now,' says he, 'I'm goin' after Uncle Jim Matthews; and me and him and the Crawford boys'll lay the body out when the undertaker comes. And Marthy Matthews will have to come over and stay all night.
"Says I, 'Sam, how is Mary bearin' it?'
"He shook his head, and says he, 'The worst way in the world. She hasn't shed a tear nor spoke a word, and she don't seem to notice anything, not even the children. But,' says he, 'I can't stand here talkin'. There's a heap to be done yet, and Milly's lookin' for me now.'
"And with that he got on his horse and rode off, and I went into the house to put the children to bed. Then I set down on the porch steps to wait for Abram. The sun was down by this time, and there was a new moon in the west, and it didn't seem like there could be any sorrow and sufferin' in such a quiet, happy, peaceful-lookin' world. But there was poor Mary not a mile away, and I set and grieved over her in her trouble jest like it had been my own. I didn't know what had happened that day between Harvey and Mary. But I knew that Harvey had been struck down in the prime o' life, and that Mary had found his dead body, and that was terrible enough. From what I'd seen o' their married life I knew that Mary's loss wasn't what mine would 'a' been if Abram had dropped dead that day instead o' Harvey, but a man and woman can't live together as husband and wife and father and mother without growin' to each other; and whatever Mary hadn't lost, she had lost the father of her children, and I couldn't sleep much that night for thinkin' of her.
"The day of the funeral I went over to help Mary and get her dressed in her widow's clothes. She was actin' queer and dazed, and nothin' seemed to make much impression on her. I was fastenin' her crape collar on, and she says to me: 'I reckon you think it's strange I don't cry and take on like women do when they lose their husbands. But,' says she, 'you wouldn't blame me if you knew.'
"And then she dropped her voice down to a whisper, and says she, 'You know I married Harvey Andrews. But after I married him, I found that there wasn't any such man. I haven't got any cause to cry, for the man I married ain't dead. He never was alive, and so, of course, he can't be dead.'
"And then she began to laugh; and says she, 'I don't know which is the worst: to be sorry when you ought to be glad, or glad when you ought to be sorry.'
"And I says, 'Hush, Mary, don't talk about it. I know what you mean, but other folks might not understand.'
"Mary ain't the only one, child, that's married a man, and then found out that there _wasn't any such man_. I've looked at many a bride and groom standin' up before the preacher and makin' promises for a lifetime, and I've thought to myself, 'You pore things, you! All you know about each other is your names and your faces. You've got all the rest to find out, and nobody knows what you'll find out nor what you'll do when you find it out.'
"Folks said it was the saddest funeral they ever went to. Harvey's people all lived down in Tennessee. His father and mother had died long ago, and he hadn't any near kin except a brother and a sister; and they lived too far off to come to the funeral in time. Abram said to me after we got home: 'Well, I never thought I'd help to lay a friend and neighbor in the ground and not a tear shed over him.'
"If Mary had 'a' cried, we could 'a' cried with her. But she set at the head o' the coffin with her hands folded in her lap, and her mind seemed to be away off from the things that was happenin' around her. I don't believe she even heard the clods fallin' on the coffin; and when we started away from the grave Marthy Matthews leaned over and whispered to me: 'Jane, don't Mary remind you of somebody walkin' in her sleep?'
"Mary's mother and sister hadn't been with her in her trouble, for they happened to be down in Logan visitin' a great-uncle. So Marthy and me settled it between us that she was to stay with Mary that night and I was to come over the next mornin'. You know how much there is to be done after a funeral. Well, bright and early I went over, and Marthy met me at the gate. She was goin' out as I was comin' in. Says she, 'Go right up-stairs; Mary's lookin' for you. She's more like herself this mornin'; and I'm thankful for that.'
"The minute I stepped in the door I heard Mary's voice. She'd seen me comin' in the gate and called out to me to come up-stairs. She was in the front room, her room and Harvey's, and the closet and the bureau drawers was all open, and things scattered around every which way, and Mary was down on her knees in front of an old trunk, foldin' up Harvey's clothes and puttin' 'em away. Her hands was shakin', and there was a red spot on each of her cheeks, and she had a strange look out of her eyes.
"I says to her, 'Why, Mary, you ain't fit to be doin' that work. You ought to be in bed restin'.' And says she, 'I can't rest till I get everything straightened out. Mother and sister Sally are comin',' says she, 'and I want to get everything in order before they get here.' And I says, 'Now, Mary, you lay down on the bed and I'll put these things away. You can watch me and tell me what to do, and I'll do it; but you've got to rest.' So I shook everything out and folded it up as nice as I could and laid it away in the trunk, while she watched me. And once she said, 'Don't have any wrinkles in 'em. Harvey was always mighty particular about his clothes.'
"Next to layin' the body in the ground, child, this foldin' up dead folks' clothes and puttin' 'em away is one o' the hardest things people ever has to do. It's jest like when you've finished a book and shut it up and put it away on the shelf. I knew jest how Mary felt, when she said she couldn't rest till everything was put away. The life she'd lived with Harvey was over, and she was closin' up the book and puttin' it out of sight forever. Pore child! Pore child!
"Well, when I got all o' Harvey's clothes put away, I washed out the empty drawers, lined 'em with clean paper and laid some o' little Harvey's clothes in 'em, and that seemed to please Mary. The father was gone, but there was his son to take his place. Then I shut it up tight, and Mary raised herself up out o' bed and says she, 'Take hold, Jane, I'm goin' to take this to the attic right now.' And take it we did, though the trunk was heavy and the stairs so steep and narrer we had to stop and rest on every step. We pushed the trunk way back under the eaves, and it may be standin' there yet for all I know.
"When we got down-stairs, Mary drew a long breath like she'd got a big load off her mind, and says she, 'There's one more thing I want you to help me about, and then you can go home, Jane, and I'll go to bed and rest.' She took a key out of her pocket, and says she, 'Jane, this is the key to the little cabin out in the back yard. Harvey used to keep something in there, but what it was I never knew. As long as we lived together, I never saw inside of that cabin, but I'm goin' to see it now.'
"The children started to foller us when we went out on the back porch, but Mary give 'em some playthings and told 'em to stay around in the front yard till we come back. Then we went over to the far corner of the back yard where the cabin was, under a big old sycamore tree. I ricollect how the key creaked when Mary turned it, and how hard the door was to open.
"Mary started to go in first, and then she fell back, and says she, in a whisper, 'You go in first, Jane; I'm afraid.' So I went in first and Mary follered. For a minute we couldn't see a thing. There was two windows to the cabin, but they'd been boarded up from the outside, and there was jest one big crack at the top of one of the windows that let in a long streak of light, and you could see the dust dancin' in it. The door opened jest enough to let us in, and we both stood there peerin' around and tryin' to see what sort of a place we'd got into. The first thing I made out was a heap of old rusty iron. I started to take a step, and my foot struck against it. There was old bolts and screws and horseshoes and scraps of old cast iron and nails of every size, all laid together in a big heap. The place seemed to be full of somethin', but I couldn't see what it all was till my eyes got used to the darkness. There was a row of nails goin' all round the wall, and old clothes hangin' on every one of 'em. And down on the floor there was piles of old clothes, folded smooth and laid one on top o' the other jest like a washerwoman would fold 'em and pile 'em up. Harvey's old clothes and Mary's and the children's, things that any right-minded person would 'a' put in the rag-bag or given away to anybody that could make use of 'em; there they was, all hoarded up in that old room jest like they was of some value. And over in one corner was all the old worn-out tin things that you could think of: buckets and pans and milk-strainers and dippers and cups. And next to them was all the glass and china that'd been broken in the years Mary and Harvey'd been keepin' house. And there was a lot of old brooms, nothin' but stubs, tied together jest like new brooms in the store. And there was all the children's broken toys, dolls, and doll dresses, and even some glass marbles that little Harvey used to play with. The dust was lyin' thick and heavy over everything, and the spiderwebs looked like black strings hangin' from the ceilin'; but things of the same sort was all lyin' together jest like some woman had put the place in order.
"You've heard tell of that bird, child, that gathers up all sorts o' rubbish and carries it off to its nest and hides it? Well, I thought about that bird; and the heap of old iron reminded me of a little boy's pocket when you turn it wrong side out at night, and the china and glass and doll-rags made me think of the playhouses I used to make under the trees when I was a little girl. I've seen many curious places, honey, but nothin' like that old cabin. The moldy smell reminded me of the grave; and when I looked at all the dusty, old plunder, the ragged clothes hangin' against the wall like so many ghosts, and then thought of the dead man that had put 'em there, I tell you it made my flesh creep.
"Well, we stood there, me and Mary, strainin' our eyes tryin' to see into the dark corners, and all at once the meanin' of it come over me like a flash: _Harvey was a miser!_"
Aunt Jane stopped, took off her glasses and polished them on the hem of her gingham apron. I sat holding my breath; but, all regardless of my suspense, she dropped the thread of the story and followed memory in one of her capricious backward flights.
"I ricollect a sermon I heard when I was a gyirl," she said. "It ain't often, I reckon, that a sermon makes much impression on a gyirl's mind. But this wasn't any ordinary sermon or any ordinary preacher. Presbytery met in town that year, and all the big preachers in the state was there. Some of 'em come out and preached to the country churches, and old Dr. Samuel Chalmers Morse preached at Goshen. He was one o' the biggest men in the Presbytery, and I ricollect his looks as plain as I ricollect his sermon. Some preachers look jest like other men, and you can tell the minute you set eyes on 'em that they ain't any wiser or any better than common folks. But Dr. Morse wasn't that kind.
"You know the Bible tells about people walkin' with God and talkin' with God. It says Enoch walked with God, and Adam talked with Him. Some folks might find that hard to believe, but it seems jest as natural to me. Why many a time I've been in my gyarden when the sun's gone down, and it ain't quite time for the moon to come up, and the dew's fallin' and the flowers smellin' sweet, and I've set down in the summer-house and looked up at the stars; and if I'd heard a voice from heaven it wouldn't 'a' been a bit stranger to me than the blowin' of the wind.
"The minute I saw Dr. Morse I thought about Adam and Enoch, and I said to myself, 'He looks like a man that's walked with God and talked with God.'
"I didn't look at the people's hats and bonnets that day half as much as I usually did, and part of that sermon stayed by me all my life. He preached about Nebuchadnezzar and the image he saw in his dream with the head of gold and the feet of clay. And he said that every human being was like that image; there was gold and there was clay in every one of us. Part of us was human and part was divine. Part of us was earthly like the clay, and part heavenly like the gold. And he said that in some folks you couldn't see anything but the clay, but that the gold was there, and if you looked long enough you'd find it. And some folks, he said, looked like they was all gold, but somewhere or other there was the clay, too, and nobody was so good but what he had his secret sins and open faults. And he said sin was jest another name for ignorance, and that Christ knew this when he prayed on the cross, 'Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.' He said everybody would do right, if they knew what was right to do, and that the thing for us to do was to look for the gold and not the clay in other folks. For the gold was the part that would never die, and the clay was jest the mortal part that we dropped when this mortal shall have put on immortality.
"Child, that sermon's come home to me many a time when I've caught myself weighin' people in the balance and findin' 'em wantin'. That's what I'd been doin' all them years with pore Harvey. I'd seen things every once in a while that let in a little light on his life and Mary's, but the old cabin made it all plain as day, and it seemed like every piece o' rubbish in it rose up in judgment against me. I never felt like cryin' at Harvey's funeral, but when I stood there peerin' around, the tears burnt my eyes, and I says to myself, 'Clay and gold! Clay and gold!'
"The same thought must 'a' struck Mary at the same minute it did me, for she fell on her knees moanin' and wringin' her hands and cryin':
"'God forgive me! God forgive me! I see it all now. He couldn't help it, and I've been a hard woman, and God'll judge me as I judged Harvey.'
"The look in her eyes and the sound of her voice skeered me, and I saw that the quicker I got her out o' the old cabin the better. I put my hand on her shoulder, and says I, 'Hush, Mary. Get up and come back to the house; but don't let the children hear you takin' on so. You might skeer little Harvey.'
"She stopped a minute and stared at me, and then she caught hold o' my hand, and says she: 'No! no! the children mustn't ever know anything about it, and nobody must ever see the inside o' that awful place. Come, quick!' says she; and she got up from her knees and pulled me outside of the door and locked it and dropped the key in her apron pocket.
"Little Harvey come runnin' up to her, and I was in hopes the sight of the child would bring her to herself, but she walked on as if she hadn't seen him; and as soon as she got up-stairs she fell down in a heap on the floor and went to wringin' her hands and beatin' her breast and cryin' without tears.
"Honey, if you're done a wrong to a livin' person, you needn't set down and grieve over it. You can go right to the person and make it right or try to make it right. But when the one you've wronged is dead, and the grave lies between you, that's the sort o' grief that breaks hearts and makes people lose their minds. And that was what Mary Andrews had to bear when she opened the door o' that old cabin and saw into Harvey's nature, and felt that she had misjudged and condemned him.
"I couldn't do anything for a long time, but jest sit by her and listen while she called Harvey back from the dead, and called on God to forgive her, and blamed herself for all that had ever gone wrong between 'em. But at last she wore herself out and had to stop, and says I, 'Mary, I don't know what's passed between you and Harvey--' And she broke in, and says she:
"'No! no! you don't know, and nobody on this earth knows what I've been through. I used to feel like I was in an iron cage that got smaller and smaller every day, and I knew the day was comin' when it would shut in on me and crush me. But I wouldn't give in to Harvey, I wouldn't let him have his own way, and I fought him and hated him and despised him; and now I see he couldn't help it, and I feel like I'd been strikin' a crippled child.'
"A crippled child! That was jest what pore Harvey was; but I knew it wasn't right for Mary to take all the blame on herself, and says I:
"'Mary, if Harvey could keep other people from knowin' what he was, couldn't he have kept you from knowin' it, too? If he was free-handed to other people, what was to hinder him from bein' the same way to you?' Says I, 'If there's any blame in this matter it belongs as much to Harvey as it does to you. When you look at that old cabin,' says I, 'you can't have any hard feelin's toward pore Harvey. You've forgiven him, and now,' says I, 'there's jest one more person you've got to forgive, and that's yourself,' says I. 'It's jest as wrong to be too hard on yourself as it is to be too hard on other folks.'
"I never had thought o' that before, child, but I've thought of it many a time since and I know it's true. It ain't often you find a human bein' that's too hard on himself. Most of us is jest the other way. But Mary was one of that kind. I could see a change come over her face while I was talkin', and I've always believed them words was put in my mouth to give Mary the comfort and help she needed.
"She grabbed hold o' my hand, and says she:
"'Do you reckon I've got a right to forgive myself?' Says she, 'I know I'm not a mean woman by nature, but Harvey's ways wasn't my ways. He made me do things I didn't want to do and say things I didn't want to say, and I never was myself as long as I lived with him. But God knows I wouldn't 'a' been so hard on him if I'd only known,' says she. 'God may forgive me, but even if He does, it don't seem to me that I've got a right to forgive myself.'
"And says I, 'Mary, if you don't forgive yourself you won't be able to keer for the children, and you haven't got any right to wrong the livin' by worryin' over the dead. And now,' says I, 'you lie down on this bed and shut your eyes and say to yourself, "Harvey's forgiven me, and God's forgiven me, and I forgive myself." Don't let another thought come into your head. Jest say it over and over till you go to sleep, and while you're sleepin', I'll look after the children.'
"I didn't have much faith in my own remedy, but she minded me like a child mindin' its mother; and, sure enough, when I tiptoed up-stairs an hour or so after that, I found her fast asleep. Her mother and her sister Sally come while she was still sleepin', and I left for home, feelin' that she was in good hands.
"That night about half-past nine o'clock I went outdoors and set down on the porch steps in the dark, as I always do jest before bedtime. That's been one o' my ways ever since I was a child. Abram used to say he had known me to forgit my prayers many a night, but he never knew me to forgit to go outdoors and look up at the sky. If there was a moon, or if the stars was shinin', I'd stay out and wander around in the gyarden till he'd come out after me; and if it was cloudy, I'd set there and feel safe in the darkness as in the light. I always have thought, honey, that we lose a heap by sleepin' all night. Well, I was sittin' there lookin' up at the stars, and all at once I saw a bright light over in the direction of Harvey Andrews' place. Our house was built on risin' ground, and we could see for a good ways around the country. I called Abram and asked him if he hadn't better saddle old Moll and ride over and see if he couldn't help whoever was in trouble. But he said it was most likely some o' the neighbors burnin' brush, and whatever it was it would be out before he could git to it. So we set there watchin' it and speculatin' about it till it died down, and then we went to bed.
"The next mornin' I was out in the yard weedin' out a bed o' clove pinks, and Sam Amos come ridin' by on his big bay mare. I hollered to him and asked him if he knew where the fire was the night before. And says he, 'Yes, Aunt Jane; it was that old cabin on Harvey Andrews' place.' He said that Amos Matthews happened to be goin' by at the time and took down the fence-rails to keep it from spreadin', but that was all he could do. Sam said Amos told him there was somethin' mysterious about that fire. He said it must 'a' been started from the inside, for the flames didn't burst through the windows and roof till after he got there, and the whole inside was ablaze. But, when he tried to open the door, it was locked fast and tight. He said Mary and her mother and sister was all out in the yard, and Mary was standin' with her hands folded in front of her, lookin' at the burnin' house jest as calm as if it was her own fireplace. Amos asked her for the key to the cabin door, and she went to the back porch and took one off a nail, but it wouldn't fit the lock, and before she could get another to try, the roof was on fire and cavin' in. Amos told Sam the cabin appeared to be full of old plunder of all sorts, and you could smell burnt rags for a mile around.