Chapter 8

He did so simply because he could not stand it any longer. It stood to reason that there must be a way out of such active torments. And, after all, why not he as well as any other man? It was absurd to suppose that Winifred could ever be _in love_ with any man, as a man would be with her. It occurred to Will that the thing to do was natural enough, after all--not to ask Winifred's love, but to offer her his. And he walked down to Mrs. Stutt's to do it, one August evening, a little before school opened after vacation. He was in good spirits, too; to come to action and to speech, after so long repression, was an inestimable relief. And she had been doubly friendly to him all this time.

Mrs. Stutt was in her little strip of grass and oleanders. "That you, Mr. Strong?" she called out cheerily as he lifted the gate-latch. "Well, Miss Northrop's in the sitting-room, I s'pose. You go right in, and I'll come in when I've done my watering."

"Thank you," said Will, absently, and walked on into the house. Winifred was not in the dark little sitting-room. He walked to the open window and stood there, expecting her to come in presently. There were veils of Madeira vine over the window, just opening their whitish tassels of bloom, and the air was full of the smell of them. Mrs. Stutt began to water the grass outside, and the shower of water from her hose glimmered through the Madeira vine; the noise of the water came to him, and the crying of crickets, and the smell of the freshly wet earth. Then he heard a step on the porch, and saw Winifred go down the short path to the gate. He could see by her white dress that she stood still there; so he went out, too, to join her. Mrs. Stutt was watering at the other side of the house now, and the two were alone.

Will stopped a moment in the darkness and faint odor of a great oleander, a few feet from the motionless girl at the gate, to realize well the grace of her dim white figure, and her unconscious attitude. She stood in a weary way, with her head a little fallen back, and her hands hanging loosely clasped before her. There was so much and so incomprehensible emotion in the attitude, that Will felt vaguely thrust out into another world from that where her interests lay. She had not heard him approach, for the train from the south was just coming to a stand at the station, not a stone's throw off, and there was a great noise of jarring cars, and shouting men, and escaping steam, and ringing bell. He waited till the noise should be quite over. Some one came walking rapidly from the station; Will, glancing at the dark figure, thought it had, even in this dimness, an unfamiliar look. It paused close by the gate.

"Winifred!"

Will did not know the voice; the tone turned him blind and dizzy.

Winifred started violently, and turned; she clasped her hands tightly, and lifted them to her breast in a frightened way, as she fell back a step.

"Oh, my God!" she cried, under her breath. There was a rattle of the gate-latch, a sharp flying open of the gate, and the stranger held her in his arms.

"My darling, my darling!" he said, with an infinite tenderness. "Did you think you could hide anywhere in all this wide world where I should not find you?"

For just an instant she yielded to his clasp--then she drew back. "You must not," she said, softly, with unmistakable pain in her voice. "You know that. I thought if I was utterly out of sight or hearing, you would forget me, and _I_ might--forget myself."

He broke in before she had fairly spoken. "You were mistaken, Winifred; there was no one between us. O my foolish little hot-head! if you had not been so headlong in your self-sacrifice--if you had only waited till I came back--I could have showed you in ten minutes that there was no place for it. Mollie is married to John Gates and is very happy. And you and I--my little girl, how nearly our two lives have been spoiled! Sweetheart," he said, laughing with a shaky voice, "I think I shall never dare let go of you again"--and he drew her back to him.

She hesitated--surrendered--clung to him with a long sobbing breath. "Oh, I have wanted you so, I have _wanted_ you so!" she cried. "Oh, don't be a dream and melt away this time!"

Will Strong, standing close in the darkness of the oleander, acquiring a life-long association with smell of Madeira vine and oleander and wet earth, cry of crickets and noise of sprinkling water, gathered himself together enough to creep away. He was _going_ to realize it pretty soon, he thought; he did not yet; it seemed likely to be beyond endurance when he did. As he passed the door some one opened it, and the lamp-light streamed about him; Winifred looked around and saw his face for an instant, and then he had slipped away through a side gate.

He walked out from town across miles of dark plain, until he came to the empty channel of the stream by which they had sat in March. Underfoot not a blade of grass or green thing; no stranger would have believed that living thing had ever grown there. The flocks and herds had long since gone to the mountain pastures. The dry channel between shelvy banks of gravel showed white in the unclouded yet dull starlight. The air was lifeless, and faintly tainted with smoke from forest fires in the mountains.

Will threw himself down on his face, clutching with his fingers at the gritty dirt. He knew as surely then, looking forward to his life, as he will know at the end looking back, that this would never be an out-lived romance. Nor could he creep back into that temple of dreams from which Winifred's own hand had lured him--it had crumbled to dust behind him. Nor was he like one who, losing a woman, loses only his best pleasure and best ambition; she was the vital condition to every pleasure, every ambition; losing her, he lost all. The realization clutched him by this time like a tiger. There was not a living creature within miles; a man might go down to primal depths, might drop even the restraint of the human in outcries and struggles as free as a tortured beast's. It may be that solitude sees more such scenes than a decently decorous world would like to think.

Yet there was a sense upon him of some moral demand, some decision to be made; and in time he began to try to collect himself for it. It would seem as if there could hardly be a position that left less for him to decide. There was no question of renouncing--he had never had anything to renounce. Nevertheless, his instinct was correct in urging him to a moral conflict and a momentous decision. The question was simply whether he could pick up his life again, could find faith that anything was worth living for; or whether life was to be a hollow going through the forms--frustrated, purposeless, full of brooding regret and jealousy, shame, and sense of wrong. But he could not drag his bruised mind up to the question; he could not even think what it was. He lifted himself up, stepped down into the dry channel, and knelt on the white stones, obeying old association with the attitude; laid his arms and head on a shelf of the bank, and let the stunned and nerveless will lie passive, while the accumulated forces of years--of generations--passion and pain and despair and love, shame and bitterness and loyalty--trampled back and forth over him, fighting out for him his battle.

It was deathly, aggressively still; not an insect to chirp, not a tree to rustle; only bare earth and sodden air. After a long time Will raised his head and threw it back, looking up at the dull stars, while his outstretched hands lay clasped before him; he began to breathe more deeply. Not many minutes later he rose and walked homeward across the dim, wide waste.

It was afternoon of the next day when he stood at Mrs. Stutt's door again. Mrs. Stutt looked at him with the embarrassment of conscious pity as she admitted him. People had been looking at him all day, on the street and in the office, with the same embarrassment and pity. Miss Northrop was packing, the good woman said; and, in an answer to her call, Winifred came out from her room into the little sitting-room. She, too, was evidently under agitation and embarrassment. Will had no doubt, from his first sight of her face, that she had seen and understood his haggard flight the evening before. He was himself entirely calm, as he held out his hand with a grave smile in silence.

Winifred tried to speak naturally.

"I had just sent a note to you, Will," she said, as they sat down.

"About the school, I suppose," he answered, quietly. "You are going away at once?"

"Yes." There she stopped, with her eyes downcast. She looked up to his face and caught her breath to speak, stopped, and began again.

"You have been very good to me all this year--" there she hesitated. Her difficulty was to choose her words so as to ignore his secret, and yet not part from him in a cold or inadequate way.

He rose, and crossed over to her.

"Winifred," he said gently, "you are distressed on my account; and so it is better that I should speak of what otherwise it would be better to ignore. I want you to know that you have not harmed me."

She rose quickly at that, and they stood near together, with their eyes fixed on each other's; the fulness of expression in her face seemed to take the place of answer. He went on steadily, speaking low:

"I have thought it all over, and I find these two things stronger than any pain that may have come to me. Winifred, I cannot do you this wrong, to make you the instrument of evil to me. That is one of the two things. And the other is that there is nothing to reproach any one with; no one has done wrong; there is no cause for shame, or resentment, or bitterness--only for clean pain. Pain is no great evil, Winifred, when it is clean, no matter how sharp."

He smiled at her tranquilly enough as he spoke. In truth, he was not unhappy at the moment. It is not during but after the parting interview that the pinch comes. She answered him only with her deeply attentive look, and he went on:

"I did not come to those convictions; they came to me; or rather, they were in me, and bore down all the other feelings. All the noisy passions dropped away before them, and left just those clear voices in my soul. They made all my love and loyalty work together, instead of tearing me in opposite directions. For, see, Winifred, hasn't it been our moral faith for years that to do spiritual harm to another is the greatest evil that can befall one, and to do him spiritual benefit, the greatest good? All these years since we were in school together, I have been proud to think that it could be only a good to you to have me think of you as I have thought, because it was only a good to me. And I will not be so disloyal now as to let my life be spoiled because of you."

Winifred looked at him aghast. "All these years!" It was a revelation intolerable at first shock to a woman that was no coquette.

"I think it was all the time dimly in my mind what _your_ last year had been; at last I went out of my life and into yours. I want you to understand that I do not think of it with bitterness, because I entered so little into it; I realize, Winifred"--his voice broke from its steadiness--"that you have been good, _good_ in it all. If you had not been--if you had trifled with me--I think I should be at the bottom of the river to-day. But since no one has wronged me," he went on more quietly, "since nothing monstrous or unnatural has befallen me, everything I believed in has the same claim on me as ever.

"And I want you to know that you need not _mind_ my love, Winifred." She dropped her eyes and stood mute. "It is something you may be willing and glad to have without troubling yourself because you cannot return it. For any pain that has happened, do not trouble yourself about that either--if I don't mind it, you needn't," he said, smiling a little, with a certain manly sweetness quite new to him. "I find one gains something in having no longer to struggle with pain and try to keep her at arm's length."

She looked up then, and cried out passionately. "O Will, Will, if only there was anything in all this world I could do to make it up to you!"

"There is nothing to make up," he said. "I would rather have pain from you than pleasure from any one else. But there _is_ something that you can do; this: not to feel my love a burden laid upon you, an annoyance or trespass, an anxiety or self-reproach--or anything that will make you want to get rid of it," he finished, smiling again; "and to let me give you all I wish, on the condition that I ask no return. And if, in a few years, I should ask to come and live near you, and be good friends--may I? It would be hard," he urged, less quietly, "that I should have to lose your friendship, when I ask nothing more. Would you take away the crumbs from me, just because I have lost the loaf?"

"Is that best, Will?" she began, anxious and hesitating. "Oh, I mean for you. It isn't _possible_ that you can always--think of me--so. There is no reason. If you do not see me--somebody else--"

"Have I been seeing you these dozen years?" he said, very gently. "You may trust me to know what is best for me. Why think--think a moment, dear friend, and you will understand. You, of all people, _can_ understand the plane I want you to take me on."

Winifred's eyes kindled and her face flushed. "I see. I _do_ understand. I can meet you on your own plane, and I can trust your friendship and you. I am not afraid to have you come--after a year or two."

"Thank you," he said, shaken as he had not been.

"It is because you are very noble that any good can come out of this harm," she went on, with an eloquent tremor in her voice. "I can see that before very long I shall be, as you said, willing--glad--for so great a gift--only always sorry for your sake. I am very grateful _now_--I cannot tell you how great a thing I think it is--from such a man as you."

They had both become embarrassed and shy now, and both stood silent to recover their ease. "You leave by this evening's train?" he asked in a minute.

"Yes."

"Then this is good-by."

"For a while."

They moved together to the door. As they reached it, Will turned and held out his hand, with an attempt at a smile. They stood a few moments with hands clasped. Winifred's downcast eyes were filling.

"Good-by, Winifred," he said.

"Good-by," she answered, faintly. A minute later she had thrown herself sobbing on her bed, and he was walking down the street.

He met Winifred's lover, coming from the ticket-office--a gentleman high-bred and handsome in every line, a scholar by his appearance, a good man by his eyes, a good companion by his smile. There were all those differences between him and Will that the young man had talked of and Winifred in all sincerity had called nothing; and, moreover, she would never in the world have loved him if there had not been. The girl was an aristocrat after all, when it came to a question not of friendship but love. And Will knew it; love is penetrating enough to divine that much from scanty data. He looked at the stranger with a sort of transferred reverence--what a king of men must he be whom Winifred could crown! And if he did not look at him without a blinding pang, it was, nevertheless, a test of the thoroughness of the night's work that there was neither bitterness nor aversion in it. Something, that sense of having disarmed pain--not dodged nor outwitted it, but disarmed it forever--must have been in Winkelried's consciousness as the spears pressed in.

But, after all, it is _taking_ the second place that costs--not being there after it has been once sincerely and thoroughly accepted. Bunyan knew long ago that it was easy walking in the Valley of Humiliation, once you had come safely down.

On the street an acquaintance met Strong and turned to walk beside him. It was the man who would not trust Judge Garvey out of sight with his baby's silver mug.

"I was just going to your office," he said. "It's something very important." He spoke with a marked friendliness, and a transparently covert sympathy. "You see," he went on, confidentially, "we fellows that have been against Garvey begin to think our minority's about over. The whole affair of Miss Northrop has hurt him. He was shabby when first she came, about that Coakley business, and he's been ugly about her ever since in a sneaking sort of way. Such a lady, too! And there's a thing come out to-day--if you'll excuse my speaking of it." He showed a certain embarrassment. "Uncle Billy Green gave it away first--he knew, being postmaster--but Garvey's been boasting of it himself, too, in the bar-room. You know you used to write to a fellow in the States, and haven't written to him so much lately."

"Yes, I know," said Strong. The man caught a hint of what he did not say in what he did.

"Uncle Billy gives away any interesting point he gets in the post-office," he said, apologetically. "You knew that before, Strong. Well, Garvey got out of him, too, that Miss Northrop didn't have nor write any letters; and he got it into his head she was hiding. Anybody could see she wasn't used to working for a living--"

"Look here--"

"Bless you, Strong, I sha'n't say a word disrespectful to her. This is something you'd ought to know. He just did up a 'Clarion' with some notice about the school in it, and her name marked, and sent it to that fellow you used to write to; and he wrote on the margin: 'Please forward to Miss N.'s friends.' He said in the bar-room, to-day, that he didn't know just what would come of it, but it stood to reason if she was on the hide, it would damage her or you, somehow."

"It hasn't, however," said Strong. "But if _I_ stayed round the bar-room--"

"Oh, we choked him off. I tell you, Strong, everybody thinks it was a pretty dirty trick. The people don't care so much about his big tricks, but they won't stand any such small ones. No money in it, either--only spite! Well, the long and the short is--it's only a few weeks till convention; and if you'll take hold now while they're mad, you can name your own man for Senate, and we'll send you to Assembly."

"I don't want to go to Assembly," said Will, standing on his office-step. "I'll gladly do my best to defeat Garvey for Senate."

"Well, you just decide on your man, and bring him out in your next paper and we'll elect him. The people are strong for you just now. And I should think you would look on going to Assembly as a sort of duty--purify politics, you know."

"Well--I'll think about it." And young Strong walked into his shabby office, stopped to give Jim directions, then went in behind his screen, and sat down to write a proper editorial for beginning the reform campaign.

HOW OLD WIGGINS WORE SHIP.

AN OLD SAILOR'S YARN.

BY CAPTAIN ROLAND T. COFFIN.

_The World, N. Y., November, 1878._

"Well, sir," said the old sailor, "here we are ag'in. I ain't been round here much lately, and atwixt you and me, she's put the 'kybosh' onto it, holdin' that comin' round here and hystin' are promotin' of rheumatics, which, as are well known, they come of long and various exposures in all climates, to say nothin' of watchin' onto a damp dock night arter night continual. But what's the use? Everybody knows as a quiet home are better than silver and fine gold, which it stands to reason are to be obtained in two ways. Wimmin are like sailors in some respects; whoever has anythin' to do with 'em must either be saddled and bridled, leastwise, or else booted and spurred. You've got to ride 'em, or else they'll ride you. Bein' a sailorman myself, it ain't likely as I'd say anythin' ag'in 'em; but if the truth must be told, I'll say this--that while it'll never do, not at no price, for to let sailors git the upper hand, there's many a man as has giv' the helm into the hands of his old woman and made a better v'yage thereby; and I don't mind sayin', sir, that havin' while follerin' the water got into the habit of allowin' her for to be skipper in the house durin' my short stoppin's on shore, it got for to be so much the custom, that since comin' home for a full due I ain't never tried for to break away from it; and though human natur' is falliable, and she does make mistakes, especially about the hystin', on the whole, and by and large, I judges I've been a gainer by it, as I believes at least eight men out of ten would be if they took the hint accordin' and went and done likewise.

"I don't go for to say as she ever goes to go to say I ain't a-goin' for to let you go there; but it are terrible aggrivokin' when the rheumatics twinges awful, and as it might be that this saw-mill don't want no more splinters laid onto it, to have her feelin'ly remark, 'Well, if you will go round a-guzzlin' ale with your swell friends and a-leavin' your lawful wife to home alone you must expect to pay for it,' whereas I know it are the dock and other causes long gone by; but that knowledge don't ease the pain a morsel, and the last time I were that way tantalized I swore I wouldn't come here no more. But whatever are the use? Man resolves and reresolves and then takes another snifter, and so here I are, and bein' as its cold, as so she sha'n't have no basis for her unfeelin' remark about guzzlin' ale, we'll let him make it hot rum, and arter the old receipt, neither economizin' in the rum or the sugar, but givin' a fair drink for honest money.

"Well, well (just mix another afore the glass cools off), to think how the time goes. Here it are autumn ag'in, and in a few weeks 'twill be winter. It reminds me (I'll take one more, if you please, with one lump less of sugar and the space in rum) that I'm gittin' old, and I feels it. My eyes ain't so good and my legs ain't so good, and I ain't so good all over. When I goes down to the dock my lantern are heavier than it used to were, and the distance ain't so short as it used to seem from the dock to the house. Afore many years I'll be put quietly away, and though I'd prefer bein' beautifully sewed up and launched shipshape in blue water, with a hundred pound weight for to keep me down, I s'poses it won't make much difference, nohow. Anyhow, if I lives as long as old Wiggins, I hopes I may go as well at the end. I don't think I ever told you about him, and if you'll let him fill 'em up ag'in--for it's one of the vartues of hot rum that the more you drinks the thirstier you gits--I'll reel you the yarn right off.

"Old Wiggins had been all his life into the Liverpool trade and had got well fixed, so far as cash were consarned; and so when he came for to be seventy or seventy-two years old he were persuaded for to knock off for a full due and spend the balance of his life ashore. Goin' up to some place in Connecticut, he buys hisself a place there and settles down. Well, for a time he were all right, a-fixin' up his house, a-buildin' new barns and hen-coops and fences and the like, and I've heerd tell that the house where he kep' his pigs were better than any dwellin'-house in that region, and the whole place were the wonder of the country roundabout; but arter he had fixed his house all up like a ship, with little staterooms all through the upper part of it, and had got everythin' inside and out in shipshape order, and there weren't nothin' else he could think of for to do, he gits terribly homesick and discontented, and times when he'd come to the city for to collect his sheer of the profits of ships as he had a interest in, he'd sit for hours on the wharf a-watchin' the vessels on the river, and it were like drawin' teeth for to git him to leave and go up to his home. His eyes had giv' out sometime afore he quit the sea, and his legs was shaky, so as he had to walk with a settin' pole, and his hand were tremblin' and unsteady; but aloft he were still all right, and his head were as clear as a bell.