Chapter 15

After he had washed his dishes in the brook, and left them in the sun to dry, he went to the village store and purchased a few simple things necessary for umbrella-mending. Both on his way to the store and back he kept his eyes open. He realized that his capital depended largely upon chance and good luck. He considered that he had extraordinary good luck when he returned with three more umbrellas. He had discovered one propped against the counter of the store, turned inside out. He had inquired to whom it belonged, and had been answered to anybody who wanted it. David had seized upon it with secret glee. Then, unheard-of good fortune, he had found two more umbrellas on his way home; one was in an ash-can, the other blowing along like a belated bat beside the trolley track. It began to seem to David as if the earth might be strewn with abandoned umbrellas. Before he began his work he went to the farmer's and returned in triumph, driven in the farm-wagon, with his cackling hens and quite a load of household furniture, besides some bread and pies. The farmer's wife was one of those who are able to give, and make receiving greater than giving. She had looked at David, who was older than she, with the eyes of a mother, and his pride had melted away, and he had held out his hands for her benefits, like a child who has no compunctions about receiving gifts because he knows that they are his right of childhood.

Henceforth David prospered--in a humble way, it is true, still he prospered. He journeyed about the country, umbrellas over his shoulder, little bag of tools in hand, and reaped an income more than sufficient for his simple wants. His hair had grown, and also his beard. Nobody suspected his history. He met the young girls whom he had terrified on the road often, and they did not know him. He did not, during the winter, travel very far afield. Night always found him at home, warm, well fed, content, and at peace. Sometimes the old farmer on whose land he lived dropped in of an evening and they had a game of checkers. The old man was a checker expert. He played with unusual skill, but David made for himself a little code of honor. He would never beat the old man, even if he were able, oftener than once out of three evenings. He made coffee on these convivial occasions. He made very good coffee, and they sipped as they moved the men and kings, and the old man chuckled, and David beamed with peaceful happiness.

But the next spring, when he began to realize that he had mended for a while all the umbrellas in the vicinity and that his trade was flagging, he set his precious little home in order, barricaded door and windows, and set forth for farther fields. He was lucky, as he had been from the start. He found plenty of employment, and slept comfortably enough in barns, and now and then in the open. He had traveled by slow stages for several weeks before he entered a village whose familiar look gave him a shock. It was not his native village, but near it. In his younger life he had often journeyed there. It was a little shopping emporium, almost a city. He recognized building after building. Now and then he thought he saw a face which he had once known, and he was thankful that there was hardly any possibility of any one recognizing him. He had grown gaunt and thin since those far-off days; he wore a beard, grizzled, as was his hair. In those days he had not been an umbrella man. Sometimes the humor of the situation struck him. What would he have said, he the spruce, plump, head-in-the-air young man, if anybody had told him that it would come to pass that he would be an umbrella man lurking humbly in search of a job around the back doors of houses? He would laugh softly to himself as he trudged along, and the laugh would be without the slightest bitterness. His lot had been so infinitely worse, and he had such a happy nature, yielding sweetly to the inevitable, that he saw now only cause for amusement.

He had been in that vicinity about three weeks when one day he met the woman. He knew her at once, although she was greatly changed. She had grown stout, although, poor soul! it seemed as if there had been no reason for it. She was not unwieldy, but she was stout, and all the contours of earlier life had disappeared beneath layers of flesh. Her hair was not gray, but the bright brown had faded, and she wore it tightly strained back from her seamed forehead, although it was thin. One had only to look at her hair to realize that she was a woman who had given up, who no longer cared. She was humbly clad in a blue-cotton wrapper, she wore a dingy black hat, and she carried a tin pail half full of raspberries. When the man and woman met they stopped with a sort of shock, and each changed face grew like the other in its pallor. She recognized him and he her, but along with that recognition was awakened a fierce desire to keep it secret. His prison record loomed up before the man, the woman's past loomed up before her. She had possibly not been guilty of much, but her life was nothing to waken pride in her. She felt shamed before this man whom she had loved, and who felt shamed before her. However, after a second the silence was broken. The man recovered his self-possession first.

He spoke casually.

“Nice day,” said he.

The woman nodded.

“Been berrying?” inquired David. The woman nodded again.

David looked scrutinizingly at her pail. “I saw better berries real thick a piece back,” said he.

The woman murmured something. In spite of herself, a tear trickled over her fat, weather-beaten cheek. David saw the tear, and something warm and glorious like sunlight seemed to waken within him. He felt such tenderness and pity for this poor feminine thing who had not the strength to keep the tears back, and was so pitiably shorn of youth and grace, that he himself expanded. He had heard in the town something of her history. She had made a dreadful marriage, tragedy and suspicion had entered her life, and the direst poverty. However, he had not known that she was in the vicinity. Somebody had told him she was out West.

“Living here?” he inquired.

“Working for my board at a house back there,” she muttered. She did not tell him that she had come as a female “hobo” in a freight-car from the Western town where she had been finally stranded. “Mrs. White sent me out for berries,” she added. “She keeps boarders, and there were no berries in the market this morning.”

“Come back with me and I will show you where I saw the berries real thick,” said David.

He turned himself about, and she followed a little behind, the female failure in the dust cast by the male. Neither spoke until David stopped and pointed to some bushes where the fruit hung thick on bending, slender branches.

“Here,” said David. Both fell to work. David picked handfuls of berries and cast them gaily into the pail. “What is your name?” he asked, in an undertone.

“Jane Waters,” she replied, readily. Her husband's name had been Waters, or the man who had called himself her husband, and her own middle name was Jane. The first was Sara. David remembered at once. “She is taking her own middle name and the name of the man she married,” he thought. Then he asked, plucking berries, with his eyes averted:

“Married?”

“No,” said the woman, flushing deeply.

David's next question betrayed him. “Husband dead?”

“I haven't any husband,” she replied, like the Samaritan woman.

She had married a man already provided with another wife, although she had not known it. The man was not dead, but she spoke the entire miserable truth when she replied as she did. David assumed that he was dead. He felt a throb of relief, of which he was ashamed, but he could not down it. He did not know what it was that was so alive and triumphant within him: love, or pity, or the natural instinct of the decent male to shelter and protect. Whatever it was, it was dominant.

“Do you have to work hard?” he asked.

“Pretty hard, I guess. I expect to.”

“And you don't get any pay?”

“That's all right; I don't expect to get any,” said she, and there was bitterness in her voice.

In spite of her stoutness she was not as strong as the man. She was not at all strong, and, moreover, the constant presence of a sense of injury at the hands of life filled her very soul with a subtle poison, to her weakening vitality. She was a child hurt and worried and bewildered, although she was to the average eye a stout, able-bodied, middle-aged woman; but David had not the average eye, and he saw her as she really was, not as she seemed. There had always been about her a little weakness and dependency which had appealed to him. Now they seemed fairly to cry out to him like the despairing voices of the children whom he had never had, and he knew he loved her as he had never loved her before, with a love which had budded and flowered and fruited and survived absence and starvation. He spoke abruptly.

“I've about got my business done in these parts,” said he. “I've got quite a little money, and I've got a little house, not much, but mighty snug, back where I come from. There's a garden. It's in the woods. Not much passing nor going on.”

The woman was looking at him with incredulous, pitiful eyes like a dog's. “I hate much goin' on,” she whispered.

“Suppose,” said David, “you take those berries home and pack up your things. Got much?”

“All I've got will go in my bag.”

“Well, pack up; tell the madam where you live that you're sorry, but you're worn out--”

“God knows I am,” cried the woman, with sudden force, “worn out!”

“Well, you tell her that, and say you've got another chance, and--”

“What do you mean?” cried the woman, and she hung upon his words like a drowning thing.

“Mean? Why, what I mean is this. You pack your bag and come to the parson's back there, that white house.”

“I know--”

“In the mean time I'll see about getting a license, and--”

Suddenly the woman set her pail down and clutched him by both hands. “Say you are not married,” she demanded; “say it, swear it!”

“Yes, I do swear it,” said David. “You are the only woman I ever asked to marry me. I can support you. We sha'n't be rolling in riches, but we can be comfortable, and--I rather guess I can make you happy.”

“You didn't say what your name was,” said the woman.

“David Anderson.”

The woman looked at him with a strange expression, the expression of one who loves and respects, even reveres, the isolation and secrecy of another soul. She understood, down to the depths of her being she understood. She had lived a hard life, she had her faults, but she was fine enough to comprehend and hold sacred another personality. She was very pale, but she smiled. Then she turned to go.

“How long will it take you?” asked David.

“About an hour.”

“All right. I will meet you in front of the parson's house in an hour. We will go back by train. I have money enough.”

“I'd just as soon walk.” The woman spoke with the utmost humility of love and trust. She had not even asked where the man lived. All her life she had followed him with her soul, and it would go hard if her poor feet could not keep pace with her soul.

“No, it is too far; we will take the train. One goes at half past four.”

At half past four the couple, made man and wife, were on the train speeding toward the little home in the woods. The woman had frizzled her thin hair pathetically and ridiculously over her temples; on her left hand gleamed a white diamond. She had kept it hidden; she had almost starved rather than part with it. She gazed out of the window at the flying landscape, and her thin lips were curved in a charming smile. The man sat beside her, staring straight ahead as if at happy visions.

They lived together afterward in the little house in the woods, and were happy with a strange crystallized happiness at which they would have mocked in their youth, but which they now recognized as the essential of all happiness upon earth. And always the woman knew what she knew about her husband, and the man knew about his wife, and each recognized the other as old lover and sweetheart come together at last, but always each kept the knowledge from the other with an infinite tenderness of delicacy which was as a perfumed garment veiling the innermost sacredness of love.

THE BALKING OF CHRISTOPHER

THE spring was early that year. It was only the last of March, but the trees were filmed with green and paling with promise of bloom; the front yards were showing new grass pricking through the old. It was high time to plow the south field and the garden, but Christopher sat in his rocking-chair beside the kitchen window and gazed out, and did absolutely nothing about it.

Myrtle Dodd, Christopher's wife, washed the breakfast dishes, and later kneaded the bread, all the time glancing furtively at her husband. She had a most old-fashioned deference with regard to Christopher. She was always a little afraid of him. Sometimes Christopher's mother, Mrs. Cyrus Dodd, and his sister Abby, who had never married, reproached her for this attitude of mind. “You are entirely too much cowed down by Christopher,” Mrs. Dodd said.

“I would never be under the thumb of any man,” Abby said.

“Have you ever seen Christopher in one of his spells?” Myrtle would ask.

Then Mrs. Cyrus Dodd and Abby would look at each other. “It is all your fault, mother,” Abby would say. “You really ought not to have allowed your son to have his own head so much.”

“You know perfectly well, Abby, what I had to contend against,” replied Mrs. Dodd, and Abby became speechless. Cyrus Dodd, now deceased some twenty years, had never during his whole life yielded to anything but birth and death. Before those two primary facts even his terrible will was powerless. He had come into the world without his consent being obtained; he had passed in like manner from it. But during his life he had ruled, a petty monarch, but a most thorough one. He had spoiled Christopher, and his wife, although a woman of high spirit, knew of no appealing.

“I could never go against your father, you know that,” said Mrs. Dodd, following up her advantage.

“Then,” said Abby, “you ought to have warned poor Myrtle. It was a shame to let her marry a man as spoiled as Christopher.”

“I would have married him, anyway,” declared Myrtle with sudden defiance; and her mother-inlaw regarded her approvingly.

“There are worse men than Christopher, and Myrtle knows it,” said she.

“Yes, I do, mother,” agreed Myrtle. “Christopher hasn't one bad habit.”

“I don't know what you call a bad habit,” retorted Abby. “I call having your own way in spite of the world, the flesh, and the devil rather a bad habit. Christopher tramples on everything in his path, and he always has. He tramples on poor Myrtle.”

At that Myrtle laughed. “I don't think I look trampled on,” said she; and she certainly did not. Pink and white and plump was Myrtle, although she had, to a discerning eye, an expression which denoted extreme nervousness.

This morning of spring, when her husband sat doing nothing, she wore this nervous expression. Her blue eyes looked dark and keen; her forehead was wrinkled; her rosy mouth was set. Myrtle and Christopher were not young people; they were a little past middle age, still far from old in look or ability.

Myrtle had kneaded the bread to rise for the last time before it was put into the oven, and had put on the meat to boil for dinner, before she dared address that silent figure which had about it something tragic. Then she spoke in a small voice. “Christopher,” said she.

Christopher made no reply.

“It is a good morning to plow, ain't it?” said Myrtle.

Christopher was silent.

“Jim Mason got over real early; I suppose he thought you'd want to get at the south field. He's been sitting there at the barn door for 'most two hours.”

Then Christopher rose. Myrtle's anxious face lightened. But to her wonder her husband went into the front entry and got his best hat. “He ain't going to wear his best hat to plow,” thought Myrtle. For an awful moment it occurred to her that something had suddenly gone wrong with her husband's mind. Christopher brushed the hat carefully, adjusted it at the little looking-glass in the kitchen, and went out.

“Be you going to plow the south field?” Myrtle said, faintly.

“No, I ain't.”

“Will you be back to dinner?”

“I don't know--you needn't worry if I'm not.” Suddenly Christopher did an unusual thing for him. He and Myrtle had lived together for years, and outward manifestations of affection were rare between them. He put his arm around her and kissed her.

After he had gone, Myrtle watched him out of sight down the road; then she sat down and wept. Jim Mason came slouching around from his station at the barn door. He surveyed Myrtle uneasily.

“Mr. Dodd sick?” said he at length.

“Not that I know of,” said Myrtle, in a weak quaver. She rose and, keeping her tear-stained face aloof, lifted the lid off the kettle on the stove.

“D'ye know am he going to plow to-day?”

“He said he wasn't.”

Jim grunted, shifted his quid, and slouched out of the yard.

Meantime Christopher Dodd went straight down the road to the minister's, the Rev. Stephen Wheaton. When he came to the south field, which he was neglecting, he glanced at it turning emerald upon the gentle slopes. He set his face harder. Christopher Dodd's face was in any case hard-set. Now it was tragic, to be pitied, but warily, lest it turn fiercely upon the one who pitied. Christopher was a handsome man, and his face had an almost classic turn of feature. His forehead was noble; his eyes full of keen light. He was only a farmer, but in spite of his rude clothing he had the face of a man who followed one of the professions. He was in sore trouble of spirit, and he was going to consult the minister and ask him for advice. Christopher had never done this before. He had a sort of incredulity now that he was about to do it. He had always associated that sort of thing with womankind, and not with men like himself. And, moreover, Stephen Wheaton was a younger man than himself. He was unmarried, and had only been settled in the village for about a year. “He can't think I'm coming to set my cap at him, anyway,” Christopher reflected, with a sort of grim humor, as he drew near the parsonage. The minister was haunted by marriageable ladies of the village.

“Guess you are glad to see a man coming, instead of a woman who has doubts about some doctrine,” was the first thing Christopher said to the minister when he had been admitted to his study. The study was a small room, lined with books, and only one picture hung over the fireplace, the portrait of the minister's mother--Stephen was so like her that a question concerning it was futile.

Stephen colored a little angrily at Christopher's remark--he was a hot-tempered man, although a clergyman; then he asked him to be seated.

Christopher sat down opposite the minister. “I oughtn't to have spoken so,” he apologized, “but what I am doing ain't like me.”

“That's all right,” said Stephen. He was a short, athletic man, with an extraordinary width of shoulders and a strong-featured and ugly face, still indicative of goodness and a strange power of sympathy. Three little mongrel dogs were sprawled about the study. One, small and alert, came and rested his head on Christopher's knee. Animals all liked him. Christopher mechanically patted him. Patting an appealing animal was as unconscious with the man as drawing his breath. But he did not even look at the little dog while he stroked it after the fashion which pleased it best. He kept his large, keen, melancholy eyes fixed upon the minister; at length he spoke. He did not speak with as much eagerness as he did with force, bringing the whole power of his soul into his words, which were the words of a man in rebellion against the greatest odds on earth and in all creation--the odds of fate itself.

“I have come to say a good deal, Mr. Wheaton,” he began.

“Then say it, Mr. Dodd,” replied Stephen, without a smile.

Christopher spoke. “I am going back to the very beginning of things,” said he, “and maybe you will think it blasphemy, but I don't mean it for that. I mean it for the truth, and the truth which is too much for my comprehension.”

“I have heard men swear when it did not seem blasphemy to me,” said Stephen.

“Thank the Lord, you ain't so deep in your rut you can't see the stars!” said Christopher. “But I guess you see them in a pretty black sky sometimes. In the beginning, why did I have to come into the world without any choice?”

“You must not ask a question of me which can only be answered by the Lord,” said Stephen.

“I am asking the Lord,” said Christopher, with his sad, forceful voice. “I am asking the Lord, and I ask why?”

“You have no right to expect your question to be answered in your time,” said Stephen.

“But here am I,” said Christopher, “and I was a question to the Lord from the first, and fifty years and more I have been on the earth.”

“Fifty years and more are nothing for the answer to such a question,” said Stephen.

Christopher looked at him with mournful dissent; there was no anger about him. “There was time before time,” said he, “before the fifty years and more began. I don't mean to blaspheme, Mr. Wheaton, but it is the truth. I came into the world whether I would or not; I was forced, and then I was told I was a free agent. I am no free agent. For fifty years and more I have thought about it, and I have found out that, at least. I am a slave--a slave of life.”

“For that matter,” said Stephen, looking curiously at him, “so am I. So are we all.”

“That makes it worse,” agreed Christopher--“a whole world of slaves. I know I ain't talking in exactly what you might call an orthodox strain. I have got to a point when it seems to me I shall go mad if I don't talk to somebody. I know there is that awful why, and you can't answer it; and no man living can. I'm willing to admit that sometime, in another world, that why will get an answer, but meantime it's an awful thing to live in this world without it if a man has had the kind of life I have. My life has been harder for me than a harder life might be for another man who was different. That much I know. There is one thing I've got to be thankful for. I haven't been the means of sending any more slaves into this world. I am glad my wife and I haven't any children to ask 'why?'