Margret Howth, a Story of To-day Part 2

Knowles shuffled uneasily, watching the girl keenly, to know how the picture touched her. Was, then, she thought, this grand, dead Past so shallow to him? These knights, pure, unstained, searching until death for the Holy Grail, could he understand the life-long agony, the triumph of their conflict over Self? These women, content to live in solitude forever because they once had loved, could any man understand that? Or the dead queen, dead that the man she loved might be free and happy,--why, this WAS life,--this death! But did pain, and martyrdom, and victory lie back in the days of Galahad and Arthur alone? The homely face grew stiller than before, looking out into the dun sweep of moorland,--cold, unrevealing. It baffled the man that looked at it.

He shuffled, chewed tobacco vehemently, tilted his chair on two legs, broke out in a thunder-gust at last.

"Dead days for dead men! The world hears a bugle-call to-day more n.o.ble than any of your piping troubadours. We have something better to fight for than a vacant tomb."

The old man drew himself up haughtily.

"I know what you would say,--Liberty for the low and vile. It is a good word. That was a better which they hid in their hearts in the old time,--Honour!"

Honour! I think, Calvinist though he was, that word was his religion.

Men have had worse. Perhaps the Doctor thought this; for he rose abruptly, and, leaning on the old man's chair, said, gently,--

"It is better, even here. Yet you poison this child's mind. You make her despise To-Day; make honour live for her now."

"It does not," the school-master said, bitterly. "The world's a failure. All the great old dreams are dead. Your own phantom, your Republic, your experiment to prove that all men are born free and equal,--what is it to-day?"

Knowles lifted his head, looking out into the brown twilight. Some word of pregnant meaning flashed in his eye and trembled on his lip; but he kept it back. His face glowed, though, and the glow and strength gave to the huge misshapen features a grand repose.

"You talk of To-Day," the old man continued, querulously. "I am tired of it. Here is its type and history," touching a county newspaper,--"a fair type, with its cant, and bigotry, and weight of uncomprehended fact. Bargain and sale,--it taints our religion, our brains, our flags,--yours and mine, Knowles, with the rest. Did you never hear of those abject spirits who entered neither heaven nor h.e.l.l, who were neither faithful to G.o.d nor rebellious, caring only for themselves?"

He paused, fairly out of breath. Margret looked up. Knowles was silent. There was a smothered look of pain on the coa.r.s.e face; the school-master's words were sinking deeper than he knew.

"No, father," said Margret, hastily ending his quotation, "'io non averei creduto, che [vita] tanta n' avesse disfatta.'"

Skilful Margret! The broil must have been turbid in the old man's brain which the grand, slow-stepping music of the Florentine could not calm. She had learned that long ago, and used it as a nurse does some old song to quiet her pettish infant. His face brightened instantly.

"Do not believe, then, child," he said, after a pause. "It is a n.o.ble doubt, in Dante or in you."

The Doctor had turned away; she could not see his face. The angry scorn was gone from the old master's countenance; it was bent with its usual wistful eagerness on the floor. A moment after he looked up with a flickering smile.

"'Onorate l' altissmo poeta!'" he said, gently lifting his finger to his forehead in a military fas.h.i.+on. "Where is my cane, Margret? The Doctor and I will go and walk on the porch before it grows dark."

The sun had gone down long before, and the stars were out; but no one spoke of this. Knowles lighted the school-master's pipe and his own cigar, and then moved the chairs out of their way, stepping softly that the old man might not hear him. Margret, in the room, watched them as they went, seeing how gentle the rough, burly man was with her father, and how, every time they pa.s.sed the sweet-brier, he bent the branches aside, that they might not touch his face. Slow, childish tears came into her eyes as she saw it; for the school-master was blind. This had been their regular walk every evening, since it grew too cold for them to go down under the lindens. The Doctor had not missed a night since her father gave up the school, a month ago: at first, under pretence of attending to his eyes; but since the day he had told them there was no hope of cure, he had never spoken of it again. Only, since then, he had grown doubly quarrelsome,--standing ready armed to dispute with the old man every inch of every subject in earth or air, keeping the old man in a state of boyish excitement during the long, idle days, looking forward to this nightly battle.

It was very still; for the house, with its half-dozen acres, lay in an angle of the hills, looking out on the river, which shut out all distant noises. Only the men's footsteps broke the silence, pa.s.sing and repa.s.sing the window. Without, the October starlight lay white and frosty on the moors, the old barn, the sharp, dark hills, and the river, which was half hidden by the orchard. One could hear it, like some huge giant moaning in his sleep, at times, and see broad patches of steel blue glittering through the thick apple-trees and the bushes.

Her mother had fallen into a doze. Margret looked at her, thinking how sallow the plump, fair face had grown, and how faded the kindly blue eyes were now. Dim with crying,--she knew that, though she never saw her shed a tear. Always cheery, going placidly about the house in her gray dress and Quaker cap, as if there were no such things in the world as debt or blindness. But Margret knew, though she said nothing. When her mother came in from those wonderful foraging expeditions in search of late pease or corn, she could see the swollen circle round the eyes, and hear her breath like that of a child which has sobbed itself tired.

Then, one night, when she had gone into her mother's room, after she was in bed, the blue eyes were set in a wild, hopeless way, as if staring down into years of starvation and misery. The fire on the hearth burned low and clear; the old worn furniture stood out cheerfully in the red glow, and threw a maze of twisted shadow on the floor. But the glow was all that was cheerful. To-morrow, when the hard daylight should jeer away the screening shadows, it would unbare a desolate, shabby home. She knew; struck with the white leprosy of poverty; the blank walls, the faded hangings, the old stone house itself, looking vacantly out on the fields with a pitiful significance of loss. Upon the mantel-shelf there was a small marble figure, one of the Dancing Graces: the other two were gone, gone in pledge. This one was left, twirling her foot, and stretching out her hands in a dreary sort of ecstasy, with no one to respond. For a moment, so empty and bitter seemed her home and her life, that she thought the lonely dancer with her flaunting joy mocked her,--taunted them with the slow, gray desolation that had been creeping on them for years. Only for a moment the morbid fancy hurt her.

The red glow was healthier, suited her temperament better. She chose to fancy the house as it had been once,--should be again, please G.o.d.

She chose to see the old comfort and the old beauty which the poor school-master had gathered about their home. Gone now. But it should return. It was well, perhaps, that he was blind, he knew so little of what had come on them. There, where the black marks were on the wall, there had hung two pictures. Margret and her father religiously believed them to be a Tintoret and Copley. Well, they were gone now.

He had been used to dust them with a light brush every morning, himself, but now he said always,--

"You can clean the pictures to-day, Margret. Be careful, my child."

And Margret would remember the greasy Irishman who had tucked them under his arm, and flung them into a cart, her blood growing hotter in her veins.

It was the same through all the house; there was not a niche in the bare rooms that did not recall a something gone,--something that should return. She willed that, that evening, standing by the dim fire. What women will, whose eyes are slow, attentive, still, as this Margret's, usually comes to pa.s.s.

The red fire-glow suited her; another glow, warming her floating fancy, mingled with it, giving her every-day purpose the trait of heroism.

The old spirit of the dead chivalry, of succour to the weak, life-long self-denial,--did it need the sand waste of Palestine or a tournament to call it into life? Down in that trading town, in the thick of its mills and drays, it could live, she thought. That very night, perhaps, in some of those fetid cellars or sunken shanties, there were vigils kept of purpose as unselfish, prayer as heaven-commanding, as that of the old aspirants for knighthood. She, too,--her quiet face stirred with a simple, childish smile, like her father's.

"Why, mother!" she said, stroking down the gray hair under the cap, "shall you sleep here all night?" laughing.

A cheery, tender laugh, this woman's was,--seldom heard,--not far from tears.

Mrs. Howth roused herself. Just then, a broad, high-shouldered man, in a gray flannel s.h.i.+rt, and shoes redolent of the stable, appeared at the door. Margret looked at him as if he were an accusing spirit,--coming down, as woman must, from heights of self-renunciation or bold resolve, to an undarned stocking or an uncooked meal.

"Kittle's b'ilin'," he announced, flinging in the information as a general gratuity.

"That will do, Joel," said Mrs. Howth.

The tone of stately blandness which Mrs. Howth erected as a s.h.i.+eld between herself and "that cla.s.s of people" was a study: a success; the resume of her experience in the combat that had devoured half her life, like that of other American house-keepers. "Be gentle, but let them know their place, my dear!" The cla.s.s having its type and exponent in Joel, stopped at the door, and hitched up its suspenders.

"That will DO, Joel," with a stern suavity.

Some idea was in Joel's head under the brush of red hair,--probably the "anarchic element."

"Uh was wis.h.i.+n' toh read the G'zette." Whereupon he advanced into the teeth of the enemy and bore off the newspaper, going before Margret, as she went to the kitchen, and seating himself beside a flaring tallow-candle on the table.

Reading, with Joel, was not the idle pastime that more trivial minds find it; a thing, on the contrary, to be gone into with slow spelling, and face knitted up into savage sternness, especially now, when, as he gravely explained to Margret, "in HIS opinion the crissis was jest at hand, and ev'ry man must be seein' ef the gover'ment was carryin' out the views of the people."

With which intent, Joel, in company with five thousand other sovereigns, consulted, as definitive oracle, "The Daily Gazette" of Towbridge. The school-master need not have grumbled for the old time: feodality in the days of Warwick and of "The Daily Gazette" was not so widely different as he and Joel thought.

Now and then, partly as an escape-valve for his overcharged conviction, partly in compa.s.sion to the ignorance of women in political economics, he threw off to Margret divers commentaries on the text, as she pa.s.sed in and out.

If she had risen to the full level of Joel's views, she might have considered these views tinctured with radicalism, as they consisted in the propriety of the immediate "impinging of the President." Besides, (Joel was a good-natured man, too, merciful to his beast,) Nero-like, he wished, with the tiger drop of blood that lies hid in everybody's heart, that the few millions who differed with himself and the "Gazette" had but one neck for their more convenient hanging, "It's all that'll save the kentry," he said, and believed it, too.

If Margret fell suddenly from the peak of outlook on life to the homely labor of cooking supper, some of the healthy heroic flush of the knightly days and the hearth-fire went down with her, I think. It brightened and reddened the square kitchen with its cracked stove and meagre array of tins; she bustled about in her quaint way, as if it had been filled up and running over with comforts. It brightened and reddened her face when she came in to put the last dish on the table,--a cosy, snug table, set for four. Heroic dreams with poets, I suppose, make them unfit for food other than some feast such as Eve set for the angel. But then Margret was no poet. So, with the kindling of her hope, its healthful light struck out, and warmed and glorified these common things. Such common things! Only a coa.r.s.e white cloth, redeemed by neither silver nor china, the amber coffee, (some that Knowles had brought out to her father--"thrown on his hands; he couldn't use it,--product of slave-labour!--never, Sir!") the delicate brown fish that Joel had caught, the bread her mother had made, the golden b.u.t.ter,--all of them touched her nerves with a quick sense of beauty and pleasure. And more, the gaunt face of the blind old man, his bony hand trembling as he raised the cup to his lips, her mother and the Doctor managing silently to place everything he liked best near his plate. Wasn't it all part of the fresh, hopeful glow burning in her consciousness? It brightened and deepened. It blotted out the hard, dusty path of the future, and showed warm and clear the success at the end. Not much to show, you think. Only the old home as it once was, full of quiet laughter and content; only her mother's eyes clear s.h.i.+ning again; only that gaunt old head raised proudly, owing no man anything but courtesy. The glow deepened, as she thought of it. It was strange, too, that, with the deep, slow-moving nature of this girl, she should have striven so eagerly to throw this light over the future.

Commoner natures have done more and hoped less. It was a poor gift, you think, this of the labour of a life for so plain a duty; hardly heroic. She knew it. Yet, if there lay in this coming labour any pain, any wearing effort, she clung to it desperately, as if this should banish, it might be, worse loss. She tried desperately, I say, to clutch the far, uncertain hope at the end, to make happiness out of it, to give it to her silent gnawing heart to feed on. She thrust out of sight all possible life that might have called her true self into being, and clung to this present shallow duty and shallow reward.

Pitiful and vain so to cling! It is the way of women. As if any human soul could bury that which might have been, in that which is!

The Doctor, peering into her thought with sharp, suspicious eyes, heeded the transient flush of enthusiasm but little. Even the pleasant cheery talk that pleased her father so was but surface-deep, he knew.

The woman he must conquer for his great end lay beneath, dark and cold.

It was only for that end he cared for her. Through what cold depths of solitude her soul breathed faintly mattered little. Yet an idle fancy touched him, what a triumph the man had gained, whoever he might be, who had held the master-key to a nature so rare as this, who had the kingly power in his hand to break its silence into electric s.h.i.+vers of laughter and tears,--terrible subtile pain, or joy as terrible. Did he hold the power still? He wondered. Meanwhile she sat there, unread.

CHAPTER II.

The evening came on, slow and cold. Life itself, the Doctor thought, impatiently, was cool and tardy here among the hills. Even he fell into the tranquil tone, and chafed under it. Nowhere else did the evening gray and sombre into the mysterious night impalpably as here. The quiet, wide and deep, folded him in, forced his trivial heat into silence and thought. The world seemed to think there. Quiet in the dead seas of fog, that filled the valleys like restless vapour curdled into silence; quiet in the listening air, stretching gray up to the stars,--in the solemn mountains, that stood motionless, like h.o.a.ry-headed prophets, waiting with uplifted hands, day and night, to hear the Voice, silent now for centuries; the very air, heavy with the breath of the sleeping pine-forests, moved slowly and cold, like some human voice weary with preaching to unbelieving hearts of a peace on earth. This man's heart was unbelieving; he chafed in the oppressive quiet; it was unfeeling mockery to a sick and hungry world,--a dead torpor of indifference. Years of hot and turbid pain had dulled his eyes to the eternal secret of the night; his soul was too sore with stumbling, stung, inflamed with the needs and suffering of the countless lives that hemmed him in, to accept the great prophetic calm.

He was blind to the prophecy written on the earth since the day G.o.d first bade it tell thwarted man of the great To-Morrow.

He turned from the night in-doors. Human hearts were his proper study.

The old house, he thought, slept with the rest. One did not wonder that the pendulum of the clock swung long and slow. The frantic, nervous haste of town-clocks chorded better with the pulse of human life. Yet life in the veins of these people flowed slow and cool; their sorrows and joys were few and life-long. The enduring air suited this woman, Margret Howth. Her blood could never ebb or flow with sudden gusts of pa.s.sion, like his own, throbbing, heating continually: one current, absorbing, deep, would carry its tide from one eternity to the other, one love or one hate. Whatever power was in the tide should be his, in its entirety. It was his right. Was not his aim high, the highest? It was his right.

Margret, looking up, saw the man's eye fixed on her. She met it coolly. All her short life, this strange man, so tender to the weak, had watched her with a sort of savage scorn, sneering at her childish, dreamy apathy, driving her from effort to effort with a scourge of contempt. What did he want now with her? Her duty was light; she took it up,--she was glad to take it up; what more would he have? She put the whole matter away from her.

It grew late. She sat down by the lamp and began to read to her father, as usual. Her mother put away her knitting; Joel came in half-asleep; the Doctor put out his everlasting cigar, and listened, as he did everything else, intently. It was an old story that she read,--the story of a man who walked the fields and crowded streets of Galilee eighteen hundred years ago. Knowles, with his heated brain, fancied that the silence without in the night grew deeper, that the slow-moving air stopped in its course to listen. Perhaps the simple story carried a deeper meaning to these brooding mountains and solemn sky than to the purblind hearts within. It was a far-off story to them,--very far off. The old school-master heard it with a lowered head, with the proud obedience with which a cavalier would receive his leader's orders. Was not the leader a knights the knight of truest courage? All that was high, chivalric in the old man sprang up to own him Lord. That he not only preached to, but ate and drank with publicans and sinners, was a requirement of his mission; nowadays----.

Joel heard the "good word" with a bewildered consciousness of certain rules of honesty to be observed next day, and a maze of crowns and harps s.h.i.+ning somewhere beyond. As for any immediate connection between the teachings of this book and "The Daily Gazette," it was pure blasphemy to think of it. The Lord held those old Jews in His hand, of course; but as for the election next month, that was quite another thing. If Joel thrust the history out of the touch of common life, the Doctor brought it down, and held it there on trial. To him it was the story of a Reformer who, eighteen centuries ago, had served his day.

Could he serve this day? Could he? The need was desperate. Was there anything in this Christianity, freed from bigotry, to work out the awful problem which the ages had left for America to solve? He doubted it. People called this old Knowles an infidel, said his brain was as unnatural and distorted as his body. G.o.d, looking down into his heart that night, saw the savage wrestling there, and judged him with other eyes than theirs.