In a Little Town Part 23

And then in grim, mutual contempt they had crept into bed and lain as far apart as they could. He would have gone into another room, but she would have thought he was afraid to hear more of her. Or she would have come knocking at the door and lured him back only to renew the war at some appeal of his to that sense of justice he was forever hoping to find in her soul.

He was aligned now along the very edge of the mattress. It was childish of her to behave so spitefully, but what could he do except repay her in kind? She would not have understood any other behavior. She had turned her back on him, too, and stretched herself as thin as she could as close to the edge as she could lie without falling out.

What a vixen she was! And at this time of all when she should have been gentle, soothing. Even if she had thought him wrong and misinterpreted his natural vehemence as virulence, she should have been patient. What was a wife for but to be a helpmeet? She knew how easily his temper was a.s.suaged, she knew the very words. Why had she avoided them?

And she was to blame for so many of his problems. Her bills and her children's bills were increasing. She took so much of his time. She needed so much entertaining, so much waiting on, so much listening to.

Neither she nor the children produced. They simply spent. In a crisis they never gave help, but exacted it.

In business, as in a s.h.i.+pwreck, strong and useful men must step back and sacrifice themselves that the women and children might be saved--for other men to take care of. And what frauds these women were! All allurement and gentleness till they had entrapped their victims, then fiends of exaction, without sympathy for the big work of men, without interest in the world's problems, alert to ridiculous suspicions, reckless with accusations, incapable of equity, and impatient of everything important.

Marriage was a trap, masking its steel jaws and its chain under flowers.

What changelings brides were! A man never led away from the altar the woman he led thither. Before marriage, so interested in a man's serious talk and the business of his life! After marriage, unwilling to listen to any news of import, sworn enemies of achievement, putting an ingrowing sentiment above all other n.o.bilities of the race.

And his wife was of all women the most womanish. She had lost what early graces she had. In the earlier days they had never quarreled. That is, of course, they had quarreled, but differently. They had left each other several times, but how rapturously they had returned. And then she had craved his forgiveness and granted hers without asking. She had always forgiven him for what he had not done, said, or thought, or for the things he had done and said most justly. But there had been a charm about her, a sweet foolishness that was irresistible.

In the dark now he smiled to think how dear and fascinating she had been then. Oh, she had loved him then, had loved the very faults she had imagined in him. Perhaps after he was dead she would remember him with her earlier tenderness. She would blame herself for making him the irascible, hot-tempered brute he had been--perhaps--at times.

And now he had slain and buried himself, and his woe could burrow no farther down. His soul was at the bottom of the pit. There was no other way to go but upward, and that, of course, was impossible.

As he wallowed in the lugubrious comfort of his own post-mortem revenge he wished that he had left unsaid some of the things he had said.

Quelled by the vision of his wife weeping over him and repenting her cruelties, they began to seem less cruel. She was absolved by remorse.

He heard her sobbing over his coffin and heard her recall her ferocious words with shame. His white, set face seemed to try to console her. He heard what he was trying to tell her in all the gentle understanding of the tomb:

"I said worse things, honey. I don't know how I could have used such words to you, my sweetheart. A longsh.o.r.eman wouldn't have called a fishwife what I called you, you blessed child. But it was my love that tormented me. If a man had quarreled with me, we'd have had a knock-down and drag-out and nothing more thought of it. If any woman but you had denounced me as you did I'd have shrugged my shoulders and not cared a--at all.

"It was because I loved you, honey, that your least frown hurt me so.

But I didn't really mean what I said. It wasn't true. You're the best, the faithfulest, the prettiest, dearest woman in all the world, and you were a precious wife to me--so much more beautiful, more tender, more devoted than the wives of the other men I knew. I will pray G.o.d to bring you to me in the place I'm going to. I could not live without you anywhere."

This was what he was trying to tell her, and could not utter a word of it. He seemed to be lying in his coffin, staring up at her through sealed eyelids. He could not purse his cold lips to kiss her warm mouth.

He could not lift an icy hand to bless her brow. They would come soon to lay the last board over his face and screw down the lid. She would scream and fight, but they would drag her away. And he could not answer her wild cries. He could not go to her rescue. He would be lifted in the box from the trestles and carried out on the shoulders of other men, and slid into the waiting hea.r.s.e; and the horses would trot away with him, leaving her to penury, with her children and his at the mercy of the merciless world, while he was lowered into a ditch and hidden under shovelfuls of dirt, to lie there motionless, useless, hideously idle forever.

This vision of himself dead was so vivid that his heart jumped in his breast and raced like a propeller out of water. The very pain and the terror were joyful, for they meant that he still lived.

Whatever other disasters overhung him, he was at least not dead. Better a beggar slinking along the dingiest street than the wealthiest Rothschild under the stateliest tomb. Better the sneers and pity of the world in whispers about his path than all the empty praise of the most resounding obituary.

The main thing was to be alive. Before that great good fortune all misfortunes were minor, unimportant details. And, after all, he was not so pitiable. His name was still respected. His factory was still running. Whatever his liabilities, he still had some a.s.sets, not least of them health and experience and courage.

But where had his courage been hiding that it left him whimpering alone? Was he a little girl afraid of the dark, or was he a man?

There were still men who would lend him money or time. What if he was in trouble? Were not the merchant princes of the earth sweating blood?

There had been a rich men's panic before the poor were reached. Now everybody was involved.

After all, what if he failed? Who had not failed? What if he fell bankrupt?--that was only a tumble down-stairs. Could he not pick himself up and climb again? Some of the biggest industries in the world had pa.s.sed through temporary strain. The sun himself went into eclipse.

If his factory had to close, it could be opened again some day. Or even if he could not recover, how many better men than he had failed? To be crushed by the luck of things was no crime. There was a glory of defeat as well as of victory.

The one great gleaming truth was that he was still alive, still in the ring. He was not dead yet. He was not going to die. He was going to get up and win.

There was no shame in the misfortunes he had had. There was no disgrace in the fears he had bowed to. All the nations and all the men in them were in a night of fear. But already there was a change of feeling. The darker the hour, the nearer the dawn. The worse things were, the sooner they must mend.

People had been too prosperous; the world had played the spendthrift and gambled too high. But economy would restore the balance for the toilers. What had been lost would soon be regained.

Fate could not down America yet. And he was an American. What was it "Jim" Hill had said to the scare-mongers: "The man who sells the United States short is a d.a.m.ned fool." And the man who sells himself short is a d.a.m.neder fool.

Thus he struggled through the bad weather of his soul. The clouds that had gathered and roared and shuttled with lightnings had emptied their wrath, and the earth still rolled. The mystery of terror was subtly altered to a mystery of surety.

Lying in the dark, motionless, he had wrought out the miracle of meditation. Within the senate chamber of his mind he had debated and pondered and voted confidence in himself and in life.

His eyes, still open, still battling for light, had found none yet. The universe was still black. He could not distinguish sky from window, nor cas.e.m.e.nt from ceiling. Yet the gloom was no longer terrible. The universe was still a great s.h.i.+p rus.h.i.+ng on, but he was no longer a midget in a little c.o.c.klesh.e.l.l about to be crushed. He was a pa.s.senger on the s.h.i.+p. The night was benevolent, majestic, sonorous with music.

The sea was glorious and the voyage forward.

And now that his heart was full of good news, he had a wild desire to rush home with it to her who was his home. How often he had left her in the morning after a wrangle, and hurried back to her at night bearing glad tidings, the quarrel forgotten beyond the need of any treaty. And she would be there among their children, beaming welcome from her big eyes.

And she was always so glad when he was glad. She took so much blame on herself; though how was she to blame for herself? Yet she took no credit to herself for being all the sweet things she was. She was the flowers and the harvest, and the cool, amorous evening after the hard day was done. And he was the peevish, whining, swearing imbecile that chose a woman for wife because she was a rose and then clenched her thorns and complained because she was not a turnip.

He felt a longing to tell her how false his croakings had been in that old dead time so long ago as last night. But she was asleep. And she needed sleep. She had been greatly troubled by his troubles. She had been anxious for him and the children. She had so many things to worry over that never troubled him. She had wept and been angry because she could not make him understand. Her very wrath was a way of crying: "I love you! You hurt me!"

He must let her sleep. Her beauty and her graces needed sleep. It was his blessed privilege to guard her slumbers, his pride to house her well and to see that she slept in fabrics suited to the delicate fabric of her exquisite body.

But if only she might chance to be awake that he might tell her how sorry he was that he had been weak and wicked enough to torment her with his baseless fears and his unreasonable ire. At least he must touch her with tenderness. Even though she slept, he must give her the benediction of one light caress.

He put his hand out cautiously toward her. He laid his fingers gently on her cheek. How beautiful it was even in the dark! But it was wet! with tears! Suddenly her little invisible fingers closed upon his hand like grape tendrils.

But this did not prove her awake. So habited they were to each other that even in their sleep their bodies gave or answered such endearments.

He waited till his loneliness for her was unendurable, then he breathed, softly:

"Are you asleep, honey?"

For answer she whirled into his bosom and clenched him in her arms and wept--in whispers lest the children hear. He petted her tenderly and kissed her hair and her eyelids and murmured:

"Did I wake you, honey?"

"No, no!" she sobbed. "I've been awake for hours."

"But you didn't move!"

"I was afraid to waken you. You need your rest so much. I've been thinking how hard you work, how good you are. I'm so ashamed of myself for--"

"But it was all my fault, honey."

"Oh no, no, my dear, my dear!"

He let her have the last word; for an enormous contentedness filled his heart. He drew the covers about her shoulder and held her close and breathed deep of the companions.h.i.+p of the soul he had chosen. He breathed so deeply that his head drooped over hers, his cheek upon her hair. The night seemed to bend above them and mother them and say to them, "Hus.h.!.+ hus.h.!.+ and sleep!"

There are many raptures in the world, and countless beautiful moments, and not the least of them is this solemn marriage in sleep of the man and woman whose days are filled with cares, and under whose roof at night children and servants slumber aloof secure.