Book: A Spinner in the Sun

M >> Myrtle Reed >> A Spinner in the Sun




"I am glad," said the minister, "to find you in. Sometimes I am not so
fortunate. I came late, for that reason."

"I've been busy," returned the Doctor. "Sit down."

The minister sank into an easy chair and leaned toward the light. "I
wish I could have a lamp like this in my room," he remarked. "It gives
a good light."

"You can have this one," returned Dexter, with an hysterical laugh,

"I was not begging," said Mr. Thorpe, with dignity. "Miss Mehitable's
lamps are all small. Some of them give no more light than a candle."

"'How far that little candle throws its beams,'" quoted Dexter. "'So
shines a good deed in a naughty world.'"

There was a long interval of silence. Sometimes Thorpe and Doctor
Dexter would sit for an entire evening with less than a dozen words
spoken on either side, yet feeling the comfort of human companionship.

"I was thinking," said, Thorpe, finally, "of the supreme isolation of
the human soul. You and I sit here, talking or not, as the mood
strikes us, and yet, what does speech matter? You know no more of me
than I choose to give you, nor I of you."

"No," responded Dexter, "that is quite true." He did not realise what
Thorpe had just said, but he felt that it was safe to agree.

"One grows morbid in thinking of it," pursued Thorpe, screening his
blue eyes from the light with his hand. "We are like a vast plain of
mountain peaks. Some of us have our heads in the clouds always, up
among the eternal snows. Thunders boom about us, lightning rives us,
storm and sleet beat upon us. There is a rumbling on some distant peak
and we know that it rains there, too. That is all we ever know. We
are not quite sure when our neighbours are happy or when they are
troubled; when there is sun and when there is storm. The secret forces
in the interior of the mountain work on unceasingly. The distance
hides it all. We never get near enough to another peak to see the
scars upon its surface, to know of the dead timber and the dried
streams, the marks of avalanches and glacial drift, the precipices and
pitfalls, the barren wastes. In blue, shimmering distance, the peaks
are veiled and all seem fair but our own."

At the word "veiled," Dexter shuddered. "Very pretty," he said, with a
forced laugh which sounded flat. "Why don't you put it into a sermon?"

Thorpe's face became troubled. "My sermons do not please," he
answered, with touching simplicity. "They say there is not enough of
hell."

"I'm satisfied," commented the Doctor, in a grating voice. "I think
there's plenty of hell."

"You never come to church," remarked the minister, not seeing the point.

"There's hell enough outside--for any reasonable mortal," returned
Dexter. He was keyed to a high pitch. He felt that, at any instant,
something might snap and leave him inert.

Thorpe sighed. His wrinkled old hand strayed out across the papers and
turned the face of Ralph's mother toward him. He studied it closely,
not having seen it before. Then he looked up at the Doctor, whose face
was again like a mask.

"Your--?" A lift of the eyebrows finished the question.

Dexter nodded, with assumed carelessness. There was another long pause.

"Sometimes I envy you," said Thorpe, laying the picture down carefully,
"you have had so much of life and joy. I think it is better for you to
have had her and lost her than not to have had her at all," he
continued, unconsciously paraphrasing. "Even in your loneliness, you
have the comfort of memory, and your boy--I have wondered what a son
might mean to me, now, in my old age. Dead though she is, you know she
still loves you; that somewhere she is waiting to take your hand in
hers."

"Don't!" cried Dexter. The strain was well-nigh insupportable.

"Forgive me, my friend," returned Thorpe, quickly. "I--" Then he
paused. "As I was saying," he went on, after a little, "I have often
envied you."

"Don't," said Dexter, again. "As you were also saying, distance hides
the peak and you do not see the scars."

Thorpe's eyes sought the picture of Dexter's wife with an evident
tenderness, mingled with yearning. "I often think," he sighed, "that
in Heaven we may have a chance to pay our debt to woman. Through
woman's agony we come into the world, by woman's care we are nourished,
by woman's wisdom we are taught, by woman's love we are sheltered, and,
at the last, it is a woman who closes our eyes. At every crisis of a
man's life, a woman is always waiting, to help him if she may, and I
have seen that at any crisis in a woman's life, we are apt to draw back
and shirk. She helps us bear our difficulties; she faces hers alone."

Dexter turned uneasily in his chair. His face was inscrutable. The
silent moment cried out for speech--for anything to relieve the
tension. Through Ralph's letters Evelina's eyes seemed to be upon him,
beseeching him to speak.

"I knew a man,", said Anthony Dexter, hoarsely, "who unintentionally
contracted quite an unusual debt to a woman."

"Yes?" returned, Thorpe, inquiringly. He was interested.

"He was a friend of mine," the Doctor continued, with difficulty, "or
rather a classmate. I knew him best at college and afterward--only
slightly."

"The debt," Thorpe reminded him, after a pause. "You were speaking, of
his debt to a woman."

Dexter turned his face away from Thorpe and from the accusing eyes
beneath Ralph's letters. "She was a very beautiful girl," he went on,
carefully choosing his words, "and they loved each other as people love
but once. My--my friend was much absorbed in chemistry and had a
fondness for original experiment. She--the girl, you know--used to
study with him. He was teaching her and she often helped him in the
laboratory.

"They were to be married," continued Dexter. "The day before they were
to be married, he went to her house and invited her to come to the
laboratory to see an experiment which he was trying for the first time
and which promised to be unusually interesting. I need not explain the
experiment--you would not understand.

"On the way to the laboratory, they were talking, as lovers will. She
asked him if he loved her because she was herself; because, of all the
women in the world, she was the one God meant for him, or if he loved
her because he thought her beautiful.

"He said that he loved her because she was herself, and, most of all,
because she was his. 'Then,' she asked, timidly, 'when I am old and
all the beauty has gone, you will love me still? It will be the same,
even when I am no longer lovely?'

"He answered her as any man would, never dreaming how soon he was to be
tested.

"In the laboratory, they were quite alone. He began the experiment,
explaining as he went, and she watched it as eagerly as he. He turned
away for a moment, to get another chemical. As he leaned over the
retort to put it in, he heard it seethe. With all her strength, she
pushed him away instantly. There was an explosion which shook the
walls of the laboratory, a quantity of deadly gas was released, and, in
the fumes, they both fainted.

"When he came to his senses, he learned that she had been terribly
burned, and had been taken on the train to the hospital. He was the
one physician in the place and it was the only thing to be done.

"As soon as he could, he went to the hospital. They told him there
that her life would be saved and they hoped for her eyesight, but that
she would be permanently and horribly disfigured. All of her features
were destroyed, they said--she would be only a pitiful wreck of a
woman."

Thorpe was silent. His blue eyes were dim with pity. Dexter rose and
stood in front of him. "Do you understand?" he asked, in a voice that
was almost unrecognisable. "His face was close to the retort when she
pushed him away. She saved his life and he went away--he never saw her
again. He left her without so much as a word."

"He went away?" asked the minister, incredulously. "Went away and left
her when she had so much to bear? Deserted her when she needed him to
help her bear it, and when she had saved him from death, or worse?"

"You would not believe it possible?" queried Dexter, endeavouring to
make his voice even.

"Of a cur, yes," said the minister, his voice trembling with
indignation, "but of a man, no."

Anthony Dexter shrank back within himself. He was breathing heavily,
but his companion did not notice.

"It was long ago," the Doctor continued, when he had partially regained
his composure. He dared not tell Thorpe that the man had married in
the meantime, lest he should guess too much. "The woman still lives,
and my--friend lives also. He has never felt right about it. What
should he do?"

"The honour of the spoken word still holds him," said Thorpe, evenly.
"As I understand, he asked her to marry him and she consented. He was
never released from his promise--did not even ask for it. He slunk
away like a cur. In the sight of God he is bound to her by his own
word still. He should go to her and either fulfil his promise or ask
for release. The tardy fulfilment of his promise would be the only
atonement he could make."

The midnight train came in and stopped, but neither heard it.

"It would be very difficult," Thorpe was saying, "to retain any shred
of respect for a man like that. It shows your broad charity when you
call him 'friend.' I myself have not so much grace."

Anthony Dexter's breath came painfully. He tightened his fingers on
the arm of the chair and said nothing.

"It is a peculiar coincidence," mused Thorpe, He was thinking aloud
now. "In the old house just beyond Miss Mehitable's, farther up, you
know, a woman has just come to live who seems to have passed through
something like that. It would be strange, would it not, if she were
the one whom your--friend--had wronged?"

"Very," answered Dexter, in a voice the other scarcely heard.

"Perhaps, in this way, we may bring them together again. If the woman
is here, and you can find your friend, we may help him to wash the
stain of cowardice off his soul. Sometimes," cried Thorpe
passionately, "I think there is no sin but shirking. I can excuse a
liar, I can pardon a thief, I can pity a murderer, but a shirk--no!"
His voice broke and his wrinkled old hands trembled.

"My--my friend," lied Anthony Dexter, wiping the cold sweat from his
forehead, "lives abroad. I have no way of finding him."

"It is a pity," returned Thorpe. "Think of a man meeting his God like
that! It tempts one to believe in a veritable hell!"

"I think there is a veritable hell," said Dexter, with a laugh which
was not good to hear. "I think, by this time, my friend must believe
in it as well. I remember that he did not, before the--it, I mean,
happened."

Far from feeling relief, Anthony Dexter was scourged anew. A thousand
demons leaped from the silence to mock him; the earth rolled beneath
his feet. The impulse of confession was strong upon him, even in the
face of Thorpe's scorn. He wondered why only one church saw the need
of the confessional, why he could not go, even to Thorpe, and share the
burden that oppressed his guilty soul.

The silence was not to be borne. The walls of the room swayed back and
forth, as though they were of fabric and stirred by all the winds of
hell. The floor undulated; his chair sank dizzily beneath him.

Dexter struggled to his feet, clutching convulsively at the table. His
lips were parched and his tongue clung to the roof of his mouth.
"Thorpe," he said, in a hoarse whisper, "I----"

The minister raised his hand. "Listen! I thought I heard----"

A whistle sounded outside, the gate clanged shut. A quick, light step
ran up the walk, the door opened noisily, and a man rushed in. He
seemed to bring into that hopeless place all the freshness of immortal
Youth.

Blinded, Dexter moved forward, his hands outstretched to meet that
eager clasp.

"Father! Father!" cried Ralph, joyously; "I've come home!"




VIII

Piper Tom

"Laddie," said the Piper to the yellow mongrel, "we'll be having
breakfast now."

The dog answered with a joyous yelp. "You talk too much," observed his
master, in affectionate reproof; "'t is fitting that small yellow dogs
should be seen and not heard."

It was scarcely sunrise, but the Piper's day began--and ended--early.
He had a roaring fire in the tiny stove which warmed his shop, and the
tea-kettle hummed cheerily. All about him was the atmosphere of
immaculate neatness. It was not merely the lack of dust and dirt, but
a positive cleanliness.

His beardless face was youthful, but the Piper's hair was tinged with
grey at the temples. One judged him to be well past forty, yet fully
to have retained his youth. His round, rosy mouth was puckered in a
whistle as he moved about the shop and spread the tiny table with a
clean cloth.

Ranged about him in orderly rows was his merchandise. Tom Barnaby
never bothered with fixtures and showcases. Chairs, drygoods boxes,
rough shelves of his own making, and a few baskets sufficed him.

In the waterproof pedler's pack which he carried on his back when his
shop was in transit, he had only the smaller articles which women
continually need. Calico, mosquito netting, buttons, needles, thread,
tape, ribbons, stationery, hooks and eyes, elastic, shoe laces, sewing
silk, darning cotton, pins, skirt binding, and a few small frivolities
in the way of neckwear, veils, and belts--these formed Piper Tom's
stock in trade. By dint of close packing, he wedged an astonishing
number of things into a small space, and was not too heavily laden
when, with his dog and his flute, he set forth upon the highway to
establish his shop in the next place that seemed promising.

"All unknowing, Laddie," he said to the dog, as he sat down to his
simple breakfast, "we've come into competition with a woman who keeps a
shop like ours, which we didn't mean to do. It's for this that we were
making a new set of price tags all day of yesterday, which happened to
be the Sabbath. It wouldn't be becoming of us to charge less than she
and take her trade away from her, so we've started out on an even basis.

"Poor lady," laughed the Piper, "she was not willing for us to know her
prices, thinking we were going to sell cheaper than she. 'T is a hard
world for women, Laddie. I'm thinking 'tis no wonder they grow
suspicious at times."

The dog sat patiently till Piper Tom finished his breakfast, well
knowing that a generous share would be given him outside. While the
dog ate, his master put the shop into the most perfect order, removing
every particle of dust, and whistling meanwhile.

When the weather permitted, the shop was often left to keep itself, the
door being hospitably propped open with a brick, while the dog and his
master went gypsying. With a ragged, well-worn book in one pocket, a
parcel of bread and cheese in another, and his flute slung over his
shoulder, the Piper was prepared to spend the day abroad. He carried,
too, a bone for the dog, well wrapped in newspaper, and an old silver
cup to drink from.

Having finished his breakfast, the dog scampered about eagerly,
indicating, by many leaps and barks, that it was time to travel, but
the Piper raised his hand.

"Not to-day, Laddie," he said. "If we travel to-day, we'll not be
going far. Have you forgotten that 't was only day before yesterday we
found our work? Come here."

The dog seated himself before the Piper, his stubby tail wagging
impatiently.

"She's a poor soul, Laddie," sighed the Piper, at length. "I'm
thinking she's seen Sorrow face to face and has never had the courage
to turn away. She was walking in the woods, trying to find the strange
music, and was disappointed when she saw 't was only us. We must make
her glad 't was us."

After a long time, the Piper spoke again, with a lingering tenderness.
"She must be very beautiful, I'm thinking, Laddie; else she would not
hide her face. Very beautiful and very sad."

When the sun was high, Piper Tom climbed the hill, followed by his
faithful dog. On his shoulder he bore a scythe and under the other arm
was a spade. He entered Miss Evelina's gate without ceremony and made
a wry face as he looked about him. He scarcely knew where to begin.

The sound of the wide, even strokes roused Miss Evelina from her
lethargy, and she went to the window, veiled. At first she was
frightened when she saw the queer man whom she had met in the woods
hard at work in her garden.

The red feather in his hat bobbed cheerfully up and down, the little
yellow dog ran about busily, and the Piper was whistling lustily an
old, half-forgotten tune.

She watched him for some time, then a new thought frightened her again.
She had no money with which to pay him for clearing out her garden, and
he would undoubtedly expect payment. She must go out and tell him not
to work any more; that she did not wish to have the weeds removed.

Cringing before the necessity, she went out. The Piper did not see her
until she was very near him, then, startled in his turn, he said, "Oh!"
and took off his hat.

"Good-morning, madam," he went on, making a low bow. She noted that
the tip of his red feather brushed the ground. "What can I do for you,
more than I'm doing now?"

"It is about that," stammered Evelina, "that I came. You must not work
in my garden."

"Surely," said the Piper, "you don't mean that! Would you have it all
weeds? And 't is hard work for such as you."

"I--I--" answered Miss Evelina, almost in a whisper; "I have no money."

The Piper laughed heartily and put on his hat again. "Neither have I,"
he said, between bursts of seemingly uncalled-for merriment, "and
probably I'm the only man in these parts who's not looking for it. Did
you think I'd ask for pay for working in the garden?"

His tone made her feel that she had misjudged him and she did not know
what to say in reply.

"Laddie and I have no garden of our own," he explained, "and so we're
digging in yours. The place wants cleaning, for 't is a long time
since any one cared enough for it to dig. I was passing, and I saw a
place I thought I could make more pleasant. Have I your leave to try?"

"Why--why, yes," returned Miss Evelina, slowly. "If you'd like to, I
don't mind."

He dismissed her airily, with a wave of his hand, and she went back
into the house, never once turning her head.

"She's our work, Laddie," said the Piper, "and I'm thinking we've begun
in the right way. All the old sadness is piled up in the garden, and
I'm thinking there's weeds in her life, too, that it's our business to
take out. At any rate, we'll begin here and do this first. One step
at a time, Laddie--one step at a time. That's all we have to take,
fortunately. When we can't see ahead, it's because we can't look
around a corner."

All that day from behind her cobwebbed windows, Miss Evelina watched
the Piper and his dog. Weeds and thistles fell like magic before his
strong, sure strokes. He carried out armful after armful of rubbish
and made a small-sized mountain in the road, confining it with stray
boards and broken branches, as it was too wet to be burned.

Wherever she went, in the empty house, she heard that cheery,
persistent whistle. As usual, Miss Hitty left a tray on her doorstep,
laden with warm, wholesome food. Since that first day, she had made no
attempt to see Miss Evelina. She brought her tray, rapped, and went
away quietly, exchanging it for another when it was time for the next
meal.

Meanwhile, Miss Evelina's starved body was responding, slowly but
surely, to the simple, well-cooked food. Hitherto, she had not cared
to eat and scarcely knew what she was eating. Now she had learned to
discriminate between hot rolls and baking-powder biscuit, between thick
soups and thin broths, custards and jellies.

Miss Evelina had wound one of the clocks, setting it by the midnight
train, and loosening the machinery by a few drops of oil which she had
found in an old bottle, securely corked. At eight, at one, and at six,
Miss Hitty's tray was left at her back door--there had not been the
variation of a minute since the first day. Preoccupied though she was,
Evelina was not insensible of the kindness, nor of the fact that she
was stronger, physically, than she had been for years.

And now in the desolate garden, there was visible evidence of more
kindness. Perhaps the world was not wholly a place of grief and tears.
Out there among the weeds a man laboured cheerfully--a man of whom she
had no knowledge and upon whom she had no claim.

He sang and whistled as he strove mightily with the weeds. Now and
then, he sharpened his scythe with his whetstone and attacked the dense
undergrowth with yet more vigour. The little yellow mongrel capered
joyfully and unceasingly, affecting to hide amidst the mass of rubbish,
scrambling out with sharp, eager barks when his master playfully buried
him, and retreating hastily before the oncoming scythe.

Miss Evelina could not hear, but she knew that the man was talking to
the dog in the pauses of his whistling. She knew also that the dog
liked it, even if he did not understand. She observed that the dog was
not beautiful--could not be called so by any stretch of the
imagination--and yet the man talked to him, made a friend of him, loved
him.

At noon, the Piper laid down his scythe, clambered up on the crumbling
stone wall, and ate his bread and cheese, while the dog nibbled at his
bone. From behind a shutter in an upper room, Miss Evelina noted that
the dog also had bread and cheese, sharing equally with his master.

The Piper went to the well, near the kitchen door, and drank copiously
of the cool, clear water from his silver cup. Then he went back to
work again.

Out in the road, the rubbish accumulated. When the Piper stood behind
it. Miss Evelina could barely see the tip of the red feather that
bobbed rakishly in his hat. Once he disappeared, leaving the dog to
keep a reluctant guard over the spade and scythe. When he came back,
he had a rake and a large basket, which made the collection of rubbish
easier.

Safe in her house, Miss Evelina watched him idly. Her thought was
taken from herself for the first time in all the five-and-twenty years.
She contemplated anew the willing service of Miss Mehitable, who asked
nothing of her except the privilege of leaving daily sustenance at her
barred and forbidding door. "Truly," said Miss Evelina to herself, "it
is a strange world."

The personality of the Piper affected her in a way she could not
analyse. He did not attract her, neither was he wholly repellent. She
did not feel friendly toward him, yet she could not turn wholly aside.
There had been something strangely alluring in his music, which haunted
her even now, though she resented his making game of her and leading
her through the woods as he had.

Over and above and beyond all, she remembered the encounter upon the
road, always with a keen, remorseless pain which cut at her heart like
a knife. Miss Evelina thought she was familiar with knives, but this
one hurt in a new way and cut, seemingly, at a place which had not been
touched before.

Since the "white night" which had turned her hair to lustreless snow,
nothing had hurt her so much. Her coming to the empty house, driven,
as she was, by poverty--entering alone into a tomb of memories and dead
happiness,--had not stabbed so deeply or so surely. She saw herself
first on one peak and then on another, a valley of humiliation and
suffering between which it had taken twenty-five years to cross. From
the greatest hurt at the beginning to the greatest hurt--at the end?
Miss Evelina started from her chair, her hands upon her leaping heart.
The end? Ah, dear God, no! There was no end to grief like hers!

Insistently, through her memory, sounded the pipes o' Pan--the wild,
sweet, tremulous strain which had led her away from the road where she
had been splashed with the mud from Anthony Dexter's carriage wheels.
The man with the red feather in his hat had called her, and she had
come. Now he was digging in her garden, making the desolate place
clean, if not cheerful.

Conscious of an unfamiliar detachment, Miss Evelina settled herself to
think. The first hurt and the long pain which followed it, the blurred
agony of remembrance when she had come back to the empty house, then
the sharp, clean-cut stroke when she stood on the road, her eyes
downcast, and heard the wheels rush by, then clear and challenging, the
pipes o' Pan.

"'There is a divinity that shapes our ends,'" she thought, "'rough-hew
them how we may.'" Where had she heard that before? She remembered,
now--it was a favourite quotation of Anthony Dexter's.

Her lip curled scornfully. Was she never to be free from Anthony
Dexter? Was she always to be confronted with his cowardice, his
shirking, his spoken and written thoughts? Was she always to see his
face as she had seen it last, his great love for her shining in his
eyes for all the world to read? Was she to see forever his pearl
necklace, discoloured, snaky, and cold, as meaningless as the yellow
slip of paper that had come with it?

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