 | CHAPTER XVI.
AND WHAT CAME OF IT. Hedged in |  |
16. CHAPTER XVI.
AND WHAT CAME OF IT.
IT was a rough face.
Eunice saw as much as that, though the
man stood in the dark, and she in the lighted
room. She saw more than that, when she had
walked boldly and close to the window to get her
hand upon the lock.
She had about the courage of an average
sensible woman, — nothing more, perhaps. The
average sensible objection to an evening visit
from a burglar when one is alone in the house
was strong within her, when she saw how rough
a face it was with which she had to deal.
When she had reached the window, when her
hand was upon the lock, when she would have
drawn the shade, when she saw what face it was
with which she had to deal, a terror quite unlike
the average sensible fear struck her through, and
struck her still.
She stood so still that her ugly visitor, taking
courage, perhaps, drew close to her, with only
the glass (Eunice thought, confusedly, how thin
and shining and firm the glass was) between
them, and rapped upon it with his knuckles, —
the knuckles were very grimy.
“Well?” said the fellow, through the glass.
“Well,” said Eunice, in a dull, thick voice.
“Shall I come in, or 'll you come out?”
Eunice sprang the lock sharply.
“Hush! I will come out.” She pointed, as
she spoke, to the piazza door. The man — or
boy, for he seemed to be scarcely more than a
boy — nodded, and moved around the house,
crunching the snow heavily underfoot. It seemed
to Eunice's excited fancy that the neighbors must
hear him for half a mile away.
Eunice, instead of locking the piazza door,
opened it, shut it after her, crossed the piazza,
and stepped out upon the snow. The moon was
up, and all the night was white. The young
fellow, as he came around the corner of the house,
was sharply relieved, both in face and figure,
against the broad blue shield of snow.
He was ragged and dirty. A slouched, soiled
nearly shaded his face from view. He jerked
up his hat, however, partly in salutation, partly
because it obscured his sight, as he came up to
the spot where Eunice stood. His coat was out
at the elbows; his boots were out at the toes;
his hands, as I said, were grimy; an odor of ill
tobacco pervaded the air about him.
Eunice, standing with the full moonlight on
her bare head, her fine lips parted, her eyes wide
open, her slender, sick hands (Eunice always
showed physical exhaustion first in her hands)
folded and trembling, — Eunice saw, as the thief
in Paradise might have seen himself dead upon
his cross, — the father of her child.
Oddly enough, the only thing of which she
thought, for the moment, was a theological discussion
which the doctor and Mrs. Purcell had
yesterday concerning the finer distinctions between
retribution and discipline.
It did not occur to her, I think, that she had
not deserved this; she was a little puzzled as to
the metaphysical grounds on which the Lord had
decreed it.
The young man, who had been leaning against
her to speak, and apparently somewhat ill at ease,
broke the silence by saying, shortly, —
“Well, Nix!”
“What do you want of me, Dick?” Eunice
spoke with considerable self-command in her
sweet, even, cultivated voice. Dick listened
sharply to it, and something in it made him dully
uncomfortable.
“Ain't over-glad to see me, be ye, now?
Did n't mean no offence! Thought mebbe ye
would.”
“What do you want?” repeated Eunice, in
the same manner as before.
“Don't know as I want nothin',” said Dick,
in a disappointed, embarrassed tone. “I thought
mebbe as I had n't done very well by ye, and,
seein' as I 'm just about ready to live a decent
life and settle down, I 'd hunt ye up and marry
ye; but, by gracious, Nix!” — Dick looked across
the white light between them with a puzzled
face, and jerked his thumb in the direction of
the wonderful southern skies, where the moon
hung quite by itself, — “I 'd as soon think of
marryin' that!”
“Yes, yes,” said Eunice, mechanically, “just
as soon.”
“What with the white, and the shine of it, and
the — the distance — miles of it, you know,”
mused Dick, “and the feeling that there warn't
never a ladder in the world made high enough
to reach the thing. Never should ha' known ye
in the world, Nix, if 't had n't ben for hearin' of
your name about town, and where ye was, and
then for havin' the chance to make sure o't at my
leisure through the winder-panes, — never should!
I 've ben on the lookout for ye, too, this long
while back. Come across old Lize once, with a
blue panoraymy and Tim in tow, — tried to get
it out of her whether she 'd stumbled 'cross ye
in her travels; but the old woman shut me up
quicker 'n gunpowder. I took the notion, at the
time o't, as she knew. Where 's the child, Nix?”
The abruptness of the question startled Eunice;
she was shivering from the cold, which, in
her unprotected state, was extreme; and she was
faint from the effort to speak gently to the fellow.
Dick was as good as other Thicket Street
boys; meant her no harm, — at least if he were
not angered. Both her sense of charity and of
and kindness.
So, feeling very weak and very much confused,
she staggered a little against the side of the
house. Dick instinctively threw out his hands to
keep her from falling. She thrust them away
with a gesture of inexpressible loathing. She
could not help it.
“I beg your pardon,” said Dick, sullenly stepping
back. “I see I 'm not fit to stand talking
here to a lady like you 're grown to be. I 'd better
go, Nix.”
“Yes, you had better go,” said Eunice, recovering
herself, — “you had better go, unless you
wish to do me a very great harm, which I do
not think you do, Dick.”
“Meant no offence! No. Told you so!”
interrupted Dick. “Meant no offence noway;
Mebbe I 'd better ha' let you alon' altogether;
thought I was doin' the fair thing by ye, that 's
all. I ain't the good-for-nothing I was in old
times; I thought I 'd like to kind o' get you off
my conscience, and spruce up and live like better
folks, — besides, I liked you, Nix, first-rate!”
“But 't ain't no odds,” continued Dick, after
neither.”
“I understand, I understand,” Eunice answered,
with increasing gentleness. “I know
you don't mean to be a bad boy, Dick. I know
you did n't mean to give me the — pain — you
have given me to-night. But it can't be helped.
God led me one way, you another. We are
different, Dick, — don't you see? — different now,
forever.”
She spoke in a simple, motherly way, as if
she were explaining something to a child. The
young fellow received what she said with a perplexed
and patient face.
“You 're right enough on that. Would n't
have come nigh ye if I 'd known it afore as clear
as I know it now. I thought a lady was a born-thing
like, afore. But, for aught I see, you 're as
fine as any on 'em. I don't see through it,” —
Dick pulled his hat down over a pair of as dull,
good-natured, uncomfortable eyes as ever attacked
an old relentless problem, — “I don't see
through it though! Here 's you and here 's me;
growed up in Thicket Street like 't other folks as
grows up in Thicket Street; all of a piece both
t' other, it was me by all odds (which hung about
me while I was huntin' of ye up). Now, here 's
me, and here 's you!” — Dick glanced across
the shining breach, which all the lighted night
seemed helping to widen between the two figures,
typical as if Thorwaldsen had made a
basso-relievo of them against the shining sky, —
“here 's you, and here 's me! Good luck got
you, — I won't say but you needed good luck,
Nix, — and here ye be, and here, for aught I ken
see, ye 'll continer to be, and no ketchin' up with
you in this world or t' other. Now if a fellar 'd
got his heart sot on ketchin' up, — which I won't
deny I ain't so partikkelar 'bout, — and there,
agin, why ain't I?” continued poor Dick, drowned
in his own metaphysics. “When folks are sot on
ketchin' up, and other folks are sot they won't
be ketched up with, and the God as made 'em
looks on and — and, as you might say, bets on
the innings for the 2.40 creetur — Well! I don't
mean no disrespect to him in especial,” broke off
Dick; “but I can't say as I see it. Howsomever,
that 's no concern o' yourn, and it 's plain
to see it would do ye no kindness to be seen
more keerful how I put myself in your way
another time. 'T ain't likely as ye 'll ever be so
put about agin. But I meant to do the fair thing,
if 't was late in the day,” repeated Dick, as he
turned to go.
Eunice, alive in the ears as a panther, — listening
for neighbors, for passers, for Christina, for
all the world to come and see her standing where
and how she stood; sick at heart, as one may
suppose that only the pure who have struggled
against tide for purity can ever be in tainted air,
— found herself, after and above all, growing
very sorry for Dick.
“Perhaps,” she said, trembling very much,
“you would like to know where — the little
boy — is?”
“Not unless you choose to tell,” said Dick.
“Everybody knows,” replied Eunice, simply.
“Perhaps you would like to go and see it —
over there.” She pointed to the corner of the
purple hill, where the light lay very solemnly.
“Dead — hey?”
Dick stood, slouched and still, with his eyes
turned toward the old churchyard and the climbing
moon.
“Thankee,” said he, after a pause; “mebbe
I 'll go over and make the little fellow a call.
Don't s'pose I 'm fit for 't, but I might be wuss,
an' I guess no harm 'll come on 't. Good by,
Nix; and I 'll not grudge ye the luck, mind, in
sight o' that.”
Dick shuffled away, through the limpid light,
up the purple hill, among the solemn snows
where the baby lay, “ketching up” at last with
the little grave, where Eunice thought she saw
him, after a pause, kneel down and remove his
slouched hat from his head.
She stood quietly enough till this, in the full
light against the pillar; then all the world reeled.
She managed to crawl into the house. When
Christina came home from the prayer-meeting,
she found her on the parlor floor nearly senseless
with what Dr. Burtis pronounced a clear
case of neuralgia at the heart.
When they had left her — feigning sleep —
alone in her gray room with her white cross that
night, she got up, locked her door, and walked
her narrow floor, with only intervals of respite,
till morning, being, she afterwards said, “too
creature more thoroughly “tired” in brain and
heart and body than Eunice Trent that night.
The mere solitude of such an experience as hers
must, it has often seemed to me, be the weariest
thing in the world. Nothing exhausts like loneliness,
and nothing equals the loneliness of sin,
since nothing but the loneliness of sin is beyond
the comprehending sympathies of Him who was
“without sin among” us. In the bitterest of
human pains, — remorse, — we must bear, as we
incurred, alone. He indeed has agreed to “remember
sins and iniquities no more forever”;
but shall we — can we — forget? Perhaps there
is in guilt a secret nature like the secret of
perpetual motion: grasp the conditions, the result
grasps you.
The thing which had happened to Eunice was
as natural as the multiplication-table; indeed,
she could but feel that Dick had let her off very
easily. She wearied her excited fancy through
the night by conceiving of advantages which he
might have taken, of which she had read or
heard as taken in cases similar to her own,
which would have turned all her patiently acquired
of the Lord's mercy, or whether of the boy's
good heart, she had escaped great perils with
little hurt.
Suppose the neighbors had seen her standing
there; suppose the fellow had dogged her steps,
wrung money from her, used her name lightly
about the town, done any one of a dozen things
which had been done in such circumstances
many times before?
She felt confident, quite, of his sincerity, when
he agreed that she should not “be so put about
agin.” Thicket Street Nix had understood the
boy well enough, — a good-hearted, careless fellow,
— and Miss Trent felt little, if any, concern
lest she were misinterpreting him now. In this,
time proved her to be correct. From the moment
when she turned and left him kneeling in
the moonlight on the purple hill, Eunice never
saw her child's father again. It took, I think, a
little of the loathsomeness of the sight of him
away, that she had seen him last just so and
there, — changed her sense of individual suffering
into a kind of solemn charity for poor Dick;
which, as time softened her memory of the whole
M. Jacques would say) to bestow on the miserable
kneeling figure which was never to “ketch up.”
Yet she passed, that night, hours of the kind
which make old men and women out of young
ones fast. The events of the evening appeared,
she said afterwards to Margaret, “to have taken
her up by the roots.” She seems to have undergone
a stirring, settling process, like fair water
into which a filthy thing is thrown. Life in
Thicket Street, sharp and gaudy and long as
Lize's “panoraymy,” unfurled all night before
her; people, scenes, incidents, which she had for
years forgotten, started up from the gray corners
of her room, and stalked about her. Like the
angel in Miss Ingelow's Story of Doom, she descended
into hell with shining feet that floated,
but did not touch the ground, — but it was hell.
She did not grow to feel herself to be aggrieved
in this experience. The Lord could not help it.
It was mathematics, not affliction.
But I remember once to have heard her say, long
after, — some discussion, I have forgotten what, between
Margaret and myself arousing the words, —
“Save a lost man his memory; he will need
no `eternal nunishment' besides.”
| CHAPTER XVI.
AND WHAT CAME OF IT. Hedged in | |