Chapter XI.
Scene, the interior of Squire Dewitt’s barn.
Hay at the sides, hay at the back, and great mountains of hay rise into the dusky regions of the loft.
In the centre stands Jierck Dewitt, just returned from his noon interview with Major Skerrett.
At the left sits Ike Van Wart, asleep, with his mouth open. Perhaps, like Voltaire, he hears partially with his tonsils.
On the right, old Sam Galsworthy is killing time with old sledge for a weapon. His right hand has just beaten his left and won the stakes, — viz.: twelve oats.
Hendrecus Canady stealthily approaches the gaping sleeper on the left. He holds a head of timothy-grass, — in these times of war we perceive that it is a good model for a cannon sponge. Hendrecus introduces timothy’s head into Van Wart’s mouth, and begins to tickle the tonsils and palate, so rosy.
To these enters pretty Katy Dewitt, blushing and smiling. Fragrance comes with her; and well it may, for she bears dinner, — a deep yellow dish of pork and beans and a pumpkin-pie exquisitely varnished.
Tender-hearted Jierck Dewitt at once remembered the wife who in happier days crisped his pork and sweetened his pie.
Hendrecus dropped his tickler into Van Wart, and sprang up to help his sweetheart. Her pretty smiles stirred happy smiles on his face, — a bright and good-humored one, though still of pill-fed complexion. His lover-like attentions brought out a blush on her cheeks. That fair color seemed to make the old barn glow and all the hay-mow bloom with fresh heads of pink clover.
Poor Jierck Dewitt recalled how there were once smiles as gay and blushes as tender between him and a damsel as buxom.
Poor fellow! his dinner did him no good. He grew moodier and moodier. The little scene between his sister and Hendrecus had made him miserable. He could not sleep like Van Wart, nor play cards with Galsworthy, nor skylark with Hendrecus. He sat brooding over his sorrow. His powers of self-control were weakened. He could not throw off this weight of an old bitterness. A great vague misery oppressed him. He began to fear his wits were going.
“If I could only get these ugly feelings into shape,” he thought, “I could grapple with them and choke them down. I must do something, or I shall go mad. I believe I’ll steal round through the woods to where I can see old Bilsby’s house and the chestnut-tree where Abby first said she’d have me. Looking at the places may help me to drag this grief out of myself and put it on them.”
Now that the British troops were withdrawn for Vaughan’s expedition, Jierck felt quite secure in dodging about the woods of the Manor. He left his companions in the barn, and stole off toward his father-in-law’s old red farm-house. He felt as if he were his own ghost, compelled to haunt a spot where he had been murdered.
It was quiet sunset. The golden light of evening was among the golden woods. The forest showered golden leaves upon the ground, and melted away in golden motes across the level sunbeams.
Jierck stole along until he came to a little glade, crossed by a pathway. A great chestnut-tree had made the glade its own. Lesser plants were easily thrust back by its stout overshadowing branches, and its brethren of the forest had willingly given place to see what their brother would do with its chance of greatness. It had done nobly. It was an example to trees and the world, of the wisdom of standing by one’s roots, expanding to one’s sunshine, and letting one’s self grow like a fine old vegetable.
This had been Jierck’s trysting-tree in the times when the pastoral poem of his life was writing itself, a canto a day. Under this chestnut, one summer’s eve, when the whole tree was a great bouquet of flowery tassels, Jierck had suddenly ventured to pop his shy question. Full-throated robins up in those very branches had shouted his sweetheart’s “Yes,” for all the birds and breezes to repeat.
Jierck, hidden in the thicket, looked kindly at the old tree. He smiled to recall the meetings there when he was a timid, clumsy lover. For a moment recollections, half comic and all pleasant, banished his agony of a man betrayed by a disloyal woman.
But presently he heard sounds that were not the light clash of falling leaf with fallen leaf. Footsteps and voices were coming. Jierck withdrew a little and watched. Two women appeared up the pathway, following their long shadows. They came out into the glade. It was his wife and her sister, furloughed for the evening, and on their way homeward.
Jierck beheld the woman’s story written on her face, — the tablet where all stories of lives are written for decipherers to read. He saw no wish there to expunge or revise the later chapters. His wife was still an insolent, brazen woman, the counterpart of her mistress on a lower plane.
Poor Jierck! he had been drawn to this spot, so he felt, to see his murderess and be stabbed over again. The exceeding weight of his agony came crushing down upon him. He shivered. It seemed to him that snow must suddenly have fallen with sunset. A moment ago it was not spring, nor summer, but very tolerable autumn; now winter had come, chilly and dreary. A friendless place to him this traitor world! Jierck felt smitten with degradation. He was utterly miserable, and the old chestnut-tree insulted him with memories of his dead hopes of happiness.
“I must have comfort,” thought Jierck.
When sorrow is too sharp to be borne, and comfort must be had at once, men go to the anodynes and stimulants. Kosmos provides these in great variety. The four of most universal application are,
Tobacco, Alcohol, Marriage, Death.
Poor Jierck Dewitt wanted comfort at once. A whiff of smoke from his pipe was not concentrated enough, and he could not wait to try what virtue there was in bigamy.
“Rum or this!” he said wildly. The alternative “this” seemed to attract him for an instant. He drew his knife from his belt, and felt along the cold edge. Was he about to taste that mighty narcotic, Death?
Death! He touched his knife-blade. Gloom alighted upon the landscape. The golden woods grew lurid. Silence, deeper than he had ever known, deepened and deepened, until he fancied that Nature was hushed and listening for his death-moan.
An imagined picture grew before his eyes: — Time, morning. Scene, this glade of the big chestnut. A man lies under the tree. The first sunbeams melt the frost that dabbles his hair. He must be a sound sleeper, for a chipmunk has picked his pockets of their crumbs, and now stands on his forehead, chuckling over his breakfast. Mrs. Jierck Dewitt enters the glade. She sees the sleeper. She starts, and approaches cautiously. She stares, and then looks up with a great, bold smile of relief and scorn. For the sleeper is her husband. He lies dead, with a knife in his breast.
“No!” hissed Jierck, dashing away this picture from his eyes. ” I’ll not kill myself to please her.”
“Rum! I must have rum, or I shall go mad. The old man’s jug will be in the old place in the kitchen cupboard,” he continued.
He skulked along rapidly through the woods, like a beast of prey. The great dull agony in his heart paused a moment. He could keep it down from maddening him, while he thought of his sorry consolation to come.
It was growing dusk now, and he was reckless. He stopped by the kitchen window of his father’s house and peered in.
The family were at supper. These were the early years of the Revolution, and war had not yet utterly desolated this region. Squire Dewitt’s was still a prosperous household, and he, a fine old patriarch, presided at a liberal board. Opposite him sat the mild mother of the house. The harmony of a lifetime of love and companion thinking on companion cares had made her expression almost identical with her husband’s. Pretty Kate, a daughter of her parents’ old age, bustled the meal along, and hoped her Hendrecus was not getting hungry. Jierck’s other sister, a widow, was making two smiles grow in the place of one, on her boy Tommy’s round face, by cutting his gingerbread fatter than usual. The cat, from a dresser, watched every morsel and every sip, with a feline look, which is a thief look.
This homely scene, instead of soothing poor Jierck, was double bitterness to him.
“Curse the woman I made my wife!” he thought. “She has spoilt my chance of home and fireside, of a happy age and children to love and reverence me. Curse her for making me hate my life!”
He turned away, half mean, half fierce, and stole in by the back-door to the cupboard.
Those were times, remember, before the demijohn and the spinning-wheel had given way to Webster’s Unabridged and the melodeon. In every farmer’s pantry stood a Dutch-bellied stone jug. It was corked with a corn cob, and looked arrogantly through the window at the old oaken bucket. Was there molasses in that jug? Not so; but rum fitzmolasses. The well-sweep grew stiff for want of exercise, moss covered the dry-rotten bucket, green slime in the stagnant well was only broken by the plunges of lonely old “Rigdumbonnimiddikaimo”; but the rum-jug was always alert and jolly, and never had time to look vacuous before it was a plenum again. It is hard to imagine those ages; for we have changed our manners now. Our brandy is dried up, our rum has run away, and this is not a land flowing with Monongahela.
Jierck stole, like a thief, into the pantry. There sat the great jug, as of yore. It was of gray stone-ware with blue splashes. Its spout was fashioned into a face on the broad grin. “Comfort here!” the grinning mask seemed to wink, and did not reveal how short-lived and bastard was the comfort it promised. Jierck heaved up its clumsy heft, balanced it upon his lips, and swigged.
Yes, — not to be squeamish in terms, — this Patriot of the Revolution swigged. This was not patriotic, nor under the circumstances honorable, nor in any way wise or prudent. And of course, as his provocation is unknown to our time, we cannot appreciate his reckless despair.
If he had only stopped when he had enough! At the present day we never take too much of our anodynes and our stimulants. One weed, one toddy, one wife, one million, one Presidential term, — whenever wisdom whispers, Satis, we pause and echo, “Satis ’t is.” Wisdom was younger in Jierck’s time. If her childish voice did at all admonish him, the gurgle in his throat made him deaf to the warning at his tympanum. He took too much, poor fellow! Pardon him, and remember that an ill-omened she-wolf had just crossed his path.
There is a sage and honorable law that limits the robbing of orchards, — “Eat your fill; but don’t fill your pockets.” Jierck was rash enough to violate this also. He pocketed a pint of his sorry comforter. He found an empty bottle labelled Hair-Oil. There were nameless unguents before Macassar, and this bottle had held one of them. Jierck filled it from the jug, and made for the barn, just in time to evade pretty Kate carrying supper to the others and her Hendrecus.
Supper was done. Dusk was come. Jierck set out with his party for the rendezvous. The peril was considerable. Hanging was the penalty for being caught. So they sharpened their eyes, pricked up their ears, trod softly, and tried to persuade the runt pony to do the same. Jierck brought up the rear, in a state of sullen contempt.
At the cross-roads Major Skerrett and his companion met them. It was night now in the woods. A red belt of day behind Dunderberg stared watchfully at the party.
“I will go down to the house alone, as we arranged,” whispered the Major. “The negro will admit me to the dining-room. Do you be ready on the lawn by the window at half past eight! It will be dark enough for safety by that time. When I open the window and whistle, jump in and take our man. That is my plan. If anything goes wrong, I will alter it. But nothing will go wrong. Good-bye!”
He moved away through the darkness.
The party waited in the woods, listening to the sounds of evening. It grew chilly. Jierck Dewitt retired again and again, and sipped from his bottle, labelled Hair-Oil. He was ashamed of himself for violating his pledge to the Major. But he soliloquized, “I am only taking just enough to keep my spirits up, — just enough to make a man of me after my making a baby of myself at sight of that woman.”
Just enough! It is not pleasant to betray the errors of the past; but it is a truth grave in this history that the unhappy fellow had much more than enough when, at half past eight, he halted his party under cover of the shrubbery on the lawn at Brothertoft Manor-House.