Joanna E. Wood

“ There is no flower on earth more beautiful in delicate fragility of texture, in purity of tint, in shape and translucent color than a morning-glory with the dew upon it.
It was a morning to live and love in. And it seemed to Homer Wilson that the whole gracious aspect of the day was completed by the forms of Myron and her boy as they stood without the gate.
His heart yearned for her as he helped her into the wagon by his side. At Mrs. Deans' he lifted her down, holding her for an instant in his arms. The keen "possessive pang" that thrilled him shook his spirit with its sacred sweetness. ”

“ Deans was wroth with herself that she had not said still less.
Ann Lemon went back to her own house, and Myron once more went back and forth to the village. The winter had changed her. She no longer shrank from before the gaze of those cold eyes that met hers daily. Instead, she met their glances with firm lips and unmoved eye, not boldly, not appealingly, but with an acceptance of rebuke and scorn that was stronger in its endurance than wrath, with a patience more pathetic than any appeal.
No smile ever moved her lips, no anger ever raised her voice. ”

“ Slow resolutions began to stir in her heart: she would go through the world "spending and being spent" for others: she would be patient to her grandmother, always remembering she had shamed her: she would be true and faithful and self-sacrificing in every relation she assumed to others; she would be sympathetic to all and she would die soon, very soon, she thought, and the village would mourn her and at last speak of her with loving kindness. Poor Myron! Like "many mighty men," she did not realize the utter barrenness of a posthumous joy or understand how diffident Death can be when wooed. ”

“ But Homer Wilson was not thinking of any generalizations; he was simply concerned with the debt he owed Myron Holder and how to pay it; for, and be it told with no thought of disparaging Homer Wilson, he felt he would bestow an inestimable benefit upon Myron Holder by making her his wife. He believed he would, at one blow, free her from the shackles of shame. He never thought of the woman-soul that strove to justify itself by rigid adherence to those vows that had seemed so sacred, uttered, as they were, by lips that were almost divine to the listening heart they had betrayed. ”

“ The springing hopvines seemed to twine their tendrils tight and tighter about her heart. All the scents and sounds of spring were ever after to her an exquisite torture. But her soul was of strong fibre.
Before all the scorn of the village, all the rebukes of Mrs. Deans, all the wrath of her grandmother, all the bitterness and misery and hopelessness of her own heart, Myron Holder was mute.
No murmur escaped her lips against the man who had forsaken her. The village knew her shame, but it could not fathom her secret. Myron Holder was deaf to all commands, entreaties, persuasions, sneers. ”

“ For some little time Myron was bewildered by the strange world which she had entered, but it did not remain long strange; it soon developed familiar phases.
She bore forever the burden of the hateful pledge the Reverend Mr. Fletcher had wrung from her. In the old, harsh days of Puritanical prudery and intolerance, the Evil Woman bore upon her breast a flamy insignia of shame—a beacon warning all not to trust their hopes or fears or joys to that perfidious bosom which had been false to its own womanhood, a something which could be seen afar off, a mute, yet eloquent, cry: "Unclean—Unclean!" ”

“ There was the young man, strong in the choice of will and heart; the old man, drawing the last coverlet over the last sleep; and, severed from these by only a short depth of kindred substance, she who had passed, her bed rapidly rounding to a grave.
At last, Clem began patting the mound with the back of his spade; his work was nearly done. Each echoless blow struck upon Myron's heart; and, thinking of the shame she had wrought the dead woman, she dealt herself those blows that she had been accustomed to endure from her grandmother's bitterness. ”

“ Warner came to the door just as Mrs. Deans entered the kitchen, hurrying in from the outer air, and bringing a new excitement with her to intensify the suspense. Mrs. Warner beckoned and whispered:
"She's speaking of hearing music and singing, now; they mostly don't last long after that."
"They," not "we"! Oh, strange race of dying people, that are set apart from all men by death's approach, that we never identify with ourselves! Oh, weird world to which they go, which doubtless we shall never enter! Oh, dreary passage they must tread, upon whose threshold we shall never stand! ”

“ In the presence of the remnant of nurses left, blessed by the devoted minister who also lived among these dangers, Myron Holder and Henry Willis took each other for man and wife.
They were alone. He held her hand, awed by the supernal brightness of her eyes.
"You will write his name above his grave?" she said. "His real name—Henry Willis? Do you know what I called him? My—little My."
"Live," he murmured. "Live to let me atone—to be happy—to be adored. Live—you can if you will."
"Could I?" she said. "Life holds nothing for me; Death him, or forgetfulness." ”

“ Deans smiled to think of Myron's surprise when she found out. Myron Holder had never done Mrs. Deans any injury, but the latter cherished against her that inexplicable hatred, that alien from rhyme or reason, sometimes fearfully fostered in the human heart. This feeling, mature and enfranchised, made the streets of Paris red with blood; has nerved the hand that hurled a bomb; has steadied the aim of the assassin and, developed by heredity and indulged by training and opportunity, has made the Thugs a people. To inflict what others endure with pain is their life. ”

“ In Myron's case had been made manifest one of those marvellous mysteries of the human mechanism that now and again thrills the scientist with a burning zeal to discover the real relation between mind and matter, to enter the penetralia of humanity and learn its secret. That desolate night in the cottage the mother-heart apprehended each pang of the choking child, and the mother endured in her own organism a like agony. How sad to think she had no Divine license to do so! How strange that such a love should spring from shame! ”

“ He soon went to sleep again, and Myron Holder and Homer Wilson sat down together to drink the tea. Her eyes rested upon him, as if well content, and he noted this with delight. The truth was they dared not yet stray elsewhere, lest the spectres he had banished might jibber at her from the dusky corners of the room.
Love is served on strange altars, and the sacrifice of a heart was again proffered in that lonely cottage, whose atmosphere was chill with the dreadful influence of death, whose silence was broken by the soft breathing of a child of shame. ”

“ Think of it, you holy women, who fare delicately, sleeping on soft couches, guarded and consoled, caressed and kept from all evil! For you are like Myron Holder in one thing: Not in suffering, nor shame, nor sorrow; not perhaps in humbleness of heart, nor meekness of spirit, nor in courage, in patience, in faithfulness, nor in hopelessness; not in poverty, nor in endurance; but with her you share, despite yourselves, a common womanhood. Remember that!
Remember also she bore upon her brow the marks of motherhood's crown of thorns. ”

“ Finding a fortune in rags, however, is a little like trying to locate the pot of gold at the rainbow's foot.
Myron Holder had heard plainly the ragman's query and Mrs. Deans' reply. Old Henry Deans, blossoming forth like a snail out of its shell, as soon as his wife's back was turned, said with leering facetiousness, "Ah—a fellow askin' after you, Myron," and pointed his fist with a look that made the blood spring to the woman's cheeks and linger there, a painful blot as though the face had been smitten. She bent over her tub in silence, her heart hot within her. ”

“ Year after year, these tokens of conflict were found in the fresh furrows; the supply seemed inexhaustible. It was as though the earth was determined to cast forth from her bosom those deadly fragments whose mission had been to maim and slay her children. Yet Mother Earth is but a cruel stepdame to some of us, less kindly than the bullet, more cruel than the flint arrowhead.
The people in Jamestown thought little enough of these relics, though in springtime they were to be found in the pockets of every ploughman; but little Bing White had a collection of some hundreds of them. ”

“ Homer turned away abruptly. "Better keep his wonderment to himself," he muttered, with a frown. "They better all keep their amazement to themselves or——" his hand clinched in a very suggestive fashion. Then he had gone for the buffalo robe for Myron to stand on, and as he gazed at her forlorn figure his anger changed to deep and abiding pity, to stern and righteous wrath. So Homer drove Myron home to the empty cottage, with Clem Humphries sitting in the bottom of the wagon, with his feet dangling over the tailboard, a quid of tobacco in his mouth, peace within his bosom. ”

“ Liz, it will be seen, was not the model child of story book fame; the girl was the ordinary type of her class, with a thousand inherited failings, a dozen minor vices; but against these she had a heart that ached for love, a tongue that told the truth though it earned a blow; a generous and impulsive soul: but, alas, in Mrs. Deans' house she absorbed naught of good to offset her faults, save the virtue of courage and endurance, which, seeing Myron Holder's bravery, she cultivated through shame. ”

“ Myron had battled against many fears, and knew, with the absolute certainty of conviction, that after the first triumph there would come a bitter reaction. She knew she would be forever at war with her own conscience. She knew that life held no prize high enough to pay for infidelity. There came suddenly athwart the dreary room the mirage of another scene: A wide stretch of sky and water, blended in a far-off blue, a mass of tossing tree-tops, a scent of fresh green ferns and flowering grasses, a swimming sense of light, exhilaration, freedom.... Homer was speaking. ”

“ There have been many changes in Jamestown—great factories disfigure the margin of the lake, defile the streams with their refuse, and befoul the atmosphere with their smoke. A long row of workmen's cottages, depressingly alike in gable and window, has crowded the Black Horse Inn out of existence. Its old bricks pave the paths over which the mill-hands go to work; the last vestige of its violets has vanished.
The hearts of the Jamestown women, however, have not changed. The same merciless virtue that hounded Myron Holder pursues the poor factory girl who falters on her way. ”

“ She looked at him, an interrogation so poignant as to be imperative in her eyes.
"Yes," he said, "we are two lonely souls, Myron. In all the wide earth there is none who cares whether I live or die."
"I am so sorry," she said. "Only, you are so good you can have friends for the seeking. As for me, I am not fit to be any one's friend. I had one friend here, but he is dead too"—she added the last sentence with a strange, swift sense of justice. Even though Homer was dead, she could not bear that he be classed with those others who had been so cruel. ”

“ Sometimes our wilderness is a perfumed garden, through which insidious devils dog our laggard footsteps. Sometimes it is a shaded pleasaunce, through which we tread with stately steps, unwitting of the derisive demons that smile as they mock our pageantry of pride. With retrospective agony, we turn to gaze upon the mirages of these scenes, as one views sunlit seas where wrecks have been, and cry aloud, "Here much precious treasure was lost!" But there are other wildernesses wherein we wander, consciously beset with Evil Spirits whose faces we know.
It was thus with Myron Holder. ”

“ Does any one live who has not, at one time or other, recognized that it may require, under certain circumstances, the supremest effort of will to look behind one?
That effort Myron Holder made, but sustained the gaze but a moment; for, gleaming from the death chamber, nay, from the very couch of death, shone two balls of livid light. With a moan of extreme terror, Myron slid from her chair and, catching at the boy's cradle, fell helpless to the floor.
Homer Wilson did not stand long knocking at the cottage door: his heart misgave him when he saw there was no light. ”

“ So Philip Hardman was left to walk the mile from the Deans farm-house to the village alone. It was evening—late evening in summer. The air was filled with that indefinite, receptive murmur the earth gives forth as it opens its pores to the dew. Without wind, there was yet a sense of motion in the atmosphere, at once calming and exhilarating. It brought a keen sense of the fact that the world is rushing through space, with its puny burden of men and their works. ”

“ She strove to interpose herself as much as possible between them, for Ann's malice grew more and more venomous, and Clem's dislike threatened to break bounds, and from speech become blows. Ann was persistent in her demands for "somethin' warmin'," and do what she could Myron could not satisfy them.
But their bitter words did not sting as her grandmother's had done. Love has a strong potency in pain and pleasure.
There is poison upon the tongue of a friend when it turns against us. No dart pricks so deep as one launched by a hand we love. ”

“ Myron Holder was a woman and had come to years of knowledge, and her fall was doubtless a sin and a shame to her—black and unforgivable; but far as Myron Holder had fallen, deep as was her humiliation, black as was her shame, inexcusable her error, she still shines in effulgent whiteness when compared with those women who refused her aid that long night through, demanding as recompense for their ministering the betrayal of her betrayer. ”

“ She was Myron Holder—a mother, but not a wife.
When under no more sacred canopy than the topaz of a summer sky—with no other bridal hymn than the choral of the wind among the trees—in obedience to no law but the voice of nature—and the pleading of loved lips—with no other security than the unwitnessed oath of a man—a woman gives herself utterly, then she is doubtless lost. ”

“ But Myron was not thinking of the busy city, of the tapping chestnut boughs, nor even of the overspan of pellucid sky. She was thinking of a cruel, sordid, babbling little village and of the silent, unkempt field wherein its dead lay. Her musings were interrupted by the ringing of a bell. She turned and hastened from the room—blue-clad, white-capped, capable—to find a new patient had arrived in her ward; a new patient, with thin, broad, stooped shoulders, overhanging pent-house brow, sad and secret, above sunken gray eyes that shone with unalterable love for mankind ”

“ Her bodice was only an ordinary calico one, but she covered its deficiencies by a black cashmere tippet of antiquated shape and ample size. It had a tassel between the shoulders, and certain lonely sparkles here and there showed that in the days of its youth and beauty it had been be-bugled. At the neck of this she pinned a knot of faded magenta ribbon, fastening it with a shell pin.
But the crowning glory of Ann's holiday toilet was her "front." This "front" was the only bit of false hair in Jamestown, and was regarded as an unholy thing, a direct manifestation of "the Devil and his works." ”

“ In the sunshine the aroma from fresh furrows is sweeter than the breath of sweet grass; at night it brings the odor of the charnel.
The wind died down; it was very still and dark. The dew fell. Presently Homer Wilson rose, and, still in the dark, found his way softly upstairs. His thick brown hair was laden with the night damps, but even the first heavy dews of spring do not leave long, glistening, smarting furrows on the cheeks—do not fall in slow-wrung, scalding drops upon clinched hands, do not linger in salt traces about the lips they touch. ”

“ His whole attention was absorbed in looking for the sinner for whose soul he was to do battle. He thirsted for the fray, but the minutes passed and no one else entered, so he took up his discourse, and soon had his congregation in a spiritual tumult. Ejaculations came thick and fast from his hearers, and there were as many weeping women as any preacher could desire; but the heart of the Reverend Fletcher was hot within him against She, the godless one, who sat at home whilst the warnings and threatenings prepared for her were poured into the ears of every one else in the village. ”