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He Fell In Love With His Wife

E >> Edward P. Roe >> He Fell In Love With His Wife



HE FELL IN LOVE WITH HIS WIFE

by Edward P. Roe




CONTENTS

Chapter
I Left Alone
II A Very Interested Friend
III Mrs. Mumpson Negotiates and Yields
IV Domestic Bliss
V Mrs. Mumpson Takes up Her Burdens
VI A Marriage?
VII From Home to the Street
VIII Holcroft's View of Matrimony
IX Mrs. Mumpson Accepts Her Mission
X A Night of Terror
XI Baffled
XII Jane
XIII Not Wife, But Waif
XIV A Pitched Battle
XV "What is to Become of Me?"
XVI Mrs. Mumpson's Vicissitudes
XVII A Momentous Decision
XVIII Holcroft Gives His Hand
XIX A Business Marriage
XX Uncle Jonathan's Impression of the Bride
XXI At Home
XXII Getting Acquainted
XXIII Between the Past and Future
XXIV Given Her Own Way
XXV A Charivari
XXVI "You don't Know"
XXVII Farm and Farmer Bewitched
XXVIII Another Waif
XXIX Husband and Wife in Trouble
XXX Holcroft's Best Hope
XXXI "Never!"
XXXII Jane Plays Mouse to the Lion
XXXIII "Shrink From YOU?"




Chapter I. Left Alone

The dreary March evening is rapidly passing from murky gloom to obscurity.
Gusts of icy rain and sleet are sweeping full against a man who, though
driving, bows his head so low that he cannot see his horses. The patient
beasts, however, plod along the miry road, unerringly taking their course to
the distant stable door. The highway sometimes passes through a grove on the
edge of a forest, and the trees creak and groan as they writhe in the heavy
blasts. In occasional groups of pines there is sighing and moaning almost
human in suggestiveness of trouble. Never had Nature been in a more dismal
mood, never had she been more prodigal of every element of discomfort, and
never had the hero of my story been more cast down in heart and hope than on
this chaotic day which, even to his dull fancy, appeared closing in harmony
with his feelings and fortune. He is going home, yet the thought brings no
assurance of welcome and comfort. As he cowers upon the seat of his market
wagon, he is to the reader what he is in the fading light--a mere dim outline
of a man. His progress is so slow that there will be plenty of time to relate
some facts about him which will make the scenes and events to follow more
intelligible.

James Holcroft is a middle-aged man and the owner of a small, hilly farm. He
had inherited his rugged acres from his father, had always lived upon them,
and the feeling had grown strong with the lapse of time that he could live
nowhere else. Yet he knew that he was, in the vernacular of the region,
"going down-hill." The small savings of years were slowly melting away, and
the depressing feature of this truth was that he did not see how he could help
himself. He was not a sanguine man, but rather one endowed with a hard,
practical sense which made it clear that the down-hill process had only to
continue sufficiently long to leave him landless and penniless. It was all so
distinct on this dismal evening that he groaned aloud.

"If it comes to that, I don't know what I'll do--crawl away on a night like
this and give up, like enough."

Perhaps he was right. When a man with a nature like his "gives up," the end
has come. The low, sturdy oaks that grew so abundantly along the road were
types of his character--they could break, but not bend. He had little
suppleness, little power to adapt himself to varied conditions of life. An
event had occurred a year since, which for months, he could only contemplate
with dull wonder and dismay. In his youth he had married the daughter of a
small farmer. Like himself, she had always been accustomed to toil and frugal
living. From childhood she had been impressed with the thought that parting
with a dollar was a serious matter, and to save a dollar one of the good deeds
rewarded in this life and the life to come. She and her husband were in
complete harmony on this vital point. Yet not a miserly trait entered into
their humble thrift. It was a necessity entailed by their meager resources;
it was inspired by the wish for an honest independence in their old age.

There was to be no old age for her. She took a heavy cold, and almost before
her husband was aware of her danger, she had left his side. He was more than
grief-stricken, he was appalled. No children had blessed their union, and
they had become more and more to each other in their simple home life. To
many it would have seemed a narrow and even a sordid life. It could not have
been the latter, for all their hard work, their petty economies and plans to
increase the hoard in the savings bank were robbed of sordidness by an honest,
quiet affection for each other, by mutual sympathy and a common purpose. It
undoubtedly was a meager life, which grew narrower with time and habit. There
had never been much romance to begin with, but something that often wears
better--mutual respect and affection. From the first, James Holcroft had
entertained the sensible hope that she was just the girl to help him make a
living from his hillside farm, and he had not hoped for or even thought of
very much else except the harmony and good comradeship which bless people who
are suited to each other. He had been disappointed in no respect; they had
toiled and gathered like ants; they were confidential partners in the homely
business and details of the farm; nothing was wasted, not even time. The
little farmhouse abounded in comfort, and was a model of neatness and order.
If it and its surroundings were devoid of grace and ornament, they were not
missed, for neither of its occupants had ever been accustomed to such things.
The years which passed so uneventfully only cemented the union and increased
the sense of mutual dependence. They would have been regarded as exceedingly
matter-of-fact and undemonstrative, but they were kind to each other and
understood each other. Feeling that they were slowly yet surely getting
ahead, they looked forward to an old age of rest and a sufficiency for their
simple needs. Then, before he could realize the truth, he was left alone at
her wintry grave; neighbors dispersed after the brief service, and he plodded
back to his desolate home. There was no relative to step in and partially
make good his loss. Some of the nearest residents sent a few cooked
provisions until he could get help, but these attentions soon ceased. It was
believed that he was abundantly able to take care of himself, and he was left
to do so. He was not exactly unpopular, but had been much too reticent and
had lived too secluded a life to find uninvited sympathy now. He was the last
man, however, to ask for sympathy or help; and this was not due to
misanthropy, but simply to temperament and habits of life. He and his wife
had been sufficient for each other, and the outside world was excluded chiefly
because they had not time or taste for social interchanges. As a result, he
suffered serious disadvantages; he was misunderstood and virtually left to
meet his calamity alone.

But, indeed he could scarcely have met it in any other way. Even to his wife,
he had never formed the habit of speaking freely of his thoughts and feelings.
There had been no need, so complete was the understanding between them. A
hint, a sentence, reveled to each other their simple and limited processes of
thought. To talk about her now to strangers was impossible. He had no
language by which to express the heavy, paralyzing pain in his heart.

For a time he performed necessary duties in a dazed, mechanical way. The
horses and live stock were fed regularly, the cows milked; but the milk stood
in the dairy room until it spoiled. Then he would sit down at his desolate
hearth and gaze for hours into the fire, until it sunk down and died out.
Perhaps no class in the world suffers from such a terrible sense of loneliness
as simple-natured country people, to whom a very few have been all the company
they required.

At last Holcroft partially shook off his stupor, and began the experiment of
keeping house and maintaining his dairy with hired help. For a long year he
had struggled on through all kinds of domestic vicissitude, conscious all the
time that things were going from bad to worse. His house was isolated, the
region sparsely settled, and good help difficult to be obtained under favoring
auspices. The few respectable women in the neighborhood who occasionally
"lent a hand" in other homes than their own would not compromise themselves,
as they expressed it, by "keepin' house for a widower." Servants obtained
from the neighboring town either could not endure the loneliness, or else were
so wasteful and ignorant that the farmer, in sheer desperation, discharged
them. The silent, grief-stricken, rugged-featured man was no company for
anyone. The year was but a record of changes, waste, and small pilferings.
Although he knew he could not afford it, he tried the device of obtaining two
women instead of one, so that they might have society in each other; but
either they would not stay or else he found that he had two thieves to deal
with instead of one--brazen, incompetent creatures who knew more about whisky
than milk, and who made his home a terror to him.

Some asked good-naturedly, "Why don't you marry again?" Not only was the very
thought repugnant, but he knew well that he was not the man to thrive on any
such errand to the neighboring farmhouses. Though apparently he had little
sentiment in his nature, yet the memory of his wife was like his religion. He
felt that he could not put an ordinary woman into his wife's place, and say to
her the words he had spoken before. Such a marriage would be to him a
grotesque farce, at which his soul revolted.

At last he was driven to the necessity of applying for help to an Irish family
that had recently moved into the neighborhood. The promise was forbidding,
indeed, as he entered the squalid abode in which were huddled men, women, and
children. A sister of the mistress of the shanty was voluble in her
assurances of unlimited capability.

"Faix I kin do all the wourk, in doors and out, so I takes the notion," she
had asserted.

There certainly was no lack of bone and muscle in the big, red-faced,
middle-aged woman who was so ready to preside at his hearth and glean from his
diminished dairy a modicum of profit; but as he trudged home along the wintry
road, he experienced strong feelings of disgust at the thought of such a
creature sitting by the kitchen fire in the place once occupied by his wife.

During all these domestic vicissitudes he had occupied the parlor, a stiff,
formal, frigid apartment, which had been rarely used in his married life. He
had no inclination for the society of his help; in fact, there had been none
with whom he could associate. The better class of those who went out to
service could find places much more to their taste than the lonely farmhouse.
The kitchen had been the one cozy, cheerful room of the house, and, driven
from it, the farmer was an exile in his own home. In the parlor he could at
least brood over the happy past, and that was about all the solace he had
left.

Bridget came and took possession of her domain with a sangfroid which appalled
Holcroft from the first. To his directions and suggestions, she curtly
informed him that she knew her business and "didn't want no mon around,
orderin' and interferin'."

In fact, she did appear, as she had said, capable of any amount of work, and
usually was in a mood to perform it; but soon her male relatives began to drop
in to smoke a pipe with her in the evening. A little later on, the supper
table was left standing for those who were always ready to "take a bite."--The
farmer had never heard of the camel who first got his head into the tent, but
it gradually dawned upon him that he was half supporting the whole Irish tribe
down at the shanty. Every evening, while he shivered in his best room, he was
compelled to hear the coarse jests and laughter in the adjacent apartment.
One night his bitter thoughts found expression: "I might as well open a free
house for the keeping of man and beast."

He had endured this state of affairs for some time simply because the woman
did the essential work in her offhand, slapdash style, and left him unmolested
to his brooding as long as he did not interfere with her ideas of domestic
economy. But his impatience and the sense of being wronged were producing a
feeling akin to desperation. Every week there was less and less to sell from
the dairy; chickens and eggs disappeared, and the appetites of those who
dropped in to "kape Bridgy from bein' a bit lonely" grew more voracious.

Thus matters had drifted on until this March day when he had taken two calves
to market. He had said to the kitchen potentate that he would take supper
with a friend in town and therefore would not be back before nine in the
evening. This friend was the official keeper of the poorhouse and had been a
crony of Holcroft's in early life. He had taken to politics instead of
farming, and now had attained to what he and his acquaintances spoke of as a
"snug berth." Holcroft had maintained with this man a friendship based partly
on business relations, and the well-to-do purveyor for paupers always gave his
old playmate an honest welcome to his private supper table, which differed
somewhat from that spread for the town's pensioners.

On this occasion the gathering storm had decided Holcroft to return without
availing himself of his friend's hospitality, and he is at last entering the
lane leading from the highway to his doorway. Even as he approaches his
dwelling he hears the sound of revelry and readily guesses what is taking
place.

Quiet, patient men, when goaded beyond a certain point, are capable of
terrible ebullitions of anger, and Holcroft was no exception. It seemed to
him that night that the God he had worshiped all his life was in league with
man against him. The blood rushed to his face, his chilled form became rigid
with a sudden passionate protest against his misfortunes and wrongs.
Springing from the wagon, he left his team standing at the barn door and
rushed to the kitchen window. There before him sat the whole tribe from the
shanty, feasting at his expense. The table was loaded with coarse profusion.
Roast fowls alternated with fried ham and eggs, a great pitcher of milk was
flanked by one of foaming cider, while the post of honor was occupied by the
one contribution of his self-invited guests--a villainous-looking jug.

They had just sat down to the repast when the weazen-faced patriarch of the
tribe remarked, by way of grace, it may be supposed, "Be jabers, but isn't
ould Holcroft givin' us a foine spread the noight! Here's bad luck to the
glowerin' ould skinflint!" and he poured out a bumper from the jug.

The farmer waited to see and hear no more. Hastening to a parlor window, he
raised it quietly and clambered in; then taking his rusty shotgun, which he
kept loaded for the benefit of the vermin that prowled about his hen-roost, he
burst in upon the startled group.

"Be off!" he shouted. "If you value your lives, get out of that door, and
never show your faces on my place again. I'll not be eaten out of house and
home by a lot of jackals!"

His weapon, his dark, gleaming eyes, and desperate aspect taught the men that
he was not to be trifled with a moment, and they slunk away.

Bridget began to whine, "Yez wouldn't turn a woman out in the noight and
storm."

"You are not a woman!" thundered Holcroft, "you are a jackal, too! Get your
traps and begone! I warn the whole lot of you to beware! I give you this
chance to get off the premises, and then I shall watch for you all, old and
young!"

There was something terrible and flame-like in his anger, dismaying the
cormorants, and they hastened away with such alacrity that Bridget went down
the lane screaming, "Sthop, I tell yees, and be afther waitin' for me!"

Holcroft hurled the jug after them with words that sounded like an
imprecation. He next turned to the viands on the table with an expression of
loathing, gathered them up, and carried them to the hog pen. He seemed
possessed by a feverish impatience to banish every vestige of those whom he
had driven forth, and to restore the apartment as nearly as possible to the
aspect it had worn in former happy years. At last, he sat down where his wife
had been accustomed to sit, unbuttoned his waistcoat and flannel shirt, and
from against his naked breast took an old, worn daguerreotype. He looked a
moment at the plain, good face reflected there, them, bowing his head upon it,
strong, convulsive sobs shook his frame, though not a tear moistened his eyes.

How long the paroxysm would have lasted it were hard to say, had not the
impatient whinnying of his horses, still exposed to the storm, caught his
attention. The lifelong habit of caring for the dumb animals in his charge
asserted itself. He went out mechanically, unharnessed and stabled them as
carefully as ever before in his life, then returned and wearily prepared
himself a pot of coffee, which, with a crust of bread, was all the supper he
appeared to crave.


Chapter II. A Very Interested Friend

For the next few days, Holcroft lived alone. The weather remained inclement
and there was no occasion for him to go farther away than the barn and
outbuildings. He felt that a crisis in his life was approaching, that he
would probably be compelled to sell his property for what it would bring, and
begin life again under different auspices.

"I must either sell or marry," he groaned, "and one's about as hard and bad as
the other. Who'll buy the place and stock at half what they're worth, and
where could I find a woman that would look at an old fellow like me, even if I
could bring myself to look at her?"

The poor man did indeed feel that he was shut up to dreadful alternatives.
With his ignorance of the world, and dislike for contact with strangers,
selling out and going away was virtually starting out on an unknown sea
without rudder or compass. It was worse than that--it was the tearing up of a
life that had rooted itself in the soil whereon he had been content from
childhood to middle age. He would suffer more in going, and in the memory of
what he had parted with, than in any of the vicissitudes which might overtake
him. He had not much range of imagination or feeling, but within his
limitations his emotions were strong and his convictions unwavering. Still,
he thought it might be possible to live in some vague, unknown place, doing
some kind of work for people with whom he need not have very much to do.
"I've always been my own master, and done things in my own way," he muttered,
"but I suppose I could farm it to suit some old, quiet people, if I could only
find 'em. One thing is certain, anyhow--I couldn't stay here in Oakville, and
see another man living in these rooms, and plowing my fields, and driving his
cows to my old pasture lots. That would finish me like a galloping
consumption."

Every day he shrunk with a strange dread from the wrench of parting with the
familiar place and with all that he associated with his wife. This was really
the ordeal which shook his soul, and not the fear that he would be unable to
earn his bread elsewhere. The unstable multitude, who are forever fancying
that they would be better off somewhere else or at something else, can have no
comprehension of this deep-rooted love of locality and the binding power of
long association. They regard such men as Holcroft as little better than
plodding oxen. The highest tribute which some people can pay to a man,
however, is to show that they do not and cannot understand him. But the
farmer was quite indifferent whether he was understood or not. He gave no
thought to what people said or might say. What were people to him? He only
had a hunted, pathetic sense of being hedged in and driven to bay. Even to
his neighbors, there was more of the humorous than the tragic in his plight.
It was supposed that he had a goodly sum in the bank, and gossips said that he
and his wife thought more of increasing this hoard than of each other, and
that old Holcroft's mourning was chiefly for a business partner. His domestic
tribulations evoked mirth rather than sympathy; and as the news spread from
farmhouse to cottage of his summary bundling of Bridget and her satellites out
of doors, there were both hilarity and satisfaction.

While there was little commiseration for the farmer, there was decided
disapprobation of the dishonest Irish tribe, and all were glad that the gang
had received a lesson which might restrain them from preying upon others.

Holcroft was partly to blame for his present isolation. Remote rural
populations are given to strong prejudices, especially against those who are
thought to be well-off from an oversaving spirit; and who, worse still, are
unsocial. Almost anything will be forgiven sooner than "thinking one's self
better than the other folks;" and that is the usual interpretation of shy,
reticent people. But there had been a decided tinge of selfishness in the
Holcrofts' habit of seclusion; for it became a habit rather than a principle.
While they cherished no active dislike to their neighbors, or sense of
superiority, these were not wholly astray in believing that they had little
place in the thoughts or interests of the occupants of the hill farm.
Indifference begat indifference, and now the lonely, helpless man had neither
the power nor the disposition to bridge the chasm which separated him from
those who might have given him kindly and intelligent aid. He was making a
pathetic effort to keep his home and to prevent his heart from being torn
bleeding away from all it loved. His neighbors thought that he was merely
exerting himself to keep the dollars which it had been the supreme motive of
his life to accumulate.

Giving no thought to the opinions of others, Holcroft only knew that he was in
sore straits--that all which made his existence a blessing was at stake.

At times, during these lonely and stormy March days, he would dismiss his
anxious speculations in regard to his future course. He was so morbid,
especially at night, that he felt that his wife could revisit the quiet house.
He cherished the hope that she could see him and hear what he said, and he
spoke in her viewless presence with a freedom and fullness that was unlike his
old reticence and habit of repression. He wondered that he had not said more
endearing words and given her stronger assurance of how much she was to him.
Late at night, he would start out of a long reverie, take a candle, and, going
through the house, would touch what she had touched, and look long and fixedly
at things associated with her. Her gowns still hung in the closet, just as
she had left them; he would take them out and recall the well-remembered
scenes and occasions when they were worn. At such times, she almost seemed
beside him, and he had a consciousness of companionship which soothed his
perturbed spirit. He felt that she appreciated such loving remembrance,
although unable to express her approval. He did not know it, but his nature
was being softened, deepened, and enriched by these deep and unwonted
experiences; the hard materiality of his life was passing away, rendering him
capable of something better than he had ever known.

In the morning all the old, prosaic problems of his life would return, with
their hard, practical insistence, and he knew that he must decide upon
something very soon. His lonely vigils and days of quiet had brought him to
the conclusion that he could not hunt up a wife as a matter of business. He
would rather face the "ever angry bears" than breathe the subject of matrimony
to any woman that he could ever imagine himself marrying. He was therefore
steadily drifting toward the necessity of selling everything and going away.
This event, however, was like a coral reef to a sailor, with no land in view
beyond it. The only thing which seemed certain was the general breaking up of
all that had hitherto made his life.

The offer of help came from an unexpected source. One morning Holcroft
received a call from a neighbor who had never before shown any interest in his
affairs. On this occasion, however, Mr. Weeks began to display so much
solicitude that the farmer was not only surprised, but also a little
distrustful. Nothing in his previous knowledge of the man had prepared the
way for such very kindly intervention.

After some general references to the past, Mr. Weeks continued, "I've been
saying to our folks that it was too bad to let you worry on alone without more
neighborly help. You ought either to get married or have some thoroughly
respectable and well-known middle-aged woman keep house for you. That would
stop all talk, and there's been a heap of it, I can tell you. Of course, I
and my folks don't believe anything's been wrong."

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