The Cup of Trembling and Other Stories Part 6

At first Jack made no answer; he could not speak; his breath came deep and hard. Then he rose on one elbow, and looked at her with great stern eyes.

"Have I accused you? You did not do it. I did not do it. It happened--to show us what we are. We have broken with all the ties of family. We can have no brother or sister--our brothers and sisters are the rebels like ourselves; every man and woman whom society has branded and cast out.

Sooner or later we shall embrace them all. Nothing healthy can come near us and not take harm from us. We are contamination to women and destruction to men. Poor Sid had better have come to a den of thieves and murderers than to his own brother's house last night; yet we might have done him worse harm if we had let him in. Now he is only dead--clean and true, as he lived. He is dead through my sin. Do you see, now, what this means to me?"

"I see," said Esmee, rising from her knees. She went out of the room, closing the door gently between them.

Jack lay stretching his aching muscles in one position after another, and every way he turned his thoughts pursued him. The brutality of his speech to Esmee wrought its anguish equally upon him, now that it was too late to get back a single word. Still, she must understand,--she would understand, when she came to think--how broken up he was in mind and body, how crazed for want of rest after that horrible night's work.

This feeling of irresponsibility to himself satisfied him that she could not hold him responsible for his words at such a time. The strain he was supporting, mentally and physically, must absolve him if she had any consideration for him left.

So at length he slept. Esmee was careful not to disturb him. She had no need of bodily rest, and the beating of her heart and the ceaseless thinking went on and on.

"I am to be left here alone with _it_"--she glanced toward the room where the body lay--"while he goes for help to take it to town. He has not asked me if I can go through with this. If I should say to him, 'Spare me this awful trial,' he would answer,--and of course he would be right,--'There are only us two; one to go and one to stay. Is it so much to ask of you after what has happened?'

"He does not ask it; he expects it. He is not my tender, remorseful lover now, dreading for me, every day, what his happiness must cost me.

He is counting what I have cost him in other possessions which he might have had if he had not paid too great a price for one."

So these two had come to judge each other in the common misery that drove them apart. Toward daylight the snow ceased and the wind went down. Jack had forgotten to provide wood for Esmee's fire; the room was growing cold, and the wood supply was in the kitchen, where he slept.

She sat still and suffered mutely, rather than waken him before the time. This was not altogether consideration for him. It was partly wounded pride, inflicting its own suffering on the flesh after a moral scourging, either through one's own or another's conscience.

When the late morning slowly dawned, she went to waken him, obedient to orders. She made every effort to arouse him, but in vain. His sleep was like a trance. She had heard of cases of extreme mental and physical strain where a sleep like this, bordering on unconsciousness, had been nature's cure. She let him sleep.

Seeing that her movements did not disturb him, she went cautiously about the room, trying, now in forlorn sincerity, to adapt herself to the necessities of the situation. She did her best to make ready something in the nature of a breakfast for Jack when he should at length awaken.

It promised to be a poor subst.i.tute, but the effort did her good.

It was after noon before Jack came to himself. He had been awake some little time, watching her, before she was aware of it. He could see for himself what she had been trying to accomplish, and he was greatly touched.

"Poor child!" he said, and held out his arms.

She remained at a distance, slightly smiling, her eyes on the floor.

He did not press the moment of reconciliation. He got upon his feet, and, in the soldierly fashion of men who live in camps and narrow quarters, began to fold his blankets, and straighten things in his corner of the room.

"If you will go into the sitting-room, I will bring in the breakfast, such as it is," said Esmee. Jack obeyed her meekly. The sitting-room fire had been relighted, and was burning brightly. It was strange to him to sit and see her wait upon him. Stranger still was her silence. Here was a new distress. He tried to pretend unconsciousness of the change in her.

"It is two o'clock," he said, looking at his watch. "I'm afraid I shall be late getting back; but you must not worry. The storm is over, and I know every foot of the way."

"Did I do wrong," Esmee questioned nervously, "not to call you? I tried very hard, but you could not wake. You must have needed to sleep, I think."

"Do you expect me to scold you every time I speak, Esmee? I have said enough, I think. Come here, dear girl. _I_ need to be forgiven now. It cuts me to the heart to see you so humble. May G.o.d humble me for those words I said!"

"You spoke the truth. Only we had not been telling each other the truth before."

"No. And we must stop it. We shall learn the truth fast enough. We need not make whips of it to lash each other with. Come here."

"I can't," said Esmee in a choking whisper.

"Yes, you can. You shall forgive me."

She shook her head. "That is not the question. You did not do it. I did not do it. G.o.d has done it--as you said."

"Did I say that? Did I presume to preach to you?"

"If I have done what you say--if I have cut you off from all human relations, and made your house worse than a den of thieves and murderers, how can anything be too bad for me to hear? What does it matter from whom I hear it?"

"I was beside myself. I was drunk with sorrow and fatigue."

"That is when people speak the truth, they say. I don't blame you, Jack.

How should I? But you know it can never be the same, after this, with you or with me."

"Esmee," said Jack, after a long and bitter silence, holding out his shaking hand, "will you come with me in there, and look at him? He knows the truth--the whole truth. If you can see in his face anything like scorn or reproach, anything but peace,--peace beyond all conception,--then I will agree that we part this day, forever. Will you come?"

"Oh, Jack, you _are_ beside yourself, now. Do you think that I would go in there, in the presence of _that_ peace, and call on it for my justification, and begin this thing again? I should expect that peace would come to me--the peace of instant death--for such awful presumption."

"I didn't mean that--not to excuse ourselves; only to bring back the trust that was between us. Does this bitterness cure the past? Have we not hurt each other enough already?"

"I think so. It is sufficient for me. But men, they say, get over such things, and their lives go on, and they take their places as before. I want you to"--

"There is nothing for me--will you believe it?--more than there is for you. Will you not do me that much justice, not to treat this one pa.s.sion of my life as--what shall I say? It is not possible that you can think such things. We must make up to each other for what we have each cost the other. Come. Let us go and stand beside him--you and I, before the others get here. It will do us good. Then we will follow him out, on his way home, as far as we can; and if there is any one in town who has an account with me, he can settle it there and then. Perhaps my mother will have both her sons shipped home to her on the same train."

Jack had not miscounted on the effect of these words. They broke down Esmee's purer resolution with their human appeal. Yet he was not altogether selfish.

He held out his hand to her. She took it, and they went together, shrinkingly, into the presence of the dead. When they came out, the eyes of both were wet.

Late as it was, it was inevitable that Jack must start. Esmee watched him prepare once more for the journey. When he was ready to set out, she said to him, with an extreme effort:

"If any one should come while you are gone, I am to let him in?"

"Do as you think best, dear; but I am afraid that no one will disturb you. It will be a lonely watch. I wish I could help you through with it."

"It is my watch," said Esmee. "I must keep it."

She would have been thankful for the company even of Tip, to answer for something living, if not human, in the house; but the dog insisted so savagely on following his master that she was forced to set him free.

She closed the door after him, and locked it mechanically, hardly aware of what she did.

There is a growth of the spirit which is gradual, progressive, healthful, and therefore permanent. There are other psychical births that are forced, convulsive, agonizing in their suddenness. They may be premature, brought on by the shock of a great sorrow, or a sin perhaps committed without full knowledge of its nature, or realization of its consequences. Such births are perilous and unsure. Of these was the spiritual crisis through which Esmee was now pa.s.sing.

She had made her choice: human love was satisfied according to the natural law. Now, in the hours of her solitary watch, that irrevocable choice confronted her. It was as a cup of trembling held to her lips by the mystery of the Invisible, which says: Whoever will drink of this cup of his desire, be it soon, be it late, shall drain it to the dregs, and "wring them out." Esmee had come very soon to the dregs of her cup of trembling.

In such anguish and abas.e.m.e.nt her new life of the spirit began. Will she have strength to sustain it, or must it pa.s.s like a shaken light into the keeping of a steadier hand?

She was but dimly aware of outward changes as the ordeal wore on. It had been pale daylight in the cabin, and now it was dusk. It had been as still as death outside after the night of storm, the cold relenting, the frost trickling like tears down the pane; but now there was a rising stir. The soft, wild gale, the chinook of the Northwest, came roaring up the peak--the breath of May, but the voice of March. The forest began to murmur and moan, and strip its white boughs of their burden, and all its fairy frost-work melted like a dream. At intervals in the deep timber a strange sound was heard, the rush and thump of some soft, heavy ma.s.s into the snow. Esmee had never heard the sound before; it filled her with a creeping dread. Every separate distinct pounce--they came at intervals, near or far, but with no regularity--was a shock to her overwrought nerves. These sounds had taken sole possession of her ear.

It was hence a double shock, at about the same hour of early twilight when her visitor had come the night before, to hear again a man's feet in the trench outside, and again a loud knock upon the door.

Her heart with its panting answered in her breast. There was a pause while outside the knocker seemed to listen, as he had done before. Then the new-born will of the woman fearfully took command of her cowering senses. Something that was beyond herself forced her to the door. Pale, and weak in every limb, she dragged herself to meet whatever it was that summoned her. This time she opened the door.

There stood a mild-faced man, in the dress of a miner, smiling apologetically. Esmee simply stared at him, and held the door wide. The man stepped hesitatingly inside, taking off his hat to the pale girl who looked at him so strangely.