Chapter IV: Part 4

For Mrs. Claxton had had her headache that always attended an electric storm, had cried herself into a worse one with her fear of the lightning, and with the fact that, for the first time, her husband had failed to appear and to sustain her through the thunderous trial, and when, later, one of the nurses happening into the room, had mentioned Mr. Claxton’s return, and she saw that he had designedly left her to suffer alone, indignation dried her tears; and having satisfied herself that the children were safely upon their pillows, she made her own toilet for the night, and went to bed with her wrath, to fall asleep instantly with her fatigue.

But Mr. Claxton was tired himself--a man is not hooted at by little boys without some wear and tear of the sensibilities. He did not attempt to wake his wife, but followed her example, and slept soundly till just before daybreak, when, in the gray dawn, he was disturbed by one of those little noises that disturb nobody but a householder. It was only a faint and rather pleasant murmur--an incessant drip, drip, drip; but there was no occasion for such a murmur, since it was not raining then, and he listened anxiously to discover the cause of it. It was not long before he surmised that it came from the overflow of the tank in the roof. That was a matter easily remedied by opening the pipes, though some slight damage had already been done, and he rose to investigate the matter with some inward grumbling about there never being anybody but himself to see to such things. Having concluded his investigation, and having done all there was to be done at present, he was so thoroughly awakened that it did not seem worthwhile to go back to bed again; so he dressed himself for the day noiselessly, and went out to the stables for his horse. The overflow of the tank had suggested to him the advisability of a visit to the great reservoir between the hills, and an inspection of the state in which the thunder-storm had left it. It occurred to him, too, that thus early he might surprise the keeper off duty, which idea had an alluring relish to him; and then it would be a pleasant morning ride, and he would be back to find breakfast ready, and his wife perhaps amiable, and the domestic storm as well blown over as the thunder-storm.

As Mr. Claxton rode forth the sun had just sent a blush over all the skies in advance of his coming, and the world was at that heavenly hour before the full yellow lustre pours over the edge when all the softer shades of color--the pure pale roses and grays and purples--seem striving to convince you how much lovelier they are than the brilliant gold and azure of broad day; the birds were warbling full-throated still, and all the boughs were glittering with dew and with the last drops of the night’s shower, till the whole earth looked as if it had been freshly made that morning. I don’t know that Mr. Claxton thought precisely that it was a special demonstration on the part of Nature in honor of his early ride, when the colors grew more and more gorgeous and the grand transformation scene finally sublimated itself into one central spot of ruby fire, out of which the sun came rolling up in majesty; but he certainly had an idea that the common people turning out to their work did not have such sunrises every morning, and he rode forward briskly, with a gratified sense of being in a species of partnership with Nature--if she got up the show, he got up the appreciation, and if the sunrise was the greatest thing in that valley, he, at any rate, was the next greatest.

It was a pretty path, in its steep ascent, up which he rode, a bridle-path where the velvet sward, with its sparkling cobwebs, only half disclosed the traces of old footprints, every here and there turning out of its way to wind round some huge mossy bowlder. Overhead the young birches and maples were waving their boughs, as if groping for the light that fell on the treetops far above, now tossing the dew down on him from the brink of some sheer face of rock, now shaking in the sweet wind in cranny and crevice of the cool wet wall upon the other side, and yet in shadow. At one point the path descended into a little hollow, a green dimple of fern and brake; then it rose rapidly, and passed beneath a group of gigantic oaks that had braved the storms of centuries, the Century Oaks they were called, indeed, their roots twisting into the ribs of the solid rock itself; and at length it came out beside the brook that went leaping down the hill from the gateway on the east side of the reservoir, fuller that morning than he remembered to have seen it--now dark and strong, and now, where a sunbeam touched it, a swift sheet of foam and rainbows. “It takes such a storm as yesterday’s to swell a brook like this,” said Mr. Claxton to himself, as his horse’s feet left the velvet sward and began to clatter over the pebbles, and the great face of the reservoir, with the green sod of its bank, rose over the wood like the vast base of some mighty unbuilt tower. “We must have an immense backwater now,” he said; “enough to run the mills if there should be a drought till the fall. I’ll take one good look at the dam before I go, if it does spoil the waffles.”

It was just as Mr. Claxton uttered these words, half aloud, that a shiver ran from head to hoof through the good beast that bore him, and which stood still with planted feet and head erect so suddenly as nearly to dismount his rider. Mr. Claxton looked on this side and on that for the object of alarm, saw nothing, and sprang to the ground. The shiver was in the ground: a thrill, a slow and terrible thrill, was pulsing through the earth, that seemed to shake like a shaking breast, that was rising to meet him--to meet him who was trembling like a reed himself.

For what was this? The end of the world? He gave one look at the awful glory up there at the crest of the hill, the awful deathly glory of the bristling, rushing, monstrous thing smitten with the full splendor of the risen sun, and then threw himself into the saddle again, wheeled about, and spurred his horse down the valley like a madman. But the muffled thunder of his horse’s hoofs in his ears was drowned by a louder sound--a dull growl, a hollow roar, a whistling of all the winds that blow in heaven; and fast as he fled a fierce foe followed faster.

In the great Claxton house upon its knoll, with the trees softly bending and bowing below it, the morning light had gently entered, and it fell upon the portrait of Mr. Claxton just as Mrs. Claxton was opening her eyes. It was a handsome portrait of him, with all that bright and ruddy comeliness that made his youth so imposing to her. It seemed to her at that moment that the face was smiling on her as it used to do at the time when she hung the picture at the foot of her bed, that it might be the first object on which her eyes should open. In a forgetful recurrence of the old emotion she did not immediately call up the events of later days, and was smiling back at it, when all at once memory resumed its play, and she turned to behold the other pillow vacant.

It was something like dismay that overcame Mrs. Claxton, for seldom had Mr. Claxton’s displeasure survived a night’s sleep. “He has gone away in anger, then!” she exclaimed. But directly her own anger ran to the rescue. “If I had shown a proper spirit in the first place,” she said, “he would never have presumed to abuse me so. I had rather be a kitchen-girl than such a slave as he makes me. The sport of all the kitchen girls! I had rather die than live so any more! I don’t care what happens if I can only escape from this. Nothing can be worse!” And with such ejaculations hovering round her like Venus’s doves, Mrs. Claxton bathed and dressed, and, fresh and fair as any flower, for all her troubles, went to find her babies.

But the babies were lovely enough to distract her thoughts for the time; and it was only after a frolic with them, in all their dimpling rosiness and laughter, that, somewhat softened, she went down with them clinging about her, Henrietta ushering the procession, and the baby astride her shoulder, to find the breakfast on the table, and Mr. Claxton she knew not where. He had saddled the red horse himself, the man said, to get a plumber, maybe, for the pipes had been leaking from the pressure.

From the pressure. Mrs. Claxton glanced up at the window, half startled, yet her face bright with a hovering triumph on the point of pouncing. Then he had probably gone up to see after the reservoir, she thought--not so sure of the dam after all! And she went to the window to look up the valley road. Yes, there was an object discernible against the bare face of rock, moving far up the hill, just beyond the Century Oaks; it was going up--no, it was standing still; now it had just turned about. A horse and rider. Yes, without doubt, that was Mr. Claxton: he had been up there to see his pet construction, but hunger was recalling him to breakfast: he hardly deserved that she should keep it hot for him. Now she could see plainer. Oh yes, that was Mr. Claxton and the red horse. But why were they coming so fast? Was there a gust up there? It looked as though a thick whirlwind were behind him. Mrs. Claxton lifted her eyes to the sky, looking for clouds; as she did so, they rested one second on the top of the hill. In that second--great God in heaven!--in that second she saw the whole east side of the reservoir move out in one mass, and a flood, a stupendous volume of water, pour in one prodigious leap, this instant transfigured in the sunshine like a supernal apparition, and the next instant precipitating itself, a dark and horrible torrent of clay and water and stone and tree, tumbling and boiling down the valley, stripping bare the rock behind it, driving the earth before!

One shrill cry from Mrs. Claxton’s lips, “It has come at last!” one bewildered look for somebody to lean on, and that was all the weakness she allowed herself. Immediately she had summoned the servants, and had the outside hands all rushing into the kitchen from garden and stable, two of them sent back to bring the long ladder into the main hall, and the others hurrying to bolt doors and drop windows and put up shutters.

“Up-stairs now!” cried Mrs. Claxton, seizing her baby, just as the alarm-bell of the mills began to ring. “If the water comes so high, we can retreat to the roof. No, no”--as the girls began to cry and show hysterical tendencies--“we are safe. The house must stand. It is stone. The walls are thick; and the force will be partly spent before the flood reaches us. It isn’t we who will suffer; it is your master, who is out in the way somewhere; it is our neighbors whose houses stand in the plain. Plant the ladder beneath a second-story window, Thomas--quick, I say!--that they may see the wisdom of running here. You simpletons! Can water run up the ladder?”

“She’s the right stuff,” said Thomas to Jane. And she was hardly obeyed when the neighbors were seen running for the knoll and springing up the terraces, men with their mothers, and women with their children, people saving themselves wherever they chanced to be, tripping and falling and fainting and dragged along, unable to make for the hills on the valley sides, and seeking the nearest security as it was offered by the great Claxton house upon its terraced knoll, thronging at last into the doorway which Thomas stood ready to close, and scattering through the upper rooms, these in a dumb horror, with wringing hands, and those with sobs and screams and cries for one another.

They were still running for the house when some were seen to fall as if prostrated by a furious wind behind them. There was a moment of intense stillness in the house, as the gazing groups beheld it, and into that stillness crept the whisper, the muffled rumble and roll, the wide roar of the open flood-gates. Thomas slammed the door, and sprang up the stairway after his mistress and the rest. “Say your prayers,” said he, putting his arms round Jane, who hid her head in them, “for here it comes!” And with the word they saw a wall of water pushing down the valley, too swift to break and fall--yellow and polished as a jewel through all its burnished front, its crest curling in a terrible foam of ruin, where toppled uprooted trees, struggling, drowning men, crashed roof and rafter, and capsized dwelling--and in another heart-beat the whole wide valley was afloat, and the flood was upon them, billowing and bellowing and surging on over the main road, over the hay field, across the gardens, up the knoll, the waters piling themselves like light from terrace to terrace. Would they rise higher? Would the house go, too? There was not time to ask it before they were foaming up the lawns, were rushing round the door-steps, were carrying away the ladder, were pouring through the windows. A shock--it was a long beam swirling in the torrent and grazing the house. Another shock--the ground vibrating to it--and they saw the great mills swing and totter and fall in a cloud of wreck, and wash away. And then one long tremor that made the hair stand on end: the shoulder of the great water was pressing full on them. One dizzy, swimming moment--they felt the strong stones and timbers quiver, felt them lift and strain and rise and settle, and then, with a great cry of joy, they saw that the house, opposing its angle to the tide, had divided its volume, and the waters flowed on either side and left it safe.

It was not a half-hour since Mrs. Claxton had seen the bursting of the reservoir before she gathered her children into her own room and shut the door, leaving the rest of the house to its sudden guests and the watchers of the passing and subsiding flood, that she might betake herself to her knees. She and her children were safe; but her husband--God alone knew where he was! She did not fall on her knees, though; she walked up and down the room like a wild woman, stopping at every turn to embrace one child or another, to exclaim in misery with a storm of tears. A half-hour ago she had seen him turn about, dashing homeward with that horror behind him--dashing homeward to save himself perhaps, perhaps to save her and the children. Now the waters must have gone over him. He must have fallen before them. And the terror and agony he had endured in that dreadful moment when he saw there was no help for him rose before her like clouds of darkness and enveloped her. One hour passed, and another; the nurses had come in and taken the frightened twins; the baby fell asleep, and little Henrietta kept awe-struck guard over him. But Mrs. Claxton saw nothing that occurred. She was realizing what her bereavement would be; she was seeing all the mistakes of her life suddenly, as if lightning had stamped the whole thing on her; she was suffering a torture of remorse; she was thinking how her husband might possibly have escaped, wondering about him, contriving for him; she was crying out that she should never see his face again; she was falling upon the bed and hiding her face in his pillow, and wetting it with scalding tears. Yes, she had told him she rued the hour she ever laid eyes on him--well, perhaps she would never lay eyes on him again! And then a striking clock seemed to be tolling a knell. The baby awoke and cried; little Henrietta tugged and pulled it off the bed, and, clasping it in her chubby arms, lugged it, in a fashion, from the room: her mother never noticed her. She had sat down to listen for the clock again. Clang, clang, clang, it measured out noon: now it was impossible that he should have escaped and not be there. Yes, she was free--free from all her troubles; she was no longer a slave; the mistress of her own house at last. But oh, to what purpose! There was no more a skeleton in that house, only in its stead a fearful phantom to rise and shake its gory locks at her. For it was she who had caused her husband’s death, if he were dead; and she started up to walk the floor again in a suspense that was worse than certainty. It was her sharp anger--yes, yes, it was her contentious tongue of yesterday--that drove him forth this morning. Ah, great Heaven! but for her wicked words he would have been at home when the reservoir burst; he would be safe and thankful now. She had murdered him, and she had murdered her own peace--her own words were the flaming swords that shut her out of hope and happiness forever. She loved him. And she had lost him. Oh, what was a little matter of every day to contend about, beside the great love of a life, the praise, the encouragement, the sympathy, the tenderness!--and she remembered how he had seemed to adore her once; how she had leaned on him and believed in him once; what warmth there used to be in his smile, what comfort in his presence. And she should never have them again. She had shut him out from the light of day, from home, from children, from life. He had left her, too, in anger; he had gone out without kissing her; he was unreconciled with her in death!

“Oh, do not let it be death!” she cried. “Spare him, Lord! save him! Do not let it be too late! Give me back my husband!” She flung herself down in wild supplication, yearning and agonized, praying for him in a passion of prayer, and growing still and silent in that ecstasy as if she were turning to stone.

There was movement and bustle now about the house, for the waters had passed, leaving only their slime behind them, thick mud on carpet and floor, ropy filth on wall and wainscot, and the people had left shelter, and were wading through the knee-deep mud in search of the spot that had been home. The servants were already beginning to see if there were any possibility of setting things to rights where the tide had flowed through below-stairs, crushing partitions and sweeping doors before it, and wondering where to find the shovels, when in the going and coming a poor creature staggered into the door, and, just as Thomas came picking his way along in high boots, fell on the floor at his feet--a poor creature, bruised and bleeding and in rags, caked with the ooze and mire, a noisome and disgusting wretch more vile than anything else on earth.

“Look here, you!” said Thomas, touching him with the end of his stick. “Get out of this, will you? It’s no place for to be lying about drunk, and no day neither. Get out, I say, or I’ll set the mastiffs on you. Here, Towser! here, Dash!” And in a moment the snarl of the dogs was heard as they made for the despicable object.

“Thomas!” cried a feeble voice, as the poor creature rose on one elbow.

“Oh, good Lord above us, Thomas!” cried Jane, on the stairs. “Don’t you know who it is?”

And in a moment the other men had been called, and among them they got that sorry fusion of humanity and alluvial deposit up the stairs and into the bath-room.

But nothing of all this stir did Mrs. Claxton hear. In that ecstasy of petitioning she was lost to all that went on; listening for some voice out of heaven, she heard no earthly sound. There was a chorus from the children outside, but she did not hear it; the door opened again, but she did not know it; and then two arms were about her, two tired and trembling arms, and a face over which the tears were pouring was beside her own. She started back quaking as if it were an apparition; and then she flung herself upon her husband’s neck.

“Oh, He has heard me! He has heard me!” she cried.

“My darling,” he was murmuring, “can you ever forgive me?”

“Oh, my dear one,” she was sobbing, “how are you and God ever going to forgive me?”

“I saw it all,” he said, presently, as she sat on the bedside where he lay, “while I was buffeting that water, and just as I had given up and was swept into the arms of the old Century Oak--the only one of them that stands now, Caroline. I was nothing but a mote, a speck, in that great surge, and all my arrogance and evil pride, all my abuse of you, seemed to be bearing me down into the flood. Oh, my child, I prayed to Heaven to save me that I might be a better husband to you! And when I came to the door my own dogs didn’t know me.” And Mr. Claxton cried again.

It was some mornings after that, when things were in a degree restored to place, and the family breakfasting together alone for the first time, that Mr. Claxton gazed smilingly at his wife, and thought, with a little self-congratulation, that he really was a better husband to her than he had been, as she beamed back at him all smiles and velvet blushes. He had never seen himself as he was, he thought, before that calamity overtook him; it had needed what they call an act of God to open his eyes. And now--Between ourselves, I don’t believe he became an angel all at once, for that despotic principle was bred in his bone, and Noah’s flood itself could not have washed it out. I should not be surprised if he were still apt to be found a very exasperating man, and I imagine that she was always liable to the reproach of the vixens, though if that temper of hers ever struck fire again, remembrance of one morning’s agony could not but quench the spark.

“How happy we are!” said he. “I don’t feel prepared to call the accident a calamity, after all--that is, so far as we are concerned,” said Mr. Claxton, checking himself. “People have supposed us enviable beings for a good while, Caroline, never dreaming of the skeleton in our closet. But in the future we shall be enviable indeed.”

“Why, so we are now!” exclaimed Mrs. Claxton.

“That old bickering of ours was a sad skeleton to carry about--it was like a babe in the arms to you, wasn’t it?”

“I made as much of it!” she said.

“Well, let us thank God that there is nothing to hold its bones together; let us thank God, my love, that there is no longer a skeleton in the house, and that we have buried it--”

“Fathoms deep,” she cried.

“--in the mire of the flood.”

And at that Mrs. Claxton looked at him, and her lips began to tremble and her eyes to fill, and she forsook her chair and ran to her husband, who, once ready to be shocked at such an indecorum, now clasped her in his arms with tender whispers, stroked her hair a moment as her head rested on his breast, and then led her back to her seat with a lofty sort of courtesy, but paused to kiss the tears off her cheek.

And Miss Henrietta, recalling the scene in after-years, wondered what in the world the skeleton could have been over whose burial her father and mother were making such an ado.

THE TRAGIC STORY OF BINNS

THE TRAGIC STORY OF BINNS

There is no use in making any pretences about it. It was no dark and splendid young pirate fascinated by a rosy rustic maiden. It was no foreign prince in disguise attracted by the grace of an unfettered shape balancing water-pails at the spring, and ready to override all the conventions of society and make the girl his wife. It was Binns, the butcher-boy.

A scrap of a fellow he was; so short, so slight, so pale, so insignificant, that it seemed as if, should he take off his long blue blouse, there would really be nothing left of him--but his freckles. And Roxy, she was half again his height, and buxom and blooming, not to say blowsy, deep-colored, and altogether with a great deal of her.

If Roxy were not Roxy, the cook, talking at the kitchen storm-door with Binns, whose scraggy horse dropped his head so low with the dropping of the reins that he looked as if he would drop in the street altogether if the authorities did not interfere--if Roxy were not Roxy, but were Gladys tossing a rose over the drawing-room balcony to the gallant young cavalry officer on his prancing Abdallah that had carried him through the terrific skirmishes of an Indian campaign, then I will admit that more entertainment and much finer company might be had out of the affair. The dinners which we might attend together in the course of our acquaintance would be very different from the surreptitious turnovers and custards with which Roxy regaled Binns; the music we might hear would have far other charms than those strains which Roxy, in her hours of leisure, called out from a bit of comb wound with a bit of paper; the dresses, too, would be far more satisfactory to the soul and the soul’s eye than Roxy’s dirt-colored calicoes, bought to wash and hide the dirt as long previously as might be; and we will say nothing of the diamonds, the pictures, the operas, and all the rest that we might arrive at in our experiences; for Roxy had no diamonds but her tears, and very few of them in the beginning; no pictures but cuttings from the comic weeklies, which she pinned up about the kitchen; and as for the dinners, again, I doubt if we should bring better appetites to our sumptuous banquet, with terrapin and canvas-back and champagne _frappé_, than Binns had when grinning over his apple turnover, wiping his mouth on his blue sleeve after it, and giving Roxy a resounding smack, to receive in return as resounding a slap. “She’s a clipper, I say,” Binns would chuckle, as if it were a love-pat after his own heart. Meanwhile not an opera of all the list is to be heard with more satisfaction than that wont to be evinced by Binns as he sat, during his evenings “on,” while Roxy, after her voluntary upon the comb and paper, which she kept in the drawer of the kitchen table with the nutmegs and allspice, sang in her loud and clear, if somewhat nasal, voice the simple ballad of “Whoa, Emma!” or

“I don’t know why I love him,
He does not care for me,
But my poor heart will wander
Wherever he may be.
If I had minded mother
I’d not been here to-day;
But I was young and foolish,
And easy led astray”;

or reverted to older tunes--“Oh, where have you been, Lord Ronald, my son?” and “Drownded, drownded, in the middle of the sea,” with other like tearful selections. To be sure, Binns’s delight was chiefly manifested by a frequent use of his coat-sleeve in the manner of lachrymose individuals without a handkerchief, in a very luxury of woe; for if the comb and paper tickled the cockles of his heart, as some mellow flute or honeyed violin might do, the enjoyment was just as ecstatic which made the tears pour forth over the sad fate of the lovers “’Way down in Salem town,” while he thought nothing of an unprotected outright boohoo, with his face twisted into all sorts of a coil, over the last words of the wretched person who implores,

“Oh, make my grave quick, brother, make my grave deep;
The sooner I lay there the sooner I’ll sleep;
For why should I wait from this sad world to part,
When the girl that I love so has broken my heart?”

Nevertheless, it was not of love, at any rate not of love of Roxy, that Binns would ever die. Roxy’s turnovers and gingersnaps and five-fingered doughnuts, her liberal bowls of coffee and secret draughts of mineral water, were very agreeable variations in his daily fare. When Roxy asked him to come in and spend an evening with some friends of hers and have a game of forty-five, he saw visions of the same run of dainties, and was much pleased by the rosy apples and tingling cider and roasted chestnuts of the regale. Come again? Of course he would come again--one did not need to be asked twice to things of that sort. He came again, and this time the nuts were butternuts, and there were cookies as nearly pound-cake as it is the nature of cookies to approach, and Binns munched and cracked and picked and sipped, and thought that Roxy was a mighty cute body to be able to have the kitchen to herself at this hour, and to have whatever she chose in it, moreover. And so he came again.

Was it Roxy’s cakes and ale alone, then, that allured Binns? Was not the face reflected in the pewter platter she scoured, as she sang her doleful ditties, as fair to him as the face of Gladys thrown up from a golden salver would have been to the cavalry officer? Sooth, I know not. I only know that a cosey kitchen, with a hot stove and bright tins, is a pleasant place, and a capacious rocking-chair with long rockers, in which you are allowed to travel all about the kitchen, is a comfortable thing, and that hands never look more kindly than when pressing toothsome dainties upon you, and that if one has nothing better to do one is rather inclined to repeat such experiences than not. If, then, it is suggested, very palpably suggested, to one, in return, that the old butcher’s nag should be hitched into the pung, with the horse-blanket for a robe, and a sleigh-ride should be given the generous purveyor of doughnuts and peanuts, could one do less? And as for scaring Roxy from any repetition of the suggestion by tipping her over into a crusty snow-drift, one’s mind would have to move a great deal more quickly than what answered Binns for a mind was able to do in order to be up to such an opportunity.

“I’ll tell you what,” said Roxy. “The next time, Binns, I’ll take the big red comforter off my bed for an extra robe, and a couple of hot flat-irons--or bricks would be better, wouldn’t they?--wrapped in newspapers, and we’ll be as warm as toast. Say Friday. There’ll be a first-rate moon. And we’ll have a real egg-and-cider flip with the hot stove-lifter in it when we get back.”

“If--if--he’ll let me have the horse,” said Binns, doubtfully, and not with radiating pleasure.

“Oh, of course he will. Now you put the blanket on him and come in, and we’ll have some hot hash--I’ve got some left over all ready to warm up--and a little taste of sangaree.”

If I should say that Roxy’s sangaree was made of vinegar and hot water and brown sugar and nutmeg and other like substances, you would not believe how Binns smacked his lips over it; so what is the use of saying anything of the sort? But it is true that Binns went away repeating to himself, “Well, for getting sunthin outer northing, she’s a beater!” And so I am sure--in view of Binns--she was.

When--hardly knowing how to help it, Roxy having taken it so for granted, feeling that he was driven by an inexorable fate when Roxy said that on Monday the moon would be good, as if the moon wasn’t always good--Binns asked for the horse the third time, his master slapped him on the back with a force that sent him half across the shop. “Well, Binns,” said he, “so you’ve got a girl, you sly dog! I never thought you’d muster face enough for that. Have the old horse and welcome, there’s no danger of fast driving when two folks are in love.” During this kindly if not altogether delicate address, Binns was pink and purple, yellow, green, blue, and white, by turns, with fright, with shame, with gratified vanity, with a sense of manly power, but, above everything else, with a prevailing awe and terror of it all, anyway, as the full meaning of his master’s words overcame him, and the gulfs of the future yawned before him. To eat Roxy’s turnovers was one thing--to marry her was quite another. The possibility had not occurred to him before, only a vague consciousness of the impossibility of anything else was beginning to oppress him--all the more vaguely, perhaps, because of his extreme unwillingness to utter anything of the sort even to himself.

If Binns had not had to stop at the house for the dinner order, it is doubtful if he would have seen Roxy that day. But “there was no going back on the shop,” he said to himself, and, looking like a sheep, he went prepared to take the order for beef.

“Roxy!” the old gardener called, opening the door--for Binns, on the idea of getting it over with, was a little earlier than common, and Roxy was not upon the outposts as usual--“here’s your young man!”

“Roxy!” cried the mischievous and vulgar Kitty, “here’s your feller!”

“You go along!” said Roxy, making her appearance, and wiping her hands on her pink print apron. And there stood Binns, as pink as the apron; and he stammered something about to-night at half-past seven sharp, and hurried off, forgetting all about the order. He had to come back, of course, and he found Roxy sitting on the edge of a water-pail inside the storm-door, with her pink apron thrown over her pink face, sobbing fit to break her heart.

“Why--why--Roxy--why, what’s the matter, Roxy?” he exclaimed. But Roxy only sobbed, the sob none the less affecting to a tender-hearted hearer because broken by a hiccough. “Why, Roxy--why, what on earth--has anybody been a-hurting of you? Why don’t you tell me?”

But Roxy’s sobs still preserved the secret.

Mr. Binns really began to feel bad himself. What man unmoved can see lovely woman shed tears? “Come now, Roxy, don’t you be a-fretting,” he urged. “You just wipe your eyes and tell me all about it.”

“Oh! No! I--I can’t.”

“Oh, come now, Roxy.”

“It’s--it’s--that hateful--that--oh, I can’t--that spiteful Kitty--a-calling you my feller.”

“Well,” said Binns, “ain’t I?”

Wretched Binns! To have taken pains not to call Roxy _dear_, to tell her to wipe her eyes, not her bright eyes, and to be caught in this unguarded way by three chance words! It was all over now; he was in for it, he saw plainly; he might as well give up handsomely. And yet--he couldn’t. All that he could do was to take to his heels and clip down the steps and into the pung and drive away as if Wild Ladies--or something else--were after him. It was Roxy’s voice that was after him, shrill as a view-halloo: “Oh, Binns! A tenderloin roast! First cut! Don’t forget--ten pounds--”

But Binns had to face the music that night or else Mr. McMasters would have to get another butcher-boy, as otherwise he would not dare face Roxy to-morrow, and there had been too much trouble from people needing employment in those overcrowded days for him to give up his place for a trifle. Well, he would go. And he would say, “Roxy, now let’s be friends, two friends, two fellers together, two folks bound to have a good sleigh-ride, with no sparking about it, no nonsense, no--you know--no spooning. You’re a first-rate girl, and I don’t know such a hand at turnovers in all the kitchens I see; but that’s no reason we should be a couple of fools with nothing to be fools on. If I was in the marrying way, there’s nobody I wouldn’t marry quicker ’n you,” and here he knew his conscience would twinge him, but he would say it. “But I ain’t, and you ain’t, and so we’ll just continue the services as we were going on before.”

And did he say it? Did Binns say it? Not a word of it! Roxy was at the gate, all alert, peering out, with the bright red comforter over her arm; and running back for the hot bricks, she had whisked into that pung, and tucked the comforter about them, and chirruped to the old nag, all in a moment, and Binns found himself slipping along the road without a word, but--I am ashamed to tell it--with a shrewd suspicion that somehow he had better not lean back, for that was Roxy’s arm behind him.

“I declare!” said Roxy. “Splendid sleighing, splendid moonlight, warm as toast, and your--your--you know who--beside you, a-driving as if he could turn round on the point of a pin--I don’t know as any one needs to be any happier.”

Perhaps the compliment on his driving was soothing to Binns’s perturbed soul; but he was naturally reticent, and at that moment he did not commit himself. One thing was safe--music; and presently he had piped up a warlike song:

“Ne’er shall oppressors brave us,
Or foreign power enslave us;
Our stripes and stars shall wave us
To glory or the tomb!
Hark! ’tis the war-trump sounding!”

followed by another effort indicative of the leadings of his fancy, whose refrain rang:

“Pride of the pirate’s heart!”

This failure of Binns to improve his opportunity evidently struck no chill to Roxy’s ardor. They were approaching Trimble’s Hollow, where a bridge crossed the frozen mill-stream, and Binns leaned forward for the whip in order to accelerate their motion--one could not say speed--when suddenly Roxy flung herself a little on one side, crying out, “No, no, now, you mustn’t begin that!”

“Mustn’t begin what?” said Binns, gruffly.

“Kissing me at every bridge we come to, just as all the other boys do. It’s something I never did approve of.”

“Nor I nuther,” said Binns. But what if you don’t approve of a thing--when a rosy cup of wine is held to your lips, and the fire tingles there, and the color sparkles, and the aroma is that of a garden of flowers under your nose, do you always have the strength of mind to set that cup down instantly? Instantly; for the man as well as the woman who hesitates is lost. And Binns, with those sparkling eyes sparkling into his, that rosy cheek close beside his own, those wholesome rosy lips--I am sure that neither you nor I would have done the like--but Binns was only Binns. And what you have done once it is so easy to do again. Before they reached home, that wicked Binns--the poor guileless little fellow--felt himself quite on the way to become what, in his ignorance of the existence of Don Giovanni, stood for the same thing. But as for Roxy, she felt very well satisfied with herself and her excursion. Binns was hers; he himself had said it that morning; and on the sleigh-ride that evening he had conducted very much as, in her imagination and belief, all lovers should conduct. The horse was blanketed at the hitching-post, and Binns was brought in whether he would or no, and some sequestered turkey-bones were grilled, and a flip was made, and there had been daring possession taken of a mince-pie, the goodly share of which transformed into a part of Binns might have caused a procession of the ghosts of all his grandmothers since the Flood to walk across his counterpane that night. And Binns ate and drank, and actually made several little jokes, and apropos of the pastry he sang:

“When Washington was but a boy
As big as you or I,
He climbed his mother’s cupboard,
And he stole her apple-pie,”

appearing to Roxy as he sang as delightful a personage as an end man. And when he went away Roxy bent and put her arms about his neck, and gave him a good fair kiss on his mouth, as any girl should kiss her sweetheart.

It was not in these days Binns dealt Roxy the hearty smack, and received the no less hearty slap in return; that was when smacks and slaps meant nothing, and in the innocence of his heart Binns was treating Roxy as he did most of the other kitchen girls upon his rounds. Later on, when the nature of Roxy’s attentions, and of her intentions too, became more pointed, these little occurrences were susceptible of misconstruction; and Binns had even been embarrassed as to the return he should make for her tarts and jellies, without, however, being able to forego the dainties offered by the assiduous charmer. But now--well, if one must be kissed, Roxy’s was a sweet and wholesome mouth, and that whip of frothy cream with plum preserve at the bottom of it was sweet and wholesome too.

It was generally understood in the household now that Roxy and Binns were “keeping company,” and no one was surprised to see Roxy always, in the afternoon hours, with a piece of white cloth in her hand, sometimes a part of what appeared to be an elaborate trousseau made chiefly of tucks and insertings and edgings, sometimes a table-cloth she was hemming, or towels she was fringing, with a pride of possession that needed no bashful concealment. She had a sewing-machine of her own in her attic chamber, and who would have had the heart to stop its low melodious thunder, long after every soul in the house was in bed? If it were Gladys, softly stitching folds of lace on sheer lawn, and you saw the light in her lattice, she would indeed have been a subject of romantic interest.

It was not exactly a pleasant thing, all this unreserve of Roxy’s. And it was really a relief to know that it had its side of maidenly delicacy and diffidence. This was exhibited in some faint degree when one afternoon Binns, who had been belated, stopped at the door, with a cargo of up-country calves, to take the order for next day’s provision, and suddenly there was a hurrying and scurrying, and Roxy was hiding something white and bunchy under her apron, and then throwing it under the table, very red in the face herself, half giggling, half crying, and Kitty, making a dive, was drawing the article from its temporary refuge, and holding it up in the face of all creation.

“What’s that?” said Binns.

“Oh my, Kitty! Oh, don’t! How can you, Kitty? Ain’t you ’shamed?” cried Roxy. And up went the apron across the hair, making a muss of all the crimps that had cost her an hour over kerosene lamp and slate-pencil when the kitchen work was done.

“Why, what’s all the fuss about that?” said Binns, good-naturedly, with Kitty’s contagious laugh.

“As if you didn’t know!” said Kitty.

“I don’t see anything particular in a cotton bag,” said Binns.

“It’s house-keeping goods, you stupid!” cried Kitty. “Isn’t it, Roxy?”

“Well, what if it is?”

“Oh, Binns!” cried Roxy, pulling down the apron and showing a face where the mismated eyes were full of liquid brightness, and the ruddy cheeks were redder still with blushes. “It’s--it’s ours!”

“Ours!”

“And I’ve got a dozen of them!”

“A dozen--”

“I’ve a dozen of everything,” cried Roxy, exultantly, all barriers burned away, “except towels, and I’ve six dozen of them. I sent up to the great sale where Rivers is running linen goods against Black’s running of gloves, and got ’em for ninepence apiece. Think of that!”

A long whistle escaped from Binns’s pursed-up lips, round as which his eyes had opened, and then, without another syllable, the astonished bridegroom and prospective householder darted down the back steps and into his cart, and galloped away, looking as nearly like one of the calves inside the rack as a human being could.

It must have been a rather tremendous moment for Binns. Up to that interview with one of the dozen of them he had been comparatively a free man, with nothing definitely pledged, with everything that was really decisive so far away that he could look at it without shutting his eyes, and with all the contingencies of time and space between. But now--house-keeping goods! Bought and paid for! Every article of them was like a winding-sheet that bound him hand and foot. He felt himself fettered, with all the world for witness; and even if he could have escaped otherwise, here in some mysterious manner, a complication of moral forces, were the great firm of Rivers and the great firm of Black, in the great metropolis, brought in as restraining influences. Something like this must have wrought on Binns’s inner consciousness as nothing ever did before, for he wound himself up to the pitch of coming that very evening for a voluntary and unappointed call upon Roxy, who, sitting on the back steps--for it was late in the spring--had just put the last thread that she could see into her hemstitching.

“Roxy,” said Binns, after a preliminary skirmish, “you’re a great seamstress. But don’t you think, say--that--that this is a little previous?”

“I’m so glad you feel so, Binns,” said Roxy, demurely, taking only the latest usage of the word. And then, looking up with her happiest smile, she added, “I think it’s a little previous myself.”

“Then what in the world are you doing it for?” blurted out Binns.

“Doing it for?” said Roxy, in amazement. “Why, for our house--for us.”

“Don’t you think we’re a couple of fools, Roxy?” he said, in a tremulous voice, looking in the direction of Europe or Africa, or anything but Roxy.

“A--couple--of--fools?”

“Not to let well enough alone,” he contrived to add before his voice failed and went out.

“I don’t know what you mean, Binns,” said Roxy.

“Well,” said Binns, moistening his lips in order to articulate, “I mean--you’re very well off as you be, and so’m I at home. And how are we going--to live--with nothing--to live on? And where? And what’s the use of all your house-keeping goods?”

“Binns!” cried Roxy. And there was ominous silence for a moment before the flood-gates of her eloquence were opened. “When we only want three rooms!” she cried. “And can hire them in your own mother’s house. And I’ve money enough put by for a carpet and a cooking-stove and a rocking-chair. And I’ve got a chamber-set of my own, and a sewing-machine, and a dozen napkins, and six table-cloths, and a dozen sheets, and a dozen pillow cases, and six dozen towels, and four blankets, and a comforter I made myself, and patchwork quilts enough to make a circus tent, and two worked motters, and no end of braided mats--for I’ve always, always been getting ready! And there’s all the wedding presents yet, and clothes enough to last me a couple of years and more, and I’ll never come upon you for any. And you with six dollars a week and some hens, and I able to run a kitchen-garden myself while you’re at the shop, and raise all the vegetables we’ll use, and the ladies of the house here going to give me their clear-starching to do, anyway, and you to have your clothes mended and your washing done with no expense, and no board to pay--”

“I don’t pay board now,” stammered Binns, his words a straw upon the flood.

“And after a little we could take a couple of boarders, you know, or I would have shoes to bind from the shop, or we could do both, and have the cheerfulest kind of evenings, and you could get your butcher’s meat first cost, of course.”

“How many turnovers and whips and jellies and sangarees and hearts and rounds and doughnuts do you think we could get on six dollars a week?” asked Binns, with courageous sarcasm.

“Well, I guess we sha’n’t go without doughnuts,” answered Roxy, scornfully. “And as for turnovers, there’s apple-trees right in your mother’s yard.”

“But they’re mother’s.”

“What if they are?”

“I guess you’d find out if you went to picking mother’s apples for your sauce.”

“Well, then, we can set some out ourselves. And as for sangarees, I rather think I know how to make them as cheap as the next. And maybe we can keep a cow after a little. _I’ll_ milk her, Binns. And I’m sure I mean to have a couple of little black pigs. And by-and-by, if we can manage to raise turkeys, it will be money in our pockets. Yes, Binns, there isn’t any doubt about it--it will be money in our pockets to go to house-keeping right away, and I make no question I will have silver spoons given me here, and money and everything. And then, Binns, you’re nothing now but McMasters’s butcher-boy--but then you’ll be a married man--McMasters’s man; and they won’t be calling you by your given name, and ordering you round. You’ll be somebody, and receive consideration; and I think the sooner we set the day the better, on account of getting the garden started. What do you say to this day fortnight? That’ll give me time for the cake.”

“I--I’ll see,” cried the agonized Binns, who may have felt as if an anaconda had swallowed him. And he stood up and listened to a lad whistling as he went up the road unseen behind the high garden wall, his hands in his pockets, a free spirit, while he--

He turned and looked at Roxy. She was not attractive-looking, she was only good-natured; her teeth were uneven, although her mouth was wholesome, her skin was rough and red, her hair was frowsy, her snapping eyes were not a pair. He sat down upon the steps again, and hid his face in his hands, and groaned aloud. “I--I don’t see how I can leave my mother,” he said.

Poor Binns. He was no beauty himself, with his red head and his freckles, his pale eyes and lips, and his dwarfish stature; and it is doubtful if another girl in town would have thought of him as lover and husband. But what did he care for that? He had not thought of another girl. Nor of this one either. And how it had all come about he was sure he did not know. It seemed to him as if he were in a dreadful dream, where one thing happens and another follows without any relation, till it all becomes a nightmare.

The next day no Binns arrived to take the dinner order. And on the following day a tall, thin fellow, who looked like Binns pulled out and flattened, appeared at the storm-door in his place; and on the third day we learned that Binns was sick in bed at home.

Anything like Roxy’s importance and bustle now was seldom seen in the house. At first her reddish hue waned, and then she went about her work with one tear trickling after another along her nose and glittering suspended on its tip. At last, however, nature gave way, and Roxy sat down in a corner of the kitchen and gave way too.

“Well, if ever!” said Kitty. “If you ain’t as big a baby as Binns is!”

“I guess you’d cry,” whimpered Roxy, “if--if--your--”

“Well? My--”

“Your--sweetheart was--suffering--at home--and he might as well be in Egypt, with that mother of his--and you didn’t know--”

“As if ’twas worse for Binns than for the rest of us to have a toothache or his head hurt him! What on earth are you worrying about it for, anyway?”

“Because it’s my duty to,” said Roxy, severely. And it being her afternoon out, she put on her things and stalked up the road to Binns’s home, where she made herself and her errand known, and remained till after nightfall; to everybody’s surprise Binns himself returning with her.