A Book o' Nine Tales.

“I knew there was something up,” the young rascal observed with much self-complacency. “I knew when you sent me off to stay all night that somebody’s funeral was comin’ off, and I was bound I’d be here to see it.”

Neither the mother nor the father returned any answer. Ordinary feelings were so absolutely swept away that the woman did not even remember that she should have attempted to quiet and to excuse the intruder. Even the maternal pride which would usually have been troubled by the impression the child’s rudeness must make upon her guest was overwhelmed by the greater emotion which possessed her whole being.

Farnsworth had never been more keenly alive in every fibre of his being than at this moment. All his family pride, his refined tastes, his delicate nature, revolted from a kinship with the ugly, uncouth child who stood grinning maliciously upon his guilty parents. His impulse, almost too strong to be resisted, was to turn back and hide himself again in the world from which he had come, – to leave this woman and her loutish child in the quiet and obscurity in which he had found them. But he was nobler than his impulses and had paid already too dearly for rashness; the claim of a son upon the father who has brought him into the world grasped his sense of justice like a hand of steel.

He rose to his feet firm and determined.

“Go away now,” he said to the boy quietly, but in a voice which even the urchin felt admitted of no disobedience. “I wish to talk with your mother. I will see you to-morrow.”

“Yes, Farnsworth,” the mother said pleadingly. “Go to bed now. I will come to you before long. That’s a good boy.”

The boy slowly and unwillingly withdrew, his reluctance showing how rare obedience was to him, and the parents were once more alone.

“You have given him my name,” were Farnsworth’s first words, as the door closed behind his son.

“It was father who did that. He said he should remember to curse you every time the name was spoken.”

“And you?” the other asked, almost with a shudder.

“I did not care. Cursing could not change things. Only I would not let him do it before the boy. I didn’t want him to know what sort of a father he had.”

In the midst of his self-abasement some hidden fibre of resentment and wounded vanity tingled at her words; but he would not heed it.

“I am not so wholly bad, Delia,” he said in a moment. “I came back to marry you. It will not change or mend the past; but it is the best I can do now.”

“It is no use to talk of that,” she returned wearily; “you and I are done with each other. Even I can see that.”

She was spent with the violence of her emotions, and only longed to have Farnsworth leave her. She was keenly sensitive now of the nicety of his attire, the contrast between him and her meagre surroundings. The shamefacedness of the poor overwhelmed her. She rose with uneven steps and trembling hands, and began to put things to rights a little. She snuffed the ill-conditioned candle, and trimmed the fire, whose drift-wood sent out tongues of colored flame. She set back into their usual gaunt and vulgar order the chairs which had been disturbed.

Farnsworth watched her with an aching heart.

“Delia,” he said at length, “come and sit down. We must decide what it is best to do.”

She obeyed him, although with evident reluctance. All the brief dignity which her elevation of mood had imparted had vanished now, leaving her more haggard and worn than ever. A faded, prematurely old woman, she sat twisting her red, stained hands in a vain attempt to hide their ugliness in the folds of her poor dress. Even self-pity in Farnsworth’s breast began to vanish in the depth of compassion which the sexton excited.

“Delia,” he said, “I must think for us both, and for the boy. He must be considered. For his sake we must be married.”

It was at once with a sense of relief and of humiliation that he saw how she shrank from this proposition. To have fallen from godhood in the meanest woman’s eyes is the keenest thrust at man’s pride. It gave Farnsworth a new conception that the gulf between them must look as impassable from her side as from his. He had thus far been too much absorbed in the sacrifices he himself was making to consider that all the desirabilities of his world would not appeal to her as to him, – that its very fulness and richness which so held and delighted him would confuse and repel her.

“It is of no use!” he exclaimed, starting up. “I must have time to think. I will come back in the morning. Think yourself, Delia, – not of me, or even of yourself, so much as of the boy. It is of him that we must have the first care. Nothing can much change our lives; but the world is before him. Goodnight.”

However different may have been the reflexions of Farnsworth and of Delia Grimwet through that long, sad night, their conclusions must have been in some respects identical, for when the former came to the house in the morning with the astonished clergyman the woman acquiesced without any discussion in the performance of the marriage ceremony. It was an occasion which the Rev. Mr. Eaton long remembered, and of which he told to the end of his life, filling out, it must be confessed, as time went on, its spare facts with sundry incidents, trifling, it is true, yet gradually overlaying the bare truth with a completeness which the clerical gossip himself, whose belief always kept pace with his invention, was far from realizing. The only thing he could with accuracy have told, beyond the simple fact of the marriage, was that when, according to his wont, he attempted to add a few words of exhortation and moral reflection, the bridegroom cut him short and showed him to the door with a courtesy perfect but irresistible, the rebuff somewhat softened by the liberality of the fee which accompanied the dismissal.

The boy during these singular proceedings had remained in a state of excited astonishment almost amounting to stupefaction; but when the newly united family were alone together, his natural perversity broke out, and showed itself in its natural and unamiable colors. To the father the child’s every uncouth word and act were the most acute torture; and the mother, partly by woman’s instinct, partly from previous acquaintance with her husband’s fastidiousness, was to a great degree sensible of this. She made no effort, however, to restrain her child. She seemed to have thrown off all responsibility upon the father, and busied herself in preparations for the boy’s departure, about which, although neither had spoken of it, there seemed to be some tacit understanding.

The forenoon was well worn when Farnsworth came to the door with his carriage, for which he had gone in person.

“Come, Delia,” he said, entering the house. “We may as well leave everything as it is. I told Mrs. Bemis to lock up the house and see to it. Are you ready?”

“Farnsworth is,” she replied, seating herself in a low chair and drawing to her side the uncouth boy, who struggled to get free.

He broke in rudely, announcing his readiness, his joy at leaving Kempton, and his satisfaction at wearing his Sunday jacket, which to his father looked poor enough.

“But you, Delia?” her husband inquired, putting up his hand to quiet the child. “Are you ready?”

“I am not going.”

Whether it was relief, remorse, or astonishment which overwhelmed him, John Farnsworth could not have told. He stood speechless, looking at his wife like one suddenly stricken dumb. The boy filled in the pause with noisy expostulations, depriving the tragedy of even the poor dignity of silence. The father knew from the outset that remonstrances would not be likely to avail, yet he remonstrated; perhaps, for human nature is subtle beyond word, he was unconsciously for that reason the more earnest in his pleading. He would have been glad could this woman and her child have been swept out of existence. Already he had to hold himself strongly in check, lest the reaction which had followed his heroic resolve to marry Delia should show itself; but he choked back the feeling with all his resolution.

“No,” Delia persistently said, her eyes dry, her voice harsh from huskiness. “I’ve no place anywhere but here. It is too late now. I’ve more feeling than I thought, for I do care something even now to be an honest woman in the sight of my neighbors; and that’ll help me bear it, I suppose. Take the boy, and do for him all you owed to me. I should spoil all if I went. He is best quit of me if he’s to please you and grow like you. I’ll stay here and dig graves; I am fit for nothing else. I want nothing of you. I married you for the boy’s sake, and for his sake I break my heart and send him away; but I will have nothing for myself. The days when I would have taken a penny from you are long gone.”

She spoke calmly enough, but with a certain poignant stress which made every word fall like a weight. He did not urge her further. He held out his hand, into which she laid hers lifelessly.

“Good-bye,” he said. “As God sees me, Delia, I’ll do my best by the boy. I will write to you. If you change your decision, – but no matter now. I will write to you and to the minister.”

All other words of parting were brief and soon spoken. The boy showed no emotion at leaving his mother, as he had throughout exhibited no tenderness. He climbed noisily into the carriage, and the father and son, so strangely assorted, rode together up the hill, past the stark meeting-house, and so on into the world whose seething waves seldom troubled, even by such a ripple as the events just narrated, the dull calm of Kempton; and to John Farnsworth it was as if the woful burden of remorse which had so long vexed heart and conscience had taken bodily shape and rode by his side.

Delia had been calm until the two were gone, – so calm that her husband thought her still half dazed by the excitement and anguish of the previous night. She stood steadily at the window until the carriage disappeared behind the grave-covered hill. Then she threw herself grovelling upon the floor in the very ecstasy of woe. She did not shriek, strangling in her throat into inarticulate moans and gurglings the cries which rent their way from her inmost soul; but she beat her head upon the bare floor; she caught at the furniture like a wild beast, leaving the print of her strong teeth in the hard wood; she was convulsed with her agony, a speechless animal rage, a boundless, irrepressible anguish which could not be measured or expressed. She clutched her bosom with her savage hands, as if she would tear herself in pieces; she wounded and bruised herself with a fierceness so intense as to be almost delight.

In the midst of her wildest paroxysm there came a knocking at the door. She started up, her face positively illuminated.

“They have come back!” she murmured in ecstasy.

She rushed to the door and undid its fastenings with fingers tremulous from eager joy. A neighbor confronted her, staring in dismay and amazement at her strange and dishevelled appearance.

“What’s come to ye, Dele?” he demanded roughly, though not unkindly. “When ye goin’ to put the box in Widder Pettigrove’s grave?”

She confronted him for an instant with a wandering look in her eye, as though she had mercifully been driven mad. Then the tyranny of life and habit reasserted itself.

“I’ll come up now, Bill,” she said.

And she went back to her graves.