He Fell In Love With His Wife, Edward Payson Roe [children's books read aloud .TXT] 📗

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