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HE FELL IN LOVE WITH HIS WIFE
by Edward P. Roe
CONTENTS
Chapter I Left AloneII 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 downhill.” 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 downhill 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
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