CHAPTER XXIV

There was something pitiful to Dorothy in the eagerness with which Joe received the inscription, which she had carefully printed on four sheets of foolscap basted together. She read it to him, over and over, that Monday morning, at his request, until he could repeat it easily.

Before going home he looked up Hiram, and borrowed a cold chisel and a hammer. When he reached the wood where he had hidden the stone, he laid it down, and, without further thought, began to chisel out the few sad words in which the graver of the city workman had recorded the fate of Harry Lyndsay. This was sufficiently easy, as he made rough work of it, being anxious to get to the more difficult task.

He had reflected a little as to the risks of some one visiting the little burial-ground up the river, but, as those he knew thereabouts did not trouble themselves to visit the graves of their dead, it did not occur to him that these city-folks would be any more likely to do so. Nor was it any more probable that, far away in the depth of the forest, anybody who was interested would ever come upon the burial-place of Susan’s children.

312“Wouldn’t know nothin’ if they did,” he said to himself, as he went on with great care to mark with a burned stick the place for the lettering, which he began now to chisel on the smooth reverse of the marble.

It was a hard job, but Joe, like most lumbermen, was very skilful with tools. He returned after dinner, and steadily persevered until the twilight forbade him to go on. Susan, still in her more pleasant mood, was satisfied that his absence meant merely the continuance of the usual labor of accumulating fire-wood for winter use.

On Tuesday, early, he went back to the unaccustomed task, and all day long hung anxious and sweating over the stone. Meanwhile Margaret Lyndsay sat on the porch of the Cliff Camp, reflecting that soon she must go away and leave her dead to loneliness and the long burial of the winter snows.

On the river Lyndsay was fishing with Anne, and Dorothy had been over, and taken away, carefully wrapped in her handkerchief, the drama of “Mrs. Macbeth.”

And still the hammer rang on in the dark woodland, until at evening his task was completed. Joe stood up, straightened his tired back, and considered the stone with satisfaction. The work was roughly done, but sufficiently plain, nor was Joe disposed to be too critical. At last here was something which Susie would like.

Pleased with this idea, he brought water from a forest spring, and sedulously cleared the marble of the charcoal-marks and of the soil of his handling. As he stood regarding it, he even felt pride in his 313seeming power to read what he had carved, and repeated aloud, “Of such are the kingdom of heaven.”

It was now late, and with deliberate care, lest his burden should fall, he heaved the slab on his back, and set off across the forest, limping as he went. When he reached the three small mounds in the clearing, he laid it down with care, and, after some deliberation, dug a hole and set the stone at the head of the middle grave. Having thus completed his task, he wiped his wet brow on his sleeve, and sat down on a stump, with his pipe in his mouth.

He intended to let the night go by, and, after breakfast next day, to take his wife to the wood, and surprise her with what he had done for her. He would tell her he had a secret; he would say it was something she would want to have done. But he would not tell her what it was. He was like a great simple child; unthoughtful, owned by the minute’s mood or need, not immoral, merely without any recognized rule of life.

As he regarded what he had done, he began to think that to bring her hither at once would be pleasant. He could not wait. The notion brought him to his feet, and he soon gathered the material for a fire, which he placed facing the stone, a few feet from the graves. The space around was amply cleared, so that there was no risk. This done, and the pile ready with birch-bark kindling, which needed only to be lighted, he turned away and hastened home.

It was now dark. As he entered his cabin he saw his wife crouched low on a stool before the fire, her head in her hands, her hair, which was coarse and 314abundant, hanging about her—a comb awry in its tumbled mass.

He guessed that her mood had changed. She took no manner of notice of his coming. He moved forward, and, touching her shoulder, said:

“What’s the matter, Susie?”

“Matter enough!” she returned, sharply. “That lawyer man’s been here, and wanted you. You ain’t never to hand when you’re wanted.”

“What is it now?”

“He says we’ve got to pay up or git out in October. Guess he got my mind ’bout it. I’d have licked him if I’d been a man. He wasn’t far from scared, anyhow.”

“That won’t help us none,” said Joe, with a glimmer of good sense. “He’ll be wus’n ever he was.”

“Who cares?” Then, turning, she set her eyes, aglow with the firelight, large, red, and evil, on Joe. “That man Carington was around to-day, asking if we’d seen bear-tracks. Bill Sansom told me. He didn’t come here. I did see him yesterday, on the lower road, a-twiddlin’ a gold watch-chain and a-singin’. What might a big gold watch be worth, Joe? I asked him the hour, just to git a look at it.”

“Lord, Susie, I don’t know.”

To this she made no reply. He stood beside her, shifting his feet uneasily.

Of a sudden she got up and caught the man by the shoulders, and, as she stood, towered over him a full foot.

“What—what’s the matter, Susie?” he gasped.

“Git that man up here in September, you fool.”

315Joe looked aside, Dorothy’s imperfect warning in his mind.

“I heerd he’d give up that notion.”

“That’s a lie.”

“It ain’t! I swear it ain’t no lie. I heerd Michelle a-sayin’ so.”

“When was it?”

“I don’t rightly remember. I—I couldn’t do it.”

“Git him here, and I’ll do it,” she said. “It’s just to pull a trigger. So.” And she snapped her thumb and finger so as make a sharp click. The blood was up in splotches of dusky red upon her angular and sallow face. The man recoiled, more scared at the woman than at the crime which he lacked power to conceive of as possible.

“Gosh!” he cried, “you’re a devil!”

In an instant she was changed. She had a share of the singular dramatic power of the abler and more resolute criminal nature.

“Oh, I’m just crazy, Joe, what with one thing and another. Don’t you never mind me.” And a smile, which to another man would have seemed hideous, disturbed her features with unwonted lines. “Might nothin’ ever chance. You and me we’ll have to just fight along. ’Tain’t every man would have stood by me all along, the way you’ve done.”

“That’s so,” said Joe, relieved. “I’ll work for you, Susie: don’t you go to fear I won’t. I was a-thinkin’ you was ’bout downded all along of them children.”

“That’s it, Joe; you’re better a heap than me.” She knew, or thought she knew, that if the chance 316came she would have the power to compel him into doing her will. There was strange self-confidence in her sense of capacity to hurl this child-man into evil-doing, as one may cast a stone; and now the notion possessed her almost continually. How to do it? how to bring about the occasion? how to escape consequences? The craving for this thing to become possible grew as the days went by. Nor is this abiding temptation rare in minds of her class. I have said that it possessed her, and the phrase suffices to describe her condition. The idea of crime owned her as a master owns a slave. It was a fierce and a powerful nature which poor Joe had taken to his unchanging heart.

“I knowed it was the children. You won’t never talk so again? Just you come with me; I’ve got something’ll surprise you.”

“What’s that, Joe?” She was just now intent on quieting his fears. “Do tell me.”

“No! You come along. Looks like rain a bit.”

“Well, I’ll go.” She threw her hair aside, and went out with him, saying, “You are a queer old man; I guess I’m right curious.” Well pleased, he went along, the woman following.

By and by they came into the open space around which the underbrush grew so close that it would have puzzled one unused to the way to find it.

“You just stand there a bit,”—and, as he spoke, he bent over the ready pile,—“and don’t look yet,” he added.

“What’s that white thing?” The night was dark, and, in the forest, of inky blackness, because of the coming storm.

317“You wait,” he repeated. “Don’t you look yet.”

He struck a match on his corduroys, and lighted the birch-bark shavings. Instantly a red light leaped up, and in a moment the flame soared high, flaring in the gusts of wind, so that the tall pines cast all around wild lengths of shivering shadows, and the forest became as day; while the white oblong of stone came sharply out into view.

“I done it,” he said. “I done it for you, Susie! I done it.”

The woman came near, and, saying no words, fell on her knees to see it better.

“You did that, Joe?” and she looked up.

“I did!”

“There’s letters on it. I can’t spell them rightly.”

“Dory she made them on paper. She won’t know. I told her it was for a board I was thinkin’ to set up. There don’t no one come here.”

“It’s a stone! a real tombstone, Joe!”

“Yes, it’s that.”

“What’s on it?”

“I learned it,” he said. “It just says:
‘HERE LIE THE BODIES
OF
SUSAN FAIRLAMB,
PETER FAIRLAMB,
ISAIAH FAIRLAMB,
CHILDREN OF
SUSAN FAIRLAMB.’

I left out Pete Fairlamb. Seems right, don’t it?” he added, noticing her silence.

318“There isn’t anything about when they was born and died. Any fool would have guessed it ought to have that.”

Joe’s face fell. After all, he had failed to satisfy her entirely.

“I done my best. Guess my back’s achin’ yet with heftin’ that stone.”

“Where did you fetch it?” she said, looking up.

“I took it out of the graveyard, up-river.”

“Why can’t you say you stole it? It’s them Lyndsays’.” As she spoke the dominant idea which she had so long nurtured rose anew into power. “Well, I didn’t think you was that much of a man, Joe.” She felt that he had taken a downward step. “You stole it!” she repeated. “You needn’t be afraid to tell me.”

The words “stole it” disturbed him.

“I stole it!” he repeated, mechanically.

“I don’t like it any the worse for that. What’s that last line? Did you say all of it?”

“That’s what Dory said was to be put under the rest. It made a lot more work; but Dory she said they most allus done it like that.”

“What is it?” said the woman. “I don’t make it out.”

He hesitated a moment. “‘Of such’—that’s it; most clean forgot it: ‘Of such are the kingdom of heaven.’”

As he spoke the drops began to fall. Then an intolerable blaze of orange light flooded the forest with momentary noonday, and, without interval, the thunder, followed by a deluge of rain, and struck 319hither and thither by the hills, died away reverberant in the distance.

“Jerusalem! That was a near one! Ain’t it a-rainin’!”

As the lightning fell the woman threw up her arms where she knelt and staggered to her feet. “Come along,” she cried; and, as she moved swiftly before him in a mighty downfall of rain, she said, over and over, “‘Of such are the kingdom of heaven’; ’of such are the kingdom of heaven!’”

When they reached home, she sat down by the fire, as if unconscious of her soaked garments, until Joe, coming in from the cow-house, said:

“You’d best be gettin’ on dry clothes, Susie. You’ll take your death of cold.”

“I’d like them Lyndsays to miss that stone, Joe.”

“I hope they won’t,” he returned. “They ain’t never been nothin’ but good to folks hereabouts. I’d not of took it happen there was another; and I wouldn’t have done it for no other woman.”

“It was a brave job, Joe, and I’ll never forget it. I wish them other things had been set on it—when they was born and died. It’s only them rich people has things complete. Maybe you done the best you could.”

“That’s so,” he returned.