The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864

Soulé dropped his hand, drew back, and was silent a moment.

"Let it be so. But did you think what you would do, if you refused your aid to me? Have you found work? or a God to preach?"

Something in these last words took Yarrow's sudden strength away. He did not answer for a moment.

"Work?" feebly. "No,—I haven't heard of any work. As for a God"—

"Well, then, what are your purposes?" coldly.

Another silence.

"I don't know. I never was worth much," he gasped out at last, stooping, and pulling at his shoestrings.

"And now"—said Soulé.

"There's no need for you to say that!" with a sharp cry. "I don't forget that I have slipped,—that it's too late,—I don't forget."

His hands jerked at his coat-fronts in a wild, dazed way.

"Stephen!"

The woman rose, and let in the air.

"I thank you. I'm not sick."

Soulé turned away. He could not meet the look on the pinched convict-face,—the soul of the man crying out for God or his brother, something to help. There was a silence for a few moments.

"You will come with me, Stephen," quietly: then, after a pause, "It is for life. There is but little time left to decide."

Was there no help? Had the true God no messenger? The winter-wind blowing through the window filled with fine frost wet his face, lifted the smothering off his lungs. His eyes grew clear, as his full sense returned after a while: seeing only at first, it so happened, the fire in its square frame; and thinking only of that, as the mind always drowsily absorbs the nearest trifle after a spasm of pain. A bed of pale red coals now, furred over with white and pearl-colored ashes. It was a long time since he had seen any open fire,—years, he believed. Where was it that there had been a fire just like that, with the ashes like moss over the heat,—and on a night in winter, too, the wind rattling the panes? Where was it? While Soulé stood waiting for his answer, his mind was drifting back, like that of a man in his dotage, through its dull, muddy thoughts, after that one silly memory. He struck on it at last. A year or two after he was married. In the bedroom. Martha was sitting by the fire, with the old yellow dog beside her: she was trying to ride the baby on his neck,—he was the clumsiest brute! He came in and stopped to see the fun; he noticed the fire then, how cozy and warm it all was: outside it was hailing, a gust shaking the house. He had been doing a bit of carpentering,—he did like to go back to the old trade! This was a wicker chair for the baby,—he had made it in the stable for a surprise: the girl always liked surprises and such nonsense. He put it down with a flourish, and he remembered how she laughed, and Ready growled, and how he and she both got on their knees to seat the youngster in, and tie him with his bandanna handkerchief. So silly that all was! When they were on the floor there, and had Master Jem fastened in, be remembered how she suddenly turned, and put her arms about his neck, as shyly as when they were first married, and kissed him. "Only God knows how good you are to me, Stephen," she said. There were tears in her eyes.—Yarrow passed his hand over his forehead. Did ever a thought come into your mind like a fresh, clean air into a stove-heated, foul room? or like the first hearty, living call of Greatheart through the dungeons of Giant Despair?

"You do not answer me, Stephen?" said his brother. "You will go with me?"

Yarrow's head was more erect, his eyes less glazed.

"It may be. The chance for me's over in the world, I think. I may as well serve you. And yet"—

"What?"

"Give me time to think. I want out-of-doors. It's close here. I'll meet you in the morning."

Soulé caught his wife's uneasy glance.

"What is this, Stephen?"

"Nothing," looking dully out into the night.

"Then"—

"There's some you said were dead,"—as if no one were speaking, with the same dull look. "Or lost: I think they're not dead. If there might be a chance yet! If I could but see Martha and the little chaps, it would save me, John Yarrow, no matter what they'd learned to think of me. They're mine,—my little chaps. She said the boys should never know. She said that of her own free will."

"Is it likely she could keep her word?" said Soulé, sneeringly.

"Why, why, she loved me, John,"—a moist color and smile coming out on his face. "There's a little thing I minded just now that—Yes, Martha kept her word."

He tapped with his fingers thoughtfully on the mantel-shelf, the smile lingering yet on his face. The woman's woollen sewing fell from her hand, and she spoke for the first time. Her tone had a harsh, metallic twang in it: Yarrow turned curiously, as he heard it.

"What could they be to you, if you found them? They have forgotten you. In five years they have not sent you a message."

"No,—I know, Madam."

Even that did not hurt him. His face kindled slowly,—still turned to the fire, as if it were telling him some old story: looking to her at last, steadfast and manly, like a man who has healthy common-sense dominant in his head, and an unselfish love at work in his heart. Such a one is not far from the kingdom of heaven.

"It seems to me as if there might be a chance—yet. It's a long time. But Martha loved me, Madam. You don't know—I think I'll go, John. It's close here, 's I said. I'll meet you at the far bridge by dawn, and let you know."

"It is your only chance," said Soulé, roughly, as he followed him to the door.

He was a ruined man, if he were balked in this.

"You do not know how the world meets a returned felon, Stephen; you"—

"Let me go," feebly, putting his hand up to his chin in the old fashion.

"I think I know that. I—I've thought of that a good deal. But it seemed to me as if there might be a chance"; and so, without a word of farewell, went stumbling down the stairs.

He had given a wistful look at the fire, as he turned away. Perhaps that would comfort him. God surely has "many voices in the world, and none of them is without its signification."

An hour before dawn, Yarrow found the place in which he had appointed to meet his brother. The night had been dark, hailing at intervals; he had gone tramping up and down the hills and stubble-fields, through snow and half-frozen mud-gullies, hardly conscious of what he did. The night seemed long to him now, looking back. He found a burnt sycamore-stump and got up on it, shivered awhile, felt his shirt, which was wet to the skin, then took off his shoes and cleared the lumps of slush out of them. There was something horrible to him in this unbroken silence and dark and wet cold: he had been in his hot cell so long, the frost stung him differently from other men, the icy thaw was wetter. It was a narrow cut in the hills where he was, a bridle-road leading back and running zigzag for some miles until it returned to the railroad-track. A lonely, unfrequented place: Frazier would take this by-path; Soulé had chosen it well to meet him. There was a rickety bridge crossing a hill-stream a few rods beyond. Yarrow pushed the dripping cap off his forehead, and looked around. No light nor life on any side: even in the heavens yawned that breathless, uncolored silence that precedes a winter's dawn. He could see the Ohio through the gully: why, it used to be a broad, full-breasted river, glancing all over with light, loaded with steamers and rafts going down to the Mississippi. He had gone down once, rafting, with lumber, and a jolly three weeks' float they had of it. Now it was a solid, shapeless mass of blocks of ice and mud. Winter? yes, but the world was altered somehow, the very river seemed struck with death. His teeth chattered; he began to try to rub some warmth into his rheumatic legs and arms; tried to bring back the fancy of last night about Martha and the fire. But that was a long way off: there were all these years' mastering memories to fade it out, you know, and besides, a diseased habit of desponding. The world was wide to him, cowering out from a cell: where were Martha and the little chaps lost in it? John said they were dead. Where should he turn now? There was an aguish pain in his spine that blinded him: since yesterday he had eaten nothing,—he had no money to buy a meal; he was a felon,—who would give him work? "There's some things certain in the world," he muttered.

"That was silly last night,—silly. And yet,—if there could have been a chance!"

He looked up steadily into the sickly, discolored sky: nothing there but the fog from these swamps. He had not wished so much that he could hear of Martha and the children, when he looked up, as of something else that he needed more. Even the foulest and most careless soul that God ever made has some moments when it grows homesick, conscious of the awful vacuum below its life, the Eternal Arm not being there. Yarrow was neither foul nor careless. All his life, most in those years in the prison, he had been hungry for Something to rest on, to own him. Sometimes, when his evil behavior had seemed vilest to him, he had felt himself trembling on the verge of a great forgiveness. But he could see so little of the sky in the cell there,—only that three-cornered patch: he had a fancy, that, if once he were out in the world that He made,—in the free air,—that, if there were a God, he would find Him out. He had not found Him.

He sat on the stump awhile, his hands over his eyes, then got down slowly, buttoning his soggy waistcoat and coat.

"I don't see as there's a chance," he said, dully. "I was a fool to think there was any better God than the one that"—digging his toe into the frozen pools. "It's all ruled. I'm not one of the elect."

That was all. After that, he stood waiting for his brother.

"I'll help him. He's the best I know."

Even the faint sigh choked before it rose to his lips,—both manhood and hope were so dead with inanition; yet a life's failure went in it.

While he stood waiting, Martha Yarrow sat by her kitchen-fire crying to God to help him; but He knew what things were needed before she asked Him.

Soulé, with his gun and game-bag, had been coursing over the hills three miles back, since four o'clock. He had bagged a squirrel or two, enough to suffice for his morning's work, and now, his piece unloaded, came stealthily towards the place of rendezvous. He had little hope that Stephen would help him: he had made up his mind to go through the affair alone. If he did it, that involved—Pah! what was in a word? Men died every day. He had quite resolved: Judith and he had talked the matter over all night. But if Frazier were a younger man, and could fight for it! Perhaps he was armed: Soulé's face flashed: he stooped and broke the trigger of his gun, and then went on with a much less heavy step. They would be more even now. He wanted to reach the bridge by dawn, and meet his brother. If he refused to help him, he would send him away, and wait for Frazier alone. About nine o'clock he might expect him.

Frazier, however, had changed his plan. He told Starr the night before, that, as M. Soulé would not breakfast with him, he had concluded to rise early, and be off by dawn. "If there's nothing to be done about the Miami shares, there is no use wasting time here," he thought. So, while Stephen Yarrow waited near the bridge, the smoke was curling out of the kitchen-chimney where the cook was making ready the cashier's beefsteak, and the old man was crawling out of bed. He could hear Starr's children in the room overhead making an uproar over their stockings. "Christmas morning, by the way! I must take some knick-knack back to Totty." (As if his trunk were not always filled with things for Totty, and his shirts crammed into the lid, when he came home!) "Something for mother, too," as he pulled on his socks. "Gloves, now, hey? A dozen pair. I wish I had asked Madame Soulé what size she wore, last night. Their hands are about the same size. Mother always had a tidy little paw. So will Totty, eh?" And so finished dressing, thinking Soulé had a neat little wife, but insipid.