Part 28 (1/2)

”Why, don't you know?” said he. ”'Ain't n.o.body told ye? She 'ain't got no husband.”

”What? Is the Cap'n dead?”

”Dead? Bless ye, he's divorced from Nancy, an' married another woman, two year ago come this May!”

I was amazed, and Hiram looked at me with the undisguised triumph of one who has news to sell, be it good or bad.

”But Nancy has written me!” I said. ”She told me the neighborhood gossip; why didn't she tell me that?”

”Pride, I s'pose, pride,” said Hiram. ”You can't be sure how misery'll strike folks. It's like a September gale; the best o' barns'll blow down, an' some rickety shanty'll stan' the strain. But there! Nancy's had more to bear from the way she took her troubles than from the troubles themselves. Ye see, 'twas this way. Cap'n Jim had his own reasons for wantin' to git rid of her, an' I guess there was a time when he treated her pretty bad. I guess he as good's turned her out o'

house an' home, an' when he sued for divorce for desertion, she never said a word; an' he got it, an' up an' married, as soon as the law'd allow, Nancy never opened her head, all through it. She jest settled down, with a bed an' a chair or two, in that little house she owned down by Wilier Brook, an' took in tailorin' an' mendin'. One spell, she bound shoes. The whole town was with her till she begun carryin' on like a crazed creatur', as she did arterwards.”

My heart sank. Poor Nancy! if she had really incurred the public scorn, it must have been through dire extremity.

”Ye see,” Hiram continued, ”folks were sort o' tried with her from the beginnin'. You know what a good outfit she had from her mother's side,--bureaus, an' beddin', an' everything complete? Well, she left it all right there in the house, for Jim to use, an' when he brought his new woman home, there the things set jest the same, an' he never said a word. I don't deny he ought to done different, but then, if Nancy wouldn't look out for her own interests, you can't blame him so much, now can ye? But the capsheaf come about a year ago, when Nancy had a smart little sum o' money left her,--nigh onto a hunderd dollars. Jim he'd got into debt, an' his oxen died, an' one thing an' another, he was all wore out, an' had rheumatic fever; an' if you'll b'lieve it, Nancy she went over an' done the work, an' let his wife nuss him. She wouldn't step foot into the bedroom, they said; she never see Jim once, but there she was, slavin' over the wash-tub and ironin'-board,--an' as for that money, I guess it went for doctor's stuff an' what all, for Jim bought a new yoke of oxen in the spring.”

”But the man! the other wife! how could they?”

”Oh, Jim's wife's a pretty tough-hided creatur', an' as for him, I al'ays thought the way Nancy behaved took him kind o' by surprise, an'

he had to give her her head, an' let her act her pleasure. But it made a sight o' town talk. Some say Nancy ain't quite bright to carry on so, an' the women-folks seem to think she's a good deal to blame, one way or another. Anyhow, she's had a hard row to hoe. Here we be, an'

there's Hannah at the foreroom winder. You won't think o' goin' over to Nancy's till arter supper, will ye?”

When I sat alone beside Nancy's bed, that night, I had several sides of her sad story in mind, but none of them lessened the dreariness of the tragedy. Before my brief acquaintance with her, Nancy was widely known as a travelling-preacher, one who had ”the power.” She must have been a strangely attractive creature, in those early days, alert, intense, gifted with such a magnetic reaching into another life that it might well set her aside from the commoner phases of a common day, and crowned, as with flame, by an unceasing aspiration for the highest. At thirty, she married a das.h.i.+ng sailor, marked by the sea, even to the rings in his ears; and when I knew them, they were solidly comfortable and happy, in a way very rea.s.suring to one who could understand Nancy's temperament; for she was one of those who, at every step, are flung aside from the world's sharp corners, bruised and bleeding.

As to the storm and s.h.i.+pwreck of her life, I learned no particulars essentially new. Evidently her husband had suddenly run amuck, either from the monotony of his inland days, or from the strange pa.s.sion he had conceived for a woman who was Nancy's opposite.

That night, I sat in the poor, bare little room, beside the billowing feather-bed where Nancy lay propped upon pillows, and gazing with bright, glad eyes into my face, one thin little hand clutching mine with the grasp of a soul who holds desperately to life. And yet Nancy was not clinging to life itself; she only seemed to be, because she clung to love.

”I'm proper glad to see ye,” she kept saying, ”proper glad.”

We were quite alone. The fire burned cheerily in the kitchen stove, and a cheap little clock over the mantel ticked unmercifully fast; it seemed in haste for Nancy to be gone. The curtains were drawn, lest the thrifty window-plants should be frostbitten, and several tumblers of jelly on the oilcloth-covered table bore witness that the neighbors had put aside their moral scruples and their social delicacy, and were giving of their best, albeit to one whose ways were not their ways. But Nancy herself was the centre and light of the room,--so frail, so clean, with her plain nightcap and coa.r.s.e white nightgown, and the small checked shawl folded primly over her shoulders. Thin as she was, she looked scarcely older than when I had seen her, five years ago; yet since then she had walked through a blacker valley than the one before her.

”Now don't you git all nerved up when I cough,” she said, lying back exhausted after a paroxysm. ”I've got used to it; it don't trouble me no more'n a mosquiter. I want to have a real good night now, talkin'

over old times.”

”You must try to sleep,” I said. ”The doctor will blame me, if I let you talk.”

”No, he won't,” said Nancy, shrewdly. ”He knows I 'ain't got much time afore me, an' I guess he wouldn't deny me the good on't. That's why I sent for ye, dear; I 'ain't had anybody I could speak out to in five year, an' I wanted to speak out, afore I died. Do you remember how you used to come over an' eat cold b'iled dish for supper, that last summer you was down here?”

”Oh, don't I, Nancy! there never was anything like it. Such cold potatoes--”

”B'iled in the pot-liquor!” she whispered, a knowing gleam in her blue eyes. ”That's the way; on'y everybody don't know. An' do you remember the year we had greens way into the fall, an' I wouldn't tell you what they was? Well, I will, now; there was chickweed, an' pusley, an'

mustard, an' Aaron's-rod, an' I dunno what all.”

”Not Aaron's-rod, Nancy! it never would have been so good!”

”It's truth an' fact! I b'iled Aaron's-rod, an' you eat it. That was the year Mis' Blaisdell was mad because you had so many meals over to my house, an' said it was the last time she'd take summer boarders an'

have the neighbors feed 'em.”

”They were good old days, Nancy!”