Roxy

41. The Enemy

Trite sayings are often trite because ttiey are so verj true. It is very trite and true also that many good plana have the fatal defect of being adopted too late. If Roxy had begun a year or a week sooner to prop Mark's house upon the sand with sympathetic kindness, it might have escaped its disastrous fate. But it might have fallen sooner or later in some way. Ruin is the only cure for ruin with some people ; there is nothing but the recoil that comes of disgrace that will save a man of vanity and egotism. It is better that the ill-founded house should be utterly swept away, perhaps. Patching will not save it.

Roxy's kindness to Mark on his return, and her sincere endeavor to enter into sympathy with some of his aims and plans, only served to make him uncomfortable. Mark's guilty consciousness wanted an opiate there is no lethe like self-pity ; if Roxy had been severe with him he might have stilled his remorse with a Rip Yan Winkle persuasion that his wife's austerity and not his own laxity drove him into sin. If he could have persuaded himself that he was an irresponsible waif, beaten upon and driven of domestic sto-ms, he might have been tolerably comfortable. He would have been quits with Roxy. But now that she gave him appreciation of his gifts and praise of his generous qua] ities, his old love for her the best passion of his life revived and he felt a shame to have sinned against her.

Unconsciously he sometimes tried to provoke her to speak the angry words which would have been a relief to him. But though, he could make her face flush with indignation, he could not draw from her lips a reproach. The power of Roxy's persistent resolution was dominant over her temper. She might cry her eyes out over his unkind words when he was gone. But her vow kept guard over her lips. And she found a certain peace in the struggle. She was born for hard tasks, and now as Bobo, grown but little taller in these years, went about the yard with a hundred chickens at his heels, he was sometimes surprised and delighted to meet Roxy with a momentary gleam of the old gladness in her face : it was when she thought she was really beginning to win back her husband to old states of feeling.

Poor Bobo, to whom Roxy's face was as the face of God, was so pleased to get a glimmer of sunshine from her that he would forthwith lill his pockets with chicken feed and give his followers an extra treat, scattering the food so that all should have some, that all of them might be happy like himself. He had improved much in mind under Roxy's care. He repeated long strings of poetry with considerable appreciation of its meaning, and he could make himself useful in many things. But he could never be taught to give his bounty to dumb creatures otherwise than lavishly, and it was a most thriftless, lazy and unscratohing set of chickens that he fed. The corn in the barn had to be kept out of his sight lest through his kindness the horses should be foundered, or the cows die of colic, or the pigs grow fat before the time of execution

Mark grew less and less remorseful as the weeks passed by He had, both from nature and training, a great power of forgetting unpleasant things the must dangerous of mental tendencies. A corrupt memory can defeat a tolerably vigorous conscience. But remorse does not generally come of successful and undetected sin. It was not David'a guilt that brought forth David's repentance, but the detection of his sin and the disasters in which he was involved. As the autumn seared and browned and graved at last into winter, Mark came to something of his old complacency. Forgetf ulness filled the place of forgiveness ; his prospects for political promotion improved, and, more than all, Roxy had come to see the error of her ways and was in active sympathy with his aims, only reserving the right to check and correct him in matters of detail. A man cannot be very guilty with whom all goes so prosperously.

It was only when one day old Gideon Kirtley came to town and held a private conversation with Mark that he was awakened from this forgetfulness of his crime. Evil done and out of mind has a way of starting up thus in a man's most peaceful and prosperous moments, as though Retribution were fond of making her entrance dramatical. To have a crime against law and society charged upon one just when the prize of ambition hangs low within reach is the realization of the doom of Tantalus. It was easy to quiet the old man for the present with money and fair promises, but Bonamy's security was fairly shaken out of him. Ashamed and terror-stricken in Roxy's presence, she found him sometimes moody and silent. He knew that Nancy would not be easily kept still, and that she would especially delight to torment Roxy. He must make a way of sending Nancy out of the country at all hazards, and he was not sure that any inducement would be sufficient to get her away. She was too fond of plaguing people to be willing to forego a particle of her revenge. Money was nc equivalent to her for the luxury of " getting even."

Mark knew that he must sooner or later have an ally in this desperate game of concealment. But who should it be ? His brother-in-law, Barlow, was his chief political friend, and was very handy in fixing up bad cases. But then he could not bear to have Amanda by any chance know his secret. And, moreover, he distrusted Barlow. His brother-in-law was in business and politics a rival, and he did not feel sure that, between Barlow's rivalry with himself and Amanda's jealousy of Roxy, Ben might not think it best to push himself for Congress. At all events, he did not choose that Barlow should have so much leverage as the knowledge of his affair with the Kirtleys would give him.

But there was no time to debate. One night in December, as Mark was crossing the common toward his own house, he was confronted by Nancy herself. After a great deal of preliminary abuse, she came out with :

" Now, what you goin' to do about it? "

" Whatever you say. If you keep still and don't make a fuss, I'll do whatever you think I ought to do."

" W'y, you jest sell out and take me and slope, an' leave the Adams girl here. I haint a-goin' to be laughed at by all the fools on Rocky Fork ; they haint no money, nor nothin'll satisfy me but jest one thing. I'm goin' to git square with her."

Mark trembled at the fiery unreason of the creature. It was then a wild beast into whose power he had put himself. In his first dash of dismay he felt all the hopelessness of the case. Could one compromise with an infuriated tiger?

'' What has she done, poor thing, that you want to break her heart ? " he said, pointing on toward his own house, with a shnddei-.

" Her ? What has she done ? I had orto been thair. She stole you, and I am straight on the road new to git even. I always git even, I do. Break her heart, hey ? Wouldn't I jest like to break it! That's what I'm goin' to do. You hadn't no business to leave me an' take her. I'm gittin' even weth her now. And you jest back out a inch from what I say, and then I'll git even weth you, too, or my name haint Kirtley ! "

" Well, Nancy," said Bonamy, seeing how useless it was to enrage her with remonstrances, " you must give me time to see about things. I can't say what I ought to do."

" Oh, they's time enough, but they's only jest one thing to do. Me an' you's goin' to Texas this lime, instid of her an' you. That's all they is of it. I swore I'd be even weth her, and it'll soon be square, one way or t'other. El you go weth me, it'll be all square with her, and I'll be satisfied. If you don't go weth me, I know more ways 'an one of gittin' square weth you, dog on you ! The ole man says I kin make you pony han'some, anyhow ; and then he says you wont be elected ; an' then he says as he'll have you took up and sent to penitentiary; and, besides all that, I've on'y got to give the nod to Jim McGowan. Jim's a dead shot, an' he'll foller you all over creation weth that rifle o' his'n. But I haint got no gredge ag'in you, ef you do the fa'r thing. But I'm even weth her, any ways you kin fix it."

She shook her fist a moment in gesticulation, as she turned away and started toward the village. Mark heard her low whinny of exultation as he lost sight of hor form in the darkness. He thought of the old tales of men who had bargained with the devil. Satan had come now to foreclose the bond, and it was too late to rue his engagement.

There is a magnanimity in conscience ; it is prone to take us at disadvantage. It always wields its whip of scorpions when the soul is scourged by outward circumstance. Mark found no cushion of self-pity, no couch of self-conceit, on which to rest that night. Half a dozen times he thought of confessing to Roxy. Her severity was terrible to him ; he shrunk from putting his crime in the light of her conscience ; but there were moments when it would have been a relief to hear her sharpest condemnation. Any outward chastisement would have numbed a little the inward remorse. On the other hand, he did not know what Roxy would do in case he told her. Would she die of shame and grief? Would she leave hira ? Would he ever be able to look her in the face again ? There were but two roads open, to throw himself on the pity of Roxy and take her counsel, or to seek advice of Lathers. The alternative was like one between God and devil.

But Roxy's very nobleness held him back. He knew that in her there was no weakness that could make her look with allowance on his sin. He could not lay it bare to her.

There is always a question when a man has fallen low whether or not he will rise again. It is a question of moral reaction. There is all the difference in the world between Herod, whose terror-stricken conscience plunges him ever deeper into crime, and David, who, out of the mire, climbs up the ladder of bitter contrition, and heartbreak, and shame, into the clean daylight once more. Mark's conscience smote him sore, but there was no fifty-first psalm in him. His vanity made him a coward. His habit of avoiding trouble made him evade the penance of a confession. After a sleepless night and a moody morning, which threw Roxy into the utmost consternation, he went to conmll Lathers.