The Steadfast Heart

Chapter 1

THE STEADFAST HEART

CHAPTER ONE

The house presented a dazed, half-witted appearance. One could have said that it was lost and bewildered and discouraged, and had settled down where it was through sheer weariness. As a matter of fact, it was not a whole house, but only the wing of a house that seemed to have wandered away from the main structure and then had been unable to find its way back. In reality it represented an unfulfilled ambition. Many years ago a farmer had commenced to build himself a home piecemeal. Inasmuch as a kitchen is a primary requisite in a home, he had built this single room with the intention of adding to it in the spring—but spring never had arrived for him. The northern exposure of the structure remained in what might be termed an anatomical condition—like the pictures of the man in the medicine almanacs who stands gracefully exhibiting his veins and arteries—for on that side the studding, which was to have been covered by the lath and plaster of the dining-room wall, had never been covered by anything at all.

It was a deserted house, unoccupied for years. Its shingles curled their edges upward, so that they had rather the appearance of the dirty feathers of some squatting, slovenly bird; its windows, such of them as were not stuffed with sacking and paper, had not been washed for a decade, and weeds and daisies and a rank tangle of summer growth extended from what had once been a picket fence to the very door…. Smoke was curling up in a negligent, shiftless way from the chimney.

Scarcely had the salt pork commenced to frizzle in the greasy spider when Titus Burke kicked open the rickety door and slouched into the room. He flung his black felt hat in a corner—and a little cloud of dust arose from it, spread and settled again, to add just that much to the accumulated filth of the place. He glanced at the stove, sniffed the odor of frying pork, and scowled.

“Sow-belly! Hain’t had nothin’ fit to put into a man’s stummick for a week.” Then with bleary humor, “Say, what’s matter? Hain’t none of the neighbors got chickens?”

Evidently Titus expected no reply from his son, nor did the boy attempt a reply—but went about his work—house work—with the same queer stolidity he had exhibited before his father entered. The thing was common to him, the whole proceeding, and made no impression upon him. Nothing made much of an impression on Angus Burke.

The woman on the mattress in the corner stirred, moaned, turned so she could see her husband.

“Did you get them for me, Titus?” she whined. “Where’s my black pills? You give them to me, now; don’t go hidin’ them from me…. Hand ’em over. Can’t you see I’m most dyin’ for the want of them?… If I was to die I’d like to know who’d look after you and keep your house and do your cookin’….” She raised herself on her elbow and stretched out a skinny, bloodless, trembling hand.

“Shet up your caterwaulin’,” replied Titus. “I got ’em, and I’ll hand ’em over as soon as I git around to it. Think a man kin do everythin’ all to once?”

This dialogue, too, was in the ordinary way of things for Angus. He knew his father would tantalize his mother by withholding her drug as long as he derived pleasure from it. It was the common ritual of the occasion and he would have wondered dully at its omission. So would the woman…. She fell back sullenly and began to moan loudly and artificially.

Angus poured muddy coffee into a cracked cup, whose thickness was such that one had to open wide the mouth to drink from it. There was neither cream nor milk…. He carried it to his mother, who snatched it without a word of thanks, spilling a portion as her shaking hand carried it to her mouth. She drank until only a tablespoonful remained in the bottom of the cup and then demanded her black pills again.

“’S a bad habit, ol’ woman. Guess I’ll break you of it,” said Titus. “If I wasn’t to give you the stuff, you couldn’t git it, and if you couldn’t git it, you couldn’t take it—and then you wouldn’t go on disgracin’ me like you be.” This was also a part of the ritual, as was Mrs. Burke’s muttered blistering curse.

Titus walked to the stove and lifted a cracked lid. “Don’t you go cussin’ me out, ol’ woman. You gimme the respect proper from a woman to her lawful wedded husband…. And jest fer cuttin’ up sich didoes I’m goin’ to punish you, like it’s my bounden duty to do. Here goes your pills into the stove.”

The woman was inarticulate. From her mouth came sounds which were not human sounds. Perhaps even Titus was able to perceive that he had carried his playfulness too far, for he abandoned his joviality suddenly and threw the little box to his wife.

“There,” he said with a snarl, “it’s the last you git outa me, so make the most of it.”

Mrs. Burke clutched her treasure from the floor and scuttled back to the mattress. Sitting on its edge, she turned her body to conceal her hands from her menfolk, broke off particles of blackish brown and dropped them into her cup, stirring them with her spoon until they partially dissolved…. Open she had been in her demands for the drug, brazen in her pleadings, yet, at the consummation of her desires, she still maintained a fiction that she took the drug surreptitiously. Some faint spark must have remained aglow within her. Still with her back to the room, she swallowed the mass and turned her face to the wall.

Angus Burke and his father ate their meal in silence.

After he had wiped the grease from the spider with a succession of slices of bread, Titus pushed back his chair and tilted it against the wall. His appetite was satisfied, for he was not dainty, and his long walk from Rainbow had dissipated the more disagreeable of the effects of his liquor. He was inclined to be genial after the peculiar fashion of Titus Burke.

He grinned at Angus with a tincture of malice in the contortion, for he did not like Angus. He did not like the boy, because when Titus joked he liked to hear the resultant cry of pain, and Angus would not cry out, could be made to betray no sign of fear or misery. It might have been courage, animal courage; it might have been mental and physical numbness, or, indeed, there might lie dormant and buried within the lad some store of real fortitude. Titus laid it to stubbornness, and regarded it as a species of filial disobedience.

As for Angus, he hated his father with the hatred of a dog which has been often kicked. It was a dull, inactive hatred, of which nothing could come. To run away never occurred to him, for such a solution of his problems required imagination, and Angus’s imagination was to be aroused from its sluggishness only when his mother conjured up terrors…. And where would he run? Was not the life of the Burkes a constant running away anyhow? From place to place they migrated, occupying filthy hovel after filthy hovel—until moved on by irate proprietors of adjacent henyards, or by constables after an epidemic of petty thefts. Such was all the life Angus could remember—if he had sought to remember. It had been, “Push on…. Push on…. You can’t stop here,” since the day when he could scarcely toddle…. In their present abode they had settled a scant two weeks before, drawn to Rainbow by what Angus did not know. All he knew was that in a day, a week, they would move on again—and then again endlessly.

“Angy,” said Titus in his most jovial tone, “how’d you like to be left the sole support of that there mother of your’n?”

Angus went on wiping out the spider with a piece of newspaper and made no reply.

“Nice boy!” exclaimed Titus with specious admiration. “Hain’t he a good, obedient, respectful son? Hain’t he p’lite to his daddy? Every time I speak he answers up pleasant and cheer-full-like…. Angy loves his ol’ daddy.”

The spider was hung on a nail and Angus began washing dishes in the tin hand basin.

“Hear me speakin’ to ye?” Titus roared with sudden menace. “If you didn’t I’ll contrive to fix up your hearin’…. How’d ye like to be left the sole support of this mother of your’n?”

“Now don’t go talkin’ that way, Titus,” said his wife from the mattress. Already her voice was stronger, more lifelike, for the drug was working its miracle.

“Shet up,” said Titus briefly. “Don’t go interferin’ betwixt parent and child. Don’t go settin’ this sweet boy agin his daddy that he thinks so much of.” He turned his attention to Angus again. “Don’t pay no attention to that mother of your’n, which is a trouble and care to both of us and ought to be ashamed of herself. I asked you a question, and, so doin’, be you a-goin’ to answer it? Yes or no?”

Angus turned a dull, phlegmatic, expressionless face to his father. “It don’t make no difference to me,” he said, and went on with his work.

“Kin you look after her fine like I’ve done, keepin’ her dressed like a queen, and allus smilin’ and happy? Kin you be a good son to her like I been a good husband—pervidin’ more grub ’n she could eat and humorin’ her and lettin’ her lay abed all day like a lady with a fortune? Kin you do them things if I go away?”

Mrs. Burke moaned, but refrained from speech. She did not believe her husband would desert her, but whenever, as was frequent, he threatened to do so, terror seized the remnant of her soul and she suffered.

“What you makin’ that squealin’ about?” Titus demanded. “Don’t go interruptin’ a pleasant conversation. Me ’n my son is speculatin’ on the future, if certain happenin’s should come to happen, which they’re likely to do. I got a hankerin’ to see the world, Angy. I’d like to travel off to Californy and Missouri and mebby Europe. Wouldn’t you jest be proud, Angy, if your ol’ daddy was to see a king? Think of standin’ onto your two feet and lookin’ at a king with a crown a-shinin’ onto his head! There’s been Burkes that’s seen royalty, Missis Burke. You married into the Burke fam’ly and you ought to hold your head higher. Seems like you hain’t never appreciated the honor I done you when I married you…. I’ll bet Burkes has called kings by their fust names.” He pointed to himself and shook his head impressively. “This here husband of your’n, which you let on to dispise, Missis Burke, has set onto the same log with a governor—the governor of a whole state—and that there governor, which comes next to bein’ a king, he up and calls me Titus. What d’ye think of that? He calls me Titus ’cause he seen what a ree-markable feller I be…. Now I’m a-goin’ to look up a king and see what he says.”

Suddenly his humor changed, and he banged the forelegs of his chair to the floor as he jumped to his feet and stamped to a far corner of the room. There, in the dim light, he withdrew a stained tobacco pouch from his pocket and took from it a roll of currency. This he thumbed over laboriously, counting with muttering lips. Even the shadows of that far corner did not suffice to hide the bills from his wife’s eyes, and she sat erect.

“Titus Burke,” she screamed, “where ’d you get all that money?”

He turned with bared teeth. “Shet up. ’Tain’t none of your business where I got it. Honest labor, that’s where. Earned it with the sweat of my brow, and that’s all the gratitude I git from a ongrateful wife—accusin’ me of stealin’ it.”

“Oh, Titus, you haven’t been and done somethin’ you can be sent to the penitentiary for?”

“Didn’t I tell you to hush your mouth? Who’s a-goin’ to any penitentiaries? Not a Burke that’s set on a log with a governor and that’s goin’ to see a king. Missis Burke, you pain me deep.”

The woman struggled to her feet, her eyes blazing with unnatural light, her mouth twisted with fear. As she approached the dim light entering the open door, her face became more clearly visible. The skin was tinted with yellow, it sagged, and under her eyes were loose folds of skin. The eyes were black and glittering, not dead and dull as they had been an hour before, and the thought back of them was not now fear or rage, but infinitely more sordid than these, for it was cupidity.

“How much?” she demanded hoarsely. “How much money you got there? I want to see it. I want to hold it in my hand. Titus, you just let me touch it…. Ain’t any of it for me?”

“Git back where you b’long…. This here don’t concern you. I earned it hard and I’m a-goin’ to keep it.” A savage smile distorted his face. “This here’s travelin’ expenses. It’s goin’ to take me to see that king I was alludin’ to.”

“How much?” repeated Mrs. Burke insistently.

“I’ve jest counted up to forty-six dollars, and I hain’t finished yit…. Hain’t seen so much for quite a spell. Don’t you wisht you had it?” He held the money tantalizingly toward his wife, but when she snatched at it, he struck her wrist violently aside. “G’wan back and eat opium,” he growled dangerously.

“You stole it,” she squawked. “You stole it.”

Opium now owned full possession of the woman. A spurious flush made her cheeks more unseemly than before and there was a false sprightliness about her, an ephemeral, unnatural vigor which was somehow horrible to see. Her appearance was impious…. She moved closer to her husband.

Titus was weary of his fun. His lips twisted into lines of cruelty and he struck his wife so that she fell sprawling to the floor, where she lay and screamed, uttering shriek after shriek.

“Be still, you hell-cat,” Titus muttered. For a moment he stood over her menacingly, then he stepped across her body to the door where he paused. “Don't go follerin’ me,” he said to An . “You hain’t wanted where I’m goin’ where I’m goin’—for good. I’m trough bein’ weighted down by you two, weighted down and drug back…. Now ’t I got capital I’m a-goin’ to git a fresh start in the world.” He paused and waited for some expostulation from the boy, but Angus did not so much as glance toward him…. The woman’s screams persisted, as Titus walked out of the door and down the dusty road…. Angus Burke neither realized nor considered that he was being deserted by his father. He moved about stolidly, indifferent to all that had taken place….

Chapter 2

CHAPTER TWO

Half an hour later, drowsing in the twilight with his back against the lofty oak which reared its top above the yard, Angus Burke heard his mother singing. So rapid are the changes from despair to contentment when one is aided by black pills! The song Angus heard was not only his mother’s favorite, it was her sole musical possession, and its subject was characteristic of the woman. It had to do with the exploits and demise of a certain famous outlaw whose crimes have been embellished with legendary glamor, and the song told of them in many verses which limped forward on maimed and mangled feet. When sung at night it filled Angus with vague terror.

“One dark and stormy night When the moon was shining bright The Denver stage was ro-o-obbed2”

the woman sang; then she hummed a few bars gloatingly before she brought her full voice to bear on the overworked refrain:

“And they laid Jesse James in his grave.”

Further along there was a bit of choice phrasing and of poetic sentiment about—

“That dirty little coward Who shot down Major Howard. And they laid Jesse James in his grave.”

Angus arose and went into the house, where the vague light of the dusty lantern seemed to offer greater security from the menace of evening shadows. His eyes were extraordinarily bright and staring, and he shivered with terror at the image of Mr. James and his exploits conjured up. Mr. James was very actual to him, in spite of the death of that gentleman reported in the ballad. Angus looked back over his shoulder at the gathering night fearsomely, and then crept into a corner where he crouched, watching his mother with furtive, hunted eyes…. Mrs. Burke continued to sing.

She, like many another of her class, was obsessed by a morbid passion for criminals and for their professional activities. She rather specialized and was a connoisseur in grotesque crime, and was a sort of encyclopedic authority upon the gruesome details of every outstanding murder of the past decade, its perpetrators, their conversations following apprehension, but more especially their last words upon the scaffold. Last words upon the scaffold, when the noose was fast, held for her an unsightly fascination. They were her specialty…. When her miserable body was given a false life by the black pills, she, delighted to delve into her store and to recount in a tense, strained voice the horrifying particulars of crime after crime, until she worked herself into a state of unreasoning terror which verged upon madness…. Crouching over a smoking lantern, whose flicker caused uncanny shadows to move upon the somber walls, she would recount to Angus dreadful tales which frightened the boy so that he would sit panting and sobbing with fear, yet held him fascinated so that he could not wrench himself away…. She was teaching him the unnatural pleasure of terror….

Ceasing her melody suddenly, Mrs. Burke leaned toward Angus with a jerky, alert, listening movement and asked in the hoarse whisper of caution, “Angy—Angy, have you seen any men lurking about—any strange men?”

Though the boy did not realize it, there were moments in which his mother spoke with another tongue than Angus Burke’s; spoke with precision and correctness, used words in the manner of the cultivated. But Angus did not realize. In the world there existed but two sorts of people, so far as he knew, and they were himself and his family on the one side and a great, ever-shift multitude whose hand was forever raised against them. He was afraid of every living soul except his mother, and what his feelings were toward her it would have been impossible to discover. Perhaps he had no feelings toward her. She existed, he existed—that was all….

Angus knew what was to follow now, recognized the question as a preamble, a part of his mother’s artistry…. He could not speak, but with wide eyes fixed upon her face, he shook his head in the negative.

“This is a lonely spot,” said Mrs. Burke in a whisper, “and your father had money—a great deal of money…. You saw it. He might have shown it to others.” As she fanned her terror to cold flame, it was to be noted that slovenliness of speech was discarded, elisions and colloquialisms were omitted, and she made use of the diction of education. “If robbers knew about that money!…” She sucked in her breath ecstatically, but drew closer to the light of the lantern and her pallid hand fluttered to her throat…. She was acting, yet she was not acting…. Silently she imagined for moments, then, suddenly, she clutched her son’s arm and whispered, “Hush—did you hear something then?”

She listened fearsomely; Angus listened, and his teeth rattled together. He was not imagin , could not, with his dulled, stunted, frozen mind, achieve to the heights of imagination. To him was nothing but stark actuality. She continued.

“There are robbers in Michigan as desperate as any in Missouri,” she confided to him. “They’re cruel…. When they rob they leave nobody alive to tell the tale…. They kill you in awful ways… when you live far from neighbors as we do—and nobody can hear your screams….” She paused again, and then pounced upon the next words with awful enjoyment., “Sometime they’ll come here—to this house…. We’ll hear them prowl about—and then they’ll rap on the door like this!” She shot the last word at Angus fiercely and illustrated with her knuckles on the table top…. Angus uttered a squeal of terror.

“They’ll rap like this with the hilt of a big knife—and then—and then—what will we do?”

With parched tongue Angus tried to moisten his livid lips; he could not have spoken to save his life.

“They may come to-night—with masks over their faces…. Maybe they’re on their way—after your father’s money…. We—we must defend ourselves. We must be ready.” Again a pause before she almost screamed the words, “Bar the door!… Get down your father’s gun.”

Angus crawled to the door and shot the bolt. He moved against it a wooden bench…. Then he took from its pegs his father’s rifle and dragged it along the floor to the table where his mother crouched.

“It’s loaded,” she whispered, and moved Angus’s chair to face the door, placing the table between. “Lay the gun across the table. Aim at the door…. If anybody comes and I say shoot—shoot!”

Mrs. Burke's terror now equaled her son’s. No longer was she gruesomely play-acting. The play had become actual. They were in danger of their lives from lurking robbers, flesh and blood miscreants who besieged them in their shanty, lusting for their blood…. The woman’s mouth sagged, the whites of her eyes showed under distended lids, and her voice rattled in her throat. She retreated to a murky corner jibbering, leaving Angus on guard…. It is to be noted that he remained on guard, finger on trigger, eyes upon the door. Even though he was beside himself with fear, he did not desert his post, did not cower in a corner as his mother cowered…. He could hear her jibbering and mouthing behind him.

“They’re coming. I know they’re coming. Riding down the road…. It’s that money. Robbers always hear of money. When I say shoot you pull the trigger…. Oh, help, help, help!” Then she fell to moaning and to repeating over and over and over endlessly the miserable monosyllable, “Oh, oh, oh, oh….” until the word seemed to bore tiny, icy holes in Angus’s soul.

So passed an hour, the woman crouching, cowering in her corner, a squalid, unhuman sight; the little boy on guard, facing the door, waiting, listening, clutching the heavy stock of his father’s rifle until his fingers ached and cramped. He had not moved…. Of a sudden Mrs. Burke lifted her unkempt head and listened. “They’ve come,” she squalled, “They’ve come!”

To Angus’s ears came the sound of approaching horses, and a spasm of terror wracked him. He wanted to scream, to burrow, to hide his face…. Then came the sound of men’s voices, hushed, muffled, stealthy, menacing—and the noise of men leaping to the ground and moving about cautiously…. There was a pause of subdued conversation; then footsteps moved toward the house.

“Robbers!” Mrs. Burke tried to scream the word, but only a whisper came. “The robbers have come…. The light! The light!” She crawled along the floor to the table and pushed off the lantern, where, chimney broken, it gasped and expired, leaving the room in utter blackness…. Again she slunk to her corner.

Angus was aware that those without had circled the house. There were several of them, all silent now. The boy leaned forward, as though striving to pierce the walls with his eyes, but made no sound…. He was terrified beyond sound.

A heavy foot fell on the one unsteady step before the door and a rude hammering made the door tremble in its untrustworthy hinges…. It was exactly as his mother said it would be. The robbers were demanding admission, rapping with the pommel of a great knife. The rapping was repeated imperatively.

“Open the door,” roared a horrid voice. To Angus it was savage, bloodthirsty. There was a brief pause, then another thunderous knock and a second summons to open. Mrs. Burke screamed once and then became silent.

“I hear you inside there,” shouted the voice. “Open up before I bust in the door….”

Mrs. Burke turned her eyes toward her son in the blackness; her face was distorted, inhuman, her eyes glittered with the light of insanity. “Shoot!” she hissed. “Shoot! Shoot! Shoot!”

Angus pressed the butt of the rifle against his chest; its muzzle covered the door. He tugged at the trigger with fingers scarcely adequate to the task—tugged, so it seemed to him, for hours. Then, suddenly, the trigger gave; there was a horrible, ear-splitting crash and roar that mingled with the piercing shriek of his mother…. Then all was silence, a dazed, stunned silence, while the room filled with the stinging fumes from the exploded cartridge.

Someone seemed to fumble uncertainly at the door; there was a moan; a scraping and scratching, followed by the thud of a falling body…. Angus, immovable, kept his eyes on the door—he could not have withdrawn them.

After the stunned silence came a chorus of shouts and cries and exclamations, then more silence, and a voice said hysterically, “My God, boys, he’s killed the sheriff!”

Chapter 3

CHAPTER THREE

The village of Rainbow was in a valley, as all villages should be, with a clean, rapidly-running river passing through its midst and cutting it into the East Side and the West Side for purposes of local rivalry. You lived on one Hill or the other—if you made any pretense to living in the right place, and had bleeding hearts growing in your flower beds. There is something significant about the bleeding heart, for it seems to flower only in villages like Rainbow, where it can be unhurried and away from smoke, and where it can thrive on odors of actual cooking which waft from actual kitchens. In Rainbow housewives bake batches of bread, batches of cookies—the thick, soft kind with sugar on the top—they concoct fried cakes, which other and uninstructed communities incorrectly term doughnuts. Picket fences persist, and, in spite of the municipal waterworks, the knowing still carry their pails to Jenkins’s well for the coolest, sweetest water which ever passed down a throat.

On the east side are three churches: the white Congregational church, the wealthy brick Baptist, and the yellow Universalist—and all these edifices of worship have spacious basements ordained to the uses of the church sociable and chicken pie supper. On the west side, at the very top of the hill, is the Catholic church, and at the very bottom the rather shabby and unpainted United Brethren. Nobody seems to know just who it is that makes up the membership of the United Brethren, yet it continues in spite of lack of bell and steeple…. Sabbath mornings in Rainbow, especially in late spring or early autumn are lovely, restful hours. Somehow the air seems sweeter for the quiet and one has time to be glad he is alive. Rainbow’s church bells mingle in a gracious sound to call all sects and creeds to old-fashioned worship.

One sees Rainbow emerge at the ringing of the “first bell,” father and mother walking ahead, dressed for the day. Father carries Bible and hymnal tightly under his right arm and walks with a manner which is not his on secular days. Nobody’s manner of a Sunday is his manner of a Tuesday….

There is a square at the eastern end of the Center Line Bridge where there is a town pump surrounded by an iron railing, and where, on a Saturday night, the band gives its weekly concert…. Main Street parallels the river, one row of stores standing with their hind legs in the water, as it were. Across the river is the grist mill, the planing mill, a sort of manufactory of odds and ends of woodenware, and the secondary hotel…. The depot and railroad are half a mile away, to be reached by travelers in Lafe Fitch’s bus, a huge yellow contraption which can be heard rattling half a dozen blocks away. Prospective travelers wait to put on hats and wraps until they hear its clamor. It is a sort of alarm clock.

The population of Rainbow is something like eighteen hundred human beings, who live pleasantly, deal kindly by one another, and are, for the most part, to be envied. They are folks, good folks, generous folks—as you would discover if trouble or illness came to you in their midst—yet they can be hard, narrow, unyielding when circumstances seem to threaten their preconceived ideas of the manner in which the world should be conducted. There is no caste, no social class, yet there are recognized certain children with whom your children must not be allowed to play…. Rainbow is very meticulous in the protection of its young, and that, in a measure, explains and justifies the story of Angus Burke.

Rainbow was upset, shaken to its foundations, yet, in a strange sort of way, it was proud. It was the possessor of a murder for the first time in its history, and that no common murder, but the killing of its duly elected sheriff in the prosecution of his duty. It gave the town a new standing, an eminence among its neighbors…. All day boys and men had been walking out to the scene of the killing, and returning, had passed the jail and stared at its barred windows in the vain hope of seeing the monster who had perpetrated the crime. There was no other topic of conversation; business was at a standstill, and, judging from the groups to be seen upon Main Street, it might have been mistaken for a holiday.