align="right" class="c19">XVII

The Howe and Webster farms adjoined, lying on a sun-flooded, gently sloping New Hampshire hillside. Between them loomed The Wall. It was not a high wall. On the contrary, its formidableness was the result of tradition rather than of fact. For more than a century it had been an estranging barrier to neighborliness, to courtesy, to broad-mindedness; a barrier to friendship, to Christian charity, to peace.

The builder of the rambling line of gray stone had long since passed away, and had he not acquired a warped importance with the years, his memory would doubtless have perished with him. All unwittingly, alas, he had become a celebrity. His was the fame of omission, however, rather than of commission. Had he, like artist or sculptor, but affixed his 2 signature to his handiwork, then might he have sunk serenely into oblivion, “unwept, unhonored, and unsung.” But unfortunately he was a modest creature. Instead, he had stepped nameless into the silence of the Hereafter, leaving to those who came after him not only the sinister boundary his hands had reared, but also a feud that had seethed hotly for generations.

If within the narrow confines of his last resting place he had ever been conscious of the dissension for which he was responsible and had been haunted by a desire to utter the magic word he had neglected to speak in life, he at least gave no sign. His lips remained sealed in death, and his spirit was never seen to walk abroad. Possibly he retired into his shroud with this finality because he never found it imperative, as did Hamlet’s ghost, to admonish posterity to remember him.

Only too well was he remembered!

The Howes and Websters who followed him hurled against the sounding board of heaven the repeated questions of who built the wall, and whose duty was it to repair it. Great-grandfather Jabez Howe quibbled with Great-grandfather Abiatha Webster for a lifetime, 3 and both went down into the tomb still quibbling over the enigma. Afterward Grandfather Nathan Howe and Grandfather Ebenezer Webster took up the dispute, and they, too, were gathered into the Beyond without ever reaching a conclusion. Their children then wrangled and argued and slandered one another, and, like their forbears, retired from the field in impotent rage, leaving the combat a draw.

In the meantime the outlines of the ancient landmark became less clear-cut. Rocks toppled from its summit; yawning gaps marred its sharp edges; and at its base vines and growing things began to creep defiantly in and out the widening fissures that rent its foundation. Almost imperceptibly year by year dissolution went on, the crude structure melting into picturesqueness and taking on the gentle charm of a ruin until Martin Howe and Ellen Webster, its present-day guardians, beheld it an ignominious heap of stone that lay crumbling amid woodbine and clematis.

Far more beautiful was it in this half-concealed dilapidation than ever it had been in the pride of its perfection. Then it had stood boldly out against the landscape, naked and 4 aggressive; to-day, clothed in Nature’s soft greenery, it had become so dim a heritage that it might easily have receded into the past and been forgotten had not the discord of which it had become the symbol been wilfully fanned into flame.

As in a bygone age one runner passed a lighted torch on to another, so did one generation of Howes and Websters bequeath to the next the embers of a wrath that never died. Each faction disclaimed all responsibility for the wall, and each refused to lay hand to it.

Adamantine as was the lichen-covered heap of granite, it was of far more mutable a quality than were the dispositions of those who had so stubbornly let it fall into decay. Time’s hand had softened the harsh stone into mellow beauty; but the flintlike characters of the Howes and Websters remained uncompromising as of yore.

And now that Martin Howe and Ellen Webster reigned in their respective homesteads, neither one of them was any more graciously inclined toward raising the fallen boundary to its pristine glory than had been their progenitors. But for their obstinacy 5 they might have agreed to dispense with the wall altogether, since long ago it had become merely an empty emblem of restriction, and without recourse to it each knew beyond question where the dividing line between the estates ran; moreover, as both families shunned the other’s land as if it were plague-ridden territory there was scant temptation for them to invade each other’s domains. But the man and the woman had inherited too much of the blood of the original stock to consider entering into an armistice.

They had, it is true, bettered their predecessors to the extent of exchanging a stilted greeting when they met; but this perfunctory salutation was usually hurtled across the historic borderline and was seldom concluded without some reference to it. For Ellen Webster was an aggravating old woman dowered with just enough of the harpy never to be able to leave her antagonist in peace if she saw him at work in his garden.

“Mornin’, Martin,” she would call.

“Good mornin’, Miss Webster.”

“So you’re plowin’ up a new strip of land.”

“Yes, marm.”

“I s’pose you know it would save you a deal 6 of cartin’ if you was to use the stones you’re gettin’ out to fix up your wall.”

Then the hector would watch the brick-red color steal slowly from the man’s cheek up to his forehead.

To pile the stones on the heap so near at hand would, he recognized, have saved both time and trouble; nevertheless, he would have worked until he dropped in his tracks rather than have yielded to the temptation.

His wall, indeed! The impudence of the vixen!

Angry in every fiber of his body, he would therefore wheel upon his tormentor and flash out:

“When you see me tinkerin’ your tumbledown wall, Miss Ellen Webster, I’ll be some older than I am now. I’ve work enough of my own to do without takin’ in repairs for my neighbors.”

At that he would hear a malicious chuckle.

For some such response Ellen always waited. She liked to see the fire of rage burn itself through Martin’s tan and feel that she had the power to kindle it. He never disappointed her. Sometimes, to be sure, she had to prod him more than once, but eventually his retort, 7 sharp as the sting of an insect, was certain to come. From it she derived a half-humorous, half-vindictive satisfaction, for she was a keen student of human nature, and no one knew better than she that after the cutting words had left his lips proud-spirited young Martin scorned himself for having been goaded into uttering them.

A tantalizing creature, Ellen Webster!

Silent,