 | XXIV.
THE NIGHT. Neighbor's wives |  |
24. XXIV.
THE NIGHT.
The Apjohns were just going to bed; and Cooper
John came to the door, with a candle, in his shirt and
trousers. He looked aghast at Abel.
“Come in: to be sure, to be sure!” he said. “Prudy!
Prudy!”
Prudy came out of the bedroom, presently, in her
petticoat, with a shawl over her shoulders, nodding sarcastically.
“How do you do, Mr. Dane?” she carelessly inquired,
arranging a corner of the shawl the better to
cover her portliness. “John Apjohn,” — turning to the
shivering cooper, — “go to bed!”
Meekly snuffing, John set the candle on the table, and
withdrew.
“Is it peace?” said Abel, holding out his hand.
“Peace, Abel Dane? I should say peace!” retorted
the grim housewife, scornfully laughing. “I wonder
the word don't blister your mouth! Peace, after sech
treatment as I have had from you and your upstart
wife! I say for't!”
“Prudy,” whispered the cooper, putting his head out
of the bedroom.
“What now?” she demanded, sharply.
“Let it be peace, Prudy; let it be peace,” said John.
“Shet up!” ejaculated Prudence.
And the imploring visage was slowly withdrawn, and
the door softly closed again.
“When you were in my garden a week ago,” said
Abei, “did I look at you with scorn? Did I magnify
your offence? Did I set myself up as your judge, and
make haste to pronounce sentence?”
“No, no; to be sure! Remember that, Prudy!”
answered a ghostly voice in the direction of the bedroom.
“No, to be sure!” repeated Prudence, with a vindictive
toss. “He didn't da's to, to my face. But what
did he do behind my back? — the sarpent! Strung tomatuses
on to my door! And that wasn't enough, but
you must come and rob us of our hard-earned money,
— thinkin' we wouldn't da's to make a fuss about it, I
s'pose. But you'll see, — you'll see, Abel Dane! Talk
of peace! Ha! ha!”
Abel commenced, protesting his innocence of the
string of “tomatuses.”
“Tut, tut,” said Mrs. Apjohn; “I s'pose you'll deny
you stole the money next!”
Once more the meek, bald pate of the cooper was
pushed into the room.
“Hear what the man has got to say, Prudy dear, —
do!”
“John Apjohn!”
“What, Prudy?”
“I said go to bed.”
“Yes, Prudy!” (Exit bald head.)
“My worthy woman,” then said Abel, seating himself,
and speaking candidly and earnestly, “I have come
to talk with you as neighbors should talk, and I beg of
you to hear me with patience and without prejudice.”
“Wal, sir,” — Prudence occupied the wood-box for a
seat, and pulled her shawl together and looked crank, —
“I hear you, sir!”
“I see it is useless for me to deny the charge of insulting
you with tomato-vines, and I have no intention
of setting up a claim to the fifty dollars, which, I presume,
belongs rightfully to you; but I here solemnly
protest that I never meant to rob you, or injure your
reputation, or wound your feelings. I call Heaven to
be my witness!”
Again the bedroom-door opened, and again the cooper's
head appeared, this time with a night-cap on.
“Prudy,” he said, in an awe-struck voice, “he calls
Heaven to witness!”
“He didn't call you!” retorted the Juno of this little
Olympus, and the night-capped Jupiter disappeared
again.
“Furthermore,” said Abel, “I pledge you my honor
that whatever reparation can be made for the injuries
you complain of, shall be made. And I tell you I am
sincerely sorry for all that has happened; and for whatever
I have done amiss I humbly ask your pardon.”
“Wal, sir?”
“Well, Mrs. Apjohn, I believe it depends upon you
whether this charge against me shall be prosecuted. If
we can come to an understanding, and you withdraw
your complaint, there will not be much difficulty in
avoiding an indictment. Question your own conscience
before you answer,” said Abel, foreboding evil from the
grimace and toss with which she prepared to reply;
“and consider whether you can afford to be unmerciful;
remembering that what mercy we show shall be shown
to us.”
Prudence pulled her shawl together nervously and
compressed her lips, and elevated her chin and said, —
“Wal, Abel Dane, you've had your say; now hear me.
Nobody can accuse me of havin' an Injin temper; and
you can't say't ever in all my life I spoke of you one misbeholden
word. You was always as decent a kind of a
man till you got married, as ever I knowed; and you
would be now, if it wa'n't for that pesky proud wife of
your'n, that I'm bound to come up with some way, and
I only wish it was her that took the money, and not you!
She's made a fool of ye, and made a proud, desaitful,
mean, underhanded scamp of you that was a perty honest
and tolerable respectable neighbor afore. I feel bad for
you, Abel Dane; and, as I said, I only wish it was her
that I could prove took the money; then if she wouldn't
smart for't, I miss my guess.”
Abel sighed; for now he saw how vain it would be to
shift the responsibility of the theft from himself to his
to her than to him.
The night-capped head was at the bedroom door again;
but it was only moved with a slow and dismal shake, in
silence.
“You are a hard-hearted woman,” said Abel, sadly
smiling, as he rose to go.
“Mabby I be! I can't help it! Human natur' is human
natur'!” Prudence grinned, put her hand on her
knee for a support, and got up from the wood-box. “I
tell ye, I never laid up anything ag'in you, Abel; and if
it wa'n't for that stuck-up critter, your wife, we never'd
quarrel; though I don't know but you're 'bout as bad as
she is now. There!” — holding her shawl together with
one hand, and taking up the candle with the other, —
“You've had your say, and I've had my say, and now
good-night.”
“One word more. Remember I have a mother and a
child.” The emotion in Abel's voice would have shaken
Prudence, if it had been possible to shake her. But she
only compressed her lips as before and said, —
“I've thought of them; I've thought it all over; and
I've said all I've got to say.”
The cooper, at these words, retreated, and crept in
between the sheets with a groan.
“Very well,” answered Abel, sternly and impressively.
“I have done. I leave you to your conscience
and your Maker.”
“I guess my conscience and my Maker will use me
Apjohn lighted him from the door with the candle.
“Remember me to your wife,” she added; “and tell
her, if you please, what I say.”
Eliza had retired with the old lady to her room,
when Abel returned home. He found the kitchen forsaken,
silent, and lighted only by the pale shimmer of
the moon. He entered the sitting-room; that, too, was
forsaken, silent, and lighted only by the pale shimmer
of the moon. There was something in the aspect of his
house that struck like desolation to his soul.
Half an hour later, he opened gently the door of
Faustina's chamber, and stood at the threshold. There
he stood, dark and stern, for a minute or two, and looked
in. By the bedside sat Melissa, with Ebby crying in
her arms. In the bed, covered completely, even to the
crown of her head, round which the bedclothes were
twisted in a disordered heap, lay the boy's mother.
“O papa!” said Ebby, stretching up his little arms,
in his night-gown.
Melissa started, and gave a frightened look at her
master.
“Put that child to bed!” said Abel.
“Oh, I did, sir!” Melissa hastened to explain. “I
put him to bed all of an hour'n'a'f ago.”
“Then what is he here for?”
“She wanted him; she had me take him up, and
bring him to her, jest so's't she could see him, she said;
her own baby, so!”
Abel was touched; as no doubt Faustina meant he
should be, when he should learn what the yearning, maternal
heart of her had prompted.
“Why don't she look at him, then? What was the
child crying for?” she heard his deep voice demand.
“O sir! mabby you think she don't keer for her
baby; but she dooes!” — This was a part of the lesson
Faustina had taught Melissa, and she repeated it very
pathetically. — “And when she wanted to have him in
bed with her, and he didn't want to go, she was so
worked! her own baby so, you know. And she jest
kivered up her head, and said, no matter, she would die,
and he wouldn't have no mother, not no more; and
that's what made him cry.”
“Me dot new mamma!” Ebby declared, with a sob
of subsiding grief between the words.
“Take him to bed,” said Abel.
“Tiss, papa!” implored the beautiful, aggrieved face,
through its tears.
The father gave the wished-for kiss; and Melissa took
the child away. Then Abel shut the door, and sat down
by the bed.
All this time, Faustina had not stirred. Abel gazed
at the vortex of bedclothes in which she had coiled herself,
and sighed, and clenched his teeth hard, and waited.
O memory! was this his marriage-bed?
“Faustina!” No motion; no response. “Have you
anything to say to me?” he continued.
“I won't stir. I'll make him think I'm dead!”
she almost wished she was dead, and could stand by and
witness his terror and remorse when he should lift the
sheet and discover her lifeless form.
But it was a difficult part to play. Madam was
smothering; and if she kept covered much longer, she
felt that, instead of making believe dead, she would be
dead in earnest. That was not so pleasant to think of,
notwithstanding the fancied satisfaction of breaking his
heart with the sight of her lovely corpse. Vanity and
spite was not quite equal to the occasion; and she waited
accordingly, with increasing ache and anxiety, for him to
make another and more moving appeal, which she resolved
beforehand not to resist. Why didn't he speak, and
afford her the longed-for excuse for uncovering? He was
in no hurry; he took his time; deliberate was Abel, — a
good deal more so, she thought, than he would have
been, had his own head been under the blanket.
But it was serious business with her, poor thing, despite
all her foolish artifice. Dread and despair were
with her there under the bedclothes.
“If you have nothing to say to me,” Abel resumed,
at last, “I have still a few words which I want you to
listen to. Will you hear me?”
At that, the arms were suddenly disengaged, the
clothes thrown back, and staring eyes rolled up wildly at
Abel, from a tragic face still half concealed by rumpled
pillows and tangled hair.
“Is this you, Faustina?” exclaimed Abel, astonished
and heartsick at the sight.
Upon which she glared, and rolled her orbs, and grated
her teeth, with superior artistic effect, for a matter of
twenty seconds, or thereabouts; then dived again, and
twisted herself up in the bed-covering, with writhings
and moanings extraordinary. Abel sighed deeply, and
waited patiently for her to come up to breathe again,
which she was not slow in doing, then said, —
“When you are calm, and in your right mind, I will
speak.”
In her right mind? That gave her a cue to another
fine piece of acting. What if she could convince him
she was insane, — overwhelm him with a spectacle of the
wreck his hard-heartedness had made of her? She
would try it, — the inconsiderate and impulsive creature.
And, indeed, she was not altogether in her right mind,
but just excited enough with fear and suffering to enter
well into the part.
This is what she did:
She sat up in bed, swept her hair from her face with
both hands, in a terrific frizzled mass, stared at Abel
again frightfully, rolled her eyes hideously, grinned
idiotically, chattered her teeth, and burst into a laugh of
frenzy.
She laughed to be heard a mile. She laughed with an
ease and inspiration for the exercise which astonished
herself, and without cessation or interval, except to
catch her breath and recommence. She laughed, in
short, until she laughed away all self-control, and could
not stop, for the life of her; having, as you perceive,
from the counterfeit into the reality, — just as sometimes
the elder Booth, from playing Richard, became
Richard, and would rant and foam at the mouth, and
fight the feigning Richmond in right deadly fashion.
Madam had, in fact, gone off in a genuine fit of hysterics.
She laughed till she sobbed, and sobbed till she
fell into convulsions, in which she was wrenched and
rolled, like a body in the breakers of an Atlantic storm,
and which finally heaved her, breathless and quivering,
upon the strands of unconsciousness.
And Abel thought her dead. He stood like one
stunned, gazing at her with a stony wonder, his lips
parted, and his hair lifting with horror. Deep, solemn
gladness, an awful hope, mingled with his fear.
He looked across the bed at Eliza, for she was there,
— all the women in the house having been summoned by
the hysteric shrieks. Their eyes met over the insensible
form. Something like lightning flashed between them,
— an instant only, — and it passed — forever.
Faustina was not dead, nor would she die yet for a
score of years at least. Things do not happen in life as
they do in romances. 'Tis pity, for now might we bring
our tale joyfully to a close, would she but revive
enough to make a free confession, before witnesses, of
her sins against the Apjohns, murmur her repentance,
ask to see a clergyman, place Eliza's hand in Abel's,
declare they are for each other, smile contentedly, and
die at a most convenient season. Then Eliza's absent
a locomotive, or sent to heaven by an exploding steamboat
boiler; leaving, of course, a will in her favor; when
nothing would remain but for the surviving hero and
heroine to be married, and enter upon the enjoyment of
that limpid existence of lymph and honey miscalled
happiness, which never was on earth, and never will be
anywhere, probably, except in story-books.
But this is no fine fiction; no far away Eden of unimaginable
beauty this, but a plain little garden-plat,
where a few common flowers grow, with many coarse
plants and weeds, rooted in this homely New England
soil, and breathing the actual air of the present. And
we must plod our way patiently to the end of the prosaic
path.
“Rub her hand!” cried Eliza, setting a brisk example,
having first dashed water into Faustina's face.
“Stand her on her head and let the blood run back
into it ag'in!” gasped Melissa, seeing the utter pallor of
her mistress, and having some dim notion that the head
was a vital part, and that when the blood forsook that,
then came death.
“Bathe her nostrils with the land of Canaan!” said
the old lady, meaning the contents of a camphor-bottle
which she brought.
“Brandy!” ejaculated Abel, remembering that a few
drops of his little store of spirits had been saved by his
timely interruption of a certain convivial entertainment,
not many nights ago.
All the proposed remedies were tried, except Melissa's,
who could find no one to favor her novel theory of
the blood. And the result was that Faustina came
duly back to consciousness, without having been stood
upon her head; and Abel had — shall we say the satisfaction?
— of seeing her breathe and live again.
But by this time all his unworthy thoughts and wicked
wishes regarding her had given place to repentance and
pity. And as soon as he could dispense with assistance,
he sent the rest away, and remained alone to watch by
her bedside.
“Don't let me die!” whispered Faustina, in a weak
voice of entreaty.
“No, no,” said Abel, confidently, “you shall not die.”
“I didn't mean to do it,” she added, whimperingly, in
terror of what had happened.
“I know you didn't,” he answered, kindly. “But
you must keep perfectly quiet now. I shall stay with
you. No harm will come whilst I am here.”
She looked up gratefully into his face.
“Oh, you are good, Abel! Kiss me, — won't you?”
And he touched his lips to her cheek.
“Oh, we can be happy yet, — can't we?” she pleaded.
“I hope so,” he replied, to quiet her.
“Oh, and you will not” —
He knew what she would say.
“No, I will not,” he promised.
“Oh, thank you, thank you!” and she covered his
hand with kisses. “But tell me true, — you will save
me?”
“I tell you true, I will. At every risk to myself, I
will shield you. And I forgive you, too. There; now
rest.”
“Oh! oh! oh!” she cried, in an ecstasy of gratitude;
“you are such a good Abel! And we shall be so happy
once more!”
But Abel's brow was dark.
“You must keep quiet, Faustina,” he said. “If you
have another such fit, you may die in it.”
“And you don't want me to die?” she said, with that
childlike simplicity which was one of her girlish arts to
please or touch.
“I want you to live,” replied Abel, in a low voice,
out of a conscience grim as night.
“Come to bed then, — won't you, my Abel?”
“No; I shall sit up and watch.”
“But you won't leave me?” she implored, with selfish
and clinging fear. “And — tell me again you won't
expose me, not even to her, — Eliza.”
“Not even to her. The secret is locked here.” Abel's
hand pressed his bosom. “Now sleep.”
And she slept. And he watched by her side all
night. And the lamp burned out, and the moon set
upon his watching, and the sun rose.
And Abel had not said to her what he entered her
room that night to say; but he kept that also locked in
his breast.
| XXIV.
THE NIGHT. Neighbor's wives | |