 | XXX.
THE OLD LADY TAKES FINAL LEAVE. Neighbor's wives |  |
30. XXX.
THE OLD LADY TAKES FINAL LEAVE.
DEAR mother,” said Abel, “it is not so bad as
it might be. Though convincted and sentenced,
still I am innocent; and that ought to comfort
us. Whatever others may believe, we have that
knowledge, and that comfort.”
“Poor comfort!” replied his mother, convulsively.
“The innocent suffer, and the wicked go unpunished.
The wrong is too great to endure. I have no malice,” —
she went on, after a paroxysm of silent anguish, — “I
never cursed anybody in my life; but I do pray that
them that's done this deed, and made you the scapegoat
of their sin and spite, I pray they may feel the
evil they have done recoil upon their own heads. I
may not live to see it; but I humbly pray it may
be so.”
This was uttered with an energy which the mild and
benevolent old lady rarely manifested; then she relapsed
again into unconstrained grief. Faustina still
kept masked; but Mrs. Apjohn winced.
“Wal, Mis' Dane,” she began, “I 'spose you mean
that for a hit at me and my husband here” —
“Not your husband! not John!” — the old lady interrupted
her, — “I believe he's as harmless as this child
here.”
At which allusion to himself, Master Ebby, who had
long been looking on, in wonder and terror and pity, to
see the grief of them all, and especially the grief of his
good old grandmother, in that strange, ugly place, set
up a scream. Eliza came and took him. John Apjohn,
meanwhile, touched by Mrs. Dane's testimony in his
favor, might have been seen strangling harder than ever
behind his hat.
“Come, come, mother,” said Abel, smoothing her thin,
gray hair with his troubled hands, as he strove to pacify
her; “we will blame nobody; we will bear all patiently,
and blame nobody.”
“Yes, I would, now!” said Mrs. Apjohn, flushed, her
lips violently compressing and relaxing, and her entire
frame (which is saying a good deal) trembling with her
emotion. “You may blame me; I'm perfectly willin'.
And I don't mean to say but what I'm desarvin' of
some blame, but not all. I jest as much believed Abel
hung them tomatuses on to my door, and stole my money,
as that my name is Prudence Apjohn; and I hain't seen
no good reason yit for changin' my mind. And I consider
I had a right to feel hurt, and make a complaint
'fore a justice, under the circumstances. But as for
wishin' Abel Dane to go to State's prison for five year',
my husband here he knows I never wished any sech
thing; and I'm as sorry for't as anybody.” So saying
her eyes, — without appearing to know it, however, for,
instead of using her handkerchief, now there was really
need of it, she bore up like a good ship against the storm,
carrying her head high.
“Well, well! the Lord knows! the Lord knows!”
murmured old Mrs. Dane. “He knows many a secret
that's hid from our eyes. And the day of reckoning will
come for us all soon. I bear no malice; I bear no malice,”
she repeated. “You was kind to come over here
with me; though I don't suppose you'd have come, if't
hadn't been for John. I had always generally found
you a kind neighbor enough till this quarrel. You got
a terrible quirk into your head then, which I never could
account for; though it was nat'ral enough, I presume.
But that you may know how you have misjudged my
son, let me tell you this, that he never mentioned, even
to me, about your taking the tomatoes from our garden
till after he was arrested.”
“As for the tomatoes,” spoke up Faustina, seized by
one of her unreasonable impulses, “you have been a
fool, Mrs. Apjohn! It was not my husband who hung
them on to your door. It was” —
She had commenced speaking under the influence of a
wild feeling that the misunderstanding about that unhappy
retaliatory trick of Tasso's was the origin of all
this trouble, which might even now be remedied by
declaring the truth. But having spoken thus far, a
fear that she was saying something indiscreet caused
the suspicion that alarmed him had entered Mrs. Apjohn's
mind also.
“It was you, then! Own up now!” cried Prudence.
“You can't deny it! It's too late! you've half-confessed
it!”
That decided Faustina to avow the truth.
“It wasn't me, nor my husband. But I'll tell you
who it was; it was Tasso Smith.”
Prudence was struck dumb.
“Do you know what you say?” demanded Abel.
“Yes, I do; for he told me.”
“And how did he know tomatoes would insult Mrs.
Apjohn?”
“I — I suppose I — told him!” confessed Faustina,
perceiving now what a rash thing she had done. “But
I — I had forgotten it.”
Abel breathed thick and hard, restraining himself, as
he looked upon her and listened to these words.
“And why on airth,” burst forth Prudence, with all
her power of astonishment and indignation, “didn't you
never tell it was Tasso, and so save all this trouble to all
on us?”
Poor Faustina scarcely remembered why she didn't.
Ah, yes! it was because she feared Tasso would betray
her, if she did! And here she was implicating him, and
laying herself open to his revenge! — ever as foolish as
she was false. But she would see him and excuse herself
to him, she thought. And now a convenient lie
inquiry. “Because,” said she, “I never knew it
myself; Tasso never told me till — long after. I met
him the other day in the street, and he was very
sorry, and begged of me not to tell. Abel was indicted
then, and I knew nothing could prevent his
having a trial.”
Abel groaned. “But you should have told me, Faustina!
Why didn't you?”
“I didn't want you to know I had seen Tasso. I
didn't mean to see him, — it was an accident, — but you
dislike him so, I thought you would be offended.”
Faustina possessed a decided talent for mendacity;
by the exercise of which she was now in a fair way to
repair her recent indiscretion. There was such a varnish
of vraisemblance on these lies, that all were deceived
by them.
“O Tasso Smith! Tasso Smith!” muttered Prudence,
quivering with rage.
Abel groaned again. “You see, my friends, you had
truly no reason to seek revenge against me.”
“And some day, Mrs. Apjohn,” cried old Mrs. Dane,
“some day, you will know that my son was as innocent
of stealing your money as of contriving that trick with
the tomatoes. I shan't envy you your conscience then!
I shan't envy you your conscience then!”
Poor Prudence, confused, convinced, pricked to the
heart, knew not which way to turn or what to say. At
this juncture, however, there occurred a circumstance
himself from observation behind his hat, and at
the same time shutting out from his eyes the spectacle
of the convict's interview with his family; strangling
more and more; and leaning latterly against the wall
for faintness, as he listened to the last stunning revelation;
the sensitive and conscientious little man, over-whelmed
at length by a cumulative sense of error
and fatality, as by a slowly-gathered tremendous wave,
grew dizzy under it, saw all things color of dim purple
a moment, and was carried off his legs. A cry and a
tumbling fall announced his catastrophe.
“Prudy, P-r-u—” he weakly gasped, and measured
his length along the jail floor.
The swoon, which Faustina had kept by her so long,
had deserted, and gone over to Mr. Apjohn. And a
very mortal-seeming swoon it was. Pallid, breathless,
and apparently pulseless and bloodless, lay the limp,
insensible cooper, — his tuftless crown having struck
the pavement with a concussion of itself almost sufficient
to rive the rind of life round that “distracted globe.”
Prudence picked him up, getting down with no little
difficulty to perform that office. But his lifeless hands
fell from him, and his head rolled this way and that, as
she endeavored to set him up and hold him in position
on her knee and arm. Meanwhile, Abel seized his
pitcher (the prisoner's solitary pitcher), and besprinkled
the white face with its contents. All in vain. The last
tick of life's timepiece seemed over in that still breast.
“O John! John! John!” cried Prudence, wildly,
“don't die! — Somebody run for a doctor! — Oh, dear!
to be locked up in jail at sech a time, and my husband
dyin'!” And she screamed for help, not perceiving
that Abel was doing all in his power to summon assistance.
“That's right, 'Lizy, — rub him! Blow in his
face! Does he breathe?”
No; John did not breathe, and there was no lively
prospect that he would ever breathe again. Observing
which, all the latent affection and regret in Mrs.
Apjohn's large, blunt nature was aroused.
“Oh, I've been a wicked woman! and this is to punish
me! I never desarved so good a husband; for he was
the bestest that ever was! Do you hear me, John?
Squeeze my hand, John, if you do!”
But John did not squeeze her hand. However, Eliza
now declared that he exhibited signs of returning consciousness.
“Oh, bless him! bless him! if he will only live!”
cried Prudence, hoping fondly for a reprieve from what
seemed certain widowhood. “I never'll be ha'sh with
him agin! I'll listen to his advice always, — which if
I'd done it in this affair of Abel's, we wouldn't none of
us be here now! Comin' to, ain't you, John? Don't
ye know me, John? Oh, the blessedest man! Give
me some sign, can't ye?”
The “blessedest man” had been laid upon his back,
with Abel's coat for a pillow. And now, anxiously and
for “some sign.”
“If you love me, John, spit in my face!” she entreated
him.
John did not grant this expressive token of endearment.
But he moved his mouth, uttered a faint groan,
and opened his eyes. About this time the jailer appeared;
some spirits were quickly brought and administered;
and the cooper was soon able to rub his contused
scalp, stare about him, and spit in anybody's face that
might request that precious favor.
“I've saved him! I've saved my man!” exclaimed
Prudence. “And O Mis' Dane!” she continued, in the
fulness of her heart, “I'd save your son for you if I
could! I've done wrong, and I regret it, and shall regret
it the longest day I live. Oh, that Tasso Smith! that
Tasso Smith! Whuther you took the money or not,
Abel, I don't know, and I don't keer; for we're all on us
liable to be tempted,” — as that virtuous woman knew
from experience. “Fustiny hain't used me well, and
she knows it; but I'm sorry I've had a spite agin
her. And as for you, Abel Dane, I've always sot
by you from a boy, and my husband here, he knows” —
What the sad, gaping, half-stupefied cooper knew did
not appear, for the good wife's speech was lost in inward
convulsion; the snow-mountains of her breast (to compare
great things with things which can hardly be called
small) had melted, and avalanche and torrent were
plunging.
When she recovered, and her man had altogether come
to, they witnessed an alarming movement. Attention
had too long been directed to them. The excitement
which had so far sustained old Mrs. Dane, and the emotion
which agitated her, had passed away, and taken her
life-force with them. Abel and Eliza had simultaneously
observed her sinking. They caught her, they bore her
to the prisoner's narrow bed. No shriek, no violent outcry
for help; but silent celerity, a murmur of grief,
and all-absorbing sadness and tenderness, gave token of
the entrance within those walls of the unseen messenger,
— the same who enters alike the abode of the fortunate
and the dwelling of the wretched, and waits not for doors
to be opened, and stops not for prison-bolts and bars.
“Abel — children,” — faintly fell the voice of the dying,
— “where am I?” She revived a little, and saw
the beloved faces bending over her surcharged with
love and sorrow. “I remember!” And the smile of
the dying was sweet. “My son! I shall be with you!”
The assistant-jailer entered, and, failing to perceive
the solemn mystery that was enacting, announced that
the visitors' time was up.
“True,” whispered the scarce audible voice, “my time
— is up. I am going. Eliza! do not mourn! Our
heavenly Father, — he is merciful! He has sent for
me!”
Her clear and beautiful countenance became singularly
illumined. Something had been said of calling a physician.
“No — tell them,” she roused herself to remonstrate.
“Let me go — in peace. Only my children around me.
Tell Mr. Apjohn — I thank him. And Mrs. Apjohn —
I forgive her.”
Aghast and pale, like one lately raised from the dead,
the cooper stood behind the bed, and saw and heard.
Mrs. Apjohn wrung her hands with unavailing remorse.
“It's me that's done it! it's me that's done it!” came
bubbling from her lips.
“Where is Ebby?” the dying woman asked. Abel
lifted up the boy. “Here,” she added, with a feeble
motion of her hand upon her breast. Abel placed him
softly there. She kissed him with her pallid lips; she
caressed him with her pallid hands, and murmured a
blessing; and Abel took him gently away. “Faustina,
— where is she?”
The guilty girl was crouching, fear-stricken, over the
foot of the bed; watching, with I know not what frenzied
thoughts, the death of which her own heart told
her she was the cause. Eliza led her forward, strangely
shrinking.
“My daughter!” Weakly the cold, death-stricken
hand took the fevered hand of the living. Starting back
instinctively, Faustina snatched away her hand, and
Eliza's was taken instead. “Abel — my son!” His
hand was taken also; and, now in the blindness of death
not seeing what she did (though I think the spirit saw,
and knew), the parting mother placed Eliza's hand in
Abel's.
“Be a true — loving wife! — My son! love her always!
— God bless” —
She drew the united hands to her lips, which closed
upon them. Astounded, plunged in deepest affliction,
Abel could not withdraw his hand; nor could Eliza
hers. Long and lingering was that prophetic, dying
kiss. Nor did the hold and pressure of the thin aged
fingers relax when all was over.
For all was over in very deed. The fingers that clung
still, and the lips that kissed still, were the lips and fingers
of the dead. And Abel and Eliza lifted up their
eyes, and looked at each other with emotion unutterable;
while Faustina crouched again at the foot of the bed,
white and shivering, like an outcast.
| XXX.
THE OLD LADY TAKES FINAL LEAVE. Neighbor's wives | |