University of Virginia Library

32. CHAPTER XXXII.
THE DEATH OF FOB.

It was all a cheat. The lustre in his eyes was false
and treacherous as the glittering whirlpool; the bloom
upon his cheek was of the hue of the rose with the canker
at its heart. Fob was dying. Martha had procured a
little lodging directly opposite his chamber, and there she
stayed when driven from his bedside by the considerate
poor neighbors, who saw how her strength was wasted in
efforts to preserve his. Even on such nights as she was
not allowed to be a watcher in his chamber, she would
hover about the door and through the hall—a gentle spirit
—eager to catch the slightest cry of pain, and taking
keen note if he but turned in his couch. Spring had gone:
Summer had come, and was ebbing fast, and, as its gentle
breath died murmuring by the window of the little tailor,
his pulses faltered more and more. At first he had been
able to rise at times, and going to his dormer—that precious
window of all the Fork—had cheered himself with

the sight of the sun at its rising—the slow-lapsing motions
of the vessels as they glided down the river. Now that
he was stretched all day long upon his couch, he made
Martha—a service she was skilful to perform—stand at
the window, and report to him, day by day, all that
passed. The little street-sights, the crowds that gathered
about the blind flute-player, the color of the horses and
carriages that went by, the shape of the country wagons
that clattered into town, with guesses whence they
came. But, most of all, he made her dwell upon the
aspect of the country beyond the river: from her look-out
she had followed the farmers through all their harvesting,
from the first glance of the sickle among the grain to the
garnering in the old red-roofed barns. She had told him—
no more faithful chronicler than Martha—the color the
fields had put on in all their changes, from green to brown,
and back again to green; and how the woods grew bright
and ruffled and swelled with their palmy leaves; and then
when the yellow crept among them—but this she did not
dwell on as the other, for Fob's heart fell when he
heard that Summer, the sweet, calm, gentle Summer
was leaving the country. She had watched his fancy, and
served it even in bringing him cider to drink, pressed from
the old orchards in Westchester, where his youth, and hers
too for that, had climbed and frolicked. One day, he called
to her to bring all his country treasures, his plants, his
bird's egg chain, his asparagus, and the fair addition she
had made herself, and lay them on his bed. Martha came
and sate down at its head. As his look passed from one
to the other, tears gathered in his eyes and fell, like the
summer-rain, upon the pillow. His heart was full, and he
began to babble of old times. He spoke of his youth, and
asked Martha if she remembered how he used to come
riding into the country, seated gravely on the coach-seat,
high in the air, making a show of helping the driver with
his horses. She did, of course she did; and how she, with
her mother, now dead and gone, used to run and help him
down. Then, there was the visit to the garden, to see her
robin that she had been feeding sleek and plump all the
latter spring and early summer against his coming. Then
the black-berrying, and the grape-hunting, and the birdnesting.

So summer after summer had passed: his father—the
cousin of Martha's father—had, to the surprise of all the
country round, come by the will of their whimsical grandfather
into ownership of the homestead, which Martha's,
as the expectant and favored heir, had occupied before.
Then, fortune turning once again, (a little law and
a little doubtful practice helping her to turn,) Martha's father
had reinstated himself. Fob—his father had died of
vexation and a broken heart, it was said—young and
pennyless, was pushed forth upon the world, was driven
upon the unpropitious craft he had lately followed. Martha
begged him, when he came to this, to pass it by—though her
father had been her cruel jailer for years—to pass it by as
he loved her. How dark and unnatural the little tailor's
features grew as he came upon these recollections. He
felt that his countenance was changed, and turned to the
wall that Martha might not learn how keen was his sense
of the wrong her father—her unkind, her unpaternal father
—had done him. He had done her too a cruel wrong—but
she showed by no change of look or color any remembrance
of it whatever. When this cloud had passed, and he
could speak again, Fob dwelt upon the old haunts he had
visited while she was in her dark dungeon at home, how
she had been with him in all.

“In the lane, the meadow, the orchard,” said Fob, “I
lingered, striving to tread in the very tracks we had made
together when the world went right with us. But it was
all by stealth—at early morning, or by the dull dusk; and
in the indistinct light, how often, Martha, did you seem to
me to be gliding about, pale and breathless, but still
loving—paler than even now. As it was—cautious and
secret as I could be in my watch, the laborers or boys of
the farm, crossing the paths on their way home at night
or back at morning, sometimes came upon me, and started
aside, as though I had been a spirit of evil.”

“I knew that it must be so,” answered Martha, “For
these were days (it was when report of yourself, the
strange wanderer, had reached my father's ear) when—
they said my illness was deepening upon me—I was
moved to an inner chamber, gloomier than the other, the
curtains drawn close, the shutters sealed, and secretly
nailed, too—for I heard the dull sound of the hammer—

and light was shut from me as if it had been a wicked
thing.”

“Was that the result?” cried Fob, with a piteous look,
“What a fool I was, to bring such hardship upon you.”

“I do not say it was a hardship!” said Martha, “I
loved the darkness they thrust upon me, deep and deadly
as it was; it was full of voices and bright eyes, like your
own, telling me of your love and faithful constancy. They
said the darkness made me more cheerful—and they were
right.”

“And what followed to you,” continued Fob, “when
they seized me as I was stealing along under the garden
wall?”

Fob stopped at once; the countenance of Martha was
whitening with a look of sorrowful entreaty, and her eyes
filling with tears. He understood it at a glance—she
wished to have her father spared, though he had never
thought of sparing her—and Fob turned at once to talk of
other things.

“Do you remember the old orchard burying-ground,”
he asked, “and the uses to which we were wont to put it?”

“To be sure I do,” answered Martha, recovering her
composure. “The old burying-ground, full of fruit-trees,
with the little school-house pushed in at one side, as if it
meant to be a good neighbor. Toddling infants, dear
Fob, we strayed there to gather blossoms and flowers,
brighter than we could find any where else;—as we grew
older and more learned, you know, we loved to read our
letters there upon the tomb-stones; and older still, and
wiser were we not?—we began to pluck the red and
yellow apples—the earliest ripened of the neighborhood.”

“And then,” said Fob, taking up the theme as Martha
paused, “when our hearts ripened, and our cheeks flushed
like the fruit above us, we used to sit in the summer noon
under the broad shade, leaning upon a grave, it might be;
and while the country round, for a wide circuit, was
steeped in a listening stillness, the little burying-ground—
swarming with bees and crickets, and melodious locusts—
was filled with a gentle murmur, which seemed like the
undersong of the spirits that slept beneath its turf.”

Martha bent above Fob, as he spoke, hanging upon his
words. “And when,” said Fob, rising in his couch in

his enthusiasm, “the little brook between the school-house
and the graves, swelled by its tributes from the woods,
babbled above them all—the gentle hum died away towards
night-fall, and the children came tumbling out of school,
you know—they used to cross it, and letting their feet rest
a moment on the graveyard's edge, they escaped into the
road, and scampered to their homes, leaving a sound of
cheerful young voices far behind. There—where little
feet tread every day, so that they may say, `Fob lies
here!'—lay me there!”

He had spoken beyond his strength; and these words
were no sooner uttered than he fell back upon his couch.
Martha seized his pale hand passionately—as though she
could so hold him back from the world to which he was
hastening—and bending above him, begged him to speak
again. Presently his eyes opened, and he dwelt upon her
face with a bewildered gaze. Was he among angles—
this at his bedside the first he was to know? There was
not a word spoken—but their eyes were busy interchanging
their lustrous light—a calm, bright, spell-bound gaze—
was this the talk of the spiritual world?

At this moment the door opened; a young gentleman of
an ashen aspect, sandy hair, and a look of strenuous cunning
about the eye, came in, and behind him, treading
lightly, and with a mournful look, Puffer Hopkins.

The young gentleman bore under his arm a great bundle
of papers, tied in a red string, which he was at the
pains to carry about, to notify the public that he was a
lawyer in practice—a good, brisk, chopping practice, as
they might infer from the size of the bundle. While Puffer
looked sorrowfully upon Martha and Fob, the young
gentleman busied himself in slashing the feathers of a
quill which he had brought with him, and in peering
about the apartment for an inkstand.

“He's going fast,” said the young gentleman, calling in
his glances from their unproductive search, and fixing
them upon the quill, which he was still trimming. “Did'nt
he gasp, then, or was that a cat sneezing on the roof?”

Puffer avoided his question, and asked whether it was
absolutely necessary to disturb him now; he seemed to be
in great pain.

“To be sure it is,” answered the young gentleman,

poising his papers in his two hands to show their weight,
“You could'nt have a better. Testimony in extremis is
the finest in the world. Mr. Mouldy says he must have
it; and what Mouldy says is law!”

“Mr. Mouldy thinks he ought to be identified as the person
that had the deed in possession, and who destroyed
it? I so understood him.”

“You understood him right, then,” said the young gentleman,
turning calmly on his heel as soon as he had made
this answer, and breaking into a subdued whistling.

“You attended to getting the old man here, I believe?”
suggested Puffer.

“I asked Mr. Mouldy about that before I left the office.
One of the boys has gone for him; he will be here in a minute.”
With which answer the young gentleman stepped
across the floor, and unfastening the blackbird from where
it hung upon the beam, took it to the window, and began
to make it hop about in its cage, by pricking it under the
feathers with his quill. Puffer, standing aside, dwelt upon
Fob and his pale companion, holding his breath lest he
should disturb them. Quick feet, clattering up, were
heard upon the stairs, and Hobbleshank came hurrying
in; at first he started in surprise when he saw Martha,
but recovering himself speedily, he stepped about the
chamber, shaking hands with the young gentleman, then
with Puffer, and, last of all, accosting Martha.

“This, then, is your friend,” said he, smiling upon her.
She glanced at Fob, with a look that went to the old man's
heart, and he was answered. Fob lifted his eyes, and
regarded Hobbleshank with curious interest. Was this
another risen from the dead? Changed as he was by
years, the furrows on his countenance ploughed in, his
hair grizzled and grey-sprinkled by time—he could not
mistake him. It was the old wanderer of the Scarsdale
road. The melancholy midnight—the raging sea—the
rent deed—all came up before him. A chair was placed
for Hobbleshank, and he took his station by the bed-side,
where Fob could look upon his countenance with the light
streaming upon it. The young gentleman had drawn up
the curtain; led Martha and Puffer aside, to get rid of
their shadows upon the bed; and himself retreated behind

a little screen at the head of the bed, from which
bower there issued, from time to time, a scratching sound.

“You have had troubles, sir,” said Fob, bearing in
mind what he had seen on the memorable night.

“A few,” answered Hobbleshank, rubbing his hands;
“A few, but they are all clearing away. Have you had
none?”

“Yours are older than mine,” resumed Fob. “They
have followed you to an old age; but they are leaving
me while I am still a young man.” Martha knew what
he meant, and turned and wept. “You have been eighteen
years a sufferer, at least.”

“Let me see,” said Hobbleshank, taking the square
breast-pin from his bosom and referring to its back, which
was graven and lettered. “Quite as long as that; but
I'll soon be young again. Fortune is my friend, and all
is coming right. An old parchment or so—a clue or two
more—and I shall find my child, and have a home to bring
him to. In a day or two all will be right.”

They all smiled, the clerk even laughed aloud in his
bower, at the earnest hopefulness of the old man.

“How a deed, all torn in fragments and parcels, can
come back,” said Fob, smiling with the others, “it would
be hard to guess. Wont you admit that?”

“It seems so at first,” answered Hobbleshank; “But
a good providence, I am sure—I feel it whispering in my
ear this very minute—is putting it together. It will be
ready when I want it.”

“And that is now,” said Fob, reaching backward under
his pillow. “And here it is.”

Hobbleshank held in his hand the parchment he had
scattered on the sea-shore a life-time ago. He would not
believe it, but springing from his chair, ran to the window,
where he would have read it, but his hands trembled and
made it waver, all blurred and confused before him. He
called Puffer to his aid, who going over it slowly line by
line, made known its contents. When Puffer came to the
passage relating to his child, he made him pause and read
it over twice, looking up into the reader's face with a look
of indescribable satisfaction. It was his old deed and no
other.

“Where did this come from—where was it found—by
whom?” asked Hobbleshank, looking toward the little tailor.

“Eighteen years ago,” said Fob, as soon as Hobbleshank
could be brought to take his seat again by the bed-side,
“there was an old, sorrow-stricken man, travelling by the
shore of the Sound. Eighteen years ago this deed was
rent by his hands in a hundred fragments.”

“Where—where is he now?” asked Hobbleshank,
from whose mind all recollection of the occurrence—so
fast had troubled thoughts and times huddled upon him—
had entirely faded. “Where is this man?”

“You are the man; older, but happier it would seem—
and I am the other, your fellow wanderer that night.
Live and grow in happiness, while I pass beyond the
sphere of earthly pain or pleasure. You are the man!”

His strength was utterly gone, and ere Martha could reach
his side, he lay, his arms stretched out, his head fixed and
rigid on the pillow. They all thought he was dead. In
a little while—Martha ministering what she could to bring
him back—a faint color came into his cheek, his eyes
opened again upon the light; but now their expression
was changed. They wandered from face to face with a
hopeless and bewildered glance. His mind was gone
astray. He babbled incoherently of the green fields—
the old coach—the homestead; sometimes he repeated
the name of Martha—then he had another upon his tongue,
but shuddering, it died away before it was uttered.

Whenever his hands, straying about the covering of his
bed, fell upon any one of his country treasures—he came
back and talked of early times. News had spread throughout
the Fork that Fob was dying, and they thronged up,
and holding the little children in their hands—Fob had
always been a friend of theirs—they stood at the door,
looking on with sorrowful respect. At this moment the
young gentleman came from behind the screen, pressed
his quill upon his coat-skirt, and thrust the new paper he
had been framing among the others in the bundle. He then
scrutinized the deed curiously for a minute, and handing it
to Hobbleshank advised him to roll it up and put it in his
pocket; and clapping his bundle of papers under his arm,
he walked off.

As the sun waned away in the sky, the brightness

faded from Fob's look, and he spoke only at long intervals:
murmuring what he would say, so that no one but
Martha, whose face was always close to his, could gather
what he uttered.

A little while after sunset—the room was growing dark
in all its corners—he began to talk aloud again. He called,
over and over again, for an old serving-man of the homestead,
whose name he mentioned, to come to his side;
fixed his look upon the poor blackbird, whose cage had
been restored to its place upon the beam, and clasped
tighter and tighter Martha's hand in his. With the gentle
motion of the wind upon a field of autumn grain, his spirit
stole away; and at an hour past sunset Fob was dead.