11. CHAPTER FORTY-SEVENTH. [sic]
RALPH AT HOME.
“There's a glim o' light inside, but I can't
see no one,” soliloquized Ralph, as he looked
through the window, “Fust of all, I must get
rid of this coat and these 'ere boots.”
Ralph opened the door, and entered the
room of Cattermill on the first floor. All was
still. A candle burning fast toward the socket,
shone over the comfortless place, but it was
utterly deserted.
“Where's John an' his wife an' his baby?”
exclaimed Ralph, gazing around the naked
floor and walls. “Cuss me, I'd forgot! Did'nt
I see John with the gang, when I was in the
dog-house? Stewel got hold o' him too! A
precious Stewel! Nancy's up stairs with
mother, I 'spose. Now for business.”
Ralph took off the great coat. Placing it
upon the fireless hearth, (he had in his walk
from the College emptied its pockets) he threw
off the heavy boots, and arranged them on top
of the coat.
“Here goes for a little 'lection fire,” he
said, as he applied the candle to the coat; “I
did'nt like to throw it away, a-cause I was so
cold. Howsomever it 'ill burn. Look there!
John and Nancy are poor folks,” he continued
with a grimace, “and poor folks can't do
without fire. There's a blaze to bring out the
Fairy!”
A heavy smoke, accompanied by a dingy
flame, began to ascend upon the hearth.
Squatting down like a beast on its haunches,
Ralph placed his face between his hands, and
— listening all the while for the sound of a
footstep — began to reflect calmly upon the
strange incidents of the night.
“Sartainly Stewel took me for somebody
else. Sich lots of fun as Fan and I will have
to-morrow, when we go out to th' College and
count them specie and bank notes! Now if
mother could only live, we'd have a nice time
of it together. Mother! 'Guess she's gone
dead about this time, but” — looking to the
stairway door — “Can't go up stairs until
Stewel's coat and boots is gone into smoke.
A precious smellin' pair o' boots them is to
be sure! B-a-u-g-h!”
At this moment, as Ralph half stifled by the
smoke, was endeavoring to arrange the fire,
the door opened behind him, and a form
entered the lonely room.
“A great deal o' fun can be got with a
thousand dollars,” cried Ralph, when a mild
voice was heard at his shoulder —
“Mister Charles Augustus Milliken, how
are you!”
Ralph looked up and beheld Stewel Pydgeon.
Stewel in all his plenitude of flesh, with his
full moon face glowing over a closely buttoned
overcoat; Stewel with a glazed cap drawn
over his forehead; Stewel with his hands in
capacious pockets, and a cigar in his extensive
mouth.
“Come, my young gentleman! Fork over
that tin box, and then we'll come to some
understandin'!”
At the same moment the stairway door
opened. The mild face of Hannah, the Millerite's
daughter, appeared beside the visage of
the Quaker woman, Martha Lott. Ralph,
however, did not see them.
He only beheld Stewel Pydgeon.
Rising slowly to his feet, his bony from clad
in its rags once more, he folded his arms, and
confronted the Police officer. His matted hair
encircled the upper part of his face, but his teeth
were set, his lower jaw fixed and rigid as iron.
“That tin box,” said Stewel, drawing a
mace from one pocket, and a pistol from the
other.
At this moment, a scene of deep interest is
progressing in the third story.
The Priest with the skull-cap fitting closely
over his brow, and small eyes glimmering from
the depths of their socket — the Priest whom
Ralph called from the Church of Saint John —
is sitting by the bed of the dying woman. Her
hand, stricken by pestilence, clasps his wrist as
it has clasped it for three hours. He turns
his gaze away from that face, made fearful by
fever struggling with the damps of death, and
shuddering in his dark attire, listens to the
words which fall, low, muttered, but distinct,
from her clotted lips.
The candle is burning low, the fire has gone
out in the sheet-iron stove. The place would
be chill and damp, were it not for the fetid
atmosphere of pestilence. The Priest is very
pale; his thick lips have lost their hues of red,
and the hand which the dying woman clutches
by the wrist, quivers incessantly.
For three weary hours, he has been alone,
with the departing soul. Alone, (for Hannah
and the Quaker Woman had retired to the
room on the second floor) alone, and yet he
has not been conscious of the flight of time.
Those three hours in the death-chamber have
passed with lightning wings. Many times has
he endeavored to free his wrist from the death-clutch
of the woman's hand, but never once
has he wished to seal his ears to the accents
of her Last Confession.
Her face, with dark hair streaked with
silver, has appalled him with its unnatural
look, but her words have passed one by one,
into his soul.
For the Confession uttered by the dying
woman was wild, improbable, exceeding in
every detail the most incredible creation of
fiction, and yet it bore truth upon its every
word and tone.
“I cannot believe it,” exclaimed Father
John — at the moment when we take up the
scene, at least three hours since his entrance
into the death-room — “You are not speaking
of human beings, but of fiends.”
The dying woman repeated two names in a
clear voice, while her eyes rested vaguely upon
the pallid face of the Priest.
“Reuben Gatherwood!” she said, “Lemuel
Gardiner!”
By the agitation which pervades the frame
of the Priest, we can discover that these names
have been uttered often, and with fearful power,
in the course of her Confession.
The Confession we will now repeat, in our
way, leaving the Priest and the dying one
alone for a little while. In our own way, for
the exact words of the Confession are too
fearful in their character, to be recorded on our
page.
While Ralph confronts Stewel on the first
floor, while the clutch of that death-stricken
hand holds the Priest by the bed of despair,
let us look at a Leaf from the Past. Let us
look at Tragedy which is enacted every day,
but which has never been described in a work
of fact or fiction, for reasons that will occur to
every reader, after the perusal of the following
Revelation.
It is dangerous ground that we are about to
tread.
