 | CHAPTER XVIII.
POOR MAX. West Lawn and The rector of St. Mark's |  |
18. CHAPTER XVIII.
POOR MAX.
THAT was what they called him at the hotel,
which had been to him a home for years, and
you would know by the intonation of their
voices that he was a favorite with all. He was very sick,
burning with fever, and talking at intervals of his
mother, of Dick, and of another whose name the attendants
could not well make out. It was of his sweetheart,
the chamber-maid surmised, for in the pocket of his vest,
which she hung away, she had found a daguerrotype of a
young girl, whose marvellous beauty she had never seen
excelled.
“Poor Mr. Max! he must have loved her so much!
I wonder where she is to-day?” she said, softly, as she
continued to scan the lovely face smiling upon her from
the worn, old-fashioned case.
Alas! the original of that picture had for many a
year been mouldering back to dust, and poor Max, who
had loved and wronged her so much, was whispering her
name in vain. He was growing worse, his nurse feared,
and so at last she sent for Dr. West, of whose skill she
into the closely darkened room.
“It seemed as if the light worried him,” the nurse
said, in a whisper, as she saw the doctor glance towards
the curtained windows.
“Very likely; but I should like to see him for
once,” was the doctor's reply, as he took the hot hand in
his.
Max's face, which, within a day or two, had grown
very thin and was now purple with fever, was turned
away from the doctor, who counted the rapid pulse, while
the nurse admitted a ray of light, which shone full upon
the sick man's pillow, and made Dr. West start suddenly,
and turn whiter even than the broad forehead round
which the damp brown hair was curling. Then he bent
anxiously over his patient, turning him more to the light,
where he could see him distinctly. Did he recognize
anything familiar in that sunken face, where the beard
was growing so heavily,—anything which carried him
back to his Northern home, where in his childhood every
pastime had been shared by another, and that other his
twin brother? Did he see anything which brought to
him thoughts of Anna, dead so long ago, or of Robin,
who died when the last summer flowers were blooming?
Yes; and kneeling by the bedside he whispered, “Robert,
Robert, is it you?”
The bright eyes were open and fixed upon him, but
face brought a doubt into the doctor's mind.
“He is like my brother Robert, and yet he is not like
him,” he thought, as he continued to scrutinize the features
which puzzled him so much.
“Mother will know,” he said at last; and going to his
mother, he said to her hurriedly, “Come with me, and
tell if you ever saw this Max before.”
He was greatly excited, but not more so than his
mother, who felt intuitively the shock awaiting her.
“Open that blind wide, and put back that heavy curtain,”
the doctor said to the frightened nurse, who quickly
obeyed his orders, and then waited to see what would
happen next.
Max was talking and counting on his fingers till he
came to twenty.
“Yes, twenty, that's it,” he said; “that's the way the
paper read; just twenty years of age, and Dick and I are
six years older. Dick loved her, too; he ought to have
married her. Dick was a trump.”
“What does he say? What does he say? O Richard,
what does he say?” Mrs. West almost screamed, as
she bent down so low that the hot fever breath lifted her
silver hair.
Richard made no answer, nor was there need, for
the mother instinct recognized the boy, the wayward,
wandering Robert, mourned for as dead during so many
past, cried out, “My boy, my boy, my Robert, my child!
God has given you back to me at last! Praised be His
name!”
For an instant something like reason flashed over the
wasted face, but it passed away, and to the mother's continued
murmurings of love there came only incoherent
mutterings of the mountains, the mines, and stocks which
seemed to have been substituted for the thoughts of
the twenty years and the trump of a Dick, now ministering
to the mother, who had fainted and was carried from
the room. But she did not stay away long. Her place
was by Robert, she said, and she went back to his side,
saying to those around her, “He is my boy: he left me
years ago, but I have found him at last.”
People gossip in California as well as elsewhere, and
the hotel was soon full of surmises and wonder, as people
repeated to each other that the man known as Max
was Robert West, who had taken another name and come
among them, for what reason none could guess. The
doctor and his mother knew the people would talk, but
they did not heed it during the days when with agonizing
suspense they hung over the bed of the prodigal, watching
for some token of amendment, and praying that the
erring one might not be taken from them now and leave
the past a darker mystery than ever. He did not talk a
in which Anna and Dick were always associated.
Once when they sat alone and Mrs. West was resting
in her room, Richard said to Robert, who had spoken of
Anna as of some one there with him, “You mean your
wife, Anna West; you know you married her privately.”
For an instant the wild eyes flashed in Richard's face,
and then the delirious man replied, “Did she tell you
so?”
“Not exactly, but I inferred as much, for when she
lay dying, she said, `Call my baby for his father,' and
when I whispered `Robert,' she nodded assent. They
are both dead now, Anna and little Robin. Your wife,
your baby, which never saw its father,” Richard continued,
wishing to impress some idea upon his brother's
mind.
But in vain, for Robert did not take the sense of what
he heard, except indeed the word baby, which he kept repeating
to himself, laughing insanely as he did so,
“Anna's baby; very funny,—very queer, when she was
only a child herself,” he would whisper, and that was all
which Richard achieved by speaking of the dead.
But there came a day when the stupor passed from
brain and head, leaving the latter free from pain and the
former clear and bright. He had been sleeping, and
when he woke only Richard was with him, and he was
sitting where he did not at first observe the eyes fastened
beat with hope and fear. He could not be mistaken, he
said to himself. It was no dream that his brother had
been there with him,—aye, was there still, looking older,
sadder, but his brother all the same. Dick, the kindest,
best brother in the world.
“Richard,” he said at last very softly, and Richard
started, and bent over the sick man, whose eyes read his
face for an instant, and then filled with great hot tears,
as, winding his arms around the doctor's neck, he sobbed,
“It is my brother, 'tis Dick; and you will forgive me.
I've got the money safe, honestly earned, too, every cent;
more than enough to pay the debt, which I heard you
were paying for me. Dear old Dick, we will be happy
yet, but tell me first that you forgive me, tell me second
how you found me, and tell me third of mother, and
all—”
He did not mention Anna, and Richard, in his reply,
only answered the questions directly put.
“Call mother,” Robert said, when told that she was
there, and in a moment she was weeping on the pillow of
her erring, but, as it would seem, deeply repentant child,
for he repeated to her what he had said to Richard about
the money, adding, “And this fall I was coming home to
buy back the dear old place, if possible; I was, mother,
I was; I've been so bad and wicked, but you will forgive
me now, for since I left New York I have not been guilty
know. They will tell you that among them all there is
no one more popular than Max; I go by that name,”
and Robert's face crimsoned as he said this last.
In his anxiety that his mother should forgive and think
well of him, he grew so much excited that all she and
Richard could do was to soothe him into quiet by assurances
of forgiveness and love. He was too weak to talk
longer, and he lay perfectly still, holding his mother's
hand and gazing into the dear face which bent so fondly
over him. Once his lips quivered with some deep emotion,
and when Richard asked what he would say, he answered:
“Mother has changed so much,—her hair has all
turned white. Was it for me, mother?”
“Not wholly, Robert; it turned about the time when
we lost Anna,” was Mrs. West answer.
Instantly the sick man's eyelids closed, and one after
another the big tears rolled down his sunken cheeks, leaving
a red, shining track, such as bitter, scalding tears always
leave, but he made no comment, and Anna was not
mentioned again until two days had passed, and he was
so much better that he sat up in bed, propped on pillows,
with his mother at his side, half supporting him. Then
suddenly breaking a silence which had fallen upon them,
he exclaimed:
“It was an unfortunate hour that saw me installed as
clerk. He trusted me so entirely, and there were such
large sums of money daily passing through my hands,
that the temptation was a great one to a person of my
expensive tastes and habits. I cannot tell just when I
took the first five dollars, replacing it as soon as possible,
and then finding the second sin so much easier than the
first. It was not a sin, I said then, as did others of my
companions who were in the habit of doing the same
thing, and who led me on from bad to worse, while all
the time my uncle believed me a pattern of honesty. If
I had not heard that a part of Uncle Jason's fortune rightfully
belonged to us, I do not believe I should have fallen
so low. As it was, I made myself think that what I took
was mine, and after I learned to gamble it was ten times
worse. There is a fascination about those dens of
iniquity which you cannot understand, and it proved my
ruin. I played every night, sometimes losing, sometimes
winning, and gradually staking more and more,
until at last I bet so heavily that forgery was the consequence.
I don't know what made me do it, for I knew
I could not replace that 20,000 dollars, and when the
deed was done there was no alternative but to run
away. Assuming the name of John Maxwell, I went to
England first, and then to California. Uncle Jason had
so much faith in me that you know he believed me murdered,
behaved most generously, suppressing the facts, and
after an interview with you, my brother, consented to
keep the whole thing still, provided the money was in
time refunded.”
“Who told you this?” both Richard and his mother
exclaimed, but Robert only replied:
“I heard it, and resolved, if possible, to earn that
money and pay it back myself. The voyage out sobered
me into a better man, for, mother, your prayers, said
over me when I was a child, rang continually in my
ears, until I, too, ventured to whisper each day the
words, `Lead us not into temptation,' saying them at
first more from habit than anything else, and afterwards
because I learned to have faith in them, learned to believe
there was something in that petition which did
keep me from falling lower. I was not good as you
term goodness, and had I died I should assuredly have
been lost; but within a few short months there has been
a change, so that what I once was doing for your sakes I
now do, I trust, from higher, holier motives; and oh! I
had so much need of forgiveness, for had I not wronged
everybody, and you, my brother, most of all?”
There was a mutual pressure of hands between the
brothers, and then they who listened hoped to hear of
Anna next, but of her Robert was still silent, and they
breathless interest as he told of his life in the mines, and
how he had been successful beyond his most sanguine
hopes,—how friends had sprung up around him, and all
things had conspired to make him happy, were it not for
the dreadful memories of the past which haunted him
continually.
“I should have written when I learned that I was
safe from a felon's doom,” he said, “but with this information
came news of so terrible a nature that I was
stunned for many months, so that I cared little what
became of me, and when feeling came back again, I said
I'll wait until I have the money as a sure peace offering.
I had it almost earned once, two years ago, but by a
great reverse I lost so much that I was compelled to
wait yet longer,—wait, as it seems, till you came here to
find me. It is all a dream to me yet that you are here,
and that I, perhaps, shall breathe again my native air,
and visit the old home. Is it greatly changed?”
“Many would think West Lawn improved,” Richard
replied, “but to us who loved Anna it can never be the
same.”
There was another silence, and then Richard, who
could no longer restrain himself, exclaimed:
“Robert, if you know aught which can throw a ray of
light on Anna's dark face, in pity tell us what it is!
wife?”
Richard could hear the beatings of his own and his
brother's heart as he waited for the answer, which, when
it came, was a decided “Yes, Anna was my wife!”
| CHAPTER XVIII.
POOR MAX. West Lawn and The rector of St. Mark's | |