 | XXI.
ANOTHER GRAVE IS OPENED. Lucy Arlyn |  |
21. XXI.
ANOTHER GRAVE IS OPENED.
I SHOULD be most happy — the honor — but, I
regret to say, there isn't a room in my house!”
Christina smiled.
“I — I mean a room to offer a lady. Under other circumstances,
I should be delighted. I — I — wouldn't I,
Job?”
“Y-a-a-s!” said Job.
“But you — you couldn't think of sitting up all night,
you know!” — with a livid smile.
“Why not? — for I am sure you will be gallant enough
to sit up with me: won't he, Job?”
“Y-a-a-s!” said Job.
“That settles it, doctor. Now, what have you got for
supper?”
“I — I declare!” stammered the distressed little old
man: “I believe — Eaten up every thing in the house,
haven't you, Job? That boy! — he's a perfect vampire, a
cormorant!”
“Indeed! What a pity he don't fat up a little!”
“Fat? A bullock a day wouldn't fat him. The quantity
of food he consumes is perfectly incredible: isn't it,
Job?”
“Y-a-a-s!” said Job, with an inane stare, as if it was perfectly
incredible.
Christina opened her porte-monnaie. “Here, Job! Go to
the neighbors. Say the doctor has company, and you want
the best that is to be had, — bread, milk, butter, cake, tea.”
At Biddikin's suggestion, she wrote down a list of the articles
she required, and despatched Job with it; while the doctor
began to think her visit might be, after all, rather an occasion
for thanks than a cause for alarm.
“How you need a woman to keep your house for you!”
she said, looking into his closets. “Ah! you have a daughter
in the spirit-world, doctor! She is here now. She glides
about the room: she shows me what to do. She says she is
with you when you never know it,” she continued softly, with
a changed expression, setting the table as quickly and handily
as if she had always been accustomed to the house.
Biddikin gazed as at an apparition. It was many years
since his daughter, or any woman, had lighted that gloomy
abode with her presence. Memories thronged upon him.
“It makes me sad to think of you alone here all winter.
Isn't it dreary?”
“Excuse me — I — you overcome me! I can't speak!”
“Have you no friends?”
“Not one!” faltered the old man. “My brother gives
me the lease of this house; but he never comes to see me.
And now even my son has been taken from me. You see
before you a man with a broken heart!”
“Ah, doctor, the world is full of such hearts! We suffer
that we may have pity for the sufferings of others.”
“Pity? No: none can know; none can sympathize;
nobody ever felt the keen anguish!” And, with his convulsed
left hand, involuntarily the doctor made the movement
of a serpent writhing into his heart.
“Don't be too certain of that,” answered Christina. “I
never yet found a sorrow so deep that I could not go to the
bottom of it, and bring up a pearl of hope, as divers do.”
She kept about her work; while the trembling old man
watched her wistfully, his countenance betraying fear, bewilderment,
and a dawning faith that in this frail woman's form
help from Heaven had come to him, to comfort and to save.
The messenger presently returned with a plentiful supply
of provisions. The table was soon loaded, the tea was made,
and the firelight shone upon a scene of cheerfulness which
had not within the memory of Job been witnessed in that
house.
“Come, doctor! supper is ready,” said Christina.
“Ah, forgive me!” He started as from a dream. “So
many things come up! To see the tea steaming there, and a
woman sitting beside it” — He paused, choking with emotion.
“You must reflect that the woman sitting beside it is hungry,”
said Christina. “Come, Job!”
“Job!” exclaimed the doctor, his voice changing instantly
to the habitually sharp tone in which he addressed the
poorhouse child, “why don't you be getting sticks to keep
up the fire?”
Christina set down the tea-pot, and looked up in sorrowful
astonishment.
“How can you speak so to that poor boy, doctor?”
“I — I were not aware — I'm a good master to you;
ain't I, Job?”
Job assented with his usual sickly grin, and drawling
“Y-a-a-s.”
“Doctor Biddikin, you are a harsh and cruel master!”
and all the disdain of her nature flashed angrily and witheringly
upon him. “You don't know how to be a good master,
you have grown so hardened. I'll show you the difference.”
The old man, who had been gazing at her a minute before
with an expression which betrayed how much he felt drawn to
her for refuge and for solace, writhed and cowered before
her; while, imitating his fierce tone and manner, she said, —
“Job! why don't you start? Get those sticks, or I'll
take a stick to you! — Is that the way he talks to you,
Job?”
“Y-a-a-s!” said Job, getting his basket, thinking it was all
in earnest.
“Ah, no, Job!” Her voice changed to a wonderfully
contrasting softness. “Never mind the sticks, my child.
Come to the table, and be happy once in your life. Poor
little Job! you have a hard time, at the best; and you deserve
all our kindness. — Does he ever speak in that way?”
“N-o-o; not to me. He does to Mad sometimes,” said
Job, with a wishful, wondering look. Christina sighed.
“Well, he will speak to you so after this, I hope,” she
said. “Come!”
“Won't let me come to table when he does.”
“Doctor Biddikin won't!” she exclaimed.
“Ah — yes — come, Job! I haven't been in the habit —
but of course since you desire it. I were bred in a very
aristocratic family, and have had servants.”
“Oh, what a pride it is that can keep alive in all this misery!
I should have thought,” she said with sad and pitying
scorn, “it would have starved out long ago.”
She placed Job at the table, and bade him eat. The doctor
endeavored also to sup like a person with a good appetite
and a clear conscience. But ever-recurring recollections
of a grave in the woods made his soul sicken and his gorge
rise; and the banquet was for the most part left to Job,
who did it ample justice.
“You are ill, doctor,” said Christina.
“I am very well, — very well indeed!” Biddikin assured
her. “I have an excellent appetite, as you see. I have
eaten prodigiously!” And he clasped his hands before his
his guest with sepulchral suavity.
He had neither candles, nor oil for his lamps; and the firelight
was beginning to fail. He was glad of an excuse to
quit the table, and busied himself kindling up the blaze with
fresh sticks, while Christina and Job finished their repast.
She joined him presently on the hearth; and, Job having
gone to bed, the young woman and the old man sat there and
talked till she had thawed his heart-springs and broken his
pride.
“What is there about you that affects me so?” he said.
“How other days come back to me! My wife, my daughter,
all I have loved, all I have lost, — you suffocate me with
the memories of them!” And he clutched his bosom, gasping
for breath.
“I do not talk of these things,” answered Christina.
“It is your spirit: your atmosphere is filled with them.
They press upon me and around me, — a cloud of witnesses!
What is it?” he said.
“It is the day of judgment which has come to your soul,”
she responded solemnly. “Do you not see Martin with the
rest?”
He bent over the hearth, and nervously pushed together
the falling brands.
“I have had a dozen patients in this house at a time,” he
spoke up suddenly. “I were occupied from morning till
night; a proud and happy man. Now not even my son is
hours?”
“I should think you would wish to die!” she exclaimed.
“Die? die?” He shuddered. “But I am not prepared!”
“Few who die are prepared. Was Martin prepared?”
Again he stirred the fire with aguish hands; and again,
after a pause, he attempted to turn the conversation.
“A dozen patients at a time. I were famous for my
treatment of rheumatic complaints. I had this house built
for a hospital. It is very large, you see. But I am all
alone in it now!”
“Not quite. Do not any longer consider Job as no more
than a dumb beast, doctor. If you have no mercy on him,
how can you expect God to have mercy on you? In the
sight of Heaven, he is as good as you or I, and may be a
great deal better. One thing is certain: he has not the blood
of a fellow-creature on his hands.”
He rolled his eyes up at her quickly. “Who has? You
— you cannot say I have.”
“Poor old man!” she said, “it is time for us to understand
each other. I do not accuse you; but I know all.”
He sat crouching over the fire, mute, paralyzed, as if he
had heard the stroke of doom.
“Fear nothing from me,” she continued, with deep pity
in her tones. “I am your sister. I have come, not to harm
you, but to save.”
He fell upon his knees, and lifted up his poor old hands
imploringly.
“Have mercy on me! — have mercy!”
“Oh, I will, as I, too, hope for mercy!” she said with a
tenderness and a radiance, even as an angel might have
looked and spoken. “I will bless you, and not hurt you.
The grave in the woods has been opened; and the grave in
your heart must also be opened, or else you can never know
peace.”
“The grave!” he articulated, with a terrified inquiry in
his face.
“Heaven guided me to it for your good. Shut up in
your heart, the dreadful secret gnaws like the undying worm.
You must give it to me.”
“I did not kill him! — I did not!”
“I know you did not willingly; and yet, in the eyes of
the world, it would be murder. And you feel the stain of
murder on your soul, — as I have felt it on mine!” her voice
suddenly sinking.
“You! — you have felt it?” eagerly uttered the culprit.
“And all the while,” she added, “I would have given my
life for the life I destroyed!”
“Is it true?” he cried, selfishly grasping at a fellowship
in guilt.
“True, or else I should not be here,” she sadly answered;
“else I should still be in the world where I was, shallow-hearted
and frivolous as any. I am an exile, but not from
your tired head on my lap, as if you were a child, and I your
mother, and tell me all.”
“It is that treasure that has been my ruin!”
“I know it well. And it may prove the ruin of more of
us yet: it certainly will, if we seek it selfishly, or for base
ends. You wanted it for your pride.”
“I were very ambitious. Great wealth and a great name,
they were my idols, and they have lost me my soul!” he
said with a wail of anguish.
“Heaven have mercy on you!” prayed Christina.
“There is in heaven no mercy for me!”
“What! have the angels less love than I? Has God less
than the angels? Old man, I bend over you now with a
bosom full of pity; with arms of charity large enough to clasp
all the sins of the world! And is Christ less than I?”
“Save me, — stay with me, — do not leave me again!”
he pleaded wildly, clinging to her, on his knees. “I never
heard such words from human lips: I shall never again.
Help me, or I am lost!”
She laid her hand on his head, soothing him as if he were
indeed an erring, repentant child, and she a forgiving mother.
And so she encouraged him to speak of Martin.
“He were a beautiful boy, and I might have loved him;
but to love a poorhouse-boy went against my pride. I were
very proud,” the old man continued, with something like the
ghost of a smile. “I wanted to keep up the illusion that I
have a slave. I — I confess I made a slave of Martin.”
“Christ,” said Christina with deep, tremulous fervor, “is
on the side of the lowly. Just so sure as we set ourselves
above the least of his little ones, we separate ourselves from
him. He who makes a slave of a fellow-creature severs the
divine bond of brotherhood, the umbilical cord of love which
unites each soul with the great life-giving Source of all souls.
It is not the slave that is cut off, but the tyrant. He gives
himself over to pride and selfishness, the father and mother
of all bad passions. Ah, you knew not what you did, old
man! You have been more unfortunate than you supposed.”
“Fifteen years of hope deferred, — think of that, before you
condemn me!” whined the wretch. “Fifteen years of seeking
for that treasure, — it had almost made me mad! I confess
I vented my disappointments on Martin. I beat him;
yes, I beat him often. I used to shut him up without any
supper, and leave him all night. One morning, I found him
dead.”
“And you the cause!”
“But I did not intend his death, — no, no! And it were
a terrible shock when I found him stiff and cold!”
Christina moaned as if the deed and the remorse were her
own.
“Oh! why did you not then call in your neighbors, and
say, `Behold the child I have punished: he has died'?”
“There were marks where I had beaten him: I could not
starvation: I could not hide them. I feared exposure; I
dreaded investigation; I feared more for my pride than for
my life. People would have pointed at me, and said, `Child-murderer!'
so I buried him in the woods.”
“And your own soul with him!” said Christina; “when
only confession and repentance could have brought you
peace.”
“Peace! — I have never known peace! I have been
haunted by horror and remorse. I thought I would atone
for what I did to Martin by getting another boy, and being
kind to him. I brought Job here. But I had lost possession
of myself: a devil has seemed to have me!”
“Many devils have had you, poor old man! To-night we
begin to cast them out. To-night God lifts the curse.”
“By your hand, — angel!” he broke forth with sobs and
tears. “Be my guide, my guardian. Tell me what to
do!”
“In the first place, be kind to Job; and, when prejudices
against the poorhouse arise, reflect that you may yet be there
yourself!”
“I — with all that treasure!”
“The closer you cling to that, the poorer you will always
be. You must give it up. If there is a treasure, it is not
for men, but for humanity.”
“It is hard, after all these years. I cannot sign away my
claims! I cannot give up my riches!”
Christina rose impatiently.
“Sordid wretch! are you so incorrigible? Have I labored
with you in vain?”
“You have come here, then, to beguile me of my treasure!”
cried the doctor; “to frighten me into compliance! But I
will not be frightened: I will not sign.”
Quietly Christina put on her bonnet and shawl, and was
about to quit the house. He ran after her, and threw himself
at her feet.
“Don't go! Pardon my childishness: I am very childish.
Stay: I will do any thing you wish.”
She looked down at him a moment, half in pity, and half
in disdain of his terrified servility: then with a sigh, as if the
resolution to depart had been a relief to her, she removed
again her bonnet and shawl, and resumed her seat by the
hearth, he cringing at her side.
| XXI.
ANOTHER GRAVE IS OPENED. Lucy Arlyn | |