35. CHAPTER XXXV.
GETTING READY FOR THE END.
HOW Julia spent two hours of blessed sadness
at the castle; how August slept peacefully for
five minutes at a time with his hand in hers, and
then awoke and looked at her, and then slumbered
again; how she moistened his parched lips
for him, and gave him wine; how at last she had to bid him
a painful farewell; how the mother gave her a benediction
in German and a kiss; how Wilhelmina clung to her with
tears; how Jonas called her a turtle-dove angel; how Brother
Hall, the preacher who had been sent for at the mother's request,
to converse with the dying man, spoke a few consoling words to
her; how Gottlieb confided to Jonas his intention never to
“sprach nodin 'pout Yangee kirls no more;” and how at last
Uncle Andrew walked home with her, I have not time to tell.
When the Philosopher bade her adieu, he called her names
which she did not understand. But she turned back to him,
and after a minute's hesitation, spoke huskily. “Uncle Andrew
if he—if he should get worse—I want—”
“I know, my daughter; you want him to die your husband?”
“Yes, if he wishes it. Send for me day or night, and I'll
come in spite of everybody.”
“God bless you, my daughter!” said Andrew. And he
watched until she got safely into the house without discovery, and
then he went back satisfied and proud.
Of course August died, and Julia devoted herself to philanthropic
labors. It is the fashion now for novels to end thus
sadly, and you would not have me be out of the fashion.
But August did not die. Joy is a better stimulant than wine.
Love is the best tonic in the pharmacopeia. And from the hour
in which August Wehle looked into the eyes of Julia, the tide of
life set back again. Not perceptibly at first. For two days he
was neither better nor worse. But this was a gain. Then slowly
he came back to life. But at Andrew's instance he kept indoors
while Humphreys staid.
Humphreys, on his part, like Ananias, pretended to have
disposed of all his property, paid his debts, reserved enough to
live on until the approaching day of doom, and given the
rest to the poor of the household of faith, and there were several
others who were sincere enough to do what he only pretended.
Among the leading Adventists was “Dr.” Ketchup, who still
dealt out corn-sweats and ginseng-tea, but who refused to sell
his property. He excused himself by quoting the injunction,
“Occupy till I come.” But others sold their estates for trifles,
and gave themselves up to proclaiming the millennium.
Mrs. Abigail Anderson was a woman who did nothing by
halves. She was vixenish, she was selfish, she was dishonest and
grasping; but she was religious. If any man think this paradox
impossible, he has observed character superficially. There are
criminals in State's-prison who have been very devout all their
lives. Religious questions took hold of Mrs. Anderson's whole
nature. She was superstitious, narrow, and intense. She was
as sure that the day of judgment would be proclaimed on the
eleventh of August, 1843, as she was of her life. No consideration
in opposition to any belief of hers weighed a feather with
her. Her will mastered her judgment and conscience.
And so she determined that Samuel must sell his property
for a trifle. How far she was influenced in this by a sincere
desire to square all outstanding debts before the final settlement,
how far by a longing to be considered the foremost and most
pious of all, and how far by business shrewdness based on that
feeling which still lurks in the most protestant people, that such
sacrifices do improve their state in a future world, I can not
tell. Doubtless fanaticism, hypocrisy, and a self-interest that
looked sordidly even at heaven, mingled in bringing about the
decision. At any rate, the property was to be sold for a few
hundred dollars.
Getting wind of this decision, Andrew promptly appeared
at his brother's house and offered to buy it. But Mrs. Abigail
couldn't think of it. Andrew had always been her enemy, and
though she forgave him, she would not on any account sell
him an inch of the land. It would not be right He had claimed
that part of it belonged to him, and to let him have it would be
to admit his claim.
“Andrew,” she said, “you do not believe in the millennium,
and people say that you are a skeptic. You want to cheat us out
of what you think a valuable piece of property. And you'll find
yourself at the last judgment with the weight of this sin on
your heart. You will, indeed!”
“How clearly you reason about other people's duty!” said
the Philosopher. “If you had seen your own duty half so
clearly, some of us would have been better off, and your account
would have been straighter.”
Here Mrs. Anderson grew very angry, and vented her spleen
in a solemn exhortation to Andrew to get ready for the coming
of the Master, not three weeks off at the farthest, and she warned
him that the archangel might blow his trumpet at any moment.
Then where would he be? she asked in exultation. Human
meanness is never so pitiful as when it tries to seize on God's
judgments as weapons with which to gratify its own spites. I
trust this remark will not be considered as applying only to Mrs.
Anderson.
But Mrs. Anderson fired off all the heavenly small-shot she
could find in the teeth and eyes of Andrew, and then, to prevent
a rejoinder, she told him it was time for her to go to secret
prayer, and she only stopped upon the threshold to send back
one Parthian arrow in the shape of a warning to “watch and
be ready.”
I wonder if a certain class of religious people have ever
thought how much their exclusiveness and Pharisaism have to do
with the unhappy fruitlessness of all their appeals! Had Mrs.
Anderson been as blameless as an angel, such exhortations would
have driven a weaker than Andrew to hate the name of religion.
But I must not moralize, for Mr. Humphreys has already
divulged his plan of disposing of the property. He has a
friend, one Thomas A. Parkins, who has money, and who will
buy the farm at two hundred dollars. He could procure the
money in advance any day by going to the village of Bethany,
the county-seat, and drawing on Mr. Parkins, and cashing the
draft. It was a matter of indifference to him, he said, only
that he would like to oblige so good a friend.
This arrangement, by which the Anderson farm was to be sold
for a song to some distant stranger, pleased Mrs. Abigail. She
could not bear that one of her unbelieving neighbors should even
for a fortnight rejoice in a supposed good bargain at her expense.
To sell to Mr. Humphreys's friend in Louisville was just the
thing. When pressed by some of her neighbors who had not received
the Adventist gospel, to tell on what principle she could
justify her sale of the farm at all, she answered that if the farm
would not be of any account after the end of the world, neither
would the money.
Mr. Humphreys went down to the town of Bethany and came
back, affecting to have cashed a draft on his friend for two hundred
dollars. The deeds were drawn, and a justice of the peace
was to come the next morning and take the acknowledgment of
Mr. and Mrs. Anderson.
This was what Jonas learned as he sat in the kitchen talking
to Cynthy Ann. He had come to bring some message from the
convalescent August, and had been detained by the attraction
of adhesion.
“I told you it was fox-and-geese. Didn't I? And so Thomas
A. Parkins is his name. Gus Wehle said he'd bet the two was
one. Well, I must drive this varmint off afore he gits his
chickens.”
