|
CHAPTER II The Gift DiffusedPart III
"F or Heaven`s sake," entreated the shrinking student, "do not let the mere interchange of a few words with me change you like this, sir! Let me pass again from your knowledge and notice. Let me occupy my old reserved and distant place among those whom you instruct. Know me only by the name I have assumed, and not by that of Longford " "Longford!" exclaimed the other. He clasped his head with both his hands, and for a moment turned upon the young man his own intelligent and thoughtful face. But the light passed from it, like the sun-beam of an instant, and it clouded as before. "The name my mother bears, sir," faltered the young man, "the name she took, when she might, perhaps, have taken one more honoured. Mr. Redlaw," hesitating, "I believe I know that history. Where my information halts, my guesses at what is wanting may supply something not remote from the truth. I am the child of a marriage that has not proved itself a well-assorted or a happy one. From infancy, I have heard you spoken of with honour and respect with something that was almost reverence. I have heard of such devotion, of such fortitude and tenderness, of such rising up against the obstacles which press men down, that my fancy, since I learnt my little lesson from my mother, has shed a lustre on your name. At last, a poor student myself, from whom could I learn but you?" Redlaw, unmoved, unchanged, and looking at him with a staring frown, answered by no word or sign. "I cannot say," pursued the other, "I should try in vain to say, how much it has impressed me, and affected me, to find the gracious traces of the past, in that certain power of winning gratitude and confidence which is associated among us students (among the humblest of us, most) with Mr. Redlaw`s generous name. Our ages and positions are so different, sir, and I am so accustomed to regard you from a distance, that I wonder at my own presumption when I touch, however lightly, on that theme. But to one who I may say, who felt no common interest in my mother once it may be something to hear, now that all is past, with what indescribable feelings of affection I have, in my obscurity, regarded him; with what pain and reluctance I have kept aloof from his encouragement, when a word of it would have made me rich; yet how I have felt it fit that I should hold my course, content to know him, and to be unknown. Mr. Redlaw," said the student, faintly, "what I would have said, I have said ill, for my strength is strange to me as yet; but for anything unworthy in this fraud of mine, forgive me, and for all the rest forget me!" The staring frown remained on Redlaw`s face, and yielded to no other expression until the student, with these words, advanced towards him, as if to touch his hand, when he drew back and cried to him: "Don`t come nearer to me!" The young man stopped, shocked by the eagerness of his recoil, and by the sternness of his repulsion; and he passed his hand, thoughtfully, across his forehead. "The past is past," said the Chemist. "It dies like the brutes. Who talks to me of its traces in my life? He raves or lies! What have I to do with your distempered dreams? If you want money, here it is. I came to offer it; and that is all I came for. There can be nothing else that brings me here," he muttered, holding his head again, with both his hands. "There CAN be nothing else, and yet " He had tossed his purse upon the table. As he fell into this dim cogitation with himself, the student took it up, and held it out to him. "Take it back, sir," he said proudly, though not angrily. "I wish you could take from me, with it, the remembrance of your words and offer." "You do?" he retorted, with a wild light in his eyes. "You do?" "I do!" The Chemist went close to him, for the first time, and took the purse, and turned him by the arm, and looked him in the face. "There is sorrow and trouble in sickness, is there not?" he demanded, with a laugh. The wondering student answered, "Yes." "In its unrest, in its anxiety, in its suspense, in all its train of physical and mental miseries?" said the Chemist, with a wild unearthly exultation. "All best forgotten, are they not?" The student did not answer, but again passed his hand, confusedly, across his forehead. Redlaw still held him by the sleeve, when Milly`s voice was heard outside. "I can see very well now," she said, "thank you, Dolf. Don`t cry, dear. Father and mother will be comfortable again, to-morrow, and home will be comfortable too. A gentleman with him, is there!" Redlaw released his hold, as he listened. "I have feared, from the first moment," he murmured to himself, "to meet her. There is a steady quality of goodness in her, that I dread to influence. I may be the murderer of what is tenderest and best within her bosom." She was knocking at the door. "Shall I dismiss it as an idle foreboding, or still avoid her?" he muttered, looking uneasily around. She was knocking at the door again. "Of all the visitors who could come here," he said, in a hoarse alarmed voice, turning to his companion, "this is the one I should desire most to avoid. Hide me!" The student opened a frail door in the wall, communicating where the garret-roof began to slope towards the floor, with a small inner room. Redlaw passed in hastily, and shut it after him. The student then resumed his place upon the couch, and called to her to enter. "Dear Mr. Edmund," said Milly, looking round, "they told me there was a gentleman here." "There is no one here but I." "There has been some one?" "Yes, yes, there has been some one." She put her little basket on the table, and went up to the back of the couch, as if to take the extended hand but it was not there. A little surprised, in her quiet way, she leaned over to look at his face, and gently touched him on the brow. "Are you quite as well to-night? Your head is not so cool as in the afternoon." "Tut!" said the student, petulantly, "very little ails me." A little more surprise, but no reproach, was expressed in her face, as she withdrew to the other side of the table, and took a small packet of needlework from her basket. But she laid it down again, on second thoughts, and going noiselessly about the room, set everything exactly in its place, and in the neatest order; even to the cushions on the couch, which she touched with so light a hand, that he hardly seemed to know it, as he lay looking at the fire. When all this was done, and she had swept the hearth, she sat down, in her modest little bonnet, to her work, and was quietly busy on it directly. "It`s the new muslin curtain for the window, Mr. Edmund," said Milly, stitching away as she talked. "It will look very clean and nice, though it costs very little, and will save your eyes, too, from the light. My William says the room should not be too light just now, when you are recovering so well, or the glare might make you giddy." He said nothing; but there was something so fretful and impatient in his change of position, that her quick fingers stopped, and she looked at him anxiously. "The pillows are not comfortable," she said, laying down her work and rising. "I will soon put them right." "They are very well," he answered. "Leave them alone, pray. You make so much of everything." He raised his head to say this, and looked at her so thanklessly, that, after he had thrown himself down again, she stood timidly pausing. However, she resumed her seat, and her needle, without having directed even a murmuring look towards him, and was soon as busy as before. "I have been thinking, Mr. Edmund, that YOU have been often thinking of late, when I have been sitting by, how true the saying is, that adversity is a good teacher. Health will be more precious to you, after this illness, than it has ever been. And years hence, when this time of year comes round, and you remember the days when you lay here sick, alone, that the knowledge of your illness might not afflict those who are dearest to you, your home will be doubly dear and doubly blest. Now, isn`t that a good, true thing?" She was too intent upon her work, and too earnest in what she said, and too composed and quiet altogether, to be on the watch for any look he might direct towards her in reply; so the shaft of his ungrateful glance fell harmless, and did not wound her. "Ah!" said Milly, with her pretty head inclining thoughtfully on one side, as she looked down, following her busy fingers with her eyes. "Even on me and I am very different from you, Mr. Edmund, for I have no learning, and don`t know how to think properly this view of such things has made a great impression, since you have been lying ill. When I have seen you so touched by the kindness and attention of the poor people down stairs, I have felt that you thought even that experience some repayment for the loss of health, and I have read in your face, as plain as if it was a book, that but for some trouble and sorrow we should never know half the good there is about us." His getting up from the couch, interrupted her, or she was going on to say more. "We needn`t magnify the merit, Mrs. William," he rejoined slightingly. "The people down stairs will be paid in good time I dare say, for any little extra service they may have rendered me; and perhaps they anticipate no less. I am much obliged to you, too." Her fingers stopped, and she looked at him. "I can`t be made to feel the more obliged by your exaggerating the case," he said. "I am sensible that you have been interested in me, and I say I am much obliged to you. What more would you have?" Her work fell on her lap, as she still looked at him walking to and fro with an intolerant air, and stopping now and then. "I say again, I am much obliged to you. Why weaken my sense of what is your due in obligation, by preferring enormous claims upon me? Trouble, sorrow, affliction, adversity! One might suppose I had been dying a score of deaths here!" "Do you believe, Mr. Edmund," she asked, rising and going nearer to him, "that I spoke of the poor people of the house, with any reference to myself? To me?" laying her hand upon her bosom with a simple and innocent smile of astonishment. "Oh! I think nothing about it, my good creature," he returned. "I have had an indisposition, which your solicitude observe! I say solicitude makes a great deal more of, than it merits; and it`s over, and we can`t perpetuate it." He coldly took a book, and sat down at the table. She watched him for a little while, until her smile was quite gone, and then, returning to where her basket was, said gently: "Mr. Edmund, would you rather be alone?" "There is no reason why I should detain you here," he replied. "Except " said Milly, hesitating, and showing her work. "Oh! the curtain," he answered, with a supercilious laugh. "That`s not worth staying for." She made up the little packet again, and put it in her basket. Then, standing before him with such an air of patient entreaty that he could not choose but look at her, she said: "If you should want me, I will come back willingly. When you did want me, I was quite happy to come; there was no merit in it. I think you must be afraid, that, now you are getting well, I may be troublesome to you; but I should not have been, indeed. I should have come no longer than your weakness and confinement lasted. You owe me nothing; but it is right that you should deal as justly by me as if I was a lady even the very lady that you love; and if you suspect me of meanly making much of the little I have tried to do to comfort your sick room, you do yourself more wrong than ever you can do me. That is why I am sorry. That is why I am very sorry." If she had been as passionate as she was quiet, as indignant as she was calm, as angry in her look as she was gentle, as loud of tone as she was low and clear, she might have left no sense of her departure in the room, compared with that which fell upon the lonely student when she went away. He was gazing drearily upon the place where she had been, when Redlaw came out of his concealment, and came to the door. "When sickness lays its hand on you again," he said, looking fiercely back at him, " may it be soon! Die here! Rot here!" "What have you done?" returned the other, catching at his cloak. "What change have you wrought in me? What curse have you brought upon me? Give me back MYself!" "Give me back myself!" exclaimed Redlaw like a madman. "I am infected! I am infectious! I am charged with poison for my own mind, and the minds of all mankind. Where I felt interest, compassion, sympathy, I am turning into stone. Selfishness and ingratitude spring up in my blighting footsteps. I am only so much less base than the wretches whom I make so, that in the moment of their transformation I can hate them." As he spoke the young man still holding to his cloak he cast him off, and struck him: then, wildly hurried out into the night air where the wind was blowing, the snow falling, the cloud-drift sweeping on, the moon dimly shining; and where, blowing in the wind, falling with the snow, drifting with the clouds, shining in the moonlight, and heavily looming in the darkness, were the Phantom`s words, "The gift that I have given, you shall give again, go where you will!" Whither he went, he neither knew nor cared, so that he avoided company. The change he felt within him made the busy streets a desert, and himself a desert, and the multitude around him, in their manifold endurances and ways of life, a mighty waste of sand, which the winds tossed into unintelligible heaps and made a ruinous confusion of. Those traces in his breast which the Phantom had told him would "die out soon," were not, as yet, so far upon their way to death, but that he understood enough of what he was, and what he made of others, to desire to be alone. This put it in his mind he suddenly bethought himself, as he was going along, of the boy who had rushed into his room. And then he recollected, that of those with whom he had communicated since the Phantom`s disappearance, that boy alone had shown no sign of being changed. Monstrous and odious as the wild thing was to him, he determined to seek it out, and prove if this were really so; and also to seek it with another intention, which came into his thoughts at the same time. So, resolving with some difficulty where he was, he directed his steps back to the old college, and to that part of it where the general porch was, and where, alone, the pavement was worn by the tread of the students` feet. The keeper`s house stood just within the iron gates, forming a part of the chief quadrangle. There was a little cloister outside, and from that sheltered place he knew he could look in at the window of their ordinary room, and see who was within. The iron gates were shut, but his hand was familiar with the fastening, and drawing it back by thrusting in his wrist between the bars, he passed through softly, shut it again, and crept up to the window, crumbling the thin crust of snow with his feet. The fire, to which he had directed the boy last night, shining brightly through the glass, made an illuminated place upon the ground. Instinctively avoiding this, and going round it, he looked in at the window. At first, he thought that there was no one there, and that the blaze was reddening only the old beams in the ceiling and the dark walls; but peering in more narrowly, he saw the object of his search coiled asleep before it on the floor. He passed quickly to the door, opened it, and went in. The creature lay in such a fiery heat, that, as the Chemist stooped to rouse him, it scorched his head. So soon as he was touched, the boy, not half awake, clutching his rags together with the instinct of flight upon him, half rolled and half ran into a distant corner of the room, where, heaped upon the ground, he struck his foot out to defend himself. "Get up!" said the Chemist. "You have not forgotten me?" "You let me alone!" returned the boy. "This is the woman`s house not yours." The Chemist`s steady eye controlled him somewhat, or inspired him with enough submission to be raised upon his feet, and looked at. "Who washed them, and put those bandages where they were bruised and cracked?" asked the Chemist, pointing to their altered state. "The woman did." "And is it she who has made you cleaner in the face, too?" "Yes, the woman." Redlaw asked these questions to attract his eyes towards himself, and with the same intent now held him by the chin, and threw his wild hair back, though he loathed to touch him. The boy watched his eyes keenly, as if he thought it needful to his own defence, not knowing what he might do next; and Redlaw could see well that no change came over him. "Where are they?" he inquired. "The woman`s out." "I know she is. Where is the old man with the white hair, and his son?" "The woman`s husband, d`ye mean?" inquired the boy. "Ay. Where are those two?" "Out. Something`s the matter, somewhere. They were fetched out in a hurry, and told me to stop here." "Come with me," said the Chemist, "and I`ll give you money." "Come where? and how much will you give?" "I`ll give you more shillings than you ever saw, and bring you back soon. Do you know your way to where you came from?" "You let me go," returned the boy, suddenly twisting out of his grasp. "I`m not a going to take you there. Let me be, or I`ll heave some fire at you!" He was down before it, and ready, with his savage little hand, to pluck the burning coals out. What the Chemist had felt, in observing the effect of his charmed influence stealing over those with whom he came in contact, was not nearly equal to the cold vague terror with which he saw this babymonster put it at defiance. It chilled his blood to look on the immovable impenetrable thing, in the likeness of a child, with its sharp malignant face turned up to his, and its almost infant hand, ready at the bars. "Listen, boy!" he said. "You shall take me where you please, so that you take me where the people are very miserable or very wicked. I want to do them good, and not to harm them. You shall have money, as I have told you, and I will bring you back. Get up! Come quickly!" He made a hasty step towards the door, afraid of her returning. "Will you let me walk by myself, and never hold me, nor yet touch me?" said the boy, slowly withdrawing the hand with which he threatened, and beginning to get up. "I will!" "And let me go, before, behind, or anyways I like?" "I will!" "Give me some money first, then, and go." The Chemist laid a few shillings, one by one, in his extended hand. To count them was beyond the boy`s knowledge, but he said "one," every time, and avariciously looked at each as it was given, and at the donor. He had nowhere to put them, out of his hand, but in his mouth; and he put them there. Redlaw then wrote with his pencil on a leaf of his pocket-book, that the boy was with him; and laying it on the table, signed to him to follow. Keeping his rags together, as usual, the boy complied, and went out with his bare head and naked feet into the winter night. Preferring not to depart by the iron gate by which he had entered, where they were in danger of meeting her whom he so anxiously avoided, the Chemist led the way, through some of those passages among which the boy had lost himself, and by that portion of the building where he lived, to a small door of which he had the key. When they got into the street, he stopped to ask his guide who instantly retreated from him if he knew where they were. The savage thing looked here and there, and at length, nodding his head, pointed in the direction he designed to take. Redlaw going on at once, he followed, something less suspiciously; shifting his money from his mouth into his hand, and back again into his mouth, and stealthily rubbing it bright upon his shreds of dress, as he went along. Three times, in their progress, they were side by side. Three times they stopped, being side by side. Three times the Chemist glanced down at his face, and shuddered as it forced upon him one reflection. The first occasion was when they were crossing an old churchyard, and Redlaw stopped among the graves, utterly at a loss how to connect them with any tender, softening, or consolatory thought. The second was, when the breaking forth of the moon induced him to look up at the Heavens, where he saw her in her glory, surrounded by a host of stars he still knew by the names and histories which human science has appended to them; but where he saw nothing else he had been wont to see, felt nothing he had been wont to feel, in looking up there, on a bright night. The third was when he stopped to listen to a plaintive strain of music, but could only hear a tune, made manifest to him by the dry mechanism of the instruments and his own ears, with no address to any mystery within him, without a whisper in it of the past, or of the future, powerless upon him as the sound of last year`s running water, or the rushing of last year`s wind. At each of these three times, he saw with horror that, in spite of the vast intellectual distance between them, and their being unlike each other in all physical respects, the expression on the boy`s face was the expression on his own. They journeyed on for some time now through such crowded places, that he often looked over his shoulder thinking he had lost his guide, but generally finding him within his shadow on his other side; now by ways so quiet, that he could have counted his short, quick, naked footsteps coming on behind until they arrived at a ruinous collection of houses, and the boy touched him and stopped. "In there!" he said, pointing out one house where there were shattered lights in the windows, and a dim lantern in the doorway, with "Lodgings for Travellers" painted on it. Redlaw looked about him; from the houses to the waste piece of ground on which the houses stood, or rather did not altogether tumble down, unfenced, undrained, unlighted, and bordered by a sluggish ditch; from that, to the sloping line of arches, part of some neighbouring viaduct or bridge with which it was surrounded, and which lessened gradually towards them, until the last but one was a mere kennel for a dog, the last a plundered little heap of bricks; from that, to the child, close to him, cowering and trembling with the cold, and limping on one little foot, while he coiled the other round his leg to warm it, yet staring at all these things with that frightful likeness of expression so apparent in his face, that Redlaw started from him. "In there!" said the boy, pointing out the house again. "I`ll wait." "Will they let me in?" asked Redlaw. "Say you`re a doctor," he answered with a nod. "There`s plenty ill here." Looking back on his way to the house-door, Redlaw saw him trail himself upon the dust and crawl within the shelter of the smallest arch, as if he were a rat. He had no pity for the thing, but he was afraid of it; and when it looked out of its den at him, he hurried to the house as a retreat. "Sorrow, wrong, and trouble," said the Chemist, with a painful effort at some more distinct remembrance, "at least haunt this place darkly. He can do no harm, who brings forgetfulness of such things here!" With these words, he pushed the yielding door, and went in. There was a woman sitting on the stairs, either asleep or forlorn, whose head was bent down on her hands and knees. As it was not easy to pass without treading on her, and as she was perfectly regardless of his near approach, he stopped, and touched her on the shoulder. Looking up, she showed him quite a young face, but one whose bloom and promise were all swept away, as if the haggard winter should unnaturally kill the spring. With little or no show of concern on his account, she moved nearer to the wall to leave him a wider passage. "What are you?" said Redlaw, pausing, with his hand upon the broken stair-rail. "What do you think I am?" she answered, showing him her face again. He looked upon the ruined Temple of God, so lately made, so soon disfigured; and something, which was not compassion for the springs in which a true compassion for such miseries has its rise, were dried up in his breast but which was nearer to it, for the moment, than any feeling that had lately struggled into the darkening, but not yet wholly darkened, night of his mind mingled a touch of softness with his next words. "I am come here to give relief, if I can," he said. "Are you thinking of any wrong?" She frowned at him, and then laughed; and then her laugh prolonged itself into a shivering sigh, as she dropped her head again, and hid her fingers in her hair. "Are you thinking of a wrong?" he asked once more. "I am thinking of my life," she said, with a monetary look at him. He had a perception that she was one of many, and that he saw the type of thousands, when he saw her, drooping at his feet. "What are your parents?" he demanded. "I had a good home once. My father was a gardener, far away, in the country." "Is he dead?" "He`s dead to me. All such things are dead to me. You a gentleman, and not know that!" She raised her eyes again, and laughed at him. "Girl!" said Redlaw, sternly, "before this death, of all such things, was brought about, was there no wrong done to you? In spite of all that you can do, does no remembrance of wrong cleave to you? Are there not times upon times when it is misery to you?" So little of what was womanly was left in her appearance, that now, when she burst into tears, he stood amazed. But he was more amazed, and much disquieted, to note that in her awakened recollection of this wrong, the first trace of her old humanity and frozen tenderness appeared to show itself. He drew a little off, and in doing so, observed that her arms were black, her face cut, and her bosom bruised. "What brutal hand has hurt you so?" he asked. "My own. I did it myself!" she answered quickly. "It is impossible." "I`ll swear I did! He didn`t touch me. I did it to myself in a passion, and threw myself down here. He wasn`t near me. He never laid a hand upon me!" In the white determination of her face, confronting him with this untruth, he saw enough of the last perversion and distortion of good surviving in that miserable breast, to be stricken with remorse that he had ever come near her. "Sorrow, wrong, and trouble!" he muttered, turning his fearful gaze away. "All that connects her with the state from which she has fallen, has those roots! In the name of God, let me go by!" Afraid to look at her again, afraid to touch her, afraid to think of having sundered the last thread by which she held upon the mercy of Heaven, he gathered his cloak about him, and glided swiftly up the stairs. Opposite to him, on the landing, was a door, which stood partly open, and which, as he ascended, a man with a candle in his hand, came forward from within to shut. But this man, on seeing him, drew back, with much emotion in his manner, and, as if by a sudden impulse, mentioned his name aloud. In the surprise of such a recognition there, he stopped, endeavouring to recollect the wan and startled face. He had no time to consider it, for, to his yet greater amazement, old Philip came out of the room, and took him by the hand. "Mr. Redlaw," said the old man, "this is like you, this is like you, sir! you have heard of it, and have come after us to render any help you can. Ah, too late, too late!" Redlaw, with a bewildered look, submitted to be led into the room. A man lay there, on a truckle-bed, and William Swidger stood at the bedside. "Too late!" murmured the old man, looking wistfully into the Chemist`s face; and the tears stole down his cheeks. "That`s what I say, father," interposed his son in a low voice. "That`s where it is, exactly. To keep as quiet as ever we can while he`s a dozing, is the only thing to do. You`re right, father!" Redlaw paused at the bedside, and looked down on the figure that was stretched upon the mattress. It was that of a man, who should have been in the vigour of his life, but on whom it was not likely the sun would ever shine again. The vices of his forty or fifty years` career had so branded him, that, in comparison with their effects upon his face, the heavy hand of Time upon the old man`s face who watched him had been merciful and beautifying. "Who is this?" asked the Chemist, looking round. "My son George, Mr. Redlaw," said the old man, wringing his hands. "My eldest son, George, who was more his mother`s pride than all the rest!" Redlaw`s eyes wandered from the old man`s grey head, as he laid it down upon the bed, to the person who had recognised him, and who had kept aloof, in the remotest corner of the room. He seemed to be about his own age; and although he knew no such hopeless decay and broken man as he appeared to be, there was something in the turn of his figure, as he stood with his back towards him, and now went out at the door, that made him pass his hand uneasily across his brow. "William," he said in a gloomy whisper, "who is that man?" "Why you see, sir," returned Mr. William, "that`s what I say, myself. Why should a man ever go and gamble, and the like of that, and let himself down inch by inch till he can`t let himself down any lower!" "Has HE done so?" asked Redlaw, glancing after him with the same uneasy action as before. "Just exactly that, sir," returned William Swidger, "as I`m told. He knows a little about medicine, sir, it seems; and having been wayfaring towards London with my unhappy brother that you see here," Mr. William passed his coat-sleeve across his eyes, "and being lodging up stairs for the night what I say, you see, is that strange companions come together here sometimes he looked in to attend upon him, and came for us at his request. What a mournful spectacle, sir! But that`s where it is. It`s enough to kill my father!" Redlaw looked up, at these words, and, recalling where he was and with whom, and the spell he carried with him which his surprise had obscured retired a little, hurriedly, debating with himself whether to shun the house that moment, or remain. Yielding to a certain sullen doggedness, which it seemed to be a part of his condition to struggle with, he argued for remaining. "Was it only yesterday," he said, "when I observed the memory of this old man to be a tissue of sorrow and trouble, and shall I be afraid, to-night, to shake it? Are such remembrances as I can drive away, so precious to this dying man that I need fear for HIM? No! I`ll stay here." But he stayed in fear and trembling none the less for these words; and, shrouded in his black cloak with his face turned from them, stood away from the bedside, listening to what they said, as if he felt himself a demon in the place. "Father!" murmured the sick man, rallying a little from stupor. "My boy! My son George!" said old Philip. "You spoke, just now, of my being mother`s favourite, long ago. It`s a dreadful thing to think now, of long ago!" "No, no, no;" returned the old man. "Think of it. Don`t say it`s dreadful. It`s not dreadful to me, my son." "It cuts you to the heart, father." For the old man`s tears were falling on him. "Yes, yes," said Philip, "so it does; but it does me good. It`s a heavy sorrow to think of that time, but it does me good, George. Oh, think of it too, think of it too, and your heart will be softened more and more! Where`s my son William? William, my boy, your mother loved him dearly to the last, and with her latest breath said, `Tell him I forgave him, blessed him, and prayed for him.` Those were her words to me. I have never forgotten them, and I`m eighty-seven!" "Father!" said the man upon the bed, "I am dying, I know. I am so far gone, that I can hardly speak, even of what my mind most runs on. Is there any hope for me beyond this bed?" "There is hope," returned the old man, "for all who are softened and penitent. There is hope for all such. Oh!" he exclaimed, clasping his hands and looking up, "I was thankful, only yesterday, that I could remember this unhappy son when he was an innocent child. But what a comfort it is, now, to think that even God himself has that remembrance of him!" Redlaw spread his hands upon his face, and shrank, like a murderer. "Ah!" feebly moaned the man upon the bed. "The waste since then, the waste of life since then!" "But he was a child once," said the old man. "He played with children. Before he lay down on his bed at night, and fell into his guiltless rest, he said his prayers at his poor mother`s knee. I have seen him do it, many a time; and seen her lay his head upon her breast, and kiss him. Sorrowful as it was to her and me, to think of this, when he went so wrong, and when our hopes and plans for him were all broken, this gave him still a hold upon us, that nothing else could have given. Oh, Father, so much better than the fathers upon earth! Oh, Father, so much more afflicted by the errors of Thy children! take this wanderer back! Not as he is, but as he was then, let him cry to Thee, as he has so often seemed to cry to us!" As the old man lifted up his trembling hands, the son, for whom he made the supplication, laid his sinking head against him for support and comfort, as if he were indeed the child of whom he spoke. When did man ever tremble, as Redlaw trembled, in the silence that ensued! He knew it must come upon them, knew that it was coming fast. "My time is very short, my breath is shorter," said the sick man, supporting himself on one arm, and with the other groping in the air, "and I remember there is something on my mind concerning the man who was here just now, Father and William wait! is there really anything in black, out there?" "Yes, yes, it is real," said his aged father. "Is it a man?" "What I say myself, George," interposed his brother, bending kindly over him. "It`s Mr. Redlaw." "I thought I had dreamed of him. Ask him to come here." The Chemist, whiter than the dying man, appeared before him. Obedient to the motion of his hand, he sat upon the bed. "It has been so ripped up, to-night, sir," said the sick man, laying his hand upon his heart, with a look in which the mute, imploring agony of his condition was concentrated, "by the sight of my poor old father, and the thought of all the trouble I have been the cause of, and all the wrong and sorrow lying at my door, that " Was it the extremity to which he had come, or was it the dawning of another change, that made him stop? " that what I CAN do right, with my mind running on so much, so fast, I`ll try to do. There was another man here. Did you see him?" Redlaw could not reply by any word; for when he saw that fatal sign he knew so well now, of the wandering hand upon the forehead, his voice died at his lips. But he made some indication of assent. "He is penniless, hungry, and destitute. He is completely beaten down, and has no resource at all. Look after him! Lose no time! I know he has it in his mind to kill himself." It was working. It was on his face. His face was changing, hardening, deepening in all its shades, and losing all its sorrow. "Don`t you remember? Don`t you know him?" he pursued. He shut his face out for a moment, with the hand that again wandered over his forehead, and then it lowered on Redlaw, reckless, ruffianly, and callous. "Why, d-n you!" he said, scowling round, "what have you been doing to me here! I have lived bold, and I mean to die bold. To the Devil with you!" And so lay down upon his bed, and put his arms up, over his head and ears, as resolute from that time to keep out all access, and to die in his indifference. If Redlaw had been struck by lightning, it could not have struck him from the bedside with a more tremendous shock. But the old man, who had left the bed while his son was speaking to him, now returning, avoided it quickly likewise, and with abhorrence. "Where`s my boy William?" said the old man hurriedly. "William, come away from here. We`ll go home." "Home, father!" returned William. "Are you going to leave your own son?" "Where`s my own son?" replied the old man. "Where? why, there!" "That`s no son of mine," said Philip, trembling with resentment. "No such wretch as that, has any claim on me. My children are pleasant to look at, and they wait upon me, and get my meat and drink ready, and are useful to me. I`ve a right to it! I`m eighty-seven!" "You`re old enough to be no older," muttered William, looking at him grudgingly, with his hands in his pockets. "I don`t know what good you are, myself. We could have a deal more pleasure without you." "MY son, Mr. Redlaw!" said the old man. "MY son, too! The boy talking to me of MY son! Why, what has he ever done to give me any pleasure, I should like to know?" "I don`t know what you have ever done to give ME any pleasure," said William, sulkily. "Let me think," said the old man. "For how many Christmas times running, have I sat in my warm place, and never had to come out in the cold night air; and have made good cheer, without being disturbed by any such uncomfortable, wretched sight as him there? Is it twenty, William?" "Nigher forty, it seems," he muttered. "Why, when I look at my father, sir, and come to think of it," addressing Redlaw, with an impatience and irritation that were quite new, "I`m whipped if I can see anything in him but a calendar of ever so many years of eating and drinking, and making himself comfortable, over and over again." "I I`m eighty-seven," said the old man, rambling on, childishly and weakly, "and I don`t know as I ever was much put out by anything. I`m not going to begin now, because of what he calls my son. He`s not my son. I`ve had a power of pleasant times. I recollect once no I don`t no, it`s broken off. It was something about a game of cricket and a friend of mine, but it`s somehow broken off. I wonder who he was I suppose I liked him? And I wonder what became of him I suppose he died? But I don`t know. And I don`t care, neither; I don`t care a bit." In his drowsy chuckling, and the shaking of his head, he put his hands into his waistcoat pockets. In one of them he found a bit of holly (left there, probably last night), which he now took out, and looked at. "Berries, eh?" said the old man. "Ah! It`s a pity they`re not good to eat. I recollect, when I was a little chap about as high as that, and out a walking with let me see who was I out a walking with? no, I don`t remember how that was. I don`t remember as I ever walked with any one particular, or cared for any one, or any one for me. Berries, eh? There`s good cheer when there`s berries. Well; I ought to have my share of it, and to be waited on, and kept warm and comfortable; for I`m eighty-seven, and a poor old man. I`m eigh-ty-seven. Eigh-ty-seven!" The drivelling, pitiable manner in which, as he repeated this, he nibbled at the leaves, and spat the morsels out; the cold, uninterested eye with which his youngest son (so changed) regarded him; the determined apathy with which his eldest son lay hardened in his sin; impressed themselves no more on Redlaw`s observation, for he broke his way from the spot to which his feet seemed to have been fixed, and ran out of the house. His guide came crawling forth from his place of refuge, and was ready for him before he reached the arches. "Back to the woman`s?" he inquired. "Back, quickly!" answered Redlaw. "Stop nowhere on the way!" For a short distance the boy went on before; but their return was more like a flight than a walk, and it was as much as his bare feet could do, to keep pace with the Chemist`s rapid strides. Shrinking from all who passed, shrouded in his cloak, and keeping it drawn closely about him, as though there were mortal contagion in any fluttering touch of his garments, he made no pause until they reached the door by which they had come out. He unlocked it with his key, went in, accompanied by the boy, and hastened through the dark passages to his own chamber. The boy watched him as he made the door fast, and withdrew behind the table, when he looked round. "Come!" he said. "Don`t you touch me! You`ve not brought me here to take my money away." Redlaw threw some more upon the ground. He flung his body on it immediately, as if to hide it from him, lest the sight of it should tempt him to reclaim it; and not until he saw him seated by his lamp, with his face hidden in his hands, began furtively to pick it up. When he had done so, he crept near the fire, and, sitting down in a great chair before it, took from his breast some broken scraps of food, and fell to munching, and to staring at the blaze, and now and then to glancing at his shillings, which he kept clenched up in a bunch, in one hand. "And this," said Redlaw, gazing on him with increased repugnance and fear, "is the only one companion I have left on earth!" How long it was before he was aroused from his contemplation of this creature, whom he dreaded so whether half-an-hour, or half the night he knew not. But the stillness of the room was broken by the boy (whom he had seen listening) starting up, and running towards the door. "Here`s the woman coming!" he exclaimed. The Chemist stopped him on his way, at the moment when she knocked. "Let me go to her, will you?" said the boy. "Not now," returned the Chemist. "Stay here. Nobody must pass in or out of the room now. Who`s that?" "It`s I, sir," cried Milly. "Pray, sir, let me in!" "No! not for the world!" he said. "Mr. Redlaw, Mr. Redlaw, pray, sir, let me in." "What is the matter?" he said, holding the boy. "The miserable man you saw, is worse, and nothing I can say will wake him from his terrible infatuation. William`s father has turned childish in a moment, William himself is changed. The shock has been too sudden for him; I cannot understand him; he is not like himself. Oh, Mr. Redlaw, pray advise me, help me!" "No! No! No!" he answered. "Mr. Redlaw! Dear sir! George has been muttering, in his doze, about the man you saw there, who, he fears, will kill himself." "Better he should do it, than come near me!" "He says, in his wandering, that you know him; that he was your friend once, long ago; that he is the ruined father of a student here my mind misgives me, of the young gentleman who has been ill. What is to be done? How is he to be followed? How is he to be saved? Mr. Redlaw, pray, oh, pray, advise me! Help me!" All this time he held the boy, who was half-mad to pass him, and let her in. "Phantoms! Punishers of impious thoughts!" cried Redlaw, gazing round in anguish, "look upon me! From the darkness of my mind, let the glimmering of contrition that I know is there, shine up and show my misery! In the material world as I have long taught, nothing can be spared; no step or atom in the wondrous structure could be lost, without a blank being made in the great universe. I know, now, that it is the same with good and evil, happiness and sorrow, in the memories of men. Pity me! Relieve me!" There was no response, but her "Help me, help me, let me in!" and the boy`s struggling to get to her. "Shadow of myself! Spirit of my darker hours!" cried Redlaw, in distraction, "come back, and haunt me day and night, but take this gift away! Or, if it must still rest with me, deprive me of the dreadful power of giving it to others. Undo what I have done. Leave me benighted, but restore the day to those whom I have cursed. As I have spared this woman from the first, and as I never will go forth again, but will die here, with no hand to tend me, save this creature`s who is proof against me, hear me!" The only reply still was, the boy struggling to get to her, while he held him back; and the cry, increasing in its energy, "Help! let me in. He was your friend once, how shall he be followed, how shall he be saved? They are all changed, there is no one else to help me, pray, pray, let me in!
|
