CHAPTER XXVII. A FRUITLESS JOURNEY
It was the afternoon when Sullivan’s letter, on the lower left hand corner of which he had written Har., Sul., arrived. Mr. Colman had gone to a town at some distance, whence he would not return till the last train. Not many letters came to him, and this, with the London postmark, naturally drew the attention of Aunt Ann and Molly. The moment the eyes of the former fell on the contracted name in the corner, they blazed.
“The shameless fellow!” she cried; “writing to beg another ten-pound note from my poor foolish brother!”
“I don’t think that is it, aunt,” returned Molly.
“And why not, pray? How should you know?”
“Mr. Sullivan has had plenty of work, and can not need to borrow money. Why are you so suspicious, auntie?”
“I am not. I never was suspicious. You are a rude girl to say so! If it is not money, you may depend upon it, it is something worse!”
“What worse can you mean?”
“That Walter has got into some scrape.”
“Why should he not write himself if it were so?”
“He is too much ashamed, and gets his friend to do it for him. I know the ways of young men!”
“Perhaps he is ill!” said Molly.
“Perhaps. It is long since I saw a letter from him! I am never allowed to read or hear one!”
“Can you wonder at that, when you are always abusing him? If he were my son, I should take care you never saw a scrap of his writing! It makes me wild to hear those I love talked of as you talk of him—always with a sniff!”
“Love, indeed! Do you suppose no one loves him but you?”
“His father loves him dearly!”
“How dare you hint that I do not love him!”
“If yours is love, auntie, I wish I may never meet it where I’ve no chance of defending myself!”
Molly had a hot temper where her friends were concerned, though she would bear a good deal without retorting.
“There!” said Aunt Ann, giving her the letter; “put that on the mantel-piece till he comes.”
Molly took it, and gazed wistfully at it, as if fain to read it through the envelope. She had had that morning a strange and painful dream about Walter—that he lay in his coffin, with a white cat across his face.
“What if he should be ill, auntie?” she said.
“Who ill?”
“Walter, of course!”
“What then? We must wait to know!”
“Father wouldn’t mind if we just opened it to make sure it was not about Walter!”
“Open my brother’s letter! Goodness gracious, what next! Well, you are a girl! I should just like to see him after you had opened one of his letters!”
Miss Hancock had herself once done so—out of pure curiosity, though on another pretense—a letter, as it happened, which he would rather not have read himself than have had her read, for it contained thanks for a favor secretly done; and he was more angry than any one had ever seen him. Molly remembered the occurrence, though she had been too young to have it explained to her; but Molly’s idea of a father, and of Richard Colman as that father, was much grander than that of most children concerning fathers. There is indeed a much closer relation between some good men and any good child than there is between far the greater number of parents and their children.
She put the letter on the chimney-piece, and went to the dairy; but it was to think about the letter. Her mind kept hovering about it where it stood on the chimney-piece, leaning against the vase with the bunch of silvery honesty in it. What if Walter was ill! Her father would not be home till the last train, and there would be none to town before the slow train in the morning! He might be very ill!—and longing for some one to come to him—his father of course—longing all day long! Her father was reasonable as he was loving: she was sure he would never be angry without reason! He was a man with whom one who loved him, and was not presuming, might take any honest liberty! He could hardly be a good man with whom one must never take a liberty! A good man was not the man to stand on his dignity! To treat him as if he were, was to treat him as those who can not trust in God behave to Him! They call Him the Supreme Euler! the Almighty! the Disposer of events! the Judge of the whole earth!—and would not “presume” to say “Father, help thy little child!” She would not wrong her father by not trusting him! she would open the letter! she would not read one word more than was needful to know whether it came to say that Walter was ill! Why should Mr. Sullivan have put his name outside, except to make sure of its being attended to immediately!
She went hack to the room where lay the letter. Her aunt was there still. Molly was glad of it: the easiest way of letting her know, for she would not have done it without, was to let her see her do what she did! She went straight to the chimney, reached up, and took the letter.
“Leave that alone!” cried Miss Hancock. “I know what you are after! You want to give it to my brother, and be the first to know what is in it! Put it back this moment!”
Molly stood with the letter in her hand.
“You are mistaken, auntie,” she said. “I am going to open it.”
“You shall do nothing of the sort—not if I live!” returned Aunt Ann, and flew to take the letter from her. But Molly was prepared for the attack, and was on the other side of the door before she could pounce.
She sped to her room, locked the door, and read the letter, then went instantly to her bonnet and cloak. There was time to catch the last train! She inclosed the letter, addressed it to her father, and wrote inside the envelope that she had opened it against the wish of her aunt, and was gone to nurse Walter. Then taking money from her drawer, she returned to Aunt Ann.
“It is about Walter. He is very ill,” she said. “I have inclosed the letter, and told him it was I that opened it.”
“Why such a fuss?” cried Aunt Ann. “You can tell him your impertinence just as well as write it! Oh, you’ve got your bonnet on!—going to run away in a fright at what you’ve done! Well, perhaps you’d better!”
“I am going to Walter.”
“Where?”
“To London to Walter.”
“You!”
“Yes; who else?”
“You shall not. I will go myself!”
Molly knew too well how Walter felt toward his aunt to consent to this. She would doubtless behave kindly if she found him really ill, but she would hardly be a comfort to him!
“I shall be ready in one moment!” continued Miss Hancock. “There is plenty of time, and you can drive me to the station if you like. Richard shall not say I left the care of his son to a chit of a girl!”
Molly said nothing, but rushed to the stable. Nobody was there! She harnessed the horse, and put him to the dog-cart with her own hands, in terror lest her aunt should be ready before her.
She was driving from the yard when her aunt appeared, in her Sunday best.
“That’s right!” she said, expecting her to pull up and take her in.
But Molly touched up her horse, and he, having done nothing for some time, was fresh, and started at speed. Aunt Ann was left standing, but it was some time before she understood that the horse had not run away.
Ere Molly reached the station, she left the dog-cart at a neighboring inn, then told one of the porters, to whom her father was well known, to look out for him by the last train, and let him know where the trap was.
As the train was approaching London, it stopped at a station where already stood another train, bound in the opposite direction, which began to move while hers stood. Molly was looking out of her window, as it went past her with the slow beginnings of speed, watching the faces that drifted by, in a kind of phantasmagoric show, never more to be repeated, when, in the further corner of a third-class carriage near the end of the train, she caught sight of a huddled figure that reminded her of Walter; a pale face was staring as if it saw nothing, but dreamed of something it could not see. She jumped up and put her head out of the window, but her own train also was now moving, and if it were Walter, there was no possibility of overtaking him. She was by no means sure, however, that it was he. The only way was to go on to her journey’s end!
CHAPTER XXVIII. DOING AND DREAMING
Walter had passed a very troubled night, and was worse, though he thought himself better. His friend looked in to see him before going to the office, and told him that he would come again in the evening. He did not tell him that he had written to his father.
Walter slept and woke and slept again. All the afternoon he was restless, as one who dreams without sleeping. The things presented to his mind, and seeming with him, were not those about him. Late in the afternoon, the fever abated a little, and he felt as one who wakes out of a dream. For a few minutes he lay staring into the room, then rose and with difficulty dressed himself, one moment shivering, the next burning. He knew perfectly what he was doing; his mind was possessed with an unappeasable longing and absolute determination to go home. The longing had been there all the night and all the day, except when it was quieted by the shadowy assuagement of his visions; and now with the first return of his consciousness to present conditions, came resolve. Better die at home, he said to himself, than recover in such a horrible place! On he went with his preparations, mechanical but methodical, till at last he put on his great-coat, took his rug, searched his purse, found enough to pay a cab to the railway station, went softly down the stair, and was in the street, a man lonely and feeble, but with a great joy of escape. Happily a cab was just passing, and he was borne in safety, half asleep again after his exertions, to the station. There he sought the station-master, and telling him his condition, prevailed upon him to take his watch as a pledge that he would send him the price of his ticket.
It was a wet night, but not very cold, and he did not suffer at first—was in fact more comfortable than he had been in bed. He seemed to himself perfectly sane when he started, but of the latter half of his journey he remembered nothing connectedly. What fragments of it returned to his recollection appeared as the remnants of a feverish dream.
The train arrived late in the dark night, at an hour when a conveyance was rarely to be had. He remembered nothing, however, of setting out to walk home, and nothing clearly as to how he fared on the way. His dreaming memory gave him but a sense of climbing, climbing, with a cold wind buffeting him back, and bits of paper, which must have been snow-flakes, beating in his face: he thought they were the shreds of the unsold copies of his book, torn to pieces by the angry publisher, and sent swirling about his face in clouds to annoy him. After that came a great blank.
The same train had taken up Mr. Colman at a junction. The moment he got out of it, the porter to whom Molly had spoken in the morning, addressed him, with the message Molly had left for him. Surprised and uneasy, he was putting some anxious questions to the man, when his son passed him. The night was still dark, and cloudy with snow, the wind was coming in gusts, now and then fiercely, and the lamps were wildly struggling against being blown out: neither saw the other. Walter staggered away, and Richard set out for the inn, to drive home as fast as possible: there only could he get light on Molly’s sudden departure for London! In her haste she had not left message enough. But he knew his son must be ill; nothing else could have caused it! He met with some delay at the inn, but at length was driving home as fast as he dared through the thick darkness of the rough ascent.
He had not driven far, before one of those little accidents occurred to his harness which, small in themselves, have so often serious results: the strap of the hames gave way, and the traces dropped by the horse’s sides. Mr. Colman never went unprovided for accidents, but in a dark night, in the middle of the road, with a horse fresh and eager to get home, it takes time to rectify anything.
At length he arrived in safety, and having roused the man, hastened into the house. There he speedily learned the truth of his conjecture, and it was a great comfort to him that Molly had acted so promptly. But he bethought himself that, by driving to another station some miles further off, at which a luggage train stopped in the night, he could reach town a few hours earlier. He went again to the stable, and gave orders to have the horse well fed and ready in an hour. Then he tried to eat the supper his sister-in-law had prepared for him, but with small success. Every few minutes he rose, opened the door, and looked out. It was a very dark morning, full of wind and snow.
By and by he could bear it no longer, and though he knew there was much time to spare, got up to go to the stable. The wind met him with an angry blast as he opened the door, and sharp pellets of keen snow stung him in the face. He had taken a lantern in his hand, but, going with his head bent against the wind, he all but stumbled over a stone seat, where they would sit by the door of a summer evening. As he recovered himself, the light of his lantern fell upon a figure huddled crouching upon the seat, but in the very act of tumbling forward from off it. He caught it with one arm, set down the light, raised its head, and in the wild, worn, death-pale features and wandering eyes, knew the face of his son. He uttered one wailing groan, which seemed to spend his life, gathered him to his bosom, and taking him up like a child, almost ran to the house with him. As he went he heard at his ear the murmured word,
“Father, I have sinned—not worthy—”
His heart gave a great heave, but he uttered no second cry.
Aunt Ann, however, had heard the first. She ran, and, opening the door, met him with the youth in his arms.
“I’m afraid he’s dead!” gasped Richard. “He is cold as a stone!”
Aunt Ann darted to the kitchen, made a blazing fire, set the kettle on it and bricks around it, then ran to see if she could help.
Richard had got his boy into his own bed, had put off his own clothes, and was lying with him in his arms to warm him. Aunt Ann went about like a steam-engine, but noiseless. She got the hot bricks, then hot bottles, and more blankets. The father thought he would die before the heat got to him. As soon as he was a little warm, he mounted his horse, and rode to fetch the doctor. It was terrible to him to think that he must have passed his boy on the way, and left him to struggle home without help.
Ere he returned, Walter had begun to show a little more life. He moaned, and murmured, and seemed going through a succession of painful events. Now he would utter a cry of disgust, now call for his father; then he would be fighting the storm with a wild despair of ever reaching his father.
The doctor came, examined him, said they were doing quite right, but looked solemn over him.
Had it not been for that glimpse she had at the station where last the train stopped, Molly would have been in misery indeed when, on arriving at Walter’s lodging, and being told that he was ill in bed, she went up to his room, and could find him nowhere. It was like a bad dream. She almost doubted whether she might not be asleep. The landlady had never heard him go out, and until she had searched the whole house, would not believe he was not somewhere in it. Rather unwillingly, she allowed Molly to occupy his room for the night; and Molly, that she might start by the first train, stretched herself in her clothes on the miserable little horse-hair sofa. She could not sleep, and was not a little anxious about Walter’s traveling in such a condition; but for all that, she could not help laughing more than once or twice to think how Aunt Ann would be crowing over her: basely deserted, left standing in the yard in her Sunday clothes, it was to her care after all that Walter was given, not Molly’s! But Molly could well enough afford to join in her aunt’s laugh: she had done her duty, and did not need to be told that we have nothing to do with consequences, only with what is right. So she waited patiently for the morning.
But how was she to do when she got home? Aunt Ann would have installed herself as nurse! It would not matter much while Walter was really ill; so long Aunt Ann would be good to him! but when he began to be himself again—for that time Molly must look out and be ready!
When she reached home, she was received at the door by her father who had been watching for her, and learned all he had to tell her. Aunt Ann spoke to her as if she had but the minute before left the room, vouchsafing not a single remark concerning Walter, and yielding her a position of service as narrow as she could contrive to make it. Molly did everything she desired without complaint, fetching and carrying for her as usual. She received no recognition from the half-unconscious Walter.
If it had not been that Aunt Ann must, like other nurses, have rest, Molly’s ministering soul would have been sorely pinched and hampered; but when her aunt retired, she could do her part for the patient’s peace. In a few days he had come to himself enough to know who were about him, and seemed to manifest a preference for Molly’s nursing. To Aunt Ann this seemed very hard—and hard it would have been, but that, through all her kindness, Walter could not help foreseeing how she would treat him in the health to which she was doing her best to bring him back. He sorely dreaded the time when, strong enough to be tormented, but not able to lock his door against her, he would be at her mercy. But he cherished a hope that his father would interfere. If necessary he would appeal to him, and beg him to depose Aunt Ann, and put sweet Molly in her stead!
One morning—Molly had been sitting up the night with the invalid—she found Aunt Ann alone at the breakfast-table.
“His father is with him now,” said Molly. “I think he is a little better; he slept more quietly.”
“He’ll do well enough!” grunted Aunt Ann. “There’s no fear of him! he’s not of the sort to die early! This is what comes of letting young people have their own way! My brother will be wiser now! and so, I hope, will Walter! It shall not be my fault if he’s not made to understand! Old or young wouldn’t listen to me! Now perhaps, while they are smarting from the rod, it may be of use to speak!”
“Aunt,” said Molly, with her heart in her throat, but determined, “please do not say anything to him for a long time yet; you might make him ill again! You do not know how he hates being talked at!”
“Don’t you be afraid! I won’t talk at him! He shall be well talked to, and straight!”
“He won’t stand it any more, auntie! He’s a man now, you know! And when a mere boy, he used to complain that you were always finding fault with him!”
“Highty, tighty! What next! The gentleman has the choice, has he, when to be found fault with, and when not!”
“I give you fair warning,” said Molly, hurriedly, “that I will do what I can to prevent you!”
Aunt Ann was indignant.
“You dare to tell me, in my own”—she was going to say house, but corrected herself—“in my own home, where you live on the charity of—”
Molly interrupted her.
“I shall ask my father,” she said, “whether he wishes me to have such words from you. If he does, you shall say what you please to me. But as to Walter, I will ask nobody. Till he is able to take care of himself, I shall not let you plague him. I will fight you first! There now!”
The flashing eyes and determined mouth of Molly, who had risen, and stood regarding her aunt in a flame of honest anger, cowed her. She shut her jaws close, and looked the picture of postponement.
That instant came the voice of Mr. Colman:
“Molly! Molly!”
“Yes, Richard!” answered Miss Hancock, rising.
But Molly was out of the door, almost before her aunt was out of her chair.
Walter had asked where she was, and wanted to see her. It was the first wish of any sort he had expressed!
CHAPTER XXIX. DREAM-MOLLY
So far better as to be able to talk, Walter one day told Molly the strange dream which, as he looked back, seemed to fill the whole time almost from his leaving his lodging to his recognition of his father by his bedside.
It was a sweet day in the first of the spring. He lay with his head toward the window, and the sun shining into the room, with the tearful radiance of sorrows overlived and winter gone, when Molly entered. She was at once whelmed in the sunlight, so that she could see nothing, while Walter could almost have counted her eyelashes.
“Stand there, Molly,” he cried, “one moment! I want to look at you!”
“It is not fair!” returned Molly. “The sun is in my eyes! I am as blind as a bat!”
“I won’t ask you, if you mind, Molly!” returned Walter.
In these days he had grown very gentle. He seemed to dread the least appearance of exaction.
“I will stand where you like, and as long as you like, Walter! Have you not consented to live a little longer with us! Oh, Walter, you don’t know what it was like when the doctor looked so grave!”
Molly stood in the sun, and Walter looked at her till his eyes were wearied with the brightness she reflected, and his heart made strong by the better brightness she radiated. For Molly was the very type of a creature born of the sun and ripened by his light and heat—a glowing fruit of the tree of life amid its healing foliage, all splendor, and color, and overflowing strength. Self-will is weakness; the will to do right is strength; Molly willed the right thing and held to it. Hence it was that she was so gentle. She walked lightly over the carpet, because she could run up a hill like a hare. When she caught selfishness in her, she was down upon it with the knee and grasp of a giant. Strong is man and woman whose eternal life subjects the individual liking to the perfect will. Such man, such woman, is free man, free woman.
Molly was in a daring dress of orange and red. Scarce a girl in London would have ventured to wear it; few girls would not have looked vulgar in it; yet Molly was right. Like a dark-colored sunflower, she caught and kept the sun.
Having gazed at her in silence for awhile, Walter said, “Come and sit by me, Molly. I want to tell the dream I have been having.”
She came at once, glad to get out of the sun. But she sat where he could still see her, and waited.
“I think I remember reaching the railway, Molly, but I remember nothing after that until I thought I was in a coal-pit, with a great roaring everywhere about me. I was shut up forever by an explosion, and the tumbling subterranean waters were coming nearer and nearer! They never came, but they were always coming! Suddenly some one took me by the arm, and pulled me out of the pit. Then I was on the hill above the pit, and had to get to the top of it. But it was in the teeth of a snow-storm! My breath was very short, and I could hardly drag one foot up after the other. All at once there was an angel with wings by my side, and I knew it was Molly. I never wondered that she had wings. I only said to myself, ‘How clever she must be to stow them away when she doesn’t want them!’ Up and up we toiled, and the way was very long. But when I got too tired, you stood before me, and I leaned against you, and you folded your wings about my head, and so I got breath to go on again. And I tried to say, ‘How can you be so kind to me! I never was good to you!’”
“You dreamed quite wrong there, Walter!” interposed Molly. “You were always good to me—except, perhaps, when I asked you too many questions!”
“Your questions were too wise for me, Molly! If I had been able to answer them, this trouble would never have come upon me. But I do wish I could tell you how delightful the dream was, for all the wind and the snow! I remember exactly how I felt, standing shadowed by your wings, and leaning against you!”
Molly’s face flushed, and a hazy look came into her eyes, but she did not turn them away.
He stopped, and lay brooding on his dream.
“But all at once,” he resumed, “it went away in a chaos of coal-pits, and snow-storms, and eyes not like yours, Molly! I was tossed about for ages in heat and cold, in thirst and loathing, with now one now another horrid draught held to my lips, thirst telling me to drink, and disgust making me dash it on the ground—only to be back at my lips the next moment. Once I was a king sitting upon a great tarnished throne, dusty and worm-eaten, in a lofty room of state, the doors standing wide, and the spiders weaving webs across them, for nobody ever came in, and no sound shook the moat-filled air: on that throne I had to sit to all eternity, because I had said I was a poet and was not! I was a fellow that had stolen the poet-book of the universe, torn leaves from it, and pieced the words together so that only one could make sense of them—and she would not do it! This vanished—and I was lying under a heap of dead on a battle-field. All above me had died doing their duty, and I lay at the bottom of the heap and could not die, because I had fought, not for the right, but for the glory of a soldier. I was full of shame, for I was not worthy to die! I was not permitted to give my life for the great cause for which the rest were dead. But one of the dead woke, and turned, and clasped me; and then I woke, and it was your arms about me, Molly! and my head was leaning where it leaned! when your wings were about me!”
By this time Molly was quietly weeping.
“I wish I had wings, Walter, to flap from morning to night for you!” she said, laughing through her tears.
“You are always flapping them, Molly! only nobody can see them except in a dream. There are many true things that can not be seen with the naked eye! The eye must be clothed and in its right mind first!”
“Your poetry is beginning to come, Walter! I don’t think it ever did before!” said Molly.
Walter gazed at her wonderingly: was little Molly going to turn out a sibyl? How grown she was! What a peace and strength shone from her countenance! She was woman, girl, and child, all in one! What a fire of life there was in this lady with the brown hands—so different from the white, wax-doll ends to Lufa’s arms! She was of the cold and ice, of the white death and lies! Here was the warm, live, woman-truth! He would never more love woman as he had! Could that be a good thing which a creature like Lufa roused in him? Could that be true which had made him lie? If his love had been of the truth, would it not have known that she was not a live thing? True love would have known when it took in its arms a dead thing, a body without a soul, a material ghost!
Another time—it was a cold evening; the wind howled about the house; but the fire was burning bright, and Molly, having been reading to him, had stopped for a moment—Walter said,
“I could not have imagined I should ever feel at home as I do now! I wonder why it is!”
“I think I could tell you!” said Molly.
“Tell me then.”
“It is because you are beginning to know your father!”
“Beginning to know my father, Moll!”
“You never came right in sight of him till now. He has been the same always, but you did not—could not see him!”
“Why couldn’t I see him, wise woman?” said Walter.
“Because you were never your father’s son till now,” answered Molly. “Oh, Walter, if you had heard Jane tell what a cry he gave when he found his boy on the cold bench, in the gusty dark of the winter morning! Half your father’s heart is with your mother, and the other half with you! I did not know how a man could love till I saw his face as he stood over you once when he thought no one was near!”
“Did he find me on the stone bench?” “Yes, indeed! Oh, Walter, I have known God better, and loved him more, since I have seen how your father loves you!”
Walter fell a thinking. Ha had indeed, since he came to himself, loved his father as he had never loved him before; but he had not thought how he had been forgetting him. And herewith a gentle repentance began, which had a curing and healing effect on his spirit. Nor did the repentance leave him at his earthly father’s door, but led him on to his father in heaven.
The next day he said,
“I know another thing that makes me feel more at home: Aunt Ann never scolds at me now. True, she seldom comes near me, and I can not say I want her to come! But just tell me, do you think she has been converted?”
“Not that I know of. The angels will have a bad time of it before they bring her to her knees—her real knees, I mean, not her church-knees! For Aunt Ann to say she was wrong, would imply a change I am incapable of imagining. Yet it must come, you know, else how is she to enter the kingdom of heaven?”
“What then makes her so considerate?”
“It’s only that I’ve managed to make her afraid of me.”