Kitabı oku: «In League with Israel: A Tale of the Chattanooga Conference», sayfa 9

CHAPTER XIII.
A LITTLE PRODIGAL

LEE was waiting disconsolately on the stairs, with Taffy beside him, when David opened the door and stepped into the hall. The landlady was up-stairs with the nurse, and all the boarders had gone to a concert, so the parlor was vacant, and David took the boy in there. He gave him an intricate chain-puzzle to work first, and afterward told him such entertaining stories of his travels that Lee forgot his painful forebodings. The clock in the hall struck ten before either of them was aware how swiftly the time had passed.

"Here's a little fellow who doesn't know where he is to sleep," David said to the nurse, when they had noiselessly entered Dr. Trent's room.

"We'll cover him up warm on the sofa," she said, kindly. "He'd better not undress."

David looked quickly across to the bed. "Is there any change?" he asked, anxiously.

She nodded, and then motioned him aside. "Would it be too much to ask you to stay a couple of hours longer, until Dr. Mills comes? Lee clings to you so, and the end may be much nearer than we thought."

"If I can be of any use, I'll stay very willingly," he replied.

They moved the sofa to the other side of the room, and the nurse began folding some blankets the landlady brought her to lay over it.

"Can't you put some more coal on the fire, dear?" she asked Lee.

He picked up a larger lump than he could well manage. The tongs slipped, and it fell with a great noise on the fender, breaking in pieces as it did so, then rattling over the hearth.

They all turned apprehensively toward the bed. The heavy jarring sound had thoroughly aroused Dr. Trent from his stupor. He looked around the room as if trying to comprehend the situation. He seemed puzzled to account for David's presence in the room, and drew his hand wonderingly across his burning forehead, then pressed it against his aching throat.

The nurse bent over him to moisten his parched lips with a spoonful of water.

Then he understood. A look of awe stole over his face, as he realized his condition. He held his hand out towards Lee, and the nurse, turning, beckoned the child to come. He folded the cold, trembling little fingers in his hot hands. "Papa's – dear – little son!" he gasped in whispers.

David turned his head away, his eyes suffused with hot tears. The scene recalled so vividly the night he had crept to his father's bedside for the last time. His heart ached for the little fellow.

"God – keep – you!" came in the same hoarse whisper.

Then he turned to the nurse, and with great effort spoke aloud, "Belle, pray!"

David, standing with bowed head, while she knelt with her arm around the frightened boy, listened to such a prayer as he had never heard before. He had wondered one time how this woman could sacrifice everything in life for the sake of a man who died so many centuries ago. But as he listened now, to her low, earnest voice, he felt an unseen Presence in the room, as of the Christ to whom she spoke so confidingly.

As she prayed that the Everlasting Arms might be underneath as this soul went down into the "valley of the shadow," the doctor cried out exultingly, "There is no valley!"

David looked up. The doctor's worn face was shining with an unspeakable happiness. He stretched out his arms.

"Jesus saves me! O, the wonder of it!"

His hands dropped. Gradually his eyes closed, and he relapsed into a stupor, from which he never aroused. When Dr. Mills came at midnight he was still breathing; but the street lights were beginning to fade in the gray, wintry dawn when Belle Carleton reverently laid the lifeless hands across the still heart, and turned to look at Lee.

The child had sobbed himself to sleep on the sofa, and David had gone.

O, the pity of it, that we keep the heart's-ease of our appreciation to wreathe cold coffin-lids, and cover unresponsive clay!

There was a constant stream of people passing in and out of the boarding-house parlor all day.

Bethany was not surprised at the great number who came to do honor to Baxter Trent, nor at the tearful accounts of his helpful ministrations from those he had befriended. But as she arranged the great masses of flowers they brought, she thought sadly, "O, why didn't they send these when he was in such sore need of love and sympathy? Now it's too late to make any difference."

All sorts of people came. A man whose wrists had not yet forgotten the chafing of a convict's shackles, touched one of the lilies that Bethany had placed on the table at the head of the casket.

"He lived white!" the man said, shaking his head mournfully. "I reckon he was ready to go if ever any body was."

They happened to be alone in the room, and Bethany repeated what the nurse had told her of the doctor's triumphant passing.

Late in the afternoon there was a timid knock at the door. Bethany opened it, and saw two little waifs holding each other's cold, red hands. One had a ragged shawl pinned over her head, and the other wore a big, flapping sunbonnet, turned back from her thin, pitiful face. Their teeth were chattering with cold and bashfulness.

"Missus," faltered the larger one, "we couldn't get no wreaves or crosses, but granny said he would like this ''cause it's so bright and gold-lookin'.'"

The dirty little hand held out a stemless, yellow chrysanthemum.

"Come in, dears," said Bethany softly, opening the door wide to the little ragamuffins.

They glanced around the mass of blossoms filling the room, with a look of astonishment that so much beauty could be found in one place.

"Jess," whispered the oldest one to her sister, "'Pears like our 'n don't show up for much, beside all these. I wisht he knowed we walked a mile through the snow to fetch it, and how sorry we was."

Bethany heard the disappointed whisper. "Did you know him well?" she asked.

"I should rather say," answered the child. "He kep' us from starvin', all the time granny was down sick so long."

"An' once he took me and Jess ridin' with him, away out in the country, and he let us get out in a field and pick lots of yellow flowers, something like this, only littler. Didn't he, Jess?"

The other child nodded, saying, as she wiped her eyes with the corner of her sister's shawl, "Granny says we'll never have another friend like him while the world stands."

Deeply touched, Bethany held up the stemless chrysanthemum. "See," she said, "I'm going to put it in the best place of all, right here by his hand."

The door opened again to admit David Herschel. Before it closed the children had slipped bashfully away, still hand in hand.

Bethany told him of their errand. "Who could have brought more?" she said, touching the shining yellow flower; "for with this little drop of gold is the myrrh of a childish grief, and the frankincense of a loving remembrance."

She felt that he could appreciate the pathos of the gift, and the love that prompted it. They had grown so much closer together in the last twenty-four hours.

"You've been here nearly all day, haven't you?" he asked, noticing her tired face. "I wish you would go home and rest, and let me take your place awhile."

He insisted so kindly that at last she yielded. Her sympathies had been sorely wrought upon during the day, and she was nearly exhausted.

After she had gone, he sat down with his overcoat on, near the front window. There was only a smoldering remnant of a fire in the grate.

The last rays of the sunset were streaming in between the slats of the shutters. He could hear the boys playing in the snowy streets, and the occasional tinkle of passing sleighbells.

"I wonder where Lee is," he thought. He had not seen the child since morning.

Two working men came in presently. They looked long and silently at the doctor's peaceful face, and tiptoed awkwardly out again.

The minutes dragged slowly by.

The heavy perfume of the flowers made David drowsy, and he leaned his head on his hand.

The door opened cautiously, and Lee looked in. His eyes were swollen with crying. He did not see David sitting back in the shadow. Only one long ray of yellow sunlight shone in now, and it lay athwart the still form in the center of the room.

Lee paused just a moment beside it, then slipped noiselessly over to the grate. There was a pile of books under his arm. He stirred the dying embers as quietly as he could, and one by one laid the books on the red coals. They were the ones Jack had so unreservedly condemned. Last of all he threw on a dogeared deck of cards. They blazed up, filling the room with light, and revealing David in his seat by the window.

"O," cried Lee in alarm, "I didn't know any one was in here."

Then leaning against the wall, he put his head on his arm, and began to sob in deeper distress than he had yet shown. He felt in his pocket for a handkerchief, but there was none there.

David took out his own and wiped the boy's wet face, as he drew him tenderly to his knee.

"Now tell me all about it," he said.

Lee nestled against his shoulder, and cried harder for awhile. Then he sobbed brokenly: "O, I've been so bad, and he never knew it! I came in here early this morning before anybody was up, to tell him I was sorry – that I would be a good boy – but he was so cold when I touched him, and he couldn't answer me! O, papa, papa!" he wailed. "It's so awful to be left all alone – just a little boy like me!"

David folded him closer without speaking. No words could touch such a grief.

Presently Lee sat up and unfolded a piece of paper. It was only the scrap of a fly-leaf, its jagged edges showing it had been torn from some school-book.

"Do you think it will hurt if I put this in his pocket?" he asked in a trembling voice. "I want him to take it with him. I felt like if I burned up those books in here, and put this in his pocket, he'd know how sorry I was."

David took the bit of paper, all blistered with boyish tears, where a penitent little hand, out of the depths of a desolate little heart, had scrawled the promise: "Dear Papa, – I will be good."

A sob shook the man's strong frame as he read it.

"I think he will be very glad to have you give him that," he answered. "You'd better put it in his pocket before any one comes in."

Lee slipped down from his lap, and crossed the room. "O, I can't," he moaned, attempting to lift the lifeless hands.

David reached down, and unbuttoning the coat, laid the promise of the little prodigal gently on his father's heart, to await its reading in the glad light of the resurrection morning. Then he called some one else to take his place, and went to telephone for a sleigh. In a little while he was driving through the twilight out one of the white country roads, with Lee beside him, that nature's wintry solitudes might lay a cool hand of healing sympathy on the boy's sore heart.

Bethany took him home with her after the funeral, and kept him a week.

Miss Caroline and Miss Harriet petted him with all the ardor of their motherly old hearts. Jack did his best to amuse him, and with the elasticity of childhood, he began to recover his usual vivacity.

"This can not go on always," Mr. Marion said to Bethany one day. He had gone up to the office to talk to her about it.

Dr. Trent had left a small insurance, requesting that Frank Marion be appointed guardian.

"Ray wants him," continued Mr. Marion. "She would have turned the house into an orphan asylum long ago if I had allowed it. But she has so many demands on her time and strength that I am unwilling to have her taxed any more. You see, for instance, if we should take Lee, I am away from home so much, that the greater part of the care and responsibility would fall on her. Just now his father's death has touched him, and he is making a great effort to do all right; but it will be a hard fight for him in a big place like this, so full of temptations to a boy of his age. He would be a constant care. The only thing I can see is to put him in some private school for a few years."

"Let me keep him till after Christmas," urged Bethany. "I can't bear to let the little fellow go away among strangers this near the holiday season. I keep thinking, What if it were Jack?"

"How would it do for me to take him out on my next trip?" suggested Mr. Marion. "I will be gone two weeks, just to little country towns in the northern part of the State, where he could have a variety of scenes to amuse him."

"That will be fine!" answered Bethany. "I'm sure he will like it."

Lee was somewhat afraid of his tall, dignified guardian. He had a secret fear that he would always be preaching to him, or telling him Bible stories. He hoped that the customers would keep him very busy during the day, and he resolved always to go to bed early enough to escape any curtain lectures that might be in store for him.

To his great relief, Mr. Marion proved the jolliest of traveling companions. There was no preaching. He did not even try to make sly hints at the boy's past behavior by tacking a moral on to the end of his stories, and he only laughed when Taffy crawled out of the innocent-looking brown paper bundle that Lee would not put out of his arms until after the train had started.

Such long sleigh-rides as they had across the open country between little towns! Such fine skating places he found while Mr. Marion was busy with his customers! It was a picnic in ten chapters, he told one of the drivers.

One afternoon, as they drove over the hard, frozen pike, one of the horses began to limp.

"Shoe's comin' off," said the driver. "Lucky we're near Sikes's smithy. It's jes' round the next bend, over the bridge."

The smoky blacksmith-shop, with its flying sparks and noisy anvils, was nothing new to Lee. He had often hung around one in the city. In fact, there were few places he had not explored.

The smith was a loud, blatant fellow, so in the habit of using rough language that every sentence was accompanied with an oath.

Mr. Marion had taken Lee in to warm by the fire.

"I wonder what that horrible noise is!" he said. They had heard a harsh, grating sound, like some discordant grinding, ever since they came in sight of the shop.

Sikes pointed over his shoulder with his sooty thumb.

"It's an ole mill back yender. It's out o' gear somew'eres. It set me plumb crazy at first, but I'm gettin' used to it now."

"Let's go over and investigate," said Mr. Marion, anxious to get Lee out of such polluted atmosphere.

The miller, an easy-going old fellow, nearly as broad as he was long, did not even take the trouble to remove the pipe from his mouth, as he answered: "O, that! That's nothing but just one of the cogs is gone out of one of the wheels. I keep thinking I'll get it fixed; but there's always a grist a-waiting, so somehow I never get 'round to it. Does make an or'nery sound for a fact, stranger; but if I don't mind it, reckon nobody else need worry."

"Lazy old scoundrel," laughed Mr. Marion, after they had passed out of doors again. "I don't see how he stands such a horrible noise. It is a nuisance to the whole neighborhood."

When he reported the conversation at the smithy, Sikes swore at the miller soundly.

Frank Marion's eyes flashed, and he took a step forward.

"Look here, Sikes," he exclaimed, in a tone that made every one in the shop pause to listen, "you've got a bigger cog missing in you than the old mill has, and it makes you a sight bigger nuisance to the neighborhood. You have lost your reverence for all that is holy. You go grinding away by yourself, leaving out God, leaving out Christ, making a miserable failure of your life grist, and every time you open your lips, your blasphemous words tell the story of the missing cog. If that old mill-wheel makes such a hateful sound, what kind of a discord do you suppose your life is making in the ears of your Heavenly Father?"

Sikes looked at him an instant irresolutely. His first impulse was to knock him over with the heavy hammer he held; but the truth of the fearless words struck home, and he could not help respecting the man who had the courage to utter them.

"Beg pardon, sir," he said at last. "I had no idee you was a parson. I laid out as you was a drummer."

"I am a drummer," answered Marion. "I am a wholesale shoe-merchant now; but I spent so many years on the road for this same house before I went into the firm, that I often go out over my old territory."

Sikes regarded him curiously. "Strikes me you've got sermons and shoe-leather pretty badly mixed up," he said.

Afterward, when he had watched the sleigh disappear down the road, he picked up the bellows and worked them in an absent-minded sort of a way.

"A drummer!" he repeated under his breath. "A drummer! I'll be – blowed!"

The incident made a profound impression on Lee. A loop in the road brought them in sight of the old mill again.

"We don't want to have any cogs missing, do we, son!" said Mr. Marion, first pinching the boy's rosy cheek, and then stooping to tuck the buffalo robes more snugly around him.

The subject was not referred to again, but the lesson was not forgotten.

Sunday was passed at a little country hotel. They walked to the Church a mile away in the morning. Time hung heavy on Lee's hands in the afternoon while Mr. Marion was reading. If it had not been for Taffy, it would have been insufferably dull. He had a slight cold, so Mr. Marion did not take him out to the night service. He left him playing with the landlady's baby in the hotel parlor. That amusement did not last long, however. The baby was put to bed, and some of the neighbors came in for a visit. Lee felt out of place, and went up to their room.

It was the best the house afforded, but it was far from being an attractive place. The walls were strikingly white and bare. A hideous green and purple quilt covered the bed. The rag carpet was a dull, faded gray. The lamp smoked when he turned it up, and smelled strongly of coal-oil when he turned it down.

He felt so lonely and homesick that he concluded to go to bed. It was very early. He could not sleep, but lay there in the dark, listening to somebody's rocking-chair, going squeakety squeak in the parlor below.

He wished he could be as comfortable and content as Taffy, curled up in some flannel in a shoe-box, on a chair beside the bed. He reached out, and stroked the puppy's soft back.

The feeling came over him as he did so, that there wasn't anybody in all the world for him really to belong to.

It was the first time since Bethany took him home that he had felt like crying. Now he lay and sobbed softly to himself till he heard Mr. Marion's step on the stairs.

He grew quiet then, and kept his eyes closed. Mr. Marion lighted the lamp, putting a high-backed chair in front of it, so that it could not shine on the bed. He picked up his Bible that was lying on the table, and, turning the leaves very quietly that he might not disturb Lee, found the night's lesson.

A stifled sniffle made him pause. After a long time he heard another. Laying down his book, he stepped up to the bed. Lee was perfectly motionless, but the pillow was wet, and his face streaked with traces of tears. Marion, with his hands thrust in his pockets, stood looking at him.

All the fatherly impulses of his nature were stirred by the pitiful little face on the pillow.

He knelt down and put his strong arm tenderly over the boy.

"Lee," he said, "look up here, son."

Lee glanced timidly at the bearded face so near his own.

"You were lying here in the dark, crying because you felt that there was nobody left to love you. Now put your arms around my neck, dear, while I tell you something. I had a little child once. I can never begin to tell you how I loved her. When she died it nearly broke my heart. But I said, for her sake I shall love all children, and try to make them happy. Because her little feet knew the way home to God, I shall try to keep all other children in the same pure path. For her sake, first, I loved you; now, since we have been together, for your own. I want you to feel that I am such a close friend that you can always come to me just as freely as you did to your father."

The boy's clasp around his neck tightened.

"But, Lee, there will be times in your life when you will need greater help than I can give; and because I know just how you will be tried, and tempted, and discouraged, I want you to take the best of friends for your own right now. I want you to take Jesus. Will you do this?"

Lee hesitated, and then said in a half-frightened whisper, "I don't know how."

"Did you ever ask your papa to forgive you after you had been very naughty?" asked Mr. Marion.

"O yes," cried Lee, "but it was too late." Between his choking sobs he told of the promise lying on his father's heart, in the far-off grave under the cemetery cedars.

Mr. Marion controlled his voice with an effort, as he pointed out the way so surely and so simply that Lee could not fail to understand.

Then, with his arm still around him, he prayed; and the boy, following him step by step through that earnest prayer, groped his way to his Savior.

It was a time never to be forgotten by either Frank Marion or Lee. They lay awake till long after midnight, too happy even to think of sleep.