DE PROFUNDIS
In the unabashed pursuit of pleasure into which Persis had plunged,
Joel was a half-hearted participant. His life-long habit of standing
scornfully aloof while his fellow beings strove to enjoy themselves,
proved no match for Celia's artless appeals. "Please come, Uncle
Joel," she would, coax. "It's lots more fun with you along." And to
the open amusement of his neighbors and his sister's ill-concealed
wonder, Joel submitted to long automobile rides, to briefer excursions
on the river and lake and to eating picnic luncheons with his back
against a tree and on his face an expression conveying his unshaken
conviction that there were ants in his sandwich. It is unlikely that
Joel's presence on these occasions added in any marked degree to the
general hilarity, but Celia's satisfaction was unmistakable. She
always sat beside him with an air of proprietorship, digging her sharp
little elbow into the sparse cushioning of his lean thighs or when
weary, dropping her frowsy head against his shoulder with an engaging
certainty that it was there for that very purpose. Like many another
who has defied capture till after middle life, Joel atoned for past
immunity by the thoroughness of his surrender.
But on this particular August morning, when an all-day expedition had
been planned to Huckleberry Mountain, Joel revolted. Whether he had
really been surfeited with picnics, or only feared that he might grow
to enjoy such puerile forms of entertainment, and so lose some of the
austere dignity which had hitherto distinguished him, it is certain
that he came down to breakfast with his mind made up. Even to Celia's
coaxing he was adamant.
"You mustn't tease Uncle Joel any more," Persis finally admonished the
child. "You don't want him to go if he wouldn't have a good time."
And to her brother she added, "You'd better go to the hotel for your
dinner, Joel."
"Oh, I can pick up something that'll do me for a dinner," Joel replied
with his old keen relish for playing the martyr. And then Celia,
dropping her oatmeal spoon, lurched forward in her chair and imprinted
a milky kiss upon his coat sleeve.
"I'll get Uncle Joel's dinner," Celia murmured. "I'll take care of
him."
"But you're going on the picnic."
"No, Aunt Persis," Celia resumed an upright position with a suddenness
that endangered her half-emptied bowl of porridge. "I don't like
picnics 'thout Uncle Joel. I'd rather stay with him."
Joel groped for the toast. The plate was directly in front of him, but
he could not see it for a blinding rush of tears. Never in his life
had he known such sweet elation, never such humility. There is an
irresistible flattery in the preference of a child. Except for the
love of his dead mother and for his sister's affection, the latter a
curious blending of duty and traditional sentiment which would have
kept on working automatically whatever he might have done, Joel had
never inspired a single unselfish attachment until Celia came into his
life. The thing was overwhelming. His hand shook till his fork
clattered against his plate. What was he to have won the heart of a
child?
In the two hours that elapsed before their departure, he suffered
agonies of apprehension that Celia would change her mind. Scraps of
cynical comment on the fickleness of her sex, some of them dating back
to Virgil and Juvenal, flitted through his memory and stung like
gad-flies. After winning such honor, after Celia had elected to remain
with him, he felt himself unable to endure the ignominy of having her
reconsider. While Mary made the beds, and Persis packed the luncheon
in the kitchen, and the children raced about getting in one another's
way, and prolonging the preparations they were desirous of hastening,
Joel waited in a cold sweat, half realizing the absurdity of his
misgiving, but quite at its mercy. He knew that if Celia changed her
mind at the last minute and departed with the others, life would not be
worth the living.
But the elf-like little creature showed no signs of vacillation. After
rendering valuable assistance in getting the others ready, including
the feat of breaking a fruit jar containing the lemon juice and sugar,
she came and stood at Joel's side, serenely contemplative and content.
Even toward Celia Joel had never been demonstrative. But as the picnic
party took possession of the machine, and half a dozen hands waved a
farewell, he slipped his arm about the child's shoulders and drew her
to him. The day was edged with gold. The warm August sunshine seemed
to reach the very depths of his heart. He had a confused impression
that he had done life an injustice.
"Tell me a story, Uncle Joel," commanded Celia, nestling closer. "Tell
me about Miranda and Ariel and that horrid old Caliban." For to reduce
Shakespeare to the juvenile comprehension had been one of the tasks
imposed on Joel by his new fealty, nor did it seem to him, as once it
might have done, a base perversion of the matchless creations of the
English tongue that in diluted and modified form, they should interest
and entertain a little maid of six.
The morning was a long rapture for the two strange comrades. Joel told
stories till Celia tired of a passive rôle and entertained him with
some of those flights of fancy compared with which the most audacious
attempts of the adult imagination seem tame and groveling. Then they
took a walk, hand in hand, after which Celia discovered that she was
hungry and a raid was made upon the pantry. Perhaps nothing so
conclusively proved the completeness of Joel's subordination as the
overthrow of his dietetic theories. The first course of their meal was
bread and molasses and it wound up with honey and ginger snaps.
By this time the sun had taken full possession of the front piazza, and
Joel pulled his chair around to the shady north side of the house and
sat there in after-dinner tranquillity while Celia played about on the
lawn. Joel's eyes followed every movement of the quaint little figure.
He remembered with wonder that other people thought Betty the prettier
of the two girls. To him that small piquant face with the unruly hair,
the straight black brows and the wonderful kindling eyes, embodied all
that was beautiful. His selfish middle-aged heart ached under the
strain of accommodating this wealth of sweet swelling tenderness.
Celia had wandered across the grass toward the clump of maples which
once had shaded the big barn erected in Joel's youth and never rebuilt
after the fire. She turned to kiss her hand, and he kissed his back,
the first time in a matter of some five and thirty years that his
dignity had so unbent. The realization that the act would prove highly
diverting to his neighbors caused him to glance anxiously toward the
road. But the white ribbon of dust was undisturbed by vehicles, and
his mind relieved, he looked again for Celia.
A full half minute he stared incredulously, looking this way and that,
wavering between startled apprehension and a conviction of his own
folly. For Celia was nowhere to be seen. The grass over which her
little feet had twinkled as he turned his head, rippled in the wind and
gave no sign. The child had not had time to reach the trees, behind,
whose trunks her slight form might easily be concealed. And then as
Joel told himself that he was a fool, a faint wailing cry brought him
to his feet.
He was running before he had time to formulate his fear. And then a
startling memory spurred him to more desperate haste. He recalled the
old well by the barn, boarded over years before and later so concealed
by the encroachment of grass and weeds that its very existence had been
forgotten. But time had taken its toll even from the stubborn oak, and
at last it had yielded under a child's light weight. Joel knew it as
he ran, but the sight of the splintered irregular opening, across which
the clover heads nodded serenely to one another, gave a poignant
anguish to his realization. He tore the rotting planks aside, and
looked as it seemed, down into unrelieved blackness. Then his
sun-dazzled vision adjusted itself to the gloom and he saw the dank,
slime-covered stones that formed the sides of the well, and below the
black gleam of water and something pink and white, that struggled and
went under, and showed again.
"Celia, Celia!" Joel shouted. "Don't be scared. Uncle Joel's coming."
He had been a coward all his life. In his boyhood he had shrunk away
from risks which to Persis were exhilarating and delightful. The ill
health of twenty years had tended to confirm and increase that native
weakness. Yet at this supreme moment no thought of his own danger
crossed his mind, The saving of Celia was all.
He kicked off his slippers and gripping the curb for support, lowered
himself into the pit. A rush of cold air like a breath from an open
grave enveloped him. Finding foothold in the crevices of the green
damp stones, digging his fingers into slimy crannies, panting,
slipping, bruising his flesh without feeling the hurt, this frail
hypochondriac went to the aid of the child who somehow had blundered
into his heart.
The water in the well reached Joel's arm-pits as he stood on its bottom
and lifted Celia to his shoulder. She clung to him for a little with a
suffocating grip, strangling, sobbing, panic-stricken. And as he
strove to soothe her, for the first time fear laid its cold hand upon
him. He looked up to the circle of blue sky so terrifyingly distant
and it seemed incredible that he could ever have made that precipitous
descent. Unencumbered he had accomplished the miracle, but he knew he
could never climb back to the warm peace of the upper air with Celia in
his arms.
The child's sobs were quieting. She was perched upon his shoulder, her
arm wound tightly about his neck. Even at the moment when all the
tragic possibilities of the event crowded on his mind, he felt the
tremor of her rigid little body and thought anxiously that Celia was in
danger of taking cold.
With an effort he took a grip upon realities. Gently he loosened the
pressure of the child's encircling arms.
"Celia, honey, don't hold Uncle Joel so tight. He's got to get breath
enough to holler, so somebody will come and take us out of this."
He had shouted till he was hoarse before he realized his folly. There
were no neighbors near enough to hear his cries. The sensible thing
was to husband his strength till some vehicle passed and then call
lustily. Again he addressed the child.
"Celia, dearie, keep your ears open. When we hear wheels coming, we'll
holler for all we're worth."
They listened till they heard upon the road the rhythmic foot-beats of
horses, and the rattle of some farmer's wagon rumbling homeward from
the village. Then together they screamed for help. But the hoofs went
on beating their tattoo till the sound grew faint, and the rattle of
the wagon died in the distance. Again and again the sound which told
of human nearness woke hope in their hearts only to die in the ensuing
silence.
"Uncle Joel," Celia wailed, "I'm co-old." Her sobs echoed uncannily as
if the well were filled with the ghosts of weeping children. Again he
gazed at the disk of blue sky overhead. He seemed to himself to be
viewing it from some indeterminate half-way house between life and
death. And yet of the two, the invisible world seemed nearer than the
earth roofed over by that placid sky.
As time passed his suffering became acute. The weight of the child on
his shoulder was an increasing torture. The cramped arm raised to hold
her secure was racked by intolerable pain. The chill of the water was
paralyzing. His heart labored. His breath came with difficulty.
Celia seemed to be relapsing into an unnatural drowsiness. Her body
sagged lifelessly. He found it necessary to stand close to the side of
the well, that the wet stones might help to support her weight.
There was only once he prayed, unless his struggle be counted as one
long prayer. But when his appeal found words, it was less a petition
than a suggestion. "She's so little, Lord, for it to end here, and
she's had a hard time so far. The fun's just beginning." It showed no
lack of wisdom, perhaps, that his prayer ended there.
His mind must have wandered a little later. It seemed as if his mother
were beside him, encouraging him as she had done long before in his
boyhood when he had wrestled with a difficult task. And then he was
out in the woods with a crowd of his boyhood companions and the wild
geese were flying south. Honk! Honk! Honk! "Guess that's why it's
so cold," Joel said, addressing the shadowy assembly. "Winter's
coming."
The sound of his own voice brought him back to reality. What he had
heard was the horn of Persis' car. She had returned. And the love of
life woke in him and gave him strength to scream lustily again and
again.
As the children scrambled out upon the grass, all talking at once,
Persis lifted an authoritative hand. "Hush! I thought I heard some
one call."
"I don't hear nothing, Miss Dale," said Mary tranquilly. Persis again
enjoined silence. As her gaze swept uneasily over the peaceful,
familiar scene, her eyes were arrested by one of the rotting boards
which had formed the cover of the unused well.
Joel, wrenching it from its place, had flung it out into the clover.
It had not been there that morning, Persis knew.
She ran toward it with a conviction of calamity which only took
concrete form when she heard her brother's call issuing from the depths
of the earth.
"The well," she cried with self-accusing anguish. "The old well." But
when she stood by its edge and sent her voice ringing down into its
depth, it was steady and strong.
"I'm going for help, Joel. 'Twon't be much of any time now. Just a
little longer."
Mary and the children had never seen the Persis who came running toward
them. They shrank back from her stern presence, half afraid.
"Mary, take the children into the house and keep them there. Call up
the doctor and tell him to get here as quick as he can. And have that
coil of new rope that's in the shed ready for me by the time I'm back."
She had leaped into the machine while she was giving her orders. It
described a dizzy circle in the grass, shot down the driveway, and sped
screaming along the dusty road. Before the trembling Mary had had more
than time to discharge her commissions the car was back with half a
dozen strong men, harvesters from the farm just below, crowded into the
seats. And when Doctor Ballard turned his sweating horse up the drive
half an hour later, Joel and Celia were between hot blankets, and
stimulants had already stirred their sluggish blood.
It was eight o'clock before the doctor left. "I've got to see the
Packard boy, or I wouldn't go. I'll come back and stay the night
through."
Persis nodded. "I'd feel easier to have you in the house. There won't
be no need for you to lose your sleep. The spare room's all made up."
Some twenty minutes later Joel roused and spoke. His respiration was
hurried and articulation difficult.
"Persis--Celia?"
She understood the syncopated sentence.
"Celia's doing fine, the doctor thinks. She's got a little
temperature, but a child's likely to have fever for any little thing."
He waited some time before putting the next question, rallying his
strength for the ordeal of speech.
"Don't s'pose--'twould do for me--to see her?"
Persis looked at him with a curious tightening of the lips, in her eyes
an unaccustomed blending of tenderness and pride.
"You shall see her, if you want to, Joel. 'Tain't going to hurt
her--to speak of."
From the room across the hall she brought Celia, a chrysalid child,
sleeping heavily, closely wrapped in an old plaid shawl, and laid her
on Joel's bed. Celia's thatch of black hair fell untidily across the
pillow. The fever gave her olive skin an unwonted color. Joel made an
ineffectual effort to lift his arm. Then as he desisted, sighing, his
sister gently lifted his hand till it touched the hot fingers of the
sleeping child.
"They're--such little--things--Persis." His labored breath made speech
fragmentary. "It's funny, how--they fill up--all the room in--a man's
heart."
"Yes, I know, Joel. But I guess maybe you'd better not talk."
"Makes me think of--what the Good Book says, Persis. 'A little
child--'"
He did not finish the quotation. After Persis was sure that he was
asleep, she carried Celia back to her bed and renewed her watch. The
doctor came in about ten o'clock and stood for a little with his
fingers on his patient's pulse.
"You'd better not lose your sleep, Doctor," Persis suggested, glancing
at the weary young face. "You go into the spare room and I'll call you
if I need you."
"I'm not tired," the doctor answered. "I'd as soon sit here for a
while." But he did not meet her eye.
It was an hour later when the struggling breath lengthened into a sigh,
deep-drawn and profound, irresistibly suggestive of untold relief. The
doctor was at the bedside instantly, but after a moment he laid the
limp hand gently down and turned away.
Persis sank upon her knees, putting her hands over her face down which
the tears were streaming, those strange illogical tears which are
life's tribute to death, however it may come. Yet even while she wept,
phrases of thanksgiving sang melodiously through her brain and echoed
in her heart. For to this brother of hers it had been given to redeem
a life of weakness and failure by a single heroic sacrifice and to die
a man.