“COME in! I want to talk to you!” said Mrs. Aylett, beckoning Mabel into
her chamber, from the door of which she had hailed her. “Sit down, my
poor girl! You are white as a sheet with fatigue. I cannot see why you
should have been suffered to know anything about this very disagreeable
occurrence. And Emmeline has been telling me that Mrs. Sutton actually
let you go up into that Arctic room.”
“It was my choice. Aunt Rachel went along to carry the light and to
keep me company. She would have dissuaded me from the enterprise if she
could,” responded Mabel, sinking into the low, cushioned chair before
the fire, which the mistress of the luxurious apartment had just wheeled
forward for her, and confessing to herself, for the first time, that she
was chilly and very tired.
“But where were the servants, my dear? Surely you are not required, in
your brother's house, to perform such menial services as taking food and
medicine to a sick vagrant.”
“Winston had forbidden them to go near the room. I wish I had gone up
earlier. I might have been the means of saving a life which, however
worthless it may seem to us, must be of value to some one.”
“Is he so far gone?”
The inquiry was hoarsely whispered, and the speaker leaned back in her
fauteuil, a spark of fierce eagerness in her dilated eyes, Mabel, in
her own anxiety, did not consider overstrained solicitude in behalf of
a disreputable stranger. She had more sympathy with it than with the
relapse into apparent nonchalance that succeeded her repetition of the
doctor's report.
“He does not think the unfortunate wretch will revive, even temporarily,
then?” commented the lady, conventionally compassionate, playing with
her ringed fingers, turning her diamond solitaire in various directions
to catch the firelight. “How unlucky he should have strayed upon our
grounds! Was he on his way to the village?”
“Who can say? Not he, assuredly. He has not spoken a coherent word. Dr.
Ritchie thinks he will never be conscious again.”
“I am afraid the event will mar our holiday gayeties to some extent,
stranger though he is!” deplored the hostess. “Some people are
superstitious about such things. His must have been the spectral visage
I saw at the window. I was sure it was that of a white man although
Winston tried, to persuade me to the contrary.”
“It is dreadful!” ejaculated Mabel energetically. “He, poor homeless
wayfarer, perishing with cold and want in the very light of our
summer-like rooms; getting his only glimpse of the fires that would have
brought back vitality to his freezing body through closed windows! Then
to be hunted down by dogs, and locked up by more unfeeling men, as if
he were a ravenous beast, instead of a suffering fellow-mortal! I
shall always feel as if I were, in some measure, chargeable with his
death--should he die. Heaven forgive us our selfish thoughtlessness, our
criminal disregard of our brother's life!”
“I understood you to say there was no hope!” interrupted Mrs. Aylett.
“So Dr. Ritchie declares. But I cannot bear to believe it!”
She pressed her fingers upon her eyeballs as if she would exclude some
horrid vision.
“My dear sister! your nerves have been cruelly tried. To-morrow, you
will see this matter--and everything else--through a different medium.
As for the object of your amiable pity, he is, without doubt, some low,
dissipated creature, of whom the world will be well rid.”
“I am not certain of that. There are traces of something like refinement
and gentle breeding about him in all his squalor and unconsciousness.
I noticed his hands particularly. They are slender and long, and his
features in youth and health must have been handsome. Dr. Ritchie
thought the same. Who can tell that his wife is not mourning his
absence to-night, as the fondest woman under this roof would regret
her husband's disappearance? And she may never learn when and how he
died--never visit his grave!”
“I have lived in this wicked world longer than you have, my sweet Mabel;
so you must not quarrel with me if these fancy pictures do not move me
as they do your guileless heart,” said Mrs. Aylett, the sinister shadow
of a mocking smile playing about her mouth. “Nor must you be offended
with me for suggesting as a pendant to your crayon sketch of widowhood
and desolation the probability that the decease of a drunken thief or
beggar cannot be a serious bereavement, even to his nearest of kin.
Women who are beaten and trampled under foot by those who should be
their comfort and protection are generally relieved when they take to
vagrancy as a profession. It may be that this man's wife, if she were
cognizant of his condition, would not lift a finger, or take a step to
prolong his life for one hour. Such things have been.”
“More shame to human nature that they have!” was the impetuous
rejoinder. “In every true woman's heart there must be tender memories of
buried loves, let their death have been natural or violent.”
“So says your gentler nature. There are women--and I believe they are in
the majority in this crooked lower sphere--in whose hearts the monument
to departed affection--when love is indeed no more--is a hatred that
can never die. But we have wandered an immense distance from the unlucky
chicken-thief or burglar overhead. Dr. Ritchie's sudden and ostentatious
attack of philanthropy will hardly beguile him into watching over his
charge--a guardian angel in dress-coat and white silk neck-tie--until
morning?”
“Mammy is to relieve him so soon as he is convinced that human skill can
do nothing for his relief,” said Mabel very gravely.
Her sister-in-law's high spirits and jocular tone jarred upon her
most disagreeably, but she tried to bear in mind in what dissimilar
circumstances they had passed the last hour. If Clara appeared
unfeeling, and her remarks were distinguished by less taste than was
customary in one so thoroughly bred, it was because the exhilaration
of the evening was yet upon her, and she had not seen the death's-head
prone upon the pillows in the cheerless attic. Thoughts of poverty and
dying beds were unseemly in this apartment when the very warmth and
fragrance of the air told of fostering and sheltering love. The heavy
curtains did not sway in the blast that hurled its whole fury against
the windows; the furniture was handsome, and in perfect harmony with the
dark, yet glowing hues of the carpet, and with the tinted walls. A tall
dressing mirror let into a recess reflected the picture, brilliant with
firelight that colored the shadows themselves; lengthened into a deep
perspective the apparent extent of the chamber and showed, like a fine
old painting, the central figure in the vista.
Mrs. Aylett had exchanged her evening dress for a cashmere wrapper, the
dark-blue ground of which was enlivened by a Grecian pattern of gold
and scarlet; her unbound hair draped her shoulders, and framed her arch
face, as she threaded the bronze ripples with her fingers. She looked
contented, restful, complacent in herself and her belongings--one whom
Time had touched lovingly as he swept by, and whom sorrow had forgotten.
“Not asleep yet!” was her husband's exclamation, entering before
anything further passed between the two women; and when his sister
started up, with an apology for being found there at so late an hour,
he added, more reproachfully than he ever spoke to his wife, “You
should not have kept her up, Mabel! Her strength has been too much taxed
already to-night. I hoped and believed that she had been in bed and
asleep for an hour.”
“Don't blame her!” said Mrs. Aylett, hastily. “I called her in as she
was proceeding to bed in the most decorous manner possible. I may as
well own the truth of my weakness. I was nervously wakeful--the effect,
in part, of the ultra-strong coffee Dr. Ritchie advised me to drink
at supper-tine--in part, of the silly sensation I got up to terrify my
friends. So I maneuvered to secure a fireside companion until you should
have dispatched your cigar. Gossip is as pleasant a sedative to ladies
as is a prime Havana to their lords.”
“And what is the latest morceau?” inquired Mr Aylett, indulgently, when
Mabel had gone.
He was standing by his wife's chair, and she leaned her head against
him, her bright eyes uplifted to his, her hair falling in a long,
burnished fringe over his arm--a fond, sparkling siren, whom no man,
with living blood in his veins, could help stooping to kiss before her
lips had shaped a reply.
“You wouldn't think it an appetizing morsel! But I listened with
interest to our unsophisticated Mabel's account of her Quixotic
expedition to what will, I foresee, be the haunted chamber of Ridgeley
in the next generation. Her penchant for adventure has, I suspect,
embellished her portrait of the hapless house-breaker.”
“A common-looking tramp!” returned Winston, disdainfully. “As villanous
a dog in physiognomy and dress as I ever saw! Such an one as generally
draws his last breath where he drew the first--in a ditch or jail;
and too seldom, for the peace and safety of society, finds his noblest
earthly elevation upon a gallows. It is a nuisance, though, having him
pay this trifling debt of Nature--nobody but Nature would trust him--in
my house. There must be an inquest and a commotion. The whole thing is
an insufferable bore. Ritchie has given him up, and gone to bed, leaving
old Phillis on the watch, with unlimited rations of whiskey, and a pile
of fire-wood higher than herself. But I did not mean that you should
hear anything about this dirty business. It is not fit for my darling's
ears. Mabel showed even less than her usual discretion in detailing the
incidents of her adventure to you.”
Flattery of his sister had never been a failing with him, but, since his
marriage, the occasions were manifold in which her inferiority to his
wife was so glaring as to elicit a verbal expression of disapproval. It
was remarkable that Clara's advocacy of Mabel's cause, at these times,
so frequently failed to alter his purpose of censure or to mitigate it,
since, in all other respects, her influence over him was more firmly
established each day and hour.
Old Phillis, Mabel's nurse and the doctress of the plantation--albeit
a less zealous devotee than her master had intimated of the potent
beverages left within her reach, ostensibly for the use of her patient
should he revive sufficiently to swallow a few drops--was yet too drowsy
from the fatigues of the day, sundry cups of Christmas egg-nogg, and the
obesity of age, to maintain alert vigil over one she, in common with her
fellow-servitors, scorned as an aggravated specimen of the always and
ever-to-be despicable genus, “poor white folks.” There was next to
nothing for her to do when the fire had been replenished, the bottles
of hot water renewed at the feet and heart, and fresh mustard draughts
wound about the almost pulseless limbs of the dying stranger. She did
contrive to keep Somnus at arm's length for a while longer, by a minute
examination of his upper clothing, which, by Dr. Ritchie's directions,
had been removed, that the remedies might be more conveniently applied,
and the heated blankets the sooner infuse a vital glow through the
storm-beaten frame. The ancient crone took them up with the tips of
her fingers--ragged coat, vest, and pantaloons--rummaged in the same
contemptuous fashion every pocket, and kicked over the worn, soaked
boots with the toe of her leather brogan, sniffing her disappointment at
the worthlessness of the habiliments and the result of her search.
“Fit fur nothin' but to bury his poor carcuss in!” she grunted, and
had recourse to her own plethoric pocket for a clay pipe and a bag of
tobacco.
This lighted by a coal from the hearth, she tied a second handkerchief
over that she wore, turban-wise, on her head, mumbling something about
“cold ears” and “rheumatiz;” settled herself in a rush-bottomed chair,
put her feet upon the rounds of another, and was regularly on duty,
prepared for any emergency, and to be alarmed at nothing that might
occur.
So strict was the discipline she established over herself in fifteen
minutes, that she did not stir at the creaking of the bolt, or the
shriller warning of the unoiled hinges, as the door moved cautiously
back, and a cloaked form became dimly visible in the opening. A survey
of the inside of the chamber, the unmoving nurse and her senseless
charge, with the fumes of brandy and tobacco, reassured the visitant.
Her stockingless feet were thrust into wadded slippers; over her white
night-dress was a dark-blue wrapper, and, in addition to this protection
against the cold, she was enveloped in a great shawl, disposed like a
cowl about her head. Without rustle or incautious mis-step she gained
the side of the improvised bed, and leaned over it. The face of the
occupant was turned slightly toward the left shoulder, and away from
the light. The apparition raised herself, with a gesture of impatience,
caught the candle from the rickety table at the head of the mattress,
snuffed it hurriedly, and again stooped toward the recumbent figure,
with it in her hand.
It was then that the vigilant watcher unclosed her flabby lids, slowly,
and without start or exclamation, much as a dozing cat blinks when a
redder sparkle from the fire dazzles her out of dreams. One hard wink,
one bewildered stare, and Phillis was awake and wary. Her chin sank yet
lower upon her chest, but the black eyes were rolled upward until they
bore directly upon the strange tableau. The shawl had dropped from the
lady's head, and the candle shone broadly upon her features, as upon the
sick man's profile. Apparently dissatisfied with this view, she slipped
her disengaged hand under the cheek which was downward, and drew his
face around into full sight.
“And bless your soul, honey!” Aunt Phillis told her young mistress, long
afterward, “you never see sech a look as was on hern--while her eyes
was thar bright and big, they was jist like live coals sot in a lump of
dough--she growed so white!”
Nevertheless the spy could return the candle to its place upon the
table without perceptible tremor of lip or limb, and after bestowing one
scrutinizing glance upon the nurse, who was fast asleep beneath it, she
went to the heap of damp clothing. These she lifted--one by one--less
gingerly than Phillis had done, and ransacked every likely hiding-place
of papers or valuables, going through the operation with a rapid
dexterity that astounded the old woman's weak mind, and made her ashamed
of her own clumsiness. Anticipating the final stealthy look in her
direction, the heavy lids fell once again, and were not raised until the
rusty bolt passed gratingly into the socket, and she felt that the place
was deserted by all save herself and the dying stroller.
She was in no danger of dozing upon her post after this visitation. For
the few hours of darkness that yet remained, she sat in her chair,
her elbows upon her knees, smoking, and pondering upon what she had
witnessed, varying her occupations by feeding the fire and such care
of the patient as she considered advisable; likening, in her rude,
yet excitable imagination, the rumbling of the gale in the chimney and
across the roof-tree, to the roll of the chariot-wheels which were to
carry away the parting soul; the tap and rattle of sleet and wind at the
windows to the summons of demons, impatient at Death's delay.
“The Lord send him an easy death, and let him go up, instead of down!”
she groaned aloud, once.
But the dubious shake of the head accompanying the benevolent petition
betokened her disbelief in the possibility of a favorable reply. In
her articles of faith it was only by a miracle that a “no-account white
man,” picked up out of the highway, and whose pockets were barren as
were those she had examined, could get an impetus in that direction.
The stormy dawn was revealing, with dreary distinctness, the shabby
disorder of the lumber-room, when Dr. Ritchie appeared in his
dressing-gown, rubbing his eyes, and yawning audibly.
“Gone--hey?” was his comment upon the negress' movements.
She had bound a strip of linen about the lank jaws; combed back the
grizzled hair from the forehead into sleek respectability; crossed the
hands at the wrists, as only dead hands are ever laid; straightened the
limbs, and was in the act of spreading a clean sheet over her finished
work.
“Nigh upon an hour since, sir,” she responded, respectfully.
“He did not revive at all after I left him?”
“Not a breath or a motion, sir. He went off at the last jist as easy as
a lamb. Never tried to say nothin', nor opened his eyes after you went
down. 'Twould a' been a pity ef you had a' lost more sleep a-settin' up
with him. Ah, well, poor soul! 'taint for us to say whar he is now. I
would hope he is in glory, ef I could. I 'spose the Almighty knows, and
that's enough.”
The doctor arrested her hand when she would have covered the face.
“He must have been a fine-looking fellow in his day!” he said, more to
himself than to her. “But he has lived fast, burned himself up alive
with liquor.”
“I didn't call nobody, sir, to help me, 'cause nobody couldn't do no
good, and I was afeared of wakin' the gentlemen and ladies, a trottin'
up and downstairs,” continued Phillis, bent upon exculpating herself
from all blame in the affair, and mistaking his momentary pensiveness
for displeasure.
“You were quite right, old lady! All the doctors and medicines in the
world could not have pulled him through after the drink and the snow had
had their way with him for so many hours--poor devil! Well! I'll go back
to bed now, and finish my morning nap.”
He was at the threshold when he bethought himself of a final injunction.
“You had better keep an eye upon these things, Aunty!” pointing to the
coat and other garments she had ranged upon chairs to dry in front of
the fire. “There will be a coroner's inquest, I suppose, and there
may be papers in his pockets which will tell who he was and where he
belonged. When you are through in here, lock the door and take out the
key--and if you can help it, don't let a whisper of this get abroad
before breakfast. It will spoil the ladies' appetites. If anybody asks
how he is, say 'a little better.' He can't be worse off than he was in
life, let him be where he may.”
“Yes, sir,” answered Phillis, in meek obedience. “But I don't think he
was the kind his folks would care to keep track on, nor the sort that
carries valeyble papers 'round with 'em.”
“I reckon you are not far out of the way there!” laughed the doctor,
subduedly, lest the echo in the empty hall might reach the sleepers on
the second floor, and he ran lightly down the garret steps.
The inquest sat that afternoon. It was a leisure season with planters,
and a jury was easily collected by special messengers--twelve jolly
neighbors, who were not averse to the prospect of a glass of Mrs.
Sutton's famous egg-nogg, and a social smoke around the fire in the
great dining-room, even though these were prefaced by ten minutes'
solemn discussion over the remains of the nameless wayfarer.
His shirt was marked with some illegible characters, done in faded ink,
which four of the jury spelled out as “James Knowlton,” three others
made up into “Jonas Lamson,” and the remaining five declined deciphering
at all. Upon one sock were the letters “R. M.” upon the fellow, “G. B.”
With these unavailable exceptions, there was literally no clue to
his name, profession, or residence, to be gathered from his person or
apparel. The intelligent jury brought in a unanimous verdict--“Name
unknown. Died from the effects of drink and exposure;” the foreman
pulled the sheet again over the blank, chalky face, and the shivering
dozen wound their way to the warmer regions, where the expected
confection awaited them.
Their decorous carousal was at its height, and the ladies, one and all,
had sought their respective rooms to recuperate their wearied energies
by a loll, if not a siesta, that they might be in trim for the evening's
enjoyment (Christmas lasted a whole week at Ridgeley) when four
strapping field hands, barefooted, that their tramp might not break the
epicurean slumbers, brought down from the desolate upper chamber a rough
pine coffin, manufactured and screwed tight by the plantation carpenter,
and after halting a minute in the back porch to pull on their boots,
took their way across the lawn and fields to the servants' burial-place.
This was in a pine grove, two furlongs or more from the garden fence,
forming the lower enclosure of the mansion grounds. The intervening dell
was knee-deep in drifted snow, the hillside bare in spots, and ridged
high in others, where the wind-currents had swirled from base to summit.
The passage was a toilsome one, and the stalwart bearers halted several
times to shift their light burden before they laid it down upon the
mound of mixed snow and red clay at the mouth of the grave. Half-a-dozen
others were waiting there to assist in the interment, and at the head
of the pit stood a white-headed negro, shaking with palsy and cold--the
colored chaplain of the region, who, more out of custom and superstition
than a sense of religious responsibility--least of all motives, through
respect for the dead--had braved the inclement weather to say a prayer
over the wanderer's last home.
The storm had abated at noon, and the snow no longer fell, but there
had been no sunshine through all the gloomy day, and the clouds were
now mustering thickly again to battle, while the rising gale in the
pine-tops was hoarse and wrathful. Far as the eye could reach were
untrodden fields of snow; gently-rolling hills, studded with shrubs and
tinged in patches by russet bristles of broom-straw; the river swollen
into blackness between the white banks, and the dark horizon of forest
seeming to uphold the gray firmament. To the right of the spectator, who
stood on the eminence occupied by the cemetery, lay Ridgeley, with its
environing outhouses, crowning the most ambitious height of the chain,
the smoke from its chimneys and those of the village of cabins beating
laboriously upward, to be borne down at last by the lowering mass of
chilled vapor.
The coffin was deposited in its place with scant show of reverence, and
without removing their hats, the bystanders leaned on their spades, and
looked to the preacher for the ceremony that was to authorize them to
hurry through with their distasteful task. That the gloom of the hour
and scene, and the utter forlornness of all the accompaniments of what
was meant for Christian burial, had stamped themselves upon the mind and
heart of the unlettered slave, was evident from the brief sentences he
quavered out--joining his withered hands and raising his bleared eyes
toward the threatening heavens:
“Lord! what is man, that thou art mindful of him! For that which
befalleth man befalleth beasts--even one thing befalleth them. All go
unto one place; all are of the dust, and all turn to dust again. Who
knoweth the spirit of man that goeth upward, and the spirit of the
beast that goeth downward to the earth? Man cometh in with vanity and
departeth in darkness, and his name shall be covered with darkness. The
dead know not anything, for the memory of them is forgotten. Also their
love, and their hatred, and their envy is now perished, neither have
they a portion for ever in anything that is done under the sun.
“Lord! teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto
wisdom. Oh, spare ME, that I may recover strength, ere I go hence and be
no more!
“In the name of the FATHER, SON, and HOLY GHOST--dust to dust, and ashes
to ashes! Amen!”
“By the way, Mr. Aylett, the poor wretch up-stairs should be buried at
the expense of the county,” remarked the coroner, before taking leave
of Ridgeley and the egg-nogg bowl. “I will take the poor-house on my
way home, and tell the overseer to send a coffin and a cart over in
the morning. You don't care to have the corpse in the house longer than
necessary, I take it? The sooner he is in the Potter's Field, the more
agreeable for you and everybody else.”
Mr. Aylett pointed through the back window at the winding path across
the fields.
A short line of black dots was seen coming along it, in the direction of
the house. As they neared it they were discovered to be men, each with a
hoe or shovel upon his shoulder.
“The deed is done!” said the master, smiling. “My good fellows there
have spared the county the expense, and the overseer the trouble of
this little matter. As for the Potter's Field, a place in my servants'
burying-ground is quite as respectable, and more convenient in this
weather.”
The jurors were grouped about the fire in the baronial hall, buttoning
up overcoats and splatterdashes, and drawing on their riding-gloves, all
having come on horseback. In the midst of the general bepraisement of
their host's gentlemanly and liberal conduct, Mrs. Aylett swam down
the staircase, resplendent in silver-gray satin, pearl necklace and
bracelets, orange flowers and camelias in her hair--semi-bridal attire,
that became her as nothing else ever had done.
“My dear madam,” said the foreman of the inquest--a courtly disciple
of the old school of manner, and phraseology--as the august body of
freeholders parted to either side to leave her a passage-way to the
fireplace--“your husband is a happy man, and his wife should be a happy
woman in having won the affection of such a model of chivalry”--stating
succinctly the late proof the “model” had offered to an admiring world
of his chivalric principles.
The delicate hand stole to its resting-place upon her lord's arm, as the
lady answered, her ingenuous eyes suffused with the emotion that gave
but the more sweetness to her smile.
“I AM a happy woman, Mr. Nelson! I think there is not a prouder or more
blessed wife in all the land than I am this evening.”
Laugh, jest, and dance ruled the fleeting hours in the halls of the
old country-house that night, and the presiding genius of the revel
was still the beautiful hostess--never more beautiful, never so winning
before. No one noticed that, by her orders, or her husband's, the window
through which she had beheld the goblin visage was closely curtained.
Or, this may have been an accidental disposition of the drapery, since
no trace of her momentary alarm remained in her countenance or demeanor.
In the kitchen a double allowance of toddy was served out, by their
master's orders, to the men who had taken part in the interment on the
hill-top. And, in their noisy talk over their potations the vagrant was
scarcely mentioned.
Only the pines, hoarser in their sough, by reason of the falling snow
that clogged their boughs, chanted a requiem above the rough hillock at
their feet.
“Man cometh in with vanity, and departeth in darkness, and his name is
covered with darkness!”