AN ESCAPED VICTIM.
IN the quiet of Harry's own room, his uncle having spent fifteen
minutes in silent and apparently puzzled thought, suddenly asked a
question:
"When did Louis go into town?"
"Several days ago. He has a way of disappearing suddenly, not giving
the family an idea of where he is going or when he expects to return,
and when he does get back he shows to any one who is not blind, that he
has been pretty low down."
"They expect him back to-morrow?"
"Why, as to that, they have been expecting him ever since he went away.
I heard Miss Alice say that he went unexpectedly, leaving word that he
should probably be back to dinner."
"Harry, my boy, I am almost inclined to think that I ought to start out
to-night, and try to look him up."
"To-night! Why, Uncle Harold, how could you? It would be midnight and
after before you could reach the city, and then where would you go? The
addresses that Miss Alice can give you must be respectable places, with
closed doors to-night."
"That is true," Mr. Chessney answered, after a thoughtful pause; "it
would be a wild kind of proceeding, apparently, with very little
excuse; and yet I am someway impressed that it is the thing to do."
Alas for the Christian world which believes in theory, that there is
a direct link between the seen and the unseen, by which the earnest
soul can be told in what way to walk, and, in practice, thinks it must
search out its own way! Mr. Chessney did not go out in search of his
friend. He did not even ask his Master whether it was his will that
the apparently "wild proceeding" should be attempted. He prayed, it is
true; and he prayed for Louis Ansted, but only in a general way; and
he retired to rest, saying within himself that directly after breakfast
he would go into town and see what he could do.
Before he was awake the next morning, the piazza of the little country
hotel, where he stopped, was filled with loungers who had something
unusual and exciting to talk about. There were a dozen different
stories, it is true; but out of them all the interested listener could
glean certain things which were painfully likely to be facts. There
had been a runaway--to that all parties agreed; and Louis Ansted had
been in the carriage, and had been thrown; but whether he was killed,
or only seriously hurt, or whether the horse had taken fright at the
approaching train, or whether the driver had attempted to cross the
railroad-track in the face of the train, or whether there had been
any train at all, authorities differed. It was still early when Harry
Matthews knocked at his uncle's door with the confused particles of
story.
"And you don't know whether he is living, or not?" asked the startled
uncle who was now making his toilet with all possible speed.
"No, I can't find out. Some of them say he was killed instantly, and
others have it that he was only stunned, and has revived. It may be
nothing but a scare. South Plains has so little excitement that it is
apt to make as much as it can out of everything. Uncle Harold, I can't
go up there and find out, for my train will be due in five minutes, and
I must be at the telegraph office, you know."
"Yes; I will be down in less than five minutes, and will go immediately
up there. I hope it is chiefly talk." Yet when he was left alone, he
said aloud and mournfully: "If I had only followed my impressions last
night!"
He had occasion to say it, or, at least, to think it often, in the days
which followed. South Plains had not exaggerated, this time. Louis
Ansted was not dead--at least, the heart was beating; but he lay a
bruised, unconscious heap among the snowy draperies of his bed--his
soiled and matted clothing, which as yet they had not dared remove,
telling to the practiced eye a story of more than a mere runaway. The
skillful doctor, who had already been summoned from the city, was
silent as well as skillful. He issued his orders in as few words as
possible, and kept his own counsel, until, left alone with Mr. Chessney
for a moment, in answer to the question, "What does this stupor mean?"
he shook his head.
"Hard to tell. It was on him before the accident, if that gives you any
light."
It gave him bitter light, and made him groan in spirit over the fact
that he had been tempted to go out in the night and hunt for his
friend, and had not gone.
Later in the day, bits of the facts came to him. Louis Ansted had been
alone; had hired a horse at the livery and started for home. "More
under the influence of liquor than usual, perhaps," the reluctant
hostler at the livery had admitted, "still, I thought he would get
through all right." For the rest, the silent lips on the bed told no
tales. He had been found, not very far from the railroad crossing,
lying under a tree, and the horse had made his way back to the stables.
Whether a train had frightened the animal, or whether being left to
himself while the driver sank into a drunken sleep had caused his
alarm, or how the accident had occurred, was left to conjecture.
His mother continually repeated the story--and succeeded in making
herself believe it--that a vicious horse had been given him, who
evidently became unmanageable at the sound of the locomotive; but some
of the listeners went out and said that there was no train passing
between the hours that the horse left the stables and returned there,
and the doctor shrugged his shoulders and said nothing.
Then followed one of those periods of waiting and watching which some
people know all about; the miseries of which can only be understood by
having to live them. The trip to the Rocky Mountains was indefinitely
postponed, and Harold Chessney, having made a journey to the city, and
rearranged his business, returned to take his place among the watchers.
He was fully roused now; so were all the friends of the sufferer; his
_body_ was in danger. It was not at all difficult to make his mother
understand this, and no means were left untried by which the frail
shell might possibly be rescued from impending ruin.
In this way passed weeks, while the soul of the injured man hovered
on the edge of another world. Gradually the excitement in the village
calmed down, and everywhere outside of that house on the hill every-day
life went on again. Mr. Chessney came and went, keeping a hand on his
business interests where he must, but keeping the most of his thoughts
and the most of his time waiting, in the hope that consciousness would
return once more to the wreck on the bed. There was one other who
watched and waited, too, though she could not now go to the house to
inquire. She could pray; and this she did. Sometimes it seemed to her
that every thought was a prayer for that periled soul. And often and
often she, too, had to think:
"What if I had been more anxious, and earnest, and constant, while the
body was comparatively in health--might not things possibly have been
different?"
It was in the middle of the night, and Mr. Chessney sat alone with the
sick man. There was nothing to do but wait, and he had prevailed upon
other weary watchers to rest, and let him take his turn. So there was
only himself to be startled by a low voice from one who had been for so
many weeks speechless: "Harold, is it you?"
Great was the rejoicing in the troubled home the next morning. Louis
was awake and conscious, knew them all, smiled feebly on his mother,
and watched hungrily every movement of Mr. Chessney.
The worst was over; he would gain rapidly now. So the mother said, with
eager voice and joyful eyes. Alice looked up questioningly when Mr.
Chessney remained silent and grave, and as soon as opportunity came,
asked her anxious question:
"Mr. Chessney, I can see that you do not share mamma's joy. Do you
think the indications unfavorable?"
"I don't know, Miss Ansted. I am not a physician, only a nurse, and I
hope I may be mistaken; but it is true that I am anxious."
And the doctor, when he came, expressed no surprise and no pleasure
over the change.
"But then he is so utterly unimpressible!" said the mother, "one might
almost as well have a marble statue for a physician."
Yet the statue worked faithfully and tirelessly, and, it must be
confessed, hopelessly. To Mr. Chessney he would talk occasionally; and
there came a day when that gentleman followed him out to the lawn.
"Doctor, what do you think?"
"That it is a charming morning."
"Doctor, is our patient gaining?"
"No."
"Is there hope that he will in time?"
"No."
"Do you mean that you have no hope of his recovery?"
"None at all; have not had from the first. Brains like his never
recover from such treatment as they have received."
"But, doctor, this is very sudden. Do you mean he will lie there
helpless for the rest of his life?"
"I don't think he will lie there three weeks longer, but he may; we are
not infallible. I shall have to hasten this morning. Young Marshall
came home in a drunken rage last night, and kicked his wife, and she is
going to die, I think. I don't know what we doctors would do if this
were not a free country, and liquor-sellers had not a right to kill
by inches all the people they choose. This victim over whom you are
watching is only one of many. That ought to comfort the friends, ought
it not? Good-morning."
"I haven't told them," said Mr. Chessney, two hours later, speaking
to Claire. He had come out to get a breath of the sweet morning air,
and to give Claire the news. During the weeks past, he had been very
thoughtful of her anxiety, and very careful that she should receive
daily bulletins. "I have not told them, but I must. Miss Benedict, this
is the hardest task a man ever has to do. How can I tell that mother
that she has robbed herself of her son? She has steadily thwarted for
two years every scheme that I devised to help him; and she did not know
what she was about, either, poor mother!"
"Did you ever try to tell her?"
"Yes, and failed, as you did. Alice told me of your effort. But I ought
to have tried again. I knew she was deceived. She thought me a fanatic,
and I could have told her of scenes that would have made one of her. I
shrank from it."
It was more than two weeks before she saw him again. During this time
she twice received little twisted slips of paper, brought to her by the
faithful Bud, and on them would be written a request that she would
pray for a soul in peril. One long letter, blistered with tears, Alice
wrote to her; the burden of it being the same; and this was all she
knew of what was passing in the house on the hill. She had not entered
it since that day when its mistress turned from her. Not that she would
not quickly have done so, had occasion arisen, but there seemed no need
to force herself on the poor mother.
"I shall never see him again," she told herself, sorrowfully, "and I
have seen him so many times when I might have tried to help him, and
did not!"
Then there came one brief, never-to-be-forgotten note, written
hurriedly by Mr. Chessney:
"I believe that Louis rests in the Everlasting Arms."
One Saturday morning she was summoned to the parlor to see Mr.
Chessney. He came forward quickly, with an anxious air, as of one
having a request to make which he feared might not be granted.
"I have come for you," he said. "Louis wants to see you. I have been
charged to bring you back with me, if possible. I wish I could save you
from this ordeal. Do you shrink from it very much?"
"No," she said with quiet gravity. "Only as one shrinks from seeing
errors that one is powerless to help. Why am I wanted, Mr. Chessney?
What can I do!"
"I do not know. Louis wants you. He wishes to see you and his mother
and his sister Alice together, and I shall have to add that he wants me
to be present. I tried to spare you all this last, but he grew excited
over it."
"I would quite as soon have you present," Claire said, with gentle
wonder. She did not understand why it was supposed to be a time of
special trial to her individually. If she could have heard Mrs.
Ansted's voice in confidential talk with Mr. Chessney, she would have
been enlightened.
"The girl is well enough, Mr. Chessney, and she has been of help to
some of the lower classes here during the winter. I have nothing
against her; on the contrary, I would like to shield her. The simple
fact is that she has become too deeply interested in my son. It is not
strange, I am sure, but it is sad; and that is why I do not wish Alice
to have her here at this time. As a mother, it is my duty to shield
the girl, though I must say she showed very little consideration for a
mother's feelings when she talked with me." All this, and much more,
which Mr. Chessney weighed, putting his nephew's views beside them, and
came to the conclusion that there was an attachment between the two
young people which had not been smiled upon by their elders.
Although Claire knew nothing of this, her appearance in the sick-room
was attended with sufficient embarrassment. Mrs. Ansted received her
with a sort of grave tolerance, as one who was humoring the whim of a
sick man, and doing violence to her own sense of propriety thereby. But
the change in Louis Ansted was so great, that, after the first moment,
it held Claire's thoughts, to the exclusion of all trivial things.
He held toward her a thin and trembling hand, as he said:
"It was good in you to come. I have changed a great deal since that
night you refused to ride with me, haven't I? Yes, I have changed since
then. Has Harold told you that I have found help at last?"
"He has told me wonderful and blessed news of you," Claire said, taking
the chair that Mr. Chessney brought to the bedside. "I do not need to
tell you how glad I was to hear it."
"No, you don't; that is true. You have given ample proof that nothing
which could happen to a friend of yours could rejoice you more. I
wish I had met you earlier; it would have made a difference, a great
difference in my life. I did not know that religion meant much of
anything. Harold, here, was of your mind, but he seemed exceptional--a
kind of fanatic; I could not keep within sight of him. The other people
whom I knew intimately, seemed to have very little to do with their
religion. I beg your pardon, mother, but that was the way it seemed to
me. There are different degrees, I suppose."
"Louis, you are talking too much," here interposed Mr. Chessney, as he
brought the medicine to administer; "your pulse is rising."
"Never mind, it won't hurt me. It is almost over now; you know that,
Chessney, as well as I do. And I have something to say, that for the
good of all parties concerned, must be said now. Mother, I want you
to know one thing: from words which you let fall yesterday, I have
discovered that you have a mistaken idea about one matter. I am going
to die, and I am glad of it. I have gone so far down hill, that to
climb back again, for one so awfully bruised as I am, would be hard,
very hard; perhaps the Lord sees that it would be impossible, and so
gives me this easy way. But, mother, before I go, I want to tell you
something which will remove from your mind a false impression. I saw
my danger some time ago, and struggled for a way of escape. It was a
weak way that I chose; God would not let me build on it. I fancied that
if I could have Claire Benedict for my wife, I could be a good and
true man. I implored her to help me in this way, and she utterly and
hopelessly refused.
"You know why I am telling you this, but she does not, and I ask her to
forgive me."