Old Abel Dunklee was delighted, and so was old Abel's wife, when little
Abel came. For this coming they had waited many years. God had
prospered them elsewise; this one supreme blessing only had been
withheld. Yet Abel had never despaired. "I shall some time have a
son," said he. "I shall call him Abel. He shall be rich; he shall
succeed to my business; my house, my factory, my lands, my
fortune,--all shall be his!" Abel Dunklee felt this to be a certainty,
and with this prospect constantly in mind he slaved and pinched and
bargained. So when at last the little one did come it was as heir to a
considerable property.
The joy in the house of Dunklee was not shared by the community at
large. Abel Dunklee was by no means a popular man. Folk had the
well-defined opinion that he was selfish, miserly, and hard. If he had
not been actually bad, he had never been what the world calls a good
man. His methods had been of the grinding, sordid order. He had
always been scrupulously honest in the payment of his debts, and in
keeping his word; but his sense of duty seemed to stop there: Abel's
idea of goodness was to owe no man any money. He never gave a penny to
charities, and he never spent any time sympathizing with the
misfortunes or distresses of other people. He was narrow, close,
selfish, and hard, so his neighbors and the community at large said,
and I shall not deny that the verdict was a just one.
When a little one comes into this world of ours, it is the impulse of
the people here to bid it welcome, and to make its lot pleasant. When
little Abel was born no such enthusiasm obtained outside the austere
Dunklee household. Popular sentiment found vent in an expression of
the hope that the son and heir would grow up to scatter the dollars
which old man Dunklee had accumulated by years of relentless avarice
and unflagging toil. But Dr. Hardy--he who had officiated in an
all-important capacity upon that momentous occasion in the Dunklee
household--Dr. Hardy shook his head wisely, and perhaps sadly, as if he
were saying to himself: "No, the child will never do either what the
old folk or what the other folk would have him do; he is not long for
here."
Had you questioned him closely, Dr. Hardy would have told you that
little Abel was as frail a babe as ever did battle for life. Dr. Hardy
would surely never have dared say that to old Dunklee; for in his
rapture in the coming of that little boy old Dunklee would have smote
the offender who presumed even to intimate that the babe was not the
most vigorous as well as the most beautiful creature upon earth. The
old man was simply assotted upon the child,--in a selfish way,
undoubtedly, but even this selfish love of that puny little child
showed that the old man was capable of somewhat better than his past
life had been. To hear him talk you might have fancied that Mrs.
Dunklee had no part or parcel or interest in their offspring. It was
always "my little boy,"--yes, old Abel Dunklee's money had a rival in
the old man's heart at last, and that rival was a helpless, shrunken,
sickly little babe.
Among his business associates Abel Dunklee was familiarly known as Old
Growly, for the reason that his voice was harsh and discordant, and
sounded for all the world like the hoarse growling of an ill-natured
bear. Abel was not a particularly irritable person, but his slavish
devotion to money-getting, his indifference to the amenities of life,
his entire neglect of the tender practices of humanity, his rough,
unkempt personality, and his deep, hoarse voice,--these things combined
to make that sobriquet of "Old Growly" an exceedingly appropriate one.
And presumably Abel never thought of resenting the slur implied therein
and thereby; he was too shrewd not to see that, however disrespectful
and evil-intentioned the phrase might be, it served him to good
purpose; for it conduced to that very general awe, not to say terror,
which kept people from bothering him with their charitable and
sentimental schemes.
Yes, I think we can accept it as a fact that Abel liked that sobriquet;
it meant more money in his pocket, and fewer demands upon his time and
patience.
But Old Growly abroad and Old Growly at home were two very different
people. Only the voice was the same. The homely, furrowed, wizened
face lighted up, and the keen, restless eyes lost their expression of
shrewdness, and the thin, bony hands that elsewhere clutched and
clutched and pinched and pinched for possession unlimbered themselves
in the presence of little Abel, and reached out their long fingers
yearningly and caressingly toward the little child. Then the hoarse
voice would growl a salutation that was full of tenderness, for it came
straight from the old man's heart; only, had you not known how much he
loved the child, you might have thought otherwise, for the old man's
voice was always hoarse and discordant, and that was why they called
him Old Growly. But what proved his love for that puny babe was the
fact that every afternoon, when he came home from the factory, Old
Growly brought his little boy a dime; and once, when the little fellow
had a fever on him from teething, Old Growly brought him a dollar!
Next day the tooth came through and the fever left him, but you could
not make the old man believe but what it was the dollar that did it
all. That was natural, perhaps; for his life had been spent in
grubbing for money, and he had not the soul to see that the best and
sweetest things in human life are not to be had by riches alone.
As the doctor had in one way and another intimated would be the case,
the child did not wax fat and vigorous. Although Old Growly did not
seem to see the truth, little Abel grew older only to become what the
doctor had foretold,--a cripple. A weakness of the spine was
developed, a malady that dwarfed the child's physical growth, giving to
his wee face a pinched, starved look, warping his emaciated body, and
enfeebling his puny limbs, while at the same time it quickened the
intellectual faculties to the degree of precocity. And so two and
three and four years went by, little Abel clinging to life with
pathetic heroism, and Old Growly loving that little cripple with all
the violence of his selfish nature. Never once did it occur to the
father that his child might die, that death's seal was already set upon
the misshapen little body; on the contrary, Old Growly's thoughts were
constantly of little Abel's famous future, of the great fortune he was
to fall heir to, of the prosperous business career he was to pursue, of
the influence he was to wield in the world,--of dollars, dollars,
dollars, millions of them which little Abel was some time to possess;
these were Old Growly's dreams, and he loved to dream them!
Meanwhile the world did well by the old man; despising him,
undoubtedly, for his avarice and selfishness, but constantly pouring
wealth, and more wealth, and even more wealth into his coffers. As for
the old man, he cared not for what the world thought or said, so long
as it paid tribute to him; he wrought on as of old, industriously,
shrewdly, hardly, but with this new purpose: to make his little boy
happy and great with riches.
Toys and picture-books were vanities in which Old Growly never
indulged; to have expended a farthing for chattels of that character
would have seemed to Old Growly like sinful extravagance. The few
playthings which little Abel had were such as his mother
surreptitiously bought; the old man believed that a child should be
imbued with a proper regard for the value of money from the very start,
so his presents were always cash in hand, and he bought a large tin
bank for little Abel, and taught the child how to put the copper and
silver pieces into it, and he labored diligently to impress upon the
child of how great benefit that same money would be to him by and by.
Just picture to yourself, if you can, that fond, foolish old man
seeking to teach this lesson to that wan-eyed, pinched-face little
cripple! But little Abel took it all very seriously, and was so apt a
pupil that Old Growly made great joy and was wont to rub his bony hands
gleefully and say to himself, "He has great genius,--this boy of
mine,--great genius for finance!"
But on a day, coming from his factory, Old Growly was stricken with
horror to find that during his absence from home a great change had
come upon his child. The doctor said it was simply the progress of the
disease; that it was a marvel that little Abel had already held out so
long; that from the moment of his birth the seal of death had been set
upon him in that cruel malady which had drawn his face and warped his
body and limbs. Then all at once Old Growly's eyes seemed to be opened
to the truth, and like a lightning flash it came to him that perhaps
his pleasant dreams which he had dreamed of his child's future could
never be realized. It was a bitter awakening, yet amid it all the old
man was full of hope, determination, and battle. He had little faith
in drugs and nursing and professional skill; he remembered that upon
previous occasions cures had been wrought by means of money; teeth had
been brought through, the pangs of colic beguiled, and numerous other
ailments to which infancy is heir had by the same specific been
baffled. So now Old Growly set about wooing his little boy from the
embrace of death,--sought to coax him back to health with money, and
the dimes became dollars, and the tin bank was like to burst of
fulness. But little Abel drooped and drooped, and he lost all interest
in other things, and he was content to lie, drooping-eyed and listless,
in his mother's arms all day. At last the little flame went out with
hardly so much as a flutter, and the hope of the house of Dunklee was
dissipated forever. But even in those last moments of the little
cripple's suffering the father struggled to call back the old look into
the fading eyes, and the old smile into the dear, white face. He
brought treasure from his vaults and held it up before those fading
eyes, and promised it all, all, all--everything he possessed, gold,
houses, lands--all he had he would give to that little child if that
little child would only live. But the fading eyes saw other things,
and the ears that were deaf to the old man's lamentations heard voices
that soothed the anguish of that last solemn hour. And so little Abel
knew the Mystery.
Then the old man crept away from that vestige of his love, and stood
alone in the night, and lifted up his face, and beat his bosom, and
moaned at the stars, asking over and over again why he had been so
bereaved. And while he agonized in this wise and cried there came to
him a voice,--a voice so small that none else could hear, a voice
seemingly from God; for from infinite space beyond those stars it sped
its instantaneous way to the old man's soul and lodged there.
"Abel, I have touched thy heart!"
And so, having come into the darkness of night, old Dunklee went back
into the light of day and found life beautiful; for the touch was in
his heart.
After that, Old Growly's way of dealing with the world changed. He had
always been an honest man, honest as the world goes. But now he was
somewhat better than honest; he was kind, considerate, merciful.
People saw and felt the change, and they knew why it was so. But the
pathetic part of it all was that Old Growly would never admit--no, not
even to himself--that he was the least changed from his old grinding,
hard self. The good deeds he did were not his own; they were his
little boy's,--at least so he said. And it was his whim when doing
some kind and tender thing to lay it to little Abel, of whom he always
spoke as if he were still living. His workmen, his neighbors, his
townsmen,--all alike felt the graciousness of the wondrous change, and
many, ah! many a lowly sufferer blessed that broken old man for succor
in little Abel's name. And the old man was indeed much broken: not
that he had parted with his shrewdness and acumen, for, as of old, his
every venture prospered; but in this particular his mind seemed
weakened; that, as I have said, he fancied his child lived, that he was
given to low muttering and incoherent mumblings, of which the burden
seemed to be that child of his, and that his greatest pleasure appeared
now to be watching other little ones at their play. In fact, so
changed was he from the Old Growly of former years, that, whereas he
had then been wholly indifferent to the presence of those little ones
upon earth, he now sought their company, and delighted to view their
innocent and mirthful play. And so, presently, the children, from
regarding him at first with distrust, came to confide in and love him,
and in due time the old man was known far and wide as Old Grampa
Growly, and he was pleased thereat. It was his wont to go every fair
day, of an afternoon, into a park hard by his dwelling, and mingle with
the crowd of little folk there; and when they were weary of their
sports they used to gather about him,--some even clambering upon his
knees,--and hear him tell his story, for he had only one story to tell,
and that was the story that lay next his heart,--the story ever and
forever beginning with, "Once ther' wuz a littl' boy." A very tender
little story it was, too, told very much more sweetly than I could ever
tell it; for it was of Old Grampa Growly's own little boy, and it came
from that heart in which the touch--the touch of God Himself--lay like
a priceless pearl.
So you must know that the last years of the old man's life made full
atonement for those that had gone before. People forgot that the old
man had ever been other than he was now, and of course the children
never knew otherwise. But as for himself, Old Grampa Growly grew
tenderer and tenderer, and his goodness became a household word, and he
was beloved of all. And to the very last he loved the little ones, and
shared their pleasures, and sympathized with them in their griefs, but
always repeating that same old story, beginning with "Once ther' wuz a
littl' boy."
The curious part of it was this: that while he implied by his
confidences to the children that his own little boy was dead, he never
made that admission to others. On the contrary, it was his wont, as I
have said, to speak of little Abel as if that child still lived, and,
humoring him in this conceit, it was the custom of the older ones to
speak always of that child as if he lived and were known and beloved of
all. In this custom the old man had great content and solace. For it
was his wish that all he gave to and did for charity's sake should be
known to come, not from him, but from Abel, his son, and this was his
express stipulation at all such times. I know whereof I speak, for I
was one of those to whom the old man came upon a time and said: "My
little boy--Abel, you know--will give me no peace till I do what he
requires. He has this sum of money which he has saved in his bank,
count it yourselves, it is $50,000, and he bids me give it to the
townsfolk for a hospital, one for little lame boys and girls. And I
have promised him--my little boy, Abel, you know--that I will give
$50,000 more. You shall have it when that hospital is built." Surely
enough, in eighteen months' time the old man handed us the rest of the
money, and when we told him that the place was to be called the Abel
Dunklee hospital he was sorely distressed, and shook his head, and
said: "No, no,--not _my_ name! Call it the _Little_ Abel hospital, for
little Abel--my boy, you know--has done it all."
The old man lived many years,--lived to hear tender voices bless him,
and to see pale faces brighten at the sound of his footfall. Yes, for
many years the quaint, shuffling figure moved about our streets, and
his hoarse but kindly voice--oh, very kindly now!--was heard repeating
to the children that pathetic old story of "Once ther' wuz a littl'
boy." And where the dear old feet trod the grass grew greenest, and
the sunbeams nestled. But at last there came a summons for the old
man,--a summons from away off yonder,--and the old man heard it and
went thither.
The doctor--himself hoary and stooping now--told me that toward the
last Old Grampa Growly sunk into a sort of sleep, or stupor, from which
they could not rouse him. For many hours he lay like one dead, but his
thin, creased face was very peaceful, and there was no pain. Children
tiptoed in with flowers, and some cried bitterly, while others--those
who were younger--whispered to one another: "Hush, let us make no
noise; Old Grampa Growly is sleeping."
At last the old man roused up. He had lain like one dead for many
hours, but now at last he seemed to wake of a sudden, and, seeing
children about him, perhaps he fancied himself in that pleasant park,
under the trees, where so very often he had told his one pathetic story
to those little ones. Leastwise he made a feeble motion as if he would
have them gather nearer, and, seeming to know his wish, the children
came closer to him. Those who were nearest heard him say with the
ineffable tenderness of old, "Once ther' wuz a littl' boy--"
And with those last sweet words upon his lips, and with the touch in
his heart, the old man went down into the Valley.