THE CUP OF COLD WATER
In August of that same summer, Hiram Gilcrest, the man of strong nerve
and iron constitution, whose boast it had been that he had never known
a day's real sickness, was stricken down with disease, and after a few
days of wasting illness, he was muttering in the delirium of typhus
fever.
He had never forgiven his daughter and her husband their runaway
marriage. True, since the partial reconciliation of five years before,
which had removed the ban of total non-communication between the two
households, Betsy had occasionally visited her mother; but always, when
at Oaklands, her father's manner, cold, distant, formal, had made her
feel that not as a child of the house, nor even as an honored guest,
but merely as a stranger, would she ever again be received in the home
of her childhood. This was a great sorrow to her, the one dark cloud in
the otherwise serene sky of her married happiness; and Logan, although
he cared little on his own account for the cold looks and haughty
demeanor of his father-in-law, loved his young wife too tenderly not to
sorrow at her sorrow.
Now that Major Gilcrest was ill, however, Abner and Betty forgot all
his harsh injustice, and hurried to the bedside where he lay battling
for life against the fire that filled his veins, sapped his strength
and consumed his flesh. Mason Rogers, too, although he and Gilcrest had
not spoken to each other since their stormy interview eight years
before, now hearing of his old friend's illness, forgot all harsh words
and thoughts, and hurried to Oaklands to offer assistance. Of
Gilcrest's six children, only Betsy and Matthew, the first-born and the
youngest, were there. Silas and Philip were in Massachusetts, students
at Cambridge; John Calvin and Martin Luther, who had been among the
first of those brave Kentucky volunteers to march to the defense of the
territory of Indiana against the depredations of Tecumseh and the
Prophet, were now with General Harrison at Vincennes.
During the day, Betsy, who had left her three little children in the
charge of the negress Marthy, shared with Aunt Dilsey the care of the
sick man; and during the night watch Abner was his most constant
attendant. Although Gilcrest was too delirious to recognize any one, it
soon came to pass that no one else could influence him as could his
once despised son-in-law; for poor Mrs. Gilcrest could not bear the
sight of her husband's sufferings, and was hardly ever allowed to enter
the room.
All that the medical erudition of the time prescribed was done for the
patient. He was bled twice a week, and smothered in blankets; he was
poulticed and plastered, blistered and fomented; he was dosed with
concoctions of fever-wort, boneset, burdock, pokeberry, mullein root,
and other medicaments bitter of taste and vile of smell; and kept hot,
weak, and miserable generally. Our forbears are represented to this
generation as a brave, vigorous and healthy race; and no wonder, for
disease in that heroic age was simply a question of the "survival of
the fittest;" and the stringent remedies prescribed under the old
dispensation were well calculated to eliminate all but the strongest
members of the race.
August and September passed, and still the master of Oaklands lay
helpless, while fever raged in his gaunt frame with unrelenting
violence. One thing was constantly denied him, fresh, cold water;
although he pleaded with such pitiful agony that his nurses wept when
they refused him. In delirium he talked of the old spring at his
far-away childhood home--of the babbling music of the water as it
sparkled over its pebbly bed and trickled down the rocky hillside--and
again and again he pleaded for one draught of its reviving freshness.
"Water! water!" was the burden of his plaint from morn till night, and
from night till morn; and when too weak to speak, his hollow, bloodshot
eyes still begged for water.
Finally he was given up to die. "He can not last through the night,"
was the verdict of the two physicians to the mourning ones around the
bedside. His fainting wife was carried from the room; and his daughter,
not able to endure the sight of his dying agonies, allowed her husband
to lead her to her old room, where she threw herself across her bed in
a paroxysm of grief. "Oh, father, father, my poor, dear old father!"
she wailed, "if only you could speak to me again before you die, and
tell me that you forgive me and love me. And my brothers, so far away!
Oh, if you could be with us in this dark hour! It is so hard, so hard!"
The doctors had left. Aunt Dilsey was upstairs in attendance upon her
stricken mistress. The night wore on, and when the gray dawn was just
beginning to creep into the chamber where Hiram Gilcrest lay
unconscious and scarcely breathing, Mason Rogers and John Trabue, worn
out with their long night's vigil, stole into an adjoining room to
snatch an hour's rest. Only Abner Logan and William Bledsoe were left
in attendance upon the dying man. Presently he opened his eyes and
fixed his gaze on Abner.
"Do you know me, Mr. Gilcrest?" asked Logan, tenderly touching the
shrunken, parched hands.
"Water! water!" was the reply; "for God's sake give me water! Have
mercy, and let me have one drop before I die!"
"You shall have it, sir," said Abner, his eyes filling. Then, to a
negro boy who was just entering the room, he cried, "Run quickly to the
spring-house, and fetch a bucket of water."
"Are you not rash, Logan?" whispered Bledsoe. "You know the doctors
have all along forbidden that."
"But they have pronounced him dying; in any case the water can make no
difference, and I can not resist his plea any longer."
The water was brought, and Abner gave the sick man one sip, which was
all he would take. To his fever-parched palate the water tasted a vile
draught; and he turned from it in loathing and despair. With a tiny mop
Logan then moistened the parched mouth with a solution of slippery elm.
Presently the moan for water was again uttered, and now the fevered
palate at last began to feel its coolness. With unnatural strength he
seized the gourd, and drained its contents. "Bless you, my boy!" he
exclaimed faintly; then fell back on his pillow exhausted, and dropped
immediately into a deep sleep.
"He's gone!" exclaimed Bledsoe, as he saw the perspiration gathering
upon his brow. "He will never wake from this stupor," and again the
sorrowing family were summoned. The solemnity of death reigned in the
chamber, where the watchers restrained their weeping, and waited in
awe-struck silence the approach of man's last grim foe.
"He may live," Abner said at last as the moments passed and Gilcrest
breathed on in quiet slumber.
"If he does," responded Bledsoe, "that water will have saved him."
Gilcrest slept on. Dawn gave place to full day, morning glided into
afternoon. Late in the evening he awoke of his own accord, weak as a
new-born babe, but with the fever gone and the light of reason once
more in his sunken eyes.
During the long weeks of convalescence that followed, while his body
was slowly regaining vigor, his heart, too, was gradually expanding
into a new spiritual life. He had ample time for reflection as he sat
propped with pillows in the cushioned chair in his quiet room; and in
those long hours of solitude and feeble helplessness, he first began to
feel the need of a religion more healing and cheering than that which
showed God only as an avenger, stern, partial and dictatorial.
Gradually, and as naturally as a plant turns to the sun, his mind
turned to that all-loving Father who, being "touched with a feeling for
our infirmities," ever tempers his righteous judgments with tenderest
mercy, and is ever yearning to deliver all from the penalty of sin.