After he had made his confession, a restless and feverish night he had
of it, often springing up from his troubled dreams and calling to her
in the darkness. But the next morning he insisted upon getting up for a
while.
Towards the afternoon he grew worse again, and took to his bed, the
yellow head tossing to and fro, the eyes bright and restless, and his
face burning. At length he looked up and said to his mother, in the
manner of one who forms a difficult resolution: "Send for the parson.
Tell him I am sick and want to see him."
It was this summons that the widow Spurlock had delivered on the Sunday
afternoon when the parson had quitted the house with such a cry of
distress. He had not so much as thought of the boy since the Friday
morning previous.
[Illustration]
"How is it possible," he exclaimed, as he hurried on--"how is it
_possible_ that I _could_ have forgotten _him?_"
The boy's mother met him outside the house and drew him into an
adjoining room, silently, for her tears were falling. He sank into the
first chair.
"Is he so ill?" he asked, under his trembling breath.
"I'm afraid he's going to be very ill. And to see him in so much
trouble--"
"What is the matter? In God's name, has anything happened to him?"
She turned her face away to hide her grief. "He said he would tell you
himself. Oh, if I've been too hard with him! But I did it for the best.
I didn't know until the doctor came that he was going to be ill, or I
would have waited. Do anything you can to quiet him--anything he should
ask you to do," she implored, and pointed towards the door of the room
in which the boy lay.
Conscience-stricken and speechless, the parson opened it and entered.
The small white bed stood against the wall beneath an open window, and
one bright-headed sunflower, growing against the house outside, leaned
in and fixed its kind face anxiously upon the sufferer's.
The figure of the boy was stretched along the edge of the bed, his
cheek on one hand and his eyes turned steadfastly towards the middle of
the room, where, on a table, the violin lay exposed to view.
He looked quickly towards the door as the parson entered, and an
expression of relief passed over his face.
"Why, David," said the parson, chidingly, and crossing to the bed
with a bright smile. "Sick? This will never do;" and he sat down,
imprisoning one of the burning palms in his own.
The boy said nothing, but looked at him searchingly, as though needing
to lay aside masks and disguises and penetrate at once to the bottom
truth. Then he asked, "Are you mad at me?"
"My poor boy!" said the parson, his lips trembling a little as he
tightened his pressure--"my poor boy! why should _I_ be mad at _you_?"
"You never could do anything with me."
"Never mind that now," said the parson, soothingly, but adding, with
bitterness, "it was all my fault--all my fault."
"It wasn't your fault," said the boy. "It was mine."
A change had come over him in his treatment of the parson. Shyness had
disappeared, as is apt to be the case with the sick.
"I want to ask you something," he added, confidentially.
"Anything--anything! Ask me anything!"
"Do you remember the wax figures?"
"Oh yes, I remember them very well," said the parson, quickly, uneasily.
"I wanted to see 'em, and I didn't have any money, and I stole a
quarter from Mr. Leuba."
Despite himself a cry escaped the parson's lips, and dropping the boy's
hand, he started from his chair and walked rapidly to and fro across
the room, with the fangs of remorse fixed deep in his conscience.
"Why didn't you come to me?" he asked at length, in a tone of helpless
entreaty. "Why didn't you come to me? Oh, if you had only come to me!"
"I did come to you," replied the boy.
"When?" asked the parson, coming back to the bedside.
"About three o'clock yesterday."
About three o'clock yesterday! And what was he doing at that time? He
bent his head over to his very knees, hiding his face in his hands.
[Illustration: Woman sitting beside child in bed]
"But why didn't you let me know it? Why didn't you come in?"
"Mrs. Spurlock told me you were at work on a sermon."
"God forgive me!" murmured the parson, with a groan.
"I thought you'd lend me a quarter," said the boy, simply. "You took
the other boys, and you told me _I_ must be certain to go. I thought
you'd lend me a quarter till I could pay you back."
"Oh, David!" cried the parson, getting down on his knees by the
bedside, and putting his arms around the boy's neck, "I would have lent
you--I would have given you--anything I have in this poor world!"
The boy threw his arms around the parson's neck and clasped him close.
"Forgive me!"
"Oh, boy! boy! can you forgive _me_?" Sobs stifled the parson's
utterance, and he went to a window on the opposite side of the room.
When he turned his face inward again, he saw the boy's gaze fixed once
more intently upon the violin.
"There's something I want you to do for me," he said. "Mr. Leuba gave
me a violin last night, and mamma says I ought to sell it and pay him
back. Mamma says it will be a good lesson for me." The words seemed
wrung from his heart's core. "I thought I'd ask _you_ to sell it for
me. The doctor says I may be sick a long time, and it worries me." He
began to grow excited, and tossed from side to side.
"Don't worry," said the parson, "I'll sell it for you."
The boy looked at the violin again. To him it was priceless, and his
eyes grew heavy with love for it. Then he said, cautiously: "I thought
_you'd_ get a good price for it. I don't think I could take less than a
hundred dollars. It's worth more than that, but if I have to sell it, I
don't think I _could_ take less than a hundred dollars," and he fixed
his burning eyes on the parson's.
"Don't worry! I'll sell it for you. Oh yes, you can easily get a
hundred dollars for it. I'll bring you a hundred dollars for it by
to-morrow morning."
As the parson was on the point of leaving the room, with the violin
under his arm, he paused with his hand on the latch, an anxious look
gathering in his face. Then he came back, laid the violin on the table,
and going to the bedside, took the boy's hands in both of his own.
"David," said the moral philosopher, wrestling in his consciousness
with the problem of evil--"David, was it the face of the Saviour that
you wished to see? Was it _this_ that tempted you to--" and he bent
over the boy breathless.
"I wanted to see the Sleeping Beauty."
The parson turned away with a sigh of acute disappointment.
It was on this night that he was seen to enter his room with a boy's
violin under his arm, and later to hang it, and hang his beloved flute,
tied with a blue ribbon, above the meagre top shelf of books--Fuller's
_Gospel_, Petrarch, Volney's _Ruins_, Zollicoffer's _Sermons_, and
the _Horrors of San Domingo_. After that he remained motionless at
his table, with his head bowed on his folded arms, until the candle
went out, leaving him in inner and outer darkness. Moralist, logician,
philosopher, he studied the transgression, laying it at last solely to
his own charge.
At daybreak he stood outside the house with the physician who had been
with the boy during the night. "Will he die?" he asked.
The physician tapped his forehead with his forefinger. "The chances are
against him. The case has peculiar complications. All night it has been
nothing but the wax figures and the stolen quarter and the violin. His
mother has tried to persuade him not to sell it. But he won't bear the
sight of it now, although he is wild at the thought of selling it."
"David," said the parson, kneeling by the bedside, and speaking
in a tone pitiful enough to have recalled a soul from the other
world--"David, here's the money for the violin; here's the hundred
dollars," and he pressed it into one of the boy's palms. The hand
closed upon it, but there was no recognition. It was half a year's
salary.
The first sermon that the parson preached in the new church was on the
Sunday after the boy's death. It was expected that he would rise to
the occasion and surpass himself, which, indeed, he did, drawing tears
even from the eyes of those who knew not that they could shed them,
and all through making the greatest effort to keep back his own. The
subject of the sermon was "The Temptations of the Poor." The sermon of
the following fortnight was on the "Besetting Sin," the drift of it
going to show that the besetting sin may be the one pure and exquisite
pleasure of life, involving only the exercise of the loftiest faculty.
And this was followed by a third sermon on "The Kiss that Betrayeth,"
in which the parson ransacked history for illustrations to show that
every species of man--ancient, mediæval, and modern--had been betrayed
in this way. During the delivery of this sermon the parson looked so
cold and even severe that it was not understood why the emotions of
any one should have been touched, or why the widow Babcock should have
lowered her veil and wept bitterly.
And thus being ever the more loved and revered as he grew ever the
more lovable and saint-like, he passed onward to the close. But not
until the end came did he once stretch forth a hand to touch his flute;
and it was only in imagination then that he grasped it, to sound
the final roll-call of his wandering faculties, and to blow a last
good-night to his tired spirit.
[Illustration: Man resting head on book]