From 'The Damnation of Theron Ware.' Copyright 1896, by Stone &
Kimball
Walking homeward briskly now, with his eyes on the sidewalk, and his
mind all aglow with crowding suggestions for the new work and
impatience to be at it, Theron Ware came abruptly upon a group of men
and boys who occupied the whole path, and were moving forward so
noiselessly that he had not heard them coming. He almost ran into the
leader of this little procession, and began a stammering apology, the
final words of which were left unspoken, so solemnly heedless of him
and his talk were all the faces he saw.
In the centre of the group were four workingmen, bearing between them
an extemporized litter of two poles and a blanket hastily secured
across them with spikes. Most of what this litter held was covered by
another blanket, rounded in coarse folds over a shapeless bulk. From
beneath its farther end protruded a big broom-like black beard, thrown
upward at such an angle as to hide everything beyond those in front.
The tall young minister, stepping aside and standing tiptoe, could see
sloping downward, behind this hedge of beard, a pinched and
chalk-like face, with wide-open, staring eyes. Its lips, of a dull
lilac hue, were moving ceaselessly, and made a dry, clicking sound.
Theron instinctively joined himself to those who followed the litter,
a motley dozen of street idlers, chiefly boys. One of these in
whispers explained to him that the man was one of Jerry Madden's
workmen in the wagonshops, who had been deployed to trim an elm-tree
in front of his employer's house, and being unused to such work, had
fallen from the top and broken all his bones. They would have cared
for him at Madden's house, but he insisted upon being taken home. His
name was MacEvoy, and he was Joey MacEvoy's father, and likewise Jim's
and Hughey's and Martin's. After a pause, the lad, a bright-eyed,
freckled, barefooted wee Irishman, volunteered the further information
that his big brother had run to bring "Father Forbess," on the chance
that he might be in time to administer "extry munction."
The way of the silent little procession led through back
streets,--where women hanging up clothes in the yards hurried to the
gates, their aprons full of clothes-pins, to stare open-mouthed at the
passers-by,--and came to a halt at last in an irregular and muddy
lane, before one of a half-dozen shanties reared among the ash-heaps
and debris of the town's most bedraggled outskirts.
A stout, middle-aged, red-armed woman, already warned by some
messenger of calamity, stood waiting on the roadside bank. There were
whimpering children clinging to her skirts, and a surrounding cluster
of women of the neighborhood; some of the more elderly of whom,
shriveled little crones in tidy caps, and with their aprons to their
eyes, were beginning in a low-murmured minor the wail which presently
should rise into the _keen_ of death. Mrs. MacEvoy herself made no
moan, and her broad ruddy face was stern in expression rather than
sorrowful. When the litter stopped beside her, she laid a hand for an
instant on her husband's wet brow, and looked--one could have sworn
impassively--into his staring eyes. Then, still without a word, she
waved the bearers toward the door, and led the way herself.
Theron, somewhat wonderingly, found himself a minute later inside a
dark and ill-smelling room, the air of which was humid with the steam
from a boiler of clothes on the stove, and not in other ways improved
by the presence of a jostling score of women, all straining their gaze
upon the open door of the only other apartment, the bedchamber.
Through this they could see the workmen laying MacEvoy on the bed, and
standing awkwardly about thereafter, getting in the way of the wife
and old Maggie Quirk as they strove to remove the garments from his
crushed limbs. As the neighbors watched what could be seen of these
proceedings, they whispered among themselves eulogies of the injured
man's industry and good temper, his habit of bringing his money home
to his wife, and the way he kept his Father Mathew pledge and attended
to his religious duties. They admitted freely that by the light of his
example, their own husbands and sons left much to be desired; and from
this wandered easily off into domestic digressions of their own. But
all the while their eyes were bent upon the bedroom door; and Theron
made out, after he had grown accustomed to the gloom and the smell,
that many of them were telling their beads even while they kept the
muttered conversation alive. None of them paid any attention to him,
or seemed to regard his presence there as unusual.
Presently he saw enter through the sunlit street doorway a person of a
different class. The bright light shone for a passing instant upon a
fashionable, flowered hat, and upon some remarkably brilliant shade of
red hair beneath it. In another moment there had edged along through
the throng, to almost within touch of him, a tall young woman, the
owner of this hat and wonderful hair. She was clad in light and
pleasing spring attire, and carried a parasol with a long oxidized
silver handle of a quaint pattern. She looked at him, and he saw that
her face was of a lengthened oval, with a luminous rose-tinted skin,
full red lips, and big brown, frank eyes with heavy auburn lashes. She
made a grave little inclination of her head toward him, and he bowed
in response. Since her arrival, he noted, the chattering of the others
had entirely ceased.
"I followed the others in, in the hope that I might be of some
assistance," he ventured to explain to her in a low murmur, feeling
that at last here was some one to whom an explanation of his presence
in this Romish house was due. "I hope they won't feel that I have
intruded."
She nodded her head as if she quite understood.
"They'll take the will for the deed," she whispered back. "Father
Forbes will be here in a minute. Do you know, is it too late?"
Even as she spoke, the outer doorway was darkened by the commanding
bulk of a new-comer's figure. The flash of a silk hat, and the
deferential way in which the assembled neighbors fell back to clear a
passage, made his identity clear. Theron felt his blood tingle in an
unaccustomed way as this priest of a strange Church advanced across
the room,--a broad-shouldered, portly man of more than middle height,
with a shapely, strong-lined face of almost waxen pallor, and a firm,
commanding tread. He carried in his hands, besides his hat, a small
leather-bound case. To this and to him the women curtsied and bowed
their heads as he passed.
"Come with me," whispered the tall girl with the parasol, to Theron;
and he found himself pushing along in her wake until they intercepted
the priest just outside the bedroom door. She touched Father Forbes on
the arm.
"Just to tell you that I am here," she said. The priest nodded with a
grave face, and passed into the other room. In a minute or two the
workmen, Mrs. MacEvoy, and her helper came out, and the door was shut
behind them.
"He is making his confession," explained the young lady. "Stay here
for a minute."
She moved over to where the woman of the house stood, glum-faced and
tearless, and whispered something to her. A confused movement among
the crowd followed, and out of it presently resulted a small table,
covered with a white cloth, and bearing on it two unlighted candles, a
basin of water, and a spoon, which was brought forward and placed in
readiness before the closed door. Some of those nearest this cleared
space were kneeling now, and murmuring a low buzz of prayer to the
click of beads on their rosaries.
The door opened, and Theron saw the priest standing in the doorway
with an uplifted hand. He wore now a surplice, with a purple band over
his shoulders, and on his pale face there shone a tranquil and tender
light.
One of the workmen fetched from the stove a brand, lighted the two
candles, and bore the table with its contents into the bedroom. The
young woman plucked Theron's sleeve, and he dumbly followed her into
the chamber of death, making one of the group of a dozen, headed by
Mrs. MacEvoy and her children, which filled the little room, and
overflowed now outward to the street door. He found himself bowing
with the others to receive the sprinkled holy water from the priest's
white fingers; kneeling with the others for the prayers; following in
impressed silence with the others the strange ceremonial by which the
priest traced crosses of holy oil with his thumb upon the eyes, ears,
nostrils, lips, hands, and feet of the dying man, wiping off the oil
with a piece of cotton-batting each time after he had repeated the
invocation to forgiveness for that particular sense. But most of all
he was moved by the rich, novel sound of the Latin as the priest
rolled it forth in the 'Asperges me, Domine,' and 'Misereatur vestri
omnipotens Deus,' with its soft Continental vowels and liquid _r_'s.
It seemed to him that he had never really heard Latin before. Then the
astonishing young woman with the red hair declaimed the 'Confiteor'
vigorously and with a resonant distinctness of enunciation. It was a
different Latin, harsher and more sonorous; and while it still
dominated the murmured undertone of the other's prayers the last
moment came.
Theron had stood face to face with death at many other bed-sides; no
other final scene had stirred him like this. It must have been the
girl's Latin chant, with its clanging reiteration of the great
names,--'beatum Michaelem Archangelum,' 'beatum Joannem Baptistam,'
'sanctos Apostolos Petrum et Paulum,'--invoked with such proud
confidence in this squalid little shanty, which so strangely affected
him.
He came out with the others at last,--the candles and the folded hands
over the crucifix left behind,--and walked as one in a dream. Even by
the time that he had gained the outer doorway, and stood blinking at
the bright light and filling his lungs with honest air once more, it
had begun to seem incredible to him that he had seen and done all
this.