THE ABYSSES OF PAIN.
Horace Endicott, though not a youth of deep sentiment, had capacities in
that direction. Life so far had been chiefly of the surface for him.
Happiness had hidden the deep and dangerous meanings of things. He was a
child yet in his unconcern for the future, and the child, alone of
mortals, enjoys a foretaste of immortality, in his belief that happiness
is everlasting. The shadow of death clouding the pinched face of Tim
Hurley was his first glimpse of the real. He had not seen his father and
mother die. The thought that followed, Sonia's beloved face lying under
that shadow, had terrified him. It was the uplifting of the veil of
illusion that enwraps childhood. The thought stayed his foot that night
as he turned into the avenue leading up to his own house, and he paused
to consider this new dread.
The old colonial house greeted his eyes, solemn and sweet in the
moonlight, with a few lights of human comfort in its windows. He had
never thought so before, but now it came straight to his heart that this
was his home, his old friend, steadfast and unchanging, which had
welcomed him into the world, and had never changed its look to him,
never closed its doors against him; all that remained of the dear, but
almost forgotten past; the beautiful stage from which all the ancient
actors had made irrevocable exit. What beauty had graced it for a
century back! What honors its children had brought to it from councils
of state and of war! What true human worth had sanctified it! Last and
the least of the splendid throng, he felt his own unworthiness sadly;
but he was young yet, only a boy, and he said to himself that Sonia had
crowned the glory of the old house with her beauty, her innocence, her
devoted love. In making her its mistress he had not wronged its former
rulers, nor broken the traditions of beauty. He stood a long time
looking at the old place, wondering at the charm which it had so
suddenly flung upon him. Then he shook off the new and weird feeling and
flew to embrace his Sonia of the starry eyes.
Alas, poor boy! He stood for a moment on the threshold. He could hear
the faint voices of servants, the shutting of distant doors, and a
hundred sweet sounds within; and around him lay the calmness of the
night, with a drowsy moon overhead lolling on lazy clouds. Nothing
warned him that he stood on the threshold of pain. No instinct hinted at
the horror within. The house that sheltered his holy mother and received
her last breath, that covered for a few hours the body of his heroic
father, the house of so many honorable memories, had become the
habitation of sinners, whose shame was to be everlasting. He stole in on
tiptoe, with love stirring his young pulses. For thirty minutes there
was no break in the silence. Then he came out as he entered, on tiptoe,
and no one knew that he had seen with his own eyes into the deeps of
hell. For thirty minutes, that seemed to have the power of as many
centuries, he had looked on sin, shame, disgrace, with what seemed to be
the eyes of God; so did the horror shock eye and heart, yet leave him
sight and life to look again and again.
In that time he tasted with his own lips the bitterness which makes the
most wretched death sweeter by comparison than bread and honey to the
hungry. At the end of it, when he stole away a madman, he felt within
his own soul the cracking and upheaving of some immensity, and saw or
felt the opening of abysses from which rose fearful exhalations of
crime, shapes of corruption, things without shape that provoked to rage,
pain and madness. He was not without cunning, since he closed the doors
softly, stole away in the shadows of the house and the avenue, and
escaped to a distant wood unseen. From his withered face all feeling
except horror had faded. Once deep in the wood, he fell under the trees
like an epileptic, turned on his face, and dug the earth with hands and
feet and face in convulsions of pain.
The frightened wood-life, sleeping or waking, fled from the great
creature in its agony. In the darkness he seemed some monster, which in
dreadful silence, writhed and fought down a slow road to death. He was
hardly conscious of his own behavior, poor innocent, crushed by the sins
of others. He lived, and every moment was a dying. He gasped as with the
last breath, yet each breath came back with new torture. He shivered to
the root of nature, like one struck fatally, and the convulsion revived
life and thought and horror. After long hours a dreadful sleep bound his
senses, and he lay still, face downward, arms outstretched, breathing
like a child, a pitiful sight. Death must indeed be a binding thing,
that father and mother did not leave the grave to soothe and strengthen
their wretched son. He lay there on his face till dawn. The crowing of
the cock, which once warned Peter of his shame, waked him. He turned
over, stared at the branches above, sat up puzzled, and showed his face
to the dim light. His arms gathered in his knees, and he made an effort
to recollect himself. But no one would have mistaken that sorrowful,
questioning face; it was Adam looking toward the lost Eden with his arms
about the dead body of his son. A desolate and unconscious face,
wretched and vacant as a lone shore strewn with wreckage.
He struggled to his feet after a time, wondering at his weakness. The
effort roused and steadied him, his mind cleared as he walked to the
edge of the wood and stared at the old house, which now in the mist of
morning had the fixed, still, reproachful look of the dead. As if a
spirit had leaped upon him, memory brought back his personality and his
grief together. Men told afterwards, early laborers in the fields, of a
cry from the Endicott woods, so strange and woful that their hearts beat
fast and their frightened ears strained for its repetition. Sonia heard
it in her adulterous dreams. It was not repeated. The very horror of it
terrified the man who uttered it. He stood by a tree trembling, for a
double terror fell upon him, terror of her no less than of himself. He
staggered through the woods, and sought far-away places in the hills,
where none might see him. When the sun drifted in through dark boughs he
cursed it, the emblem of joy. The singing of the birds sounded to his
ears like the shriek of madmen. When he could think and reason somewhat,
he called up the vision of Sonia to wonder over it. The childlike eyes,
the beautiful, lovable face, the modest glance, the innocent
blushes--had nature such masks for her vilest offspring? The mere animal
senses should have recognized at the first this deadly thing, as animals
recognize their foes; and he had lived with the viper, believing her the
peer of his spotless mother. She was his wife! Even at that moment the
passionate love of yesterday stirred in his veins and moved him to
deeper horror.
He doubted that he was Horace Endicott. Every one knew that boy to be
the sanest of young men, husband to the loveliest of women, a happy,
careless, wealthy fellow, almost beside himself with the joy of life.
The madman who ran about the desolate wilds uttering strange and
terrible things, who was wrapped within and without in torments of
flame, who refrained from crime and death only because vengeance would
thus be cheaply satisfied, could hardly be the boy of yesterday. Was sin
such a magician that in a day it could evolve out of merry Horace and
innocent Sonia two such wretches? The wretch Sonia had proved her
capacity for evil; the wretch Horace felt his capabilities for crime and
rejoiced in them. He must live to punish. A sudden fear came upon him
that his grief and rage might bring death or madness, and leave him
incapable of vengeance. _They_ would wish nothing better. No, he must
live, and think rationally, and not give way. But the mind worked on in
spite of the will. It sat like Penelope over the loom, weaving terrible
fancies in blood and flame! the days that had been, the days that were
passing; the scenes of love and marriage; the old house and its latest
sinners; and the days that were to come, crimson-dyed, shameful; the
dreadful loom worked as if by enchantment, scene following scene, the
web endless, and the woven stuff flying into the sky like smoke from a
flying engine, darkening all the blue.
The days and nights passed while he wandered about in the open air.
Hunger assailed him, distances wearied him, he did not sleep; but these
hardships rather cooled the inward fire, and did not harm him. One day
he came to a pool, clear as a spring to its sandy bottom, embowered in
trees, except on one side where the sun shone. He took off his clothes
and plunged in. The waters closed over him sweet and cool as the embrace
of death. The loom ceased its working a while, and the thought rose
up, is vengeance worth the trouble? He sank to the sandy bed, and oh, it
was restful! A grip on a root held him there, and a song of his boyhood
soothed his ears until it died away in heavenly music, far off,
enticing, welcoming him to happier shores. He had found all at once
forgetfulness and happiness, and he would remain. Then his grip
loosened, and he came to the surface, swimming mechanically about,
debating with himself another descent into the enchanted region beneath.
Some happy change had touched him. He felt the velvety waters grasp his
body and rejoiced in it; the little waves which he sent to the reedy
bank made him smile with their huddling and back-rushing and laughing;
he held up his arm as he swam to see the sun flash through the drops of
water from his hand. What a sweet bed of death! No hard-eyed nurses and
physicians with their array of bottles, no hypocrites snuffling sympathy
while dreaming of fat legacies, no pious mummeries, only the innocent
things direct from the hand of God, unstained by human sin and training,
trees and bushes and flowers, the tender living things about, the
voiceless and passionless music of lonely nature, the hearty sun, and
the maternal embrace of the sweet waters. It was dying as the wild
animals die, without ceremony; as the flowers die, a gentle weakening of
the stem, a rush of perfume to the soft earth, and the caressing winds
to do the rest. Yes, down to the bottom again! Who would have looked for
so pleasant a door to death in that lonely and lovely pool!
He slipped his foot under the root so that it would hold him if he
struggled, put his arms under his head like one about to sleep, and
yielded his senses to that far-off, divine music, enticing,
welcoming.... It ceased, but not until he had forgotten all his sorrows
and was speeding toward death. Sorrow rescued sorrow, and gave him back
to the torturers. The old woman who passed by the pond that morning
gathering flowers, and smiling as if she felt the delight of a
child--the smile of a child on the mask of grief-worn age--saw his
clothes and then his body floating upward helpless from the bottom. She
seized his arm, and pulled him up on the low bank. He gasped a little
and was able to thank her.
"If I hadn't come along just then," she said placidly, as she covered
him decently with his coat, "you'd have been drownded. Took a cramp, I
reckon?"
"All I remember is taking a swim and sinking, mother. I am very much
obliged to you, and can get along very well, I think."
"If you want any help, just say so," she answered. "When you get dressed
my house is a mile up the road, and the road is a mile from here. I can
give you a cup of tea or warm milk, and welcome."
"I'll go after a while," said he, "and then I'll be able to thank you
still better for a very great service, mother."
She smiled at the affectionate title, and went her way. He became weak
all at once, and for a while could not dress. The long bath had soothed
his mind, and now distressed nature could make her wants known. Hunger,
soreness of body, drowsiness, attacked him together. He found it
pleasant to lie there and look at the sun, and feel too happy to curse
it as before. The loom had done working, Penelope was asleep. The door
seemed forever shut on the woman known as Sonia, who had tormented him
long ago. The dead should trouble no one living. He was utterly weary,
sore in every spot, crushed by torment as poor Tim Hurley had been
broken by his engine. This recollection, and his lying beside the pool
as Tim lay beside the running river, recalled the Monsignor and the holy
oils. As he fell asleep the fancy struck him that his need at that
moment was the holy oils; some balm for sick eyes and ears, for tired
hands and soiled feet, like his mother's kisses long ago, that would
soothe the aching, and steal from the limbs into the heart afterwards; a
heavenly dew that would aid sleep in restoring the stiffened sinews and
distracted nerves. The old woman came back to him later, and found him
in his sleep of exhaustion. Like a mother, she pillowed his head,
covered him with his clothes, and her own shawl, and made sure that his
rest would be safe and comfortable. She studied the noble young head,
and smoothed it tenderly. The pitiful face, a terrible face for those
who could read, so bitterly had grief written age on the curved dimpled
surface of youth, stirred some convulsion in her, for she threw up her
arms in despair as she walked away homeward, and wild sobs choked her
for minutes.
He sat on the kitchen porch of her poor home that afternoon, quite free
from pain. A wonderful relief had come to him. He seemed lifted into an
upper region of peace like one just returned from infernal levels. The
golden air tasted like old wine. The scenes about him were marvelous to
his eyes. His own personality redeemed from recent horror became a
delightful thing.
"It is terrible to suffer," he said to Martha Willis. "In the last five
days I have suffered."
"As all men must suffer," said the woman resignedly.
"Then you have suffered too? How did you ever get over it, mother?"
She did not tell him, after a look at his face, that some sorrows are
indelible.
"We have to get over everything, son. And it is lucky we can do it,
without running into an insane asylum."
"Were your troubles very great, mother?"
"Lots of people about say I deserved them, so they couldn't be very
great," she answered, and he laughed at her queer way of putting it,
then checked himself.
"Sorrow is sorrow to him who suffers," he said, "no matter what people
say about it. And I would not wish a beast to endure what I did. I would
help the poor devil who suffered, no matter how much he deserved his
pain."
"Only those who suffered feel that way. I am alone now, but this house
was crowded thirty years ago. There was Lucy, and John, and Oliver, and
Henry, and my husband, and we were very happy."
"And they are all gone?"
"I shall never see them again here. Lucy died when I needed her most,
and Henry, such a fine boy, followed her before he was twenty. They are
safe in the churchyard, and that makes me happy, for they are mine
still, they will always be mine. John was like his father, and both were
drunkards. They beat me in turn, and I was glad when they took to
tramping. They're tramping yet, as I hear, but I haven't seen them in
years. And Oliver, the cleverest boy in the school, and very headstrong,
he went to Boston, and from there he went to jail for cheating a bank,
and in jail he died. It was best for him and for me. I took him back to
lie beside his brother and sister, though some said it was a shame. But
what can a mother do? Her children are hers no matter if they turn out
wrong."
"And you lived through it all, mother?" said the listener with his face
working.
"Once I thought different, but now I know it was for the best," she
answered calmly, and chiefly for his benefit. "I had my days and years
even, when I thought some other woman had taken Martha Willis' place, a
poor miserable creature, more like the dead than the live. But I often
thought, since my own self came back, how lucky it was Lucy had her
mother to close her eyes, and the same for poor Henry. And Oliver, he
was pretty miserable dying in jail, but I never forgot what he said to
me. 'Mother,' he said, 'it's like dying at home to have you with me
here.' He was very proud, and it cut him that the cleverest of the
family should die in jail. And he said, 'you'll put me beside the
others, and take care of the grave, and not be ashamed of me, mother.'
It was the money he left me, that kept this house and me ever since. Now
just think of the way he'd have died if I had not been about to see to
him. And I suppose the two tramps'll come marching in some day to die,
or to be buried, and they'll be lucky to find me living. But anyway I've
arranged it with the minister to see to them, and give them a place with
their own, if I'm not here to look after them."
"And you lived through it all!" repeated Horace in wonder.
Her story gave him hope. He must put off thinking until grief had
loosened its grip on his nerves, and the old self had come uppermost. He
was determined that the old self should return, as Martha had proved it
could return. He enjoyed its presence at that very moment, though with a
dread of its impending departure. The old woman readily accepted him as
a boarder for a few days or longer, and treated him like a son. He slept
that night in a bed, the bed of Oliver and Henry,--their portraits
hanging over the bureau--and slept as deeply as a wearied child. A
blessed sleep was followed by a bitter waking. Something gripped him the
moment he rose and looked out at the summer sun; a cruel hand seized his
breast, and weighted it with vague pain. Deep sighs shook him, and the
loom of Penelope began its dreadful weaving of bloody visions, while
the restful pool in the woods tempted him to its cool rest. For a moment
he gave way to the thought that all had ended for him on earth. Then he
braced himself for his fight, went down to chat cheerfully with Martha,
and ate her tasty breakfast with relish. He saw that his manner pleased
the simple heart, the strong, heroic mother, the guardian of so many
graves.