A WAYWORN TRAVELER
For eight weary weeks Stargarde had, in the opinion of her friends, been
afflicted by the terrible being who undoubtedly was her mother. But to
Stargarde it was no affliction. From the night that she had taken the
miserable creature in her arms, washed and fed her and laid her on her
own bed, it had seemed rather a joy and privilege than a duty, to wait
upon her. Cheerfully and uncomplainingly she placed herself at the
disposal of her unworthy parent, guarding and restraining her as far as
she possibly could, and making no ado when she was missing, but
patiently seeking her in the lowest haunts of the town as a shepherd
would seek a lost sheep and return it to the sheepfold.
After Mrs. Frispi had been with Stargarde for four weeks her wanderings
suddenly ceased. Her evil genius might prompt her to roam, but it was no
longer in her power to do so. Her frame, strong as it had been, suddenly
yielded to the effects of disease brought on by her irregular life. She
lay on her back in Stargarde’s bed with no thought in her guilty soul of
preparing for that longer, more mysterious flight than any she had yet
taken, but raving day by day in obscene and abominable language that
made Camperdown look in despair and admiration at Stargarde, who in an
agony of compassion hung over the unhappy woman and urged her to repent.
Day by day he entered the sick-room, sometimes greeted sullenly by the
sufferer, at others hailed by a torrent of abuse that made him turn from
her with a shudder of disgust; but gradually there came a change. During
the past ten days his patient had lain in a sullen, stoical silence,
apparently indifferent alike to her sufferings and to Stargarde’s tender
ministrations. That she used no more reckless language was something to
be thankful for, and with a sense of relief to think that he was no
longer in the den of a wild beast, Camperdown stepped into the room one
Sunday morning.
He held his _fiancée’s_> hand one instant in his own, then went to the
bed and glanced sharply over Mrs. Frispi’s attenuated features. She did
not look at him, even when he laid his fingers on her bony wrist, for
her big blue eyes, slowly revolving in their sunken sockets, were
following Stargarde as she moved about the room.
“Let me take your temperature,” he said.
Mrs. Frispi shook her head impatiently.
“Mother,” murmured Stargarde appealingly, coming to stand beside her.
At this the woman submitted, and when she turned her head toward
Camperdown he noticed that a softened look had overspread her features,
and that tears were stealing down her cheeks.
In order to give her time to compose herself he affected to be busy with
his instrument case.
A side glance presently cast in her direction showed him that the tears
were still on her cheeks and also that she was not anxious to avoid his
scrutiny.
“Are you going to throw her over?” she asked quietly.
Camperdown stared at her.
“Are you going to throw her over on account of me?” asked Mrs. Frispi,
again indicating Stargarde by a motion of her head.
“No, I am not,” he said decidedly.
She made a sound of satisfaction in her throat and went on coolly: “She
forgives me, but you will not. You would have kicked me back in the mud.
She pitied me. She reminds me of the good people that I was with in New
York for a little while when I was a girl. No one has cared for me
since. I couldn’t help myself. Suppose she had been brought up where I
was.”
Camperdown frowned at the horrible possibilities suggested. Yet he took
comfort in the sturdy character of his betrothed. “She would have been
good anywhere,” he said stoutly.
“Have you lived in the slums?” said the woman with a sneer. “Could an
angel be good with a thousand devils after her?”
He did not reply to her otherwise than by a shrug of his shoulders.
“And you won’t forgive me for disgracing you,” she went on in a kind of
languid surprise; “and you call yourself a Christian.”
“Brian,” said Stargarde with a passion of entreaty in her voice.
“I do forgive you,” he said not unkindly, and after a short struggle
with himself; “but you can’t expect me to admire you.”
“Admire me!” she exclaimed, burying her face in the pillow. “Oh, my
God!”
A few minutes later he left the Pavilion and went to his home.
The next day and the next and the next Camperdown saw Mrs. Frispi, but
she did not speak to him. He saw that she was becoming weaker, and also
that she was in a quieter, calmer mood.
“To-night she will probably die,” he said on the evening of the third
day, “and I shall take Mrs. Trotley and go to Stargarde.”
While he was at dinner a message came from the Pavilion for him and for
Zilla. The end was coming sooner than they had imagined it would.
Zilla hesitated about going; not that she feared death, for she had seen
many people die, but from purely selfish motives. It was a rainy
evening, and she would rather stay at home and read one of her beautiful
books than to go out to witness the end of a person who was utterly
uninteresting to her.
“I cannot wait,” said Camperdown, “and I think that you ought to come
with me. There is a cab at the door; you won’t have to walk.”
Zilla flashed him a swift glance, darted upstairs for her cloak, and
went with him.
It was certainly not a hateful sight that they witnessed when they left
the rain and darkness of the street and entered Stargarde’s cheerful
rooms. Every light was shining brightly. Mrs. Frispi’s sight was almost
gone, and to enable her to see some objects in the room that she dearly
prized, Stargarde had even had additional lights brought in.
The woman lay quietly among the pillows of her snow-white bed, the gaunt
framework of her bones almost piercing through the thin covering of
skin. Stargarde sat by the bed and in a recess was a girl dressed in the
uniform of the Salvation Army.
“It is no use,” Mrs. Frispi was uttering in short gasping breaths, as
Camperdown and Zilla paused in the doorway; “I can’t see them—tell me.”
Around Stargarde’s room hung a number of paintings illustrating an old
hymn that she was fond of singing. Two years before an English artist,
poor and drunken and expelled from his native land, had found a shelter
till his death in the Pavilion. In gratitude for Stargarde’s kindness to
him, he had painted a series of pictures for her, representing the
adventures of the wayworn traveler that he had so often heard her
singing about to a quaint, wild tune.
On these paintings hanging around her bed Mrs. Frispi’s eyes had often
rested, and Stargarde, thinking that no more applicable story could be
framed to suit her mother’s circumstances, had, in talking to her, woven
biblical truths with the progress of the weary traveler. The striking
pictures and the graphic words had impressed themselves upon the
sin-worn mind. Even now, when her earthly vision was dulled, the dying
one had before her mental gaze the representations of the traveler
toiling up the mountain, his garments worn and dusty, his step slow, his
eyes turned resolutely from the enchanting arbors where sweet songsters
invited his delay to the top of the mountain, beyond which were the
heavenly vale and the golden city.
“While gazing on that city,”
repeated Stargarde gently,
“Just o’er the narrow flood,
A band of holy angels
Came from the throne of God.
They bore him on their pinions
Safe o’er the dashing foam,
And joined him in his triumph;
‘Deliverance will come.’”
Her voice died away, and Zilla sank into a chair while Camperdown
stepped softly to the bedside. There was nothing that he could do for
his patient; the shadow of death was already upon her face.
Yet she lay quietly, as quietly as a child about to fall asleep, and
giving no sign of distress or emotion except in the hurried and labored
rise and fall of her chest.
“I believe in God now,” she said solemnly, and moving her almost
sightless eyes toward him. “I believe in everything. Oh,” with a sudden
great and bitter cry, and straining her gaze in Stargarde’s direction,
“what a wrong I have done her!”
Stargarde held one of her mother’s hands in her own. At her despairing
words she seized the other and folded them both between her strong, fair
palms with a consoling clasp.
“I wish to go to heaven because she will be there,” said the woman,
starting up in bed with a last exertion of strength. “I cast her off
when she was a baby, and she kisses me!”
Camperdown hastily pushed more pillows behind her and moistened her lips
with drops of a stimulant beside him.
“I can see plainly now,” she went on, opening wide her blue eyes with
their strange and touching expression. “Zeb, mind what she says and
don’t vex her. Take good care of her, you,” she continued, addressing
Camperdown. “I forgive you now; I could have killed you before. I hated
every man. I forgive all”—brokenly—"as I hope to be forgiven—even him."
Her breath fluttered convulsively for a few minutes, then she sprang
forward: “I hear them—the song of triumph they sing upon that shore.
Jesus hath redeemed us—to suffer nevermore,” she added. “O Jesus, do not
despise me—I am sorry.”
Her last words were spoken. She fell back in Camperdown’s arms and he
laid her head on the pillows.
Stargarde’s face was shining like that of an angel. For many days he had
seen her kneeling by that sick-bed, had heard her pleading voice, “O
God, give me this soul; save my mother and take her to heaven.” Now her
heart’s desire was gratified, and he feared that after the long weeks of
watching and confinement to the house a collapse would come; but there
was no sign of it yet. Very calmly she asked Zilla if she would care to
stay in the room while Camperdown left it. Zilla remained; and
Stargarde, while performing the last tender offices for her mother in
which she would receive only a small amount of assistance from her
friend of the Salvation Army, talked sweetly to the child of the
triumphant entry of their mother’s spirit into heaven, and of the
putting away of the deserted body under the grass and the flowers where
it would lie till the joyful resurrection.
Death had before this been connected with all that was squalid and
mysterious and unlovely in the child’s mind—not a thing to be feared
among people who led reckless lives, but rather to be hated and shunned.
When she at last left the Pavilion and put her hand in Camperdown’s for
him to take her home, she remarked sagely, “I shall not mind dying, now
that I am rich.”