"Can you send for her?"
"What, HERE?"
"Yes, here."
"What for?"
"To marry him," said Gideon, gently. "There's no time to lose."
"To MARRY him?"
"He wishes it."
"But say--oh, come, now," said Hamlin confidentially, leaning back with
his hands on the top of a chair. "Ain't this playing it a little--just
a LITTLE--too low down? Of course you mean well, and all that; but
come, now, say--couldn't you just let up on him there? Why,
she"--Hamlin softly closed the door--"she's got no character."
"The more reason he should give her one."
A cynical knowledge of matrimony imparted to him by the wives of others
evidently colored Mr. Hamlin's views. "Well, perhaps it's all the same
if he's going to die. But isn't it rather rough on HER? I don't
know," he added, reflectively; "she was sniveling round here a little
while ago, until I sent her away."
"You sent her away!" echoed Gideon.
"I did."
"Why?"
"Because YOU were here."
Nevertheless Mr. Hamlin departed, and in half an hour reappeared with
two brilliantly dressed women. One, hysterical, tearful, frightened,
and pallid, was the destined bride; the other, highly colored, excited,
and pleasedly observant, was her friend. Two men hastily summoned from
the anteroom as witnesses completed the group that moved into the
bedroom and gathered round the bed.
The ceremony was simple and brief. It was well, for of all who took
part in it none was more shaken by emotion than the officiating priest.
The brilliant dresses of the women, the contrast of their painted faces
with the waxen pallor of the dying man; the terrible incongruity of
their voices, inflections, expressions, and familiarity; the mingled
perfume of cosmetics and the faint odor of wine; the eyes of the
younger woman following his movements with strange absorption, so
affected him that he was glad when he could fall on his knees at last
and bury his face in the pillow of the sufferer. The hand that had
been placed in the bride's cold fingers slipped from them and
mechanically sought Gideon's again. The significance of the
unconscious act brought the first spontaneous tears into the woman's
eyes. It was his last act, for when Gideon's voice was again lifted in
prayer, the spirit for whom it was offered had risen with it, as it
were, still lovingly hand in hand, from the earth forever.
The funeral was arranged for two days later, and Gideon found that his
services had been so seriously yet so humbly counted upon by the
friends of the dead man that he could scarce find it in his heart to
tell them that it was the function of the local preacher--an older and
more experienced man than himself. "If it is," said Jack Hamlin,
coolly, "I'm afraid he won't get a yaller dog to come to his church;
but if you say you'll preach at the grave, there ain't a man, woman, or
child that will be kept away. Don't you go back on your luck, now;
it's something awful and nigger-like. You've got this crowd where the
hair is short; excuse me, but it's so. Talk of revivals! You could
give that one-horse show in Tasajara a hundred points, and skunk them
easily." Indeed, had Gideon been accessible to vanity, the spontaneous
homage he met with everywhere would have touched him more
sympathetically and kindly than it did; but in the utter
unconsciousness of his own power and the quality they worshiped in him,
he felt alarmed and impatient of what he believed to be their weak
sympathy with his own human weakness. In the depth of his unselfish
heart, lit, it must be confessed, only by the scant, inefficient lamp
of his youthful experience, he really believed he had failed in his
apostolic mission because he had been unable to touch the hearts of the
Vigilantes by oral appeal and argument. Feeling thus the reverence of
these irreligious people that surrounded him, the facile yielding of
their habits and prejudices to his half-uttered wish, appeared to him
only a temptation of the flesh. No one had sought him after the manner
of the camp-meeting; he had converted the wounded man through a common
weakness of their humanity. More than that, he was conscious of a
growing fascination for the truthfulness and sincerity of that class;
particularly of Mr. Jack Hamlin, whose conversion he felt he could
never attempt, yet whose strange friendship alternately thrilled and
frightened him.
It was the evening before the funeral. The coffin, half smothered in
wreaths and flowers, stood upon trestles in the anteroom; a large
silver plate bearing an inscription on which for the second time Gideon
read the name of the man he had converted. It was a name associated on
the frontier so often with reckless hardihood, dissipation, and blood,
that even now Gideon trembled at his presumption, and was chilled by a
momentary doubt of the efficiency of his labor. Drawing unconsciously
nearer to the mute subject of his thoughts, he threw his arms across
the coffin and buried his face between them.
A stream of soft music, the echo of some forgotten song, seemed to
Gideon to suddenly fill and possess the darkened room, and then to
slowly die away, like the opening and shutting of a door upon a flood
of golden radiance. He listened with hushed breath and a beating
heart. He had never heard anything like it before. Again the strain
arose, the chords swelled round him, until from their midst a tenor
voice broke high and steadfast, like a star in troubled skies. Gideon
scarcely breathed. It was a hymn--but such a hymn. He had never
conceived there could be such beautiful words, joined to such exquisite
melody, and sung with a grace so tender and true. What were all other
hymns to this ineffable yearning for light, for love, and for infinite
rest? Thrilled and exalted, Gideon felt his doubts pierced and
scattered by that illuminating cry. Suddenly he rose, and with a
troubled thought pushed open the door to the sitting-room. It was Mr.
Jack Hamlin sitting before a parlor organ. The music ceased.
"It was YOU," stammered Gideon.
Jack nodded, struck a few chords by way of finish, and then wheeled
round on the music-stool towards Gideon. His face was slightly
flushed. "Yes. I used to be the organist and tenor in our church in
the States. I used to snatch the sinners bald-headed with that. Do you
know I reckon I'll sing that to-morrow, if you like, and maybe
afterwards we'll--but"--he stopped--"we'll talk of that after the
funeral. It's business." Seeing Gideon still glancing with a troubled
air from the organ to himself, he said: "Would you like to try that
hymn with me? Come on!"
He again struck the chords. As the whole room seemed to throb with the
music, Gideon felt himself again carried away. Glancing over Jack's
shoulders, he could read the words but not the notes; yet, having a
quick ear for rhythm, he presently joined in with a deep but
uncultivated baritone. Together they forgot everything else, and at
the end of an hour were only recalled by the presence of a silently
admiring concourse of votive-offering friends who had gathered round
them.
The funeral took place the next day at the grave dug in the public
cemetery--a green area fenced in by the palisading tules. The words of
Gideon were brief but humble; the strongest partisan of the dead man
could find no fault in a confession of human frailty in which the
speaker humbly confessed his share; and when the hymn was started by
Hamlin and taken up by Gideon, the vast multitude, drawn by interest
and curiosity, joined as in a solemn Amen.
Later, when those two strangely-assorted friends had returned to Mr.
Hamlin's rooms previous to Gideon's departure, the former, in a manner
more serious than his habitual cynical good-humor, began: "I said I had
to talk business with you. The boys about here want to build a church
for you, and are ready to plank the money down if you'll say it's a go.
You understand they aren't asking you to run in opposition to that
Gospel sharp--excuse me--that's here now, nor do they want you to run a
side show in connection with it. They want you to be independent.
They don't pin you down to any kind of religion, you know; whatever you
care to give them--Methodist, Roman Catholic, Presbyterian---is mighty
good enough for them, if you'll expound it. You might give a little of
each, or one on one day and one another--they'll never know the
difference if you only mix the drinks yourself. They'll give you a
house and guarantee you fifteen hundred dollars the first year."
He stopped and walked towards the window. The sunlight that fell upon
his handsome face seemed to call back the careless smile to his lips
and the reckless fire to his brown eyes. "I don't suppose there's a
man among them that wouldn't tell you all this in a great deal better
way than I do. But the darned fools--excuse me--would have ME break it
to you. Why, I don't know. I needn't tell you I like you--not only
for what you did for George--but I like you for your style--for
yourself. And I want you to accept. You could keep these rooms till
they got a house ready for you. Together--you and me--we'd make that
organ howl. But because I like it--because it's everything to us--and
nothing to you, it don't seem square for me to ask it. Does it?"
Gideon replied by taking Hamlin's hand. His face was perfectly pale,
but his look collected. He had not expected this offer, and yet when
it was made he felt as if he had known it before--as if he had been
warned of it--as if it was the great temptation of his life. Watching
him with an earnestness only slightly overlaid by his usual manner,
Hamlin went on.
"I know it would be lonely here, and a man like you ought to have a
wife for--" he slightly lifted his eyebrows--"for example's sake. I
heard there was a young lady in the case over there in Tasajara--but
the old people didn't see it on account of your position. They'd jump
at it now. Eh? No? Well," continued Jack, with a decent attempt to
conceal his cynical relief, "perhaps those boys have been so eager to
find out all they could do for you that they've been sold. Perhaps
we're making equal fools of ourselves now in asking you to stay. But
don't say no just yet--take a day or a week to think of it."
Gideon still pale but calm, cast his eyes around the elegant room, at
the magic organ, then upon the slight handsome figure before him. "I
WILL think of it," he said, in a low voice, as he pressed Jack's hand.
"And if I accept you will find me here to-morrow afternoon at this
time; if I do not you will know that I keep with me wherever I go the
kindness, the brotherly love, and the grace of God that prompts your
offer, even though He withholds from me His blessed light, which alone
can make me know His wish." He stopped and hesitated. "If you love
me, Jack, don't ask me to stay, but pray for that light which alone can
guide my feet back to you, or take me hence for ever."
He once more tightly pressed the hand of the embarrassed man before him
and was gone.
Passers-by on the Martinez road that night remembered a mute and
ghostly rider who, heedless of hail or greeting, moved by them as in a
trance or vision. But the Widow Hiler the next morning, coming from
the spring, found no abstraction or preoccupation in the soft eyes of
Gideon Deane as he suddenly appeared before her, and gently relieved
her of the bucket she was carrying. A quick flash of color over her
brow and cheek-bone, as if a hot iron had passed there, and a certain
astringent coyness, would have embarrassed any other man than him.
"Sho, it's YOU. I reck'ned I'd seen the last of you."
"You don't mean that, Sister Hiler?" said Gideon, with a gentle smile.
"Well, what with the report of your goin's on at Martinez and improvin'
the occasion of that sinner's death, and leadin' a revival, I reckoned
you'ld hev forgotten low folks at Tasajara. And if your goin' to be
settled there in a new church, with new hearers, I reckon you'll want
new surroundings too. Things change and young folks change with 'em."
They had reached the house. Her breath was quick and short as if she
and not Gideon had borne the burden. He placed the bucket in its
accustomed place, and then gently took her hand in his. The act
precipitated the last drop of feeble coquetry she had retained, and the
old tears took its place. Let us hope for the last time. For as Gideon
stooped and lifted her ailing babe in his strong arms, he said softly,
"Whatever God has wrought for me since we parted, I know now He has
called me to but one work."
"And that work?" she asked, tremulously.
"To watch over the widow and fatherless. And with God's blessing,
sister, and His holy ordinance, I am here to stay."