WAKING AND WATCHING.
Burning with thirst and wild with fever,
She tossed and moaned on her couch of pain;
With an aching heart he must go and leave her;
Never shall they two meet again!
Never? Oh, yes, where the stars are burning
O'er his path to Heaven with a golden glow,
His soul turns back with its human yearning
To watch her anguish and soothe her woe.
When Mrs. Chester awoke from her slumber, which had been one wild
and harrowing dream, she inquired of the children, who were early
to her bed, if their father had not come back, and if there was yet
no tidings from the Mayor's office. They answered that he had but
just left the house, and that he had been with her nearly an hour
as she slept. She smiled gently, and closing her heavy eyes, turned
her head upon the pillow, moaning with the pain this slight motion
gave.
Mary went to the little supper table which she had spread in
anticipation of Mr. Chester's return, and came back with a bowl of
warm tea in her hand.
"If you can only drink a little of this ma'am," she said, stirring
the tea with a bright silver teaspoon, the last they had left of a
full set, "it always does your head so much good!"
Mrs. Chester rose upon her elbow and attempted to take the tea, but
her head was dizzy, and after the first spoonful she turned away in
disgust.
"I cannot drink it. Oh, for a glass of cold, cold water!"
Mary ran into the next room and came back with some water. But it
tasted tepid to the poor invalid, and she only bathed her parched
mouth with it.
"You are ill, you are very ill, ma'am," said Mary; "this does not
seem like nothing but a slight headache. May I run for a doctor?"
"We have no money to pay doctors with, my child," said the poor
invalid, clasping her hot fingers together, "now that I am sick, who
will earn bread for you all? who will comfort _him_?"
"I will do my best, and so will Isabel!" replied Mary, "besides,
perhaps--"
The child paused and her eyes fell. She was about to say that perhaps
the Mayor might not be so very hard on Mr. Chester, after all; but
remembering the look and manner of that unhappy man, she could not
say this with truth, knowing well, as if it had been told her in
words, that her benefactor had no hope. "Perhaps," she added,
"something may happen. When it was at the worst with me, you know
something happened."
"And surely it is at the worst with us now," murmured Mrs. Chester,
meekly folding her hands, "no, not the worst," she added, with a wild
start, "for I am not a widow yet."
God help the poor woman. She was a widow, even then.
The two children sat up that night watching by the sick, and waiting
for the father to return, who lay so cold and still upon the sodden
timber of that dismal pier. They had eaten nothing all day--at least
Mary had not--and now they cut the sixpenny loaf in slices and partook
of it, leaving a small covered dish, which had been prepared for
Chester, untouched. His supper was sacred to those little girls.
Hungry and worn-out as they were, neither of them even once glanced
at it longingly. They were quite content with the dry bread, and even
ate of that sparingly, for Mrs. Chester had asked for ice, and various
little things in her delirium--she was delirious then--and the
children ran out after everything she mentioned, hoping to relieve
the terrible state she was in, till they had but one shilling left.
So they made a sparing meal of the bread--those poor little
creatures--and a cup of cold water, for the tea must be saved for
him and for her. "Children," they said, with tears in their eyes,
"ought not to want such things."
With all her brave effort to sit up till her father came, poor little
Isabel dropped to sleep with her head upon the table, weary and almost
heartbroken, for she was not used to suffering like Mary Fuller, and
her childish strength yielded more readily. After this, Mary sat
watching quite alone, for Mrs. Chester had muttered herself into a
feverish sleep, and the house was in profound silence.
Then came upon Mary Fuller a terrible sense of the desolation that
had overtaken them. Dark and shadowy thoughts swept over her soul,
leaving it calm, but oh, how unutterably miserable. This foreshadowing
of evil fastened upon her like a conviction. She felt in the very
depths of her being that some solemn event was approaching its
consummation that very moment. She ceased to listen for Chester's
coming, but hushing her tread, as if in the close presence of death,
crept away to a corner and prayed silently.
There are moments in human life when persons linked together in a
series of events may form tableaux, which stand out from ordinary
grouping, like an illustration stamped in strong light and shadow
on the book of destiny. Thus was Chester's household revealed on that
solemn midnight.
Mary Fuller, upon her knees, her small hands uplifted, her face turned
to the wall; Isabel, with her lovely head pillowed on her arms; and,
through an open door, Jane Chester, in her feverish sleep, with the
pale lamplight glimmering over them all--this was one picture.
Another, equally distinct in its mournful outline, was revealed to
the all-seeing One alone.
Upon that dark wharf, among the motionless ships, that seemed like
spectres gazing upon his hushed agony, Chester still lay, shrouded
by the heavy clinging fog. The tide rose slowly lapping the sodden
timbers which formed his death-bed, and creeping upwards, inch by
inch, like the weltering folds of a pall. The whisper of these waters,
black and sluggish, gurgling and creeping toward him, was the last
sound poor Chester ever heard on earth.
Oh, it was a wretched picture that might have won pity from the
ghostlike shrouds and spars which hedged it in as with a forest of
blasted trees.
One more picture, and the night closes. The Common Council was in
session. Both marble wings of the City Hall were brilliantly
illuminated, and crowds of eager spectators gathered around the two
council chambers. Some fifty or sixty poor and efficient men were
to be turned out of office, and the populace were eager to witness
the jocose and delicate way in which the New York city fathers
decapitated their children. To have witnessed the smiling jests that
passed to and fro in the Board, the quiet and sneering pleasure of
one man--the careless tone of another--the indifferent air of a
third--you would have supposed that these wise men had met to perform
some great public benefit. It seemed like a gala night, the majority
were so full of generous glee.
And why should they not be jovial and happy in the legislative halls?
What was there to dampen their spirits in these gay proceedings? True,
the heads of fifty or sixty families were thus playfully deprived
of the means of an honest support. Efficient and experienced men were
taken from almost all the city departments, and cast without
occupation upon the world. Men who had toiled in the city's service,
for years, for a bare livelihood, were suddenly cast forth to want
and penury. It was in the season of a terrible epidemic, and
physicians who had braved pestilence and death, heaped together in
the great hospitals of the city--who had made a home of the
lazar-house, when to breathe its atmosphere was almost to die--were
among those who were to be given up as victims to party.
These men, some of them yet trembling upon the brink of the grave
from pestilence, inhaled while nobly performing duties for which they
were scarcely better paid than the commonest soldier--these were the
men whom our city fathers were so blandly and pleasantly removing
from their field of duty. Was it wonderful, then, that the whole
affair seemed quite like pastime to those engaged in it; or that they
made themselves jocosely eloquent upon the subject, whenever one of
the grave minority ventured to lift his voice against the proceedings?
When the two Boards broke up for recess, nothing could exceed the
spirit and good fellowship with which they went down to supper. The
Mayor was present, for having been an Alderman himself, he always
knew when anything peculiarly agreeable to his taste was coming off
at the hall. The President of the Upper Board was in splendid spirits,
and altogether it was a brilliant scene when the Mayor took his seat
next the President, and the aldermen and assistants ranged themselves
on either side the groaning board.
With what relish the city fathers ate their supper that night! Birds
worth their weight in gold vanished from their plates as if they had
taken wing. Great, luscious oysters, delicately cooked after every
conceivable fashion--canvas-backed ducks, swimming in foreign
jellies--turkeys and roasted chickens, that went from the table whole,
being too common for men who had learned to indulge in wild game and
condiments at the cost of ten thousand a year--decanters, through
which the wine gleamed red and bright, interspersed here and there
with others of a darker tinge and more potent flavor--brandied fruit
and rich sweetmeats, all shed their dull sickening fragrance through
the tea-room. The flash of glasses in the light; the flash of coarse
wit that followed the drained glasses; the clatter of plates; the
noiseless tread of the waiters--why it was enough to make the silver
urn and curious old pitchers start of themselves from the side-board
to claim a share in the feast. It was enough to make the public
documents, prisoned in the surrounding book-cases, shiver and rustle
with an effort to free themselves from bondage.
The very fragments of that official supper would have fed many a poor
family for weeks; but the city fathers really did enjoy it so much
it would have been a pity to dampen their spirits by an idea so at
variance with their action. They had consigned at least fifty
blameless families to poverty that night, and surely that was labor
enough without troubling themselves about the means by which they
were to be kept from perishing.
You could see by the quiet smile upon the Mayor's lip, as he arose
from the supper table, and helped himself to a handful of cigars from
a box on the side-board, that he was in excellent spirits. A
distinguished guest from the country partook of the city's hospitality
that night, and as the two lighted their cigars, they conversed
together on city matters.
"To-morrow--to-morrow," said his honor, "you must go over our
institutions--Bellevue, the Island, and the various Asylums."
The stranger shook his head.
"Not to Bellevue, if that is where your people are dying off so
rapidly of ship-fever," he said. "I have a terror of the disease;
why I saw it stated that half the physicians at your Alms House were
down with it, and that three or four out of the number have died this
season."
"Yes," said the Mayor, lighting a cigar, "the mortality has been very
great at Bellevue, especially among the young doctors. They are
peculiarly exposed, however."
"I should think," said the stranger, laying down his cigar, for he
could not find the heart to smoke quietly, when conversing on a
subject so painful, "I should suppose it would be difficult to find
persons ready to meet almost certain death, as these young men are
sure to do. It must be a painful task to you, sir, when you sign their
appointments. It would seem to me like attaching my name to a death
warrant."
"Yes," replied the Mayor, taking out his cigar and examining the end,
for it did not burn readily; "it is very disagreeable. Why, sir, the
city has paid, already, nearly five hundred dollars for funeral
expenses; and there is no knowing how far it may be carried."
The stranger looked up in surprise; he could not believe that he had
heard aright--that the Mayor of New York was absolutely counting,
as a subject of regret, the funeral cost attending the death of those
brave young men who had perished amid the pestilence, more bravely
a thousand times, than warriors that fall on the battle-field.
But as he was about to speak again, several aldermen who still
lingered at the table, called loudly for the Mayor.
"I say," said the Alderman, who has been particularly presented to
the reader, leaning over the back of his chair, with a glass of wine
in one hand--"I say, have you settled that Chester yet? My man is
getting impatient."
"Hush!" said his honor; "not so loud, my good friend. Bring in the
nomination to-morrow--I gave Chester his quietus this afternoon."
And so he had; for while this scene was going on at the City Hall,
the two pictures we have given, were stamped upon the eternal pages
of the Past, and so was this.