Up to the black gates, but not beyond them. The dawn following such a
night will seem more like a daughter of the night than promise of day.
It is day that follows, notwithstanding: The sad fair girl survived, and
her flickering life was the sole light of the household; at times burying
its members in dusk, to shine on them again more like a prolonged
farewell than a gladsome restoration.
She was saved by what we call chance; for it had not been in her design
to save herself. The hand was firm to help her to the deadly draught.
As far as could be conjectured, she had drunk it between hurried readings
from her mother's Bible; the one true companion to which she had often
clung, always half-availingly. The Bible was found by her side, as if it
had fallen from the chair before which she knelt to read her last
quickening verses, and had fallen with her. One arm was about it; one
grasped the broken phial with its hideous label.
It was uncomplainingly registered among the few facts very distinctly
legible in Master Gammon's memory, that for three entire weeks he had no
dumplings for dinner at the farm; and although, upon a computation,
articles of that description, amounting probably to sixty-three (if there
is any need for our being precise), were due to him, and would
necessarily be for evermore due to him, seeing that it is beyond all
human and even spiritual agency to make good unto man the dinner he has
lost, Master Gammon uttered no word to show that he was sensible of a
slight, which was the only indication given by him of his knowledge of a
calamity having changed the order of things at the farm. On the day when
dumplings reappeared, he remarked, with a glance at the ceiling: "Goin'
on better--eh, marm?"
"Oh! Mas' Gammon," Mrs. Sumfit burst out; "if I was only certain you said
your prayers faithful every night!" The observation was apparently taken
by Master Gammon to express one of the mere emotions within her bosom,
for he did not reply to it.
She watched him feeding in his steady way, with the patient bent back,
and slowly chopping old grey jaws, and struck by a pathos in the sight,
exclaimed,--
"We've all been searched so, Mas' Gammon! I feel I know everything
that's in me. I'd say, I couldn't ha' given you dumplin's and tears; but
think of our wickedness, when I confess to you I did feel spiteful at you
to think that you were wiltin' to eat the dumplin's while all of us
mourned and rocked as in a quake, expecting the worst to befall; and that
made me refuse them to you. It was cruel of me, and well may you shake
your head. If I was only sure you said your prayers!"
The meaning in her aroused heart was, that if she could be sure Master
Gammon said his prayers, so as to be searched all through by them, as she
was herself, and to feel thereby, as she did, that he knew everything
that was within him, she would then, in admiration of his profound
equanimity, acknowledge him to be a superior Christian.
Naturally enough, Master Gammon allowed the interjection to pass,
regarding it as simply a vagrant action of the engine of speech; while
Mrs. Sumfit, with an interjector's consciousness of prodigious things
implied which were not in any degree comprehended, left his presence in
kindness, and with a shade less of the sense that he was a superior
Christian.
Nevertheless, the sight of Master Gammon was like a comforting medicine
to all who were in the house. He was Mrs. Sumfit's clock; he was balm
and blessedness in Rhoda's eyes; Anthony was jealous of him; the farmer
held to him as to a stake in the ground: even Robert, who rallied and
tormented, and was vexed by him, admitted that he stood some way between
an example and a warning, and was a study. The grand primaeval quality
of unchangeableness, as exhibited by this old man, affected them
singularly in their recovery from the storm and the wreck of the hours
gone by; so much so that they could not divest themselves of the idea
that it was a manifestation of power in Master Gammon to show forth
undisturbed while they were feeling their life shaken in them to the
depths. I have never had the opportunity of examining the
idol-worshipping mind of a savage; but it seems possible that the
immutability of aspect of his little wooden God may sometimes touch him
with a similar astounded awe;--even when, and indeed especially after, he
has thrashed it. Had the old man betrayed his mortality in a sign of
curiosity to know why the hubbub of trouble had arisen, and who was to
blame, and what was the story, the effect on them would have been
diminished. He really seemed granite among the turbulent waves. "Give
me Gammon's life!" was Farmer Fleming's prayerful interjection; seeing
him come and go, sit at his meals, and sleep and wake in season, all
through those tragic hours of suspense, without a question to anybody.
Once or twice, when his eye fell upon the doctor, Master Gammon appeared
to meditate. He observed that the doctor had never been called in to one
of his family, and it was evident that he did not understand the
complication of things which rendered the doctor's visit necessary.
"You'll never live so long as that old man," the farmer said to Robert.
"No; but when he goes, all of him's gone," Robert answered.
"But Gammon's got the wisdom to keep himself safe, Robert; there's no one
to blame for his wrinkles."
"Gammon's a sheepskin old Time writes his nothings on," said Robert.
"He's safe--safe enough. An old hulk doesn't very easily manage to
founder in the mud, and Gammon's been lying on the mud all his life."
"Let that be how 't will," returned the farmer; "I've had days o' mortal
envy of that old man."
"Well, it's whether you prefer being the fiddle or the fiddle-case,"
quoth Robert.
Of Anthony the farmer no longer had any envy. In him, though he was as
passive as Master Gammon, the farmer beheld merely a stupefied old man,
and not a steady machine. He knew that some queer misfortune had
befallen Anthony.
"He'll find I'm brotherly," said Mr. Fleming; but Anthony had darkened
his golden horizon for him, and was no longer an attractive object to his
vision.
Upon an Autumn afternoon; Dahlia, looking like a pale Spring flower, came
down among them. She told her sister that it was her wish to see Edward.
Rhoda had lost all power of will, even if she had desired to keep them
asunder. She mentioned Dahlia's wish to her father, who at once went for
his hat, and said: "Dress yourself neat, my lass." She knew what was
meant by that remark. Messages daily had been coming down from the Hall,
but the rule of a discerning lady was then established there, and Rhoda
had been spared a visit from either Edward or Algernon, though she knew
them to be at hand. During Dahlia's convalescence, the farmer had not
spoken to Rhoda of her engagement to the young squire. The great misery
intervening, seemed in her mind to have cancelled all earthly
engagements; and when he said that she must use care in her attire he
suddenly revived a dread within her bosom, as if he had plucked her to
the verge of a chasm.
But Mrs. Lovell's delicacy was still manifest: Edward came alone, and he
and Dahlia were left apart.
There was no need to ask for pardon from those gentle eyes. They joined
hands. She was wasted and very weak, but she did not tremble. Passion
was extinguished. He refrained from speaking of their union, feeling
sure that they were united. It required that he should see her to know
fully the sinner he had been. Wasted though she was, he was ready to
make her his own, if only for the sake of making amends to this dear fair
soul, whose picture of Saint was impressed on him, first as a response to
the world wondering at his sacrifice of himself, and next, by degrees, as
an absolute visible fleshly fact. She had come out of her martyrdom
stamped with the heavenly sign-mark.
"Those are the old trees I used to speak of," she said, pointing to the
two pines in the miller's grounds. "They always look like Adam and Eve
turning away."
"They do not make you unhappy to see them, Dahlia?"
"I hope to see them till I am gone."
Edward pressed her fingers. He thought that warmer hopes would soon flow
into her.
"The neighbours are kind?" he asked.
"Very kind. They, inquire after me daily."
His cheeks reddened; he had spoken at random, and he wondered that Dahlia
should feel it pleasurable to be inquired after, she who was so
sensitive.
"The clergyman sits with me every day, and knows my heart," she added.
"The clergyman is a comfort to women," said Edward.
Dahlia looked at him gently. The round of her thin eyelids dwelt on him.
She wished. She dared not speak her wish to one whose remembered mastery
in words forbade her poor speechlessness. But God would hear her prayers
for him.
Edward begged that he might come to her often, and she said,--
"Come."
He misinterpreted the readiness of the invitation.
When he had left her, he reflected on the absence of all endearing
epithets in her speech, and missed them. Having himself suffered, he
required them. For what had she wrestled so sharply with death, if not
to fall upon his bosom and be his in a great outpouring of gladness? In
fact he craved the immediate reward for his public acknowledgement of his
misdeeds. He walked in this neighbourhood known by what he had done, and
his desire was to take his wife away, never more to be seen there.
Following so deep a darkness, he wanted at least a cheerful dawn: not one
of a penitential grey--not a hooded dawn, as if the paths of life were to
be under cloistral arches. And he wanted a rose of womanhood in his hand
like that he had parted with, and to recover which he had endured every
earthly mortification, even to absolute abasement. The frail bent lily
seemed a stranger to him.
Can a man go farther than his nature? Never, when he takes passion on
board. By other means his nature may be enlarged and nerved, but passion
will find his weakness, and, while urging him on, will constantly betray
him at that point. Edward had three interviews with Dahlia; he wrote to
her as many times. There was but one answer for him; and when he ceased
to charge her with unforgivingness, he came to the strange conclusion
that beyond our calling of a woman a Saint for rhetorical purposes, and
esteeming her as one for pictorial, it is indeed possible, as he had
slightly discerned in this woman's presence, both to think her saintly
and to have the sentiments inspired by the overearthly in her person.
Her voice, her simple words of writing, her gentle resolve, all issuing
of a capacity to suffer evil, and pardon it, conveyed that character to a
mind not soft for receiving such impressions.