A WRITTEN WORD.
My escape from that strong net of fatality that had enmeshed so many
years of my still young life, had been, it seemed, only a merciful
respite. Now the toils, regathering about me again, woke a spirit of
hopeless resignation in me that had been foreign to my earlier mood of
resistance. Man has made of himself so plodding an animal as to almost
resent the unreality of his brief vacations. He eats his way, like a
wood-boring larva, through a monotonous tunnel of routine, satisfied
with the thought that some day he may emerge into the light on the
other side, ready-winged for flight to the garden of paradise. Perhaps
Lazarus was humanly far-seeing in refusing the rich man a drop of
water. It would have made the poor wretch’s after lot tenfold more
unendurable.
Now a feeling came over me that I could struggle no more, but would
lie in the web and suffer unresisting the onsets of fate. My father’s
seizure; Duke’s reappearance and his hint as to the visit I was to
expect from Jason; the sudden flight of the cripple before the vision
of Dr. Crackenthorpe--all these were strands about my soul with which
I would concern myself no longer. I would do my duty, so far as I
could, and set my face in one direction and glance aside no more.
That night I ordered Peggy to bed--for since Jason’s going she slept
in the house--and myself passed the dreary vigil of the hours by my
father’s side. Indeed, for the three days following I scarcely lay
down at all, but took my food in snatches and slept by fits and starts
in chairs or window-corners as occasion offered.
During the whole of this time the condition of the patient never
altered. He lay on his back, breathing crookedly from his twisted
mouth; his eyes closed; the whole of the right side of his body
stricken motionless. His left hand he would occasionally move and that
was the single sign of animate life he showed.
And day and night the wind blew and the hail and rain came down in a
cold and ceaseless deluge. The whole country was flooded, I heard, and
the streams risen, but still the rending storm flew and added
devastation to misery.
It was on the afternoon of the third day that, chancing to look at the
old man as I sat by his bedside, I saw, with a certain shock of
pleasure, that his eyes were open and fixed upon my face. I jumped to
my feet and leaned over him, and at that some shadow of emotion passed
across his features, as if the angel of death stood between him and
the window.
Presently his left hand, that lay on the coverlet, began moving. The
fingers twitched with a beckoning motion and he raised his arm several
times and let it fall again listlessly. I fancied I was conscious of
some dumb appeal addressed to me, toward which my own soul yearned in
sympathy. Yet, strive as I would, I could not interpret it. An
inexpressible trouble seemed lost and wandering in the fathomless
depths of the eyes; passionate utterance seemed ever hovering on the
lips, ever escaping the grasp of will and sliding back into blackness.
“Dad,” I said, “what is it? Try to express by a sign and I will try to
understand.”
The hand rose again, weakly fluttered in the air and dropped upon the
coverlet. Thrice the effort was made and thrice I failed to interpret
its significance. Then a little quivering sigh came from the mouth and
the eyes closed in exhaustion.
I racked my brains for the meaning of the sign. Some trouble, it was
evident, sought expression, but what--what--what? My mind was all
dulled and confused by the incidents of the last few days.
While I was vainly struggling for a solution old Peggy entered the
room with tea and bread and butter for my afternoon meal. She paused
with the tray in her hands, watching the blind groping of the fingers
on the bed.
“Ay,” she said, “but I doubt me ye cudn’t hold a pen, master.”
I turned sharply to her.
“Is that what he wants?”
“Pen or pencil--’tis arl one. When speech goes, we talk wi’ the
fingers.”
What a fool I had been! The sign I had struggled in vain for hours to
read, this uncanny old beldame had understood at a glance.
I hurried out of the room and returned with paper and pencil. I thrust
the latter between the wandering fingers and they closed over it with
a quick, weak snap. But they could not retain it, and it slipped from
them again upon the coverlet. A moan broke from the lips and the arm
beat the clothes feebly.
“Heave en up,” said the old woman. “He’s axing ye to.”
I put my arm under my father’s shoulders and with a strong effort got
him into a sitting posture, propped among the pillows. I placed the
pencil in his hand again and held the paper in such a position that he
could write upon it. He succeeded in making a few hieroglyphic
scratches on the white surface and that was all.
“It’s no manner o’ use, Renalt,” said Peggy. “Better lat en alone and
drink up your tea.”
“Put it down there and leave us to ourselves.”
The old creature did as she was bidden and shuffled from the room
grumbling.
I placed the paper where my father’s hand could rest upon it, and sat
down to my silent meal.
Presently, watching, as I ate, the weak restless movements of the hand
upon the quilt, a thought occurred to me, which then and there I
resolved to put into practice. It was evident that, unless through an
unexpected renewal of strength, those dying fingers would never
succeed in forming a legible word with the pencil they could barely
hold. But they could make a sign of themselves and that little power I
must seek to direct.
I hurried down to the kitchen and seized from the wall an ancient bone
tablet that Peggy used for domestic memoranda. Scraping a little soot
from the chimney I mixed it with water into a thick paste and spread a
thin layer of the latter over the surface of the tablet. It dried
almost immediately, and writing on it with the tip of my finger, I
found that the soot came readily away, leaving the mark I had made
stenciled white and clear under the upper coating.
Returning to my father, with this extemporized first principle and the
saucer of black paste, I held the tablet before his dim, wandering
eyes, and wrote on it with my finger, demonstrating the method. At
first he hardly seemed to comprehend my meaning, but, after a
repetition or two his glance concentrated and his forehead seemed to
ripple into little wrinkles of intelligence. At that I smeared the
surface of the bone afresh, waited a minute for it to dry, and placed
it under his hand upon the bed, leaving him to evolve the method from
his poor crippled inner consciousness.
But a few moments had elapsed when a small, low sound from the bed
brought me to my father’s side.
He looked from me to the tablet, where it lay, and there was a
strained imploring line between his eyes. Gently I took up the little
black square and I saw that something was formed on it. With infinite
toil, for it was only his left hand he could use, he had scratched on
it a single, straggling word, and in the fading light I read it:
“Forgive.”
“Father!” I cried; “is that what you have been striving to say?”
He dragged up his unstricken arm slowly into an attitude as if the
hand sought its fellow to join it in a prayer to me.
“Before God,” I said, “you wrong me to think I could say that word!
What have I to forgive you for? My sins have been my own, and they
have met with their just reward. Am I to forgive you for loving me?
Dad--dad! I have known so little love that I can’t afford to wrong
yours by a thought. Look! I will blot this out, that you may know my
heart has nothing but tenderness in it for you!”
I snatched up the tablet and smeared out the cruel word and placed the
blank surface under his hand again. He was looking at me all the time
with the same dim anguished expression, and now his head sunk back on
the pillow and a tear rolled down his face.
Night came upon me sitting there, and presently, overcome by emotion
and weariness, I fell over upon the foot of the bed and sunk into a
profound sleep. For hours I lay unconscious and it was broad day in
the room when I awoke with a sudden start.
Realizing in a moment how I had betrayed my vigil, I leaped to my feet
with a curse at my selfishness and looked down upon my father. He was
lying back, sunk in a wan exhausted sleep, and under its influence his
features seemed to have somewhat resumed their normal expression.
But it appeared he had again been scrawling on the tablets, with the
first of the dawn, probably; and these were the broken words thereon
that stared whitely up at me:
“I murd Mored.”