GILBERT ALLISON HEARS A VOICE.
It was this night that two travelers were journeying across a bit of
suburban country toward their city homes. They were out later than they
had expected to be, perhaps. At any rate, it was somewhere close to the
hour of midnight and they were approaching an old graveyard.
As they neared the ancient burying ground Mr. Allison, for he was one of
the riders, became less talkative, and rode closer to his friend, a
young man of about his own age.
"Hist, Sammy! Didn't you hear something? Ah! Now it has gone again. You
were not quick enough. Keep your ear open. At the turning of the wind it
may come again."
"Well, by grabs! Gillie, where will you end?" laughed the other. "First
love, now ghosts. Listening for spooks because we happen to be passing
the burying spot of some of our ancestors. Allow me to alight and pick a
switch for the poor boy to defend himself with when the ghosts set upon
him."
"Sammie! Sammie! I hear it again! It's coming on the breeze. Listen
now!"
Gilbert Allison stopped his horse and leaned eagerly forward. Sammie
listened, but was again too late. The dead leaves rustled close by over
the sunken graves; the tall, bare trees waved their skeleton arms, while
the breeze died away to a long, weary sigh and was gone.
"It does not come from the cemetery, Sammie, but from beyond. Perhaps it
will come again. Listen!"
The breeze was coming to them again, and they drew their horses to a
halt.
"There, Sammie! You did not miss that, did you?"
They listened a moment longer, but the breeze was dying away and with it
the cry, whatever it was.
"The Dickens! Allison, let us hurry on. This is too ghostly a night to
tarry. That cry gives me an uneasy feeling to the marrow of my bones."
They quickened their pace, and rode some distance in silence. The sky
seemed growing darker and the wind was rising. A thick clump of trees
hard by cast a gloomy shadow across the road, and just as they passed
into this the floating clouds covered the face of the moon, and they
were in pitchy darkness.
Suddenly there burst into the black night from somewhere in front of
them a most unearthly yell.
Allison's horse quivered and Sammie's gave a violent lurch.
"Heavens, Sammie! What was that?"
"Blast the moon!" ejaculated Sammie. "Ride close to the side of the
road. It was near here."
They had passed the clump of trees, but were still in the dark. All was
still save the tiresome moaning of the trees. Then they heard the rapid
approach of some man or beast, and the next instant, directly at their
sides, there went out onto the night air a succession of blood-curdling
yells and barks.
The horses sprang and danced.
The moon came out, and in its pale yellow light they saw the creature
disappearing down the road. It was the figure of a man, crouching and
springing, rather than walking. As he neared the clump of trees he made
the night shudder with still wilder and fiercer screams. Then he
disappeared down the shadowy road.
"A madman!" said Allison. "Heavens! What couldn't he do to a fellow if
he had him to himself?"
Sammie laughed nervously.
"His boots are full of snakes, if I am not mistaken--but truly a bad
fellow. He must have been what we heard back by the cemetery."
"No. Not such a noise as that. That was a wailing cry. Perhaps--he
surely cannot have had his hand on any human being. Let us hurry on. The
devil must be hereabouts to-night."
The suburbs seemed again to be asleep. The wind came and went over the
rickety homes, sparsely scattered, and its moaning was made more dismal
by the long-drawn out howl of some sleepless cur.
At rare intervals a light gleamed from a window.
One window from which a light shone Gilbert Allison and his friend
looked into that night, and somehow that window remained always open in
the memory of each, with a bright light burning behind it.
It was a dreary little structure that stood close to the roadside, quite
alone. The window was only a square hole, and the feeble light inside
flickered as the wind blew through. There had been glass there once, no
doubt, but that glass and many other cheap glass windows had gone into a
better, richer piece of glass, and that hung in a respectable saloon.
Reflecting the decanters and red noses--and broken hearts? No! Ah, no!
Their reflection would have injured the trade. They remained where the
cheap glass had once been, and it was one of these hearts that Gilbert
Allison, late of the firm of Allison, Russell & Joy, caught a glimpse of
as he paused at the open window.
A woman sat on the floor in the middle of the room.
A woman of petrified misery. She gazed beyond the surrounding walls into
the happy past, the mournful future--into Heaven and Hell, or somewhere.
Close by her side lay the still warm body of the boy. She placed her
hands over his face, and, feeling the warmth, opened the tattered,
bloody little night-dress and pressed her ear over the heart--pressed it
closer and closer, but the heart was still.
She did not cry, this woman. Why should she? She knew the child was
better off. She lifted a corner of her garment and wiped the thick blood
from the face, then she pressed her lips to the lips, the cheeks, the
forehead, in long, loving, mother kisses. She drooped her head close
over the childish body, and drawing the soft arms around her neck held
them there. She stroked back the hair, and her hands were bloodstained.
Resting the child's body tenderly on the hard floor, she raised her face
of misery and her bloodstained hands toward Heaven.
"God!" she cried. "Look at my hands! See God! Here it is--my baby's
blood. Come, God, and see my boy. He's getting stiff--but come,
God--come! See the bruises and the blood! See the face--the little face,
all full of pain and fear--and feel the crushed bones, God! He is
getting cold--cold--cold! The boy's dead!"
She caught up one of the child's hands and pressed it convulsively.
After a moment's silence she began again, suddenly, fiercely:
"Is there any God? Where is he? Where does he stay? Not with Christians.
They have the power, if God were with them, to stop the curse. No, not
with them. They do not stop it. No. They license it, they do. 'Woe, woe
to him that puts the bottle to his neighbor's lips.' They do! They do!
But God must be somewhere. God come out of somewhere!"
The wind blew and the light flickered. Allison and Sammie, looking in,
seemed riveted to the spot. It was not a pleasant picture, yet they
gazed.
"My husband a murderer!" wailed the woman. "The boy's blood on his
hands? Lord God! I never want to see his face again! Have mercy on his
soul! Perhaps he cannot help it now--he is a madman. Love him if you
can--I loved him once."
Something like a sob sounded in the woman's voice, but she choked it
back. After a moment of silence she moved a short distance from the
little corpse, and, raising herself upright on her knees, with her hands
clasped at arm's length over her head, she prayed.
It was not a Christlike prayer--rather the helpless cry of a soul
tortured, in the grasp of a Christianized sin.
"Lord God! Down deep in Hell--away down--down where the fire is hottest,
and the black blackest, and the smoke thickest, there let the man be
bound forever who covers the business of Hell with a respectable
covering. There forever let him see my boy's piteous, quivering face;
let him hear the dying moan and see the red blood! I know them, God! You
know them, God--you know them! Hear my prayer!"
Another gust of wind came, nearer and stronger, and the lamp flickered
out. It was quiet. Very quiet. So quiet that Allison and Sammie heard
the sigh that escaped the woman's lips. It was a heavy sigh, filled with
tears and utter despair.
A sigh that went farther than all the sighing winds had ever gone. A
sigh that was wafted far above to the great God who keeps record of the
sighs that come up from the hearts of a million drunkards' wives, and
who writes on the balance-sheet: "Vengeance is mine. I will repay."
Some people, one of them an officer, entered the house from the opposite
side, and the two travelers, seeing no need for their services, turned
away and mounted their horses.
Mr. Allison was somewhat excited.
"Hanging is too good for that brute!" he said, loudly. "I believe I
could stand by and see him roast. Heavens, what a devil! Poor woman, I
wish I had not stopped there to-night."
Sammie grunted. "Thinking of the place she referred to as the
respectable dealer's future headquarters?" he questioned.
"Shut up, will you! This is no time for joking!"
The young man complied with the request of his polite friend, and
thought to himself, but Mr. Allison was no better pleased. He knew that
if he had not seen it, it would have been. It really was. He was deeply
stirred. And as he rode on through the night he was thinking new and
strange thoughts.