In the little town of Chester, near the Bay of Chesapeake, lived an
elegant man, with the softest manners in the world and a shadow
forever on his countenance. He bore a blameless character and an
honored name. He had one son of the same name as his own, Perry
Whaley. This son was forever with him, for use or for pleasure; they
could not be happy separated, nor congenial together. A destiny seemed
to unite them, but with it also a baleful memory. The negroes
whispered that in the boy's conception and birth was a secret of
shame; he was not this father's son, and his mother had confessed it.
That mother was gone--fled to a distant part of the world with her
betrayer--and the divorce was recorded while yet young Perry Whaley
was a babe. But the boy never knew it: his origin reposed in the
sensitive memory of his father only, and every day the father looked
at the son long and distantly, and the son at the father with a most
affectionate longing.
"Papa," he would say, "can't you try to love me? Do I disobey you? I
am sure I am always unhappy out of your sight."
The father could not do without that boy, but could only hate him. "My
son," he would reply, "you are obedient, but a demon! I could not love
you if I would!"
"Never mind then, father, I can wait. There is plenty of time in life
to make you love me!"
Judge Whaley--for he had been on the bench--was the highest example in
Maryland of honor and pride. A General of militia, often in the
Legislature, and once or twice a Senator at Washington, he had all
the shattered sensibilities of a proud man wounded in the soul. Age
was coming untimely upon his high temples and shadowed countenance,
and as he walked along the market-place and green court-house yard,
polite to men, boys, and negroes, they said in low tones, "Pity such a
real gentleman can't be happy!"
In public affairs Judge Whaley was not silent: he led his party with
intrepid utterances, and his prejudices, like his intellect, were
strong; but though the election sometimes hung by a few votes, and his
influence then gave every temptation on the part of low speakers and
writers to allude to his domestic dishonor, the vile reminiscence was
never mentioned. A profound respect for the man permeated society, and
in his unsmiling way he was kind to whites and blacks. A slaveholder,
and at the head of the principal slave-holding connection, and the
particular champion in that region of slavery privileges, he would
take his Bible and visit the cottages of his negroes and read to them
even when sick of contagious fevers. He defended poor clients freely
in the courts, and fought for the lives of free negroes under capital
indictments. He was of the vestry of the aged Episcopal Church, which
dominated the social influence of the town, and never omitted
attendance on all the services, but with the shadow forever on his
brow. Young Perry went everywhere with his father, and chattered and
was active to oblige him, and sometimes by his boyish humor made a
little light weaken the strong edges of that paternal shadow; but in a
few minutes, looking up into the Judge's face, he would see that
distant, accusing look returned again.
A great desire sprang up in the boy's heart to be fully loved by his
father. He looked at other boys and saw that they received from their
fathers a treatment not more gentle, but more real, as if a deep well
of feeling lay in those parents which could send up cool water or
tears, either in disagreement or sympathy. Young Perry had his own
horse and his negro, and was the only inhabitant, besides the Judge,
of the old black brick, square, colonial house on the brink of the
river--that house whence the light had gone in lurid flight when the
young wife, in the bravado of her shame, departed forever.
Judge Whaley was able, with his intellectual sympathy, to observe that
his boy was apt and right-minded.
Perry read law precociously, and liked it. He was the best juvenile
debater in the little old college on the slight hill overlooking the
town. His appearance was good, and he had a cheerful nature; yet
nowhere, among beautiful girls or riding companions, gunning on the
river, crabbing on the bridge, or skating on the meadows, was he half
so happy as with his father.
"Well, Perry," the Judge would say, "how is my demon to-day--what is
he studying now?"
"Studying you, papa; I don't understand you."
"The time will come, alas for you!" exclaimed the Judge.
"Do I displease you in any thing I do?"
"No, my son."
"Do you believe I love you?"
"Yes, I do believe it. I wish, Perry, it could be returned."
The son, under the influence of this discouraging confidence, became
serious and melancholy. He would take his gun on his shoulder and wade
out into the meadow marshes, as if for game, and there would be seen
by other gunners sitting on some old pier or perched on some worm
fence, looking straight up at the sky, as if it might answer the
riddle of his father's hate and his own unreciprocated affection. He
would also, on rainy or cold days, when the inmates could not stir
abroad, mount his horse and ride to the almshouse beyond the town
mill, and, taking a pleasant story or ballad from his pocket, read to
the huddled paupers, as well as to the keeper's family, attracted by
his pleasant condescension. By degrees the boy's face also took the
shadow worn by his father.
"Oh, if they could only love!" remarked the old people around the
court-house; "or if they only could admit the real love between them!"
The Judge never admitted it; that seemed to be a part of his religion,
a duty to himself, if painful, and the son never woke nor retired to
rest without searching in that paternal shadow for the kindly gleam of
awakened love, yet ever kissed the shadow only, and a brow that was
cold.
One Christmas Day the river was frozen--a rare event in that genial
latitude, and hearing that wild geese were flying down toward the bay
creeks and coves, the Judge took his gun and a negro and set off,
without waiting for Perry, who was not immediately to be found. An
hour later the boy returned and heard of his father's departure, and
started on horseback to overtake the carriage. He followed the track
beyond the mill and almshouse, and across the heads of several
peninsulas or necks leading into the wide tidal river. A few frosted
persimmons hung yet to their warty branches; the hulls of last
autumn's black walnuts were beneath the spreading boughs; old orchards
of peach-trees where the tints of green and bud smouldered in pink
contrast to the oft-blackened and sapless branches, set off the purple
beads of the haw on the bushes along the lanes. Fish-hawks, flying
across the sky, felt the shadow of the flocks of wild ducks flying
higher; and rabbits crossed the road so boldly in the face of Perry
Whaley, that once a raccoon, limping across a cornfield like a lame
spaniel, turned too and took both barrels of Perry's gun without other
fright or injury than slightly to hurry its pace. As the young man
heard the crows chatter around the corn-shocks and the mocking-bird in
some alder-thicket answer and sauce the catbird's scream, he said to
himself:
"Every thing is attached by an inner chord to something else, and that
other thing, free-hearted, carols or quarrels back--except father to
me. Can I not, too, find something to love me? There is Marion, the
Doctor's daughter, with the chestnut curls falling all round her
neck--she loves me, I know; but until I gain my father's love I cannot
think of woman!"
The pine-trees above his head murmured rather than moaned, as if they
strongly sympathized with him and would presently make loud and angry
cause against his enemies. "What is it," asked Perry of his
unsuspecting mind, "which makes my father so unappeasable? What is
there in me which broods upon his just and honorable life, and which
he cannot drive away though he tries? Has he some learned
superstition, some religious vow or mistaken sacrifice?"
Perry turned down a lane and then into the bed of a frozen brook, and
coming in sight of the broad river, espied his father, gun in hand,
stealthily creeping under a load of brush and twigs which the Judge's
negro had piled about his back and head, to conceal his figure from a
flock of ducks that were bathing and diving in an open place of deep
water, to which the ice had not extended.
The gliding brush heap, by slow and flitting advances, had progressed
about to within gunshot of the scarce suspecting fowls, and Perry and
the negro, from different sides of the cove, watched with the keenest
interest--when suddenly, with very little noise, the ice gave way and
Judge Whaley had sunk in deep water, loaded down with heavy gunning
boots, shot-belt, overcoat and gun. The negro stood paralyzed a
minute and then fell upon his knees, unknowing what to do. A sense of
joy started in Perry Whaley's breast as strong as his apprehensive
fears. He might be made the instrument of saving that beloved life,
and dissipating the spell of its indifference!
Nothing but this ardent passion saved Perry himself from drowning. He
had crossed the cove ere yet the impulse of parental recognition had
taken form, and throwing a rein from the carriage around the negro
man's armpits, and seizing a long fence-rail, ran rapidly across,
pulling both toward the point of danger.
Judge Whaley had been a powerful man and an accomplished sportsman;
and still as resolute as in youth, struggled with all intelligence for
his life. He sank to the bottom on first breaking through the ice,
then reaching upward made two or three powerful efforts to catch the
rim of the ice-field and sank again in each endeavor, weighted down
with leather and iron. He had sunk to rise no more when Perry reached
the edge of the field, placed the end of the rail over the abyss and
planted the negro's weight upon it, and then he dived, head foremost,
into the freezing salt depths--where the tide was running--and with
the carriage rein looped in his right hand. Before he could lay hand
upon his father, that desperate man had seized him by the hair and
drawn his head to the bottom, and every instant Perry felt that his
remainder of breath was almost run unless he could break that iron
hold. Even in that instant of agony, with death painting its awful
pageantry on his interior sight, Perry felt a gladder kind of destiny;
that perhaps the arms of a father's love were around him, and in
another sphere, already about to dawn, the shadow might depart from
that kind face and unyearning heart.
But with a sense of more human dutifulness, Perry recalled his
residuum of perception. It was necessary to break that drowning man's
grapple upon his hair, and taking the only way, if cruel, to assist
his father, the young man struck the elder's knuckles with his
clinched fist. As they released the rein was thrown about Judge
Whaley's shoulders and run through the buckle, and as his rescuer,
almost exhausted, swam upward, he made the rein fast to his ankle and
seized hold of the rail. Here occurred another agonizing delay. The
negro could not pull the rail in, between his own fears and the double
burden; the young man was exhausted and cramped with cold, and every
instant his father, still submerged, was drowning. At this moment
when the renewed probability of death brought no compensations of a
tender sentiment, it pleased the tide to whirl Judge Whaley's body
inwards, directly beneath the ice-field, and he being now insensible,
if alive at all, the negro clutched it effectually. In the awakened
pain and hope of that minute, Perry Whaley supported himself along the
piece of rail to the solid ice, and assisted to draw his father from
the water, and then swooned dead. They lay together, the unwelcome son
and the repelling father, under the universal pity of the great eye of
Heaven, on the natal day of Him who came into the world also
fatherless, but not disowned.
A neighboring farmer sent one of his boys to Chester for the doctor,
and by rubbing and restoratives, both the Judge and his son were
brought back to circulation and pulsation. Perry soon recovered, but
Judge Whaley was saved only with the greatest difficulty. It was
nightfall in the hospitable farm-house before he was able to see or
speak, and then, a little drunken with the spirits which had been
administered, he asked in a whisper:
"Who saved my life?"
"Who but your son Perry?" answered the cheerful Doctor Voss. "You were
both wrapped together for a long while in the bottom of the cove!"
"My son!" exclaimed Judge Whaley, scarcely understanding the reply.
"Who is my son?"
"Here, father! We are both alive. Thank God!"
"_My_ son?" muttered Judge Whaley. "Brave son! Who is it?"
"Why, Perry Whaley!" answered the good housewife. "His arms are around
your neck. Those warm kisses were his!"
The sick man glared about him till his eye fell on the boy.
"Ha!" he whispered. "By you. Had I awakened in heaven would you have
been there, too?"
The Judge sank back into a moment's insensibility, and the son sat
there sobbing piteously.
Though saved from the wave Judge Whaley had a long following spell of
fever, in which his son nursed him for many weeks, and once the spark
of life seemed to have fled; the Judge's pulse stopped still, and
while they were at solemn prayer--the rector of the Episcopal Church
reading from his book--Perry cried: "He still lives. It is the
medicine he needs!"
After the second resuscitation Dr. Voss remarked: "It is not often,
Judge Whaley, that a man's life is twice saved by his son!"
Tears were no longer in Perry's eyes; he had heard his father in
delirium constantly repeat his name. After the Judge's recovery he
placed in Perry's pocket a fine English watch, and gave him a pair of
horses and a stylish wagon.
"Hereafter," he said, "you shall take charge of the property. My son,
look about you and find a wife! In your character you are deserving of
a good one, for I fear the affection you are seeking can never arise
in my heart enough to satisfy you. Gratitude and respect are always
here, my son, but love has been a stranger to me these many years. I
wish you to marry while I live, and be happy in some good woman's
affection. I may die and you may not become my heir! There is the
doctor's beautiful daughter; she has my decided approval!"
"If it is your wish, father, I will marry."
The day Perry Whaley was admitted to the bar of Kent County on motion
of his father, he stopped with his pair of horses at Doctor Voss's
house, and asked Miss Marion to take a drive. She was a peerless
brunette, whose dark brown curls taking the light upon their
luxuriance seemed the rippling of water from the large amber wells of
her eyes. In childhood she had looked with admiration on his straight,
trim figure and manly courtesy, and hoped that she might find favor in
his sight. For this she had put by the scant opportunities in a small,
old, unvisited town, to be wedded to her equals, and the whispered
imputation that there was a taint in Perry Whaley's blood made no
impression upon her wishes. Her younger sisters were gone before her,
but true to the impetuous tendencies of her childhood she waited for
Perry, indulging the dream that she was destined to be his wife.
The happy, supreme opportunity had come. They took the road over the
river drawbridge into another county; the frost was out of the ground,
and the loamy road invited the horses to their speed until the breath
of spring raised in Marion's cheeks the color that dressed the budding
peach orchards which spread over the whole landscape, as if Nature was
in maternity and her rosy breasts were full of milk.
"Do you like these horses, Marion?" said Perry Whaley, when they had
gone several miles. "If you do you can drive them as long as you
live."
She laughed, more because it was the feminine way than in her feeling.
"Drive them alone?"
"Only when you do not want me to go."
"Then it will seldom be alone, Perry."
They both breathed short in silence, the happy silence of youth's
desire and assent, until Perry said, "You are sure you love me, then?"
"Must I be frank, Perry?"
"As much as ever in your life!"
"I am very sure. I loved you in my childhood--no more now than then,
except that the growth of love has strengthened with my strength."
"Marion," said the young man with a thoughtful face, "if I have not
long ago recognized this fidelity, which, to be also frank with you, I
have suspected--not because of any desert of mine, but love is like
the light which we distinctly feel even with our eyes shut--it has
been because with all my soul I was laboring for my father's love
first. You have seen the shadow on his brow? How it came there I do
not know. I have thought that with my wife to light the dark chambers
of our old house, a triple love would bloom there, and what he has
called the demon in me would disappear beneath your beautiful
ministrations. Be that angel to both of us, and as my wife touch the
fountain of his tears and make his noble heart embrace me!"
Marion Voss felt a great sense of trouble. "Is it possible," she
thought, "that Perry has never suspected the cause of that shadow on
the Judge's life? Perhaps not! It would have been cruel to tell Perry,
but crueller, perhaps, to let him grow to manhood in unchallenged
pride and find it out at such a critical time." The rest of the ride
passed in endearments and the engagement vow was made.
"My dear one," said Marion, as they rolled on the bridge at Chester,
and the few lights of the town and of the vessels and the single
steamboat descended into the river, "had you not better have an
understanding with your father on the subject of his affection?
Perhaps you have talked in riddles. Something far back may have
disturbed your mutual faith. Whatever it is, nothing shall break my
promise to you. I will be your wife, or no man's. But the shadow that
is on Judge Whaley's face I fear no wife can drive away."
These words disturbed young Perry Whaley, as he drove his horses into
the hotel stable and slowly pursued his way across the public plot or
area, past the old square brick Methodist church, already lighted
brightly for a special evening service, though it was a week-day. He
passed next the small, echoing market-house and the Episcopal church,
and court-house yard. Every thing he saw had at that moment the
appearance of something so very vivid and real that it frightened him.
Yonder was the spot where, with other boys, he had burned tar-barrels
on election nights; up a lane the jail where he had seen the prisoners
flatten their noses against the bars to beg tobacco; a tall Lombardy
poplar at a corner stood stolid except at its summit, where a portion
of the foliage whispered with a freshening sound. How still; as if
every thing was in suspense like him--the favorite of the old town
for so many years, and soon to become the possessor of its most
beautiful and virtuous woman!
He sounded the knocker at the door of the square, solid brick mansion,
built while all acknowledged the King of Britain here, and in whose
threshold General Washington had stood more than once. His father
admitted him directly into a prim, wainscoted room with a
square-angled stairway in the corner leading above; a thick rag carpet
was on the floor; the furniture was mahogany and hair-cloth; on the
wall were portraits of the Whaleys or Whalleys, back to that regicide
who fled from the vengeance of King Charles's sons, and, escaping many
perils in New England, lived unrecognized on this peninsula.
Judge Whaley had lighted a large oil lamp, and its shade threw the
flame upon his strong magisterial face, wherein grief and
righteousness seemed as highly blent as in some indigent republican
Milton or Pym.
"My father," said Perry Whaley with the tender tone habitual to him,
"I have consulted your wishes as well as my desire. Marion Voss will
be my wife."
"It is well, my son," replied Judge Whaley, placing upon his nose his
first pair of silver spectacles. "You are entitled to so much beauty
and grace on every ground of a dutiful youth and agreeable person, and
of talents which will make both of you a comfortable livelihood."
"Father, with so great a change of relations before me, I desire to
obtain your whole confidence."
Perry's voice trembled; the Judge sat still as one of the brazen
andirons where the wood burned with a colorless flame in the
fireplace. The father took off the spectacles and laid them down.
"Confidence in what respect, Perry?"
The young man walked to his father and knelt at his knee and clasped
his hand. Even then Perry saw the shadow gather in that kind man's
brow, as if he perceived the demon in his son.
"Before I make a lady my wife, father, I want every mystery of my
life related. I have always heard that my mother died. Where is she
buried?"
There was a long pause.
"She is not dead," said Judge Whaley, without any inflection, "except
to me."
"Not dead, father?" asked the son, with throbbing temples. "Oh, why
have I been so deceived? Were you unhappy?"
"I thought I was happy," said the Judge huskily; "that was long my
impression."
"And my mother--was she, too, happy when you were so?"
"No."
The young man rose and walked to the wainscot and back again. "Dear
father, I see the origin of the shadow upon your brow. Why was I not
told before? Perhaps the son of two unhappy parents might have brought
them together again, if for no other congenial end, than that he was
their only son!"
The Judge raised his eyes to the imploring eyes of the younger man.
The shadow never was so deep upon his brow as Perry saw it now; it was
the shadow of a long inured agony intensified by a dread judicial
sympathy.
"You are not my son!" he said.
Perry's mouth opened, but not to articulate. He stretched out his
hands to touch something, and that only which he could not reach
struck and stunned him; he had fallen senseless to the floor.
When Perry returned to knowledge he was lying upon the carpet, a cloak
under his head, and his father, walking up and down, stooped over him
frequently to look into his face with a tender, yet suffering
interest. The young man did not move, and only revealed his
wakefulness at last by raising his hand to check a relieving flow of
tears.
"My dear boy," finally said Judge Whaley, himself shedding tears, "I
had supposed that you already knew something of the tragedy of my
life."
"Never," moaned Perry.
"Then, forgive me; I should myself have gradually told you the tale;
it might have come up with your growth, inwoven like a mere ghost
story. Did no playmate, no older intimate, not one of your age
striving for the bar, ever whisper to you that I had been deceived,
and that you, my only comfort, were the fruit of the deception?"
"No, sir." Perry's tears seemed to dry in the recollection. "We were
both gentlemen--at least, after we reached this world. No one ever
insulted me nor you! I humbly thank God that, discredited as I may
have been, my conduct to all was so considerate that no one could
obtrude such a truth upon me. Is it the truth? O father!--I must call
you so! it is the only word I know--is this, at last, one of the
dreadful visions of diseased sleep or of insanity? Who am I? What was
my mother? I can bear it all, for now I have seen why you never loved
me."
Perry, pale as death and still of feeble brain, had arisen as he spoke
and made this imploration with only the eloquence of haggard
forgetfulness. The Judge took Perry's hands and supported him.
"My son, have I not earned the name of father? Yes, I have plucked the
poison-arrow from my heart and sucked its venom. I have taken the
offspring of my injurer and warmed it in my bosom. Every morning when
you arose I was reminded of my dishonor. Every night when we kissed
good-night, I felt, God knows, that I had loved my enemies and done
good to them which injured me!"
The young man, looking up and around in the impotence of expression,
saw the portraits of the dead Whaleys in unbroken lineal
respectability, bending their eyes upon him--the one, the only
impostor of the name!
"Perry," continued the Judge, "I am not wholly guilty of keeping you
blind. I have told you many times that between us was a gap, a rift of
something. I have sometimes said, as your artless caresses, mixed
with the bitter recollection of your origin, almost dispossessed my
reason, that you were 'my demon.'"
"Yes, father; but I was so anxious to love you that I never brooded on
that. I see it all! Every repulse comes back to me now. You have
suffered, indeed, and been the Christian. But I must hear the tale
before I depart."
"Depart! Where?"
"To find my mother, if she lives. To find my name! I cannot bear this
one. It would be deceit."
"Not even the name of My Son?"
"Alas! no. Just as I am I must be known. My putative father, if he
lives, must give me another name."
"Thank God, Perry, he is dead!"
"But not his name. I can make honorable even my--"
"Say it not!" exclaimed the Judge, placing his hand upon Perry's
mouth. "Pure as all your life has been, you shall not degrade it with
such a word. Oh, my son!--my orphan son!--dear faithful prattler
around my feet for all these desolate and haunted years, I have
doubted for your sake every thing--that wedlock was good, that pride
of virtuous origin was wise, that human jealousy was any thing but a
tiger's selfishness. I did not sow the seed that brought you forth;
too well I know it! Yet grateful and fair has been the vine as if
watered by the tears of angels; and when I sleep the demon in you
fades, and then, at least, your loving tendrils find all my nature an
arbor to take you up!"
"Would to God!" said Perry bitterly, "that in the sleep of everlasting
death we laid together. O my God! how I have loved you--father!"
The Judge enfolded the young man in his arms and like a child Perry
rested there. The lamp, previously burning very low, went out for want
of oil, as the old man nursed like his own babe the serpent's
offspring, not his own but another's untimely son, bred on the honor
of a husband's name. As they sat in the perfect darkness of the old
riverside mansion, Judge Whaley told his tale.
He had neglected to marry until he had become of settled legal and
business habits, and more than forty-five years of age when he chose
for a wife a young lady who professed to admire and love him. They had
no children. The wife was a coquette, and began to woo admiration
almost as soon as the nuptials were done. Judge Whaley thought nothing
ill of this; he was in the heyday of his practice and willing to let
one so much his junior enjoy herself. Among his law students was a
young man from South Carolina, of brilliant manners and insidious
address. This person had already become so intimate with Mrs. Whaley
as to draw upon the Judge anonymous letters notifying him that he was
too indifferent, to which letters he gave no attention, only bestowing
the more confidence and freedom upon her, when, happily, as it was
thought, the wife showed signs of maternity. Perry was born, to the
joy of his father. The young mother, however, hastened to recover her
health and gayety. The favor she expressed for the student's society
was revived and not opposed by her husband. Judge Whaley returned
unexpectedly one day to his residence; he came upon a scene that in an
instant destroyed faith and rendered explanation impossible. His wife
was false. The student passionately avowed himself her seducer. The
Judge went through the ordeal like a magistrate.
"Take her away with you," he said. "That is the only reparation you
can do her, until she is legally divorced, and after that, if
necessary, I will give her an allowance, but she cannot rest under
this roof another night. It has been the abode of chaste wives since
it was builded. My honor is at stake. This day she must go. Make her
your wife and let neither ever return."
They departed by carriage, unknown to any, and never had returned.
But a few weeks after they disappeared a letter was received by Judge
Whaley, admonishing him that his son was the offspring of the same
illegal relations. It was signed and written by his wife. The wretched
man debated whether he should send the infant to an asylum or keep it
upon his premises. Through procrastination, continued for twenty
years, the child had derived all the advantages of legitimacy, and
still the demon of the husband's peace was the test of the gentleman's
religion.
As this story had proceeded toward its final portions, the young man
had detached himself from his father's arms. When Judge Whaley
concluded in the darkness he waited in vain for a response. The old
man lighted the lamp and peered about the room wistfully. Perry was
gone.
That night, in the happiness of her engagement, Marion Voss had a glad
unrest, which her mother noticed. "Dear," said the mother, "let us go
over to the Methodist church. It is one of their protracted meetings
or revivals, as they call it. If Perry comes he will know where to
find us, as I will leave word."
The Methodists were second in social standing, but a wide gap
separated them from the slave-holding and family aristocracy, who were
Episcopalians. The sermon was delivered by one of their most powerful
proselytizers, an old man in a homespun suit, high shoulders, lean,
long figure, and glittering eyes. He was a wild kind of orator,
striking fear to the soul, dipping it in the fumes of damnation,
lifting it thence to the joys of heaven. Terrible, electrical
preaching! It was the product of uncultured genius and human
disappointment. Marion sat in awe, hardly knowing whether it was
impious or angelic. In a blind exordium the old zealot commanded those
who would save their souls to walk forward and kneel publicly at the
altar, and make their struggle there for salvation.
The first whom Marion saw to walk up the dimly lighted aisle and kneel
was Perry Whaley. All in the church saw and knew him, and a
thunderous singing broke out, in which religious and mere
denominational zeal all threw their enthusiasm.
"Judge Whaley's son--Episcopalian--admitted to the bar
to-day--wonderful!"
Marion heard these whispers on every hand; and as the singing ceased,
and the congregation knelt to pray, Marion's mother saw her turning
very pale, and silently and unobserved led her out of the
meeting-house.
It was one o'clock in the morning when Judge Whaley heard Perry enter
the door. He was preceded by the beams of a lamp, as his step came
almost trippingly up the stairs. The Judge looked up and saw the face
of his demon, streaked with recent tears and shaded with dishevelled
hair, but on it a look like eternal sunshine.
"Glory! glory! glory!" exclaimed the young man hoarsely. He rushed
upon his aged friend, and kissed him in an ecstacy almost violent.
"My boy! Perry! What is it? You are not out of your mind?"
"No! no! I have found my father, our father!"
"Who is it?" asked the Judge, with a rising superstition, as if this
were not his orphan, but its preternatural copy; "you have found your
father? What father?"
"God!" exclaimed young Perry, his countenance like flame. "My father
is God and He is love!"
The town of Chester and the whole country had now a serious of rapid
sensations. Judge Whaley and his son were turned lunatics, and behaved
like a pair of boys. Marion Voss had broken her engagement with Perry
Whaley because he insisted that he was not the Judge's son. Young
Perry was exhorting in the Methodist church, and studying and starving
himself to be a preacher. The Methodists were wild with social and
denominational triumph: the Episcopalians were outraged, and meditated
sending Perry to the lunatic asylum. Finally, to the great joy of
nervous people, the last sensation came--Perry Whaley had left
Chester to be a preacher.
Judge Whaley now grew old rapidly, and meek and careless of his
attire. In an old pair of slippers, glove-less and abstracted, he
crossed the court-house green, no longer the first gentleman in the
county in courteous accost and lofty tone. He read his Bible in the
seclusion of his own house, and fishermen on the river coming in after
midnight saw the lamp-light stream through the chinks of his shutters,
and said: "He has never been the same since Perry went away." But he
read in the religious papers of the genius and power of the absent
one, roving like a young hermit loosened, and with a tongue of flame
over the length and breadth of the country, producing extraordinary
excitement and adding thousands to his humble denomination.
On Christmas Day the Judge was sitting in his great room reading the
same mystic book, and listening, with a wistfulness that had never
left him, to every infrequent footfall in the street. There came a
knock at the door. He opened it, and out of the darkness into which he
could not see came a voice altered in pitch, but with remembered
accents in it, saying:
"Father, mother has come home!"
Stepping back before that extraordinary salutation, Judge Whaley saw a
man come forward leading a woman by the hand. The Judge receded until
he could go no farther, and sank into his chair. The woman knelt at
his feet; older, and grown gray and in the robes of humility, yet in
countenance as she had been, only purified, as it seemed, by suffering
and repentance, he saw his wife of more than twenty years before.
Looking up into the face of the son he had watched so long for, the
old man saw a still more wonderful transformation. The elegant young
gentleman of a few months before was a living spectre, his bright eyes
standing out large and consumptive upon a transparent skin, and
glittering with fanaticism or excitement.
"Perry Whaley," said the woman firmly, but with sweetness, "it is
twenty-two years since I left this house with hate of me in your heart
and a degraded name; I was in thought and act a pure woman, though the
evidence against me was mountain-high. My sin was that of many
women--flirtation. Nothing more, before my God! I trifled with one of
your students, a reckless and hot-blooded man, and inspired him with a
tyrannous passion. He swore if I would not fly with him to destroy me.
One day, the most dreadful of my life, he heard your foot upon the
stairs ascending to my chamber, and threw himself into it before you
and avowed himself your injurer. Then rose in confirmation of him
every girlish folly; I saw myself in your mild eyes condemned, in this
community long suspected, and by my own family discarded for your
sake. Where could I go but to the author of my sorrows? He became my
husband and I am a widow."
Judge Whaley stretched out his hand in the direction of his eyes, not
upon the old wife at his feet, but toward his son, who had settled
into a chair and closed his eyes as if in tired rapture.
"Hear me but a moment more," said the kneeling woman. "I was the slave
of an ever-jealous maniac; but my heart was still at this fireside
with your bowed spirit, and this our son. My husband told me that the
way to recover the child was to claim it as his. His motive, I fear,
was different--to place me on record as confessedly false and prevent
our reunion forever. But I was not wise enough to see it. I only
thought you would send my son to me. I waited in my lonely home in
Charleston years on years. He came at last, but not too late; my
frivolous soul, grown selfish with vanity and disappointment, bent
itself before God through the prayers of our son. I am forgiven, Perry
Whaley. _I have felt it!_"
The old man did not answer, but strained his eyes upon his son. "See
there!" he slowly spoke, "Perry is dying. Famished all these years for
human love, this excess of joy has snapped the silver cord. Wife,
Mary, we have martyred him."
It was the typhoid fever which had developed from Perry's wasting
vitality. He sank into delirium as they looked at him, and was carried
tenderly to his bed. Marion Voss came to nurse him with his mother.
She, too, after Perry's departure, had grown serious and followed his
example, and was a Methodist. The young zealot sank lower and lower,
despite science or prayers. Both churches prayed for him. Negroes and
whites united their hopes and kind offices. One morning he was of
dying pulse, and the bell in the Episcopal church began to toll. At
the bedside all the little family had instinctively knelt, and Perry's
mother was praying with streaming eyes, committing the worn-out nature
to Heavenly Love, when suddenly Judge Whaley, who had kept his hand on
Perry's pulse, exclaimed:
"It beats! He lives again. The stimulant, Marion!"
Father and son had rescued each other's lives. One day as Perry had
recovered strength, Judge Whaley said:
"My son, are you a minister, qualified to perform marriages?"
"Yes."
"When you are ready and strong, will you marry your mother and me
again?"
"Very soon," said Perry; "but not too soon. Here is Marion waiting for
me, as she has waited, like Rachel for Jacob, these many years. I
shall preach no more, dear father, except as a layman. I see by your
eyes that the demon is no longer in our home, and the remainder of my
life will be spent in returning to you the joy my presence for years
dispelled."
"O Perry, my patient son," exclaimed the father, "they who entertain
angels unawares have nothing to look to with regret--except
unkindness."