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The Uncalled: A Novel, a novel by Paul Laurence Dunbar |
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Chapter 16 |
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_ CHAPTER XVI Next morning when Brent went down to breakfast he was as a man who had passed through an illness. His eyes were bloodshot, his face was pale, his step was nervous and weak. "Just what I expected," muttered Mrs. Jones. "He was in a beastly condition last night. I shall speak to Mr. Perkins about it. He had no right to take and get him in such a state." She was more incensed than ever when the gay young clerk came in looking perfectly fresh. "He 's used to it," she told herself, "and it does n't tell on him, but it 's nearly killed that poor young man." "Hullo there, Brent," said Perkins. "You chucked me for good last night. Did you lose your way, or was your 'character' too interesting?" "Character too interesting," was the laconic reply. "And I 'll bet you 've been awake all night studying it out." "You are entirely right there," said Brent, smiling bitterly. "I have n't slept a wink all night: I 've been studying out that character." "I thought you looked like it. You ought to take some rest to-day." "I can't. I 've got to put in my time on the same subject." Mrs. Jones pursed her lips and bustled among the teacups. The idea of their laughing over their escapades right before her face and thinking that she did not understand! She made the mental observation that all men were natural born liars, and most guilty when they appeared to be most innocent. "Character," indeed! Did they think to blind her to the true situation of things? Oh, astute woman! "Strange fellow," said Perkins to his spoon, when, after a slight breakfast, Brent had left the table. "There 's others that are just as strange, only they think they 're sharper," quoth Mrs. Jones, with a knowing look. "I don't understand you," returned her boarder, turning his attention from his spoon to the lady's face. "There 's none so blind as those who don't want to see." "Again I say, I don't understand you, Mrs. Jones." "Oh, Mr. Perkins, it 's no use trying to fool me. I know men. In my younger days I was married to a man." "Strange contingency! But still it casts no light on your previous remarks." "You 've got very innocent eyes, I must say, Mr. Perkins." "The eyes, madam, are the windows of the soul," Perkins quoted, with mock gravity. "Well, if the eyes are the soul's windows, there are some people who always keep their windows curtained." "But I must deny any such questionable performance on my part. I have not the shrewdness to veil my soul from the scrutiny of so keen an observer as yourself." "Oh, flattery is n't going to do your cause one mite of good, Mr. Perkins. I 'm not going to scold, but next time you get him in such a state I wish you 'd bring him home yourself, and not let him come tearing in here like a madman, scaring a body half to death." "Will you kindly explain yourself? What condition? And who is 'him'?" "Oh, of course you don't know." "I do not." "Do you mean to tell me that you were n't out with Mr. Brent last night before he came home?" "I assuredly was not with him after the first quarter of an hour." "Well, it 's hard to believe that he got that way by himself." "That way! Why, he left me at the door of Meyer's beer-garden to talk to a temperance crank who he thought was a character." "Well, no temperance character sent him rushing and stumbling in here as he did last night. 'Character,' indeed! It was at the bottom of a pail of beer or something worse." "Oh, I don't think he was 'loaded.' He 's an author, and I guess his eye got to rolling in a fine frenzy, and he had to hurry home to keep it from rolling out of his head into the street." "Mr. Perkins, this is no subject for fun. I have seen what I have seen, and it was a most disgraceful spectacle. I take your word for it that you were not with Mr. Brent, but you need not try to go further and defend him." "I 'm not trying to defend him at all; it 's really none of my business." And Perkins went off to work, a little bit angry and a good deal more bewildered. "I thought he was a 'jay,'" he remarked. To Brent the day was a miserable one. He did not leave his room, but spent the slow hours pacing back and forth in absorbed thought, interrupted now and then by vain attempts to read. His mind was in a state of despairing apprehension. It needed no prophetic sense to tell him what would happen. It was only a question of how long a time would elapse before he might expect to receive word from Dexter summoning him home. It all depended upon whether or not the "California Pilgrim" got money enough last night for exploiting his disgraceful history to finish the last stage of the journey. What disgusted the young man so intensely was that his father, after having led the life he had, should make capital out of relating it. Would not a quiet repentance, if it were real, have been quite sufficient? He very much distrusted the sincerity of motive that made a man hold himself up as an example of reformed depravity, when the hope of gain was behind it all. The very charity which he had preached so fiercely to his congregation he could not extend to his own father. Indeed, it appeared to him (although this may have been a trick of his distorted imagination) that the "Pilgrim" had seemed to take a sort of pleasure in the record of his past, as though it were excellent to be bad, in order to have the pleasure of conversion. His lip involuntarily curled when he thought of conversion. He was disgusted with all men and principles. One man offends, and a whole system suffers. He felt a peculiar self-consciousness, a self-glorification in his own misery. Placing the accumulated morality of his own life against the full-grown evil of his father's, it angered him to think that by the intervention of a seemingly slight quantity the results were made equal. "What is the use of it all," he asked himself, "my struggle, involuntary though it was, my self-abnegation, my rigidity, when what little character I have built up is overshadowed by my father's past? Why should I have worked so hard and long for those rewards, real or fancied, the favour of God and the respect of men, when he, after a career of outrageous dissipation, by a simple act or claim of repentance wins the Deity's smile and is received into the arms of people with gushing favour, while I am looked upon as the natural recipient of all his evil? Of course they tell us that there is more joy over the one lamb that is found than over the ninety and nine that went not astray; it puts rather a high premium on straying." He laughed bitterly. "With what I have behind me, is it worth being decent for the sake of decency? After all, is the game worth the candle?" He took up a little book which many times that morning he had been attempting to read. It was an edition of Matthew Arnold's poems, and one of the stanzas was marked. It was in "Mycerinus."
It was not until the next morning, however, that his anticipations were realised, and the telegraph messenger stopped at his door. The telegram was signed Eliphalet Hodges, and merely said, "Come at once. You are needed." "Needed"! What could they "need" of him? "Wanted" would have been a better word,--"wanted" by the man who for sixteen years had forgotten that he had a son. He had already decided that he would not go, and was for the moment sorry that he had stayed where the telegram could reach him and stir his mind again into turmoil; but the struggle had already recommenced. Maybe his father was burdening his good old friends, and it was they who "needed" him. Then it was his duty to go, but not for his father's sake. He would not even see his father. No, not that! He could not see him. It ended by his getting his things together and taking the next train. He was going, he told himself, to the relief of his guardian and his friend, and not because his father--his father!--wanted him. Did he deceive himself? Were there not, at the bottom of it all, the natural promptings of so close a relationship which not even cruelty, neglect, and degradation could wholly stifle? He saw none of the scenes that had charmed his heart on the outward journey a few days before; for now his sight was either far ahead or entirely inward. When he reached Dexter, it was as if years had passed since he left its smoky little station. Things did not look familiar to him as he went up the old street, because he saw them with new eyes. Mr. Hodges must have been watching for him, for he opened the door before he reached it. "Come in, Freddie," he said in a low voice, tiptoeing back to his chair. "I 've got great news fur you." "You need n't tell me what it is," said Brent. "I know that my father is here." Eliphalet started up. "Who told you?" he said; "some blockhead, I 'll be bound, who did n't break it to you gently as I would 'a' done. Actu'lly the people in this here town--" "Don't blame the people, Uncle 'Liph," said the young man, smiling in spite of himself. "I found it out for myself before I arrived; and, I assure you, it was n't gently broken to me either." To the old man's look of bewildered amazement, Brent replied with the story of his meeting with his father. "It 's the good Lord's doin's," said Eliphalet, reverently. "I don't know just whose doing it is, but it is an awful accusation to put on the Lord. I 've still got enough respect for Him not to believe that." "Freddie," exclaimed the old man, horror-stricken, "you ain't a-gettin' irreverent, you ain't a-beginnin' to doubt, air you? Don't do it. I know jest what you 've had to bear all along, an' I know what you 're a-bearin' now, but you ain't the only one that has their crosses. I 'm a-bearin' my own, an' it ain't light neither. You don't know what it is, my boy, when you feel that somethin' precious is all your own, to have a real owner come in an' snatch it away from you. While I thought yore father was dead, you seemed like my own son; but now it 'pears like I 'ain't got no kind o' right to you an' it 's kind o' hard, Freddie, it 's kind o' hard, after all these years. I know how a mother feels when she loses her baby, but when it 's a grown son that 's lost, one that she 's jest been pilin' up love fur, it 's--it 's--" The old man paused, overcome by his emotions. "I am as much--no, more than ever your son, Uncle 'Liph. No one shall ever come between us; no, not even the man I should call father." "He is yore father, Freddie. It 's jest like I told Hester. She was fur sendin' him along." In spite of himself, a pang shot through Brent's heart at this. "But I said, 'No, no, Hester, he 's Fred's father an' we must take him in, fur our boy's sake.'" "Not for my sake, not for my sake!" broke out the young man. "Well, then, fur our Master's sake. We took him in. He was mighty low down. It seemed like the Lord had jest spared him to git here. Hester 's with him now, an'--an'--kin you stand to hear it?--the doctor says he 's only got a little while to live." "Oh, I can stand it," Brent replied, with unconscious irony. The devotion and the goodness of the old man had softened him as thought, struggle, and prayer had failed to do. "Will you go in now?" asked Eliphalet. "He wants to see you: he can't die in peace without." The breath came hard between his teeth as Brent replied, "I said I would n't see him. I came because I thought you needed me." "He 's yore father, Freddie, an' he 's penitent. All of us pore mortals need a good deal o' furgivin', an' it does n't matter ef one of us needs a little more or a little less than another: it puts us all on the same level. Remember yore sermon about charity, an'--an' jedge not. You 'ain't seen all o' His plan. Come on." And, taking the young man by the hand, he led him into the room that had been his own. Hester rose as he entered, and shook hands with him, and then she and her husband silently passed out. The sufferer lay upon the bed, his eyes closed and his face as white as the pillows on which he reclined. Disease had fattened on the hollow cheeks and wasted chest. One weak hand picked aimlessly at the coverlet, and the laboured breath caught and faltered as if already the hand of Death was at his throat. The young man stood by the bed, trembling in every limb, his lips now as white as the ashen face before him. He was cold, but the perspiration stood in beads on his brow as he stood gazing upon the face of his father. Something like pity stirred him for a moment, but a vision of his own life came up before him, and his heart grew hard again. Here was the man who had wronged him irremediably. Finally the dying man stirred uneasily, muttering, "I dreamed that he had come." "I am here." Brent's voice sounded strange to him. The eyes opened, and the sufferer gazed at him. "Are you--" "I am your son." "You--why, I--saw you--" "You saw me in Cincinnati at the door of a beer-garden." He felt as if he had struck the man before him with a lash. "Did--you--go in?" "No: I went to your temperance meeting." The elder Brent did not hear the ill-concealed bitterness in his son's voice. "Thank God," he said. "You heard--my--story, an'--it leaves me--less--to tell. Something--made me speak--to you that--night. Come nearer. Will--you--shake hands with--me?" Fred reached over and took the clammy hand in his own. "I have--had--a pore life," the now fast weakening man went on; "an' I have--done wrong--by--you, but I--have--repented. Will you forgive me?" Something came up into Brent's heart and burned there like a flame. "You have ruined my life," he answered, "and left me a heritage of shame and evil." "I know it--God help me--I know it; but won't--you--forgive me, my son? I--want to--call you--that--just once." He pressed his hand closer. Could he forgive him? Could he forget all that he had suffered and would yet suffer on this man's account? Then the words and the manner of old Eliphalet came to him, and he said, in a softened voice, "I forgive you, father." He hesitated long over the name. "Thank God for--for--the name--an'--forgiveness." He carried his son's hand to his lips, "I sha' n't be--alive--long--now,--an' my--death--will set--people--to talkin'. They will--bring--up the--past. I--don't want you--to--stay an' have--to bear--it. I don't want to--bring any more on--you than I have--already. Go--away, as--soon as I am dead." "I cannot leave my friends to bear my burdens." "They will not speak--of them--as they--will speak of--you, my--poor--boy. You--are--old--Tom Brent's--son. I--wish I could take--my name--an' all--it means--along--with--me. But--promise--me--you--will--go. Promise--" "I will go if you so wish it." "Thank--you. An'--now--good-bye. I--can't talk--any--more. I don't dare--to advise--you--after--all--you--know--of me; but do--right--do right." The hand relaxed and the eyelids closed. Brent thought that he was dead, and prompted by some impulse, bent down and kissed his father's brow,--his father, after all. A smile flitted over the pale face, but the eyes did not open. But he did not die then. Fred called Mrs. Hodges and left her with his father while he sat with Eliphalet. It was not until the next morning, when the air was full of sunlight, the song of birds, and the chime of church bells, that old Tom Brent's weary spirit passed out on its search for God. He had not spoken after his talk with his son. There were heavy hearts about his bed, but there were no tears, no sorrow for his death,--only regret for the manner of his life. Mrs. Hodges and Eliphalet agreed that the dead man had been right in wishing his son to go away, and, after doing what he could to lighten their load, he again stood on the threshold, leaving his old sad home. Mrs. Hodges bade him good-bye at the door, and went back. She was too bowed to seem hard any more, or even to pretend it. But Eliphalet followed him to the gate. The two stood holding each other's hands and gazing into each other's eyes. "I know you 're a-goin' to do right without me a-tellin' you to," said the old man, chokingly. "That 's all I want of you. Even ef you don't preach, you kin live an' work fur Him." "I shall do all the good I can, Uncle 'Liph, but I shall do it in the name of poor humanity until I come nearer to Him. I am dazed and confused now, and want the truth." "Go on, my boy; you 're safe. You 've got the truth now, only you don't know it; fur they 's One that says, 'Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these, ye have done it unto me.'" Another hearty hand-shake, and the young man was gone. As Fred went down the street, some one accosted him and said, "I hear yore father 's home." "Yes, he 's home," said Fred. Tom Brent was buried on Tuesday morning. The Rev. Mr. Simpson, who, in spite of his age, had been prevailed upon to resume charge of his church, preached the sermon. He spoke feelingly of the "dear departed brother, who, though late, had found acceptance with the Lord," and he ended with a prayer--which was a shot--for the "departed's misguided son, who had rejected his Master's call and was now wandering over the earth in rebellion and sin." It was well that he did not see the face of Eliphalet Hodges then. Dan'l Hastings nodded over the sermon. In the back part of the church, Mrs. Martin and Mrs. Smith whispered together and gaped at the two old mourners, and wondered where the boy was. They had "heerd he was in town." Bill Tompkins brought Elizabeth to the funeral. _ |
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