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Margret Howth, A Story of To-day, a novel by Rebecca Harding Davis |
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Chapter 7 |
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_ CHAPTER VII For that night, at least, Holmes swept his soul clean of doubt and indecision; one of his natures was conquered,--finally, he thought. Polston, if he had seen his face as he paced the street slowly home to the mill, would have remembered his mother's the day she died. How the stern old woman met death half-way! why should she fear? she was as strong as he. Wherein had she failed of duty? her hands were clean: she was going to meet her just reward. It was different with Holmes, of course, with his self-existent soul. It was life he accepted to-night, he thought,--a life of growth, labour, achievement,--eternal. "Ohne Hast, aber ohne Rast,"--favourite words with him. He liked to study the nature of the man who spoke them; because, I think, it was like his own,--a Titan strength of endurance, an infinite capability of love, and hate, and suffering, and over all, (the peculiar identity of the man,) a cold, speculative eye of reason, that looked down into the passion and depths of his growing self, and calmly noted them, a lesson for all time.
There was a curious power in the words, as he lingered over them, like half-comprehended music,--as simple and tender as if they had come from the depths of a woman's heart: it touched him deeper than his power of control. Pah! it was a dream of Faust's; he, too, had his Margaret; he fell, through that love. He went on slowly to the mill. If the name or the words woke a subtile remorse or longing, he buried them under restful composure. Whether they should ever rise like angry ghosts of what might have been, to taunt the man, only the future could tell. Going through the gas-lit streets, Holmes met some cordial greeting at every turn. What a just, clever fellow he was! people said: one of those men improved by success: just to the defrauding of himself: saw the true worth of everybody, the very lowest: hadn't one spark of self-esteem: despised all humbug and show, one could see, though he never said it: when he was a boy, he was moody, with passionate likes and dislikes; but success had improved him, vastly. So Holmes was popular, though the beggars shunned him, and the lazy Italian organ-grinders never held their tambourines up to him. The mill street was dark; the building threw its great shadow over the square. It was empty, he supposed; only one hand generally remained to keep in the furnace-fires. Going through one of the lower passages, he heard voices, and turned aside to examine. The management was not strict, and in case of a fire the mill was not insured: like Knowles's carelessness. It was Lois and her father,--Joe Yare being feeder that night. They were in one of the great furnace-rooms in the cellar,--a very comfortable place that stormy night. Two or three doors of the wide brick ovens were open, and the fire threw a ruddy glow over the stone floor, and shimmered into the dark recesses of the shadows, very home-like after the rain and mud without. Lois seemed to think so, at any rate, for she had made a table of a store-box, put a white cloth on it, and was busy getting up a regular supper for her father,--down on her knees before the red coals, turning something on an iron plate, while some slices of ham sent up a cloud of juicy, hungry smell. The old stoker had just finished slaking the out-fires, and was putting some blue plates on the table, gravely straightening them. He had grown old, as Polston said,--Holmes saw, stooped much, with a low, hacking cough; his coarse clothes were curiously clean: that was to please Lois, of course. She put the ham on the table, and some bubbling coffee, and then, from a hickory board in front of the fire, took off, with a jerk, brown, flaky slices of Virginia johnny-cake. "Ther' yoh are, father, hot 'n' hot," with her face on fire,--"ther'--yoh--are,--coaxin' to be eatin'.--Why, Mr. Holmes! Father! Now, ef yoh jes' hedn't hed yer supper?" She came up, coaxingly. What brooding brown eyes the poor cripple had! Not many years ago he would have sat down with the two poor souls, and made a hearty meal of it: he had no heart for such follies now. Old Yare stood in the background, his hat in his hand, stooping in his submissive negro fashion, with a frightened watch on Holmes. "Do you stay here, Lois?" he asked, kindly, turning his back on the old man. "On'y to bring his supper. I couldn't bide all night 'n th' mill," the old shadow coming on her face,--"I couldn't, yoh know. HE doesn't mind it." She glanced quickly from one to the other in silence, seeing the fear on her father's face. "Yoh know father, Mr. Holmes? He's back now. This is him." The old man came forward, humbly. "It's me, Marster Stephen." The sullen, stealthy face disgusted Holmes. He nodded, shortly. "Yoh've been kind to my little girl while I was gone," he said, catching his breath. "I thank yoh, Marster." "You need not. It was for Lois." "'T was fur her I comed back hyur. 'T was a resk,"--with a dumb look of entreaty at Holmes,--"but fur her I thort I'd try it. I know't was a resk; but I thort them as cared fur Lo wud be merciful. She's a good girl, Lo. She's all I hev." Lois brought a box over, lugging it heavily. "We hev n't chairs; but yoh'll sit down, Mr. Holmes?" laughing as she covered it with a cloth. "It'd a warm place, here. Father studies 'n his watch, 'n' I'm teacher,"--showing the torn old spelling-book. The old man came eagerly forward, seeing the smile flicker on Holmes's face. "It's slow work, Marster,--slow. But Lo's a good teacher, 'n' I'm tryin',--I'm tryin' hard." "It's not slow, Sir, seein' father hed n't 'dvantages, like me. He was a"---- She stopped, lowering her voice, a hot flush of shame on her face. "I know." "Be n't that'll 'xcuse, Marster, seein' I knowed noght at the beginnin'? Thenk o' that, Marster. I'm tryin' to be a different man. Fur Lo. I AM tryin'." Holmes did not notice him. "Good-night, Lois," he said, kindly, as she lighted his lamp. He put some money on the table. "You must take it," as she looked uneasy. "For Tiger's board, say. I never see him now. A bright new frock, remember." She thanked him, her eyes brightening, looking at her father's patched coat. The old man followed Holmes out. "Marster Holmes"---- "Have done with this," said Holmes, sternly. "Whoever breaks law abides by it. It is no affair of mine." The old man clutched his hands together fiercely, struggling to be quiet. "Ther' 's none knows it but yoh," he said, in a smothered voice. "Fur God's sake be merciful! It'll kill my girl,--it 'll kill her. Gev me a chance, Marster." "You trouble me. I must do what is just." "It's not just," he said, savagely. "What good'll it do me to go back ther'? I was goin' down, down, an' bringin' th' others with me. What good'll it do you or the rest to hev me ther'? To make me afraid? It's poor learnin' frum fear. Who taught me what was right? Who cared? No man cared fur my soul, till I thieved 'n' robbed; 'n' then judge 'n' jury 'n' jailers was glad to pounce on me. Will yoh gev me a chance? will yoh?" It was a desperate face before him; but Holmes never knew fear. "Stand aside," he said, quietly. "To-morrow I will see you. You need not try to escape." He passed him, and went slowly up through the vacant mill to his chamber. The man sat down on the lower step a few moments, quite quiet, crushing his hat up in a slow, steady way, looking up at the mouldy cobwebs on the wall. He got up at last, and went in to Lois. Had she heard? The old scarred face of the girl looked years older, he thought,--but it might be fancy. She did not say anything for a while, moving slowly, with a new gentleness, about him; her very voice was changed, older. He tried to be cheerful, eating his supper: she need not know until to-morrow. He would get out of the town to-night, or---- There were different ways to escape. When he had done, he told her to go; but she would not. "Let me stay til' night," she said. "I be n't afraid o' th' mill." "Why, Lo," he said, laughing, "yoh used to say yer death was hid here, somewheres." "I know. But ther' 's worse nor death. But it'll come right," she said, persistently, muttering to herself, as she leaned her face on her knees, watching,--"it'll come right." The glimmering shadows changed and faded for an hour. The man sat quiet. There was not much in the years gone to soften his thought, as it grew desperate and cruel: there was oppression and vice heaped on him, and flung back out of his bitter heart. Nor much in the future: a blank stretch of punishment to the end. He was an old man: was it easy to bear? What if he were black? what if he were born a thief? what if all the sullen revenge of his nature had made him an outcast from the poorest poor? Was there no latent good in this soul for which Christ died, that a kind hand might not have brought to life? None? Something, I think, struggled up in the touch of his hand, catching the skirt of his child's dress, when it came near him, with the timid tenderness of a mother touching her dead baby's hair,--as something holy, far off, yet very near: something in his old crime-marked face,--a look like this dog's, putting his head on my knee,--a dumb, unhelpful love in his eyes, and the slow memory of a wrong done to his soul in a day long past. A wrong to both, you say, perhaps; but if so, irreparable, and never to be recompensed. Never? "Yoh must go, my little girl," he said at last. Whatever he did must be done quickly. She came up, combing the thin gray hairs through her fingers. "Father, I dunnot understan' what it is, rightly. But stay with me,--stay, father!" "Yoh've a many frien's, Lo," he said, with a keen flash of jealousy. "Ther' 's none like yoh,--none." "Father, look here." She put her misshapen head and scarred face down on his hand, where he could see them. If it had ever hurt her to be as she was, if she had ever compared herself bitterly with fair, beloved women, she was glad now, and thankful, for every fault and deformity that brought her nearer to him, and made her dearer. "They're kind, but ther' 's not many loves me with true love, like yoh. Stay, father! Bear it out, whatever it be. Th' good time 'll come, father." He kissed her, saying nothing, and went with her down the street. When he left her, she waited, and, creeping back, hid near the mill. God knows what vague dread was in her brain; but she came back to watch and help. Old Yare wandered through the great loom rooms of the mill with but one fact clear in his cloudy, faltering perception,--that above him the man lay quietly sleeping who would bring worse than death on him to-morrow. Up and down, aimlessly, with his stoker's torch in hand, going over the years gone and the years to come, with the dead hatred through all of the pitiless man above him,--with now and then, perhaps, a pleasanter thought of things that had been warm and cheerful in his life,--of the corn-huskings long ago, when he was a boy, down in "th' Alabam',"--of the scow his young master gave him once, the first thing he really owned: he was almost as proud of it as he was of Lois when she was born. Most of all remembering the good times in his life, he went back to Lois. It was all good, there, to go back to. What a little chub she used to be! Remembering, with bitter remorse, how all his life he had meant to try and do better, on her account, but had kept putting off and putting off until now. And now---- Did nothing lie before him but to go back and rot yonder? Was that the end, because he never had learned better, and was a "dam' nigger"? "I'll NOT leave my girl!" he muttered, going up and down,--"I'll NOT leave my girl!" If Holmes did sleep above him, the trial of the day, of which we have seen nothing, came back sharper in sleep. While the strong self in the man lay torpid, whatever holier power was in him came out, undaunted by defeat, and unwearied, and took the form of dreams, those slighted messengers of God, to soothe and charm and win him out into fuller, kindlier life. Let us hope that they did so win him; let us hope that even in that unreal world the better nature of the man triumphed at last, and claimed its reward before the terrible reality broke upon him. Lois, over in the damp, fresh-smelling lumber-yard, sat coiled up in one of the creviced houses made by the jutting boards. She remembered how she used to play in them, before she went into the mill. The mill,--even now, with the vague dread of some uncertain evil to come, the mill absorbed all fear in its old hated shadow. Whatever danger was coming to them lay in it, came from it, she knew, in her confused, blurred way of thinking. It loomed up now, with the square patch of ashen sky above, black, heavy with years of remembered agony and loss. In Lois's hopeful, warm life this was the one uncomprehended monster. Her crushed brain, her unwakened powers, resented their wrong dimly to the mass of iron and work and impure smells, unconscious of any remorseless power that wielded it. It was a monster, she thought, through the sleepy, dreading night,--a monster that kept her wakeful with a dull, mysterious terror. When the night grew sultry and deepest, she started from her half-doze to see her father come stealthily out and go down the street. She must have slept, she thought, rubbing her eyes, and watching him out of sight,--and then, creeping out, turned to glance at the mill. She cried out, shrill with horror. It was a live monster now,--in one swift instant, alive with fire,--quick, greedy fire, leaping like serpents' tongues out of its hundred jaws, hungry sheets of flame maddening and writhing towards her, and under all a dull and hollow roar that shook the night. Did it call her to her death? She turned to fly, and then----He was alone, dying! He had been so kind to her! She wrung her hands, standing there a moment. It was a brave hope that was in her heart, and a prayer on her lips never left unanswered, as she hobbled, in her lame, slow way, up to the open black door, and, with one backward look, went in. _ |
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