Stories by American Authors Volume VIII Part 13

Scip put up his feeble hand; Zerviah took it; Scip spoke no more. The nurse held the negro's hand a long time; the lamp went out; they sat on in the dark. Through the flapping wooden shutter the stars looked in.

Suddenly, Zerviah perceived that Scip's hand was quite cold.

He carried him out by starlight, and buried him under the palmetto. It was hard work digging alone. He could not make a very deep grave, and he had no coffin. When the earth was stamped down, he felt extremely weary and weak. He fell down beside his shovel and pick to rest, and lay there in the night till he felt stronger. It was damp and dark.

Shadows like clouds hung over the distant outline of the swamp.

The Sunday bells in the town had ceased. There were no sounds but the cries of a few lonely birds and wild creatures of the night, whose names he did not know. This little fact added to his sense of solitude.

He thought at first he would get up and walk back to the city in the dark. An intense and pa.s.sionate longing seized him to be among living men. He took a few steps down the road. The unwholesome dust blew up through the dark against his face. He found himself so tired that he concluded to go back to the hut. He would sleep, and start in the morning with the break of the dawn. He should be glad to see the faces of his kind again, even though the stir of welcome and the light of trust were gone out of them for him. They lived, they breathed, they spoke. He was tired of death and solitude.

He groped back into the hut. The oil was low, and he could not relight the lamp. He threw himself in the dark upon his bed.

He slept until late in the morning, heavily. When he waked, the birds were shrill in the hot air, and the sun glared in.

"I will go now," he said, aloud. "I am glad I can go," and crept to his feet.

He took two steps--staggered--and fell back. He lay for some moments, stricken more with astonishment than alarm. His first words were:

"Lord G.o.d! After all--after all I've gone through--Lord G.o.d Almighty, if You'll believe it--I've _got it_!"

This was on Wednesday morning. Night fell, but no one came.

Thursday--but outside the hut no step stirred the parched, white dust.

Friday--Sat.u.r.day--no voice but his own moaning broke upon the sick man's straining ear.

His professional experience gave him an excruciating foresight of his symptoms, and their result presented itself to him with horrible distinctness. As one by one he pa.s.sed through the familiar conditions whose phases he had watched in other men a hundred times, he would have given his life for a temporary ignorance. His trained imagination had little mercy on him. He weighed his chances, and watched his fate with the sad exactness of knowledge.

As the days pa.s.sed, and no one came to him, he was aware of not being able to reason with himself clearly about his solitude. Growing weak, he remembered the averted faces of the people for whom he had labored, and whom he had loved. In the stress of his pain their estranged eyes gazed at him. He felt that he was deserted because he was distrusted.

Patient as he was, this seemed hard.

"They did not care enough for me to miss me," he said, aloud, gently.

"I suppose I was not worth it. I had been in prison. I was a wicked man. I must not blame them."

And again:

"They would have come if they had known. They would not have let me _die_ alone. I don't think _she_ would have done that. I wonder where she is? n.o.body has missed me--that is all. I must not mind."

Growing weaker, he thought less and prayed more. He prayed, at last, almost all his time. When he did not pray, he slept. When he could not sleep, he prayed. He addressed G.o.d with that sublime familiarity of his, which fell from his lips with no more irreverence than the kiss of a child falling upon its mother's hand or neck.

The murderer, the felon, the outcast, talked with the Almighty Holiness, as a man talketh with his friends. The deserted, distrusted, dying creature believed himself to be trusted by the Being who had bestowed on him the awful gift of life.

"Lord," he said, softly, "I guess I can bear it. I'd like to see somebody--but I'll make out to get along.... Lord! I'm pretty weak. I know all about these spasms. You get delirious next thing, you know.

Then you either get better or you never do. It'll be decided by Sunday night. Lord! Dear Lord!" he added, with a tender pause, "don't _You_ forget me! I hope _You'll_ miss me enough to hunt me up."

It grew dark early on Sat.u.r.day night. The sun sank under a thin, deceptive web of cloud. The shadow beneath the palmetto grew long over Scip's fresh grave. The stars were dim and few. The wind rose, and the lights in the city, where watchers wept over their sick, trembled on the frail breeze, and seemed to be multiplied, like objects seen through tears.

Through the wooden shutter, Zerviah could see the lights, and the lonely palmetto, and the grave. He could see those few cold stars.

He thought, while his thoughts remained his own, most tenderly and longingly of those for whom he had given his life. He remembered how many keen cares of their own they had to carry, how many ghastly deeds and sights to do and bear. It was not strange that he should not be missed. Who was he?--a disgraced, unfamiliar man, among their kin and neighborhood. Why should they think of him? he said.

Yet he was glad that he could remember them. He wished his living or his dying could help them any. Things that his patients had said to him, looks that healing eyes had turned on him, little signs of human love and leaning, came back to him as he lay there, and stood around his bed, like people, in the dark hut.

"_They loved me_," he said: "Lord, as true as I'm alive, they did!

I'm glad I lived long enough to save life, _to save life_! I'm much obliged to You for that! I wish there was something else I could do for them.... Lord! I'd be willing to die if it would help them any. If I thought I could do anything that way, toward sending them a frost--

"No," he added, "that ain't reasonable. A frost and a human life ain't convertible coin. He don't do unreasonable things. May be I've lost my head already. But I'd be glad to. That's all. I suppose I can _ask_ You for a frost. _That's_ reason.

"Lord G.o.d of earth and heaven! that made the South and North, the pestilence and destruction, the sick and well, the living and the dead, have mercy on us miserable sinners! Have mercy on the folks that pray to You, and on the folks that don't! Remember the old graves, and the new ones, and the graves that are to be opened if this h.e.l.lish heat goes on, and send us a blessed frost, O Lord, _as an act of humanity_! And if that ain't the way to speak to You, remember I haven't been a praying man long enough to learn the language very well,--and that I'm pretty sick,--but that I would be glad to die--to give them--a great, white, holy frost. Lord, a frost! Lord, a cool, white, clean frost, for these poor devils that have borne so much!"

At midnight of that Sat.u.r.day he dozed and dreamed. He dreamed of what he had thought while Scip was sick: of what it was like, to be holy; and, sadly waking, thought of holy people--good women and honest men, who had never done a deadly deed.

"I cannot be holy," thought Zerviah Hope; "but I can pray for frost."

So he tried to pray for frost. But by that time he had grown confused, and his will wandered pitifully, and he saw strange sights in the little hut. It was as if he were not alone. Yet no one had come in.

_She_ could not come at midnight. Strange--how strange! Who was that who walked about the hut? Who stood and looked at him? Who leaned to him? Who brooded over him? Who put arms beneath him? Who looked at him, as those look who love the sick too much to shrink from them?

"I don't know You," said Zerviah, in a distinct voice. Presently he smiled. "Yes, I guess I do. I see now. I'm not used to You. I never saw You before. You are Him I've heered about--G.o.d's Son! G.o.d's Son, You've taken a great deal of trouble to come here after me. n.o.body else came. You're the only one that has remembered me. You're very good to me.

"... Yes, I remember. They made a prisoner of _You_. Why, yes! They deserted _You_. They let _You_ die by Yourself. What did You do it for? I don't know much about theology. I am not an educated man. I never prayed till I come South.... I forget--_What did You do it for?_"

A profound and solemn silence replied.

"Well," said the sick man, breaking it in a satisfied tone, as if he had been answered, "I wasn't worth it ... but I'm glad You came. I wish they had a frost, poor things! _You_ won't go away? Well, I'm glad. Poor things! Poor things! I'll take Your hand, if You've no objections."

After a little time, he added, in a tone of unutterable tenderness and content:

"_Dear_ Lord!" and said no more.

It was a quiet night. The stars rode on as if there were no task but the tasks of stars in all the universe, and no sorrow keener than their sorrow, and no care other than their motion and their s.h.i.+ning.

The web of cloud floated like exhaling breath between them and the earth. It grew cooler before the dawn. The leaves of the palmetto over Scip's grave seemed to uncurl, and grow lax, and soften. The dust still flew heavily, but the wind rose.

The Sunday-bells rang peacefully. The sick heard them, and the convalescent and the well. The dying listened to them before they left. On the faces of the dead, too, there came the look of those who hear.

The bells tolled, too, that Sunday. They tolled almost all the afternoon. The young Northerner, Dr. Remane, was gone,--a reticent, brave young man,--and the heroic telegraph operator. Sat.u.r.day night they buried her. Sunday, "Bobby" took her place at the wires, and spelled out, with shaking fingers, the cries of Calhoun to the wide, well world.

By sunset, all the bells had done ringing and done tolling. There was a clear sky, with cool colors. It seemed almost cold about Scip's hut.

The palmetto lifted its faint head. The dust slept. It was not yet dark when a little party from the city rode up, searching for the dreary place. They had ridden fast. Dr. Frank was with them, and the lady, Marian Dare. She rode at their head. She hurried nervously on.

She was pale, and still weak. The chairman of the Relief Committee was with her, and the sub-committee and others.

Dr. Dare pushed on through the swinging door of the hut. She entered alone. They saw the backward motion of her gray-sleeved wrist, and came no farther, but removed their hats and stood. She knelt beside the bed, and put her hand upon his eyes. G.o.d is good, after all. Let us hope that they knew her before they closed.

She came out, and tried to tell about it, but broke down, and sobbed before them all.

"It's a martyr's death," said the chief, and added solemnly, "Let us pray."

He knelt, and the others with him, between the buried negro and the unburied nurse, and thanked G.o.d for the knowledge and the recollection of the holy life which this man had lived among them in their hour of need.