Brought Home Part 5

"I don't know, dear," answered Ann Holland.

"My father never lets me go to see her when she's worst," he went on, "only Sarah goes into her room, and him. She talks and laughs often, and yet my father says she is ill. When I am a man I shall be a doctor, and learn how to make her well. But it will be a long time before I am clever enough for that, I'm afraid. My father says she's too ill for anybody to come to see us; isn't it a pity?"

"Yes, my dear," she answered.

"She can never hear me say my hymns now," he said; "and when she's not so ill that my father won't let me see her, she sits crying, crying ever so; and if I want to play with her, or read to her, she can't bear it, she says. I should think there ought to be somebody to cure her, if we could only find out. My father scarcely ever laughs now, because she's so ill; and when he plays with me he only looks sad, and he speaks in a quiet voice as if it would make her worse. Do try, Miss Holland, and ask everybody that comes to your house if they don't know of some very, very clever doctor for my mother."

"I will try," she said. "I'll do all I can. But you may run home now, Master Charlie, See! There's your father coming back for you."

"I know I sha'n't see my mother again to-day," he answered; "good-by, and remember, please."

She watched him running across the little meadow to his father; and then she turned away, and walked slowly through the street homeward. Little knots of the towns-people lingered still about the doorways, discussing their rector's troubles. Though most of them greeted her, anxious to hear her opinion as one who was considered on friendly terms with the rector's family, she evaded their questionings, and pa.s.sed on to the solitude of her own dwelling. It had been solitary now for some days, for her brother had disappeared early in the week; having stripped the house of money, and set off on one of his vagrant tramps, of which she knew nothing except that he always returned penniless, and generally with the good clothes she provided for him exchanged for worthless rags.

How many years it was that her life had been embittered by his drunkenness she could hardly reckon, so many had they been. These strange absences of his had at first been a severe trial to her; but of late years they had been a holiday time of rest, except for the continual anxiety she felt on his behalf. Her quaint and quiet kitchen, as she unlocked the door and entered it, seemed a haven of refuge, where she could indulge in the tears she had kept under control till now. The love she felt for Mr. Chantrey was so deep and true, that any sorrow of his must have grieved her. But she knew so well what this sorrow was!

She knew through what long years it might last; and how hopeless it might grow before the end came. Looking back upon her own blighted life, she could foresee for him only a weary, miserable, ever-deepening wretchedness. The Sunday afternoon pa.s.sed by slowly, and the evening came, The soft suns.h.i.+ne and spring showers of the morning were gone; and a sullen sweep of rain, driven by the east wind, was beating through the streets. A neighbor looked in to say she had seen the curate from the next parish pa.s.s through the town toward the church; and she thought Mr.

Chantrey would very likely not be there. But Ann Holland had already decided not to go. At any moment she might hear her brother's shambling step draw near the door, and his fingers fumbling at the latch. She could not bear the neighbors to see him when he came off one of his vagabond tramps, dirty and ragged as he usually was. She must stay at home again for him; again, as she had done hundreds of times, mourning pitifully over him, and ready to receive him patiently, impenitent as he was. She went up stairs to make his bed quite ready for him; and to put out of his way everything that could by any chance hurt him, if he should stumble and fall in his drunken weakness. When she returned to the kitchen, she lighted a candle, and opened the old family Bible, with its large type, which seemed to her a more sacred book than the little one she used daily. But she could not read; the words pa.s.sed vaguely and without meaning beneath her eyes. Her mind was full of the thought of her unhappy brother, and Mr. Chantrey's miserable wife.

It was past her usual hour of going to bed before she made up the kitchen fire to be in readiness, lest her brother should knock her up at any hour during the night. At the last moment she opened the street-door, and stood listening for a little while, as she always did when he was not at home. The rain was still sweeping through the street, which was as silent as if the town had been deserted. The gas-lights in the lamps flickered with the wind, and lit up the pools and channels of water running down the pavements.

But just as she turned to go in, her quick ear caught the sound of distant footsteps, growing louder as they came in her direction. It was the tramp of several feet, marching slowly like those of persons bearing a heavy burden. She waited to see who and what it could be so late this Sunday night; and soon, under the flickering lamps, she caught sight of several men, carrying among them a hurdle, with a shapeless heap upon it. A sudden, vague panic seized her, and she hastily retreated inside her house, shutting and barring the door. She said to herself she did not wish to see what they were carrying past. But were they going past?

She heard them still, tramping slowly on toward her house; would they pa.s.s by with their burden? She put down the light, for her hand trembled too much to hold it; and she stood listening, her ears quickened for every sound, and her white face turned toward the closed and fastened door.

A knock came upon it, which almost caused her to shriek aloud. Yet it was a quiet rap, and a neighbor's voice answered as she asked tremulously who was there. She hastened to open the door, so welcome was the sound of the well-known voice; but there, opposite to her, in the driving rain, rested the hurdle, with the confused ma.s.s lying huddled together upon it. The men who bore it were silent, standing with their faces turned toward her; all of them strangers, except the one neighbor, who was on her threshold.

"They found him lying out in the fields near the Woodhouse farm," said her neighbor, in a loud whisper; "he'd strayed there, we reckon."

"Is he dead?" she asked, mechanically.

"Not dead, bless your heart! no!" was the answer; "we'll carry him in.

There now! Don't take on. There's a special providence over folks like him; they never come to much harm, you know. Show us where to lay him."

Ann Holland made way for the men to pa.s.s her, as they carried their burden into the quiet, pleasant kitchen. She followed with the light, and looked down upon him; her brother, who had played with her, and learned the same lessons, when they were innocent little children together. His gray hair was matted, and his bloated face smeared with dust and damp. He was barefooted and bareheaded. But as she gazed down upon him, and listened to his heavy struggle for breath, she cried in a tone of terror. "He is dying."

CHAPTER XI.

LOST

An hour later the house was comparatively quiet again. A doctor had been, and said nothing could be done for Richard Holland, except to let him die where he was undisturbed. The men who had carried him home had dispersed, or had adjourned to the Upton Arms, to drink, and to talk over this close of a drunkard's life. The news had in some way reached the Rectory; and now only Mr. Chantrey and Ann Holland watched beside him. They had laid him, as he was, on the little white-covered sofa in the parlor, never so soiled before. Mr. Chantrey sat gazing at the degraded, dying man. No deeper debas.e.m.e.nt could come to any human being; almost the likeness of a human being had been lost. The mire and slough of the ditch into which he had fallen still clung to him; for only his face had been hastily washed clean by his sister's hand; a face that had forfeited all intelligence and seemliness; a coa.r.s.e, squalid, disfigured face. Yet Ann was not repulsed by it; her tears fell upon it; and once she had bent over it, and kissed it gently. Now and then she put her mouth close to the deafened ear, and spoke to him, calling him by fond names, and imploring him to give some sign that he heard, and knew her.

But there was no sign. The heavy breathing grew more thick and labored, yet feebler as the time pa.s.sed slowly on. David Chantrey marvelled at the poor sister's patience and tenderness.

"Don't trouble to stay with me, sir," she said, at last, "I thought perhaps he'd come to himself, and you'd say a word to him. But there's no hope of that now."

"No," he answered, "I will not go, Ann," and his-voice trembled with dread. "Do you think my wife could ever be as bad as this?"

"G.o.d forbid!" she cried, earnestly. "G.o.d keep her from it! Oh! if she could but see; if she could but know! But he wasn't always like this. He was a kind, good-natured, clever man once. It's drinking that's ruined him."

"I will stay with you to the end," said Mr. Chantrey; "it is fit for me.

You are teaching me a lesson of patience, Ann. All this day I have been thinking if it would be possible for me to give up my wife, and send her away from me, to end her days apart from mine. I have been in despair; in the very deeps. But now; why! even if I knew she would die thus, I cannot forsake her."

"Ay! we must have patience," she answered. "I always hoped to win him back again, but it was too strong for him and me. G.o.d knows how he's been tempted on all hands; even those that call themselves religious, and go to church regular as can be. He used to cry to me sometimes, and promise to turn over a new leaf; and then somebody perhaps that he looked up to would treat him at the Upton Arms. He might have been a good man, if he'd been left alone."

"Let us pray together for him and ourselves," said Mr. Chantrey, kneeling down once again by the little couch, as he had knelt the night of his return home. Ann still held her brother's head upon her arm, and her bowed face nearly rested upon it. But all words failed David Chantrey. "Father!" he cried, "Father!" There was nothing more that he could say. It was the single, despairing call of a soul that was full of trouble; that was "laid in the lowest pit, in darkness, in the deeps."

But the bewildered brain of the dying man caught the cry, and he muttered it over to himself; "Father! father! where is he?"

"It's G.o.d, our Father who art in heaven," said Ann Holland, uttering the words very slowly and distinctly in his ear; "try to think of Him, and pray to Him. He'll hear you, even now."

"Father!" he muttered again, "why! he'd be ashamed of his boy."

"It's G.o.d," she said, keeping down her sobs, "you've no other father.

Think of Him: G.o.d, who loves you."

"He'd be ashamed of me," repeated the dying man.

For a minute or two he kept on whispering to himself words they could not hear, except the one word "shame." Then all was still. The miserable end had come; and neither love nor patience could avail him anything on this side the grave. He had gone as a drunkard into the presence of his Judge.

CHAPTER XII.

A COLONIAL CURACY

The death of Richard Holland might have had a salutary effect upon Sophy Chantrey, if it had not been for the shock of learning how deeply she had disgraced herself and her husband in the sight of his people. She felt that she could never again face those who had seen her on that Sunday morning. She shut herself up in her room, refusing to admit any one, except the servant who waited upon her, and steadily set herself against any communication with the world outside. Even her husband she would hardly speak to; and her child she would not see. The strain and stress of her remorse was more than she could bear. Before the week was gone, she had fled for forgetfulness to the vice which bound her in so heavy a chain. All the cunning of her nature, so strangely perverted, was put into action to procure a supply of the stimulants she craved; and she escaped from her misery for a little while by losing herself in suicidal lethargy and stupefaction.

Mr. Chantrey himself felt it to be impossible to meet the gaze of his usual congregation; he shrank even from walking through the streets of his own town, while his shame was fresh upon him. He exchanged duties with fellow-clergymen, and so evaded the immediate difficulty. But he knew that this could not go on for long. He could not conscientiously retain a position such as he held, if he had not the moral and mental strength necessary for the discharge of its obligations. Strength of all kinds seemed to fail him. His physical vitality was low; the health he had gained in Madeira had been too severely taxed since his return. He had fought bravely against the mental feebleness that was creeping gradually over him with a paralyzing languor; but he knew he could not bear the conflict much longer. Everything was telling against him. He would fain have proved to his people that a man can live out a n.o.ble, useful, Christ-like life, under crus.h.i.+ng sorrows, and shame that was worse than sorrow. But it was not in him to do it. He found himself feeble and crippled, in the very thick of life's battle; and it appeared to him that his position as rector of the parish rendered his feebleness tenfold disastrous.

But this decay of power came slowly, though surely. By the close of his second winter in England he felt within himself that he must quit his country again, if he wished to live only a few years longer. There had been no bright sunny spot of gladness for him, no gleam of hope throughout the whole winter. He had been compelled to send his boy away again to school, to s.h.i.+eld him from seeing the disgrace of his mother.

His friends had almost ceased to come to his house, and he had no heart to go to theirs. It was only now and then that he accepted his aunt's invitations to dine alone with her.

"Aunt," he said one evening, when they two were alone together in her fantastic drawing-room, "I have resigned my living."

"Resigned your living!" she repeated, in utter amazement, "resigned Upton Rectory!"

She could hardly p.r.o.nounce the words; and she gazed at him with an air of bewilderment which brought a smile to his careworn face.

"Yes," he answered, "life has grown intolerable to me here."

"And what do you mean to do?" she asked.

"I am going out to my friend Warden," he replied, "who has a charge in New Zealand; he promises me a curacy under him, if I can get nothing better. But I am sure of a charge of my own very soon."

"A curate to Warden! a curate in New Zealand!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Mrs. Bolton.

"David, are you mad?"