Читать книгу The Gayworthys - Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney - Страница 20

Mrs. Hartshorne's plum-colored silk and muslin pelerine were laid out on the bed in the best bedroom. The very cat, walking through, would have known by that, that it was Sunday morning. Old Flighty,—named in colthood, but long outgrown the correspondence to her title,—(don't Rose, and Lily, and Grace,—yes, even Patience, and Charity, and Comfort, and Frank, and Peter, and Felix, and Agnes, come often to outlive and belie theirs also?) stood harnessed in the wagon, and tied to the front fence; and Gabriel was in the garden, gathering as he always had done, since he was four years old, a Sunday nosegay for his mother, of late pinks and sweetwilliam, and southern-wood, and ladies' delights, and bits of coriander; when that good lady came reluctantly to the unusual conclusion that she "didn't feel hardly well enough to go to meetin', after all."

She told Gabriel so, when he came in with his accustomed little offering, and found her sitting pale, uncertain, and unready, a strange thing, indeed, for her, by the kitchen hearth. The farmer was shaving his chin by the looking-glass that tilted forward from the wall between the windows, and bore above it the common and morally appropriate country decoration,—a bunch of peacocks' feathers. Somebody always stayed in the room of late while he performed this Sunday morning operation; and Gabriel thought at first that his mother had only thus been detained from her own dressing.

"There, mother," he said cheerily,—he was always tender and cheery to her, the manly, gracious-hearted fellow,—as he and the sunshine came in together at the garden door, "here's your posy. And you won't have much time to spare. The bell's just struck. I'll wait here to see you off; or drive, if you and father like."

The old man turned about quickly, as Gabriel seated himself. There was an angry, suspicious gleam in his eye.

"What are ye allers waitin' round for, hey? Who yer watchin' of? Can't I drive ma'am to meetin's well's anybody?"

"You and father'd best go along without me, I guess," said Mrs. Hartshorne. "I don't feel quite so smart as common to-day, somehow."

Then Gabriel looked anxiously in his mother's face, and noted the paleness of it. He began to say that he would stay, too; but she anticipated his words, and stopped him.

"Mary Makepeace'll be at home. I shan't want anybody else. And you'd best both go."

Gabriel saw a queer look flit over his father's face; an expression as of a prisoner, who, through the inadvertence or mischance of a keeper, might perceive an opportunity before him. He had been very restless, lately, and impatient of their presence; he had had constantly an eager, watching air, as if what he wanted were to get away. From the beginning of the alteration in him, this had been its peculiar feature; a propensity to give them the slip; to make strange, sudden errands, and go off to distances, alone.

Gabriel wondered if his mother recollected that he could not sit with his father during service,—that he would be left to himself in the great, old-fashioned pew; and how he would be likely to comport himself. The presence of others, however he might chafe at it, seemed a force that held him to his old habits of outward demeanor. Gabriel had found him quite wild and bewildered, once or twice, of late, when he had tracked him out, in his ramblings away from home. So it was with a secret apprehension that he set off with him to-day, under the compulsion of circumstances, and in obedience to the wish of his mother.

The church-bell swung sweet and solemn on the air, as they drove along; it seemed to pulse forth a deep calm that should reach into souls. Old Mr. Hartshorne looked placidly forgetful, presently, of his momentary excitement, and seemed to fall, involuntarily, into the old Sabbath mood. Gabriel took courage. We know very little, I think, how outward sights and sounds and habitudes hold us safely by their myriad fine and subtle threads, in mental poise. How the whole creation travaileth with us, and all our minutest relations are adjusted, lest a single human soul should lose its wonderful balance and consciousness, and be lost. Let us take care how we discard and break away, despising, in our presumption, the value of that wherewith God, by His supremely-wise ordination hath hedged and environed us. A sharp pain,—an instant's giddiness, isolating us from ordinary perceptions, sets earth and heaven shattering and whirling to our thought. A calm touch,—the glance resting on some familiar, insignificant object,—a gentle sound,—brings back the delicate equilibrium, as by electric impulse, to the disturbed and endangered brain. We know not, hourly, how we are saved, or what we are saved from.

It is from an instinct of the spirit which touches upon this truth rather than from any definite apprehension, that children of fine, sensitive, nervous organization dread "the dark." I hold it an outrage and a cruelty to thrust them relentlessly into this void they shrink from. The soul craves things sensible and local, whereto to anchor itself. The first gift of God to the world was light; the dearest promise of Christ is that he prepares a place for us. The fearful threat to the unworthy is "outer darkness"; an apostle hath it—"the blackness of darkness forever." May there be, perhaps, an awful literalness in the phrasing—a "lost soul"?

Old Mr. Hartshorne rode up to the church-door, alighted and walked in, like any other of the comers. Gabriel fastened the old horse under the shed, and went up to his seat among the singers.

He noticed, as he glanced down toward the family pew, his father fidget a little with the hymn books, and then settle himself more quietly; looking round upon his neighbors with a certain expression of simple importance and self-appreciation, such as a child might have, sent to church, exceptionally, by himself; as if he said, "You see I am quite to be trusted." Alternating with wilfulness and petulance, and vagary, there often showed among the symptoms which Gabriel and his mother watched with the keen, silent eye of anxious love, this touching air of half conscious liability to go somehow wrong, and the pride of refraining. God only knows how mind, as well as soul, struggles and clings before it goes down, borne under by some fearful influence of which He alone who permits it, can understand the might.

The prayers and hymns and reading of holy words began; continued. Gabriel forgot, by and by, to be uneasy, seeing, whenever he looked that way, his father quite composed, and outwardly himself. There was one beside him, though, who read his every glance; who felt intuitively, through her secret sympathy, his fears; who watched when he relaxed. Ah! how Joanna Gayworthy was repenting there, that day, that she had not seized, when he had half offered it, the right to share his trouble, and help him in his care! And now, it was too late. He would never ask again. He had only been betrayed, as it were, into that beginning of an avowal, which he had resolved within himself,—how truly she read him now!—must not be uttered, because he deemed it not "fair and right to ask, as things were." So men defraud women of their dearest rights; so women must wait silently, in pain, nor dare to claim them!

The sermon began. It was a "revival discourse," preached by a stranger; an exhortation unstinted in all the technical force and coloring of like discourses as such professedly; sermons that in times of religious excitement, it used to be common for men gifted in that specialty to go starring about with; starring, some of them, at least, it is to be feared, too much after the fashion of Samson's foxes; a fearful picture of God's wrath; tremendous warnings; all the awful imagery of Ancient Hebrew Writ, from Sinai to the final thunders of the latest prophet of that olden dispensation; reiteration of the text,—"escape unto the mountains;" a placing of God and man over against each other,—the One upon His Throne of Judgment, the other quaking, cowering beneath. God's Spirit was there, among the people, doubtless; there were hearts in that assembly, touched, softened, tender, who had come up asking humbly, secretly, for bread from heaven to feed their needs. But this man—did he not rather hurl stones among them? There were souls awestruck, scared; there were nerves thrilled, brains fevered, as they listened, was there a single spirit won back into the Father's bosom? Oh, be careful, ye who come with Law and Gospel in either hand, and on your lips cursing and blessing; be careful how ye apportion, and mete out, and construe. It is a fearful thing to deal recklessly with the feeble minds and hesitating hearts of men! How know ye what ye may be doing with those differently and delicately, perhaps perilously, attuned moods and vital crises of human experience?

"Escape for your life! Escape unto the mountains!"

The voice rang out once again,—startlingly, sonorously. A hand reached over, almost in the same moment, and laid itself with a quick pressure, on Gabriel Hartshorne's arm. A hurried breath came with it,—

"Gabriel! Your father!"

The young man leaped to his feet; gave one look below; the pew was empty. There was a stir of heads; a pause in the preaching, and Squire Lawton and Deacon Gibson were moving quickly toward the door. Gabriel sprang to the gallery stairs and rushed down.

This was what had happened. The poor, misty brain that had been soothed by the Sunday bells, and by hymns and prayers, half followed, perhaps, but lifting in a dim way, his instincts to the One Strength and Safety, had felt a hot, sudden quiver at the first utterance of those detached words which the preacher had separated from their connection and chosen for his text. They had struck upon, and chimed dangerously with the morbid prehension of his mind. The old man moved himself along the seat, to where the window recessed itself into the wall, and stood open, letting in the summer air. He looked out, away, upon the everlasting hills that framed the glowing landscape. So gazing,—his mind and fancy wandering toward their mysterious distances,—his ears took in mechanically the burning, urgent words of the sermon. He felt no religious fear; but as the sentences fell, they played upon that one diseased chord; they stirred wildly, like fierce music, that physical unreasoning impulse. He moved his head, with quick, short, furtive turns, to right and left. He watched for a moment when no eye should be upon him, he changed his place, softly, again, and seated himself in the window, with his arm upon the sill. Then he held himself innocently quiet, for some moments, with the cunning of actual, developed insanity, looking round upon the near neighbors who had noticed his movement, with a peculiarly open, placid expression, till they turned their eyes away, and he felt himself again alone.

Close by, outside, pulling at her halter, and uttering, now and then, a quick, impatient whinny, stood Newell Gibson's fiery, half-broken young mare, harnessed to a light gig. She, too, wanted to get away. Every suggestion of word and scene,—even of animal sound and movement, at once an incentive, with its blind, brute sympathy, and a prompting to new, wild purpose,—conspired, strangely and fatally, to quicken the old man's fast maddening fancy.

He was spied upon—he was restrained. He knew he was going wrong, and he could not help himself. "Escape?" It was just what he wanted to do.

The impassioned, vehement sentences of the discourse swept on. There was a breathless hush in the old church. All eyes, save the straying eyes of children,—and, by this time, many of these were shut in sleep,—were fixed upon the speaker. He lifted his left arm, and stretched it out, right over toward those blue, shadowy peaks that filled the horizon, and the words pealed forth again.

"Escape! Escape, for your life! Look not behind you, nor stay in all the plain! Escape unto the mountain, lest ye be consumed!"

There was a sudden sound,—a leap outside; people started, and turned. It was at this instant that Joanna had touched Gabriel's arm.

When he reached the great outer door of the meeting-house, springing down the last six steps of the steep gallery-stairs and dashing across the vestibule,—he saw Newell Gibson's mare fling herself by, at a gallop, the light gig rocking and bounding after her, down the hill. His father sat in the frail vehicle, erect, his gray hair floating back in the wind from his uncovered head.

Gone!—To his death? It seemed so.

Another sound of wheels came round the building. Squire Lawton and Deacon Gibson, in the Squire's open wagon. They pulled up, for an instant, as they saw Gabriel standing pale, horrified, uncertain for the moment, on the stone step before the door.

"Will ye get in, Gabe?" The deacon spoke with the sudden, undefined distance in his familiar address, that people assume instinctively, toward one fearfully stricken. "We'll do the best we can. 'Pon my soul, I'm sorry for ye!"

"Come with me," said another voice at his side. "It'll do no harm to be a minute or two behind.—We mustn't make a chase of it." Dr. Gayworthy addressed the last words to the two men in the wagon. "You'd better take the turnpike, over to the crossing; and drive as fast as you please. We'll follow the old gentleman."

Gabriel turned mutely, and accompanied the Doctor to his chaise.

There was no word spoken between them, as they followed, along windings and descents, the headlong course of the runaway animal; noting the tracks of her fierce hoofs that had clutched the gravel in mad leaps, and the swerving traces of the wheels, as the vehicle had swayed from side to side of the narrow country road, most marvelously escaping immediate overturn. What should they find at last? For nearly a mile, the road, though in no part actually precipitous, tended downward all the way,—no great length visible before them at any given point. Beyond this, a long ascent traced itself to clear view up the slopes of an opposite hill; and there, presently, if it were possible that horse and vehicle should hold so long together, they would again catch glimpse of them. Over that hill, also, at right angles, stretched the turnpike, crossing just beneath the brow upon the hither side. There lay the bare chance of safety. If the two who had gone that shorter way, could head the creature, slackened in her speed with taking the long hill, it might yet be well. But the still, white line lay dustily distinct against the green mountain-side, and nothing moved upon it yet. Something must have already happened. There was an ugly turn by the brook, and the bridge was narrow. Gabriel grew paler as they came down into the shaded hollow, still following the wild trail that must end soon, and losing sight, now, of the way beyond.

Up in the meeting-house,—the momentary disturbance externally composed,—the minister was closing his discourse to restless ears that listened no longer; and men and women waited feverishly through the short prayer and benediction, unheeding either, in the eager human interest that had laid hold of them. All the little world of Hilbury knew that half-kept secret of the Hartshorne farmhouse, now.

Gabriel thought of it, even in those short instants of dread; thought of Joanna in her seat there in the gallery; felt, still, the touch of her hand upon his arm, and the friendly sympathy of it in his soul. He could never sit and sing there with her, again. If his father lived, he must never leave him, now.

So they kept their way down,—silent, breathless,—to where they came upon it all. The shattered gig, thrown on its side, crashed up against the handrail of the bridge, where it seemed to have been dragged and caught,—a broken shaft and splinters of the whiffletree, lying beyond,—some bits of torn harness,—the horse gone. This side the brook, across a decayed log overgrown to a bank with moss and weeds, a prostrate figure,—and a gray head flung back, with closed eyes. One arm lay bent, beneath the body.

Gabriel raised the poor, brain-sick, unconscious head, and held it against his breast. Kind, skilful hands moved and manipulated body and limbs; drawing, carefully, the limp arm from its unnatural position.

"Both bones of the forearm broken. And that seems all. That, and falling just here, is what has saved him." These were the first words spoken.

"Saved him,—for what?" groaned Gabriel, his long trouble speaking itself, at last, from pale, dry lips, and imploring eyes.

"We'll hope," said the doctor, cheerily. "And now, I'd rather he wouldn't come to, till we get him home. He won't remember how it came about; and that's better. There's the wagon."

"If my mother only mightn't know it all!" cried Gabriel.

She never did.