Читать книгу The Story That the Keg Told Me, and The Story of the Man Who Didn't Know Much - W. H. H. Murray - Страница 17
ОглавлениеTHE MISER'S FEAR.
"I greatly fear my money is not safe."—Shakespeare.
"Increase his riches and his peace destroy,
Now fears in dire vicissitude invade,
The rustling brake alarms and quivering shade,
Nor light nor darkness brings his pain relief:
One shows the plunder and one hides the thief."—Johnson.
Well, things went on in the same fashion day after day, and night after night, but getting worse all the time. My master did little work, and of course earned little money,—only enough to buy his bread and tea, with now and then a little piece of meat. He seemed to have no desire to get more, but was only anxious to keep what he had. And about this he was so anxious that it kept him in a fever of excitement all the time. For days he would scarcely go beyond the doorway; and if he saw a man coming along the road he would hasten in, close the shutters, and bar the door, as if he feared the man was a robber, and was coming to rob him. And indeed this was his feeling. He was never for an instant free of the fear of losing his money. He would mutter about it in the daytime, and he would mutter about it in the night when he was asleep. Many a time have I heard him, in the dead of the night, when the old house was as still as a tomb, suddenly break out and say, "Oh! you don't want my money, eh? You came for it, you know you did, and you hope by crying to get it out of me; but you sha'n't have a dollar of it; no, not a dollar! D'ye hear?—if it would save your soul!" And then he would put out his arms and wrap them around me and strain me to him, muttering and murmuring about his "Beautiful dollars. My own, own DOLLARS; they want to get you from me. I know them; but they shall never do it, for I would kill them if they tried." And he would grind and grit his teeth, and hoarsely repeat the word, "kill,—kill," as he sunk again into a heavy sleep.
It was bad enough to hear his muttering when all was quiet and peaceful, and his sleep was undisturbed; but when the night was stormy and wild, and the wind made the old house shake, and the rain was slashed in great sheets against the windows, and the timbers in the framework creaked and groaned,—at such times he would toss and moan in his bed, shriek, and clutch me with his fingers, leap up and strain and tug and strike as if he were wrestling with an unseen person, who was striving to carry me away. Indeed, waking or sleeping, he was tormented with a deadly fear; and the fear was born of the suspicion that some one would succeed in stealing me, and the treasure in me.
And this suspicion it was that had poisoned his whole life, and made him hate his kind, and driven him into the wretched strait he was in when I came to him. And a more wretched strait no mortal was ever in; for what is worse than the suspicion of one's kind, even of one's wife and child; yea, and of the man of God himself, whose love for you is as God's,—the deep, steady, ministering love of the soul? And this was just his case, as I found out one day. It came about thus:—
It was summer; and for the sake of comfort—for the old house was damp and close—he had left the door wide open, and, seating himself in his chair, had fallen asleep. Indeed, I was rather drowsy myself, and was fast dropping off into a nap, when I heard my master give a horrible yell, and leap with a frightful oath to his feet. My eyes, as you can imagine, opened with a snap; and the sight I beheld nearly upset me. In the doorway stood a man and a woman; and by his dress I knew the man to be the old village pastor, and the woman I soon learned was my master's wife. For a minute my master stood looking at them, and then he said abruptly, "What in the Devil's name did you come here for?"
"John," said the woman, "your child, Mary, is dying; and I thought you, who are her father, might want to see her before she passed away;" and her voice choked, and I saw her breast heave with suppressed sobs.
"Dying, is she?" said my master brutally. "I don't believe it: it's a trumped-up story of yours to get me away from here, that you may steal my gold; but you can't fool me with your lying, and you might as well get away from here, both of you."
"John," returned the woman,—and as she spoke the great tears came into her eyes, and her hands twitched convulsively,—"John, I never lied to you or to any one, in my life, and you know it. Mary is dying, as the parson here can tell you; and I dare not let her die, and not give you a chance to see her; for she was the last one born to us, and you did love her before the cursed love of gold in you drove from your heart all other loving. And I said the father should see the child before she dies; it is his right; and so I have come and told you. And besides, Mary herself last night spoke your name in her sleep, and talked in her wanderings of you; and this morning she said suddenly, 'I wish I could see father before I die. I dreamed of him last night; it was an awful dream; and I wish I might tell it to him before I go. It might be it would do him good, and win his heart from his dreadful gold.' And so, John, I got this man of God to come along with me, that he might bear witness to my truth, and perhaps speak a word of wisdom to you."
While the woman had been speaking, my master had stood looking at her with the same scowl on his face, and the same hard, suspicious expression in his eyes. Not a muscle changed, nor a line softened. So he stood a moment, glaring at them; and then he said to the minister, who was leaning on his cane,—for he was old and weak, and his head was white as snow,—"Well, what have you got to say?"
"John Roberts," said the old man solemnly, "I have much to say; for I bring a message, not from your dying child, but from your living Lord. I remember when I baptized you as a child at the altar, on the day your pious parents gave you in holy covenant to God. And I remember when I married you to this woman here, your wife; and I remember your early promise, and the happiness you had yourself and made for others, until the lust of gold possessed you. And I have known your downward path, and how that which God meant for good became, by your perversion of its use, an evil to you,—yea, an evil which poisoned all your life, and changed the course of it; turned you against your friends, made you brutal to your wife and child, and brought you to the gate of hell, where you now stand,—a miserable miser! All this I have watched and seen and known; and all this I have warned you against time and again in past years, and in the name of Him who was sold to death by a miser like yourself. And now I call upon you to repent, and by true repentance and deep contrition find mercy in Him whom you have sold out of your heart and life, and in whose eyes you are another Judas, yet lacking repentance. Repent, therefore, and return to your right mind, lest a worse thing fall upon you, and the curse of your life be doubled upon you in your death, even that as you are now deserted of man, you may in that dreadful hour find yourself deserted of God. And as for your child, as your wife has said, she is dying, and she has asked for you. She bids you come to her before she dies. For God has spoken to her in a vision, as he did to some of old, and revealed to her what shall be if you repent not,—a dreadful death, in a wild spot, with no one nigh, and a darkness round about you in your death-hour like the darkness that surrounds the damned,—all this she has seen with eyes prepared by the mystery of the Unknown to see it; and I pray you, therefore, as one standing between the living and the dead, that you come right speedily and see your child, and hear her message, lest she die, and leave it unspoken, and what she has seen in vision be realized in fact, and you be lost in death even as you are already lost in life."
He paused, and his face shone as one who speaks beyond the measure of the spirit of man,—even by the measure of the Spirit of God,—and his aged hands shook; and when he had ended, his lips continued to move, as one who follows an exhortation with an audible prayer.
But my master remained unmoved. He heard the words of his old Pastor as he had the words of his wife, with the same scowling, sinister look in his eyes, the same set doggedness of face, the same sneering expression on his lips. He stared at them a moment, and then shouted:—
"You LIE! both of you,—you want my money, you mean to steal it from me. Everybody wants it; there isn't an honest man in the world. All are thieves. All love gold. You do. I know by your looks you love it. You can't fool me by your tears and your preaching. You get out of this house or I will kill you," and he swore a horrible oath, and stepping back a step he seized the bludgeon and swung it round his head, and stamped his foot upon the floor and swore at them again; his eyes glowed like hot coals, and the froth hung on his lips. The woman ran screaming from the house, but the old pastor stood his ground, and faced him, and said:—
"John Roberts, thou art a doomed man. Thou hast denied the truth and resisted the Spirit, and Satan hath thee in full possession. The lust of gold that destroys many is in thee strong and mighty, and only God can save thee, nor he against thy will. Repent, or thou shalt perish in a lonely spot, on a dark night, with none to help nor hear thy cries; and thy gold shall perish with thee." And so saying, he turned and slowly left the house.
For a moment my master stood, and then he rushed for the door and locked it, and slid the great strong bars into their sockets; and then he came and lifted me upon the table, and patted me with his hand, and laughed and said: "My gold! my gold!" And when night came he took my head out and poured the shining pieces upon the table, and played with them for hours; and then, as was his fashion, he fell to counting them by tens in the same manner as was his custom, saying: "One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven, Eight, Nine, Ten,—GOOD!" until he had counted them to the very last one. As he counted the frenzy grew on him, and when his task was over, and the old dark wood table was all yellow with the gold pieces lying in stacks of ten, he was wild in the joy of his terrible lust. He leaped and danced around the glistening coins, and shouted till the old house rang: "Sixteen Thousand Six Hundred and Sixty-six!"
And then he put them all back within me, fastened my head in tightly, laid me in his bed, laid himself beside me, and, putting an arm around me, he fell asleep. And I knew that over the old house the stars were shining brightly, and that above the stars the Great God, with eyes that never slept, was looking calmly down on him and me.
But when he woke in the morning he was not as he had been, but more nervous and savage-like. He did not unbar the door during the whole day, or open the heavy shutters an inch, but kept all closed and dark. And he was muttering and talking to himself all day. He had the look of one who was planning some deep plot, nor could I make out what it was; but I caught enough of his talk to know that he was more suspicious of losing his money than ever, and trusted no one, but was afraid of all men, known and unknown, and was thinking and planning how to make his money safe, and get me to some spot where no one could steal me. Once I heard him say: "All men are thieves. I suspect them all. No one with money is safe among them. They will get it yet, unless I go where they cannot find me." And then he would curse his kind, and swear.
At last he suddenly stopped in his tramping up and down the room, and shouted:—
"I'll go, go where they cannot find me. Go where I can be alone, and can count my money as much as I wish, in the broad day, under the bright sun or stars, and see it glint and glisten in the bright light. Won't that be glorious!—to be alone with my money, where I can spread it all out in broad day and see it shine, and count it over and play with it, with no one nigh to scare me nor make me hide it away, for fear of its being seen and stolen. Men, curse them, are what I dread. I will go where there is not a man!"
