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 19

"Gold, gold, gold, gold,

Bright and yellow, hard and cold."—Hood.

"After this he said no more, but packed up the few things he had, and rolled me up in a blanket, and put me in a sack, so I could neither see nor hear a single thing that was done or said, and that is all I know of what happened for many a day, only I knew by my feeling that I was being carried, carried, CARRIED, over rivers and mountains, and through forests that were wide and deep, until one day I felt myself put in a boat; and on we went, day after day, night after night, until one afternoon, I knew not when, neither the year nor the day, the boat stopped, the bag in which I was was carried ashore, and, for the first time for many a day, I was taken out of it, and I saw the sunlight once more, and behold! I was on the very point off which you this evening found me."

And here the keg paused a moment, as one who is tired of rapid talking, or oppressed by mournful memories; and it made a motion as if it would sit down, but did not. But it put one little hand up to its chin and rested for a moment so, and I thought it fetched a little sigh, but of that I am not sure, for it might have been a puff of wind playing with the uppermost tuft of some neighboring pine, or the sputtering of the fire, for that matter; but in a moment it began again.

"You must pardon my stopping a moment, but I have not done much talking for many a year, and it really takes the breath out of me; moreover, one of my heads is gone, and that makes a great difference with a keg, I assure you; for we are like a great many men who manage to get along with one head, but no one sees how they do it, and all heartily wish they had another in addition to the one they have, and a better one too. And besides I am getting rather old, and I doubt if I live much longer; for ever since I have been standing here, by the fire, I have felt that I might fall to pieces at any moment;" and the keg cast an anxious look down over itself, and then, as if partially strengthened, went on:—

"Well, things continued very much as they were at the old house for several weeks, and my master seemed happy in the thought that he had got beyond the reach of men and the danger of their stealing me and what I had in me. Every day when the sun shone brightly, he would take me down to the point yonder, from beneath the shadow of the pines, where the sun shines clearly, and pour the treasure out in one great pile and play with it by the hour. It seemed to please him greatly to see the yellow coins shine and shimmer in the bright light, and he would lie in the sand and watch the sparkling heap by the hour, and count it all over and over again, and laugh and shout while doing it as he used to do around the old table when we were in the house. And it seemed more dreadful to me than ever before, for here everything was so still and solemn, and the sky seemed so grave, the sun so strong and bright, and the mountains so vast and majestic, and all things so suggestive of God and Eternity, that it seemed blasphemy for a human being to be thinking so much of his money. Indeed, the sky and water and mountains, and even the trees, seemed to have eyes and to be looking straight down at him as he sat there in the sand counting his money, as if wondering what use it could all be to him."

But after a time I could see that a change was coming over my master. He grew grave and quiet, and moved about in a noiseless way, very unlike his old fashion of acting and talking. He left off counting his money for days at a time, and when he did count it, it was in a listless manner, just the reverse of his old-time fashion. He would even go away and leave the yellow heap on the sand unwatched and uncared for, while he sat looking at the shadow of the mountain in the water, or lay stretched at full length on his back, a stone for his pillow, his hands crossed on his breast and his eyes gazing fixedly up at the heavens. You may imagine that I was very much puzzled at all this, and wondered what it all meant, for I could see that something was preying on his mind, and that a great change was coming over him.

One day he came, and packing the gold within me, put the head in with the greatest care; and when it was done, he stood looking at me a moment and then said, "I think I will never open you again," and he said it in such a sad sort of a way that I was vastly puzzled. Indeed, I did not believe him, but fancied that he was not feeling over-well, and was low-spirited because of it, and that when he came to himself he would come around and count what was in me as happily as ever. But a greater surprise was in store for me; for when he went to the camp, which was in this very place you have here to-night, he did not take me with him, but left me there alone on the beach. I did not think much of it at first, for I said to myself, he will be back by and by and carry me in with him to the camp as he always does; but the minutes passed and kept passing and still he did not come, and at last I gave him up and decided that I must pass the night where I was, alone. Well, as you can fancy, I felt very strangely in view of it, and rather nervously, too, for I had never spent a night alone by myself since my master owned me, or outside a house or tent either, for that matter; so as I have said I felt a little nervous about it. But I made up my mind to be as brave as I might and put as good a face on the matter as I could. But it was a very strange experience I had that night, and one I have never forgotten. You see it was the first night I ever spent alone in the wilderness, and it made an impression on me I shall never forget, and although I have since passed many nights alone in this solitary spot, yet never has there been one to me like that first one. The shadows of the mountains were so dark and heavy that they appeared to burden the lake as with a ponderous bulk, and the very water that reflected their vast sides seemed oppressed by their presence. The sky was blue-black; a grave and sombre sky it was. In it only a few stars shone, and those with shortened beams. The silence was like an atmosphere. It rested upon the mountains, brooded on the water, and slept amid the shadows of the still trees. And yet, dark as it was, I felt that in it there was an eye, and, silent as it was, I felt that out of it would come a voice—an Eye that looked in steady but unwrathful condemnation upon me, and a Voice that spoke in solemn judgment, although with inaudible tones.

It seemed as if the sin of my master was being charged upon me, and that the whole universe was visiting upon me its contempt. O sir! I saw strange sights that night, and heard sounds that made me shrink in fear within my hoops. Bands of angels all robed in white, and flying on white wings, came and stood poised in the air above me, and pointed at me with their white hands, and as they gazed, their sweet faces dilated with horror. Devils, too, great black beings and things that were shapeless, whose faces were those of hell, and eyes bloodshot with torture, came, and poising above me, would point with their black fingers insultingly downward, and laugh with horrid mirth; then sail away until their black wings faded in the farther gloom. And I heard moans in the air as of a woman moaning for bread; and prayers as of a dying child, dying with a dread at her heart for some one whose sin lay on her soul; and sounds as of many noises mixed in one; prayers and curses, oaths and snatches of hymns. And out of the stillness of the outward space—the stillness of the far-off and the far-up and the beyond, I seemed to hear a great voice continually saying: "The man that loveth money overmuch is doomed. The man that loveth money overmuch is doomed."

At last the sun rose, and right glad was I to see it, but little did I dream, when I saw it come up over the mountain yonder, what would happen before it rose again. For of all days in my life that was the most eventful, and I do not expect you to believe me when I tell you what took place in it; but I shall tell you the truth, nevertheless, and of things just as they happened.

About ten o'clock in the morning my master came to the point where I was, and his face was as I had never seen it before. It was the face of a man who had suffered much, and was suffering. His hair lay matted on his damp forehead; his eyes were bloodshot; his teeth set, and his mouth white at the corners, while his hands were clinched as the hands of one in a spasm. He came and stood directly over me, and in a voice hard and strained said:—

"For thee, thou cursed gold, I have wasted my life and ruined my soul."

This he said many times. Then he walked away and stood and talked to himself; and I heard him say: "He said, 'Unless you repent, you shall die on a dark night, in a lonely spot, with no one nigh.'" And he kept repeating, "On a dark night, in a lonely spot, with no one nigh." And then he would look around him at the trees and the mountains and the solitary shores.

After a while he began to walk up and down the point, and wring his hands and smite them on his breast, and cry out: "Oh! if I could do it! Oh! if I could do it! Perhaps there would be hope for me; perhaps there would be hope for ME!" And he would emphasize the ME in such a plaintive, pitiful tone as was never done, I think, by man before. Once he got down on his knees, and clasped his hands together, and I wondered what he was going to do, for I had never seen a man in that position before, and it looked so queer; but in an instant he leaped to his feet and cried: "NO, NO! It is no use. Forgiveness is not for me; forgiveness is not for me."

And so the day passed, and a fine day it was, too, for though my master was in such trouble, and the grip of a dire distress was on him, yet the sun took no note of it, but shone as brightly in the sky, and the trees swung as merrily to and fro as the breeze blew through them, and the ripples ran laughing along the curved beach as if there were never such a thing as human trouble in the world.

Toward night, just before the sun went down, my master came, and taking my head out, stood for a while looking at the gold within me; then he said slowly to himself: "Perhaps I may have strength to do it; perhaps I may have strength to do it." And then he sat down on the sand and gazed far off, as one whose thoughts are not in his eyes. And there, in the one spot, without moving, he sat, while the sun went down, the shadows of evening settled slowly and darkly on shore and lake and mountain range, until at last night like a mantle lay darkly on the world. There, in the stillness, my master sat, his face hidden by the gloom, thinking—I knew not what. At last he moved; and, as if too weak to rise, crawled along on the sand to my side, and steadying himself on his knees, he placed his hands together, and lifting his face to the dark blue heaven above, found speech, and began to talk to One I could not see:—

"O Thou, who art the Lord of this great world; whose eyes see every creature thou hast made; and whose ear is open to their cry, see me to-night and hear my prayer. Bound have I been, and bound I am, to sin. My soul, pursued by evil, knows not where to flee. My life has been a hell, and out of hell I seek deliverance here and now. Come to my aid or I am lost! Save me in mercy or I am doomed! Give thou me strength, for I am weak, and may not do what I would do, without thy aid. Out of this stillness speak to me. Here where no man may hear, hear thou my cry. Thou Lord of heavenly mercy, lend me thine aid!"

He paused, and rising to his feet, lifted me, and started toward the bushes where he kept his boat, and placing me in it shoved out upon the lake, and paddled toward the centre, saying slowly and solemnly to himself:—

"Lend me thine aid, O Lord! Lend me thine aid!" At last we reached the centre of the lake, and having checked the boat, he sat for a moment without saying a word; then lifting his face upward he said in a low, sweet voice: "Dear Lord, thou hast given of thy strength. I thank thee,"—"then raised me in his arms and"—

A rattle and a crash, as of pieces of wood falling suddenly in a heap, and my eyes came open with a snap. My fire had smouldered down, and a thin column of blue smoke was rising, unattended by flame, in a wavy spiral through the air. The moon had found an opening in the pines overhead, and was pouring its white beams upon the whiter ashes. The keg I had picked from the lake, heated by the fire, had shrunken in its staves until the rusty iron bands afforded them no support; and shaken by the slight jar of a crumbling brand, or falling pine-cone, perhaps, had tumbled inward and lay in a confused heap. I rubbed my eyes, stretched out my chilled legs, and said to myself: "What a queer dream! I really thought that keg was talking to me. If it had kept on much longer it would have persuaded me that the old fellow, its master, or his ghost, is actually on this lake now. Egad! I think it would start even my pulse a little to see a man in a boat on this lake to-night."

Half laughing to myself at the silly suggestion that my fancy had made, I rose to my feet, stretched myself, yawned, and stepping down to the edge of the water looked out upon the lake. I am not ashamed to say that I started, and the blood chilled a little in my veins at what I saw. There, off the point, within twenty feet of where I found the keg, was a boat and a man sitting in it—motionless as if carved from the air!