The Sword of Damocles: A Story of New York Life
Page 28
XXVII.
THE LONE WATCHER.
"Hark! to the hurried question of Despair, Where is my child?--and Echo answers--Where?"
--BYRON.
"Colonel Japha recovered from his shock, but was never the same managain. All that was genial, affectionate and confiding in his nature,had been turned as by a lightning's stroke, to all that was hard, bitterand suspicious. He would not allow the name of Jacqueline to be spokenin his presence; he would listen to no allusion made to those days whenshe was the care and perplexity, but also the light and pleasure of thehouse. Men are not like women, my child; when they turn, it is at anangle, the whole direction of their nature changes.
"Perhaps the news that presently came to us from Boston may have hadsomething to do with this. It was surely dreadful enough; Jacqueline'sperfidy had slain her lover. Mr. Robert Holt, the cultured, noble,high-souled gentleman, had been found lying dead on the floor of hisroom, a few days after the events I have just related, with a lady'sdiamond ring in his hand and the remnants of a hastily burned letter inthe grate before him. He had burst a blood-vessel, and had expiredinstantly.
"This sudden and tragic ending of a man of energy and will, was also thereason, perhaps, why Grotewell never arrived at the truth ofJacqueline's history. Boston was a long way from here in those days, andthe story of her lover's death was not generally known, while the factof her elopement was. Consequently she was supposed to have fled withthe man who had been seen to visit her most frequently; a report whichneither the Colonel nor myself had the courage to deny.
"My child, you have a brow like snow, and a cheek like roses; you knowlittle of life's sorrows and little of life's sins. To you the skies areblue, the woods vernal, the air balmy; the sad looks upon men's andwomen's faces, tell but shallow tales of the ceaseless grinding of griefin their pent up souls. But you are gentle, and you have an imaginationthat goes beyond your experience; perhaps if you pause and think, youcan understand what a tale could be told of the weeks and months andyears that now followed, without hint or whisper of the fate of her whohad gone out from amongst us with the brand of her father's curse uponher brow. At first we hoped, yes, _he_ hoped,--I could see it in hiseyes when there came a sudden ring at the bell,--that some sign of herpenitence, or some proof of her existence, would come to relieve thetorture of our fears, if not the shame of our memories. But the doorthat closed upon her on that fatal eve, had shut without an echo. Whilewe vainly waited, time had ample leisure to carve the furrows of age aswell as of suffering on the Colonel's once smooth brow, and to change mydaily vigil into a custom of despair, rather than of hope. Time had alsoleisure to rob us of much of our worldly goods and to make our continuedliving in this grand old house, an act that involved constant care andthe closest economy. That we were enabled to preserve appearances to theday that beheld the Colonel laid low by the final stroke of his dreaddisease, was only due to the secret charity of a certain gentleman, who,declaring he was indebted to us, secretly supplied me with means ofsupport.
"But of all this you care little.
"You had rather hear about the evening watch with its hopeful assurance,'Yet another day and she will be here,' to be followed so soon by thedespairing acknowledgement, 'Yet another day and she has not come!' orof those dark hours when the Colonel lay blank and white upon hispillow, with his eyes fixed on the door which would never open to thebeating of a daughter's heart, while the gray shadow of an awfulresolution deepened upon his immovable face. What that resolution was Icould not know, but I feared it, when I saw what a sternness it gave tohis eye, what a fixedness to his set and implacable lip; and when in thewaning light of a certain December afternoon, the circle of neighborsabout his bed gave way to the stiff and forbidding form of Mr. Phelps, Ifelt a thrill of mortal apprehension and only waited to hear the short,'It shall be done,' of the lawyer to some slowly whispered command ofthe colonel, to rise from my far off corner and stand ready to accostMr. Phelps as he came from the bedside of the dying man.
"'What is it?' I asked, rushing up to him as he issued forth into thehall, and seizing him by the arm, with a woman's unreasoningimpetuosity. 'I have nursed his daughter on my knee; tell me, then, whatit is he has ordered you to do in this final moment?'
"Mr. Phelps for all his ungainly bearing, is not a hard-hearted man, asyou know, and he doubtless saw the depth of the misery that made meforget myself. Giving me a look that was not without its touch ofsarcasm, he replied, 'The colonel has made me promise, to see that aplank is nailed across the front door of this house, after his body hasbeen carried out to burial.'
"A board across the front door! His anger then was implacable. Thewithering curse that had rung in my ears for ten years, was to outlivehis death! With a horrified groan, I pressed my hands over my eyes andrushed back. My first glimpse of the Colonel's face showed me that theend was at hand, but that fact only made more imperative my consumingdesire to see that curse removed, even though it were done with hisfinal breath. Drawing near his bedside, I leaned down, and waiting tillhis eye wandered to my face, asked him if there was nothing he wishedamended before his strength failed. He understood me. We had not sat forso long, face to face across the chasm of a hideous memory, withoutknowing something of the workings of each other's mind. Glancing up athis wife's portrait which ever faced him as he lay upon his pillow, hismouth grew severe and he essayed to shake his head. I at once pointed tothe portrait.
"'What will you say to her when she meets you on the borders of heaven?'I demanded with the courage of despair.' She will ask, 'Where is mychild?' And what will you reply?'
"The fingers that lay upon the coverlid moved spasmodically; he eyed mewith a steady deepening stare, awful to meet, fearful to remember. Iwent on steadily; 'She has gone out of this house with your curse; tellme that if she comes back, she may be greeted with your forgiveness.'Still that awful stare which changed not. 'I have watched and waited forher every day since her departure,' I whispered, 'and shall watch andwait for her, every day until I die. Shall a stranger's love be greaterthan a father's?' This time his lips twitched and the grey shadowshifted, but it did not rise. 'I had sworn to do it,' I went on. 'Whenyou lay there at the top of the stairs, smitten down by your firstshock, I told her, come sickness, come health, I should keep a dailyvigil at that door of the house which your severity had not closed uponher; and I have kept my word till now and shall keep it to the end. Whatwill you do for this miserable child of whose being you are the author?'
"With indescribable anxiety I paused and watched him, for his lips weremoving. 'Do for her?' he repeated.
"How awful is the voice of the dying! I shivered as I listened, but drewnear and nearer, that I might lose no word that came from his stonylips.
"'She will not come,' gasped he, with an effort that raised him up inbed, and deepened that horrible stare, 'but--'
"Who shall say what he might have uttered if Death's hand had delayed asingle instant, but the inexorable shadow fell, and he never finishedthe sentence.
"My child, these are frightful things for you to hear. God knows I wouldnot assail your pure ears with a tale like this, if it were not for thehelp and sympathy I hope to gain from you. Sin is a hideous thing; thegulf it opens is wide and deep; well may it be said to swallow those whotrust themselves above its flower-hung brink. But we who are human, owesomething to humanity. Love stops not because of the gulf; love followsthe sinner with wilder and more heart-breaking longing, the deeper anddeeper he sinks into the illimitable darkness. Ten years have passedsince we laid the Colonel away in the burying-place of all the Japhas,and dutiful to his last request, nailed up the front door of hisspeedily to be forsaken mansion. In all that time my watch has remainedunbroken in this house, which by will he had left to me, but which Isecretly hold in trust for her. The hour of six has found me at my post,sometimes elate with hope, sometimes depressed with repeateddisappointments, but whether hopeful or sad, always trustful that thegreat God who Himself so loved all sinners, that H
e gave the life of HisSon to rescue them, would ultimately grant me the desire of my heart.But the decrepitude of age is coming upon me, and each morning I leavemy bed, with growing fear lest my infirmities will increase until theyfinally overcome my resolution. Child, if this should happen, if lyingin my bed I should some day hear that she had come back, and failing tofind the lamp burning and the welcome ready, had gone away again--Butthe thought is madness. I cannot bear it. A sinner, lost, degraded,suffering, starving, perhaps, is wandering this way. She is hardened andold in guilt; she has drunk the cup of life's passions and found themcorrupting poison; all that was lovely and pure and good has withdrawnfrom her; she stands alone, shut off by her sin, like a wild thing in acircle of flame. What shall touch this soul? The preacher's voice has nocharm for her; good men's advice is but empty air. God's love must bemirrored in human love, to strike an eye so unused to looking up. Whereshall she find such love? It is all that can rescue her; love as greatas her sin, as boundless as her degradation, as persistent as hersuffering. Child--"
"I know what you are going to say," suddenly exclaimed Paula, rising upand confronting Mrs. Hamlin with a steady high look of determination."In the day of your weakness or illness you want some one to unlock thedoor and light the lamp. You have found her!"