CHAPTER V
THE SECRET OF A HEART
Late that night I was awakened by the slamming of doors and hurried footsteps in the hall and up and down the stairs. I sat up in bed, and as I listened intently, heard frightened whispering without my door. It rose and died away and rose again, broken by stifled sobbing, and I knew that some great disaster had befallen. It seemed, somehow, natural that this should happen, after my father's recent conduct. With a cold fear at my heart, I threw the covers back, slid from the bed, and groped my way across the room. As I fumbled at the latch, the whispering and sobbing came suddenly to an end, as though those without had stopped with bated breath. At last I got the door open, and looking out, saw half a dozen negro servants grouped upon the landing. One of them held a lantern, which threw slender rays of light across the floor and queer shadows up against their faces. They stared at me an instant, and then, finding their breath again, burst forth in lamentation.
"What is it?" I cried. "What has happened?"
My old mammy had her arms around me and caught me up to her face, down which the tears were streaming.
"Oh, Lawd, keep dis chile!" she sobbed, looking down at me with infinite tenderness. "Oh, Lawd, bless an' keep dis chile!"
"But, mammy," I repeated impatiently, "what has happened?"
Her trembling lips would not permit her answering, but she pointed to the door of my father's room and her tears broke forth afresh.
"Is my mother there?" I asked.
She nodded.
"Then I will go to her," I said, and I had squirmed out of her arms and was running along the passage before she could detain me. In a moment I had reached the door, but all my courage seemed to fail me in face of the mystery within, and the knock I gave was a very feeble and timid one. I heard a quick step on the floor, and the door opened ever so little.
"Is it you, doctor?" asked my mother's voice.
"No, mother, it is only I," I said.
"You!" she cried, in a terrible voice, and I caught a glimpse of her face rigid with horror before she slammed the door. The sight seemed to freeze me there on the threshold, powerless to move. I have tried—ah, how often!—to put behind me the memory of her face as I saw it then, but it is before me now and again, even yet. And I began to cry, for it was the first time my mother had ever shut me from her presence.
"Are you there, Tom?" I heard her voice ask in a moment. Her voice, did I say? Nay, not hers, but a voice I had never heard before,—the voice of a woman suffocating with anguish.
"Yes, mother," I answered, "I am here."
"And you love me, do you not, Tom?"
"Oh, yes, mother!" I cried; and I thank God to this day that there was so much of genuine feeling in my voice.
"Then if you love me, Tom," she said, "you will go back to your room and not come near this door again. Promise me, Tom, that you will do as I ask you."
"I promise, mother," I answered. "But what has happened? Is father dead?"
"Mr. Fontaine will be here soon," she said, "and will explain it all to you. Now run back to your room, dearest, and go to bed."
"Yes, mother," I said again, but as I turned to go, I heard a sound which struck me motionless. No, my father was not dead, for that was his voice I heard, pitched far above its usual key.
"I shall never go back," he cried. "I shall never go back till he asks me."
I felt the perspiration start from my forehead.
"Have you gone, Tom?" asked my mother's voice.
"I am just going, mother," I sobbed, and tore myself away from the door. My mammy's arms were about me again as I turned, and carried me back to my room. This time I did not resist, but as she sat down, still holding me, I laid my head upon her breast and sobbed myself to sleep. When I awoke, I found that I was in bed with the covers tucked close around me, and through my window I could see the gray dawn breaking. I lay and watched the light grow along the horizon and up into the heavens. And while I lay thus, with heart aching dully, the door of my room opened softly, and with joy inexpressible I saw that it was my beloved friend who entered.
"Oh, Mr. Fontaine!" I cried, and stretched out my arms to him. He took me up as a mother might, and held me close against his heart.
"Do you remember, dear," he said, and his voice was trembling, "what you told me one day by the river—that you meant to be brave under trial?"
I sobbed assent.
"Well, the trial has come, Tom, and I want you to be brave and strong.
You are not going to disappoint me, are you?"
Oh, it was hard, and I was only a child, but I sat upright on his knee and tried to dry my tears.
"I will try," I said, but the sobs would come in spite of me.
"That is right," and he was stroking my hair in that old familiar, tender way. "Your father is very ill, Tom."
Well, if that was all, I could bear it, certainly.
"But he will get well," I said.
He was looking far out at the purple sky, and his face seemed old and gray.
"I hope and pray so," he said at last. "He has the smallpox, Tom. There are some cases along the river near Charles City, and he must have caught it there. Doctor Brayle has done everything for him that can be done."
But I was not listening. There was room for only one thought in my brain.
"And my mother is with him!" I cried, and my heart seemed bursting.
He held me tight against him, and I felt a tear fall upon my head. This was the trial, then—for him no less than me.
"Yes, she is with him, Tom. She believes it her duty, and will allow no one else to enter. Ah, she has not been found wanting. Dear heart, I knew she would never be."
Of what came after, I have no distinct remembrance. Mr. Fontaine told me that my mother wished me to go home with him, so that I might be quite beyond reach of the infection. He had agreed that this would be the wisest course, and so, too stricken at heart to resist, I was bundled into his chaise with a chest of my clothes, and driven away through the crowd of sobbing negroes to the little house at Charles City where he and his sister lived.
The week that followed dwells in my memory as some tremendous nightmare, lightened here and there by the unvarying kindness of my friend and of his sister. I wandered along the river and gazed out across the changing water for hours at a time, with eyes that saw nothing of what was before them. Often I remained thus until some one came for me and led me gently back into the house. My brain seemed numbed, and no longer capable of thought. Mr. Fontaine took charge of our affairs, doing everything that could be done, keeping the frightened negroes to their work, and praying with my mother through the tight-closed door. He had no fear, and would have entered and prayed with her beside the bed, had she permitted.
I was sitting by the river-bank one evening, watching the shadows lengthen across the water, when I heard a step behind me, and turned to see my friend approaching. A glance at his face brought me to my feet.
"What is it?" I cried, and ran to him.
He took my hands in his.
"Your father died an hour ago, Tom," he said, and smoothed my hair in the familiar way which seemed to comfort him as well as me.
"And my mother?" I asked, for it was of her I was thinking.
"Your mother is ill, too," he said, and placed his arms about me and held me close, "but with God's grace we will save her life."
But I had started from him.
"If she is ill," I cried, "I must go to her. She will want me."
He shook his head, still holding to my hands.
"No, she does not want you, Tom," he said. "The one thing that will make her happy is the thought that you are quite removed from danger. I believed my place was at her bedside, but she would not permit it."
And then he told me, with glistening eyes, that my old mammy, who had been my mother's thirty years before, was nursing her and would not be sent away. She had burst in the door of the plague chamber the moment she had heard that her mistress was ill, and dared any one disturb her. Old Doctor Brayle had commanded that she be given her will, and declared that in this old negro woman's careful nursing lay my mother's great chance of life.
The scalding tears poured down my cheeks as Mr. Fontaine told me this,—the first, I think, that I had shed that week, for after that dreadful night, my sorrow had been of a dry and bitter kind,—and a stinging remorse seized me as I thought of the times I had been cross and disobedient to mammy. Ah, how I loved her now! It was the accustomed irony of my life that I was never to tell her so.
Ere daylight the next morning I was seated beside my friend as he drove me home. The river was cloaked in mist, and the dawn seemed inexpressibly dreary. As we approached the house, I wondered to see how forlorn and neglected it appeared. A crowd of wailing negroes surrounded the chaise when we stopped, and I would have got out, but Mr. Fontaine held me firmly in my seat.
"We must remain here," he said, and I dropped back beside him, and waited in a kind of stupor.
Presently they brought the coffin down, the negroes who carried it wreathing themselves in tobacco smoke, and placed it in a cart. We followed at a distance as it rolled slowly toward the Wyeth burying-ground in the grove of willows near the road. The thought came to me that my father should lie with the Stewarts, not with the Wyeths, and then suddenly a great sickness and faintness came upon me, and I remember nothing of what followed until I found Miss Fontaine lifting me from the chaise at the door. I was put to bed, and not until the next day was I able to crawl forth again.
Then came days of anguish and suspense, days spent by me roaming the woods, or lying face downward beneath the trees, and praying that God would spare my mother's life. Bulletins were brought me from her bedside,—she was better, she was worse, she was better,—how shall I tell the rest?—until at last one day came my dear friend, his lips quivering, the tears streaming down his face unrestrained, and told me that she was dead. I think the sight of his great sorrow frightened me, and I bore the blow with greater composure than I had thought possible. Had she sent me no message? Yes, she had sent me a message,—her last thought had been of me. She asked me to be a good boy and an honest man, to follow the counsel of Mr. Fontaine in all things, and to keep my promise to my father. So, even in death her love for him and for the honor of his memory triumphed, as I would have had it do.
Again there was a dismal procession through the gray morning to the willow grove, where we stood beneath the dripping branches, while afar off the rude coffin was lowered to its last resting-place. The negroes grouped themselves about, and my friend stood at my side, his head bare, his face raised to heaven, as though he saw her there.
"'I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: and whosoever liveth and believeth in me, shall never die.'"
I felt the threads of my life slipping from me one by one, even as the trees faded from before my eyes. Only that strong, exultant voice at my side went on and on.
"'Now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the firstfruits of them that slept.'" On and on went the voice; there was nothing else in the whole wide world but that voice crying out over my mother's grave. "'I heard a voice from heaven, saying unto me. Write. From henceforth blessed are the dead who die in the Lord.'" And then the voice faltered and broke. "She was the light of my life and the joy of my heart," it was no longer the ritual of the church; "and yet had I to walk beside her and tell her naught. And now is she taken from me, for the Lord hath received her to His bosom to live in the light of His love forevermore."
I looked up into his face and saw the secret of his heart revealed,—the secret he had kept so well, but which his anguish had wrung from him. It was only for an instant, yet I think he knew I had read his heart—I, alone of all the world, understood. Had my mother known, I wonder? Yes, I think she had, and in the greatness of his love found help and comfort. Good man and lovely woman, God rest and keep you both.
I went home with him, remembering with a pang that the place I had called home was mine no longer. Those among my friends who know the history of my boyhood understand to some extent my loathing for the cards and dice. It is perhaps unreasonable,—I might be the first to deem it so in any other man,—but when I count up the woe they brought my mother,—father and husband slaves to the same frenzy,—how they wrecked her life and embittered it, my passion rises in my throat to choke me. Never did I hate them more than in the days which followed; for they had made me outcast, and what the future held for me, I could not guess. The question was answered of a sudden a week later, when there came from my grandfather a curt note bidding me be sent to Riverview. It was decided at once that I must go. I myself looked forward to the change with a boy's blind longing for adventure, and said farewell to the man who had been so much to me with a willingness I wince to think upon.