DEATH AND LIFE.
HERE had been a grand and solemn funeral. A long line of splendid coaches had followed the millionaire to his last resting-place. Rosewood and silver and velvet and crape had united to do him honor. Many stores in the city were closed because Mr. Hastings had extensive business connections with them. The hotels were closed because Mr. Hastings owned three of the largest; the Euclid House was shuttered and bolted, and long lines of heavy crape floated from the numerous doors. Many hats had been uplifted, many gray heads bared, while the closing words of the solemn burial service were once more repeated, and then the mourners had returned to their places, and the long line of carriages had swept back, and the city had taken down its shutters and opened its doors again, and the world had rushed onward as before. Only in that one home—there the desolation tarried. Through all the trouble and the pain Theodore had been with them constantly. That first day he had accompanied them home of necessity, their rightful protector being still in his drunken sleep. Arrived there, they needed help and comfort even more than they had before. There were friends by the hundreds, but Theodore could not fail to see that while Mrs. Hastings appeared incapable of directing, and indeed very indifferent as to what was done, Dora turned steadily and constantly to him for advice and assistance. Pliny was prevailed upon to go at once to his room, and was very soon asleep. When the wretched stupor of sleep had worn itself out upon him, and left the fearful headache to throb in his temples, Theodore was at his side, grave and sad and silent, but patient still, and gentle as a woman. Only a few words passed between them, Pliny speaking first in a cold, hard tone.
"Go away, Mallery, and let me alone—everything is over. All I ask of you is to send me a bottle of brandy, and never let me see your face again."
Theodore's only answer was to dip his hand again into cool water, and pass it gently over the burning temples; then he said:
"I think it would be well to lie still, Pliny. They do not need you below at present, and your head is very hot."
Pliny pushed feebly with his hand.
"Go away, Mallery, I can not endure the sight of you. It is all over, I say. I will never try again."
Very quietly and steadily went the firm, cool hand across his forehead, and the voice that answered him was quiet and firm.
"No, I shall not leave you, dear friend, and all is not over. You are going to try harder than ever before, and I am never going to give you up—never!"
Silence for a little, then Pliny said:
"Then don't leave me, Theodore, not for an instant, day or night—promise."
And Theodore, ignoring all the strangeness of his position, promised, and remained in the house, the watcher-guard and helper of more than Pliny.
Not for an instant did he lose sight of his friend; through all the trying ordeal of the following days he was constantly present. Even in Pliny's private interviews with his mother, Theodore hovered near, and his was the first face that Pliny met when he came to the door to issue any orders. It was Theodore's hand that held open the carriage door when the son came to follow his father to his final resting-place, and it was Theodore's arm that was linked in his when he walked down the hall on his return.
These were sad things to Theodore in another way. Despite all Mr. Hastings' coldness to him, he had never been able to lose sight of the memory of those days, now long gone by, in which the rich man had in a sense been his protector and friend. He could not forget that it was through him that his first step upward had been taken. Aside from his mother, Mr. Hastings was perhaps the first person for whom he felt a touch of love. He could not forget him—could not cease to mourn for him.
There was, only a week after this, another funeral. There was no long line of coaches, and no display of magnificence this time—only a quiet, slow-moving procession following the unplumed hearse. Only one store in the city was closed, and not a hundred people knew for whom the bell tolled that day; but did ever truer mourners or more bleeding hearts follow a coffin to its final resting-place than were those who gathered around that open grave, and saw the body of Grandma McPherson laid to rest for awhile, awaiting the call of the great Maker, when he should bid it come up to meet its glorified spirit, and dwell in that wonderful Forever!
The messenger came suddenly to her, in the quiet of a moonlight night, when all the household were asleep; and none who saw her in the morning, with that blessed look upon her face, that told of earth receding and heaven coming in, could doubt but that when in the silent night she heard the Master whisper, "Come up higher," she made answer, "Even so, Lord Jesus."
So they laid her in the silent city on the hill, very near the spot where, by and by, there towered and blazed Mr. Hastings' monument; but when they set up her white headstone they marked on it the blessed words: "So he giveth his beloved sleep."
But oh, that home left without a mother—the dear, loving, toiling, patient, self-sacrificing mother!
"Dear old lady," were the words in which Theodore had most often thought of her, and I find on thinking back that I have constantly spoken of her thus, but in reality she was not old at all; her early life of toil and privation and sorrow had whitened her hair and marked heavy lines as of age on her face. Her quaint dress gave added strength to this impression, and Theodore when he first met her was at that age when all women in caps and spectacles are old, so "Grandma" she had always been to him, but they only wrote "sixty-three" on her coffin.
They were sitting together, Theodore and Pliny, the first evening they had spent alone since the changes had come to them. They were in their pleasant room which must soon be vacated, for the guiding presence that had made of them a family was wanting now. They had not been talking, only the quietest common-places—neither of them seemed to have words that they chose to utter. They were sitting in listless attitudes, each occupying a great arm-chair, which they called "study-chairs." Theodore with his hands clasped at the back of his head, and Pliny with his face half hidden in his hands. The latter was the first to break the silence.
"Mallery, you are such a wonderment to me! What is there about me that makes you cling so? I thought it was all over during that awful time. I don't know how you can help despising me, but you don't know how it was. Oh, Theodore, I tried, I struggled, I meant to keep my promise, and even at such a time as that the sight of my enemy conquered me. Now, what am I to do? There is no hope for me at all. I have no trust, no confidence in myself."
"That at least would be hopeful if it were strictly true," Theodore answered, earnestly. "But, Pliny, it is not quite true. If you utterly distrusted yourself, so utterly that you would stop trying to save yourself alone, and accept the All-powerful Helper's aid, I should be at rest about you forever."
Contrary to his usual custom, Pliny had no answer ready, seemed not in the least inclined to argue, and so Theodore only dropped a little sigh and waited. It was not despair with him during these days—his faith had reached high ground. "Ask, and ye shall receive," had come home to him with wonderful force just lately, while he waited on his knees; he felt that he should never let go again for a moment. Still there seemed nothing now for him to do, nothing but that constant watching and constant praying; and he had only lately come to realize how much these two things meant. Presently, sitting there in the silence, he bethought himself of Winny in her desolation.
"Pliny," he said, suddenly, "shall not you and I go down and try to help poor Winny endure her loneliness? Do you know she is utterly alone? Rick's wife is in her room with the child, and Rick and Jim just went down the walk together."
Pliny seemed nothing loth, and the two descended to the dear little parlor where so many happy hours had been passed. Winny had turned down the gas to its lowest ebb, and was curled into a corner of the sofa, giving up to the form of grief in which she most indulged—utter, white silence. She sat erect as the two young men entered, and Theodore turned on the gas; Pliny took the other corner of the sofa, and Theodore the chair opposite them. He looked from one to the other of the white worn faces. What utter misery was expressed on both! A great longing came over him to comfort them. But what comfort could he offer for such troubles as theirs, save the one thing that both rejected? He gave voice to his thoughts almost without intending it, with no other feeling than that his great pity and desire for them were beyond his control.
"How much, how very much, you two people need the same help! What utter nothingness any other aid is. I have not the heart to offer either of you the mockery of human sympathy," he spoke in gentle, sad tones, and straight way was startled with himself for speaking at all. Winny turned her great gray solemn eyes on her companion in the other corner.
"Do you feel the need of help?" she asked, gravely. "Heaven knows I do feel the need of something I don't possess. I am utterly shipwrecked. I don't know which way to turn. I do, if I only would turn that way. Mother had help all her life long—help that you and I know nothing about. Do you doubt that?"
"No, I don't," answered Pliny, solemnly.
"Then why can't we have it if we both need it, and can get it for the asking? Mother prayed for you as well as for me. The very last night of her life I heard her. I know what she prayed for is so. I'm tired of struggling. I've been at it, Theodore knows, for a great many years. If mother were here to-night I would say to her: 'Mother, I'm not going to struggle any more; I'm going to give myself up,' and that would make her happy—oh, too happy for earth. Well, I'm going to, anyway. I'm sick of myself; I want to get away from myself; I need help. You've struggled, too; I know by myself. Suppose we both give up. Suppose we both kneel down here this minute, and say that we are tired of ourselves, and ashamed of ourselves and we want Christ. Theodore will say it for us. Will you do it, Mr. Hastings?"
She had spoken rapidly and with the same energy that characterized all her words, but with solemn earnestness. Pliny bowed his head on his two hands, while utter silence reigned; and Theodore, wonder-struck over the turn that the conversation had taken, yet had breath enough left to say
"Lord Jesus, help them, help them. Oh, remember Calvary and the 'many mansions,' and help them both. Let the decision be now." This prayer he repeated and re-repeated. Then suddenly Pliny arose.
"If ever any one on earth needed help and strength it is I," he said, hoarsely. "Yes, I want to give up if I can," and he dropped upon his knees.
In an instant Winny was kneeling, and Theodore's whole soul was being poured out in prayer for those two. A moment and then Pliny, in low, hoarse voice said:
"Lord, help me; I am sinking in deep waters." And Winny added: "Savior of my mother, I am sick of sin; take me out of myself and into thee."
When they arose Theodore stole quietly from the room and left them alone. He went up to his own closet and prayed such prayer of thanksgiving as was recorded in heaven that night, and the angels around the throne had great joy.
Not yet were the shocks and changes coming to these households over. Not two weeks had the millionaire been sleeping his last sleep, when there burst like a bombshell on the business world the startling news that his millions had vanished into vapor, or perhaps it would be speaking more properly to say into poison. Strange, wild speculations, that the acute, far-sighted business man would never have touched for a moment had he been himself, had been entered into while his brain was struggling with the fumes of brandy. Notes had been signed, sales had been made and debts contracted upon an enormous scale; in short, the whole business was in a bewildering entanglement.
"There won't be five thousand dollars left out of the whole immense property," said Edgar Ryan, one of the lawyers in charge, at the close of a confidential conversation with Theodore, and Theodore, like the rest of the world, stood for a little stunned and aghast over this new calamity.
"I never saw such a tangle in all my days," continued Ryan, earnestly. "The amount of property shipwrecked is almost incredible. The man was never intoxicated in his life, and yet it may be truthfully said of him that he has let rum swallow all his millions. I tell you, Mallery, you and Habakkuk were undoubtedly correct."
Theodore turned and walked soberly and wearily away. He had not the heart just then to smile over the memory of anything. There followed weary, anxious, harassing days—days in which Pliny remained doggedly behind the counter, and Theodore almost entirely ignored the store, and gave himself up to following the footsteps of appraisers and auctioneers and policemen, and in trying to shield Mrs. Hastings and Dora, for the red flag floated out from the grand mansion proudly known for years as Hastings' Hall. Oh change! Can anything in all time be compared in swiftness and sharpness and terror to that monster who swoops down upon our hearts and homes, and almost in the twinkling of an eye leaves them desolate? Oh heaven! With all its glories and its joys, can anything in all the bright description equal in peace and rest and comfort that one precious sentence which admits of no thought of change: "And they shall reign forever and ever?"
There were plans innumerable to be made and acted upon. Rick and his wife had gone back ere this to their Western home. Winny had steadily refused their urgent petitions to accompany them, and worked faithfully on in her honored position in one of the great graded schools. She and Jim had taken board together in a quiet house as far removed from the dear old home as possible. Mrs. Hastings had promptly accepted the invitation of her husband's brother in Chicago. The invitation had also been extended to Dora, and she had as promptly declined it. Her strong, independent nature asserted itself here. She would not go to live a dependent in her uncle's home. She would not teach music, for which she pronounced herself unfitted by nature and education; but she would take the boys' room next to Winny's in the aforesaid graded school, and share the quiet little room in the boarding house, whither Winny had carried many of her household treasures.
It was all settled at last, and when Mrs. Hastings was ticketed and checked for Chicago under the escort of one of the firm who was going thither, and the young ladies were quietly domiciled in their new and pleasant room, Pliny and Theodore came to the first breathing place they had found for many a day, and felt absolutely forlorn and disconsolate. They were together in the store, the last clerk had departed, and their loneliness only served to add to their sense of gloom.
"Well," said Pliny, closing the ledger with a heavy sigh, "if we had a local habitation we'd go to it now, wouldn't we?"
"Probably," answered Theodore, drumming on the counter with his fingers. "Where are we going to live, Pliny, anyway?"
"More than I know," was Pliny's gloomy answer. "In the street for all I seem to care just at present."
And then the office door clicked behind them, and Mr. Stephens appeared.
"I thought you were gone, sir," said Pliny, rising in surprise.
"No, I was waiting your movements. Come, young gentlemen, I want you both to come home with me. There is no use in remonstrating, my boy," he added, laying his hand on Theodore's shoulder, as the latter would have spoken. "I have had your and Pliny's rooms ready for you this week past, and have only waited until you were at leisure to take possession. I keep bachelor's hall, you know, and if ever a man needed something new and fresh about him I do. So do as I want you to for once, just to see how it will seem."
There was much talk about the matter, argument and counter argument; but in the end Mr. Stephens prevailed, as in reality he generally did, when he set his heart upon a thing, despite his statements that Theodore kept him under complete control. Before another week closed the two young men were cozily settled in their new quarters, and really feeling as much at home as though half their lives had been spent there.
There was one other matter which came to Theodore as a source of great satisfaction.
"Mallery," Mr. Stephens had said to him one morning when they were quite alone in the private office, "have you any special interest in the Hastings' place?"
Theodore hesitated a little, and then answered frankly enough:
"Yes, sir, I certainly have. There are many associations connected with that house that will always endear it to me."
"Then you may be interested to know that I have become the purchaser of it; and if at any time, for any reason, you should wish to make special disposition of it, it shall always be in a state to await your orders. Real estate is valuable property, and as good a way as any in which to dispose of surplus funds."
Theodore came out from behind the screen to try to offer some word of thanks, but Mr. Stephens had pushed open the green baize door and vanished.
