So they had rubbed on, till at Chicago Edgar had fallen ill with inflammation on the chest and throat, and was left voiceless, hovering on the verge of decline. He was still confined to his room when he received a note from Zoraya to inform him that she could not be burthened with the support of an invalid, and had therefore made other arrangements, in pursuance of which she enclosed a deed of divorce. To him it was liberty, and satisfaction that she had not heart enough to rob him of his child, but it was also destitution. However, there was compassion enough for the sick and deserted vocalist to render landlord and doctor merciful, and he was allowed to liquidate his debt by taking portraits as soon as he could reach the drawing-room of the boarding-house and wield his crayons.
'I don't know whether the divorce would hold water at home,' he said; 'but keep it, to guard the boy. If he is heir to anything she will scent it, like a vulture, carrion. Stay, while I can sign it, you draw up a form, giving the custody of him to my brothers, and forbidding her having anything to do with him.'
He was uneasy till this was done. His success at Chicago had given him hopes of gaining a livelihood with his brush, but he soon found photography too strong for him, and could meet with no employment as a violinist. His health was too much shattered for settled exertion, and though he said little of his struggles and sufferings, they must have been frightful, as he dropped from one failure to another, striving as he had never striven before, till he actually became a teamster to a party prospecting far West. 'I can't think how they came to take such a screw!' he said; 'but I believe they forgave me my child for the sake of my fiddle. Such a child as it was too, not eighteen months old, but never fretting for a moment. Most of the way I carried him strapped on my back, and always felt his little hand in my beard, and heard his voice in my ear as blithe as a katydid, and he was always ready to play, till he was a regular pet-kitten among them. Ah, well, Jerry, you and I have had good times together. How will he ever stand the high polite at home? Pah! You must have him out now and then, and let him breathe the prairies, and gallop after the buffaloes.'
It had ended in Edgar's settling down on this spot, having found the Editor of the 'Soaring Eagle of the Far West' closing with a favourable offer at the other end of the Continent. 'Tell Felix I took to his trade,' he said. 'Take home a sheet or two to be preserved alongside of the Pursuivant in the family archives. It is dated Violinia, a free translation of Fiddler's Ranch. Before I came, it used to be Broken-head Ranch; but it got the other name when I took to playing to hinder my boy from hearing more foul tongues than I could help. Take Lance my violin. He may some day make it over to Jerry, if he has a turn that way, though maybe he had best not.'
Perhaps nothing he said was sadder than this, considering what music could have been to him.
It appeared that though the wonderful spring of health in that salubrious air had made his first years there enjoyable, he had begun to feel the lack of all good influences as his child grew older. What he heard with indifference from his comrades, was shocking when echoed from the tender lips that brought back the thought of home; and when Gerald began to ask those deep questions of why and wherefore, life and death, that we only cease to wonder over as we grow used to them, Edgar, who had never reflected before, only undergone a few intellectual impressions and influences, answered as one bewildered; and when the fair head nestled to him, longed to see it bent over the clasped hands, like the heads so like it at home. He tried to teach; but prayers, cast off half a life-time ago, came not at his beck, and the very framework of the religion he had never attended to, and then thrown aside, had almost passed from him. Fragments floated before him, and his perplexity became longing to clear his mind; and when the foul habits and language of the Ranch came prominently before the child's growing perception, he had resolved to remove to where order and decency prevailed. He had answered an advertisement offering employment as an editor in a more advanced settlement, and was in the act of riding to an isolated station to collect his debts before his departure, when the attack had been made.
It was as if he had been just turning back from the husks which the swine did eat, and making his first step from the far country; and perhaps he thought so himself, for when Fernan's kindness as well as his own suffering had demolished his proud irony, he said, 'A fellow like you carries his Bible as a charm. Read me the old story of the younger son. It is not an original idea to ask for it, but the cadences have rung in my head ever since that "Pater noster" of yours.'
It was as if the old irreverence must still tinge whatever he said. Very perplexing it was. Was it repentance, that self-condemnation for wasted kindness? Was it faith, that increasing craving for Gospel messages? Was it prayer, the entreaty for the forms whose words, all broken, haunted the memory of the clergyman's son? He showed neither fear nor regret; he knew he had his death-warrant, he had made a bad business of life, and was weary of it—he, his thirty-second year not yet complete—he, the most gifted of the brothers. He sent no direct message, either to ask pardon for himself, or protection for his child—perhaps he was too secure of both to feel the need, for he spoke more and more of Felix and Cherry—nay, seemed to be talking to them when fever obscured his mind. Over and over recurred Lance's answer, 'a reasonable, holy, and lively sacrifice,' as if it had been the riddle of his life—or again the opening words of the Lord's Prayer, running into 'I will arise and go to my Father.'
The loving hearts must trust to the Father, Who can meet the son even while yet a great way off. And it was well for them that kind Ferdinand dropped the veil over the day when the doctor came too late for alleviation, though in time to save the child, as the lethargic trance gave way, and the moan of 'Daddy, daddy!' began. The last conscious light of the father's eyes met those of the boy; his last word replied to the feeble call. So Edgar Underwood passed away, and Ferdinand buried him beneath a pine-tree, amid many evidences that he had endeared himself to the rude spirits around, who mourned him in their rough sort, with many an anecdote of his ready wit and good-nature, and many another of little Jerry's drollery, simplicity, or courage.
The doctor recommended transporting the child to Sacramento before recovery of his senses should aggravate the danger of the journey. The spine, though not actually touched, had received a shock, and would require most careful treatment, beyond his own skill. So a bark cradle like that of a papoose, had been constructed, and slung to Ferdinand's shoulders so that he could raise it in his arms and break the jolting of the waggon over the roadless waste. When clasped in a pair of kind arms, with a beard to put his hand into, and a soothing voice to hush his moan, he did not waken to miss his father, though more than once he asked how soon they should arrive, and many times begged to go to bed.