An Old Hulk
Old Thomas Brockwell—sometimes called Bull Brockwell, he of the mighty thews and sinews—had been for some years a widower, and had he remained a widower I should have been the poorer by one good friend—a lowly one—oh, yes—but you know that true friendship is one of the few things the lowly can afford to give.
But the broad-shouldered, ruddy-faced old Briton had married an American wife in the person of the mother of my closest chum—and so I learned many things about the narrow, hard, honest old giant—things that sometimes filled my eyes with tears of laughter; sometimes with stinging drops of anguished pity. The only surprising thing about Brockwell’s second marriage was that it had not taken place years before—for given a working-class Englishman of middle age—owning a house of his own—you have the worst material in the world for a widower. But, like most of his race, he was a bit contrary, and when all his housekeepers and his elderly unmarried friends pursued him openly—without even trying to hide the matrimonial lasso with a few flowers of sentiment or delicacy—he shook his obstinate, old head and plunged away.
Then Emily had arrived upon the scene, whom he described as “a fine figure of a woman” (she weighed something over two hundred), and if she was too inert to join in the general pursuit of him, she was also too inert to avoid pursuit herself—hence the marriage, and though, while praising her housekeeping, he openly expressed his doubts of her soul’s salvation—the new, phlegmatic Mrs. Brockwell remained quite undisturbed. She was an experienced chewer of gum—she said she had to chew it to aid her digestion—but be that as it may, a certain mental clearness, a sort of spiritual calm, seemed to come to her from her steady, cow-like munching. On the occasion of her second marriage she had contentedly chewed until she took her place before the lean, old minister; then, having no bridesmaid to act for her, she stuck her gum on her breast-pin, temporarily, while she promised to accept the big party at her side, and all his belongings, and to nurse him for the rest of his life without further remuneration—and with the nuptial benediction she had resumed her gum and had gone forth a slowly-chewing, contented bride—and on Sunday, he wishing, probably, to do all that was courteous and polite under the circumstances, took his new wife out to the cemetery and proceeded to introduce her—as it were—to the other members of the family.
A hideous chunk of stone stood in the middle of a plot, from which the graves rayed out like the spokes of a wheel—and old Thomas, with a cane, which so surely only appeared on Sundays that a bad little boy once said: “God made the Sabbath day and old Brockwell’s cane!”—with this cane he immediately bored a little hole at the foot of one grave and remarked: “I buried my first wife there”—and Emily brought her jaws to with a snap, and bowed her head slightly, as though acknowledging an introduction. Then she chewed again, and old Thomas yanked out the cane with some effort, as though Mrs. Brockwell No. 1 was holding on to it. Then he bored another little hole at the foot of another grave with the cane and announced: “I buried my eldest son here”—another stoppage of the jaws and another bow—and so the old “borer” went on, till each member of the family had been presented to the new-comer in turn, and then he gave the final touch of brightness to this very original bridal outing by carefully measuring with the cane the space, to see if there was enough left for two more spokes to his family “wheel of death.”
Mrs. Brockwell was wont to declare she would remember that day as long as she lived. Not because her sensibilities were wounded, but because she had not been constructed for rapid action, and she declared she would never have lived through the homeward walk but for the sustaining power of an extra piece of gum, which she luckily had in her pocket—for this was the golden age of the world when women still had pockets.
Old Thomas Brockwell narrowly—very narrowly—escaped being a religious monomaniac. Unquestionably sincere, his religion was yet a thing so warped and bitter as to fill most people with shrinking dread. He studied only the Old Testament, rarely reading the New. In his ears the rolling thunders of Sinai drowned the gentle “Voice” preaching from the “Mount.” He believed in a personal Devil—he believed in a material Hell.
I have never known anyone who got as much satisfaction out of the whole of his religion as he got out of Hell alone. He talked of it, thought of it, and, in regretful tones, told many of his friends that they were going there. All its accessories were dear to him. The “brimstone,” the “burning lake” and that “undying worm,” which seemed, in his imagination, something between a boaconstrictor and a Chinese dragon, while the “bottomless pit” not only gave him two words to roll sweetly under his tongue, but provided an ideal place to shake frightened little boys over at Sunday-school—for he labored faithfully Sunday after Sunday to frighten sinful youth into the church or the idiot asylum.
His God was a bitterly revengeful God! The Bible told him to fear Him and to obey His commandments. The base of his religion was “an eye for an eye—a tooth for a tooth!” He knew no “turning of the other cheek”—no “forgiveness of enemies,” and many a time, in his efforts to show his disapproval of the loving, gentle, yet strong teaching of the New Testament, he blasphemed unconsciously. Few things made him so angry as to suggest “a Hell of remorse”—of “tortured conscience”—of “mental agony”—while a hint at “atonement”—a final winning of forgiveness—was a rag so red as to set him madly charging through the harshest and most cruelly just punishments meted out in the Bible—and the worse one promised for the future—Hell! “And their future is now!” he would shout, with glaring eyes! “Now, do you understand? All these disobedient servants of the Lord are in fiery torments now! and will be forever! Ah! it’s a big place—a mighty big place!—far and far away bigger than Heaven! It has to be, there’s so many more to go there!”
Night and morning he read a portion of the Bible, and prayed loud and long—and right there he came in conflict with his Emily. There was just one point they differed on—they did not quarrel, because Emily was too slow in speech. There’s no comfort to be had out of a quarrel, unless it’s quick—very quick; and if Emily had had her choice she would a good deal rather have died than try to be quick.