I sat stupidly silent. I had a vision of myself being driven away as unworthy to enter in with true believers, having jested upon the great subject. I tried to force my lips to speak, to tell him I would bring the book I had read it all in—but, truth to tell, I was too frightened to speak, and his brow blackening with anger, Mattie, his step-daughter, calmly asked: “Mother where was it in the old-world they found those ‘sacred’ manuscripts the other day?” (Poor Emily wasn’t at all sure there was an old-world.) “Mr. Brockwell, you’ll know—Egypt wasn’t it? Those wise men are working over them, you know, to translate them; they say they are parts of the old—”
“Egypt,” declared the battered Brockwell. “Egypt, and very interesting they are too!”
“But,” I meekly started, “but”—then Mattie cleared her throat loudly, and bending over me, muttered: “Don’t be a fool—leave well-enough alone!” and I followed her advice and was silent. A month later, I told them “good-bye,” my profession taking me far from them, and I could not help admiring the upright, powerful figure of the old man, as he stood at his gate—so perfectly proportioned that it was hard to believe that he was inches over six feet in height. As I reached the walk I looked back. Emily, large and buxom, stood in the door, a soft, red shawl about her ample shoulders—her jaws working with a slow precision that told me plainly she was “breaking in” a new piece of gum. Bull Brockwell waved his hat to me, and, against the westering sun, he loomed up black and big! And I said to myself: “In faith as in body—a giant!”
Three years had passed before I saw him again, three vivid, crowded years for me! Success had perched upon the lonely, little banner I had carried into that strange campaign where each one fights according to his own individual plan, and I was back in the old city, and because of that success was in great haste to seek my lowly, old friends out—for self respect, even a suspicious pride, renders it very hard for the lowly to make the first advance toward one who has risen ever so slightly. I had heard nothing of them during my absence, and standing at the door waiting a good, long wait—for Emily, like most large bodies, moved slowly—I said to myself: “I shall not see the dear, old ‘Bull’ for a couple of hours yet, as he will surely be sleeping now, but by six o’clock—” and then the door opened, and Mrs. Emily was before me, quite unchanged—and had taken me into a big comfortable embrace—and kissed me warmly and loudly, and expressed her gratification so noisily that I wondered she was not afraid of waking her husband—and then she led the way to the sitting-room, without one word of warning or explanation—which was so like Emily—and crying out, “My, Mr. Brockwell, but here is some one you’ll be glad to see,” she moved aside and left me in the doorway, where I stood quite still, the smile of welcome drying stiffly on my lips, while with pained astonishment I stared at—Mr. Brockwell (?)—oh, yes; that thick thatch of hair was neither whiter nor thinner than before. There was the splendid, old torso with all its depth of chest and breadth of shoulder. But why was he in that dread wheel-chair? Why were his great limbs covered with a quilt? and, worst of all, why that strange expression in his face? Meeting that piteous, appealing glance, I felt the tears begin to fall, for I realized that in spite of the presence here of Mr. Brockwell—old Bull Brockwell was no more! The painful silence was broken by the trembling voice of Emily: “Father, I clean forgot to tell her—anything—and—and, I declare, she does take it right hard—don’t she, now?” and she slipped out of the room, wiping her own eyes furtively as she went!
As I crossed the room toward him, his chin sank upon his breast, and shaking his old head slowly, he sadly murmured: “From him that hath not, shall be taken away even that which he hath!”
I took his great hand between both of mine, and my lips were just forming the words: “Surely this is but temporary?” when he raised his eyes, and, looking into them, I saw that hope was dead and buried there. I sank upon my knees beside him and said: “Tell me about it, Mr. Brockwell.” He glanced towards his wife’s room, but I persisted gently: “No—I want you to tell me,” for my true sympathy had bridged the years between us, and we were like old friends.
In low tones he told his simple, commonplace story. It was the construction he put upon the usual that made it seem unusual, and brief and simple as his story was, it was intensely characteristic. He had started earlier than usual to his night’s work, and was swinging his coffee-pail to the measure of the old hymn, “On Jordan’s Stormy Banks I Stand,” when, turning into a cross-street, he found himself in a crowd of running men and women, and in a few moments was in the midst of all the turmoil and commotion attending a fire, and he soon saw there was cause for the cries of the women and the curses of the men. There had been a nasty accident, and it had come to the first engine approaching the fire. It had been a case of strange driver and a too-short turn, and there, in a terrible heap, lay one horse flat, the other on its knees, and behind them a partly overturned engine. Worst of all, not only were its own services lost, but it was keeping other engines from entering the street, save by a long detour. Now, if ever there was a demand for lifting-power that demand was made right there, and old Brockwell sat down his coffee-pail and began to remove his heavy coat (it was early November then), when he learned quite suddenly that the burning house was a haunt of evil doers, was in fact a place that honest folk turned their faces from as they passed, and for the moment he hesitated, then flinging his coat fiercely off, he shouted: “Help! men, help! That fire must be quenched, to give those people one last chance to save themselves from eternal fire,” and the “old Bull” was with the firemen, working with a will and showing such splendid lifting-power that the crowd cheered the “gray old Hercules” lustily, and among other happenings some “company’s hose” had burst, and many were wetted thoroughly, among them old Brockwell. A church clock had boomed out the hour, and it was time for him to go on to his work, and then he felt how wet he was. He might have gone home and changed his clothing and only have been a little late in getting to the store. There was no one to make comment or to report his action, but he would be late, and he was proud, (the old man’s lips had twisted painfully in uttering that word), proud of his punctuality, and—well—he had gone on to the store, wet as he was, and the night had been long, and now and then, strange, deep, burning pains, that seemed a mile long, had run from hip to heel, but he had watched the night out—and—and he would never watch again—that was all. He had, in fact, “scuttled his own ship,” but in ignorance, lass! In ignorance, not in villainy. Yes, it was rheumatism first. He hadn’t minded that so very much, because he had the awful pain to fight, but this (again that piteous twist of the lips), this partial paralysis—well there was nothing even to fight now.
Had I not seen hope dead in his eye? His head sank low on his breast. I touched my lips to his hand, and whispered, “How you have suffered!” His eyes closed wearily, and he answered lowly: “I have eaten ashes like bread, and mingled my drink with weeping,” then, almost with a sob, he said: “Aye, aye—in very truth my sin hath found me out!”
I started almost angrily, exclaiming: “Your sin? What sin? You have loved—at least you have feared God all your life long! His word has ever been upon your lips. You have striven to obey His laws—what sin has found you out?” He raised his head, crying: “And to think I was so blind—so self-satisfied! To think how I tried to keep the boys from going to perdition by way of Sunday ball, and the girls by way of their vanity in their bits of ribbons! The blind ‘leading the blind,’ in good truth! Even when I was stricken I did not understand, until a neighbor made my sin plain to me.”
“Ah,” I said, “and had that neighbor removed the beam from his own eye, that he could see so very plainly the mote in yours?”