“Come unto me all ye who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest!” Slowly, with trembling lips, he repeated the words a second time. Then he leant forward, tore a bit from the evening paper, and placing it as a marker, he closed the book. Emily and I knelt, and for once I felt no sense of the ridiculous in hearing a poor, finite creature explaining matters to the Infinite Being who knows all things. Very humbly the old believer explained to the God he had made so fearsome to himself why he lifted his voice in prayer in this unseemly attitude, instead of on his knees in humble, loving humility!
I gasped—I felt Emily’s hand slip over and grasp mine—which proved lucky later on. Never before had that word been heard in that way, in this house of faith. But, oh, when the old man asked forgiveness for having wickedly doubted for a time the perfect truthfulness of one very near to him—his truest friend—Emily gave a plunge and tried to pull away from me. “I can’t,” she gasped. “I can’t bear it! I must confess my lie!”
“Oh!” I moaned under cover of his bass rumble, “keep still! He’s so happy now! Confess to heaven!” She tried again to pull her hand away. I clung tight, and putting my lips close to her ear, whispered: “He will forgive you because of your love! You know,” I muttered wildly, “much shall be forgiven because she loved much! That’s not it, but you know what I mean!”
The bass rumble stopped suddenly—so did I—but thank heaven, Emily’s spurt of remorseful courage was over—her loving falsehood unconfessed! The rumble was resumed, and all was well!
Next day, as I came in hatted and cloaked to say “good-bye,” old Brockwell—bright and ruddy—had his cutting board on his knees, bits of calico all over him. A foot-rule, a blue pencil, and several envelopes before him, and the air of “this is my busy day” of a railroad magnate at least. His “log-cabin” pattern had been found in a “rocky-mountain” envelope, and in fact things were all at loggerheads—but by-and-by they would be ship-shape. I was just to wait till I saw some of his own designs! Emily was going to go right at one—of “anchors”—blue anchors on a white ground, and did I suppose any of my pieces would be long enough—he couldn’t well have those anchors less than six or seven inches long, and then a bit of the old Adam came out in him, when he lowered his voice to tell me: “He was not ashamed to cut patch-work, and he was not afraid—that in a year from now there would be quilts downstairs that could outsail anything upstairs that had been cut out only after beggin’ and coaxin’!”
I looked at the mighty wreck before me! I thought of the three men he had put out in that early morning fight! Of how, strained and patched and stitched, he had picked up that barrel of flour and carried it in from very pride in his strength! How he had won cheers for his splendid lifting-power at that fire, and now he had come to this! He sat there helpless as a child, his only work cutting up scraps of calico for quilts. He was, as he himself said, “an old hulk!” and yet he looked brightly up to me and said: “You remember old lady Brighton, don’t you, lass? Unbeliever, poor old thing! Emily and I are going to make a real pretty ‘star quilt’ and give to her. Star-pattern works up such small pieces, you know! Nothing, most, too small for that, and so bright too!”
It was no use denying it—this wreck was dearer—was more valuable to others, as a wreck, than it had been in full panoply and strength. He was accepting things—he was conquering himself, and he was “greater than he who taketh a city!”
So there I left him. For background, he had his honest, toilsome, clean-thinking past! His old wife’s faithful love was as the blue sky, bowing gently over him. The slow, still sands of Time piling steadily about him, and before him that great, illimitable ocean of Eternity, which will at last receive into its bosom this fine, old hulk!
The Gentleman Who Was Going to Die