Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848

by Various

He stood still until the last echo of his mother's footsteps died away in the distance, and then crept stealthily to the front window, where, seeing her passing the gate into the lane, he broke out into a low laugh, and returned again to the fire-place.

"So, I must be a saddler, must I? Ahem! Well! it takes two to play at that, so we'll see who makes high, low, Jack, and the game this deal. Hurst was about right when he said things would come to a compass afore long. Guess they have, but who cares? I reckon I know which side my bread is buttered!"

Here David White again crossed over to the window, and looked out. His mother was far away in the lane, and just turning the last pannel of the garden fence, where the road branched off, and led by the old mill. Withdrawing from the window, he took a small hand-saw file, and a rudely fashioned key from his pocket, passed over to the bed, and lifting the foot-valance, drew out a large and strong oaken chest; then glancing hurriedly around the room to be sure that no one was present, he applied the key to the lock. It did not quite fit, but, after carefully filing and applying it for some time, the bolt turned in its socket, and the chest stood open before him. In rummaging the till, he at length discovered the object of his search, a purse of silver coin, the accumulated gains of months, and placed there by his mother only a few days previous. This was not her usual depository for money, but, in the present instance, it had been laid aside until the absent minister of the village should return, into whose hands she was accustomed to deliver her spare funds for safe keeping. Laying the purse by his side, he locked the chest, and having arranged every thing as nearly as possible as he found it, retired through an opposite door into his chamber.

"Twenty dollars and a shilling, I think they said," muttered he to himself. "A good round sum for one evening's work. I wonder if I hadn't better take mother's fashion, and praise Heaven for it?"

Having entered his chamber, he sat down to count his newly-acquired treasure, and finding the amount as large as he expected, carefully deposited it, with the exception of a few dollars, in a leathern belt around his person. Then assuming his shot-pouch, and flinging his rifle to his shoulder, he stooped down, and taking a small bundle, wrapped in a silk handkerchief, from his trunk, retired from the house, slamming the door violently after him, and walked rapidly on, until he reached the summit of an eminence near the old moss-grown mill, which was the last place from which he could see the home he was leaving, perhaps forever. Here he stopped for a few moments, leaned his rifle and bundle against a large, long-limbed, butter-nut, and sat down upon a decaying log at its foot, to gaze, for the last time, upon the old mansion which had been his home from earliest remembrance.

It has been said that there are times when the stoniest hearts are softened; when the sternest natures are made mild, and when the most abandoned are like little children. That moment had now come for David White. It was strange, passing strange. He had committed crime upon crime, yet scarcely felt a moment's remorse; for years he had acted toward his mother as if his whole soul were naught but selfishness; but when he came to leave that mother, that old homestead, and all the bright and beautiful objects around it, a softness breathed over his iron-nature, and the fount of tears sent up its gushing libations. I have often thought that such feelings must be akin to those mysterious, indefinable, and gloomy forebodings—those dim and indescribable fears and shrinkings within self, that sometimes come over our spirits like a creeping, icy thrill—in the midst of a giddy round of pleasure, or, as we stand by the grave's brink to see our friends entombed, and yet which no earthly or human cause is able to explain.

He was beholding everything for the last time, and he looked around him as the dying man upon his nearest friends, when he feels the cold hand of death pressed heavily upon his brow, and the silver chords of his spirit's harp gathering to their utmost tension, and snapping, one by one, like reeds before the blast. There was the home which had sheltered him in his helplessness, glowing in a shower of soft moonlight, and seeming more beautiful than he ever saw it before. There the only true love this wide world of cold and bitter heartlessness can know, beamed on his infant eyes; and there he had spent the only happy moments in all his boyhood existence. In that little room he had first learned to pray, and there, first forgotten the duty. There his mother had watched over him night after night, when he had a burning fever, and the grave had half-opened its terrible portals for his entrance. And now he was going to abandon that mother who had loved and cherished him so fondly—leave her all alone, a joyless, childless widow, and for what cause? He choked down the emotion that rose to his mind, and turned hurriedly in another direction. Not more than twenty paces from him, a stream went dancing and bubbling across the road like a track of liquid silver—the stream that was fed by the cool spring at home; and he remembered how he had gazed in transport, many years agone, at the bright-hued insects floating in the meek, golden-colored sunshine, now sinking their velvet feet into the moist sand upon the water's brink, and sipping tiny draughts; or, resting upon the edges of the blue and crimson flowers that looked up like gems from the verdant grass, opening and shutting their unruffled fans, woven of gold and sunlight. He turned away from the scene sick at heart, but still another object presented itself to view, awakening old memories. A little farther on yonder in the green meadow, through which murmured the mill-stream, and by the drooping-willow whose long branches rippled in the current, was a deep place, in the midst of which loomed up a dark-gray rock, like a lone sentinel to the rapid waters, and the scene made his heart bound again. There he had angled for trout for many a summer, and looked down delighted into the music-breathing waters, watching the silver and mottled fishes as they went trooping swiftly past, like guests to a fairy wedding. The tears gushed into his eyes as old recollections came thronging to his mind, and he faltered in his determination. He turned, and took one step toward home, but vicious impulses triumphed, and the rainbow that had begun to arch his heart faded in darkness. He disappeared down the slope toward the old bridge, and David White was ruined forever.

Meanwhile Widow White had almost reached her destination. A few steps farther on rose a little white-washed cottage, with sloping roof, and two large china-trees embowering it in front. As she arrived at the small trellis-work gate, a light met her eye, faintly twinkling through the dark foliage of an intervening bough, and reflecting a ruddy glare upon the side-walk that lay entombed in shadow. She opened the gate, followed the narrow foot-path leading to the front door, and found herself in a dark entry, with a few rays of light shimmering through the key-hole of a door immediately before her. As she put her hand to the latch, a stifled sob broke upon her ear, and noiselessly opening the door, she glided into the apartment. It was indeed the chamber of death. On a little table by the fire-place, amidst a number of glasses and vials, burned a solitary candle over a long and lengthening wick, shedding a dim radiance throughout the room. By the side of an old-fashioned bedstead, hung with snow-white valance, knelt the old gray-headed minister, and his low voice, broken and thrillingly solemn, went up in earnest prayer for a departing soul. Upon the bed itself, propped up with pillows, lay the invalid. Three days ago the flush of health had mantled her cheek, and brightened in her eye, and now, how ghastly and changed she was! The sunken and mist-covered eye; the pallid cheek; the hueless lips, and painful breath, too truly testified that the dark angel Azrael was watching by the couch-side. At the head of the bed sat the daughter, a little girl apparently five years of age, with her head bent upon her knees, and her hands clasped beneath her face, weeping bitterly. The supplicating accents of the gray-haired minister ceased, and he arose from his kneeling posture, his eyes streaming with tears, and clasping in both of his the thin white hand that rested upon the snowy counterpane, leaned gently over, and placed his lips close to the ear of the dying woman.

"My dear Mrs. Williams," said he kindly, "we all feel that you are rapidly sinking; do you die happy? Do you feel that there is a Jesus in heaven, through whose mediation you will be saved?"

There was a rustling of the bed-clothes, a faint murmur, and the sufferer languidly turned her eyes upon the speaker. A dimness was in those sunken orbs; a clamminess upon her wan brow, and her breast heaved wildly beneath the linen that lay in snowy waves across it. But she did not appear to have heard the inquiry of the minister.