Part 37 (1/2)
”I tell you the solemn truth,” he said, lifting his voice in dogged a.s.sertion: ”the best sermon I ever preached in my life, I preached only three weeks ago, at the camp-meeting. It was admitted by everybody to be far and away my finest effort! They will tell you the same!”
”It's quite likely,” a.s.sented Sister Soulsby. ”I quite believe it.”
”Then how can anybody say that I've degenerated, that I've become a fool?” he demanded.
”I haven't heard anybody hint at such a thing,” she answered quietly.
”No, of course, YOU haven't heard them!” he cried. ”I heard them, though!” Then, forcing himself to a sitting posture, against the restraint of her hand, he flung back the covering. ”I'm burning hot already! Yes, those were the identical words: I haven't improved; I've degenerated. People hate me; they won't have me in their houses. They say I'm a nuisance and a bore. I'm like a little nasty boy. That's what they say. Even a young man who was dying--lying right on the edge of his open grave--told me solemnly that I reminded him of a saint once, but I was only fit for a barkeeper now. They say I really don't know anything at all. And I'm not only a fool, they say, I'm a dishonest fool into the bargain!”
”But who says such twaddle as that?” she returned consolingly. The violence of his emotion disturbed her. ”You mustn't imagine such things.
You are among friends here. Other people are your friends, too. They have the very highest opinion of you.”
”I haven't a friend on earth but you!” he declared solemnly. His eyes glowed fiercely, and his voice sank into a grave intensity of tone. ”I was going to kill myself. I went on to the big bridge to throw myself off, and a policeman saw me trying to climb over the railing, and he grabbed me and marched me away. Then he threw me out at the entrance, and said he would club my head off if I came there again. And then I went and stood and let the cable-cars pa.s.s close by me, and twenty times I thought I had the nerve to throw myself under the next one, and then I waited for the next--and I was afraid! And then I was in a crowd somewhere, and the warning came to me that I was going to die. The fool needn't go kill himself: G.o.d would take care of that. It was my heart, you know. I've had that terrible fluttering once before. It seized me this time, and I fell down in the crowd, and some people walked over me, but some one else helped me up, and let me sit down in a big lighted hallway, the entrance to some theatre, and some one brought me some brandy, but somebody else said I was drunk, and they took it away again, and put me out. They could see I was a fool, that I hadn't a friend on earth. And when I went out, there was a big picture of a woman in tights, and the word 'Amazons' overhead--and then I remembered you. I knew you were my friend--the only one I have on earth.”
”It is very flattering--to be remembered like that,” said Sister Soulsby, gently. The disposition to laugh was smothered by a pained perception of the suffering he was undergoing. His face had grown drawn and haggard under the burden of his memories as he rambled on.
”So I came straight to you,” he began again. ”I had just money enough left to pay my fare. The rest is in my valise at the hotel--the Murray Hill Hotel. It belongs to the church. I stole it from the church. When I am dead they can get it back again!”
Sister Soulsby forced a smile to her lips. ”What nonsense you talk--about dying!” she exclaimed. ”Why, man alive, you'll sleep this all off like a top, if you'll only lie down and give yourself a chance.
Come, now, you must do as you're told.”
With a resolute hand, she made him lie down again, and once more covered him with the fur. He submitted, and did not even offer to put out his arm this time, but looked in piteous dumbness at her for a long time.
While she sat thus in silence, the sound of Brother Soulsby moving about upstairs became audible.
Theron heard it, and the importance of hurrying on some further disclosure seemed to suggest itself. ”I can see you think I'm just drunk,” he said, in low, sombre tones. ”Of course that's what HE thought. The hackman thought so, and so did the conductor, and everybody. But I hoped you would know better. I was sure you would see that it was something worse than that. See here, I'll tell you. Then you'll understand. I've been drinking for two days and one whole night, on my feet all the while, wandering alone in that big strange New York, going through places where they murdered men for ten cents, mixing myself up with the worst people in low bar-rooms and dance-houses, and they saw I had money in my pocket, too, and yet n.o.body touched me, or offered to lay a finger on me. Do you know why? They understood that I wanted to get drunk, and couldn't. The Indians won't harm an idiot, or lunatic, you know. Well, it was the same with these vilest of the vile.
They saw that I was a fool whom G.o.d had taken hold of, to break his heart first, and then to craze his brain, and then to fling him on a dunghill to die like a dog. They believe in G.o.d, those people. They're the only ones who do, it seems to me. And they wouldn't interfere when they saw what He was doing to me. But I tell you I wasn't drunk. I haven't been drunk. I'm only heart-broken, and crushed out of shape and life--that's all. And I've crawled here just to have a friend by me when--when I come to the end.”
”You're not talking very sensibly, or very bravely either, Theron Ware,”
remarked his companion. ”It's cowardly to give way to notions like that.”
”Oh, I 'm not afraid to die; don't think that,” he remonstrated wearily.
”If there is a Judgment, it has. .h.i.t me as hard as it can already. There can't be any h.e.l.l worse than that I've gone through. Here I am talking about h.e.l.l,” he continued, with a pained contraction of the muscles about his mouth--a stillborn, malformed smile--”as if I believed in one!
I've got way through all my beliefs, you know. I tell you that frankly.”
”It's none of my business,” she rea.s.sured him. ”I'm not your Bishop, or your confessor. I'm just your friend, your pal, that's all.”
”Look here!” he broke in, with some animation and a new intensity of glance and voice. ”If I was going to live, I'd have some funny things to tell. Six months ago I was a good man. I not only seemed to be good, to others and to myself, but I was good. I had a soul; I had a conscience.
I was going along doing my duty, and I was happy in it. We were poor, Alice and I, and people behaved rather hard toward us, and sometimes we were a little down in the mouth about it; but that was all. We really were happy; and I--I really was a good man. Here's the kind of joke G.o.d plays! You see me here six months after. Look at me! I haven't got an honest hair in my head. I'm a bad man through and through, that's what I am. I look all around at myself, and there isn't an atom left anywhere of the good man I used to be. And, mind you, I never lifted a finger to prevent the change. I didn't resist once; I didn't make any fight.
I just walked deliberately down-hill, with my eyes wide open. I told myself all the while that I was climbing uphill instead, but I knew in my heart that it was a lie. Everything about me was a lie. I wouldn't be telling the truth, even now, if--if I hadn't come to the end of my rope.
Now, how do you explain that? How can it be explained? Was I really rotten to the core all the time, years ago, when I seemed to everybody, myself and the rest, to be good and straight and sincere? Was it all a sham, or does G.o.d take a good man and turn him into an out-and-out bad one, in just a few months--in the time that it takes an ear of corn to form and ripen and go off with the mildew? Or isn't there any G.o.d at all--but only men who live and die like animals? And that would explain my case, wouldn't it? I got bitten and went vicious and crazy, and they've had to chase me out and hunt me to my death like a mad dog! Yes, that makes it all very simple. It isn't worth while to discuss me at all as if I had a soul, is it? I'm just one more mongrel cur that's gone mad, and must be put out of the way. That's all.”
”See here,” said Sister Soulsby, alertly, ”I half believe that a good cuffing is what you really stand in need of. Now you stop all this nonsense, and lie quiet and keep still! Do you hear me?”
The jocose sternness which she a.s.sumed, in words and manner, seemed to soothe him. He almost smiled up at her in a melancholy way, and sighed profoundly.
”I've told you MY religion before,” she went on with gentleness. ”The sheep and the goats are to be separated on Judgment Day, but not a minute sooner. In other words, as long as human life lasts, good, bad, and indifferent are all braided up together in every man's nature, and every woman's too. You weren't altogether good a year ago, any more than you're altogether bad now. You were some of both then; you're some of both now. If you've been making an extra sort of fool of yourself lately, why, now that you recognize it, the only thing to do is to slow steam, pull up, and back engine in the other direction. In that way you'll find things will even themselves up. It's a see-saw with all of us, Theron Ware--sometimes up; sometimes down. But n.o.body is rotten clear to the core.”