My Fire Opal, and Other Tales

In these frugal and humane sentiments her mistress hastily concurs; and, henceforth, Harmy does "see to his vittels;" thereby vastly bettering the sanitary condition of poor Peter, whose "messes," whatever other excellence they may boast, are not anti-dyspeptic. Peter, like most of his sex, especially open to the seductions of the cuisine, is deeply impressed with the domestic worth of his caterer, and, in confidential discourse with Reuben, admiringly observes that "Miss Patterson's cookin' does beat the Dutch; an' for scourin' a floor he never see her ekal; an' ef she'd 'a' got hitched in her younger days, what a wife she'd 'a' made!"

Having thus put Peter's kitchen to rights, Harmy suggests to herself the practicability of correcting a certain irregularity in his conduct, "which has (as she expresses it) ben a weighin' on her mind quite a spell."

As this is a reform not to be undertaken lightly or single-handed, she determines to make an alliance with Reuben; and to this effect, one moonlight evening when the two are quite alone, she takes the hired man into her confidence. "For," says the good woman, "I put it to you, now, an' bein' old enough to be your mother, sich things is no harm between us, Reuben. I put it to you, ef it don't seem scand'lus for a man to ondress, an' git into bed with his door wide open, an' a decent woman overlookin' on him from her bedroom winder? To be sure, I never once turn my eyes his way, but I can't help sensin' on it, an' 's true's you're alive, Reuben, ef he don't sleep there night arter night, with his door stretched, right afore my face!"

"P'r'aps he wants air," pleads Reuben, in excuse.

"Then why on airth," returns Harmy, "don't he open his winder! Now, Reuben, to please me, do go this very night an' shet that door. Ef folks don't know what manners is, it's best to give 'em a hint, I say, an', ten to one, he won't be the wiser fur it till mornin', fur, to my knowledge, he's been abed a hull hour by the kitchen clock."

Thus urgently besought, and willing to oblige, Reuben steps gingerly down the garden path, and, reassured by the heavy snores within, softly closes the summer-house door. He is about to retrace his steps when, bounce upon the floor, comes Peter Floome! Open goes the door with a bang, and a voice, so energetically fierce that Reuben turns upon his heel to assure himself that the speaker is really Peter, angrily exclaims, "No, you don't, now! Hain't I ben shet up like a dog in a kennel night arter night fur twenty-two year, say? An' what the d – l's the use o' pardonin' a man out, ef you can't give him the swing o' his own bedroom door?"

Reuben, who relishes a bit of humour, details to his mistress, on the morrow, this unsuccessful attempt of Harmy to compel Peter's respect to the proprieties. Miss Paulina, kindly wise, decides in favour of the open door, and thereafter, Peter, like "him that hath the key of David, openeth, and no man shutteth." The intense satisfaction of this cell-worn creature in his open door is, indeed, a thing to contemplate, and, touched, no doubt, by the homely pathos of the bowed, motionless figure sitting (often far into the night) in his low doorway, bathed in the tender beauty of the summer moonlight, or sharply projected on the darkness in momentary silhouette, by lurid flashes of summer lightning, Harmy herself is at length modified, and tacitly condones Peter's bold breach of decorum.

Through long disuse of the power of speech, Peter Floome has become habitually taciturn. His protracted fits of almost dogged silence are, however, relieved by equally abnormal attacks of garrulousness. In these moods he holds long and confidential discourse with Reuben. On a summer evening, seated in his humble doorway, he will recount for his entertainment such bits of prison gossip, or such incidents of prison life, as have retained their hold on his failing memory. Often on these occasions a dash of the old cynicism gives pungency to his speech, but, ordinarily, he is amiably at one with destiny, and at peace with himself and his neighbour. Behold him to-night, already in his talking-cap. Harmy and Mandy Ann are seated upon the summer-house steps; Reuben, wearied by a long day's haying, is reclining lazily upon the grass; Peter, meantime, is graciously intent in serving up for the three his most relishing prison tidbits. Harmy, being rheumatic, does not often grace these out-door assemblages with her august presence; "but to-night," as she herself explains, "havin' a longin' for a breath of fresh air, she jest strolled into the garden, an' thought she might as well set down with 'em and rest a spell." Peter's audience secured, he opens his budget of prison reminiscence and rehearses a long, heart-breaking drama, at which Harmy pulls out her handkerchief, and complains of a cold in her head, while Mandy Ann sobs outright, and Reuben himself is detected in an audible sniff.

"'Tain't a lively yarn, I'll 'low," apologizes the narrator, "an', p'r'aps, I hadn't oughter told it to you wimmin folks. Well, we've all got to go when our time comes; an' death ain't the wust thing in the world, no, not by a jug full! An', whenever the Almighty summons us, I hope we'll all face the music, an' go off with flyin' colours."

Harmy, who considers Peter's similes objectionably secular, here suggests, as an appropriate lesson, the parable of the ten virgins, and advises Reuben and Mandy Ann to "jine the church, an' have their lamps trimmed an' burnin' when the bridegroom cometh."

Peter, ignoring the parable, irreverently observes that "all the Ballous had ben handsomely buried;" an', when his turn comes, all he asks is to hev a marble gravestone, with verses cut on to it, same as the rest o' his folks. As to what's comin' after death (he philosophically avers), "'tain't no use to worry 'bout that; fur it stan's to reason that the Lord ain't goin' to hang on to His creeturs, through thick an' thin, in this world, an' then go back on 'em in t'other."

Reuben, who is not reflective, here yawns audibly, and, expressing his intention to "turn in," bids them a drowsy good-night. The "wimmin folks" follow his lead, and Peter is left alone in his moonlit doorway.

"There never was," as Harmy repeatedly asserts to Mandy Ann, who is about retiring, "such a night; light enough to pick up a pin by the moon, an' too pleasant fur any mortal to think o' sleepin'!"

Leisurely setting her sponge for the morrow's baking, gathering up her silver, bolting the doors, and looking after the window-fastenings, the good woman reluctantly retires to her chamber.

Having no disposition for sleep, Harmy, half undressed, sits looking out upon the moonlit garden. Her mind is ill at ease. "We live in a dyin' world," she drearily soliloquises. "Here's our May-blossom, now, poor blessed lamb! a growin' that weaker every day that it stan's to reason she can't last but a spell longer; an' Miss Paulina that bound up in the child, that how she's goin' to stan' the partin' the Lord only knows! An' there's Peter, goin' round with that pesky onsartin' heart, liable to stop beatin', without a minnit's notice, eny day.

"To be sure, now," she retrospectively muses, "it was a cross las' spring to hev a convict brung right into the family; an' to see that child a hangin' on to him, an' a huggin' an' kissen on him, same's ef he was her own flesh and blood; but there (judicially and emphatically), I will say that fur him, though he's no end mussy an' sloppy about housework, and does hev scand'lous notions about his bedroom door, there ain't a grain o' real harm in Peter Floome; an' it's lots o' company to see him a settin' there nights in that summer-house doorway. Well, he's gone an' turned in, I see; an' it's 'bout time I follered suit, I guess."

The night wind is rising. It soughs rhythmically through the great pine, beside the west door, and sends a miniature snow-storm of syringa petals upon the garden walks.

It winnows spice-like odors from ancient clumps of clove-pink. Tall summer lilies, nodding drowsily upon their stems, breathe, incense-like, upon the dewy air. Brooding birds twitter sleepily among the green Linden boughs; and, over it all, lies, like God's benediction, the wonderful glamour of the still white moonlight.

"Well," declares Harmy, giving voice to her thought, as she ties her nightcap strings, and takes one more good look at the garden; "I mus' say that the Lord's put His creeturs into a han'some world; an' no mistake! I s'pose now," she adds, compunctiously, "that I'm turrible wicked to say it, but, somehow, I can't jest see my way to believin' that things is fixed the way they'd orter be. To my mind, it would 'er ben more to the pint to 'a' made all on us Methusalehs. It's dretful upsettin' to hev to live in a dyin' world, no matter how pooty it is."

Still heavy with anxious foreboding, Harmy puts out her candle, and, presently, "dropping off," forgets in sleep the unsatisfactory arrangement of mundane affairs.

At early dawn she is aroused by the ringing of Miss Paulina's chamber bell; and, before she has got well into her gown, Mandy Ann comes to summons her to the bedside of May-blossom. The child is fast sinking. Doctor Foster is already here; but human help is of no avail. A hard coughing spell has been followed by a cruel hemorrhage, which has already drained her thin blue veins. Exhausted and unconscious she waits upon the border-line, betwixt life and death; and there, wringing Miss Parker's trembling hand, and pressing a last kiss upon the brow of the dying child, the good doctor leaves her to Him in whose hand are the issues of life and death.

All day long, with wide unseeing eyes "looking," as Harmy quaintly expresses it, "right straight up into heaven," May-blossom lies senseless upon her couch of white.

No priceless "last word" breaks the silence of her sweet folded lips. There is nothing more for hope to hang upon, not even the sad anticipation of a dying smile; and so the slow day wears on to night.

Miss Paulina – heart-broken – hangs over the dear unconscious form; and, in yonder corner ("how in the world Miss Paulina come to give her consent to his stayin' here sence mornin', without a mou'ful o' victuals an' drink, an' not so much as a word of notice for his best friends," Harmy Patterson cannot opine; "but there! folks will do curos things sometimes; an' to see a man settin' that way, hour after hour, all doubled up, an' the tears a tricklin' down his shirt-front, is turrible tryin'!") sits Peter Floome. At midnight, Harmy persuades Miss Parker to "lop down a minnit; you'll be all beat out afore the fun'al," she urges. "Do now hear to me! I'm the oldest, Miss Pauly, an' hev seen lots o' sickness an' death in my day." Thus persuaded, the poor worn lady seeks her chamber, and is soon in a troubled, but heavy sleep. Harmy in a flowered "loose gown," wonderful in color and design, watches the death-bed of May-blossom. Peter Floome, silent, motionless, with bowed gray head, still holds his place – rejecting every advance of his comforter, who says irritably to herself, "Land sakes, I'd 'bout as soon be stark alone!"

How still the night is! A mother robin, brooding her fledglings in the tall linden, beside the open window, twitters drowsily, from time to time. A persistent June bug, bouncing clumsily against wall and ceiling, wantons jarringly with the solemn silence. On the bureau stands May-blossom's own pet vase – a Parian hand. It still holds a faded cluster of lady's delights, placed there, but yesterday, by her own sweet hand. The long July night wears on. Harmy, at regular intervals, steps softly to the bedside, and, bending tenderly over her charge, listens a while to the laboured breathing of the child, and then, with a stealthy side glance at the silent watcher, – whose presence, to her mind, but ill accords with the occasion, – returns to rock softly, and moan, under her breath, "Dear, dear, dear o' me! I s'pose it's the Lord's will; but, when I look at that precious child, I can't, nohow, help prayin' straight agin it! P'r'aps I may as well read a few chapters (taking a heavy Bible from a stand beside the fireplace); the Scripters is wonderful comfortin' in times of affliction."

And now, Harmy Patterson, – good old-fashioned Christian, never once doubting that God Himself literally penned every word between the covers of her "King James edition," – gets mightily edified and reassured by a pious perusal of the Book of Lamentations! Harmy likes long chapters, and many of them; and, having exhausted Lamentations, she reads on and on, until (if you should put her to the rack, you couldn't make her confess it) she falls fast asleep.

Hark! Is it the robin twittering in the linden? Ah, no! a sadder and more hopeless sound disturbs her repose. It is the death-rattle! A moment more, and she is hastening to the child. Peter Floome has already anticipated her; and, kneeling by the bedside, is clasping, in his rough brown palm, the slender white hand of his precious nursling. A cruel spasm convulses the tender frame. The little arms are up-flung in agony! A moment; and it has passed – thank God! the last mortal pang! And now the sweet Carrara marble face is lighted by a dawn that is not of earth. A smile of ecstasy sweetens the dying lips; and, as the conscious gray eyes look fondly upon the familiar bowed head beside her, she whispers in rapturous surprise: "Why, Peter! Peter! It is morning!" A faint gasp – a single flutter of the failing breath, and all is over. Harmy Patterson, bending her stiff old knees, grasps the hand of Peter Floome, and the two weep silently together. Peter's adoring gaze is still fastened upon the dear dead face, and, with his right hand still clasping that of May-blossom, he presses in his left that of Harmy, and broken-heartedly wails: "Oh, Miss Patterson, Miss Patterson! the' ain't nothin' left!"

"It's the will of the Lord, Peter," piously exhorts Harmy; "an' we must all bow down to it, an' bear up under it. But, O land, (rising abruptly to her feet)! how in the world I'm to break it to Miss Paulina (an' she not here at the last minnit) is more'n I know; but I must do it, an' right off, too." And, leaving her fellow-mourner still upon his knees, she hurries from the room on her distasteful errand. Harmy, in spite of her best intentions, delays awhile. "It's a pity" – she says to herself – "to wake her up to her trouble, and she so sound, an' quiet. I've a mind to let her lay a minnit longer." And she does, but, ere long, the two women are beside the dear dead form. Miss Paulina – true to her own sweet self – holds in abeyance the sorrow of her aching heart, while she kindly seeks to comfort the poor bowed creature still clinging to his beloved nursling. Tenderly clasping his disengaged hand, she strives with gentle force to draw him from the room. The hand is nerveless, and chill. The entire form seems strangely limp and listless! The truth at last dawns upon her her – "Peter Floome is dead!" Yes, his fond, faithful spirit, following hard upon the flight of that —

"Little fair soul that knew not sin,"

had gone softly and painlessly out of mortal life; and who shall say that, in the "house of many mansions," the convict, "delivered from the body of his sin," may not dwell, side by side, with the innocent prison child?

Rough-handed men come, with heavy tread, to bear the dead man from the room, but it is Miss Paulina, herself, who tenderly disengages the interclasped hands, and, then stooping reverently to the bowed gray head, she lays her own in silent benediction upon it, and voicelessly transposes the gracious words that, centuries ago, fell from the blessed lips of the divine man: "His sins, though many, are forgiven, for he loved much."

And now, already the red rose of dawn blooms in the summer sky, and, like belated ghosts, that may not bide for the coming sun, we steal noiselessly from the chamber of death.

Year after year the blue-eyed periwinkle blooms upon a low, short grave in that "City of the Silent," the Saganock burying-ground. Its headstone is a shaft of Carrara marble. A carven lily, broken on its stem, in emblem of the unfilled promise of a life, droops over this simple inscription:

"Her name was Mabel."

In the old burying-ground beneath the pines is another grave, and, before the sod had greened upon it, it was Miss Paulina's pious care to order for it a modest headstone, and, mindful of Peter's heart's earnest wish, she had "verses cut on to it."

Resolutely turning her face from her own sad world of graves, Miss Paulina lives unselfishly on, in other lives. Gentle deeds of beneficence and love blossom thickly along her gracious life-road, as roses flower upon their stems, and never dream that through them the world is made more sweet.

Harmy, at seventy, still considers herself quite equal to any domestic exigency. Reuben, "taking heed to his ways," has minded her sage admonitions. He has "jined the church." Mandy Ann and he have become one. This marriage scarce makes a ripple in their tranquil lives, which are still consecrated to the service of the House of Parker.

Timothy Tucker no longer keeps the iron doors of the prison guard-room. Soon after the sudden departure of Warden Flint, and the consequent subtraction of May-blossom from his uncongenial existence, he migrated to California. He has become, in sunny San Francisco, the pleased proprietor of a flourishing bird store. As duly set forth on his sign of blue and gold, "birds, cages, and seed, with bouquets and cut flowers of every description," may be obtained at this mercantile establishment. The ex-turnkey's favourite customer is a little maid, of ten sweet Californian summers. Her eyes are like the sapphire of a noon-day heaven. Her hair is the braided sunshine of her own golden clime.

No one (not even the charming little buyer herself) guesses why the bird and flower dealer invariably gives this fair creature twice her money's worth of violets, pinks, or roses, or why, last winter, he trained, to the utmost of their pretty possibilities, two yellow canaries as a Christmas "gift for his fair." But one day, as this little maiden, bearing in her hand a lavish bunch of Parma violets, turned smiling from his door, the listening parrots heard him thus pensively soliloquize: "Blue eyes, but jes' such hair, an' her step, to a T! An' a wonderful takin' little creetur you air, to be sure. But (sorrowfully shaking his grizzled head), you ain't her. No, no, no! Not by a long shot!"

ESCAPED

IN this roomy corner cell, which rejoices in a glazed window, and is far more cheerful than the ordinary hospital compartment, a pale, earnest man, with sensitive face and iron-gray hair, sits writing.

Looking over his shoulder, you would perceive that (absurd though it may seem) he is making entries in a regular nautical log-book. This has been, for many years, his daily practise; for this convict, whose bowed form and subdued mien retain no traces of the sometime "jolly tar," is a born sailor.

His prison name is Robert Henderson. His is the old, old story – a wild bout in port; a drunken quarrel with a drunken shipmate; a reckless assault; an unintentional murder, and a consequent life-term in the State Prison. Although in hospital for treatment, Henderson is still on his feet, and quite competent to undertake the care of the feebler sinners who are, from time to time, consigned to the other cot in this – his sleeping cell.

Eighteen slow years behind the bars have brought in their weary train salutary repentance and unavailing regret; and, under their pressure, he is gradually going to pieces. Time has been when his whole being was dominated by a restless, homesick yearning for the sea – a form of that nostalgia, recognized in medicine as a real malady, the passionate craving of the land-locked sailor for his wide, billowy home – the sea.

Long before his coming up to hospital, I had noted this mild-mannered convict, and had heard his story from official lips.

By his correct demeanour, and careful adherence to prison rules, he had found favour in the sight of the warden, who tacitly gave him such sympathy as, without in the least palliating crime, may be bestowed even upon a murderer, when his fatal act is the unfortunate result of momentary frenzy, and does not indicate innate depravity.

Henderson, being a creature of superabundant vitality, it is but inch by inch that he has physically succumbed to an environment absolutely antipodal to both temperament and training. Naturally reserved and reticent, he seldom complained; but, on a certain day, when the scent of some foreign fruit that I had brought him may have stirred within him old memories of tropical seas and gracious sunny lands, he gave voice to his yearning. It was on a prison reception-day, and I was his "visitor;" and long after, when the end came, I remembered his words, and thanked God that he had at last given this long-denied being the desire of his soul.

"Yes, lady," he said, "I was born and reared on the sea, my mother being a sea-captain's wife, and at the time making the round voyage with my father. Why! even now" he murmured passionately, "I could cross the Atlantic in my shirt-sleeves, lady, but here! in a close, damp cell! My God! I shiver with cold, and moan and fret like a sick baby. Often, of a night, I cannot sleep for thought of it all. I pace my den hour after hour, like a caged beast. I cry to Heaven, the sea! the sea! Almighty God, give me but once more to look upon it, to smell brine, to see a ship bound bravely over its broad billows! After that, let what will come, I can die content."

From the slow monotony of the prison shoe-shop, Henderson has, at last, been released by ill-health, and is now permanently established in the hospital; and, dismal though it be to find oneself a tenant of a hospital cell, and facing the blank certainty that there is for him no egress, save by that final inexorable door opening into the blind unknown, he is comparatively happy. So sweet is the merest taste of liberty to long-denied lips!

Now he may, hour by hour, stroll in the prison-yard, brightened in summer by its small oasis of verdure and bloom (the flowerbeds), and, in winter, still wholesomely sweet with keen, bracing air and genial sunshine. The old sea-longing still haunts his enfeebled mind; but now, it is a thing to be borne. He has outlived the fierce vehemence of human desire; and, with little positive suffering, is slowly wearing away of lingering consumption, complicated with incurable disease of the heart.

The prison clock is on the stroke of nine, and the prison itself (already in its nightcap) composes itself for a long night's rest.

In the deserted guard-room and along the now empty corridors, silence undisturbedly reigns. Here in the hospital the quiet of the hour is less unbroken. Five consumptives (as is their wont, poor fellows!) will cough the slow night away; and, in yonder cell, a man, with a great carbuncle under his ear, groans, sotto-voce, at every breath.

On the second floor, in the large cell or room at the head of the stairway (which is, as occasion requires, used for the sick, for the holding of prison inquests, or for an operating-room, and but one of whose several cots is now occupied), a convict is dying. He has been long about it, for his vitality is tremendous. In his single body there would seem to be the makings of, at least, two centenarians.

Nature, however, makes us men, and the devil mars them. And here, before the coming of his first gray hair, lies the sin-spoilt material for a brisk old patriarch of a hundred years!

He is not, however, to be lightly put out of existence. Even this nefarious old prison does not readily dispatch him. Consumption, the chosen "red slayer" of its "slain," he flouts with his last fluttering breath.

This daring and desperate sinner has proved himself, even under the disadvantages of restraint, a splendid villain. Unweariedly indefatigable in his efforts to regain his forfeited liberty, and, prolific of resources to that end, his custody (even when in close confinement) has sorely vexed the official soul. By repeated assaults upon his fellow convicts and the prison officers (for which sanguinary purpose he has fashioned the deadliest weapons from the most inconceivable of articles), he has well-nigh lost all claim on human sympathy; and the entire prison community has long since given him over to his diabolic possessor. Failing health, and its attendant necessities, have partially subdued this fierce, unresting spirit; but even now, in the last stage of consumption, unable to lift himself from his pillow, and already on the solemn outskirts of an unknown world, the abnormal evil is yet strong within him. For a past day or two he has been delirious; and though far too wasted to require physical restraint, he is, even in his helplessness, half terrible. The passing soul still revels amid remembered scenes of debauch, or gloats upon the foul details of crime. The night-watcher's labour is here one of love; yet, tender as the convict is to his ailing comrade, this dying wretch scarce appeals to his humanity; and night-watching zeal is, in this case, inconveniently cool. Robert Henderson – who in this favouring month of June somewhat renews his failing strength – has kindly volunteered to sit up to-night with this unpopular patient. The superintendent, ever ready to encourage good intent, and scarce aware of Henderson's unfitness for the hard mental strain of a lonely night beside so uncanny a death-bed, accedes to his request, and at nine o'clock he takes his place in the dismal apartment. The cells are, as is customary, secured for the night. The superintendent leaves the hospital; the cook, who, with his attendant, is also a hospital nurse, retires to his rest; and Henderson, locked in, is left alone with his charge. It chances to be his first watch beside a dying bed, and an exceptionally trying one it proves.