The Old Homestead Part 23

For once Farnham deigned to answer his wife.

"I walked very slowly, and am not tired," he said, "but what is this?

what is it Frederick proposes to do?"

"Mrs. Chester has escaped from her house, sir, in a raving fever, and cannot be found. I was going with Joseph, here, to search for her," answered Frederick, looking anxiously into his father's face.

"What, another!" muttered the Mayor, with a pang of remorse. "Yes, go my son, I will help you; the whole police shall be put on the search if necessary."

Joseph lifted his eyes to the Mayor as he was speaking, and as Farnham caught the look, a smile broke over his face, one of those powerful smiles that transfigure the very features of some men.

"Thank you! oh! thank you!" exclaimed the boy, "we shall find her now."

Here Judge Sharp stepped forward and held out his hand, for the Mayor had not seen him till then.

"Let me go with these young people, perhaps I can help them better than the whole police," he said, kindly.

"I wish you would," answered the Mayor, "for I feel very strangely to-day." He certainly was pale, and seemed much shaken, as if some powerful feeling had seized upon his vitality.

"Then I will leave you to your wife, while I go with these boys on their merciful errand," said the Judge. "Come, my lads."

"One moment," said the Mayor, taking Joseph by the hand, while he led him away from the group, and whispered in his ear. His lips were pale with intense feeling, as he listened for the answer.

"My name is Joseph Esmond, that is his name also."

"I knew it--I was sure of it," muttered Farnham, and he sat down in an easy chair, and watched the boy wistfully as he left the room.

G.o.d had reached the conscience of that man at last, and his granite heart was breaking up with the force of old memories and sudden remorse. That day, his past and present life had been linked forcibly together. The shock made him look inward, and he saw clearly that the hard, barren track of politics had led him to become a murderer.

The law did not recognize this, but his soul did.

CHAPTER XIII

JANE CHESTER AND THE STRANGER.

Disease, thou art a fearful thing When, half disarmed by household care, Thou sweepest with thy poison wing, O'er the loved forms to which we cling, And bending to the sweet and fair, Leav'st thy corroding mildew there!

But if thou treadst the plundered track, Where poverty has swept before, Leaving his victim on the rack, Then, then, thou art a demon black, That steals within the poor man's door.

Crus.h.i.+ng his hopes forevermore!

And Jane Chester--where was she while strangers were bearing away the husband of her youth to his lone grave? Amid her fever that day, amid all her delirium, one idea had been vivid and prominent before her. The woman's heart remained true to its anchorage amid the storm and fire of approaching s.h.i.+p-fever. Long after reason had failed, the love that was stronger than reason told her that some great evil was befalling her husband. Time was to her a vague idea; she thought that he had been gone for weeks--that he was seeking for her and the children along the wharves and in the dim alleys of the city, and that the Mayor had forbidden him to come home. She would find him--she would take food and clean garments to him in the street. He should not wander there so poverty-stricken and neglected, without her. In defiance of the Mayor, in defiance of the whole world, she would go to him.

This thought ran through her burning brain, and trembled wildly on her tongue. Her husband--her husband--he could not come to her, and she must go to him. But the two little girls--they appeared to her like guards--great gaunt creatures dressed in fantastic uniform, stationed by her bed to coerce and frighten her. They held her back; they seemed to smother her in the bed-clothes, and gird her head down to the pillow with the hot clasp of their united hands. Those two little creatures became to her an object of terrible dread. She longed for strength to tear them down from the towering alt.i.tude which her imagination gave, and blindfold them, as they, in her wild fancy, had blindfolded her with their scorching hands.

She saw little Mary Fuller put on her hood and go forth with a thrill of insane delight. That wild, uncouth form had seemed far more terrible than the other, and yet now the pet.i.te figure of her own child seemed to rise and swell over her like a fiend.

"Ice--ice!"

She knew, in her delirium, that this cry sometimes sent her dreaded jailors from the room. If they were absent, she could find her clothes--she could steal softly down stairs, and away after _him_.

"Ice--ice!" she cried, "I will drink nothing unless the ice rattles in the gla.s.s--cold, cold. It must be cold as death, I say."

Isabel rose up in terror, and taking their last sixpence, went forth for the ice. Then the mother laughed beneath the bedclothes--alone, all alone. She started up--tore off her cap and her night-dress, and thrust her unstockinged feet in a pair of slippers that stood near the bed.

Several dresses hung in the room. With her eager and burning hands she took them down, cast all but one on the floor, and put that on, laughing low and dismally all the while. A bandbox stood at the foot of the bed. She crept to it, took out a bonnet, and drew it with her trembling hands over the disordered ma.s.ses of her hair, which she tried vainly to smooth with her hot palms. Strong with fever, wild with apprehension that her guard might return, the poor woman arose to her feet, and after steadying herself by the door-frame awhile, staggered from the room down the stairs and into the broad city.

Filled with the one idea, that of finding her husband, she pa.s.sed on, turning a corner--another, pausing now and then by an iron railing, to which she clung, with a desperate effort to keep herself upright.

Many persons saw her as she pa.s.sed, reeling in her walk, and with her sweet face flushed crimson; but, alas! these sights are not uncommon in our city, from causes far more heart-rending than illness, and with pa.s.sing wonder that a person of her appearance should be thus exposed at mid-day. Those who noticed her went by, some smiling in scorn, others filled with such pity as the truly good feel for erring humanity. But the poor invalid tottered forward, unconscious of their pity or their scorn. She had but one object--one fixed thought among all the wild ideas that floated through her brain--her husband. She was in search of him, and, in her fever-strength, she walked on and on, murmuring his name over and over to herself, as a lost child mutters the name of its parents.

At last, her strength gave way. She was upon a broad sidewalk, to which the granite steps swept down from many a lordly mansion. Her head reeled; the suns.h.i.+ne fell upon her eyes like sparks of fire; she clung to an iron bal.u.s.trade, swung half round with a feeble effort to sustain herself, and sunk upon the pavement, moaning as she fell.

Many persons pa.s.sed by the poor invalid as she lay thus helpless upon the stones. At last, one more thoughtful and more humane than the rest, bent down and spoke to her. She opened her eyes, looked at him with a dull, vacant gaze, and besought him, in husky tones, to go away and tell Chester that she was there, waiting. The man saw that she was suffering, and, let the cause be what it might, incapable of moving. He called to a woman, who was pa.s.sing by with a basket on her arm, and gave her a s.h.i.+lling to sit down and hold the invalid's head in her lap, while he went for help.

"She may be only ill," said the benevolent Samaritan to the officer of police, whom he met on a corner. "There is no look about her of habitual intemperance; at any rate, she cannot be hardened."

The officer followed this kind man, and they found Mrs. Chester moaning bitterly, and much exhausted by the exertion she had made.

"It is a singular case," said the policeman, "her language is good, her appearance might be ladylike. But, see." The man pointed with a meaning smile at the symmetrical feet in their loose slippers. The blue veins were swelling under the white surface, and there was a faint spasmodic quiver of the muscles that seemed to spread over her whole frame.

"I can hardly believe that this is intoxication," said the stranger, gazing compa.s.sionately on the prostrate woman. "She must be ill--taken down suddenly in the street."

"But how came she barefooted? and her hair, it has not been done up in a week? I'm afraid we can't make out a clear case, sir."

"But where will you take her?"

"Home, if she can tell us where it is--to the Tombs, if she is so far gone as not to know," replied the man.

"The Tombs!"

"Oh, that is the City Prison, sir."

"I know, but the City Prison is no place for a person like this!"

"Well, if you can point out anything better."

"If I had a home in the city, this poor creature should never sleep in a prison," was the answer.

"Oh, I thought you must be a stranger," was the half compa.s.sionating reply. "It takes some time before one gets used to these sights, but they are common enough, I can tell you, sir. Now let us see if she can be made to comprehend what we say."

With that sort of half-contemptuous interest with which the insane are sometimes cajoled, the policeman began to question the invalid; but she only asked him very earnestly if her husband had come; and turning her face from the hot suns.h.i.+ne that was pouring upon her, began to complain piteously that they had laid her down there to be consumed by a storm of fire-flakes that was dropping upon her neck and forehead.

"You see the poor creature can tell us nothing; she is quite beside herself," said the policeman. "I must take her to the prison--it is the best I can do--to-morrow her friends may claim her, perhaps. At the worst she will only be committed for a day or two."

"Wait here," said the stranger, hurriedly, "wait till I get a carriage; she must not be taken through the streets in this state,"

and the kind man went off in haste.