Mercy Philbrick's Choice Part 19

On both my eyes her lips she set, All red and warm and dewy wet, As she pa.s.sed by.

The kiss did not my eyelids close, But like a rosy vapor goes, Where'er I sit, where'er I lie, Before my every glance, and shows All things to-day "Couleur de rose."

Would it last thus? Alas, who knows?

Men ask and sigh: They say it fades, "Couleur de rose."

Why, oh, why?

Without swift joy and sweet surprise, Surely those lips upon my eyes Could never lie, Though both our heads were white as snows, And though the bitterest storm that blows, Of trouble and adversity, Had bent us low: all life still shows To eyes that love "Couleur de rose."

This sonnet, also, she persisted in calling Stephen's, and not her own, because he had asked her the question which had suggested it:--

LOVERS' THOUGHTS.

"How feels the earth when, breaking from the night, The sweet and sudden Dawn impatient spills Her rosy colors all along the hills?

How feels the sea, as it turns sudden white, And shines like molten silver in the light Which pours from eastward when the full moon fills Her time to rise?"

"I know not, love, what thrills The earth, the sea, may feel. How should I know?

Except I guess by this,--the joy I feel When sudden on my silence or my gloom Thy presence bursts and lights the very room?

Then on my face doth not glad color steal Like shining waves, or hill-tops' sunrise glow?"

One of the others was the poem of which I spoke once before, the poem which had been suggested to her by her desolate sense of homelessness on the first night of her arrival in Penfield. This poem had been widely copied after its first appearance in one of the magazines; and it had been more than once said of it, "Surely no one but a genuine outcast could have written such a poem as this." It was hard for Mercy's friends to a.s.sociate the words with her. When she was asked how it happened that she wrote them, she exclaimed, "I did not write that poem, I lived it one night,--the night when I came to Penfield, and drove through these streets in the rain with mother. No vagabond in the world ever felt more forlorn than I did then."

THE OUTCAST.

O sharp, cold wind, thou art my friend!

And thou, fierce rain, I need not dread Thy wonted touch upon my head!

On, loving brothers! Wreak and spend Your force on all these dwellings. Rend These doors so pitilessly locked, To keep the friendless out! Strike dead The fires whose glow hath only mocked By m.u.f.fled rays the night where I, The lonely outcast, freezing lie!

Ha! If upon those doors to-night I knocked, how well I know the stare, The questioning, the mingled air Of scorn and pity at the sight, The wonder if it would be right To give me alms of meat and bread!

And if I, reckless, standing there, For once the truth imploring said, That not for bread or meat I longed, That such an alms my real need wronged,

That I would fain come in, and sit Beside their fire, and hear the voice Of children; yea, and if my choice Were free, and I dared mention it, And some sweet child should think me fit To hold a child upon my knee One moment, would my soul rejoice, More than to banquet royally, And I the pulses of its wrist Would kiss, as men the cross have kissed.

Ha! Well the haughty stare I know With which they'd say, "The man is mad!"

"What an impostor's face he had!"

"How insolent these beggars grow!"

Go to, ye happy people! Go!

My yearning is as fierce as hate.

Must my heart break, that yours be glad?

Will your turn come at last, though late?

I will not knock, I will pa.s.s by; My comrades wait,--the wind, the rain.

Comrades, we'll run a race to-night!

The stakes may not seem much to gain: The goal is not marked plain in sight; But, comrades, understand,--if I Drop dead, 't will be a victory!

These poems and many others Stephen carried with him wherever he went. To read them over was next to seeing Mercy. The poet was hardly less dear to him than the woman. He felt at times so removed from her by the great gulf which her genius all unconsciously seemed to create between herself and him that he doubted his own memories of her love, and needed to be rea.s.sured by gazing into her eyes, touching her hand, and listening to her voice. It seemed to him that, if this separation lasted much longer, he should lose all faith in the fact of their relation. Very impatient thoughts of poor old Mrs. Carr filled Stephen's thoughts in these days.

Heretofore she had been no barrier to his happiness; her still and childlike presence was no restraint upon him; he had come to disregard it as he would the presence of an infant in a cradle. Therefore, he had, or thought he had, the kindest of feelings towards her; but now that her helpless paralyzed hands had the power to shut him away from Mercy, he hated her, as he had always hated every thing which stood between him and delight. Yet, had it been his duty to minister to her, he would have done it as gently, as faithfully, as Mercy herself. He would have spoken to her in the mildest and tenderest of tones, while in his heart he wished her dead. So far can a fine fastidiousness, allied to a sentiment of compa.s.sion, go towards making a man a consummate hypocrite.

Parson Dorrance came often to see Mercy, but always with Lizzy Hunter. By the subtle instinct of love, he knew that to see him thus, and see him often, would soonest win back for him his old place in Mercy's life. The one great desire he had left now was to regain that,--to see her again look up in his face with the frank, free, loving look which she always had had until that sad morning.

A strange incident happened to Mercy in these first weeks of her mother's illness. She was called to the door one morning by the message that a stranger wished to speak to her. She found standing there an elderly woman, with a sweet but care-worn face, who said eagerly, as soon as she appeared,--

"Are you Mrs. Philbrick?"

"Yes," said Mercy. "Did you wish to see me?"

The woman hesitated a moment, as if trying to phrase her sentence, and then burst out impetuously, with a flood of tears,--

"Won't you come and help me make my husband come home. He is so sick, and I believe he will die in that wretched old garret."

Mercy looked at her in blank astonishment, and her first thought was that she must be insane; but the woman continued,--

"I'm Mrs. Wheeler. You never saw me before, but my husband's talked about you ever since he first saw you on the street, that day. You're the only human being I've ever known him take a fancy to; and I do believe, if anybody could do any thing with him, you could."

It seemed that, in addition to all his other eccentricities, "Old Man Wheeler" had the habit of disappearing from his home at intervals, leaving no clew behind him. He had attacks of a morbid unwillingness to see a human face: during tkese attacks, he would hide himself, sometimes in one place, sometimes in another. He had old warehouses, old deserted mills and factories, and uninhabited rooms and houses in all the towns in the vicinity. There was hardly any article of merchandise which he had not at one time or another had a depot for, or a manufactory of. He had especially a hobby for attempting to make articles which were not made in this country. It was only necessary for some one to go to him, and say, "Mr. Wheeler, do you know how much this country pays every year for importing such or such an article?" to throw him into a rage.

"d.a.m.ned nonsense! d.a.m.ned nonsense, sir. Just as well make it here. I'll make it myself." And up would start a new manufacture, just as soon as he could get men to work at it.

At one time it was ink, at another time brushes, then chintz, and then pocket-books; in fact, n.o.body pretended to remember all the schemes which the old man had failed in. He would stop them as instantaneously as he began them, dismiss the workmen, shut up the shops or the mills, turn the key on them just as they stood, very possibly filled full of material in the rough. He did not care. The hobby was over: he had proved that the thing could be made in America, and he was content. It was usually in some one of these disused buildings that he set up his hermitage in these absences from home. He would sally out once a day and buy bread, just a pittance, hardly enough to keep him alive, and then bury himself again in darkness and solitude. If the absence did not last more than three or four days, his wife and sons gave themselves no concern about him. He usually returned a saner and healthier man than he went away. When the absences were longer, they went in search of him, and could usually prevail on him to return home with them. But this last absence had been much longer than usual before they found him. He was as cunning and artful as a fugitive from justice in concealing his haunt. At last he was discovered in the old garret store-room over the Brick Row. The marvel was that he had not died of cold there. He was not far from it, however; for he was so ill that at times he was delirious. He lay curled up in the old stack of comforters in the corner, with only a jug of water and some crumbs of bread by his side, when they found him. He had been so ill when he last crawled up the stairs that he had forgotten to take the key out of the keyhole, but left it on the outside, and by that they found him. At the bare suggestion of his going home, he became so furious that it seemed unsafe to urge it. His wife and eldest son had stayed there with him now for two days; but he had grown steadily worse, and it was plain that he must die unless he could be properly cared for.

"At last I thought of you," said the poor woman. "He's always said so much about you; and once, when I was riding with him, he pointed you out to me on the street, and said he, 'That's the very nicest girl in America.' And he told me about his giving you the clock; and I never knew him give any thing away before in his whole life. Not but what he has always been very good to me, in his way. He'd never give me a cent o' money; but he'd always pay bills,--that is, that was any way reasonable. But I said to 'Siah this morning, 'If there's anybody on earth can coax your father to let us take him home, it's that Mrs. Philbrick; and I'm going to find her.' 'Siah didn't want me to. The boys are so ashamed about it; but I don't see any shame in it. It's just a kind of queer way Mr. Wheeler's always had; and everybody's got something queer about 'em, first or last; and this way of Mr. Wheeler's of going off don't hurt anybody but himself.

I got used to 't long ago. Now, won't you come, and try and see if you can't persuade him? It won't do any harm to try."

"Why, yes, indeed, Mrs. Wheeler, I'll come; but I don't believe I can do any thing," said Mercy, much touched by the appeal to her. "I have wondered very much what had become of Mr. Wheeler. I had not seen him for a long time."

When they went into the garret, the old man was half-lying, half-sitting, propped on his left elbow. In his right hand he held his cane, with which he continually tapped the floor, as he poured out a volley of angry reproaches to his son "'Siah," a young man of eighteen or twenty years old, who sat on a roll of leather at a safe distance from his father's lair. As the door opened, and he saw Mercy entering with his wife, the old man's face underwent the most extraordinary change. Surprise, shame, perplexity, bravado,--all struggled together there.

"G.o.d bless my soul! G.o.d bless my soul!" he exclaimed, trying to draw the comforters more closely about him.

Mercy went up to him, and, sitting down by his side, began to talk to him in a perfectly natural tone, as if she were making an ordinary call on an invalid in his own home. She said nothing to suggest that he had done any thing unnatural in hiding himself, and spoke of his severe cold as being merely what every one else had been suffering from for some time. Then she told him how ill her mother was, and succeeded in really arousing his interest in that. Finally, she said,--

"But I must go now. I can't be away from my mother long. I will come and see you again to-morrow. Shall I find you here or at your home?"

"Well, I was thinking I 'd better move home to-day," said he.

His wife and son involuntarily exchanged glances. This was more than they had dared to hope.

"Yes, I would, if I were you," replied Mercy, still in a perfectly natural tone. "It would be so much better for you to be in a room with a fire in it for a few days. There isn't any way of warming this room, is there?"

said she, looking all about, as if to see if it might not be possible still to put up a stove there. "'Siah" turned his head away to hide a smile, so amused was he by the tact of the remark. "No, I see there is no stovepipe-hole here," she went on, "so you'd much better move home. I'm going by the stable. Let me send Seth right up with the carriage, won't you?"

"No, no! Bless my soul! Thinks I'm made of money, don't she! No, no! I can walk." And the old half-crazy glare came into his eyes.

Mercy went nearer to him, and laid her hand gently on his.

"Mr. Wheeler," said she, "you did something very kind for me once: now won't you do something once more,--just once? I want you to go home in the carriage. It is a terribly cold day, and the streets are very icy. I nearly fell several times myself coming over here. You will certainly take a terrible cold, if you walk this morning. Please say I may get the carriage."

"Bless my soul! Bless my soul, child! Go get it then, if you care so much; but tell him I'll only pay a quarter,--only a quarter, remember. They'd take every cent I've got. They are all wolves, wolves, wolves!"

"Yes, I'll tell him only a quarter. I'll have him here in a few minutes!"

exclaimed Mercy, and ran out of the room hastily before the old man could change his mind.

As good luck would have it, Seth and his "kerridge" were in sight when Mercy reached the foot of the staircase. So in less than five minutes she returned to the garret, exclaiming,--