The Brick Moon and Other Stories Part 15

Just as the Creed was finished, when the rest of the church was still, the s.e.xton led up the aisle a grim- looking man, with a s.h.a.ggy coat and a very dirty face, and brought him close to the door of Mr. Molyneux's pew-- as if he would fain bring him in. Mr. Molyneux was at the end of the pew, but happened to be turning away from the aisle, and the s.e.xton actually touched him. He turned round and looked at the stranger,--evidently did not know him,--but with the instinct of hospitality, stepped into the aisle and offered him his seat. The stranger was embarra.s.sed; hesitated as if he would speak, then shook his head in refusal of the attention, and crossing the aisle, took a seat offered him there, in full sight of Mr. Molyneux, and, indeed, of Matty.

Poor girl! The trifle--of course it was a trifle-- upset her sadly.

Was the man a marshal or a sheriff? Would they really arrest her father on Christmas Day, in church?

CHAPTER IV

IS THIS CHRISTMAS?

Yes; it was, as you have said, a very curious Christmas service for all those people.

What Horace turned his mind to, at intervals, has been told.

Of the elder members of our little company who sat there near the head of the side aisle, it may be said, in general, that they did their best to keep their hearts and minds engaged in the service, and that sometimes they succeeded. They succeeded better while they could really join in the hymns and the prayers than they did when it came to the sermon. Good Dr. Gill, overruled by one of those lesser demons, whose work is so apparent though so inexplicable in this finite world, had selected for the text of his sermon of gladness the words, "Search and look." And so it happened--it was what did not often happen with him--he must needs repeat those words often, at the beginning and end, indeed, of every leading paragraph of the sermon. Now this duty of searching and looking had been just what all the elder members of the Molyneux family had been solidly doing--each in his way or hers, directly or by sympathy--in the last forty- eight hours. To get such relief as they might from it, they had come to church, to look rather higher if they could. So that it was to them more a misfortune than a matter of immediate spiritual relief that their dear old friend, who loved each one of them with an intimate and peculiar love, happened to enlarge on his text just as he did.

If poor Mr. Molyneux, by dint of severe self-command, had succeeded in abstracting his thoughts from disgrace almost certain,--from thinking over, in horrible variety, the several threads of inquiry and answer by which that disgrace was to be avoided or precipitated,--how was it possible to maintain such abstraction, while the worthy preacher, wholly unconscious of the blood he drew with every word, ground out his sentences in such words as these:--

"Search and look, my brethren. Time pa.s.ses faster than we think. Our gray hairs gather apace above our foreheads. And the treasure which we prized beyond price in years bygone has perhaps, amid the cares of this world, or in the deceitfulness of riches, been thrust on one side, neglected, at last forgotten. How is it with you, dear friends? Are you the man? Are you the woman?

Have you put on one side the very treasure of your life,--as some careless housewife might lay aside on a forgotten shelf this parcel or that, once so precious to her? Dear friends, as the year draws to a close, awaken from such neglect! Brush away the dust from these forgotten caskets! Lift them from their hiding-places and set them forth, even in your Christmas festivities.

Search and look!"

Poor Mrs. Molyneux had never wished before so earnestly that a sermon might be done. She dared not look round to see her husband for a while, but after one of these invocations--not quite so terrible as the rest, perhaps--she stole a glance that way, to find--that she might have spared her anxiety. Two nights of "searching and looking" had done their duty by the poor man, and though his head was firm braced against the column which rose from the side of their pew, his eyes were closed, and his wife was relieved by the certainty that he was listening, as those happy members of the human family listen who a.s.sure me that they hear when their lids are tight pressed over their eyeb.a.l.l.s. As for Beverly, he was a.s.suming the resolute aspect of a sailor under fire, and was imagining himself taking the whole storm of Fort Constantine as he led an American squadron into the Bay of Sevastopol. Tom did not know what the preacher said, but was devising the method of his interview with Greenhithe. Matty did know. Dear girl! she knew very well. And with every well-rounded sentence of the sermon she was more determined as to the method of her appeal to Mrs. Gilbert, the widow of the notary. She would search and look there.

Yes! and it was well for every one of them that they went to that service. The sermon at the worst was but twenty minutes. "Twenty minutes in length," said Beverly, wickedly, "and no depth at all." But that was not true nor fair; nor was that, either way, the thing that was essential. By the time they had all sung

"Praise G.o.d from whom all blessings flow,"

even before the good old Doctor had asked for Heaven's blessing upon them, it had come. To Mr. Molyneux it had come in an hour's rest of mind, body, and soul. To Matty it had come in an hour's calm determination. To Mrs. Molyneux it had come in the certainty that there is One Eye which sees through all hiding-places and behind all disguises. To the children it had come, because the hour had called up to them a hundred memories of Galilee and Nazareth, of Mary Mother, and of children made happy, to supplement and help out their legends of Santa Claus. Yes, and even Beverly the brave, and Tom the outraged, as they stood to receive the benediction of the preacher, were more of men and less of firebrands than they were. They all stood with reverence; they paused a moment, and then slowly walked down the aisle.

"Where is your father, Horace?" said Mrs. Molyneux, a little anxiously, as she came where she could speak aloud. Horace was waiting for her.

"Papa? He went away with the gentleman who came in after service began; they crossed the street and took a carriage together."

"And did papa leave no message?"

"Why, no; he did not turn round. The strange man-- the man in the rough coat--just touched him and spoke to him half-way down the aisle. Then papa whispered to him and he whispered back. Then, as soon as they came into the vestibule here, papa led him out at that side door, and did not seem to remember me. They almost ran across the street, and took George Gibb's hack. I knew the horses."

"That's too bad," said Laura; "I thought papa would walk home with us and tell us the story of the bears."

Poor Mrs. Molyneux thought it was too bad, too; but she said nothing.

And Matty, when she joined her mother, said,--

"I shall feel a thousand times happier, mamma, if I go and see Mrs. Gilbert now." And she explained who Mrs.

Gilbert was. "Perhaps it may do some good. Anyway, I shall feel as if I were doing something. I will be home in time to finish the tree and things, for Horace will like to help me."

And the poor girl looked her entreaties so eagerly that her mother could not but a.s.sent to her plan.

So she made Beverly go up the avenue with her,--Beverly, who would have swum the Potomac and back for her, had she asked him,--as he was on his way to join his father at the Bureau.

As they came out upon the broad sidewalk, that odious Greenhithe, with some one whom Beverly called a blackguard of his crew, pushed by them, and he had the impudence to turn and touch his hat to Matty again.

Matty's hand trembled on Beverly's arm, but she would not speak for a minute, only she walked slower and slower.

Then she said: "I am so afraid, Bev, that Tom and he will get into a quarrel. Tom declares he will go into Willard's and find out whether he does know anything."

But Beverly, very mannish, tried to rea.s.sure her and make her believe that Tom would be very self-restrained and perfectly careful.

On Christmas Day the Jew's dry-goods store, which had taken the place of old Mr. Gilbert's notary's office, was closed--not perhaps so much from the Israelite's enthusiasm about Christmas as in deference to what in New England is called "the sense of the street." Matty, however, acting from a precise knowledge of Was.h.i.+ngton life, rang boldly at the green door adjacent, Beverly still waiting to see what might turn up; and when a brisk "colored girl" appeared, Matty inquired if Mrs. Munroe was at home.

Now all that Matty knew of Mrs. Munroe was that her name was on a well-scoured bra.s.s plate on the door.

Mrs. Munroe was in. Beverly said he would wait in the pa.s.sage. Mrs. Munroe proved to be a nice, motherly sort of a person, who, as it need hardly be said, was stone-deaf. It required some time for Matty to adjust her speaking apparatus to the exigency, but when this was done, Mrs. Munroe explained that Mr. Gilbert was dead,-- that an effort had been made to continue the business with the old sign and the old good will, under the direction of a certain Mr. Bundy, who had sometimes been called in as an a.s.sistant. But Mr. Bundy, after some years, paid more attention to whiskey than he did to notarying, and the law business had suffered. Finally, Mr. Bundy was brought home by the police one night with a broken head, and then Mrs. Gilbert had withdrawn the signs, cancelled the lease, turned Mr. Bundy out-of- doors, and retired to live with a step-sister of her brother's wife's father near the a.r.s.enal; good Mrs.

Munroe was not certain whether on Delaware Avenue, or whether on T Street, U Street, or V Street. And, indeed, whether the lady's name were Butman before she married her second husband, and Lichtenfels afterward--or whether his name were Butman and hers Lichtenfels, Mrs. Munroe was not quite sure. Nor could she say whether Mr.

Gilbert took the account books and registers --there were heaps on heaps of them, for Mr. Gilbert had been a notary ever since General Jackson's day--or whether Bundy did not take them, or whether they were not sold for old paper, Mrs. Munroe was not sure. For all this happened-- all the break-up and removal--while Mrs. Munroe was on a visit to her sister not far from Brick Church above Little Falls, on your way to Frederic. And Mrs. Munroe offered this visit as a constant apology for her not knowing more precisely every detail of her old friend's business.

This explanation took a good deal of time, through all of which poor Beverly was fretting and fuming and stamping his cold feet in the pa.s.sage, hearing the occasional questions of his sister, uttered with thunder tone in the "setting-room" above, but hearing no word of the placid widow's replies.

When Matty returned and held a consultation with him, the question was, whether to follow the books of account to Georgetown, where Mr. Bundy was understood to be still residing, or to the neighborhood of the a.r.s.enal, in the hope of finding Mrs. Gilbert, Mrs. Lichtenfels, or Mrs.

Butman, as the case might be. Readers should understand that these two points, both unknown to the young people, are some six miles asunder, the original notary's office being about half-way between them. Beverly was more disposed to advise following the man. He was of a mind to attack some one of his own s.e.x. But the enterprise was, in truth, Matty's enterprise. Beverly had but little faith in it from the beginning, and Matty was minded to follow such clue as they had to Mrs.

Gilbert, quite sure that, woman with woman, she should succeed better with her than, man with man, Beverly with Bundy. Beverly a.s.sented to this view the more willingly, because Matty was quite willing to undertake the quest alone. She was very brave about it indeed. "Plenty of nice people at the a.r.s.enal," or near it, whom she could fall back upon for counsel or information. So they parted. Matty took a street car for the east and south, and Beverly went his ways to the Bureau of Internal Improvement to report for duty to his father.

This story must not follow the details of Matty's quest for the firm of "Gilbert, Lichtenfels, or Butman."

Certain it is that she would never have succeeded had she rested simply on the directory or on such crude information as Mrs. Munroe had so freely given. But Matty had an English tongue in her head,--a courteous, which is to say a confiding, address with strangers; she seemed almost to be conferring a favor at the moment when she asked one, and she knew, in this business, that there was no such word as fail. After one or two false starts--some very stupid answers, and some very blunt refusals--she found her quarry at last, by as simple a process as walking into a Sunday-school of colored children, where she heard singing in the bas.e.m.e.nt of a little chapel.

In a few words Matty explained her errand to the Superintendent, and that it was necessary that she should find Mrs. Gilbert before dark.

"Ting!" one stroke of the bell called hundreds of eager voices to silence.

"Who knows where Mrs. Gilbert lives? Is it at Mrs.

Butman's house or Mrs. Lichtenfels'?"

Twenty eager hands contended with each other for the honor of giving the information, and in three minutes more, Matty, all encouraged by her success, was on her way.

And Mrs. Gilbert was at home. Good fortune number two! Matty's star was surely in the ascendant! Matty sent in her card, and the nice old lady presented herself at once, remembered who Matty was, remembered how much business Mr. Molyneux used to bring to the office, and how grateful Mr. Gilbert always was. She was so glad to see Matty, and she hoped Mr. Molyneux was well, and Mrs.

Molyneux and all those little ones! She used to see them every Sunday as they went to church, if they went on the avenue.

Thus encouraged, Matty opened on her sad story, and was fairly helped from stage to stage by the wonder, indignation, and exclamations of the kind old lady. When Matty came to the end, and made her understand how much depended on the day-book, register, and ledger of her husband, it was a fair minute before she spoke.

"We will see, my dear, we will see. I wish it may be so, but I 'm all afeard. It would not be like him, my dear. It would not be like any of them. But come with me, my dear, we will see--we will see."

Then, as Matty followed her, through devious ways, out through the kitchen, across a queer bricked yard, into a half stable, half woodshed, which the good woman unlocked, she went on talking:--

"You see, my dear child, that though notaries are called notaries, as if it were their business to give notice, the most important part of their business is keeping secrets. Now, when a man's note goes to protest, the notary tells him what has happened, which he knew very well before; and then he comes to the notary and begs him not to tell anybody else, and of course he does not. And the business of a notary's account books, as my husband used to say, is to tell just enough, and not to tell any more.

"Why, my dear child, he would not use blotting-paper in the office,--he would always use sand. 'Blotting- paper! Never!' he would say; 'Blotting-paper tells secrets!'"

With such chatter they came to the little chilly room, which was shelved all around, and to Matty's glad eyes presented rows of green and blue and blue and red boxes,--and folio and quarto books of every date, from 1829 to 1869, forty years in which the late Mr. Gilbert had been confirming history, keeping secret what he knew, but making sure what, but for him, might have been doubted by a sceptic world.