Eben Holden Part 36

Chapter 33

That very night, I looked in at the little shop beneath us and met Riggs. It was no small blessing, just as I was entering upon dark and unknown ways of life, to meet this h.o.a.ry headed man with all his lanterns. He would sell you anchors and fathoms of chain and rope enough to hang you to the moon but his 'lights'were the great attraction of Riggs s. He had every kind of lantern that had ever swung on land or sea. After dark, when light was streaming out of its open door and broad window Riggs's looked like the side of an old lantern itself. It was a door, low and wide, for a time when men had big round bellies and nothing to do but fill them and heads not too far above their business.

It was a window gone blind with dust and cobwebs so it resembled the dim eye of age. If the door were closed its big bra.s.s knocker and ma.s.sive iron latch invited the pa.s.ser. An old s.h.i.+p's anchor and a coil of chain lay beside it. Blocks and heavy bolts, steering wheels, old bra.s.s compa.s.ses, coils of rope and rusty chain lay on the floor and benches, inside the shop. There were rows of lanterns, hanging on the bare beams.

And there was Riggs. He sat by a dusty desk and gave orders in a sleepy, drawling tone to the lad who served him. An old Dutch lantern, its light softened with green gla.s.s, sent a silver bean across the gloomy upper air of the shop that evening. Riggs held an old un lantern with little streams of light bursting through its perforated walls. He was blind, one would know it at a glance. Blindness is so easy to be seen. Riggs was showing it to a stranger.

'Turn down the lights,' he said and the boy got his step-ladder and obeyed him.

Then he held it aloft in the dusk and the little lantern was like a castle tower with many windows lighted, and, when he set it down, there was a golden sprinkle on the floor as if something had plashed into a magic pool of light there in the darkness.

Riggs lifted the lantern, presently, and stood swinging it in his hand.

Then its rays were sown upon the darkness falling silently into every nook and corner of the gloomy shop and breaking into flowing dapples on the wall.

'See how quick it is!' said he as the rays flashed with the speed of lightning. 'That is the only traveller from Heaven that travels fast enough to ever get to earth.

Then came the words that had a mighty fitness for his tongue.

'Hail, holy light! Offspring of Heaven first born.

His voice rose and fell, riding the mighty rhythm of inspired song. As he stood swinging the lantern, then, he reminded me of a chanting priest behind the censer. In a moment he sat down, and, holding the lantern between his knees, opened its door and felt the candle. Then as the light streamed out upon his hands, he rubbed them a time, silently, as if was.h.i.+ng them in the bright flood.

'One dollar for this little box of daylight,' he said.

'Blind?' said the stranger as he paid him the money.

'No,' said Riggs, 'only dreaming as you are.

I wondered what he meant by the words 'dreaming as you are.

'Went to bed on my way home to marry,' he continued, stroking his long white beard, 'and saw the lights go out an' went asleep and it hasn't come morning yet--that's what I believe. I went into a dream. Think I'm here in a shop talking but I'm really in my bunk on the good s.h.i.+p Arid coming home. Dreamed everything since then--everything a man could think of. Dreamed I came home and found Annie dead, dreamed of blindness, of old age, of poverty, of eating and drinking and sleeping and of many people who pa.s.s like dim shadows and speak to me--you are one of them.

And sometimes I forget I am dreaming and am miserable, and then I remember and am happy. I know when the morning comes I shall wake and laugh at all these phantoms. And I shall pack my things and go up on deck, for we shall be in the harbour probably--ay! maybe Annie and mother will be waving their hands on the dock!

The old face had a merry smile as he spoke of the morning and all it had for him.

'Seems as if it had lasted a thousand years,' he continued, yawning and rubbing his eyes. 'But I've dreamed the like before, and, my G.o.d! how glad I felt when I woke in the morning.

It gave me an odd feeling--this remarkable theory of the old man. I thought then it would be better for most of us if we could think all our misery a dream and have his faith in the morning--that it would bring back the things we have lost. I had come to buy a lock for my door, but I forgot my errand and sat down by Riggs while the stranger went away with his lantern.

'You see no reality in anything but happiness,' I said.

'It's all a means to that end,' he answered. 'It is good for me, this dream. I shall be all the happier when I do wake, and I shall love Annie all the better, I suppose.

'I wish I could take my ifi luck as a dream and have faith only in good things,' I said.

'All that is good shall abide,' said he, stroking his white beard, 'and all evil shall vanish as the substance of a dream. In the end the only realities are G.o.d and love and Heaven. To die is just like waking up in the morning.

'But I know I'm awake,' I said.

'You think you are--that's a part of your dream. Sometimes I think I'm awake--it all seems so real to me. But I have thought it out, and I am the only man I meet that knows he is dreaming. When you do wake, in the morning, you may remember how you thought you came to a certain shop and made some words with a man as to whether you were both dreaming, and you will laugh and tell your friends about it. Hold on! I can feel the s.h.i.+p lurching. I believe I am going to wake.

He sat a moment leaning back in his chair with closed eyes, and a silence fell upon us in the which I could hear only the faint ticking of a tall clock that lifted its face out of the gloom beyond me.

'You there?' he whispered presently.

'I am here,' I said.

'Odd!' he muttered. 'I know how it will be--I know how it has been before. Generally come to some high place and a great fear seizes me. I slip, I fall--fall--fall, and then I wake.

After a little silence I heard him snoring heavily. He was still leaning back in his chair. I walked on tiptoe to the door where the boy stood looking out.

'Crazy?' I whispered.

'Dunno,' said he, smiling.

I went to my room above and wrote my first tale, which was nothing more or less than some brief account of what I had heard and seen down at the little shop that evening. I mailed it next day to the Knickerbocker, with stamps for return if unavailable.

Chapter 34

New York was a crowded city, even then, but I never felt so lonely anywhere outside a camp in the big woods, The last day of the first week came, but no letter from Hope. To make an end of suspense I went that Sat.u.r.day morning to the home of the Fullers. The equation of my value had dwindled sadly that week. Now a small fraction would have stood for it--nay, even the square of it.

Hope and Mrs Fuller had gone to Saratoga, the butler told me. I came away with some sense of injury. I must try to be done with Hope. There was no help for it. I must go to work at something and cease to worry and lie awake of nights. But I had nothing to do but read and walk and wait. No word had come to me from the 'Tribune'--evidently it was not languis.h.i.+ng for my aid. That day my tale was returned to me with thanks with nothing but thanks printed in black type on a slip of paper--cold, formal, prompt, ready-made thanks. And I, myself, was in about the same fix--rejected with thanks--politely, firmly, thankfully rejected. For a moment I felt like a man falling. I began to see there was no very clamourous demand for me in 'the great emporium', as Mr Greeley called it. I began to see, or thought I did, why Hope had s.h.i.+ed at my offer and was now shunning me. I went to the Tribune office. Mr Greeley had gone to Was.h.i.+ngton; Mr Ottarson was too busy to see me. I concluded that I would be willing to take a place on one of the lesser journals. I spent the day going from one office to another, but was rejected everywhere with thanks. I came home and sat down to take account of stock. First, I counted my money, of which there were about fifty dollars left. As to my talents, there were none left. Like the pies at the Hillsborough tavern, if a man came late to dinner--they were all out. I had some fine clothes, but no more use for them than a goose for a peac.o.c.k's feathers.

I decided to take anything honourable as an occupation, even though it were not in one of the learned professions. I began to answer advertis.e.m.e.nts and apply at business offices for something to give me a living, but with no success. I began to feel the selfishness of men.

G.o.d pity the warm and tender heart of youth when it begins to harden and grow chill, as mine did then; to put away its cheery confidence forever; to make a new estimate of itself and others. Look out for that time, O ye good people! that have sons and daughters.

I must say for myself that I had a mighty courage and no small capital of cheerfulness. I went to try my luck with the newspapers of Philadelphia, and there one of them kept me in suspense a week to no purpose. When I came back reduced in cash and courage Hope had sailed.

There was a letter from Uncle Eb telling me when and by what steamer they were to leave. 'She will reach there a Friday,' he wrote, 'and would like to see you that evening at Fuller's'.

I had waited in Philadelphia, hoping I might have some word, to give her a better thought of me, and, that night, after such a climax of ill luck, well--I had need of prayer for a wayward tongue. I sent home a good account of my prospects. I could not bring myself to report failure or send for more money. I would sooner have gone to work in a scullery.

Meanwhile my friends at the chalet were enough to keep me in good cheer.

There were William McClingan, a Scotchman of a great gift of dignity and a nickname inseparably connected with his fame. He wrote leaders for a big weekly and was known as Waxy McClingan, to honour a pale ear of wax that took the place of a member lost n.o.body could tell how. He drank deeply at times, but never to the loss of his dignity or self possession. In his cups the natural dignity of the man grew and expanded. One could tell the extent of his indulgence by the degree of his dignity. Then his mood became at once didactic and devotional.

Indeed, I learned in good time of the rumour that he had lost his ear in an argument about the Scriptures over at Edinburgh.

I remember he came an evening, soon after my arrival at the chalet, when dinner was late. His dignity was at the full. He sat awhile in grim silence, while a sense of injury grew in his bosom.

'Mrs Opper,' said he, in a grandiose manner and voice that nicely trilled the r's, 'in the fourth chapter and ninth verse of Lamentations you will find these words--here he raised his voice a bit and began to tap the palm of his left hand with the index finger of his right, continuing: "They that be slain with the sword are better than they that be slain with hunger. For these pine away stricken through want of the fruits of the field." Upon my honour as a gentleman, Mrs Opper, I was never so hungry in all my life.'

The other boarder was a rather frail man with an easy cough and a confidential manner, lie wrote the 'Obituaries of Distinguished Persons'

for one of the daily papers. Somebody had told him once, his head resembled that of Was.h.i.+ngton. He had never forgotten it, as I have reason to remember. His mind lived ever among the dead. His tongue was pickled in maxims; his heart sunk in the brine of recollection; his humour not less unconscious and familiar than that of an epitaph; his name was Lemuel Framdin Force. To the public of his native city he had introduced Webster one fourth of July--a perennial topic of his lighter moments.

I fell an easy victim to the obituary editor that first evening in the chalet. We had risen from the table and he came and held me a moment by the coat lapel. He released my collar, when he felt sure of me, and began tapping my chest with his forefinger to drive home his point I stood for quite an hour out of sheer politeness. By that time he had me forced to the wall--a G.o.d's mercy, for there I got some sense of relief in the legs. His gestures, in imitation of the great Webster, put my head in some peril. Meanwhile he continued drumming upon my chest.

I looked longingly at the empty chairs. I tried to cut him off with applause that should be condusive and satisfying, but with no success.

It had only a stimulating effect. I felt somehow like a cheap hired man badly overworked. I had lost all connection. I looked, and smiled, and nodded, and exclaimed, and heard nothing. I began to plan a method of escape. McClingan--the great and good Waxy McClingan--came out of his room presently and saw my plight.

'What is this?' he asked, interrupting, 'a serial stawry?