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(July 1891)
Publications:
- The Path, vol. VI, no. 4, July 1891, pp. 102-109
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CTD entry in Russian: Коннелли, Джеймс Х. - Как вернуть Араминту
DATA
Title for references: Connelly JH - Calling Araminta Back
Short description: Signed "James H. Connelly." Part I of a serialized story of the widower John Blodgett, who after his...
102
I.
"The Lord gave, and the Lord taketh away; Blessed be the name of the Lord." The parson's unctuous glibness, in utterance of the pious platitude, seemed to Mr. Blodgett—chief mourner—animated by personal approval of the Lord's final action in the premises. Would there have been103such a tinge of satisfaction in his resignation if the dead woman had been his own wife? Was it quite certain that the Lord had concerned Himself at all about either the giving or the taking of Mrs. Araminta Blodgett?
"Forasmuch as it hath pleased Almighty God," etc., etc., went on the flow of formal blandiloquence. Why had it pleased Him? wondered John Blodgett. What interest could He have had in the matter? It certainly had not pleased Araminta, who was seriously misunderstood if her oft-expressed desire to "enter into the heavenly rest" had been taken in earnest. And so far from pleasing her husband, it had much annoyed him—to state the case mildly. Araminta had some "trying ways," doubtless, but probably not more than other women have, and John, in thirty years of married life, had got used to them.
The poor old widower, riding by himself in the slow-moving carriage behind the hearse, felt very sad and lonely. Though by no means an imaginative man, the fancy grew upon him that his life was a cable, a great strand of which had parted when Araminta died, weakening what was left. At the receiving vault he looked on silently, while the attendants filed Araminta away in a stone pigeon-hole and slid its heavy iron door into place with a bang. He made no spectacular display of grief, for his nature was not demonstrative, and at fifty-five one does not care enough about what people think to prompt the simulation of emotion.
But when he got back into his carriage again, all alone, as he preferred to be, his eyes were moist and he thought very gravely upon what had happened to Araminta; what was going to happen to him in the few years he had yet to go, companionless, down the hill of life; and how much better it would have been if they could have finished the course together. Decidedly, he reflected, the Lord's way of pleasing Himself occasioned great inconvenience to others. Mr. Blodgett meant no irreverence in so thinking, he had merely—through much hearing of prayers and sermons—got into a habit of almost social familiarity with God's personality.
The way was long, and, though the horses trotted briskly on the return from the cemetery, the short winter day had ended by the time the widower reached his home. He sighed, as he let himself in with his latch-key, at the ominously suggestive darkness of the hall-way yawning before him. It looked like an enlargement of the pigeon-hole in which they had deposited104Araminta. Never before had he found it unlighted. She always saw to that. He turned into the dark parlor and barked one of his shins upon something that stood directly in his way, which upon examination proved to be one of the trestles used to support Araminta's coffin. It belonged in the house, so had not been carried off by the undertaker, and nobody had thought of removing it when its temporary service here was ended. The sudden realization of what it was gave Mr. Blodgett quite a shock, for it brought vividly back to his mental vision her face, cold and white and still, in the silken interior of the costly casket, as he had last seen it, just at that spot.
He shuddered and imagined that he heard a faint sigh somewhere near him. Holding his breath and listening so intently that he thought he could hear his heart beat, he stood perfectly still and vainly strove to pierce the intense darkness with his sight. A little thrill of chilliness seemed to run over his skin, and for a moment he had an impression that there was near him some one he was much more likely to see then than he would be if he had a light. The person—or whatever it was—seemed to be at his elbow, just behind his shoulder, and he felt an almost irresistible impulse to, instead of looking around, jump to the door and make his escape. Then he pulled his scattered faculties together with the reflection:
"Nonsense! I didn't imagine there was enough superstition in me to make me even think of such a thing! And, even if it should be Araminta, why should I be afraid of her now—when she is past talking?"
Quite himself again, he turned on his heel, walked deliberately out to the hall and went on to the dining room, where he found warmth, light, comfort, and company. Miss Artemisia Hodson, an elderly spinster, and Mrs. Ellice Merwin, widow—"friends of the corpse" as they had styled themselves when assuming authority—had temporarily grasped the reins of control, fortunately for the easy going of the household chariot. When all other friends went away, to the cemetery, or shopping, or the matinée, after the services in the church, these two good ladies marched straight to Mr. Blodgett's house, announced themselves and took possession, to the serious105disappointment of Lucy—the maid—who had just become interested in rummaging her late mistress's bureau drawers, and the infinite disgust of the cook, who had just commenced to get drunk. Miss Hodson rescued Araminta's keys, locked up her room, and found work for Lucy in setting the dining table. Mrs. Merwin directed affairs in the kitchen. Rebellion against two such energetic, experienced women was clearly impossible, and when John came home the dinner awaiting him was one that Araminta herself had never excelled.
"Though it does seem like a waste of good victuals, to set such a meal before a man stricken with grief and naturally without any appetite when in sorrow, most likely," commented the spinster, who had strange ways of giving undue prominence to her ignorance of men.
"Humph!" sniffed the wiser Mrs. Merwin, "Men are critters you must feed under all circumstances. I've read in novels a heap about love and grief spoiling their appetites, but never saw anything of the sort and don't believe it. Why, a man will eat a hearty breakfast while the sheriff is waiting to hang him when he gets through. I've read of them doing it. From106the cradle to the grave the one thing they live for is—to eat. All the events of their lives are simply incidents that happen between meals. They tell us that in the New Jerusalem 'there shall be neither marrying nor giving in marriage' [Miss Hodson sighed], but I take notice they speculate on 'rivers of milk and honey,' which is figurative of course, like most of Scripture, for naturally where you get milk you have beef critters—but milk is more poetic—and what would be the use of so much honey if you weren't to have any bread to spread it on?"
"Don't you think, Sister Merwin," suggested the spinster timidly, "that you take the words of the promises a little too literally?"
"No. You can't be too literal for a man when you come to talk about feed, either here or in the hereafter."
Mr. Blodgett's appetite hardly did justice to the widow's expectations. He missed the face he had so long been accustomed to see opposite him at every meal; the setting of the table was novel to him; Miss Hodson innocently put milk in his tea; Mrs. Merwin had not known that he loathed mutton; altogether, it seemed to him as if he were dining out and, that Araminta might, at any minute, come in to say, "John, it is time for us to be going". It was a great relief to him when the announcement of a visitor, Mr. Elnathan Flitters—who came to offer his condolences—afforded excuse for escape from the table.
Mr. Flitters was a nice, well-meaning man, good rather than bright, of whose society it was not difficult to get an elegant sufficiency in a short time when he mounted his one hobby—spiritualism. The "summer-land" was known to him as Paris or Oshkosh may be to other persons. All departed greatness was, so to speak, "kept on tap" for him, and its communications literally "drawn from the wood" by his mediums for his benefit. One had only to know the gems of thought freely bestowed upon him by the intellectual giants "on the other shore", to recognize how different they were from the crude mental products of earth life. There, for instance, was that sweet assurance by Carlyle—"My friend, it is good to be good, not for the good there is in goodness, but for the goodness of being good." Of course, Carlyle never could have said anything like that when he was alive. Probably he would rather have been kicked than have done so. But, being dead, that was his style. And Mr. Flitters could quote such things to you all night, a fact which minimized eagerness for his companionship among those who knew him. To have the genuineness of those communications questioned by sceptics and scoffers saddened, but did not anger, him. He honestly pitied the doubters.
"That which I know—I know," he would reply calmly. "I have called for thousands of those who have gone before, all the great names in history, sacred and profane, from Adam down, and none have failed to re-107spond. Would you reject their multitudinous testimony? I hope not. Why, it was but the other night that Marc Antony came to us; did not wait to be called for, but just dropped in; and at my request repeated his great speech over Cæsar's body, commencing:
'Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears; |
The medium wrote it all down, just as he delivered it, and it is, word for word, as reported by Shakespeare. Could you doubt such evidence as that? I hope not."
Mr. Flitters' present mission was not the mere offering of empty condolences. It was his habit to call wherever he was acquainted, as soon as possible after an invasion by Death in a domestic circle, and urge upon the survivors the practicability and advisability of opening up communications at once with the dear departed. The sooner this was done, he averred, before the spirit strayed away on excursions into infinite space, to which it would find itself impelled by natural curiosity, the easier it would be of accomplishment. Mr. Blodgett, he said, had only to say the word in order to have his wishes gratified, if he desired to speak with his wife again, or even to see her.
The widower's mental vision beheld again that white, still face in the casket, so real yet so horribly unlike the woman who had walked by his side through more than a quarter of a century of life, and he shuddered.
"I don't know," he replied hesitatingly, "about bothering Araminta—before she gets sort of settled down in her new surroundings anyway. Everything over there must be strange to her yet—if it is at all like what you say. She never could bear to be pestered when she had anything on her mind; just wanted to be let alone until she had had her think out. I guess we'd better let her be for the present."
"But," argued Mr. Flitters, "this is the very time when she will be most grateful for recall. Lovely as the summer-land is, she is a stranger and may not yet have run across any friends. In her lonesomeness she will be glad to know she is cherished in remembrance by friends here. And she cannot return uninvited. Just think that in silence she stretches out her appealing hands to you from the golden shore. She only awaits your call to return and be your guardian angel. Ah! do not repulse the angel visitors, Mr. Blodgett. Call her back."
The ladies joined their solicitations to those of Mr. Flitters, not that positive Mrs. Merwin "really believed anything would come of it, but at least there would be no harm in trying". Eventually Mr. Blodgett succumbed to the pressure of the trio.
"Well," he assented, "I agree. Araminta is welcome to come back if it seems fittin' to her to do so. But how do you propose to fetch her?"
"Ah!" ejaculated Mr. Flitters triumphantly, "leave that to me—to me108and Mrs. Husslewell, I should say. A wonderful woman Mrs. Husslewell is, sir; gifted with miraculous power. I will bring her here to-morrow night and you shall see for yourself. Yes, sir. You shall see—what you shall see."
When Mr. Blodgett went up to his room that night, his surroundings there painfully accentuated his sense of bereavement. He and Araminta were old-fashioned folks who had occupied the same apartment, in common, all their married lives, and naturally the traces of her presence were, to those of his, in the proportion of ten to one. Everything of which his senses took cognizance reminded him of "the touch of a vanished hand and the sound of a voice that was still". The air was still heavy with the perfume she used; her toilet appliances were scattered over the top of the bureau; an open door showed a closet hung full of her dresses; one of her wrappers was draped over a rocking-chair, as if she had just thrown it off; a withered bunch of flowers, the last she saw with mortal sight, stood upon a stand by the bed; on the mantel was a book she had been reading, with her scissors stuck between the leaves to mark where she left off; as he groped under the bed for his slippers, his fingers first came in contact with hers; and as he sat down to take off his shoes, the "tidy" on the back of the chair, pulled loose by his shoulders, slipped down and one of its pins jabbed him cruelly in the small of the back. It was perhaps the thousandth time that had happened to him, and as he tore the thing loose from its moorings near his spine and hurled it, with a half-smothered execration, across the room, he vowed that would never occur again. He always had hated "tidies", but Araminta possessed a mania for them, and consequently they were on every chair in the house. But—let him who could, find one of them after to-morrow.
Stirring the fire and putting his slippered feet on the fender before it, he sank into reverie. Naturally that which was uppermost in his thoughts was the calling back of Araminta. How might it affect her chances of participation in the general resurrection? if she broke the programme, which—according to the preacher—was that she should sleep until then. But then the preacher had said some queer and probably untrue things, and his information about the resurrection scheme might be unreliable. He said that damnation had been the common lot of all who lived prior to the coming of Christ, and that proposition did not commend itself to any fair-minded man. How about Moses, and David, and Elias, and Jonah, and Lot, and lots more of the Biblical worthies? Were they all damned? And the repeated assurance that "the blood of Christ washeth away all sin" surely had not a leg to stand on, logically, nor was admissible upon any hypothesis that would be creditable to God.
Mr. Blodgett, it will be perceived, was little, if any, better than a109heathen, for he had the audacity to reason about these things—to which his attention was now, for the first time, seriously drawn—instead of accepting everything by faith, as the preacher said he should. His cogitations, or Miss Hodson's strong tea, made him nervous, so he knew there was no use in going to bed, and thought he would like to smoke a cigar. He had already started for his "study", the little den which was the only place in all that big house where Araminta had allowed him to burn tobacco, when he suddenly remembered that there was nobody now to object to his smoking wherever he pleased, nobody to care whether "the smell got into the curtains" or not. So he lighted the fragrant little roll and sat down again, with a sigh that was not wholly regretful pain. It did seem to him that there was a tremulous movement in the air, as if of a groan that was almost audible, but of course that was only his nerves, he said to himself, and he went on with his musings and smoking.
When he had finished his cigar, he tossed its butt into the grate and went to bed. Never before had he realized how big that bed was. Its wideness made him feel lonesome. After a time, he dropped into a doze, from which he waked suddenly with a violent start and a thrill of horror. His arm was thrown over something that lay beside him, a tangible, bodily form, round and cold. The fire had died down and the room was dark. He leaped out of bed, lighted the gas and looked. The form was still there. It was the spare pillow. With a snort of disgust he said to himself:
"I wouldn't have been such a fool if that old maid had not given me such confoundedly strong tea and insisted upon my taking two cups of it."
He felt that it would be useless to try again to sleep without taking something to quiet his nerves, and remembered that a little closet in his den contained a soother which would be likely to meet the emergency. Lighting a candle, he went to get it, walking cautiously on tip-toe, though if he had stopped to think, he would have remembered there was now nobody sleeping in that part of the house. When he entered the den he pulled down the window-blind, bolted the door, and then opened a little closet neatly concealed in the wall. The medicine was before him, in a decanter bearing the mysterious initials "S. O. P." He was just about pouring some of it into a glass and taking it "straight," when the happy thought occurred to him that it would be much more palatable, perhaps even almost enjoyable, with the addition of hot water and sugar; also that it might be more efficacious if sipped leisurely, while he smoked a cigar before his bed room fire. Well, why should he not take it as he pleased? Araminta could not put her veto on the proceedings now. With a newly-born sense of independence thrilling him, he marched back to his room, carrying the decanter along, and walking upon his heels even louder than was necessary.
Araminta was always lenient to her own little weaknesses, first of which was tea-drinking in her room at all odd hours, and kept handy a very complete apparatus for brewing her frequent cups of cheer. In her silver kettle, over the alcohol lamp, John boiled some water; in her cut-glass bowl he found lumps of loaf-sugar; and when he had compounded the medicine he sniffed its fragrant steam with hearty satisfaction. Then he lighted another cigar, took a sip of the toddy and smiled. Again he fancied near him a faint atmospheric disturbance, suggestive of a groan audible only to the mind, rather more distinct than before. But the grateful warmth of the beverage spread a glow of comfort through his frame; he sipped again, smacking his lips; a feeling of emancipation animated him and he said:
"Let her groan. This suits me. But if Flitters brings her back, as he has promised, the way she will declare herself will be a lesson to the meek in spirit. And how much more of that can I stand? Maybe it might prove a good deal easier to start than to stop. Is it prudent to turn Araminta loose on a congenial theme when she is quiet? Is it kind to her to disturb her? Doubtless she is, as Flitters says, a stranger in the summer-land, but she is old enough to take care of herself, wherever she is, and will find some way of getting into good society before long. Ten chances to one she has run across Mrs. Danforth already, and has advance points on all the coming Easter styles in robes and halos. What's the use of bringing her back to be unhappy with the knowledge that I'm making myself comfortable?"
When at length Mr. Blodgett returned to his bed, his nerves had been effectively soothed and he slept sweetly, but his last waking thought was a doubt of the advisability of calling Araminta back.
James H. Connelly.
Footnotes