A SIGNAL IN THE NIGHT
"How far that little candle throws his beams!"
—Merchant of Venice.
A month of dangerous and almost fatal sickness followed. When at last, through the care of a faithful negro "mammy," the much-enduring man crept out from the valley of the shadow of death, he learned that Pepeeta had secured a little room in a tenement house and was supporting herself with her needle, in the use of which she had become an expert in those glad hours when she made her baby's clothes, and those sad ones when she sat far into the night awaiting David's return.
On the morning of the first day in which he was permitted to leave the house he made his way to Pepeeta's new quarters.
"And so this is to be her home," he said with a shudder as he looked up to the attic window. Every day this pale young man was seen, by the curious neighbors, hovering about the place. As for the object of his love and solicitude, she began at once to be a bread-winner. The delicate girl who never in her life until now had experienced a care about the necessities of existence began to struggle for bread in company with the thousands of poor and needy, creatures by whom she found herself surrounded. The only hunger she experienced was that of the heart. She soon became conscious of David's presence, and derived from it a pleasure which only added to her pain. She avoided him as best she could, and her determination and her sanctity prevented him from approaching her.
David could never remember how many days were passed in this way, for he lost count of time, and lived more like a man in a dream than like one in a world of life and action.
But as his strength slowly returned, he grew more and more restive under the restraint which Pepeeta's will imposed upon him. And so, while he did not dare to approach her in person, he determined to put his case to a final test, and if he could not win her back to leave forever a place in which he was doomed to suffer perpetual torment.
In the execution of this purpose, he wrote her a letter in which, after passionately pleading for her love, he asked her to give him a sign of willingness to take him once more back into her life. "If I may cherish hope of your ultimate relenting," he wrote, "place your candle on the window sill. I will wait until midnight, and if you extinguish it then, I shall accept your decision as final, and you will be responsible for what follows. I am a desperate man, and life without you has become intolerable."
With this letter in his hand, he waited until the street was quiet and the halls of the tenement house deserted, and then crept up the long staircase with trembling knees.
On tiptoe he picked his way across the corridor and slipped the note under the door. So quietly did he step that he did not hear his own footfall; but it did not escape the ears of the woman who sat stitching her life into the garment lying upon her knees. There is often in a footfall music sweeter than bird songs or harp tones.
Having thrust the letter under the door, David fled hastily down the stairway and into the street, where he began to pace back and forth like a sentry on his beat, never for a single instant losing sight of the window whence streamed the feeble rays of the candle from which he was to receive the signal of hope or despair.
Never did a condemned felon in a cell watch for the coming of a messenger of pardon with more wildly beating heart than his as he gazed at that window up in the wall of the gloomy tenement house. Never did a mariner on a storm-tossed vessel keep his eye more resolutely fixed on beams from a distant lighthouse.
It was then ten o'clock, and as he watched the slow-moving hands upon the moonlit dial in the church tower, it seemed to him they were held back by invisible fingers, and there came to his mind a forgotten story of a man who, having been accidentally imprisoned in a sepulchre, suffered in the twenty minutes which elapsed before his release all the pangs of starvation, so powerfully was his imagination excited. This story which he had once discredited he now believed, for it seemed to him as if eternities were being crowded into single moments.
He had also heard that drowning men could review their entire lives in the few instants that preceded their loss of consciousness, and he acquired a new comprehension of this mystery. All the experiences of his entire existence swept through his mind again and again with a rapidity and a distinctness that astonished him. Like a great shuttle darting back and forth through a fabric, his mind seemed to be passing again and again forward and backward through all the scenes of the past. Finally, and after what seemed uncounted ages, the great clock struck the hour of midnight. One, two, three—he stood like a man rooted to the ground,—four, five, six—his heart beat louder than the bell,—seven, eight, nine—the blood seemed bursting through his temples,—ten, eleven, twelve!—the light went out! The universe seemed to have been instantaneously swallowed up in darkness. He could not see the figure that crept to the window and gazed down upon him from behind the drapery of the curtains. He did not know that Pepeeta had fallen upon her knees in an agony deeper than his own, and was gazing down at him through streaming tears. In those few succeeding moments the sense of his personal loss was displaced by a sudden and overpowering sense of his personal guilt. The full consciousness of his sin burst upon him. He saw the selfishness of his love and the wickedness of his lust in a light brighter than day.
There is a kind of rhododendron about Trebizond of which the bees make a honey that drives people mad! He saw that illicit love was that honey of Trebizond! He felt, as he had never felt before, the pressure of that terrible power that over all and through all the discords and sins of life makes resistlessly for righteousness. He perceived that a system of wheels is attached to every thought and act, and that, each one sets in motion the entire machinery of justice. He felt that every sleepless starry eye in heaven penetrated the guilty secrets of his soul and was pledged to the execution of judgment.
These perceptions confounded him with fear. His thoughts ceased to move in order, tossing and teasing each other like straws in the wind. They ceased to illumine the depths of his soul and only hung like flickering candles above a dark mine.
Whether he looked up or down, without or within, he saw no hope, but it was not until after the lapse of many and unnoted moments that the disturbed machinery of his mind began to move. He awakened as from a nightmare, drew his hands across his eyes and looked this way and that as if to get his bearings.
"What next?" he said aloud, as if speaking to some one else. Receiving no answer, he turned instinctively toward his gambling house, and went stumbling along through the deserted streets. What is a man, after all, but a stumbling machine? Progress is made by falling forward over obstacles! The poor stumbler tottered across his own threshold into that brilliant room where he had always received an enthusiastic welcome, but which he had not visited since his sickness. If ever a man needed kindness and encouragement it was he; but his sensitive spirit instantly discovered that all was changed.
His superstitious companions had not forgotten the broken glass, and had heard of his subsequent calamities. With them the lucky alone were the adorable! The gods of the temples of fortunes are easily and quickly dethroned and the worshipers had already prostrated themselves before other shrines.
The coldness of his greeting sent a chill to his already benumbed heart and increased his desperation. He was nervous, excited, depressed, and feeling the need of something to distract his thought from his troubles, he sat down and began to play; but from the first deal he lost—lost steadily and heavily.
The habitués of the place exchanged significant glances as much as to say, "I told you so!"
Whispered phrases passed from lip to lip.
"He is playing wild."
"He has lost his nerve."
"His luck has turned."
And so indeed it had! Within a few short hours he had staked his entire fortune and lost it. It had gone as easily and as quickly as it had come.
"I guess that is about all," he said, pushing himself wearily back from the table at which he had just parted with the title to his desolated home.
"Shall I stake you, Davy?" asked one of his friends, touched by the pathos of the haggard face and hopeless voice.
"No," he answered, rising. "I have played enough. I am going away. Good-bye, boys."
Without another word, he left them and passed out of the door.
"Good-bye," they cried, as he vanished, scarcely raising their eyes from the tables.
Even in a crowd like that there will generally be found some heart which still retains its tenderness. The young man who had offered to stake him, followed the ruined gambler into the street.
"Where are you going, old man?" he said kindly, slipping his hand through David's arm.
"I don't know," he answered absently.
"Are you dead broke, Davy?"
"Dead broke," in a lifeless echo.
"Will you accept a little loan? You can't go far without money."
"It's no use."
"Take it! I wouldn't have had it if it hadn't been for you, and I won't have it long whether you take it or not."
As he spoke he slipped a roll of bills into his friend's pocket.
"Thanks!" said David.
"Don't mention it," he replied.
"Good-bye."
"Good-bye."
The sun was just rising as they parted. The first faint stir of life was perceptible in the city streets; the green-grocers were coming in with their fresh vegetables; the office boys were opening the doors and putting away the shutters; there was a bright, morning look on the faces which peered into the haggard countenance of the gambler as he crept aimlessly along, but the fresh, sweet light gave him neither brightness nor joy. His heart was cold and dead; he had not even formed a purpose.
And so he drifted aimlessly until the current that was setting toward the levee caught him and bore him on with it. The sight of a vessel just putting out to sea communicated to his spirit its first definite impulse and he ascended the gang-plank without even inquiring its destination.
In a few moments the boat swung loose and turned its prow down the river. The bustle of the embarkation distracted him. He watched the hurrying sailors, gazed at the piles of merchandise, walked up and down the deck, listened to the fresh breeze that began to play upon the great, sonorous harp of the shrouds and the masts, and when at last the vessel glided out into the waters of the gulf he lay down in a hammock and fell into a long and dreamless sleep.