ONE evening, about ten days before Christmas, mother and I were waiting, as we so often did, for father's return. It was earlier than he commonly came back, so we did not expect him yet. I had been reading to mother the fifteenth of John, and she said she did wish she had cared more for such things. She thought, if she had, she would be happier. And I said it wasn't too late, for God was always willing to answer if we asked Him.
And then, all at once, there was a great noise and banging at the front door. I went out to see what it was, and some men came in, carrying a helpless body.
I remember shivering with the old feeling of horror and dread, not of fear. I thought he had taken too much again.
And so he had, but that was not all. He had fallen into a cellar, and was very much hurt. The men spoke as if they scarcely knew whether he still breathed.
It was terrible indeed. I called mother, and she shrieked and wrung her hands and seemed half beside herself. There was no learning particulars at first. Father was carried upstairs, and laid on the bed, and one of the men went off for a doctor.
Father lay quite quiet and senseless, not even moaning. Dickenson, our former neighbour, was one of those who had come, and I took him aside, and asked how it had all happened.
He could not tell me very much. Partly from what he had seen, and partly from what had been told him, he knew that father had been with Mr. Simmons in the billiard-room, and that they had been playing for money, and that father seemed to lose over and over again and was very much excited, while Mr. Simmons seemed trying to soothe him. Then the two went into another room, and drink was called for, and father became still more excited. He seemed trying to get up a quarrel with Mr. Simmons, and he said over and over again that Mr. Simmons had ruined him.
Mr. Simmons kept quite cool all the time, but presently he was seen to get up and move away, in a sort of stealthy manner, making believe that he was coming back directly. Father grew quite furious then, and attacked him with his fists, and others in the room had to come to the rescue. Mr. Simmons took himself off, by their advice, and seemed not at all sorry to do so; and father went back to his seat, muttering and grumbling, and saying "he would be even with him yet."
After a while he got up to go home, and Dickenson, seeing how unsteady he was, followed some distance behind, not feeling sure that help mightn't be needed. And so it was. Father had not gone half a street length, before he seemed to fancy he saw Mr. Simmons ahead. He set up a sort of shout, and rushed off at a blind pace, and in a moment went headlong down a kind of open trap-door, with a deep warehouse cellar below. The marvel was that he escaped death on the spot.
I went back to him, after hearing all this, and waited till the doctor came. Mother was sobbing and crying and would not stay in the room. I did not dare to touch father. He lay just as they had put him down, helpless and senseless. Sometimes I thought he must be already gone. The men were very good, and would not leave me alone. One was Sykes, Mr. Johnstone's foreman, and I never shall forget his kindness, as he tried to cheer me up.
When the doctor came, I was sent away, and there was a long examination. Mother was sobbing so as to be quite useless, and the doctor sent for me afterwards, to speak to me.
He said that father was terribly hurt. There were broken bones, but he feared these were not the worst injuries. He could not say more yet, however: so he only gave careful directions how I was to manage, and promised to come again next day.
The next few weeks were just one long bout of nursing. It was wonderful how good some of our old neighbours were,—those who had been grannie's friends in earlier days. As for newer friends, who had clustered round us when the money came, they dropped off like dead leaves from a tree in autumn.
I don't know what we should have done without help. Mother was such a poor nurse, and so easily overcome, and also she was in sickly health. And I was a mere girl, quite unused to illness.
As the weeks passed on, father did not seem really better. The broken bones were mending, but he lay still like a log, seeming to have no power in his body and no sense in his mind. At first there was a great deal of fever, and his thoughts wandered much; but when that passed off, sense did not come back. He knew nobody clearly, and was like a little child, having to be fed and cared for every hour.
And at last the doctor told us plainly that it always would be so. He said he had feared it from the beginning. The injuries to the head and spine were so great that father could never recover from them. He might linger on a good many years, but he would be helpless and childish to the end.
I can see now how this great trouble was sent in mercy to mother and me, for we were saved by it from greater miseries. But at the time we could not see things so. When we thought how the accident had happened, and when we remembered what father had once been, it seemed almost more than we could bear.
For a long while there was no time to think of anything but the nursing. Soon, however, it became needful to give attention to something else. Christmas bills had come in again, and tradespeople were growing impatient. And when mother and I began to look into the matter, we found strangely little of the five thousand pounds left. Father had been selling out capital again and again, unknown to us; so instead of £400 a year there was not £200, and there were demands enough to swallow up a good part of what remained. Mr. Simmons had fleeced poor father indeed; though of course it had not all gone in that direction.
Mr. Simmons was nowhere to be found. He had gone away a day or two after the accident, to pay a week's visit to a friend,—so he said. But though a good many weeks had gone by, he had not returned, and he never did return. Nobody knew his whereabouts: so we could ask him no questions about father's affairs.
We let our house as quickly as possible, and we sold out a good part of what remained of the money, so as to pay off everything. Mother said I should manage it all my own way, and I could not bear to keep people waiting longer for their due. I went to kind Mr. Scott, and he helped me with advice. Then we settled to live in a tiny cottage, much smaller than our old one, which had a second room on the ground-floor, beside the kitchen, where father could sleep. There was just enough money left to keep us going, with great care, and with the help of what we could earn,—I by charing, and mother by needlework. Asaph came to live at home, and went to a shop every day as errand boy.
These changes were at first a great trouble to mother. Yet in time she learnt to be thankful that she had not been left to go on in her old way, caring for nothing but amusing herself. And as for me, I was far happier in the little cottage than I had been in the house.
Not that there was any harm in our having a nice house and more money, if God gave them to us. The harm was in taking it all, without a thought of how to use and spend according to His will.
Father never became better. He lived some years, always in the same state. He had hardly more sense than a baby, and did not seem to remember the past. I often said to him texts and easy hymns, but I never could tell if he understood. He passed away suddenly at last, in his sleep. Ah,—he was a sad wreck. Things might have been so different with him!
We three lived on long together in the little cottage, afterwards; and Asaph grew to be our comfort and stay. The change came only just in time to save our boy from being quite spoilt. But father's state was a sharp warning to him. He seemed to become more thoughtful from that Christmas—and no wonder.
THE END.
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