Read Ebook: The Angel of Lonesome Hill; A Story of a President by Landis Frederick

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Ebook has 144 lines and 7875 words, and 3 pages

THE ANGEL OF LONESOME HILL A STORY OF A PRESIDENT

It was a handful of people in the country--a simple-hearted handful. There was no railroad--only a stage which creaked through the gullies and was late. Once it had a hot-box, and the place drifted through space, a vagrant atom.

Time swung on a lazy hinge. Children came; young folks married; old ones died; Indian Creek overflowed the bottom-land; crops failed; one by one the stage bore boys and girls away to seek their fortunes in the far-off world; at long intervals some tragedy streaked the yellow clay monotony with red; January blew petals from her silver garden; April poured her vase of life; August crawled her snail length; years passed, leaving rusty streaks back to a dull horizon.

The sky seemed higher than anywhere else; clouds hurried over this place called "Cold Friday."

A mile to the east was "Lonesome Hill." Indians once built signal fires upon it, and in this later time travellers alighted as their horses struggled up the steep approach. At the top was a cabin; it was whitewashed, and so were the apple-trees round it. A gourd vine clung to its chimney; pigeons fluttered upon its shingles, and June flung a crimson rose mantle over its side and half-way up the roof.

One wished to stop and rest beneath its weeping willow by the white stone milk house.

Those who passed by day were accustomed to a woman's face at the window--a calm face which looked on life as evening looks on day--such a face as one might use to decorate a fancy of the old frontier. Those who passed by night were grateful for the lamp which protested against Nature's apparent consecration of the place to solitude.

This home held aloof from "Cold Friday"; many times Curiosity went in, but Conjecture alone came out, for through the years the man and woman of this cabin merely said, "We came from back yonder." Nobody knew where "yonder" was.

But the law of compensation was in force--even in "Cold Friday." With acquaintanceships as with books, the ecstasy of cutting leaves is not always sustained in the reading, and the silence of this man and woman was the life of village wonder.

It gave "Friday's" chimney talk a spice it otherwise had never known; the back log seldom crumbled into ashes till the bones of these cabin dwellers lay bleaching on the plains of "Perhaps."

John Dale was seventy-five years or more, but worked his niggard hillside all the day, and seldom came to town. His aged wife was kind; the flowers of her life she gave away, but none could glance upon the garden. She seemed to know when neighbors were ill; hers was the dignity of being indispensable. Many the mother of that region who, standing beneath some cloud, thanked God as this slender, white-haired soul with star shine in her face, hurried over the fields with an old volume pasted full of quaint remedies.

She made a call of another kind--just once--when the "Hitchenses" brought the first organ to "Cold Friday."

She remained only long enough to go straight to the cabinet, which the assembled neighbors regarded with distant awe, and play several pieces "without the book." On her leaving with the same quiet indifference, Mrs. Ephraim Fivecoats peered owlishly toward Mrs. Rome Lukens and rendered the following upon her favorite instrument:

"Well! if that woman ever gits the fever an' gits deliriums, I want to be round, handy like. I'll swan there'll be more interestin' things told than we've heerd in our born days--that woman is allus thinkin'!"

In this final respect, the judgment of the Lady of the House of Fivecoats was sound.

How gallant the mind is! If the past be sad, it mingles with Diversion's multitude till Sadness is lost; if the present be unhappy, it has a magic thrift of joys, and Unhappiness is hushed by Memory's laughter; if both past and present have a grief, it seeks amid its scanty store for some event, for instance, whose recurrence brings some brightness; to greet this it sends affectionate anticipations--and were its quiver empty, it would battle still some way!

So the wife of Dale looked forward to Doctor Johnston's visits, yet there were so many doors between her silence and the world, she did not turn as he entered one eventful day.

Doctors are Nature's confessors, and down the memory of this one wandered a camel of sympathy upon which the sick had heaped their secret woes for years, though one added naught to the burden.

It was the tale he wished to hear, and when some fugitive phrase promised revelation, he folded the powders slowly; but when it ended in a sigh, he strapped up bottles and expectations and went away, reflecting how poor the world where one might hear all things save those which interested.

But Time is a patient locksmith to whom all doors swing open.

"I always sit by this window," she began as he removed the fever thermometer; "I've looked so long, I see nothing in a way--and at night I always put the light here. If he should come in the dark I want him to see--here is a letter."

The Doctor read and returned it with a look of infinite pity.

"I had a dream last night; I may be superstitious or it may be the fever--but it was so real. I saw it all; it was just like my prayer. I believe in God, you know." She smiled in half reproach. "Yes, in spite of all.

"In that dream something touched my hand and a voice whispered the word, 'Now.' Oh, how anxious it was! I awoke, sitting up; the lamp had gone out, yet it was not empty--and there was no wind."

John Dale stumbled into the room, his arms full of wood, and an old dog, lying before the fireplace, thumped his tail against the floor with diminishing vigor.

She arose. "I'll get you a bite to eat, Doctor."

"Never mind! I must be going." He made a sign to Dale, who followed to the gate.

"John, I've been calling here a long time--"

"I know I ought to pay somethin'," Dale started to say.

"It isn't that--I've just diagnosed the case; only one man can cure it."

"Would he--on credit?" Dale anxiously inquired.

"He never charges." Johnston smiled sorrowfully at the old man's despair.

"Who is he?"

"The President; the President of the United States," he added as Dale's eyes filled with questions. "I came out of college a sceptic, John, and I'd be an infidel outright but for that wife of yours--she's nearer the sky, somehow, than any other mortal I've seen. I don't believe in anything, of course--but that dream--if I were you I'd trust it--I'd follow where it led."

With his foot on the hub, the farmer slowly whetted his knife on his boot. "I'll go with you, Doctor."

"I called at the office, but it was locked, and so I'm here," apologized Dale as Judge Long opened the door of his old-fashioned stone house in Point Elizabeth, the county seat.

"Glad to see you--had your supper?"

Hearing voices in the dining-room, he answered in the affirmative.

"Then have a cigar and wait in the library; the folks are having a little company."

The old man surveyed the room; the books alone were worth more than his earthly possessions. From a desk loomed a bust of Webster. Shadows seemed to leap from it; the sombre lips bespoke the futility of striving against stern realities.

There was gayety in the dining-room; Judge Long was a fountain of mirth, a favorite at taverns, while riding the circuit--before juries--wherever people gathered.

A gale of laughter greeted his last anecdote and the diners protested as he arose.

Dale told his story excitedly, and at the conclusion Judge Long slowly brushed away the tobacco smoke.

"I'm sorry, John, but we did all we could last month--and we failed; there's just one thing to do--face the matter. It's hard, but this world is chiefly water, and what isn't water is largely rock--it's for fish and fossils, I suppose."

"But we will win now!" The old man's hand fell with decision.

"Why do you say that?"

"Mother had another dream last night."

"But, you know, she had one a month ago," quietly protested Long.

"Yes--and it came true--we didn't do our part just right. We can't fail this time; there must be a day of justice!"

"Well, as to that, John, this game of life is strange; we bring nothing with us, so how can we lose? We take nothing away, so how can we win? We think; we plan; we stack these plans with precision, but Chance always sits at our right, waiting to cut the cards. You speak of 'justice.' It's a myth. The statue above the court-house stands first on one foot, then on the other, tired of waiting, tired of the sharp rocks of technicality, tired of the pompous farce. Why, Dale," he waved a hand toward an opposite corner, "if old Daniel Webster were here he couldn't do anything!"

When an American lawyer cites that mighty shade it is conclusive, but the effect was lost on Dale. He was not a lawyer, neither had he read the "Dartmouth College Case" nor the "Reply to Hayne." In fact his relations with the "Sage of Marshfield" were so formal he believed his fame to rest chiefly on having left behind a multitude of busts. Besides, he was impatient; the Judge's peroration having lifted his head so suddenly that cigar ashes fell upon the deep rug at his feet.

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