Erema; Or, My Father's Sin, Page 2

  CHAPTER II

  A PACIFIC SUNSET

  At last we came to a place from which the great spread of the earthwas visible. For a time--I can not tell how long--we had wholly lostourselves, going up and down, and turning corners, without gettingfurther. But my father said that we must come right, if we made up ourminds to go long enough. We had been in among all shapes, and want ofshapes, of dreariness, through and in and out of every thrup and thrumof weariness, scarcely hoping ever more to find our way out and discovermemory of men for us, when all of a sudden we saw a grand sight. Theday had been dreadfully hot and baffling, with sudden swirls of red dustarising, and driving the great drought into us. To walk had been worsethan to drag one's way through a stubbly bed of sting-nettles. But nowthe quick sting of the sun was gone, and his power descending in thebalance toward the flat places of the land and sea. And suddenly welooked forth upon an immeasurable spread of these.

  We stood at the gate of the sandy range, which here, like a vast brownpatch, disfigures the beauty of the sierra. On either side, in purpledistance, sprang sky-piercing obelisks and vapor-mantled glaciers,spangled with bright snow, and shodden with eternal forest. Before uslay the broad, luxuriant plains of California, checkered with more tintsthan any other piece of earth can show, sleeping in alluvial ease,and veined with soft blue waters. And through a gap in the brown coastrange, at twenty leagues of distance, a light (so faint as to seem ashadow) hovered above the Pacific.

  But none of all this grandeur touched our hearts except the water gleam.Parched with thirst, I caught my father's arm and tried to urge himon toward the blue enchantment of ecstatic living water. But, to mysurprise, he staggered back, and his face grew as white as the distantsnow. I managed to get him to a sandy ledge, with the help of his ownendeavors, and there let him rest and try to speak, while my frightenedheart throbbed over his.

  "My little child," he said at last, as if we were fallen back ten years,"put your hand where I can feel it."

  My hand all the while had been in his, and to let him know where it was,it moved. But cold fear stopped my talking.

  "My child, I have not been kind to you," my father slowly spoke again,"but it has not been from want of love. Some day you will see all this,and some day you will pardon me."

  He laid one heavy arm around me, and forgetting thirst and pain, withthe last intensity of eyesight watched the sun departing. To me, I knownot how, great awe was every where, and sadness. The conical point ofthe furious sun, which like a barb had pierced us, was broadening intoa hazy disk, inefficient, but benevolent. Underneath him depth of nightwas waiting to come upward (after letting him fall through) and stainhis track with redness. Already the arms of darkness grew in readinessto receive him: his upper arc was pure and keen, but the lower wasflaked with atmosphere; a glow of hazy light soon would follow, and onebright glimmer (addressed more to the sky than to the earth), and afterthat a broad, soft gleam; and after that how many a man should never seethe sun again, and among them would be my father.

  He, for the moment, resting there, with heavy light upon him, and thedark jaws of the mountain desert yawning wide behind him, and all thebeautiful expanse of liberal earth before him--even so he seemed to me,of all the things in sight, the one that first would draw attention.His face was full of quiet grandeur and impressive calm, and the sadtranquillity which comes to those who know what human life is throughcontinual human death. Although, in the matter of bodily strength, hewas little past the prime of life, his long and abundant hair was white,and his broad and upright forehead marked with the meshes of the netof care. But drought and famine and long fatigue had failed even now tochange or weaken the fine expression of his large, sad eyes. Those eyesalone would have made the face remarkable among ten thousand, so deepwith settled gloom they were, and dark with fatal sorrow. Such eyesmight fitly have told the grief of Adrastus, son of Gordias, who, havingslain his own brother unwitting, unwitting slew the only son of hisgenerous host and savior.

  The pale globe of the sun hung trembling in the haze himself had made.My father rose to see the last, and reared his tall form uprightagainst the deepening background. He gazed as if the course of life layvanishing below him, while level land and waters drew the breadth ofshadow over them. Then the last gleam flowed and fled upon the face ofocean, and my father put his dry lips to my forehead, saying nothing.

  His lips might well be dry, for he had not swallowed water for threedays; but it frightened me to feel how cold they were, and eventremulous. "Let us run, let us run, my dear father!" I cried. "Deliciouswater! The dark falls quickly; but we can get there before dark. It isall down hill. Oh, do let us run at once!"

  "Erema," he answered, with a quiet smile, "there is no cause now forhurrying, except that I must hurry to show you what you have to do, mychild. For once, at the end of my life, I am lucky. We have escaped fromthat starving desert at a spot--at a spot where we can see--"

  For a little while he could say no more, but sank upon the stony seat,and the hand with which he tried to point some distant landmark fellaway. His face, which had been so pale before, became of a deadlywhiteness, and he breathed with gasps of agony. I knelt before him andtook his hands, and tried to rub the palms, and did whatever I couldthink of.

  "Oh, father, father, you have starved yourself, and given every thingto me! What a brute I was to let you do it! But I did not know; I neverknew! Please God to take me also!"

  He could not manage to answer this, even if he understood it; but hefirmly lifted his arm again, and tried to make me follow it.

  "What does it matter? Oh, never mind, never mind such, a wretch as I am!Father, only try to tell me what I ought to do for you."

  "My child! my child!" were his only words; and he kept on saying, "Mychild! my child!" as if he liked the sound of it.

  At what time of the night my father died I knew not then or afterward.It may have been before the moon came over the snowy mountains, or itmay not have been till the worn-out stars in vain repelled the daybreak.All I know is that I ever strove to keep more near to him through thenight, to cherish his failing warmth, and quicken the slow, laborious,harassed breath. From time to time he tried to pray to God for me andfor himself; but every time his mind began to wander and to slip away,as if through want of practice. For the chills of many wretched yearshad deadened and benumbed his faith. He knew me, now and then, betwixtthe conflict and the stupor; for more than once he muttered feebly, andas if from out a dream,

  "Time for Erema to go on her way. Go on your way, and save your life;save your life, Erema."

  There was no way for me to go, except on my knees before him. I tookhis hands, and made them lissome with a soft, light rubbing. I whisperedinto his ear my name, that he might speak once more to me; and when hecould not speak, I tried to say what he would say to me.

  At last, with a blow that stunned all words, it smote my stupid,wandering mind that all I had to speak and smile to, all I cared toplease and serve, the only one left to admire and love, lay here in myweak arms quite dead. And in the anguish of my sobbing, little thingscame home to me, a thousand little things that showed how quietly hehad prepared for this, and provided for me only. Cold despair andself-reproach and strong rebellion dazed me, until I lay at my father'sside, and slept with his dead hand in mine. There in the desert ofdesolation pious awe embraced me, and small phantasms of individual fearcould not come nigh me.

  By-and-by long shadows of morning crept toward me dismally, and thepallid light of the hills was stretched in weary streaks away from me.How I arose, or what I did, or what I thought, is nothing now. Suchtimes are not for talking of. How many hearts of anguish lie forlorn,with none to comfort them, with all the joy of life died out, and allthe fear of having yet to live, in front arising!

  Young and weak, and wrong of sex for doing any valiance, long I lay bymy father's body, wringing out my wretchedness. Thirst and famine nowhad flown into the opposite extreme; I seemed to loathe the thoughtof water, and the smell of food wou
ld have made me sick. I opened myfather's knapsack, and a pang of new misery seized me. There lay nearlyall his rations, which he had made pretense to eat as he gave me minefrom time to time. He had starved himself; since he failed of his mark,and learned our risk of famishing, all his own food he had kept for me,as well as his store of water. And I had done nothing but grumble andgroan, even while consuming every thing. Compared with me, the hoveringvultures might be considered angels.

  When I found all this, I was a great deal too worn out to cry or sob.Simply to break down may be the purest mercy that can fall on trulyhopeless misery. Screams of ravenous maws and flaps of fetid wings cameclose to me, and, fainting into the arms of death, I tried to save myfather's body by throwing my own over it.