Chapter XVIII: Poor Max

That was what they called him at the hotel, which had been to him a home for years, and you would know by the intonation of their voices that he was a favorite with all. He was very sick, burning with fever, and talking at intervals of his mother, of Dick, and of another whose name the attendants could not well make out. It was of his sweetheart, the chamber-maid surmised, for in the pocket of his vest, which she hung away, she had found a daguerrotype of a young girl, whose marvellous beauty she had never seen excelled.

“Poor Mr. Max! he must have loved her so much! I wonder where she is to-day?” she said, softly, as she continued to scan the lovely face smiling upon her from the worn, old-fashioned case.

Alas! the original of that picture had for many a year been mouldering back to dust, and poor Max, who had loved and wronged her so much, was whispering her name in vain. He was growing worse, his nurse feared, and so at last she sent for Dr. West, of whose skill she had heard so much, and who in a few minutes stepped into the closely darkened room.

“It seemed as if the light worried him,” the nurse said, in a whisper, as she saw the doctor glance towards the curtained windows.

“Very likely; but I should like to see him for once,” was the doctor’s reply, as he took the hot hand in his.

Max’s face, which, within a day or two, had grown very thin and was now purple with fever, was turned away from the doctor, who counted the rapid pulse, while the nurse admitted a ray of light, which shone full upon the sick man’s pillow, and made Dr. West start suddenly, and turn whiter even than the broad forehead round which the damp brown hair was curling. Then he bent anxiously over his patient, turning him more to the light, where he could see him distinctly. Did he recognize anything familiar in that sunken face, where the beard was growing so heavily,—anything which carried him back to his Northern home, where in his childhood every pastime had been shared by another, and that other his twin brother? Did he see anything which brought to him thoughts of Anna, dead so long ago, or of Robin, who died when the last summer flowers were blooming? Yes; and kneeling by the bedside he whispered, “Robert, Robert, is it you?”

The bright eyes were open and fixed upon him, but with a vacant stare, while a second look at the flushed face brought a doubt into the doctor’s mind.

“He is like my brother Robert, and yet he is not like him,” he thought, as he continued to scrutinize the features which puzzled him so much.

“Mother will know,” he said at last; and going to his mother, he said to her hurriedly, “Come with me, and tell if you ever saw this Max before.”

He was greatly excited, but not more so than his mother, who felt intuitively the shock awaiting her.

“Open that blind wide, and put back that heavy curtain,” the doctor said to the frightened nurse, who quickly obeyed his orders, and then waited to see what would happen next.

Max was talking and counting on his fingers till he came to twenty.

“Yes, twenty, that’s it,” he said; “that’s the way the paper read; just twenty years of age, and Dick and I are six years older. Dick loved her, too; he ought to have married her. Dick was a trump.”

“What does he say? What does he say? O Richard, what _does_ he say?” Mrs. West almost screamed, as she bent down so low that the hot fever breath lifted her silver hair.

Richard made no answer, nor was there need, for the mother instinct recognized the _boy_, the wayward, wandering _Robert_, mourned for as dead during so many dreary years, while the mother-love, forgetting all the past, cried out, “My boy, my boy, my Robert, my child! God has given you back to me at last! Praised be His name!”

For an instant something like reason flashed over the wasted face, but it passed away, and to the mother’s continued murmurings of love there came only incoherent mutterings of the mountains, the mines, and stocks which seemed to have been substituted for the thoughts of the twenty years and the trump of a Dick, now ministering to the mother, who had fainted and was carried from the room. But she did not stay away long. Her place was by Robert, she said, and she went back to his side, saying to those around her, “He is my boy: he left me years ago, but I have found him at last.”

People gossip in California as well as elsewhere, and the hotel was soon full of surmises and wonder, as people repeated to each other that the man known as Max was Robert West, who had taken another name and come among them, for what reason none could guess. The doctor and his mother knew the people would talk, but they did not heed it during the days when with agonizing suspense they hung over the bed of the prodigal, watching for some token of amendment, and praying that the erring one might not be taken from them now and leave the past a darker mystery than ever. He did not talk a great deal, but when he did it was mostly of home scenes in which Anna and Dick were always associated.

Once when they sat alone and Mrs. West was resting in her room, Richard said to Robert, who had spoken of Anna as of some one there with him, “You mean your wife, Anna West; you know you married her privately.”

For an instant the wild eyes flashed in Richard’s face, and then the delirious man replied, “Did _she_ tell you so?”

“Not exactly, but I inferred as much, for when she lay dying, she said, ‘Call my baby for his father,’ and when I whispered ‘Robert,’ she nodded assent. They are both dead now, Anna and little Robin. Your wife, your baby, which never saw its father,” Richard continued, wishing to impress some idea upon his brother’s mind.

But in vain, for Robert did not take the sense of what he heard, except indeed the word _baby_, which he kept repeating to himself, laughing insanely as he did so, “Anna’s baby; very funny,—very queer, when she was only a child herself,” he would whisper, and that was all which Richard achieved by speaking of the dead.

But there came a day when the stupor passed from brain and head, leaving the latter free from pain and the former clear and bright. He had been sleeping, and when he woke only Richard was with him, and he was sitting where he did not at first observe the eyes fastened so curiously upon him, as Robert West’s heart alternately beat with hope and fear. He could not be mistaken, he said to himself. It was no dream that his brother had been there with him,—aye, was there still, looking older, sadder, but his brother all the same. Dick, the kindest, best brother in the world.

“Richard,” he said at last very softly, and Richard started, and bent over the sick man, whose eyes read his face for an instant, and then filled with great hot tears, as, winding his arms around the doctor’s neck, he sobbed, “It is my brother, ’tis Dick; and you will forgive me. I’ve got the money safe, honestly earned, too, every cent; more than enough to pay the debt, which I heard you were paying for me. Dear old Dick, we will be happy yet, but tell me first that you forgive me, tell me second how you found me, and tell me third of mother, and all—”

He did not mention Anna, and Richard, in his reply, only answered the questions directly put.

“Call mother,” Robert said, when told that she was there, and in a moment she was weeping on the pillow of her erring, but, as it would seem, deeply repentant child, for he repeated to her what he had said to Richard about the money, adding, “And this fall I was coming home to buy back the dear old place, if possible; I was, mother, I was; I’ve been so bad and wicked, but you will forgive me now, for since I left New York I have not been guilty of a single dishonorable act. Ask the people here, they know. They will tell you that among them all there is no one more popular than _Max_; I go by that name,” and Robert’s face crimsoned as he said this last.

In his anxiety that his mother should forgive and think well of him, he grew so much excited that all she and Richard could do was to soothe him into quiet by assurances of forgiveness and love. He was too weak to talk longer, and he lay perfectly still, holding his mother’s hand and gazing into the dear face which bent so fondly over him. Once his lips quivered with some deep emotion, and when Richard asked what he would say, he answered:

“Mother has changed so much,—her hair has all turned white. Was it for _me_, mother?”

“Not wholly, Robert; it turned about the time when we lost Anna,” was Mrs. West answer.

Instantly the sick man’s eyelids closed, and one after another the big tears rolled down his sunken cheeks, leaving a red, shining track, such as bitter, scalding tears always leave, but he made no comment, and Anna was not mentioned again until two days had passed, and he was so much better that he sat up in bed, propped on pillows, with his mother at his side, half supporting him. Then suddenly breaking a silence which had fallen upon them, he exclaimed:

“It was an unfortunate hour that saw me installed as our great Uncle Jason’s book-keeper and confidential clerk. He trusted me so entirely, and there were such large sums of money daily passing through my hands, that the temptation was a great one to a person of my expensive tastes and habits. I cannot tell just when I took the first five dollars, replacing it as soon as possible, and then finding the second sin so much easier than the first. It was not a sin, I said then, as did others of my companions who were in the habit of doing the same thing, and who led me on from bad to worse, while all the time my uncle believed me a pattern of honesty. If I had not heard that a part of Uncle Jason’s fortune rightfully belonged to us, I do not believe I should have fallen so low. As it was, I made myself think that what I took was mine, and after I learned to gamble it was ten times worse. There is a fascination about those dens of iniquity which you cannot understand, and it proved my ruin. I played every night, sometimes losing, sometimes winning, and gradually staking more and more, until at last I bet so heavily that forgery was the consequence. I don’t know what made me do it, for I knew I could not replace that 20,000 dollars, and when the deed was done there was no alternative but to run away. Assuming the name of John Maxwell, I went to England first, and then to California. Uncle Jason had so much faith in me that you know he believed me murdered, until the fraud was discovered, when it seems he behaved most generously, suppressing the facts, and after an interview with you, my brother, consented to keep the whole thing still, provided the money was in time refunded.”

“Who told you this?” both Richard and his mother exclaimed, but Robert only replied:

“I heard it, and resolved, if possible, to earn that money and pay it back myself. The voyage out sobered me into a better man, for, mother, your prayers, said over me when I was a child, rang continually in my ears, until I, too, ventured to whisper each day the words, ‘Lead us not into temptation,’ saying them at first more from habit than anything else, and afterwards because I learned to have faith in them, learned to believe there was something in that petition which did keep me from falling lower. I was not good as you term goodness, and had I died I should assuredly have been lost; but within a few short months there has been a change, so that what I once was doing for your sakes I now do, I trust, from higher, holier motives; and oh! I had so much need of forgiveness, for had I not wronged everybody, and you, my brother, most of all?”

There was a mutual pressure of hands between the brothers, and then they who listened hoped to hear of Anna next, but of her Robert was still silent, and they suffered him to take his own course, following him with breathless interest as he told of his life in the mines, and how he had been successful beyond his most sanguine hopes,—how friends had sprung up around him, and all things had conspired to make him happy, were it not for the dreadful memories of the past which haunted him continually.

“I should have written when I learned that I was safe from a felon’s doom,” he said, “but with this information came news of so terrible a nature that I was stunned for many months, so that I cared little what became of me, and when feeling came back again, I said I’ll wait until I have the money as a sure peace offering. I had it almost earned once, two years ago, but by a great reverse I lost so much that I was compelled to wait yet longer,—wait, as it seems, till you came here to find me. It is all a dream to me yet that you are here, and that I, perhaps, shall breathe again my native air, and visit the old home. Is it greatly changed?”

“Many would think West Lawn improved,” Richard replied, “but to us who loved Anna it can never be the same.”

There was another silence, and then Richard, who could no longer restrain himself, exclaimed:

“Robert, if you know aught which can throw a ray of light on Anna’s dark face, in pity tell us what it is! You do know,—you must know!—Was Anna your wife?”

Richard could hear the beatings of his own and his brother’s heart as he waited for the answer, which, when it came, was a decided “_Yes_, Anna was my wife!”