The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 04, No. 25, November, 1859

"I do promise."

"Swear!"

"Nay, friend, that would be wrong," replied the girl, unconsciously adopting the phraseology of the Quakers, while expressing a sentiment learned from them; for though Faith had been brought up outwardly in the creed of her father, she had, without being aware of it, adopted many of the tenets to which her mother held.

"I will promise you very solemnly, however," continued she, "that I will neither look at yonder thing nor allow any one else to do so; and you will be wrong to doubt my word."

"I don't.—What is your name?"

"Faith."

"A good omen. Mine is—Ichabod."

"Ichabod Widdrinton?"

"Ichabod. Call me so,—all of you."

"Very well, if it is your name, we will. Now you must go to sleep."

"Sit there,—where I can see you."

Faith complied with this request, although uncertain whether it was not prompted by a distrust of her promise. The stranger soon slept, and his young nurse then made a more attentive survey of his features than she had yet done. He seemed not over forty years of age, and would, in health, have been considered a handsome man,—although the fine silky hair, thin beard, sensitive nostril, and delicate mouth could never have expressed much of strength or resolution.

The traces of disease and starvation were painfully apparent; but it seemed to the thoughtful Faith that behind these she could perceive in the sorrowful, downward curve of the lips, in the lines of the hollow, throbbing temples, in the gloomy light of the dark eyes, symptoms of a long corroding care, which, though secretly, had done its work of devastation more surely and more ruthlessly than the more apparent foes.

"How he must have suffered!" murmured she. It seemed as if the tone of gentle pity had penetrated the light slumber, and reached the heart of the sick man,—for, opening his eyes, he smiled upon the girl, a wan, sad smile, which was at once an assent and a benison.

From that moment, until the welcome end of that sad life, Ichabod would patiently endure no tendance but Faith's; and she, with the calm and silent self-abnegation of her order, (for Florence Nightingale is but a type, and there are those all about us who lack but her opportunities,) devoted herself to him.

Her mother sometimes remonstrated, and begged her to yield her place in the sick-chamber to her or to one of the pauper women; but Faith, whose grave sweetness concealed more determination than a stranger would have guessed, would simply say,—

"Dear mother, what is a little fatigue to one as well as I am, compared with the pleasure of making this poor stranger's death-bed happy and quiet?—which it certainly would not be, if he was crossed in his fancy for seeing me about him." And the conscientious mind of the mother was forced to yield assent to this simple logic.

A few weeks thus passed, and then the sick man became a dying man. The pauper inmates of the house were all willing and anxious to watch beside him through the long nights, but Ichabod received all their attentions very ungraciously; nor was it till Faith told him, in her kind, decided way, that she could not stay with him at night, that he consented to allow the others to do so.

At last there came the evening when the physician said to Mrs. Coffin, as he entered the room where she sat with her husband,—

"He won't last till morning,—'tis impossible."

"Then thee had better watch beside him, Phineas. It is not fitting that Faith should do so."

"Certain. I'll go right up, and send her down," replied Phineas, readily.

But when the arrangements for the night were made known to Ichabod, he caught hold of Faith's dress, as she stood at his bedside bidding him good-night, and gasped out,—

"No, no!—you!—I must have—you!—I shall die—die to-night!—And—and I want to tell—to tell you something.—Stay,—stay, Faith!—it's the last—last time, and I—I shall never trouble any one—any more."

"Let me stay, mother; father, do!" pleaded Faith, looking from one to the other. "I should be very unhappy, always, if I was obliged to deny him this last request. I shall not be afraid, mother; and Betty can sleep in the chair by the fire, if you wish it, so as to be at hand, if "–

"Well, child, if thee feels a call to do so, and it will make thee unhappy to be denied, I will hold my peace. But thee must certainly have Betty here, and promise to send her to call me, if Ichabod should be worse,—won't thee?"

Faith gave the required promise, and in a short time the chamber was prepared for night. The old woman (whose skill in the last awful rites which man pays to man caused her always to be selected for such occasions) slept soundly beside the glowing fire, the dying man dozed uneasily, and Faith, shading the light from his eyes, opened the large-print Bible, which her mother, careful both for the well-being of her daughter's immortal soul and temporal eyesight, had recommended for her night's perusal.

The hours passed slowly on, unmarked by change, until Faith had counted three solemn strokes from the old clock in the entry, when the sick man suddenly awoke.

As Faith came to his bedside, to offer him the draught for which he always asked on awakening, she was struck with a change in his face. The eyes were at once calmer and brighter, the look of uneasy pain had disappeared, and the thin lips wore almost a smile.

"Dear Faith," said he, in a gentle voice, which yet was stronger and more unbroken than any she had heard from him before, "how good you have been to me! I am dying; but do not call any one yet. I want to talk to you a little, first. Put another pillow under my head, and raise me,—so. Now light your other candle, stir the fire to a brighter blaze, and then uncover—it."

Faith, pale and quiet, did as she was bid, stirred the fire, till its ruddy glow brightened every nook of the little white-washed chamber, and made the old crone beside it wince and mutter in her sleep. Having shielded her from its fierce light, she then, with trembling fingers, opened a little penknife which lay upon the table, and cut the twine with which the cover was sewed at the back. The last stitch severed, the cloth fell with a solemn rustle at her feet, and disclosed—a picture.

Faith examined it with much attention and some curiosity. It was the full-length figure of a man, dressed in rich robes of office, his powdered hair put back from his forehead, his left hand resting on the pommel of his sword, and his right clasping a roll of parchment. The expression of his face was grave, majestic, and noble; and yet between those handsome features and the attenuated face of the dying pauper Faith soon perceived one of those resemblances, strong, yet indefinable, which are so apparent to some persons, so undiscoverable by others.

"A noble gentleman, Faith,—was he not?" said Ichabod, at length. "And they say his picture does not do him justice. He was an English gentleman of property and station,—the heir of a good fortune and honorable name; but he left all to come here and help found this new country,—this glorious land of freedom and conscience,—where every man has perfect liberty—to starve in his own fashion.

"He came and was a great man among them. He built the finest house in the village of Boston, and then came hither, where they made him governor and named a bay after him.

"He went home for a visit to England, and there he had this picture painted by the court-painter of those days, and brought it back with him as a present to his wife.

"He was father of many children, mostly girls: and finally died in a very dignified and respectable manner, full of years and honors,—as they say in storybooks.

"His handsome property, being divided so often, made but rather small portions for the children, and several of the daughters died unmarried.

"Then the family began to decay, and each succeeding head of the family found it a harder struggle to keep up the old hospitalities and the traditional style of living. They died out, too. The lateral branches of the family-tree never flourished, and one after another came to an end, till about forty years ago the remnant of the family-blood and the family-name was centred in two cousins, a young man and a girl. They met at the funeral of the girl's mother, and found in a short conversation that they were the sole representatives of the old name, alive.

"They married, gloomily helping on the fate which awaited them, by uniting their two threads of life in one, that thus she might sever it more easily. I was their only child, and they named me Ichabod,—'the glory has departed.'

"It is a sad proof of how deeply the bitterness of life had entered their souls, that, even in the supreme moment when they clasped their first-born in their arms, the name which rose from heart to lip, and which they bestowed upon him, was in itself a cry of anguish and despair.

"The husband soon died. Man breaks, woman bends, beneath the crushing weight of such a life. My mother lived, a dark and silent woman, till five years ago. Then she died, too, and I inherited my ancestor's portrait and the curse of the Withringtons.

"I tried to work, to earn my bread, as men all about me were doing. But no,—the fate was upon me, the curse pursued me. Everything failed which I attempted. I sunk lower and lower, until the name and the picture, which had been my pride, became a shame and a reproach to me. I abandoned the one and concealed the other, resolved to reveal neither until the moment arrived when death should wipe out the squalor of life, conquer fate, and expiate the curse.

"Quick, Faith, quick! The hour has come. Take the knife you just held,—cut the canvas from its frame,—cut it in fragments,—lay it on the blazing fire. We will perish together,—the First and—the Last."

"Nay, Ichabod, give it to me," said Faith, shrinking from the proposed holocaust "I will always keep it, and value it."

"Would you see me fall dead at your feet, while attempting to do for myself what you refuse to do for me?" asked the dying man, with feverish ardor, and half rising, as if to leave his bed.

"No, no,—I will do it, since it must be so," exclaimed Faith, eagerly. "Lie down again and watch me."

Ichabod sunk back upon his pillows, and gazed with eyes of fitful light upon the girl, while she, opening the keen knife, cut slowly and laboriously round the margin of the stout canvas, which shrieked beneath the blade, as if the spirit of the effigy which it bore were resisting the fearful doom which threatened it.

At last the canvas was entirely released, and Faith silently held it up before the eyes of the dying man, upon whose face had come a dull, leaden blankness, and whose eyes were painful to watch as they struggled to pierce the film which was gathering over them.

"Burn," he hoarsely murmured.

With a sigh, Faith cut the picture into strips, and laid them gently, reverently, upon the coals heaped in the large fireplace.