All Bedlam Courses Past (one hundred seventy)

All Bedlam Courses Past

Chapter Seven

Can’t Leave for Staying

(part one hundred seventy)

ii.

The Educated 

Where were they now to be found, those friends, proven fair-weather fellows, after all? Gadsby Bingley wearied of his long and footsore journey, through such desolate and inhospitable territory. He sank at the end of his last few steps, to lay himself under a lone tree, spotted long minutes past at a distant crossroads. Nowhere was there sound of man nor beast. He had emptied his water jug; not a drop fell to his panting tongue. Had the tree but borne fruit, of some succulent variety, both to slake his thirst and fill his stomach!

Perhaps civilization lay over the horizon, just where sight faded. When he felt his strength somewhat regained, he might—

But which way, left or right? O, that Divine Mercy—he scarce dared say the words—pity him and furnish rescue, in the form of a mounted traveler! Gadsby perspired less, for resting immobile, but the weather remained sultry. And yet, no cloud dotted the sky. Were there angels there, high beyond imagination’s reach, but seeing far below, to the depths of man’s suffering on earth?

Would they see one repentant sinner, forsaken, parched, and starving?

Those magician’s powers that had fooled the common herd could be of no help; Gadsby had no audience to swindle of their hard-earned coins. It came to him now, how cruel his treachery had been. He thought of the poor widow, the last few pennies she had dredged from her tattered pocketbook, to purchase for her dying child the promised elixir—which its purveyor had known to be mere syrup and water!

Prayer seemed to come to him naturally, and he cried, to a Heaven which had known him not

“Leave off.”

“Leave off…here?” Richard, not accepting it, gave the line a second rendering, much vibrato on the name of Heaven. “Dear Lord Above! Have mercy on me, a poor sinner!”

“Shut up. Shut up. Shut up.” His father repeated the phase until the steam ran out and he shut himself up.

“You don’t like that bit about the angels, ‘high beyond imagination’s reach’? I thought it had dash, myself.”

“Shut up.”

“Well, you’re a little frisky, nighttime coming on. Take some food?”

Stubborn refusal to answer. Richard resolved that if his father told him a hundred times not, he would ask a hundred and one.

“How’s that robe? Cozy enough?”

“If you liked, you could leave me altogether.”

“No, I can’t. That is, I do like, and I would leave you, but Carolina Melvin went and deputized me, and she’s one to be seeing things through. I don’t picture her doing a job halfway. Ought to please you Mama at least makes friends.”

182

Bedlam

All Bedlam Courses Past (part one hundred seventy-one)

(2024, Stephanie Foster)