Berry looked at her hard, and then said in a dry voice, “An’ so I got to go an’ leave you to him?”
“Yes, you mus’; I’m his’n now.”
He turned to the door, murmuring, “My wife gone, Kit a nobody, an’ Joe, little Joe, a murderer, an’ then I—I—ust to pray to Gawd an’ call him ‘Ouah Fathah.’ ” He laughed hoarsely. It sounded like nothing Fannie had ever heard before.
“Don’t, Be’y, don’t say dat. Maybe we don’t un’erstan’.”
Her faith still hung by a slender thread, but his had given way in that moment.
“No, we don’t un’erstan’,” he laughed as he went out of the door. “We don’t un’erstan’.”
He staggered down the steps, blinded by his emotions, and set his face towards the little lodging that he had taken temporarily. There seemed nothing left in life for him to do. Yet he knew that he must work to live, although the effort seemed hardly worthwhile. He remembered now that the Universe had offered him the under janitorship in its building. He would go and take it, and someday, perhaps—He was not quite sure what the “perhaps” meant. But as his mind grew clearer he came to know, for a sullen, fierce anger was smouldering in his heart against the man who through lies had stolen his wife from him. It was anger that came slowly, but gained in fierceness as it grew.
Yes, that was it, he would kill Gibson. It was no worse than his present state. Then it would be father and son murderers. They would hang him or send him back to prison. Neither would be hard now. He laughed to himself.
And this was what they had let him out of prison for? To find out all this. Why had they not left him there to die in ignorance? What had he to do with all these people who gave him sympathy? What did he want of their sympathy? Could they give him back one tithe of what he had lost? Could they restore to him his wife or his son or his daughter, his quiet happiness or his simple faith?
He went to work for the Universe, but night after night, armed, he patrolled the sidewalk in front of Fannie’s house. He did not know Gibson, but he wanted to see them together. Then he would strike. His vigils kept him from his bed, but he went to the next morning’s work with no weariness. The hope of revenge sustained him, and he took a savage joy in the thought that he should be the dispenser of justice to at least one of those who had wounded him.
Finally he grew impatient and determined to wait no longer, but to seek his enemy in his own house. He approached the place cautiously and went up the steps. His hand touched the bell pull. He staggered back.
“Oh, my Gawd!” he said.
There was crape on Fannie’s bell. His head went round and he held to the door for support. Then he turned the knob and the door opened. He went noiselessly in. At the door of Fannie’s room he halted, sick with fear. He knocked, a step sounded within, and his wife’s face looked out upon him. He could have screamed aloud with relief.
“It ain’t you!” he whispered huskily.
“No, it’s him. He was killed in a fight at the racetrack. Some o’ his frinds are settin’ up. Come in.”
He went in, a wild, strange feeling surging at his heart. She showed him into the death-chamber.
As he stood and looked down upon the face of his enemy, still, cold, and terrible in death, the recognition of how near he had come to crime swept over him, and all his dead faith sprang into new life in a glorious resurrection. He stood with clasped hands, and no word passed his lips. But his heart was crying, “Thank God! thank God! this man’s blood is not on my hands.”
The gamblers who were sitting up with the dead wondered who the old fool was who looked at their silent comrade and then raised his eyes as if in prayer.
When Gibson was laid away, there were no formalities between Berry and his wife; they simply went back to each other. New York held nothing for them now but sad memories. Kit was on the road, and the father could not bear to see his son; so they turned their faces southward, back to the only place they could call home. Surely the people could not be cruel to them now, and even if they were, they felt that after what they had endured no wound had power to give them pain.
Leslie Oakley heard of their coming, and with her own hands reopened and refurnished the little cottage in the yard for them. There the white-haired woman begged them to spend the rest of their days and be in peace and comfort. It was the only amend she could make. As much to satisfy her as to settle themselves, they took the cottage, and many a night thereafter they sat together with clasped hands listening to the shrieks of the madman across the yard and thinking of what he had brought to them and to himself.
It was not a happy life, but it was all that was left to them, and they took it up without complaint, for they knew they were powerless against some Will infinitely stronger than their own.
Colophon
The Sport of the Gods
was published in 1902 by
Paul Laurence Dunbar.
This ebook was produced for
Standard Ebooks
by
David Elwell,
and is based on a transcription produced in 2006 by
Robert Ledger, Suzanne Shell, and The Online Distributed Proofreading Team
for
Project Gutenberg
and on digital scans from the
Internet Archive.
The cover page is adapted from
East Side, New York,
a painting completed circa 1908 by
Louis Eilshemius.
The cover and
