So it came to pass that by the time the flood had entirely subsided and the mud which occupied the site of the Cassedy’s garden had dried so that one could reach the new house by walking, the exiled family returned to an enlarged and improved domain, and respectful acquaintances were careful to speak of it as Mistress McCrea’s house.
Blessed be little. Even in the haste of their exodus the Cassedys had been able to take with them the most sacred of their household gods, and as for furniture, they could afford to lose the few simple old pieces they had possessed, in view of the fact that the new dwelling contained twice as much, and that of a much better quality.
The building was not quite in the position desired, but with the aid of his team, and the willing assistance of his neighbors, Cassedy succeeded in jacking it about till he got it in the right place. When the family, amid the congratulations of their friends and to their own great satisfaction, took formal possession, and the careful Cassedy with his team drew back the heterogeneous lot of lumber that had sheltered them on the hill, and built with it a fence that was the envy of the neighborhood, people even began to whisper that the Cassedys were getting up in the world, and Father Joseph suggested that a thank-offering would be most suitably bestowed upon the parish of Saint Ann.
But how approach, or by what reference preface, the crowning discovery that filled to overflowing the cup of the delighted Cassedys? The statement that the furniture of the new house doubled in extent and value that of the old one, is short of the whole truth. In one of the four bedrooms (no other house upon Fiddler’s Neck had more than two) there was a heavy black walnut bedstead, with springs and mattress reasonably dry, in spite of the soaking that the lower floor of the house had sustained. The headboard of the bed was high and ornately decorated with moldings, while the sides were of unusual thickness. It was altogether a massive piece of furniture, such as a rich man might own, but entirely above the ordinary aspirations of people like the Cassedys. In the very center of the high headboard was a medallion or shield in high relief, and upon it, swinging from a small hook, hung a picture the like of which had never before been seen on Fiddler’s Neck. A young woman, with auburn hair, blue eyes piously raised to Heaven, and delicate hands clasped in uninterrupted devotion, occupied a frame of Florentine gold, shaped to form a cross. It is no wonder that the awestruck family regarded this miniature and its setting with superstitious joy. To their simple minds it was at once the symbol and the flower of their new fortunes.
For days the returning neighbors were admitted to view the precious thing. With but one dissenting voice, they pronounced it the likeness of a saint, and when Father Joseph had added his approval to the general verdict, the matter was deemed to be settled beyond dispute. It was even whispered that Saint Ann herself had come to take the Cassedys under her special protection, and a halo of sanctity began to gather about the teamster’s house. It cost him something, to be sure, as dignities and reputation are apt to cost. There could be no doubt that one so favored should do more for the church than could be expected from his less fortunate neighbors. Father Joseph was certainly just in advancing this view, and in fairness to Mike Cassedy it should be said that he entirely fell in with it, and labored early and late to support his new dignities. Business increased with him; in place of two horses, within the year he had six, and two strong, sober lads were employed as helpers; so that in time he became the most prosperous man in the community.
In the grand new bedroom, in the magnificent bed, under the blessed picture, they put Gramma McCrea. An amiable dispute between the mother and daughter had been settled by the unusual utterance of a word from Mike.
“Y’r mother’ll take that room, who else?” Who else, indeed. The whole family agreeing that it was her right, not only because she had “dramed it,” but by reason of her advanced years, her rheumatic pains, and her greatly loved personality, the old woman was affectionately installed in the best chamber.
“‘Deed, my dear,” she said to her daughter, “ye are all too good to th’ useless ould ‘ooman. I’d be better plazed if yerself and Mike, good, honest man, wud slape in it.”
“Whisht, an’ don’t be callin’ yerself names,” answered Mrs. Cassedy, bustling about in pretense of tidying the already immaculate premises. “What’d me an’ Mike fale like, slapin’ in the grand bed, an’ you on straw. I’d take shame to do it. We’re young yet, and our bones rest aisy wherever we are.”
The first night that Gramma McCrea slept in the big bed she painfully climbed to her knees at the head of the mattress, and reaching up, touched the picture with thin, trembling fingers. Then she said her prayers and signed the cross, feeling safe and rich as she had never before felt in all her long, toil-filled life. Was not “Itself” watching over her?
The exposure at the time of the flood had greatly increased Gramma’s rheumatism. When she first was established in the great bed, under the blessed protection of “Itself,” she was nearly doubled with pain, and even her pious thanksgiving and petitions to Heaven were punctuated with groans and sighs. Now a miracle, or what bore strong external resemblance to one, gave the Cassedy family and their neighbors fresh occasion to marvel. The first twenty-four hours in the bed were marked by a decided improvement in Mistress McCrea’s condition. At the end of the second day she arose, declaring that her pains had left her, and offered to help her daughter with the housework. After the third night—but this is a secret between Gramma and her youngest grandchild—she astonished Mamie by challenging her to a contest at rope-skipping, and the agility displayed by the rejuvenated old woman could only be equalled by the astonishment of the child, or by her own subsequent contrition. The details of Gramma’s recovery, the rope-skipping episode alone omitted, soon became public property. It may be that doubters would have arisen to question the truth of the story, had not Gramma been seen frequently without her cane, a living witness to the supernatural virtue of “Itself.”
Janey Mack, lame from her birth, was living in the next house but one from the Cassedy home when these things occurred, and after many consultations her mother made bold to ask Gramma McCrea might Janey sleep one night in the great bed.
“Not wan night, but a wake if ‘twill do her anny good,” was the hearty reply. “I’ll not be sayin’ that ‘Itself’ will cure her, but ‘twill be no harm to thry. I’m that young meself now that I cud slape on the flure and not be the worse.”
Janey’s uncle, the acknowledged skeptic of Fiddler’s Point, made great sport of the “shuperstition of thim wimmin”; but when, at the end of a week, Janey walked out of the Cassedy’s house without her crutches, he fairly turned tail and went up to Kansas City to look for a job that he heard was waiting for him there.
Father Joseph had been away during the time occupied by these miraculous cures. On his return to Fiddler’s Point he found the settlement in an uproar.
“What’s this they tell me about miracles being worked in your house?” he asked Mike. There was a suggestion of sternness in the good priest’s voice, for to him this was altogether a serious matter, to be reported to his superiors in the church in any event, to be investigated solemnly, and if the work of error, to be sternly suppressed.
“They tell me that the picture has been curing Mistress McCrea and Janey Mack,” he specified.
Mike twisted the whip he had in his hands, and made several efforts before the machinery of his jaws could frame a reply.
“They do be sayin’ so,” he finally admitted.
“What do you say?” pressed the clergyman.
“They’re both walkin’“; came the slow answer.
There being nothing further to be elicited from Mike, Father Joseph went to see the late sufferers, and found both active, as reported. Still puzzled and anxious, not willing to let error slip into his fold unchallenged, nor yet content to be himself an obstacle to what might be really the goodness of Heaven, the careful priest startled the Cassedys with a request. He had been troubled for years with an annoying m
alady of the nerves, which caused the left side of his face to twitch. Would the family permit him to sleep in the wonderful bed?
He had not meant to make this experiment public, but forgetting to enjoin the Cassedys to silence, the news soon spread like wildfire that Father Jo, no less, was himself going to sleep in Gramma McCrea’s bed.
Many were the speculations upon the outcome of the priest’s experiment, many would have been the comments if that little community could have witnessed the strange goings on in the grand bedroom, after the Cassedys had bade their reverend guest good night, and gone to their own untroubled repose. In the first place, Father Joseph produced several sacred emblems and instruments of his high office, and betook himself to devotions of so exceptionally lengthy a character that the clock was on the stroke of twelve when he had concluded. Even then he showed no evidence of an intention to undress, but arrayed himself rather in the robes of his calling, and with candle and book proceeded, according to long disused formulas, to determine whether the picture upon the bedhead could by any possible chance derive its extraordinary power from the spirit of darkness and evil.
A weird, yet impressive spectacle, the priest afforded, in that midnight solitude, performing sacred rites by the light of a solitary candle, with the purpose of guarding his parish against the presence of a possible necromantic influence.
Father Joseph was not a particularly superstitious man, but he was a highly imaginative, and exceedingly conscientious one, and his performance in the Cassedys’ house that night was the antithesis of things frivolous or vain. At length, thoroughly satisfied that whatever the picture might be, it certainly was not the result of satanic inspiration, the conscientious priest laid off his clothes and pillowed his head beneath “Itself,” where, weary with his long vigil, he soon dropped into a delicious sleep. He did not waken till Mrs. Cassedy, alarmed at his long silence, knocked timidly at the bedroom door. Cheerfully he answered her and sprang from the bed, conscious of a new vigor. Before he had finished dressing, he became aware of a great change in himself. The nervous affection that had afflicted him for twenty years had entirely left him. He descended to the family living room in a state of amazement. The Cassedys gathered about him with ejaculations of wonder and expressions of joy, and before long half the parish had congregated at the teamster’s door, to learn the new miracle that “Itself” had wrought.
For days following this event nothing else was talked of on Fiddler’s Point. The ordinary affairs of life seemed of meager importance compared with the astonishing certainty that a series of supernatural works were being performed in that very neighborhood where so lately men had stood aghast and women had bemoaned the loss of property and the destruction of the fruits of lifelong labor.
Such congregations as Father Joseph welcomed at the little church of St. Ann, such reformations on the part of hardened backsliders, such conversions of recalcitrant heretics, such piety among the women of his flock, and such liberal donations to the various funds of the church, had never before been known in that poor parish.
As the rumors of the marvelous cures spread, and in spreading no doubt were magnified, other cripples, from other parishes, began to visit the poverty-stricken and long despised Point, and beg for admission to the potent presence of “Itself.” From up and down the river they came, thicker and faster, till the Cassedys were at their wits’ end to receive them, and at the same time conduct the domestic affairs of their home. Their privacy was a thing of the past, to be looked back upon with regret and longing. No more could Mike, returning from his day’s work, stretch his coatless arms, and extend his shoeless stockings in the comfort of his own house. The children were arrayed from morning to night in their best dresses and their best manners, which, after the novelty had worn off, became highly irksome. Gramma McCrea, poor woman, had no more comfort in her grand room and wonderful bed, seeing that by day the premises were invaded by curious or anxious pilgrims, and by night generally occupied by one or more of the lame, the halt, or the blind.
At first, when those in direful plight petitioned for a chance to occupy the great bed, the hearts of Mrs. Cassedy and Gramma McCrea melted, and the strangers were made freely welcome, without charge, to the benefit they might derive from the curative influence of “Itself”; but after a time, acting under the advice of Father Joseph, they made a slight charge for the privilege. The honest Priest, full of pious joy at the development of such a marvel in his parish, notified his Bishop, and the latter came straightway to add the seal of his approval to a matter which promised to redound to the fame of his diocese.
When the great man entered the honored dwelling of the Cassedys, the little girls were awed into a becoming silence, and the women adorned themselves as for a great festival, and attended him with tremulous devotion, while even Mike was constrained to remain at home, to surrender the freedom of his muscular frame to the thraldom of Sunday broadcloth, and submit his bronzed neck to the irksome bondage of a starched collar. The Bishop questioned and was satisfied. Moreover, he was pleased to pronounce the episcopal benediction, and when he departed, left behind him an odor of sanctity, and the endorsement of his authority. After that the very door-yard of the Cassedys was not sufficient to contain the throng that gathered there daily, and the now prominent family longed secretly but fervently for a return to their former obscurity and the delightful peace of a quiet way of life.
When the Jefferson City Palladium got hold of the news, which it finally did, a young and enterprising reporter was detailed to take care of the item. He visited Fiddler’s Point, with a determination to make a good story out of what he believed would prove a very small sensation. The reality so far exceeded his anticipations that upon his return to the office he wrote an enthusiastic account of his discoveries, embellished with numerous clever touches of an original character, and further adorned with a display head by which the wayfaring man, though a deafmute, could not fail to be stunned. In letters that would have lent distinction to a billboard, men were invited to learn that a new Lourdes had been discovered, an American shrine that made fair to rival the greatest religious healing establishments of the old world. The curing of Father Burke was the text for half a column, in an article which occupied fully a page and a half of the Palladium.
One of the immediate effects of that publication was the fact that it attracted the attention of Doctor Hamilton Wilton, the great nerve specialist, newly returned from his sabbatical year in Europe.
“I’ll just take a run down and look into this,” he said, thoughtfully. “The phases of communal hysteria are sure to be exhibited beautifully during such an epidemic.”
A series of surprises attended Doctor Wilton’s visit to Fiddler’s Point. In the first place, he recognized in the Cassedys’ dwelling a house of his own, built three years before, on the Kansas River, below Topeka. He had made there a sort of hermitage, where he sometimes retired to pursue in solitude those scientific experiments which were his recreation. During the great flood, while he was absent in Europe, this building had been swept away, and he had imagined that, with its contents, it had been wrecked and carried piecemeal to the Mississippi.
Led by Mrs. Cassedy the Doctor ascended to Gramma McCrea’s room, where the old woman sat in tedious state and explained in sentences so often repeated that they sounded like a lesson learned by rote, the marvelous story of the miracles wrought by “Itself.” The corners of the room were already beginning to be filled with a collection of cranes and crutches, inevitable attachments of a curative shrine. Wilton looked long and curiously at the picture over the bed, then with a compassionate interest at the woman, to whom already so evidently this exhibition had become a wearisome task. He placed his hand thoughtfully on the frame of the bedstead and ran his fingers along the molding. Once he seemed upon the point of saying something in reply to Gramma McCrea’s rehearsal, but at the end only thanked her courteously, and leaving a bank bill in her hand, bowed himself out.
The second surprise was when
the Doctor stood at the rectory door, face to face with the Priest. For a while neither could find voice. As Ham and Jo, they had filled the hours of active boyhood with pranks and adventures, never undertaken singly, and had gained a brilliant, if unenviable, local reputation for mischief before they were fairly in their teens. Now the Physician and the Pastor stood face to face, dumb because old recollections stubbornly combated the formality of mature propriety.
“Jo!—Jo!—you old—” Wilton choked.
“Ham! You sinner—” The priest drew him in and closed the door before flinging his arms around him and executing a fandango for which he was, at a later hour, becomingly penitent.
After awhile, when they were seated over a chop and a bottle of Chablis in a quiet room in the tower, Wilton told Father Jo the story of the house.
“Among the experiments that interested me just before my departure for Europe,” he said, “those upon which I entered with the keenest zest were connected with the wonderful properties of the newly discovered mineral, radium. By singular good fortune I secured a very small quantity of this inestimably precious substance and tried to discover a means by which water or some other medium might be made radio-active, with a view to testing the curative powers which scientists, even then, were beginning to claim for radium. The mineral itself, you understand, is not only too enormously expensive, but far too powerful an agent for direct use. Such an employment of it, I believe, would result in ulcers, hideous deformity, insanity, and death. Reduced to an infinitesimal proportion in water, I conceived that the malefic properties of the substance might be made beneficent. Unwilling to trust my secret hopes to popular discussion, and being anxious to apply the result of my labors in the most effectual way, I purchased an old, massive bedstead, in the sides of which, having grooved them for the purpose, I inserted phials of fluid specially prepared, practically surrounding the occupant of the bed with what I hoped would prove a novel and effectual curative influence.”
Science Fiction by Gaslight: A History and Anthology of Science Fiction in the Popular Magazines, 1891-1911 Page 45
