Heaven’s gift takes earth’s abatement!
He who smites the rock and spreads the water,
Bidding drink and live a crowd beneath him,
Even he, the minute makes immortal,
Proves, perchance, but mortal in the minute,
Desecrates, belike, the deed in doing.
—ROBERT BROWNING.
Relays of men had been at work in the woods clothing the steep banks of
the ravine above Fraternia for three days, even while the rain was
falling in torrents. It was absolutely necessary to secure the lumber
while the river was of a depth to carry it down stream, and for a time
all other work was in abeyance.
Gregory had worked steadily with the rest at the wood cutting, but Keith
had told Anna the night before that on Saturday morning he would be
obliged to go down to Spalding, the small town in the plain below the
valley, on urgent business concerning notes which were coming due and
must be extended if possible.
It was therefore with great surprise that Anna, as they approached the
spot where the men were at work, heard Frieda exclaim:—
“There is the master himself; see, Sister Benigna!”
They had had a merry scramble up the gorge, but a hard one. The swollen
stream had submerged the narrow path by which the ascent was commonly
made, and it was only by finding the footholds cut out by the men with
their axes in the earth of the dripping, slippery bank above, that Anna
and her companion had been able to make their way on. Holding their
pails with one hand and clinging to overhanging branches or roots of
ferns and laurel with the other, shaking the splashes of rain from the
dripping leaves as they struck their faces, the two had scrambled
breathlessly forward; and now, at length, the welcome sound of the axe
greeted their ears, and they saw a little beyond, strewing the
underbrush, the new chips and shining splinters of stripped bark which
told that trees had recently been felled.
Anna had just stopped to exclaim:—
“How good it smells, Frieda,—such a wild, pure smell!” and was laughing
at her own choice of adjectives, when Frieda had called her attention to
John Gregory. He was standing at no great distance from them in the
midst of the rapid, roaring creek where the water reached nearly to the
tops of his high boots, and, with a strong pole in both hands, was
directing the course of the logs, which were eddying wildly about him on
the surface of the torrent, into the proper channel which should carry
them down stream.
Frieda’s voice attracted his attention to their approach, and without
pause he strode through the water, leaped up the bank and was promptly
in the path, if it could be called such, before them, holding out both
hands to relieve them of their burdens, and smiling a cordial greeting.
Anna’s cheeks wore a vivid flush.
“Then you did not go to Spalding?” she asked, seeking to quiet the
confusion of her surprise and the immoderate beating of her heart.
Frieda, she saw gratefully, was quite as excited; it was so unusual for
Mr. Gregory to bestow attentions of this sort upon them; it was not
strange that one should be a little stirred.
“No,” he said, leading on in the now broadening path, “I found I could
send a letter by Charley, and the men rather needed a long-legged fellow
like myself up here this morning. But I see that my doing this has
reacted unexpectedly upon you. Charley not being on hand to bring the
dinner, our ladies have had to take his place,” and Gregory turned
toward them as he spoke with regret and apology which were evidently
sincere.
“Are you very tired?” he asked simply, looking at Frieda but speaking to
Anna.
They both declared that it had been great fun and they were not in the
least tired; and indeed the bright bloom of their cheeks, and the
laughter in their eyes, and the elastic firmness of their steps were
sufficient reassurance.
“I think, Mr. Gregory,” said Anna, quite at her ease now, “that
Fraternia women can never know anything of that disease of civilization,
nervous prostration. It will become extinct in one spot at least.”
“‘More honoured in the breach than the observance,’” quoted Gregory, “we
shall hail its loss.”
Soon they reached a little clearing, where, the underbrush trampled
down, the rugged steepness of the bank declining to a gentler slope, and
the sun having found full entrance by reason of the removal of the
larger trees, there was a possibility of finding a dry place to rest.
Here they were soon joined by half a dozen men, several of whom had
brought their dinner with them, and preparations were made for a fire to
heat the coffee which filled one of the pails brought by Anna and
Frieda. The other was solidly packed with sweet, wholesome brown bread
and butter and thick slices of meat.
The fat pine chips and splinters burned readily in spite of the
all-pervading dampness, and the coffee-pail, suspended over this small
camp-fire from a hastily improvised tripod, was soon sending up a
deliciously fragrant steam.
The men treated the two women as if they had been foreign princesses,
covering a great tree-trunk with their coats for a kind of throne for
them, and serving them with coffee in tin cups with much flourish of
mock ceremony. This part of the proceedings John Gregory watched from a
little distance, leaning against a tree, a smile of quiet pleasure in
his eyes. He refused the coffee for himself, drinking always and only
water, but ate the bread and meat they handed him with hearty relish and
a vast appetite.
By a sort of inevitable gravitation, almost before the meal was
concluded, Frieda had strayed off into the woods with Matt Taylor, son
of Anna’s neighbour, whose devotion to her was one of the especial
interests for Fraternia folk that spring. A certain view from the crest
of the hill beyond the little clearing was by no means to be missed.
Then, one after the other, the men took up their axes and returned to
their work; but John Gregory kept his place, and still stood leaning
against the tree, facing Anna, the smouldering embers of the fire
between.
He had been speaking on a subject in which all had been interested,—the
prayer test advocated by Mr. Tyndall, which had attracted the attention
of the scientific and religious world of that time. The men had gone
away reluctantly, leaving the conversation to these two. Heretofore Anna
had hardly spoken, but now with deepening seriousness she said:—
“I feel the crude, incredible impertinence of such a test as this which
Mr. Tyndall has proposed, and yet it brings up very keenly to me my own
attitude for many years.”
Gregory looked a question, but did not speak, and Anna went on:—
“A good woman whom I once heard speak at Mrs. Ingraham’s in Burlington
gave me an idea of prayer, quite new to me then, but which I at least
partially accepted, and which has had its effect on my inner life ever
since.”
“It was—?”
“That we were to pray to God for every small material interest of life,
and were to expect definite, concrete, physical return. That if such was
not our experience it was because we were not dwelling near God, and
were out of harmony with him. This life of answered prayer and perfect
demonstrable union which she described was called the ‘higher life.’”
“What was your own experience?”
“It has been a long experience of spiritual defeat. I prayed for years
for every temporal need, asked for whatever I deeply desired,
and—never—perhaps there was one exception, but hardly more—received an
answer to my praying which I could fairly assume to be such.”
Anna’s face was profoundly sad, as she spoke, with the sense of the
baffling disappointments of years.
“In the end what has been the effect on you?”
“I have ceased to pray at all, Mr. Gregory. I know that sounds very
harsh, perhaps very wrong, but I lost the expectation of a response, and
the constant defeat and failure made me bitter and unbelieving. God
seemed only to mock my prayers, not to fulfil. It seemed to me at last
that I was dishonouring him by praying, and that waiting in silence and
patience was shown to be my portion. Do you think that was sinful?”
Anna raised her eyes timidly to Gregory’s face with this question, and
met the repose and steady confidence of it with a swift presentiment of
comfort.
“No,” he answered; “I think you were simply struggling to release
yourself from the meshes of the net which a mercenary conception of
prayer cannot fail to throw over the soul. It was said of John Woolman,
and a holier man never lived, that he offered no prayers for special
personal favours. I believe the theory of prayer of your Burlington
friend not only mistaken, but dangerous and misleading. Instead of such
a habit of mind as she described being a ‘higher life,’ I should call it
a lower one. The nearer the man comes to God, the less he prays, not the
more, for definite objective things and externals; the more he rests on
the great good will of God. Prayer was not designed for man to use to
conform a reluctant God to his will, to get things given him, but to
conform the man’s own blind and erring will to the divine. By this I do
not mean to say that no prayers for temporal objects are granted. Many
have been, but the soul that feeds itself on this conception of prayer
as a system of practical demand and supply lives on husks.”
“But there are many promises?” Anna said with hesitation.
“Yes,” said Gregory, with the emphasis of sure conviction, crossing the
space between them to stand directly before her, forgetting all his
usual scruples; “but you must interpret Scripture by Scripture, by the
whole tendency and purpose, not by isolated mottoes which men like to
drag out for spiritual decoration, breaking off short all their roots
which reach down into the solid rock of universal Truth! Look at our
Lord himself—did he ask for ‘ease and rest and joys’? It is only as we
enter into his spirit that our prayers are answered, and that almost
means that we shall cease to pray at all for personal benefits. He
prayed, often, whole nights together, but was it that he might win his
own cause with the people about him? Was it not rather for the
multitudes upon whom he had compassion, and that God the Father should
be made manifest in himself? Ah, Sister Benigna, few of us have sounded
the depths of this great subject of prayer. It is one of the deepest
things of God; and, believe me, it is not until we have cast out utterly
the last shred of the notion of childish coaxing of God to do what will
please us, that we can catch some small perception of its meaning. But
let me say just one thing more: you are too young to count any prayer
unanswered. At present you see in part and interpret God’s dealings only
in part. At the end of life your interpretation will be larger, calmer
than it is now. We ‘change the cruel prayers we made,’ and even here
live to praise God that they are broken away ‘in his broad, loving
will.’”
Anna sat in silence, her eyes downcast, slowly passing in review the
nature of her own most ardent prayers and the deep anguish and doubt of
their non-fulfilment. Not one, she saw, could bear the high test of
likeness to the mind of Christ, not one but had its admixture of
selfishness, not one but seemed poor and vain in this new light. A
nobler conception of the relation of her soul to God seemed to dawn
within her. She looked up then, and saw upon Gregory’s face that inner
illumination which belongs to the religious genius. The look of it smote
her eyes as if with white and dazzling light, and they fell as if it
were impossible to bear it. Then she rose, and they stood for a moment
alone and in silence, while a sense of measureless content overflowed
Anna’s spirit, and for an instant made time and space and human
relations as if they were not. So strong upon her was the sense of
uplift from the contact with the spirit of Gregory. She hardly knew at
first that the incredible had happened. John Gregory had taken her hand
in his, with reverent gentleness, for some seconds. He was asking her if
he had been able to help her in any wise, and asking it as if he cared
very much. She said “yes,” quite simply, and turned to go. Frieda was
coming back, and they were lingering over long. Slowly they descended
the rugged path before them, for a strange trepidation had come over
Anna,—a vague, new, disturbing joy.