Ann dosed where she sat. Toyner slept again. At length they were both
aware that the level light of the sun was in the room.
Ann sat up, looking at the door intently. Then her eyes moved as if
following some one across the room.
"What is it?" asked Toyner.
Ann started up with one swift look of agonised entreaty, and then it
seemed that what she had seen vanished, for she turned to Bart
trembling, unable to speak at first, sobs struggling with her breath.
"It was father--I saw him come to the door and come in. He's dead now."
"What did he look like?" Toyner's voice was very quiet.
"He looked as if he was dead, but as if he was mad too--his body as if
it was dead, and himself wild and mad and burning inside of it." She was
crouching on the floor, shaken with the sobs of a new and overwhelming
pity. "O Bart! I never cared--cared anything for him before--except to
have him comfortable and decent; but if I thought he was going to
be--like that--now I think I would die to save him if I could."
"Would you die to save him? So would God; and you can't believe in God
at all unless you know that He does what He wants to do. And God does
it; dies in him, and is in him now; and He will save him."
Bart's eyes were full of peace.
"Can't you trust God, Ann? When He is suffering so much for love of each
of us? He could make us into good machines, but He won't. Can't you
begin to do what He is doing for yourself and other people? Ann, if He
suffers in your father and in you, He is glad when you are glad. Try to
be glad always in His love and in the glory of it."
Ann's mind had reverted again to the traditions of which she knew so
little. "I don't want to go to heaven," she said, "if father is in some
place looking like he did just now."
"Heaven" (Bart repeated the word curiously), "heaven is inside you when
you grow to be like God; and through all ages and worlds heaven will be
to do as He does, to suffer with those that are suffering, and to die
with those that are dying. But remember, Ann, too, it means to rejoice
with those who are rejoicing; and joy is greater than pain and
heaviness. And heaven means always to be in peace and strength and
delight, because it is along the line of God's will where His joy
flows."
Ann rose and ran out of the house. To be in the sunshine and among the
wild sunflowers was more to her just then than any wisdom. The wave of
pity that had gone over her soul had ebbed in a feeling of exhaustion.
Her body wanted warmth and heat. She felt that she wanted _only_ that.
After she had sat for an hour near the bank of the rippling stream, and
all her veins were warmed through and through with the sunlight, the
apparition of her father seemed like a dream. She had seen him thus once
in life, and supposed him a spirit. She was ready to suppose what she
had now seen to be a repetition of that last meeting, coming before she
was well roused from her sleep. She took comfort because her pulses ran
full and quiet once more. She thought of her love to Bart, and was
content. As to all that Bart had said--ah well! something she had
gathered from it, which was a seed in her mind, lay quiet now.
At length Toyner found strength to walk feebly, and sat down on the
doorstep, where he could see Ann. It was his first conscious look upon
this remote autumn bower, and he never forgot its joy. The eyes of men
who have just arisen from the dim region that lies near death are often
curiously full of unreasoning pleasure. Within himself Toyner called the
place the Garden of Eden.
"If only I had not brought you here!" said Ann. "If only I had not left
the canoe untied!"
For answer Bart looked around upon the trees and flowers and upon her
with happy eyes that had no hint of past or future in them. Something of
the secret of all peace--the _Eternal Now_--remained with him as long
as the weakness of this injury remained.
"Don't fret, Ann" (with a smile).
"I'm afraid for you; you look awful ill, and ought to have a doctor."
He had it in his mind to tell her that he was all right and desired only
what he had; but, in the dreamy reflective mood that still held him,
what he said was:
"If all the trouble in earth and heaven and hell were put together, Ann,
it would be just like clouds passing before the sun of joy. The clouds
are never at an end, but each one passes and melts away. Ann! sorrow and
joy are like the clouds and the sun."
It is never destined that man should remain long in Eden. About noon
that day Ann heard a shout from the direction of the lake outside among
the dead trees; the shout was repeated yet nearer, and in a minute or
two she recognised the voice and heard the sound of oars splashing up
the narrow channel made by the running creek. The thought of this
deliverance had not occurred to her; yet when she recognised the voice
it seemed to her natural enough that David Brown should have divined
where his canoe might have been brought. She stood waiting while his
boat came up the creek. The young athlete sprang from it, question and
reproach in his handsome young face. She found no difficulty then in
telling him just what she had done, and why. She felt herself suddenly
freed from all that life of frequent deception which she had so long
practised. She had no desire to dupe any man now into doing any service.
Something in the stress of the last days, in her new reverence for Bart,
had wrought a change in the relative value she set on truth and the
gain of untruth. She held up her head with a gesture of new dignity as
she told David that she had sought her father and found Bart.
"Father has half killed him, and now it hurts me to see him ill. Bart is
a good man. O David, I tell you there is no one in the world I mind
about so much as Bart. Could you take him in your boat now to the
hospital at The Mills? He would have done as much for you, and more, if
you had got hurt in that way."
So David took the man Ann loved to the hospital at The Mills. He did it
willingly if he did it ruefully. Ann went home, as she had come, in the
canoe, except that she had gone out in the dead of night and she went
home in broad daylight.
No one blamed Ann when they knew she had gone out to help her father; no
one smiled or sneered when they found that she had succeeded in saving
Toyner's life.
A few days passed, and poor Markham was found drowned in a forest pool.
They brought him home and buried him decently at Fentown for his
daughter's sake.
Toyner lay ill for weeks in the little wooden hospital at The Mills.