A DARKENED SOUL.
As Julia left Bart, the full force of her scornful words seemed for
the first time to reach him. The great restraint her presence imposed
in some way suspended, or broke their effect, and he turned from the
gate with a half-uttered moan of anguish. He did not then recall her
words or manner; he only realized that, in a cruel and merciless way,
she had crushed his heart and soul. It was not long; both recoiled
with a sense of wrong and injustice, and utter helplessness, for the
hurt came from a woman. Instinctively he returned to the point whence
they had emerged when they left the woods, and the thought of the
screaming brute came to him with a sense of relief. Here was an object
upon which he could wreak himself, and in a half frenzy of madness he
hurried towards a spot in the edge of the Slashing, towards which
the cowardly thing had run when it fled from his onset. He paused
to listen upon the margin of that tangled wilderness of young trees,
briers, and decaying trunks. How solemn and quiet, wild and lonely it
was, in the deep night and deeper woods! The solemn hush fell upon
the bruised spirit of the youth with the quieting touch and awe of a
palpable presence, rebukingly, yet tenderly and pityingly.
Quick to compassionate others, he had ever been relentless to himself,
and refused to regard himself as an object of injustice, or as needing
compassion. As he stood for a moment confronting himself, scorned,
despised and humiliated, he felt for himself the measureless contempt
to which he seemed to have fallen; yet, under it all, and against it
all, he arose. "Oh, Bart! Bart! what a poor, abject, grovelling
thing you really are," he said bitterly, "when the word of a girl
so overcomes you! when the slap of her little hand so benumbs and
paralyzes you! If you can't put her haunting face from you now, God
can hardly help you. How grand she was, in her rage and scorn! Let me
always see her thus!" and he turned back into the old road. Along
this he sauntered until his eye met the dull gleam of his rifle-barrel
against the old stump where he left it. With a great start, he
exclaimed, "Oh, if I could only go back to the moment when I stood
here with power to choose, and dream!" It was a momentary weakness, a
mere recoil from the wound still so fresh and ragged.
It was still in early evening, with time and life heavy on his hands,
when he remembered that the Doctor had sent him word to come to the
pond that night. Taking his rifle by the muzzle, and throwing it
across his shoulder, he plunged into the woods in a right line for the
west shore of the pond, at about its midway.
Through thick woods tangled with underbrush and laced with wild
vines, down steep banks, over high hills and rocky precipices, across
clearings and hairy brier patches, he took his way, and found relief
in the physical exertions of which he was still capable. At last he
stood on the margin of the forest and hill-embosomed waters of that
lovely little lake. It was solitary and silent, but for the weird
sounds of night birds and aquatic animals that frequented its reedy
margin, and a soft, silvery mist was just rising from its unruffled
surface, that gathered in a translucent veil against the dark forest
of the opposite shore. Its simple, serene and quiet beauty, under the
stars and rising moon, was not lost upon the poetic nature of Barton,
still heaving with the recent storm.
He ran his eye along the surface of the water, and discerned in the
shadow of the wood, near the island, a fourth of a mile distant, a
light, and below it the dark form of a boat. Placing his closed hands
to his lips, he blew a strong, clear, full whistle, with one or two
notes, and was answered by Theodore. At the landing near him was a
half-rotten canoe, partially filled with water, and near it was an old
paddle. Without a moment's thought, Barton pushed it into deep water,
springing into it as it glided away. He had not passed half the
distance to the other boat, when he discovered that it was filling.
With his usual rashness, he determined to reach his friends in it
by his own exertions, and without calling to them for aid, and by an
almost superhuman effort he drove on with his treacherous craft. The
ultimate danger was not much to a light and powerful swimmer, and he
plunged forward. The noise and commotion of forcing his waterlogged
canoe through the water attracted the attention of the party he
was approaching, but who had hardly appreciated his situation as he
lightly sprang from his nearly filled boat into their midst.
"Hullo, Bart! Why under the heavens did you risk that old log? Why
didn't you call to us to meet you?"
"Because," said Bart, excited by his effort and danger, "because to
myself I staked all my future on reaching you in that old hulk, and I
won. Had it sunk, I had made up my mind to go with her, and, like Mr.
Mantalini, in Dickens's last novel, 'become a body, a demnition moist
unpleasant body.'"
"What old wreck is it?" inquired Young, looking at the scarcely
perceptible craft that was sinking near them.
"It is the remains of the old canoe made by Thomas Ridgeley, in his
day, I think," said Jonah.
"Nothing of the sort," said Bart; "it is the remains of old Bullock's
'gundalow,' that has been sinking and swimming, like old John Adams
in the Revolution, these five years past. Don't let me think to-night,
Uncle Jonah, that anything from my father's hand came to take me into
the depths of this pond."
The craft occupied by the party was a broad, scow-like float, with low
sides, steady, and of considerable capacity. At the bow was a raised
platform, covered with gravel, on which stood a fire-jack. The crew
were lying on the silent water, engaged with their lines, when Bart so
unceremoniously joined them. He went forward to a vacant place and lay
down in the bottom, declining to take a line.
"What is the matter, Bart?" asked the Doctor.
"I don't know. I've been wandering about in the woods, and I must have
met something, or I have lost something,--I don't know which."
"I guess you saw the wolverine," said Theodore.
"I guess I did;" and pretty soon, "Doctor, is this your robe? Let
me cover myself with it; I am cold!" and there was something almost
plaintive in his voice.
"Let me spread it over you," said the Doctor, with tenderness. "What
ails you, Bart? are you ill?"
"If you left your saddle-bags at home, I think I am; if they are
here, I am very well. Doctor," he went on, "can a man have half of his
faculties shut off and retain the others clear and strong?"
"I don't know,--perhaps so; why?"
"Well, I feel as if one of your astringents had placed its claws on a
full half of me and drawn it all into a pucker; and the other half is
in some way set free, and I feel clairvoyant."
"What do you think you can see?" asked the Doctor.
"A young man--quite a young man--blindfolded, groping backward in the
chambers of his darkened soul, and trying to escape out of it," said
Bart.
"What a queer fancy!" said the Doctor.
"He must have an unusually large soul," said Uncle Jonah.
"Every soul is big enough for the man to move in, small as it is,"
said Bart.
"What is your youth doing in his, now?" asked the Doctor.
"He is sitting down, resigned," answered Bart.
"If his soul was dark, why was he blindfolded?" asked the Doctor.
"Well, I don't know. For the same reason that men with eyes think that
a blind man cannot see so well in the dark, perhaps," was the answer.
"And see here," looking into the water, "away down here is a beautiful
star. There, I can blot it out with my hand! and see, now, how I can
shatter it into wavelets of stars, and now break it into a hundred, by
merely disturbing the water where I see it, 'like sunshine broken in
a rill.' Who knows but it may be the just-arrived light of an old, old
star which has just come to us? How easy to climb back on one of these
filmy rays, myriads of millions of leagues, home to its source! I
will take off the bandage and let the poor boy see it, and climb if he
may."
"You are fanciful and metaphysical," said the Doctor. "Euclid has not
operated, I fear. Why would you go up to the source of that ray? Would
you expect to find God and heaven there?"
"I should but traverse the smallest portion of God," said Bart, "and
yet how far away He seems just now. Somebody's unshapen hand cuts His
light off; and I cannot see Him by looking down, and I haven't the
strength to look up."
"How incoherently you talk; after all, suppose that there is no
God, for do your best, it is but a sentiment, a belief without
demonstrative proof."
"Oh, Doctor, don't! You are material, and go by lines and angles;
cannot you understand that a God whose existence you would have
to prove is no God at all? that if His works and givings out don't
declare and proclaim him, He is a sham? You cannot see and hear,
Doctor, when you are in one of your material moods. Look up, if you
can see no reflection in the waters below."
"Well, when I look into the revealed heaven, for instance, Bart, I see
it peopled with things of the earth, reflected into it from the earth;
showing that the whole idea is of the earth--earthy."
"Oh, Doctor! like the poor old Galilean; when he thought it was all
up, he went out and dug bait, and started off a-fishing. You attend
to your fishing, and let me dream. If God should attempt to reveal
Himself to you to-night, which I wouldn't do, He would have to
elevate and enlarge and change you to a celestial, so that you could
understand Him; or shrink and shrivel Himself to your capacity, and
address you on your level, as I do, using the language and imagery of
this earth, and you would answer Him as you do me--'It is all of the
earth--earthy.' I want to sleep."
The Doctor pondered as if there was a matter for thought in what
he had heard, and a little ripple of under-talk ran on about the
subjects, the everlasting old, old and eternally new problems that
men have dreamed and stumbled over, and always will--which Bart had
dreamily spoken of as if they were very familiar to his thoughts, and
they spoke of him, and wondered if anything had happened, and pulled
their boat to a new position, while the overtaxed youth subsided
into fitful slumber. Theodore finally awoke him, and said that they
proposed to light up the jack, if he would take the spear, and they
would push out to deeper water, and try for bass. Bart stared about
him uncomprehendingly for a moment. "Oh, Theodore, my fishing days
are over! I will never 'wound the gentle bosom of this lake' with fish
spear, or gig, or other instrument; and I've backed this old rifle
around for the last time to-day."
"Bart, think of all our splendid times in the woods!"
"What a funny dream I had: I dreamed I was a young Indian, not John
Brown's 'little Indian,' but a real red, strapping, painted young
Indian, and our tribe was encamped over on the west side of this
Indian lake, by Otter Point; and I was dreadfully in love with the
chief's daughter."
"Who didn't love you again," said Theodore.
"Of course not, being a well-brought up young Indianess: and I went
to the Indian spring, that runs into the pond, just above 'Barker's
Landing,' that you all know of."
"I never knew that it was an Indian spring," said Young.
"Well, it is," replied Bart. "It has a sort of an earthen rim around
it, or had a few minutes ago; and the water bubbles up from the
bottom. Well, you drop a scarlet berry into it, and if it rises and
runs over the rim, the sighed-for loves you, or she don't, and I have
forgotten which. I found a scarlet head of ginseng, and dropped the
seeds in one after another, and they all plumped straight to the
bottom."
"Well, what was the conclusion?"
"Logical. The berries were too heavy for the current, or the current
was too weak for the berries."
"And the Indianess?"
"She and all else faded out."
"Oh, pshaw! how silly!" said Young. "Will you take the spear, or won't
you?"
"Will you take the spear, or won't you?" replied Bart, mimicking him
with great effect.
"Have you heard from Henry lately?" asked Uncle Jonah.
"A few days ago," answered Bart, who turned moodily away like a
peevish child angered with half sleep, and a pang from the thrust he
had received.
"Henry is the most ambitious young man I ever knew," said the Doctor;
"I fear he may never realize his aspirations."
"Why not?" demanded Bart, with sudden energy. "What is there that my
brother Henry may not hope to win, I would like to know? He will win
it or die in the effort."
"He will not, if he lives a thousand years," said Young, annoyed at
Bart's mimicking him. "It ain't in him."
"What ain't in him, Old Testament?" demanded Bart, with asperity.
"The stuff. I've sounded him; it ain't there!"
"You've sounded him! Just as you are now sounding this bottomless
pond, with a tow string six feet long, having an angle worm at one
end, and an old hairy curmudgeonly grub at the other."
"There, Brother Young," said Uncle Jonah, "stop before worse comes."
"Mr. Young," said Bart, a moment later, with softened voice, making
way towards him, "forgive me if you can. I've done with coarse and
vulgar speeches like that. You believe in Henry, and only spoke to
annoy me. I take it all back. I will even spear you some bass, if
Theodore will light up the jack. Give me the oars, and let me wake up
a little, while we go to better ground below."
For a few moments he handled the polished, slender-tined, long-handled
spear with great dexterity and success, and told the story of old
Leather Stocking spearing bass from the Pioneers. He soon ceased,
however, and declared he would do no more, and his companions,
disgusted with his freaky humor, prepared to return. Bart, casting
down his spear, remained in moody silence until they landed. Theodore
picked up his rifle, the fish were placed in baskets, the tackle
stowed away, the boat secured, and the party proceeded homeward.
Bart lived further from the pond than any of the party, and Theodore,
who loved him, and was kind to his moods, taking a few of the finest
fish, accompanied him home. As they were about to separate from Uncle
Jonah--the father of Theodore--he turned to Bart, and said: "Something
has happened, no matter what; don't be discouraged, you stick to them
old books; there's souls in 'em, and they will carry you out to your
place, some time."
"Thank you, thank you, Uncle Jonah!" said Bart, warmly; "these are the
only encouraging words I've heard for two years."
"Theodore," said Bart, as they walked on, "what an uncomfortable bore
I must have been to-night."
"Oh, I don't know! we thought that something had happened, perhaps."
"No, I'm trying to change, and be more civil and quiet, and have been
thinking it all over, and don't feel quite comfortable; and we have
both something to do besides run in the woods. You were very good to
come with me, Theodore," he said, as they parted at the gate.