"I WILL GO."
It was September, 1867 that Oliver Carr asked Mattie Myers to go with
him to Australia. For six months she hesitated, refused, wavered. It was
not a question of devotion to each other, but of loyalty to the
life-ideal of each. Going to Australia meant three or five or seven
years away from Mattie's chosen vocation. She weighed at its full value
the argument that she could teach in Melbourne; of course, she could
teach; but teaching must necessarily be subordinate to missionary work.
Mattie did not undervalue the importance of missionary labors; but
neither did she undervalue the importance of touching girls' lives in
the school room.
In the struggle, McGarvey and Williams, as we have seen, took opposite
sides; McGarvey was for his pupil, Oliver; Williams was for his pupil,
Mattie. Each looked at the question from his point of view. To the
President of the Bible College, what was more important than carrying
the Bible across the sea? To the President of Daughters' College,
teaching was the exalted vocation of woman--Let O. A. Carr do his man's
work, he argued; and let Mattie Myers do her woman's work.
And there was brother Joe, who had done so much for Mattie--the brother
whom she feared she might love too well--pleading, arguing, exhorting.
"Let Oliver go to Australia," he insisted, "and when he comes back--at
the end of his five or seven years, then, if you and he think as much of
each other as you do now, why--" But the proposition seemed quite safe,
so he added with a stout heart, "then you can get married!" But on this
side of the five years, No! Never! And when words fail him, and
arguments need to be rested, each having done service so often for want
of new ones--Joe gets his flute and sits on the piazza with Mattie,
these balmy spring evenings of 1868, and plays and plays--plays always
the old familiar melodies, the airs that are wrapped up with her most
sacred memories--"Old Kentucky Home," and "Home, Sweet Home," and--we
fear--"Bonnie Blue Flag" that carries up the bars and would sweep the
stars from the Heaven of Union blue.
[Illustration: "I Will Go."]
All this is too much for Mattie; her own conscience, the advice of
Williams, "that prince of instructors," as she calls him, and beloved
Joe; all cry out against Australia. She writes to Oliver--
"I pray that the love of God may strengthen you to accomplish your holy
mission, and bring you back to waiting hearts in your own Kentucky land.
I may regret the decision that prevents me from going with you. I may,
after you are gone, regret that my hand is not to help you; I weep to
labor with you. I do not know. But I have tried to enlighten my
conscience, and it must not be disregarded. Go, and give to the weary
rest, and to those that thirst, of the well of living water. Though I
must suffer, there is a morn and land beyond it all. Go, and work for
God."
In these days when evangelistic work would permit Oliver to come to
Lancaster, he visited Mattie Myers as her accepted suitor. After her
day's work in the schoolroom, she listened to his reading of "Lady of
Lyons," and after the "Lady of Lyons" had had her say, talk would drift
to Australia. It was at the conclusion of such a talk at Mt. Carmel--how
earnest we may imagine--when Joe was not there--_that_ we may take for
granted--the young teacher rose with the solemnity of one who takes an
irretrievable step, having counted all the costs--"I will go!"
Those are her words. And having spoken, the matter is settled. Let poor
Joe play his flute-airs, and look mournfully into space; let Williams
say what he will, or Pinkerton, or anybody else. Mattie has spoken. That
means a wedding-day on March the twenty-sixth.
Not that Joe understands how unalterable is her mind. Indeed, he is in
no condition to bear the truth. That voyage seems to him a death, the
going out from his life of the dearest object of his affections. He
grows wild when she tries to make him understand her mind. When Oliver
reasons with him, he no longer answers with arguments, but with mere
incoherent passion, partly anger, partly despair. So this is what we
will do; we will go to Mt. Carmel without telling Joe,--yonder at the
home of the sister, Mrs. O'Bannon, where we first met, whence we took
that Spring-wagon excursion to the ineffective spring of AEsculapia.
Mattie will take the stage that comes down to Maysville. Oliver will be
standing upon the pike, out of sight of any kinsman's house. Mattie
will order the stage to stop. He will get in--off we will go.
And so we might have made our trip without incident, without sorrow, but
for the unforeseen, in this instance, embodied in brother Joe. He
suddenly appears, wild and excited, having come in such nervous haste,
that his hat is left at home. Hatless, but not breathless, he stops that
stage and holds it while he delivers himself of all his arguments,
seeking to bury Australia in an avalanche of spontaneous eloquence. But
the word Mattie has spoken before the blazing hearth she speaks on the
open pike: "I will go."
Why argue further? Clearly conscience nerves her to her purpose!
Conscience--or love. Only one term of her first school so proudly
begun--and she has put it in charge of another, and is starting forth to
merge her life-work into that of another--and he, a stranger not long
ago,--a mere lad gathering the shavings in the wagon-shop to start the
tavern fires.
Events now come thick and fast. We are getting ready for the wedding
now. Oliver rides in a buggy with a schoolmate from his home town, May's
Lick, through Lexington to Lancaster, the home of Mattie Myers. Many
times he stops on the way for farewells. The reception committee come
forth in strength, but their spokesman bursts into tears, and Oliver is
received with tears only. Albert Myles, his six-year schoolmate
accompanies him to Lancaster. The wedding is to be at five in the
morning. Bells ring. The village people, thinking there is a fire, are
roused and come forth. Learning that it is a wedding, they troop to the
church. The spectators look on through their tears, thinking vaguely of
the other side of the globe, whither the bridal pair is presently to set
forth. Albert Myles performs the ceremony. It is a scene of early light
and tears. "Mattie going away!" is the murmur--Mattie whom these folk
have known from infancy--going away in early womanhood, perhaps never to
return!
From Lancaster to Lexington in a carriage; and here J. B. Bowman, the
University necromancer, gives the bride and groom a dinner in his home,
once the home of Henry Clay,--Ashland, where we have seen Walter Scott
admiring the picture of George Washington. Teachers and pupils of the
University assemble, and there is another mournful farewell. In the
afternoon, from Lexington to Stony point, and goodby to Mrs. Fox,
that sister Minnie of the May's Lick days. At Millersburg, another
wedding-dinner, given by Alex. McClintock, and then to May's Lick,
thirty-six miles by carriage.
[Illustration: Before We Say Goodbye]
Here they remain over Sunday--the last Sunday in the old May's Lick
church, in which Eneas Myall is a deacon,--the blacksmith who said when
first hearing the news, "I am sorry to see you go, Ollie, but it seems
providential!" The elders of the church, the same who were elders when
Walter Scott preached there, ordained Oliver on that last Sunday at
home. He was surrounded by old friends, tearful but exultant in their
sorrow. There was one who could not come because, "I can't tell him
goodby," he said. That was Oliver's hard task now, to say goodby to all,
hardest of all to those of his father's house. But he had nerved himself
for the ordeal. "I could tell them all goodby," he says, "until I came
to my mother."
They go, according to their plans, straight to Maysville, across the
county, to take boat for Cincinnati. Not alone do Mattie and Oliver make
that journey. His mother is with them. News runs before; the Australian
missionaries are coming! The word is quickly passed back and forth,
that there will be services at the church. When Oliver arrives he finds
the appointment made. He rises to preach. It is his last night in
Kentucky. Before his vision stretches a long vista of uncertain years in
a strange land; years among strangers for this man who is blessed with
so many friends. But that sorrow is swallowed up in the deeper joy of
presenting Christ to the people, showing forth his loveliness for the
last time in the land of his birth.
That sermon is not preserved, for which we are, we believe, sufficiently
thankful. If love in its fulness cannot be spoken, much less can it be
read. There is a simplicity and an inner earnestness, that is altogether
baffling to the snare of leaded type. Whatever the subject of that
sermon, Christ was in it, and we care nothing for its divisions and its
order. We are thrilled with joy by that sermon--we who never heard
it,--because we see the preacher's mother step forth--at last!--and
stand before them all like a beautiful dream come true--or rather, like
a spirit of love, whose enkindled face flashes into the son's eyes the
answer to his prayers.
Not in vain, as we have seen, were her lonely vigils, sewing far toward
midnight in the sleep-enwrapped tavern, that her children might be
clothed, toiling before break of day, the pale candle guiding her hands
to heroic labor that her loved ones might be fed. Much does Oliver owe
her, and much is now repaid, on this last night in Kentucky. He baptized
her; and as she came up out of the water, with his arm so tenderly
passed about her, she looked at him through her wonderful, new-found
happiness. "If all were as easy to obey as baptism," she murmured, "it
would be easy enough!"
And so,--the boat to Cincinnati where W. T. Moore's father-in-law, he
who is later to become Governor Bishop of Ohio,--entertains the bridal
pair in his home, and other friends assemble for goodbys,--the goodbys
at Macomb, Illinois. And then to New York to set forth for Australia, by
way of England. On board at last--and under a sullen sky they stand on
deck, watching their native land fade--fade--till nothing is to be seen
but a world of angry waves.