AMOS VENTURES INTO THE WORLD
In the autumn evenings Grandfather sat beside his stove in meditation.
It was against his principles to permit himself too high a degree of
physical comfort, but as the current of his blood ran less swiftly he
drew unconsciously closer to the stove. As he had often sat here and
ordered his life, so he was ordering now his departure from life. He
dreamed sometimes of a burial such as the fathers had had, at midnight
under the light of torches, with antiphonal singing and solemn tolling
of bells, and with a procession of the Brotherhood of Zion and the
Sisterhood of Spiritual Virgins.
Amos was at the pine table, now correcting the papers of the children
in his school, now bent over his Latin manuscript. It seemed to him
that his mind became less active and that the devil tempted him to
dream when he ought to be at work.
To Grandfather there had been in the universe two stable realities, the
existence of a wise and all-powerful Creator and the correctness of the
Seventh-Day Baptist interpretation of the Creator's mind and works.
Now in his old age he dwelt with increasing satisfaction upon a third
reality, the divine appointment and fitness of Amos, on account of his
faith and piety, to interpret both Creator and theology. He thought, as
the weeks passed, less anxiously about Ellen, ascribing her placability
to his own advice and to her better mind, rather than to the stern
necessities of her case. She would, he believed, now that the dangerous
influence of her father was removed, "come round."
One day he summoned a carpenter and went with him over the old
buildings, measuring and inspecting. Here a wall needed strengthening,
here a chimney rebuilding, here fresh plaster should replace the broken
mortar of clay and grass. The sum required to put all in order was not
large.
Sitting drowsily by the stove Grandfather peopled the quiet night with
figures. He saw Saron filled; he saw men going after prayer to work in
the fields and women in white filing in solemn procession to worship
at midnight. They went joyfully, as he and Amos went sometimes to pray
in the Saal. He heard above his little cottage heavenly songs issuing
from the high matin room of Saron.
But the figures in his dreams were not those of departed saints. The
face of the speaker in the pulpit who held an audience enthralled,
not alone by his eloquence, but by the power of truth, was not that
of Father Friedsam, but of Amos; the cowled and robed figure which
was followed by adoring converts was that of Amos; the religious who
knelt alone in the Saal at midnight praying for his people was Amos. It
was mediæval and strange, but it was real to the dreamer. It had all
happened once, less than two hundred years ago--it might, if it pleased
God, happen again.
But Amos, alas! had come to doubt his own strength, had come indeed to
fear his own thoughts. As he bent over "The Mystic Dove" on this winter
evening his face was drawn, the fingers with which he held his pen were
icy. He was trying to translate a sentence which he believed praised
the holy mystery of the sacraments, but his mind was not upon his work,
and, spoken to suddenly, he started as guiltily as though Grandfather
had looked into his heart and detected his disquiet.
"Our little girl is learning to submit herself," said Grandfather
contentedly. "Matthew tells me so. That's the first lesson
learned--quiet. She is like the noble Sister Anastasia whose pride was
softened. Have you seen Ellen at any time?"
"Once," answered Amos without lifting his head. He spoke indifferently
and bent more closely over his work, as though he had reached an
important paragraph. It was the acting of a lie, for he thought of
Ellen in school and at home and especially in the long evenings when
it was supposed that his sacred task occupied his mind. He had been
thinking of her when Grandfather spoke; for her benefit he was making a
strange plan.
Last Sunday afternoon he had gone for a walk. Even then he had not
been quite honest with himself, for he had pretended that his object
was exercise, when deep in his heart he hugged a hope of seeing Ellen.
An intense natural shyness and a consciousness of guilt forbade him
Matthew's door. It was unthinkable that he should "go to see" Ellen!
Making a long détour he had arrived at last in the woodland back of the
Levis house and there waited for darkness to become complete, when he
intended to go to the edge of the woods and look down upon the lighted
windows and perhaps see Ellen's shadow moving back and forth.
The November evening was still and he had taken only a few steps into
the woodland when he heard the sound of crying. Ellen herself was no
more tender-hearted and he at once moved forward rapidly, then stood
still, trying to decide upon the direction from which the sound came.
He could now hear nothing; perhaps his footsteps on the dry leaves had
betrayed his approach. Then he heard the sound again nearer at hand. It
was not the whimper of a trapped animal, it was the smothered sobbing
of a human being. He went forward swiftly. Then again he paused. The
low western sun cast a single level beam through the clouds; the light
fell upon Ellen, a mournful figure in a black shawl upon a stump, Ellen
alone in the twilight, Ellen unreconciled to her bereavement, Ellen
changed and forlorn.
"It is I. Can I help you, Ellen?" he asked breathlessly.
Ellen sprang to her feet, her black shawl trailing.
"Oh, is it you?" She drew a long breath of relief. Amos was
negligible--she had thought that it was Matthew! It made little
difference whether Amos observed her woes.
"You can persuade them to let me go away," she said despairingly.
"I haven't anything to live for, I'm all alone." Then she recovered
herself. "Please forget this. No one can do anything." She rubbed her
eyes furiously with a wet handkerchief and pulled her shawl round her.
"I hadn't any business to talk about it."
At once she walked rapidly out of the gloom of the woods into the
brighter light and made her way, somber and forlorn, across the fields.
Amos took her place upon the broad stump. He saw her reach the kitchen
door, he saw the light gleam. It was possible that Matthew and Millie
were away--was she then alone, poor, poor Ellen? He would go down and
speak to her further; he should not have let her go uncomforted, he
who meditated upon religious matters, who translated holy books! But
suppose that Matthew and Millie should return, Millie with her sharp,
cunning eyes! Besides, he knew that he could not help Ellen, she would
not listen.
Then, the devil tempted him. Grandfather's plan for her was a mistaken
one, she would never bind herself to conventual life. In the Normal
School whither he had gone to learn elementary Latin there had been
many lady teachers, confirmed in singleness, faithful to their duties
and to their various denominations, and useful to the world--it was
not wrong to think of Ellen bound to education! He rose and went home,
meaning to speak in her behalf.
But between the time of that bold intention and this evening,
misgivings troubled him. If he were listened to he would be helping
to send Ellen into the world. She wished to go farther away than the
Normal School, farther away than Lancaster or Harrisburg, and about the
safety of the world beyond he had grave doubts. She might even go to
New York where, every one said, wickedness was rampant. There was no
telling where she might not go!
Presently a solution presented itself. It was possible to learn much
from books; he had gained all his information from that source,
and from books he would learn about the present condition of the
world. Before speaking to his uncle he would acquaint himself with
contemporary writings and be governed by their character. In Harrisburg
there was a State library from which he occasionally secured books by
mail, and he had sometime ago announced to Grandfather his intention
to apply there in person for a new volume. At Christmas, when school
closed for a week, he would be his own master. When he had come to this
determination his mind was easier and he was able to proceed with his
translation.
His preparations for departure consisted of earnest prayer and the
packing of a frugal lunch. When he found that he could conscientiously
ask the blessing of God upon his undertaking his spirits rose. As for
the material preparations, prices in city restaurants were high and
wastefulness was wicked.
The day which he had selected dawned bitter cold; the fire in the
cottage did not burn well and the pinched and blue countenance of
Grandfather distressed him. But Grandfather would listen to no
sympathy.
"My trials are small beside those suffered on this spot."
The landscape showed bleak and gray in the dawn; the lighted windows
suggested not the cheerfulness of evening and of family gatherings,
but unwilling rising in cold rooms, the breaking of ice in pitcher
and bowl, the torturing operation of milking with stiff hands. Wheels
creaked over the frozen snow, and horses puffed like chimneys. Amos was
not warmly dressed; he had never, in fact, been dressed warmly enough
to meet winter storms. Having climbed into the trolley car, he tried
to restrain his tears while circulation returned to his frost-bitten
fingers. He looked fully the part of a shivering Saint Francis. A
traveling man, wrapped in a fur-lined coat, and cursing inwardly the
luck which had kept him overnight in the village, stared.
"Who is he?" he asked the conductor; but the conductor, being busy with
his fares, made no reply.
His was the first but not the last comment upon Amos that day. Entering
the train at Lancaster he walked the length of the car to find a
seat, and after him heads turned. Even persons who were familiar
with Lancaster County's strange types looked startled; one or two
impressionable women shivered.
"Do you suppose he's very wise or very stupid?" asked one woman of
another.
"He's very handsome."
"Do you think so?"
"Yes, he's too handsome."
"I'll warrant he's the kind of a crank after whom women would travel in
droves. Perhaps we'll have a new sect."
Amos heard no comments. He sat down and looked at the smooth farmlands,
then at the river filled with floating ice, then upon the tall
stacks and chimneys and into the heart of glowing furnaces. It was
a bewildering world to which he was an alien. He was trained to be
interested not in mechanical operations or in the achievements of
science, but in the operations of the human soul. A famous saint had
put into words, centuries before, Grandfather Milhausen's teaching.
"Suppose that you had subtilty and learning enough to know all things,
that you were acquainted with all languages, the courses of the stars,
and all the rest--what is there in that to be proud of? The glory of
man is to be faithful to God."
Catching a glimpse of the dome of the Capitol soon after he had left
the station, he walked up a narrow street to the rising ground. Now
that he was here he would not confine himself to the library, but would
look about--this, too, might be a part of Ellen's world! It was nine
o'clock and the sun gave a small measure of warmth. Squirrels ran up
and down the tree-trunks and pigeons wheeled above his head. Their
friendliness with the passers-by pleased him.
Then, abruptly, pleasure ended. He looked not down at the parked
street, as Ellen had looked at first, but up at two groups of statuary
newly placed on each side of the main entrance. Here, in broad
daylight, fixed eternally and shamefully in marble, were human beings
without clothes! He did not blush; his astonishment and incredulity
were too deep. After a long stare he withdrew his gaze embarrassed. It
was to escape the glaring nudities that he entered the bronze doors, on
which were represented various worthies of the Commonwealth. He did not
smile at the neatly collared gentlemen whose heads protruded like the
heads of turtles; he found them vaguely an assurance of the stability
of the world.
Once inside, he felt a measure of confidence. Upon his childlike mind
the soaring dome, the painted walls made the same impression which they
had made upon the mind of Ellen. He looked longest at the lunettes in a
corridor which pictured the early sects and found at last his own. How
beautiful was this quiet place and how intolerable the group without!
Here, in Moravian, sounding his trombone from the tower, in pious
Quakeress preaching to the savage, in Wissahickon mystic at prayer on
the hillside, was nothing to hurt Ellen.
For an hour he wandered about, walking on marble stairways and thick
rugs and letting his astonished vision rest on masses of color, the
green of Penn's rich coat, the Admiral's scarlet robe, the blue sky. He
had not known that such colors existed. Suddenly he apprehended dimly
the beauty of the world, of trees and streams and the bodies of human
beings. But they were all an obstacle between man and God!
He felt with sudden depression his own insignificance. He had seen in
all his years no crowds of human beings, had been part of no large
body of men, had had a share in no concerted movement. He knew in a
general way the history of his State, but he was not of it; he taught
the history of his country, but felt no thrill at sight of its flag. He
read no daily paper, and in his religious weekly all the news of the
world was censored and emasculated.
In the library he stood most astonished and confused. Shelves upon
shelves of books, hundreds and thousands of books! He was confounded by
their number and by the vastness of the world which they represented;
he was embarrassed by the studious silence; he was frightened by the
cool black eyes of a young woman behind the desk. To gain a moment's
time, he stepped aside to look at an old map and at a framed and
valuable proclamation offering ten thousand dollars for the arrest of
the assassin of Abraham Lincoln.
At last he summoned sufficient courage to ask for "The Early Sects,"
and was told that it was at present out of the library.
"I wanted it for study," he explained. "I have sent for books from
here."
"If you will leave your name and address we'll send it to you."
As he wrote his name on a card, his eye fell upon a row of books at the
end of the desk whose bright bindings marked them as the modern works
for which he sought. He thought it best to buy copies of his own; he
was not a rapid reader and he wished to study them carefully.
"May I copy their names?"
"Surely!"
He looked at the titles in an uncritical spirit and took them as
they came. The volumes belonged to the "Thinker's Library," a
somewhat poorly bound, carelessly edited series of English novels and
translations of other European novels and tales. It was a curious list
which he transcribed--"Bertha Garlan," "Russian Stories," "Esther
Waters."
He found at last in a store, where he had to thread his way among women
buying laces and handkerchiefs and table linen, a corner where books
were sold. The first two volumes on his list were on hand, "Esther
Waters" was not to be had, but "Evelyn Innes" was suggested by the
clerk as a substitute. Then, his bundle under his arm, he walked out.
Now that his business was attended to, he would satisfy his still
undulled curiosity. It seemed to him that the gaze of every passer-by
sought his, and he was uneasy until he realized that his glance sought
the eye of every passer-by. This fact discovered, he walked on looking
straight ahead and holding his shoulders stiffly.
He came at last to the street with the park in the center running from
the Capitol to the river. There stood large churches, and seeing a few
women enter the most imposing, he entered also. He made no excuse for
himself, though he knew that his uncle would not approve; an inspection
of churches seemed a legitimate part of his expedition.
When with a single astonished glance he saw that the few worshipers
were kneeling, he knelt also. He had not dreamed that anywhere but in
the Saal men went to pray alone. He prayed now for the Kloster and for
his uncle and for Ellen--poor little Ellen whose sobs he would never
forget. It seemed to him that God spoke to him and told him that it
would be right to help her to her heart's desire, and he sighed happily.
Then--it may have been the tinkle of beads slipping from finger to
finger, it may have been a subtle ecclesiastical odor different from
the odor of the Saal--he felt a sudden misgiving. He opened his eyes
slowly and looked at the woman kneeling near by, who was not so
absorbed in her devotions that she did not have a startled eye for her
neighbor whom she believed to be some sort of very holy man. Next he
saw the stations of the cross along the wall, and then the marble altar
with its tiny, gleaming lamp. Whither, oh, whither had he come?
At once terrible words rushed into his startled mind--"popish images,"
"idolatry," "confessional." He rose and clutched his package and went
out. In the vestibule he saw a woman performing what he took to be
a slight ablution in a sort of basin--it removed his last lingering
doubt. He fled, and the door closed noisily behind him, disturbing
those within.
As he walked weakly toward the river, he realized that it was not
altogether emotion which had exhausted him, but partly hunger. To one
who was accustomed to the damp coldness of the Saal a meal out of
doors, even on such a day as this, was tolerable and he sat down on a
bench near the spot where Ellen and her father had paused hand in hand
to look across toward Stephen's gray house. He, too, looked at it, but
the lives lived there did not come within his experience and were not
to be imagined.
When his lunch was eaten, he returned to the station to wait for
his train and sat holding his package of books, and watching the
ever-changing throng. All he saw had a bearing upon his errand, and
he tried to picture Ellen among the travelers--not Ellen in her black
shawl, but Ellen in her brown coat and tight-fitting cap, her Christmas
gifts in her hands, all smiles and happiness. His day in the world had
brought him to no final decision; Ellen's future still waited upon his
reading.
For some reason unknown to him, the train waited for a long time upon
a siding outside the city, and he could look directly through an
opening in a high fence into the yard of an iron mill. Opposite the
opening stood a lofty shed, apparently a vast store-house for finished
products, in which cranes moved like gigantic men, lifting and laying
down masses of iron and loading long girders upon cars. He watched, as
he sometimes watched the farmers intent upon their work, the men who
manipulated the enormous machines, and the men who came and went in the
yard. Simply to live and work and not to think, what happiness in such
a lot! But he reproached himself sharply for desiring the glory of the
moon rather than the glory of the sun which was his. He had chosen the
better part, or to speak exactly, it had been chosen for him. Let him
be grateful.
He entered the gate of the Kloster after dark. Grandfather had lighted
the brass lamp and sat by the stove asleep. On the stove were several
pots with a fragrant steam escaping from under their lids. As Amos laid
down his books on the sill outside, his conscience reproached him. But
his motive was, he reminded himself, excellent.
Grandfather went early to bed on his hard cot in the next room, leaving
Amos bending over the manuscript from which he had been separated for
a day, and charging him not to work too late. When the old man's light
breathing could be heard, Amos opened the door, brought in his precious
parcel and with shaking, thrifty hands untied the hard knot with which
it was fastened. He selected the book which was uppermost and laid the
others in the drawer of his table. In the silence of the night he
began to study the world into which he was to launch Ellen. Surely none
of these authors had hitherto been read in a stranger spot! Close to
the little cottage on one side crowded the graves of the dead, above
it on the other rose the grim old buildings. All spoke, not of love,
either good or evil, nor of the present, nor of life, but of the past
and of the peace of death.
The book he had selected was the volume of Russian stories. He read an
introductory paragraph which stated that the author gave a description
of his impressions of the Russian-Japanese War, an event as dim to Amos
as though it had taken place in 1904 B.C. instead of 1904 A.D. He was
disappointed--he was not interested in war! But having begun he kept
on. He had thought himself a slow reader, but he had read hitherto only
the subtle abstractions of mystic writers, pondering as he went; he had
never had before him such texts as these.
"Horror and madness!" The opening words were not reassuring. But he
read on.
"I felt it for the first time as we were marching along the
road--marching incessantly for ten hours without stopping, never
diminishing our step, never waiting to pick up those who had fallen,
but leaving them to the enemy that was moving behind us in a compact
mass."
He blinked as though to clear his vision; then his pupils moved back
and forth, back and forth.
"An hour passed, but the multitude still moved on, and the air and the
distant, phantom-like ranks trembled as before. Again the burning heat
pierced my body ... I was surrounded by a group of gray people; some
lying motionless, perhaps dead; others sitting up and staring vacantly.
Some had guns and resembled soldiers; others were stripped almost
naked, and the skin on their bodies was so livid that one did not care
to look at it. Not far from me some one was lying with his bared back
upturned. One could see by the unconcerned manner in which he had
buried his face in the sharp, burning sand, by the whiteness of the
palm of his upturned hand, that he was dead, but his back was as red as
if he were alive. And I saw--"
"What is this?" whispered Amos. But he read on and on until headless
men surrounded him and a sea of blood seemed rising to engulf him.
He finished with a dying light and a body aching cruelly with cold.
The fire had gone out; there echoed about him the mysterious crackling
sounds of a bitter night. He rose and stood in the darkness, appalled
by the things he had read. Was this the world into which he had thought
to send pure and lovely Ellen?
After a long time he heard his uncle sigh in his sleep, and the tears
began to run down his cheeks. It must be almost morning; he would wrap
himself in his coat and await the striking of the hour, then, if it
was not too early to disturb his uncle, he would make up the fire.
Moreover, he would make it up with these hideous writings for which he
had spent good money.
But deliberation brought better counsel--Ellen would have no encounter
with war! Besides, it was a Russian story and Ellen did not mean to go
to Russia. He would read the other books.
The next evening he did not wait until Grandfather had gone to bed; but
laid his book inside the manuscript of "The Mystic Dove" and began. A
great deal of "Evelyn Innes" he did not understand, but he understood
enough. He read like a child for the story, all else escaping his
immature attention. The technique of music was an uncharted sea; the
ambitions of Mr. Innes he did not comprehend; he had never seen an
opera, nor was he able to picture one. But he saw clearly what had
happened to Evelyn. A cold perspiration broke out upon him. It was well
for Ellen that he had set out to discover the world!
Then he was guilty of a curious and natural inconsistency. He concluded
that it was his duty to acquaint himself further with wickedness, so
that he might the better resist it. When he had finished "Evelyn,"
he returned to the book of Russian stories, laying it, too, between
the pages of "The Mystic Dove." He saw a dark river which carried on
its strong current a raft, and understood that a young man, a pious
Christian, worked at the stern and watched his wife made much of in a
shameful way by his own father in the bow.
But still he read on. "The Raft" was short; midnight was still far
away; he opened the third book. Again the accident of his choice was
unfortunate. The story was simply and plainly told. Bertha Garlan,
widowed and with a little child, sought out, under pressure of
irresistible desire for affection, an old sweetheart who had attained
fame and who lived grossly, and had with him a brief liaison. Her
passion and her shame were pictured with equal skill--it was a moving
tale, and it pointed as bitter a lesson as the pen of moralist could
present.
It was not strange that when he tried to work at his "Mystic Dove,"
the language proved dull and meaningless. He ceased to translate and
began to walk about, traveling over the frozen roads at night like one
condemned to wander for his sins. The world was a whirlpool of crime
in which each hour betrayed and murdered thousands were sucked down to
destruction. His uncle had been right.
At last he began to think of another way to help Ellen. His uncle
believed and had taught him that a man's first concern should be the
eternal safety of his own soul. Might there not be a higher duty?
Speculating, he felt his cheeks burn, his heart throb quickly.