GRANDFATHER AND AMOS MAKE DISCOVERIES
Amos had acquired during the past winter a considerable addition to
his library. The publishers added the famous tales of "Père Goriot"
and "Madame Bovary" to their lists, and in accordance with the
suggestions of the clerk in the department store he was advised of
their publication. He read no more at lightning speed, but allowed
himself only a small portion each day. To teach school, to keep house,
to cultivate a garden, to read in the evenings--it was a life common to
thousands of prosaic citizens, but to him it was a life of wicked and
surreptitious adventure. In April he received a copy of "Tess of the
D'Urbervilles," and with it, by a packer's error, a recently published
and enormously popular story advocating an unremitting optimism in all
the circumstances of life, a gladness which nothing could disturb,
all-pervading as the air. He read it, sitting on a bench in the grove
above Cocalico Creek.
"'I'm so happy that I sing for joy,' said little Mary. 'I just make up
my mind to be glad, that's all that's necessary. I make everybody round
me glad.'"
He looked with astonishment at the printed word. Was he to pay good
money for this? A succession of strange expressions appeared upon his
handsome face and finally a grin, all-embracing, malicious. In this
fashion a lion might mock an unstockaded village.
Suddenly he rose and hurled the book with good aim exactly into the
middle of the creek where it sank heavily; then he laughed a silly
laugh. Life was not like that; life was orgiastic, sinister, monstrous!
In June he went to look after his supply of books. The Thinker's
Library was not growing with sufficient rapidity for him, and now that
his school was closed and he had so many long, idle hours he needed
occupation. The day was rainy and cool and dismally unseasonable,
and Grandfather looked at him in astonishment. The translation of
"The Mystic Dove" was long, long overdue, but Grandfather still had
implicit faith in its completion; Amos was slow, but spiritual tasks
were not to be hurried.
When Amos had gone the old man felt lonely. He made his way after a
while in the cool rain to the Saal and Saron, and walked through the
buildings, peopling them with figures. The stairs leading to the second
floor of Saron, were narrow and steep and he took them slowly, trying
to find a hold for his cane and not daring to cling to the ancient rope
which served as a rail, for fear that he might pull down the whole
structure upon his head.
In the second story his mood brightened. Here the sisters had sat with
their spinning-wheels and looms; here they had sung their ethereal
matins, and had prayed for their beloved Father Friedsam; here they
had talked of the mystical love of the Lord for his Sweet Flowers. An
unsympathetic person would have shivered at the damp, gravelike air,
at the narrowness of the tiny rooms, and at the ancient odors which
suggested decay and dreariness; and an imaginative person would have
remembered all the inevitable physical and mental abnormalities of
conventual life.
But Grandfather was cheered and not depressed. In a sudden increase
of mental vigor he began to plan once more the rehabilitation of the
Kloster. Here should be placed a supporting beam; here fresh plaster,
where the old plaster of clay and grass had crumbled away, leaving
exposed the slanting rafters held together by wooden pegs. Here was a
large space, newly opened like the hollow in which Amos had found "The
Mystic Dove," and he began to explore the depths with his stick. He
had gone over the old buildings many times, but never without hope of
finding some writing which had been overlooked, and had even stared
at the graves of Father Friedsam and Brother Jabez wondering whether
they might not contain a written message for the present backsliding
generation.
When his cane touched a small movable object, he forgot that he had
often prayed for exactly such an experience, and he was amazed and
excited. He knelt down and thrust his hand into the opening. A book!
Many books! His old cheeks quivered and his beard trembled upon his
aged breast. He pressed his body against the crumbling plaster so as to
reach in still farther, reproaching himself because he was surprised
at a blessing for which he had so ardently prayed. A library of
books--other "Mystic Doves" and "Sweet Lilies!"
He drew them out, one by one. But the binding was not of musty leather,
but of cheap modern cloth; the language was neither German nor Latin,
and there was no musty odor of sanctity--what could they be? Still
kneeling painfully, he opened the uppermost of the pile which he had
made and began to read.
"Hitherto he had never compromised himself in his relations with women.
As he had often said of himself, he had inspired no great passion, but
a multitude of caprices. But now he had begun to feel that it is one
love and not twenty that makes life memorable; he wished to redeem his
life from intrigues, and here was the very chance he was waiting for.
But habit had rendered him cowardly, and this affair frightened him
almost as much as marriage had done. To go away with her, he felt, was
equivalent to marrying her. His life would never be the same again. The
list would be lost to him forever; no more lists for him. He would be
known as the man who lived with--lived with whom? A girl picked up in
the suburbs who sang rather prettily."
Grandfather turned fifty pages or so.
"He was the young poet whom all Paris fell in love with. He came up to
Paris with a married woman; I think they came from Angoulême. I haven't
read Lost Illusions for twenty years. She and he were the stars in the
society of some provincial town, but when they arrived in Paris each
thought the other very common and countrified. He compares her with
Madame d'Espard; she compares him with Rastignac; Balzac completes the
picture with a touch of pure genius--they forgot that six months would
transform them both into exquisite Parisians!"
Grandfather turned another hundred pages.
"'Dearest, we cannot spend the night driving about London.'
"He sighed on his mistress's shoulder. She threw his black hair from
his forehead."
The book dropped to the floor.
"Ach, Gott im Himmel!" cried Grandfather. "What is then this?"
He explored deeply and still more deeply, till he had at last all
the library before him on the floor. Who had carried these books to
this spot? To whom did they belong? Together with the agony of which
his cramped body suddenly became conscious, there rushed upon him a
sickening suspicion of the truth. Only one person beside himself had
access to the old buildings.
For a long time he stood staring at the odious books. He did not wish
to touch them; he would have liked to press them into a closer heap
with his cane and to set fire to them. But they were not his. Nor did
he wish to leave them in this clean and holy place. He would carry
them down, and when Amos returned he would confront him with them. The
dream of his old age was not yet quite destroyed; there would be no
restoration of the Kloster; but a repentant sinner might still serve a
secular congregation. With him Grandfather would wrestle day and night.
He carried the books to the cottage in five long journeys. Baskets
woven by the sisters were at hand, but he did not remember them and a
heavily laden basket would have made a perilous burden. Up and down
the two flights of stairs which were scarcely more than ladders he
journeyed, his knees shaking. Then in his kitchen he placed the books
in a row on the table.
Confounded, he sat with his hands clasped on his cane, waiting. The
rain continued to fall; the monotonous drip from the eaves changed to
the plunge of a miniature waterfall; the shadows of the Saal and Saron
and finally the shadows of night fell upon the little house, and still
he sat alone.
Amos meanwhile had journeyed through a landscape shrouded in rain and
mist. Fields and farmhouses and noble groups of trees were hidden or
showed only in ghostly outlines. In the neighborhood of the long line
of furnaces and mills the mist produced many strange phenomena. Above
the ground was a succession of dull masses, black freight trains, the
lower floors of vast and shapeless buildings, and mammoth truncated
pyramids of dim red or black or yellow ore. Once, above the layer of
mist which enshrouded the upper portion of a towering blast-house, he
saw a titanic figure, a man elevated apparently upon the mist itself,
raising against heaven a defiant hammer. He felt in his own muscles a
sudden tightening--he believed that he could swing a hammer like that
and swing it hard.
The city was wrapped in the same dismal blanket. He wandered about the
streets; he visited the Capitol and patrolled miles of the muddy river.
He could not see the distant bank, and even the islands in midstream
had vanished. He walked out beyond the city limits, and there from a
little stone pier looked down into a deep, swirling pool. There was
nothing in life, he believed, and nothing in death either. The men and
women who wrote the books he read made very little allowance for the
future; to them he believed the very conception was ludicrous.
Then Amos realized suddenly to what point he had come. He recoiled in
horror from the deep pool and from his own wicked thoughts and rapidly
retraced his steps. When he reached the city limits, he left the river
road in fear and took to the first parallel street.
It had begun to rain heavily and he had no umbrella. He remembered
the cathedral into which he had gone by mistake, and wondering at his
earlier feeling of wickedness, he decided to take refuge there from the
rain. He felt an intense curiosity; Roman Catholic beliefs were often
mentioned in the books which he read. He hurried his steps, and when he
reached the church he went in and sat down panting.
At first he experienced only a dull peace. His body was tired, his mind
ceased to operate and the mere freedom from thought was comfortable.
Gradually a deeper quiet came upon him, induced by the silence and
the dim conception of ageless traditions which he had unconsciously
gathered. Here as in the Kloster men had found peace; they had crept
away and had taken vows and hidden themselves forever from the
temptations of the mad world.
He saw a slender youth in a long, loose garment enter the church from
behind the altar and kneel down. As he knelt he read from a little
book, and sometimes he made a graceful, rapid motion with his hand
across forehead and breast. Amos watched hungrily and knelt also,
crouching almost to the floor. The young man had a happy face--would
that he had courage to ask the nature and the effect of his orisons! He
would do anything, follow any one.
But the young priest, having finished his devotions, rose, crossed
himself, and went the way he had come. He had to Amos's eyes suddenly
a complacent air which produced a reaction. The fierce hunger for
life came back; he rose and went out, letting the door slam. He would
buy more books. And--poor Amos!--he would do worse than that; he would
learn something of the world at first hand. There were theaters and
moving-picture houses--to him nothing human was hereafter to be foreign.
The rain had ceased, and again for a brief space the mist descended,
not now in a thick blanket, but in ragged masses, and a wind blew
from the river. The deeper chill of evening cooled the air, and as
pedestrians took on a livelier pace, he moved more briskly with them.
At the corner of the square he stood still and watched the street-cars
moving on the weblike tracks, and the bright lights of the automobiles
weaving a pattern round them, and the larger circles of human beings
perpetually revolving. The group of Salvation Army workers stood where
they had stood months before, singing shrilly, with an accompaniment
of tambourine music, an old and sentimental religious song set to a
popular secular air. Their leader looked about with the same solemnity,
the same canine determination to snatch as many souls as possible from
eternal death. Amos looked and listened unmoved.
Then suddenly, as though by this dullness he had opened finally
a gateway for the powers of darkness, there rose beside him a
representative of that evil which he believed to be the chief evil of
the world. A short, heavy woman whose black eyes sparkled behind a
figured veil came up to him, so close that her shoulder touched his
arm. He took an involuntary step, then he looked down.
"You're all alone?" asked a flat voice.
"Yes."
"So am I, but I'm always glad for company. Perhaps you would come with
me?"
"Where?"
The woman answered by turning back toward the dark street and Amos
followed her. He walked lightly as though he walked without shoes,
as an Arab might follow his master down a ghostly street. His folded
arms might have held together a shrouding burnous, his air was secret.
He turned like a soldier on parade into a dark hallway and climbed
a flight of stairs and another and yet another, going as though he
understood perfectly the object of his journey.
The last stairway opened into a room from which he could see an
illuminated sky, and he realized that he was above the square. He could
hear faintly against the sound of grinding brakes and automobile horns
a confident declaration:
"I'm the child of a King,
The child of a King,
With Jesus my Saviour,
I'm the child of a King."
A cold sweat broke out upon him.
His companion moved quietly about the back of the deep, dim room,
her motions imagined and not seen. As she moved, it seemed to Amos
as though some monstrous and evil thing was bearing down upon him,
an enormous, indescribable instrument of woe. His terror was not
only mental, but physical; he lifted his hands as if to ward off the
crushing weight. At the same time he felt the whole situation to be
unreal; and so keen was this impression that he expressed it aloud.
"I'm not like this!"
"What did you say?" asked the flat voice.
Amos answered in deeds, not words. He rose to his feet and moving like
a cat approached the door. Then he flung himself down the stairs, one
flight, two, three, and out into the street. He believed that he heard
footsteps behind him, felt dim arms outstretched for him. He saw, ten
times magnified, the face of the captain of the Army. His face was all
that he could see. He flung himself upon the little band, now almost
without an audience, and pushed his way into the center.
The astonished captain laid a hand upon his arm.
"You're not fleeing from arrest, are you?"
"No," panted Amos. "I'm fleeing from evil."
"Then stand right where you are."
The tambourines began to beat furiously. A lassie started to sing with
a volume of sweet sound which came uncannily from her tiny throat. She
fixed upon Amos concerned and pitying eyes. The woman with the dark
veil did not appear from her fastness.
Amos stood close to the captain, who, after another song had been
sung, invited all who wished to be saved to come with him to the rooms
of the Army. Apparently Amos was the only one interested in this
important matter and him he led away, leaving the others to conduct
the meeting. In a bare little room furnished with benches, a portable
organ, and a few printed Scripture texts, he bade Amos sit down.
"Now, Brother, what's your trouble?"
Amos was for the moment speechless, the joys of confidence being new
to him, but when he began to speak, he could not stop. He told of his
youth and his uncle and Ellen and of his buying books and of the old
Kloster.
"It was intended that I should found a conventual order."
The captain did not understand.
"A what?"
"A conventual order. We were to gather in others to live a life of
meditation."
The captain knitted his heavy brows. "What were you going to meditate
about?"
"The goodness of God and the sin of the world," said Amos faintly; and
drew forth an amazing reply:
"I don't wonder you got nutty."
"Got what?" repeated Amos, puzzled. "Nutty?"
"You've understood me, Brother." The captain tapped his forehead
significantly with his gnarled hand whose deep-laid grime no washing
could altogether remove. "Then what?"
Amos described his despair, his contemplation of the dark pool, and his
last and most terrible experience.
"I'm utterly vile," said he at last.
"You're worse than that," said the captain.
"Won't you advise me?" asked Amos timidly.
The little man stared at him. He asked again for a second description
of Amos's long days, he looked at the mighty frame, and was filled with
an impatience which was almost disgust. He rose as though he were going
to turn Amos out. Instead he addressed him fiercely.
"Will you do exactly as I tell you for a month?"
"Yes," promised Amos weakly.
The captain opened a closet door and pointed to several sets of
workingman's overalls.
"You pick out the longest of those and roll them into a bundle and come
along."
Amos obeyed. He could not explain this strange course, unless he was to
be conducted on a journey to see depths of misery and wickedness more
abysmal than his own.
Whistling, the little man led the way out into the street, and
returning to the square bade his companions good-bye. Of the wide,
interested eyes of the leader of the singing he took special note, and
smiled inwardly and said to himself with the air of a prophet, "Sally's
got her eye on him." Then he climbed into a street-car, Amos close
behind him. When they had traveled several miles he got out and led
the way through an opening in a high fence into the yard of a blast
furnace. The blast was in progress and the air was filled with rosy
light.
"Come on," he said.
"What are we going to do?" Did some hideous immolation threaten? The
place seemed like the lower regions.
"We're going to work," said the strange guide. "What ails you is not
sin, but idleness; you've got too much time on your hands. I bet you
ain't ever worked a whole day in your life! I'm the boss of the night
shift and you're under me. Get me?"
With a gasp of astonishment Amos "got" him. But the captain, however
efficacious his cure, was mistaken in his diagnosis. He believed Amos
to be lazy as well as idle.