When Kike had appeared at the camp meeting, as we related, it was not
difficult to forecast his fate. Everybody saw that he was going into
a consumption. One year, two years at farthest, he might manage to
live, but not longer. Nobody knew this so well as Kike himself. He
rejoiced in it. He was one of those rare spirits to whom the
invisible world is not a dream but a reality, and to whom religious
duty is a voice never neglected. That he had sacrificed his own life
to his zeal he understood perfectly well, and he had no regrets
except that he had not been more zealous. What was life if he could
save even one soul?
"But," said Morton to him one day, "you are wrong, Kike. If you had
taken care of yourself you might have lived to save so many more."
"Morton, if your eye were fastened on one man drowning," replied
Kike, "and you thought you could save him at the risk of your health,
you wouldn't stop to calculate that by avoiding that peril you might
live long enough to save many others. When God puts a soul before me
I save that one if il costs my life. When I am gone God will find
others. It is glorious to work for God, but it is awful. What if by
some neglect of mine a soul should drop into hell? O! Morton, I am
oppressed with responsibility! I will be glad when God shall say, It
is enough."
Few of the preachers remonstrated with Kike. He was but fulfilling
the Methodist ideal; they admired him while most of them could not
quite emulate him. Read the minutes of the old conferences and you
will see everywhere among the brief obituaries, headstones in memory
of young men who laid down their lives as Kike was doing. Men were
nothing--the work was everything. Methodism let the dead bury their
dead; it could hardly stop to plant a spear of grass over the grave
of one of its own heroes.
But Pottawottomie Creek circuit was poor and wild, and it had paid
Kike only five dollars for his whole nine months' work. Two of this
he had spent for horse-shoes, and two he had given away. The other
one had gone for quinine. Now he had no clothes that would long hold
together. He would ride to Hissawachee and get what his mother had
carded and spun, and woven, and cut, and sewed for the son whom she
loved all the more that he seemed no longer to be entirely hers. He
could come back in three days. Two days more would suffice to reach
Peterborough circuit. So he sent on to the circuit, in advance, his
appointments to preach, and rode off to Hissawachee. But he did not
get back to camp-meeting. An attack of fever held him at home for
several weeks.
At last he was better and had set the day for his departure from
home. His mother saw what everybody saw, that if Kike ever lived to
return to his home it would only be to die. And as this was,
perhaps, his last visit, Mrs. Lumsden felt in duty bound to tell him
of her intention to marry Brady. While Brady thought to do the
handsome thing by secretly getting a marriage license, intending,
whenever the widow should mention the subject to Kike, to immediately
propose that Kike should perform the ceremony of marriage. It was
quite contrary to the custom of that day for a minister to officiate
at a wedding of one of his own family; Brady defied custom, however.
But whenever Mrs. Lumsden tried to approach Kike on the subject, her
heart failed her. He was so wrapped up in heavenly subjects, so full
of exhortations and aspirations, that she despaired beforehand of
making him understand her feelings. Once she began by alluding to
her loneliness, upon which Kike assured her that if she put her trust
in the Lord he would be with her. What was she to do? How make a
rapt seer like Kike understand the wants of ordinary mortals? And
that, too, when he was already bidding adieu to this world?
The last morning had come, and Brady was urging on the weeping widow
that she must go into the room where Kike was stuffing his small
wardrobe into his saddle-bags, and tell him what was in their hearts.
"Oh, I can't bear to," said she. "I won't never see him any more and
I might hurt him, and----"
"Will," said Brady, "thin I'll hev to do it mesilf."
"If you only would!" said she, imploringly.
"But it's so much more appropriate for you to do it, Mrs. Lumsden.
If I do it, it'll same jist loike axin' the b'y's consint to marry
his mother."
"But I can't noways do it," said the widow. "If you love me you
might take that load offen me."
"I'll do it if it kills me, sthraight," and Brady marched into the
sitting-room, where Kike, exhausted by his slight exertion, was
resting in the shuck-bottom rocking-chair. Brady took a seat
opposite to him on a chair made out of a transformed barrel, and
reached up his iron gray hair uneasily. To his surprise Kike began
the conversation.
"Mr. Brady, you and mother a'n't acting very wisely, I think," said
Kike.
"Ye've noticed us, thin," said Brady, in terror.
"To be sure I have."
"Will, now, Koike, I'll till you fwat I'm thinkin'. Ye're pecooliar
loike; ye don't know how to sympathoize with other folks because
ye're livin' roight up in hiven all the toime."
"Why don't you live more in heaven?"
"Will, I think I'd throy if I had somebody to help me," said Brady,
adroitly. "But I'm one of the koind that's lonesome, and in doire
nade of company. I was jilted whin I was young, and I thought I'd
niver be a fool agin. But ye see ye ain't niver been in love in all
yer loife, and how kin ye fale fer others?"
"Maybe I have been in love, too," said Kike, a strange softness
coming into his voice.
"Did ye iver! Who'd a thought it?" And Brady made large eyes at
him. "Thin ye ought to fale fer the infarmities of others," he added
with some exultation.
"I do. That's why I said you and mother were very foolish."
"Fwy, now; there it is agin. Fwat do ye mane?"
"Why this. When I was here before I saw that you and mother had
taken a liking to each other. I thought by this time you'd have been
married. And I didn't see any reason why you shouldn't. But you're
as far away as ever. Here's mother's land that needs somebody to
take care of it. I am going away never to come back. If I could see
you married the only earthly care I have would be gone, and I could
die in peace, whenever and wherever the Lord calls me."
"God bliss ye, Koike," said Brady, wiping his eyes. "Fwy didn't you
say that before? Ye're a prophet and a angel, I belave. I wish I
was half as good, or a quarther. God bliss ye, me boy. I wish--I
wish ye would thry to live afwoile, I've been athrying' and your
mother's been athryin' to muster up courage to spake to ye about
this, and ye samed so hivenly we thought ye would be displased. Now,
will ye marry us before ye go?"
"I haven't got any license."
"Here 'tis, in me pocket."
"Where's a witness or two?"
"I hear some women-folks come to say good-bye to ye in the other
room."
"I'd like to marry you now," said Kike. "I must get away in an hour."
And he married them. They wept over him, and he made no concealment
that he was going away for the last time. He rode out from
Hissawachee never to come back. Not sad, but exultant, that he had
sacrificed everything for Christ and was soon to enter into the life
everlasting. For, faithless as we are in this day, let us never hide
from ourselves the fact that the faith of a martyr is indeed a
hundred fold more a source of joy than houses and lands, and wife and
children.
_CHAPTER XXXI._