NAME THE CHAPTER AFTER YOU READ IT.
Eternity has clasped a few more of her romping children, the mad
galloping years, to her eager bosom since you last gazed upon the
countenances of the principal actors in our little drama. Winter, the
frozen love of God, is upon its annual visit to earth, and Astral and
Erma Wysong Herndon are spending the winter eve in their cosy, modestly
furnished home before a grate full of live, glowing coals, while little
Astral Herndon, Jr., a pretty, precocious child of seven summers is
astride his fond papa's knee, gazing thoughtfully out of his pretty
brown eyes into the fire. Erma, yet wearing black for her brother John,
has grown more beautiful with the years and, her rounded, matronly form
presents fresh beauties to Astral's eyes each time he looks in her
direction, which be assured is not seldom. She is now holding a book
before her face and is supposed to be reading, but in reality she is
furtively watching her boy, and notes, with a heaving bosom, the manlike
sobriety on his face.
There were strange experiences connected with the birth of that child.
It was on this wise: When Erma knew that God would bless her with an
offspring she besought Astral to allow her to leave Richmond and stay
until her child was born. She asked to be separated from him and from
the world until God had fully wrought upon the human being whom he was
shortly to introduce into the world through her. The volcanic eruptions
that had, from time to time, hurled forth their smoke and lava upon
Erma's soul, had left huge craters in her heart so deep as to be
unfathomable by means of mortal measuring lines; so wide that human ken
could not span from side to side. Astral knew and felt this and learned
to look upon his wife as a being in an especial sense the handmaid of
God. So, while not understanding the full meaning of Erma's request, he
stood ready to grant it. Erma, escorted by her husband, hied away to the
mountains of West Virginia and took up her abode on Nutall's Mountain.
Here Astral left her, to spend those great days with the plain and
simple folk of the mountain fastnesses, honest and sturdy and fearless.
At the foot of Nutall's Mountain, a few miles distant from the crest,
lies the Kanawha River, whose waters quarrel as they tumble over the
rocks in the river bed on their way to the sea. The path downward from
the mountain crest to the river, followed alongside of a deep canyon,
that wound its way serpent-like around the mountain side, piloting the
mountain streams to their common mother, the Kanawha River. As long as
health would permit, Erma would rise in the morning, just before
daybreak, and descend this long, winding, rocky pathway to the river,
delighting to look through the green foliage of the trees rising up from
the sides and bottom of the deep gorge mentioned. Sometimes she would
sit upon a huge boulder near at hand, and, surrounded on all sides by
the green foliage, drink in the wild, untamed beauty of the mountains,
and commune with the Spirit of recklessness and fury that evidently
makes the mountain his favorite resort. Also, at night time Erma would
steal forth, and, hunting the highest mountain peak, would stand and
look by the light of the moon from silent, sullen range to silent sullen
range, and marvel at their stillness. At these times Erma's soul seemed
to feel the magnetic sweep of the queenly moon as this lovely woman of
the skies, gathering her robes about her, sped swiftly but noiselessly
along. The ears of her soul caught the far-off patter of the footfalls
of the tiny stars as they journeyed silently on to God. The purpose of
these protracted communings with the sublime side of nature, Erma never
disclosed to mortal, and as soon as Astral Herndon, Jr., was born and
she was able to travel, she yielded herself to the yearning arms of her
husband, who was now present to carry her home.
Erma watched her child as it grew, with more than a mother's interest
and noticed with eagerness every expression upon the child's face and
every utterance from its childish lips. Astral soon discovered this
preternatural interest in the child and contented himself with watching
Erma while she watched the child. Thus it is to-night: the child gazes,
Erma watches it, and Astral watches Erma. A fierce snowstorm is raging
without. The mad heavens seem determined to whiten the black earth,
nothing daunted that all previous efforts in that direction have ended
in the slushy mire; something of the fate that has sometimes attended
the efforts of reformers to whiten the civic life of humanity. The
winds, seemingly, would deter the snowflakes from their fruitless task
of whitening the earth, catching them just before they reached the
ground and whirling them around and around until the snowflakes, nimbly
twisting out of the hands of the wind, fall exhausted upon the earth to
learn from experience the treatment often accorded those who would do
good. The snowstorm continues, the child muses, the mother watches.
Astral is an onlooker. The look of earnestness on the child's brow
deepens and deepens, and Erma's bosom heaves, her lips move as if in
prayer, and the book trembles in her hand. By and by the child opens its
lips to speak, Erma leans forward, her eyes aglow with strange fire.
Astral feels the fever rising in his veins and somehow regards himself
as face to face with a crisis in two souls. He realizes that soon his
wife and her child shall stand revealed unto each other, and a feeling
of awe creeps over him.
"Papa," says the child, "what do you want me to be when I am a man?"
Astral can say nothing. Erma's soul is in her eyes and her heart is
thumping as though it would come out. The child lifts its eyes and gazes
at the burning orbs of its mamma. In its simple way, it said, quietly:
"Mamma, I am going to be what you want me to be. I can tell that that is
what you are looking at me so for."
With a scream of joy Erma sprang over to her husband and clasped her boy
to her bosom, while she nestled her throbbing temples on Astral's
shoulder. The soul of the mother had met that of the child and each had
discovered its true inward self to the other, and Erma felt her every
prayer answered and her every wish attained.
Erma said, "Astral, it now makes no difference to the world how soon I
leave it; and God may take me at any time."
A feeling of terror, that caused his innermost soul to shudder, stole
over Astral as he heard these solemn words come forth from Erma's
lips--words that foreshadowed her untimely end. Verily, verily, coming
events cast their shadows before them.
A loud knock at the door, succeeded by a dull thud as of a falling body,
caused Astral and Erma to spring to their feet. Taking a lamp in his
hand, Astral went out into the hallway and to the front door. He opened
the door and a gust of wind blew off the lamp chimney and put out the
light, the chimney falling to the floor and breaking. Lighting a lantern
he saw the form of a man half buried in the drift of snow before his
door. Astral, being a man of considerable strength, stooped down, lifted
the man into his arms and bore him into the room where his wife and
child stood in open-eyed astonishment.
The man was unconscious and Astral lay him in the middle of the floor
and sought to restore him to consciousness. The man had on a long rubber
ulster, which was buttoned from top to bottom. This Astral unbuttoned
and made the exciting discovery that the man was dressed in the striped
clothes of a convict. This drew Erma to him, and she now aided Astral in
the work of resuscitating him. At length the man opened his eyes and
languidly fastened his gaze on Erma, who experienced a strange thrill as
she looked into the eyes of this nearly frozen convict. The longer she
looked, the more and more her feelings began to assume definite form,
and a sensation of terror crept over her until she had to get up and
move away. The eyes of the convict followed her and continued to affect
her strangely.
Astral did not take note of his wife's discomfiture. He asked the man,
"Where did you come from?"
He replied in husky tones, "I have come from Hell and am going to
Heaven." The man made an effort to rise and Astral aided him. He asks,
"Is that your wife and child?" Astral nodded assent.
"Send them out of the room or take me out, as I have something to say to
you."
Erma grasped up Astral Herndon, Jr., and went up stairs, leaving the
convict to talk with her husband. But a deep conviction was settling
upon her mind and she could not stay there. She put her boy down and
crept down stairs, drawn by an indefinable something to the room where
the convict was. She did not enter but paced restlessly to and fro in
the cold hallway.
Soon Astral came out with the look of a man thoroughly dumfounded. He
grasped Erma by the hand and led her upstairs to her bedroom. They sit
down and stare at each other. Astral does not know how to break the news
to Erma. At length he says, "Erma, your brother was never hanged. He is
downstairs now."
With a mad leap Erma broke out of the room, rushed downstairs, crying,
"John! John!! John!!!" When she neared his seat she stopped suddenly,
her voice ceased abruptly. John's head lay limp upon his bosom, for his
soul had forsaken his body. Becalmed by a more than human power, Erma
knelt before his chair in which sat the lifeless form and passionately
kissed the mute lips that had passed under the ban of eternal silence.
"Oh!" she gasped, clapping a hand to her heart. She attempted to rise,
but fell forward, her head finding a resting place on her dead brother's
knee. Erma's beautiful eyelids closed, opened again as if to give a last
view, and then closed, alas, forever. Her heart ceased to beat, and her
soul stole noiselessly out of her body to return no more.