The evening came on, slow and cold. Life itself, the Doctor thought,
impatiently, was cool and tardy here among the hills. Even he fell into
the tranquil tone, and chafed under it. Nowhere else did the evening
gray and sombre into the mysterious night impalpably as here. The
quiet, wide and deep, folded him in, forced his trivial heat into
silence and thought. The world seemed to think there. Quiet in the
dead seas of fog, that filled the valleys like restless vapour curdled
into silence; quiet in the listening air, stretching gray up to the
stars,--in the solemn mountains, that stood motionless, like
hoary-headed prophets, waiting with uplifted hands, day and night, to
hear the Voice, silent now for centuries; the very air, heavy with the
breath of the sleeping pine-forests, moved slowly and cold, like some
human voice weary with preaching to unbelieving hearts of a peace on
earth. This man's heart was unbelieving; he chafed in the oppressive
quiet; it was unfeeling mockery to a sick and hungry world,--a dead
torpor of indifference. Years of hot and turbid pain had dulled his
eyes to the eternal secret of the night; his soul was too sore with
stumbling, stung, inflamed with the needs and suffering of the
countless lives that hemmed him in, to accept the great prophetic calm.
He was blind to the prophecy written on the earth since the day God
first bade it tell thwarted man of the great To-Morrow.
He turned from the night in-doors. Human hearts were his proper study.
The old house, he thought, slept with the rest. One did not wonder
that the pendulum of the clock swung long and slow. The frantic,
nervous haste of town-clocks chorded better with the pulse of human
life. Yet life in the veins of these people flowed slow and cool;
their sorrows and joys were few and life-long. The enduring air suited
this woman, Margret Howth. Her blood could never ebb or flow with
sudden gusts of passion, like his own, throbbing, heating continually:
one current, absorbing, deep, would carry its tide from one eternity to
the other, one love or one hate. Whatever power was in the tide should
be his, in its entirety. It was his right. Was not his aim high, the
highest? It was his right.
Margret, looking up, saw the man's eye fixed on her. She met it
coolly. All her short life, this strange man, so tender to the weak,
had watched her with a sort of savage scorn, sneering at her childish,
dreamy apathy, driving her from effort to effort with a scourge of
contempt. What did he want now with her? Her duty was light; she took
it up,--she was glad to take it up; what more would he have? She put
the whole matter away from her.
It grew late. She sat down by the lamp and began to read to her
father, as usual. Her mother put away her knitting; Joel came in
half-asleep; the Doctor put out his everlasting cigar, and listened, as
he did everything else, intently. It was an old story that she
read,--the story of a man who walked the fields and crowded streets of
Galilee eighteen hundred years ago. Knowles, with his heated brain,
fancied that the silence without in the night grew deeper, that the
slow-moving air stopped in its course to listen. Perhaps the simple
story carried a deeper meaning to these brooding mountains and solemn
sky than to the purblind hearts within. It was a far-off story to
them,--very far off. The old school-master heard it with a lowered
head, with the proud obedience with which a cavalier would receive his
leader's orders. Was not the leader a knights the knight of truest
courage? All that was high, chivalric in the old man sprang up to own
him Lord. That he not only preached to, but ate and drank with
publicans and sinners, was a requirement of his mission; nowadays----.
Joel heard the "good word" with a bewildered consciousness of certain
rules of honesty to be observed next day, and a maze of crowns and
harps shining somewhere beyond. As for any immediate connection
between the teachings of this book and "The Daily Gazette," it was pure
blasphemy to think of it. The Lord held those old Jews in His hand, of
course; but as for the election next month, that was quite another
thing. If Joel thrust the history out of the touch of common life, the
Doctor brought it down, and held it there on trial. To him it was the
story of a Reformer who, eighteen centuries ago, had served his day.
Could he serve this day? Could he? The need was desperate. Was there
anything in this Christianity, freed from bigotry, to work out the
awful problem which the ages had left for America to solve? He doubted
it. People called this old Knowles an infidel, said his brain was as
unnatural and distorted as his body. God, looking down into his heart
that night, saw the savage wrestling there, and judged him with other
eyes than theirs.
The story stood alive in his throbbing brain demanding hearing. All
things were real to this man, this uncouth mass of flesh that his
companions sneered at; most real of all, the unhelped pain of life, the
great seething mire of dumb wretchedness in streets and alleys, the cry
for aid from the starved souls of the world. You and I have other work
to do than to listen,--pleasanter. But he, coming out of the mire, his
veins thick with the blood of a despised race, had carried up their
pain and hunger with him: it was the most real thing on earth to
him,--more real than his own share in the unseen heaven or hell. By
the reality, the peril of the world's instant need, he tried the
offered help from Calvary. It was the work of years, not of this night.
Perhaps, if they who preach Christ crucified had doubted him as this
man did, their work in the coming heaven might be higher,--and ours,
who hear them. When the girl had finished reading, she went out into
the cool air. The Doctor passed her without notice. He went, in his
lumbering way, down the hill into the city; glad to go; the trustful,
waiting quiet oppressed, taunted him. It sent him back more mad
against Destiny, his heart more bitter in its great pity. Let him go
to the great city, with its stifling gambling-hells, its negro-pens,
its foul cellars;--his place and work. If he stumble blindly against
unconquerable ills, and die, others have so stumbled and so died. Do
you think their work is lost?
Margret stood looking down at the sloping moors and fog. She, too, had
her place and work. She thought that night she saw it clearly, and
kept her eyes fixed on it, as I said. They plodded steadily down the
wide years opening before her. Whatever slow, unending toil lay in
them, whatever hungry loneliness, or coarseness of deed, she saw it
all, shrinking from nothing. She looked at the big blue-corded veins
in her wrist, full of untainted blood,--gauged herself coolly, her
lease of life, her power of endurance,--measured it out against the
work waiting for her. No short task, she knew that. She would be old
before it was finished, quite an old woman, hard, mechanical, worn out.
But the day would be so bright, when it came, it would atone for all:
the day would be bright, the home warm again; it would hold all that
life had promised her of good.
All? Oh, Margret, Margret! Was there no sullen doubt in the brave
resolve? Was there no shadow just then, dark, ironical, blotting out
father and mother and home, creeping nearer, less alien to your soul
than these, than even your God?
If any such cold, masterful shadow rose out of years gone, and clutched
at the truest life of her heart, she stifled it, and thrust it down.
And yet, leaning on the gate, and thinking vacantly, she remembered a
time when through that shadow, she believed more in a God than she did
now. When, by the help of that very dead hope, He of whom she read
to-night stood close, an infinitely tender Helper, that with the
differing human loves she knew, had loved His mother and Mary.
Therefore, a Helper. Now, struggle as she would for warmth or healthy
hopes, the world was gray and silent. Her defeated woman's nature
called it so, bitterly. Christ was a dim, ideal power, heaven far-off.
She doubted if it held anything as real as that which she had lost.
As if to bring back the old times more vividly to her, there happened
one of those curious little coincidences with which Fate, we think, has
nothing to do. She heard a quick step along the clay road, and a muddy
little terrier jumped up, barking, beside her. She stopped with a
suddenness strange in her slow movements. "TIGER!" she said, stroking
its head with passionate eagerness. The dog licked her hand, smelt her
clothes to know if she were the same: it was two years since he had
seen her. She sat there, softly stroking him. Presently there was a
sound of wheels jogging down the road, and a voice singing snatches of
some song, one of those cheery street-songs that the boys whistle. It
was a low, weak voice, but very pleasant. Margret heard it through the
dark: she kissed the dog with a strange paleness on her face, and stood
up, quiet, attentive as before. Tiger still kept licking her hand, as
it hung by her side: it was cold, and trembled as he touched it. She
waited a moment, then pushed him from her, as if his touch, even,
caused her to break some vow. He whined, but she hurried away, not
waiting to know how he came, or with whom. Perhaps, if Dr. Knowles had
seen her face as she looked back at him, he would have thought there
were depths in her nature which his probing eyes had never reached.
The wheels came close, and directly a cart stopped at the gate. It was
one of those little wagons that hucksters drive; only this seemed to be
a home-made affair, patched up with wicker-work and bits of board. It
was piled up with baskets of vegetables, eggs, and chickens, and on a
broken bench in the middle sat the driver, a woman. You could not help
laughing, when you looked at the whole turn-out, it had such a
make-shift look altogether. The reins were twisted rope, the wheels
uneven. It went jolting along in such a careless, jolly way, as if it
would not care in the least, should it go to pieces any minute just
there in the road. The donkey that drew it was bony and blind of one
eye; but he winked the other knowingly at you, to ask if you saw the
joke of the thing. Even the voice of the owner of the establishment,
chirruping some idle song, as I told you, was one of the cheeriest
sounds you ever heard. Joel, up at the barn, forgot his dignity to
salute it with a prolonged "Hillo!" and presently appeared at the gate.
"I'm late, Joel," said the weak voice. It sounded like a child's, near
at hand.
"We can trade in the dark, Lois, both bein' honest," he responded,
graciously, hoisting a basket of tomatoes into the cart, and taking out
a jug of vinegar.
"Is that Lois?" said Mrs. Howth, coming to the gate. "Sit still,
child. Don't get down."
But the child, as she called her, had scrambled off the cart, and stood
beside her, leaning on the wheel, for she was helplessly crippled.
"I thought you would be down to-night. I put some coffee on the stove.
Bring it out, Joel."
Mrs. Howth never put up the shield between herself and this member of
"the class,"--because, perhaps, she was so wretchedly low in the social
scale. However, I suppose she never gave a reason for it even to
herself. Nobody could help being kind to Lois, even if he tried. Joel
brought the coffee with more readiness than he would have waited on
Mrs. Howth.
"Barney will be jealous," he said, patting the bare ribs of the old
donkey, and glancing wistfully at his mistress.
"Give him his supper, surely," she said, taking the hint.
It was a real treat to see how Lois enjoyed her supper, sipping and
tasting the warm coffee, her face in a glow, like an epicure over some
rare Falernian. You would be sure, from just that little thing, that
no sparkle of warmth or pleasure in the world slipped by her which she
did not catch and enjoy and be thankful for to the uttermost. You
would think, perhaps, pitifully, that not much pleasure or warmth would
ever go down so low, within her reach. Now that she stood on the
ground, she scarcely came up to the level of the wheel; some deformity
of her legs made her walk with a curious rolling jerk, very comical to
see. She laughed at it, when other people did; if it vexed her at all,
she never showed it. She had turned back her calico sun-bonnet, and
stood looking up at Mrs. Howth and Joel, laughing as they talked with
her. The face would have startled you on so old and stunted a body.
It was a child's face, quick, eager, with that pitiful beauty you
always see in deformed people. Her eyes, I think, were the kindliest,
the hopefullest I ever saw. Nothing but the livid thickness of her
skin betrayed the fact that set Lois apart from even the poorest
poor,--the taint in her veins of black blood.
"Whoy! be n't this Tiger?" said Joel, as the dog ran yelping about him.
"How comed yoh with him, Lois?"
"Tiger an' his master's good friends o' mine,--you remember they allus
was. An' he's back now, Mr. Holmes,--been back for a month."
Margret, walking in the porch with her father, stopped.
"Are you tired, father? It is late."
"And you are worn out, poor child! It was selfish in me to forget.
Good-night, dear!"
Margret kissed him, laughing cheerfully, as she led him to his
room-door. He lingered, holding her dress.
"Perhaps it will be easier for you to-morrow than it was to-day?"
hesitating.
"I am sure it will. To-morrow will be sure to be better than to-day."
She left him, and went away with a step that did not echo the promise
of her words.
Joel, meanwhile, consulted apart with his mistress.
"Of course," she said, emphatically.--"You must stay until morning,
Lois. It is too late. Joel will toss you up a bed in the loft."
The queer little body hesitated.
"I can stay," she said, at last. "It's his watch at the mill to-night."
"Whose watch?" demanded Joel.
Her face brightened.
"Father's. He's back, mum."
Joel caught himself in a whistle.
"He's very stiddy, Joel,--as stiddy as yoh."
"I am very glad he has come back, Lois," said Mrs. Howth, gravely.
At every place where Lois had been that day she had told her bit of
good news, and at every place it had been met with the same kindly
smile and "I'm glad he's back, Lois."
Yet Joe Yare, fresh from two years in the penitentiary, was not exactly
the person whom society usually welcomes with open arms. Lois had a
vague suspicion of this, perhaps; for, as she hobbled along the path,
she added to her own assurance of his "stiddiness" earnest explanations
to Joel of how he had a place in the Croft Street woollen-mills, and
how Dr. Knowles had said he was as ready a stoker as any in the
furnace-rooms.
The sound of her weak, eager voice was silent presently, and nothing
broke the solitary cold of the night.