All high happiness has in it some element of love; all love contains a
desire for peace. One immediate effect of new happiness, new love, is
to make us turn toward the past with a wish to straighten out its
difficulties, heal its breaches, forgive its wrongs. We think most
hopefully of distressing things which may still be remedied, most
regretfully of others that have passed beyond our reach and will.
It was between ten and eleven o'clock of the next day--Sunday. David's
cold had become worse. He had turned over necessary work to the negro
man and stayed quietly in his room since the silent breakfast Two or
three books chosen carelessly out of the trunk lay on his table before
the fire: interest had gone out of them this day. With his face red and
swollen, he was sitting beside this table with one hand loosely
covering the forgotten books, his eyes turned to the window, but
looking upon distant inward scenes.
Sunday morning between ten and eleven o'clock! the church-going hour of
his Bible-student life. In imagination he could hear across these wide
leagues of winter land the faint, faint peals of the church bells which
were now ringing. He was back in the town again--up at the college--in
his room at the dormitory; and it was in the days before the times of
his trouble. The students were getting ready for church, with freshly
shaved faces, boots well blacked, best suits on, not always good ones.
He could hear their talk in the rooms around his, hear fragments of
hymns, the opening and shutting of doors along the hallways, and the
running of feet down the stairs. By ones and twos and larger groups
they passed down and out with their hymnals, Testaments, sometimes
blank books for notes on the sermon. Several thrust bright, cordial
faces in at the door, as they passed, to see whether he and his
roommate had started.
The scene changed. He was in the church, which was crowded from pulpit
to walls. He was sitting under the chandelier in the choir, the number
of the first hymn had just been whispered along, and he began to sing,
with hundreds of others, the music which then released the pinions of
his love and faith as the air releases the wings of a bird. The hymn
ceased; he could see the pastor rise from behind the pulpit, advance,
and with a gesture gather that sea of heads to prayer. He could follow
the sermon, most of all the exhortation; around him was such stillness
in the church that his own heart-beats were audible. Then the Supper
and then home to the dormitory again--with a pain of happiness filling
him, the rest and the unrest of consecration.
Many other scenes he lived through in memory this morning--once lived
in reality amid that brotherhood of souls. His tenderest thoughts
perhaps dwelt on the young men's prayer-meetings of Sunday afternoons
at the college. There they drew nearest to the Eternal Strength which
was behind their weakness, and closest to each other as student after
student lifted a faltering, stumbling petition for a common blessing on
their work. The Immortal seemed to be in that bare room, filling their
hearts with holy flame, drawing around them the isolation of a devoted
band. They were one in One. Then had followed the change in him which
produced the change in them: no fellowship, no friendship, with an
unbeliever; and he was left without a comrade.
His heart was yearning and sick this day to be reconciled to them all.
How did they think of him, speak of him, now? Who slept in his bed? Who
sat a little while, after the studies of the night were over, talking
to his room-mate? Who knelt down across the room at his prayers when
the lights were put out? And his professors--what bulwarks of knowledge
and rectitude and kindness they were!--all with him at first, all
against him at last, as in duty bound.
To one man alone among those hundreds could David look back as having
begun to take interest in him toward the close of his college days.
During that vacation which he had spent in reading and study, he had
often refreshed himself by taking his book out to the woodland park
near the city, which in those days was the grounds of one of the
colleges of the University. There he found the green wild country
again, a forest like his pioneer ancestor's. Regularly here he observed
at out-of-door work the professor of Physical Science, who also was
pressing his investigations forward during the leisure of those summer
months. An authority from the north, from a New England university, who
had resigned his chair to come to Kentucky, attracted by the fair
prospects of the new institution. A great gray-bearded, eagle-faced,
square-shouldered, big-footed man: reserved, absorbed, asking to be let
alone, one of the silent masters. But David, desperate with
intellectual loneliness himself, and knowing this man to be a student
of the new science, one day had introduced himself and made inquiry
about entering certain classes in his course the following session.
The professor shook his head. He was going back to New England himself
the next year; and he moved away under the big trees, resuming his work.
As troubles had thickened about David, his case became discussed in
University circles; and he was stopped on the street one day by this
frigid professor and greeted with a man's grasp and a look of fresh
beautiful affection. His apostasy from dogmatism had made him a friend
of that lone thinker whose worship of God was the worship of Him
through the laws of His universe and not through the dogmas of men.
This professor--and Gabriella: they alone, though from different
motives, had been drawn to him by what had repelled all others. It was
his new relation to her beyond anything else that filled David this day
with his deep desire for peace with his past. She had such peace in
herself, such charity of feeling, such simple steadfast faith: she cast
the music of these upon the chords of his own soul. To the influence of
her religion she was now adding the influence of her love; it filled
him, subdued, overwhelmed him. And this morning, also out of his own
happiness he remembered with most poignant suffering the unhappiness of
his father. His own life was unfolding into fulness of affection and
knowledge and strength; his father's was closing amid the weakness and
troubles that had gathered about him; and he, David, had contributed
his share to these. To be reconciled to his father this day--that was
his sole thought.
It was about four o'clock. The house held that quiet which reigns of a
Sunday afternoon when the servants have left the kitchen for the cabin,
when all work is done, and the feeling of Sunday rest takes possession
of our minds. The winter sunshine on the fields seems full of rest; the
brutes rest--even those that are not beasts of burden. The birds appear
to know the day, and to make note of it in quieter twitter and slower
flight.
David rose resolutely and started downstairs. As he entered his
father's room, his mother was passing out She looked at her son with
apprehension, as she closed the door. His father was sitting by a
window, reading, as was his Sunday wont, the Bible. He had once written
to David that his had always been a religious people; it was true. A
grave, stern man--sternest, gravest on Sunday. When it was not possible
to go to church, the greater to him the reason that the house itself
should become churchlike in solemnity, out of respect to the day and
the duty of self-examination. A man of many failings, but on this
subject strong.
David sat down and waited for him to reach the end of the page or
chapter. But his father read on with a slow perceptible movement of his
lips.
"Father."
The gray head was turned slowly toward him in silent resentment of the
interruption.
"I thought it would be better to come down and talk with you."
The eyes resought the page, the lips resumed their movements.
"I am sorry to interrupt you."
The eye still followed the inspired words, from left to right, left to
right, left to right.
"Father, things ought not to go on in this way between us. I have been
at home now for two months. I have waited, hoping that you would give
me the chance to talk about it all. You have declined, and meantime I
have simply been at work, as I used to be. But this must not be put off
longer for several reasons. There are other things in my life now that
I have to think of and care for." The tone in which David spoke these
last words was unusual and significant.
The eyes stopped at a point on the page. The lips were pressed tightly
together.
David rose and walked quietly out of the room. After he had closed the
door behind him and put his foot on the stairs, he stopped and with
fresh determination reopened the door. His father had shut the Bible,
laid it on the floor at the side of his chair, and was standing in the
middle of the room with his eyes on the door through which David had
passed. He pointed to his son to be seated, and resumed his chair. He
drew his penknife from his pocket and slowly trimmed the ravellings
from his shirt-cuffs, blowing them off his wrists. David saw that his
hands were trembling violently. The tragedy in the poor action cut him
to the heart and he threw himself remorsefully into the midst of things.
"Father, I know I have disappointed you! Know it as well as you do; but
I could not have done differently."
"YOU not believe in Christianity! YOU not believe the Bible!"
The suppressed enraged voice summed up again the old contemptuous
opinion.
The young man felt that there was another than himself whom it wounded.
"Sir, you must not speak to me with that feeling! Try to see that I am
as sincere as you are. As to the goodness of my mind, I did not derive
it from myself and am not to blame. I have only made an earnest and an
honest use of what mind was given me. But I have not relied upon it
alone. There are great men, some of the greatest minds of the world,
who have been my teachers and determined my belief."
"All your life you had the word of God as your teacher and you believed
it. Now these men tell you not to believe it and you believe them. And
then you complain that I do not think more highly of you."
"Father," cried David, "there is one man whose name is very dear to us
both. The blood of that man is in me as it is in you. Sir, it is your
grandfather. Do you remember what the church of his day did with him?
Do you forget that, standing across the fields yonder, is the church he
himself built to freedom of opinion in religious matters? I grew up,
not under the shadow of that church, for it casts none, but in the
light of it. I have seen many churches worship there. I have had before
me, from the time I could remember, my great-grandfather's words: they
seemed to me the voice of God by whom all men were created, and the
spirit of Christ by whom, as you believe, men are to be saved."
The younger man stopped and waited in vain for the older one to reply.
But his father also waited, and David went on:--
"I do not expect you to stand against the church in what it has done
with me: that HAD to be done. If you had been an elder of that church,
I know you, too, would have voted to expel me. What I do ask of you is
that you think me as sincere in my belief as I think you in yours. I do
ask for your toleration, your charity. Everything else between us will
be easy, if you can see that I have done only what I could. The faith
of the world grows, changes. Sons cannot always agree with their
fathers; otherwise the world would stand still. You do not believe many
things your own grandfather believed--the man of whose memory you are
so proud. The faith you hold did not even exist among men in his day. I
can no longer agree with you: I do not think the less of you because I
believe differently; do not think the less of me!"
The young man could not enter into any argument with the old one. He
would not have disturbed if he could his father's faith: it was too
late in life for that. Neither could he defend his own views without
attacking his father's: that also would have been cruelty in itself and
would have been accepted as insulting. Still David could not leave his
case without witnesses.
"There are things in the old Bible that no scholar now believes."
"The Almighty declares they are true; you say they are not: I prefer to
believe the Almighty. Perhaps He knows better than you and the
scholars."
David fell into sorrowful silence. "There are some other matters about
which I should like to speak with you, father," he said, changing the
subject. "I recall one thing you said to me the day I came home. You
asked me why I had come back here: do you still feel that way?"
"I do. This is a Christian house. This is a Christian community. You
are out of place under this roof and in this neighborhood. Life was
hard enough for your mother and me before. But we did for you what we
could; you were pleased to make us this return. It will be better for
you to go."
Every word seemed to have been hammered out of iron, once melted in the
forge, but now cold and unchangeably shaped to its heavy purpose. The
young man writhed under the hopelessness of the situation:--
"Sir, is it all on one side? Have I done nothing for you in all these
years? Until I was nearly a man's age, did I not work? For my years of
labor did I receive more than a bare living? Did you ever know a slave
as faithful? Were you ever a harsh master to this slave? Do you owe me
nothing for all those years?--I do not mean money,--I mean kindness,
justice!"
"How many years before you began to work for us did your mother and I
work for you? Did you owe us nothing for all that?"
"I did! I do! I always shall! But do you count it against me that
Nature brought me forth helpless and kept me helpless for so many years
afterwards? If my being born was a fault, whose was it? Is the
dependence of an infant on its parent a debt? Father! father! Be just!
be just! that you may be more kind to me."
"Kind to YOU! Just to YOU!" Hitherto his father had spoken with a
quietude which was terrible, on account of the passion raging beneath.
But now he sprang to his feet, strode across, and, pulling a ragged
shirt-cuff down from under his coat-sleeve, shook it in his son's
eyes--poverty. He went to one of the rotting doors and jerking it open
without turning the knob, rattled it on its loose hinges--poverty. He
turned to the window, and with one gesture depicted ruined outhouses
and ruined barn, now hidden under the snow, and beautiful in the Sunday
evening light--poverty. He turned and faced his son, majestic in
mingled grief and care.
"Kind! just! you who have trifled with your advantages, you who are
sending your mother out of her home--"
David sprang toward him in an agony of trouble and remorse.
"It is not true, it is not necessary! Father, you have been too much
influenced by my mother's fears. This is Bailey's doing. It is about
this I have wanted to talk to you. I shall see Bailey to-morrow."
"I forbid you to see him or to interfere."
"I must see him, whether you wish it or not," and David, to save other
hard words that were coming, turned quickly and left the room.
He did not go down to supper. Toward bedtime, as he sat before his
fire, he heard a slow, unfamiliar step mounting the stair. Not often in
a year did he have the chance to recognize that step. His mother
entered, holding a small iron stewpan, from under the cover of which
steamed a sweet, spicy odor.
"This will do your cold good," she said, tasting the stew out of a
spoon which she brought in her other hand, and setting it down on the
hot hearth. Then she stood looking a little fearfully at her son, who
had not moved. Ah, that is woman's way! She incites men to a
difficulty, and then appears innocently on the battle-field with
bandages for the belligerents. How many of the quarrels of this world
has she caused--and how few ever witnessed!
David was sick in heart and body and kept his chair and made no reply.
His mother suddenly turned, feeling a cold draft on her back, and
observed the broken window-pane and the flapping sheet of paper.
"There's putty and glass in the store-room: why don't you put that pane
of glass in?"
"I will sometime," said David, absently. She went over to his bed and
beat up the bolster and made everything ready for him.
"You ought to have clean sheets and pillow-cases," she remarked
confidently; "the negroes are worthless. Good night," she said, with
her hand on the door, looking back at him timidly.
He sprang up and went over to her. "Oh, mother! mother! mother!" he
cried, and then he checked the useless words that came rushing in a
flood.
"Good night! and thank you for coming. Good night! Be careful, I'll
bring the candle, the stairway is dark. Good night!"
"Oh, Gabriella! Gabriella!" he murmured as he went back to his table.
He buried his head on his arms a moment, then, starting up, threw off
his clothes, drank the mixture, and got into bed.