THE LIGHT THAT LIES
"Oh! why did God create at last
This novelty on earth, this fair defect
Of nature, and not till the world at once
With men as angels, without feminine?"
--Paradise Lost.
On the following morning the preacher-plowman was afield at break of
day. The horses, refreshed and rested by food and sleep, dragged the
gleaming plowshare through the heavy sod as if it were light snow, and
the farmer exulted behind them.
That universal life which coursed through all the various forms of being
around him, bounded in tides through his own veins. The fresh morning
air, the tender light of dawning day, the odors of plants and songs of
birds, filled his sensitive soul with unutterable delight.
In the midst of all these beauties and wonders, he existed without
self-consciousness and labored without effort. His heart was pure and
his oneness with the natural world was complete. Whatever was beautiful
and gentle in the manifold operations of the Divine Spirit in the world
around him, he saw and felt. To all that was horrible and ferocious, he
was blind as a child in Paradise. He did not notice the hawk sweeping
upon the dove, the swallow darting upon the moth, nor the lizard lying
in wait for the fly; or, if he did, he saw them only as he saw the
shadows flitting across the sunny landscape. His soul was like a garden
full of light, life, perfume, color and the music of singing birds and
whispering leaves. Before his inward eye the familiar figures of his
daily life passed and repassed, but among them was also a new one. It
was the figure that had arrested his attention and inspired him the
night before.
For hours he followed the plow without the consciousness of fatigue, but
at length he paused to rest the horses, who were beginning to pant with
their hard labor. He threw back his head, drew in deep inspirations of
pure air, glanced about and felt the full tide of the simple joy of
existence roll over him. Life had never seemed sweeter than in those few
moments in which he quaffed the brimming cup of youth and health which
nature held to his lips. Not a fear, not an apprehension of any danger
crossed his soul. His glances roved here and there, pausing a moment in
their flight like hummingbirds, to sip the sweetness from some unusually
beautiful cloud or tree or flower, when he suddenly caught sight of a
curious equipage flying swiftly down the road at the other side of the
field. The spirited horses stopped. A man rose from the seat, put his
hands to his mouth like a trumpet, uttered a loud "hallo," and beckoned.
David tied the reins to the plow handles and strode across the fresh
furrows. Vaulting the fence and leaping the brook which formed the
boundary line of the farm, he ascended the bank and approached the
carriage. As he did so the occupants got out and came to meet him. To
his astonishment he saw the strangers whom he had noticed the night
before. The man advanced with a bold, free demeanor, the woman timidly
and with downcast eyes.
"Good morning," said the doctor.
David returned his greeting with the customary dignity of the Quakers.
"My name is Dr. Aesculapius."
"Thee is welcome."
"I was over to the m-m-meeting house last night, and heard your
s-s-speech. Didn't understand a w-w-word, but saw that you c-c-can talk
like a United States Senator."
David bowed and blushed.
"I came over to make you a p-p-proposition. Want you to yoke up with me,
and help me sell the 'B-B-Balm of the Blessed Islands.' You can do the
t-t-talking and I'll run the b-b-business; see?"
He put his thumbs in the armholes of his vest, spread his feet apart,
squared himself and smiled like a king who had offered his throne to a
beggar.
David regarded him with a look of astonishment.
"What do you s-s-say?"
Gravely, placidly, the young Quaker answered: "I thank thee, friend, for
what thee evidently means as a kindness, but I must decline thy offer."
"Decline my offer? Are you c-c-crazy? Why do you d-d-decline my offer?"
"Because I have no wish to leave my home and work."
Although his answer was addressed to the man, his eyes were directed to
the woman. His reply, simple and natural enough, astounded the quack.
"What!" he exclaimed. "Do you mean that you p-p-prefer to stay in this
p-p-pigstye of a town to becoming a citizen of the g-g-great world?"
"I do."
"But listen; I will pay you more money in a single month than you can
earn by d-d-driving your plow through that b-b-black mud for a whole
year."
"I have no need and no desire for more money than I can earn by daily
toil."
"No need and no desire for money! B-b-bah! You are not talking to
sniveling old women and crack-b-b-brained old men; but to a f-f-feller
who can see through a two-inch plank, and you can't p-p-pass off any of
your religious d-d-drivel on him, either."
This coarse insult went straight to the soul of the youth. His blood
tingled in his veins. There was a tightening around his heart of
something which was out of place in the bosom of a Quaker. A hot reply
sprang to his lips, but died away as he glanced at the woman, and saw
her face mantled with an angry flush.
Calmed by her silent sympathy, he quietly replied: "Friend, I have no
desire to annoy thee, but I have been taught that 'the love of money is
the root of all evil,' and believing as I do I could not answer thee
otherwise than I did."
It was evident from the look upon the countenance of the quack that he
had met with a new and incomprehensible type of manhood. He gazed at the
Quaker a moment in silence and then exclaimed, "Young man, you may mean
what you say, b-b-but you have been most infernally abused by the
p-p-people who have put such notions in your head, for there is only one
substantial and abiding g-g-good on earth, and that is money. Money is
power, money is happiness, money is God; get money! get it anywhere! get
it anyhow, but g-g-get it."
Instead of mere resentment for a personal insult, David now felt a tide
of righteous indignation rising in his soul at this scorn and denial of
those eternal principles of truth and duty which he felt to be the very
foundations of the moral universe.
"Sir," said he, with the voice and mien of an apostle, "I perceive that
thou art in the gall of bitterness and the bonds of iniquity. Thy money
perish with thee. The God of this world hath blinded thine eyes."
The quack, who now began to take a humorous view of the innocence of the
youth, burst into a boisterous guffaw.
"Well, well," he said in mingled scorn and pity, "reckon you are more to
be pitied than b-b-blamed. Fault of early education! Talk like a
p-p-parrot! What can a young fellow like you know about life, shut up
here in this seven-by-nine valley, like a man in a b-b-barrel looking
out of the b-b-bung-hole?"
Offended and disgusted, the Quaker was about to turn upon his heel; but
he saw in the face of the man's beautiful companion a look which said
plainly as spoken words, "I, too, desire that you should go with us."
This look changed his purpose, and he paused.
"Listen to me now," continued the doctor, observing his irresolution.
"You think you know what life is; but you d-d-don't! Do you know what
g-g-great cities are? Do you know what it is to m-m-mix with crowds of
men, to feel and perhaps to sway their p-p-passions? Do you know what it
is to p-p-possess and to spend that money which you d-d-despise? Do you
know what it is to wear fine clothes, to d-d-drink rare wines, to see
great sights, to go where you want to and to do what you p-p-please?"
"I do not, nor do I wish to. And thee must abandon these follies and
sins, if thee would enter the Kingdom of God," David replied, fixing his
eyes sternly upon the face of the blasphemer.
"God! Ha, ha, ha! Who is He, anyhow? Same old story! Fools that can't
enjoy life, d-d-don't want any one else to! Ever hear 'bout the fox that
got his tail b-b-bit off? Wanted all the rest to have theirs! What the
d-d-deuce are we here in this world for? T-t-tell me that, p-p-parson!"
"To do the will of our Father which is in heaven."
"To do the will of our Father in heaven! I know but one will, and it is
the w-w-will of Doctor P-p-paracelsus Aesculapius. I'm my own lord and
law, I am."
"Know thou that for all thy idle words, God will bring thee to
judgment?" David answered solemnly.
"Rot!" muttered the doctor, disgusted beyond endurance, and concluding
the interview with the cynical farewell,
"Good-bye, d-d-dead man! I have always hated c-c-corpses! I am going
where men have red b-b-blood in their veins."
With these words he turned on his heel and started toward the carriage,
leaving David and Pepeeta alone. Neither of them moved. The gypsy
nervously plucked the petals from a daisy and the Quaker gazed at her
face. During these few moments nature had not been idle. In air and
earth and tree top, following blind instincts, her myriad children were
seeking their mates. And here, in the odorous sunshine of the May
morning, these two young, impressionable and ardent beings, yielding
themselves unconsciously to the same mysterious attraction which was
uniting other happy couples, were drawn together in a union which time
could not dissolve and eternity, perhaps, cannot annul.
Having stalked indignantly onward for a few paces, the doctor discovered
that his wife had not followed him, and turning he called savagely:
"Pepeeta, come! It is folly to try and p-p-persuade him. Let us leave
the saint to his prayers! But let him remember the old p-p-proverb,
'young saint, old sinner!' Come!"
He proceeded towards the carriage; but Pepeeta seemed rooted to the
ground, and David was equally incapable of motion. While they stood
thus, gazing into each other's eyes, they saw nothing and they saw all.
That brief glance was freighted with destiny. A subtle communication had
taken place between them, although they had not spoken; for the eye has
a language of its own.
What was the meaning of that glance? What was the emotion that gave it
birth in the soul? He knew! It told its own story. To their dying day,
the actors in that silent drama remembered that glance with rapture and
with pain.
Pepeeta spoke first, hurriedly and anxiously: "What did you say last
night about the 'light of life?' Tell me! I must know."
"I said there is a light that lighteth every man that cometh into the
world."
"And what did you mean? Be quick. There is only a moment."
"I meant that there is a light that shines from the soul itself and that
in this light we may walk, and he who walks in it, walks safely. He need
never fall!"
"Never? I do not understand; it is beautiful; but I do not understand!"
"Pepeeta!" called her husband, angrily.
She turned away, and David watched her gliding out of his sight, with an
irrepressible pain and longing. "I suppose she is his daughter," he said
to himself, and upon that natural but mistaken inference his whole
destiny turned. Something seemed to draw him after her. He took a step
or two, halted, sighed and returned to his labor.
But it was to a strangely altered world that he went. Its glory had
vanished; it was desolate and empty, or so at least it seemed to him,
for he confounded the outer and the inner worlds, as it was his nature
and habit to do. It was in his soul that the change had taken place. The
face of a bad man and of an incomprehensible woman followed him through
the long furrows until the sun went down. He was vaguely conscious that
he had for the first time actually encountered those strenuous elements
which draw manhood from its moorings. He felt humiliated by the
recognition that he was living a dream life there in his happy valley;
and that there was a life outside which he could not master so easily.
That confidence in his strength and incorruptibility which he had always
felt began to waver a little. His innocence appeared to him like that of
the great first father in the garden of Eden, before his temptation, and
now that he too had listened to the voice of the serpent and had for the
first time been stirred at the description of the sweetness of the great
tree's fruit, there came to him a feeling of foreboding as to the
future. He was astonished that such characters as those he had just
seen did not excite in him loathing and repulsion. Why could he not put
them instantly and forever out of his mind? How could they possess any
attractiveness for him at all--such a blatant, vulgar man or such an
ignorant, ah! but beautiful, woman; for she was beautiful!
Yes--beautiful but bad! But no--such a beautiful woman could not be bad.
See how interested she was about the "inner light." She must be very
ignorant; but she was very attractive. What eyes! What lips!
Thoughts which he had always been able to expel from his mind before,
like evil birds fluttered again and again into the windows of his soul.
For this he upbraided himself; but only to discover that at the very
moment when he regretted that he had been tempted at all, he also
regretted that he had not been tempted further.
All day long his agitated spirit alternated between remorse that he had
enjoyed so much, and regret that he had enjoyed so little. Never had he
experienced such a tumult in his soul. He struggled hard, but he could
not tell whether he had conquered or been defeated.
It was not until he had retired to his room at night and thrown himself
upon his knees, that he began to regain peace. There, in the stillness
of his chamber, he strove for the control of his thoughts and emotions,
and fell asleep after long and prayerful struggles, with the sweet
consciousness of a spiritual triumph!