A BROKEN REED
"Superstition is a senseless fear of God."
--Cicero.
The address of the young Quaker in the meeting house and the interview
with him by the roadside had opened a new epoch in the life of the
Fortune Teller.
Her idea of the world was a chaos of crude and irrational conceptions.
The superstitions of the gypsies by whom she had been reared were
confusedly blended with those practical but vicious maxims which
governed the conduct of her husband.
For her, the world of law, of order, of truth, of justice had no
existence. The quack cared little what she thought, and had neither the
ability nor the interest to penetrate to the secrets of her soul.
She had lived the dream life of an ignorant child up to the moment when
David had awakened her soul, and now that she really began to grapple
with the problems of existence, she had neither companion nor teacher to
help her.
The two objects about which her thoughts had begun to hover helplessly
were the God of whom David had spoken and the Quaker himself. Both of
them had profoundly agitated her mind and heart, and still haunted her
thoughts.
During all of Saturday after the interview, through the evening which
she had passed in her booth, and far into the night, she had revolved in
her mind the words she had heard, and attempted to weave these two
mysterious beings into her confused scheme of thought.
Her disappointment at David's refusal to accompany them in their
wandering life had been bitter. She did not comprehend the nature of her
feeling for him; but his presence gave her so exquisite a happiness that
the thought of never seeing him again had become intolerable.
For the first time she, who had been for years, as she thought,
disclosing the future to other people, was seized with a burning
curiosity as to her own. Up to this crisis of her experience she had
lived in the present moment; but now she must look into to-morrow and
see if the Quaker was ever to cross her path again. For so important, so
delicate and so difficult a discovery it seemed to her that the ordinary
instruments of her art were pitifully inadequate. The playing cards, the
lines upon her hands, the leaves in her tea cup would not do. She would
resort to that charm which the old gypsy had given her at parting, and
which she had reserved for some great and critical moment of life. That
moment had arrived.
As she enjoyed the most perfect freedom in all her movements, she
snatched an early and hurried breakfast Sunday morning, told her husband
that she was going to the woods for wild flowers, and set forth upon an
errand pregnant with destiny.
With an instinct like that of a wild creature she made her way swiftly
towards the great forest which lay at a little distance from the
outskirts of the village.
Her ignorance, her inexperience, her sadness and her beauty would have
stirred the hardest heart to compassion. Arrived at the point where she
was to confront the great spiritual problems of existence, she might
almost as well have been the first woman who had ever done so, for she
knew nothing of the experiences of others who had encountered them, and
she had scarcely heard an echo of the great life-truths which seers have
been ages in discovering. She had to sound her way across the perilous
sea of thought without any other chart than the faded parchment of the
gypsy, and those few incomprehensible words which she had heard from the
lips of the young Quaker.
It is good for us that upon this vast and unknown sea of life, God's
winds and waves are wiser and stronger than the pilots, and often bring
our frail crafts into havens which we never sought! Perhaps the act
which Pepeeta was about to perform had more ethical and spiritual value
than the casual observer would suppose, because of the perfect sincerity
with which she undertook its performance. No priestess ever entered an
oracle, no vestal virgin a temple, nor saint a shrine with more
reverence than she felt, as she passed into the silence of this
primeval forest.
Neither David nor Pepeeta knew anything of each other's movements, but
they started upon their different errands at almost the same moment and
were pursuing parallel courses with only a low ridge of hills between
them. Each was following the brightest light that had shone upon the
pathway of life. Both were absorbed with the highest thoughts of which
they were capable. As invisible planets deflect the stars from their
orbits, these two were imperceptibly diverting each other from the way
of duty. The experiences of this beautiful morning were to color the
lives of both forever.
As soon as Pepeeta had escaped from the immediate environments of the
village, she gave herself wholly to the task of gathering those
ingredients which were to constitute the mixture she planned to offer to
her god. She first secured a cricket, a lizard and a frog, and then the
herbs and flowers which were to be mingled with them. Thrusting them all
into a little kettle which swung on her arm, she surrendered herself to
the silent and mysterious influences of the forest. At the edge of the
primeval wilderness a solemn hush stole over her. She entered its
precincts as if it were a temple and she a worshiper with a votive
offering. Threading her way through the winding aisles of the great
cathedral, she was exalted and transported. The fitful fever cooled in
her veins. She absorbed and drew into her own spirit the calm and
silence of the place, and she was in turn absorbed and drawn into the
majestic life around her. The distinctively human seemed to slip from
her like a garment, and she was transformed into a creature of these
solitudes. Her movements resembled those of a fawn. Her great,
gazelle-like eyes peered hither and thither, as if ever upon the watch
for some hidden foe. It was as if her life in the habitations of men had
been an enforced exile, and she had now returned to her native haunts.
As she penetrated more and more deeply into the wood, her confidence
increased; she stepped more firmly, removed her hat, shook out her long
black tresses, listened to the songs of birds piping in the tops of
trees, and exulted in the consciousness of freedom and of kinship with
these natural objects. With a sudden and impulsive movement, she drew
near to the smooth trunk of a great beech, put her arms around it, laid
her cheek against it and kissed the bark. She was prompted by the same
instinct which made St. Francis de Assisi call the flowers "our little
sisters,--" an inexplicable sense of companionship and fraternity with
living things of every kind.
Her swift footsteps brought her at last to the summit of a low line of
hills, and she glided down into an unpeopled and shadow-haunted valley
through which ran a crystal stream. Perceiving the fitness of the place
for her purpose, she hastened forward smiling, and, heated with her
journey, threw herself down by the side of the brook and plunged her
face into its cool and sparkling waters. Then she lifted her head and
carried the water to her lips in the palm of her dainty hand, and as she
drank beheld the image of her face on the surface of a quiet little
pool. Small wonder that she stooped to kiss the red lips which were
mirrored there! So did the fair Greek maidens discover and pay tribute
to their own loveliness, in the pure springs of Hellas.
Refreshed by the cooling draught, the priestess now addressed herself to
her task. Gazing for an instant around the majestic temple in which her
act of worship was to be performed, she began like some child of a long
gone age to rear an altar. Selecting a few from the many boulders that
were strewn along the edge of the stream, she arranged them so as to
make an elevated platform upon which she heaped dry leaves, brushwood
and dead branches. Over it she suspended a tripod of sticks, and from
this hung her iron kettle. Drawing from her pocket flint and steel, she
struck them together, dropped a spark upon a piece of rotten wood,
purred out her pretty cheeks and blew it into a flame. As the fire
caught in the dry brushwood and began to leap heavenward, she followed
it with her great brown eyes until it vanished into space. Her spirit
thrilled with that same sense of awe and reverence which filled the
souls of primitive men when they traced the course of the darting flames
toward the sky. In the presence of fire, some form of worship is
inevitable. Before conflagrations our reveries are transformed into
prayers. The silently ascending tongues of flame carry us involuntarily
into the presence of the Infinite.
Filling her kettle with water from the running brook, she stirred into
it the herbs, the berries, the lizard, the frog and the cricket. This
part of her work completed, she sat down upon a bed of moss, drew forth
the sacred parchment and read its contents again and again.
"When the cauldron steams, dance about the fire and sing this song. As
the last words die away Matizan will leap from the flames and reveal to
thee the future."
Credulous child that she was, not the faintest shadow of a doubt floated
across her mind. She thrust the parchment back into her bosom, and as
the water began to bubble, leaped to her feet, threw her arms above her
head, sprang into the air, and went whirling away in graceful curves and
bacchantean dances.
There were in these movements, as in every dance, mysterious and perhaps
incomprehensible elements.
Who can tell whether they have their origin in the will of the dancer
alone, or in some outside force? The daisies in the meadow and the waves
of the sea dance because they are agitated by the wind. The little cork
automaton upon the sounding board of a piano dances because it is
agitated by the vibrations of the strings. The little children in the
alleys of a great city seem to be agitated in the same way by the
hurdy-gurdy!
Perhaps the rhythmic beating of the feet upon the ground surcharges the
body with electrical force, as by the touch of a magnet. There is a
mystery in the simplest phenomena of life.
Pepeeta, dancing upon the green moss beneath the great beech trees,
seemed to be in the hands of some external power, and could scarcely
have been distinguished from an automaton! She had brought her
tambourine, and holding it on high with her left hand or extending it
far forward, she tapped it with her fingers or her knuckles, until all
its brazen disks tingled and its little bells gave out a sweet and
silvery tintinnabulation.
The dancer's movements were alternately sinuous, undulatory and gliding.
At one moment her supple form, bending humbly toward the earth,
resembled the stem of a lily over-weighted with its blossom; the next, a
branch of a tree flung upward by a tempest; the next, a column of autumn
leaves caught up by a miniature whirlwind and sent spinning along a
winding path.
Her eyes glowed, her cheeks burned and her bosom heaved with excitement.
She seemed either to have caught from nature her own mood, or else to
have communicated hers to it, for while she danced all else danced with
her, the water in the brook, the squirrels in the tree-tops, the shadows
on the moss, and the leaves on the branches.
Following the directions of the parchment, she continued to spin and
flutter around the fire until the water in the kettle began to boil. At
the first ebullitions, she stood poised for an instant upon her toe,
like the famous statue of Mercury, and so lightly that she seemed to be
sustained by undiscoverable wings, or to float, like a bubble, of her
own buoyancy.
Settling down at length as if she were a hummingbird lighting upon a
flower, she began to circle slowly around the fire and sing. The melody
was in a minor key and full of weird pathos. The words were these:
"God of the gypsy camp, Matizan, Matizan,
Open the future to me--
Me thy true worshiper, here in this solitude,
Offering this incense to thee.
"Matizan, Matizan, God of the future days,
Come in the smoke and the fire;
Kaffaran, Kaffaran, Muzsubar, Zanzarbee;
Bundemar, Omadar, Zire."
As the last syllable fell from her lips, the loathsome decoction boiled
over, and the singer, pausing as if suddenly turned to marble, stood in
statuesque beauty, her arms extended, her lips parted, her eyes fixed.
Expectancy gave place to surprise, surprise to disappointment,
disappointment to despair.
The lips began to quiver, the eyes to fill with tears; her girlish
figure suddenly collapsed and sank upon the ground as the sail of a
vessel falls to the deck when a sudden blast of wind has snapped its
cordage.
While the broken-hearted and disillusioned priestess lay prostrate
there, the fire spluttered, the birds sang cheerfully in the treetops,
and the brook murmured to the grasses at its marge. No unearthly voice
disturbed the tranquillity of the forest, and no unearthly presence
appeared upon the scene. The great world spirit paid no more attention
to the prone and weeping woman than to the motes, that were swimming
gaily in the sunbeams.
As for her, poor child, her life faith had been dissipated in a single
instant, and the whole fabric of her thought-world demolished in a
single crash.
What had happened to the Quaker in the lumber camp, had befallen the
gypsy in the forest. But while in his case the disappearance of faith
had been followed by a sudden eruption of evil passions, in hers a
vanished superstition had given place to a nascent spiritual life.
The seed of religious truth sown by his hand in the fertile soil of her
heart already struck its roots deep down. She did not in any full degree
comprehend his words; but that reiterated statement that "there is a
light which lighteth every man that cometh into the world" had made an
indelible impression upon her mind and was destined to accomplish great
results.
As she lay crushed and desolate in her disillusionment, her mind began
of its own accord suddenly to feed upon this new hope. She could not be
said to have been reasoning, as David was doing in the cabin. Her nature
was emotional rather than intellectual, or at least her powers of reason
had never been developed. She could not therefore think her way through
these pathless regions over which she was now compelled to pass; she
could only feel her way. The thoughts which began to course through her
mind did not originate in any efforts of the will, but issued
spontaneously from the depths of her soul, and as they arose without
volition, so did they flow on until they finally became as pure and
clear as the waters of the brook by whose banks she lay.
When her emotions had expended their force and she arose, an experience
befell her which revealed the immaturity of her mind.
The idea of that "inner light" had taken complete possession of her
soul, and so when she suddenly perceived a long bright path of gold
which a beam of the setting sun had thrown along the floor of the
forest, like a shining track in the direction of the village, she
thought it had emerged from the depths of her own spirit.
Without a moment's hesitation she entered this golden highway and sped
along! Not for another instant did she regret the failure of the gypsy
god to meet her. She knew well enough, now, the way to find her path
amid the mysteries of life! She had but to follow this light!
The shining pathway led her to the summit of the hill; and as she began
to descend the other slope, it vanished with the sun. But she was not
troubled, for she saw at a glance that the brook to whose banks she was
coming was the one flowing through the farm of the Quaker. "Perhaps I
shall see him again," she said to herself, and the hope made her
tumultuously happy.
She had lost all consciousness of the flight of time, and now noticed
with surprise that it was evening. The crows were winging their way to
their nesting ground; the rabbits were seeking their burrows; the whole
animal world was faring homeward. Some universal impulse seemed to be
driving them along their predestined paths, as it drove the brooks and
the clouds, and Pepeeta appeared, as much as they, to be borne onward by
a power above herself. She was but little more conscious of choosing her
path than the doe who at a little distance was hurrying home to her
mate; so completely were all her volitional powers in abeyance to the
emotional elements of her soul.