OUT OF THE JAWS OF DEATH
"Men deal with life as children with their play,
Who first misuse, then cast their toys away."
--Cowper.
Bewildered by the scene through which he had just passed, Corson
returned to his rooms and spent the night in a sort of stupor. What
happened the next day he never knew; but on the following morning he
accompanied Mantel to the cemetery where, with simple but reverent
ceremony, they committed the body of the doctor to the bosom of earth.
Just as they were about to turn away, after the conclusion of the burial
service, a strange thing happened. The limb of a great elm tree, which
had been tied back to keep it out of the way of the workmen, was
released by the old sexton and swept back over the grave.
It produced a similar impression upon the minds of both the subdued
spectators. They glanced at each other, and Mantel said, "It was like
the wing of an angel!"
"Yes," added David with a sigh, "and seemed to brush away and obliterate
all traces of his sorrow and his sins."
They did not speak during their homeward journey, and when they reached
their rooms David paced uneasily backward and forward until the shadows
of evening had fallen. When he suddenly observed that it was dusk, he
took his hat and went out into the streets. There was something so
restless and unnatural about his movements as to excite the suspicion of
his friend, who waited for a single moment and then hurried after him.
The night was calm and clear, the autumn stars were shining in a
cloudless sky, and the tide of life which had surged through the busy
streets all day was ebbing like the waters from the bays and estuaries
along the shore of the ocean.
The sounds the people made in tramping over the stone pavements or
hurriedly driving over the hard streets, possessed a strangely different
quality from the monotonous and grinding roar of the daylight. They were
sharp, clear, resonant and emphatic. A single footfall attracted the
attention of a listener more than the previous shuffle of a thousand
feet. David's,--soft and subdued as it was,--resounded loudly, echoing
from the buildings on either side of him as he slowly paced along.
It was evident to every one who met him that he was moving aimlessly.
Now and then some keen-eyed pedestrian stopped to take a second look
and, turning to do so, felt an instinctive pity for this burdened,
care-encumbered man, wending his way through the almost deserted
streets.
This gaze was unreturned and this sympathy unperceived. He was in one of
those fits of abstraction when the whole external universe with all its
beauties and sublimities has ceased to exist. His cup of misery was
full, he had lost all clue to the meaning of life and a single definite
idea had taken complete possession of his mind. It was that he was
doomed to pass his existence under a curse.
By the very nature of its being, the soul is keenly sensitive to
blessings and curses, and it is not alone the benediction of the mitred
priest that thrills the heart! That of the pauper upon whom we have
bestowed alms sometimes awakens in our bosom a hope and gladness out of
all proportion to the insignificant source from which it has proceeded.
Nor do we need to be cursed by the great and the powerful to feel a pang
of terror in our souls! Let but some helpless wretch whom we have
wronged commit his cause to heaven in a single syllable, and we shudder
as if we already heard the approach of those avenging feet which the
ancients said were shod with wool. The curse of the dead and impotent
beggar rang in the ears of the fugitive like the strokes of an alarm
bell. That deep sense of justice which had been formed in his early life
had been revivified and endowed with a resistless power.
At such moments as these through which he was passing man experiences no
doubt as to the nature and origin of conscience. He is as sure that the
terror aroused in his heart is the echo of the decision of some real and
awful tribunal as that the wave upon the shore is produced by some real
though invisible storm at sea, or the shadow on the mountain by some
palpable object between it and the sun.
The conscience is not only "a secretion in the brain," it is not only
the "accumulated observations of the universal man upon the phenomena of
the moral life," it is not only his study of the laws of cause and
effect distilled into maxims and forebodings; it is this, but it is more
than this--as every total is more than any of its parts. For every man
has something which is in him, but not of him. It resides within his
intelligence, but it is not so much the offspring of his intelligence as
an emissary that has taken up its residence there! This obscure
something is stronger than he. He does not subordinate it to himself,
but is subordinated by it. He can rebel against it, but he cannot
overthrow it. He can fly from it, but he cannot escape it.
This sublime and mysterious power had at last obtained complete
ascendency in the soul of David Corson. He no longer argued and he no
longer resisted. He saw no way of escape from the spiritual anaconda
which was tightening its folds around him.
This was all the more strange because the way to the satisfaction of the
irrepressible hunger of his heart was now open. Pepeeta's husband was
dead, and although he was not innocent of a great crime, he was at least
not a murderer. Pepeeta still loved him, if she were still alive. Of
this he had no more doubt than of his love for her. Why then did he thus
give up to despair? Why did he not fly to her arms and claim from life
that happiness which had hitherto escaped his grasp?
He did not try to solve these problems, nor to comprehend his own
despair. He only knew that he had been baffled at every turn of his life
by powers with which he was unable to cope, and that he was tired of the
struggle. He would give himself up to the mighty stream of events and be
borne along. If he was exercising any volition in the choice of the path
he was following, he was doing it unconsciously. That path was leading
him direct to the harbor. It was a pathway well-worn by tired feet like
his own.
The miserable creatures who had preceded him seemed to have formed a
sort of wake by which he was being drawn along to that "wandering grave"
in the deep sea. At last he reached the water's edge, and started as he
heard the waves splashing among the wooden piles. The soft, sibilant
sounds seemed like kisses on the lips of the victims of their
treacherous caresses.
The deed of which they whispered seemed but the logical conclusion of
his entire career. He put his foot upon the edge of the wharf and looked
down into the dark abyss.
It was at this critical instant that his faithful friend extended his
hand to save him; but at the same instant another and mightier hand was
also extended from the sky.
From a remote part of the Battery a sound cut the silent air. It was a
human voice, masculine, powerful, tender and pleading, lifted in a
sacred song. That sound was the first element of the objective world
which had penetrated the consciousness of the tortured and desperate
would-be suicide.
He turned and listened--and as he did so, Mantel sprang back among the
shadows just in time to escape his observation. The full-throated music,
floating on the motionless air, fell upon his ear like a benediction. He
listened, and caught the words of a hymn with which he had been familiar
in his childhood:
"Light of those whose dreary dwelling
Borders on the shades of death!
Rise on us, thy love revealing,
Dissipate the clouds beneath.
Thou of heaven and earth creator--
In our deepest darkness rise,
Scattering all the night of nature,
Pouring day upon our eyes."
By the spell of this mysterious music he was drawn back into the living
world--drawn as if by some powerful magnet.
Pain and sorrow had become tired of vexing him at last, and now
stretched forth their hands in a ministry of consolation. With his eyes
fixed on the spot from which the music issued, he moved unconsciously
toward it, Mantel following him.
A few moments' walking brought him to a weird spectacle. A torch had
been erected above a low platform on which stood a man of most unique
and striking personality. He looked like a giant in the wavering light
of the torch. He was dressed in the simple garb of a Quaker; his head
was bare; great locks of reddish hair curled round his temples and fell
down upon his shoulders. His massive countenance bespoke an
extraordinary mind, and beamed with rest and peace.
As he sang the old familiar hymn, he looked around upon his audience
with an expression such as glowed, no doubt, from the countenance of the
Christ when He spoke to the multitudes on the shores of Lake Genessaret.
Close to the small platform was a circle of street Arabs, awed into
silence and respect by the charm of this remarkable personality. Next to
them came a ring of women--some of them old and gray, with haggard and
wrinkled countenances upon which Time, with his antique pen, had traced
many illegible hieroglyphs; some of them young and bedizened with tinsel
jewelry and flashy clothing; not a few of them middle-aged, wan,
dispirited and bearing upon their hips bundles wrapped in faded shawls,
from which came occasionally that most distressing of sounds, the wail
of an ill-fed and unloved infant, crying in the night.
Outside of this zone of female misery and degradation, there was a belt
of masculine stupidity and crime; men with corpulent bodies, bull necks,
double chins, pile-driving heads; men of shrunken frames, cadaverous
cheeks, deep-set and beady eyes--vermin-covered, disease-devoured,
hope-deserted. They clung around him, these concentric circles of
humanity, like rings around a luminous planet, held by they knew not
what resistless attraction.
The simple melody, borne upon the pinions of that resonant and
cello-like voice, attained an almost supernatural influence over their
perverted natures. When it ceased, an audible sigh arose, an involuntary
tribute of adoration and of awe.
As soon as he had finished his hymn, this consecrated apostle to the
lost sheep of the great city opened a well-worn volume.
The passage which he read, or rather chanted, was the fifty-third
chapter of Isaiah, the awe-inspiring sentences sending through the
circles of humanity which were tightening about him visible vibrations.
When he finished his reading, he began an address full of homely wit and
pathos, in which, with all the rich and striking imagery culled from a
varied life in the wildernesses of the great forests and the great
cities of our continent, he appealed to that consciousness of "the true,
the beautiful and the good" which he believed to lie dormant, but
capable of resurrection, in the soul of every man.
A few of his auditors were too far gone with fatigue or intoxication to
follow him, and elbowing their way through the crowd shot off into the
night upon their various tangents of stupidity or crime; but most of the
spectators listened with a sort of rapt and involuntary attention.
The influence which he exerted over the mind of the young man whom he
had unconsciously saved from suicide was as irresistible as it was
inscrutable. His language had the charm of perfect familiarity. Every
word and phrase had fallen from his own lips a hundred times in similar
exhortations. In fact, they seemed to him strangely like the echo of his
own voice coming back upon him from the dim and half-forgotten past.
His interest and excitement culminated in an incident for which the
listener was totally unprepared. The speaker who had been exhorting his
audience upon the testimony of prophet and apostle now appealed to his
own personal experience.
"Look at me!" he said, laying his great hand on his broad chest. "I was
once as hardened and desperate a man as any of you; but God saved me!
See this book!" he added, holding up the old volume. "I will tell you a
story about it. I found it in a log cabin away out in the frontier state
of Ohio. Listen, and I will tell you how. I had left a lumber camp with
a company of frontiersmen one Sunday morning, to go to a new clearing
which 'we were making in the wilderness, when I suddenly discovered that
I had forgotten my axe. Swearing at my misfortune, I returned to get it.
As I approached the cabin which I had left a few minutes before, I heard
a human voice. I paused in surprise, crept quietly to the door and
listened. Some one was talking in almost the very language in which I
have spoken to you. I was frightened and fled! Escaping into the depths
of the forest, I lay down at the root of a great tree, and for the
first time in my life I made a silence in my soul and listened to the
voice of God. I know not how long I lay there; but at last when I
recovered my consciousness I returned to the cabin. It was silent and
empty; but on the floor I found this book."
"Good God!" exclaimed a voice.
So rapt had been the attention of the hearers that at this unexpected
interruption the women screamed and the men made a wide path for the
figure that burst through them and rushed toward the platform.
The speaker paused and fixed his eye upon the man who pressed eagerly
toward him.
"Tell me whether a red line is drawn down the edge of that chapter, and
a hand is pointing toward the fifth and sixth verses!" he cried.
"It is," replied the lumberman.
"Then let me take it!" exclaimed David, reaching out his trembling
hands.
"What for?"
"Because it is mine! I am the man who proclaimed the holy faith, and,
God forgive me, abandoned it even as you received it!"
The astonished lumberman handed him the Bible, and he covered it with
kisses and tears. In the meantime, the crowd, excited by the spectacular
elements of the drama, surged round the actors, and the preacher,
reaching down, took David by the arm and raised him to the platform.
"Be quiet, my friends," he said with a gesture of command, "and when
this prodigal has regained his composure we will ask him to tell us his
story."
Of what was transpiring around him, David seemed to be entirely
unconscious and at last the fickle crowd became impatient.
"What's de matter wid you?" said a sarcastic voice.
"Speak out! Don't snuffle," exclaimed another.
"Tip us your tale," cried a fourth.
"Go on. Go on. We're waiting," called many more.
These impatient cries at last aroused David from his waking dream, he
drew his hand over his eyes, and began his story.
For a time the strange narrative produced a profound impression. Heads
drooped as if in meditation upon the mystery and meaning of life;
significant glances were exchanged; tears trembled in many eyes; these
torpid natures received a shock which for a moment awakened them to a
new life.
But it was only for a moment. They were incapable of the sustained
effort of thought, of ambition, or of will. Impressions made upon their
souls were like those made on the soft folds of a garment by the passing
touch of a hand.
To their besotted perceptions this scene was like a play in a Bowery
theater, and now that the dramatic denouement had come, they lost their
interest and sauntered away singly or in little groups. In a few moments
there were only three figures left in the light of the flaming torch,
They were those of the lumberman, David, and Mantel, who now drew near,
took his friend by the hand and pressed it with a gentle sympathy.
"Where did you come from?" asked David in surprise, as he for the first
time recognized his companion.
"I have followed you all the evening," Mantel replied.
"Then you have heard the story of this book?"
"I have, and I could not have believed it without hearing."
"Can you spare us a little of your time?" said David, turning to the
lumberman.
"I owe you all the time you wish and all the service I can render," he
replied.
"You have more than paid your debt by what you have done for me
to-night, but who are you?"
"I am only another voice crying in the wilderness."
"Is this your only business in life--to speak to the outcast and the
wretched as you did to-night?"
"This is all."
David looked his admiration.
"How do you support yourself?" asked Mantel, to whom such a man was a
phenomenon.
"We do not any of us support ourselves so much as we are supported," he
replied.
"And this life of toil and self-denial had its origin in those words I
spoke in the empty lumber camp?" asked David, incredulously.
"It is not a life of self-denial, but that was its beginning."
"It is a mystery. I lost my faith and you found it, and now perhaps you
are going to give it back again!" David said.
The lumberman turned his searching eyes kindly on Mantel's face and
said, "And how is it with thee, my friend; hast thou the peace of God?"
The directness of the question startled the gambler. "I have, no peace
of any kind; my heart is full of storms and my life is a ruin," he
answered sadly.
"Did thee never notice," said the lumberman gently, "how nature loves to
reclaim a ruin?"
"In what way?"
"By covering it with vines and moss."
The unexpected nature of this answer and the implied encouragement
produced a deep impression on the mind of the gambler, but he answered:
"I shall never be reclaimed. I have gone too far. I have often tried to
find the true way of life, and prayed for a single glimpse of light!
Have you ever heard how Zeyd used to spend hours leaning against the
wall of the Kaaba and praying, 'Lord, if I knew in what manner thou
wouldst have me adore thee, I would obey thee; but I do not! Oh! give me
light!' I have prayed that prayer with all that agony, but, to me, the
universe is dark as hell!"
"There is light enough! It is eyes we need!" said the evangelist.
"Light! Who has it? Many think they have, but it is mere fancy. They
mistake the shining of rotten wood for fire!"
"And sometimes men have walked in the light without seeing it, as fish
swimming in the sea and birds flying in the air, might say, 'Where is
the sea?' 'Where is the air?'"
"But what comfort is it, if there is light, and I cannot see it? There
might as well be no light at all!"
"The bird never knows it has wings until it tries them! We see, not by
looking for our eyes, but by looking out of them. We say of a little
child that it has to 'find its legs.' Some men have to find their eyes."
"It is an art, then, to see?"
"I would even call it a trick, if I dared."
"Can you impart that capacity and teach that art?"
"No, it must be acquired by each man for himself. We can only tell
others 'we see.'"
"I only know that I wish I could see!"
"We see by faith."
"And what is faith?"
"It is a power of the soul as much higher than reason as reason is
higher than sense."
"Some men may possess such power, but I do not."
"You at least have an imagination."
"Yes."
"Well, faith is but the imagination spiritualized."
Mantel regarded the man who spoke in these terse and pregnant sentences
with astonishment. "This," said he, "is not the same language in which
you addressed the people in the Battery. This is the language of a
philosopher! Do all lumbermen in the west speak thus?"
The evangelist began to reply, but was interrupted by David, who now
burst out in a sudden exclamation of joy and gratitude. He had been too
busy with reflections and memories to participate actively in the
conversation, for this startling incident had disclosed to him the whole
slow and hidden movement of the providence of his life towards this
climax and opportunity. He was profoundly moved by a clear conviction
that a divine hand must have planned and superintended this whole web of
events, and had intentionally led him from contemplating the tragic
issue of his sinful deeds and desires, to this vision of the good he had
done in the better moments of his life. This strange coincidence, to a
mind like his, could leave no room for doubt that the hand of God was on
him, and that, after all, he had been neither abandoned nor forgotten.
The lumberman had been sent at this critical moment to save him! There
was still hope!
With that instantaneous movement in which his disordered conceptions of
life invariably re-formed themselves, the chaotic events of the past
shifted themselves into a purposeful and comprehensible series, and
revealed beyond peradventure the hand of God.
And as this conclusion burst upon him, he broke into the conversation of
Mantel and the lumberman with the warmest exclamations of gratitude and
happiness.
They talked a long time in the quiet night, asking and answering
questions. The two friends besought the evangelist to accompany them to
their rooms, but he said:
"I have given you my message and must pass on. My work is to bear
testimony. I sow the seed and leave its cultivation and the harvest to
others."