THE END OF EXILE
"Every one goes astray, and the least imprudent is he who
repents soonest." --Voltaire.
The steamer on which Corson embarked after his overland journey from New
York City to Pittsburg, had descended the Ohio almost as far as
Cincinnati, before other thoughts than those which were concerned with
Pepeeta and his spiritual regeneration could awaken any interest in his
mind. But as the boat approached Cincinnati, the places, the persons and
the incidents of his childhood world began to present themselves to his
consciousness. An irrepressible longing to look once more upon the place
of his birth and the friends of his youth took possession of his mind.
He found, on inquiry, that the boat was to remain at the wharf in
Cincinnati for several hours, and that there would be time enough for
him to make the journey to his old home and back before she proceeded
down the river. He decided to do so, and observed with satisfaction that
those painful gropings for the next stepping stone across the streams of
action which had been so persistent and painful a feature of his recent
life had given place to the swift intuitions of his youth. He saw his
way as he used to when a boy, and made his decisions rapidly and
executed them fearlessly. The discovery of this fact gave a new zest
and hope to life.
In a few moments after he had landed at the familiar wharf he was
mounted upon a fleet horse, rushing away over those beautiful rolling
hills which fill the mind of the traveler with uncloying delight in
their variety, their fertility and their beauty. It was the first time
since he had left the farm that his mind had been free enough from
passion or pain to bestow its full attention upon the charms of Nature;
they dawned on him now like a new discovery. The motion of the
horse,--so long unfamiliar, so easy, so graceful, so rhythmical,--seemed
of itself to key his spirits to his environment, for it is an elemental
pleasure to be seated in the saddle and feel the thrill of power and
rapid motion. The rider's eyes brightened, his cheeks glowed, his pulses
bounded. He gathered up the beauties of the world around him in great
sheaves of delicious and thrilling sensations. Long-forgotten odors came
sweeping across the fields, rich with the verdure of the vernal season,
and brought with them precious accompaniments of the almost-forgotten
past. The rich and varied colors of field and sky and forest fed his
starved soul with one kind of beauty; and the sweet sounds of the
outdoor world intoxicated him with another. The low of cattle, the
bleating of sheep, the crowing of chanticleers, the cackling of hens,
the gobble of turkeys, the multitudinous songs of the birds enveloped
him in a sort of musical atmosphere. For the first time since his
restoration to hope, the past seemed like a dream, and these few
blissful moments became a prophecy of a new and grander life. "For, if
the burden can fall off for a single moment, why not for many moments?"
So he said to himself, as the consciousness of his past misery and his
unknown future thrust their disturbing faces into the midst of these
blissful emotions.
The vague joys which had been surging through his soul became vivid and
well-defined as the details of the landscape around his old home began
gradually to be revealed. At first he had recognized only the larger and
more general features like the lines of hills, the valleys, the rivers;
but now he began to distinguish well-known farms and houses, streams in
which he had fished, groves in which he had hunted, roads over which he
had driven; and the pleasure of reviving old memories and associations
increased with every step of progress. At last he began to ascend the
high hill which hid the house of his childhood from view. He reached the
summit; there lay the village fast asleep in the spring sunshine. He
recognized it, but with astonishment, for it looked like a miniature of
its former self. The buildings that once appeared so grand had shrunk to
playhouses. The broad streets had contracted and looked like narrow
lanes. He rubbed his eyes to see if they were deceiving him.
An unreality brooded mysteriously over everything. It was the same, yet
not the same, and he paused a moment to permit his mind to become
accustomed to these alterations; to ponder upon the reasons for this
change; to realize the joy and sadness which mingled in his heart; and
then he turned into a side road to escape any possible encounter with
old acquaintances.
The route which he had chosen did not lead to the farm house, but to the
cemetery where the body of his mother lay wrapped in her dreamless
sleep; that neglected grave was drawing him to itself with a magnetic
force. He who, for a year, had thought of her scarcely at all, now
thought of nothing else. The last incident in her life, the face white
with its intolerable pain of confession, the gasp for breath, the sudden
fall, the quiet funeral, his own responsibility for this tragic
death--he lived it all over and over again in an instant of time as
grief, regret, remorse, successively swept his heart. Tying his horse
outside the lonely burying ground, he threaded his way among the
myrtle-covered graves to the low mound which marked her resting place,
approached it, removed his hat and stood silently, reverently, by its
side.
There come to us all hours or moments of sudden and unexpected
disclosures of the hidden meaning of life. Such an one came to David,
there by that lowly grave. He saw, as in the light of eternity, the
grandeur and beauty of that character which the story of her sin and
suffering had made him in his immaturity, misinterpret and despise! He
did not comprehend that tragic story when she told it; it was impossible
that he should, for he had no knowledge or experience adequate to
furnish him the clew. Nothing is more inconceivable and impossible to a
child than the possibility of his parents dying or doing wrong. When he
awakens to consciousness he finds around him eternal things,--rocks,
hills, rivers, stars, parents! They all seem to belong to the same order
of indestructible existence, and he would as soon expect to see the sun
blotted from heaven as a parent removed from earth! And when his ethical
perceptions awake, he has another experience of a similar character. His
father and mother stand to him for the very moral order itself! To his
mind, it is inconceivable that they should ever err, and the bare
suggestion that those august and venerable beings can really sin, fills
him with horror and incredulity. If he, therefore, sometime learns that
they have committed a trifling indiscretion, he trembles, and if, in
some tragic moment, irresistible proof is brought to bear on him that
they have been guilty of a dark and desperate deed, the whole moral
system seems to undergo a sudden and final collapse! There is no longer
any standing-ground beneath his feet and he could not be driven into a
deeper despair if God himself had yielded to temptation. This discovery
and this despair had fallen to the lot of David, and he had cherished
the impressions, formed in that dark hour, through all these many
months. But now, returning to the scenes of his boyhood and bringing
back his burdens of care and sin, bringing back also his deepened
experience of life and his enlarged ability, to comprehend its
difficulties and sorrows, he suddenly saw the conduct and character of
his mother in a new light. He, too, had met temptation, had fallen, had
gone down into the depths, and in that awful and interpretative
experience, comprehended the victory which his mother had won on the
field of dishonor and defeat! He was now enabled to reconstruct, by the
aid of his enlightened imagination, a true picture of the events which
she had sketched so imperfectly in those few brief words. He realized
what she must have had to struggle against, and could measure the whole
weight of guilt and despair that must have rested on her heart. He knew
only too well how easy was the road into darkness, and how rugged the
one leading up into the light; yet this frail woman had followed it and
scaled those heights! She had been able to put that past into the
background, and keep it where it belonged. She had hidden her sorrows in
her heart; nothing had daunted her; no discouragement had cast her down.
By a wonderful grace she had concealed her sin from some, and made
others fear even to whisper the knowledge they possessed. She had made
that sin a torch to illumine her future. She had used it as a stepping
stone to ascend into purity and holiness. He could not remember in all
those long years of devotion and of love, that she had ever permitted
him to feel a moment's distrust of her perfect purity and goodness; and
this seemed to him a miracle! That purity and goodness must have been
real! So protracted an hypocrisy would have been impossible. Whence,
then, had she derived the power thus to rise superior to her past? She
had shown its terrific spell over her sensibilities by dying with shame
when she at last proclaimed it, and yet for twenty years she had kept it
under her feet like a writhing dragon, while she calmly fought her
fight. It was incredible, sublime!
As he stood there by her grave, measuring this deep and tragic
experience with his new divining rod of sympathy, there rushed upon him
an overmastering desire to reveal his appreciation to that suffering
heart beyond the skies. A feeling of bitterness at his inability to do
this frenzied him; a new consciousness of the irony of life in
permitting him to make these discoveries when they could do her no good
plunged him suddenly into a struggle with the darker problems of being
which for a little while had ceased to vex him.
"Do all the appreciations of heroism come too late?" he asked his sad
heart. "Do we acquire wisdom only when we, can no longer be guided by
it? Do we achieve self-mastery and real virtue only to be despised by
our children? Where is the clue to this tangle? Oh! mother, mother, if I
could only have one single hour to ask thee what thou didst learn about
this awful mystery in those lonely years of struggle! If I could only
tell thee of my penitence, of my admiration, my love! But it is too
late--too late."
With this despairing cry on his lips, he flung himself upon the grave,
buried his face in the green turf and burst into a convulsive passion of
tears, such tears as come once or twice, perhaps, in the lives of most
men, when they are passing through the awful years of adjustment to the
incomprehensible and apparently chaotic experiences of existence.
Like a thunderstorm, these convulsions clear the atmosphere and give
relief to the strained tension of the soul. At length, when his emotion
had spent itself in long-drawn sighs, David rose in a calm and tender
frame of mind, plucked a bunch of violets from the grave and reluctantly
turned away.
On foot, and leading his horse, he entered a quiet and secluded path
which led past the rear of the farm. He had not consciously determined
what he should do next; but his heart impelled him irresistibly toward
that little bridge where he had encountered Pepeeta on his return from
the lumber camp. It was at that place and that hour, perhaps, that he
had passed through the deepest experience of his whole life, for it was
there that the full power of the beauty of the woman in whom he had met
his destiny had burst upon him, and it was there that for the first time
he had consciously surrendered himself to those rich emotions which love
enkindles in the soul.
Perhaps our spiritual enjoyments are capable of an ever-increasing
development and intensity; but those pleasures that belong to the
earthly life and are excited by the things of time and sense, however
often they may recur, by an inviolable law of nature attain their climax
in some one single experience, just as there is in the passage of a star
across the sky a single climactic moment, and in the life of a rose an
instant when it reaches its most transcendent beauty. They all attain
their zenith and then begin to wane; that one brilliant but transitory
instant of perfect bliss can no more be recalled than the passing stroke
of a bell, the vanished glory of a sunset, or the last sigh of a dying
friend; and many of the vainest and most unsatisfying struggles of life
are expended in the effort to reproduce that one evanescent and
forevermore impossible ecstasy.
Possibly David hoped that he could live that perfect moment over again
by standing on that bridge! It was thither he bent his steps, and as he
approached it there did come back faint echoes, little refluent waves;
his lively imagination reproduced the scene; the dazzling figure really
seemed once more to emerge from the secluded forest path; he almost
heard the sound of her voice!
He threw the horse's bridle over the limb of a tree, leaned over the
handrail of the bridge and looked down into the water. The stillness of
the world, the slumber-song of the stream, the haunting power of the
past superinduced a mood of abstraction so common in other, happier
days.
Oblivious to all the objects and events of that outside world, he stood
there dreaming of the past. While he did so, Pepeeta, following her
daily custom, left the farm-house to take an evening walk. She also
sought the little bridge. Perhaps she was summoned to this spot by some
telepathic message from her lover; perhaps it was habit that impelled
her, perhaps it was some fascination in the place itself. She moved
forward with the quiet step peculiar to natures which are sensitive to
the charm of the great solitudes of the world, and came noiselessly out
from the low bushes behind the lonely watcher. As she stepped out into
the road, she caught sight of the solitary figure and her heart,
anticipating her eye in its swift recognition, throbbed so violently
that she placed her hand on her bosom as if to still it.
"David!" she said in a low whisper.
She paused to observe him for a moment and, as he did not stir, began to
move quietly towards him as he stood there motionless--a silhouette
against the background of the darkening sky. She drew near enough to
touch him; but so profound was his reverie that he was oblivious of her
presence. It could not have been long that Pepeeta waited, although it
seemed ages before he moved, sighed and breathed her name.
She touched him on the arm. He turned, and so met her there, face to
face.
It was an experience too deep for language, and their emotions found
expression in a single simple act. They clasped each other's hands and
stood silently looking into each other's eyes. After many moments of
silence David asked: "Why do you not speak to me, Pepeeta?"
"My eyes have told you all," she said.
"But what they say is too good to be believed! You must confirm their
mute utterance with a living word," he cried.
"I love you, love you, love you," she replied.
"You love me! I bless you for it, Pepeeta, but there is something else
that I must know."
"What can it be? Is not everything comprehended in that single word? It
is all-embracing as the air! It enfolds life as the sky enfolds the
world!"
"Ah! Pepeeta, you loved me when we parted, but you did not forgive me!"
She dropped her eyes.
"Have you forgiven me now?"
"It is not true that I did not forgive you," she replied, looking up at
his face again. "There has never been in my heart for a single moment
any sense of a wrong which I could not pardon. It has been one of the
awful mysteries of this experience that I could not feel that wrong!
When I tried to feel it most, my heart would say to me, 'you are not
sorry that he loved you, Pepeeta! You would rather that all this agony
should have befallen you than that he should not have loved you at all!'
It is this feeling that has bewildered me, David. Explain it to me. Let
me know how I could have such feelings in my heart and yet be good. It
seems as if I ought to hate you; but I cannot. I love you, love you,
love you."
"But, Pepeeta, if you loved me, why did you leave me? I do not
comprehend. How could you let me stand in the darkness under your window
and then turn away from it into the awful blackness and solitude to
which I fled?"
"Do not reproach me, I thought it was my duty, David."
"I do not reproach you. I only want to know your inmost heart."
"I do not know! There has been all the time something stronger than
myself impelling me. I grew too weak to reason. I felt that the heart
had reasons of its own, too deep for the mind to fathom, and I yielded
to them. I was only a woman after all, David. Love is stronger than
woman! Oh! it was I who wronged you. I ought not to have forsaken you.
Ought I? I do not know, even now. Who can tell me what is right? Who can
lead me out of this frightful labyrinth? If I did wrong in seeking you,
I humbly ask the pardon of God, and if I did wrong in abandoning you, I
ask forgiveness in all lowliness and meekness from the man I wronged."
"No, Pepeeta, you have never wronged me; I alone have been to blame. The
result could not have been really different, no matter what course you
took. The scourge would have fallen anyway! All that has happened has
been inevitable. Justice had to be vindicated. If it had not come in
one way, it would in another, for there are no short cuts and evasions
in tragedies like this! Every result that is attached to these causes
must be drawn up by them like the links in a chain, and one never knows
when the end has come."
His solemn manner and earnest words alarmed Pepeeta.
"Oh, David," she cried, "it cannot, cannot be so awful. Such
consequences cannot hang upon the deeds we commit in the limitations and
ignorance of this earthly life."
"Forgive me, Pepeeta, I should not talk so. These are the fears of my
darker moments. I have brighter thoughts and hopes. There is a quiet
feeling in my heart about the future that grows with the passing days.
God is good, and he will give us strength to meet whatever comes. We
must live, and while we live we will hope for the best. Life is a gift,
and it is our duty to enjoy it."
"Oh! it is good to hear you say that! It comforts me. I think it cannot
be possible that we should not be able to escape from this darkness if
we are willing to follow the divine light."
"I think so, too," he said.
His words were spoken with such assurance as to awaken a vague surmise
that he had reasons which he had not told. She pressed his hands and
besought him to explain.
"Oh! tell me," she said eagerly; "is there anything new? Has anything
happened?"
"Pepeeta," he answered slowly, "we have been strangely and kindly dealt
with. It is not quite so bad as it seemed, for I did not kill him."
"You did not kill him! What do you mean?"
"No, it is a strange story! I thought I had killed him. I knew murder
was in my heart. It was no fault of mine that the blow was not fatal. I
left him in the road for dead. But, thank God, he did not die; he did
not die then!"
"He did, not die then? Have you seen him? Is he dead now? Tell me! Tell
me!"
Quietly, gently, briefly as he could, he narrated the events of the past
few months, and as he did so she drew in short breaths or long
inspirations as the story shifted from phase to phase, and when at last
he had finished, she clasped her hands and gazed up into the depths of
the sky with eyes that were swimming in tears.
"Poor doctor, poor old man," Pepeeta sighed at last. "Oh! How we have
wronged him, how we have made him suffer. He was always kind! He was
rough, but he was kind. Oh! why could I not have loved him? But I did
not, I could not. My heart was asleep. It had never once waked from its
slumber until it heard your voice, David. And, afterwards,--well I could
not love him! But why should we have wronged him so? How base it was!
How terrible! I pity him, I blame myself--and yet I cannot wish him
back. Listen to me, David. I am afraid I am glad he is dead. What do you
think of that? Oh! what a mystery the human heart is! How can these
terrible contradictions exist together? I would give my life to undo
that wrong, and yet I should die if it were undone. All this is in the
heart of a woman--so much of love, so much of hate, for I should have
hated him, at last! I cannot understand myself. I cannot understand this
story. What does all this mean for us, David? Perhaps you can see the
light now, as you used to! I think from your face and your voice that
you are your old self again. Oh! if you can see that inner light once
more, consult it. Ask it if there is any reason why we cannot be happy
now? Tell it that your Pepeeta is too weak to endure this separation any
longer. I am only a woman, David! I cannot any longer bear life alone. I
love you too deeply. I cannot live without you."
Waiting long before he answered, as if to reflect and be sure, David
said quietly but confidently, "Pepeeta, I cannot see any reason why we
should not begin our lives over again, starting at this very place from
which we made that false beginning three long years ago. We cannot go
back, but, in a sense, we can begin again."
"But can we really begin again?" she asked. "How is it possible? I do
not see! We are not what we were. There is so much of evil in our
hearts. We were pure and innocent three years ago. Is it not necessary
to be pure and innocent? And how can we be with all this fearful past
behind us? We cannot become children again!"
"I have thought much and deeply about it," David responded. I know not
what subtle change has taken place within me, but I know that it has
been great and real. My heart was hard, but now it is tender. It was
full of despair, and now it is full of hope. I am not as innocent as I
was that night when you heard me speak in the old Quaker meeting-house,
or rather I am not innocent in the same way. My heart was then like a
spring among the mountains; it had a sort of virgin innocence. I had
sinned only in thought, and in the dreamy imaginations of unfolding
youth. It is different now; a whole world of realized, actualized evil
lies buried in the depths of my soul. It is there, but it is there only
as a memory and not as a living force. There must in some way, I cannot
tell how, be a purity of guilt as well as of innocence, and perhaps it
is a purity of a still higher and finer kind. There was a peace of mind
which I had as an innocent boy, which I do not possess now; but I have
another and deeper peace. There was a childish courage; but it was the
courage of one who had never been exposed to danger. There is another
courage in my heart now, and it is the courage of the veteran who has
bared his bosom to the foe! I know not by what strange alchemy these
diverse elements of evil can have become absorbed and incorporated into
this newer and better life, but this I do know, and nothing can make me
doubt it--that while I am not so good, yet I am better; while I am not
so pure, yet I am purer. Yes, Pepeeta, I think we can go back on our
track. We can be born again! We can once more be little children. I
feel myself a little child to-night--I who, a few days ago, was like an
old man, bowed and crushed under a load of wretchedness and misery! God
seems near to me; life seems sweet to me. Let us begin again, Pepeeta.
We have traveled round a circle, and have come back to the old starting
point. Let us begin again."
"Oh! David," she said, kissing the hands she held; "how like your old
self you are to-night. Your words of hope have filled my soul with joy.
Is it your presence alone that has done it, or is it God's, or is it
both? A change has come over the very world around us. All is the same,
and yet all is different. The stars are brighter. The brook has a
sweeter music. There is something of heaven in this intoxicating cup you
have put to my lips! I seem to be enveloped by a spiritual presence!
Hush! Do you hear voices?"
The excitement had been too intense for this sensitive woman to endure
with tranquillity. Her heart, her conscience, her imagination had
suffered an almost unendurable strain. She flung herself into the arms
of her lover and trembled upon his breast, and he held her there until
she had regained her composure.
"Do you really love me yet?" she asked, at length, raising her face and
gazing up into his with an expression in which the simple affection of a
little child was strangely blended with the passionate love of an ardent
and adoring woman.
"Love you!" he cried; "your face has been the last vision upon which I
gazed when I fell into a restless slumber, and the first which greeted
returning consciousness, when I waked from my troubled dream. My life
has been but a fragment since we parted; a part of my individuality
seemed to have been torn away. I have always felt that neither time nor
space could separate us for--"
At that instant the horse which had stood patiently beside them on the
bridge, shook his head, rattled his bridle and whinnied.
"Poor fellow! I had forgotten all about him in my joy!" said David,
starting at the sound, and patting his shoulder. "You have had a hard
run, and are tired and hungry. I must get you to the barn and feed you.
They will miss you at the stable to-night, but I will send you back
to-morrow, or ride you myself, that is if Pepeeta wishes to be rid of
me."
He said this teasingly, but smiled at her,--a tender and confident
smile.
"Oh! you shall never leave me again--not for a moment," she cried,
pressing his arm against her heart.
He paused a moment and looked down as if a new thought had struck him.
"What is the matter?" she asked.
"Do you think they will welcome me at home?" he said, with a penitence
and humility that touched her deeply.
"Welcome you home?" she exclaimed; "you do not know them, David. They
talk of nothing else. They have sent messages to you in every direction.
The door is never locked, and there has never been a night since you
disappeared that a candle has not burned to its socket on the sill of
your window; what do you think of that? You do not know them, David.
They are angels of mercy and goodness. I have been selfish in keeping
you so long to myself. Come, let us hasten."
Just at that instant a loud halloo was heard--"Pepeeta, Pepeeta,
Pepeeta!"
"It is Steven--the dear boy! He has missed me. You have a dangerous
rival, David."
She said this with a merry laugh and cried out, "Steven, Steven,
Steven!"
"Where are you?" he called.
"I am here by the bridge!" she cried, in her silvery treble.
"She is here by the bridge!" The deep bass voice of her lover went
rolling through the woods.
There was silence for a moment, and then they heard a joyous shout,
"Uncle David! Uncle David! Oh! Mother, Father, it is Uncle David."
There was a crashing in the bushes, and the great half-grown boy bounded
through them and flung himself into the arms extended to him, with all
the trust, all the love, all the devotion of the happy days of old.