|TWO days after this Hoag came back from Atlanta, reaching home just at
noon.
“I didn't go to the funeral myself,” he carelessly remarked at the
dinner-table. “I had some fellers to see on business, an' I ain't much
of a hand at such parades of flowers an' black stuff, nohow. Harriet
is standin' it all right, but Eth' is in a purty bad fix. They've had a
doctor with 'er ever since Jennie died. Eth' had never seen anybody die
before, an' it seems that Jennie knowed enough to recognize 'er, an'
begged 'er to stick by 'er side to the very end. Eth' has been nearly
crazy ever since. She was too upset to go to the buryin', although
plenty o' carriages was on hand, an' she could have rid in comfort. They
offered me a seat at their expense, but, as I say, I had other fish to
fry.”
“I knew it would go hard with Ethel,” Mrs. Tilton sighed. “It is a
pity they let 'er see it. Such things are hard enough even on old,
experienced folks. When are they comin' up, or did they say?”
“To-morrow. That ain't no place for 'em down thar in all that whiz,
hustle, an' chatter, with a nigger fetchin' in a card or a bunch o'
flowers every minute. The fellers that run the flower-stores certainly
are in clover.”
Mrs. Mayfield and Ethel came in on the nighttrain which reached Grayson
at ten o'clock, and, having retired, Paul saw neither of them till the
next day. He had risen for his early morning walk, and gone down to
the front lawn, where he was surprised to see Mrs. Mayfield nervously
walking back and forth, her troubled glance on the ground. He had never
seen her look so grave, so despondent. Her hair was drawn more tightly
across her brow, and there was no trace of color in her pinched and
troubled face. Seeing him, she bowed and made a pathetic little gesture
of welcome. He hesitated for a moment as to whether he might intrude
upon her, but some appealing quality of friendliness in her sad glance
reassured him, and, hat in hand, he crossed the grass to her.
“I was very sorry to hear your bad news,” he said. “I was sorry, too,
that there seemed nothing I could do to help.”
“Thank you; you are very kind,” the lady said, her thin lips quivering
sensitively. “I have thought of you, Paul, several times since the blow
came. After our recent talks I am sure you could have given us more
consolation than almost any one else. At a time like this there is
absolutely nothing to lean on except the goodness and wisdom of God.”
“Yes, of course,” he responded, simply.
“I am not worrying about Jennie now,” Mrs. Mayfield went on, gravely,
sweeping his face with almost yearning eyes. “At my age one becomes
accustomed to face death calmly, but, Paul, I am actually alarmed about
the effect on Ethel.”
“I know, and I am sorry,” Paul said; “very, very sorry.”
“She has hardly touched any sort of food since Jennie died,” Mrs.
Mayfield asserted, in a tremulous tone. “She is wasting away. She can't
sleep even under opiates. She cries constantly, and declares she can't
get her mind from it for a moment. We ought not to have allowed her to
see the end, but we could not avoid it. Jennie was conscious almost to
the last minute, though she did not realize she was dying. They thought
it best not to tell her, and she begged Ethel and her parents and me and
the young man she was to marry--begged us not to leave her. She seemed
quite afraid. Then suddenly she had a terrible convulsion. She was
clinging to my daughter's hand when she died. Ethel fainted, and had to
be taken home in a carriage. She--she--Paul, she has lost all faith
in the goodness of God, in an after-life, in everything. She is simply
desperate and defiant. She can't be made to see any sort of justice in
it. She is bitter, very bitter, and hard and resentful. Two kind-hearted
ministers down there tried to talk to her, but she almost laughed in
their faces. Some sweet old ladies--intimate friends of ours--tried to
pacify her, too, but could do nothing. I wish you had been there. You
have comforted me more than any one else ever did. Your faith seems such
a living, active thing, and even while down there under all that sadness
I found myself somehow feeling that your thoughts--your prayers were
with us.”
“Yes, yes,” he nodded, his blood mounting to his face, “that was all
I could do. Prayer is a wonderful force, but unfortunately it seems
without great or immediate effect unless it arises out of faith itself,
and perfect faith is very rare.”
“I understand,” the lady sighed. “I hear Ethel coming down. I wish you
would talk to her. I am sure you can do her good, and something must
be done. No medicine can help her; her trouble is of the mind. It is
natural for persons to lose faith under a shock like this, and in time
get over it; but--but, Paul, I've known people to die of grief, and that
is really what I am afraid of.”
Ethel, as she descended the veranda steps, saw them. She wavered for a
moment, as if undecided which way to go, and then, as if reluctantly,
she came on to them. Paul noted the drawn whiteness of her face and the
dark rings about her despairing eyes. Her whole being seemed to vibrate
from a tense state of nervousness. Her lips were fixed in a piteous
grimace as she gave Paul her hand.
“Mother's told you about it, I am sure,” were her first words.
“Yes,” he nodded, sympathetically, “it is very sad.”
She took a deep, tremulous breath, and her lips were drawn tight as from
inner pain. “Paul,” she said, bitterly, “I didn't know till now that
even an _omnipotent_ God could invent a thing as horrible as all that
was. If--if it would amount to anything I would curse him--actually
curse him.”
“I am going to leave you with Paul,” Mrs. Mayfield said, suddenly
catching her breath as if in pain. “I have something to do up-stairs.
Listen to him, my child. He has comforted me, and he can comfort
you. You must not allow yourself to become hard like this. Oh, you
mustn't--you mustn't, darling! You'll break my heart.”
“Oh, I don't know what to do--I don't know what to do!” Ethel shook with
dry sobs, and there was a fixed stare in her beautiful eyes. “I can't
think of Jennie being gone--being put away like that, when she had so
much to live for, and when the happiness of so many depended on her
recovery.”
Without a word, and with an appealing and significant backward glance at
Paul, Mrs. Mayfield moved away.
“Would you like to walk down to the spring?” Paul proposed, gently. “The
air is so fresh and invigorating, and breakfast won't be ready for some
time yet.”
She listlessly complied, walking along at his side like a drooping human
flower in movement. He heard her sighing constantly. He did not speak
again till they were seated at the spring, then he said:
“Your mother overrates my power of giving consolation; there is nothing
helpful that any mortal can do at such a time. I cannot give you my
faith. It came to me only after years and years of suffering, sordid
misery, and dense spiritual blindness. But I want to try, if you don't
mind. I'd give my life to--to save you pain, to turn you from your
present despair. Will you listen to me if I'll tell you some of the
things that I passed through? You can't see it as I do, Ethel, but I
am absolutely positive that your cousin is now a thousand times happier
than she was--happier than you or I, or any one on earth.”
“Oh, I know what you will say,” Ethel wailed, softly. “I believed such
things once, as you know. But I haven't been frank with you, Paul.
Seeing your beautiful faith which brought you back here in such a
wonderful way, I could not bear to let you know the truth; but I
have been in doubt for a long time, and now I have nothing to hold
to--absolutely nothing. You might argue a thousand years and you
could not--kind and gentle though you are--convince me that a just and
merciful God would allow my poor cousin to suffer as she suffered, and
cause me to feel as I feel only through my love for her. If there _is_
a good God, He is powerless to avert such as that, and a creator who
is not omnipotent is no God at all. We are a lot of helpless material
creatures staggering through darkness, dragging bleeding hearts after
us, and yearning for what can never be ours. That's the awful, repulsive
truth, Paul. It's unpleasant, but it's the truth.”
“I will tell you what I passed through after I left here, if you will
let me,” Paul began, a look of pained sensitiveness clutching his mobile
features. “It is hard to have you--of all persons--know to what depths
of degradation I sank; but I feel--something seems to tell me--that my
story may help you. Will you hear me?”
“Perhaps you ought not to tell me anything that is unpleasant,” Ethel
said, listlessly.
Paul lowered his head and looked at the ground. “I am not sure, Ethel,
that it is not my duty to go from man to man, house to house, and tell
it word for word, thought for thought, deed for deed. The world, as
never before in its history, is groping for spiritual light, and my
life--my soul-experiences--would shed it upon any thinking person.
No one could pass through what I have passed through and doubt the
existence of God and His inexpressible goodness. It is painful to tell
you, for, above all, I want your good opinion, and yet I must. Will you
listen, Ethel?”
“Yes, yes,” she answered; “but, Paul, if I am absent-minded don't blame
me. I've not thought of a single thing since Jennie died but the way she
looked then, and in her coffin afterward. I don't think I can ever get
those things out of my mind. They are simply driving me insane.”
“Nothing but an absolutely different point of view will help you,” Paul
said, gravely, his glance now resting tenderly on her grief-stricken
face. “When my father died I, too, was desperate. When I ran away from
here that terrible night I was as near akin to a wild beast as ever
mortal man was. I was at heart a murderer gloating like a bloodthirsty
savage over another's death. I won't go into detail over the earliest
part of what I went through. I traveled with a band of thieving gipsies
for a while. Later I joined a circus, and there gravitated to the same
sort of associates. Some of the company were not immoral; but I was a
murderer hiding my guilt, and among only the lowest of the low did I
feel at home. All others I hated.”
“Oh, do you think you ought to--ought to--” Ethel faltered. “How can it
do any good to--” Her voice failed her, and she stared at him dumbly.
“I think I ought to tell you, because it is the hardest thing in the
world for me to do,” he said, his tone low and labored. “I want you to
know me as I was at my worst. I can't feel that I have the right to sit
by you and be treated as a friend while you are unaware of what I have
been. For the first two years I was as low as the lowest. I hated life,
man, everything, and yet there was always something holding me back from
absolute crime. Down deep within me there was always a voice, always a
picture, always a sunlit scene--”
He choked up, pretended to cough, and looked away to avoid her inquiring
eyes.
“I don't quite understand,” she prompted him, with her first show of
interest.
He turned and looked steadily into her great, shadowy eyes.
“The scene was the roadside down there, Ethel. The picture was that of
a refined, gentle little girl, her eyes full of sympathy. The voice was
hers, telling me that she was going to pray for--for me.”
“Oh, oh, why do you say that now?” Ethel cried. “Now, now, after I have
told you that I no longer--”
“Because the little girl ought to know,” he answered. “She should
be told of the clinging effect her promise--her prayers--had on a
storm-tossed human soul. The scene, the voice, the picture, never left
the wanderer. They grew like pure flowers in the mire of his deepest
sin. In many cases it is the memory of prayers at a mother's knee in
childhood that haunts the worldly minded in after-life; but my childhood
had no prayers, and that little girl became my guardian angel.”
“Oh, Paul, Paul, don't, don't!” Ethel cried, and for a moment she seemed
to have forgotten her grief.
“But I must go on,” Paul answered. “I finally reached Portland and
settled down. I was tired of roaming, and under a small printer I began
to learn type-setting. I made rapid progress. I had access to a good
public library, and I passed most of my evenings in study. Later I began
reporting on a big newspaper, and from that I gradually drifted into the
writing of editorials. I don't take any credit for the success I met,
for the articles I wrote were readable only because they were without
heart or soul, and appealed only to individuals like myself. I ridiculed
everything, tore down everything. A thing only had to be praised by
others for me to hurl my vitriol upon it. The arrant hypocrisy of
the church-members, the mental weakness of the preachers, and the
gullibility of the public were my choice themes. Birds of my own
particular feather flocked about me and congratulated me. I became vain
of my powers. I was sure that I was a great intellectual force in
the world. My salary was raised, and I found myself in comfortable
circumstances. I belonged to a small society of advanced thinkers, as
we styled ourselves. We held meetings once a week and prepared and read
essays. The great materialistic scientists and writers were our guides
and gods. We pitied all the rest of the world for its inability to reach
our height. That went on for several years, then an odd thing happened.”
“What was that?” Ethel was now almost eagerly leaning forward, her pale
lips parted.
The color in Paul's cheeks had deepened. “I must tell that, too,” he
said. “And I shall not shirk the humiliation of it. There was a young
poet in Boston whose parents lived in Portland. His books had been
widely circulated, and when he came out on a visit the papers had a
great deal to say about him. I don't think I ever sank lower than I did
then.” Paul's voice faltered. “I was jealous. I read his books out of
curiosity, and found them wholly spiritual, full of dreams, ideality,
and mysticism. Then I sat up all of one night and wrote the most
caustic and virulent attack on his work that I had ever written. It was
published at once, and created a local sensation. My friends gave me a
dinner in honor of it, and we drank a good deal of beer and filled the
air with smoke. Selections from the poet's books were read and laughed
at. That seemed all right; but an unexpected thing happened. The next
day the young man called at the office and sent in his card, asking
particularly for me. It made me furious; my associates on the paper
thought he had come to demand personal satisfaction, and so did I. I
kept him waiting in the reception-room for some time, and then I went in
to him, fully expecting trouble. So you can imagine my surprise to have
him rise and extend his hand in a timid and yet cordial manner. I
had never seen him before, and I was struck by the wonderful, almost
suffering delicacy of his face and a certain expression in his big,
dreamy eyes that I had never seen before. He seemed greatly embarrassed,
so much so that at first he seemed unable to talk. Presently he managed
to tell me, in the frankest, most gentle manner, that he had come to see
me because, after reading my article, he was afraid he or his work had
offended me personally in some way. I was completely taken aback.
I simply couldn't make him out. I was tempted to speak roughly, but
couldn't. We sat down, and he started to explain more fully why he had
come. He said it was his aim in life to live in harmony with God's law,
and that, as he saw it, the feeling between him and me was spiritual
discord which ought not to exist. He said he was sure, when I understood
him fully, that I could have no personal animus against him for
conscientiously writing the poems I had attacked. He said it was the
highest law of life for all men to love one another, and until they did
there would be human discord. I can't tell you half he said. I know,
somehow, that for the first time in my experience I found myself facing
a human being who was more spirit than matter, and who possessed a power
against which I had no weapon. He seemed to feel my embarrassment,
and rose to go. At the door he gave me his hand again and pressed mine
warmly. 'I am sure,' he said, 'that nothing but good can result from
this visit. Something within me always tells me when I ought to do a
thing like this. It is always hard to do; but if I refuse to obey I
invariably suffer for it.'”
“How very strange!” Ethel exclaimed. “And what came of it?”
“Much, much,” Paul answered. “When he had gone I remained for some
time in the room with the door closed. I was hot from head to foot with
shame. I felt worse than if I had been thrashed in public. I did not
know what to do, and I was sure something had to be done. I returned to
the office, and the reporters and printers gathered about me, full of
jokes and eager for information. I could say nothing. A mechanical jest
rose to my lips, but I didn't utter it. I could no longer make sport of
him behind his back. I put on my hat and went for a walk. I felt sure
that I owed him a public apology, and I knew that I would not be able to
make it, and that fairly confounded me. I admired him more than any man
I had ever met. During that walk a maddening mental picture rose before
me.” Here the speaker's voice quivered. “I fancied, Ethel--I fancied
that I saw you as I last saw you. Some one was presenting that young man
to you. I saw you both walking off together across the meadows in the
sunshine among the flowers. He was gathering them for you. You were
receiving them, and it seemed to me that you and he were mated _as man
and woman never had been mated before_.”
“Oh, Paul, don't!” Ethel protested. “You must not think of me that way;
but go on--go on!”
“Day after day, week after week,” Paul continued, “I fought the
inclination to write that apology. I'd start it, only to throw it aside
as something above and beyond my nature. I began to loath myself. I
had sufficient cause. I was a murderer living under a false name,
continually lying about my past, haunted by remorse, and gradually
losing my reason. Then came the crisis. I call it my 'black day.' You
will despise me when I confess it, but I decided to--kill myself.”
“Oh, Paul, Paul!” Ethel covered her face with her hands. “How _could_
you--how _could_ you?”
“I was a blind man, goaded to despair. I was swimming with my last
feeble stroke in a torrent of sin. It was Christmas Eve. The joy of the
rest of the world only added to my loneliness. All my acquaintances had
gone to relatives and friends, and I was alone in my desolate room. I
had never faced myself so plainly as I did that night. I did not believe
there was any future life, and I told myself that I was tired of the
struggle, and wanted to go to sleep never to wake again. I thought
that would solve it, you see, I wrote a note to old Silas Tye, feeling
somehow that I wanted him to know what had happened to me. I got ready.
Forgive me, but I want you to hear it all. The door' and windows were
tightly closed, and I turned on the gas and lay down on the bed. I
folded my hands on my breast. I was sorry for myself. Then, just as I
was beginning to notice the odor of the gas, I seemed to see old Uncle
Si on his knees praying for me, and I asked myself what was he praying
for, to whom or what was he praying? My next thought was of you and your
sweet, girlish faith, and then I recalled the poet and his beautiful
ideas of life. All at once, as if in a flash of light, came the thought
that you three might be right and I wrong; that while I could kill my
body I might never be able to kill my soul. 'God help me!' I cried,
and why I did not know, for I had never prayed before. I sprang up and
turned out the gas and opened the windows and breathed the fresh air
deep into my lungs. Just then the church-bells of the city rang out in
the announcement of the day on which Christ was born. I was tingling all
over with a strange, new hope. What if I should, after all, actually be
immortal?
“I sat down before the fire and asked myself, for the first time in my
life, 'Am I flesh, blood, and bones, or am I wholly spirit?' Was it a
physical possibility for my brain-cells--tiny fragments of matter--to
evoke the spiritual tempest through which I was passing? Was there a God
and was He good? If not, why was the universe?
“I had brought home a new book--the _Life of Tolstoi_--to review, and I
began to read it with the first touch of sympathy I had ever given
such a work. It clutched me and held me like a vise. At one time
Tolstoi--like myself--had been tempted to kill himself because he had
no faith, and life was nothing without it. Like myself, he had been
influenced by materialistic thinkers and worldly-minded associates. He
had wealth, a noble's title, and great fame, and yet he had thrown them
all over that he might become as a little child. Among the great men of
the earth--his mental peers--he could not find the peace of soul that he
found reflected in the faces of the poorest peasants on his estate. He
wanted to be like them, because he felt they were more like God than
he. For him the riddle was solved. It struck me that his life was a
wonderful revelation of spiritual truth, if it was anything aside from
senility. To satisfy myself on this point I spent the next day reading
his books, becoming more and more convinced of his rational sincerity
and the unity of his life from beginning to end. Tolstoi's admiration
for Rousseau led me to Rousseau's life and _Confessions_. From him I
went to Plato, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius, and all the great poets.
I neglected my duties on the paper, and fairly buried myself in books
such as I'd never read before. My desire to satisfy myself that my soul
was immortal became a veritable passion. I read everything that could
possibly throw a light on the subject. The first thing that I became
convinced of was my stupendous ignorance. For instance, I had never
dreamt that one could have any faith which was not founded on the
religious creeds of which I had heard all my life; but I soon saw that
it was possible to acquire a belief like that of Emerson, Whitman,
Wordsworth, and Goethe, which soared above all so-called revelation
and reached out into the transcendental. I read the works of many
philosophers, spurning almost angrily those who leaned to the material
side of life and reverently devouring those who, like Kant and Hegel,
were idealistic. Among the modern ones William James seemed inspired.
Then Bergson held me with his idea that the simple intuition of
the trusting masses was a better guide to hidden truth than the
intellectuality of all the scholars.”
“I didn't know you had read so much,” Ethel said, when Paul paused and
sat tenderly regarding her grief-stricken face.
“I was forced to,” he smiled. “I was in a corner fighting for life
against awful odds. I was sick and disgusted with existence. In my new
atmosphere I began to breathe for the first time. I was sensing the
eternal meaning of things. I began to see why I had been made to suffer,
and I was glad. The habits of my associates, their cramped and aimless
lives, now seemed horribly sordid. It sounded strange to hear them speak
so seriously and gravely of trivial affairs when a vast new world was
fairly throbbing around me. I ventured to speak with a tentative sort of
respect of some of the books I had read, and they laughed at me. I was
forced into cowardly craftiness. I hid my wonderful secret and continued
to go among them. But that couldn't go on. One cannot serve both the
spirit and the flesh and be true to either, so I gave up my associates.
I apologized to the poet, wrote a strong review of a new book of his,
and we became good friends.”
“Then, then”--Ethel laid an eager hand on his arm--“then you decided
to--to come home?”
Paul smiled reminiscently, his glance on the gray wisps of clouds slowly
lifting themselves from the mountain-side up into the full blaze of the
sun.
“I simply had to do it,” he said. “It was as inevitable as life itself.
I knew it was right, and that settled it.”
“So you came!” Ethel cried. “You came back.”
“Yes, and when I reached here that night and learned the truth I saw
God's hand in it all. Now, you see why I have told you this. Can you
believe there is any other design than good--infinite good--behind
sorrow, trouble, and agony? Your grief is great--it seems unbearable
now; but behind it, above it, beyond it is a purpose so divinely wise
that no mortal sense can grasp it.”
Just then Cato appeared at the kitchen door ringing the breakfast-bell.
Ethel rose apathetically, and they slowly walked toward the house
together. They saw her mother among the flowers waiting for them. Paul
heard his companion sigh and, looking at her, he saw that she had lapsed
into despair again.
“I can't bear it,” he heard her say. “I can't--I can't. It's awful,
awful!”