|ONE evening at the end of that week Paul met
Mrs. Mayfield walking back and forth on the lawn. Her head was enveloped
in a light shawl and her eyes were downcast. Presently she turned toward
him, and he saw that she had been weeping.
“I was going to inquire of Mrs. Tilton how your daughter is,” he began.
“I have not seen her since the morning I walked with her to the spring.”
The lady touched her thin lips with her handkerchief and made an obvious
effort to control her voice. She laid her hand on his arm almost with a
gesture of despair, and he felt the delicate fingers tremble.
“I've been wanting to see you,” she faltered. “The poor child seldom
leaves her bed. The doctor says nothing but time will do her any good.
She scarcely eats anything, and has grown thin and white, and oh, so
nervous! Jennie's death has simply terrified her--shocked her through
and through. She cries constantly. I wake up in the night and hear
weeping and moaning. The doctor can't deceive me. I know he is worried,
because he comes often and asks so many questions. He admits that grief
like Ethel's sometimes results disastrously, and I myself have never
seen so serious a case as hers. Paul, she has lost all faith in God and
religion. She came up-stairs, after you talked to her that day, in what
seemed to be a really more hopeful mood. She put her head in my lap and
cried for the first time in a natural way, but she hardened again soon
afterward. That afternoon letters came from Jennie's father and mother
and the young man Jennie was to marry, and Ethel went into hysterics.
She really did not know what she was saying or doing. Oh, it was
pitiful! She says she simply can't get away from the memory of the
awful details. It was my fault; she should never have been there. Jennie
wanted her, though, and there was no time for reflection. We were all
excited.”
“Something must be done to take your daughter's mind from it,” Paul
advised, gravely. “A mental picture like that should not be held. It is
decidedly dangerous.”
“That's why I wanted to see you,” Mrs. Mayfield said. “You can help me
if you will. My brother says you are going to drive over the mountain
tomorrow on business. I really think Ethel would go along if you would
care to take her.”
“I should be delighted,” he answered. “I'd be a poor companion at such
a time, but the view from the mountain at this time of the year is
wonderful, and the trip might divert her thoughts.”
“Then I'll have her ready,” Mrs. Mayfield promised. “And oh, Paul, I
do hope you will impress some of your beautiful thoughts upon her.
Religion, faith in God's goodness, and the hope of immortality are
absolutely the only sustaining things at such a time. If I had not had
them to cling to when my poor husband died I think I should have lost my
reason. I doubted at first--I could see no justice in his sufferings and
mine; but I have become reconciled. People are more material in their
ideas nowadays, and Ethel has come across some injurious books which
have influenced her. She is so gentle and sweet--really, it is her pity
for Jennie that is causing it all. She is not thinking of herself.
That is the state of mind of a mother who has lost a child; she feels,
somehow, that her child has been wrongly treated and she resents it.”
“I'll do my best to cheer her up to-morrow,” Paul said, a note of
despondency creeping into his voice, “though I am afraid I can't do
much.”
“I am sure you can do far more than any one else,” Mrs. Mayfield said,
as she glanced at the window of her daughter's room and turned to go in.
“I'll have her ready.”
After breakfast the following morning Cato brought the horse and buggy
around to the veranda, and Paul went out to see if everything was in
readiness for the trip, having received a message at breakfast from Mrs.
Mayfield that Ethel was quite willing to go. Presently he heard the two
ladies descending the stairs, and a moment later they joined him in the
yard. Paul was shocked by Ethel's appearance. She was quite pale and
there were despondent shadows under her eyes, but, withal, he had never
seen her look so beautiful; it was as if some rare, suppressed radiance
were issuing from her hair, skin, and pain-filled eyes, the long lashes
of which seemed dipped in the essence of tears.
“I know you will think I'm very troublesome, Paul,” she smiled, sadly,
as she gave him her hand to get into the buggy. “I've been so despondent
that I have avoided all of you. It is very kind of you to bother with me
to-day.”
“It is certainly a great pleasure to me,” he answered, as he tucked the
lap-robe about her feet. “You mustn't try to talk unless you care to.”
“It seems to me that I can think of only one subject,” she sighed, as
she leaned over the wheel and kissed her mother. “I seem to be floating
on a sea of unreality, under clouds of despair. I was looking from
the window of my room just now and saw the people going to work at the
tannery, and in the fields with their pails and tools, and I wanted to
scream. It seemed so queer for them to be moving about as if nothing
unusual had happened when”--Her voice failed her. With a sensitive
tightening of the lips Mrs. Mayfield signaled Paul to drive on, and he
started the horse.
They had gone some distance along the stony road which wound gradually
up the mountain-side before either of them spoke. It was Ethel who broke
the silence.
“There is no time in the world, Paul,” she said, huskily, “in which one
so keenly feels and appreciates the kindness of friends as a time like
this. I can see that you are sorry for me, and I want you to know how
grateful I am, but I simply can't express it. My very heart and soul
seem to have died within me.”
“You mustn't try,” he answered. “You must simply realize that all things
are right. Even _this_ great sorrow, sad as it appears, is for the best,
if only you could see it in the right light.”
“I remember you said so the other day. And, Paul, I did try hard. A
beautiful faith in personal immortality, like yours, really does keep
away the horror of death, and I tried, with all my mind and body, to
grasp it. I prayed and prayed for your faith, and it seemed to me, at
certain moments, that I came so close to it that I could almost sense it
as a wonderful reality. It would flash before me like a beautiful dream,
and then vanish, leaving nothing but that awful scene in its place. For
half an hour yesterday I was almost happy. It seemed to me that Jennie
was really not dead. I fancied she was there with me, telling me--not in
words, but in some subtle way--not to grieve, that she was in a new life
full of joy and freedom.”
“That is the thought you ought to endeavor to hold,” Paul fervently
declared, “because it is simple truth. In fact, you deny the ultimate
aim of life in looking at it in any other way.”
“You will say it was a small thing, perhaps,” Ethel went on, “which
threw me back into despair. It was this: Shortly after our talk at the
spring, I picked up a newspaper, and the first thing I saw was a long
article concerning a statement made by Edison, to the effect that the
result of all his careful and lifelong investigations was the conclusion
that the immortality of the soul was an utter impossibility. Paul, I
dropped from hope to despair in an instant. I tried to think you might
be right and he wrong, but I failed. I asked myself this question: If
God is good enough to grant us another and a better life, why will He
allow one of the greatest men of our age to deny it, and let me--_me_,
suffering and praying for light as I am--come across his denial in grim,
black letters on white paper?”
“That raises a little scientific point.” Paul looked at her wistful
face and half smiled. “You allowed yourself to be influenced, almost
self-hypnotized, by one single mental picture.”
“How so?” Ethel inquired.
Paul smiled again. “Why, you let Mr. Edison--with all due respect to his
knowledge of merely material things--you let him loom too large before
your sight. One may hold a little ugly insect so close to the eye that
it will shut out the light of billions of suns and stars. When it is a
question of opinion alone it would be better to go to specialists in
the particular field we are investigating. Mr. Edison is a specialist in
_material_ things, not spiritual things. We would not go to a coal-miner
who had spent his life underground to render an opinion on the effects
of sunlight on flowers; nor to a boilermaker for an opinion on music
played to the vanishing-point of delicate expression. We have one great
historical authority on spiritual matters. Christ told us that there
is a life beyond this, and he died asserting it. There was
another--Socrates--who realized it so strongly that he laughed in the
face of death. Ethel, I cannot believe that God would create men like
those, allow them to suffer for others as they did, and then prove them
to be liars outright or self-deceived simpletons.”
“Oh, I'm so glad I came this morning!” Ethel cried, looking up at him
gratefully. “You have given me so much hope. Your faith is wonderful,
and you seem to inspire me with it.”
“No, we really must not go to our material scientists for hope in such
things,” Paul resumed, “but rather to our great imaginative poets,
artists, and idealistic philosophers, all of whom knew there could be no
continuity of progress without eternal life. Evolution of matter is
only a visible symbol of the evolution of the unseen. I can fancy Jesus
meeting one of our great self-satisfied materialists and hear Him say:
'Verily, verily, thou hast thy reward; sooner shalt thou see through a
mountain of adamant than look into the kingdom of heaven.'”
Ethel laughed softly. “You are making me ashamed of myself, Paul. I am
going to try harder than ever to do my duty. I know what it is, but I am
simply stunned. My uncle and aunt write me that the young man Jennie was
to have married has gone to drinking again. He simply could not
stand his great grief. That is another thing that seems so unfair and
unreasonable. For Jennie's sake he gave up the habit, and promised her
and her parents never to drink again. Now he is going to ruin, when if
Jennie had lived--” Ethel's voice broke, and she did not finish what she
had started to say.
“But can't you see what your cousin may have escaped?” Paul reasoned.
“A young man who is weak enough to allow a sorrow--even a sorrow like
that--to throw him into dissipation would not be likely to make a worthy
husband. After marriage some other disappointment might have upset him,
and a woman married to such a man would have led a miserable life.”
“Oh, that's true,” Ethel admitted, “and Jennie never could have borne
it; she was so frail and sensitive.”
“There's surely a good reason for all that happens,” Paul said. “But we
can't be expected to understand what is withheld from us.”
They were both silent for a while. They had reached the highest point of
the road, and the lower mountains and hills fell away on all sides like
the green billows of a mighty ocean. Above it all shone the sun. The
blue, cloud-flecked sky arched over them like a vast dome. The breeze
which fanned their faces was refreshing and laden with the fragrance of
wild flowers. Paul called her attention to the mill at the foot of
the mountain to which they were going, and started the horse down the
incline.
“I am to have a visitor Sunday,” Ethel remarked, her glance on the
horse. “My friend, Mr. Peterson, is coming up to spend the day.”
“Oh!” Paul unconsciously ejaculated, and then the color rose to his
face. “I have not met him. I saw him at the bank one day when I went to
Atlanta with your uncle, but we were not introduced. He was very busy
looking over Mr. Hoag's papers.”
“They are great friends,” Ethel said, somewhat awkwardly, her cheeks
slightly tinted. “I don't feel as if I can entertain him very well in my
present state of mind, but I knew my uncle would be offended if I wrote
him not to come.”
“It will be good for you, no doubt,” Paul said, lamely, and for no
obvious reason he tightened the reins and shook them over the animal's
back. “He will bring you news from the city and it may divert your
thoughts.”
“Perhaps so. My mother thought he ought to come; he has been most kind
to us. He is one of my best friends.”
“Your uncle tells me that Mr. Peterson is growing rich,” Paul remarked.
“He seems to have a wise head for business.”
“Yes, he is ambitious that way, and socially, too. He belongs to the
best clubs and has a great many friends.”
“Your uncle says he is a member of one of the old aristocratic families
and has many influential blood connections.”
“Yes, I think so”--Ethel suddenly glanced at her companion's face
and noted that it was rigid, as if under the control of some keen
emotion--“but such things do not really count,” she added, consolingly;
“they don't make a man any the better.”
Paul said nothing, and the horse drew them along for some distance in
silence. Then Ethel took up the subject where it had dropped.
“I am sure you will like Mr. Peterson; he has traveled a great deal. He
has an interest in one of the Atlanta papers, and I have heard him speak
of having influenced some of the political editorials. For so young a
man he is looking far ahead and is very, very shrewd. My uncle declares
that he is a born politician, and that sooner or later he will become a
candidate for some high office, such even as Senator or Governor.”
Suddenly Paul drew the horse to a standstill. She saw him glance up a
very rugged steep over an abrupt cliff on the right.
“I see some violets,” he said. “I've been looking for some all along. If
you will hold the reins I'll climb up and get them.”
She gave him a puzzled stare for an instant, and her lips tightened
significantly as she answered: “I really would like to have them, but
it looks steep and dangerous up there; you might slip and fall over the
cliff.”
He shrugged his shoulders and smiled bitterly.
The lines of pain she had noticed about his eyes and mouth still
remained.
“Oh, it is not dangerous,” he declared. “As a boy I have climbed up
worse places than that; but I was barefooted then and a sort of wild
animal. You remember how I looked and acted when I first met you? In the
eyes of the social world I am still not much better off, for the social
world--_your_ world--draws a sharp line at birth and fortune, and they
are things some of us have to do without.”
He had got out of the buggy and was turning away. She had a startled
impulse to deny what he had just said, but suitable words could not be
so quickly summoned. In no little chagrin and fear of his opinion of
her, she sat watching him as he climbed the steep, clinging to this
or that projecting stone crevice or deep-rooted shrub. How strong,
handsome, and genuine he looked, with his fine, fearless head bared to
the sun and breeze! She saw him pause for seconds at a time, looking for
a new foothold in the rocky soil as the one he stood on slowly crumbled,
rattled down the incline, and shot over the cliff just beneath him.
She called out to him warningly once, and she was startled at the new
quality in her voice. What could it mean? she asked herself. Surely she
was not beginning to--She pulled her eyes from him and stared almost
angrily at her folded hands, telling herself that she could not deeply
care for any man. Just then she heard a small avalanche of disrupted
stone sliding down the mountain-side, and, looking up, she saw Paul
hanging by a single hand to a shrub, his foothold completely gone. She
screamed and stood up in the buggy, only to have him turn his face,
while his feet swung free, and smile reassuringly.
“Don't be afraid,” he called out. “I'm all right.” And then she saw him
calmly placing his foot on another projection.
From that point he moved upward till the violets were reached, and she
saw him gathering them and twisting them together in a tiny bunch with a
reverence of touch which was observable even at that distance. Then,
the stems of the flowers held between his lips, he began to make his
way back, and moments of keen suspense followed in which she looked away
from him to avoid the consciousness of his danger. Presently he was by
her side, his brow beaded with perspiration, his broad chest rising and
falling from his exertion. Without a word he gave her the violets and
got into the buggy.
“Why did you take all that risk?” she asked reproachfully. “I want the
flowers, it is true; but, oh! if you had lost your hold and fallen--”
She went no further.
“It does seem dangerous when you look at it from down here,” he
answered, critically glancing up at the cliff. “But that is because we
can see the full height of the bluff. Up there, you know, I couldn't
look over the edge. If I had, perhaps I might have grown dizzy.”
“Paul,” Ethel said, after they had remained silent for several minutes,
“I am very grateful to you. When I am with you I don't suffer so much
over poor Jennie's death. Somehow you inspire me with your faith. I am
going to ask you a favor--one favor, and then I'm done with it. Will
you please tell me positively, in so many words, that you really are
convinced that she is still in existence. I know you've already said
so, in a way, but I want to remember your exact words, so if I become
despondent again I can repeat them over and over to myself.”
Paul laughed and glanced at her tenderly and wistfully. “I believe it
as positively as I believe that I am here with you at this moment,” he
said, quite gravely.
“Thank you,” she returned, simply. “I am going to believe it because you
do. I know that you know the truth. I know it--I know it!” She held the
violets to her lips, and it was as if she kissed the purple petals.
A glow as of reviving health seemed to suffuse her wan cheeks.