leetle oneasy arter dealin' with the thievin' vagabonds whose tracks
I've found on the line of my traps. It has seemed to me, sometimes, in
the evenin', in thinkin' the matter over, that perhaps a leetle less
bullet and a leetle more scriptur' might have did jest as well. But a
man is apt to be a leetle ha'sh in his anger; but I have an idee that
the Lord makes some allowance for a man's doin's when he's a good deal
r'iled. That's where the marcy comes in. Yis, that's where the marcy
comes in; isn't it, boy?" and the old man looked at Herbert.
"There is certainly where we need the mercy to come in," answered
Herbert; "but it were better that we acted so that mercy need not be
shown."
The man listened to Herbert's reply with an expression of strong assent
on his countenance, then he turned to the trapper.
"You say, old man, that you never knew remorse. Happy has your life been
because of it; and happy shall your life be to its close. I have known
remorse. It is a fearful knowledge,--as fearful as the knowledge of
hell. Woe to the man that does an evil deed. That instant he is doomed;
doomed to anguish. His divinity punishes him. Within his bosom the great
tribunal is instantly set up. The judge takes his seat. The witnesses
are summoned; and the whole universe swarms to the trial. His memory is
a torment; and all the forces of his mind suddenly concentrate in
memory,--the memory of one deed, or of many deeds, even as his sin has
been sole or manifold. What torment, old man, is like the torment of one
whose memory is confined wholly to his evil deeds!"
No one made any reply. The anguish of the man's speech made response
impossible.
"Before I did the deed," he continued, after a pause, "my memory took
knowledge of all sweet things; of all dear faces I have ever seen; of
all generous and blessed deeds I had ever done. But after that I could
remember but one thing,--the murderer; only one face,--the face of him I
killed, and all my life, and the glory of it, was thrown into black
eclipse by that one terrible act. Before I did the deed Nature was a joy
to me, but now in every star I see his countenance looking down upon me.
In every flower I see his still, cold face. The winds bear to me his
voice. The water of those rapids"--and the man stretched his hand out
towards the flowing river--"sounds to me like the rattle in his throat
as he lay dying. How shall I find release, old man? How quit myself of
this terrible curse?" and the man's words ended in a groan.
"The mercy of the Lord be great," replied the trapper; "greater than any
deed of guilt did by mortal; great enough to cover you, friend, and
your misdoin', as a mother covers the error of her child with her
forgiveness."
"I know the mercy of the Lord is great," answered the man, "I know His
forgiveness covers all; but the old law--old as the world, old as guilt
and justice--the law of life for life and blood for blood,--has never
been repealed. And this is the one comfort left for the noble: that
however great the guilt, however wicked the deed, the atonement can be
as great as the sin. He who dies pays all debts. He who has sent one to
the grave and goes to the grave voluntarily, goes into the arms of
mercy. I know not where else, with all his searching, man may surely
find it."
Again there was silence. Above, the stars shone warmly through the dusky
gloom. The rapids roared, falling hoarsely through the darkness. A
moaning ran along the pine-tops; the firelight flamed and flickered, and
the flames flashed the four faces into sight that were grouped around
the brands. At length the trapper said:
"What is it ye have in yer heart to do, friend?"
"I took a life," answered the man; "I must give one in return. I took a
life and my life is forfeited. This is my condemnation, and I pronounce
it on myself. My judge is not above; my judge is within. In this the
world finds protection, and in this the sinner finds release from sin.
There is no other way; at least, no other way so perfect. One man was
great enough to die for the sins of others. They who would rise to the
level of his life must be great enough to lay down their life for their
own sins. This is justice; and out of such true justice blooms the
perfect mercy." To this the man added thoughtfully, "There is but one
objection."
"What is the objection?" asked Herbert. "What is the objection, if one
be great enough to make so great a sacrifice?"
"The objection," answered the man, "is found in this: it is so deep a
sin to kill; it is so easy a thing to die--for what is death? The
ignorant dread it because they do not analyze it; their lack of
thoughtfulness makes them cowardly; for death is going out of bondage
into liberty. He who passes through the dark gate finds himself, when he
has passed, standing in the cloudless sunshine. In dying, the sorrowful
become glad; the small become greater; and if they die rightly, the
sinful become sinless. If a great motive prompts us to death, it is the
perfect regeneration. Entering thus the new life, man is born anew. And
so in punishment the great law of mercy stands revealed, and sin leads
up to sinlessness. In such travail of soul, he who suffers through
suffering is satisfied."
"It is sublime philosophy," exclaimed Herbert, "but few are great enough
to practice it."
"Rather, sir," exclaimed the man, "few are knowing enough to accept it.
The eyes of men, through their ignorance, are blinded by fear and they
see not the delivering gates though they stand facing the open passage."
"Life is sweet."
The words fell from the lips of Herbert as if they spoke themselves.
"To the innocent, life is sweet," answered the man, "but to the guilty,
life is bitterness. The world was not made for the guilty. The beauties
and glories of it were not for them. The universe is not sustained for
them. Only for the good do things exist. The breasts of life are full;
but their nourishment is not for guilty lips to draw. I have seen the
time when life was sweet. I have lived to see the time when life is
bitter. Through death I go out of bitterness into sweetness. This is
the mercy that is unto all and which all can take--take freely. Some
get it through another--all might get it through themselves."
"It is a violent deed to kill one's self," said the trapper.
"You mistake," answered the man, "there is a coarse, rude way; there is
a fine and noble way. 'I have power,' said the Man, 'to lay down my life
and I have power to take it again.' Do you not think, old trapper, that
a man can die when he wills?"
"I don't understand ye," answered the trapper.
"The soul rules the body," replied the stranger. "The soul is not bound
to the body; it lives in it as a man lives in his house. My body is only
my environment. I can quit it at will. I can go out of it."
"Do you mean to say," asked Herbert, "that we can leave our bodies
through determination of purpose and mental decision?"
[Illustration: "_The four sat in silence by the fire._"]
"There have been such cases," answered the man, "and such cases there
might be continually. If the relations between the soul and the body are
recognized and the supreme authority of the one over the other allowed
full action, the soul can do anything it pleases. It can come and it
can go. This is my faith."
While the foregoing conversation was being conducted, the girl had
remained silent. Herbert sat opposite to her; and as the firelight
flamed her face into sight, he could not but note the expression of it.
The look of her face was that of one who was listening to what she had
heard before--perhaps many times before, and which, upon the hearing,
she had combated and was determined to continue to combat. And at this
point she suddenly spoke up.
"I think, sir,"--and she lifted her eyes to the face of the man,--"that
the living should live for the living rather than die for the dead; for
the dead have no wants, neither of the body nor of the heart, neither of
the mind nor the soul; for, if they want, God feeds them. But the living
want and crave and have deep needs and God feeds not at all, unless
through us who live; and it is our duty to do, and not to die."
The words were clearly and slowly spoken, spoken in a quiet but
determined tone. The old trapper raised his face and looked at the girl,
as if surprised at the wisdom of her speech. Herbert was already
looking at her. The man slowly turned his face towards her, and said:
"Mary, we have argued that point before."
The tone in which he spoke was not one of rebuke, and yet it conveyed
the idea that the point was settled and was not to be reopened. The girl
waited a moment respectfully, as if she felt profound deference for the
other's character and would not willingly oppose his wish, and then she
said:
"I know, sir, we have discussed it before; but it is not settled, and
never can be settled; for it sets in comparison the value of two
lives--the one that was and the one that is; and I say that there are
lives--of which yours is one--that belong to others and cannot be
disposed of as if they were a selfish thing. And life is a truer
atonement for sin than death. You owe more than one debt, and you have
no right to pay the one, however great it is, if by the paying of that
you leave the others unpaid."
"Friend," said the trapper, "the girl speaks wisdom; leastwise she
brings matter into the council which men of gravity should not
overlook. The livin' sartinly have claims. What can you say to her
speech?"
For a moment the man made no reply, and then he said:
"My philosophy is based upon a sentiment--a sentiment born of
conscience, and conscience makes duty for us all. There is no reasoning
against conscience. It is the voice of God--the only God we have. My
conscience tells me that there is but one atonement that I can make.
There is no election. I must do it."
"What good," said Herbert, addressing the man, "what good will you do by
dying?"
"I shall satisfy myself," said the man.
"And what right have you to satisfy yourself in such a matter?"
exclaimed the girl. "What right have any of us to satisfy ourselves?
What right have we to be selfish in our death any more than in our life?
Oh, sir, if you saw rightly, you would see that you had no right to
satisfy yourself in this dreadful way. You should satisfy others. They
need you even as the poor need the rich; as the weak need the strong; as
those who are prone, because they cannot lift themselves, need one who
is strong enough to lift them. It is not heroic to die unless the full
object of life is met by the dying. It is heroic to live, because it is
harder than dying. Even death dedicated to atonement can be a greater
sin than the deed which one would atone."
"I know not how the girl has such wisdom," said the trapper, "for she be
young, and yit she sartinly seems to me to have the right of it. I know
not who ye be, nor how many look to ye for help; but ef ye be one that
can help, and there be many that need yer help, I sartinly conceit that
ye should live--live to help 'em."
"You say right! You say right, old man!" exclaimed the girl. "His life
is not a common life. It represents such power and faculty and
opportunity, and I may say such devotion to the many, that it does not
belong to him, and may not therefore be disposed of as if he owned it
himself and had the right to do with it as he pleased."
"I do not say," answered the man, "that I own my life. I say rather that
I do not own it. I owe it. There are debts you cannot pay by life. The
laws of the whole world recognize this; nor do we do by living the
greatest service. He who dies to uphold a righteous principle fulfils
all righteousness. He who gives away a life in atonement for a life
taken makes all life more sacred; and so he serves the living beyond all
other service he might do. She looks at individuals; I observe
principles. She contemplates only the present; I forecast the future
needs of man. Moreover, the highest service one can do man is to serve
himself in the highest manner. He who ministers to his own sense of
justice strengthens the judicial sense of the world. Men overvalue life
when they suppose that there is nothing better. To teach them that there
is something better, to impress them by some signal event that there is
something higher and nobler than mere living, is to fulfill all
benevolence to their souls. How many the Saviour could feed and heal and
bless by avoiding Calvary! And yet he did not avoid it. He showed the
object of life, which is service. I trust I have not wholly failed to
show men that. He then showed the highest object of dying, which is
service. Why should I not imitate him? Why should I not be a law unto
myself and bear the penalty voluntarily?"
The man rose to his feet as he concluded, and looking at the trapper and
Herbert, said:
"Gentlemen, I thank you for your hospitality and courtesy," and turning
to the girl he said, "Mary, we will talk this matter over more fully by
ourselves."
And then he bowed to the group and turned away.
IV
Long after the man and the girl had departed, the trapper and Herbert
sat by their campfire discussing the question which their guest had
propounded. Their conversation was grave and deliberate, as became the
theme; and they united in the opinion that if the deed had been done in
anger elicited by a provocation, the man should give himself the favor
which the law even would allow under similar circumstances.
"I tell ye, Herbert," said the trapper, "the girl said the man had
cause; leastwise, that the man whom he struck worried him to it and that
the blow was given in anger. Now, hot blood is hot blood, and cold blood
is cold blood, and ef a man kill another man in cold blood it be
murder,--the law says so, and what is better, natur' says so; but ef a
man kill another man in his anger, when his blood is up and he is
strongly provoked to it, the law says there be a difference, and it
isn't murder. And I conceit that the girl be right, and that the man
has no right, in natur' or law either, to murder himself because in his
anger he murdered another man. And besides," continued the old man,
after a moment's pause, during which he had evidently made an effort at
memory, "ef there be any wrath in the case it belongs to the Lord and
not to man. Ye may recall the varse, Henry."
"_'Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord.'_" Such was the
quotation Herbert made.
"Sartinly, sartinly," answered the trapper, "that is it. Vengeance is
the Lord's, and he is the only one that can handle it rightly; and the
man had better leave it to the Lord."
For several moments Herbert made no reply; and then, as if speaking to
himself more than his companion, he said:
"How the girl loves him!"
"Ye've hit it, Henry," answered the trapper, promptly. "Yis, ye've hit
it in the centre. I noted her face, the look in her eyes and the
arnestness of her voice; and there is no doubt about the matter of the
lovin'. She is one of the quiet kind, boy; and she has got the faculty
of listenin' a long time, which isn't nateral to a woman. But when she
speaks, ye can see what she is. She has a quiet face but a detarmined
sperit. I've seed several of the same sort,--seed them afore the battle
and arter the battle; and I know what's in the heart of the girl. Yis, I
know what's in the heart of the girl," and the old man looked at his
companion across the camp fire.
The young man returned his gaze, and then said quietly:
"What is in the heart of the girl, John Norton?"
"Ef the man dies, the girl dies, too," answered the trapper, and
stooping, he pushed a brand into the centre of the fire.
"It is awful to think so," replied the young man, "it is awful to think
that one so lovely should die so miserable."
"She belongs to the kind that does seen things," answered the trapper.
"But whether ye can call her dyin' miserable, I sartinly doubt; for
there be some that can't die miserable owin' to their feelin's. And I've
noted that them who die feelin' a sartin way die happy whenever they
die; for death means one thing to one and another thing to another; and
the heart that has lost all, is happy to go in sarch of it, even ef it
be along the trail that the sun never shines on."
And so the two men sat and talked, feeding the camp fire with sticks
occasionally as they talked. They wondered who the man was and whence
he came, wondered if he would change his views and if the girl could win
him over to a rational way of looking at the deed that had been done and
the true way to atone for it; wondered if they could not assist her in
her loving task when the morning came; talked and wondered and planned,
and at last, wrapping their blankets around them, they laid down to
sleep. The last words spoken were by the Trapper, and were these:
"We will go over in the mornin', Herbert, and help the girl."
And then they slept.
* * * * *
Beyond the balsam thicket, by another camp fire, the girl and the man
sat talking, talking of the deed that had been done and the atonement
demanded, and of the great future beyond this present life; the future
that stretches away endlessly, the future of peace to some, perhaps to
all, who knows? For there be some who think that this life has in it
such forces of education, such enlightenment to the understanding, such
quickening to the conscience, such ripening of character; and that
through its experiences, its trials, and its griefs, come such graces to
the souls of those that leave it, that when they pass they leave their
worse self behind them, even as the germ leaves the shuck out of which
it sprouted,--leaves the dull, clamp ground forever while it groweth up
into the sunlight in which it finds perfection.
"Mary," said the man, "I have done with the past. My mind turns wholly
toward the future. I see it as the shipwrecked sailor sees the land,
which, if he can but reach, he will not only be beyond the storm that
wrecks him, but beyond all storms forever. Companion of my joys and
companion of my grief,--companion in everything but in my sin,--counsel
with me, with your eyes turned ahead. You are innocent and innocence is
prophetic. What lies beyond this world and the life men live in it? What
of good waits for him who gives up this life bravely and penitently, and
trusts himself to the decisions and the certainties of the great
hereafter?"
"My master," said the girl, "it is not for me to teach you, you who are
so much greater than I, you who have been gifted with faculties and
powers that have lifted you above men. What can I say to you save to
repeat what you have said to me?"
"Mary," he replied, "talk to me from out your heart and not from out
your mind. The prophecies that come to men from Heaven, Heaven has
communicated through the emotions of the just and the pure, and not
through the perceptions. Tell me of the faith of your heart, the heart
which I know has been free of guile. Tell me of the great Hereafter and
what awaits me there."
"The Hereafter?" said the girl, and she lifted her eyes lovingly to the
face of the man. "The Hereafter is the same as Here, only larger; as
things grown are larger than things ungrown. The Future is to the
Present what the river is to the stream, what the stream is to the
fountain,--it is the flowing out and the flowing on,--the widening and
the deepening of what is."
"Is there no gap, no breakage, no chasm or gulf between the Here and the
Hereafter?" asked the man.
"No," said the girl, "there is no gap, nor chasm, nor gulf, but
continuity of progress and perfect sequence. The connections between
the Known and the Unknown are perfect. The one does not end and the
other begin. Time is the beginning of eternity; and the brief time that
men call a day is only a fraction of endlessness."
"There is no end to life, then?" queried the man.
"End to life!" exclaimed the girl. "How can life end? Life changes its
form, its embodiment, the location of its residence; but life is the
breath of God and when once breathed into the universe and it has taken
form and made for itself expression, who may annihilate it? Who may take
it out of existence? No, master, there is no end to life."
"It is a sublime faith," said the man, "and I have proclaimed it unto
many; but few have been great enough to receive the doctrine as a
verity. In theory they have received it; but their superstition has
robbed them of its mighty consolations. But if we do not die, but only
pass forward as men go out of a city's gate along a road that has no
end, what fate befalls them? Does a change of nature come to them?"
"Only such as comes through growth," answered the girl.
"Shall I be just as I am when I have passed into the great future?" he
asked.
"You will be the same," answered the girl, "only more abundantly
yourself. We are all our life looking for ourselves," continued the
girl, "and few, if any, find themselves until they die."
"I don't understand," said the man. "I know the Lord is speaking through
you, for you are uttering truths so great that at the utterance they
seem mysteries. Explain as the teacher explains to the child she is
trying to teach."
"I mean," answered the girl, "that death is an enlightenment and a
discovery. It will give us revelations of ourselves; for never do we
find Him save as we find Him in His, and we are His. You will not know
who and what you are until you get far enough ahead, my master, to look
back upon yourself. We must go up and go on a long way before we know
what we are now."
Here the conversation paused for a while and nothing disturbed the
profound silence but the roar of the rapids whose ceaseless sound
swelled and sank in the silence like the waves of the sea. At length the
man said, "Have you thought of the land ahead? Is it real? And where is
it, and what the life lived there?"
"Why do you ask me such questions," answered the girl, "when you know
that I have thought only as you have taught me to think, am but
repeating the faith I learned from your lips? Surely, there is a land
ahead, or rather many lands,--lands and seas and blessed islands in the
seas where the blessed live; and loves and lovers and homes exquisitely
and endlessly peaceful are there; and men who have grown nobler than
they were here; and women, far sweeter than their short life here might
make them, live and love in the lands ahead."
The girl spoke low but earnestly, and her words sounded on the silent
air like softly-breathed music, so much did her sweet self possess her
words. And the man listened as men listen to music when it comes softly
and sweetly to their ears.
"Mary," said the man, "you make the life ahead seem so sweet that I
shrink from entering it, lest by so doing I escape the punishment for my
sin I would fain inflict upon myself."
"Oh, master!" exclaimed the girl, "you do mistake; for though I do
believe all I have said and would trust myself to the far future as
young eagles trust themselves to the warm air when they have grown equal
to the joy of flight, yet the life of this earth is sweet, so sweet when
the heart is satisfied that one might fear to exchange it for another as
one fears to part with what fully satisfies, even though the promise of
more abundant things is sure as God. It is sweet to breathe the airs of
the earth as health receives them. 'Tis sweet to live and love and serve
in loving and find your happiness in giving it. 'Tis sweet to teach and
guide men up and on to wider knowledge and nobler living,--to make them
gentler and finer in their thoughts and happier-hearted; and oh, my
master, 'tis sweet to live with one you love; be unto him a new life
daily, and see him grow in your growth, matching it, and so go on in
that perfect companionship that the future may give to us as the highest
fortune, and, having given, has given its best and all."
"You shall live," answered the man, "you shall live and have as you
deserve, dear girl; and if I have taught you aught which, being known,
has made or shall make your life on earth sweeter, take it as my legacy
to you. I had thought to leave you something more, perhaps something
better, but that is past."
"I will not take your legacy and stay," answered the girl, "I will
rather take it and go with you, that where you are I may be with you.
You have promised nothing and I want no promise. I have only asked one
thing and only one thing now do I ask, and that you will not hold from
me, for I have earned it, earned it by patient serving and by growth
that you know came from you."
"What is it that you ask? Tell me," replied the man, "for you shall have
it if it be in the power of my giving."