THE IVORY SERIES
_Each, 16mo, gilt top, 75 cents_
AMOS JUDD. By J. A. Mitchell
Editor of “Life”
IA. A Love Story. By Q
[Arthur T. Quiller-Couch]
THE SUICIDE CLUB
By Robert Louis Stevenson
IRRALIE’S BUSHRANGER
By E. W. Hornung
A MASTER SPIRIT
By Harriet Prescott Spofford
MADAME DELPHINE
By George W. Cable
ONE OF THE VISCONTI
By Eva Wilder Brodhead
A BOOK OF MARTYRS
By Cornelia Atwood Pratt
_Other Volumes to be announced_
A BOOK OF MARTYRS
When first they mixed the Clay of Man and clothed
His Spirit in the Robe of Perfect Beauty,
For Forty Mornings did an evil Cloud
Rain Sorrows over him from Head to Foot;
And when the Forty Mornings passed to Night,
There came one Morning-Shower--one Morning-Shower
Of Joy--to Forty of the Rain of Sorrow!
And though the better Fortune came at last
To seal the Work, yet every Wise Man knows
Such Consummation never can be here!
_From the Persian of Jàmi._
A BOOK OF MARTYRS
BY
CORNELIA ATWOOD PRATT
CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS
NEW YORK, 1896
Copyright, 1896, by
Charles Scribner’s Sons
TROW DIRECTORY
PRINTING AND BOOK BINDING COMPANY
NEW YORK
NOTE
Of the stories in this volume, “Witherle’s Freedom” and “Serene’s
Religious Experience” were first published in _The Century Magazine_;
“A Consuming Fire,” “Hardesty’s Cowardice” and “The Honor of a
Gentleman” in _Harper’s Weekly_; “At the End of the World” in _The
Independent_. Thanks are due the publishers of these periodicals for
permission to reprint the stories here.
CONTENTS
PAGE
_Witherle’s Freedom_, _1_
_Serene’s Religious Experience; an Inland Story_, _19_
_An Instance of Chivalry_, _45_
_A Consuming Fire_, _71_
_An Unearned Reward_, _89_
_Hardesty’s Cowardice_, _111_
“_The Honor of a Gentleman_,” _131_
_Rivals_, _153_
_At the End of the World_, _165_
WITHERLE’S FREEDOM
His little world was blankly astonished when Witherle dropped out of
it. His disappearance was as his life had been, neat, methodical,
well-arranged; but why did he go at all?
He had lived through thirty-seven years of a discreetly conducted
existence with apparent satisfaction; he had been in the ministry for
fifteen years; he had been married nearly as long; he was in no sort of
difficulty, theological, financial, or marital; he possessed the favor
of his superiors in the church, the confidence of his wife, and he had
recently come into a small fortune bequeathed him by a great-aunt.
Every one regarded him as very “comfortably fixed”--for a minister.
Of all the above-enumerated blessings he had divested himself
methodically, as a man folds up and lays aside worn garments. He
resigned his charge, he transferred his property to his wife, and
wrote her a farewell note in which he said, in a light-hearted way
which she mistook for incoherence, that she would never see him again.
These things done, he dropped out of the sight of men as completely as
a stone fallen into a pond.
His friends speculated and investigated, curiously, eagerly, fearfully,
but to no purpose. What was the motive? Where had he gone? Had he
committed suicide? Was he insane? The elders of the church employed a
detective, and the friends of his wife took up the search, but Witherle
was not found. He had left as little trace whereby he could be followed
as a meteor leaves when it rushes across the sky.
Presently, of course, interest in the event subsided; the church got a
new minister; Witherle’s wife went back to her own people; the world
appeared to forget. But there was a man of Witherle’s congregation
named Lowndes who still meditated the unsolved problem at odd moments.
He was a practical man of affairs, with the psychological instinct,
and he found the question of why people do the things that they do
perennially interesting. Humanity from any point of view is a touching
spectacle; from a business standpoint it is infinitely droll.
Personally Lowndes was one of the wholesome natures for whom there are
more certainties than uncertainties in life, and he felt for Witherle
the protecting friendliness that a strong man sometimes has for one
less strong. He advised him as to his investments on week-days, and
listened patiently Sunday after Sunday, as the lesser man expounded
the mysteries of creation and the ways of the Creator, sustained by
the reflection that Witherle was better than his sermons. He did not
consider him an interesting man, but he believed him to be a good one.
When Witherle was no longer at hand, Lowndes counselled and planned for
his wife, and otherwise made himself as useful as the circumstances
would permit. He felt sorry for Witherle’s wife, a nervous woman to
whom had come as sharp an upheaval of life as death itself could have
brought about, without the comfort of the reflection that the Lord had
taken away.
Fate, who sometimes delivers the ball to those who are ready to play,
decreed that, in May, about a year after Witherle’s disappearance,
Lowndes should be summoned from the Pennsylvania village where he
lived to one of the cities of an adjoining State. His business took
him along the dingy river-front of the town. Crossing a bridge one
evening toward sunset, he stopped idly to note the shifting iridescent
tints that converted the river for the hour into a heavenly water-way
between the two purgatorial banks lined with warehouses and elevators
black with the inexpressibly mussy and depressing blackness of the soot
of soft coal. His glance fell upon a coal-barge being loaded at the
nearest wharf. He leaned over the rail, wondering why the lines of the
figure of one of the workmen looked familiar to him. The man seemed
to be shovelling coal with a peculiar zest. As this is a species of
toil not usually performed for the love of it, his manner naturally
attracted attention. While Lowndes still stood there pondering the
problematical familiarity of his back, the man turned. Lowndes
clutched the rail. “By Jove!” he said, excitedly, for he saw that the
features were the features of Witherle. Their expression was exultant
and illuminated beyond anything ever vouch-safed to that plodding
gospeller. Moving along the bridge to a point just above the barge, he
took out his watch and looked at it. It was nearly six o’clock.
The next fifteen minutes were exciting ones for Lowndes. His mind was
in a tumult. It is no light matter to make one’s self the arbiter of
another man’s destiny; and he knew enough of Witherle to feel sure that
the man’s future was in his hands. He looked down at him dubiously, his
strong hands still clutching the rail tensely. For a minute he felt
that he must move on without making his presence known, but even as he
resolved, the clocks and whistles clamorously announced the hour.
When the men quitted their work, the man whom Lowndes’s eyes were
following came up the stairs that led to the bridge. As he passed,
Lowndes laid a hand lightly on his shoulder.
“How are you, Witherle?” he said.
The man stared at him blankly a second, recoiled, and his face turned
livid as he shook off the friendly hand. The other men had passed on,
and they were alone on the bridge.
“I’m a free man,” said Witherle, loudly, throwing back his shoulders.
“Before God, I’m a free man for the first time in my life. What do you
want with me?”
“Don’t rave,” said Lowndes, sharply. “I sha’n’t hurt you. You couldn’t
expect me to pass you without speaking, could you?”
“Then you weren’t looking for me?” asked Witherle, abjectly.
“I have business on hand.” Lowndes spoke impatiently, for he did not
enjoy seeing his old friend cower. “I am here for the Diamond Oil
Co. I was crossing the bridge just now, when I saw a man down there
shovelling coal as if he liked it; and I delayed to look, and saw it
was you. So I waited for you. That is all there is of it. You needn’t
stop if you don’t wish.”
Witherle drew a deep breath. “My nerves aren’t what they were,” he
said, apologetically. “It played the mischief with them to--” He left
the sentence hanging in the air.
“If you weren’t going to like the results, you needn’t have gone,”
observed Lowndes, in an impartial tone. “Nobody has been exactly able
to see the reasons for your departure. You left the folks at home a
good deal stirred up.”
“What do they say about me there?”
Lowndes hesitated. “Most of them say you were crazy. Your wife has gone
back to her people.”
“Ah!”
Lowndes looked at the man with a sudden impulse of pity. He was leaning
against the rail, breathing heavily. His face was white beneath the
soot, but in his eyes still flamed that incomprehensible ecstasy. He
was inebriate with the subtle stimulus of some transcendent thought.
But what thought? And what had brought him here? This creature, with
his sensitive mouth, his idealist’s eyes, his scholar’s hands, black
and hardened now but still clearly recognizable, was at least more out
of place among the coal-heavers than he had been in the pulpit. Lowndes
felt mightily upon him the desire to shepherd this man back to some
more sheltered fold. The highways of existence were not for his feet;
not for his lips the “Song of the Open Road.” He did not resist the
desire to say, meditatively:
“You have no children----”
“God in His mercy be praised for that one blessing!” Witherle muttered.
But Lowndes went on as if he did not hear:
“But you might think of your wife.”
“I have thought of her--too much. I thought about everything too much.
I am tired of thinking,” said Witherle. “I wonder if you understand?”
“Not in the least.”
Witherle looked about him restlessly. “Come where we can talk--down
there on that pile of boards. I think I’d like to talk. It is very
simple when once you understand it.”
He led the way to the opposite end of the bridge, and down an
embankment to a lumber-pile at the water’s edge. Up the river the May
sun had gone down in splendor, leaving the water crimson-stained.
Witherle sat down where he could look along the river-reaches.
“Hold on a minute, Witherle. Don’t talk to me unless you are sure you
want to.”
“That’s all right. There’s nothing much to tell. I don’t seem to mind
your understanding.”
Witherle was silent a minute.
“It is very simple,” he said again. “This is the way I think about
it. Either you do the things you want to do in this world or else you
don’t. I had never done what I wanted until I left home. I didn’t mean
to hurt anybody by coming away in that style, and I don’t think that I
did. I’d rather not be selfish, but life got so dull. I couldn’t stand
it. I had to have a change. I had to come. The things you have to do
you do. There was a Frenchman once who committed suicide and left a
note that said: ‘Tired of this eternal buttoning and unbuttoning.’ I
know how he felt. I don’t know how other men manage to live. Perhaps
their work means more to them than mine had come to mean to me. It was
just dull, that was all, and I had to come.”
Lowndes stared. Truly it was delightfully simple. “Why, man, you can’t
chuck your responsibilities overboard like that. Your wife----”
“When I was twenty-one,” interrupted Witherle, “I was in love. The girl
married somebody else. Before I met my wife she had cared for a man who
married another woman. You see how it was. We were going to save the
pieces together. As a business arrangement that sort of thing is all
right. I haven’t a word to say against it. She is a good woman, and
we got on as well as most people, only life was not ecstasy to either
of us. Can’t you see us tied together, snaking our way along through
existence as if it were some gray desert, and we crawling on and on
over the sand, always with our faces bent to it, and nothing showing
itself in our way but the white bones of the men and women who had
travelled along there before us--grinning skulls mostly? Can’t you see
it?”
Looking up, he caught an expression in Lowndes’s eyes the meaning of
which he suspected. “Oh, you needn’t be afraid,” he added, hastily,
“that this is insanity. It’s only imagination. That’s the way I felt.
And my work was only another long desert to be toiled through--with the
Sphinx at the end. I wasn’t a successful preacher, and you know it. I
hadn’t any grip on men. I hadn’t any grip on myself--or God. I couldn’t
see any use or any meaning or any joy in it. The whole thing choked me.
I wanted a simpler, more elemental life. I wanted to go up and down
the earth and try new forms of living, new ways of doing things, new
people. Life--that was what I wanted; to feel the pulse of the world
throb under my touch, to be in the stir, to be doing something. I was
always haunted by the conviction that life was tremendous if only you
once got at it. I couldn’t get at it where I was. I was rotting away.
So when that money was left me it came like a godsend. I knew my wife
could live on that, and I didn’t think she’d miss me much, so I just
came off.”
“And you like it?”
The man’s eyes flamed. “Like it? It’s great! It’s the only thing there
is. I’ve been from Maine to California this year. I wintered in a
Michigan lumber-camp--that was hell. I was a boat-hand on the Columbia
last summer--that was heaven. I worked in a coal-mine two months--a
scab workman, you understand. And now I’m at this. I tell you, it is
fine to get rid of cudgelling your brains for ideas that aren’t there,
and of pretending to teach people something you don’t know, and take
to working with your hands nine hours a day and sleeping like a log
all night. I hadn’t slept for months, you know. These people tell me
about themselves. I’m seeing what life is like. I’m getting down to
the foundations. I’ve learned more about humanity in the last six
months than I ever knew in all my life. I believe I’ve learned more
about religion. I’m getting hold of things. It’s like getting out on
the open sea after that desert I was talking about--don’t you see?
And it all tastes so good to me!” He dropped his head into his hands,
exhausted by the flood of words he had poured rapidly out.
Lowndes hesitated long before he spoke. He was reflecting that
Witherle’s exaltation was pathological--he was drunk with the air of
the open road.
“Poor little devil!” he thought. “One might let alone a man who finds
ecstasy in being a coal-heaver; but it won’t do.”
“Life is big,” he admitted, slowly; “it’s tremendous, if you like;
it’s all you say--but it isn’t for you. Don’t you see it is too late?
We’re all of us under bonds to keep the world’s peace and finish the
contracts we undertake. You’re out of bounds now. You have got to come
back.”
Witherle stared at him blankly. “You say that? After what I’ve
told you? Why, there’s nothing to go back for. And here--there is
everything! What harm am I doing, I’d like to know? Who is hurt? What
claims has that life on me? Confound you!” his wrath rising fiercely,
“how dare you talk like that to me? Why isn’t life for me as well as
for you?”
This Witherle was a man he did not know. Lowndes felt a little
heart-sick, but only the more convinced that he must make his point.
“If you didn’t feel that you were out of bounds, why were you afraid of
me when I came along?”
The thrust told. Witherle was silent. Lowndes went on: “Bread isn’t as
interesting as champagne, I know, but there is more in it, in the long
run. However, that’s neither here nor there--if a man has a right to
his champagne. But you haven’t. You are mistaken about your wife. She
was all broken up. I don’t pretend to say she was desperately fond of
you. I don’t know anything about that. But, anyhow, she had made for
herself a kind of life of which you were the centre, and it was all
the life she had. You had no right to break it to pieces getting what
you wanted. That’s a brutal thing for a man to do. She looked very
miserable, when I saw her. You’ve got to go back.”
Witherle turned his head from side to side restlessly, as a sick man
turns on the pillow.
“How can I go back?” he cried, keenly protesting. “Don’t you see it’s
impossible? I’ve burned my ships.”
“That’s easy enough. You went off in a fit of double consciousness, or
temporary insanity, or something like that, and I found you down here.
It will be easy enough to reinstate you. I’ll see to that.”
“That would be a lie,” said Witherle, resolutely.
Lowndes stared at him curiously, reflecting upon the fastidiousness
with which men pick and choose their offenses against righteousness,
embracing one joyously and rejecting another with scorn.
“Yes; so it would. But I have offered to do the lying for you, and you
_are_ off your head, you know.”
“How?” demanded Witherle, sharply.
“Any man is off his head who can’t take life as it comes, the bad
and the good, and bear up under it. Suicide is insanity. You tried
to commit suicide in the cowardliest way, by getting rid of your
responsibilities and saving your worthless breath. Old man, it won’t
do. You say you’ve learned something about religion and humanity--come
back and tell us about it.”
Witherle listened to his sentence in silence. His long lower lip
trembled.
“Anything more?” he demanded.
“That’s all. It won’t do.”
The man dropped his head into his hands and sat absolutely still.
Lowndes watched the river growing grayer and grayer, and listened to
the lapping of the water against the lumber, remembering that one
of the poets had said it was a risky business tampering with souls,
and matter enough to save one’s own. The reflection made him feel a
little faint. What if Witherle had a right to that life in spite of
everything--that life for which he had given all?
Witherle lifted his head at last. “You are sure my wife was broken up
over it?” he demanded, despairingly.
“Sure.”
Witherle cast one longing glance across the darkening river to the
black outlines of the barge. There, ah, even there, the breath of life
was sweet upon his lips, and toil was good, and existence was worth
while.
“I thought no soul in the world had a claim on me. Curse duty! The life
of a rat in a cage!” he cried. “Oh, Lord, I haven’t the head nor the
heart for it!”
The words were bitter, but his voice broke with compliance. He rose to
his feet and stretched out his arms with a fierce gesture, then dropped
them heavily by his side.
“Come on,” he said.
Lowndes, watching him with that curious, heart-sickening sympathy
growing upon him, was aware that he had seen the end of a soul’s
revolt. Rightly or wrongly, Witherle’s freedom was over.
SERENE’S RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE; AN INLAND STORY
Serene and young Jessup, the school-teacher, were leaning over the
front gate together in the warm summer dusk.
“See them sparkin’ out there?” inquired Serene’s father, standing at
the door with his hands in his pockets, and peering out speculatively.
“Now, father, when you know that ain’t Serene’s line.”
It was Mrs. Sayles who spoke. Perhaps there was the echo of a faint
regret in her voice, for she wished to see her daughter “respectit like
the lave”; but “sparkin’” had never been Serene’s line.
“Serene wouldn’t know how,” said her big brother.
“There’s other things that’s a worse waste o’ time,” observed Mr.
Sayles, meditatively, “and one on ’em’s ’Doniram Jessup’s ever-lastin’
talk-talk-talkin’ to no puppus. He’s none so smart if he does teach
school. He’d do better on the farm with his father.”
“He’s more’n three hundred dollars ahead, and goin’ to strike out for
himself, he says,” observed the big brother, admiringly.
“Huh! My son, I’ve seen smart young men strike out for themselves ’fore
ever you was born, and I’ve seen their fathers swim out after ’em--and
sink,” said Mr. Sayles, oracularly.
Outside the June twilight was deepening, but Serene and the
school-teacher still leaned tranquilly over the picket-gate. The
fragrance of the lemon-lilies that grew along the fence was in the
air, and over Serene’s left shoulder, if she had turned to look, she
would have seen the slight yellow crescent of the new moon sliding down
behind the trees.
They were talking eagerly, but it was only about what he had written in
regard to “Theory and Practice” at the last county examination.
“I think you carry out your ideas real well,” Serene said, admiringly,
when he had finished his exposition. “’Tisn’t everybody does that. I
know I’ve learned a good deal more this term than I ever thought to
when I started in.”
The teacher was visibly pleased. He was a slight, wiry little fellow,
with alert eyes, a cynical smile, and an expression of self-confidence,
which was justifiable only on the supposition that he had valuable
information as to his talents and capacity unknown to the world at
large.
“I think you _have_ learned a good deal of me,” he observed,
condescendingly; “more than any of the younger ones. I have taken some
pains with you. It’s a pleasure to teach willing learners.”
At this morsel of praise, expressed in such a strikingly original
manner, Serene flushed and looked prettier than ever. She was always
pretty, this slip of a girl, with olive skin, pink cheeks, and big,
dark eyes, and she always looked a little too decorative, too fanciful,
for her environment in this substantial brick farm-house, set in the
midst of fat, level acres of good Ohio land. It was as if a Dresden
china shepherdess had been put upon their kitchen mantel-shelf.
Don Jessup stooped and picked a cluster of the pink wild rosebuds,
whose bushes were scattered along the road outside the fence, and
handed them to her with an admiring look. Why, he scarcely knew; it is
as involuntary and natural a thing for any one to pay passing tribute
to a pretty girl as for the summer wind to kiss the clover. Serene read
the momentary impulse better than he did himself, and took the buds
with deepening color and a beating heart.
“He gives them to me because he thinks I look like that,” she thought
with a quick, happy thrill.
“Yes,” he went on, rather confusedly, his mind being divided between
what he was saying and a curiosity to find out if she would be as angry
as she was the last time if he should try to kiss the nearest pink
cheek; “I think it would be a good idea for you to keep on with your
algebra by yourself, and you might read that history you began. I don’t
know who’s going to have the school next fall. Now, if I were going to
be here this summer, I----”
“Why, Don,” Serene interrupted him, using the name she had not
often spoken since Adoniram Jessup, after a couple of years in the
High School, had come back to live at home, and to teach in their
district--“why, Don, I thought your mother said you were going to help
on the farm this summer.”
Adoniram smiled, a thin-lipped, complacent little smile.
“Father did talk that some, but I’ve decided to go West--and I start
to-morrow.”
To-morrow! And that great, hungry West, which swallows up people so
remorselessly! Something ailed Serene’s heart; she hoped he could not
hear it beating, and she waited a minute before saying, quietly:
“Isn’t this sort of sudden?”
“I don’t like to air my plans too much. There’s many a slip, you know.”
“You’ll want to come to the house and say good-by to the folks, and
tell us all about it?” As he nodded assent, she turned and preceded him
up the narrow path.
“When will you be back?” she asked over her shoulder.
“Maybe never. If I have any luck, I’d like the old people to come out
to me. I’m not leaving anything else here.”
“You needn’t have told _me_ so,” said Serene to herself.
“Father, boys, here’s Don come in to say good-by. He’s going West
to-morrow.”
“Well, ’Doniram Jessup! Why don’t you give us a s’prise party and be
done with it?”
Don smiled cheerfully at this tribute to his secretive powers, and
sitting down on the edge of the porch, began to explain.
Serene glanced around to see that all were listening, and then slipped
quietly out through the kitchen to the high back porch, where she found
a seat behind the new patent “creamery,” and leaning her head against
it, indulged in the luxury of a few dry sobs. Tears she dared not shed,
for tears leave traces. Though “sparkin’” had not been Serene’s line,
love may come to any human creature, and little Serene had learned more
that spring than the teacher had meant to impart or she to acquire.
When the five minutes she had allotted to her grief were past she went
back to the group at the front of the house as unnoticed as she had
left them. Her father was chaffing Jessup good-naturedly on his need
of more room to grow in, and Don was responding with placid ease. It
was not chaff, indeed, that could disturb his convictions as to his
personal importance to the development of the great West. Presently he
rose and shook hands with them all, including herself--for whom he had
no special word--said a general good-by, and left them.
“He’s thinking of himself,” thought Serene a little bitterly, as she
watched him go down the yard; “he is so full of his plans and his
future he hardly knows I am here. I don’t believe he ever knew it!”
To most people the loss of the possible affection of Don Jessup would
not have seemed a heavy one, but the human heart is an incomprehensible
thing, and the next six weeks were hard for Serene. For the first time
in her life she realized how much we can want that which we may not
have, and she rebelled against the knowledge.
“Why?” she asked herself, and “why?” Why should she have cared, since
he, it seemed, did not? Why couldn’t she stop caring now? And, oh,
why had he been so dangerously kind when he did not care? Poor little
Serene! she did not know that we involuntarily feel a tenderness almost
as exquisite as that of love itself toward whatever feeds the fountain
of our vanity.
Presently, tired of asking herself, she turned to asking Heaven, which
is easier. For we cannot comfortably blame ourselves for the inability
to answer our own inconvenient inquiries, but Heaven we can both ask
and blame. Serene had never troubled Heaven much before, but now,
in desperation, she battered at its portals night and day. She did
not pray, you understand, to be given the love which many small signs
had taught her to believe might be hers, the love that, nevertheless,
had not come near to her. Though young, she was reasonable. She
instinctively recognized that when we cannot be happy it is necessary
for us to be comfortable, if we are still to live. So, after a week
or two of rebellion, she asked for peace, sure that if it existed for
her anywhere in the universe, God held it in His keeping, for, now, no
mortal did.
She prayed as she went about her work by day; she prayed as she knelt
by her window at evening, looking out on the star-lit world; she prayed
when she woke late in the night and found her room full of the desolate
white light of the waning moon, and always the same prayer.
“Lord,” said Serene, “this is a little thing that I am going through.
Make me feel that it is a little thing. Make me stop caring. But if you
_can’t_, then show me that you care that I am not happy. If I could
feel you knew and cared, I think I might be happier.”
But in her heart she felt no answer, and peace did not come to fill the
place of happiness.
In our most miserable hours fantastic troubles and apprehensions of the
impossible often come to heap themselves upon our real griefs, making
up a load which is heavier than we can bear. Serene began to wonder if
God heard--if He was there at all.
Her people noticed that she grew thin and tired-looking, and attributed
it to the fierce hot weather. For it was the strange summer long
remembered in the inland country where they lived as the season of the
great drought. There had been a heavy snowfall late in April; from that
time till late in August no rain fell. The heat was terrible. Dust was
everywhere. The passage of time from one scorching week to another
was measured by the thickening of its heavy inches on the highway; it
rose in clouds about the feet of cattle in the burnt-up clover-fields.
The roadside grass turned to tinder, and where a careless match had
been dropped, or the ashes shaken from a pipe, there were long, black
stretches of seared ground to tell the tale. The resurrection of the
dead seemed no greater miracle than these blackened fields should
shortly turn to living green again, under the quiet influence of autumn
rains.
And now, in the early days of August, when the skies were brass, the
sun a tongue of flame, and the yellow dust pervaded the air like
an ever-thickening fog, a strange story came creeping up from the
country south of them. “Down in Paulding,” where much of the land
still lay under the primeval forest, and solitary sawmills were the
advance-guards of civilization; where there were great marshes, deep
woods, and one impenetrable tamarack swamp, seemed the proper place
for such a thing to happen if it were to happen at all. The story was
of a farmer who went out one Sunday morning to look at his corn-field,
forty good acres of newly cleared land, ploughed this year only for
the second time. The stunted stalks quivered in the hot air, panting
for water; the blades were drooping and wilted like the leaves of a
plant torn up from the ground. He looked from his blasted crop to the
pitiless skies, and, lifting a menacing hand, cursed Heaven because
of it. Those who told the story quoted the words he used, with voices
awkwardly lowered; but there was nothing impressive in his vulgar,
insensate defiance. He was merely swearing a shade more imaginatively
than was his wont. The impressive thing was that, as he stood with
upraised hand and cursing lips, he was suddenly stricken with
paralysis, and stood rooted to the spot, holding up the threatening
arm, which was never to be lowered. This was the first story. They
heard stranger things afterward: that his family were unable to remove
him from the spot; that he was burning with an inward fire which did
not consume, and no man dared to lay hand on him, or even approach him,
because of the heat of his body.
It was said that this was clearly a judgment, and it was much talked
of and wondered over. Serene listened to these stories with a singular
exultation, and devoutly trusted that they were true. She had needed
a visible miracle, and here was one to her hand. Why should not
such things happen now as well as in Bible days? And if the Lord
descended in justice, why not in mercy? The thing she hungered for
was to know that He kept in touch with each individual human life,
that He listened, that He cared. If He heard the voice of blasphemy,
then surely He was not deaf to that of praise--or agony. She said to
herself, feverishly, “I must know, I must see for myself, if it is
true.”
She said to her father: “Don’t you think I might go down to Aunt Mari’s
in Paulding for a week? It does seem as if it might be cooler down
there in the woods,” and her tired face attested her need of change and
rest. He looked at her with kindly eyes.
“Don’t s’pose it will do you no great harm, if your mother’ll manage
without you; but your Aunt Mari’s house ain’t as cool as this one,
Serene.”
“It’s different, anyhow,” said the girl, and went away to write a
postal-card to Aunt Mari and to pack her valise.
When she set out, in a day or two, it was with as high a hope as ever
French peasant maid took on pilgrimage to Loretto. She hoped to be
cured of all her spiritual ills, but how, she hardly knew. The trip
was one they often made with horses, but Serene, going alone, took
the new railroad that ran southward into the heart of the forests and
the swamps. Her cousin Dan, with his colt and road-cart, met her at
the clearing, where a shed beside a water-tank did duty for town and
station, and drove her home. Her Aunt Mari was getting dinner, and,
after removing her hat, Serene went out to the kitchen, and sat down
on the settee. The day was stifling, and the kitchen was over-heated,
but Aunt Mari was standing over the stove frying ham with unimpaired
serenity.
“Well, and so you thought it would be cooler down here, Serene? I’m
real glad to see you, but I can’t promise much of nothin’ about the
weather. We’ve suffered as much as most down here.”
Serene saw her opportunity.
“We heard your corn was worse than it is with us. What was there in
that story, Aunt Mari, about the man who was paralyzed on a Sunday
morning?”
“Par’lyzed, child? I don’t know as I just know what you mean.”
“But he lived real near here,” persisted Serene--“two miles south and
three east of the station, they said. That would be just south of here.
And we’ve heard a good deal about it. You must know, Aunt Mari.”
“Must be old man Burley’s sunstroke. That’s the only thing that’s
happened, and there was some talk about that. He’s a Dunkard, you
know, and they are mightily set on their church. Week ago Sunday was
their day for love-feast, and it was a hundred an’ seven in the shade.
He hadn’t been feelin’ well, and his wife she just begged him not to
go out; but he said he guessed the Lord couldn’t make any weather too
hot for him to go to church in. So he just hitched up and started, but
he got a sunstroke before he was half-way there, and they had to turn
round and bring him home again. He come to all right, but he ain’t
well yet. Some folks thinks what he said ’bout the weather was pretty
presumpshus, but I dunno. Seems if he might use some freedom of speech
with the Lord if anybody could, for he’s been a profitable servant.
A good man has some rights. I don’t hold with gossipin’ ’bout such
things, and callin’ on ’em ‘visitations’ when they happen to better
folks than me--why, Serene! what’s the matter?” in a shrill crescendo
of alarm, for the heat, the journey, and the disappointment had been
too much for the girl. Her head swam as she grasped the gist of her
aunt’s story, and perceived that upon this simple foundation must have
been built the lurid tale which had drawn her here, and for the first
time in her healthy, unemotional life she quietly fainted away.
When she came to herself she was lying on the bed in Aunt Mari’s
spare room. The spare room was under the western eaves, and there
were feathers on the bed. Up the stairway from the kitchen floated
the pervasive odor of frying ham. A circle of anxious people, whose
presence made the stuffy room still stuffier, were eagerly watching
her. Opening her languid eyes to these material discomforts of her
situation, she closed them again. She felt very ill, and the only thing
in her mind was the conviction that had overtaken her just as she
fainted--“Then God is no nearer in Paulding than at home.”
As the result of closing her eyes seemed to be the deluging of her face
with water until she choked, she decided to reopen them.
“Well,” said Aunt Mari, heartily, “that looks more like. How do you
feel, Serene? Wasn’t it singular that you should go off so, just when
I was tellin’ you ’bout ’Lishe Burley’s sunstroke? I declare, I was
frightened when I looked around and saw you. Your uncle would bring you
up here and put you on the bed, though I told him ’twas cooler in the
settin’-room. But he seemed to think this was the thing to do.”
“I wish he’d take me down again,” said Serene, feebly and ungratefully,
“and” (after deliberation) “put me in the spring-house.”
“What you need is somethin’ to eat,” said Aunt Mari with decision.
“I’ll make you a cup of hot tea, and” (not heeding the gesture of
dissent) “I don’t believe that ham’s cold yet.”
Serene had come to stay a week, and a week accordingly she stayed.
The days were very long and very hot; the nights on the feather-bed
under the eaves still longer and hotter. She had very little to say
for herself, and thought still less. There is a form of despair which
amounts to coma.
“Serene’s never what you might call sprightly,” observed Aunt Mari in
confidence to Uncle Dan’el, “but this time, seems if--well, I s’pose
it’s the weather. Wonder if I’ll ever see any weather on this earth to
make me stop talkin’?” It was a relief all around when the day came for
her departure.
“I’ll do better next time, Aunt Mari,” said Serene as she stepped
aboard the train; but she did not greatly care that she had not done
well this time.
When the short journey was half over, the train made a longer stop
than usual at one of the way stations. Then, after some talking, the
passengers gradually left the car. Serene noticed these things vaguely,
but paid no attention to their meaning. Presently a friendly brakeman
approached and touched her on the shoulder.
“Didn’t you hear ’em say, Miss, there was a freight wreck ahead, and we
can’t go on till the track is clear?”
“How long will it be?” asked Serene, slowly finding the way out of her
reverie.
“Mebbe two hours now, and mebbe longer. I’ll carry your bag into the
depot, if you like,” and he possessed himself of the shiny black valise
seamed with grayish cracks, and led the way out of the car.
The station at Arkswheel is a small and grimy structure set down on a
cinder bank. Across the street on one corner is a foundry, and opposite
that a stave-factory with a lumber-yard about it. In the shadow of the
piled-up staves, like a lily among thorns, stands a Gothic chapel,
small, but architecturally good. Serene, looking out of the dusty
window, saw it, and wondered that a church should be planted in such a
place. When, presently, although it was a week-day, the bell began to
ring, she turned to a woman sitting next to her for an explanation.
“That’s the church Mr. Bellington built. He owns the foundry here. They
have meeting there ’most any time. ’Piscopal, it is.”
“I don’t know much about that denomination,” observed Serene, sedately.
“My husband’s sister-in-law that I visit here goes there. She says her
minister just does take the cake. They think the world an’ all of him.”
Serene no longer looked interested. The woman rose, and walked about
the room, examining the maps and time-tables. By and by she came back
and stopped beside Serene.
“If we’ve got to wait till nobody knows when, we might just as well
go over there and see what’s goin’ on--to the church, I mean. Mebbe
’twould pass the time.”
Inside the little church the light was so subdued that it almost
produced the grateful effect of coolness. As they sat down behind the
small and scattered congregation, Serene felt that it was a place to
rest. The service, which she had never heard before, affected her like
music that she did not understand. The rector was a young man with a
heavily lined face. His eyes were dark and troubled, his voice sweet
and penetrating. When he began his sermon she became suddenly aware
that she was hearing some one to whom what he discerned of spiritual
truth was the overwhelmingly important thing in life, and she listened
eagerly. This was St. Bartholomew’s day, it appeared. Serene did not
remember very clearly who he was, but she understood this preacher
when, dropping his notes and leaning over his desk, he seemed to be
scrutinizing each individual face in the audience before him to find
one responsive to his words.
He was not minded, he said, to talk to them of any lesson to be drawn
from the life of St. Bartholomew, of whom so little was known save that
he lived in and suffered for the faith. The one thought that he had to
give had occurred to him in connection with that bloody night’s work in
France so long ago, of which this was the anniversary, when thousands
were put to death because of their faith.
“Such things do not happen nowadays,” he went on. “That form of
persecution is over. Instead of it, we have seen the dawning of what
may be a darker day, when those who profess the faith of Christ have
themselves turned to persecute the faith which is in their hearts.
Faith--the word means to me that trust in God’s plans for us which
brings confidence to the soul even when we stand in horrible fear of
life, and mental peace even when we are facing that which we cannot
understand. We persecute our faith in many ingenious ways, but perhaps
those torture themselves most whose religion is most emotional--those
who are only sure that God is with them when they feel the peace of His
presence in their hearts. A great divine said long ago that to love God
thus is to love Him for the spiritual loaves and fishes, which He does
not mean always to be our food. But for those who think that He is not
with them when they are unaware of His presence so, I have this word:
When you cannot find God in your hearts, then turn and look for Him in
your lives. When you are soul-sick, discouraged, unhappy; when you feel
neither joy nor peace, nor even the comfort of a dull satisfaction in
earth; when life is nothing to you, and you wish for death, then ask
yourself, What does God mean by this? For there is surely some lesson
for you in that pain which you must learn before you leave it. You are
not so young as to believe that you were meant for happiness. You know
that you were made for discipline. And the discipline of life is the
learning of the things _God wishes us to know_, even in hardest ways.
But He is in the things we must learn, and in the ways we learn them.
There is a marginal reading of the first chapter of the revised version
of the Gospel of St. John which conveys my meaning: ‘That which hath
been made was life in Him, and the life [or, as some commentators read,
and I prefer it, simply _life_] was the light of men.’ That is, before
Christ’s coming the light of men was in the experience to be gained in
the lives He gave them. And it is still true. Not His life only, then,
but your life and mine, which we know to the bitter-sweet depths, and
whose lessons grow clearer and clearer before us, are to guide us. Life
_is_ the light of men. I sometimes think that this, and this only, is
rejecting Christ--to refuse to find Him in the life He gives us.”
Serene heard no more. What else was said she did not know. She had
seized upon his words, and was applying them to her own experiences
with a fast-beating heart, to see if haply she had learned anything by
them that “God wanted her to know.” She had loved unselfishly. Was not
that something? She had learned that despair and distrust are not the
attitudes in which loss may be safely met. She had become conscious in
a blind way that the world was larger and nearer to her than it used
to be, and she was coming to feel a sense of community in all human
suffering. Were not all these good things?
When the congregation knelt for the last prayer, Serene knelt with
them, but did not rise again. She did not respond even when her
companion touched her on the shoulder before turning to go. She could
not lift her face just then, full as it was of that strange rapture
which came of the sudden clear realization that her life was the tool
in the hands of the Infinite by which her soul was shaped. “Let me be
chastened forever,” the heart cries in such a moment, “so that I but
learn more of thy ways!”
Some one came slowly down the aisle at last, and stopped, hesitating,
beside the pew where she still knelt. Serene looked up. It was the
rector. He saw a slender girl in unbecoming dress, whose wild-rose
face was quivering with excitement. She saw a man, not old, whose thin
features nevertheless wore the look of one who has faced life for a
long time dauntlessly--the face of a good fighter.
“Oh, sir, is it true what you said?” she demanded, breathlessly.
“It is what I live upon,” he answered, “the belief that it is true.”
And then, because he saw that she had no further need of him, he
passed on, and left her in the little church alone. When at length
she recrossed the street to the station, the train was ready, and in
another hour she was at home.
They were glad to see her at home, and they had a great deal to tell
that had happened to them in the week. They wondered a little that
she did not relate more concerning her journey, but they were used to
Serene’s silences, and her mother was satisfied with the effect of
the visit when she observed that Serene seemed to take pleasure in
everything she did, even in the washing of the supper-dishes.
There were threatening clouds in the sky that evening, as there had
often been before that summer, but people were weary of saying that it
looked like a shower. Nevertheless, when Serene woke in the night, not
only was there vivid lightning in the sky, and the roll of distant but
approaching thunder, but there was also the unfamiliar sound of rain
blown sharply against the roof, and a delicious coolness in the room.
The long drought was broken.
She sat up in her white bed to hear the joyous sound more clearly. It
was as though the thunder said, “Lift up your heart!” And the rapturous
throbbing of the rain seemed like the gracious downpouring of a needed
shower on her own parched and thirsty life.
AN INSTANCE OF CHIVALRY
Applegate entered his door that night with a delightful sense of the
difference between the sharp November air without and the warmth and
brightness within, but as he stood in the little square hall taking
off his overcoat, this comfortable feeling gave way to a heart-sick
shrinking of which he was unashamed. He was a man of peace, and through
the closed door of the sitting-room came the sound of voluble and angry
speech. The voice was that of Mrs. Applegate.
Reluctantly he pushed open the door. It was a pretty quarrel as it
stood. At one end of the little room, gay with light and color, was
Julie, leaning on the mantel. She wore a crimson house-dress a trifle
low at the throat, which set off vividly her rich, dark beauty.
Undoubtedly she had beauty, and a singular, gypsy-like piquancy as
well. It did not seem to matter that the gown was slightly shabby.
She was kicking the white fur hearth-rug petulantly now and then to
punctuate her remarks.
Dora, with her book in her lap, sat in a low chair by the lamp. Dora
was a slender, self-possessed girl of fifteen, in whose cold, young
eyes her step-mother had read from the first a concentrated and silent
disapproval which was really very exasperating.
“It’s the first time that woman has set foot in this house since I’ve
been the mistress of it,” Julie was saying, angrily. “Maybe she thinks
I ain’t fine enough for her to call on. Lord! I’d like to tell her what
I think of her. It was her business to ask for me, and it was your
business to call me, whether she did or not. Maybe you think I ain’t
enough of a lady to answer Mrs. Buel Parry’s questions. I’d like to
have you remember I’m your father’s wife!”
Dora’s head dropped lower in an agony of vicarious shame. How,
her severe young mind was asking itself, could any woman bear to
give herself away to such an appalling extent? To reveal that one
had thwarted social ambitions; to admit that one might not seem a
lady--degradation could go no farther in the young girl’s eyes.
“What’s the matter, Dora?” asked Applegate, quietly, in the lull
following Julie’s last remark.
“Mrs. Parry came to the door to ask what sort of a servant Mary
Samphill had been. Mamma was in the kitchen, teaching the new girl how
to mould bread, and I answered Mrs. Parry’s questions. She did not ask
for any one.”
“I say it was Dora’s business to ask her in and call me. Whose servant
was Mary Samphill, I’d like to know. Was she Dora’s?”
Applegate crossed the room to the open fire and stretched his chilled
fingers to the flame.
“Aren’t you a little unreasonable, Julie?” he inquired, gently. “If
Mrs. Parry didn’t ask for you, I don’t quite see what Dora could do but
answer her questions.”
“Me unreasonable? I like that! Mrs. Buel Parry came to this house to
see me, but Dora was bound I shouldn’t see her. Dora thinks”--she
hesitated a moment, choking with her resentment--“she thinks I ain’t
Mrs. Parry’s kind, and she was going to be considerate and keep us
apart. Oh, yes! She thinks she knows what the upper crust wants. If I’m
not Mrs. Parry’s sort, I’d like to know why. You thought I was your
sort fast enough, John Applegate!” and Julie threw back her dark head
with a gesture that was very fine in its insolence. “I guess if Mrs.
Parry and Mrs. Otis and that set are company for you, they’re company
for me. Of course you take Dora’s side. You always do. I can tell you
one thing. When I was Frazer MacDonald’s wife I had some things I don’t
have now, for all you think you’re so fine. MacDonald never would have
stood by and seen me put upon. If folks wasn’t civil to his wife,
he knew the reason why. I might have done better than marry you--I
might----”
Julie stopped to take breath.
“Do you think I can make Mrs. Parry call on you if she doesn’t want to,
Julie?”
She shrugged her shoulders.
“What is the good of marrying a man who can’t do anything for you?” she
demanded. “It isn’t any more than my due she should call, and you know
it. She was thick enough with your first wife. And me to be treated
so after all I’ve done for you and your children. I give you notice
I’m going to Pullman to-morrow, and I’m going to stay till I get good
and ready to come back. Maybe you’ll find out who makes this house
comfortable for you, John Applegate. Maybe you will.”
And with this Julie slipped across the room--she could not be
ungraceful even when she was most violent--and left it, shutting the
door with emphasis.