THE PILGRIM
A few days after Abraham Lincoln had entered service to split rails for
a new pair of breeches, he came to town late one afternoon to get an ax.
After tarrying a short time to tell a story or two, he started back
about sun-down, his ax, on the handle of which was swung a bundle, over
his shoulder.
As twilight gathered, the ungainly youth took his way along the road
that ran not far from the smoothly flowing Sangamon. His strides were
long and easy, and, away from the small habitations and contrivances
of mankind, he seemed to become one with the big things of nature,
and what was sometimes considered lack of grace seemed now an easy
expression of reserve force.
The roar of the mill-dam sounded musical as if the twilight were
softening its daytime boisterous tumult.
The falling dew seemed loosening up the fragrance of the woods, the
subtle breath of tangled vines and trailing roses, with sometimes a
more decided fragrance, as when the full-sized foot of the pedestrian
brushed into a bed of wild mint.
As he rounded the skirt of the bluff, the rosy tinted sky seemed
suddenly to withdraw itself, and the timbers upon the summit to move
themselves slowly against the crimson and fading gold, like a row of
shadowy sentinels gathered for the night.
A tinkling gurgle from an irregular, dark spot against the foot of the
bluff told of a ravine, and the running stream, whose musical babble,
as it made its way to the river, sounded like the prattle of a child
compared to the river's volume falling by the mill.
As he took his way in the gathering gray of night, the long-limbed
youth cast giant shadows, subtle, indistinct shadows far across the
road and into other shadows, where they merged into the formless gloom
and were lost.
While yet rounding the bluff he heard the barking of a dog and then
the tinkle of a cow-bell. Common sounds these were, but coming on
the stillness from the heights above they lent a sort of musical
enchantment to the quiet and the enfolding mystery of night. Then a
human voice was heard, a woman's voice that seemed to burst suddenly
into the flower of a full blown song.
The youth slowed up a bit and listened. The words thrown out by the
ringing voice sounded clearly:
I'm a pilgrim
And I'm a stranger;
I can tarry, I can tarry but a night.
The young man stopped. The song was to him unusual. The clear voice
took the notes unhesitatingly and rolled them in melodious movement as
she sang the words "p-i-l-grim" and "s-t-r-a-n-ger," and then hurrying
on gladly, as if it were a matter for great rejoicing that she could
tarry but a night.
The youth dropped his ax and bundle to the ground and turned his face
toward the bluff casting its long shadows. The bell tinkled a moment in
the gathering gloom. Then the voice rang out again on the evening hush:
Do not detain me,
For I am going
To where the streamlets are ever flowing.
Again there was the peculiar rolling fall and rise on the syllables.
Again the gladness of some exultation, then the refrain "I'm a pilgrim"
with its confidence and its melody.
The voice was nearer now. There was no sound or sight of any moving
object on the bluff, but she was somewhere there and seemed coming
nearer.
The tinkle of the cow-bell made an interlude. Then again the voice of
singing, whether nearer or farther now he did not question. He was
listening to the words:
Of that country
To which I'm going
My Redeemer, my Redeemer is the light.
There is no sorrow
Nor any sighing
Nor any sin there, nor any dying.
The mysterious singer on the heights was farther away now. The voice
was growing fainter as the refrain rang into the stillness, "I'm a
pilgrim--and I'm a stranger--I can tarry--I can tarry----"
The youth leaned forward and listened, breathlessly. But the voice was
dying and the tinkle of the bell came on the stillness, faint as a
memory.
After standing a moment, the listener in the shadows made ready to go
on. When he turned to pick up his ax and bundle, he found his hat in
his hands. When he had removed it he did not remember. Mechanically he
placed it on his head and started on his way.
The red and purple of the earlier evening showing through the trunks of
the trees crowning the bluff was giving way now to the silvery green of
the rising moon.
With his ax over his shoulder the figure paused a moment for a last
look upward and then moved on.
But he did not feel the same. He had undergone some change. What
was it? Within his breast the song had raised something intensely
alive--something like hunger, fierce yet very tender; something like
strange pain; something like wild joy; something like unsatisfied
longing, together with unmeasured satisfaction. What was it? He did not
know. Mysterious to him as was the singer, was now the effect of the
singing.
Yet out of the mingled sensation of unrest and satisfaction, suddenly
stirred into life, there came to the youth thoughts of his mother.
His mother had been a pilgrim on a journey. He had heard her say so
many times. But the burden of her song had been "Earth is a desert
drear." He had heard her sometimes try to sing. But she did not go
shouting. She suffered on the way, endured, was patient, and at the
last she reached a groping hand for something strong to hold her back
from that country to which she believed she was going. It was with
a twitching of his muscles and a quiver of the big strong mouth he
thought of the passing on of his mother.
But here was a pilgrim happy, shouting, even jubilant. Who was she?
What manner of person could she be? His curiosity was aroused.
As he strode on toward Turtle Ford the falling waters of the dam
softened their roar into an indistinct murmur, and then like the voice
of the singer and the tinkle of the bell, blended into the quiet,
broken only by the call of a whip-poor-will or the whirr of a bat's
wing.
The moon rose above the lacey darkness of the timber-line. The
railsplitter had had no supper. Once he stopped and gathered some
berries. But he was not thinking of food. The eternal mystery of the
awakening of one's other self had both breathed through and enfolded
him. He was not hungry. He tossed the berries down by the roadside. His
pace quickened as he neared the clearing. He did not understand, but
for some reason he himself experienced a lifted-up sensation. It was
as if the conquering confidence and joy of the unknown singer had been
contagious.
At the edge of the clearing he stopped. The shack and pig-pen and few
rail-fences stood out in the moonlight like the skeleton of something
to be clothed with a body. The dogs came out and barked, but crept back
satisfied at sight of the tall figure. He stepped up to the door of the
shack. The snoring of a man told him his approach had not disturbed the
sleeping family.
He turned toward the end of the cabin where a ladder stood, which he
mounted. At the square opening which served as door and window to the
loft, he paused and looked in, and by the moon's indistinct light he
saw the three boys of the family lying on a pallet. The dull hum of
mosquitoes sounded.
He turned back to the ladder, and on its top, with his back resting
against the cabin, he sat and looked out into the night. In the
light all was beautiful; even the piles of brush were softened until
they looked like the gray and silver tendrils of giant vines piled
by titanic fairies, and the trunks of trees were columns in some
mysterious and endless cathedral canopied with silvered green.
Across the wilds of the forest, which in the magic of night and the
moon were so beautiful, the thoughts of the youth again traveled back
to his childhood and its mysteries, and he seemed to see again a very
small grave in a lonesome spot beside which his mother cried and
declared with tears and choking voice that she could not go away and
leave it forever. To the boy who looked on, this had seemed strange.
Why should she weep because she could not take a grave from Kentucky
to Indiana, the new home, and such a tiny little grave? It had been
a mystery. Later he came to answer the mystery of it by calling it
"mother love." He thought of that grave, far away in Kentucky, as he
sat on the ladder. Then he thought of the grave of the mother who had
wept beside the little grave--two graves.
Some time he too would fill a grave somewhere--and so would the singer
on the heights. What was life after all? Its end was the same for
all--whether a tiny grave or one long enough even for him? The question
seemed to mock itself and laugh.
Then the voice of the singer rang clear again--a pilgrim rejoicing,
shouting--such a glad pilgrim, and again he felt himself impelled to
the heights from which it had come--felt himself a creature of some
fresh-born force he could no more fathom than explain.
A wild cat screamed down the creek. The three boys thumped the floor,
seeking in their sleep to destroy the mosquitoes. The dogs scratched
under the house. The man snored. Once the baby cried and the mother
soothed it.
These voices and sounds seemed a part of the secrets of the night and
of the strange awakening that possessed him with the pleasure and pain
of its mystery.
There was a sound, however, that came with the first pink of the
morning that seemed in some unknown way to hold the key to the mystery
of his strangely aroused hunger--a hunger born whether for good or ill
he knew not.
With the first stirring of life at the new day, a song bird just at
the edge of the clearing sent out its call, clear as the voice of the
singer on the bluff and, in the imagination of the inquiring youth,
like it, glad and unafraid.
But the bird was calling for a mate--one of its own kind--one which
would answer its call.
Again the call rang out penetrating and joyful.
The young man listened. Then a smile of satisfaction lit his homely
face, for from somewhere down in the tangle of the creek banks, one of
its own kind was answering the call.
The hidden singer in the clearing called again, even throwing more life
and gladness into the song. Again the answer came from the unseen one
of like kind, a little closer now. They were moving toward each other.
The silent listener had not made a study of birds. Yet now he was quite
sure that somewhere they would meet in the wide expanse of over-laced
branches and would mate.
Again his mind went back to the singer of the bluff--and her
challenging call. Who or what manner of woman was she? He wondered.
When the man who had been snoring awoke with the first streaks of day,
the ringing of an ax sounded on his ear. "If he don't beat anything to
bite them trees down and eat them up, I'm a liar. He must have been at
it all night."
"He needs breeches--needs them powerful bad," his wife replied.
"Must want to go a courtin'," was his comment.
"Courtin' or no courtin', he'll be ketched by the sheriff if he don't
git some new breeches right soon. His is fixin' to leave him. I'm
skeered every time he jumps over the fence."