THE NEW TEACHING.
AND now, this Sunday morning, Isla stood on the rocks, and looked at
the young preacher, as she came toward her.
“Good morning!” said the preacher, feeling curiously embarrassed under
the quiet, straightforward gaze of the island girl. “I saw you at the
service this morning; but I missed you when it was over, and your
friend here guided me to you.” She turned to look at Joe, but he had
disappeared.
“Yes,” said Isla Heron, “I was there. I was coming to look for you,
too. I wanted to ask you if something you said was true.”
The preacher smiled. “I hope I said nothing that was untrue,” she said.
Isla looked up with a startled glance. “Oh, yes!” she said. “Things
that are not true here, anyhow. I don’t know how it may be over on
the main. But—what I wanted to ask you—you read something from the
Bible,—‘The tongue of the dumb shall sing.’ What did you mean by that?”
The preacher repeated, slowly, that she might have time to think a
little.
“‘Then shall the lame man leap as a hart, and the tongue of the dumb
sing.’ Yes, that is a beautiful passage; you will find it in Isaiah,
the thirty-fifth chapter.”
“But is it true?” Isla persisted. “Did they do it then, or can they do
it now?”
“I do not understand you,” the preacher said, gently. “It is a prophecy
of the flourishing of Christ’s kingdom.”
“Will he make dumb people speak? that is all I want to know,” said
Isla. “My little brother is dumb, and I would do anything in the world
to make him speak. If that is true, tell me how it is done.”
The preacher looked at her very tenderly.
“Let us sit down here, my dear,” she said; “and tell me about your
little brother.”
They sat down on a warm brown stone, and Isla told the story of her
little Jacob; of her father’s death two years before, and of her
mother’s fading away through the year, and following him before another
spring came.
“So now there are just the two of us,” she said. “Just me and my little
Jacob. And if I could make him hear and speak, I would be willing to
die myself.”
“He can never hear!” the preacher said. “These are not the days of
miracles, and we have no assurance that we may look for them, though
signs and wonders are all about us. But truly a wonder has been wrought
in these very days; and it may be that the child can be taught to
speak, and to read by the lips what others say to him.”
She told Isla, in a few words, of the new teaching of the deaf, and the
girl listened with her whole soul.
“Where is it done?” she asked. “Tell me the name of the place!”
The preacher named Bellton as the nearest city where such teaching
could be had. “Have you friends there?” she asked.
Isla’s startled eyes gave her answer. “Bellton!” she said. “That was a
place Giles showed me on the sand, where the people lived in prisons,
and liked it, and turned white for want of sun. I should have to go
there, should I, and take my little Jacob? Could a person live there,
do you think, who was not used to it?”
“I was there for two or three years,” said the preacher. “I lived well
enough, Isla. Have you never been away from your island?”
The girl shook her head.
“No! why should I go? I never would go, except to help my little Jacob.
It would kill me to live under a roof, and breathe hot air, and have no
wind blowing, and no sea.”
“Where do you live?” asked the preacher. “You cannot spend the year
out-of-doors, in this cold place.”
“Come and see!” said Isla Heron.
She led the preacher over the gray rocks, over the high downs, till
they came to the little green meadow, set like a jewel in a great ring
of stones.
Here was the cabin, looking from the outside not unlike the rock
against which it leaned. Inside, it was gay with shells and bright
berries, and everything was neat and clean, as Mary Heron had taught
her children to keep it. Jacob was sitting by the table, carving
a boat, and at Isla’s coming he rose, clapping his hands, and ran
to throw his arms round her neck; but drew back in alarm at sight
of the stranger. The girl spoke to him with eyes and hands, and led
him forward, still hanging back, but smiling now, and ready to make
friends. He was nearly ten years old, but so small and delicate that
he looked much younger. His face was all sunshine, but there was no
line of thought in it yet; he had never had to think for himself.
Isla had done all his thinking, and he had lived like a bird so far,
taking everything at her hands, rejoicing in the sunshine, and the
sea, and the shells and flowers. He knew nothing beyond his own end
of the island. Isla was a great traveller in his eyes, because she
sometimes went to the village, and was gone for hours. This never made
him sad, because he did not know what sadness was; but he had a pride
in his sister’s journeyings, and looked eagerly in her face when she
came back, seeking new light there, since she was so wise always, and
probably learned new wisdom every time she went away.
The preacher caressed the child, and sat for a few moments in the
little sitting-room, her mind full of new thoughts.
“You live here entirely alone?” she asked, presently; “you two
children? Are you happy, Isla? Is it not terribly lonely?”
Isla looked up wondering.
“How should it be lonely?” she said. “It is home. It is the only place
where we could live. Some people wanted us to come and live in the
village, after mother died. We’d sooner have died, too, both of us.
Wouldn’t we, Jacob?”
“Is there no one belonging to you? it seems too—”
“Too dreadful,” the preacher would have said, but something seemed to
hold back the words. Perhaps it was the perfect quiet in the two faces.
“Of course I miss Giles, all the time,” Isla went on, presently. “But
he was so tired, poor dear, that he could not stay any longer.”
“And your mother?” said the preacher, with some reproach in her tone.
“Do you not miss your mother?”
“Jacob did!” said Isla. “Or he would have, at first, if I had let him.
But mother,—oh, you could not have kept her. She hated it so, after
Giles was gone, she had to go, too. No, we are much better off without
mother; she could not bear me after Giles went, and hardly she could
bear Jacob; and she tried so hard to die, I was glad when she could.
She was dumb, too, you know, and now she isn’t, I suppose.”
This was strange talk. The preacher felt that she should reprove and
exhort, but still the girl’s face silenced her.
“Tell me, Isla,” she said, after a silence, “what did you mean, when
you said, a little while ago, that I had said some things that were not
true. You did not mean that, I am sure.”
Isla reflected.
“Oh, yes,” she said. “Oh, surely I meant it. You spoke of Him,”—she
nodded upward with her curious reverent gesture,—“you said He was our
Father; I liked that. Giles knew a little, but he did not know that
much, then. Now I suppose he does. But then you said that if we did
things,—I don’t remember what things,—that He would be angry with us
always, and never love us any more, and that we should be punished all
the time, forever. And that could not be true, because it is nonsense.”
The preacher was startled, and spoke sharply.
“You are not speaking in a proper manner!” she said. “What right have
you to speak so to me?”
“You asked me!” said Isla. “What did you want me to say?”
They were both silent for a time.
“Why do you think this?” said the preacher then. “What can you know
about these things, living here with no teaching and no light save that
of your own heart, which is sinful?”
Isla laughed.
“I had a father!” she said. “Do you suppose that Great One needed Giles
to tell Him how to treat His children?”
“What can I know?” she repeated. “I know what the sea tells me all day,
all my life; and what the clouds tell me, and the birds; but most of
all I know what my little Jacob tells me. Look at him! Is he sinful? If
you say that, then I see that you do not know. But my sea knows, and
it tells me, all day long. All day long!” the girl repeated; and her
eyes grew soft and dreamy as she gazed out over the blue, white-tossing
water. The preacher would have answered, for she was shocked and
pained at this unseemly talk; but suddenly some words came to her mind,
and silenced her.
“Deep answereth unto deep—”
“I must go!” she said, rising. “I should like to see you again, Isla,
and talk with you; your—your thoughts are strange to me, but I feel
that your heart is good. I must go now back to the village.” She kissed
the little boy, who cooed and smiled in return, and turned to find her
way back to the village; but Isla was at her side.
“Let me take you by a shorter way,” she said. “It is slow climbing over
our rocks when folks are not used to them. I will take you through the
Dead Valley, and you will get there quicker. But you will not tell
people?” she said, stopping for a moment, and looking up into her
companion’s face with searching eyes. “It is our own place, Jacob’s and
mine; we don’t want other folks to know about it.”
The preacher promised.
“Shut your eyes, then!” cried the girl, her face lightening with
pleasure. “Give me your hand, and I will lead you into our Dead Valley.
Now! now open your eyes, and look!”
The preacher obeyed, and gave a cry of surprise, so strange a place
was this that met her eyes. A valley of rocks; yes! but not rocks like
those she had seen elsewhere, not like any rocks that she had seen in
her life. A place of desolation, full of the bones of forgotten ages.
The girl, watching her companion’s face, laughed aloud for pleasure.
“Do you see?” she cried. “Do you see why it is the Dead Valley? Look
at them all, the great beasts, lying asleep! Giles told me all about
them, when we first found this place; we came together, Giles and I.
He said, ‘They are mammoths, like elephants, only bigger;’ and he had
seen the bones of one, somewhere, in some place where they keep such
things, so he knew their names and all. And see! They used to play
here, and go down to the water to bathe, and just live as they liked.
And one day,—we played they had done some dreadful thing, but we never
knew just what,—they were all turned into gray stones, and here they
have been ever since. There! that is one of the biggest; and he fell
down on his side, you see, and just curled his great huge legs under
him, and went to sleep so comfortable! And this one,—oh, I love this
old fellow. He was kneeling, don’t you see, preacher? and he could not
get up when the time came, so he went to sleep just that way. And down
there by the beach, that one had gone down to drink and take his bath,
and he tumbled in, and there he lies. Over the other side of him, that
is where Jacob and I go to bathe ourselves. The rockweed grows all over
his shoulders, and keeps him warm. And we run over his back, and sit
on his great round head, and climb into a hollow place that we call
his mouth; but he never stirs, just sleeps and sleeps; and there he
will stay, Giles said, till the last call comes. What is the matter,
preacher?”
The preacher had started with a little cry of dismay. Two or three
aged trees, ragged and twisted and bent, still clung to the rocks in
this grim place, and kept some sort of iron-bound life in their veins.
There were many others lying beside them, which had given up the fight
years,—centuries ago. Only their bones were left, gleaming pallid and
slender among the sleeping mammoths; and soon these old soldiers, too,
would lay down their arms and join the sleepers. But still there showed
some faint tinge of green in their rusty tops; and, as the preacher
looked at them, wondering, a great black bird rose from the ragged
branches, and almost brushed past them in his flight.
Isla laughed again, and waved her hand with a friendly gesture.
“Those are our ravens,” she said. “They are friends of ours, Jacob’s
and mine. Other folks are afraid of them, but we know them, and they
like us. This way, preacher! Step up on this elephant’s shoulder; he
will not hurt you. There! now it will be smoother; and tell me more
about the place where they teach dumb people to speak.”