In Darkness.
LAST Tuesday night Jennie met me at the station. It is unusual for
her to do so. The surprise was a delightful one to me. But as I sat
down beside her in the basket wagon she did not greet me as joyously
as usual. Her mien was so sober that I asked her at once the
question:
"Jennie, what is the matter? You look sick."
"I am sick, John," said she; "sick at heart. Willie Gear is dead."
"Willie Gear dead!" I exclaimed.
"Yes," said Jennie. "He was skating on the pond. I suppose this warm
weather has weakened the ice. It gave way. Three of the boys went in
together. The other two got out. But Willie was carried under the
ice."
Jennie was driving. Instead of turning up the hill from the depot
she kept down the river road. "I thought you would want to go down
there at once," said she. "And so I left baby with Nell and came
down for you."
We rode along in silence. Willie Gear was his father's pride and
pet. He was a noble boy. He inherited his mother's tenderness and
patience, and with them his father's acute and questioning
intellect. He was a curious combination of a natural skeptic and a
natural believer. He had welcomed the first step toward converting
our Bible-class into a mission Sabbath-school, and had done more
than any one else to fill it up with boys from the Mill village. He
was a great favorite with them all and their natural leader in
village sports and games. There was no such skater or swimmer for
his age as Willie Gear, and he was the champion ball-player of the
village. But I remember him best as a Sabbath-school scholar. I can
see even now his earnest upturned face and his large blue eyes,
looking strait into his mother's answering gaze, and drinking in
every word she uttered to that mission-class which he had gathered
and which she every Sabbath taught. He was not very fortunate in his
teacher in our own church Sabbath-school. For he took nothing on
trust and his teacher doubted nothing. I can easily imagine how his
soul filled with indignation at the thought of Abraham's offering up
his only son as a burnt sacrifice, and how with eager questioning he
plied his father, unsatisfied himself with the assurances of one who
had never experienced a like perplexity, and therefore did not know
how to cure it.
And Willie was really gone. Would it soften the father's heart and
teach him the truth of Pascal's proverb that "The heart has reasons
of its own that the reason knows not of;" or would it blot out the
last remnant of faith, and leave Mr. Gear without a God as he had
been without a Bible and without a Saviour?
I was still pondering these problems, wildly thinking, not
aimlessly, yet to no purpose, when we reached the familiar cottage.
Is it indeed true that nature has no sympathy? There seemed to me to
be on all around a hush that spoke of death. There needed no
sorrowful symbol of crape upon the door; and there was none. I
almost think I should have known that death was in the house had no
one told me.
As I was fastening my horse Mr. Hardcap came up. We entered the gate
together.
"This is a hard experience for Mr. Gear," said I to Mr. Hardcap.
"The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether,"
replied Mr. Hardcap, severely.
I could feel Jennie tremble on my arm, but I made no response to Mr.
Hardcap.
Mr. Gear opened the door for us himself before we had time to knock.
He was perfectly calm and self-possessed. Jennie said afterward she
should not have guessed, to have seen him elsewhere, that he had
even heard of Willie's death. But I noticed that he uttered no
greeting. He motioned us into the sitting-room without a word.
Here, on a sofa, lay, like a white statue, the form of the dear boy.
By the side of the sofa sat the mother, her eyes red and swollen
with much weeping. But the fierceness of sorrow had passed; and now
she was almost as quiet as the boy whose sleep she seemed to watch;
she was quite as pale.
She rose to meet us as we entered, and offered me her hand. Jennie
put her arm around the poor mother's waist and kissed her tenderly.
But still nothing was said.
Mr. Hardcap was the first to break the silence. "This is a solemn
judgment," said he.
Mr. Gear made no reply.
"I hope, my friend," continued Mr. Hardcap, "that you will heed the
lesson God is a teachin' of you, and see how fearful a thing it is
to have an unbeliev'n heart. God will not suffer us to rest in our
sin of unbelief. If we lay up our treasures on earth where moth and
rust doth corrupt, we must expect they will take to themselves wings
and fly away."
Mr. Hardcap's horrible mutilation of Scripture had always impressed
me in a singular manner. But I think its ludicrous side never so
affected me before. What is it in me that makes me always appreciate
most keenly the ludicrous in seasons of the greatest solemnity and
distress? The absurdity of his misapplication of the sacred text
mingled horribly with a sense of the insupportable anguish I knew he
was causing. And yet I knew not how to interfere.
"I hope he was prepared," said Mr. Hardcap.
"I hope so," said Mr. Gear quietly.
"He was such a noble fellow," said Jennie to the weeping mother. She
said it softly, but Mr. Hardcap's ears caught the expression.
"Nobility, ma'am," said he, "isn't a savin' grace. It's a nateral
virtoo. The question is, did he have the savin' grace of faith and
repentance?"
"I believe," said Mrs. Gear, earnestly, "that Willie was a
Christian, if ever there was one, Mr. Hardcap."
"He hadn't made no profession of religion you know, ma'am," said Mr.
Hardcap. "And the heart is deceitful above all things and
desperately wicked."
Mr. Hardcap is very fond of quoting that text. I wonder if he ever
applies it to himself.
"It seems kind o' strange now that he should be taken away so sudden
like," continued Mr. Hardcap, "without any warnin'. And you know
what the Scripture tells us. 'The wages of sin is death.'"
Mr. Gear could keep silence no longer. "I wish then," said he
hoarsely, "God would pay me my wages, and let me go."
"Oh! Thomas," said his wife appealingly. Then she went up to Mr.
Hardcap, and laid her hand gently on his arm. "Mr. Hardcap," said
she, "it was very good of you to call on us in our sorrow. And I am
sure that you want to comfort us, and do us good. But I don't
believe my husband will get any good just now from what you have to
say. We are stunned by the blow that came so suddenly, and must have
a little time to recover from it. Would you feel offended if I asked
you to go away and call again some other time?"
"The word must be spoken in season and out of season," said Mr.
Hardcap doggedly. Nevertheless he turned to leave. He offered his
hand to Mr. Gear, who was leaning with his head upon his hand
against the mantel-piece, and possibly did not notice the proffered
salutation. At all events he never moved. Mr. Hardcap looked at him
a moment, opened his mouth as if to speak, but apparently
reconsidered his purpose, for he closed it again without speaking,
and so left the room. Mrs. Gear went with him to the door, where I
heard her ask him to pray for her and for her husband, and where I
heard him answer something about a sin unto death that could not be
prayed for. Jennie followed Mrs. Gear softly out; and so Mr. Gear
and I were left alone.
Alone with the dead.
"That's your Christian consolation," said Mr. Gear bitterly.
"Is that just to your wife?" I answered him quietly.
"No! It is not just to my wife," he replied. "I would give all I
possess to have her faith. She is almost heart-broken,--and yet-yet-I
who ought to sustain her would be crazed with grief if I had not her
to lean upon. And she-she leans on I know not what. Oh! if I did but
know."
"She leans on Him who not in vain Experienced every human pain," I
answered softly.
"He was such a noble boy," continued Mr. Gear speaking half to
himself, and half to me. "He was so pure, so truthful, so
chivalrous, so considerate of his mother's happiness and of mine.
And he was beginning to teach me, teach me that I did not know all.
I was afraid of my own philosophy for him. I wanted him to have his
mother's faith, though I never told him so. I never perplexed him
with my own doubtings. I solved what I could of his, I was coming to
believe little by little that there was a clearer, better light than
that I walked in. I was hoping that he might find it and walk in it.
I even dreamed, sometimes, to myself, that he would yet learn how to
show it to me. And now he is gone, and the glimmer of light is gone,
and the last hope for me is gone with him."
"He is gone," I said softly, "to walk in that clearer, better light,
and beckons you to follow."
Mr. Gear made no answer, hardly seemed to note the interruption.
"And this is the bitterness of the blow to me," he continued, still
speaking half to me, half to himself. "I thought I believed in
immortality. I thought I believed in God. These two beliefs at least
were left me. And now nothing is left. My wife says 'he is not dead
but sleepeth.' But I cannot see it. To me he is gone, for ever gone.
If on the other side of that veil which hides him from me, that
mystic something which we call his spirit still lingers, I do not
see it. I had a dream of that better land once and called it faith.
But this cruel blow has wakened me, and the dream has passed in the
very hour when I need it most. And nothing is left me; not even that
poor vision."
"Not even God?" said I softly.
"Not even God," he answered with terrible deliberation. "For a bad
God is worse than no God at all. And how can I believe that God is
good? He looks down on our happy home. He looks on our dear boy, its
life and joy. He knows how our life is wrapped up in him. He sees
how little by little Willie is leading me up into a higher, happier,
holier life. And then He strikes him down, and leaves my wife
heart-broken, and me in darkness, bereft by one blow of my child and
of my faith."
Then he pointed to the dead boy who lay on the lounge before us.
"How can I reconcile this with the love of God?" he cried. "How can
you, Mr. Laicus?"
All bitterness was gone now. He looked me earnestly in the eye, and
asked eagerly, as one who longed for a solution, and yet was in
despair of finding it.
"I cannot," I answered, "and dare not try. If I had only life's book
to read, Mr. Gear, I should not believe in a God of love. I should
turn Persian, and believe in two gods, one of love and good-will,
one of hate and malice."
He looked at me in questioning surprise.
"Love, Mr. Gear, is its own demonstration. I know that God loves
me."
"How?" said he.
"How?" said I. "Do you remember when we first met, Mr. Gear, that
you told me your God was everywhere, in every brook, and mountain,
and flower, and leaf, and storm, and ray of sunshine."
He nodded his head reflectively, as one recalling a half forgotten
conversation.
"My God is in the hearts of those that seek Him," said I. "And in my
heart I carry an assurance of His love that life cannot disturb. I
know His love as the babe knows its mother's love, lying upon her
breast. It knows her love though it neither understands her nature
nor her ways."
He shook his head sadly.
"Mr. Laicus," said he, "I believe you, but I do not comprehend you.
I believe that you have a faith that is worth the having. I would
give all I possess or ever possessed to share it with you in this
hour. I do not know-I sometimes think it is only a pleasant dream.
Would God I could sleep and dream such dreams."
"It is no dream, Mr. Gear, but truth and soberness," said I. "A
dream does not last through eighteen centuries, and raise half a
world from barbarism to civilization. A dream does not carry mothers
through such sorrows as this with outlooking anticipations so clear
as those which give Mrs. Gear her radiant hope. No! Mr. Gear. It is
you who have been dreaming, and life's sorrow has awakened you."
"Mr. Laicus," he cried almost passionately, "I said I believed in
nothing. But it is not true. I have no creed. I do not even believe
in God or immortality any more. I have no God. I am without hope.
But I believe in my wife. I believe in you. I believe that you and
she have something-I know not what-that supports you in temptation
and sustains you in sorrow. Tell me what it is. Tell me how I may
get it. I will cast my pride away. I would believe. Help my
unbelief."
"Mr. Gear," said I, laying my hand upon his arm, "here in the
presence of this dear boy, be the solemn witness of your petition
and your vow, will you kneel with me to ask of God what you have
asked of me, but what He alone can give you, and record before Him
the promise you have made to me, but which He alone can receive at
your hands?"
He made no answer-hesitated a moment-then knelt, with the dear boy's
hand fast clasped in his, while kneeling at his side I echoed the
prayer he had already uttered: "I believe; help Thou mine unbelief."
And as we rose I saw the tears streaming down his softened face, the
first tears he had shed since I had entered his house. I knew that
Willie had taught him more in his death than by his life, and felt
that now, to my own heart though not to his, I could answer the
question he had asked me, "How can you reconcile this with the love
of God?"