CHAPTER VIII.
When Sidney opened his eyes next day it was upon a transfigured world that he looked. A world golden with imaginings of happiness across whose vistas shone a white path, like the milky way in the heavens, marking the life road to be trodden by Vashti and himself. Cradled in a happy trance his heart knew no apprehensions. At such a time retrospect shares the mind almost equally with anticipation. The glorious present is made still more glorious by comparison. As Sidney dwelt upon his past it was borne in upon him with peculiar force that it had been but a curtain raiser to the real drama of his life. He had been a popular man as a student and afterwards also, but it seemed strange even to himself how few real ties he would have to sever in adopting this new life—so radically different in vocation from any he ever dreamed of before. The fact was that in all his friendships he had given more than he had received. He had given liberally of that intangible vital capital called sympathy, and he had received but little in return. Although he had not realizedit his friendships had been only so many drains upon his vitality. He had thought of, and for, his friends continually; they had accorded him the tribute of uncomprehending admiration which bears the same relation to real sympathy as bran does to the full, rich wheat. Thus it was that in separating himself from these friendships he felt no wrench. Separate from them he must. He knew that the keeping of his promise to Vashti was utterly incompatible with his old life; he must “come out and be separate” from all his old associates and associations. He felt, however, that this would be possible; possible without sacrilege. His attitude towards religion had always been defensive rather than offensive. He felt deeply the pathos of the Christ drama. The figure of the Man of Sorrows was a familiar one in the gallery of mental portraits to which this idealist had turned in time of trial for strength.
There was one man whose verdict upon his action he longed to know, yet dreaded to ask. A strong soul, untamed by sect, unshackled by formulated belief. A man whose magnificent active human organism was hallowed by the silver thread of mysticism. A man whose splendid logical mind was transcended by a subtle sense of premonition, intuition, which led him far beyond where his reason or his scanty learning could bear him company. A man whose eyes looked out wistfully yet eagerly from beneath penthouse eyebrows. A man whosetoil-roughened fingers turned reverently the pages of books he could not read; French or German books beyond his ken. A man in whose proper person Sidney had always felt there was symbolled forth the half blind, half perceptive struggle of the human to comprehend the infinite.
What would this man think of his new vows? This man who would have died for what the world called hisdisbeliefs.
Well, Sidney told himself that his firstdevoirwas to Vashti and the promise made to her. He would not delay. These thoughts bore him company till he was in the hall. He did not know the hour, but suddenly he was aware of a subtle, penetrating freshness in the air. He looked out of the hall door: the garden was dim with autumnal dew. Was it indeed so very early?
He heard voices in the kitchen. He found there only Mr. Lansing and Miss Tribbey.
“Is it so early?” he asked, smiling.
“For the land’s sakes! Mr. Martin!” said Temperance. “Is that you?”
Sidney laughed aloud; there was a ring in his voice which made Temperance regard him.
“I have been awake for ages,” he said; “so here I am.”
Temperance remembered certain days in the past when she had been wont to awaken ere the first bird sang in the dark. These were the days whenNathan, a hobbledehoy, too bashful to woo her in daylight, used to waylay her in the lane when she took the cows back to the field, and stand with his arm about her in the dusk.
Temperance rubbed her eyes.
“The morning sun do dazzle,” she said, giving unsought explanation of the moisture in her eyes.
“Better set right down and have breakfast,” said old Mr. Lansing. “The young folks is turrible lazy, it seems to me, nowadays.”
“Oh, not all of them,” said Sidney. “Look at Temperance.”
Old Lansing chuckled delightedly.
“Nathan Peck had better look out, Temp’rins; I allus did say you had a way with the men.”
Temperance tossed her head, well pleased.
“Will you have your eggs fried or biled?” she asked Sidney, the blush upon her gaunt cheek giving her a sadly sweet look of girlhood.
Old Lansing finished his breakfast and pushed back his chair.
“You’ll excuse me,” he said, “but I’ve been up since cock-crow, and I hav’n’t done a blessed thing but water the cows. The men are in the barn now waiting. Temp’rins ’ll give you breakfast. I’ll warrant the girls will be surprised when they get down. Lazy critturs! Temp’rins, why don’t you wake ’em up?”
“O sakes! Let ’em sleep,” said Temperance; “ina few more years they’ll wake fast enough o’ their own accord. Laws! I kin mind when I’d have slep’ all day if they’d let me be.”
In this homely sentence lay the secret of Temperance’s influence. This gaunt old maid never forgot the workings of her own youth. Indeed now that it was past she acknowledged its weaknesses very frankly, and this reminiscence made her very lenient towards young people.
Old Mr. Lansing departed for the barn, and Sidney, filled with impatience to see Vashti, paced up and down the kitchen.
Temperance brought the eggs and sat down beside the tray, looking at him with a sort of pitiful sympathy in her keen eyes.
Sidney essayed to begin his breakfast; a smile twitching the corners of his sensitive mouth.
Temperance watched him.
At length he laid down his knife and looked at her.
A subtle atmosphere of sympathy made him confident and expansive.
“I say, Temperance,” he said, “I was never so happy in all my life. You don’t mind my talking to you about it, do you? I’m so happy that—oh, Temperance.”
It was a boyish conclusion; he looked at the gaunt country woman; her hands worked nervously; she looked as if shefeltthe emotion which made him ineloquent.
“You have seen—you are pleased?” he continued in haphazard fashion.
“Bless your soul, Sidney,” burst out Miss Tribbey, forgetting to be formal, “I’m pleased if so be you’re happy. I ain’t very religious. I expect I have a worldly heart. I’m like Martha in the Bible, allus looking after cooking and sich, but I’ve said to my Nathan heaps o’ times, ‘He’s a blessing,’ I said, ‘to have in the house,’ and I mean it. My soul! I only hope Vashti ’ll come up to your expectation.”
“Ah,” said Sidney, “there’s no doubt of that. She’s perfect.”
Miss Tribbey’s mouth half opened, then shut resolutely. She had her own standard of perfection, but she had too much sense to deprecate the lover’s fond extravagance.
“I’m perfectly content,” said Sidney, “perfectly.”
Miss Tribbey grew very white.
“Don’t say that,” she said earnestly, “don’t; no good ever came of sich a boast. It’s terrible dangerous t’ say you are perfectly content. I never knew good to come of it—never.”
“But I am,” said Sidney, feeling happy enough to challenge the powers of evilen masse.
“Listen,” said Temperance gravely, “don’t say that. ’Taint meant for mortal man to be content. ’Taint intended. What would make us work for Heaven if we was perfectly content here? No, don’t say it. I’ve known one or two people that thoughtthemselves perfectly content, and how soon they was brought down! There was Mrs. Winder. Has anyone told you about Mrs. Winder?”
“No,” said Sidney, “but I know her by sight. She’s got a stern face.”
“Starn! You’d be starn-looking too if you’d come through what Sal Winder has. First she married Joshua Winder; he was a bad lot if ever there was one, and after they’d been married ten years and had four children, what does he do but up and run away with a bound girl at Mr. Phillipses, a red-cheeked, bold-faced critter she was. Well, Sal never said nothin’. She was left with a mortgage and the four children and a roof that leaked. I don’t s’pose anyone ever knowed the shifts Sal was put to to bring up them young ones and work that place and make both ends meet and keep the roof of the old house from falling in. Mebbe you’ve remarked the old house? It’s got a white rosebush by the door, and blue ragged-sailors in the yard, and the pile of bricks beyond was once a smoke house. She had all her hams and bacon stole one year to make things easier for her. Well, her oldest boy was the most remarkable young one that Dole ever see. Joshua his name was, after his father, but that’s all the likeness there was between the two of them. That boy was jist grit and goodness clean through! And the way he helped his mother! There wasn’t a foot of that old place they didn’t work, and prices weregood then, and in about six years Sal got the mortgage paid. She gave a dollar to the plate in church the next Sunday. Some held ’twas done to show off, but Sal wasn’t that stripe of woman. ’Twas a thank-offering, that’s what it was.
“Well, next year Sal built a barn, and the year after the new house was begun. The house went on slowly, for Sal wanted to pay as she went along. Well, at last the house was built and painted real tasty, and one day I was over there to visit a spell, and Sal says, ‘Joshua has gone to pay the painter for the house painting,’ she says; ‘it’s a sort of celebration for us and we’re having ducks for supper. I hope you’ll stay and help us celebrate.’ Then she went on to say how good Joshua had been, which she didn’t need to tell me, for all Dole knowed he was perfect if ever there was a perfect son. So jest after the lamps was lighted, in come Joshua. He was tall and slim; he favoured Sal in his looks; he had worked so hard ever since he was little that his hands had a turrible knotty look like an old man’s, and he had a sort of responsible expression to his face. Well, we was all setting at supper and Joshua had cut up the ducks and we was all helped, and Sal says, ‘Now make your supper all of ye. We’ve had a hard row to hoe, Joshua and me, but we’ve kep’ it clear o’ weeds, and I guess we’re goin’ to have a harvest o’ peace and quiet after the grubbin’.’ Joshua looked up at his mother, and Inever seen two people more happy to look at. Sal was real talkative that night, and she says:
“‘Well, Temperance, I’m right glad you’re here to-night.I’m perfectly content this night,’ she says. The words wasn’t out of her mouth till I saw Joshua give a shiver—like a person with a chill in his back.
“‘Have you got a chill, Joshua?’ I says, and he laughed quite unconsarned, and he says, ‘Yes, I seem to have the shivers.’
“Four days after that Joshua Winder lay dead in the new house.... My! I mind how his hands looked in his coffin. His face was young, but his hands looked as if he’d done his heft o’ work. No, never say you are perfectly content. It’s turrible dangerous.”
Sidney’s sensitive heart was wrung by the homely story.
“Oh, Temperance,” he said, “why did you tell me that?” She looked at him as a surgeon might regard one whom his healing lancet had pained.
“Because,” said Temperance, “because it’s a tempting o’ Providence to say or to think you are content. I ain’t superstitious, but I’d rather hear the bitterest complainings as to hear anyone say that.”
“And yet,” said Sidney, “I should think the Lord would be pleased to see people happy, each in his own way.”
“Well,” said Temperance, modestly, “I ain’t much on religion, Mr. Martin. I can’t argue and praiseand testify the way some can, but my experience has been that when folks begin to think themselves and their lives perfect and to mix up earth with heaven, and forget which one they’re livin’ in, they’re apt to be brought up sudden. It seems to me heaven’s a good deal like a bit o’ sugar held in front of a tired horse to make him pull. I guess there’s a good many of us would lie down in the harness if it wasn’t for that same bit of sugar; we may look past the sugar for a while, but when we get to a bit of stiff clay or run up against a rock we’re mighty glad to have the sugar in front o’ us again; but, sakes! you ain’t made no breakfast, and there’s the girls! You’ll breakfast with—her—after all.”
Temperance gave him an arch look and departed, and Mabella had hardly crossed the threshold before the sympathetic Miss Tribbey called her; when she arrived in the back kitchen Temperance took her by the shoulders and whispered energetically in her ear:
“Sakes, M’bella! Don’t go where you ain’t wanted.”
Mabella’s eyes lighted with sympathy.
“You don’t say!” she said.
Temperance nodded like a mandarin.
“It must be catching!” said Mabella. “It was Nathan brought the infection to the house.”
“Go ’long with you,” said Temperance, and witha very considerate clatter of dishes she made her intended entry audible to the two people in the kitchen.
Mabella looked at Vashti eagerly—sympathetically, but the calm, beautiful face of her cousin was as a sealed book.
“Whatever was that noise in the night, Temperance?” asked Vashti.
“Why, I don’t know,” said Temperance, “I was sure I heard a noise, but I couldn’t see anything when I got up. Did you hear anything, Mr. Martin?”
“Not I,” said Sidney, “but I was so busy with my own thoughts that you might have fired a cannon at my ear and I would not have heard it.” He looked at Vashti; her down-drooped eyes were fixed upon her plate; suddenly he exclaimed:
“What have you done to your hand? It’s burned!”
“Yes,” she said quietly, “after I blew out my lamp last night I knocked the chimney off. I caught it against my side with the back of my hand, that burned it.”
“My!” said Mabella. “I would have let it break.”
Vashti smiled, and suddenly raised her eyes to Sidney.
“A little pain is good for me, I think. It makes one know things are real.”
“But the reality is sometimes sweeter than the dream,” he said, tenderly.
She let her eyes fall in maidenly manner. It wasas if she had spoken. This woman’s most ordinary movements proclaimed the eloquence of gesture.
“You must have been up early,” said Mabella to Sidney.
“Yes,” he said, “I was in a hurry to leave the dream-world for the real.”
“And how do you like it?” asked Mabella, saucily.
Vashti spoke at the moment, some trivial speech, but in her tone there was the echo of might and right. It was as if with a wave of her hand she brushed aside from his consideration everything, every person, but herself.
They rose from the table together.
“Come out,” he whispered; she nodded, and soon they were pacing together in the morning sunshine. Mabella looked after them; turning, she saw Temperance wiping her eyes.
“What is it?” she asked with concern.
“Nothing,” said Temperance; “nothing; I’m real low in my spirits this morning, though why, I’m sure I can’t say. But it’s fair touching to hear him! There he was this morning talkin’ of her being perfect, and sayin’ he was perfectly contented. It’s a tempting o’ Providence. And, Mabella, there’s Vashti—she—well, I may misjudge,” concluded Temperance lamely. “Sakes! look at them chickings,” with which Temperance took herself off to regulate the ways and manners of her poultry yard. Mabella departed to do her work light heartedly, and Vashti out in themorning sunshine with her lover was weaving her web more and more closely about him.
In two nights more Sidney was leaving Dole.
It was the night of the prayer meeting.
All Dole knew of his engagement to Vashti Lansing; all knew he hoped to be the successor of old Mr. Didymus. The old white-headed man had spoken a few words to him telling him how happy he was to think of his place being so filled. He spoke of it calmly, but Sidney’s lips quivered with emotion. Mr. Didymus said, “Wait till you’re my age and you won’t think it sad to talk of crossing over. Wife and I have been two lonely old people for long now, hearkening for the Lord’s voice in the morning and in the evening, and sometimes inclined to say: ‘How long, oh, Lord! How long?’ We won’t be long separated. When folks live as long together as we have they soon follow each other. That’s another of God’s kindnesses.”
There was in the simple old man’s speech an actual faith and trust which brought his belief within the vivid circle of reality.
“I will do my best,” said Sidney.
“The Lord will help you,” said the old man.
The prayer meeting was animated by thought for Sidney. There was something in the idea of hisgoing forth to prepare to be their pastor which caught the Dole heart and stirred its supine imagination.
When old Mr. Didymus prayed for him, that he might be kept, and strengthened and guided, it was with all the fervour of his simple piety. The intensity of his feelings communicated itself to his hearers.Amenswere breathed deeply and solemnly forth.
Vashti would have liked Sidney to speak.
“I cannot,” he said simply; nor was his silence ill thought of. He was going forth; he was to be comforted; he was the one to listen to-night whilst they encouraged him and plead for him, and again, in the name of the Great Sacrifice, offered up petitions for him. The hour had come for the closing of the meeting, when suddenly Mary Shinar’s clear, high treble uttered the first words of one of the most poignantly sweet hymns ever written.
“God be with you till we meet again—May His tender care surround you,And His Loving arm uphold you,God be with you till we meet again.”
“God be with you till we meet again—May His tender care surround you,And His Loving arm uphold you,God be with you till we meet again.”
“God be with you till we meet again—May His tender care surround you,And His Loving arm uphold you,God be with you till we meet again.”
“God be with you till we meet again—
May His tender care surround you,
And His Loving arm uphold you,
God be with you till we meet again.”
Every voice in the church joined in this farewell, and then the benediction was slowly said—the old tender, loving, apostolic benediction, and they all streamed forth into the chill purity of the autumn night. They shook hands with him, and he stood among them tall and slight and pale, inexpressibly touched by their kindliness, unexpectedly thrilled bytheir display of emotion. It was only their religion which moved these people to demonstration.
The last hand clasp was given. The lights in the church were out, and the Lansing party took its way homeward.
Temperance’s face and Mabella’s were both tear-stained. Vashti’s pale beauty shone out of the dusk with lofty quietude in every line.
Sidney looking at her felt he realized what perfection of body and spirit meant.
A new moon was rising in the clear pale sky—the wide fields, tufted here and there with dim blossomed wild asters, lay sweet and calm, awaiting the approach of night as a cradled child awaits its mother’s kiss. Far away the tinkling lights of solitary farm-houses shone, only serving to emphasize the sense of solitude, here and there a tree made a blacker shadow against the more intangible shades of night. There was no sound of twilight birds; no murmur of insect life.
Sidney was passing home through the heart of the silence after a farewell visit to Lanty, who was kept at home nursing a sick horse.
It was the night before Sidney’s departure from the Lansing house. The summer was over and gone. It had heaped the granaries of his heart high withthe golden grains of happiness. He walked swiftly on, then suddenly conscious that he was walking upon another surface than the grass, he paused and looked about him. Around him was the tender greenness of the newly springing grain—above him the hunters’ moon curved its silver crescent, very young yet and shapen like a hunter’s horn. A new sweet night was enfolding the earth, gathering the cares of the day beneath its wings, and bringing with it as deep a sense of hopeful peace as fell upon the earth after the transcendent glory of the first day, and here amid these familiar symbols of nature’s tireless beginnings he was conscious of an exalted sense of re-birth. He too was upon the verge of a new era.
He stood silent, gazing out into the infinity of the twilight.
Afterwards when the pastoral mantle did fall upon his shoulders there was a solemn laying on of hands, a solemn reception into the ranks of those who fight for good; but the real consecration of Sidney’s life took place in that lonely silent field, where the furrows had not yet merged their identity one with the other, where the red clods were not yet hidden by the blades. Out of the twilight a mighty finger touched him, and ever after he bore upon his forehead almost as a visible light the spiritual illumination which came to him then. It was, alas, no self-comforting recognition of a personal God. It was only the sense that all was in accord between the Purposer and the worldhe had made; but this was much to Sidney. The man-made discord could be remedied, even as the harsh keys may be attuned. For ever after this hour he would give himself up to striving to bring his fellows into accord with the beautiful world about them.
Suddenly he felt himself alone. A speck in the vastness of the night, a little flame flickering unseen; but just as a sense of isolation began to fall upon him a mellow glow gladdened his eyes—the light from the open door of the old Lansing house. He bent his steps towards it with a humble feeling that he had trodden upon holy ground ere he was fitly purified.
In after days when many perplexities pressed upon him, he often withdrew in spirit to this twilight scene. Of its grey shades, its dim distances, its silence, its serenity, its ineffable purity he built for himself a sanctuary.
Alas! In that sanctuary the God was always veiled.