CHAPTER XVI.
The next dawn drew from out the dark bright with the portents of a perfect day.
All the hollow heaven was blue as a turquoise stone.
Vashti faced the sunny hours, which yet loomed so black for her, with that courage and calm which grows out of over-much torture.
Pain became its own anæsthetic in course of time—and this numbness had crept over proud Vashti Lansing. She had made others suffer much, but they all had their compensations. Who can say how much she suffered herself?
As the hour for the service drew near, Sidney became very nervous. Vashti tried vainly to console him, but all her soothing words failed to impress him. It was as if she strove to grave an image upon quicksilver.
At last she said to him gently:
“It will be given thee in that hour what thou shalt say.”
His face brightened.
“Of course it will,” he said simply. “That has happened to me before.”
They left the house together. The sun seemed to be more radiant in its revealings than usual that morning, and as Vashti walked down the path its radiance seemed to linger and dwell about her. “A gold frame about the dearest picture upon earth,” said Sidney, his loving eyes alight with the adoration of first love. And as he saw her that morning she was very beautiful.
Passing the common height of women she had grown more statuesque and slender, the lithe plastic grace of her girlhood had fixed into a gracious, womanly dignity. Her great grey eyes were profoundly mysterious. They looked out desolately from her tragic face, as the altar lamps of a desecrated temple might shine upon the waste places.
The contours of her strong, beautiful face were solemn and suave as the curves of the Greek Acanthus leaf. Above all there was expressed in her whole face and in every line of her body an intense energy, both of thought and movement. With her to think was to act; to will was to strive.
When distressed by thought or tormented by the behests of her imperious will, she was wont to translate the mental energy into physical exercise, and walk until the demon was laid by physical weariness.
She wore that Sunday morning one of the gowns Sidney had so lovingly designed for her. It fell in quasi-Greek draperies straight from shoulder to heel. Conventionalized by the hand of a clever modiste,it was yet almost classic in its severity. It suited her well.
They arrived at the church a little late.
The congregation was already assembled—and such a congregation! Never in all the annals of Dole had there been such an one. The village had simply emptied itself into the church.
Lanty and Mabella were there, the light of perfect peace and love upon their brows.
Ann Serrup and her baby sat in Mrs. Ranger’s pew. That good woman, trembling before the shadow of the “judgment” she was always prophesying, had secured Ann apparently to offer in evidence of good faith, if need arose.
Nathan and Temperance occupied one end of their accustomed pew, crushed into the corner by the overflowing of the unprecedented assembly. And seated in the middle of the church, well back, but just in a line from the pulpit, sat a stranger.
A man with a strong square head, rugged face, and grizzled hair and beard.
A workman, one could see at a glance, and poor as the people of the congregation, but yet there was a subtle difference.
His face was more sophisticated in suffering than theirs—his poverty more poignant—for he knew which they did not, what poor people miss. He had looked wistfully up the highways he might not tread, they looked only upon the hard road they had travelled.
He peered yearningly into paradises of learning whose gates are closed to the man whose hours are spent in toil; they did not lift their eyes beyond the little circle of their immediate needs. He craved to “reach the law within the law”; they sought their own personal salvation.
And as Sidney rose the eyes of this man dwelt upon him as one might look upon a master who had betrayed him, whom yet he follows afar off.
Sidney rose in his place.
A shaft of golden light wavered about the old-fashioned square panes of the window, and, finding the centre of one, pierced through it, and streamed in lucent radiance straight above Sidney’s head.
Some in the congregation thought it was like the flaming sword that drove Adam from Paradise, and the old workman, watching the preacher with an infinitude of yearning in his eyes, gave a deep-chested sigh and thought it pity that nature’s golden illumination was just a little higher than Sidney, just a hand-breadth beyond him.
With hands outstretched above them Sidney uttered the usual words of his invocation, and then gave out the hymn. There are unwritten canons which govern the selection of sacred songs, and in Dole the clergyman had been wont to begin the service with words suggestive of humbleness, or pleading, or an acknowledgment of the Deity they were addressing, or at least a filial expression of confidence in a Father’s love. But Sidney had chosen another hymn than any of these—one of those yearning sweet songs which here and there redeem the hymn-books—usually chosen at the end of the service; he took it as the key-note seemingly of his sermon:
“Oh love that will not let me go.”
The congregation sang it wailingly. The preacher rose again and taking for his text these words “Love, the fulfilling of the law,” closed the Bible and resting his folded hands upon it began to speak to them, so winningly, so tenderly, that his words smote the flint of their hearts as Moses’ rod did the rock. It is one of the terrible tragedies of our imagination to think that the act which saved the wandering querulous tribes alive, condemned the weary old patriarch to only view the promised land. Our souls rebel against the thought, the dispensation seems too bitter, and it is hard to reconcile ourselves to the idea that Sidney, giving the cup of Living Water to these people should himself die athirst—because he had neglected some outward forms. For surely no one could dream but that Sidney’s whole life had been one long act of worship.
The old workman had never known before how beautiful the gospel of good tidings might be made. He felt it necessary to steel himself against its insidious charm. Humanized by Sidney’s subtlesympathy, and presented to them as a panacea for all human ills, it was little wonder that the old workman began to realize to the full the hold the Christ-word had upon those who believe—though their hearts be rived and strained by earthly cares, though their souls be carded like wool and woven with worldliness, yet there remain ever the little grains of love—the tiny shining particles of faith.
And, as Sidney quoted gentle passages from Holy Writ, a great hope fell upon the old workman that the man preaching these things really believed them—were it otherwise? He shuddered. The magnitude of the hypocrisy necessary for such a deception appalled this disciple of the barren truth. And his hope that Sidney believed was not based only upon the desire to know his idol worthy at least of respect for honesty, if not for judgment; deep down in the soul of this great-hearted man there lived a great love, a great concern for Sidney. He longed to know that Sidney was happy. There was no need to ask if he had suffered. From his appearance it would seem he had suffered almost to the point of death. It would be some compensation if he had won such consolation as he proffered his people. Now this attitude of the old workman’s proves his devotion, for it takes a deep, deep love indeed, to make us willing to forget our personal prejudices. But as Sidney proceeded a sick fear fell upon the grey-haired man. For, if unlettered in the highersense of the word, he yet brought to bear upon any mental question that intuitional acuteness of perception, which in a worthy way corresponds to the natural craftiness which makes comparatively ignorant men so often successful in business.
Nature’s lenient mother-heart tries to protect all her children—these gifts seem to be the birthright of the poor. Alas! instead of being used as a defence they are too often upraised in offensive menace.
Beneath the eloquent imagery, the deep human sympathy, the tender lovingness of Sidney’s words, the old workman pierced—and found nothing.
Within the sanctuary of Sidney’s soul there was no benignant Christ—only the vague splendour of altruistic ideals.
And yet—he held up before his congregation this mask of formulated faith and tricked them as the priests, hidden in the hollow images, tricked the credulous people thousands of years ago.
The old workman almost groaned aloud.
A man of the most lofty mental integrity, this mummery wrung his heart.
“Oh,” he said within himself, “if he would only, only once declare the truth—even now if he would cast away these mummy cloths of deception which swathe his spirit. If he would once, onlyoncespeak and redeem himself for ever.”
He looked at Sidney, an agony of entreaty in his eyes, hoping against hope, he looked upon him steadfastly, and suddenly Sidney’s voice faltered, a vague expression dimmed his eyes, he repeated himself, hesitated, then in utter silence his eyes roved over his congregation, here and there, as if seeking something definitely defined; and after an interval which keyed up the already tense regard of his hearers almost unendurably, Sidney found the face he sought, and with the unquestioning, unreasoning gladness of a child, he relinquished his eyes to the piteous entreaty in the workman’s.
His congregation, whose prejudices had not withstood his eloquence, stirred and wondered, but Sidney heeded not, for the crisis in his life had come.
Who shall explain these things?
In vain the scientist with scalpel and microscope pries and peers, these subtleties puzzle and delude him. For by some curious telepathy, untranslatable in the symbols of spoken speech, Sidney’s mind received the impression of the other man’s great grief, whose only hope translated itself into a great cry, “Be true; be true.”
And Sidney answered it.
For, fixing the attention of his congregation with a gesture as of one who confesses before his judges, he began to speak. And in words of surpassing and subtle eloquence he laid bare every secret of his soul to them. With eyes exalted and glorified he spoke of his love for Vashti Lansing; he told how she had entreated him, how he had hesitated, “but,” he said, “her beauty and her goodness stole my soul and I promised to be Minister of Dole.”
A swift intaken breath told how Dole comprehended this—the determination to be the minister’s wife was easily comprehensible—but the means appalled these people with their faith in the mystic election of priests.
With searching syllables Sidney brought forth the secrets of his soul, and translated to his hearers the doubts and fears, the hopes and ideals which dwelt with him during the period of his long probation.
With face wrung with reminiscent agony he spoke of the day when, after his Profession of Faith, he was solemnly set apart to the service of the God in whom he did not believe.
In some way he made them comprehend his suffering, and a long-drawn groan went up from the over-wrought people, nearly every one of whom had at one time or another agonized beneath “conviction of sin,” to whom these spiritual wrestlings were sacred as the birth-pangs of their mothers. With humbleness of spirit he traced his course among them.
He told them in simple touching words of his love for them, of his hopes for the little village in the valley, of his secret plans for their welfare.
Day by day he traced his path among them till he came to the sermon of the preceding Sunday, and, quite suddenly it all came back to him, all its cruelty, its innuendo, its bitter Mosaic logic, writ as in letters of fire upon his heart.
With an exceeding bitter cry he said, “Ah, brothers! This is the evil thing of my ministry. I forgot that the true physician uses the knife as well as the healing unguent. I shrank from paining you, I so eagerly wanted your love; I so dearly coveted your confidences; I so ceaselessly sought your sympathy that I could not bring myself to say anything to wound you. It seems to me that for hard-wrought hands like yours there must be recompense waiting; for weary feet like yours, which have travelled by such stony ways, I thought there must be pleasant paths, and as we are forbidden to take judgment upon us, so doubtless I sinned in judging you so mercifully, but I am too weak to condemn. But my wife, my beautiful wife, more spiritual than I, did not fall into this error, and took the burden from which I shrank. She chose my text for me last Sunday, and when, after reading it, I found myself without words, dumb for very pity before you, suddenly there entered into me the spirit of Vashti, my wife; I cannot explain this to you, but it is true. It was her holy spirit which spake through my unworthy lips.”
A quiver shuddered through the congregation; they remembered the old witch-wife—was burning too bitter a penance for such deeds? Silently, but with terrible unanimity, Vashti Lansing was condemned, but their gaze did not wander for a second from the magnetic eyes of their preacher who, with a few more words of eulogy upon Vashti, which were tragically but unconsciously ironic, continued in an almost apologetic way, “I would be the last to question the inspiration of my last Sunday’s sermon to you, but yet,” more humbly still, as one who, whilst excusing himself, still persists in error, “but yet I can’t help thinking we should not dwell too much upon the inclement side of justice; why grieve over sudden deaths when we have read of those who ‘were not, for God took them?’ Why scorn death-bed repentances when we remember the thief on the cross? Why scoff and turn away from those who sin; why predict generations of shame for them when it is written, ‘Though ye have lain among the pots, yet shall ye be as the wings of a dove covered with silver, and her feathers with yellow gold.’” The imagery of the words he had quoted diverted his thoughts to another channel, the apology died from his voice, to be succeeded by the triumph of the high priest who chants a pæan to his divinity, and he uttered an impassioned plea to the men and women before him to endeavour to bring their lives more into accord with the beauty and sublimity of nature, and just as he was soaring into the rhapsodies of pantheistic adoration, there sounded from the elm trees the clear sweet call of a bird.
Sidney paused and listened. It came again.
And then before the wondering eyes of the startled congregation—Sidney’s face was transfigured into a semblance of glorified peace. He stood before them smiling in visible beatitude. The sun ray which had been wavering nearer and nearer to him descended upon his brow like an aureola, Nature’s golden crown to the soul which adored her; an instant the congregation saw their preacher thus—for the third time the bird’s imperatively sweet cry sounded, and Sidney, turning as one who responds to a personal summons, descended the pulpit stair, and following the bird’s voice out into the sunshine of the summer day, and was gladly gathered to its bosom. Henceforth he had no part in human hopes or fears. “Heaven lies about us in our infancy,” a heaven of infinite freshness, of illimitable joy, of inexhaustible possibilities and gladness.
Sidney’s spirit had burst the bars of the prison house and won back to the places of innocent delight, from which each day bears us further away.
Ere he reached the door the grey-haired workman was at his side; there were tears in his eyes—a holy awe upon his countenance, as of one who had witnessed an apotheosis. He wrung Sidney’s hand—and Sidney gazed upon him with infinite impersonal loving-kindness—with such a regard onemight dream the Deity regarded his creatures.
The workman strove to speak, but the words died in his throat.
“I am so pleased to see you,” said Sidney gently. “You have been long away.”
“Yes,” said the man, “yes—and I must journey on again.”
“Then,” said Sidney, “I wish you pleasant ways, calm seas and safe haven.”
He clasped both the workman’s hands in his.
So they parted for ever. The one to tread the hard road down to “the perishing white bones of a poor man’s grave.”
The other to stray along the golden vistas of ecstatic dreams—till they merged in the dream of death.
And as the workman turned away the congregation came forth and gathered about Sidney; each one in passing the door had turned to give a look of contempt at Vashti where she sat, still and unmoved in her place, and each marvelled at her quietude, but when all the congregation drew from out the church, and yet Vashti did not come, the mothers in Israel went back and found her still sitting there—for she was paralyzed in every limb, though an alert intelligence shone in her great eyes.
They gathered about her, and she confronted them still and silent as another Sphinx with her secret unrevealed. The curse of perpetual inaction had fallen upon her impetuous will; her superb body was shackled by stronger gyves than human ingenuity could devise.
Ah, Vashti! When only a few hours since you had coolly reckoned with the issues of life and death—saying arrogantly “at such and such a time will I lay down the burden of life—and knock unbidden upon death’s portal and present myself an unlooked-for guest before his throne.”
The poorest of us is wont to say “life at least is mine.” How we delude ourselves! We are but infants, priding ourselves upon holding the ends of the reins, whilst Destiny shapes our course—when we would linger in pleasant places we are hurried forward, and when we would flee we are held in some bleak country barren of delight.
They told Sidney gently of what had befallen his wife—but as That Other said “Who is my mother?” so Sidney said, “Who is my wife?” and let his gaze wander to where, high above the housetops, the swallows soared black against the blue....
Mabella and Temperance waited tenderly upon Vashti. Whatever her sins were they were terribly expiated. Through the interminable days and nights she rested there, a living log, imprisoning a spirit fervid as flame, a will as imperious as ever, an intelligence acutely lucid.
We shrink from reckoning up the sum of this woman’s torture, augmented by each loathedkindness to which she must submit.
With extraordinary resolution she feigned herself dumb in their hands, from the beginning she had crucified this one of the few faculties left her—she did not choose to be questioned, she would not complain.
She remembered the dream she had had upon the night of her betrothal, and knew that its curse had come upon her.
Lanty sometimes came to her, when she was alone, and told her that he forgave her—that he was sorry for her; he told her again and again, and hoped she understood—but she made no sign—though this all but slew her spirit.
They contrived a wheeled chair for her, and when the weather was fine took her abroad into the sunshine, and sometimes on a summer Sunday, when Lanty did no work, he and Mabella would take her to Mullein meadow, because it was a place of sweet memories to them.
But one grows heartsick at thought of the refined and exquisite tortures this woman endured. Endured unsubdued—for never by one syllable did Vashti break the silence which she had imposed upon her tormented soul.
Dole “hoped against hope” for the restoration of its beloved preacher, but it never came.
He was vowed to the worship of Nature.
At length another preached in his pulpit, an earnest, commonplace man, wise enough to accept with little question accepted truths, only sensitive enough to feel vaguely that he was an alien to the hearts of his people, but attributing the barrier between them to his great superiority. Dole did not forget its duty to the church, but the congregations there were never so great as those which gathered in the churchyard when Sidney came every now and then to talk to them from beneath the elm trees, telling the wonderful truths about Nature, revealing to them in parable the pathos and possibilities of their own lives, bidding them aspire always, expounding to them the miracles writ in letters of flowers upon the hillside, and spelled in starry symbols against the sky. They brought their children to him even as the women brought their babes to be blessed by the Redeemer, and Sidney taught them with unwearied patience, and in more than one instance sowed seed which brought forth a hundredfold. He no longer took solitary walks, for one or other of the Dole children was sent with him always, a happy reverent attendant, whose only duty consisted in suggesting that the dreamer turn towards home at noon or nightfall.
And so we leave Sidney, rapt in the ecstasy of a happy dream, wherein by clairvoyant vision he saw “good in everything.”
Nor need we split theological hairs analyzing his claims to mercy.
A mortal genius has said:
“He prayeth best who loveth bestBoth man and beast and bird.”
“He prayeth best who loveth bestBoth man and beast and bird.”
“He prayeth best who loveth bestBoth man and beast and bird.”
“He prayeth best who loveth best
Both man and beast and bird.”
And the Christ forgave a great sinner because she “had loved much.”
Upon these pleas Sidney’s case must rest, if ever he is called before the Grand Jury.
As to the wreck of his mortal life, we can but remember the words of an Eastern martyr, spoken long, long ago—“It is better to be a crystal and be broken than to be a tile upon the housetop and remain.”
THE END.