CHAPTER XI.YGDRASIL.
It was easy for little Louis to accept the story of the Christ-child as a fairy tale; his life was so full of marvels this Christmas-tide. It was a drop of bitterness, of course, that George had not been asked to accompany him to Freddy’s Tree; but, to say the truth, George was not a particularly refined or attractive-looking child. He was large for his age, and heavily built; slow of speech and movement, with whitish hair, pale blue eyes, and features inchoate, of a modelling seemingly unfinished. There were not wanting signs and tokens that George might develop into a fine man; but at the moment he was unattractive, and Alice had not reached the point of choosing her guests on the broad ground of a common humanity. Indeed she was not prevented, either by common humanity or the further consideration of kinship, from reflecting with a secret glee, which she was careful not to reveal to her husband, that the presence of Louis, the shoemaker’s son, would only be condoned by the remainder of her guests because he was still—only a baby.
For Alice had bidden, not only the Garyulies and the Joblillies, but also the Grand Panjandrum himself with the little round button at top.
“Of course,” said Mrs. Henry Randolph, “you have a right to ask whom you please to your own house, and the child is only a baby, too young to presume,at present,” with awful emphasis; “but I am sorry to see you infected bythe levelling tendencies of the age. Do you not know that even in heaven there are distinctions of rank?”
“I don’t know anything about it,” said Alice.
“Why, I’m sure we read of Thrones, Dominions, Principalities, and Powers.”
“And I suppose the Thrones decline to call on the Dominions, and the Principalities speak of the Powers as ‘that sort of people,’” said Alice. “Jennie, if I believed as you do, I’d—well, I’d rather be a heathen.”
“I hope you never may be a heathen, my dear”—
“Oh! come, you’re both right and both wrong. People who argue always are,” interposed the hearty, jovial voice of Mr. Randolph. He was a tall, fine-looking man, with clear brown eyes, remarkably keen, and rather lacking in tenderness, but of a certain restless quickness as they swept from one face to another. His features were regular, and his manner genial, while his laugh was equal to that immortal one of Scrooge’s nephew. Henry Randolph was a man of enormous popularity, and so trusted by his friends that even the knowledge that he had availed himself of the terms of his father’s will to keep back his sister’s portion did not shake their faith. He must have such good reasons, they said.
In truth, his reasons were of the very best. He was a man who speculated largely, and for the most part successfully; but, just at the time of Alice’s marriage, his losses had been so heavy that to resign the control of such a large amount would have been to him financial ruin, while, with it at his command, he could in a short time make good his loss. The temptation to refuse his consent to the marriage, and thus make the money legally his, was doubled by his real objection to Dr. Richards as an irreligious man, whose views upon social and political matters were also open to exception. He honestly wished his sister to accompanythe family abroad, as, even if her marriage were not thereby definitely broken off, it would at least be deferred sufficiently long to serve his purpose financially.
Now, of all this Frederick Richards was perfectly aware; that is, he knew—as every one did—of the sudden collapse of the scheme which crippled Mr. Randolph, and swallowed whole innumerable smaller fortunes, and, through some murmur of the reeds such as betrayed King Midas’ secret, learned that Henry Randolph was a loser to a large amount. But to Alice the doctor said nothing; only, when the family returned to Micklegard, and the offer was made to let bygones be bygones, and restore to Alice the fortune her father had left her, Dr. Richards quietly refused.
Why?
It is hard to make his motives comprehensible to those who regard wealth as the supreme good.
The grandfather of Henry and Alice Randolph had made his fortune by means which, even in that day and generation, were regarded with scorn and horror. He was a slave-trader; but his only daughter, surrounded by luxury and educated at a Northern school, never suspected by what iniquitous means her wealth was acquired. To her, her father had always been the man he had become after his runaway marriage with the daughter of an aristocratic family, and his purchase of an estate in the far South,—handsome, jovial, and, to her, always tenderly indulgent. Her marriage to a representative of one of the “old families” strengthened her belief in herself as one of the chosen few for whose benefit the world was made and ordered; and her husband didnotbehold in the pearls and rubies upon his bride’s fair neck the blood and tears of suffering human beings, though somewhat distressfully aware of the not over-creditable manner in which his father-in-law had “made his money.” A convenient termthis of “makingmoney,” by the by. One might call it the great nineteenth-centurypetitio principii; for what a man makes might certainly be considered as his by all social and moral laws, while that which he merely acquires is suggestive of all sorts of confusing possibilities. Yet, if he makes, of what does he make, and whence came his material? Unless he makes also that, can he be said really to own the thing finally produced?
All which would have appeared to Henry Randolph very empty and unprofitable speculation,—mere sound, signifying nothing. Certainly, if one had accused him of insensibility to such suffering as he did not actually see, there are few of us who could afford to cast a stone at him; and he would have said of himself that to cases of real distress his heart and purse were always open; yet, to Frederick Richards’s mind, an invisible, semi-tangible hardness, under the manufacturer’s generous, cordial exterior, was always accounted for and excused by his grandfather’s occupation. That his own Alice had, as he firmly believed, escaped such a core to her loving heart (like the earth’s inmost hypothetical solid centre), was a freak of heredity for which he did not profess to be able to account. Yet, even Alice did not entirely concur in her husband’s opinion about the fortune, as was indeed most natural. She yielded to his feeling upon the matter; but her own was by no means what it would have been had the fruit of speculation been “lifted” bodily from a bank vault, or the slave-trader’s chattels been of pure Caucasian parentage. Also the money would have been in many ways a convenience, and, in case of “anything happening” to herself or the doctor, would have given her an ease of mind in regard to Freddy, which she was by no means able to derive from the thought of an overruling Providence.
What Henry Randolph thought of his brother-in-law, we had better not inquire; what he said was this,—
“Well, it’s his own affair; and if he can afford to despise such a sum of money, he is better off than I am,” which in a sense was true, since Dr. Richards had as much as he wanted.
The amount in question, however, was carefully “left” to Alice in her brother’s will, he being, according to his lights, a just man, whenever speculation would allow him; and, meanwhile, the two families were on studiously cordial terms, and were assembled on Christmas Eve to hail the lighting of the tree Ygdrasil.
It was Dr. Richards who told the story before the doors were opened, with Freddy in his arm-chair beside him, Frank and Harry Randolph on the floor at his feet, Louis in the place of honor on his knee, and Pinkie leaning forward from her father’s arms to listen. Pinkie, alias Rosalie, alias Pink Rosebud, was a wilful little maiden not three years old. She had the dark clear skin, brown eyes, and chestnut curls of the Randolphs, and bore indeed so strong a resemblance to Freddy, that her brilliant color and strong, active limbs sent many a pang to his parents’ hearts. But there was no envy in the pain, and the child was well-nigh as dear to both as if she had been their own.
The boys were comparatively very unimportant members of the Randolph household. Mrs. Randolph was what is called an excellent mother, and brought up her boys very strictly, and without petting or indulgence. Therefore they were best described collectively, at least in her presence, where there was little to distinguish them, except that Frank had taken a line of his own in being fair and blue-eyed. For the rest, both were painfully shy, silent, and awkward, though well-looking and well-dressed.
Little Louis, on the other hand, was perhaps too young to be shy, or perhaps had lived too freely and happily with his father to dread the criticism of his elders. At allevents, as he sat on the doctor’s kind knee, and heard of the dragon Nidhug and the beautiful Nornas, and the golden and silver fruit of the great world-tree, there was nothing in his sparkling eyes, nothing in his sweet, childish face and neat, becoming dress, to indicate that the Nornas had been otherwise than kindly disposed at his birth.
Freddy and he had taken to each other at once.
“Can’t you walk one bit?”
“Haven’t you any mamma at all?” they had asked; and then the fair, rosy face and the pale, dark one had met and kissed each other.
After the gifts had been distributed and compared, there was singing of Christmas carols; for all the Randolphs had fine musical and artistic talent, and the boys forgot themselves and their mother’s presence more readily in music than in any other employment or amusement. Harry, indeed, was the leading soprano of the choir to which both belonged; and as all gathered around the piano, where Alice presided, they were a perfect picture of a happy, united, and religious family. And these are some of the words that they sang:—
“It came upon the midnight clear,That glorious song of old,From angels bending near the earthTo touch their harps of gold.‘Peace on the earth, good-will to men,From Heaven’s all-gracious King,’The world in solemn stillness layTo hear the angels sing.But with the woes of sin and strifeThe world has suffered long,Beneath the angel strain have rolledTwo thousand years of wrong;And man at war with man hears notThe love-song that they bring;Oh! hush the noise, ye men of strife,And hear the angels sing.And ye, beneath life’s crushing loadWhose forms are bending low,Who toil along the climbing wayWith painful steps and slow,Look now! for glad and golden hoursCome swiftly on the wing.Oh, rest beside the weary road,And hear the angels sing!For lo! the days are hastening on,By prophet bards foretold,When with the ever-circling yearsComes round the age of gold;When Peace shall over all the earthIts ancient splendors fling,And the whole world give back the songWhich now the angels sing.”
“It came upon the midnight clear,That glorious song of old,From angels bending near the earthTo touch their harps of gold.‘Peace on the earth, good-will to men,From Heaven’s all-gracious King,’The world in solemn stillness layTo hear the angels sing.But with the woes of sin and strifeThe world has suffered long,Beneath the angel strain have rolledTwo thousand years of wrong;And man at war with man hears notThe love-song that they bring;Oh! hush the noise, ye men of strife,And hear the angels sing.And ye, beneath life’s crushing loadWhose forms are bending low,Who toil along the climbing wayWith painful steps and slow,Look now! for glad and golden hoursCome swiftly on the wing.Oh, rest beside the weary road,And hear the angels sing!For lo! the days are hastening on,By prophet bards foretold,When with the ever-circling yearsComes round the age of gold;When Peace shall over all the earthIts ancient splendors fling,And the whole world give back the songWhich now the angels sing.”
“It came upon the midnight clear,That glorious song of old,From angels bending near the earthTo touch their harps of gold.‘Peace on the earth, good-will to men,From Heaven’s all-gracious King,’The world in solemn stillness layTo hear the angels sing.
“It came upon the midnight clear,
That glorious song of old,
From angels bending near the earth
To touch their harps of gold.
‘Peace on the earth, good-will to men,
From Heaven’s all-gracious King,’
The world in solemn stillness lay
To hear the angels sing.
But with the woes of sin and strifeThe world has suffered long,Beneath the angel strain have rolledTwo thousand years of wrong;And man at war with man hears notThe love-song that they bring;Oh! hush the noise, ye men of strife,And hear the angels sing.
But with the woes of sin and strife
The world has suffered long,
Beneath the angel strain have rolled
Two thousand years of wrong;
And man at war with man hears not
The love-song that they bring;
Oh! hush the noise, ye men of strife,
And hear the angels sing.
And ye, beneath life’s crushing loadWhose forms are bending low,Who toil along the climbing wayWith painful steps and slow,Look now! for glad and golden hoursCome swiftly on the wing.Oh, rest beside the weary road,And hear the angels sing!
And ye, beneath life’s crushing load
Whose forms are bending low,
Who toil along the climbing way
With painful steps and slow,
Look now! for glad and golden hours
Come swiftly on the wing.
Oh, rest beside the weary road,
And hear the angels sing!
For lo! the days are hastening on,By prophet bards foretold,When with the ever-circling yearsComes round the age of gold;When Peace shall over all the earthIts ancient splendors fling,And the whole world give back the songWhich now the angels sing.”
For lo! the days are hastening on,
By prophet bards foretold,
When with the ever-circling years
Comes round the age of gold;
When Peace shall over all the earth
Its ancient splendors fling,
And the whole world give back the song
Which now the angels sing.”
“What a tissue of rotten lies Christianity is!” thought Dr. Richards (who could not sing), leaning in his favorite attitude upon the mantel-piece, and listening to Henry Randolph’s fine bass, as it bore up the flute-like notes of his son. “There is Randolph, now, by a turn of his pen to-morrow will make ‘life’s crushing load’ heavier, maybe, to hundreds, and his own pockets heavier at the same time, and then will square accounts with his conscience by giving fifty dollars to some charity. Faugh!”
But at this moment an exclamation from Mrs. Randolph interrupted him. Louis and Pinkie, while the singing was under way, had got together into a corner, where they were discovered to be embracing one another in a very pretty baby fashion.
“But I tisses F’eddy,” observed Pinkie.
“It is very different,” remarked Mrs. Randolph. “Freddy is your cousin; but this little boy is no relation, and is besides in quite a different state of life.”
“Fut is state of life?” asked Pinkie. “Is it tause he tan yun ayound and F’eddy tant?”
“You’ll understand when you are older, dear,” said her mother; but whether Pinkie would have been satisfied with this answer was rendered forever doubtful by the announcement of the carriage.
“Good-by, child,” said the great lady, patting Louis’ golden head; “I wish you every good fortune that is proper for you to have. I was your mother’s best friend, if she had only known it, and would have saved her from the misery that afterwards, in the righteous Providence of God, overtook her.”
“What is misery?” asked little Louis, wistfully; “is it dying? My papa says she died ’cause we was poor, and the millionnaires wouldn’t ’vide. Are you a millionnaire, and would you ’vide?”
“Quite a promising young Socialist,” observed Mr. Randolph. “His father must be a dangerous man.”
But Louis did not hear him; he was listening eagerly to the lady.
“My dear, life and death are the gift of God. Your mother broke his laws, and he punished her”—
“Jennie! Jennie! don’t speak so to the child.”
“He should hear it from some one, Alice, and there is no one else likely to tell him. Heaven knows how kindly I feel towards poor Dora, but I dare not palliate her sin. ‘Be not unequally yoked together with unbelievers’ are the words of Scripture, and poor Dora has paid the penalty for disregarding them; happier so than if she had seen her sin visited uponothers.”
“Jennie, my dear Jennie, indeed the horses will catch their death; you forget how cold it is,” cried her husband, in an agony.
Doctor Richards saw them gravely to the door, then returned to the parlor, where Alice, with white lips, was restlessly putting chairs in place, and tidying books andornaments; and Louis was standing where he had been left, with flushed face and clinched baby hands.
“If God killed my mamma,” said Louis, as the doctor entered, “then I hate God!”
“Hush, Louis,” said the doctor. “I must take you home, little boy. After all, Alice, it don’t do to mix—states of life.”
“It would, if people were human,” she said in a stifled voice.
“Ah!” he said; “but some people are only—millionnaires.”
“Is God a millionnaire?” asked Louis, as they drove away.
“Mrs. Randolph thinks so,” said the doctor; “but there’s no such person, Louis, it’s all a myth—that is, a fairy-tale.”
“I fink everyfing is a fairy-tale,” said Louis to himself with a sigh of relief; “and I’m glad about it, too; for it’s nice to be a Christ-child, but I don’t want to be God and kill people.”
When Dr. Richards returned he found Alice waiting for him in his study. Freddy, she said, had dropped asleep at once, after the evening’s fatigue.
“I am glad,” said the doctor; “I feared the excitement might keep him awake.”
“Yes,” she said, and then, suddenly, all the storm within her broke forth.
“Fred,” she cried, “help me! Is there a God? and is he so cruel? Would he punish my child for his mother’s sin?”
“My dear,” he said very gently, “why ask me? you know my opinion on these matters. And you have no very high esteem for Mrs. Randolph that her words should have such weight.”
“It is my own conscience!” she cried wildly. “Fred, I will tell you even though it will give you pain. It has rung in my ears night and day, ‘The sins of the fathers shall be visited on the children.’”
“Poor little girl,” he said tenderly, stroking her hair. “I hoped at least, Alice, that your religion made you happier.”
“My religion! mine! Oh! whatismy religion! I feel like little Louis, Fred, that I hate”—
“Hush!” he said, “you will be sorry presently, when this excitement has passed away. Go to bed, like a good girl, and forget it all.”
“If I only could!” she sighed; “but I won’t pray, Fred; I can’t, to a God of punishment.”
He did not reply, except by a kiss, but, when the door had closed behind her, smiled a little bitterly.
“The mystery of pain,” he thought, “she said we should solve it together, hoping all the while to convert me, as I knew very well. And her solution is, a God of punishment!”
He turned up his reading-lamp and took up the latest medical treatise, which, though it recommended very harsh remedies, he did not decline to believe in.
Dr. Richards was a devotee of physical science, not a philologist, and it therefore did not occur to him that, etymologically, Punishment is much the same word as Purification.
CHAPTER XII.“O YE ICE AND SNOW, BLESS YE THE LORD!”
Louis was awake bright and early on that Christmas morning, though, as applied to the atmospheric conditions of that particular day, “bright” is a singularly inappropriate adjective. The snow fell, not merely in flakes, but in clouds, and whether “the opposite side of the street” was “over the way,” or in Farther India, was purely a matter of faith; to the eye it was perfectly invisible.
“I don’t see how you are to get even as far as next door with those things,” said Metzerott, half in earnest, looking first at Louis, then at the blinding storm.
“Oh! but, papa, I must take George and Frau Anna their presents,” cried Louis in dismay.
“I don’t see why youmust,” said his father. “Fritz will be in after his breakfast in a few minutes; he can take them.”
Louis looked very grave; he turned and took up his picture of the Christ-child. It was prettily framed, and the inscription, with its letters of red, blue, and gold, encircled it like a glory. Alice had used German letters and the German version.
“Ehre sei Gott in der Höhe, und Friede auf Erden, und den Menschen ein Wohlgefallen.”
“I could not be a Christ-kind if Fritz took them in,” he said.
Sally Price, who was busy over the frying-pan, whilePolly stirred up the bread-sponge for the daily baking, which, as they had three families to provide for, might not be omitted, even on Christmas Day,—Sally Price dropped her iron spoon and held up her hands.
“Well, if I ever did!” she said. “Do you want to be a Christ-child, you angel?”
“Papa said I might, and Dr. Richards said, last night, the little boy in the picture looked like me, and I must try to be like him.”
“Law!” interposed Susan, “I thought the doctor was one of these infidels.”
“Infidel or not,” said Miss Sally, “he acts like a mighty good Christian.”
“But talkin’ like that, Sister Sally”—
“Talk! anybody cantalk: and infidels often talk louder than Christians, about imitatin’ the Saviour, and such like. I s’pose they think nobody can keep ‘em up to it, if they don’t want to be kep’; while a member of the Church daren’t say much, for fear of folks sayin’ he has back-slid if he don’t live up to it.”
“Can’t I go, papa?” asked Louis, to whom the foregoing had been simply wasted breath.
“Of course, my son. I will carry you myself. We will show the good church members two more infidels who can keep up to their word without being kept.”
“It’s just awful to think of that child being brought up to believe like that,” said Polly as she covered her sponge and set it away to rise.
“Well, ’tis and ’taint, Polly,” answered Sally thoughtfully. “First place, he’s one of them children which of such is the kingdom of Heaven, and the good Lord will take care of his own; and, second, how better could he be raised than to want to be a little Christ-child, and ready to cry if he’s told he can’t?”
“But he thinks it is all a fairy-tale.”
“As it were,” said Sally. “What’s the difference between fairy-tale and history, Polly Price, to a baby five years old?”
“But when he gets older, Aunt Sally”—
“You take my advice, Polly, don’t you never cross a bridge till you come to it. If the good Lord don’t take care of him when he gets older, it’ll be time for you to interfere. Now, ketch hold and rench out Mrs. Rolf’s coffee-pot, will you? and I’ll pour the coffee into it. And if them pork chops ain’t done to a turn, I lose my guess. Cream gravy, too, for a treat for Christmas!”
“Last Christmas,” said Susan, “we had nothing to eat but the heel of a loaf, so hard we soaked it in water before we could bite into it.”
Sally stood for a moment with misty eyes; her volubility was gone on this subject. Then, as a sound of feet stamping off snow was heard at the door, she said with fervor, “GoodLord!” and fell to work upon the business in hand.
The next moment Metzerott hurried in with Louis on his shoulder, and followed by Fritz Rolf, a bright-faced boy of eight, with much of his mother’s briskness and “faculty.”
“I’ve cleared a path,” said Fritz; “and, if it lasts till I get back, I’ll get this breakfast in a-hootin’. But I tellyouit’s snowing! Cover everything up warm, Aunt Sally, or Jacky Frost will stick his nose into it. Coffee, taters, pork, and hot biscuit! Bully! Ta! ta! see you later.”
“You’re a-goin’ to see me right now,” said Sally dryly. “S’pose you can open the front door yourself? Not with that tray in your hands, less’n you want to play the fall of Troy with it.”
As she opened the front door of the shop carefully, to exclude as much, or rather admit as little, as possible of the snowy air, those in the kitchen heard her exclaim, “Dr.Richards! if ever I seen a snow image! Your very eyelashes is white! Jump off and get warm, do!”
“I wasn’t at all sure of my whereabouts, Miss Sally,” answered the doctor’s voice, “until you spoke. But for my horse’s better judgment, I should have lost my way a dozen times—a hundred times—between this and Oak Grove.”
He had sprung from his horse as he spoke, and was shaking the snow from a blanket strapped military fashion behind his saddle, wherewith to cover the steaming animal.
“Oak Grove! the land! You ain’t been twelve miles in this storm?”
“Sent for at midnight,” said the doctor, shaking off vigorously the snow adhering to his person before he entered the shop. “Old patient, and a matter of life and death; so I had to go.”
“Well, I hope it turned out life, to pay you for your trouble.”
“I think it will be; she is safe for the present, at all events,” he said, very quietly, but with a smile from under his fur cap, which Sally never forgot.
Just at this moment a centaur-like figure loomed up through the snow, and halted at the sound of their voices.
“Is that you, doctor? They told me at your house to ride out along the road to Oak Grove, and I might meet you. What luck that I took this street!”
“Mr. Randolph! What has happened?”
“It’s my wife, doctor, my poor wife! I don’t know if she will be alive when we get there. I would not trust any one but myself to come for you in this storm.”
“A poor compliment to human nature,” thought Dr. Richards, “and a bitter commentary on the happiness of the rich. Metzerott, here, could find twenty to serve him in such a strait; but they are not hirelings.”
Perhaps twenty self-devoted friends was rather a largeproportion for even a poor man; but Dr. Richards had been four hours on the road, and was nearly frozen, so his exaggeration may be forgiven, especially as he was on his horse before the reflection had passed through his mind.
At the first sound of Mr. Randolph’s voice, Sally had re-opened the shop door, which she had closed behind her, and called out, “Cup o’ coffee, Polly; be spry!” and as the doctor was about to ride away, there it was at his elbow, black, fragrant, and steaming hot. He swallowed it hastily, though he said afterwards that he could have dallied over every spoonful, like an old maid over her afternoon tea, so good it tasted. Then he disappeared with Henry Randolph into the storm.
The coffee would have been doubly relished had Dr. Richards known it would be his sole physical support and sustenance until noon of the same day. He had sent his tired horse home by a man-servant immediately upon reaching Mr. Randolph’s; but it was late in the afternoon before Alice, who had been watching anxiously, saw him walk wearily up the street towards the house. She had the door open before he reached it. The snow-storm had ceased, in consequence of a sudden fall in the temperature, and the brilliant sunshine on the white garment of Mother Earth, which the rude, irreverent wind was tossing in huge folds hither and thither, seemed to trouble the doctor’s eyes; for Alice noticed that he shaded them with his hand as he came towards her, and that they had a strained, dazed expression when he had entered the study, into which, with many loving words, she tenderly drew him.
“You walked home, dear! How imprudent! I sent John to ask if you wanted the buggy.”
“I sent him on to Dr. Harrison, who took my rounds for me to-day—happily, for I am fit for nothing now. Oneof Harrison’s horses is laid up, and the other is not able for double work such weather as this.”
“It is frightfully cold, and—oh, my darling! what a condition you are in!”
“Well,” said the doctor philosophically, “when a man has had snow drifting down the back of his neck and his boots, and settling everywhere about his person that it lawfully could settle, for about fourteen hours, and then it has melted and dried on him, he has a right to be in a condition.”
“I am afraid he will have a right to be ill if he keeps up that sort of thing,” said Alice. “But how is poor Jennie? Henry was in a terrible way about her this morning, but I have seen her in so many of these attacks”—
“Just so,” said the doctor; “poor soul, I suppose it was this one coming on that made her so—ah—captious—last night. I had very little hope of her from the moment I reached her bedside; but one comfort is that she had everything done for her that medical science could suggest. Harrison was with her in less than half an hour after she was taken, and stayed till I got there.”
“Is she—why, Fred, you talk as if—she can’t bedead!”
“She died about an hour ago, Alice. I would not let them send you any message, for, knowing how it would shock you, I wished to bring the news myself.”
Alice made no reply, but stood white and still, her hands hanging clasped before her, gazing into the fire. She could find no tear for the unloved sister-in-law, there was no grief at her heart for the loss of one so antagonistic; but the shock of her death was all the more sudden and terrible. For Alice was quite conscious of the crisis in her spiritual life that had been revealed to her on the preceding night, to which, as to all crises, physical and psychological, she had been long unconsciously drawing near.
In truth, Alice’s religion had never been to her nearly so real as the love she bore to her husband; there had been nothing between her and the Invisible, approaching or corresponding to the unfailing sympathy, the wordless comprehension and support, she found in him. Her love was real—her religion an unconscious make-believe; and reality had conquered.
Upon her realization that the creed she had learned had grown all unreal to her (that it had never been other than unreal she was not yet wise enough to know), Mrs. Randolph’s sudden passing away into the unknown came as a lightning stroke to her own house of life. Nothing else could have shown her so clearly the change in her own creed, as this death, so near herself, yet with no loving grief to hide the sharp surprise, the sudden vacancy. She was utterly silent; indeed, what was she to say? the usual platitudes had become so unutterably meaningless.
“She is better off,”—but Alice knew nothing whatever about it. “I hope she is happy!” “I trust she died at peace with God.” “May she rest in peace,”—none of these phrases would come to her lips. Only there rose before her mind a sudden sense of the dark unknown into which that soul had gone out; was it indeed to annihilation?
She turned suddenly, and put out both hands to her husband; her eyes had a frightened, lost look.
“Fred,” she cried, “what is death? is this lifeall? Shall we lose each other utterly one day, you and I? Is therenothingbeyond the grave?”
He took her in his arms, it was all he could do for her in her sore need.
“I don’t know, my darling,” he said; “if there be, science has no power to find it. We must only love each other all the more while we live.”
“But why?” she cried, “what good will that do? itwill only add to the misery of the one who is left behind. What is the use of love? or of living? unless we could die together.”
“There are others,” he said, “whom we can help. We may live for them.”
“And what claim have they upon us? If there is nothing beyond the grave, why not make the journey thither as short as possible, at least for the wretched? There is Freddy, for example, who has to suffer so much; if it is right to give him a little morphine to ease his pain for a while, why would it be wrong to give him enough to ease it forever?”
“Fortunately, there is no fear of your carrying that theory into practice,” he said, trying to smile.
“Because I am selfish,” she replied, “and cannot part with my child sooner than I must. But, Fred, there must be some truth somewhere; why should we not look for it together? There are books.”
“That is the hopeless part about it,” he answered; “there are so many books, and all so positive on their own side of the question. The theologian will prove to you just as clearly the whole scheme of salvation, as he calls it, as the scientist that nothing but matter has any real existence. For my part, there are two arguments which to me are perfectly conclusive. I ask nothing further. Whether there is or is not some sort of Blind Power in the universe, such as the great First Cause that some scientists are willing to acknowledge, does not interest me; but of the non-existence of an all-knowing, all-loving, personal God I am perfectly convinced for two reasons. First, the existence of evil in all its forms: sin, sorrow, suffering, and death.Iwould not allow such things in a world under my control, and a God who is less merciful than I is no God at all—for me.”
“I remember,” she said softly, “I have always known you thought like that.”
“But my second reason,” he continued, “is, if possible, even stronger. Here are you and I—yes, Alice, I too—who would give our very lives to believe in God and immortality. How are we to do it? To examine all the evidence, for and against, would take a lifetime of incessant study; and even those who have given this—beginning, too, with far more learning than we possess—have reached widely different conclusions. Well may the Book of Job say, ‘Canst thou by searching find out God?’ but the author, whoever he was, failed to draw the conclusion that, if there were a God he would not so have hidden himself.”
“I suppose you are right; at least, I don’t see how to answer you. But, surely, Fred, there is a great deal in the Bible about the truth being easy to find. All through the Old Testament it is the Jews who are turning away from God, and he who pleads with them to return; and in the New it says that God has hidden these things from the wise and prudent, and revealed them unto babes; and that only those who become as little children can enter into the kingdom of heaven.”
“That is, only those who crush down the intellect and believe blindly,” he said bitterly. “I can find no faith on those terms, Alice; let me meet annihilation, if I must, with my eyes open.”
For another moment she clung to him, with her face hidden; then she looked up very pale, but calm.
“I can live without faith,” she said quietly; “but I give you warning now, that without you and my child I could not and would not live. If death comes to me first,—well! if not”—
“You will live as long as there is any one for whom youcan make the burden of life less heavy,” he said, “and so will I so far as we can control our own fate. It has been all the creed I could boast of for many years, Alice, to say, ‘I believe there are those whom I must live to help.’ I give it to you, now, in return for that of which I have robbed you; take it for what it is worth.”
“‘I believe there are those whom I must live to help,’” she repeated slowly. “It is a better creed than poor Jennie’s, Fred. ‘I believe there are those whom I must live to help!’” A sudden light came to her eyes, a smile to her lips. “I will begin with you!” she cried. “Why, how abominably selfish I am, to keep you here talking theology, when you are tired to death and half starved, I dare say.”
“My comforts are at least all ready for me,” he answered, smiling, with a glance at the tempting meal upon the table, and the coffee-pot, and little dish of fried oysters keeping hot before the fire.
“I thought you would rather have your lunch here,” she said. “Will you change your clothes first?”
“They seem to have pretty well dried on me,” he answered, “but I shall feel better for a hot bath; I am chilled to the very bone. And, meanwhile, there is some one else, Alice, love, who will need your care. Your brother asked to send poor little Pinkie here for a few days, and of course I had no wish to refuse. You will not mind the trouble, I know. The carriage will be here in a few moments.”
“Poor little Pinkie!” Alice’s eyes filled with the first tears that she had shed for Mrs. Randolph. “No, no, she will not be a trouble; but I must tell Freddy.” She paused, hesitated, and came back. “What shall I say to him, Fred? I can’t tell him that his aunt has gone to heaven. I don’t know that there is such a place.”
“She has gone into the unknown,” he replied; “but that would be nonsense to Freddy. I do not know what bettername you can find, my dear, than just heaven. And if you don’t believe in golden harps and a glassy sea,—well, neither do you put much faith in the country above the bean-stalk; yet you tell Freddy about that.”
Alice went away, not quite satisfied, yet seeing no other course practically open to her than that suggested by her husband. It was a comfort that Freddy needed not now to be instructed in the nature or whereabouts of the Celestial Country. His small imagination took fire at once at the idea that Aunt Jennie had gone there; and he talked so eloquently to Pinkie of harps and crowns and angels with great white wings that, what with his conversation, and the pride and honor of paying a visit all alone, the little thing dried her tears for the mother whom she had been told she was never to see again, and was comforted until bedtime. But by bedtime Alice’s hands were so full as to promise her every opportunity to put her new creed into action.
For Dr. Richards’s hot bath had proved quite ineffectual to take the chill out of his bones. Alice found him sitting huddled over the fire, shivering with what he asserted to be only a nervous chill. He could not eat, but was insatiably thirsty, and said that his eyes bothered him; he supposed the snow had dazzled them. She tried vainly to persuade him to go to bed, until her persuasions were re-enforced by the positive orders of Dr. Harrison, who happened to come in. Before morning he was burning with fever, and tormented with all the worst agonies of inflammatory rheumatism.
Truly, it seemed that Mrs. Randolph had been right, and that an avenging God was punishing the faithless for their disloyalty to him. And yet how had this illness come? By spending and being spent for others; by rendering good for the evil rendered unto him. Has not Christ said, “Inasmuchas ye did it unto these, ye did it unto me”? Can he return evil for good?
Only a step of the way can our dull eyes see; and oftentimes that step is rough and hard, and to us looks very evil. But the evil shall pass away, the good remaineth.
It was strange what comfort and strength Alice found in her new creed, meagre though it were in comparison with the creeds of Christendom.
“I believe there are those whom I must live to help.”
Simple and practical, at least.
Logical? well, no! The human mind is, fortunately, not supremely logical; fortunately, I say, considering the readiness wherewith it adopts premises whose sole logical conclusion would be worse than the Spanish Inquisition, or the hanging of the Salem witches. Dr. Richards’s creed had come to his wife backed by the irresistible force of his life and character.
But neither of them reflected that in the verb, the little verbmust, lay all they professed to deny,—an ordered universe and an ordering God.
CHAPTER XIII.PROSIT NEUJAHR.
Sally Price had parted, in the storm and stress of life, with most of the superstitions wherewith she began the world; but there were two upon which she still retained a firm hold. One related to the new moon, which was to her a sign and token of good luck if seen over the right shoulder, or in full face in the open sky; while the left shoulder, or the obscuring branches of trees, brought, in some shape or other, misfortune. She always made a wish before she removed her eyes from the first sight of the new moon, holding up money, if her pocket happened to contain any of that commodity; but in this she had less faith, though she often referred to the fact that, the very last new moon before Polly’s famous swoon, she, Sally, had shown the moon a silver dime, and had wished for something to do whereby they could keep from starving.
The other superstition was that New Year’s Day foretold the year’s complexion, whether sad or joyful. Not its atmospheric condition. Sally looked upon the weather as a matter of too slight importance to be capable of foretelling anything; but sick or sorry; penniless, cold, and hungry; busy, happy, rich, and glad,—as New Year’s Day found her, so, in the main, would she be throughout the year.
They were foolish superstitions enough, I admit; yet Sally had infused something into them not utterly and ridiculously preposterous. For if, as she so humbly and faithfully believed, a Providence watches over the fall ofthe sparrow, why could not the same Providence foretell to her by the position of the moon and her own impecuniosity, or the reverse, and also by the events and circumstances of New Year’s Day, His gracious will concerning her for the ensuing month or year? It was quite worth His while to comfort her with a little gleam of hope when help was at hand, or to give her time to prepare her mind if misfortune were approaching. And not for the world would she have waited to get the moon over her right shoulder before she looked up, or in any other way have tampered with the omen. It was certainly not her doing that they were to take possession of their new quarters in Männerchor Hall on Sylvester-Abend itself, or that the New Year was to open so brightly with a concert and ball; but it was not strange, but touching, how persistently she strove that Susan should be perfectly well by the eventful day.
“If you wasn’t younger than me, Susan Price,” she said, “I’d say you was in your dotage. Tired! What have you done to tire you, I’d like to know?”
“That’s just where it is, Sally,” her sister would answer meekly, “I ain’t done nothin’; and yet I feel’s if I don’t want to lift a finger, not if the house was afire.”
“Well, don’t lift a finger, then,” Sally would reply. “There ain’t no call for you to; and when the house ketches fire, I’ll come and call you.”
The truth was that Susan, who had never possessed Sally’s vigor, either of mind or body, had been worn out by the bitterness of the struggle for existence, and had no strength to rally now that the worst of the battle was over. Dr. Richards had prescribed tonics—and paid for them himself—and had shaken his head gravely when he had left her.
“A total change of air, scene, and idea,” he said privately to Karl Metzerott, “might possibly put new life into her;but I doubt if she have sufficient elasticity of mind or body to make such a change possible. Set her down in the middle of Paris or London, and she would mentally carry Grind and Crushem and her sewing-machine along with her. She can’t shake them off as her sister has done.”
“Not till she moves to the graveyard,” said Karl grimly; “that’s the only change possible for her, I suppose.”
“And she will piously believe that an All-Merciful God has sent her there! Well, poor soul, it’s her only consolation; I would not rob her of it if I could.”
“Which you couldn’t, doctor. That’s the queerest part of all the lot of rubbish. Those two women believe that the All-Merciful God you speak of has watched over them all their lives, as firmly as I believe you have just written that prescription. I cannot understand it.”
“Nor I,” said the doctor; “but there are so many things one cannot understand,” he added, half to himself.
Did it ever occur to him now, as he lay upon his bed of pain, that an all-merciful, loving Father might be trying—even then—to teach him the lesson which Susan Price already had learned,—the lesson he could not understand?
The move on New Year’s Eve brightened up poor Susan so as to cheer Sally wonderfully. They were busy all day arranging their new domicile; for they meant to use the front portion of the former shop as a dining-room, where those whom they supplied might, if they preferred, take their meals instead of having them sent home. They had already had an application from a young German girl who taught in the public schools, and had neither friends nor relatives in the city, and from one or two clerks in the various stores. Metzerott and Frau Anna, for a while at least, would provide for the conveyance of their own meals, though the former had plans and designs upon a house thatstood next to the Hall, whereof he spoke not until the time should be ripe.
Besides their “moving and unpacking,” as Sally jocularly called it,—for they had little to move but their three selves,—and the meals to prepare for their regular customers, there was the supper to be served at the ball that night, so it may be imagined that the Prices had their hands full. Franz Schaefer came around early “to help,” as he said, in reality to look at Polly in the intervals of his proper business of attending to the fire and lights. He was now a tall, somewhat gawky youth of nearly seventeen, with his father’s reddish hair standing up like a halo around an honest, open, but ugly countenance, which, lacking the pastor’s nervous quickness, wore for its most constant expression a stolid impassibility. Only with his violin upon his shoulder did his face light up or change; but, with the soft touch of the electric wood against his cheek, the eyes grew soft and humid, a half-smile curved the corners of the rather heavy lips, and a slight color crept into his usually pale face.
Polly, who was three years his senior, laughed at the lad’s devotion, and alternately petted and scolded him, like a mother. Franz submitted; but he had entirely made up his mind as to his own course.
“I mean to marry her if she will wait until I come back from Germany,” he said to himself. “If she marries any one else, I will kill him like a mosquito.”
Certainly, no one suspected such bloodthirsty designs in the quiet youth who lounged awkwardly against the doorpost as the members of the Männerchor climbed, laughing and talking, up the steep winding staircase that led to the Concert Hall, most of them pausing to chaff “Janitor Franz,” as they went by. Franz was not good at chaff; he never could think of anything clever enough to say untilthe occasion was past. Then he thought of a plenty, he said. Sometimes he confided some of the things he ought to have said to Polly, who laughed at him undisguisedly.
“If you were a soldier, Franz,” she said, “you’d go after your ammunition just as the battle was beginning.”
As usual Franz only grinned in reply, but later in the evening he suddenly exclaimed aloud, “Not if somebody I can imagine were on the other side.”
Several persons standing by looked at him in surprise; but Franz did not deign to explain that the imaginary somebody was Polly’s possible husband.
In truth Franz was not stupid, though the connection between his mind and tongue did not act as rapidly as might have been wished. But give him time and he could think as clearly and plan as well as anybody. And thus on this Sylvester Night it was beautiful to see how evident he made it to all men that Polly belonged to him. He surrounded her with his own family, of whom Tina, recently married, was his confidant, and highly approved his choice. The pastor was amused, but unconcerned, as at something belonging to a distant and improbable future; and Gretchen, who still held fast her own immunity from accident, was mildly sarcastic and coolly critical. Polly did not rebel; she liked the pastor’s family, even to Lottie, now grown stouter than ever, and apt to drop asleep on very small provocation. Tina and Polly were fast friends; and, as for Franz himself, his devotion was too absurd for any sensible person to consider seriously.
It was the last hour of the old year, and “Damenregiment” was solemnly proclaimed by the Herr President. The ladies, he said, who for all the year had been under the rule of their lords and masters, for that one hour, were to have full sway. They were to ask, and their partners were not to refuse, to tread a measure devised for the totaloverthrow of the nobler sex. In the “Männerchor Cotillon” the dancers stood in a circle as in “Tucker.” In the midst stood a table and chair, the former bearing favors and a nightcap. Up to this table each conqueror waltzed her chosen victim, and, either decorated him with a favor—in which case he waltzed her away again,—or—put the nightcap on his head. In which case, he naturally remained in his place until released by some more gracious Tänzerin.
Great was the fun and loud the laughter; many an old score was paid off by a specially unbecoming arrangement of that yellow tissue-paper cap, with its full white frill and long floating strings; many a shy old bachelor was hunted out from his refuge in the gallery, and made, as he keenly felt, a scorn and hissing in the sight of all men. Polly thoroughly enjoyed it. She chose the prettiest favor she could find for Karl Metzerott, who was her first partner, and who, simply to tease Franz, improved his opportunity to keep her to himself so long that not a few gossiping eyebrows went up in consequence. Polly, however, being filled with compassion at the sight of Franz chained, Andromeda-like, to that fatal chair (though when dulycappedhe rather resembled Medusa), raised him to the seventh heaven by releasing him.
“It must be nearly twelve,” she said. “Ought not you to look after that dynamite bomb, or whatever it is, that is to explode the New Year in upon us?”
Franz grinned; this time his answer was all ready.
“I’ve got nothing to do with that,” he said, “that’s the president’s business. They would not trust me, anyway; I’m too young. I know who I’m going to wish a happy New Year to, Miss Polly, first of anybody here.”
“That’s good,” she said coolly, “who is it?”
“Ah! I won’t tell, or she’d be running off,” said thelad; “but if any fellow cuts in ahead of me, I’ll throw him downstairs. Miss Polly, if I was to kiss her hand, you know, would she be mad at me?”
“Yes, I think she would,” rejoined Polly. “There are my aunts, who have come up for the New Year wishes; itmustbe near twelve.”
Sally and Susan had been busy in the kitchen over the supper, all the evening, but at this moment appeared in the doorway, to see the Old Year out and the New Year in, smiling and radiant in the new dresses which Frau Anna had made for them.
“Aunt Susan looks so very pale,” said Polly uneasily, “I am afraid she has been working too hard. I ought to have stayed and helped them, but they were both so kind, and the music sounded so bright and cheering,”—
“There was so little to do,” said Franz, “the supper was mostly ready”—
At this moment something—perhaps a dynamite bomb, as Polly had said,—exploded on the stage, and Polly found her hand suddenly seized and kissed.
“Prosit Neujahr!Miss Polly,” cried Franz; “I hope you may be as happy as I would like to make you.”
Polly had no time to be angry; indeed she was half stunned by the “Prosits” and handshakings going on all around her. But through it all there rang all at once a shrill, grief-stricken cry.
“Notnow, Susan! Oh! notnow, when we were goin’ to be so happy!”
For, amid the laughter and good wishes all around her, Susan Price had suddenly and quietly fainted away.