"De Lord He sent His angel.(Fly low, sweet angel;Fly low, sweet angel;Comin' for deliver us again.)An' He tamed de lions for Daniel;An' for Peter broke de prison and de chain.O! de angel of de Lord."
"De Lord He sent His angel.(Fly low, sweet angel;Fly low, sweet angel;Comin' for deliver us again.)An' He tamed de lions for Daniel;An' for Peter broke de prison and de chain.O! de angel of de Lord."
"De Lord He sent His angel.(Fly low, sweet angel;Fly low, sweet angel;Comin' for deliver us again.)An' He tamed de lions for Daniel;An' for Peter broke de prison and de chain.O! de angel of de Lord."
"De Lord He sent His angel.
(Fly low, sweet angel;
Fly low, sweet angel;
Comin' for deliver us again.)
An' He tamed de lions for Daniel;
An' for Peter broke de prison and de chain.
O! de angel of de Lord."
The servant was at work in an outer kitchen; the very words were clear. The gentle melody of the stanza was ended abruptly by the soft, triumphal shout of the last line.
Durgan made the laborers rest their burden within the doorway of the barn, while he went forward with the doctor. But now from the back door Hermione came. She was clad in the simple gray morning gown which she always wore at her housewife's duties; but she looked a shadow of herself, so pale and wan with the pain of the night. She came forward quickly. Durgan saw at a glance that she knew what Bertha could tell, and was ready to meet whatever evil was sufficient for the day. Even at such a moment, so selfless and courteous was she, she had a modest word of greeting and gratitude for Durgan.
Durgan made the doctor tell her the truth quickly, and Hermione went straight on to the side of the nerveless man.
Almost as soon as she looked, without amoment's betrayal of unusual emotion, she stooped and kissed him.
In thick utterance the paralytic repeated her name. What he thought or felt none might know; the still features gave no expression.
Then a great joy lit up her face, and the tone of her homely words was like a song of praise.
"We can keep you safe. You will be quite safe here; and Birdie and I will take real good care of you. We have a beautiful home ready for you."
The doctor had turned away. She gave her command to the bearers, and walked with new lightness beside the bed as it was carried toward the house.
Durgan followed, and found that he was holding his hat in his hand.
How terrible, indeed, was this meeting of love and lack-love, of the life gained by self-giving and the life lost by self-saving. The woman, at one with all the powers of life—body, mind, and spirit a unity—able (rare self-possession) to give herself when and for whom she would; meeting with this self-wrecked, disintegrated man, for whom she had suffered and was still eager to suffer. Like most things of divine import, that kiss given by the very principle of life to the soul lying in moraldeath had passed without observation. Durgan looked upon the still face. He could now clearly recognize the likeness to Bertha in the form, color, and inward glow of the eyes; but so fixed and expressionless were the muscles of the face, which had taken on a look of sensuous contentment, that the onlooker could not even guess what that glow of suffering might betoken, how much there was of memory, of shame, of remorse, of any love for aught but self, or how much latent force of moral recuperation there might be.
While they went to the house through the tears of the morning, the negress with the velvet voice was still singing:
"An' de Lord He sent His angel,An' He walked wi' de children in de flame.(Fly low, sweet angel.)"
"An' de Lord He sent His angel,An' He walked wi' de children in de flame.(Fly low, sweet angel.)"
"An' de Lord He sent His angel,An' He walked wi' de children in de flame.(Fly low, sweet angel.)"
"An' de Lord He sent His angel,
An' He walked wi' de children in de flame.
(Fly low, sweet angel.)"
Durgan, who had been feeling like one in a dream, suddenly forgot to listen to the song, for he saw, as in a flash, the cause of Hermione's solemn joy. The criminal had been restored to her in the only way in which it was possible for his life to be preserved for a time, and for him to be allowed to die in peace. Neither Alden, nor any other, could propose to bring this stricken man to answer in an earthly court. It was again herprivilege to lavish love upon him, to reap the result of her sacrifice by tending his lingering life and telling him her treasure of faith—of the mercy of God and the hope of heaven.
Durgan felt that day to be a distinctly happy one. A youth makes many pictures of happiness for himself, and he must have but a poor outfit of hope and imagery whose pictures are realized. Yet happiness springs up beside the steps of the older wayfarer, a wild flower that he has not sown or tended. In places where his familiar burden lightens, or when gathering clouds disperse, it pushes up its bright flower-face with a positive beauty and fragrance, something much fairer and better than the mere negation of trouble, yet not so gay as mere imagined joys. Durgan, who had come to this mountain thinking to be alone, and had become so strenuously involved in the fate of his neighbors, to-day not only felt peace in the cessation of fear and gloomy forebodings which had enwrapped them all, but was lifted beyond this to participate in the joy of heavenly deliverance which transfigured Hermione Claxton. He could notthink of her to-day without a strange, new, selfless pleasure which he did not analyze; and, added to this, his heart leaped up in gratitude on his own account, for surely now the wife he was bound to honor would be spared the public odium which to her vain nature would be peculiar agony. The fate of a long, living death for the man who had stifled every honorable impulse to avoid the legal punishment of death was robbed of its worst horror, because it gave him immunity from the passion of fear by which he was enslaved, and restored him to the arms of the only human love which could not be quenched by his misconduct and disgrace. Durgan knew enough to suppose that when his wife's first glamor of reverence for Claxton had passed, when, with the help of such a skilful prompter, she had succeeded on the stage of her ambition, his home with her had been no longer even peaceful. The letters 'Dolphus had stolen had convinced Durgan that she was prepared to get rid of her protégé if possible; and when he left her he was practically a homeless fugitive, the whole world his enemy. From such a fate self-destruction, or yielding to the last penalty of the law, were the only ways of escape, had not the angel of mercy intervened.
Later in the day Alden came from the roomabove the carriage house, the room in which Durgan had spent his first two curious nights on Deer Mountain. He only knew of the finding of the fugitive, for, on being assured of this, he had fallen asleep in sheer exhaustion.
The rain was shifting for the time, affording intervals of blithe air and mellow sunlight. Alden sat him down upon a settle in the verandah. The trailing vines and the passion-flower were glowing with the life-renewing moisture, but the gorgeous leaves and long tassels of the love-lies-bleeding had fallen, sodden with the rain.
Durgan was waiting for some instructions concerning certain invalid requisites. His cousins, the Durgan Blounts, were returning to Baltimore for the winter, and Durgan had undertaken that they should make the purchases. No sooner had Alden spoken than Miss Claxton left her writing desk, came swiftly, and sat down beside him.
"There is something that I am waiting to tell you," she said. Her voice was very gentle. "I have not made any explanation, either, to Mr. Durgan, for I wouldn't till I saw you; but he ought to know, for Mrs. Durgan's sake."
Durgan had moved, but, at her command, remained.
There was a little silence, and after she beganhe was quite sure she had forgotten his presence. She took Alden's passive hand in hers.
"Herbert! my father has come back to us. No, dear; do not start like that. He is still alive. That is my long secret, which I could not have kept from you for anyone's sake but his."
Alden said not a word. He sat erect, as if someone had struck him.
"Oh," she cried, with tears in her voice, "the fate that came to him that terrible morning was worse than death, and now he has been carried back to us paralyzed. Have patience with me, and I will tell you all that happened."
The little lawyer, as if suddenly moved by some electric force, was for bounding from his seat, every nerve quivering with the sting of his own mortification and the shock of surprise. It was the strength of her will that controlled him.
"I must tell you from the beginning—it is the only way. Upon the morning that that crime was committed in our house, a boy came with a note from Mr. Beardsley. It made my father very angry. He told me that Beardsley was coming on the heels of his messenger upon an impertinent errand. What he said was that Beardsley was bent upon dictating the terms of his friendship with Mrs. Durgan, whom he had only lately met.
"There was something the maids had to do that afternoon, and I sent them then in the morning, for I could not bear that anyone should see such a person in our house, or see my father so angry. My poor step-mother had not risen from bed. When Beardsley came he went upstairs to my father's sitting-room. The door was shut, but from what my father told me afterwards, I know pretty well what happened."
"Afterwards!" repeated Alden; "afterwards! Hermione?"
"Dear Herbert, do not be angry, but only listen, and you will understand how easily what seemed impossible could happen. This Mr. Beardsley had the idea that my poor father and Mrs. Durgan had fallen in love at his meetings. He was a simple, stupid man, and he thought it his duty to exhort my father and warn my step-mother. I think that, angry as he was, my father thought it best to receive his exhortation with the affection of playfulness. It was his way, you know. He had graceful, whimsical ways; he was not like other people. When he could not make this man see his own folly, or divert him from his purpose, he took down the little old pistol that was fastened on the wall as an ornament—the one that was found. I need not tell you that he did not know it wasloaded; I did not know, and I dusted his things every day, for he could not bear to have a servant in the room. He tried to stop Beardsley by threatening to shoot himself in mock despair. Poor mamma, hearing loud voices, ran in.
"Up till then I am sure papa had not a serious thought, except that he was naturally angered by the folly of the man; but the pistol went off, and poor mamma was killed. Oh! can you not imagine my father's wild grief and anger against the fellow that, as he would think, had caused him to do it? But there was more than that. My father told me that Beardsley denounced him as a wilful murderer, and declared that it was only a feigned accident. Then, you see, he was the only witness, and could ruin my father's reputation. Oh, I think it was fear as much as anger, but I am sure it was frenzy, possessed my father. You know what happened. The Indian battle-ax was hanging beside the pistol, and as soon as Beardsley fell, I am sure my father lost all control of himself or any knowledge of what he was doing."
"Hermione," said Alden, "you cannot believe this story? Who has made you believe it?" He lifted her hand to his lips. "Have you believed this all these years?"
"It is true, Herbert; you will have to believeit. I will tell you my part of it. I do not think I did right, but you will see that I did not know what else to do. When I heard the noise I ran upstairs, but the door was locked. The boy that brought the note was waiting in the kitchen all this time for Beardsley to pay him. Then, in a minute, all was quiet, and I heard my father sobbing like a child. You cannot think how quickly it all happened. Then my father came to the door and whispered through, 'Hermione, are you alone? Are the servants out? Is Bertha there?' So I told him of Beardsley's messenger waiting below.
"Then he came out and called over the stairs to the boy. You know how very clever and quick he always was when he wanted to do anything. He looked the boy up and down, and then he said, 'Do you want to earn a hundred dollars?' The boy was cautious; he did not answer. My father said, 'Can you hold your tongue and help me, and I'll make a gentleman of you? It's your best chance, for a crime has been committed in this house, and if you don't do as I bid you, I'll give you up to the police and say you did it; they'll take my word for it.' And all the time, between speaking, he was sobbing. He shoved the boy into hisdressing-room. Then he told me what had happened.
"He told me he would be hanged if I did not keep quite quiet. I could not believe that they were dead. I went into the room, but I couldn't stop an instant. The sight of that poor body, disfigured past all recognition, even the clothes stained beyond recognition, made me almost insensible. I saw that no doctor could be of any use.
"My father was very quick. He shaved himself, and colored his face with his paints, and put on the boy's clothes. He told me he would go to Mrs. Durgan, who would get him away. He told me to call the police at once, and tell them everything, except that I had seen him or knew anything about him. He locked the boy in a narrow cupboard that held hot-water pipes, and told me how to let him out at night. I did not think at the time it could be wrong to keep silence about my father. I did just what he told me to do.
"You know, Herbert, you said the other night that I had deceived you; but, indeed, the great deceit came of itself. I don't think even my father intended it. I could never have believed they could have mistaken that man lying there for my father. First, the police made the mistake; then, in a few hours, we heard the newsboys crying it all over thestreets. Still I felt sure that when you came, and the coroner, the truth would be known. When you believed it, too, what word could I have said to you that would not have made it your duty to hunt him down? His daughter was the only person who could take the responsibility of silence. I don't say I was right to do it; I only know I could not do anything else. Even the boy, as I found afterwards, had never seen Beardsley. A servant had given him the note to bring. He naturally thought it was Beardsley who had bribed him, and escaped in his clothes. I only kept silent hour by hour.
"I thought again they would find out at the inquest; but when, at length, the poor body was buried, and those saturated, torn clothes burned, and I had found out from Mrs. Durgan that the poor wretch had no near relatives or friends to mourn him, I could do nothing but acquiesce. I had a message from father, through Mrs. Durgan, before they arrested me. She and he had decided that he must personate the dead man, and he even ventured to play the medium's part at the dark séance. He was always clever at disguises. I could not judge them. I hardly cared, then, whether I lived or died; the wickedness of it all was so dreadful. I shrank far more—and therewas nothing heroic in that—from the thought of my father being arrested and punished than from danger for myself. Think what it would have been like if it had been your father!"
Seeing that Alden was profoundly distressed, she hastened to say, "If I had told you, Herbert, how painful would your position have been! And I never even told Bertha; it was father's parting request that she should not know. But I know that of late she has guessed something, for she has lived in fear up here alone. I was obliged when I was ill in Paris to tell her where she would find the truth; she guessed the rest, I fear, and it must have been father's return that she has dreaded. But now he has been brought back so helpless he can never hurt anyone again."
Alden's emotion was hardly restrained from breaking through the crust of his conventionality, and Hermione was fain to turn to a lighter aspect of the case in addressing Durgan.
"I gathered from my father's letters that Mrs. Durgan's motive in befriending him was partly kindness, and partly that he could be of use to her."
"I can understand that," said Durgan. He also felt it a relief to speak clearly on the only aspect of this sorrowful tale which did not awakenemotion. "It was the one thing in the whole world that my wife wanted—to be told how to manipulate the secret springs of a world of fashion in which she had so far moved as one in the dark. And having once taken your father in, she could not go back."
He rose as he said this and went away, wondering how much Alden would submit to the continued devotion of such a daughter to such a father, how much Hermione's appeal would reach him: "Think how you would feel if it were your father."
A day or two later Alden was returning to New York. Durgan drove him to Hilyard in Miss Claxton's surrey.
All the mountains had begun to wear golden caps. Lower down the yellow pod of the wild pea and purple clusters of wild grapes were tangled in the roadside bushes. The sun shone, and the birds cawed and chirped as they quarreled for the scarlet berries of the ash; not a bird sang, for it was not nesting time.
"The doctor can't make a guess, then, as to how long Claxton may live? It may be for months, I suppose," said Durgan.
Alden drew himself up in the attitude of one who gives an important opinion. He was going back to his world of conventions, and already taking on its ways. "My dear sir, I see no reason why, with such nursing, surrounded by suchluxuries, in the finest air, and in such tranquillity, he should not live—ah, perhaps for years."
"It will not be so long as that, I think."
"That must be as God wills."
But there was too much religious starch in the tone of these words to suggest acquiescence.
This good little man, with all his constancy and fervor, had not a large enough soul to see so vile a prodigal feasted without resentment.
Said Durgan, "If his mind is as lucid as the doctor thinks, his present experience must be pretty much like lying helpless in a lake of fire."
"Sir, what is there to trouble him? Two of the finest, most agreeable women who ever lived on this earth are his slaves. They wheel him hither and thither as he suggests a preference. They read; they sing; they show him nature in her glory; and his body suffers no pain. I do not understand your allusion."
"I thought it just possible that, being human, he might have a soul latent in him."
"'Soul'! He has, without excuse or provocation, committed the most brutal crime of the decade; he has passed his years since ministering to his own tastes and indolences in the society of a lady who pleased his fancy, while, with the most horrid cruelty and worm-like cowardice, he hasleft his tender daughter to suffer the consequences of his crime. He has within him, sir, a soul, humanly speaking, beyond hope of redemption."
"But Christian faith compels his daughter to set aside the human aspects of the case."
"Women, sir—women have no standard of manly virtue. Can you conceive that a son—a man who knew the world, could slur over such vice, such perfidy, in a parent?"
Alden's reiteration of "Sir," spoken between his teeth, had so very much the force of "Damn you," that Durgan forbore to suggest that the point of his remark had been evaded.
Alden, half conscious of his own angry inconsistency as a religious man in desiring the torment of the wicked, still resented Durgan's logic enough to bring forward at this point an unpalatable subject. "With regard to Mrs. Durgan, sir; from all the inquiries I have made, I understand that she probably was aware that Adolphus, who has been his valet all these years, had summoned Claxton here on threat of disclosure, and that Claxton had gone to New Orleans, there to assume his new incognito—which, knowing the negro's origin, was natural enough before he interfered on his behalf in your neighborhood. But I understand that Mrs.Durgan did not know that I or the ladies were here, and had no suspicion of the servant's intended treachery. In all probability she has not heard from Claxton, at any rate since he left New Orleans. You are aware that we have decided that the Miss Claxtons shall, till their father's death, retain the name they took upon entering this neighborhood. I wish to suggest to you that it would not be safe to trust Mrs. Durgan with the secret of their whereabouts. It is undesirable, in keeping a secret, to trust human nature any further than is absolutely necessary, and it appears to me, therefore, needful to request you to let Mrs. Durgan be left in entire ignorance of the fate of her late protégé."
Durgan could not but inwardly admit that there was a certain poetic justice in leaving his wife thus in a condition of suspense, and altho he resented the manner of the instruction, he expressed conditional acquiescence.
Durgan more than suspected that Alden was querulously wreaking upon the criminal, and upon all he met, the anger he felt against himself for not, at the first, discerning the simple mistake which had caused the mystery of the "Claxton case." As they drove on, mile after mile, through the wild harvests of the woodland, this supposition wasconfirmed. After talking of many things, Alden broke out in self-soothing comment:
"As to the mistake of the murdered man's identity, my dear sir, how could doubt enter the mind? The body lay in Claxton's private room, beside the couch that he constantly occupied—an unrecognizable mass; Mrs. Claxton dead beside him, and neither of self-inflicted wounds; Bertha wailing the loss of her father; Hermione stunned by shock of grief. Who the dead was, seemed so self-evident; who the murderer could be, such a puzzle, that the mind inevitably dwelt exclusively on the latter point. My dear sir, looking back on the matter, even now I cannot see how a suspicion of the truth could have arisen."
With his professional pique adding to his intense private grief for Hermione's long sacrifice, it was, perhaps, not surprising that the return of perfect confidence in her, after the agony of reluctant distrust, did not do more to sweeten the ferment of his little soul. Durgan reflected that on a mind no longer young, filled with long earlier memories of mutual trust, the suspicion of a few recent days could make little impression. And, again, this short-lived emotion of suspicion was succeeded by the pain of knowing that his own happiness and hers had been voluntarily sacrificed for a wretchso devoid of any trace of chivalry or of parental feeling.
Before reaching Hilyard, Alden expressed his opinion upon another aspect of the recent disclosure. "You say, sir, that to you the most amazing part is that such a man as Claxton could do so deadly a deed. My dear sir, my experience of crime is that the purely selfish nature only needs the spark of temptation to flame out into some hellish deed. No doubt you will think me puritanical, but I hold that, while to most cultured egoists such temptation never comes, in God's sight they are none the less evil for that mere absence of temptation. Idleness and self-love, especially where education enhances the guilt, are the dirt in which the most virulent plague-germs can propagate with speed and fecundity."
Durgan felt that, whether his opinion was true or false, it was brought forward now with an energy directed against the class to which he himself belonged.
The two men parted stiffly, but they both felt that Alden would return in a more placable mood.
That day, in a burying-ground near Hilyard, the mulatto called "'Dolphus" was laid beneath the ground. Born the ward of a nation whose institutions had first brought about his existence andthen severed him from his natural protectors, he had been given only a little knowledge by way of life's equipment, which, murderer as he was, had proved in his hands a less dangerous thing than in those of many a citizen of the dominant race. No one in that great nation mourned his death or gave a passing sigh to his lone burial; and if anyone set store by that bare patch of grave cut in the unkempt grass among the wild field lilies it must have been God, who is said to gather what mortals cast away.
Durgan took Adam back to Deer with him. Adam was somewhat the worse for the success of his grief and piety, genuine tho they were. These qualities had won him praise and consideration; they were no longer unconscious. Like a child who had been on a stage, he was inclined to pose and show elaborate signs of grief.
Durgan bore with him for a few days, and then spoke his mind:
"Stop that, you absurd nigger! If you don't look alive I'll make you!"
Adam paused in the middle of a pious ejaculation with his mouth open.
"Reckon you don't know what I'll do to you."
"No, Marse Neil. How can this pore child know your mind, suh?"
"I'll have you married to the new girl Miss Smith got. I'll do it next week!"
Adam rolled his eyes heavenward. "An' the Lord only just took my pore gal, suh! You's not in earnest, suh?"
"And if I make you marry the new girl the Lord will have given you a better one."
Adam was deftly cooking Durgan's breakfast, moving about the hut with the light step of pride in the new service.
There was a silence. Durgan had become absorbed in the newspaper.
At last, with another sigh that was cut short ere it had expanded his huge chest, Adam meekly began:
"Marse Neil, suh."
"Well?"
"The minister who visited me in my affliction, he say—sez he—that we ought to take wi' joy all the dealin' of the Lord an' bless His name."
And Durgan replied, without raising his eyes, "I believe it. Adam, you are a good nigger. I'll speak to Miss Smith."
One day, a while after, the young gardener against whose aspirations Durgan had warned Bertha came up to the mica mine. He had left Deer Cove soon after Bertha had dismissed him,and gone, as the old stories have it, "into the world to seek his fortune." It was a very unusual step for a mountain white, and had given his father so much concern that he had had the son prayed for at the Sunday camp meeting. The errant gardener had roamed as far as Baltimore, and worked awhile in the household of a certain rich man. He had come away from the plutocrat's palace homesick for his mountains, but had brought back one dominant idea. Probably his disappointed love had made his mind peculiarly impressionable, or, true to the traditions of his class, he might, perhaps, not have gained even one. He had now the most exaggerated idea of the elevation to which the "rich and great" were raised. Convinced when he left Deer that Bertha would not receive his addresses, he had found consolation in investing her with a new glamor, as one of an almost princely cast. Upon his return he had heard the talk of the neighborhood—the story which Alden had allowed to go abroad—that the invalid father, who had been leading some kind of dissipated life abroad, had returned, after years of estrangement, to be nursed in his last illness by his daughters. Herein lay the motive of young Godson's errand.
"They say that he doesn't like colored menlifting him and moving him about—that Miss Smith's looking for a helper for him."
Durgan laid his pick against the rock and stood in silent astonishment. He had seen different emotions work different changes in the habits of men, but never so remarkable a result of love as this cure of petty pride in the stiff-necked mountaineer. He was uncertain how far the young man had interpreted himself aright.
"It is for Miss Bertha's sake you wish to do this?" he asked.
Godson assented.
And having at last satisfied himself, by more interrogation, that the youth had actually no further hope at present than to serve his goddess in some lowly task, Durgan undertook to support his application.
With this end in view he went up to the summit house at his usual hour, when the day's work was over, at sundown.
On the lawn the invalid's flat carriage was tilted at an angle which enabled him to see the delectable mountains bathed in the light reflected from that other country—the cloud-land beyond the golden river of the horizon, in which the sun, like a pilgrim, was going down. The elder daughter was reading to him.
Durgan had no mind to disturb them. He had come hoping that the paralytic would have been put away for the night. He disliked encountering Claxton; and, had he disliked the man less, the wrestling soul that shone through the eyes of the almost inanimate face would have distressed him.
Bertha, who was sitting at a short distance from the pair, and out of their sight, saw the visitor and came across the grass.
They went for a stroll together up on the higher rocks.
"I am very idle in these days," said Bertha. "All the children in my nursery have grown up and are too big to be nursed. There is nothing to do, even in the garden."
"But the care of your father must absorb all your time and thought."
As he said this there was a questioning inflection in his mind that he kept out of his tone.
She hung her head as she walked. After a while she spoke, a beautiful flush on her face. "In the old days father loved me better than Hermie, because I was better-looking, and I always thought all that he did was perfect. I thought I loved him far more than Hermie did, because she often tried to persuade him that what he did was wrong. Now——"
Durgan waited.
"Now he does not want to see me. He does not like me to talk or read to him. It makes it hard for Hermie, for she has everything to do. She thinks father is shy of me and that it will wear away."
"I have no doubt it will."
"No," she sighed; "you are both wrong. Father, in spite of his helplessness, sees far more clearly. He was always quick to read everyone. He knows"—her voice faltered—"that I cannot love him now that I know what he did. Oh, I hate him for deserting Hermie and letting her bear it!" She pressed her hand to her side, as if speaking of some disease that gave her pain. "How can I help it, Mr. Durgan? I despise him, and he knows it."
"I dare say he does. He knows, of course, that the whole world could regard him with no feelings but those of hatred and scorn."
She stopped short in her walk. In a minute she said, "I think I will go back again, Mr. Durgan. I cannot bear that you should speak that way to me about my own father."
He smiled. "You seem to have some filial affection left."
"Did you only say it to make me feel angry?"
"Yes; that is why I said it; but, at the same time, you must remember that the world would certainly judge as you have said; and if the ties of kindred did not give a closer embrace than the world does, there would be no home feeling for any of us; there would be no bright spark of the sacred fire of the next world in this."
"'Fire.' We think of heaven as light, not heat."
"And we think of hell as heat, not light; yet we know light and heat to be one and the same thing; and both are the supreme need of life, and both are the only adequate symbols of love."
Many a red flag and gay pennon of autumn was now flying on the heights of Deer. The leaves of the stunted oak wood were floating and falling, and below, the chestnuts were yellowing, burr and leaf. The weeds were sere and full of ripe seed, and the shrubs of ripe berries. Birds of passage in flocks were talking and calling, eating their evening meal, or settling, a noisy multitude, in verdant lodging for the night.
"I always wonder where they come from, or where they are going," said the girl. "I used to long so often, in all the nights and days I have been on this mountain, to be able to fly away as the birds fly; and now, since Eve died, what wehave suffered makes me feel that just to live here, away from the worse sorrows of the world, would be enough happiness always."
"That's right. Let us make the best of our mountain, for we are likely to enjoy its solitudes for some time to come."
"If I only could set my affections right!" she said wistfully. "Perhaps, as you think, I have better feelings underneath, but they are not on the top just now. I am ashamed to be with Hermie, because I suspected her; and father is ashamed to be with me, because I am not good enough to forget what he has done. And I have no comfort in religion, for either I think God is cruel, or else most likely it is all chance and there is no reason at the heart of the universe."
"You are quite ready to believe now in God's insanity."
"How can you taunt me that way? I have told you that I am ashamed of my wicked thoughts about Hermione. But how can we tell that there is any mind governing the universe?"
"It was only when you could not understand your sister that you thought you had found any proof of lack of mind. You would treat the great Power that lies behind the universe in the same way."
"I have heard many good people say as much. Do you think it wicked?"
"I can only say that I have never liked you so well since I knew your thoughts about your sister. How much more must all good spirits despise us when we distrust the mind of God."
"You speak unkindly. I cannot alter my doubt."
"No. You are endowed with beauty and health, intellect and heart. You have done many things well. But this, I suppose, is a radical defect."
She did not look satisfied. "How can I alter it?"
"If I were you I would go on laying out the orchard you were working at in spring. You could put in a great many of the small trees yourself. I have gained so much from delving that I offer you the same occupation with a certificate of merit."
"But I can't get the rows straight alone," she said, "or prepare the ground. It is all as it was when the Godsons left. It was you who made me send them away."
"And now I have come to ask you to take young Godson back," he said. So he told the young man's story. "He will have time to help in the orchard if he is employed about your father."
"Do you think there is no risk?" she asked, with the grave dignity that the peculiar isolation of her life had given.
"I would not undertake to say that," he replied, with a smile. "But, such as it is, he takes it. You need help sadly, and perhaps you will both learn more wisdom than I was able to impart when I first interfered."
Durgan went his solitary way down the trail. Godson was still waiting for him. He was as fine a fellow as those remote mountains produce—spare, tall, with a curious look of ideality peculiar to their hardy sons. When he was told he might go up to the summit house, his blue eyes, far under the projecting tow-colored brows, looked almost like the eyes of a saint wrapped in adoration. Durgan was not in a mood to feel that Bertha was his superior.
Durgan built sticks for a fire on the rock-ledge to make his own coffee. He was a better man physically than he had been when he came to Deer Mountain—strong, sinewy, and calm, the processes of age arrested by the vital tide of work. Alone as he was in his eyrie, he could take keen pleasure in the stateliness of his rock palace, in the vision of nights and days that passed before it, in the food and rest that his body earned. To-night hewas not expecting satisfaction, and when he struck his match the whole universe was gray and seemed empty; but no sooner had his small beacon blazed than an answering beam leaped out of the furthest distance. It was the evening star.