The Redemption of David Corson by Charles Frederic Goss

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THE REDEMPTION OF DAVID CORSON

by

CHARLES FREDERIC GOSS

The Bowen-Merrill Company

1900

_To my friend
William Harvey Anderson_

Contents

I. This Other Eden
II. And Satan Came Also
III. The Egyptians
IV. The Woman
V. The Light That Lies
VI. The Trail of the Serpent
VII. The Chance Word
VIII. A Broken Reed
IX. Where Paths Converge
X. A Poisoned Spring
XI. The Flesh and the Devil
XII. The Moth and the Flame
XIII. Found Wanting
XIV. Turned Tempter
XV. The Snare of the Fowler
XVI. The Derelicts
XVII. The Shadow of Death
XVIII. A Fugitive and a Vagabond
XIX. Alienation
XX. The Inevitable Hour
XXI. A Signal in the Night
XXII. Heart Hunger
XXIII. Where I Might Find Him
XXIV. Safe Haven
XXV. The Little Lad
XXVI. Out of the Shadow
XXVII. If Thine Enemy Hunger
XXVIII. A Man Crossed With Adversity
XXIX. As a Tale That is Told
XXX. Out of the Jaws of Death
XXXI. The Great Refusal
XXXII. The End of Exile
XXXIII. A Self-imposed Expiation
XXXIV. Fasting in the Wilderness
XXXV. A Forest Idyl
XXXVI. The Supreme Test
XXXVII. Paradise Regained

CHAPTER I.

THIS OTHER EDEN

"This other Eden, demi-paradise, this fortress built by nature."
--Richard II.

Hidden away in this worn and care-encumbered world, scarred with its
frequent traces of a primeval curse, are spots so quiet and beautiful as
to make the fall of man seem incredible, and awaken in the breast of the
weary traveler who comes suddenly upon them, a vague and dear delusion
that he has stumbled into Paradise.

Such an Eden existed in the extreme western part of Ohio in the spring
of eighteen hundred and forty-nine. It was a valley surrounded by wooded
hills and threaded by a noisy brook which hastily made its way, as if
upon some errand of immense importance, down to the big Miami not many
miles distant. A road cut through a vast and solemn forest led into the
valley, and entering as if by a corridor and through the open portal of
a temple, the traveler saw a white farm-house nestling beneath a mighty
hackberry tree whose wide-reaching arms sheltered it from summer sun
and winter wind. A deep, wide lawn of bluegrass lay in front, and a
garden of flowers, fragrant and brilliant, on its southern side.
Stretching away into the background was the farm newly carved out of the
wilderness, but already in a high state of cultivation. All those
influences which stir the deepest emotion of the heart were silently
operating here--quiet, order, beauty, power, life. It affected one to
enter it unprepared in much the same way, only with a greater variety
and richness of emotion, as to push through dense brush and suddenly
behold a mountain lake upon whose bosom there is not so much as a
ripple, and in whose silver mirror surrounding forests, flying
water-fowl and the bright disk of the sun are perfectly reflected.

In this lovely valley, at the close of a long, odorous, sun-drenched day
in early May, the sacred silence was broken by a raucous blast from that
most unmusical of instruments, a tin dinner horn. It was blown by a
bare-legged country boy who seemed to take delight in this profanation.
By his side, in the vine-clad porch of the white farm-house stood a
woman who shaded her eyes with her hand as she looked toward a vague
object in a distant meadow. She was no longer young, but had exchanged
the exquisite beauty of youth for the finer and more impressive beauty
of maturity. As the light of the setting sun fell full upon her face it
seemed almost transparent, and even the unobserving must have perceived
that some deep experience of the sadness of life had added to her
character an indescribable charm.

"Thee will have to go and call him, Stephen, for I think he has fallen
into another trance," the woman said, in a low voice in which there was
not a trace of impatience, although the evening meal was waiting and the
pressing work of the household had been long delayed.

The child threw down his dinner horn, whistled to his dog and started.
Springing up from where he had been watching every expression of his
master's face, the shaggy collie bounded around him as he moved across
the lawn, while the woman watched them with a proud and happy smile.
They had scarcely entered the long lane leading to the pasture, when a
woodchuck shambled out of the corner of the fence and ran lumbering into
his burrow. Rushing excitedly after him the child clapped his hands and
shouted: "Dig him out! Dig him out, Shep!" Tearing up the ground with
his paws and thrusting his head down into the subterranean chamber, the
obedient collie yelped and whined. Then backing out and plunging in once
more, he yelped and whined again. The hole was too deep or the time too
short and the boy became discouraged. Moving reluctantly away he
chidingly summoned his companion to follow him. The dog, humiliated by
his failure, obeyed, and sheepishly licked his mouth with his long, red
tongue.

By this time the sun's disk had sunk behind the hills, its trailing
glory lingering above their summits while slowly in the sky faded
continents, mountains and spires. The day had died regretfully upon a
couch o'erhung with gorgeous canopies, and the ensanguined bier still
seemed to tremble with his last sigh. Birds in the tops of trees and
crickets beneath the sod were giving expression to the emotions of the
sad heart of the great earth in melancholy evening songs. The odors of
peach and apple blossoms, wafted by gentle breezes from distant
orchards, made the valley fragrant as an oriental garden. The soothing
influence of the approaching night subdued the effervescent spirits of
the lad, and he began to walk softly, as do nuns in the aisles of dim
cathedrals or deer in the pathways of the moonlit forest. These few
moments between twilight and dark are pregnant with a mysterious
holiness and it is doubtful if the worst of men could find the courage
to commit a crime while they endure.

Unutterable and incomprehensible emotions were awakened in the soul of
the boy by the stillness and beauty of the evening world. His senses
were not yet dulled nor his feelings jaded. Through every avenue of his
intelligence the mystery of the universe stole into his sensitive
spirit. If a breeze blew across the meadow he turned his cheek to its
kiss; if the odor of spearmint from the brookside was wafted around him
he breathed it into his nostrils with delight. He saw the shadow of a
crow flying across the field and stopped to look up and listen for the
swish of her wings and her loud, hoarse caw as she made her way to the
nesting grounds; then he gazed beyond her, into the fathomless depths of
the blue sky, and his soul was stirred with an indescribable awe.
Everything filled him with surprise, with wonder and with ecstasy,--the
glowing sky above the western hills, the new pale crescent of the silver
moon, the heavy-laden honey bees eagerly hastening home, the long
shadows lying across his path, the trees with branches swaying in the
evening breeze, the cows with bursting udders lowing at the bars.

But it was not so much the objects themselves as the spirit pervading
them, which stirred the depths of the child's mind. The little pantheist
saw God everywhere. We bestow the gift of language upon a child, but the
feelings which that language serves only to interpret and express exist
and glow within him even if he be dumb. And this gift of language is
often of questionable value, and had been so with him. Things he had
heard said about God often made the boy hate Him. All that he felt,
filled him with love. To him the valley was heaven, and through it
invisibly but unmistakably God walked, morning, noon and evening.

To the child sauntering dreamily and wistfully along, the object dimly
seen from the farm-house door began gradually to dissolve itself into a
group of living beings. Two horses were attached to a plow; one standing
in the lush grass of the meadow, and the other in a deep furrow traced
across its surface. The first, an old gray mare, was breathing heavily,
her sides expanding and contracting like a bellows. Her wide nostrils
opened and closed with spasmodic motions. Her eyes were shut and she
seemed to be asleep. The other, a young and slender filly doing this
season the first real service of her life, pawed the ground restlessly,
snorted, shook her mane, rattled the harness chains and looked angrily
over her shoulder at the driver. The plowshare was buried deep in the
rich, alluvial soil, and a ribbon of earth rolled from its blade like a
petrified sea billow, crested with a cluster of daisies white as the
foam of a wave.

Between the handles of the plow and leaning on the crossbar, his back to
the horses, stood a young Quaker. His broad-brimmed hat, set carelessly
on the back of his head, disclosed a wide, high forehead; his flannel
shirt, open at the throat, exposed a strong, columnar neck, and a deep,
broad chest; his sunburned and muscular arms were folded across his
breast; figure and posture revealed the perfect concord of body and soul
with the beauty of the world; his great blue eyes were fixed upon the
notch in the hills where the sun had just disappeared; he gazed without
seeing and felt without thinking.

The boy approached this statuesque figure with a stealthy tread, and
plucking a long spear of grass tickled the bronzed neck. The hand of the
plowman moved automatically upward as if to brush away a fly, and at
this unconscious action the child, seized by a convulsion of laughter
and fearing lest it explode, stuffed his fists into his mouth. In the
opinion of this irreverent young skeptic his Uncle Dave was in a
"tantrum" instead of a "trance," and he thought such a disease demanded
heroic treatment.

For several years this Quaker youth had been the subject of remarkable
emotional experiences, in explanation of which the rude wits of the
village declared that he had been moon-struck; the young girls who
adored his beauty thought he was in love, and the venerable fathers and
mothers of this religious community believed that in him the scriptural
prophecy, "Your young men shall see visions," had been literally
fulfilled. David Corson himself accepted the last explanation with
unquestioning faith. He no more doubted the existence of a spiritual
than of a material universe. He did not even conceive of their having
well-defined boundaries, but seemed to himself to pass from one to the
other as easily as across the lines of adjoining farms. In this respect
he resembled many a normal youth, except that this impression had
lingered with him a little longer than was usual; for faith is always
instinctive, while skepticism is the result of experience and
reflection. Having as yet only wandered around the edges of the sacred
groves of wisdom where these pitiless teachers break the sweet shackles
of their pupils, he still thought the thoughts of childhood and
instinctively obeyed the injunction of Emerson, to "reverence the dreams
of our youth," and the admonition of Richter, that "when we cease to do
so, then dies the man in us." Whatever might have been the real nature
of these emotional experiences, no one doubted that they possessed a
genuine reality of some kind or other, for it was a matter of history in
this little community that David Corson had often exercised prophetic,
mesmeric and therapeutic powers.

The life of this young man had been pure and uneventful. Existence in
this frontier region, once full of the tragedy of Indian warfare, had
been gradually softened by peace and religion. The passions slowly
kindling in the struggle over slavery had not yet burst into flame, and
this particular valley was even more quiet than others because it had
been settled by a colony of Quakers. Into it the rude noises of the
great outside world floated only in softened echoes, and what knowledge
young Corson had acquired of that vague and shadowy realm had come
mainly through traveling preachers, and this, because of their
simplicity and unworldliness, was not unlike hearing the crash of arms
through silken portieres or seeing the flash of lightning through the
stained-glass windows of a cathedral. In such a sequestered region books
and papers were scarce, and he had access only to a few volumes written
by quietists and mystics, and to that great mine of sacred literature,
the Holy Bible. The seeds of knowledge sown by these books in the rich
soil of this young heart were fertilized by the society of noble men,
virtuous women, and natural surroundings of exquisite beauty.

But however limited his knowledge of men and affairs, the young mystic
had acquired an extraordinary familiarity with the operations of the
divine life which animates the universe. He seemed to have found the
pass-key to nature's mysteries, and to have acquired a language by which
he could communicate with all her creatures. He knew where the rabbits
burrowed, where the partridges nested, and where the wild bees stored
their honey. He could foretell storms by a thousand signs, possessed the
homing instinct of the pigeons, knew where the first violets were to be
found, and where the last golden-rod would bloom. The squirrels crept
down the trunks of trees to nibble the crumbs which he scattered for
them. He could fold up his hands like a cup and at his whistle birds
would drop into them as into a nest. His was a beautiful soul, and what
Novalis said of Spinoza might have been said of him, "he was a
God-intoxicated man." He was in that blissful period of existence when
the interpretations of life imparted to him by his elders solved the few
simple problems of thought and action pressed upon him by his
environment. He had never seriously questioned any of the ideas received
from his instructors. He was often conscious of the infinite mystery
lying beyond his ken, but never of those frightful inconsistencies and
contradictions in nature and life by which the soul is sooner or later
paralyzed or at least bewildered.

And so his outlook upon the universe was serene and untroubled. As he
stood there in the deepening twilight he differed from the child who had
approached him in this, that while the boy reveled in the beauty around
him because he did not try to comprehend it, the youth was intoxicated
by the belief that he possessed the clue to all these mysteries, and had
a working theory of all the phenomena in the natural and spiritual world
in which he moved. To such mystical natures this confidence is
unavoidable anywhere through the period of the pride of adolescence; but
it was heightened in this case by the simplicity of life's problems in
this narrow valley, and in the provincial little village which was the
metropolis of this sparsely settled region. To him "the cackle of that
bourg was the murmur of the world," and his theories of a life lacking
the complexities of larger aggregations of men seemed adequate, because
he had never seen them thoroughly tested, to meet every emergency
arising for reflection or endeavor. In this mental attitude of serene
and undisturbed confidence that he knew the real meaning of existence,
and was in constant contact with the divine mind through knowledge or
through vision, every avenue of his spirit was open to the influences of
nature. Through all that gorgeous day of May he had been drawing these
influences into his being as the vegetation drew in light and moisture,
until his soul was drenched through and through, and at that perfect
hour of dusk, when the flowers and grasses exhaled the gifts they had
received from heaven and earth in a richer, finer perfume like an
evening oblation, the young dreamer was also rendering back those gifts
bestowed by heaven in an incense of purest thought and aspiration. It
was one of those hours that come occasionally in that sublime period of
unshattered ideals and unsullied faith, for which Pharaoh and Caesar
would have exchanged their thrones, Croesus and Lucullus bartered their
wealth, Solomon and Aristotle forgotten their learning.

Every imaginative youth who has been reared in pure surroundings
experiences over again in these rare and radiant hours all the bliss
that Adam knew in Eden. To his joyous, eager spirit, the world appears a
new creation fresh from the hand of God. He hears its author walking in
the garden at eventide, and murmuring: "Behold it is very good." A
single element of disquietude, a solitary, vague unrest disturbs him. He
awaits his Eve with longing, but has no dread of the serpent.

At sight of this young man the most superficial observer would have
paused to take a second look; an artist would have instinctively seized
his pencil or his brush; a scientist would have paused to inquire what
mysterious influences could have produced so finely proportioned a
nature; a philosopher to wonder what would become of him in some sudden
and powerful temptation.

None of these reflections disturbed the mind of the barefooted boy.
Having suppressed his laughter, he tickled the sunburnt neck again. Once
more the hand rose automatically, and once more the boy was almost
strangled with delight. The dreamer was hard to awaken, but his
tormentor had not yet exhausted his resources. No genuine boy is ever
without that fundamental necessity of childhood, a pin, and finding one
somewhere about his clothing, he thrust it into the leg of the plowman.
The sudden sting brought the soaring saint from heaven to earth. In an
instant the mystic was a man, and a strong one, too. He seized the
unsanctified young reprobate with one hand and hoisted him at arm's
length above his head.

"Oh, Uncle Dave, I'll never do it again! Never! Never! Let me down."

Still holding him aloft as a hunter would hold a falcon, the
reincarnated "spirit" laughed long, loud and merrily, the echoes of his
laughter ringing up the valley like a peal from a chime of bells. The
child's fear was needless, for the heart and hands that dealt with him
were as gentle as a woman's. The youth, resembling some old Norse god as
he stood there in the gathering gloom, lowered the child slowly, and
printing a kiss on his cheek, said:

"Thee little pest, thee has no reverence! Thee should never disturb a
child at his play, a bird on his nest nor a man at his prayers."

"But thee was not praying, Uncle Dave," the boy replied. "Thee was only
in another of thy tantrums. The supper has grown cold, the horses are
tired and Shep and I have walked a mile to call thee. Grandmother said
thee had a trance. Tell me what thee has seen in thy visions, Uncle
Dave?"

"God and His angels," said the young mystic softly, falling again into
the mood from which he had been so rudely awakened.

"Angels!" scoffed the young materialist. "If thee was thinking of any
angel at all, I will bet thee it was Dorothy Fraser."

"Tush, child, do not be silly," replied the convicted culprit. For it
was easier than he would care to admit to mingle visions of beauty with
those of holiness.

"I am not silly. Thee would not dare say thee was not thinking of her.
She thinks of thee."

"How does thee know?"

"Because she gives me bread and jam if I so much as mention thy name."

This did not offend the young plowman, to judge by the expression of his
face; but he said nothing, and, stooping down, loosened the chains of
the whiffletree and turned the faces of the tired horses homeward. The
cavalcade moved on in silence for a few moments, but nothing can repress
the chatter of a boy, and presently he began again.

"Uncle Dave, was it really up this very valley that Mad Anthony Wayne
marched with his brave soldiers?"

"This very valley."

"I wish I could have been with him."

"It is an evil wish. Thee is a child of peace. Thy father and thy
father's fathers have denied the right of men to war. Thee ought to be
like them, and love the things that make for peace."

"Well, if I can not wish for war, I will wish that a runaway slave would
dash up this valley with a pack of bloodhounds at his heels. Oh, Uncle
Dave, tell me that story about thy hiding a negro in the haystack, and
choking the bloodhounds with thine own hands."

"I have told thee a hundred times."

"But I want to hear it again."

"Use thy memory and thy imagination."

"Oh, no, please tell me. I like to hear some one tell something."

"Thee does? Then listen to the whip-poor-will, the cricket or the
brook."

"I hear them, but I do not know what they say. Tell me."

"Tell thee! No one can tell thee, child, if thee can not understand for
thyself. The message differs for the hearers, and the difference is in
the ear and not the sound."

They both paused for a moment, and listened to those soothing lullabies
with which nature sings the world to sleep. So powerful was the tide
that floated the mystic out on the ocean of dreams, he would have
drifted away again if the child had not suddenly recalled him.

"I can not make out what they say," he cried, "and anyhow there is no
time to try. Come, let us go. Everybody is waiting for us."

"Thee is right," answered his uncle. "Go and let down the bars and we
will hurry home."

The child, bounding forward, did as he was told, and the tired
procession entered the barnyard. The plowman fed his horses, and stopped
to listen for a moment to their deep-drawn sighs of contentment, and to
the musical grinding of the oats in their teeth. His imaginative mind
read his own thoughts into everything, and he believed that he could
distinguish in these inarticulate sounds the words, "Good-night.
Good-night."

"Good-night," he said, and stroking their great flanks with his kind
hand, left them to their well-earned repose. On his way to the house he
stopped to bathe his face in the waters of a spring brook that ran
across the yard, and then entered the kitchen where supper was spread.

"Thee is late," said the woman who had watched and waited, her fine face
radiant with a smile of love and welcome.

"Forgive me, mother," he replied. "I have had another vision."

"I thought as much. Thee must remember what thee has seen, my son," she
said, "for all that thee beholds with the outer eye shall pass away,
while what thee sees with the inner eye abides forever. And had thee a
message, too?"

"It was delivered to me that on the holy Sabbath day I should go to the
camp in Baxter's clearing and preach to the lumbermen."

"Then thee must go, my son."

"I will," he answered, taking her hand affectionately, but with Quaker
restraint, and leading her to the table.

The family, consisting of the mother, an adopted daughter Dorothea, the
daughter's husband Jacob and son Stephen, sat down to a simple but
bountiful supper, during which and late into the evening the young
mystic pondered the vision which he believed himself to have seen, and
the message which he believed himself to have heard. In his musings
there was not a tremor or a doubt; he would have as soon questioned the
reality of the old farm-house and the faces of the family gathered about
the table. Of the susceptibility of the nerves to morbid activity, or
the powers of the overdriven brain to objectify its concepts, he had
never even dreamed. He was a credulous and unsophisticated youth,
dwelling in a realm of imagination rather than in a world of reality and
law. He had much to learn. His education was about to begin, and to
begin as does all true and effective education, in a spiritual
temptation. The Ghebers say that when their great prophet Ahriman was
thrown into the fire by the order of Nimrod, the flames into which he
fell turned into a bed of roses, upon which he peacefully reclined. This
innocent Quaker youth had been reclining upon a bed of roses which now
began to turn into a couch of flames.

CHAPTER II.

AND SATAN CAME ALSO

"It is the little rift within the lute
That by and by will make the music mute,
And ever widening slowly silence all."

--Tennyson.

At the moment when Stephen was sounding the horn to summon the young
mystic to his supper, a promiscuous crowd of loafers with chairs tilted
against the wall of the village tavern received a shock.

They heard the tinkle of bells in the distance, and looking in the
direction of this unusual sound, saw a team of splendid coal-black
horses dash round a corner and whirl a strange vehicle to the door of
the inn.

There were two extraordinary figures on the front seat of the wagon. The
driver was a sturdy, thick-set man whose remarkable personal appearance
was fixed instantly and ineradicably in the mind of the beholder by an
enormous moustache whose shape, size and color suggested a crow with
outstretched wings. As if to emphasize the ferocious aspect lent him by
this hairy canopy which completely concealed his mouth, Nature had
duplicated it in miniature by brows meeting above his nose and spreading
themselves, plume-like, over a pair of eyes which gleamed so brightly
that they could be felt, altho' they were so deep-set that they could
scarcely be seen.

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