The Redemption of David Corson by Charles Frederic Goss

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With this letter in his hand, he waited until the street was quiet and
the halls of the tenement house deserted, and then crept up the long
staircase with trembling knees.

On tiptoe he picked his way across the corridor and slipped the note
under the door. So quietly did he step that he did not hear his own
footfall; but it did not escape the ears of the woman who sat stitching
her life into the garment lying upon her knees. There is often in a
footfall music sweeter than bird songs or harp tones.

Having thrust the letter under the door, David fled hastily down the
stairway and into the street, where he began to pace back and forth like
a sentry on his beat, never for a single instant losing sight of the
window whence streamed the feeble rays of the candle from which he was
to receive the signal of hope or despair.

Never did a condemned felon in a cell watch for the coming of a
messenger of pardon with more wildly beating heart than his as he gazed
at that window up in the wall of the gloomy tenement house. Never did a
mariner on a storm-tossed vessel keep his eye more resolutely fixed on
beams from a distant lighthouse.

It was then ten o'clock, and as he watched the slow-moving hands upon
the moonlit dial in the church tower, it seemed to him they were held
back by invisible fingers, and there came to his mind a forgotten story
of a man who, having been accidentally imprisoned in a sepulchre,
suffered in the twenty minutes which elapsed before his release all the
pangs of starvation, so powerfully was his imagination excited. This
story which he had once discredited he now believed, for it seemed to
him as if eternities were being crowded into single moments.

He had also heard that drowning men could review their entire lives in
the few instants that preceded their loss of consciousness, and he
acquired a new comprehension of this mystery. All the experiences of his
entire existence swept through his mind again and again with a rapidity
and a distinctness that astonished him. Like a great shuttle darting
back and forth through a fabric, his mind seemed to be passing again and
again forward and backward through all the scenes of the past. Finally,
and after what seemed uncounted ages, the great clock struck the hour of
midnight. One, two, three--he stood like a man rooted to the
ground,--four, five, six--his heart beat louder than the bell,--seven,
eight, nine--the blood seemed bursting through his temples,--ten,
eleven, twelve!--the light went out! The universe seemed to have been
instantaneously swallowed up in darkness. He could not see the figure
that crept to the window and gazed down upon him from behind the drapery
of the curtains. He did not know that Pepeeta had fallen upon her knees
in an agony deeper than his own, and was gazing down at him through
streaming tears. In those few succeeding moments the sense of his
personal loss was displaced by a sudden and overpowering sense of his
personal guilt. The full consciousness of his sin burst upon him. He saw
the selfishness of his love and the wickedness of his lust in a light
brighter than day.

There is a kind of rhododendron about Trebizond of which the bees make a
honey that drives people mad! He saw that illicit love was that honey of
Trebizond! He felt, as he had never felt before, the pressure of that
terrible power that over all and through all the discords and sins of
life makes resistlessly for righteousness. He perceived that a system of
wheels is attached to every thought and act, and that, each one sets in
motion the entire machinery of justice. He felt that every sleepless
starry eye in heaven penetrated the guilty secrets of his soul and was
pledged to the execution of judgment.

These perceptions confounded him with fear. His thoughts ceased to move
in order, tossing and teasing each other like straws in the wind. They
ceased to illumine the depths of his soul and only hung like flickering
candles above a dark mine.

Whether he looked up or down, without or within, he saw no hope, but it
was not until after the lapse of many and unnoted moments that the
disturbed machinery of his mind began to move. He awakened as from a
nightmare, drew his hands across his eyes and looked this way and that
as if to get his bearings.

"What next?" he said aloud, as if speaking to some one else. Receiving
no answer, he turned instinctively toward his gambling house, and went
stumbling along through the deserted streets. What is a man, after all,
but a stumbling machine? Progress is made by falling forward over
obstacles! The poor stumbler tottered across his own threshold into that
brilliant room where he had always received an enthusiastic welcome, but
which he had not visited since his sickness. If ever a man needed
kindness and encouragement it was he; but his sensitive spirit instantly
discovered that all was changed.

His superstitious companions had not forgotten the broken glass, and had
heard of his subsequent calamities. With them the lucky alone were the
adorable! The gods of the temples of fortunes are easily and quickly
dethroned and the worshipers had already prostrated themselves before
other shrines.

The coldness of his greeting sent a chill to his already benumbed heart
and increased his desperation. He was nervous, excited, depressed, and
feeling the need of something to distract his thought from his troubles,
he sat down and began to play; but from the first deal he lost--lost
steadily and heavily.

The habitues of the place exchanged significant glances as much as to
say, "I told you so!"

Whispered phrases passed from lip to lip.

"He is playing wild."

"He has lost his nerve."

"His luck has turned."

And so indeed it had! Within a few short hours he had staked his entire
fortune and lost it. It had gone as easily and as quickly as it had
come.

"I guess that is about all," he said, pushing himself wearily back from
the table at which he had just parted with the title to his desolated
home.

"Shall I stake you, Davy?" asked one of his friends, touched by the
pathos of the haggard face and hopeless voice.

"No," he answered, rising. "I have played enough. I am going away.
Good-bye, boys."

Without another word, he left them and passed out of the door.

"Good-bye," they cried, as he vanished, scarcely raising their eyes from
the tables.

Even in a crowd like that there will generally be found some heart which
still retains its tenderness. The young man who had offered to stake
him, followed the ruined gambler into the street.

"Where are you going, old man?" he said kindly, slipping his hand
through David's arm.

"I don't know," he answered absently.

"Are you dead broke, Davy?"

"Dead broke," in a lifeless echo.

"Will you accept a little loan? You can't go far without money."

"It's no use."

"Take it! I wouldn't have had it if it hadn't been for you, and I won't
have it long whether you take it or not."

As he spoke he slipped a roll of bills into his friend's pocket.

"Thanks!" said David.

"Don't mention it," he replied.

"Good-bye."

"Good-bye."

The sun was just rising as they parted. The first faint stir of life was
perceptible in the city streets; the green-grocers were coming in with
their fresh vegetables; the office boys were opening the doors and
putting away the shutters; there was a bright, morning look on the faces
which peered into the haggard countenance of the gambler as he crept
aimlessly along, but the fresh, sweet light gave him neither brightness
nor joy. His heart was cold and dead; he had not even formed a purpose.

And so he drifted aimlessly until the current that was setting toward
the levee caught him and bore him on with it. The sight of a vessel just
putting out to sea communicated to his spirit its first definite impulse
and he ascended the gang-plank without even inquiring its destination.

In a few moments the boat swung loose and turned its prow down the
river. The bustle of the embarkation distracted him. He watched the
hurrying sailors, gazed at the piles of merchandise, walked up and down
the deck, listened to the fresh breeze that began to play upon the
great, sonorous harp of the shrouds and the masts, and when at last the
vessel glided out into the waters of the gulf he lay down in a hammock
and fell into a long and dreamless sleep.

CHAPTER XXII.

HEART HUNGER

"Only; I discern
Infinite passion, and the pain
Of finite hearts that yearn."

--Browning.

For a moment after she had read the note which David thrust beneath her
door, Pepeeta held her breath; then sinking to her knees, she prostrated
herself before that august Being to whom all men bow in last
extremities; her head resting upon arms pathetically crossed on the low
window sill--bruised but not broken, cast down, but not destroyed--she
drank the cup of sorrow to its dregs.

Men hang birds in dark rooms, sometimes, until they learn to sing, and
it was to a kindred discipline of her Heavenly Father's that Pepeeta was
being subjected. In that supreme hour of trial she performed the
greatest feat of which the soul is capable. She defied her own nature;
she committed an act of sacred violence against the most clamorous
propensities of her heart.

What that struggle cost her no mortal mind can know. That in her
decision she chose the better part some will doubt. The most common
justification of our conduct is that we have followed the "dictates of
our natures." But because those natures are double, and the good and
evil perpetually struggle for the mastery, we are sometimes compelled
to reverse their most strenuous demands.

Those lofty souls who are enabled to perceive their duty clearly and to
commit bravely this act of sacred violence must always remain a mystery
to those who meanly live upon a lower plane of existence.

It was as certain when this pure soul entered upon her renewed struggle
to find the path of duty that she would succeed, as that the carrier
pigeon, launched into an unknown region, will find the homeward way; but
for a little time she fluttered her wings in ignorance and despair; she
found no rest for the soles of her feet, and the ark of refuge was
nowhere to be seen.

The nearness of her lover, she could see him in the street; his sorrow,
she could behold his white face even by the pale light of the moon; his
tender love, whose real depth she had never for a moment doubted; his
bitter agony, which she knew she could terminate in a single instant,
all appealed to her with an indescribable power. Her own sorrow and
loneliness were eclipsed by the consciousness of the sorrow and
loneliness of the man whom she loved more than life. She felt the pain
in his bosom far more than in her own; but this feeling which added so
much to her suffering became a clear interpreter of her duty.

She acted from a single, undivided impulse; it was to do him good and
bring to him the final beatitude of life. She saw as clearly as when the
facts about this tragedy were flashed upon her that her presence in
David's life would be a perpetual source of irritation, and that so long
as he possessed her he would never be able to face the truly spiritual
problems which remained to be solved.

How she acquired those powers of divination is a mystery. Such women
possess a certain prescience that cannot wholly be accounted for. What
Pepeeta did was right because she was Pepeeta. It does not follow that
because such natures see so clearly that they act with less pain than
others. Indeed, the more clear those spiritual perceptions, the more
poignant are the sufferings which they involve; life can scarcely afford
a situation more pathetic than hers.

Alone in a great city, young and beautiful, capable of enjoying
happiness with a singular appreciation, the victim of a complicated set
of circumstances for the comprehension and management of which her early
life had afforded no training; guilty of a great sin, but if one could
say so, innocently guilty, and penitent; consecrated to duty, but torn
asunder by conflicting emotions as if upon a wheel--of what deeper
sorrow is the soul capable?

When she extinguished that candle she extinguished the sun of her human
happiness; but it happened to her as it has happened to countless
others, that in the darkness which ensued she saw a myriad beautiful
stars.

The next morning Pepeeta resolutely took up the heavy burden of her life
and bore it uncomplainingly, adjusting herself as the brave and patient
have ever done, to the necessities of her daily existence. Her little
attic room became a sort of sanctuary, and began to take upon itself a
reflection of her nature. She built it to fit her own character and
needs, as a bird builds its nest to fit its bosom.

It may be said of most of us that we secrete our homes as the snails do
their shells. They become a sort of material embodiment of our spirits,
a physical expression of our whole thought about life. Before long
flowers were blooming in Pepeeta's window; a mocking bird was singing in
a cage above it; on the wall hung the old tambourine and one after
another many little inexpensive but brightening bits and scraps of
things such as women pick up by instinct found their places in this
simple attic.

She seldom left it for the outside world, except when she went to
deliver the work she had finished, and on Sundays when she spent the
morning wandering from one church to another. As a consequence of these
brief but regular pilgrimages her beautiful face became familiar to the
residents of some of the side streets where the women and children made
her low courtesies and the men doffed their hats by that divine instinct
of reverence which we all feel in the presence of the beautiful and the
good.

A double craving devours our human hearts--for solitude and for
companionship. As there are hours when we thirst to be alone, there are
others when we hunger for the touch of a human hand, the glance of a
human eye, a smile from human lips. Even gross, material things like
food and drink lose half their flavor when taken in solitude. Pepeeta
needed friends and found them.

We never know how small a part of ourselves that fraction may be which
we have taken for the whole! We come to know ourselves by struggle and
endeavor, more than by thought and meditation. We have only to do our
work each day in hope and trust. We can only find rest in effort. It is
not in repose, but in activity--not in joy, but in sorrow, that the soul
comes to its second birth. Pepeeta needed labor and suffering, and they
were sent her.

She accepted all that followed her supreme decision without a question
and without a murmur for many months, and then--a reaction came! The
draughts upon her physical and emotional nature had been too great.

CHAPTER XXIII.

WHERE I MIGHT FIND HIM

"Attempt the end, and never stand to doubt,
Nothing's so hard but search will find it out."

--Herrick.

During several months of loneliness and sorrow a great change had been
taking place in the mind of the patient sufferer, of which she was only
vaguely conscious.

Purposes are often formed in the depths of our souls, of which we know
nothing until they suddenly emerge into full view. Such a purpose had
been slowly evolving in the heart of Pepeeta.

The strain which she had been undergoing began at last to exhaust her
physically.

Her vital force became depleted, her step grew feeble, the light died
out of her eyes, she drooped and crept feebly about her room. The
determination which she had so resolutely maintained to live apart from
her guilty lover slowly ebbed away. She was, after all, a woman, not a
disembodied spirit, and her woman's heart yearned unquenchably for the
touch of her lover's hand, for the kisses of his lips, for the comfort
of his presence.

This longing increased with every passing hour. Fatigue, weariness,
loneliness, steadily undermined her still struggling resistance to those
hungerings which never left her, till at last, when the failing
resources of her nature were at their lowest point, all her remaining
strength was concentrated into a single passionate desire to look once
more upon the face which glowed forever before her inner eye, or at
least to discover what had befallen the wanderer in his sin and
wretchedness.

Slowly the diffused longing crystallized into a fixed purpose, to resist
which was beyond her power. Having nobly conquered temptation while she
had strength, and yielded only when her physical nature itself was
exhausted, she gathered up the few possessions she had accumulated, sold
them for what they would bring, and, with a heart palpitating wildly,
broke every tie she had formed with the life around her and turned her
face toward the little village where her happiness and sorrows had
begun.

It was a long and tedious journey from New Orleans to Cincinnati in
those days, and it told terribly upon the weakened constitution of the
wayfarer. Her heart beat too violently in her bosom; a fierce fever
began to burn in her veins; she trembled with terror lest her strength
fail her before she reached her journey's end. It was not of Death
himself that she was afraid; but that he should overtake her before she
had seen her lover!

Husbanding her strength as shipwrecked sailors save their bread and
water, she counted the days and the miles to the journey's end, and
having arrived at the wharf of the Queen City, the pale young traveler
who had excited the compassion of the passengers, but who would neither
communicate the secret of her sorrow nor accept of any aid, took her
little bundle in her thin hand and started off on the last stage of her
weary pilgrimage. It was the hardest of all, for her money was exhausted
and there was nothing for her to do but walk.

It was a cold December day. Gray clouds lowered, wintry winds began to
moan, and she had proceeded but a little way when light flakes of snow
began to fall. The chill penetrated her thin clothing and shook her
fragile form. She moved more like a wraith than a living woman. Her
tired feet left such slight impressions in the snow that the feathery
flakes obliterated one almost before she had made another, and she was
haunted by the thought that every trace of her passage through life was
thus to disappear!

Ignorant of the distance or the exact direction, and stopping
occasionally to inquire the way, she plodded on, the exhaustion of
hunger and weariness becoming more and more unendurable. All that she
did now was done by the sheer force of will; but yield she would not.
She would die cheerfully when she had attained her object, but not
before. The winds became more wild and boisterous; they loosened and
tossed her black hair about her wan face; they beat against her person
and drove her back. Every step seemed the last one possible; but
suddenly, just as she descended the slope of a steep hill, she saw the
twinkling lights of the village and the feeble rays shot new courage
into her heart. Under this accession of power she pushed forward and
made her way toward the old Quaker homestead.

The night had now deepened around her; but every foot of the landscape
had been indelibly impressed upon her memory, and even in the gathering
gloom she chose the road unerringly. There were only a few steps more,
and reeling toward the door yard fence she felt her way to the gate,
opened it, staggered forward up the path in the rays of light that
struggled out into the darkness, and with one final effort fell fainting
upon the threshold.

The scene within the house presented a striking contrast to that
without. In a great open fireplace the flames of the beech logs were
wavering up the chimney. Seated in the radiance of their light, on a low
stool, was a young boy with his elbows upon his knees and his cheeks in
the palms of his hands. His mother sat by his side stroking his hair and
gazing at him in fond, brooding love. The father was bending over a
Bible lying open on the table; it was the hour of prayer. He was reading
a lesson from the twenty-fifth chapter of St. Matthew, and had just
articulated in slow and reverent tones the words of Jesus, "I was a
stranger and ye took me in," when they heard a sound at the door.

Father, mother and son sprang to their feet and, hurrying towards the
door, flung it open and beheld a woman's limp form lying on the
threshold.

It was but a child's weight to the stalwart Quaker who picked it up in
his great arms and carried it into the radiance of the great fireplace,
and in an instant he and Dorothea his wife were pushing forward the work
of restoration. They forced a cordial between the parted lips, chafed
the white hands, warmed the half-frozen feet, and in a few moments were
rewarded by discovering feeble signs of life. The color came back in a
faint glow to the marble face, the pulses fluttered feebly, the bosom
heaved gently, as if the refluent tide of life had surged reluctantly
back, and the tired heart began once more to beat. She had regained her
life but not her consciousness, and lay there as white and almost as
still as death. The little boy stood gazing wonderingly at her from a
distance. The calm features of the Quaker were agitated with emotion.
His wife knelt by the side of the pale sleeper, and her tears dropped
silently on the hand which she pressed to her lips.

CHAPTER XXIV.

SAFE HAVEN

"The human heart finds shelter nowhere but in human kind."

--George Eliot.

For many days Pepeeta's life hung in the balance, her spirit hovering
uncertainly along the border land of being, and it was only love that
wooed it back to life.

When at length, through careful nursing, she really regained her
consciousness and came up from those unfathomable abysses where she had
been wandering, she opened her eyes upon the walls of a little chamber
that looked out through an alcove into the living room of the Quaker
house.

Dorothea had finished her afternoon's work and was seated before the
great fireplace, while by her side stood Steven, speaking to her in
whispers, and looking often toward the cot on which Pepeeta lay. An
almost sacred stillness was in the room, for since the advent of the
sufferer, even the quiet of that well-ordered household had deepened and
softened.

The silence was suddenly broken by a voice feeble and tremulous, but
very musical and sweet. It was Pepeeta, who gazed around her in
bewilderment and asked in vague alarm, "Where am I?"

Dorothea was by her side in an instant, and taking the thin fingers in
her strong hands, replied: "Thee is among friends."

Pepeeta looked long into the calm face above her, and gathered
reassurance; but her memory did not at once return.

"Have I ever been in this place before? Have I ever seen your face? Has
something dreadful happened? Tell me," she entreated, gazing with
agitation into the calm eyes that looked down into hers.

"I cannot tell thee whether thee has ever seen us before, but we have
seen thee so much for a few days that we feel like old friends," said
Dorothea, pressing the hand she held, and smiling.

Pepeeta's eyes wandered about the room restlessly for a moment, and then
some dim remembrance of the past came back.

"Did I come here in a great storm?" she asked.

"Thee did, indeed. The night was wild and cold."

"Did I fall on the threshold?"

"Upon the very threshold, and let us thank God for that, because if thee
had fallen at the gate or in the path we should never have heard thee."

Pepeeta struggled to a sitting posture as her memory clarified, fixed
her wide open eyes upon Dorothea and asked, pathetically, "Where is he?"

"I do not know who thee means," said Dorothea, laying her hand on the
invalid's shoulders and trying gently to push her back upon her pillow.

"David!" she exclaimed, "David. Tell me if you know, for it seems to me
I shall die if I do not hear."

"I do not know, my love. It is a long time since we have heard from
David. But thee must lie down. Thee is not strong enough to talk."

She did not need to force her now. The muscles relaxed, and Pepeeta sank
back upon her pillow, sobbing like a little child, while Dorothea
stroked her forehead. The soothing touch of her hand and her gentle
presence calmed the agitated and disappointed heart. The sobs became
less frequent, the tears ceased to flow, and sleep, coming like a
benediction, brought the balm of oblivion.

The boy, with his great brown eyes, looked wonderingly from the face of
the invalid to that of his mother, who sat silently weaving in her
imagination the story of this life, from the few strands which she had
seized in this brief and broken conversation.

The next morning when Pepeeta awakened she was not only rested and
refreshed by this natural sleep, but was restored to the full possession
of her consciousness and her memory.

When Dorothea came in from her morning duties to see how her patient
fared, she was startled by the change, for the invalid had recovered
that calm self-possession which she had lost before beginning her
journey, and now that her uncertainty was ended had already begun to
face disappointment with fortitude and resolution.

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