The Redemption of David Corson by Charles Frederic Goss

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The evangelist began to reply, but was interrupted by David, who now
burst out in a sudden exclamation of joy and gratitude. He had been too
busy with reflections and memories to participate actively in the
conversation, for this startling incident had disclosed to him the whole
slow and hidden movement of the providence of his life towards this
climax and opportunity. He was profoundly moved by a clear conviction
that a divine hand must have planned and superintended this whole web of
events, and had intentionally led him from contemplating the tragic
issue of his sinful deeds and desires, to this vision of the good he had
done in the better moments of his life. This strange coincidence, to a
mind like his, could leave no room for doubt that the hand of God was on
him, and that, after all, he had been neither abandoned nor forgotten.
The lumberman had been sent at this critical moment to save him! There
was still hope!

With that instantaneous movement in which his disordered conceptions of
life invariably re-formed themselves, the chaotic events of the past
shifted themselves into a purposeful and comprehensible series, and
revealed beyond peradventure the hand of God.

And as this conclusion burst upon him, he broke into the conversation of
Mantel and the lumberman with the warmest exclamations of gratitude and
happiness.

They talked a long time in the quiet night, asking and answering
questions. The two friends besought the evangelist to accompany them to
their rooms, but he said:

"I have given you my message and must pass on. My work is to bear
testimony. I sow the seed and leave its cultivation and the harvest to
others."

CHAPTER XXXI.

THE GREAT REFUSAL

"But when the young man heard that saying, he went away sorrowful."

Too busy with their own thoughts to talk on the way home, on entering
their rooms Mantel threw himself into a chair, while David nervously
began to gather his clothes together and crowd them hastily into a
satchel.

"What's up?" asked Mantel.

"I'm off in the morning."

"Which way are you going?"

"There is only one way. I am going to find Pepeeta."

"Do you really expect to succeed?"

"Expect to! I am determined!"

"It's a sudden move."

"Sudden! everything is sudden. Events have simply crashed upon me
lately! When I think of the fluctuations of hope and despair, of
certainty and uncertainty through which I have gone in the past few
hours, I am stupefied."

"And I never go through any! My life is like a dead and stagnant
sea--nothing agitates it. If I could once be upheaved from the bottom or
churned into a foam from the top, I think I might amount to something."

"You ought to quit this business, Mantel, and come with me. I am going
to find Pepeeta, take her back to that quiet valley where I lived, and
get myself readjusted to life. I need time for reflection, and so do
you. What do you say? Will you join me? I cannot bear to leave you? You
have been a friend, and I love you!"

"Thanks, Corson, thanks. You have come nearer to stirring this dead
heart of mine than any one since--well, no matter. I reciprocate your
feeling. I shall have a hard time of it after you have gone."

"Then join me."

"It is impossible."

"But why? This life will destroy you sooner or later."

"Oh--that's been done already."

"No, it hasn't. There are more noble things in you than you realize.
What you need is to give them scope and let them out."

"You don't know me. What you see is all on the surface. If I ever had
any power of decision or action it has gone. I am the victim, and not
the master of my destiny. I am drifting along like a derelict, with no
compass to guide, rudder to steer or anchor to grip the bottom."

"Make another effort, old man, do! Look at me. I was in as bad a fix as
you are only a little while ago."

"Yes; but see what has happened to you! Circumstances have tumbled you
out of the nest, and of course you had to fly. I wish something would
happen to me! I would almost be glad to have lightning strike me."

"What you say is true in a way, of course. I know I don't deserve any
credit for breaking out of this life. But don't you think a man can do
it alone, without any such frightful catastrophes to help him? It seems
to me, now, that I could. I feel as if I could burst through stone
walls."

"Of course you do, my dear fellow, and you can. But something has put
strength into you! That's what I need."

"Well, let me put it into you! Lean on me. I can't bear to leave you
here and see you go down! Come, brace up. Make an effort. Decide. Tear
yourself away!"

"You actually make my heart flutter, Davy; I feel as if I would really
like to do it. But I can't. It's no use. I shouldn't get across the
ferry before I'd begin to hang back."

"But you don't belong to this life. You are above it, naturally. You
ought to be a force for good in the world. Society needs such men as you
are, and needs them badly. Come! If I can break these meshes you can."

"No, my dear fellow, that's a non-sequitur. There is different blood
flowing in our veins, and we have had a different environment and
education. As far back as I know anything about them, my people have all
lived on the surface of life, and I have floated along with them. But,
by heavens--I have at least seen down into the depths!"

"Well, I have my inheritance of bad blood also. I had a father who was
not only weak but wicked."

"Yes, but think of your mother."

"Mantel, you are carrying this too far. A man is something more than the
mere chemical product of his ancestor's blood and brains! Every one has
a new and original endowment of his own. He must live and act for
himself."

"Maybe so, but everything seems, at least, to be a fixed and inevitable
consequence of what has gone before. I don't want to disparage this last
act of yours, but see how far back its roots reach into the past. See
what a chain of events led up to it, and what frightful causes have been
operating to bring you up to the sticking point! How long ago was it
that you were just as ready to throw up the game?"

"Horrible! Don't speak of it! It makes me tremble. I am not worthy to
defend or even advocate a life of endeavor and victory, Mantel, and I
will not try; but I know that I am right."

"Yes, Dave, you are right; I know it as well as you. I am only talking
to ease my conscience. I know I ought to snap these cords, and I know I
can. But I also know that I am grinding here in this devil's mill while
every bad man makes sport and every good man weeps! And I know that I
shall keep on grinding while you and thousands of other noble fellows
with less brains, perhaps, and fewer chances than mine, make wild dashes
for liberty and do men's work in the world. But here I am, cold and
dead, and here I remain."

"Can nothing persuade you--not love? I love you, Mantel! Come, let us go
together. Who knows what we can do if we try? I must persuade you!"

"I am like a ship in a sea of glue. You touch me, but you don't persuade
me! It's no use. I cannot budge. The aspirations you awaken in my soul
leap up above the surface like little fishes from a pond, and as quickly
fall back again! No, I cannot go. Don't press me--it makes me feel like
the young man in the gospel, who made what Dante calls 'the great
refusal;' he saw that young man's 'shade' in hell."

They were sitting on the sill of a deep window in what had once been one
of the most fashionable mansions of the city. The sash was raised, and
the light of the moon fell full upon their young faces. They ceased
speaking after Mantel had uttered those solemn words, and looked out
over the housetops to the water of the great river. It was long after
midnight, and not a sound broke the stillness. Fleecy clouds were
drifting across the sky, and a vessel under full sail was going silently
down the river toward the open sea. They had involuntarily clasped each
other's hands, and as their hearts opened and disclosed their secrets
they were drawn closer and closer together until their arms stole about
each other's necks. For a few brief moments they were boys again. The
vices that had hardened their hearts and shut their souls up in lonely
isolation relaxed their hold. That sympathy which knit the hearts of
David and Johnathan together made their's beat as one.

David broke the silence. "I cannot bear to leave you, Mantel. Join me.
Such feelings as these which stir us so deeply to-night do not come too
often. It must be dangerous to resist them. I suppose there are slight
protests and aspirations in the soul all the time, but these to-night
are like the flood of the tide."

"Yes," said Mantel; "the Nile flows through Egypt every day, but flows
over it only once a year."

"And this is the time to sow the seed, isn't it?"

"So they say. But you must remember that you feel this more deeply than
I do, Davy. I am moved. I have a desire to do better, but it isn't large
enough. It is like a six-inch stream trying to turn a seven-foot wheel.

"Don't make light of it, Mantel!"

"I don't mean to, but you must not overestimate the impressions made on
me. I am not so good as you think."

"I wish you had the courage to be as good as you are."

"But there is no use trying to be what I am not. If I should start off
with you, I should never be able to follow you. My old self would get
the victory. In the long run, a man will be himself. 'Nature is often
hidden, sometimes overcome--seldom extinguished.'"

"What a mood you are in, Mantel! It makes me shiver to hear you talk so.
Here I am, full of hope and purpose; my heart on fire; believing in
life; confident of the outcome; and you, a better man by nature than I
am, sitting here, cold as a block of ice, and the victim of despair! I
ought to be able to do something! Sweet as life is to me to-night, I
feel that I could lay it down to save you."

"Dear fellow!" said Mantel, grasping his hands and choking with emotion;
"you don't know how that moves me! It can't seem half so strange to you
as it does to me; but I must be true to myself. If I told you I would
take this step I should not be honest. No! Not to-night! Sometime,
perhaps. I haven't much faith in life, but I swear I don't believe, bad
man as I am, that anybody can ever go clear to the bottom, without being
rescued by a love like that! I'll never forget it, Davy; never! It will
save me sometime; but you must not talk any more, you are tired out. Go
to bed, friend, brother, the only one I ever really had and loved. You
will need your sleep. Leave me alone, and I will sit the night out and
chew the bitter cud."

It was not until daybreak that David ceased his supplications and lay
down to snatch a moment's rest. When he awoke, he sprang up suddenly and
saw Mantel still sitting before the open window where he left him,
smoking his cigar and pondering the great problem.

"I have had a wonderful dream," he said.

"What was it?" asked Mantel.

"I dreamt that I was swimming alone in a vast ocean,--weary, exhausted,
desperate and sinking,--but just as I was going down a hand was thrust
out of the sky, and although I could not reach it, so long as I kept my
eyes on it I swam with perfect ease; while, just the moment I took them
off, my old fatigue came back and I began to sink. When I saw this, I
never looked away for even a second, and the sea seemed to bear me up
with giant arms. I swam and swam as easily as men float, day after day
and year after year, until I reached the harbor."

"Whose hand was it?"

"I couldn't tell."

"Well, swim on and look up, Davy, and God bless you."

They parted at dawn, one to break through the meshes and escape, and the
other--!

In Australia, when drought drives the rabbits southward, the ranchmen,
terrified at their approach, have only to erect a woven wire fence on
the north side of their farms to be perfectly safe, for the poor things
lie down against it and die in droves--too stupid to go round, climb
over, or dig under! It is a comfort to see one of them now and then who
has determined to find the green fields on the southward side--no matter
what it costs!

Weak and bad as he had been, David at least took the first path which he
saw leading up to the light.

CHAPTER XXXII.

THE END OF EXILE

"Every one goes astray, and the least imprudent is he who
repents soonest." --Voltaire.

The steamer on which Corson embarked after his overland journey from New
York City to Pittsburg, had descended the Ohio almost as far as
Cincinnati, before other thoughts than those which were concerned with
Pepeeta and his spiritual regeneration could awaken any interest in his
mind. But as the boat approached Cincinnati, the places, the persons and
the incidents of his childhood world began to present themselves to his
consciousness. An irrepressible longing to look once more upon the place
of his birth and the friends of his youth took possession of his mind.

He found, on inquiry, that the boat was to remain at the wharf in
Cincinnati for several hours, and that there would be time enough for
him to make the journey to his old home and back before she proceeded
down the river. He decided to do so, and observed with satisfaction that
those painful gropings for the next stepping stone across the streams of
action which had been so persistent and painful a feature of his recent
life had given place to the swift intuitions of his youth. He saw his
way as he used to when a boy, and made his decisions rapidly and
executed them fearlessly. The discovery of this fact gave a new zest
and hope to life.

In a few moments after he had landed at the familiar wharf he was
mounted upon a fleet horse, rushing away over those beautiful rolling
hills which fill the mind of the traveler with uncloying delight in
their variety, their fertility and their beauty. It was the first time
since he had left the farm that his mind had been free enough from
passion or pain to bestow its full attention upon the charms of Nature;
they dawned on him now like a new discovery. The motion of the
horse,--so long unfamiliar, so easy, so graceful, so rhythmical,--seemed
of itself to key his spirits to his environment, for it is an elemental
pleasure to be seated in the saddle and feel the thrill of power and
rapid motion. The rider's eyes brightened, his cheeks glowed, his pulses
bounded. He gathered up the beauties of the world around him in great
sheaves of delicious and thrilling sensations. Long-forgotten odors came
sweeping across the fields, rich with the verdure of the vernal season,
and brought with them precious accompaniments of the almost-forgotten
past. The rich and varied colors of field and sky and forest fed his
starved soul with one kind of beauty; and the sweet sounds of the
outdoor world intoxicated him with another. The low of cattle, the
bleating of sheep, the crowing of chanticleers, the cackling of hens,
the gobble of turkeys, the multitudinous songs of the birds enveloped
him in a sort of musical atmosphere. For the first time since his
restoration to hope, the past seemed like a dream, and these few
blissful moments became a prophecy of a new and grander life. "For, if
the burden can fall off for a single moment, why not for many moments?"
So he said to himself, as the consciousness of his past misery and his
unknown future thrust their disturbing faces into the midst of these
blissful emotions.

The vague joys which had been surging through his soul became vivid and
well-defined as the details of the landscape around his old home began
gradually to be revealed. At first he had recognized only the larger and
more general features like the lines of hills, the valleys, the rivers;
but now he began to distinguish well-known farms and houses, streams in
which he had fished, groves in which he had hunted, roads over which he
had driven; and the pleasure of reviving old memories and associations
increased with every step of progress. At last he began to ascend the
high hill which hid the house of his childhood from view. He reached the
summit; there lay the village fast asleep in the spring sunshine. He
recognized it, but with astonishment, for it looked like a miniature of
its former self. The buildings that once appeared so grand had shrunk to
playhouses. The broad streets had contracted and looked like narrow
lanes. He rubbed his eyes to see if they were deceiving him.

An unreality brooded mysteriously over everything. It was the same, yet
not the same, and he paused a moment to permit his mind to become
accustomed to these alterations; to ponder upon the reasons for this
change; to realize the joy and sadness which mingled in his heart; and
then he turned into a side road to escape any possible encounter with
old acquaintances.

The route which he had chosen did not lead to the farm house, but to the
cemetery where the body of his mother lay wrapped in her dreamless
sleep; that neglected grave was drawing him to itself with a magnetic
force. He who, for a year, had thought of her scarcely at all, now
thought of nothing else. The last incident in her life, the face white
with its intolerable pain of confession, the gasp for breath, the sudden
fall, the quiet funeral, his own responsibility for this tragic
death--he lived it all over and over again in an instant of time as
grief, regret, remorse, successively swept his heart. Tying his horse
outside the lonely burying ground, he threaded his way among the
myrtle-covered graves to the low mound which marked her resting place,
approached it, removed his hat and stood silently, reverently, by its
side.

There come to us all hours or moments of sudden and unexpected
disclosures of the hidden meaning of life. Such an one came to David,
there by that lowly grave. He saw, as in the light of eternity, the
grandeur and beauty of that character which the story of her sin and
suffering had made him in his immaturity, misinterpret and despise! He
did not comprehend that tragic story when she told it; it was impossible
that he should, for he had no knowledge or experience adequate to
furnish him the clew. Nothing is more inconceivable and impossible to a
child than the possibility of his parents dying or doing wrong. When he
awakens to consciousness he finds around him eternal things,--rocks,
hills, rivers, stars, parents! They all seem to belong to the same order
of indestructible existence, and he would as soon expect to see the sun
blotted from heaven as a parent removed from earth! And when his ethical
perceptions awake, he has another experience of a similar character. His
father and mother stand to him for the very moral order itself! To his
mind, it is inconceivable that they should ever err, and the bare
suggestion that those august and venerable beings can really sin, fills
him with horror and incredulity. If he, therefore, sometime learns that
they have committed a trifling indiscretion, he trembles, and if, in
some tragic moment, irresistible proof is brought to bear on him that
they have been guilty of a dark and desperate deed, the whole moral
system seems to undergo a sudden and final collapse! There is no longer
any standing-ground beneath his feet and he could not be driven into a
deeper despair if God himself had yielded to temptation. This discovery
and this despair had fallen to the lot of David, and he had cherished
the impressions, formed in that dark hour, through all these many
months. But now, returning to the scenes of his boyhood and bringing
back his burdens of care and sin, bringing back also his deepened
experience of life and his enlarged ability, to comprehend its
difficulties and sorrows, he suddenly saw the conduct and character of
his mother in a new light. He, too, had met temptation, had fallen, had
gone down into the depths, and in that awful and interpretative
experience, comprehended the victory which his mother had won on the
field of dishonor and defeat! He was now enabled to reconstruct, by the
aid of his enlightened imagination, a true picture of the events which
she had sketched so imperfectly in those few brief words. He realized
what she must have had to struggle against, and could measure the whole
weight of guilt and despair that must have rested on her heart. He knew
only too well how easy was the road into darkness, and how rugged the
one leading up into the light; yet this frail woman had followed it and
scaled those heights! She had been able to put that past into the
background, and keep it where it belonged. She had hidden her sorrows in
her heart; nothing had daunted her; no discouragement had cast her down.
By a wonderful grace she had concealed her sin from some, and made
others fear even to whisper the knowledge they possessed. She had made
that sin a torch to illumine her future. She had used it as a stepping
stone to ascend into purity and holiness. He could not remember in all
those long years of devotion and of love, that she had ever permitted
him to feel a moment's distrust of her perfect purity and goodness; and
this seemed to him a miracle! That purity and goodness must have been
real! So protracted an hypocrisy would have been impossible. Whence,
then, had she derived the power thus to rise superior to her past? She
had shown its terrific spell over her sensibilities by dying with shame
when she at last proclaimed it, and yet for twenty years she had kept it
under her feet like a writhing dragon, while she calmly fought her
fight. It was incredible, sublime!

As he stood there by her grave, measuring this deep and tragic
experience with his new divining rod of sympathy, there rushed upon him
an overmastering desire to reveal his appreciation to that suffering
heart beyond the skies. A feeling of bitterness at his inability to do
this frenzied him; a new consciousness of the irony of life in
permitting him to make these discoveries when they could do her no good
plunged him suddenly into a struggle with the darker problems of being
which for a little while had ceased to vex him.

"Do all the appreciations of heroism come too late?" he asked his sad
heart. "Do we acquire wisdom only when we, can no longer be guided by
it? Do we achieve self-mastery and real virtue only to be despised by
our children? Where is the clue to this tangle? Oh! mother, mother, if I
could only have one single hour to ask thee what thou didst learn about
this awful mystery in those lonely years of struggle! If I could only
tell thee of my penitence, of my admiration, my love! But it is too
late--too late."

With this despairing cry on his lips, he flung himself upon the grave,
buried his face in the green turf and burst into a convulsive passion of
tears, such tears as come once or twice, perhaps, in the lives of most
men, when they are passing through the awful years of adjustment to the
incomprehensible and apparently chaotic experiences of existence.

Like a thunderstorm, these convulsions clear the atmosphere and give
relief to the strained tension of the soul. At length, when his emotion
had spent itself in long-drawn sighs, David rose in a calm and tender
frame of mind, plucked a bunch of violets from the grave and reluctantly
turned away.

On foot, and leading his horse, he entered a quiet and secluded path
which led past the rear of the farm. He had not consciously determined
what he should do next; but his heart impelled him irresistibly toward
that little bridge where he had encountered Pepeeta on his return from
the lumber camp. It was at that place and that hour, perhaps, that he
had passed through the deepest experience of his whole life, for it was
there that the full power of the beauty of the woman in whom he had met
his destiny had burst upon him, and it was there that for the first time
he had consciously surrendered himself to those rich emotions which love
enkindles in the soul.

Perhaps our spiritual enjoyments are capable of an ever-increasing
development and intensity; but those pleasures that belong to the
earthly life and are excited by the things of time and sense, however
often they may recur, by an inviolable law of nature attain their climax
in some one single experience, just as there is in the passage of a star
across the sky a single climactic moment, and in the life of a rose an
instant when it reaches its most transcendent beauty. They all attain
their zenith and then begin to wane; that one brilliant but transitory
instant of perfect bliss can no more be recalled than the passing stroke
of a bell, the vanished glory of a sunset, or the last sigh of a dying
friend; and many of the vainest and most unsatisfying struggles of life
are expended in the effort to reproduce that one evanescent and
forevermore impossible ecstasy.

Possibly David hoped that he could live that perfect moment over again
by standing on that bridge! It was thither he bent his steps, and as he
approached it there did come back faint echoes, little refluent waves;
his lively imagination reproduced the scene; the dazzling figure really
seemed once more to emerge from the secluded forest path; he almost
heard the sound of her voice!

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