The Redemption of David Corson by Charles Frederic Goss

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When this single day's work was ended there remained nothing for David
to do but chink and daub the walls with mud, cover the rude rafters of
the roof with his shakes, build the chimneys out of short sticks,
cob-house fashion, and cement them on the inside with clay to protect
them from the flames.

The other day was the one on which, at the close of the long and genial
summer, when the mass of timber and brushwood had been thoroughly
seasoned by the hot suns, he set his torches to the carefully
constructed piles.

Steven and Pepeeta were to share with him in the excitement of this
conflagration, and David had postponed it until dusk, in order that they
might enjoy its entire sublimity. He had taken the precaution to plow
many furrows around the cabin and also around the edge of the clearing,
so the flames could neither destroy his house nor devastate the forest.

Such precautions were necessary, for nothing can exceed the ferocity of
fire in the debris which the woodsmen scatter about them. When the dusk
had settled down on this woodland world and long shadows had crept
across the clearing, wrapping themselves round the trees at its edge
and scattering themselves among the thick branches till they were almost
hid from view, David lighted a pine torch and gave it into the hands of
the eager boy, who seized it and like a young Prometheus started forth.
A single touch to the dry tinder was enough. With a dull explosion, the
mass burst into flame. Shouting in his exultation, the little
torch-bearer rushed on, igniting pile after pile, and leaving behind him
almost at every step a mighty conflagration. At each new instant, as the
night advanced, a new outburst of light illumined the darkness, until
ten, twenty, fifty great heaps were roaring and seething with flames!
Great jets spouted up into the midnight heavens as if about to kiss the
very stars, and suddenly expired in the illimitable space above them.
Immense sparks, shot out from these bonfires as from the craters of
volcanoes, went sailing into the void around them and fell hissing into
the water of the brooks or silently into the new-plowed furrows.

The clouds above the heads of the subdued and almost terrified
beholders, for no one is ever altogether prepared for the absolute
awfulness of such a spectacle, were glowing with the fierce light which
the fires threw upon them. Weird illuminations played fantastic tricks
in the foliage from which the startled shadows had vanished. The roar of
the ever-increasing fires became louder and louder, until in very terror
Pepeeta crept into David's arms for protection, while the child who had
fearlessly produced this scene of awful grandeur and destruction shouted
with triumph at his play.

"Thee's a reckless little fire-eater!" said David, watching his figure
as it appeared and disappeared. "How youth trifles with forces whose
powers it can neither measure nor control! It was well that I drew a
furrow around our cabin or it would have been burned."

His gaze was fixed on the little cabin which seemed to dance and
oscillate in the palpitating light; and touched by the analogies and
symbols which his penetrating eye discovered in the simple scenes of
daily life, he continued to soliloquize, saying, "I should have drawn
furrows around my life, before I played with fire!"

"Nay, David," replied Pepeeta, "we should never have played with fire at
all."

"How wise we are--too late!"

"Shall we walk any more cautiously when the next untried pathway opens?"
he added, somewhat sadly, as he recalled the errors of the past.

"We ought to, if experience has any value," said Pepeeta.

"But has it? Or does it only interpret the past, and not point out the
future?"

"Something of both, I think."

"Well we must trust it."

"But not it alone. There is something, better and safer."

"What is that, my love?"

"The path-finding instinct of the soul itself."

"Do you believe there is such an instinct?"

"As much as I believe the carrier pigeon has it. It is the inner light
of which you told me. You see, I remember my lesson like an obedient
child."

"Why, then, are we so often misled?" he asked, tempting her.

"Because we do not wholly trust it!" she said.

"But how can we distinguish the true light from the false, the instinct
from imagination or desire? If the soul has a hundred compasses pointing
in different ways, what compass shall lead the bewildered mariner to
know the true compass?"

"He who will know, can know."

"Are you speaking from your heart, Pepeeta?"

"From its depths."

"And have you no doubts that what you say is true?"

"None, for I learned it from a teacher whom I trust, and have justified
it by my own experience."

"And now the teacher must sit at the feet of the pupil! Oh! beautiful
instructress, keep your faith firm for my sake! I have dark hours
through which I have to pass and often lose my way. The restoration of
my spiritual vision is but slow. How often am I bewildered and lost! My
thoughts brood and brood within me!"

"Put them away," she said, cheerily. "We live by faith and not by sight.
We need not be concerned with the distant future. Let us live in this
dear, divine moment. I am here. You are here! We are together; our
hands touch; our eyes meet; our hearts are one; we love! Let us only be
true to our best selves, and to the light that shines within! Oh! I have
learned so much in these few months, among these people of peace, David!
They know the way of life! We need go no farther to seek it. It lies
before us. Let us follow it!"

"Angel of goodness," he exclaimed, clasping her hand, "it must be that
supreme Love reigns over all the folly and madness of life, or to such a
one as I, a gift so good and beautiful would never have been given!"

She pressed his hand for response, for her lips quivered and her heart
was too full for words.

And now, through the ghastly light which magnified his size portentously
and painted him with grotesque and terrible colors, the child
reappeared, begrimed with smoke and wild with the transports of a power
so vast and an accomplishment so wonderful.

The three figures stood in the bright illumination, fascinated by the
spectacle. The flames, as if satisfied with destruction, had died down,
and fifty great beds of glowing embers lay spread out before them, like
a sort of terrestrial constellation.

The wind, which had been awakened and excited to madness as it rushed in
from the great halls of the forest to fan the fires, now that it was no
longer needed, ceased to blow and sank into silence and repose. Little
birds, returning to their roosts, complained mournfully that their
dreams had been disturbed, and a great owl from the top of a lofty elm
hooted his rage.

It was Saturday night. The labors of the week were over. The time had
come for them to return to the farm house. They turned away reluctantly,
leaving nature to finish the work they had begun.

CHAPTER XXXVI.

THE SUPREME TEST

"Not in the clamor of the crowded street,
Not in the shouts and plaudits of the throng,
But in ourselves, are triumph and defeat."
--Longfellow.

The emotions of the woodsman's heart had been in the main cheerful and
full of hope during the springtime and the summer; but when the autumn
came, with its wailing winds, its dying vegetation, and falling leaves,
new moods were superinduced in his sensitive soul.

It is impossible even for the good and innocent to behold this universal
dissolution and decay without remembering that they themselves must pass
through some such temporary experience. But upon those who carry guilty
secrets in their hearts these impressions descend with crushing weight.
David felt them to the full when at last the winter set in; when the
days were shortened and he was compelled to forego his toil at an early
hour and retire to his cabin! There he was confronted by all the
problems and temptations of a soul battling with the animal nature and
striving to emancipate the spirit from its thraldom.

At the close of one cold, blustering day, when his evening meal had been
eaten in solitude, he sat down before the great fire which roared in the
chimney. He read awhile, but grew tired of his book and threw it down.
The melancholy which he had suppressed so long rose at last, and there
burst on him the apparent uselessness of the task he had gratuitously
assigned himself. Why had he ever done it? Why should he be sitting
there alone in his cabin when by his side there might be that radiant
woman whose presence would dispel instantly and forever the loneliness
which ceaselessly gnawed at his heart? What, after all, was to be gained
by this self-sacrifice? Life is very short, and there are few pleasures
to be had, at best. Why should he not seize them as fast as they came
within his reach? Had he not suffered enough already? Who had ever
suffered more? It was only an unnecessary cruelty that had even
suggested such agony as he was now experiencing. He was being cheated
out of legitimate pleasures, and that by the advice of an old ascetic
whose own capacity for enjoyment had been dried up, and who was envious
of the happiness of others! As these thoughts rushed through his soul,
he could not but perceive that he had been forced once more to enter the
arena and to fight over the old battle which he had lost in the
lumberman's cabin three years before! And he found to his dismay how
much harder it was to fight these foes of virtue when they come to us
not as vague imaginations of experiences which we have never tried, but
as vivid memories of real events. Then he had only dreamed of the sweet
fruits of the knowledge of good and evil: but now the taste was in his
mouth, to whet his appetite and increase his hunger. The slumbering
selfhood of his soul woke and clamored for its rights.

It was Chateaubriand who affirmed that the human heart is like one of
those southern pools which are quiet and beautiful on the surface, but
in the bottom of which there lies an alligator! However calm the surface
of the exile's soul appeared, there was a monster in its depth, and now
it rose upon him. In his struggles with it he paced the floor, sank
despairingly into his chair, and fell on his knees by turns. Animal
desires and brute instincts grappled with intellectual convictions and
spiritual aspirations; flesh and blood with mind and spirit; skepticism
with trust; despair with hope.

The old forest had been the theater of many combats. In earth, air and
water, birds, animals and fishes had struggled with each other for
supremacy and existence. Beasts had fought with Indians and Indians with
white men; but no battle had been more significant or tragic than the
one which was taking place in the quiet cabin. There was no noise and no
bloodshed, but it was a struggle to the death. It was no new strife, but
one which has repeated itself in human hearts since they began to beat.
It cannot be avoided by plunging into the crowds of great cities, nor by
fleeing to the solitudes of forests, for we carry our battleground with
us. The inveterate foes encamp upon the fields, and when they are not
fighting they are recuperating their strength for struggles still to
come.

But although neither combatant in this warfare is ever wholly
annihilated, there is in every life a Waterloo. There comes a struggle
in which, if we are not victorious, we at least remain permanent master
of the field. This was the night of David's Waterloo. A true history of
that final conflict in the soul of this hermit would not have disgraced
the confessions of Saint Augustine!

He wrestled to keep his thoughts pure and his faith firm, until the
sweat stood in beads on his forehead. He felt that to yield so much as
the fraction of an inch of ground in his battle against doubt and sin
this night was to be lost! And still the conflict went against him.

It turned upon another of those trivial incidents of which there had
been a series in his life. His attention was arrested by a sound in the
woods which summoned his consciousness from the inner world of thought
and feeling to the great external world of action and endeavor. His
huntsman's ear detected its significance at once, and springing to the
corner of the room he seized his rifle, threw open the cabin door and
stood on the threshold. A full moon shone on the snow and in that white
and ghostly light his quick eye caught sight of a spectacle that made
his pulses leap. A fawn bounded out into the open field and headed for
his cabin, attracted by the firelight gleaming through the window and
door. Behind her and snapping almost at her heels, came a howling pack
of a half dozen wolves whose red, lolling tongues, white fangs and
flaming eyes were distinctly visible from where he stood. Coolly raising
his rifle he aimed at the leader and pulled the trigger. There was a
quick flash, a sharp report, and the wolf leaped high in the air,
plunged headlong, tumbled into the snow, and lay writhing in the pangs
of death.

There was no time to load again, and there was no need, for the
terrified fawn, impelled by the instinct of self-preservation, chose the
lesser of two dangers and with a few wild bounds toward the cabin, flung
herself through the wide-open door.

David had detected her purpose and stepped aside; and instantly she had
entered closed and bolted the door upon the very muzzles of her
pursuers. They dashed themselves against it and whined with baffled
rage, while the half-frantic deer crawled trembling to the side of her
preserver, licked his hands and lay at his feet gasping for breath.

To some men an incident like this would have been an incident and
nothing more; but souls like Corson's perceive in every event and
experience of life, elements which lie beneath the surface.

Not only was he saved from the spiritual defeat of which he was on the
verge, by being summoned instantly from the subjective into the
objective world; but the rescue of the deer became a beautiful and holy
symbol of life itself, and so revealed and illustrated life's main end
"the help of the helpless,"--that he was at once elevated from a region
of struggle and despair into one of triumph and hope. He remained in it
until he fell asleep. He awoke in it on the morrow. From that high plane
he did not again descend so low as he had been. The courage that had
been kindled and the purposes which had been crystallized by the joy of
this rescue and the gratitude of the deer remained permanently in his
heart. He lived in dreams of other acts like this, in which the objects
saved by his strength were not the beasts of the field, but the hunted
and despairing children of a heavenly Father.

The fawn became to him a continual reminder of this spiritual struggle
and victory, for he kept it in his cabin, made it a companion, trained
it to follow him about his work, and finally presented it to Pepeeta.

There were many beautiful things to be seen in the winter woods; snow
hanging in plumes from the trees, the smoke of the cabin curling into
the still air, rabbits browsing on the low bushes, the woodsman standing
in triumph over a fallen tree; but when, on the days of her visits to
the exile, Pepeeta entered the clearing and the deer, perceiving her
approach, ran to greet her in flying leaps, bounded around her, looked
up into her face with its gentle eyes, ate the food she offered and
licked the hand of its mistress--David thought that there was nothing
more beautiful in the world.

CHAPTER XXXVII.

PARADISE REGAINED

"The loves that meet in Paradise shall cast out fear,
And Paradise hath room for you and me and all."
--Christina Rossetti.

At last--the springtime came!

The potent energy of the sun opened all the myriad veins of the great
trees, wakened the hibernating creatures of the dens and burrows from
their protracted sleep, caused the seeds to swell and burst in the bosom
of earth, and sent the blood coursing through David's veins, quickening
all his intellectual and spiritual powers.

And then, the end of his exile was near! In a few weeks he would have
vindicated the purity of his purpose to attain the divine life, and have
proved himself worthy to claim the hand of Pepeeta!

All the winter long he had plied his axe. Once more, now that the snow
had vanished, he set fire to the debris which he had strewn around him,
and saw with an indescribable feeling of triumph and delight the open
soil made ready for his plow. He yoked a team of patient oxen to it and
set the sharp point deep into the black soil. Never had the earth
smelled so sweet as now when the broad share threw it back in a
continuously advancing wave. Never had that yeoman's joy of hearing the
ripping of roots and the grating of iron against stones as the great
oxen settled to their work, strained in their yokes and dragged the plow
point through the bosom of the earth, been half so genuine and deep. It
was good to be alive, to sleep, to eat, to toil! Cities had lost their
charm. David's sin was no longer a withering and blasting, but a
chastening and restraining memory. His clearing was a kingdom, his cabin
a palace, and he was soon to have a queen! He had reserved his sowing
for the last day of his self-imposed seclusion, which ended with the
month of May.

On the day following, having accomplished his vow, he would go to the
house of God and claim his bride! This day he would devote to that
solemn function of scattering the sacred seed of life's chief support
into the open furrow!

No wonder a feeling of devotion and awe came upon him as he prepared
himself for his task; for perhaps there is not a single act in the whole
economy of life better calculated to stir a thoughtful mind to its
profoundest depths than the sowing of those golden grains which have
within them the promise and potency of life. Year after year, century
after century, millions of men have gone forth in the light of the
all-beholding and life-giving sun to cast into the bosom of the earth
the sustenance of their children! It is a sublime act of faith, and this
sacrifice of a present for a future good, an actual for a potential
blessing, is no less beautiful and holy because familiar and old. The
Divine Master himself could not contemplate it without emotion and was
inspired by it to the utterance of one of his grandest parables.

And then the field itself inspired solemn reflections and noble pride in
the mind of the sower. It was his own! He had carved it out of a
wilderness! Here was soil which had never been opened to the daylight.
Here was ground which perhaps for a thousand, and not unlikely for ten
thousand years, should bring forth seed to the sower; and he had cleared
it with his own hands! Generations and centuries after he should have
died and been forgotten, men would go forth into this field as he was
doing to-day, to sow their seed and reap their harvests.

He slung his bag of grain over his shoulder and stepped forth from his
cabin at the dawn of day. The clearing he had made was an almost perfect
circle. All around it were the green walls of the forest with the great
trunks of the beeches, white and symmetrical, standing like vast
Corinthian columns supporting a green frieze upon which rested the lofty
roof of the immense cathedral. From the organ-loft the music of the
morning breeze resounded, and from the choirs the sweet antiphonals of
birds. Odors of pine, of balsam, of violets, of peppermint, of
fresh-plowed earth, of bursting life, were wafted across the vast nave
from transept to transept, and floated like incense up to heaven.

The priest, about to offer his sacrifice, the sacrifice of a broken
heart and contrite spirit, about to confess his faith; in the beautiful
and symbolic act of sacrificing the present for the future, stepped
forth into the open furrow.

His open countenance, bronzed with the sun, was lighted with love and
adoration; his lips smiled; his eyes glowed; he lifted them to the
heavens in an unspoken prayer for the benediction of the great
life-giver; he drew into his nostrils the sweet odors, into his lungs
the pure air, into his soul the beauty and glory of the world, and then,
filling his hand with the golden grain, he flung it into the bosom of
the waiting earth.

All day long he strode across the clearing and with rhythmical swinging
of his brawny arm lavishly scattered the golden grain.

As the sun went down and the sower neared the conclusion of his labor,
his emotions became deeper and yet more deep. He entered more and more
fully into the true spirit and significance of his act. He felt that it
was a sacrament. Thoughts of the operation of the mighty energies which
he was evoking; of the Divine spirit who brooded over all; of the coming
into this wilderness of the woman who was to be the good angel of his
life; of the ceremony that was to be enacted in the little meeting
house; of the work to which he was dedicated in the future, kindled his
soul into an ecstasy of joy. He ceased to be conscious of his present
task. The material world loosened its hold upon his senses. His thoughts
became riveted upon the elements of that spiritual universe that lay
within and around him, and that seemed uncovered to his view as to the
apostle of old. "Whether he was in the body, or out of the body, he
could not tell!" Finally he ceased to move; his hand was arrested and
hung poised in mid-air with the unscattered seed in its palm; he eyes
were fixed on some invisible object and he stood as he had stood when we
first caught sight of him in the half-plowed meadow--lost in a trance.

How long he stood he never knew, but he was wakened, at last, as it was
natural and fitting he should be.

Fulfilling her agreement to come and bring him home on the eve of their
wedding day, Pepeeta emerged like a beautiful apparition from an opening
in the green wall of the great cathedral. She saw David standing
immovable in the furrow. For a few moments she was absorbed in
admiration of the grace and beauty of the noble and commanding figure,
and then she was thrilled with the consciousness that she possessed the
priceless treasure of his love. But these emotions were followed by a
holy awe as she discovered that the soul of her lover was filled with
religious ecstasy. She felt that the place whereon she stood was holy
ground, and reverently awaited the emergence of the worshiper from the
holy of holies into which he had withdrawn for prayer.

But the rapture lasted long and it was growing late. The shadows from
the summits of the hills had already crept across the clearing and were
silently ascending the trunks of the trees on the eastern side. It was
time for them to go. She took a step toward him, and then another,
moving slowly, reverently, and touched him on the arm. He started. The
half-closed hand relaxed and the seed fell to the ground, the dreamer
woke and descended from the heaven of the spiritual world into that of
the earthly, the heart of a pure and noble woman.

"I have come," she said simply.

He took her in his arms and kissed her.

"Thee is not through yet?"

"So it seems! I must have lost myself."

"I think thee rather found thyself."

"Perhaps I did; but I must finish my labor. It will never do for me to
let my visions supplant my tasks. They will be hurtful, save as
incentives to toil. I must be careful!"

"Let me help thee. There are only a few more furrows. I am sure that I
can sow," she said, extending her hand.

He placed some of the seed in her apron and she trudged by his side,
laughing at her awkwardness but laboring with all her might. Her lover
took her hand in his and showed her how to cast the seed, and so they
labored together until every open furrow was filled. It was dark when
they were done. They lingered a little while to put the cabin in order,
and then turned their faces towards the old farmhouse.

The two little brooks were singing their evening song as they mingled
their waters together in front of that wilderness home. The lovers stood
a moment at their point of junction, as Pepeeta said, "It is a symbol of
our lives." They listened to the low murmur, watched the crystal stream
as it sparkled in the moonlight, stole away into the distance, chanting
its own melodious lay of love. It led them out of the clearing and into
the depths of the forest. They moved like spirits passing through a land
of dreams. The palpable world seemed stripped of its reality. The
creatures that stole across their path or started up as they passed, the
crickets that chirped their little idyls at the roots of the great
trees, the fire-flies that kindled their evanescent fires among the
bushes, the night owls that hooted solemnly in the tree tops, the rustle
of the leaves in the evening breeze, the gurgle of the waters over the
stones in the bed of the brook, their own muffled footfalls, the patches
of moonlight that lay like silver mats on the brown carpet of the woods,
the flickering shadows, the ghostly trunks of the trees, the slowly
swaying, plume-like branches, sounded only like faint echoes or gleamed
only like soft reflections of a fairy world!

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