The Redemption of David Corson by Charles Frederic Goss

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"Well, well," he said in mingled scorn and pity, "reckon you are more to
be pitied than b-b-blamed. Fault of early education! Talk like a
p-p-parrot! What can a young fellow like you know about life, shut up
here in this seven-by-nine valley, like a man in a b-b-barrel looking
out of the b-b-bung-hole?"

Offended and disgusted, the Quaker was about to turn upon his heel; but
he saw in the face of the man's beautiful companion a look which said
plainly as spoken words, "I, too, desire that you should go with us."

This look changed his purpose, and he paused.

"Listen to me now," continued the doctor, observing his irresolution.
"You think you know what life is; but you d-d-don't! Do you know what
g-g-great cities are? Do you know what it is to m-m-mix with crowds of
men, to feel and perhaps to sway their p-p-passions? Do you know what it
is to p-p-possess and to spend that money which you d-d-despise? Do you
know what it is to wear fine clothes, to d-d-drink rare wines, to see
great sights, to go where you want to and to do what you p-p-please?"

"I do not, nor do I wish to. And thee must abandon these follies and
sins, if thee would enter the Kingdom of God," David replied, fixing his
eyes sternly upon the face of the blasphemer.

"God! Ha, ha, ha! Who is He, anyhow? Same old story! Fools that can't
enjoy life, d-d-don't want any one else to! Ever hear 'bout the fox that
got his tail b-b-bit off? Wanted all the rest to have theirs! What the
d-d-deuce are we here in this world for? T-t-tell me that, p-p-parson!"

"To do the will of our Father which is in heaven."

"To do the will of our Father in heaven! I know but one will, and it is
the w-w-will of Doctor P-p-paracelsus Aesculapius. I'm my own lord and
law, I am."

"Know thou that for all thy idle words, God will bring thee to
judgment?" David answered solemnly.

"Rot!" muttered the doctor, disgusted beyond endurance, and concluding
the interview with the cynical farewell,

"Good-bye, d-d-dead man! I have always hated c-c-corpses! I am going
where men have red b-b-blood in their veins."

With these words he turned on his heel and started toward the carriage,
leaving David and Pepeeta alone. Neither of them moved. The gypsy
nervously plucked the petals from a daisy and the Quaker gazed at her
face. During these few moments nature had not been idle. In air and
earth and tree top, following blind instincts, her myriad children were
seeking their mates. And here, in the odorous sunshine of the May
morning, these two young, impressionable and ardent beings, yielding
themselves unconsciously to the same mysterious attraction which was
uniting other happy couples, were drawn together in a union which time
could not dissolve and eternity, perhaps, cannot annul.

Having stalked indignantly onward for a few paces, the doctor discovered
that his wife had not followed him, and turning he called savagely:
"Pepeeta, come! It is folly to try and p-p-persuade him. Let us leave
the saint to his prayers! But let him remember the old p-p-proverb,
'young saint, old sinner!' Come!"

He proceeded towards the carriage; but Pepeeta seemed rooted to the
ground, and David was equally incapable of motion. While they stood
thus, gazing into each other's eyes, they saw nothing and they saw all.
That brief glance was freighted with destiny. A subtle communication had
taken place between them, although they had not spoken; for the eye has
a language of its own.

What was the meaning of that glance? What was the emotion that gave it
birth in the soul? He knew! It told its own story. To their dying day,
the actors in that silent drama remembered that glance with rapture and
with pain.

Pepeeta spoke first, hurriedly and anxiously: "What did you say last
night about the 'light of life?' Tell me! I must know."

"I said there is a light that lighteth every man that cometh into the
world."

"And what did you mean? Be quick. There is only a moment."

"I meant that there is a light that shines from the soul itself and that
in this light we may walk, and he who walks in it, walks safely. He need
never fall!"

"Never? I do not understand; it is beautiful; but I do not understand!"

"Pepeeta!" called her husband, angrily.

She turned away, and David watched her gliding out of his sight, with an
irrepressible pain and longing. "I suppose she is his daughter," he said
to himself, and upon that natural but mistaken inference his whole
destiny turned. Something seemed to draw him after her. He took a step
or two, halted, sighed and returned to his labor.

But it was to a strangely altered world that he went. Its glory had
vanished; it was desolate and empty, or so at least it seemed to him,
for he confounded the outer and the inner worlds, as it was his nature
and habit to do. It was in his soul that the change had taken place. The
face of a bad man and of an incomprehensible woman followed him through
the long furrows until the sun went down. He was vaguely conscious that
he had for the first time actually encountered those strenuous elements
which draw manhood from its moorings. He felt humiliated by the
recognition that he was living a dream life there in his happy valley;
and that there was a life outside which he could not master so easily.
That confidence in his strength and incorruptibility which he had always
felt began to waver a little. His innocence appeared to him like that of
the great first father in the garden of Eden, before his temptation, and
now that he too had listened to the voice of the serpent and had for the
first time been stirred at the description of the sweetness of the great
tree's fruit, there came to him a feeling of foreboding as to the
future. He was astonished that such characters as those he had just
seen did not excite in him loathing and repulsion. Why could he not put
them instantly and forever out of his mind? How could they possess any
attractiveness for him at all--such a blatant, vulgar man or such an
ignorant, ah! but beautiful, woman; for she was beautiful!
Yes--beautiful but bad! But no--such a beautiful woman could not be bad.
See how interested she was about the "inner light." She must be very
ignorant; but she was very attractive. What eyes! What lips!

Thoughts which he had always been able to expel from his mind before,
like evil birds fluttered again and again into the windows of his soul.
For this he upbraided himself; but only to discover that at the very
moment when he regretted that he had been tempted at all, he also
regretted that he had not been tempted further.

All day long his agitated spirit alternated between remorse that he had
enjoyed so much, and regret that he had enjoyed so little. Never had he
experienced such a tumult in his soul. He struggled hard, but he could
not tell whether he had conquered or been defeated.

It was not until he had retired to his room at night and thrown himself
upon his knees, that he began to regain peace. There, in the stillness
of his chamber, he strove for the control of his thoughts and emotions,
and fell asleep after long and prayerful struggles, with the sweet
consciousness of a spiritual triumph!

CHAPTER VI.

THE TRAIL OF THE SERPENT

"Every man living shall assuredly meet with an hour of temptation,
a critical hour which shall more especially try what metal his
heart is made of"--South.

It was long after he had awakened in the morning before the memory of
the adventure of yesterday recurred to David's mind. His sleep had been
as deep as that of an infant, and his rest in the great ocean of
oblivion had purified him, so that when he did at last recall the
experience which had affected him so deeply, it was with indifference.
The charm had vanished. Even the gypsy's beauty paled in the light of
the Holy Sabbath morning. He could think of her with entire calmness,
and so thoroughly had the evil vanished that he hoped it had disappeared
forever. But he had yet to learn that before evil can be successfully
forgotten it must be heroically overcome.

He did not yet realize this, however, and his bath, his morning prayer,
a passage from the gospel, the hearty breakfast, the kind and trustful
faces of his family, dispelled the last cloud from the sky of his soul.
Having finished the round of morning duties, he made himself ready to
visit the lumber camp, there to discharge the sacred duty revealed to
him in the vision.

The confidence reposed by the genuine Quaker in such intimations of the
Spirit is absolute. They are to him as imperative as the audible voice
of God to Moses by the burning bush.

"Farewell, mother, I am off," he said, kissing her upon the white
forehead.

"Thee is going to the lumber camp, my son?" she asked, regarding him
with ill-concealed pride.

"I am, and hope to press the truth home to the hearts of those who shall
hear me," replied the young devotee, his face lighting up with the
blended rapture of religious enthusiasm, youth and health.

"The Lord be with thee and make thy ministrations fruitful," his mother
said, and with this blessing he set off.

As the young mystic had yesterday thought the world dark and stormy
because of the tempest in his soul, so now he thought it still and
peaceful, because of his inward calm. The very intensity of his recent
struggles had rendered his soul acutely sensitive, like a delicate
musical instrument which responded freely to the innumerable fingers
wherewith Nature struck its keys. Her manifold forms, her gorgeous
colors, her gigantic forces thrilled and intoxicated him.

That sense of fellowship with all the forms of life about him, which is
characteristic of all our moments of deepest rapture in the embrace of
Nature, filled his soul with joy. He accosted the trees as one greets a
friend; he chatted with the brooks; he held conversation with the little
lambs skipping in the pastures, and with the horses that whinnied as he
passed.

Such opulent moments come to all in youth; moments when the soul,
unconscious of its chains because they have not been stretched to their
limits, roams the universe with God-like liberty and joy.

Had he been asked to analyze these exquisite emotions, the young Quaker
would have said that they were the joys of the indwelling of the Divine
Spirit. He did not realize how much of his exhilaration came from the
feelings awakened by the experiences of the day before. One might almost
say that a spiritual fragrance from the woman who had crossed his path
was diffusing itself through the chambers of his soul. It was like the
odor of violets which lingers after the flowers themselves are gone.

Up to this time, he had never felt the mighty and mysterious emotion of
love. More than once, when he had seen the calm face of Dorothy Fraser,
soft and tender feelings had arisen in his heart; but they were only the
first faint gleams of that conflagration which sooner or later breaks
forth in the souls of men like him.

It was this confusion of the sources of his happiness which made him
oblivious to the struggle that was still going on within his mind. The
question had been raised there as to whether he had chosen wisely in
turning his back upon the joys of an earthly life for the joys of
heaven. It had not been settled, and was waiting an opportunity to
thrust itself again before his consciousness. In the meantime he was
happy. Never had he seemed to himself more perfectly possessed by the
Divine Spirit than at the moment when he reached the summit of the last
hill, and looked down into the valley where lay the lumber-camp. He
paused to gaze upon a scene of surpassing loveliness, and was for a
moment absorbed by its beauty; but a sudden discovery startled and
disturbed him. There was no smoke curling from the chimneys. There were
no forms of men moving about in their brilliant woolen shirts; he
listened in vain for voices; he could not even hear the yelp of the
ever-watchful dogs.

"Can it be possible that I have been deceived by my vision?" he asked
himself.

It was the first real skepticism of his life, and crowding it back into
his heart as best he could, he pressed on, excited and curious. As he
approached the rude structure, the signs of its desertion became
indubitable. He called, but heard only the echo of his own voice. He
tried the door, and it opened. Through it he entered the low-ceiled
room. On every hand were evidences of recent departure; living coals
still glowed in the ashes and crumbs were scattered on the tables. There
could be no longer any doubt that the lumbermen had vanished. The last
and most incontrovertible proof was tacked upon the wall in the shape of
a flat piece of board on which were written in a rude scrawl these
words: "We have gone to the Big Miami."

The face so bright and clear a moment ago was clouded now. He read the
sentence over and over again. He sat down upon a bench and meditated,
then rose and went out, walking around the cabin and returning to read
the message once more. If he had spoken the real sentiment of his heart
he would have said: "I have been deceived." He did not speak, however,
but struggled bravely to throw off the feelings of surprise and doubt;
and so, reassuring his faith again and again by really noble efforts,
took from his pocket the lunch his mother had prepared, and ate it
hungrily although abstractedly. As he did so, he felt the animal joy in
food and rest, and his courage and confidence revived.

"It is plain," he said to himself, "that God has sent me here to try my
faith. All he requires is obedience! It is not necessary that I should
understand; but it is necessary that I should obey!"

The idea of a probation so unique was not distasteful to his romantic
nature, and he therefore at once addressed himself to the business upon
which he had come. He had been sent to preach, and preach he would.
Drawing from the inner pocket of his coat a well-worn Bible, he turned
to the fourteenth chapter of the Gospel of Saint John, rose to his feet
and began to read. It was strange to be reading to this emptiness and
silence, but after a moment he adjusted himself to the situation. The
earnest effort he was making to control his mind achieved at least a
partial success. His face brightened, he conjured up before his
imagination the forms and faces of the absent men. He saw them with the
eye of his mind. His voice grew firm and clear, and its tones reassured
him.

Having finished the lesson, he closed the volume and began to pray. Now
that his eyes were shut, the strangeness of the situation vanished
entirely. He was no longer alone, for God was with him. The petition was
full of devotion, tenderness and faith, and as he poured it forth his
countenance beamed like that of an angel. When it was finished he began
the sermon. The first few words were scarcely audible. The thoughts were
disconnected and fragmentary. He suffered an unfamiliar and painful
embarrassment, but struggled on, and his thoughts cleared themselves
like a brook by flowing. Each effort resulted in a greater facility of
utterance, and soon the joy of triumph began to inspire him. The old
confidence returned at last and his soul, filled with faith and hope and
fervor, poured itself forth in a full torrent. He began to be awed by
the conjecture that his errand had some extraordinary although hidden
import. Who could tell what mission these words were to accomplish in
the plans of God? He remembered that the waves made by the smallest
pebble flung into the ocean widen and widen until they touch the
farthest shore, and he flung the pebbles of his speech into the great
ocean of thought, transported by the hope of sometime learning that
their waves had beat upon the shores of a distant universe.

Suddenly, in the midst of this tumultuous rush of speech, he heard, or
thought he heard, a sound. It seemed to him like a sob and there
followed stumbling footsteps as of some one in hurried flight, but he
was too absorbed to be more than dimly conscious of anything save his
own emotions.

And yet, slight as was this interruption, it served to agitate his mind
and bring him down from the realms of imagination to the world of
reality. His thoughts began to flow less easily and his tongue
occasionally to stammer; the strangeness of his experience came back
upon him with redoubled force; the chill influence of vacancy and
emptiness oppressed him; his enthusiasm waned; what he was doing began
to seem foolish and even silly.

Just at that critical moment there occurred one of those trifling
incidents which so often produce results ridiculously disproportionate
to their apparent importance. Through the open door to which his back
was turned, a little snake had made its way into the room, and having
writhed silently across the floor, coiled itself upon the hearth-stone,
faced the speaker, looked solemnly at him with its beady eyes, and
occasionally thrust out its forked tongue as if in relish of his words.

That fixed and inscrutable gaze completed the confusion of the orator.
He suddenly ceased to speak, and stood staring at the serpent. His face
became impassive and expressionless; the pupils of his eyes dilated; his
lips remained apart; the last word seemed frozen on his tongue. Not a
shade of thought could be traced on his countenance and yet he must
have been thinking, for he suddenly collapsed, sank down on a rude bench
and rested his head on his hands as if he had come to some disagreeable,
and perhaps terrible conclusion. And so indeed he had. The uneasy
suspicions which had been floating in his mind in a state of solution
were suddenly crystallized by this untoward event. The absurdity of a
man's having tramped twenty miles through an almost unbroken wilderness
to preach the gospel to a garter snake, burst upon him with a crushing
force. This grotesque denouement of an undertaking planned and executed
in the loftiest frame of religious enthusiasm, shook the very foundation
of his faith.

"It is absurd, it is impossible, that an infinite Spirit of love and
wisdom could have planned this repulsive adventure! I have been misled!
I am the victim of a delusion!" he said to himself, in shame and
bitterness.

To him, Christianity had been not so much a system of doctrines based
upon historical proofs, as emotions springing from his own heart. He
believed in another world not because its existence had been testified
to by others, but because he daily and hourly entered its sacred
precincts. He had faith in God, not because He had spoken to apostles
and prophets, but because He had spoken to David Corson. Having received
direct communication from the Divine Spirit, how could he doubt? What
other proof could he need?

Suddenly, without warning and without preparation, the foundation upon
which he had erected the superstructure of his faith crumbled and fell.
He had been deceived! The communications were false! They had originated
in his own soul, and were not really the voice of God.

Through this suspicion, as through a suddenly-opened door, the powers of
hell rushed into his soul and it became the theater of a desperate
battle between the good and evil elements of life. Doubt grappled with
faith; self-gratification with self-restraint; despair with hope; lust
with purity; body with soul.

He heard again the mocking laughter of the quack, and the stinging words
of his cynical philosophy once more rang in his ears. What this coarse
wretch had said was true, then! Religion was a delusion, and he had been
spending the best portion of his life in hugging it to his bosom. Much
of his youth had already passed and he had not as yet tasted the only
substantial joys of existence,--money, pleasure, ambition, love! He felt
that he had been deceived and defrauded.

A contempt for his old life and its surroundings crept upon him. He
began to despise the simple country people among whom he had grown up,
and those provincial ideas which they cherished in the little, unknown
nook of the world where they stagnated.

During a long time he permitted himself to be borne upon the current of
these thoughts without trying to stem it, till it seemed as if he would
be swept completely from his moorings. But his trust had been firmly
anchored, and did not easily let go its hold. The convictions of a
lifetime began to reassert themselves. They rose and struggled
heroically for the possession of his spirit.

Had the battle been with the simple abstraction of philosophic doubt,
the good might have prevailed, but there obtruded itself into the field
the concrete form of the gypsy. The glance of her lustrous eye, the
gleam of her milk-white teeth, the heaving of her agitated bosom, the
inscrutable but suggestive expression of her flushed and eager face,
these were foes against which he struggled in vain. A feverish desire,
whose true significance he did not altogether understand, tugged at his
heart, and he felt himself drawn by unseen hands toward this mysterious
and beautiful being. She seemed to him at that awful moment, when his
whole world of thought and feeling was slipping from under his feet, the
one only abiding reality. She at least was not an impalpable vision, but
solid, substantial, palpitating flesh and blood. Like continuously
advancing waves which sooner or later must undermine a dyke, the
passions and suspicions of his newly awakened nature were sapping the
foundations of his belief.

At intervals he gained a little courage to withstand them, and at such
moments tried to pray; but the effort was futile, for neither would the
accustomed syllables of petition spring to his lips, nor the feelings of
faith and devotion arise within his heart. He strove to convince
himself that this experience was a trial of his faith, and that if he
stood out a little longer, his doubt would pass away. He lifted his head
and glanced at the serpent still coiled upon the hearth. Its eyes were
fixed upon him in a gorgon-like stare, and his doubts became positive
certainties, as disgust became loathing. The battle had ended. The
mystic had been defeated. This sudden collapse had come because the
foundations of his faith had been honeycombed. The innocent serpent had
been, not the cause, but the occasion.

Influences had been at work, of which the Quaker had remained
unconscious. He had been observing, without reflecting upon, many facts
in the lives of other men, experiences in his own heart, and apparent
inconsistencies in the Bible. There was also a virus whose existence he
did not suspect running in his very blood! And now on top of the rest
came the bold skepticism of the quack, and the bewildering beauty of the
gypsy.

Yes, the preliminary work had been done! We never know how rotten the
tree is until it falls, nor how unstable the wall until it crumbles. And
so in the moral natures of men, subtle forces eat their way silently and
imperceptibly to the very center.

A summer breeze overthrows the tree, the foot of a child sets the wall
tottering; a whisper, a smile, even the sight of a serpent, is the jar
that upsets the equilibrium of a soul.

The Quaker rose from his seat in a fever of excitement. He seized the
Bible lying open on the table, hurled it frantically at the snake and
flung himself out of the open door into the sunshine. A wild
consciousness of liberty surged over him.

"I am free," he exclaimed aloud. "I have emancipated myself from
superstition. I am going forth into the world to assert myself, to
gratify my natural appetites, to satisfy my normal desires. It was for
this that life was given. I have too long believed that duty consisted
in conquering nature. I now see that it lies in asserting it. I have too
long denied myself. I will hereafter be myself. That man was
right--there is no law above the human will."

CHAPTER VII.

THE CHANCE WORD

"A man reforms his habits altogether or not at all."
--Bacon.

David was not mistaken in his vague impression that he had heard a sob
and footsteps outside the cabin door.

The little band of lumbermen abandoning their camp in the early light of
the morning for another clearing still farther in the wilderness, had
already covered several miles of their journey when their leader
suddenly discovered that he had forgotten his axe, and with a wild
volley of oaths turned back to get it.

Even in that region, where new types of men sprang up like new varieties
of plants after a fire has swept over a clearing, there was not to be
found a more unique and striking personality than Andy McFarlane. In
physique he was of gigantic proportions, his hair and beard as red as
fire, his voice loud and deep, his eyes blue and piercing. Clad in the
gay-colored woolen shirt, the rough fur cap, and the high-topped boots
of a lumberman, his appearance was bold and picturesque to the last
degree.

Nor were his mental powers inferior to his physical. Although unable to
read or write, he could both reason and command. His keen perceptions,
his ready wit, his forcible logic and his invincible will had made him
a leader among men and the idol of the rude people among whom he passed
his days.

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