The Redemption of David Corson by Charles Frederic Goss

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"What! Make a well man think he is sick?" the Quaker asked in
astonishment.

"Sure! That's the secret of success. I can pick out the strongest man in
the c-c-crowd and in five minutes have pains shooting through him like
g-g-greased lightning. They are all like jumping-jacks to the man that
knows them. You watch me pull the string and you-you'll see them
wig-wig-wiggle."

"It seems a pity to take advantage of such weakness in our fellow men,"
said David, whose heart began to suffer qualms as he contemplated this
rascality and his own connection with it.

"Fellow men! They are no fellows of mine. They are nuts for me to
c-c-crack. They are oysters for me to open!" responded the quack, as he
drove gaily into the public square and checked the horses, who stood
with their proud necks arched, champing their bits and looking around at
the crowd as if they shared their master's contempt.

Pepeeta descended from the carriage and made her way hastily into the
tent which had already been pitched for her. The doctor lighted his
torch and set his stock of goods in order while David, obeying his
directions, began to move among the people to study their habits.
Elbowing his way here and there, he contemplated the crowd in the light
of the quack's philosophy, and as he did so received a series of painful
mental shocks.

"The first principle in the art of painting a picture is to know where
to sit down;" in other words, everything depends upon the point of view.
Now that David began to look for evidences of the weaknesses and
follies of his fellow men, he saw them everywhere. For the first time in
his life he observed that startling prevalence of animal types which
always communicates such a shock to the mind of him who has never
discovered it before. Every countenance suddenly seemed to be the face
of a beast, but thinly and imperfectly veiled. There were foxes and
tigers and wolves, there were bulldogs and monkeys and swine. He had
always seen, or thought he saw, upon the foreheads of his fellow men
some evidence of that divinity which had been communicated to them when
God breathed into the great first father the breath of life; but now he
shuddered at the sight of those thick lips and drooping jaws, those dull
or crafty eyes, those sullen, sodden, gargoyle features, as men do at
beholding monstrosities.

A few weeks ago he would have felt a profound pity at this discovery,
but so rapid and radical had been the alteration in his feelings that he
was now seized by a sudden revulsion and contempt. "Are these creatures
really men?" he asked himself. He stood there among them taller,
straighter, keener, handsomer than them all, and the old feelings that
have made men aristocrats and tyrants in every age of the world, surged
in his heart and hardened it against them.

By this time the quack had finished his few simple preparations, and,
standing erect before his audience, began the business of the evening.

Having observed the habits of the game, David now chose a favorable
position to study those of the hunter. He watched with an almost
breathless interest every expression upon that sinister face and
listened with a boundless interest to every word that fell from those
treacherous lips.

He was not long in justifying the quack's honest criticism of his own
oratory. His voice lacked the vibrant tones of a musical instrument and
his rhetoric that fluency, without which the highest effects of
eloquence can never be attained. By speaking very slowly and
deliberately he avoided stammering, but this always acted like a
dragging anchor upon the movement of his thought. These were radical
defects, but in every other respect he was a consummate artist. He
arrested the attention of his hearers with an inimitable skill and held
it with an irresistible power.

His piercing eye noted every expression on the faces of his hearers, and
seemed to read the inmost secrets of their hearts. He perceived the
slightest inclination to purchase, and was as keen to see a hand steal
towards a pocket-book as a cat to see a mouse steal out of its hole.

He coaxed, he wheedled, he bantered, he abused,--he even threatened. He
fulfilled his promise to the letter, "to make the well men think that
they were sick," and many a stalwart frontiersman whose body was as
sound as an ox, began to be conscious of racking pains.

Nor were those legitimate arts of oratory the only ones which this
arch-knave practiced.

"I gave you two dollars, and you only gave me change for one," cried a
thin-faced, stoop-shouldered, helpless-looking fellow, who had just
purchased a bottle of the "Balm of the Blessed Islands."

With lightning-like legerdemain the quack had shuffled this bill to the
bottom of his pile, and lifting up the one that lay on top, exposed it
to the view of his audience.

"That's a lie!" he said, in his slow, impressive manner. "There is
always such a man as this in every crowd. Some one is always trying to
take advantage of those who, like myself, are living for the public
good. Gentlemen, you saw me lay the b-b-bill he gave me down upon the
top! Here it is; judge for yourselves. That is a bad man! Beware of
him!"

The bold effrontery of the quack silenced the timid customer, who could
only blush and look confused. His blushes and confusion condemned him
and the crowd hustled him away from the wagon. They believed him guilty
and he half believed it of himself.

David, who had seen the bill and knew the victim's innocence but not the
doctor's fraud, pressed forward to defend him. The quack stopped and
silenced him with an inimitable wink, and then instantly and with
consummate art diverted his auditors with a series of droll stories
which he always reserved for emergencies like this. They were old and
thread-bare, but this was the reason he chose them. He had one for
every circumstance and occasion.

There was a man standing in an outer circle of the crowd around whose
forehead was a bandage. "Come here, my friend," said the quack. "How did
you get this wound? Don't want to tell? Oh! well, that is natural. A
horse kicked him, no doubt; never got it in a row! No! No! Couldn't any
one hit him! Reminds me of the man who saw a big black-and-blue spot on
his boy's forehead. 'My son,' said he, 'I thought I told you not to
fight? How did you get this wound?' 'I bit it, father,' replied the boy.

"'Bit it!' exclaimed the old man in astonishment, 'how could you bite
yourself upon the forehead?'

"'I climbed onto a chair,' says he.

"And have you been climbing on a chair to bite your forehead, too, my
friend?" he asked with humorous gravity, while a loud guffaw went up
from the crowd.

"Well," he continued soothingly, "whether you did it or not, just let me
rub a little of this b-b-balm upon it, and by to-morrow morning it will
be well. There! that's right. One dollar is all it costs. You don't want
it? What the d-d-deuce did you let me open the b-b-bottle for? I'll
leave it to the crowd if that is fair? There, that is right. Pay for it
like a man. It's worth double its price. Thank you. By to-morrow noon
you will b-b-be sending me a testimonial to its value. Do you want to
hear some of my testimonials, gentlemen?"

The crowd shuffled and stood over on its other foot. The doctor, putting
an enormous pair of spectacles upon his nose, took up a piece of paper
and pretended to read slowly and carefully to avoid stammering:

"'Dr. Aesculapius.

"'Dear Sir: I was wounded in the Mexican war. I have been unable to walk
without crutches for many years; but after using your liniment, I ran
for office!' Think of it, gentlemen, the day of miracles has not passed.
'I lost my eyesight four years ago, but used a bottle of your "wash" and
saw wood.' Saw wood, gentlemen, what do you think of that? He saw wood!
'Some time ago I lost the use of both arms; but a kind friend furnished
me with a box of your pills, and the next day I struck a man for ten
dollars.' There is a triumph of the medical art, my friends. And yet
even this is surpassed by the following: 'I had been deaf for many
years, stone deaf; but after using your ointment, I heard that my aunt
had died and left me ten thousand dollars.' Think of it, gentlemen, ten
thousand dollars! And a written guarantee goes with every bottle, that
the first thing a stone-deaf man will hear after using this medicine
will be that his aunt has died and left him ten thousand dollars."

During all these varied operations, David had never taken his eyes from
the face of the quack. Even his quick wit had often been baffled by the
almost superhuman adroitness of this past grandmaster of his art.

The novelty of the scene, the skill of the principal actor, the rapid
growth of the piles of coin and bills, the frantic desire of the people
to be gulled, all served to obscure those elements which were calculated
to appeal to the Quaker's conscience. He felt like one awakened from a
dream. While he was still in the half dazed condition of such an
awakening, the quack gave him a sign that this part of his lesson was
ended, and following the direction of the thumb which he threw over his
shoulder towards Pepeeta's tent, he eagerly took his way thither.

Before the door stood several groups of young men and maidens, talking
under their breath as if in the presence of some august deity. Now and
then a couple disentangled itself from the crowd, and with visible
trepidation entered. As they reappeared, their friends gathered about
them and besought them to disclose the secrets they had discovered.

Some of them giggled and simpered, others laughed boisterously and
skeptically, while others still, looked scared and anxious. It was
evident that even those who tried to make light of what they had seen
and heard were moved by something awe-inspiring.

David listened to their silly talk, observed their bold demeanor and
their vulgar manners, while the impression of weakness, of stupidity, of
the lowness and beastiality of humanity made upon his mind by the aged
and the mature, was intensified by his observation of the young and
callow.

He did not anywhere see a spark of true nobility. He did not hear a word
of wisdom. Everything was moving on a low, material and animal plane. He
felt that manhood and womanhood was not what he had believed it to be.

From the outside of the gypsy's tent, he could make but few discoveries
of her method; and he waited impatiently until the last curious couple
had departed. When they had disappeared, he entered.

At the opposite side of the tent and reclining upon a low divan was the
gypsy. Above her head a tallow candle was burning dimly. Before her was
a rough table covered with a shawl, upon which were scattered cups of
tea with floating grounds, ivory dice, cards, coins and other implements
of the "Black Art."

Pepeeta sprang to her feet when she saw who her visitor was, and
exhibited the clearest signs of agitation. David's own emotions were not
less violent, for although the gypsy's surroundings were poor and mean,
they served rather to enhance than to diminish her exquisite beauty. Her
shoulders and arms were bare, and on her wrists were gold bracelets of
writhing serpents in whose eyes gleamed diamonds. On her fingers and in
her ears were other costly stones. Her dress was silk, and rustled when
she moved, with soft and sibilant sounds.

"The doctor has sent me here to study the methods by which you do your
work," said David approaching the table and gazing at her with
undisguised admiration.

"You should have come before. How can you study my methods when I am not
practicing them? And any way, you have no faith in them. Have you? I
always had until I heard your sermon in the little meeting house."

"And have you lost it now?"

"It has been sadly shaken."

"You can at least show me how you practice the art, even if you have
lost your faith in it. I too have lost a faith; but we must live. What
are these cards for?"

"If you wish me to show you, you may shuffle and cut them, but I would
rather tell your fortune by your hand, for I have more faith in
palmistry than in cards."

He extended his hand; she took it, and with her right forefinger began
to trace the lines. Her gaze had that intensity with which a little
child peers into the mechanism of a watch or an astronomer into the
depths of space.

A thrill of emotion shot through the frame of the Quaker at the touch of
those delicate and beautiful fingers.

The contrast between his own hands and hers was marked enough to be
almost ridiculous. Hers were tiny, soft and white. His were large, brown
and calloused. He thought to himself, "It is as if two little white
mice were playing about an enormous trap which in a moment may seize
them."

Neither of them, spoke. The delicate finger of the gypsy moved over the
lines of the palm like that of a little school-girl over the pages of a
primer. They did not realize how dangerous was that proximity, nor how
fatal that touch. Through those two poles of Nature's most powerful
battery, the magnetic and mysterious current of love was passing.

"What do you see?" said David, at last.

"Shall I tell you?" she asked, lifting her eyes to his.

"If you please," he said.

"I will do so if you wish; but if the story of your life is really
written in the palm of your hands, it is sad indeed, and you would be
happier if you knew it not."

"But it is not written there. I do not believe it, nor do you."

"Let us hope that it is not," she answered, and began the following
monologue in a low musical monotone:

"Marked as it is with the signs of toil, this hand has still retained
all those characteristics that an artist would choose as a model. It is
perfect in its form. The palm is of medium size, the fingers without
knots, the third phalanges are all long and pointed, and the thumb is
beautifully shaped. Whoever possesses a hand like this must be guided by
ideals. He is a worshiper of the sublime and beautiful. He disdains
small achievements, embarks enthusiastically upon forlorn hopes, and is
spurred to victory by the fervor of his desires.

"See this thumb! How finely it is pointed. The first phalanx is short,
and indicates that above all other things he is a man of heart and will
be dominated by his affections. He will yield to temptations, perhaps;
but the second phalanx is long and reveals a power of reason and logic
which will probably triumph at last."

Not a single word of all this had David heard. Her voice sounded to him
like the low droning of bees in a meadow, and he had been watching the
movements of her fingers, as he used to watch the dartings of the
minnows in the pools of the brook which ran through his farm.

"How smooth the fingers are! And how they taper to the cone," continued
Pepeeta. "Here is this one of Jupiter, for example. How plainly it tells
of religiousness and perhaps of fanaticism! The Sun finger is not long.
Nay, it is not long enough. There is too little love of glory here. And
the Saturnian finger is too long. The life is too much under the
dominion of Fate or Destiny. The Mercurial finger is short. He will be
firm in his friendships. The moons all correspond. They, also, are too
large. The Mount of Venus, here at the base of the thumb, is excessively
developed, and indicates capacity for gentleness, for chivalry, for
tenderness and love. The Mount of the Moon is small. That is good. There
will be no disturbance of the brain, no propensity towards lunacy. Mars
is not excessive, but it is strong, and he will be bold and courageous,
but not quarrelsome."

The pleasant murmur of the voice, the gentle pressure of her hand, her
nearness and her beauty, had rendered the Quaker absolutely oblivious to
her words.

"Let me now examine the lines," she continued. "Here is the line of the
heart. It passes clear across the palm. It is well marked at every point
and is most pronounced upon the upper side. The love will not be a
sensual passion, but look! it is joined to the head below the finger of
Saturn. It is the sign of a violent death! Heavens!"

As she uttered this exclamation, she pressed the hand convulsively
between her own, and looked up into his face.

The involuntary and sudden action recalled him to his consciousness.
"What did you say?" he asked.

"Have you not been listening?" she replied, repressing both her anxiety
and her annoyance.

"No; was it a good story or a bad one which you were reading?"

"It was both."

"Well--it is no matter, those accidental marks can have no
significance."

"Do you think so?"

"I am sure."

"You do not believe in any signs?"

"None."

"You know that the traveler on the desert told the Bedouin that he did
not, and yet from the foot prints of the camels the Bedouin deciphered
the whole history of a caravan."

Astonished at her reply, David did not answer.

"And then, you know," she continued, "there are the weather signs."

"Yes--that is so."

"And what are the letters of a book but signs?"

"You are right again."

"And is not hardness a sign of something in a stone, and heat of
something in fire? And are not deeds the sign of some quality in a man's
soul, and the expressions of his face signs of emotions of his heart?"

"They are."

"So that by his gait and gestures each man says: 'I am a farmer--a
quack--a Quaker--a soldier--a priest'?"

"This, too, is true."

"Why, then, should not the character and destiny of the man disclose
itself in signs and marks upon his hands?"

David was too much astonished by these words to answer. They revealed a
mental power which he had not even suspected her of possessing. He
discovered that while she was as ignorant as a child in the realms of
thought to which she had been unaccustomed, in her sphere of experience
and reflection she was both shrewd and deep.

"You have thought much about this matter," he said.

"Too much, perhaps."

"It is deeper than I knew."

"And so is everything deeper than we know. Tell me, if you can, why it
is that having met you I have lost faith in my art, and having met me
you have lost faith in your religion."

"It is strange."

"Something must be true. Do you not think so?"

"I have begun to doubt it."

"I believe that what _you_ said is true."

As they stood thus confronting each other, they would have presented a
study of equal interest to the artist or to the philosopher. There was
both a poem and a picture in their attitude. Grace and beauty revealed
themselves on every feature and in every movement. They had arrived at
one of those dramatic points in their life-journey, where all the tragic
elements of existence seem to converge. Agitated by incomprehensible and
delicious emotions, confronting insoluble problems, longing, hoping,
fearing, they hovered over the ocean of life like two tiny sparrows
swept out to sea by a tempest.

The familiar objects and landmarks had all vanished. As children rise in
the morning to find the chalk lines, inside of which they had played
their game of "hop-scotch," washed out by the rain, they had awakened to
find that the well known pathways and barriers over which and within
which they had been accustomed to move had all been obliterated. They
had nothing to guide them and nothing to restrain them except what was
written in their hearts, and this mysterious hieroglyph they had not yet
learned to decipher.

They were awakened from their reveries by the footsteps of the quack,
and by his raucous voice summoning them back into the world of realities
from which they had withdrawn so completely.

"Well, little wife," he said, "how is b-b-business?"

"Fair," she said, gathering up a double hand-full of change and passing
it over to him indifferently.

The question fell upon the ears of the Quaker like a thunder bolt. It
was to him the first intimation that Pepeeta was not the daughter of the
quack. "His wife!" The heart of the youth sank in his bosom. Here was a
new and unexpected complication. What should he do? It was too late to
turn back now. The die had been cast, and he must go forward.

The doctor rattled on with an unceasing flow of talk, while the mind of
the Quaker plunged into a series of violent efforts to adjust itself to
this new situation. He tried to force himself to be glad that he had
been mistaken. He for the first time fully admitted the significance of
the qualms which he felt at permitting himself to regard this strolling
gypsy with such feelings as had been in his heart.

"But now," he said to himself, "I can go forward with less compunction.
I can gratify my desire for excitement and adventure with perfect
safety. I will stay with them for a while, and when I am tired can leave
them without any entanglements." When the situation had been regarded
for a little while from this point of view, he felt happier and more
care-free than for weeks. He solaced his disappointment with the
reflection that he should still be near Pepeeta, but no longer in any
danger.

At this profound reflection of the young moth hovering about the flame,
let the satirist dip his pen in acid, and the pessimist in gall! There
is enough folly and stupidity in the operations of the human mind to
provoke the one to contempt and the other to despair.

The cuttle-fish throws out an inky substance to conceal itself from its
enemies; but the soul ejects an opaque vapor in which to hide from
itself! In this mist of hallucination which rises and envelopes us, the
whole appearance of life alters. Passion and desire repress the judgment
and pervert the conscience. Conclusions that are illogical, expectations
that are irrational and confidences that are groundless to the most
final and fatal absurdity seem as natural and reasonable as intuitions.

It is not in human nature to escape this perversion of thought and
feeling under the stress of temptation. One may as well try to prevent
the rise of temperature in the blood in the rage of fever. There are
times when even the upright in heart must withdraw to the safe covert
of the inner sanctuary and there fervently put up the master prayer of
the soul, "Lord, lead me not into temptation!" But if necessity or duty
calls them out into the midst of life's dangers, let them remember that
what they feel in the calm retreat, is not what will surge through their
disordered intellects and their bounding pulses when they come within
the reach of those fearful fascinations!

It was such a prayer that David had need of when he gave his hand to the
gypsy.

CHAPTER XIII.

FOUND WANTING

"How oft the sight of means to do ill deeds makes ill deeds
done!"--King John.

The spring and summer had passed, autumn had attained the fullness of
its golden beauty, and the inevitable had happened. David and Pepeeta
had passed swiftly though not unresistingly through all the intervening
stages between a chance acquaintance and an impassioned love.

Any other husband than the quack would have foreseen this catastrophe;
but there is one thing blinder than love, and that is egotism such as
his. His colossal vanity had not even suspected that a woman who
possessed him for her husband could for a single instant bestow a
thought of interest on any other man.

Astute student of men, penetrating judge of motive and conduct that he
was, he daily beheld the evolution of a tragedy in which he was the
victim, with all the indifference of a lamb observing the preparations
for its slaughter. Because of this ignorance and indifference, the
fellowship of these two young people had been as intimate as that of
brother and sister in a home, and this new life had wrought an
extraordinary transformation in the habits and character of both.

David had abandoned the Quaker idiom for the speech of ordinary men,
and discarded his former habiliments for the most conventional and
stylish clothes. Contact with the world had sharpened his native wit,
and given him a freedom among men and women, that was fast descending
into abandon. Success had stimulated his self-confidence and made him
prize those gifts by which he had once aroused the devotion of adoring
worshipers in the Quaker meeting house; he soon found that they could be
used to victimize the crowds which gathered around the flare of the
torch in the public square.

That which his friends had once dignified by the name of spiritual power
had deteriorated into something but little above animal magnetism. He
had learned to cherish a profound contempt for men and morals, and the
shrewd maxims which the quack had instilled into his mind became the
governing principles of his conduct. Those qualities which he had
inherited from his dissolute father, and which had been so long
submerged, were upheaved, while all that he had received from his mother
by birth and education sank out of sight and memory. Three elemental
passions assumed complete possession of his soul--the love of
admiration, of gambling and of the gypsy.

A transformation of an exactly opposite character had been taking place
in Pepeeta. Under the sunshine of David's love, and the dew of those
spiritual conceptions which had fallen upon her thirsty spirit, the
seeds of a beautiful nature, implanted at her birth, germinated and
developed with astonishing rapidity. Walking steadily in such light as
fell upon her pathway and ever looking for more, her spiritual vision
became clearer and clearer every day; and while this affection for God
purified her soul, her love for David expanded and transformed her
heart. Her unbounded admiration for him blinded her to that process of
deterioration in his character which even the quack perceived. To her
partial eye a halo still surrounded the head of the young apostate. But
while these two new affections wrought this sudden transformation in the
gypsy and filled her with a new and exquisite happiness, the
circumstances of her life were such that this illumination could not but
be attended with pain, for it brought ever new revelations of those
ethical inconsistencies in which she discovered herself to be deeply if
not hopelessly involved.

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