Читать книгу A Woman of Yesterday - Caroline Atwater Mason - Страница 10

Table of Contents

O Joy, hast thou a shape?

Hast thou a breath?

How fillest thou the soundless air?

Tell me the pillars of thy house!

What rest they on? Do they escape

The victory of Death?

—H. H.

In the largest theatre of the New England city of Springfield on a night in December, an immense assembly of people was gathered. Every gallery was crowded to its utmost, and the house, from floor to roof, was a dense mass of human beings. On the stage were musical instruments, but the customary scenery was withdrawn, save that the background showed a Neapolitan villa situated on the slope of a Swiss mountain, at the base of which an ultramarine ocean heaved stormily. Against the incongruity of this unstable structure were massed several hundred men and women, and before them a musical leader, baton in hand. At an appointed signal the great chorus stood, and with them, at the gesture of a man, himself seated near the centre of the foreground of the stage, the whole audience, with a rushing sound like the sea or the wind, rose also.

Then there was sung by the chorus, with trained perfection, an old hymn, the words of which, as well as the melody, were of quaint and almost childish simplicity:—

“Alas, and did my Saviour bleed?

And did my Sovereign die?

Would he devote that sacred head

For such a worm as I?

Was it for crimes that I had done

He groaned upon the tree?

Amazing pity, grace unknown,

And love beyond degree.”

With a swift motion of his baton the leader indicated that the whole assembly was to join in singing the refrain, in lowered voices. There followed in a deep murmur of a pathos quite indescribable:—

“Remember me, remember me,

Oh, Lord, remember me!

And when thou sittest on thy throne

Dear Lord, remember me.”

At the close of this hymn many people in all parts of the house were in tears, but the hush of motionless silence following was complete, and the eyes of all were riveted upon that central figure on the stage, the man who now rose and, advancing to the front, began to address them.

This man was of majestic personal presence and his speech was with marked power. Thinly veiled under a manner of unusual restraint and quietness lay a genius for emotional appeal and for persuasion. There was in his manner and speech an utter absence of excitability, and yet a quality which excited; a capacity for impassioned eloquence, apparently controlled and held back by the speaker’s will. The congregation listened with absorbed attention.

At the close of the address, which was designed to move all the impenitent or irresolute persons present to an immediate confession of their need of a Saviour, the speaker asked those of this class who were present and were so inclined to advance and take certain seats, directly in front of the stage, which had been reserved for them.

A close observer would have been interested in watching the man as this part of the evening’s work was ushered in. The restrained intensity of his manner was noticeably augmented; his eyes moved slowly and searchingly from one part of the house to another with a gaze which no trifler and no awakened soul might escape. The expression of his face was sternly solemn, even tragical, as of one undergoing an actual travail of spirit. He stood absolutely motionless save for a single and significant gesture of his right hand, an upward gesture made with peculiar slowness and with dramatic effect. It was at once entreating, subduing, and commanding.

At the first moment no person stirred; but presently, as if drawn by an irresistible magnetism, a stream of men and women could be seen advancing down the various aisles, with fixed look, pallid faces, and sometimes with tears. Upon such the speaker bent a look of gentleness and encouragement, in which his features would be momentarily relaxed, only to resume the profound solemnity already spoken of, as he lifted his eyes again to the unmoved masses still confronting him.

The chorus, without rising, now chanted softly the words of vivid appeal:—

“Why not to-night? Why not to-night?

Thou wouldst be saved, why not to-night?”

Many moments passed. The company of seekers now numbered a hundred. Beneath the absolute outward restraint which held all, an inner excitement grew steadily in intensity, and the subtle contagion of “the crowd” assumed an irresistible sway. It might have become alarming. It possessed elements of terror just below the surface. A climax was reached when a man of gigantic frame and brutalized features, in the upper gallery, stepped forward, and with a gesture rude and almost wild, flung out his arms toward the evangelist, and called through the silence of the place:—

“I give in—you knew I’d have to. Yes, I’m comin’.” And then, turning, clattered down the bare gallery stairs, only to reappear presently below, with his coarse head bent and big tears flowing down his purple cheeks.

Gradually the stream of seekers abated, and the aisles became empty. Thus far no word of appeal or warning had been added to the sermon; save for the restrained monotony of the music this extraordinary scene had taken place in complete silence.

Then the speaker’s voice was heard again, and in it was a strange emotional quality which had been previously unnoticed, and before which the pride and will of many melted within them.

“The people of this company are dismissed to their homes,” he said, in gentle, measured tones; “my work now is for those who have feared God rather than men. They will remain. Let all others go without unnecessary delay, or stopping for speech with one another. The Spirit is here.”

The benediction followed, but as they broke up, scores hitherto irresolute turned and joined the company of seekers in the front of the house.

When the speaker, the house being otherwise emptied, came down to the anxious and disquieted little company waiting for his guidance, he stood before them in silence for a little space, and then, turning to a group of clergymen who were associated with him, he said:—

“Pardon me, but I believe I will leave these friends in your hands, brethren. I wish to return immediately to my lodging,” and saying nothing further in explanation or apology, he departed, with evident haste.

When he reached the lobby of the theatre he found three men watching who hastened toward him, their spokesman, with outstretched hand, introducing himself and his companions and adding, with eager cordiality:—

“This is so much better than we expected. We were prepared to wait for you some time.”

The man received the greeting gravely, and, indeed, silently.

“Will you come with us now to our hotel? We wish to confer with you. We have come from New York for that purpose.”

“Will you not let me know what you wish here, at once?” was the rejoinder. “I am in some haste.”

“Certainly, certainly, if you prefer it,” said the other, cheerfully, hiding a shade of discomfiture. Then, with a change to serious emphasis, he proceeded: “We want you to undertake a work in New York this winter, as soon as possible, in fact. A large group of prominent churches is ready to unite in the movement, and unlimited resources will be placed at your disposal. Your own compensation, pardon me for alluding to it, will be anything you will name—that is a matter of indifference to the committee, save that it be large enough. We are ready to build you a tabernacle two hundred feet square,—larger if you like.”

The man addressed involuntarily laid his hand on his breast; a letter in the pocket under his hand, from Chicago, specified a tabernacle three hundred feet square. He smiled slightly; even religious zeal was a size larger in Chicago than elsewhere.

Further details were mentioned, but the evangelist seemed to give them a forced and mechanical attention. Then, rather suddenly, he broke in with a word of apology.

“I am fully sensible, gentlemen,” he went on, “of the confidence you have manifested in me, and I would, under other conditions, have accepted your proposition. But the very circumstance of your making it to-night hastens an action on my part which I have been approaching, but had not, until now, definitely determined upon. I am about to withdraw from this work, and can form no engagements, however promising. I shall close the meetings here as soon as I can honourably do so, and these meetings are, for the present certainly, my last.”

The blank faces of the three men before him seemed to demand a word or two more.

“My reasons?” he asked with curt and almost chilling brevity. “Pardon me. They are personal to myself. Good evening. No one can regret your disappointment more than I.” With these words the speaker turned abruptly from the little group and left the theatre. In great amazement and perplexity the committee of three presently followed his example.

Here was an accredited and earnest man, no irresponsible religious tramp, who possessed, apparently in a superlative degree, the gift of winning souls for which Samuel Mallison had given his all, if in vain, and for lack of which he might fairly be said to be dying, being one who could have lived on spiritual joy, if such had ever been his portion. And this man, possessing this coveted and crowning religious endowment, was deliberately putting it aside, and refusing to use it. What did it signify?

Anna Mallison had left Haran, in its ice-bound valley, early that morning, and, by travelling through snowdrifts in a sleigh all the forenoon, had been favoured to get as far as Springfield on her journey, at nine o’clock of that same evening. She was bound for Boston, where she was to go before the missionary board to be examined as to her fitness and promise for a worker on the “foreign field.”

At the Springfield station Anna had been met by the little missionary lady whom she had heard and met in Haran on her night of great decision. By her she had been conducted to a hotel, shown to a room, affectionately if reticently counselled, and then left to sleep and be ready for another early start on the following morning. It was the first time Anna had ever been in a city, and she was bewildered by the noise and lights in the streets through which she had been hurriedly driven.

Left alone, she looked about her at the stiff order of the narrow hotel chamber, the first she had ever inhabited, the showy, shabby carpet, the cheap carvings of the furniture, the long mirror in which she herself stood, still and dreary, and a rushing wave of heart-sickness swept over her. Her anxiety for her father became suddenly poignant; a sense of the sadness of his life tore her heart with fierce pain: she realized now, as she had failed to before, how fast his strength declined. She longed to know how that moment fared with him, and how the next would. A wild purpose seized her to return the next morning to Haran, and let all other purposes go until some later time.

However, in spite of all this anxiety and doubt, Anna’s physical weariness was sufficient to bring sleep apace, when once her head was on the pillow, and all the distant murmur of the city and the sudden, uncomprehended noises of the great house were soon lost to her. Thus she failed to hear a man who entered the room next to hers within the same hour, who closed the door with some emphasis and locked it fast; who, after that, walked up and down within the narrow limits of that room with uniform, slow step, and who continued to do this until the December dawn filtered through the dim windows. All was still in that next room when Anna awoke. The anxiety and homesickness of the night before were gone, and in their place was that mysterious joy which once before on a June night had strangely visited her. Again, in her dream, she had seen the face which ever since had dominated her; as before, it was majestic, free, and strong. As before, it had bent to her,—

“Bent down and smiled.”

She rose hastily, glad and awed and greatly wondering. At six o’clock she was ready and went down to the great dining-hall, dark save for the wan light of a single gas jet under which she sat down, silent and alone, and was served by a heavy-eyed, untidy man-servant, with an indifferent breakfast. She swallowed a few mouthfuls by force of will, then gathered up her humble belongings, and started out alone into the icy chill of the grey morning. It was too early for her friend from the Orient to brave the rigours of the unaccustomed winter. It was all comfortless, dreary, and inauspicious; small cheer for a young girl starting on such an errand, but there was no sinking now of her spirit. She walked to the Springfield station in the light and warmth of that inexplicable radiance of her dream, and so pursued her journey to Boston.

FROM ANNA MALLISON’S NOTE-BOOK

Do you believe in the mutual penetration of mind? Do you believe that, independent of word and voice, independent of distance, from one end of the world to the other, minds can influence and penetrate one another?... Do you not know a soul can feel within it another soul which touches it?

—Père Gratry.

January 28, 1870.—A week to-day since my father was buried. It is late at night, and I have come up to my little roof room, but I cannot sleep. I have been with my mother, and we have cried together, until she sleeps at last, so tired, and her dear face changed so sadly that, as she slept, I was almost afraid. And yet she is greatly upheld, and as gentle and uncomplaining as it is possible to be.

But for me, knowing my father, and trying to find the meaning of his life, these days give me less grief than wonder and perplexity. For a time after my father told me the story of his past, after I knew what he might have been, knew his great renunciation, his utter humility, his leaving all to seek one only thing, and that a gift for others, and even that being denied him, so that to himself his life seemed a failure, and its supreme sacrifice unsanctioned and unblessed—after this I could hardly bear the heart-break of it all. So pure, so blameless, so devoted a life, and yet, to his own thought, so unfruitful. Just a narrow little village church, with its narrow little victories and defeats, and its monotony of spiritual ebb and flow—this was the sum of his achievement. Was it not hard of God? This he would not have said, but my undisciplined heart has cried out in bitterness and rebellion. I have been in deep doubt and darkness.

To-night it is given me to see it all in light, and I am reconciled. The word which changed my father’s life was that great word of the Master, “Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone.” That dying, the utterness of it, was what we did not comprehend. I think my father understood before he left us, although he could not express it. But all along he had felt that in dying in his own personal life to the world and to his ambition, he was meeting the condition, and that in his own personal life the fruits of that death were to be manifest, that he should be set for the salvation of many. But God sees not with our short vision. Days with him are years, and years days; and our whole life but a vapour, which appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away.

This has come to me: My father’s sacrifice has borne in the life of one of his children, if not in all, the fruit of an especial dedication of that life to the service of God. If he had not been the man he was, if he had not laid down his life daily and hourly in humble self-surrender to the Divine Will, never, never should I have dreamed of giving myself to the work to which I am now pledged. His life, in its deepest working, had been wrought into mine, so that unconsciously I willed to be what he would have willed to have me. So, then, it is no more I alone, but the spirit, the will, the nature of my father that worketh in me.

The God of my father—this phrase, so common, so almost commonplace before, has suddenly taken to itself an extraordinary significance. My father’s God, my God, who began in my father’s willing sacrifice of all the noblest powers of his manhood his purpose of grace, will now, in his good pleasure, carry on the one work, the same so begun, through me, all unworthy as I am, timid, trembling, but a child. A child, and yet called with this high calling; child of a saint, called solemnly, sacredly, in the very depths of my being, deeper than I feel, higher than I know, to be my father’s child, to be the continuance, the fulfilment of his dying life, to finish what he began, to bring to fruitage the seed he died to sow. How sublime, how sweet, how awful the vocation wherewith I am called!

Then look upon me, O my God, my father’s God! Behold my weakness; raise it into power; turn my dull mind to light, my hard and narrow heart to a flame of love; make me thy minister, thy messenger, fulfil in me all thy great will.

February 20.—To-night I am alone in the old home, not our home any more. It is stripped already of all that made it home, but, bare and grim as it is, I love it, and leave it with a sorrow my heart is yet too tired to realize. They have consented to let me sleep this one last night in my own little room. This poor bed is to be left, being not worth removing, and all that clothes it goes with me. So, like a pilgrim, under a tent roof for a single night, I lie alone, and look up beyond the dear old gable and see the winter stars.

They shine upon his grave, and the snow already has drifted over it, and my heart bleeds. Why will they not let us pray for our dead as the Romish people do? Oh, kind little father, gone what dim, dazzling way I do not know, will they let you be happy at last? Will God let you see why?

February 21.—It was a strange night, and yet most beautiful.

I hardly slept, but prayed until nearly dawn. Then I slept a short time, and woke to find my limbs racked with pain from the bitter chill of the room, and tears running down my face. Almost as if I were carrying out an order given me in my sleep, I hurried on my clothing, and, taking my candle, came down the stairs, both flights, through the empty, echoing house, to the rooms below. I was so cold that I shook from head to foot. Then I found in the kitchen wood left from our store, and I brought it into the east room, the parlour, where we laid my father after his death, and where I had sat beside his dear form each night. The great fireplace was bare and empty, like the room, but the andirons were left.

I laid the wood across and started the fire, and it blazed and gave light, and threw strange shadows about the room, and I kneeled beside it, on the hearth, as I used sometimes when I was a little child, and warmed my hands, and still I cried, and there was no one to comfort me.

Mally says she would have been afraid—in that room. I cannot understand. It is because her dearest have not died. What of him could have been anything but precious? To have felt his spirit near me! That would indeed have been holy consolation.

But what if that were true? I do not know. While I so crouched in the chimney corner, my heart bleeding, and the tears bathing my poor face, there was a soft touch, lighter than the flight of a thistledown, passing over my head, as if the gentlest hand God himself could make gentle had smoothed my hair, and sought to comfort me.

Then some one said: “I came here to be with you.” But I do not know whether it was I who so said in my own heart, or whether the words were spoken to my ear. I only know that I was comforted, and the fire warmed my aching limbs, and my head drooped against the wall, and I slept with long sobs, as I slept once when I was a child, and my dear father ministered to me.

It was broad daylight when I awoke, and I felt soothed and strong. I rose to go and make ready to lock and leave the house. But first I knelt and prayed, and I am praying still.

Live in me, O God, as my father lives in me, and as thou didst live in him. Let me live the life and die the death which he sought to live, to die, for thee. Give thou unto him through me abiding fruit in the salvation of souls; and grant us such grace as that we may humbly and worthily fulfil thy gracious will, I on earth, as he in heaven.