Читать книгу The Redemption of David Corson - Charles Frederic Goss - Страница 13

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"Oh! why did God create at last

This novelty on earth, this fair defect

Of nature, and not till the world at once

With men as angels, without feminine?"

—Paradise Lost.

On the following morning the preacher-plowman was afield at break of day. The horses, refreshed and rested by food and sleep, dragged the gleaming plowshare through the heavy sod as if it were light snow, and the farmer exulted behind them.

That universal life which coursed through all the various forms of being around him, bounded in tides through his own veins. The fresh morning air, the tender light of dawning day, the odors of plants and songs of birds, filled his sensitive soul with unutterable delight.

In the midst of all these beauties and wonders, he existed without self-consciousness and labored without effort. His heart was pure and his oneness with the natural world was complete. Whatever was beautiful and gentle in the manifold operations of the Divine Spirit in the world around him, he saw and felt. To all that was horrible and ferocious, he was blind as a child in Paradise. He did not notice the hawk sweeping upon the dove, the swallow darting upon the moth, nor the lizard lying in wait for the fly; or, if he did, he saw them only as he saw the shadows flitting across the sunny landscape. His soul was like a garden full of light, life, perfume, color and the music of singing birds and whispering leaves. Before his inward eye the familiar figures of his daily life passed and repassed, but among them was also a new one. It was the figure that had arrested his attention and inspired him the night before.

For hours he followed the plow without the consciousness of fatigue, but at length he paused to rest the horses, who were beginning to pant with their hard labor. He threw back his head, drew in deep inspirations of pure air, glanced about and felt the full tide of the simple joy of existence roll over him. Life had never seemed sweeter than in those few moments in which he quaffed the brimming cup of youth and health which nature held to his lips. Not a fear, not an apprehension of any danger crossed his soul. His glances roved here and there, pausing a moment in their flight like hummingbirds, to sip the sweetness from some unusually beautiful cloud or tree or flower, when he suddenly caught sight of a curious equipage flying swiftly down the road at the other side of the field. The spirited horses stopped. A man rose from the seat, put his hands to his mouth like a trumpet, uttered a loud "hallo," and beckoned.

David tied the reins to the plow handles and strode across the fresh furrows. Vaulting the fence and leaping the brook which formed the boundary line of the farm, he ascended the bank and approached the carriage. As he did so the occupants got out and came to meet him. To his astonishment he saw the strangers whom he had noticed the night before. The man advanced with a bold, free demeanor, the woman timidly and with downcast eyes.

"Good morning," said the doctor.

David returned his greeting with the customary dignity of the Quakers.

"My name is Dr. Aesculapius."

"Thee is welcome."

"I was over to the m-m-meeting house last night, and heard your s-s-speech. Didn't understand a w-w-word, but saw that you c-c-can talk like a United States Senator."

David bowed and blushed.

"I came over to make you a p-p-proposition. Want you to yoke up with me, and help me sell the 'B-B-Balm of the Blessed Islands.' You can do the t-t-talking and I'll run the b-b-business; see?"

He put his thumbs in the armholes of his vest, spread his feet apart, squared himself and smiled like a king who had offered his throne to a beggar.

David regarded him with a look of astonishment.

"What do you s-s-say?"

Gravely, placidly, the young Quaker answered: "I thank thee, friend, for what thee evidently means as a kindness, but I must decline thy offer."

"Decline my offer? Are you c-c-crazy? Why do you d-d-decline my offer?"

"Because I have no wish to leave my home and work."

Although his answer was addressed to the man, his eyes were directed to the woman. His reply, simple and natural enough, astounded the quack.

"What!" he exclaimed. "Do you mean that you p-p-prefer to stay in this p-p-pigstye of a town to becoming a citizen of the g-g-great world?"

"I do."

"But listen; I will pay you more money in a single month than you can earn by d-d-driving your plow through that b-b-black mud for a whole year."

"I have no need and no desire for more money than I can earn by daily toil."

"No need and no desire for money! B-b-bah! You are not talking to sniveling old women and crack-b-b-brained old men; but to a f-f-feller who can see through a two-inch plank, and you can't p-p-pass off any of your religious d-d-drivel on him, either."

This coarse insult went straight to the soul of the youth. His blood tingled in his veins. There was a tightening around his heart of something which was out of place in the bosom of a Quaker. A hot reply sprang to his lips, but died away as he glanced at the woman, and saw her face mantled with an angry flush.

Calmed by her silent sympathy, he quietly replied: "Friend, I have no desire to annoy thee, but I have been taught that 'the love of money is the root of all evil,' and believing as I do I could not answer thee otherwise than I did."

It was evident from the look upon the countenance of the quack that he had met with a new and incomprehensible type of manhood. He gazed at the Quaker a moment in silence and then exclaimed, "Young man, you may mean what you say, b-b-but you have been most infernally abused by the p-p-people who have put such notions in your head, for there is only one substantial and abiding g-g-good on earth, and that is money. Money is power, money is happiness, money is God; get money! get it anywhere! get it anyhow, but g-g-get it."

Instead of mere resentment for a personal insult, David now felt a tide of righteous indignation rising in his soul at this scorn and denial of those eternal principles of truth and duty which he felt to be the very foundations of the moral universe.

"Sir," said he, with the voice and mien of an apostle, "I perceive that thou art in the gall of bitterness and the bonds of iniquity. Thy money perish with thee. The God of this world hath blinded thine eyes."

The quack, who now began to take a humorous view of the innocence of the youth, burst into a boisterous guffaw.

"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!