Читать книгу The Story That the Keg Told Me, and The Story of the Man Who Didn't Know Much - W. H. H. Murray - Страница 27

"One impulse from a vernal wood

May teach you more of man,

Of moral evil and of good,

Than all the sages can."—Wordsworth.

"'My father, John Norton, was a miser, although the world never knew it; but he loved money, and all his life was spent in getting it. He lived to be an old man, and when he died he was buried from the meeting-house—for he was a deacon in the church—and the minister preached the sermon, and told the people of his thrift and economy, of his industry and sobriety, and held him up as an example, when I knew, and all who knew him knew, that he was sober when others drank simply because he was too stingy to drink, and that his industry was all selfish, and that his economy was miserly. I only tell you this to let you know whence I got my love of money, and how the lust of gain came in me. It was born in me, John Norton, as much as the power of scenting was born in your hound; yea, given me at birth from the miserly nature and habits of a father who was a church member, and whose character and mode of life were praised by the minister when they buried his body.

He left me all his property, for I was his only child; and no one save me ever knew how much it was, for it was largely in gold coin that he had hidden away, and which he told me of and where to find it, by whispering it in my ear when he was dying. I was thirty years of age before he died, and the property fell to me; and until I had the gold myself, and had seen it and counted it, I had lived a happy life; for I was married to an angel, and had three children, and a happier family never lived than we were before the gold came to me. But no sooner had I gotten it into my possession than I began to love it. Yea, the sight of the coin started the lust for it in me, and woke to full life the awful appetite for it which was in him and which he had transmitted to me. And the love for that gold grew on me as I handled it;—and handle it I did, until it became a passion with me. I used to get up nights when my wife was sleeping and go down cellar where I kept it in a large pot, and count it over, and push my hands into it, and laugh to hear it rattle, and to see it shine in the candle light. And the love of it grew and grew and grew, until I loved nothing else. And with the growth of the dreadful lust in me there grew a suspicion of men and women, because I had got it into my head that they would steal it, until at last I grew suspicious of my own wife and children, even to such a degree that I drove them out of the house and forbade them ever to cross its threshold again. You say I was mad. Yes, I was mad—mad with the awful madness of one in whose heart is a terrible and wicked love; a love that entices him and seduces him from good unto evil, and finally becomes stronger than conscience—stronger than affection for wife and children—yea, stronger than his fear of God. Yes, I was mad in that way, and the madness grew in its fury until it became a continuous frenzy, and my life one hell of raging fear, suspicion, and hatred of my kind. I need not tell you all, for you would not understand it; you could not understand it, for you have never handled money nor known the love of it, and are as a child in your knowledge of such an experience. At last I came to these woods; came driven by the frenzy of fear lest men should steal my money; came, not from the love of nature, or the longing for a peaceful, quiet, innocent life; but in order to be where my money would be safe, for my money was my god, my life, my heaven, and I feared some one would steal it, and so I brought it here because no man was here. How did I bring it? I brought it in a keg; a keg stout and large, and lined with my own hands; and that keg was my altar, my shrine, my god. John Norton, remember it's a dying man that is talking to you, when I tell you that here, on this very beach where I now lie, and you sit, I have sat in the bright sunlight and in the solemn moonlight, too, and counted my money by the hour, and laughed and danced around it as a devil might; yea, I, a mortal man, have danced around a pile of money like a heathen round his idol, with the great blue sky overhead, and beyond the sky the greater God looking solemnly down with His all-seeing eyes upon me and my gold.'

And here the man paused, Henry, a minit, and he panted like a young faan in her fust race with the hounds, for he was overtalkin' his strength, and I feered he would die for sartin ef he didn't fetch up a bit and git rested; so I thought I had better give him a lift in the right direction by talkin' a leetle myself, and I drawed at a ventur', like a man who sends the lead by his notions of the sound, when it's too dusky to get his eye into the sights, and said:

Ef I was in your place, Mr. Roberts, I would sot down and rest a bit, for ye be travellin' with a big load over a rough carry, ef I am any jedge, and ye be gittin' sort of shaky-like in yer legs, and ye will come down in a heap pritty soon ef ye don't steady up a bit and take it a leetle easier; for me and the hound mean to fetch ye round yit; that is, ef the tea don't gin out, and the Lord's app'intments be not agin it. So ye jest hold up a minit or two, and rest while we stir in a few more leaves of the yarb, and steep it for ye easy-like, for tea can't be hurried no more than a slow hound in the beginnin' of a race, before he's got the scent warm in his nose, and his faculties workin'. No, the yarb is spunky and knows its own importance, and won't stand rough treatment; and ef ye bile it a bit its vartu' is gone, for a wallopin' pot spiles the tea; so ye give me and the hound time to do the thing up accordin' to the rules and practices of correct obsarvation, and we will give ye a lift that'll make ye grateful to us both; and I don't catch the pith of your last sayin' about the eyes of the Lord bein' terrible as he was lookin' at ye, and I can't conceit of it, nohow. Now, the eyes of a panther be terrible, sure enough, and I have lined the sights by 'em when they barnt a hole in the darkness; and I have had many a clinch with a Huron in a scrimmage, when I was younger, when the blood of his savagery was up, and his eyes was as red as an adder's; but the eyes of the Lord, as I have seed 'em in the works of his hand, have always been strong, for sartin, but gentle and mild as a mother doe when her faan is friskin' around her; and I can't conceit of the face of the Lord as bein' terrible, nor understand how a mortal could be afeered to have 'em on him.'

And all the while, Henry, I kept preparin' the fire for the tea. But the man broke in on me, and said,—

'Old man, leave off preparing that tea and hear me. Naught that you can do will prevent my dying, for it is written that I die this day, and I feel within my soul that my hour is drawing nigh. Leave off your preparations, therefore, for your efforts cannot save me from death, nor would I have it otherwise if I could. I want you to listen and hear my words, nor move again until I am done.'

So I sot down agin, and the hound came and sot down on the other side of the man, and then he began to talk:—

'John Norton, I came to these woods a miserable miser. There was in all my life but one love, and that was for money. Money I loved, loved it with all the strength of my nature. For years I had thought of nothing else, and cared for nothing else. For years I had no joy but the fierce joy of seeing it and counting it. To me my money was all there was in the whole universe worth loving,—the one idol of my soul. I brought it here because no man was here, and hence knew it could not be stolen. With it safe I was happy. With it secure I asked no higher boon. I was not only a miser, but I was hardened in all my nature. The lust of gold had eaten out all other cravings. All noble affections, all tender sympathies, all truthful qualities, all charities and fine emotions had been banished from my bosom by this all-absorbing passion. I was only a shell of a man inhabited by one great devil. This devil in me had his fierce joy, his tormenting suspicions, his rending rage, his agonies and his pangs; but no trace of humanity, no fibre of charity, no possibility of peace. Thus possessed, I came to this lake. You must not think I had not been entreated; for man and woman had alike been faithful to me, and with prayers, with tears, with warnings and exhortations had striven to deliver me from the devil within, and bring me to my right mind. But neither man nor woman, neither wife nor child, nor the Spirit of God acting in and through these could make me see the greatness of my sin, or the emptiness of my passion, or the vanity of my life. These I could resist and had resisted. Man could not master the devil in me or drive him out of my soul.

But here the demon was met by other agents and agencies he could not resist, and here the devil in me was mastered. By whom and what? By Nature, I reply, and by the irresistible majesties of God in Nature. Here the greatness of my surroundings made me small, and the immeasurable splendors above me at night, and the glories around me by day, made my gold seem contemptible. Not that these influences came to be felt at once; not that the conviction produced by them was sudden, for it was not; but slowly, subtly, and in a way I could not fight; with a power I could not resist, out of the silence of space, out of the blue sky and the uplifted mountains, out of sunrise and sunset, out of the water and the air, out of the solemn nights and the succession of splendid days there came regeneration to my soul. Within me was born in this mystical way a sense of larger and holier things, and moods of worship, and generous thoughts, and longings for what was fine and far ahead; so that, involuntarily, and before I was aware, a change came to me in my likes and feelings, and I beheld as with eyes newly opened the significance of things, the use of life and the true application of its lessons. I said my eyes were opened; and they were, so that I who had never thought of the beyond and the coming, but had lived in the here and the now, was compelled by a force within me to look constantly up and ahead into the great unseen and unknown. And this force within me I could not resist; it was stronger than my will and mightier than habit, and, forced by its energy, I yielded. And then out of the unknown and the unseen there came forth, as the blaze of a beacon from darkness and distance, a vision, and it scared me at first to face it, but at last I was able; and the vision that blazed out upon me from the darkness and the distance, terrible in its brightness, was the Vision of Immortality.

John Norton, this vision haunted me. The vision of life beyond, stretching on forever and forever, unintermittent and endless, lay like a mountain on my guilty soul. And out of the conception came an awful scrutiny that searched me through and through like a knife. And out of this searching, amid agony and pangs, was born a Conscience; a Conscience which pinched me like a vice, and wrung groans and cries of remorse out of my mouth, until, at times, the silence of the night was filled with my moaning. It was the silence that did it, old man; for the silence was more than silence; it was GOD. I could not fly from it; I could not escape its rebukes; I could not hide myself from its solemn upbraidings. It condemned me for the life I had lived; it upbraided me for the passion I had nursed; it threatened me with the censure of a just and holy verdict. Here, on this point, in the midst of the all-surrounding silence, I found my Judgment Day. Here my mind lost the petty measurement of time, and took to itself in perfect sensing the realization of eternity. Here I wrestled with the Spirit that has not form, and strove with the Energy that can never be incarnate; the Spirit of Justice and Love commingled with the energy of God. Here, old man, I strove; here I was overcome; and here I yielded; ay, yielded to a test. And the test was this: that I should deliberately, with my own hands, empty into the waters of this lake the gold I had loved like a devil; and to keep which, without fear of losing it, I had been self-banished from my kindred and kind and had come to this lonely lake. Yes, I yielded; yielded to the power I could not resist; the power of the Lord who made and inhabits these woods, and whose presence I saw and felt in their beauty, and majesty, and silence. And I cried unto Him to whom I had yielded, for strength to do the test; cried unto Him on my knees, with my hands on the keg that held the gold, for strength to deliver my soul from its horrible spell, and pour it—every dollar of it—into the waters of the lake. And He gave me strength, old man,—even in answer to my prayer did He strengthen me to do the deed which, being done, delivered me from the spell of the power that had held me, and from the bondage to the terrible lust. And last night the battle was fought, and the victory won, and I was delivered from Hell. For I prayed unto Him, and he listened and heard; and I lifted the keg and carried it to my boat, and paddled to the middle of the lake. And there, with hell and heaven to see, I lifted the keg in my arms and held it out over the water, and poured the gold I had worshipped into its depths. And there and then, when the deed was done, the blessing of the Lord came on me, and His marvellous peace stole into my soul. It came to me from the air, and the water, and the sky; from the bosom of the white moonlighted stillness; from the motionless woods and the shores; from the air around me and the infinite spaces above and beyond; came to me, Old Trapper, from the outbreathings of that God who is Spirit, and in whom the innocent and the forgiven live, and move, and have being.'

Here the man came to a halt, Henry, and he looked into my eyes as ef he wanted to see ef I understood, and arter a minit or two he said, 'Old Man, do you understand me?'

'Well,' said I to him, 'I can't say that the trail of yer talk is altogether plain to me, Mr. Roberts, but me and the hound has kept our eyes on ye as ye blazed along on the line, and I guess we have got the gineral direction of it. I can see for sartin that ye had a rough trip, and a heavy pack to carry, and ye must have found it hard backin' at times. It seems to me ef ye had onloaded earlier ye would have fetched through in better shape and saved valuable time, for ye look to me like a man who hasn't got over the carry 'til dusk, and can't be of much sarvice to the camp 'til another sunrise; but I think ye have got across for sartin and be out of the woods, and that's a good deal to say of a man who has been lost and fooled away half his day by walking in circles, and I rej'ice that ye be where ye be, and know which way the trail leads arter this; and ef ye be sartin of the lay of the land ahead and know where the line ye be on leads to, ye oughter feel contented and happy-like, as I dare say ye do, Mr. Roberts.'

'Yes, I do feel contented and happy,' said he, 'happier than words may tell. My sin has been great, but the mercy of God is greater, and I feel I can trust Him here and beyond. I have lived as no man should live; but here, on this beach to-day, my life will end, and when I am gone you may think of me as a sinner whose sin was forgiven and whose soul had found peace.'

Arter this he didn't say much for some time, but lay with his eyes lookin' up to the sky and a quiet sort of a look on his face. I conceited the man was thinkin' of things, and it may be of people, a good ways off, and that it wouldn't be right to distarb him in his meditations. But arter a while I said to him, for I felt a leetle oneasy on the subject, for I feered he would forgit it,—'Mr. Roberts, ye spoke about some directions ye wanted to give me, and perhaps ye had better say what ye have in mind on the matter, so me and the hound may know jest what ye want did by and by; for we shall mind and do jest as ye tell us, ef it be within the range of our gifts, and death don't overtake us on the arrand.'

Well, arter a leetle while he turned his eyes on me and said: 'I suppose it don't make much difference where or how my body is buried, arter I am gone; do you, Old Trapper?'

'Well, no, I don't think it does, Mr. Roberts, when ye git right down to the gist of the matter; but every cretur is born with his prejudices, and has his own idees of what is right and proper teching things to be done; and I conceit the Lord allows a man to fetch his line about where he pleases in p'ints of parsonal jedgment; and ef I was in your place I should have my own way about my burial, and have everythin' did straight and systematic-like, accordin' to my own idees of the thing. Now, me and the hound there has our own notions about the treatment the mortal frame should receive arter the sperit has left it, and we conceit that it should be treated as a Huron treats his lodge when he is about to move out of it forever. But we can guess our notions wouldn't suit ye nor seem reasonable-like, because ye was edicated another way, and I have always noted that a man sticks to his 'arly edication as a moose sticks to his gait. So we won't distarb ye with our idees; but do jest as ye tell us to, even ef it be agin reason, as me and the hound understand it.'

Well, the man seemed to be sort of encouraged to say his mind out arter what I had said, and arter looking at the sky a while, with his eyes half-shet, he said,—

'Do you know, John Norton, for days I have been haunted with the fear of dying alone; I dare say it is foolish of me, but I can't help it, nevertheless, and I praise the Lord that He has sent you to me in the hour of my need. The sight of your face helps me inexpressibly, and the sound of your voice has banished the terrible loneliness from my soul. Yes, I shall die happy, now that the companionship of my kind is given me in death. When I am gone I want you to give me a decent burial, as they do down on the coast where I was born. And the way of it is this: They dress the body in good clothes, and put it in a coffin, and they read a chapter or two from the Bible at the house where the man lived, and the minister prays and the choir sings. Then they take the coffin to the grave and bury it, and they generally have a prayer at the grave; and they sod the grave, and put a slab of stone at the head, and plant flowers on the mound. I know, old man, that you can't do all this, and you needn't try. Only do the best you can, that is all; especially bury me so the wolves can't get my bones; and say a few pious words above the grave.'

Well, arter this he said nothin' for a full hour, and I said nothin' neither, for it was plain that his feet was on the very edge of the Great Clearin', and I felt it was nateral for a man standin' at the very eend of the trail to want to look around him in silence awhile; and so I said nothin', for I feered to distarb his mind as he stood lookin' into the etarnal world. By and by he said:—

'Old man, the hour is almost come when I must go, and the way ahead is dark. I see no light and no helper. What can I do?'

'John Roberts,' I said, for I could see by the look of his face and the fear in his voice that he was in trouble, like a boy lost in the woods, 'stick to the trail and keep yer eye on the blazed line of His marcy. Don't hurry, but take it slow and sarcumspectly and trust to the markings. I have heerd said that the carry ye be on led through a valley, dim and dusky as a stretch of pine land by night, but that the man who stuck to the line would fetch through all right. And remember, that me and the hound isn't fur behind, and sartinly the Lord ain't far ahead; so stick to the line, and don't swing a foot from the trail, and ye will sartinly strike risin' land afore long and see light.' And I moved close up to his side and lifted his head into my lap, so he could catch his breath easier; for he was laborin' heavily, and I knowed he couldn't stand it much longer.

So I sot in the sand holdin' his head, and the hound sot at his feet, and we both kept our eyes on the face; and arter our fashion I prayed for the man, and put the case before the Lord in a strong sort of a way, I can tell ye.

Well, arter a while a great change came over his features. He opened his eyes and looked into my face in a happy way as if he had seen a new sight, and a smile crept over his lips, and his countenance softened like the clouds arter storm, and he said:—

'Old man, old man, I see light ahead!' And then he drew a long, contented sort of a breath, moved his legs out easily in the sand, sort of rolled his head gently over in my lap as ef goin' to sleep, closed his eyes, and his sperit, without groan or struggle, stole out of the body in which it had lodged so long in trouble, and passed through the clear light and pure air up to its Maker. And that is the way, Henry, he came to the eend of the trail, and I reckon he found the Lord of marcy waitin' for him at the edge of the Clearin'.

So I sot in the sand, with the head in my lap, closin' his eyes, and the hound, accordin' to his gifts, came and put his nose agin the cheek, and then walked down to the eend of the p'int, and sot down on his ha'nches, and lifted his nose into the air and lamented."