The Complete Writings of Charles Dudley Warner Part 121

"And do you think it would be any better if all were poor alike?"

"I think it would be better if there were no idle people. I'm half ashamed that I have leisure to go every time I go to that mission. And I'm almost sorry, Mr. Lyon, that I took you there. The boys knew you were English. One of them asked me if you were a 'lord' or a 'juke' or something. I cannot tell how they will take it. They may resent the spying into their world of an 'English juke,' and they may take it in the light of a show."

Mr. Lyon laughed. And then, perhaps after a little reflection upon the possibility that the n.o.bility was becoming a show in this world, he said:

"I begin to think I'm very unfortunate, Miss Debree. You seem to remind me that I am in a position in which I can do very little to help the world along."

"Not at all. You can do very much."

"But how, when whatever I attempt is considered a condescension? What can I do?"

"Pardon me," and Margaret turned her eyes frankly upon him. "You can be a good earl when your time comes."

Their way lay through the little city park. It is a pretty place in summer--a varied surface, well planted with forest and ornamental trees, intersected by a winding stream. The little river was full now, and ice had formed on it, with small openings here and there, where the dark water, hurrying along as if in fear of arrest, had a more chilling aspect than the icy cover. The ground was white with snow, and all the trees were bare except for a few frozen oak-leaves here and there, which s.h.i.+vered in the wind and somehow added to the desolation. Leaden clouds covered the sky, and only in the west was there a gleam of the departing winter day.

Upon the elevated bank of the stream, opposite to the road by which they approached, they saw a group of people--perhaps twenty-drawn closely together, either in the sympathy of segregation from an unfeeling world, or for protection from the keen wind. On the hither bank, and leaning on the rails of the drive, had collected a motley crowd of spectators, men, women, and boys, who exhibited some impatience and much curiosity, decorous for the most part, but emphasized by occasional jocose remarks in an undertone. A serious ceremony was evidently in progress. The separate group had not a prosperous air. The women were thinly clad for such a day. Conspicuous in the little a.s.sembly was a tall, elderly man in a shabby long coat and a broad felt hat, from under which his white hair fell upon his shoulders. He might be a prophet in Israel come out to testify to an unbelieving world, and the little group around him, shaken like reeds in the wind, had the appearance of martyrs to a cause. The light of another world shone in their thin, patient faces. Come, they seemed to say to the worldlings on the opposite bank--come and see what happiness it is to serve the Lord. As they waited, a faint tune was started, a quavering hymn, whose feeble notes the wind blew away of first, but which grew stronger.

Before the first stanza was finished a carriage appeared in the rear of the group. From it descended a middle-aged man and a stout woman, and they together helped a young girl to alight. She was clad all in white.

For a moment her thin, delicate figure shrank from the cutting wind.

Timid, nervous, she glanced an instant at the crowd and the dark icy stream; but it was only a protest of the poor body; the face had the rapt, exultant look of joyous sacrifice.

The tall man advanced to meet her, and led her into the midst of the group.

For a few moments there was prayer, inaudible at a distance. Then the tall man, taking the girl by the hand, advanced down the slope to the stream. His hat was laid aside, his venerable locks streamed in the breeze, his eyes were turned to heaven; the girl walked as in a vision, without a tremor, her wide-opened eyes fixed upon invisible things. As they moved on, the group behind set up a joyful hymn in a kind of mournful chant, in which the tall man joined with a strident voice.

Fitfully the words came on the wind, in an almost heart-breaking wail:

"Beyond the smiling and the weeping I shall be soon; Beyond the waking and the sleeping, Beyond the sowing and the reaping, I shall be soon."

They were near the water now, and the tall man's voice sounded out loud and clear:

"Lord, tarry not, but come!"

They were entering the stream where there was an opening clear of ice; the footing was not very secure, and the tall man ceased singing, but the little band sang on:

"Beyond the blooming and the fading I shall be soon."

The girl grew paler and shuddered. The tall man sustained her with an att.i.tude of infinite sympathy, and seemed to speak words of encouragement. They were in the mid-stream; the cold flood surged about their waists. The group sang on:

"Beyond the s.h.i.+ning and the shading, Beyond the hoping and the dreading, I shall be soon."

The strong, tender arms of the tall man gently lowered the white form under the cruel water; he staggered a moment in the swift stream, recovered himself, raised her, white as death, and the voices of the wailing tune came:

"Love, rest, and home Sweet hope! Lord, tarry not, but come!"

And the tall man, as he struggled to the sh.o.r.e with his almost insensible burden, could be heard above the other voices and the wind and the rush of the waters:

"Lord, tarry not, but come!"

The girl was hurried into the carriage, and the group quickly dispersed.

"Well, I'll be--" The tender-hearted little wife of the rough man in the crowd who began that sentence did not permit him to finish it. "That'll be a case for a doctor right away," remarked a well-known pract.i.tioner who had been looking on.

Margaret and Mr. Lyon walked home in silence. "I can't talk about it,"

she said. "It's such a pitiful world."

IV

In the evening, at our house, Margaret described the scene in the park.

"It's dreadful," was the comment of Miss Forsythe. "The authorities ought not to permit such a thing."

"It seemed to me as heroic as pitiful, aunt. I fear I should be incapable of making such a testimony."

"But it was so unnecessary."

"How do we know what is necessary to any poor soul? What impressed me most strongly was that there is in the world still this longing to suffer physically and endure public scorn for a belief."

"It may have been a disappointment to the little band," said Mr. Morgan, "that there was no demonstration from the spectators, that there was no loud jeering, that no s...o...b..a.l.l.s were thrown by the boys."

"They could hardly expect that," said I; "the world has become so tolerant that it doesn't care."

"I rather think," Margaret replied, "that the spectators for a moment came under the spell of the hour, and were awed by something supernatural in the endurance of that frail girl."

"No doubt," said my wife, after a little pause. "I believe that there is as much sense of mystery in the world as ever, and as much of what we call faith, only it shows itself eccentrically. Breaking away from traditions and not going to church have not destroyed the need in the minds of the ma.s.s of people for something outside themselves."

"Did I tell you," interposed Morgan--"it is almost in the line of your thought--of a girl I met the other day on the train? I happened to be her seat-mate in the car-thin face, slight little figure--a commonplace girl, whom I took at first to be not more than twenty, but from the lines about her large eyes she was probably nearer forty. She had in her lap a book, which she conned from time to time, and seemed to be committing verses to memory as she looked out the window. At last I ventured to ask what literature it was that interested her so much, when she turned and frankly entered into conversation. It was a little Advent song-book. She liked to read it on the train, and hum over the tunes. Yes, she was a good deal on the cars; early every morning she rode thirty miles to her work, and thirty miles back every evening. Her work was that of clerk and copyist in a freight office, and she earned nine dollars a week, on which she supported herself and her mother. It was hard work, but she did not mind it much. Her mother was quite feeble. She was an Adventist. 'And you?' I asked. 'Oh, yes; I am. I've been an Adventist twenty years, and I've been perfectly happy ever since I joined--perfectly,' she added, turning her plain face, now radiant, towards me. 'Are you one?' she asked, presently. 'Not an immediate Adventist,' I was obliged to confess.

'I thought you might be, there are so many now, more and more.' I learned that in our little city there were two Advent societies; there had been a split on account of some difference in the meaning of original sin. 'And you are not discouraged by the repeated failure of the predictions of the end of the world?' I asked. 'No. Why should we be? We don't fix any certain day now, but all the signs show that it is very near. We are all free to think as we like. Most of our members now think it will be next year.'--'I hope not!' I exclaimed. 'Why?' she asked, turning to me with a look of surprise. 'Are you afraid?' I evaded by saying that I supposed the good had nothing to fear. 'Then you must be an Adventist, you have so much sympathy.'--'I shouldn't like to have the world come to an end next year, because there are so many interesting problems, and I want to see how they will be worked out.'--'How can you want to put it off'--and there was for the first time a little note of fanaticism in her voice--'when there is so much poverty and hard work? It is such a hard world, and so much suffering and sin. And it could all be ended in a moment. How can you want it to go on?' The train approached the station, and she rose to say good-by. 'You will see the truth some day,' she said, and went away as cheerful as if the world was actually destroyed. She was the happiest woman I have seen in a long time."

"Yes," I said, "it is an age of both faith and credulity."

"And nothing marks it more," Morgan added, "than the popular expectation among the scientific and the ignorant of something to come out of the dimly understood relation of body and mind. It is like the expectation of the possibilities of electricity."

"I was going on to say," I continued, "that wherever I walk in the city of a Sunday afternoon, I am struck with the number of little meetings going on, of the faithful and the unfaithful, Adventists, socialists, spiritualists, culturists, Sons and Daughters of Edom; from all the open windows of the tall buildings come notes of praying, of exhortation, the melancholy wail of the inspiring Sankey tunes, total abstinence melodies, over-the-river melodies, songs of entreaty, and songs of praise. There is so much going on outside of the regular churches!"

"But the churches are well attended," suggested my wife.

"Yes, fairly, at least once a day, and if there is sensational preaching, twice. But there is nothing that will so pack the biggest hall in the city as the announcement of inspirational preaching by some young woman who speaks at random on a text given her when she steps upon the platform. There is something in her rhapsody, even when it is incoherent, that appeals to a prevailing spirit."'

"How much of it is curiosity?" Morgan asked. "Isn't the hall just as jammed when the clever attorney of Nothingism, Ham Saversoul, jokes about the mysteries of this life and the next?"

"Very likely. People like the emotional and the amusing. All the same, they are credulous, and entertain doubt and belief on the slightest evidence."

"Isn't it natural," spoke up Mr. Lyon, who had hitherto been silent, "that you should drift into this condition without an established church?"

"Perhaps it's natural," Morgan retorted, "that people dissatisfied with an established religion should drift over here. Great Britain, you know, is a famous recruiting-ground for our socialistic experiments."

"Ah, well," said my wife, "men will have something. If what is established repels to the extent of getting itself disestablished, and all churches should be broken up, society would somehow precipitate itself again spiritually. I heard the other day that Boston, getting a little weary of the Vedas, was beginning to take up the New Testament."