 | CHAPTER I.
LOVE UNKNOWN. Barriers burned away |  |
1. CHAPTER I.
LOVE UNKNOWN.
From its long sweep over the unbroken prairie, a
heavier blast than usual shook the slight frame house.
The windows rattled in the casements, as if shivering in
their dumb way in the December storm. So open and
defective was the dwelling in its construction, that eddying
currents of cold air found admittance at various
points—in some instances carrying with them particles
of the fine, sharp, hail-like snow that the gale was driving
before it in blinding fury.
Seated at one of the windows, peering out into the
gathering gloom of the swiftly coming night, was a pale,
faded woman, with lustrous dark eyes. An anxious light
shone from them, as she tried in vain to catch a glimpse
of the darkening road that ran about fifty yards distant
from the house. As the furious blast shook the frail tenement,
and circled round her in chilly currents from many
a crack and crevice, she gave a short, hacking cough, and
drew a thin shawl closer about her slight frame.
The unwonted violence of the wind had its effect upon
another occupant of the room. From a bed in the corner
near the stove came a feeble, hollow voice,
“Wife!”
In a moment the woman was bending over the bed,
and in a voice full of patient tenderness answered,
“Well, dear.”
“Has he come?”
“Not yet; but he must be here soon.”
The word “must” was emphasized in such a way as to
mean doubt rather than certainty, as if trying to assure
her own mind of a fact about which painful misgivings
could not be banished. The quick ear of the sick man
caught the tone, and in a querulous voice he said,
“O! if he should not get here in time, it would be
the last bitter drop in my cup, now full and running over.”
“Dear husband, if human strength and love can accomplish
it, he will be here soon. But the storm is indeed
frightful, and were the case less urgent, I could
almost wish he would not try to make his way through it.
But then we know what Dennis is; he never stops to
consider difficulties, but pushes right on—and if—if he
doesn't—if it is possible, he will be here before very long.”
In spite of herself, the mother's heart showed its anxiety,
and too late for remedy, she saw the effect upon her
husband. He raised himself in bed with sudden and unwonted
strength. His eyes grew wild and almost fierce,
and in a sharp, hurried voice, he said,
“You don't think there is danger? There is no fear
of his getting lost? If I thought that I would curse God
and die.
“O Dennis, my husband, God forbid that you should
speak thus. How can you feel so toward our best friend?”
“What kind of a friend has He been to me, pray?
Has not my life been one long series of misfortunes?
Have I not been disappointed in all my hopes? I once
believed in God and I tried to serve Him. But if, as I have
been taught, all this evil and misfortune was ordered and
made my inevitable lot by Him, He has not been my
me.”
In the Winter twilight the man's emaciated, unshorn
face had the ghostly, ashen hue of death. From cavernous
sockets his eyes gleamed with a terribly vindictive
light, akin to insanity, and, in a harsh, high voice, as unnatural
as his appearance and words, he continued:
“Remember what I have gone through! What I have
suffered! How often the cup of success that I was raising
to my lips has been dashed to the ground!”
“But, Dennis, think a moment.”
“Ah! haven't I thought till my heart is gall and my
brain bursting? Haven't I, while lying here, hopelessly
dying, gone over my life again and again? Haven't I
lived over every disappointment, and taken every step
downward a thousand times? Remember the pleasant,
plentiful home I took you from, under the great elms in
Connecticut. Your father did not approve of your marrying
me, and said I was only a poor school-teacher. But
you know then that I had every prospect of getting the village
academy, but with my luck another got ahead of me.
Then I determined to study law. What hopes I had! I
already grasped political honors that seemed within my
reach, for you know I was a ready speaker. If my friends
could only have seen that I was peculiarly fitted for public
life and advanced me sufficient means, I would have
returned it tenfold. But no; I was forced into other
things for which I had no great aptness or knowledge,
and years of struggling poverty and repeated disappointment
followed. At last your father died and gave us
enough to buy a cheap farm out here. But why go over
our experience in the West? My plan of making sugar
from the sorghum, which promised so brilliantly, has
ended in the most wretched failure of all. And now money
has gone, health has gone, and soon my miserable life
you and the two little ones—what will you do?” and the
man covered his head with the blanket and wept aloud.
His poor wife, borne down by the torrent of his sorrow,
was on her knees at his bedside, with her face buried in
her hands, weeping also.
But suddenly he started up. His sobs ceased. The
tears congealed upon his face. His eyes grew hard and
fierce, and his hands clenched.
“But he was coming,” he said. “He may get lost in
the storm this bitter Winter night.”
He grasped his wife roughly by the arm. She was astonished
at his sudden strength, and raised a tearful, startled
face to his. It was well she could not see its terrible
expression in the dusk; but she shuddered as he
hissed in her ear,
“If this should happen—if my miserable death is the
cause of his death—if my accursed destiny involves him,
your staff and hope, in so horrible a fate, what have I to
do but curse God and die?
It seemed to the poor woman that her heart would
burst with the agony of that moment. As the storm had
increased, a terrible dread had chilled her very soul.
Every louder blast than usual had caused her an internal
shiver, while for her husband's sake she had controlled
herself outwardly. Like a shipwrecked man who is clinging
to a rock, that he fears the tide will submerge, she had
watched the snow rise from one rail to another along the
fence. When darkness set in it was half way up to the
top rail, and she knew it was drifting. The thought of
her ruddy, active, joyous-hearted boy, whose affection and
hopefulness had been the broad track of sunlight on her
hard path—the thought of his lying white and still beneath
one of these great banks, just where she could never know
till Spring rains and suns revealed to an indifferent stranger
and even her faith wavered on the brink of the dark gulf
of despair into which her husband was sinking. Left to
herself, she might have sunk for a time, though her sincere
belief in God's goodness and love would have triumphed.
But her womanly, unselfish nature, her long
habit of sustaining and comforting her husband, came to
her aid. Breathing a quick prayer to heaven, which was
scarcely more than a gasp and a glance upward, she asked,
hardly knowing what she said—
“And what if he is not lost? What if God restores
him safe and well?”
She shuddered after she had thus spoken, for she saw
that her husband's belief in the hostility of God had
reached almost the point of insanity. If this test failed,
would he not, in spite of all she could say or do, curse
God and die, as he had said? But she had been guided
in her words more than she knew. He that careth for the
fall of the sparrow, had not forgotten them in their sore
extremity.
The man in answer to her question relaxed his hold
upon her arm, and with a long breath fell back on his
pillow.
“Ah!” said he, “if I could only see him again safe
and well, if I could only leave you with him as your protector
and support, I believe I could forgive all the past
and be reconciled even to my hard lot.”
“God gives you opportunity so to do, my father, for
here I am safe and sound.”
The soft snow had muffled his footsteps, and his approach
had been unnoted. Entering in at the back door,
and passing through the kitchen, he had surprised his parents
in the painful scene above described. As he saw
his mother's form in dim outline kneeling at the bed, her
face buried in its covering,—as he heard his father's significant
While he loved his father dearly, and honored him
for his many good traits, he was also conscious of his
faults, especially this most serious one now threatening
such fatal consequences—that of charging to God the
failures and disappointments resulting from defects in his
own character. It seemed as if a merciful Providence
was about to use this awful dread of his death—a calamity
that rose far above and overshadowed all the past—
as the means of winning back the alienated heart of this
weak and erring man.
The effect of his sudden and unexpected presence in
the sick room was most marked. The poor mother who
had shown such self-control and patient endurance before,
now gave way utterly, and clung for a few moments around
her son's neck with hysterical energy, then in strong reaction,
fainted away. The strain upon her worn and over-taxed
system had been too severe.
At first his father could only look through the dusk at
the outline of his son with a bewildered stare, his mind
too weak to comprehend the truth. But soon he too was
sobbing for joy.
But when his wife suddenly became a dead and lifeless
weight in his son's arms, and he in wild alarm cried,
“Mother, what is the matter? Speak to me! O I have
killed her by my rash entrance,” the sick man's manner
changed, and his eyes again became dry and hard, and
even in the darkness had a strange glitter.
“Is your mother dead?” he asked in a low, hoarse
voice.
“O mother, speak to me,” cried his son, forgetting for
a time his father.
For a moment there was death-like silence. Then the
young man groped for an old settle in the corner of the
room, and laid his mother tenderly upon it and sprang for
grasp fell upon his arm that his mother had shuddered under
a little before, and the question was again hissed in
his ear, “Is your mother dead?” For a moment he had
no power to answer, and his father continued,
“What a fool I was to expect God to show mercy or
kindness to me or mine while I was above ground. You
are only brought home to suffer more than death in seeing
your mother die. May that God that has followed me all
my life, not with blessings—”
“Hush, father!” cried his son, in loud, commanding
tones. “Hush, I entreat,” and in his desperation he actually
put his hand over his father's mouth.
The poor woman must have been dead, indeed, had
she long remained deaf to the voice of her beloved son,
and his loud tones partially revived her. In a faint voice
she called,
“Dennis!”
With hands suddenly relaxed, and hearts almost stilled
in their beating, father and son listened for a second.
Again, a little louder, through that dark and silent room,
was heard the faint call,
“Dennis?”
Springing to her side, her son exclaimed,
“O mother, I am here; don't leave us; in mercy don't
leave us.”
“It was I she called,” said his father.
With unnatural strength he had tottered across the
room, and taking his wife's hand, cried,
“O Ethel, don't die; don't fill my already full cup to
overflowing with bitterness.”
Their familiar voices were the best of remedies. After
a moment she sat up, and passing her hand across her
brow as if to clear away confusion of mind, said,
“Don't be alarmed; it's only a faint turn. I don't
so before.”
Poor woman, amid all the emergencies of her hard lot,
she had never in the past given way so far.
Then, becoming aware of her husband's position, she
exclaimed—
“Why, Dennis, my husband, out of your bed—you will
catch your death.”
“Ah, wife, that matters little if you and Dennis live.”
“But it matters much to me,” cried she, springing up.
By this time her son had struck a light, and they were
able to look on each other's faces. The unnatural strength,
the result of excitement, was fast leaving her husband.
The light revealed him helplessly leaning on the couch
where his wife had laid. His face was ashen pale, and he
was gasping for breath. Tenderly they carried him back
to his bed, and he was too weak now to do more than
quietly lie upon it and look at them. After replenishing
the fire, and looking at the little ones that were sleeping
in the outer room, they shaded the lamp, and sat down at
his bedside, while the mother asked her son many eager
questions as to his escape. He told them how he had
struggled through the snow till almost exhausted, when he
was overtaken by a farmer with a strong team, and thus
enabled to make the journey in safety.
As the sick man looked and listened, his face grew
softer and more quiet in its expression.
Then the young man, remembering, said,
“I bought the medicines you wrote for, mother, at
Blankville. This, the druggist said, would produce quiet
sleep, and surely father needs it after the excitement of
the evening.”
The opiate was given, and soon the regular, quiet
breathing of the sick man showed that it had taken effect.
A plain but plentiful supper, which the anxious mother had
and the young man did ample justice to it. For the moment
the cravings of his heart were satisfied in meeting
his kindred after absence, he became conscious of the
keenest hunger. Toiling through the snow for hours in
the face of the December storm, had taxed his system to
the utmost, and now he felt the need of food and rest.
After supper he honestly meant to watch at his father's
bedside, while his mother slept; but he had scarcely seated
himself on the old settle, before sleep, like an armed
man, overpowered him, and in spite of all his efforts he was
soon bound in the dreamless slumber of healthful youth.
But with eyes so wide and lustrous that it would seem
sleep could never close them again, the wife and mother,
pale and silent, watched between her loved ones. The
troubled expression was gone, for the ranks of her little
band had closed up, and all were about her in one more
brief rest in the forward and uncertain march of life. She
seemed looking intently at something far off—something
better discerned by the spiritual than the natural eye. Disappointments
had been bitter, poverty hard and grinding,
but she had learned to escape into a large world that was
fast becoming real to her strong imagination. While her
husband was indulging in chimerical visions of boundless
prosperity here on earth, which he would bring to pass by
some lucky stroke of fortune or invention, she also was
picturing to herself grander things which God would realize
to her beyond time and earth. When alone, in moments
of rest from incessant toil, she would take down the
great family Bible, and with her finger on some description
of the “new heavens and new earth” as the connecting
link between her promise and her strong realization of
it, she would look away with that intent gaze. The new
world, purged from sin and sorrow, would rise before her
with more than Eden loveliness. Her spirit would revel
joy she would meet her Lord and Saviour in some secluded
place, and sit listening at His feet like Mary of old.
Thus, in the strong illusion of her imagination, Christ's
words seemed addressed directly to her, while she looked
up into His face with wrapt attention. Instead of reading
her Lord's familiar sayings, she seemed to listen to them as
did the early disciples. After a little time she would close
the Bible and go back to her hard practical life with an
awed yet strengthened hopeful expression, like that which
must have rested on the disciples' faces on coming down
from the Mount of Transfiguration.
| CHAPTER I.
LOVE UNKNOWN. Barriers burned away | |