 | ONE OF THE ELECT. Men, women, and ghosts |  |
6. ONE OF THE ELECT.
“Down, Muff! down!”
Muff obeyed; he took his paws off from his master's
shoulders with an injured look in his great mute
eyes, and consoled himself by growling at the cow.
Mr. Ryck put a sudden stop to a series of gymnastic
exercises commenced between them, by throwing the
creature's hay down upon her horns; then he watered
his horse, fed the sheep, took a look at the hens, and
closed all the doors tightly; for the night was cold,
so cold that he shivered, even under that great bottlegreen
coat of his: he was not a young man.
“Pretty cold night, Muff!” Muff was not blest
with a forgiving disposition; he maintained a dignified
silence. But his master did not feel the slight. Something,
perhaps the cold, made him careless of the dog
to-night.
The house was warm, at least; the light streamed
far out of the kitchen window, down almost to the
orchard. He passed across it, showing his figure a
little stooping, and the flutter of gray hair from under
his hat; then into the house. His wife was busied
about the room, a pleasant room for a kitchen, with
cheeriest of fires, the home-like faces of blue and
white china peeping through the closet door; a few
books upon a little shelf, with an old Bible among
them; the cosey rocking-chair that always stood by the
fire, and a plant or two in the south window. He
came in, stamping off the snow; Muff crawled behind
the stove, and gave himself up to a fit of metaphysics.
“Cold, Amos?”
“Of course. What else should I be, woman?”
His wife made no reply. His unusual impatience
only saddened her eyes a little. She was one of those
women who would have borne a life-long oppression
with dumb lips. Amos Ryck was not an unkind husband,
but it was not his way to be tender; the years
which had whitened his hair had brought him stern
experiences: life was to him a battle, his horizon
always that about a combatant. But he loved her.
“Most ready to sit down, Martha?” he said at
last, more gently.
“In a minute, Amos.”
She finished some bit of evening work, her step soft
about the room. Then she drew up the low rocking-chair
with its covering of faded crimson chintz, and
sat down by her husband.
She did this without noise; she did not sit too near
to him; she took pains not to annoy him by any feminine
bustle over her work; she chose her knitting, as
timidly into his face. But there was a frown, slight
to be sure, but still a frown, upon it, neither did he
speak. Some gloomy, perhaps some bitter thought
held the man. A reflection of it might have struck
across her, as she turned her head, fixing her eyes
upon the coals.
The light on her face showed it pale; the lines on
her mouth were deeper than any time had worn for
her husband; her hair as gray as his, though he was
already a man of grave, middle age, when the little
wife — hardly past her sixteenth birthday — came to
the farm with him.
Perhaps it is these silent women — spiritless, timid
souls, like this one, — who have, after all, the greatest
capacity for suffering. You might have thought
so, if you had watched her. Some infinite mourning
looked out of her mute brown eyes. In the very
folding of her hands there was a sort of stifled cry,
as one whose abiding place is in the Valley of the
Shadow.
A monotonous sob of the wind broke at the corners
of the house; in the silence between the two, it was
distinctly heard. Martha Ryck's face paled a little.
“I wish —” She tried to laugh. “Amos, it cries
just like a baby.”
“Nonsense!”
Her husband rose impatiently, and walked to the
window. He was not given to fancies; all his life
he liked the sound of that wind much better than the
woman. He thrummed upon the window-sill, then
turned sharply away.
“There 's a storm up, a cold one too.”
“It stormed when —”
But Mrs. Ryck did not finish her sentence. Her
husband, coming back to his seat, tripped over a stool,
— a little thing it was, fit only for a child; a bit of
dingy carpet covered it: once it had been bright.
“Martha, what do you keep this about for? It 's
always in the way!” setting it up angrily against the
wall.
“I won't, if you 'd rather not, Amos.”
The farmer took up an almanac, and counted out
the time when the minister's salary and the butcher's
bill were due; it gave occasion for making no reply.
“Amos!” she said at last. He put down his book.
“Amos, do you remember what day it is?”
“I 'm not likely to forget.” His face darkened.
“Amos,” again, more timidly, “do you suppose we
shall ever find out?”
“How can I tell?”
“Ever know anything, — just a little?”
“We know enough, Martha.”
“Amos! Amos!” her voice rising to a bitter cry,
“we don't know enough! God 's the only one that
knows enough. He knows whether she 's alive, and
if she 's dead he knows, and where she is; if there
was ever any hope, and if her mother —”
“Hope, Martha, for her!”
She had been looking into the fire, her attitude unchanged,
her hands wrung one into the other. She
roused at that, something in her face as if one flared
a sudden light upon the dead.
“What ails you, Amos? You 're her father; you
loved her when she was a little, innocent child.”
When she was a child, and innocent, — yes. That
was long ago. He stopped his walk across the room,
and sat down, his face twitching nervously. But he
had nothing to say, — not one word to the patient
woman watching him there in the firelight, not one
for love of the child who had climbed upon his knee
and kissed him in that very room, who had played
upon that little faded cricket, and wound her arms
about the mother's neck, sitting just so, as she sat now.
Yet he had loved her, the pure baby. That stung
him. He could not forget it, though he might own
no fathership to the wanderer.
Amos Ryck was a respectable man; he had the
reputation of an honest, pious farmer to maintain.
Moreover, he was a deacon in the church. His own
life, stern in its purity, could brook no tenderness
toward offenders. His own child was as shut out
from his forgiveness as he deemed her to be from the
forgiveness of his God. Yet you would have seen, in
one look at the man, that this blow with which he
was smitten had cleft his heart to its core.
This was her birthday, — hers whose name had not
forgotten it since its morning? Did not the memories
it brought crowd into every moment? Did they not
fill the very prayers in which he besought a sin-hating
God to avenge him of all his enemies?
So many times the child had sat there at his feet
on this day, playing with some birthday toy, — he
always managed to find her something, a doll or a
picture-book; she used to come up to thank him, pushing
back her curls, her little red lips put up for a kiss.
He was very proud of her, — he and the mother.
She was all they had, — the only one. He used to
call her “God's dear blessing,” softly, while his eyes
grew dim; she hardly heard him for his breaking
voice.
She might have stood there and brought back all those
dead birthday nights, so did he live them over. But
none could know it; for he did not speak, and the
frown knotted darkly on his forehead. Martha Ryck
looked up at last into her husband's face.
“Amos, if she should ever come back!” He
started, his eyes freezing.
“She won't! She — ”
Would he have said “she shall not?” God only
knew.
“Martha, you talk nonsense! It 's just like a woman.
We 've said enough about this. I suppose He
who 's cursed us has got his own reasons for it. We
must bear it, and so must she.”
He stood up, stroking his beard nervously, his eyes
wandering about the room; he did not, or he could
not, look at his wife. Muff, rousing from his slumbers,
came up sleepily to be taken some notice of.
She used to love the dog, — the child; she gave him
his name in a frolic one day; he was always her play-fellow;
many a time they had come in and found her
asleep with Muff's black, shaggy sides for a pillow, and
her little pink arms around his neck, her face warm
and bright with some happy dream.
Mr. Ryck had often thought he would sell the creature;
but he never had. If he had been a woman,
he would have said he could not. Being a man, he
argued that Muff was a good watch-dog, and worth
keeping.
“Always in the way, Muff!” he muttered, looking
at the patient black head rubbed against his knee. He
was angry with the dog at that moment; the next he
had repented; the brute had done no wrong. He
stooped and patted him. Muff returned to his dreams
content.
“Well, Martha,” he said, coming up to her uneasily,
“you look tired.”
“Tired? No, I was only thinking, Amos.”
The pallor of her face, its timid eyes and patient
mouth, the whole crushed look of the woman, struck
him freshly. He stooped and kissed her forehead, the
sharp lines of his face relaxing a little.
“I did n't mean to be hard on you, Martha; we
not to talk of what can't be helped, — you see.”
“Yes.”
“Don't think anything more about the day; it 's
not — it 's not really good for you; you must cheer up,
little woman.”
“Yes, Amos.”
Perhaps his unusual tenderness gave her courage;
she stood up, putting both arms around his neck.
“If you 'd only try to love her a little, after all,
my husband! He would know it; He might save her
for it.”
Amos Ryck choked, coughed, and said it was time
for prayers. He took down the old Bible in which his
child's baby-fingers used to trace their first lessons after
his own, and read, not of her who loved much and
was forgiven, but one of the imprecatory Psalms.
When Mrs. Ryck was sure that her husband was
asleep that night, she rose softly from her bed, unlocked,
with noiseless key, one of her bureau drawers,
took something from it, and then felt her way down
the dark stairs into the kitchen.
She drew a chair up to the fire, wrapped her shawl
closely about her, and untied, with trembling fingers,
the knots of a soft silken handkerchief in which her
treasures were folded.
Some baby dresses of purest white; a child's little
pink apron; a pair of tiny shoes, worn through by
pattering feet; and a toy or two all broken, as some
a careless baby! Yet they never could scold her,
she always affected such pretty surprises, and wide
blue-eyed penitence: a bit of a queen she was at the
farm.
Was it not most kindly ordered by the Infinite
Tenderness which pitieth its sorrowing ones, that into
her still hours her child should come so often only as a
child, speaking pure things only, touching her mother
so like a restful hand, and stealing into a prayer?
For where was ever grief like this one? Beside
this sorrow, death was but a joy. If she might have
closed her child's baby-eyes, and seen the lips which
had not uttered their first “Mother!” stilled, and laid
her away under the daisies, she would have sat there
alone that night, and thanked Him who had given and
taken away.
But this, — a wanderer upon the face of the earth,
— a mark, deeper seared than the mark of Cain, upon
the face which she had fondled and kissed within her
arms; the soul to which she had given life, accursed
of God and man, — to measure this, there is no speech
nor language.
Martha Ryck rose at last, took off the covers of the
stove, and made a fresh blaze which brightened all the
room, and shot its glow far into the street. She went
to the window to push the curtain carefully aside, stood
a moment looking out into the night, stole softly to the
door, unlocked it, then went upstairs to bed.
The wind, rising suddenly that night, struck sharply
through the city. It had been cold enough before,
but the threatened storm foreboded that it would be
worse yet before morning. The people crowded in a
warm and brilliant church cast wandering glances
from the preacher to the painted windows, beyond
which the night lay darkly, thought of the ride home
in close, cushioned carriages, and shivered.
So did a woman outside, stopping just by the door,
and looking in at the hushed and sacred shelter. Such
a temperature was not the best medicine for that cough
of hers. She had just crawled out of the garret,
where she had lain sick, very sick, for weeks.
Passing the door of the Temple which reared its
massive front and glittering windows out of the darkness
of the street, her ear was caught by the faint,
muffled sound of some anthem the choir were singing.
She drew the hood of her cloak over her face, turned
into the shadow of the steps, and, standing so, listened.
Why, she hardly knew. Perhaps it was the mere
entreaty of the music, for her dulled ear had never
grown deaf to it; or perhaps a memory, flitting as a
shadow, of other places and other times, in which the
hymns of God's church had not been strange to her.
She caught the words at last, brokenly. They were
of some one who was wounded. Wounded! she held
her breath, listening curiously. The wind shrieking
past drowned the rest; only the swelling of the organ
murmured above it. She stole up the granite steps
her, and she went on tiptoe to the muffled door, putting
her ear to it, her hair falling over her face. It
was some plaintive minor air they were hymning, as
sad as a dying wail, and as sweet as a mother's lullaby.
“But He was wounded; He was wounded for our
transgression; He was bruised for our iniquities.”
Then, growing slower and more faint, a single voice
took up the strain, mournfully but clearly, with a hush
in it as if one sang on Calvary.
“Yet we hid, as it were, our faces from Him. He
was despised, and we esteemed him not.”
Well; He only knows what it spoke to the woman,
who listened with her guilty face hidden in her hair;
how it drew her like a call to join the throng that
worshipped him.
“I 'd like to hear the rest,” she muttered to herself.
“I wonder what it is about.”
A child came down from the gallery just then, a
ragged boy, who, like herself, had wandered in from
the street.
“Hilloa, Meg!” he said, laughing, “you going to
meeting? That 's a good joke!” If she had heard
him, she would have turned away. But her hand
was on the latch; the door had swung upon its noiseless
hinges; the pealing organ drowned his voice.
She went in and sat down in an empty slip close by
the door, looking about her for the moment in a sort
of childish wonder. The church was a blaze of light
people, a soft flutter of fans, and faint, sweet perfumes
below; the velvet-cushioned pulpit, and pale, scholarly
outlines of the preacher's face above; the warmth
of rainbow-tinted glass; the wreathed and massive
carving of oaken cornice; the glitter of gas-light from
a thousand prisms, and the silence of the dome beyond.
The brightness struck sharply against the woman
sitting there alone. Her face seemed to grow grayer
and harder in it. The very hush of that princely
sanctuary seemed broken by her polluted presence.
True, she kept afar off; she did not so much as lift
up her eyes to heaven; she had but stolen in to hear the
chanted words that were meant for the acceptance and
the comfort of the pure, bright worshippers, — sinners,
to be sure, in their way; but then, Christ died for
them. This tabernacle, to which they had brought
their purple and gold and scarlet, for his praise, was
not meant for such as Meg, you know.
But she had come into it, nevertheless. If He had
called her there, she did not know it. She only sat
and listened to the chanting, forgetting what she was;
forgetting to wonder if there were one of all that
reverent throng who would be willing to sit and worship
beside her.
The singing ended at last, and the pale preacher
began his sermon. But Meg did not care for that;
she could not understand it. She crouched down in
the corner of the pew, her hood drawn far over her
as it seemed, the words of the chant.
“Wounded — for our transgressions; and bruised,”
—muttering, after a while, — “Yet we hid our faces.”
Bruised and wounded! The sound of the words
attracted her; she said them over and over. She
knew who He was. Many years ago she had heard
of him; it was a great while since then; she had
almost forgotten it. Was it true? And was he perhaps,
— was there a little chance it meant, he was
bruised for her, — for her? She began to wonder
dimly, still muttering the sorrowful words down in
her corner, where no one could hear her.
I wonder if He heard them. Do you think he
did? For when the sermon was ended, and the
choir sang again, — still of him, and how he called
the heavy-laden, and how he kept his own rest for
them, she said, — for was she not very weary and
heavy-laden with her sins? — still crouching down in
her corner, “That 's me. I guess it is. I 'll find
out.”
She fixed her eyes upon the preacher, thinking, in
her stunted, childish way, that he knew so much, so
many things she did not understand, that surely he
could tell her, — she should like to have it to think
about; she would ask him. She rose instinctively with
the audience to receive his blessing, then waited in her
hooded cloak, like some dark and evil thing, among
the brilliant crowd. The door opening, as they began
brought back a spasm of coughing. She stood quivering
under it, her face livid with the pain. The crowd
began to look at her curiously, to nod and whisper
among themselves.
The sexton stepped up nervously; he knew who
she was. “Meg, you 'd better go. What are you
standing here for?”
She flung him a look out of her hard, defiant eyes;
she made no answer. A child, clinging to her mother's
hand, looked up as she went by, pity and fear in her
great wondering eyes. “Mother, see that poor
woman; she 's hungry or cold!”
The little one put her hand over the slip, pulling at
Meg's cloak. “What 's the matter with you? Why
don't you go home?”
“Bertha, child, are you crazy?” Her mother
caught her quickly away. “Don't touch that woman!”
Meg heard it.
Standing, a moment after, just at the edge of the
aisle, a lady, clad in velvet, brushed against her, then
gathered her costly garments with a hand ringed and
dazzling with diamonds, shrinking as if she had touched
some accursed thing, and sweeping by.
Meg's eyes froze at that. This was the sanctuary,
these the worshippers of Him who was bruised. His
message could not be for her. It would be of no use
to find out about him; of no use to tell him how she
about that Rest, and about that heavy-laden one.
His followers would not brook the very flutter of
her dress against their pure garments. They were
like him; he could have nothing to say to such as
she.
She turned to go out. Through the open door she
saw the night and the storm. Within was the silent
dome, and the organ-hymn still swelling up to it.
It was still of the wounded that they sang. Meg
listened, lingered, touched the preacher on the arm as
he came by.
“I want to ask you a question.”
He started at the sight of her, or more perhaps at
the sharpness in her voice.
“Why, why, who are you?”
“I 'm Meg. You don't know me. I ain't fit for
your fine Christian people to touch; they won't let
their little children speak to me.”
“Well?” he said, nervously, for she paused.
“Well? You 're a preacher. I want to know about
Him they 've been singing of. I came in to hear the
singing. I like it.”
“I — I don't quite understand you,” began the
minister. “You surely have heard of Jesus Christ.”
“Yes,” her eyes softened, “somebody used to tell
me; it was mother; we lived in the country. I
was n't what I am now. I want to know if he can
put me back again. What if I should tell him I was
suppose?”
Somehow the preacher's scholarly self-possession
failed him. He felt ill at ease, standing there with
the woman's fixed black eyes upon him.
“Why, yes; he always forgives a repentant sinner.”
“Repentant sinner.” She repeated the words
musingly. “I don't understand all these things.
I 've forgotten most all about it. I want to know.
Could n't I come in some way with the children and
be learnt 'em? I would n't make any trouble.”
There was something almost like a child in her
voice just then, almost as earnest and as pure. The
preacher took out his handkerchief and wiped his
face; then he changed his hat awkwardly from hand
to hand.
“Why, why, really, we have no provision in our
Sabbath school for cases like this: we have been meaning
to establish an institution of a missionary character,
but the funds cannot be raised just yet. I am sorry;
I don't know but —”
“It 's no matter!”
Meg turned sharply away, her hands dropping lifelessly;
she moved toward the door. They were
alone now in the church, they two.
The minister's pale cheek flushed; he stepped after
her.
“Young woman!”
She stopped, her face turned from him.
“I will send you to some of the city missionaries, or
I will go with you to the Penitents' Retreat. I should
like to help you. I —”
He would have exhorted her to reform as kindly as
he knew how; he felt uncomfortable at letting her go
so; he remembered just then who washed the feet of
his Master with her tears. But she would not listen.
She turned from him, and out into the storm, some
cry on her lips, — it might have been: —
“There ain't nobody to help me. I was going to be
better!”
She sank down on the snow outside, exhausted by
the racking cough which the air had again brought
on.
The sexton found her there in the shadow, when he
locked the church doors.
“Meg! you here? What ails you?”
“Dying, I suppose!”
The sight of her touched the man, she lying there
alone in the snow; he lingered, hesitated, thought of
his own warm home, looked at her again. If a friendly
hand should save the creature, — he had heard of such
things. Well? But how could he take her into his
respectable home? What would people say? — the
sexton of the Temple! He had a little wife there
too, pure as the snow upon the ground to-night.
Could he bring them under the same roof?
“Meg!” he said, speaking in his nervous way,
police and let them take you where it 's warmer.”
But she crawled to her feet again.
“No you won't!”
She walked away as fast as she was able, till she
found a still place down by the water, where no one
could see her. There she stood a moment irresolute,
looked up through the storm as if searching for the
sky, then sank upon her knees down in the silent
shade of some timber.
Perhaps she was half-frightened at the act, for she
knelt so a moment without speaking. There she began
to mutter: “Maybe He won't drive me off; if
they did, maybe he won't. I should just like to tell
him, anyway!”
So she folded her hands, as she had folded them
once at her mother's knee.
“O Lord! I 'm tired of being Meg. I should like
to be something else!”
Then she rose, crossed the bridge, and on past the
thinning houses, walking feebly through the snow that
drifted against her feet.
She did not know why she was there, or where she
was going. She repeated softly to herself now and
then the words uttered down in the shade of the timber,
her brain dulled by the cold, faint, floating dreams
stealing into them.
Meg! tired of being Meg! She was n't always
that. It was another name, a pretty name she
always call her that. She used to play about among
the clover-blossoms and buttercups then; the pure
little children used to kiss her; nobody hooted after
her in the street, or drove her out of church, or left
her all alone out in the snow, — Maggie!
Perhaps, too, some vague thought came to her of
the mournful, unconscious prophecy of the name, as
the touch of the sacred water upon her baby-brow had
sealed it, — Magdalene.
She stopped a moment, weakened by her toiling
against the wind, threw off her hood, the better to
catch her laboring breath, and standing so, looked
back at the city, its lights glimmering white and pale,
through the falling snow.
Her face was a piteous sight just then. Do you
think the haughtiest of the pure, fair women in yonder
treasured homes could have loathed her as she loathed
herself at that moment?
Yet it might have been a face as fair and pure as
theirs; kisses of mother and husband might have
warmed those drawn and hueless lips; they might
have prayed their happy prayers, every night and
morning, to God. It might have been. You would
almost have thought he had meant it should be so, if
you had looked into her eyes sometimes, — perhaps
when she was on her knees by the timber; or when
she listened to the chant, crouching out of sight in
the church.
Well, it was only that it might have been. Life
could hold no possible blessed change for her, you
know. Society had no place for it, though she sought
it carefully with tears. Who of all God's happy
children that he had kept from sin would have gone
to her and said, “My sister, his love holds room for
you and me”; have touched her with her woman's
hand, held out to her her woman's help, and blessed
her with her woman's prayers and tears?
Do you not think Meg knew the answer? Had she
not learned it well, in seven wandering years? Had
she not read it in every blast of this bitter night, out
into which she had come to find a helper, when all
the happy world passed by her, on the other side?
She stood there, looking at the glittering of the city,
then off into the gloom where the path lay through
the snow. Some struggle was in her face.
“Home! home and mother! She don't want me,
— nobody wants me. I 'd better go back.”
The storm was beating upon her. But, looking
from the city to the drifted path, and back from the
lonely path to the lighted city, she did not stir.
“I should like to see it, just to look in the window,
a little, — it would n't hurt 'em any. Nobody 'd
know.”
She turned, walking slowly where the snow lay
pure and untrodden. On, out of sight of the town,
where the fields were still; thinking only as she went,
that nobody would know, — nobody would know.
could even say good-by to it quite aloud, and they
would n't hear her, or come and drive her away.
And then —
She looked around where the great shadows lay
upon the fields, felt the weakening of her limbs, her
failing breath, and smiled. Not Meg's smile; a very
quiet smile, with a little quiver in it. She would find
a still place under the trees somewhere; the snow
would cover her quite out of sight before morning,
— the pure, white snow. She would be only Maggie
then.
The road, like some familiar dream, wound at last
into the village. Down the street where her childish
feet had pattered in their playing, by the old town
pump, where, coming home from school, she used to
drink the cool, clear water on summer noons, she
passed, — a silent shadow. She might have been the
ghost of some dead life, so moveless was her face.
She stopped at last, looking about her.
“Where? I most forget.”
Turning out from the road, she found a brook half
hidden under the branches of a dripping tree, — frozen
now; only a black glare of ice, where she pushed
away the snow with her foot. It might have been a
still, green place in summer, with banks of moss, and
birds singing overhead. Some faint color flushed
all her face; she did not hear the icicles dropping
from the lonely tree.
“Yes,” — she began to talk softly to herself, —
“this is it. The first time I ever saw him, he stood
over there under the tree. Let me see; was n't I
crossing the brook? Yes, I was crossing the brook;
on the stones. I had a pink dress. I looked in the
glass when I went home,” brushing her soft hair out
of her eyes. “Did I look pretty? I can't remember.
It 's a great while ago.”
She came back into the street after that, languidly,
for the snow lay deeper. The wind, too, had chilled
her more than she knew. The sleet was frozen upon
her mute, white face. She tried to draw her cloak
more closely about her, but her hands refused to hold
it. She looked at them curiously.
“Numb? How much farther, I wonder?”
It was not long before she came to it. The house
stood up silently in the night. A single light glimmered
far out upon the garden. Her eye caught it
eagerly. She followed it down, across the orchard,
and the little plats where the flowers used to be so
bright all summer long. She had not forgotten them.
She used to go out in the morning and pick them for
her mother, — a whole apronful, purple, and pink, and
white, with dewdrops on them. She was fit to touch
them then. Her mother used to smile when she
brought them in. Her mother! Nobody ever smiled
so since. Did she know it? Did she ever wonder
what had become of her, — the little girl who used to
kiss her? Did she ever want to see her? Sometimes,
her daughter who had sinned, or guess that
she was tired of it all, and how no one in all the wide
world would help her?
She was sleeping there now. And the father. She
was afraid to see him; he would send her away, if he
knew she had come out in the snow to look at the old
home. She wondered if her mother would.
She opened the gate, and went in. The house was
very still. So was the yard, and the gleam of light
that lay golden on the snow. The numbness of her
body began to steal over her brain. She thought atmoments,
as she crawled up the path upon her hands
and knees, — for she could no longer walk, — that she
was dreaming some pleasant dream; that the door
would open, and her mother come out to meet her.
Attracted like a child by the broad belt of light, she
followed it over and through a piling drift. It led her
to the window where the curtain was pushed aside.
She managed to reach the blind, and so stand up a
moment, clinging to it, looking in, the glow from the
fire sharp on her face. Then she sank down upon the
snow by the door.
Lying so, her face turned up against it, her stiffened
lips kissing the very dumb, unanswering wood, a
thought came to her. She remembered the day.
For seven long years she had not thought of it.
A spasm crossed her face, her hands falling clinched.
Who was it of whom it was written, that better were
more vile than Judas, what should be said?
Yet it was hard, I think, to fall so upon the very
threshold, — so near the quiet, peaceful room, with
the warmth, and light, and rest; to stay all night in
the storm, with eyes turned to that dead, pitiless sky,
without one look into her mother's face, without one
kiss, or gentle touch, or blessing, and die so, looking
up! No one to hold her hand and look into her eyes,
and hear her say she was sorry, — sorry for it all!
That they should find her there in the morning, when
her poor, dead face could not see if she were forgiven!
“I should like to go in,” sobbing, with the first
tears of many years upon her cheek, — weak, pitiful
tears, like a child's, — “just in out of the cold!”
Some sudden strength fell on her after that. She
reached up, fumbling for the latch. It opened at her
first touch; the door swung wide into the silent
house.
She crawled in then, into the kitchen where the fire
was, and the rocking-chair; the plants in the window,
and the faded cricket upon the hearth; the dog, too,
roused from his nap behind the stove. He began to
growl at her, his eyes on fire.
“Muff!” she smiled weakly, stretching out her
hand. He did not know her, — he was fierce with
strangers. “Muff! don't you know me? I 'm Maggie;
there, there, Muff, good fellow!”
She crept up to him fearlessly, putting both her
arms about his neck, in a way she had of soothing
him when she was his playfellow. The creature's
low growl died away. He submitted to her touch,
doubtfully at first, then he crouched on the floor
beside her, wagging his tail, wetting her face with
his huge tongue.
“Muff, you know me, you old fellow! I 'm sorry,
Muff, I am, — I wish we could go out and play together
again. I 'm very tired, Muff.”
She laid her head upon the dog, just as she used to
long ago, creeping up near the fire. A smile broke
all over her face, at Muff's short, happy bark.
“He don't turn me off; he don't know; he thinks
I 'm nobody but Maggie.”
How long she lay so, she did not know. It might
have been minutes, it might have been hours; her
eyes wandering all about the room, growing brighter
too, and clearer. They would know now that she had
come back; that she wanted to see them; that she
had crawled into the old room to die; that Muff had
not forgotten her. Perhaps, perhaps they would look
at her not unkindly, and cry over her just a little, for
the sake of the child they used to love.
Martha Ryck, coming in at last, found her with her
long hair falling over her face, her arms still about the
dog, lying there in the firelight.
The woman's eyelids fluttered for an instant, her
lips moving dryly; but she made no sound. She came
and took her child's head upon her lap.
“Maggie!”
She opened her eyes and looked up.
“Mother 's glad to see you, Maggie.”
The girl tried to smile, her face all quivering.
“Mother, I — I wanted you. I thought I was n't
fit.”
Her mother stopped and kissed her lips, — the polluted,
purple lips, that trembled so.
“I thought you would come back to me, my daughter.
I 've watched for you a great while.”
She smiled at that, pushing away her falling hair.
“Mother, I 'm so sorry.”
“Yes, Maggie.”
“And oh!” she threw out her arms; “O, I 'm
so tired, I 'm so tired!”
Her mother raised her, laying her head upon her
shoulder.
“Mother 'll rest you, Maggie,” soothing her, as if
she sang again her first lullaby, when she came to her,
the little pure baby, — her only one.
“Mother,” once more, “the door was unlocked.”
“It has been unlocked every night for seven years,
my child.”
She closed her eyes after that, some stupor creeping
over her, her features in the firelight softening and
melting, with the old child-look coming into them.
Looking up at last, she saw another face bending over
were tears in the eyes, and some recent struggle quivering
out of it.
“Father, I did n't mean to come in, — I did n't
really; but I was so cold. Don't send me off, father!
I could n't walk so far, — I shall be out of your way in
a little while, — the cough —”
“I send you away, Maggie? I — I might have
done it once; God forgive me! He sent you back,
my daughter, — I thank him.”
A darkness swept over both faces then; she did not
even hear Muff's whining cry at her ear.
“Mother,” at last, the light of the room coming
back, “there 's Somebody who was wounded. I
guess I 'm going to find him. Will he forget it all?”
“All, Maggie.”
For what did He tell the sin-laden woman who came
to him once, and dared not look into his face? Was
ever soul so foul and crimson-stained that he could not
make it pure and white? Does he not linger till his
locks are wet with the dews of night, to listen for the
first, faint call of any wanderer crying to him in the
dark?
So He came to Maggie. So he called her by her
name, — Magdalene, most precious to him; whom he
had bought with a great price; for whom, with groanings
that cannot be uttered, he had pleaded with his
Father: Magdalene, chosen from all eternity, to be
graven in the hollow of his hand, to stand near to him
face, to touch him with her happy tears among his sinless
ones forever.
And think you that then, any should scorn the
woman whom the high and lofty One, beholding, did
thus love? Who could lay anything to the charge
of his elect?
Perhaps he told her all this, in the pauses of the
storm, for something in her face transfigured it.
“Mother, it 's all over now. I think I shall be
your little girl again.”
And so, with a smile, she went to Him. The light
flashed broader and brighter about the room, and
on the dead face there, — never Meg's again. A
strong man, bowed over it, was weeping. Muff moaned
out his brute sorrow where the still hand touched
him.
But Martha Ryck, kneeling down beside her only
child, gave thanks to God.
| ONE OF THE ELECT. Men, women, and ghosts | |