University of Virginia Library

66. LXVI.

REUBEN is still floating between death and life.
There is doubt whether the master of the long
course or of the short course will win. However that
may be, his consciousness has returned; and it has
been with a great glow of gratitude that the poor Doctor
has welcomed that look of recognition in his eye, —
the eye of Rachel!

He is calm, — he knows all. That calmness which
had flashed into his soul when last he saw the serene
face of his fellow-voyager upon that mad sea is his still.

The poor father had been moved unwontedly by that
unconsciousness which was blind to all his efforts at
spiritual consolation; but he is not less moved when
he sees reason stirring again, — a light of eager inquiry
in those eyes fearfully sunken, but from their cavernous
depths seeing farther and more keenly than ever.

“Adèle's mother, — was she lost?” He whispers it
to the Doctor; and Miss Eliza, who is sewing yonder,
is quickened into eager listening.

“Lost! my son, lost! Lost, I apprehend, in the
other world as well as this. I fear the true light never
dawned upon her.”

A faint smile — as of one who sees things others do
not see — broke over the face of Reuben. “'T is a
broad light, father; it reaches beyond our blind reckoning.”

There was a trustfulness in his manner that delighted
the Doctor. “And you see it, my son? — Repentance,
Justification by Faith, Adoption, Sanctification, Election?”

“Those words are a weariness to me, father; they
suggest methods, dogmas, perplexities. Christian hope,
pure and simple, I love better.”

The Doctor is disturbed; he cannot rightly understand
how one who seems inspired by so calm a trust
— the son of his own loins too — should find the authoritative
declarations of the divines a weariness. Is
it not some subtle disguise of Satan, by which his poor
boy is being cheated into repose?

Of course the letter of Adèle, which had been so
long upon its way, Miss Eliza had handed to Reuben
after such time as her caution suggested, and she had
explained to him its long delay.

Reading is no easy matter for him; but he races
through those delicately penned lines with quite a new
strength. The spinster sees the color come and go
upon his wan cheek, and with what a trembling eagerness
he folds the letter at the end, and, making a painful
effort, tries to thrust it under his pillow. The good

woman has to aid him in this. He thanks her, but
says nothing more. His fingers are toying nervously
at a bit of torn fringe upon the coverlet. It seems a
relief to him to make the rent wider and wider. A
little glimpse of the world has come back to him, which
disturbs the repose with which but now he would have
quitted it forever.

Adèle has been into the sick-chamber from time to
time, — once led away weeping by the good Doctor,
when the son had fallen upon his wild talk of school-days;
once, too, since consciousness has come to him
again, but before her letter had been read. He had
met her with scarce more than a touch of those fevered
fingers, and a hard, uncertain quiver of a smile, which
had both shocked and disappointed the poor girl. She
thought he would have spoken some friendly consoling
word of her mother; but his heart, more than his
strength, failed him. Her mournful, pitying eyes were
a reproach to him; they had haunted him through the
wakeful hours of two succeeding nights, and now, under
the light of that laggard letter, they blaze with a new
and an appealing tenderness. His fingers still puzzle
wearily with that tangle of the fringe. The noon
passes. The aunt advises a little broth. But no, his
strength is feeding itself on other aliment. The Doctor
comes in with a curiously awkward attempt at gentleness
and noiselessness of tread, and, seeing his excited

condition, repeats to him some texts which he believes
must be consoling. Reuben utters no open dissent;
but through and back of all he sees the tender
eyes of Adèle, which, for the moment, outshine the
promises, or at the least illuminate them with a new
meaning.

“I must see Adèle,” he says to the Doctor; and the
message is carried, — she herself presently bringing
answer, with a rich glow upon her cheek.

“Reuben has sent for me,” — she murmurs it to herself
with pride and joy.

She is in full black now; but never had she looked
more radiantly beautiful than when she stepped to the
side of the sick-bed, and took the hand of Reuben with
an eager clasp — that was met, and met again. The
Doctor is in his study, (the open door between,) and
the spinster is fortunately just now busy at some of her
household duties.

Reuben fumbles under his pillow nervously for that
cherished bit of paper, (Adèle knows already its history,)
and when he has found it and shown it (his thin
fingers crumpling it nervously) he says, “Thank you
for this, Adèle!”

She answers only by clasping his hand with a sudden
mad pressure of content, while the blood mounted into
either cheek with a rosy exuberance that magnified her
beauty tenfold.

He saw it, — he felt it all; and through her beaming
eyes, so full of tenderness and love, saw the world to
which he had bidden adieu shining before him more
beguilingly than ever. Yesterday it was a dim and
weary world that he could leave without a pang; to-day
it is a brilliant world, where hopes, promises, joys
pile in splendid proportions.

He tells her this. “Yesterday I would have died
with scarce a regret; to-day, Adèle, I would live.”

“You will, you will, Reuben!” and she grappled
more and more passionately those shrunken fingers.
“'T is not hopeless!” (sobbing.)

“No, no, Adèle, darling, not hopeless. The cloud is
lifted, — not hopeless!”

“Thank God, thank God!” said she, dropping upon
her knees beside him, and with a smile of ecstasy he
gathered that fair head to his bosom.

The Doctor, hearing her sobs, came softly in. The
son's smile, as he met his father's inquiring look, was
more than ever like the smile of Rachel. He has been
telling the poor girl of her mother's death, thinks the
old gentleman; yet the Doctor wonders that he could
have kept so radiant a face with such a story.

Of these things, however, Reuben goes on presently
to speak: of his first sight of the mother of Adèle, and
of her devotional attitude as they floated down past the
little chapel of Nôtre Dame to enter upon the fateful

voyage; he recounts their talks upon the tranquil
moon-lit nights of ocean; he tells of the mother's eager
listening to his description of her child.

“I did not tell her the half, Adèle; yet she loved me
for what I told her.”

And Adèle smiles through her tears.

At last he comes to those dismal scenes of the wreck,
relating all with a strange vividness; living over again,
as it were, that fearful episode, till his brain whirled,
his self-possession was lost, and he broke out into a
torrent of delirious raving.

He sleeps brokenly that night, and the next day is
feebler than ever. The physician warns against any
causes of excitement. He is calm only at intervals.
The old school-days seem present to him again; he
talks of his fight with Phil Elderkin as if it happened
yesterday.

“Yet I like Phil,” he says (to himself), “and Rose
is like Amanda, the divine Amanda. No — not she.
I 've forgotten: it 's the French girl. She 's a —
Pah! who cares? She 's as pure as heaven; she 's an
angel. Adèle! Adèle! Not good enough! I 'm not
good enough. Very well, very well, now I 'll be bad
enough! Clouds, wrangles, doubts! Is it my fault?
Meam Ecclesiam! How they kneel! Puppets! mummers!
No, not mummers; they see a Christ. What
if they see it in a picture? You see Him in words.

Both in earnest. Belief — belief! That is best.
Adèle, Adèle, I believe!”

The Doctor is a pained listener of this incoherent
talk of his son. “I am afraid, — I am afraid,” he
murmurs to himself, “that he has no clear views of the
great scheme of the Atonement.”

The next day Reuben is himself once more, but
feeble, to a degree that startles the household. It is a
charming morning of later September; the window is
wide open, and the sick one looks out over a stretch of
orchard (he knew its every tree), and upon wooded
hills beyond (he knew every coppice and thicket), and
upon a background of sky over which a few dappled
white clouds floated at rest.

“It is most beautiful!” said Reuben.

“All things that He has made are beautiful,” said
the Doctor; and thereupon he seeks to explore his
way into the secrets of Reuben's religious experience,
— employing, as he was wont to do, all the Westminster
formulas by which his own belief stood fast.

“Father, father, the words are stumbling-blocks to
me,” says the son.

“I would to God, Reuben, that I could make my
language always clear.”

“No, father, no man can, in measuring the Divine
mysteries. We must carry this draggled earth-dress
with us always, — always in some sort fashionists, even

in our soberest opinions. The robes of light are worn
only Beyond. Thought, at the best, is hampered by
this clog of language, that tempts, obscures, misleads.”

“And do you see any light, my son?”

“I hope and tremble. A great light is before me;
it shines back upon outlines of doctrines and creeds
where I have floundered for many a year.”

“But some are clear, — some are clear, Reuben!”

“Before, all seems clear; but behind” —

“And yet, Reuben,” (the Doctor cannot forbear the
discussion,) “there is the cross, — Election, Adoption,
Sanctification” —

“Stop, father; the cross, indeed, with a blaze of
glory, I see; but the teachers of this or that special
form of doctrine I see only catching radiations of the
light. The men who teach, and argue, and declaim,
and exorcise, are using human weapons; the great
light only strikes here and there upon some sword-point
which is nearest to the cross.”

“He wanders,” says the Doctor to Adèle, who has
slipped in and stands beside the sick-bed.

“No wandering, father; on the brink where I stand,
I cannot.”

“And what do you see, Reuben, my boy?” (tenderly.)

Is it the presence of Adèle that gives a new fervor, a
kind of crazy inspiration to his talk? “I see the light-hearted

clashing cymbals; and those who love art,
kneeling under blazing temples and shrines; but the
great light touches the gold no more effulgently than
the steeple of your meeting-house, father, but no less.
I see eyes of chanting girls streaming with joy in the
light; and haggard men with ponderous foreheads
working out contrivances to bridge the gap between
the finite and the infinite. Father, they are no nearer
to a passage than the radiant girls who chant and tell
their beads. Angels in all shapes of beauty flit over
and amid the throngs I see, — in shape of fleecy
clouds that fan them, — in shape of brooks that murmur
praise, — in shape of leafy shadows that tremble
and flicker, — in shape of birds that make a concert of
song.” The birds even then were singing, the clouds
floating in his eye, the leafy shadows trailing on the
chamber floor, and, from the valley, the murmur of the
brook came to his sensitive ear.

“He wanders, — he wanders!” said the poor Doctor.

Reuben turns to Adèle. “Adèle, kiss me!” A
rosy tint ran over her face as she stooped and kissed
him with a freedom a mother might have shown, —
leaving one hand toying caressingly with his hair.
“The cloud is passing, Adèle, — passing! God is Justice;
Christ is Mercy. In Him I trust.”

“Reuben, darling,” says Adèle, “come back to us!”

“Darling, — darling!” he repeated with a strange,
eager, satisfied smile, — so sweet a sound it was.

The chamber was filled with the delightful perfume
of a violet bed beneath the window. Suddenly there
came from the Doctor, whose old eyes caught sooner
than any the change, a passionate outcry. “Great
God! Thy will be done!”

With that one loud, clear utterance, his firmness
gave way, — for the first time in sixty years broke utterly;
and big tears streamed down his face as he
gazed yearningly upon the dead body of his first-born.