"I don't mean to, but you must not overestimate the impressions made on me. I am not so good as you think."

"I wish you had the courage to be as good as you are."

"But there is no use trying to be what I am not. If I should start off with you, I should never be able to follow you. My old self would get the victory. In the long run, a man will be himself. 'Nature is often hidden, sometimes overcome--seldom extinguished.'"

"What a mood you are in, Mantel! It makes me shiver to hear you talk so.

Here I am, full of hope and purpose; my heart on fire; believing in life; confident of the outcome; and you, a better man by nature than I am, sitting here, cold as a block of ice, and the victim of despair! I ought to be able to do something! Sweet as life is to me to-night, I feel that I could lay it down to save you."

"Dear fellow!" said Mantel, grasping his hands and choking with emotion; "you don't know how that moves me! It can't seem half so strange to you as it does to me; but I must be true to myself. If I told you I would take this step I should not be honest. No! Not to-night! Sometime, perhaps. I haven't much faith in life, but I swear I don't believe, bad man as I am, that anybody can ever go clear to the bottom, without being rescued by a love like that! I'll never forget it, Davy; never! It will save me sometime; but you must not talk any more, you are tired out. Go to bed, friend, brother, the only one I ever really had and loved. You will need your sleep. Leave me alone, and I will sit the night out and chew the bitter cud."

It was not until daybreak that David ceased his supplications and lay down to s.n.a.t.c.h a moment's rest. When he awoke, he sprang up suddenly and saw Mantel still sitting before the open window where he left him, smoking his cigar and pondering the great problem.

"I have had a wonderful dream," he said.

"What was it?" asked Mantel.

"I dreamt that I was swimming alone in a vast ocean,--weary, exhausted, desperate and sinking,--but just as I was going down a hand was thrust out of the sky, and although I could not reach it, so long as I kept my eyes on it I swam with perfect ease; while, just the moment I took them off, my old fatigue came back and I began to sink. When I saw this, I never looked away for even a second, and the sea seemed to bear me up with giant arms. I swam and swam as easily as men float, day after day and year after year, until I reached the harbor."

"Whose hand was it?"

"I couldn't tell."

"Well, swim on and look up, Davy, and G.o.d bless you."

They parted at dawn, one to break through the meshes and escape, and the other--!

In Australia, when drought drives the rabbits southward, the ranchmen, terrified at their approach, have only to erect a woven wire fence on the north side of their farms to be perfectly safe, for the poor things lie down against it and die in droves--too stupid to go round, climb over, or dig under! It is a comfort to see one of them now and then who has determined to find the green fields on the southward side--no matter what it costs!

Weak and bad as he had been, David at least took the first path which he saw leading up to the light.

CHAPTER x.x.xII.

THE END OF EXILE

"Every one goes astray, and the least imprudent is he who repents soonest." --Voltaire.

The steamer on which Corson embarked after his overland journey from New York City to Pittsburg, had descended the Ohio almost as far as Cincinnati, before other thoughts than those which were concerned with Pepeeta and his spiritual regeneration could awaken any interest in his mind. But as the boat approached Cincinnati, the places, the persons and the incidents of his childhood world began to present themselves to his consciousness. An irrepressible longing to look once more upon the place of his birth and the friends of his youth took possession of his mind.

He found, on inquiry, that the boat was to remain at the wharf in Cincinnati for several hours, and that there would be time enough for him to make the journey to his old home and back before she proceeded down the river. He decided to do so, and observed with satisfaction that those painful gropings for the next stepping stone across the streams of action which had been so persistent and painful a feature of his recent life had given place to the swift intuitions of his youth. He saw his way as he used to when a boy, and made his decisions rapidly and executed them fearlessly. The discovery of this fact gave a new zest and hope to life.

In a few moments after he had landed at the familiar wharf he was mounted upon a fleet horse, rushing away over those beautiful rolling hills which fill the mind of the traveler with uncloying delight in their variety, their fertility and their beauty. It was the first time since he had left the farm that his mind had been free enough from pa.s.sion or pain to bestow its full attention upon the charms of Nature; they dawned on him now like a new discovery. The motion of the horse,--so long unfamiliar, so easy, so graceful, so rhythmical,--seemed of itself to key his spirits to his environment, for it is an elemental pleasure to be seated in the saddle and feel the thrill of power and rapid motion. The rider's eyes brightened, his cheeks glowed, his pulses bounded. He gathered up the beauties of the world around him in great sheaves of delicious and thrilling sensations. Long-forgotten odors came sweeping across the fields, rich with the verdure of the vernal season, and brought with them precious accompaniments of the almost-forgotten past. The rich and varied colors of field and sky and forest fed his starved soul with one kind of beauty; and the sweet sounds of the outdoor world intoxicated him with another. The low of cattle, the bleating of sheep, the crowing of chanticleers, the cackling of hens, the gobble of turkeys, the mult.i.tudinous songs of the birds enveloped him in a sort of musical atmosphere. For the first time since his restoration to hope, the past seemed like a dream, and these few blissful moments became a prophecy of a new and grander life. "For, if the burden can fall off for a single moment, why not for many moments?"

So he said to himself, as the consciousness of his past misery and his unknown future thrust their disturbing faces into the midst of these blissful emotions.

The vague joys which had been surging through his soul became vivid and well-defined as the details of the landscape around his old home began gradually to be revealed. At first he had recognized only the larger and more general features like the lines of hills, the valleys, the rivers; but now he began to distinguish well-known farms and houses, streams in which he had fished, groves in which he had hunted, roads over which he had driven; and the pleasure of reviving old memories and a.s.sociations increased with every step of progress. At last he began to ascend the high hill which hid the house of his childhood from view. He reached the summit; there lay the village fast asleep in the spring sunshine. He recognized it, but with astonishment, for it looked like a miniature of its former self. The buildings that once appeared so grand had shrunk to playhouses. The broad streets had contracted and looked like narrow lanes. He rubbed his eyes to see if they were deceiving him.

An unreality brooded mysteriously over everything. It was the same, yet not the same, and he paused a moment to permit his mind to become accustomed to these alterations; to ponder upon the reasons for this change; to realize the joy and sadness which mingled in his heart; and then he turned into a side road to escape any possible encounter with old acquaintances.

The route which he had chosen did not lead to the farm house, but to the cemetery where the body of his mother lay wrapped in her dreamless sleep; that neglected grave was drawing him to itself with a magnetic force. He who, for a year, had thought of her scarcely at all, now thought of nothing else. The last incident in her life, the face white with its intolerable pain of confession, the gasp for breath, the sudden fall, the quiet funeral, his own responsibility for this tragic death--he lived it all over and over again in an instant of time as grief, regret, remorse, successively swept his heart. Tying his horse outside the lonely burying ground, he threaded his way among the myrtle-covered graves to the low mound which marked her resting place, approached it, removed his hat and stood silently, reverently, by its side.

There come to us all hours or moments of sudden and unexpected disclosures of the hidden meaning of life. Such an one came to David, there by that lowly grave. He saw, as in the light of eternity, the grandeur and beauty of that character which the story of her sin and suffering had made him in his immaturity, misinterpret and despise! He did not comprehend that tragic story when she told it; it was impossible that he should, for he had no knowledge or experience adequate to furnish him the clew. Nothing is more inconceivable and impossible to a child than the possibility of his parents dying or doing wrong. When he awakens to consciousness he finds around him eternal things,--rocks, hills, rivers, stars, parents! They all seem to belong to the same order of indestructible existence, and he would as soon expect to see the sun blotted from heaven as a parent removed from earth! And when his ethical perceptions awake, he has another experience of a similar character. His father and mother stand to him for the very moral order itself! To his mind, it is inconceivable that they should ever err, and the bare suggestion that those august and venerable beings can really sin, fills him with horror and incredulity. If he, therefore, sometime learns that they have committed a trifling indiscretion, he trembles, and if, in some tragic moment, irresistible proof is brought to bear on him that they have been guilty of a dark and desperate deed, the whole moral system seems to undergo a sudden and final collapse! There is no longer any standing-ground beneath his feet and he could not be driven into a deeper despair if G.o.d himself had yielded to temptation. This discovery and this despair had fallen to the lot of David, and he had cherished the impressions, formed in that dark hour, through all these many months. But now, returning to the scenes of his boyhood and bringing back his burdens of care and sin, bringing back also his deepened experience of life and his enlarged ability, to comprehend its difficulties and sorrows, he suddenly saw the conduct and character of his mother in a new light. He, too, had met temptation, had fallen, had gone down into the depths, and in that awful and interpretative experience, comprehended the victory which his mother had won on the field of dishonor and defeat! He was now enabled to reconstruct, by the aid of his enlightened imagination, a true picture of the events which she had sketched so imperfectly in those few brief words. He realized what she must have had to struggle against, and could measure the whole weight of guilt and despair that must have rested on her heart. He knew only too well how easy was the road into darkness, and how rugged the one leading up into the light; yet this frail woman had followed it and scaled those heights! She had been able to put that past into the background, and keep it where it belonged. She had hidden her sorrows in her heart; nothing had daunted her; no discouragement had cast her down.

By a wonderful grace she had concealed her sin from some, and made others fear even to whisper the knowledge they possessed. She had made that sin a torch to illumine her future. She had used it as a stepping stone to ascend into purity and holiness. He could not remember in all those long years of devotion and of love, that she had ever permitted him to feel a moment's distrust of her perfect purity and goodness; and this seemed to him a miracle! That purity and goodness must have been real! So protracted an hypocrisy would have been impossible. Whence, then, had she derived the power thus to rise superior to her past? She had shown its terrific spell over her sensibilities by dying with shame when she at last proclaimed it, and yet for twenty years she had kept it under her feet like a writhing dragon, while she calmly fought her fight. It was incredible, sublime!

As he stood there by her grave, measuring this deep and tragic experience with his new divining rod of sympathy, there rushed upon him an overmastering desire to reveal his appreciation to that suffering heart beyond the skies. A feeling of bitterness at his inability to do this frenzied him; a new consciousness of the irony of life in permitting him to make these discoveries when they could do her no good plunged him suddenly into a struggle with the darker problems of being which for a little while had ceased to vex him.

"Do all the appreciations of heroism come too late?" he asked his sad heart. "Do we acquire wisdom only when we, can no longer be guided by it? Do we achieve self-mastery and real virtue only to be despised by our children? Where is the clue to this tangle? Oh! mother, mother, if I could only have one single hour to ask thee what thou didst learn about this awful mystery in those lonely years of struggle! If I could only tell thee of my penitence, of my admiration, my love! But it is too late--too late."

With this despairing cry on his lips, he flung himself upon the grave, buried his face in the green turf and burst into a convulsive pa.s.sion of tears, such tears as come once or twice, perhaps, in the lives of most men, when they are pa.s.sing through the awful years of adjustment to the incomprehensible and apparently chaotic experiences of existence.

Like a thunderstorm, these convulsions clear the atmosphere and give relief to the strained tension of the soul. At length, when his emotion had spent itself in long-drawn sighs, David rose in a calm and tender frame of mind, plucked a bunch of violets from the grave and reluctantly turned away.

On foot, and leading his horse, he entered a quiet and secluded path which led past the rear of the farm. He had not consciously determined what he should do next; but his heart impelled him irresistibly toward that little bridge where he had encountered Pepeeta on his return from the lumber camp. It was at that place and that hour, perhaps, that he had pa.s.sed through the deepest experience of his whole life, for it was there that the full power of the beauty of the woman in whom he had met his destiny had burst upon him, and it was there that for the first time he had consciously surrendered himself to those rich emotions which love enkindles in the soul.

Perhaps our spiritual enjoyments are capable of an ever-increasing development and intensity; but those pleasures that belong to the earthly life and are excited by the things of time and sense, however often they may recur, by an inviolable law of nature attain their climax in some one single experience, just as there is in the pa.s.sage of a star across the sky a single climactic moment, and in the life of a rose an instant when it reaches its most transcendent beauty. They all attain their zenith and then begin to wane; that one brilliant but transitory instant of perfect bliss can no more be recalled than the pa.s.sing stroke of a bell, the vanished glory of a sunset, or the last sigh of a dying friend; and many of the vainest and most unsatisfying struggles of life are expended in the effort to reproduce that one evanescent and forevermore impossible ecstasy.

Possibly David hoped that he could live that perfect moment over again by standing on that bridge! It was thither he bent his steps, and as he approached it there did come back faint echoes, little refluent waves; his lively imagination reproduced the scene; the dazzling figure really seemed once more to emerge from the secluded forest path; he almost heard the sound of her voice!

He threw the horse's bridle over the limb of a tree, leaned over the handrail of the bridge and looked down into the water. The stillness of the world, the slumber-song of the stream, the haunting power of the past superinduced a mood of abstraction so common in other, happier days.

Oblivious to all the objects and events of that outside world, he stood there dreaming of the past. While he did so, Pepeeta, following her daily custom, left the farm-house to take an evening walk. She also sought the little bridge. Perhaps she was summoned to this spot by some telepathic message from her lover; perhaps it was habit that impelled her, perhaps it was some fascination in the place itself. She moved forward with the quiet step peculiar to natures which are sensitive to the charm of the great solitudes of the world, and came noiselessly out from the low bushes behind the lonely watcher. As she stepped out into the road, she caught sight of the solitary figure and her heart, antic.i.p.ating her eye in its swift recognition, throbbed so violently that she placed her hand on her bosom as if to still it.

"David!" she said in a low whisper.

She paused to observe him for a moment and, as he did not stir, began to move quietly towards him as he stood there motionless--a silhouette against the background of the darkening sky. She drew near enough to touch him; but so profound was his reverie that he was oblivious of her presence. It could not have been long that Pepeeta waited, although it seemed ages before he moved, sighed and breathed her name.

She touched him on the arm. He turned, and so met her there, face to face.

It was an experience too deep for language, and their emotions found expression in a single simple act. They clasped each other's hands and stood silently looking into each other's eyes. After many moments of silence David asked: "Why do you not speak to me, Pepeeta?"

"My eyes have told you all," she said.

"But what they say is too good to be believed! You must confirm their mute utterance with a living word," he cried.

"I love you, love you, love you," she replied.

"You love me! I bless you for it, Pepeeta, but there is something else that I must know."

"What can it be? Is not everything comprehended in that single word? It is all-embracing as the air! It enfolds life as the sky enfolds the world!"

"Ah! Pepeeta, you loved me when we parted, but you did not forgive me!"

She dropped her eyes.

"Have you forgiven me now?"