Ester Ried Part 26

"Dr. Gilbert."

"Dr. Gilbert?"

"Yes, sir."

"How does it happen that I never knew it?"

"I am sure I do not know." Dr. Van Anden pa.s.sed his hand across his eyes, and spoke in sadness and weariness. "I had no conception that you were not aware of it until this moment. It explains in part what was strangely mysterious to me; but even in that case, it would have been, as you said, a blunder, not a criminal act However, we can not undo _that_ past. I desire, above all other things, to set myself right in your eyes as a Christian man. I think I may have been a stumbling-block to you. G.o.d only knows how bitter is the thought I have done wrong; I should have acknowledged it years ago. I can only do it now. Again I ask you. Dr. Dougla.s.s, will you pardon those bitterly spoken words of mine?"

Dr. Dougla.s.s bowed stiffly, with an increase of hauteur visible in every line of his face.

"Give yourself no uneasiness on that score, Dr. Van Anden, nor on any other, I beg you, so far as I am concerned. My opinion of Christianity is peculiar perhaps, but has not altered of late; nor is it likely to do so. Of course, every gentleman is bound to accept the apology of another, however tardily it may be offered. Shall I bid you good-evening, sir?"

And with a very low, very dignified bow, Dr. Dougla.s.s went back to the piazza and Sadie. And groaning in spirit over the tardiness of his effort, Dr. Van Anden returned to his room, and prayed that he might renew his zeal and his longing for the conversion of that man's soul.

"Have you been receiving a little fraternal advice?" queried Sadie, her mischievous eyes dancing with fun over the supposed discomfiture of one of the two gentlemen, she cared very little which.

"Not at all. On the contrary, I have been giving a little of that mixture in a rather unpalatable form, I fear. I haven't a very high opinion of the world, Miss Sadie."

"Including yourself, do you mean?" was Sadie's demure reply.

Dr. Dougla.s.s looked the least bit annoyed; then he laughed, and answered with quiet grace:

"Yes, including even such an important individual as myself. However, I have one merit which I consider very rare--sincerity."

Sadie's face a.s.sumed a half puzzled, half amused expression, as she tried by the moonlight to give a searching look at the handsome form leaning against the pillar opposite her.

"I wonder if you _are_ as sincere as you pretend to be?" was her next complimentary sentence. "And also I wonder if the rest of the world are as unlimited a set of humbugs as you suppose? How do you fancy you happened to escape getting mixed up with the general humbugism of the world? This Mr. Parker, now, talks as though he felt it and meant it."

"He is a first-cla.s.s fanatic of the most outrageous sort. There ought to be a law forbidding such ranters to hold forth, on pain of imprisonment for life."

"Dr. Dougla.s.s," said Sadie, speaking with grave dignity, "I would rather not hear you speak of that old gentleman in such a manner. He may be a fanatic and a ranter, but I believe he means it, and I can't help respecting him more than any cold-blooded moralist that I ever met. Besides, I can not forget that my honored father was among the despised cla.s.s of whom you speak so scornfully."

"My dear friend," and Dr. Dougla.s.s' tone was as gentle as her mother's could have been, "forgive me if I have pained you; it was not intentional. I do not know what I have been saying--some unkind things perhaps, and that is always ungentlemanly; but I have been greatly disturbed this evening, and that must be my apology. Pardon me for detaining you so long in the evening air. May I advise you, professionally, to go in immediately?"

"May I advise you unselfishly to get into a better humor with the world in general, and Dr. Van Anden in particular, before you undertake to talk with a lady again?" Sadie answered in her usual tones of raillery; all her dignity had departed. "Meantime, if you would like to have unmolested possession of this piazza to a.s.sist you in tramping off your evil spirit, you shall be indulged. I'm going to the west side. The evening air and I are excellent friends." And with a mocking laugh and bow Sadie departed.

"I wonder," she soliloquized, returning to gravity the moment she was alone, "I wonder what that man has been saying to him now? How unhappy these two gentlemen make themselves. It would be a consolation to know right from wrong. I just wish I believed in everybody as I used to. The idea of this gray-headed minister being a hypocrite! that's absurd. But then the idea of Dr. Van Anden being what he is! Well, it's a queer world. I believe I'll go to bed."

CHAPTER XXIV.

G.o.d'S WAY.

Be it understood that Dr. Dougla.s.s was very much astonished, and not a little disgusted with himself. As he marched defiantly up and down the long piazza he tried to a.n.a.lyze his state of mind. He had always supposed himself to be a man possessed of keen powers of discernment, and yet withal exercising considerable charity toward his erring fellow-men, willing to overlook faults and mistakes, priding himself not a little on the kind and gentlemanly way in which he could meet ruffled human nature of any sort. In fact, he dwelt on a sort of pedestal, from the hight of which he looked calmly and excusingly down on weaker mortals. This, until to-night: now he realized, in a confused, blundering sort of way, that his pedestal had crumbled, or that he had tumbled from its hight, or at least that something new and strange had happened. For instance, what had become of his powers of discernment? Here was this miserable doctor, who had been one of the thorns of his life, whom he had looked down upon as a canting hypocrite. Was he, after all, mistaken? The explanation of to-night looked like it; he had been deceived in that matter which had years ago come between them; he could see it very plainly now. In spite of himself, the doctor's earnest, manly apology would come back and repeat itself to his brain, and demand admiration.

Now Dr. Dougla.s.s was honestly amazed at himself, because he was not pleased with this state of things. Why was he not glad to discover that Dr. Van Anden was more of a man than he had ever supposed? This would certainly be in keeping with the character of the courteous, unprejudiced gentleman that he had hitherto considered himself to be; but there was no avoiding the fact that the very thought of Dr. Van Anden was exasperating, more so this evening than ever before. And the more his judgment became convinced that he had blundered, the more vexed did he become.

"Confound everybody!" he exclaimed at length, in utter disgust. "What on earth do I care for the contemptible puppy, that I should waste thought on him. What possessed the fellow to come whining around me to-night, and set me in a whirl of disagreeable thought? I ought to have knocked him down for his insufferable impudence in dragging me out publicly in that meeting." This he said aloud; but something made answer down in his heart: "Oh, it's very silly of you to talk in this way. You know perfectly well that Dr. Van Anden is not a contemptible puppy at all. He is a thoroughly educated, talented physician, a formidable rival, and you know it; and he didn't whine in the least this evening; he made a very manly apology for what was not so very bad after all, and you more than half suspect yourself of admiring him."

"Fiddlesticks!" said Dr. Dougla.s.s aloud to all this information, and went off to his room in high dudgeon.

The next two days seemed to be very busy ones to one member of the Ried family. Dr. Dougla.s.s sometimes appeared at meal time and sometimes not, but the parlor and the piazza were quite deserted, and even his own room saw little of him. Sadie, when she chanced by accident to meet him on the stairs, stopped to inquire if the village was given over to small-pox, or any other dire disease which required his constant attention; and he answered her in tones short and sharp enough to have been Dr. Van Anden himself:

"It is given over to madness," and moved rapidly on.

This encounter served to send him on a long tramp into the woods that very afternoon. In truth, Dr. Dougla.s.s was overwhelmed with astonishment at himself. Two such days and nights as the last had been he hoped never to see again. It was as if all his pet theories had deserted him at a moment's warning, and the very spirit of darkness taken up his abode in their place. Go whither he would, do what he would, he was haunted by these new, strange thoughts. Sometimes he actually feared that he, at least, was losing his mind, whether the rest of the world were or not. Being an utter unbeliever in the power of prayer, knowing indeed nothing at all about it, he would have scoffed at the idea that Dr. Van Anden's impa.s.sioned, oft-repeated pet.i.tions had aught to do with him at this time. Had he known that at the very time in which he was marching through the dreary woods, kicking the red and yellow leaves from his path in sullen gloom, Ester in her little clothes-press, on her knees, was pleading with G.o.d for his soul, and that through him Sadie might be reached, I presume he would have laughed. The result of this long communion with himself was as follows: That he had overworked and underslept, that his nervous system was disordered, that in the meantime he had been fool enough to attend that abominable sensation meeting, and the man actually had wonderful power over the common mind, and used his eloquence in a way that was quite calculated to confuse a not perfectly balanced brain.

It was no wonder, then, in his state of bodily disorder, that the sympathetic mind should take the alarm. So much for the disease, now for the remedy. He would study less, at least he would stop reading half the night away; he would begin to practice some of his own preaching, and learn to be more systematic, more careful of this wonderful body, which could cause so much suffering; he would ride fast and long; above all, he would keep away from that church and that man, with his fanciful pictures and skillfully woven words.

Having determined his plan of action he felt better. There was no sense, he told himself, in yielding to the sickly sentimentalism which had bewitched him for the past few days; he was ashamed of it, and would have no more of it. He was master of his own mind, he guessed, always had been, and always _would_ be. And he started on his homeward walk with a good deal of alacrity, and much of his usual composure settling on his face.

Oh, would the gracious Spirit which had been struggling with him leave him indeed to himself? "O G.o.d," pleaded Ester, "give me this one soul in answer to my prayer. For the sake of Sadie, bring this strong pillar obstructing her way to thyself. For the sake of Jesus, who died for them both, bring them both to yield to him."

Dr. Dougla.s.s paused at the place where two roads forked and mused, and the subject of his musing was no more important than this: Should he go home by the river path or through the village? The river path was the longer, and it was growing late, nearly tea time; but if he took the main road he would pa.s.s his office, where he was supposed to be, as well as several houses where he ought to have been, besides meeting probably several people whom he would rather not see just at present.

On the whole, he decided to take the river road, and walked briskly along, quite in harmony with himself once more, and enjoying the autumn beauty spread around him. A little white speck attracted his attention; he almost stopped to examine into it, then smiled at his curiosity, and moved on. "A bit of waste paper probably," he said to himself. "Yet what a curious shape it was as if it had been carefully folded and hidden under that stone. Suppose I see what it is? Who knows but I shall find a fortune hidden in it?" He turned back a step or two, and stooped for the little white speck. One corner of it was nestled under a stone. It was a ragged, rumpled, muddy fragment of a letter, or an essay, which rain and wind and water had done their best to annihilate, and finally, seeming to become weary of their plaything, had tossed it contemptuously on the sh.o.r.e, and a pitying stone had rolled down and covered and preserved a tiny corner. Dr.

Dougla.s.s eyed it curiously, trying to decipher the mud-stained lines, and being in a dreamy mood wondered meanwhile what young, fair hand had penned the words, and what of joy or sadness filled them.

Scarcely a word was readable, at least nothing that would gratify his curiosity, until he turned the bit of leaf, and the first line, which the stone had hidden, shone out distinctly: "Sometimes I can not help asking myself why I was made--." Here the corner was torn off, and whether that was the end of the original sentence or not, it was the end to him. G.o.d sometimes uses very simple means with which to confound the wisdom of this world. Such a sudden and extraordinary revulsion of feeling as swept over Dr. Dougla.s.s he had never dreamed of before. He did not stop to question the strangeness of his state of mind, nor why that bit of soiled, torn paper should possess so fearful a power over him. He did not even realize at the moment that it was connected with this bewilderment, he only knew that the foundation upon which he had been building for years seemed suddenly to have been torn from under him by invisible hands, and left his feet sinking slowly down on nothing; and his inmost soul took suddenly up that solemn question with which he had never before troubled his logical brain: "I can not help asking myself why I was made?" There was only one other readable word on that paper, turn it whichever way he would, and that word was "G.o.d;" and he started and shivered when his eye met this, as if some awful voice had spoken it to his ear.

"What unaccountable witchcraft has taken possession of me?" he muttered, at length. And turning suddenly he sat himself down on an old decaying log by the river side, and gave himself up to real, honest, solemn thought.

"Where is Dr. Dougla.s.s?" queried Julia, appearing at the dining-room door just at tea time. "There is a boy at the door says they want him at Judge Beldon's this very instant."

"He's _nowhere_" answered Sadie solemnly, pausing in the work of arranging cups and saucers. "It's my private opinion that he has been and gone and hung himself. He pa.s.sed the window about one o'clock, looking precisely as I should suppose a man would who was about to commit that interesting act, since which time I've answered the bell seventeen times to give the same melancholy story of his whereabouts."

"My!" exclaimed the literal Julia, hurrying back to the boy at the door. She comprehended her sister sufficiently to have no faith in the hanging statement, but honestly believed in the seventeen sick people who were waiting for the doctor.

The church was very full again that evening. Sadie had at first declared herself utterly unequal to another meeting that week, but had finally allowed herself to be persuaded into going; and had nearly been the cause of poor Julia's disgrace because of the astonished look which she a.s.sumed as Dr. Dougla.s.s came down the aisle, with his usual quiet composure of manner, and took the seat directly in front of them. The sermon was concluded. The text: "See I have set before thee this day life and good, death and evil," had been dwelt upon in such a manner that it seemed to some as if the aged servant of G.o.d had verily been shown a glimpse of the two unseen worlds waiting for every soul, and was painting from actual memory the picture for them to look upon.

That most solemn of all solemn hymns had just been sung:

"There is a time, we know not when A point, we know not where, That marks the destiny of men 'Twixt glory and despair.

"There is a line, by us unseen, That crosses every path, The hidden boundary between G.o.d's mercy and his wrath."

Silence had but fairly settled on the waiting congregation when a strong, firm voice broke in upon it, and the speaker said:

"I believe in my soul that I have met that point and crossed that line this day. I surely met G.o.d's mercy and his wrath, face to face, and struggled in their power. Your hymn says, 'To cross that boundary is to die;' but I thank G.o.d that there are two sides to it. I feel that I have been standing on the very line, that my feet had well-nigh slipped. To-night I step over on to mercy's side. Reckon me henceforth among those who have chosen life."

"Amen," said the veteran minister, with radiant face.

"Thank G.o.d," said the earnest pastor, with quivering lip.

Two heads were suddenly bowed in the silent ecstasy of prayer--they were Ester's and Dr. Van Anden's. As for Sadie, she sat straight and still as if petrified with amazement, as she well-nigh felt herself to be, for the strong, firm voice belonged to Dr. Dougla.s.s!

An hour later Dr. Van Anden was pacing up and down the long parlor, with quick, excited steps, waiting for he hardly knew what, when a shadow fell between him and the gaslight. He glanced up suddenly, and his eyes met Dr. Dougla.s.s, who had placed himself in precisely the same position in which he had stood when they had met there before.

Dr. Van Anden started forward, and the two gentlemen clasped hands as they had never in their lives done before. Dr. Dougla.s.s broke the beautiful silence first with earnestly spoken words: