Hills of the Shatemuc Part 144

"Oak -- maple -- hickory -- and there's ash, and birch -- 'tain't very good."

Elizabeth sighed, and led the way on again, while the old negro shouldered his axe and followed with Clam; probably sighing on his own part, if habitual gentleness of spirit did not prevent. n.o.body ever knew Clam do such a thing.

"Look at her!" muttered the damsel; -- "going with her head down, -- when'll she see a tree? Ain't we on a march! Miss 'Lizabeth! -- the tree won't walk home after it's cut."

"What?" said her mistress.

"How'll it get there?"

"What?"

"The tree, Miss Lizzie -- when Anderese has cut it."

"Can't he carry some home?"

"He'll be a good while about it -- if he takes one stick at a time -- and we ain't nigh home, neither."

Elizabeth came to a stand, and finally turned in another direction, homewards. But she broke from the path then, and took up the quest in earnest, leading her panting followers over rocks and moss-beds and fallen cedars and tangled vines and undergrowth, which in many places hindered their way. She found trees enough at last, and near enough home; but both she and her companions had had tree-hunting to their satisfaction.

Elizabeth commissioned Anderese to find fuel in another way; and herself in some disgust at her new charge, returned to her rock and her bible. She tried to go through with the third chapter of Matthew; and her eye did go over it, though often swimming in tears. But that was the end of her studies at that time. Sorrow claimed the rest of the day for its own, and held the whole ground. Her household and its perplexities -- her bible and its teachings -- her ignorance and her necessities, -- faded away from view; and instead thereof rose up the lost father, the lost home, and the lost friend yet dearer than all.

"What's become of Miss Haye?" whispered Mrs. Nettley late in the evening.

"Don' know," answered Clam. "Melted away -- all that can melt, and shaken down -- all that can shake, of her. That ain't all, so I s'pose there's somethin' left."

"Poor thing! -- no wonder she takes it hard," said the good lady.

"No," said Clam, -- she never did take nothin' easy."

"Has she been crying all the afternoon?"

"Don' know," said Clam; "the eye of curiosity ain't invited; but she don't take that easy neither, when she's about it.

I've seen her cry -- once; she'd do a year o' your crying in half an hour."

CHAPTER XIII.

O Land of Quiet! to thy sh.o.r.e the surf Of the perturbed Present rolls and sleeps; Our storms breathe soft as June upon thy turf, And lure out blossoms.

LOWELL.

They were days of violent grief which for a little while followed each other. Elizabeth spent them out of doors; in the woods, on the rocks, by the water's edge. She would take her bible out with her, and sometimes try to read a little; but a very few words would generally touch some spring which set her off upon a torrent of sorrow. Pleasant things past or out of her reach, the present time a blank, the future worse than a blank, -- she knew nothing else. She did often in her distress repeat the prayer she had made over the first chapter of Matthew; but that was rather the fruit of past thought; she did not think in those days; she gave up to feeling; and the hours were a change from bitter and violent sorrow to dull and listless quiet. Conscience sometimes spoke of duties resolved upon; impatient pain always answered that their time was not now.

The first thing that roused her was a little letter from Winthrop, which came with the pieces of furniture and stores he sent up to her order. It was but a word, -- or two words; one of business, to say what he had done for her; and one of kindness, to say what he hoped she was doing for herself. Both words were brief, and cool; but with them, with the very handwriting of them, came a waft of that atmosphere of influence -- that silent breath of truth which every character breathes -- which in this instance was sweetened with airs from heaven. The image of the writer rose before her brightly, in its truth and uprightness and high and fixed principle; and though Elizabeth wept bitter tears at the miserable contrast of her own, they were more healing tears than she had shed all those days. When she dried them, it was with a new mind, to live no more hours like those she had been living. Something less distantly unlike him she could be, and would be. She rose and went into the house, while her eyes were yet red, and gave her patient and unwearied attention, for hours, to details of household arrangements that needed it. Her wits were not wandering, nor her eyes; nor did they suffer others to wander.

Then, when it was all done, she took her bonnet and went back to her old wood-place and her bible, with an humbler and quieter spirit than she had ever brought to it before. It was the fifth chapter of Matthew now.

The first beat.i.tude puzzled her. She did not know what was meant by 'poor in spirit,' and she could not satisfy herself.

She pa.s.sed it as something to be made out by and by, and went on to the others. There were obligations enough.

"'Meek?'" said Elizabeth, -- "I suppose if there is anything in the world I am _not_, it is meek. I am the very, very opposite. What can I do with this? It is like a fire in my veins. Can _I_ cool it? And if I could control the outward seeming of it, that would not be the change of the thing itself. Besides, I couldn't, I must _be_ meek, if I am ever to seem so."

She went on sorrowfully to the next.

"'Hunger and thirst after righteousness' -- I do desire it -- I do not '_hunger and thirst_.' I don't think I do -- and it is those and those only to whom the promise is given. I am so miserable that I cannot even wish enough for what I need most.

O G.o.d, help me to know what I am seeking, and to seek it more earnestly! --"

"'Merciful?'" she went on with tears in her eyes -- "I think I am merciful. -- I haven't been tried, but I am pretty sure I am merciful. But there it is -- one must have all the marks, I suppose, to be a Christian. Some people may be merciful by nature -- I suppose I am. --"

"Blessed are the _pure in heart_."

She stopped there, and even shut up her book, in utter sorrow and shame, that if 'pure in heart' meant pure to the All- seeing eye, hers was so very, very far from it. There was not a little sc.r.a.p of her heart fit for looking into. And what could she do with it? The words of Job recurred to her, -- "Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? not one."

Elizabeth was growing 'poor in spirit' before she knew what the words meant. She went on carefully, sorrowfully, earnestly -- till she came to the twenty-fourth verse of the sixth chapter. It startled her.

"No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one and love the other; or else he will hold to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve G.o.d and Mammon."

"That is to say then," said Elizabeth, "that I must devote myself _entirely_ to G.o.d -- or not at all. All my life and possessions and aims. It means all that! --"

And for 'all that' she felt she was not ready. One corner for self-will and doing her own pleasure she wanted somewhere; and wanted so obstinately, that she felt, as it were, a mountain of strong unwillingness rise up between G.o.d's requirements and her; an iron lock upon the door of her heart, the key of which she could not turn, shutting and barring it fast against his entrance and rule. And she sat down before the strong mountain and the locked door, as before something which must, and could not, give way; with a desperate feeling that it _must_ -- with another desperate feeling that it would not.

Now was Elizabeth very uncomfortable, and she hated discomfort. She would have given a great deal to make herself right; if a movement of her hand could have changed her and cleared away the hindrance, it would have been made on the instant; her judgment and her wish were clear; but her will was not. Unconditional submission she thought she was ready for; unconditional obedience was a stumbling-block before which she stopped short. She _knew_ there would come up occasions when her own will would take its way -- she could not promise for it that it would not; and she was afraid to give up her freedom utterly and engage to serve G.o.d in _everything_.

An enormous engagement, she felt! How was she to meet with ten thousand the enemy that came against her with twenty thousand?

-- Ay, how? But if he were not met -- if she were to be the servant of _sin_ for ever -- all was lost then! And she was not going to be lost; therefore she _was_ going to be the unconditional servant of G.o.d. When? --

The tears came, but they did not flow; they could not, for the fever of doubt and questioning. She dashed them away as impertinent asides. What were they to the matter in hand.

Elizabeth was in distress. But at the same time it was distress that she was resolved to get out of. She did not know just what to do; but neither would she go into the house till something was done.

"If Mr. Landholm were here! --"

"What could he do?" answered conscience; "there is the question before you, for you to deal with. You must deal with it. It's a plain question."

"I cannot" -- and "Who will undertake for me?" -- were Elizabeth's answering cry.

Her heart involuntarily turned to the great helper, but what could or would he do for her? -- it was his will she was thwarting. Nevertheless, "_to whom should she go?_" -- the shaken needle of her mind's compa.s.s turned more and more steadily to its great centre. There was light in no other quarter but on that 'wicket-gate' towards which Bunyan's Pilgrim first long ago set off to run. With some such sorrowful blind looking, she opened to her chapter of Matthew again, and carelessly and sadly turned over a leaf or two; till she saw a word which though printed in the ordinary type of the rest, stood out to her eyes like the lettering on a signboard. "ASK." --

"Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you."

The tears came then with a gush.

"Ask what? -- it doesn't say, --but it must be whatever my difficulty needs -- there is no restriction. 'Knock'! -- I will -- till it is opened to me -- as it will be! --"

The difficulty was not gone -- the mountain had not suddenly sunk to a level; but she had got a clue to get over the one, and daylight had broken through the other. Elizabeth felt not changed at all; no better, and no tenderer; but she laid hold of those words as one who has but uncertain footing puts his arms round a strong tree, -- she clung as one clings there; and clasped them with a.s.surance of life. Ask? -- did she not ask, with tears that streamed now; she knocked, clasping that stronghold with more glad and sure clasp; she knew then that everything would be 'made plain' in the rough places of her heart.