The Eye of Dread Part 33

"All--that--? Of what--Mr. 'Arry?" She seemed truly mystified.

"I mean those childish legends of the saints you often quote?"

Amalia laughed. "You think I have learn them of the good sisters in my convent, and is no truth in them?"

"Why--I guess that's about it. Did your father believe them?"

"Maybe no. But my father was 'devoue'--very--but he had a very wide thought of G.o.d and man--a thought reaching far out--to--I find it very hard to explain. If but you understood the French, I could tell you--but for me, I have my father's faith and it makes me glad to play in my heart with these legends--as you call them."

He gave her a quick, appealing glance, then turned his gaze away. "Try to explain. Your English is beautiful."

"If you eat your breakfast, then will I try."

"Yes, yes, I will. You say he had faith reaching far out--to where--to what?"

"He said there would never be rest in all the universe until we find everywhere G.o.d,--living--creating--moving forever in the--the--all."

She held out her hands and extended her arms in an encompa.s.sing movement indescribably full of grace.

"You mean he was a pantheist?"

"Oh, no, no. That is to you a horror, I see, but it was not that."

She laughed again, so merrily that Harry laughed, too. But still he persisted, "Amalia--never mind what your father thought; tell me your own faith."

Then she grew grave, "My faith is--just--G.o.d. In the all.

Seeing--feeling--knowing--with us--for us--never away--in the deep night of sorrow--understanding. In the far wilderness--hearing. In the terror and remorse of the heart--when we weep for sin--loving. It is only one thing in all the world to learn, and that is to learn all things, just to reach out the mind, and touch G.o.d--to find his love in the heart and so always live in the perfect music of G.o.d. That is the wonderful harmony--and melody--and growth--of each little soul--and of all peoples, all worlds,--Oh, it is the universe of love G.o.d gives to us."

For a while they were silent, and Madam Manovska began to move about the cabin, setting the things in order. She did not seem to have taken any interest in their talk. Harry rose to go, but first he looked in Amalia's eyes.

"The perfect Music of G.o.d?" He said the words slowly and questioningly.

"You understand my meaning?"

"I can't say. Do you?"

She quickly s.n.a.t.c.hed up her violin which lay within reach of her arm.

"I can better show you." She drew a long chord, then from it wandered into a melody, sweet and delicate; then she drew other chords, and on into other melodies, all related; then she began to talk again. "It is only on two strings I am playing--for hear? the others are now souls out of the music of G.o.d--listen--" she drew her bow across the discordant strings. "How that is terrible! So G.o.d creates great and beautiful laws--" she went back into the harmony and perfect melody, and played on, now changing to the discordant strain, and back, as she talked--"and gives to all people power to understand, but not through weakness--but through longing and searching with big earnestness of purpose, and much desire. Who has no care and desire for the music of G.o.d, strikes always those wrong notes, and all suffer as our ears suffer with the bad sounds. So it is, through long desiring, and living, always a little and a little more perceiving, reaching out the hand to touch in love our brothers and sisters on the earth,--always with patience learning to find in our own souls the note that strikes in harmony with the great thought of G.o.d--and thus we understand and live in the music of G.o.d. Ah, it is hard for me to say it--but it is as if our souls are given wings--wings--that reach--from the gold of the sun--even to the earth at our feet, and we float upon that great harmony of love like upon a wonderful upbearing sea, and never can we sink, and ever all is well--for we live in the thought of G.o.d."

"Amalia--Amalia--How about sin, and the one who--kills--and the ones who hate--and the little children brought into the world in sin--"

Harry's voice trembled, and he bowed his head in his hands.

"Never is anything lost. They are the ones who have not yet learned--they have not found the key to G.o.d's music. Those who find must quickly help and give and teach the little children--the little children find so easily the key--but to all the strings making horrible discord on the earth--we dare not shut our ears and hide--so do the sweet, good sisters in the convent. They do their little to teach the little children, but it is always to shut their ears. But the Christ went out in the world, not with hands over his ears, but outreached to his brothers and sisters on the earth. But my father--my father! He turned away from the church, because he saw they had not found the true key to G.o.d's music--or I mean they kept it always hid, and covered with much--how shall I say--with much drapery--and golden coverings, that the truth--that is the key--was lost to sight. It was for this my father quarreled with--all that he thought not the truth.

He believed to set his people free both from the world's oppression and from their own ignorance, and give to them a truth uncovered. Oh, it set his old friends in great discord more than ever--for they could not make thus G.o.d's music. And so they rose up and threw him in prison, and all the terrible things came upon him--of the world. My mother must have been very able through love to drag him free from them, even if they did pursue. It was the conflict of discord he felt all his life, and now he is free."

Suddenly the mother's deep tones sounded through the cabin with a finality that made them both start. "Yes. Now he is free--and yet will he bring them to--know. We wait for him here. No more must he go to Poland. It is not the will of G.o.d."

Still Harry was not satisfied. "But if you think all these great thoughts--and you do--I can't see how you can quote those legends as if you thought them true."

"I quote them, yes, because I love them, and their poetry. Through all beauty--all sweetness--all strength--G.o.d brings to us his thought.

This I believe. I believe the saints lived and were holy and good, loving the great brotherhood. Why may not they be given the work of love still to do? It is all in the music of G.o.d, that they live, and make happy, and why should I believe that it is now taken from them to do good? Much that I think lies deep in my heart, and I cannot tell it in words."

"Nor can I. But my thoughts--" For an instant Amalia, looking at him, saw in his face the same look of inward fear--or rather of despair that had appalled Larry, but it went as quickly as it appeared, and she wondered afterward if she had really seen it, or if it was a strange trick of the firelight in the windowless cabin.

"And your thoughts, Mr. 'Arry?"

"They are not to be told." Again he rose to go, and stood and looked down on her, smiling. "I see you have already tried the crutches."

"Yes. I found them in the snow, before the door. How I got there? I did hop. It was as if the good angels had come in the night. I wake and something make me all glad--and I go to the door to look at the whiteness, and then I am sorry, because of Sir Kildene, then I see before me--while that I stand on one foot, and hop--hop--hop--so, I see the crutch lie in the snow. Oh, Mr. 'Arry, now so pale you are! It is that you have worked in the night to make them--Is not? That is sorrowful to me. But now will I do for you pleasant things, because I can move to do them on these, where before I must always sit still--still--Ah, how that is hard to do! One good thing comes to me of this hurt. It makes the old shoes to last longer. How is it never to wear out shoes? Never to walk in them."

Harry laughed. "We'll have to make you some moccasins."

"And what is moccasins? Ah, yes, the Indian shoe. I like them well, so soft they must be, and so pretty with the beads. I have seen once such shoes on one little Indian child. Her mother made them."

Then Harry made her try the crutches to be sure they were quite right, and, seeing that they were a little too long, he measured them with care, and carried them back to the shed, and there he shortened them and polished them with sand and a piece of flint, until he succeeded in making a very workmanlike job of them.

At noon he brought them back, and stood in the doorway a moment beside her, looking out through the whiteness upon the transformed world. In spite of what that snow might mean to Larry Kildene, and through him to them, of calamity, maybe death, a certain elation possessed Harry.

His body was braced to unusual energy by the keen, pure air, and his spirit enthralled and lifted to unconscious adoration by the vast mystery of a beauty, subtle and ethereal in its hushed eloquence. From the zenith through whiteness to whiteness the flakes sifted from the sky like a filmy bride's veil thrown over the blue of the farthest and highest peaks, and swaying soft folds of lucent whiteness upon the earth--the trees--and upon the cabin, and as they stood there, closing them in together--the very center of mystery, their own souls. Again the pa.s.sion swept through him, to gather her in his arms, and he held himself sternly and stiffly against it, and would have said something simple and common to break the spell, but he only faltered and looked down on his hands spread out before her, and what he said was: "Do you see blood on them?"

"Ah, no. Did you hurt your hand to cause blood on them, and to make those crutch for me?" she cried in consternation.

"No, no. It's nothing. I have not hurt my hand. See, there's no blood on the crutches." He glanced at them as she leaned her weight on them there at his side, with a feeling of relief. It seemed as if they must show a stain, yet why should it be blood? "Come in. It's too cold for you to stand in the door with no shawl. I mean to put enough wood in here to last you the rest of the day--and go--"

"Mr. 'Arry! Not to leave us? No, it is no need you go--for why?"

Her terror touched him. "No, I would not go again and leave you and your mother alone--not to save my soul. As you say, there is no need--as long as it is so still and the clouds are thin the snow will do little harm. It would be the driving, fine snow and the drifts that would delay him."

"Yes, snow as we have it in the terrible Russia. I know such snow well," said Madam Manovska.

They went in and closed the door, and sat down to eat. The meal was lighted only by the dancing flames from the hearth, and their faces glowed in the fitful light. Always the meals were conducted with a certain stately ceremony which made the lack of dishes, other than the shaped slabs of wood sawn from the ends of logs--odd make-shifts invented by Harry, seem merely an accident of the moment, while the bits of lace-edged linen that Amalia provided from their little store seemed quite in harmony with the air of grace and gentleness that surrounded the two women. It was as if they were using a service of silver and Sevres, and to have missed the graciousness of their ministrations, now that he had lived for a little while with them, would have been sorrow indeed.

He even forgot that he was clothed in rags, and wore them as if they were the faultless garments of a prince. It was only when he was alone that he looked down on them and sighed. One day he had come to the cabin to ask if he might take for a little while a needle and thread, but when he got there, the conversation wandered to discussion of the writers and the tragedies of the various nations and of their poets, and the needle and thread were forgotten.

To-day, as the snow fell, it reminded Amalia of his need, and she begged him to stay with them a little to see what the box he had rescued for them contained. He yielded, and, taking up the violin, he held it a moment to his chin as if he would play, then laid it down again without drawing the bow across it.

"Ah, Mr. 'Arry, it is that you play," cried Amalia, in delight. "I know it. No man takes in his hand the violin thus, if he do not play."

"I had a friend once who played. No, I can't." He turned away from it sadly, and she gently laid it back in its box, and caught up a piece of heavy material.

"Look. It is a little of this left. It is for you. My mother has much skill to make garments. Let us sew for you the blouse."

"Yes, I'll do that gladly. I have no other way to keep myself decent before you."

"What would you have? All must serve or we die." Madam Manovska spoke, "It is well, Sir 'Arry King, you carry your head like one prince, for I will make of you one peasant in this blouse."

The two women laughed and measured him, and conferred volubly together in their own tongue, and he went out from their presence feeling that no prince had ever been so honored. They took also from their store warm socks of wool and gave him. Sadly he needed them, as he realized when he stepped out from their door, and the soft snow closed around his feet, chilling them with the cold.

As he looked up in the sky he saw the clouds were breaking, and the sun glowed through them like a great pale gold moon, even though the flakes continued to veil thinly the distance. His heart lightened and he went back to the cabin to tell them the good news, and to ask them to pray for clear skies to-morrow. Having been reared in a rigidly puritanic school of thought, the time was, when first he knew them, that the freedom with which Amalia spoke of the Deity, and of the Christ, and the saints, and her prayers, fell strangely upon his unaccustomed ears. He was reserved religiously, and seemed to think any mention of such topics should be made with bated breath, and the utmost solemnity. Often it had been in his mind to ask her concerning her beliefs, but his shyness on such themes had prevented.

Now that he had asked her he still wondered. He was used to feel that no one could be really devout, and yet speak so freely. Why--he could not have told. But now he began to understand, yet it was but a beginning. Could it be that she belonged to no church? Was it some sect of which he had never heard to which they belonged? If so, it must be a true faith, or it never could have upheld them through all their wanderings and afflictions, and, as he pondered, he found himself filled with a measure of the same trustful peace. During their flight across the plains together he had come to rest in them, and when his heart was too heavy to dare address the Deity in his own words, it was balm to his hurt spirit to hear them at their devotions as if thus G.o.d were drawn nearer him.