The Zeit-Geist Part 7

When men have visions the impression left upon their minds is that light from the unseen world of light has in some way broken through into the sphere of their cognizance. The race in its ages of reflection has upon the whole come to the conclusion that that which actually takes place is the gradual growth and the sudden breaking forth of light within the mysterious depths of the man himself. A new explanation of a fact does not do away with the fact.

Toyner was not dead, he was stunned; his head was badly injured. When his consciousness returned, and through what process of inflammation and fever his wounded head went in the struggle of nature toward recovery, was never clearly known. His body, bound with the soft torn cloths to the upright tree, sagged more and more until it found a rest upon the inclined log. The fresh sweet air from pine woods, the cool vapours from the water beneath him, were nurses of wise and delicate touch. The sun arose and shone warmly, yet not hotly, through the air in which dry haze was thickening. The dead trees stood in the calm water, keeping silence as it were, a hundred stalwart guards with fingers at their lips, lest any sound should disturb the life that, with beneficent patience, was little by little restoring the wounded body from within. Even the little vulgar puffing market-boat that twice a day pa.s.sed the windings of the old river channel--the only disturber of solitude--was kept at so great a distance by this guard of silent trees that no perception of her pa.s.sing, and all the life and perplexity of which she must remind him, entered into Toyner's half-closed avenues of sense.

For two days the sun rose on Bart through the mellow, smoke-dimmed atmosphere. Each night it lay in a red cloud for an hour in the west, tingeing and dyeing all the mirror below the trees with red. No one was there in the desolate lake to see the twice-told glory of that rosy flood and firmament, unless it was this wondrous light that first penetrated the eyes of the prisoner with soothing brightness.

It was at some hour of light--sunset or sunrise, or it might have been in the blending of the mornings and the evenings in that confusion of mind which takes no heed of time--that Toyner first began to know himself. Then it was not of himself that he took knowledge; his heart in its waking felt after something else around and beneath and above him, everywhere, something that meant light and comfort and rest and love, something that was very strong, that was strength; he himself, Bart Toyner, was part of this strength, and rested in it with a rest and refreshing which is impossible to weakness, however much it may crave.

It came to him as he lay there, not knowing the where or when of his knowledge--it came to him that he had made a great mistake, as a little child makes a mistake in laughable ignorance. Indeed, he laughed within himself as he thought what a strange, childish, grotesque notion he had had,--he had thought, he had actually thought, that G.o.d was only a part of things; that he, Bart Toyner, could turn away from G.o.d; that G.o.d's power was only with him when he supposed himself to be obedient to Him!

Yes, he had thought this; but now he knew that G.o.d was all and in all.

There came to him, trooping with this new joy of knowledge, the sensuous sight and sound and smell of many things that he had known, but had not understood, before. All the spring-times through which he had walked unconscious of their meaning, came to him. There was a sound in his ears of delicate flowers springing to light through dewy moss, of buds bursting, and he saw the glancing of myriad tiny leaves upon the grey old trees. With precisely the same sense of sweetness came the vision of days when autumn rain was falling, and the red and sear leaf, the nut, the pine-cone and the flower-seed were dropping into the cold wet earth.

Was life in the spring, and death in the autumn? Was the power and love of G.o.d not resting in the damp fallen things that lay rotting in the ground?

There came before him a troop of the little children of Fentown, all the rosy-cheeked faces and laughing eyes and lithe little dancing forms that he had ever taken the trouble to notice; and Ann and Christa came and stood with them--Christa with her dancing finery, with her beautiful, thoughtless, unemotional face, her yellow hair, and soft white hands; and Ann, a thousand times more beautiful to him, with her sun-brown tints and hazel eyes, so full of energy and forethought, her dark neat hair and working-dress and hardened hands--this was beauty! Over against it he saw Markham, blear-eyed, unkempt and dirty; and his own father, a gaunt, idiotic wreck of respectable manhood; and his mother, faded, worn, and peevish; with them stood the hunch-backed baker of Fentown and all the coa.r.s.e and ugly sons of toil that frequented its wharfs.

There was not a child or a maiden among those he saw first who did not owe their life to one of these. With the children and the maidens there were pleasure and hope; with the older men and women there were effort and failure, sin and despair. The life that was in all of them, was it partly of G.o.d and partly of themselves? He laughed again at the question. The life that was in them all was all of G.o.d, every impulse, every act. The energy that thrilled them through, by which they acted, if only as brutes act, by which they spoke, if only to lie, by which they thought and felt, even when thought and feeling were false and bad, the energy which upheld them was all of G.o.d. That devil, too, that he saw standing close by and whispering to them--his form was dim and fading; he was not sure whether he was a reality or a thought, but--if he had life, was it his own? Somewhere, he could not remember where or when, he had heard the voice of truth saying, "Thou couldst have no power against me except it were given thee from above."

The strange complexity of dreams, which seems so foolish, brings them nearer to reality than we suppose, for there is nothing real which has not manifold meanings. Before this vision of his townspeople faded, Bart saw Ann slowly walk over from the group in which she had risen to be a queen, to that group whose members were worn with disappointment and age; as she went he saw her perfectly as he had never seen her before, the hard shallow thoughts that were woven in with her unremitting effort to do always the thing that she had set herself to do; and he saw, too, a nature that was beneath this outer range of activity, a small trembling fountain of feeling suppressed and shut from the light. In some strange way as she stood, having grown older by transition from one group to the other, he saw that this inner fountain of strength was increasing and overflowing all that other part which had before made up almost the entire personality of the woman. This change did not take place visibly in the other people among whom she stood. It was in Ann he saw the change. He felt very glad he had seen this; he seemed to think of nothing else for a long time.

He forgot then all the detail of that which he had seen and thought, and it seemed to him that he spent a long time just rejoicing in the divine life by which all things were, and by which they changed, growing by transformation into a glory which was still indistinct to him, too far off to be seen in any way except that its light came as the light comes from stars which we say we see and have never really seen at all.

Through this joy and light the details of life began to show again. The two forces which he had always supposed had moulded his life acted his early scenes over again. His young mother, before the shadow of despair had come over her, was seen waiting upon all his boyish footsteps with cheerful love and patience, trying to guide and to help, but trying much more to comfort and to please; and his father, with a strong body and the strength of fixed opinion and formed habits, having no desire for his son except to train and form him as he himself was trained and formed, was seen darkening all the boy's happiness with unreasonable severity, which hardened and sharpened with the opposition of years into selfish cruelty. Toyner had often seen these scenes before; all that was new to him now was that they stood in the vivid light of a new interpretation. Ah! the father's cruelty, the irritable self-love, the incapacity to recognise any form of life but his own, it was of G.o.d,--not a high manifestation: the bat is lower than the bird, and yet it is of G.o.d. Bart saw now the one great opportunity of life! He saw that the whole of the universe goes to develop character, and the one chief heavenly food set within reach of the growing character for its nourishment is the opportunity to embrace malice with love, to gather it in the arms of patience, convert its shame into glory by willing endurance.

Had he, Bart Toyner, then really been given the power in that beginning of life to put out his hand and take this fruit which would have given him such great strength and stature, or had he only had strength just for what he had done and nothing more?

The answer seemed to come to him from all that he had read of the growth of things. He looked into the forests, into the life of the creatures that now lived in them; he saw the fish in the rivers and the birds in the air, everywhere now roots were feeling under the dark ground for just the food that was needed, and the birds flew open-mouthed, and the fishes darted here and there, and the squirrels h.o.a.rded their nuts.

Everywhere in the past the growth of ages had been bringing together these creatures and their food by slowly developing in them new powers to a.s.similate new foods. What then of those that pined and dwindled when the organism was not quite strong enough and the old food was taken away? Ah, well! they fell--fell as the sparrows fall, not one of them without G.o.d. And what of man rising through ages from beast to sainthood, rising from the mere dominion of physical law which works out its own obedience into the moral region, where a perpetual choice is ordained of G.o.d, and the consequences of each choice ordained? Was not the lower choice often inevitable? Who could tell when or where except G.o.d Himself? And the higher choice the only food by which character can grow! So men must often fall. Fall to what end? To pa.s.s into that boundless gulf of distant light into which everything is pa.s.sing, pa.s.sing straight by the a.s.similation of its proper food, circuitously by weakness and failure, but still coming, growing, reaching out into infinite light, for all is of G.o.d, and G.o.d is Love.

All Toyner's thought and sense seemed to lose hold again of everything but that first realisation of the surrounding glory and joy and strength, and the feeling that he himself had to rest for a little while before any new thing was given him to do.

His body lay back upon the grey lifeless branch, wrapped in the ragged, soiled garment that Markham had put upon him; the silence of night came again over the water and the grey dead trees, and nature went on steadily and quietly with her work of healing.

CHAPTER XI.

When Toyner had left Fentown to go and rescue Markham, Ann had stood a good way off upon the dark sh.o.r.e just to satisfy herself that he had got into the boat and rowed down the river. This was not an indication that she doubted him. She followed him unseen because she felt that night that there were elements in his conduct which she did not in the least understand. When he was gone, she went back to fulfil her part of the contract, and she had a strength of purpose in fulfilling it which did not belong mainly to the obligation of her promise. Something in his look when he had come in this evening, in his glance as he bade her farewell, made her eager to fulfil it.

All night, asleep or awake, she was more or less haunted with this new feeling for Toyner--a feeling which did not in her mind resemble love or liking, which would have been perhaps best translated by the word "reverence," but that was not a word in Ann's vocabulary, not even an idea in her mental horizon.

Our greatest gains begin to be a fact in the soul before we have any mental conception of them!

The next day Ann was up early. She took her beer (it was home-brewed and not of great value) and deliberately poured it out, bottle after bottle, into a large puddle in the front road. The men who were pa.s.sing early saw her action, and she told them that she had "turned temp'rance." She washed the bottles, and set them upside down before the house to dry where all the world might see them. The sign by which she had advertised her beer and its price had been nothing but a sheet of brown paper with letters painted in irregular brush strokes. Ann had plenty of paper. This morning she laid a sheet upon her table, and rapidly painted thereon with her brush such advertis.e.m.e.nts as these:

_Tea and Coffee, 3 Cents a Cup.

Ginger Bread, Baked Beans, Lemonade.

Cooking done to order at any hour and in any style._

By the time this placard was up, Christa had sauntered out to smell the morning air, and she looked at it with what was for Christa quite an exertion of surprise.

She went in to where Ann was scrubbing the tables. Christa never scrubbed except when it was necessary from Ann's point of view that she should, but she never interfered either. Now she only said:

"Ann!"

"I'm here; I suppose you can see me."

"Yes; but, Ann----"

It was so unusual for Christa to feel even a strong emotion of surprise that she did not know in the least how to express it.

Ann stopped scrubbing. She had never supposed that Christa would yield easily to all the terms of the condition; she had not sufficient confidence in her to explain the truth concerning the secret compact.

"Look here, Christa, do you know that Walker died last night? Now I'll tell you what it is; you needn't think that the people who are respectable but not religious will have anything more to do with us, even in the off-hand way that they've had to do with us before now.

Father's settled all that for us. Now the only thing we've got to do is to turn religious. We're going to be temp'rance, and never touch a game of cards. You're going to wear plain black clothes and not dance any more. It wouldn't be respectable any way, seeing they may catch father any day, and the least we can do is sort of to go into mourning."

Christa stood bright and beautiful as a child of the morning, and heard the sentence of this long night pa.s.sed upon her; but instead of looking plaintive, a curiously hard look of necessary acquiescence came about the lines of her cherry lips. Ann was startled by it; she had expected Christa to bemoan herself, and in this look she recognised that the younger sister had an element of character like her own, was perhaps growing to be what she had become. The quality that she honestly admired in herself appeared disgusting to her in pretty Christa, yet she went on to persuade and explain; it was necessary.

"We can't dance, Christa, for no one would dance with us; we can't wear flowers in our hats, for no one would admire them. I suppose you have the sense to see that? The men that come here are a pretty easy-going rough lot, but they draw a line somewhere. Now I've kept you like a lady so far, and I'll go on doing that to the end" (This was Ann's paraphrase for respectability); "so if you don't want to sit at home and mope, we've got to go in for being religious and go to church and meetings.

The minister will come to see us, and all that sort will take to speaking to us, and I'll get you into Sunday school. There are several very good-looking fellows that go there, and there's a cla.s.s of real big girls taught by a Young-Men's-Christian-a.s.sociation chap. He'd come to see you, you know, if you were in his cla.s.s."

Christa was perfectly consoled, perfectly satisfied; she even showed her sister some of the animation which had hitherto come to her only when she was flirting with men.

"Ann," she said earnestly, "you are very splendid. I got up thinking there weren't no good in living at all."

Ann eyed her sharply. Was one set of actions the same to Christa as another? and was she content to forget all their own shame and all her father's wretched plight if she could only have a few pleasures for herself? It was exactly the pa.s.sive state that she had desired to evoke in Christa; but there are many spectres that come to our call and then appal us with their presence!

Ann went on with her work. She was not in the habit of indulging herself in moods or reveries; still, within her grew a silent disapproval of Christa. She felt herself superior to her. After a while another thought came upon her with unexpected force. Christa's motive for taking to the religious life was only self-interest; her own motive was the same; and was not that the motive which she really supposed hitherto to actuate all religious people? Had she not, for instance, been fully convinced that self-interest was the sum and substance of Bart Toyner's religion? Now between Bart Toyner and Christa and herself she felt that a great gulf was fixed.

Well, she did not know; she did not understand; she was not at all sure that she wanted to understand anything more about Bart Toyner and all the complex considerations about life which the thought of him seemed to arouse in her. She felt that the best way of ridding herself of uncomfortable thoughts about him was to be busy in performing all that he could reasonably require at her hands. It is just in the same way that many people rid themselves of thoughts about G.o.d.

All that long day, while the sunlight fell pink through the haze, Ann worked at renovating her own life and Christa's. She took Christa and went to some girls of their acquaintance, and presented them with all the feathers, furbelows, and artificials which she and Christa possessed. She cooked some of the viands which she had advertised for sale, and prepared all her small stock of kitchen utensils for the new avocation. It was a long hard day's work, and before it was over the village was ringing with the news of all this change. The minister had already called on Ann and Christa, saying suitable things concerning their father's terrible crime and their own sad position. When he was gone Christa laughed.

CHAPTER XII.

The sweet-scented smoke of the distant forest fires had diffused itself all day in the atmosphere more and more palpably. It was not a gloomy effect, and familiar to eyes accustomed to the Canadian August. All the sunbeams were very pink, and they fell flickering among the shadows of the pear tree upon Markham's grey wooden house, upon the path and the ragged green in front. Ann had pleasant a.s.sociations with these pink beams because they told of fine weather. Smoke will not lie thus in an atmosphere that is molested with any currents of wind that might bring cloud or storm. On the whole Ann had spent the day happily, for fair weather has much to do with happiness; but when that unusual flood of blood-red light came at sunset, giving an unearthly look to a land which was well enough accustomed to bright sunsets of a more ordinary sort, Ann's courage and good humour failed her; she yielded to the common influence of marvels and felt afraid.

What had she done, and what was she going to do? She was playing with religion; and religion, if it was nothing more, was something which had made Bart Toyner look at her with such a strange smile of selfless hope and desire--hope that she would be something different from what she had been, desire that the best should come to her whatever was going to happen to him. That was the explanation of what had seemed inexplicable in his look (she felt glad to have worked it out at last); and if anything so strange as that were possible in Bart, what was the force with which she was playing? Would some judgment befall her?

The evening closed in. Christa went to bed to finish a yellow-backed novel. As it was the last she was to read for a long time, she thought she might as well enjoy it. Ann sat alone in the outer room. The night was very still. Christa went to sleep, but Ann continued to sit, st.i.tching at the very plain garb that Christa was to don on the morrow, not so much because she needed to work as because she felt no need of sleep. The night being close and warm, her window, a small French cas.e.m.e.nt, stood open. At a late hour, when pa.s.sers upon the road were few, arrested by some sound, she knew not what, she lifted her head and looked through the open window intently, in the same way as we lift our eyes and look sometimes just because another, a stranger perhaps, has riveted his gaze upon us.

A moment more, and Ann saw some one come within the beams of her own lamp outside of the window; the figure crossed like a dark, silent shadow, but Ann thought she recognised Toyner. The outline of the clothes that he had worn when she had seen him last just about this hour on the previous night was unconsciously impressed upon her mind. A shudder of fear came over her, and then she was astonished at the fear; he might easily have done all that she had given him to do and returned by this time. Yet why did he pa.s.s the window in that ghostly fashion and show no sign of coming to the door? A moment or two that she sat seemed beaten out into the length and width of minutes by the throbbing of her nerves, usually so steady. She determined to steel herself against discomfort. If Toyner had done his work and come home and did not think it wise to visit her openly, what was there to alarm in that? Yet she remembered that Toyner had spoken of being away for some indefinite length of time. She had not understood why last night, and now it seemed even more hard to understand.