"It"s a curious thing, Mister--perhaps you"ve noticed it yourself--that the best things of all in the world people won"t have as a gift."
"I"ve noticed it," I said.
"It"s strange, isn"t it?" he again remarked.
"Very strange," I said.
"I don"t know"s I can blame them," he continued. "I was that way myself for a good many years: all around me gold and diamonds and precious jewels, and me never once seeing them. All I had to do was to stoop and take them--but I didn"t do it."
I saw that I had met a philosopher, and I decided that I would stop and wrestle with him and not let him go without his story--something like Jacob, wasn"t it, with the angel?
"Do you do all this without payment?"
He looked at me in an injured way.
"Who"d pay me?" he asked. "Mostly people think me a sort of fool. Oh, I know, but I don"t mind. I live by the Word. No, n.o.body pays me: I am paying myself."
By this time he was ready to start. So I said, "Friend, I"m going your way, and I"ll walk with you."
So we set off together down the hill.
"You see, sir," he said, "when a man has got the best thing in the world, and finds it"s free, he naturally wants to let other people know about it."
He walked with the unmistakable step of those who knew the long road--an easy, swinging, steady step--carrying his small black bag. So I gradually drew him out, and when I had his whole story it was as simple and common, but as wonderful, as daylight: as fundamental as a tree or a rock.
"You see, Mister," he said, "I was a wild sort when I was young. The drink, and worse. I hear folks say sometimes that if they"d known what was right they"d have done it. But I think that conscience never stops ringing little bells in the back of a man"s head; and that if he doesn"t do what is right, it"s because he _wants_ to do what is wrong. He thinks it"s more amusing and interesting. I went through all that, Mister, and plenty more besides. I got pretty nearly as low as a man ever gets. Oh, I was down and out: no home, no family, not a friend that wanted to see me. If you never got down that low, Mister, you don"t know what it is.
You are just as much dead as if you were in your grave. I"m telling you.
"I thought there was no help for me, and I don"t know"s I wanted to be helped. I said to myself, "You"re just naturally born weak and it isn"t your fault," It makes a lot of men easier in their minds to lay up their troubles to the way they are born. I made all sorts of excuses for myself, but all the time I knew I was wrong; a man can"t fool himself.
"So it went along for years. I got married and we had a little girl."
He paused for a long moment.
"I thought _that_ was going to help me. I thought the world and all of that little girl----" He paused again.
"Well, _she_ died. Then I broke my wife"s heart and went on down to h.e.l.l. When a man lets go that way he kills everything he loves and everything that loves him. He"s on the road to loneliness and despair, that man. I"m telling you.
"One day, ten years ago this fall, I was going along the main street in Quinceyville. I was near the end of my rope. Not even money enough to buy drink with, and yet I was then more"n half drunk, I happened to look up on the end of that stone wall near the bridge--were you ever there, Mister?--and I saw the words "G.o.d is Love" painted there. It somehow hit me hard. I couldn"t anyways get it out of my mind. "G.o.d is Love." Well, says I to myself if G.o.d is Love, he"s the only one that _is_ Love for a chap like me. And there"s no one else big enough to save me--I says. So I stopped right there in the street, and you may believe it or explain it anyhow you like, Mister, but it seemed to me a kind of light came all around me, and I said, solemn-like, "I will try G.o.d.""
He stopped a moment. We were walking down the hill: all about us on either side spread the quiet fields. In the high air above a few lacy clouds were drifting eastward. Upon this story of tragic human life crept in pleasantly the calm of the countryside.
"And I did try Him," my companion was saying, "and I found that the words on the wall were true. They were true back there and they"ve been true ever since. When I began to be decent again and got back my health and my job, I figured that I owed a lot to G.o.d. I wa"n"t no orator, and no writer and I had no money to give, "but," says I to myself, I"m a painter. I"ll help G.o.d with paint." So here I am a-travelling up and down the roads and mostly painting "G.o.d is Love," but sometimes "Repent ye" and "h.e.l.l yawns." I don"t know much about religion--but I do know that His Word is like a fire, and that a man can live by it, and if once a man has it he has everything else he wants."
He paused: I looked around at him again. His face was set steadily ahead--a plain face showing the marks of his hard earlier life, and yet marked with a sort of high beauty.
"The trouble with people who are unhappy, Mister," he said, "is that they won"t try G.o.d."
I could not answer my companion. There seemed, indeed, nothing more to be said. All my own speculative incomings and outgoings--how futile they seemed compared with this!
Near the foot of the hill there is a little-bridge. It is a pleasant, quiet spot. My companion stopped and put down his bag.
"What do you think," said he, "I should paint here?"
"Well," I said, "you know better than I do. What would _you_ paint?"
He looked around at me and then smiled as though he had a quiet little joke with himself.
"When in doubt," he said, "I always paint "G.o.d is Love," I"m sure of that. Of course "h.e.l.l yawns" and "Repent ye" have to be painted--near towns--but I much rather paint "G.o.d is Love.""
I left him kneeling there on the bridge, the bit of carpet under his knees, his two little cans at his side. Half way up the hill I turned to look back. He lifted his hand with the paint brush in it, and I waved mine in return. I have never seen him since, though it will be a long, long time before the sign of him disappears from our roadsides.
At the top of the hill, near the painted boulder, I climbed the fence, pausing a moment on the top rail to look off across the hazy countryside, warm with the still sweetness of autumn. In the distance, above the crown of a little hill, I could see the roof of my own home--and the barn near it--and the cows feeding quietly in the pastures.
IX
THE GUNSMITH
Harriet and I had the first intimation of what we have since called the "gunsmith problem" about ten days ago. It came to us, as was to be expected, from that accomplished spreader of burdens, the Scotch Preacher. When he came in to call on us that evening after supper I could see that he had something important on his mind; but I let him get to it in his own way.
"David," he said finally, "Carlstrom, the gunsmith, is going home to Sweden."
"At last!" I exclaimed.
Dr. McAlway paused a moment and then said hesitatingly:
"He _says_ he is going."
Harriet laughed. "Then it"s all decided," she said; "he isn"t going."
"No," said the Scotch Preacher, "it"s not decided--yet."
"Dr. McAlway hasn"t made up his mind," I said, "whether Carlstrom is to go or not."
But the Scotch Preacher was in no mood for joking.
"David," he said, "did you ever know anything about the homesickness of the foreigner?"
He paused a moment and then continued, nodding his great s.h.a.ggy head:
"Man, man, how my old mither greeted for Scotland! I mind how a sprig of heather would bring the tears to her eyes; and for twenty years I dared not whistle "Bonnie Doon" or "Charlie Is My Darling" lest it break her heart. "Tis a pain you"ve not had, I"m thinking, Davy."
"We all know the longing for old places and old times," I said.
"No, no, David, it"s more than that. It"s the wanting and the longing to see the hills of your own land, and the town where you were born, and the street where you played, and the house----"