"It does not make me happy! I shall never be happy until I have a home,"
she said, still sobbing, and trying to conceal the cause of her grief from herself as well as from her husband.
Nothing could have astonished the great, well-fed animal by her side more than this confession. In all his life he had never heaved a sigh.
His contentment was like that of a lion in a forest full of antelopes.
But if he was fierce and cruel to others, he was at least kind to his mate, and he now put his great paw around her little shoulders and gave her one of his leonine kisses.
"You are as melancholy as an unstrung d-d-drum," he said. "I must cheer you up. How would you like a s-s-song? What shall it be? "Love"s Young D-D-Dream"? All right. Here g-g-goes."
And at the word, he opened his great mouth and stuttered it forth in stentorian tones that went bellowing among the hills like the echoes of thunder.
Pepeeta smiled at his kindness and was grateful for his clumsy efforts at consolation; but they did not dispel her sadness. Her spirits sank lower and lower. The light seemed to have faded out of the world, and the streams of joy to have run dry. She sighed again in spite of herself, and in that sigh exhaled the hope which had sprung from her heart at the prospects of a new and sweet companionship.
She had divined the cause of her disappointment with an unerring instinct. It was exactly as she thought. At the last instant, David"s heart had failed him.
On the preceding evening, he had hurried through his "ch.o.r.es," excused himself from giving an account of the adventures of the day on the ground of fatigue, and retired to his room to cherish in his heart the memories of that beautiful face and the prospects of the future. He could not sleep. For hours he tossed on his bed or sat in the window looking out into the night, and when at last he fell into an uneasy slumber his dreams were haunted by two faces which struggled ceaselessly to crowd each other from his mind. One was the young and pa.s.sionate countenance of the gypsy, and the other was that of his beautiful mother with her pale, carven features, her snow-white hair, her pensive and unearthly expression. They both looked at him, and then gazed at each other. Now one set below the horizon like a wan, white moon, and the other rose above it like the glowing star of love. Now the moon pa.s.sed over the glowing star in a long eclipse and then disappearing behind a cloud left the brilliant star to shine alone.
When he awoke the gray dawn revealed in vague outline the realities of the world, and warned him that he had but a few moments to execute his plans. He sprang from his couch strong in his purpose to depart, for the fever of adventure was still burning in his veins, and the rapturous looks with which Pepeeta had received his promise to be her companion still made his pulses bound. He hurriedly put a few things into a bundle and stole out of the house.
As he moved quietly but swiftly away from the familiar scenes, his heart which had been beating so high from hope and excitement began to sink in his bosom. He had never dreamed of the force of his attachment to this dear place, and he turned his face toward the old gray house again and again. Every step away from it seemed more difficult than the last, and his feet became heavy as lead. But he pressed on, ashamed to acknowledge his inability to execute his purpose. He came to the last fence which lay between him and the bridge where he had agreed to await the adventurers, and then paused.
He was early. There was still time to reflect. Had the carriage arrived at that moment he would have gone; but it tarried, and the tide of love and regret bore him back to the old familiar life. "I cannot go. I cannot give it up," he murmured to himself.
Torn by conflicting emotions, inclining to first one course and then another, he finally turned his face away from the bridge and fled, impelled by weakness rather than desire. He did not once look back, but ran at the top of his speed straight to the old barn and hid himself from sight. There, breathless and miserable, he watched. He had not long to wait. The dazzling "turn-out" dashed into view. On the high seat he beheld Pepeeta, saw the eager glance she cast at the farm house, followed her until they arrived at the bridge, beheld her disappointment, raved at his own weakness, rushed to the door, halted, returned, rushed back again, returned, threw himself upon the sweet smelling hay, cursed his weakness and indecision and finally surrendered himself to misery.
From the utter wretchedness of that bitter hour, he was roused by the ringing of the breakfast bell. Springing to his feet, he hastened to the spring, bathed his face, a.s.sumed a cheerful look and entered the house.
For the first time in his life he attempted the practice of deception, and experienced the bitterness of carrying a guilty secret in his bosom.
How he worried through the morning meal and the prayer at the family altar, he never knew, and he escaped with inexpressible relief to the stable and the field to take up the duties of his daily life. He found it plodding work, for the old inspirations to endeavor had utterly vanished. He who had hitherto found toil a beat.i.tude now moved behind the plow like a common drudge.
Tired of the pain which he endured, he tried again and again to forget the whole experience and to persuade himself that he was glad the adventure had ended; but he knew in his heart of hearts that he had failed to follow the gypsy, not because he did not really wish to, but because he did not wholly dare. The consciousness that he was not only a bad man but a coward, added a new element to the bitterness of the cup he was drinking.
Each succeeding day was a repet.i.tion of the first, and became a painful increment to his load of misery and unrest. The very world in which he lived seemed to have undergone a transformation. The sunlight had lost its glory, the flowers had become pale and odorless, the songs of the birds dull and dispiriting.
What had really changed was the soul of the young recluse and mystic.
The consciousness of G.o.d had vanished from it; the visions of the spiritual world no longer visited it; he ceased to pray in secret, and the pet.i.tions which he offered at the family altar were so dull and spiritless as even to excite the observation and comment of his little nephew.
"Uncle Dave," remarked that fearless critic, "you pray as if you were talking down a deep well."
No wonder that the child observed the fact upon which he alone had courage to comment, for there is as great a difference between a prayer issuing from the heart and one merely falling from the lips as between water gushing from a fountain and rain dripping from a roof.
Some men pa.s.s their lives in the midst of environments where insincerity would not have been so painful; but in a home and a community where sham and hypocrisy were almost unknown these perpetual deceptions became more and more intolerable with every pa.s.sing hour. Nothing could be more certain than that in a short time, like some foreign substance in a healthy body, his nature would force him out of this uncongenial environment. With some natures the experience would have been a slow and protracted one, but with him the termination could not be long delayed.
It came in a tragedy at the close of the next Sabbath. The day had been dreary, painful and exasperating beyond all endurance, and he felt that he could never stand the strain of another. And so, having detained his mother in the sitting room after the rest of the family had retired, he paced the floor for a few moments, and after several unsuccessful attempts to introduce the subject gently, said bluntly:
"Mother, I am chafing myself to death against the limitations of this narrow life."
"My son," she said calmly, "this has not come to me as a surprise."
He moved uneasily and looked as if he would ask her "Why?"
"Because," she said, as if he had really spoken, "a mother possesses the power of divination, and can discern the sorrows of her children, by a suffering in her own bosom."
The consciousness that he had caused her pain rendered him incapable of speech, and for a moment they sat in silence.
"What is thy wish and purpose, my son?" she asked at last, with an effort which seemed to exhaust her strength.
"I wish to see the world," he answered, his eye kindling as he spoke.
This reply, foreseen and expected as it was, sent a shiver through her.
She turned paler, if possible, than before; but summoning all the powers of self-control resident in that disciplined spirit, she replied with an enforced tranquillity:
"My son, does thee know what this world is which thee fain would see?"
"I have seen it in my dreams. I have heard its distant voices calling to me. My spirit chafes to answer their summons. I strain at my anchor like a great ship caught by the tide."
"Shall I tell thee what this world of which thee has dreamed such dreams is really like, my son?" she asked, struggling to maintain her calm.
"How should thee know?"
"I have seen it."
"Thee has seen it? I thought that thee had pa.s.sed thy entire life among the Quakers," he answered with surprise.
"I say that I have seen it. Shall I tell thee what it is?" she resumed, as if she had not heard him.
"If thee will," he answered, awed by a strange solemnity in her manner.
Her quick respirations had become audible. Small but intensely red spots were burning on either cheek. Her white hands trembled as they clutched the arms of the old rocking chair in which she sat.
"I will!" she said, regarding him with a look which seemed to devour him with yearning love. "This world whose voices thee hears calling is a fiction of thine own brain. That which thee thinks thee beholds of glory and beauty thee hast conjured up from the depths of a youthful and disordered fancy, and projected into an unreal realm. That world which thee has thus beheld in thy dreams will burst like a pin-p.r.i.c.ked bubble when thee tries to enter it. It is not the real world, my son. How shall I tell thee what that real world is? It is a snare, a pit-fall. It is a flame into which young moths are ever plunging. It promises, only to deceive; it beckons, only to betray; its smiles are ambushes; it is sunlight on the surface, but ice at the heart; it offers life, but it confers death. I bid thee fear it, shun it, hate it!"
She leaned far forward in her chair, and her face upon which the youth had never seen any other look but that of an almost unearthly calm, was glowing with excitement and pa.s.sion.
"Mother," he exclaimed, "what does thee know of this world, thee who has pa.s.sed thy life in lonely places and amongst a quiet people?"
She rose and paced the floor as if to permit some of her excitement to escape in physical activity, and pausing before him, said: "My only and well-beloved son, thee does not know thy mother. A veil has been drawn over that portion of her life which preceded thy birth, and its secrets are hidden in her own heart. She has prayed G.o.d that she might never have to bring them forth into the light; but he has imposed upon her the necessity of opening the grave in which they are buried, in order that, seeing them, thee may abandon thy desires to taste those pleasures which once lured thy mother along the flower-strewn pathway to her sin and sorrow."
Her solemnity and her suffering produced in the bosom of her son a nameless fear. He could not speak. He could only look and listen.
"Thee sees before thee," she continued, "the faded form and features of a woman once young and beautiful. Can thee believe it?"
He did not answer, for she had seemed to him as mothers always do to children, to have been always what he had found her upon awakening to consciousness. He could not remember when her hair was not gray.
Something in her manner revealed to the startled soul of the young Quaker that he was about to come upon a discovery that would shake the very foundation of his life; for a moment he could not speak.
The silence in which she awaited the answer to her question became profound and in it the ticking of the old clock sounded like the blows of a blacksmith"s hammer, the purring of the cat like the roar of machinery, and the beating of his heart like the dull thud of a battering ram.
As if reading his inmost thoughts, the white-faced woman said: "And so thee thought that I was always old and gray?"