BY HOWARD PYLE
One morning, after I had dressed myself and had left my room, I came
upon an entry which I had never before noticed, even in this my own
house. At the further end a door stood ajar, and wondering what was in
the room beyond, I traversed the long passageway and looked within.
There I saw a man sitting, with an open book lying upon his knees, who,
as I laid one hand upon the door and opened it a little wider, beckoned
to me to come and read what was written therein.
A secret fear stirred and rustled in my heart, but I did not dare to
disobey. So, coming forward (gathering away my clothes lest they should
touch his clothes), I leaned forward and read these words:
"What shall a man do that he may gain the kingdom of heaven?"
I did not need a moment to seek for an answer to the question. "That,"
said I, "is not difficult to tell, for it has been answered again and
again. He who would gain the kingdom of heaven must resist and subdue
the lusts of his heart; he must do good works to his neighbors; he must
fear his God. What more is there that man can do?"
Then the leaf was turned, and I read the Parable.
The town of East Haven is the full equation of the American ideal worked
out to a complete and finished result. Therein is to be found all that
is best of New England intellectuality—well taught, well trained; all
that is best of solidly established New England prosperity; all that is
best of New England progressive radicalism, tempered, toned, and
governed by all that is best of New England conservatism, warmed to life
by all that is best and broadest of New England Christian liberalism. It
is the sum total of nineteenth-century American cultus, and in it is
embodied all that for which we of these days of New World life are
striving so hard. Its municipal government is a perfect model of a
municipal government; its officials are elected from the most worthy of
its prosperous middle class by voters every one of whom can not only
read the Constitution, but could, if it were required, analyze its laws
and by-laws. Its taxes are fairly and justly assessed, and are spent
with a well-considered and munificent liberality. Its public works are
the very best that can be compassed, both from an artistic and practical
stand-point. It has a free library, not cumbersomely large, but almost
perfect of its kind; and, finally, it is the boast of the community that
there is not a single poor man living within its municipal limits.
Its leisure class is well read and widely speculative, and its busy
class, instead of being jealous of what the other has attained, receives
gladly all the good that it has to impart.
All this ripeness of prosperity is not a matter of quick growth of a
recent date; neither is its wealth inherited and held by a few lucky
families. It was fairly earned in the heyday of New England commercial
activity that obtained some twenty-five or thirty years ago, at which
time it was the boast of East Haven people that East Haven
sailing-vessels covered the seas from India to India. Now that busy
harvest-time is passed and gone, and East Haven rests with opulent ease,
subsisting upon the well-earned fruits of good work well done.
With all this fulness of completion one might think that East Haven had
attained the perfection of its ideal. But no. Still in one respect it is
like the rest of the world; still, like the rest of the world, it is
attainted by one great nameless sin, of which it, in part and parcel, is
somehow guilty, and from the contamination of which even it, with all
its perfection of law and government, is not free. Its boast that there
are no poor within its limits is true only in a certain particular
sense. There are, indeed, no poor resident, tax-paying, voting citizens,
but during certain seasons of the year there are, or were, plenty of
tramps, and they were not accounted when that boast was made.
East Haven has clad herself in comely enough fashion with all those fine
garments of enlightened self-government, but underneath those garments
are, or were, the same vermin that infested the garments of so many
communities less clean—parasites that suck existence from God's gifts
to decent people. Indeed, that human vermin at one time infested East
Haven even more than the other and neighboring towns; perhaps just
because its clothing of civilization was more soft and warm than theirs;
perhaps (and upon the face this latter is the more likely explanation of
the two) because, in a very exaltation of enlightenment, there were no
laws against vagrancy. Anyhow, however one might account for their
presence, there the tramps were. One saw the shabby, homeless waifs
everywhere—in the highways, in the byways. You saw them slouching past
the shady little common, with its smooth greensward, where well-dressed
young ladies and gentlemen played at lawn-tennis; you saw them standing
knocking at the doors of the fine old houses in Bay Street to beg for
food to eat; you saw them in the early morning on the steps of the old
North Church, combing their shaggy hair and beards with their fingers,
after their night's sleep on the old colonial gravestones under the
rustling elms; everywhere you saw them—heavy, sullen-browed, brutish—a
living reproach to the well-ordered, God-fearing community of something
cruelly wrong, something bitterly unjust, of which they, as well as the
rest of the world, were guilty, and of which God alone knew the remedy.
No town in the State suffered so much from their infestation, and it was
a common saying in the town of Norwark—a prosperous manufacturing
community adjoining East Haven—that Dives lived in East Haven, and that
Lazarus was his most frequent visitor.
The East Haven people always felt the sting of the suggested sneer; but
what could they do? The poor were at their doors; they knew no immediate
remedy for that poverty; and they were too compassionate and too
enlightened to send the tramps away hungry and forlorn.
So Lazarus continued to come, and Dives continued to feed him at the
gate, until, by-and-by, a strange and unexpected remedy for the trouble
was discovered, and East Haven at last overcame its dirty son of Anak.
Perhaps if all the votes of those ultra-intelligent electors had been
polled as to which one man in all the town had done most to insure its
position in the van of American progress; as to who best represented
the community in the matter of liberal intelligence and ripe culture; as
to who was most to be honored for steadfast rectitude and immaculate
purity of life; as to who was its highest type of enlightened
Christianity—an overwhelming if not unanimous vote would have been cast
for Colonel Edward Singelsby.
He was born of one of the oldest and best New England families; he had
graduated with the highest honors from Harvard, and finished his
education at Göttingen. At the outbreak of the rebellion he had left a
lucrative law practice and a probable judgeship to fight at the head of
a volunteer regiment throughout the whole war, which he did with signal
credit to himself, the community, and the nation at large. He was a
broad and profound speculative thinker, and the papers which he
occasionally wrote, and which appeared now and then in the more
prominent magazines, never failed to attract general and wide-spread
attention. His intelligence, clear-cut and vividly operating, instead of
leading him into the quicksands of scepticism, had never left the hard
rock of earnest religious belief inherited from ten generations of
Puritan ancestors. Nevertheless, though his feet never strayed from that
rock, his was too active and living a soul to rest content with the
arid face of a by-gone orthodoxy; God's rain of truth had fallen upon
him and it, and he had hewn and delved until the face of his rock
blossomed a very Eden of exalted Christianity. To sum up briefly and in
full, he was a Christian gentleman of the highest and most perfect type.
Besides his close and profound studies in municipal government, from
which largely had sprung such a flawless and perfect type as that of
East Haven, he was also interested in public charities, and the
existence of many of the beneficial organizations throughout the State
had been largely due to his persistent and untiring efforts. The
municipal reforms, as has been suggested, worked beautifully, perfectly,
without the grating of a wheel or the creaking of a joint; but the
public charities—somehow they did not work so well; they never did just
what was intended, or achieved just what was expected; their mechanism
appeared to be perfect, but, as is so universally the case with public
charities, they somehow lacked a soul.
It was in connection with the matter of public charities that the tramp
question arose. Colonel Singelsby grappled with it, as he had grappled
with so many matters of the kind. The solution was the crowning work of
his life, and the result was in a way as successful as it was
paradoxical and unexpected.
Connected with the East Haven Public Library was the lecture-room, where
an association, calling itself the East Haven Lyceum, and comprising in
its number some of the most advanced thinkers of the town, met on
Thursdays from November to May to discuss and digest matters social and
intellectual. More than one good thing that had afterward taken definite
shape had originated in the discussions of the Lyceum, and one winter,
under Colonel Singelsby's lead, the tramp question was taken up and
dissected.
He had, Colonel Singelsby said, studied that complex question very
earnestly and for some time, and to his mind it had resolved itself to
this: not how to suppress vagrancy, but how to make of the vagrant an
honest and useful citizen. Repressive laws were easily passed, but it
appeared to him that the only result achieved by them was to drive the
tramp into other sections where no such laws existed, and which sections
they only infested to a greater degree and in larger numbers. Nor in
these days of light was it, in his opinion, a sufficient answer to that
objection that it was the fault of those other communities that they did
not also pass repressive laws. The fact remained that they had not
passed them, and that the tramps did infest their precincts, and such
being the case, it was as clear as day (for that which injures some,
injures all) that the wrong of vagrancy was not corrected by merely
driving tramps over the limits of one town into those of another.
Moreover, there was a deeper and more interior reason against the
passage of such repressive laws; to his thinking it behooved society, if
it would root out this evil, to seek first the radix from which it drew
existence; it behooved them first to very thoroughly diagnose the
disease before attempting a hasty cure. "So let us now," said he, "set
about searching for this radix, and then so drive the spade of reform as
to remove it forever."
The discussion that followed opened a wide field for investigation, and
the conclusion finally reached during the winter was not unlike that so
logically deduced by Mr. Henry George at a later date. The East Haven
Lyceum, however, either did not think of or did not care to advocate
such a radical remedy as Mr. George proposed. They saw clearly enough
that, apart from the unequal distribution of wealth, which may perhaps
have been the prime cause of the trouble, idleness and thriftlessness
are acquired habits, just as industry and thrift are acquired habits,
and it seemed to them better to cure the ill habit rather than to upset
society and then to rebuild it again for the sake of benefiting the
ill-conditioned few.
So the result of the winter's talk was the founding of the East Haven
Refuge, of which much has since been written and said.
Those interested in such matters may perhaps remember the article upon
the Refuge published in one of the prominent magazines. A full
description of it was given in that paper. The building stood upon Bay
Street overlooking the harbor; it was one of the most beautiful
situations in the town; without, the building was architecturally plain,
but in perfect taste; within, it was furnished with every comfort and
convenience—a dormitory immaculately clean; a dining-room, large and
airy, where plain substantial food, cooked in the best possible manner,
was served to the inmates. There were three bath-rooms supplied with hot
and cold water, and there was a reading and a smoking-room provided not
only with all the current periodicals, but with chess, checkers, and
backgammon-boards.
At the same time that the Refuge was being founded and built, certain
municipal laws were enacted, according to which a tramp appearing within
the town limits was conveyed (with as little appearance of constraint as
possible) to the Refuge. There for four weeks he was well fed, well
clothed, well cared for. In return he was expected to work for eight
hours every day upon some piece of public improvement: the repaving of
Main Street with asphaltum blocks was selected by the authorities as the
initial work. At the end of four weeks the tramp was dismissed from the
Refuge clad in a neat, substantial, well-made suit of clothes, and with
money in his pocket to convey him to some place where he might, if he
chose, procure permanent work.
The Refuge was finished by the last of March, and Colonel Singelsby was
unanimously chosen by the board as superintendent, a position he
accepted very reluctantly. He felt that in so accepting he shouldered
the whole responsibility of the experiment that was being undertaken,
yet he could not but acknowledge that it was right for him to shoulder
that burden, who had been foremost both in formulating and advocating
the scheme, as well as most instrumental in carrying it to a practical
conclusion. So, as was said, he accepted, though very reluctantly.
The world at large was much disposed to laugh at and to ridicule all the
preparation that Dives of East Haven made to entertain his Lazarus.
Nevertheless, there were a few who believed very sincerely in the
efficacy of the scheme. But both those who believed and those who
scoffed agreed in general upon one point—that it was altogether
probable that East Haven would soon be overrun with such a wilderness of
tramps that fifty Refuges would not be able to supply them with refuge.
But who shall undertake to solve that inscrutable paradox, human
life—its loves, its hates?
The Refuge was opened upon the 1st of April; by the 29th there were
thirty-two tramps lodged in its sheltering arms, all working their eight
hours a day upon the repaving of Main Street. That same day—the
29th—five were dismissed from within its walls. Colonel Singelsby, as
superintendent, had a little office on the ground-floor of the main
building, opening out upon the street. At one o'clock, and just after
the Refuge dinner had been served, he stood beside his table with five
sealed envelopes spread out side by side upon it. Presently the five
outgoing guests slouched one by one into the room. Each was shaven and
shorn; each wore clean linen; each was clad in a neat, plain, gray suit
of tweed; each bore stamped upon his face a dogged, obstinate, stolid,
low-browed shame. The colonel gave each the money enclosed in the
envelope, thanked each for his service, inquired with pleasant
friendliness as to his future movements and plans, invited each to come
again to the Refuge if he chanced to be in those parts, shook each by a
heavy, reluctant hand, and bade each a good-by. Then the five slouched
out and away, leaving the town by back streets and byways; each with his
hat pulled down over his brows; each ten thousand times more humiliated,
ten thousand times more debased in his cleanliness, in his good clothes,
and with money in his pocket, than he had been in his dirt, his tatters,
his poverty.
They never came back to East Haven again.
The capacity of the Refuge was 50. In May there were 47 inmates, and
Colonel Singelsby began to apprehend the predicted overflow. The
overflow never came. In June there were 45 inmates; in July there were
27; in August there were 28; in September, 10; in October, 2; in
November, 1; in December there were none. The fall was very cold and
wet, and maybe that had something to do with the sudden falling off of
guests, for the tramp is not fond of cold weather. But even granting
that bad weather had something to do with the matter, the Refuge was
nevertheless a phenomenal, an extraordinary success—but upon very
different lines than Colonel Singelsby had anticipated; for even in this
the first season of the institution the tramps began to shun East Haven
even more sedulously than they had before cultivated its hospitality.
Even West Hampstead, where vagrancy was punished only less severely than
petty larceny, was not so shunned as East Haven with the horrid comforts
of its Refuge.
As was said, the records of the Refuge showed that one inmate still
lingered in the sheltering arms of that institution during a part of
the month of November. That one was Sandy Graff.
Sandy Graff did not strictly belong to the great peregrinating leisure
class for whose benefit the Refuge had been more especially founded and
built. Those were strangers to the town, and came and went apparently
without cause for coming and going. Little or nothing was known of
such—of their name, of their life, of whence they came or whither their
footsteps led. But with Sandy Graff it was different; he belonged
identically to the place, and all the town knew him, the sinister
tragedy of his history, and all the why and wherefore that led to his
becoming the poor miserable drunken outcast—the town "bummer"—that he
was.
There is something bitterly enough pathetic in the profound abasement of
the common tramp—frouzy, unkempt, dirty, forlorn; without ambition
further than to fill his belly with the cold leavings from decent folks'
tables; without other pride than to clothe his dirty body with the
cast-off rags and tatters of respectability; without further motive of
life than to roam hither and yon—idle, useless, homeless, aimless. In
all this there is indeed enough of the pathetic, but Sandy Graff in his
utter and complete abasement was even more deeply, tragically sunken
than they. For them there was still some sheltering ægis of secrecy to
conceal some substratum in the uttermost depths of personal depravity;
but for Sandy—all the world knew the story of his life, his struggle,
his fall; all the world could see upon his blotched and bloated face the
outer sign of his inner lusts; and what deeper humiliation can there be
than for all one's world to know how brutish and obscene one may be in
the bottom of one's heart? What deeper shame may any man suffer than to
have his neighbors read upon his blasted front the stamp and seal of
all, all his heart's lust, set there not only as a warning and a lesson,
not only a visible proof how deep below the level of savagery it is
possible for a God-enlightened man to sink, but also for
self-gratulation of those righteous ones that they are not fallen from
God's grace as that man has fallen?
One time East Haven had been Sandy Graff's home, and it was now the
centre of his wanderings, which never extended further than the
immediately neighboring towns. At times he would disappear from East
Haven for weeks, maybe months; then suddenly he would appear again,
pottering aimlessly, harmlessly, around the streets or byways;
wretched, foul, boozed, and sodden with vile rum, which he had procured
no one knew how or where. Maybe at such times of reappearance he would
be seen hanging around some store or street corner, maundering with some
one who had known him in the days of his prosperity, or maybe he would
be found loitering around the kitchen or out-house of some pitying
Bay-Streeter, who also had known him in the days of his dignity and
cleanliness, waiting with helpless patience for scraps of cold victuals
or the dregs of the coffee-pot, for no one drove him away or treated him
with unkindness.
Sandy Graff's father had been a cobbler in Upper Main Street, and he
himself had in time followed the same trade in the same little,
old-fashioned, dingy, shingled, hip-roofed house. In time he had married
a good, sound-hearted, respectable farmer's daughter from a neck of land
across the bay, known as Pig Island, and had settled down to what
promised to be a decent, prosperous life.
So far as any one could see, looking from the outside, his life offered
all that a reasonable man could ask for; but suddenly, within a year
after he was married, his feet slipped from the beaten level pathway of
respectability. He began taking to drink.
Why it was that the foul fiend should have leaped astride of his neck,
no man can exactly tell. More than likely it was inheritance, for his
grandfather, who had been a ship-captain—some said a slave-trader—had
died of mania a potu, and it is one of those inscrutable rulings of
Divine Providence that the innocent ones of the third and fourth
generation shall suffer because of the sins of their forebears, who have
raised more than one devil to grapple with them, their children, and
children's children. Anyhow, Sandy fell from grace, and within three
years' time had become a confirmed drunkard.
Fortunately no children were born to the couple. But it was one of the
most sad, pitiful sights in the world to see Sandy's patient, sad-eyed
wife leading him home from the tavern, tottering, reeling, helpless,
sodden. Pitiful indeed! Pitiful even from the outside; but if one could
only have looked through that outer husk of visible life, and have
beheld the inner workings of that lost soul—the struggles, the
wrestling with the foul grinning devil that sat astride of him—how much
more would that have been pitiful! And then, if one could have seen and
have realized as the roots from which arose those inner workings, the
hopes, the longings for a better life that filled his heart during the
intervals of sobriety, if one could have sensed but one pang of that
hell-thirst that foreran the mortal struggle that followed, as that
again foreran the inevitable fall into his kennel of lust, and then,
last and greatest, if those righteous neighbors of his who never sinned
and never fell could only have seen the wakening, the bitter agony of
remorse, the groaning horror of self-abasement that ended the
debauchery—Ah! that, indeed, was something to pity beyond man's power
of pitying.
If Sandy's wife had only berated and abused him, if she had even cried
or made a sign of her heart-break, maybe his pangs of remorse might not
have been so deadly bitter and cruel; but her steadfast and unrelaxing
patience—it was that that damned him more than all else to his hell of
remorse.
At last came the end. One day Sandy went to New Harbor City to buy
leather for cobbling, and there his devil, for no apparent reason at
all, leaped upon him and flung him. For a week he saw or knew nothing
but a whirling vision of the world seen through rum-crazy eyes; then at
last he awoke to find himself hatless, coatless, filthy, unshaved,
blear-eyed, palsied. Not a cent of money was left, and so that day and
night, in spite of the deadly nausea that beset him and the trembling
weakness that hung like a leaden weight upon every limb, he walked all
the thirty-eight miles home again to East Haven. He reached there about
five o'clock, and in the still gray of the early dawning. Only a few
people were stirring in the streets, and as he slunk along close to the
houses, those whom he met turned and looked after him. No one spoke to
him or stopped him, as might possibly have been done had he come home at
a later hour. Every shred and filament of his poor remorseful heart and
soul longed for home and the comfort that his wife alone could give him,
and yet at the last corner he stopped for a quaking moment or so in the
face of the terror of her unreproachful patience. Then he turned the
corner—
Not a sign of his house was to be seen—nothing but an empty, gaping
blackness where it had stood before. It had been burned to the ground!
Why is it that God's curse rests very often and most heavily upon the
misfortunate? Why is it that He should crush the reeds that are bruised
beneath His heel? Why is it that He should seem so often to choose the
broken heart to grind to powder?
Sandy's wife had been burned to death in the fire!
From that moment Sandy Graff was lost, utterly and entirely lost. God,
for His terrible purposes, had taken away the one last thread that bound
the drowning soul to anything of decency and cleanliness. Now his devil
and he no longer struggled together; they walked hand in hand. He was
without love, without hope, without one iota that might bring a flicker
of light into the midnight gloom of his despairing soul.
After the first dreadful blast of his sorrow and despair had burned
itself out, he disappeared, no one knew whither. A little over a month
passed, and then he suddenly appeared again, drunken, maudlin, tearful.
Again he disappeared, again he reappeared, a little deeper sunken, a
little more abased, and henceforth that was his life. He became a part
of the town, and everybody, from the oldest to the youngest, knew him
and his story. He injured no one, he offended no one, and he never
failed, somehow or somewhere, to find food to eat, lodging for his
head, and clothing to cover his nakedness. He had been among the very
first to enter the Refuge, and now, in November, he was the last one
left within its walls. He was the only one of the guests who returned,
and perhaps he would not have done so had not his aching restlessness
driven him back to suffer an echo of agony in the place where his
damnation had been inflicted upon him.
Between Colonel Singelsby upon the one side, the wise, the pure, the
honored servant of God, and Sandy Graff upon the other side, the vile,
the filthy, the ugly, the debased, there yawned a gulf as immeasurably
wide and deep as that which gaps between heaven and hell.
The winter of the year that saw the opening of the East Haven Refuge was
one of the most severe that New England had known for generations. It
was early in January that there came the great snowstorm that spread its
two or three feet of white covering all the way from Maine to Virginia,
and East Haven, looking directly in the teeth of the blast that came
swirling and raging across the open harbor, felt the full force of the
icy tempest. The streets of the town lay a silent desert of drifting
whiteness, for no one who could help it was abroad from home that bitter
morning.
The hail and snow spat venomously against the windows of Dr. Hunt's
office in one of those fine old houses on Bay Street overlooking the
harbor. The wind roared sonorously through the naked, tortured branches
of the great elm-trees, and the snow piled sharp and smooth in fence
corners and around north gables of the house.
Dr. Hunt shuddered as he looked out of the window, for while all his
neighbors sat snug and warm around their hearths, he had to face the
raging of the icy blast upon the dull routine of his business of
mercy—the dull routine of bread-getting by comforting the afflictions
of others. Then the sleigh drew up to the gate, the driver already
powdered with the gathering whiteness, and Dr. Hunt struggled into his
overcoat, tied the ribbons of his fur cap under his chin, and drew on
his beaver gloves. Then, with one final shudder, he opened his office
door, and stepped out into the drift upon the step.
Instantly he started back with a cry: he had trodden upon a man covered
and hidden by the snow.
It was Sandy Graff. How long he had been lying there, no one might tell;
a few moments more, and the last flicker of life would have twinkled
mercifully out. The doctor had him out of the snow in a moment, and in
the next had satisfied himself that Sandy was not dead.
Even as he leaned over the still white figure, feeling the slow faint
beating of the failing heart, the doctor was considering whether he
should take Sandy into the house or not. The decision was almost
instantaneous: it would be most inconvenient, and the Refuge was only a
stone's-throw away. So the doctor did not even disturb the household
with the news of what had happened. He and the driver wrapped the
unconscious figure in a buffalo-robe and laid it in the sleigh.
As the doctor was about to step into the sleigh, some one suddenly laid
a heavy hand upon his shoulder. He turned sharply, for he had not heard
the approaching footsteps, muffled by the thick snow, and he had been
too engrossed with attention to Sandy Graff to notice anything else.
It was young Harold Singelsby; his face was very white and drawn, and
in the absorption of his own suppressed agitation he did not even look
at Sandy. "Doctor," said he, in a hoarse, constrained voice, "for God's
sake, come home with me as quickly as you can: father's very sick!"
I had often wondered how it is with a man when he closes his life to
this world. Looking upon the struggling efforts of a dying man to retain
his hold upon his body, I had often wondered whether his sliding to
unconsciousness was like the dissolving of the mind to sleep in this
life.
That death was not like sleep was at such times patent enough—it was
patent enough that it was the antithesis of sleep. Sleep is peaceful;
death is convulsed—sleep is rest; death is separation.
That which I here following read in the book as it lay open upon the
man's knees seemed in a way dark, broken, indistinct with a certain grim
obscurity; yet if I read truly therein I distinguished this great
difference between death and sleep: Sleep is the cessation of
consciousness from an interior life to exterior thought; death is the
cessation of consciousness from the exterior mind to an interior life.
When Sandy Graff opened his eyes once more, it was to find himself again
within the sheltering arms of the Refuge. That awakening was almost to a
full and clear consciousness. It was with no confusion of thought and
but little confusion of sight, except for a white mist that seemed to
blur the things he saw.
He knew, instantly and vividly, where he was. Instantly and vividly
everything found its fit place in his mind—the long rows of cots; the
bald, garishly white walls, cold and unbeautiful in their immaculate
cleanliness; the range of curtainless windows looking out upon the
chill, thin gray of the winter day. He was not surprised to find himself
in the Refuge; it did not seem strange to him, and he did not wonder. He
dimly remembered stumbling through the snow-drifts and then falling
asleep, overpowered by an irresistible and leaden drowsiness. But just
where it was he fell, he could not recall.
He saw with dim sight that three or four people were gathered about his
bed. Two of them were rubbing his legs and feet, but he could not feel
them. It was this senselessness of feeling that first brought the
jarring of the truth to him. The house-steward stood near by, and Sandy
turned his face weakly toward him. "Mr. Jackson," said he, faintly, "I
think I'm going to die."
He turned his face again (now toward the opened window), and was staring
unwinkingly at a white square of light, and it seemed to him to grow
darker and darker. At first he thought that it was the gathering of
night, but faint and flickering as were his senses, there was something
beneath his outer self that dreaded it—that dreaded beyond measure the
coming of that darkness. After one or two efforts, in which his stiff
tongue refused to form the words he desired to speak, he said, at last,
"I can't see; it's—getting—dark."
He was dimly, darkly conscious of hurry and bustle around him, of voices
calling to send for the doctor, of hurrying hither and thither, but it
all seemed faint and distant. Everything was now dark to his sight, and
it was as though all this concerned another; but as outer things slipped
further and further from him, the more that inner life struggled,
tenaciously, dumbly, hopelessly, to retain its grip upon the outer
world. Sometimes, now and then, to this inner consciousness, it seemed
almost as though it were rising again out of the gathering blackness.
But it was only the recurrent vibrations of ebbing powers, for still
again, and even before it knew it, that life found itself quickly deeper
and more hopelessly in the tremendous shadow into which it was being
inexorably engulfed.
He himself knew nothing now of those who stood about the bed, awe-struck
and silent, looking down upon him; he himself sensed nothing of the
harsh convulsive breathing, and of all the other grim outer signs of the
struggle. But still, deep within, that combat of resistance to death
waged as desperately, as vividly, as ever.
A door opened, and at the sudden noise the dissolving life
recrystallized for one brief instant, and in that instant the dying man
knew that Dr. Hunt was standing beside his bed, and heard him say, in a
slow, solemn voice, sounding muffled and hollow, as though from far away
and through an empty space, "Colonel Singelsby has just died."
Then the cord, momentarily drawn tense, was relaxed with a snap, and
the last smoky spark was quenched in blackness.
Dr. Hunt's fingers were resting lightly upon the wrist. As the last deep
quivering breath expired with a quavering sigh, he laid the limp hand
back upon the bed, and then, before he arose, gently closed the stiff
eyelids over the staring glassy eyes, and set the gaping jaws back again
into a more seemly repose.
So all this first part of the Parable had, as I read it, a reflected
image of what was real and actual; of what belonged to the world of men
as I knew that world. The people of whom it spoke moved and lived, maybe
not altogether as real men of flesh and blood move and live, but
nevertheless with a certain life of their own—images of what was real.
All these things, I say (excepting perhaps the last), were clear and
plain enough after a certain fashion, but that which followed showed
those two of whom the story was written—the good man and the wicked
man—stripped of all their outer husk of fleshly reality, and walking
and talking not as men of flesh and blood, but as men in the spirit.
So, though I knew that which I was reading might indeed be as true, and
perhaps truer, than that other which I had read, and though I knew that
to such a state I myself must come, and that as these two suffered, I
myself must some time suffer in the same kind, if not in the same
degree, nevertheless it was all strangely unreal, and being set apart
from that which I knew, was like life as seen in a dream.
Yet let it not be thought that this Parable is all a vague dream, for
there are things which are more real than reality, and being so, must be
couched in different words from such as describe the things that one's
bodily eyes behold of the grim reality of this world. Such things, being
so told, may seem as strange and as unsubstantial as that which is
unreal, instead of like that which is real.
So that which is now to be read must be read as the other has been
read—not as a likeness of life in its inner being, but as an image of
that life.
Sandy Graff awoke, and opened his eyes. At first he thought that he was
still within the dormitory of the Refuge, for there before him he saw
cold, bare white walls immaculately clean. Upon either hand was the row
of beds, each with its spotless coverlet, and in front was the long line
of curtainless windows looking out upon the bright daylight.
But as his waking senses gathered to a more orderly clearness, he saw
very soon that the place in which he was was very different from the
Refuge. Even newly awakened, and with his brain clouded and obscured by
the fumes of sleep, he distinguished at once that the strange, clear,
lucid brilliancy of the light which came in through the row of windows
was very different from any light that his eyes had ever before seen.
Then, as his mind opened wider and fuller and clearer, and as one by one
the objects which surrounded him began to take their proper place in his
awakened life, he saw that there were many people around, and that most
of the beds were occupied, and in every case by a man. The room in which
he lay was somewhat longer than the dormitory of the Refuge, and was
connected at the further end with what appeared to be a sort of
waiting-room beyond. In and out of the connecting doorway people were
coming and going. Some of these seemed to be friends of those who were
lying in the beds, being in every case led to some particular bedside,
the occupant of which had newly awakened; others, who seemed to be
attendants of the place, moved constantly hither and thither, busying
themselves around other of the beds, where lay such as seemed to need
attention.
Sandy looked slowly around him from left to right. Some of the occupants
of the beds—and one of these lay in the cot next to him—were not yet
awake, and he saw, with a sort of awe, that each of these lay strangely
like a dead man—still, motionless, the face covered with a linen
napkin. Two of the attendants seemed to have these sleepers especially
in their charge, moving continually hither and thither, to the bedside
first of one and then another, evidently to see if there were yet any
signs of waking. As Sandy continued watching them, he saw them at last
softly and carefully lift a napkin from one of the faces, whereupon the
man immediately awoke and sat up.
This occurred in a bed not very far from where he himself lay, and he
watched all that passed with a keen and thrilling interest. The man had
hardly awakened when word was passed down the length of the room to the
antechamber beyond. Apparently some friends of the sleeper were waiting
for this word to be brought to them, for there entered directly two
women and a man from the further doorway. The three came straight to the
bed in which the man lay, and with great noise of rejoicing seemed to
welcome the new-comer. They helped him to arise, handed him his clothes
piece by piece from the chair at the bedside, and the man began dressing
himself.
It was not until then, and until his ear caught some stray words of
those that were spoken, that Sandy began to really realize where he was
and what had happened to him. Then suddenly a great and awful light
broke upon him—he had died and had come to life again—his living
senses had solved the greatest of all mysteries—the final mystery; the
mystery of eternity.
It happens nearly always, it is said, that the first awakening thought
of those who die is of the tremendous happening that has come upon them.
So it was with Sandy. For a while he lay quite still, with his hands
folded, and a strange awful brooding, almost as though of fear,
breathlessly wrapping his heart roundabout. But it was not for a long
time that he lay thus, for suddenly, like a second flash of lightning in
the gathering darkness of a cloud, the thought shot through him that no
friends had come to meet and to greet him as they had come to meet and
greet these others. Why had his wife not come to him? He turned his
head; the chair beside him was empty; he was without even clothes to
wear.
For a while he lay with closed eyes like one stunned. Then a sudden
voice broke upon his ear, and he opened his eyes again and looked up. A
tall man with calm face—almost a stern face—stood beside the bed
looking down at him.
Somehow Sandy knew that he had no business in the bed now that he was
awake, and, with a half-muttered apology, he made a motion as if to
arise, then, remembering that there were no clothes for him to wear, he
sank back again upon the pillow.
"Come," said the man, giving his cane a rap upon the floor, "you must
get up; you have already been here longer than the law allows."
Sandy had been too long accustomed to self-abasement in the world he had
left to question the authority of the man who spoke to him. "I can't
help lying here, sir," said he, helplessly. "I've no clothes to wear."
Then he added: "Maybe if you let my wife come to me, she'd bring me
something to wear. I hear say, sir, that I've died, and that this is
heaven. I don't know why she hasn't come to me. Everybody else here
seems to have somebody to meet him but me."
"This is not heaven," said the man.
A long silence followed. "It's not hell, is it?" said Sandy, at last.
The man apparently did not choose to answer the question. "Come," said
he, "you waste time in talk. Get up. Wrap the sheet around you, and come
with me."
"Where are you going to take me?" said Sandy.
"No matter," said the other. "Do as I tell you." His voice was calm,
dispassionate; there was nothing of anger in it, but there was that
which said he must be obeyed.
Sandy drew the sheet upon which he lay about him, and then shuddering,
half with nervous dread and half with cold, arose from the warm bed in
which he lay.
The other turned, and without saying a word led the way down the length
of the room, Sandy following close behind. The noise of talking ceased
as they passed by the various beds, and all turned and looked after the
two, some smiling, some laughing outright. Sandy, as he marched down the
length of the room, heard the rustling laugh and felt an echo of the
same dull humiliation he had felt when he had marched with the other
guests of the East Haven Refuge to their daily task of paving Main
Street. There as now the people laughed, and there in the same manner as
they did now; and as he had there slouched in the body, so now he
slouched heavily in the spirit after his conductor.
Opposite the end of the room where was the door through which the
friends and visitors came and went was another door, low and narrow.
Sandy's guide led the way directly to it, lifted the latch, and opened
it. It led to a long entry beyond, gloomy and dark. This passageway was
dully lighted by a small square window, glazed with clouded glass, at
the further end of the narrow hall, upon which fronted a row of closed
doors. The place was very damp and chill; a cold draught of air blew
through the length of it, and Sandy, as the other closed the door
through which they had just entered, and so shut out the noise beyond,
heard distinctly the sound of running water. Without turning to the left
or to the right, Sandy's guide led the way down the hall, stopping at
last when he had reached a door near the further end. He drew a bunch of
keys from his pocket, chose one from among them, fitted it into the
lock, and turned it.
"Go in there," said he, "and wash yourself clean, and then you shall
have clothes to wear."
Sandy entered, and the door was closed behind him. The place in which he
found himself was very cold, and the floor beneath his feet was wet and
slimy. His teeth chattered and his limbs shuddered as he stood looking
around him. The noise of flowing water sounded loud and clear through
the silence; it was running from a leaden pipe into a wooden tank,
mildewed and green with mould, that stood in the middle of the room. The
stone-walls around, once painted white, were now also stained and
splotched with great blotches of green and russet dampness. The only
light that lit the place came in through a small, narrow, slatted window
close to the ceiling, and opposite the doorway which he had entered. It
was all gloomy, ugly, repellent.
There were some letters painted in red at the head of the wooden tank.
He came forward and read them, not without some difficulty, for they
were nearly erased.
This is the water of death!
Sandy started back so suddenly that he nearly fell upon the slippery
floor. A keen pang of sudden terror shot through him; then a thought
that some grotesque mockery was being played upon him. A second thought
blew the first away like a breath of smoke, for it told him that there
could be no mockery in the place to which he had come. His waking and
all that had happened to him had much of nightmare grotesquery about it,
but there was no grotesquery or no appearance of jesting about that man
who had guided him to the place in which he now found himself. There was
a calm, impassive, unemotional sternness about all that he said and
did—official, automatonlike—that precluded the possibility of any jest
or meaningless form. This must indeed be the water of death, and his
soul told him that it was meant for him.
He turned dully, and walked with stumbling steps to the door. He felt
blindly for a moment for the latch, then his hand touched it, and he
raised it with a click. The sharp sound jarred through the silence, and
Sandy did not open the door. He stood for a little while staring
stupidly down upon the floor with his palm still upon the latch. Was the
man who had brought him there waiting outside? Behind him lay the water
of death, but he dared not open the door and chance the facing of that
man. The sheet had fallen away from him, and now he stood entirely
naked. He let the latch fall back to its place—carefully, lest it
should again make a noise, and that man should hear it. Then he gathered
the now damp and dirty sheet about him, and crouched down upon the cold
floor close to the crack of the door.
There he sat for a while, every now and then shuddering convulsively
with cold and terror, then by-and-by he began to cry.
There is something abjectly, almost brutally, pathetic in the ugly
squalor of a man's tears. Sandy Graff crying, and now and then wiping
his eyes with the damp and dirty sheet, was almost a more ugly sight
than he had been in the maudlin bathos of his former drunkenness.
So he sat for a long time, until finally his crying ended, only for a
sudden sob now and then, and he only crouched, wondering dully. At last
he slowly arose, gathering the sheet still closer around him, and
creeping step by step to the tank, looked down into its depth. The water
was as clear as crystal; he dipped his hand into it—it was as cold as
ice. Then he dropped aside the sheet, and stood as naked as the day he
was born. He stepped into the water.
A deathly faintness fell upon him, and he clutched at the edge of the
tank; but even as he clutched his sight failed, and he felt himself
sinking down into the depths.
"Help!" he cried, hoarsely; and then the water closed blackly over his
head.
He felt himself suddenly snatched out from the tank, warm towels were
wrapped about him, his limbs were rubbed with soft linen, and at last he
opened his eyes. He still heard the sound of running water, but now the
place in which he was was no longer dark and gloomy. Some one had flung
open the slatted window, and a great beam of warm, serene sunlight
streamed in, and lay in a dazzling white square upon the wet floor. Two
men were busied about him. They had wrapped his body in a soft warm
blanket, and were wiping dry his damp, chilled, benumbed hands and feet.
"What does this mean?" said Sandy, faintly. "Was I not then to die,
after all? Was not that the water of death?"
"The water of death?" said they. "You did not read the words aright;
that was the water of life." They helped him dress himself in his
clothes—clothes not unlike those which the East Haven Refuge had given
its outgoing guests, only, somehow, these did not make him feel
humiliated and abased as those had made him feel. Then they led him out
of that place. They traversed the same long passageway through which he
had come before, and so came to the bedroom which he had left. The
tenants were all gone now, and the attendants were busied spreading the
various beds with clean linen sheets and coverlets, as though for fresh
arrivals.
No one seemed to pay any attention to him. His conductors led the way to
the anteroom which Sandy had seen beyond.
A woman was sitting patiently looking out of the window. She turned her
head as they entered, and Sandy, when he saw her face, stood suddenly
still, as though turned to stone. It was his wife!
With Colonel Singelsby was no such nightmare awakening as with Sandy
Graff; with him, were no such ugly visions and experiences; with him was
no squalor and discomfort. Yet he also opened his eyes upon a room so
like that upon which they had closed that at first he thought that he
was still in the world. There was the same soft bed, the same warmth of
ease and comfort, the same style of old-fashioned furniture. There were
the curtained windows, the pictures upon the wall, the bright warm fire
burning in the grate.
At first he saw all these things drowsily, as one does upon newly
awakening. With him, as with Sandy, it was only when his conscious life
had opened wide and clear enough to observe and to recognize who they
were that were gathered around him that with a keen, almost agonizing
thrill he realized where he was and what had befallen him. Upon one side
of his bed stood his son Hubert; upon the other side stood his brother
James. The one had died ten, the other nineteen years before. Of all
those who had gone from the world which he himself had just left, these
stood the nearest to him, and now, in his resurrection, his opening eyes
first saw these two. They and other relatives and friends helped him to
arise and dress, as Sandy had seen the poor wretches in the place in
which he had awakened raised from their beds and dressed by their
friends.
All Colonel Singelsby's teachings had told him that this was not so
different from the world he had left behind. Nevertheless, although he
was prepared somewhat for it, it was wonderful to him how alike the one
was to the other. The city, the streets, the people coming and going,
the stores, the parks, the great houses—all were just as they were in
the world of men. He had no difficulty in finding his way about the
streets. There, in comfortable houses of a better class, were many of
his friends; others were not to be found; some, he was told, had
ascended higher; others, he was also told, had descended lower.
Among other places, Colonel Singelsby found himself during the afternoon
in the house of one with whom he had been upon friendly, almost
intimate terms in times past in the world. Colonel Singelsby remembered
hearing that the good man had died a few months before he himself had
left the world. He wondered what had become of him, and then in a little
while he found himself in his old friend's house. It had been many years
since he had seen him. He remembered him as a benign, venerable old
gentleman, and he had been somewhat surprised to find that he was still
living in the town, instead of having ascended to a higher state.
The old gentleman still looked outwardly venerable, still outwardly
benign, but now there was under his outer seeming a somewhat of restless
querulousness, a something of uneasy discontent, that Colonel Singelsby
did not remember to have seen there before. They talked together about
many things, chiefly of those in the present state of existence in which
they found themselves. It was all very new and vivid upon Colonel
Singelsby's mind, but the reverend gentleman seemed constantly to forget
that he was in another world than that which he had left behind. It
seemed to be always with an effort that he brought himself to talk of
the world in which he lived as the world of spirits. The visit was
somehow unpleasant to Colonel Singelsby. He was impressed with a certain
air of intolerance exhibited by the other. His mind seemed to dwell more
upon the falsity of the old things than upon the truth of the new, and
he seemed to take a certain delight in showing how and in what everybody
but those of his own creed erred and fell short of the Divine intent,
and not the least disagreeable part of the talk to Colonel Singelsby was
that the other's words seemed to find a sort of echo in his own mind.
At last he proposed a walk, and the other, taking his hat and stick,
accompanied him for a little distance upon the way. The talk still clung
much to the same stem to which it had adhered all along.
"It is a very strange thing," said the reverend gentleman, "but a great
many people who have come to this town since I came hither have left it
again to ascend, as I have been told, to a higher state. I think there
must have been some mistake, for I cannot see how it is possible—and in
fact our teachings distinctly tell us that it is impossible—for one to
ascend to a higher state without having accepted the new truths of the
new order of things."
Colonel Singelsby did not make answer. He was not only growing tired of
the subject itself, but of his old friend as well.
They were at that moment crossing an angle of a small park shaded by
thin, spindly trees. As the Colonel looked up he saw three men and a
woman approaching along the same path and under the flickering shadows.
Two of the men walked a little in advance, the other walked with the
woman. There was something familiar about two of the group, and Colonel
Singelsby pointed at them with his finger.
"Who are they?" said he. "I am sure there is somebody I know."
The other adjusted his glasses and looked. "I do not know," said he,
"except that one of the men is a new-comer. We somehow grow to know who
are new-comers by the time we have lived here a little while."
"Dear me!" cried Colonel Singelsby, stopping abruptly, "I know that man.
I did not know that he had come here too. I wonder where they are
going?"
"I think," said the reverend gentleman, dryly—"I think that this is
one of those cases of which I just spoke to you. I judge from the
general appearance of the party that they are about to ascend, as they
call it here, to a higher state."
"That is impossible!" said Colonel Singelsby. "That man is a poor
wretched creature whom I have helped with charity again and again, it
cannot be that he is to go to a higher state, for he is not fit for it.
If he is to be taken anywhere, it must be to punishment."
The other shrugged his shoulders and said nothing, he had seen such
cases too often during his sojourn to be deceived.
The little party had now come close to the two, and Colonel Singelsby
stepped forward with all his old-time frank kindness of manner. "Why,
Sandy," said he, "I did not know that you also had come here."
"Yes, sir," said Sandy; "I died the same night you did."
"Dear me!" said the Colonel, "that is very singular, very singular
indeed! Where are you going now, Sandy?"
"I don't know," said Sandy; "these gentlemen here are taking me
somewhere, I don't know where. This is my wife," said he. "Don't you
remember her, sir?"
"Oh yes," said the Colonel, with his most pleasant air, "I remember her
very well, but of course I am not so much surprised to see her here as I
am to see you. But have you no idea where you are going?" he continued.
"No," said Sandy; "but perhaps these gentlemen can tell you." And he
looked inquiringly at his escort, who stood calmly listening to what was
said.
So far, the Parable, as I had read it, progressed onward with some
coherence and concatenation, a coherence and concatenation growing
perhaps more disjointed as it advanced. Now it began to be broken with
interjectory sentences, and just here was one, the tenor of which I
could not altogether understand, but have since comprehended more or
less clearly. I cannot give its exact words, but only its general form.
"O wretched man," it said, "how pitiful are thy vain efforts and
strivings to keep back by thine own strength that fiery flood of hell
which grows and increases to overwhelm thy soul! If the inflowing of
good which Jehovah vouchsafes is infinite, only less infinite is the
outflowing of that which thou callest evil and wickedness. How, then,
canst thou hope to stand against it and to conquer? How canst thou hope
to keep back that raging torrent of fire and of flame with the crumbling
unbaked bricks of thine own soul's making? Poor fool! Thou mayst
endeavor, thou mayst strive, thou mayst build thy wall of defence higher
and higher, fearing God, and living a life of virtue, but by-and-by thou
wilt reach the end, and then wilt find thou canst build no higher! Then
how vain shall have been thy life of resistance! First that flood shall
trickle over the edge of thy defence; then it shall run a stream the
breadth of a man's hand; then it shall gush forth a torrent; then,
bursting over and through and around, it shall sweep away all that thou
hast so laboriously built up, and shall rush, howling, roaring, raging,
and burning through thy soul with ten thousand times the fury and
violence that it would have done if thou hadst not striven to keep it
back, if thou hadst not resisted and fought against it. For bear this in
mind: Christ said he came not to call the good to repentance, but the
evil, and if thou art full of thine own, how then canst thou hope to
receive of a God that asketh not for sacrifice, but for love?"
Hence again the story resumed.
Colonel Singelsby had not before noticed the two men who were with
Sandy, now he observed them more closely. They were tall, middle-aged
men, with serious, placid, unemotional faces. Each carried a long white
staff, the end of which rested upon the ground. There was about them
something somehow different from anything Colonel Singelsby had ever
seen before. They were most quiet, courteous men, but there was that in
their personal appearance that was singularly unpleasant to Colonel
Singelsby. Why, he could not tell, for they were evidently gentlemen,
and, from their bearing, men of influence. He turned to Sandy again.
"How has it been with you since you have been here?" said he.
"It has been very hard with me," said Sandy, patiently; "very hard
indeed; but I hope and believe now that the worst is over, and that
by-and-by I shall be happy, and not have any more trouble."
"I trust so, indeed," said the Colonel; "but do not hope for too much,
Sandy. Even the best men coming to this world are not likely to be rid
of their troubles at once, and it is not to be hoped for that you, after
your ill-spent life, should find your lot easier than theirs."
"I know, sir," said Sandy, "and I am very sorry."
There was a meek acceptance of the Colonel's dictum that grated somehow
unpleasantly upon the Colonel's ears. He would rather that Sandy had
made some protest against that dictum. He approached half a step and
looked more keenly at the other, and then for the first time he saw that
some great, some radical, some tremendous change had happened. The man
before him was no doubt Sandy Graff, but all that was low-browed, evil,
foul, was gone, as though it had been washed away, and in its place was
a translucent, patient meekness, almost like—There was something so
terribly vital in that change that Colonel Singelsby shuddered before
it. He looked and looked, and then he passed the back of his hand across
his eyes. "All this is very unreal," said he, turning to his friend the
minister. "It is like a dream. I begin to feel as though nothing was
real. Surely it is not possible that magic changes can go on, and yet I
cannot understand all these things in the least."
For answer, the reverend gentleman shrugged his shoulders almost sourly.
"Gentlemen," said Colonel Singelsby, turning abruptly upon Sandy's
escort, "let me ask you is this a certain man whom I used to know as
Sandy Graff?"
One of the men nodded his head.
"And will you tell me," said he, "another thing? Will you kindly tell me
where you are taking him?"
"We are about to take him," said the man, looking steadily at the
Colonel as he answered—"we are about to take him to the outskirts of
the First Kingdom."
At the answer Colonel Singelsby actually fell back a pace in his
amazement. It was almost as though a blow had fallen upon him. "The
outskirts of the First Kingdom?" said he. "Did I understand you? The
outskirts of the First Kingdom? Surely there is some mistake here! It is
not possible that this man, who died only yesterday, filthy and polluted
with iniquity, stinking in the nostrils of God with ten thousand
indulged and gratified lusts—it is not possible that you intend taking
him to that land, passing by me, who all my life have lived to my best
endeavors in love to God and my neighbor?"
It was the voice of his minister that broke the answer. "Yes, they do,"
said he, sharply; "that is just what they do mean. They do mean to take
him, and they do mean to leave us, for such is the law in this dreadful
place. We, the children of light, are nothing, and they, the fuel of
hell, are everything. Have I not been telling you so?"
Colonel Singelsby had almost forgotten the presence of his acquaintance.
He felt very angry at his interference, and somehow he could no longer
govern his anger as he used to do. He turned upon him and fixed him with
a frown, and then he observed for the first time that a little crowd had
begun gathering, and now stood looking on, some curious and unsmiling,
some grinning. The Colonel drew himself to his height, and looked
haughtily about him. They who grinned began laughing. And now, at last,
it was come Colonel Singelsby's turn to feel as Sandy Graff had felt—as
though all that was happening to him was happening in some hideous
nightmare dream. As in a dream, the balancing weights of reasoning and
morality began to melt before the heat of that which burned within; as
in a dream, the uncurbed inner motives began to strive furiously. Then a
sudden fierce anger, quite like the savage irrational anger of an ugly
dream, flamed up quickly and fiercely. He opened his lips as though to
vent his rage, but for an instant his tottering reason regained a
momentary poise. Checking himself with an effort ten thousand times
greater than that he would have used in his former state and in the
world, he bowed his head upon his breast and stood for a little while
with fingers interlocked, clinching his trembling hands together. So he
stood for a while, brooding, until at last Sandy and his escort made a
motion as if to pass by. Then he spoke again.
"Stop a bit!" said he, looking up—"stop a bit!" His voice was hoarse
and constrained, and he looked neither to the right nor to the left, but
straight at that one of the men to whom he had spoken before. "Sir,"
said he, and then clearing his husky voice—"sir," again, "I have
learned a lesson—the greatest lesson of my life! I have looked into my
heart, and I have seen—I have seen myself—God help me,
gentlemen!—I—maybe I am no better than this man."
The crowd, which had been increasing, as crowds do, began to jeer at the
words, for, like most crowds, it was of a nether sort, and enjoyed the
unusual sight of the gentleman and the aristocrat abasing and
humiliating himself before the reformed drunkard.
At the sound of that ugly jeering laugh Colonel Singelsby quivered as
though under the cut of a lancet, but he never removed his eyes from the
man to whom he spoke. For a moment or two he bit his nether lip in his
effort for self-control, and then repeated, in a louder and perhaps
harsher voice, "I am no better than this man!" He paused for a moment,
and the crowd ceased its jeering to hear what he had to say. "I ask only
this," he said, "that you will take me where you are taking him, and
that I may enjoy such happiness as he is about to enjoy."
Instantly a great roar of laughter went up from the crowd, which had now
gathered to some twenty or thirty souls. The man to whom Colonel
Singelsby had spoken shook his head calmly and impassively.
"It cannot be," said he.
Colonel Singelsby turned white to the very lips, his eyes blazed, and
his breath came thick and heavily. His nostrils twitched spasmodically,
but still, with a supreme effort—a struggle so terrible that few men
happily may ever know it or experience it—he once more controlled the
words that sprang to his lips and struggled for utterance. He swallowed
and swallowed convulsively. "Sir," said he at last, in a voice so
hoarse, so horribly constrained, that it seemed almost to rend him as it
forced utterance—"sir, surely I am mistaken in what I understand; it is
little I ask you, and surely not unjust. Yesterday this man was a vile,
debauched drunkard; surely that does not make him fitter for heaven!
Yesterday I was a God-fearing, law-abiding man, surely that does not
make me unfit! I am not unfit, am I?"
"You are not yet fit for heaven," answered the man, with impassive
calmness. And again, for the third time, the crowd roared with evil
laughter.
Within Colonel Singelsby's soul that fiery flood was now lashing
dreadfully close to the summit of its barriers. His face was as livid as
death, and his hands were clinched till the nails cut into his palm.
"Let me understand for once and for all, for I confess I cannot
understand all this. You say he is to go, and that I am not to go! Is
it, then, God's will and God's justice that because this man for twenty
years has led a life of besotted sin and indulgence, and because I for
sixty years have feared God and loved my neighbor, that he is to be
chosen and I am to be left?"
The man did not reply in words, but in the steady look of his unwinking
eyes the other read his answer.
"Then," gasped Colonel Singelsby, and as he spoke he shook his clinched
and trembling fist against the still, blue sky overhead—"then, if that
be God's justice, may it be damned, for I want none of it."
Then came the end, swiftly, completely. For the fourth time the crowd
laughed, and at the sound those floodgates so laboriously built up
during a lifetime of abstinence were suddenly burst asunder and fell
crashing, and a burning flood of hell's own rage and madness rushed
roaring and thundering into his depicted, empty soul, flaming, blazing,
consuming like straws every precept of righteousness, every fear of God,
and Colonel Edward Singelsby, the one-time Christian gentleman, the
one-time upright son of grace, the one-time man of law and God, was
transformed instantly and terribly into—what? Was it a livid devil from
hell? He cursed the jeering crowd, and at the sound of his own curses a
blindness fell upon him, and he neither knew what he said nor what he
did. His good old friend, who had accompanied him so far and until now
had stood by him, suddenly turned, and maybe fearing lest some
thunderbolt of vengeance should fall upon them from heaven and consume
them all, he elbowed himself out of the crowd and hurried away. As for
the wretched madman, in his raging fury, it was not the men who had
forbidden him heaven whom he strove to rend and tear limb from limb, but
poor, innocent, harmless Sandy Graff. The crowd swayed and jostled this
way and that, and as madness begets madness, the curses that fell from
one pair of lips found an echo in curses that leaped from others. Sandy
shrunk back appalled before the hell-blast that breathed upon him, and
he felt his wife clutch him closer. Only two of those that were there
stood unmoved; they were the two men who acted as Sandy's escort. As the
tide of madness seemed to swell higher, they calmly stepped forward and
crossed their staves before their charge. There was something in their
action full of significance for those who knew. Instantly the crowd
melted away like snow under a blast of fire. Had there not been two men
present more merciful than the rest, it is hard to say what terrible
thing might not have happened to Colonel Edward Singelsby—deaf and dumb
and blind to everything but his own rage. These two clutched him by the
arms and dragged him back.
"God, man!" they cried, "what are you doing? Do you not see they are
angels?"
They dragged him back to a bench that stood near, and there held him,
whilst he still beat the air with his fist and cried out hoarse curses,
and even as they so held him, two other men came—two men dark, silent,
sinister—and led him away.
Then the other and his wife and his two escorts passed by and out of the
gate of the town, and away towards the mountain that stood still and
blue in the distance.
So far I read, and then I could bear to read no more, but placed my
hand upon the open page of the book. "What is this dreadful thing?" I
cried. "Is, then, a man punished for truth and justice and virtue and
righteousness? Is it, then, true that the evil are rewarded, and that
the good are punished so dreadfully?"
Then the man who held the book spoke again. "Take away thy hand and
read," said he.
Then I took away my hand, and read as he bade me, and found these
words:
"How can God fill with His own that which is already filled by man?
First it must be emptied before it may be filled with the true good of
righteousness and truth, of humility and love, of peace and joy. O thou
foolish one who judgest but from the appearance of things, how long will
it be before thou canst understand that while some may be baptized with
water to cleanliness and repentance, others are baptized with living
fire to everlasting life, and that they alone are the children of God?"
Then again I read these words:
"Woe to thee, thou who deniest the laws of God and man! Woe to thee,
thou who walkest in the darkness of the shadow of sin and evil! But ten
thousand times woe to thee, thou who pilest Pelion of self-good upon
Ossa of self-truth, not that thou mayst scale therefrom the gate of
Heaven, but that thou mayst hide thyself beneath from the eye of the
Living God! By-and-by His Day shall come! His Terrible Lightning shall
flash from the East to the West! His Dreadful Flaming Thunder-bolt shall
fall, riving thy secret fastnesses to atoms, and leaving thee, poor
worm, writhing in the dazzling effulgence of His Light, and shrivelling
beneath the consuming flame of His Loving-kindness!"
Then the leaf was turned, and there before me lay the answer to that
first question, "What shall a man do that he may gain the kingdom of
Heaven?" There stood the words, plain and clear. But I did not dare to
read them, but turning, left that place, shutting the door to behind
me.
Never have I found that door or entered that room again, but by-and-by
I know that I shall find them both once more, and shall then and there
read the answer that forever stands written in that book, for it still
lies open at the very page, and he upon whose knees it rests is
Israfeel, the Angel of Death.
But what of the sequel? Is there a sequel? Are we, then, to suffer
ourselves to do evil for the sake of shunning pain in the other world? I
trow not! He who sets his foot to climb must never look backward and
downward. He who suffers most must reach the highest. There must be
another part of the story which lies darkly and dimly behind the letter.
One can see, faintly and dimly but nevertheless clearly, what the poor
man was to enjoy—the poor man who from without appeared to be so evil,
and yet within was not really evil. One can see a vision faint and dim
of a simple little house cooled by the dewy shade of green trees forever
in foliage; one can see pleasant meadows and gardens forever green,
stretching away to the banks of a smooth-flowing river in whose level
bosom rests a mirrored image of that which lies beyond its farther
bank—a great town with glistering walls and gleaming spires reaching
tower above tower and height above height into the blazing blue, the
awful serenity of a heavenly sky. One can know that toward that town the
poor man who had sinned and repented would in the evenings gaze and
wonder until his soul, now ploughed clean for new seed, might learn the
laws that would make it indeed an inhabitant of that place. It is a
serene and beautiful vision, but not different from that which all may
see, and enjoy even, in part, in this world.
But how was it with that other man—with that good man who had never
sinned until his earthly body was stripped away that he might sin and
fall in the spirit—sin and fall to a depth so profound that even one
furtive look into that awful abysm makes the minds of common men to reel
and stagger? When that God-sent blast of fire should have burned out the
selfhood that clung to the very vitals of his soul, what then? Who is
there that with unwinking eyes may gaze into the effulgent brilliancy of
the perfect angelhood? He who sweats drops of salt in his life's inner
struggles shall, maybe, eat good bread in the dew of it, but he who
sweats drops of blood in agony shall, when his labor is done, sit him,
maybe, at the King's table, and feast upon the Flesh of Life and the
very Wine of Truth.
Was it so with that man who never sinned until all his hell was let
loose at once upon him?
