CHAPTER XII.
“O YE ICE AND SNOW, BLESS YE THE LORD!”
Louis was awake bright and early on that Christmas morning, though, as applied to the atmospheric conditions of that particular day, “bright” is a singularly inappropriate adjective. The snow fell, not merely in flakes, but in clouds, and whether “the opposite side of the street” was “over the way,” or in Farther India, was purely a matter of faith; to the eye it was perfectly invisible.
“I don’t see how you are to get even as far as next door with those things,” said Metzerott, half in earnest, looking first at Louis, then at the blinding storm.
“Oh! but, papa, I must take George and Frau Anna their presents,” cried Louis in dismay.
“I don’t see why you must,” said his father. “Fritz will be in after his breakfast in a few minutes; he can take them.”
Louis looked very grave; he turned and took up his picture of the Christ-child. It was prettily framed, and the inscription, with its letters of red, blue, and gold, encircled it like a glory. Alice had used German letters and the German version.
“Ehre sei Gott in der Höhe, und Friede auf Erden, und den Menschen ein Wohlgefallen.”
“I could not be a Christ-kind if Fritz took them in,” he said.
Sally Price, who was busy over the frying-pan, while Polly stirred up the bread-sponge for the daily baking, which, as they had three families to provide for, might not be omitted, even on Christmas Day,—Sally Price dropped her iron spoon and held up her hands.
“Well, if I ever did!” she said. “Do you want to be a Christ-child, you angel?”
“Papa said I might, and Dr. Richards said, last night, the little boy in the picture looked like me, and I must try to be like him.”
“Law!” interposed Susan, “I thought the doctor was one of these infidels.”
“Infidel or not,” said Miss Sally, “he acts like a mighty good Christian.”
“But talkin’ like that, Sister Sally”—
“Talk! anybody can talk: and infidels often talk louder than Christians, about imitatin’ the Saviour, and such like. I s’pose they think nobody can keep ‘em up to it, if they don’t want to be kep’; while a member of the Church daren’t say much, for fear of folks sayin’ he has back-slid if he don’t live up to it.”
“Can’t I go, papa?” asked Louis, to whom the foregoing had been simply wasted breath.
“Of course, my son. I will carry you myself. We will show the good church members two more infidels who can keep up to their word without being kept.”
“It’s just awful to think of that child being brought up to believe like that,” said Polly as she covered her sponge and set it away to rise.
“Well, ’tis and ’taint, Polly,” answered Sally thoughtfully. “First place, he’s one of them children which of such is the kingdom of Heaven, and the good Lord will take care of his own; and, second, how better could he be raised than to want to be a little Christ-child, and ready to cry if he’s told he can’t?”
“But he thinks it is all a fairy-tale.”
“As it were,” said Sally. “What’s the difference between fairy-tale and history, Polly Price, to a baby five years old?”
“But when he gets older, Aunt Sally”—
“You take my advice, Polly, don’t you never cross a bridge till you come to it. If the good Lord don’t take care of him when he gets older, it’ll be time for you to interfere. Now, ketch hold and rench out Mrs. Rolf’s coffee-pot, will you? and I’ll pour the coffee into it. And if them pork chops ain’t done to a turn, I lose my guess. Cream gravy, too, for a treat for Christmas!”
“Last Christmas,” said Susan, “we had nothing to eat but the heel of a loaf, so hard we soaked it in water before we could bite into it.”
Sally stood for a moment with misty eyes; her volubility was gone on this subject. Then, as a sound of feet stamping off snow was heard at the door, she said with fervor, “Good Lord!” and fell to work upon the business in hand.
The next moment Metzerott hurried in with Louis on his shoulder, and followed by Fritz Rolf, a bright-faced boy of eight, with much of his mother’s briskness and “faculty.”
“I’ve cleared a path,” said Fritz; “and, if it lasts till I get back, I’ll get this breakfast in a-hootin’. But I tell you it’s snowing! Cover everything up warm, Aunt Sally, or Jacky Frost will stick his nose into it. Coffee, taters, pork, and hot biscuit! Bully! Ta! ta! see you later.”
“You’re a-goin’ to see me right now,” said Sally dryly. “S’pose you can open the front door yourself? Not with that tray in your hands, less’n you want to play the fall of Troy with it.”
As she opened the front door of the shop carefully, to exclude as much, or rather admit as little, as possible of the snowy air, those in the kitchen heard her exclaim, “Dr. Richards! if ever I seen a snow image! Your very eyelashes is white! Jump off and get warm, do!”
“I wasn’t at all sure of my whereabouts, Miss Sally,” answered the doctor’s voice, “until you spoke. But for my horse’s better judgment, I should have lost my way a dozen times—a hundred times—between this and Oak Grove.”
He had sprung from his horse as he spoke, and was shaking the snow from a blanket strapped military fashion behind his saddle, wherewith to cover the steaming animal.
“Oak Grove! the land! You ain’t been twelve miles in this storm?”
“Sent for at midnight,” said the doctor, shaking off vigorously the snow adhering to his person before he entered the shop. “Old patient, and a matter of life and death; so I had to go.”
“Well, I hope it turned out life, to pay you for your trouble.”
“I think it will be; she is safe for the present, at all events,” he said, very quietly, but with a smile from under his fur cap, which Sally never forgot.
Just at this moment a centaur-like figure loomed up through the snow, and halted at the sound of their voices.
“Is that you, doctor? They told me at your house to ride out along the road to Oak Grove, and I might meet you. What luck that I took this street!”
“Mr. Randolph! What has happened?”
“It’s my wife, doctor, my poor wife! I don’t know if she will be alive when we get there. I would not trust any one but myself to come for you in this storm.”
“A poor compliment to human nature,” thought Dr. Richards, “and a bitter commentary on the happiness of the rich. Metzerott, here, could find twenty to serve him in such a strait; but they are not hirelings.”
Perhaps twenty self-devoted friends was rather a large proportion for even a poor man; but Dr. Richards had been four hours on the road, and was nearly frozen, so his exaggeration may be forgiven, especially as he was on his horse before the reflection had passed through his mind.
At the first sound of Mr. Randolph’s voice, Sally had re-opened the shop door, which she had closed behind her, and called out, “Cup o’ coffee, Polly; be spry!” and as the doctor was about to ride away, there it was at his elbow, black, fragrant, and steaming hot. He swallowed it hastily, though he said afterwards that he could have dallied over every spoonful, like an old maid over her afternoon tea, so good it tasted. Then he disappeared with Henry Randolph into the storm.
The coffee would have been doubly relished had Dr. Richards known it would be his sole physical support and sustenance until noon of the same day. He had sent his tired horse home by a man-servant immediately upon reaching Mr. Randolph’s; but it was late in the afternoon before Alice, who had been watching anxiously, saw him walk wearily up the street towards the house. She had the door open before he reached it. The snow-storm had ceased, in consequence of a sudden fall in the temperature, and the brilliant sunshine on the white garment of Mother Earth, which the rude, irreverent wind was tossing in huge folds hither and thither, seemed to trouble the doctor’s eyes; for Alice noticed that he shaded them with his hand as he came towards her, and that they had a strained, dazed expression when he had entered the study, into which, with many loving words, she tenderly drew him.
“You walked home, dear! How imprudent! I sent John to ask if you wanted the buggy.”
“I sent him on to Dr. Harrison, who took my rounds for me to-day—happily, for I am fit for nothing now. One of Harrison’s horses is laid up, and the other is not able for double work such weather as this.”
“It is frightfully cold, and—oh, my darling! what a condition you are in!”
“Well,” said the doctor philosophically, “when a man has had snow drifting down the back of his neck and his boots, and settling everywhere about his person that it lawfully could settle, for about fourteen hours, and then it has melted and dried on him, he has a right to be in a condition.”
“I am afraid he will have a right to be ill if he keeps up that sort of thing,” said Alice. “But how is poor Jennie? Henry was in a terrible way about her this morning, but I have seen her in so many of these attacks”—
“Just so,” said the doctor; “poor soul, I suppose it was this one coming on that made her so—ah—captious—last night. I had very little hope of her from the moment I reached her bedside; but one comfort is that she had everything done for her that medical science could suggest. Harrison was with her in less than half an hour after she was taken, and stayed till I got there.”
“Is she—why, Fred, you talk as if—she can’t be dead!”
“She died about an hour ago, Alice. I would not let them send you any message, for, knowing how it would shock you, I wished to bring the news myself.”
Alice made no reply, but stood white and still, her hands hanging clasped before her, gazing into the fire. She could find no tear for the unloved sister-in-law, there was no grief at her heart for the loss of one so antagonistic; but the shock of her death was all the more sudden and terrible. For Alice was quite conscious of the crisis in her spiritual life that had been revealed to her on the preceding night, to which, as to all crises, physical and psychological, she had been long unconsciously drawing near.
In truth, Alice’s religion had never been to her nearly so real as the love she bore to her husband; there had been nothing between her and the Invisible, approaching or corresponding to the unfailing sympathy, the wordless comprehension and support, she found in him. Her love was real—her religion an unconscious make-believe; and reality had conquered.
Upon her realization that the creed she had learned had grown all unreal to her (that it had never been other than unreal she was not yet wise enough to know), Mrs. Randolph’s sudden passing away into the unknown came as a lightning stroke to her own house of life. Nothing else could have shown her so clearly the change in her own creed, as this death, so near herself, yet with no loving grief to hide the sharp surprise, the sudden vacancy. She was utterly silent; indeed, what was she to say? the usual platitudes had become so unutterably meaningless.
“She is better off,”—but Alice knew nothing whatever about it. “I hope she is happy!” “I trust she died at peace with God.” “May she rest in peace,”—none of these phrases would come to her lips. Only there rose before her mind a sudden sense of the dark unknown into which that soul had gone out; was it indeed to annihilation?
She turned suddenly, and put out both hands to her husband; her eyes had a frightened, lost look.
“Fred,” she cried, “what is death? is this life all? Shall we lose each other utterly one day, you and I? Is there nothing beyond the grave?”
He took her in his arms, it was all he could do for her in her sore need.
“I don’t know, my darling,” he said; “if there be, science has no power to find it. We must only love each other all the more while we live.”
“But why?” she cried, “what good will that do? it will only add to the misery of the one who is left behind. What is the use of love? or of living? unless we could die together.”
“There are others,” he said, “whom we can help. We may live for them.”
“And what claim have they upon us? If there is nothing beyond the grave, why not make the journey thither as short as possible, at least for the wretched? There is Freddy, for example, who has to suffer so much; if it is right to give him a little morphine to ease his pain for a while, why would it be wrong to give him enough to ease it forever?”
“Fortunately, there is no fear of your carrying that theory into practice,” he said, trying to smile.
“Because I am selfish,” she replied, “and cannot part with my child sooner than I must. But, Fred, there must be some truth somewhere; why should we not look for it together? There are books.”
“That is the hopeless part about it,” he answered; “there are so many books, and all so positive on their own side of the question. The theologian will prove to you just as clearly the whole scheme of salvation, as he calls it, as the scientist that nothing but matter has any real existence. For my part, there are two arguments which to me are perfectly conclusive. I ask nothing further. Whether there is or is not some sort of Blind Power in the universe, such as the great First Cause that some scientists are willing to acknowledge, does not interest me; but of the non-existence of an all-knowing, all-loving, personal God I am perfectly convinced for two reasons. First, the existence of evil in all its forms: sin, sorrow, suffering, and death. I would not allow such things in a world under my control, and a God who is less merciful than I is no God at all—for me.”
“I remember,” she said softly, “I have always known you thought like that.”
“But my second reason,” he continued, “is, if possible, even stronger. Here are you and I—yes, Alice, I too—who would give our very lives to believe in God and immortality. How are we to do it? To examine all the evidence, for and against, would take a lifetime of incessant study; and even those who have given this—beginning, too, with far more learning than we possess—have reached widely different conclusions. Well may the Book of Job say, ‘Canst thou by searching find out God?’ but the author, whoever he was, failed to draw the conclusion that, if there were a God he would not so have hidden himself.”
“I suppose you are right; at least, I don’t see how to answer you. But, surely, Fred, there is a great deal in the Bible about the truth being easy to find. All through the Old Testament it is the Jews who are turning away from God, and he who pleads with them to return; and in the New it says that God has hidden these things from the wise and prudent, and revealed them unto babes; and that only those who become as little children can enter into the kingdom of heaven.”
“That is, only those who crush down the intellect and believe blindly,” he said bitterly. “I can find no faith on those terms, Alice; let me meet annihilation, if I must, with my eyes open.”
For another moment she clung to him, with her face hidden; then she looked up very pale, but calm.
“I can live without faith,” she said quietly; “but I give you warning now, that without you and my child I could not and would not live. If death comes to me first,—well! if not”—
“You will live as long as there is any one for whom you can make the burden of life less heavy,” he said, “and so will I so far as we can control our own fate. It has been all the creed I could boast of for many years, Alice, to say, ‘I believe there are those whom I must live to help.’ I give it to you, now, in return for that of which I have robbed you; take it for what it is worth.”
“‘I believe there are those whom I must live to help,’” she repeated slowly. “It is a better creed than poor Jennie’s, Fred. ‘I believe there are those whom I must live to help!’” A sudden light came to her eyes, a smile to her lips. “I will begin with you!” she cried. “Why, how abominably selfish I am, to keep you here talking theology, when you are tired to death and half starved, I dare say.”
“My comforts are at least all ready for me,” he answered, smiling, with a glance at the tempting meal upon the table, and the coffee-pot, and little dish of fried oysters keeping hot before the fire.
“I thought you would rather have your lunch here,” she said. “Will you change your clothes first?”
“They seem to have pretty well dried on me,” he answered, “but I shall feel better for a hot bath; I am chilled to the very bone. And, meanwhile, there is some one else, Alice, love, who will need your care. Your brother asked to send poor little Pinkie here for a few days, and of course I had no wish to refuse. You will not mind the trouble, I know. The carriage will be here in a few moments.”
“Poor little Pinkie!” Alice’s eyes filled with the first tears that she had shed for Mrs. Randolph. “No, no, she will not be a trouble; but I must tell Freddy.” She paused, hesitated, and came back. “What shall I say to him, Fred? I can’t tell him that his aunt has gone to heaven. I don’t know that there is such a place.”
“She has gone into the unknown,” he replied; “but that would be nonsense to Freddy. I do not know what better name you can find, my dear, than just heaven. And if you don’t believe in golden harps and a glassy sea,—well, neither do you put much faith in the country above the bean-stalk; yet you tell Freddy about that.”
Alice went away, not quite satisfied, yet seeing no other course practically open to her than that suggested by her husband. It was a comfort that Freddy needed not now to be instructed in the nature or whereabouts of the Celestial Country. His small imagination took fire at once at the idea that Aunt Jennie had gone there; and he talked so eloquently to Pinkie of harps and crowns and angels with great white wings that, what with his conversation, and the pride and honor of paying a visit all alone, the little thing dried her tears for the mother whom she had been told she was never to see again, and was comforted until bedtime. But by bedtime Alice’s hands were so full as to promise her every opportunity to put her new creed into action.
For Dr. Richards’s hot bath had proved quite ineffectual to take the chill out of his bones. Alice found him sitting huddled over the fire, shivering with what he asserted to be only a nervous chill. He could not eat, but was insatiably thirsty, and said that his eyes bothered him; he supposed the snow had dazzled them. She tried vainly to persuade him to go to bed, until her persuasions were re-enforced by the positive orders of Dr. Harrison, who happened to come in. Before morning he was burning with fever, and tormented with all the worst agonies of inflammatory rheumatism.
Truly, it seemed that Mrs. Randolph had been right, and that an avenging God was punishing the faithless for their disloyalty to him. And yet how had this illness come? By spending and being spent for others; by rendering good for the evil rendered unto him. Has not Christ said, “Inasmuch as ye did it unto these, ye did it unto me”? Can he return evil for good?
Only a step of the way can our dull eyes see; and oftentimes that step is rough and hard, and to us looks very evil. But the evil shall pass away, the good remaineth.
It was strange what comfort and strength Alice found in her new creed, meagre though it were in comparison with the creeds of Christendom.
“I believe there are those whom I must live to help.”
Simple and practical, at least.
Logical? well, no! The human mind is, fortunately, not supremely logical; fortunately, I say, considering the readiness wherewith it adopts premises whose sole logical conclusion would be worse than the Spanish Inquisition, or the hanging of the Salem witches. Dr. Richards’s creed had come to his wife backed by the irresistible force of his life and character.
But neither of them reflected that in the verb, the little verb must, lay all they professed to deny,—an ordered universe and an ordering God.