THE HIGH HILLS, AND "GOD'S MAN"
Sun hath sunk in radiant splendor,
Now the colors fade away
And the moon, with light more tender,
Sheds its silver on the bay.
Eventide is softly casting
O'er the earth a magic spell,
And a love-song, everlasting,
On the night wind seems to swell.
Deeper grow the lengthening shadows,
Darkening the heaven's blue,
One by one the stars are gleaming,
Night is nigh, would you were, too.
Donald hummed the words in his not unmelodious baritone, as he climbed up the forest path down which, twelve months before, he had rushed headlong, in blind anger.
The spell of the high, forest-clad hills, and the new-born night was upon his spirit. Pleasant anticipations filled his heart, and left no room for painful recollection as he hastened over the needle-strewn pathway on which the white radiance of the full moon, shining through the branches, made a tracery of silver and black.
Let men whose minds are governed wholly by cold commonsense, and whose souls hold no spark of vitalizing imagination, scoff at moon-witchery and lunar madness. Let them declare that the earth's haunting satellite is merely a dead world which cannot even shine with its own light. Magic it does wield. And, just as it distorts and magnifies all commonplace, familiar objects, so it twists the thoughts of men; just as it steals away the natural colors from the things of earth, and substitutes for them those of its own conception, so it alters the hues of man's meditation.
The usually exuberant Mike trotted in silence, close to his master's heels, and now and then cast suspicious glances aloft at the tall spectre things which he knew to be trees.
Donald knew that it was rather absurd of him to be toiling up the five-mile mountain path that night, when the next morning would have done just as well; but he had thankfully thrown off the shackles of civilization along with its habiliments. For two free, full weeks he meant to live like a child of the out-of-doors, and to draw a brimming supply of new energy from Mother Nature's never-failing breasts. Every moment was precious.
As he neared the Gap, his winging thoughts flew ahead to Big Jerry's cabin and to the child-woman who had so attracted him a year before. Once more he told himself that she was nothing to him, and that now, especially, he had no right to allow her, child though she were, to hold so large a place in his heart. Yet what chance has reason in competition with moonlight?
The clearing, with the cabin beyond it, came into view. The little house was likewise a victim of the prevailing necromancy, for its rough, hand-split and weatherbeaten shingles were now a shimmering olive-silver.
Mike gave voice to a joyful yelp, and tried to crowd past his owner's legs, for he had seen, or sensed, Rose even before the latter became aware of the presence of their little friend. She was standing, alone, on the outer edge of the tiny stoop, whose darkened doorway formed a black background, against which her figure appeared, cameo-like. The flooding brightness lifted her form and face, seen in profile, into sharp relief, and the shadow which it cast on the grass made her appear the more tall and slender. Grown and subtly altered she undoubtedly was, thought Donald. The girlish curves and lithesomeness had not departed; but they carried a suggestion of approaching maturity. Her wavy hair no longer hung unbound about her face, but was dressed in two braids, one of which had fallen forward across her breast. Shoes and stockings covered her legs; but the simple dress still left her neck and arms bare, and the flesh was robbed of its color and made alabaster, the golden threads stolen from the dark hair and replaced by a silver sheen, so that there was something ethereal, but startlingly beautiful, in the picture.
Holding the violently wriggling Mike in check, one hand on his collar, the other grasping his jaws, Donald stole silently forward until he had passed the corner of the cabin, and his own shadow had crept forward, and laid itself at the girl's feet.
Suddenly she perceived it, and turned with a question in her shadowy eyes. Her lips parted, then curved into the familiar magic smile, as she cried, "Oh, Doctor MacDonald. You've come."
Mike twisted free, and, with a mad bound and wiggle, threw himself on the girl, who caught him in her arms. Then, holding him against her, she somehow succeeded in extending one hand, shapely and slender, to meet the man's two eager ones.
"Oh, grandpap," she thrilled through the doorway. "Hurry out hyar. Dr. Mac hes come fer ter see ye."
A sense of vague disappointment possessed Donald as he heard her lapse into the musical, but provincial, dialect; but, seeming to read his thought that the year of study had not been able to alter it, she whispered, "I always talk like I used to, to him, for he likes it best."
"I see, and you're quite right, too," was his low-voiced reply, as he heard the old man's heavy tread crossing the bare floor within.
"Wall, wall, stranger. We air shor'ly powerful pleased fer ter welcome ye ergin," came in Big Jerry's deep and hearty voice, as he emerged from the darkness, and caught Donald's hand in the old, crushing vise.
For a few moments they all chatted happily, and then Jerry said, "Erfore I fergits hit, us wants ye ter stay up hyar this trip. Ther loft-room air yourn, an' leetle Rose hes fixed hit up special fer ye—curtains et ther window, er rag rug on ther floor, an' ther Lawd knows what else."
"Do you really want me to?" cried the newcomer in pleased surprise.
"Of course we really want you," answered the happy girl.
"Then, by Jove, I'll be only too glad to, although I had not thought of such a thing."
"I allows thet yo' kin regard this hyar cabin as yo'r home whenever yo're hyarerbouts, an' we wants fer ye ter feel thet hit air home," said the giant with simple courtesy.
"I can't tell you how much that means to me—real hospitality like that," began Donald, hesitatingly. "You know I ... I haven't any real home and haven't had ... since mother left us, and my sister was married. Of course," he added hastily, "my rooms are pleasant and comfortable, and all that; but they're only a place to work, sleep and eat in, and there isn't any of that indefinably vital something—a soul, perhaps—which makes a real home a sacred spot, no matter how big or how small it may be. I get frightfully lonely there, sometimes."
"I didn't allow thet a man could git lonely in the city," replied Jerry.
"'In the city?' My dear man, one can be twice as lonely there as any place I know of. The very life makes for shut-inness, in mind as well as body, and there are thousands and thousands of men, and women, too, there, who know scarcely a soul outside of the very few with whom their daily work brings them in contact; and they are mere acquaintances, not friends. They see only the four walls of the rooms in which they work and sleep, and the walled-in streets between the two.
"These very streets seem to me to typify the city's life—so hard, so filled with hurrying, jostling crowds of people, all equally intent upon their own narrow, selfish affairs, people who would think a fellow crazy if he spoke to them pleasantly, as you did to me the first time I saw you. There are thousands who never even lift their eyes to the narrow strips of sky between the tall buildings. They—and they only—know what real loneliness is.
"Of course I'm not one of those unfortunates," he added quickly, "for I have many friends, and am making new ones daily; but that is the atmosphere I live in fifty weeks of the year. Do you wonder that it gets on my nerves at times, and that I long to run away from it all and get into the big, open spaces in the warm heart of friendly nature?
"Do you think that I can ever feel lonesome in the forest and fields, with living things always about me which are ready to share themselves with me?"
"I reckon I haint never thought uv thet. This hyar mountain country air's whar I hev lived in contentment all my life, an' I allows thet hit's good ernough fer me ter keep on livin' in, twill I dies."
Rose remained silent, although obviously disturbed by Donald's words; but, before she could voice her thoughts, another figure quietly joined the group—a tall, stooping man, clean shaven, and with an æsthetic countenance seemingly out of its natural environment.
"Why, it's my minister man," cried Rose joyfully. "Wherever did you come from?"
"My wanderings brought me close home, and I could not pass by without calling on my two good friends in Webb's Gap."
"An' we air downright glad fer ter see ye, reverend," answered the host. "This hyar air the doctor man from the city, what leetle Rose hes told ye so much erbout."
Donald already felt drawn to the strange divine, their common interest in the girl acting as a lode-stone, and he clasped his hand with friendly pressure. The other returned it less vigorously, but no less sincerely, and Donald experienced a peculiar mesmeric thrill which startled him a little.
"Perhaps I should apologize," began Mr. Talmadge in a low voice, the timbre of which still retained the resonance of early culture. "I came on this happy scene—or at least to the corner of the house—while you were speaking of life in the city, and I could not very well help pausing and listening.
"I know your feelings only too well, Dr. MacDonald. I was born, bred and worked in New York until my health became undermined by just such influences as you mentioned; and I was forced to run away, too, and seek the hills 'whence cometh my help.'"
"And deep in your inner consciousness you don't regret the change, do you?" asked Donald.
"No. Perhaps I am selfish—a shirker—and there are times when the old call to get back where I know that the need is greatest comes like a clarion. But for myself, the disaster—which once seemed like a curse—has turned out to be a blessing, as is so often the case. I have learned a great lesson, doctor."
"What lesson?" queried Rose.
"God's," responded the minister, quietly. "It may seem strange to you, my dear, but, although I was reared in a religious family, went through a great theological school, and was the rector of a city church for ten years, I never fully knew Him until I came here."
"Why, Mr. Talmadge!" gasped the girl in astonishment, while Donald said bluntly, "Do you really believe that you know Him, now?"
"I do. Not, of course, in all the fullness of His mysterious majesty, but as a friend whose ways are no longer hidden from my eyes."
"Frankly, I wish I might say as much," said the doctor. "I, too, was brought up in a religious household, but small good it did me, for, when I became old enough to think for myself, the glaring errors and inconsistencies in my childhood belief became so apparent that I became hopeless of ever understanding the truth which might lie within that astonishing maze. I quit going to church long ago."
"Doctors are generally regarded as an atheistic lot," smiled the minister.
"That's slander. We may—in the aggregate—be agnostic.... I suppose that I am."
"I ... I don't understand," said Rose in distress, "but I don't like for to hear yo' say that, Dr. Mac."
"It may not be as bad as it sounds, my child," laughed Mr. Talmadge. "An atheist is indeed a terrible person, who doesn't believe in our heavenly Father, but an agnostic is only one who confesses that he doesn't know ... but may be quite willing to learn."
"Oh, learn ... I mean teach him, then," she said earnestly. "You are God's man and know everything about Him, Mr. Talmadge."
"Indeed I don't—far from it, and I imagine that your friend doesn't want to hear a sermon on the mount."
"I do," she cried, "there's lot of things I want to hear about, but I've always been afraid to ask you, till now."
Rather gruffly Donald added his word, "I hope that I am broad-minded enough not only to receive, but to welcome, any light on a subject which is, I imagine, the most vitally important one in life."
"Well, then, suppose we hold a little spiritual clinic for our Rose's benefit primarily, remembering that where two or three are gathered together in His name, God will be with them. And, after all, what time could be more fitting than this silent, holy night; what place more suitable than this great temple of the out-of-doors, for us simple children of His to seek understanding?"