THE CONFLICT BETWEEN FAITH AND LOVE
About that time of the year an aspect of great, glowing beauty and a feeling of deep, sweet peace always comes to this beautiful, pastoral country.
The long, warm days are then of the rarest gold, and the short, cool nights are of the purest silver. The ripened grain has been garnered, and its golden sheaves no longer tent the rich, broad lands. The tall, tasselling corn now flows free in rippling, murmuring, ever widening silvery seas. The ocean of the vast tobacco fields rolls and rolls its mighty billows of deepening green into the darkening purple haze of the misty horizon. The wooded hillsides are now very still, and dark blue shadows linger all day among the trees—which stir scarcely a leaf—waiting to creep down toward the village at nightfall to meet the snow-white mist loitering over the resting meadows. The birds, too, are resting, half asleep in the heart of the ancient wood; they sing more seldom and their songs are sweeter and softer and come forth touched with a tender melancholy. The very shrilling of the crickets in the long grass sounds less shrill, and seems to rise and fall with the waves of heat. The butterflies, clustering on the commonest wayside weeds like tropical flowers, hardly move their dazzling wings of yellow and white, waving them as languorously as a flower unfurls its petals. And then—in those radiant days—the thistledown also softly spreads its pinions of gossamer silver, and, borne on the breath of the south breeze, it wings its weightless way over all the snow-masses of the elder bloom, and burnishes its lacelike whiteness into the luminous border of the veil which the midsummer heaven lends to the midsummer earth.
The honeysuckle over Tom Watson's window was thinning under the heat and bronzing under the drouth. Its leaves, green-yellow, drifted languidly down to the browning grass of the neglected lawn. So that there was scarcely a cool shadow left to shield the wretchedness of the stricken man, sitting day after day in the spot to which destiny had chained him; or one to cover the sadness of the wife, keeping her hopeless vigil by his side, in open view for every passer-by to see. It was a sight to wring any heart, and the Oldfield people were always kind to one another and always helpful—as simple, poor people are everywhere. But in this sad case there seemed no way to help, nothing that any one could do. No one might penetrate the dumb horror of the sick man's awful gaze, straining all the desolate day through, as long as the light lasted, toward some unseen and unreachable thing, as a wild creature strains dumbly at its chain. No one could pass the silence of Anne's reserve to share, to lessen, or even completely to comprehend the conflict ceaselessly waging within the high, narrow walls of her spirit.
Up to the beginning of this strife Anne's heart and soul had gone more nearly abreast, more evenly side by side, than most women's hearts and souls are able to go through life. The one nearly always goes before the other in every true woman's breast. And the path of Anne's spirit was very narrow, much narrower than that in which most women tread; so that, at this last steep pass, there was not room for both to go together, and thus her heart and her soul were forced to strive, the one with the other, for the right of way. There was never a moment's doubt in Anne's single, simple, and most strenuous mind as to which should lead. Now, as always, the road between right and wrong lay straight, clear, and open before her feet. There never was the slightest danger of her wandering or wavering. But oh, the agonized wringing of her heart, the almost unendurable travail of her soul—in this death struggle for her husband's salvation! And yet she suffered the anguish unflinchingly, her very love forbidding her conscience to yield, to barter the hope of the life everlasting for the relief of a few broken years. And every day the conflict grew fiercer as her husband's growing strength increased his piteously powerless resistance to restraint, and fed the flame of his desire for cards, now as strong as any ruling passion ever was in death. Impassive as Anne was by nature, she used sometimes to wonder if she would be able to bear it any longer and live. Her heart was breaking, her soul was almost at bay, so desperate was the strife between the two.
It is one of life's cruel ironies that the deepest feeling must often find trivial and even absurd expression. In poor Anne's first blind casting about for something to divert her husband's thoughts, in her first futile trying to remember what he used to like,—and she had known very little of his tastes in the days of his strength,—the recollection of seeing him read the county newspaper, which was published weekly in a neighboring town, came suddenly out of the mists of her memory. She sent for the paper and tried to read it to him, beginning at the top line of the first column and going straight through to the last line on the last page, fearing lest she might miss the article which he most wanted to hear. But Anne was not a good reader, and a clouded mind and a racked body do not make a patient listener. Tom gave no sign and he did not try to speak; but Anne saw his miserable, unresting eyes wander away to the far-off purpled hills, beyond which lay the free, bright world; and his thoughts—but who dare wonder whither his thoughts wandered?
After the failure in the reading of the newspaper, Anne turned to books. There were no new books in Oldfield, had poor Anne known the new from the old, and there were few of any kind. Miss Judy had more than any one else, and she was eager in offering all that had belonged to her father, as well as the handful of more recent ones gathered by her own simple tastes; and these last she urged upon Anne as being lighter and more cheerful, and consequently more suited to the cheering of an invalid. She was quite sure, so she said, smiling to hearten Anne, that Tom would like to hear about Becky; he had always liked lively, good-hearted people—like himself. But Anne instinctively chose the major's books instead, shrinking from all lightness as unsuited to her husband's need, and believing, as a woman of her type usually believes, that a man is most interested in what she herself least understands.
When the reading of the dry old books had failed even more completely, if possible, than the reading of the newspaper, Anne tried to talk to her husband; and that was the hardest of all. She had always been a silent woman, well named "still-tongued"; and now that her sad heart lay in her bosom like lead, she found less and less to say, so that this last attempt was the most complete and the saddest of her many repeated defeats. It was then, when at the end of her own resources, that she held to Sidney's hand, and asked with her appealing eyes for the help which she knew not how to beg with her lips. After this Sidney went every day to see Tom, and told him, as amusingly as she could tell anything, of everything that was going on, no matter whether he listened or not. And she also sent Doris, who went often (taking Miss Judy's guitar at that little lady's suggestion) to sing to the invalid, and who was careful to choose her gayest songs and to play nothing less cheerful than the Spanish fandango; and it really seemed, once in a while, as if a light came into the sick man's darkened gaze as it rested upon the girl as she tinkled the old guitar, with the broad blue ribbon falling around her beautiful shoulders.
The whole village was, in truth, unwearying in its kindness all the long days, through all those long months; but there were, nevertheless, the lonely hours of the endless nights to be passed alone, when the desperate husband and the despairing wife dumbly faced the appalling future,—a burning, unlighted, empty desert,—stretching perhaps through many terrible years. And even then Anne stood firm, with her sad, steady eyes ever on the white heights which she saw beyond the black gulf, wherein she strove perpetually with the powers of darkness for her husband's soul.
She never left him now for a moment, night or day, except when there was preaching in her own church and her faith required the "breaking of bread"; and at rare long intervals to go to prayer-meeting, when she felt her strength failing and hoped to find in the prayers of others new strength for her own ceaseless petitions. One night of midsummer, when the bell began to ring for prayer-meeting, she felt that she must go. She accordingly arose—reluctantly as she always left him—and went into the bedroom and put on her quakerish bonnet. Then she came back and stood before her husband, seeking wistfully to do something more for his comfort before leaving him, as she never forgot to try to do. She turned the cushions at his back to make them softer, and moved the pillows behind his head so that it might rest easier, and straightened the cover over his powerless knees. These poor things, which she always did, were all that she ever could do. She would return soon, as soon as she could, she said, as she always said, bending down to press her pale lips to his scarred forehead. At the gate she stopped and lingered, looking back, as she always looked, sorely loath still to leave him even for an hour of uplifting prayer.
Night was near. The last red gold of the sunset had paled from the highest, farthest hilltop, where the graveyard lay. The tombstones—the new white ones that stood so straight, the older gray ones that leaned, the oldest brown ones that had fallen—all were dim now in the soft glory of the afterglow, as many of the cold, hard things of this world are softened by the tender light from the world above. The dusk was already creeping down the darkling arches of the wooded hillsides. Mists were already arising from the low-lying meadows, trailing long white cloud-fleeces, all starred with fireflies, thus making a new heaven of the old earth.
Through the gloaming and the stillness Anne's lonely figure went steadily, swiftly onward toward the church. Lynn Gordon noted the tense paleness and the strange exaltation of her still face, when he met and passed her on the big road, faint as the light was, and the sight of it touched him, though his own mind was lightly at peace and his own heart was over-flowing with thoughtless happiness. The impression of suffering that her face had given him was still in his mind when he drew near the window beside which the sick man sat, and because of it, or some other motive that he did not stop to fathom, he suddenly stood still, and after a hesitating pause, and a longing glance toward the silver poplars, he opened the gate and crossed the yard and went to the window to speak to Tom Watson. Nothing was farther from his thoughts than any intent of going into the house—as he told the doctor afterwards when speaking of what followed.
"It was like mesmerism. I have not the vaguest idea of how it really happened. His awful eyes drew me, when I didn't want to go. They dragged me into that house as if a giant hand had been laid upon my collar. The first thing that I knew the negro boy who waits on Watson had set out a table and put the lamp on it, and had laid a pack of cards between him and me." The young man shuddered at the recollection. "I hope I may never again see anything like that poor wretch's face when his palsied hands first touched the cards which I dealt him. I tried to remind myself that there couldn't be any harm in such a game and that there might be some good. But to see such a passion as his for gambling looking out of a dead man's face is a sight which I hope never to look upon again."
The lamplight shone far down the big road that night, and Anne saw it almost as soon as she left the meeting-house on her lonely way home. At the sight her heavy heart seemed to leap as if it would escape from its cell of pain; and then, faint with deadly fear, it seemed to fall back as though it could never beat again. Too near to fainting to stand, she sat down on the roadside, and remained without moving for a long time. She was all alone in the darkness, no one else was going her way; and no one passed along the deserted thoroughfare. She knew at once what the streaming lamplight meant; and she tried to think what was best to do, now that the worst was come. She arose tremblingly at last, when she had rallied strength enough, and she went on feebly through the still blackness of the night, like a woman suddenly stricken with great age. She did not know that she was weeping, and the great, slow, heavy tears of the rarely moved fell unheeded down her white cheeks. The gate was open, as Lynn Gordon had left it, and she entered the yard noiselessly, passing the window like an unseen shadow and with an averted face. On the steps at the back of the house she sank down almost prone and lay motionless, hardly conscious, she knew not for how long. The heavy tears still fell silently and unnoticed, as the hardest rain falls without storm. She was trying to think, but she could not; she could do nothing but pray. And she prayed—praying as one having great faith does pray when a tidal wave from life's troubled sea sweeps over a stranded soul. For Anne's faith stood, even now, firm as a mighty rock anchored to the foundations of the earth. And through all the darkness and turmoil of this supreme spiritual stress a single ray of white light shone steadily as a beacon to her tossed spirit. The abomination had not come through any weakness of hers; her faith had not yielded to her love.
The next perfect day had worn slowly to another glorious sunset when Anne went again down the big road, but this time toward the Gordon place. Lynn saw her coming, and he arose from his seat on the porch, where he chanced to be sitting alone with his cigar, and went to meet her, thinking how foolish it was for him to be smitten at the first sight of her by a sense of guilt and a painful conviction of having done her an injury. He tried to throw off the feeling with a smile, as he stood holding open the gate for her to enter.
There was no answering smile on Anne's pale face, yet its perfect calmness and the steadiness of her clear gaze reassured him somewhat. Her voice also was quite calm and steady when she said that she could not come in to see his grandmother, as he invited her to do; and after a momentary hesitation added that she had come solely to give him a message from her husband—one that she could not send by any one else.
"Tom has sent me to ask if you will play cards with him again to-night," she said deliberately, in a curiously level tone, as if weighing every word, and with her clear eyes fixed with singular intensity on the young man's face.
"Why—of course I will—I'll be delighted to," Lynn responded eagerly, with much relief. He had not expected her to say anything of this kind. "But, my dear Mrs. Watson, you needn't have taken the trouble to come all this distance yourself to ask me. I should have come willingly, no matter who had brought the request. Mr. Watson had only to tell me when he wished me to come."
"That is why I came. I wanted to make sure that you would come just the same, whether I asked you or not," said Anne, still looking at him with her luminous clearness of gaze, the white light behind her eyes shining high and bright.
"Certainly," he replied quickly, made uneasy by her look, though he knew not why and did not in the least understand what was in the mind of this quiet woman of few words.
She stood silent for a moment, so frail, so pale, under the gloom of the low, dark boughs of the cypress tree, that she seemed more spirit than flesh. Then she silently turned away her clear eyes, in which sorrow lay heavy as stones at the bottom of a still crystal pool. She stood for a moment silently looking far over the shadowed fields, above which the white banners of mist were already afloat on the evening breeze. Her inscrutable gaze then wandered toward the cloud mountains towering in the west, their snowy summits rifted by rivers of molten gold, and flooding the peaceful earth with unearthly beauty.
"Until I knew whether anything that I could say or do would make any difference—about your coming—I could not see my way," she said, turning back, her strange eyes again looking straight into his perplexed eyes. "Now that you have told me, I must do what is right—as nearly as I can."
"I don't understand," faltered the young man. "Would you like me to come with you now—at once? I am quite ready."
"I can't let you—or any one—do for my husband what I am not willing to do for him myself. I can't ask another to commit sin for him in my stead. If it must be done, it is I who must do it—not any one else."
She spoke calmly, but with infinite sadness, and her pale face turned a shade paler, if it could be paler than it had been when she first appeared beneath the gloomy cypress boughs.
The young man was startled, bewildered, touched. He no longer felt like smiling at Anne's taking the matter seriously; there was no longer anything absurd in her attitude. His impulsive heart, always quick to see and to respond to the real, the fine, and the high, filled now with a sudden rush of sympathy for this quiet woman with the white face and the spare speech, for all her narrow mind and her stern faith.
"But, my dear madam, you don't know how to play cards, do you?" he protested confusedly, at a loss what to say or to do.
"No," said Anne, with an involuntary movement of shrinking. "But I thought—I can't see my way. It is the first time. I don't seem to be able to tell right from wrong. But I thought that if—if you would teach me—that is if it wouldn't be wrong for me to ask you—even to do that!"
"How could it be wrong?" he said gently. "I have never thought that there was any harm in card-playing merely for amusement. I will gladly teach you what I know, which isn't a great deal, nor hard to learn."
"The path is dark before my feet. I can only stumble on till the light be given," murmured Anne, as if thinking aloud, even as though she were praying.
"Let's go now," said Lynn, taking a sudden resolution. "If you are not yet satisfied, we can talk it all over as we walk along."
Anne assented silently; they passed out from beneath the shadow of the cypress tree and went on their way up the deserted, darkened big road, but neither found another word to say. The light of the lamp, awaiting the game on the sick man's table, already shone far to meet them, and when its beams fell on Anne's face Lynn turned his eyes away.
But she did not falter; she led the way through the gate and straight into the room where that awful, dumb figure sat, striving to shuffle the cards with its poor palsied hands, and with the gambler's terrible eagerness flaming in his eyes. Anne laid off her bonnet, and without speaking took the player's place opposite her husband.
Lynn was as silent as Anne herself, but he quietly placed himself, standing, beside her, thinking as he did this and glanced at her that the look of exaltation on Anne's white, still face must have been the look that the martyrs wore when they entered the arena to confront the wild beasts. He felt awed by the solemnity of the scene. He hardly dared move or speak, it so weighed upon him, but he explained the rules and the terms of the game as simply and as briefly as he could. He never forgot the sudden dilation of Anne's eyes and the dimness that followed, as though the white light behind them had suddenly flared high before going out, when he first put the cards in her hands and the game began.
"You must draw—you draw to a straight flush. Mr. Watson stands pat," said Lynn, in a hushed tone, feeling as if he were desecrating some holy place—starting at the sound of his own voice as though it sounded through a cathedral.
"I draw to a straight flush. Mr. Watson stands pat," repeated Anne's pale lips, as a pious soul in extremity might murmur a Latin prayer which it did not understand.
"Now you raise him," prompted Lynn.
"Now I raise you," echoed Anne.
"Ah, he calls you and takes the pot."
"He calls me and takes the pot."
Thus begun, the game went on by surer degrees through the terrible hours of the horrible night, till a later bedtime than Tom Watson had known since he had ceased to be the keeper of his own time. The next morning it was resumed as soon as breakfast was over, and continued day after day and night after night. The teacher wearied after the first day, though he came oftener than he might have been expected to come, since he was young and happy, and there were other and pleasanter things drawing him away. But Anne learned fast—faster, perhaps, than she had ever learned anything else. There are few things that the slowest-witted woman cannot learn when her whole heart and soul hang upon the learning. It was therefore not long before she could play alone, after a fashion, and from that time on she played ceaselessly through every waking moment, stopping only for the meals that neither husband nor wife could eat. So that every morning Anne sat down to the card-table, silently imploring pardon for the sin which she was about to commit; every night she lay wearily down on her sleepless bed, praying for forgiveness for the sin which she had committed during the day. And always Anne played with the unaltered belief—firm as her belief in the plan of salvation—that she staked on every game the relief of her husband's body against the saving of his soul.