Beyond the Black Waters

by A. L. O. E.

Oscar assented by a silent inclination of the head. At first he could not utter a word, the revulsion from utter despair was so great. Io made up for her husband’s silence by giving fervent thanks to her deliverer in broken Karen, as she resumed her seat on her litter.

“It was all God’s doing, mem sahib,” said Ko Thah Byu in gentle tones, which curiously contrasted with his loud, impassioned address to the Shans. “Ko Thah Byu was on his way to Mouang, hoping to reach it before night should make the forest path dark. Ko Thah Byu sat by yon ruin, and read his book, and fell asleep, like the man in the pilgrim-story of whom thepadri [clergyman] tells. Ko Thah Byu rose, and forgot his book, and went on his way, and trod many steps towards Mouang ere his loss was known. Karen servant of Christ had to go back; but he found the book, and now the reason why he lost it is clear as the moon in the sky.Karen at Mouang would not know of the white mem’s trouble; Karen in the wood could give help. All was right—all is ever right that our Father God does for His children.”

“All was indeed ordered in mercy,” observed Io to her husband as he walked beside her litter, which was borne on again by the Karens. “My Oscar, at the worst, the very worst, I thought that the Lord would come to our help. I prayed very hard in my terror, and I am sure that you prayed too.”

“No, I did not pray,” was the gloomy reply, which astonished and distressed the young wife.

“O Oscar! I felt as if the Lord’s loving hand were holding me up,” she exclaimed.

“You saw the hand stretched forth to save; I saw the hand upraised to strike.”

Oscar had no sooner uttered the unguarded words than he wished them unsaid. The party were passing under the deep shadow of the dark trees; the torches were some way in front. Oscar could not see on his wife’s face the effect of the sentence which had escaped from him in a moment of anguish; still less could he know its effect on her mind, for Io uttered not anotherword until Mouang was reached. The exclamation of Oscar had been to her like a fearful revelation—a sudden gleam on a dark subject, but such a gleam as a flash of forked lightning might give.

“Oscar not pray—at such a moment of peril not be able to pray!” so ran Io’s troubled current of thought. “He—the noble, the good, the pious—he could only see our loving Father’s hand upraised to strike! What fearful mystery lies beneath this? We have long seen my husband’s sadness, and made guesses—oh, what wrong guesses!—as to its cause. What could so shut out a Christian from communion with God but sin? My beloved one’s life is as pure as mortal’s can be; there can be nothing in the present to weigh so heavily on his conscience as to crush out the spirit of prayer. Can it be possible that there has been something in the past which to one so sensitive to the least touch of evil, one who so abhors the smallest error, may appear to be a very serious sin? Oh that Oscar would confide all to his wife, to one who would not love him less whatever he might have done!”

Then Io’s thoughts fell naturally into the channel of prayer. She had very often before pleaded for her husband—she had wrestled in intercession at the time of his illness, and again and again after her marriage—but never with more intense, agonized earnestness than she did now, with her litter for an oratory, and the black, sombre night as a curtain around her. Her head bowedon her clasped hands, and the tears wetting her pale cheeks, Io prayed in the gloomy forest. Then suddenly the litter emerged into moonlight, and the calm holy brightness around seemed like an earnest of answer to prayer.

“We are going for the third time to Mouang,” thought Io as she leant back in her litter and closed her eyes, Oscar thought in sleep. “It seems as if some invisible cord drew us to a spot of which yesterday we knew not even the name. May it be that some strange blessing awaits us there. May it be that the guiding Hand which is leading us on in this land of strangers is taking us to a place where my Oscar’s darkness will pass away, and where he will see and know that goodness and mercy have followed, and will follow him still, all the days of his life.”