I could understand. He was beside himself. His soul had been reft away into merciful dulness, somewhere outside his body. When the burial was over, Francis had dismissed him and walked away into the woods. Pierre followed, silently. All that day they walked, Francis unconscious that he was not alone. Then Pierre began to realize that they were going in a great circle, and that they were coming back to the grave. Night fell, and they were still walking, now away from the grave again, but always in a circle. The moon came out, and Pierre, very hungry, yet not daring to lose sight of Francis, approached him and tried to speak; the boy's eyes were wide open, unwinking, luminous. Pierre began to talk of food, and Francis struck out at him, and walked on. Pierre followed. They continued still in the same dull circle, all night long, Francis walking like a cat undeterred by branches and avoiding pitfalls with the cleverness of the insane, and the guide, wearied and stumbling. Just as the latter darkness of night came on, Francis paused, wavered a little, and Pierre caught him as he fell. He drew him upon his shoulder, and toiled back to camp with him. There he laid him upon a couch in the cabin, and poured brandy between his lips. All that day the boy slept, only stirring when Pierre roused him to administer milk or brandy; but at twilight time he moved and opened his eyes. Pierre knew he had "come back." Then the old man placed bread and meat beside him and went silently out. He had much experience, I judged, of the dignity of the soul; much knowledge, gained from lonely living, of her needs. He knew when she must be alone. Yet he watched all night in the grove, his quick ears strained for a movement of the creature within. What came next, Francis Hume only can tell.
It is two o'clock in the morning, and I am writing here in the cabin door-way. I have no light, yet I can see what I am writing. That, I remember, is not what ordinarily happens; but it seems quite natural. I must write in haste, for, as I judge, I have been crazy, and now I am sane; and I must put down something to remember, lest madness should come on again. I must have something to hold to, if I am to fall back into the great confusion and trouble of mind that have been sweeping me down like a sea. For I have learned something. It is most precious, and I must be sure to keep it. There is no doubt that I have killed my father. I was not by to tend him. When his soul was going forth, I let it go alone. I brought upon him the sharpest pangs of his mortality. But even that is well. Can I write what has befallen me, to recall it to my later mind when the vision has faded, as it may? I cling to it. I must try. First, I went down into hell. I do not know much about that. It is confused. And hell is not very important. We dig it for ourselves. Let me remember only the things of God. Then I awoke, and Pierre was feeding me. He went out, and I saw the twilight shaft of light strike across the cabin where it used to fall. But I knew everything was changed. The cabin was not real. Only I was real—and Pierre. My soul—was it my soul?—went out of the cabin, and swept across Lone Mountain to the sea, and over the sea and back again. She saw the great earth swing in space. She knew there are many worlds beside. She felt an awe of the vastness of things, and she began to be healed. Then she came back to me, and I took her in, like a dove with dew upon her wings, and she comforted me. Me? Was it she who went, or I? What is she? I do not know. But I was comforted. Then, as I lay there, vision after vision began to throng upon me, and the cabin walls lifted up, and let me see the world. And I looked upon the great balances wherein we are held, and millions of souls, uncounted souls, in myriads, like little points of light, fleeing home to God. That was it—God. That was what I had sinned and suffered for, to know Him. I saw the souls going toward Him, and an ineffable delight took hold on me because I felt that I was going, too; not my body, not even the Me that stayed in the cabin, though every impulse of me was tending fast that way. I knew a flower's feeling when its fragrance meets the sun. This was love; and immediately I understood everything that it was necessary for me to understand. I comprehended His perfect well-wishing toward us. I knew one blood ran from His heart through ours. I knew how small a thing it is to say "I suffer." I? What is I? A mote in the whole, an aching nerve in one great plexus. And the whole will some day be nourished, and we shall be healed. I do not know whether I can believe this when I read it by day; but the cabin is thronged with—radiances. I have not learned what to call them, but they are infinitely beautiful, patient, strong, and they uphold me. I cannot think they suffer with me; their wisdom is too great. But they crowd about me silently, forbearingly, divinely. They are incarnate love. I stretch out my hands to them. While they stay, I am almost happy. I do not see them, yet they shed a lustre and the soul perceives it. I have learned—what have I learned? Obedience. I must not strive nor cry. I must serve. What? I do not know. But I must serve, even in the dark and enchained. I am content to grope, with my eyes bandaged. Content? No, this is joy. I have tasted God. I drink no other spring.
I have read this over. It is all wrong, all poor and pale; I have told nothing. Yet the visions—they are in my soul. I throw my arms about them and hold them fast. Perhaps even they must be withdrawn. Perhaps it is a part of my service to lose my way. Even that I accept. I reach my hand for the cup—thirstily. I drink, and to the Unknown God. What is He? I am contented not to know. What am I? It is His will I should not know. Only this: the soul is perfect, indestructible, and she goes to lave herself in Him.
The next morning, said Pierre, Francis made swift preparations for going away. They were few, for he wished to retain nothing belonging to his former life. He took last long looks about the walls, he studied the pictures as if he would learn them by heart, and laid his hand upon one and another of the things that had been dear to him. Then he touched fire to the building, and stood by outside, waiting while it burned. Pierre very plainly understood why he did it, though he could not tell. He seemed to distrust the quality of my intelligence because I asked primitive questions. Was it because Francis feared marauders? Was it some idea of sacrifice to his father's memory? Was it because he felt himself unworthy to retain the precious surroundings of a life to which he had been false? As I became insistent, Pierre grew dumb. The cabin burned, he said. Francis watched it. Then he went away. He never came back.
In the old man's countenance I fancied I could trace, under a veiling patience, the lines of an immortal grief. Francis, I could understand, had been the child of his heart, his one human love. It had taken all the great austerity of the forest to teach him to bear that loss. Yet you could see from his face, as in the faces of so many who suffer with dignity, that he was not destitute of hope.
It has been surprisingly difficult to follow the after-track of Francis Hume. For those who knew him have only to say that he disappeared. But he disappeared merely by settling down at their own door: the back-door where carriages never come. He selected a very poor and sordid street in the city where he had met his loss, and betook himself there to live; not, I believe, with any idea of work among the poor, but because he had probed life to the bottom in his own experience, and he felt constrained to seek a lower depth. He had acquired that passionate abnegation which is the child of grief; not undervaluing the joys of time, he had learned that they were not for him. Now his life became very simple, very humble, in the expectancy of its attitude; for he leaned upon God, and waited until he should be told what to do. There are strange, vivid memories of him among the people with whom he walked. Evidently he gave munificently, yet from such austerity of life, and with such directness of speech and action, that few presumed to bleed him further. In that same dark region remain to-day strange touches of magnificence and beauty; a great picture here, a glowing curtain there, dowered with a richness the present owners may not understand, although they dimly feel it. He had no formulated idea of charity, no recognition of the fact that there are theories of doing good. All that can be discovered about his later life is that he was much beloved, and that he loved much; the latter, from an aching sense of the pain common to all souls, a sense of spiritual kinship. At least, he was spared many of the tawdry temptations of youth; for grief had touched him so near that she had opened his eyes to the foolishness of vain desires. He could watch the fluttering of the garment of happiness without wondering if happiness were really underneath. He had seen the real; thenceforth, for him, there was no illusion. He simply lived, and shared when the inner voice told him to share; and as it afterwards proved, he made his will, and left his fortune to buy great tracts of pine woods for a camping-ground forevermore. But that does not pertain to his story. Sufficient to know that the trust has been very wisely administered, and that hundreds of squalid creatures were last summer turned loose there.
Meantime Zoe Morton was fulfilling to the letter her own cynical prophecy of an unhappy marriage. There is no doubt whatever about the life she led with Captain Morton. He was a frank materialist. Every man has his price, said he; every woman also. The baser breed of vices are as unavoidable as any other part of the earthly scheme. Eat and drink—and die when you must. He was kind enough to Zoe in the manner of a man who would not wantonly hurt his horse or dog; he would have been kinder had she not rebelled. But after the manner of her sex and nature, when they wed with Bottom, she went hysterical-mad. He got tired—and he rode away. Then, after five years of marriage and two of acute invalidism, thus she wrote Francis Hume:—