The Redemption of David Corson

by Charles Frederic Goss

With an instinct like that of a wild creature she made her way swiftly towards the great forest which lay at a little distance from the outskirts of the village.

Her ignorance, her inexperience, her sadness and her beauty would have stirred the hardest heart to compassion. Arrived at the point where she was to confront the great spiritual problems of existence, she might almost as well have been the first woman who had ever done so, for she knew nothing of the experiences of others who had encountered them, and she had scarcely heard an echo of the great life-truths which seers have been ages in discovering. She had to sound her way across the perilous sea of thought without any other chart than the faded parchment of the gypsy, and those few incomprehensible words which she had heard from the lips of the young Quaker.

It is good for us that upon this vast and unknown sea of life, God's winds and waves are wiser and stronger than the pilots, and often bring our frail crafts into havens which we never sought! Perhaps the act which Pepeeta was about to perform had more ethical and spiritual value than the casual observer would suppose, because of the perfect sincerity with which she undertook its performance. No priestess ever entered an oracle, no vestal virgin a temple, nor saint a shrine with more reverence than she felt, as she passed into the silence of this primeval forest.

Neither David nor Pepeeta knew anything of each other's movements, but they started upon their different errands at almost the same moment and were pursuing parallel courses with only a low ridge of hills between them. Each was following the brightest light that had shone upon the pathway of life. Both were absorbed with the highest thoughts of which they were capable. As invisible planets deflect the stars from their orbits, these two were imperceptibly diverting each other from the way of duty. The experiences of this beautiful morning were to color the lives of both forever.

As soon as Pepeeta had escaped from the immediate environments of the village, she gave herself wholly to the task of gathering those ingredients which were to constitute the mixture she planned to offer to her god. She first secured a cricket, a lizard and a frog, and then the herbs and flowers which were to be mingled with them. Thrusting them all into a little kettle which swung on her arm, she surrendered herself to the silent and mysterious influences of the forest. At the edge of the primeval wilderness a solemn hush stole over her. She entered its precincts as if it were a temple and she a worshiper with a votive offering. Threading her way through the winding aisles of the great cathedral, she was exalted and transported. The fitful fever cooled in her veins. She absorbed and drew into her own spirit the calm and silence of the place, and she was in turn absorbed and drawn into the majestic life around her. The distinctively human seemed to slip from her like a garment, and she was transformed into a creature of these solitudes. Her movements resembled those of a fawn. Her great, gazelle-like eyes peered hither and thither, as if ever upon the watch for some hidden foe. It was as if her life in the habitations of men had been an enforced exile, and she had now returned to her native haunts.

As she penetrated more and more deeply into the wood, her confidence increased; she stepped more firmly, removed her hat, shook out her long black tresses, listened to the songs of birds piping in the tops of trees, and exulted in the consciousness of freedom and of kinship with these natural objects. With a sudden and impulsive movement, she drew near to the smooth trunk of a great beech, put her arms around it, laid her cheek against it and kissed the bark. She was prompted by the same instinct which made St. Francis de Assisi call the flowers "our little sisters,—" an inexplicable sense of companionship and fraternity with living things of every kind.

Her swift footsteps brought her at last to the summit of a low line of hills, and she glided down into an unpeopled and shadow-haunted valley through which ran a crystal stream. Perceiving the fitness of the place for her purpose, she hastened forward smiling, and, heated with her journey, threw herself down by the side of the brook and plunged her face into its cool and sparkling waters. Then she lifted her head and carried the water to her lips in the palm of her dainty hand, and as she drank beheld the image of her face on the surface of a quiet little pool. Small wonder that she stooped to kiss the red lips which were mirrored there! So did the fair Greek maidens discover and pay tribute to their own loveliness, in the pure springs of Hellas.

Refreshed by the cooling draught, the priestess now addressed herself to her task. Gazing for an instant around the majestic temple in which her act of worship was to be performed, she began like some child of a long gone age to rear an altar. Selecting a few from the many boulders that were strewn along the edge of the stream, she arranged them so as to make an elevated platform upon which she heaped dry leaves, brushwood and dead branches. Over it she suspended a tripod of sticks, and from this hung her iron kettle. Drawing from her pocket flint and steel, she struck them together, dropped a spark upon a piece of rotten wood, purred out her pretty cheeks and blew it into a flame. As the fire caught in the dry brushwood and began to leap heavenward, she followed it with her great brown eyes until it vanished into space. Her spirit thrilled with that same sense of awe and reverence which filled the souls of primitive men when they traced the course of the darting flames toward the sky. In the presence of fire, some form of worship is inevitable. Before conflagrations our reveries are transformed into prayers. The silently ascending tongues of flame carry us involuntarily into the presence of the Infinite.

Filling her kettle with water from the running brook, she stirred into it the herbs, the berries, the lizard, the frog and the cricket. This part of her work completed, she sat down upon a bed of moss, drew forth the sacred parchment and read its contents again and again.

"When the cauldron steams, dance about the fire and sing this song. As the last words die away Matizan will leap from the flames and reveal to thee the future."