The Love That Prevailed

by Frank Frankfort Moore

The hours which he passed in loneliness almost every day of his life, the solitary rides covering thousands of miles, his long walks without a companion, were devoted to self renunciation. He was more afraid of himself than of any enemy from without. He sometimes found himself in such a frame of mind as caused him to admire the spirit that led the priests of the heathen beliefs in the East to torture and mutilate themselves in the attainment of what appeared to them to be holiness. He knew that their way was not the right way, and the object which they strove to achieve was not a worthy one; but he could not deny the self-sacrifice and its value.

Yes, but was it not possible that self-sacrifice might, if performed ostentatiously, become only another form of self-glorification?

It was only now that this thought flashed upon him. He had walked along the cliff path for a mile or two, and soon became aware of the pangs of hunger. It was nothing for him to set out to preach without having more than a bite or two of bread, and to go fasting until the afternoon. He had never regarded this as an act of self-sacrifice. But how had he felt when some of his friends had made much of these facts, entreating him to be more mindful of his health? Had he not felt a certain pride in thinking that his health was regarded as important?

And now, when he should return to the house where he was a guest—it was the house of a Mr. Hartwell, the owner of a mine in the tin district some distance from Porthawn—would not his hours of fasting preceding and following the exertion of preaching to so great a multitude in the open air make him appear akin to a martyr in the eyes of the people with whom he might come in contact?

Nay, could he deny that he felt some vanity in the reflection that here again he would be seriously remonstrated with for his disregard of himself?

Even his orderly mind was unable to differentiate between the degrees of self-sacrifice and self-satisfaction involved in this simple question of fasting and eating, and he was troubled that his attempts to do so were not wholly successful. It was like the man that, in his hours of exhaustion, he should be dissatisfied with what was really the result of his exhaustion. This trivial self-examination was, though he did not know it, only the result of his neglect of the wants of his body. Yes, but this fact did not make it the less worrying to him.

He had been led by the charm of the day to walk farther than he had intended, and he was so exhausted that he found it necessary to rest in a dip of the cliffs above the little bay. On each side of him stretched the broken shore, a short crescent patch of sand at every dip in that long, uneven wall, and marking the outline of its curve was the white floss of the lazy ripples. Behind him was the coarse sand-herbage of the broken shore, and in front of him stretched the sea. A white bird or two hovered between the waters and the cliff summit, and far away a revenue cutter showed its white sails. Sunlight was over all. The warm air seemed imbued with the presence of God, which all might breathe and become at peace with all the world.

It came over the face of the waters, upon the face of the man who reclined upon a cushion of springy herbage that quite hid the shape of the rock at whose base it found root. The feathery touch upon his brow soothed him as a mother's hand soothes her child and banishes its distrust. He lay there and every doubt that had oppressed him vanished. He was weary and hungry, but he felt that the grace of heaven was giving him food in the strength of which he might wander in the wilderness for forty days.

He closed his eyes and with the faint hum of the little bees that droned among the blue cliff-flowers,—with the faint wash of the ripples upon the unnumbered pebbles of the beach—a sweet sleep crept over him.

When he awoke it was not with a start, but as gently as he had fallen asleep. For a moment he had a fear that he had overslept himself. He turned to look at the sun and saw standing only half a dozen yards away the girl by whose side he had walked a few mornings before to the village.