A Furnace of Earth

by Hallie Erminie Rives

On a sudden the blurred sea-view was swallowed up. The wind swooped, grasping at his ankles. It picked up pebbles and flung them, howling, against his body. They stung like heavy hail. It snapped off unwilling twigs from the cringing bushes and dashed them into the childish face. But he did not retreat. What was the wind that it should force him back! A mighty determination was in his little soul. His teeth were tight clenched, and his legs ached with the strain. The blast caught away his breath and he turned his back to it. At the moment it seemed to lull, tempting him to go its way, but he would not yield.

Then the tempest gathered all its forces and hurled them spitefully, hatefully against him, barring, lashing him cruelly, thrusting him backward. He dropped upon his knees in the path, giving not an inch. The wind, sopped with heavy rain, fell upon him bodily. He stretched himself flat, winding his fingers among the roots of the wiry grasses, struck down, bruised, but still unconquered.

A lone, pied gull, careening sidelong through the wind-rifts, roused in him a helpless frenzy of anger and resentment. He clenched his tiny fist and shook it at the sky, choking, gasping, sobbing, great tears of impotent rage and mortification blown across his cheeks.

FIRE.

The red-gold of the sun still warmed the late summer dusk. The fading light sifted between the curtains of the window and touched lovingly the checkered coverlid, moulding into soft outline the rounded little limbs beneath. The long hair spread goldenly across the pillow, and the wide brown eyes were open.

Old Anne was going to die—old Anne with the ugly wrinkled face and bony fingers from which all the children ran. She was going to die that night. Margaret had heard it whispered among the servants. That very same night while she herself was asleep in bed! Her soul was going to leave her body and fly up to God.

She wondered how it would look, but she knew it would be very beautiful. Its back would not be bent, nor its face drawn with shining burn-scars. It would be young and straight, and it would have wings—long, white wings, such as the angels had in the big stained-glass window over the choir-box in the chapel. It would have a ring of light around its head, such as the moon had on misty evenings. It would go just at the moment when old Anne died, and those who watched close enough might see. Would it speak? Or would it go so swiftly that it could only smile for a good-by? She wondered if its eyes would be kindly and blue, not dim and watery as Anne’s had been. Her own face was smoother and prettier than Anne’s, but her eyes were dark. Angels always had blue eyes. Its face would be turned up toward heaven, where it was going, and its wings would make a soft, whispering sound, like a pigeon’s when it starts to fly. One would have to be very quick, but if one were there at just the right minute, one could see it.

Oh, if she only could! She felt quite sure she would not be afraid of Anne then, knowing that she was just going to be an angel! If they would only let her! She was so little, and they would be watching, so that maybe they would not notice her. Perhaps she could slip in quietly on tiptoe, and then she would see a real shining soul, such as she herself had inside of her, and which she loved to imagine sometimes looked out of her eyes at her from the looking-glass. A breathless eagerness seized her, and she sat up in the bed, hugging her knees and resting her chin upon them.

She listened a moment; the house was very still. Then she threw down the covers, and jumped in her bare feet to the floor. She sat down on the rug in her white nightgown, and pulled on her stockings with nervous haste, and her shoes, leaving them unbuttoned and flapping. Then she slipped into her muslin dress, fastening it behind at the neck and waist, and opened the door, tugging at the big brass knob, and quaking at its complaining creaks. No one was in sight, and the little figure, with its bright floating hair and rosy skin showing between its shoulders like a belated locust, stole fearfully down the dim stairway, along the deserted hall, and sidling through the half-opened door, stepped out among the long-fingered glooms of the standing shrubbery.