The Re-Creation of Brian Kent

by Harold Bell Wright

RE-CREATION.

From the very day of his decision, to which he had been so unexpectedly helped by Judy, Brian Kent was another man. The gloomy, despondent, undecided spirit that was the successor of the wretched creature that Judy had helped to Auntie Sue's that morning was now succeeded by a cheerful, hopeful, contented man, who went to his daily task with a song, did his work with a smile and a merry jest, and returned, when the day was done, with peace in his heart and laughter on his lips.

As the days of the glorious Ozark autumn passed, Brian's healthful, outdoor work on the timbered mountain-side brought to the man of the cities a physical grace and beauty he had lacked,—the grace of physical strength and the beauty of clean and rugged health. The bright autumn sun and the winds that swept over the many miles of tree-clad hills browned his skin; while his work with the ax developed his muscles and enforced deep breathing of the bracing mountain air, thus bringing a more generous supply of richer blood, which touched his now firmly rounded cheeks with color.

The gift of humor and the faculty of quaint and witty conversational twists, with the genius of storytelling that was his from his Irish mother, made quick friends for him of the mountain neighbors who welcomed this new pupil of their old school-teacher with whole-hearted pleasure, and quoted his jests and sayings throughout the country with never-failing delight. And Judy,—it is not too much to say that Judy became his most ardent admirer and devoted slave.

But the dear old mistress of the little log house by the river alone recognized that these outward changes in the human wreck that the river had brought to her were but manifestations of a more potent transformation that was taking place in the man's inner life; and it was this inner change that filled the teacher's loving heart with joy, and which she watched with keen and delighted interest.

It was not, after all, a new life that was coming to this man, Auntie Sue told herself; it was his own old and more real life that was reassuring itself. It was the real Brian Kent that had been sojourning in a far country that was now coming home to his own. It was the wealth of his heart and mind and soul which had been deep-buried under an accumulation of circumstances and environment that was now being brought to the surface.

Might it not be that Auntie Sue's genius for absorbing beauty and making truth her own had, in her many years of searching for truth and beauty in whatever humanity she encountered, developed in her a peculiar sensitiveness? And was it not this that had made her feel instinctively the real nature of the man in whom a less discerning observer would have recognized nothing worthy of admiration or regard? Without question, it was the true,—the essential,—the underlying,—elements in the character of the absconding bank clerk that had aroused in this remarkable old gentlewoman the peculiar sense of kinship—of possession—that had determined her attitude toward the stranger. The law that like calls to like is not less applicable to things spiritual than to things material. The birds of a feather that always flock together are not of necessity material birds of material feathers.

Nor was Brian Kent himself unconscious of his Re-Creation. The man knew what he was, as every man knows deep within himself the real self that is. And that was the horror of the situation which had set him adrift on the river that night when, in his last drunken despairing frenzy, he had left the world with a curse in his heart and had faced the black unknown with reckless laughter and a profane toast. It is to be doubted if there can be a hell of greater torment than that experienced by one who, endowed by nature with a capacity for great living, is betrayed by the very strength of his genius into a situation that is intolerable of his real self, and is forced, thus, to a continuous self-crucifixion and death.

In his new environment the man felt the awakening of this self which he had mourned as dead. Thoughts, emotions, dreams, aspirations, which had, as he believed, been killed, he found were not dead, but only sleeping; and in the quickening of their vitality and strength he knew a joy as great as had been his despair.

The beauty of nature, that had lost its power of appeal to his sodden soul, now stirred him to the very depth of his being. The crisp, sun-sweet air of the autumn mornings, when he went forth with his ax to the day's clean labor, was a draught of potent magic that set every nerve of him tingling with delight. The woodland hillside, where he worked, was a wonderland of beautiful creations that inspired a thousand glowing fancies. Sometimes, at his heavy task, he would pause for a moment's rest, and so would look out and away over the vast expanse of country that from his feet stretched in all its charm of winding river and wooded slopes, and tree-fringed ridges to the far, blue sky-line; and the very soul of him would answer to the call as he had thought he never could answer again. The very clouds that drifted past on their courses to unseen ports beyond the hills were freighted with meaning for him now. The winds that came laden with the subtly blended perfume of ten thousand varieties of trees and grasses and shrubs and flowers whispered words of life which he now could hear. The loveliness of the glowing morning skies, as he saw them when he rose for the day's work, and the glories of the sunsets, as he watched them with Auntie Sue from the porch when the day's task was accomplished, filled him with an exquisite gladness which he had never hoped to know again.