LOVE'S VICTORY OVER SIN
The curtain of the night had fallen—and human souls were on their trial; for human life is then behind the scenes, and the candour of its purity or shame comes with the shelter of the falling night. In their noblest acts, and in their basest deeds, men are aided by the impartial dark. Both alike she screens, though with fickle folds, retreating when she hears the first footfall of the dawn; then is every man's work made manifest of what sort it is—and the great judgment day shall be but relentless light.
The landscape no longer glimmered on the sight when Michael Blake set out from the little inn, his heart burning with fear. And hope heaped fuel on the flame, for fear would die if it were not for hope. He walked on beneath the stately elms, their far-spread branches whispering as he passed, for they knew well his step, and wondered that it hurried so. He paused at the spring and drank again, but his thirst was still unquenched.
He looked about him at the holy night; and surging shame flooded neck and face with crimson. For it had been thus and there, amid the sanctities of the night, and by their trysting-place, that the soul's great wound was made, the blood oozing ever since, oozing still. Memory, ermine-robed, half enchantress and half avenger, turned her face full on his as he sat by the spring; but he turned his own away and started on, ever on.
"Oh, my God! Give me a chance," he cried, "give me a chance," and the darkness answered not, but the whispering trees seemed to have the woman-voice.
He sees the light now; it is the harbour light, and Michael Blake presses swiftly on, his heart upbraiding the laggard feet.
He stands now before the door, but that same heart, strangely wavering, refuses to go in. The hour has struck for Michael Blake, the hour for which his soul has waited long; but strange forces seek to hold him back. The chiefest of these is fear; he feels he is hurrying his judgment day, and when God would punish men, thinks he, He endows them with deep and burning love—for otherwise He cannot speak to them in the eternal tongue. The trembling man turns as if to go back.
"It is too light," he murmured, "still too light," for the memory of another night has arisen upon him with judgment in its wings.
As he moves noiselessly from the door-step, he pauses by the window. It is partly open, for the night is mild. A woman's figure moves before it, so close that he could almost touch—and his arms go out unbidden, God's retrievers, though they knew it not. He controls himself, and steps back a pace, for she has passed to the other side of the room. Beside an old chest of drawers she kneels, and his heart burns with eager passion as he beholds the beauty of her face. Time, and sorrow, and God, have worked together. Unto them all she hath submitted, and they have held to their holy task till the beauty of peace rewards their secret toil.
She is lifting something from the drawer and the light falls upon it. Another, and still another, she takes up in her gentle hands, smiling down on them the while—they are a child's outgrown possessions, bits of clothing some, and some, broken toys, such as mothers take into their immortal keeping when children have spurned them from their own.