“To make it worse, the people about me said, ‘I told you so,’ and sermonized on the matter. They said, ‘You can’t destroy hate with hate. That increases it. That mottled fellow in the swamp is not the enemy you have to dread. The cruelty you put out, when you threw a stone at him, is your real enemy. It will come back to you through him, because it is the law. He will trouble you far down the line. Your heart shall bleed again and again, because of blows from hands you never injured; but it will be but your own deed returning to you, and something of your mottled foe shall mark you, for many and many a day.’”
(Lilla looked at the mottled eyes of her friend with a new interest, wondering if the curious splashes of tawn had been flung there by her ancient enemy.)
“Now I understand why I have been treated cruelly often by the very persons I loved and believed in. Somewhere I have earned it. Somewhere I gave it forth, and it has come back a hundredfold, for good and bad both multiply themselves on their return trips. Even Farnsworth’s cruelty to me, which hurt me so much, was no doubt in accord with the law of causality I had set in motion. But he, too, shall reap as he has sown.
“The other picture represented this life, I think. I was climbing a hillside, accompanied by a little party of friends and attended by the guardian of my soul, who beguiled the way by pleasant speech and cheery good-will. At last we reached the top and found there an old-fashioned inn, clean and comfortable, with bare white floors, big rooms, and broad wooden sofas, that looked inviting to our tired bodies. Before I entered, I looked to the west, and saw a scene of beauty never to be forgotten. Sunlight, soft as moonlight, fell on fields of swaying grain, on trees gay with blossoms and heavy with fruit at the same time, on flowers whose perfume sweetened all the air, on birds whose bright plumage dazzled the eye. I gazed spellbound. The very sky above was new and strangely beautiful. Looking down, I saw what before I had not noticed, that the hill was cut off close by my feet, and between me and this lovely landscape yawned a bottomless ravine. Stretching forth his hand and pointing to it, my guardian said, ‘Behold the promised land! But you shall not enter in—not yet! No; you shall not enter in until you come with the great seal in your hand.’ With one longing, hungry glance at the paradise I was not yet ready to know, I turned and went into the inn, longing for rest.
“I have almost reached the inn. I have seen the promised land but have not yet the great seal. After a rest in the inn—who knows,—perhaps I can bridge the ravine.”
Those last days—those precious last days, how beautiful they were!
Northern forests put on a glory of gold and red after the frost has touched them with its destroying hand, and the winter is near. Dying suns diffuse a strange brightness, and the spirit of man, when passing out of sight, often radiates a heavenly splendor.
So it was that the soul of Cartice Doring never gave forth so much of sweetness as in the last days of her stay here.
“It is much to have learned one’s lesson,” she said. “Next time I can begin in a higher class. So you see, after all, this life wasn’t wasted. Yes, I have learned a little, and shall not find the road so rough next time.
“Would I could give others what I have learned.