And seeing that he understood, she laid her hand upon his bosom, gasped once, and the little hands were safe. They would never “go wrong” now, never. Even love, which tempts the strongest into sin, could never harm them now, those little dead hands.
“In the heart of the woods.” It was there they buried her, beside that broken-hearted one whose life went with the tidings from old Shiloh, in the little mountain graveyard in the woods between Dan and Beersheba.
As for him, her murderer, they said, “the accident quite drove him mad.” Perhaps it did; he thought so, often; only that he never called it by the name of accident.
“It was God’s plan for helping me,” he told himself during those slow hours of torture that followed. There were days and weeks when the very mention of the place would tear his very soul. Then the old craving returned. Drink; he could forget, drown it all if only he could return to the old way of forgetting. But something held him back. What was it? God? No, no. God did not care for such as he, he told himself. He was alone; alone forever now. One night there was a storm, the cedars were lashed and broken, and the windows rattled and shook with the fury of the wind. The rain beat against the roof in torrents. The night was wild, as he was. Oh, he, too, could tear, and howl, and shriek. Tear up the very earth, he thought, if only he let his demon loose.
He arose and threw on his clothes. He wanted whiskey; he was tired of the struggle, the madness, the despair. A mile beyond there was a still, an illicit concern, worked only at night. He meant to find it. His brain was giving way, indeed. Had already given way, he thought, as he listened to the wind calling him, the storm luring him on to destruction. The very lightning beckoned him to “come and be healed.” Healed? Aye, he knew what it was that healed the agonies of mind which physics could not reach. He knew, he knew. He had been a fool to think he would forego this healing.
He laughed as he tore open the door and stepped out into the night. The cool rain struck upon his burning brow as he plunged forward into the arms of the darkness. He had gone but two steps when the fever that had mounted to his brain began to cool. And the wind—he paused. Was it speaking to him, that wild, midnight wind? “‘In the heart of the woods. O Love, O Love!’”
There was a shimmery glister of lightning among the shadowy growth. Was it a figure, a form of a woman beckoning him, guiding him. He turned away from the midnight still, and followed that shimmery light, straight to the little graveyard in the woods, and fell across the little new mound there, and sobbed like a child that has rebelled and yielded. A soft presence breathed among the shadows; a soft presence that crept to his bosom when he opened his arms, his face still pressed against the soft, new sod. A strange, sweet peace came to him, such as he had never felt before, filling him with restful, chastened, and exquisite sadness. The storm passed by after awhile, and the rain fell softly—as the dew falls on flowers. And he arose and went home, with the chastened peace upon him, and the old passionate pain gone forever.
… … … .
But as the summers drifted by, year after year, he returned. He became a familiar comer to the humble mountain folk, where summer twilight times they saw him leaning on the parson’s little gate, conversing with the old man of the “Promised Land” toward which, as “brethren,” they were travelling. Sometimes they talked of the blessed dead—the dear, dear dead who are permitted to return to give help to their loved ones.
Aye, he believes it, knows it, for the old temptation assails him no more forever. That is enough to know.