The Reign of Law; a tale of the Kentucky hemp fields

The first time she saw these portraits, she turned and walked rapidly out of the parlor. She had enough troubles of her own without bearing the troubles of all these faces. Later on she could confront them with equanimity—that company of the pallid, the desperately sick, the unaccountably uncomfortable. All looked, not as though there had been a death in the family, but a death in the collection: only the same grief could have so united them as mourners. And whatever else they lacked, each showed two hands, the full number, placed where they were sure to be counted.

She was in the midst of this psychological reversion to ancestral gayety when David arrived. Each looked quickly at the other with unconscious fear. Within a night and a day each had drawn nearer to the other; and each secretly inquired whether the other now discovered this nearness. Gabriella saw at least that he, too, was excited with happiness.

He appeared to her for the first time handsome. He WAS better looking. When one approaches the confines of love, one nears the borders of beauty. Nature sets going a certain work of decoration, of transformation. Had David about this time been a grouse, he would probably have displayed a prodigious ruff. Had he been a bulbul and continued to feel as he did, he would have poured into the ear of night such roundelays as had never been conceived of by that disciplined singer. Had he been a master violinist, he would have been unable to play a note from a wild desire to flourish the bow. He had long stood rooted passively in the soil of being like a century plant when it is merely keeping itself in existence. But latterly, feeling in advance the approach of the Great Blossoming Hour, he had begun to shoot up rapidly into a lofty life-stalk; there were inches of the rankest growth on him within the last twenty-four hours. To-night he was not even serious in his conversation; and therefore he was the more awkward. His emotions were unmanageable; much more his talk. But she who witnesses this awkwardness and understands—does she ever fail to pardon?

"Last night," he said with a droll twinkle, after the evening was about half spent, "there was one subject I did not speak to you about—Man's place in Nature. Have you ever thought about that?"

"I've been too busy thinking about my place in the school!" said Gabriella, laughing—Gabriella who at all times was simplicity and clearness.

"You see Nature does nothing for Man except what she enables him to do for himself. In this way she has made a man of him; she has given him his resources and then thrown him upon them. Beyond that she cares nothing, does nothing, provides, arranges nothing. I used to think, for instance, that the greenness of the earth was intended for his eyes—all the loveliness of spring. On the contrary, she merely gave him an eye which has adapted itself to get pleasure out of the greenness. The beauty of spring would have been the same, year after year, century after century, had he never existed. And the blue of the sky—I used to think it was hung about the earth for his sake; and the colors of the clouds, the great sunsets. But the blueness of the sky is nothing but the dust of the planet floating deep around it, too light to sink through the atmosphere, but reflecting the rays of the sun. These rays fall on the clouds and color them. It would all have been so, had Man never been born. The earth's springs of drinking water, refreshing showers, the rainbow on the cloud,—they would have been the same, had no human being ever stood on this planet to claim them for ages as the signs of providence and of covenant."

Gabriella had her own faith as to the rainbow.

"So, none of the other animals was made for Man," resumed David, who seemed to have some ulterior purpose in all this. "I used to think the structure and nature of the ass were given him that he might be adapted to bear Man's burdens; they were given him that he might bear his own burdens. Horses were not made for cavalry. And a camel—I never doubted that he was a wonderful contrivance to enable man to cross the desert; he is a wonderful contrivance in order that the contrivance itself may cross the desert."

"I hope I may never have to use one," said Gabriella, "when I commence to ride again. I prefer horses and carriages—though I suppose you would say that only the carriage was designed for me and that I had no right to be drawn in that way."

"Some day a horse may be designed for you, just as the carriage is. We do not use horses on railroads now; we did use them at first in Kentucky. Sometime you may not use horses in your carriage. You may have a horse that was designed for you."

"I think," said Gabriella, "I should prefer a horse that was designed for itself."

"And so," resumed David, moving straight on toward his concealed climax, "if I were a poet, I'd never write poems about flowers and clouds and lakes and mountains and moonbeams and all that; those things are not for a man. If I were a novelist, I'd never write stories about a grizzly bear, or a dog, or a red bird. If I were a sculptor, I'd not carve a lynx or a lion. If I were a painter, I'd never paint sheep. In all this universe there is only one thing that Nature ever created for a man. I'd write poems about that one thing! I'd write novels about it! I'd paint it! I'd carve it! I'd compose music to it!"

"Why, what is that?" said Gabriella, led sadly astray.

"A woman!" said David solemnly, turning red.

Gabriella fled into the uttermost caves of silence.

"And there was only one thing ever made for woman."

"I understand perfectly."

David felt rebuffed. He hardly knew why. But after a moment or two of silence he went on, still advancing with rough paces toward his goal:—

"Sometimes," he said mournfully, "it's harder for a man to get the only thing in the world that was ever made for him than anything else! This difficulty, however, appertains exclusively to the human species."

Gabriella touched her handkerchief quickly to her lips and held it there.

"But then, many curious things are true of our species," he continued, with his eyes on the fire and in the manner of a soliloquy, "that never occur elsewhere. A man, for instance, is the only animal that will settle comfortably down for the rest of its days to live on the exertions of the female."

"It shows how a woman likes to be depended on," said Gabriella, with her deep womanliness.

"Tom-cats of the fireside," said David, "who are proud of what fat mice their wives feed them on. It may show what you say in the nature of the woman. But what does it show in the nature of the man?"

"That depends."

"I don't think it depends," replied David. "I think it is either one of the results of Christianity or a survival of barbarism. As one of the results of Christianity, it demonstrates what women will endure when they are imposed upon. As a relic of barbarism—when it happens in our country—why not regard it as derived from the North American Indians? The chiefs lounged around the house and smoked the best tobacco and sent the squaws out to work for them. Occasionally they broke silence by briefly declaring that they thought themselves immortal."

Gabriella tried to draw the conversation into other channels, but David was not to be diverted.

"It has been a great fact in the history of your sex," he said, looking across at her, with a shake of his head, as though she did not appreciate the subject, "that idea that everything in the universe was made for Man."

"Why?" inquired Gabriella, resigning herself to the perilous and the irresistible.

"Well, in old times it led men to think that since everything else belonged to them, so did woman: therefore when they wanted her they did not ask for her; they took her."

"It is much better arranged at present, whatever the reason."

"Now a man cannot always get one, even when he asks for her," and David turned red again and knotted his hands.

"I am so glad the schoolhouse was not damaged by the storm," observed Gabriella, reflecting.

David fell into a revery but presently awoke.

"There are more men than women in the world. On an average, that is only a fraction of a woman to every man. Still the men cannot take care of them. But it ought to be a real pleasure to every man to take care of an entire woman."

"Did you ever notice the hands in that portrait?"

David glanced at the portrait without noticing it, and went his way.

"Since a man knows nothing else was created for him, he feels his loneliness without her so much more deeply. They ought to be very good and true to each other—a man and a woman—since they two are alone in the universe."

He gulped down his words and stood up, trembling.

"I must be going," he said, without even looking at Gabriella, and went out into the hall for his coat.

"Bring it in here." she called. "It is cold out there." She watched how careless he was about making himself snug for his benumbing walk. He had a woollen comforter which he left loosely tied about his neck.

"Tie it closer," she commanded. "You had a cold last night, and it is worse tonight. Tuck it in close about your neck."

David made the attempt. He was not thinking.

"This way!" And Gabriella showed him by using her fingers around her own neck and collar.

He tried again and failed, standing before her with a mingling of embarrassment and stubborn determination.

"That will never do!" she cried with genuine concern. She took hold of the comforter by the ends and drew the knot up close to his throat, he lifting his head to receive it as it came. Then David with his eyes on the ceiling felt his coat collar turned up and her soft warm fingers tucking the comforter in around his neck. When he looked down, she was standing over by the fireplace.

"Good night," she said positively, with a quick gesture of dismissal as she saw the look in his eyes.

Each of the million million men who made up the past of David, that moment reached a hand out of the distance and pushed him forward. But of them all there was none so helpless with modesty,—so in need of hiding from every eye,—even his own,—the sacred annals of that moment.

He was standing by the table on which burned the candles. He bent down quickly and blew them out and went over to her by the dim firelight.

XIX

All high happiness has in it some element of love; all love contains a desire for peace. One immediate effect of new happiness, new love, is to make us turn toward the past with a wish to straighten out its difficulties, heal its breaches, forgive its wrongs. We think most hopefully of distressing things which may still be remedied, most regretfully of others that have passed beyond our reach and will.

It was between ten and eleven o'clock of the next day—Sunday. David's cold had become worse. He had turned over necessary work to the negro man and stayed quietly in his room since the silent breakfast Two or three books chosen carelessly out of the trunk lay on his table before the fire: interest had gone out of them this day. With his face red and swollen, he was sitting beside this table with one hand loosely covering the forgotten books, his eyes turned to the window, but looking upon distant inward scenes.

Sunday morning between ten and eleven o'clock! the church-going hour of his Bible-student life. In imagination he could hear across these wide leagues of winter land the faint, faint peals of the church bells which were now ringing. He was back in the town again—up at the college—in his room at the dormitory; and it was in the days before the times of his trouble. The students were getting ready for church, with freshly shaved faces, boots well blacked, best suits on, not always good ones. He could hear their talk in the rooms around his, hear fragments of hymns, the opening and shutting of doors along the hallways, and the running of feet down the stairs. By ones and twos and larger groups they passed down and out with their hymnals, Testaments, sometimes blank books for notes on the sermon. Several thrust bright, cordial faces in at the door, as they passed, to see whether he and his roommate had started.

The scene changed. He was in the church, which was crowded from pulpit to walls. He was sitting under the chandelier in the choir, the number of the first hymn had just been whispered along, and he began to sing, with hundreds of others, the music which then released the pinions of his love and faith as the air releases the wings of a bird. The hymn ceased; he could see the pastor rise from behind the pulpit, advance, and with a gesture gather that sea of heads to prayer. He could follow the sermon, most of all the exhortation; around him was such stillness in the church that his own heart-beats were audible. Then the Supper and then home to the dormitory again—with a pain of happiness filling him, the rest and the unrest of consecration.

Many other scenes he lived through in memory this morning—once lived in reality amid that brotherhood of souls. His tenderest thoughts perhaps dwelt on the young men's prayer-meetings of Sunday afternoons at the college. There they drew nearest to the Eternal Strength which was behind their weakness, and closest to each other as student after student lifted a faltering, stumbling petition for a common blessing on their work. The Immortal seemed to be in that bare room, filling their hearts with holy flame, drawing around them the isolation of a devoted band. They were one in One. Then had followed the change in him which produced the change in them: no fellowship, no friendship, with an unbeliever; and he was left without a comrade.

His heart was yearning and sick this day to be reconciled to them all. How did they think of him, speak of him, now? Who slept in his bed? Who sat a little while, after the studies of the night were over, talking to his room-mate? Who knelt down across the room at his prayers when the lights were put out? And his professors—what bulwarks of knowledge and rectitude and kindness they were!—all with him at first, all against him at last, as in duty bound.

To one man alone among those hundreds could David look back as having begun to take interest in him toward the close of his college days. During that vacation which he had spent in reading and study, he had often refreshed himself by taking his book out to the woodland park near the city, which in those days was the grounds of one of the colleges of the University. There he found the green wild country again, a forest like his pioneer ancestor's. Regularly here he observed at out-of-door work the professor of Physical Science, who also was pressing his investigations forward during the leisure of those summer months. An authority from the north, from a New England university, who had resigned his chair to come to Kentucky, attracted by the fair prospects of the new institution. A great gray-bearded, eagle-faced, square-shouldered, big-footed man: reserved, absorbed, asking to be let alone, one of the silent masters. But David, desperate with intellectual loneliness himself, and knowing this man to be a student of the new science, one day had introduced himself and made inquiry about entering certain classes in his course the following session.

The professor shook his head. He was going back to New England himself the next year; and he moved away under the big trees, resuming his work.

As troubles had thickened about David, his case became discussed in University circles; and he was stopped on the street one day by this frigid professor and greeted with a man's grasp and a look of fresh beautiful affection. His apostasy from dogmatism had made him a friend of that lone thinker whose worship of God was the worship of Him through the laws of His universe and not through the dogmas of men.

This professor—and Gabriella: they alone, though from different motives, had been drawn to him by what had repelled all others. It was his new relation to her beyond anything else that filled David this day with his deep desire for peace with his past. She had such peace in herself, such charity of feeling, such simple steadfast faith: she cast the music of these upon the chords of his own soul. To the influence of her religion she was now adding the influence of her love; it filled him, subdued, overwhelmed him. And this morning, also out of his own happiness he remembered with most poignant suffering the unhappiness of his father. His own life was unfolding into fulness of affection and knowledge and strength; his father's was closing amid the weakness and troubles that had gathered about him; and he, David, had contributed his share to these. To be reconciled to his father this day—that was his sole thought.

It was about four o'clock. The house held that quiet which reigns of a Sunday afternoon when the servants have left the kitchen for the cabin, when all work is done, and the feeling of Sunday rest takes possession of our minds. The winter sunshine on the fields seems full of rest; the brutes rest—even those that are not beasts of burden. The birds appear to know the day, and to make note of it in quieter twitter and slower flight.

David rose resolutely and started downstairs. As he entered his father's room, his mother was passing out She looked at her son with apprehension, as she closed the door. His father was sitting by a window, reading, as was his Sunday wont, the Bible. He had once written to David that his had always been a religious people; it was true. A grave, stern man—sternest, gravest on Sunday. When it was not possible to go to church, the greater to him the reason that the house itself should become churchlike in solemnity, out of respect to the day and the duty of self-examination. A man of many failings, but on this subject strong.

David sat down and waited for him to reach the end of the page or chapter. But his father read on with a slow perceptible movement of his lips.

"Father."

The gray head was turned slowly toward him in silent resentment of the interruption.

"I thought it would be better to come down and talk with you."

The eyes resought the page, the lips resumed their movements.

"I am sorry to interrupt you."

The eye still followed the inspired words, from left to right, left to right, left to right.

"Father, things ought not to go on in this way between us. I have been at home now for two months. I have waited, hoping that you would give me the chance to talk about it all. You have declined, and meantime I have simply been at work, as I used to be. But this must not be put off longer for several reasons. There are other things in my life now that I have to think of and care for." The tone in which David spoke these last words was unusual and significant.

The eyes stopped at a point on the page. The lips were pressed tightly together.

David rose and walked quietly out of the room. After he had closed the door behind him and put his foot on the stairs, he stopped and with fresh determination reopened the door. His father had shut the Bible, laid it on the floor at the side of his chair, and was standing in the middle of the room with his eyes on the door through which David had passed. He pointed to his son to be seated, and resumed his chair. He drew his penknife from his pocket and slowly trimmed the ravellings from his shirt-cuffs, blowing them off his wrists. David saw that his hands were trembling violently. The tragedy in the poor action cut him to the heart and he threw himself remorsefully into the midst of things.

"Father, I know I have disappointed you! Know it as well as you do; but I could not have done differently."

"YOU not believe in Christianity! YOU not believe the Bible!"

The suppressed enraged voice summed up again the old contemptuous opinion.

The young man felt that there was another than himself whom it wounded.

"Sir, you must not speak to me with that feeling! Try to see that I am as sincere as you are. As to the goodness of my mind, I did not derive it from myself and am not to blame. I have only made an earnest and an honest use of what mind was given me. But I have not relied upon it alone. There are great men, some of the greatest minds of the world, who have been my teachers and determined my belief."

"All your life you had the word of God as your teacher and you believed it. Now these men tell you not to believe it and you believe them. And then you complain that I do not think more highly of you."

"Father," cried David, "there is one man whose name is very dear to us both. The blood of that man is in me as it is in you. Sir, it is your grandfather. Do you remember what the church of his day did with him? Do you forget that, standing across the fields yonder, is the church he himself built to freedom of opinion in religious matters? I grew up, not under the shadow of that church, for it casts none, but in the light of it. I have seen many churches worship there. I have had before me, from the time I could remember, my great-grandfather's words: they seemed to me the voice of God by whom all men were created, and the spirit of Christ by whom, as you believe, men are to be saved."

The younger man stopped and waited in vain for the older one to reply. But his father also waited, and David went on:—

"I do not expect you to stand against the church in what it has done with me: that HAD to be done. If you had been an elder of that church, I know you, too, would have voted to expel me. What I do ask of you is that you think me as sincere in my belief as I think you in yours. I do ask for your toleration, your charity. Everything else between us will be easy, if you can see that I have done only what I could. The faith of the world grows, changes. Sons cannot always agree with their fathers; otherwise the world would stand still. You do not believe many things your own grandfather believed—the man of whose memory you are so proud. The faith you hold did not even exist among men in his day. I can no longer agree with you: I do not think the less of you because I believe differently; do not think the less of me!"

The young man could not enter into any argument with the old one. He would not have disturbed if he could his father's faith: it was too late in life for that. Neither could he defend his own views without attacking his father's: that also would have been cruelty in itself and would have been accepted as insulting. Still David could not leave his case without witnesses.

"There are things in the old Bible that no scholar now believes."

"The Almighty declares they are true; you say they are not: I prefer to believe the Almighty. Perhaps He knows better than you and the scholars."

David fell into sorrowful silence. "There are some other matters about which I should like to speak with you, father," he said, changing the subject. "I recall one thing you said to me the day I came home. You asked me why I had come back here: do you still feel that way?"

"I do. This is a Christian house. This is a Christian community. You are out of place under this roof and in this neighborhood. Life was hard enough for your mother and me before. But we did for you what we could; you were pleased to make us this return. It will be better for you to go."

Every word seemed to have been hammered out of iron, once melted in the forge, but now cold and unchangeably shaped to its heavy purpose. The young man writhed under the hopelessness of the situation:—

"Sir, is it all on one side? Have I done nothing for you in all these years? Until I was nearly a man's age, did I not work? For my years of labor did I receive more than a bare living? Did you ever know a slave as faithful? Were you ever a harsh master to this slave? Do you owe me nothing for all those years?—I do not mean money,—I mean kindness, justice!"

"How many years before you began to work for us did your mother and I work for you? Did you owe us nothing for all that?"

"I did! I do! I always shall! But do you count it against me that Nature brought me forth helpless and kept me helpless for so many years afterwards? If my being born was a fault, whose was it? Is the dependence of an infant on its parent a debt? Father! father! Be just! be just! that you may be more kind to me."

"Kind to YOU! Just to YOU!" Hitherto his father had spoken with a quietude which was terrible, on account of the passion raging beneath. But now he sprang to his feet, strode across, and, pulling a ragged shirt-cuff down from under his coat-sleeve, shook it in his son's eyes—poverty. He went to one of the rotting doors and jerking it open without turning the knob, rattled it on its loose hinges—poverty. He turned to the window, and with one gesture depicted ruined outhouses and ruined barn, now hidden under the snow, and beautiful in the Sunday evening light—poverty. He turned and faced his son, majestic in mingled grief and care.