The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, No. 61, November, 1862. VariousЧитать онлайн книгу.

      Bitter and brief his logic that reasoned from wrong unto error:

      "This is their praying and singing," he said, "that makes you reject

      me,—

      You that were kind to me once. But I think my fathers' religion,

      With a light heart in the breast, and a friendly priest to absolve one,

      Better than all these conversions that only bewilder and vex me,

      And that have made man so hard and woman fickle and cruel.

      Well, then, pray for my soul, since you would not have spoken to save

      me,—

      Yes,—for I go from these saints to my brethren and sisters, the

      sinners."

      Spake and went, while her faint lips fashioned unuttered entreaties,—

      Went, and came again in a year at the time of the meeting,

      Haggard and wan of face, and wasted with passion and sorrow.

      Dead in his eyes was the careless smile of old, and its phantom

      Haunted his lips in a sneer of restless incredulous mocking.

      Day by day he came to the outer skirts of the circle,

      Dwelling on her, where she knelt by the white-haired exhorter, her

      father,

      With his hollow looks, and never moved from his silence.

      Now, where he stood alone, the last of impenitent sinners,

      Weeping, old friends and comrades came to him out of the circle,

      And with their tears besought him to hear what the Lord had done for

      them.

      Ever he shook them off, not roughly, nor smiled at their transports.

      Then the preachers spake and painted the terrors of Judgment,

      And of the bottomless pit, and the flames of hell everlasting.

      Still and dark he stood, and neither listened nor heeded:

      But when the fervent voice of the while-haired exhorter was lifted,

      Fell his brows in a scowl of fierce and scornful rejection.

      "Lord, let this soul be saved!" cried the fervent voice of the old man;

      "For that the shepherd rejoiceth more truly for one that hath wandered,

      And hath been found again, than for all the others that strayed not."

      Out of the midst of the people, a woman old and decrepit,

      Tremulous through the light, and tremulous into the shadow,

      Wavered toward him with slow, uncertain paces of palsy,

      Laid her quivering hand on his arm and brokenly prayed him:

      "Louis Lebeau, I closed in death the eyes of your mother.

      On my breast she died, in prayer for her fatherless children,

      That they might know the Lord, and follow Him always, and serve Him.

      Oh, I conjure you, my son, by the name of your mother in glory,

      Scorn not the grace of the Lord!" As when a summer-noon's tempest

      Breaks in one swift gush of rain, then ceases and gathers

      Darker and gloomier yet on the lowering front of the heavens,

      So brake his mood in tears, as he soothed her, and stilled her

      entreaties,

      And so he turned again with his clouded looks to the people.

      Vibrated then from the hush the accents of mournfullest pity,—

      His who was gifted in speech, and the glow of the fires illumined

      All his pallid aspect with sudden and marvellous splendor:

      "Louis Lebeau," he spake, "I have known you and loved you from

      childhood;

      Still, when the others blamed you, I took your part, for I knew you.

      Louis Lebeau, my brother, I thought to meet you in heaven,

      Hand in hand with her who is gone to heaven before us,

      Brothers through her dear love! I trusted to greet you and lead you

      Up from the brink of the River unto the gates of the City.

      Lo! my years shall be few on the earth. Oh, my brother,

      If I should die before you had known the mercy of Jesus,

      Yea, I think it would sadden the hope of glory within me!"

      Neither yet had the will of the sinner yielded an answer;

      But from his lips there broke a cry of unspeakable anguish,

      Wild and fierce and shrill, as if some demon within him

      Rent his soul with the ultimate pangs of fiendish possession,

      And with the outstretched arms of bewildered imploring toward them,

      Death-white unto the people he turned his face from the darkness.

      Out of the sedge by the creek a flight of clamorous killdees

      Rose from their timorous sleep with piercing and iterant challenge,

      Wheeled in the starlight and fled away into distance and silence.

      White on the other hand lay the tents, and beyond them glided the river,

      Where the broadhorn1 drifted slow at the will of the current,

      And where the boatman listened, and knew not how, as he listened,

      Something touched through the years the old lost hopes of his

      childhood,—

      Only his sense was filled with low monotonous murmurs,

      As of a faint-heard prayer, that was chorused with deeper responses.

      Not with the rest was lifted her voice in the fervent responses,

      But in her soul she prayed to Him that heareth in secret,

      Asking for light and for strength to learn His will and to do it:

      "Oh, make me clear to know, if the hope that rises within me

      Be not part of a love unmeet for me here, and forbidden!

      So, if it be not that, make me strong for the evil entreaty

      Of the days that shall bring me question of self and reproaches,

      When the unrighteous shall mock, and my brethren and sisters shall

      doubt me!

      Make me worthy to know Thy will, my Saviour, and do it!"

      In her pain she prayed, and at last, through her mute adoration,

      Rapt from all mortal presence, and in her rapture uplifted,

      Glorified she rose, and stood in the midst of the people,

      Looking on all with the still, unseeing eyes of devotion,

      Vague, and tender, and sweet, as the eyes of the dead, when we dream

      them

      Living and looking on us, but they cannot speak, and we cannot:

      Knowing only the peril that threatened his soul's unrepentance,

      Knowing only the fear and error and wrong that withheld him,

      Thinking, "In doubt of me,