The Zeit-Geist, Lily Dougall [best electronic book reader txt] 📗

God was to set him in heaven. But, look you, Ann, there isn't a day or an hour that God is not asking them to choose the better and the quicker way, and there isn't a day or an hour that He isn't asking you and me and every one else in the world to do as He does so as to help them to choose it, and live out the sufferings of their life with them till they do."

Ann sat quite still; she had a feeling that if she moved to make any other sound, however slight, than that of speech some spell would be broken. In the darkness Bart had awakened out of the stupor of his injury; and although Ann could not have expressed it, she felt that his voice came like the speech of a soul that is not a part of the things we see and touch. It was so strange to her that he did not ask her where he was. For a few minutes more at least she did not want to bring the least rustle of material surroundings into their talk. She was still incredulous; it is only a very weak mind that does not take time to grow into a new point of view.

"Bart, was God with father when he tried to kill you and tied you to the tree?"

"Yes."

"How do you know?"

"You can't think of God being less than something else. If God was not in your father, then space is outside God's mind. You can't think that God wanted to save your father from doing it and didn't, unless you think that the devil was stronger than God. You can't think that you are more loving than God; and if He is so loving, He couldn't let any one do what wasn't just the best thing. I tell you, it's a love that's awful to think of that will go on giving men strength to do wrong until through the ages of hell they get sick of it, rather than make them into machines that would just go when they're wound up and that no one could love."

"Do they know all this in church, Bart?" Ann asked. It had never occurred to her before to test her beliefs by this standard, but now it seemed necessary; she felt after tradition instinctively. The nakedness of Bart's statements seemed to want tradition for a garment.

Bart's words were very simple. "When I was fastened on that log and saw all this, I saw that Jesus knew it all, and that that was what all His life and dying meant, and that the people that follow Him are learning to know that that was what it meant; it takes them a long, long time, and we can't understand it yet, but as the world goes on it will come clearer. Everybody that knows anything about Him says all this in church, only they don't quite understand it. There's many churches, Ann, where the people all get up and say out loud, 'He descended into hell.' I don't know much, for I've only read the Bible for one year; but if you think of all that Jesus did and all that happened to Him, you will see what I mean. People have made little of it by saying it was a miracle and happened just once, but He knew better. He said that God had been doing it always, and that He did nothing but what He saw God doing, and that when men saw Him they would know that God was like that always. Haven't I just been telling you that God bears our sins and carries our sorrows with us until we become blessed because we are holy? We can always choose to be that, but He will never _make_ us choose. Jesus never _made_ anybody do anything; and, Ann, if there are things in the Bible that we don't understand to mean that, it is because they are a parable, and a parable, Ann, is putting something people can't understand in pictures that they can look at and look at, and always learn something every time they look, till at last they understand what is meant. People have always learned just as much from the Bible as they can take in, and made mistakes about the rest; but it is God's character to make us learn even by mistakes."

Ann's interest began to waver. They were silent awhile, and then, "Bart, do you know where you are?" she asked.

"I don't seem to care much where I am, as long as you are here." There was a touch of shyness in the tone of the last words that made all that he had said before human to her.

"If it hadn't been that I thought it was father, I'd have taken you home." She told him how she had brought him. "If it had been a boat," she said, "I'd have found out who it was before we got here, but the canoe was too narrow."


CHAPTER XVI.

Ann dosed where she sat. Toyner slept again. At length they were both aware that the level light of the sun was in the room.

Ann sat up, looking at the door intently. Then her eyes moved as if following some one across the room.

"What is it?" asked Toyner.

Ann started up with one swift look of agonised entreaty, and then it seemed that what she had seen vanished, for she turned to Bart trembling, unable to speak at first, sobs struggling with her breath.

"It was father--I saw him come to the door and come in. He's dead now."

"What did he look like?" Toyner's voice was very quiet.

"He looked as if he was dead, but as if he was mad too--his body as if it was dead, and himself wild and mad and burning inside of it." She was crouching on the floor, shaken with the sobs of a new and overwhelming pity. "O Bart! I never cared--cared anything for him before--except to have him comfortable and decent; but if I thought he was going to be--like that--now I think I would die to save him if I could."

"Would you die to save him? So would God; and you can't believe in God at all unless you know that He does what He wants to do. And God does it; dies in him, and is in him now; and He will save him."

Bart's eyes were full of peace.

"Can't you trust God, Ann? When He is suffering so much for love of each of us? He could make us into good machines, but He won't. Can't you begin to do what He is doing for yourself and other people? Ann, if He suffers in your father and in you, He is glad when you are glad. Try to be glad always in His love and in the glory of it."

Ann's mind had reverted again to the traditions of which she knew so little. "I don't want to go to heaven," she said, "if father is in some place looking like he did just now."

"Heaven" (Bart repeated the word curiously), "heaven is inside you when you grow to be like God; and through all ages and worlds heaven will be to do as He does, to suffer with those that are suffering, and to die with those that are dying. But remember, Ann, too, it means to rejoice with those who are rejoicing; and joy is greater than pain and heaviness. And heaven means always to be in peace and strength and delight, because it is along the line of God's will where His joy flows."

Ann rose and ran out of the house. To be in the sunshine and among the wild sunflowers was more to her just then than any wisdom. The wave of pity that had gone over her soul had ebbed in a feeling of exhaustion. Her body wanted warmth and heat. She felt that she wanted _only_ that. After she had sat for an hour near the bank of the rippling stream, and all her veins were warmed through and through with the sunlight, the apparition of her father seemed like a dream. She had seen him thus once in life, and supposed him a spirit. She was ready to suppose what she had now seen to be a repetition of that last meeting, coming before she was well roused from her sleep. She took comfort because her pulses ran full and quiet once more. She thought of her love to Bart, and was content. As to all that Bart had said--ah well! something she had gathered from it, which was a seed in her mind, lay quiet now.

At length Toyner found strength to walk feebly, and sat down on the doorstep, where he could see Ann. It was his first conscious look upon this remote autumn bower, and he never forgot its joy. The eyes of men who have just arisen from the dim region that lies near death are often curiously full of unreasoning pleasure. Within himself Toyner called the place the Garden of Eden.

"If only I had not brought you here!" said Ann. "If only I had not left the canoe untied!"

For answer Bart looked around upon the trees and flowers and upon her with happy eyes that had no hint of past or future in them. Something of the secret of all peace--the _Eternal Now_--remained with him as long as the weakness of this injury remained.

"Don't fret, Ann" (with a smile).

"I'm afraid for you; you look awful ill, and ought to have a doctor."

He had it in his mind to tell her that he was all right and desired only what he had; but, in the dreamy reflective mood that still held him, what he said was:

"If all the trouble in earth and heaven and hell were put together, Ann, it would be just like clouds passing before the sun of joy. The clouds are never at an end, but each one passes and melts away. Ann! sorrow and joy are like the clouds and the sun."

It is never destined that man should remain long in Eden. About noon that day Ann heard a shout from the direction of the lake outside among the dead trees; the shout was repeated yet nearer, and in a minute or two she recognised the voice and heard the sound of oars splashing up the narrow channel made by the running creek. The thought of this deliverance had not occurred to her; yet when she recognised the voice it seemed to her natural enough that David Brown should have divined where his canoe might have been brought. She stood waiting while his boat came up the creek. The young athlete sprang from it, question and reproach in his handsome young face. She found no difficulty then in telling him just what she had done, and why. She felt herself suddenly freed from all that life of frequent deception which she had so long practised. She had no desire to dupe any man now into doing any service. Something in the stress of the last days, in her new reverence for Bart, had wrought a change in the relative value she set on truth and the gain of untruth. She held up her head with a gesture of new dignity as she told David that she had sought her father and found Bart.

"Father has half killed him, and now it hurts me to see him ill. Bart is a good man. O David, I tell you there is no one in the