Part 42 (1/2)
Satan, avaunt!
Nay, take thine hour; Thou canst not daunt, Thou hast no power; Be welcome to thy nest, Though it be in my breast.
Burrow amain; Dig like a mole; Fill every vein With half-burned coal; Puff the keen dust about, And all to choke me out.
Fill music's ways With creaking cries, That no loud praise May climb the skies; And on my laboring chest Lay mountains of unrest.
My slumber steep In dreams of haste, That only sleep, No rest I taste-- With stiflings, rimes of rote, And fingers on the throat.
Satan, thy might I do defy; Live core of night, I patient lie: A wind comes up the gray Will blow thee clean away.
Christ's angel, Death, All radiant white, With one cold breath Will scare thee quite, And give my lungs an air As fresh as answered prayer.
So, Satan, do Thy worst with me, Until the True Shall set me free, And end what He began, By making me a man.
”It is not much of poetry, Ruth!” he said, raising his eyes from the paper; ”--no song of thrush or blackbird! I am ashamed that I called it a c.o.c.k-crow--for that is one of the finest things in the world--a clarion defiance to darkness and sin--far too good a name for my poor jingle--except, indeed, you call it a Cochin-china-c.o.c.k-crow--from out a very wheezy chest!”
”'My strength is made perfect in weakness,'” said Ruth solemnly, heedless of the depreciation. To her the verses were as full of meaning as if she had made them herself.
”I think I like the older reading better--that is, without the _My_,”
said Polwarth: ”'Strength is made perfect in weakness.' Somehow--I can not explain the feeling--to hear a grand aphorism, spoken in widest application, as a fact of more than humanity, of all creation, from the mouth of the human G.o.d, the living Wisdom, seems to bring me close to the very heart of the universe. Strength--strength itself--all over--is made perfect in weakness;--a law of being, you see, Ruth! not a law of Christian growth only, but a law of growth, even all the growth leading up to the Christian, which growth is the highest kind of creation. The Master's own strength was thus perfected, and so must be that of His brothers and sisters. Ah, what a strength must be his!--how patient in endurance--how gentle in exercise--how mighty in devotion--how fine in its issues,-perfected by such suffering! Ah, my child, you suffer sorely sometimes--I know it well! but shall we not let patience have her perfect work, that we may--one day, Ruth, one day, my child--be perfect and entire, wanting nothing?”
Led by the climax of his tone, Ruth slipped from her stool on her knees.
Polwarth kneeled beside her, and said:
”O Father of life, we praise Thee that one day Thou wilt take Thy poor crooked creatures, and give them bodies like Christ's, perfect as His, and full of Thy light. Help us to grow faster--as fast as Thou canst help us to grow. Help us to keep our eyes on the opening of Thy hand, that we may know the manna when it comes. O Lord, we rejoice that we are Thy making, though Thy handiwork is not very clear in our outer man as yet. We bless Thee that we feel Thy hand making us. What if it be in pain! Evermore we hear the voice of the potter above the hum and grind of his wheel. Father, Thou only knowest how we love Thee. Fas.h.i.+on the clay to Thy beautiful will. To the eyes of men we are vessels of dishonor, but we know Thou dost not despise us, for Thou hast made us, and Thou dwellest with us. Thou hast made us love Thee, and hope in Thee, and in Thy love we will be brave and endure. All in good time, O Lord. Amen.”
While they thus prayed, kneeling on the stone floor of the little kitchen, dark under the universal canopy of cloud, the rain went on clas.h.i.+ng and murmuring all around, rus.h.i.+ng from the eaves, and exploding with sharp hisses in the fire, and in the mingled noise they had neither heard a low tap, several times repeated, nor the soft opening of the door that followed. When they rose from their knees, it was therefore with astonishment they saw a woman standing motionless in the doorway, without cloak or bonnet, her dank garments clinging to her form and dripping with rain.
When Juliet woke that morning, she cared little that the sky was dull and the earth dark. A selfish sorrow, a selfish love even, makes us stupid, and Juliet had been growing more and more stupid. Many people, it seems to me, through sorrow endured perforce and without a gracious submission, slowly sink in the scale of existence. Such are some of those middle-aged women, who might be the very strength of social well-being, but have no aspiration, and hope only downward--after rich husbands for their daughters, it may be--a new bonnet or an old coronet--the devil knows what.
Bad as the weather had been the day before, Dorothy had yet contrived to visit her, and see that she was provided with every necessary; and Juliet never doubted she would come that day also. She thought of Dorothy's ministrations as we so often do of G.o.d's--as of things that come of themselves, for which there is no occasion to be thankful.
When she had finished the other little house-work required for her comfort, a labor in which she found some little respite from the gnawings of memory and the blankness of antic.i.p.ation, she ended by making up a good fire, though without a thought of Dorothy's being wet when she arrived, and sitting down by the window, stared out at the pools, spreading wider and wider on the gravel walks beneath her. She sat till she grew chilly, then rose and dropped into an easy chair by the fire, and fell fast asleep.
She slept a long time, and woke in a terror, seeming to have waked herself with a cry. The fire was out, and the hearth cold. She s.h.i.+vered and drew her shawl about her. Then suddenly she remembered the frightful dream she had had.
She dreamed that she had just fled from her husband and gained the park, when, the moment she entered it, something seized her from behind, and bore her swiftly, as in the arms of a man--only she seemed to hear the rush of wings behind her--the way she had been going. She struggled in terror, but in vain; the power bore her swiftly on, and she knew whither. Her very being recoiled from the horrible depth of the motionless pool, in which, as she now seemed to know, lived one of the loathsome creatures of the semi-chaotic era of the world, which had survived its kind as well as its coevals, and was ages older than the human race. The pool appeared--but not as she had known it, for it boiled and heaved, bubbled and rose. From its lowest depths it was moved to meet and receive her! Coil upon coil it lifted itself into the air, towering like a waterspout, then stretched out a long, writhing, s.h.i.+vering neck to take her from the invisible arms that bore her to her doom. The neck shot out a head, and the head shot out the tongue of a water-snake. She shrieked and woke, bathed in terror.
With the memory of the dream not a little of its horror returned; she rose to shake it off, and went to the window. What did she see there?
The fearsome pool had entered the garden, had come half-way to the house, and was plainly rising every moment. More or less the pool had haunted her ever since she came; she had seldom dared go nearer it than half-way down the garden. But for the dulling influence of her misery, it would have been an unendurable horror to her, now it was coming to fetch her as she had seen it in her warning dream! Her brain reeled; for a moment she gazed paralyzed with horror, then turned from the window, and, with almost the conviction that the fiend of her vision was pursuing her, fled from the house, and across the park, through the sheets of rain, to the gate-lodge, nor stopped until, all unaware of having once thought of him in her terror, she stood at the door of Polwarth's cottage.
Ruth was darting toward her with outstretched hands, when her uncle stopped her.
”Ruth, my child,” he said, ”run and light a fire in the parlor. I will welcome our visitor.”
She turned instantly, and left the room. Then Polwarth went up to Juliet, who stood trembling, unable to utter a word, and said, with perfect old-fas.h.i.+oned courtesy, ”You are heartily welcome, ma'am. I sent Ruth away that I might first a.s.sure you that you are as safe with her as with me. Sit here a moment, ma'am. You are so wet, I dare not place you nearer to the fire.--Ruth!”