Part 23 (2/2)
”What is her business?” he asked mildly.
”Being a fairy, I suppose. I'll never forgive her for what she did to Billy. Besides,” I added, ”she makes fun of us.”
”No wonder, for we humans are so stupid.”
”She's full of mischief.”
”Of course.” The old man's eyes twinkled and blinked as though--I can't set words to fit that puzzled memory. He had told me twice that he was not a fairy. ”I am to tell you from my lady, that she is not the minx.
Winds, waves, and living things,” he said, ”are full of mischief and laughter. The sun has room to sparkle even in a tear, and Heaven touches our lips with every smile, for joy is holy. Spirits, angels, fairies, are only thoughts which have caught the light celestial, mirror-thoughts which s.h.i.+ne in Heaven's glory. Children, and happy people see that light, which never s.h.i.+nes on any clouded soul.”
”My soul is clouded. Help me.”
”I wonder,” he smiled with his old kind eyes. ”Have you a sense of humor? Ah,--there. Then you need never worry, or run away. As suns.h.i.+ne and rain are to the dear earth, so are laughter and tears to every living soul. Humor, dear, is the weather in which the spirit lives.”
”But sorrow and tears?”
”Why, how can the sun make rainbows without rain?”
”You'll praise pain next!”
”That is a sacrament,” he answered gravely, ”the outward sign of inward grace. For how else can G.o.d reach through selfishness down to the soul in need?”
My pain had come back, but it was welcome now.
On the left were the solemn pines, and at their feet white flowers; on the right were my fair birch trees; and the glade between lay in warm suns.h.i.+ne.
”Lift up your hearts,” whispered the priest, and I saw my trees, which in winter storm and summer sun alike show their brave faces to the changing sky.
”We lift them up unto the Lord,” they seemed to answer.
”It is very meet, right, and our bounden duty,” he responded, then looked as it seemed into my very soul.
I saw the dear priest's face through tears, but when I brushed them away the mist remained. He seemed remote, awful, and beautiful.
”There is a place,” he said, ”where souls awaiting incarnation, rest, and from that place they come, borne by messengers. A messenger was waiting in these woods, no evil spirit, my daughter, but one who came bearing a child to you. She stands august and lovely at your back, and in her arms the soul of a man-child, just on the verge of incarnation, waits at the boundary of the spirit land.
”'The light s.h.i.+neth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.'
”That light is all around you, and I must go. This very ground is holy.
Fare you well.”
Two days had pa.s.sed since my dear Jesse left, then through the long day I waited in the house, and the blue gloom of night swept up the glowing cliff. It was then I heard the signal shot from the rim-rock, and told my baby David that his father was coming home.
CHAPTER XIV
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