Part 5

“Besides, it will be so charming to live in Washington, and meet all the celebrities. I hope it is not frivolous, for I suppose all girls like society. I wonder what Herbert will do. Perhaps he will write me that he is broken-hearted; perhaps he will come in person and rebuke me. He is very proud, though, and I think he will bear it bravely. I had a friend who engaged herself to two at once, and the rejected young man shot himself. I hope Herbert will not do that!”

The cards were sent, and preparations went forward for a grand wedding. Dresses were tried on, and boxes of presents were opened with eager curiosity—those offerings which usually mean so little, and cramp the recipients for the next ten years in returning like favors. There was nothing from Herbert—not even a letter.

“How strange!” said the expectant bride. When Mr. Underwood received the cards he was indeed confounded, not heart-broken, for though he had long loved Clara Rawley he had questioned for some time her complete devotion to him.

She had been a society prize—rich, pretty, admired. He, likewise of fine family, could have won many. It was of course a disappointment, a humiliation. His friends would know it, and wonder at it. Some men would have taken a hasty departure to Europe; some would have been embittered by a young woman’s double dealing. He determined, perhaps not the most honorable thing for him, to recompense evil for evil.

By wise investigation he ascertained at what hour the happy bridegroom, Robert Spalding, was expected at the home of his betrothed, and decided to meet him on the train previous to his arrival. They had met each other once or twice, and thus it was not difficult to discern in the crowded cars the handsome face of his rival.

“Mr. Spalding, I believe.”

“Yes. Oh, I remember you—Mr. Underwood, the friend of Miss Rawley! Glad to see you; sit down.”

Presently the conversation turned upon the approaching wedding, and then with apparent calmness, but with indignation, Herbert told him how he had been engaged to Miss Rawley for several years, and of her perfidy.

Mr. Spalding listened with astonishment, and when he had finished, lost faith, ceased to find her the ideal of his life. She had been faithless to one; she might be to another. She certainly was undeserving of the love he had given her. He determined, then and there, to retrace his steps, and sent her a telegram, followed by a letter, telling her of the withdrawal of his hand.

The Rawley family were in consternation when the letter was received. Clara was piqued, angered, and became ill over it, and was sent to Europe. The careless if not heartless girl had been punished.

THE HOUSE-WARMING.

“ALMOST ready for the great event,” said Mr. Josiah Midland, portly and genial, to his wife Martha, as they stood on the porch of a two-story brick house, nearly completed. “I want the new house for you, Martha, and I want it also, I must confess, to show the people of Collinston that Josiah Midland has been a financial success. You know life has been a struggle since I left this town a boy, and worked my way on the railroad to a place of trust. Life is not an easy thing for the best of us, and where the one gains in the race, the many are so bound by the needs of every day that they can never rise above their surroundings. I kept good habits and saved my money. I owe that teaching to my hard-working mother.”

“Yes, you have been a great success,” said the thin and careworn wife, who had shared his struggles and did not possess his buoyant temperament to throw off the wear of daily life. “I almost dread to have a house-warming, for it will cost so much and bring no end of work. I should like to have the people see our beautiful home, but you know I cannot shine in society.”

Mrs. Midland looked up to her husband as the great factor in their worldly gains, and so he was; but he owed much to the economy and good sense of the quiet woman who was glad to be his helper.

“Oh, you will shine enough, Martha, so that I shall be proud of you! After the furniture is once in the house we will invite everybody—yes, everybody, rich and poor. It’s great folly for a man to make social distinctions for himself as soon as he has a few thousands. I want to have them all enjoy the house. It’s the handsomest house in the village, and they’ll all be glad to come. The caterer will provide the supper, and you’ll just have to shake hands with the guests and look pleased.”

“What do you think I had better wear, Josiah?”

“Oh, you must have a new dress for the occasion! I like garnet. Get a garnet silk with a good deal of velvet, and you’ll look handsome;” and Mr. Midland smiled in his big-hearted way that had won him friends from his boyhood.

The new moon had risen in the west, and the stars were coming out brightly, as if all nature even was glad at Mr. Midland’s success. As they left the house the church bell rang out.

“Let us go,” said Mr. Midland. “The minister told me the other day that an evangelist was coming here. I forgot all about it, but it might pay us to go and hear him once. Religion isn’t a thing of emotion to me, but I like to hear good preaching. I’ve never had any notion of joining a church myself, but I don’t know what the community would be without the churches. Property would go down pretty quickly.”

The minister, as was human, felt the blood quicken in his veins as the successful railroad-man and his wife entered. Not that they were more important than poor people, but he knew that money consecrated to good ends is a power almost unlimited. He could only silently pray that some word would be uttered which would touch Mr. Midland’s heart.

The young evangelist preached not an extraordinary sermon, but a simple talk upon the power of a good life—a life that came but once and was spent so quickly. Mr. Midland sat like one awakened out of sleep. True, he had made money; he had a good moral character; but he would go through life but once, and he was living entirely for himself. He had never realized what a wonderful gift from heaven this life is, with all its possibilities to help others, to make the poor comfortable, the sad happy, to remove the causes of crime and discontent. He seemed, all at once, to have made a voyage of discovery, and to have found a new land.

He said little on the way home, except to tell Martha that he felt strangely, and that she must go to bed and sleep, but he would sit up awhile and think. Mr. Midland did think long and carefully by the shaded lamp. He thought over his whole past experience. He had been prospered, and he owed all to a Higher Power. And after he had thought, he prayed.

In the morning he said: “Martha, I have given up the house-warming. I have decided to use the money to send a boy to college to become a preacher;” and then he added, “for a man who turns the life of another heavenward does the greatest work in the world, and I must help to do the greatest hereafter.”

Mrs. Midland looked confused for a minute, and then she said, half audibly, “I am very glad, Josiah.” After that night Mr. Midland’s face took on an expression that was noted till his death, years afterward. It was as though he had talked with the angels, and joined a new brotherhood. The genial man became more genial, more considerate, more self-controlled. It became literally true that, like his Master, “he went about doing good.” Without children of his own, he devoted his property to the giving of the Gospel to the people. He joined heartily, by voice and money, in all that elevated mankind. He built houses for the poor; he educated orphans; he held prayer-meetings in sparsely-settled districts; he labored for temperance; he became the idol and ideal man of the community. He carried out his plan of using the house-warming money to educate a young man for the ministry, and lived to see his gift return a thousand-fold interest.

HANNAH AND JOE.

IN THE YEAR 1851 Captain Budington, of Groton, Conn., passed the winter in Cumberland inlet, west of Greenland. Here he met Joe and Hannah on the island of Kim-ick-su-ic, so called because its flat centre, covered with grass, resembles a dogskin. Hannah was twelve years old, dressed in fur pantaloons and short fur overdress, and bore the name of Too-koo-li-too in her own language. Joe was a good deal older, and his real name was Ebierbing.

A few years afterward a merchant from Hull, England, Mr. Bolby, met them at Cumberland gulf, where they had come off the island to trade, and prevailed upon them to take the long journey to England. When he reached home he made a large company, and in the presence of these guests the young woman Hannah was married to Joe. Mr. Bolby took them to several places in England and Scotland, and they were finally presented to Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. The Queen was deeply interested in these people from the far North in British America, and asked them to dine with her. If the Queen was pleased with the sincere, uneducated, fur-dressed pair, Hannah was no less pleased with the gracious Queen in her elegant home, so entirely different from a snow hut. She always said Victoria was “very kind, very much lady.” After two years they returned to Cumberland inlet, and in 1860 Charles F. Hall, the explorer, met them.

Everybody in both England and America had become deeply interested in the fate of Sir John Franklin. He had left England in 1845 with two ships, the “Erebus” and “Terror,” with one hundred and thirty-four persons, in search of the North Pole. After two years relief parties were sent out to find them. Lady Franklin spent all her large fortune in sending out ships to search for her missing husband.

Finally, in 1850, the graves of three of the men were found at the far North, on Beechy island, west of Hannah’s home, so that the course which Franklin took was known. Four years later Dr. Rae, of England, heard from the Eskimos that a large company of white men had starved on King William Land, far to the northwest of Baffin’s bay, and he obtained from the Eskimos many articles which belonged to Franklin and his men.

After England had spent over five million dollars in searching for Franklin it was ascertained that both his ships had gone to pieces in the ice off the west coast of King William Land, and that his poor men had starved and frozen, as they wandered over the ice in a vain search for food or friends. Then skeletons were found in boats or in snowbanks, and their boots, watches, and silver had become the property of the Eskimos. Sir John died two years after the ships left England, and must have been buried in the ocean.

Some persons believed that the Franklin party were not all dead. Charles Francis Hall was an engraver at Cincinnati, O. He was poor, and with no influential friends, but he felt that the Lord had called him to the work of finding some of the Franklin men. He read all he could find about Arctic life. He asked money of prominent men and learned societies, and finally, after enough obstacles to discourage any other man, obtained funds to build a boat and put up twelve hundred pounds of food for the journey. A New London firm gave him a free passage on one of their ships, and he went, in 1860, to the far North, discovering relics of Sir Martin Frobisher’s expedition, made three hundred years before. His boat was lost, so he had to return to America, and brought with him Joe and Hannah, who had been with him two years, and who were devotedly attached to him.

In 1864 Hall started again with Joe and Hannah, and north of Hudson bay lived five years among the Eskimos, eating their raw food and living in their igloos or snow huts. Joe, with great skill, would kill a walrus, which sometimes weighs two thousand pounds, or would watch two whole nights near a hole in the ice where the seal comes up to breathe, that he might spear it for his master.

In 1866, May 14, the only child of Joe and Hannah died, while on one of Hall’s journeys. According to custom, the distracted mother at the plain funeral carried the dead baby in a fur blanket suspended from her neck. Captain Hall put this note in the fur cap covering the head of the child: “These are the mortal remains of little King William, the only child of Ebierbing and Too-koo-li-too, the interpreters of the lost Franklin Research Expedition. God hath its soul now, and will keep it from harm.”

Later, Hall visited King William Land, and brought away one hundred and twenty-five pounds of relics of Franklin and his men. Among these was a complete skeleton, proved from the filling of a tooth to be that of an officer of the ship “Erebus.” Hall felt sure now that all the party were dead. Joe and Hannah came back to the States with Hall, bringing a little three-year-old girl whom they adopted. They bought her of her parents for a sled. Hannah named her Sylvia Grinnell, after the Grinnell family, celebrated for their gifts towards Arctic research, but her real name was Punna.

Captain Hall made his third voyage in the ship “Polaris” in 1871 for the North Pole, taking his devoted Joe and Hannah and little Punna. He reached a higher point in Smith sound than had been reached by any other vessel at that time, and anchored in a harbor protected by an iceberg four hundred and fifty feet long and three hundred broad, calling the place Thank God harbor. In the autumn of this year Hall died very suddenly, and his men spent two days in digging a grave only two feet deep. He was buried at eleven in the forenoon, but so dark was it in that high latitude that lanterns were carried. Poor Hannah sobbed aloud at the death of her best friend. The party on the “Polaris” determined to return, but, being caught in the ice, were obliged to abandon her and throw the provisions and clothing out on the ice-floe. In the midst of this work, in the night, the ship drifted away, with fourteen persons on board, leaving on a piece of ice one hundred yards long and seventy-five broad Captain Tyson and eight white men and nine Eskimos, including three women and a baby eight weeks old. Hannah and Punna were among them.

A dreadful snow-storm came on, and the shivering creatures huddled together under some musk-ox skins. Later they built a little house from materials thrown out of the ship, and floated down Baffin’s bay and Davis strait, the ice constantly crumbling and the sea washing over them. They used all their boats save one for fuel, and were only kept alive through the heroic efforts of Joe and another Eskimo, Hans, who caught some seals for them, which were eagerly eaten uncooked, without removing the hairy skin. They had only a little mouldy bread, and the sufferings of the children from hunger were painful to witness.

Once, when nearly all were dead from starvation, Joe saved them by killing a bear. He and Hannah refused to leave Captain Tyson and the party when they were drifting past their homes at Cumberland inlet, even when it was probable that the Eskimos themselves must be used for food by the famished white men. After drifting one thousand five hundred miles in six months (one hundred and ninety-six days), one of the most thrilling journeys on record, the party were rescued off the coast of Labrador by the English ship “Tigress.”

Hannah and Joe settled at Groton in 1873, in a little house purchased for them by their good friend, “Father Hall.” Joe became a carpenter, and Hannah made up furs and other articles on her sewing-machine.

The next year Hannah, at the age of thirty-eight, died of consumption, her health broken by the exposure on the ice-floe. She had long been an earnest Christian, loving and reading her Bible daily. She was tenderly cared for by Mrs. Captain Budington and others, saying at the last, “Come, Lord Jesus, and take thy poor creature home!” A handsome stone marks the grave of the faithful Hannah in the cemetery. Joe came often to the graves on the hillside of Groton, and said at last, “Hannah gone! Punna gone! Me go now again to King William Land; I have to fight; me no care.” He went with Lieutenant Schwatka in the Franklin search party, June 19, 1878, and never returned to the United States.

BURTON CONE’S REASON.

YEARS after Coleridge wrote the beautiful “Hymn before Sunrise in the Valley of Chamouni,” which Felicia Hemans said she would give all her poems to have written,—among a group of strangers standing in awe before Mont Blanc was a man who seemed forty-five, from his hair fully half gray and his quiet, dignified bearing, though he must have been younger. He was absorbed in his own thoughts. He did not look at any face about him, but seemed spell-bound by the sublimity of the scene. In that vast mountain, white with eternal snows, with the rivers, fed by the glaciers, turbulent at its base, the sun clothing it with rainbows, he saw the same God who had compassed his life, as the stalwart pines hedged in the grand mount before him.

After a time, as through that as yet undeveloped science of unseen power between mind and mind, he felt a presence. He was conscious of eyes fixed upon him, conscious that somebody he had known and loved was near him. A hand was laid on his shoulder.

“Burton, you’re the last man in all the world I thought of seeing. Ten years since you and I travelled together, and you yet on the wing? I supposed you had settled down to some life-work, and was surrounded by loves and cares ere this. You and I have stood here together before.”

The speaker was a genial, generous man, somewhat Cone’s junior in look and manner, whose sorrows, whether many and great or not, could not long crush his happy heart. His sympathies were quick, his hopes naturally bright, and his nature ardent. The decade that had passed since the former companionship had aged one more than the other. The one had been giving time and heart to business, but had lived alone, though a crowded world was about him. The other had been kept young and fresh by the love of a cheerful wife and sunny daughter, and the years had gone by rapidly and more than ordinarily well stored with good deeds.

“Come, Burton, I am tiring of this road and grandeur. Let’s go back to the hotel and have one of the old friendly talks. Nature has lost half its beauty now that only one pair of eyes sees it—and I have no one to tell of the beautiful or strange things I have seen. You don’t need friendship as I do. You are made of sterner stuff. You are Mont Blanc personified.”

Cone’s mind was full of the grandeur before him, but his heart, cold as he was, was keenly alive to the needs of those who had been friends, so together they walked arm in arm to their lodgings.

“Now, let’s talk over the ten years, Cone. Ten years make a fool or a wise man of a fellow—carry him up to the gates or down to the depths.”

“Tell me what they have done for you, Marsh. You know how much I have to thank you and your young wife for the sunshine you put into my life when we travelled together before. She seemed like a sister to me. She understood me; and that is where most women fail. They do not know us, or we do not know them, so our true natures never come side by side; but she seemed to feel the pulse of my life. She knew just when I needed jovial words and when I needed sympathy or quiet. She had the tact I have heard so often described, but seldom seen, and a pure, good heart back of it. I fear all hasn’t gone right with you. Can it be that you are walking alone, like myself?”

Tears gathered in Marsh’s eyes. He had almost a woman’s heart and a woman’s love. “It isn’t hard for you to stand alone, but for me it is crushing. I buried my wife in England six months ago. We came for her health, but she failed rapidly and went away soon after we arrived. Our little girl is boarding with friends, and I wander anywhere, everywhere,—so I can forget. I cannot go back to America. Nothing binds me there. I seem unfit for labor, and I am adrift. You know she was like an anchor. I depended upon her judgment, upon her help, upon her love. When a woman leans entirely upon a man, and she is taken away, he may feel as though something dear and beautiful had gone out from him; but when a woman has strength enough to be a companion, a counsellor, in the deeds and plans of every day,—when she is not a pet merely, but a guide to everything noble,—when, whether you will or not, you are kept upon a plane of right and duty and manhood,—what shall a poor relying heart do?”

“Would you wish to forget, Marsh? I would put such a blessing away in my heart and grow strong from daily looking at it.”

“I can’t keep it, Cone. I must get away from such memories. I feel as though I drifted hither and thither, because there is no hand on the helm. To remember is misery: to forget might be relief.”

“And yet, do you not owe such a wife a loving, yearning remembrance? One might forget a flower that blossomed for his pleasure for a day or a week; but hold in grateful memory a spring that opened in the desert of a parched life and became an unfailing supply. Memories sometimes are almost as sweet as present realities, and sometimes we are made even stronger by the one than by the other.”

“That may be good philosophy for those who have never loved and lost. No one can know till he has the trial. I have one left, I know, but that does not fill the place of the other, and perchance no one ever could.”

“You must go back with me to our fatherland. I am nearly through my journeying, for it seems idle work for me now. Besides, I have had premonitions that I should make ready for another journey. You seem startled. Ten years have worn upon me, for they have been years of constant and hard labor. I could not forget, and would not; but hope will fade into fruition by and by.”

“Cone, you ought to tell me of your life. Much as you respected my wife, you never raised the curtain from the scenes which transpired before we met you. Why have you lived to your age, and taken no heart into your own to bless and hold? Your principles are like adamant, and would keep you anywhere, but every man and woman needs to have his or her heart uncloistered, that others may grow strong and unselfish with him. This working out life’s plan alone, with no giving or receiving of loves, seems a mistake to me. Has your heart anything hidden away in it, or are you proof to what you may think the weaker acts of life?”

Cone’s face seemed a little troubled. Not one man or woman out of ten thousand reaches the age of forty without having loved or been loved, and felt blessed joy or bitter pain in one or the other. Was he indeed different from the rest of mankind? He manifested no partiality for women, except a deference that everybody pays to what it supposes exalted and ennobling. He had received numerous proofs of their esteem for him, and indications that they would not repel his attentions. He was often the subject of remark, from his striking face and manner, but when all the queries had been asked and unanswered they said, “There must be a reason for all this, and time will tell it.”

He had been touched in heart by Marsh’s utter helplessness. He knew better than anybody else what a centre she had been to his thought and his affections. He sympathized with him. Perhaps the doors of his own inner sanctuary, locked for a half-score years, might swing back just once, and let a weary friend come in and find consolation.

“Come to-night, Marsh, and I will talk with you. Good-by till then.”

Alone and unperceived he stole out to sit under the majestic shadows of Mont Blanc, and worship. Nobody with a God in his heart ever stands there without holding communion with Him. No wonder that the lofty peaks, echoing cañons, and wondrous waterfalls of our own country have written the names of more than one poet on the pages of American literature! Such scenes are the nurseries in which great minds develop. Such grand handiwork of the Builder draws every man very near to Him.