Chapter 18

OUT OF THE SMOKE

There was an immense burden lifted off me. It is difficult to express the change and the relief in my feelings. The next day was given to an excursion in the neighbourhood; and I never can forget how rare the air seemed to be, as if I were breathing pure life; and how brilliant the sunlight was that fell on the wonderful Palestine carpet of spring flowers. All over they were; under foot and everywhere else; flashing from hidden places, peeping round corners, smiling at us in every meadow and hillside; a glory upon the land. Papa was in great delight, as well as I; and as kind as possible to me; also very good to Mr. Dinwiddie. Mr. Dinwiddie himself seemed to me transformed. I had gone back now to the free feeling of a child; and he looked to me again as my childish eyes had seen him. There was a great amount of fire and vigour and intellectual life in his countenance; the auburn hair and the brown eyes glowed together with the hue of a warm temperament; but that was tempered by a sweet and manly character. I thought he had grown soberer than the Mr. Dinwiddie of my remembrance.

That particular day lies in my memory like some far-off lake that one has seen just under the horizon of a wide landscape, - a still bit of silvery light. It is not the distance, though, in this case, that gives it its shining. We were going that morning to visit Gibeon and Neby Samwil; and the landscape was full, for me, of the peace which had come into the relations between me and papa. It was a delicious spring day; the flowers bursting under our feet with their fresh smiles; the air perfumed with herby scents and young sweetness of nature; while associations of old time clustered all about, like sighs of history. - We went first along the great stony track which leads from Jerusalem to the north; then turned aside into the great route from Jaffa to Jerusalem; not the southern and rougher way which re had taken when we came from the coast. This was he approach of almost all the armies which have poured their fury on the devoted city. We went single file, as one has to go in Palestine; and I liked it. There was too much to think of to make one want to talk. And the buoyancy of the air seemed to feed mind as well as body, and give all the stimulus needed. Mr. Dinwiddie sometimes called out to me to point my attention to something; and the rest of the time I kept company with the past and my own musings.

We visited Gibeon first, and stood by the dry pool where Abner and Joab watched the fight of their twelve picked men; and we read Solomon's prayer.

"This is a wonderful country," said papa, "for the way its associations are packed. There is more history here than in any other region of the world."

"Well, papa, it is the world's history," I said.

"What do you mean, Daisy?"

I hesitated; it was not very easy to tell.

"She is right though," said Mr. Dinwiddie; "it is the very core of the world's history, round which the other is slowly gathering and maturing, to the perfected fruit. Or to take it another way, - ever since God at the first did visit the Gentiles, to take put of them a people for His name, His dealings with that people have been an earnest and an image of His course with His Church at large. We may cut down to the heart of the world and find the perfect flower here - as we do in bulbs."

"A blossoming to destruction then, it seems," said my father.

"No!" said Mr. Dinwiddie - "to restoration and glory. The history of this land is not yet finished."

"And you think _that_ is in store for it yet?"

Mr. Dinwiddie answered, - " 'Thus saith the Lord; If ye can break my covenant of the day, and my covenant of the night, and that there should not be day and night in their season; then may also my covenant be broken with David my servant, that he should not have a son to reign upon his throne; and with the Levites the priests, my ministers. As the hosts of heaven cannot be numbered, neither the sand of the sea measured: so will I multiply the seed of David my servant, and the Levites that minister unto me.' "

"Who spoke that?"

"The prophet Jeremiah."

"And when, pray?"

"When Nebuchadnezzar and his army were just upon the point of completing the destruction of the city - and of the people."

"Then it refers to their return from captivity, does it not?"

"As the type of the other restoration," said Mr. Dinwiddie. "For 'In those days, and at that time, will I cause the Branch of righteousness to grow up unto David; and he shall execute judgment and righteousness in the land. In those days shall Judah be saved, and Jerusalem shall dwell safely; and this is the name whereby she shall be called, The Lord our righteousness.' Moreover, in Ezekiel's vision of a new temple and city, he gives the dimensions of the temple large enough to take in all Jerusalem, and the holy city as many times exceeding its utmost actual limits; and he says, 'The name of the city from that day shall be, The Lord is there.' Jehovah shammah. I wish the day were come."

"You take it as entirely figurative!" said papa. "I thought just now you made it entirely literal."

"What is a figure?" said Mr. Dinwiddie. "And if you take away the literal, where will the spiritual be?"

"True," said papa. "These are things I have not studied."

And then we mounted to the height of Neby Samwil and sat down for a good long look. Mr. Dinwiddie was here as elsewhere invaluable. He told us everything and pointed out everything to us, that we ought to see or know. The seacoast plain lay below; - spread out for many a mile, with here a height and there a cluster of buildings, and the blue sea washing its western border. We could easily see Jaffa, Ramleh and Lydda; we picked those spots out first which we knew. Then Mr. Dinwiddie pointed us to Ashdod, and to Ekron, a little to the left of Ramleh.

"And that is where Nebuchadnezzar was with his army, before he went up to Jerusalem," I said.

"The first time," said Mr. Dinwiddie. "Yes; there his hosts of Chaldeans lay in the plain; and there after the place was taken he impaled the chiefs of the town; and then flushed with power, came up to Jerusalem and cast banks against it. So he says; and we know that so Isaiah prophesied he would do; and we know that Hezekiah bought him off."

"Did he come up this way of the Beth-horons?" I asked.

"I suppose so. And down this way, Joshua chased the fleeing kings and their followers and overthrew them as they fled down the pass - what a rush it must have been! - and down there, down where the green sweeps into the hills from the plain, there is Ajalon."

"Papa, do you see?"

"I see; but I do not understand quite so well as you do, Daisy, what you are talking about."

"It is Miss Randolph's own country," remarked Mr. Dinwiddie.

"She is not a Jewess," said papa.

"Pardon me - we have it on authority that 'he is a Jew which is one inwardly;' - an Israelite indeed," Mr . Dinwiddie muttered to himself.

I saw papa was puzzled and half displeased. I hastened to turn the conversation, and showed him where Bethel lay and the mountains of Ephraim; and finally ordered our luncheon basket to be brought forward. But we had to leave our position and choose a shaded place, the sun was growing so hot.

"How long do you expect to remain here - in Palestine, Mr. Dinwiddie?" something prompted me to ask. He hesitated a moment or two and then replied -

"I cannot tell - probably as long as I stay anywhere on this scene of action."

"You do not mean ever to come home?" I said.

"What is 'home,' Miss Daisy?" he replied, looking at me.

"It is where we were born," said papa.

"Would your daughter say so?"

"No," I answered; for I was born at Magnolia. "But I think home is where we have lived, - is it not?"

"Melbourne?" Mr. Dinwiddie suggested.

"No," said I; "it is not Melbourne now, to be sure; but neither could it be possibly any place in Europe, or Asia."

"Are you sure? Not in _any_ circumstances?"

I cannot tell what, in his tone or look, drove his meaning home. But I felt the colour rise in my face and I could not answer.

"It is where the heart is, after all," Mr. Dinwiddie resumed. "The Syrian sky does not make much difference. _My_ home is waiting for me."

"But we speak of home here, and properly."

"Properly, for those who have it."

"I think, Mr. Dinwiddie, that we say 'home' sometimes, when we speak only of where the heart was."

"Better not," he said. "Let us have a living home, not a dead one. And that we can, always."

"What do you know of places where the heart _was?_" said papa, looking at me curiously.

"Not much, papa; but I was thinking; and I think people mean that sometimes."

"We will both trust she will never come nearer to the knowledge," said Mr. Dinwiddie, with one of his bright looks at papa and at me. It was assuming a little more interest in our affairs than I feared papa would like; but he took it quietly. More quietly than I could, though my reason for disquietude was different. Mr. Dinwiddie's words had set vibrating a chord in my heart which could not just then give a note of pleasure. I wanted it to lie still. The wide fair landscape took a look to me instantly, which indeed belonged to it, of "places where the heart was;" and the echo of broken hopes came up to my ear from the gray ruins near and far. Yet the flowers of spring were laughing and shouting under my feet. Was it hope, or mockery?

"What are you questioning, Miss Daisy ?" said Mr. Dinwiddie, as he offered me some fruit.

"I seemed to hear two voices in nature, Mr. Dinwiddie; - I wanted to find out which was the true."

"What were the voices? - and I will tell you."

"One came from the old heap of Ekron yonder, and the ruins of Ramleh, and Jerusalem, and Gibeon, and Bethel; - the other voice came from the flowers."

"Trust the flowers."

"Why, more than the ruins?"

"Remember," - said he. "One is God's truth; the other is man's falsehood."

"But the ruins tell truth too, Mr. Dinwiddie."

"What truth? They tell of man's faithlessness, perversity, wrongheadedness, disobedience; persisted in, till there was no remedy. And now, to be sure, they are a desolation. But that is not what God willed for the land."

"Yet surely, Mr. Dinwiddie, there come desolations into people's lives too."

"By the same reason."

"Surely without it sometimes."

"Nay," he said. " 'The Lord redeemeth the soul of His servants; and none of them that trust in Him shall be desolate.' "

"But their lives are empty sometimes?"

"That they may be more full, then. Depend on it, the promise is sure, - they shall not want any good I thing."

"One must let the Lord judge then," I said somewhat sorrowfully, "what are the good things."

"Will we not?" said Mr. Dinwiddie. "Do we know? We must agree to his judgment, too; and then we shall find there is no want to them that fear him. The Lord is my Shepherd! - I shall not want. But the sheep follow the shepherd, and never dream of choosing out their own pasture, Miss Daisy."

My voice choked a little and I could not answer. And all the rest of the day I could not get back my quiet. The talk of leaving the choice of my life out of my own hands, had roused my hands to cling to their choice with a terrible grasp lest it should be taken away from them. The idea that Thorold and I might be parted from each other, made my heart leap out with inexpressible longing to be with him. It was not till we got home to the Mount of Olives again, and I was watching the glory of the sunset, turning Jerusalem to gold and bringing out rosy and purple and amethyst hues from the Moab mountains, that my heart leapt back to its rest and I heard the voice of nature and God again above the din of my own heart.

As soon as the season was far enough advanced, and Mr. Dinwiddie could make his arrangements to be with us, we left Jerusalem and its surroundings and set off northwards. It was hard to go. Where many a sorrowful traveller has left his little mound of farewell stones on Scopus, I stood and looked back; as long as papa would wait for me. Jerusalem looked so fair, and the thought and prospect of another Jerusalem lay before me, fairer indeed, but so distant. And I fancied storms and some rough travelling between. And here, in the actual Jerusalem, my life had been very sweet; peaceful with a whole flood tide of peacefulness. I resolved I would not lose nor forget this ungratefully; but as long as I could I would be happy. So I turned my face at last to enjoy every foot of the way to Nablous.

During our stay at Jerusalem and on the Mount of Olives, of course letters and papers had been received regularly; and sometimes a bit of news from America had made all our hearts stir. Mine, with a new throb of hope and possible exultation; for what we heard was on the side of Northern successes. Still, papa and Mr. Dinwiddie agreed these were but the fortune of war, and could not - in the nature of things last. The South could not be overcome. So they said, and I feared. But a thrill of possible doubt came over me when I heard of Fort Donelson, and the battle of Pea Ridge, and the prowess of the little iron-clad _Monitor_. And a great throb of another kind heaved my heart, when we got the news of President Lincoln's Message, recommending that assistance should be given by Congress to every Southern State which would abolish slavery. A light broke in upon the whole struggle; and from that time the war was a different thing to me. Papa and Mr. Dinwiddie talked a great deal about it, discussing the subject in almost all its bearings. I sat by and said nothing.

I would not read the papers myself, all this time. In America I had studied them, and in Switzerland and in Florence I had devoured them. Here in the Holy Land, I had made an agreement with myself to be happy; to leave the care of things which I could not manage, and not to concern myself with the fluctuations on the face of affairs which I could not trace out to their consequences, do what I would. So. I heard the principal points of news from papa's talk and Mr. Dinwiddie's; I let the papers alone. Only with one exception. I could not help it. I could not withhold myself from looking at the lists of wounded and killed. I looked at nothing more; but the thought that one name might be there would have incessantly haunted me, if I had not made sure that it was not there. I dreaded every arrival from the steamers of a new mail budget.

From Mr. Thorold I got no letter. Nor from Miss Cardigan. From Mrs. Sandford one; which told me nothing I wanted to know. To mamma papa had writ- ten, describing to her the pleasure we were enjoying and the benefit his health was deriving from our journey, and asking her to join us at Beyrout and spend the summer on Lebanon.

Towards Beyrout we now journeyed gently on; stopping and lingering by the way as our custom was. At Nablous, at Nazareth, at Tiberias, at Safed, at Banias; then across the country to Sidon, down to Khaiffa and Carmel; finally we went up to Beyrout. Papa enjoyed every bit of the way; to me it was a journey scarcely of this earth, the happiness of it was so great. Mr. Dinwiddie everywhere our kind and skilful guide, counsellor, helper; knowing all the ground, and teaching us to use our time to the very best advantage. He made papa more at ease about me, and me about papa.

At Beyrout, for the first time since we left Jerusalem, we found ourselves again in a hotel. Mr. Dinwiddie went to find our despatches that were awaiting us. Papa lay down on the cushions of a divan. I sat at the window, wondering at what I saw. I wonder now at the remembrance.

It was afternoon, and the shades and colours on the mountains and the sea were a labyrinth of delight. Yes, the eye and the mind lost themselves again and again, to start back again to the consciousness of an enchanted existence. The mountains rising from the coast were in full view of my window, shaded with all sorts of green from the different woods and cultivation which clothed their sides. The eye followed their growing heights and ridges, till it rested on the snow summit of Sunnin; then swept round the range to the southward; but ever came back again to the lofty, reposeful majesty of that white mountain top in the blue ether. Little streams I could see dashing down the rocks; a white thread amongst the green; castles or buildings of some stately sort were upon every crag; I found afterwards they were monasteries. The sea waves breaking on the rocks of the shore gave other touches of white, and the sea was taking a deep hue, and the town stretching back from it looked gay and bright, with pretty houses and palm trees and palaces, and, bright-coloured dresses flitting here and there in the streets; and white sails were on the sea. I had never seen, I have never seen, anything more lovely than Beyrout. I had come to the city rather anxious; for we expected there to meet a great budget of news, which I always dreaded; wandering about from place to place, we had been blissfully separated for some time from all disturbing intelligence. Now we must meet it, perhaps; but the glory of the beauty before me wrapped my heart round as with an unearthly shield. Peace, peace, and good will, - it spoke, from Him who made the beauty and owned the glory; softly it reminded me that my Father in heaven could not fail in love nor in resources. I leaned my head against the frame of the open window, and rested and was glad.

Mr. Dinwiddie came back with a business step. I looked up, but I would not fear. He laid a pile of letters and papers before papa, and then sat down to the consideration of some of his own.

"What is doing at home, Dinwiddie?" papa asked.

"A good deal, since our last advices."

"What? I am tired of reading about it."

"Yes," said Mr. Dinwiddie. "You want me to save you the trouble?"

"If it is no trouble to you."

"The news is of several advantages gained by the Yankees."

"That won't last," said papa. "But there are always fluctuations in these things."

"Back in March," Mr. Dinwiddie went on, "there are reported two engagements in which our troops came off second best - at Newhern and at Winchester. It is difficult perhaps to know the exact truth - the papers on the two sides hold such different language. But the sixth of April there was a furious battle at Pittsburg Landing, our men headed by Beauregard, Polk and Sidney Johnston, when our men got the better very decidedly; the next day came up a sweeping reinforcement of the enemy under Grant and others, and took back the fortune of war into their own hands, it seems."

"Perhaps that is doubtful too," observed my father.

"I see Beauregard asked permission to bury his dead."

"Many killed?" asked my father.

"Terribly many. There were large numbers engaged, and fierce fighting."

So they _can_ do it, I said to myself, amid all my heart- beating.

"There will be of course, some variation of success," said my father.

"The pendulum is swung all to one side, in these last news," said Mr. Dinwiddie.

"What next?"

"Fort Pulaski is taken."

"Pulaski!" my father exclaimed.

"Handsomely done, after a bombardment of thirty hours."

"I am surprised, I confess," said papa.

"The House of Representatives has passed a bill for the abolition of slavery in the District."

"Oh, I am glad!" I exclaimed. "_That_ is good."

"Is that _all_ you think good in the news?" said Mr. Dinwiddie a little pointedly.

"Daisy is a rebel," said papa.

"No, papa; not _I_ surely. I stand by the President and the Country."

"Then _we_ are rebels, Dinwiddie," said papa, half wearily. "Half the country is playing the fool, that is clear; and the whole must suffer."

"But the half where the seat of war is, suffers the most."

"That will not last," said papa. "I know the South."

"I wonder if we know the North," said Mr. Dinwiddie. "Farragut has run the gauntlet of the forts at the mouth of the Mississippi and taken New Orleans."

"Taken New Orleans!" my father exclaimed again, rising half up as he lay on the cushions of the divan.

"It was done in style," said Mr. Dinwiddie, looking along the columns of his paper. "Let me read you this, Mr. Randolph."

Papa assented, and he read; while I turned my face to the window again, and listened to Farragut's guns and looked at Lebanon. What a strange hour it was! There was hope at work and rejoicing; but it shook me. And the calmness of the everlasting hills and the mingled sweetnesses of the air, came in upon the fever of my heart with cooling and quieting power. The sea grew a deeper blue as I listened and looked; the mountains - what words can tell the mantle of their own purple that enfolded them as the evening came on; and the snowy heights of Sunnin and Kunisyeh grew rosy. I looked and I drank it in; and I could not fear for the future.

I believe I had fallen into a great reverie, during which Mr. Dinwiddie ended his reading and left the room. It was papa's touch on my shoulder that roused me. He had come to my side.

"Are you happy, Daisy?" was his question.

"Papa? -" I said in bewilderment.

"Your face was as calm as if you had nothing to think about."

"I had been thinking, papa. I was thinking, I believe."

"Does this strange news make you happy?"

"Oh, no, papa; not that."

"What then?"

"Something that is no news, and that never can grow old, papa. The mountains and the sea were just reminding me of it."

"You mean - what? You speak riddles, Daisy."

"Papa, you would give me everything good for me, if you could."

He kissed me fondly.

"I would, my child. Whether I can, or no, that troubles me by its uncertainty."

"Papa, my Father in heaven can, and will. There is no doubt about His power. And so there is no uncertainty."

"Daisy! -" said papa, looking at me in a strange way.

"Yes, papa, I mean it. Papa, you know it is true."

"I know you deserve all I can give you," he said, taking my face in his two hands and looking into it. "Daisy - is there anybody in the world that loves you as well as I do?"

That was a little too much, to bring up my heart in words in that manner. In spite of my composure, which I thought so strong, I was very near bursting into tears. I believe my face flushed and then grew pale with the struggle. Papa took me in his arms.

"You shall have no trouble that I can shield you from," he said tenderly. "I will put nothing between you and this young man if he is worthy of you, Daisy. I will pat nothing. But others may. My power reaches only a certain distance."

"Papa -" I began, but I could not say what I would.

"Well?3 - said he tenderly, stroking my hair, "what is it? I would keep all trouble from you, my pet, if I could."

"Papa," I whispered, "that may not be best. We must leave that. But papa, if you only knew what I know and were glad as I am glad, - I think I could bear all the rest!"

"How shall I be glad as you are glad, Daisy?" he said, half sadly.

"Papa, let Jesus make you happy!"

"You are talking Hebrew, my child."

"No, papa; for if you seek Him, He _will_ make you happy."

"Come! we will seek him from to-day," my father said.

And that was my summer on Lebanon. My mother wrote that she would not join us in Syria; she preferred to remain in Paris, where she had my aunt Gary's company and could receive the American news regularly. Her words were bitter and scornful about the successes of the Northern army and McClellan's fruitless siege of Yorktown; so bitter, that papa and I passed them over without a word of comment, knowing how they bore on my possible future.

But we, we studied the Bible, and we lived on Lebanon. And when I have said that, I have said all. From one village to another, higher and higher up, we went; pitching our tents under the grand old walnut trees, within sight or hearing of mountain torrents that made witcheries of beauty in the deep ravines; studying sunrisings, when the light came over the mountain's brow and lit our broken hillside by degrees, our walnut tree tops and the thread of the rushing stream; and sunsets, when the sun looked at us from the far-off Mediterranean and touched no spot of Lebanon but to make a glorified place of it. With Mr. Dinwiddie we took rides to different scenes of wonder and beauty; made excursions sometimes of a week or two long; we dreamed at Baalbec and rejoiced under the Cedars. Everywhere papa and I read the Bible. Mr. Dinwiddie left us for some time during the summer, and returned again a few days before we left Lebanon and Syria.

"So you are going to-morrow" - he said the last evening, as he and I were watching the sunset from the edge of the ravine which bordered our camping-ground. I made no answer, for my heart was too full.

"It has been a good summer," he said. I bowed my head in assent.

"And now," he said, "you push out into the world again. I feel about you as I did when I saw your little craft just starting forth, and knew there were breakers ahead."

"You do not know that now, Mr. Dinwiddie?" I said.

"I know there are rocks. If the sea should let you pass them in quiet, it would be a wonder."

That was too true, I knew. I could only be silent.

"How do you feel?" he next asked.

"I know it is as you say, Mr. Dinwiddie."

"And in view of it? -"

"What can I do, - Mr. Dinwiddie?"

"Nothing to avoid the rocks. The helm is not in your hand."

"But I know in whose hand it is."

"And are willing to have it there?"

"More than willing," I said, meeting his eye.

"Then the boat will go right," he said, with a sort of accent of relief. "It is the cross pulls with the oar, striving to undo the work of the rudder, that draw the vessel out of her course. The Pilot knows, - if you can only leave it to the Pilot."

There was a pause again.

"But He sometimes takes the boat into the breakers," Mr. Dinwiddie said.

"Yes," I said. "I know it."

"What then, Daisy, my friend?"

"What then, Mr. Dinwiddie?" I said, looking up at him. "Then she must be broken to pieces."

"And what then? Can you trust the Pilot still?"

His great eyes were flashing and glittering as he looked at me. No careless nor aimless thought had caused such an interrogatory, I knew. I met the eyes which seemed to be blazing and melting at once, but I answered only by the look.

"You may," he went on, without taking his eyes from mine. "You may trust safely. Even if the vessel is shaken and broken, trust even then, when all seems gone. There shall be smooth waters yet; and a better voyage than if you had gone a less wearisome way."

"Why do you say all this to me, Mr. Dinwiddie?"

"Not because I am a prophet," he said, looking away now, - "for I am none. And if I saw such trials ahead for you, I should have hardly courage to utter them. I asked, to comfort myself; that I might know of a certainty that you are safe, whatever comes."

"Thank you," I said, rather faintly.

"I shall stay here," he went on presently, "in the land of my work; and you will be gone to-morrow for other scenes. It isn't likely you will ever see me again. But if ever you need a friend, on the other side of the globe, if you call me, I will come. It is folly to say that, though," he said plucking hastily at a spear of grass; - "you will not need nor think of me. But I suppose you know, Daisy, by this time, that all those who come near you, love you. I am no exception. You must have charity for me."

"Dear Mr. Dinwiddie," I said reaching out my hand, - "if I were in trouble and wanted a friend, there is no one in the world that I would sooner, or - rather, or as soon or as lief, ask to help me. Except -" I added, and could not finish my sentence. For I had remembered there was an exception which ought to be implied somewhere.

"I know," he said, wringing my hand. "I wish I could heap blessings on the head of the exception. Now let us go in."

The next day we rode down to Beyrout, and took the steamer that same evening.