CHAPTER XXVI

GLOOM AND THE LIGHT

Ann's secret was not long in gaining publicity after her father found it out, nor was he disposed entirely to discredit the gossips' reports that McNeil's strange actions might be due to a living wife or some crime committed. Why else on earth would a man change his name, desert a girl like Ann Rutledge, and go away--nobody knew where?

The town gossip greatly embarrassed Ann Rutledge, yet she was glad she had told her parents, and, the burden of the secret now being removed, she was more like herself.

The action of John McNeil and the consequent displeasure of Ann's father were much to the liking of Lincoln, and while he felt sorry for Ann, his sorrow was not sufficient to hold back his joy, which was given expression in the jolliest stories he had ever told. Laughter seemed infectious around the post-office when the postmaster was there. His days in New Salem had all been busy, happy days with his good friends, and opportunities for study. But better than all was the growing consciousness that an undefined hope which had been struggling against a clearly defined duty, was approaching the right of way. His heart was glad as he went about over the country with his stakes and chains.

It was just about this time that the wheel of fortune turned. The men who had bought the Lincoln and Berry store and had given Lincoln paper to pay his debts with, closed their doors one day without notice, and, without saying farewell to a soul in New Salem, disappeared.

When Lincoln heard this he felt slip upon him the burden of a debt that staggered him. Not in a lifetime did it seem he would be able to pay it. And so it was that just as it seemed that he was about to enter the path of a golden glow he was thrown, instead, into the black gloom of a great despondency.

When the word was passed around town of Abe Lincoln's bad luck there was much talk. What would he do? There seemed to be just two alternatives, to skin out and leave it all, as the men had done who bought the store, and his partner Berry before them, had done, or to settle down to a lifetime of struggle and pay the debt. Everybody believed Abe Lincoln thoroughly honest, but here was a test that seemed beyond the powers of human endurance.

The night the store was closed, Abe Lincoln did not come home to supper.

"Where is Abe Lincoln?" the Rutledges asked.

Nobody knew. Ann slipped away to the post-office. It was closed. She rattled the door and called his name at the latch-hole but received no answer.

Day was drawing to a close, but she made an excuse to go to the mill, and with a little basket on her arm she hurried down the sloping road. Twilight shades were falling over the weather-stained log building which seemed to be drawing itself into the shadows of the trees on the opposite bank of the river. The big, stone wheel was silent, but the waters falling over the dam gave out the sound of something alive.

Quietly she approached the wide mill doors which stood open. On the threshold she looked carefully in. For a moment the deeper gloom of the inside blinded her. Then the big, white millstone took shape, and the door, opening onto the river platform. Through this a pale light filtered.

Taking a step farther in, she looked again toward some dark outlines which she was sure were not those of pillar or prop, outlines which took the form of a tall, shadowy giant standing against the doorway and looking out upon the river in the falling darkness.

She crossed the mill rapidly and softly, and, approaching the tall shadowy figure, touched the giant of the gloom on the arm and said, "Abraham Lincoln."

He turned about quickly. "Ann--Ann Rutledge--what are you doing here?"

"I have been looking for you."

"Why?"

"You did not come to supper."

"I often go without supper."

"I heard of your trouble. I wanted to find you and to help you. You found me in the cellar--and helped me."

"And what can you do--what can anyone do for me?" and he turned again to the river. "Look at the darkness. Only _that_ for me."

"But light always follows darkness, Abraham. God has planned it so. Sometimes the night is very dark, and very long, but morning comes. It is always so."

He was silent and they stood together in the gloom.

"God!" he said to himself. "Is there a God? I wonder. If there is a God He knows how hard I've tried--worked against fate itself, how I wanted to be something in the world. I've loved to study about Washington and have been fool enough to dream I might do something for my country some time. But Washington came from a race of cavaliers. I come from the poorest of ten thousand. Washington at the age of twenty-one was an Adjutant General of Virginia with the rank of Major. Abraham Lincoln at twenty-one was driving two yoke of oxen to an emigrant wagon through the mud-holes and wilds of the West and had never been to school a year in his life. I was tryin'. I felt that I was gettin' ahead. Now comes a burden that will crush me to earth--for Ann Rutledge--Ann Rutledge," and he turned toward her and spoke with fierce determination, "every penny of this debt must be paid if it takes me _to the day of my death_ with my coffin money thrown in."

"Yes, Abraham Lincoln," she answered gently, "every penny--and God will help you do it, for God never expects the impossible. He's not that kind of a God, you know."

"You talk about God," said Lincoln rather indifferently, "as if you were sure--well, I believe you are. I knew it the night I heard you singin' on the bluff. I have heard you sing that song many times since--sometimes in my dreams. I wish I could feel as you do when you sing your pilgrim song. I have imagined that I will some day, but now--now I think of my mother lyin' under a forgotten tangle where strange beasts creep. She was a pilgrim, too--but she passed out of it all weak and weary. Yet she believed just as you believe, as I have tried to believe."

"But, Abraham--you know we are here for just a little time. The song says, 'I can tarry--I can tarry but a night.' Sometimes the night is very short, as when a child passes on. Sometimes it is longer, as when an old, old man dies. But whether long or short, the night gives way to the morning with its light and fresh life and strength. I know it is so."

She had been speaking in a quiet voice with a touch of pleading, for she felt he was not paying close attention.

"How do you know it?" he asked, turning to her. "Tell me how you know it--or why you believe so strongly."

"Let us sit down," she said, "here where the light is fading on the river. See, only the foam shines now. But in just a little while the moon will put a thousand bars of silver on the water. We are not afraid of the dark--you and I--nor of each other. I want to tell you a story."

He was paying attention now. They sat down on the broad step of the mill door. To him Ann Rutledge had never been so close before, and yet just now so unattainable. Never before had she spoken to him in such childish simplicity, yet now she was mysteriously beyond his understanding.

"I have often doubted," he said, with something like a sigh as he stretched his legs across the platform and waited; "I should like to believe--as you do. Can you make me?"

"I will tell you a story," she said again. Her voice was low and sweet. It seemed in tune with the gathering darkness, the falling of the water, the evening calm and the burdened heart of the man.

"When I was yet very small I began wondering and asking questions about things I could neither understand nor believe. It was while we were back in Kentucky I was sent to the pasture to watch the cows. There was a pond in the low end of the pasture where the reeds grew and where all was very quiet around. I was sitting beside the water, wondering perhaps if something strange and beautiful would appear from its depths as in fairy stories, when I saw a hideous, mud-colored grub creeping slowly above the water-line and climbing the reed. I was tempted to knock it back out of sight, it was so ugly. But I only watched. Very soon its muddy shell cracked open, something with wings crept out and the shell fell back to the place from which it had come. The new creature spread its wings slowly. They dried, turning as they did so into silver gauze, which he spread out like bits of shining lace. Then he went skimming away across the pond and over the dandelions and grass flowers, even over the heads of the grazing cows. In all my life I had never dreamed of anything so wonderful nor had any fairy story ever been told me that was so marvelous as what I had just seen. I looked back to the pond. A ray of sun was shining so that I could see the bottom. The cast-off shell was lying there in the mud. There were others around it like it, except they had life in them. They crept up and maybe looked at the empty shell. One touched it and turned away.

"After a time the new creature with the silvery wings came again and rested on the reed. His reflection showed in the water. Perhaps he could see those who were as he had been, creeping in the mud. But he had no way of telling them that they would one day become creatures of the upper world of sun-shine and flowers and sky, for the only world they knew was mud. And then I thought of people--and that we are yet dwelling in the world of mud. The Bible calls it the 'earth.' It says 'there is a natural body'--do you remember--'There is a natural body and there is a spiritual body. The first is of the earth--earthy.' And it is not until we have left the old body that we can know the life on wings--the life up in God's big fields of sun-shine that we call heaven.

"As I watched the shining creature sitting on the reed, I thought perhaps it was a mother wishing she could tell her child down below to be brave and not mind the mud, for at longest it can last but a little while. Of course there was no way the one could speak and the other hear. But it was a helpful thought. Do you ever think of your mother this way? Do you ever feel when you are in the gloom that she is not very far away, and only waiting until you have been changed, to tell you many things? The Bible calls it 'when this mortal shall have put on Immortality.'"

"Immortality," the man repeated, as if to himself. It was the title of the new poem he so liked. Then he said, almost reverently, "Go on, Ann."

"_I believe_," she said simply, "that's why I am so happy when I'm singing 'I'm a pilgrim.' It is my soul you hear singing, Abraham--_that part of me that will not die_, that is shouting on the way. Wasn't God good to plan it all so lovely?"

Abraham Lincoln turned slowly and looked down on Ann Rutledge.

The moon was throwing its first gleams across the river. In the pale light the face and hair with its pale red-gold halo seemed to stand out from the shadowy background like something ethereal and unreal. The man gazed at it. It was so shining--so happy.

"You were sobbin' in the cellar not so long ago," he said.

"That was the darkness--but always the light comes back."

"Because you believe."

"Don't you believe? Oh you must believe, Abraham."

"Do you want to help me to believe? Do you want to help me to reach the heights--higher heights than man has ever climbed? For I feel that you can help me do even this. You can transform me, and I do not expect to die either--not yet."

"What can I do for you?"

"Once I saw an eagle rise from a bluff on the river. Easily it lifted itself above everything and soared against the sky. So was I lifted up when I heard you singin' on the heights. All night long I sat thinkin' about it. I could not fathom the mystery then. With the sunrise the matin' call of the bird began to unfold the mystery to me. Ann--Ann Rutledge, I want you to let me love you."

"Does love have to be let?" She asked the question, looking out across the water and woods.

"No--never. But dams can be built, and then the waters on their way must do one of two things--break the dam or change their course. I do not want to change my course. I do not want to break a dam--if it can be helped--for I'll make a rip-snortin' big smash-up of it if I do. May I love you?"

He was looking into her face, which was still shining.

"Let me get a letter to John McNeil asking him to release me."

"And then, Ann?"

"Then--Oh, Abraham Lincoln!--_then_--but we mustn't even talk of it yet"; and she arose from the step.

The tall man stood beside her. The rising moon cast a light on his face. The girl looked at it in wonderment.

"Abraham," she said, "you do not look like the same man I found here."

"Keep still, Ann," he whispered. "We are just outside heaven."

"And you believe now--believe?" and she waited for his answer.

"Believe, yes I believe. I must believe in the _Great Creator_. Nothin' less could have fashioned the soul of Ann Rutledge. From now on, eternally, I shall believe to my soul's salvation."

"Out of the gloom into the light," she said softly.

A few moments they stood as if not wishing to break some magic spell. Then he said, "You must run right home. We will not go out together; but from the door I will watch until you are well away, then I will follow."

Another moment they tarried in the wide mill door as if loath to leave, then she went out.

As she did so a small dark figure stepped around the corner of the