Chapter 26

A HORROR OF GREAT DARKNESS

By the time Edith reached home the transient strength and transient brightening of the skies seemed to pass away. Her mother was no better and the poor girl saw too plainly the grisly spectres, care, want, and shame upon her hearth, to fear any good fairy that left such traces as she saw in her garden. But the mystery troubled her; she longed to know who it was. As she mused upon it on her way home, Arden Lacey suddenly occurred to her, and there was a glimmer of a smile and a faint increase of color on her pale face. But she did not suggest her suspicion to Hannibal, when he eagerly asked if it were Malcom.

"No, strange to say, it was not," said Edith. "Who could it have been?"

Hannibal's face fell, and he looked very solemn. "Sumpen awful's gwine to happen, Miss Edie," he said, in a sepulchral tone.

Edith broke into a sudden reckless laugh, and said, "I think something awful is happening about as fast as it can. But never mind, Hannibal, we'll watch to-night, and perhaps he will come again."

"Oh, Miss Edie, I'se hope you'll 'scuse me. I couldn't watch for a spook to save my life. I'se gwine to bed as soon as it's dark, and cover up my head till mornin'."

"Very well," said Edith, quietly. "I'm going to sit up with mother to-night, and if it comes again, I'll see it."

"De good Lord keep you safe, Miss Edie," said Hannibal, tremblingly. "You'se know I'd die for you in a minit; but I'se couldn't wateh for a spook nohow," and Hannibal crept away, looking as if the very worst had now befallen them.

Edith was too weary and sad even to smile at the absurd superstition of her old servant, for with her practical, positive nature she could scarcely understand how even the most ignorant could harbor such delusions. She said to Laura, "Let me sleep till nine o'clock, and then I will watch till morning."

Laura did not waken her till ten.

After Edith had shaken off her lethargy, she said, "Why, Laura, you look ready to faint!"

With a despairing little cry, Laura threw herself on the floor, and buried her face in her sister's lap, sobbing:

"I am ready to faint--body and soul. Oh, Edie, Edie, what shall we do? Oh, that I were sure death was an eternal sleep, as some say! How gladly I would close my eyes to-night and never wish to open them again! My heart is ashes, and my hope is dead. And yet I am afraid to die, and more afraid to live. Ever since--Zell--went--the future has been--a terror to me. Edith," she continued, after a moment, in a low voice, that trembled and was full of dread, "Zell has not written--the silence of the grave seems to have swallowed her. _He has not married her!_" and an agony of grief convulsed Laura's slight frame.

Edith's eyes grew hard and tearless, and she said sternly, "It were better the grave had swallowed her than such a gulf of infamy."

Laura suddenly became still, her sobs ceasing. Slowly she raised such a white, terror-stricken face, that Edith was startled. She had never seen her elder sister, once so stately and proud, then so apathetic, moved like this.

"Edith," she said, in an awed whisper, "what is there before us? Zell's, flight, like a flash of lightning, has revealed to me where we stand, and ever since I have brooded over our situation, till it seems as if I shall go mad. There's an awful gulf before us, and every day we are being pushed nearer to it;" and Laura's large blue eyes were dilated with horror, as if she saw it.

"Mother is going to die," she continued, in a tone that chilled Edith's soul. "Our money will soon be gone; we then shall be driven away even from this poor shelter, out upon the streets--to New York, or somewhere. Edith, Oh, Edith, don't you see the gulf? What else is before us?"

"Honest work is before me," said Edith, almost fiercely. "I will compel the world to give me a place entitled at least to respect."

Laura shook her head despairingly. "You may struggle back and up to where you are safe. You are good and strong. But there are so many poor girls in the world like me, who are not good and strong! Everything seems to combine to push a helpless, friendless woman toward that gulf. Poor rash, impulsive Zell saw it, and could not endure the slow, remorseless pressure, as one might be driven over a precipice, and one she loved seemed to stand ready to break the fall. I understand her stony, reckless face now."

"Oh, Laura, hush!" said Edith, desperately.

"I must speak," she went on, in the same low voice, so full of dread, "or my brain will burst. I have thought and thought, and seen that awful gulf grow nearer and nearer, till at times it seemed as if I should shriek with terror. For two nights I have not slept. Oh! why were we not taught something better than dressing and dancing, and those hollow, superficial accomplishments that only mock us now? Why were not my mind and body developed into something like strength? I would gladly turn to the coarsest drudgery, if I could only be safe. But after what has happened no good people will have anything to do with us, and I am a feeble, helpless creature, that can only shrink and tremble as I am pushed nearer and nearer."

Edith seemed turning into stone, herself paralyzed by Laura's despair. After a moment Laura continued, with a perceptible shudder in her voice:

"There is no one to break my fall. Oh, that I was not afraid to die! That seems the only resource to such as I, If I could just end it all by becoming nothing--"

"Laura, Laura," cried Edith, starting up, "cease your wild mad words. You are sick and morbid. You are more delirious than mother is. We can get work; there are good people who will take care of us."

"I have seen nothing that looks like it," said Laura, in the same despairing tone. "I have read of just such things, and I see how it all must end."

"Yes, that's just it," said Edith, impatiently. "You have read so many wild, unnatural stories of life that you are ready to believe anything that is horrible. Listen: I have over four hundred dollars in the bank."

"How did you get it?" asked Laura, quickly.

"I have followed mother's suggestion, and mortgaged the place."

Laura sank into a chair, and became so deathly white that Edith thought she would faint. At last she gasped:

"Don't you see? Even you in your strength can't help yourself. You are being pushed on, too. You said you would not follow mother's advice again, because it always led to trouble. You said, again and again, you would not mortgage the place, and yet you have done it. Now it's all clear. That mortgage will be foreclosed, and then we shall be turned out, and then--" and she covered her face with her hands. "Don't you see," she said, in a muffled tone, "the great black hand reaching out of the darkness and pushing us down and nearer? Oh, that I wasn't afraid to die!"

Edith was startled. Even her positive, healthful nature began to yield to the contagion of Laura's morbid despair. She felt that she must break the spell and be alone. By a strong effort she tried to speak in her natural tone and with confidence. She tried to comfort the desperate woman by endearing epithets, as if she were a child. She spoke of those simple restoratives which are so often and vainly prescribed for mortal wounds, sleep and rest.

"Go to bed, poor child," she urged. "All will look differently in the sunlight to-morrow."

But Laura scarcely seemed to heed her. With weak, uncertain steps she drew near the bed, and turned the light on her mother's thin, flushed face, and stood, with clasped hands, looking wistfully at her.

"Yes, my dear," muttered Mrs. Allen in her delirium, "both your father and myself would give our full approval to your marriage with Mr. Goulden." The poor woman made watching doubly hard to her daughters, since she kept recalling to them the happy past in all its minutiae.

Laura turned to Edith with a smile that was inexpressibly sad, and said, "What a mockery it all is! There seems nothing real in this world but pain and danger. Oh, that I was not afraid to die!"

"Laura, Laura! go to your rest," exclaimed Edith, "or you will lose your reason. Come;" and she half carried the poor creature to her room. "Now, leave the door ajar," she said, "for if mother is worse I will call you."

Edith sat down to her weary task as a watcher, and never before, in all the sad preceding weeks, had her heart been so heavy, and so prophetic of evil, Laura's words kept repeating themselves to her, and mingling with those of her mother's delirium, thus strangely blending the past and the present. Could it be true that they were helpless in the hands of a cruel, remorseless fate, that was pushing them down? Could it be true that all her struggles and courage would be in vain, and that each day was only bringing them nearer to the desperation of utter want? She could not disguise from herself that Laura's dreadful words had a show of reason, and that, perhaps, the mortgage she had given that day meant that they would soon be without home or shelter in the great, pitiless world. But, with set teeth and white face, she muttered:

"Death first."

Then, with a startled expression, she anxiously asked herself: "Was that what Laura meant when she kept saying, 'Oh, if I wasn't afraid to die!'" She went to her sister's door and listened. Laura's movements within seemed to satisfy her, and she returned to the sick-room and sat down again. Putting her hand upon her heart, she murmured:

"I am completely unnerved to-night. I don't understand myself;" and she looked almost as pale and despairing as Laura.

She was, in truth, in the midst of that "horror of great darkness" that comes to so many struggling souls in a world upon which the shadow of sin rests so heavily.

CHAPTER XXYI

FRIEND AND SAVIOUR

Knowing of no other source of help than an earthly one, her thoughts reverted to the old Scotch people whom she had recently visited. Their sunlighted garden, and happy, homely life, their simple faith, seemed the best antidote for her present morbid tendencies.

"If the worst comes to the worst, I think they would take us in for a little while, till some way opened," she thought. "Oh that I had their belief in a better life! Then it wouldn't seem so dreadful to suffer in this one. Why have I never read the 'Gude Book,' as they call it? But I never seemed to understand it; still, I must say, that I never really tried to. Perhaps God is angry with us, and is punishing us for so forgetting Him. I would rather think that than to feel so forgotten and lost sight of. It seems as if God didn't see or care. It seems as if I could cling to the harshest father in the world, if he would only protect and help me. A God of wrath, that I have heard clergymen preach of, is not so dreadful to me as a God who forgets, and leaves His creatures to struggle alone. Our minister was so cold and philosophical, and presented a God that seemed so far off, that I felt there could never be anything between Him and me. He talked about a holy, infinite Being, who dwelt alone in unapproachable majesty; and I want some one to stoop down and love and help poor little me. He talked about a religion of purity and good works, and love to our fellow-men. I don't know how to work for myself, much less for others, and it seems as if nearly all my fellow-creatures hated and scorned me, and I am afraid of them; so I don't see what chance there is for such as we. If we had only remained rich, and lived on the avenue, such a religion wouldn't be so hard. It seems strange that the Bible should teach him and old Malcom so differently. But I suppose he is wiser, and understands it better. Perhaps it's the flowers that teach Malcom, for he always seems drawing lessons from them."

Then came the impulse to get the Bible and read it for herself. "The impulse!" whence did it come?

When Edith felt so orphaned and alone, forgotten even of God, then the Divine Father was nearest his child. When, in her bitter extremity, at this lonely midnight hour she realized her need and helplessness as never before, her great Elder Brother was waiting beside her.

The impulse was divine. The Spirit of God was leading her as He is seeking to lead so many. It only remained for her to follow these gentle impulses, not to be pushed into the black gulf that despairing Laura dreaded, but to be led into the deep peace of a loving faith.

She went down into the parlor to get the Bible that in her hands had revealed the falseness and baseness of Gus Elliot, and the thought flashed through her mind like a good omen, "This book stood between me and evil once before." She took it to the light and rapidly turned its pages, trying to find some clew, some place of hope, for she was sadly unfamiliar with it.

Was it her trembling fingers alone that turned the pages? No; He who inspired the guide she consulted guided her, for soon her eyes fell upon the sentence--

"Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest."

The words came with such vivid power and meaning that she was startled, and looked around as if some one had spoken to her. They so perfectly met her need that it seemed they must be addressed directly to her.

"Who was it that said these words, and what right had he to say them?" she queried eagerly, and keeping her finger on the passage as if it might be a clew out of some fatal labyrinth, she turned the leaves backward and read more of Him with the breathless interest that some poor burdened soul might have felt eighteen centuries ago in listening to a rumor of the great Prophet who had suddenly appeared with signs and wonders in Palestine. Then she turned and read again and again the sweet words that first arrested her attention. They seemed more luminous and hope-inspiring every moment, as their significance dawned upon her like the coming of day after night.

Her clear, positive mind could never take a vague, dubious impression of anything, and with a long-drawn breath she said, with the emphasis of perfect conviction:

"If He were a mere man, as I have been taught to believe, He had no right to say these words. It would be a bitter, wicked mockery for man or angel to speak them. Oh, can it be that it was God Himself in human guise? I could trust such a God."

With glowing cheeks and parted lips, she resumed her reading, and in her eyes was the growing light of a great hope.

The upper room of that poor little cottage was becoming a grand and sacred place. Heaven, that honors the deathless soul above all localities, was near. The God who was not in the vast and gold-incrusted temple on Mount Moriah sat in humble guise at "Jacob's well," and said to one of His poor guilty creatures: "I that speak unto thee am He." Cathedral domes and cross-tipped spires indicated the Divine presence on every hand in superstitious Rome, but it would seem that He was near only to a poor monk creeping up Pilate's staircase. Though the wealth of the world should combine to build a colossal church, filling it with every sacred emblem and symbol, and causing its fretted roof to resound with unceasing choral service, it would not be such a claim upon the great Father's heart as a weak, pitiful cry to Him from the least of His children. Though Edith knew it not, that Presence without which all temples are vain had come to her as freely, as closely, as truly as when it entered the cottage at Bethany, and Mary "sat at Jesus' feet and heard His word." Even to her, in this night of trouble, in this stony wilderness of care and fear, as to God's trembling servant of old, a ladder of light was let down from heaven, and on it her faith would climb up to the peace and rest that are above, and therefore undisturbed by the storms that rage on earth.

But it is God's way to make us free through truth. Christ, when on earth, did not deal with men's souls as with their bodies. The latter He touched into instantaneous cure; to the former He appealed with patient instruction and entreaty, revealing Himself by word and deed, and saying: In view of what I prove myself to be will you trust me? Will you follow me?

In words which, though spoken so long ago, are still the living utterances of the Spirit to every seeking soul, He was now speaking to Edith, and she listened with the wonder and hope that might have stirred the heart of some sorrowing maiden like herself, when His voice was accompanied by the musical chime of waves breaking on the shores of Galilee, or the rustle of winds through the gray olive leaves.

Edith came to the source of all truth with a mind as fresh and unprejudiced as that of one who saw and heard Jesus for the first time, as, in his mission journeys, he entered some little town of the Holy Land. She had never thought much about Him, and had no strong preconceived opinions. She was almost utterly ignorant of the creeds and symbols of men, and Christ was not to her, as He is to so many, the embodiment of a system and the incarnation of a doctrine--a vague, half-realized truth. When she thought of Him at all, it had been as a great, good man, the most famous religious teacher in the past, whose life had nobly "adorned a tale and pointed a moral." But this would not answer anymore. "What could a man, dead and buried centuries ago, do for me now?" she asked, bitterly.

"I want one who can with right speak these words--

"'Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.'"

And as, with finger still clinging to this passage, she read of miracle and parable, now trembling almost under the "Sermon on the Mount," now tearful under the tender story of the prodigal, the feeling came in upon her soul like the rising tide, "This was not mere man."

Then, with an awe she had never felt before, she followed him to Gethsemane, to the High Priest's palace, to Pilate's judgment-hall, and thence to Golgotha, and it seemed to her one long "Via Dolorosa." With white lips she murmured, with the centurion, "Truly this man was the Son of God."

She was reading the wonderful story for the first time in its true connection, and the Spirit of God was her guide and teacher. When she came to Mary "weeping without at the sepulchre," her own eyes were streaming, and it seemed as if she were weeping there herself.

But when Jesus said, in a tone perhaps never heard before or since in this world, "Mary," it seemed that to herself He was speaking, and her heart responded, "Rabboni--Master."

She started up and paced the little room, thrilling with excitement.

"How blind I have been!" she exclaimed--"how utterly blind! Here I have been struggling alone all these weary weeks, with scarcely hope for this world and none for the next, when I might have had _such_ a friend and helper all the time. Can I be deceived? Can this sweet way of light out of our thick darkness be a delusion?"

She went to where her little Bible lay open at the passage, "Come unto me," and bowing her head upon it, pleaded as simply and sincerely as the Syro-Phoenician mother pleaded for her child in the very presence of the human Saviour--

"O Jesus, I am heavily laden. I labor under burdens greater than I can bear. Divine Saviour, help me."

In answer she expected some vague exaltation of soul, of an exquisite sense of peace, as the burden was rolled away.

There was nothing of the kind, but only an impulse to go to Laura. She was deeply disappointed. She seemed to have climbed such a lofty height that she might almost look into heaven and confirm her faith forever, and only a simple earthly duty was revealed to her. Her excited mind, that had been expanding with the divinest mysteries, was reacting into quietness, and the impression was so strong that she must go to Laura, that she thought her sister had been calling her, and she, in her intense preoccupation, had heard her as in a dream.

Still keeping the little Bible in her hand, she went to Laura's room. Through the partially open door she saw, with a sudden chill of fear, that the bed had not been slept in. Pushing the door open, she looked eagerly around with a strange dread growing upon her. Laura was writing at a table with her back toward the entrance. There was a strong odor of laudanum in the room, and a horrible thought blanched Edith's cheek. Stealing with noiseless tread across the intervening space, with hand pressed upon her heart to still its wild throbbings, she looked over her sister's shoulder, and followed the tracings of her pen with dilating eyes.

"Mother, Edith, farewell! When you read these sad words I shall be dead. I fear death--I cannot tell you how I fear it, but I fear more that dreadful gulf which daily grows nearer. I must die. There is no other resource for a poor, weak woman like me. If I were only strong--if I had only been taught something--but I am helpless. Do not be too hard upon poor little Zell. Her eyes were blinded by a false love; she did not see the black gulf as I see it. If God cares for what such poor forlorn creatures as I do, may He forgive. I have thought till my brain reels. I have tried to pray, but hardly knew what I was praying to. I don't understand God--He is far off. The world scorns us. There is none to help. There is no other remedy save the drug at my side, which will soon bring sleep which I hope will be dreamless. Farewell!

"Your poor, trembling, despairing LAURA."

Every sentence was written with a sigh that seemed as if it might be the last that the burdened soul could, give, and every line was blotted with tears. Edith saw that the poor, thin face was pinched and wan with misery, and that the pallor of death had already blanched even her lips, and, with a shudder of horror, her eyes fell on a phial of laudanum at Laura's left hand, from which she was partially turned away, in the act of writing.

With an ecstatic thrill of joy, she now understood how her prayer had been answered. How could there have been rest--how could there have been peace--if this awful tragedy had been consummated?

With one devout, grateful glance upward, she silently took away the fatal drug, and laid her Bible down in its place.

Laura finished her letter, leaned back, and murmured a long, trembling, "Farewell!" that was like a low, mournful vibration of an Aeolian harp, when the night-breeze breathes upon it. Then she pressed her right hand over her eyes, shuddered, and tremblingly put out her left for that which would end all. But, instead of the phial which she had placed there but a little before, her hand rested upon a book. Startled, she opened her eyes, and saw not the dreaded poison, but in golden letters that seemed luminous to her dazzled sight:

HOLY BIBLE.

Though all had lasted but a brief moment, Edith's power of self-control was gone. Dashing the bottle on the floor, where it broke into many fragments, she threw herself on her sister's neck and sobbed:

"O Laura, Laura! your hand is on a better remedy. It has saved me--it can save you. It has shown me the Friend we need. He sent me to you;" and she clung to her sister in a rapture of joy, murmuring, with every breath:

"Thanks, thanks, eternal gratitude! I see how my prayer is answered now."

Laura, in her shattered condition, was too bewildered and feeble to do more than cling to Edith, with a blessed sense of being rescued from some great peril. A horrid spell seemed broken, and for some reason, she knew not why, life and hope were still possible. A torrent of tears seemed to relieve her of the dreadful oppression that had so long rested on her, and at last she faltered:

"Who is this strange friend?"

"His name is Jesus--Saviour," said Edith, in a low, reverential tone.

"I don't quite understand," said Laura, hesitatingly. "I can only cling to you till I know Him."

"He knows you, Laura, and loves you. He has never forgotten us. It was we who forgot Him. He sent me to you, just in time. Now put your hand on this book, and promise me you will never think of such an awful thing again."

"I promise," said Laura, solemnly; "not if I am in my right mind. I don't understand myself. You seem to have awakened me from a fearful dream. I will do just what you tell me to."

"Oh, Laura, let us both try to do just what our Divine Friend tells us to do."

"Perhaps, through you, I shall learn to know Him. I can only cling to you to-night," said Laura, wearily, "I am so tired," and her eyes drooped as she spoke.

With a sense of security came a strong reaction in her overtaxed nature. Edith helped her to bed as if she were a child, and soon she was sleeping as peacefully as one.