Winter Evening Tales

Finally she was persuaded to let him see Christine, "just for five minutes." The poor girl came to him, a shadow of her gay self, and, weeping in his arms, told him he must bid her good-by forever. The five minutes were lengthened into a long, terrible hour, and Franz went back to New York with the knowledge that in that hour his life had been broken in two for this life.

One night toward the close of November his friend Louis called. "Franz," he said, "have you heard that Christine Stromberg is to marry old Clarke?"

"Yes."

"No one can trust a woman. It is a shame of Christine."

"Louis, speak of what you know. Christine is an angel. If a woman appears to do wrong, there is probably some brute of a man behind her forcing her to do it."

"I thought she was to be your wife."

"She is my wife in soul and feeling. No one, thank God, can help that. If I was Clarke, I would as willingly marry a corpse as Christine Stromberg. Do not speak of her again, Louis. The poor innocent child! God bless her!" And he burst into a passion of weeping that alarmed his friend for his reason, but which was probably its salvation.

In a week Franz had left for Europe, and the next Christmas, Christine and James Barker Clarke were married, and began housekeeping in a style of extravagant splendor. People wondered and exclaimed at Christine's reckless expenditure, her parents advised, her husband scolded; but though she never disputed them, she quietly ignored all their suggestions. She went to Paris, and lived like a princess; Rome, Vienna and London wondered over her beauty and her splendor; and wherever she went Franz followed her quietly, haunting her magnificent salons like a wretched spectre.

They rarely or never spoke. Beyond a grave inclination of the head, or a look whose profound misery he only understood, she gave him no recognition. The world held her name above reproach, and considered that she had done very well to herself.

Ten years passed away, but the changes they brought were such as the world regards as natural and inevitable. Christine's mother died and her father married again; and Christine had a son and a daughter. Franz watched anxiously to see if this new love would break up the icy coldness of her manners. Sometimes he was conscious of feeling angrily jealous of the children, but he always crushed down the wretched passion. "If Christine loved a flower, would I not love it also?" he asked himself; "and these little ones, what have they done?" So at last he got to separate them entirely from every one but Christine, and to regard them as part and portion of his love.

But at the end of ten years a change came, neither natural nor expected. Franz was walking moodily about his library one night, when Louis came to tell him of it, Louis was no longer young, and was married now, for he had found out that the beaten track is the safest.

"Franz," he said, "have you heard about Clarke? His affairs are frightfully wrong, and he shot himself an hour ago."

"And Christine? Does she know? Who has gone to her?"

"My wife is with her. Clarke shot himself in his own room. Christine was the first to reach him. He left a letter saying he was absolutely ruined."

"Where will Christine and the children go?"

"I suppose to her father's. Not a pleasant place for her now. Christine's step-mother dislikes both her and the children."

Franz said no more, and Louis went away with a feeling of disappointment. "I thought he would have done something for her," he said to his wife. "Poor Christine will be very poor and dependent."

Ten days after he came home with a different story. "There never was a woman as lucky about money as Cousin Christine," he said. "Hardy & Hall sent her notice to-day that the property at Ryebeach settled on her before her marriage by Mr. Clarke was now at her disposal. It seems the old gentleman anticipated the result of his wild speculations, and in order to provide for his wife, quietly bought and placed in Hardy's charge two beautifully furnished cottages. There is something like an accumulation of sixteen thousand dollars of rentage; and as one is luckily empty, Christine and the children are going there at once. I always thought the property was Hardy's own before. Very thoughtful in Clarke."

"It is not Clarke one bit. I don't believe he ever did it. It is some arrangement of Franz Müller's."

"For goodness' sake don't hint such a thing, Lizzie! Christine would not go, and we should have her here very soon. Besides, I don't believe it. Franz took the news very coolly, and he has kept out of my way since."

The next day Louis was more than ever of his wife's opinion. "What do you think, Lizzie?" he said. "Franz came to me to-day and asked if Clarke did not once loan me two thousand dollars. I told him Clarke gave me two thousand about the time we were married."

"'Say loaned, Louis,' he answered, 'to oblige me. Here is two thousand and the interest for six years. Go and pay it to Christine; she must need money.' So I went."

"Is she settled comfortably?"

"Oh, very. Go and see her often. Franz is sure to marry her, and he is growing richer every day."

It seemed as if Louis's prediction would come true. Franz began to drive out every afternoon to Ryebeach. At first he contented himself with just passing Christine's gate. But he soon began to stop for the children, and having taken them a drive, to rest a while on the lawn, or in the parlor, while Christine made him a cup of tea.

For Franz tired very easily now, and Christine saw what few others noticed: he had become pale and emaciated, and the least exertion left him weary and breathless. She knew in her heart that it was, the last summer he would be with her. Alas! what a pitiful shadow of their first one! It was hard to contrast the ardent, handsome lover of ten years ago with the white, silently happy man who, when October came, had only strength to sit and hold her hand, and gaze with eager, loving eyes into her face.

One day his physician met Louis on Broadway. "Mr. Curtin," he said, "your friend Müller is very ill. I consider his life measured by days, perhaps hours. He has long had organic disease of the heart. It is near the last."

"Does he know it?"

"Yes, he has known it long. Better see him at once."

So Louis went at once. He found Franz calmly making his last preparations for the great event. "I am glad you are come, Louis," he said; "I was going to send for you. See this cabinet full of letters. I have not strength left to destroy them; burn them for me when—when I am gone.

"This small packet is Christine's dear little notes: bury them with me: there are ten of them, every one ten years old."

"Is that all, dear Franz?"

"Yes; my will has long been made. Except a legacy to yourself, all goes to Christine—dear, dear Christine!"

"You love her yet, then, Franz?"

"What do you mean? I have loved her for ages. I shall love her forever. She is the other half of my soul. In some lives I have missed her altogether let me be thankful that she has come so near me in this one."

"Do you know what you are saying, Franz?"

"Very clearly, Louis. I have always believed with the oldest philosophers that souls were created in pairs, and that it is permitted them in their toilsome journey back to purity and heaven sometimes to meet and comfort each other. Do you think I saw Christine for the first time in your uncle's parlor? Louis, I have fairer and grander memories of her than any linked to this life. I must leave her now for a little. God knows when and where we meet again; but He does know; that is my hope and consolation."

Whatever were Louis's private opinions about Franz's theology it was impossible to dissent at that hour, and he took his friend's last instructions and farewell with such gentle, solemn feelings as had long been strange to his-heart.

In the afternoon Franz was driven out to Christine's. It was the last physical effort he was capable of. No one saw the parting of those two souls. He went with Christine's arms around him, and her lips whispering tender, hopeful farewells. It was noticed however, that after Franz's death a strange change came over Christine—a beautiful nobility and calmness of character, and a gentle setting of her life to the loftiest aims.

Louis said she had been wonderfully moved by the papers Franz left. The ten letters she had written during the spring-time of their love went to the grave with him, but the rest were of such an extraordinary nature that Louis could not refrain from showing them to his cousin, and then at her request leaving them for her to dispose of. They were indeed letters written to herself under every circumstance of her life, and directed to every place in which she had sojourned. In all of them she was addressed as "Beloved Wife of my Soul," and in this way the poor fellow had consoled his breaking, longing heart.

To some of them he had written imaginary answers, but as these all referred to a financial secret known only to the parties concerned in Christine's and his own sacrifice, it was proof positive that he had written only for his own comfort. But it was perhaps well they fell into Christine's hands: she could not but be a better woman for reading the simple records of a strife which set perfect unselfishness and child-like submission as the goal of its duties.

Seven years after Franz's death Christine and her daughter died together of the Roman fever, and James Barker Clarke, junior, was left sole inheritor of Franz's wealth.

"A German dreamer!"

Ah, well, there are dreamers and dreamers. And perchance he that seeks fame, and he that seeks gold, and he that seeks power, may all alike, when this shadowy existence is over, look back upon life "as a dream when one awaketh."

THE VOICE AT MIDNIGHT

"It is the King's highway that we are in; and know this, His messengers are on it. They who have ears to hear will hear; and He opens the eyes of some, and they see things not to be lightly spoken of."

It was John Balmuto who said these words to me. John was a Shetlander, and for forty years he had gone to the Arctic seas with the whale boats. Then there had come to him a wonderful experience. He had been four days and nights alone with God upon the sea, among mountains of ice reeling together in perilous madness, and with little light but the angry flush of the aurora. Then, undoubtedly, was born that strong faith in the Unseen which made him an active character in the facts I am going to relate.

After his marvelous salvation, he devoted his life to the service of God by entering that remarkable body of lay evangelists attached to the Presbyterian Church in Highland parishes, called "The Men," and he became noted throughout the Hebrides for his labors, and for his knowledge of the Scriptures.

Circumstances, that summer, had thrown us together; I, a young woman, just entering an apparently fortunate life; he, an aged saint, standing on the borderland of eternity. And we were sitting together, in the gray summer gloaming, when he said to me, "Thou art silent to-night. What hast thou, then, on thy mind?"

"I had a strange dream. I cannot shake off its influence. Of course it is folly, and I don't believe in dreams at all." And it was then he said to me, "It is the King's highway that we are in, and know this, His messengers are on it."

"But it was only a dream."

"Well, God speaks to His children 'in dreams, and by the oracles that come in darkness.'"

"He used to do so."

"Wilt thou then say that He has ceased so to speak to men? Now, I will tell thee a thing that happened; I will tell thee just the bare facts; I will put nothing to, nor take anything away from them.

"'Tis, five years ago the first day of last June. I was in Stornoway in the Lews, and I was going to the Gairloch Preachings. It was rough, cheerless weather, and all the fishing fleet were at anchor for the night, with no prospect of a fishing. The fishers were sitting together talking over the bad weather, but, indeed, without that bitterness that I have heard from landsmen when it would be the same trouble with them. So I gathered them into Donald Brae's cottage, and we had a very good hour. I noticed a stranger in the corner of the room, and some one told me he was one of those men who paint pictures, and I saw that he was busy with a pencil and paper even while we were at the service. But the next day I left for the Preachings, and I thought no more of him, good or bad.

"On the first of September I was in Oban. I had walked far and was very tired, but I went to John MacNab's cottage, and, after I had eat my kippered herring and drank my tea, I felt better. Then I talked with John about the resurrection of the body, for he was in a tribulation of thoughts and doubts as to whether our Lord had a permanent humanity or not.

"And I said to him, John, Christ redeemed our whole nature, and it is this way: the body being ransomed, as well as the spirit, by no less a price than the body of Christ, shall be equally cleansed and glorified. Now, then, after I had gone to my room, I was sitting thinking of these things, and of no other things whatever. There was not a sound but that of the waves breaking among the rocks, and drawing the tinkling pebbles down the beach after them. Then the ears of my spiritual body were opened, and I heard these words, 'I will go with thee to Glasgow!' Instead of saying to the heavenly message, 'I am ready!' I began to argue with myself thus: 'Whatever for should I go to Glasgow? I know not anyone there. No one knows me. I have duties at Portsee not to be left. I have no money for such a journey—'

"I fell asleep to such thoughts. Then I dreamed of—or I saw—a woman fair as the daughters of God, and she said, 'I will go with thee to Glasgow!' With a strange feeling of being hurried and pressed I awoke—wide awake, and without any conscious will of my own, I answered, 'I am ready. I am ready now.'

"As I left the cottage it was striking twelve, and I wondered what means of reaching Glasgow I should find at midnight. But I walked straight to the pier, and there was a small steamer with her steam up. She was blowing her whistle impatiently, and when the skipper saw me coming, he called to me, in a passion, 'Well, then, is it all night I shall wait for thee?'

"I soon perceived that there was a mistake, and that it was not John Balmuto he had been instructed to wait for. But I heeded not that; I was under orders I durst not disobey. She was a trading steamer, with a perishable cargo of game and lobsters, and so she touched at no place whatever till we reached Glasgow. One of her passengers was David MacPherson of Harris, a very good man, who had known me in my visitations. He was going to Glasgow as a witness in a case to be tried between the Harris fishers and their commission house in Glasgow.

"As we walked together from the steamer, he said to me, 'Let us go round by the court house, John, and I'll find out when I'll be required.' That was to my mind; I did not feel as if I could go astray, whatever road was taken, and I turned with him the way he desired to go. He found the lawyer who needed him in the court house, and while they talked together I went forward and listened to the case that was in hand.

"It was a trial for murder, and I could not keep my eyes off the young man who was charged with the crime. He seemed to be quite broken down with shame and sorrow. Before MacPherson called me the court closed and the constables took him away. As he passed me our eyes met, and my heart dirled and burned, and I could not make out whatever would be the matter with me. All night his face haunted me. I was sure I had seen it some place; and besides it would blend itself with the dream which had brought me to Glasgow.

"In the morning I was early at the court house and I saw the prisoner brought in. There was the most marvelous change in his looks. He walked like a man who has lost fear, and his face was quite calm. But now it troubled me more than ever. Whatever had I to do with the young man? Yet I could not bear to leave him.

"I listened and found out that he was accused of murdering his uncle. They had been traveling together and were known to have been at Ullapool on the thirtieth of May. On the first of June the elder man was found in a lonely place near Oban, dead, and, without doubt, from violence. The chain of circumstantial evidence against his nephew was very strong. To judge by it I would have said myself to him, 'Thou art certainly guilty.'

"On the other side the young man declared that he had quarreled with his uncle at Ullapool and left him clandestinely. He had then taken passage in a Manx fishing smack which was going to the Lews, but he had forgotten the name of the smack. He was not even certain if the boat was Manx. The landlord of the inn, at which he said he stayed when in the Lews, did not remember him. 'A thing not to be expected,' he told the jury, 'for in the summer months, what with visitors, and what with the fishers, a face in Stornoway was like a face on a crowded street. The young man might have been there'—

"The word Stornoway made the whole thing clear to me. The prisoner was the man I had noticed with a pencil and paper among the fishers in Donald Brae's cottage. Yes, indeed he was! I knew then why I had been sent to Glasgow. I walked quickly to the bar, and lifting my bonnet from my head, I said to the judge, 'My lord, the prisoner was in Stornoway on the first of June. I saw him there!'

"He gave a great cry of joy and turned to me; and in a moment he called out: 'You are the man who read the Bible to the fishers. I remember you. I have your likeness among my drawings.' And I said, 'I am the man.'

"Then my lord, the judge, made them swear me, and he said they would hear my evidence. For one moment I was a coward. I thought I would hide God's share in the deliverance, lest men should doubt my whole testimony. The next, I was telling the true story: how I had been called at midnight—twice called; how I had found Evan Conochie's boat waiting for me; how on the boat I had met David MacPherson, and been brought to the court house by him, having no intention or plan of my own in the matter.

"And there was a great awe in the room as I spoke. Every one believed what I said, and my lord asked for the names of the fishers who were present in Donald Brae's cottage on the night of the first of June. Very well, then, I could give many of them, and they were sent for, and the lad was saved, thank God Almighty!"

"How do you explain it, John?"

"No, I will not try to explain it; for it is not to be hoped that anyone can explain by human reason the things surpassing human reason."

"Do you know what became of the young man?"

"I will tell thee about him. He is a very rich young man, and the only child of a widow, known like Dorcas of old for her great goodness to the Lord's poor. But when his mother died it did not go well and peaceably between him and his uncle; and it is true that he left him at Ullapool without a word. Well, then, he fell into this sore strait, and it seemed as if all hope of proving his innocence was over.

"But that very night on which I saw him first, he dreamed that his mother came to him in his cell and she comforted him and told him, 'To-morrow, surely, thy deliverer shall speak for thee.' He never doubted the heavenly vision. 'How could I?' he asked me. 'My mother never deceived me in life; would she come to me, even in a dream, to tell me a lie? Ah, no!'"

"Is he still alive?"

"God preserve him for many a year yet! I'll only require to speak his name"—and when he had done so, I knew the secret spring of thankfulness that fed the never-ceasing charity of one great, good man.

"And yet, John," I urged, "how can spirit speak with spirit?"

"'How?' I will tell thee, that word 'how' has no business in the mouth of a child of God. When I was a boy, who had dreamed 'how' men in London might speak with men in Edinburgh through the air, invisible and unheard? That is a matter of trade now. Can thou imagine what subtle secret lines there may be between the spiritual world and this world?"

"But dreams, John?"

"Well, then, dreams. Take the dream life out of thy Bible and, oh, how much thou wilt lose! All through it this side of the spiritual world presses close on the human side. I thank God for it. Yes, indeed! Many things I hear and see which say to me that Christians now have a kind of shame in what is mystical or supernatural. But thou be sure of this—the supernaturalism of the Bible, and of every Christian life is not one of the difficulties of our faith, it is the foundation of our faith. The Bible is a supernatural book, the law of a supernatural religion; and to part with this element is to lose out of it the flavor of heaven, and the hope of immortality. Yes, indeed!"

This conversation occurred thirty years ago. Two years since, I met the man who had experienced such a deliverance, and he told me again the wonderful story, and showed me the pencil sketch which he had made of John Balmuto in Donald Brae's cottage. He had painted from it a grand picture of his deliverer, wearing the long black camlet cloak and head-kerchief of the order of evangelists to which he belonged. I stood reverently before the commanding figure, with its inspired eyes and rapt expression; for, during those thirty years, I also had learned that it was only those

Who ne'er the mournful midnight hoursWeeping upon their bed have sate,Who know you not, Ye Heavenly Powers.

SIX, AND HALF-A-DOZEN

Slain in the battle of life. Wounded and fallen, trampled in the mire and mud of the conflict, then the ranks closed again and left no place for her. So she crawled aside to die. With a past whose black despair was as the shadow of a starless night, a future which her early religious training lit up with the lurid light of hell, and the strong bands of a pitiless death dragging her to the grave—still she craved, as the awful hour drew near, to see once more the home of her innocent childhood. Not that she thought to die in its shelter—any one who knew David Todd knew also that was a hopeless dream; but if, if her father should say one pardoning word, then she thought it would help her to understand the love of God, and give her some strength to trust in it.

Early in the evening, just as the sun was setting and the cows were coming lowing up the little lane, scented with the bursting lilac bushes, she stood humbly at the gate her father must pass in order to go to the hillside fold to shelter the ewes and lambs. Very soon she saw him coming, his Scotch bonnet pulled over his brows, his steps steadied by his shepherd's staff. His lips were firmly closed, and his eyes looked far over the hills; for David was a mystic in his own way, and they were to him temples not made with hands in which he had seen and heard wonderful things. Here the storehouses of hail and lightning had been opened in his sight, and he had watched in the sunshine the tempest bursting beneath his feet. He had trod upon rainbows and been waited upon by spectral mists. The voices of winds and waters were in his heart, and he passionately believed in God. But it was the God of his own creed—jealous, just and awful in that inconceivable holiness which charges his angels with folly and detects impurity in the sinless heavens. So, when he approached the gate he saw, but would not see, the dying girl who leaned against it. Whatever he felt he made no sign. He closed it without hurry, and then passed on the other side.

"Father! O, father! speak one word to me."

Then he turned and looked at her, sternly and awfully.

"Thou art nane o' my bairn. I ken naught o' thee."

Without another glance at the white, despairing face, he walked rapidly on; for the spring nights were chilly, and he must gather his lambs into the fold, though this poor sheep of his own household was left to perish.

But, if her father knew her no more, the large sheep-dog at his side was not so cruel. No theological dogmas measured Rover's love; the stain on the spotless name of his master's house, which hurt the old man like a wound, had not shadowed his memory. He licked her hands and face, and tried with a hospitality and pity which made him so much nearer the angels than his master to pull her toward her home. But she shook her head and moaned pitifully; then throwing her arms round the poor brute she kissed him with those passionate kisses of repentance and love which should have fallen on her father's neck. The dog (dumb to all but God) pleaded with sorrowful eyes and half-frantic gestures; but she turned wearily away toward a great circle of immense rocks—relics of a religion scarcely more cruel than that which had neither pity nor forgiveness at the mouth of the grave. Within their shadow she could die unseen; and there next morning a wagoner, attracted by the plaintive howling of a dog, found her on the ground, dead.