CHAPTER IV
A SPECIAL PROVIDENCE
Daybreak of the second day of imprisonment brought no renewal of thestorm, though the sun was hidden and the clouds were dark and lowering.But the morning was to have its tragedy.
The storekeeper who had got on at the station five miles back seemedhalf demented. He had chafed and grumbled loudly from the first,asserting that his business would be ruined without his immediatepresence and attention, and heaping imprecations upon the weather andthe railroad company alike. Patience or philosophy seemed entirelylacking in his character. All through the first day of detention he hadpaced restlessly back and forth throughout the train, a walkingexpletive, and now he had become furious.
"I must get home," he shouted; "I live only five miles down the trackand I'm going to walk it. I know these blizzards, and I'm bigger thanany of 'em! I can make it!" and he would have leaped from the train atonce had not strong hands restrained him. He went forward mutteringly.
The stillness of all the world about had something to it sinister andthreatening. It was like the silence of a graveyard. "I'd rather havethat storm howling again, and howling worse than ever," said one of thepassengers, "than endure this ghastly quiet. It's altogether too quiet.Something is going to happen!"
He was right. Something was going to happen. The dark clouds weresinking nearer and nearer to the earth, and at last there came a sound,the faintest of sighs, of the coming wind. It deepened steadily until itbecame more than a sigh; it was a moan. It increased in volume. The moanbecame a shriek, the shriek a mighty roar, and the blizzard, with itssnowfall, was raging about the pass again.
The passengers crowded together at the windows and a few of the morehardy even ventured out upon the platforms to enjoy, or to becomeapprehensive over, the mighty spectacle.
They were thus engaged when there came rushing excitedly into the carthe pert youth who had told the remarkable Indian story the nightbefore.
"The Storekeeper!" he exclaimed. "The Storekeeper is missing! He musthave left the train!"
"THE STOREKEEPER!" HE EXCLAIMED]
There was aroused a sudden and alarmed interest, followed by a hurryingof men to the different platforms, but there was nothing to be seen. Theman must have slipped from the train, unobserved, before the recurrenceof the storm and made the desperate attempt to reach his home by theexercise of sheer bulldog tenacity and brute force, in strugglingthrough the enormous drifts. Stafford, accompanied by two of thetrainmen, made a brief but arduous and difficult search for somedistance, but found slight trace of the missing passenger. Close besidethe train they discovered where he had leaped off and staggereduncertainly forward, but beyond that there was no sign. The snow hadalready hidden the reckless being's trail.
There was a sequel, long in coming. Late in the following spring, whenthe looming drifts of the pass had melted, the mortal part of theStorekeeper was found some distance from the track, where he hadstumbled blindly in his wanderings. But of his fate there could, ofcourse, at this time, be no certain knowledge. There was even a chance,some thought, that he might accomplish the seemingly impossible. Themen muttered to each other, and that was all. Why the Storekeeper,apparently one possessed of shrewdness at least, should have taken suchawful risk no one could say--but it made swift tragedy.
Communication had been maintained with Belden. A path to the telegraphpole utilized by Stafford on the night of the stoppage had beenlaboriously dug by the trainmen and Stafford had again made theconnection and learned the condition of affairs with the rescuing partyalready started. The report was not altogether encouraging. The vastfall of snow in the canyon, drifted, in some places, higher than the topof the smokestack of the locomotive--for this was the greatest blockadein the history of the road--had proved more than baffling, even with thesnow-plow. Scores of men were at work ahead of it with shovels, in thework of bringing the clearance within the range of its capability. Therelief train was yet many miles from the one entirely helpless. Stillthe snow would not be so deep at points ahead, where the canyon widened,and the belief of the rescuers was that the half-entombed would bereached at some hour of the fourth day of their detention. The news wasnot received with any degree of exultation.
It was at this crisis that Moses appeared to lead those in the Cassowaryand their visitors out of the gloom oppressing them.
When men and women of intelligence and brightness and modern perceptionare cast together in an emergency, there ever appears among them someone who brings the group close together. He may not be the greatest ofthe group, but he has some dominant instinct in him involving a regardfor the comfort of others. Such a man was Colonel Livingston.
The Colonel was a man of thought, and he wanted his own sort of peoplearound him. He had raised a regiment once, when fierce things were goingon in the "60's," and he knew how to gather men. He had ranged throughthe train, like some good-naturedly overbearing Lord High Commissionerselecting those whose appearance most appealed to him and, because ofhis keen acumen and genial approachment, had captured easily and broughtinto the Cassowary those whom he thought would swing best into being ahealthful and merry part of the fraction of humanity enduring temporarydistress. He had an idea.
The occupants of the Cassowary included a number of the more thanordinarily intelligent and cultivated--as would naturally be the case insuch a car and on such an extended trip--and all had, by this time,become more or less acquainted, though all had not, like the Colonel,acquired the fancy of addressing others by the title of theiroccupation. It was to such a group as this that the Colonel, standing atone end of the car, addressed himself:
"I'm afraid that we are flunking a little. I know--I feel it in mybones--that we are going to escape from this cold dilemma without anyserious consequence, but we shall not be a credit to ourselves if wefalter in the interval. Let us avoid depression. Let us enliven thesituation as much as possible. To such end I have a suggestion to makein this connection which, I hope, may be well received. Last night I wasmuch interested in a story told by the buoyant and blithesome younggentleman occupying the end seat on the left side there"--and heindicated the "Gallus Youth"--"and it has come to my mind since that wemay greatly relieve the monotony of our case by doing what we do in thesmoking compartment, that is, by telling stories. If you consent, Iwill modestly offer myself as a sort of master of ceremonies. Does theidea meet with any degree of approval?"
There was no dissent, but, instead, a hearty agreement to theproposition, the Colonel's cheery manner having its effect on everybody.For a time, though, the story-telling did not begin.
There was need, certainly, for any and all suggestions as to means forameliorating in any degree a situation the grimness of which wasbeginning to force itself upon even the most optimistic of the company.The wind, even when it lowered its tone for a moment, growled ominously.
"It is awful," moaned the woman with the baby. "I wonder how God can letsuch things happen. I wonder if praying would help?"
Then followed--it could hardly be otherwise with such acompany--reverent but earnest discussion of the question of whether ornot Providence ever really intervened in special cases, as a result ofspecial supplication. Varying opinions were expressed, the majority,even the most seemingly devout, inclining to the belief that the answerto the question was beyond the knowledge accorded to humanity. It wasthe Colonel's opportunity. He appealed to the Minister, who had listenedto the discussion with a thoughtful smile upon his kindly face, but whohad not given an opinion.
"Do you believe in special providences, sir?" he asked. "Can you relatea single instance in your experience, or one of which you have heard,from a reliable source, where there has been the manifestation of whatwe call 'a special providence,' in direct answer to prayer?"
"I cannot answer your question," was the Minister's reply. "I cannotanswer the first part of the query, because I am undecided, and I cannotanswer the second because the same reasoning would, in a way, apply,since I am not entirely assured of certain eart
hly facts. But," andthere was a twinkle in the reverend gentleman's eyes, "I heard a curiousstory once, for the exact truth of which I will by no means vouch, whichI will tell in the narrator's own words, and which, supposing it to betrue, might be looked upon as either for or against the doctrine of
A SPECIAL PROVIDENCE
Just who are the "salt of the earth" is a disputable question. The titlebelongs traditionally to a group of that splendid race--the Jews. Butit is claimed, also, and on seemingly excellent grounds, by othergroups, including a large number of the people of Iowa. Appearances arein their favor, for Iowa was settled by a fine lot of men and women, andtheir children have not deteriorated.
They were excellent pioneers who came to cross the great river and makea new State, to cut away the forest where it was too dense, to planttrees where the prairie-planted farm-houses and barns needed shelterfrom wintry blasts, to import cattle, and horses, and sheep, and hogswith blood in them, and to repeat the old exploit of the dominating racein making, somewhere, the desert blossom as the rose. About what isMaxonville alighted one of the groups of men and women, settling downlike wild geese upon an area of fertile and well-watered land.Maxonville was not much in evidence when they came, these strong men andwomen, for only "Old Man" Maxon was living at the forks where the bigcreek found the little river; but they all settled about, and there werebuilt new homes close to Maxon's, and there came, as the years passed, achurch, and a schoolhouse, and a grocery and dry goods store, and, intime, the prosperous town. The farmers round about prospered, for theyhad thrift and intelligence and something of the old Covenanters'spirit.
The church Maxonville built, offhand and ready for all its uses beforethey had a preacher, was a pride to the sturdy men and believing women,and when the preacher came to them from the East they were moresatisfied than ever.
There may be something in lonely farm work making one a grim adherent ofstraight creed. Down behind horses and plow all day long, with only thegreat blue sky of God above, and only a view of the same sky meeting agreen horizon far away and all around; inclosed in this great vault ofblue and green, and left alone with one's thoughts, it may be that theeternal problem becomes more earnestly considered, more a part of allthe thought and life of a human being than it is to the man of the city,who has his attention distracted every moment from the great,overwhelming presence and pressure. Such effects crystallize. The peopleof Maxonville and its vicinity were sternly devout--that is, most ofthem--and their new minister was a fit exponent of their creed.
The minister was tall, dark-haired, clean-shaven, and with brown eyeswhich were keen, chiefly, in looking into himself. He had a stern,well-defined mission in religious teaching--as earnest as IgnatiusLoyola, stubborn as Oliver Cromwell. He had been through college, andthen through one of the strictest of theological schools. He was fit topreach, he felt, as far as mere acquirement of having learned the waysof other preachers; but he knew that the ideas of the world werechanging, and that if the world were changing God must be doing it, andso he was at times perplexed. But he came to his little land of prairieflowers, and steer-raising, and honest obstinacy, a fit man for theplace. And they said they had a preacher!
It is doubtful if any village of three hundred people in the UnitedStates, from Montpelier to San Diego, from Portland to St. John, has notone pretty girl or more. Maxonville had a number of pretty girls, andone of them was more than pretty; she was beautiful.
Deacon Conant was the leading man of the church of the new town. He wasa man who had succeeded, because of brains and energy, in managing histwo or three farms, but he does not figure in this account save that hewas the father of Jane Conant. His blood had gone into her, and it waspretty good blood, too. The preacher had fallen in love with her and shewith him. Preachers and girls would not be good for much if they did notdo that sort of thing occasionally.
Here was an ideal relation of things, or what should have been an idealone. What could have been finer than that there should have come into agrowing town in a growing region a stalwart, almost fanatical builder-upof faith, who should find a fitting partner in the daughter of the chiefman of the locality, and that from the union so buttressed all aroundshould come great results? There was but one obstacle in the way of thisperfect combination, and the obstacle was in the woman. It isastonishing how women will nibble at apples and learn things, from Evedown! This particular young woman had graduated from one of the mostcleverly conducted of Eastern colleges for girls, and she had views. Notonly did she have views, but she had views in the face of her religiousteacher, of the man whom she respected for his earnestness and loved forhimself. They were intensely happy for a while after theirengagement--as becomes strong souls getting close together in suchrelationship--but with nearer relationship came necessarily morevehement and unguarded interchange of thought, and--sad the day!--theydiffered seriously, upon a matter of belief.
A part of the belief of John Elwell, the preacher, was an implicitconfidence in the manifestation at times of what we call a "specialprovidence." One of the ideas of the young woman, deeply religiousthough she was, was an utter disbelief in this same thing--that is, adisbelief that God sometimes makes an exception, and, instead of workingthrough the laws of the Nature which He has instituted, produces adirect result having the quality of what we are accustomed to call amiracle.
The two discussed the matter together very often after they came closetogether, as lovers may. The first time they debated there came a littlewedge between them as thin as tissue paper abraded to an end. Next timethe wedge grew larger, and where it ended there was a cleft reachingdown to anywhere. The third time there was a split broad and welldefined, and the engagement was broken.
"My dear, I do believe in special providences; I do believe that earnestprayer will bring results in certain cases, justifiable in themselves."
"I do not."
"Why?"
"Because I believe that the whole thing--and I am only a girl talking, Idon't know what you call it--is just a belief and taken on trust. Whatwould you think of going down to the mill there and praying the millerto make one bag of flour coarse in the midst of all his business? Themiller is giving us bread for our physical life, and he knows best howto do it, at least as compared with the rest of us. I know that this isall a poor simile, a poor comparison, but I can't help it."
Now, even an earnest preacher is human, and a great many girls--thoughthe healthy among us call them angels--are human. The engagement betweenthe two was at this juncture broken off so squarely that the endsweren't even ragged, though there was left a possible sequence, notaltogether black as midnight--a vague hope in the heart of each that thefuture might have something to it. This brought a few words more beforethey parted.
Said the girl: "Show me a case of special providence and I will believewith you. It must be--it cannot possibly be otherwise--than that thereshould in some way, somehow, come an opportunity for showing that youare right and I wrong."
The pale-faced man's eyes were burning as he looked at her.
"The day will come!" he said.
Time passed and the two worked together in social and church relations,but there was no more talk of marriage. It was one day in mid-July, ayear after the conversation just described, when John Elwell was talkingearnestly from his pulpit, and Jane Conant was one of the congregation.
The preacher talked well that day--there is no denying it. He talked ina simple, straightforward but wonderfully eloquent way of how thequality of one's relation to others in this world must make easy oruneasy the path toward what is the better habitation after death. Hetold of the duties of the successful to the unsuccessful, of the strongto the weak; and he told too, of how, even in this world, each man'smind is accuser or justifier, and how, even in this world, come rewardsand punishments, and how to him with faith enough should come immediatereturns. With glowing face he even went aside a little to speak of thosewho talk too much of Nature and the Universe, and who believe that ageneral scheme is as tr
ue and strong and believable as one moredefinite--"'He noteth the sparrow's fall,'" he said.
It was sultry within the church, and all seemed lifeless, though heartswere beating rapidly under the preacher's eloquence. There seemed nooxygen in the air; all was oppressive. There was no sound as the speakerclosed a long and telling sentence, save the slight "swish" as a locustalighted on the sill of an open window. There was sound enough a momentlater.
Through the open doorway leaped a young man who shouted but one word:
"Cyclone!"
At the exclamation breaking in thus on the religious stillness perhapsone-fourth of the congregation started to their feet and rushed into theopen air, but the three-fourths remained in their seats as if paralyzed.The preacher paused, looked about, and then with almost shining facespoke solemnly:
"My friends, we are threatened with one of the visitations which Godsometimes decrees, but which, it is my earnest belief, cannot harm thosewho believe in Him rightly and appeal to Him most trustingly. Let uspray that the cyclone will avoid this church."
They knelt together, preacher and congregation, and strong and trustfuland appealing was the pastor's prayer. His clear voice did not falter inthe eloquent appeal, and those who knelt felt confidence and a glorifiedpride in the attitude taken in an awful hour. Men came rushing to thedoorway crying aloud upon all within to make the attempt at escape to asafer place, but there was no response, no sound save that of thepreacher's uplifted voice. There was a roar and rumble in the farsouthwest and a half darkness was approaching. As the sound outsideincreased, the voice of the preacher became less audible, but thespellbound and trusting congregation did not move. Among the women wasstill Jane Conant.
The rumble became a roar, the roar an ear-splitting, paralyzing blast,and then--chaos! In blackness, with its steeple, its roof, its wholeupper part torn away and leaving but an uncovered brick rectangle, tenor fifteen feet in height, remained what was of the church inMaxonville. With the blackness came a torrent; the interior of therectangle became a flooded space, within which area men and women waded,and floundered and shouted, and shrieked, and felt for each other, andfeared, almost, that the world was ended. Then gradually, the floodceased, and daylight came again, and the drenched creatures within whatwas left of the church--by what seemed a miracle there had been noneinjured--emerged upon the greenery about. Among them was the preacher.He spoke to no one. He had worn a straw hat when he came to the church,and had found it somehow. It had been wetted and crushed, and now hungdown on each side of his head grotesquely. He was a sodden, queercreature who looked neither to the right nor to the left. But there wasthought in him still. He lifted his face to Heaven, and thanked God thatall had been preserved, but said no other word. He walked drippinglyalong the sidewalk and then turned down a lane which led into thecountry.
Barely one-fourth of a mile--estimated conventionally as the crowflies--from the town of Maxonville was the farm of John Dent. It was nota large farm; it was, in fact, but a quarter of a quarter-section,which means forty acres; but acres have nothing to do with ideas. JohnDent, though he had only a little farm, worked hard and lived reasonablywell, and had a standing, and knew the preacher well, and debated oneimportant question with him frequently. It was this same question ofspecial providence, and the attitude of John Dent was, though in a man'sway, identical with that of Jane Conant, the preacher's lost sweetheart.The preacher wondered at this sometimes. He wondered how it was thatthis gifted girl and this obstinate, deep-thinking farmer should sochance to decide alike. Of course all this was before the cyclone.
Down at the bottom of his heart John Dent was a little sentimental. Hisfather and mother had come to the small farm before him. They were deadnow, as well as certain sisters and brothers, and they were buried in alittle private graveyard on the farm, around which the beeches grewthickly and from which the ground sloped gently into a laughing creek.There was not much surplus left at the end of each year of the productof John Dent's farming, and the surplus had more channels for immediateand demanding distribution than it could supply, still John Dentthought that some day he would put up a neat little brick monument inthat graveyard--a somewhat unusual form of monument--but that was Dent'sidea. He was going to have a pyramidical thing about fifty feet high.The spire of the church at Maxonville was of brick, hollow of course,welded solidly in its weather-hardened cement, as if it were a monolithof stone.
The cyclone had passed. A preacher had gone down a lane thinking thethoughts which come to a clean Christian man in a surprising anddispiriting emergency. A fair young woman had gone home crying over whatwas where her heart was, and Mr. John Dent had seen a cyclone come andmiss his place by about forty rods, and had also seen an out-flingingand eccentric wing of that same cyclone deposit, just in the properplace in the burying-ground of his family, a perfect pyramid monument,such as he had been dreaming of for the last quarter of a century. Itwas all queer and out of the common, and was hard to explain; it is notattempted here, for this is only the story of what happened within anhour or two on a certain afternoon in Iowa.
This is going back to the preacher. He walked fast and he walked far,and found himself deep in the country. He was at least honest in all hethought; he was a good man, yet he was troubled to the depths of hisbeing. "I have prayed to God," he said to himself, "and He has refusedme. The cyclone didn't turn away from the church! Is the woman I loveright, and am I wrong? Is there a broader and greater scheme of beingwherein I should be a trusting and unquestioning instrument rather thanone who demands as a special suppliant? I will see Jane," he said in hisgreat strait. "I feel that she may aid me."
He met the woman that night; he went to her house and found her there,and found, too, that as she was, being a dear woman, she had just thenbut vague views either on special providences or anything else inparticular, all being absorbed in anxiety as to his own health andwelfare. She was but a loving, frightened creature, harried over whatmight have happened to the man who through all the months of silence andseparation had been all there was in the world to her. He had come halfintending to admit himself all in error, but soon all had been lost inthe mere performance of a man and a woman blending. And the eveningpassed. Then when the next day came, the two, now understanding, walkedout into the country.
It was in that wonderful hour of the summer sunset, when all the worldis filled with light and the heavens are tinted with opalescent colorsfrom an unseen source, and some vagrant vesper sparrow is still singing,that John Elwell and Jane Conant stood in John Dent's little familygraveyard, looking soberly at the transplanted church steeple. It stoodthere, its base ranged plumb east and west, north and south, as ifcalculated with all the niceties of the Ancient Order; at its foot thequiet grass-grown graves, while all around stretched clover meadows andthe cornfields.
"I feel like borrowing a phrase from the Mohammedans," said theminister, "or just the beginning of one, then saying no more: 'God isgreat!'"
The girl's summer bonnet hung back over her shoulders, its pink stringsloosely tied under her chin. She looked comprehendingly at the minister,but she said nothing.
"I have been narrow," continued the minister, "but God is great."
Coming across the clover field they saw John Dent, and the two went tothe white picket fence around the graveyard, which he had built andcared for, and stood at its little gate to meet him.
"Mr. Dent," said the minister, when he had shaken the farmer's hand, andas they all turned to look at the steeple top, "I have had a lesson, andI must acknowledge that it was needed. Our vision is limited, and weoften know not even how to pray! I am content to leave all to God, norto wrestle for His special interposition in my behalf. The doctrine ofspecial providences is presuming--of the earth, earthy. I see that now."
"Well, I don't know," said John Dent; "I didn't exactly pray for it, butI've always wanted a monument to my folks here. Sometimes I thought itwas vain and worldly minded in me, but I couldn't give it up. I wantedthat monument just about as high as th
e end of the steeple stands, justabout that shape, too, more than anything in this world. I couldn't seemy way clear to getting it. I couldn't afford to build one--and here itis! I don't know as I quite agree with you now parson, concerningspecial providences!"
It was just before the conclusion of the Minister's story that a ladyentered quietly from the next sleeping car and was welcomed to thecoterie by two or three of the ladies, who had, evidently, met her.Stafford looked in her direction and their eyes met. Then, all the worldchanged!
They knew each other on the instant, but beyond the slightest ofinclinations of their heads, there was no sign of recognition. There wasno smile. There was but an almost startled look which changed into oneof comprehension and then of the ready trust which was of the past. Whatmessage that lingering mutual glance conveyed neither could have toldentirely--it was doubtful, hopeful, appealing, understanding.
As the minister ceased talking, and comment began, Stafford rose andmade his way toward the new arrival. He had but neared her when Mrs.Livingston took him by the arm:
"Have you met Mrs. Eversham yet, Mr. Stafford?"
They clasped hands, and his head swam, it seemed to him: "I did not knowthat you were on the train," he said.
"I have been slightly ill," she answered gently, "and have been confinedto my stateroom most of the time since leaving San Francisco, but I amwell again. It is good to be out."
Then their attention was demanded by others and they were separated.But, what a flavor to the world now!
The Cassowary; What Chanced in the Cleft Mountains Page 4
