When Janet heard of the promise which Mr. Leonard had exacted from Felix she seethed with indignation; and, though she “knew her place” better than to say anything to Mr. Leonard about it, she made her disapproval so plainly manifest in her bearing that the stern, gentle old man found the atmosphere of his hitherto peaceful manse unpleasantly chill and hostile for a time.
It was the wish of his heart that Felix should be a minister, as he would have wished his own son to be, had one been born to him. Mr. Leonard thought rightly that the highest work to which any man could be called was a life of service to his fellows; but he made the mistake of supposing the field of service much narrower than it is — of failing to see that a man may minister to the needs of humanity in many different but equally effective ways.
Janet hoped that Mr. Leonard might not exact the fulfilment of Felix’s promise; but Felix himself, with the instinctive understanding of perfect love, knew that it was vain to hope for any change of viewpoint in his grandfather. He addressed himself to the keeping of his promise in letter and in spirit. He never went again to old Abel’s; he did not even play on the organ, though this was not forbidden, because any music wakened in him a passion of longing and ecstasy which demanded expression with an intensity not to be borne. He flung himself grimly into his studies and conned Latin and Greek verbs with a persistency which soon placed him at the head of all competitors.
Only once in the long winter did he come near to breaking his promise. One evening, when March was melting into April, and the pulses of spring were stirring under the lingering snow, he was walking home from school alone. As he descended into the little hollow below the manse a lively lilt of music drifted up to meet him. It was only the product of a mouth-organ, manipulated by a little black-eyed, French-Canadian hired boy, sitting on the fence by the brook; but there was music in the ragged urchin and it came out through his simple toy. It tingled over Felix from head to foot; and, when Leon held out the mouth-organ with a fraternal grin of invitation, he snatched at it as a famished creature might snatch at food.
Then, with it half-way to his lips, he paused. True, it was only the violin he had promised never to touch; but he felt that if he gave way ever so little to the desire that was in him, it would sweep everything before it. If he played on Leon Buote’s mouth-organ, there in that misty spring dale, he would go to old Abel’s that evening; he KNEW he would go. To Leon’s amazement, Felix threw the mouth-organ back at him and ran up the hill as if he were pursued. There was something in his boyish face that frightened Leon; and it frightened Janet Andrews as Felix rushed past her in the hall of the manse.
“Child, what’s the matter with you?” she cried. “Are you sick? Have you been scared?”
“No, no. Leave me alone, Janet,” said Felix chokingly, dashing up the stairs to his own room.
He was quite composed when he came down to tea, an hour later, though he was unusually pale and had purple shadows under his large eyes.
Mr. Leonard scrutinized him somewhat anxiously; it suddenly occurred to the old minister that Felix was looking more delicate than his wont this spring. Well, he had studied hard all winter, and he was certainly growing very fast. When vacation came he must be sent away for a visit.
“They tell me Naomi Clark is real sick,” said Janet. “She has been ailing all winter, and now she’s fast to her bed. Mrs. Murphy says she believes the woman is dying, but nobody dares tell her so. She won’t give in she’s sick, nor take medicine. And there’s nobody to wait on her except that simple creature, Maggie Peterson.”
“I wonder if I ought to go and see her,” said Mr. Leonard uneasily.
“What use would it be to bother yourself? You know she wouldn’t see you — she’d shut the door in your face like she did before. She’s an awful wicked woman — but it’s kind of terrible to think of her lying there sick, with no responsible person to tend her.”
“Naomi Clark is a bad woman and she lived a life of shame, but I like her, for all that,” remarked Felix, in the grave, meditative tone in which he occasionally said rather startling things.
Mr. Leonard looked somewhat reproachfully at Janet Andrews, as if to ask her why Felix should have attained to this dubious knowledge of good and evil under her care; and Janet shot a dour look back which, being interpreted, meant that if Felix went to the district school she could not and would not be held responsible if he learned more there than arithmetic and Latin.
“What do you know of Naomi Clark to like or dislike?” she asked curiously. “Did you ever see her?”
“Oh, yes,” Felix replied, addressing himself to his cherry preserve with considerable gusto. “I was down at Spruce Cove one night last summer when a big thunderstorm came up. I went to Naomi’s house for shelter. The door was open, so I walked right in, because nobody answered my knock. Naomi Clark was at the window, watching the cloud coming up over the sea. She just looked at me once, but didn’t say anything, and then went on watching the cloud. I didn’t like to sit down because she hadn’t asked me to, so I went to the window by her and watched it, too. It was a dreadful sight — the cloud was so black and the water so green, and there was such a strange light between the cloud and the water; yet there was something splendid in it, too. Part of the time I watched the storm, and the other part I watched Naomi’s face. It was dreadful to see, like the storm, and yet I liked to see it.
“After the thunder was over it rained a while longer, and Naomi sat down and talked to me. She asked me who I was, and when I told her she asked me to play something for her on her violin,” — Felix shot a deprecating glance at Mr. Leonard—”because, she said, she’d heard I was a great hand at it. She wanted something lively, and I tried just as hard as I could to play something like that. But I couldn’t. I played something that was terrible — it just played itself — it seemed as if something was lost that could never be found again. And before I got through, Naomi came at me, and tore the violin from me, and — SWORE. And she said, ‘You big-eyed brat, how did you know THAT?’ Then she took me by the arm — and she hurt me, too, I can tell you — and she put me right out in the rain and slammed the door.”
“The rude, unmannerly creature!” said Janet indignantly.
“Oh, no, she was quite in the right,” said Felix composedly. “It served me right for what I played. You see, she didn’t know I couldn’t help playing it. I suppose she thought I did it on purpose.”
“What on earth did you play, child?”
“I don’t know.” Felix shivered. “It was awful — it was dreadful. It was fit to break you heart. But it HAD to be played, if I played anything at all.”
“I don’t understand what you mean — I declare I don’t,” said Janet in bewilderment.
“I think we’ll change the subject of conversation,” said Mr. Leonard.
It was a month later when “the simple creature, Maggie” appeared at the manse door one evening and asked for the preached.
“Naomi wants ter see yer,” she mumbled. “Naomi sent Maggie ter tell yer ter come at onct.”
“I shall go, certainly,” said Mr. Leonard gently. “Is she very ill?”
“Her’s dying,” said Maggie with a broad grin. “And her’s awful skeered of hell. Her just knew ter-day her was dying. Maggie told her — her wouldn’t believe the harbour women, but her believed Maggie. Her yelled awful.”
Maggie chuckled to herself over the gruesome remembrance. Mr. Leonard, his heart filled with pity, called Janet and told her to give the poor creature some refreshment. But Maggie shook her head.
“No, no, preacher, Maggie must get right back to Naomi. Maggie’ll tell her the preacher’s coming ter save her from hell.”
She uttered an eerie cry, and ran at full speed shoreward through the spruce woods.
“The Lord save us!” said Janet in an awed tone. “I knew the poor girl was simple, but I didn’t know she was like THAT. And are you going, sir?”
“Yes, of course. I pray God I may be able to help the
poor soul,” said Mr. Leonard sincerely. He was a man who never shirked what he believed to be his duty; but duty had sometimes presented itself to him in pleasanter guise than this summons to Naomi Clark’s death-bed.
The woman had been the plague spot of Lower Carmody and Carmody Harbour for a generation. In the earlier days of his ministry to the congregation he had tried to reclaim her, and Naomi had mocked and flouted him to his face. Then, for the sake of those to whom she was a snare or a heart-break, he had endeavoured to set the law in motion against her, and Naomi had laughed the law to scorn. Finally, he had been compelled to let her alone.
Yet Naomi had not always been an outcast. Her girlhood had been innocent; but she was the possessor of a dangerous beauty, and her mother was dead. Her father was a man notorious for his harshness and violence of temper. When Naomi made the fatal mistake of trusting to a false love that betrayed and deserted, he drove her from his door with taunts and curses.
Naomi took up her quarters in a little deserted house at Spruce Cove. Had her child lived it might have saved her. But it died at birth, and with its little life went her last chance of worldly redemption. From that time forth, her feet were set in the way that takes hold on hell.
For the past five years, however, Naomi had lived a tolerably respectable life. When Janet Peterson had died, her idiot daughter, Maggie, had been left with no kin in the world. Nobody knew what was to be done with her, for nobody wanted to be bothered with her. Naomi Clark went to the girl and offered her a home. People said she was no fit person to have charge of Maggie, but everybody shirked the unpleasant task of interfering in the matter, except Mr. Leonard, who went to expostulate with Naomi, and, as Janet said, for his pains got her door shut in his face.
But from the day when Maggie Peterson went to live with her, Naomi ceased to be the harbour Magdalen.
The sun had set when Mr. Leonard reached Spruce Cove, and the harbour was veiling itself in a wondrous twilight splendour. Afar out, the sea lay throbbing and purple, and the moan of the bar came through the sweet, chill spring air with its burden of hopeless, endless longing and seeking. The sky was blossoming into stars above the afterglow; out to the east the moon was rising, and the sea beneath it was a thing of radiance and silver and glamour; and a little harbour boat that went sailing across it was transmuted into an elfin shallop from the coast of fairyland.
Mr. Leonard sighed as he turned from the sinless beauty of the sea and sky to the threshold of Naomi Clark’s house. It was very small — one room below, and a sleeping-loft above; but a bed had been made up for the sick woman by the down-stairs window looking out on the harbour; and Naomi lay on it, with a lamp burning at her head and another at her side, although it was not yet dark. A great dread of darkness had always been one of Naomi’s peculiarities.
She was tossing restlessly on her poor couch, while Maggie crouched on a box at the foot. Mr. Leonard had not seen her for five years, and he was shocked at the change in her. She was much wasted; her clear-cut, aquiline features had been of the type which becomes indescribably witch-like in old age, and, though Naomi Clark was barely sixty, she looked as if she might be a hundred. Her hair streamed over the pillow in white, uncared-for tresses, and the hands that plucked at the bed-clothes were like wrinkled claws. Only her eyes were unchanged; they were as blue and brilliant as ever, but now filled with such agonized terror and appeal that Mr. Leonard’s gentle heart almost stood still with the horror of them. They were the eyes of a creature driven wild with torture, hounded by furies, clutched by unutterable fear.
Naomi sat up and dragged at his arm.
“Can you help me? Can you help me?” she gasped imploringly. “Oh, I thought you’d never come! I was skeered I’d die before you got here — die and go to hell. I didn’t know before today that I was dying. None of those cowards would tell me. Can you help me?”
“If I cannot, God can,” said Mr. Leonard gently. He felt himself very helpless and inefficient before this awful terror and frenzy. He had seen sad death-beds — troubled death-beds — ay, and despairing death-beds, but never anything like this. “God!” Naomi’s voice shrilled terribly as she uttered the name. “I can’t go to God for help. Oh, I’m skeered of hell, but I’m skeereder still of God. I’d rather go to hell a thousand times over than face God after the life I’ve lived. I tell you, I’m sorry for living wicked — I was always sorry for it all the time. There ain’t never been a moment I wasn’t sorry, though nobody would believe it. I was driven on by fiends of hell. Oh, you don’t understand — you CAN’T understand — but I was always sorry!”
“If you repent, that is all that is necessary. God will forgive you if you ask Him.”
“No, He can’t! Sins like mine can’t be forgiven. He can’t — and He won’t.”
“He can and He will. He is a God of love, Naomi.”
“No,” said Naomi with stubborn conviction. “He isn’t a God of love at all. That’s why I’m skeered of him. No, no. He’s a God of wrath and justice and punishment. Love! There ain’t no such thing as love! I’ve never found it on earth, and I don’t believe it’s to be found in God.”
“Naomi, God loves us like a father.”
“Like MY father?” Naomi’s shrill laughter, pealing through the still room, was hideous to hear.
The old minister shuddered.
“No — no! As a kind, tender, all-wise father, Naomi — as you would have loved your little child if it had lived.”
Naomi cowered and moaned.
“Oh, I wish I could believe THAT. I wouldn’t be frightened if I could believe that. MAKE me believe it. Surely you can make me believe that there’s love and forgiveness in God if you believe it yourself.”
“Jesus Christ forgave and loved the Magdalen, Naomi.”
“Jesus Christ? Oh, I ain’t afraid of HIM. Yes, HE could understand and forgive. He was half human. I tell you, it’s God I’m skeered of.”
“They are one and the same,” said Mr. Leonard helplessly. He knew he could not make Naomi realize it. This anguished death-bed was no place for a theological exposition on the mysteries of the Trinity.
“Christ died for you, Naomi. He bore your sins in His own body on the cross.”
“We bear our own sins,” said Naomi fiercely. “I’ve borne mine all my life — and I’ll bear them for all eternity. I can’t believe anything else. I CAN’T believe God can forgive me. I’ve ruined people body and soul — I’ve broken hearts and poisoned homes — I’m worse than a murderess. No — no — no, there’s no hope for me.” Her voice rose again into that shrill, intolerable shriek. “I’ve got to go to hell. It ain’t so much the fire I’m skeered of as the outer darkness. I’ve always been so skeered of darkness — it’s so full of awful things and thoughts. Oh, there ain’t nobody to help me! Man ain’t no good and I’m too skeered of God.”
She wrung her hands. Mr. Leonard walked up and down the room in the keenest anguish of spirit he had ever known. What could he do? What could he say? There was healing and peace in his religion for this woman as for all others, but he could express it in no language which this tortured soul could understand. He looked at her writhing face; he looked at the idiot girl chuckling to herself at the foot of the bed; he looked through the open door to the remote, starlit night — and a horrible sense of utter helplessness overcame him. He could do nothing — nothing! In all his life he had never known such bitterness of soul as the realization brought home to him.
“What is the good of you if you can’t help me?” moaned the dying woman. “Pray — pray — pray!” she shrilled suddenly.
Mr. Leonard dropped on his knees by the bed. He did not know what to say. No prayer that he had ever prayed was of use here. The old, beautiful formulas, which had soothed and helped the passing of many a soul, were naught save idle, empty words to Naomi Clark. In his anguish of mind Stephen Leonard gasped out the briefest and sincerest prayer his lips had ever uttered.
“O, God, our Father! Help this woman. Speak to her
in a tongue which she can understand.”
A beautiful, white face appeared for a moment in the light that streamed out of the doorway into the darkness of the night. No one noticed it, and it quickly drew back into the shadow. Suddenly, Naomi fell back on her pillow, her lips blue, her face horribly pinched, her eyes rolled up in her head. Maggie started up, pushed Mr. Leonard aside, and proceeded to administer some remedy with surprising skill and deftness. Mr. Leonard, believing Naomi to be dying, went to the door, feeling sick and bruised in soul.
Presently a figure stole out into the light.
“Felix, is that you?” said Mr. Leonard in a startled tone.
“Yes, sir.” Felix came up to the stone step. “Janet got frightened what you might fall on that rough road after dark, so she made me come after you with a lantern. I’ve been waiting behind the point, but at last I thought I’d better come and see if you would be staying much longer. If you will be, I’ll go back to Janet and leave the lantern here with you.” “Yes, that will be the best thing to do. I may not be ready to go home for some time yet,” said Mr. Leonard, thinking that the death-bed of sin behind him was no sight for Felix’s young eyes.
The Complete Works of L M Montgomery Page 538