Chapter XXI: Hedged in

As for John, perhaps he was quite as much astonished at the turn of events as was any of the family. It is true he had been threatening for many weeks to turn his back on the old homestead, but it is doubtful if he had really, during that time, a well-defined intention of doing any such thing.

No plans as to where he should go or what he should do had taken shape; only a vague unrest, and a more or less settled determination to some time get away from it all.

Therefore, as he turned his back on the familiar barns and long-stretching fields, and went out from them in the darkness of that May evening, not one of the family was more in fog as to what he would do next than was John himself. Instinctively he turned his steps to the village, spending the evening in his old haunt, showing only by a more reckless manner than usual that there had been any change in his life. In fact he realized no change; he never turned toward the family road leading homeward as he came out from that corner grocery at a later hour than usual; but he stopped abruptly before he reached the top of the hill, considered a moment, then turned and retraced his steps, and presently struck out boldly on the road leading cityward. The great city, only sixty miles away, was of course the first point for an enterprising young man about to start out in life for himself.

About midnight he reached the station where the express train stopped. By the station lamps he discovered that the eastern-bound train would be due in five minutes. He drew from his pocket the handful of silver and copper that constituted his available means, slowly counted them, lounged into the station, and inquired the price of a ticket to the city, then smiled grimly to himself to discover that after purchasing one he should have just fivepence left. "I guess I can live on that for a week or so," he muttered; "father could. If I can't I can starve. I'm going to the city anyhow." And the ticket was bought. Presently came the train, and our reckless young traveller sauntered into it, selected the best seat he could find, settled himself comfortably, and went to sleep, apparently indifferent to the fact that his mother was at that moment shedding bitter tears for him. No, he was not indifferent; would not have been, at least, had he known the fact. Nothing in all his young life's experience would have amazed him more. He did not understand his mother, which is not strange, perhaps, when one considers that she had spent years in learning how to hide her heart away from the sight of those she loved best. John Morgan actually did not believe that he had ever caused his mother to shed one tear; he did not believe that she loved him. What did he know about mother love, save as she revealed it to him?

It is not my purpose to take you wandering with John Morgan. Even if we had time for it, the experience would be anything but pleasant. He went into many places where you would not like to follow; he did many things that were better left undone, and are much better left untold. Yet I will be just to poor, silly, wicked John. He held back, or rather was held back by a force which he did not in the least understand, from many a place that otherwise he would have entered. There were depths of sin and folly into which he had abundant chance to sink, and from which nothing in his own depraved heart kept him from sinking, and yet into which he did not sink. He would have smiled in superior scorn over the thought that the incense of prayer, which had been rising day and night concerning him during the passing weeks, had anything to do with the unseen force that held him when he would have plunged headlong. Still he was held. He is not the first one who has been saved from self-shipwreck by a power outside of himself, unrecognized and unthanked.

Still it must be confessed that John Morgan took long enough strides in the road to shipwreck, and did what he could for his own overthrow, goaded meantime by an exasperating and ever-increasing sense of failure. Here was he at last, his own master, able to work, if he could find anything to do, or to let it alone, just as he pleased; no one to direct, or, as he had always phrased it, to "order." No one to complain, no one to question—a life of freedom at last. Was it not for this he had pined? It was humiliating to discover that it did not satisfy him. He could not, even for an hour, cheat himself into believing that he was happy in the life that he had chosen. A very vagabond of a life he led. He tried working and lounging and starving, and the time hung heavily. It was more than humiliating, it was exasperating; but the fact remained that he could no more get away from the memory of that clean, sweet-smelling, sweetly kept room, in which he had lately passed his nights, than he could get away from his own miserable self. Nay, the very smell of the wild-wood violets which had nodded on him from the tiny vase that last morning at home, and which he had affected to despise, seemed to follow and haunt him. How perfectly absurd it was in him here, in the very centre of this great centre of life, to actually long for a whiff of those wild violets! He sneered at himself, and swore at himself, and longed for them all the same.

So passed the days, each one bearing him steadily downward, and yet each one holding him back from the downward depths into which he might have plunged. And the summer heats came in all their fierceness and wilted him with their city-polluted breath; he had been used all his life to the free, pure air of the country. At times it was hard for him to believe that this crowded, ill-smelling city could belong to the same earth on which the wide-stretching harvest-fields lay and smiled. And the summer waned, and the rich, rare October days, so beautiful in the country, so barren of all interest to the homeless in a great city, came to him, and John Morgan had actually become a tramp! The work which he had at first despised and hated he now could not find; and if he would not carry his early threat into execution and literally starve, he must tramp and beg. Now starving had lost its charms somewhere among the parchings of those summer months; he had so nearly tried that way as to shudder over it; to ask for a bite at the back door of country-looking houses was more to his mind.

One never-to-be-forgotten October day he shook himself out from the shelter of a wrecked car, near which he had passed the night, and resolved upon a breakfast of some sort. I wish I could give you a picture of him. His own mother would not have recognized him. His clothing in the old days had been none of the finest, but whatever passed through Mother Morgan's hands was clean, and carefully mended. Now this bundle of rags and dirt would have been in danger of being spurned from her door without a second glance. "There is no excuse for filth!" she was wont to say grimly. Her son John had heard her say it many a time. He thought of it this morning as he shook himself; yet how could he help the filth? He had no clothes, he had no place in which to wash, he had nothing with which to brush, and very little left to brush! True, he had brought himself into this very position, but of that he did not choose to think; and besides, everybody knows it is easier to get into certain positions than to get out of them. I wish I could tell you how he felt. He did not understand his own mood. He was not repentant, not in the least; if anything, he was more bitter and defiant than ever. But he was disappointed: assuming control of one's own actions was by no means so comfortable or desirable a lot as he had imagined. There were days in which he believed that to have milked the gentle cows, and cared for the fine horses, would have been a positive relief. It was not work that John had shirked. Yet he had no idea of going home; his proud spirit and defiant nature would not let him even suggest that thought to himself.

On this particular morning he had resolved to try again for work. He managed to get on the last car of an outgoing goods train, and was thus whirled a few miles into the country. At the first station he jumped off, and began his search for work. He found a farmer who was compassionate, and gave him wood to carry into the already well-stocked shed by way of earning his breakfast. Presently the farmer came to the door and called:

"We are about ready for breakfast now. You can come in while we have prayers and then have breakfast."

"I don't want prayers," said John, stopping short midway between the door and the wood-pile, his arms full. "I asked for something to eat, not for praying."

"I know that, and you shall have the something to eat; but a little praying won't hurt you. Why, man, you can afford to be thankful that you have found a chance to eat again!"

"No, I can't," said John fiercely. "If I can't have the breakfast without the praying, I'll go without the breakfast."

"Very well," said the sturdy farmer, "I'm bound you shall then. I declare, if a fellow has got so far that he can't even listen to a word of prayer, he doesn't deserve to eat."

"Then I'll starve," said John in anger, and he threw the wood on the floor and strode away.

"Oh, I don't know about that, father," said a motherly voice, and a motherly face looking out after angry John. "Seems to me I'd have given him some breakfast if he didn't want to come to prayers. Maybe he was ashamed to, he looks so much like a rag-bag."

"Why didn't he say so then!" said the disturbed farmer. "Who expected him to fly off in a passion at the mention of a prayer? He's a hard case, I'm afraid."

That was true enough; and yet the incident was not so much against John as it sounds. Poor John! he was angry at his own heart for remembering, with a certain lingering touch of tenderness, that prayer in the kitchen at home in the Sabbath evening twilight; he wanted no experience that would call it up more plainly. Breakfastless, and supperless last night, John Morgan! There had always been plenty to eat in his father's house. What a bitterness it was to think that, now he was independent, he was actually a dependent on the chance charities of the world!

He tramped on; he was growing hungrier; he felt that he really could not work now until he had a chance to eat; it was actual pauperism this time. A neat-looking house, a neat kitchen door; he knocked at it and asked for a bit of bread. A trim old lady answered it,—

"Yes, to be sure. Come in. And so you're hungry? Poor fellow! It must be hard to be hungry. No home, I suppose?"

John shook his head.

"Poor fellow! You look young too. Is your mother dead, did you say?"

All the while she bustled about, getting a savoury breakfast ready for him—a cup of steaming coffee, and a bit of meat, and generous slices of bread and butter—bread that looked and butter that smelled like his mother's. And this was a farmhouse, and a neat, clean kitchen, and a yellow painted floor.

At that last question a strange feeling came over John Morgan. Was his mother dead? "No," he almost said. He would not have liked to nod his head to that. And yet, here he was among the October days, and it had been early May when he left her. How many funeral processions he had passed on the streets since, and he had had no word from his mother. Down in the pasture meadow one day his father had said to him, "Don't plough that bit up; I've never made up my mind to it. In spite of me, it looks as if it was meant for a kind of family burying-ground." There was a great tree there and a grassy hillside, and a small clear stream purled along very near. How did he know but a grave had been dug on that hillside since he went away? His heart gave a few sudden thuds, and then for a minute almost seemed to stop beating. Could it be possible that John Morgan really loved his mother! He was eating his breakfast now—a good breakfast it was, and the trim old lady talked on.

"Well, there are a good many homeless people in the world. It must be hard; but then, you know, the Master himself gave up his home, and had not where to lay his head—did it for our sakes too. Wasn't that strange? Seems to me I couldn't give up my home. But he made a home by it for every one of us. I hope you've looked after the title to yours, young man."

No answer from John. The old lady sighed, and said to herself, as she trotted away for a biscuit for him,—

"He doesn't understand, poor fellow. I suppose he never has had any good thoughts put into his mind. Dear me! I wish I could do something for him besides feeding his poor, perishing body."

But John did understand perfectly. What was the matter with all the people this morning? Why were they so persistently forcing that subject at him? He had been wandering almost six months, and had never met so many straightforward words concerning it in all the months as he had this morning. Is not it possible, John Morgan, that God's watching Spirit knows when to reach even your heart? The little old lady trotted back, a plate of biscuits in one hand and a little card in the other.

"Put these biscuits in your pocket; maybe they'll come good when you are hungry again. And here is a little card; you can read, I suppose?"

The faintest suspicion of a smile gleamed in John Morgan's eyes as he nodded assent.

"Well, then, you read it once in a while just to please me. Those are true words on it; and Jesus is here yet trying to save, just the same as he always was. He wants to save you, young man, and you had better let him do it now. If I were you I wouldn't wait another day."

As he tramped down the street, his inner man so wonderfully refreshed by the good coffee and bread and butter, he could not help looking at the card, which, also, after that breakfast, he could not help taking, although he wanted to put it into the cheery fire. It was a simple enough card, and printed on it in plain letters were these words, "It is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners." Then underneath, "I am the bread of life. He that believeth on me shall never hunger." Still lower on the card, in ornamented letters, the words, "The Master is come, and calleth for thee." Then a hand pointing to an italicized line, "I that speak unto thee am he."

"Queer mess that," said John, and he thrust the card into his pocket and strode toward the village depot. He meant to board the next train and get a little farther into the country, and continue his search for work. The train arrived, and he succeeded in slipping into it. But it was hardly fairly under way when he discovered that he had miscalculated, and was being borne back toward the great city, instead of farther into the country.

"I don't care," he said. "I don't know what I want of the country. On the whole, I may as well try my chances in the city. I'll go up Greenwich Street and try my luck in the warehouses. I can roll boxes about now since I've had another breakfast."

But the train presently switched off and ran into another station, into another part of the city, wherein John was as total a stranger as though he had just dropped from the clouds.

"Where on earth am I?" he said bewildered, swinging himself down from the top of the car and looking around. "Just my luck. I'm nowhere. East, west, north, south,—which way shall I go? I'll go north. Which is north? Or no, I won't; it's coming winter. I guess I'll go south, and walk as long as it looks interesting, and see where I'll bring up. What difference does it make which way I go?"

All the difference in the world, John Morgan. It is a link in the chain which is narrowing around you. It is one of the apparently trivial movements which will have its silent, unnoticed, unthought-of part in helping you to decide which way you will go during all your future, and at what station you will finally land.