Chapter XII

'Resolve,' the haughty moralist would say, 'The single act is all that we demand.' Alas! such wisdom bids a creature fly Whose very sorrow is, that time hath shorn His natural wings. WORDSWORTH.

The book in Elizabeth's hand was her bible. It was the next thing, and the only thing to be done after Winthrop's going away, that she could think of, to begin upon the first chapter of Matthew. It was action, and she craved action. It was an undertaking; for her mind remembered and laid hold of Winthrop's words -- "Ask honestly, of your own conscience and of God, at each step, what obligation upon you grows out of what you read." And it was an undertaking that Winthrop had set her upon. So she sought out her yesterday's couch of moss with its cedar canopy, and sat down in very different mood from yesterday's mood, and put her bible on her lap. It was a feeling of dull passive pain now; a mood that did not want to sleep.

The day itself was very like yesterday. Elizabeth listened a minute to the sparrow and the locust and the summer wind, but presently she felt that they were overcoming her; and she opened her book to the first chapter of Matthew. She was very curious to find her first _obligation_. Not that she was unconscious of many resting upon her already; but those were vague, old, dimly recognized obligations; she meant to take them up now definitely, in the order in which they might come.

She half paused at the name in the first verse, -- was there not a shadow of obligation hanging around that? But if there were, she would find it more clearly set forth and in detail as she went on. She passed it for the present.

From that she went on smoothly as far as the twenty-first verse. That stopped her.

"And she shall bring forth a son; and thou shalt call his name Jesus; for he shall save his people from their sins."

"'_His people_,' --" thought Elizabeth. "I am not one of his people. Ought I not to be?"

The words of the passage did not say; but an imperative whisper at her heart said "Ay!"

"_His people!_ -- but how can I be one of his people?" she thought again. And impatience bade her turn over the leaf, and find something more or something else; but conscience said, "Stop -- and deal with this obligation first."

"What obligation? -- '_He shall save his people from their sins_.' Then certainly I ought to let him save me from mine -- that is the least I can do. But what is the first thing -- the first step to be taken? I wish Mr. Landholm was here to tell me. --"

She allowed herself to read on to the end of the page, but that gave her not much additional light. She would not turn over the leaf; she had no business with the second obligation till the first was mastered; she sat looking at the words in a sort of impatient puzzle; and not permitting herself to look forward, she turned back a leaf. That gave her but the titlepage of the New Testament. She turned back another, to the last chapter of the Old. Its opening words caught her eye.

"For behold, the day cometh that shall burn as an oven; and all the proud, yea, and all that do wickedly, shall be stubble; and the day that cometh shall burn them up, saith the Lord of Hosts, that it shall leave them neither root nor branch."

"_The proud, and they that do wickedly_ -- that is my character and name truly," thought Elizabeth. "I am of them. -- And it is from this, and this fate, that 'his people' shall be delivered. But how shall I get to be of them?" Her eye glanced restlessly up to the next words above --

"Then shall ye return and discern between the righteous and the wicked, between him that serveth God and him that serveth him not."

"'_Then_,' -- in that day," -- thought Elizabeth, "I can discern between them now, without waiting for that. -- Winthrop Landholm is one that serveth God -- I am one that serve him not. There is difference enough, I can see now -- but this speaks of the difference at that day; another sort of difference. -- Then I ought to be a servant of God --"

The obligation was pretty plain.

"Well, I will, when I find out how," -- she began. But conscience checked her.

"This is not the first chapter of Matthew," she said then. "I will go back to that."

Her eye fell lower, to the words,

"But unto you that fear my name shall the Sun of Righteousness arise with healing in his wings."

The tears started to Elizabeth's eyes. "This is that same who will save his people from their sins, -- is it? -- and that is his healing? Oh, I want it! -- There is too much difference between me and them. He shall save his people from their sins, -- I have plenty, -- plenty. But how? -- and what shall I do? It don't tell me here."

It did not; yet Elizabeth could not pass on. She was honest; she felt an obligation, arising from these words, which yet she did not at once recognize. It stayed her. She must do something -- what could she do? It was a most unwelcome answer that at last slid itself into her mind. _Ask_ to be made one of 'his people' -- or to be taught how to become one? Her very soul started. _Ask?_ -- but now the obligation stood full and strong before her, and she could cease to see it no more. _Ask?_ -- why she never did such a thing in her whole life as ask God to do anything for her. Not of her own mind, at her own choice, and in simplicity; her thoughts and feelings had perhaps at some time joined in prayers made by another, and in church, and in solemn time. But here? with the blue sky over her, in broad day, and in open air? It did not seem like praying time. Elizabeth shut her book. Her heart beat. Duty and she were at a struggle now; she knew which must give way, but she was not ready yet. It never entered her head to question the power or the will to which she must apply herself, no more than if she had been a child. Herself she doubted; she doubted not him. Elizabeth knew very little of his works or word, beyond a vague general outline, got from sermons; but she knew one servant of God. That servant glorified him; and in the light which she saw and loved, Elizabeth could do no other but, in her measure, to glorify him too. She did not doubt, but she hesitated, and trembled. The song of the birds and the flow of the water mocked her hesitancy and difficulty. But Elizabeth was honest; and though she trembled she would not and could not disobey the voice of conscience which set before her one clear, plain duty. She was in great doubt whether to stand or to kneel; she was afraid of being seen if she knelt; she would not be so irreverent as to pray sitting; she rose to her feet, and clasping a cedar tree with her arms, she leaned her head beside the trunk, and whispered her prayer, to him who saves his people from their sins, that he would make her one of them, she did not know how, she confessed; she prayed that he would teach her.

She kept her position and did not move her bended head, till the tears which had gathered were fallen or dried; then she sat down and took up her book again and looked down into the water. What had she done? Entered a pledge, she felt, to be what she had prayed to be; else her prayer would be but a mockery, and Elizabeth was in earnest. "What a full-grown fair specimen he is of his class," she thought, her mind recurring again to her adviser and exemplar; "and I -- a poor ignorant thing in the dark, groping for a bit of light to begin!" -- The tears gathered again; she opened the second chapter of Matthew.

She looked off again to feel glad. Was a pledge entered only on her side? -- was there not an assurance given somewhere, by lips that cannot lie, that prayer earnestly offered should not be in vain? She could not recall the words, but she was sure of the thing; and there was more than one throb of pleasure, and a tiny shoot of grateful feeling in her heart, before Elizabeth went back to her book. What was the next 'obligation'? She was all ready for it.

Nothing stopped her much in the second chapter. The 'next obligation' did not start up till the words of John the Baptist in the beginning of the third --

"Repent ye, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand."

"What is repentance? -- and what is the kingdom of heaven?" pondered Elizabeth. "I wish somebody was here to tell me. Repent? -- I know what it is to repent -- it is to change one's mind about something, and to will just against what one willed before. -- And what ought I to repent about? -- Everything wrong! _Everything wrong!_ -- That is, to turn about and set my face just the other way from what it has been all my life! -- I might as good take hold of this moving earth with my two fingers and give it a twist to go westwards. --"

Elizabeth shut up her book, and laid it on the moss beside her.

"Repent? -- yes, it's an obligation. Oh what shall I do with it! --"

She would have liked to do with it as she did with her head -- lay it down.

"These wrong things are iron-strong in me -- how can I unscrew them from their fastenings, and change all the out-goings and in-comings of my mind? -- when the very hands that must do the work have a bent the wrong way. How can I? -- I am strong for evil -- I am weak as a child for good."

"I will try!" she said the next instant, lifting her head up -- "I will _try_ to do what I can. -- But that is not changing my whole inner way of feeling -- that is not _repenting_. Perhaps it will come. Or is this determination of mine to _try_, the beginning of it? I do not know that it is -- I cannot be sure that it is. No -- one might wish to be a good lawyer, without at all being willing to go through all the labour and pains for it which Winthrop Landholm has taken. -- No, _this_ is not, or it may not be, repentance -- I cannot be sure that it is anything. But will it not come? or how can I get it? How alone I am from all counsel and help! -- Still it must be my duty to try -- to try to do particular things right, as they come up, even though I cannot feel right all at once. And if I try, won't the help come, and the knowledge? -- What a confusion it is! In the midst of it all it is my duty to repent, and I haven't the least idea how to set about it, and I can't do it! O I wish Winthrop Landholm was here! --"

Elizabeth pondered the matter a good deal; and the more she thought about it, the worse the confusion grew. The duty seemed more imminent, the difficulty more obstinate. She was driven at last, unwillingly again, to her former ressource -- what she could not give herself, to ask to have given her. She did it, with tears again, that were wrung from breaking pride and weary wishing. More quietly then she resolved to lay off perplexing care, and to strive to meet the moment's duty, as it arose. And by this time with a very humbled and quieted brow, she went on with her chapter. The words of the next verse caught her eye and her mind at once.

"For this is he that was spoken of by the prophet Esaias, saying, The voice of one crying in the wilderness, prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight."

"Is not this it?" cried Elizabeth. "If I do my part -- all I can -- is not that _preparing the way_ for him to do what I cannot do?"

She thought so, at any rate, and it comforted her.

"Miss 'Lizabeth," said Clam, just behind her, "Karen wants to know what time you'll have dinner?"

"I don't care."

"That's 'zackly Karen's time o' day," said Clam discontentedly.

"I don't care at all, Clam."

"And she says, _what_ 'll you have?"

"Nothing -- or anything. Don't talk to me about it."

"Ain't much good in choosing," said Clam, "when there ain't three things to choose from. How long can you live on pork, Miss 'Lizabeth?"

Elizabeth looked up impatiently.

"Longer than you can. Clam! --"

"Ma'am?"

"Let me alone. I don't care about anything."

Clam went off; but ten minutes had not gone when she was back again.

"Miss Lizzie, -- Anderese wants to know if he'll go on cuttin' wood just as he's a mind to?"

"Anderese? -- who's he?"

"Karen and him used to be brother and sister when they was little."

"What does he want?"

"Wants to know if he shall go on cuttin' wood just as ever."

"Cutting wood! -- what wood?"

"I s'pect it's your trees."

"Mine! What trees?"

"Why the trees in the woods, Miss Lizzie. As long as they was nobody's, Anderese used to cut 'em for the fire; now they're yourn, he wants to know what he shall do with 'em."

"Let 'em alone, certainly! Don't let him cut any more."

"Then the next question is, where'll he go for something to make a fire?"

"To make a fire!"

"Yes, Miss Lizzie -- unless no time 'll do for dinner as well as any time. Can't cook pork without a fire. And _then_ you'd want the kettle boiled for tea, I reckon."

"Can't he get wood anywhere, Clam? without cutting down trees."

"There ain't none to sell anywheres -- _he_ says."

"What trees has he been cutting?" said Elizabeth, rousing herself in despair.

"Any that come handy, I s'pose, Miss Lizzie -- they'll all burn, once get 'em in the chimney."

"He mustn't do that. Tell him -- but you can't tell him-- and _I_ can't. --"

She hesitated, between the intense desire to bid him cut whatever he had a mind, and the notion of attending to all her duties, which was strong upon her.

"Tell him to cut anything he pleases, for to-day -- I'll see about it myself the next time."

Two minutes' peace; and then Clam was at her back again.

"Miss Lizzie, he don't know nothin' and he wants to know a heap. Do you want him to cut down a cedar, he says, or an oak, or somethin' else. There's the most cedars, he says; but Karen says they snap all to pieces."

Elizabeth rose to her feet.

"I suppose I can find a tree in a minute that he can cut without doing any harm. -- Bring me a parasol, Clam, -- and come along with me."

Clam and the parasol came out at one door, and Anderese and his axe at another, as Elizabeth slowly paced towards the house. The three joined company. Anderese was an old grey- haired negro, many years younger however than his sister. Elizabeth asked him, "Which way?"

"Which way the young lady pleases."

"I don't please about it," said Elizabeth, -- "I don't know anything about it -- lead to the nearest place -- where a tree can be soonest found."

The old man shouldered his axe and went before, presently entering a little wood path; of which many struck off into the leafy wilderness which bordered the house. Leaves overhead, rock and moss under foot; a winding, jagged, up and down, stony, and soft green way, sometimes the one, sometimes the other. Elizabeth's bible was still in her hand, her finger still kept it open at the second chapter of Matthew; she went musingly along over grey lichens and sunny green beds of moss, thinking of many things. How she was wandering in Winthrop's old haunts, where the trees had once upon a time been cut by him, she now to order the cutting of the fellow trees. Strange it was! How she was desolate and alone, nobody but herself there to do it; her father gone; and she without another protector or friend to care for the trees or her either. There were times when the weight of pain, like the pressure of the atmosphere, seemed so equally distributed that it was distinctly felt nowhere, -- or else so mighty that the nerves of feeling were benumbed. Elizabeth wandered along in a kind of maze, half wondering half indignant at herself that she could walk and think at all. She did not execute much thinking, to do her justice; she passed through the sweet broken sunlight and still shadows, among the rough trunks of the cedars, as if it had been the scenery of dreamland. On every hand were up-shooting young pines, struggling oaks that were caught in thickets of cedar, and ashes and elms that were humbly asking leave to spread and see the light and reach their heads up to freedom and free air. They asked in vain. Elizabeth was only conscious of the struggling hopes and wishes that seemed crushed for ever, her own.

"She don't see nothin'," whispered Clam to Anderese, whom she had joined in front. "She's lookin' into vacancy. If you don't stop, our axe and parasol 'll walk all round the place, and one 'll do as much work as the other. I can't put up my awning till you cut down something to let the sun in."

The old man glanced back over his shoulder at his young lady.

"What be I goin' to do?" he whispered, with a sidelong glance at Clam.

"Fling your axe into something," said Clam. "That'll bring her up."

The old man presently stepped aside to a young sapling oak, which having outgrown its strength bent its slim altitude in a beautiful parabolic curve athwart the sturdy stems of cedars and yellow pines which lined the path. Anderese stopped there and looked at Elizabeth. She had stopped too, without noticing him, and stood sending an intent, fixed, far-going look into the pretty wilderness of rock and wood on the other side of the way. All three stood silently.

"Will this do to come down, young lady?" inquired Anderese, with his axe on his shoulder. Elizabeth faced about.

"'Twon't grow up to make a good tree -- it's slantin' off so among the others." He brought his axe down.

"_That?_" said Elizabeth, -- "that reaching-over one? O no! you mustn't touch that. What is it?"

"It's an oak, miss; it's good wood."

"It's a better tree. No indeed -- leave that. Never cut such trees. Won't some of those old things do?"

"Them? -- them are cedars, young lady."

"Well, won't they do?"

"They'd fly all over and burn the house up," said Clam.

"What do you want?"

"Some o' the best there is, I guess," said Clam.

"Hard wood is the best, young lady."

"What's that?"

"Oak -- maple -- hickory -- and there's ash, and birch -- 'tain't very good."

Elizabeth sighed, and led the way on again, while the old negro shouldered his axe and followed with Clam; probably sighing on his own part, if habitual gentleness of spirit did not prevent. Nobody ever knew Clam do such a thing.

"Look at her!" muttered the damsel; -- "going with her head down, -- when'll she see a tree? Ain't we on a march! Miss 'Lizabeth! -- the tree won't walk home after it's cut."

"What?" said her mistress.

"How'll it get there?"

"What?"

"The tree, Miss Lizzie -- when Anderese has cut it."

"Can't he carry some home?"

"He'll be a good while about it -- if he takes one stick at a time -- and we ain't nigh home, neither."

Elizabeth came to a stand, and finally turned in another direction, homewards. But she broke from the path then, and took up the quest in earnest, leading her panting followers over rocks and moss-beds and fallen cedars and tangled vines and undergrowth, which in many places hindered their way. She found trees enough at last, and near enough home; but both she and her companions had had tree-hunting to their satisfaction. Elizabeth commissioned Anderese to find fuel in another way; and herself in some disgust at her new charge, returned to her rock and her bible. She tried to go through with the third chapter of Matthew; and her eye did go over it, though often swimming in tears. But that was the end of her studies at that time. Sorrow claimed the rest of the day for its own, and held the whole ground. Her household and its perplexities -- her bible and its teachings -- her ignorance and her necessities, -- faded away from view; and instead thereof rose up the lost father, the lost home, and the lost friend yet dearer than all.

"What's become of Miss Haye?" whispered Mrs. Nettley late in the evening.

"Don' know," answered Clam. "Melted away -- all that can melt, and shaken down -- all that can shake, of her. That ain't all, so I s'pose there's somethin' left."

"Poor thing! -- no wonder she takes it hard," said the good lady.

"No," said Clam, -- she never did take nothin' easy."

"Has she been crying all the afternoon?"

"Don' know," said Clam; "the eye of curiosity ain't invited; but she don't take that easy neither, when she's about it. I've seen her cry -- once; she'd do a year o' your crying in half an hour."