Chapter VI: The Trail of the Serpent

"Every man living shall assuredly meet with an hour of temptation,
a critical hour which shall more especially try what metal his
heart is made of"--South.

It was long after he had awakened in the morning before the memory of the adventure of yesterday recurred to David's mind. His sleep had been as deep as that of an infant, and his rest in the great ocean of oblivion had purified him, so that when he did at last recall the experience which had affected him so deeply, it was with indifference. The charm had vanished. Even the gypsy's beauty paled in the light of the Holy Sabbath morning. He could think of her with entire calmness, and so thoroughly had the evil vanished that he hoped it had disappeared forever. But he had yet to learn that before evil can be successfully forgotten it must be heroically overcome.

He did not yet realize this, however, and his bath, his morning prayer, a passage from the gospel, the hearty breakfast, the kind and trustful faces of his family, dispelled the last cloud from the sky of his soul. Having finished the round of morning duties, he made himself ready to visit the lumber camp, there to discharge the sacred duty revealed to him in the vision.

The confidence reposed by the genuine Quaker in such intimations of the Spirit is absolute. They are to him as imperative as the audible voice of God to Moses by the burning bush.

"Farewell, mother, I am off," he said, kissing her upon the white forehead.

"Thee is going to the lumber camp, my son?" she asked, regarding him with ill-concealed pride.

"I am, and hope to press the truth home to the hearts of those who shall hear me," replied the young devotee, his face lighting up with the blended rapture of religious enthusiasm, youth and health.

"The Lord be with thee and make thy ministrations fruitful," his mother said, and with this blessing he set off.

As the young mystic had yesterday thought the world dark and stormy because of the tempest in his soul, so now he thought it still and peaceful, because of his inward calm. The very intensity of his recent struggles had rendered his soul acutely sensitive, like a delicate musical instrument which responded freely to the innumerable fingers wherewith Nature struck its keys. Her manifold forms, her gorgeous colors, her gigantic forces thrilled and intoxicated him.

That sense of fellowship with all the forms of life about him, which is characteristic of all our moments of deepest rapture in the embrace of Nature, filled his soul with joy. He accosted the trees as one greets a friend; he chatted with the brooks; he held conversation with the little lambs skipping in the pastures, and with the horses that whinnied as he passed.

Such opulent moments come to all in youth; moments when the soul, unconscious of its chains because they have not been stretched to their limits, roams the universe with God-like liberty and joy.

Had he been asked to analyze these exquisite emotions, the young Quaker would have said that they were the joys of the indwelling of the Divine Spirit. He did not realize how much of his exhilaration came from the feelings awakened by the experiences of the day before. One might almost say that a spiritual fragrance from the woman who had crossed his path was diffusing itself through the chambers of his soul. It was like the odor of violets which lingers after the flowers themselves are gone.

Up to this time, he had never felt the mighty and mysterious emotion of love. More than once, when he had seen the calm face of Dorothy Fraser, soft and tender feelings had arisen in his heart; but they were only the first faint gleams of that conflagration which sooner or later breaks forth in the souls of men like him.

It was this confusion of the sources of his happiness which made him oblivious to the struggle that was still going on within his mind. The question had been raised there as to whether he had chosen wisely in turning his back upon the joys of an earthly life for the joys of heaven. It had not been settled, and was waiting an opportunity to thrust itself again before his consciousness. In the meantime he was happy. Never had he seemed to himself more perfectly possessed by the Divine Spirit than at the moment when he reached the summit of the last hill, and looked down into the valley where lay the lumber-camp. He paused to gaze upon a scene of surpassing loveliness, and was for a moment absorbed by its beauty; but a sudden discovery startled and disturbed him. There was no smoke curling from the chimneys. There were no forms of men moving about in their brilliant woolen shirts; he listened in vain for voices; he could not even hear the yelp of the ever-watchful dogs.

"Can it be possible that I have been deceived by my vision?" he asked himself.

It was the first real skepticism of his life, and crowding it back into his heart as best he could, he pressed on, excited and curious. As he approached the rude structure, the signs of its desertion became indubitable. He called, but heard only the echo of his own voice. He tried the door, and it opened. Through it he entered the low-ceiled room. On every hand were evidences of recent departure; living coals still glowed in the ashes and crumbs were scattered on the tables. There could be no longer any doubt that the lumbermen had vanished. The last and most incontrovertible proof was tacked upon the wall in the shape of a flat piece of board on which were written in a rude scrawl these words: "We have gone to the Big Miami."

The face so bright and clear a moment ago was clouded now. He read the sentence over and over again. He sat down upon a bench and meditated, then rose and went out, walking around the cabin and returning to read the message once more. If he had spoken the real sentiment of his heart he would have said: "I have been deceived." He did not speak, however, but struggled bravely to throw off the feelings of surprise and doubt; and so, reassuring his faith again and again by really noble efforts, took from his pocket the lunch his mother had prepared, and ate it hungrily although abstractedly. As he did so, he felt the animal joy in food and rest, and his courage and confidence revived.

"It is plain," he said to himself, "that God has sent me here to try my faith. All he requires is obedience! It is not necessary that I should understand; but it is necessary that I should obey!"

The idea of a probation so unique was not distasteful to his romantic nature, and he therefore at once addressed himself to the business upon which he had come. He had been sent to preach, and preach he would. Drawing from the inner pocket of his coat a well-worn Bible, he turned to the fourteenth chapter of the Gospel of Saint John, rose to his feet and began to read. It was strange to be reading to this emptiness and silence, but after a moment he adjusted himself to the situation. The earnest effort he was making to control his mind achieved at least a partial success. His face brightened, he conjured up before his imagination the forms and faces of the absent men. He saw them with the eye of his mind. His voice grew firm and clear, and its tones reassured him.

Having finished the lesson, he closed the volume and began to pray. Now that his eyes were shut, the strangeness of the situation vanished entirely. He was no longer alone, for God was with him. The petition was full of devotion, tenderness and faith, and as he poured it forth his countenance beamed like that of an angel. When it was finished he began the sermon. The first few words were scarcely audible. The thoughts were disconnected and fragmentary. He suffered an unfamiliar and painful embarrassment, but struggled on, and his thoughts cleared themselves like a brook by flowing. Each effort resulted in a greater facility of utterance, and soon the joy of triumph began to inspire him. The old confidence returned at last and his soul, filled with faith and hope and fervor, poured itself forth in a full torrent. He began to be awed by the conjecture that his errand had some extraordinary although hidden import. Who could tell what mission these words were to accomplish in the plans of God? He remembered that the waves made by the smallest pebble flung into the ocean widen and widen until they touch the farthest shore, and he flung the pebbles of his speech into the great ocean of thought, transported by the hope of sometime learning that their waves had beat upon the shores of a distant universe.

Suddenly, in the midst of this tumultuous rush of speech, he heard, or thought he heard, a sound. It seemed to him like a sob and there followed stumbling footsteps as of some one in hurried flight, but he was too absorbed to be more than dimly conscious of anything save his own emotions.

And yet, slight as was this interruption, it served to agitate his mind and bring him down from the realms of imagination to the world of reality. His thoughts began to flow less easily and his tongue occasionally to stammer; the strangeness of his experience came back upon him with redoubled force; the chill influence of vacancy and emptiness oppressed him; his enthusiasm waned; what he was doing began to seem foolish and even silly.

Just at that critical moment there occurred one of those trifling incidents which so often produce results ridiculously disproportionate to their apparent importance. Through the open door to which his back was turned, a little snake had made its way into the room, and having writhed silently across the floor, coiled itself upon the hearth-stone, faced the speaker, looked solemnly at him with its beady eyes, and occasionally thrust out its forked tongue as if in relish of his words.

That fixed and inscrutable gaze completed the confusion of the orator. He suddenly ceased to speak, and stood staring at the serpent. His face became impassive and expressionless; the pupils of his eyes dilated; his lips remained apart; the last word seemed frozen on his tongue. Not a shade of thought could be traced on his countenance and yet he must have been thinking, for he suddenly collapsed, sank down on a rude bench and rested his head on his hands as if he had come to some disagreeable, and perhaps terrible conclusion. And so indeed he had. The uneasy suspicions which had been floating in his mind in a state of solution were suddenly crystallized by this untoward event. The absurdity of a man's having tramped twenty miles through an almost unbroken wilderness to preach the gospel to a garter snake, burst upon him with a crushing force. This grotesque denouement of an undertaking planned and executed in the loftiest frame of religious enthusiasm, shook the very foundation of his faith.

"It is absurd, it is impossible, that an infinite Spirit of love and wisdom could have planned this repulsive adventure! I have been misled! I am the victim of a delusion!" he said to himself, in shame and bitterness.

To him, Christianity had been not so much a system of doctrines based upon historical proofs, as emotions springing from his own heart. He believed in another world not because its existence had been testified to by others, but because he daily and hourly entered its sacred precincts. He had faith in God, not because He had spoken to apostles and prophets, but because He had spoken to David Corson. Having received direct communication from the Divine Spirit, how could he doubt? What other proof could he need?

Suddenly, without warning and without preparation, the foundation upon which he had erected the superstructure of his faith crumbled and fell. He had been deceived! The communications were false! They had originated in his own soul, and were not really the voice of God.

Through this suspicion, as through a suddenly-opened door, the powers of hell rushed into his soul and it became the theater of a desperate battle between the good and evil elements of life. Doubt grappled with faith; self-gratification with self-restraint; despair with hope; lust with purity; body with soul.

He heard again the mocking laughter of the quack, and the stinging words of his cynical philosophy once more rang in his ears. What this coarse wretch had said was true, then! Religion was a delusion, and he had been spending the best portion of his life in hugging it to his bosom. Much of his youth had already passed and he had not as yet tasted the only substantial joys of existence,--money, pleasure, ambition, love! He felt that he had been deceived and defrauded.

A contempt for his old life and its surroundings crept upon him. He began to despise the simple country people among whom he had grown up, and those provincial ideas which they cherished in the little, unknown nook of the world where they stagnated.

During a long time he permitted himself to be borne upon the current of these thoughts without trying to stem it, till it seemed as if he would be swept completely from his moorings. But his trust had been firmly anchored, and did not easily let go its hold. The convictions of a lifetime began to reassert themselves. They rose and struggled heroically for the possession of his spirit.

Had the battle been with the simple abstraction of philosophic doubt, the good might have prevailed, but there obtruded itself into the field the concrete form of the gypsy. The glance of her lustrous eye, the gleam of her milk-white teeth, the heaving of her agitated bosom, the inscrutable but suggestive expression of her flushed and eager face, these were foes against which he struggled in vain. A feverish desire, whose true significance he did not altogether understand, tugged at his heart, and he felt himself drawn by unseen hands toward this mysterious and beautiful being. She seemed to him at that awful moment, when his whole world of thought and feeling was slipping from under his feet, the one only abiding reality. She at least was not an impalpable vision, but solid, substantial, palpitating flesh and blood. Like continuously advancing waves which sooner or later must undermine a dyke, the passions and suspicions of his newly awakened nature were sapping the foundations of his belief.

At intervals he gained a little courage to withstand them, and at such moments tried to pray; but the effort was futile, for neither would the accustomed syllables of petition spring to his lips, nor the feelings of faith and devotion arise within his heart. He strove to convince himself that this experience was a trial of his faith, and that if he stood out a little longer, his doubt would pass away. He lifted his head and glanced at the serpent still coiled upon the hearth. Its eyes were fixed upon him in a gorgon-like stare, and his doubts became positive certainties, as disgust became loathing. The battle had ended. The mystic had been defeated. This sudden collapse had come because the foundations of his faith had been honeycombed. The innocent serpent had been, not the cause, but the occasion.

Influences had been at work, of which the Quaker had remained unconscious. He had been observing, without reflecting upon, many facts in the lives of other men, experiences in his own heart, and apparent inconsistencies in the Bible. There was also a virus whose existence he did not suspect running in his very blood! And now on top of the rest came the bold skepticism of the quack, and the bewildering beauty of the gypsy.

Yes, the preliminary work had been done! We never know how rotten the tree is until it falls, nor how unstable the wall until it crumbles. And so in the moral natures of men, subtle forces eat their way silently and imperceptibly to the very center.

A summer breeze overthrows the tree, the foot of a child sets the wall tottering; a whisper, a smile, even the sight of a serpent, is the jar that upsets the equilibrium of a soul.

The Quaker rose from his seat in a fever of excitement. He seized the Bible lying open on the table, hurled it frantically at the snake and flung himself out of the open door into the sunshine. A wild consciousness of liberty surged over him.

"I am free," he exclaimed aloud. "I have emancipated myself from superstition. I am going forth into the world to assert myself, to gratify my natural appetites, to satisfy my normal desires. It was for this that life was given. I have too long believed that duty consisted in conquering nature. I now see that it lies in asserting it. I have too long denied myself. I will hereafter be myself. That man was right--there is no law above the human will."