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568            55. 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 charge

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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 respe respectable life. When Janet Peterson had died, her idiot daughter, Maggie had been left with no kith or 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 nobody felt called upon to everybody shirked the unpleasant task of interfering in the matter,

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into stars above the afterglow, and 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 harbor 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

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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 lik

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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 you’d d I’d die before you got here—die and go to hell. I didn’t know before to-day

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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

 

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tell you I’m sorry for living wicked—I was always sorry for it all the time. There ain’t nobod 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

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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

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.”

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Naomi cowered and moaned.

“Oh, I wish I could believe that. I wouldn’t be frighted 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 No Naomi realize it. This anguished death-bed was no place for a theological exposition[.]

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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

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of the bed; he looked through the open door to the remote, starlit night—and a horrible sense of he 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

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boy stood by Naomi’s bed and looked down at her with sympathetic eyes. But at first she did not look at him—she looked past him at the minister.

“I might have died in that spell,” she said, with sullen reproach in her voice, “and if I had I’d been in hell now. You can’t help me—I’m done with you. There ain’t any hope for me, and I know it now.”

She turned to Felix.

“Take down that fiddle on the wall and play something for me,” she said imperiously. “I’m dying –and I’m going to hell—and I don’t want to think of it. Play me something to take my thoughts off it—I don’t

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care what you play. I was always fond of music—there was always something in it for me I never found anywhere else.”

Felix looked at his grandfather. The old man nodded; he felt too ashamed to speak; he sat with his fine silver head in his hands, while Felix took down and tuned the old violin, on which so many godless lilts had been played in many a wild revel. Mr. Leonard felt that he had failed his religion. He could not give Naomi the help that was in it for her.

Felix drew the bow softly, perplexedly over the strings. He had no idea what he should play. Then his

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and all I have hoped for you will be abundantly fulfilled.

 

—————–     ——————–

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eyes were caught and held by Naomi’s burning, mesmeric, blue gaze as she lay on her crumpled pillow. A strange, inspired look came over the boy’s face. He began to play as if it were not he who played, but some mightier power, of which he was but the passive instrument.

Sweet and soft and wonderful was the music that stole through the room. Mr. Leonard forgot his heartbreak and listened to it in puzzled amazement. He had never heard anything like it before. How could the child play like that? He looked at Naomi and marvelled at the change in her face. The fear and freez frenzy were going out of it; she listened

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breathlessly, never taking her eyes from Felix. At the foot of the bed the idiot girl sat with tears on her cheeks.

In that strange music was the joy of innocent, mirthful childhood, blent with the laughter of waves and the call of glad winds. Then it held the wild, wayward dreams of youth, sweet and pure in their wildness and waywardness. They were followed by a rapture of young love—all-surrendering, all-sacrificing love.

The music changed. It held the torture of unshed tears, the anguish of a heart deceived and desolate. Mr. Leonard almost put his hands over his ears to shut out its intolerable

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strangely familiar in it. He struggled to recall where he had heard it before; then he suddenly knew—he had heard it before Felix came in Naomi’s terrible words! He looked at his grandson with something like awe. Here was a power of which he knew nothing—a strange and dreadful power. Was it of God? Or of Satan?

For the last time the music changed. And now it was not music at all—it was a great, infinite forgiveness, an all-comprehending love. It was healing for a sick soul; it was light and hope and peace. A Bible text, seemingly incongruous; came into Mr. Leonard’s

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further than that Old Man Shaw had no ambition. He was as blithe as a pilgrim on a pathway climbing to the west. He had learned the rare secret that you must take happiness where you can find it—that there is no use in marking the place and coming back to it at a more convenient season, because it will not be there then. And it is very easy to be happy if you know, as Old Man Shaw most thoroughly knew, how to find pleasure in little things. He enjoyed life; he had always