THE ANGEL OF THE GILA
Days came and went. The Bible school of Gila had ceased to be an experiment. It was a fact patent to all that the adobe schoolhouse had become the social center of the community, and that the soul of that center was Esther Bright. She had studied sociology in college and abroad. She had theorized, as many do, about life; now, life itself, in its bald reality, was appealing to her heart and brain. She did not stop to analyze her fitness for the work. She indulged in no morbid introspection. It was enough for her that she had found great human need. She was now to cope, almost single handed, with the forces that drag men down. She saw the need, she realized the opportunity. She worked with the quiet, unfailing patience of a great soul, leaving the fruitage to God.
Sometimes the seriousness in Esther's face would deepen. Then she would go out into the Open. On one of these occasions, she strayed to her favorite haunt in the timber along the river, and seated herself on the trunk of a dead cottonwood tree, lying near the river bank. Trees, covered with green mistletoe, towered above her. Tremulous aspens sparkled in the sunshine. The air was crystal clear; the vast dome of the sky, of the deepest blue. She sat for a long time with face lifted, apparently forgetful of the open letter in her hand. At last she turned to it, and read as follows:
Lynn, Mass., Tenth Month, Fifth Day, 1888.
My Beloved Granddaughter:
Thy letter reached me Second Day. Truly thou hast found a field that needs a worker, and I do not question that the Lord's hand led thee to Gila. What thou art doing and dost plan to do, interest me deeply; but it will tax thy strength. I am thankful that thou hast felt a deepening sense of God's nearness. His world is full of Him, only men's eyes are holden that they do not know. All who gain strength to lead and inspire their fellows, learn this surely at last:—that the soul of man finds God most surely in the Open. If men would help their fellows, they must seek inspiration and strength in communion with God.
To keep well, one must keep his mind calm and cheerful. So I urge thee not to allow the sorrowfulness of life about thee to depress thee. Thou canst not do thy most effective work if thy heart is always bowed down. The great sympathy of thy nature will lead thee to sorrow for others more than is well for thee. Joy is necessary to all of us. So, Beloved, cultivate joyousness, and teach others to do so. It keeps us sane, and strong and helpful.
I know that the conditions thou hast found shock and distress thee, as they do all godly men and women; but I beg thee to remember, Esther, that our Lord had compassion on such as these, on the sinful as well as on the good, and that He offers salvation to all. How to have compassion! Ah, my child, men are so slow in learning that. Love,—compassion, is the key of Christ's philosophy.
I am often lonely without thee; but do not think I would call thee back while the Lord hath need of thee.
Thy Uncle and Aunt are well, and send their love to thee.
I have just been reading John Whittier's 'Our Master.' Read it on next First Day, as my message to thee.
God bless thee.
Thy faithful grandfather,
David Bright.
As she read, her eyes filled.
In the veins of Esther Bright flowed the blood of honorable, God-fearing people; but to none of these, had humanity's needs called more insistently than to her. Her grandfather had early recognized and fostered her passion for service; and from childhood up, he had frequently taken her with him on his errands of mercy, that she might understand the condition and the needs of the unfortunate. Between the two there existed an unusual bond.
After reading the letter, Esther sat absorbed in thought. The present had slipped away, and it seemed as though her spirit had absented itself from her body and gone on a far journey. She was aroused to a consciousness of the present by a quick step. In a moment Kenneth Hastings was before her; then, seated at her side.
"Well!" he began. "How fortunate I am! Here I was on my way to call on you to give you these flowers. I've been up on the mountains for them."
"What beautiful mountain asters!" was her response, her face lighting with pleasure. "How exquisite in color! And how kind of you!"
"Yes, they're lovely." He looked into her face with undisguised admiration. Something within her shrank from it.
Three weeks had now passed since the meeting of Kenneth Hastings and Esther Bright. During this time, he had become an almost daily caller at Clayton Ranch. When he made apologies for the frequency of his calls, the Claytons always assured him of the pleasure his presence gave them, saying he was to them a younger brother, and as welcome.
It was evident to them that Kenneth's transformation had begun. John Clayton knew that important changes were taking place in his daily life; that all his social life was spent in their home; that he had ceased to enter a saloon; and that he had suddenly become fastidious about his toilet.
If Esther noted any changes in him, she did not express it. She was singularly reticent in regard to him.
At this moment, she sat listening to him as he told her of the mountain flora.
"Wait till you see the cactus blossoms in the spring and summer." He seemed very enthusiastic. "They make a glorious mass of color against the soft gray of the dry grass, or soil."
"I'd love to see them." She lifted the bunch of asters admiringly.
"I have some water colors of cacti I made a year ago. I'd like to show them to you, Miss Bright, if you are interested."
She assured him she was.
"I was out in the region of Colorado River a year ago. It is a wonderful region no white man has yet explored. Only the Indians know of its greatness. I have an idea that when that region is explored by some scientist, he will discover that canyon to be the greatest marvel of the world. What I saw was on a stupendous, magnificent scale."
"How it must have impressed you!"
"Wonderfully! I'll show you a sketch I made of a bit of what I found. It may suggest the magnificence of the coloring to you."
"How did you happen to have sketching materials with you?"
"I agreed to write a series of articles for an English magazine, and wished illustrations for one of the articles."
"How accomplished you are!" she exclaimed. "A mining engineer, a painter, an author—"
"Don't!" he protested, raising a deprecatory hand.
Having launched on the natural wonders of Arizona, he grew more and more eloquent, till Esther's imagination made a daring leap, and she looked down the gigantic gorge he pictured to her, over great acres of massive rock formation, like the splendor of successive day-dawns hardened into stone, and saw gigantic forms chiseled by ages of erosion.
"Do you ride horseback, Miss Bright?" he asked, suddenly changing the conversation.
"I am sorry to say that I do not. I do not even know how to mount."
"Let me teach you to ride," he said, with sudden interest.
"You would find me an awkward pupil," she responded, rising.
"I am willing to wager that I should not. When may I have the pleasure of giving you the first lesson?"
"Any time convenient for you when I am not teaching." She began to gather up her flowers and hat.
Then and there, a day was set for the first lesson in horsemanship.
"Sit down, please," said Kenneth. "I want you to enlighten me. I am painfully dense."
She seated herself on the tree trunk again, saying as she did so:
"I had not observed any conspicuous signs of density on your part, Mr. Hastings, save that you think I could be metamorphosed into a horsewoman. Some women are born to the saddle. I was not. I am not an Englishwoman, you see."
"But decidedly English," he retorted. "I wish you would tell me your story."
Her face flushed.
"I beg your pardon," he hastened to say. "I did not mean to be rude. You interest me deeply. Anything you think or do, anything that has made you what you are, is of deep interest to me."
"There is nothing to tell," she said simply. "Just a few pages, with here and there an entry; a few birthdays; graduation from college; foreign travel; work in Gila; a life spent in companionship with a wonderfully lovely and lovable grandfather; work at his side, and life's history in the making. That is all."
"All?" he repeated. "But that is rich in suggestion. I have studied you almost exclusively for three weeks, and I know you."
She looked up. The expression in his eyes nettled her. Her spinal column stiffened.
"Indeed! Know a woman in three weeks! You do well, better than most of your sex. Most men, I am told, find woman an unsolvable problem, and when they think they know her, they find they don't."
This was interesting to him. He liked the flash in her eye.
"Some life purpose brings you to Gila, to work so unselfishly for a lot of common, ignorant people."
"What is that to you?"
Her question sounded harsh in her own ears, and then she begged his pardon.
"No apology is necessary on your part," he said, changing from banter to a tone of seriousness. "My words roused your resentment. I am at fault. The coming of a delicately nurtured girl like you into such a place of degradation is like the coming of an angel of light down to the bottomless pit. I beg forgiveness for saying this; but, Miss Bright, a mining camp, in these days, is a hotbed of vice."
"All the more reason why people of intelligence and character should try to make the life here clean. I believe we can crowd out evil by cultivating the good."
"You are a decided optimist," he said; "and I, by force of circumstances, have become a confirmed pessimist."
"You will not continue to be a pessimist," she said, prophetically, seeing in her mind's eye what he would be in the years to come. "You will come to know deep human sympathy; you will believe in the possibility of better and better things for your fellows. You will use your strength, your intellect, your fine education, for the best service of the world about you."
Somehow that prophecy went home to him.
"By George!" he exclaimed, "you make a fellow feel he must be just what you want him to be, and what he ought to be."
The man studied the woman before him, with deep and increasing interest. She possessed a strength, he was sure, of which no one in Gila had yet dreamed. He continued:
"Would you mind telling me the humanitarian notions that made you willing to bury yourself in this godless place?"
She hesitated. The catechism evidently annoyed her, for it seemed to savor of impertinent curiosity. But at last she answered:
"I believe my grandfather is responsible for the humanitarian notions. It is a long story."
She hesitated.
"I am interested in what he has done, and what you are doing. Please tell me about it."
"Well, it goes back to my childhood. I was my grandfather's constant companion until I went to college. He is a well-known philanthropist of New England, interested in the poor, in convicts in prison and out, in temperance work, in the enfranchisement of woman, in education, and in everything that makes for righteousness."
She paused.
"And he discussed great questions with you?"
"Yes, as though in counsel. He would tell me certain conditions, and ask me what I thought we had better do."
"An ideal preparation for philanthropic service." He was serious now.
"There awoke within me, very early, the purpose to serve my fellow men in the largest possible way. Grandfather fostered this; and when the time came for me to go to college, he helped me plan my course of study." She looked far away.
"You followed it out?"
"Very nearly. You see, Mr. Hastings, service is no accident with me. It dates back generations. It is in my blood."
"Your blood is of the finest sort. Surely service does not mean living in close touch with immoral, disreputable people."
Her eyes kindled, grew dark in color.
"What does it mean, then? The strong, the pure, the godly should live among men, teach by precept and example how to live, and show the loveliness of pure living just as Jesus did. I have visited prisons with grandfather, have prayed with and for criminals, and have sung in the prisons. Is it not worth while to help these wretched creatures look away from themselves to God?"
"Oh, Miss Bright," he protested, "it is dreadful for a young girl like you even to hear of the wickedness of men."
"Women are wicked, too," she responded seriously, "but I never lose hope for any one."
"Some day hope will die out in your heart," he said discouragingly.
"God forbid!" she spoke solemnly. In a moment she continued:
"I am sure you do not realize how many poor creatures never have had a chance to be decent. Just think how many are born of sinful, ignorant parents, into an environment of sin and ignorance. They live in it, they die in it. I, by no will or merit of my own, received a blessed heritage. My ancestors for generations have been intelligent, godly people, many of them people of distinction. I was born into an atmosphere of love, of intelligence, of spirituality, and of refinement. I have lived in that atmosphere all my life. My good impulses have been fostered, my wrong ones checked."
"I'll wager you were painfully conscientious," he said.
"Why should I have been given so much," she continued, "and these poor creatures so little, unless it was that I should minister to their needs?"
"You may be right." He seemed unconvinced. "But I am sure of one thing. If I had been your grandfather, and you my grandchild, I never would have let you leave me."
He was smiling.
"You should know my grandfather, and then you would understand."
"How did you happen to come to Gila?" he asked.
"I met Mr. and Mrs. Clayton in the home of one of their friends in England. We were house guests there at the same time. We returned to America on the same steamer. Mrs. Clayton knew I was to do settlement work, and urged me to come to Gila a while instead. So I came."
How much her coming was beginning to mean to him, to others! Both were silent a while. Then it was Kenneth who spoke.
"Do you know, Miss Bright, it never occurred to me before you came, that I had any obligations to these people? Now I know I have. I was indifferent to the fact that I had a soul myself until you came."
She looked up questioningly.
"Yes, I mean it," he said. "To all intents and purposes I had no soul. A man forgets he has a soul when he lives in the midst of vice, and no one cares whether he goes to the devil or not."
"Is it the environment, or the feeling that no one cares?" she asked.
"Both." He buried his face in his hands.
"Did you feel that no one cared? I'm sure your mother cared."
She had touched a sore spot.
"My mother?" he said, bitterly. "My mother is a woman of the world." Here he lifted his head. "She is engrossed in society. She has no interest whatever in me, and never did have, although I am her only child."
"Perhaps you are mistaken," she said softly. "I am sure you must be mistaken."
"When a mother lets year after year go by without writing to her son, do you think she cares?"
"You don't mean to say that you never receive a letter from your mother?"
"My mother has not written to me since I came to America. Suppose your mother did not write to you. Would you think she had a very deep affection for you?"
Esther's face grew wistful.
"Perhaps you do not know," she answered, "I have no living mother. She died when I was born."
"Forgive my thoughtless question," he said. "I did not know you had lost your mother. I was selfish."
"Oh, no," she said, "not selfish. You didn't know, that was all. We sometimes make mistakes, all of us, when we do not know. I lost my father when I was a very little child."
"And your grandfather reared you?"
"Yes, grandfather, assisted by my uncle and auntie."
"Tell me about your grandfather, I like to hear."
"He was my first playfellow, and a fine one he was, too."
"How I envy him!"
"You mustn't interrupt me," she said demurely.
"I am penitent. Do proceed."
Then she told him, in brief, the story of her life, simple and sweet in the telling. She told him of the work done by her grandfather.
"He preaches, you tell me."
"Yes," she said, rambling on, "he is a graduate of Yale, and prepared to be a physician. But his heart drew him into the ministry, the place where he felt the Great Physician would have him be. Grandfather is a Friend, you know, a Quaker."
"So I understood."
"He had a liberal income, so it was possible for him to devote his entire time to the poor and distressed. He has been deeply interested in the Negro and American Indian, and in fact, in every one who is oppressed by his stronger brother."
"An unusual man."
"Very."
"How could you leave him? Did you not feel that your first duty was to him?"
"It was hard to leave him," she said, while her eyes were brimming with tears; "but grandfather and I believe that opportunity to serve means obligation to serve. Besides, love is such a spiritual thing we can never be separated."
"Love is such a spiritual thing—" he repeated, and again, "Spiritual."
He was silent a moment, then he spoke abruptly.
"You have already been the salvation of at least one soul. I owe my soul to you."
"Oh, no, not to me," she protested. "That was God's gift to you from the beginning. It may have slumbered, but you had it all the while."
"What did your grandfather say to your coming to Gila?"
"When I told him of the call to come here, told him that within a radius of sixty miles there was no place of religious worship, he made no response, but sat with his head bowed. At last he looked up with the most beautiful smile you ever saw, and said, 'Go, my child, the Lord hath need of thee.'" Her voice trembled a little.
"He was right," said Kenneth earnestly. "The Lord has need of such as you everywhere. I have need of you. The people here have need of you. Help us to make something of our lives yet, Miss Bright." There was no doubting his sincerity.
She had again risen to go.
"Don't go," he said. "I would like to tell you my story, if you care to hear."
"I shall be glad to hear your story. I know it will not be as meager as mine."
"I wish," he said earnestly, "that I might measure up to your ideal of what a man should be. I cannot do that. But I can be honest and tell you the truth about myself.
"I belong to a proud, high-strung race of people. My father is like his forbears. He is a graduate of Cambridge; has marked literary ability.
"My mother is a society woman, once noted as a beauty at court. She craves admiration and must have it. That is all she cares for. She has never shown any affection for my father or me.
"I left England when I was twenty-two,—my senior year at Cambridge. I've been in America eight years, and during that time I have received but two letters from home, and those were from my father."
"You must have felt starved."
"That's it," he said, "starved! I did feel starved. You see, Miss Bright, a fellow's home has much to do with his life and character. What is done there influences him. Wine was served on our table. My parents partook freely of it; so did our guests. I have seen some guests intoxicated. We played cards, as all society people do. We played for stakes, also. You call that gambling. My mother's men admirers were mush-headed fools."
"Such conditions obtain in certain circles in this country, too. They are a menace to the American home," she said gravely.
"I was sent to Cambridge," he continued, "as my father and his father, and father's father before him, had been sent. I was a natural student and always did well in my work. But my drinking and gambling finally got me into trouble. I was fired. My father was so incensed at my dismissal he told me never to darken his doors again. He gave me money, and told me to leave at once for America.
"I went to my mother's room to bid her good-by. She stood before a mirror while her maid was giving the final touches to her toilet. She looked regal and beautiful as she stood there, and I felt proud of her. I told her what had happened, and that I had come to bid her good-by. She turned upon me pettishly, and asked me how I could mar her pleasure just as she was going to a ball. Her last words to me were, 'I hate to be disturbed with family matters!'"
"Did she bid you good-by?"
"No."
"Forget it," she urged. "All women are not like that. I hope you will find some rare woman who will be as a mother to you."
"Forget it!" he repeated bitterly. "I can't."
"But you will sometime. You came to America. What next?"
"Then I entered the School of Mines at Columbia, and took my degree the following year, after which I joined Mr. Clayton here. That was seven years ago."
"Did you know him in England?"
"Yes. During these intervening years I have frequented the saloons. I have drank some, gambled some, as I did at home. And I have mingled with disreputable men here, but not to lift them up. I have not cared, chiefly because I knew no one else cared."
His companion was silent.
"You despise me, Miss Bright," he continued. "I deserve your contempt, I know. But I would do anything in the power of man to do now, if I could undo the past, and have a life as blameless as your own."
He glanced at his companion.
"What a brute I have been," he exclaimed, "to pour my ugly story into your ears!"
"I am glad you told me," she assured him. She looked up with new sympathy and understanding. "You are going to live down your past now, Mr. Hastings. We'll begin here and now. You will not speak of this again unless it may be a relief to you. The matter will not cross my lips."
She flashed upon him a radiant smile. She believed in him. He could hardly comprehend it.
"You do not despise me? You forgive my past?" He looked into her face.
"It is God who forgives. Why should I despise whom God forgives?"
"If ever I find my way to God," he said in a low voice, "it will be through you."
She quoted softly:
"'Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red as crimson, they shall be as wool.'" Then she added, "I must go home now."
They walked on to Clayton Ranch. After a few commonplaces, Kenneth lifted his hat, and turning, walked swiftly toward the company's headquarters.
Esther stood a moment, watching the easy, graceful stride of the young engineer. His words then, and long afterwards, rang in her ears,—"Help us to make something of our lives yet." And as the words echoed in her heart, a voice aged and full of tender love, came to her like an old refrain,—"Go, my child, the Lord hath need of thee."
She lifted her face and looked into the sky. Suddenly she became conscious of the beauty of the hour. The violet light of evening played about her face and form. She forgot the flowers in her arms, forgot the sunset, and stood absorbed in prayer.
