Chapter XXX The Schoolmaster and the Widow
When Kike had appeared at the camp meeting, as we related, it was not difficult to forecast his fate. Everybody saw that he was going into a consumption. One year, two years at farthest, he might manage to live, but not longer. Nobody knew this so well as Kike himself. He rejoiced in it. He was one of those rare spirits to whom the invisible world is not a dream but a reality, and to whom religious duty is a voice never neglected. That he had sacrificed his own life to his zeal he understood perfectly well, and he had no regrets except that he had not been more zealous. What was life if he could save even one soul?
“But,” said Morton to him one day, “you are wrong, Kike. If you had taken care of yourself you might have lived to save so many more.”
“Morton, if your eye were fastened on one man drowning,” replied Kike, “and you thought you could save him at the risk of your health, you wouldn’t stop to calculate that by avoiding that peril you might live long enough to save many others. When God puts a soul before me I save that one if il costs my life. When I am gone God will find others. It is glorious to work for God, but it is awful. What if by some neglect of mine a soul should drop into hell? O! Morton, I am oppressed with responsibility! I will be glad when God shall say, It is enough.”
Few of the preachers remonstrated with Kike. He was but fulfilling the Methodist ideal; they admired him while most of them could not quite emulate him. Read the minutes of the old conferences and you will see everywhere among the brief obituaries, headstones in memory of young men who laid down their lives as Kike was doing. Men were nothing—the work was everything. Methodism let the dead bury their dead; it could hardly stop to plant a spear of grass over the grave of one of its own heroes.
But Pottawottomie Creek circuit was poor and wild, and it had paid Kike only five dollars for his whole nine months’ work. Two of this he had spent for horse-shoes, and two he had given away. The other one had gone for quinine. Now he had no clothes that would long hold together. He would ride to Hissawachee and get what his mother had carded and spun, and woven, and cut, and sewed for the son whom she loved all the more that he seemed no longer to be entirely hers. He could come back in three days. Two days more would suffice to reach Peterborough circuit. So he sent on to the circuit, in advance, his appointments to preach, and rode off to Hissawachee. But he did not get back to camp-meeting. An attack of fever held him at home for several weeks.
At last he was better and had set the day for his departure from home. His mother saw what everybody saw, that if Kike ever lived to return to his home it would only be to die. And as this was, perhaps, his last visit, Mrs. Lumsden felt in duty bound to tell him of her intention to marry Brady. While Brady thought to do the handsome thing by secretly getting a marriage license, intending, whenever the widow should mention the subject to Kike, to immediately propose that Kike should perform the ceremony of marriage. It was quite contrary to the custom of that day for a minister to officiate at a wedding of one of his own family; Brady defied custom, however. But whenever Mrs. Lumsden tried to approach Kike on the subject, her heart failed her. He was so wrapped up in heavenly subjects, so full of exhortations and aspirations, that she despaired beforehand of making him understand her feelings. Once she began by alluding to her loneliness, upon which Kike assured her that if she put her trust in the Lord he would be with her. What was she to do? How make a rapt seer like Kike understand the wants of ordinary mortals? And that, too, when he was already bidding adieu to this world?
The last morning had come, and Brady was urging on the weeping widow that she must go into the room where Kike was stuffing his small wardrobe into his saddle-bags, and tell him what was in their hearts.
“Oh, I can’t bear to,” said she. “I won’t never see him any more and I might hurt him, and——”
“Will,” said Brady, “thin I’ll hev to do it mesilf.”
“If you only would!” said she, imploringly.
“But it’s so much more appropriate for you to do it, Mrs. Lumsden. If I do it, it’ll same jist loike axin’ the b’y’s consint to marry his mother.”
“But I can’t noways do it,” said the widow. “If you love me you might take that load offen me.”
“I’ll do it if it kills me, sthraight,” and Brady marched into the sitting-room, where Kike, exhausted by his slight exertion, was resting in the shuck-bottom rocking-chair. Brady took a seat opposite to him on a chair made out of a transformed barrel, and reached up his iron gray hair uneasily. To his surprise Kike began the conversation.
“Mr. Brady, you and mother a’n’t acting very wisely, I think,” said Kike.
“Ye’ve noticed us, thin,” said Brady, in terror.
“To be sure I have.”
“Will, now, Koike, I’ll till you fwat I’m thinkin’. Ye’re pecooliar loike; ye don’t know how to sympathoize with other folks because ye’re livin’ roight up in hiven all the toime.”
“Why don’t you live more in heaven?”
“Will, I think I’d throy if I had somebody to help me,” said Brady, adroitly. “But I’m one of the koind that’s lonesome, and in doire nade of company. I was jilted whin I was young, and I thought I’d niver be a fool agin. But ye see ye ain’t niver been in love in all yer loife, and how kin ye fale fer others?”
“Maybe I have been in love, too,” said Kike, a strange softness coming into his voice.
“Did ye iver! Who’d a thought it?” And Brady made large eyes at him. “Thin ye ought to fale fer the infarmities of others,” he added with some exultation.
“I do. That’s why I said you and mother were very foolish.”
“Fwy, now; there it is agin. Fwat do ye mane?”
“Why this. When I was here before I saw that you and mother had taken a liking to each other. I thought by this time you’d have been married. And I didn’t see any reason why you shouldn’t. But you’re as far away as ever. Here’s mother’s land that needs somebody to take care of it. I am going away never to come back. If I could see you married the only earthly care I have would be gone, and I could die in peace, whenever and wherever the Lord calls me.”
“God bliss ye, Koike,” said Brady, wiping his eyes. “Fwy didn’t you say that before? Ye’re a prophet and a angel, I belave. I wish I was half as good, or a quarther. God bliss ye, me boy. I wish—I wish ye would thry to live afwoile, I’ve been athrying’ and your mother’s been athryin’ to muster up courage to spake to ye about this, and ye samed so hivenly we thought ye would be displased. Now, will ye marry us before ye go?”
“I haven’t got any license.”
“Here ’tis, in me pocket.”
“Where’s a witness or two?”
“I hear some women-folks come to say good-bye to ye in the other room.”
“I’d like to marry you now,” said Kike. “I must get away in an hour.”
And he married them. They wept over him, and he made no concealment that he was going away for the last time. He rode out from Hissawachee never to come back. Not sad, but exultant, that he had sacrificed everything for Christ and was soon to enter into the life everlasting. For, faithless as we are in this day, let us never hide from ourselves the fact that the faith of a martyr is indeed a hundred fold more a source of joy than houses and lands, and wife and children.