As the bell continued other carriages came towards town, and some passed
him, their inmates all bowing, and often stealing a look back to see
Judge Custis again, the first man in the county.
They looked upon an humbled heart, a gladdened soul, which the sharp
hand of affliction had made to bleed, while an unforeseen Providence in
his darling child had kissed the wound to sleep and sucked the poison
from it.
Raising his brow towards the bright blue sky, as if he could not raise
it high enough to feel more of that heavenly rest encinctured there, the
Judge sighed forth a happy wish, like the kiss of love after a quarrel,
when doubt is all dispelled or wrong forgiven:
"O make me as a little child! Wash out my stains! Lead me in the path my
child has walked, or I shall never see her in the life to come!"
His lips trembled and his breast heaved convulsively. In that idea of
being unfit to enter where his child would go, in the more abundant life
beyond the present, he received a distinct sermon from the long-empty
pulpit of nature and conscience, and revelations from within clearer
than Holy Scriptures; for he felt the justice of the final separation of
the impure from the pure, and the faith of perseverance in good to draw
onward towards holiness itself, and perseverance in sensuality and
selfishness to detain the spirit in its husk of swine. His agony
increased.
"Where shall I drift if I go on," he said, "playing the sleek magistrate
and family head, and loving to slip away in the dark, like negroes
hunting coons by night? What is escaping discovery to the increasing
degradation of my own sanctuary, my created spirit? Can I find the way I
have wandered down and retrace my steps? There is but little of life
left me to do it in, but by God's help I will try! Yes, this golden
Sabbath I will do something to begin.
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