The Valley of Vision : A Book of Romance and Some Half-Told TalesVan Dyke, Henry
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The Valley of Vision : A Book of Romance and Some Half-Told Tales
Van Dyke, Henry
Religious fiction, American; Short stories, American
“No, dear little master,” she said, “you shall not stay in this
house--not an hour. It is not fit for you. My Nubian shall lead you
back to the gate, and you will return to your friends outside of
the city, and you will forget one whom you comforted for a moment.”
The Boy turned back as he stood in the doorway. “No,” he said. “I
will not forget you. I will always remember your love and kindness.
Will you learn to pray, and give up being a sinner?”
“I will try,” she answered; “you have made me want to try. Go in
peace. God knows what will become of me.”
“God knows, sister,” replied the Boy gravely. “Abide in peace.”
So he went out into the dusk with the Nubian and found the camp on
the hillside and a shelter in one of the friendly tents, where he
slept soundly and woke refreshed in the morning.
This day he would not spend in playing and wandering. He would go
straight to the Temple, to find some of the learned teachers who
gave instruction there, and learn from them the wisdom that he
needed in order to do his work for his Father.
As he went he thought about the things that had befallen him
yesterday. Why had the man dressed in white despised him? Why had
the city children mocked him and chased him away with stones? Why
was the strange woman who had been so kind to him afterward so
unhappy and so hopeless?
There must be something in the world that he did not understand,
something evil and hateful and miserable that he had never felt in
himself. But he felt it in the others, and it made him so sorry, so
distressed for them, that it seemed like a heavy weight, a burden
on his own heart. It was like the work of those demons, of whom
his mother had told him, who entered into people and lived inside
of them, like worms eating away a fruit.
Only these people of whom he was thinking did not seem to have a
demon that took hold of them and drove them mad and made them foam
at the mouth and cut themselves with stones, like a man he once
saw in Galilee. This was something larger and more mysterious-like
the hot wind that sometimes blew from the south and made people
gloomy and angry--like the rank weeds that grew in certain fields,
and if the sheep fed there they dropped and died.
The Boy felt that he hated this unknown, wicked, unhappy thing more
than anything else in the world. He would like to save people from
it. He wanted to fight against it, to drive it away. It seemed as
if there were a spirit in his heart saying to him, “This is what
you must do, you must fight against this evil, you must drive out
the darkness, you must be a light, you must save the people--this
is your Father's work for you to do.”
But how? He did not know. That was what he wanted to find out. And
he went into the Temple hoping that the teachers there would tell
him.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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