CHAPTER I

Produced by Doug Levy

THE MILLER OF OLD CHURCH

by Ellen Glasgow

To my sister Cary Glasgow McCormack

In loving acknowledgment of help

and sympathy through the years

CONTENTS

BOOK FIRST

JORDAN'S JOURNEY

Chapter

I. At Bottom's Ordinary

II. In Which Destiny Wears the Comic Mask

III. In Which Mr. Gay Arrives at His Journey's End

IV. The Revercombs

V. The Mill

VI. Treats of the Ladies' Sphere

VII. Gay Rushes Into a Quarrel and Secures a Kiss

VIII. Shows Two Sides of a Quarrel

IX. In Which Molly Flirts

X. The Reverend Orlando Mullen Preaches a Sermon

XI. A Flight and an Encounter

XII. The Dream and the Real

XIII. By the Mill-race

XIV. Shows the Weakness in Strength

XV. Shows the Tyranny of Weakness

XVI. The Coming of Spring

XVII. The Shade of Mr. Jonathan

XVIII. The Shade of Reuben

XIX. Treats of Contradictions

XX. Life's Ironies

XXI. In Which Pity Masquerades as Reason

BOOK SECOND

THE CROSS-ROADS

Chapter

I. In which Youth Shows a Little Seasoned

II. The Desire of the Moth

III Abel Hears Gossip and Sees a Vision

IV. His Day of Freedom

V. The Shaping of Molly

VI. In Which Hearts Go Astray

VII. A New Beginning to an Old Tragedy

VIII. A Great Passion in a Humble Place

IX. A Meeting in the Pasture

X. Tangled Threads

XI. The Ride to Piping Tree

XII. One of Love's Victims

XIII. What Life Teaches

XIV. The Turn of the Wheel

XV. Gay Discovers Himself

XVI. The End

Author's Note: The scene of this story is not the

place of the same name in Virginia.

BOOK FIRST

JORDAN'S JOURNEY

THE MILLER OF OLD CHURCH

CHAPTER I

AT BOTTOM'S ORDINARY

It was past four o'clock on a sunny October day, when a stranger, who

had ridden over the "corduroy" road between Applegate and Old Church,

dismounted near the cross-roads before the small public house known to

its frequenters as Bottom's Ordinary. Standing where the three roads

meet at the old turnpike-gate of the county, the square brick building,

which had declined through several generations from a chapel into a

tavern, had grown at last to resemble the smeared face of a clown under

a steeple hat which was worn slightly awry. Originally covered with

stucco, the walls had peeled year by year until the dull red of the

bricks showed like blotches of paint under a thick coating of powder.

Over the wide door two little oblong windows, holding four damaged

panes, blinked rakishly from a mat of ivy, which spread from the rotting

eaves to the shingled roof, where the slim wooden spire bent under the

weight of creeper and innumerable nesting sparrows in spring. After

pointing heavenward for half a century, the steeple appeared to have

swerved suddenly from its purpose, and to invite now the attention of

the wayfarer to the bar beneath. This cheerful room which sprouted, like

some grotesque wing, from the right side of the chapel, marked not only

a utilitarian triumph in architecture, but served, on market days to

attract a larger congregation of the righteous than had ever stood up

to sing the doxology in the adjoining place of worship. Good and bad

prospects were weighed here, weddings discussed, births and deaths

recorded in ever-green memories, and here, also, were reputations

demolished and the owners of them hustled with scant ceremony away to

perdition.

From the open door of the bar on this particular October day, there

streamed the ruddy blaze of a fire newly kindled from knots of resinous

pine. Against this pleasant background might be discerned now and then

the shapeless silhouette of Betsey Bottom, the innkeeper, a soft and

capable soul, who, in attaching William Ming some ten years before, had

successfully extinguished his identity without materially impairing her

own. Bottom's Ordinary had always been ruled by a woman, and it would

continue to be so, please God, however loudly a mere Ming might protest

to the contrary. In the eyes of her neighbours, a female, right or

wrong, was always a female, and this obvious fact, beyond and above any

natural two-sided jars of wedlock, sufficed in itself to establish Mrs.

Ming as a conjugal martyr. Being an amiable body--peaceably disposed to

every living creature, with the exception of William--she had hastened

to the door to reprimand him for some trivial neglect of the grey mule,

when her glance lighted upon the stranger, who had come a few minutes

earlier by the Applegate road. As he was a fine looking man of full

habit and some thirty years, her eyes lingered an instant on his face

before she turned with the news to her slatternly negro maid who was

sousing the floor with a bucket of soapsuds.

"Thar's nobody on earth out thar but young Mr. Jonathan Gay come back to

Jordan's Journey," she said. "I declar I'd know a Gay by his eyes if I

war to meet him in so unlikely a place as Kingdom Come. He's talkin'

to old Adam Doolittle now," she added, for the information of the maid,

who, being of a curious habit of mind, had raised herself on her knees

and was craning her neck toward the door, "I can see his lips movin',

but he speaks so low I can't make out what he says."

"Lemme git dar a minute, Miss Betsey, I'se got moughty sharp years, I

is."

"They're no sharper than mine, I reckon, and I couldn't hear if I stood

an' listened forever. It's about the road most likely, for I see old

Adam a-pintin'."

For a minute after dismounting the stranger looked dubiously at the

mottled face of the tavern. On his head the sunlight shone through

the boughs of a giant mulberry tree near the well, and beyond this the

Virginian forest, brilliant with its autumnal colours of red and copper,

stretched to the village of Applegate, some ten or twelve miles to the

north.

Starting southward from the cross-roads, the character of the country

underwent so sudden a transformation that it looked as if man, having

contended here unsuccessfully with nature, had signed an ignominious

truce beneath the crumbling gateposts of the turnpike. Passing beyond

them a few steps out of the forest, one found a low hill, on which

the reaped corn stood in stacks like weapons of a vanished army, while

across the sunken road, the abandoned fields, overgrown with broomsedge

and life-everlasting, spread for several miles between "worm fences"

which were half buried in brushwood. To the eyes of the stranger, fresh

from the trim landscapes of England, there was an aspect of desolation

in the neglected roads, in the deserted fields, and in the dim grey

marshes that showed beyond the low banks of the river.

In the effort to shake off the depression this loneliness had brought

on his spirits, he turned to an ancient countryman, wearing overalls

of blue jeans, who dozed comfortably on the circular bench beneath the

mulberry tree.

"Is there a nearer way to Jordan's Journey, or must I follow the

turnpike?" he asked.

"Hey? Young Adam, are you thar, suh?"

Young Adam, a dejected looking youth of fifty years, with a pair of

short-sighted eyes that glanced over his shoulder as if in fear of

pursuit, shuffled round the trough of the well, and sat down on the

bench at his parent's side.

"He wants to know, pa, if thar's a short cut from the ornary over to

Jordan's Journey," he repeated.

Old Adam, who had sucked patiently at the stem of his pipe during the

explanation, withdrew it at the end, and thrust out his lower lip as a

child does that has stopped crying before it intended to.

"You can take a turn to the right at the blazed pine a half a mile on,"

he replied, "but thar's the bars to be pulled down an' put up agin."

"I jest come along thar, an' the bars was down," said young Adam.

"Well, they hadn't ought to have been," retorted old Adam, indignantly.

"Bars is bars whether they be public or private, an' the man that pulls

'em down without puttin' 'em up agin, is a man that you'll find to be

loose moraled in other matters."

"It's the truth as sure as you speak it, Mr. Doolittle," said a wiry,

knocked-kneed farmer, with a hatchet-shaped face, who had sidled up to

the group. "It warn't no longer than yesterday that I was sayin' the

same words to the new minister, or rector as he tries to get us to call

him, about false doctrine an' evil practice. 'The difference between

sprinklin' and immersion ain't jest the difference between a few drips

on the head an' goin' all under, Mr. Mullen,' I said, 'but 'tis the

whole difference between the natur that's bent moral an' the natur that

ain't.' It follows as clear an' logical as night follows day--now, I ax

you, don't it, Mr. Doolittle--that a man that's gone wrong on immersion

can't be trusted to keep his hands off the women?"

"I ain't sayin' all that, Solomon Hatch," responded old Adam, in a

charitable tone, "seein' that I've never made up my own mind quite clear

on those two p'ints--but I do say, be he immersed or sprinkled, that

the man who took down them bars without puttin' 'em up ain't a man to be

trusted."

"'Twarn't a man, 'twas a gal," put in young Adam, "I seed Molly

Merryweather goin' toward the low grounds as I come up."

"Then it's most likely to have been she," commented Solomon, "for she is

a light-minded one, as is proper an' becomin' in a child of sin."

The stranger looked up with a laugh from the moss-grown cattle

trough beside which he was standing, and his eyes--of a peculiar dark

blue--glanced merrily into the bleared ones of old Adam.

"I ain't so blind yet as not to know a Gay when I see one," said the

labourer, with a sly chuckle. "If I hadn't closed the eyes of old Mr.

Jonathan when he was found dead over yonder by the Poplar Spring, I'd as

soon as not take my Bible oath that he'd come young agin an' was ridin'

along back to Jordan's Journey."

"Do you believe down here that my uncle killed himself?" asked the young

man, with a furtive displeasure in his voice, as if he alluded to a

disagreeable subject in response to some pressure of duty.

"'Tis as it may be, suh, I can't answer for that. To this day if you get

Solomon Hatch or Betsey Bottom, (axin' her pardon for puttin' her last),

started on the subject they'll contend till they're blue in the face

that 'twas naught done but pure murder. However, I'm too old at my time

of life to take up with any opinion that ain't pleasant to think

on, an', when all's said an' done, pure murder ain't a peaceable,

comfortable kind of thing to believe in when thar's only one Justice of

the Peace an' he bed-ridden since Christmas. When you ax me to pin my

faith on any p'int, be it for this world or the next, my first question

consarnin' it is whether that particular p'int happens to be pleasant.

'Tis that little small argyment of mine that has confounded Mr. Mullen

more than once, when he meets me on equal ground outside the pulpit.

'Mebbe 'tis an' mebbe 'tisn't,' as I remarked sociably to him about the

matter of eternal damnation, 'but you can't deny, can you, suh, bein'

outside the pulpit an' bound to speak the truth like the rest of us,

that you sleep a long sight easier in yo' bed when you say to yo'self

that mebbe 'tisn't?'"

"You see pa's old, an' he won't harbour any belief at his time of

life that don't let him rest comfortable," remarked young Adam, in an

apologetic aside. "It's that weakness of his that keeps him from bein' a

thorough goin' good Christian."

"That strange young clergyman has stirred us all up about the

doctrines," said Solomon Hatch. "He's opened Old Church agin, an' he

works terrible hard to make us feel that we'd rather be sprinkled on the

head than go under all over. A nice-mannered man he is, with a pretty

face, an' some folks hold it to be a pity that we can't change our ideas

about baptism and become Episcopals in our hearts, jest to oblige him.

The women have, mostly, bein' an accommodatin' sex in the main, with the

exception of Mrs. Mallory, the blacksmith's mother, who declars she'd

rather give up eternal damnation any day than immersion."

"I ain't goin' so fur as that," rejoined old Adam, "an' mo'over, when

it comes to the p'int, I've never found any uncommon comfort in either

conviction in time of trouble. I go to Mr. Mullen's church regular every

Sunday, seein' the Baptist one is ten miles off an' the road heavy, but

in my opinion he's a bit too zealous to turn over the notions of the

prophets an' set up his own. He's at the age when a man knows everything

on earth an' generally knows it wrong."

"You see pa had been settin' on the anxious bench for forty years,"

explained young Adam, "an' when Mr. Mullen came, he took it away from

under him, so to speak, while he was still settin' on it."

"'Twas my proper place," said old Adam resentfully, "when it comes to

crops or the weather I am firm fixed enough in my belief, but in matters

of religion I hold with the onsartain."

"Only his powerful belief in the Devil an' all his works keeps him from

bein' a heathen," observed young Adam in awe-stricken pride. "Even Mr.

Mullen can't move him, he's so terrible set."

"Well, he ain't my Redeemer, though doubtless he'd be cast down if he

was to hear as I'd said so," chuckled the elder. "The over earnest, like

the women folk, are better not handled at all or handled techily. I'm

near blind as it is, but ain't that the man yonder leadin' his horse out

of the Applegate road?"

"'Taint the rector, but the miller," responded his son. "He's bringin'

over Mrs. Bottom's sack of meal on the back of his grey mare."

"Ah, he's one of the folks that's gone over neck an' crop to the

Episcopals," said Solomon Hatch. "His folks have been Presbyterians over

at Piping Tree sence the time of Noah, but he recites the Creed now as

loud as he used to sing the doxology. I declar his voice boomed out so

in my ears last Sunday that I was obleeged to put up my hands to keep

'em from splittin'. Have you ever marked, Mr. Doolittle, havin' had the

experience of ninety years, that when a man once takes up with a heresy,

he shouts a heap louder than them that was born an' baptised in it? It

seems as if they can't desert the ancient ways without defying 'em as

well."

"'Tis so, 'tis so," admitted old Adam, wagging his head, "but Abel

Revercomb was al'ays the sort that could measure nothin' less than a

bushel. The pity with big-natured folk is that they plough up a mountain

and trip at last over a pea-vine!"

From the gloom and brightness of the Applegate road there emerged the

large figure of a young man, who led a handsome grey mare by the halter.

As he moved against the coloured screen of the leaves something of the

beauty of the desolate landscape showed in his face--the look of almost

autumnal sadness that one finds, occasionally, in the eyes of the

imaginative rustic. He wore a pair of sheepskin leggins into which the

ends of his corduroy trousers were stuffed slightly below the knees. His

head was bare, and from the open neck of his blue flannel shirt, faded

from many washings, the muscles in his throat stood out like cords in

the red-brown flesh. From his uncovered dark hair to his heavy boots, he

was powdered with the white dust of his mill, the smell of which floated

to the group under the mulberry tree as he passed up the walk to the

tavern.

"I lay he seed Molly Merryweather comin' up from the low grounds,"

remarked Solomon, when the young man had moved out of earshot.

"Thar's truth spoken for once, if only by accident," retorted old Adam.

"Yonder comes Reuben Merryweather's wagon now, laden with fodder. Is

thar anybody settin' on it, young Adam? My eyes is too po' to make out."

"Molly Merryweather, who else?" responded the younger.

The wagon approached slowly, piled high with fodder and drawn by a pair

of old oxen. In the centre of the load a girl was sitting, with a pink

sunbonnet on her shoulders, and the light wind, which drove in gusts

from the river, blowing the bunch of clustering brown curls on her neck.

She was a small vivid creature, with a sunburned colour and changeable

blue eyes that shone almost green in the sunlight.

"Terr'ble light minded as you can tell to look at her," said Solomon

Hatch, "she's soft enough, so my wife says, where sick folks an'

children an' animals are consarned, but she acts as if men war

born without common feelin's of natur an' didn't come inside the

Commandments. It's beyond me how a kind-hearted woman can be so

unmerciful to an entire sex."

"Had it been otherwise 'twould have been downright disproof of God's

providence and the bond of matrimony," responded old Adam.

"True, true, Mr. Doolittle," admitted Solomon, somewhat abashed. "Thar

ain't any in these parts as can equal you on the Scriptures, as I've

said over an' over agin. It's good luck for the Almighty that He has got

you on His side, so to speak, to help Him confound His enemies."

"Thar're two sides to that, I reckon, seein' I confound not only His

enemies, but His sarvents. Sech is the shot an' shell of my logic that

the righteous fall before it as fast as the wicked--faster even I might

say if I war speakin' particular. Have you marked how skeery Mr. Mullen

has growed about meetin' my eyes over the rail of the pulpit? Why, 'twas

only yesterday that I brought my guns to bear on the resurrection of

the body, an' blowed it to atoms in his presence. 'Now thar's Reuben

Merryweather who buried one leg at Manassas, Mr. Mullen,' I said as

pleasant an' natchel as if I warn't about to confound him, 'an' what I'd

like to have made clear an' easy to me, suh, is what use the Almighty is

goin' to make of that odd leg on the Day of Jedgment? Will he add a

new one onto Reuben,' I axed, 'when, as plain as logic will have it,

it won't be a resurrection, but a creation, or will he start that leg

a-trampin' by itself all the way from Manassas to jine the other at Old

Church?' The parson had been holdin' pretty free all the mornin' with

nobody daring to contradict him, and a man more taken aback by the power

of logic my sight never lit on. 'Spare me, Mr. Doolittle,' was all he

said, never a word mo'. 'Spare me, Mr. Doolittle.'"

"Ah, a tough customer you are," commented Solomon, "an' what answer did

you make to that, suh?"

Old Adam's pipe returned to his mouth, and he puffed slowly a minute.

"'Twas a cry for mercy, Solomon, so I spared him," he responded.

The wagon had reached the well, and without stopping, the large

white-and-red oxen moved on into the turnpike. Bending from her high

seat, Molly Merryweather smiled at the miller, who made a single stride

toward her. Then her glance passed to the stranger, and for an instant

she held his gaze with a pair of eyes that appeared to reflect his in

shape, setting and colour. In the man's face there showed perplexity,

admiration, ironic amusement; in the girl's there was a glimmer of the

smile with which she had challenged the adoring look of the miller.

The flush left the features of young Revercomb, and he turned back, with

a scowl on his forehead, while old Adam cackled softly over the stem of

his pipe.

"Wiles come as natchel to women as wickedness to men, young Adam," he

said. "The time to beware of 'em is in yo' youth befo' they've bewitched

yo'. Why, 'tis only since I've turned ninety that I've trusted myself to

think upon the sex with freedom."

"I'm bewarin'," replied his son, "but when Molly Merryweather widens her

eyes and bites her underlip, it ain't in the natur of man or beast to

stand out agin her. Why, if it had been anybody else but the rector I

could have sworn I saw him squeezin' her hand when he let down the bars

for her last Sunday."

"It's well knowed that when he goes to upbraid her for makin' eyes at

him durin' the 'Have mercy on me,' he takes a mortal long time about the

business," responded Solomon, "but, good Lord, 'tain't fur me to wish

it different, seein' it only bears out all I've argured about false

doctrines an' evil practice. From the sprinklin' of the head thar's but

a single step downward to the holdin' of hands."

"Well, I'm a weak man like the rest of you," rejoined young Adam, "an'

though I'm sound on the doctrines--in practice I sometimes backslide.

I'm thankful, however, it's the lesser sin an' don't set so heavy on the

stomach."

"Ah, it's the light women like Molly Merryweather that draws the eyes of

the young," lamented old Adam.

"A pretty bit of vanity, is she?" inquired the stranger lightly, and

fell back the next instant before the vigorous form of the miller, who

swung round upon him with the smothered retort, "That's a lie!" The

boyish face of the young countryman had paled under his sunburn and he

spoke with the suppressed passion of a man who is not easily angered and

who responds to the pressure of some absorbing emotion.

"Lord, Lord, Abel, Mr. Jonathan warn't meanin' no particular disrespect,

not mo' was I," quavered old Adam.

"You're too pipin' hot, miller," interposed Solomon. "They warn't

meanin' any harm to you nor to the gal either. With half the county

courtin' her it ain't to be expected that she'd go as sober as a grey

mare, is it?"

"Well, they're wastin' their time," retorted the miller, "for she

marries me, thank God, this coming April."

Turning away the next instant, he vaulted astride the bare back of the

mare, and started at a gallop in the direction of the turnpike.

"I'll be blessed if that little gal of Reuben Merryweather's ain't his

religion," commented young Adam.

"An' he's of the opinion that he's going to marry her this comin'

spring," cackled Solomon. "Well, I could be namin' two or three others

of the same mind, if I'd take the trouble. It's all sensible enough to

lambaste the women when they don't pick up every virtue that we throw

away, but what's to be expected of 'em, I ax, when all the men sence

Adam have been praisin' the sober kind of gal while they was runnin'

arter the silly? Thar're some among 'em, I reckon, as have reasoned out

to themselves that a man's pursuit speaks louder in the years, arter

all, than his praise. Now, thar's a fine, promisin' farmer, like the

miller gone runnin' loose, mo's the pity."

"A kind heart at bottom," said old Adam, "but he's got a deal of larnin'

to do befo' he'll rest content to bide along quietly in the same world

with human natur."

"Oh, he's like the Revercombs from the beginnin'," protested Solomon,

"slow an' peaceable an' silent until you rouse 'em, but when they're

once roused, they're roused beyond God or devil."

"Is this young Cain or Abel the head of the family?" inquired the

stranger.

"Bless you, no, Mr. Jonathan, he ain't the head--for thar's his brother

Abner still livin'--but, head or tail, he's the only part that counts,

when it comes to that. Until the boy grew up an' took hold of things,

the Revercombs warn't nothin' mo' than slack fisted, out-at-heel po'

white trash, as the niggers say, though the old man, Abel's grandfather,

al'ays lays claim to bein' connected with the real Revercombs, higher

up in the State--However that may be, befo' the war thar warn't no place

for sech as them, an' 'tis only since times have changed an' the bottom

begun to press up to the top that anybody has heerd of 'em. Abel went to

school somehow by hook or crook an' got a good bit of book larnin', they

say, an' then he came back here an' went to turnin' up every stone an'

stick on the place. He ploughed an' he sowed an' he reaped till he'd

saved up enough to buy that piece of low ground betwixt his house and

the grist-mill. Then Ebenezer Timberlake died of the dropsy an' the

first thing folks knew, Abel had moved over and turned miller. All the

grain that's raised about here now goes to his mill, an' they say he'll

be throwin' out the old and puttin' in new-fangled machinery befo' the

year is up. He's the foremost man in these parts, suh, unless you war to

come to Jordan's Journey to live like yo' uncle."

"To live like my uncle," repeated the young man, with an ironic

intonation that escaped the ears of old Adam. "But what of the miller's

little sweetheart with the short hair and the divine smile? Whose

daughter is she?"

Old Adam's thin lips flattened until a single loosened tooth midway of

his lower gum wagged impishly back and forth. His face, sunburned

and frosted like the hardened rind of some winter fruit, revealed the

prominent bones of the skull under the sunken flesh. One of his gnarled

old hands, trembling and red, clutched the clay bowl of his pipe; the

other, with the callous skin of the palm showing under the bent fingers,

rested half open on the leather patch that covered the knee of his

overalls. A picture of toilworn age, of the inevitable end of all mortal

labour, he had sat for hours in the faint sunshine, smiling with his

sunken, babyish mouth at the brood of white turkeys that crowded about

the well.

"Well, she's Reuben Merryweather's granddaughter, suh," replied Solomon

in the place of the elder. "He was overseer at Jordan's Journey, you

know, durin' the old gentleman's lifetime, after the last Jordan died

and the place was bought by yo' uncle. Ah, 'twas different, suh, when

the Jordans war livin'!"

Some furtive malice in his tone caused the stranger to turn sharply upon

him.

"The girl's mother--who was she?" he asked.

"Janet Merryweather, the prettiest gal that ever set foot on these

roads. Ah, 'twas a sad story, was hers, an' the less said about it,

the soonest forgotten. Thar was some folks, the miller among 'em, that

dropped dead out with the old minister--that was befo' Mr. Mullen's

time--for not wantin' her to be laid in the churchyard. A hard case,

doubtless, but a pious man such as I likes to feel sartain that however

much he may have fooled along with sinful women in this world, only the

most respectable of thar sex will rise around him at the Jedgment."

"And the father?" inquired the stranger, with a sound as if he drew in

his breath sharply.

"Accordin' to the Law an' the Prophets she hadn't any. That may be goin'

agin natur, suh, but 'tis stickin' close to Holy Writ an' the wisdom of

God."

To this the young man's only response was a sudden angry aversion that

showed in his face. Then lifting his horse's head from the trodden grass

by the well, he sprang into the saddle, and started, as the miller had

done, over the three roads into the turnpike. Remembering as he passed

the gate posts that he had spoken no parting word to the group under the

mulberry tree, he raised himself in his stirrups, and called back "Good

day to you. Many thanks," in his pleasant voice.