"No, let's go and see what it all is."
The girls hung close to the arms of the young men and they went down to
the tent and looked in.
It was filled with a motley throng of people, most of them seated on
circling benches. A fringe of careless or scoffing onlookers stood back
against the tent wall. Many of them were strangers to Ben.
Occasionally a Norwegian farm-hand, or a bevy of young people from some
near district, lifted the flap and entered with curious or laughing or
insolent faces.
The tent was lighted dimly by kerosene lamps, hung in brackets against
the poles, and by stable lanterns set here and there upon the benches.
Ben and Milton ushered the girls in and seated them a little way back.
The girls smiled, but only faintly. The undertone of women's cries moved
them in spite of their scorn of it all.
"What cursed foolishness!" said Ben to Milton.
Milton smiled, but did not reply. He only nodded toward the exhorter, a
man with a puffy jumble of features and the form of a gladiator, who was
uttering wild and explosive phrases.
"Oh, my friends! I bless the Lord for the SHALL in the word. You SHALL
get light. You SHALL be saved. Oh, the SHALL in the word! You SHALL be
redeemed!"
As he grew more excited, his hoarse voice rose in furious screams, as if
he were defying hell's legions. Foam lay on his lips and flew from his
mouth. At every repetition of the word "shall" he struck the desk a
resounding blow with his great palm.
"He's a hard hitter," said Milton.
At length he leaped, apparently in uncontrollable excitement, upon the
mourners' bench, and ran up and down close to the listening, moaning
audience. He walked with a furious rhythmic, stamping action, like a
Sioux in the war dance. Wild cries burst from his audience, antiphonal
with his own.
"He 'SHALL' send light!"
"_Send Thy arrows, O Lord._"
"O God, come!"
"He 'SHALL' keep His word!"
One old negro woman, fat, powerful, and gloomy, suddenly arose and
uttered a scream that had the dignity and savagery of a mountain lion's
cry. It rang far out into the night.
The exhorter continued his mad, furious, thumping, barbaric walk.
Behind him a row of other exhorters sat, a relay ready to leap to his
aid. They urged on the tumult with wild cries.
"A-men, brother."
"YES, brother, YES!" clapping their hands in rhythm.
The exhorter redoubled his fury. He was like a jaded actor rising at
applause, carried out of his self-command.
Out of the obscure tumult of faces and tossing hands there came at last
certain recognizable features. The people were mainly farming folks of
the more ignorant sort, rude in dress and bearing, hard and bent with
toil. They were recognizably of a class subject to these low forms of
religious excitement which were once well-nigh universal.
The outer fringe continued to smile scornfully and to jest, yet they
were awed, in a way, by this suddenly revealed deep of barbaric emotion.
The girls were appalled by the increasing clangor. Milton was amused,
but Ben grew bitter. Something strong came out in him, too. His lip
curled in disgust.
Suddenly, out of the level space of bowed shoulders, tossing hands, and
frenzied, upturned faces, a young girl leaped erect. She was strong and
handsome, powerful in the waist and shoulders. Her hair was braided like
a child's, and fell down her back in a single strand. Her head was
girlish, but her face looked old and drawn and tortured.
She moaned pitifully; she clapped her hands with wild gestures, ending
in a quivering motion. The action grew to lightning-like quickness. Her
head seemed to set in its socket. Her whole body stiffened. Gasping
moans came from her clenched teeth as she fell to the ground and rolled
under the seats, wallowing in the muddy straw and beating her feet upon
the ground like a dying partridge.
The people crowded about her, but the preacher, roared above the
tumult:--
"Si' down! Never mind that party. She's all right; she's in the hands of
the Lord!"
The people settled into their seats, and the wild tumult went on again.
Ben rose to go over where the girl was and the others followed.
A young man seated by the struggling sinner held her hand and fanned her
with his hat, while some girl friends, scared and sobbing, kept the
tossing limbs covered. She rolled from side to side restlessly,
thrusting forth her tongue as if her throat were dry. She looked like a
dying animal.
Maud clung to Milton.
"Oh, can't something be done?"
"Her soul is burdened for _you_!" cried a wild old woman to the
impassive youth who clung to the frenzied girl's hand.
A moment later, as the demoniacal chorus of yells, songs, incantations,
shrieks, groans, and prayers swelled high, a farmer's wife on the left
uttered a hoarse cry and stiffened and fell backward upon the ground.
She rolled her head from side to side. Her eyes turned in; her lips wore
a maniac's laugh, and her troubled brow made her look like the death
mask of a tortured murderer, the hell horror frozen on it.
She sank at last into a hideous calm, with her strained and stiffened
hands pointing weirdly up. She was like marble. She did not move a
hair's breadth during the next two hours.