three men stopped and talked, and then walked, chatted, and returned.
The starlight was cool and still. At the Parson's gate, March, refusing
to go in, said, yes, he would be glad of the missionary's company on a
longer stroll. The two moved on and were quite out of sight when Fannie
and Barbara, with Johanna close behind them, came out on their way to
church.
"It would be funny," whispered Fannie, "if such a day as this should end
in John March's getting religion, wouldn't it?"
But Barbara could come no nearer to the subject than to say, "I don't
like revivals. I can't. I never could." She dropped her voice
significantly--"Fannie."
"What, dear?"
"What were you going to say when Johanna rang the tea-bell and your
father came in?"
"Was I going to say something? What'd you think it was?"
"I think it was something about Mr. Ravenel."
"O well, then, I reckon it wasn't anything much, was it?"
"I don't know, but--Johanna, you can go on into church." They loitered
among the dim, lamp-lit shadows of the church-yard trees. "You said you
were not like most engaged girls."
"Well, I'm not, am I?"
"No, but why did you say so?"
"Why, you know, Barb, most girls are distressed with doubts of their own
love. I'm not. It's about his that I'm afraid. What do you reckon's the
reason I've held him off for years?"
"Just because you could, Fannie."
"No, my dear little goosie, I did it because he never was so he couldn't
be held off. I knew, and know yet, that after the wedding I've got to do
all the courting. I don't doubt he loves me, but Barb, love isn't his
master. That's what keeps me scared." They went in.
The service began. In this hour for the putting away of vanities the
choir was dispensed with and the singing was led by a locally noted
precentor, a large, pert, lazy Yankee, who had failed in the raising of
small fruits. His zeal was beautiful.
"Trouble! 'Tain't never no trouble for me to do nawthin', an' even if
'twas I'd do it!" He sang each word in an argumentative staccato, and in
high passages you could see his wisdom teeth. Between stanzas he spoke
stimulating exhortations: "Louder, brethren and sisters, louder; the
fate of immortal souls may be a-hangin' on the amount of noise you
make."
As hymn followed hymn the church filled. All sorts--black or yellow
being no sort--all sorts came; the town's best and worst, the country's
proudest and forlornest; the sipper of wine, the dipper of snuff; acrid
pietist, flagrant reprobate, and many a true Christian whose
God-forgiven sins, if known to men, neither church nor world could have
pardoned; many a soul that under the disguise of flippant smiles or
superior frowns staggered in its darkness or shivered in its cold,
trembling under visions of death and judgment or yearning for one right
word of guidance or extrication; and many a heart that openly or
secretly bled for some other heart's reclaim. And so the numbers grew
and the waves of song swelled. The adagios and largos of ancient
psalmody were engulfed and the modern "hyme toons," as the mountain
people called them, were so "peert an' devilish" that the most heedless
grew attentive, and lovers of raw peanuts, and even devotees of tobacco,
emptied their mouths of these and filled them with praise.
Garnet had never preached more effectively. For the first time in
Barbara's experience he seemed to her to feel, himself, genuinely and
deeply the things he said. His text was, "Be sure your sin will find you
out." Men marvelled at the life-likeness with which he pictured the
torments of a soul torn by hidden and cherished sin. So wonderful, they
murmured, are the pure intuitions of oratorical genius! Yet Barbara was
longing for a widely different word.
Not for herself. It was not possible that she should ever tremble at any
pulpit reasoning of temperance and judgment from the lips of her father.
Three things in every soul, he cried, must either be subdued in this
life or be forever ground to powder in a fiery hereafter; and these
three, if she knew them at all, were the three most utterly unsubdued
things that he embodied--will, pride, appetite. The word she vainly
longed for was coveted for one whose tardy footfall her waiting ear
caught the moment it sounded at the door, and before the turning of a
hundred eyes told her John March had come and was sitting in the third
seat behind her.
In the course of her father's sermon there was no lack of resonant Amens
and soft groanings and moanings of ecstasy. But Suez was neither Wildcat
Ridge nor Chalybeate Springs, and the tempering chill of plastered
ceiling and social inequalities stayed the wild unrestraint of those who
would have held free rule in the log church or under the camp-meeting
bower. The academic elegance of the speaker's periods sobered the ardor
which his warmth inspired, and as he closed there rested on the
assemblage a silence and an awe as though Sinai smoked but could not
thunder.
Barbara hoped against hope. At every enumeration of will, pride, and
appetite she saw the Pastor's gaze rest pleadingly on her, and in the
stillness of her inmost heart she confessed the evil presence of that
unregenerate trinity. Yet when he rose to bid all mourners for sin come
forward while the next hymn was being sung, she only mourned that she
could not go, and tried in vain not to feel, as in every drop of her
blood she still felt, there behind her, that human presence so different
from all others on earth. "This call," she secretly cried, "this hour,
are not for me. Father in Heaven! if only they might be for him."
Before the rising precentor could give out his hymn Uncle Jimmie Rankin
had sprung to his feet and started "Rock of Ages" in one of the wildest
minors of the early pioneers. At once the strain was taken up on every
side, the notes swelled, Uncle Jimmie clapped hands in time, and at the
third line a mountain woman in the gallery, sitting with her sun-bonnet
pulled down over her sore eyes, changed a snuff-stick from her mouth to
her pocket, burst into a heart-freezing scream, and began to thrash
about in her seat. The hymn rolled on in stronger volume. The Yankee
precentor caught the tune and tried to lead, but Uncle Jimmie's voice
soared over him with the rapture of a lark and the shriek of an eagle,
two or three more pair of hands clapped time, the other Suez pastor took
a trochee, and the four preachers filed down from the high pulpit,
singing as they came. Garnet began to pace to and fro in front of it and
to exhort in the midst of the singing.
"Who is on the Lord's side?" he loudly demanded.
"Should my tears forever flow," sang the standing throng.
But no one advanced.
"Should my zeal no respite know," they sang on, and Garnet's "Whosoever
will, let him come," and other calls swept across their chant like the
crash of falling trees across the roar of a torrent.
"Oh, my brother, two men shall be in the field; the one shall be taken
and the other left; which one will you be? Come, my weary sister; come,
my sin-laden brother. O, come unto the marriage! Now is the accepted
time! The clock of God's patience has run down and is standing at Now!
Sing the last verse again, Uncle Jimmie! This night thy soul may be
required of thee! Two women shall be grinding together; the one shall be
taken, the other left. O, my sweet sister, come! be the taken one!--flee
as a bird! The angel is troubling the pool; who will first come to the
waters? O, my unknown, yet beloved brother, whoever you are, don't you
know that whosoever comes first to-night will lead a hundred others and
will win a crown with that many stars? Come, brethren, sisters, we're
losing priceless moments!"
Why does no one move? Because just in the middle of the house, three
seats behind that fair girl whose face has sunk into her hands, sits,
with every eye on them, the wan missionary from China, pleading with
John March.
Parson Tombs saw the chance for a better turn of affairs. "Brethren," he
cried, kneeling as he spoke, "let us pray! And as our prayers ascend if
any sinner feels the dew o' grace fall into his soul, let him come
forward and kneel with the Lord's ministers. Brother Samuel Messenger,
lead us in prayer!"
The missionary prayed. But the footfall for which all waited did not
sound; the young man who knelt beside the supplicant, with temples
clutched in his hands, moved not. While the missionary's amen was yet
unspoken, Parson Tombs, still kneeling, began to ask aloud,
"Will Brother Garnet----"
But Garnet was wiser. "Father Tombs," he cried "the Lord be with you,
lead us in prayer yourself!"
"Amen!" cried the other pastor. He was echoed by a dozen of his flock,
and the old man lifted his voice in tremulous invocation. The prayer was
long. But before there were signs of it ending, the step for which so
many an ear was strained had been heard. Men were groaning, "God be
praised!" and "Hallelujah!" Fannie's eyes were wet, tears were welling
through Barbara's fingers, mourners were coming up both aisles, and John
March was kneeling in the anxious seat.
XLIII.
ST. VALENTINE'S DAY
One morning some six weeks after New Year's eve Garnet's carriage wheels
dripped water and mud as his good horses dragged them slowly into the
borders of Suez. The soft, moist winds of February were ruffling the
turbid waters of Turkey Creek and the swollen flood of the Swanee. A
hint of new green brightened every road-side, willows were full of
yellow light, and a pink and purple flush answered from woods to
fence-row, from fence-row to woods, across and across the three
counties.
"This pike's hardly a pike at all since the railroad's started," said
the Major, more to himself than to Barbara and Johanna; for these were
the two rear occupants of the carriage.
"Barb, I got a letter from Fair last night. You did too, didn't you?"
"Yes, sir."
"He'll be here next week. He says he can't stop with us this time."
Barbara was silent, and felt the shy, care-taking glance of her maid.
Garnet spoke again, in the guarded tone she knew so well.
"I reckon you understand he's only coming to see if he'll take stock in
this land company we're getting up, don't you?"
"Yes, sir."
"Doe he know you're going to spend these two weeks at Halliday's before
you go North?"
"I think he does."
The questioner turned enough to make a show of frowning solicitude.
"What's the matter with you this morning? sad at the thought of leaving
home?"
"No, sir"--the speaker smiled meditatively--"we only don't hit on a
subject of interest to both."
The father faced to front again and urged the horses. He even raised the
whip, but let it droop. Then he turned sharply and drew his daughter's
glance. "Is Fair going to stay with John March?"
They sat gaze to gaze while their common blood surged up to his brows
and more gradually suffused her face. Without the stir of an eyelash she
let her lips part enough to murmur, "Yes."
Before her word was finished Garnet's retort was bursting from him,
"Thanks to you, you intermeddling----" He was cut short by the lurch of
the carriage into a hole. It flounced him into the seat from which he
had half started and faced him to the horses. With a smothered
imprecation he rose and laid on the whip. They plunged, the carriage
sprang from the hole and ploughed the mire, and Garnet sat down and
drove into the town's main avenue, bespattered with mud from head to
waist.
Near the gate of the Academy grounds stood Parson Tombs talking to a
youth in Rosemont uniform. The student passed on, and the pastor, with
an elated face, waved a hand to Garnet. Garnet stopped and the Parson
came close.
"Brother Tombs, howdy?"
"Why, howdy-do, Brother Garnet?--Miss Barb!--Johanna." He pointed
covertly at the departing youth and murmured to Garnet, "He'll make ow
fo'teenth convert since New Year's. And still there is room!--Well,
brother, I've been a-hearin' about John March's an' yo'-all's lan' boom,
but"--the good man giggled--"I never see a case o' measles break out
finer than the lan' business is broke out on you!--And you don't seem to
mind it no mo'n--Look here! air you a miracle o' grace, aw what air
you?"
"Why, nothing, Brother Tombs, nothing! Nothing but an old soldier who's
learned that serenity's always best."
The Parson turned to Barbara and cast a doting smile sidewise upon the
old soldier. But Garnet set his face against flattery and changed the
subject.
"Brother Tombs, speaking of John March, you know now risky it is for
anybody--unless it's you--to say anything to him. Oh, I dare say he's
changed, but when he hasn't been converted two months, nor a member of
the church three weeks, we mustn't expect him to have the virtues of an
old Christian."
"He's changed mo'n I'm at libbety to tell you, Brother Garnet. He's
renounced dancing."
"Yes?--Indeed! He's quit dancing. But still he carries two revolvers."
"Why, Brother John Wesley, I--that's so. I've spoke to John about that,
but--the fact is----"
Garnet smiled. "His life's in constant danger--that's my very point. The
bad weather's protected him thus far, but if it should last five years
without a break, still you know that as soon as it fairs off----"
"_Uv_ co'se! Enos's kinsfolks 'll be layin' faw him behind some bush aw
sett'n' fire to his house; an' so what shall he do, brother, if we say
he----"
"Oh, let him shoot a Yahoo or two if he must, but I think you ought to
tell him he's committing a criminal folly in asking that young Yankee,
Mr. Fair, to stop with him at Widewood when he comes here next week!"
"Why, Brother Garnet! Why, supposin' that young stranger should get
shot!"
"Yes, or if he should no more than see March shot or shot at! What an
impression he'd carry back North with him! It's an outrage on our whole
people, sir, and God knows!--I speak reverently, my dear brother--we've
suffered enough of that sort of slander! I'd tell him, myself, but--this
must be between us, of course----"
"Why, of co'se, Brother Garnet," murmured the Pastor and bent one ear.
"It's a pure piece of selfish business rivalry on John's part toward me.
He's asked Fair to his house simply to keep him away from Rosemont."
"Why, Brother Garnet! Rosemont's right where he'd ought to go to!"
"In John's own interest!" said Garnet.
"In John's--you're right, my brother! I'm suprised he don't see it so!"
"O--I'm not! He's a terribly overrated chap, Brother Tombs. Fact is--I
say it in the sincerest friendship for him--John's got no real talents
and not much good sense--though one or two of his most meddlesome
friends have still less." The Major began to gather up the reins.
"Well, I'll try to see him, Brother Garnet. I met him yeste'day--Look
here! I reckon that young man's not goin' to stop with him after all. He
told me yeste'day he was going to put a friend into Swanee Hotel because
Sisteh March felt too feeble, aw fearful, aw somethin', an' he felt
bound to stand his expenses."
"And so he"--the Major paused pleasantly. "How much did you lend him?"
"Aw! Brother Garnet, I didn't mean you to know that! He had to put
shuttehs on his sitt'n'-room windows, too, you know, to quiet Sisteh
March's ve'y natu'al fears. I only promised to lend him a small amount
if he should need it."
"O, he'll need it," said the Major, and included Barbara in his broad
smile. "Still, I hope you'll let him have it. If he doesn't return it to
you I will; I loved his father. John should have come to me, Brother
Tombs, as he's always done. I say this to you privately, you know. I'll
consider the loan practically made to me, for we simply can't let Fair
go to Widewood, even if John puts shutters on all his windows."
Again the speaker lifted his reins and the Parson drew back with a bow
to Barbara, when Johanna spoke and the whole group stared after two
townward-bound horsemen.
"Those are mountain people, right now," said the Parson.
"Yes," replied Garnet, "but they're no kin to Enos." He moved on to
Halliday's gate.
It was the fourteenth of the month. The Major stayed in town for the
evening mail and drove home after dark, alone, but complacent, almost
jovial. He had got three valentines.
XLIV.
ST. VALENTINE'S: EVENING
At Widewood that same hour there was deep silence. Since the first of
the year the only hands left on the place were a decrepit old negro and
wife, whom even he pronounced "wuthless," quartered beyond the
stable-yard's farther fence. For some days this "lady" had been
Widewood's only cook, owing to the fact that Mrs. March's servant,
having a few nights before seen a man prowling about the place, had left
in such a panic as almost to forget her wages, and quite omitting to
leave behind her several articles of the Widewood washing.
Within the house John March sat reading newspapers. His healthy legs
were crossed toward the flickering hearth, and his strong shoulders
touched the centre-table lamp. The new batten shutters excluded the
beautiful outer night. His mother, to whom the mail had brought nothing,
was sitting in deep shadow, her limp form and her regular supply of
disapproving questions alike exhausted. Her slender elbow slipped now
and then from the arm of her rocking-chair, and unconscious gleams of
incredulity and shades of grief still alternated across her face with
every wrinkling effort of her brows to hold up her eyelids.
John was not so absorbed as he seemed. He felt both the silence and the
closed shutters drearily, and was not especially cheered by the
following irrelevant query in the paragraph before him:
"Who--having restored the sight of his jailer's blind daughter and
converted her father from idolatry--was on this day beheaded?"
Yet here was a chance to be pleasant at the expense of a man quite too
dead to mind.
"Mother," he began, so abruptly that Mrs. March started with a violent
shudder, "this is February fourteenth. Did any ancient person of your
acquaintance lose his head to-day?" He turned a facetious glance that
changed in an instant to surprise. His mother had straightened up with
bitter indignation, but she softened to an agony of reproach as she
cried:
"John!"
"Why, mother, what?"
"Ah! John! John!" She gazed at him tearfully. "Is this what you've
joined the church for? To cloak such----"
"My dear mother! I was simply trying to joke away the dismals! Why,"--he
smiled persuasively--"if you only knew what a hard job it is." But the
ludicrousness of her misconstruction took him off his guard, and in
spite of the grimmest endeavor to prevent it, his smile increased and he
stopped to keep from laughing.
Mrs. March rose, eloquent with unspoken resentment, and started from the
room. At the door she cast back the blush of a martyr's forgiveness, and
the next instant was in her son's big right arm. His words were broken
with laughter.
"My dear, pretty little mother!" She struggled alarmedly, but he held
her fast. "Why, I know the day is nothing to you, dear, less than
nothing. I know perfectly well that I am your own and only valentine.
Ain't I? Because you're mine now, you know, since I've turned over this
new leaf."
The mother averted her face. "O my son, I'm so unused to loving words,
they only frighten me."
But John spoke on with deepening emotion. "Yes, mother, I'm going to be
your valentine, and yours only, as I've never been or thought of being
in all my life before. I'm going to try my very best! You'll help me,
won't you, little valentine mother?"
She lifted a glance of mournful derision. "Valentine me no valentines.
You but increase my heart-loneliness. Ah! my self-deluded boy, your
fickle pledges only mean, to my sad experience, that you have made your
own will everything, and my wish nothing. Valentine me no valentines,
let me go."
The young man turned abruptly and strode back to his newspapers. But he
was too full of bitterness to read. He heard his mother's soft progress
upstairs, and her slow step in the unlighted room overhead. It ceased.
She must have sat down in the dark. A few moments passed. Then it
sounded again, but so strange and hurried that he started up, and as he
did so the cry came, frantic with alarm, from the upper hall, and then
from the head of the stairs:
"John! John!"
He was already bounding up them. Mrs. March stood at the top, pale and
trembling. "A man!" she cried, "with a gun! I saw him down in the
moonlight under my window! I saw him! he's got a gun!"
She was deaf and blind to her son's beseechings to be quiet. He caught
her hands in his; they were icy. He led her by gentle force down-stairs
and back to her sitting-room seat.
"Why, that's all right, mother; that's what you made me put the shutters
on down here for. If you'd just come and told me quietly, why, I might
a' got him from your window. Did you see him?"
"I don't know," she moaned. "He had a gun. I saw one end of it."
"Are you sure it was a gun? Which end did you see, the butt or the
muzzle?"
Mrs. March only gasped. She was too refined a woman to mention either
end of a gun by name. "I saw--the--front end."
"He didn't aim it at you, or at anything, did he?"
"No--yes--he aimed it--sidewise."
"Sideways! Now, mother, there I draw the line! No man shall come around
here aiming his gun sideways; endangering the throngs of casual
bystanders!"
"Ah! John, is this the time to make your captive and beleaguered mother
the victim of ribald jests?"
"My dear mother, no! it's a time to go to bed. If that fellow's still
nosing 'round here with his gun aimed sideways he's protection enough!
But seriously, mother, whatever you mean by being embargoed and
blockaded----"
"I did not say embargoed and blockaded!"
"Why, my dear mother, those were your very words!"
"They were not! They were not my words! And yet, alas! how truly----"
She turned and wept.
"O Lord! mother----"
"My son, you've broken the second commandment!"
"It was already broke! O for heaven's sake, mother, don't cave in in
this hysterical way!"
The weeper whisked round with a face of wild beseeching. "O, my son,
call me anything but that! Call me weak and credulous, too easily led
and misled! Call me too poetical and confiding! I know I'm more lonely
than I dare tell my own son! But I'm not--Oho! I'm not hysterical!" she
sobbed.
So it continued for an hour. Then the lamp gave out and they went to
bed.
The next morning John drove his mother to Suez for a visit of several
days among her relatives, and rode on into Blackland to see if he could
find "a girl" for Widewood. He spent three days and two nights at these
tasks, stopping while in Blackland with--whom would you suppose?
Proudfit, for all the world! He took an emphatic liking to the not too
brainy colonel, and a new disrelish to his almost too sparkling wife.
As, at sunset of the third day, he again drew near Suez and checked his
muddy horse's gallop at Swanee River Bridge, his heart leaped into his
throat. He hurriedly raised his hat, but not to the transcendent
beauties of the charming scene, unless these were Fannie Halliday and
Barbara Garnet.
XLV.
A LITTLE VOYAGE OF DISCOVERIES
For two girls out on a quiet stroll, their arms about each other and
their words murmurous, not any border of Suez was quite so alluring as
the woods and waters seen from the parapet of this fine old stone
bridge.
The main road from Blackland crossed here. As it reached the Suez side
it made a strong angle under the town's leafy bluffs and their two or
three clambering by-streets, and ran down the rocky margin of the stream
to the new railway station and the old steamboat landing half a mile
below. The bridge was entirely of rugged gray limestone, and spanned the
river's channel and willow-covered sand-bars in seven high, rude arches.
One Christmas dawn during the war a retreating enemy, making ready to
blow up the structure, were a moment too slow, and except for the scars
of a few timely shells dropped into their rear guard, it had come
through those years unscathed. For, just below it, and preferable to it
most of the year, was a broad gravelly ford. Beyond the bridge, on the
Blackland side, the road curved out of view between woods on the right
and meadows on the left. A short way up the river the waters came
dimpling, green and blue in August, but yellow and swirling now, around
the long, bare foot of a wooded island, that lay forever asleep in
midstream, overrun and built upon by the winged Liliputians of the
shores and fields.