The chronicle of Jacob Cochrane's career in the little villages near
the Saco River has no such interest for the general reader as it had for
Waitstill Baxter. She hung upon every word that Ivory had written and
realized more clearly than ever before the shadow that had followed him
since early boyhood; the same shadow that had fallen across his mother's
mind and left, continual twilight there.
No one really knew, it seemed, why or from whence Jacob Cochrane had
come to Edgewood. He simply appeared at the old tavern, a stranger, with
satchel in hand, to seek entertainment. Uncle Bart had often described
this scene to Waitstill, for he was one of those sitting about the great
open fire at the time. The man easily slipped into the group and
soon took the lead in conversation, delighting all with his agreeable
personality, his nimble tongue and graceful speech. At supper-time the
hostess and the rest of the family took their places at the long table,
as was the custom, and he astonished them by his knowledge not only of
town history, but of village matters they had supposed unknown to any
one.
When the stranger had finished his supper and returned to the bar-room,
he had to pass through a long entry, and the landlady, whispering to her
daughter, said:--
“Betsy, you go up to the chamber closet and get the silver and bring it
down. This man is going to sleep there and I am afraid of him. He must
be a fortune-teller, and the Lord only knows what else!”
In going to the chamber the daughter had to pass through the bar-room.
As she was moving quietly through, hoping to escape the notice of the
newcomer, he turned in his chair, and looking her full in the face,
suddenly said:--
“Madam, you needn't touch your silver. I don't want it. I am a
gentleman.”
Whereupon the bewildered Betsy scuttled back to her mother and told her
the strange guest was indeed a fortune-teller.
Of Cochrane's initial appearance as a preacher Ivory had told Waitstill
in their talk in the churchyard early in the summer. It was at a child's
funeral that the new prophet created his first sensation and there,
too, that Aaron and Lois Boynton first came under his spell. The whole
countryside had been just then wrought up to a state of religious
excitement by revival meetings and Cochrane gained the benefit of this
definite preparation for his work. He claimed that all his sayings
were from divine inspiration and that those who embraced his doctrine
received direct communication from the Almighty. He disdained formal
creeds and all manner of church organizations, declaring sectarian names
to be marks of the beast and all church members to be in Babylon. He
introduced re-baptism as a symbolic cleansing from sectarian stains, and
after some months advanced a proposition that his flock hold all things
in common. He put a sudden end to the solemn “deaconing-out” and droning
of psalm tunes and grafted on to his form of worship lively singing
and marching accompanied by clapping of hands and whirling in circles;
during the progress of which the most hysterical converts, or the most
fully “Cochranized,” would swoon upon the floor; or, in obeying their
leader's instructions to “become as little children,” would sometimes go
through the most extraordinary and unmeaning antics.
It was not until he had converted hundreds to the new faith that he
added more startling revelations to his gospel. He was in turn bold,
mystical, eloquent, audacious, persuasive, autocratic; and even when his
self-styled communications from the “Almighty” controverted all that his
hearers had formerly held to be right, he still magnetized or hypnotized
them into an unwilling assent to his beliefs. There was finally a
proclamation to the effect that marriage vows were to be annulled when
advisable and that complete spiritual liberty was to follow; a liberty
in which a new affinity might be sought, and a spiritual union begun
upon earth, a union as nearly approximate to God's standards as faulty
human beings could manage to attain.
Some of the faithful fell away at this time, being unable to accept the
full doctrine, but retained their faith in Cochrane's original power to
convert sinners and save them from the wrath of God. Storm-clouds began
to gather in the sky however, as the delusion spread, month by month
and local ministers everywhere sought to minimize the influence of the
dangerous orator, who rose superior to every attack and carried
himself like some magnificent martyr-at-will among the crowds that now
criticized him here or there in private and in public.
“What a picture of splendid audacity he must have been,” wrote Ivory,
“when he entered the orthodox meeting-house at a huge gathering where
he knew that the speakers were to denounce his teachings. Old Parson
Buzzell gave out his text from the high pulpit: Mark XIII, 37, 'AND WHAT
I SAY UNTO YOU I SAY UNTO ALL, WATCH!' Just here Cochrane stepped in at
the open door of the church and heard the warning, meant, he knew, for
himself, and seizing the moment of silence following the reading of
the text, he cried in his splendid sonorous voice, without so much as
stirring from his place within the door-frame: “'Behold I stand at the
door and knock. If any man hear my voice I will come in to him and will
sup with him,--I come to preach the everlasting gospel to every one that
heareth, and all that I want here is my bigness on the floor.'”
“I cannot find,” continued Ivory on another page, “that my father or
mother ever engaged in any of the foolish and childish practices which
disgraced the meetings of some of Cochrane's most fanatical followers
and converts. By my mother's conversations (some of which I have
repeated to you, but which may be full of errors, because of her
confusion of mind), I believe she must have had a difference of opinion
with my father on some of these views, but I have no means of knowing
this to a certainty; nor do I know that the question of choosing
spiritual consorts' ever came between or divided them. This part of the
delusion always fills me with such unspeakable disgust that I have never
liked to seek additional light from any of the older men and women who
might revel in giving it. That my mother did not sympathize with my
father's going out to preach Cochrane's gospel through the country, this
I know, and she was so truly religious, so burning with zeal, that had
she fully believed in my father's mission she would have spurred him on,
instead of endeavoring to detain him.”
“You know the retribution that overtook Cochrane at last,” wrote Ivory
again, when he had shown the man's early victories and his enormous
influence. “There began to be indignant protests against his doctrines
by lawyers and doctors, as well as by ministers; not from all sides
however; for remember, in extenuation of my father's and my mother's
espousal of this strange belief, that many of the strongest and wisest
men, as well as the purest and finest women in York county came under
this man's spell for a time and believed in him implicitly, some of them
even unto the end.
“Finally there was Cochrane's arrest and examination, the order for him
to appear at the Supreme Court, his failure to do so, his recapture and
trial, and his sentence of four years imprisonment on several counts, in
all of which he was proved guilty. Cochrane had all along said that the
Anointed of the Lord would never be allowed to remain in jail, but
he was mistaken, for he stayed in the State's Prison at Charlestown,
Massachusetts, for the full duration of his sentence. Here (I am again
trying to plead the cause of my father and mother), here he received
much sympathy and some few visitors, one of whom walked all the way from
Edgewood to Boston, a hundred and fifteen miles, with a petition for
pardon, a petition which was delivered, and refused, at the Boston State
House. Cochrane issued from prison a broken and humiliated man, but
if report says true, is still living, far out of sight and knowledge,
somewhere in New Hampshire. He once sent my father an epitaph of his own
selection, asking him to have it carved upon his gravestone should he
die suddenly when away from his friends. My mother often repeats it, not
realizing how far from the point it sounds to us who never knew him in
his glory, but only in his downfall.
“'He spread his arms full wide abroad
His works are ever before his God,
His name on earth shall long remain,
Through envious sinners fret in vain.'”
“We are certain,” concluded Ivory, “that my father preached with
Cochrane in Limington, Limerick, and Parsonsfield; he also wrote from
Enfield and Effingham in New Hampshire; after that, all is silence.
Various reports place him in Boston, in New York, even as far west as
Ohio, whether as Cochranite evangelist or what not, alas! we can never
know. I despair of ever tracing his steps. I only hope that he died
before he wandered too widely, either from his belief in God or his
fidelity to my mother's long-suffering love.”
Waitstill read the letter twice through and replaced it in her dress
to read again at night. It seemed the only tangible evidence of Ivory's
love that she had ever received and she warmed her heart with what she
felt that he had put between the lines.
“Would that I were free to tell you how I value your friendship!” “My
mother's heart feeds on the sight of you!” “I want you to know something
of the circumstances that have made me a prisoner in life, instead of a
free man.” “Yours is the most undaunted heart in all the world!” These
sentences Waitstill rehearsed again and again and they rang in her ears
like music, converting all the tasks of her long day into a deep and
silent joy.