Tiverton Hollow had occasionally an evening meeting; this came about
naturally whenever religious zeal burned high, or when the congregation
felt, with some uneasiness, that it had remained too long aloof from
spiritual things. To-night, the schoolhouse had been designated for an
assembling place, and the neighborhood trooped thither, animated by an
excited importance, and doing justice to the greatness of the occasion
by "dressing up." Farmers had laid aside their ordinary mood, with
overalls and jumpers, and donned an uncomfortable solemnity, an
enforced attitude of theological reflection, with their stocks. Wives
had urged their patient fingers into cotton gloves, and in cashmere
shawls, and bonnets retrimmed with reference to this year's style,
pressed into the uncomfortable chairs, and folded their hands upon the
desks before them in a sweet seriousness not unmingled with the desire
of thriftily completing a duty no less exigent than pickle-making, or
the work of spring and fall. Last came the boys, clattering with
awkward haste over the dusty floor which had known the touch of their
bare feet on other days. They looked about the room with some awe and a
puzzled acceptance of its being the same, yet not the same. It was
their own. There were the maps of North and South America; the yellowed
evergreens, relic of "Last Day," still festooned the windows, and an
intricate "sum," there explained to the uncomprehending admiration of
the village fathers, still adorned the blackboard. Yet the room had
strangely transformed itself into an alien temple, invaded by theology
and the breath of an unknown world. But though sobered, they were not
cast down; for the occasion was enlivened, in their case, by a
heaven-defying profligacy of intent. Every one of them knew that Sammy
Forbes had in his pocket a pack of cards, which he meant to drop, by
wicked but careless design, just when Deacon Pitts led in prayer, and
that Tom Drake was master of a concealed pea-shooter, which he had
sworn, with all the asseverations held sacred by boys, to use at some
dramatic moment. All the band were aware that neither of these daring
deeds would be done. The prospective actors themselves knew it; but it
was a darling joy to contemplate the remote possibility thereof.
Deacon Pitts opened, the meeting, reminding his neighbors how precious
a privilege it is for two or three to be gathered together. His
companion had not been able to come. (The entire neighborhood knew that
Mrs. Pitts had been laid low by an attack of erysipelas, and that she
was, at the moment, in a dark bedroom at home, helpless under
elderblow.)
"She lays there on a bed of pain," said the deacon. "But she says to
me, 'You go. Better the house o' mournin' than the house o' feastin','
she says. Oh, my friends! what can be more blessed than the counsel of
an aged and feeble companion?"
The deacon sat down, and Tom Drake, his finger on the pea-shooter,
assured himself, in acute mental triumph, that he had almost done it
that time.
Then followed certain incidents eminently pleasing to the boys. To
their unbounded relief, Sarah Frances Giles rose to speak, weeping as
she began. She always wept at prayer meeting, though at the very moment
of asserting her joy that she cherished a hope, and her gratitude that
she was so nearly at an end of this earthly pilgrimage and ready to
take her stand on the sea of glass mingled with fire. The boys reveled
in her testimony. They were in a state of bitter uneasiness before she
rose, and gnawed with a consuming impatience until she began to cry.
Then they wondered if she could possibly leave out the sea of glass;
and when it duly came, they gave a sigh of satiated bliss and sank into
acquiescence in whatever might happen. This was a rich occasion to
their souls, for Silas Marden, who was seldom moved by the spirit, fell
upon his knees to pray; but at the same unlucky instant, his
sister-in-law, for whom he cherished an unbounded scorn, rose (being
"nigh-eyed" and ignorant of his priority) and began to speak. For a
moment, the two held on together, "neck and neck," as the happy boys
afterward remembered, and then Silas got up, dusted his knees, and sat
down, not to rise again at any spiritual call. "An' a madder man you
never see," cried all the Hollow next day, in shocked but gleeful
memory.
Taking it all in all, the meeting had thus far mirrored others of its
class. If the droning experiences were devoid of all human passion, it
was chiefly because they had to be expressed in the phrases of strict
theological usage. There was an unspoken agreement that feelings of
this sort should be described in a certain way. They were not the
affairs of the hearth and market; they were matters pertaining to that
awful entity called the soul, and must be dressed in the fine linen
which she had herself elected to wear.
Suddenly, in a wearisome pause, when minds had begun to stray toward
the hayfield and tomorrow's churning, the door was pushed open, and the
Widow Prime walked in. She was quite unused to seeking her kind, and
the little assembly at once awoke, under the stimulus of surprise. They
knew quite well where she had been walking: to Sudleigh Jail, to visit
her only son, lying there for the third time, not, as usual, for
drunkenness, but for house-breaking. She was a wiry woman, a mass of
muscles animated by an eager energy. Her very hands seemed knotted with
clenching themselves in nervous spasms. Her eyes were black, seeking,
and passionate, and her face had been scored by fine wrinkles, the
marks of anxiety and grief. Her chocolate calico was very clean, and
her palm-leaf shawl and black bonnet were decent in their poverty. The
vague excitement created by her coming continued in a rustling like
that of leaves. The troubles of Hannah Prime's life had been very
bitter--so bitter that she had, as Deacon Pitts once said, after
undertaking her conversion, turned from "me and the house of God." A
quickening thought sprang up now in the little assembly that she was
"under conviction," and that it had become the present duty of every
professor to lead her to the throne of grace. This was an exigency for
which none were prepared. At so strenuous a challenge, the old
conventional ways of speech fell down and collapsed before them, like
creatures filled with air. Who should minister to one set outside their
own comfortable lives by bitter sorrow and wounded pride? What could
they offer a woman who had, in one way or another, sworn to curse God
and die? It was Deacon Pitts who spoke, but in a tone hushed to the key
of the unexpected.
"Has any one an experience to offer? Will any brother or sister lead in
prayer?"
The silence was growing into a thing to be recognized and conquered,
when, to the wonder of her neighbors, Hannah Prime herself rose, She
looked slowly about the room, gazing into every face as if to challenge
an honest understanding. Then she began speaking in a low voice
thrilled by an emotion not yet explained. Unused to expressing herself
in public, she seemed to be feeling her way. The silence, pride,
endurance, which had been her armor for many years, were no longer
apparent; she had thrown down all her defenses with a grave composure,
as if life suddenly summoned her to higher issues.
"I dunno's I've got an experience to offer," she said. "I dunno's it's
religion. I dunno what 'tis. Mebbe you'd say it don't belong to a
meetin'. But when I come by an' see you all settin' here, it come over
me I'd like to tell somebody. Two weeks ago I was most crazy"--She
paused of necessity, for something broke in her voice.
"That's the afternoon Jim was took," whispered a woman to her neighbor.
Hannah Prime went on.
"I jest as soon tell it now. I can tell ye all together what I couldn't
say to one on ye alone; an' if anybody speaks to me about it
afterwards, they'll wish they hadn't. I was all by myself in the house.
I set down in my clock-room, about three in the arternoon, an' there I
set. I didn't git no supper. I couldn't. I set there an' heard the
clock tick. Byme-by it struck seven, an' that waked me up. I thought
I'd gone crazy. The figgers on the wall-paper provoked me most to
death; an' that red-an'-white tidy I made, the winter I was laid up,
seemed to be talkin' out loud. I got up an' run outdoor jest as fast as
I could go. I run out behind the house an' down the cart-path to that
pile o' rocks that overlooks the lake; an' there I got out o' breath
an' dropped down on a big rock. An' there I set, jest as still as I'd
been settin' when I was in the house."
Here a little girl stirred in her seat, and her mother leaned forward
and shook her, with alarming energy. "I never was so hard with Mary L.
afore," she explained the next day, "but I was as nervous as a witch. I
thought, if I heard a pin drop, I should scream."
"I dunno how long I set there," went on Hannah Prime, "but byme-by it
begun to come over me how still the lake was. 'Twas like glass; an' way
over where it runs in 'tween them islands, it burnt like fire. Then I
looked up a little further, to see what kind of a sky there was. 'T was
light green, with clouds in it, all fire, an' it begun to seem to me as
if it was a kind o' land an' water up there--like our'n, on'y not
solid. I set there an' looked at it; an' I picked out islands, an'
ma'sh-land, an' p'ints running out into the yeller-green sea. An'
everything grew stiller an' stiller. The loons struck up, down on the
lake, with that kind of a lonesome whinner; but that on'y made the rest
of it seem quieter. An' it begun to grow dark all 'round me. I dunno 's
I ever noticed before jest how the dark comes. It sifted down like
snow, on'y you couldn't see it. Well, I set there, an' I tried to keep
stiller an' stiller, like everything else. Seemed as if I must. An'
pretty soon I knew suthin' was walkin' towards me over the lot. I kep'
my eyes on the sky; for I knew 't would break suthin' if I turned my
head, an' I felt as if I couldn't bear to. An' It come walkin',
walkin', without takin' any steps or makin' any noise, till It come
right up 'side o' me an' stood still. I didn't turn round. I knew I
mustn't. I dunno whether It touched me; I dunno whether It said
anything--but I know It made me a new creatur'. I knew then I shouldn't
be afraid o' things no more--nor sorry. I found out 't was all right.
'I'm glad I'm alive,' I said. 'I'm thankful!' Seemed to me I'd been
dead for the last twenty year. I'd come alive.
"An' so I set there an' held my breath, for fear 'twould go. I dunno
how long, but the moon riz up over my left shoulder, an' the sky begun
to fade. An' then it come over me 't was goin'. I knew 't was terrible
tender of me, an' sorry, an' lovin', an' so I says, 'Don't you mind; I
won't forgit!' An' then It went. But that broke suthin', an' I turned
an' see my own shadder on the grass; an' I thought I see another, 'side
of it. Somehow that scairt me, an' I jumped up an' whipped it home
without lookin' behind me. Now that's my experience," said Hannah
Prime, looking her neighbors again in the face, with dauntless eyes. "I
dunno what 't was, but it's goin' to last. I ain't afraid no more, an'
I ain't goin' to be. There ain't nuthin' to worry about. Everything's
bigger'n we think." She folded her shawl more closely about her and
moved toward the door. There she again turned to her neighbors.
"Good-night!" she said, and was gone.
They sat quite still until the tread of her feet had ceased its beating
on the dusty road. Then, by one consent, they rose and moved slowly
out. There was no prayer that night, and "Lord dismiss us" was not
sung.