THE SUMMERS
While they were at supper a strong cold wind sprung up, so that Mr. Pace
had to heap wood on the fire. And afterward, when the two girls ran to
the door, they could see that the sky had cleared and the stars were out,
looking, it seemed, unusually large and bright and sociable.
“Why not go to prayer meeting?” said Azalea.
“At your church or mine?”
“Oh, if you don’t mind, Annie Laurie, at mine this time. Dear old Elder
Mills is leaving, you know. You’ve heard how sick he is with the
rheumatism, haven’t you? He’s going down to Florida where the climate
will be better for him. They say he’s wonderful these last few weeks.
He’s trying to say everything he can think of that will help the people
he’s known so long. I love to hear people talk when they are really,
really in earnest, don’t you?”
Annie Laurie looked at her friend understandingly.
“You are just like me, Azalea; you always want mountains to be higher
than they really are, and stars brighter, and sermons deeper, and friends
more loving. Nothing is ever quite big enough to suit me—nor quite
_hard_ enough.”
“Not intense enough, Carin would say.”
“That’s it. Yes, let’s go to prayer meeting. I’ll ask father if I may.”
They presently were on their way, walking briskly because they were late.
The little Methodist church was full of the old friends of Elder Mills,
who as he stood before them, his white hair hanging around his shoulders,
his face haggard with pain, yet had a look in his eyes of exaltation and
joy which seemed to make a light thing of his physical distress.
“Oh, I want you to love one another,” he said during the evening. “I
want you to forgive one another. Be honest, be brave in saying what you
think, live truly, avoid lies. Above everything, avoid lies—in word and
in act.”
“For goodness sake,” thought Annie Laurie, “Can’t preachers find anything
else to talk about but lies? Whether I go to my own church or another,
that seems to be the theme.” She remembered how she had caught Sam
Disbrow’s eye that day at the Baptist church when the minister had been
talking about lies, and how queer it had been to realize that she was
reading Sam’s mind, and could tell that he, like herself, was wondering
why the preacher kept harping on that. Annie Laurie’s mind drifted off
to Sam’s home—to his mother who never was well, to their untidy little
house, and to his cross-eyed sister, who never would make friends with
anybody. Sam seemed so different from the rest of the family, with his
hearty downright ways, his energy, his determination to make something of
himself.
Was meeting over? She aroused herself as from a dream.
“There’s to be a business meeting,” Azalea said to her as the people
arose. “They’re to talk about who is to be our new minister. Since it
is not conference time, we are to ask for some one we want, and then if
the bishop thinks best we can have him.”
“I see,” said Annie Laurie vaguely. Though she did not really see.
The two girls started out together, crowding softly by their elders who
were gathered about in the aisles talking over the trial that had come to
the church in losing Elder Mills, and in being obliged to bring a new
minister in at the middle of the session. And then, suddenly, a
beautiful idea came to Azalea. Why couldn’t they ask the Rev. Absalom
Summers? He was in that tiny backwoods village where there were so few
to hear or enjoy him; and he was such a wonderful man, all wrapped up in
his religion, and talking about it as if it must be the business of
everyone. And if he came, her “pretend cousin” Barbara, his wife, would
come also, and that blessed baby, Jonathan. To think was to act with
Azalea, now as always. She broke from Annie Laurie and ran up to her old
friend and protector, Haystack Thompson.
“Oh, Mr. Thompson, dear,” she whispered, “if only you could manage to put
in a word for Mr. Summers! You know what he is—how he talks and sings
and laughs and keeps everybody stirred up. He’d put life into any
church, wouldn’t he? He’s just wasted down in that little valley where
he lives. Hardly anybody comes to church, and those who do, don’t like
him. They think he’s too new-fashioned. But here he’d be appreciated.”
“Well, now,” drawled Mr. Thompson, running his hand through his wild head
of hair—the hair that gave him his nickname of “Haystack”—“I don’t know
but there might be something in that. He sure has got a lot of ginger in
him, ‘the power of the Lord,’ he calls it, and I reckon maybe that’s what
it is. Anyway, as you insinuate, Zalie, the Seven Sleepers would have
had a hard time of it trying to keep up their slumbers anywhere around
his neighborhood.”
“And then Mrs. Summers,” went on Azalea breathlessly; “think what she
would mean to the church! She’s so lively, you know, and so interested
in everyone—sorry for them when she ought to be, and happy with them all
other times.”
“Sharin’ their sorrows an’ their joys with ’em, I reckon you mean,
daughter.”
“Yes; and the baby—”
“Of course, the baby! He’d be a drawin’ card to any congregation.”
“Oh, Mr. Thompson, if I could have that baby around I’d—”
“Yes?”
“I’d—I’d be good all the rest of my days.”
“Be a practicin’ Christian, eh? Well, as you say, Summers is a mighty
fetching man—don’t know of any with more—well, more radiation. I reckon
I’d better mention him to the bretherin. Perhaps the bishop would hear
to his being moved up this a-way—particularly if I told him you was
wantin’ to play with the baby.”
Azalea never cared how much fun her kind old Haystack made of her. He
had followed her over mountains and through valleys, in sun and rain, in
a certain terrible episode of her life, when she had been stolen away
from Mrs. McBirney and all but forced back into her hateful life with a
traveling show, and she let him joke and fleer all he pleased, knowing
him, as she did, for one of her staunchest friends.
“Yes, please do,” she urged. “They’re just going into meeting now. Just
tell them how he laughs and talks and cuts up!”
“Fine recommendations for a pastor!”
“Well, they are,” insisted Azalea. “Of course they are. He wants
everyone to be as good and happy as he is, and if they aren’t, he’ll find
out why.”
Haystack Thompson brought his huge brows together and regarded Azalea
with his sharp eyes. Neither spoke for a moment. Then: “Yes-sum,” he
said, and moved toward the front to join the representative members of
the congregation.
So it came about that a month later Azalea had the great happiness of
knowing that her friends, the Reverend Absalom Summers and his wife and
baby were coming to Lee as the result of her suggestion. It was rather a
joke among those who knew of it. “Azalea’s choice” they called the new
minister. But it was no joke to Azalea. It meant more to her than she
ever could explain.
“You see,” she said to Carin, “it’s ideas that count—right ideas. Now,
I’m a person of no importance whatever. But because I happened to have
the right idea, those men listened to me and did what I wanted them to
do.”
“And the point of it all is,” laughed Carin, “that if you have enough
right ideas and can find enough persons to listen to them, you’ll be
important, see?”
“Don’t laugh,” said Azalea. “If you knew what it meant for me to have
the Summerses come—”
“I know well enough—know too well. After they come, what chance will I
have of getting your attention?”
“Carin, how can you? No one can take your place. My friends are all
separate. I can’t spare one, and not one can take the place of another.”
They were in Carin’s pony cart as they held this conversation, on their
way down to the station, and it seemed as they drove along the one
macadamized road in the county, that everyone they knew was bent in the
same direction.
True, it was nighttime, but the lanterns and lamps revealed the identity
of the travelers. Amusements were not many at Lee, and the coming of the
new Methodist minister and his family was an event worthy of notice.
Moreover, the fame of the Reverend Absalom Summers had gone abroad. His
strong bright gifts, his hearty, brotherly nature, his way of finding
nothing too small for his interest or too great for his inquisitiveness,
had won him friends. So they gathered—these friendly, waiting
neighbors—in the draughty little waiting room of the station and waited
for the nine o’clock train.
The peculiarities of this nine o’clock train were well known. It had
acquired a habit of arriving at about a quarter of ten, and it was not
until the hands of the clock and of the frequently consulted watches of
the male members approached that hour, that anyone thought of going out
to look up the track. But there it was, sure enough, faithful to the
time it had chosen for itself. Its flaring headlight could be seen away
up the mountains. The air was nipping, and the company of watchers
shivered together, but they would none of them go back into the station
now that the headlight really was in sight.
Moreover, though they would not say so, they loved to be out among the
mountains—those mountains that were as the very soul of their lives, that
held them together, that gave meaning to their secret motives, to their
religion, to their daily work. They loomed now, darkest purple against
the starry sky. The wind swept down from them, fresh with an
indescribable freshness. An owl called—was silent—then called again.
Lights shone out from the houses in the village, and from the scattered
cabins along the mountain sides. Now and then there was a movable light
high on the mountain, as some hill farmer made his way to his house from
a neighbor’s, or from his visit to town, or from looking after his stock.
The headlight disappeared as the train swept around the horseshoe bend.
Then it burst upon them like a menacing star. It rushed towards them.
There was a shriek as of a giant taken prisoner. The train was there!
The conductor got down and exchanged greetings, and an enormously tall
and thin man appeared, carrying many bundles.
“There he is! It’s the Elder. There’s Mr. Summers,” cried the people.
They surged forward, pulled the man from the steps, seized his bundles,
and waited while he assisted a little lady to alight.
“Why, she isn’t as large as we are, Azalea,” whispered Carin.
“I know,” Azalea whispered back, quivering as she hugged her companion’s
arm. “I told you—”
But Carin was not to know what Azalea had told her, for at that moment
the voice of the little lady was heard saying:
“And where’s Azalea?”
It was, for Azalea, a thrilling moment. Afterward, thinking it all over,
she could not tell why her heart so leaped at that first word. Was it
because she had no kin, really, that this voice of loving friendship was
so sweet to her? Was it that she was proud—she who had been a wanderer
and a beggar—to be asked for before all the people? Was it just
abounding love for Barbara Summers, her “pretend cousin”?
It made no difference, really. There was Barbara, her dark eyes shining;
there was her babe in her arms, fresh and wonderful from sleep; and there
was his mother offering him to Azalea.
The two kissed above the baby.
“Honey bunch!” murmured Azalea, and gathered him into her arms.
She saw nothing of how the people came forward to make Mr. Summers and
his wife welcome; heard nothing of what Pa McBirney said to them, urging
them into his comfortable old mountain wagon. Even the voice of Carin
was vague in her ears, though she knew she was murmuring her appreciation
of golden curls and blue eyes, of tiny teeth, of dimples, or chubby
little hands. But nothing that anybody could say would be too much,
Azalea thought. Her hungry heart, never yet satisfied, with all the love
that had come to her, wrapped a thousand quivering tendrils about this
little laughing child.
“You riding with Miss Carin, Zalie?” asked Pa McBirney.
“Yes, thank you, father. We’ll drive right up to the parsonage, won’t
we, Carin?”
“As fast as Mustard can take us,” replied Carin. “The baby won’t mind
leaving you a moment, will he, Mrs. Summers?”
Barbara Summers shook her head. She was not given to passing Jonathan
over to the care of others, but there was something in the satisfied
expression of Azalea’s face that forbade her to take him away.
Carin turned the head of the little yellow pony toward the Methodist
parsonage. They had a hill to climb and a dark, curving little road to
traverse. But five or six vehicles were ahead of them, and Mustard, who
felt like a mere boy in the horse world, and who always was pleased if he
could get in a grown-up affair of any kind, trotted along importantly.
Lights shone out from among the armored pines. Azalea got out and
carried Jonathan through the freshly decorated rooms, with their newly
polished furniture and snowy curtains, to the bedroom where the little
iron cot awaited Jonathan.
“Shut the door, Carin dear,” she whispered happily. “Let’s undress him.
His mother said we’d find his nightie in that bag.”