"THE nicer half of the You-I seems buried in contemplation this
morning," said Philip at his breakfast table, the Saturday before
Christmas.
"The home-half of the You-I," Grace replied, after a quick rally from
a fit of abstraction, "was thinking that it saw very little of the
store-half this week, except when she went to the store to look for it.
Was business really so exacting, or was it merely absorbing?"
"'Twas both, dear girl," said Philip, wishing he might repeat to her
all that Caleb had said to him as recorded in the preceding chapter,
and then scolding himself for the wish.
"I wonder," Grace said, "whether you know you often look as if you were
in serious trouble?"
"Do I? I'm sorry you noticed it, but now that it's over, I don't object
to telling you that if a single money package had arrived six hours
later than it did, the principal general store of this county would
have taken second or third place in the public esteem."
"Phil! Was it so large a sum?"
"Oh, no; merely two hundred dollars, but without it I would have had to
decline to buy two or three wagon-loads of dressed hogs."
"'Dressed hogs'! What an expression!"
"Quite so; still, 'tis the meatiest one known in this part of the
country. I can't say, however, that 'tis an ideal one for use when
ladies are present, so I beg to move the previous question. What was
it?"
"'Twas that I've seen very little of you this week except when I've
been to the store to look for you. Won't the business soon be easier,
as you become accustomed to it, so we may have our evenings together
once more?"
"I hope so," said Philip.
"You didn't say that as if you meant it."
"Didn't I? Well, dear girl, to-morrow will be Sunday, and you shall
have every moment of my time, and 'I shall bathe my weary soul in seas
of heavenly rest,' as Caleb frequently sings to himself."
"You poor fellow! You need more help in the store, if you don't wish to
become worn out."
"I don't see how any one could assist me. Caleb is everything he should
be, but he has given me to understand that everything really depends
upon the proprietor, and the more I learn of the business, the more
plainly I see that he is right."
Grace asked a few questions, and after Philip had answered them he
exclaimed:--
"You artful, inquisitive, dreadful woman! You've dragged out of me a
lot of things that I'd determined you shouldn't know, for I've always
had an utter contempt for men who inflict their personal troubles upon
their wives. But you can imagine from what I've told you that no one
but a partner could relieve me of any of my work."
"Then why not teach your partner the business?"
"'Twill be time to do that when I get one."
"Don't be stupid, Phil," Grace said, rising from her chair, going to
her husband, and bestowing a little pinch and a caress. "Don't you know
who I mean?"
"Dear girl," said Philip, "you're quite as clever as I,--which is no
compliment,--and everybody adores you. But the idea of your dickering
by the hour with farmers and other countrymen--and dickering is simply
the soul of our business--is simply ridiculous."
"I don't see why," Grace replied, with a pout, followed by a flash in
her deep brown eyes. "Some of the farmers' wives 'dicker,' as you call
it, quite as sharply as their husbands. Am I stupider than they?"
"No--no! What an idea! But--they've been brought up to it."
"Which means merely that they've learned it. What women have done woman
can do. I hope I'm not in the way in the store when you're talking
business?"
"In the way! You delicious hypocrite!"
"Well, I've listened a lot for business' sake, instead of merely for
fun. Besides, I do get dreadfully lonesome in the house at times,
in spite of a little work and a lot of play--at the piano. Oh, that
reminds me of something. Prepare to be startled. A great revival effort
is to begin at the church to-morrow night, and a committee of two,
consisting of Caleb and Mr. Grateway, the minister, have been to me to
know--guess what they wanted."
"H'm! I shouldn't wonder if they wanted you to promise to sit beside
the minister, so that all the susceptible young men might be coaxed to
church and then shaken over the pit and dragged into the fold. Caleb
and the minister have long heads."
"Don't be ridiculous! What they ask is that you'll have our piano moved
to the church, and that you'll play the music for the hymns. There's to
be a lot of singing, and the church hasn't any instrumental music, you
know, and Caleb has been greatly impressed by your playing."
"Well, I'll be--I don't know what. Old fools! I wish they'd asked me
direct! They'd have got a sharp, unmistakable 'NO!'"
"So they said; that was the reason they came to me."
"And you said--"
"That I'd consult you, and that if for any reason you felt that you
must decline, I would play for them."
"Grace--Somerton!"
"Why shouldn't I? I often played the melodeon for the choir in our
village church before I went to New York."
"Did you, indeed? But I might have imagined it, for there seems to be
nothing that you can't do, or won't attempt. But let us see where we
are. You've promised, practically, that they shall have the music; if
I decline to play, they'll think I'm stuck up, or something of which,
for business' sake, I can't afford to be suspected. Besides, when I
married you I made some vows that weren't in the service, and one of
them was that I never would shift any distasteful duty upon my wife. On
the other hand, these Methodists are a literal lot of people. They've
wanted me to become a class-leader because Uncle Jethro was one. I
believe the duties are to inflict spiritual inquisition every Sunday
upon specified people in the presence of one another. I escaped only
by explaining that I was not a member of their denomination. But give
them an inch and they'll take an ell. If I play for them that night,
they'll expect me to do it the next, and again and again, probably
every Sunday, and I certainly shan't have our piano jogged once a week
over frozen roads, with the nearest tuner at a city seventy-five miles
away."
"Then let me tell them that you won't allow them to be disappointed,
but that as you've not been accustomed to play for church singing, and
I have, that I will play for them."
"That means that every one in the church will stare at you, which
will make your husband feel wretchedly uncomfortable. Aside from
that, you'll distract attention from the minister; so although I know
that you personally are a means of grace--Grace, itself, indeed, ha,
ha!--the effect of the sermon won't be worth any more than a bag of
corn-husks."
"Oh, Phil! don't imagine that everybody sees me through your eyes.
Besides, except while playing I shall sit demurely on a front bench,
with my back to the congregation."
So Caleb and the minister were rejoiced, and spread the announcement
throughout the town, and Grace rehearsed the church's familiar airs to
all the hymns on the list which the minister gave her, though some of
them she had to learn by ear, by the assistance of Caleb, who whistled
them to her. Soon after dark on Sunday night six stalwart sinners,
carefully selected by Caleb, exulted in the honor of carrying the
little upright piano to the church, where they remained so as to be
sure of seats from which to hear the music.
The Methodist church edifice in Claybanks could seat nearly three
hundred people and give standing room to a hundred more. Seldom had
it been filled to its extreme capacity; but when the opening hymn was
"given out" on the night referred to, the building was crowded to
the doors and a hundred or more persons outside begged and demanded
that windows and doors should remain open during the singing. Pastor
Grateway, who had been in the ministry long enough to make the most of
every opportunity, improved this occasion to announce that according to
custom in all churches possessing instruments, the music of each hymn
would be played before the singing began. Grace, quite as uncomfortable
as her husband would have been in her place, was nevertheless familiar
with the music and the piano, and the congregation rose vociferously
to the occasion. Even the sinners sang, and one back-seat ruffian, who
had spent a winter in a city and frequented concert saloons, became so
excited as to applaud at the end of the first hymn, for which he was
promptly tossed through an open window by his more decorous comrades.
The hymn after the prayer was equally effective, so the minister
interpolated still another one after the scripture reading called the
"second lesson." He, too, had been uplifted by the music--so much
uplifted that he preached more earnestly than usual and also more
rapidly, so as to reach the period of "special effort." At the close of
the sermon he said:--
"As we sing the hymn beginning 'Come, ye Sinners, Poor and Needy,' let
all persons who wish to flee from the wrath to come, and desire the
prayers of true believers, come forward and kneel at the mourners'
bench."
The hymn was sung, and two or three persons approached the altar
and dropped upon their knees. As the last verse was reached, Caleb
whispered to the minister, who nodded affirmatively; then he whispered
to Grace, who also nodded; then he found Philip, who was seated
near the front, to be within supporting distance of his wife, and
whispered:--
"Give your wife a spell for a minute; play 'Am I a Soldier of the
Cross' the way you did the other day for me. That'll fetch 'em!"
Philip frowned and refused, but Caleb snatched his hand in a vise-like
grasp and fairly dragged him from his seat. Half angry, half defiant,
yet full of the spirit of any man who finds himself "in for it,"
whatever "it" may be, Philip dropped upon the piano stool which Grace
had vacated, and attacked the keys as if they were sheaves of wheat and
he was wielding a flail. He played the music as he had played it to
Caleb, with the accent and swing of a march, yet with all the runs and
variations with which country worshippers are wont to embroider it, and
the hearers were so "wrought up" by it that they began the hymn with a
roaring "attack" that was startling even to themselves. Grace, seeing
no seat within reach, and unwilling to turn her back to the people,
retired to one end of the piano, under one of the candles, from which
position, on the raised platform in front of the pulpit, she beheld
a spectacle seldom seen in its fulness except by ministers during a
time of religious excitement--a sea of faces, many of them full of the
ecstacy of faith and anticipation, others wild with terror at the doom
of the impenitent.
Like most large-souled women, Grace was by nature religious and
extremely sympathetic, and unconsciously she looked pityingly and
beseechingly into many of the troubled faces. Her eyes rested an
instant, unconsciously, on those of one of the stalwart sinners who
had brought the piano to the church. In a second the man arose, strode
forward, and dropped upon his knees. Grace looked at another,--for the
six were together on one bench,--and he, too, came forward. Then a
strange tumult took possession of her; she looked commandingly at the
others in succession, and in a moment the entire six were on their
knees at the altar.
"Great hell!" bellowed the ruffian who had been tossed through the
window, into which he had climbed halfway back in his eagerness to hear
the music. Then he tumbled into the church, got upon his feet, and
hurried forward to join the other sinners at the mourners' bench, which
had already become so crowded that Caleb was pressing the saints from
the front seats to make room for coming penitents.
The hymn ended, but Philip did not know it, so he continued to play.
Grace whispered to him, and when he had reached the last bar, which
he ended with a crash, he abruptly seated himself on the pulpit steps
and felt as if he had done something dreadful and been caught in the
act. Grace reseated herself at the instrument; and as the minister,
with the class leaders, Sunday-school teachers, and other prominent
members of the church were moving among the penitents, counselling and
praying, and the regular order of song and prayer had been abandoned or
forgotten, she played the music of the hymns that had been designated
by the minister on the previous day. Some of the music was plaintive,
some spirited, but she played all with extreme feeling, whether the
people sang or merely listened. She played also all newer church music
that had appealed to her in recent years, and when, at a very late
hour, the congregation was dismissed, she suddenly became conscious of
the most extreme exhaustion she had ever known. As she and her husband
were leaving the church, one of the penitents approached them and
said:--
"Bless the Lord for that pianner--the Lord an' you two folks."
"Amen!" said several others.
Philip and Grace walked home in silence; but when they were within
doors, Philip took his wife's hands in his, held them apart, looked
into Grace's eyes, which seemed to be melting, and exclaimed:--
"Grace Somerton--my wife--a revivalist!"
"Is Saul also among the prophets?" Grace retorted, with a smile which
seemed to her husband entirely new and peculiar. "It was your music
that started the--what shall I call it?"