It is doubtful if the Rev. Mr. Burch had ever found in Syria a person
more difficult to persuade than the already “gospel-hardened” Jacob
Moody of Riverboro.
Tall, gaunt, swarthy, black-bearded--his masses of grizzled, uncombed
hair and the red scar across his nose and cheek added to his sinister
appearance. His tumble-down house stood on a rocky bit of land back of
the Sawyer pasture, and the acres of his farm stretched out on all sides
of it. He lived alone, ate alone, plowed, planted, sowed, harvested
alone, and was more than willing to die alone, “unwept, unhonored, and
unsung.” The road that bordered upon his fields was comparatively little
used by any one, and notwithstanding the fact that it was thickly set
with chokecherry trees and blackberry bushes it had been for years
practically deserted by the children. Jacob's Red Astrakhan and Granny
Garland trees hung thick with apples, but no Riverboro or Edgewood boy
stole them; for terrifying accounts of the fate that had overtaken one
urchin in times agone had been handed along from boy to boy, protecting
the Moody fruit far better than any police patrol.
Perhaps no circumstances could have extenuated the old man's surly
manners or his lack of all citizenly graces and virtues; but his
neighbors commonly rebuked his present way of living and forgot the
troubled past that had brought it about: the sharp-tongued wife, the
unloving and disloyal sons, the daughter's hapless fate, and all the
other sorry tricks that fortune had played upon him--at least that was
the way in which he had always regarded his disappointments and griefs.
This, then, was the personage whose moral rehabilitation was to be
accomplished by the Daughters of Zion. But how?
“Who will volunteer to visit Mr. Moody?” blandly asked the president.
_Visit Mr. Moody!_ It was a wonder the roof of the barn chamber did not
fall; it did, indeed echo the words and in some way make them sound more
grim and satirical.
“Nobody'll volunteer, Rebecca Rowena Randall, and you know it,” said
Emma Jane.
“Why don't we draw lots, when none of us wants to speak to him and yet
one of us must?”
This suggestion fell from Persis Watson, who had been pale and
thoughtful ever since the first mention of Jacob Moody. (She was fond of
Granny Garlands; she had once met Jacob; and, as to what befell, well,
we all have our secret tragedies!)
“Wouldn't it be wicked to settle it that way?”
“It's gamblers that draw lots.”
“People did it in the Bible ever so often.”
“It doesn't seem nice for a missionary meeting.”
These remarks fell all together upon the president's bewildered ear the
while (as she always said in compositions)--“the while” she was trying
to adjust the ethics of this unexpected and difficult dilemma.
“It is a very puzzly question,” she said thoughtfully. “I could ask Aunt
Jane if we had time, but I suppose we haven't. It doesn't seem nice to
draw lots, and yet how can we settle it without? We know we mean right,
and perhaps it will be. Alice, take this paper and tear off five narrow
pieces, all different lengths.”
At this moment a voice from a distance floated up to the haymow--a voice
saying plaintively: “Will you let me play with you, girls? Huldah has
gone to ride, and I'm all alone.”
It was the voice of the absolutely-without-guile Thirza Meserve, and it
came at an opportune moment.
“If she is going to be a member,” said Persis, “why not let her come up
and hold the lots? She'd be real honest and not favor anybody.”
It seemed an excellent idea, and was followed up so quickly that
scarcely three minutes ensued before the guileless one was holding the
five scraps in her hot little palm, laboriously changing their places
again and again until they looked exactly alike and all rather soiled
and wilted.
“Come, girls, draw!” commanded the president. “Thirza, you mustn't chew
gum at a missionary meeting, it isn't polite nor holy. Take it out and
stick it somewhere till the exercises are over.”
The five Daughters of Zion approached the spot so charged with fate, and
extended their trembling hands one by one. Then after a moment's silent
clutch of their papers they drew nearer to one another and compared
them.
Emma Jane Perkins had drawn the short one, becoming thus the destined
instrument for Jacob Moody's conversion to a more seemly manner of life!
She looked about her despairingly, as if to seek some painless and
respectable method of self-destruction.
“Do let's draw over again,” she pleaded. “I'm the worst of all of us.
I'm sure to make a mess of it till I kind o' get trained in.”
Rebecca's heart sank at this frank confession, which only corroborated
her own fears.
“I'm sorry, Emmy, dear,” she said, “but our only excuse for drawing lots
at all would be to have it sacred. We must think of it as a kind of a
sign, almost like God speaking to Moses in the burning bush.”
“Oh, I _wish_ there was a burning bush right here!” cried the distracted
and recalcitrant missionary. “How quick I'd step into it without even
stopping to take off my garnet ring!”
“Don't be such a scare-cat, Emma Jane!” exclaimed Candace bracingly.
“Jacob Moody can't kill you, even if he has an awful temper. Trot right
along now before you get more frightened. Shall we go cross lots with
her, Rebecca, and wait at the pasture gate? Then whatever happens Alice
can put it down in the minutes of the meeting.”
In these terrible crises of life time gallops with such incredible
velocity that it seemed to Emma Jane only a breath before she was being
dragged through the fields by the other Daughters of Zion, the guileless
little Thirza panting in the rear.
At the entrance to the pasture Rebecca gave her an impassioned embrace,
and whispering, “_Whatever you do, be careful how you lead up_,” lifted
off the top rail and pushed her through the bars. Then the girls turned
their backs reluctantly on the pathetic figure, and each sought a tree
under whose friendly shade she could watch, and perhaps pray, until the
missionary should return from her field of labor.
Alice Robinson, whose compositions were always marked 96 or 97,--100
symbolizing such perfection as could be attained in the mortal world of
Riverboro,--Alice, not only Daughter, but Scribe of Zion, sharpened her
pencil and wrote a few well-chosen words of introduction, to be used
when the records of the afternoon had been made by Emma Jane Perkins and
Jacob Moody.
Rebecca's heart beat tumultuously under her gingham dress. She felt
that a drama was being enacted, and though unfortunately she was not the
central figure, she had at least a modest part in it. The short lot had
not fallen to the properest Daughter, that she quite realized; yet would
any one of them succeed in winning Jacob Moody's attention, in
engaging him in pleasant conversation, and finally in bringing him to
a realization of his mistaken way of life? She doubted, but at the same
moment her spirits rose at the thought of the difficulties involved in
the undertaking.
Difficulties always spurred Rebecca on, but they daunted poor Emma Jane,
who had no little thrills of excitement and wonder and fear and longing
to sustain her lagging soul. That her interview was to be entered as
“minutes” by a secretary seemed to her the last straw. Her blue eyes
looked lighter than usual and had the glaze of china saucers; her
usually pink cheeks were pale, but she pressed on, determined to be
a faithful Daughter of Zion, and above all to be worthy of Rebecca's
admiration and respect.
“Rebecca can do anything,” she thought, with enthusiastic loyalty, “and
I mustn't be any stupider than I can help, or she'll choose one of
the other girls for her most intimate friend.” So, mustering all her
courage, she turned into Jacob Moody's dooryard, where he was chopping
wood.
“It's a pleasant afternoon, Mr. Moody,” she said in a polite but hoarse
whisper, Rebecca's words, “_Lead up! Lead up!_” ringing in clarion tones
through her brain.
Jacob Moody looked at her curiously. “Good enough, I guess,” he growled;
“but I don't never have time to look at afternoons.”
Emma Jane seated herself timorously on the end of a large log near the
chopping block, supposing that Jacob, like other hosts, would pause in
his tasks and chat.
“The block is kind of like an idol,” she thought; “I wish I could take
it away from him, and then perhaps he'd talk.”
At this moment Jacob raised his axe and came down on the block with such
a stunning blow that Emma Jane fairly leaped into the air.
“You'd better look out, Sissy, or you'll git chips in the eye!” said
Moody, grimly going on with his work.
The Daughter of Zion sent up a silent prayer for inspiration, but none
came, and she sat silent, giving nervous jumps in spite of herself
whenever the axe fell upon the log Jacob was cutting.
Finally, the host became tired of his dumb visitor, and leaning on
his axe he said, “Look here, Sis, what have you come for? What's your
errant? Do you want apples? Or cider? Or what? Speak out, or _git_ out,
one or t'other.”
Emma Jane, who had wrung her handkerchief into a clammy ball, gave it
a last despairing wrench, and faltered: “Wouldn't you like--hadn't you
better--don't you think you'd ought to be more constant at meeting and
Sabbath school?”
Jacob's axe almost dropped from his nerveless hand, and he regarded
the Daughter of Zion with unspeakable rage and disdain. Then, the blood
mounting in his face, he gathered himself together, and shouted: “You
take yourself off that log and out o' this dooryard double-quick, you
imperdent sanct'omus young one! You just let me ketch Bill Perkins'
child trying to teach me where I shall go, at my age! Scuttle, I tell
ye! And if I see your pious cantin' little mug inside my fence ag'in on
sech a business I'll chase ye down the hill or set the dog on ye!
_Scoot, I tell ye!_”
Emma Jane obeyed orders summarily, taking herself off the log, out the
dooryard, and otherwise scuttling and scooting down the hill at a pace
never contemplated even by Jacob Moody, who stood regarding her flying
heels with a sardonic grin.
Down she stumbled, the tears coursing over her cheeks and mingling with
the dust of her flight; blighted hope, shame, fear, rage, all tearing
her bosom in turn, till with a hysterical shriek she fell over the bars
and into Rebecca's arms outstretched to receive her. The other Daughters
wiped her eyes and supported her almost fainting form, while Thirza,
thoroughly frightened, burst into sympathetic tears, and refused to be
comforted.
No questions were asked, for it was felt by all parties that Emma Jane's
demeanor was answering them before they could be framed.
“He threatened to set the dog on me!” she wailed presently, when, as
they neared the Sawyer pasture, she was able to control her voice. “He
called me a pious, cantin' young one, and said he'd chase me out o' the
dooryard if I ever came again! And he'll tell my father--I know he will,
for he hates him like poison.”
All at once the adult point of view dawned upon Rebecca. She never
saw it until it was too obvious to be ignored. Had they done wrong in
interviewing Jacob Moody? Would Aunt Miranda be angry, as well as Mr.
Perkins?
“Why was he so dreadful, Emmy?” she questioned tenderly. “What did you
say first? How did you lead up to it?”
Emma Jane sobbed more convulsively, and wiped her nose and eyes
impartially as she tried to think.
“I guess I never led up at all; not a mite. I didn't know what you
meant. I was sent on an errant, and I went and done it the best I could!
(Emma Jane's grammar always lapsed in moments of excitement.) And then
Jake roared at me like Squire Winship's bull.... And he called my face
a mug.... You shut up that secretary book, Alice Robinson! If you write
down a single word I'll never speak to you again.... And I don't want to
be a 'member' another minute for fear of drawing another short lot. I've
got enough of the Daughters or Zion to last me the rest o' my life! I
don't care who goes to meetin' and who don't.”
The girls were at the Perkins's gate by this time, and Emma Jane went
sadly into the empty house to remove all traces of the tragedy from her
person before her mother should come home from the church.
The others wended their way slowly down the street, feeling that their
promising missionary branch had died almost as soon as it had budded.
“Goodby,” said Rebecca, swallowing lumps of disappointment and chagrin
as she saw the whole inspiring plan break and vanish into thin air like
an iridescent bubble. “It's all over and we won't ever try it again.
I'm going in to do overcasting as hard as I can, because I hate that the
worst. Aunt Jane must write to Mrs. Burch that we don't want to be
home missionaries. Perhaps we're not big enough, anyway. I'm perfectly
certain it's nicer to convert people when they're yellow or brown or
any color but white; and I believe it must be easier to save their souls
than it is to make them go to meeting.”