_"I paint him in character."_--Shakespeare
That a Davenport should seriously contemplate leaving the "Mother
Church." as the devotees of the Anglican establishment were given to
calling their branch of the real Roman mother, was a proposition
too absurd to be considered; and the old Major met his son's first
suggestions, wherein this tendency was indicated, as the mere vaporings
of a restless, unformed boy. He laughed loudly, guyed his son openly,
and inquired jocosely which one of the pretty Methodist girls had struck
his fancy.
"If it turns out to be serious, Grif, and you marry her, she will, as a
matter of course, transfer her membership to the Mother Church. A true
wife always follows her husband in all things. 'Thy people shall be
my people, and thy God my God,' you know, Grif. Good old saying. Bible
truth, my son. But who is the happy girl, you young scamp? There is
rather a paucity of thoroughbreds among the Methodists, as they call
this new craze. Don't make _that_ kind of a mistake, my boy, whatever
else you do. Better keep inside the paddock."
The old Major chuckled, and, turning on his heel, left his son covered
with confusion, and with a sense of impotent zeal and conviction to
which he could not or dared not give voice.
That this question of a truer, warmer, more personally stirring
religious life did not touch a single responsive chord in the Major's
nature, filled the son, anew, with misgivings. At first, these
questionings led him to doubt himself, and to wonder if it could, after
all, be possible that his own youth, inexperience and provincialism
might really not lie at the root of his new unrest. He went to the
Methodist meetings with a fresh determination to be serenely critical,
and not to yield to the onrush of emotion which had grown so strong
within him as he had listened, in the past, to the passionate and often
ruggedly-eloquent appeals of the pioneers of the new faith--or, perhaps,
it were better to say, to the new expression of the old faith. He gave
up his extra Latin lessons, which had been his delight and the pride
of his tutor and of his family, that he might have these hours for the
study of the Bible and the few other books carried by the colporteurs or
the circuit riders, who were beginning to overrun the State.
The old Major disapproved, but it was not his way to discuss matters
with his family; and it may be doubted, indeed, if the Major grasped the
significance and force of the tide which had overtaken his son, as it
had rushed with the power of a flood over his beloved Virginia and left
in its wake a tremendous unrest, and carried before it many of the most
sincere and forceful characters and questions. Beyond a few twittings
and an occasional growl, therefore, the old Major had ignored his son's
gradual withdrawal from the ancient forms and functions and the fact
that almost every Sunday morning, of late, had found the boy absent from
the family pew and present two miles up the valley at the little log
meeting-house of the Methodists. He was unprepared, therefore, to face
the question seriously, when finally told by the boy's mother that Grif
had decided that on his nineteenth birthday he would be baptized, and
that he intended to enter the ministry as a circuit rider.
The joke struck the Major as good above the average. He laughed long and
loud. He chuckled within himself all day. When evening came and Griffith
appeared at the table the Major was too full of mirth and derision to
content himself with his usual banter.
"Your mothah inforhms me," he began with the ironical touch in his tone
held well under the sparkle of humor. "Your mothah inforhms me that
to-morrow is your nineteenth birthday, you long-legged young gosling,
and that you contemplate celebrating it by transmuting yourself into a
Methodist ass with leather lungs and the manners, sir,--and the habits,
sir, of--of--of a damned Yankee!"
As the Major had halted for words and the picture of his son as a
circuit rider arose before him as a reality and not as a joke, his ire
had gotten the better of his humor. The picture he had conjured up in
his own mind of this son of his in the new social relations sure to
result from the contemplated change of faith swamped the old Major's
sense of the absurdity of the situation in a sudden feeling of
indignation and chagrin, and the sound of his own unusual words did the
rest.
Griffith looked up at his father in blank surprise. His mother said,
gently, "Majah! Majah!" But the old 'squire's sudden plunge into anger
had him in its grip. He grew more and more excited as his own words
stirred him.
"Yes, sir, like a damned northern tackey that comes down here amongst
respectable people to talk to niggers, and preach, as they call their
ranting, to the white trash that never owned a nigger in their whole
worthless lives, and tell'em about the 'unrighteousness' of slavery! Why
don't they read their Bibles if they know enough to read? _It_ teaches
slavery plain enough--'Servants obey your masters in all things,' and
'If a man sell his servant,' and 'His servant is his money,' and a good
many more! Why don't they read their Bibles, I say, and shout if they
want to, and attend to their own business? Nobody wants their long noses
down here amongst reputable people, sowing seeds of riot and rebellion
among the niggers!" The Major had forgotten his original point but it
came back to him as Grif began to speak.
"But, sir-"
"But, sir!" he said, rising from his chair in his excitement, "don't
'but, sir,' me! I'm disgusted and ashamed, sir! Ashamed from the bottom
of my hawt, that a son of mine--a Davenport--could for one moment
contemplate this infernal piece of folly! A circuit rider, indeed! A
damned disturber of niggers! A man with, no traditions! Shouting and
having fits and leading weak-minded women and girls, and weaker-minded
boys and niggers into unpardonable, disgraceful antics and calling
it religion! Actually having the effrontery to call it religion! It's
nothing but infernal rascality in half the cases and pitiable insanity
in the other half, and if I'd been doing my duty as a 'squire I'd have
taken the whole pestiferous lot up and put one set in jail and the other
set in an asylum, long ago! Look at'em! Ducking 'converts,' as they call
their dupes, in the creek! Perfectly disgraceful, sir! I forbid you to
go about their meetings again, sir! Yes, sir, once and for all, I forbid
it!"
The Major brought his fist down on the table with a bang that set
the fine china rattling and added the last straw of astonishment and
discomfort to the unusual family jar; for few indeed had ever been the
occasions upon which even a mild degree of paternal authority had
not been so quickly followed by ready and willing compliance that an
outbreak of anything like real temper or authoritative command--other
than at or toward the slaves--had been hardly within Grif's memory.
The boy arose, trembling and pale, and leaving his untouched plate of
choice food before him turned to leave the room.
"Come back here, sir!" commanded the old Major. "Take your seat, sir,
and eat your supper, sir, and--"
Mrs. Davenport burst into tears. The boy hesitated, parted his lips as
if to speak, looked at his mother, and with a sudden movement of his
hand toward a little book which he always carried these later days in
his breast-pocket, he stepped to his mother's side. There was a great
lump in his throat. He was straggling for mastery of himself but his
voice broke into a sob as he said:
"'He that loveth father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me. And
he that taketh not his cross and followeth after Me, is not worthy of
Me.'" He kissed his mother's forehead and passed swiftly out of the
room. His horse stood at the front gate waiting the usual evening
canter. Griffith threw his long leg over the saddle, and said to Jerry,
who stood holding the bridle of his own horse, ready to follow as
was his custom: "I don't want you to-night, Jerry. Stay at home.
Good-night," and rode away into the twilight.
It would be difficult to say just what Griffith's plan was. Indeed, it
had all been so sudden and so out of the ordinary trend of his life,
that there was a numb whirl of excitement, of pain and of blind impulse
too fresh within him to permit of anything like consecutive thought.
But, with Grif, as with most of us when the crises of our lives come,
fate or chance or conditions have taken the reins to drive us. We are
fond of saying--and while we are young we believe--that we decided
thus or thus; that we converted that condition or this disaster into
an opportunity and formed our lives upon such and such a model. All of
which is--as a rule--mere fond self-gratulation. The fact is, although
it may wound our pride to acknowledge it, that we followed the line of
least resistance (all things being considered, our own natures included)
and events did the rest. And so when Grif turned an angle in the road,
two miles from home, and came suddenly upon the circuit rider, who was
to baptize the new converts on the following day, and when Brother Prout
took it for granted that Grif was on his way to the place of gathering
in order to be present at the preliminary meeting, it seemed to Grif
that he had originally started from home with that object in view. His
thoughts began to center around that idea. The pain and shock of the
home-quarrel, which he had simply started out to ride off, to think
over, to prepare to meet on the morrow, gradually faded into a dull
hurt, which made the phrases and quotations and exhortations of Brother
Prout sound like friendly and personal utterances of soothing and
of paternal advice, and so the two miles stretched into ten and the
camp-ground was reached, and for Griffith, the die was cast.