David Gillespie woke later than his daughter, and when he had put away
the shadows of his unhappy dreams he took up the burden of waking thoughts
which weighed more heavily on him. The sight of his child groveling at the
feet of that blasphemous impostor and adoring him as her God pitilessly
realized itself to him as a thing shameful past experience and beyond
credence, and yet as undeniable as his pulse, his breath, his seeing and
hearing. The dread which a less primitive spirit would have forbidden
itself as something too abominable, possessed him as wholly possible. He
had lived righteously, and he had kept evil from those dear to him, both
the dead and the quick, by the force of his strong unselfish will; now he
had seen his will without power upon the one who was dearest, and whom he
seemed to hold from evil only by the force of his right hand. But his hand
could not be everywhere and at all times; and then?
The breakfast which the girl had got for him and left on the hearth was
warm yet, when he put it on the table, and she could not have been gone
more than a few minutes, but she had gone, he did not know where, without
waiting to speak with him after the threats and defiances which they had
slept upon. When he had poured the coffee after the mouthfuls he forced
down, he acted on the only hope he had and crossed the woods-pasture to
his sister's cabin.
She understood the glance he gave within from the threshold where he
paused, and said, “She ain't here, David.” Nancy had cleared her breakfast
away and was ironing at the shelf where she had eaten; the baby was
playing on the floor.
Gillespie looked down at it. “I didn't know but what she'd come over to
dress it; she cares so much for it.”
“It cares for her, too. But what brings you after her?”
“She's gone somewhere without her breakfast. We had high words last night
after I brought her home.”
“I'm afraid you'll have higher words, yet, David. Joey was at the Temple.”
“Nancy, I don't know what to do about her.”
“You knew what to do about _me_, David.” She gave her stab, and then
she pitied him, not for the pain she was willing he should feel from it,
but for the pain he was feeling before. “I know it isn't like that. I'm
sorry for you both. You haven't come to the end of your troubles.”
“I can't understand the girl,” he said desolately. “Up to a year ago she
was like she had always been, as biddable as a child, and meek and
yielding every way. All at once she's got stiff-necked and wilful.”
“She couldn't tell you why, herself, David. We are all that way--good
little girls--and then all of a sudden wilful women. I don't know what
changes us. It's harder on us than it is on you. It came on me like a
thief in the night and stole away my sense. It gave Joseph Dylks his
chance over me; if it had been sooner or later I should have known he was
a power of darkness as far as I could see him. But my eyes were holden by
my self-conceit, and I thought he was an angel of light.”
“He's got past being an angel now,” Gillespie said, forcing himself to
the real matter of his errand, far from the question of his daughter's
estrangement from her old self. “Did Joey tell you about--last night?”
Nancy did not quit the psychological question at once. “Up to that time
we think our fathers and brothers are something above the human; then we
think they're not even up to the common run of men. We think other men are
different because we don't know them. Yes,” she returned to his question
with a sigh, “Joey told me something about it--enough about it. I suppose
it isn't right to let him be a spy on his father; but I have to. If I
didn't he might want to go, from the talk of those fools, and get to
believin' with them. He said there was boys and girls kneelin' with the
rest--little children, almost, and shoutin' and prayin' to Joseph. Did you
see 'em?”
“Yes; it was dreadful, Nancy. But it was worse to see the women, the
grown-up girls, and the mothers of the children. It looked like they had
been drinking. It fairly turned me sick. And my own daughter groveling on
her knees with the worst! If I didn't know Dylks for the thing he is,
without an idea beyond victuals and clothes, I might ha' thought he had
thrown a spell on 'em, just for deviltry. But they done it all themselves;
he just gave them the _chance_ to play the fool.”
Nancy resumed from her own more immediate interest, “Well, I let Joey go;
and I don't know whether it helps or hurts to have him come home feelin'
about him, and all the goings on, just like I would myself. He always says
he's glad I wasn't there, and he pities the poor fool women more than he
despises his father. Or I ortn't to say despise; Joey don't despise
anybody; he's all good, through and through; I don't know where he gets
it. He's like Laban, and yet he ain't any kin to Laban.”
“It must be hard on you, Nancy. I don't know how you can bear up the way
you do. It is like a living streak of fire in me.”
“That's because there's some hope left in you. I can bear what I've got
to because the feeling is all burnt out of me. It's like as if my soul was
dead.”
“You mustn't say that, Nancy.”
“I say anything I please, now; anything I think. I'm not afraid any more;
I hain't got anything left to be afraid of.”
“Well, I have,” David returned. “Something I'm ashamed to be afraid of
it: his hold on Jane. I don't understand it. We've always thought alike
and believed alike, and now to see her gone crazy after a thief and liar
like that! It's enough to drive me mad the other way. I don't only want to
kill _him_; I want to kill--”
“David!” she stopped him, and in his pause she added, “You're worse than
what I ever was. Where is your religion?”
“Where is _her_ religion? I raised her to fear God, the Bible God
that I've prayed to for her since she was a little babe, but now since
she's turned to this heathen image I begin to turn from _Him_. What's
_He_ been about if He's All Seeing and All Powerful, to let loose
such a devil on a harmless settlement like this where we were all brethren
and dwelt together in unity, no matter whether we believed in dipping or
sprinkling? We loved one another--in the Scripture sense--and now look!
Families broken up, brothers not speaking, wives and husbands parting,
parents cursing the day their children were born, and children flying in
the face of their parents. Did you hear about Christopher Mills, how he
come crying to his father and mother and tried to make them believe in
Dylks, and when his father said it was all a snare and a delusion,
Christopher went away telling them their damnation was sealed?”
“No,” the woman said with bitter pleasure in the mockery, “but I heard
how our new Saint Paul Enraghty went over to his uncle's the other day,
and said he should never see corruption, and should never die, and told
his uncle he couldn't shoot him. Them that was there say the old man just
reached for his rifle, and was going to shoot Saint Paul in the legs, and
then Paul begged off and pretended that he was only in fun!”
She laughed, but David Gillespie looked sadly at her. “I don't believe I
like to hear you laugh, Nancy.”
“Why, are you turning believer too, David? It'll be time for me next,”
she mocked. “I couldn't laugh at Joseph, may be, but Saint Paul Enraghty
is a bigger rascal or a bigger fool than he is. Some say that Joseph is
just crazy, and some that he's after money, and that Enraghty's put him up
to everything.”
“Yes,” David moodily assented to the general tenor of her talk. “The way
they've roped in between 'em that poor fool Davis who'd been preaching for
the United Brethren, and now preaches Dylks! First he wouldn't hardly go
into the same house, and then he wouldn't leave it till he could come with
Dylks. I don't know how they do it! Sometimes I think the decentest man
left in the place is that red-mouthed infidel, Matthew Braile! Sometimes
I'm a mind to go to his house and get him to tell me what Tom Paine would
do in my place.”
“You _are_ pretty far gone, David. But I don't wonder at it; and I
don't believe I think so badly of Matthew Braile, either. He may be an
infidel, but he believes in some kind of a God that wants people to do
right; he don't believe in mortal sin, and may be that's where he's out;
and I hear tell he don't think there's going to be any raisin' of the
body, or any Last Day, or any Hell; but he keeps it to himself unless
folks pester him. I was afraid once to have Joey talk with him, before the
plow went over me. But now I let Joey go to him all he wants to. He lets
Joey come and pet the coon Joey give him because he heard that the
Squire's little boy used to want one. From all I can make out they don't
do much but talk about the little boy; he seems to take comfort in Joey
because Joey's like him, or the Squire thinks so.”
“If Jane had died when she was his little boy's age, I wouldn't feel as
if I had lost her half as much as I do now.”
Nancy lifted herself from her ironing-board and looked at her brother.
“You told me what the duty of a woman was that found out she had two
husbands. Don't you know what the duty of a man is that has a daughter
turned idolater?”
“No, I don't, Nancy,” David answered doggedly.
“Then, why don't you wrestle with the Lord in prayer? Perhaps He'd make
you some sign.”
“Oh, prayer! The thought of it makes me sick since I saw them fools
wallowing round at Dylks's feet, and beseeching that heathen image to save
them.”
“Then if you hain't got any light of yourself, and you don't believe the
Lord can give you any, what do you expect _me_ to do for you?”
“I don't expect anything, Nancy. If she was a child I could whip it out
of her, but when your child has got to be a woman you can't whip her.”
They left the hopeless case, and began to talk of the things they had
heard, especially the miracle which Dylks had promised to work. “He's
appointed it for to-night,” Gillespie said, “but I don't believe but what
he'll put it off, if the coast ain't clear when the time comes. He always
had the knack of leaving the back door open when he saw trouble coming up
to the front gate.”
“You can't tell me anything about Joseph Dylks,” Nancy said. She was
ironing, and at the last word she brought the iron down with the heavy
thump that women give with it at an emphatic word in their talk. “What I
wonder is that a man like you, David, could care what people in such a
place as this would say if they found out that I was livin' with Laban
when I knowed Dylks was alive. There wouldn't be any trouble with his
followers, I reckon. He'd just tell 'em he never saw me in his life
before, and that would do them.”
“Nancy,” her brother turned solemnly upon her, “as sure as I'm standing
here I don't care for that any more. If you say the word, I'll go and tell
Laban to come back to you.”
“You're safe there, David. If you've parted with your conscience, I've
got it from you. I wonder you don't go and follow after Joseph Dylks too.
All the best and smartest men in the place believe in him. Just look at
Mr. Enraghty! A man with more brains and book learnin' than all the rest
put together; willin' to be the Apostle Paul because Joseph Dylks called
him it, and gets up in the Temple where he used to preach Christ Jesus and
Him crucified, and tells the people to behold their God in Joseph Dylks!
There's just one excuse for him: he's crazy. If he ain't he's the
wickedest man in Leatherwood, the wickedest man in the whole world; he's
worse than Joseph Dylks, because he knows better. Joseph is such a liar
that he could always make himself believe what he said. But it's no use
your stayin' here, David!” She suddenly broke off to turn on her brother.
“If you're a mind to let Jane come, I'll try what I can do with her.”
The old man faltered at the door. “Are you going to tell her, Nancy?”
“I'm not going to tell _you_, whether I am or not, David!”
Her words began harshly, but ended with his name tenderly, pitifully
uttered.
She called after him as he moved from her door, heavily, weakly, more
like an old man than she had noted him yet, “I'll talk to Jane, and
whatever I say will be for her good.” She watched him out of sight from
where she was working; then she went to the door, with some mind to call
more kindly yet to him; but he was not to be seen, and she went back to
her ironing, and ironed more swiftly than before, moving her lips in a
sort of wrathful revery. From time to time she changed her iron for one at
the hearth, which she touched with her wetted finger to test its heat, and
returned to her table with an unconscious smile of satisfaction in its
quick responsive hiss. In her movements to and fro she spoke to the baby,
which babbled inarticulately up to her from the floor. Then she seemed to
forget it, and it was in one of these moments of oblivion that she was
startled by a sharp cry of terror from it. A man was looking in at the
door.
X
The man stood with one foot on the log doorstep outside and the other
planted on the threshold of the cabin.
Nancy came toward him with her iron held at arms' length before her.
“What do you want?” she demanded fiercely.
“Give me to drink,” he said, with a grin.
“Go round to the well,” she answered.
The man bent his body a little forward, and looked in, but he did not
venture to lift his other foot to the threshold. “Where is your husband?”
he asked.
“I have no husband. What is it to you?”
“'Thou sayest well ... for him whom thou now hast, is not thy husband.'
You don't look a bit older, and you're as handsome as ever, Nancy. I
suppose that's his,” he said, turning his eye towards the little one on
the floor, lifted by her hands half upright, and peering at him, in
conditional alarm.
“It's mine,” she retorted.
“Oh, anybody could see that. It's the image of you. And so is our Joey.
You don't let your young ones favor your husbands much, Nancy; and yet you
was not always so set against me. What's your notion letting Joey come to
the Temple?”
“To see for himself what you are.”
“That's what I thought, maybe. Well, he don't seem to take to me much, if
I can judge from his face when he looks my way. I hain't been able to give
him all the attention I may later. But you needn't be troubled about him.
I won't do anything to make you anxious. Nancy, I wish you could feel as
friendly to me as I do to you. Will you let me have something to drink out
of?”
“Go round,” she said, “and I'll bring the gourd to you.”
Dylks laughed, but he obeyed, and found his way to the well where he
lowered the bucket at the end of the swoop, and stood waiting for Nancy to
follow him with the dipper fashioned from a long-necked gourd, as the
drinking cup oftenest was in the western country of those days. She held
it out to him with her head turned and he carried it to his lips from the
brimming bucket.
He drank it empty, and then turned it over with a long, deep “Ah--h--h!”
of satisfaction. “That was good! Good as the buttermilk would have been
that you didn't think to offer me. Well, I thank you for the water,
anyway, you woman of Samaria.” He held the gourd toward her but she did
not take it, and he laughed again. “If you could have had your way without
sin you'd have made it poison, I reckon. Don't you know I could drink
poison the same as water?”
“_You_ don't,” she said, and as he swung the gourd in tacit question
what to do with it since she did not offer to take it, she bade him, “Put
it down.”
He did so, and she set her foot on the thin bowl and crushed it like an
egg shell. He laughed. “Is that the way you feel about me, Nancy? Pity for
the gourd, but don't you believe that if I was to will it so, it would
come good and whole again?”
“_You_ don't believe it,” she said.
“It's not for me to believe or to unbelieve,” he answered. “I am that I
am.”
“Oh, yes,” she taunted him, “you've tried saying such things, and you're
not afraid because it ha'n't killed you yet. You think if you _was_
just a man it would kill you.”
“Who can tell what I think? Perhaps something like what you say has gone
through my mind. Why, Nancy, if you would listen once, I could convince
you of it, too. Come, now, look at it in this light! If God lets a man say
and do what the man pleases--and He _has_ to do it every now and then
according to what the Book tells--why ain't the man equal with God? You
believe, maybe, that you would be struck dead if you said the things that
I do; but why ain't I struck dead? Why, either because it ain't so, at
all, or because I'm God. It stands to reason, don't it? What is God,
anyway? If He was so mighty and terrible, wouldn't He have ways of showing
it in these times just as much as in those old times that we read about in
the Book?
“Don't you know that if there was anything besides you and me, here now,
it would have sent the lightning out of this clear sky and blasted me when
I said, I was God? Well, now we'll try it again. Listen! I _am God_,
Jehovah, ruler of heaven and earth!” He stood a moment, smiling. “There
you see! I'm safe and sound as ever. May be you think it would be worse if
_you_ said I was God. Lots have said it. Last night all Leatherwood
was hanging to my arms and legs down there in the Temple worshiping me. If
I hadn't been God it would have made me sick! No mere man could stand the
praising God gets in the churches all the time. Why that proves I'm what I
say I am, if nothing else does. I saw it from the first; I felt it; I knew
it.” He ended with his laugh.
She stayed herself by the trunk of the tree overhanging the well. “Yes,
you've got all Leatherwood with you, or as good as all, and I don't wonder
it's made you crazy. But don't you be so sure. Some day there's going to
be a reckoning with you, and you're going to wake up from this dream of
yours.” She seemed to gather force as she faced him. “I could feel to be
glad it _was_ a dream; I could feel to pity you. But don't you
believe but what it's going to turn against you. Some day, sooner or
later, some man's going to show the people what you are; some woman--”
[Illustration: “You believe, maybe, that you would be struck dead if you
said the things that I do; but why ain't I struck dead?”]
“There you've said it,” he broke in. “That's what I've come for. You're
the only woman that could hurt me, not because you think you know me the
best, but because you're the bravest woman that ever was. That's why I've
got to have you with me in my dispensation. Male and female created He
them in His image. I can swing all Leatherwood by myself, but
Leatherwood's nothing. If I had you with me we could swing the world!
Nancy, why don't you come to me?” He flung his arms wide and bent his
stalwart shape toward her. “Leatherwood's nothing, I tell you. Why, you
ought to see the towns Over-the-Mountains; you ought to see Philadelphia,
where I came from the last thing. Everywhere the people are waiting for a
sign, just as they've always been, and we would come with a sign--plenty
of signs: the perfect Godhead, male and female, for the greatest sign of
all. Why, I wonder there's a Christian woman living, with the slur that
the idea of just one male God throws on women! Don't you know that the
Egyptians and the Greeks and the Romans, and everybody but the Hebrews,
had a married God, and that the Godhead was husband and wife? If you had
ever read anything at all you would know that.”
The bad, vulgar beauty of his face, set in its flowing beard and hair,
glowed on her.
“You needn't look that way at me, Joseph Dylks,” she answered. “I don't
want any book-l'arning to know what _you_ are. You're what you always
was, a lazy, good-for-nothing--Oh, I don't say you wasn't handsome; that
was what done it for me when I made you my God; but I won't make you my
God now, though you're as handsome as ever you was; handsomer, if that's
any comfort to you.”
“Nothing to what you're coming to me would be, Nancy.”
“You'll have to do without, then. You think you can twist me round your
finger, like you used to, if you willed it, but I've outlived you, you and
your will. Now I want you to go, and not ever come near me again; or I'll
have Laban here, the next time.”
“Laban? Laban? Oh, the man who is not thy husband! I'm not afraid of your
having Laban, here; let him come. I've converted worse sinners than
Laban.” He had remained, bent forward with his gaze still on her; now he
lifted himself, and said, as if it were another word of his spell, “Come,
Nancy!”
She answered, “If I thought there was any mercy in you--”
“Why, I'm All-merciful, as well as All-mighty, Nancy!” he jeered.
“No,”--as if concluding her thought, she said, “it's no use! You couldn't
do a right thing if you wanted to; you can only do wrong things. I see
that.”
“What is right and what is wrong? When you stand by my side in your half
of the godhead, you will know that there is no difference. Why, even a
poor human being can make wrong right by wanting it enough, and with God
there is nothing but one kind of thing, the thing that God allows. It
don't matter whether it's letting the serpent tempt that fool woman in
Eden, or Joseph's brethren selling him into Egypt, or Samuel hewing Agag
in pieces, or the Israelites smiting the heathen, or David setting Uriah
in the forefront of the battle, or Solomon having hundreds of wives; it's
all right if God wills it. You'll say it's put right by what happens to
them that do wrong. Be God yourself and the right and the wrong will take
care of themselves. I want you to come and help me. Why, with the sister
and daughter of old David Gillespie both following me--”
She suddenly shrank from the grandeur of judging of him, to the measure
of her need of his forbearance. “Oh, why can't you let David alone? What's
he ever done to you?”
“What have I ever done to him?” Dylks demanded, temporizing on her ground.
“Why can't you let Jane alone?”
He gave his equine snort, as if the sense of his power could best vent
itself so. “Why can't she let _me_ alone? That girl bothers me worse
than all the other women in Leatherwood put together. She won't _let_
me let her alone.”
“She was all right before you came. Why can't you let her go back to
Hughey Blake?”
“Hughey Blake? Oh! Then it wasn't--” A light of malign intelligence shone
in his eyes. “Well, I haven't got anything against Hughey Blake.”
“Oh, if you'd only let her go back to Hughey! If you'd only let her
alone, I'd--”
“You'd what?” He bounded toward her, and at her recoil he laughed and
said, “I didn't mean to scare you.”
“I wasn't scared. You can't scare _me_, Joseph Dylks. It's past that,
long ago, with you and me. But if I only knowed what you was up to--what
you would really take to let David alone; to let her go back to Hughey
Blake--But there ain't any pity in you!”
“Don't I tell you I'm _full_ of pity? Look here, Nancy; I don't ask
you to come with me, to be one with me, to go halves in the godhead, all
at once. It's been step by step with me: first exhorter, then prophet,
then disciple, then the Son, then the Father: but it's been as easy! You
don't know how faith, the faith of the elect, helps along; and you would
have that from the beginning; they would take you on my word, you wouldn't
have to say or do anything. But that's not what I'm expecting now,” he
hurried to add, smiling at the cloud of refusal in her face. “I'm not
fooling; all I ask now is to have you come and see me do a miracle at
Brother Hingston's to-night. I'll do two miracles if you'll come, and one
will be sending Jane Gillespie away from me and back to Hughey Blake.
You'll want to see that, even if you don't want to see me turn a bolt of
cloth into seamless raiment by the touch of my hand.”
“You are a wicked man, Joseph Dylks,” the woman solemnly answered. “And
I'm sorry I asked you anything. You _couldn't_ do good, if you
tried.” She pulled her sunbonnet across her face, as if to hide it for
shame, and went back slowly toward the cabin.
“Salvation!” Dylks shouted after her, and gave his equine snort. He began
to sing, as he took his way through the woods,
“Plunged in a gulf of dark despair
We wretched sinners lay.”
At first he sang boldly, filling the woods with the mocking of his hymn.
But at the sound of footsteps crackling over the dry falling twigs toward
him intermittently, as if they paused in question, and then resumed their
course toward him, his voice fell, brokenly silencing itself till at the
encounter of a man glimpsed through the trees, and pausing in a common
arrest, it ceased altogether.
“Who are you?” Dylks demanded of the slight, workworn figure before him.
“Laban Billings,” the man faltered.
“Well, then, Laban Billings, make way for the Lord thy God,” Dylks
powerfully returned, and as if he had borne the man down before him, he
strode over the place where he had stood, and lost himself in the shadows
beyond.
Laban hurried on, stumbling and looking back over his shoulder, till he
found himself face to face with Nancy at the door of the shed behind the
cabin. She was looking, too, in the direction Dylks had ceased from their
sight in the woods. They started from each other in mutual fright.
“Nancy!” he entreated. “I didn't see you. I--I wasn't comin' to see you,
indeed, indeed I wasn't. I just thought I might ketch sight of the
baby--It's pretty hard to do without you both! And I was just passin'--Well,
they've knocked off work at the Corners, so's to come to the miracle at
Hingston's Mill to-night--But I'll go right away again, Nancy.”
“You needn't, Laban. Come in and see the baby.”
“Nancy!” he uttered joyfully. Then he faltered, “Do you think it will be
right--”
“Oh, who knows what's right?” she retorted. Then at his stare, she
demanded, “Didn't you run across anybody in the woods?”
“Yes.”
“What did he look like?”
“Like what they tell the Leatherwood God looks like. They're half crazy
about him at the Corners. They don't hardly talk about anything else.”
“Did you think he looked like God?”
“More like Satan, I should say. He's handsome enough for Satan.”
“It was Joseph Dylks.”
“Yes, I s'picioned that.”
“And he's been here, wanting me to go away with him--Over-the-Mountains.”
Laban made a dry sound in his throat and it was by a succession of
efforts that he could say, “And--and--and--”
“Oh, could you _ask_, Laban?” she lamented. “You're my husband,
don't you know it?” At the sound of her lament a little voice of fear and
hope answered from the cabin. The father-hunger came into the man's weak
face, making it strong. “Come in and see our baby, Laban.”
She put out her hand to him innocently like a little girl to a little
boy, and he took it. “I know it's just for the baby; and I feel to thank
you, Nancy,” he said, and together they went into the cabin.
At sight of him the baby crowed recognition. “She knowed you in a
minute,” the mother said, and she straightened the skirt of the little one
which the father had deranged in lifting the child from the floor. “I
don't believe she'll ever forget you; I _reckon_ she won't if I have
any say in it. Me and Joey talks about you every night when we're gettin'
her to sleep.” She gurgled out a half-sob, half-laugh, as the little one
pulled and pushed at his face, which he twisted this way and that, to get
her hand in his mouth. “She always cared more for you than she did for me.
I'll set you a piece, Laban; I was just going to get me a bite of
something; I don't take my meals very regular, with you not here.”
“Well, I _am_ a little hungry with the walk from the Corners, after
such an early breakfast.”
“Well, you just keep her.”
“Oh, _I'll_ keep her,” he exulted.
She hustled about the hearth, getting the simple meal, which she made
more than she had meant, and they had a joyous strange time together at
the leaf she stayed from the well.
He kept the baby in his lap while he ate. Then he walked the floor till
she fell asleep in his arms. When he lifted himself from laying her in the
rough cradle which he had himself made for her, he said, without looking
at the mother, “Now, I must be going, Nancy.”
“Don't go on account of me, Laban,” she said with the same fierce courage
she had shown in driving him from her before. “If it's for me--”
“Nancy, I've thought it all out since I been away. And I reckon I ain't
your husband, in the sight of God. You was right about that; and I won't
ever come back again till--as long as--” He glanced wistfully at the
little one in the cradle, and then he turned to go out of the door.
“And--and--good-by, Nancy.”
She followed him to the door. “Kiss me, Laban!”
He put away the arms she lifted toward him. “No,” he said, “I reckon it
wouldn't be right,” and he turned and walked swiftly away, without looking
back.