The crowd at Hingston's mill grew with the arrival of the unbelievers as
well as the believers in Dylks. They came from all sides, sometimes singly
and sometimes in groups, and the groups came disputing as often as
agreeing among themselves. When a group was altogether believing they
exchanged defiances with a party of those religious outcasts, the Hounds,
disturbers of camp-meetings and baptisms, and notorious mockers, now, of
the Leatherwood god in his services at the Temple. But the invitation
given to see the promised miracle had been _to all_; the Hounds had
felt in it the tenor of a challenge, and they had accepted it defiantly.
They jeered at the believers as these arrived, sometimes hailing them by
name; they neighed and whinnied, and shouted “Salvation!” and in the
intervals of silence they burst out with the first lines of the Believers'
hymn.
There were those who mocked, “I am God Almighty,” “The Father and the Son
are one, and I am both of 'em put together,” and “Oh, Dylks, save us!”
“Don't leave us, Dylks!” “Make the Devil jump, Joseph! Make him rattle his
scales for us!” “Fetch on your miracle!” The believing women turned away;
some of the younger tittered hysterically at a droll profanation of their
idol's name, and then one of the ruffians applauded. “That's right,
sisters! We like to have you enjoy yourselves. Promised to let anybody in
particular see you home to-night?” The girls tried to control themselves,
and laughed the more, and the Hound called, “Say, girls, let's have a
dance--a dance before the Lord.”
Jane Gillespie had come with her father in the family pride which forbade
them to reject each other publicly. The girl stood a little apart from her
father, and near her hung, wistfully, fearfully, the young farmer whom the
neighborhood gossip had assigned her for an acceptable if not accepted
lover. She looked steadfastly away from Hughey Blake, with her head lifted
and her cheeks coldly flushed under the flame of her vivid hair: she was
taller than the other girls, and showed above the young man.
“Say, Hughey,” one of the Hounds spoke across the space they had left
between them and the decent unbelievers, “Can't you gimme a light? Reach
up!” He held out a cigar, in the joke of kindling it at the girl's hair.
Hughey Blake turned, and his helpless retort, “You ought to be ashamed of
yourself,” redoubled the joy of the Hounds. The girl glanced quickly at
him, with what meaning he could not have made out, and it might have been
fear of her which kept him hesitating whether to cross over and fall upon
his tormentor. He looked at her as if for a sign, but she made as if she
had heard nothing; then while he still hesitated a slender, sinewy young
fellow came down the open ground, with a soft jolt in his gait like that
of a rangy young horse. He wore high boots with his trousers pushed
carelessly into their tops, and for a sign of week-day indifference to the
occasion, a checked shirt, of the sort called hickory; he struck up the
brim of his platted straw hat in front with one hand, and with the other
on his hip stood a figure of backwoods bravery, such as has descended to
the romance of later times from the reality of the Indian-fighting
pioneers.
“You fellows keep still!” he called out. “If you don't I'll make you.”
Retorts of varied sense and nonsense came from the Hounds, but without
malice in their note. One voice answered, “I'd like to see you try, Jim
Redfield!”
The other jolted closer toward the line of the Hounds, and leaned over.
“Did I hear somebody speak?” he asked.
“I reckon not, Jim,” the voice of his challenger returned. “Come to join
the band?”
“I didn't come to worry helpless women,” Redfield said.
“That's right, Jim. There's where we're with you. D'you reckon Apostle
Hingston'll let us in to see the miracle if we'll keep the believers
straight while the Almighty is at it?”
“I can't say for Mr. Hingston,” Redfield returned. “But if I was in his
place I'd want to keep my jug out of sight when you fellows were on duty.”
Redfield passed the Gillespies as he lounged back to his place with a
covert glance at the girl, who made no sign of seeing her champion.
The woman who was bringing the body of the miracle came round the corner
of the mill, and showed herself in the open space with the bolt of cloth
borne carefully in her arms.
“Why, it's a baby!” came from that merriest of the Hounds whom Redfield
had turned from an enemy into a troublesome friend of the believers.
“Reckon the women'll have something to say to that if he tries to turn
e'er a baby into seamless raiment.”
The fellow got the laugh he had tried for, and when Redfield looked
toward him again he said, “All right, Jim. I'm keepin' 'em quiet the best
I can. But the elect _will_ make a noise, sometimes.”
The woman with her bundle passed through the open door of the house
behind the mill. The public entrance was at the front where by day the
bags of grain were lifted by rope and tackle to the upper story, and the
farmers who brought them climbed up by the inner stairways. The believers
had expected that they were to come in by way of the dwelling, but now the
burly figure of the miller, with the light of a candle behind it, showed
black in the doorway, and he spoke up, in his friendly voice: “Neighbors,
we want you all to go round to the front of the mill and come in there.
The miracle is going to be done on the bolting-cloth floor, where there
will be room for all that wants to see. We don't mean to keep anybody out,
whether they believe or don't believe. The only thing we want is for you
all to be quiet, and not make trouble. And now, come in as quick as you
can, so you can be sure we haven't had time to do anything to the cloth
that the seamless raiment is going to be made out of.”
“Hounds and everybody?” called that gayest voice among the outcasts.
“Hounds and everybody,” the miller humorously assented, and his black
bulk melted into the dark as the candle disappeared within.
The dim light from tin lanterns threw the pattern of their perforations
on the walls and roofs of the interior, and showed the tracery of the
floury cobwebs. The people could scarcely see their way to the stairs by
the glimmer, and there was more talking with nervous laughter than there
had been outside. One of the Hounds called out, “I don't want any of you
girls to kiss _me!_” and gave the relief of indignation to the
hysterical emotion of the believers; the more serious of the unbelievers
found escape in their helpless laughter from their tense expectation of
triumph in the failure of the promised miracle.
The wide space on the bolting-cloth floor, before the bins mounded high
with new wheat, and the rows of millstones, motionless under their empty
hoppers, was lighted by candles in tin sconces, but these were so few that
they shone only on the foremost faces and left those behind a gleam of
eyes or teeth. The familiar machinery had put on a grewsome strangeness
which had its final touch from the roll lying on the table like something
dead. A table had been set in front of the barrels under the bolting
cloths, and the muslin funnels, empty of flour, hung down into the barrels
with the effect of colossal legs standing in them. The air of the hot
night was close within; a damp odor from the water flowing under the
motionless mill wheels seemed to cool it, but did not; the perspiration
shone on the faces where the light fell on them.
The miller and his family had places in the front line of the spectators,
and with them was the woman who had given the cloth for the miracle; and
who stood staring at the stuff, which she had known so intimately in every
thread and fiber, with an air of estrangement.
When the stumbling feet of the last arrivals ceased on the stairs, the
miller stood out facing the crowd, and told them that he expected the Good
Old Man, now, any minute, together with the Apostle Paul, whom they all
knew by his earthly name as their neighbor, Mr. Enraghty. He asked them to
be as still as they could, and especially after the Good Old Man came, to
be perfectly silent; not to whisper, and not to move if they could help
it. There was nothing, though, he said, to hinder the believers from
joining in their favorite hymn; and at once the wailing of it began to
fill the place. When it ended, the deep-drawn breath of some wearied
expectant made itself heard with the shifting of tired feet easing
themselves. The minutes grew into an hour, with no sign of Dylks or
Enraghty, and the miller was again forced to ask the patience of his
neighbors. But there began to be murmurs from the unbelievers, and more
articulate protests from the Hounds. Some children, whom the believers had
brought with them to see the divine power manifest itself, whimpered, and
were suffered to lie down at the feet of their fathers and mothers and
forget their disappointment in sleep. A babe, too young to be left at
home, woke and cried, and was suckled to rest again, with ironical
applause from the Hounds.
At the end of two hours of waiting, relieved with pleas and promises from
the miller, there was no word from Dylks and no token of his bodily
presence. With the scoffing of the unbelievers, the prayers of the
faithful rose. “Come soon, oh Lord!” “Send thy Power!” “Remember thy
Little Flock!” Upon these at last broke falteringly, stragglingly, a
familiar voice, the voice of Abel Reverdy, kindly and uncouth as himself,
and expressive, like his presence, of an impartial interest in the
feelings of both the faithful and the unfaithful. He was there in the
company of his wife, who held a steadfast place among the believers, while
Abel ranged freely from one party to the other, and could not well have
known himself of either, though friendly with both. He was of a sort of
disapproving friendship even with the Hounds, and now his voice said in
impartial suggestion, “Why not somebody go and fetch him?”
“Good for you, Abel!” came from the Hound who was oftenest spokesman for
the others. “Why don't you go yourself, Abel?”
Other voices applauded, and Abel was beginning to share a general
confidence in his fitness for the mission, when his wife spoke up, “'Deed
and 'deed, I can tell you he ain't agoun' to do no such a thing, not if we
stay here all night, murricle or no murricle. I ain't agoun' to have him
put his head into the Lion of Judah's mouth, and have it bit off, like as
not. I can't tell from one minute to another whether he's a believer or
not, and if anybody is to go for the Good Old Man it's got to be a studdy
believer, and not a turncoat of many colors like Abel.”
If Sally had satisfied her need of chastizing her husband for his
variableness, and found a comfort in her scriptural language, not
qualified by its wandering application, Abel loyally accepted her open
criticism. “That's so, Sally, I ain't the one to send. I misdoubted it
myself, or I'd 'a' gone without sayin' nothin' in the first place. But, as
Sally says,” he addressed the crowd, “it ought to be a believer.”
“Then why not Sally?” a scorner suggested. She did not refuse, and there
was a whispering between her and those next her in debate of the question.
But it was closed by the loud, austere voice of one of the believing
matrons in the apostolic mandate, “Let your women keep silence in the
churches.” The text was not closely apt; it was not a precept obeyed in
the revivals of any of the sects in Leatherwood; it was especially ignored
in the meetings of the Dylks believers; but its proclamation now satisfied
the yearning always rife in them to affiliate their dispensation with the
scriptural tradition.
“Well, that settles it, Sister Coombs,” Sally promptly assented, “I
wasn't agoun' to, anyway, and I ain't agoun' to now, if I stay here all
night, or the Good Old Man don't ever come.”
“Why not Jim Redfield?” a Hound demanded, and the miller tried to be
stern in calling out, “No trifling!” but lost effect by gently adding,
“Friends.” The unbelievers laughed, but the miller's retreat from the bold
stand he had taken was covered by Redfield's threat that if those fellows
kept on he would give them something to laugh about.
As he stepped into the neutral space between the friends and enemies of
Dylks, he had a sort of double fearfulness for the women, because he was
not only not of their faith, but because he was of no religious sect in a
community where every one but an open infidel like Matthew Braile was of
some profession. He came to the Baptist services with his mother, but he
had not been baptized, and he was not seen at the house to house prayer
meetings, where the young people came with the old, or at the frolics
where dancing was forbidden, but not kissing in their games or in their
walks home through the woods. He was not supposed to be in love with any
one, and he lived alone on a rich bottom-land farm with his mother, in a
house which his father had built where his grandfather's log cabin had
stood. He was of a tradition which held him closer to the wilderness than
most of the people of Leatherwood; in the two generations before him the
Redfields had won and held their lands against the Indians, and had fought
them in the duels, from tree to tree, which the pioneers taught the
savages, or learned from them, risking their lives and scalps in the same
chances. He was of the sort of standing which old family gives, even where
all families are new, and he was now making his way politically, in spite
of his irreligion; he meant to go to the legislature, eventually, and in a
leisurely sort he was reading law, and reciting his Blackstone to Matthew
Braile. As he came and went from the old infidel's house, he was apt to
stop at the tavern porch, where the few citizens who could detach their
minds from the things of another world gave them in cloudy conjecture to
the political affairs of this, or to scrutiny of the real motives
actuating the occasional travelers who apparently arrived for a meal's
victuals or a night's lodging. With these Redfield had scarcely a social
life, but he could talk with them almost to the point of haranguing them,
for they were men; at the store, where his mother's errands sometimes took
him, he shrank from the women as timid as they when they dismounted from
their saddles or wagons, and slipped in with their butter and eggs, and
passed out again deeply obscured in their sunbonnets.
They were mostly women past the time of life when men look at them
curiously, but once Redfield was startled by meeting a young girl, as he
was trying to go out, and began losing himself with her in that hopeless
encounter of people who try to give way to each other and keep passing to
the same side at once. Her face and her red hair burned one fire, but at
last she stopped stone still, and let him go by, with a sort of angry
challenge in her blue eyes. He knew that it was Jane Gillespie without
knowing her to speak with, as he would have said, and he knew that against
her father's will she was one of the followers of Dylks. The idolatry was
not yet open and scandalous, but since then he had heard his mother
denouncing her as a worthless hussy with the other women who had worshiped
Dylks in that frenzy at the Temple. He walked up and down, passing near
where she stood with her father and Hughey Blake, and lost his breath at
each approach and caught it again at each remove. It so vividly seemed
that he must speak to her, though he did not know what he wished to say,
that it was as if he really had done so, when he heard one of the Hounds
saying, “Well, and what are you goin' to do about it, Jim?”
Then he heard himself boasting, “I'm going after Dylks myself; and if
he'll come peaceably, and do his miracle I'll take him for my god, and if
he won't, God have mercy on him!”
He was answering his jeering questioner in his words, but his eyes were
on the girl; her own eyes were lowered after a glance at her father and
Hughey Blake, and his vow remained in his ears a foolish vaunt. While he
stood unable to return to his place, a voice which no one knew, came from
the darkness outside.
“Behold,” it said, “I am the Presence of the Most High, and I come to you
with my Peace. The miracle that ye wait to see has been wrought already
unseen of you. The cloth before you has been touched by my Power, and
turned into the seamless raiment which ye seek as a sign. But it shall not
be shown to you now. Ye shall see it seven days and seven nights hence on
the eighth night at the Temple. Till then, have patience, have faith. Thus
saith the Lord.”
The voice died from the medley of scriptural phrase and a shiver of awe
passed over those who had heard. One of the believing women called out,
“Praise ye the Lord!” Then a yell of mockery broke from the Hounds and
some one shouted, “Let's have a look!” and the crowd rushed upon the roll
of cloth which lay on the table, where the woman who had brought it in her
arms had put it, and had stood patiently, anxiously, trustfully waiting.
She spread her arms out over it, with a piteous gesture, like a mother
trying to keep her child from harm. “Oh, don't! Oh, don't!” she implored.
“It's _my_ cloth! I spun it, I wove it, every thread! It's all we've
got for our clothes this winter! Don't touch it, don't tear it!”
[Illustration: “It's _my_ cloth! I spun it, I wove it, every thread!
It's all we've got for our clothes this winter!”]
Her prayer was like a signal for its denial. One of the Hounds pushed her
away and caught the cloth up. “We won't hurt it, Sister Bladen. We just
want to see what a seamless garment looks like, anyway. Maybe it'll fit
some of us. Here, boys, take a hold!”
He held by the outer edge of the cloth, and flung the bolt unfurling
itself toward his fellows over the heads of the believing men who had
crowded forward to save it from the desecration, while the woman tried to
seize it from him, beseeching, imploring, “Oh, don't hurt it, Bill Murray!
Oh, be careful! Don't let it drop! Oh, don't, don't, don't!”
“We can't do it any hurt, Sister Bladen, if it's got a miracle inside of
it,” one of the ruffians mocked. “_You_ tell her we wont hurt it, Jim
Redfield! She'll trust _you!_”
The women believers were sobbing; the men gathered themselves for a
struggle with the surprise sprung upon them, but held back as if in a
superstitious hope of help from the god whom the women seemed not to trust
in his failure of them.
“Here, you fellows!” Redfield shouted over the tossing heads before him.
“What do you want to spoil her cloth for?”
His look and voice had their effect with the angry, pushing, shuffling,
elbowing, wailing, weeping crowd, in a pause like the arrest of curiosity.
“Let go that cloth, Bill,” he said, not with authority, but in a tone of
good fellowship.
The miller interposed with his friendly voice, and it seemed as if the
unbelievers would give way in pity of the poor woman who had brought the
cloth. Suddenly the bolt of stuff which Murray had conditionally yielded
was twitched from Redfield in boisterous fun, and then in the frenzy more
of mischief than malice it was seized by the Hounds, and torn into shreds.
“Find the seamless raiment!” they yelled to one another. The unbelievers
stood aside; the believers did nothing, in a palsy of amaze; the poor
woman, to whom her toil and pride in it had hallowed the stuff, sank down
staying herself on her hands from the floor, in hapless despair. Her
moaning and sobbing filled the place after the tumult of destruction had
been stricken silent. “Oh, I don't care for the miracle,” she kept
lamenting, “but what are my children going to wear this winter? Oh, what
will _he_ say to me!” It was her husband she meant.