of it. As a convalescent Vivian had been endearing to the last degree.
It was congenial to him to be waited upon, and the one severe and
immitigable suffering incidental to his illness (and for which he
secretly promised himself royal amends) was almost made up for by the
knowledge that he had at last discovered Amanda's weak point, and could
hereafter, at least in a measure, hold his own. Vivian did not put it
just this way to himself. He had as great a genius for embroidering
facts as Amanda had for truth. What he said was that he was glad to
find that his wife was fond of him, after all. And in a beautiful
spirit he forgave her, and took her to his heart.
This is what Fauquier County understood. But it did not forgive Amanda.
A year later the county might have forgiven her, if she had borne the
misfortune that came to her more meekly. But revolutions of character
are seldom permanent, and Amanda, after compromising with her own
judgment because it found her consistently severe, entered into that
debatable territory where we are swayed alternately by a desire to be
gentle and an impulse to be sharp.
"I don't mean to reproach ye, honey," her mother said, one day when
Amanda was spending the day with her; "but somehow, yo' temper ain't so
even as it used to be. You wuz always high--wantin' things yo' own way.
It ain't so much that now. But you's mo' easy upset than you used to
be."
Amanda turned her dark eyes upon her mother. They were beautiful still.
But that crisis of a woman's life when her beauty begins to fade had
come to her early.
Upon her lap lay a three months' old baby. It had a look of vigor, and
a certain weird beauty about its little face; but not for an instant
during her almost passionate care of it had Amanda been able to forget
something that the flowing robes concealed from casual glances. The
child was hopelessly deformed.
"Yes, dearie, I know," said Mrs. Powell, her gaze following Amanda's
as it was bent upon the sleeping infant. "I know it's a trial. And I'm
ashamed I said anything. Nobody need t' wonder at yo' bein' a mite out
o' gear. But trust the good Laud, Mandy, and He'll bring everything out
right, yit."
"Will He straighten baby's back, do you think, mother? Or do you mean
that He will make things right by letting it die?"
Mrs. Powell's color arose, and she did not venture to reply. Could any
one but a mother wish the child to live?
"He will not die," said Amanda, laying her hand softly on the baby's
thick golden hair. There was intense feeling in the low tone, but with
her next words her voice took on a hard quality that Mrs. Powell had
learned to associate with acute distress. "He will live," she cried,
but not loudly; "live to reproach his father for a sin so dark that
no one can name it. Aye, we must hush it up. This is a 'visitation of
Providence,' in the opinion of our good friends. Well, I don't call it
that. The truth is that it's a visitation of _liquor_, of----"
"Hush, hush, Mandy!"
"Excuse my lack of delicacy," said Amanda, with biting scorn. Not
scorn of her mother, but of the idea of the county as reflected in her
mother. She leaned back and drew a fleecy white shawl carefully over
the baby's shoulders, then resumed sadly:
"I could stand it better, if I was free from blame in my own eyes. I
tell you, mother, the only real hell is in knowing you're wrong, and
feeling, to the bottom of your heart that you've brought suffering upon
others by being wrong."
"My dear child," quavered good Mrs. Powell, "you's morbid. Yo' notion
ain't the right notion at all. How could you ahelped the pore child's
bein' so?"
"By standing to my colors. By obeying my own conscience, no matter what
the world said."
"Mandy, yo' own sense must tell you't you couldn't ahelped it, noway.
Even if you'd kept on thinkin' 's you done. It wuz took out'n yo'
hands. You done yo' duty in stayin' by Vivian when he wuz laid low, an'
nobody kin do mo'n their duty."
"It was my duty to nurse him. And after that--after he was _well_, I
should have--gone."
"Now, I reely thought you got fond o' Vivian, an' I wuz thankin' the
Laud for it."
"Oh, women are mostly fools," answered Amanda, sweepingly. "But don't
thank the Lord for it, mother. The fruits of folly are more bitter than
the fruits of wilful sins, I think."
"Mandy," said Mrs. Powell, rising in all the might of her sensible,
hearty, well-balanced nature; "it won't do to be furever dwellin'
'pon what we've failed to do, an' what we ought to adone. This world
ain't heaven, and we's right to rejoice with tremblin'; but there's a
sayin' I want to recommend to yo' pore, worn heart: 'Again I say unto
ye, rejoice.' That's it, honey. Stop worryin' an' frettin' an' leave
things you can't alter if you wuz to kill yo'self tryin'.
"An' now I'm a-goin' to hev Liza make a co'n pudden' an' whip up cream
fur the peaches, an' you must please me by puttin' away everything else
an' givin' yo' mind to enjoyin' a right good dinner. Thar's miseries in
the world, to be shore, but thar's comfort too, an' to my thinkin' it's
mighty good common sense to take our fill o' creature comforts as we
go along, fur we's only got a certain length o' time to stay 'pon this
'arth, an' we might as well make the best on it."
"There are some things that have no best side," said Amanda; but she
said it rather faintly. After all, there was logic in what her mother
expressed. She knew that nothing in the world now could alter her
opinion of Vivian; nothing should ever again alter her attitude toward
him. But was there any comfort or happiness to be got out of life still?
Mrs. Powell had left the room, after pressing a kiss upon her
daughter's cheek, and another upon the hair of the sleeping baby.
Through the window came the sound of Nellie's voice, exclaiming to her
little colored playmates in vivacious accents: "There's papa coming!
Grandma said he was coming to dinner;" and in another moment she
skipped into the room with her hand in that of the fine-looking man who
appeared before his wife hat in hand, wearing a gentle, deprecating
smile.
Amanda arose quickly, pressing her baby to her breast, and stood
looking at him with fire in her eyes. Am I never to be safe from your
intrusion? her look said. But her lips were mute, and with a lately
learned self-control she remained silent, while he filled in the
embarrassing moment with the graceful, fluent phrases ever at his
command.
"What a magnificent woman she is," thought Vivian, as he threw himself
into a chair, and began to entertain little Nellie with some funny
anecdote, intensely conscious all the while of the stately, stern
presence that ignored him.
Suddenly her gown brushed his knees as she passed him on her way to the
door, and he glanced up rather uneasily.
"I'm only going to lay baby on the bed," she said in a low tone, not
without the trace of contempt she could never nowadays keep out of
her voice when speaking to him. But in the other room, while she was
bending over her little one, there came to her one of those humorous
suggestions that visit us now and then, to lighten our periods of
depression.
"Man is, after all, only a kind of stomach, and friendship but an
eating together." The sentence was from Carlyle, perhaps; anyway, it
was applicable to the situation. What was the use of making such a
serious affair out of living?
"Oh, yes, it is easy enough to be upon friendly terms 'if friendship is
but an eating together,'" Amanda said to herself, grimly.
Half an hour later Mrs. Powell, sitting, flushed and anxious at the
head of her hospitable table, rejoiced at the amenities that passed
between her two guests, and whispered to her own heart that everything
was coming out right, in the end. And to this determined optimism
Amanda, who interpreted her mother's beaming looks perfectly, made no
sign of dissent. But Vivian, even with his facile acceptance of all
things in his favor, could not help but realize to-day, very strongly,
that Amanda would never be to him, so long as she lived, anything but
an icicle. With her temper, it might have been worse than that.
PETER WEAVER.[2]
I.
SNEAKING CREEK CHURCH had an unusually full attendance on the Sunday
morning that saw Miles Armstrong's first wrestle with his Satanic
majesty, in the interests of that congregation.
He was a well-grown boy of twenty, or so, with the look of an eager
colt scenting its first honors in the wind, and determined to strain
every nerve to come in ahead at the finish. The bright, brown eye,
large and deep, turning here and there with a half-timid, half-bold
gaze, the quivering nostril and tossing chestnut mane over his long
head gave him a likeness to a high-bred horse, scarcely broken yet, and
destined to kick the traces somewhat before settling down to a steady
pace.
The accommodations offered by the Second Baptist Church to its
preachers were not luxurious. A straight-backed cane chair, and a small
square table holding a bible and a pitcher of water were the creature
comforts that stole gently upon the senses of young Armstrong after his
ten-mile gallop over Fauquier County roads that morning.
Nothing cared he for creature comforts. Nothing either, for the fact
that the congregation facing him was composed of Fauquier County's
choicest and best in the line of hereditary sinners; clothed in fine
raiment and conscious of waiting carriages and servants outside, and
of choice viands upon solid silver dishes at the end of their journey
homeward after they had listened to the sermon. To him all these
personages, in rustling silks and fine broadcloth, all these Haywoods,
and Gordons, and Dudleys were so many sick souls, needing the cordial
of the true gospel; so many criminally blind beings with feet turned
toward destruction, careless of the light and life they might have by
an effort that, to him, in his young zeal, seemed so simple and slight;
to them, perhaps, involving sacrifices beyond his experience and power
to imagine.
Immediately in front of the platform stood the organ, and seated bolt
upright before this was Miss Lavinia Powell, in a green silk waist
with skin-tight sleeves that prevented her raising her arms to her
head to twist up the wisp of gray hair straggling from her door-knob
_coiffeur_, and which consequently held the uneasy attention of a
nervous woman in her rear all church time. Had the hair belonged to
anybody else than Miss Lavinia Powell, the neighbor would have ventured
to reach over and adjust it. But no one ever performed familiar offices
for Miss Powell. She was the quintessence of spinsterhood, and her
weapons of defense were two gray eyes like a ferret's; of offense--a
tongue unparalleled for point.
Two-thirds of the people were wondering what Miss Lavinia thought of
the new preacher. He was not yet permanently engaged. Underneath all
his concentrated purpose to utter telling truths this morning, lurked
the consciousness that he was on probation. He felt, even though it
was impossible that he could have heard the whisper that was running
around the church while he gave out the first hymn. It began in the pew
occupied by a couple of girls who were visiting old Mrs. Powell, who
sat with her sweet, serene face turned toward the young preacher with a
look of beautifully blended respect and benevolence. She heard none of
the gossip carried on by her nieces.
"Is he ordained?"
"No, indeed. Not a minister at all yet."
"He's experienced sanctification, though."
"You don't say so!"
"Yes, but he fell from grace, they say. Perhaps that's why he looks so
melancholy."
"Do you think he looks melancholy? To me he just looks earnest. He's
got splendid eyes, but they're awfully deep. I'd be proud of a man with
eyes like that, wouldn't you?"
A smothered giggle, and a murmur to a friend in the next pew.
"Do you believe in sanctification? The preacher's experienced it."
Nellie Thomas heard the last remark, and from that moment her
reverential gaze was fixed upon the thin, earnest face of the youthful
preacher. Her heart bowed before the spiritual power abiding in him.
She received the sermon as a divine message, humbly responsive to the
persuasive words that sought to arouse a conviction of sin in all
hearers.
"We are all of us in the mire of sin," uttered the clear young voice
in solemn accents. "Every one of us should take shame to himself for
his sins. You that wear elegant clothes and live in great houses are
no better than the beggar--the tramp--that goes from one back door to
another--in the matter of sin. The back door of the Father's house is
the door we'll have to go to when we want to enter into heaven. If
you are proud and lofty-minded, and think yourself good enough to be
admitted at the front door it is all the more certain that you'll be
turned away and made to go around to the back entrance, and made to
wait there knocking a long time before you are let in. And good enough
for you, too. Are any one of us fit to enter into the presence of the
Lord? If any one of us thinks so he ought to take shame to himself for
the notion. If I had such a false notion in my own head I'd take shame
to myself for it."
The sermon went on, the emphatic voice falling at the end of every
sentence as if the speaker had the intent to drive home his argument
by verbal knocks. The respectable audience was browbeaten and held up
to ridicule for its pretensions to virtue; it was proved conclusively
that not a hope of salvation could be reasonably cherished by a single
person present. Proved to the general mind. A few persons remained in
doubt, and one--a man seated with folded arms in the middle of the
church--continued utterly skeptical. He had attended closely to the
sermon, his broad, ruddy face expressing throughout a kindly sympathy
with the preacher, curiously mingled with concern. Now and then he had
allowed a great sigh to escape him, and once he moved restlessly as
if impelled to utter a protest. But he mastered the impulse and kept
quiet until the final word was said, and the preacher in an agitated
voice gave out the last hymn. All the hymns had been mournful. This
was brighter. Perhaps the congregation embraced the opportunity for a
change of mood, for the hymn swelled out with unwonted vigor, nearly
every one falling in with the second stanza.
A powerful bass voice projected itself from the lungs of the
good-humored-looking skeptic. Throwing back his head he roared forth a
melodious bellow that drowned all other individual accents--save one.
Nellie Thomas' bird-like tones thrilled their roundelay of worship with
the silvery clearness of the skylark. With the freshness and innocence
of some lark reared on the top bough of a giant tree, high above the
strife and guilt of the world. The throb of feeling in the tones came
from the same source that a child's emotions of worship come from;
an awed sense of personal inferiority to some element of perfection
dwelling somewhere in the universe, and approached on timid wings of
faith. Unconscious of self, her sweet voice brightened and strengthened
until the mass of sound outside seemed but a great accompaniment, the
mighty single bass bearing her up as if it held her aloft in its arms.
This was what Peter Weaver came to church for. Singing devotional songs
with little Nellie was the crown and cap-sheaf of the week's silent,
unrecognized worship that was carried on with the generous abandonment
of a mind seeking no reward beyond the privilege of devoting itself to
its cherished object. The simple, brave soul lodged in Peter's huge
frame joyed in surrounding the young girl with a protecting fondness
that was like an invisible shield interposed between her and harm.
He had never cared for any other girl, and he had cared for her ever
since she--a radiant maid of six years in a pink lawn frock and white
sun-bonnet--entered the old school-house door one morning twelve years
before, and transformed the loutish boy puzzling over sums, into a
poet and a knight-errant, bound forever to her service. During all
these years that he had carried her school-books, gathered wild-flowers
for her from dangerous mountain crevasses, and catered to her gentle
whims in every way a man might, who bore her continually in his heart
and studied how best to give her pleasure, Peter had never broken in
upon this friendship by a word of the sentiment of which his poet-soul
was full. Nellie, called by her admirers the beauty of Virginia, was
to him the living embodiment of the sweetbriar rose, too delicate,
too sensitive to be plucked and worn, even by one worthy of that
distinction. Himself, he thought scarce worthy to tie her little shoe.
And yet, except in contrast with this Dresden china creature, with her
skin of milk and roses, her golden brown eyes so soft and shy, and her
cloud of sunny curls, fine as floss, the modest farmer-poet, tied
by circumstances to homely tasks, was not a man to be despised. His
height, which was six feet two inches, was sustained by good breadth
of shoulder and shapeliness of limb. His round head, covered with
short, crisp, black locks, was well set, and his pleasant eyes, of
an opaque blue like the hue of old Dutch pottery, looked out at you
with a frank and honest expression. There was too much color in his
cheek, but it was a clear, bright red, showing healthy blood beneath,
as free from venom as his nature. He was now thirty-two years old,
and his philosophical temperament, not wanting in capacity for deep
thinking, made his years set lightly upon him. He was still rather a
great boy than a mature man, in the opinion of most people, and perhaps
of all the men and women in Fauquier County who knew and liked Peter
Weaver, but one person recognized and appreciated the sound, sane mind,
the capacity for heroic action that lay beneath his eccentricities
and commonplace, almost awkward bearing. This friend was Amanda
Thomas, the widowed mistress of Benvenew, called Mistress Amanda, to
distinguish her from old widow Thomas, her mother-in-law.
Mistress Amanda's strong character rather than any external advantages
had made her an important personage in the county. Her kinsfolk, the
Powells, were impoverished, and her husband, the bright particular star
of the sporting set, had left her an affectionate legacy of debts,
together with an invalid child whose malady set him apart from the
working world and enshrined him in his mother's heart as something to
be tenderly cherished at any cost to herself or others. This boy was
never seen out of his home, and people whispered dark stories of his
strange and dangerous moods, in which no one could do anything with him
save Peter Weaver.
No wonder, then, that Peter Weaver, whose oddities were not upheld
by an ancient Virginia family name, was, nevertheless, welcomed as a
favorite guest at Benvenew, where many a proud youngster hung about,
thinking himself rewarded for hours of patient homage to the stately
mistress, by a glimpse of shy Nellie. He and Mistress Amanda had
come to that complete understanding when a glance interchanged means
a whole volume of explanation. It was natural for this glance to be
interchanged when they differed from prevailing opinions.
Therefore, it was this great lady's gaze that caught and held the
doubtful look that Peter threw toward the preacher while the final
argument was being made as to the absolute necessity for all of them
to be bowed down in humiliation over their sins. Some rapid question
and answer seemed to pass between the two that left Peter satisfied. He
threw himself into the singing with more than common zeal, and when the
moment came for a general relaxing from the stiffness of sermon-tide
he walked out of his pew and up toward the front with a fixed purpose
plainly written upon his face.
The youthful preacher had stepped down from the platform, and with the
step he seemed to become another man. All the severity had vanished
both from countenance and manner. Bright, kind, with a suppressed
liveliness that became in the passage from heart to tongue cheerful
and witty response to the pleasant clamor around him, he was like a
man who had thrown off the weight of a heavy responsibility, and got
back home again. But outward transformations are not to be taken as
signs of deep internal changes. The man who laughs at your dinner table
is the same man who refused to abate his stern judgment against your
brother yesterday. He is not to be played with because he chooses to be
humorous.
Peter Weaver was now standing beside the preacher. Mistress Amanda
introduced them, and then turned so that her voluminous draperies made
a barrier between the two men and the groups behind.
Young Armstrong's slim hand yielded a ready clasp to the mighty grip of
the farmer-poet, who was anxious to express in this greeting more than
usual good-will and interest. To balance what he had made up his mind
it was his duty to say.
"I'm shore them that have a better right than me to express an opinion
have thanked you for your sermon," said Peter. Always slow, his speech
was now even ponderous, through anxiety to find appropriate words. Some
of his thickness of his Dutch grandfather's tongue had descended to
him, along with a short-sighted and earnest devotion to duty.
Armstrong answered by some light word, divining, by that
super-sensitiveness of the young enthusiast, that a criticism was in
the air. He looked up at the honest red face half a head higher than
his own pale one, with a little curiosity. Peter's kindliness was so
vast that he felt like a school-boy being forgiven by the professor of
moral philosophy. A strange feeling for an expounder of the sacred word
to experience in the presence of an apparently commonplace man.
"It was a good sermon," Peter went on; "that is, good because there
was an honest purpose in it. But I don't agree with you, sir."
"Don't you?" retorted the preacher, smiling. He was not displeased that
his first sermon contained stuff for argument.
"You see, your point of view is the point of view of a well-meaning
but inexperienced young man. The world isn't near as bad as you made
it out. There's a lot of good in human nature, and you'll find it out
after awhile. I'm not afraid but what you'll find it out. But I'd be
sorry to have you go on saying all these hard things that don't do any
good. The only way to make people better is to take hold of some good
thing about 'em and build on it. The world wants to be encouraged, not
discouraged, sir!"
Armstrong felt now like a boy in the infant class being lectured by the
Sabbath-school superintendent. His white teeth closed down over his
lower lip. It galled him to have to look up to meet the eyes of this
singular individual. But he rallied himself gallantly.
"Oh, I think very well of human nature," he said, in his strong, clear
tones. "But you know we must not look at things from _that_ standpoint.
Anything short of perfection is rottenness in the eyes of God. And who
among us is anywhere near perfect?"
"Still, the world wants encouraging," repeated Peter.
It was the idea he had intended to emphasize. He wished that this fine
young man and himself were seated on the porch of his little green
cottage, with a pipe apiece, and the afternoon before them to talk the
matter out. But nearly everybody had left the church. Only half a dozen
or so lingered to exchange a word with the preacher. Courteous Peter
felt that he had been to the fore long enough. He extended his hand
again, and gave Armstrong's a cordial grip.
"Your face contradicts your preaching," he concluded, backing away
reluctantly. "You'll not be so severe when you let yourself be as much
in sympathy with people as nature meant you to be!"
He bowed in his ungainly fashion, and walked on out. Armstrong's
attention was immediately engaged by Mistress Amanda, who invited him
to go home with her to dinner. She had listened with keen interest
to the little exchange of views between the preacher and Peter. Her
sympathy was with Peter. She had less toleration than he for the
intolerance of others. There is no bigotry like the bigotry of an
egoistic mind that thinks itself liberal; and Mistress Amanda felt an
impatient contempt for the hard and fast Calvinism of the preacher.
But personal preferences were not allowed to stand in the way of
hospitality. The preacher was pressed to come to Benvenew and stay
over until Monday, when he could ride back to Roselawn, the Armstrong
dwelling, in the cool air of the morning.