At half-past six o’clock a little company of people passed down the
village street in the direction of the Lennox farm-house.
They advanced in silence, stepping along the frozen ridges of the road.
It was cold, but there was no snow. There was a young moon shining
through thin white clouds like nebulæ.
Now and then, as the company went on, new recruits were gathered from
the scattered houses. A man would emerge darkly from a creaking gate,
with maybe a second and third dark figure following, with a flirt of
feminine draperies. “There’s Deacon Scranton,” or “There’s Thomas
Jennings and his wife and Ellen,” the people would murmur to one
another.
Once a gleam of candle-light from an open door lay across the road in
advance, and wavered into darkness with a slam of the door when the
company drew near. Then a solitary woman came ponderously down the
front walk, seeming to jar the frozen earth with the jolt of her great
feminine bulk. “There’s Abby Mosely,” somebody muttered. Sometimes
two young girls fluttered out of a door-yard, clinging together with
nervous giggles and outcries, which were soon hushed. They moved along
with the others, their little cold fingers clinging together with a
rigid clutch. It was as if a strange, solemn atmosphere surrounded this
group moving along the country road in the starlit night. Whoever came
into their midst felt it, and his emotions changed involuntarily as
respiration changes on a mountaintop.
When the party reached a windy hill-top in sight of the lighted windows
of the Lennox house in the valley below, it numbered nearly twenty.
Half-way down the hill somebody else joined them. He had been standing
ahead of them, waiting in the long shadow of a poplar, and they had not
discerned him until they were close to him. Then he stepped forward
and the shadow of the tree was left motionless. The young girls half
screamed, he appeared so suddenly, and their nerves were strained. The
elders made a solemn hushed murmur of greeting. They knew as soon as
he moved that he was Isaac Penfield. He had a martial carriage of his
shoulders, he was a captain in the militia, and he wore an ash-colored
cloak, which distinguished him.
The young girls cast glances, bolder from the darkness, towards his
stately ash-colored shoulders and the pale gleam of his face. Not one
of them who had not her own lover but had her innocent secret dreams
about this Isaac Penfield. Now, had a light shone out suddenly in the
darkness, their dreams would have shown in their faces.
One slender girl slunk softly around in the rear darkness and crept so
close to Isaac Penfield that his ash-colored cloak, swinging out in the
wind, brushed her cheek. He did not notice her; indeed, after his first
murmur of salutation, he did not speak to any one.
They all went in silence down the hill, and flocked into the yard of
the Lennox house. There was a red flicker of light in the kitchen
windows from the great hearth fire, but a circle of dark heads and
shoulders hid the fire itself from the new-comers. There was evidently
a number of people inside.
Deacon Scranton raised the knocker, and the door was opened
immediately. Melissa Lennox stood there holding a candle in a brass
candlestick, with the soft light streaming up on her fair face. She
looked through it with innocent, anxious blue eyes at the company.
“Won’t you walk in?” she said, tremulously, and the people passed into
the south entry, and through the door on the left into the great Lennox
kitchen. Some dozen persons who had come from the other end of the
village were already there.
Isaac Penfield entered last. Melissa did not see him until he stepped
suddenly within her radius of candle-light. Then she started, and bent
her head before him, blushing. The candle shook in her outstretched
hand.
Isaac Penfield took the candle without a word and set it on the stairs.
Then he took Melissa’s slim right hand in his, and stood a moment
looking down at her bent head, with its parted gloss of hair. His
forehead was frowning, and yet he half smiled with tender triumph.
“Come out in the front yard with me a moment,” he whispered. He pulled
her with gentle force towards the door, and the girl yielded, after a
faint murmur of expostulation.
Out in the front yard Isaac Penfield folded a corner of his ash-colored
cloak around Melissa’s slender shoulders.
“Now I want you to tell me, Melissa,” he whispered. “You are not still
carried away by all this?” He jerked his head towards the kitchen
windows.
Melissa trembled against the young man’s side under the folds of his
cloak.
“You are not, after all I said to you, Melissa?”
She nodded against his breast, with a faint sob.
“I hoped you would do as I asked you, and cut loose from this folly,”
Isaac Penfield said, sternly.
“Father--says--it’s true. Oh, I am afraid--I am afraid! My sins are so
great, and I cannot hide from the eyes of the Lord. I am afraid!”
Isaac Penfield tightened his clasp of the girl’s trembling figure, and
bent his head low down over hers. “Melissa, dear, can’t you listen to
me?” he whispered.
Suddenly the kitchen door opened, and a new light streamed across the
entry.
“Melissa, where be you?” called a woman’s voice, high-pitched and
melancholy.
“There’s mother calling,” Melissa said, in a frightened whisper, and
she broke away and ran into the house.
Her mother stood in the kitchen door. “Where have you been?” she began.
Then she stopped, and looked at Isaac Penfield with a half-shrinking,
half-antagonistic air. This stalwart young man, radiant with the
knowledge of his own strength, represented to this delicate woman, who
was held to the earth more by the tension of nerves than the weight of
matter, the very pride of life, the material power which she was to
fear and fight for herself and for her daughter.
“I thought I would step into your meeting to-night, if I were
permitted,” Isaac Penfield said.
Mrs. Lennox looked at him with deep blue eyes under high, thin temples.
“All are permitted who listen to the truth with the right spirit,”
said she, and turned shortly and glided into the kitchen. Melissa and
Isaac followed.
The company sat in wide semicircles, three deep, before the fire. In
the open space between the first semicircle and the fire, his wide
arm-chair on the bricks of the broad hearth, half facing the company,
sat Solomon Lennox. Near him sat his deaf-and-dumb son Alonzo. He held
up a large slate so the firelight fell upon it, and marked upon it with
a grating pencil. He screwed his face with every stroke, so it seemed
that one watching attentively might discern the picture itself from his
changing features.
Alonzo Lennox was fourteen years old, but he looked no more than ten,
and he had been deaf and dumb from his birth. The firelight gave a
reddish tinge to his silvery blond hair, spreading out stiffly from the
top of his head over his ears like the thatch of a hut. His delicate
irregular profile bent over the slate; now and then a spasm of silent
merriment shook his narrow chest, and the surrounding people looked at
him with awe. They regarded it as the mystic ecstasy of a seer.
Melissa and her mother had slid softly through the semicircles to the
chairs they had left. Isaac Penfield stood on the outskirts, towering
over all the people, refusing a seat which somebody offered him. He
threw off his ash-colored cloak and held it on his arm. His costume of
fine broadcloth and flowered satin and glittering buttons surpassed
any there, as did his face and his height and his carriage; and, more
than all, he stood among the others raised upon a spiritual eminence,
unseen, but none the less real, which his ancestors had reared for
him before his birth. The Penfield name had been a great one in that
vicinity for three generations. Once Penfields had owned the larger
part of the township. Isaac’s father, and his grandfather before him,
had been esquires, and held as nearly the position of lords of this
little village as was possible in New England. Now this young man was
the last of his race, living, with his housekeeper and an old servant,
in the Penfield homestead; and the village adulation which had been
accorded to his ancestors was his also in a large measure.
To-night, as he entered, people glanced at him, away from Alonzo and
his slate, but only for a moment. The matter under discussion that
night was too solemn and terrible to be lost sight of long.
In about ten minutes after Isaac Penfield entered, the boy gave a
shout, grating and hideous, with a discord of human thoughts and senses
in it. A shudder passed over the company like a wind.
Alonzo Lennox sprang up and waved the slate, and his father reached
out for it. “Give it to me,” he demanded, sternly, as if the boy could
hear. But Alonzo gave another shout, and leaped aside, and waved the
slate out of his father’s reach. Then he danced lightly up and down
on the tips of his toes, shaking his head and flinging out fantastic
heels. His shock of hair flew out wildly, and looked like a luminous
crown; the firelight struck his dilated eyes, and they gleamed red.
The people watched him with sobbing breaths and pale faces, all except
Isaac Penfield and one other. Isaac stood looking at him, with his
mouth curling in a scornful smile. Solomon Lennox stood aside with a
startled air, then he caught the boy firmly by the arm and grasped the
slate.
Alonzo grinned impishly in his father’s face, then he let go the
slate, and sank down on his stool in the chimney-corner. There he sat
submissive and inactive, except for the cunning, sharp flash of his
blue eyes under his thatch of hair.
Solomon Lennox held the slate to the light and looked at it, while the
people waited breathless, their pale intent faces bent forward. Then he
handed the slate, without a word, to the man at the end of the first
semicircle, and it was circulated through the entire company. As one
passed the slate to another a shuddering thrill like an electric shock
seemed to be passed with it, and there was a faint murmur of horror.
Isaac Penfield held the slate longest, and examined it closely. Drawn
with a free hand, which certainly gave evidence of some inborn artistic
skill aside from aught else, were great sweeping curves of wings
upbearing an angel with a trumpet at his mouth. Under his feet were
lashing tongues as of flames, with upturned faces of agony in the midst
of them. And everywhere, between the wings and the angel and the flames
and the faces, were, in groups of five, those grotesque little symbols
of the sun, a disk with human features therein, which one sees in the
almanacs.
After Isaac Penfield had finished looking at the mystic slate he passed
it to Solomon Lennox’s elder brother, Simeon, who sat at his right. The
old man’s hard shaven jaws widened in a sardonic grin; his small black
eyes twinkled derisively over the drawings. “Pretty pictures,” he said,
half aloud. Then he passed the slate along with a contemptuous chuckle,
which was heard in the solemn stillness all over the room.
Solomon Lennox gave a furious glance in his brother’s direction. “This
is no time nor season for scoffers!” cried he. And his voice seemed to
shock the air like a musket-shot.
Simeon Lennox chuckled again. Solomon’s right hand clinched. He
arose; then sat down again, with his mouth compressed. He sat still
until the slate had gone its rounds and returned to the boy, who sat
contemplating it with uncouth delight; then he stood up, and the words
flowed from his mouth in torrents. Never at a loss for subject-matter
of speech was Solomon Lennox. By the fluency of his discourse he might
well have been thought inspired. He spoke of visions of wings and holy
candlesticks and beasts and cups of abomination as if he had with his
own eyes seen them like the prophet of old. He expounded strange and
subtle mathematical calculations and erratic interpretations of history
as applied to revelation with a fervor which brought conviction to his
audience. He caught the slate from his deaf-and-dumb son, and explained
the weird characters thereon. The five suns were five days. Five times
the sun should arise in the east, as it had done from the creation;
then should the angel, upborne on those great white wings, sound his
trumpet, and the flames burst forth from the lower pit, and those
upturned faces in the midst of them gnash with despair.
“Repent, for the day of the Lord is at hand!” shouted Solomon Lennox at
the close of his arguments, and his voice itself rang like a trumpet
full of all intonations and reverberations, of awe and dread. “Repent,
for the great and dreadful day of the Lord is at hand! Repent while
there is yet time, while there is yet a foothold on the shore of the
lake of fire! Repent, repent! Prepare your ascension robes! Renounce
the world, and all the lust and the vanity thereof! Repent, for the
day of judgment is here! Soon shall ye choke with the smoke of the
everlasting burning, soon shall your eyes be scorched with the fiery
scroll of the heavens, your ears be deafened with the blast of the
trumpet of wrath, and the cry against you of your own sins! Repent,
repent, repent!”
Solomon Lennox’s slight figure writhed with his own emotion as with
internal fire; the veins swelled out on his high bald forehead; his
eyes blazed with fanatical light. Aside from the startling nature of
his discourse, he himself was a marvel, and a terror to his neighbors.
His complete deviation from a former line of life produced among them
the horror of the supernatural. He affected them like his own ghost. He
had always been a man of few and quiet words, who had never expressed
his own emotions in public beyond an inaudible, muttered prayer at a
conference meeting, and now this flood of fiery eloquence from him
seemed like a very convulsion of human nature.
When a great physical malady is epidemic there are often isolated
cases in remote localities whose connection with the main disturbance
cannot be established. So in this little New England village, far from
a railroad, scarcely reached by the news of the day, Solomon Lennox
had developed within himself, with seeming spontaneity, some of the
startling tenets of Joseph Miller, and had established his own small
circle of devoted disciples and followers. It was as if some germs of
a great spiritual disturbance had sought, through some unknown medium,
this man’s mind as their best ripening place.
After Solomon had arisen one night in conference meeting and poured
forth his soul to his startled neighbors in a strain of fiery prophecy,
Millerite publications had been sent for, and he had strengthened
his own theories with those of the original leader, although in many
respects his maintained a distinct variance.
The effect of Solomon’s prophecies had been greatly enhanced by the
drawings of his deaf-and-dumb son. Alonzo Lennox’s slate, covered with
rude representations of beasts and trumpets and winged creatures--the
weird symbolic figures of the prophet Daniel--had aroused a tumult of
awe and terror in the village. And the more so because the boy had
never learned the language of the deaf and dumb, and had no ordinary
and comprehensible means of acquiring information upon such topics.
To-night, as his father spoke, he kept his blue eyes upon his face
with such a keen look that it seemed almost impossible that he did not
hear and comprehend every word. Unbelievers in this new movement were
divided between the opinion that Lonny Lennox had heard more than folks
had given him credit for right along, and the one that he understood
by some strange power which the loss of his other faculties had
sharpened.
“The boy has developed the sixth sense,” Isaac Penfield thought as he
watched his intent face upturned towards his father’s; and he also
thought impatiently that he should be cuffed and sent to bed for his
uncanny sharpness. He grew more and more indignant as the time went on
and the excitement deepened. He watched Melissa grow paler and paler,
and finally press her slender hands over her face, and shake with sobs,
and made a sudden motion as if he would go to her. Then he restrained
himself, and muttered something between his teeth.
Old Simeon Lennox watched him curiously, then he hit him in the side
with a sharp elbow. “Made up your mind to go up in our family chariot
on the last day?” he whispered, with a hoarse whistle of breath in
Isaac’s ear. Then he leaned back, with a long cackle of laughter in his
throat, which was unheard in the din of his brother’s raging voice and
the responsive groans and sobs.
Isaac Penfield colored, and kept his eyes straight forward and his head
up with a haughty air. Presently the old man nudged him again, with the
sharpness of malice protected by helplessness. “Guess,” he whispered,
craning up to the young man’s handsome, impatient face--“guess you
’ain’t much opinion of all this darned tomfoolery neither.”
Isaac shook his head fiercely.
“Well,” said the old man, “let ’em go it,” and he cackled with laughter
again.
After Solomon Lennox had finished his fervid appeal, two or three
offered prayers, and many testified and confessed sins, and professed
repentance, and terror of the wrath to come, in hoarse, strained
voices, half drowned by sobs and cries.
It was nearly midnight before Solomon Lennox declared the meeting at
a close, and recommended the brethren and sisters to repair to their
homes, not to sleep, but to pray, and appointed another session for
the next forenoon, for these meetings of terror-stricken and contrite
souls were held three times a day--morning, afternoon, and evening. In
those days the housewives’ kitchen tables were piled high with unwashed
dishes, the hearths were unswept and the fires low, the pantry shelves
were bare, and often the children went to bed with only the terrors of
the judgment for sustenance.
In those days the cattle grew lean, and stood lowing piteously long
after nightfall at the pasture bars. Even the horses turned in their
stalls at every footfall and whinnied for food. Men lost all thought
for their earthly goods in their fierce concern for their own souls.
The people flocked out of Solomon Lennox’s kitchen, some with rapt
eyes, some white-faced and trembling, huddling together as if with a
forlorn hope that human companionship might avail somewhat even against
divine judgment. The deaf-and-dumb boy went sleepily out of the room
and up-stairs with his candle, leaving his slate on the hearthstone.
Isaac Penfield stood a few minutes looking irresolutely at Melissa, who
sat still with her hands pressed tightly over her face, as if she were
weeping. Her mother stood near her, talking to Abby Mosely, who was
Simeon Lennox’s housekeeper. The woman was fairly gasping with emotion;
her broad shawled bosom heaved.
“Repent!” cried Mrs. Lennox, loud, in her ears, like an echo of her
husband. “Repent; there is yet time! There are five days before the
heavens open! Repent!” Her nervous hands served to intensify her weak,
straining voice. They pointed and threatened in the woman’s piteous,
scared face. Isaac started to approach Melissa; then her mother half
turned and seemed to shriek out her warning cry towards him, and he
tossed his gray cloak over his shoulders, strode out of the room, and
out of the house.
Old Simeon Lennox lingered behind the others.
“I’m a-comin’ right along, Abby,” he called to his housekeeper when she
started to leave the room. “If ye go to bed afore I come, mind ye put
the cat out, so she won’t get afoul of that pig meat in the pantry.”
Simeon spoke with cool disregard of the distressed sobs and moans with
which the woman was making her exit.
“D’ye hear what I say, Abby?” he called, sharply, when she did not
reply.
The housekeeper groaned a faint assent over her shoulder as she crossed
the threshold.
“Well, mind ye don’t forgit it,” said Simeon, “for I tell ye what ’tis,
if that cat does git afoul of that pig meat, there’ll be a jedgement
afore Thursday.”
The old man clamped leisurely across the room, drew an arm-chair close
to the fire, and settled into it with a grunting yawn.
“Fire feels good,” he remarked. His voice was thick, for he had tobacco
in his mouth.
“Woe be unto you, Simeon Lennox, if you can still think of the comfort
of your poor body which will soon be ashes,” cried his sister-in-law.
She waved before him like a pale flame; her white face seemed fairly
luminous.
Simeon shifted his tobacco into one cheek as he stared at her. “You’d
better go to bed, Sophy Anne; you’re gittin’ highstericky,” said he,
and chewed again.
“Woe be unto you, fer the bed you shall lie on, unless you repent,
Simeon Lennox!”
“Look at here, Sophy Anne,” said Simeon, “ain’t you got no mince-pies
in the house?”
Mrs. Lennox looked at him, speechless, for a moment.
“If you have,” Simeon went on, “I wish you’d give me a piece. I ’ain’t
had no mince-pie fit to eat I dun’no’ when. Abby Mosely wa’n’t never
much of a cook, and sence she’s took to goin’ to your meetin’ here
three times a day, it’s much as ever’s I get anything. It ain’t no
more’n fair, Sophy Anne, that you should give me a piece of mince-pie,
if you’ve got any.”
Mrs. Lennox broke in upon him with a cry which was almost a shriek. “I
shall make no more pies in this world, Simeon Lennox. Woe be unto you!
Woe be unto you if you think of such things in the face of death and
eternal condemnation!”
Solomon Lennox had followed the departing people into the yard. His
exhorting voice could still be heard out there, for the doors were open.
Simeon looked around and shivered. “If you ’ain’t got no mince-pie, I
wish you’d shet that door, Sophy Anne,” he said.
Sophia Anne Lennox stood looking at him for a minute. He chuckled in
her face. She snatched a candle from the shelf and went out of the room
with an air of desperation.
Melissa rose up and crept after her, her face like a drooping white
flower, gliding so closely in her mother’s wake that she seemed to have
no individual motion of her own. Simeon looked hard at her as she went.
“Sophy Anne is wiry,” he said, when his brother came in. “She’ll go it
all right if the wires don’t snap, an’ I reckon they won’t; but you’d
better look out for Melissy. She can’t stan’ such tearin’ work as this
very long. She’ll have a fever or somethin’.”
“What matters that?” cried Solomon. “What matters any tribulation
of the flesh when the end of all flesh is at hand?” His voice was
hoarse with his long clamor. He leaned over and shook a nervous fist
impressively before his brother’s face.
Simeon chewed on, and looked at the fist without winking. “You don’t
mean to say, Solomon Lennox,” said he at length, “that you believe all
this darned tomfoolery?”
His brother looked at him with solemn wrath. “Do I believe revelation
and the prophets?” he cried. “Woe be unto all scoffers, even though
they be my own flesh and blood!”
“Now, Solomon, I’ll jest stump ye to point out any passage in the
Scripturs that says, up an’ down, square an’ fair, that the world’s
comin’ to an end next Thursday. I’ll jest stump ye to do it.”
“There are passages that point to the truth, and I have repeated them
to-night,” replied Solomon, hotly.
“Passages that ye’ve had to twist hind-side foremost, an’ bottom-side
up, an’ add, an’ subtract, an’ divide, an’ multiply, an’ hammer, an’
saw, an’ bile down, an’ take to a grist-mill, afore you got at the
meanin’ you wanted,” returned his brother, contemptuously. “That
ain’t the kind of passage I’m after. There’s too much two-facedness
an’ double-dealin’ about the Scripturs anyway, judgin’ by some of you
folks. What I want is a square up an’ down passage that says, without
no chance of its meanin’ anything else, ‘The world is comin’ to an end
next week Thursday.’ I stump ye to show me sech a passage as that. _Ye
can’t do it!_”
The habits of a lifetime are strong even in strained and exalted
states, acting like the lash of a familiar whip. Solomon Lennox was
the younger brother; all his life he had borne a certain docility of
attitude towards Simeon, which asserted itself now.
The fervid orator stood for a moment silent before this sceptical,
sneering elder brother. “I’d like to know how you account for Lonny’s
drawin’s,” he said at length, in a tone which he might have used when
bullied by Simeon in their boyhood.
“Drawin’s,” drawled Simeon, and sarcasm itself seemed to hiss in the
final s--“dr-r-awin’s! The little scamp is sharp as steel, an’ he’s
watched an’ he’s eyed till he’s put two an’ two together. It’s easy
enough to account for the drawin’s. The air here has been so thick
lately with wings an’ wheels an’ horns an’ trumpets an’ everlastin’
fire that anybody that wa’n’t an idgit could breathe it in. An’ I miss
my guess if his mother ’ain’t showed him the picturs in the big Bible
mor’n once when you’ve been talkin’, an’ pointed out the hearth fire
an’ the candlesticks an’ the powder-horn. Sophy Anne’s sharp, an’ she’s
done more to learn that boy than anybody knows of, though I’ve got my
doubts now as to how straight he’s really got it in his mind. Lord,
them drawin’s ain’t nothin’. Solomon Lennox, you can’t look me in the
face an’ say that you actilly believe all this darned tomfoolery!”
Solomon for these few minutes had been on the old level of a brotherly
argument, but now he arose suddenly to his latter heights.
“I believe that the end of the world is near, that the great and
dreadful day of the Lord is at hand, accordin’ to prophecy and
revelation,” he proclaimed, and his eyes shone under his high forehead
as under a majestic dome of thought and inspiration.
Simeon whistled. “Ye don’t, though. Look at here, Solomon; tell ye what
I’ll do. I’ll put ye to the test. Look at here, you say the world’s
comin’ to an end next Thursday. Well, it stands to reason if it is,
that you ’ain’t got no more need of temporal goods. S’pose--you give me
a deed of this ’ere farm?”
Solomon stared at his brother.
Simeon shook his fist at him slowly. “_Ye won’t do it_,” he said, with
a triumphant chuckle.
“I _will_ do it.”
“Git Lawyer Bascombe to draw up the papers to-morrow?”
“_I will_.”
“Me to take possession by daylight next Friday mornin’, if the world
don’t come to an end Thursday night?”
“_Yes_,” replied Solomon, hurling the word at his brother like a stone.
Simeon got up and buttoned his coat over his lean chest. “Well,” said
he, “I’ve had pretty hard luck. I’ve lost three wives, and I’ve been
burnt out twice, an’ the last house ain’t none too tight. I’ll move
right in here next Friday mornin’ at daylight. Mebbe I’ll get married
again.”
“Much good will the heaping up of barns an’ storehouses do when you
hear the voice of the Lord saying, ‘Thou fool, this night shall thy
soul be required of thee,’” returned his brother; but he spoke the
fervid words with a certain feebleness. All his life since he was a
boy had Solomon Lennox toiled and saved to own this noble farm. The
bare imagination of giving it up to another cost him much, although he
firmly believed that in a week’s space it would be only a modicum of
the blackened ashes of a world. He stood the test of his faith, but he
felt the scorch of sacrificial flame.
“It ain’t me that’s the fool,” said Simeon, shrugging himself into his
great-coat. “I ain’t goin’ to hang back with my soul when it’s required
of me, but I ain’t goin’ to keep chuckin’ of it in the face of the Lord
afore He’s ready for it, like some folks I know. Them’s the fools.
When’ll you be down to Lawyer Bascombe’s to-morrow, Solomon, to deed
away these barns an’ storehouses that you ’ain’t no more use for?”
“I’ll be down there at nine o’clock to-morrow mornin’.”
“All right; you can count on me,” said Simeon. He went out, and
Solomon bolted the door after him promptly. But he had no sooner
returned to the kitchen than there came a sharp tap on the window, and
there was Simeon’s hard leering old face pressed against the pane.
“You’ll--have--to--fetch Sophy Anne down there to-morrow,” he called.
“She’ll--have to sign that deed too, or it won’t stan’.”
“All right,” shouted Solomon, and the face at the window, with a
parting nod, disappeared.
Lawyer Bascombe’s office was in the centre of the village, over the
store. A steep flight of stairs at the right of the store led to it. Up
these stairs, at nine o’clock the next morning, climbed Solomon Lennox
and his wife Sophia Anne, with pale devoted faces, and signed away all
their earthly goods as an evidence of their faith.
In some way the matter had become known in the village. When Solomon
and Sophia Anne came down the stairs there was quite a crowd before the
door, standing back with awed curiosity to let them pass. Simeon Lennox
did not leave at once after the signing of the deed. When he appeared
in the doorway with a roll of paper in his hand the crowd had dispersed.
Without any doubt this act of Solomon Lennox and his wife materially
strengthened their cause. When it became known that they had
actually signed away their property in their confidence that days of
property-holding were over, even scoffers began to look serious. That
evening the meeting at Solomon Lennox’s house numbered a third more
than usual. The next evening it was doubled, and the best room as well
as the kitchen was filled. Solomon stood at the foot of the stairs in
the entry between the rooms and exhorted, while the deaf-and-dumb boy’s
slate circulated among the awe-stricken people.
Isaac Penfield came to no more meetings, and he did not see Melissa
again until Tuesday. Late Tuesday afternoon she went up to the village
store with a basket of eggs. The days of barter were nearly over,
as she had been taught to believe, but there was no molasses in the
house, and the poor deaf-and-dumb boy was weeping for it with uncouth
grief, and could not be comforted by the prospect of eternal joys.
When Melissa came out of the store with the bottle of molasses in her
basket, Isaac Penfield’s bay mare and chaise were drawn up before the
platform, and Isaac stood waiting. Melissa started and colored when she
saw him.
“Get in, please,” he said, motioning her towards the chaise.
She looked at him falteringly.
“Get in, please, Melissa; I want to speak to you.”
The bay mare was restive, tossing her head and pawing with one delicate
fore foot. Isaac could scarcely keep her quiet until Melissa got in.
When he took the reins she gave a leap forward, and the chaise swung
about with a lurch. Isaac threw himself back and held the reins taut;
the mare flew down the road, pulling hard on her bits; the chaise
rocked high on the frozen road. Melissa sat still, her delicate face
retired within the dark depths of her silk hood.
Isaac did not speak to her until they reached the foot of a long hill.
“I want to ask you something,” he said then, with a wary eye still on
the straining shoulders of the mare. “I want to ask you again to give
this up.”
Melissa did not speak.
“Won’t you promise me?”
“I can’t,” she said, faintly.
“You can if you will.” Suddenly Isaac leaned over her. “Won’t you
promise _me_, Melissa?”
She shrank away from him. “I--can’t. I believe father.”
“Melissa, you don’t.”
“I do,” said she, with a despairing sob.
Isaac Penfield bent his face down close to hers. “Can’t you believe me
as well as your father? Melissa, look at me.”
Melissa bent her head down over her hands.
“Look at me, Melissa.”
She raised her head slowly as if there were a constraining hand under
her chin, and her eyes met his.
“Can’t you, Melissa?”
Fair locks of hair fell over the girl’s gentle cheeks; her soft mouth
quivered. It seemed as if her piteous blue eyes were only upheld by
the look in the young man’s, and as if all the individual thought and
purpose in her face and her whole soul were being overcast by his
imperious will, but she shook her head.
“Can’t you, Melissa?”
She shook her head again.
Isaac Penfield’s face turned white. He touched the whip to the mare,
and she gave a sharp bound forward. They had not much farther to go.
Neither of them spoke again until Isaac assisted Melissa out of the
chaise at her own gate.
“Good-bye,” he said then, shortly.
Melissa looked up at him and caught her breath. She could not speak.
Isaac sprang into his chaise, and was out of the yard with a sharp
grate of wheels, and she went into the house.
Her mother was setting chairs in order for the evening meeting. She
looked up sharply as Melissa entered.
“Who was that brought you home?” said she.
“Isaac Penfield,” replied Melissa, turning her face from her mother’s
eyes.
“I hope you ain’t letting your thoughts dwell on anything of that kind
now,” said her mother.
“I met him as I was coming out of the store, and he asked me to ride. I
sha’n’t ever see him again,” Melissa returned, faintly.
The deaf-and-dumb boy had been dozing with gaping mouth in his
chimney-corner. Now he waked, and caught sight of his sister and the
basket, and hastened to her with a cry of uncouth hunger and greediness.
“In a minute, sonny,” Melissa said, in a sobbing voice; “wait a
minute.” She held the basket aloof while she removed her hood and shawl.
“You may see him on his way to the outer darkness,” said her mother,
with solemn vindictiveness.
“Mother, he has repented; he is a member of the church,” Melissa cried
out, with sudden sharpness.
“Repentance avails nothing without faith,” returned her mother, setting
down a chair so heavily that the deaf-and-dumb boy started at the
concussion and looked about him wonderingly.
“He has repented; he is a member of the church; he is safe,” Melissa
cried again.
“I tell you he is not,” said her mother.
Melissa went into the pantry with her brother at her elbow, and
prepared for him a plate of bread and molasses. The tears fell over
her cheeks, but Alonzo noticed nothing. His greedy eyes were fixed on
the food. When it was ready for him he sat down on his stool in the
chimney-corner and devoured it with loud smacks of his lips. That was
all the evening meal prepared in the Lennox house that night. After
the chairs were set in order for the meeting, Melissa and her mother
sat down close to the fire and sewed on some white stuff which flowed
in voluminous folds over their knees to the floor. Solomon came in
presently, and seated himself with the great Bible on his knees. He
read silently, but now and then gesticulated fiercely, as if he read
aloud.
The meeting began at half-past six. About a quarter of an hour before,
the outer door was heard opening, and there was a shuffling step and a
clearing cough in the entry.
“It’s your uncle Simeon,” whispered Mrs. Lennox to Melissa, and her
mouth took on a severer tension.
Solomon frowned over the Holy Writ on his knee.
Simeon advanced into the room, his heavy boots clapping the floor
with a dull clatter as of wood, dispelling the solemn stillness. His
grinning old face, blue with the cold, was sunk in the collar of his
great-coat. He rubbed his hands together as he approached the fire.
“Well, how are ye all?” he remarked, with a chuckle, as if there were a
joke in the speech.
Nobody replied. Simeon pulled a chair up close to the fire and sat down.
“It’s tarnal cold,” said he, leaning over and spreading out his old
hands to the blaze.
“The brands are all ready for the burning,” said his sister-in-law, in
a hollow, trembling voice. She drew a long thread through the white
stuff on her knee.
Simeon turned suddenly and looked at her with a flash of small bright
eyes. Then he laughed. “Lord bless ye, Sophy Anne, I forgot how tarnal
hot you folks are calculatin’ to have it day after to-morrow,” said
he. “Well, if you fail in your calculations, an’ the cold continues,
I shall be mighty glad to come in here. My house is darned cold this
weather, and Abby Mosely ain’t particular ’bout the doors; seems to
me sometimes as if I was settin’ in a hurricane the heft of the time,
and as if my idees were gettin’ on a slant. Abby thinks she’s goin’ up
Thursday, and I wish in thunder she would. I wouldn’t have her another
day, if she wa’n’t a lone woman and nowheres to go. She ain’t no kind
of a cook. Look at here, Sophy Anne--”
Mrs. Lennox sewed on with compressed lips.
“Sophy Anne, look at here. You ’ain’t got no mince-pies on hand now,
have you?”
“No, I ’ain’t.”
“Well, I didn’t much s’pose you’d made any, you’ve been so busy gettin’
ready to fly lately. Look at here, Sophy Anne, don’t you feel as if you
could roll me out a few mince-pies to-morrow, hey?”
Mrs. Lennox looked at him.
“I dun’no’ when I’ve eat a decent mince-pie,” pursued Simeon. “Abby
Mosely keeps the commandments, but she can’t make pies that’s fit to
eat. I ’ain’t had a mince-pie I could eat since my last wife died. I
wish you’d contrive an’ roll me out a few, Sophy Anne. Your mince-pies
used to go ahead of Maria’s; she always said they did. If the world
don’t come to an end day after to-morrow, I’d take a sight of comfort
with ’em, and I’ll be darned, if it does come to an end, if I don’t
think I’d have a chance to eat one or two of ’em before the fire got
round to me. Can’t ye do it, Sophy Anne, nohow?”
“No, I can’t.”
“Can’t ye roll me out just half a dozen mince-pies?”
“I will never roll out a mince-pie for you, Simeon Lennox,” said Sophia
Anne, with icy fervor.
“Ye never will?”
“No, I never will.” Sophia Anne’s stern eyes in their hollow blue
orbits met his.
Simeon chuckled; then he turned to his brother. “Well, Sol’mon, s’pose
you’re flappin’ all ready to fly?” he said.
Solomon made no reply. He frowned over the great volume on his knees.
The deaf-and-dumb boy had set his empty plate on the hearth and fallen
asleep again, with his head tilted against the jamb. Melissa sewed, her
pale face bent closely over her work.
“Hear ye are goin’ to fly from Penfield’s hill?” said Simeon.
Still Solomon said nothing.
“Well, I s’pose that’s as good a place as any,” said Simeon, “though
’tain’t a very high hill. I should ’most think you’d want a higher hill
than Penfield’s. I s’pose you’ll be kind of unhandy with your wings
at first, an’ start off something like hens. But then I s’pose a few
feet more or less won’t make no odds when they get fairly to workin’. I
heard the women was makin’ flyin’-petticoats. Them what you’re to work
on, Sophy Anne, you and Melissy?”
Sophia Anne gave one look at him, then she took a stitch.
“Abby Mosely’s to work on one, I guess,” said Simeon. “She’s ben
a-settin’ in a heap of white cloth a-sewin’ for three days. I came in
once, an’ she was tryin’ of it on, an’ she slipped out of it mighty
sudden. All I’ve got to say is she’ll cut a queer figure flyin’. She’s
pretty hefty. I miss my guess if she don’t find it a job to strike out
at first. Now I should think you might take to flyin’ pretty natural,
Sophy Anne.”
Mrs. Lennox’s pale face was flushed with anger, but she sewed on
steadily.
“As for Melissy,” said Simeon, in his chuckling drawl, “I ruther guess
she could fly without much practice too. She’s built light; but it
strikes me she’d better have a weddin’-gown than a flyin’-petticoat.
Young Penfield goin’ to fly with you, Melissy?”
Solomon Lennox closed the Bible with a great clap. “I’ll have no more
of this!” he said, with a shout of long-repressed fury.
“Now, Solomon, don’t ye get riled so near the end of the world,”
drawled his brother, getting up slowly. “I’m a-goin’. I ain’t goin’
to be the means of makin’ you backslide when ye’re so nigh the top of
Zion’s Hill. I’m a-goin’ home. I don’t s’pose I shall get no supper on
account of Abby’s hurryin’ up on her flyin’-petticoat. Sure you ain’t
goin’ to make them mince-pies for me, Sophy Anne?”
“Yes, I be sure.”
The brother-in-law thrust his sharp old face down close to Sophia
Anne’s. “Sure?” he repeated.
Sophia Anne started back and stared at him. There was something strange
in his manner.
The old man laughed, and straightened himself. “Well, I’m a-goin’,”
said he. “Good-bye. Mebbe I sha’n’t see ye again before ye fly. Hope
ye’ll light easy. Good-bye.”
After Simeon had closed the door, he opened it again, and thrust his
sharp features through a narrow aperture. “Look at here, Solomon,” said
he. “Mind ye leave the key in the door when ye go out to fly Thursday
night. I want to come right in.” Then Simeon shut the door again, but
his malicious laugh could be plainly heard in the entry.
He did not go straight home as he had said, but up the road to Lawyer
Bascombe’s office. When he returned, the meeting in his brother’s house
was in session, and the windows were dark with heads against the red
firelight. Old Simeon stared up at them, and laughed aloud to himself
as he went by. “Sophy Anne won’t make me no mince-pies. She’s sure
on’t,” he said, and laughed again.
The next day all the ordinary routine of life seemed at a standstill
in the village. The storekeeper had become a convert, the store was
closed, and the green inside shutters were fastened. Now and then
a village loafer lounged disconsolately up, shook the door on its
rattling lock, stared at the shuttered windows, then lounged away,
muttering. The summer resting-place of his kind, the long, bewhittled
wooden bench on the store platform, could not be occupied that wintry
day. The air was clear, and the dry pastures were white and stiff with
the hoar-frost; the slants of the roofs glistened with it in the sun.
The breaths of the people going to and from Solomon Lennox’s house were
like white smoke. The meeting began at dawn. Children were dragged
hither at their parents’ heels, cold and breakfastless. Not a meal was
cooked that day in the houses of Solomon Lennox’s followers. All the
precious hours were spent in fasting and prayer. Towards night the
excitement deepened. There was present within the village a spiritual
convulsion as real as any other convulsion of nature, and as truly
although more subtly felt. Even they who had scoffed and laughed at
this new movement from the first, and were now practically untouched by
it, grew nervous and ill at ease towards night as from the gathering of
a storm. The air seemed charged with electricity generated by the touch
of human thought and faith with the Unknown. The unbelievers pressed
their faces against the window-panes, shading their eyes from the
light within as the dusk deepened, or stood out in their yards watching
the sky, half fearful they should indeed see some sign or marvel
therein.
But the night came on, and the stars shone out in their order as they
had done from the first, and there was no sign but the old one of
eternal love and beauty in the sky. The moon arose at nine o’clock,
nearly at her full. That, from some interpretation of symbolical
characters on the deaf-and-dumb boy’s slate, had been fixed upon as the
hour of meeting upon Penfield’s hill. The solemn and dreadful moment
which was to mark the climax of all creation was expected between that
hour and dawn.
At half-past eight white-robed figures began to move along the road.
People peeped around their curtains to see them pass; now and then
belated children ran shrieking with terror into the houses at sight of
them.
Beside the road, close to the gate which led to the wide field at the
foot of Penfield’s hill, under the shadow of a clump of hemlocks, Isaac
Penfield had been waiting since quarter past eight o’clock. When the
white company came in sight he drew farther back within the shadow,
scanning the people eagerly as they passed.
Solomon Lennox and Deacon Scranton let down the bars, and the people
passed through silently, crowding each other whitely like a flock of
sheep. Sophia Anne, the deaf-and-dumb boy holding fast to her hand, was
among the first.
Isaac had expected to see Melissa close to her mother; but she had
become separated from her and came among the last.
Her slender figure was hidden in her flowing white robes, but there was
no mistaking her gentle faltering gait and the delicate bend of her
fair uncovered head.
Isaac stepped forward suddenly, threw his arm around Melissa, and
drew her back with him within the shadow of the hemlocks. Nobody saw
it but Abby Mosely, Simeon Lennox’s housekeeper, and she was too
panic-stricken to heed it intelligently; she went panting on after the
others in her voluminous white robe, and left Melissa alone with Isaac
Penfield.
Isaac pressed Melissa’s head close to his breast, leaned his face down
to hers, and whispered long in her ear. She listened trembling and
unresisting; then she broke away from him weakly, “I can’t, I can’t,”
she moaned. But he caught her again, and whispered again with his lips
close to her soft pale cheek, and frequent kisses between the words.
“Come, now, sweetheart,” he said at length, and attempted to draw her
with him into the road; but she pulled herself away from him again, and
stood warding him off with her white-draped arms.
“I can’t, I can’t,” she moaned again. “I must go with father and
mother.”
“I tell you they are wrong; can’t you believe me?”
“I--must--go with them.”
“No; come with me, Melissa.”
Melissa, still with her arms raised against him, looked away over the
meadow, full of moving white figures. The moon shone out over it, and
it gleamed like a field of Paradise peopled with angels. Then she
looked up in her lover’s face, and suddenly it was to her as if she saw
therein the new earth of all her dreams.
Solomon Lennox and his followers kept on to Penfield’s hill, which
arose before them crowned with silver, and Isaac Penfield hastened down
the road to the village, half carrying Melissa’s little white-clad
figure, wrapped against the cold in his own gray cloak.
Early the next morning a small company of pallid shivering people crept
through the village to their homes. Many had weakened and deserted
long before dawn, chilled to their very thoughts and fancies by their
long vigil on the hill-top. Young girls ran home, crying aloud like
children, and men half dragged hysterical wives rigid with chills.
Solomon Lennox and his wife remained until the dawn light shone; then
he beckoned to her and the whimpering deaf-and-dumb boy, and led the
way down the hill without a word. He never looked at the rest of the
company, but they followed silently.
The Penfield house was about a quarter of a mile from the pasture bars.
When they reached it, Isaac stood waiting at the gate. He went up to
Solomon, who was passing without a look, and touched his arm with an
impatient yet respectful gesture. “You and Mrs. Lennox and Lonny had
better come in here, I think,” he said.
Solomon was moving on with dull obstinacy, but Isaac laid his hand
on his arm. “I--think you have--forgotten,” he said. “I am sorry,
but--your brother Simeon has--taken possession of your house.”
Solomon stared at him dully. He did not seem to comprehend. Sophia Anne
looked as blue and bloodless in her white robe as if she were dead.
She had scarce more control of her trembling tongue than if it were
paralyzed, but her highly strung feminine nerves gave out vibrations
still.
“Has Simeon took possession?” she demanded, fiercely.
Isaac Penfield nodded. “I think it would be pleasanter for you to come
in here now,” he said. Then he hesitated, and colored suddenly. “Your
daughter is in here,” he added.
Sophia Anne gave a keen glance at him. Then she turned in at the
gate with a sharp twitch at the arm of the deaf-and-dumb boy, who
was making strange cries and moans, like a distressed animal. “Come,
father,” she called, impatiently; and Solomon also entered the Penfield
gate with a piteous, dazed air.
In the great south room of the Penfield house were Melissa and Mrs.
Martha Joyce, the housekeeper. Mrs. Joyce was mixing something in a
steaming bowl; Melissa sat still, gazing at the fire. She was dressed
in a blue satin gown and fine lace tucker, which had belonged to Isaac
Penfield’s mother. Madam Penfield had been nearly Melissa’s size, and
the gown fitted her slender figure daintily. She sat with her fair head
bent, the color coming and going in her soft cheeks, as if from her own
thoughts. Her little hands were folded in her blue satin lap, and on
one finger gleamed a great pearl, which Madam Penfield had used to wear.
When the door opened and her parents entered, she half started up, with
a great blush; then she sank back, trembling and pale.
Isaac Penfield crossed over to her, and laid his hand on her shoulder.
“She is my wife,” he said. “We were married last night.”
Sophia Anne made a faint gesture, which might have expressed anything.
Solomon staggered to a chair without a look. In truth, when they
entered the warm room, and the long strain of resistance against cold
and fatigue ceased, exhaustion overcame them. Mrs. Joyce administered
hot porridge and cordials, and Melissa knelt down in her blue satin and
rubbed her mother’s benumbed hands.
Solomon took whatever was offered him, meekly, like a child. His face
was changed; the look which it had worn during the greater part of
his life, the expression of himself within his old worn channel, had
returned.
He was sitting by the fire, sipping cordial, when his brother Simeon
came in; he had not even noticed the brazen clang of the knocker.
Simeon came tiptoeing around in front of his brother, thrust down his
face on a level with his, and peered at him with a sharp twinkle of
black eyes. Then he looked at Sophia Anne, and chuckled. “’Pears to me
wings didn’t work very well,” said he.
Simeon had a roll of paper in his hand. He went to the desk, and spread
it out ostentatiously. Then he began to read in a high, solemn voice,
with an undertone of merriment in it. “Know all men by these presents,”
began Simeon Lennox, and read straight through the deed, with all its
strange legal formalities, by which his brother Solomon had conveyed
his worldly goods to him.
Sophia Anne writhed in her chair as Simeon read. She was on a rack of
torture, and every new word was a turn of the screw. Solomon set his
tumbler of cordial on the hearth, and rested his head on his hands.
After Simeon had finished reading the deed, he paused for a moment.
Sophia Anne gave a dry sob.
Then Simeon cleared his throat, and continued: “The foregoing I do
hereby declare null and void, and I do hereby remise, release, sell,
and forever quitclaim, for myself and my heirs, by these presents, the
aforementioned premises, with all the privileges and appurtenances
thereunto belonging, to the said Solomon Lennon, his heirs and assigns
forever, in consideration that Sophia Anne, the wife of said Solomon
Lennox, shall, during the term of her natural life, unless she be
prevented by sickness from so doing, make, mix, season, and bake for
me with her own hands, with her best skill, according to her own
conscience, seven mince pies during every week of the year, with one
extra for every Independence and Thanksgiving day, and that the said
Sophia Anne, the wife of the said Solomon Lennox, shall hereunto set
her hand and seal.”
Simeon looked at Sophia Anne. She stared back at him, speechless.
“Well, what ye goin’ to do about it, Sophy Anne?” said Simeon.
Sophia Anne still looked at him as if he were a blank wall against
which her very spirit had been brought to a standstill.
“Goin’ to sign it, Sophy Anne?”
Sophia Anne got up. Her knees trembled, but she motioned back Isaac
Penfield’s proffered arm. She went to the desk, sat down, took the
quill, dipped it carefully in the inkstand, and shook it lest it blot.
Her lean arm crooked as stiffly as a stick, her lips were a blue line,
but she wrote her name with sharply rippling strokes, and laid the pen
down.
“Sure ye won’t make them mince pies, Sophy Anne?” said Simeon.
Sophia Anne made no reply. She put her elbow on the desk, and leaned
her head on her hand. Simeon looked at her a moment, then he gave her a
rough pat on her shoulder and turned and went to the window, and stood
there, staring out.
Melissa was weeping softly; Isaac stood beside her, smoothing her hair
tenderly. The deaf-and-dumb boy’s fair head hung helplessly over his
shoulder. He had fallen asleep with the tears on his cheeks.
The morning sunlight shone broadly into the room over them all, but
Solomon Lennox did not seem to heed that or anything that was around
him, sitting sadly within himself: a prophet brooding over the ashes of
his own prophetic fire.