After meeting the women and children walked home to set out the cold
viands for the Sabbath dinner, while the men stood in a group on the green
before the door for a few minutes' conversation.
"Verily, Master Everett, the breath of the Almighty was in your words this
day as never before," said one of them. "One more such visitation of the
anger of God and your son will be saved."
"How looked he when they bore him out?" asked the minister faintly. His
face was very white.
The other continued, "Truly, reverend sir, your setting forth of the devil
lying in wait for the thoughtless, and the lake burning with brimstone,
did almost affright me who for many years now have known myself to be of
the elect. I could not wonder that terrors melted the soul of your son."
"How looked he when they bore him out?" repeated the minister impatiently.
The other answered encouragingly, "More like death than life, so the women
say." The minister waved the men aside and went swiftly down the street.
The hen and chickens fled with shrill cries at his approach, and the old
negress stopped her song. After he had passed she chuckled slowly to
herself, thrust her head up sideways to get the sun in a new place, and
began her crooning chant afresh.
"How is the boy?" asked the minister of his wife as he stepped inside the
door. "Not still screaming out and----"
Mistress Everett shook her head reassuringly. "Nay, he is quiet now, up in
his room."
Nathaniel lay on his trundle bed, his eyes fixed on the rafters, his pale
lips drawn back. At the sight his father sat down heavily on the edge of
the bed. The boy sprang upon him with a cry, "Oh, father, I see fire
always there--last winter when I burned my finger--oh, always such pain!"
The minister's voice broke as he said, "Oh, Nathaniel, the blessed ease
when all this travail is gone by and thou knowest thyself to be of the
elect."
Nathaniel screamed out at this, a fleck of froth showing on his lips.
"That is the horrible thing--I know I am not one of the saved. My heart is
all full of carnal pleasures and desires. To look at the sun on the
hillside--why I love it so that I forget my soul--hell--God--"
His father gave a deep shocked groan and put his hand over the quivering
lips. "Be not a bitterness to him that begot you. Hush!"
The fever of excitement left the boy and he fell down with his face in the
pillow to lie there motionless until his parents went out for second
meeting, leaving him alone in the house. "Confidence must be rooted out of
his tabernacle," said his father sternly. "The spirit of God is surely
working in his heart in which I see many of my own besetting sins."
Nathaniel sprang up, when he heard the door shut, with a distracted idea
of escape, now that his jailers were away, and felt an icy stirring in the
roots of his hair at the realization that his misery lay within, that the
walls of his own flesh and blood shut it inexorably into his heart
forever. He threw open the window and leaned out.
The old negress came out of the woods at the other end of the street, her
turban gleaming red. She moved in a cautious silence past the
meeting-house, but when she came opposite the minister's house, thinking
herself alone, she burst into a gay, rapid song, the words of which she so
mutilated in her barbarous accent that only a final "Oh, Molly-oh!" could
be distinguished. She carried an herb-basket on her arm now, into which,
from time to time, she looked with great satisfaction.
Nathaniel ran down the stairs and out of the door calling. She paused,
startled. "How can you sing and laugh and walk so lightly?" he cried out.
She cocked her head on one side with her turtle-like motion. "Why should
she not sing?" she asked in her thick, sweet voice. She had never learned
the difference between the pronouns. "She's be'n gatherin' yarbs in the
wood, an' th' sun is warm," she blinked at it rapidly, "an' the winter it
is pas', Marse Natty, no mo' winter!"
Nathaniel came close up to her, laying his thin fingers on her fat, black
arm. His voice quivered. "But they say if you love those things and if
they make you glad you are damned to everlasting brimstone fire. Tell me
how you dare to laugh, so that I will dare too."
The old woman laughed, opening her mouth so widely that the red lining to
her throat showed moistly, and all her fat shook on her bones. "Lord love
ye, chile, dat's white folks' talk. Dat don't scare a old black woman!"
She shifted her basket to the other arm and prepared to go on. "You're
bleeged to be keerful 'bout losin' yo' soul. Black folks ain't got no
souls, bless de Lord! When _dey_ dies dey _dies_!"
She shuffled along, laughing, and began to sing again. Nathaniel looked
after her with burning eyes. After she had disappeared between the tree
trunks of the forest, the breeze bore back to him a last joyous whoop of
"_Oh_, Molly-oh!" He burst into sobs, and shivering, made his way back
into his father's darkening, empty house.