Читать книгу An Unofficial Patriot - Helen H. Gardener - Страница 5

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It has been well said that the heresies of one generation are the orthodox standards of the next; and it is equally true that the great convulsive waves of emotion, belief, patriotic aspiration or progressive emulation of the leaders of thought of one age, for which they are martyred by the conventionally stupid majority, become the watchwords and uncontrovertible basis of belief for the succeeding generation of the respectably unthinking, and furnish afresh, alas! the means, the motives and the power for the crucifixion of the prophets and thinkers of the new cycle. Mediocrity is forever sure that nothing better or loftier is in store. Genius sees eternal progress in perpetual change.

Much of the doings and many of the sayings of the new religious sect seemed to the people about them full of heresy, dangerous in tendency, and, indeed, blasphemous in its enthusiasms and its belief in and effort for an intimate personal relationship with a prayer-answering and a praise-loving God. To Grif, Brother Prout's fervor and enthusiasm of expression, his prayers which seemed the friendly communications of one who in deed and in truth walked with his God, instead of the old, perfunctory, formal reading of set phrases arranged for special days, which had to be hunted up in a book and responded to by all in exactly the same words, and with the same utter want of personal feeling, to Grif, these fervid, passionate, sincere and simple appeals of the kind old enthusiast seemed like the very acme and climax of a faith which might, indeed, move mountains.

"Amen! amen!"

"Praise the Lord, O my soul!"

"Thanks be to Almighty Godt" echoed along the banks of the river, the loved Opquan, that had been to Grif a friend and companion from his earliest boyhood. He had never stood by its banks without an onrush of feeling that had tended to burst into a song of joy! From his grandfather's front porch and from the windows of his own room at home he could see it winding through the rocky hills and struggling for its right to reach the sea. He had skipped pebbles on it and waded across it at low tide, and had stood in awe at its angry and impetuous swirl when the spring rains had swollen it to a torrent of irresistible force. It seemed to Grif now that its waters smiled at him, and his eyes filled with tears that were of happiness not unmixed with a tender pain and regret—regret for he knew not what.

"Joy to the world, the Lord has come!" rang out with a volume and an impassioned sincerity which gave no room for the critical ear of the musician nor for the carping brain of the skeptic, had either been there to hear. "Let earth receive her King!" The hills in the distance took up the melody, and it seemed to the overwrought nerves of the boy that nothing so beautiful in all the world had ever been seen or heard before. "Let every heart prepare Him room, and heaven and nature sing!" Ah, was not heaven and nature, indeed, singing the most glorious song the earth had ever heard or seen when she made this valley? When she built these mountains, and threaded that little river over the stones? Griffith was lost in an intoxication of soul and sense. He was looking across the valley to the old home. His hands were clenched until the nails were marking the palms, and his voice rang out so clear and true that the neighborhood boys touched each other and motioned toward the young fellow with almost a sense of envy. Neither cultured musician nor cynic was there, and the softness of the air lent charm to the simple exercises which some of the youths had come in a spirit of fun to deride. It was restful to the weary, stimulating to the sluggish and soothing to the unhappy. They were carried out of their narrow and monotonous lives. If Griffith's heart had been sore and in a condition to be soothed by the words and prayers of Father Prout, how much more were his nerves and emotions in that unstrung and vaguely wounded and impressionable state where physical change and reaction is easily mistaken for religious fervor or exaltation, how much more was he in that state where melody joined to nature's most profligate mood of beauty in scene leads captive the soul!

During the meeting which had followed his arrival at the camp-ground Grif had passed through that phase of physical reaction which meant to him a "leading of the spirit" and, as he stood now on the banks of his beloved river pouring out his young heart in the hymn of his boyish fancy, he no longer doubted that he had, indeed, been "called" to be a circuit rider and to cast his lot with the new order of religions enthusiasts. He looked now upon his previous doubts as temptations of the devil and put, once and for all, their whisperings behind him and accepted the new lot as heaven and God-sent and intended.

Father Prout gave to all of his converts a choice in the form of their baptism. Leaning, himself, toward immersion, he still held that sprinkling was sufficient and with a lingering memory of his father's fling at "ducking converts in the creek," Griffith had determined to be sprinkled; but, as the last echoes of the old hymn died away, he stepped to the bank and indicated that he would be immersed. As he arose from the water his face was radiant, and when he had removed his immersion robe his eyes filled with happy tears as his father rode up to the edge of the grounds and held out his arms to the boy.

"My son," he said tremulously, "my son, forgive me. I have been unhappy all night. I did not realize that I was swearing at you until your mothah told me. Come home, my boy, and your new friends will be welcome at Rock Hall. God bless you, my son, come home, your mothah is unhappy."

Mr. Lengthy Patterson, a long-legged, cadaverous mountaineer who had wended his way from the distant fastnesses of the high perched log cabin which he called home and wherein he ate and slept when he was not engaged in those same occupations out under the stars where night—during his hunting and fishing expeditions—chanced to overtake him, had been watching Grif all day. The boy's radiant face the past hour had fascinated him. In his absorption he had stepped so close to the old Major as he and Grif stood making ready for the homeward ride, that Mr. Davenport made an instinctive gesture of impatient disapproval which called the naturally deferential woodsman back to his normal mental state.

"It is Lengthy Patterson, father," said Griffith, with his ever-ready impulse to cover the confusion of the unlucky or ignorant who were intrusive without a knowledge of the fact until a recognition of disapproval made self-consciousness painful.

Mr. Davenport moved as if to make amends for his previous manner by an offer to shake hands with the mountaineer—an unheard-of proceeding on the 'Squire's part.

"Oh, it's Lengthy Patterson, is it? I beg your pahrdon, Mr. a—Lengthy. I did not recognize you at—"

The long legs had moved slowly away. He turned around, tilted his half rimless hat further on to the back of his head, in lieu of lifting it, and in a voice as evenly graded to one single note as is that of a flying loon, remarked, as he kept on his way:

"No excuse. Say nothin'. Few words comprehends the whole."

"What did that fellow say, Grif?" asked his father, as they mounted.

Griffith laughed rather hysterically. The reaction was coming.

"It's just a phrase he has, father. They say he never was known to say anything else; but I expect that is a joke. He's an honest fellow and a splendid woodsman. He knows every crack in the mountains, and is a perfect terror to rattlesnakes. Don't you remember? He is the fellow who saved the old Randolph house that time it took fire, and got the children out. They say when Mrs. Randolph went away up to his cabin to thank him, he remarked that 'a few words comprehended the whole,' and fled the mountain until he was sure she had gone. He appears to be afraid of the English language and of nothing else on earth."

There was a long silence. The old Major was turned half out of his saddle, as was a habit of his, to rest himself. The horses were taking their own gait. Presently they turned a curve in the road and Grif suddenly threw his arm across his father's shoulder and leaned far over toward him. "Kiss me, father," he said, and before the moisture had dried out of their eyes and the great lump left their throats, both laughed a little in that shame-faced fashion men have when, with each other, they have yielded to their natural and tender emotions. But both horses understood and broke into a steady lope, and the chasm was bridged.

"Dars Mos' Grif! Dars Mos' Grif an' ole Mos'!" exclaimed Jerry as he saw the two horsemen in the distance. "Dey comin', Mis' Sallie, dey is dat! Lawsy me, Mis' Sallie, dey want no uste fer yo' ter be skeered dat a way 'bout Mos' Grif. He's des dat staidy dat yo' c'd cahry wattah on he haid, let er 'lone Selim ain't gwine ter let no trouble come ter Mos' Grif. But I dus 'low dat'e oughter a tuck dis chile erlong wid'im ter look arter'im, dough. Dat's a fack. I knows dat. Run inter de kitchen, Lippy Jane, an' tell yo' maw dat Mos' Grif an' ole Mos' mose heah, an' she better git dem dar chicken fixins all raidy quick as ebber she kin. Dey gwine ter be hongry, sho's yo' bohn, dey is dat."

Lippy Jane sped away on her errand with that degree of enthusiasm which sprang from a consciousness of bearing a welcome message to expectant listeners, when suddenly, as she passed a group of idle compeers, one of the boys flung upon her lower lip, where it lodged and dangled in squirming response to her every motion, a long yellow apple peeling. She did not pause in her onward course, but called back in belligerent tones at the offender:

"I des gwine ter lef dat erlone dar, now, an' show hit ter Mos' Grif! I is dat! You nasty little nigger!" and she reappeared, after giving her message in the kitchen, with the pendant peel still reposing upon the superfluous portion of the feature to which she was indebted for her name.