Читать книгу The Quickening - Lynde Francis - Страница 4

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The revival in Paradise Valley, conducted by the Reverend Silas Crafts, of South Tredegar, was in the middle of its second week, and the field—to use Brother Crafts' own word—was white to the harvest.

Little Zoar, the square, weather-tinged wooden church at the head of the valley, built upon land donated to the denomination in times long past by an impenitent but generous Major Dabney, stood a little way back from the pike in a grove of young pines. By half-past six of the June evening the revivalist's congregation had begun to assemble.

Those who came farthest were first on the ground; and by the time twelve-year-old Thomas Jefferson, spatting barefooted up the dusty pike, had reached the church-house with the key, there was a goodly sprinkling of unhitched teams in the grove, the horses champing their feed noisily in the wagon-boxes, and the people gathering in little neighborhood knots to discuss gravely the one topic uppermost in all minds—the present outpouring of grace on Paradise Valley and the region round-about.

"D'ye reckon the Elder'll make it this time with his brother-in-law?" asked a tall, flat-chested mountaineer from the Pine Knob uplands.

"Samantha Parkins, she allows that Caleb has done sinned away his day o' grace," said another Pine Knobber, "but I ain't goin' that far. Caleb's a sight like the iron he makes in that old furnace o' his'n—honest and even-grained, and just as good for plow-points and the like as it is for soap-kittles. But hot 'r cold, it's just the same; ye cayn't change hit, and ye cayn't change him."

"That's about right," said a third. "It looks to me like Caleb done sot his stakes where he's goin' to run the furrow. If livin' a dozen years and mo' with such a sancterfied woman as Martha Gordon won't make out to toll a man up to the pearly gates, I allow the' ain't no preacher goin' to do it."

"Well, now; maybe that's the reason," drawled Japheth Pettigrass, the only unmarried man in the small circle of listeners; but he was promptly put down by the tall mountaineer.

"Hold on thar, Japhe Pettigrass! I allow the' ain't no dyed-in-the-wool hawss-trader like you goin' to stand up and say anything ag'inst Marthy Gordon while I'm a-listenin'. I'm recollectin' right now the time when she sot up day and night for more'n a week with my Malviny—and me a-smashin' the whisky jug acrost the wagon tire to he'p God to forgit how no-'count and triflin' I'd been."

Thomas Jefferson had opened the church-house doors and windows and was out among the unhitched teams looking for Scrap Pendry, who had been one of a score to go forward for prayers the night before. So it happened that he overheard the flat-chested mountaineer's tribute to his mother. It warmed him generously; but there was a boyish scowl for Japheth Pettigrass. What had the horse-trader been saying to make it needful for Bill Layne to speak up as his mother's defender? Thomas Jefferson recorded a black mark against Pettigrass's name, and went on to search for Scrap.

"What you hiding for?" he demanded, when the newly-made convert was discovered skulking in the dusky shadows of the pines beyond the farthest outlying wagon.

"I ain't hidin'," was the half-defiant answer.

"You're a liar," said Thomas Jefferson coolly, ducking skilfully to escape the consequences.

But there were no consequences. Young Pendry's heavy face flushed a dull red—that could be seen even in the growing dusk—but he made no move retaliatory. Thomas Jefferson walked slowly around him, wary as a wild creature of the wood, and to the full as curious. Then he stuck out his hand awkwardly.

"I only meant it 'over the left,' Scrap, hope to die," he said. "I allowed I'd just like to know for sure if what you done last night made any difference."

Scrap was silent, glibness of tongue not being among the gifts of the East Tennessee landward bred. But he grasped the out-thrust hand heartily and crushed it forgivingly.

"Come on out where the folks are," urged Thomas Jefferson. "Sim Cantrell and the other fellows are allowin' you're afeard."

"I ain't afeard," denied the convert.

"No; but you're sort o' 'shamed, and that's about the same thing, I reckon. Come on out; I'll go 'long with you."

Then spake the new-born love in the heart of the big, rough, country boy. "I cayn't onderstand how you can hold out, Tom-Jeff. I've come thoo', praise the Lord! but I jest natchelly got to have stars for my crown. You say you'll go 'long with me, Tom-Jeff: say it ag'in, and mean it."

Again the doubtful-curious look came into Thomas Jefferson's gray eyes, and he would not commit himself. Nevertheless, one point was safely established, and it was a point gained: the miraculous thing called conversion was beyond question real in Scrap's case. He turned to lead the way between the wagons. The lamps were lighted in the church and the people were filling the benches, while the choir gathered around the tuneless little cottage organ to practise the hymns.

"I—I'm studyin' about it some, Scrap," he confessed, half angry with himself that the admission sent the blood to his cheeks. "Let's go in."

It was admitted on all sides that Brother Crafts was a powerful preacher. Other men had wrestled mightily in Zoar, but none to such heart-shaking purpose. When he expatiated on the ineffable glories of Heaven and the joys of the redeemed, which was not too often, the reflection of the celestial effulgences could be seen rippling like sunshine on the sea of faces spreading away from the shore of the pulpit steps. When he spoke of hell and its terrors, which was frequently and with thrilling descriptive, even so hardened a scoffer as Japheth Pettigrass was wont to declare that you could hear the crackling of the flames and the cries of the doomed.

The opening exercises were over—the Bible reading, the long, impassioned prayer, the hymn singing—and the preacher stood up in a hush that could be felt, and stepped forward to the small desk which served for a pulpit.

He was a tall man, thin and erect, with a sallow, beardless face unrelieved by any line of mobility, but redeemed and almost glorified by the deep-set, eager, burning eyes. He had a way of bending to his audience when he spoke, with one long arm crooked behind him and the other extended to mark the sentences with a pointing finger, as if to remove the final trace of impersonality; to break down the last of the barriers of reserve which might be thrown up by the impenitent heart.

The hush remained unbroken till he announced his text in a voice that rang like an alarm-bell pealed in the dead of night. There are voices and voices, but only now and then one which is pitched in the key of the spheral harmonies. When the Reverend Silas hurled out the Baptist's words, Repent ye: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand! the responsive thrill from the packed benches was like the sympathetic vibration of harp-strings answering a trumpet blast.

The thin, large-jointed hand went up for silence, as if there could be a silence more profound than that which already hung on his word. Then he began slowly, and in phrase so simple that the youngest child could not fail to follow him, to draw the picture of that Judean morning scene on the banks of the Jordan, of the wild, unkempt, skin-clad forerunner, thundering forth his message to a sin—cursed world. On what deaf ears had it fallen among the multitude gathered on Jordan's bank! On what deaf ears would it fall in Zoar church this night!

He classed them rapidly, and with a prescient insight into the mazes of human frailty that made it seem as if the doors of all hearts were open to him: the Pharisee, who paid tithes—mint, anise and cummin—and prayed daily on the street corners, and saw no need for repentance; the youth and the maiden, with their lips to the brimming cup of worldly pleasures, saying to the faithful monitor, yet a little while longer and we will hear thee; the man and woman grown, fighting the battle for bread, living toilfully for time and the things that perish, and hearing the warning voice faintly and ever more faintly as the years pass; the aged, steeped and sodden in sin unrepented of, and with the spiritual senses all dulled and blunted by lifelong rebellion, willing now to hear and obey, it might be, but calling in vain on the merciful and long-suffering God they had so long rejected.

Then, suddenly, he passed from pleading to denunciation. The setting of The Great White Throne and the awful terrors of the Judgment Day were depicted in words that fell from the thin lips like the sentence of an inexorable judge.

"'Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels!'" he thundered, and a shudder ran through the crowded church as if an earthquake had shaken the valley. "There is your end, impenitent soul; and, alas! for you, it is only the beginning of a fearful eternity! Think of it, you who have time to think of everything but the salvation of your soul, your sins, and the awful doom which is awaiting you! Think of it, you who are throwing your lives away in the pleasures of this world; you who have broken God's commands; you who have stolen when you thought no eye was on you; you who have so often committed murder in your hating hearts! Think not that you will be suffered to escape! Every servant of the most high God who has ever declared His message to you will be there to denounce you: I, Silas Crafts, will meet you at the judgment-seat of Christ to bear my witness against you!"

A man, red-faced and with the devil of the cup of trembling peering from under his shaggy eyebrows, rose unsteadily from his seat on the bench nearest the door.

"'Sh! he's fotched Tike Bryerson!" flew the whisper from lip to ear; but the man with the trembling madness in his eyes was backing toward the door. Suddenly he stooped and rose again with a backwoodsman's rifle in his hands, and his voice sheared the breathless silence like the snarl of a wild beast at bay.

"No, by jacks, ye won't witness ag'inst me, Silas Crafts; ye'll be dead!"

The crack of the rifle went with the words, and at the flash of the piece the man sprang backward through the doorway and was gone. Happily, he had been too drunk or too tremulous to shoot straight. The preacher was unhurt, and he was quick to quell the rising tumult and to turn the incident to good account.

"There went the arrow of conviction quivering to the heart of a murderer!" he cried, dominating the commotion with his marvelous voice. "Come back here, Japheth Pettigrass; and you, William Layne: God Almighty will deal with that poor sinner in His own way. For him, for every impenitent soul here to-night, the hour has struck. 'Now is the accepted time; now is the day of salvation.' While we are singing, Just as I am, without one plea, let the doors of divine mercy stand opened wide, and let every hard heart be softened. Come, ye disconsolate; come forward to the mercy-seat as we sing."

The old, soul-moving, revival hymn was lifted in a triumphant burst of sound, and Thomas Jefferson's heart began to pound like a trip-hammer. Was this his call—his one last chance to enter the ark of safety? Just there was the pinch. A saying of Japheth Pettigrass's, overheard in Hargis's store on the first day of the meetings, flicked into his mind and stuck there: "Hit's scare, first, last, and all the time, with Brother Silas. He knows mighty well that a good bunch o' hickories, that'll bring the blood every cut, beats a sugar kittle out o' sight when it comes to fillin' the anxious seat." Was it really his call? Or was he only scared?

The twelve-year-old brain grappled hardily with the problem which has thrown many an older wrestler. This he knew: that while he had been listening with outward ears to the restless champing and stamping of the horses among the pines, but with his inmost soul to the burning words of his uncle, the preacher, a great fear had laid hold of him—a fear mightier than desire or shame, or love or hatred, or any spring of action known to him. It was lifting him to his feet; it was edging him past the others on the bench and out into the aisle with the mourners who were crowding the space in front of the pulpit platform. At the turn he heard his mother's low-murmured, "I thank Thee, O God!" and saw the grim, set smile on his father's face. Then he fell on his knees on the rough-hewn floor, with the tall mountaineer called William Layne on his right, and on his left a young girl from the choir who was sobbing softly in her handkerchief.

June being the queen of the months in the valleys of Tennessee, the revival converts of Little Zoar had the pick and choice of all the Sundays of the year for the day of their baptizing.

The font was of great nature's own providing, as was the mighty temple housing it—a clear pool in the creek, with the green-walled aisles in the June forest leading down to it, and the blue arch of the flawless June sky for a dome resplendent.

All Paradise was there to see and hear and bear witness, as a matter of course; and there were not wanting farm-wagon loads from the great valley and from the Pine Knob highlands. Major Dabney was among the onlookers, sitting his clean-limbed Hambletonian, and twisting his huge white mustaches until they stood out like strange and fierce-looking horns. Also, in the outer ranks of skepticism, Major Dabney's foreman and horse-trader, Japheth Pettigrass, found a place. On the opposite bank of the stream were the few negroes owning Major Dabney now as "Majah Boss," as some of them—most of them, in fact—had once owned him as "Mawstuh Majah"; and mingling freely with them were the laborers, white and black, from the Gordon iron-furnace.

Thomas Jefferson brought up memories from that solemn rite administered so simply and yet so impressively under the June sky, with the many-pointing forest spires to lift the soul to heights ecstatic. One was the singing of the choir, minimized and made celestially sweet by the lack of bounding walls and roof. Another was the sight of his father's face, with the grim smile gone, and the steadfast eyes gravely tolerant as he—Thomas Jefferson—was going down into the water. A third—and this might easily become the most lasting of all—was the memory of how his mother clasped him in her arms as he came up out of the water, all wet and dripping as he was, and sobbed over him as if her heart would break.