Part 11

It was with more than his usual enjoyment of gossip that the school-master hurried home to the Captain's that evening to tell the story of Morton's return, and to boast that he had already soiphered it out by the single Rule of Thray that Moirton would come out roight. The Captain, as he ate his waffles with country molasses, slurred the whole thing, and wanted to know if he was going to refuse to pay a debt of honor and keep the mare, when he had fairly lost her gambling with Burchard. But Patty inly resolved to show her lover more affection than ever. She would make him feel that her love would be constant when the friendship of others failed. She liked to flatter herself, as other young women have to their cost, that her love would reform her lover.

Patty knew he would come. She went about her work next morning, humming some trifling air, that she might seem nonchalant. But after awhile she happened to think that her humming was an indication of pre-occupation. So she ceased to hum. Then she remembered that people would certainly interpret silence as indicative of meditation; she immediately fell a-talking with might and main, until one of the younger girls asked: "What does make Patty talk so much?" Upon which, Patty ceased to talk and went to work harder than ever; but, being afraid that the eagerness with which she worked would betray her, she tried to work more slowly until that was observed. The very devices by which we seek to hide mental pre-occupation generally reveal it.

At last Patty was fain to betake herself to the loom-room, where she could think without having her thoughts guessed at. Here, too, she would be alone when Morton should come.

Poor Morton, having told his mother of his religious change, found it hard indeed to tell Patty. But he counted certainly that she would censure him for gambling, which would make it so much easier for him to explain to her that the only way for him to escape from vice was to join the Methodists, and thus give up all to a better life. He shaped some sentences founded upon this supposition. But after all his effort at courage, and all his praying for grace to help him to "confess Christ before men," he found the cross exceedingly hard to bear; and when he set his foot upon the threshold of the loom-room, his heart was in his mouth and his face was suffused with guilty blushes. Ah, weak nature! He was not blushing for his sins, but for his repentance!

Patty, seeing his confusion, determined to make him feel how full of forgiveness love was. She saw nobleness in his very shame, and she generously resolved that she would not ask, that she would not allow, a confession. She extended her hand cordially and beamed upon him, and told him how glad she was that he had come back, and--and--well--; she couldn't find anything else to say, but she urged him to sit down and handed him a splint-bottom chair, and tried for the life of her to think of something to say--the silence was so embarrassing. But talking for talk's sake is always hard. One talks as one breathes--best when volition has nothing to do with it.

The silence was embarrassing to Morton, but not half so much so as Patty's talk. For he had not expected this sort of an opening. If she had accused him of gambling, if she had spurned him, the road would have been plain. But now that she loved him and forgave him of her own sweet generosity, how should he smite her pride in the face by telling her that he had joined himself to the illiterate, vulgar fanatical sect of ranting Methodists, whom she utterly despised? Truly the Enemy had set an unexpected snare for his unwary feet. He had resolved to confess his religious devotion with heroic courage, but he had not expected to be disarmed in this fashion. He talked about everything else, he temporized, he allowed her to turn the conversation as she would, hoping vainly that she would allude to his gambling. But she did not. Could it be that she had not heard of it? Must he then reveal that to her also?

While he was debating the question in his mind, Patty, imagining that he was reproaching himself for the sin and folly of gambling, began to talk of what had happened in the neighborhood--how Jake Sniger "fell with the power" on Sunday and got drunk on Tuesday: "that's all this Methodist fuss amounts to, you know," she said. Morton thought it ungracious to blurt out at this moment that he was a Methodist: there would be an air of contradiction in the avowal; so he sat still while Patty turned all the sobbing and sighing, and shouting and loud praying of the meetings into ridicule. And Morton became conscious that it was getting every minute more and more difficult for him to confess his conversion. He thought it better to return to his gambling for a starting point.

"Did you hear what a bad boy I've been, Patty?"

"Oh! yes. I'm sorry you got into such a bad scrape; but don't say any more about it, Morton. You're too good for me with all your faults, and you won't do it any more."

"But I want to tell you all about it, and what happened while I was gone. I'm afraid you'll think too hard of me--"

"But I don't think hard of you at all, and I don't want to hear about it because it isn't pleasant. It'll all come out right at last: I'd a great deal rather have you a little wild at first than a hard Methodist, like Kike, for instance."

"But--"

"I tell you, Morton, I won't hear a word. Not one word. I want you to feel that whatever anybody else may say, I know you're all right."

You think Morton very weak. But, do you know how exceedingly sweet is confidence from one you love, when there is only censure, and suspicion, and dark predictions of evil from everybody else? Poor Morton could not refuse to bask in the sunshine for a moment after so much of storm. It is not the north wind, but the southern breezes that are fatal to the ice-berg's voyage into sunny climes.

At last he rose to go. He felt himself a Peter. He had denied the Master!

"Patty," he said, with resolution, "I have not been honest with you. I meant to tell you something when I first came, and I didn't. It is hard to have to give up your love. But I'm afraid you won't care for me when I tell you--"

The severity of Morton's penitence only touched Patty the more deeply.

"Morton," she said, interrupting, "if you've done anything naughty, I forgive you without knowing it. But I don't want to hear any more about it, I tell you." And with that the blushing Patty held her cheek up for her betrothed to kiss, and when Morton, trembling with conflicting emotions, had kissed her for the first time, she slipped away quickly to prevent his making any painful confessions.

For a moment Morton stood charmed with her goodness. When he believed himself to have conquered, he found himself vanquished.

In a dazed sort of way he walked the greater part of the distance home. He might write to her about it. He might let her hear it from others. But he rejected both as unworthy of a man. The memory of the kiss thrilled him, and he was tempted to throw away his Methodism and rejoice in the love of Patty, now so assured. But suddenly he seemed to himself to be another Judas. He had not denied the Lord--he had betrayed him; and with a kiss!

Horrified by this thought, Morton hastened back toward Captain Lumsden's. He entered the loom-room, but it was vacant. He went into the living-room, and there he saw not Patty alone, but the whole family. Captain Lumsden had at that moment entered by the opposite door. Patty was carding wool with hand-cards, and she looked up, startled at this reappearance of her lover when she thought him happily dismissed.

"Patty," said Morton, determined not to fall into any devil's snare by delay, and to atone for his great sin by making his profession as public as possible, "Patty, what I wanted to say was, that I have determined to be a Christian, and I have joined--the--Methodist--Church."

Morton's sense of inner conflict gave this utterance an unfortunate sound of defiance, and it aroused all Patty's combativeness. It was in fact a death wound to her pride. She had feared sometimes that Morton would be drawn into Methodism, but that he should join the despised sect without so much as consulting her was more than she could bear. This, then, was the way in which her forbearance and forgiveness were rewarded! There stood her father, sneering like a Mephistopheles. She would resent the indignity, and at the same time show her power over her lover.

"Morton, if you are a Methodist, I never want to see you again," she said, with lofty pride, and a solemn awfulness of passion more terrible than an oath.

"Don't say that, Patty!" stammered Morton, stretching his hands out in eager, despairing entreaty. But this only gave Patty the greater assurance that a little decision on her part would make him give up his Methodism.

"I do say it, Morton, and I will never take it back." There was a sternness in the white face and a fire in the black eyes that left Morton no hope.

But he straightened himself up now to his full six feet, and said, with manly stubbornness: "Then, Patty, since you make me choose, I shall not give up the Lord, even for you. But," he added, with a broken voice, as he turned away, "may God help me to bear it."

Ah, Matilda Maria! if Morton were a knight in armor giving up his ladye love for the sake of monastic religiousness, how admirable he would be! But even in his homespun he is a man making the greatest of sacrifices. It is not the garb or the age that makes sublime a soul's offering of heart and hope to duty. When Morton was gone Lumsden chuckled not a little, and undertook to praise Patty for her courage; but I have understood that she resented his compliments, and poured upon him some severe denunciation, in which the Captain heard more truth than even Kike had ventured to utter. Such are the inconsistencies of a woman when her heart is wounded.

It seems a trifle to tell just here, when Morton and Patty are in trouble--but you will want to know about Brady. He was at Colonel Wheeler's that evening, eagerly telling of Morton's escape from lynching, when Mrs. Wheeler expressed her gratification that Morton had ceased to gamble and become a Methodist.

"Mithodist? He's no Mithodist."

"Yes, he is," responded Mrs. Wheeler, "his mother told me so; and what's more, she said she was glad of it." Then, seeing Brady's discomfiture, she added: "You didn't get all the news that time, Mr. Brady."

"Well, me dair madam, when I'm admithed to a family intervoo, it's not proper fer me to tell all I heerd. I didn't know the fact was made public yit, and so I had to denoy it. It's the honor of a Oirish gintleman, ye know."

What a journalist he would have made!

_CHAPTER XX._

THE CONFERENCE AT HICKORY RIDGE.

More than two years have passed since Morton made his great sacrifice. You may see him now riding up to the Hickory Ridge Church--a "hewed-log" country meeting-house. He is dressed in homespun clothes. At the risk of compromising him forever, I must confess that his coat is straight-breasted--shad-bellied as the profane call it--and his best hat a white one with a broad brim. The face is still fresh, despite the conflicts and hardships of one year's travel in the mountains of Eastern Kentucky, and the sickness and exposure of another year in the malarious cane-brakes of Western Tennessee. Perils of Indians, perils of floods, perils of alligators, perils of bad food, perils of cold beds, perils of robbers, perils of rowdies, perils of fevers, and the weariness of five thousand miles of horseback riding in a year, with five or six hundred preachings in the same time, and the care of numberless scattered churches in the wilderness have conspired to give sedateness to his countenance. And yet there is a youthfulness about the sun-browned cheeks, and a lingering expression of that sort of humor which Western people call "mischief" about the eyes, that match but grotesquely with white hat and shad-bellied coat.

He has been a preacher almost ever since he became a Methodist. How did he get his theological education? It used to be said that Methodist preachers were educated by the old ones telling the young ones all they knew; but besides this oral instruction Morton carried in his saddle-bags John Wesley's simple, solid sermons, Charles Wesley's hymns, and a Bible. Having little of the theory and system of theology, he was free to take lessons in the larger school of life and practical observation. For the rest, the free criticism to which he was subject from other preachers, and the contact with a few families of refinement, had obliterated his dialect. Naturally a gentleman at heart, he had, from the few stately gentlemen that he met, quickly learned to be a gentleman in manners. He is regarded as a young man of great promise by the older brethren; his clear voice is very charming, his strong and manly speech and his tender feeling are very inspiring, and on his two circuits he has reported extraordinary revivals. Some of the old men sagely predict that "he's got bishop-timber in him," but no such ambitious dreams disturb his sleep. He has not "gone into a decline" on account of Patty. A healthy nature will bear heavy blows. But there is a pain, somewhere--everywhere--in his being, when he thinks of the girl who stood just above him in the spelling-class, and who looked so divine when she was spinning her two dozen cuts a day. He does not like this regretful feeling. He prays to be forgiven for it. He acknowledges in class-meeting and in love-feast that he is too much like Lot's wife--he finds his heart prone to look back toward the objects he once loved. Often in riding through the stillness of a deep forest--and the primeval forest is to him the peculiar abode of the Almighty--his noble voice rings out fervently and even pathetically with that stanza:

"The dearest idol I have known, Whate'er that idol be, Help me to tear it from thy throne And worship only Thee!"

No man can enjoy a joke with more zest than he, and none can tell a story more effectively in a generation of preachers who are all good story-tellers. He loves his work; its dangers and difficulties satisfy the ambition of his boyhood; and he has had no misgivings, except when once or twice he has revisited his parents in the Hissawachee Bottom. Then the longing to see Patty has seized him and he has been fain to hurry away, praying to be delivered from every snare of the enemy.

He is not the only man in a straight-breasted coat who is approaching the country meeting-house. It is conference-time, and the greetings are hearty and familiar. Everybody is glad to see everybody, and, after a year of separation, nobody can afford to stand on ceremony with anybody else. Morton has hardly alighted before half a dozen preachers have rushed up to him and taken him by the hand. A tall brother, with a grotesque twitch in his face, cries out:

"How do you do, Brother Goodwin? Glad to see the alligators haven't finished you!"

To which Morton returns a laughing reply; but suddenly he sees, standing back of the rest and waiting his turn, a young man with a solemn, sallow face, pinched by sickness and exposure, and bordered by the straight black hair that falls on each side of it. He wears over his clothes a blanket with arm-holes cut through, and seems to be perpetually awaiting an ague-chill. Seeing him, Morton pushes the rest aside, and catches the wan hand in both of his own with a cry: "Kike, God bless you! How are you, dear old fellow? You look sick."

Kike smiled faintly, and Morton threw his arm over his shoulder and looked in his face. "I am sick, Mort. Cast down, but not destroyed, you know. I hope I am ready to be offered up."

"Not a bit of it. You've got to get better. Offered up? Why, you aren't fit to offer to an alligator. Where are you staying?"

"Out there." Kike pointed to the tents of a camp-meeting barely visible through the trees. The people in the neighborhood of the Hickory Ridge Church, being unable to entertain the Conference in their homes, had resorted to the device of getting up a camp-meeting. It was easier to take care of the preachers out of doors than in. Morton shook his head as he walked with Kike to the thin canvas tent under which he had been assigned to sleep. The white spot on the end of Kike's nose and the blue lines under his finger-nails told plainly of the on-coming chill, and Morton hurried away to find some better shelter for him than under this thin sheet. But this was hard to do. The few brethren in the neighborhood had already filled their cabins full of guests, mostly in infirm health, and Kike, being one of the younger men, renowned only for his piety and his revivals, had not been thought of for a place elsewhere than on the camp-ground. Finding it impossible to get a more comfortable resting place for his friend, Morton turned to seek for a physician. The only doctor in the neighborhood was a Presbyterian minister, retired from the ministry on account of his impaired health. To him Morton went to ask for medicine for Kike.

"Dr. Morgan, there is a preacher sick down at the camp-ground," said Morton, "and--"

"And you want me to see him," said the doctor, in an alert, anticipative fashion, seizing his "pill-bags" and donning his hat.

When the two rode up to the tent in which Kike was lodged they found a prayer-meeting of a very exciting kind going on in the tent adjoining. There were cries and groans and amens and hallelujahs commingled in a way quite intelligible to the experienced ear of Morton, but quite unendurable to the orderly doctor.

"A bad place for a sick man, sir," he said to Morton, with great positiveness.

"I know it is, doctor," said Morton; "and I've done my best to get him out of it, but I cannot. See how thin this tent-cover is."

"And the malaria of these woods is awful. Camp-meetings, sir, are always bad. And this fuss is enough to drive a patient crazy."

Morton thought the doctor prejudiced, but he said nothing. They had now reached the corner of the tent where Kike lay on a straw pallet, holding his hands to his head. The noise from the prayer-meeting was more than his weary brain would bear.

"Can you sit on my horse?" said the doctor, promptly proceeding to lift Kike without even explaining to him who he was, or where he proposed to take him.

Morton helped to place Kike in the saddle, but the poor fellow was shaking so that he could not sit there. Morton then brought out Dolly--she was all his own now--and took the slight form of Kike in his arms, he riding on the croup, and the sick man in the saddle.

"Where shall I ride to, doctor?"

"To my house," said the doctor, mounting his own horse and spurring off to have a bed made ready for Kike.

As Morton rode up to the doctor's gate, the shaking Kike roused a little and said, "She's the same fine old Dolly, Mort."

"A little more sober. The long rides in the cane-brakes, and the responsibility of the Methodist itinerancy, have given her the gravity that belongs to the ministry."

Such a bed as Kike found in Dr. Morgan's house! After the rude bear-skins upon which he had languished in the backwoods cabins, after the musty feather-beds in freezing lofts, and the pallets of leaves upon which he had shivered and scorched and fought fleas and musquitoes, this clean white bed was like a foretaste of heaven. But Kike was almost too sick to be grateful. The poor frame had been kept up by will so long, that now that he was in a good bed and had Morton he felt that he could afford to be sick. What had been ague settled into that wearisome disease called bilious fever. Morton staid by him nearly all of the time, looking into the conference now and then to see the venerable Asbury in the chair, listening to a grand speech from McKendree, attending on the third day of the session, when, with the others who had been preaching two years on probation, he was called forward to answer the "Questions" always propounded to "Candidates for admission to the conference." Kike only was missing from the list of those who were to have heard the bishop's exhortations, full of martial fire, and to have answered his questions in regard to their spiritual state. For above all gifts of speech or depths of learning, or acuteness of reasoning, the early Methodists esteemed devout affections; and no man was of account for the ministry who was not "groaning to be made perfect in this life." The question stands in the discipline yet, but very many young men who assent to it groan after nothing so much as a city church with full galleries.

The strange mystery in which appointments were involved could not but pique curiosity. Morton having had one year of mountains, and one year of cane-brakes, had come to wish for one year of a little more comfort, and a little better support. There is a romance about going threadbare and tattered in a good cause, but even the romance gets threadbare and tattered if it last too long, and one wishes for a little sober reality of warm clothes to relieve a romance, charming enough in itself, but dull when it grows monotonous.

The awful hour of appointments came on at last. The brave-hearted men sat down before the bishop, and before God, not knowing what was to be their fate. Morton could not guess where he was going. A miasmatic cane-brake, or a deadly cypress swamp, might be his doom, or he might--but no, he would not hope that his lot might fall in Ohio. He was a young man, and a young man must take his chances. Morton found himself more anxious about Kike than about himself. Where would the bishop send the invalid? With Kike it might be a matter of life and death, and Kike would not hear to being left without work. He meant, he said, to cease at once to work and live.

The brethren, still in sublime ignorance of their destiny, sang fervently that fiery hymn of Charles Wesley's:

"Jesus, the name high over all, In hell or earth or sky, Angels and men before him fall, And devils fear and fly.

"O that the world might taste and see, The riches of his grace, The arms of love that compass me Would all mankind embrace."

And when they reached the last stanzas there was the ring of soldiers ready for battle in their martial voices. That some of them would die from exposure, malaria, or accident during the next year was probable. Tears came to their eyes, and they involuntarily began to grasp the hands of those who stood next them as they approached the climax of the hymn, which the bishop read impressively, two lines at a time, for them to sing:

"His only righteousness I show, His saving truth proclaim, 'Tis all my business here below To cry, 'Behold the Lamb!'

"Happy if with my latest breath I may but gasp his name, Preach him to all and cry in death, 'Behold, behold the Lamb!'"

Then, with suffused eyes, they resumed their seats, and the venerable Asbury, with calmness and with a voice faltering with age, made them a brief address; tender and sympathetic at first, earnest as he proceeded, and full of ardor and courage at the close.