Part 10

'I hopes,' proceeded the grandmother, disregarding the interruption, and peering out again at the road where the horseman had disappeared, 'ez Hi Kelsey won't sot hisself ter prophesyin' evil at the meetin'; 'pears ter me he ought to be hendered, ef mought be, 'kase the wrath he foresees mos'ly kems ter pass, an' I'm always lookin' ter see him prophesy the raiders--though he hev hed the grace ter hold his hand 'bout'n the still. An' I hopes he won't hev nuthin' ter say 'bout it at the meetin' Sunday.'

The little log meeting-house at the Notch stood high on a rugged spur of the Great Smoky. Dense forests encompassed it on every hand, obscuring that familiar picture of mountain and cloud and cove. From its rude, glassless windows one could look out on no distant vista, save, perhaps, in the visionary glories of heaven or the climatic discomforts of hell, according to the state of the conscience, or perchance the liver. The sky was aloof and limited. The laurel tangled the aisles of the woods.

Sometimes from the hard benches a weary tow-headed brat might rejoice to mark in the monotony the frisking of a squirrel on a bough hard by, or a woodpecker solemnly tapping. The acorns would rattle on the roof, if the wind stirred, as if in punctuation of the discourse. The pines, mustering strong among the oaks, joined their mystic threnody to the sad-voiced quiring within. The firs stretched down long, pendulous, darkling boughs, and filled the air with their balsamic fragrance.

Within the house the dull light fell over a few rude benches and a platform with a chair and table, which was used as pulpit. Shadows of many deep, rich tones of brown lurked among the rafters. Here and there a cobweb, woven to the consistence of a fabric, swung in the air. The drone of a blue-bottle, fluttering in and out of the window in a slant of sunshine, might invade the reverent silence, as Brother Jake Tobin turned the leaves to read the chapter.

Sometimes there would sound, too, a commotion among the horses without, unharnessed from the waggons and hitched to the trees; then in more than one of the solemn faces might be descried an anxious perturbation--not fear because of equine perversities, but because of the idiosyncrasies of callow human nature in the urchins left in charge of the teams. No one ventured to investigate, however, and, with that worldly discomfort contending with the spiritual exaltations they sought to foster, the rows of religionists swayed backward and forward in rhythm to the reader's voice, rising and falling in long, billowy sweeps of sound, like the ground swell of ocean waves.

It was strange, looking upon their faces, and with a knowledge of the limited phases of their existence, their similarity of experience here, where a century might come and go, working no change save that, like the leaves, they fluttered awhile in the outer air with the spurious animation called life, and fell in death, and made way for new bourgeonings like unto themselves--strange to mark how they differed. Here was a man of a stern, darkly religious conviction, who might either have writhed at the stake or stooped to kindle the flames; and here was an accountant soul that knew only those keen mercantile motives--the hope of reward and the fear of hell; and here was an enthusiast's eye, touched by the love of God; and here was an unfinished, hardly humanized face, that it seemed as presumptuous to claim as the exponent of a soul as the faces of the stupid oxen out-of-doors. All were earnest; many wore an expression of excited interest, as the details of the chapter waxed to a climax, like the tense stillness of a metropolitan audience before an unimagined _coup de theatre_. The men all sat on one side, chewing their quids; the women on the other, almost masked by their limp sun-bonnets. The ubiquitous baby--several of him--was there, and more than once babbled aloud and cried out peevishly. Only one, becoming uproarious, was made a public example, being quietly borne out and deposited in the ox-waggon, at the mercy of the urchins who presided over the teams, while his mother creaked in again on the tips of deprecating, anxious toes, to hear the Word.

Brother Jake Tobin might be accounted in some sort a dramatic reader. He was a tall, burly man, inclining to fatness, with grizzled hair reached back from his face. He cast his light grey eyes upward at the end of every phrase, with a long, resonant 'Ah!' He smote the table with his hands at emphatic passages; he rolled out denunciatory clauses with a freshened relish which intimated that he considered one of the choicest pleasures of the saved might be to gloat over the unhappy predicament of the damned. He chose for his reading paragraphs that, applied to aught but spiritual enemies and personified sins, might make a civilized man quake for his dearest foe. He paused often and interpolated his own observations, standing a little to the side of the table, and speaking in a conversational tone. 'Ain't that so, my brethren an' sisters! But _we_ air saved in the covenant--ah!' Then, clapping his hands with an ecstatic upward look, 'I'm so happy, I'm so happy!'--he would go on to read with the unction of immediate intention, 'Let death seize them! Let them go down quick into hell!'

He wore a brown jeans suit, the vest much creased in the regions of his enhanced portliness, its maker's philosophy not having taken into due account his susceptibility to 'chicken fixin's.' After concluding the reading, he wiped the perspiration from his brow with his red bandanna handkerchief, and placed it around the collar of his unbleached cotton shirt, as he proceeded to the further exertion of 'lining out' the hymn.

The voice broke forth in those long, lingering cadences that have a melancholy, spiritual, yearning effect, in which the more tutored church music utterly fails. The hymn rose with a solemn jubilance, filling the little house, and surging out into the woods; sounding far across unseen chasms and gorges, and rousing in the unsentient crags an echo with a testimony so sweet, charged with so devout a sentiment, that it seemed as if with this voice the very stones would have cried out, had there been dearth of human homage when Christ rode into Jerusalem.

Then the sudden pause, the failing echo, the sylvan stillness, and the chanting voice 'lined out' another couplet. It was well, perhaps, that this part of the service was so long; the soul might rise on its solemnity, might rise on its aspiration.

It came to an end at last. Another long pause ensued. Kelsey, sitting on the opposite side of the table, his elbow on the back of his chair, his hand shading his eyes, made no movement. Brother Jake Tobin looked hard at him, with an expression which in a worldly man we should pronounce exasperation. He hesitated for a moment in perplexity. There was a faint commotion, implying suppressed excitement in the congregation. Parson Kelsey's idiosyncrasies were known by more than one to be a thorn in the side of the frankly confiding Brother Jake Tobin.

'Whenst I hev got him in the pul_pit_ alongside o' me,' he would say to his cronies, 'I feel ez onlucky an' weighted ez ef I war a-lookin' over my lef' shoulder at the new moon on a November Friday. I feel ez oncommon ez ef he war a deer, or suthin', ez hev got no salvation in him. An' eff he don't feel the sperit ter pray, he _won't_ pray, an' I hev got ter surroun' the throne o' grace by myself. He _kin_ pray ef he hev a mind ter, an' he _do_ seem ter hev hed a outpourin' o' the sperit o' prophecy; but he hev made me 'pear mighty comical 'fore the Lord a many a time, when I hev axed him ter open his mouth an' he hev kep' it shut.'

Brother Jake did not venture to address him now. An alternative was open to him.

'Brother Reuben Bates, will ye lead us in prayer?' he said to one of the congregation.

They all knelt down, huddled like sheep in the narrow spaces between the benches, and from among them went up the voice of supplication, that anywhere and anyhow has the commanding dignity of spiritual communion, the fervour of exaltation, and all the moving humility of the finite leaning upon the infinite. Ignorance was annihilated, so far as Brother Reuben Bates's prayer was concerned. It grasped the fact of immortality--all worth knowing!--and humble humanity was presented as possessing the intimate inherent principles of the splendid fruitions of eternity.

He had few words, Brother Reuben, and the aspirated 'Ah!' was long drawn often, while he swiftly thought of something else to say. Brother Jake Tobin, after the manner in vogue among them, broke out from time to time with a fervour of assent. 'Yes, my Master!' he would exclaim in a wild, ecstatic tone. 'Bless the Lord!' 'That's a true word!' 'I'm so happy!'

Always these interpolations came opportunely when Brother Reuben seemed entangled in his primitive rhetoric, and gave him a moment for improvisation. It was doubtless Hi Kelsey's miserable misfortune that his acute intuition should detect in the reverend tones a vainglorious self-satisfaction, known to no one else, not even to the speaker; that he should accurately gauge how Brother Jake Tobin secretly piqued himself upon his own gift in prayer, never having experienced these stuttering halts, never having needed these pious boosts; that he should be aware, ignorant as he was, of that duality of cerebration by which Brother Jake's mind was divided between the effect on God, bending down a gracious ear, and the impression of these ecstatic outbursts on the congregation; that the petty contemptibleness of it should depress him; that its dissimulations angered him. With the rigour of an upright man, he upbraided himself. He was on his knees: was he praying? Were these the sincerities of faith? Was this lukewarm inattention the guerdon of the sacrifice of the cross? His ideal and himself, himself and what he sought to be--oh, the gulf! the deep divisions!

He gave his intentions no grace. He conceded naught to human nature. His conscience revolted at a sham. And he was a living, breathing sham--upon his knees.

Ah, let us have a little mercy on ourselves! Most of us do. For there was Brother Jake Tobin, with a conscience free of offence, happily unobservant of his own complicated mental processes and of the motives of his own human heart, becoming more and more actively assistant as Brother Reuben Bates grew panicky, hesitant, and involved, and kept convulsively on through sheer inability to stop, suggesting epilepsy rather than piety.

It was over at last; exhausted nature prevailed, and Brother Bates resumed his seat, wiping the perspiration from his brow and raucously clearing his rasped throat.

There was a great scraping of the rough shoes and boots on the floor as the congregation rose, and one or two of the benches were moved backward with a harsh, grating sound. A small boy had gone to sleep during the petition, and remained in his prayerful attitude. Brother Jake Tobin settled himself in his chair as comfortably as might be, tilted it back on its hind-legs against the wall, and wore the air of having fairly exploited his share of the services and cast off responsibility. The congregation composed itself to listen to the sermon.

There was an expectant pause. Kelsey remembered ever after the tumult of emotion with which he stepped forward to the table and opened the book. He turned to the New Testament for his text--turned the leaves with a familiar hand. Some ennobling phase of that wonderful story which would touch the tender, true affinity of human nature for the higher things--from this he would preach to-day. And yet, at the same moment, with a contrariety of feeling from which he shrank aghast, there was skulking into his mind all that grewsome company of doubts. In double file they came: fate and free agency, free will and fore-ordination, infinite mercy and infinite justice, God's loving-kindness and man's intolerable misery, redemption and damnation. He had evolved them all from his own unconscious logical faculty, and they pursued him as if he had, in some spiritual necromancy, conjured up a devil--nay, legions of devils. Perhaps if he had known how they have assaulted the hearts of men in times gone past; how they have been combated and baffled, and yet have risen and pursued again; how, in the scrutiny of science and research, men have paused before their awful presence, analyzed them, philosophized about them, and found them interesting; how others, in the levity of the world, having heard of them, grudge the time to think upon them--if he had known all this, he might have felt some courage in numbers.

As it was, there was no fight left in him. He closed the book with a sudden impulse. 'My frien's,' he said, 'I stan' not hyar ter preach ter-day, but fur confession.'

There was a galvanic start among the congregation, then intense silence.

'I hev los' my faith!' he cried out, with a poignant despair. 'God ez gin it--ef thar is a God--hev tuk it away. You-uns kin go on. You-uns kin b'lieve. Yer paster b'lieves, an' he'll lead ye ter grace--leastwise ter a better life. But fur me thar's the nethermost depths of hell, ef'--how his faith and his unfaith tried him!--'ef thar be enny hell. Leastwise----Stop, brother,'--he held up his hand in deprecation, for Parson Tobin had risen at last, with a white, scared face; nothing like this had ever been heard in all the length and breadth of the Great Smoky Mountains--'bear with me a little; ye'll see me hyer no more. Fur me thar is shame, ah! an' trial, ah! an' doubt, ah! an' despair, ah! The good things o' life hev not fallen ter me. The good things o' heaven air denied. My name is ter be a by-word an' a reproach 'mongst ye. Ye'll grieve ez ye hev ever hearn the Word from me, ah! Ye'll be held in derision! An' I hev hed trials--none like them ez air comin', comin', down the wind. I hev been a man marked fur sorrow, an' now fur shame.'

He stood erect; he looked bold, youthful. The weight of his secret, lifted now, had been heavier than he knew. In his eyes shone that strange light which was frenzy, or prophecy, or inspiration; in his voice rang a vibration they had never before heard.

'I will go forth from 'mongst ye--I that am not of ye. Another shall gird me an' carry me where I would not. Hell an' the devil hev prevailed agin me. Pray fur me, brethren, ez I cannot pray fur myself. Pray that God may yet speak ter me--speak from out o' the whurlwind.'

There was a sound upon the air. Was it the rising of the wind? A thrill ran through the congregation. The wild emotion, evoked and suspended in this abrupt pause, showed in pallid excitement on every face. Several of the men rose aimlessly, then turned and sat down again. Brought from the calm monotony of their inner life into this supreme crisis of his, they were struck aghast by the hardly comprehended situations of his spiritual drama enacted before them. And what was that sound on the air? In the plenitude of their ignorant faith, were they listening for the invoked voice of God?

Kelsey, too, was listening, in anguished suspense.

It was not the voice of God, that man was wont to hear when the earth was young; not the rising of the wind. The peace of the golden sunshine was supreme. Even a tiny cloudlet, anchored in the limited sky, would not sail to-day.

On and on it came. It was the galloping of horse--the beat of hoofs, individualized presently to the ear--with that thunderous, swift, impetuous advance that so domineers over the imagination, quickens the pulse, shakes the courage.

It might seem that all the ingenuity of malignity could not have compassed so complete a revenge. The fulfilment of his prophecy entered at the door. All its spiritual significance was annihilated; it was merged into a prosaic material degradation when the sheriff of the county strode, with jingling spurs, up the aisle, and laid his hand upon the preacher's shoulder. He wore his impassive official aspect. But his deputy, following hard at his heels, had a grin of facetious triumph upon his thin lips. He had been caught by the nape of the neck, and in a helpless, rodent-like attitude had been slung out of the door by the stalwart man of God, when he and Amos James had ventured to the meeting-house in liquor; and neither he nor the congregation had forgotten the sensation. It was improbable that such high-handed proceedings could be instituted to-day, but the sheriff had taken the precaution to summon the aid of five or six burly fellows, all armed to the teeth. They, too, came tramping heavily up the aisle. Several wore the reflection of the deputy's grin; they were the 'bold, bad men,' the prophet's early associates before 'he got religion, an' sot hisself ter consortin' with the saints.' The others were sheepish and doubtful, serving on the posse with a protest under the constraining penalties of the law.

The congregation was still with a stunned astonishment. The preacher stood as one petrified, his eyes fixed upon the sheriff's face. The officer, with a slow, magisterial gesture, took a paper from his breast-pocket, and laid it upon the Bible.

'Ye kin read, pa'son,' he said. 'Ye kin read the warrant fur yer arrest.'

The deputy laughed, a trifle insolently. He turned, swinging his hat--he had done the sacred edifice the reverence of removing it--and surveyed the wide-eyed, wide-mouthed people, leaning forward, standing up, huddled together, as if he had some speculation as to the effect upon them of these unprecedented proceedings.

Kelsey could read nothing. His strong head was in a whirl; he caught at the table, or he might have fallen. The amazement of it--the shame of it!

'Who does this?' he exclaimed, in sudden realization of the situation. Already self-convicted of the blasphemy of infidelity, he stood in his pulpit in the infinitely ignoble guise of a culprit before the law.

Those fine immaterial issues of faith and unfaith--where were they? The torturing fear of futurity, and of a personal devil and a material hell--how impotent! His honest name--never a man had borne it that had suffered this shame; the precious dignity of freedom was riven from him; the calm securities of his self-respect were shaken for ever. He could never forget the degradation of the sheriff's touch, from which he shrank with so abrupt a gesture that the officer grasped his pistol and every nerve was on the alert. Kelsey was animated at this moment by a pulse as essentially mundane as if he had seen no visions and dreamed no dreams. He had not known how he held himself--how he cherished those values, so familiar that he had forgotten to be thankful till their possession was a retrospection.

He sought to regain his self-control. He caught up the paper; it quivered in his trembling hands; he strove to read it. 'Rescue!' he cried out in a tense voice. 'Rick Tyler! I never rescued Rick Tyler!'

The words broke the long constraint. They were an elucidation, a flash of light. The congregation looked at him with changed eyes, and then looked at each other. Why did he deny? Were not the words of his prophecy still on the air? Had he not confessed himself an evil-doer, forsaken of God and bereft of grace? His prophecy was matched by the details of his experience. Had he done no wrong he could have foreseen no vengeance.

'Rick Tyler ain't wuth it,' said one old man to another, as he spat on the floor.

The widow of Joel Byers, the murdered man, fell into hysterical screaming at Rick Tyler's name, and was presently borne out by her friends and lifted into one of the wagons.

'It air jes' ez well that the sher'ff takes Pa'son Kelsey, arter that thar confession o' his'n,' said one of the dark-browed men, helping to yoke the oxen. 'We couldn't hev kep' him in the church arter sech words ez his'n, and church discipline ain't a-goin' ter cast out no sech devil ez he air possessed by.'

Brother Jake Tobin, too, appreciated that the arrest of the preacher in his pulpit was a solution of a difficult question. It was manifestly easier for the majesty of the State of Tennessee to deal with him than for the little church on the Big Smoky.

'Yer sins hev surely fund ye out, Brother Kelsey,' he began, with the air of having washed his hands of all responsibility. 'God would never hev fursook ye ef ye hedn't fursook the good cause fust. Ye air ter be cast down--ye who hev stood high.'

There was a momentary silence.

'Will ye come?' said the sheriff, smiling fixedly, 'or had ye ruther be fetched?'

The deputy had a pair of handcuffs dangling officiously. They rattled in rude contrast with the accustomed sounds of the place.

Kelsey hesitated. Then, after a fierce internal struggle, he submitted meekly, and was led out from among them.

XI.

It is seldom, in this world at least, that a man who absents himself from church repents it with the fervour of regret which Amos James experienced when he heard of the unexpected proceedings at the Notch.

'Sech a rumpus--dad-burn my luck--I mought never git the chance ter see agin!' he declared with a pious sense of deprivation. And he thought it had been a poor substitute to sit on the doorstep all the forenoon Sunday, 'ez lonesome ez a b'ar in a hollow tree,' because his heart was yet so sore and sensitive that he could not see Dorinda's pink sun-bonnet without a rush of painful emotion, or her face without remembering how she looked when he talked of the rescue of Rick Tyler.

The 'gang o' men'--actively described by his mother as 'lopin' roun' the mill'--lingered long in conclave this morning. Perhaps their views had a more confident and sturdy effect from being propounded at the top of the voice, since the insistent whirr of the busy old mill drowned all efforts in a lower tone; but it was very generally the opinion that Micajah Green had transcended all the license of his official character in making the arrest at the place and time he had selected.

'I knows,' commented one of the disaffected, 'ez it air the law o' Tennessee ez a arrest kin be made of a Sunday, ef so be it must. But 'pears like ter me 'twar nuthin' in this worl' but malice an' meanness ez tuk ch'ice o' the minute the man hed stood up ter preach the Word ter arrest him. 'Cajah Green mus' hev tuk keerful heed o' time--jes' got thar spang on the minute.'

'He w-warn't p-p-preachin' the Word,' stuttered Pete Cayce antagonistically. 'He hed 'jest 'lowed he w-w-warn't fit ter preach it. No more war he.'

He had come down from the still to treat for meal for the mash. He was willing to wait--nay anxious, that he might bear his share in the conversation.

He tilted his chair back against the wall, and nodded his long, drab-tinted locks convincingly.

The water whirled around the wheel; the race foamed with prismatic bubbles, flashing opal-like in the sun; the vague lapsing of the calm depths in the pond was like some deep sigh, as of the fulness of happiness or reflective content--not pain. The water falling over the dam babbled in a meditative undertone. All sounds were dominated by the whirr of the mill in its busy, industrial monody, and within naught else could be heard, save the strident voices pitched on the miller's key and roaring the gossip.

Through the window could be seen the rocky banks opposite, their summits tufted with huckleberry and sassafras bushes and many a tangle of weeds; the dark shadow in the water below; the slope of the mountain rising above. A branch, too, of the low-spreading chestnut-oak, that hung above the roof of the mill, was visible, swaying close without; it cast a tempered shade over the long cobwebs depending from the rafters, whitened by the dust of the flour.