Part 11

In spite of her sorrow, Mrs. Goodwin could not help thinking that it was very inconsistent for an Arminian to believe that God would convert a man in answer to prayer, when Arminians professed to believe that a man could be a Christian or not as he pleased. Willing, however, to lay the blame of her misfortune on anybody but Morton, she said, half peevishly, that she wished the Methodists had never come to the settlement. Morton had been in a hopeful state of mind, and they had driven him to wickedness. Otherwise he would doubtless have been a Christian by this time.

And now Mrs. Wheeler, on her part, thought--but did not say--that it was most absurd for Mrs. Goodwin to complain of anything having driven Morton away from salvation, since, according to her Calvinistic doctrine, he must be saved anyhow if he were elected. It is so easy to be inconsistent when we try to reason about God's relation to his creatures; and so easy to see absurdity in any creed but our own!

The twilight deepened, and Mrs. Goodwin, unable now to endure the darkness, lit her candle. Then there was a knock at the door. Ever since Sunday the mother, waiting between hope and despair, had turned pale at every sound of footsteps without. Now she called out, "Come in!" in a broken voice, and Mr. Brady entered, having just dismissed his school.

"Troth, me dair madam, it's not meself that can give comfort. I'm sure to say something not intoirely proper to the occasion, whiniver I talk to anybody in throuble--something that jars loike a varb that disagrees with its nominative in number and parson, as I may say. But I thought I ought to come and say you, and till you as I don't belave Moirton would do anything very bad, an' I'm shoore he'll be home afore the wake's out. I've soiphered it out by the Rule of Thray. As Moirton Goodwin wuz to his other throubles--comin' out all roight--so is Moirton Goodwin to his present dif_fic_culties. If the first term and the third is the same, then the sicond and the fourth has got to be idintical. Perhaps I'm talkin' too larned; but you're an eddicated woman, Mrs. Goodwin, and you can say that me dimonsthration's entoirely corrict. Moirton'll fetch the answer set down in the book ivery toime, without any remainder or mistake. Thair's no vulgar fractions about him."

"Fractious, did you say?" spoke in Job Goodwin, who had held his hand up to his best ear, to hear what Brady was saying. "No, I don't 'low he was fractious, fer the mos' part. But he's gone now, and he'll git killed like Lew did, and we'll all hev the fever, and then they'll be a war weth the Bridish, and the Injuns'll be on us, and it 'pears like as if they wa'n't no eend of troubles a-comin'. Hey?"

At that very moment the latch was jerked up and Henry came bursting into the room, gasping from excitement.

"What is it? Injuns?" asked Mr. Goodwin, getting to his feet.

But Henry gasped again.

"Spake!" said Brady. "Out wid it!"

"Mort's--a-puttin'--Dolly--in the stable!" said the breathless boy.

"Dolly's in the stable, did you say?" queried Job Goodwin, sitting down again hopelessly. "Then somebody--Injuns, robbers, or somebody--'s killed Mort, and she's found her way back!"

While Mr. Goodwin was speaking, Mrs. Wheeler slipped out of the open door, that she might not intrude upon the meeting; but Brady--oral newspaper that he was--waited, with the true journalistic spirit, for an interview. Hardly had Job Goodwin finished his doleful speech, when Morton himself crossed the threshold and reached out his hand to his mother, while she reached out both hands and--did what mothers have done for returning prodigals since the world was made. Her husband stood by bewildered, trying to collect his wits enough to understand how Morton could have been murdered by robbers or Indians and yet stand there. Not until the mother released him, and Morton turned and shook hands with his father, did the father get rid of the illusion that his son was certainly dead.

"Well, Moirton," said Brady, coming out of the shadow, "I'm roight glad to see ye back. I tould 'em ye'd bay home to-noight, maybe. I soiphered it out by the Single Rule of Thray that ye'd git back about this toime. One day fer sinnin', one day fer throyin' to run away from yersilf, one day for repintance, and the nixt the prodigal son falls on his mother's neck and confisses his sins."

Morton was glad to find Brady present; he was a safeguard against too much of a scene. And to avoid speaking of subjects more unpleasant, he plunged at once into an account of his adventure at Brewer's Hole, and of his arrest for stealing his own horse. Then he told how he had escaped by the good offices of Mr. Donaldson. Mrs. Goodwin was secretly delighted at this. It was a new bond between the young man and the minister, and now at last she should see Morton converted. The religious experience Morton reserved. He wanted to break it to his mother alone, and he wanted to be the first to speak of it to Patty. And so it happened that Brady, having gotten, as he supposed, a full account of Morton's adventures, and being eager to tell so choice and fresh a story, found himself unable to stay longer. But just as he reached the door, it occurred to him that if he did not tell Morton at once what had happened in his absence, some one else would anticipate him. He had sole possession of Morton's adventure anyhow; so he straightened himself up against the door and said:

"An' did ye hear what happened to Koike, the whoile ye was gone, Moirton?"

"Nothing bad, I hope," said Morton.

"Ye may belave it was bad, or ye may take it to be good, as ye plase. Ye know how Koike was bilin' over to shoot his uncle, afore ye went away in the fall. Will, on'y yisterday the Captin he jist met Koike in the road, and gives him some hard words fer sayin' what he did to him last Sunthay. An' fwat does Koike do but bowldly begins another exhortation, tellin' the Captin he was a sinner as desarved to go to hill, an' that he'd git there if he didn't whale about and take the other thrack. An' fwat does the Captin do but up wid the flat of his hand and boxes Koike's jaw. An' I thought Koike would 'a' sarved him as Magruder did Jake Sniger. But not a bit of it! He fired up rid, and thin got pale immajiately. Thin he turned round t'other soide of his face, and, wid a thremblin' voice, axed the Captin if he didn't want to slap that chake too? An' the Captin swore at him fer a hypocrite, and thin put out for home wid the jerks; an' he's been a-lookin' loike a sintince that couldn' be parsed iver sence."

"I wonder Kike bore it. I don't think I could," said Morton, meditatively.

"Av coorse ye couldn't. Ye're not a convarted Mithodist, But I must be goin'. I'm a-boardin' at the Captin's now."

_CHAPTER XIX._

PATTY.

Patty's whole education tended to foster her pride, and in Patty's circumstances pride was conservative; it saved her from possible assimilation with the vulgarity about her. She was a lily among hollyhocks. Her mother had come of an "old family"--in truth, of two or three old families. All of them had considered that attachment to the Established Church was part and parcel of their gentility, and most of them had been staunch Tories in the Revolution. Patty had inherited from her mother refinement, pride, and a certain lofty inflexibility of disposition. In this congenial soil Mrs. Lumsden had planted traditional prejudices. Patty read her Prayer-book, and wished that she might once attend the stately Episcopal service; she disliked the lowness of all the sects: the sing-song of the Baptist preacher and the rant of the Methodist itinerant were equally distasteful. She had never seen a clergyman in robes, but she tried, from her mother's descriptions, to form a mental picture of the long-drawn dignity of the service in an Old Virginia country church. Patty was imaginative, like most girls of her age; but her ideals were ruled by the pride in which she had been cradled.

For the Methodists she entertained a peculiar aversion. Methodism was new, and, like everything new, lacked traditions, picturesqueness, mustiness, and all the other essentials of gentility in religious matters. The converts were rude, vulgar, and poor; the preachers were illiterate, and often rough in voice and speech; they made war on dancing and jewelry, and dancing and jewelry appertained to good-breeding. Ever since her father had been taken with that strange disorder called "the jerks," she had hated the Methodists worse than ever. They had made a direct attack on her pride.

The story of Morton's gambling had duly reached the ears of Patty. The thoughtful unkindness of her father could not leave her without so delectable a morsel of news. He felt sure that Patty's pride would be outraged by conduct so reckless, and he omitted nothing from the tale--the loss of horse and gun, the offer to stake his hat and coat, the proposal to commit suicide, the flight upon the forfeited horse--such were the items of Captain Lumsden's story. He told it at the table in order to mortify Patty as much as possible in the presence of her brothers and sisters and the hired men. But the effect was quite different from his expectations. With that inconsistency characteristic of the most sensible women when they are in love, Patty only pitied Morton's misfortunes. She saw him, in her imagination, a hapless and homeless wanderer. She would not abandon him in his misfortunes. He should have one friend at least. She was sorry he had gambled, but gambling was not inconsistent with gentlemanliness. She had often heard that her mother would have inherited a plantation if her grandfather had been able to let cards alone. Gambling was the vice of gentlemen, a generous and impulsive weakness. Then, too, she laid the blame on her favorite scape-goat. If it had not been for Kike's exciting exhortation and the inconsiderate violence of the Methodist revival, Morton's misfortune would not have befallen him. Patty forgave in advance. Love condones all sins except sins against love.

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.

[Illustration: THE CHOICE.]

"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.

[Illustration: GOING TO CONFERENCE.]