Part 13

“Much good will the heaping up of barns an’ storehouses do when you hear the voice of the Lord saying, ‘Thou fool, this night shall thy soul be required of thee,’” returned his brother; but he spoke the fervid words with a certain feebleness. All his life since he was a boy had Solomon Lennox toiled and saved to own this noble farm. The bare imagination of giving it up to another cost him much, although he firmly believed that in a week’s space it would be only a modicum of the blackened ashes of a world. He stood the test of his faith, but he felt the scorch of sacrificial flame.

“It ain’t me that’s the fool,” said Simeon, shrugging himself into his great-coat. “I ain’t goin’ to hang back with my soul when it’s required of me, but I ain’t goin’ to keep chuckin’ of it in the face of the Lord afore He’s ready for it, like some folks I know. Them’s the fools. When’ll you be down to Lawyer Bascombe’s to-morrow, Solomon, to deed away these barns an’ storehouses that you ’ain’t no more use for?”

“I’ll be down there at nine o’clock to-morrow mornin’.”

“All right; you can count on me,” said Simeon. He went out, and Solomon bolted the door after him promptly. But he had no sooner returned to the kitchen than there came a sharp tap on the window, and there was Simeon’s hard leering old face pressed against the pane. “You’ll--have--to--fetch Sophy Anne down there to-morrow,” he called. “She’ll--have to sign that deed too, or it won’t stan’.”

“All right,” shouted Solomon, and the face at the window, with a parting nod, disappeared.

Lawyer Bascombe’s office was in the centre of the village, over the store. A steep flight of stairs at the right of the store led to it. Up these stairs, at nine o’clock the next morning, climbed Solomon Lennox and his wife Sophia Anne, with pale devoted faces, and signed away all their earthly goods as an evidence of their faith.

In some way the matter had become known in the village. When Solomon and Sophia Anne came down the stairs there was quite a crowd before the door, standing back with awed curiosity to let them pass. Simeon Lennox did not leave at once after the signing of the deed. When he appeared in the doorway with a roll of paper in his hand the crowd had dispersed.

Without any doubt this act of Solomon Lennox and his wife materially strengthened their cause. When it became known that they had actually signed away their property in their confidence that days of property-holding were over, even scoffers began to look serious. That evening the meeting at Solomon Lennox’s house numbered a third more than usual. The next evening it was doubled, and the best room as well as the kitchen was filled. Solomon stood at the foot of the stairs in the entry between the rooms and exhorted, while the deaf-and-dumb boy’s slate circulated among the awe-stricken people.

Isaac Penfield came to no more meetings, and he did not see Melissa again until Tuesday. Late Tuesday afternoon she went up to the village store with a basket of eggs. The days of barter were nearly over, as she had been taught to believe, but there was no molasses in the house, and the poor deaf-and-dumb boy was weeping for it with uncouth grief, and could not be comforted by the prospect of eternal joys. When Melissa came out of the store with the bottle of molasses in her basket, Isaac Penfield’s bay mare and chaise were drawn up before the platform, and Isaac stood waiting. Melissa started and colored when she saw him.

“Get in, please,” he said, motioning her towards the chaise.

She looked at him falteringly.

“Get in, please, Melissa; I want to speak to you.”

The bay mare was restive, tossing her head and pawing with one delicate fore foot. Isaac could scarcely keep her quiet until Melissa got in. When he took the reins she gave a leap forward, and the chaise swung about with a lurch. Isaac threw himself back and held the reins taut; the mare flew down the road, pulling hard on her bits; the chaise rocked high on the frozen road. Melissa sat still, her delicate face retired within the dark depths of her silk hood.

Isaac did not speak to her until they reached the foot of a long hill. “I want to ask you something,” he said then, with a wary eye still on the straining shoulders of the mare. “I want to ask you again to give this up.”

Melissa did not speak.

“Won’t you promise me?”

“I can’t,” she said, faintly.

“You can if you will.” Suddenly Isaac leaned over her. “Won’t you promise _me_, Melissa?”

She shrank away from him. “I--can’t. I believe father.”

“Melissa, you don’t.”

“I do,” said she, with a despairing sob.

Isaac Penfield bent his face down close to hers. “Can’t you believe me as well as your father? Melissa, look at me.”

Melissa bent her head down over her hands.

“Look at me, Melissa.”

She raised her head slowly as if there were a constraining hand under her chin, and her eyes met his.

“Can’t you, Melissa?”

Fair locks of hair fell over the girl’s gentle cheeks; her soft mouth quivered. It seemed as if her piteous blue eyes were only upheld by the look in the young man’s, and as if all the individual thought and purpose in her face and her whole soul were being overcast by his imperious will, but she shook her head.

“Can’t you, Melissa?”

She shook her head again.

Isaac Penfield’s face turned white. He touched the whip to the mare, and she gave a sharp bound forward. They had not much farther to go. Neither of them spoke again until Isaac assisted Melissa out of the chaise at her own gate.

“Good-bye,” he said then, shortly.

Melissa looked up at him and caught her breath. She could not speak. Isaac sprang into his chaise, and was out of the yard with a sharp grate of wheels, and she went into the house.

Her mother was setting chairs in order for the evening meeting. She looked up sharply as Melissa entered.

“Who was that brought you home?” said she.

“Isaac Penfield,” replied Melissa, turning her face from her mother’s eyes.

“I hope you ain’t letting your thoughts dwell on anything of that kind now,” said her mother.

“I met him as I was coming out of the store, and he asked me to ride. I sha’n’t ever see him again,” Melissa returned, faintly.

The deaf-and-dumb boy had been dozing with gaping mouth in his chimney-corner. Now he waked, and caught sight of his sister and the basket, and hastened to her with a cry of uncouth hunger and greediness.

“In a minute, sonny,” Melissa said, in a sobbing voice; “wait a minute.” She held the basket aloof while she removed her hood and shawl.

“You may see him on his way to the outer darkness,” said her mother, with solemn vindictiveness.

“Mother, he has repented; he is a member of the church,” Melissa cried out, with sudden sharpness.

“Repentance avails nothing without faith,” returned her mother, setting down a chair so heavily that the deaf-and-dumb boy started at the concussion and looked about him wonderingly.

“He has repented; he is a member of the church; he is safe,” Melissa cried again.

“I tell you he is not,” said her mother.

Melissa went into the pantry with her brother at her elbow, and prepared for him a plate of bread and molasses. The tears fell over her cheeks, but Alonzo noticed nothing. His greedy eyes were fixed on the food. When it was ready for him he sat down on his stool in the chimney-corner and devoured it with loud smacks of his lips. That was all the evening meal prepared in the Lennox house that night. After the chairs were set in order for the meeting, Melissa and her mother sat down close to the fire and sewed on some white stuff which flowed in voluminous folds over their knees to the floor. Solomon came in presently, and seated himself with the great Bible on his knees. He read silently, but now and then gesticulated fiercely, as if he read aloud.

The meeting began at half-past six. About a quarter of an hour before, the outer door was heard opening, and there was a shuffling step and a clearing cough in the entry.

“It’s your uncle Simeon,” whispered Mrs. Lennox to Melissa, and her mouth took on a severer tension.

Solomon frowned over the Holy Writ on his knee.

Simeon advanced into the room, his heavy boots clapping the floor with a dull clatter as of wood, dispelling the solemn stillness. His grinning old face, blue with the cold, was sunk in the collar of his great-coat. He rubbed his hands together as he approached the fire.

“Well, how are ye all?” he remarked, with a chuckle, as if there were a joke in the speech.

Nobody replied. Simeon pulled a chair up close to the fire and sat down.

“It’s tarnal cold,” said he, leaning over and spreading out his old hands to the blaze.

“The brands are all ready for the burning,” said his sister-in-law, in a hollow, trembling voice. She drew a long thread through the white stuff on her knee.

Simeon turned suddenly and looked at her with a flash of small bright eyes. Then he laughed. “Lord bless ye, Sophy Anne, I forgot how tarnal hot you folks are calculatin’ to have it day after to-morrow,” said he. “Well, if you fail in your calculations, an’ the cold continues, I shall be mighty glad to come in here. My house is darned cold this weather, and Abby Mosely ain’t particular ’bout the doors; seems to me sometimes as if I was settin’ in a hurricane the heft of the time, and as if my idees were gettin’ on a slant. Abby thinks she’s goin’ up Thursday, and I wish in thunder she would. I wouldn’t have her another day, if she wa’n’t a lone woman and nowheres to go. She ain’t no kind of a cook. Look at here, Sophy Anne--”

Mrs. Lennox sewed on with compressed lips.

“Sophy Anne, look at here. You ’ain’t got no mince-pies on hand now, have you?”

“No, I ’ain’t.”

“Well, I didn’t much s’pose you’d made any, you’ve been so busy gettin’ ready to fly lately. Look at here, Sophy Anne, don’t you feel as if you could roll me out a few mince-pies to-morrow, hey?”

Mrs. Lennox looked at him.

“I dun’no’ when I’ve eat a decent mince-pie,” pursued Simeon. “Abby Mosely keeps the commandments, but she can’t make pies that’s fit to eat. I ’ain’t had a mince-pie I could eat since my last wife died. I wish you’d contrive an’ roll me out a few, Sophy Anne. Your mince-pies used to go ahead of Maria’s; she always said they did. If the world don’t come to an end day after to-morrow, I’d take a sight of comfort with ’em, and I’ll be darned, if it does come to an end, if I don’t think I’d have a chance to eat one or two of ’em before the fire got round to me. Can’t ye do it, Sophy Anne, nohow?”

“No, I can’t.”

“Can’t ye roll me out just half a dozen mince-pies?”

“I will never roll out a mince-pie for you, Simeon Lennox,” said Sophia Anne, with icy fervor.

“Ye never will?”

“No, I never will.” Sophia Anne’s stern eyes in their hollow blue orbits met his.

Simeon chuckled; then he turned to his brother. “Well, Sol’mon, s’pose you’re flappin’ all ready to fly?” he said.

Solomon made no reply. He frowned over the great volume on his knees. The deaf-and-dumb boy had set his empty plate on the hearth and fallen asleep again, with his head tilted against the jamb. Melissa sewed, her pale face bent closely over her work.

“Hear ye are goin’ to fly from Penfield’s hill?” said Simeon.

Still Solomon said nothing.

“Well, I s’pose that’s as good a place as any,” said Simeon, “though ’tain’t a very high hill. I should ’most think you’d want a higher hill than Penfield’s. I s’pose you’ll be kind of unhandy with your wings at first, an’ start off something like hens. But then I s’pose a few feet more or less won’t make no odds when they get fairly to workin’. I heard the women was makin’ flyin’-petticoats. Them what you’re to work on, Sophy Anne, you and Melissy?”

Sophia Anne gave one look at him, then she took a stitch.

“Abby Mosely’s to work on one, I guess,” said Simeon. “She’s ben a-settin’ in a heap of white cloth a-sewin’ for three days. I came in once, an’ she was tryin’ of it on, an’ she slipped out of it mighty sudden. All I’ve got to say is she’ll cut a queer figure flyin’. She’s pretty hefty. I miss my guess if she don’t find it a job to strike out at first. Now I should think you might take to flyin’ pretty natural, Sophy Anne.”

Mrs. Lennox’s pale face was flushed with anger, but she sewed on steadily.

“As for Melissy,” said Simeon, in his chuckling drawl, “I ruther guess she could fly without much practice too. She’s built light; but it strikes me she’d better have a weddin’-gown than a flyin’-petticoat. Young Penfield goin’ to fly with you, Melissy?”

Solomon Lennox closed the Bible with a great clap. “I’ll have no more of this!” he said, with a shout of long-repressed fury.

“Now, Solomon, don’t ye get riled so near the end of the world,” drawled his brother, getting up slowly. “I’m a-goin’. I ain’t goin’ to be the means of makin’ you backslide when ye’re so nigh the top of Zion’s Hill. I’m a-goin’ home. I don’t s’pose I shall get no supper on account of Abby’s hurryin’ up on her flyin’-petticoat. Sure you ain’t goin’ to make them mince-pies for me, Sophy Anne?”

“Yes, I be sure.”

The brother-in-law thrust his sharp old face down close to Sophia Anne’s. “Sure?” he repeated.

Sophia Anne started back and stared at him. There was something strange in his manner.

The old man laughed, and straightened himself. “Well, I’m a-goin’,” said he. “Good-bye. Mebbe I sha’n’t see ye again before ye fly. Hope ye’ll light easy. Good-bye.”

After Simeon had closed the door, he opened it again, and thrust his sharp features through a narrow aperture. “Look at here, Solomon,” said he. “Mind ye leave the key in the door when ye go out to fly Thursday night. I want to come right in.” Then Simeon shut the door again, but his malicious laugh could be plainly heard in the entry.

He did not go straight home as he had said, but up the road to Lawyer Bascombe’s office. When he returned, the meeting in his brother’s house was in session, and the windows were dark with heads against the red firelight. Old Simeon stared up at them, and laughed aloud to himself as he went by. “Sophy Anne won’t make me no mince-pies. She’s sure on’t,” he said, and laughed again.

The next day all the ordinary routine of life seemed at a standstill in the village. The storekeeper had become a convert, the store was closed, and the green inside shutters were fastened. Now and then a village loafer lounged disconsolately up, shook the door on its rattling lock, stared at the shuttered windows, then lounged away, muttering. The summer resting-place of his kind, the long, bewhittled wooden bench on the store platform, could not be occupied that wintry day. The air was clear, and the dry pastures were white and stiff with the hoar-frost; the slants of the roofs glistened with it in the sun. The breaths of the people going to and from Solomon Lennox’s house were like white smoke. The meeting began at dawn. Children were dragged hither at their parents’ heels, cold and breakfastless. Not a meal was cooked that day in the houses of Solomon Lennox’s followers. All the precious hours were spent in fasting and prayer. Towards night the excitement deepened. There was present within the village a spiritual convulsion as real as any other convulsion of nature, and as truly although more subtly felt. Even they who had scoffed and laughed at this new movement from the first, and were now practically untouched by it, grew nervous and ill at ease towards night as from the gathering of a storm. The air seemed charged with electricity generated by the touch of human thought and faith with the Unknown. The unbelievers pressed their faces against the window-panes, shading their eyes from the light within as the dusk deepened, or stood out in their yards watching the sky, half fearful they should indeed see some sign or marvel therein.

But the night came on, and the stars shone out in their order as they had done from the first, and there was no sign but the old one of eternal love and beauty in the sky. The moon arose at nine o’clock, nearly at her full. That, from some interpretation of symbolical characters on the deaf-and-dumb boy’s slate, had been fixed upon as the hour of meeting upon Penfield’s hill. The solemn and dreadful moment which was to mark the climax of all creation was expected between that hour and dawn.

At half-past eight white-robed figures began to move along the road. People peeped around their curtains to see them pass; now and then belated children ran shrieking with terror into the houses at sight of them.

Beside the road, close to the gate which led to the wide field at the foot of Penfield’s hill, under the shadow of a clump of hemlocks, Isaac Penfield had been waiting since quarter past eight o’clock. When the white company came in sight he drew farther back within the shadow, scanning the people eagerly as they passed.

Solomon Lennox and Deacon Scranton let down the bars, and the people passed through silently, crowding each other whitely like a flock of sheep. Sophia Anne, the deaf-and-dumb boy holding fast to her hand, was among the first.

Isaac had expected to see Melissa close to her mother; but she had become separated from her and came among the last.

Her slender figure was hidden in her flowing white robes, but there was no mistaking her gentle faltering gait and the delicate bend of her fair uncovered head.

Isaac stepped forward suddenly, threw his arm around Melissa, and drew her back with him within the shadow of the hemlocks. Nobody saw it but Abby Mosely, Simeon Lennox’s housekeeper, and she was too panic-stricken to heed it intelligently; she went panting on after the others in her voluminous white robe, and left Melissa alone with Isaac Penfield.

Isaac pressed Melissa’s head close to his breast, leaned his face down to hers, and whispered long in her ear. She listened trembling and unresisting; then she broke away from him weakly, “I can’t, I can’t,” she moaned. But he caught her again, and whispered again with his lips close to her soft pale cheek, and frequent kisses between the words.

“Come, now, sweetheart,” he said at length, and attempted to draw her with him into the road; but she pulled herself away from him again, and stood warding him off with her white-draped arms.

“I can’t, I can’t,” she moaned again. “I must go with father and mother.”

“I tell you they are wrong; can’t you believe me?”

“I--must--go with them.”

“No; come with me, Melissa.”

Melissa, still with her arms raised against him, looked away over the meadow, full of moving white figures. The moon shone out over it, and it gleamed like a field of Paradise peopled with angels. Then she looked up in her lover’s face, and suddenly it was to her as if she saw therein the new earth of all her dreams.

Solomon Lennox and his followers kept on to Penfield’s hill, which arose before them crowned with silver, and Isaac Penfield hastened down the road to the village, half carrying Melissa’s little white-clad figure, wrapped against the cold in his own gray cloak.

Early the next morning a small company of pallid shivering people crept through the village to their homes. Many had weakened and deserted long before dawn, chilled to their very thoughts and fancies by their long vigil on the hill-top. Young girls ran home, crying aloud like children, and men half dragged hysterical wives rigid with chills. Solomon Lennox and his wife remained until the dawn light shone; then he beckoned to her and the whimpering deaf-and-dumb boy, and led the way down the hill without a word. He never looked at the rest of the company, but they followed silently.

The Penfield house was about a quarter of a mile from the pasture bars. When they reached it, Isaac stood waiting at the gate. He went up to Solomon, who was passing without a look, and touched his arm with an impatient yet respectful gesture. “You and Mrs. Lennox and Lonny had better come in here, I think,” he said.

Solomon was moving on with dull obstinacy, but Isaac laid his hand on his arm. “I--think you have--forgotten,” he said. “I am sorry, but--your brother Simeon has--taken possession of your house.”

Solomon stared at him dully. He did not seem to comprehend. Sophia Anne looked as blue and bloodless in her white robe as if she were dead. She had scarce more control of her trembling tongue than if it were paralyzed, but her highly strung feminine nerves gave out vibrations still.

“Has Simeon took possession?” she demanded, fiercely.

Isaac Penfield nodded. “I think it would be pleasanter for you to come in here now,” he said. Then he hesitated, and colored suddenly. “Your daughter is in here,” he added.

Sophia Anne gave a keen glance at him. Then she turned in at the gate with a sharp twitch at the arm of the deaf-and-dumb boy, who was making strange cries and moans, like a distressed animal. “Come, father,” she called, impatiently; and Solomon also entered the Penfield gate with a piteous, dazed air.

In the great south room of the Penfield house were Melissa and Mrs. Martha Joyce, the housekeeper. Mrs. Joyce was mixing something in a steaming bowl; Melissa sat still, gazing at the fire. She was dressed in a blue satin gown and fine lace tucker, which had belonged to Isaac Penfield’s mother. Madam Penfield had been nearly Melissa’s size, and the gown fitted her slender figure daintily. She sat with her fair head bent, the color coming and going in her soft cheeks, as if from her own thoughts. Her little hands were folded in her blue satin lap, and on one finger gleamed a great pearl, which Madam Penfield had used to wear.

When the door opened and her parents entered, she half started up, with a great blush; then she sank back, trembling and pale.

Isaac Penfield crossed over to her, and laid his hand on her shoulder. “She is my wife,” he said. “We were married last night.”

Sophia Anne made a faint gesture, which might have expressed anything. Solomon staggered to a chair without a look. In truth, when they entered the warm room, and the long strain of resistance against cold and fatigue ceased, exhaustion overcame them. Mrs. Joyce administered hot porridge and cordials, and Melissa knelt down in her blue satin and rubbed her mother’s benumbed hands.