Kildares of Storm Part 36

While they ate, through the open door they saw a scattering stream of people pa.s.s along the trail below, all going in the same direction; on foot, on horseback, and mule-back, and ox-back. Many animals carried more than one rider. One old plow-horse came along, led by a st.u.r.dy patriarch, crowded from mane to crupper with children of a.s.sorted sizes.

"Why, how queer, when we never pa.s.sed a single soul all day!" said Jacqueline. "Where do they all come from, Brother Bates, and where are they going?"

"To the meetin'-house down the trail a ways," he explained. "I sont word ahead that a preacher was comin', and all the folks is turnin' out."

Philip gave a faint groan. "What, to-night?" He had hoped for a few hours' rest after the day's journey.

"Why, in co'se! Hit's moonlight to-night, an' the teacher's done let out school a-purpose. I done sont word," said the Apostle. "'T ain't no time to waste. 'Watch and wait lest the Bridegroom cometh and find thee sleepin'.'"

"So there's a school even in these wilds? A lonely job for a school-ma'am, I should think. Is she pretty?" asked Channing, hopefully, with a thought of the accepted mountain school-teacher of current fiction.

"'T ain't no her. It's a him," remarked the host; his one contribution to the conversation.

"Reckon a her'd have right smart trouble keepin' school on Misty, wouldn't she, Anse?" chuckled Brother Bates.

"'Low she would," grunted the other, and relapsed into silence.

Afterwards, on their way to the meeting-house, Jacqueline inquired into his meaning. "Why would a woman have trouble teaching school here? Are the children so very bad?"

The Apostle explained, "'T ain't so much the chillun as the grown folks, specially the men folks. You see Teacher makes 'em all come on moonlight nights; the paws and maws, and the gran'paws and gran'maws, too. He's got a whole lot of new-fangled notions, Teacher has. They don't allus take to 'em kindly--you know how old folks are about new-fangled ways.

But he makes 'em come ef they wants to or not, and he larns 'em, too--not only spellin' and sums and such-like, but how to take keer of the babies, and the sick folks, and how to git the hens to lay, and how to cook, and all!"

"To cook! That is indeed a n.o.ble work," murmured Channing, devoutly, having recourse to his flask of soda-mints. "Would that our hostess might take advantage of the opportunity!"

"She have," said Brother Bates, proudly. "She done nussed the whole fambly through a fever-sickness a little while ago, doin' like Teacher told her, and nary one of 'em died. But she ain't got so fur as cookin'

yet."

"I'd like to meet this teacher," said Philip, heartily. "Will he be at the meeting to-night?"

The Apostle sighed. "Reck'n he won't. Ain't it queer how a smart man like that don't take no stock in the Word of G.o.d? 'Lows he's scrambled along without it all his life, and allus will. But I dunno. I dunno. I expect the Lord's got a surprise up his sleeve for Teacher."

The door-yard of the rough cabin that was dignified by the name of meeting-house was quite crowded with men when they arrived. Philip went among them pleasantly, saying, "Good evening, my friends," shaking hands where he could find a hand to shake, greeted here and there by a gruff, "Howdy, Preacher," but for the most part welcomed in solemn, almost hostile silence.

"They're just kind o' bashful," murmured the peddler, in apology for his people.

"I know," smiled Philip, himself feeling a little shy, and like an intruder.

They filed in silently behind him, each depositing a gun in a rack beside the meeting-house door.

"I breathe more easily," murmured Channing in Jacqueline's ear. "For small mercies, let us be duly thankful. Lord, what a crew!"

The two followed Philip to the bare, uncarpeted platform that was to serve as altar. The girl saw to her dismay that there was no piano, not even a harmonium to a.s.sist her singing. Brother Bates acted as master of ceremonies. The peddler was evidently a man of great importance in the community, its one traveler, acquainted with the ways of cities.

"Let marryin' couples set on the right-hand, front benches. Preacher will attend to 'em after meetin'," he announced.

Four or five couples obeyed these instructions with subdued t.i.ttering, the fact that several of the brides-to-be carried young infants in their arms not adding appreciably to their embarra.s.sment.

"Have they licenses?" murmured Philip.

"I dunno," replied the Apostle, serenely. "Ef they ain't, they kin git 'em afterwards. The Lord knows how fur they be from law-places."

The little community of Misty Ridge was at that time one of the poorest and most uncivilized in the c.u.mberland Mountains; many hours' ride, over trails that were at times impa.s.sable, from the nearest railroad; entirely unknown to the world below save when one of its sons was sent, for good and sufficient reason, down to the penitentiary. It is a literary fashion of the day to laud the Kentucky mountaineer as an uncouth hero, a sort of n.o.bleman in disguise, guarding intact in his wilderness an inheritance of great racial traits for the strengthening of future generations. Unfortunately, with his good old Saxon name and his good old Saxon customs, he also inherits occasionally something of the moral nature which caused his Saxon ancestor to be deported overseas. The mountains of Kentucky, and of Tennessee, were settled to some extent by convicts who had served their time in the English penal colonies along the sea-coast.

Such an origin, doubtless, might have been claimed by the spa.r.s.e settlement on Misty, and time had done nothing to mitigate any curse of inheritance. The beautiful, barren hills, their hidden riches as yet undiscovered, yielding so meager a livelihood in return for such bitter labor, served as ramparts between their people and the world beyond.

Little help at that time reached them from without. Solitude, ignorance, direst poverty, form a soil in which bodies flourish better than souls, and even bodies do not flourish exceedingly.

Channing, gazing about at the faces below him, one and all with eyes fixed upon the fresh loveliness of Jacqueline, had a moment of acute uneasiness. What right had Benoix, who knew the mountains, to bring the girl into contact with such b.e.s.t.i.a.lity? The odor of packed humanity that came to his fastidious nostrils was as sickening as the odor of a bear-pit. He recalled tales of their untamable fierceness. He remembered the row of guns even now resting in a rack outside the door. His eye, going inadvertently to the st.u.r.dy figure of the clergyman, noticed a suspicious bulge in the hip-pocket of his riding-breeches. He started.

"Does Benoix carry a pistol?" he whispered to Jacqueline.

"Of course! I've got one, too," she answered cheerfully. "Where's yours?"

The author felt that he had lost his taste for mountaineering. He looked in vain for one of the beauteous mountain maids so satisfyingly frequent in the pages of current fiction. The women were all sallow, stolid, sullen, old beyond their years. Even the babies were sallow and stolid and old. Many of the men were muscular and well-grown, but with a lanky, stooping height that did not suggest health. Inflamed eyes were common in that congregation, hollow cheeks flushed with the sign there is no mistaking, faces vacuous and dull-eyed and foolishly a-grin.

"Ugh! Think of the germs," he said unhappily, under his breath. "Your friend the peddler is making signs at you."

Jacqueline, obedient to the signal, stopped to the edge of the platform and began to sing the first hymn that came to her mind. She found that she was singing alone. Channing did not know the air. She glanced imploringly at Philip, but he did not see her. He was studying his congregation. They sat in solemn silence, staring at Jacqueline.

At first her voice shook a little with self-consciousness, but she threw her head up gallantly, and went on, verse after verse. At the end she was singing as confidently as if Jemima and the little organ and the faithful choir of Storm church were behind her. Her voice died away in the final "Amen," and she went to her seat, still amid dead silence.

"Why didn't you help me out?" she whispered reproachfully to Philip.

"It wasn't necessary. Look at them!"

Then she saw that the stupidity, the grimness of all those watching faces was gone as if by magic. They had become bright, eager, almost tremulous with pleasure. The girl was touched. She understood why the peddler had so insisted upon Philip's ability to start a hymn. Music, such crude and simple music as came their way, meant to these starved natures all that they knew of beauty, of higher things, perhaps of religion.

In the hush that followed, Philip began: "The Lord is in His holy temple. Let all the earth keep silence before Him."

It was a strange setting for the stately Episcopal service, simplified as Philip made it for the occasion; a bare, log-walled room, lit by smelling kerosene lamps, without altar, candles or cross, without religious symbol of any sort. Only Jacqueline followed the service, kneeling where the congregation should have knelt, making the responses in her clear young voice, joining him in the prayers. But Philip was aware of no incongruity. He gave them what he had to give, and felt none the less a priest because of his flannel shirt and his shabby riding-trousers. Cathedral or log-cabin, it was all one to him. He knew that with Jacqueline's singing, the Lord had indeed entered into His holy temple.

Presently he spoke to them as he would have spoken to his Sunday-school cla.s.ses at home, earnestly and very simply, with none of the condescending blandness of the elder. Some of their homely phrases, their very accent, had crept unconsciously into his speech, a remnant of the impressionable days when he had lived for a while among mountain folk. Jacqueline realized that this unconscious adaptability was the secret of his hold on people, of their confiding trust in him. Whatever they might be, he was for the moment one of them, looking at their temptations, their failures, never from the outside but from their own point of view.

Brother Bates, a little worried at first by the mildness of his protege's voice and manner, realized after a few moments the people were listening to him as they had never listened to the h.e.l.l-fire-and-d.a.m.nation preachers of their previous experience. Not a man in that room, including Percival Channing, escaped the somewhat uncomfortable feeling that the text, "Do unto others as ye would be done by," had been chosen particularly for his benefit--which is perhaps the secret of great preaching.

Jacqueline, gazing about with great pride in her friend, saw that not only was the room crowded with listeners, but that others were standing outside in the porch. One profile, outlined for a few moments against a window, attracted her attention by contrast with those about it; an elderly face, worn by evident illness or suffering, sensitive and intelligent and refined, despite the gray stubble of beard on his cheeks and the rough flannel collar about his throat. Jacqueline watched him curiously, until her gaze drew his and he suddenly disappeared.

"He looked almost like a gentleman," she thought. "I wonder why he did not come inside?"

Her mind reverted to this man more than once.

When they were on their way back up the moonlit trail, she and Channing lingering behind the others, an explanation suddenly struck her.

"The non-believing school teacher, of course!" she exclaimed. "Ashamed to be caught listening to 'the Word of G.o.d.' Well, he may not be interested in the Word of G.o.d," she added musingly, "but he certainly was interested in the word of Philip. Never took his eye off Phil's face!"

Channing had taken her hand, which turned and clung to his with its usual nestling gesture. Now he put his arm around her, drawing her to him in the shadow of some trees. But close as they stood, he had an odd feeling that for the moment, the girl was far away from him.

"What are you thinking of? Tired, sweetheart?"

She leaned back against him, nodding. "Awfully. What a day! But wasn't it worth it, just to see those people listening to Philip? Do you know,"