Other Main-Travelled Roads. Garland Hamlin
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its socket. Her whole body stiffened. Gasping moans came from her clenched teeth as she fell to the ground and rolled under the seats, wallowing in the muddy straw and beating her feet upon the ground like a dying partridge.
The people crowded about her, but the preacher, roared above the tumult:—
"Si' down! Never mind that party. She's all right; she's in the hands of the Lord!"
The people settled into their seats, and the wild tumult went on again. Ben rose to go over where the girl was and the others followed.
A young man seated by the struggling sinner held her hand and fanned her with his hat, while some girl friends, scared and sobbing, kept the tossing limbs covered. She rolled from side to side restlessly, thrusting forth her tongue as if her throat were dry. She looked like a dying animal.
Maud clung to Milton.
"Oh, can't something be done?"
"Her soul is burdened for you!" cried a wild old woman to the impassive youth who clung to the frenzied girl's hand.
A moment later, as the demoniacal chorus of yells, songs, incantations, shrieks, groans, and prayers swelled high, a farmer's wife on the left uttered a hoarse cry and stiffened and fell backward upon the ground. She rolled her head from side to side. Her eyes turned in; her lips wore a maniac's laugh, and her troubled brow made her look like the death mask of a tortured murderer, the hell horror frozen on it.
She sank at last into a hideous calm, with her strained and stiffened hands pointing weirdly up. She was like marble. She did not move a hair's breadth during the next two hours.
Over to the left a young man leaped to his feet with a scream:—
"Jesus, Jesus, Jesus!"
The great negress caught him in her arms as he fell, and laid him down, then leaped up and down, shrieking:—
"O Jesus, come. Come, God's Lamb!"
Around her a dozen women took up her cry. Most of them had no voices. Their horrifying screams had become hoarse hisses, yet still they strove. Scores of voices were mixed in the pandemonium of prayer.
All order was lost. Three of the preachers now stood shouting before the mourners' bench, two were in the aisles.
One came down the aisle toward the girl with the braided hair. As he came he prayed. Foam was on his lips, but his eyes were cool and calculating; they betrayed him.
As he came he fixed his gaze upon a woman seated near the prostrate girl, and with a horrible outcry the victim leaped into the air and stiffened as if smitten with epilepsy. She fell against some scared boys, who let her fall, striking her head against the seats. She too rolled down upon the straw and lay beside her sister. Both had round, pretty, but childish faces.
Milton's party retreated. They smiled no more; they were horror-stricken.
Squads of "workers" now moved down the aisles; in one they surrounded two people, a tall, fair girl and a young man.
"Why, it's Grace!" exclaimed Maud.
Ben turned quickly, "Where?"
They pointed her out.
"She can't get away. See! Oh, boys, don't let them—"
Ben pushed his way toward her, his face set in a fierce frown, bitter, desperate.
Grace stood silently beside one of the elders; a woman exhorter stood before her. Conrad, overawed, had fallen into a trembling stupor; Grace was defenseless.
The elder's hand hovered over her head, on her face a deadly pallor had settled, her eyes were cast down, she breathed painfully and trembled from head to foot. She was about to fall, when Ben set his eyes upon her.
"Get out o' my way," he shouted, shouldering up the aisle. His words had oaths, his fists were like mauls.
"Grace!" he cried, and she heard. She looked up and saw him coming; the red flamed over her face.
The power of the preacher was gone.
"Let me go," she cried, trying to wring herself loose.
"You are going to hell. You are lost if you do not—"
"God damn ye. Get out o' way. I'll kill ye if you lay a hand on her."
With one thrust Ben cleared her tormentor from her arm. For one moment the wordless young man looked into her eyes; then she staggered toward him. He faced the preacher.
"I'd smash hell out o' you for a leather cent," he said. In the tumult his words were lost, but the look on his face was enough. The exhorter fell away.
Their retreat was unnoted in the tumult. At the door they looked back for an instant at the scene.
At the mourners' bench were six victims in all stages of induced catalepsy, one man with head flung back, one with his hands pointing, fixed in furious appeal. Another with bowed head was being worked upon by a brother of hypnotic appeal. He struck with downward, positive gestures on either side of the victim's head.
Over another the negress towered, screaming with panther-like ferocity:—
"Git under de blood! Git under de blood!"
As she screamed she struck down at the mourner with her clenched fist. On her face was the grin of a wildcat.
Out under the cool, lofty oaks, the outcry was more inexpressibly hellish, because overhead the wind rustled the sweet green leaves, crickets were chirping, and the scent of flowering fields of buckwheat was in the air.
Grace grew calmer, but she clung with strange weakness to her lover. She felt he had saved her from something, she did not know what, but it was something terrifying to look back upon.
Conrad was forgotten—set aside. Ben bundled him into the carryall and took his place with Grace. He no longer hesitated, argued, or apologized. He had claimed his own.
On the long ride home, Grace lay within his right arm, and the young man's tongue was unchained. He talked, and his spirit grew tender and manly and husbandlike, as he told his plans and his hopes. Hell was very far away, and Heaven was very near.
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