THE LEATHERWOOD GOD. William Dean Howells
Читать онлайн книгу.
and threat that gave them pleasure beyond speech.
"She didn't say it was your claybank that snorted?" the Squire gravely inquired.
"Squire Braile, you surely will kill me," and the husband joined the wife in a shout of laughter. "Now I can't hardly git back to what she did say. But, I can tell you, it wasn't nawthun' to laugh at. Plenty of 'em keeled over where they sot, and a lot bounced up and down like it was a earthquake and pretty near all the women screamed. But he stood there, straight as a ramrod, and never moved a eye-winker. She said his face was somepin awful: just as solemn and still! He never spoke after that one word 'Salvation,' but every once in a while he snorted. Nobody seen him come in, or ever seen him before till he first snorted, and then they didn't see anybody else. The preacher, he preached along, and tried to act like as if nowthun' had happened, but it was no use; nobody didn't hardly pay no attention to him 'ceptun' the stranger himself; he never took his eyes off Elder Grove; some thought he was tryun' to charm him, like a snake does a bird; but it didn't faze the elder."
"Elder too old a bird?" the Squire suggested.
"Yes, I reckon he mought been," Sally innocently assented.
"And when he gave the benediction, the snorter disappeared in a flash, with a strong smell of brimstone, I suppose?"
"Why, that was the thing of it, Squire. He just stayed, and shuck hands with everybody, pleasant as a basket of chips; and he went home with David Gillespie. He was just as polite to the poorest person there, but it was the big bugs that tuck the most to him."
"Well," the Squire summed up, "I don't see but what your reports agree, and I reckon there must be some truth in 'em. Who's that up there at the pike-crossing?" He did not trouble himself to do more than frown heavily in the attempt to make out the passer. Mrs. Reverdy jumped from her chair and ran out to look.
"Well, as sure as I'm alive, if it ain't that Gillespie girl! I bet she'll know all about it. I'll just ketch up with her and git the news out of her, if there is any. Say, say, Jane!" she called to the girl, as she ran up the road with the cow-like gait which her swirling skirt gave her. The girl stopped for her; then in apparent haste she moved on again, and Sally moved with her out of sight; her voice still made itself heard in uncouth cries and laughter.
Braile called into the kitchen where Reverdy had remained in the enjoyment of Mrs. Braile's patient hospitality, "Here's your chance, Abel!"
"Chance?" Reverdy questioned back with a full mouth.
"To get that corn of yours ground, and beat Sally home."
"Well, Squire," Reverdy said, "I reckon you're right." He came out into the open space where Braile sat. "Well, I won't fergit this breakfast very soon," he offered his gratitude to Mrs. Braile over his shoulder, as he passed through the door.
"You're welcome, Abel," she answered kindly, and when he had made his manners to the impassive Squire and mounted his claybank and thumped the horse into motion with his naked heels, she came out into the porch and said to her husband, "I don't know as I liked your hinting him out of the house that way."
Braile did not take the point up, but remained thoughtfully smiling in the direction his guest had taken. "The idea is that most people marry their opposites," he remarked, "and that gives the children the advantage of inheriting their folly from two kinds of fools. But Abel and Sally are a perfect pair, mental and moral twins; the only thing they don't agree in is their account of what became of that snorting exhorter. But the difference there isn't important. If an all-wise Providence has kept them from transmitting a double dose of the same brand of folly to posterity, that's one thing in favor of Providence." He took up his wife's point now. "If I hadn't hinted him away, he'd have stayed to dinner; you wouldn't have hinted him away if he'd stayed to supper."
"Well, are you going to have some breakfast?" his wife asked. "I'll get you some fresh coffee."
"Well, I would like a little—with the head on—Martha, that's a fact. Have I got time for another pipe?"
"No, I don't reckon you have," his wife said, and she passed into the kitchen again, where she continued to make such short replies as Braile's discourse required of her.
He knocked his pipe out on the edge of his still uptilted chair, as he talked. "One fool like Abel I can stand, and I was just going to come in when Sally came in sight; and then I knew that two fools like Abel would make me sick. So I waited till the Creator of heaven and earth could get a minute off and help me out. But He seemed pretty busy with the solar system this morning, and I had about given up when He sent that Gillespie girl in sight. I knew that would fetch Sally; but it was an inspiration of my own to suggest Abel's chance to him; I don't want to put that on your Maker, Martha."
"It was your inspiration to get him to stay in the first place," Mrs.
Braile said within.
"No, Martha; that was my unfailing obedience to the sacred laws of hospitality; I didn't expect to fall under their condemnation a second time, though." Mrs. Braile did not answer, and by the familiar scent from within, Braile knew that his coffee must be nearly ready. As he dropped his chair forward, he heard a sound of frying, and "Pshaw, Martha!" he called. "You're not getting me some fresh bacon?"
"Did you suppose there'd be some left?" she demanded, while she stepped to and fro at her labors. Her steps ceased and she called, "Well, come in now, Matthew, if you don't want _every_thing to get cold, like the pone is."
Braile obeyed, saying, "Oh, I can stand cold pone," and at sight of the table with the coffee and bacon renewed upon it, he mocked tenderly, "Now just to reward you, Martha, I've got half a mind to go with you to the next meeting in the Temple."
"I don't know as I'm goin' myself," she said, pouring the coffee.
"I wish you would, just to please me," he teased.
Chapter 2
No one could say quite how it happened that the stranger went home from the camp-meeting with old David Gillespie and his girl. Many had come forward with hospitable offers, and the stranger had been affable with all; but he had slipped through the hands he shook and had parried the invitations made him. Gillespie had not seemed to invite him, and his shy daughter had shrunk aside when the chief citizens urged their claims; yet the stranger went with them to their outlying farm, and spent all the next day there alone in the tall woods that shut its corn fields in.
Sally Reverdy had failed to get any light from the Gillespie girl when she ran out from Squire Braile's cabin. The girl seemed still under the spell that had fallen upon many at the meeting, and it appeared to Sally that she did not want to talk; at any rate she did not talk to any satisfactory end. A squirrel hunter believed he had caught a glimpse of the stranger in the chestnut woods behind the Gillespie spring-house, but he was not a man whose oath was acceptable in the community and his belief was not generally shared. It was thought that the stranger would reappear at the last night of the camp-meeting, but the Gillespies came without him, and reported that they had expected he would come by himself.
The camp-meeting broke up after the Sunday morning service and most of the worshipers, sated with their devotional experience, went home, praising the Power in song as they rode away in the wagons laden with their camp furniture, and their children strewn over the bedding. But for others, the fire of the revival burned through the hot, long, August Sabbath day, and a devout congregation crowded the Temple.
The impulse of the week past held over to the night unabated. The spacious log-built house was packed from wall to wall; the men stood dense; the seats were filled with women; only a narrow path was left below the pulpit for those who might wish to rise and confess Christ before the congregation. The people waited in a silence broken by their deep breathing, their devout whispering, the scraping of their feet; now and then a babe, whose mother could not leave it at home, wailed pitifully or spitefully till it was coaxed or scolded still; now and then some one coughed. The air