Chapter XXVI Engagement
You do not like Morton in his vacillating state of mind as he rides toward Salt Fork, weighing considerations of right and wrong, of duty and disinclination, in the balance. He is not an epic hero, for epic heroes act straightforwardly, they either know by intuition just what is right, or they are like Milton’s Satan, unencumbered with a sense of duty. But Morton was neither infallible nor a devil. A man of sensitive conscience cannot, even by accident, break a woman’s heart without compunction.
When Goodwin approached Salt Fork he was met by Burchard, now sheriff of the county, and warned that he would be attacked. Burchard begged him to turn back. Morton might have scoffed at the cowardice and time-serving of the sheriff, if he had not been under such obligations to him, and had not been touched by this new evidence of his friendship. But Goodwin had never turned back from peril in his life.
“I have a right to preach at Salt Fork, Burchard,” he said, “and I will do it or die.”
Even in the struggle at Salt Fork Morton could not get rid of his love affair. He was touched to find lying on the desk in the school-house a little unsigned billet in Ann Eliza’s handwriting, uttering a warning similar to that just given by Burchard.
It was with some tremor that he looked round, in the dim light of two candles, upon the turbulent faces between him and the door. His prayer and singing were a little faint. But when once he began to preach, his combative courage returned, and his ringing voice rose above all the shuffling sounds of disorder. The interruptions, however, soon became so distinct that he dared not any longer ignore them. Then he paused in his discourse and looked at the rioters steadily.
“You think you will scare me. It is my business to rebuke sin. I tell you that you are a set of ungodly ruffians and law breakers. I tell your neighbors here that they are miserable cowards. They let lawless men trample on them. I say, shame on them! They ought to organize and arrest you if it cost their lives.”
Here a click was heard as of some one cocking a horse-pistol. Morton turned pale; but something in his warm, Irish blood impelled him to proceed. “I called you ruffians awhile ago,” he said, huskily. “Now I tell you that you are cut-throats. If you kill me here to-night, I will show your neighbors that it is better to die like a man than to live like a coward. The law will yet be put in force whether you kill me or not. There are some of you that would belong to Micajah Harp’s gang of robbers if you dared. But you are afraid; and so you only give information and help to those who are no worse, only a little braver than you are.”
Goodwin had let his impetuous temper carry him too far. He now saw that his denunciation had degenerated into a taunt, and this taunt had provoked his enemies beyond measure. He had been foolhardy; for what good could it do for him to throw away his life in a row? There was murder in the eyes of the ruffians. Half-a-dozen pistols were cocked in quick succession and he caught the glitter of knives. A hasty consultation was taking place in the back part of the room, and the few Methodists near him huddled together like sheep. If he intended to save his life there was no time to spare. The address and presence of mind for which he had been noted in boyhood did not fail him now. It would not do to seem to quail. Without lowering his fiercely indignant tone, he raised his right hand and demanded that honest citizens should rally to his support and put down the riot. His descending hand knocked one of the two candles from the pulpit in the most accidental way in the world. Starting back suddenly, he managed to upset, and extinguish the other just at the instant when the infuriated roughs were making a combined rush upon him. The room was thus made totally dark. Morton plunged into the on-coming crowd. Twice he was seized and interrogated, but he changed his voice and avoided detection. When at last the crowd gave up the search and began to leave the house, he drifted with them into the outer darkness and rain. Once upon Dolly he was safe from any pursuit.
When the swift-footed mare had put him beyond danger, Morton was in better spirits than at any time since the elder’s solemn talk on the preceding Saturday. He had the exhilaration of a sense of danger and of a sense of triumph. So bold a speech, and so masterly an escape as he had made could not but demoralize men like the Salt Forkers. He laughed a little at himself for talking about dying and then running away, but he inly determined to take the earliest opportunity to urge upon Burchard the duty of a total suppression of these lawless gangs. He would himself head a party against them if necessary.
This cheerful mood gradually subsided into depression as his mind reverted to the note in Ann Eliza’s writing. How thoughtful in her to send it! How delicate she was in not signing it! How forgiving must her temper be! What a stupid wretch he was to attract her affection, and now what a perverse soul he was to break her devoted heart!
This was the light in which Morton saw the situation. A more suspicious man might have reasoned that Ann Eliza probably knew no more of Goodwin’s peril at Salt Fork than was known in all the neighboring country, and that her note was a gratuitous thrusting of herself on his attention. A suspicious person would have reasoned that her delicacy in not signing the note was only a pretense, since Morton had become familiar with her peculiar handwriting in the affair of the lawsuit in which he had assisted her. But Morton was not suspicious. How could he be suspicious of one upon whom the Lord had so manifestly poured out his Spirit? Besides, the suspicious view would not have been wholly correct, since Ann Eliza did love Morton almost to distraction, and had entertained the liveliest apprehensions of hie peril at Salt Fork.
But with however much gratitude he might regard Ann Eliza’s action, Morton Goodwin could not quite bring himself to decide on marriage. He could not help thinking of the morning when negro Bob had discovered him talking to Patty by the spring-house, nor could he help contrasting that strong love with the feebleness of the best affection he could muster for the handsome, pious, and effusive Ann Eliza Meacham.
But as he proceeded round the circuit it became more and more evident to Morton that he had suffered in reputation by his cool treatment of Miss Meacham. Elderly people love romance, and they could not forgive him for not bringing the story out in the way they wished. They felt that nothing could be so appropriate as the marriage of a popular preacher with so zealous a woman. It was a shock to their sense of poetic completeness that he should thus destroy the only fitting denouement. So that between people who were disappointed at the come-out, and young men who were jealous of the general popularity of the youthful preacher, Morton’s acceptability had visibly declined. Nevertheless there was quite a party of young women who approved of his course. He had found the minx out at last!
One of the results of the Methodist circuit system, with its great quarterly meetings, was the bringing of people scattered over a wide region into a sort of organic unity and a community of feeling. It widened the horizon. It was a curious and, doubtless, also a beneficial thing, that over the whole vast extent of half-civilized territory called Jenkinsville circuit there was now a common topic for gossip and discussion. When Morton reached the very northernmost of his forty-nine preaching places, he had not yet escaped from the excitement.
“Brother Goodwin,” said Sister Sharp, as they sat at breakfast, “whatever folks may say, I am sure you had a perfect right to give up Sister Meacham. A man ain’t bound to marry a girl when he finds her out. I don’t think it would take a smart man like you long to find out that Sister Meacham isn’t all she pretends to be. I have heard some things about her standing in Pennsylvania. I guess you found them out.”
“I never meant to marry Sister Meacham,” said Morton, as soon as he could recover from the shock, and interrupt the stream of Sister Sharp’s talk.
“Everybody thought you did.”
“Everybody was wrong, then; and as for finding out anything, I can tell you that Sister Meacham is, I believe, one of the best and most useful Christians in the world.”
“That’s what everybody thought,” replied the other, maliciously, “until you quit off going with her so suddenly. People have thought different since.”
This shot took effect. Morton could bear that people should slander him. But, behold! a crop of slanders on Ann Eliza herself was likely to grow out of his mistake. In the midst of a most unheroic and, as it seemed to him, contemptible vacillation and perplexity, he came at last to Mount Zion meeting-house. It was here that Ann Eliza belonged, and here he must decide whether he would still leave her to suffer reproach while he also endured the loss of his own good name, or make a marriage which, to those wiser than he, seemed in every way advisable. Ann Eliza was not at meeting on this day. When once the benediction was pronounced, Goodwin resolved to free himself from remorse and obloquy by the only honorable course. He would ride over to Sister Sims’s, and end the matter by engaging himself to Ann Eliza.
Was it some latent, half-perception of Sister Meacham’s true character that made him hesitate? Or was it that a pure-hearted man always shrinks from marriage without love? He reined his horse at the road-fork, and at last took the other path and claimed the hospitality of the old class-leader of Mount Zion class, instead of receiving Sister Sims’s welcome. He intended by this means to postpone his decision till afternoon.
Out of the frying-pan into the fire! The leader took Brother Goodwin aside and informed him that Sister Ann Eliza was very ill. She might never recover. It was understood that she was slowly dying of a broken heart.
Morton could bear no more. To have made so faithful a person, who had even interfered to save his life, suffer in her spirit was bad enough; to have brought reproach upon her, worse; to kill her outright was ingratitude and murder. He wondered at his own stupidity and wickedness. He rode in haste to Sister Sims’s. Ann Eliza, in fact, was not dangerously ill, and was ill more of a malarious fever than of a broken heart; though her chagrin and disappointment had much to do with it. Morton, convinced that he was the author of her woes, felt more tenderness to her in her emaciation than he had ever felt toward her in her beauty. He could not profess a great deal of love, so he contented himself with expressing his gratitude for the Salt Fork warning. Explanations about the past were awkward, but fortunately Ann Eliza was ill and ought not to talk much on exciting subjects. Besides, she did not seem to be very exacting. Morton’s offer of marriage was accepted with a readiness that annoyed him. When he rode away to his next appointment, he did not feel so much relieved by having done his duty as he had expected to. He could not get rid of a thought that the high-spirited Patty would have resented an offer of marriage under these circumstances, and on such terms as Ann Eliza had accepted. And yet, one must not expect all qualities in one person. What could be finer than Ann Eliza’s lustrous piety? She was another Hester Ann Rogers, a second Mrs. Fletcher, maybe. And how much she must love him to pine away thus! And how forgiving she was!