Chapter III Going to Meeting
Every history has one quality in common with eternity. Begin where you will, there is always a beginning back of the beginning. And, for that matter, there is always a shadowy ending beyond the ending. Only because we may not always begin, like Knickerbocker, at the foundation of the world, is it that we get courage to break somewhere into the interlaced web of human histories—of loves and marriages, of births and deaths, of hopes and fears, of successes and disappointments, of gettings and havings, and spendings and losings. Yet, break in where we may, there is always just a little behind the beginning, something that needs to be told.
I find it necessary that the reader should understand how from childhood Morton had rather worshiped than loved Patty Lumsden. When the long spelling-class, at the close of school, counted off its numbers, to enable each scholar to remember his relative standing, Patty was always “one,” and Morton “two.” On one memorable occasion, when the all but infallible Patty misspelled a word, the all but infallible Morton, disliking to “turn her down,” missed also, and went down with her. When she afterward regained her place, he took pains to stand always “next to head.” Bulwer calls first love a great “purifier of youth,” and, despite his fondness for hunting, horse-racing, gaming, and the other wild excitements that were prevalent among the young men of that day, Morton was kept from worse vices by his devotion to Patty, and by a certain ingrained manliness.
Had he worshiped her less, he might long since have proposed to her, and thus have ended his suspense; but he had an awful sense of Patty’s nobility? and of his own unworthiness. Moreover, there was a lion in the way. Morton trembled before the face of Captain Lumsden.
Lumsden was one of the earliest settlers, and was by far the largest land-owner in the settlement. In that day of long credit, he had managed to place himself in such a way that he could make his power felt, directly or indirectly, by nearly every man within twenty miles of him. The very judges on the bench were in debt to him. On those rare occasions when he had been opposed, Captain Lumsden had struck so ruthlessly, and with such regardlessness of means or consequences, that he had become a terror to everybody. Two or three families had been compelled to leave the settlement by his vindictive persecutions, so that his name had come to carry a sort of royal authority. Morton Goodwin’s father was but a small farmer on the hill, a man naturally unthrifty, who had lost the greater part of a considerable patrimony. How could Morton, therefore, make direct advances to so proud a girl as Patty, with the chances in favor of refusal by her, and the certainty of rejection by her father? Illusion is not the dreadfulest thing, but disillusion—Morton preferred to cherish his hopeless hope, living in vain expectation of some improbable change that should place him at better advantage in his addresses to Patty.
At first, Lumsden had left him in no uncertainty in regard to his own disposition in the matter. He had frowned upon Goodwin’s advances by treating him with that sort of repellant patronage which is so aggravating, because it affords one no good excuse for knocking down the author of the insult. But of late, having observed the growing force and independence of Morton’s character, and his ascendancy over the men of his own age, the Captain appreciated the necessity of attaching such a person to himself, particularly for the election which was to take place in the autumn. Not that he had any intention of suffering Patty to marry Morton. He only meant to play fast and loose a while. Had he even intended to give his approval to the marriage at last, he would have played fast and loose all the same, for the sake of making Patty and her lover feel his power as long as possible. At present, he meant to hold out just enough of hope to bind the ardent young man to his interest. Morton, on his part, reasoned that if Lumsden’s kindness should continue to increase in the future as it had in the three weeks past, it would become even cordial, after a while. To young men in love, all good things are progressive.
On the Sunday morning following the shucking, Morton rose early, and went to the stable. Did you ever have the happiness to see a quiet autumn Sunday in the backwoods? Did you ever observe the stillness, the solitude, the softness of sunshine, the gentleness of wind, the chip-chip-chlurr-r-r of great flocks of blackbirds getting ready for migration, the lazy cawing of crows, softened by distance, the half-laughing bark of cunning squirrel, nibbling his prism-shaped beech-nut, and twinkling his jolly, child-like eye at you the while, as if to say, “Don’t you wish you might guess?”
Not that Morton saw aught of these things. He never heard voices, or saw sights, out of the common, and that very October Sunday had been set apart for a horse-race down at “The Forks.” The one piece of property which our young friend had acquired during his minority was a thorough-bred filley, and he felt certain that she—being a horse of the first families—would be able to “lay out” anything that could be brought against her. He was very anxious about the race, and therefore rose early, and went out into the morning light that he might look at his mare, and feel of her perfect legs, to make sure that she was in good condition.
“All right, Dolly?” he said—“all right this morning, old lady? eh? You’ll beat all the scrubs; won’t you?”
In this exhilarating state of anxiety and expectation, Morton came to breakfast, only to have his breath taken away. His mother asked him to ride to meeting with her, and it was almost as hard to deny her as it was to give up the race at “The Forks.”
Rough associations had made young Goodwin a rough man. His was a nature buoyant, generous, and complaisant, very likely to take the color of his surroundings. The catalogue of his bad habits is sufficiently shocking to us who live in this better day of Sunday-school morality. He often swore in a way that might have edified the army in Flanders. He spent his Sundays in hunting, fishing, and riding horse-races, except when he was needed to escort his mother to meeting. He bet on cards, and I am afraid he drank to intoxication sometimes. Though he was too proud and manly to lie, and too pure to be unchaste, he was not a promising young man. The chances that he would make a fairly successful trip through life did not preponderate over the chances that he would wreck himself by intemperance and gambling. But his roughness was strangely veined by nobleness. This rude, rollicking, swearing young fellow had a chivalrous loyalty to his mother, which held him always ready to devote himself in any way to her service.
On her part, she was, indeed, a woman worthy of reverence. Her father had been one of those fine old Irish gentlemen, with grand manners, extravagant habits, generous impulses, brilliant wit, a ruddy nose, and final bankruptcy. His daughter, Jane Morton, had married Job Goodwin, a returned soldier of the Revolution—a man who was “a poor manager.” He lost his patrimony, and, what is worse, lost heart. Upon his wife, therefore, had devolved heavy burdens. But her face was yet fresh, and her hair, even when anchored back to a great tuck-comb, showed an errant, Irish tendency to curl. Morton’s hung in waves about his neck, and he cherished his curls, proud of the resemblance to his mother, whom he considered a very queen, to be served right royally.
But it was hard—when he had been training the filley from a colt—when he had looked forward for months to this race as a time of triumph—to have so severe a strain put upon his devotion to his mother. When she made the request, he did not reply. He went to the barn and stroked the filley’s legs—how perfect they were!—and gave vent to some very old and wicked oaths. He was just making up his mind to throw the saddle on Dolly and be off to the Forks, when his decision was curiously turned by a word from his brother Henry, a lad of twelve, who had followed Morton to the stable, and now stood in the door.
“Mort,” said he, “I’d go anyhow, if I was you. I wouldn’t stand it. You go and run Doll, and lick Bill Conkey’s bay fer him. He’ll think you’re afeard, ef you don’t. The old lady hain’t got no right to make you set and listen to old Donaldson on sech a purty day as this.”
“Looky here, Hen!” broke out Morton, looking up from the meditative scratching of Dolly’s fetlocks, “don’t you talk that away about mother. She’s every inch a lady, and it’s a blamed hard life she’s had to foller, between pappy’s mopin’ and the girls all a-dyin’ and Lew’s bad end—and you and me not promisin’ much better. It’s mighty little I kin do to make things kind of easy for her, and I’ll go to meetin’ every day in the week, ef she says so.”
“She’ll make a Persbyterian outen you, Mort; see ef she don’t.”
“Nary Presbyterian. They’s no Presbyterian in me. I’m a hard nut. I would like to be a elder, or a minister, if it was in me, though, just to see the smile spread all over her face whenever she’d think about it. Looky here, Hen! I’ll tell you something. Mother’s about forty times too good for us. When I had the scarlet fever, and was cross, she used to set on the side of the bed, and tell me stories, about knights and such like, that she’d read about in grandfather’s books when she was a girl—jam up good stories, too, you better believe. I liked the knights, because they rode fine horses, and was always ready to fight anything that come along, but always fair and square, you know. And she told me how the knights fit fer their religion, and fer ladies, and fer everybody that had got tromped down by somebody else. I wished I’d been a knight myself. I ’lowed it would be some to fight for somebody in trouble, or somethin’ good. But then it seemed as if I couldn’t find nothin’ worth the fightin’ fer. One day I lay a-thinkin’, and a-lookin’ at mother’s white lady hands, and face fit fer a queen’s. And in them days she let her hair hang down in long curls, and her black eyes was bright like as if they had a light inside of ’em, you know. She was a queen, I tell you! And all at wunst it come right acrost me, like a flash, that I mout as well be mother’s knight through thick and thin; and I’ve been at it ever since. I ‘low I’ve give her a sight of trouble, with my plaguey wild ways, and I come mighty blamed nigh runnin’ this mornin’, dogged ef I didn’t. But here goes.”
And with that he proceeded to saddle the restless Dolly, while Henry put the side-saddle on old Blaze, saying, as he drew the surcingle tight, “For my part, I don’t want to fight for nobody. I want to do as I dog-on please.” He was meditating the fun he would have catching a certain ground-hog, when once his mother should be safely off to meeting.
Morton led old Blaze up to the stile and helped his mother to mount, gallantly put her foot in the stirrup, arranged her long riding-skirt, and then mounted his own mare. Dolly sprang forward prancing and dashing, and chafing against the bit in a way highly pleasing to Morton, who thought that going to meeting would be a dull affair, if it were not for the fun of letting Dolly know who was her master. The ride to church was a long one, for there had never been preaching nearer to the Hissawachee settlement than ten miles away. Morton found the sermon rather more interesting than usual. There still lingered in the West at this time the remains of the controversy between “Old-side” and “New-side” Presbyterians, that dated its origin before the Revolution. Parson Donaldson belonged to the Old side. With square, combative face, and hard, combative voice, he made war upon the laxity of New-side Presbyterians, and the grievous heresies of the Arminians, and in particular upon the exciting meetings of the Methodists. The great Cane Ridge Camp-meeting was yet fresh in the memories of the people, and for the hundredth time Mr. Donaldson inveighed against the Presbyterian ministers who had originated this first of camp-meetings, and set agoing the wild excitements now fostered by the Methodists. He said that Presbyterians who had anything to do with this fanaticism were led astray of the devil, and the Synod did right in driving some of them out. As for Methodists, they denied “the Decrees.” What was that but a denial of salvation by grace? And this involved the overthrow of the great Protestant doctrine of Justification by Faith. This is rather the mental process by which the parson landed himself at his conclusions, than his way of stating them to his hearers. In preaching, he did not find it necessary to say that a denial of the decrees logically involved the rest. He translated his conclusions into a statement of fact, and boldly asserted that these crazy, illiterate, noisy, vagabond circuit riders were traitors to Protestantism, denying the doctrine of Justification, and teaching salvation by the merit of works. There were many divines, on both sides, in that day who thought zeal for their creed justified any amount of unfairness. (But all that is past!)
Morton’s combativeness was greatly tickled by this discourse, and when they were again in the saddle to ride the ten miles home, he assured his mother that he wouldn’t mind coming to meeting often, rain or shine, if the preacher would only pitch into somebody every time. He thought it wouldn’t be hard to be good, if a body could only have something bad to fight. “Don’t you remember, mother, how you used to read to me out of that old “Pilgrim’s Progress,” and show me the picture of Christian thrashing Apollyon till his hide wouldn’t hold shucks? If I could fight the devil that way, I wouldn’t mind being a Christian.”
Morton felt especially pleased with the minister to-day, for Mr. Donaldson delighted to have the young men come so far to meeting; and imagining that he might be in a “hopeful state of mind,” had hospitably urged Morton and his mother to take some refreshment before starting on their homeward journey. It is barely possible that the stimulus of the good parson’s cherry-bounce had quite as much to do with Morton’s valiant impulses as the stirring effect of his discourse.