Other Main Travelled Roads

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As he pondered the fire burned, and there rose again the flame of his
resolution. He lifted his face and prayed that he might be the one to
bring these people into the living union of the Church of Christ.

His blood set toward his heart with tremulous action.

His eyes glowed with zeal like that of the prophets of the Middle Ages.
He saw the people united once more in this desecrated hall. He heard the
bells ringing, the sound of song, the voices of love and fellowship
filling the anterooms where hate had scrawled hideous blasphemy against
woman and against God.

As he sat there Herman came in, his keen eyes seeking out every stain
and evidence of vandalism.

"Cheerful prospect, isn't it?"

Wallace looked up with the blaze of his resolution still in his eyes.
His pale face was sweet and solemn.

"Oh, how these people need Christ!"

Herman turned away. "They need killing--about two dozen of 'em. I'd like
to have the job of indicating which ones. I wouldn't miss the old man,
you bet!" he added, with cordial resentment.

Wallace was helpless in the face of such reckless thought, and so sat
silently watching the handsome young fellow as he walked about.

"Well, now, Stacey, I guess you'll need to move. I had another session
with the old man, but he won't give in, so I'm off for Chicago. Mother's
brother, George Chapman, who lives about as near the schoolhouse on the
other side, will take you in. I guess we'd better go right down now and
see about it. I've said good-by to the old man--for good this time; we
didn't shake hands, either," he said, as they started down the road
together. He was very stern and hard. Something of the father was hidden
under his laughing exterior.

Stacey regretted deeply the necessity which drove him out of Allen's
house. Mrs. Allen and Mattie had appealed to him very strongly. For
years he had lived far from young women, and there was a magical power
in the intimate home actions of this young girl. Her bare head, with
simple arrangement of hair, someway seemed the most beautiful thing he
had ever seen.

He thought of her that night, as he sat at the table with Chapman and
his aged mother. They lived alone, and their lives were curiously
silent. Once in a while a low-voiced question, and that was all. George
read the _Popular Science, Harper's Monthly Magazine_, and the _Open
Court_, and brooded over them with slow intellectual movement. It was
wonderful the amount of information he secreted from these periodicals.
He was better informed than many college graduates. He had little
curiosity about the young stranger. He understood that he was to teach
the school; beyond that he did not care to go.

He tried Wallace once or twice on the latest discoveries of John Fiske
and Edison, and then gave him up and retired to his seat beside the
sitting-room stove.

On the following Monday morning school began, and as Wallace took his
way down the lane the wrecked church came again to his eyes. He walked
past it with slow feet. His was a deeply religious nature, one that
sorrowed easily over sin. Suffering of the poor did not trouble him;
hunger seemed a little thing beside losing one's everlasting soul.
Therefore, to come from his studies upon such a monument of human
depravity as this rotting church was to receive a shock and to hear a
call to action.

Approaching the schoolhouse, his thought took a turn toward the
scholars and toward Mattie. He had forgotten to ask her if she intended
to be one of his pupils.

There were several children already gathered at the weather-beaten door
as he came up. It was all very American--the box-like house of white,
the slender teacher approaching, the roughly clad urchins waiting.

He said, "Good morning, scholars!"

They chorused a queer croak in reply--hesitating, inarticulate, shy. He
unlocked the door and entered the cold, bare room--familiar, unlovely,
with a certain power of primitive associations. In such a room he had
studied his primer and his Ray's Arithmetic. In such a room he had made
gradual recession from the smallest front seat to the back wall seat;
and from one side of such a room to the other he had furtively
worshipped a graceful, girlish head.

He allowed himself but a moment of such dreaming before assuming
command, and with his ready helpers a fire was soon started. Other
children came in, timorous as rabbits, slipping by, each with an eye
fixed on him like a scared chicken. They pre-empted their seats by
putting down books and slates, and there arose sly wars for possession,
which he watched with amusement--it was so like his own life at that
age.

He assumed control as nearly in the manner of the old-time teachers as
he could recall, and the work of his teaching was begun. The day passed
quickly, and, as he walked homeward again, there stood that rotting
church, and in his mind there rose a surging emotion larger than he
could himself comprehend--a desire to rebuild it by uniting the warring
factions, of whose lack of Christianity this deserted chapel was a fatal
witness.

IV

Now this mystical thing happened. As this son of a line of preachers
brooded on this unlovely strife among men, he lost the equipoise of the
scholar and student of modern history. He grew narrower and more
intense. The burden of his responsibility as a preacher of Christ grew
daily more insupportable.

Toward the end of the week he announced preaching in the schoolhouse on
Sunday afternoon, and at the hour set he found the room crowded with
people of all ages and sorts.

His heart grew heavy as he looked out over the room--on women nursing
querulous children, on the grizzled faces of grim-looking men, who
studied him with keen, unsympathetic eyes. He had hard, unfriendly
material to work with. There were but few of the opposite camp present,
while the Baptist leaders were all there, with more curiosity than
sympathy in their faces.

They exulted to think the next preacher to come among them as an
evangelist should be a Baptist.

After the singing, which would have dribbled away into failure but for
Mattie, Wallace rose, looking very white and weak, and began his
prayer. Some of the boys laughed when his voice stuck in his throat, but
he went on to the end of an earnest supplication, feeling he had not
touched them at all.

While they sang again, he sat looking down at them with dry throat and
staring eyes. How hard, how unchristian-like, they all were. What could
he say to them? He saw Mattie gazing up at him, and on the front seat
sat three beautiful little girls huddled together with hands clasped;
inexpressibly dainty by contrast. As he looked at them the thought came
to him, What is the goodness of a girl--of a child? It is not
partisan--it is not of creeds, of articles--it is goodness of thought,
of deeds. His face lighted up with the inward feeling of this idea, and
he rose resolutely.

"Friends, with the help of Christ I am come among you to do you good. I
shall hold meetings each night here in the schoolhouse until we can
unite and rebuild the church again. Let me say now, friends, that I was
educated a Baptist. My father was a faithful worker in the Baptist
Church, and so was his father before him. I was educated in a Baptist
college, and I came here hoping to build up a Baptist Church." He
paused.

"But I see my mistake. I am here to build up a Church of Christ, of good
deeds and charity and peace, and so I here say I am no longer a Baptist
or Methodist. I am only a preacher, and I will not rest until I rebuild
the church which stands rotting away there." His voice rang with
determination as he uttered those words.

The people listened. There was no movement now. Even the babies seemed
to feel the need of being silent. When he began again it was to describe
that hideous wreck. He delineated the falling plaster, the litter around
the pulpit, the profanation of the walls. "It is a symbol of your sinful
hearts!" he cried.

Much more he said, carried out of himself by his passion. It was as if
the repentant spirit of his denominational fathers were speaking through
him; and yet he was not so impassioned that he did not see, or at least
feel, the eyes of the strong young girl fixed upon him; his resolutions
were spoken to her, and a swift response seemed to leap from her eyes.

When it was over, some of the Methodists and one of the Baptists came up
to shake hands with him, awkwardly wordless, and the pressure of their
hands helped him. Many of the Baptist brethren slipped outside to
discuss the matter. Some were indignant, others much moved.

Allen went by him with an audible grunt of derision, with a dark scowl
on his face, but Mattie smiled at him, with tears still in her eyes. She
had been touched by his vibrant voice; she had no sins to repent of.

The skeptics of the neighborhood were quite generally sympathetic.
"You've struck the right trail now, parson," said Chapman, as they
walked homeward together. "The days of the old-time denominationalism
are about played out."

But the young preacher was not so sure of it, now that his inspiration
was gone. He remembered his debt to his college, to his father, to the
denomination, and it was not easy to set aside the grip of such
memories.

He sat late revolving the whole situation in his mind. When he went to
bed his problem was still with him, and involved itself with his dreams;
but always the young girl smiled upon him with sympathetic eyes and told
him to go on--or so it seemed to him.

He was silent at breakfast. He went to school with a feeling that a
return to teaching little tow-heads to count and spell was now
impossible. He sat at his scarred and dingy desk while they took their
places, and his eyes had a passionate intensity of prayer in them which
awed his pupils. He had assumed new grandeur and terror in their eyes.
When they were seated he bowed his head and uttered a short plea for
grace, and then he looked at them again.

On the low front seat, with dangling legs and red, round faces, sat the
little ones. Some way he could not call them to his knees and teach them
to spell; he felt as if he ought to call them to him, as Christ did, to
teach them love and reverence. It was impossible that they should not be
touched by this hideous neighborhood strife.

Behind them sat the older children, some of them with rough, hard, sly
faces. One or two grinned rudely and nudged each other. The older girls
sat with bated breath; they perceived something strange in the air. Most
of them had heard his sermon of the night before.

At last he broke silence. "Children, there is something I must say to
you this morning. I'm going to have meeting here to-night, and it may
be I shall not be your teacher any more--I mean in school. I wish you'd
go home to-day and tell your people to come to church here to-night. I
wish you'd all come yourselves. I want you to be good. I want you to
love God and be good. I want you to go home and tell your people the
teacher can't teach children how to read till he has taught the older
people to be kind and generous. You may put your books away, and school
will be dismissed."

The wondering children obeyed--some with glad promptness, others with
sadness, for they had already come to like their teacher very much.

As he sat by the door and watched them file out, it was as if he were a
king abdicating a throne, and these his faithful subjects.

Mrs. Allen came over with Mattie to see him that day. She was a good
woman, gentle and prayerful, and she said, with much emotion:

"Oh, Mr. Stacey, I do hope you can patch things up here. If you could
only touch his heart! He don't mean to do wrong, but he's so set in his
ways--if he says a thing he sticks to it."

Stacey turned to Mattie for a word of encouragement, but she only looked
away. It was impossible for her to put into words her feeling in the
matter, which was more of admiration for his courage than for any part
of his religious zeal. He was so different from other men.

It did him good to have these women come, and he repeated his vow:

"By the grace of our Lord, I am going to rebuild the Cyene Church!" and
his face paled and his eyes grew luminous.

The girl shivered with emotion. He seemed to recede from her as he
spoke, and to grow larger, too. Such nobility of purpose was new and
splendid to her.

* * * * *

The revival was wondrously dramatic. The little schoolhouse was crowded
to the doors night by night. The reek of stable-stained coats and boots,
the smell of strong tobacco, the effluvia of many breaths, the heat, the
closeness were forgotten in the fervor of the young evangelist's
utterances. His voice took on wild emotional cadences which sounded deep
places in the heart. To these people, long unused to religious oratory,
it was like the return of John and Isaiah. It was poetry and the drama,
and processions and apocalyptic visions. This youth had the histrionic
spell, too, and his slender body lifted and dilated, and his head took
on majesty and power, and the fling of his white hand was a challenge
and an appeal.

A series of stirring events took place on the third night.

On Wednesday Jacob Turner rose and asked the prayers of his neighbors,
and was followed by two Baptist spearmen of the front rank. On Thursday
the women were weeping on one another's bosoms; only one or two of the
men held out--old Deacon Allen and his antagonist, Stewart Marsden.
Grim-visaged old figures they were, placed among repentant men and
weeping women. They sat like rocks in the rush of the two factions
moving toward each other for peaceful union. Granitic, narrow, keen of
thrust, they seemed unmoved, while all around them, one by one, skeptics
acknowledged the pathos and dignity of the preacher's views of life and
death.

Meanwhile the young evangelist lived at high pressure. He grew thinner
and whiter each night. He toiled in the daytime to formulate his
thoughts for the evening. He could not sleep till far toward morning.
The food he ate did him little good, while his heart went out constantly
to his people in strenuous supplication. It was testimony of his human
quality that he never for one moment lost that shining girl face out of
his thought. He looked for it there night after night. It was his
inspiration in speaking, as at the first.

On the nights when Mattie was not there his speech was labored (as the
elders noticed), but on the blessed nights when she came and sang, her
voice, amid all the rest, came to him, and uttered poetry and peace like
a rill of cool, sweet water. And afterward, when he walked home under
the stars, his mind went with her, she was so strong and lithe and good
to see. He did not realize the worshipping attitude the girl took before
his divine duties.

At last the great day came--the great night.

In some way, perhaps by the growing mass of rushing emotion set in
action by some deep-going phrase, or perhaps by some interior slow
weakening of stubborn will, Deacon Allen gave way; and when the preacher
called for penitents, the old man struggled to his feet, his seamed,
weather-beaten face full of grotesque movement. He broke out:

"Brethren, pray for me; I'm a miserable sinner. I want to confess my
sins--here--before ye all." He broke into sobbing terrible to hear. "My
heart is made--flesh again--by the blessed power of Christ...."

He struggled to get his voice. One or two cried, "Praise God!" but most
of them sat silent, awed into immobility.

The old man walked up the aisle. "I've been rebellious--and now I want
to shake hands with you all--and I ask your prayers." He bent down and
thrust his hand to Marsden, his enemy, while the tears streamed down his
face.

Marsden turned white with a sort of fear, but he rose awkwardly and
grasped the outstretched hand, and at the touch of palms every soul rose
as if by electric shock. "Amens!" burst forth. The preacher began a
fervent prayer, and came down toward the grizzled, weeping old men, and
they all embraced, while some old lady with sweet, quavering voice
raised a triumphal hymn, in which all joined, and found grateful relief
from their emotional tension.

Allen turned to Mattie and his wife. "My boy--send for him--Herman."

It seemed as if the people could not go away. The dingy little
schoolhouse was like unto the shining temple of God's grace, and the
regenerated seemed to fear that to go home might permit a return to hate
and strife. So they clung around the young preacher and would not let
him go.

At last he came out, with Allen holding to his arm. "You must come home
with us to-night," he pleaded, and the young minister with glad heart
consented, for he hoped he might walk beside Mattie; but this was not
possible. There were several others in the group, and they moved off two
and two up the deep hollows which formed the road in the snow.

The young minister walked with head uplifted to the stars, hearing
nothing of the low murmur of talk, conscious only of his great plans,
his happy heart, and the strong young girl who walked before him.

In the warm kitchen into which they came he lost something of his
spiritual tension, and became more humanly aware of the significance of
sitting again with these people. He gave the girl his coat and hat, and
then watched her slip off her knitted hood and her cloak. Her eyes shone
with returning laughter, and her cheeks were flushed with blood.

Looking upon her, the young evangelist lost his look of exaltation, his
eyes grew soft and his limbs relaxed. His silence was no longer rapt--it
was the silence of delicious, drowsy reverie.

V

The next morning he did not rise at all. The collapse had come. The bad
air, the nervous strain, the lack of sleep, had worn down his slender
store of strength, and when the great victory came he fell like a tree
whose trunk has been slowly gnawed across by teeth of silent saw. His
drowse deepened into torpor.

In the bright winter morning, seated in a gay cutter behind a bay colt
strung with slashing bells, Mattie drove to Kesota for the doctor. She
felt the discord between the joyous jangle of the bells, the stream of
sunlight, and the sparkle of snow crystals, but it only added to the
poignancy of her anxiety.

She had not yet reached self-consciousness in her regard for the young
preacher--she thought of him as a noble human being, liable to death,
and she chirped again and again to the flying colt, whose broad hoofs
flung the snow in stinging showers against her face.

A call at the doctor's house set him jogging out along the lanes, while
she sent a telegram to Herman. As she whirled bay Tom into the road to
go home her heart rose in relief that was almost exaltation. She loved
horses. She always sang under her breath, chiming to the beat of their
bells, when alone, and now she loosened the rein and hummed an old
love-song, while the powerful young horse squared away in a trot which
was twelve miles an hour.

In such air, in such sun, who could die? Her good animal strength rose
dominant over fear of death.

She came upon the doctor swinging along in his old blue cutter, dozing
in country-doctor style, making up for lost sleep.

"Out o' the way, doctor!" she gleefully called.

The doctor roused up and looked around with a smile. He was not beyond
admiring such a girl as that. He snapped his whip-lash lightly on old
Sofia's back, who looked up surprised, and, seeming to comprehend
matters, began to reach out broad, flat, thin legs in a pace which the
proud colt respected. She came of illustrious line, did Sofia,
scant-haired and ungracious as she now was.

"Don't run over me!" called the doctor, ironically, and, with Sofia
still leading, they swung into the yard.

Mattie went in with the doctor, while Allen looked after both horses.
They found Chapman attending Wallace, who lay in a dazed
quiet--conscious, but not definitely aware of material things.

The doctor looked his patient over carefully. Then he asked, "Who is the
yoong mon?"

"He's been teaching here, or, rather, preaching."

"When did this coom on?"

"Last night. Wound up a big revival last night, I believe. Kind o' caved
in, I reckon."

"That's all. Needs rest. He'll be wearin' a wood jacket if he doosna
leave off preachin'."

"Regular jamboree. I couldn't stop him. One of these periodical
neighborhood 'awakenings,' they call it."

"They have need of it here, na doot."

"Well, they need something--love for God--or man."

"M--well! It's lettle I can do. The wumman can do more, if the mon'll be
eatin' what they cuke for 'im," said the candid old Scotchman. "Mak' 'im
eat! Mak' 'im eat!"

Once more Tom pounded along the shining road to Kesota to meet the
six-o'clock train from Chicago.

Herman, magnificently clothed in fur-lined ulster and cap, alighted with
unusually grave face, and hurried toward Mattie.

"Well, what is it, Sis? Mother sick?"

"No; it's the teacher. He is unconscious. I've been for the doctor. Oh,
we were scared!"

He looked relieved, but a little chagrined. "Oh, well, I don't see why I
should be yanked out of my boots by a telegram because the teacher is
sick! He isn't kin--yet."

For the first time a feeling of confusion swept over Mattie, and her
face flushed.

Herman's keen eyes half closed as he looked into her face.

"Mat--what--what! Now look here--how's this? Where's Ben Holly's claim?"

"He never had any." She shifted ground quickly. "Oh, Herman, we had a
wonderful time last night! Father and Uncle Marsden shook hands--"

"What!" shouted Herman, as he fell in a limp mass against the cutter.
"Bring a physician--I'm stricken."

"Don't act so! Everybody's looking."

"They'd better look. I'm drowning while they wait."

She untied the horse and came back.

"Climb in there and stop your fooling, and I'll tell you all about it."

He crawled in with tearing groans of mock agony, and then leaned his
head against her shoulder. "Well, go on, Sis; I can bear it now."

She nudged him to make him sit up.

"Well, you know we've had a revival."

"So you wrote. Must have been a screamer to fetch Dad and old Marsden. A
regular Pentecost of Shinar."

"It was--I mean it was beautiful. I saw father was getting stirred up.
He prayed almost all day yesterday, and at night--Well, I can't tell
you, but Wallace talked, oh, so beautiful and tender!"

"She calls him Wallace?" mused Herman, like a comedian. "Hush! And then
came the hand-shaking, and then the minister came home with us because
father asked him to, and stayed because he liked the chicken."

The girl was hurt, and she showed it. "If you make fun, I won't tell you
another word," she said.

"Away Chicago! enter Cyene! Well, come, I won't fool any more."

"Then after Wallace--I mean--"

"Let it stand. Come to the murder."

"Then father came and asked me to send for you, and mother cried, and so
did he. And, oh, Hermie, he's so sweet and kind! Don't make fun of him,
will you? It's splendid to have him give in, and everybody feels glad
that the district will be all friendly again."

Herman did not gibe now. His voice was gentle. The pathos in the scene
appealed to him. "So the old man sent for me himself, did he?"

"Yes; he could hardly wait till morning. But this morning, when we came
to call the teacher, he didn't answer, and father went in and found him
unconscious. Then I went for the doctor."

Bay Tom whirled along in the splendid dusk, his nostrils flaring ghostly
banners of steam on the cold, crisp air. The stars overhead were points
of green and blue and crimson light, low-hung, changing each moment.
Their influence entered the soul of the mocking young fellow. He felt
very solemn, almost melancholy, for a moment.

"Well, Sis, I've got something to tell you all. I'm going to tell it to
you by degrees. I'm going to be married."

"Oh!" she gasped, with quick, indrawn breath. "Who?"

"Don't be ungrammatical, whatever you do. She's a cashier in a
restaurant, and she's a fine girl," he added, steadily, as if combating
a prejudice. He forgot for the moment that such prejudices did not exist
in Cyene.

Sis was instantly tender, and very, very serious.

"Of course she is, or you wouldn't care for her. Oh, I'd like to see
her!"

"I'll take you up some day and show her to you."

"Oh, will you? Oh, when can I go?" She was smitten into gravity again.
"Not till the teacher is well."

Herman pretended to be angry. "Dog take the teacher, the old
spindle-legs! If I'd known he was going to raise such a ruction in our
quiet and peaceful neighborhood, I never would have brought him here."

Mattie did not laugh; she pondered. She never quite understood her
brother when he went off on those queer tirades, which might be a joke
or an insult. He had grown away from her in his city life.

They rode on in silence the rest of the way, except now and then an
additional question from Mattie concerning his sweetheart.

As they neared the farm-house she lost interest in all else but the
condition of the young minister. They could see the light burning dimly
in his room, and in the parlor and kitchen as well, and this unusual
lighting stirred the careless young man deeply. It was associated in his
mind with death and birth, and also with great joy. The house was
lighted so the night his elder brother died, and it looked so to him
when he whirled into the yard with the doctor when Mattie was born.

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