Prairie Folks
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Hamlin Garland >> Prairie Folks
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Pill recovered himself.
"Not hard enough for _you_, neighbor Bacon."
Bacon rose, retaining the same dry, prosaic tone:
"I ain't bitin' that kind of a hook, an' I ain't goin' to be _yanked_
into heaven when I c'n _slide_ into hell. Waal! I must be goin'; I've
got a new-milk's cow that needs tendin' to."
The effect of all this was indescribable. From being at the very mouth
of the furnace, quivering with fear and captive to morbid imaginings,
Bacon's dry intonation had brought them all back to earth again. They
saw a little of the absurdity of the whole situation.
Pill was beaten for the first time in his life. He had been struck below
the belt by a good-natured giant. The best he could do, as Bacon
shuffled calmly out, was to stammer: "Will some one please sing?" And
while they sang, he stood in deep thought. Just as the last verse was
quivering into silence, the full, deep tones of Radbourn's voice rose
above the bustle of feet and clatter of seats:
"And all _that_ he preaches in the name of Him who came bringing peace
and good-will to men."
Radbourn's tone had in it reproach and a noble suggestion. The people
looked at him curiously. The deacons nodded their heads together in
counsel, and when they turned to the desk Pill was gone!
"Gee whittaker! That was tough," said Milton to Radbourn; "knocked the
wind out o' him like a cannon-ball. What'll he do now?
"He can't do anything but acknowledge his foolishness."
"You no business t' come here an' 'sturb the Lord's meetin'," cried old
Daddy Brown to Radbourn. "You're a sinner and a scoffer."
"I thought Bacon was the disturbing ele"----
"You're just as bad!"
"He's all _right_," said William Councill. "I've got sick, m'self, of
bein' _scared_ into religion. I never was so fooled in a man in my life.
If I'd tell you what Pill said to me the other day, when we was in
Robie's store, you'd fall in a fit. An' to hear him talkin' here
t'night, is enough to make a horse laugh."
"You're all in league with the devil," said the old man wildly; and so
the battle raged on.
Milton and Radbourn escaped from it, and got out into the clear, cold,
untainted night.
"The heat of the furnace don't reach as far as the horses," Radbourn
moralized, as he aided in unhitching the shivering team. "In the vast,
calm spaces of the stars, among the animals, such scenes as we have just
seen are impossible." He lifted his hand in a lofty gesture. The light
fell on his pale face and dark eyes.
The girls were a little indignant and disposed to take the preacher's
part. They thought Bacon had no right to speak out that way, and Miss
Graham uttered her protest, as they whirled away on the homeward ride
with pleasant jangle of bells.
"But the secret of it all was," said Radbourn in answer, "Pill knew he
was acting a part. I don't mean that he meant to deceive, but he got
excited, and his audience responded as an audience does to an actor of
the first class, and he was for the time in earnest; his imagination
_did_ see those horrors,--he was swept away by his own words. But when
Bacon spoke, his dry tone and homely words brought everybody, preacher
and all, back to the earth with a thump! Every body saw that, after
weeping and wailing there for an hour, they'd go home, feed the calves,
hang up the lantern, put out the cat, wind the clock, and go to bed. In
other words, they all came back out of their barbaric _powwow_ to their
natural modern selves."
This explanation had palpable truth, but Lily had a dim feeling that it
had wider application than to the meeting they had just left.
"They'll be music around this clearing to-morrow," said Milton, with a
sigh; "wish I was at home this week."
"But what'll become of Mr. Pill?"
"Oh, he'll come out all right," Radbourn assured her, and Milton's clear
tenor rang out as he drew Eileen closer to his side:
"O silver moon, O silver moon,
You set, you set too soon--
The morrow day is far away,
The night is but begun."
IV.
The news, grotesquely exaggerated, flew about the next day, and at
night, though it was very cold and windy, the house was jammed to
suffocation. On these lonely prairies life is so devoid of anything but
work, dramatic entertainments are so few, and appetite so keen, that a
temperature of twenty degrees below zero is no bar to a trip of ten
miles. The protracted meeting was the only recreation for many of them.
The gossip before and after service was a delight not to be lost, and
this last sensation was dramatic enough to bring out old men and women
who had not dared to go to church in winter for ten years.
Long before seven o'clock, the school-house blazed with light and buzzed
with curious speech. Team after team drove up to the door, and as the
drivers leaped out to receive the women, they said in low but eager
tones to the bystanders:
"Meeting begun yet?"
"Nope!"
"What kind of a time y' havin' over here, any way?"
"A mighty solumn time," somebody would reply to a low laugh.
By seven o'clock every inch of space was occupied; the air was
frightful. The kerosene lamps gave off gas and smoke, the huge stove
roared itself into an angry red on its jack-oak grubs, and still people
crowded in at the door.
Discussion waxed hot as the stove; two or three Universalists boldly
attacked everybody who came their way. A tall man stood on a bench in
the corner, and, thumping his Bible wildly with his fist, exclaimed, at
the top of his voice:
"There is _no_ hell at _all_! The Bible says the _wicked_ perish
_utterly_. They are _consumed_ as _ashes_ when they die. They _perish_
as _dogs_!"
"What kind o' docterin' is that?" asked a short man of Councill.
"I d'know. It's ol' Sam Richards. Calls himself a
Christian--Christadelphian 'r some new-fangled name."
At last people began to inquire, "Well, ain't he comin'?"
"Most time f'r the Elder to come, ain't it?"
"Oh, I guess he's preparin' a sermon."
John Jennings pushed anxiously to Daddy Brown.
"Ain't the Elder comin'?"
"I d'know. He didn't stay at my house."
"He didn't?"
"No. Thought he went home with you."
"I ain't see 'im 't all. I'll ask Councill. Brother Councill, seen
anything of the Elder?"
"No. Didn't he go home with Bensen?"
"I d'n know. I'll see."
This was enough to start the news that "Pill had skipped."
This the deacons denied, saying "he'd come or send word."
Outside, on the leeward side of the house, the young men who couldn't
get in stood restlessly, now dancing a jig, now kicking their huge boots
against the underpinning to warm their toes. They talked spasmodically
as they swung their arms about their chests, speaking from behind their
huge buffalo-coat collars.
The wind roared through the creaking oaks; the horses stirred
complainingly, the bells on their backs crying out querulously; the
heads of the fortunates inside were shadowed outside on the snow, and
the restless young men amused themselves betting on which head was
Bensen and which Councill.
At last some one pounded on the desk inside. The suffocating but lively
crowd turned with painful adjustment toward the desk, from whence Deacon
Benson's high, smooth voice sounded:
"Brethren an' sisters, Elder Pill hain't come--and, as it's about eight
o'clock, he probably won't come to-night. After the disturbances last
night, it's--a--a--we're all the more determined to--the--a--need of
reforming grace is more felt than ever. Let us hope nothing has happened
to the Elder. I'll go see to-morrow, and if he is unable to come--I'll
see Brother Wheat, of Cresco. After prayer by Brother Jennings, we will
adjourn till to-morrow night. Brother Jennings, will you lead us in
prayer?" (Some one snickered.) "I hope the disgraceful--a--scenes of
last night will not be repeated."
"Where's Pill?" demanded a voice in the back part of the room. "That's
what I want to know."
"He's a bad pill," said another, repeating a pun already old.
"I guess so! He borrowed twenty dollars o' me last week," said the first
voice.
"He owes me for a pig," shouted a short man, excitedly. "I believe he's
skipped to get rid o' his debts."
"So do I. I allus said he was a mighty queer preacher."
"He'd bear watchin' was my idee fust time I ever see him."
"Careful, brethren--_careful_. He may come at any minute."
"I don't care if he does. I'd bone him f'r pay f'r that shote, preacher
'r no preacher," said Bartlett, a little nervously.
High words followed this, and there was prospect of a fight. The
pressure of the crowd, however, was so great it was well-nigh impossible
for two belligerents to get at each other. The meeting broke up at last,
and the people, chilly, soured, and disappointed at the lack of
developments, went home saying Pill was _scaly_; no preacher who chawed
terbacker was to be trusted; and when it was learned that the horse and
buggy he drove he owed Jennings and Bensen for, everybody said, "He's a
fraud."
V.
In the meantime, Andrew Pill was undergoing the most singular and awful
mental revolution.
When he leaped blindly into his cutter and gave his horse the rein, he
was wild with rage and shame, and a sort of fear. As he sat with bent
head, he did not hear the tread of the horse, and did not see the trees
glide past. The rabbit leaped away under the shadow of the thick groves
of young oaks; the owl, scared from its perch, went fluttering off into
the cold, crisp air; but he saw only the contemptuous, quizzical face of
old William Bacon--one shaggy eyebrow lifted, a smile showing through
his shapeless beard.
He saw the colorless, handsome face of Radbourn, with a look of reproach
and a note of suggestion--Radbourn, one of the best thinkers and
speakers in Rock River, and the most generally admired young man in Rock
County.
When he saw and heard Bacon, his hurt pride flamed up in wrath, but the
calm voice of Radbourn, and the look in his stern, accusing eyes, made
his head fall in thought. As he rode, things grew clearer. As a matter
of fact, his whole system of religious thought was like the side of a
shelving sand-bank--in unstable equilibrium--needing only a touch to
send it slipping into a shapeless pile at the river's edge. That touch
had been given, and he was now in the midst of the motion of his falling
faith. He didn't know how much would stand when the sloughing ended.
Andrew Pill had been a variety of things, a farmer, a dry-goods
merchant, and a traveling salesman, but in a revival quite like this of
his own, he had been converted and his life changed. He now desired to
help his fellow-men to a better life, and willingly went out among the
farmers, where pay was small. It was not true, therefore, that he had
gone into it because there was little work and good pay. He was really
an able man, and would have been a success in almost anything he
undertook; but his reading and thought, his easy intercourse with men
like Bacon and Radbourn, had long since undermined any real faith in the
current doctrine of retribution, and to-night, as he rode into the
night, he was feeling it all and suffering it all, forced to acknowledge
at last what had been long moving.
The horse took the wrong road, and plodded along steadily, carrying him
away from his home, but he did not know it for a long time. When at last
he looked up and saw the road leading out upon the wide plain between
the belts of timber, leading away to Rock River, he gave a sigh of
relief. He could not meet his wife then; he must have a chance to think.
Over him, the glittering, infinite sky of winter midnight soared,
passionless, yet accusing in its calmness, sweetness and majesty. What
was he that he could dogmatize on eternal life and the will of the Being
who stood behind that veil? And then would come rushing back that scene
in the school-house, the smell of the steaming garments, the gases from
the lamps, the roar of the stove, the sound of his own voice, strident,
dominating, so alien to his present mood, he could only shudder at it.
He was worn out with the thinking when he drove into the stable at the
Merchants' House and roused up the sleeping hostler, who looked at him
suspiciously and demanded pay in advance. This seemed right in his
present mood. He was not to be trusted.
When he flung himself face downward on his bed, the turmoil in his brain
was still going on. He couldn't hold one thought or feeling long; all
seemed slipping like water from his hands.
He had in him great capacity for change, for growth. Circumstances had
been against his development thus far, but the time had come when growth
seemed to be defeat and failure.
VI.
Radbourn was thinking about him, two days after, as he sat in his friend
Judge Brown's law office, poring over a volume of law. He saw that
Bacon's treatment had been heroic; he couldn't get that pitiful
confusion of the preacher's face out of his mind. But, after all,
Bacon's seizing of just that instant was a stroke of genius.
Some one touched him on the arm.
"Why,--Elder,--Mr. Pill, how de do? Sit down. Draw up a chair."
There was trouble in the preacher's face. "Can I see you, Radbourn,
alone?"
"Certainly; come right into this room. No one will disturb us there."
"Now, what can I do for you?" he said, as they sat down.
"I want to talk with you about--about religion," said Pill, with a
little timid pause in his voice.
Radbourn looked grave. "I'm afraid you've come to a dangerous man."
"I want you to tell me what you think. I know you're a student. I want
to talk about my case," pursued the preacher, with a curious hesitancy.
"I want to ask a few questions on things."
"Very well; sail in. I'll do the best I can," said Radbourn.
"I've been thinking a good deal since that night. I've come to the
conclusion that I don't believe what I've been preaching. I thought I
did, but I didn't. I don't know _what_ I believe. Seems as if the land
had slid from under my feet. What am I to do?"
"Say so," replied Radbourn, his eyes kindling. "Say so, and get out of
it. There's nothing worse than staying where you are. What have you
saved from the general land-slide?"
Pill smiled a little. "I don't know."
"Want me to cross-examine you and see, eh? Very well, here goes." He
settled back with a smile. "You believe in square dealing between man
and man?"
"Certainly."
"You believe in good deeds, candor and steadfastness?"
"I do."
"You believe in justice, equality of opportunity, and in liberty?"
"Certainly I do."
"You believe, in short, that a man should do unto others as he'd have
others do unto him; think right and live out his thoughts?"
"All that I steadfastly believe."
"Well, I guess your land-slide was mostly imaginary. The face of the
eternal rock is laid bare. You didn't recognize it at first, that's all.
One question more. You believe in truth?"
"Certainly."
"Well, truth is only found from the generalizations of facts. Before
calling a thing true, study carefully all accessible facts. Make your
religion practical. The matter-of-fact tone of Bacon would have had no
force if you had been preaching an earnest morality in place of an
antiquated terrorism."
"I know it; I know it," sighed Pill, looking down.
"Well, now, go back and tell 'em so. And then, if you can't keep your
place preaching what you do believe, get into something else. For the
sake of all morality and manhood, don't go on cursing yourself with
hypocrisy."
Mr. Pill took a chew of tobacco, rather distractedly, and said:
"I'd like to ask you a few questions."
"No, not now. You think out your present position yourself. Find out
just what you have saved from your land-slide."
The elder man rose; he hardly seemed the same man who had dominated his
people a few days before. He turned with still greater embarrassment.
"I want to ask a favor. I'm going back to my family. I'm going to say
something of what you've said, to my congregation--but--I'm in debt--and
the moment they know I'm a backslider, they're going to bear down on me
pretty heavy. I'd like to be independent."
"I see. How much do you need?" mused Radbourn.
"I guess two hundred would stave off the worst of them."
"I guess Brown and I can fix that. Come in again to-night. Or no, I'll
bring it round to you."
The two men parted with a silent pressure of the hand that meant more
than any words.
When Mr. Pill told his wife that he could preach no more, she cried, and
gasped, and scolded till she was in danger of losing her breath
entirely. "A guinea-hen sort of a woman" Councill called her. "She can
talk more an' say less'n any woman I ever see," was Bacon's verdict,
after she had been at dinner at his house. She was a perpetual irritant.
Mr. Pill silenced her at last with a note of impatience approaching a
threat, and he drove away to the Corners to make his confession without
her. It was Saturday night, and Elder Wheat was preaching as he entered
the crowded room. A buzz and mumble of surprise stopped the orator for a
few moments, and he shook hands with Mr. Pill dubiously, not knowing
what to think of it all, but as he was in the midst of a very effective
oratorical scene, he went on.
The silent man at his side felt as if he were witnessing a burlesque of
himself as he listened to the pitiless and lurid description of torment
which Elder Wheat poured forth--the same figures and threats he had used
a hundred times. He stirred uneasily in his seat, while the audience
paid so little attention that the perspiring little orator finally
called for a hymn, saying:
"Elder Pill has returned from his unexpected absence, and will exhort in
his proper place."
When the singing ended, Mr. Pill rose, looking more like himself than
since the previous Sunday. A quiet resolution was in his eyes and voice
as he said:
"Elder Wheat has more right here than I have. I want 'o say that I'm
going to give up my church in Douglass and"---- A murmur broke out,
which he silenced with his raised hand. "I find I don't believe any
longer what I've been believing and preaching. Hold on! let me go on. I
don't quite know where I'll bring up, but I think my religion will
simmer down finally to about this: A full half-bushel to the half-bushel
and sixteen ounces to the pound." Here two or three cheered. "Do unto
others as you'd have others do unto you." Applause from several, quickly
suppressed as the speaker went on, Elder Wheat listening as if
petrified, with his mouth open.
"I'm going out of preaching, at least for the present. After things get
into shape with me again, I may set up to teach people how to live, but
just now I can't do it. I've got all I can do to instruct myself. Just
one thing more. I owe two or three of you here. I've got the money for
William Bacon, James Bartlett and John Jennings. I turn the mare and
cutter over to Jacob Bensen, for the note he holds. I hain't got much
religion left, but I've got some morality. That's all I want to say
now."
When he sat down there was a profound hush; then Bacon arose.
"That's _man's_ talk, that is! An' I jest want 'o say, Andrew Pill, that
you kin jest forgit you owe me anything. An' if ye want any help come to
me. Y're jest gittun' ready to preach, 'n' I'm ready to give ye my
support."
"That's the talk," said Councill. "I'm with ye on that."
Pill shook his head. The painful silence which followed was broken by
the effusive voice of Wheat:
"Let us pray--and remember our lost brother."
* * * * *
The urgings of the people were of no avail. Mr. Pill settled up his
affairs, and moved to Cresco, where he went back into trade with a
friend, and for three years attended silently to his customers, lived
down their curiosity and studied anew the problem of life. Then he moved
away, and no one knew whither.
One day, last year, Bacon met Jennings on the road.
"Heerd anything o' Pill lately?"
"No; have you?"
"Waal, yes. Brown told me he ran acrost him down in Eelinoy, doun' well,
too."
"In dry goods?"
"No, preachun'."
"Preachun'?"
"So Brown said. Kind of a free-f'r-all church, I reckon from what Jedge
told me. Built a new church, fills it twice a Sunday. I'd like to hear
him, but he's got t' be too big a gun f'r us. Ben studyun', they say;
went t' school."
Jennings drove sadly and thoughtfully on.
"Rather stumps Brother Jennings," laughed Bacon, in his leonine
fashion.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
PART III.
WILLIAM BACON'S HIRED MAN: AND DAUGHTER MARIETTA
... Love and youth pass swiftly: Love sings,
And April's sun fans warmer sunlight from his wings.
WILLIAM BACON'S MAN
I.
The yellow March sun lay powerfully on the bare Iowa prairie, where the
plowed fields were already turning warm and brown, and only here and
there in a corner or on the north side of the fence did the sullen
drifts remain, and they were so dark and low that they hardly appeared
to break the mellow brown of the fields.
There passed also an occasional flock of geese, cheerful harbingers of
spring, and the prairie-chickens had set up their morning symphony,
wide-swelling, wonderful with its prophecy of the new birth of grass and
grain and the springing life of all breathing things. The crow passed
now and then, uttering his resonant croak, but the crane had not yet
sent forth his bugle note.
Lyman Gilman rested on his ax-helve at the wood-pile of Farmer Bacon to
listen to the music around him. In a vague way he was powerfully moved
by it. He heard the hens singing their weird, raucous, monotonous song,
and saw them burrowing in the dry chip-dust near him. He saw the young
colts and cattle frisking in the sunny space around the straw-stacks,
absorbed through his bare arms and uncovered head the heat of the sun,
and felt the soft wooing of the air so deeply that he broke into an
unwonted exclamation:
"Glory! we'll be seeding by Friday, sure."
This short and disappointing soliloquy was, after all, an expression of
deep emotion. To the Western farmer the very word "seeding" is a poem.
And these few words, coming from Lyman Gilman, meant more and expressed
more than many a large and ambitious spring-time song.
But the glory of all the slumbrous landscape, the stately beauty of the
sky with its masses of fleecy vapor, were swept away by the sound of a
girl's voice humming, "Come to the Savior," while she bustled about the
kitchen near by. The windows were open. Ah! what suggestion to these
dwellers in a rigorous climate was in the first unsealing of the
windows! How sweet it was to the pale and weary women after their long
imprisonment!
As Lyman sat down on his maple log to hear better, a plump face appeared
at the window, and a clear girl-voice said:
"Smell anything, Lime?"
He snuffed the air. "Cookies, by the great horn spoons!" he yelled,
leaping up. "Bring me some, an' see me eat; it'll do ye good."
"Come an' get 'm," laughed the face at the window.
"Oh, it's nicer out here, Merry Etty. What's the rush? Bring me out
some, an' set down on this log."
With a nod Marietta disappeared, and soon came out with a plate of
cookies in one hand and a cup of milk in the other.
"Poor little man, he's all tired out, ain't he?"
Lime, taking the cue, collapsed in a heap, and said feebly, "Bread,
bread!"
"Won't milk an' cookies do as well?"
He brushed off the log and motioned her to sit down beside him, but she
hesitated a little and colored a little.
"O Lime, s'pose somebody should see us?"
"Let 'em. What in thunder do we care? Sit down an' gimme a holt o' them
cakes. I'm just about done up. I couldn't 'a' stood it another minute."
She sat down beside him with a laugh and a pretty blush. She was in her
apron, and the sleeves of her dress were rolled to her elbows,
displaying the strong, round arms. Wholesome and sweet she looked and
smelled, the scent of the cooking round her. Lyman munched a couple of
the cookies and gulped a pint of milk before he spoke.
"Whadda we care who sees us sittin' side b' side? Ain't we goin' t' be
married soon?"
"Oh, them cookies in the oven!" she shrieked, leaping up and running to
the house. She looked back as she reached the kitchen door, however, and
smiled with a flushed face. Lime slapped his knee and roared with
laughter at his bold stroke.
"Ho! ho!" he laughed. "Didn't I do it slick? Ain't nothin' green in _my_
eye, I guess." In an intense and pleasurable abstraction he finished the
cookies and the milk. Then he yelled:
"Hey! Merry--Merry Etty!"
"Whadda ye want?" sang the girl from the window, her face still rosy
with confusion.
"Come out here and git these things."
The girl shook her head, with a laugh.
"Come out an' git 'm, 'r by jingo I'll throw 'em at ye! Come on, now!"
The girl looked at the huge, handsome fellow, the sun falling on his
golden hair and beard, and came slowly out to him--came creeping along
with her hand outstretched for the plate which Lime, with a laugh in his
sunny blue eyes, extended at the full length of his bare arm. The girl
made a snatch at it, but his left hand caught her by the wrist, and away
went cup and plate as he drew her to him and kissed her in spite of her
struggles.
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