“There you’ve said it,” he broke in. “That’s what I’ve come for. You’re the only woman that could hurt me, not because you think you know me the best, but because you’re the bravest woman that ever was. That’s why I’ve got to have you with me in my dispensation. Male and female created He them in His image. I can swing all Leatherwood by myself, but Leatherwood’s nothing. If I had you with me we could swing the world! Nancy, why don’t you come to me?” He flung his arms wide and bent his stalwart shape toward her. “Leatherwood’s nothing, I tell you. Why, you ought to see the towns Over-the-Mountains; you ought to see Philadelphia, where I came from the last thing. Everywhere the people are waiting for a sign, just as they’ve always been, and we would come with a sign — plenty of signs: the perfect Godhead, male and female, for the greatest sign of all. Why, I wonder there’s a Christian woman living, with the slur that the idea of just one male God throws on women! Don’t you know that the Egyptians and the Greeks and the Romans, and everybody but the Hebrews, had a married God, and that the Godhead was husband and wife? If you had ever read anything at all you would know that.”
The bad, vulgar beauty of his face, set in its flowing beard and hair, glowed on her.
“You needn’t look that way at me, Joseph Dylks,” she answered. “I don’t want any book-l’arning to know what you are. You’re what you always was, a lazy, good-for-nothing — Oh, I don’t say you wasn’t handsome; that was what done it for me when I made you my God; but I won’t make you my God now, though you’re as handsome as ever you was; handsomer, if that’s any comfort to you.”
“Nothing to what you’re coming to me would be, Nancy.”
“You’ll have to do without, then. You think you can twist me round your finger, like you used to, if you willed it, but I’ve outlived you, you and your will. Now I want you to go, and not ever come near me again; or I’ll have Laban here, the next time.”
“Laban? Laban? Oh, the man who is not thy husband! I’m not afraid of your having Laban, here; let him come. I’ve converted worse sinners than Laban.” He had remained, bent forward with his gaze still on her; now he lifted himself, and said, as if it were another word of his spell, “Come, Nancy!”
She answered, “If I thought there was any mercy in you—”
“Why, I’m All-merciful, as well as All-mighty, Nancy!” he jeered.
“No,” — as if concluding her thought, she said, “it’s no use! You couldn’t do a right thing if you wanted to; you can only do wrong things. I see that.”
“What is right and what is wrong? When you stand by my side in your half of the godhead, you will know that there is no difference. Why, even a poor human being can make wrong right by wanting it enough, and with God there is nothing but one kind of thing, the thing that God allows. It don’t matter whether it’s letting the serpent tempt that fool woman in Eden, or Joseph’s brethren selling him into Egypt, or Samuel hewing Agag in pieces, or the Israelites smiting the heathen, or David setting Uriah in the forefront of the battle, or Solomon having hundreds of wives; it’s all right if God wills it. You’ll say it’s put right by what happens to them that do wrong. Be God yourself and the right and the wrong will take care of themselves. I want you to come and help me. Why, with the sister and daughter of old David Gillespie both following me—”
She suddenly shrank from the grandeur of judging of him, to the measure of her need of his forbearance. “Oh, why can’t you let David alone? What’s he ever done to you?”
“What have I ever done to him?” Dylks demanded, temporizing on her ground.
“Why can’t you let Jane alone?”
He gave his equine snort, as if the sense of his power could best vent itself so. “Why can’t she let me alone? That girl bothers me worse than all the other women in Leatherwood put together. She won’t let me let her alone.”
“She was all right before you came. Why can’t you let her go back to Hughey Blake?”
“Hughey Blake? Oh! Then it wasn’t—” A light of malign intelligence shone in his eyes. “Well, I haven’t got anything against Hughey Blake.”
“Oh, if you’d only let her go back to Hughey! If you’d only let her alone, I’d—”
“You’d what?” He bounded toward her, and at her recoil he laughed and said, “I didn’t mean to scare you.”
“I wasn’t scared. You can’t scare me, Joseph Dylks. It’s past that, long ago, with you and me. But if I only knowed what you was up to — what you would really take to let David alone; to let her go back to Hughey Blake — But there ain’t any pity in you!”
“Don’t I tell you I’m full of pity? Look here, Nancy; I don’t ask you to come with me, to be one with me, to go halves in the godhead, all at once. It’s been step by step with me: first exhorter, then prophet, then disciple, then the Son, then the Father: but it’s been as easy! You don’t know how faith, the faith of the elect, helps along; and you would have that from the beginning; they would take you on my word, you wouldn’t have to say or do anything. But that’s not what I’m expecting now,” he hurried to add, smiling at the cloud of refusal in her face. “I’m not fooling; all I ask now is to have you come and see me do a miracle at Brother Hingston’s to-night. I’ll do two miracles if you’ll come, and one will be sending Jane Gillespie away from me and back to Hughey Blake. You’ll want to see that, even if you don’t want to see me turn a bolt of cloth into seamless raiment by the touch of my hand.”
“You are a wicked man, Joseph Dylks,” the woman solemnly answered. “And I’m sorry I asked you anything. You couldn’t do good, if you tried.” She pulled her sunbonnet across her face, as if to hide it for shame, and went back slowly toward the cabin.
“Salvation!” Dylks shouted after her, and gave his equine snort. He began to sing, as he took his way through the woods,
“Plunged in a gulf of dark despair
We wretched sinners lay.”
At first he sang boldly, filling the woods with the mocking of his hymn. But at the sound of footsteps crackling over the dry falling twigs toward him intermittently, as if they paused in question, and then resumed their course toward him, his voice fell, brokenly silencing itself till at the encounter of a man glimpsed through the trees, and pausing in a common arrest, it ceased altogether.
“Who are you?” Dylks demanded of the slight, workworn figure before him.
“Laban Billings,” the man faltered.
“Well, then, Laban Billings, make way for the Lord thy God,” Dylks powerfully returned, and as if he had borne the man down before him, he strode over the place where he had stood, and lost himself in the shadows beyond.
Laban hurried on, stumbling and looking back over his shoulder, till he found himself face to face with Nancy at the door of the shed behind the cabin. She was looking, too, in the direction Dylks had ceased from their sight in the woods. They started from each other in mutual fright.
“Nancy!” he entreated. “I didn’t see you. I — I wasn’t comin’ to see you, indeed, indeed I wasn’t. I just thought I might ketch sight of the baby — It’s pretty hard to do without you both! And I was just passin’ — Well, they’ve knocked off work at the Corners, so’s to come to the miracle at Hingston’s Mill to-night — But I’ll go right away again, Nancy.”
“You needn’t, Laban. Come in and see the baby.”
“Nancy!” he uttered joyfully. Then he faltered, “Do you think it will be right—”
“Oh, who knows what’s right?” she retorted. Then at his stare, she demanded, “Didn’t you run across anybody in the woods?”
“Yes.”
“What did he look like?”
“Like what they tell the Leatherwood God looks like. They’re half crazy about him at the Corners. They don’t hardly talk about anything else.”
“Did you think he looked like God?”
“More like Satan, I should say. He’s handsome enough for Satan.”
“It was Joseph Dylks.”
“Yes, I s’picioned
that.”
“And he’s been here, wanting me to go away with him — Over-the-Mountains.”
Laban made a dry sound in his throat and it was by a succession of efforts that he could say, “And — and — and—”
“Oh, could you ask, Laban?” she lamented. “You’re my husband, don’t you know it?” At the sound of her lament a little voice of fear and hope answered from the cabin. The father-hunger came into the man’s weak face, making it strong. “Come in and see our baby, Laban.”
She put out her hand to him innocently like a little girl to a little boy, and he took it. “I know it’s just for the baby; and I feel to thank you, Nancy,” he said, and together they went into the cabin.
At sight of him the baby crowed recognition. “She knowed you in a minute,” the mother said, and she straightened the skirt of the little one which the father had deranged in lifting the child from the floor. “I don’t believe she’ll ever forget you; I reckon she won’t if I have any say in it. Me and Joey talks about you every night when we’re gettin’ her to sleep.” She gurgled out a half-sob, half-laugh, as the little one pulled and pushed at his face, which he twisted this way and that, to get her hand in his mouth. “She always cared more for you than she did for me. I’ll set you a piece, Laban; I was just going to get me a bite of something; I don’t take my meals very regular, with you not here.”
“Well, I am a little hungry with the walk from the Corners, after such an early breakfast.”
“Well, you just keep her.”
“Oh, I’ll keep her,” he exulted.
She hustled about the hearth, getting the simple meal, which she made more than she had meant, and they had a joyous strange time together at the leaf she stayed from the well.
He kept the baby in his lap while he ate. Then he walked the floor till she fell asleep in his arms. When he lifted himself from laying her in the rough cradle which he had himself made for her, he said, without looking at the mother, “Now, I must be going, Nancy.”
“Don’t go on account of me, Laban,” she said with the same fierce courage she had shown in driving him from her before. “If it’s for me—”
“Nancy, I’ve thought it all out since I been away. And I reckon I ain’t your husband, in the sight of God. You was right about that; and I won’t ever come back again till — as long as—” He glanced wistfully at the little one in the cradle, and then he turned to go out of the door. “And — and — good-by, Nancy.”
She followed him to the door. “Kiss me, Laban!”
He put away the arms she lifted toward him. “No,” he said, “I reckon it wouldn’t be right,” and he turned and walked swiftly away, without looking back.
XI
The woman stood watching the man, as long as she could see him, and long after, with her left hand lifted to the jamb of the door, higher than her head. Then from the distance where he passed from sight over the brow of the hill, another figure of a man appeared, and slowly made its way down to the cabin. As she knew while he was still far off, it was Matthew Braile who, as long as he sat in the seat of the scorner, with his chair tilted against the wall, seemed a strong middle-aged man; but when he descended from his habitual place, with the crook of his stick, worn smooth by use, in his hard palm, one saw that he was elderly and stiff almost to lameness. He carried himself with a forward droop, and his gaze bent ponderingly on the ground, as if he were not meaning to look her way, and would pass without seeing her.
“Squire Braile!” she called to him, and as he straightened himself and turned round toward her, she besought him, “Do you believe there’s any God?”
“Oh!” he answered, and he smiled at the challenge from the somewhat lonely elevation which he knew the thoughts of his neighbors kept, aloof from the sordid levels of politics and business. “Why, Nancy, haven’t we got one, right here in Leatherwood?”
“That’s what makes me think there ain’t any, Squire Braile. If you’re not in too much of a hurry, I wish you’d stop and talk to me a minute. I’m in trouble.”
“Most women are; or men, for the matter of that. What is it, Nancy? I’m rather stronger on law than gospel; but if I can be any help, why you know your Joey’s an old friend of mine, and I’ll be glad to help you.”
He came toward her where she had stepped from the threshold and sat crouched on the hewn log, and stood looking down at her before he sank at her side.
“You may think it’s pretty strange, my asking you for help. Won’t you set? I can’t let you come inside because the baby’s just got to sleep.”
“Well,” he assented, “if you’re not afraid to be seen with such an infidel in the full light of day,” he jested, confronting her from the log where he sank. “What would Brother Gillespie say?”
She ignored his kindly mockery, and again she began, “What makes you believe there’s a God? You don’t believe in the Bible?”
“Not altogether, Nancy.”
“Do you believe in the Bible God?”
“As much as the Bible’ll let me.”
“Then, do you believe in the miracles?”
“What are you after, Nancy Billings?”
“If you saw a miracle, would you believe it?”
“That would depend on who did it. Now, I want you to let me do a little of the catechizing. I’ve liked you and Laban ever since you came to Leatherwood, and you know how your Joey has all but brought my boy back to me. Well, do you believe in God?”
“No!”
“Why don’t you?”
“A God that would let Joseph Dylks claim to be Him, and let them poor fools kneel down to him and worship him? Would an all-wise and all-powerful God do that?”
“What makes you say all-powerful? Haven’t you seen time and time again when good didn’t prevail against evil, and don’t you suppose He’d have helped it if He could? And why do you call Him all-wise? Is it because men are no-wise? That wouldn’t prove it, would it? And about the miracles, what does a miracle prove? Does it prove that the person who does it is of God, or just that faith is stronger than reason in those who think it’s happened?”
“But sin: do you think there’s such a thing?” Nancy pursued.
“There you are, catechizing me again! Yes, I think there’s sin, because I’ve known it in myself, if I haven’t in others.”
“And what is it — sin?”
“Well, Nancy, it seems to vary according to the time and place. But I should say it was going against what you knew was right at the time being.”
“And do you always know?”
“Always!” the old man answered solemnly. “I never was mistaken in my life, whether I went for or against it, and I’ve done both.”
The woman drew a hapless sigh. “Yes, I reckon it’s so.”
Braile was putting out his stick to help himself in rising, after the silence she let follow. She came from it, and reached a staying hand toward him. “And supposin’ — supposin’ — there was a woman — that there was a woman, and her husband left her, and he kept away years and years, till she thought he was dead, and she married somebody else, and then he come back, would it be a sin for her to keep on with the other one when she knowed the first one was alive?”
“I reckon that’s what would be called a sin, Nancy. Not that I’d be very quick to condemn her—”
“And supposin’ that the first one hadn’t claimed her yet, and she’d made the other one leave her, and then the first one come and wanted her to join him in the wickedest thing that ever was, and she wasn’t as strong as she had been, and she felt to need the protection-like of the other one: would it be a sin for her to take him back?”
Braile made again as if to rise. “I reckon you’d better talk to Mis’ Braile about a thing like that. You see, a man—”
She stayed him again with a beseeching gesture.
“Squire Braile, do you believe that God is good?”
“Ah, now, I’m more at home in a question like that. You might say that if He lets
evil prevail, it’s either because He can’t help it, or because He don’t care, or even because He thinks it’s best for mankind to let them have their swing when they choose to do evil. I incline to think that’s my idea. He’s made man, we’ll say, made him in His own image, and He’s put him here in a world of his own, to do the best or the worst with it. The way I look at it, He doesn’t want to keep interfering with man, but lets him play the fool or play the devil just as he’s a mind to. But every now and then He sends him word. If we’re going to take what the Book says, He sent him Word made flesh, once, and I reckon He sends him Word made Spirit whenever there’s a human creature comes into the world, all loving and all unselfish — like your Joey, or — my — my Jimmy—”
The old man’s voice died in his throat, and the woman laid her hand on his knee. He trembled to his feet, now. “When I think of such Spirits coming into this world, I’m not afraid of all the devils out of hell Dylksing round.”
He walked on down the road, and Nancy went indoors and went about her household work. She cleaned the dishes and trimmed the hearth; she spun the flax which tufted her wheel; then she took the rags of some garments past repair, and in the afternoon shadow of her threshold she cut them into ribbons and sewed them end to end and wound them into balls, for weaving into carpets.
People, as the evening drew on, went by, singly, in twos, in groups, silent for the most part, but some talking seriously. These looked at Nancy without speaking, but some asked, “Ain’t you goin’ to the Miracle?” and she shook her head for answer.
She had brushed her hair and put it up neatly after her indoors work was done, but she was in what she would have called her every-day clothes, and the passers had on their Sunday clothes; the girls wore their newest plaids of linsey-woolsy, and the young men wore tall beaver hats, and long high-collared coats, with tight pantaloons, which some pretenders to the latest fashions had strapped under their boots. They had on their Sunday faces, too; some severe, some sly, some simple and kind, but all with an effect of condition for whatever might be going to happen. They went as the people of Leatherwood went to the Temple on the Sabbaths before their meetings had been turned from the orderly worship of the Most High to the riot of emotions raised by the strange man who proclaimed himself God. In their expectations of the Sign which he had promised to give them, both those who believed and those who denied him found themselves in a sort of truce. They were as if remanded to the peace of the time before the difference which had rent the community into warring fragments. In this truce brothers were speaking who had not spoken since they accepted or refused the new God; families walked together in the harmony which he had lately counseled; children honored their believing or disbelieving parents; fathers and mothers ceased to abhor their children as limbs of Satan, according to their faith or unfaith. “Let everybody come to the Sign,” he had exhorted them when he promised them the miracle, “just as if they had never seen or heard me before, and let His creatures judge their Creator with love for one another in their hearts.”
Delphi Complete Works of William Dean Howells Page 915