Delphi Complete Works of William Dean Howells

by William Dean Howells

  “Ye have heard it said aforetime that the New Jerusalem would come down here in Leatherwood, but I say unto you that all that has passed away, that the words which were spoken by the prophet might be fulfilled, ‘Many are called but few are chosen.’ Verily, verily, I said unto you, that heaven and earth shall pass away, but the words I speak now shall not pass away. If the works which have been done in Leatherwood had been done in Tyre and Sidon, the New Jerusalem would have come down in both places, for they did not stone the prophets as the Herd of the Lost did in Leatherwood.”

  “He means that morning when he took up the pike and the fellows chased him into the tall timber,” Braile whispered to his wife; “but I can’t tell what he’s driving at.”

  “Be still!” she said.

  Many of the Little Flock groaned and cried aloud; the Herd of the Lost, except for one shrill note of bitter laughter, were silent, and only those who sat near perceived that it was Jane Gillespie who had laughed.

  Redfield looked round at her, unconscious of his look.

  “I go a long way off,” Dylks proceeded, “and some of my beloved, even my Little Flock, cannot follow me; but though they cannot follow me, even the lame, halt, and blind shall be with me in the spirit, and shall behold the New Jerusalem where I will bring it down.”

  Many of the Little Flock at this cried out, “Where will it be, Lord?” “Where will the New Jerusalem come down?” “How shall we see it?”

  “With the eyes of faith, even as ye have seen the miracles I have wrought among ye, which were shown to babes and sucklings and were hidden from the wise of this world. But now I go from you, and my feet shall be upon the mountains and shall descend upon the other side and there I will bring down the New Jerusalem, and there ye shall be, in the flesh or in the spirit, to behold the wonder of it.”

  Some of the Little Flock cried out again. “Oh, don’t leave us, Father!” “Take us all with you in the flesh!” “We want to be taken up with you!” and then some of them entreated, “Tell us about it; tell us what it will be like.”

  Dylks lifted his eyes as if in the rapture of the vision. “‘Its light shall eclipse the splendor of the sun. The temples thereof, and the residences of the faithful will be built of diamonds excelling the twinkling beauty of the stars. Its walls will be of solid gold, and its gates silver. The streets will be covered with green velvet, richer in luster and fabric than mortal eye ever beheld. The gardens thereof will be filled with all manner of pleasant fruits, precious to the sight, and pleasant to the taste. The faithful shall ride in chariots of crimson, drawn by jet-black horses that need no drivers; and their joys shall go on increasing forever. The air of the city shall be scented with the smell of shrubs and flowers, and ten thousand different instruments all tuned to the songs of heaven shall fill the courts, and the streets and the temples, and the residences, and the gardens with music like ear hath not heard, swelling the soul of the saved with perpetual delight.’”

  Sighs and groans of ecstasy went up from the Flock at each of the studied pauses which Dylks made in recounting the wonders of the heavenly city, fancied one after another at the impulse of their expectation. At the end they swarmed forward to the altar place and flung themselves on the ground, and heaped the pulpit steps with their bodies. “Take us with you, Lord!” they entreated. “Take us all with you in the flesh!” “Don’t leave us here to perish among the heathen and the ungodly when you go.” Then some began to ask, as if he had already consented, “But what shall we eat, and what shall we drink, and wherewithal shall we be clothed on that far journey?”

  Dylks leaned forward against the pulpit desk and showed a few coins drawn from the pocket of Hingston’s pantaloons which he was wearing. “These shall be enough, for out of these three rusty old coppers I can make millions of gold and silver dollars.”

  The frenzy mounted, and the Herd of the Lost who began to tire of the sight, left the temple. Redfield followed out behind Matthew Braile and his wife. “That settles it,” he said. “I’ll see to Mr. Dylks in the morning.”

  “Now, I look at it differently. He’s going, like he said he would, and we’ve got to let him go in his own way, and bring down the New Jerusalem Over-the-Mountains, or anywhere else he pleases, so he don’t bring it down in Leatherwood.”

  “I say so, too, Matthew. He’s keeping his word the best he can, poor lying soul. They wouldn’t let him back out now.”

  “I don’t want you to trouble him, Jim Redfield, till you have a warrant from me,” Braile resumed, braced by his wife’s support. “And I want you to keep the Hounds away, and give Dylks a fair start. You know the law won’t let you touch him. Now do you hear?”

  “I hear,” Redfield said sullenly, with the consent which Braile read in his words. “But if there’s any more such goings on as we’ve had here to-night, I won’t answer for the rest of his scalp.”

  He hurried forward from the elderly couple and overtook the Gillespies walking rapidly. Hughey Blake had just fallen away from them and stood disconsolately looking after them.

  “Is that you, James Redfield?” David Gillespie asked, peering at him in the night’s dimness. “This is the man that helped me to get you a lock of that scoundrel’s hair,” he said to his daughter.

  She answered nothing in acknowledgment of the introduction, but Redfield said, coming round to her side and suiting his step to hers, “I would like to go home with you till my road passes yours.”

  “Well,” she said, “if you ain’t ashamed to be seen with such a fool. Nobody can see you to-night,” she added, bitterly, including him in her self-scorn.

  “You needn’t imply that I like it to be in the dark. I would like to walk with you in broad day past all the houses in Leatherwood. But I don’t suppose you’d let me.” She did not say anything, and he added, “I’m going to ask you to the first chance.” Still she did not say anything, though her father had fallen behind and left the talk wholly to them.

  XIX

  Nancy sat at her door in the warm September evening when the twilight was beginning to come earlier than in the August days, and her boy rushed round the corner of the cabin in a boy’s habitual breathlessness from running.

  “Oh, mother, mother!” he called to her, as if he were a great way off. “Guess what!” He did not wait for her to guess. “The Good Old Man is goin’ to leave Leatherwood and go Over the Mountains with the Little Flock, and he says he’s goin’ to bring down the New Jerusalem at Philadelphy, and all that wants to go up with him kin go. Mr. Hingston’s goin’ with him, and he’s goin’ to let Benny. Benny don’t know whether he can get to go up in the New Jerusalem or not, but he’s goin’ to coax his father the hardest kind.”

  He stopped panting at his mother’s knees where she sat on the cabin threshold nearly as high as he stood. She put up her hand and pushed the wet hair from his forehead. “How you do sweat, Joey! Go round and wash your face at the bench. Maybe Jane will give you a drink of the milk, while it’s warm yet, before she lets it down in the well. She’s just through milkin’.”

  The boy tore himself away with a shout of “Oh, goody!” and his mother heard him at the well. “Wait a minute, Jane! Mother said I could have a drink before you let it down,” and then she heard him, between gulps, recounting to the girl’s silence the rumors she had already heard from him. He came running back, with a white circle of milk round his lips. “Mother,” he began, “have you ever been Over-the-Mountains?”

  “No, I’ve never been anywhere but just here in the country, and where you was born, back where we moved from.”

  “Well, mother, how old am I now?”

  “You’re goin’ on twelve, Joey dear.”

  “Yes, that’s what I thought. Benny ain’t on’y ten. And he ain’t as big for his age as what I am. He’s been to the circus, though; his father took him to it at Wheeling that time when he went on the steamboat. I wisht I could go to a circus.”

  “Well, maybe you kin when you grow up. Circuses ain’t everyth
ing.”

  “No,” the boy relucted. “Benny says the New Jerusalem will be a good deal like the circus. That’s the reason he coaxed his father to let him go. Is Philadelphy as far as Wheeling?”

  “A good deal further, from what I’ve heard tell,” his mother said; she smiled at his innocently sinuous approach to his desire.

  He broke out with it. “Mother, what’s the reason I can’t go with Benny, and Mr. Hingston, and the Little Flock? They’d take good care of me, and I wouldn’t make Mr. Hingston any trouble. Me ‘n’ Benny could sleep together. And the Good Old Man he’s always been very pleasant to me. Patted my head oncet, and ast me what my name was.”

  “Did you tell him it was Billings?” his mother asked uneasily.

  “No, just Joseph; and he said, well, that was his name, too. Don’t you think the Good Old Man is good?”

  “We’re none of us as good as we ought to be, Joey. No, he ain’t a good man, I’m afraid.”

  “My!” the boy said, and then after a moment: “I don’t want to go, Mother, unless you want to let me go.”

  His mother did not speak for a while, and it seemed as if she were not going to speak at all, so that the boy said, with a little sigh of renunciation, “I didn’t expect you would. But I’d be as careful! And even if the Good Old Man ain’t so very good, Mr. Hingston is, and he wouldn’t let anything happen to me.”

  The woman put her hand under the boy’s chin, and looked into his eager eyes which had not ceased their pleading. At last she said, “You can go, Joey!”

  “Mother!” He jumped to his feet from his crouching at hers. “Oh, glory to God!”

  “Hush, Joey, you mustn’t say things like that. It’s like swearing, dear.”

  “I know it is, and I didn’t mean to. Of course it’s right, in meetin’, and it kind of slipped out when I wasn’t thinkin’. But I won’t say any bad things, you needn’t be afraid. Oh, I’ll be as good! But look a’here, mother! Why can’t you come, too?”

  “And leave your little sister?” She smiled sadly.

  “I didn’t think of that. But couldn’t Jane take care of her? She’s always carryin’ her around. And Uncle David could come here, and live with them. He wouldn’t want to stay there without me, or no one.”

  “It wouldn’t do, Joey dear.”

  “No,” the boy assented.

  “You can go and tell Benny I said you might go, if his father will have you.”

  “Oh, he will; he said so; Benny’s ast him! And he said he’d take good care of us both.”

  “I’m not afraid. You know how to take care of yourself. And, Joey—”

  She stopped, and the boy prompted her, “What, mom?”

  “When I said the Good Old Man wasn’t a good man, I didn’t want to set you against him. I want you to be good to him.”

  “Yes, mother,” the boy assented in a puzzle. “But if he ain’t good—”

  “He ain’t, Joey. He’s a wicked man. Sometimes I think he’s the wickedest man in the world. But I want you to watch out, and if ever you can help him, or do anything for him, remember that I wanted you to do it: a boy can often help a man.”

  “I will, mother. But I don’t see the reason, if he’s so very wicked, why—”

  “That’s the very reason, Joey dear. And go and tell Benny now that I let you go. And — don’t tell him what I said about the Good Old Man.”

  “Oh, I woon’t, I woon’t, mom! Oh, glory — Oh, I didn’t mean to say it, and I didn’t, really, did I? But I’m so glad, and Benny’ll be, too! Can I tell him now? To-night?”

  “Yes. Run along.”

  He hesitated; then he leaped into the air with a joyful yell and vanished round the corner of the cabin into the dusk.

  His mother did not leave her place on the threshold, but sat with her face bowed in her hands. By and by Jane Gillespie came to the door from within, and then Nancy lifted her head and made room for her to sit beside her. She told her what had passed, and Jane said, “If I was a man I would — Well, I know what I would do!”

  She did not sit down, but stood behind Nancy and talked down over her shoulder. “Yes,” Nancy said, “that’s what I used to say when I was a girl. But now I’m glad I ain’t a man, for I wouldn’t know what to do.”

  “Well, I wouldn’t ‘a’ left a hair in his head. I’d ‘a’ — I’d ‘a’ half killed him! Oh, when I think what a fool that man made of me!”

  “Don’t let Jim Redfield make a fool of you, then.”

  “Who said I’m letting him?” the girl demanded fiercely.

  “Nobody. But don’t.”

  “Aunt Nancy! If it was anybody but you said such a thing! But I know! It’s because you’re so set on Hughey Blake. Hughey Blake!” she ended scornfully, and went back into the cabin.

  Nancy rose from her place with a sigh. “Oh, I ‘spose you’re right about my lettin’ Joey go. I don’t know why I let him.”

  XX

  The meetings of the Little Flock had continued ever since the reappearance of Dylks, and in the earlier spirit. But the spring was broken, and since he had said that the New Jerusalem would not come down at Leatherwood, many had lost not faith but hope. Few could have the hope of following him as far as far-off Philadelphia, and sharing the glories which he promised them there. For a pioneer community the people were none of them poor; some were accounted rich, and among the richest were many followers of Dylks. But most of the Flock were hardworking farmers who could not spare the time or the money for that long journey Over-the-Mountains, even with the prospect of the heavenly city at the end. Yet certain of the poorest set their houses in order, and mortgaged their lands, and went with the richest, when on a morning after the last great meeting in the Temple, the Little Flock assembled for parting, some to go and some to stay.

  Nancy did not come with her boy for the farewell. They had kissed each other at the cabin door, and then he had run light-heartedly away, full of wild expectation, to find Benny Hingston at the Cross Roads and then race with him to join the crowd before the Temple, where the Little Flock stood listening to the last words which the Good Old Man should speak to them in Leatherwood. Many wept; Dylks himself was crying. The enemies of their faith did not molest them except for a yelp of derision now and then, and a long-drawn howl from the Hounds, kept well back by the Herd of the Lost, under the command of Redfield. He stood in the chief place among these, and at his right hand Matthew Braile leaned on his stick.

  When the last prayer had been said, and they who were going had kissed or shaken hands with those who were staying, and friends and foes had both scattered, Braile said to the young man whom he now faced, “Well, that’s the last of him.”

  Redfield’s jaw was still set from the effort of seeing the affair through in as much decency as he had been able to enforce. “It ain’t the last of them. But I reckon, now he’s gone, they’ll behave themselves. None of the saints that are left will make trouble.”

  “No, with Enraghty out of the way and that kind old fool Hingston, with his example of mistaken righteousness, we can get along fairly enough with the old dispensation. Well, Abel,” he called to Reverdy, who was lounging about in the empty space which the crowd had left, unwilling to leave the scene of so much excitement for the dull labors of the field, “you thought you wouldn’t go to see the New Jerusalem come down, after all. How’s the Good Old Man goin’ to work it without you?”

  “He’s had to work things ‘thout me for a good while now, Squire,” Abel returned, not with perfect satisfaction in the part assigned him by the irony of the Squire. “Ever sence that night at Mr. Enraghty’s, I been putty much done with him. A god that couldn’t help hisself in a little trouble like that, he ain’t no god for me.”

  “Oh, I remember. But what about Sally? She didn’t go with the Little Flock, either?”

  “I reckon me ‘n’ Sally thinks putty much alike about the Little Flock,” Abel said with as much hauteur as a man in his bare feet could command. “We hain’t either of u
s got any use for Little Flocks, any more.”

  “Well, I’m glad of it. But I thought she might have come to see them off.”

  Abel relented. “Sally ain’t very well, this mornin’. Up all night with the toothache.” Redfield had turned from them, and Abel now remarked, “I was wonderin’ whether I couldn’t borry a little coffee from Mis’ Braile for breakfast; I been so took up ‘ith all these goun’s on that I hain’t had no time to go to the store.”

  “Why, certainly,” the Squire replied, “and you’d better come and have breakfast with us on the way home. I came down without mine so as to see the Ancient of Days off, and make sure of his going.”

  “Pshaw, Squire, it don’t seem quite right to have you usin’ them old Bible sayun’s so common like.”

  “Well, Abel, perhaps it isn’t quite the thing. But you must make allowance for my being in such high spirits. I haven’t breathed so free in a coon’s age. I would like to have stowed Dylks for a little while in the loft with ours! But Mis’ Braile wouldn’t hear of it. Well, we’ve seen the last of him, I hope. And now we’re hearing the last of him.” He halted Abel in their walk, at a rise in the ground where they caught the sound of the hymn which the Little Flock, following Dylks for a certain way, were singing. “‘Sounds weel at a distance,’ as the Scotchman said of the bagpipes. And the farther the better. I don’t believe I should care if I never heard that tune again.” They reached Braile’s cabin, and he said, “Well, now come in and have something to stay your stomach while you’re waiting for Sally to make the coffee you’re going to borrow.”

  “No, I reckon not, Squire,” Abel loyally held out.

  “Well, then, come in and get the coffee, anyhow.”

  “I reckon that’s a good idea, Squire,” Abel assented with a laugh for the joke at his cost. As they mounted the steps, Braile stopped him at the sound of voices in the kitchen.