The Preacher of Cedar Mountain: A Tale of the Open Country
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CHAPTER XXXIII
The Sociable
Christmas time with its free days and its social gatherings was at hand;and the Church folk must needs respond to the spirit of the season witha "sociable." In such a meeting, the young minister is king--that is thetradition--and on this occasion it was easier than usual to crown theheir apparent. At least twenty girls were making love to Jim, and he wasquite unconscious of it all, except that he thought them a little free,and at length he recited an appropriate couplet from "The Solitude ofAlexander Selkirk": "They are so unaccustomed to man, their tameness isshocking to me." He joked and laughed with all; but ever he drifted overtoward Belle, to consult, to whisper, to linger.
For such affairs there is a time-honoured and established programme thatwas fairly well adhered to at least in the early part. They met at thechurch parlours and gossiped; had a prayer, then more gossip; nextfollowed tea and cakes in a poisonous abundance, and more gossip. Nowthe older preacher, as expected, read a chapter out of some safe storybook, amid gossip--harmless in the main, but still gossip. Next themusical geniuses of the congregation were unchained. A perfectlywell-meaning young lady sang, "Be kind to your brother, he may not lastlong," to an accompaniment of squeaks on the melodeon--and gossip. A boyorator recited "Chatham's speech on American Independence," and receivedan outburst of applause which, for a moment, overpowered the gossip.
Lou-Jane Hoomer, conspicuous for her intense hair and noisy laugh, hadbeen active in getting up the sociable, and now she contributed of hertalents by singing "Home, Sweet Home." About the middle of the secondperiod, according to custom, the preacher should recite "BarbaraFrietchie" to a whispering chorus of gossip. But Jim was brought up in aland not reached by Barbara's fame and he made a new departure by givinga Fenian poem--"Shamus O'Brien"--with such fervour that, for the moment,the whisperers forgot to gossip.
Belle, as the manager of the affair, was needed everywhere and all thetime, but made no contribution to the programme. Lou-Jane scored such asuccess with "Home, Sweet Home" that she was afterward surrounded by agroup of admirers, among them Jim Hartigan.
"Sure," he said, she "was liable to break up the meeting making everyone so homesick," and she replied that "it would never break up as longas he was there to attract them all together."
John Higginbotham, with his unfailing insurance eye, pointed out thatthe stove-pipe wire had sagged, bringing the pipe perilously near thewoodwork, and then gossiped about the robberies his company hadsuffered. A game of rhymes was proposed. In this one person gives a wordand the next to him must at once match it with an appropriate rhyme.This diversion met with little enthusiasm and the party lagged untilsome one suggested that Jim recite. He chose a poem from Browning, "HowThey Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix." He put his very soul inthose galloping horses and wondered why the poet said so much about themen and so little about the steeds. Dr. Jebb could not quite "see thelesson," but the fire and power of the rendering gripped the audience.Dr. Carson said, "Now you're doing real stuff! If you'd cut out all yourpiffling goody talk and give us life like that, you'd have all the townwith you."
Lou-Jane was actually moved, and Belle glowed with pride to see her heroreally touching the nobler strings of human emotion--strings that such acommunity is apt to lose sight of under cobwebs of long disuse but theyare there and ready to resound to the strong, true soul that can touchthem with music.
But what was it in the trampling horses that stirred some undiscovereddepth in his own heart? How came it that those lines drove fogbanks backand showed another height in his soul, a high place never seen before,even by himself? And, as those simple townfolk, stirred they knew nothow, all clamoured for another song, he felt the thrill that once washis in the far-off stable yard of Links, when Denny Denard, brandishinga dung-fork, chanted "The Raiding of Aymal." Now it all came back andHartigan shouted out the rede:
"Haakon is dead! Haakon is dead! Haakon of the bronze-hilt sword is dead. His son's in his stead; Aymal, tall son of Haakon, Swings now the bronze-hilt sword of his father. He is gone to the High-fielden To the high pasture to possess the twelve mares of his father; Black and bay and yellow, as the herdsman drave them past him; Black and yellow, their manes on the wind; And galloped a colt by the side of each."
So he sang in a chant the saga-singer's tale of the king killing all thecolts save one that it might have the nursing of the twelve. His eyesparkled and glowed; his colour mounted; his soul was so stirred withthe story that his spirit could fill the gaps where his memory failed.The sense of power was on him; he told the swinging tale as though itwere in verity his own; and the hearers gazed intensely, feeling that hesang of himself. It was no acting, but a king proclaiming himself aking, when he told of the world won by the bronze sword bearer mountedon the twelve-times-nourished stallion colt; and he finished with aroyal gesture and injunction:
"Ho! ye, ye seven tall sons of Aymal, Comes there a time when face you many trails; Hear this for wisdom now; Twelve colts had I and all save one I slew. The twelve-times-nourished charger grew And round the world he bore me And never failed; so all the world was mine And all the world I ruled. Ho, children of the bronze-hilt sword, Take this for guiding creed: Pick out your one great steed And slay the rest and ride."
And when he smote the table with his fist the folk in that poor, simplehall were hushed with awe. They had no words to clothe the thoughts thatcame, no experience of their own to match them. There was a pauses--asilence; a slow, uncertain sounding of applause. Carson glared halfhypnotized; then said to himself: "This is not Jim Hartigan; this is theroyal saga who sang."
What he clearly expressed, the others vaguely but deeply felt. As forBelle, the passion and the power of it possessed her. She was deeplymoved--and puzzled, too. It was a side of Jim she had not known before.Later, as they went home together hand on arm, she held on to him verytightly and said softly: "Now I know that you are marked for big thingsin the world."