THE CIRCUIT RIDER
The years sped on with unbelievable swiftness as they are very prone to do after the corner into the teens is turned.
Jason worked every summer, but he did not offer to buy his mother a dress nor did he buy himself either clothing or books. He put all he earned by toward his course in medicine. When he was a little fellow, his mother had given him a lacquered sewing box that had belonged to her French mother. It had proved an admirable treasure box for childish hoardings. Jason, the summer he was thirteen, cleared it out and put into it his summer earnings, ten dollars.
With his newly acquired reticence, he did not speak of the box, nor did he mention the extra bills, quarters and dollars that appeared there from time to time. The little hoard grew slowly, very slowly, in spite of these anonymous additions—it grew as slowly as the years sped rapidly, it seemed to Jason's mother.
Jason must have been sixteen, the summer he went with his father on one of the Sunday circuit trips. He never had been on one before. But it had been decided that he was to begin his medical studies in the fall. He was to be apprenticed to a doctor in Baltimore and his mother was anxious for father and son to draw together if possible before the son went into the world. Not that Jason and the minister quarreled. But there never had been the understanding between the two that except for the unfortunate magazine episode, always had existed between Jason and his mother.
The trip lay in the hills of West Virginia. Brother Wilkins rode his old horse, Charley, a handsome gray. Jason rode an old brown mare, borrowed from a parishioner for the trip.
Mrs. Wilkins, standing in the door, watched the two ride off together with a thrill of pride. Jason was almost as tall in the saddle as his father. He had shot up amazingly of late. The minister was getting very gray. He had been late in his thirties when he married. But he sat a horse as though bred to the saddle and Old Charley was a beauty. Brother Wilkins was very fond of horses and was a good judge of horse flesh. Sometimes Mrs. Wilkins had thought, that if Ethan had not chosen to be a Methodist minister he would have made a first-class country squire.
She watched the two out of sight down the valley road, then with a little sigh turned back to the empty home.
Jason, though always a little self-conscious when alone with his father, was delighted with the idea of the trip. They crossed the Ohio on the ferry and rode rapidly into the West Virginia hills. The minister made a great effort to be entertaining and Jason was astonished at his father's intimate knowledge of the countryside.
"I don't see how you remember all the places, father," he said at noon, when the minister had turned to a side road to find a farmer whom he wished to greet.
"I had this circuit years ago before you were born, my boy. I know the people intimately."
"Don't you get tired of it?" asked Jason, suddenly.
"Tired of saving souls?" returned his father. "Do you think you'll ever get tired of saving bodies?"
"O that's different," answered the boy. "You've got something to take hold of, with a body."
"And the body ceases to exist when the soul departs. Never forget that, my boy."
"But you work so hard," insisted Jason, "and you get so little for it. I don't mean money alone," flushing as if at some memory, "but it doesn't seem as if the people care. They'll take all they can get out of each minister as he comes along, and then forget him."
Brother Wilkins looked at Jason, thoughtfully. "Sixteen is very young, Jason. I'm afraid you were born carnal minded. I pray every night of my life that as you grow older, you'll grow toward Christ and not away from Him."
Again Jason flushed uncomfortably and a silence fell that lasted until they reached the remote hill settlement where service was to be held that night. The settlement consisted of a log church, surrounded by a scattered handful of log houses, each already with its tiny glow of light, for night comes early in the hills. The two had eaten a cold lunch in the saddles, for church service would begin as soon as they arrived.
There were twenty-five or thirty people in the rough little church. They crowded round Brother Wilkins enthusiastically when he entered and he called them all by name as he shook hands with them. Jason slid into a back seat. His father mounted to the pulpit.
"Let us open by singing
'How tedious and tasteless the hours
When Jesus no longer I see—'"
The old familiar tune! Jason wondered how many meetings his father had opened with it. The audience sang it with a will. In fact with too much will. A group of young men on the rear seat opposite Jason sang with unnecessary fervor, quite drowning out the female voices in the congregation. Jason saw his father, his face heavily shadowed in the candle-light, glance askance at the rear seat.
"Let us pray," said Brother Wilkins. There was a rustle as the congregation knelt. "O God, I have come to You again in this mountain place after many years and many wanderings. I thank You for giving me this privilege. I have greeted old friends who have not forgotten me and who all these years have remembered You and Christ, Your only begotten Son. Tonight, O Heavenly Father, I have brought with me to this sacred fold my own one lamb that he might see how sacred and how great is Your power. Look on him tonight, O Supreme Master, and mark him for Your own. And remember, that if the young men in the rear seat plan any disturbance tonight, O Heavenly Father, that the arm of Thy priest is strong and the soul of Thy servant is resolute. For Jesus Christ's sake, Amen."
The boom of "Amens" from the back seat was tremendous. Brother Wilkins, rising after his prayer, looked at the four young men for a long moment, over his glasses. Then he said:
"Let us sing
'From Greenland's icy mountains
To India's coral strands.'"
This was sung with tremendous vim, and the minister began his sermon. Jason's father was a good preacher. His vocabulary was rich and his ideas those of a thinking man whose religion was a passion. But the young men on the rear seat were unimpressed. One of them snored. Brother Wilkins stopped his sermon.
"Be silent, ye sons of Satan," he thundered. There was silence and he took up the thread of his talk. A low cat call interrupted him. The minister stopped and slipped off his coat, folding it carefully as he laid it on his desk. It was old and the seams would not stand strain. He rolled up his cuffs as he descended from the pulpit, the congregation watching him spell-bound. Jason had seen his father in action before and was deeply embarrassed but not surprised.
Brother Wilkins strode up to the pew where the offenders sat and seized by the ear the largest of the group, a hulk of twenty-one or so, larger than the minister. He led the young man into the aisle and reached up and boxed his ears, with the sound of impact of a club on an empty barrel.
"Now leave this house of God," roared the minister. The young fellow sneaked out the door. Brother Wilkins turned back to the pew.
"Don't you tech me or I'll brain ye," cried the youth who was about Brother Wilkins' own size.
"Hah!" snorted the minister. There was the sound of blows, a quick scuffling of feet and the second offender was booted out of the door. The remaining two made a quick and unassisted exit. Breathing a little heavily, Brother Wilkins returned to his sermon; and to his hypnotized and immensely regaled congregation it seemed that the rest of his preaching was as from one inspired by God.
Jason sat brooding deeply. Something within him revolted at the spectacle of his father descending from the pulpit to beat recalcitrant members of his congregation. An old and familiar sense of shame enveloped him, and he was thankful when once again darkness had enveloped them and they were traveling rapidly along the mountain road. They were to have a late supper and spend the night at a cabin well along the road they must travel on the morrow.
Brother Wilkins was in the abstracted state that always followed his preaching and Jason was glad to respect his silence, until it had lasted so long that he became uneasy.
"Father, didn't you say that Herd's was five miles beyond the church?"
The minister pulled up his horse. In the darkness Jason could barely see the outlines of his body.
"Heavens, Jason! Why didn't you rouse me sooner? This isn't the main traveled road. When did we leave it?"
"I don't know, sir. I thought you knew this part of the country so well—"
"So I do, ordinarily. But I can't recognize by-paths on a night like this. Wait, isn't that a light up the mountainside yonder? Come along, my boy, we'll find out where we are."
The light glowed only faintly from the open door of a cabin. An old woman, with a pipe in her mouth, sat crooning over a little fire in the crude fireplace. She looked up in astonishment when the two appeared in the doorway.
"Why, it's Brother Wilkins!" she cackled. "Lord's sake, what you doin' clar up hyar!"
"Why, Sister Clark! I am glad to see you," exclaimed Jason's father, shaking one of the old woman's hands, and shouting into her other, which she cupped round her ear. "My son and I must have got off the main road five miles back. We're on our way to Milton."
Sister Clark was visibly excited. "Ye ain't going on a step tonight. I can fix a shake-down for ye. Thing like this don't happen to a lone old woman twice in a lifetime. Bring in your saddle-bags—but Lord!" she stopped aghast. "I ain't got a bit of pork in the house, nor there ain't a chicken on the place. All I got is corn-meal and molasses."
"Plenty, Sister Clark! Plenty! Get the saddle-bags, Jason, and tie the horses to graze."
They ate their supper by candle-light after their hostess had cooked the mush in a kettle hanging from the crane. Brother Wilkins had a violent choking fit during the meal and Sister Clark pounded him on the back, apologizing as she did so for her familiarity with the minister.
Jason slept profoundly on his share of the shake-down that night, and at dawn, after more mush, they were up and away.
Twice on this day, Sunday, Brother Wilkins held service in the mountains and it was nine o'clock at night when they started toward the Ohio again. It was not until they had reached the river at dawn and had roused the ferryman that the minister recovered from his Sunday abstraction.
"Did you have a pleasant trip, Jason?" he asked as they led the horses into the boat.
"Yes, father," answered Jason dutifully.
Brother Wilkins looked at the boy, as if he were beholding him from a new angle.
"You don't look as much like your dear mother as you did in your childhood, my boy. Sometimes—I wonder—Jason, do you think this life has been too hard on your mother?"
"Yes, sir, I do. It's hard on a boy, why shouldn't it be doubly hard on a woman?"
The minister sighed. "Your reply is hardly polite, Jason, though I suppose my question merited it." Then with sudden heat: "Never mistake this cold frankness of yours for courage, my son. It takes more courage usually to be courteous than to be impolite. Did you notice that I coughed violently yesterday evening at Sister Clark's?"
"Yes, sir."
"Well, the cause of it was this. She went down to the spring and fetched a pail of water for the mush. When I was eating my helping, I felt a lump in my mouth. But the old lady had her eye on me every minute for fear I wouldn't enjoy the frugal meal, so I could only investigate with my tongue. I found that she had cooked a little bit of a frog in the mush. Now, Jason, if she had discovered that she never would have recovered from the mortification. The only time in her life the minister stopped with her. So, though it made me choke, I swallowed it. That, sir, is my idea of courtesy. I wish you not to forget it."
Jason's cool, speculative young gaze was on his father's face as he answered:
"I understand, father."
The minister turned away. "No, you don't. I doubt if you ever do." And he did not speak again until they reached home.
