The church had for Alethea many melancholy associations. She paused at the palings, remembering the night when she had stood here in the silent moonshine, in the full summer-tide, and the vapors had shifted about, and in their midst she had seen the boy whom they had said was dead. How much had come into her life since then, and, alas, how much had gone forth forever! The snow hung heavy in the pine-trees; the faint moon was in the fretted gray sky above the mountains. The little house was dark and drear under its whitened roof. The snow was melting close to the chimney. She heard the drops trickling down. The mounds in the inclosure were very distinct. Some of them had a square of palings close about: those were the graves of the well-to-do people of the cove. She could hardly have said, but for her life-long knowledge of the place, which was the new-made grave where lay the man who had pointed at her with his last living impulse, whose last word was intended for her, becoming dumb on his lips as his life died in him,—a word never to be heard, never to be answered. Here they all were, little ephemeral mounds in the midst of the great eternities of the mountains. She wondered if there were words to be said buried with the others; deeds to be done or undone; hopes unrealized; promises deferred until now when time was no more for them. Life was transitory, and so she was minded anew of the preacher.
He was already in the pulpit when she entered the low, dark little building, with its scanty congregation huddled on the few benches. He was a long-haired, wild-eyed, jeans-clad mountaineer, with a powerful physique and an admiration of prowess. He was a worthy and a well-meaning man, and there are those of his profession wiser than he who forget that they are apostles of peace. The circumstantial account of various feuds detailed in the Old Bible proved of intense interest to the majority of his congregation, who listened with eager faces and spellbound attention. The methods of slaughter in those days seem to have had phenomenal diversity, and certainly exceeded anything of the sort that had ever been heard of in Eskaqua Cove.
Alethea’s mind was too closely held in subordination to reverence for her to acknowledge, even to herself, how little this discourse met her peculiar needs. She endeavored to fix her attention humbly upon the harrowing details of barbarity; now and then an expression of wincing sympathy was in her clear eyes.
The application of the sermon—for it had an application—was to be found in the thankfulness which every professing member should experience because his lot was cast in Eskaqua Cove, where such practices did not obtain, and the fear which the unregenerate should harbor, since these tortures were nothing in comparison to what would happen to him in the next world, unless he forthwith mended his ways.
It left a certain trace of meditative astonishment among the heavy mountaineers, slouching out to their horses and wagons, slowly commenting while chewing hard on their great quids of tobacco. The women lingered and talked in a lack-lustre fashion to one another of their ailments, and interchanged inquiries concerning absent members of the family. Sophy Griff stood by the palings, debating whether she should accept the proffer of one of the youths to take her home on his horse behind him.
She was looking about doubtfully. “I brung two o’ the chil’ren along o’ me, but they ’pear ter hev runned off somewhar. I dunno ez I wanter leave ’em.”
“They’ll be home ’fore supper-time,” urged the gallant. “Trest ’em ter git thar ef thar’s enny eatin’ goin’ on.”
With this logic she suffered herself to be persuaded, mounted his horse behind him, and they rode away after the manner of a cavalier and his lady-love of the olden time.
Alethea trudged along the road to Mrs. Purvine’s house, for the journey up the mountain was hardly a possible achievement after the fatigues of the descent. The sun had come out. It scintillated on the snow. The cascades in the half-frozen river glittered iridescent. The bluffs were outlined with drifts in all their fissures; icicles clung to them at every jutting point, and the stunted trees of their summit, whose insistent roots seemed to pierce the stone, were encased in ice, and sparkled as the wind moved them. In the midst of all this splendor Mrs. Purvine’s house was dark and humble, despite the porch, and the front steps, and the glass windows. In the half-buried garden a bevy of dark figures sped this way and that over the snow. They were aunt Dely’s boys chasing rabbits. The creatures, half famished and bold with necessity,—fatally distinct on the whitened ground,—were deftly knocked on the head with a stick, and one blow from such experts was sufficient. In the party was a smaller boy, whom, at first, Alethea was puzzled to remember. Presently she recognized ’Gustus Tom, and this prepared her to see, when she entered, “sister Eudory,” sitting in front of Mrs. Purvine’s fire.
The pernicious glass in the windows added much cheerfulness to the apartment in weather like this. It aided the firelight in revealing sister Eudory’s tangle of flaxen hair and beguiling plumpness, as she sat, looking demure and wise, in one of the large rickety chairs. She was nearly five years of age now, and a great girl, and when she got down and went and stood behind the churn, in an affectation of shyness because of Alethea’s presence, she was not hidden by the article, and the handle of the dasher was insufficient to obscure her downcast face and her finger in her mouth.