The sermon went on, the emphatic voice falling at the end of every sentence as if the speaker had the intent to drive home his argument by verbal knocks. The respectable audience was browbeaten and held up to ridicule for its pretensions to virtue; it was proved conclusively that not a hope of salvation could be reasonably cherished by a single person present. Proved to the general mind. A few persons remained in doubt, and one—a man seated with folded arms in the middle of the church—continued utterly skeptical. He had attended closely to the sermon, his broad, ruddy face expressing throughout a kindly sympathy with the preacher, curiously mingled with concern. Now and then he had allowed a great sigh to escape him, and once he moved restlessly as if impelled to utter a protest. But he mastered the impulse and kept quiet until the final word was said, and the preacher in an agitated voice gave out the last hymn. All the hymns had been mournful. This was brighter. Perhaps the congregation embraced the opportunity for a change of mood, for the hymn swelled out with unwonted vigor, nearly every one falling in with the second stanza.
A powerful bass voice projected itself from the lungs of the good-humored-looking skeptic. Throwing back his head he roared forth a melodious bellow that drowned all other individual accents—save one. Nellie Thomas' bird-like tones thrilled their roundelay of worship with the silvery clearness of the skylark. With the freshness and innocence of some lark reared on the top bough of a giant tree, high above the strife and guilt of the world. The throb of feeling in the tones came from the same source that a child's emotions of worship come from; an awed sense of personal inferiority to some element of perfection dwelling somewhere in the universe, and approached on timid wings of faith. Unconscious of self, her sweet voice brightened and strengthened until the mass of sound outside seemed but a great accompaniment, the mighty single bass bearing her up as if it held her aloft in its arms.
This was what Peter Weaver came to church for. Singing devotional songs with little Nellie was the crown and cap-sheaf of the week's silent, unrecognized worship that was carried on with the generous abandonment of a mind seeking no reward beyond the privilege of devoting itself to its cherished object. The simple, brave soul lodged in Peter's huge frame joyed in surrounding the young girl with a protecting fondness that was like an invisible shield interposed between her and harm. He had never cared for any other girl, and he had cared for her ever since she—a radiant maid of six years in a pink lawn frock and white sun-bonnet—entered the old school-house door one morning twelve years before, and transformed the loutish boy puzzling over sums, into a poet and a knight-errant, bound forever to her service. During all these years that he had carried her school-books, gathered wild-flowers for her from dangerous mountain crevasses, and catered to her gentle whims in every way a man might, who bore her continually in his heart and studied how best to give her pleasure, Peter had never broken in upon this friendship by a word of the sentiment of which his poet-soul was full. Nellie, called by her admirers the beauty of Virginia, was to him the living embodiment of the sweetbriar rose, too delicate, too sensitive to be plucked and worn, even by one worthy of that distinction. Himself, he thought scarce worthy to tie her little shoe.
And yet, except in contrast with this Dresden china creature, with her skin of milk and roses, her golden brown eyes so soft and shy, and her cloud of sunny curls, fine as floss, the modest farmer-poet, tied by circumstances to homely tasks, was not a man to be despised. His height, which was six feet two inches, was sustained by good breadth of shoulder and shapeliness of limb. His round head, covered with short, crisp, black locks, was well set, and his pleasant eyes, of an opaque blue like the hue of old Dutch pottery, looked out at you with a frank and honest expression. There was too much color in his cheek, but it was a clear, bright red, showing healthy blood beneath, as free from venom as his nature. He was now thirty-two years old, and his philosophical temperament, not wanting in capacity for deep thinking, made his years set lightly upon him. He was still rather a great boy than a mature man, in the opinion of most people, and perhaps of all the men and women in Fauquier County who knew and liked Peter Weaver, but one person recognized and appreciated the sound, sane mind, the capacity for heroic action that lay beneath his eccentricities and commonplace, almost awkward bearing. This friend was Amanda Thomas, the widowed mistress of Benvenew, called Mistress Amanda, to distinguish her from old widow Thomas, her mother-in-law.
Mistress Amanda's strong character rather than any external advantages had made her an important personage in the county. Her kinsfolk, the Powells, were impoverished, and her husband, the bright particular star of the sporting set, had left her an affectionate legacy of debts, together with an invalid child whose malady set him apart from the working world and enshrined him in his mother's heart as something to be tenderly cherished at any cost to herself or others. This boy was never seen out of his home, and people whispered dark stories of his strange and dangerous moods, in which no one could do anything with him save Peter Weaver.
No wonder, then, that Peter Weaver, whose oddities were not upheld by an ancient Virginia family name, was, nevertheless, welcomed as a favorite guest at Benvenew, where many a proud youngster hung about, thinking himself rewarded for hours of patient homage to the stately mistress, by a glimpse of shy Nellie. He and Mistress Amanda had come to that complete understanding when a glance interchanged means a whole volume of explanation. It was natural for this glance to be interchanged when they differed from prevailing opinions.
Therefore, it was this great lady's gaze that caught and held the doubtful look that Peter threw toward the preacher while the final argument was being made as to the absolute necessity for all of them to be bowed down in humiliation over their sins. Some rapid question and answer seemed to pass between the two that left Peter satisfied. He threw himself into the singing with more than common zeal, and when the moment came for a general relaxing from the stiffness of sermon-tide he walked out of his pew and up toward the front with a fixed purpose plainly written upon his face.
The youthful preacher had stepped down from the platform, and with the step he seemed to become another man. All the severity had vanished both from countenance and manner. Bright, kind, with a suppressed liveliness that became in the passage from heart to tongue cheerful and witty response to the pleasant clamor around him, he was like a man who had thrown off the weight of a heavy responsibility, and got back home again. But outward transformations are not to be taken as signs of deep internal changes. The man who laughs at your dinner table is the same man who refused to abate his stern judgment against your brother yesterday. He is not to be played with because he chooses to be humorous.
Peter Weaver was now standing beside the preacher. Mistress Amanda introduced them, and then turned so that her voluminous draperies made a barrier between the two men and the groups behind.
Young Armstrong's slim hand yielded a ready clasp to the mighty grip of the farmer-poet, who was anxious to express in this greeting more than usual good-will and interest. To balance what he had made up his mind it was his duty to say.