The efforts of all were soon concentrated on her, and such stamping and clapping and singing was never heard before. Such cries of “Jes’ look up, sistah, don’t you see Him at yo’ side? Jes’ reach out yo’ han’ an’ tech de hem of His ga’ment. Jes’ listen, sistah, don’t you heah de angels singin’? don’t you heah de rumblin’ of de cha’iot wheels? He’s a-comin’, He’s a-comin’, He’s a-comin’!”
But Anner ’Lizer was immovable; with her face lying against the hard bench, she moaned and prayed softly to herself. The congregation redoubled its exertions, but all to no effect, Anner ’Lizer wouldn’t “come thoo.”
It was a strange case.
Aunt Maria whispered to her bosom friend: “You min’ me, Sistah Hannah, dere’s sump’n’ on dat gal’s min’.” And Aunt Hannah answered: “I believe you.”
Josephine, or more commonly Phiny, a former belle whom Anner ’Lizer’s superior charms had deposed, could not lose this opportunity to have a fling at her successful rival. Of course such cases of vindictiveness in women are rare, and Phiny was exceptional when she whispered to her fellow-servant, Lucy: “I reckon she’d git ’ligion if Sam Me’itt was heah to see her.” Lucy snickered, as in duty bound, and whispered back: “I wisht you’d heish.”
Well, after all their singing, in spite of all their efforts, the time came for closing the meeting and Anner ’Lizer had not yet made a profession.
She was lifted tenderly up from the mourner’s bench by a couple of solicitous sisters, and after listening to the preacher’s exhortation to “pray constantly, thoo de day an’ thoo de night, in de highways an’ de byways an’ in yo’ secret closet,” she went home praying in her soul, leaving the rest of the congregation to loiter along the way and gossip over the night’s events.
All the next day Anner ’Lizer, erstwhile so cheerful, went about her work sad and silent; every now and then stopping in the midst of her labours and burying her face in her neat white apron to sob violently. It was true, as Aunt Hannah expressed, that “de Sperit had sholy tuk holt of dat gal wid a powahful han’.”
All of her fellow-servants knew that she was a mourner, and with that characteristic reverence for religion which is common to all their race, and not lacking even in the most hardened sinner among them, they respected her feelings. Phiny alone, when she met her, tossed her head and giggled openly. But Phiny’s actions never troubled Anner ’Lizer, for she felt herself so far above her. Once though, in the course of the day, she had been somewhat disturbed, when she had suddenly come upon her rival, standing in the spring-house talking and laughing with Sam. She noticed, too, with a pang, that Phiny had tied a bow of red ribbon on her hair. She shut her lips and only prayed the harder. But an hour later, somehow, a ribbon as red as Phiny’s had miraculously attached itself to her thick black plaits. Was the temporal creeping in with the spiritual in Anner ’Lizer’s mind? Who can tell? Perhaps she thought that, while cultivating the one, she need not utterly neglect the other; and who says but that she was right?