The Ancient Law. Glasgow Ellen Anderson Gholson
itself within four well-built walls. Yet, in spite of her convictions, something in the voice whose words she could not distinguish, held her there, as if she were rooted on her old horse to the spot of ground. The unconventional preacher, in his cheap clothes, aroused in her an interest which seemed in some vague way to have its beginning in a mystery that she could not solve. The man was neither a professional revivalist nor a member of the Salvation Army, yet he appeared to hold the attention of his listeners as if either their money or their faith was in his words. And it was no uncultured oratory – "Ten Commandment Smith," for all his rough clothes, his muddy boots and his hardened hands, was beneath all a gentleman, no matter what his work – no matter even what his class. Though she had lived far out of the world in which he had had his place, she felt instinctively that the voice she heard had been trained to reach another audience than the one before him in the old field. His words might be simple and straight from the heart – doubtless they were – but the voice of the preacher – the vibrant, musical, exquisitely modulated voice – was not merely a personal gift, but the result of generations of culture. The atmosphere of a larger world was around him as he stood there, bare-headed in the sunshine, speaking to a breathless crowd of factory workers as if his heart went out to them in the words he uttered. Perfectly motionless on the grass at his feet his congregation sat in circles with their pathetic dumb eyes fixed on his face.
"What is it about, Adam? Can't you find out?" asked Emily, stirred by an impulsive desire to be one of the attentive group of listeners – to come under the spell of personality which drew its magic circle in the centre of the green field.
Adam crossed the space slowly, and returned after what was to Emily an impatient interval.
"It's one of his talks on the Ten Commandments – that's why they gave him his nickname. I didn't stay to find out whether 'twas the top or the bottom of 'em, Miss, as I thought you might be in a hurry."
"But they can get that in church. What makes them come out here?"
"Oh, he tells 'em things," said Adam, "about people and places, and how to get on in life. Then he's al'ays so ready to listen to anybody's troubles arterward; and he's taken over Martha Frayley's mortgage – you know she's the widow of Mike Frayley who was a fireman and lost his life last January in the fire at Bingham's Wall – I reckon, a man's got a right to talk big when he lives big, too."
"Yes, I suppose he has," said Emily. "Well, I must be going now, so I'll ride on ahead of you."
Touching the neck of the horse with her bare hand, she passed at a gentle amble into one of the smaller streets of Tappahannock. Her purpose was to call upon one of her pupils who had been absent from school for several days, but upon reaching the house she found that the child, after a slight illness, had recovered sufficiently to be out of doors. This was a relief rather than a disappointment, and mounting again, she started slowly back in the direction of Cedar Hill. A crowd of men, walking in groups along the roadside, made her aware that the gathering in the field had dispersed, and as she rode by she glanced curiously among them in the hope of discovering the face of the speaker. He was walking slightly behind the crowd, listening with an expression of interest, to a man in faded blue overalls, who kept a timid yet determined hold upon his arm. His face, which had appeared grave to Emily when she saw it at Cedar Hill, wore now a look which seemed a mixture of spiritual passion and boyish amusement. He impressed her as both sad and gay, both bitter and sympathetic, and she was struck again by the contrast between his hard mouth and his gentle eyes. As she met his glance, he bowed without a smile, while he stepped back into the little wayside path among the dusty thistles.
Unconsciously, she had searched his face as Milly Trend had done before her, and like her, she had found there only an impersonal kindliness.
CHAPTER IX
The Old And The New
WHEN she reached home she found Beverly, seated before a light blaze in the dining-room, plunged in the condition of pious indolence which constituted his single observance of the Sabbath. To do nothing had always seemed to him in its way as religious as to attend church, and so he sat now perfectly motionless, with the box of dominoes reposing beside his tobacco pouch on the mantel above his head. The room was in great confusion, and the threadbare carpet, ripped up in places, was littered with the broken bindings of old books and children's toys made of birchwood or corncob, upon which Beverly delighted to work during the six secular days of the week. At his left hand the table was already laid for supper, which consisted of a dish of batter-bread, a half bared ham bone and a pot of coffee, from which floated a thin and cheap aroma. A wire shovel for popping corn stood at one side of the big brick fireplace, and on the hearth there was a small pile of half shelled red and yellow ears. Between the two long windows a tall mahogany clock, one of the few pieces left by the collector of old furniture, ticked with a loud, monotonous sound, which seemed to increase in volume with each passage of the hands.
"Did you hear any news, my dear?" inquired Beverly, as Emily entered, for in spite of the fact that he rarely left his fireside, he was an insatiable consumer of small bits of gossip.
"I didn't see anybody," answered Emily in her cheerful voice. "Shall I pour the coffee?"
She went to the head of the table, while her brother, after shelling an ear of corn into the wire shovel, began shaking it slowly over the hickory log.
"I thought you might have heard if Milly Trend had really made up her mind to marry that young tobacco merchant," he observed.
Before Emily could reply the door opened and the three children rushed in, pursued by Aunt Mehitable, who announced that "Miss Meely" had gone to bed with one of her sick headaches and would not come down to supper. The information afforded Beverly some concern, and he rose to leave the room with the intention of going upstairs to his wife's chamber; but observing, as he did so, that the corn was popping finely, he sat down again and devoted his attention to the shovel, which he began to shake more rapidly.
"The terrapin's sick, papa," piped one of the children, a little girl called Lila, as she pulled back her chair with a grating noise and slipped into her seat. "Do you s'pose it would like a little molasses for its supper?"
"Terrapins don't eat molasses," said the boy, whose name was Blair. "They eat flies – I've seen 'em."
"My terrapin shan't eat flies," protested Bella, the second little girl.
"It ain't your terrapin!"
"It is."
"It ain't her terrapin, is it, papa?"
Beverly, having finished his task, unfastened the lid of the shovel with the poker, and suggested that the terrapin might try a little popcorn for a change. As he stood there with his white hair and his flushed face in the red firelight, he made a picture of beautiful and serene domesticity.
"I shouldn't wonder if he'd get quite a taste for popcorn if you could once persuade him to try it," he remarked, his mind having wandered whimsically from his wife to the terrapin.
Emily had given the children batter-bread and buttermilk, and she sat now regarding her brother's profile as it was limned boldly in shadow against the quivering flames. It was impossible; she discovered, to survey Beverly's character with softness or his profile with severity.
"Don't you think," she ventured presently, after a wholesome effort to achieve diplomacy, "that you might try to-morrow to spade the seed rows in the garden. Adam can't find anybody, and if the corn isn't dropped this week we'll probably get none until late in the summer."
"'I cannot dig, to beg I am ashamed,'" quoted Beverly, as he drank his coffee. "It would lay me up for a week, Emily, I am surprised that you ask it."
She was surprised herself, the moment after she had put the question, so hopeless appeared any attempt to bend Beverly to utilitarian purposes.
"Well, the tomatoes which I had counted on for the market will come too late," she said with a barely suppressed impatience in her voice.
"I shouldn't worry about it if I were you," returned Beverly, "there's nothing that puts wrinkles in a pretty face so soon as little worries. I remember Uncle Bolingbroke (he used to be my ideal as a little boy) told me once that he had lived to be upward of ninety on the worries from which