20. A Millstonks
The temptations of a scrupulous man like Whittakei are never gross. The
" Fierce Anthropophagi,
Spectre, diaboli,
What scared St. Anthony,
Hobgoblins, lemures,
Dreams of antipodes,
Night-riding incubi
Troubling the fantasy,"
are not for him. But it is a most unhappy thing for a man to be both scrupulous and logical. The combination is bad. The scrupulous man, and especially the scrupulous woman, whose logic is defective', is saved from a thousand snares. On the other hand the severely logical man who is not scrupulous escapes easily. This is how it happens that the harshest creeds do little harm. One man is saved by his laziness, another by his transparent quibbles, while a third walks boldly out the front door, having but a feeble moral sense. Mark Bonamy, for instance, would not have been troubled by Whittaker's doubts. His easy-going egotism, his calm confidence that his own purposes and welfare were of the first importance, would have furnished a premise from which to draw any convenient conclusion. But poor Whittaker was ground between his clear logic on the one hand, and his severe scruples on the other. He had an instinctive doubt of the security of Mark's religious life, He did not question the doctrine of final perseverance, but then he could not be sure of the genuineness of a conversion. What if he should offend one of these little ones ? It were better that a millstone were hanged about his neck.
He did not dare go back to that forbidden logic which absolves itself from obligation by pushing on toward fatalism. He shuddered at Antinomianism, for that is the extinction of conscience. It was at this point that the intuitions of an honest nature put a stop to logic.
In a state of mind such as his, there is one thing stronger than reasoning. It is the persistence of ideas. Once mastered by the notion that in wedding Roxy he would be offending against one of those who were yet but babes in Christ : he could not shake it off. The awful words " millstone about his neck," re-echoed in his mind.
He tried to write a letter withdrawing his offer. He began : " My dear Roxy " but decided that that was too cordial. Then he wrote " Dear friend " but that would not do. " Miss Adams " was too cold. At last after tearing up several sheets of paper he resolved not to write at all. Good sense, which is not exactly either conscience or logic, but both with something added, began to revive. Why not go to Roxy without waiting for the week to expire and learn from her what was the exact state of the case ? It was nonsense to decide such a question for her. Besides, the half threat of Highbury made it quite necessary that he should assert his right to do as he thought best.
When he set out to go to see Roxy, the town was full of people come to see the " animal show " The whole stagnant life of the country about was s'irred by the arrival of a spectacle. Here were women standing by the hour with babies in their arms, waiting to see the outside of the box wagons as they passed along the streets. Horses were neighing to other horses all about the open square in the middle of the town, and groups of people formed and dissolved and re-formed again like molecules in effervoscence, while everywhere, girls in new calico and lawn, and boys in cotton drilling, hurried to and fro.
When Whittaker neared Roxy's house he began to doubt again whether he was acting wisely or not. So ho walked on further till he came to a gate leading into a pasture. Through this into a grass-bordered path, along the path up to the foot of the hill, he traveled mechanically ; then up the rocky hill-side, through the patches of papaw, be went clambering over a stone wall into a vineyard, and over another into a road on top of the ridge. From the summit he saw the whole village at his feet, the river, the distant hills, and all the glorious landscape. He saw as in a dream, for he cared neither for river nor skv, hillslope nor town. He stopped a moment to single out the log house in which lived the shoe-maker's daughter. Then he strode eagerly onward, at first along the open road, afterward turning whimsically into a disused wagon-track, almost overgrown now with bright May-apple plants. Out of this he turned into a blind cow-path leading into a dark ravine or " hollow." Down this he followed in the rocky bed of a dry " branch," in the shadow of beech and butternut trees, and those noble tulip-trees which they class with poplars in Indiana, until at last he came suddenly out upon the bank of Indian Creek. He had walked two rough and rocky miles. He had meant to think when he started, but he had not thought at all. He had only a sense of having left the noisy little town behind him, and of having marched straight forward to the mouth of their dark ho'low. He had not been able to walk away from his perplexities. He stood and looked at the woods ; He idly traced the gigantic grape-vines up to where they were interlaced in the tree-boughs, a hundred feet or so from the ground; he stared vacautly at the stagnant creek, the sluggish current of which seemed to be drying up in the summer heat, spite of the protection of the dense forest A solitary ugly, short-tailed, long-legged bittern flapped awkwardly past with discordant screams, and a few hoarse bull-frogs croaked in the margin of the water. Whit taker, heated and tired, with all his fiery eagerness spent, sat down on a moss-grown log, and thought again what an awful thing it was to have a millstone hanged about one's neck. Then, from the mere religious habit of his life, he knelt on the bed of leaves. But he did not pray ; he only lay across the log and listened to the beating of his heart, and recalled images of Roxy with her background of the quaint old house and its homely interior.
After a long time he started slowly and wearily back toward Luzerne.
Meantime the " animal show " at the appointed time " took up," as the country people expressed it. It was a poor enough show. The few beasts looked very tame and dispirited, but then the visitors paused for only a brief interview with the scrawny lion, that bore but a weak resemblance to his own portrait on the show-bills as the "king of beasts;" they did not waste much time on the email iger, from " the jungles of India." After giving a cracker or two to the elephant, they assembled in a great crowd in front of the cage of grinning, chattering, scratching monkeys. Il that steady-going age, people were not conscious that there might be aught of family affection in this attraction. Monkeys then were monkeys pure and simple; one could look at them as one looks at caiicaturcs of nobody in particular; one might laugh at them without a sense of gamboling rudely over the graves of his ancestors.
Near this cage stood Twonnet, another girl now from the Twonnet of the morning, laughing in her free, childish way at the pranks of the monkeys. She had all the children with her Cecille, Isabelle, Adolphe, Louis and little Julie, whom they called " Teet," a foreshortening of Petite. A little monkey had just pulled the tail of the big baboon in the next cage, to the great delight of the children, when who should come along but Jemima Squaring herself off where she could see, she declared thai " them air monkeys was a kind of people. Only needed a little dressin' up and you'd have human critters. An' they wouldn't be no bigger fools than most folks. They do for to run for the legislater, Mr. Bonamy."
This last to Mark, who made his appearance at this moment in company with Roxy.
" Can't talk well enough for that," he answered.
" Why ! " said Twonnet, always ready for attack when Mark was at hand. " I didn't suppose you Methodists would attend such a place. Didn't they church Wayne Thomas for going to a circus last year ? "
" Yes, but that was a circus," said Roxy. " This kind of a show has nothing wrong it. It gives a body information. I'm sure it's better than reading Goldsmith's 'Animated Nature. "
"It's right improvin', I'm shore," said Jemima, with droJ mock gravity. " Shouldn't think they'd be any use o' your goin' to Texas, now. Mr. Bonamy."
"Why?"
"Oh, the people must be so much ' improved' by cata mounts and other varmint that they can see any day without pay that missionaries ain't needed. But I s'posc animals bars an' rattle-snakes and sich haint improvin' to the mind tell they're put in cages."
" But," said Roxy, timidly, like a person caught doing something wrong, " it isn't any harm to look at these creatures. They are God's works, you know."
" Yes, but some of God's works haint calc'lated to be admired while they're runnin' 'round loose. If Mark Mr. Bonamy here finds a nasty, p'ison copperhead snake under his piller some night, I don't 'low but what he'll up with a stick and give him a right hard knock on the head smashin' God's works all to pieces."
"That I will, Jemima, kill him first and admire him afterward," said Mark, laughing in his hearty, unreserved fashion.
Slowly the people dispersed after watching the underfed tiger devour a very tough piece of meat, and hearing the lion roar in fierce discontent over a bone that gave him little promise of a good supper. Mark and Roxy as they walked homeward together did not meditate much on God's works which they had seen. They had, also, the misfortune to meet Mr. Whittaker returning, hungry and fagged, from his long tramp in the woods, and disappointed at having knocked in vain at the door oflioxy's house. A sudden pain smote the girl's heart. Had hebeen to see her? She remembered now what sordid arguments her aunt had used in favor of Mark, and she could hardly resist a feeling that she was betraying Whittaker and giving herself to Mark on account of Mark's worldly advantages. Indeed, this very rebellion against the aunt's advice had almost induced her to decline Mark's invitation to go to the show. And then she remembered that the time for her reply to Whittaker was but two days off, and how could she maintain a judicial frame of mind if she kept Mark's company. But he had pleaded that he needed some recreation, there was not much that was pleasant left for him. And Roxy's heart had seconded its pleading, for the more she talked with him of his plans, and pitied him in his prospective trials, so much the more she loved him. She was a romancer, like all girls of her age, only her romances had a religious coloring. If she could have felt a hearty pity for Whittaker, or painted pictures of possible self-immolations for him, she might have loved him. But he had never said a word about any sacrifices that he had made. Is it any tvonder that the impulsive, romantic, self-pitying Mark should have made the deepest impression ? Was there not also a latent feeling that Bonamy needed her influence? For all strong women like to feel that they are necessary to somebody, and your pitiful and philanthropic woman wants somebody to be sorry for.
Nevertheless, at sight of the fagged and anxious face Oi the young minister, she was smitten with pain, and she lapsed into a melancholy from which Mark could not arouse her. Once or twice she answered him with just a spice of contradictoriness. Mark had meant to open his whole heart to her that very afternoon. Now he thought that he had in some way offended. He bade her good-bye at the gate, and walked slowly homeward through the long shadows of the evening, trying to guess what he had done to give offense. If Roxy could have decided the debate in her heart as most girls would have done, according to her inclination, there would have been no more halting. But the vision of Whittaker's troubled face made her hesitate, and then the scrupulous habit of her mind made everything that was pleasant seem to be wrong. Because she loved Mark she feared that she ouofht not to have him. In imitation of the early Methodist saints she sought to decide this matter, not by using her judgment, but by waiting for some supernatural impulse or some outward token.
" Choose my way for me, O Lord ! " she wrote in her diary that evening.
And yet with all her praying she was in a fair way to make her own choice. There is nothing so blind as love, there is nothing so given to seeing. It will get even frora heaven the vision it seeks.