Marg'et Ann
It was sacrament Sabbath in the little Seceder congregation at Blue Mound. Vehicles denoting various degrees of prosperity were beginning to arrive before the white meeting-house that stood in a patch of dog-fennel by the roadside.
The elders were gathered in a solemn, bareheaded group on the shady side of the building, arranging matters of deep spiritual portent connected with the serving of the tables. The women entered the church as they arrived, carrying or leading their fat, sunburned, awe-stricken children, and sat in subdued and reverent silence in the unpainted pews. There was a smell of pine and peppermint and last week's gingerbread in the room, and a faint rustle of bonnet strings and silk mantillas as each newcomer moved down the aisle; but there was no turning of heads or vain, indecorous curiosity concerning arrivals on the part of those already in the pews.
Outside, the younger men moved about slowly in their creased black clothes, or stood in groups talking covertly of the corn planting which had begun; there was an evident desire to compensate by lowered voices and lack of animated speech for the manifest irreverence of the topic.
Marg'et Ann and her mother came in the farm wagon, that the assisting minister, the Rev. Samuel McClanahan, who was to preach the "action sermon," might ride in the buggy with the pastor. There were four wooden chairs in the box of the wagon, and the floor was strewn with sweet-scented timothy and clover. Mrs. Morrison and Miss Nancy McClanahan, who had come with her brother from Cedar Township to communion, sat in two of the chairs, and Marg'et Ann and her younger sister occupied the others. One of the boys sat on the high spring seat with his brother Laban, who drove the team, and the other children were distributed on the hay between their elders.
Marg'et Ann wore her mother's changeable silk made over and a cottage bonnet with pink silk strings and skirt and a white ruche with a wreath of pink flowers in the face trimming. Her brown hair was combed over her ears like a sheet of burnished bronze and held out by puff combs, and she had a wide embroidered collar, shaped like a halo, fastened by a cairngorm in a square setting of gold.
Miss Nancy McClanahan and her mother talked in a subdued way of the Fast Day services, and of the death of Squire Davidson, who lived the other side of the creek, and the probable result of Esther Jane Skinner's trouble with her chest. There was a tacit avoidance of all subjects pertaining to the flesh except its ailments, but there was no long-faced hypocrisy in the tones or manner of the two women. Marg'et Ann listened to them and watched the receding perspective of the corn rows in the brown fields. She had her token tied securely in the corner of her handkerchief, and every time she felt it she thought regretfully of Lloyd Archer. She had hoped he would make a confession of faith this communion, but he had not come before the session at all. She knew he had doubts concerning close communion, and she had heard him say that certain complications of predestination and free will did not appear reasonable to him. Marg'et Ann thought it very daring of him to exact reasonableness of those in spiritual high places. She would as soon have thought of criticising the Creator for making the sky blue instead of green as for any of His immutable decrees as set forth in the Confession of Faith. It did not prevent her liking Lloyd Archer that her father and several of the elders whom he had ventured to engage in religious discussion pronounced him a dangerous young man, but it made it impossible for her to marry him. So she had been quite anxious that he should see his way clear to join the church.
They had talked about it during intermission last Sabbath; but Marg'et Ann, having arrived at her own position by a process of complete self-abnegation, found it hard to know how to proceed with this stalwart sinner who insisted upon understanding things. It is true he spoke humbly enough of himself, as one who had not her light, but Marg'et Ann was quite aware that she did not believe the Catechism because she understood it. She had no doubt it could be understood, and she thought regretfully that Lloyd Archer would be just the man to understand it if he would study it in the right spirit. Just what the right spirit was she could not perhaps have formulated, except that it was the spirit that led to belief in the Catechism. She had hoped that he would come to a knowledge of the truth through the ministrations of the Rev. Samuel McClanahan, who was said to be very powerful in argument; but he had found fault with Mr. McClanahan's logic on Fast Day in a way that was quite disheartening, and he evidently did not intend to come forward this communion at all. Her father had spoken several times in a very hopeless manner of Lloyd's continued resistance of the Holy Spirit, and Marg'et Ann thought with a shiver of Squire Atwater, who was an infidel, and was supposed by some to have committed the unpardonable sin. She remembered once when she and one of the younger boys had gone into his meadow for wild strawberries he had come out and talked to them in a jovial way, and when they were leaving, had patted her little brother's head, and told him, with a great, corpulent laugh, to "ask his father how the devil could be chained to the bottomless pit." She did not believe Lloyd could become like that, but still it was dangerous to resist the Spirit.
Miss Nancy McClanahan had a bit of mint between the leaves of her psalm-book, and she smelled it now and then in a niggardly way, as if the senses should be but moderately indulged on the Sabbath. She had on black netted mitts which left the enlarged knuckles of her hands exposed, and there was a little band of Guinea gold on one of her fingers, with two almost obliterated hearts in loving juxtaposition. Marg'et Ann knew that she had been a hardworking mother to the Rev. Samuel's family ever since the death of his wife, and she wondered vaguely how it would seem to take care of Laban's children in case Lloyd should fail to make his peace with God.
When they drove to the door of the meeting-house, Archibald Skinner came down the walk to help them dismount. Mrs. Morrison shook hands with him kindly and asked after his sister's cough, and whether his Grandfather Elliott was still having trouble with his varicose veins. She handed the children to him one by one, and he lifted them to the ground with an easy swing, replacing their hats above their tubular curls after the descent, and grinning good-naturedly into their round, awe-filled, freckled countenances.
Miss Nancy got out of the wagon backwards, making a maidenly effort to keep the connection between the hem of her black silk skirt and the top of her calf-skin shoes inviolate, and brushing the dust of the wagon wheel from her dress carefully after her safe arrival in the dog-fennel. Marg'et Ann ignored the chair which had been placed beside the wagon for the convenience of her elders, and sprang from the wheel, placing her hands lightly in those of the young man, who deposited her safely beside her mother and turned toward her sister Rebecca with a blush that extended to the unfreckled spaces of his hairy, outstretched hands, and explained his lively interest in the disembarkation of the family.
Laban drove the team around the corner to a convenient hitching-place, and the women and children went up the walk to the church door. Mrs. Morrison stopped a moment on the step to remove the hats of the younger boys, whose awe of the sanctuary seemed to have deprived them of volition, and they all proceeded down the aisle to the minister's pew.
The pastor and the Rev. Samuel McClanahan were already in the pulpit, their presence there being indicated by two tufts of hair, one black and the other sandy, which arose above the high reading-desk; and the elders having filed into the room and distributed themselves in the ends of the various well-filled pews, the young men and boys followed their example, the latter taking a sudden start at the door and projecting themselves into their places with a concentration of purpose that seemed almost apoplectic in its results.
There was a deep, premonitory stillness, broken only by the precentor, who covertly struck his tuning-fork on the round of his chair, and held it to his ear with a faint, accordant hum; then the minister arose and spread his hands in solemn invocation above the little flock.
"Let us pray."
Every one in the house arose. Even old Mrs. Groesbeck, who had sciatica, allowed her husband and her son Ebenezer to assist her to her feet, and the children who were too small to see over the backs of the pews slipped from their seats and stood in downcast stillness within the high board inclosures.
After the prayer, Mr. Morrison read the psalm. It was Rouse's version: —
"I joy'd when to the house of God,
Go up, they said to me.
Jerusalem, within thy gates
Our feet shall standing be.
Jerus'lem as a city is
Compactly built together.
Unto that place the tribes go up,
The tribes of God go thither."
The minister read it all and "lined out" the first couplet. Then the precentor, a tall, thin man, whose thinness was enveloped but not alleviated by an alpaca coat, struck his tuning-fork more openly and launched into the highly rarefied atmosphere of "China," being quite alone in his vocal flight until the congregation joined him in the more accessible regions of the second line.
Marg'et Ann shared her psalm-book with Laban, who sat beside her. He had hurt his thumb shelling seed corn, and his mother had made him a clean thumb-stall for Sabbath. It was with this shrouded member that he held the edge of the psalm-book awkwardly. Laban's voice was in that uncertain stage in which its vagaries astonished no one so much as its owner, but he joined in the singing. "Let all the people praise Thee" was a command not to be lightly set aside for worldly considerations of harmony and fitness, and so Laban sang, his callow and ill-adjusted soul divided between fears that the people would hear him and that the Lord would not.
Marg'et Ann listened for Lloyd Archer's deep bass voice in the Amen corner.
She wished his feet were standing within the gates of Jerusalem, as he so resonantly announced that they would be. But whatever irreverence there might be in poor Laban refusing to sing what he did not dream of doubting, there was no impiety to these devout souls in Lloyd Archer's joining with them in the vocal proclamation of things concerning which he had very serious doubts.
Not that Jerusalem, either new or old, was one of these things; the young man himself was not conscious of any heresy there; he believed in Jerusalem, in the church militant upon earth and triumphant in heaven, and in many deeper and more devious theological doctrines as well. Indeed, his heterodoxy was of so mild a type that, viewed by the incandescent light of to-day, which is not half a century later, it shines with the clear blue radiance of flawless Calvinism.
If the tedious "lining out," traditionally sacred, was quite unreasonable and superfluous, commemorating nothing but the days of hunted Covenanters and few psalm-books and fewer still who were able to read them, perhaps the remembrance of these things was as conducive to thankfulness of heart as David's recital of the travails and triumphs of ancient Israel. Certain it is that profound gratitude to God and devotion to duty characterized the lives of most of these men and women who sang the praises of their Maker in this halting and unmusical fashion.
Marg'et Ann sang in a high and somewhat nasal treble, compassing the extra feet of Mr. Rouse's doubtful version with skill, and gliding nimbly over the gaps in prosody by the aid of his dextrously elongated syllables.
Some of the older men seemed to dwell upon these peculiarities of versification as being distinctively ecclesiastical and therefore spiritually edifying, and brought up the musical rear of such couplets with long-drawn and profoundly impressive "shy-un's" and "i-tee's;" but these irregularities found little favor in the eyes of the younger people, who had attended singing-school and learned to read buckwheat notes under the direction of Jonathan Loomis, the precentor.
Marg'et Ann listened to the Rev. Mr. McClanahan's elaborately divided discourse, wondering what piece of the logical puzzle Lloyd would declare to be missing; and she glanced rather wistfully once or twice toward the Amen corner where the young man sat, with his head thrown back and his eager eyes fixed upon the minister's face.
When the intermission came, she ate her sweet cake and her triangle of dried apple pie with the others, and then walked toward the graveyard behind the church. She knew that Lloyd would follow her, and she prayed for grace to speak a word in season.
The young man stalked through the tall grass that choked the path of the little inclosure until he overtook her under a blossoming crab-apple tree.
He had been "going with" Marg'et Ann more than a year, and there was generally supposed to be an understanding between them.
She turned when he came up, and put out her hand without embarrassment, but she blushed as pink as the crab-apple bloom in his grasp.
They talked a little of commonplace things, and Marg'et Ann looked down and swallowed once or twice before she said gravely, —
"I hoped you'd come forward this sacrament, Lloyd."
The young man's brow clouded.
"I've told you I can't join the church without telling a lie, Marg'et Ann. You wouldn't want me to tell a lie," he said, flushing hotly.
She shook her head, looking down, and twisting her handkerchief into a ball in her hands.
"I know you have doubts about some things; but I thought they might be removed by prayer. Have you prayed earnestly to have them removed?" She looked up at him anxiously.
"I've asked to be made to see things right," he replied, choking a little over this unveiling of his holy of holies; "but I don't seem to be able to see some things as you do."
She pondered an instant, looking absently at the headstone of "Hephzibah," who was the later of Robert McCoy's two beloved wives, then she said, with an effort, for these staid descendants of Scottish ancestry were not given to glib talking of sacred things:
"I suppose doubts are sent to try our faith; but we have the promise that they will be removed if we ask in the right spirit. Are you sure you have asked in the right spirit, Lloyd?"
"I have prayed for light, but I haven't asked to have my doubts removed, Marg'et Ann; I don't know that I want to believe what doesn't appear reasonable to me."
The girl lifted a troubled, tremulous face to his.
"That isn't the right spirit, Lloyd, – you know it isn't. How can God remove your doubts if you don't want him to?"
The young man reached up and broke off a twig of the round, pink crab-apple buds and rolled the stem between his work-hardened hands.
"I've asked for light," he repeated, "and if when it comes I see things different, I'll say so; but I can't want to believe what I don't believe, and I can't pray for what I don't want."
The triangle of Marg'et Ann's brow between her burnished satin puffs of hair took on two upright, troubled lines. She unfolded her handkerchief nervously, and her token fell with a ringing sound against tired Hephzibah's gravestone and rolled down above her patiently folded hands.
Lloyd stooped and searched for it in the grass. When he found it he gave it to her silently, and their hands met. Poor Marg'et Ann! No hunted Covenanter amid Scottish heather was more a martyr to his faith than this rose-cheeked girl amid Iowa cornfields. She took the bit of flattened lead and pressed it between her burning palms.
"I hope you won't get hardened in unbelief, Lloyd," she said soberly.
The congregation was drifting toward the church again, and the young people turned. Lloyd touched the iridescent silk of her wide sleeve.
"You ain't a-going to let this make any difference between you and me, are you, Marg'et Ann?" he pleaded.
"I don't know," wavered the girl. "I hope you'll be brought to a sense of your true condition, Lloyd." She hesitated, smoothing the sheen of her skirt. "It would be an awful cross to father and mother."
The young man fell behind her in the narrow path, and they walked to the church door in unhappy silence.
Inside, the elders had accomplished the spreading of the tables with slow-moving, awkward reverence. The spotless drapery swayed a little in the afternoon breeze, and there was a faint fruity smell of communion wine in the room.
The two ministers and some of the older communicants sat with bowed heads, in deep spiritual isolation.
The solemn stillness of self-examination pervaded the room, and Marg'et Ann went to her seat with a vague stirring of resentment in her heart toward the Rev. Samuel McClanahan, who, with all his learning, could not convince this one lost sheep of the error of his theological way. She put aside such thoughts, however, before the serving of the tables, and walked humbly down the aisle behind her mother, singing the one hundred and sixteenth psalm to the quaint rising and falling cadences of "Dundee."
Once, while the visiting pastor addressed the communicants, she thought how it would simplify matters if Lloyd were sitting opposite her, and then caught her breath as the minister adjured each one to examine himself, lest eating and drinking unworthily he should eat and drink damnation to himself.
It was almost sunset when the service ended, and as the Morrisons drove into the lane the smell of jimson-weed was heavy on the evening air, and they could hear the clank of the cow bells in the distance.
Marg'et Ann went to her room to lay aside her best dress and get ready for the milking, and Mrs. Morrison and Rebecca made haste to see about supper.
Miss Nancy McClanahan walked about the garden in her much made-over black silk, and compared the progress of Mrs. Morrison's touch-me-nots and four-o'clocks with her own, nipping herself a sprig of tansy from the patch under the Bowerly apple-tree.
She shared Marg'et Ann's room that night, and after she had taken off her lace headdress and put a frilled nightcap over her lonesome little knot of gray hair and said her prayers, she composed herself on her pillow with a patient sigh, and lay watching Marg'et Ann crowd her burnished braids into her close-fitting cap without speaking; but after the light was out, and her companion had lain down beside her, the old maid placed her knotted hand on the girl's more shapely one, and said: —
"There's worse things than living single, Marg'et Ann, and then again I suppose there's better. Of course every girl has her chances, and the people we make sacrifices for don't always seem quite as grateful as we calculated they'd be. I'm not repinin', but I sometimes think if I had my life to live over again I'd do different."
Marg'et Ann pressed the knotted fingers, that felt like a handful of hickory nuts, and touched the little circle with its two worn-out hearts, but she said nothing.
She had heard that the Rev. Samuel McClanahan was going to marry the youngest Groesbeck girl, now that his children were "getting well up out of the way," and she knew that her mother had been telling Miss Nancy something about her own love affair with Lloyd Archer.
Whatever Mrs. Morrison may have confided to Miss Nancy McClanahan concerning Marg'et Ann and her lover must have been entirely suppositional and therefore liable to error; for the confidence between parent and child did not extend into the mysteries of love and marriage, nor would the older woman have dreamed of intruding upon the sacred precinct of her daughter's feelings toward a young man. She had remarked once or twice to her husband that she was afraid sometimes that there was something between Lloyd Archer and Marg'et Ann; but whether this something was a barrier or a bond she left the worthy minister to divine.
That he had decided upon the latter was evidenced, perhaps, by his reply that he hoped not, and his fear, which he had expressed before, that Lloyd was getting more and more settled in habits of unbelief; and Mrs. Morrison took occasion to remark the next day in her daughter's hearing that she would hate to have a child of hers marry an unbeliever.
Marg'et Ann did not, however, need any of these helps to an understanding of her parents' position. She knew too well the danger that was supposed to threaten him who indulged in vain and unprofitable questionings, and she had too often heard the vanity of human reason proclaimed to feel any pride in the readiness with which Lloyd had answered Squire Wilson in the argument they had on foreordination at Hiram Graham's infare. Indeed, she had felt it a personal rebuke when her father had said on the way home that he hoped no child of his would ever set up his feeble intellect against the eternal purposes of God, as Lloyd Archer was doing. Marg'et Ann knew perfectly well that if she married Lloyd in his present unregenerate state she would, in the estimation of her father and mother, be endangering the safety of her own soul, which, though presumably of the elect, could never be conclusively so proved until the gates of Paradise should close behind it.
She pondered on these things, and talked of them sometimes with Lloyd, rather unsatisfactorily, it is true; for that rising theologian bristled with questions which threw her troubled soul into a tumult of fear and uncertainty.
It was this latter feeling, perhaps, which distressed her most in her calmer moments; for it was gradually forcing itself upon poor Marg'et Ann that she must either snatch her lover as a brand from the burning or be herself drawn into the flames.
She had taken the summer school down on Cedar Creek, and Lloyd used to ride down for her on Friday evenings when the creek was high.
Rebecca and Archie Skinner were to be married in the fall, and her mother, who had been ailing a little all summer, would need her at home when Rebecca was gone. Still, this would not have stood in the way of her marriage had everything else been satisfactory; and Lloyd suspected as much when she urged it as a reason for delay.
"If anybody has to stay at home on your mother's account, why not let Archie Skinner and Becky put off their wedding a while? They're younger, and they haven't been going together near as long as we have," said Lloyd, in answer to her excuses.
They were riding home on horseback one Friday night, and Lloyd had just told her that Martin Prather was going back to Ohio to take care of the old folks, and would rent his farm very reasonably.
Marg'et Ann had on a slat sunbonnet which made her profile about as attractive as an "elbow" of stovepipe, but it had the advantage of hiding the concern that Lloyd's questioning brought into her face. It could not, however, keep it out of her voice.
"I don't know, Lloyd," she began hesitatingly; then she turned toward him suddenly, and let him see all the pain and trouble and regret that her friendly headgear had been sheltering. "Oh, I do wish you could come to see things different!" she broke out tremulously.
The young man was quiet for an instant, and then said huskily, "I just thought you had something like that in your mind, Marg'et Ann. If you've concluded to wait till I join the church we might as well give it up. I don't believe in close communion, and I can't see any harm in occasional hearing, and I haven't heard any minister yet that can reconcile free will and election; the more I think about it the less I believe; I think there is about as much hope of your changing as there is of me. I don't see what all this fuss is about, anyway. Arch Skinner isn't a church member!"
It was hard for Marg'et Ann to say why Archie Skinner's case was considered more hopeful than Lloyd's. She knew perfectly well, and so did her lover, for that matter, but it was not easy to formulate.
"Ain't you afraid you'll get to believing less and less if you go on arguing, Lloyd?" she asked, ignoring Archie Skinner altogether.
"I don't know," said Lloyd somewhat sullenly.
They were riding up the lane in the scant shadow of the white locust trees. The corn was in tassel now, and rustled softly in the fields on either side. There was no other sound for a while. Then Marg'et Ann spoke.
"I'll see what father thinks" —
"No, you won't, Marg'et Ann," broke in Lloyd obstinately. "I think a good deal of your father, but I don't want to marry him; and I don't ask you to promise to marry the fellow I ought to be, or that you think I ought to be; I've asked you to marry me. I don't care what you believe and I don't care what your father thinks; I want to know what you think."
Poor Lloyd made all this energetic avowal without the encouragement of a blush or a smile, or the discouragement of a frown or a tear. All this that a lover watches for anxiously was hidden by a wall of slats and green-checked gingham.
She turned her tubular head covering toward him presently, however, showing him all the troubled pink prettiness it held, and said very genuinely through her tears, —
"Oh, Lloyd, you know well enough what I think!"
They had reached the gate, and it was a very much mollified face which the young man raised to hers as he helped her to dismount.
"Your father and mother wouldn't stand in the way of our getting married, would they?" he asked, as she stood beside him.
"Oh, no, they wouldn't stand in the way," faltered poor Marg'et Ann.
How could she explain to this muscular fellow, whose pale-faced mother had no creed but what Lloyd thought or wanted or liked, that it was their unspoken grief that made it hard for her? How shall any woman explain her family ties to any man?
Marg'et Ann did not need to consult her father. He looked up from his writing when she entered the door.
"Was that Lloyd Archer, Marg'et Ann?" he asked kindly.
"Yes, sir."
"I'd a little rather you wouldn't go with him. He seems to be falling into a state of mind that is likely to end in infidelity. It troubles your mother and me a good deal."
Marg'et Ann went into the bedroom to take off her riding skirt, and she did not come out until she was sure no one could see that she had been crying.
Mrs. Morrison continued to complain all through the fall; at least so her neighbors said, although the good woman had never been known to murmur; and Marg'et Ann said nothing whatever about her engagement to Lloyd Archer.
Late in October Archie Skinner and Rebecca were married and moved to the Martin Prather farm, and Lloyd, restless and chafing under all this silence and delay, had no longer anything to suggest when Marg'et Ann urged her mother's failing health as a reason for postponing their marriage.
Before the crab-apples bloomed again Mrs. Morrison's life went out as quietly as it had been lived. There was a short, sharp illness at the last, and in one of the pauses of the pain the sick woman lay watching her daughter, who was alone with her.
"I'm real glad there was nothing between you and Lloyd Archer, Marg'et Ann," she said feebly; "that would have troubled me a good deal. You'll have your father and the children to look after. Nancy Helen will be coming up pretty soon, and be some help; she grows fast. You'll have to manage along as best you can."
The girl's sorely troubled heart failed her. Her eyes burned and her throat ached with the effort of self-control. She buried her face in the patchwork quilt beside her mother's hand. The woman stroked her hair tenderly.
"Don't cry, Marg'et Ann," she said, "don't cry. You'll get on. It's the Lord's will."
The evening after the funeral Lloyd Archer came over, and Marg'et Ann walked up the lane with him. She was glad to get away from the Sabbath hush of the house, which the neighbors had made so pathetically neat, – taking up the dead woman's task where she had left it, and doing everything with scrupulous care, as if they feared some vision of neglected duty might disturb her rest.
The frost was out of the ground and the spring plowing had begun. There was a smell of fresh earth from the furrows, and a red-bud tree in the thicket was faintly pink.
Lloyd was silent and troubled, and Marg'et Ann could not trust her voice. They walked on without speaking, and the dusk was deepening before they turned to go back. Marg'et Ann had thrown a little homespun shawl over her head, for there was a memory of frost in the air, but it had fallen back and Lloyd could see her profile with its new lines of grief in the dim light.
"It don't seem right, Marg'et Ann," he began in a voice strained almost to coldness by intensity of feeling.
"But it is right, – we know that, Lloyd," interrupted the girl; then she turned and threw both arms about his neck and buried her face on his shoulder. "Oh, Lloyd, I can't bear it – I can't bear it alone – you must help me to be – to be – reconciled!"
The young man laid his cheek upon her soft hair. There was nothing but hot, unspoken rebellion in his heart. They stood still an instant, and then Marg'et Ann raised her head and drew the little shawl up and caught it under her quivering chin.
"We must go in," she said staidly, choking back her sobs.
Lloyd laid his hands on her shoulders and drew her toward him again.
"Is there no help, Marg'et Ann?" he said piteously, looking into her tear-stained face. In his heart he knew there was none. He had gone over the ground a thousand times since he had seen her standing beside her mother's open grave with the group of frightened children clinging to her.
"God is our refuge and our strength,
In straits a present aid;
Therefore, although the earth remove
We will not be afraid,"
repeated the girl, her sweet voice breaking into a whispered sob at the end. They walked to the step and stood there for a moment in silence.
The minister opened the door.
"Is that you, Marg'et Ann," he asked. "I think we'd better have worship now; the children are getting sleepy."