THE LAW AND THE GOSPEL

“HUSH! Stop it, Davy. He’s a-comin’!”

The old woman who spoke—a wrinkled dame she was, bowed down by years and infirmity, her face creased by a thousand grimed-in, wrinkled lines—moved with an odd sprightliness as she stepped across the floor. She placed a hand upon the shoulder of the young man whom she accosted, standing between him and the door of the little cabin of which they were the only occupants.

The young man turned toward her, smiling half dreamily. He was a tall man, as his outstretched legs, one crossed over the other, would attest; a man well developed, muscular and powerful. His gray eyes seemed now half a-dream, his wide mouth fixed itself in pleasant lines, so that he seemed far away, somewhere in the lands to which music offers access. For now he had been engaged in the production of what perhaps might have been called music. It was an old ballad tune he had been playing on his violin, and but now his grandam had joined in high and cracking treble on the old air of “Barbara Allen,” known time out of mind in these hills. It was the keener ear of the old woman which first had caught warning of approaching danger.

“Take keer, I say!” she repeated, and shook him impatiently. “I tell ye I heerd him come in at the lower gate. He’ll be here direckly. Git shet of that fiddle, boy!”

She bent on him a pair of deep-set hazel eyes, sharp as those of some wild creature. Her voice had in it a half-masculine dominance. Every movement of her stooped and broken body bespoke a creature full of resolution, fearless, fierce.

“Gawd knows why he’s back so soon,” she went on, “but he’s here. Give him time to turn old Molly loose and git a few years of corn, an’ he’ll be right in. Onct he hears that fiddle he’ll raise trouble, that’s what he’ll do. I reckon I know a preacher, an’ most of all yore daddy. For him thar hain’t nothin’ sinfuller’n a fiddle; he’s pizen on ’em—all preachers is—him wust of all. What does he know about music? Now, if he was French an’ Irish, like me, it mought be different. But then——”

“I kain’t hep it, Granny,” said the young man, still slowly, still unchanged, his fingers still trailing across the strings. “‘Barbara Allen’—do ye call that wicked, even on a Sunday? Besides, this is the fust time I’ve ever strung this fiddle up full. I couldn’t git the strings till jest now. Melissa says——”

“Never mind what Meliss’ says neither—she’s a triflin’ sort, even if she is yore own wife. For all that, ye’d orter be home this minute, like enough.”

“As if ye understood!” said the young man, sighing now and dropping the instrument to his knee. For the first time a shade of sadness crossed his face, giving to his features a certain sternness and masculine vigor.

“Why shouldn’t I understand, Davy? Listen—ye hain’t for these hills. Ye’re a throw-back somehow, ye don’t belong here. I say that, though yore daddy is my own son. Don’t I know him—he’d skin us alive if he found us two here fiddlin’ on Sunday atternoon. He certainly would shake us out over hell fire, boy! When he gits started to exhortin’ and damnin’ around here, he certainly is servigerous. Ye know that. Hist, now!”

The young man himself now heard the sound of heavy footsteps slopping on the sodden earth, the slam of the slat gate’s wooden latch as someone entered. There followed the stamp of heavy feet on the broken gallery, where evidently someone was stopping for an instant to kick off the mud.

Before the newcomer could enter the young man arose, and with one stride gained the opening that led up to the loose-floored loft of the single-storied log house. He reached up a long arm and laid the offending fiddle back out of sight upon the floor.

Just as he turned there entered the person against whose advent he had been warned—a tall man, large of frame, bushy and gray-white of hair and as to a beard whose strong, close-set growth gave him a look of singular fierceness. As he stood he might have seemed fifty years old. In reality he was past seventy. The young man who faced him now—his son—was twenty-eight. A stalwart breed this, housed here in this cabin in a cove of the ancient Cumberlands. The old dame who stood now, her eyes turning from one to the other, would never see her ninetieth birthday again.

Andrew Joslin, commonly known through these half-dozen mountain communities where he rode circuit as “Preacher Joslin,” stood now in the door of his own home and looked about him with his accustomed sternness—a sternness always more intense upon the Lord’s Day. A somber, dour nature, that of this mountain minister, whose main mission in life was to proclaim the wrath of God. A man of yea, yea, and nay, nay, one must have said who saw him standing now, his gray eyes looking out fiercely, searchingly, beneath his bushy brows.

“What ye been doin’?” he asked suspiciously now, indifferently of the old woman, his mother, and the stalwart young man, his own son. “What ye doin’ here, David? Why hain’t ye home? Why hain’t ye at church to-day, like ye’d orter be?”

“Thar’s no sarvices nowhars near here, an’ ye know it, Andrew,” said the old woman somewhat querulously.

“Thar kin be sarvices anywhar whar a few is gethered together in the name of the Lord. Ye two right here could hold sarvices for the glory of God, if so as ye wanted to.”

Neither made answer to him, and he went on:

“David, have ye read all of that thar book I give ye? Ye’d orter git some good outen Calvin’s Institutes. Ye’ll maybe be a preacher some time like yore daddy.”

“Well, daddy, I done tried to read her. I set up all one night with Preacher Cuthbertson from over in Owsley, an’ we both read sever’l chapters in them Institutes. Hit was nigh about midnight when we both went to sleep, an’ atter I’d went to sleep he done shuk me by the shoulder an’ woke me up, an’ he says to me, ‘David, David, I’ve been thinkin’ over them Institutes so hard.... I believe they’ve injured my mind’!”

The young man broke into a wide-mouthed smile as he made this recountal. But it was a thundercloud of wrath upon the face of his father which greeted such levity.

“Ye wasn’t reverent!” he blazed. “Ye was impyous, both of ye. Injure his mind—why, that feller Cuthbertson never had no mind fer to injure. That’s what ails him. The book of John Calvin is one of the greatest books in the world. What’ll folks like ye and Preacher Cuthbertson be up an’ sayin’ next? An’ I’d set ye apart for the ministry, too, allowin’ I could git ye some schoolin’ atter a while, somewhars.”

He turned from them both, and stood a little apart, his brows drawn down into a scowling frown.

“How come ye come home so soon, Andrew?” asked his mother now. “We wasn’t expectin’ ye back—ye told me ye was a-goin’ over to Leslie to preach a couple days on the head of Hell-fer-Sartin. But ye only left yisterday.”

“Hit’s none yore business how I got back so soon,” replied the old man savagely. “I don’t have to account to no one what I do.”

He turned about now moodily. In his great hand he still clutched the heavy umbrella which he carried, its whalebone ribs and cotton cover dripping rivulets. A step or two brought him to the opening in the loft floor, where he reached up to place the wet umbrella out of the way. As he did so his hand struck some other object hidden there. He grasped it and drew it down—and stood, his face fairly contorted with surprise and anger.

It was his son’s violin which now he clutched in his gnarled and bony hand. As he regarded it the emotion on his face was as much that of horror as aught else. A violin, an instrument of hell, here in his house—his house—a chosen minister of God!

“What’s this?” he demanded at length. “Tell me—how come this thing here—in my house!”

With one stride now—tearing away all the strings of the instrument with one grasp of his hand as he did so—he flung the offending violin full upon the flames in the fireplace, sweeping from him with an outward thrust of his great arm the tall figure of his son, who impulsively stepped forward to save his cherished instrument. As for the wrinkled old woman, she stood arrested in an attitude as near approaching fear as any she ever had evinced. She knew the fierce temper of both these men.

But the young man, the equal in height of his parent, his superior in strength, stayed his own impulse and lowered the clenched hand he had raised. Filial obedience, after all, was strong in his heart

“That’s whar it belongs!” exclaimed the older man, his eyes flashing. “In hell fire is whar all them things belongs, an’ the critters that fosters ‘em. My own flesh an’ blood! O Lord God, lay not up this against thy sarvent!”

“Ye have sinned against the Lord,” he began, excited now in something of the religious fervor which had had no expenditure of late. He thrust a long, bony finger towards his son. “Ye an’ yore granny both have sinned. To Adam was give the grace of perseverin’ in good if he choosed. Adam had the power if he had the will, but not the will that he mought have the power. It was give to all of us subserquents to have both the will an’ the power fer to obstain from sin. But have ye two obstained? Look at that thing a-quoilin’ up in hell. That’s what comes to them that fosters evil when they have both the will an’ the power, an’ don’t use neither.”

They stood looking at him silently, and he went on, still more excited.

“Ye have-ah—tempted of the Lord,” he intoned. “Ye have forgot the holy commandments of the Lord-ah! Ye have sinned in the sight of God on the holy Sabbath day-ah! Ye have kivered up yore sin from me, the sarvent of the Lord-ah! Ye have plotted agin me. Ye have no grace, fer grace is not offered by the Lord to be either received or rejected—it is grace that perjuces both the will an’ the choice in the heart of man. But whar air the subserquent good works of grace? Ye don’t show them. Ye nuvver had no grace, neither one of ye! The both of ye will quoil in hell like that thing thar.”

“Tell me”—he turned now to the old dame—“was he a-fiddlin’ here in my house on the Lord’s day?”

“Yes, he war, an’ it hain’t the first time!” exclaimed the old woman. “I don’t keer who knows it. He war a-playin’ ‘Barbara Allen’ here, an’ I war a-singin’ to it. Now ye know it, an’ what air ye goin’ to do about it?”

For a moment the three stood in tableau, strong, yet sad enough. Then the fierce soul of the old man flamed yet more.

“Disgrace me—in my own house! Out of my house, ye, an’ never darken its doors agin! Yore wife and children need ye plenty ‘thout ye comin’ up here, fiddlin’ in a preacher’s house on Sunday.”

“Do ye mean that, daddy?” asked the young man quietly. “Do ye reelly mean that? Maybe ye’d better think it over.”

“I don’t have to think it over,” retorted the other. “Begone! Don’t nuvver come here again.”

“I reckon I’ll go too,” said the grandam, reaching out a skinny arm for the sunbonnet on its peg at the door.

“Ye’ll do nothin’ of the sort,” replied her son savagely. “Ye belong here. Let him go. I sont his mother outen the same door onct.”

“I know ye did, Andrew,” she replied, her fierce eyes untamed as she faced him. “An’ as good a womern as ever was in the world when she started, ontel ye cowed her an’ abused her, an’ sont her down the river—ye know whar, an’ ye know into what. Ye kin preach till ye’re daid, and shake me over hell fire all ye like, but ye kain’t change me, and ye kain’t scare me, an’ ye know it almighty well. I’ll stay here, an’ I’ll go when I git ready, an’ ye know that.”

“Go on, Davy.” She turned to the young man who stood, gray and silent, his hand upon the half-opened door. “Take him at his word, an’ don’t ye nuvver come back here agin. If ye hain’t happy in yore own home, git outen these mountings—git somewhars else. No matter what ye do, ye kain’t do worsen what ye’re doin’ here. Ye know that yore maw nuvver flickered afore him—nor yore granny neither—an’ don’t ye.”

The gray old man stood silent, at bay, in the center of the squalid little room—a room cluttered up with heavy, homemade chairs, a pair of corded bedsteads, a low board table; an interior lighted now in the approaching gloom of evening by nothing better than the log fire on the deep-worn hearth. It was an old, old room in an old, old house. The threshold of the door, renewed no man might say how often, was worn yet again to the bottom. Its hinges of wood were again worn half in two. The floor, made of puncheons once five inches thick, hewn by a hand-adze two generations ago from some giant poplar tree, now worn almost as smooth as glass by the polishing of bare feet—puncheons more than a yard wide each as they lay here on the ancient floor beams. A pair of windows, once owning glass, partially lighted the room, and there were two doors, one standing ajar at the farther end of the room making upon a covered passageway which led to a second cabin. In this usually went forward, it might be supposed, the cooking operations of the place, such as they were.

At length the old woman stepped to the side of the fireplace and kicked together the ends of the logs. A faint flame arose, now lighting up the interior of this half-savage abode. It showed all the better the tall form of the young man at the door. He spoke no more. With one last glance straight at the face of his father, he turned and passed out into the dusk.

The old man, suddenly trembling, now cast himself into a chair before the fire and sat staring into the flickering flames.

“Whar’s my supper?” he demanded hoarsely after a time.

“Thar hain’t none ready, an’ ye know it,” said his mother. “If I’d a-knowed ye war a-comin’ back I mought have got something ready. What made ye?”

“Hit war the Lord’s will,” he rejoined. “I’ve met causes sufficient. The Lord brung me back to find out what was a-goin’ on here, I reckon. The Sabbath, too!”

“Hit’s no worse one day than another,” said his mother. “Ye’ve druv yore own son outen yore own house. He’s got no house of his own to go to, to speak of—God knows thar’s little enough to keep him thar, that’s shore. Thar’s little enough to keep any of us here, come to that.”

Her attitude certainly was not that of shrinking or fear. Granny Joslin was known far and wide through these mountains as the fightingest of the fighting Joslins; and that was saying much.

“Womern, womern!” The old preacher raised a hand in protest. There was a sort of weakening in his face and his attitude, a sort of quavering in his voice.

She turned and looked at him—looked at the floor where his chair sat before the fireplace. Beside the drip of the old umbrella there was another stain spreading on the floor now—darker than that which first had marked it; a stain which seemed to have darkened his garments and to have caked on his heavy, homemade shoes.

“What’s that, Andy?” she asked imperiously, but knowing well enough what it was. “Who done that?”

He made no answer for a time, but at length remarked with small concern, “Why, old Absalom done that, that’s who. He knifed me in the back when I was lookin’ the other way atter his two boys.”

“Ye taken the old hill trail, then?”

“Yes, it wasn’t so slippy as the creek road up to Hell-fer-Sartin. Oh, I know I was warned outen thar, but I couldn’t show the white feather, could I?”

“No, ye couldn’t, not even if ye war a preacher.” By this time she was busying herself caring for his wound.

“Well, that’s how it come,” went on Andrew Joslin. “I taken the hill trail turnin’ off yander from the creek, like ye know. I met them up in the hills. The Lord led me to ‘em, maybe. The Lord fotched me back here, too, to find what I have found. How have I sinned!”

“If ye didn’t kill old Absalom Gannt ye shore have sinned,” remarked his fierce dam casually. “Was it some fight they made?”

“Well, yes. Thar wasn’t but me along, exceptin’ Chan Bullock from over on the head of the Buffalo—we met up jest as I got up into the hills. When we turned down the head of Rattlesnake we run acrosst them people settin’ under a tree, dry, an’ playin’ a game of keerds, right on the Lord’s day. I rid up with my pistol in my hand, an’ I says to them I didn’t think they war a-doin’ right to play keerds thar. I seen old Absalom thar, an’ two of his boys and two of his cousins. Before I could say much to them, one of the boys he up and fired fust. He hit old Molly in the neck. She pitched some then, an’ afore I could git her whar I could do anything, the feller that fired at me, he slipped over down the big bank back of him, an’ got away in the bush. They had their horses thar, an’ a couple of ‘em jumped on horseback an’ begun firin’ at me, an’ all the time old Molly was a-jumpin’ so nobody could hit nobody offen her. Then come Chan Bullock ridin’ up closeter to me. He had along his old fifty-caliber Winchester—never could bear them big guns; they shoot too high. Well, he fired couple of times, an’ missed, an’ by that time all of Absalom an’ his folks was on the run, either horseback er afoot.

“I seen the boy that done shot at me a-runnin’ down the creek bed more’n a hundred and fifty yard away. I grabbed the gun away from Chan, an’ I says, ‘If I couldn’t shoot no better’n ye kin I’d be ashamed o’ myself.’ So I taken a keerful aim—ye see, I helt a leetle ahead of him—an’ when I pulls the trigger he rolls over about four times atter he hit the ground. I swear that big rifle must be a hard-hittin’ gun—hit war a good two-hundred yard when I shot!

“Chan didn’t have no pistol along, an’ mine had fell on the ground. While all this war a-happenin’, Absalom he had snuck back behint the tree whar they was a-settin’ an’ a-playin’ keerds. Now, when my back was turned, he run out an’ he cut me two er three times right here in the back, afore I could hep myself. Then he run off, too.”

“An’ ye didn’t git ‘im?”

“How could I? He run down the creek bed road towarge whar that other feller was. I covered him fair with Chan’s gun—but she snapped on me. He hadn’t had but a couple of hulls, an’ I’d shot the last shot at Pete when I got him. So Absalom, he got away.”

“Well, you see how come me to come home,” he added presently, having faithfully told his kin the full story of the latest combat. “I didn’t know as I could git acrosst the mountings into Hell-fer-Sartin an’ preach fer a couple days. Somehow it seemed to me I had orter come back home. I did—an’, well you see what I’ve done found here. I didn’t git Absalom. I’ve lost my son, David. Hit ’pears to me like I’m forsaken of the Lord this day!”

His mother made no comment, but stepped up to the mantel-piece and reached down a bottle of white liquid, from which she poured half a pint into a gourd which she found alongside the bottle.

“Drink this,” said she. “We’ll git Absalom some other time.”