By Shore and Sedge
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Bret Harte >> By Shore and Sedge
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10 BY SHORE AND SEDGE
by BRET HARTE
CONTENTS
BY SHORE AND SEDGE
AN APOSTLE OF THE TULES
SARAH WALKER
A SHIP OF '49
BY SHORE AND SEDGE
AN APOSTLE OF THE TULES
I
On October 10, 1856, about four hundred people were camped in
Tasajara Valley, California. It could not have been for the
prospect, since a more barren, dreary, monotonous, and uninviting
landscape never stretched before human eye; it could not have been
for convenience or contiguity, as the nearest settlement was thirty
miles away; it could not have been for health or salubrity, as the
breath of the ague-haunted tules in the outlying Stockton marshes
swept through the valley; it could not have been for space or
comfort, for, encamped on an unlimited plain, men and women were
huddled together as closely as in an urban tenement-house, without
the freedom or decency of rural isolation; it could not have been
for pleasant companionship, as dejection, mental anxiety, tears,
and lamentation were the dominant expression; it was not a hurried
flight from present or impending calamity, for the camp had been
deliberately planned, and for a week pioneer wagons had been slowly
arriving; it was not an irrevocable exodus, for some had already
returned to their homes that others might take their places. It
was simply a religious revival of one or two denominational sects,
known as a "camp-meeting."
A large central tent served for the assembling of the principal
congregation; smaller tents served for prayer-meetings and class-
rooms, known to the few unbelievers as "side-shows"; while the
actual dwellings of the worshipers were rudely extemporized
shanties of boards and canvas, sometimes mere corrals or inclosures
open to the cloudless sky, or more often the unhitched covered
wagon which had brought them there. The singular resemblance to a
circus, already profanely suggested, was carried out by a
straggling fringe of boys and half-grown men on the outskirts of
the encampment, acrimonious with disappointed curiosity, lazy
without the careless ease of vagrancy, and vicious without the
excitement of dissipation. For the coarse poverty and brutal
economy of the larger arrangements, the dreary panorama of unlovely
and unwholesome domestic details always before the eyes, were
hardly exciting to the senses. The circus might have been more
dangerous, but scarcely more brutalizing. The actors themselves,
hard and aggressive through practical struggles, often warped and
twisted with chronic forms of smaller diseases, or malformed and
crippled through carelessness and neglect, and restless and uneasy
through some vague mental distress and inquietude that they had
added to their burdens, were scarcely amusing performers. The
rheumatic Parkinsons, from Green Springs; the ophthalmic Filgees,
from Alder Creek; the ague-stricken Harneys, from Martinez Bend;
and the feeble-limbed Steptons, from Sugar Mill, might, in their
combined families, have suggested a hospital, rather than any other
social assemblage. Even their companionship, which had little of
cheerful fellowship in it, would have been grotesque but for the
pathetic instinct of some mutual vague appeal from the hardness of
their lives and the helplessness of their conditions that had
brought them together. Nor was this appeal to a Higher Power any
the less pathetic that it bore no reference whatever to their
respective needs or deficiencies, but was always an invocation for
a light which, when they believed they had found it, to
unregenerate eyes scarcely seemed to illumine the rugged path in
which their feet were continually stumbling. One might have smiled
at the idea of the vendetta-following Ferguses praying for
"justification by Faith," but the actual spectacle of old Simon
Fergus, whose shot-gun was still in his wagon, offering up that
appeal with streaming eyes and agonized features was painful beyond
a doubt. To seek and obtain an exaltation of feeling vaguely known
as "It," or less vaguely veiling a sacred name, was the burden of
the general appeal.
The large tent had been filled, and between the exhortations a
certain gloomy enthusiasm had been kept up by singing, which had
the effect of continuing in an easy, rhythmical, impersonal, and
irresponsible way the sympathies of the meeting. This was
interrupted by a young man who rose suddenly, with that spontaneity
of impulse which characterized the speakers, but unlike his
predecessors, he remained for a moment mute, trembling and
irresolute. The fatal hesitation seemed to check the unreasoning,
monotonous flow of emotion, and to recall to some extent the reason
and even the criticism of the worshipers. He stammered a prayer
whose earnestness was undoubted, whose humility was but too
apparent, but his words fell on faculties already benumbed by
repetition and rhythm. A slight movement of curiosity in the rear
benches, and a whisper that it was the maiden effort of a new
preacher, helped to prolong the interruption. A heavy man of
strong physical expression sprang to the rescue with a hysterical
cry of "Glory!" and a tumultuous fluency of epithet and sacred
adjuration. Still the meeting wavered. With one final paroxysmal
cry, the powerful man threw his arms around his nearest neighbor
and burst into silent tears. An anxious hush followed; the speaker
still continued to sob on his neighbor's shoulder. Almost before
the fact could be commented upon, it was noticed that the entire
rank of worshipers on the bench beside him were crying also; the
second and third rows were speedily dissolved in tears, until even
the very youthful scoffers in the last benches suddenly found their
half-hysterical laughter turned to sobs. The danger was averted,
the reaction was complete; the singing commenced, and in a few
moments the hapless cause of the interruption and the man who had
retrieved the disaster stood together outside the tent. A horse
was picketed near them.
The victor was still panting from his late exertions, and was more
or less diluvial in eye and nostril, but neither eye nor nostril
bore the slightest tremor of other expression. His face was stolid
and perfectly in keeping with his physique,--heavy, animal, and
unintelligent.
"Ye oughter trusted in the Lord," he said to the young preacher.
"But I did," responded the young man, earnestly.
"That's it. Justifyin' yourself by works instead o' leanin' onto
Him! Find Him, sez you! Git Him, sez you! Works is vain. Glory!
glory!" he continued, with fluent vacuity and wandering, dull,
observant eyes.
"But if I had a little more practice in class, Brother Silas, more
education?"
"The letter killeth," interrupted Brother Silas. Here his
wandering eyes took dull cognizance of two female faces peering
through the opening of the tent. "No, yer mishun, Brother Gideon,
is to seek Him in the by-ways, in the wilderness,--where the foxes
hev holes and the ravens hev their young,--but not in the Temples
of the people. Wot sez Sister Parsons?"
One of the female faces detached itself from the tent flaps, which
it nearly resembled in color, and brought forward an angular figure
clothed in faded fustian that had taken the various shades and
odors of household service.
"Brother Silas speaks well," said Sister Parsons, with stridulous
fluency. "It's fore-ordained. Fore-ordinashun is better nor
ordinashun, saith the Lord. He shall go forth, turnin' neither to
the right hand nor the left hand, and seek Him among the lost
tribes and the ungodly. He shall put aside the temptashun of
Mammon and the flesh." Her eyes and those of Brother Silas here
both sought the other female face, which was that of a young girl
of seventeen.
"Wot sez little Sister Meely,--wot sez Meely Parsons?" continued
Brother Silas, as if repeating an unctuous formula.
The young girl came hesitatingly forward, and with a nervous cry of
"Oh, Gideon!" threw herself on the breast of the young man.
For a moment they remained locked in each other's arms. In the
promiscuous and fraternal embracings which were a part of the
devotional exercises of the hour, the act passed without
significance. The young man gently raised her face. She was young
and comely, albeit marked with a half-frightened, half-vacant
sorrow. "Amen," said Brother Gideon, gravely.
He mounted his horse and turned to go. Brother Silas had clasped
his powerful arms around both women and was holding them in a
ponderous embrace.
"Go forth, young man, into the wilderness."
The young man bowed his head, and urged his horse forward in the
bleak and barren plain. In half an hour every vestige of the camp
and its unwholesome surroundings was lost in the distance. It was
as if the strong desiccating wind, which seemed to spring up at his
horse's feet, had cleanly erased the flimsy structures from the
face of the plain, swept away the lighter breath of praise and
plaint, and dried up the easy-flowing tears. The air was harsh but
pure; the grim economy of form and shade and color in the level
plain was coarse but not vulgar; the sky above him was cold and
distant but not repellent; the moisture that had been denied his
eyes at the prayer-meeting overflowed them here; the words that had
choked his utterance an hour ago now rose to his lips. He threw
himself from his horse, and kneeling in the withered grass--a mere
atom in the boundless plain--lifted his pale face against the
irresponsive blue and prayed.
He prayed that the unselfish dream of his bitter boyhood, his
disappointed youth, might come to pass. He prayed that he might in
higher hands become the humble instrument of good to his fellow-
man. He prayed that the deficiencies of his scant education, his
self-taught learning, his helpless isolation, and his inexperience
might be overlooked or reinforced by grace. He prayed that the
Infinite Compassion might enlighten his ignorance and solitude with
a manifestation of the Spirit; in his very weakness he prayed for
some special revelation, some sign or token, some visitation or
gracious unbending from that coldly lifting sky. The low sun
burned the black edge of the distant tules with dull eating fires
as he prayed, lit the dwarfed hills with a brief but ineffectual
radiance, and then died out. The lingering trade winds fired a few
volleys over its grave and then lapsed into a chilly silence. The
young man staggered to his feet; it was quite dark now, but the
coming night had advanced a few starry vedettes so near the plain
they looked like human watch-fires. For an instant he could not
remember where he was. Then a light trembled far down at the
entrance of the valley. Brother Gideon recognized it. It was in
the lonely farmhouse of the widow of the last Circuit preacher.
II
The abode of the late Reverend Marvin Hiler remained in the
disorganized condition he had left it when removed from his sphere
of earthly uselessness and continuous accident. The straggling
fence that only half inclosed the house and barn had stopped at
that point where the two deacons who had each volunteered to do a
day's work on it had completed their allotted time. The building
of the barn had been arrested when the half load of timber
contributed by Sugar Mill brethren was exhausted, and three windows
given by "Christian Seekers" at Martinez painfully accented the
boarded spaces for the other three that "Unknown Friends" in
Tasajara had promised but not yet supplied. In the clearing some
trees that had been felled but not taken away added to the general
incompleteness.
Something of this unfinished character clung to the Widow Hiler and
asserted itself in her three children, one of whom was consistently
posthumous. Prematurely old and prematurely disappointed, she had
all the inexperience of girlhood with the cares of maternity, and
kept in her family circle the freshness of an old maid's
misogynistic antipathies with a certain guilty and remorseful
consciousness of widowhood. She supported the meagre household to
which her husband had contributed only the extra mouths to feed
with reproachful astonishment and weary incapacity. She had long
since grown tired of trying to make both ends meet, of which she
declared "the Lord had taken one." During her two years' widowhood
she had waited on Providence, who by a pleasing local fiction had
been made responsible for the disused and cast-off furniture and
clothing which, accompanied with scriptural texts, found their way
mysteriously into her few habitable rooms. The providential manna
was not always fresh; the ravens who fed her and her little ones
with flour from the Sugar Mills did not always select the best
quality. Small wonder that, sitting by her lonely hearthstone,--a
borrowed stove that supplemented the unfinished fireplace,--
surrounded by her mismatched furniture and clad in misfitting
garments, she had contracted a habit of sniffling during her dreary
watches. In her weaker moments she attributed it to grief; in her
stronger intervals she knew that it sprang from damp and draught.
In her apathy the sound of horses' hoofs at her unprotected door
even at that hour neither surprised nor alarmed her. She lifted
her head as the door opened and the pale face of Gideon Deane
looked into the room. She moved aside the cradle she was rocking,
and, taking a saucepan and tea-cup from a chair beside her,
absently dusted it with her apron, and pointing to the vacant seat
said, "Take a chair," as quietly as if he had stepped from the next
room instead of the outer darkness.
"I'll put up my horse first," said Gideon gently.
"So do," responded the widow briefly.
Gideon led his horse across the inclosure, stumbling over the heaps
of rubbish, dried chips, and weather-beaten shavings with which it
was strewn, until he reached the unfinished barn, where he
temporarily bestowed his beast. Then taking a rusty axe, by the
faint light of the stars, he attacked one of the fallen trees with
such energy that at the end of ten minutes he reappeared at the
door with an armful of cut boughs and chips, which he quietly
deposited behind the stove. Observing that he was still standing
as if looking for something, the widow lifted her eyes and said,
"Ef it's the bucket, I reckon ye'll find it at the spring, where
one of them foolish Filgee boys left it. I've been that tuckered
out sens sundown, I ain't had the ambition to go and tote it back."
Without a word Gideon repaired to the spring, filled the missing
bucket, replaced the hoop on the loosened staves of another he
found lying useless beside it, and again returned to the house.
The widow once more pointed to the chair, and Gideon sat down.
"It's quite a spell sens you wos here," said the Widow Hiler,
returning her foot to the cradle-rocker; "not sens yer was
ordained. Be'n practicin', I reckon, at the meetin'."
A slight color came into his cheek. "My place is not there, Sister
Hiler," he said gently; "it's for those with the gift o' tongues.
I go forth only a common laborer in the vineyard." He stopped and
hesitated; he might have said more, but the widow, who was familiar
with that kind of humility as the ordinary perfunctory expression
of her class, suggested no sympathetic interest in his mission.
"Thar's a deal o' talk over there," she said dryly, "and thar's
folks ez thinks thar's a deal o' money spent in picnicking the
Gospel that might be given to them ez wish to spread it, or to
their widows and children. But that don't consarn you, Brother
Gideon. Sister Parsons hez money enough to settle her darter Meely
comfortably on her own land; and I've heard tell that you and Meely
was only waitin' till you was ordained to be jined together.
You'll hev an easier time of it, Brother Gideon, than poor Marvin
Hiler had," she continued, suppressing her tears with a certain
astringency that took the place of her lost pride; "but the Lord
wills that some should be tried and some not."
"But I am not going to marry Meely Parsons," said Gideon quietly.
The widow took her foot from the rocker. "Not marry Meely!" she
repeated vaguely. But relapsing into her despondent mood she
continued: "Then I reckon it's true what other folks sez of Brother
Silas Braggley makin' up to her and his powerful exhortin'
influence over her ma. Folks sez ez Sister Parsons hez just
resigned her soul inter his keepin'."
"Brother Silas hez a heavenly gift," said the young man, with
gentle enthusiasm; "and perhaps it may be so. If it is, it is the
Lord's will. But I do not marry Meely because my life and my ways
henceforth must lie far beyond her sphere of strength. I oughtn't
to drag a young inexperienced soul with me to battle and struggle
in the thorny paths that I must tread."
"I reckon you know your own mind," said Sister Hiler grimly. "But
thar's folks ez might allow that Meely Parsons ain't any better
than others, that she shouldn't have her share o' trials and keers
and crosses. Riches and bringin' up don't exempt folks from the
shadder. I married Marvin Hiler outer a house ez good ez Sister
Parsons', and at a time when old Cyrus Parsons hadn't a roof to his
head but the cover of the emigrant wagon he kem across the plains
in. I might say ez Marvin knowed pretty well wot it was to have a
helpmeet in his ministration, if it wasn't vanity of sperit to say
it now. But the flesh is weak, Brother Gideon." Her influenza
here resolved itself into unmistakable tears, which she wiped away
with the first article that was accessible in the work-bag before
her. As it chanced to be a black silk neckerchief of the deceased
Hiler, the result was funereal, suggestive, but practically
ineffective.
"You were a good wife to Brother Hiler," said the young man gently.
"Everybody knows that."
"It's suthin' to think of since he's gone," continued the widow,
bringing her work nearer to her eyes to adjust it to their tear-
dimmed focus. "It's suthin' to lay to heart in the lonely days and
nights when thar's no man round to fetch water and wood and lend a
hand to doin' chores; it's suthin' to remember, with his three
children to feed, and little Selby, the eldest, that vain and
useless that he can't even tote the baby round while I do the work
of a hired man."
"It's a hard trial, Sister Hiler," said Gideon, "but the Lord has
His appointed time."
Familiar as consolation by vague quotation was to Sister Hiler,
there was an occult sympathy in the tone in which this was offered
that lifted her for an instant out of her narrower self. She
raised her eyes to his. The personal abstraction of the devotee
had no place in the deep dark eyes that were lifted from the cradle
to hers with a sad, discriminating, and almost womanly sympathy.
Surprised out of her selfish preoccupation, she was reminded of her
apparent callousness to what might be his present disappointment.
Perhaps it seemed strange to her, too, that those tender eyes
should go a-begging.
"Yer takin' a Christian view of yer own disappointment, Brother
Gideon," she said, with less astringency of manner; "but every
heart knoweth its own sorrer. I'll be gettin' supper now that the
baby's sleepin' sound, and ye'll sit by and eat."
"If you let me help you, Sister Hiler," said the young man with a
cheerfulness that belied any overwhelming heart affection, and
awakened in the widow a feminine curiosity as to his real feelings
to Meely. But her further questioning was met with a frank,
amiable, and simple brevity that was as puzzling as the most artful
periphrase of tact. Accustomed as she was to the loquacity of
grief and the confiding prolixity of disappointed lovers, she could
not understand her guest's quiescent attitude. Her curiosity,
however, soon gave way to the habitual contemplation of her own
sorrows, and she could not forego the opportune presence of a
sympathizing auditor to whom she could relieve her feelings. The
preparations for the evening meal were therefore accompanied by a
dreary monotone of lamentation. She bewailed her lost youth, her
brief courtship, the struggles of her early married life, her
premature widowhood, her penurious and helpless existence, the
disruption of all her present ties, the hopelessness of the future.
She rehearsed the unending plaint of those long evenings, set to
the music of the restless wind around her bleak dwelling, with
something of its stridulous reiteration. The young man listened,
and replied with softly assenting eyes, but without pausing in the
material aid that he was quietly giving her. He had removed the
cradle of the sleeping child to the bedroom, quieted the sudden
wakefulness of "Pinkey," rearranged the straggling furniture of the
sitting-room with much order and tidiness, repaired the hinges of a
rebellious shutter and the lock of an unyielding door, and yet had
apparently retained an unabated interest in her spoken woes.
Surprised once more into recognizing this devotion, Sister Hiler
abruptly arrested her monologue.
"Well, if you ain't the handiest man I ever seed about a house!"
"Am I?" said Gideon, with suddenly sparkling eyes. "Do you really
think so?"
"I do."
"Then you don't know how glad I am." His frank face so
unmistakably showed his simple gratification that the widow, after
gazing at him for a moment, was suddenly seized with a bewildering
fancy. The first effect of it was the abrupt withdrawal of her
eyes, then a sudden effusion of blood to her forehead that finally
extended to her cheekbones, and then an interval of forgetfulness
where she remained with a plate held vaguely in her hand. When she
succeeded at last in putting it on the table instead of the young
man's lap, she said in a voice quite unlike her own,--
"Sho!"
"I mean it," said Gideon, cheerfully. After a pause, in which he
unostentatiously rearranged the table which the widow was
abstractedly disorganizing, he said gently, "After tea, when you're
not so much flustered with work and worry, and more composed in
spirit, we'll have a little talk, Sister Hiler. I'm in no hurry
to-night, and if you don't mind I'll make myself comfortable in the
barn with my blanket until sun-up to-morrow. I can get up early
enough to do some odd chores round the lot before I go."
"You know best, Brother Gideon," said the widow, faintly, "and if
you think it's the Lord's will, and no speshal trouble to you, so
do. But sakes alive! it's time I tidied myself a little," she
continued, lifting one hand to her hair, while with the other she
endeavored to fasten a buttonless collar; "leavin' alone the
vanities o' dress, it's ez much as one can do to keep a clean rag
on with the children climbin' over ye. Sit by, and I'll be back in
a minit." She retired to the back room, and in a few moments
returned with smoothed hair and a palm-leaf broche shawl thrown
over her shoulders, which not only concealed the ravages made by
time and maternity on the gown beneath, but to some extent gave her
the suggestion of being a casual visitor in her own household. It
must be confessed that for the rest of the evening Sister Hiler
rather lent herself to this idea, possibly from the fact that it
temporarily obliterated the children, and quite removed her from
any responsibility in the unpicturesque household. This effect was
only marred by the absence of any impression upon Gideon, who
scarcely appeared to notice the change, and whose soft eyes seemed
rather to identify the miserable woman under her forced disguise.
He prefaced the meal with a fervent grace, to which the widow
listened with something of the conscious attitude she had adopted
at church during her late husband's ministration, and during the
meal she ate with a like consciousness of "company manners."
Later that evening Selby Hiler woke up in his little truckle bed,
listening to the rising midnight wind, which in his childish fancy
he confounded with the sound of voices that came through the open
door of the living-room. He recognized the deep voice of the young
minister, Gideon, and the occasional tearful responses of his
mother, and he was fancying himself again at church when he heard a
step, and the young preacher seemed to enter the room, and going to
the bed leaned over it and kissed him on the forehead, and then
bent over his little brother and sister and kissed them too. Then
he slowly re-entered the living-room. Lifting himself softly on
his elbow, Selby saw him go up towards his mother, who was crying,
with her head on the table, and kiss her also on the forehead.
Then he said "Good-night," and the front door closed, and Selby
heard his footsteps crossing the lot towards the barn. His mother
was still sitting with her face buried in her hands when he fell
asleep.
She sat by the dying embers of the fire until the house was still
again; then she rose and wiped her eyes. "Et's a good thing," she
said, going to the bedroom door, and looking in upon her sleeping
children; "et's a mercy and a blessing for them and--for--me. But--
but--he might--hev--said--he--loved me!"
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