Nathaniel sprang up, when he heard the door shut, with a distracted idea of escape, now that his jailers were away, and felt an icy stirring in the roots of his hair at the realization that his misery lay within, that the walls of his own flesh and blood shut it inexorably into his heart forever. He threw open the window and leaned out.
The old negress came out of the woods at the other end of the street, her turban gleaming red. She moved in a cautious silence past the meeting-house, but when she came opposite the minister"s house, thinking herself alone, she burst into a gay, rapid song, the words of which she so mutilated in her barbarous accent that only a final "Oh, Molly-oh!" could be distinguished. She carried an herb-basket on her arm now, into which, from time to time, she looked with great satisfaction.
Nathaniel ran down the stairs and out of the door calling. She paused, startled. "How can you sing and laugh and walk so lightly?" he cried out.
She c.o.c.ked her head on one side with her turtle-like motion. "Why should she not sing?" she asked in her thick, sweet voice. She had never learned the difference between the p.r.o.nouns. "She"s be"n gatherin" yarbs in the wood, an" th" sun is warm," she blinked at it rapidly, "an" the winter it is pas", Ma.r.s.e Natty, no mo" winter!"
Nathaniel came close up to her, laying his thin fingers on her fat, black arm. His voice quivered. "But they say if you love those things and if they make you glad you are d.a.m.ned to everlasting brimstone fire. Tell me how you dare to laugh, so that I will dare too."
The old woman laughed, opening her mouth so widely that the red lining to her throat showed moistly, and all her fat shook on her bones. "Lord love ye, chile, dat"s white folks" talk. Dat don"t scare a old black woman!"
She shifted her basket to the other arm and prepared to go on. "You"re bleeged to be keerful "bout losin" yo" soul. Black folks ain"t got no souls, bless de Lord! When _dey_ dies dey _dies_!"
She shuffled along, laughing, and began to sing again. Nathaniel looked after her with burning eyes. After she had disappeared between the tree trunks of the forest, the breeze bore back to him a last joyous whoop of "_Oh_, Molly-oh!" He burst into sobs, and shivering, made his way back into his father"s darkening, empty house.
III
At the breakfast table the next morning his father looked at him neutrally. "This day you shall go to salt the sheep in the Miller lot," he announced, "and you may have until the hour before sundown to walk in the wood."
"Oh, _father_, really!"
"That is what I said," repeated the minister dryly, pushing away from the table.
After the boy had gone, carrying the bag of salt and the little package of his noonday meal, the minister sighed heavily. "I fear my weak heart inclines me to too great softness to our son." To his wife he cried out a moment later, "Oh, that some instance of the wrath of Jehovah could come before us now, while our son"s spirit is softened. Deacon Truitt said yesterday that one more visitation would save him."
Nathaniel walked along soberly, his eyes on the road at his feet, his face quite pale, a sleepless night evidently behind him. He came into the birches without noticing them at first, and when he looked up he was for a moment so taken by surprise that he was transfigured. The valley at his feet shimmered like an opal through the slender white pillars of the trees. The wood was like a many-columned chapel, unroofed and open to the sunlight. Nathaniel gave a cry of rapture, and dropped the bag of salt.
"Oh!" he cried, stretching out his arms, and then again, "Oh!"
For a moment he stood so, caught into a joy that was almost anguish, and then at a sudden thought he shrank together, his arm crooked over his eyes. He sank forward, still covering his eyes, into a great bed of fern, just beginning to unroll their whitey-green b.a.l.l.s into long, pale plumes.
There he lay as still as if he were dead.
Two men came riding through the lane, their horses treading noiselessly over the leaf-mold. They had almost pa.s.sed the motionless, prostrate figure when the older reined in and pointed with his whip. "What is that, LeMaury?"
At the unexpected sound the boy half rose, showing a face so convulsed that the other horseman cried out alarmed, "It ees a man crazed! Ride on, _mon colonel_!" He put spurs to his horse and sprang forward as he spoke.
The old soldier laughed a little, and turned to Nathaniel. "Why, "tis the minister his son. I know you by the look of your father in you. What bad dream have we waked you from, you pretty boy?"
"You have not waked me from it," cried Nathaniel. "I will never wake as long as I live, and when I die--!"
"Why, LeMaury is right. The poor lad is crazed. We must see to this."
He swung himself stiffly from the saddle and came limping up to Nathaniel.
Kneeling by the boy he brought him up to a sitting position, and at the sight of the ashen face and white, turned-back eyeb.a.l.l.s he sat down hastily, drawing the young head upon his shoulder with a rough tenderness.
"Why, so lads look under their first fire, when they die of fear. What frights you so?"
Nathaniel opened great solemn eyes upon him. "I suppose it is the conviction of sin. That is what they call it."
For an instant the old man"s face was blank with astonishment, and then it wrinkled into a thousand lines of mirth. He began to laugh as though he would never stop. Nathaniel had never heard anyone laugh like that. He clutched at the old man.
"How dare you laugh!"
The other wiped his eyes and rocked to and fro, "I laugh--who would not--that such a witless baby should talk of his sin. You know not what sin is, you silly innocent!"
At the kindliness of the tone an aching knot in the boy"s throat relaxed.
He began to talk hurriedly, in a desperate whisper, his hands like little birds" claws gripping the other"s great gauntleted fist. "You do not know how wicked I am--I am so wholly forward the wonder is the devil does not take me at once. I live only in what my father calls the l.u.s.t of the eye.
I--I would rather look at a haw-tree in bloom than meditate on the Almighty!" He brought out this awful confession with a gasp at its enormity, but hurried on to a yet more terrible climax. "I cannot be righteous, but many times there are those who cannot--but oh, worse than that, I cannot even _wish_ to be! I can only wish to be a painter."
At this unexpected ending the old man gave an exclamation of extreme amazement.
"But, boy, lad, what"s your name? However did you learn that there are painters in the world, here in this prison-house of sanct.i.ty?"
Nathaniel had burrowed into his protector"s coat as though hiding from the imminent wrath of G.o.d. He now spoke in m.u.f.fled tones. "Two years ago, when I was but a little child, there came a man to our town, a Frenchman, they said, and his horse fell lame, and he stopped two days at my Uncle Elzaphan"s. My Uncle Elzaphan asked him what business did he in the world, and he said he put down on cloth or paper with brushes and colors all the fair and comely things he saw. And he showed a piece of paper with on it painted the row of willows along our brook. I sat in the chimney-corner and no one heeded me. I saw--oh, then I _knew_! I have no paint, but ever since I have made pictures with burnt sticks on birchbark--though my father says that of all the evil ways of evil men none lead down more swift to the chambers of death and the gates of h.e.l.l than that. Every night I make a vow unto the Lord that I will sin no more; but in the morning the devil whispers in my ear and I rise up and sin again--no man knows this--and I am never glad unless I think I have done well with my pictures, and I hate the meeting-house and--" His voice died away miserably.
"Two years ago, was"t?" asked the old man. "And the man was French?"
"Aye."
The old soldier shifted his position, stretched out a stiff knee with a grimace of pain, and pulled the tall lad bodily into his lap like a child.
For some time the two were silent, the sun shining down warmly on them through the faint, vaporous green of the tiny leaves. The old horse cropped the young shoots with a contented, ruminative air, once in a while pausing to hang his head drowsily, and bask motionless in the warmth.
Then the old man began to speak in a serious tone, quite different from his gentle laughter. "Young Everett, of all the people you have seen, is there one whom you would wish to have even a moment of the tortures of h.e.l.l?"
Nathaniel looked at him horrified. "Why, no!" he cried indignantly.
"Then do you think your G.o.d less merciful than you?"
Nathaniel stared long into the steady eyes. "Oh, do you mean it is not _true_?" He leaned close in an agony of hope. "Sometimes I have thought it _could_ not be true!"
The old soldier struck him on the shoulder inspiritingly, his weather-beaten face very grave. "Aye, lad, I mean it is not true. I am an old man and I have learned that they lie who say it is true. There is no h.e.l.l but in our own hearts when we do evil; and we can escape a way out of that by repenting and doing good. There is no devil but our evil desires, and G.o.d gives to every man strength to fight with those. There is only good in your love for the fair things G.o.d made and put into the world for us to love. No man but only your own heart can tell you what is wrong and what is right. Only _do not fear_, for all is well."
The scene was never to fade from Nathaniel Everett"s eyes. In all the after crises of his life the solemn words rang in his ears.
The old man suddenly smiled at him, all quaint drollery again. "And now wait." He put hand to mouth and hallooed down the lane. "Ho there!
LeMaury!"
As the Frenchman came into sight, the old man turned to Nathaniel, "Is this the gentleman who painted your willows?"
"Oh, aye!" cried Nathaniel.
The Frenchman dismounted near them with sparkling glances of inquiry.
"See, LeMaury, this is young Master Everett, whom you have bewitched with your paint-pots. He would fain be an artist--_de gustibus_--! Perhaps you have in him an apprentice for your return to France."
The artist looked sharply at Nathaniel. "Eh, so? Can young master draw?
Doth he know aught of _chiaroscuro_?"