Read Ebook: A Man's World by Edwards Albert

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Ebook has 1504 lines and 98497 words, and 31 pages

There was a rattle and jerk--we had no air-brakes on the Tennessee trains in those days--and the railroad station and the Father slipped out of sight. Such an amazing number of things went by the car window! I counted all the fields to the next station. There were thirty-seven. The conductor told me I was not to get off till the eighteenth stop. I started in valiantly to count them all, but my attention was distracted by the fact that things near the track went by so much faster than things far away. In "physics A" at college I learned an explanation of this phenomena which seemed all right on paper but even today it is entirely inadequate when I am in a train and actually watching the earth revolve about distant points in either horizon. Trying to find a reason for it on that first railroad trip put me to sleep. At last the conductor woke me up and handed me over to Mary.

I can recall only vaguely the details of that delectable week, the strangeness of the entire experience is what sticks in my memory. There was the baby, so soft and round and contented. There was the German nurse, the first white servant I had ever seen. And there were the armchairs in the living-room, curved and comfortable and very different from the chairs in the parlor at home. After supper, instead of sending me off to bed, Mary read to me before the open fire, read me the wonderful stories of King Arthur. When at last I was sleepy, she came with me to my room. It embarrassed me to undress before her, but it was very sweet to have her tuck me in and kiss me "goodnight."

Mary "spoiled" me, to use the Father's expression, systematically, she let me eat between meals and gorged me with sweets. One night it made me sick. I have forgotten whether "dough-nuts" or "pop-overs" were to blame. When the doctor had gone away, laughing--for it was not serious--Mary took me into her own bed. I would gladly have suffered ten times the pain for the warm comfort of her arms about me.

It was during this visit that all the side of life we call Art began to appeal to me. The King Arthur legends were my introduction to literature, Malory and Tennyson's "Idylls" were the first written stories or poems I ever enjoyed. And I think my first impression of Beauty, was the sight of Mary nursing the baby. I am sure she did not realize with what wondering eyes I watched her. I was only a little shaver and she could not have guessed what a novel sight it was for me. At home, everything human, which could not be suppressed, was studiously hidden. I think some of the old Madonnas in which the Mother is suckling the Child would have seemed blasphemous to the Father. Art has always seemed to me at its highest when occupied with some such simple human thing.

I had two playmates in those days, Margaret and Albert Jennings. Their father had been on "Stonewall" Jackson's staff. "Al" was my own age, but seemed older and Margot was a year younger. Until I went away to school we were almost inseparable. Only in affairs of the church were we apart, for they were Episcopalians.

Our biggest common interest was a "Chicken Company." We had built an elaborate run in the back yard of the parsonage and sometimes had as many as thirty hens. This enterprise led us into the great sin of our childhood--stealing.

Why I stole I cannot explain. I never pretended to justify it. We would sell a dozen eggs to my household and then take as many out of the pantry as were necessary to complete a dozen for Mrs. Jennings. We did this off and on for four or five years. When the hens laid freely we did not have to. But if there were not eggs to satisfy the demands of the two families, we stole. I think we blamed it on the chickens. Al and I were always full of great projects for improving the stock or the run and so needed money. There was little danger of discovery, because housekeeping was a very unexact science in our southern homes. And just because the chickens refused to lay as they should, seemed a very trivial reason for sacrificing our plans. But we did not like to do it. We always searched the nests two or three times in the hope of finding the eggs we needed.

Al was a queer chap. I remember one time we were two eggs short.

"We'll have to steal them from your mother," I said.

"You may be a thief," he retorted angrily, as we started after the spoils. "But I intend to pay it back. It's just a loan."

There was a weak subterfuge to the effect that Margot knew nothing of our dishonesty. The three of us had decided upon this in open council, to protect her in case we were caught. If there were to be any whippings, it was for the masculine members of the firm to take them. But Margot knew, just as well as we did, how many eggs were laid and how far our sales exceeded that number. But the candy she bought did not seem to trouble her conscience any more than it did her digestion. I have met no end of older women, in perfectly good church standing, who are no more squeamish about how their men folk gain their income.

There was another very feminine trait about Margot. We divided our profits equally, in three parts. Al and I always put most of our share back into the business. Margot spent hers on candy. Al used to object to this arrangement sometimes, but I always stood up for her.

This was because I expected to marry her. I do not remember when it was first suggested, but it was an accepted thing between us. Col. Jennings used laughingly to encourage us in it. I spoke of it once at home, but the Father shook his head and said it would grieve him if I married outside of our denomination. The Baptists were his special aversion, but next to them he objected to Episcopalians, whom he felt to be tainted with popery.

This led to a quarrel with Margot. I told her flatly that I would not marry her, unless she became a Presbyterian. She was a little snob and, as the most considerable people of the county belonged to her church, she preferred to give me up rather than slip down in the social scale. For several days we did not speak to each other. I refused to let any misguided Episcopalians in my yard. As the chicken run was in my domain, Al, who was smaller than I, became an apostate. But Margot held out stubbornly, until her mother intervened and told us, with great good sense, that we were much too young to know the difference between one sect and another, that we had best suspend hostilities until we knew what we were fighting about. So peace was restored.

This calf-love of mine was strangely cold. Some of the boys and girls in school used to "spoon." But "holding hands" and so forth seemed utterly inane to me. I do not know what Margot felt about it, but I no more thought of kissing her than her brother. The best thing about her was that she also loved King Arthur. Mary had given me a copy of Malory. Up in our hay-loft, Margot and I used to take turns reading it aloud and acting it. Only once in a long while could we persuade Al to join us in these childish dramatics. I was generally Launcelot. Sometimes she would be Elaine, but I think she loved best to be the Queen.

I can only guess what the Father would have thought of my filling my mind with such lore. I took no chances in the matter. With great pains, I arranged the books so that the absence of Froissart would not be noticed. Until I went East to school at sixteen, it reposed in the bottom of the bran bin in the loft, and when at last I went, I gave it to Margot as my choicest treasure.

When I saw her ten years ago, she showed me the old book. The sight of it threw us both under constraint, bringing back those old days when we had planned to marry. The funeral of a dream always seem sadder to me than the death of a person.

Permanent camp meetings, the things which grew into the Chautauqua movement, were just beginning their popularity. One had been started a few score miles from our village and the year I went away to school, the Father had been made director. We left home early in the summer, and I was to go East without coming back.

On the eve of my departure, I went to see Margot. It was my first formal call and, in my new long trousers, I was much embarrassed. For an hour or so we sat stiffly, repeating every ten minutes a promise to write to each other. I remember we figured out that it would take me ten years to finish the Theological Seminary and be ready to marry her. It was ordained that I was to study for the ministry. No other career had ever been suggested to me.

The constraint wore off when I asked her for a photograph to take with me to school. From some instinct of coquetry she pretended not to want me to have one. Boys at school, she said, had their walls covered with pictures of girls, she would not think of letting hers be put up with a hundred others. When I solemnly promised not to have any picture but hers, she said she had no good one. There was one on the mantel, and I grabbed it in spite of her protest.

She was a bit of a tomboy and a hoydenish scuffle followed. In the scramble my hand fell accidentally on her breast. It sent a dazzling thrill through me. The vision came to me of Mary nursing the baby and the beauty of her white breast. The idea connected itself with Margot, struggling in my arms. I knew nothing of the mystery of life. I cannot tell what I felt--it was very vague--but I knew some new thing had come to me.

Margot noticed the change. I suppose I stopped the struggle with her.

"What's the matter?" she asked.

"Nothing."

But I went off and sat down apart.

"What's the matter?" she insisted, coming over and standing in front of me. "Did I hurt you?"

"No," I said. "But we mustn't wrestle like that. We aren't children any more."

She threw up her head and began to make fun of me and my new long trousers. But I interrupted her.

"Margot! Margot! Don't you understand?"

I took hold of her hands and pulled her down beside me and kissed her. It was the first time. I am sure she did not understand what I meant--I was not clear about it myself. But she fell suddenly silent. And while I sat there with my arm about her, I saw a vision of Mary's home and the warm joy of it. Margot and I would have a home like that; not like the Father's.

I was under the spell of some dizzying emotion which none of our grown up words will fit. The emotion, I suppose, comes but once, and is too fleeting to have won a place in adult dictionaries. It was painful and awesome, but as I walked home I was very happy.

Of course I never questioned the Father's religious dogmas. I did not even know that they might be questioned. But two things troubled me persistently.

I had been taught that our Saviour was the Prince of Peace, that His chief commandment was the law of love. But when adults got together there was always talk of the war. I do not think there was any elder or deacon in our church who had not served. How often I listened to stories of the wave of murder and rapine that had swept through our mountains only a few years before!

I remember especially the placing of a battle monument just outside our village and the horde of strangers who came from various parts of the state for the ceremony. The heroes were five men in gray uniforms, all who were left of the company which had stood there and had been shot to pieces. One was an old man, three were middle aged, and one was so young that he could not have been more than sixteen on the day of the fight. The man who had been their captain stayed at the parsonage. After supper the principal men of the village gathered in our parlor. I stood by the Father's chair and listened wide-eyed as, in his cracked voice, the Captain told us all the details of that slaughter. I remember that in the excitement of his story-telling the old soldier became profane, and the Father did not rebuke him.

Somehow I could not feel any romance in modern warfare, there seemed no similarity between these men and the chivalric heroes of The Round Table. Perhaps if Launcelot had been a real person, there in the parsonage parlor, and had told me face to face and vividly how he had slain the false knight Gawaine, had made me see the smear of blood on his sword blade, the cloven headed corpse of his enemy, that also they might have seemed abhorrent.

As a little boy I could not understand how a follower of Jesus could be a soldier. I did not know that grown men were also asking the same question. Years afterwards I remember coming across Rossetti's biting sonnet--"Vox ecclesiae, vox Christi"--

"O'er weapons blessed for carnage, to fierce youth From evil age, the word has hissed along:-- Ye are the Lord's: go forth, destroy, be strong: Christ's Church absolves ye from Christ's law of ruth."

I do not know what the Father would have thought of those words, for, like some of the Roundhead leaders of Cromwell's time, he had been Chaplain as well as Captain of his company. If the war had broken out again, as the "Irreconcilables" believed it surely would, and if Oliver had refused to enlist on the ground that he was studying for Christ's ministry, I think the Father would have cursed him.

The other thing which worried me was a "gospel hymn," which we sang almost every Sunday. It had a swinging tune, but the words were horrible.

There is a fountain filled with blood, Drawn from Emanuel's veins; And sinners plunged beneath that flood Lose all their guilty stains.

Such a gory means of salvation seemed much more frightful to my childish imagination than the most sulphurous hell.

These things I was told I would understand when I grew up. This was the answer to so many questions, that I got out of the habit of asking them. I believed that the Father was very wise and was willing to take his word for everything.

At eleven he persuaded me "to make a profession of faith" and join the church. It is only within these latter, mellower years that I can look back on this incident without bitterness. It was so utterly unfair. The only thing I was made to understand was that I was taking very serious and irrevocable vows. This was impressed on me in every way. I was given a brand new outfit of clothes. I had never had new underwear and new shoes simultaneously with a new suit and hat before. Such things catch a child's imagination. I had to stand up before the whole congregation and reply to un-understandable questions with answers I had learned by rote. Then for the first time I was given a share of the communion bread and wine. The solemnity of the occasion was emphasized. But there was no effort--at least no successful one--to make me understand what it was all about. When I became old enough to begin to think of such things, I found that I had already sworn to believe the same things as long as I lived. Try as hard as I can to remember the many kindnesses of my adoptive parents, realizing, as I surely do, how earnestly and prayerfully they strove to do the best for me, this folly remains my sharpest recollection of them. It was horribly unfair to a youngster who took his word seriously.

But I never had what is called a "religious experience" until that summer in camp meeting when I was sixteen.

In after years, I have learned that the older and richer sects have developed more elaborate and artistic stage-settings for their mysteries. I cannot nowadays attend a service of the Paulist Fathers, or at Saint Mary the Virgin's without feeling the intoxication of the heavy incense and the wonderful beauty of the music. But for a boy, and for the simple mountain folk who gathered there, that camp was sufficiently impressive.

It stood on the edge of a mirror lake, under the shadow of Lookout Mountain, in one of the most beautiful corners of Tennessee. Stately pines crowded close about the clearing and beyond the lake the hill dropped away, leaving a sweeping view out across the valley. Man seemed a very small creature beneath those giant trees, in the face of the great distances to the range of mountains beyond the valley. There was nothing about the camp to recall one's daily life. The thousand and one things which insistently distract one's attention from religion had been excluded.

Every care had been taken to make the camp contrast with, and win people from, "The Springs,"--a fashionable and worldly resort nearby. There was no card playing nor dancing, as such things were supposed to offend the Deity. The stage to the railroad station did not run on Sunday.

After breakfast every day the great family--a hundred people or more--gathered by the lake-side and the Father led in prayer. During the morning there were study courses, most of which were Bible classes. I only remember two which were secular. One was on Literature and the King James Version was taken as a model of English prose. No mention was made of the fact that much of the original had been poetry. There was also a course on "Science." A professor of Exigesis from a neighboring Theological Seminary delivered a venomous polemic against Darwin. The "Nebular Hypothesis" was demolished with many convincing gestures.

My little love affair with Margot had put me in a state of exaltation. Other things conspired to make me especially susceptible to religious suggestion. Oliver was back from his second year in the seminary. My dislike for him was forgotten. He seemed very eloquent to me in the young people's meetings, which he conducted.

Mary was there with her three children and had taken for the summer the cottage at one end of the semi-circle overlooking the lake. Her husband, Prof. Everett, had been away for several months on the geological expedition to Alaska, which was, I believe, the foundation of the eminence he now holds in that science. Mary also had been caught up in the religious fervor of the place. To me she seemed wonderfully spiritualized and beautiful beyond words. Oliver and I used often to walk home with her after the evening meetings and, sitting out on her porch over the water, talk of religion.

Sundays were continuous revival meetings. Famous fishers-of-souls came every week. All methods from the most spiritual to the coarsest were used to wean us from our sins. It was "Salvation" Milton, who landed me.

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