第86章

Careless or mischievous young people who were pushed into the foremost ranks of the mockers, and stood grinning and grimacing under the lights, would of a sudden feel a spell clamped upon them.They would hear a strange, quavering note in the preacher's voice, catch the sense of a piercing, soul-commanding gleam in his eye--not at all to be resisted.These occult forces would take control of them, drag them forward as in a dream to the benches under the pulpit, and abase them there like worms in the dust.And then the preacher would descend, and the elders advance, and the torch-fires would sway and dip before the wind of the mighty roar that went up in triumph from the brethren.

These combats with Satan at close quarters, if they made the week-day evenings exciting, reacted with an effect of crushing dulness upon the Sunday services.

The rule was to admit no strangers to the grounds from Saturday night to Monday morning.Every year attempts were made to rescind or modify this rule, and this season at least three-fourths of the laymen in attendance had signed a petition in favor of opening the gates.The two Presiding Elders, supported by a dozen of the older preachers, resisted the change, and they had the backing of the more bigoted section of the congregation from Octavius.

The controversy reached a point where Theron's Presiding Elder threatened to quit the grounds, and the leaders of the open-Sunday movement spoke freely of the ridiculous figure which its cranks and fanatics made poor Methodism cut in the eyes of modern go-ahead American civilization.

Then Theron Ware saw his opportunity, and preached an impromptu sermon upon the sanctity of the Sabbath, which ended all discussion.Sometimes its arguments seemed to be on one side, sometimes on the other, but always they were clothed with so serene a beauty of imagery, and moved in such a lofty and rarefied atmosphere of spiritual exaltation, that it was impossible to link them to so sordid a thing as this question of gate-money.

When he had finished, nobody wanted the gates opened.

The two factions found that the difference between them had melted out of existence.They sat entranced by the charm of the sermon; then, glancing around at the empty benches, glaringly numerous in the afternoon sunlight, they whispered regrets that ten thousand people had not been there to hear that marvellous discourse.Theron's conquest was of exceptional dimensions.The majority, whose project he had defeated, were strangers who appreciated and admired his effort most.The little minority of his own flock, though less susceptible to the influence of graceful diction and delicately balanced rhetoric, were proud of the distinction he had reflected upon them, and delighted with him for having won their fight.

The Presiding Elders wrung his hand with a significant grip.

The extremists of his own charge beamed friendship upon him for the first time.He was the veritable hero of the week.

The prestige of this achievement made it the easier for Theron to get away by himself next day, and walk in the woods.A man of such power had a right to solitude.

Those who noted his departure from the camp remembered with pleasure that he was to preach again on the morrow.

He was going to commune with God in the depths of the forest, that the Message next day might be clearer and more luminous still.

Theron strolled for a little, with an air of aimlessness, until he was well outside the more or less frequented neighborhood of the camp.Then he looked at the sun and the lay of the land with that informing scrutiny of which the farm-bred boy never loses the trick, turned, and strode at a rattling pace down the hillside.

He knew nothing personally of this piece of woodland--a spur of the great Adirondack wilderness thrust southward into the region of homesteads and dairies and hop-fields--but he had prepared himself by a study of the map, and he knew where he wanted to go.Very Soon he hit upon the path he had counted upon finding, and at this he quickened his gait.

Three months of the new life had wrought changes in Theron.He bore himself more erectly, for one thing;his shoulders were thrown back, and seemed thicker.

The alteration was even more obvious in his face.

The effect of lank, wistful, sallow juvenility had vanished.

It was the countenance of a mature, well-fed, and confident man, firmer and more rounded in its outlines, and with a glow of health on its whole surface.Under the chin were the suggestions of fulness which bespeak an easy mind.

His clothes were new; the frock-coat fitted him, and the thin, dark-colored autumn overcoat, with its silk lining exposed at the breast, gave a masculine bulk and shape to his figure.

He wore a shining tall hat, and, in haste though he was, took pains not to knock it against low-hanging branches.

All had gone well--more than well--with him.The second Quarterly Conference had passed without a ripple.

Both the attendance and the collections at his church were larger than ever before, and the tone of the congregation toward him was altered distinctly for the better.

As for himself, he viewed with astonished delight the progress he had made in his own estimation.He had taken Sister Soulsby's advice, and the results were already wonderful.

He had put aside, once and for all, the thousand foolish trifles and childish perplexities which formerly had racked his brain, and worried him out of sleep and strength.

He borrowed all sorts of books boldly now from the Octavius public library, and could swim with a calm mastery and enjoyment upon the deep waters into which Draper and Lecky and Laing and the rest had hurled him.

He dallied pleasurably, a little languorously, with a dozen aspects of the case against revealed religion, ranging from the mild heterodoxy of Andover's qualms to the rude Ingersoll's rollicking negation of God himself, as a woman of coquetry might play with as many would-be lovers.