Gordon entered the tent where the service was in progress. A subdued light filtered through the canvas upon a horde that filled every foot of s.p.a.ce; they sat pressed together on long, rough boards nailed together in the semblance of benches. On a platform at the farther side a row of men and women sat against the canvas wall; to their left a folding organ had been erected, and was presided over by a man with a blurred, greyish countenance; while, standing at the forefront of the platform, a large, heavy man in a black frock coat was addressing the a.s.semblage. He had a round, pallid, smooth face with long, black hair brushed back upon his coat collar, and great, soft, white hands.

"... it's rising," he proclaimed, in a loud, sing-song voice, "the flood is rising; now it's about your pockets--praise G.o.d! now it's above your waists. It's rising! it's rising! Hallelujah! the sea of redemption is rising," his voice rose with the figurative flood. "At last it's about your hearts, your hearts are immersed in the Sacred Tide."

A man beside Gordon groaned and dropped upon his knees. A woman cried, "G.o.d! G.o.d! G.o.d!" A spindling, overgrown boy rose fumbling at his throat.

"I can't breathe," he choked, "I can't--" His face grew purplish, congested. The tumult swelled, directed, dominated, by the voice of the revivalist. He dropped upon his knees, and, amid the sobbing silence, pled with an invisible Judge hovering, apparently, over a decision to destroy at one b.l.o.o.d.y blow the recalcitrant peoples of the earth, the peoples of His making.

"Spare us," he implored; "spare us, the sheep of h.e.l.l; lead us to Thy shining pasture ... still water; lead us from the great fire of the eternal pit, from the boiling bodies of the unsaved...."

Gordon Makimmon indifferently regarded the clamor. The process of "getting religion" was familiar, commonplace. He saw Tol'able sitting on a back bench; with a mutual gesture the two men rose and left the tent.

"I had to bring m'wife," Tol'able explained; "did you see her sitting on the platform? She's one of the main grievers. I got some good licker in the wagon--better have a comforter."

They walked down to a dusty, two-seated surrey, where, from under a horse blanket, Tol'able produced a small jug. He wiped the mouth on his sleeve and pa.s.sed it to Gordon; then held the gurgling vessel to his open throat.

"There was some h.e.l.l raised last night," he proceeded; "a man from up back had his head busted with a stone, and a drunken looney shot through the women's tent: an old girl hollered out they had G.o.ddy right in there among 'em."

"They were shooting a while back," Gordon observed indifferently. "Have you seen Buck Simmons here?"

"No, I hain't. He wouldn't be here noways."

Gordon preserved a discreet silence in regard to his source of a.s.surance of Buckley's presence at the camp meeting.

"Have another drink, Gord."

The services were temporarily suspended, and the throng emptied from the tent. A renewed sanity clothed them--girls drew into squares of giggling defense against the verbal sallies of robustly-witted young men. Women collected their offspring, gathering in circles about opened boxes of lunch: a mult.i.tude of papers and box lids littered the ground. A hot, steaming odor, a.n.a.logous to coffee, rose from the crowded counter. A prodigious amount of raw whiskey was consumed among the vehicles by the stream and mud-coated willows.

Gordon slowly made his way through the throng, in search of Meta Beggs; perhaps, after all, she had decided not to come; he might easily miss her in that mob. It was not clear in his mind what he would do if he saw her.

She would be with Buckley Simmons, and there was a well recognized course of propriety for such occasions: he would be expected merely to greet in pa.s.sing a girl accompanying another man. Any other proceeding would be met with instant resentment. And Buckley Simmons, Gordon knew, must still nurse a secret antagonism toward him. However, he had disposed of Buckley in the past ... if necessary he could do so again.

At the entrance to the service tent the organist, his countenance still livid in the sunlight, blew a throaty summons on a cornet, and the crowd slowly trailed back within. In the thinning groups Gordon saw the school-teacher, clad in a bright blue skirt and a hat with a stiff, blue feather. She was at Buckley's side, consuming a slice of cake with delicate, precise motions of her hand, and greeting with patent abstraction his solicitous attentions.

IX

Meta Beggs saw Gordon at the same moment; and, without observation on the part of her escort, beckoned him to her. She said promptly:

"Mr. Makimmon, please take care of me while Buckley goes down by those carriages, where we saw you a little while ago, and gets his share of the refreshment there. I'm certain that dusty road made him as dry as possible."

Buckley grinned; such frank feminine acknowledgment and solicitude for the masculine palate was rare in Greenstream. "Why, no, Miss Beggs," he rejoined; "I'm in good shape for a while yet. I got a flask under the seat of the buggy--"

"I insist on your tending to it at once. I know just how it is with men--they have got to have that little refreshment ... don't you call it 'life preserver'? I'll be right by the counter; if Mr. Makimmon will be so kind--"

"Well," Buckley agreed, "a drink don't go bad any time; the road was kind of dusty. If you insist, Miss Beggs."

"I do! I do!" He turned and left them, striding toward the lower level.

Then:

"The fool!" she exclaimed viciously; "my arm is all black and blue where he pinched it. My skin is not like the hides on these mountain girls, it tears and bruises dreadfully easy, it's so fine. Let's go back there," she pointed to where, behind the platform and counter, a path was trampled through brush higher than their heads. Gordon glanced swiftly in the direction in which Buckley Simmons had vanished. "He won't be back," she added contemptuously, "for a half hour. He'll stay down there and drink rotten whiskey and sputter over rotten stories." Without further parley she proceeded in the direction indicated; and, following her, Gordon dismissed Buckley from his thoughts.

Meta Beggs wore a shirtwaist perforated like a sieve; through it he saw flimsy lace, a faded blue ribband, her gleaming shoulders. In an obscure turn of the path she stopped and faced him. "Just look," she proclaimed, unfastening a bone b.u.t.ton that held her cuff. She rolled her sleeve back over her arm. High up, near the soft under-turning, were visible the bluish prints of fingers. "You see," she added; "and there are others ... where I can't show you."

"Buck's pretty vigorous with the girls," he admitted; "I once dropped him down a spell for it."

He was fascinated by her naked, shapely arm; it was slender at the wrist, and surprisingly round above, at a soft, brown shadow. He was seized by a desire to touch it, and he held her pointed elbow while he examined the bruises more minutely. "That's bad," he p.r.o.nounced; "on that pretty skin, too." He was confused by the close proximity of her bare flesh, the pulse in his neck beat visibly.

For a moment she stood motionless; then, with her eyes half closed, sulky, she drew away from him and rearranged her sleeve.

The brush ended on a slope where pine trees had covered the ground with a glossy mat of bronzed needles; and his companion sank to a sitting position with her back against a trunk. They were outside the influence of the camp meeting, beyond its unnatural excitation. The pine trees were black against the brilliant day; they might have been cast in iron, there was no suggestion of growth in the dun covering below; it was as seasonless where they sat as the sea; the air, faintly spiced and still, seemed to have lain unchanged through countless ages.

Meta Beggs sat motionless, with a look of inexpressible boredom on her pale countenance. Her hands, Gordon thought, were like folded buds of the mountain magnolia.

She said, unexpectedly, "You're rich now, aren't you, one of the richest men in the county?"

"Why I--I got some money; that is, my wife has."

She dismissed, with an impatient gesture, the distinction. "Money is life," she continued, with a perceptible, envious longing, "it's freedom, all the things worth having. It makes women--it's their leather boxes full of rings and pins and necklaces, their dresses of all-over lace, their silk and hand scalloped and embroidered underclothes; it's their fascination and chance and power--"

"I would like to see you in some of those lace things," he returned.

"Well, get them for me," she answered hardily.

Utterly unprepared for this direct attack he was thoroughly disconcerted.

"Why, certainly!" he replied, laboriously polite, "the next time--I'll do it!--when I'm in Stenton again I'll bring you a pair of silk stockings."

"Black," she said practically, "and size eight and a half. You will like me in black silk stockings," she added enigmatically.

"I'll bet," he replied with enthusiasm. "I won't wait to go, but send for them. You would make the dollars dance. You are different from--" he was going to say Lettice, but, instinctively, he changed it to, "the women around here. You've got an awful lot of ginger to you."

"I know what I want, and I'm not afraid to pay for it. Almost everybody wants the same thing--plenty and pleasure, but they're afraid of the price; they are afraid of it alive and when they will be dead. Women set such a store on what they call their virtue, and men tend so much to the opinion of others, that they don't get anywhere."

"Don't you set anything on your--your virtue?"

"I'd make it serve me; I wouldn't be a silly slave to it all my life. If I can get things with it that's what I'm going to do."

Gordon Makimmon found these potent words from such a pleasing woman as Meta Beggs. Any philosophy underlying them, any ruthless strength, escaped him entirely. They appealed solely to him as "gay," highly suggestive.

They stirred his blood into warm, heady tides of feeling. He moved over the smooth covering of pine needles, closer to her. But with an expression of petulance she rose.

"I suppose we must look for Buckley," she observed. Gordon had completely forgotten Buckley Simmons' presence at the camp meeting. The school-teacher, swaying slimly, led the way over the path to the plateau.

They saw Buckley Simmons at once: he was talking in an excited, angry manner to a small group of men. A gesture was made toward Gordon and his companion; Buckley turned, and his face flushed darkly, Gordon, stood still, Meta Beggs fell behind, as the former made his way toward them.

Buckley spoke loudly when he was still an appreciable distance away:

"You were mighty considerate about my dusty throat," he began with heavy sarcasm; "I ought to have seen at the time that you had it made up between you. This is the second time that you have broken in on me, Makimmon. I'm not a boy any longer. You can't tread on me. It's going to stop ... now."

"There's nothing for you to get excited about, Buck. Miss Beggs and I took a little stroll while you were away."