Mr. Thornton

THE man with the string tie looked — and was — precisely the sort of person to call a book ‘meaty,’ and he was riding in the back seat of the country carriage with a man likely to call a book ‘inept.’ Which means that neither could possibly understand the other.

It was the burying of Alexander Moffatt, who at Selby’s Corners had for years been joining house to house and field to field, and now desisted from that intense and silent job. For Alexander’s neighbors the future life was something mixed with musical instruments and pervaded by æsthetic joys. Alexander did not in the least fit into that — would not, as the postmaster had once remarked in another connection, ‘corroborate’ with that. He had left — or relinquished — his farms, and, when severed from them, utterly dissolved.

The man with the string tie — minister of the Baptist Church at Selby’s Corners — had ‘preached the funeral.’ The difficulty of the situation had been considerable, and the dead Alexander’s face, with its bull-dog expression and perfectly straight-across mouth, had not helped. Therefore the minister had been noisy and emphatic beyond his wont. He had heavily ground in the austere fact of mortality, and at the end had made the most of ‘not slothful in business,’ and the circumstance that Alexander had been a good provider. After this a quartette with a terribly projecting alto had sung ‘One Sweet Day.’

The other man was Alexander’s nephew by marriage, representing a niece by blood who was sick and unable to come. He was a city lawyer, and looked the part in garments, face and carriage. His wife had long since sloughed all the characteristics of the Moffatt stirps. Such things are always happening in America.

The sepulture of Alexander had impressed the proxy mourner as a fascinating clinic in folk-lore. At the house he had dimly recalled something of Kipling’s about pagan rites and American middle-class burials, and something else of Spencer’s about the need of a professional religious class to keep alive the sense of mystery in the breed. At the grave the service had been in charge of the Independent Order of Bisons. Their ritual had been stickily sentimental, and their chaplain had made more than one impressive reference to ‘the diseased.’ Then they had, man by man, deposited small white cloth cut-outs of buffaloes in the grave, and withdrawn.

‘Just like the South Sea Islands!’ thought Alexander’s nephew. ‘These people know about telephones and all that; but after all, it’s about the same.’

Now, on the way back from the cemetery, the two ill-assorted passengers had nothing to say to each other. The gulf between them so asserted itself as to discourage even talk about the weather. The driver turned conversational and came to the rescue.

‘Well, Reverend Bowles,’ he observed, ‘Alick’s gone to his reward, all right.’

The minister squirmed.

‘Most too good to damn, an’ yet hardly good enough to save. He give thirty dollars toward the new hosecart an’ helped on the uniforms for the silver cornet band. You know how he laid ’em all out at the big festival you had for foreign missions. An’ yet, if he was after a farm, my, how anybody got stepped on that come in his way — widows or orphans or anybody! It’s going to be some job for the Almighty to sift things out with Alexander.’

‘ Why should you think any Almighty must sift things out?’ inquired the nephew by marriage.

The Reverend Mr. Bowles, delighted to have Alexander pushed into the background, and not displeased by a promising scent of battle, instantly unlimbered.

‘The Word,’ he answered in a tone pugnaciously pious, ‘the Word. Romans fourteen and ten says we shall stand before the judgment seat, and Second Corinthians five and ten says the same and more, too; and Hebrews nine and twenty-seven tells how “it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment.” Then there’s John’s Revelation, which says right out, “The books shall be opened,” — books, understand. See, too, Matthew twenty-five, thirty-one to end.’

Mr. Bowles felt it a happy circumstance that he had preached on this subject at Conference only the week before.

The driver was a happy man. At his livery and feed establishment he had heard that ‘the new Reverend,’ lately come to the Corners, was mighty in the Scriptures, and that he owned above three hundred books. Would he put it all over this city chap?

‘I see,’ said the lawyer pleasantly. ‘You get this out of certain old writings which are authority for you. Millions of other people, in blocks of varying sizes, get something quite different out of other old writings which are authority for them. Millions more of us get something still more different out of no writings at all. Are you entirely sure that all these millions are wrong, and that you alone and those with you have — excuse me — picked out the ace? ’

Mr. Bowles had never preached about anything like this, and did not readily find a text. He came back, however, after a pause, with words averring that spiritual things must be spiritually discerned.

‘I see,’ said the lawyer again. ‘You have picked out the ace. And when any one has done that, there’s nothing more to say. Do you mind if I light a cigar?’

Mr. Bowles did mind, but did not say so; and he did not understand why, with his shots so well aimed and so vigorously sped, he did not feel more comfortable.

‘Look here,’ he began, ‘Mr. — ah’— ‘Thornton.’

‘Mr. Thornton, this blessed book,’ — he held up his Bible, — ‘written with the finger of God and declaring the whole counsel of God, says we shall all stand before the judgment seat and all give account. It tells of a worm that dieth not and of the wrath of the Lamb. It ’ —

‘Oh, yes, I know,’ interrupted the lawyer. ‘It tells of a great many things like that, and what it says about them may take hold — doubtful, though — of three tenths of the present population of this country. You belong to the three tenths. The other seven tenths of us quietly go our own ways, leaving you happy with the ace

— which for us is really the two-spot. In this matter of the after-death,’ — he blew a column of smoke in the air,

— ‘the seven tenths of us just don’t, know anything about it,—anything. We know we’re here, and that’s all. Even with the three tenths, or a good many of them, you’d find, if you were to peel off the wrappings, that all they really know and are sure of is that they’re here. They would n’t bet or stake their lives on anything more. Put them up against a crisis and see. Of course there are a few people, like Oliver Lodge, who think they’ve broken through into something, but’—

‘Who,’ heatedly demanded Mr. Bowles, finding his voice at last, ‘who is Senator Lodge compared with the Apostle Paul?’

‘The Apostle Paul remains faintly part of “the current prejudice,” as John Morley once called it. He talks about judgment seats and somebody to stand before them after dying, and we respectfully let him talk, just as we respectfully go to funerals and respectfully listen to impossible things. You three tenths have the only opinion that is organized, — there it is, — but the real general conviction is miles and miles away from it. The bed-rock is, that we know we’re here. When it comes to the scratch, that is all that the seven tenths of us — yes, and more — will bet on or stake our lives on. Put almost anybody against a crisis and see.'

The driver stopped his horses at the Empire Hotel, and left his passengers at that hostelry. Mr. Thornton, making ready for supper, repeated, ‘We’re here, and that’s all’

Mr. Bowles felt that he had been in conversation with a damned soul.

Down at the stable the driver made report to certain interested friends: ‘The new Reverend is certainly hell on the Bible. What sent him to the ropes was the lawyer’s gittin’ him off the track — away from the subject. Their way, you know.’

The Empire Hotel burned that night, making for Selby’s Corners what the setting up of Angelo’s David made for Florence — a new date from which to reckon time. The lawyer and the minister, who perforce had stayed over night, since the railroad’s one daily train would not leave until morning, were the only persons sleeping on the third floor. Awakened by the yells of the entire population, they threw open their room doors, only to recoil before thick clouds of choking smoke. Thornton crept on hands and knees down the narrow hall to a window. Leaning out to breathe, he felt presently beside him another man, — the minister, — who in utter panic began to babble incoherent prayers.

‘O God!’ he shrieked, ‘remember thine ancient mercies! Remember I’m in the ministry — a family, too, O God, you know that! I can’t die — just can’t die and go away from all I know to what I don’t know! I’ve got work to do here — your work! Get me out of this, God — quick!’

‘Quiet, man!’ said Thornton. ‘You want your head.’

‘The stairs are gone,’ wailed on the minister, ‘and we’re thirty foot from the ground! There’s fire belchin’ out from the window under us, too! To die!’ — the wail passed into an appalling screech — ‘To die, die, die! Where are you — are you anywhere, God ? ’

The ends of a ladder pushed up through the smoke to the windowledge. A roar of voices came from the crowd below, and one above all others: ‘Quick, before it burns! Quick, for God’s sake, quick!’

‘ On to it, you! ’ said Thornton to the collapsing Bowles. ‘You have children and I have n’t. Hurry!’

Bowles swung over the ledge, still babbling. He began to make his way down. Little flames were licking at the ladders sides and rungs. Five feet below, he looked back at the window, and, as the craven self for a moment cleared out of his features, saw Thornton’s face, with a look on it he never forgot — a look to last any man’s life. He knew only that it was big — too big for him to understand.

‘But you’ll die,’ he screamed as he descended. ‘I’m to live, but you’ll — die! ’

‘No!’ called back Thornton, above the crackle and through the smoke. ‘ I ’m up against it and I’ve changed my mind! I know I’m here, and more than here— more! I shall not die!’

And the building fell in with a crash as Bowles stood safe on the ground.