Lamb in His Bosom

by Caroline Miller

  When Maggie went, and was laid out, Cean fell in a heap on the bed in the cold, damp shed-room of Dicie Smith’s house, and felt that she was going to die, and hoped that she would. She was but a lone sojourner in this world now; heaven was a happier, warmer place by far.

  Cean did not hang over Maggie’s dead body, grieving as some women make grief over their dead, kissing faces that have the feel of drying, newly-dug clay against their weeping lips. Some women will scream out when men let down a coffin into a grave, as one man stands in the hole to let one end of the pine box down, then climbs out so that the other end may thud into place; any woman knows that such treatment will jar every bone, every inch of flesh, though it be dead. Cean would not scream out. Is a dead corpse more knowin’ than a planking of wood or a stone, than cold dirt or dead leaves or any poplar chair? Cean would not stand over Maggie, grieving because her eyes were shut, because her mouth was speechless and could never learn words again, because blood was clotted cold in her veins by the hard ague-fit of death.

  “I did not love my child’s soul enough,” Cean grieved. Oh, she had loved Maggie’s body that was part of her own even now, as surely as her own hand or her lifting breath was part of her body. “I loved the body overmuch, I know.” Now when she must give the body to the ground, and never see it more as she had seen it in this world, it was like to kill her. She grieved for Maggie more than she had grieved for Lonzo, or her mother, or little Caty. “Ma was an old woman, and it was time for her to go.…Caty was a little child and missed all the hardships that this life brings a woman.…But Maggie was a woman old enough to know her mother’s heart without sayin’ many words about it.…I loved Lonzo more than all my children put together, but never did I bear him about with me for nigh onto a year till he was grown enough to breathe for himself.…I carried Maggie…and quarreled to myself because of the burden she was to me.…I did not give Lonzo his breath and his heartbeat and the very blood in his veins.…I never suckled Lonzo in my arms a thousand times over, as I did this baby, this woman-child….”

  Oh, Cean could not have hurt more if her heart had been ripped out of her body and set yonder on a hot spider to fry and be eaten. “Can it be,” she thought, “that griefs cut deeper when we are past bein’ young?”

  She was like to lose her mind, for she kept thinking that breaths were like threads on a mighty loom, drawn tight, woven among one another, broken singly as each life reaches its frayed or shortcut ending. She could hear the treadle of the loom knocking in her ears—but that was her heartbeat.…No, it was surely a loom, working secretly at its business; and every knock of it brought her nearer to the end of her own thread of breath that was drawn yonder closer and closer with every rise and fall of her breast; and finally it would be cut, as she cut free the threads of a web of homespun, and wove the loose fringe of warp threads that were left on the loom beam into a thrum towel with tassels tied along its lower edge. She had lost her breath, Lonzo had told her, when Zilfey was born, and he gave her his own breath; mayhap that cut his breath short so that now he was in his grave, two year since, before ever he was old enough to die. Still, there would be found her lost breath in all her living children, for they had drawn it from her as they were born; each child cut her own breath short by that much. The more children a woman bears, the sooner she dies. Now her first little twins had never been able to catch their breath from her, since she had murdered them in her heart long ago; for the seed of a woman’s waiting children lie in her body from the day she is born, and she must watch that her head nor her hand nor her heart do them no hurt till they come to their birth, each in turn; that is why a woman-child must be purer in heart than a male child may be, careful of her body, holy in her mind, for she bears within her the seeds of souls, like a green seed-pod that will ripen in time and scatter itself before it dries and dies and is empty.

  The knocking of the loom in her ears, the weariness of her body, the labor of much long-thinking, were like to drive Cean out of her right mind.

  Margot tried to cheer her; her children hung over her bed; but she would not rise nor eat nor do anything that they asked her to do. She let them take Maggie and bury her yonder in Pa’s buryin’-ground, and would not even rise from her bed to go and hear the last words said over her child. She stormed hard words at little Will Sandifer who had brought this on Maggie and had stood about like a dolt while Maggie was dying. Lonzo would have done differently, thought Cean; Pa would have done differently; Jasper or Jake or Lias would have done differently. This was no man, but a spindle-shanked child, that Maggie had married, for he laid his empty hands against his face and cried like a woman.

  Dermid O’Connor came and prayed over Cean because Margot asked him to. He set all the others out of the room, and spoke to Cean as though he were a warning angel from God. But he talked to the back of her head, for she had turned her face to the wall and shut her ears to his words. Well she knew that Margot had sent Cal for him.

  His words fell slowly; she listened because he spoke so low:

  “Cean Smith…’tis yours and Godalmighty’s business, the settlin’ o’ this matter. Another human has no business a-comin’ atwixt the two o’ ye. But a sarvint o’ His’n that takes a powerful interest in the peace o’ yere sowl can bid ye to take on yere showlders inny burthen that He chooses to lay there. They’re plinty sthrong, Cean Smith, yere showlders. ’Tis a woman that ye are, such as God but rarely chooses to make up. ’Tis top place I’d be a-givin’ ye. Yere plinty sthrong to bear this, yere plinty able. ’Tis only yere heart that’s a-wearied and a-tired, but mind ye, He told ye a long while sincet, ‘Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy-laden—and I will give ye rest….’”

  Silence fell; Cean went on listening through the silence.

  “Yere eyes were not meant to laugh all the while, Cean Smith. ’Tis grievin’ that makes the eyes o’ a woman deep with understandin’ and sweet with the love o’ God. Me mother was o’ Catholic faith. She prayed to Mary, Mother o’ God, and found comfort for her sowl when she lost a son at sea, and another in the war with Bonaparte. Meditatin’ on Mary comforted her grievin’. I buried her one day. I doubt not this very mornin’ she and Mary be a-sittin ’Yonder Some’eres a-talkin’ over the little boys that the two o’ them washed and kissed and buried in this world. ’Tis Mary maybe ye’d better think on. Ye’re child was not crucified in shame. Kneel at the foot o’ yere cross, ye that are only another little Mary, and God will give ye comfort, too.…Cannot ye turn yere eyes thisaway whilst I say a little prayer fer ye?”

  His voice dropped nighonto a whisper as he entreated her as he might entreat a hurt child.

  She said:

  “God’s forgot that ever I lived…He’s forgot…and He never cared, nohow….”

  He smoothed her brown, rough-palmed hand; he held her hands to keep her from jerking herself away from his admonishing: “Oh, ’tis not true, the words yere a-sayin’, Cean Smith; and well ye know it. Never does He forget a child o’ His’n. ’Tis His children that forget that He is rememberin’. Get on yere knees and climb on them up to the shelter o’ His arms. Knock on His ears with yere prayers. Creep into His arms, Cean Smith, and lay yere head on His bosom, and He’ll hold ye closer than inny man ye ever love can ever hold ye. He’ll lay His hand on yere head and ye’ll stop yere restless fightin’ against His will. He’ll shut yere pitiful little mouth from complainin’ against Him. Ye’ll hush and be comforted….”

  She dared him to prove his saying:

  “Then pray fer Him to do them things fer me!”

  He prayed; and when he had finished, Cean’s will was as water to God’s will, and Cean’s tears were softening and healing to her heart.

  O’Connor parted from her with the words:

  “Rest yereself, Cean Smith, and pull yereself t’gether. ’Tis others ye must think on, and not all yereself. There be others that be thinking on ye when ye don’t know it. Whin all this grief has lessened, I mind me o’ a question I’d like to put to
ye for ye to think on....”

  Cean began to mull over what that question might be before little Levie Pleasant, dead Maggie’s girl-child, was three months old. But other griefs intervened between that question and Cean. Bloody flux carried off Levie Pleasant and Cean’s own last baby, Zilfey, in the spring of ’sixty.

  Early in May, Dicie went off in the night, from heart failure; Cean found her stone-dead early one morning, with her eyes staring at the ceiling, and her hands hard in rigor mortis on her chest.

  Cean stood these griefs far better than she had stood Maggie’s death, for through them she leaned hard upon Godalmighty and Dermid O’Connor.

  The brush arbor was hardly big enough to hold all the folks who came from round about to hear O’Connor preach on Sundays.

  Cean sat on a narrow plank with her children ranged on the right and left of her. Willow baskets were in her cart, full of good things for the dinner on the grounds.

  Dermid O’Connor would eat no pickles or preserves but her own, and would so make her feel faint from blushing. As he preached, she would lean forward, and all his sermons seemed messages for her alone—words which the others could never understand. His words fell into her heart and lay there for later remembering; she turned them about and gloated over them as one gloats in secret over precious letters from a loved one far yonder.

  Wagons and road carts, oxen and mules, and sometimes a bushy-tailed horse hitched to a swinging limb were halted all about the brush arbor church. The animals stamped their hooves and switched their tails at flies that settled on their flanks in the drowsy heat. Away from the brush arbor leaves of the trees murmured a little in a breath of air; and a louder murmur of a man’s voice preached heaven and the remission of sin, hell and sin’s sure punishment. He was preaching the glory of the “New Light” that falls into the minds and hearts of men when they seek God carefully with tears and prayers. “And as he journeyed, he came near Damascus; and suddenly there shined round about him a light from heaven….”

  Last year’s oak leaves and pine-needles lay thick on the sandy ground that was marked by hooves of animals and feet of men and women. The brush arbor sat in the midst of the wilderness on a sandy slope above a sweet-water spring not far from the crossways of three trails of the settlement. Its sloping roof of thatched palmetto fans was reared high on cypress poles; planks were ranged on wooden blocks, forming rows of seats for all who would come; the rostrum was a tall cypress gum with a puncheon seat behind it for the preacher of God. At the left of the rostrum there was a water-shelf holding a water-piggin filled with water from the spring, and a drinking-gourd. Through the preaching little children would come for water, and go back down the wide aisle, and rustle softly across their mothers’ knees to their places.

  Dermid O’Connor’s church was formed from this beginning.

  In time a weather-boarded house was set up; the boards were riven from logs and dressed down with a builder’s adze. Elders were elected from the assembled congregation by common acclaim, and rules of church order were formulated and penned by Dermid O’Connor into a church record.

  By common usage, the church came to be called Sweetwater Church. O’Connor left the name at that, and preached a sermon on how one might come to this house of God and drink of sweet living water to quench the bitter-salt thirst that sin leaves in the soul.

  The rules which the elders formulated were read for the first time on a first Sunday of July. O’Connor stood before a pine table which had a drawer in which to keep the record and the quill and the ink-horn; he read the rules slowly and solemnly, letting each rule sink into the minds of the people, so that each man and woman might hear and judge if he wished to become a member of this congregation:

  1.There shall be no whispering nor show of disrespect within this church, nor fighting nor use of profane language on the grounds thereof.

  2.There shall be no taking by stealth of any article that is another’s, by any member of this church, whether it be a house, a wife, a water-piggin, or a shoat, or any other thing.

  3. There shall be no swapping of horses on Sabbath Days, nor wagoning save to and from the house of God.

  4. There shall be no getting out of temper nor acting un-Christian-like.

  5. There shall be no shows, nor vain display of things of this world.

  6. There shall be no corrupting of the soul by sins of the flesh.

  7. One member may accuse another member and bring a grievance before the congregation that shall try him openly for his sin; but such accusation shall be made only to the glory of God and the redemption of an immortal soul; in such case, the congregation may appoint a committee to wait upon a malefactor.

  8. When a member has conscious guilt of sin within his soul, he shall by his own compulsion rise before the congregation, accuse himself, express contrition, and be forgiven by God and man.

  9. No member shall be admitted to communion with this congregation save by earnest confession of faith in God, and the witness of the spirit.

  When the rules were read, O’Connor preached a powerful sermon on “Repent ye!” The very air stilled at the recital of the visitation of the wrath of God upon brazen sinners. O’Connor told of that day when the moon shall turn to blood and the sun shall become black as sackcloth of hair, and the earth and sea shall heave up their dead, and sons of men shall flee and pray for the rocks to fall upon them and hide them from the wrath of Godalmighty, who shall have borne with sins of men till He wearies and takes His revenge.

  Little children hid their faces in their mothers’ laps, and strong men trembled, as O’Connor read the dreadful words, awful by reason of their truth, from the Word of God, and expounded them for the salvation of lost souls.

  O’Connor opened the doors of his new church and commanded the people to fall on their knees, elders and all alike, and pray for a sign that God had forgiven their sins, that He would take them within this church whose members would be caught up in that great day of wrath, safe from the belching flames of hell, safe from walking pestilences and plagues that shall besiege the earth when the vials in the angels’ hands are emptied and the beast riseth out of the sea to make war upon the saints.

  “On yere knees, for ‘tis black with sin ye are!” the preacher shouted.

  And they fell on their knees.

  There rose from the plank benches murmurs of the voices of terror-stricken souls, and the whimpering of babies whose mothers ignored their children’s hunger in their own greater hunger after righteousness, in their fear of eternal damnation.

  They labored in prayer, as the preacher had told them to do, for a sign that their prayers were heard and their sins forgiven. On that Sunday, dinner was not spread till the sun was low in the west, for souls were seeking entrance to this new church; their names on its roll would admit them to Glory when this world goes up in fire.

  Many mothers went home without the blessing, for their thoughtless children at their knees kept them from seeking with all their hearts as a soul must do. But there were many who fought their way through and found glory in their grasp; one by one they laid their hands in the preacher’s hand, confessed their sins, and asked entrance to this church, and cleansing baptism under water.

  Margot was among those who confessed their sins this first day.

  She stood before the congregation with the horror of hell set on her face, and confessed her sins of twenty-year-and-more gone, and later sins of not so long ago—her love for Jasper while she grieved after Lias, and the sin of Jasper’s child. All the country round about knew of this last sin, but none blamed Margot nor Jasper; no man knew but that Lias was dead when she married Jasper. But no soul that heard Margot confess knew of her sins of twenty-year gone. An awful hush fell upon them; so this good woman had a heart dyed black in sin; all the while she was carrying about a load of sin in her breast! No wonder God had visited sorrow upon her. Their faces hardened, judging her sorrow just and her heart mean and hard. But Jasper dropped his head in his hands and groa
ned like a death-struck bull. Little Sully tugged at his mother’s skirts as she stood in defiant shame, easing her soul of its load; the child was troubled and wept because his mother was troubled and wept. But Vincent, son of Lias, and now nigh eighteen year old, did not weep, but hung his head and could have died for pity that he felt for his sweet mother.

  But for all the belated peace in her heart, Margot never again held her head proud and tall as was her old way; never again would she meet a body’s eyes when she spoke, but dropped her own glance nigh onto the low hem of her dress; rarely did she speak save when she was spoken to.

  Neither did she fear Lias’s coming now. Lias was a thing that she had lived past, with pain and length of time and patience, as Seen Carver used to say that a woman must do with some things.

  Bliss Corwin, now a thin-bodied, ashy-faced little woman, accused herself before the congregation, and was forgiven of her heinous crimes of many years gone. Bliss was an old, dried-up woman, nigh onto forty year old. People said that she was light in her head, and her own mother would not deny it; for Bliss was forever holding converse with the guineas or teaching an adder to know her. Under her mother’s front step there lived an old frog that Bliss fed night and morning as though it were a beast. When any comer appeared, Bliss made it to the crib or the woods, and no persuasion could make her come out to talk with a body. Long ago she had begun to drop her eyes before other eyes, and to murmur meekly when she spoke.

  She made her confession with her eyes set on Dermid O’Connor’s feet. Her face had the look of a child in it, though age-wrinkles were thick across it. Mayhap her confession made changes in her; it is not given to curious, eagle-sharp eyes to see into the placid or turbulent hide-outs of the heart.

  When she was through speaking she stood for a little minute with all her body trembling with the beating of her heart. Dermid O’Connor said, “God bless you, sister!” and all the elders breathed “A-men.” Then Bliss hurried down the aisle and ran to her father’s cart, for she was sick. She lay for a while on a quilt in the back of the cart, but soon she lifted her head and spilled her breakfast over the cartwheel.