Dermid O’Connor began to feel a fearsome doubt: Mayhap I do wrong to ask these people to turn their hearts wrong side out for all the people to see. It is not meet for a minister to come between any soul and its God….
But he could not think how to mend matters now. Truth is, he had not deemed these simple people to be so deep-dyed in sin.
Cean confessed her sins with her eyes set steadfastly on a trembling scrub-oak tree that showed through an open shutter: she had acted un-Christian-like a thousand times; she had fought against Godalmighty’s will in her life; she had ever loved her loved ones’ bodies more than their souls; she had lived selfishly, thinking more of her own woes than of the griefs of another; and she was ever hoping for peace and rest and happiness in this present world before she reached heaven—which cannot be. Her own mother had confessed this last sin many times, Cean said; Cean was thribbly guilty of it.
As Cean confessed, Aryadne and Bethany sniffled into her skirts. They could not understand what their mother’s words meant, but it seemed a sad thing to weep over.
Cean told the congregation that yet, for all her praying, she had no witness of the spirit to relate, but she would pray on; and she asked for their prayers.
She sat down with blood storming in her ears, and breaths short in her chest. Never before in all her life had she said so much without halting.
Two days later the witness of the spirit came to Cean after she had fasted two days and nights till she puked from emptiness. She had sworn to take no food into her body until Godalmighty should give her a sign. Through her fast she kept her thoughts on heaven, she prayed unceasingly, she repented of her many sins with tears.
On the second night she got the blessing, the seal of God’s approval. Never did she doubt that it was a vision that came to her in her sleep….
She was walking across a swampy place where her feet sank into warm muck that oozed pleasantly between her toes. A red bird sat on her shoulder and sharpened his beak on her ear that was become white, new bone like that which sprouts from a heifer’s skull. Undergrowth and swinging tendrils of vines grew so thick before her that she could not see the place to which she was hastening; it lay yonder beyond, pulling her feet toward it. The red bird, ever whetting his bill on her ears that were of horn like a heifer’s, flew about her head and settled in her hair, and blinded her eyes with red from his wings. Then slowly, out of the muck, her toes that had been bare flesh showed bone gray like a heifer’s hooves. Inside herself she felt bones bulging and crowding and falling loosely together, so that she was that weak that she was like to fall from faintness. And ever the red bird dartled about her head, and alighted upon her toes, and struck his soft, feathery blows about her body. Then the red bird troubled her no more.…She was walking up a green slope, and her body was feather-light, so that walking was no labor. She knew herself to be beautiful and strange-appearing, for where her limbs had been there were left only bones shaped in the shape of her former body, molded of cloudlike, shining substance, soft to the touch, and more pleasant to behold than words can tell. Her flesh had fallen away in the red bird’s beak. But this was she in pearly raiment that was not flesh, but bone, that was not bone, but some other substance. Never at any time in all her life was Cean able to describe that substance. She walked, swift and light as wind’s passing, over the green grass to a place where children were playing under an apple tree that was laden with blossoms and fruit, so that every heavy bough was smothered in bloom, so that apple-fruit fell in a bright, soft storm all about her head and crowded under her feet until she could not walk, but must float above the ground cluttered with fair fruitage. The oldest child that was playing there was Mary Magnolia, white of body like Cean and formed of smooth and lovely flesh such as magnolia blossoms wear: She bore in her arms a small, white child whom she called Levie Pleasant. There were with her other children, white as the moon and as softly bright: there was Caty, with a smile on her mouth; there were naked twin boy-children who caught Cean’s feet in their bright hands and pulled her out of the air that gleamed like an opal, down to the green grass. The twin boy-children whispered to Cean their names—Timothy and Titus—and Titus was the more beautiful, if they could be said to differ….
The vision broke, and Cean rose in the night and broke her fast with cold cornbread and fried meat. Her prayers were answered, and in no ordinary fashion; she had seen heaven before she died, a vision commonly granted only to saints.
Now that her soul’s salvation was attended to, Cean took a smart set and caught up with her work in the fields.
And O’Connor started in to court her in earnest.
He did not ask her outright to wed him. He sent her an album by the children—a thing that he had bought at the Coast last fall and had penned full of tender verses for Cean Smith. The verses had come out of his head, telling her of his love. Cean’s heart fluttered over each verse, like she was sixteen:
Whose fair face lights my deepest dream
With light celestial, Pure.
But day shall have no sunlight Beam
Until that I am Your
Dermid.
Cean had never seen a swan, and well she knew that her neck was noways like a swan’s; but one verse read:
A swan’s Neck Graceful is as well.
And sweet the Turtle-Dove.
But brings no word that Any Tell
of one likeYou to Love
With all my Heart.
She had learned all the verses by rote long before he came up the slope between the showering pink of the crepe myrtles to ask if it may have happed that she had come into possession of a little book that was sent her by an unknown party. She sent the children away to chop and tote firewood. She smiled to herself, and feigned ignorance of any such book, until he thought a prank had been played upon him and felt himself a monstrous-big fool. Gloom settled upon his clean, naked face with its short fringe of brown beard. Then she laughed at him:
“Ye be a mighty foolish man, Dermid O’Connor, if ye believe anything a woman tells ye!”
He laid his hands on her shoulders, and retreating from his nearness, her head pressed into a branch of crepe myrtle and shook free a little shower of blossoms that fell upon her head and his head as he kissed her mouth that had the sorrow-wrinkles set about it and the weight of years pulling it down. They stood in the midst of the low tree that was full of plumes of puckered blooms that fall if a breeze but shake them a little—much less the leaning of two strong bodies—that smell a little like four-o’clock flowers, that are thinner than butterflies’ wings, softer to the touch than a bumblebee’s worsted garb, sweeter as they fall than any other flower even as it buds.
He laid her head upon his breast and did not note that the hair upon it was nearly white. Cean did not remember, either, under the drifting tide of blossoms and green leaves as she leaned against the clean trunk of her crepe myrtle tree with her head on the breast of the minister of Godalmighty. The touch of his naked lips on her mouth was a sweeter, more comforting thing than any sermon he had ever preached. Here was a new sacrament—a new way of tasting bread and wine for the remission of pain and death.
Then she turned her face fearfully up to Dermid O’Connor’s.
“Dermid O’Connor! Hit mought be a sin fer me to find such pleasure in yore kissin’ me! Hit mought be carnality, moughtn’t hit?”
He laughed, with his eyes shooting blue fire upon her:
“’Twould be a mighty shame if that were true. But we must gower through this world as best we may. Mayhap Godalmighty forgives carnality if we be ashamed for it.…’Tis foriver kissin’ and repentin’ I’ll be….”
Cean felt the nigh like a fool on her second marriage-day, in August. For Margot would have her garbed in frilled pantalets under her wide-skirted, full-gathered white frock. Cean could not get used to the feel of the pantalets all up and down betwixt her legs.
To be fancy, Margot set a dish of pick-tooths in the center of the table at the bridal party, and
there was much laughing and cleaning of teeth when dinner was done.
And the press of Dermid’s mouth upon Cean’s lips, against her neck, within the blue-veined inner curve of her elbow, made her forget that ever her mouth had wept, that ever her shoulders had bent under sorrow like a tree under a storm, that ever her arms had ached with being full of love for a dead body—for now her arms were filled again.
Chapter 22
With her new name Cean had taken upon herself a new life that was different from the other two lives that she had lived under her other two names.
Cean Carver was a pyeart, shy-mouthed, swift-fingered helper to her mother, and a nurse to Jake, and a pupil of her father’s tutoring; Cean Carver was a girl-child of unexpressed fancies and long imaginings.
Cean Smith was a woman that Lonzo Smith made from a brown child that had no more sense than to let a rattlesnake bite her when she was growing the dark bud that was to be Mary Magnolia, sweet as a white tree-flower and dead now as the magnolia blooms of year before last; Cean Smith was shut-mouthed instead of shy-mouthed, and browner and swifter of finger than was Cean Carver. She would slap the jaws of a child that did not mind her; she could make up her mind in the flick of an eyelash, and stick to it for the rest of her life. Cean Smith made her children keep their teeth clean with fire coals and salt swabbed on a chewed sweet-gum twig; their bodies must be clean and sweet-smelling before they got into their beds at night; before they fell asleep, they must say their grateful prayers, thanking God that they were still alive, though heaven was a wondrous happy place. Cean Smith was sensible and careful in all her ways.
Cean Carver learned of her mother how to keep a house and how to tend a child and gave her knowledge to Lonzo Smith’s wife. Cean Smith learned of Godalmighty how to bear a grief without complaining, and passed that knowledge, like a secret gift, to the woman that married Dermid O’Connor.
Cean O’Connor was the object of gentle envy among other women of the Sweetwater Settle-mint. The New Light religion had come upon them like a bright light, and those who had not yet the witness of the sperrit were wrastling like Jacob of old for it. Now, Cean Smith had been chosen to step into that holy of holies that was the preacher’s life. None doubted that he was a true minister of God, that his way of preaching was The Way, The Truth, and The Life. None doubted that he would see Glory, though they might fall short of it; for he was a good and wise man, gentle in all his ways, kind in his judgments, patient in all his ministering. Now, Cean Smith was to live with him as wife, feeding his hunger, knitting his stockings, greasing his boots, quilting his bed-covering.
From the day when he married, the preacher fell a little way from grace in the eyes of his church; he was not now the Christlike saint with his eyes set on heaven, for he had taken to himself a woman to comfort him, and she was his first wife, though he was fifty-one come October, by his own admission. Never again did he seem so holy-minded, so set apart in God’s service, after the day when he said his own marriage words over himself and Cean Smith. Never again did the laying-on of his hands upon the heads of the women so move them as a witness of the Indwelling of the Holy Spirit. For now he was Cean Smith’s husband.
Cean was a good wife to him. She rubbed the silver communion chalice and the pewter plate until they shone. Each Sabbath morning she had Dermid’s articles of service ready for him when he was shaven and ready to ride to the church—tuning-fork, psalm-book, Holy Word. She learned history from Dermid’s lips and could tell you all about the great revival of eighteen hundred, and greater farther-back revivals than that one. She knew to keep her lips close shut-to when some woman came to the house in a pet, telling of the scandalous life which this or that church member was leading. Always Cean let the matter come to Dermid’s ears from another tongue than her own. But he never was swayed by idle gossip; never would he accuse a member, nor allow an elder to do it. By the power of God in his sermons Dermid forced a sinner to accuse himself. He pulled quietly on a sinner’s heart, preaching around and about and over and under the sinner’s misdoing, and never flinging a hard word straight into his face; then he would swing a tune into a swelling call to prayer—for he could pitch a tune as well by ear as with a tuning-fork—and the sinner would come stumbling down the aisle and, grasping Dermid’s hand, he would pour out his confession before the whole congregation. Such a confession is good for the healing of a man’s soul; a carbuncle will never heal till it be opened.
O’Connor set apart the first Sabbath of each month to be a Love Feast Day. On that day the converts gave their experiences—new light on some passage of Scripture, the strengthening of some weak sister’s faith, homely instances of God’s mercy and understanding and answers to prayer: Old Mis’ Autrey lost her gold thimble on a Wednesday, and prayed to God to help her find it, and, lo! when she raised her face from between her hands on the bed, there lay the thimble where her face had been; Sallie M’Namara was sifting flour for biscuit when it came to her what The Word meant when it said “pressed down and running over.” Each testimony was offered in humility to God’s eternal glory; Dermid O’Connor approved each witness of God with a gentle nod and a fervent “God bless you.”
Cean could never testify, and it was a shame to her. Godalmighty had gone away from her when Dermid O’Connor came close. She could not think hard on Dermid’s sermons on the Isle of Patmos, or Calvary, for as the words came out from his clean face, she remembered the touch of his naked mouth. And that was a heinous sin, for she was forty-and-two and a grandmother three times over. (For Kissie now had twin girls named Evaline and Angeline.) Many a time as she sat under Dermid’s preaching, her conscience would nudge her, saying, “Rise up! Confess before them all that you are yet full of carnality, though you be now an old woman. That the preacher is your husband is all the more reason why you should empty your heart of sin?”
But she would sit unmoved, asking God for mercy, knowing full well that mercy comes after repentance, never before. This was another thing to mull over in the night, long after Dermid was snoring close by her shoulder.
When she knew that she would bear a child on the same moon with Kissie’s next, she was so ashamed that she cried, and would not tell Dermid for a week. When he knew, he would not let her grieve, but chided her, laughing, and kissed her face and called her his darlin’, but she could pay him no mind for thinking: This Dermid needs to have his mind on God’s Word, and not on a woman. I betrayed him away from The Truth. Anyhow, what will I do in Glory, if ever I manage to git there, with two men a-standin’ a-waitin’ fer me?
But the very next Sabbath Day, Dermid preached such a sermon on “The Witness of the Spirit” as Cean had never heard fall from his lips. She looked for God to strike him dead in the pulpit, but God did not, and from that time on she looked to die in childbed where this child of Dermid’s would bring her in no time.
The strangest fancies beset her, so that Dermid grew ever more gentle with her, and ever more anxious in the face. Through the days she had heartburn and sour stomach; through the nights she had visions. One vision came to her which she would much have liked to tell; but the congregation might think that she was taking airs upon herself now that she was the preacher’s wife. But she could think on that vision, and so forget any earthly worry, for she had seen Heaven.…Alabaster walls encompassed Heaven about, walls that were as tall as the skies of the earth that she had left below. Morning-glories clambered in green fountains on all the alabaster walls. And their trumpet-mouths of blood-red and thun-dery-blue and moon-white and winecolor and cinnabar—oh, all the mouths of all the colored trumpet-flowers—blew music through the vast breadth of Heaven. But that music did not blare and break upon the ears as does earthly sound; no, that music was soundless and airy; more, it was the air of Heaven, as wind is the air of earth. The very angels breathed music and it was life to them. But Cean could hear the music that had no sound, as could God and all the saints. She had new hearing; her former hearing had passed away. Past fleshy comprehension wa
s that music compounded of brassy, gay notes of red flower-mouths, muted melody of dusky blue blooms, thin tribble of flaunting white blossoms, and heavy bass of winecolored ones, and those of cinnabar. Cean could hear that music yet; though the mouths made no sound, yet they filled all the white vaults of the Glory-World with praise: Holy-Holy-Holy!
After that vision, Cean confessed her sense of sin to Dermid. He laughed at her sense of sin. She said:
“What sort of a place might heaven be, Dermid?”
She meant to draw him on. If his answer suited her, she would tell him of her vision. But his mouth filled with argument, and he harangued that heaven was not such a place as mortal man would make it out to be. Only spirits dwelt in heaven, he said. Cean would have none of that, for well she knew that never would she care to strive for heaven if, once there, she could not stroke Dermid’s very cheek (and Lonzo’s beard, but she said nothing of that to Dermid), if there she would not see the white scar in Maggie’s hand where Maggie had sliced it through once, long ago, as she helped her Ma cook breakfast. How was Cean to know little Caty in heaven if she could not look into her child’s cloudy blue eyes nor fondle her soft, fat hands?
Dermid convinced her in long arguments that there is no heaven save a spiritual heaven. Former things shall have passed away, he said. He showed her that she could not have a heaven for the bodies of her loved ones by wishing for it. So she lost her heaven, and she grieved more for it than for any other loss that she had known, for Cean’s heaven would have made all things right. Her sense of loss brought fresh upon her grief for those of hers who were dead, and other grief for those of hers who were yet living; for if she would not again see these children, as they now were, once they were dead, then it behooved her to grieve for them now, since they would so soon be spirits, unrecognizable and alien to their mother’s heart. And it was so with Dermid and herself; when one of them should leave the other in this world, it would be without hope of a good-morrow on another day. So she went about grieving as Dermid’s child grew heavy; and every day that it grew, it reminded her—the thing that is born, it shall die!
Lamb in His Bosom Page 31
