The End of the World: A Love Story

  CHAPTER XXXI.

  CYNTHY ANN'S SACRIFICE.

  Jonas had been all his life, as he expressed it in his mixed rhetoric,"a wanderin' sand-hill crane, makin' many crooked paths, and, like thecards in French monte, a-turnin' up suddently in mighty on-expectedplaces." He had been in every queer place from Halifax to Texas, andthen had come back to his home again. Naturally cautious, and especiallysuspicious of the female sex, it is not strange that he had not married.Only when he "tied up to the same w'arf-boat alongside of Cynthy Ann, hethought he'd found somebody as was to be depended on in a fog or aharricane." This he told to Cynthy Ann as a reason why she should accepthis offer of marriage.

  "Jonas," said Cynthy Ann, "don't flatter. My heart is dreadful weak, andprone to the vanities of this world. It makes me abhor myself in dustand sackcloth fer you to say such things about poor unworthy me."

  "Ef I think 'em, why shouldn't I say 'em? I don't know no law agintellin' the truth ef you git into a place where you can't no ways helpit. I don't call you angel, fer you a'n't; you ha'nt got no wings norfeathers. I don't say as how as you're pertikeler knock-down handsome.I don't pertend that you're a spring chicken. I don't lie nor flatter. Ia'n't goin' it blind, like young men in love. But I do say, with my eyesopen and in my right senses, and feelin' solemn, like a man a-makin' hislast will and testament, that they a'n't no sech another woman to befound outside the leds of the Bible betwixt the Bay of Fundy and the RioGrande. I've 'sought round this burdened airth,' as the hymn says, andthey a'n't but jest one. Ef that one'll jest make me happy, I'll fold myweary pinions and settle down in a rustic log-cabin and raise corn andpotaters till death do us part."

  Cynthy trembled. Cynthy was a saint, a martyr to religious feeling, amedieval nun in her ascetic eschewing of the pleasures of life. ButCynthy Ann was also a woman. And a woman whose spring-time had paused.When love buds out thus late, when the opportunity for the woman'snature to blossom comes unexpectedly upon one at her age, the temptationis not easily resisted. Cynthy trembled, but did not quite yield up herChristian constancy.

  "Jonas, I don't know whether I'd orto or not. I don't deny--I think I'dbetter ax brother Goshorn, you know, sence what would it profit ef Igained you or any joy in this world, and then come short by settin' youup fer a idol in my heart? I don't know whether a New Light is aonbeliever or not, and whether I'd be onequally yoked or not. I must axthem as knows better nor I do."

  "Well, ef I'm a onbeliever, they's nobody as could teach me to believequicker'n you could. I never did believe much in women folks till Ibelieved in you."

  "But that's the sin of it, Jonas. I'd believe in you, and you'd believein me, and we'd be puttin' our trust in the creatur instid of theCreator, and the Creator is mighty jealous of our idols, and He wouldtake us away fer idolatry."

  "No, but I wouldn't worship you, though I'd rather worship you thananybody else ef I was goin' into the worshipin' business. But you see Ia'n't, honey. I wouldn't sacrifice to you no lambs nor sheep, I wouldn'tpray to you, nor I wouldn't kiss your shoes, like people does thePope's. An' I know you wouldn't make no idol of me like them Greek godsthat Andrew's got picters of. I a'n't handsome enough by a long shot fera Jupiter or a 'Pollo. An' I tell you, Cynthy, 'tain't no sin to love.Love is the fullfilling of the law."

  But Cynthy Ann persisted that she must consult Brother Goshorn, theantiquated class-leader at the cross-roads. Brother Goshorn was a goodman, but Jonas had a great contempt for him. He was a strainer out ofgnats, though I do not think he swallowed camels. He always stood at thedoor of the love-feast and kept out every woman with jewelry, every girlwho had an "artificial" in her bonnet, every one who wore curls, everyman whose hair was beyond what he considered the regulation length ofScripture, and every woman who wore a veil. In support of this lastprohibition he quoted Isaiah iii, 23: "The glasses and the fine linenand the hoods and the veils."

  To him Cynthy Ann presented the case with much trepidation. All herhopes for this world hung upon it. But this consideration did notgreatly affect Brother Goshorn. Hopes and joys were as nothing to himwhere the strictness of discipline was involved. The Discipline meantmore to a mind of his cast than the Decalogue or the Beatitudes. Heshook his head. He did not know. He must consult Brother Hall. Now,Brother Hall was the young preacher traveling his second year, veryyoung and very callow. Ten years of the sharp attritions of a Methodistitinerant's life would take his unworldliness out of him and develop hispractical sense as no other school in the world could develop it. But asyet Brother Hall had not rubbed off any of his sanctimoniousness, hadnot lost any of his belief that the universe should be governed on highgeneral principles with no exceptions.

  So when Brother Goshorn informed him that one of his members, SisterCynthy Ann Dyke, wished to marry, and to marry a man that was a NewLight, and had asked his opinion, and that he did not certainly knowwhether New Lights were believers or not, Brother Hall did not stop toinquire what Jonas might be personally. He looked and felt very solemn,and said that it was a pity for a Christian to marry a New Light. It wasclearly a sin, for a New Light was an Arian. And an Arian was just asgood as an infidel. An Arian robbed Christ of His supreme deity, andsince he did not worship the Trinity in the orthodox sense he mustworship a false god. He was an idolater therefore, and it was a sin tobe yoked together with such an one.

  Many men more learned than the callow but pious and sincere Brother Hallhave left us in print just such deductions.

  When this decision was communicated to the scrupulous Cynthy Ann, shefolded her hopes as one lays away the garment of a dead friend; she westto her little room and prayed; she offered a sacrifice to God not lesscostly than Abraham's, and in a like sublime spirit. She watered theplant In the old cracked blue-and-white tea-pot, she noticed that it wasjust about to bloom, and then she dropped one tear upon it, and becauseit suggested Jonas in some way, she threw it away, resolved not to haveany idols in her heart. And, doubtless, God received the sacrifice,mistaken and needless as it was, a token of the faithfulness of herheart to her duty as she understood it.

  CYNTHY ANN'S SACRIFICE.]

  Cynthy Ann explained it all to Jonas in a severe and irrevocable way.Jonas looked at her a moment, stunned.

  "Did Brother Goshorn venture to send me any of his wisdom, in the way ofadvice, layin' round loose, like counterfeit small change, cheapas dirt?"

  "Well, yes," said Cynthy Ann, hesitating.

  "I'll bet the heft of my fortin', to be paid on receipt of the amount,that I kin tell to a T what the good Christian wanted me to do."

  "Don't be oncharitable, Jonas. Brother Goshorn is a mighty sincere man."

  "So he is, but his bein' sincere don't do me no good. He wanted you toadvise me to jine the Methodist class as a way of gittin' out of thedifficulty. And you was too good a Christian to ask me to change fer anysech reason, knowin' I wouldn't be fit for you ef I did."

  Cynthy Ann was silent. She would have liked to have Jonas join thechurch with her, but if he had done it now she herself would havedoubted his sincerity.

  "Now, looky here, Cynthy, ef you'll say you don't love me, and nevercan, I'll leave you to wunst, and fly away and mourn like a turtle-dove.But so long as it's nobody but Goshorn, I'm goin' to stay and litigatethe question till the Millerite millennium comes. I appeal to Caeesar orsomebody else. Neither Brother Goshorn nor Brother Hall knows enough tosettle this question. I'm agoin' to the persidin' elder. And you can'ttry a man and hang him and then send him to the penitentiary fer therest of his born days without givin' him one chance to speak fer hisselfagin the world and everybody else. I'm goin' to see the persidin' eldermyself and plead my own cause, and ef he goes agin me, I'll carry it upto the bishop or the archbishop or the nex' highest man in the heap,till I git plum to the top, and ef they all go agin me, I'll begin overagin at the bottom with Brother Goshorn, and keep on till I find a manthat's got common-sense enough to salt his religion with."