The End of the World: A Love Story

  CHAPTER XXXVII.

  THE DELUGE.

  The indescribable deluge! But, after all, the worst of anything of thatsort is the moment before it begins. A plunge-bath, a tooth-pulling, anamputation, and a dress-party are all worse in anticipation than in themoment of infliction. Julia, as she stood busily sticking a pin in thewindow-sash, waiting for her mother to begin, wished that the stormmight burst, and be done with it. But Mrs. Anderson understood herbusiness too well for that. She knew the value of the awful moments ofsilence before beginning. She had not practiced all her life withoutlearning the fine art of torture in its exquisite details. I doubt notthe black-robed fathers of the Holy Office were leisurely gentlemen,giving their victims plenty of time for anticipatory meditation, layingout their utensils quietly, inspecting the thumb-screw affectionately tomake sure that it would work smoothly, discussing the rack and wheelwith much tender forethought, as though torture were a sweet thing, tobe reserved like a little girl's candy lamb, and only resorted to whenthe appetite has been duly whetted by contemplation. I never had thepleasure of knowing an inquisitor, and I can not certify that they wereof this deliberate fashion. But it "stands to nature" that they were.For the vixens who are vixens of the highest quality, are alwaysdeliberate.

  Mrs. Anderson felt that the piece of invective which she was about toundertake, was not to be taken in hand unadvisedly, "but reverently,discreetly, and in the fear of God." And so she paused, and Juliafumbled the tassel of the window-curtain, and trembled with the chill ofexpectation. And Mrs. Abigail continued to debate how she might makethis, which would doubtless be her last outburst before the day ofjudgment, her masterpiece--worthy song of the dying swan. And then shehoped, she sincerely hoped, to be able by this awful _coup de main_ toawaken Julia to a sense of her sinfulness. For there was such a jumbleof mixed motives in her mind, that one could never distinguish hersincerity from her hypocrisy.

  Mrs. Anderson's conscience was quite an objective one. As Jonas oftenremarked, "she had a feelin' sense of other folkses unworthiness." Andthe sins which she appreciated were generally sins against herself.Julia's disobedience to herself was darker in her mind than murdercommitted on anybody else would have been. And now she sat deliberating,not on the limit of the verbal punishment she meant to inflict--thatgave her no concern--but on her ability to do the matter justice. Evenas a tyrannical backwoods school-master straightens his long beech-rodrelishfully before applying it.

  Not that Mrs. Anderson was silent all this time. She was sighing andgroaning in a spasmodic devotion. She was "seeking strength from aboveto do her whole duty," she would have told you. She was "agonizing" inprayer for her daughter, and she contrived that her stage-whisperpraying should now and then reach the ears of its devoted object.Humphreys remained seated, pretending to read the copy of "Josephus,"but watching the coming storm with the interest of a connoisseur. Andwhile he remained Jonas determined to stay, to keep Julia incountenance, and he beckoned to Cynthy to stay also. And SamuelAnderson, who loved his daughter and feared his wife, fled like a cowardfrom the coming scene. Everybody expected Mrs. Anderson to break outlike a fury.

  But she knew a better plan than that. She felt a new device come like aninspiration. And perhaps it was. It really seemed to Jonas that thedevil helped her. For instead of breaking out into commonplace scolding,the resources of which she had long since exhausted, she dropped uponher knees, and began to pray for Julia.

  No swearer ever curses like the priest who veils his personal spites inofficial and pious denunciations, and Mrs. Anderson had never dealt outabuse so roundly and terribly and crushingly, as she did under the guiseof praying for the salvation of Julia's soul from well-deservedperdition. But Abigail did not say perdition. She left that to weakspirits. She thought it a virtue to say "hell" with unction andemphasis, by way of alarming the consciences of sinners. Mrs. Anderson'sprayer is not reportable. That sort of profanity is too bad to write.She capped her climax--even as I have heard a revivalist pray for ascoffer that had vexed his righteous soul--by asking God to convert herdaughter, or if she could not be converted to take her away, that shemight not heap up wrath against the day of wrath. For that sort ofreligious excitement which does not quiet the evil passions, seems toinflame them, and Mrs. Anderson was not in any right sense sane. And theprayer was addressed more to the frightened Julia than to God. She wouldhave been terribly afflicted had her petition been granted.

  Julia would have run away from the admonition which followed the prayer,had it not been that Mrs. Anderson adroitly put it under cover of areligious exhortation. She besought Julia to repent, and then, affectingto show her her sinfulness, she proceeded to abuse her.

  Had Julia no temper? Yes, she had doubtless a spice of her mother'sanger without her meanness. She would have resisted, but that fromchildhood she had felt paralyzed by the utter uselessness of allresistance. The bravest of the villagers at the foot of Vesuvius neverdreamed of stopping the crater's mouth.

  But, happily, at last Mrs. Anderson's insane wrath went a little toofar.

  "You poor lost sinner," she said, "to think you should go to destructionunder my very eyes, disgracing us all, by running over the country atnight with bad men! But there's mercy even for such as you."

  Julia would not have understood the full meaning of this aspersion ofher purity, had she not caught Humphreys's eye. His expression, halfsneer, half leer, seemed to give her mother's saying its fullinterpretation. She put out her hand. She turned white, and said: "Sayone word more, and I will go away from you and never come back! Never!"And then she sat down and cried, and then Mrs. Anderson's maternal love,her "unloving love," revived. To have her daughter leave her, too, wouldbe a sort of defeat. She hushed, and sat down in her splint-bottomedrocking-chair, which snapped when she rocked, and which seemed to speakfor her after she had shut her mouth. Her face settled into amartyr-like appeal to Heaven in proof of the justice of her cause. Andthen she fell back on her forlorn hope. She wept hysterically, insincere self-pity, to think that an affectionate mother should have sucha daughter!

  Julia, finding that her mother had desisted, went to her room. She didnot exactly pray, but she talked to herself as she paced the floor. Itwas a monologue, and yet there was a conscious appeal to an invisiblePresence, who could not misjudge her, and so she passed from talking toherself to talking to God, and that without any of the formality ofprayer. Her mother had made God seem to be against her. Now she, likeDavid, protested her innocence to God. She recited half to herself, andyet also to God--for is not every appeal to one's conscience in somesense an appeal to God?--she recited all the struggles of that nightwhen she went to August at the castle. People talk of the consolationthere is in God's mercy. But Julia found comfort in God's justice. He_could_ not judge her wrongly.

  Then she opened the Testament at the old place, and read the words longsince fixed in her memory. And then she--weary and heavy laden--cameagain to Him who invites, and found rest. And then she found, as manyanother has found, that coming to God is not, as theorists will have it,a coming once for a lifetime, but a coming oft and ever repeated.

  Jonas and Cynthy Ann retired to the kitchen, and the former said hi hisirreverent way, "Blamed ef Abigail ha'nt got more devils into her'n MaryMagdalene had the purtiest day she ever seed! I should think, arter alife with her fer a mother, the bad place would be a healthy anddelightful clime. The devil a'n't a patchin' to her."

  "Don't, Jonas; you talk so cur'us, like as ef you was kinder sorterwicked."

  "That's jest what I am, my dear, but Abigail Anderson's wicked withoutthe kinder sorter. She cusses when she's a-prayin'. She cusses that poargal right in the Lord's face. Good by, I must go. Smells so all-firedlike brimstone about here." This last was spoken in an undertone ofindignant soliloquy, as he crossed the threshold of Cynthy'sclean kitchen.