At this instant the preacher’s litany was cut short by the sobs of a woman to the left side of the pulpit. With a wink to the assembled crowd, he turned to her.
“You there,” he said. “You, little mother! Would you venture to affirm that you know your scripture?”
I could just make out the back of the woman’s head, if I stood on tip-toe. It shook a little, but she answered confidently enough—:
“I believe I do, preacher.”
“We’ll see what you believe,” the preacher said. His voice was low and reverent. Holding his right hand aloft, he intoned—:
THEIR EYES STAND OUT WITH FATNESS:
THEY HAVE MORE THAN HEART COULD WISH.
“Who is being discussed here?” he asked, looking not at the woman but over her black-bonneted head at the rest of us. A light was beginning to kindle in his eyes.
“The wicked,” the woman answered promptly.
“The wicked,” the preacher repeated for our benefit. He coughed once into his sleeve. “Recognize them, do you, from that description?”
“I haven’t — beg pardon, I recognize their manner from it,” the woman said. “I’d know them by their ways, sir, yes.”
“Your familiarity, sister, with the ways and manners of the wicked is duly noted,” the preacher said. A ripple of laughter ran through the tent. “Pray continue your declamation for us.”
The woman said nothing, shaking her head more resolutely now.
“No?” said the preacher, frowning. “Nothing? Shall we give you more? Good—; we’ll give you more.” He ran his finger slowly, almost coquettishly, down the page.
THEY ARE CORRUPT, AND SPEAK WICKEDLY CONCERNING
OPPRESSION: THEY SPEAK LOFTILY.
He paused again. The tent was as silent, in that moment, as a genuine church might have been. The woman was one of a small, severely clothed handful at the very front who looked to be the only persons there to have opened the Holy Book—; the others, by the look of them, were in the habit of passing their Sabbath-days in decidedly looser collars. The preacher smiled and shifted his balance on the crate.
“I don’t follow, sir,” the woman said, looking to either side of her in perplexity. “I don’t see that I warrant—”
“ ‘They set their mouths against the heavens,’ ” the preacher hissed, glaring down at her as though the Antichrist were hiding in her bonnet—: “ ‘They set their mouths against the heavens, and their tongue walketh through the earth.’ ” There! What is the lesson in that, little mother-in-Jesus?” He stepped — or rather teetered — back from the edge of the crate as he spoke, holding the small glossy book above him like a tomahawk. I saw now that it was a cheap brush-peddler’s copy, the sort passed out at every river-landing. “ ‘Their tongue WALKETH through the earth,’ ” he sang out, slapping the binding smartly with his palm. “Psalm 73, one — nine!”
The woman made no attempt at a reply. The bonnet hid her face from us, but it was plain that she was weeping. The preacher looked down at her contentedly. He was a puzzle to us all, and an entertainment—; but he was more than that. He was a revelation. To the woman in front of him, of course, he was no less than a scourge.
“‘Their tongue walketh through the earth,’ ” he said once more, almost too quietly to hear.
Just then a scuffling began outside the tent. No-one else seemed to take note of it, though the sound was irregular and bright. Perhaps the preacher did, however, as he suddenly stood bolt upright and sucked in a solemn breath. In spite of his exceeding smallness — or perhaps because of it — this act had a tragic nobility that was irresistible. It seemed as if he were about to embark, with gentility and grace, upon a long and sweetly rendered discourse on human suffering.
Instead he hurled himself down at the stricken woman, buffeting the air with the little book, his thin voice sharpening to a shriek—:
“It’s ME, of course, little mother-in-Jesus! Me! Can’t you find me in that scrap of doggerel? Can’t you make out my silhouette? Do my eyes not stand out with fatness? Does pride not compass me about? Have I not set my mouth against the heavens? Answer! Have I not spoken loftily?”
He tossed the book aside and caught the woman about the waist, pulling a pocket-mirror from his coat and bringing it within a hair’sbreadth of her face—:
“The lesson, little mother, is not to go rooting about for sweet-meats when your bowels were meant for oats.”
The woman’s body slumped forward slightly, as though the wind had gone out of it. The preacher’s next words came out very like a hymn—:
LOOK UPON YOUR CUD-CHEWING NATURE,
BLESSED OF JAHWEH, AND BE CONTENT.
The image of him in that instant is graven onto my memory like acid onto copper-plate. He stood stock-still before the woman, one arm hidden among the starched pleats of her dress, the other holding the mirror aloft that the entire tent might peer into it. He was a good deal smaller than his victim and there was something about him of the supplicant and the school-boy even as he stared up into her eyes, his face a patch-work of malice, exultation, and heaven knows what species of desire. The rest of the women buried their faces in their shawls—; the men howled at the pulpit like heifers at a branding.
No-one had made a move as yet, however. All stood looking on abjectly, stiffly, breaking away in a great show of disgust only to look back at once, helpless as babes in their curiosity. Some of the men had begun, without being aware of it, to leer. The sermon had done its work—: in the space of five minutes the assembly under the tent— which at first had borne at least a skin-deep resemblance to a gathering of the faithful — had been exposed as a carnival of mawkishness and lust. A dream-like stillness overcame me, the stillness of astonishment, weighing down my awareness and my limbs—; I turned back sleepily to face the pulpit. The preacher was now clutching the woman’s head by its tight, revivalist bun and fumbling with the fly-button of his britches.
In the blink of an eye the crowd swung shut on them like a gate. I fought my way forward with all my strength—; just as I reached the pulpit, however, shouts rang out behind me and the gate swung open as inexorably as it had closed. The preacher and his catechist had vanished. A tide of bewildered faces swept me out onto the grass—: it was the better part of a minute before I was able to get my bearings. When at last I did, I couldn’t suppress a laugh—: along the edge of the tent lay a row of cast-off saddles, ranged neatly side-by-side in the weeds. Of the thirty-odd horses there was not the slightest trace.
Neither, when I made my way back inside, was there any sign of the “Redeemer.” A throng of bloodless-looking men stood packed together at the pulpit, cursing and whispering to one another—; it was impossible to guess whether he’d escaped or been bustled off to the nearest fork-limbed tree. A deep and righteous violence prevailed. A number of suspicious looks were directed toward me, on account of my ragged river-clothes—: I came to my senses, turned my back on the lot of them, and slunk quietly back to my skiff. Only when I was well out on the water did I notice the thick, oily throbbing of my brain, as though I’d spent the last hour drinking mash.