Go Tell It on the Mountain (15 page)

“Now, you ain’t going to get mad?” asked Elder Peters, kindly—yet there remained, to Gabriel’s fixed attention, something mocking in his face and voice. “You ain’t going to spoil our little dinner?”

“I don’t think it’s right,” said Gabriel, “to talk evil about
no
body. The Word tell me it ain’t right to hold nobody up to scorn.”

“Now you just remember,” Elder Peters said, as kindly as before, “you’s talking to your
elders
.”

“Then it seem to me,” he said, astonished at his boldness, “that if I got to look to you for a example, you ought to
be
a example.”

“Now, you know,” said someone else, jovially, “you ain’t fixing to make that woman your wife or nothing like that—so ain’t no need to get all worked up and spoil our little gathering. Elder Peters didn’t mean no harm. If
you
don’t never say nothing worse than that, you can count yourself already up there in the Kingdom with the chosen.”

And at this a small flurry of laughter swept over the table; they went back to their eating and drinking, as though the matter were finished.

Yet Gabriel felt that he had surprised them; he had found them out and they were a little ashamed and confounded before his purity. And he understood suddenly the words of Christ, where it was written: “Many are called but few are chosen.” Yes, and he looked around the table, already jovial again, but rather watchful now, too, of him—and he wondered who, of all these, would sit in glory at the right hand of the Father?

And then, as he sat there, remembering again Elder Peters’ boisterous, idle remark, this remark shook together in him all those shadowy doubts and fears, those hesitations and tendernesses, which were his in relation to Deborah, and the sum of which he now realized was his certainty that there was in that relationship something foreordained. It came to him that, as the Lord had given him Deborah, to help him to stand, so the Lord had sent him to her, to raise her up, to release her from that dishonor which was hers in the eyes of men. And this idea filled him, in a moment, wholly, with the intensity of a vision: what better woman could be found?
She
was not like the mincing daughters of Zion! She was not to be seen prancing lewdly through the streets, eyes sleepy and mouth half open with just, or to be found mewing under midnight fences, uncovered, uncovering some black boy’s hanging curse! No, their married bed would be holy, and their children would continue the line of the faithful, a royal line. And, fired with this, a baser fire stirred in him
also, rousing a slumbering fear, and he remembered (as the table, the ministers, the dinner, and the talk all burst in on him again) that Paul had written: “It is better to marry than to burn.”

Yet, he thought, he would hold his peace awhile; he would seek to know more clearly the Lord’s mind in this matter. For he remembered how much older she was than he—eight years; and he tried to imagine, for the first time in his life, that dishonor to which Deborah had been forced so many years ago by white men: her skirts above her head, her secrecy discovered—by white men. How many? How had she borne it? Had she screamed? Then he thought (but it did not really trouble him, for if Christ to save him could be crucified, he, for Christ’s greater glory, could well be mocked) of what smiles would be occasioned, what filthy conjecture, barely sleeping now, would mushroom upward overnight like Jonah’s gourd, when people heard that he and Deborah were going to be married. She, who had been the living proof and witness of their daily shame, and who had become their holy fool—and he, who had been the untamable despoiler of their daughters, and thief of their women, their walking prince of darkness! And he smiled, watching the elders’ well-fed faces and their grinding jaws—unholy pastors all, unfaithful stewards; he prayed that he would never be so fat, or so lascivious, but that God should work through him a mighty work: to ring, it might be, through ages yet unborn, as sweet, solemn, mighty proof of His everlasting love and mercy. He trembled with the presence that surrounded him now; he could scarcely keep his seat. He felt that light shone down on him from Heaven, on him, the chosen; he felt as Christ must have felt in the temple, facing His so utterly confounded elders; and he lifted up his eyes, not caring for their glances or their clearing of throats, and the silence that abruptly settled over the table, thinking: “Yes. God works in many mysterious ways His wonders to perform.”

“Sister Deborah,” he said, much later that night as he was walking her to her door, “the Lord done laid something on my heart and I want you to help me to pray over it and ask Him to lead me right.”

He wondered if she could divine what was in his mind. In her face there was nothing but patience, as she turned to him, and said: “I’m praying all the time. But I sure will pray extra hard this week if you want me to.”

And it was during this praying time that Gabriel had a dream.

He could never afterward remember how the dream began, what had happened, or who he was with in the dream; or any details at all. For there were really two dreams, the first like a dim, blurred, infernal foreshadowing of the second. Of this first dream, the overture, he remembered only the climate, which had been like the climate of his day—heavy, with danger everywhere, Satan at his shoulder trying to bring him down. That night as he tried to sleep, Satan sent demons to his bedside—old friends he had had, but whom he saw no more, and drinking and gambling scenes that he had thought would never rise to haunt him again, and women he had known. And the women were so real that he could nearly touch them; and he heard again their laughter and their sighs, and felt beneath his hands again their thighs and breasts. Though he closed his eyes and called on Jesus—calling over and over again the name of Jesus—his pagan body stiffened and flamed and the women laughed. And they asked why he remained in this narrow bed alone when they waited for him; why he had bound his body in the armor of chastity while they sighed and turned on their beds for him. And he sighed and turned, every movement torture, each touch of the sheets a lewd caress—and more abominable, then, in his imagination, than any caress he had received in life. And he clenched his fists and began to plead the blood, to exorcise the hosts of Hell, but even this motion was like another motion, and at length he fell on his knees to pray. By and by he fell into a troublous sleep—it seemed that he was going to be stoned, and then he was in battle, and then shipwrecked in the water—and suddenly he awoke, knowing that he must have dreamed, for his loins were covered with his own white seed.

Then, trembling, he got out of bed again and washed himself. It was a warning, and he knew it, and he seemed to see before him the
pit dug by Satan—deep and silent, waiting for him. He thought of the dog returned to his vomit, of the man who had been cleansed, and who fell, and who was possessed by seven devils, the last state of that man being worse than his first. And he thought at last, kneeling by his cold bedside, but with the heart within him almost too sick for prayer, of Onan, who had scattered his seed on the ground rather than continue his brother’s line.
Out of the house of David, the son of Abraham
. And he called again on the name of Jesus; and fell asleep again.

And he dreamed that he was in a cold, high place, like a mountain. He was high, so high that he walked in mist and cloud, but before him stretched the blank ascent, the steep side of the mountain. A voice said: “Come higher.” And he began to climb. After a little, clinging to the rock, he found himself with only clouds above him and mist below—and he knew that beyond the wall of mist reigned fire. His feet began to slip; pebbles and rocks began ringing beneath his feet; he looked up, trembling, in terror of death, and he cried: “Lord, I can’t come no higher.” But the voice repeated after a moment, quiet and strong and impossible to deny: “Come on, son. Come higher.” Then he knew that, if he would not fall to death, he must obey the voice. He began to climb again, and his feet slipped again; and when he thought that he would fall there suddenly appeared before him green, spiny leaves; and he caught onto the leaves, which hurt his hand, and the voice said again: “Come higher.” And so Gabriel climbed, the wind blowing through his clothes, and his feet began to bleed, and his hands were bleeding; and still he climbed, and he felt that his back was breaking; and his legs were growing numb and they were trembling, and he could not control them; and still before him there was only cloud, and below him the roaring mist. How long he climbed in this dream of his, he did not know. Then, of a sudden, the clouds parted, he felt the sun like a crown of glory, and he was in a peaceful field.

He began to walk. Now he was wearing long, white robes. He heard singing: “Walked in the valley, it looked so fine, I asked my
Lord was all this mine.” But he knew that it was his. A voice said: “Follow me.” And he walked, and he was again on the edge of a high place, but bathed and blessed and glorified in the blazing sun, so that he stood like God, all golden, and looked down, down, at the long race he had run, at the steep side of the mountain he had climbed. And now up this mountain, in white robes, singing, the elect came. “Touch them not,” the voice said, “my seal is on them.” And Gabriel turned and fell on his face, and the voice said again: “So shall thy seed be.” Then he awoke. Morning was at the window, and he blessed God, lying on his bed, tears running down his face, for the vision he had seen.

When he went to Deborah and told her that the Lord had led him to ask her to be his wife, his holy helpmeet, she looked at him for a moment in what seemed to be speechless terror. He had never seen such an expression on her face before. For the first time since he had known her he touched her, putting his hands on her shoulders, thinking what untender touch these shoulders had once known, and how she would be raised now in honor. And he asked: “You ain’t scared, is you, Sister Deborah? You ain’t got nothing to be scared of?”

Then she tried to smile, and began, instead, to weep. With a movement at once violent and hesitant, she let her head fall forward on his breast.

“No,” she brought out, muffled in his arms, “I ain’t scared.” But she did not stop weeping.

He stroked her coarse, bowed head. “God bless you, little girl,” he said, helplessly. “God bless you.”

The silence in the church ended when Brother Elisha, kneeling near the piano, cried out and fell backward under the power of the Lord. Immediately, two or three others cried out also, and a wind, a foretaste of that great downpouring they awaited, swept the church. With this cry, and the echoing cries, the tarry service moved from its first stage of steady murmuring, broken by moans and now and
again an isolated cry, into that stage of tears and groaning, of calling aloud and singing, which was like the labor of a woman about to be delivered of her child. On this threshing-floor the child was the soul that struggled to the light, and it was the church that was in labor, that did not cease to push and pull, calling on the name of Jesus. When Brother Elisha cried out and fell back, crying, Sister McCandless rose and stood over him to help him pray. For the rebirth of the soul was perpetual; only rebirth every hour could stay the hand of Satan.

Sister Price began to sing:

A lone voice, joined by others, among them, waveringly, the voice of John. Gabriel recognized the voice. When Elisha cried, Gabriel was brought back in an instant to this present time and place, fearing that it was John he heard, that it was John who lay astonished beneath the power of the Lord. He nearly looked up and turned around; but then he knew it was Elisha, and his fear departed.

Neither of his sons was here tonight, had ever cried on the threshing-floor. One had been dead for nearly fourteen years—dead in a Chicago tavern, a knife kicking in his throat. And the living son, the child, Roy, was headlong already, and hardhearted: he lay at home, silent now, and bitter against his father, a bandage on his forehead. They were not here. Only the son of the bondwoman stood where the rightful heir should stand.

He felt that he should rise and pray over Elisha—when a man cried out, it was right that another man should be his intercessor. And he thought how gladly he would rise, and with what power he would pray if it were only his son who lay crying on the floor tonight. But he remained, bowed low, on his knees. Each cry that came from the fallen Elisha tore through him. He heard the cry of his dead son and his living son; one who cried in the pit forever, beyond the hope of mercy; and one who would cry one day when mercy would be finished.

Now Gabriel tried, with the testimony he had held, with all the signs of His favor that God had shown him, to put himself between the living son and the darkness that waited to devour him. The living son had cursed him—
bastard
—and his heart was far from God; it could not be that the curse he had heard tonight falling from Roy’s lips was but the curse repeated, so far, so long resounding, that the mother of his first son had uttered as she thrust the infant from her—herself immediately departing, this curse yet on her lips, into eternity. Her curse had devoured the first Royal; he had been begotten in sin, and he had perished in sin; it was God’s punishment, and it was just. But Roy had been begotten in the marriage bed, the bed that Paul described as holy, and it was to him the Kingdom had been promised. It could not be that the living son was cursed for the sins of his father; for God, after much groaning, after many years, had given him a sign to make him know he was forgiven. And yet, it came to him that this living son, this headlong, living Royal, might be cursed for the sin of his mother, whose sin had never been truly repented; for that the living proof of her sin, he who knelt tonight, a very interloper among the saints, stood between her soul and God.