17 Elias Peabody

As we advanced further into the mountains we met more of the inhabitants. I had taken care to spread the report, by every possible means, that ours was an errand of peace. To use an ancient jest, I meant to have peace if we had to fight for it. I learnt afterward that our arrest of Bucks was one of the best evidences we could give of our good intentions, as he was a turbulent character and everybody in the mountains who knew him knew that the cause of peace was better served when he was under duress.

People began to come in now and talk to us freely. From all of them I heard of the Reverend Elias Peabody and the note was always admiration and respect. It was evident to the dullest comprehension that he had acquired a strong influence in the mountains and it was equally evident that the influence was wholly for good. The stories of his great eloquence and earnestness continued, and I, who had known him so well, was not surprised. It seemed likely to me, too,, that piety and zeal would develop more in the mountains than in the lower country.

Our destination was Elverson, a little town, but so far as I could learn the central point of the trouble. We reached it after a march of three days, and entered amid a concourse of people, come from a ring of fifty miles. They received us, men, women and children, with all the taciturnity of the mountains, gazing at us in solemn silence as we went into camp just on the slope behind the town. Bucks, swart and sullen, was still with us—he had no other choice—and he was promptly locked up in the little log jail, which I surrounded with a strong guard. Here he soon had company, as acting on information given me on the march I arrested within two hours of our arrival three other men who were leaders in the feud. They were taken wholly by surprise and made no resistance.

When this was done I walked down toward the town with some of the officers, Harrison and Connor among them. I, of course, was in civilian dress, but the others were in uniform, and it was our object to greet the Reverend Elias Peabody, who, I was informed, was already on his way to meet us. I had heard soon after our arrival that he was due in the town within a day, and I had a longing to see him, realizing now what an attachment I had formed in the penitentiary for this sincere man, and that his influence in my life had been greatly for good.

Elverson is in a pleasant little valley, just where the slopes end and the levels begin. Behind it our tents rose like white dots in the green foliage, and above them shot for a thousand feet the sheer face of a mountain. With the rudeness of the village, hidden by the trees and only the sublimity and beauty of nature before us, there was nothing to offend the eye and much to please the mind.

“Not a bad place for seclusion and rest,” said Harrison, “but I should not want a long period of it.”

We entered the little town and a curious crowd soon gathered about us, attracted by the first Governor who had ever appeared in Elverson. Nor were they wanting in respect for my office; there were no hostile looks, no derisive gestures, but an attentive silence; the taciturnity of the mountains in the presence of strangers still prevailed.

We stood in the little public square talking with the town officials, when a murmur suddenly arose.

“Mr. Peabody is coming,” said some one, and the next moment a tall thin man, with long black hair and the rapt face of one of the old Hebrew prophets, strode among us. It was Elias. I should have known him anywhere, and under any circumstances, but it was Elias, changed and glorified. Upon his face was the seal of a deep and abiding peace. The mountains breed mysticism and faith, particularly so when the mind that receives them is not troubled by learning or cultivation, and the eyes of Elias Peabody looked beyond this world. He had found faith and fulfillment.

He stood a moment in our circle and looked about him. His eyes fell upon me, standing among the others, but in civilian garb, and he never hesitated. A look of sudden, but intense joy overspread his face and with a quick movement he stepped toward me.

“Charlie! Charlie Johnson!” he exclaimed, “I thought I’d never see you again, but you’ve come back!”

He seized my hand in an iron grasp and wrung it, and I, dazed, not knowing what to say, said nothing.

“It is the Governor of Kentucky, Mr. Clarke, Mr. Peabody,” said Harrison dryly at my elbow.

I glanced at Harrison. Deep down in his eye was a cynical gleam, but his face showed nothing else. But Connor, a look of intense surprise and suspicion on his mean, gross face, was leaning forward to hear more.

Elias dropped my hand when he heard Harrison’s words, and stared at me a moment. Then the rapt, faraway expression returned to his face and he said:

“I’ve made a mistake, Mr. Clarke. All of us welcome the Governor of Kentucky to Elverson.”

He spoke in a tone of deep conviction and sincerity, and it seemed that the “mistake” had passed forever out of his mind. Yet he had known me, he alone; the changes of years and position had been nothing to him; at the first glance he had seen Charlie Johnson under them all and had come straight to me. I knew that Harrison had observed, and I knew too that, already guessing something, he would now infer much. But the very imminence and greatness of the danger steadied me for the moment. I acted as if nothing unusual had occurred, and, with the officers around me, engaged Elias in talk about the feud. Here he was thoroughly at home and he spoke rapidly, earnestly and clearly. He had seen the leaders of both sides and he had sought to put in them the fear of God. He had brought them to his meetings and he had preached to them with all the fervor of which his fervent mind was capable.

This may sound strange to those who live in cities, and who take faith lightly, but it was not so to those who dwell in the deeps of the mountains. We have our feuds and the world has made much of them, often far more than the truth, to our deep disgrace, but it is a solemn fact that nearly all these mountaineers, willing as many of them are to take life, are intensely religious. Elias knew how to tread the right road to their fears and hopes alike, and they stood in more awe of Elias Peabody with the thunders of the Church behind him, than of the Governor of Kentucky with rapid fire rifles at his back.

As I talked to Elias I saw the way. I resolved upon a mixture of force and moral suasion. That afternoon I sent out soldiers and arrested every suspected man who could he reached in so short a space, while other details were to go further into the mountains and seize the more distant feudists. Often while giving orders for these movements I came in contact with Harrison, and I felt always that he was watching me, more than once I noticed the same cynical little look in his eyes, but he said nothing, and I forced myself to appear indifferent.

I had been asked to stay while I was in Elverson as a guest at the home of Mr. Samuel Hay, who kept the general store and who had the best house in the place, an offer that I accepted. At twilight, feeling that the work of the day was over I went there, and sat down with the family to a hospitable mountain supper. Then after spending a while in talk before the open fire to answer the demands of courtesy, I went to my room, weary with the long day’s toil and anxiety.

It was a good apartment, large, and with all the comforts of the mountain home of the best class. I sank with an unuttered sigh of relief into a deep wicker chair, and looked through the window before me toward the dark crests and ridges beyond, now faintly touched with silver in the growing moonlight. But though my eyes were turned in that direction I scarcely saw them; the events of the day were passing swiftly before me, and I was conscious that the business on which I had come to the mountains had fallen suddenly into second place. It was myself now with whom I had to deal, and who I was and what I might appear to the world made the vital question.

A tap at the door, and my host’s small son said that the Reverend Elias Peabody wished to see me. I might have known that Elias would come, and, glad of it, I promptly told the boy to bring him up. In a moment his firm step was heard in the passage, and then he entered, closing the door behind him with care. I had risen and I held out both hands.

“Old friend!” I said.

A look of relief, almost boyish in its delight, came over his face, and stepping forward he seized my hands in his.

“Charlie,” he said, “forgive me. I never dreamed of it; how was I to know that you, the man who was with me in the cell, was the Governor of Kentucky? Had they told me so I should have said that it was false, but I had to believe my own eyes, and there was no warning.”

“You were not to blame,” I said, “but I did not think that you would know me. No one else has.”

“No one else has known you as I have Charlie,” he said, and there was a deep note of affection in his voice, for which I was grateful. Nor did I seek to keep him from calling me “Charlie,” a name that seemed to come spontaneously to his lips.

“Sit down,” I said. “We meet again strangely when we think how we first met.”

“You’ve become a great man,” he said.

“No, you are the great man. I only have a great place, while you are great without the place.”

He sat down before the fire which was burning brightly,, and gazed at me much as a father looks at his son after long absence. But his face never for an instant lost its look of rapt, spiritual exaltation. Involuntarily I thought of Alicia, and at that moment I saw a singular likeness between the two, the likeness of the spirit. Alicia, as I last saw her, and Elias as I now saw him, looked over and beyond earthly and temporal things. Each had put on an armor that no weapon of ill could pierce. I confess that as I sat there and as he gazed at me a certain awe of this man who was so much, better than I crept into my mind. In the Middle Ages many a rough knight must have had this feeling when he fell on his knees and confessed before a great priest, a holy man in all truth.

I shivered—it may be with a premonition of a great change to come. His eyes searched me through, and in the firelight, which was the only light, his figure grew.

“Charlie,” he said, “I’ll keep your secret, if you want me to do it.”

“Only one other knows it.”

“A woman. Who could keep such a secret, but a preacher and a woman?”

I said nothing. I looked with troubled eyes at Elias, then at the fire, and then at the mountains beyond the valley’s rim, where the growing moonlight bathed every peak and ridge in a silver glory. His few and simple words had touched new springs in me, had made a new call to conscience.

“Charlie, I’ll keep your secret, if you want me to do it,” he repeated in the selfsame words.

I turned my eyes back, until they met his, where they were held,

“Do you think I should tell?” I asked.

“It is not for me to say,” he replied.

I repeat that I am of the earth; earthy, as has been well said, an expression that appeals to me. I like the good things of the world and its glories, and more than the shadow of them I had now within my grasp. I could not let them go.

“Have you been happy? Have you lived it down?” I asked with all the passionate emphasis of one who wishes to be let alone.

I have never seen another man’s face illumined as his was when I asked the question.

“Yes, Charlie,” he replied, “I am happy and I have lived it down. I have lived it down for myself. What does it matter about the others? Nothing that any one may say can hurt me now.”

I knew that he told the truth, I had known it even before I asked the question, but I wanted the answer from his own lips. Yet he was a mountaineer and I was not; it was the mountains that judged him, while I had to face a far more critical audience.

“The load will get heavier and heavier all the time,” he said.

Again he spoke the truth and I knew it. There were periods, sometimes long ones, when I forgot my own secret, but when the actual painful knowledge of it returned it always came with greater weight. I could not forget the look on the face of Harrison, nor that on the face of Connor either.

“I’m your friend, Charlie,” said Elias, “I’m glad to see you Governor of the State, and I’m proud too. It’s one thing that I’ve come here to-night to say, and to say to you alone.”

Then he relapsed into silence and the two of us gazed into the fire, where walls and turrets were forming among the glowing coals. All around us was silence. We heard no one stirring in the house below, and off on the slope the tired troops were already sleeping.

“You’ll do what’s right, Charlie,” said Elias at last.

“If I only knew what’s right,” I said.

“If we wait and truly want it, the way is pointed out to us,” he said.

We relapsed into another silence, which I was the one finally to break.

“You’ll help me all you can with the settlement of this feud, won’t you Elias?” I asked.

“With all my heart and soul,” he replied with fervor.

Then I told him of a plan which appealed to him strongly. He was to be a central figure in it, and I saw his face illumined with zeal for his task. When he rose to go and took my hand in his strong clasp he said:

“God will show you the way, Charlie.”

It was said simply and I knew that it came from the bottom of his heart. When he was gone, I sat long in troubled thought. Would it be better to tell everything? If the disclosure brought disgrace with it; it would also bring peace. I was not afraid—I think I can truly make the claim—but a weight that is carried long grows heavier every day.

I arose early the next morning and as soon as I could leave my post went to the camp, where I found all things trim and ready. Harrison was one of the most active officers—it seemed to me that he would have made a good soldier—and after my inspection, he approached me and began a conversation, at first about camp subjects, but he said presently:

“This minister, Mr. Peabody, is likely to be of great help, don’t you think?”

“Yes,” I replied, understanding where he meant to take the talk, but hardened at that moment into indifference.

“He seemed to recognize you yesterday,” he said in a soft, insinuating tone.

“He did. We have met before,” I replied shortly.

“An old friendship, I suppose? I noticed that he called you by a given name. I did not know that your middle name was Charles.”

This was too much; it more than bordered on insolence and I said sharply to him:

“I think Lieutenant Harrison that a detachment of the Louisville company is about to start in search of a member of the Horner faction. You should see to it.”

He flushed, then saluted and withdrew. I was commander-in-chief, and I was resolved that no subordinate officer of mine should annoy me.

Our movements were attended with unbroken success. Armed in advance with accurate information the troops brought in all the Kent and Horner combatants. Those who were concerned in the murders were placed under double guard to await trial for their lives, and all the others were compelled to attend services in the large church on the following Sunday.

I believe that a Christian service of more interest has never been held in the mountains than that conducted on a beautiful Sunday in early June by the Reverend Elias Peabody at Elverson. The church was crowded with members of the Kent and Horner factions, nearly all of whom had come unwillingly, and around them was a double line of attentive soldiers. Outside other soldiers—the church was within our lines—walked up and down, rifle on shoulder, and on the slope not far away the polished metal work of a Gatling gun gleamed brightly. Through the open door of the church the glorious June sunshine poured in a golden flood, illuminating the swarthy set faces of the feudists, and bringing out every stern feature.

I sat near the front, with Mr. Hay on one side of me and Mrs. Hay on the other, when Elias came into the pulpit. He was as one consecrated, “the light that never was on sea or land” shining on his face. I have compared him before to one of the prophets of old and I think it a good comparison. To-day he was transported by his task.

There was intense silence in the room as he opened his Bible. The Kents were on one side of the church and the Horners on the other, and before they had exchanged dark glances, but now they looked only at the minister.

Certain moments, when we are lifted up and carried on by a superhuman strength which is of the spirit, come into the lives of all of us, and such a moment had now come into the life of Elias Peabody. He preached from the sublime text, “Vengeance is mine saith the Lord,” and he levelled terrible words at the two factions before him which had claimed vengeance as their own.

I am a lowlander with the lowlander’s doubts that will come now and then, but in the mountains all is faith. It is not easy to doubt with the majestic peaks looking down in silent rebuke, and all of this vast primeval belief, this fire and passion in the service of a Christ, with whom he communed daily, was centred in the soul of Elias Peabody. He spoke in simple words, he.used few gestures, but his was the eloquence of a great untaught world and he reached the mind and heart of every man in that building.

He preached no milk and water doctrine, but a Hell, at least of the soul, if not of the body. Every word was laden with conviction and went straight to the mark. I saw the dark faces of the feudists paling before the lightnings that he hurled. More than one looked toward the door and made the first motion to steal out, but my soldiers were on guard there and they had to listen.

Elias painted magnificently with mountain symbol and illustration the condition into which they had brought themselves. He told how the wrath of God would punish the assassins and the murderers, and he deftly alluded to the temporal power, that is the State, as another agency at hand to help. But it was always the spiritual wrath that they feared the more as I could see and as I had expected. Their apprehension soon passed into fright as the great minister thundered invective and threat at them and more than once I saw a huge mountaineer, nervously wipe perspiration from his face with the back of his hand.

Elias passed from the thunders of the Church to the promise of peace for those who would walk in the strait and narrow path. Honesty and absolute openness were necessary, he said, our lives should be blameless in the eyes of all, and as he spoke his eyes roving over the congregation met mine. I thrilled in spite of myself, because I knew then that Elias, unconsciously, had began to preach to me.

He talked again of the strait and narrow path. No man could carry his sin, he said, he must throw it off, or the burden would become too heavy for him to bear. My eyes wandered around the church and met those of Harrison, cynical even sneering. I believed that he understood, but it did not matter to me then whether he did or not. Elias was appealing to a higher motive than fear. He described in words, simple in themselves, but burning with the truth, the freedom and joy of the man who had cast off his burden of sin, and all the time I listened spellbound, feeling his words eat into my very soul.

I did not know then that he preached a long time—I was told afterward that we were two hours in the church —but when he finished we all went out in a dazed silence. He had preached the sermon I wanted and also another I had not expected. Both kept me thoughtful for a long time, and I understood more clearly than ever that things could scarcely go on in the old way. The warnings were too strong.

I stayed two weeks in Elverson and I found that the double threat of spiritual and temporal punishment was a good deterrent for the Kents and Horners, and I had the satisfaction, too, of seeing the murderers placed on trial for their lives, several of which were afterward taken by the State. But Elias remained as the great moral deterrent, and it was his influence, aided by a little judicious law that settled forever the feud of the Kents and the Horners.

When I came away with two of the military companies, leaving only one on guard, Elias walked with me to the edge of the valley.

“I feel that God brought us together again, Charlie,” he said, “and it was for the good of us both. I know that you will do right, Charlie.”

“If I know what is right, and if I am strong enough to do it,” I replied.

“The way will be pointed out to you,” he rejoined with the tone and look of a seer.

The opening from the valley, a narrow cut between the ridges was not far from Elverson, and I stopped there a moment to look back at Elias. He stood on the crest of a little hill, his tall, thin figure enlarged in the brilliant sunshine, his head bent forward a little, as if he would gaze after us until we should pass out of sight.

More than ever he looked like a prophet of old.

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