“And Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering and laid it upon Isaac his son; and he took the fire in his hand, and a knife!…”
A series of loud reports from the flapping canvas interrupted him, and with hand uplifted he waited for quiet. In that instant Lydia Willard turned round, and, by accident, looked straight at me. She had her mother’s fierce black eyes, the same thin-lipped intensity and whiteness; but what most struck me about her face was its extraordinary smallness: it was almost a doll’s face, or a monkey’s, small, hard, and concentrated. It seemed to me there was nothing human in it whatever.
“And Abraham stretched forth his hand, and took the knife to slay his son.… My brothers and sisters in Christ”—Mr. Boody paused again for effect, and glared from one to another of his audience—“what does this mean for us? What does this grand story tell us? Two things … two things! … The first, that we must trust in God. His will is our will. The second—” Again he paused dramatically. And then suddenly, pointing a quivering finger directly at Mrs. Willard, who gave a start and then sat rigid, “What is the second? That we must be prepared to offer up to God in holy sacrifice even those things that are dearest to us. What He asks, we must give. If He asks us for our children, we must give them to Him.… Why, is God less dear to us than our children? Is His word less than our law? Do we understand Him? Do we dare … do we dare to say that we know what His purpose is? No!”
He was beginning to work himself up. He paced rapidly to and fro on his little wooden platform, now and then stopping for a moment to thump his fist on the deal table. But I thought I had had enough; and a little later, seizing the opportunity afforded by another shuddering series of explosions from the tent, I sneaked out to the car and drove home. It seemed to me a pretty poor show.
The wind blew all afternoon, with sudden squalls of hard rain. At one time it was so dark that we had to light the lamp in the sitting room. Looking out of the front windows, we could at such moments see hardly farther than the red-covered bridge; Hateful Mountain had been engulfed in cloud. Then would come a sudden lifting of the flying rain, and a quick shaft of mild sunlight would show us the swollen river, brown with mud, rushing westward through the drenched valley. The dirt road was a solid sheet of water.
It was a little after five when the telephone rang. I heard Captain Phippen’s voice.
“That you, Bill?”
“Yes.”
“Hello, Bill?… There’s something queer down at the Willards’.”
His voice suddenly faded away.
“What’s that?” I said.
“Can you hear me?… I say, there’s something queer down at the Willard farm. Think you could come up here quick in your Ford, and fetch me?”
“Why, sure.… Sure, I’ll be right up!”
Aunt Jenny put down her magazine and looked at me sharply.
“What’s the Captain want?” she said.
“Oh, just company, I guess.”
“Well, bring him back to supper—he owes us a visit. And tell him there’s popovers.”
“I will, Aunt Jenny.”
I grabbed my hat and raincoat and ran to the barn for the car. It had almost stopped raining—there was a hole in the clouds overhead—but the northeast still looked black.
What on earth was happening?
I learned soon enough. Captain Phippen was waiting for me on his porch, in his oilskins. He had his spyglass in his hand.
“I didn’t mean to scare you, Bill,” he said, “but just take a look. It don’t look right.”
I ran up the wooden steps, took the glass from his hand, and directed it toward the Willard farm. I could see the house very clearly at that moment. A shaft of watery sunlight illuminated it brilliantly against the somber rain-colored country beyond. And it looked exactly as it always did. But when I swung the glass to the right, toward the cow-yard, what I saw amazed me. Above the fragment of board fence which still remained (where years before we used to watch the horns of cattle tossing) I could distinctly see the heads and shoulders of the two women. There was nothing so remarkable in that. What was remarkable was the way the heads and shoulders were behaving. They glided to and fro rapidly, now to the right and now to the left—and now and then it seemed to me that their arms were raised—but they always came back to the same spot. At this spot, the heads and shoulders would sometimes disappear entirely, only, the next instant, to leap high into the air again, exactly like puppets. It looked as if the two women were doing some idiotic sort of dance. In fact, it was so absurd that I laughed.
“It’s damned funny!” I said.
Captain Phippen made no answer. He took the glass from me and leveled it westward.
“What do you say we go down there, Bill?” He put the brass telescope on the porch-rail.
“Sure, if you like!”
“All right.”
“You think there’s something wrong?”
“Yeap, I do. D’you see that chair on the porch?”
“No.”
“Take another look.”
I did so, and sure enough, on the little side-porch, next to the cow-yard, I could make out the wheel-chair, lying on its back, with its wheels in the air.
“That’s queer,” I said.
“And not so funny!… Let’s go down there.”
It took us about ten minutes to get to the Willard footbridge. The flooded river was almost up to the level of the bridge; and as we walked cautiously along the slippery planks, we could hear crazy shouts from the cow-yard. For the moment, we could see nothing, because of the low, straggling lilac-hedge which ran across the front corner of the yard. But when we had passed this barrier we stood still in sheer astonishment.
The two women had gone completely mad.
I’m sure they had seen us approaching; but if they had, they paid no attention to us. Round and round the cow-yard, which was half mud and half water, they were dancing in a grotesque, hobbling circle, like a pair of scarecrow bacchantes. They were so drenched with rain and mud, from head to foot, as to be hardly recognizable. Raising and flapping their arms, they shouted incessantly and incoherently something that sounded like “Bow down, Isaac! Bow down, Isaac!”; and as we ran forward we could see that the huddled object in the mud, which now and then they paused in their dance to kick, was old Isaac, but scarcely distinguishable from the filth in which he lay. The red rubber boots pointed mutely toward the river. It was when he saw these, I think, that Captain Phippen shouted something harshly at the two women; and, suddenly quieted, they drew a little way off from us and stared at us with the dull, curious surprise of animals. Without protest or comment, almost without interest (standing on a corner of the porch), they then watched us pick up the lifeless body and carry it, dripping, into the house. At first I thought Isaac was dead. It seemed incredible that such a shapeless thing—covered with water and mud and blood—could be alive. The sight of his face—no longer recognizably human—sickened me. But Captain Phippen, hardier than I, opened the soaked waistcoat and discovered that Isaac’s heart was still beating.… I was only too glad to be sent for the doctor.
Two days later, nevertheless, old Isaac died, a sacrifice to the Lord. An embarrassed coroner and jury gave the cause of his death, officially, as “an apoplexy, induced by over-exertion.” During this time, and for a few days after, Mrs. Willard and Lydia, who had both become suddenly very meek, were left unmolested; the town authorities were uncertain what to do with them. Was it a murder? Or, if not, what was it?… The State authorities were more decided. A week later we heard that Lydia and her mother had been “spirited” away, as the papers put it, to the asylum.