On the Head of a Pin (5 page)

So the girl with the chestnut hair was her sister-in-law. That explained the lack of family resemblance, although that didn't always hold true. There was no mention of the hulking fellow who had been with them on the street and Lewis was left to wonder where he fit into the family. Husband? Brother? Sometimes these family units were so convoluted that there was little to gain in speculation. Like his own family — all those great burly boys, then little Martha, who could easily be mistaken for one of those “gifts from God” that sometimes occur late in a couple's life.

Just then, the man in question came out of Stickle's Tavern and headed toward the church. He stopped just outside the gate and stood, obviously waiting for Minta.

“Will he not come in?” Lewis asked her.

“I don't think so,” she replied. “He doesn't hold much with meetings like this. He thinks it's a waste of time.”

The man glared at Lewis as Minta walked down the path to join him.

Lewis usually held a class meeting after services so that those who wished to do so could study the Bible together. But he wouldn't today. His household was still unorganized from the move, and Betsy still fragile and easily tired. Besides, Martha was an energetic child, a fact that kept Betsy on the hop most days, and now she was fussy from the long period of sitting. Lewis judged that the meeting would be better left for Varney who, as a local preacher, was perfectly capable of directing it. After all, he had been acting in this capacity before Lewis had arrived in the area, and would probably appreciate confirmation that not all of his duties were to be usurped. The authority assigned to these lay preachers was one of the points of contention with the Wesleyans, and it was as well to reinforce the Episcopal position from the start.

“I'm sorry to decamp, Mr. Varney, but I know that the meeting will be in good hands.”

“Aye, don't you worry, I'll manage.” Varney looked pleased. “Is the little one your daughter?”

“My granddaughter. The only girl in the household now.” Martha had fallen on the step and was wailing. Lewis smiled. “But do you know something? I think she makes more noise than all the boys put together.”

Lewis scooped the little girl up and bundled her onto the horse, putting her in the saddle in front of him. Her sobbing hiccoughs eventually subsided as she surveyed the passing countryside.

“Cow!” she shrieked, pointing at a herd pastured in a field along the road. Lewis agreed that, yes, it was indeed a cow.

“You were very lucky today,” Betsy remarked as they jogged along.

“What do you mean?”

“You were lucky that you weren't called to account there in the churchyard. You don't know enough Latin to debate a frog, and you don't know Greek at all.”

“Yes, but no one else knows that. Besides, I didn't claim to know anything at all. I merely offered the opinion that Latin or Greek would be more entertaining. And it would have been, too, I expect.”

“That's a mighty fine line you're walking there, Thaddeus. The way you're twisting words around, you're beginning to sound like an Anglican.”

“Oh.” He knew she was right, and that he had deliberately uttered a misleading statement. “Yes, dear, perhaps you're right.”

“You know I am. Sometimes you're too clever for your own good.”

“Wait a moment, Betsy. I've just thought of some Greek words. Alpha, for one — and Omega.” He kicked his horse into a fast trot that bounced them up and down, making it harder for her to answer. But just as he was looking back to laugh at her, he caught a glimpse of a female form slipping around the side of a barn that stood at the edge of the road. Her cap had fallen down her back, revealing a mass of chestnut hair.

“That's odd,” he said, as he slowed the horse.

“What's odd?”

“I think that was the sister-in-law of the small woman you sat with at the service.”

“The pregnant woman who helped with Martha, you mean? Minta?”

Lewis looked at his wife, astounded. “Now how do you know she's pregnant?”

“Oh, for crying out loud, Thaddeus. After all the children I've had, do you think I can't tell? She's expecting all right, and it's making her sickly.”

He shrugged. “Oh, well. None of it matters, I guess, except that Minta gave me to understand that her sister-in-law was ill at home.”

He craned his head around, but he couldn't see whether there was anyone else there or not.

V

T
he following week there was a camp meeting called at Gatrey's farm in Adolphustown, just across the Bay of Quinte, with William Case as the featured speaker. Lewis had not been invited to preach. He was not a member of church union, and therefore could not officially take part in the events of the day. Besides, a great deal of the allure of this sort of meeting was that people got to hear someone different. As a rule, these camp meetings made Lewis a little uneasy anyway. He had never been sure whether they actually accomplished anything or not. It was all too easy for people to get caught up in the frenzy of the moment and profess to something they didn't genuinely feel. Sometimes, he suspected, the young men came forward and fell on their knees simply to impress the young women present.

Betsy laughed, as she always did, when Lewis grumpily presented this last part of his argument. “It's hard enough to bring people to the Lord without questioning their motives,” she said. “Just rejoice that they're sincere at the moment and work hard to make it stick.”

The meeting was to be held in one of Gatrey's back fields. There was no building large enough to accommodate the number of people who were expected, and even if there were, they would probably not be allowed to use it. Camp meetings were a specialty of the Episcopal Methodists, and sat uneasily with the more sedate British Church. They instead preferred the protracted meeting, held inside over a number of days. It took less trouble to stage, and offered less opportunity for trouble-makers to disrupt the proceedings. It also helped establish their ownership of the buildings being used. The Wesleyans may have frowned at the Episcopals' exuberant approach to saving souls, but camp meetings were popular and resulted in many conversions, so they had decided that this one would be allowed to proceed.

It was a scene familiar to Lewis: a platform with a roof set up over it at one end of the field under the shade of hickory trees that had been left along the fence line; the penitent's bench in front; the entire area enclosed by a stout fence with a gate at the far end. The rest of the pasture was littered with slabs of wood that would serve as benches. Some of the older attendees brought chairs, but not many. It was, after all, an enterprise of the soul. Comforts of the body were something that was not supposed to be considered. Farther back in the field the tents were going up. The meeting could well last several days, and families were taking the opportunity to stake their claims on patches of pasture that would accommodate their housekeeping needs.

The Varneys were there, setting up their campfire, and Lewis nodded to them as he passed. Beside the Varneys were two fine-looking young men — the Caddick brothers he presumed — who looked to have brought samples of their wares and were doing a brisk business selling miniatures and small landscape scenes. The most popular and least expensive items seemed to be the little dressmaking pins with the Lord's Prayer painted on the head.

The taller of the two, Benjamin, had a small magnifying glass, which he handed to Lewis so that he could inspect the handiwork. “I have to carry one with me,” he confided, laughing. “Otherwise people are suspicious that there's not really anything there.”

Lewis held the glass over the pin and could just make out the minute script. I'm getting old, he thought. Even magnified I can barely see it.

“Very nice,” he said, and handed it back to the boy. He didn't know what else to say about a prayer he couldn't even see.

“Wouldn't you like to buy one? Maybe for the Missus?” Benjamin asked.

“That's all right,” he said. “We both already know the prayer by heart.”

“A miniature portrait then, perhaps?” said the other brother, whose name Lewis later remembered was Willet. “I can do one in a few minutes. We even have lockets to put them in.”

“No, thank you.” He was a little rankled that the sales were going on so blatantly at what was supposed to be a religious meeting, but then many other people were making good coin selling pocket-size bibles, and there were any number who had shown up with food and water for sale, among them the peddler, Isaac Simms. Some enterprising women had set up huge vats and were preparing stews and soups for sale to those who were too busy praying, or too idle to feed their own families.

Just then, Minta Jessup and her sister-in-law Rachel strolled up to admire the lockets, a group of young men following along behind them — admiring Rachel, Lewis figured. He tipped his hat to them in greeting.

“It's the preacher from Demorestville! Good day to you, sir. I thought we might meet again.”

“I'm pleased it's under such pleasant circumstances.”

Minta smiled too, but he thought she looked pale and even more tired than when he had last seen her. “Are you preaching today, Mr. Lewis?”

“No, not today. It's Mr. Case's meeting today.”

“Now I'm disappointed,” Rachel said. “Minta told me how much she enjoyed your sermon, both the one in the church and the one in the yard. I was looking forward to hearing you.” He could see the twinkle in her grey eyes. “If you expect to convert me to a Methodist, you're going to have to let me hear you preach, you know. Otherwise, I may go off with the Presbyterians, or even the Anglicans.”

“Now you've given me a real challenge. I must make a note to myself that I need to preach to Rachel Jessup, otherwise she may wander into false creeds.”

They had been walking as they talked, but now Minta objected. “I need to sit for a moment, if you don't mind.”

Rachel was immediately solicitous. “Of course, I'm sorry. Here's a vacant piece of log in the shade.” She helped her down, and fussed about her for a moment.

Lewis was about to go on his way and leave the two women, when Minta said, “I'm fine, really. There's no reason for you to sit around. Go on with Mr. Lewis and see what there is to see.”

Rachel hesitated for a moment. “All right, but I won't be long, and then I'll come back and keep you company.”

“Minta's expecting her first child,” she confided when they were out of earshot. “She's sick most of the time, but tries to keep going. That's why Seth asked me to come and live with them, to give her a hand.”

“This child-bearing business is hard on some women,” Lewis said. “It wears them out, even the strong ones, and I don't think your Minta was too robust to begin with.” So Betsy was right, he thought. He might have known.

“Do you have children, sir?”

“Yes, three boys. I had girls, but I've lost them all.”

His grief must have shown in his face. “Oh, I'm so sorry,” Rachel said. “I didn't mean to intrude.”

“It's all right. It's just that one of the losses is recent. I can't help but believe that they've all gone to a better place, but I admit that I miss them sorely.”

Whatever she might have said in return was lost in the hubbub of the start of the meeting. William Case mounted the platform and gazed out over the crowd theatrically before he uttered his first words.

“Brothers and Sisters …” he began.

Lewis rather disliked William Case. He found him pompous and intolerant, failings that he knew are often ascribed to men of God, but in Case they were refined to an unbearable degree. He also had a reputation as a ladies' man of sorts, but his specialty seemed to be marrying up lady preachers so as to shut them up. At least that was Lewis's theory.

His first wife had been Hetty Hubbard, a local preacher who had had some success. But after Case married her, she mounted the pulpit no more. When she died a short time later, he took as his second wife the well-known preacher Eliza Barnes. She had been a popular speaker who had laboured hard among the Indian Missions. Case had professed on more than one occasion to detest her, and during her preaching days he even refused to sit on the same platform with her if she were scheduled to speak. Now that he'd married her, of course, he refused to allow her to say anything, much less profess the Word of God.

Lewis had heard Barnes preach on several occasions, and had admired her eloquence and the force of her voice, which carried easily to the farthest-flung of the congregation.

In the new order of Methodism, however, women were no longer encouraged to profess their faith in public, instead being relegated to the home on account of their “fragility.” Lewis knew this was nonsense, given the lives they led. Take Betsy, for example. For most of her life she had been about as frail as a draught horse, had given birth to ten children and raised them virtually alone, had suffered fevers and accidents and sorrows by the score, and yet was still able, on the days when her ague didn't plague her, to work the average man into the ground. If Betsy had ever been inclined to take up the travelling connection and give public vent to her faith, Lewis would have encouraged and applauded her.

She had laughed when he said this to her at one time. “I declare, Thaddeus, that's the last thing I would want to do. One of us on the road is enough.”

“But if you wanted to, I'd do my best to help you, you know.”

“No, Thaddeus. The only thing I ever wanted was you and the babies.”

And then her voice had softened. “I do thank you for saying it, though.”

Not so Case. And not so with most of the other Methodists, in spite of the fact that they had for years relied on women to supervise class meetings, to carry the gospel to the Indian Missions, and yes, even to preach wherever there was someone to listen. His church was falling into line with the Wesleyans, who had gone so far as to pass a resolution forbidding women from taking the pulpit, and men like William Case had agreed to it.