15. Mark's Mission
" You don't say so." It was Sheriff Lathers who spoke, as he did so, putting his boots up on the mantel-piece, leaning back in his chair and spitting in the fire-place expectorating by way of facilitating the expression of his ideas. He never could say anything of great importance without stopping to spit, and his little clique of hangers-on knew that when Major Tom Lathers thus loosened his mental machinery he was about to say something quite oracular. It was the signal for general silence and intense attention on the part of the bottle-nosed deputy and other interested disciples of the eminent and astute political philosopher whose misfortune it was that he must repose his boots on the poplar mantel-piece in the sheriff's office in Luzerne, rather than on the sofas in the United States Senate Chamber, for which last position of repose nature had clearly intended him. But while I have thus digressed the philosopher has run his sharp gray eyes in a scrutinizing way around the circle of ad miring loafers has rammed his fists into his pockets, corrugated his intellectual brow, resumed his meditative stare at the fireplace, in which there are the charred relics of the last (ire it contained, destined to remain until the next fire shall be lighted in the fall. And now he is ready to speak.
" Well, I'll be swinged ! '' Here he paused. Pauses of this sort whet people's appetites. He looked about him once more to be sure that he had now fairty arrested the whole-hearted attention of his devout followers.
" I didn't believe no ways, as Mark Bonamy would go, and he wouldn't a gone a step ef the ole man hadn't a threatened. Mark's one of this 'ere kind: you can coax him and tole him with a yer of corn, but jist try to drive him and he won't. ' Git up,' says you, 'I won't,' says he ; ' Git up there,'' says you, ' I'll be dogged ef I do,' says he, and lets his heels fly and you keel over backward. I tried drivin' and tolin' last summer and he kicked up every time I tried the spurs onto him. But he's goin' to Texas shore enough, they say. That'll wear out soon and he'll be back here, like the prodigal son, eatin' swine's flesh with the rest of us."
Here he gave a knowing look at each of his auditors and received a significant blink in return.
Just at this point Mark Bonamy himself came in to attend to some business with the sheriff's deputy.
" Good morning, Major," he said, half-conscions at once that he had interrupted some conversation about himself.
" Howdy, Mark ? Goin' to Texas, shore as shootin', so they say ? "
" Yes." This with some hesitation, as of a man who would fain make an avowal with reserve lest he should want to creep out of it.
" Well, Mark," here Lathers paused, placed his feet on the mantel-piece again and again performed the preliminary rite of expectoration, " I dc say that they aint many folks that gives up more'n you dj in goin' away on a fool mission to convert the heathen. Now, Mark, it mayn't be a bad move after all. Texas is a small republic, and you may come to be president there, like Joseph did in the Land of Canaan. Hey ? And Texas may be hitched on behind Uncle Sam's steamboat some day as a scrt of yawl. In which case look out for Mark Bonamy, United States Senator. It's better to be capt'in of a yawl than deck hand on board the ' General Pike.' I don't know whether you're a fool after all. Jcseph didn't go down into Egypt for i othing. He had his eye on the corn."
Here Lathers winked at the deputy's luminous nose, and then looked seriously at Bonamy. Somehow Mark, at this moment, felt ashamed of his mission, and was quite willing to have Lathers impute to him interested designs rather than to appear to the eyes of that elevated moral philosopher a man who was somewhat disinterested and therefore a fool. The real chameleon is a sensitive vanity, prone to change color with every change of surrounding.
Mark Bonamy was not yet a licensed preacher, nor even an exhorter, for his probation of six months had not expired. He exhorted in meeting by general consent, but as a layman. A glowing account of his abilities and of his missionary enthusiasm had been sent to Bishop Hedding, who immediately booked him in his mind as suited to some dangerous and difficult role ; for Hedding looked on men as a chess-player does upon his pieces, he weighed well the difference between a knight and a rook, and especially between a piece with great powers and a mere pawn. The death of Dr. Martin Ruter had weakened the Texan mission. In Mark, as described to him, he saw a man of force who might in time prove of the utmost value to the church in that new republic. So he wrote to Mark, asking if he would proceed in the autumn to Texas and take a place as second man on a circuit of some five hundred miles around, with forty-seven preaching-places. The letter came at the right moment, for Bonamy had just returned from the great camp-meeting in Moore's Woods, with all his religious enthusiasm and missionary zeal at white heat. He had renewed for the tenth time in six months his solemn consecration of himself to some great work, had made a public and penitent confession of his backslidings, and resolved to grow cold no more. And of all his spiritual leaders none were wise enough to know and point out to him that this keying himself higher than his impulsive nature would bear, was one of his chief perils. Reactions were inevitable while he continued to be Mark Bonamy.
But while he was thus, as Cartwright would have said, "under a shouting latitude," there came the letter from the great bishop like the voice of God telling him to leave his father's house, and to get him out into the wilderness to seek the lost sheep. Many a man gets committed to some high and heroic course in his best moment, often wondering afterward by what inspiration he was thus raised above himself. Happy is he whose opportunity of decision finds him at high-water mark. Happy, if ho have stability enough to stand by his decision after it is made.
Mark was not without debate and hesitation. He might even now have faltered but for two things. The influence of Roxy and of his father alike impelled him to accept. As soon as the word came to Colonel Bonamy that Mark had received such a letter, he did his best, unwittingly, to confirm him in his purpose by threatening him again with disinheritance. It only needed to awaken the son's combativeness to give his resolution strength and consistency. Even the religious devotion of a martyr may gain tone from inborn oppugnancy.
Then there was the influence of Roxy. Her relation to Mark was only that of a confidential religious friend.
He had had occasion to consult her father frequently, sometimes when meeting her on the street, sometime? calling at her house. But how often does one have to remark that mere friendship between a young man and a young woman is quite impossible for any considerable time. There is no King Knud who can say to the tide of human affection, " thus far and no farther." Mark's love for Roxy had ceased to be Platonic he was not quite Plato. But how should he even confess to himself that he loved Roxy. For loving Roxy and going on a mission to the Brazos River were quite inconsistent. A man was not supposed to want a wife to help him fight Indians, rattlesnakes, Mexican desperadoes and starvation. And to give up the mission for Roxy's sake would have been to give up Roxy also. He knew dimly that it was only in the light of a self-sacrificing hero that she admired him. Perhaps he unconsciously recognized also that this admiration of him on her part had served to keep his purpose alive.