as his wife was always in winchester for holy week, the miller customarily took his easter dinner with his daughter and granddaughters. this year easter sunday fell early (the twenty-third of march), but it was a bright, sunshiny morning, and warm for the season. he walked across the meadow to accompany mrs. blake and her little girls to church. the children told him joyfully that mr. fairhead, the preacher (who was also their schoolmaster), was coming to dinner. it would be like a party; for mr. fairhead was not old and dismal like most preachers, and did not say a long grace while the chicken was getting cold.
the church was a forlorn weather-boarded building with neither spire nor bell, standing on a naked hillside where the rains had washed winding gutters in the gravelly slope. it had once been painted red, but the boards were now curling from lack of paint. it looked like an abandoned factory left to the mercy of the weather. in the basement underneath, the country day school was kept.
the miller and his daughter went up four warped plank steps and entered the church. once within, they separated. all the men and boys sat on one side of the aisle, the girls and women on the other. the pews were long benches, with backs but no cushions. there was no floor covering of any kind, there were no blinds at the dusty windows. the peaked shingle roof was supported by whitewashed rafters. up under this roof, over the front door, was the gallery where the coloured people sat. it was a rule among the farmers who owned slaves to send them to church on sunday.
while mrs. blake knelt for a few moments in silent prayer, mary and betty sat restlessly trying to peep over the hats and sunbonnets in front of them to catch sight of their dear mr. fairhead, who was in the splint-bottom chair behind the pulpit, waiting for his congregation to assemble.
when the scuffling tramp of heavy shoes on the bare floor had ceased, mr. fairhead rose and said: “let us pray.” he closed his eyes and began his invocation. in the untempered light which poured through the bare windows he looked a very young man indeed, with rosy cheeks and yellow hair. he had been sent out into the backwoods to teach the country school and to “fill the pulpit,” though he had not yet been ordained. during the long summer vacations he lived in winchester and read divinity with old doctor sellers, coming out to back creek on horseback every saturday to conduct the sunday service.
after the prayer he gave out the hymn, read it aloud slowly and distinctly, since many of his congregation could not read. when he closed his hymnbook, the congregation rose. old andrew shand, a scotchman with wiry red hair and chin whiskers, officially led the singing. he struck his tuning-fork on the back of a bench and began: “there is a land of pure delight,” at a weary, drawling pace. but the colbert negroes, and the miller himself, immediately broke away from shand and carried the tune along. mr. fairhead joined in, looking up at the gallery. for him the singing was the living worship of the sunday services; the negroes in the loft sang those bright promises and dark warnings with such fervent conviction. fat lizzie and her daughter, bluebell, could be heard above them all. bluebell had a pretty soprano voice, but lizzie sang high and low with equal ease. the congregation downstairs knew what a “limb” she was, but no one, except andy shand, ever complained because she took a high hand with the hymns. the old people who couldn’t read could “hear the words” when lizzie sang. neither could lizzie read, but she knew the hymns by heart. mr. fairhead often wondered how it was that she sounded the letter “r” clearly when she sang, though she didn’t when she talked.
could we but stand where moses stood
and view the landscape o’er
not jordan’s stream nor death’s cold flood
would fright us from that shore.
when lizzie rolled out the last verse and sat down, the young preacher looked up at the gallery, not with a smile, exactly, but with appreciation. he often felt like thanking her.
as for andy shand, he hated lizzie and all the colbert negroes. his animosity extended to the colberts themselves; even about mrs. blake he was “none so sure.”
after the congregation was dismissed, mr. fairhead and the miller walked down the road together, deep in conversation. mrs. blake and her girls followed behind. she knew her father enjoyed the company of an educated man like fairhead; that was why she had asked the preacher to dinner. their talk, as she listened to it, was plain farmer talk, to be sure; about the early season, and the prospects for wheat and hay. presently the miller began to ask about the country school and mr. fairhead’s pupils. there were bright boys among them, the young man insisted, some who rode over to school from as far as peughtown. there were even boys from the mountain who would do fairly well if they had half a chance. there was casper flight — here colbert held up his hand.
“never say flight to me, mr. fairhead. i’ve ground that man’s miserable bit of corn and buckwheat ten years for nothing, and on top of that he hangs around the mill and steals honest men’s grist. my sampson has caught him time and again crawling down from the storeroom at night with a bag in his hand.”
“i know all about him, mr. colbert. but if you could see how that corn and buckwheat was raised, you wouldn’t grudge grinding it for nothing. they’ve got no horse, and this boy casper breaks up the ground in their corn patch and buckwheat field himself. he pulls the plough, and his mother follows at the plough handles and holds the share in the earth. last spring i got mr. giffen up on the ridge to lend casper a horse, to put in his buckwheat. his father came home unexpectedly, knocked the boy down, took the horse out of the plough, and rode up to capon river to go fishing.”
“i’m glad you told me, sir. if there’s any good can come out of the flights, god knows i’d like to help it along. i could give this boy work around the place in busy times, but you know none of those mountain boys will work along with coloured hands.”
“yes, i know.” mr. fairhead sighed. “it’s the one thing they’ve got to feel important about — that they’re white. it’s pitiful.”
whenever colbert had a talk with david fairhead, he wished he could see more of him. he had several times asked the young man to supper at the mill house, but he observed that fairhead was not at ease in sapphira’s company. he was shy and on his guard, and sapphira had seemed possessed to puzzle him with light ironies. since he was from pennsylvania, she considered him an inferior. yet her manner with inferiors (with the cobbler, the butcher, the weaver, the storekeeper) was irreproachable. when the old broom-pedlar or the wandering tinsmith happened along, they were always given a place at the dinner table, and she knew just how to talk to them. but with fairhead she took on a mocking condescension, as if she were all the while ridiculing his simplicity. therefore, henry figured it out, she did not really regard him as an inferior, but as an equal — of the wrong kind. fairhead boarded with mrs. bywaters, at the post office, and sapphira knew that he was “northern” at heart. she laughed and told henry she could “smell it on him.”
oh, yes, she admitted, he was not an ignoramus, like the country schoolteachers who had been there before him. she was glad mary and betty had a teacher who did not chew tobacco in the schoolroom or speak like the mountain people. he had doubtless been raised a gentleman — of the pennsylvania kind. but he was a mealy-mouth, say what you would; and if she made him uncomfortable, it was because he hadn’t the wit to come back at her. “how can i talk to a man who blushes every time i poke fun at him, or at anybody else? you’d better give it up, henry.” so the schoolmaster was not invited to the mill house again.
