The Gentle Rebel
Authors: Gilbert Morris
© 1988 by Gilbert Morris
Published by Bethany House Publishers 11400 Hampshire Avenue South Bloomington, Minnesota 55438
Bethany House Publishers is a division of
Baker Publishing Group, Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Ebook edition created 2011
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.
ISBN 978-1-4412-7031-3
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.
Cover illustration by Dan Thornberg
Cover design by Danielle White
This one is for my redheads—
Alan Blake Morris and
Zachary Alan Morris
POWER IN THE BLOOD
Alan, my son, quite without intent
Wheeled around as I came in and bent
His head to one side grinning crookedly—
And from his eyes, my father looked at me.
A thousand times I’d seen my father twist
His head just so (sort of a starboard list)
Squint-eyed, as though peering through a haze,
Just as he looked at me through my son’s gaze.
I saw my father clear in my son’s light,
O, there is power in the blood all right!
That father’s blood that cools and slows its pace
Will glow again in a grandson’s face.
One day, perhaps, when I am gone from here,
I’ll come again to look at Alan plain and clear;
Then he will halt, will stand in shocked surprise
To see me smile at him—through Zachary’s eyes!
CONTENTS
8. “A Man in Love Is Bound to Be a Fool!”
11. “He’s a Mighty Fearsome Man!”
14. “The Whites of Their Eyes!”
23. “I’ll Do What I Have to Do!”
CHAPTER ONE
ALONE!
If Julie Sampson had been born two years earlier or two years later, she would not have been in such a trap—or so she thought as she stood trembling in her small room, her back pressed against the wall.
If I were only twelve or thirteen, he’d leave me alone—or if I were seventeen, I’d be old enough to leave here!
She held her breath as heavy footfalls sounded on the stairs, came down the hall, then stopped abruptly outside her door. She suddenly pressed the back of her hand against her mouth to shut off the cry of terror that rose to her lips. The silence grew thick, so thick that between the solemn tickings of the clock she thought she could hear heavy breathing. Her eyes were riveted on the door as she waited for the pewter knob to turn. When the thought of escape through the small window beside her pierced her mind, she cast a quick glance at the snow that was drifting gently outside the glass.
She edged cautiously to her right.
I wonder if I would break my legs on the cobblestones?
she thought fleetingly, looking down at the walk that ran in front of the shop. She didn’t really care—all she wanted to do was escape. She touched the catch on the window; then suddenly the footfalls retreated, going down the hall, and echoing down the stairs.
“Thank God!” she breathed, and then discovered that her legs were trembling so violently she could hardly stand, let
alone make the jump to the walkway below. Dropping into the chair beside the small oak table, she hid her face in her hands and tried to think. She struggled to choke back the sobs that rose in her throat; finally, with great effort, she shook her shoulders, rose from the chair and walked to the washbasin at the foot of her bed. Dashing her face with cold water, she dried it with a thick, white cloth that hung at the end of the stand, then began to pace back and forth. Her mind whirled, filled with insistent but ineffective thoughts. She couldn’t seem to sort them out, and any prayer she tried to utter seemed meaningless, an empty formula, a ritual learned from childhood.
She walked to the window, looking down over the wooden sign that said SILAS SAMPSON—CARTOGRAPHER in crimson letters, carefully scrolled. The sight of it evoked an image of her father, and as she thought of his slight figure bent over his desk, the tears flooded her eyes, and she dashed them away almost angrily.
I can’t cry for him anymore!
she thought. And then she looked across the street, resolutely past the sign swinging in the stiff January breeze, and saw a man wearing a heavy fur coat. Her lips grew firm, and snatching a heavy coat and a bonnet from the pegs on the wall, she stepped outside her room, walked down the hall and descended the stairs.
Her hope of passing through the shop without being noticed was dashed as a voice said, “Julie—where you going?”
Aaron Sampson suddenly appeared, interposing his bulk between her and the door, and as always she had to restrain herself to keep from flinching as he put his meaty hand on her shoulder. “I don’t want you to go out in this weather,” he said, and his grip changed to a caress that made her flesh crawl.
“Rev. Kelly asked me to come by today,” she said quickly.
“The preacher? What’s he want with you?”
“I—I think he wants some work done on his books.”
“Oh, work is it?” Aaron Sampson cared nothing for preachers, but he dearly loved a dollar. Reluctantly, he let his thick
hand slide off Julie’s shoulder, stepped aside, and a sudden grin pulled the corners of his thick lips up as she slipped by him. “Might ought to tell that preacher that he’ll be needed right soon, Julie!”
She closed the door quickly to shut off his words, but his coarse voice penetrated the three-inch oak with ease: “Might have a marrying job, ain’t that right, girl?”
The hard lines of Philadelphia had been blurred by soft folds of new snow, and the rough street felt like thick carpet as Julie hurried to catch up with the tall minister. Her feet made no sound, and flakes as big as wafers stung her face. When she called out, “Rev. Kelly!” there was an echo in the icy air, as if her voice were frozen, too.
“Why, Julie!” Rev. Zachariah Kelly’s skeletal thinness was disguised by the bulk of the fur coat, but the face that peered out from under a tri-cornered hat seemed even more pale and bony, framed as it was by the black hat and coat. “What are you doing out in this weather?”
“Oh, I—I just thought it would be good to get some fresh air.” Julie’s face flushed suddenly. She had lied to Aaron, and whatever the man’s designs, her lack of truthfulness troubled her. Then she lifted her face and said quickly, “Rev. Kelly, you told my father once that you wanted him to make a map for you—of County Cork, I think it was?”
“Why, bless me, child!” He stared at her with kindly blue eyes, and then nodded. “I’d almost forgotten that—but so I did.”
“Could—could I go home with you so we could talk about it? I can make the map—almost as good as Father could have done it if he . . . !”
Kelly’s vision was weak, but he did not miss the sudden tears that rose to the girl’s eyes at the mention of her father. He reached out, took her hand, and said gently, “It’s very hard to lose a dear one, Julie—hard for anyone. But doubly so when we only have the
one
to lose.” His mind went back two months when he had tossed the handful of dirt into
the ground, hearing it strike the wooden coffin containing Julie’s father with a dull
thud,
and he remembered that she had flinched at the sound as if the earth had struck her in the face—or as if a musket ball had smitten her in the heart. “You were very close to your father, Julie,” he murmured. Then briskly, he took her arm and said, “Why, I think that’s a splendid idea—that map of the old country! We’ll just pop along to my study and I’ll show you where I came from—and did you know, my dear, that all Irishmen are descended from kings?” He chattered away lightly, and was rewarded to see the lines fade from her smooth brow.
They passed under the shadow of Christ Church, an imposing virgin clothed in winter white, then walked around the path to the small cottage in the rear that almost touched the graveyard. Rev. Kelly bustled Julie inside, and asked his wife to fix some tea and bring it to the study.
“There’s no tea, you mind,” Mrs. Kelly said with a mischievous smile. “Don’t you remember, Zachariah?”
He stared at her blankly; then a grimace of annoyance swept his thin features. “Blast!” Then he laughed, and a twinkle lit his blue eyes. “When the Crown put that tax on tea, I got carried away with some of Sam Adams’ talk—and when the Sons of Liberty dressed up like Indians and threw the King’s tea into Boston Harbor, why, I joined the rest of the Bedlamites and threw all my tea in the fire!” He shrugged ruefully, then added as he guided Julie to his study, “That’s the way it is with that sort of
repentance
—a man gets carried away with something, then has to live with it after the parade’s over!”
Julie followed him into the large study lined with books. “Now, let’s see,” he muttered, staring at the two large tables against the wall almost buried with papers, drawings, books, and other scholarly material. “Ah! Here we have it!”
The minister extracted a large book from the midst of a stack of papers, opened it, and soon he and Julie were chattering away about longitudes, latitudes and other matters
of the business. Rev. Kelly was not thinking of mapmaking, however, but of the young woman who stood beside him. Since the death of her father, Julie had been grappling with a problem that he could not quite identify. She had been a member of his church all her life, as had her father, and the two of them had been inseparable. Since his death, however, she had become more and more silent and her ruddy cheeks had grown pale.