University of Virginia Library

22. XXII.
ANOTHER SUNDAY.

Another Sunday morning, — how pure and tranquil
after the fever of the week! The farm-wagon is housed,
and the unyoked oxen graze in the autumn pastures.
The mill is silent; the cool, damp cavern under it echoing
only to the plash of the water dripping over the
great wheel. The carpenter's chest is locked, the shop
closed and solitary; only mice in the shavings rustling,
and flies buzzing in the dust and cobwebs of the sunny
windows. Even the active young jackplane, resting on
the work-bench, has a serious, composed look, — as it
were, an air of keeping the Sabbath.

And the cooper's tools lie idle. And the freshly-shaped
staves, standing in the corners, seem to be looking
at each other, and wondering at the vicissitudes of
life; feeling, no doubt, that they have been dreadfully
shaved. While the rows of sober, adult barrels and little
juvenile firkins, all in their new, clean dresses, are holding
a solemn Quaker-meeting, so very life-like, you
would say yonder pretty matron in hoops is just going
to open her head and say something.

Judging from the aspect of the cooper this fine morning,

you would furthermore infer that the said solemnity
will never be interrupted by him, that it will be always
Sunday henceforth in his shop, and Quaker-meeting
among the casks. He himself, he thinks, is through with
church-going, and listening to psalms and sermons forever.
No more shall he sit piously in his pew, while the
words from the pulpit fall and feed him, or the singing
of the sweet-voiced choir breaks silvery over his soul.
Never again shall he hold up his head, unshamed in the
congregation. Even the ringing of the church-bells, in
the holy calm, is intolerable to him; their swelling, sonorous
roar, their dying moan and murmur, awakening in
his breast such vibrant memories, vague terrors, and
sick regrets.

Astride his chair he sits, his head bowed upon the
back of it, a pitiable object. Not even Mrs. Apjohn's
robust bosom can resist a thrill of pity as she looks at
him. Or does the ringing of the church-bells disturb
her also? She has resolutely put on her black silk, declaring
that she is going to meeting, anyway; that she
can hold up her head in church or out of church. But,
the hour arrived, her heart succumbs. Can she bear
the ordeal of jeers and significant glances? What if she
should find a tomato in her pew? Will there not be
some text read at her from the Scriptures, or some application
to her trespass made in the sermon? She has
put on her bonnet with indecision; her fingers hesitate
with the ribbons.

“Sick, John?” she says, turning partly round, as she
stands before the glass.

“I ain't well, Prudy; I ain't well; not over'n above,”
answers melancholy John, under his elbow.

Now, Prudence flatters herself that she is not afraid
to face the nation. But John is poorly; John is downhearted;
maybe John will resort again to his sanguinary
handkerchief. Ought she, as a faithful wife, to leave him
alone? she asks herself, glancing from his submissive
neck to the kitchen pole.

“I declare, John,” she says, out of one corner of her
mouth, — pins in the other corner, — “I won't go to
meetin', after all! You're sick; and I'll stay to hum
and nu's' ye.”

“Never mind me; never mind me,” says Cooper John.
“Go if ye can, and take the good on't. To be sure, to
be sure.”

These were the only words he spoke, until Prudence
had taken off her black silk, put on her every-day gown
again, and sat down in the rocking-chair, with the Bible
on her lap.

“Come, John! le's be sociable, and have a sort of
comf'table Sunday to hum. What ye thinkin' about?”
asks Prudence.

“What a week can bring forth! — the difference
'twixt this Sunday and last, Prudy!” And remembering
how then, in his sleek Sunday clothes, he walked to
church, a respected cooper, and the honest husband of
an honest wife; no neighbors incensed against them,
no finger of scorn pointed at them; the sight of a blushing
tomato no more to him than the aspect of your chaste

cucumber or innocent pippin; everybody friendly to him,
the deacons recognizing him, the selectmen often deigning
to shake hands with him, even the minister saying,
kindly, “Good-morning, Mr. Apjohn!” or, “I hope
you are well this blessed morning, brother Apjohn!”
— remembering such things were one brief week ago,
and can never be again, he takes his little bald head in
his two hands, and wrings it, as if he would force tears
of blood out of that juiceless turnip.

“Highty-tighty, John!” says Prudence; “don't be so
foolish!”

“It won't be Mr. Apjohn any more!” laments the
cooper. “But it'll be Old Apjohn; or Tomato Apjohn.”

“Never mind, John!” says Prudence the inexorable.
“We'll spite 'em to our heart's content! Le's think
o' that, and take comfort.”

“Spite 'em? — Comfort?” repeats the cooper. “No,
no, no!” And the tolling bell says “No — no — no!”
with slow and mournful roar. And the angels whisper
in their hearts, “No, no, no!” But though the sorrowful
tongue of her husband, and the iron tongue of the
bell, and angels' sweetly persuasive lips, should all unite
to warn or to entreat, they could not turn Prudence
from her revenge.

“I can't see a sign of their gittin' out to meetin',” she
observes, looking out of the window towards Abel's
house. “No wonder they don't go! They're deeper'n
the mud'n we be'n the mire, enough sight; we've got
that to console us! Why, John, what's a few tomatuses

'twixt neighbors? only think on't! But breaking into
a house, and into a chist, and stealin' fifty dollars in
money, — that's a State's-prison job, John! Oh, we'll
give folks somethin' to talk about, that'll make 'em forgit
the tomatuses, John!” And with a gleam of malicious
joy, she sits down again, with the Bible on her
lap.

“Read a chapter, Prudy,” says the cooper.

And she reads, —

“But why dost thou judge thy brother? or why dost
thou set at naught thy brother? for we shall all stand
before the judgment-seat of Christ.”

“That's it! to be sure!” comments the humble listener.
“Prudy, how can we be unforgivin' to others?
when we stand so much in need of mercy ourselves?
`Before the judgment-seat of Christ,' Prudy! remember
that!”

Prudence turns to read in another place: “Woe
unto you, when all men shall speak well of you!” and
thinks that here is solace, — that here is something that
will suit her better. But the very next paragraph commences
that sublime and beautiful injunction, “Love
your enemies, do good to them that hate you, bless them
that curse you.”

And she closes the book impatiently. The Bible does
not please her to-day.

In the meanwhile very different scenes are passing in
Abel's house. Faustina still keeps her bed. But Eliza,
active, helpful, effusing an atmosphere of cheerfulness

around her wherever she moves, more than fills the
place of the sullen, absent wife. She has quickly learned
the ways of the altered household; she has the old lady
once more in her chair, in the cosey kitchen-corner; and
again she is the sunshine of the house, as in old times.
Indeed, it seems as if the old times, and the beautiful,
harmonious order of departed days were now restored.
And, but for Ebby prattling yonder, watching his new
“mamma” with pleased eyes, Abel could almost fancy
his married life a wild dream.

“Oh, this is Sunday!” he thinks. No such day of
rest has he known for months. The light of Eliza's
countenance is joy to him; the sense of her presence is
a balm to all his hurts. He looks at his mother's dear
old face, freshly washed with dews of gladness and
gratitude, and shining in the morning brightness of a
new hope; he sees Melissa inspired with unwonted
activity and cleverness; he observes even the dumb
inmate, Turk, thumping his susceptible tail against
every object he passes, in his restless delight at Eliza's
coming; he almost forgets the guilty, despairing woman
in the chamber, and her crime, which he must answer
for; and still he says in his soul, “Oh, this indeed is
Sunday!”

Again Eliza sat with him and his mother at breakfast;
and again she poured the elixir of her own sweet
spirit into the cups she gave them. And the muffins, —
Abel would have known they were of her cooking.
Taste them wherever he might, he could not have been

deceived. They possessed an ingredient which is not
mentioned in any receipt-book. They had the real
Eliza flavor. No such muffins had been eaten in his
house since she left it; and as for that unmistakable
flavor, how often had he longed for it, sitting down to
an ill-furnished table, and turning heart-sick from the
uninviting edibles!

Then, sometimes, in the midst of his thankfulness,
the recollection of Faustina and of her crime crosses
his spirit like an eclipse; and all the future is darkened.

Then, too, the aching thought of what might have
been, had Eliza never gone and Faustina never come,
pierces him. And the thought of what may be still, if
he will but decide to sacrifice his wife, agitates him like
a temptation.

For he knows now, with certainty, that all hope of
happiness with her is shattered; that, under the thin
veneering of her beauty, there is no true grain of
character; that what the deep heart of man forever
hungers for, and can find only in the deep heart of
woman, — what he has sought so ardently and long in
her, and sought always in vain, — can never be his so
long as she is his; and that to be her husband now, in
aught but the name and outward form, will be a sin
against his own divine instinct of marriage.

And, with equal certainty, he knows that, in this
woman whom he once called sister, and loved so calmly
and purely and habitually, under the illusion of that
name, that he never guessed the strength and sacredness

of the tie between them, there exists a soul richly furnished
with all the grace and goodness and sympathy
which he has longed for in a wife, but which he did not
find when he set the vanity of his eyes to choose for him.

It avails not for Abel to put away these thoughts.
They return: when the small, sprightly, electric form
moves before him, or he catches the flash of her sunny
glances; when his ears drink the soft music of her conversation
or laughter; when once more, as in bygone
years, in the mild Sunday afternoon, they read together,
aloud, in the consolatory Gospels, or the mighty poem
of Job; when their voices blend in singing again the
old beloved tunes, and their spirits blend also in a more
subtile and delicious harmony; continually the wishes,
the regrets, the passionate yearnings return, with their
honey and their stings.

It is too much. Oh that the simple strain of an old
tune, flinging out its spiral coil, should have power to
lasso the will and master it! that the near rustle of a
robe should convulse a strong man's affections! that
the mere sight of an industrious little hand setting the
supper-table should thrill the heart to tears!

After supper, Abel went out to walk, to calm his
emotions, to cool his spirit in the bath of the evening
air, — to read the riddle of his life, if possible, in the
light of the sunset and the stars. And as he walked,
thinking of the two women, — her he loved, and her he
loathed, — doubting, hoping, in anguish and humility;
he remembered the prayer of Jesus, and a part of it,

which had always been dark, suddenly became clear.
And he prayed within himself, —

“O Father in Heaven! hallowed be thy name, which
is Love!

“O Love! lead us not into temptation!”

This day it had been revealed to him that, by the deeper
law of marriage, he and Eliza belonged to each other,
— and that she, with her woman's nature, supreme in
matters of the heart, had recognized the truth, long since,
and been moved by it when he deemed her conduct so
strange and unpardonable. If he had hitherto repented
of his unkindness to her, how did he now gnash his teeth
at the recollection of his own blindness and madness!

At sunset he stood upon a hill, and overlooked a
landscape which had all his life been familiar to him; —
the same earth, the same sky, the spectacle of the sundown.
But now, for the first time, by some chance,
bending his head, he discovered a phenomenon, known to
every shrewd lover of nature. His eyes inverted, looking
backwards under his shoulder, saw the world upside-down.
The unusual order in which the rays of color impinged
the nerve of vision exhibited them with surprising
distinctness and delicacy. The green valley, the
glimmering stream, the tints of early autumn on hillside
and cliff, the light on the village roofs far and near, the
blue suffused horizon, the glittering sun beyond, were
transfigured with magical loveliness. In the cloudless
purity of the sky, which had scarcely attracted his attention
before, burned the most exquisitely beautiful belts

of color, more splendid than any rainbow. And Abel
said, “How blind we are to the glories that are always
before our eyes! Eliza was with me every day. I was
as ignorant of her dearness and worth as I have always
been of the beauty of the world until now. Oh, why
have I discovered the charms of the earth and sky just
as I am threatened with being shut up from the sight of
them in the walls of a prison? And why have I never
felt her charms until now I look at them through the
grated windows of wedlock?”

So saying, or rather thinking, or rather feeling, — for
his emotions did not shape themselves in words, — he
turned to descend the hill.

“Why should I suffer in that wretched woman's
place?” he repeatedly asked himself, in the sweating
agony of his heart. “I can force her to write a full confession.
That will exculpate me. That may lead to — O my
God! let me not sin in this! Let my duty be made
plain!”

He walked far. He returned by the common, and
stood struggling with himself in sight of his house.
It was now moonlight; and the stars twinkled in their
eternal spheres. He could see the windows, behind
which his wife lay writhing with terror and shame. He
could see the door of his house, once more rendered dear
to him by her, the very thought of whom could agitate
and swell his breast.

“I will talk with Eliza, — I will tell her everything, —
and she shall tell me what to do.”