University of Virginia Library

6. CHAPTER VI.

The next day was the Sabbath. John Cross had timed
his arrival at the village with a due reference to his duties,
and after a minute calculation of days and distances, so
that his spiritual manna might be distributed in equal proportions
among his hungering flock. His arrival made
itself felt accordingly, not simply in Charlemont, but
throughout the surrounding country for a circuit of ten
miles or more. There was a large and hopeful gathering
of all sorts and sexes, white and black, old and young.
Charlemont had a very pretty little church of its own; but
one, and that, with more true Christianity than is found
commonly in this world of pretence and little tolerance,
was open to preachers of all denominations. The word
of God, among these simple folks, was quite too important
to make them scruple at receiving it from the lips of either
Geneva, Rome or Canterbury. The church stood out
among the hills at a little distance from, but in sight of the
village; a small, neat Grecian-like temple, glimmering
white and saintlike through solemn-visaged groves, and
gaudy green foliage. The old trees about it were all kept
neatly trimmed, the brush pruned away and cleared up,
and a smooth sweet sward, lawnlike, surrounded it, such
as children love to skip and scramble over, and older
children rest at length upon, in pairs, talking over their
sweet silly affections. Surrounded by an admiring crowd,
each of whom had his respectful salutation, at length
towards noon we see our friend John Cross approaching
the sacred dwelling. Truly he was the most simple, fraternal
of all God's creatures. He had a good word for
this, an affectionate inquiry for that, none had he forgotten,
and he had a benevolent smile, and a kind pressure of the
hand for all. He was a man to do good, for every body
saw that he thought for every body sooner than for himself,
and sincerity and earnestness, constitute with the necessary
degree of talent, the grand secrets for making
successful teachers in every department. Though a simple,

unsophisticated, unsuspecting creature, John Cross
was a man of very excellent natural endowments. He
chose for his text a passage of the Scriptures which admitted
of a direct practical application to the concerns of
the people, their daily wants, their pressing interests,
moral, human, and social. He was thus enabled to preach
a discourse which sent home many of his congregation
much wiser than they came, if only in reference to their
homely duties of farmstead and family. John Cross was
none of those sorry and self-constituted representatives of
our eternal interests, who deluge us with a vain, worthless
declamation, proving that virtue is a very good thing, religion
a very commendable virtue, and a liberal contribution
to the church-box at the close of the sermon one of the
most decided proofs that we have this virtue in perfection.
Nay, it is somewhat doubtful, indeed, if he ever once alluded
to the state of his own scrip and the treasury of the
church. His faith, sincere, spontaneous, ardent, left him
in very little doubt that the Lord will provide, for is he
not called “Jehovah-jireh?”—and his faith—and for this
too was he a believer—was strengthened and confirmed by
the experience of his whole life. But then John Cross
had few wants—few, almost none! In this respect he
resembled the first apostles. The necessities of life once
cared for, never was mortal man more thoroughly independent
of the world. He was not one of those fine
preachers who, dealing out counsels of self-denial, in grave
saws and solemn maxims, with wondrous grim visage and
a most slow, lugubrious shaking of the head,—are yet always
religiously careful to secure the warmest seat by the
fireside, and the best buttered bun on table. He taught no
doctrine which he did not practice; and as for consideration—that
test at once of the religionist and the gentleman
—he was as humbly solicitous of the claims and feelings
of others, as the lovely and lowly child to whom reverence
has been well taught from the beginning, as the true beginning,
equally of politeness and religion.

Before going into church he urged his protégé, Stevens,
to consent to share in the ceremonies of the service as a
layman; but there was still some saving virtue in the young
man, which made him resolute in refusing to do so. Perhaps,
his refusal was dictated by a policy like that which
had governed him so far already; which made him reluctant

to commit himself to a degree which might increase
very much the hazards of detection. He feared indeed,
the restraints which the unequivocal adoption of the profession
would impose upon him, fettering somewhat the
freedom of his intercourse with the young of both sexes,
and, consequently, opposing an almost insurmountable
barrier to the prevailing object which had brought him to
the village. Whatever may have been the feelings or motives
which governed him, they, at least, saved him from
an act which would have grievously aggravated his already
large offence against truth and propriety. He declined,
in language of the old hypocrisy. He did not feel justified
in taking up the cross—he felt that he was not yet worthy;
and, among the members of a church, which takes largely
into account the momentary impulses and impressions of
the professor, the plea was considered a sufficiently legitimate
one.

But though Stevens forbore to commit himself openly
in the cause which he professed a desire to espouse, he
was yet sufficiently heedful to maintain all those externals
of devotion which a seriously-minded believer would be
apt to exhibit. He could be a good actor of a part, and
in this lay his best talent. He had that saving wisdom of
the worldling, which is too often estimated beyond its
worth, which is called cunning; and the frequent successes
of which produces that worst of all the diseases
that ever impaired the value of true greatness,—conceit.
Alfred Stevens, fancied that he could do every thing, and
this fancy produced in him the appearances of a courage
which his moral nature never possessed. He had
the audacity which results from presumption, not the wholesome
strength which comes from the conscious possession
of right purpose. But a truce to our metaphysics.

Never did a saint wear the aspect of such supernatural
devotion. He knelt with the first, groaned audibly at intervals,
and when his face became visible, his eyes were
strained in upward glances, so that the spectator could behold
little more in their orbs than a sea of white.

“Oh! what a blessed young man!” said Mrs. Quackenbosh.

“How I wish it was he that was to preach for us today;”
responded that gem from the antique, Miss Polly

Entwistle, who had joined every church in Kentucky in
turn, without having been made a spouse in either.

“How handsome he is!” simpered Miss Julia Evergreen—a
damsel of seventeen, upon whom the bilious
eyes of Miss Entwistle were cast with such an expression
as the devil is said to put on when suddenly soused in holy
water.

“Handsome is that handsome does!” was the commentary
of a venerable cormorant to whom Brother Cross had
always appeared the special and accepted agent of heaven.

“I wish Brother Cross would get him to pray only. I
wonder if he believes in the new-light doctrine?” purred
one of the ancient tabbies of the conventicle.

“The new light is but the old darkness, Sister Widgeon;”
responded an old farmer of sixty-four, who had
divided his time so equally between the plough and the
prayer book, that his body had grown as crooked as the
one, while his mind was bewildered with as many doctrines
as ever worried all sense out of the other. We
shall not suffer these to divert us from our purpose, any
more than Stevens permitted their speculations upon his
person and religion to affect the appearances of his devotion.
He looked neither to the right nor to the left while
entering the church, or engaging in the ceremonies. No
errant glances were permitted to betray to the audience a
mind wandering from the obvious duties that were before
it; and yet Alfred Stevens knew just as well that every
eye in the congregation was fixed upon him, as that he
was himself there; and among those eyes, his own keen
glance had already discovered those of that one for whom
all these labours of hypocrisy were undertaken. Margaret
Cooper sat on the opposite side of the church, but the line
of vision was uninterrupted between them, and when—
though very unfrequently—Stevens suffered his gaze to
rest upon her form, it was with a sudden look of pleased
abstraction, as if, in spite of himself, his mind was irresistibly
drawn away from all recollection of its immediate
duties. If a word is sufficient for the wise, a look answers
an equal purpose with the vain. Margaret Cooper
left the church that morning with a pleased conviction that
the handsome stranger had already paid his devotion to her
charms. There was yet another passion to be gratified.

The restless ambition of her foolish heart whispered to her
momently, that if her person had done so much, what
might she not hope to achieve when the treasures of her
mind were known. She had long since made the comparison
of her own intellect with that of every other maiden
in the village, and she flattered herself that before
many days, the young stranger should make it too. Her
vain heart was rapidly preparing to smooth the path of the
enemy and make his conquests easy.

But it was not the women only, by whom the deportment
of Alfred Stevens was so closely watched. The
eyes of suspicion and jealousy were upon him. The two
young men whose interview formed the conclusion of our
last chapter, scanned his conduct and carriage with sufficient
keenness of scrutiny.

“I'll tell you what, Bill Hinkley,” said his cousin,
“this fellow, to my thinking, is a very great rascal.”

“What makes you think so?” demanded the former,
with slow, dissatisfied accents; “he seems to pray very
earnestly.”

“That's the very reason I think him a rascal. His
praying seems to me very unnatural. Here, he's a perfect
stranger in the place, yet he never shows any curiosity
to see the people. He never once looks around him.
He walks to the church with his eye cast upon the ground,
and sometimes he squints to this side and sometimes to
that, but he seems to do it slyly, and seems to take pains
that nobody should see him doing it. All this might answer
for an old man, who believing that every thing is
vanity—as, indeed, every thing must seem to old people;
but to a young fellow, full of blood, who eats well, drinks
well, sleeps well, and should naturally have a hankering
after a young girl, all this is against nature. Now, what's
against nature is wrong, and there's wrong at the bottom
of it. Youth is the time to laugh, dance, sing, play on the
violin, and always have a sweetheart when it can find one.
If you can't get a beauty take a brown; and if Mary won't
smile, Susan will. But always have a sweetheart; always
be ready for fun and frolic; that's the way for the young,
and when they don't take these ways, it's unnatural—
there's something wrong about it, and I'm suspicious of
that person. Now, I just have this notion of the young
stranger. He's after no good. I reckon he's like a hundred

others; too lazy to go to work, he goes to preaching,
and learns in the first sermon to beg hard for the missionaries.
I'll lick him, Bill, to a certainty if he gives me the
littlest end of an opportunity.”

“Pshaw, Ned, don't think of such a thing. You are
quite too fond of licking people.”

“Deuse a bit. It does 'em good.—Look you, this chap
is monstrous like Joe Richards. I'll have to lick him on
that account.”

“You're mad, Ned;—talk of whipping a preacher.”

“He's no preacher yet,” said the other, “but if I lick
him he may become one.”

“No matter, he's never offended you.”

“Ay, but he will. I see it in the fellow's looks. I
never was mistaken in a fellow's looks in all my life.”

“Wait till he does offend you then.”

“Well, I'm willing to do that, for I know the time will
come. I'm always sure, when I first see a man, to know
whether I'll ever have to flog him or not. There's a
something that tells me so. Isn't that very singular,
Bill?”

“No! you form a prejudice against a man, fancy that
you ought to whip him, and then never rest till you've
done so. You'll find your match some day.”

“What! you think some other chap will fancy he
ought to whip me? Well—maybe so. But this ain't the
fellow to do that.”

“He's a stout man, and I reckon strong. Besides, Ned,
he's very handsome.”

“Handsome! Lord, Bill, what a taste you have? How
can a man be called handsome that never altogether opens
his eyes, except when he turns up the whites until you'd
think he'd never be able to get the balls back to their proper
place? Then, what a chin he has—as sharp as a
pitchfork, and who but a girl child would fancy a man
with his hair combed sleek like a woman's on each side of
his ears, with big whiskers at the same time that looks for
all the world like the brush of a seven years running fox
Handsome! If my pup `Dragon' was only half so much
like a beast, I'd plump him into the horsepond!”

It is probable that Ned Hinkley did not in truth think
of the stranger as he expressed himself. But he saw how
deep a hold his appearance had taken, in an adverse way,

upon the mind and feelings of his relative and friend, and
his rude, but well-meant endeavours, were intended to console
his companion, after his own fashion, by the exhibition
of a certain degree of sympathy. His efforts, however
well intended, did not produce any serious effect.
William Hinkley, though he forbore the subject, and
every expression which might indicate either soreness or
apprehension, was still the victim of that presentiment
which had touched him on the very first appearance of the
stranger. He felt more than ever apprehensive on the
score of his misplaced affections. While his cousin had
been watching the stranger, his eyes had been fixed upon
those of Margaret Cooper, and his fears were increased
and strengthened, as he perceived that she was quite too
much absorbed in other thoughts and objects to behold for
an instant the close espionage which he maintained upon
her person. His heart sunk within him, as he beheld how
bold was her look, and how undisguised the admiration
which it expressed for the handsome stranger.

“You will go home with me, William?” said the
cousin.

The other hesitated.

“I think,” said he, after a moment's pause, “I should
rather go to my own home. It is a sort of weakness to
let a stranger drive a man off from his own family, and
though I somehow dislike this person's looks, and am very
sorry that John Cross brought him to our house, yet I
shouldn't let a prejudice which seems to have no good foundation
take such possession of my mind. I will go home,
Ned, and see,—perhaps, I may come to like the stranger
more when I know him better.”

“You'll never like him. I see it in the fellow's eye;
but just as you please about going home. You're right in
one thing, never to give up your own dunghill, so long as
you can get room on it for a fair fling with your enemy.
Besides, you can see better, by going home, what the
chap's after. I don't see why he should come here to
learn to preach. We can't support a preacher. We don't
want one. He could just as well have learnt his business
where he came from.”

With these words the cousins separated.

“Now,” said Ned Hinkley as he took his own way
homeward, in a deeper fit of abstraction than was altogether

usual with him—“now will Bill Hinkley beat about the
bush without bouncing through it, until it's too late to do
any thing. He's mealy-mouthed with the woman, and
mealy-mouthed with the man, and mealy-mouthed with
every body—quite too soft-headed, too easy to get on.
Here's a stranger nobody knows, just like some crow from
another corn-field, that'll pick up his provision from under
his very nose, and he doing nothing to hinder until there's
no use in trying. If I don't push in and help him he'll
not help himself. As for Margaret Cooper, dang it, I'll
court her for him myself. If he's afraid to pop the question
I ain't; though I'll have to be mighty careful about the
words I use, or she'll be thinking I come on my own hook;
and that would be a mighty scary sort of business all round
the house. Then this stranger. If any body can look
through a stranger here in Charlemont, I reckon I'm that
man. I suspect him already. I think he's after no good
with his great religioning; and I'll tie such a pair of eyes
to his heels, that his understanding will never be entirely
out of my sight. I'll find him out if any body can. But
I won't lick him till I do. That would'nt be altogether
right, considering he's to be a parson, though I doubt he'll
never make one.”

And thus, with a head filled with cares of a fashion
altogether new to it, the sturdy young Kentuckian moved
homewards with a degree of abstraction and gravity in his
countenance which was not among the smallest wonders
of the day and place in the estimation of his friends and
neighbours.

Meanwhile, the work of mischief was in full progress.
Every body knows the degree of familiarity which exists
among all classes in a country village, particularly when
the parties are brought together under the social and stimulating
influences of religion. It was natural that the pastor,
long known and well beloved, should be surrounded by his
flock as he descended from the pulpit. The old ladies
always have a saving interest in his presence, and they
pave the way for the young ones. Alfred Stevens, as the
protégé of John Cross, naturally attended his footsteps,
and was introduced by him to the little congregation—such
portion, at least, as had remained to do honour to the
preacher. Of these, not last, nor least, was the widow
Cooper; and, unreluctant by her side, though in silence

and not without a degree of emotion, which she yet
was able to conceal,—stood her fair but proud-hearted
daughter. Margaret, alas! Margaret stood there with a
heart more proud, yet more humble, than ever. Proud in
the consciousness of a new conquest—humble in the feeling
that this conquest had not been made, but at the expense
of some portion of her own independence. Hitherto, her
suitors had awakened no other feeling in her heart but
vanity. Now, she felt no longer able to sail on, “imperial
arbitress,” smiling at woes which she could inflict, but
never share. That instinct, which, in the heart of young
Hinkley had produced fear, if not antipathy, had been as
active in her case, though with a very different result. The
first glimpse which she had of the handsome stranger,
months before, had impressed her with a singular emotion;
and now that he was returned,—she could not divest herself
of the thought that his return was a consequence of
that one glimpse. With a keener judgment than belonged
to her neighbours, she too had some suspicions that religion
was scarcely the prevailing motive which had brought
the youth back to their little village; for how could she
reconcile with his present demure gravity and devout
profession, the daring which he had shown in riding back
to behold her a second time. That such had been his
motive she divined by her own feeling of curiosity, and
the instincts of vanity were prompt enough to believe that
this was motive sufficient to bring him back once more,
and under the guise of a character, which would the readiest
secure an easy entrance to society. Pleased with the
fancy that she herself was the object sought, she did not
perceive how enormous was the sort of deception which
the stranger had employed to attain the end desired. With
all her intellect she had not the wisdom to suspect that he
who could so readily practise so bold an hypocrisy, was
capable of the worst performances;—and when their
names were mentioned, and his eyes were permitted to
meet and mingle their glances with hers, she was conscious
of nothing farther than a fluttering sentiment of pleasure,
which was amply declared to the stranger, in the flash
of animation which spoke openly in her countenance;—
eye speaking to lip and cheek, and these, in turn, responding
with a kindred sentiment to the already tell-tale eye.
William Hinkley, from a little distance, beheld this meeting.
He had lingered with the curiosity which belongs to
the natural apprehension of the lover. He saw them
approach—nay, fancied he beheld the mutual expression
of their sympathizing eyes, and he turned away, and
hurried homeward, with the feeling of a heart already overborne,
and defrauded in all its hopes and expectations.
The flowers were threatened with blight in his Eden;—but
he did not conjecture, poor fellow, that a serpent had
indeed entered it!