 | CHAPTER XII.
SKIRMISHING. The guardian angel |  |
12. CHAPTER XII.
SKIRMISHING.
“SO the Rev. Joseph Bellamy Stoker has called upon
you, Susan Posey, has he? And wants you to come
and talk religion with him in his study, Susan Posey, does
he? Religion is a good thing, my dear, the best thing in
the world, and never better than when we are young, and
no young people need it more than young girls. There
are temptations to all, and to them as often as to any, Susan
Posey. And temptations come to them in places where
they don't look for them, and from persons they never
thought of as tempters. So I am very glad to have your
thoughts called to the subject of religion. `Remember thy
Creator in the days of thy youth.'
“But Susan Posey, my dear, I think you had better not
break in upon the pious meditations of the Rev. Joseph
Bellamy Stoker in his private study. A monk's cell and
a minister's library are hardly the places for young ladies.
They distract the attention of these good men from their
devotions and their sermons. If you think you must go,
you had better take Mrs. Hopkins with you. She likes
religious conversation, and it will do her good too, and save
a great deal of time for the minister, conversing with two
at once. She is of discreet age, and will tell you when it
is time to come away, — you might stay too long, you know.
I 've known young persons stay a good deal too long at these
interviews, — a great deal too long, Susan Posey!”
Such was the fatherly counsel of Master Byles Gridley.
Susan was not very quick of apprehension, but she could
not help seeing the justice of Master Gridley's remark, that
for a young person to go and break in on the hours that a
minister requires for his studies, without being accompanied
by a mature friend who would remind her when it was time
to go, would be taking an unfair advantage of his kindness
in asking her to call upon him. She promised, therefore
that she would never go without having Mrs. Hopkins as
her companion, and with this assurance her old friend rested
satisfied.
It is altogether likely that he had some deeper reason
for his advice than those with which he satisfied the simple
nature of Susan Posey. Of that it will be easier to judge
after a glance at the conditions and character of the minister
and his household.
The Rev. Mr. Stoker had, in addition to the personal
advantages already alluded to, some other qualities which
might prove attractive to many women. He had, in particular,
that art of sliding into easy intimacy with them
which implies some knowledge of the female nature, and,
above all, confidence in one's powers. There was little
doubt, the gossips maintained, that many of the younger
women of his parish would have been willing, in certain
contingencies, to lift for him that other end of his yoke
under which poor Mrs. Stoker was fainting, unequal to the
burden.
That lady must have been some years older than her
husband, — how many we need not inquire too curiously,
— but in vitality she had long passed the prime in which
he was still flourishing. She had borne him five children,
and cried her eyes hollow over the graves of three of them.
Household cares had dragged upon her; the routine of village
of her as the minister's wife; she had wanted more fresh
air and more cheerful companionship; and her thoughts
had fed too much on death and sin, — good bitter tonics to
increase the appetite for virtue, but not good as food and
drink for the spirit.
But there was another grief which lay hidden far beneath
these obvious depressing influences. She felt that she was
no longer to her husband what she had been to him, and
felt it with something of self-reproach, — which was a
wrong to herself, for she had been a true and tender wife.
Deeper than all the rest was still another feeling, which
had hardly risen into the region of inwardly articulated
thought, but lay unshaped beneath all the syllabled trains
of sleeping or waking consciousness.
The minister was often consulted by his parishioners upon
spiritual matters, and was in the habit of receiving in his
study visitors who came with such intent. Sometimes it
was old weak-eyed Deacon Rumrill, in great iron-bowed
spectacles, with hanging nether lip and tremulous voice,
who had got his brain into a muddle about the beast with
two horns, or the woman that fled into the wilderness, or
other points not settled to his mind in Scott's Commentary.
The minister was always very busy at such times, and
made short work of his deacon's doubts. Or it might be that
an ancient woman, a mother or a grandmother in Israel,
came with her questions and her perplexities to her pastor;
and it was pretty certain that just at that moment he
was very deep in his next sermon, or had a pressing visit
to make.
But it would also happen occasionally that one of the
tenderer ewe-lambs of the flock needed comfort from the
thought she noticed, that the good man had more leisure
for the youthful and blooming sister than for the more discreet
and venerable matron or spinster. The sitting was
apt to be longer; and the worthy pastor would often linger
awhile about the door, to speed the parting guest,
perhaps, but a little too much after the fashion of young
people who are not displeased with each other, and who
often find it as hard to cross a threshold single as a witch
finds it to get over a running stream. More than once,
the pallid, faded wife had made an errand to the study,
and, after a keen look at the bright young cheeks, flushed
with the excitement of intimate spiritual communion, had
gone back to her chamber with her hand pressed against
her heart, and the bitterness of death in her soul.
The end of all these bodily and mental trials was, that
the minister's wife had fallen into a state of habitual invalidism,
such as only women, who feel all the nerves which
in men are as insensible as telegraph-wires, can experience.
The doctor did not know what to make of her case, —
whether she would live or die, — whether she would languish
for years, or, all at once, roused by some strong impression,
or in obedience to some unexplained movement
of the vital forces, take up her bed and walk. For her
bed had become her home, where she lived as if it belonged
to her organism. There she lay, a not unpleasing invalid
to contemplate, always looking resigned, patient, serene,
except when the one deeper grief was stirred, always
arrayed with simple neatness, and surrounded with little
tokens that showed the constant presence with her of
tasteful and thoughtful affection. She did not know, nobody
could know, how steadily, how silently, all this artificial
of her daughter Bathsheba, one of the every-day, air-breathing
angels without nimbus or aureole who belong to
every story which lets us into a few households, as much
as the stars and the flowers belong to everybody's verses.
Bathsheba's devotion to her mother brought its own
reward, but it was not in the shape of outward commendation.
Some of the more censorious members of her
father's congregation were severe in their remarks upon
her absorption in the supreme object of her care. It
seems that this had prevented her from attending to other
duties which they considered more imperative. They did
n 't see why she should n't keep a Sabbath school as well
as the rest, and as to her not comin' to meetin' three times
on Sabbath day like other folks, they could n't account for
it, except because she calculated that she could get along
without the means of grace, bein' a minister's daughter.
Some went so far as to doubt if she had ever experienced
religion, for all she was a professor. There was a good
many indulged a false hope. To this, others objected her
life of utter self-denial and entire surrender to her duties
towards her mother as some evidence of Christian character.
But old Deacon Rumrill put down that heresy by showing
conclusively from Scott's Commentary on Romans xi.
1 - 6, that this was altogether against her chance of being
called, and that the better her disposition to perform good
works, the more unlikely she was to be the subject of
saving grace. Some of these severe critics were good
people enough themselves, but they loved active work
and stirring companionship, and would have found their
real cross if they had been called to sit at an invalid's
bedside.
As for the Rev. Mr. Stoker, his duties did not allow
him to give so much time to his suffering wife as his
feelings would undoubtedly have prompted. He therefore
relinquished the care of her (with great reluctance,
we may naturally suppose) to Bathsheba, who had inherited
not only her mother's youthful smile, but that
self-forgetfulness which, born with some of God's creatures,
is, if not “grace,” at least a manifestation of native
depravity which might well be mistaken for it.
The intimacy of mother and daughter was complete,
except on a single point. There was one subject on
which no word ever passed between them. The excuse
of duties to others was by a tacit understanding a
mantle to cover all short-comings in the way of attention
from the husband and father, and no word ever passed
between them implying a suspicion of the loyalty of his
affections. Bathsheba came at last so to fill with her
tenderness the space left empty in the neglected heart,
that her mother only spoke her habitual feeling when she
said, “I should think you were in love with me, my darling,
if you were not my daughter.”
This was a dangerous state of things for the minister.
Strange suggestions and unsafe speculations began to mingle
with his dreams and reveries. The thought once admitted
that another's life is becoming superfluous and a burden,
feeds like a ravenous vulture on the soul. Woe to the
man or woman whose days are passed in watching the
hour-glass through which the sands run too slowly for
longings that are like a skulking procession of bloodless
murders! Without affirming such horrors of the Rev.
Mr. Stoker, it would not be libellous to say that his fancy
was tampering with future possibilities, as it constantly
for some act of folly, or some crime, it may be, which
will in its own time evolve itself as an idea in the consciousness,
and by and by ripen into fact.
It must not be taken for granted that he was actually
on the road to some fearful deed, or that he was an utterly
lost soul. He was ready to yield to temptation if it came
in his way; he would even court it, but he did not shape
out any plan very definitely in his mind, as a more desperate
sinner would have done. He liked the pleasurable
excitement of emotional relations with his pretty
lambs, and enjoyed it under the name of religious communion.
There is a border land where one can stand on
the territory of legitimate instincts and affections, and
yet be so near the pleasant garden of the Adversary,
that his dangerous fruits and flowers are within easy
reach. Once tasted, the next step is like to be the scaling
of the wall. The Rev. Mr. Stoker was very fond
of this border land. His imagination was wandering over
it too often when his pen was travelling almost of itself
along the weary parallels of the page before him. All
at once a blinding flash would come over him, the lines
of his sermon would run together, the fresh manuscript
would shrivel like a dead leaf, and the rows of hardhearted
theology on the shelves before him, and the
broken-backed Concordance, and the Holy Book itself,
would fade away as he gave himself up to the enchantment
of his delirious dream.
The reader will probably consider it a discreet arrangement
that pretty Susan Posey should seek her
pastor in grave company. Mrs. Hopkins willingly consented
to the arrangement which had been proposed, and
Mr. Stoker's study. They were both arrayed in their
field-day splendors on this occasion. Susan was lovely in
her light curls and blue ribbons, and the becoming dress
which could not help betraying the modestly emphasized
crescendos and gently graded diminuendos of her figure.
She was as round as if she had been turned in a lathe,
and as delicately finished as if she had been modelled
for a Flora. She had naturally an airy toss of the head
and a springy movement of the joints, such as some girls
study in the glass (and make dreadful work of it), so
that she danced all over without knowing it, like a little
lively bobolink on a bulrush. In short, she looked fit to
spoil a homily for Saint Anthony himself.
Mrs. Hopkins was not less perfect in her somewhat
different style. She might be called impressive and imposing
in her grand costume, which she wore for this
visit. It was a black silk dress, with a crape shawl, a
firmly defensive bonnet, and an alpaca umbrella with
a stern-looking and decided knob presiding as its handle.
The dried-leaf rustle of her silk dress was suggestive
of the ripe autumn of life, bringing with it those golden
fruits of wisdom and experience which the grave teachers
of mankind so justly prefer to the idle blossoms of adolescence.
It is needless to say that the visit was conducted with
the most perfect propriety in all respects. Mrs. Hopkins
was disposed to take upon herself a large share of the
conversation. The minister, on the other hand, would
have devoted himself more particularly to Miss Susan;
but, with a very natural make-believe obtuseness, the good
woman drew his fire so constantly that few of his remarks,
object at which they were aimed. It is probable
that his features or tones betrayed some impatience at
having thus been foiled of his purpose, for Mrs. Hopkins
thought he looked all the time as if he wanted to get rid
of her. The three parted, therefore, not in the best
humor all round. Mrs. Hopkins declared she 'd see the
minister in Jericho before she 'd fix herself up as if she
was goin' to a weddin' to go and see him again. Why,
he did n't make any more of her than if she 'd been a
tabby-cat. She believed some of these ministers thought
women's souls dried up like peas in a pod by the time
they was forty year old; anyhow, they did n't seem to
care any great about 'em, except while they was green
and tender. It was all Miss Se-usan, Miss Se-usan, Miss
Se-usan, my dear! but as for her, she might jest as well
have gone with her apron on, for any notice he took of
her. She did n't care, she was n't goin' to be left out
when there was talkin' goin' on, anyhow.
Susan Posey, on her part, said she did n't like him a
bit. He looked so sweet at her, and held his head on one
side, — law! just as if he had been a young beau! And,
— don't tell, — but he whispered that he wished the next
time I came I would n't bring that Hopkins woman!
It would not be fair to repeat what the minister said to
himself; but we may own as much as this, that, if worthy
Mrs. Hopkins had heard it, she would have treated him to
a string of adjectives which would have greatly enlarged
his conceptions of the female vocabulary.
| CHAPTER XII.
SKIRMISHING. The guardian angel | |