University of Virginia Library

39. XXXIX.

REUBEN wrote to the Doctor, under the influence
of this new glow of feeling, in a way that at once
amazed and delighted the good old gentleman. And
yet there were ill-defined, but very decided, terrors and
doubts in his delight. Dr. Johns, by nature as well as
by education, was disposed to look distrustfully upon
any sudden conviction of duty which had its spring in
any extraordinary exaltation of feeling, rather than in
that full intellectual seizure of the Divine Word, which
it seemed to him could come only after a determined
wrestling with those dogmas that to his mind were the
aptest and compactest expression of the truth toward
which we must agonize. The day of Pentecost showed
a great miracle, indeed; but was not the day of miracles
past?

The Doctor, however, did not allow his entertainment
of a secret fear to color in any way his letters of
earnest gratulation to his son. If God has miraculously
snatched him from the ways that lead to destruction,
(such was his thought,) let us rejoice.

“Be steadfast, my dear Reuben,” he writes. “You

have now a cross to bear. Do not dishonor its holy
character; do not faint upon the way. Our beloved
Adèle, as you have been told, is trembling upon the
verge of the grave. May God in His mercy spare her,
until, at least, she gain some more fitting sense of the
great mission of His Son, and of the divine scheme of
atonement! I fear greatly that she has but loose ideas
upon these all-important subjects. It pains me beyond
belief to find her indifferent to the godly counsels of
your pious aunt, which she does not fail to urge upon
her, `in season and out of season;' and she has shown
a tenacity in guarding that wretched relic of her early
life, the rosary and crucifix, which, I fear, augurs the
worst. Pray for her, my son; pray that all the vanities
and idolatries of this world may be swept from her
thoughts.”

And Reuben, still living in that roseate atmosphere
of religious meditation, is schoked by this story of the
danger of Adèle. Is he not himself in some measure
accountable? In those days when they raced through
the Catechism together, did he never provoke her
mocking smiles by his sneers at the ponderous language?
Did he not tempt her to some mischievous
sally of mirth, on many a day when they were kneeling
in couple about the family altar.

And in the flush of his exalted feeling he writes her
how bitterly he deplores all this, and, borrowing his

language from the sermons he now listens to with
greed, he urges Adèle “to plant her feet upon the
Rock of Ages, to eschew all vanities, and to trust to
those blessed promises which were given from the
foundation of the world.”

Indeed, there is a fervor in his feeling which pushes
him into such extravagances of expression as the Doctor
would have found it necessary to qualify, if Adèle,
poor child, had not been by far too weak for their comprehension.

The Brindlocks were, of course, utterly amazed at
this new aspect in the character of their pet young
nephew from the country. Mr. Brindlock said, consolingly,
to his wife, when the truth became only too apparent,
“My dear, it's atmospheric, I think. It 's a
`revival' season; there was such a one, I remember,
in my young days.”

(Mrs. Brindlock laughed at this quite merrily.)

“To be sure there was, my dear, and I was really
quite deeply affected. Reuben will come out all right;
we shall see him settling down soon to good merchant
habits again.”

But the animus of the new tendency was far stronger
than Brindlock had supposed; and within a month
Reuben had come to a quiet rupture with his city patron.
The smack of worldliness was too strong for him.
He felt that he must go back to his old home, and place

himself again under the instructions of the father whose
counsels he had once so spurned.

“You don't say you mean to become a parson?”
said Mr. Brindlock, more than ever astounded.

“It is very likely,” said Reuben; “or possibly a missionary.”

“Well, Reuben, if you must, you must. But I don't
see things in that light. However, my boy, we 'll keep
our little private ventures astir; you may need them
some day.”

And so they parted; and Reuben went home to
Ashfield, taking an affectionate leave of his Aunt Mabel,
who had been over-kind to him, and praying in his
heart that that good, but exceedingly worldly woman,
might some day look on serious things as he looked on
them.

He had thought in his wild days, that, when he
should go back to Ashfield for any lengthened stay,
(for thus far his visits had been few and flying ones,)
he should considerably astonish the old people there by
his air and city cultivation. It is quite possible that
he had laid by certain flaming cravats which he
thought would have a killing effect in the country
church, and anticipated a very handsome triumph by
the easy swagger with which he would greet old Deacon
Tourtelot and ask after the health of Miss Almira.
But the hope of all such triumphs was now dropped

utterly. Such things clearly belonged to the lusts of
the eye and the pride of life. He even left behind him
some of the most flashy articles of his attire, with the
request to Aunt Mabel that she would bestow them
upon some needy person, or, in default of this, make
them over to the Missionary Society for distribution
among the heathen, — a purpose for which some of
them, by reason of their brilliant colors, were certainly
most admirably adapted. Under his changed view of
life, it appeared to Reuben that every unnecessary indulgence,
whether of dress or food, was a sin. With
the glowing enthusiasm of youth, he put such beautiful
construction upon the rules of Christian faith as would
hardly survive the rough every-day wear of the world.
Even the stiff dignity of Dr. Mowry he was inclined to
count only an accidental incrustation of manner, beneath
which the heart of the parson was all aglow with
the tenderest benevolence. We hope he may have
been right in this; it is certain, that, if he could carry
forward the same loving charity to the end of his days,
he would have won the best third of the elements of a
Christian career, without respect to dogmas.

So Reuben goes back to Ashfield with a very modest
and quiet bearing. He is to look with other eyes
now upon the life there, and to judge how far it will
sustain his new-found religious sympathies. All meet
him kindly. Old Squire Elderkin, who chances to be

the first to greet him as he alights from the coach,
shakes him warmly by the hand, and taps him patronizingly
upon the shoulder.

“Welcome home again, Reuben! Well, well, they
thought you were given over to bad courses; but it 's
all right now, I hear; quite upon the other tack, eh,
Reuben? That 's well, my good fellow; that 's well.”

And Reuben thanked him, thinking perhaps how odd
it was that this worldly old gentleman, of whom he had
thought, since his late revulsion of feeling, with a good
deal of quiet pity, should commend what was so foreign
to his own habit. There were, then, some streaks of
good-natured worldliness which tallied with Christian
duty. The serene, kindly look of Mrs. Elderkin was
in itself the tenderest welcome; and it was an ennobling
thought to Reuben, that he had at last placed himself
(or fancied he had) upon the same moral plane
with that good woman. As for Rose, the joyous, frolicsome,
charming Rose, whom he had thought at one
time to electrify by his elegant city accomplishments, —
was not even the graceful Rose a veteran in the Christian
army in which he had but now enlisted? Why,
then, should she show timidity and shyness at this
meeting with him? Yet her little fingers had a quick
tremor in them as she took his hand, and a swift
change of color (he knew it of old) ran over her face
like a rosy cloud.

“It is delightful to think that Reuben is safe at last,”
said Mrs. Elderkin, after he had gone.

“Yes, mamma,” said Rose.

“It must be a great delight to them all at the parsonage.”

“I suppose so, mamma. I wish Phil were here,” said
Rose again, in a plaintive little tone.

“I wish he were, my child; it might have a good
influence upon him: and poor Adèle, too; she must
surely listen to Reuben, he is so earnest and impassioned.
Don't you think so, Rose?”

Rose is working with nervous rapidity.

“But, my child,” says the mother, “are you not
sewing that breadth upon the wrong side?”

True enough, upon the wrong side, — so many weary
stitches to undo!

Miss Eliza had shown a well-considered approval of
Reuben's change of opinions; but this had not forbidden
a certain reserve of worldly regret that he should
give up so promising a business career. She had half
hinted as much to the Doctor.

“I do not see, brother,” she had said, “that his piety
will involve the abandonment of mercantile life.”

“His piety,” said the Doctor, “if it be of the right
stamp, will involve an obedience to conscience.”

And there the discussion had rested. The spinster
received Reuben with much warmth, in which her

stately proprieties of manner, however, were never for
one moment forgotten.

Adèle, who was now fortunately in a fair way of recovery,
but who was still very weak, and who looked
charmingly in her white chamber-dress with its simple
black belt, received him with a tender-heartedness of
manner which he had never met in her before. The
letter of Reuben had been given her, and, with all its
rawness of appeal, had somehow touched her religious
sentiment in a way it had never been touched before.
He had put so much of his youthful enthusiasm into
his language, it showed such an elasticity of hope and
joy, as impressed her very strangely. It made the
formal homilies of Miss Eliza seem more harsh than
ever. She had listened, in those fatiguing and terrible
days of illness, to psalms long drawn out, and wearily;
but here was some wild bird that chanted a glorious
carol in her ear, — a carol that seemed touched with
heaven's own joy. And under its influence — exaggerated
as it was by extreme youthful emotion — she
seemed to see the celestial gates of jasper and pearl
swing open before her, and the beckonings of the great
crowd of celestial inhabitants to enter and enjoy.

For a long time she had been hovering (how nearly
she did not know) upon the confines of the other world;
but with a vague sense that its mysteries might open
upon her in any hour, she had, in her sane intervals,

ranked together the promises and penalties that had
been set before her by the good Doctor: now worrying
her spirit, as it confronted some awful catechismal dogma
that it sought vainly to solve; and then, from sheer
weakness and disappointment, seizing upon the symbol
of the cross, (of which the effigy was always near at
hand,) and by a kiss and a tear seeking to ally her
fainting heart with the mystic company of the elect
who would find admission to the joys of paradise. But
the dogmas were vain, because she could not grapple
them to her heart; the cross was vain, because it was
an empty symbol; the kisses and the tears left her
groping blindly for the key that would surely unlock
for her the wealth of the celestial kingdom. In this
attitude of mind, wearied by struggle and by fantasies,
came to her the letter of Reuben, — the joyous
outburst of a pioneer who had found the way. She
never once doubted that the good Doctor had found it,
too, — but so long ago, and by so hard a road, that she
despaired of following in his steps. But Reuben had
leaped to the conquest, and carried a blithe heart with
him. Surely, then, there must be a joy in believing.

“I thank you very much for your letter, Reuben,”
said Adèle, and she looked eagerly into his face for
traces of that triumph which so glittered throughout
his letter.

And she did not look in vain; for, whether it were

from the warm, electric touch of those white, thin fingers
of hers, or the eager welcome in her eyes, or from
more sacred cause, a great joy shone in his face, — a
joy that from thenceforward they began to share in
common. At last — at last, a bright illumination was
spread over the dreary teachings of these last years.
Not a doubt, not a penalty, not a mystic, blind utterance
of the Catechism, but the glowing enthusiasm of Reuben
invested it with cheery promise, or covered it with
the wonderful glamour of his hope. Between these two
young hearts — the one, till then, all doubt and weariness,
and the other, just now, all impassioned exuberance
— there came a grafting, by virtue of which the
religious sentiment in Adèle shot away from all the severities
around her into an atmosphere of peace and
joy.

The Doctor saw it, and wondered at the abounding
mercies of God. The spinster saw it, and rejoiced at
the welding of this new link in the chain of her purposes.
The village people all saw it, and said among
themselves, “If he has won her from the iniquities of
the world, he can win her for a wife, if he will.”

And the echoes of such speeches come, as they needs
must, to the ear of Rose, without surprising her, so
much do they seem the echo of her own thought; and
if her heart may droop a little under it, she conceals it
bravely, and abates no jot in her abounding love for
Adèle.

“I wish Phil were here,” she says in the privacy of
her home.

“So do I, darling,” says the mother, and looks at
her with a tender inquisitiveness that makes the sweet
girl flinch, and affect for a moment a noisy gayety,
which is not in her heart.

Rose! Rose! are you not taking wrong stitches
again?