University of Virginia Library

10. CHAPTER X.
MR. ST. JOHN.

THAT good man, in the calm innocence of his heart,
was ignorant of the temptations to which he exposed
his tumultuous young disciple. He was serenely
gratified with the sight of Jim's handsome face and alert,
active figure, as he was enacting good shepherd over his
unruly flock. Had he known the exact nature of the
motives which he presented to lead them to walk in the
ways of piety, he might have searched a good while in
primitive records before finding a churchly precedent

Arthur St. John was by nature a poet and idealist
He was as pure as a chrysolite, as refined as a flower;
and, being thus, had been, by the irony of fate, born on
one of the bleakest hillsides of New Hampshire, where
there was a literal famine of any esthetic food. His
childhood had been fed on the dry husks of doctrinal
catechism; he had sat wearily on hard high-backed seats
and dangled his little legs hopelessly through sermons
on the difference between justification and sanctification.
His ultra-morbid conscientiousness had been wrought
into agonized convulsions by stringent endeavors to
carry him through certain prescribed formulæ of conviction
of sin and conversion; efforts which, grating against
natures of a certain delicate fiber, produce wounds and
abrasions which no after-life can heal. To such a one
the cool shades of the Episcopal Church, with its orderly
ways, its poetic liturgy, its artistic ceremonies, were as the
shadow of a great rock in a weary land. No converts are

so disposed to be ultra as converts by reaction; and persons
of a poetic and imaginative temperament are peculiarly
liable to these extremes.

Wearied with the intense and noisy clangor of modern
thought, it was not strange if he should come to think
free inquiry an evil, look longingly back on the ages
of simple credulity, and believe that the dark ages of intellect
were the bright ones of faith. Without really
going over to the Romish Church, he proposed to walk
that path, fine as the blade that Mahomet fabled as the
Bridge of Paradise, in which he might secure all the
powers and influences and advantages of that old system
without its defects and corruptions.

So he had established his mission in one of the least
hopeful neighborhoods of New York. The chapel was a
marvel of beauty and taste at small expense, for St. John
was in a certain way an ecclesiastical architect and artist.
He could illuminate neatly, and had at command a good
store of the beautiful forms of the past to choose from.
He worked at diaphanous windows which had all the
effect of painted glass, and emblazoned texts and legends,
and painted in polychrome, till the little chapel dazzled
the eyes of street vagabonds, who never before
had been made welcome to so pretty a place in their
lives. Then, when he impressed it on the minds of these
poor people that this lovely, pretty little church was their
Father's house, freely open to them every day, and that
prayers and psalms might be heard there morning and
evening, and the holy communion of Christ's love every
Sunday, it is no marvel if many were drawn in and impressed.
Beauty of form and attractiveness of color in
the church arrangements of the rich may cease to be
means of grace and become wantonness of luxury—but
for the very poor they are an education, they are means
of quickening the artistic sense, which is twin brother to

the spiritual. The rich do not need these things, and the
poor do.

St. John, like many men of seemingly gentle temperament,
had the organizing talent of the schoolmaster. No
one could be with him and not feel him; and the intense
purpose with which he labored, in season and out
of season, carried all before it. He marshaled his forces
like an army; his eye was everywhere and on everyone.
He trained his choir of singing boys for processional
singing; he instructed his teachers, he superintended and
catechised his school. In the life of incessant devotion
to the church which he led, woman had no place except
as an obedient instrument. He valued the young and
fair who flocked to his standard, simply and only for what
they could do in his work, and apparently had no worldly
change with which to carry on commerce of society.

Yet it was true, as Jim said, that his eye had in some
way or other been caught by Angelique; yet, at first, it
was in the way of doubt and inquiry, rather than approval.

Angelique was gifted by nature with a certain air of piquant
vivacity, which gave to her pretty person the effect
of a French picture. In heart and character she was
a perfect little self-denying saint, infinitely humble in her
own opinion, devoted to doing good wherever her hand
could find it, and ready at any time to work her pretty
fingers to the bone in a good cause. But yet undeniably
she had a certain style and air of fashion not a bit
like “St. Jerome's love” or any of the mediæval
saints. She could not help it. It was not her fault
that everything about her had a sort of facility for sliding
into trimly fanciful arrangement—that her little hats
would sit so jauntily on her pretty head, that her foot
and ankle had such a provoking neatness, and that her
daintily gloved hands had a hundred little graceful movements

in a moment. Then her hair had numberless mutinous
little curly-wurlies, and flew of itself into the golden
mists of modern fashion; and her almond-shaped hazel
eyes had a trick of glancing like a bird's, and she looked
always as if a smile might break out at any moment, even
on solemn occasions;—all which were traits to inspire
doubt in the mind of an earnest young clergyman, in whose
study the pictures of holy women were always lean, long-favored,
with eyes rolled up, and looking as if they never
had heard of a French hat or a pair of gaiter-boots. He
watched her the first Sunday that she sat at the head of
her class, looking for all the world like a serious-minded
canary bird, and wondered whether so evidently airy and
worldly a little creature would adapt herself to the earnest
work before her; but she did succeed in holding a set of
unpromising street-girls in a sort of enchanted state while
she chippered to them in various little persuasive intonations,
made them say catechism after her, and then told
them stories that were not in any prayer-book. After a
little observation, he was convinced that she would “do.”
But the habit of watchfulness continued!

On this day, as Jim had suggested the subject,
Alice somehow was moved to remark the frequent direction
of Mr. St. John's eyes.

On this Sunday Angelique had had the misfortune to
don for the first time a blue suit, with a blue velvet hat
that gave a brilliant effect to her golden hair. In front
of this hat, nodding with every motion of her head, was
a blue and gold humming bird. She wore a cape of ermine,
and her class seemed quite dazzled by her appearance.
Now Mr. St. John had worked vigorously to get
up his little chapel in blue and gold, gorgeous to behold;
but a blue and gold teacher was something that there
was no churchly precedent for—although if we look into
the philosophy of the thing there may be the same sort of

influence exercised over street barbarians by a prettily-dressed
teacher as by a prettily-dressed church. But as
Mr. St. John gazed at Angelique, and wondered whether
it was quite the thing for her to look so striking, he saw a
little incident that touched his heart. There was a poor,
pinched, wan-visaged little girl, the smallest in the class,
whose face was deformed by the scar of a fearful burn.
She seemed to be in a trembling ecstacy at Angie's finery,
and while she was busy with her lesson stealthily laid her
thin little hand upon the ermine cape. Immediately she
was sharply reproved by a coarse, strong, older sister, who
had her in charge, and her hand rudely twitched back.

Angie turned with bright, astonished eyes, and seeing
the little creature cowering with shame, beamed down on
her a lovely smile, stooped and kissed her.

“You like it, dear?” she said frankly. “Sit up and
rest your cheek on it, if you like,” and Angie gathered her
up to her side and went on telling of the Good Shepherd.

Arthur St. John took the whole meaning of the incident.
It carried him back beyond the catacombs to
something more authentic, even to Him who said, “Suffer
little children to come unto me,” and he felt a strange,
new throb under his surplice.

The throb alarmed him to the degree that he did not
look in that direction again through all the services,
though he certainly did remark certain clear, bird-like
tones in the chants with a singular feeling of nearness.

Just about this time, St. John, unconsciously to himself,
was dealing with forces of which no previous experience
of life had given him a conception. He passed
out of his vestry and walked to his solitary study in a
kind of maze of vague reverie, in which golden hair and
hazel eyes seemed strangely blent with moral enthusiasms.
“What a lovely spirit!” he thought; and he felt as if he
would far rather have followed her out of the door than

to have come to the cold, solitary sanctities of his own
room.

Mr. St. John's study was not the sanctum of a self-indulgent,
petted clergyman, but rather that of one who
took life in very serious earnest. His first experience of
pastoral life having been among the poor, the sight of the
disabilities, wants, and dangers, the actual terrible facts
of human existence, had produced the effect on him that
they often do on persons of extreme sensibility and conscientiousness.
He could not think of retaining for himself
an indulgence or a luxury while wants so terrible
stared him in the face; and his study, consequently, was
furnished in the ascetic rather than the esthetic style. Its
only ornaments were devotional pictures of a severe mediæval
type and the books of a well-assorted library.
There was no carpet; there were no lounging chairs or
sofas of ease. In place was a prie dieu of approved antique
pattern, on which stood two wax candles and lay
his prayer-book. A crucifix of beautiful Italian workmanship
stood upon it, and it was scrupulously draped
with the appropriate churchly color of the season.

As we have said, this room seemed strangely lonely
as he entered it. He was tired with work which had begun
early in the morning, with scarce an interval of
repose, and a perversely shocking idea presented itself
to his mind—how pleasant it would be to be met on
returning from his labors by just such a smile as he
had seen boaming down on the poor little girl.

When he found himself out, and discovered that this
was where his thoughts were running to, he organized a
manly resistance; and recited aloud, with unction and
emphasis, Moore's exquisite version of St. Jerome's opinion
of what the woman should be whom a true priest
might love.

“Certainly, not in the least like her,” he thought, and
he resolved to dismiss the little hat with the humming
bird, the golden mist of hair, and the glancing eyes, into
the limbo of vain thoughts.

Mr. St. John, like many another ardent and sincere
young clergyman, had undertaken to be shepherd and
bishop of souls, with more knowledge on every possible
subject than the nature of the men and women he was to
guide.

A fastidious taste, scholarly habits, and great sensitiveness,
had kept him out of society during all his collegiate
days. His life had been that of a devout recluse.
He knew little of mankind, except the sick and decrepid
old women, whom he freely visited, and who had for
nothing the vision of his handsome face and the charm

of his melodious voice amid the dirt and discomforts of
their sordid poverty. But fashionable young women, the
gay daughters of ease and luxury, were to him rather objects
of suspicion and apprehension than of attraction.
If they flocked to his church, and seemed eager to enlist
in church work under his leadership, he was determined
that there should be no sham in it. In sermon after sermon,
he denounced in stringent terms the folly and guilt
of the sentimental religion which makes playthings of
the solemn rituals of the church, which wears the cross
as a glittering bauble on the outside, and shrinks from
every form of the real self-denial which it symbolizes.

Angelique, by nature the most conscientious of beings,
had listened to this eloquence with awful self-condemnation.
She felt herself a dreadfully sinful little
girl, that she had lived so unprofitable a life hitherto, and
she undertook her Sunday-school labors with an intense
ardor. When she came to visit in the poor dwellings
from whence her pupils were drawn, and to see how devoid
their life was of everything which she had been
taught to call comfort, she felt wicked and selfish for enjoying
even the moderate luxuries allowed by her father's
reduced position. The allowance that had been given her
for her winter wardrobe seemed to be more than she had a
right to keep for herself in face of the terrible destitutions
she saw. Secretly she set herself to see how much she
could save from it. She had the gift of a quick eye and
of deft fingers; and so, after running through the fashionable
shops of dresses and millinery to catch the ideal of
the hour, she went to work for herself. A faded merino
was ripped, dyed, and, by the aid of clever patterns and
skillful hands, transformed into the stylish blue suit.
The little blue velvet hat had been gathered from the
trimmings of an old dress. The humming bird had
been a necessary appendage, to cover the piecing of the

velvet; and thus the outfit which had called up so many
alarmed scruples in Mr. St. John's mind was as completely
a work of self-denial and renunciation as if
she had come out in the black robe of a Sister of
Charity.

The balance saved was, in her own happy thought,
devoted to a Christmas outfit for some of the poorest of
her scholars, whose mothers struggled hard and sat up
late washing and mending to make them decent to be
seen in Sunday-school.

But how should Mr. St. John know this, which
Angie had not even told to her own mother and sisters?
To say the truth, she feared that perhaps she might be
laughed at as Quixotic, or wanting in good sense, in going
so much beyond the usual standard in thoughtfulness
for others, and, at any rate, kept her own little counsel.
Mr. St. John knew nothing about women in that class of
society, their works and ways, where or how they got
their dresses; but he had a general impression that fashionable
women were in heathen darkness, and spent
on dress fabulous amounts that might be given to the
poor. He had certain floating views in his mind, when
further advanced in his ministry, of instituting a holy
sisterhood, who should wear gray cloaks, and spend all
their money and time in deeds of charity.

On the present occasion, he could see only the very
patent fact that Angelique's dress was stylish and becoming
to an alarming degree; that, taken in connection
with her bright cheeks, her golden hair, and glancing
hazel eyes, she was to the full as worldly an object
as a blue-bird, or an oriole, or any of those brilliant
creatures with which it has pleased the Maker of all to
distract our attention in our pilgrimage through this sinful
and dying world.

Angie was so far from assuming to herself any merit

in this sacrifice that her only thought was how little it
would do. Had it been possible and proper, she would
have willingly given her ermine cape to the poor, wan
little child, to whom the mere touch of it was such a
strange, bewildering luxury; but she had within herself
a spice of practical common sense which showed her
that our most sacred impulses are not always to be literally
obeyed.

Yet, while the little scarred cheek was resting on her
ermine in such apparent bliss, there mingled in with the
thread of her instructions to the children a determination
next day to appraise cheap furs, and see if she
could not bless the little one with a cape of her very own.

Angie's quiet common sense always stood her in
good stead in moderating her enthusiasms, and even
carried her at times to the length of differing with the
rector, to whom she looked up as an angel guide. For
example, when he had expatiated on the propriety and
superior sanctity of coming fasting to the holy communion,
sensible Angie had demurred.

“I must teach my class,” she pleaded with herself,
“and if I should go all that long way up to church
without my breakfast, I should have such a sick-headache
that I could n't do anything properly for them. I 'm
always cross and stupid when that comes on.”

Thus Angie concluded by her own little light, in
her own separate way, that “to do good was better than
sacrifice.” Nevertheless, she supposed all this was because
she was so low down in the moral scale, for did
not Mr. St. John fast?—doubtless it gave him headache,
but he was so good he went on just as well with a headache
as without—and Angie felt how far she must rise to
be like that.

“There now,” said Jim Fellows, triumphantly, to

Alice, as they were coming home, “did n't you see your
angel of the churches looking in a certain direction this
morning?”

Alice had, as a last resort, a fund of reserved dignity
which she could draw upon whenever she was really
and deeply in earnest.

“Jim,” she said, without a smile, and in a grave tone,
“I have confidence that you are a true friend to us all.”

“Well, I hope so,” said Jim, wonderingly.

“And you are too kind-hearted and considerate to
wish to give real pain.”

“Certainly I am.”

“Well, then, promise me never to make remarks of
that nature again, to me or anybody else, about Angie
and Mr. St. John. It would be more distressing and
annoying to her than anything you could do; and the
dear child is now perfectly simple-hearted and unconstrained,
and cheerful as a bird in her work. The
least intimation of this kind might make her conscious
and uncomfortable, and spoil it all. So promise me
now.”

Jim eyed his fair monitress with the kind of wicked
twinkle a naughty boy gives to his mother, to ascertain
if she is really in earnest, but Alice maintained a brow
of “sweet, austere composure,” and looked as if she expected
to be obeyed.

“Well, I perfectly long for a hit at St. John,” he said,
“but if you say so, so it must be.”

“You promise on your honor?” insisted Alice.

“Yes, I promise on my honor; so there!” said Jim.
“I wont even wink an eyelid in that direction. I 'll
make a perfect stock and stone of myself. But,” he
added, “Jim can have his thoughts for all that.”

Alice was not exactly satisfied with the position assumed
by her disciple, she therefore proceeded to fortify

him in grace by some farther observations, delivered in a
very serious tone.

“For my part,” she said, “I think nothing is in such
bad taste, to say the least, as the foolish way in which
some young people will allow themselves to talk and
think about an unmarried young clergyman, while he
is absorbed in duties so serious and has feelings so far
above their comprehension. The very idea or suggestion
of a flirtation between a clergyman and one of his flock
is utterly repulsive and disagreeable.”

Here Jim, with a meek gravity of face, simply interposed
the question:

“What is flirtation?”

“You know, now, as well as I do,” said Alice, with
heightened color. “You need n't pretend you do n't.”

“Oh,” said Jim. “Well, then, I suppose I do.” And
the two walked on in silence, for some way; Jim with an
air of serious humility, as if in a deep study, and Alice
with cheeks getting redder and redder with vexation.

“Now, Jim,” she said at last, “you are very provoking.”

“I 'm sure I give in to everything you say,” said Jim,
in an injured tone.

“But you act just as if you were making fun all the
time; and you know you are.”

“Upon my word I do n't know what you mean. I
have assented to every word you said—given up to you
hook and line—and now you're not pleased. I tell you
it 's rough on a fellow.”

“Oh, come,” said Alice, laughing at the absurdity of
the quarrel; “there 's no use in scolding you.”

Jim laughed too, and felt triumphant; and just then
they turned a corner and met Aunt Maria coming from
church.