“With holy fear, and humble song,”
and got through the first verse together pretty well. Then came the second verse:
“Far in the deep where darkness dwells,The land of horror and despair,Justice has built a dismal hell,And laid her stores of vengeance there.”
Myrtle's voice trembled a little in singing this verse, and she hardly kept up her part with proper spirit.
“Sing out, Myrtle,” said Miss Cynthia, and she struck up the third verse:
“Eternal plagues and heavy chains,Tormenting racks and fiery coals,And darts t' inflict immortal pains,Dyed in the blood of damned souls.”
This last verse was a duet, and not a trio. Myrtle closed her lips while it was singing, and when it was done threw down the book with a look of anger and disgust. The hunted soul was at bay.
“I won't sing such words,” she said, “and I won't stay here to hear them sung. The boys in the streets say just such words as that, and I am not going to sing them. You can't scare me into being good with your cruel hymn-book!”
She could not swear: she was not a boy. She would not cry: she felt proud, obdurate, scornful, outraged. All these images, borrowed from the holy Inquisition, were meant to frighten her—and had simply irritated her. The blow of a weapon that glances off, stinging, but not penetrating, only enrages. It was a moment of fearful danger to her character, to her life itself.
Without heeding the cries of the two women, she sprang up-stairs to her hanging chamber. She threw open the window and looked down into the stream. For one moment her head swam with the sudden, overwhelming, almost maddening thought that came over her,—the impulse to fling herself headlong into those running waters and dare the worst these dreadful women had threatened her with. Something she often thought afterwards it was an invisible hand held her back during that brief moment, and the paroxysm—just such a paroxysm as throws many a young girl into the Thames or the Seine—passed away. She remained looking, in a misty dream, into the water far below. Its murmur recalled the whisper of the ocean waves. And through the depths it seemed as if she saw into that strange, half—remembered world of palm-trees and white robes and dusky faces, and amidst them, looking upon her with ineffable love and tenderness, until all else faded from her sight, the face of a fair woman,—was it hers, so long, long dead, or that dear young mother's who was to her less a recollection than a dream?
Could it have been this vision that soothed her, so that she unclasped her hands and lifted her bowed head as if she had heard a voice whispering to her from that unknown world where she felt there was a spirit watching over her? At any rate, her face was never more serene than when she went to meeting with the two maiden ladies on the following day, Sunday, and heard the Rev. Mr. Stoker preach a sermon from Luke vii. 48, which made both the women shed tears, but especially so excited Miss Cynthia that she was in a kind of half-hysteric condition all the rest of the day.
After that Myrtle was quieter and more docile than ever before. Could it be, Miss Silence thought, that the Rev. Mr. Stoker's sermon had touched her hard heart? However that was, she did not once wear the stormy look with which she had often met the complaining remonstrances Miss Silence constantly directed against all the spontaneous movements of the youthful and naturally vivacious subject of her discipline.
June is an uncertain month, as everybody knows, and there were frosts in many parts of New England in the June of 1859. But there were also beautiful days and nights, and the sun was warm enough to be fast ripening the strawberries,—also certain plans which had been in flower some little time. Some preparations had been going on in a quiet way, so that at the right moment a decisive movement could be made. Myrtle knew how to use her needle, and always had a dexterous way of shaping any article of dress or ornament,—a natural gift not very rare, but sometimes very needful, as it was now.
On the morning of the 15th of June she was wandering by the shores of the river, some distance above The Poplars, when a boat came drifting along by her, evidently broken loose from its fastenings farther up the stream. It was common for such waifs to show themselves after heavy rains had swollen the river. They might have run the gauntlet of nobody could tell how many farms, and perhaps passed by half a dozen towns and villages in the night, so that, if of common, cheap make, they were retained without scruple, by any who might find them, until the owner called for them, if he cared to take the trouble.
Myrtle took a knife from her pocket, cut down a long, slender sapling, and coaxed the boat to the side of the bank. A pair of old oars lay in the bottom of the boat; she took one of these and paddled it into a little cove, where it could lie hid among the thick alders. Then she went home and busied herself about various little matters more interesting to her than to us.
She was never more amiable and gracious than on this day. But she looked often at the clock, as they remembered afterwards, and studied over a copy of the Farmer's Almanac which was lying in the kitchen, with a somewhat singular interest. The days were nearly at their longest, the weather was mild, the night promised to be clear and bright.
The household was, to all appearance, asleep at the usual early hour. When all seemed quiet, Myrtle lighted her lamp, stood before her mirror, and untied the string that bound her long and beautiful dark hair, which fell in its abundance over her shoulders and below her girdle.
She lifted its heavy masses with one hand, and severed it with a strong pair of scissors, with remorseless exaction of every wandering curl, until she stood so changed by the loss of that outward glory of her womanhood, that she felt as if she had lost herself and found a brother she had never seen before.
“Good-by, Myrtle!” she said, and, opening her window very gently, she flung the shining tresses upon the running water, and watched them for a few moments as they floated down the stream. Then she dressed herself in the character of her imaginary brother, took up the carpet-bag in which she had placed what she chose to carry with her, stole softly down-stairs, and let herself out of a window on the lower floor, shutting it very carefully so as to be sure that nobody should be disturbed.
She glided along, looking all about her, fearing she might be seen by some curious wanderer, and reached the cove where the boat she had concealed was lying. She got into it, and, taking the rude oars, pulled herself into the middle of the swollen stream. Her heart beat so that it seemed to her as if she could hear it between the strokes of the oar. The lights were not all out in the village, and she trembled lest she should see the figure of some watcher looking from the windows in sight of which she would have to pass, and that a glimpse of this boat stealing along at so late an hour might give the clue to the secret of her disappearance, with which the whole region was to be busied in the course of the next day.
Presently she came abreast of The Poplars. The house lay so still, so peaceful,—it would wake to such dismay! The boat slid along beneath her own overhanging chamber.
“No song to-morrow from the Fire-hang-bird's Nest!” she said. So she floated by the slumbering village, the flow of the river carrying her steadily on, and the careful strokes of the oars adding swiftness to her flight.
At last she came to the “Broad Meadows,” and knew that she was alone, and felt confident that she had got away unseen. There was nothing, absolutely nothing, to point out which way she had gone. Her boat came from nobody knew where, her disguise had been got together at different times in such a manner as to lead to no suspicion, and not a human being ever had the slightest hint that she had planned and meant to carry out the enterprise which she had now so fortunately begun.
Not till the last straggling house had been long past, not till the meadows were stretched out behind her as well as before her, spreading far off into the distance on each side, did she give way to the sense of wild exultation which was coming fast over her. But then, at last, she drew a long, long breath, and, standing up in the boat, looked all around her. The stars were shining over her head and deep down beneath her. The cool wind came fresh upon her cheek over the long grassy reaches. No living thing moved in all the wide level circle which lay about her. She had passed the Red Sea, and was alone in the Desert.
She threw down her oars, lifted her hands like a priestess, and her strong, sweet voice burst into song,—the song of the Jewish maiden when she went out before the chorus of, women and sang that grand solo, which we all remember in its ancient words, and in their modern paraphrase,
“Sound the loud timbrel o'er Egypt's dark sea!Jehovah hath triumphed, his people are free!”
The poor child's repertory was limited to songs of the religious sort mainly, but there was a choice among these. Her aunt's favorites, beside “China,” already mentioned, were “Bangor,” which the worthy old New England clergyman so admired that he actually had the down-east city called after it, and “Windsor,” and “Funeral Hymn.” But Myrtle was in no mood for these. She let off her ecstasy in “Balerma,” and “Arlington,” and “Silver Street,” and at last in that most riotous of devotional hymns, which sounds as if it had been composed by a saint who had a cellar under his chapel,—“Jordan.” So she let her wild spirits run loose; and then a tenderer feeling stole over her, and she sang herself into a more tranquil mood with the gentle music of “Dundee.” And again she pulled quietly and steadily at her oars, until she reached the wooded region through which the river winds after leaving the “Broad Meadows.”
The tumult in her blood was calmed, yet every sense and faculty was awake to the manifold delicious, mysterious impressions of that wonderful June night, The stars were shining between the tall trees, as if all the jewels of heaven had been set in one belt of midnight sky. The voices of the wind, as they sighed through the pines, seemed like the breath of a sleeping child, and then, as they lisped from the soft, tender leaves of beeches and maples, like the half-articulate whisper of the mother hushing all the intrusive sounds that might awaken it. Then came the pulsating monotone of the frogs from a far-off pool, the harsh cry of an owl from an old tree that overhung it, the splash of a mink or musquash, and nearer by, the light step of a woodchuck, as he cantered off in his quiet way to his hole in the nearest bank. The laurels were just coming into bloom,—the yellow lilies, earlier than their fairer sisters, pushing their golden cups through the water, not content, like those, to float on the surface of the stream that fed them, emblems of showy wealth, and, like that, drawing all manner of insects to feed upon them. The miniature forests of ferns came down to the edge of the stream, their tall, bending plumes swaying in the night breeze. Sweet odors from oozing pines, from dewy flowers, from spicy leaves, stole out of the tangled thickets, and made the whole scene more dream-like with their faint, mingled suggestions.
By and by the banks of the river grew lower and marshy, and in place of the larger forest-trees which had covered them stood slender tamaracks, sickly, mossy, looking as if they had been moon-struck and were out of their wits, their tufts of leaves staring off every way from their spindling branches. The winds came cool and damp out of the hiding-places among their dark recesses. The country people about here called this region the “Witches' Hollow,” and had many stories about the strange things that happened there. The Indians used to hold their “powwows,” or magical incantations, upon a broad mound which rose out of the common level, and where some old hemlocks and beeches formed a dark grove, which served them as a temple for their demon-worship. There were many legends of more recent date connected with this spot, some of them hard to account for, and no superstitious or highly imaginative person would have cared to pass through it alone in the dead of the night, as this young girl was doing.
She knew nothing of all these fables and fancies. Her own singular experiences in this enchanted region were certainly not suggested by anything she had heard, and may be considered psychologically curious by those who would not think of attributing any mystical meaning to them. We are at liberty to report many things without attempting to explain them, or committing ourselves to anything beyond the fact that so they were told us. The reader will find Myrtle's “Vision,” as written out at a later period from her recollections, at the end of this chapter.
The night was passing, and she meant to be as far away as possible from the village she had left, before morning. But the boat, like all craft on country rivers, was leaky, and she had to work until tired, bailing it out, before she was ready for another long effort. The old tin measure, which was all she had to bail with, leaked as badly as the boat, and her task was a tedious one. At last she got it in good trim, and sat down to her oars with the determination to pull steadily as long as her strength would hold out.
Hour after hour she kept at her work, sweeping round the long bends where the river was hollowing out one bank and building new shore on the opposite one, so as gradually to shift its channel; by clipper-shaped islands, sharp at the bows looking up stream, sharp too at the stern, looking down,—their shape solving the navigator's problem of least resistance, as a certain young artist had pointed out; by slumbering villages; by outlying farm-houses; between cornfields where the young plants were springing up in little thready fountains; in the midst of stumps where the forest had just been felled; through patches, where the fire of the last great autumnal drought had turned all the green beauty of the woods into brown desolation; and again amidst broad expanses of open meadow stretching as far as the eye could reach in the uncertain light. A faint yellow tinge was beginning to stain the eastern horizon. Her boat was floating quietly along, for she had at last taken in her oars, and she was now almost tired out with toil and excitement. She rested her head upon her hands, and felt her eyelids closing in spite of herself. And now there stole upon her ear a low, gentle, distant murmur, so soft that it seemed almost to mingle with the sound of her own breathing, but so steady, so uniform, that it soothed her to sleep, as if it were the old cradle-song the ocean used to sing to her, or the lullaby of her fair young mother.
So she glided along, slowly, slowly, down the course of the winding river, and the flushing dawn kindled around her as she slumbered, and the low, gentle murmur grew louder and louder, but still she slept, dreaming of the murmuring ocean.
“A Vision seen by me, Myrtle Hazard, aged fifteen, on the night of June 15, 1859. Written out at the request of a friend from my recollections.
“The place where I saw these sights is called, as I have been told since, Witches' Hollow. I had never been there before, and did not know that it was called so, or anything about it.
“The first strange thing that I noticed was on coming near a kind of hill or mound that rose out of the low meadows. I saw a burning cross lying on the slope of that mound. It burned with a pale greenish light, and did not waste, though I watched it for a long time, as the boat I was in moved slowly with the current and I had stopped rowing.
“I know that my eyes were open, and I was awake while I was looking at this cross. I think my eyes were open when I saw these other appearances, but I felt just as if I were dreaming while awake.
“I heard a faint rustling sound, and on looking up I saw many figures moving around me, and I seemed to see myself among them as if I were outside of myself.
“The figures did not walk, but slid or glided with an even movement, as if without any effort. They made many gestures, and seemed to speak, but I cannot tell whether I heard what they said, or knew its meaning in some other way.
“I knew the faces of some of these figures. They were the same I have seen in portraits, as long as I can remember, at the old house where I was brought up, called The Poplars. I saw my father and my mother as they look in the two small pictures; also my grandmother, and her father and mother and grandfather, and one other person, who lived a great while ago. All of these have been long dead, and the longer they had been dead the less like substance they looked and the more like shadows, so that the oldest was like one's breath of a frosty morning, but shaped like the living figure.
“There was no motion of their breasts, and their lips seemed to be moving as if they were saying, Breath! Breath! Breath! I thought they wanted to breathe the air of this world again in my shape, which I seemed to see as it were empty of myself and of these other selves, like a sponge that has water pressed out of it.
“Presently it seemed to me that I returned to myself, and then those others became part of me by being taken up, one by one, and so lost in my own life.
“My father and mother came up, hand in hand, looking more real than any of the rest. Their figures vanished, and they seemed to have become a part of me; for I felt all at once the longing to live over the life they had led, on the sea and in strange countries.
“Another figure was just like the one we called the Major, who was a very strong, hearty-looking man, and who is said to have drank hard sometimes, though there is nothing about it on his tombstone, which I used to read in the graveyard. It seemed to me that there was something about his life that I did not want to make a part of mine, but that there was some right he had in me through my being of his blood, and so his health and his strength went all through me, and I was always to have what was left of his life in that shadow-like shape, forming a portion of mine.
“So in the same way with the shape answering to the portrait of that famous beauty who was the wife of my great-grandfather, and used to be called the Pride of the County.
“And so too with another figure which had the face of that portrait marked on the back, Ruth Bradford, who married one of my ancestors, and was before the court, as I have heard, in the time of the witchcraft trials.
“There was with the rest a dark, wild-looking woman, with a head-dress of feathers. She kept as it were in shadow, but I saw something of my own features in her face.
“It was on my mind very strongly that the shape of that woman of our blood who was burned long ago by the Papists came very close to me, and was in some way made one with mine, and that I feel her presence with me since, as if she lived again in me; but not always,—only at times,—and then I feel borne up as if I could do anything in the world. I had a feeling as if she were my guardian and protector.
“It seems to me that these, and more, whom I have not mentioned, do really live over some part of their past lives in my life. I do not understand it all, and perhaps it can be accounted for in some way I have not thought of. I write it down as nearly as I can give it from memory, by request, and if it is printed at this time had rather have all the real names withheld.
“MYRTLE HAZARD.” NOTE BY THE FRIEND.
“This statement must be accounted for in some way, or pass into the category of the supernatural. Probably it was one of those intuitions, with objective projection, which sometimes come to imaginative young persons, especially girls, in certain exalted nervous conditions. The study of the portraits, with the knowledge of some parts of the history of the persons they represented, and the consciousness of instincts inherited in all probability from these same ancestors, formed the basis of Myrtle's 'Vision.' The lives of our progenitors are, as we know, reproduced in different proportions in ourselves. Whether they as individuals have any consciousness of it, is another matter. It is possible that they do get a second as it were fractional life in us. It might seem that many of those whose blood flows in our veins struggle for the mastery, and by and by one or more get the predominance, so that we grow to be like father, or mother, or remoter ancestor, or two or more are blended in us, not to the exclusion, however, it must be understood, of a special personality of our own, about which these others are grouped. Independently of any possible scientific value, this 'Vision' serves to illustrate the above-mentioned fact of common experience, which is not sufficiently weighed by most moralists.
“How much it may be granted to certain young persons to see, not in virtue of their intellectual gifts, but through those direct channels which worldly wisdom may possibly close to the luminous influx, each reader must determine for himself by his own standards of faith and evidence.
“One statement of the narrative admits of a simple natural explanation, which does not allow the lovers of the marvellous to class it with the quasi-miraculous appearance seen by Colonel Gardiner, and given in full by Dr. Doddridge in his Life of that remarkable Christian soldier. Decaying wood is often phosphorescent, as many readers must have seen for themselves. The country people are familiar with the sight of it in wild timber-land, and have given it the name of 'Fox-fire.' Two trunks of trees in this state, lying across each other, will account for the fact observed, and vindicate the truth of the young girl's story without requiring us to suppose any exceptional occurrence outside of natural laws.”
It was already morning when a young man living in the town of Alderbank, after lying awake for an hour thinking the unutterable thoughts that nineteen years of life bring to the sleeping and waking dreams of young people, rose from his bed, and, half dressing himself, sat down at his desk, from which he took a letter, which he opened and read. It was written in a delicate, though hardly formed female hand, and crossed like a checker-board, as is usual with these redundant manuscripts. The letter was as follows:
OXBOW VILLAGE, June 13, 1859.
MY DEAREST CLEMENT,—You was so good to write me such a sweet little bit of a letter,—only, dear, you never seem to be in quite so good spirits as you used to be. I wish your Susie was with you to cheer you up; but no, she must be patient, and you must be patient too, for you are so ambitious! I have heard you say so many times that nobody could be a great artist without passing years and years at work, and growing pale and lean with thinking so hard. You won't grow pale and lean, I hope; for I do so love to see that pretty color in your cheeks you have always had ever since I have known you; and besides, I do not believe you will have to work so very hard to do something great,—you have so much genius, and people of genius do such beautiful things with so little trouble. You remember those beautiful lines out of our newspaper I sent you? Well, Mr. Hopkins told me he wrote those lines in one evening without stopping! I wish you could see Mr. Hopkins,—he is a very talented person. I cut out this little piece about him from the paper on purpose to show you,—for genius loves genius,—and you would like to hear him read his own poetry,—he reads it beautifully. Please send this piece from the paper back, as I want to put it in my scrapbook, under his autograph:—
“Our young townsman, Mr. Gifted Hopkins, has proved himself worthy of the name he bears. His poetical effusions are equally creditable to his head and his heart, displaying the highest order of genius and powers of imagination and fancy hardly second to any writer of the age. He is destined to make a great sensation in the world of letters.”
Mrs. Hopkins is the same good soul she always was. She is very proud of her son, as is natural, and keeps a copy of everything he writes. I believe she cries over them every time she reads them. You don't know how I take to little Sossy and Minthy, those two twins I have written to you about before. Poor little creatures,—what a cruel thing it was in their father and mother not to take care of them! What do you think? Old bachelor Gridley lets them come up into his room, and builds forts and castles for them with his big books! “The world's coming to an end,” Mrs. Hopkins said the first time he did so. He looks so savage with that scowl of his, and talks so gruff when he is scolding at things in general, that nobody would have believed he would have let such little things come anywhere near him. But he seems to be growing kind to all of us and everybody. I saw him talking to the Fire-hang-bird the other day. You know who the Fire-hang-bird is, don't you? Myrtle Hazard her name is. I wish you could see her. I don't know as I do, though. You would want to make a statue of her, or a painting, I know. She is so handsome that all the young men stand round to see her come out of meeting. Some say that Lawyer Bradshaw is after her; but my! he is ten years older than she is. She is nothing but a girl, though she looks as if she was eighteen. She lives up at a place called The Poplars, with an old woman that is her aunt or something, and nobody seems to be much acquainted with her except Olive Eveleth, who is the minister's daughter at Saint Bartholomew's Church. She never has beauxs round her, as some young girls do—they say that she is not happy with her aunt and another woman that stays with her, and that is the reason she keeps so much to herself. The minister came to see me the other day,—Mr. Stoker his name is. I was all alone, and it frightened me, for he looks, oh, so solemn on Sundays! But he called me “My dear,” and did n't say anything horrid, you know, about my being such a dreadful, dreadful sinner, as I have heard of his saying to some people,—but he looked very kindly at me, and took my hand, and laid his hand on my shoulder like a brother, and hoped I would come and see him in his study. I suppose I must go, but I don't want to. I don't seem to like him exactly.
I hope you love me as well as ever you did. I can't help feeling sometimes as if you was growing away from me,—you know what I mean,—getting to be too great a person for such a small person as I am.
I know I can't always understand you when you talk about art, and that you know a great deal too much for such a simple girl as I am. Oh, if I thought I could never make you happy!... There, now! I am almost ashamed to send this paper so spotted. Gifted Hopkins wrote some beautiful verses one day on “A Maiden Weeping.” He compared the tears falling from her eyes to the drops of dew which one often sees upon the flowers in the morning. Is n't it a pretty thought?
I wish I loved art as well as I do poetry; but I am afraid I have not so much taste as some girls have. You remember how I liked that picture in the illustrated magazine, and you said it was horrid. I have been afraid since to like almost anything, for fear you should tell me some time or other it was horrid. Don't you think I shall ever learn to know what is nice from what is n't?
Oh, dear Clement, I wish you would do one thing to please me. Don't say no, for you can do everything you try to,—I am sure you can. I want you to write me some poetry,—just three or four little verses TO SUZIE. Oh, I should feel so proud to have some lines written all on purpose for me. Mr. Hopkins wrote some the other day, and printed them in the paper, “To M——e.” I believe he meant them for Myrtle,—the first and last letter of her name, you see, “M” and “e.”
Your letter was a dear one, only so short! I wish you would tell me all about what you are doing at Alderbank. Have you made that model of Innocence that is to have my forehead, and hair parted like mine! Make it pretty, do, that is a darling.
Now don't make a face at my letter. It is n't a very good one, I know; but your poor little Susie does the best she can, and she loves you so much!
Now do be nice and write me one little bit of a mite of a poem,—it will make me just as happy!
I am very well, and as happy as I can be when you are away.
Your affectionate SUSIE.
(Directed to Mr. Clement Lindsay, Alderbank.)
The envelope of this letter was unbroken, as was before said, when the young man took it from his desk. He did not tear it with the hot impatience of some lovers, but cut it open neatly, slowly, one would say sadly. He read it with an air of singular effort, and yet with a certain tenderness. When he had finished it, the drops were thick on his forehead; he groaned and put his hands to his face, which was burning red.
This was what the impulse of boyhood, years ago, had brought him to! He was a stately youth, of noble bearing, of high purpose, of fastidious taste; and, if his broad forehead, his clear, large blue eyes, his commanding features, his lips, firm, yet plastic to every change of thought and feeling, were not an empty mask, might not improbably claim that Promethean quality of which the girl's letter had spoken,—the strange, divine, dread gift of genius.
This poor, simple, innocent, trusting creature, so utterly incapable of coming into any true relation with his aspiring mind, his large and strong emotions,—this mere child, all simplicity and goodness, but trivial and shallow as the little babbling brooklet that ran by his window to the river, to lose its insignificant being in the swift torrent he heard rushing over the rocks,—this pretty idol for a weak and kindly and easily satisfied worshipper, was to be enthroned as the queen of his affections, to be adopted as the companion of his labors! The boy, led by the commonest instinct, the mere attraction of biped to its female, which accident had favored, had thrown away the dearest possession of manhood,—liberty,—and this bauble was to be his lifelong reward! And yet not a bauble either, for a pleasing person and a gentle and sweet nature, which had once made her seem to him the very paragon of loveliness, were still hers. Alas! her simple words were true,—he had grown away from her. Her only fault was that she had not grown with him, and surely he could not reproach her with that.
“No,” he said to himself, “I will never leave her so long as her heart clings to me. I have been rash, but she shall not pay the forfeit. And if I may think of myself, my life need not be wretched because she cannot share all my being with me. The common human qualities are more than all exceptional gifts. She has a woman's heart; and what talent of mine is to be named by the love a true woman can offer in exchange for these divided and cold affections? If it had pleased God to mate me with one more equal in other ways, who could share my thoughts, who could kindle my inspiration, who had wings to rise into the air with me as well as feet to creep by my side upon the earth,—what cannot such a woman do for a man!
“What! cast away the flower I took in the bud because it does not show as I hoped it would when it opened? I will stand by my word; I will be all as a man that I promised as a boy. Thank God, she is true and pure and sweet. My nest will be a peaceful one; but I must take wing alone,—alone.”
He drew one long sigh, and the cloud passed from his countenance. He must answer that letter now, at once. There were reasons, he thought, which made it important. And so, with the cheerfulness which it was kind and becoming to show, so far as possible, and yet with a little excitement on one particular point, which was the cause of his writing so promptly, he began his answer.
ALDERBANK, Thursday morning, June 16, 1859.
MY DEAR SUSIE,—I have just been reading your pleasant letter; and if I do not send you the poem you ask for so eloquently, I will give you a little bit of advice, which will do just as well,—won't it, my dear? I was interested in your account of various things going on at Oxbow Village. I am very glad you find young Mr. Hopkins so agreeable a friend. His poetry is better than some which I see printed in the village papers, and seems generally unexceptionable in its subjects and tone. I do not believe he is a dangerous companion, though the habit of writing verse does not always improve the character. I think I have seen it make more than one of my acquaintances idle, conceited, sentimental, and frivolous,—perhaps it found them so already. Don't make too much of his talent, and particularly don't let him think that because he can write verses he has nothing else to do in this world. That is for his benefit, dear, and you must skilfully apply it.
Now about yourself. My dear Susie, there was something in your letter that did not please me. You speak of a visit from the Rev. Mr. Stoker, and of his kind, brotherly treatment, his cordiality of behavior, and his asking you to visit him in his study. I am very glad to hear you say that you “don't seem to like him.” He is very familiar, it seems to me, for so new an acquaintance. What business had he to be laying his hand on your shoulder? I should like to see him try these free-and-easy ways in my presence! He would not have taken that liberty, my dear! No, he was alone with you, and thought it safe to be disrespectfully familiar. I want you to maintain your dignity always with such persons, and I beg you not to go to the study of this clergyman, unless some older friend goes with you on every occasion, and sits through the visit. I must speak plainly to you, my dear, as I have a right to. If the minister has anything of importance to say, let it come through the lips of some mature person. It may lose something of the fervor with which it would have been delivered at first hand, but the great rules of Christian life are not so dependent on the particular individual who speaks them, that you must go to this or that young man to find out what they are. If to any man, I should prefer the old gentleman whom you have mentioned in your letters, Father Pemberton. You understand me, my dear girl, and the subject is not grateful. You know how truly I am interested in all that relates to you,—that I regard you with an affection which—
HELP! HELP! HELP!
A cry as of a young person's voice was heard faintly, coming from the direction of the river. Something in the tone of it struck to his heart, and he sprang as if he had been stabbed. He flung open his chamber window and leaped from it to the ground. He ran straight to the bank of the river by the side of which the village of Alderbank was built, a little farther down the stream than the house in which he was living.
Everybody that travels in that region knows the beautiful falls which break the course of the river just above the village; narrow and swift, and surrounded by rocks of such picturesque forms that they are sought and admired by tourists. The stream was now swollen, and rushed in a deep and rapid current over the ledges, through the rocky straits, plunging at last in tumult and foam, with loud, continuous roar, into the depths below the cliff from which it tumbled.
A short distance above the fall there projected from the water a rock which had, by parsimonious saving during a long course of years, hoarded a little soil, out of which a small tuft of bushes struggled to support a decent vegetable existence. The high waters had nearly submerged it, but a few slender twigs were seen above their surface.
A skiff was lying close to this rock, between it and the brink of the fall, which was but a few rods farther down. In the skiff was a youth of fourteen or fifteen years, holding by the slender twigs, the boat dragging at them all the time, and threatening to tear them away and go over the fall. It was not likely that the boy would come to shore alive if it did. There were stories, it is true, that the Indians used to shoot the fall in their canoes with safety; but everybody knew that at least three persons had been lost by going over it since the town was settled; and more than one dead body had been found floating far down the river, with bruises and fractured bones, as if it had taken the same fatal plunge.
There was no time to lose. Clement ran a little way up the river-bank, flung off his shoes, and sprang from the bank as far as he could leap into the water. The current swept him toward the fall, but he worked nearer and nearer the middle of the stream. He was making for the rock, thinking he could plant his feet upon it and at the worst hold the boat until he could summon other help by shouting. He had barely got his feet upon the rock, when the twigs by which the boy was holding gave way. He seized the boat, but it dragged him from his uncertain footing, and with a desperate effort he clambered over its side and found himself its second doomed passenger.
There was but an instant for thought.
“Sit still,” he said, “and, just as we go over, put your arms round me under mine, and don't let go for your life!”
He caught up the single oar, and with a few sharp paddle-strokes brought the skiff into the blackest centre of the current, where it was deepest, and would plunge them into the deepest pool.
“Hold your breath! God save us! Now!”
They rose, as if with one will, and stood for an instant, the arms of the younger closely embracing the other as he had directed.
A sliding away from beneath them of the floor on which they stood, as the drop fails under the feet of a felon. A great rush of air, and a mighty, awful, stunning roar,—an involuntary gasp, a choking flood of water that came bellowing after them, and hammered them down into the black depths so far that the young man, though used to diving and swimming long distances underwater, had well-nigh yielded to the fearful need of air, and sucked in his death in so doing.
The boat came up to the surface, broken in twain, splintered, a load of firewood for those who raked the river lower down. It had turned crosswise, and struck the rocks. A cap rose to the surface, such a one as boys wear,—the same that boy had on. And then—after how many seconds by the watch cannot be known, but after a time long enough, as the young man remembered it, to live his whole life over in memory—Clement Lindsay felt the blessed air against his face, and, taking a great breath, came to his full consciousness. The arms of the boy were still locked around him as in the embrace of death. A few strokes brought him to the shore, dragging his senseless burden with him.
He unclasped the arms that held him so closely encircled, and laid the slender form of the youth he had almost died to save gently upon the grass. It was as if dead. He loosed the ribbon that was round the neck, he tore open the checked shirt—
The story of Myrtle Hazard's sex was told; but she was deaf to his cry of surprise, and no blush came to her cold cheek. Not too late, perhaps, to save her,—not too late to try to save her, at least!
He placed his lips to hers, and filled her breast with the air from his own panting chest. Again and again he renewed these efforts, hoping, doubting, despairing,—once more hoping, and at last, when he had almost ceased to hope, she gasped, she breathed, she moaned, and rolled her eyes wildly round her, she was born again into this mortal life.
He caught her up in his arms, bore her to the house, laid her on a sofa, and, having spent his strength in this last effort, reeled and fell, and lay as one over whom have just been whispered the words,
“He is gone.”
The first thing Clement Lindsay did, when he was fairly himself again, was to finish his letter to Susan Posey. He took it up where it left off, “with an affection which——” and drew a long dash, as above. It was with great effort he wrote the lines which follow, for he had got an ugly blow on the forehead, and his eyes were “in mourning,” as the gentlemen of the ring say, with unbecoming levity.
“An adventure! Just as I was writing these last words, I heard the cry of a young person, as it sounded, for help. I ran to the river and jumped in, and had the pleasure of saving a life. I got some bruises which have laid me up for a day or two; but I am getting over them very well now, and you need not worry about me at all. I will write again soon; so pray do not fret yourself, for I have had no hurt that will trouble me for any time.”
Of course, poor Susan Posey burst out crying, and cried as if her heart would break. Oh dear! Oh dear! what should she do! He was almost killed, she knew he was, or he had broken some of his bones. Oh dear! Oh dear! She would go and see him, there!—she must and would. He would die, she knew he would,—and so on.
It was a singular testimony to the evident presence of a human element in Mr. Bytes Gridley that the poor girl, on her extreme trouble, should think of him as a counsellor. But the wonderful relenting kind of look on his grave features as he watched the little twins tumbling about his great books, and certain marks of real sympathy he had sometimes shown for her in her lesser woes, encouraged her, and she went straight to his study, letter in hand. She gave a timid knock at the door of that awful sanctuary.
“Come in, Susan Posey,” was its answer, in a pleasant tone. The old master knew her light step and the maidenly touch of her small hand on the panel.
What a sight! 'there were Sossy and Minthy intrenched in a Sebastopol which must have cost a good half-hour's engineering, and the terrible Bytes Gridley besieging the fortress with hostile manifestations of the most singular character. He was actually discharging a large sugar-plum at the postern gate, which having been left unclosed, the missile would certainly have reached one of the garrison, when he paused as the door opened, and the great round spectacles and four wide, staring infants' eyes were levelled at Miss Susan Posey.
She almost forgot her errand, grave as it was, in astonishment at this manifestation. The old man had emptied his shelves of half their folios to build up the fort, in the midst of which he had seated the two delighted and uproarious babes. There was his Cave's “Historia Literaria,” and Sir Walter Raleigh's “History of the World,” and a whole array of Christian Fathers, and Plato, and Aristotle, and Stanley's book of Philosophers, with Effigies, and the Junta Galen, and the Hippocrates of Foesius, and Walton's Polyglot, supported by Father Sanchez on one side and Fox's “Acts and Monuments” on the other,—an odd collection, as folios from lower shelves are apt to be.
The besieger discharged his sugar-plum, which was so well aimed that it fell directly into the lap of Minthy, who acted with it as if the garrison had been on short rations for some time.
He saw at once, on looking up, that there was trouble. “What now, Susan Posey, my dear?”
“O Mr. Gridley, I am in such trouble! What shall I do? What shall I do?”
She turned back the name and the bottom of the letter in such a way that Mr. Gridley could read nothing but the few lines relating their adventure.
“So Mr. Clement Lindsay has been saving a life, has he, and got some hard knocks doing it, hey, Susan Posey? Well, well, Clement Lindsay is a brave fellow, and there is no need of hiding his name, my child. Let me take the letter again a moment, Susan Posey. What is the date of it? June 16th. Yes,—yes,—yes!”
He read the paragraph over again, and the signature too, if he wanted to; for poor Susan had found that her secret was hardly opaque to those round spectacles and the eyes behind them, and, with a not unbecoming blush, opened the fold of the letter before she handed it back.
“No, no, Susan Posey. He will come all right. His writing is steady, and if he had broken any bones he would have mentioned it. It's a thing his wife will be proud of, if he is ever married, Susan Posey,” (blushes,) “and his children too,” (more blushes running up to her back hair,) “and there 's nothing to be worried about. But I'll tell you what, my dear, I've got a little business that calls me down the river tomorrow, and I shouldn't mind stopping an hour at Alderbank and seeing how our young friend Clement Lindsay is; and then, if he was going to have a long time of it, why we could manage it somehow that any friend who had any special interest in him could visit him, just to while away the tiresomeness of being sick. That's it, exactly. I'll stop at Alderbank, Susan Posey. Just clear up these two children for me, will you, my dear? Isosceles, come now,—that 's a good child. Helminthia, carry these sugar-plums down—stairs for me, and take good care of them, mind!”
It was a case of gross bribery and corruption, for the fortress was immediately, evacuated on the receipt of a large paper of red and white comfits, and the garrison marched down—stairs much like conquerors, under the lead of the young lady, who was greatly eased in mind by the kind words and the promise of Mr. Byles Gridley.
But he, in the mean time, was busy with thoughts she did not suspect. “A young person,” he said to himself,—“why a young person? Why not say a boy, if it was a boy? What if this should be our handsome truant?—'June 16th, Thursday morning!'—About time to get to Alderbank by the river, I should think. None of the boats missing? What then? She may have made a raft, or picked up some stray skiff. Who knows? And then got shipwrecked, very likely. There are rapids and falls farther along the river. It will do no harm to go down there and look about, at any rate.”
On Saturday morning, therefore, Mr. Byles Gridley set forth to procure a conveyance to make a visit, as he said, down the river, and perhaps be gone a day or two. He went to a stable in the village, and asked if they could let him have a horse.
The man looked at him with that air of native superiority which the companionship of the generous steed confers on all his associates, down to the lightest weight among the jockeys.
“Wal, I hain't got nothin' in the shape of a h'oss, Mr. Gridley. I've got a mare I s'pose I could let y' have.”
“Oh, very well,” said the old master, with a twinkle in his eye as sly as the other's wink,—he had parried a few jokes in his time,—“they charge half-price for mares always, I believe.”
That was a new view of the subject. It rather took the wind out of the stable-keeper, and set a most ammoniacal fellow, who stood playing with a currycomb, grinning at his expense. But he rallied presently.
“Wal, I b'lieve they do for some mares, when they let 'em to some folks; but this here ain't one o' them mares, and you ain't one o' them folks. All my cattle's out but this critter, 'n' I don't jestly want to have nobody drive her that ain't pretty car'ful,—she's faast, I tell ye,—don't want no whip.—How fur d' d y' want t' go?”
Mr. Gridley was quite serious now, and let the man know that he wanted the mare and a light covered wagon, at once, to be gone for one or two days, and would waive the question of sex in the matter of payment.
Alderbank was about twenty miles down the river by the road. On arriving there, he inquired for the house where a Mr. Lindsay lived. There was only one Lindsay family in town,—he must mean Dr. William Lindsay. His house was up there a little way above the village, lying a few rods back from the river.
He found the house without difficulty, and knocked at the door. A motherly-looking woman opened it immediately, and held her hand up as if to ask him to speak and move softly.
“Does Mr. Clement Lindsay live here?”
“He is staying here for the present. He is a nephew of ours. He is in his bed from an injury.”
“Nothing very serious, I hope?”
“A bruise on his head,—not very bad, but the doctor was afraid of erysipelas. Seems to be doing well enough now.”
“Is there a young person here, a stranger?”
“There is such a young person here. Do you come with any authority to make inquiries?”
“I do. A young friend of mine is missing, and I thought it possible I might learn something here about it. Can I see this young person?”
The matron came nearer to Byles Gridley, and said: “This person is a young woman disguised as a boy. She was rescued by my nephew at the risk of his life, and she has been delirious ever since she has recovered her consciousness. She was almost too far gone to be resuscitated, but Clement put his mouth to hers and kept her breathing until her own breath returned and she gradually came to.”
“Is she violent in her delirium?”
“Not now. No; she is quiet enough, but wandering,—wants to know where she is, and whose the strange faces are,—mine and my husband's,—that 's Dr. Lindsay,—and one of my daughters, who has watched with her.”
“If that is so, I think I had better see her. If she is the person I suspect her to be, she will know me; and a familiar face may bring back her recollections and put a stop to her wanderings. If she does not know me, I will not stay talking with her. I think she will, if she is the one I am seeking after. There is no harm in trying.”
Mrs. Lindsay took a good long look at the old man. There was no mistaking his grave, honest, sturdy, wrinkled, scholarly face. His voice was assured and sincere in its tones. His decent black coat was just what a scholar's should be,—old, not untidy, a little shiny at the elbows with much leaning on his study-table, but neatly bound at the cuffs, where worthy Mrs. Hopkins had detected signs of fatigue and come to the rescue. His very hat looked honest as it lay on the table. It had moulded itself to a broad, noble head, that held nothing but what was true and fair, with a few harmless crotchets just to fill in with, and it seemed to know it.
The good woman gave him her confidence at once. “Is the person you are seeking a niece or other relative of yours?”
(Why did not she ask if the girl was his daughter? What is that look of paternity and of maternity which observing and experienced mothers and old nurses know so well in men and in women?)
“No, she is not a relative. But I am acting for those who are.”
“Wait a moment and I will go and see that the room is all right.”
She returned presently. “Follow me softly, if you please. She is asleep,—so beautiful,—so innocent!”
Byles Gridley, Master of Arts, retired professor, more than sixty years old, childless, loveless, stranded in a lonely study strewed with wrecks of the world's thought, his work in life finished, his one literary venture gone down with all it held, with nobody to care for him but accidental acquaintances, moved gently to the side of the bed and looked upon the pallid, still features of Myrtle Hazard. He strove hard against a strange feeling that was taking hold of him, that was making his face act rebelliously, and troubling his eyes with sudden films. He made a brief stand against this invasion. “A weakness,—a weakness!” he said to himself. “What does all this mean? Never such a thing for these twenty years! Poor child! poor child!—Excuse me, madam,” he said, after a little interval, but for what offence he did not mention. A great deal might be forgiven, even to a man as old as Byles Gridley, looking upon such a face,—so lovely, yet so marked with the traces of recent suffering, and even now showing by its changes that she was struggling in some fearful dream. Her forehead contracted, she started with a slight convulsive movement, and then her lips parted, and the cry escaped from them,—how heart-breaking when there is none to answer it,—“Mother!”
Gone back again through all the weary, chilling years of her girlhood to that hardly remembered morning of her life when the cry she uttered was answered by the light of loving eyes, the kiss of clinging lips, the embrace of caressing arms!
“It is better to wake her,” Mrs. Lindsay said; “she is having a troubled dream. Wake up, my child, here is a friend waiting to see you.”
She laid her hand very gently on Myrtle's forehead. Myrtle opened her eyes, but they were vacant as yet.
“Are we dead?” she said. “Where am I? This is n't heaven—there are no angels—Oh, no, no, no! don't send me to the other place—fifteen years,—only fifteen years old—no father, no mother—nobody loved me. Was it wicked in me to live?” Her whole theological training was condensed in that last brief question.
The old man took her hand and looked her in the face, with a wonderful tenderness in his squared features. “Wicked to live, my dear? No indeed! Here! look at me, my child; don't you know your old friend Byles Gridley?”
She was awake now. The sight of a familiar countenance brought back a natural train of thought. But her recollection passed over everything that had happened since Thursday morning.
“Where is the boat I was in?” she said. “I have just been in the water, and I was dreaming that I was drowned. Oh! Mr. Gridley, is that you? Did you pull me out of the water?”
“No, my dear, but you are out of it, and safe and sound: that is the main point. How do you feel now you are awake?”
She yawned, and stretched her arms and looked round, but did not answer at first. This was all natural, and a sign that she was coming right. She looked down at her dress. It was not inappropriate to her sex, being a loose gown that belonged to one of the girls in the house.
“I feel pretty well,” she answered, “but a little confused. My boat will be gone, if you don't run and stop it now. How did you get me into dry clothes so quick?”
Master Byles Gridley found himself suddenly possessed by a large and luminous idea of the state of things, and made up his mind in a moment as to what he must do. There was no time to be lost. Every day, every hour, of Myrtle's absence was not only a source of anxiety and a cause of useless searching but it gave room for inventive fancies to imagine evil. It was better to run some risk of injury to health, than to have her absence prolonged another day.
“Has this adventure been told about in the village, Mrs. Lindsay?”
“No, we thought it best to wait until she could tell her own story, expecting her return to consciousness every hour, and thinking there might be some reason for her disguise which it would be kinder to keep quiet about.”
“You know nothing about her, then?”
“Not a word. It was a great question whether to tell the story and make inquiries; but she was safe, and could hardly bear disturbance, and, my dear sir, it seemed too probable that there was some sad story behind this escape in disguise, and that the poor child might need shelter and retirement. We meant to do as well as we could for her.”
“All right, Mrs. Lindsay. You do not know who she is, then?”
“No, sir, and perhaps it is as well that I should not know. Then I shall not have to answer any questions about it.”
“Very good, madam,—just as it should be. And your family, are they as discreet as yourself?”
“Not one word of the whole story has been or will be told by any one of us. That was agreed upon among us.”
“Now then, madam. My name, as you heard me say, is Byles Gridley. Your husband will know it, perhaps; at any rate I will wait until he comes back. This child is of good family and of good name. I know her well, and mean, with your kind help, to save her from the consequences which her foolish adventure might have brought upon her. Before the bells ring for meeting to-morrow morning this girl must be in her bed at her home, at Oxbow Village, and we must keep her story to ourselves as far as may be. It will all blow over, if we do. The gossips will only know that she was upset in the river and cared for by some good people,—good people and sensible people too, Mrs. Lindsay. And now I want to see the young man that rescued my friend here,—Clement Lindsay, I have heard his name before.”
Clement was not a beauty for the moment, but Master Gridley saw well enough that he was a young man of the right kind. He knew them at sight, fellows with lime enough in their bones and iron enough in their blood to begin with,—shapely, large-nerved, firm-fibred and fine-fibred, with well-spread bases to their heads for the ground-floor of the faculties, and well-vaulted arches for the upper range of apprehensions and combinations. “Plenty of basements,” he used to say, “without attics and skylights. Plenty of skylights without rooms enough and space enough below.” But here was “a three-story brain,” he said to himself as he looked at it, and this was the youth who was to find his complement in our pretty little Susan Posey! His judgment may seem to have been hasty, but he took the measure of young men of twenty at sight from long and sagacious observation, as Nurse Byloe knew the “heft” of a baby the moment she fixed her old eyes on it.
Clement was well acquainted with Byles Gridley, though he had never seen him, for Susan's letters had had a good deal to say about him of late. It was agreed between them that the story should be kept as quiet as possible, and that the young girl should not know the name of her deliverer,—it might save awkward complications. It was not likely that she would be disposed to talk of her adventure, which had ended so disastrously, and thus the whole story would soon die out.
The effect of the violent shock she had experienced was to change the whole nature of Myrtle for the time. Her mind was unsettled: she could hardly recall anything except the plunge over the fall. She was perfectly docile and plastic,—was ready to go anywhere Mr. Gridley wanted her to go, without any sign of reluctance. And so it was agreed that he should carry her back in his covered wagon that very night. All possible arrangements were made to render her journey comfortable. The fast mare had to trot very gently, and the old master would stop and adjust the pillows from time to time, and administer the restoratives which the physician had got ready, all as naturally and easily as if he had been bred a nurse, vastly to his own surprise, and with not a little gain to his self-appreciation. He was a serviceable kind of body on occasion, after all, was he not, hey, Mr. Byles Gridley? he said to himself.
At half past four o'clock on Sunday morning the shepherd brought the stray lamb into the paved yard at The Poplars, and roused the slumbering household to receive back the wanderer.
It was the Irishwoman, Kitty Fagan, huddled together in such amorphous guise, that she looked as if she had been fitted in a tempest of petticoats and a whirlwind of old shawls, who presented herself at the door.
But there was a very warm heart somewhere in that queer-looking bundle of clothes, and it was not one of those that can throb or break in silence. When she saw the long covered wagon, and the grave face of the old master, she thought it was all over with the poor girl she loved, and that this was the undertaker's wagon bringing back only what had once been Myrtle Hazard. She screamed aloud,—so wildly that Myrtle lifted her head from the pillow against which she had rested it, and started forward.
The Irishwoman looked at her for a moment to assure herself that it was the girl she loved, and not her ghost. Then it all came over her,—she had been stolen by thieves, who had carried her off by night, and been rescued by the brave old man who had brought her back. What crying and kisses and prayers and blessings were poured forth, in a confusion of which her bodily costume was a fitting type, those who know the vocabulary and the enthusiasm of her eloquent race may imagine better than we could describe it.
The welcome of the two other women was far less demonstrative. There were awful questions to be answered before the kind of reception she was to have could be settled. What they were, it is needless to suggest; but while Miss Silence was weeping, first with joy that her “responsibility” was removed, then with a fair share of pity and kindness, and other lukewarm emotions,—while Miss Badlam waited for an explanation before giving way to her feelings,—Mr. Gridley put the essential facts before them in a few words. She had gone down the river some miles in her boat, which was upset by a rush of the current, and she had come very near being drowned. She was got out, however, by a person living near by, and cared for by some kind women in a house near the river, where he had been fortunate enough to discover her.—Who cut her hair off? Perhaps those good people,—she had been out of her head. She was alive and unharmed, at any rate, wanting only a few days' rest. They might be very thankful to get her back, and leave her to tell the rest of her story when she had got her strength and memory, for she was not quite herself yet, and might not be for some days.
And so there she was at last laid in her own bed, listening again to the ripple of the waters beneath her, Miss Silence sitting on one side looking as sympathetic as her insufficient nature allowed her to look; the Irishwoman uncertain between delight at Myrtle's return and sorrow for her condition; and Miss Cynthia Badlam occupying herself about house-matters, not unwilling to avoid the necessity of displaying her conflicting emotions.
Before he left the house, Mr. Gridley repeated the statement in the most precise manner,—some miles down the river—upset and nearly drowned—rescued almost dead—brought to and cared for by kind women in the house where he, Byles Gridley, found her. These were the facts, and nothing more than this was to be told at present. They had better be made known at once, and the shortest and best way would be to have it announced by the minister at meeting that forenoon. With their permission, he would himself write the note for Mr. Stoker to read, and tell the other ministers that they might announce it to their people.
The bells rang for meeting, but the little household at The Poplars did not add to the congregation that day. In the mean time Kitty Fagan had gone down with Mr. Byles Gridley's note, to carry it to the Rev. Mr. Stoker. But, on her way, she stopped at the house of one Mrs. Finnegan, a particular friend of hers; and the great event of the morning furnishing matter for large discourse, and various social allurements adding to the fascination of having a story to tell, Kitty Fagan forgot her note until meeting had begun and the minister had read the text of his sermon. “Bless my soul! and sure I 've forgot ahl about the letter!” she cried all at once, and away she tramped for the meeting-house. The sexton took the note, which was folded, and said he would hand it up to the pulpit after the sermon,—it would not do to interrupt the preacher.
The Rev. Mr. Stoker had, as was said, a somewhat remarkable gift in prayer,—an endowment by no means confined to profoundly spiritual persons,—in fact, not rarely owing much of its force to a strong animal nature underlying the higher attributes. The sweet singer of Israel would never have written such petitions and such hymns if his manhood had been less complete; the flavor of remembered frailties could not help giving a character to his most devout exercises, or they would not have come quite home to our common humanity. But there is no gift more dangerous to the humility and sincerity of a minister. While his spirit ought to be on its knees before the throne of grace, it is too apt to be on tiptoe, following with admiring look the flight of its own rhetoric. The essentially intellectual character of an extemporaneous composition spoken to the Creator with the consciousness that many of his creatures are listening to criticise or to admire, is the great argument for set forms of prayer.
The congregation on this particular Sunday was made up chiefly of women and old men. The young men were hunting after Myrtle Hazard. Mr. Byles Gridley was in his place, wondering why the minister did not read his notice before the prayer. This prayer, was never reported, as is the questionable custom with regard to some of these performances, but it was wrought up with a good deal of rasping force and broad pathos. When he came to pray for “our youthful sister, missing from her pious home, perhaps nevermore to return to her afflicted relatives,” and the women and old men began crying, Byles Gridley was on the very point of getting up and cutting short the whole matter by stating the simple fact that she had got back, all right, and suggesting that he had better pray for some of the older and tougher sinners before him. But on the whole it would be more decorous to wait, and perhaps he was willing to hear what the object of his favorite antipathy had to say about it. So he waited through the prayer. He waited through the hymn, “Life is the time”—He waited to hear the sermon.
The minister gave out his text from the Book of Esther, second chapter, seventh verse: “For she had neither father nor mother, and the maid was fair and beautiful.” It was to be expected that the reverend gentleman, who loved to produce a sensation, would avail himself of the excitable state of his audience to sweep the key-board of their emotions, while, as we may, say, all the stops were drawn out. His sermon was from notes; for, though absolutely extemporaneous composition may be acceptable to one's Maker, it is not considered quite the thing in speaking to one's fellow-mortals. He discoursed for a time on the loss of parents, and on the dangers to which the unfortunate orphan is exposed. Then he spoke of the peculiar risks of the tender female child, left without its natural guardians. Warming with his subject, he dilated with wonderful unction on the temptations springing from personal attractions. He pictured the “fair and beautiful” women of Holy Writ, lingering over their names with lover-like devotion. He brought Esther before his audience, bathed and perfumed for the royal presence of Ahasuerus. He showed them the sweet young Ruth, lying down in her innocence at the feet of the lord of the manor. He dwelt with special luxury on the charms which seduced the royal psalmist,—the soldier's wife for whom he broke the commands of the decalogue, and the maiden for whose attentions, in his cooler years, he violated the dictates of prudence and propriety. All this time Byles Gridley had his stern eyes on him. And while he kindled into passionate eloquence on these inspiring themes, poor Bathsheba, whom her mother had sent to church that she might get a little respite from her home duties, felt her blood growing cold in her veins, as the pallid image of the invalid wife, lying on her bed of suffering, rose in the midst of the glowing pictures which borrowed such warmth from her husband's imagination.