WHAT WAS HER DUTY?
Ann Holland was a great favorite with Mrs. Bolton. The elderly,
old-fashioned woman held firmly to all old-fashioned ways; knew her duty
to God and her duty to her neighbor, as taught by the Church Catechism,
and faithfully fulfilled them to the best of her power. She ordered
herself lowly and reverently to all her betters, especially to the widow
of an archdeacon. No new-fangled, radical notions, such as her drunken
brother picked up, could find any encouragement from her. Mrs. Bolton
always enjoyed an interview with her, so marked was her deference. She
had occasionally condescended to visit Ann Holland in her kitchen, and
sit on the projecting angle of the three-cornered chair, a favor duly
appreciated by her delighted hostess. Mr. Chantrey ran in often, as he
was passing by, partly because he felt a real friendship, for the
true-hearted, struggling old maid, and partly to see after her
good-for-nothing brother. As Ann Holland had said herself, she was ready
to go through fire and water for the sake of these friends and patrons
of hers, whose kindness was the brightest element in her life.
After much tearful deliberation, she received upon the daring step of
going to Bolton Villa, on an errand to Mrs. Bolton, with a vague hope
that she might discover how false this cruel scandal was. There was a
bridle of Mrs. Bolton's in the shop, which had been sent for a new curb,
and she would take it home herself. Early the next afternoon, therefore.
she clad herself in her best Sunday clothes, and made her way slowly
along the streets toward the church. It was but slowly for she rarely
went out on a week day, when her neighbors' shops were open; and there
were too many attractions in the windows for even her anxiety and
consciousness of a solemn mission to resist altogether.
The church and the rectory looked so peaceful amid the trees, just
tinged with the hues of autumn, that Ann Holland's spirits insensibly
revived. There was little sign of life about the rectory, for no one was
living in it at present but Mr. Warden, the clergyman who had taken Mr.
Chantrey's duty. Ann Holland opened the church-yard gate and strolled
pensively up among the graves to the porch, that she might rest a little
and ponder over what she should say to Mrs. Bolton. There was not a
grave there that she did not know; those lying under many of the grassy
sods were as familiar to her as the men and women now in full life in
the neighboring town. Just within sight, near the vestry window was a
little mound covered with flowers, where she had seen a little child of
David and Sophy Chantrey's laid to rest. A narrow path was worn up to
it; more bare and trodden than before Mr. Chantrey had gone away. Ann
Holland knew as well as if she had seen her, that the poor solitary
mother had worn the grass away.
The church door was open; for Mr. Warden had chosen to make the vestry
his study, and had intimated to all the parish that there he might
generally be found if any one among them wished to see him in any
difficulty or sorrow. Though this was well known, no one of Mr.
Chantrey's parishioners had gone to him for counsel; for he was a grave,
stern, silent man, whose opinion it was difficult to guess at and
impossible to fathom. He was unmarried, and kept no servant, except the
housekeeper who had been left in charge of the rectory. All society he
avoided, especially that of women. His abruptness and shyness in their
presence was painful both to himself and them. To Mrs. Bolton, however,
he was studiously civil, and to Sophy, his friend's wife, he would
gladly have shown kindness and sympathy, if he had only known how. He
often watched her tracing the narrow footworn track to her baby's grave,
and he longed to speak some friendly words of comfort to her, but none
came to his mind when they encountered each other. No one in Upton,
except Ann Holland, had seen, as he had, how thin and wan her face grew;
nor had any one noticed as soon as he had done the strangeness of her
manner at times, the unsteadiness of her step, and the flush upon her
face, as she now and then passed to and fro under the yew-trees. But he
had never had the courage to speak to her at such moments; and there was
only a mournful suspicion and dread in his heart, which he did his best
to hide from himself.
This afternoon Mrs. Bolton had sought him in the vestry, where he had
been silently brooding over his parish and its sins and sorrows, in the
dim, green light shining through the lattice window, which was thickly
overgrown with ivy. Mrs. Bolton was a handsome woman still, always
handsomely dressed, as became a wealthy archdeacon's widow. Her presence
seemed to fill up the little vestry; and as she occupied his old,
high-backed chair, Mr. Warden stood opposite to her, looking down
painfully and shyly at the floor on which he stood, rather than at the
distinguished personage who was visiting him.
"I come to you," she said, in a decisive, emphatic voice, "as a
clergyman, as well as my nephew's confidential friend. What I say to you
must go no farther than ourselves. We have no confessional in our
church, thank Heaven! but that which is confided to a clergyman, even to
a curate, ought to be as sacred as a confession."
"Certainly," answered Mr. Warden, with painful abruptness.
"Sacred as a confession!" repeated Mrs. Bolton. "I must tell you, then,
that I am in the greatest trouble about my nephew's wife. You know how
ill she was last winter, after he went away. A low, nervous fever, which
hung over her for months. She would not listen to my telling David about
it, and, indeed, I was reluctant to distress and disturb him about a
matter that he could not help. But she is very strange now; very strange
and flighty. Possibly you may have observed some change in her?"
"Yes," he replied, still looking down on the floor, but seeing a vision
of Sophy pacing the beaten track to the little grave under the vestry
window.
"When she was at the worst," pursued Mrs. Bolton, "and I had the best
advice in London for her, she was ordered to take the best wine we could
get. I told Brown to bring out for her use some very choice port,
purchased by the archdeacon years ago. She must have perished without
it; but unfortunately--I speak to you as her pastor, in confidence--she
has grown fond of it."
"Fond of it?" repeated Mr. Warden.
"Yes," she answered, emphatically; "I leave the cellar entirely in
Brown's charge; a very trusty servant; and I find that Mrs. Chantrey has
lately been in the habit of getting a great deal too much from him. But
she will take anything she can get that will either stupefy or excite
her. She never writes to David until her spirits are raised by
stimulants of one kind or another. It is a temptation I cannot
understand. I take a proper quantity, just as when the archdeacon was
alive, and I never think of exceeding that. I need no more, and I desire
no more. But Mrs. Chantrey grows quite excited, almost violent at times.
It makes me more anxious than words can express."
There was a long pause, Mr. Warden neither lifting his head nor opening
his mouth. His pale face flushed a little, and his lips quivered. David
Chantrey was his dearest friend, and an almost intolerable sense of
shame and dread kept him silent. His wife, of whom he always spoke so
tenderly in all his letters to him! The very spot where he was listening
to this charge against her, David's vestry, seemed to deepen the shame
of it, and the unutterable sorrow, if it should be true.
"What would you counsel me to do?" asked Mrs. Bolton, after a time.
"Must I write to my nephew and tell him?"
"Do!" he cried, with sudden eagerness and emphasis; "do! Take the
temptation out of her way at once. Let everything of the kind be removed
from the house. Let no one touch it, or mention it in her presence.
Guard her as you would guard a child from taking deadly poison."
"Impossible!" exclaimed Mrs. Bolton. "Have no wine in my house? You
forget my station and its duties, Mr. Warden, I must give dinner parties
occasionally; I must allow beer to my servants. It is absurd. Nobody
could expect me to take such a step as that."
"Listen to me," he said, earnestly, and with an authority quite at
variance with his ordinary shyness. "I do not venture to hope for any
other remedy. I have known men, ay, and women, who have not dared to
pass close by the doors of a tavern for fear lest they should catch but
the smell of it, and become brutes again in spite of themselves. Others
have not dared even to think of it. If Mrs. Chantrey be falling into
this sin, there is no other course for you to pursue than to banish it
from your table, and, if possible, from your house. It is better for her
to die, if needs be, than to live a drunkard."
"A drunkard!" echoed Mrs. Bolton. "I am sure I never used such a word
about Sophy. I cannot believe it possible that my nephew's wife, a
clergyman's wife, could become a drunkard, like a woman of the lowest
classes! And I cannot understand how you, a clergyman, could seriously
propose so extraordinary a step. Why, there is no danger to me; nobody
could ever suspect me of being fond of wine. I have taken it in
moderation all my life, and I cannot believe it is my duty to give it up
altogether at my age."
"Very possibly it has never been your duty before," answered Mr. Warden,
"and now I urge it, not for your own sake, but for hers. She has fallen
into the snare blindfolded, and you can extricate her, though at some
cost to yourself. I feel persuaded you can induce her to abstain, if you
will do so yourself. You call yourself a Christian--"
"I should think there can be no doubt about that," she interrupted,
indignantly; "the archdeacon never expressed any doubt about it, and
surely I may depend upon his judgment."
"Forgive me," said Mr. Warden. "I ought to have said you are a
Christian, and a Christian is one who follows his Lord's example."
"Who drank wine himself, and blessed it," interposed Mrs. Bolton, in a
tone of triumph.
"The great law of whose life was self-sacrifice," he pursued. "If one of
his brethren or sisters had been a drunkard, can you think of him
filling up his own cup with wine and drinking it, as they sat side by
side at the same table?"
"I should be shocked at imagining anything so presumptuous, not to call
it blasphemous," she said. "We can only go by the plain words of
Scripture, which tell us that He turned water into wine, and that He
drank wine Himself. I am not afraid of going by the plain words of
Scripture."
"But we have only fragments of His history," replied Mr. Warden, "and
only a few verses of His teachings. Would you say that Paul had more of
the spirit of self-sacrifice than Christ? Yet he said, 'It is good
neither to eat flesh, nor to drink wine, nor anything whereby thy
brother stumbleth.' And again, 'If meat make my brother to offend, I
will eat no flesh while the world standeth.' If the servant spoke so,
what do you think the Master would have answered if any one had asked
Him, 'Lord, what shall I do to save my brother from drunkenness?' It
will be a self-denial to you; people will wonder at it, and talk about
you; yet I say, if you would truly follow your Lord and Saviour, there
is no choice for you. You can save a soul for whom Christ died; and is
it possible that you can refuse to do it?"
"I thought," said Mrs. Bolton, "that you would expostulate with her, and
warn her as her pastor; and I cannot but believe that, now I have made
it known to you, you are responsible for her--at least more responsible
than I am. You must use your influence with her; and if she is deaf to
reason, we have done all we could."
"I cannot accept the responsibility," he answered, in a tone of pain.
"If she were dwelling under my roof, it would be mine; but I cannot take
your share of it. As your pastor, I place your duty before you, and you
cannot neglect it without peril. As a snare to her soul it has become an
accursed thing in your household; and I warn you of it most earnestly,
beseeching you to hear in time to save yourself, and her, and David from
misery!"
"Mr. Warden," exclaimed Mrs. Bolton, "I am astonished at your
fanaticism!"
She had risen from her chair, and was about to sail out of the vestry
with an air of outraged dignity, when Mr. Warden said, in a low tone,
and with a heavy sigh, "See, there she is!"
Mrs. Bolton paused and turned toward the window, which overlooked the
little grave of her nephew's child, who had been very dear to herself.
Sophy had just sunk down beside it. There was a slight strangeness and
disorder about her appearance, which no stranger might have noticed, but
which could not fail to strike both of them. She looked dejected and
unhappy, and hid her face in her hands, as though she felt their gaze
upon her. The clergyman laid his hand upon Mrs. Bolton's arm with an
unconscious pressure, and looked earnestly into her clouded face.
"Look!" he said. "In Christ's name, I implore you to save her."
"I will do what I can," she answered impatiently, "but I cannot take
your way to do it; it is irrational."
"There is no other way," he said mournfully, "and I warn you of it."