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 beaming 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.
"Who is the maid my spirit seeks,
Through cold reproof and slander's blight?
Has _she_ Love's roses on her cheeks?
Is _hers_ an eye of this world's light?
No--wan and sunk with midnight prayer
Are the pale looks of her I love;
Or if at times a light be there,
Its beam is kindled from above.
I choose not her, my heart's elect,
From those who seek their Maker's shrine
In gems and garlands proudly deck'd
As if themselves were things divine.
No--Heaven but faintly warms the breast
That beats beneath a broider'd vail;
And she who comes in glitt'ring vest
To mourn her frailty, still is frail.
Not so the faded form I prize
And love, because its bloom is gone;
The glory in those sainted eyes
Is all the grace _her_ brow puts on.
And ne'er was Beauty's dawn so bright,
So touching, as that form's decay
Which, like the altar's trembling light,
In holy luster wastes away."
"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 couldn'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, "didn'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 won't 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 needn't pretend you don'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 don'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.
_CHAPTER XI._
AUNT MARIA CLEARS HER CONSCIENCE.
When Mrs. Wouvermans met our young friends, she was just returning
home after performing her morning devotions in one of the most
time-honored churches in New York. She was as thorough and faithful in
her notions of religion as of housekeeping. She adhered strictly to
_her own_ church, in which undeniably none but ancient and respectable
families worshiped, and where she was perfectly sure that whatever of
dress or deportment she saw was certain to be the correct thing.
It was a church of eminent propriety. It was large and lofty, with
long-drawn aisles and excellent sleeping accommodations, where the
worshipers were assisted to dream of heaven by every appliance
of sweet music, and not rudely shaken in their slumbers by any
obtrusiveness on the part of the rector.
In fact, everything about the services of this church was thoroughly
toned down by good breeding. The responses of the worshipers were
given in decorous whispers that scarcely disturbed the solemn
stillness; for when a congregation of the best-fed and best-bred
people of New York on their knees declare themselves "miserable
sinners," it is a matter of delicacy to make as little disturbance
about it as possible. A well-paid choir of the finest professional
singers took the whole responsibility of praising God into their
own hands, so that the respectable audience were relieved from any
necessity of exertion in that department. As the most brilliant
lights of the opera were from time to time engaged to render the more
solemn parts of the service, flocks of sinners who otherwise would
never have entered a church crowded to hear these "morning stars sing
together;" let us hope, to their great edification. The sermons of the
rector, delivered in the dim perspective, had a plaintive, far-off
sound, as a voice of one "crying in the wilderness," and crying at
a very great distance. This was in part owing to the fact that the
church, having been built after an old English ecclesiastical model in
days when English churches were used only for processional services,
was entirely unadapted for any purposes of public speaking, so that a
man's voice had about as good chance of effect in it as if he spoke
anywhere in the thoroughfares of New York.
The rector, the Rev. Dr. Cushing, was a good, amiable man;
middle-aged, adipose, discreet, devoted to "our excellent liturgy,"
and from his heart opposed to anything which made trouble.
From the remote distances whence his short Sunday cry was uttered,
he appeared moved to send protests against two things: first, the
tendency to philosophical speculation and the skeptical humanitarian
theories of the age; and second, against Romanizing tendencies in the
church. The young missionary, St. John, who got up to early services
at conventual hours, and had prayers every morning and evening, and
communion every Sunday and every Saint's day; who fasted on all the
Ember Days, and called on other people to fast, and seemed literally
to pray without ceasing; appeared to him a bristling impersonation of
the Romanizing tendencies of the age, and one of those who troubled
Israel. The fact that many of the young ladies of the old established
church over which the good Doctor ministered were drawn to flock up to
the services of this disturber gave to him a realizing sense of the
danger to which the whole church was thereby exposed.
On this particular morning he had selected that well-worn text, "Are
not Abana and Pharpar, rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters
of Jordan? May I not wash in them and be clean?"
Of course, like everybody who preaches on this text, he assumed that
Jordan was the true faith as _he_ preached it, and that the rivers of
Damascus were any and every faith that diverged from his own.
These improper and profane rivers were various. There was, of course,
modern skepticism with profuse allusions to Darwin; there were all
sorts of modern humanitarian and social reforms; and there was in the
bosom of the very church herself, he regretted to state, a disposition
to go off after the Abana and Pharpar of Romish abominations. All
these were to be avoided, and people were to walk in those quiet paths
of godliness in which they had been brought up to walk, and, in short,
do pretty much as they had been doing, undisturbed by new notions, or
movements, or ideas, whether out of the church or in.
And as he plaintively recited these exhortations, his voice coming in
a solemn and spectral tone adown the far-off aisles, it seemed to give
a dreamy and unreal effect even to the brisk modern controversies and
disturbances which formed his theme. The gorgeous, many-colored lights
streamed silently the while through the stained windows, turning
the bald head of one ancient church-warden yellow, and of another
green, and another purple, while the white feathers on Mrs. Demas's
bonnet passed gradually through successive tints of the rainbow; and
the audience dosed off at intervals, and awakened again to find the
rector at another head, and talking about something else; and so on
till the closing ascription to the Trinity, when everybody rose with
a solemn sense that something or other was over. The greater part of
the audience in the intervals of somnolency congratulated themselves
that _they_ were in no danger of running after new ideas, and thanked
God that they never speculated about philosophy. As to turning out to
daily morning and evening prayers, or fasting on any days whatsoever,
or going into any extravagant excesses of devotion and self-sacrifice,
they were only too happy to find that it was their duty to resist the
very suggestion as tending directly to Romanism.
The true Jordan, they were happy to find, ran directly through their
own particular church, and they had only to continue their stated
Sunday naps on its borders as before.
Mrs. Wouvermans, however, was not of a dozing or dreamy nature. Her
mind, such as it was, was always wide awake and cognizant of what
she was about. She was not susceptible of a dreamy state: to use an
idiomatic phrase, she was always up and dressed; everything in her
mental vision was clear cut and exact. The sermon was intensified in
its effect upon her by the state of the Van Arsdel pew, of which she
was on this Sunday the only occupant. The fact was, that the ancient
and respectable church in which she worshiped had just been through
a contest, in which Mr. Simons, a young assistant rector, had been
attempting to introduce some of the very practices hinted at in the
discourse. This fervid young man, full of fire and enthusiasm, had
incautiously been made associate rector for this church, at the time
when Dr. Cushing had been sent to Europe to recover from a bronchial
attack. He was young, earnest and eloquent, and possessed with the
idea that all those burning words and phrases in the prayer-book,
which had dropped like precious gems dyed with the heart's blood of
saints and martyrs, ought to mean something more than they seemed to
do for modern Christians. Without introducing any new ritual, he set
himself to make vivid and imperative every doctrine and direction
of the prayer-book, and to bring the drowsy company of pew-holders
somewhere up within sight of the plane of the glorious company of
apostles and the noble army of martyrs with whose blood it was sealed.
He labored and preached, and strove and prayed, tugging at the drowsy
old church, like Pegasus harnessed to a stone cart. He set up morning
and evening prayers, had communion every Sunday, and annoyed old rich
saints by suggesting that it was their duty to build mission chapels
and carry on mission works, after the pattern of St. Paul and other
irrelevant and excessive worthies, who in their time were accused of
turning the world upside down. Of course there was resistance and
conflict, and more life in the old church than it had known for years;
but the conflict became at last so wearisome that, on Mr. Cushing's
return from Europe, the young angel spread his wings and fled away to
a more congenial parish in a neighboring city.
But many in whom his labors had wakened a craving for something real
and earnest in religion strayed off to other churches, and notably the
younger members of the Van Arsdel family, to the no small scandal of
Aunt Maria.
The Van Arsdel pew was a perfect fort and intrenchment of
respectability. It was a great high, square wall-pew, well cushioned
and ample, with an imposing array of prayer-books; there was room in
it for a regiment of saints, and here Aunt Maria sat on this pleasant
Sunday listening to the dangers of the church, all alone. She felt, in
a measure, like Elijah the Tishbite, as if she only were left to stand
up for the altars of her faith.
Mrs. Wouvermans was not a person to let an evil run on very far
without a protest. "While she was musing the fire burned," and when
she had again mounted guard in the pew at afternoon service, and still
found herself alone, she resolved to clear her conscience; and so she
walked straight up to Nellie's, to see why none of them were at church.
"It's a shame, Nellie, a perfect shame! There wasn't a creature but
myself in our pew to-day, and good Dr. Cushing giving such a sermon
this morning!"
This to Mrs. Van Arsdel, whom she found luxuriously ensconced on a
sofa drawn up before the fire in her bedroom.
"Ah, well, the fact is, Maria, I had such a headache this morning,"
replied she, plaintively.
"Well, then, you ought to have made your husband and family go;
somebody ought to be there! It positively isn't respectable."
"Ah, well, Maria, my husband, poor man, gets so tired and worn out
with his week's work, I haven't a heart to get him up early enough for
morning service. Mr. Van Arsdel isn't feeling quite well lately; he
hasn't been out at all to-day."
"Well, there are the girls, Alice and Angelique and Marie, where are
they? All going up to that old Popish, ritualistic chapel, I suppose.
It's too bad. Now, that's all the result of Mr. Simons's imprudences.
I told you, in the time of it, just what it would lead to. It leads
straight to Rome, just as I said. Mr. Simons set them a-going, and
now he is gone and they go where they have _lighted_ candles on the
altar every Sunday, and Mr. St. John prays with his back to them, and
has processions, and wears all sorts of heathenish robes; and your
daughters go there, Nellie."
The very plumes in Aunt Maria's hat nodded with warning energy as she
spoke.
"Are you _sure_ the candles are _lighted_?" said Mrs. Van Arsdel,
sitting up with a weak show of protest, and looking gravely into the
fire. "I was up there once, and there were candles on the altar, to be
sure, but they were not lighted."