“So the Rev. Joseph Bellamy Stoker has called upon you, Susan Posey, has
he? And wants you to come and talk religion with him in his study, Susan
Posey, does he? Religion is a good thing, my dear, the best thing in the
world, and never better than when we are young, and no young people need
it more than young girls. There are temptations to all, and to them as
often as to any, Susan Posey. And temptations come to them in places
where they don't look for them, and from persons they never thought
of as tempters. So I am very glad to have your thoughts called to the
subject of religion. 'Remember thy Creator in the days of thy youth.'
“But Susan Posey, my dear, I think you hard better not break in upon
the pious meditations of the Rev. Joseph Bellamy Stoker in his private
study. A monk's cell and a minister's library are hardly the places for
young ladies. They distract the attention of these good men from their
devotions and their sermons. If you think you must go, you had better
take Mrs. Hopkins with you. She likes religious conversation, and it
will do her good too, and save a great deal of time for the minister,
conversing with two at once. She is of discreet age, and will tell you
when it is time to come away,--you might stay too long, you know. I've
known young persons stay a good deal too long at these interviews,--a
great deal too long, Susan Posey!”
Such was the fatherly counsel of Master Byles Gridley.
Susan was not very quick of apprehension, but she could not help seeing
the justice of Master Gridley's remark, that for a young person to go
and break in on the hours that a minister requires for his studies,
without being accompanied by a mature friend who would remind her when
it was time to go, would be taking an unfair advantage of his kindness
in asking her to call upon him. She promised, therefore, that she would
never go without having Mrs. Hopkins as her companion, and with this
assurance her old friend rested satisfied.
It is altogether likely that he had some deeper reason for his advice
than those with which he satisfied the simple nature of Susan Posey.
Of that it will be easier to judge after a glance at the conditions and
character of the minister and his household.
The Rev. Mr. Stoker had, in addition to the personal advantages already
alluded to, some other qualities which might prove attractive to many
women. He had, in particular, that art of sliding into easy intimacy
with them which implies some knowledge of the female nature, and, above
all, confidence in one's powers. There was little doubt, the gossips
maintained, that many of the younger women of his parish would have been
willing, in certain contingencies, to lift for him that other end of his
yoke under which poor Mrs. Stoker was fainting, unequal to the burden.
That lady must have been some years older than her husband,--how many we
need not inquire too curiously,--but in vitality she had long passed
the prime in which he was still flourishing. She had borne him five
children, and cried her eyes hollow over the graves of three of them.
Household cares had dragged upon her; the routine of village life
wearied her; the parishioners expected too much of her as the minister's
wife; she had wanted more fresh air and more cheerful companionship; and
her thoughts had fed too much on death and sin,--good bitter tonics to
increase the appetite for virtue, but not good as food and drink for the
spirit.
But there was another grief which lay hidden far beneath these obvious
depressing influences. She felt that she was no longer to her
husband what she had been to him, and felt it with something of
self-reproach,--which was a wrong to herself, for she had been a true
and tender wife. Deeper than all the rest was still another feeling,
which had hardly risen into the region of inwardly articulated thought,
but lay unshaped beneath all the syllabled trains of sleeping or waking
consciousness.
The minister was often consulted by his parishioners upon spiritual
matters, and was in the habit of receiving in his study visitors who
came with such intent. Sometimes it was old weak-eyed Deacon Rumrill,
in great iron-bowed spectacles, with hanging nether lip and tremulous
voice, who had got his brain onto a muddle about the beast with two
horns, or the woman that fled into the wilderness, or other points not
settled to his mind in Scott's Commentary. The minister was always very
busy at such times, and made short work of his deacon's doubts. Or it
might be that an ancient woman, a mother or a grandmother in Israel,
came with her questions and her perplexities to her pastor; and it was
pretty certain that just at that moment he was very deep in his next
sermon, or had a pressing visit to make.
But it would also happen occasionally that one of the tenderer ewe-lambs
of the flock needed comfort from the presence of the shepherd. Poor
Mrs. Stoker noticed, or thought she noticed, that the good man had more
leisure for the youthful and blooming sister than for the more discreet
and venerable matron or spinster. The sitting was apt to be longer; and
the worthy pastor would often linger awhile about the door, to speed the
parting guest, perhaps, but a little too much after the fashion of young
people who are not displeased with each other, and who often find it
as hard to cross a threshold single as a witch finds it to get over
a running stream. More than once, the pallid, faded wife had made an
errand to the study, and, after a keen look at the bright young cheeks,
flushed with the excitement of intimate spiritual communion, had gone
back to her chamber with her hand pressed against her heart, and the
bitterness of death in her soul.
The end of all these bodily and mental trials was, that the minister's
wife had fallen into a state of habitual invalidism, such as only
women, who feel all the nerves which in men are as insensible as
telegraph-wires, can experience.
The doctor did not know what to make of her case,--whether she would
live or die,--whether she would languish for years, or, all at once,
roused by some strong impression, or in obedience to some unexplained
movement of the vital forces, take up her bed and walk. For her bed
had become her home, where she lived as if it belonged to her organism.
There she lay, a not unpleasing invalid to contemplate, always looking
resigned, patient, serene, except when the one deeper grief was stirred,
always arrayed with simple neatness, and surrounded with little tokens
that showed the constant presence with her of tasteful and thoughtful
affection. She did not know, nobody could know, how steadily, how
silently all this artificial life was draining the veins and blanching
the cheek of her daughter Bathsheba, one of the everyday, air-breathing
angels without nimbus or aureole who belong to every story which lets
us into a few households, as much as the stars and the flowers belong to
everybody's verses.
Bathsheba's devotion to her mother brought its own reward, but it was
not in the shape of outward commendation. Some of the more censorious
members of her father's congregation were severe in their remarks upon
her absorption in the supreme object of her care. It seems that this had
prevented her from attending to other duties which they considered more
imperative. They did n't see why she shouldn't keep a Sabbath-school
as well as the rest, and as to her not comin' to meetin' three times
on Sabbath day like other folks, they couldn't account for it, except
because she calculated that she could get along without the means of
grace, bein' a minister's daughter. Some went so far as to doubt if she
had ever experienced religion, for all she was a professor. There was
a good many indulged a false hope. To this, others objected her life of
utter self-denial and entire surrender to her duties towards her mother
as some evidence of Christian character. But old Deacon Rumrill put down
that heresy by showing conclusively from Scott's Commentary on Romans
xi. 1-6, that this was altogether against her chance of being called,
and that the better her disposition to perform good works, the more
unlikely she was to be the subject of saving grace. Some of these severe
critics were good people enough themselves, but they loved active work
and stirring companionship, and would have found their real cross if
they had been called to sit at an invalid's bedside.
As for the Rev. Mr. Stoker, his duties did not allow him to give so
much time to his suffering wife as his feelings would undoubtedly
have prompted. He therefore relinquished the care of her (with great
reluctance we may naturally suppose) to Bathsheba, who had inherited
not only her mother's youthful smile, but that self-forgetfulness
which, born with some of God's creatures, is, if not “grace,” at least a
manifestation of native depravity which might well be mistaken for it.
The intimacy of mother and daughter was complete, except on a single
point. There was one subject on which no word ever passed between them.
The excuse of duties to others was by a tacit understanding a mantle
to cover all short-comings in the way of attention from the husband and
father, and no word ever passed between them implying a suspicion of the
loyalty of his affections. Bathsheba came at last so to fill with her
tenderness the space left empty in the neglected heart, that her mother
only spoke her habitual feeling when she said, “I should think you were
in love with me, my darling, if you were not my daughter.”
This was a dangerous state of things for the minister. Strange
suggestions and unsafe speculations began to mingle with his dreams
and reveries. The thought once admitted that another's life is becoming
superfluous and a burden, feeds like a ravenous vulture on the soul.
Woe to the man or woman whose days are passed in watching the hour-glass
through which the sands run too slowly for longings that are like a
skulking procession of bloodless murders! Without affirming such horrors
of the Rev. Mr. Stoker, it would not be libellous to say that his fancy
was tampering with future possibilities, as it constantly happens with
those who are getting themselves into training for some act of folly,
or some crime, it may be, which will in its own time evolve itself as an
idea in the consciousness, and by and by ripen into fact.
It must not be taken for granted that he was actually on the road to
some fearful deed, or that he was an utterly lost soul. He was ready to
yield to temptation if it came in his way; he would even court it, but
he did not shape out any plan very definitely in his mind, as a more
desperate sinner would have done. He liked the pleasurable excitement of
emotional relations with his pretty lambs, and enjoyed it under the name
of religious communion. There is a border land where one can stand on
the territory of legitimate instincts and affections, and yet be so
near, the pleasant garden of the Adversary, that his dangerous fruits
and flowers are within easy reach. Once tasted, the next step is like
to be the scaling of the wall. The Rev. Mr. Stoker was very fond of this
border land. His imagination was wandering over it too often when his
pen was travelling almost of itself along the weary parallels of the
page before him. All at once a blinding flash would come over him the
lines of his sermon would run together, the fresh manuscript would
shrivel like a dead leaf, and the rows of hard-hearted theology on the
shelves before him, and the broken-backed Concordance, and the Holy Book
itself, would fade away as he gave himself up to the enchantment of his
delirious dream.
The reader will probably consider it a discreet arrangement that pretty
Susan Posey should seek her pastor in grave company. Mrs. Hopkins
willingly consented to the arrangement which had been proposed, and
agreed to go with the young lady on her visit to the Rev. Mr. Stoker's
study. They were both arrayed in their field-day splendors on this
occasion. Susan was lovely in her light curls and blue ribbons, and the
becoming dress which could not help betraying the modestly emphasized
crescendos and gently graded diminuendos of her figure. She was as round
as if she had been turned in a lathe, and as delicately finished as if
she had been modelled for a Flora. She had naturally an airy toss of the
head and a springy movement of the joints, such as some girls study in
the glass (and make dreadful work of it), so that she danced all over
without knowing it, like a little lively bobolink on a bulrush. In
short, she looked fit to spoil a homily for Saint Anthony himself.
Mrs. Hopkins was not less perfect in her somewhat different style. She
might be called impressive and imposing in her grand-costume, which she
wore for this visit. It was a black silk dress, with a crape shawl, a
firmly defensive bonnet, and an alpaca umbrella with a stern-looking and
decided knob presiding as its handle. The dried-leaf rustle of her silk
dress was suggestive of the ripe autumn of life, bringing with it those
golden fruits of wisdom and experience which the grave teachers of
mankind so justly prefer to the idle blossoms of adolescence.
It is needless to say that the visit was conducted with the most perfect
propriety in all respects. Mrs. Hopkins was disposed to take upon
herself a large share of the conversation. The minister, on the other
hand, would have devoted himself more particularly to Miss Susan, but,
with a very natural make-believe obtuseness, the good woman drew his
fire so constantly that few of his remarks, and hardly any of his
insinuating looks, reached the tender object at which they were aimed.
It is probable that his features or tones betrayed some impatience at
having thus been foiled of his purpose, for Mrs. Hopkins thought he
looked all the time as if he wanted to get rid of her. The three parted,
therefore, not in the best humor all round. Mrs. Hopkins declared she'd
see the minister in Jericho before she'd fix herself up as if she was
goin' to a weddin' to go and see him again. Why, he did n't make any
more of her than if she'd been a tabby-cat. She believed some of these
ministers thought women's souls dried up like peas in a pod by the time
they was forty year old; anyhow, they did n't seem to care any great
about 'em, except while they was green and tender. It was all Miss
Se-usan, Miss Se-usan, Miss Se-usan, my dear! but as for her, she might
jest as well have gone with her apron on, for any notice he took of
her. She did n't care, she was n't goin' to be left out when there was
talkin' goin' on, anyhow.
Susan Posey, on her part, said she did n't like him a bit. He looked
so sweet at her, and held his head on one side,--law! just as if he had
been a young beau! And,--don't tell,--but he whispered that he wished
the next time I came I wouldn't bring that Hopkins woman!
It would not be fair to repeat what the minister said to himself; but we
may own as much as this, that, if worthy Mrs. Hopkins had heard it,
she would have treated him to a string of adjectives which would have
greatly enlarged his conceptions of the female vocabulary.