In tracing the history of a human soul through its commonplace nervous
perturbations, still more through its spiritual humiliations, there is
danger that we shall feel a certain contempt for the subject of such
weakness. It is easy to laugh at the erring impulses of a young girl;
but you who remember when_______ _________, only fifteen years old,
untouched by passion, unsullied in name, was found in the shallow brook
where she had sternly and surely sought her death,--(too true! too
true!--ejus animae Jesu miserere!--but a generation has passed since
then,)--will not smile so scornfully.
Myrtle Hazard no longer required the physician's visits, but her mind
was very far from being poised in the just balance of its faculties. She
was of a good natural constitution and a fine temperament; but she
had been overwrought by all that she had passed through, and, though
happening to have been born in another land, she was of American
descent. Now, it has long been noticed that there is something in the
influences, climatic or other, here prevailing, which predisposes to
morbid religious excitement. The graver reader will not object to
seeing the exact statement of a competent witness belonging to a by-gone
century, confirmed as it is by all that we see about us.
“There is no Experienced Minister of the Gospel who hath not in the
Cases of Tempted Souls often had this Experience, that the ill Cases of
their distempered Bodies are the frequent Occasion and Original of their
Temptations.” “The Vitiated Humours in many Persons, yield the Steams
whereinto Satan does insinuate himself, till he has gained a sort of
Possession in them, or at least an Opportunity to shoot into the Mind as
many Fiery Darts as may cause a sad Life unto them; yea, 't is well if
Self-Murder be not the sad end into which these hurried. People are
thus precipitated. New England, a country where Splenetic Maladies
are prevailing and pernicious, perhaps above any other, hath afforded
Numberless Instances, of even pious People, who have contracted these
Melancholy Indispositions which have unhinged them from all Service or
Comfort; yea, not a few Persons have been hurried thereby to lay Violent
Hands upon themselves at the last. These are among the unsearchable
Judgments of God!”
Such are the words of the Rev. Cotton Mather.
The minister had hardly recovered from his vexatious defeat in the
skirmish where the Widow Hopkins was his principal opponent, when he
received a note from Miss Silence Withers, which promised another and
more important field of conflict. It contained a request that he
would visit Myrtle Hazard, who seemed to be in a very excitable and
impressible condition, and who might perhaps be easily brought under
those influences which she had resisted from her early years, through
inborn perversity of character.
When the Rev. Mr. Stoker received this note, he turned very pale,--which
was a bad sign. Then he drew a long breath or two, and presently a flush
tingled up to his cheek, where it remained a fixed burning glow. This
may have been from the deep interest he felt in Myrtle's spiritual
welfare; but he had often been sent for by aged sinners in more
immediate peril, apparently, without any such disturbance of the
circulation.
To know whether a minister, young or still in flower; is in safe or
dangerous paths, there are two psychometers, a comparison between
which will give as infallible a return as the dry and wet bulbs of the
ingenious “Hygrodeik.” The first is the black broadcloth forming the
knees of his pantaloons; the second, the patch of carpet before his
mirror. If the first is unworn and the second is frayed and threadbare,
pray for him. If the first is worn and shiny, while the second keeps its
pattern and texture, get him to pray for you.
The Rev. Mr. Stoker should have gone down on his knees then and there,
and sought fervently for the grace which he was like to need in the
dangerous path just opening before him. He did not do this; but he stood
up before his looking-glass and parted his hair as carefully as if he
had been separating the saints of his congregation from the sinners, to
send the list to the statistical columns of a religious newspaper. He
selected a professional neckcloth, as spotlessly pure as if it had been
washed in innocency, and adjusted it in a tie which was like the
white rose of Sharon. Myrtle Hazard was, he thought, on the whole, the
handsomest girl he had ever seen; Susan Posey was to her as a buttercup
from the meadow is to a tiger-lily. He, knew the nature of the nervous
disturbances through which she had been passing, and that she must be in
a singularly impressible condition. He felt sure that he could establish
intimate spiritual relations with her by drawing out her repressed
sympathies, by feeding the fires of her religious imagination, by
exercising all those lesser arts of fascination which are so familiar to
the Don Giovannis, and not always unknown to the San Giovannis.
As for the hard doctrines which he used to produce sensations with in
the pulpit, it would have been a great pity to worry so lovely a girl,
in such a nervous state, with them. He remembered a savory text
about being made all things to all men, which would bear application
particularly well to the case of this young woman. He knew how to weaken
his divinity, on occasion, as well as an old housewife to weaken her
tea, lest it should keep people awake.
The Rev. Mr. Stoker was a man of emotions. He loved to feel his heart
beat; he loved all the forms of non-alcoholic drunkenness, which are so
much better than the vinous, because they taste themselves so keenly,
whereas the other (according to the statement of experts who are
familiar with its curious phenomena) has a certain sense of unreality
connected with it. He delighted in the reflex stimulus of the excitement
he produced in others by working on their feelings. A powerful preacher
is open to the same sense of enjoyment--an awful, tremulous, goose-flesh
sort of state, but still enjoyment--that a great tragedian feels when he
curdles the blood of his audience.
Mr. Stoker was noted for the vividness of his descriptions of the
future which was in store for the great bulk of his fellow-townsmen and
fellow-worlds-men. He had three sermons on this subject, known to all
the country round as the sweating sermon, the fainting sermon, and
the convulsion-fit sermon, from the various effects said to have been
produced by them when delivered before large audiences. It might be
supposed that his reputation as a terrorist would have interfered with
his attempts to ingratiate himself with his young favorites. But the
tragedian who is fearful as Richard or as Iago finds that no hindrance
to his success in the part of Romeo. Indeed, women rather take to
terrible people; prize-fighters, pirates, highwaymen, rebel generals,
Grand Turks, and Bluebeards generally have a fascination for the sex;
your virgin has a natural instinct to saddle your lion. The fact,
therefore, that the young girl had sat under his tremendous pulpitings,
through the sweating sermon, the fainting sermon, and the convulsion-fit
sermon, did not secure her against the influence of his milder
approaches.
Myrtle was naturally surprised at receiving a visit from him; but she
was in just that unbalanced state in which almost any impression is
welcome. He showed so much interest, first in her health, then in her
thoughts and feelings, always following her lead in the conversation,
that before he left her she felt as if she had made a great discovery;
namely, that this man, so formidable behind the guns of his wooden
bastion, was a most tenderhearted and sympathizing person when he
came out of it unarmed. How delightful he was as he sat talking in the
twilight in low and tender tones, with respectful pauses of listening,
in which he looked as if he too had just made a discovery,--of an angel,
to wit, to whom he could not help unbosoming his tenderest emotions, as
to a being from another sphere!
It was a new experience to Myrtle. She was all ready for the spiritual
manipulations of an expert. The excitability which had been showing
itself in spasms and strange paroxysms had been transferred to those
nervous centres, whatever they may be, cerebral or ganglionic, which
are concerned in the emotional movements of the religious nature. It was
taking her at an unfair disadvantage, no doubt. In the old communion,
some priest might have wrought upon her while in this condition, and
we might have had at this very moment among us another Saint Theresa or
Jacqueline Pascal. She found but a dangerous substitute in the spiritual
companionship of a saint like the Rev. Joseph Bellamy Stoker.
People think the confessional is unknown in our Protestant churches.
It is a great mistake. The principal change is, that there is no screen
between the penitent and the father confessor. The minister knew his
rights, and very soon asserted them. He gave aunt Silence to understand
that he could talk more at ease if he and his young disciple were left
alone together. Cynthia Badlam did not like this arrangement. She was
afraid to speak about it; but she glared at them aslant, with the look
of a biting horse when his eyes follow one sideways until they are all
white but one little vicious spark of pupil.
It was not very long before the Rev. Mr. Stoker had established pretty
intimate relations with the household at The Poplars. He had reason to
think, he assured Miss Silence, that Myrtle was in a state of mind which
promised a complete transformation of her character. He used the phrases
of his sect, of course, in talking with the elderly lady; but the
language which he employed with the young girl was free from those
mechanical expressions which would have been like to offend or disgust
her.
As to his rougher formulae, he knew better than to apply them to a
creature of her fine texture. If he had been disposed to do so, her
simple questions and answers to his inquiries would have made it
difficult. But it was in her bright and beautiful eyes, in her handsome
features, and her winning voice, that he found his chief obstacle. How
could he look upon her face in its loveliness, and talk to her as if
she must be under the wrath and curse of God for the mere fact of
her existence? It seemed more natural and it certainly was more
entertaining, to question her in such a way as to find out what kind of
theology had grown up in her mind as the result of her training in the
complex scheme of his doctrinal school. And as he knew that the merest
child, so soon as it begins to think at all, works out for itself
something like a theory of human nature, he pretty soon began sounding
Myrtle's thoughts on this matter.
What was her own idea; he would be pleased to know, about her natural
condition as one born of a sinful race, and her inherited liabilities on
that account?
Myrtle smiled like a little heathen, as she was, according to the
standard of her earlier teachings. That kind of talk used to worry her
when she was a child, sometimes. Yes, she remembered its coming back to
her in a dream she had, when--when--(She did not finish her sentence.)
Did he think she hated every kind of goodness and loved every kind of
evil? Did he think she was hateful to the Being who made her?
The minister looked straight into the bright, brave, tender eyes, and
answered, “Nothing in heaven or on earth could help loving you, Myrtle!”
Pretty well for a beginning!
Myrtle saw nothing but pious fervor in this florid sentiment. But as
she was honest and clear-sighted, she could not accept a statement which
seemed so plainly in contradiction with his common teachings, without
bringing his flattering assertion to the test of another question.
Did he suppose, she asked, that any persons could be Christians, who
could not tell the day or the year of their change from children of
darkness to children of light.
The shrewd clergyman, whose creed could be lax enough on occasion, had
provided himself with authorities of all kinds to meet these awkward
questions in casuistical divinity. He had hunted up recipes for
spiritual neuralgia, spasms, indigestion, psora, hypochondriasis, just
as doctors do for their bodily counterparts.
To be sure they could. Why, what did the great Richard Baxter say in his
book on Infant Baptism? That at a meeting of many eminent Christians,
some of them very famous ministers, when it was desired that every one
should give an account of the time and manner of his conversion, there
was but one of them all could do it. And as for himself, Mr. Baxter
said, he could not remember the day or the year when he began to be
sincere, as he called it. Why, did n't President Wheelock say to a
young man who consulted him, that some persons might be true Christians
without suspecting it?
All this was so very different from the uncompromising way in which
religious doctrines used to be presented to the young girl from the
pulpit, that it naturally opened her heart and warmed her affections.
Remember, if she needs excuse, that the defeated instincts of a strong
nature were rushing in upon her, clamorous for their rights, and that
she was not yet mature enough to understand and manage them. The paths
of love and religion are at the fork of a road which every maiden
travels. If some young hand does not open the turnpike gate of the
first, she is pretty sure to try the other, which has no toll-bar. It is
also very commonly noticed that these two paths, after diverging awhile,
run into each other. True love leads many wandering souls into the
better way. Nor is it rare to see those who started in company for the
gates of pearl seated together on the banks that border the avenue to
that other portal, gathering the roses for which it is so famous.
It was with the most curious interest that the minister listened to
the various heresies into which her reflections had led her. Somehow or
other they did not sound so dangerous coming from her lips as when they
were uttered by the coarser people of the less rigorous denominations,
or preached in the sermons of heretical clergymen. He found it
impossible to think of her in connection with those denunciations of
sinners for which his discourses had been noted. Some of the sharp old
church-members began to complain that his exhortations were losing their
pungency. The truth was, he was preaching for Myrtle Hazard. He was
getting bewitched and driven beside himself by the intoxication of his
relations with her.
All this time she was utterly unconscious of any charm that she was
exercising, or of being herself subject to any personal fascination.
She loved to read the books of ecstatic contemplation which he furnished
her. She loved to sing the languishing hymns which he selected for
her. She loved to listen to his devotional rhapsodies, hardly knowing
sometimes whether she were in the body, or out of the body, while he
lifted her upon the wings of his passion-kindled rhetoric. The time came
when she had learned to listen for his step, when her eyes glistened at
meeting him, when the words he uttered were treasured as from something
more than a common mortal, and the book he had touched was like a
saintly relic. It never suggested itself to her for an instant that this
was anything more than such a friendship as Mercy might have cultivated
with Great-Heart. She gave her confidence simply because she was very
young and innocent. The green tendrils of the growing vine must wind
round something.
The seasons had been changing their scenery while the events we have
told were occurring, and the loveliest days of autumn were now shining.
To those who know the “Indian summer” of our Northern States, it is
needless to describe the influence it exerts on the senses and the
soul. The stillness of the landscape in that beautiful time is as if
the planet were sleeping, like a top, before it begins to rock with the
storms of autumn. All natures seem to find themselves more truly in
its light; love grows more tender, religion more spiritual, memory sees
farther back into the past, grief revisits its mossy marbles, the poet
harvests the ripe thoughts which he will tie in sheaves of verses by his
winter fireside.
The minister had got into the way of taking frequent walks with Myrtle,
whose health had seemed to require the open air, and who was fast
regaining her natural look. Under the canopy of the scarlet, orange,
and crimson leaved maples, of the purple and violet clad oaks, of the
birches in their robes of sunshine, and the beeches in their clinging
drapery of sober brown, they walked together while he discoursed of
the joys of heaven, the sweet communion of kindred souls, the ineffable
bliss of a world where love would be immortal and beauty should never
know decay. And while she listened, the strange light of the leaves
irradiated the youthful figure of Myrtle, as when the stained window
let in its colors on Madeline, the rose-bloom and the amethyst and the
glory.
“Yes! we shall be angels together,” exclaimed the Rev. Mr. Stoker. “Our
souls were made for immortal union. I know it; I feel it in every throb
of my heart. Even in this world you are as an angel to me, lifting me
into the heaven where I shall meet you again, or it will not be heaven.
Oh, if on earth our communion could have been such as it must be
hereafter! O Myrtle, Myrtle!”
He stretched out his hands as if to clasp hers between them in the
rapture of his devotion. Was it the light reflected from the glossy
leaves of the poison sumach which overhung the path that made his cheek
look so pale? Was he going to kneel to her?
Myrtle turned her dark eyes on him with a simple wonder that saw an
excess of saintly ardor in these demonstrations, and drew back from it.
“I think of heaven always as the place where I shall meet my mother,”
she said calmly.
These words recalled the man to himself for a moment and he was silent.
Presently he seated himself on a stone. His lips were tremulous as he
said, in a low tone, “Sit down by me, Myrtle.”
“No,” she answered, with something which chilled him in her voice, “we
will not stay here any longer; it is time to go home.”
“Full time!” muttered Cynthia Badlam, whose watchful eyes had been upon
them, peering through a screen of yellow leaves, that turned her face
pale as if with deadly passion.