In December of the year 1820 came about a certain event of which hint
has been already given by the party chiefly concerned; and Mrs. Johns
presented her husband with a fine boy, who was in due time
christened--Reuben.
Mrs. Handby was present at this eventful period, occupying the
guest-chamber, and delighting in all the little adornments that had been
prepared by the loving hands of her daughter; and upon the following
Sabbath, Mr. Johns, for the first time since his entrance upon the
pastoral duties of Ashfield, ventured to repeat an old sermon. Dame
Tourtelot had been present on the momentous occasion, with such a
tempest of suggestions in regard to the wrappings and feeding of the new
comer, that the poor mother had quietly begged the good clergyman to
decoy her, on her next visit, into his study. This he did, and succeeded
in fastening her with a discussion upon the import of the word
_baptize_, in which he was in a fair way of being carried by storm, if
he had not retreated under cover of his Greek Lexicon.
Mrs. Elderkin had been zealous in neighborly offices, and had brought,
in addition to a great basket of needed appliances, a silver porringer,
which, with wonderful foresight, had been ordered from a Hartford
jeweller in advance. The out-of-door man, Larkin, took a well-meaning
pride in this accession to the family,--walking up and down the street
with a broad grin upon his face. He also became the bearer, in behalf of
the Tew partners, of a certain artful contrivance of tin ware for the
speedy stewing of pap, which, considering that the donors were childless
people, was esteemed a very great mark of respect for the minister.
Would it be strange, if the father felt a new ambition stirring in him,
as he listened from his study to that cry of a child in the house? He
does feel it, and struggles against it. Are not all his flock his
spiritual children? and is he not appointed of Heaven to lead them
toward the rest which is promised? Should that babe be more to him than
a hundred others who are struggling through life's snares wearily? It
may touch him, indeed, cruelly to think it; but is not the soul of the
most worthless person of his parish as large in the eye of the Master as
this of his first-born? Shall these human ties supplant the spiritual
ones by which we are all coheirs of eternal death or of eternal life?
And in this way the minister schools himself against too demonstrative a
joy or love, and prays God silently that His gift may not be a
temptation.
For all this, however, there is many a walk which would have been taken
of old under the orchard trees now transferred to the chamber, where he
paces back and forth with the babe in his arms, soothing its outcry, as
he thinks out his discourse for the following Sabbath.
In due time Mrs. Handby returns to her home. The little child pushes
through its first month of venturesome encounter with the rough world it
has entered upon bravely; and the household is restored to its uniform
placidity. The affairs of the parish follow their accustomed course.
From time to time there are meetings of the "Consociation," or other
ministerial assemblages, in the town, when the parsonage is overflowing,
and Rachel, with a simple grace, is compelled to do the honors to a
corps of the Congregational brotherhood. As for the parson, he was like
a child in all household matters. Over and over he would invite his
brethren flocking in from the neighboring villages to pass the night
with him, when Rachel would decoy him into a corner, and declare, with a
most pitiable look of distress, that not a bed was unoccupied in the
house. Whereupon the goodman would quietly take his hat, and trudge
away to Squire Elderkin's, or, on rarer occasions, to Deacon
Tourtelot's, and ask the favor of lodging with them one of his clerical
brethren.
At other times, before some such occasion of clerical entertainment, the
little housewife, supported by Esther with broom and a great array of
mops, would wait upon the parson in his study and order him away to his
walk in the orchard,--an order which the poor man never ventured to
resist; but, taking perhaps a pocket volume of Doddridge, or of
Cowper,--the only poet he habitually read,--he would sally out with hat
and cane,--this latter a gift of an admiring parishioner, which it
pleased Rachel he should use, and which she always brought to him at
such times, with a little childish mime of half-entreaty and
half-command that it was not in his heart to resist, and which on rare
occasions (that were subject of self-accusation afterward) provoked him
to an answering kiss. At which Rachel:--
"Now go and leave us, please; there's a good man! And mind," (shaking
her forefinger at him,) "dinner at half past twelve: Larkin will blow
the shell."
The parson, as he paced back and forth under the apple-trees, out of
sight, and feeling the need of more vigorous exercise than his usual
meditative gait afforded, would on occasions brandish his cane and
assume a military air and stride, (he remembered the Major's only too
well,) getting in a glow with the unusual movement, and in the heat of
it thanking God for all the blessings that had befallen him: a pleasant
home; a loving wife; a little boy to bear the name, in which, with all
his spiritual tendencies, he yet took a very human pride; health,--and
he whisked his cane as vigorously as ever the Major had done his
cumbrous sword,--the world's comforts; a congregation that met him
kindly, that listened kindly. Was he not leading them in the path of
salvation, and rejoicing in the leadership?
And then, to himself,--"Be careful, careful, Benjamin Johns, that you
take not too great a pride in this work and home of yours. You are but
an instrument in greater hands; He doeth with you what seemeth Him best.
Let not the enticements of the world be too near your thought." In this
way it was that the minister pruned down all the shoots of his natural
affections, lest they might prove a decoy to him, and wrapped himself
ever more closely in the rigors of his chosen theology.
As the boy Reuben grows, and gains a firmer footing, he sometimes
totters beside the clergyman in these orchard walks, clinging blindly to
his hand, and lifting his uncertain feet with great effort over the
interrupting tufts of grass, unheeded by the minister, who is pondering
some late editorial of the "Boston Recorder." But far oftener the boy is
with the mother, burying his face in that dear lap of hers,--lifting the
wet face to have tears kissed away and forgotten. And as he thrives and
takes the strength of three or four years, he walks beside her under the
trees of the village street, clad in such humble finery as the Handby
grandparents may have bestowed; and he happens oftenest, on these
strolls with Rachel, into the hospitable home of the Elderkins, where
there are little ones to romp with the boy. Most noticeable of all, just
now, one Philip Elderkin, (of whom more will have to be said as this
story progresses,) only a year the senior of Reuben, but of far stouter
frame, who looks admiringly on the minister's child, and as he grows
warm in play frights him with some show of threat, which makes the
little Reuben run for cover to the arms of Rachel. Whereat the mother
kisses him into boldness, and tells him that Phil is a good boy and
means no harm to him.
Often, too, in the square-topped chaise, the child is seated on a little
stool between the parson and his wife, as they drive away upon their
visits to the outskirts of the parish,--puzzling them with those strange
questions which come from a boy just exploring his way into the world of
talk.
"Benjamin," says Rachel, as they were nearing home upon one of these
drives, "Reuben is quite a large boy now, you know; have you ever
written to your friend, Mr. Maverick? You remember he promised a gift
for him."
"Never," said the minister, whose goodness rarely took the shape of
letter-writing,--least of all where the task would seem to remind of a
promised favor.
"You've not forgotten it? You've not forgotten Mr. Maverick?"
"Not forgotten, Rachel,--not forgotten to pray for him."
"I _would_ write, Benjamin; it might be something that would be of
service to Reuben. _Please_ don't forget it, Benjamin."
And the minister promised.
In the autumn of 1824,--the minister of Ashfield being still in good
favor with nearly all his parishioners, and his wife Rachel being still
greatly beloved,--a rumor ran through the town, one day, that there was
serious illness at the parsonage, the Doctor's horse and saddle-bags
being observed in waiting at the front gate for two hours together.
Following close upon this, the Tew partners reported--having received
undoubted information from Larkin, who still kept in his old
service--that a daughter was born to the minister, but so feeble that
there were grave doubts if the young Rachel could survive. The report
was well founded; and after three or four days of desperate struggle
with life, the poor child dropped away. Thus death came into the
parsonage with so faint and shadowy a tread, it hardly startled one. The
babe had been christened in the midst of its short struggle, and in this
the father found such comfort as he could; yet reckoning the poor,
fluttering little soul as a sinner in Adam, through whom all men fell,
he confided it with a great sigh to God.
It would have been well, if his grief had rested there. But two days
thereafter there was a rumor on the village street,--flying like the
wind, as such rumors do, from house to house,--"The minister's wife is
dead!"
"I want to know!" said Mrs. Tew, lifting herself from her task of
assorting the mail, and removing her spectacles in nervous haste. "Do
tell! It a'n't possible! Miss Johns dead?"
"Yes," says Larkin, "as true as I live, she's dead"; and his voice broke
as he said it,--the kind little woman had so won upon him.
Squire Elderkin, like a good Christian, came hurrying to the parsonage
to know what this strange report could mean. The study was unoccupied.
With the familiarity of an old friend he made his way up the cramped
stairs. The chamber-door was flung wide open: there was no reason why
the whole parish might not come in. The nurse, sobbing in a corner, was
swaying back and forth, her hands folded across her lap. Reuben,
clinging to the coverlet, was feeling his way along the bed, if by
chance his mother's hand might catch hold upon his; and the minister
standing with a chair before him, his eyes turned to heaven (the same
calm attitude which he took at his evening prayer-meeting) was
entreating God to "be over his house, to strengthen him, to pour down
his Spirit on him, to bind up the bruised hearts,--to spare,--spare"----
Even the stout Squire Elderkin withdraws outside the door, that he may
the better conceal his emotion.
The death happened on a Friday. The Squire, after a few faltering
expressions of sympathy, asked regarding the burial. "Should it not be
on Sunday?"
"Not on Sunday," says Mr. Johns; "God help me, Squire,--but this is not
a work of necessity or mercy. Let it be on Monday."
"On Monday, then," said Elderkin,--"and let me take the arrangement of
it all off your thought; and we will provide some one to preach for you
on the Sabbath."
"No, Mr. Elderkin, no; I am always myself in the pulpit. I shall find
courage there."
And he did. A stranger would not have suspected that the preacher's wife
lay dead at home; the same unction and earnestness that had always
characterized him; the same unyielding rigidity of doctrine: "_Except ye
repent, ye shall all likewise perish._"
Once only--it was in the reading of the last hymn in the afternoon
service--his voice broke, and he sat down half through. But as the song
rose under the old roof of the meeting-house, his courage rose with it.
He seemed ashamed of the transitory weakness. What right had he to bring
private griefs to such a place? What right had the leader to faint, when
the army were pressing forward to the triumph God had promised to the
faithful? So it was in a kind of ecstasy that he rose, and joined with a
firm, loud voice in the final doxology.
One or two of the good old ladies, with a sad misconception of the force
that was in him, and of the divine aid which seemed vouchsafed to him
during the service, came to him, as he passed out, to give him greeting
and a word of condolence. For that time only he passed them by, as if
they had been wooden images. His spirit had been strained to its
uttermost, and would bear no more. He made his way home with an
ungainly, swift gait,--home to the dear bedside,--down upon his
knees,--struggling with his weakness,--praying.
At the tea-hour Esther knocked; but in vain. An hour after, his boy
came,--came at the old woman's suggestion, (who had now the care of
him,) and knelt by his side.
"Reuben,--my boy!"
"She's in heaven, isn't she, father?"
"God only knows, my son. He hath mercy on whom He will have mercy."