SKIRMISHING.
"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.