"Dr. Lavendar," said William King, "some time when Goliath is doing his
2.40 on a plank road, don't you want to pull him up at that house on
the Perryville pike where the Grays used to live, and make a call? An
old fellow called Roberts has taken it; he is a--"
"Teach your grandmother," said Dr. Lavendar; "he is an Irvingite. He
comes from Lower Ripple, down on the Ohio, and he has a daughter,
Philippa."
"Oh," said Dr. King, "you know 'em, do you?"
"Know them? Of course I know them! Do you think you are the only man
who tries to enlarge his business? But I was not successful in my
efforts. The old gentleman doesn't go to any church; and the young lady
inclines to the Perryville meeting-house--the parson there is a nice
boy."
"She is an attractive young creature," said the doctor, smiling at some
pleasant memory; "the kind of girl a man would like to have for a
daughter. But did you ever know such an old-fashioned little thing!"
"Well, she's like the girls I knew when I was the age of the Perryville
parson, so I suppose you'd call her old-fashioned," Dr. Lavendar said.
"There aren't many such girls nowadays; sweet-tempered and sensible and
with some fun in 'em."
"Why don't you say 'good,' too?" William King inquired.
"Unnecessary," Dr. Lavendar said, scratching Danny's ear; "anybody who
is amiable, sensible, and humorous is good. Can't help it."
"The father is good," William King said, "but he is certainly not
sensible. He's an old donkey, with his TONGUES and his VOICE!"
Dr. Lavendar's face sobered. "No," he said, "he may be an Irvingite,
but he isn't a donkey."
"What on earth is an Irvingite, anyhow?" William asked.
Dr. Lavendar looked at him, pityingly: "William, you are so
ridiculously young! Well, I suppose you can't help it. My boy, about
the time you were born, there was a man in London--some folks called
him a saint, and some folks called him a fool; it's a way folks have
had ever since our Lord came into this world. His name was Irving, and
he started a new sect." (Dr. Lavendar was as open-minded as it is
possible for one of his Church to be, but even he said "sect" when it
came to outsiders.)
"He started this new sect, which believed that the Holy Ghost would
speak again by human lips, just as on the Day of Pentecost. Well,
there was 'speaking' in his congregation; sort of outbursts of
exhortation, you know. Mostly unintelligible. I remember Dr.
Alexander said it was 'gibberish'; he heard some of it when he was in
London. It may have been 'gibberish,' but nobody can doubt Irving's
sincerity in thinking it was the Voice of God. When he couldn't
understand it, he just called it an 'unknown tongue.' Of course he was
considered a heretic. He was put out of his Church. He died soon
after, poor fellow."
"Doesn't Mr. Roberts's everlasting arguing about it tire you out?"
William asked.
"Oh no," Dr. Lavendar said, cheerfully; "when he talks too long I just
shut my eyes; he never notices it! He's a gentle old soul. When I
answer back--once in a while I really have to speak up for the
Protestant Episcopal Church--I feel as if I had kicked Danny." William
King grinned. Then he got up and, drawing his coat-tails forward,
stood with his back to the jug of lilacs in Dr. Lavendar's fireplace.
"Oh, well, of course it's all bosh," he said, and yawned; "I was on a
case till four o'clock this morning," he apologized.
"William," said Dr. Lavendar, admiringly, "what an advantage you
fellows have over us poor parsons! Everything a medical man doesn't
understand is 'bosh'! Now, we can't classify things as easily as that."
"Well, I don't care," William said, doggedly; "from my point of view--"
"From your point of view," said Dr. Lavendar, "St. Paul was an
epileptic, because he heard a Voice?"
"If you really want to know what I think--"
"I don't," Dr. Lavendar said; "I want you to know what I think. Mr.
Roberts hasn't heard any Voice, yet; he is only listening for it.
William, listening for the Voice of God isn't necessarily a sign of
poor health; and provided a man doesn't set himself up to think he is
the only person his Heavenly Father is willing to speak to, listening
won't do him any harm. As for Henry Roberts, he is a humble old man.
An example to me, William! I am pretty arrogant once in a while. I
have to be, with such men as you in my congregation. No; the real
trouble in that household is that girl of his. It isn't right for a
young thing to live in such an atmosphere."
William agreed sleepily. "Pretty creature. Wish I had a daughter just
like her," he said, and took himself off to make up for a broken
night's rest. But Dr. Lavendar and Danny still sat in front of the
lilac-filled fireplace, and thought of old Henry Roberts listening for
the Voice of God, and of his Philippa. The father and daughter had
lately taken a house on a road that wandered over the hills between
elderberry-bushes and under sycamores, from Old Chester to Perryville.
They were about half-way between the two little towns, and they did not
seem to belong to either. Perryville's small manufacturing bustle
repelled the silent old man whom Dr. Lavendar called an "Irvingite";
and Old Chester's dignity and dull aloofness repelled young Philippa.
The result was that the Robertses and their one woman servant, Hannah,
had been living on the Perryville pike for some months before anybody
in either village was quite aware of their existence. Then one day in
May, Dr. Lavendar's sagging old buggy pulled up at their gate, and the
old minister called over the garden wall to Philippa: "Won't you give
me some of your apple blossoms?"
That was the beginning of Old Chester's knowledge of the Roberts
family. A little later Perryville came to know them, too: the Rev. John
Fenn, pastor of the Perryville Presbyterian Church, got off his big,
raw-boned Kentucky horse at the same little white gate in the brick
wall at which Goliath had stopped, and walked solemnly--not noticing
the apple blossoms--up to the porch. Henry Roberts was sitting there
in the hot twilight, with a curious listening look in his face--a look
of waiting expectation; it was so marked, that the caller involuntarily
glanced over his shoulder to see if any other visitor was approaching;
but there was nothing to be seen in the dusk but the roan nibbling at
the hitching-post. Mr. Fenn said that he had called to inquire whether
Mr. Roberts was a regular attendant at any place of worship. To which
the old man replied gently that every place was a place of worship, and
his own house was the House of God. John Fenn was honestly dismayed at
such sentiments--dismayed, and a little indignant; and yet, somehow,
the self-confidence of the old man daunted him. It made him feel very
young, and there is nothing so daunting to Youth as to feel young.
Therefore he said, venerably, that he hoped Mr. Roberts realized that
it was possible to deceive oneself in such matters. "It is a dangerous
thing to neglect the means of grace," he said.
"Surely it is," said Henry Roberts, meekly; after which there was
nothing for the caller to do but offer the Irvingite a copy of the
_American Messenger_ and take his departure. He was so genuinely
concerned about Mr. Roberts's "danger," that he did not notice Philippa
sitting on a stool at her father's side. But Philippa noticed him.
So, after their kind, did these two shepherds of souls endeavor to
establish a relationship with Henry and Philippa Roberts. And they
were equally successful. Philippa gave her apple blossoms to the old
minister,--and went to Mr. Fenn's church the very next Sunday. Henry
Roberts accepted the tracts with a simple belief in the kindly purpose
of the young minister, and stayed away from both churches. But both
father and daughter were pleased by the clerical attentions:
"I love Dr. Lavendar," Philippa said to her father.
"I am obliged to Mr. Fenn," her father said to Philippa. "The youth,"
he added, "cares for my soul. I am obliged to any one who cares for my
soul."
He was, indeed, as Dr. Lavendar said, a man of humble mind; and yet
with his humbleness was a serene certainty of belief as to his soul's
welfare that would have been impossible to John Fenn, who measured
every man's chance of salvation by his own theological yardstick, or
even to Dr. Lavendar, who thought salvation unmeasurable. But then
neither of these two ministers had had Henry Roberts's experience. It
was very far back, that experience; it happened before Philippa was
born; and when they came to live between the two villages Philippa was
twenty-four years old....
It was in the thirties that young Roberts, a tanner in Lower Ripple,
went to England to collect a small bequest left him by a relative. The
sense of distance, the long weeks at sea in a sailing-vessel, the new
country and the new people, all impressed themselves upon a very
sensitive mind, a mind which, even without such emotional preparation,
was ready to respond to any deeply emotional appeal. Then came the
appeal. It was that new gospel of the Tongues, which, in those days,
astounded and thrilled all London from the lips of Edward
Irving--fanatic, saint, and martyr!--the man who, having prayed that
God would speak again in prophecy, would not deny the power of prayer
by refusing to believe that his prayer was answered, even though the
prophecy was unintelligible. And later, when the passionate cadences
of the spirit were in English, and were found to be only trite or
foolish words, repeated and repeated in a wailing chant by some
sincere, hysterical woman, he still believed that a new day of
Pentecost had dawned upon a sinful world! "For," said he, "when I
asked for bread, would God give me a stone?"
Henry Roberts went to hear the great preacher and forgot his haste to
receive his little legacy so that he might hurry back to the tanyard.
Irving's eloquence entranced him, and it alone would have held him
longer than the time he had allowed himself for absence from the
tannery. But it happened that he was present on that Lord's Day when,
with a solemn and dreadful sound, the Tongues first spoke in that dingy
Chapel in Regent Square, and no man who heard that Sound ever forgot
it! The mystical youth from America was shaken to his very soul. He
stayed on in London for nearly a year, immersing himself in those tides
of emotion which swept saner minds than his from the somewhat dry land
of ordinary human experience. That no personal revelation was made to
him, that the searing benediction of the Tongues had not touched his
own awed, uplifted brow, made no difference: he believed!--and prayed
God to help any lingering unbelief that might be holding him back from
deeper knowledges. To the end of his days he was Edward Irving's
follower; and when he went back to America it was as a missionary of
the new sect, that called itself by the sounding title of The Catholic
Apostolic Church. In Lower Ripple he preached to any who would listen
to him the doctrine of the new Pentecost. At first curiosity brought
him hearers; his story of the Voice, dramatic and mysterious, was
listened to in doubting silence; then disapproved of--so hotly
disapproved of that he was sessioned and read out of Church.
But in those days in western Pennsylvania, mere living was too
engrossing a matter for much thought of "tongues" and "voices"; it was
easier, when a man talked of dreams and visions, not to argue with him,
but to say that he was "crazy." So by and by Henry Roberts's heresy
was forgotten and his religion merely smiled at. Certainly it struck
no roots outside his own heart. Even his family did not share his
belief. When he married, as he did when he was nearly fifty, his wife
was impatient with his Faith--indeed, fearful of it, and with
persistent, nagging reasonableness urged his return to the respectable
paths of Presbyterianism. To his pain, when his girl, his Philippa,
grew up she shrank from the emotion of his creed; she and her mother
went to the brick church under the locust-trees of Lower Ripple; and
when her mother died Philippa went there alone, for Henry Roberts, not
being permitted to bear witness in the Church, did so out of it, by
sitting at home on the Sabbath day, in a bare upper chamber, waiting
for the manifestation of the Holy Spirit. It never came. The Tongues
never spoke. Yet still, while the years passed, he waited,
listening--listening--listening; a kindly, simple old man with mystical
brown eyes, believing meekly in his own unworth to hear again that
Sound from Heaven, as of a rushing, mighty wind, that had filled the
London Chapel, bowing human souls before it as a great wind bows the
standing corn!
It was late in the sixties that Henry Roberts brought this faith and
his Philippa to the stone house on the Perryville pike, where, after
some months had passed, they were discovered by the old and the young
ministers. The two clergymen met once or twice in their calls upon the
new-comer, and each acquired an opinion of the other: John Fenn said to
himself that the old minister was a good man, if he was an
Episcopalian; and Dr. Lavendar said to William King that he hoped there
would be a match between the "theolog" and Philippa.
"The child ought to be married and have a dozen children," he said;
"although Fenn's little sister will do to begin on--she needs mothering
badly enough. Yes, Miss Philly ought to be making smearkase and
apple-butter for that pale and excellent young man. He intimated that I
was a follower of the Scarlet Woman because I wore a surplice."
"Now look here! I draw the line at that sort of talk," the doctor said;
"he can lay down the law to me, all he wants to; but when it comes to
instructing you--"
"Oh, well, he's young," Dr. Lavendar soothed him; "you can't expect him
not to know everything at his age."
"He's a squirt," said William. In those days in Old Chester middle age
was apt to sum up its opinion of youth in this expressive word.
"We were all squirts once," said Dr. Lavendar, "and very nice boys we
were, too--at least I was. Yes, I hope the youngster will see what a
sweet creature old Roberts's Philippa is."
She was a sweet creature; but as William King said, she was amusingly
old-fashioned. The Old Chester girl of those days, who seems (to look
back upon her in these days) so medieval, was modern compared to
Philippa! But there was nothing mystical about her; she was just
modest and full of pleasant silences and soft gaieties and simple,
startling truth-telling. At first, when they came to live near
Perryville, she used, when the weather was fine, to walk over the
grassy road, under the brown and white branches of the sycamores, into
Old Chester, to Dr. Lavendar's church. "I like to come to your
church," she told him, "because you don't preach quite such long
sermons as Mr. Fenn does." But when it rained or was very hot she
chose the shorter walk and sat under John Fenn, looking up at his pale,
ascetic face, lighted from within by his young certainties concerning
the old ignorances of people like Dr. Lavendar--life and death and
eternity. Of Dr. Lavendar's one certainty, Love, he was deeply
ignorant, this honest boy, who was so concerned for Philippa's father's
soul! But Philippa did not listen much to his certainties; she coaxed
his little sister into her pew, and sat with the child cuddled up
against her, watching her turn over the leaves of the hymn-book or
trying to braid the fringe of Miss Philly's black silk mantilla into
little pigtails. Sometimes Miss Philly would look up at the careworn
young face in the pulpit and think how holy Mary's brother was, and how
learned--and how shabby; for he had only a housekeeper, Mrs. Semple, to
take care of him and Mary. Not but what he might have had somebody
besides Mrs. Semple! Philippa, for all her innocence, could not help
being aware that he might have had--almost anybody! For others of
Philly's sex watched the rapt face there in the pulpit. When Philippa
thought of that, a slow blush used to creep up to her very temples.
She saw him oftener in the pulpit than out of it, because when he came
to call on her father she was apt not to be present. At first he came
very frequently to see the Irvingite, because he felt it his duty to
"deal" with him; but he made so little impression that he foresaw the
time when it would be necessary to say that Ephraim was joined to his
idols. But though it might be right to "let him alone," he could not
stop calling at Henry Roberts's house; "for," he reminded himself, "the
believing daughter may sanctify the unbelieving father!" He said this
once to Dr. Lavendar, when his roan and old Goliath met in a narrow
lane and paused to let their masters exchange a word or two.
"But do you know what the believing daughter believes?" said Dr.
Lavendar. He wiped his forehead with his red bandanna, for it was a hot
day; then he put his old straw hat very far back on his head and looked
at the young man with a twinkle in his eye, which, considering the
seriousness of their conversation, was discomfiting; but, after all, as
John Fenn reminded himself, Dr. Lavendar was very old, and so might be
forgiven if his mind was lacking in seriousness. As for his question
of what the daughter believed: "I think--I hope," said the young
minister, "that she is sound. She comes to my church quite regularly."
"But she comes to my church quite irregularly," Dr. Lavendar warned
him; and there was another of those disconcerting twinkles.
The boy looked at him with honest, solemn eyes. "I still believe that
she is sound," he said, earnestly.
Dr. Lavendar blew his nose with a flourish of the red bandanna. "Well,
perhaps she is, perhaps she is," he said, gravely. But the reassurance
of that "perhaps" did not make for John Fenn's peace of mind; he could
not help asking himself whether Miss Philippa WAS a "believing
daughter." She did not, he was sure, share her father's heresies, but
perhaps she was indifferent to them? which would be a grievous thing!
And certainly, as the old minister had declared, she did go
"irregularly" to the Episcopal Church. John Fenn wished that he was
sure of Miss Philippa's state of mind; and at last he said to himself
that it was his duty to find out about it, so, with his little sister
beside him, he started on a round of pastoral calls. He found Miss
Philly sitting in the sunshine on the lowest step of the front
porch--and it seemed to Mary that there was a good deal of delay in
getting at the serious business of play; "for brother talks so much,"
she complained. But "brother" went on talking. He told Miss Philippa
that he understood she went sometimes to Old Chester to church?
"Sometimes," she said.
"I do not mean," he said, hesitatingly, "to speak uncharitably, but we
all know that Episcopacy is the handmaid of Papistry."
"Do we?" Philly asked, with grave eyes.
"Yes," said Mr. Fenn. "But even if Dr. Lavendar's teachings are
defective,"--Mary plucked at his sleeve, and sighed loudly; "(no,
Mary!)--even if his teachings are defective, he is a good man according
to his lights; I am sure of that. Still, do you think it well to
attend a place of worship when you cannot follow the pastor's
teachings?"
"I love him. And I don't listen to what he says," she excused herself.
"But you should listen to what ministers say," the shocked young man
protested--"at least to ministers of the right faith. But you should
not go to church because you love ministers."
Philippa's face flamed. "I do not love--most of them."
Mary, leaning against the girl's knee, looked up anxiously into her
face. "Do you love brother?" she said.
They were a pretty pair, the child and the girl, sitting there on the
porch with the sunshine sifting down through the lacy leaves of the two
big locusts on either side of the door. Philippa wore a pink and green
palm-leaf chintz; it had six ruffles around the skirt and was gathered
very full about her slender waist; her lips were red, and her cheeks
and even her neck were delicately flushed; her red-brown hair was
blowing all about her temples; Mary had put an arm around her and was
cuddling against her. Yes, even Mary's brother would have thought the
two young things a pretty sight had there been nothing more serious to
think of. But John Fenn's thoughts were so very serious that even
Mary's question caused him no embarrassment; he merely said, stiffly,
that he would like to see Miss Philippa alone. "You may wait here,
Mary," he told his little sister, who frowned and sighed and went out
to the gate to pull a handful of grass for the roan.
Philippa led her caller to her rarely used parlor, and sat down to
listen in silent pallor to his exhortations. She made no explanations
for not coming to his church regularly; she offered no excuse of filial
tenderness for her indifference to her father's mistaken beliefs; she
looked down at her hands, clasped tightly in her lap, then out of the
window at the big roan biting at the hitching-post or standing very
still to let Mary rub his silky nose. But John Fenn looked only at
Philippa. Of her father's heresies he would not, he said, do more than
remind her that the wiles of the devil against her soul might present
them-selves through her natural affections; but in regard to her
failure to wait upon the means of grace he spoke without mercy, for, he
said, "faithful are the wounds of a friend."
"Are you my friend?" Philly asked, lifting her gray eyes suddenly.
Mr. Fenn was greatly confused; the text-books of the Western Seminary
had not supplied him with the answer to such a question. He explained,
hurriedly, that he was the friend of all who wished for salvation.
"I do not especially wish for it," Philippa said, very low.
For a moment John Fenn was silent with horror. "That one so young
should be so hardened!" he thought; aloud, he bade her remember hell
fire. He spoke with that sad and simple acceptance of the fact with
which, even less than fifty years ago, men humbled themselves before
the mystery which they had themselves created, of divine injustice.
She must know, he said, his voice trembling with sincerity, that those
who slighted the offers of grace were cast into outer darkness?
Philly said, softly, "Maybe."
"'Maybe?' Alas, it is, certainly! Oh, why, WHY do you absent yourself
from the house of God?" he said, holding out entreating hands.
Philippa made no reply. "Let us pray!" said the young man; and they
knelt down side by side in the shadowy parlor. John Fenn lifted his
harsh, melancholy face, gazing upward passionately, while he wrestled
for her salvation; Philly, looking downward, tracing with a trembling
finger the pattern of the beadwork on the ottoman before which she
knelt, listened with an inward shiver of dismay and ecstasy. But when
they rose to their feet she had nothing to say. He, too, was silent.
He went away quite exhausted by his struggle with this impassive,
unresisting creature.
He hardly spoke to Mary all the way home. "A hardened sinner," he was
thinking. "Poor, lovely creature! So young and so lost!" Under Mary's
incessant chatter, her tugs at the end of the reins, her little bursts
of joy at the sight of a bird or a roadside flower, he was thinking,
with a strange new pain--a pain no other sinner had ever roused in
him--of the girl he had left. He knew that his arguments had not moved
her. "I believe," he thought, the color rising in his face, "that she
dislikes me! She says she loves Dr. Lavendar; yes, she must dislike
me. Is my manner too severe? Perhaps my appearance is unattractive."
He looked down at his coat uneasily.
As for Philly, left to herself, she picked up a bit of sewing, and her
face, at first pale, grew slowly pink. "He only likes sinners," she
thought; "and, oh, I am not a sinner!"