“Goshamighty, stand off there! Who in ---- are _you_?”
This candid remark was addressed by a fisherman in blue flannel
shirtsleeves to a gentleman in afternoon dress. It was in the month
of September, and the fleets were busy in and off the harbor of the
fishing-town. The autumn trips were well under sail, and the docks
and streets of Windover buzzed and reeled with crews just anchored
or about to weigh. At the juncture of the principal business avenue
of the town with its principal nautical street--from a date passing
the memory of living citizens irreverently named Angel Alley--a
fight was in brisk progress. This was so common an incident in that
part of the town that the residents had paid little attention to
it. But the stranger, being a stranger, had paused and asked for a
policeman.
The bystanders stared.
“There ain’t none nigher’n the station,” replied a girl who was
watching the fight with evident relish. She wore a pert sailor hat
of soiled white straw, set on one side of her head, and carried
her hands in the pockets of a crumpled tan-colored reefer. Her
eyes were handsome and bold. The crowd jostled her freely, which
did not seem to trouble her. “There’s a fellow just arrested,”
she explained cheerfully, “for smashing his wife with a coal-hod;
they’re busy with him down to the station. He fit all the way over.
It took four cops to hold him. Most the folks are gone over there
to see the other game. This fun here won’t be spoiled just yet
awhile.”
Something in the expression with which the gentleman regarded her
attracted the girl’s attention. She took her hands out of her
pockets, and scanned him with a dull surprise; then, with a motion
which one could not call abashed, but which fell short of her
previous ease of manner, she turned her back and walked a little
away towards the edge of the crowd.
The fight was at its hottest. Two men, an Italian laborer and
an American fisherman, were somewhat seriously belaboring each
other, to their own undisguised satisfaction and the acclamation
of the bystanders. Both were evidently more or less drunk. An open
grogshop gaped behind them. Similar places of entertainment, with
others less easily described, lined both sides of Angel Alley,
multiplying fruitfully, till the wharves joined their grimy hands
and barred the way to this black fertility.
It was a windy day; the breeze was rising, and the unseen sea could
be heard moaning beyond.
Just as the stranger, with the indiscretion of youth and
inexperience, was about to step into the ring and try to stop
the row, a child pushed through the crowd. It was a boy; a little
fellow, barely four or five years old. He ducked under the elbows
and between the legs of the spectators with an adroitness which
proclaimed him the son of a sailor, and ran straight to the
combatants, crying:
“Father! Fa--ther! Marm says to please to stop! She says to ax you
to _please_ to stop, and come home wiv you’ little boy!”
He ran between the two men, and put up his little dirty fingers
upon his father’s big, clenched hand; he repeated piteously,
“Father, Fa--ther, Fa--ther!”
But more than this the little fellow had not time to say. The
father’s dark, red face turned a sudden, ominous purple, and before
any person of them all could stay him his brutal hand had turned
upon the child.
Cries of shame and horror rose from the crowd; a woman’s shriek
echoed from a window across the street, and the screams of the boy
pierced the bedlam. The Italian, partly sobered, had slunk back.
“Stop him! Part them! Hold him, somebody! He’ll kill the child!”
yelled the bystanders, and not a man of them stirred.
“Why, it’s only a _baby_!” cried the girl in the reefer, running
up. “He’ll murder it! Oh, if I was a _man_!” she raved, wringing
her hands.
At that moment, before one could have lifted the eyelash to see how
it fell, a well-aimed blow struck the brute beneath the ear. He
fell.
Hands snatched the writhing child away; his mother’s arms and
screams received him; and over the fallen man a slight, tall figure
was seen to tower. The stranger had thrown down his valise, and
tossed off his silk hat. His delicate face was as white as a star.
He quivered with holy rage. He trampled on the fellow with one
foot, and ground him down; he had the attitude of the St. Michael
in Guido’s great picture. He had that scorn and all that beauty.
A geyser of oaths spurted from the prostrate ruffian. The stranger
stooped, and pinned him skillfully until they ceased.
“Now,” he said calmly, “get up. Get up, I say!” He released his
clenched white hand from the other’s grimy flesh.
“He’ll thresh the life outen ye!” protested a voice from the
increasing crowd. “You don’t know Job Slip ’s well ’s we do. He’ll
make short work on ye, sir, if you darst let go him.”
“No, he won’t,” replied the stranger quietly. “He respects a good
blow when he feels it. He knows how it ought to be planted. He
would do as much himself, if he saw a man killing his own child.
Wouldn’t you, Job Slip?”
He stepped back fearlessly and folded his arms. The rapidly
sobering sot struggled to his feet, and instinctively squared off;
looked at the gentleman blindly for a moment, then dropped his huge
arms.
“Goshamighty!” he said, “who in ---- are _you_?”
He took one of the stranger’s delicate hands in his black and
bleeding palms, and critically examined it.
“_That?_ Why, my woman’s paw is stronger ’n’ bigger ’n _that_!”
contemptuously. “And you didn’t overdo it neither. Pity! If you’d
only made it manslaughter--why, I could ha’ sent ye up on my
antumortim deppysition.”
“Oh, I knew better than that,” replied the stranger calmly, turning
for his hat. He thought of the boxing-lessons that he used to take
on the Back Bay, years ago. Some one in the crowd brushed off the
hat with the back of a dusty elbow, and handed it respectfully to
the gentleman. The girl in the reefer picked up his valise.
“I’ve kep’ my eye on it, for you,” she said in a softened voice.
“Well,” said Job Slip slowly, “I guess _I_’ll keep my eye on _him_.”
“Do!” answered the stranger heartily. “I wish you would. They don’t
fight where I’m going.”
“Who be you, anyway?” demanded Job Slip with undisguised
admiration. He had not made up his mind yet whether to spring at
the other’s throat, or to offer him a drink.
“I’m in too much of a hurry to tell you now,” answered the
gentleman quietly. “I’ve missed the most important engagement of my
life--to save your child.”
“He’s goin’ to his weddin’,” muttered a voice behind him. The girl
started the chorus of a song which he had never heard before, and
was not anxious to hear again.
“You have a good voice,” he said, turning. “You can put it to a
better use than that.”
She stared at him, but made him no reply. The crowd parted and
scattered, and he came through into the main street.
“Sir! Sir!” called a woman’s voice from a window over his head.
The young man looked up. The mother of the little boy held the
child upon the window-sill for him to see.
“He ain’t much hurt!” she cried. “I thought you’d like to know it.
It’s all along of you. God go with you, sir! God bless you, sir!”
He had put on his hat, but removed it at these words, and stood
uncovered before the drunkard’s wife. She could not know how much
it meant to him--that day. Without looking back he strode up the
street. The Italian ran out and watched him. Job Slip hesitated
for a moment; then he did the same, following the young man with
perplexed and sodden eyes. The Italian stood amiably beside his
late antagonist. Both men had forgotten what they fought about,
now. A little group from the vanishing crowd joined them. The
mother in the window--a gaunt Madonna--shaded her eyes with her
hand to see the departing figure of the unknown while she pressed
the bruised and sobbing child against her breast. The stranger
halted at the steps of the old First Church of Windover; then ran
up lightly, and disappeared within the open doors.
“I’ll be split and salted!” said a young man who had not been
drinking, “if I don’t believe that’s the new parson come to town!”
The speaker had black eyebrows which met in a straight and heavy
line.
“I’ll be ----!” said Job Slip.
* * * * *
The church was thronged. Citizens and strangers jostled each other
in the porch, the vestibules, and the aisles. It was one of those
religious festivals so dear to the heart of New England, and
so perplexing to gayer people. No metropolitan play could have
collected a crowd like this in Windover.
The respectability of the town was out in force. The richest fish
firms, the largest ship-owners, and the oldest families shed the
little light of local glory upon the occasion. Most of them, in
fact, were members of the parish. Windover had what an irreverent
outsider had termed her codocracy. The examination--to be followed
that evening by the ordination--of the new minister was an affair
of note. Windover is not the only town on the map where the social
leaders are fond of patronizing whatever ecclesiastical interests
are dependent on the generosity of their pockets and the importance
of their names. Nothing tends to the growth of a religious sect so
much as the belief that the individual is important to it.
Upon the platform, decorated by the Ladies’ Aid Society with
taste, piety, and goldenrod, sat the Council called to examine and
to ordain Emanuel Bayard to the ministry of Christ. These were
venerable men; they drove in from the surrounding parishes in their
buggies, or took the trains from remoter towns. A few city names
had responded; one or two of them were eminent. The columns of the
“Windover Topsail” had these already set up in display type, and
the reporters in the galleries dashed them off on yellow slips of
paper.
As the minister-elect, panting with his haste, ran up the steps and
into the church, the first thing that he perceived was the eye of
one of his Cesarea Professors fastened sternly upon him. It gave
him the feeling of a naughty little boy who was late to school.
This guilty sensation was not lessened by a vision of the back of
his uncle’s bald head in an eminent seat among the lay delegates,
and by the sight of the jeweled Swiss repeater, familiar to his
infancy, too visibly suspended from Mr. Hermon Worcester’s hand.
The church clock (wearing for the occasion a wreath of purple
asters, which had received an unfortunate lurch to one side, and
gave that pious timepiece a tipsy air) charitably maintained that
Bayard was but seven minutes late. The impatience of the Council
and the anxiety of the audience seemed to aver that an hour
would not cover, nor eternity pardon, the young man’s delay. He
dropped his valise into the hand of the sexton, and strode up the
broad aisle. The dust of the street fight still showed upon his
fashionable clothes. His cheeks were flushed with his fine color.
His disordered hair clung to his white forehead in curls that the
straitest sect of the Pharisees could not have straightened. Every
woman in the audience noticed this, and liked him the better for
it. But the Council was composed of straight-haired men.
Somebody beckoned him into the minister’s room to repair damages:
and as he crossed the platform to do so, Bayard stooped and
exchanged a few whispered words with the moderator. The wrinkled
face of that gentleman changed visibly. He rose at once and said:--
“It is due to our brother and to the audience to state that your
minister-elect desires me to make his apologies to this parish for
a tardiness which he found to be unavoidable,--morally unavoidable,
I might say. And I should observe,” added the moderator,
hesitating, “that I have been requested _not_ to explain the
nature of the case, but I shall take it upon myself to defy this
injunction, and to state that an act of Christian mercy detained
our brother. I do not think,” said the moderator, dropping suddenly
from the ecclesiastical to the human tone, “that it is every man
who would have done it, under the circumstances; and I do not
consider it any less creditable for that.”
A sound of relief stirred through the house as the moderator sat
down. The audience ceased twisting its head to look at the tipsy
clock, thus enabling the Ladies’ Aid Association to get that aster
wreath for the first time out of mind. Mr. Hermon Worcester’s watch
went back to its comfortable fob. A smile melted across the anxious
face of Professor Haggai Carruth of Cesarea. The minister-elect
reappeared with plumage properly smoothed, and the proceedings of
the day set in, with the usual decorum of the denomination.
It is not a ceremonious sect, that of the Congregationalism of New
England; and its polity allows much diversity upon occasions like
these, whose programme depends a good deal upon the preference of
the moderator. Bayard’s moderator was a gray-haired, kind-hearted,
plain country minister, the oldest man in the Council, and one of
the best. It was not his intention to subject the young man to one
of the ecclesiastical roastings at that time in vogue, and for the
course of events which followed he was not responsible. This was
a matter of small moment at the time; but Bayard had afterwards
occasion to remember it.
He listened dreamily to the conventional preliminary exercises of
the afternoon. His mind was in a turmoil which poorly prepared
the young man for the intellectual and emotional strain of the
day. That scene in the street flashed and faded and reappeared
before him, like the dark lantern which an evil hand brings into
a sacred place. The blow of the man’s fist upon the child seemed
to fall crashing upon his own flesh. Across the crescendo of
the chorus of the hymn the cry of the little boy ran in piteous
discord. The organ rolled up the oaths of the wharves. While the
good, gray-haired moderator was praying, Bayard was shocked to find
that the song of the street girl ran through his burning brain.
The gaunt Madonna in the window of the drunkard’s home seemed to
be stamped--a dark photographic letter-head--upon the license to
preach the Christian religion which he was required (with more than
usual precision) to produce.
“Why,” said a sour voice suddenly at his elbow, “why do you
consider yourself a child of God?”
Bayard recalled himself with a start to the fact that the personal
examination of the day had begun, and that the opening shot had
come from the least important and most crabbed man in the Council.
And now for three quivering hours the young man stood the fire
of the most ingenious ecclesiastical inquisition which had been
witnessed in that part of the State for many a year.
At first it rather amused him than otherwise, and he bore it with
great good nature.
He was patient beyond his years with the small clergyman from the
small interior parish, whose hobby was that theological students
were not properly taught their Bibles, and who had invented a
precious catechism of his own, calculated to prove to the audience
how little they or the candidate knew of Boanerges, Gog and Magog,
and the four beasts which are the chief zoological ornaments of the
Apocalypse. Having treated these burning questions satisfactorily,
Bayard fenced awhile with the learned clergyman who was alive only
in the dead languages, and who put the candidate through his Greek
and Hebrew paces as if he had been a college boy.
Bayard had felt no serious concern as to the outcome of the
examination, a mere form, a husk, a shell, with which it was not
worth a man’s while to quarrel. The people of the church--he had
already begun to call them his people--were enthusiastically and
lovingly pledged to him. He smiled into their familiar faces over
the heads of his inquisitors, and manfully and cheerfully stood his
ground. All, in fact, went well enough, until the theology of the
young man came under investigation. Then a cloud no bigger than a
man’s tongue, if one may say so, appeared to darken the interior
of Windover First Church. The oldest and deafest men in the
Council pricked up their ears. The youngest and best-natured grew
uneasy. The candidate’s people looked at him anxiously. His uncle
flushed; Professor Carruth coughed sternly. The moderator ruled and
overruled, and tried with troubled kindness to quench the warming
flame of ecclesiastical censure in which many a bright, devout
young life goes out.
Suddenly Bayard awoke to the fact that the smoke was curling in the
fagots at his feet; that the stake was at his back, the chains upon
his hands; that he was in danger of being precondemned for heresy
in the hearts of those gray old men, his elder brothers in the
church, and disgraced before the eyes of the people who had loved
and chosen him.
The house was now so full and so still that a sigh could be heard;
and when a group from the street pushed noisily in, and stood by
the entrance, impatient expressions leaped from pew to pew. Bayard
looked up at the disturbance. There by the green baize doors stood
the Italian, Job Slip, and the young fellow (with the eyebrows) who
did not drink, two or three other spectators of the fight, and the
girl in the reefer. An uninvited delegation from Angel Alley, these
children of the devil had crept among those godly men and women,
and stared about.
“A circumstance,” complained Mr. Hermon Worcester afterwards to
Professor Carruth, “which might not happen on such an occasion in
our New England churches once in twenty years.”
Bayard had been singularly gentle and patient with his tormentors
up to this moment. But now he gathered himself, and fought for his
life like a man. Brand after brand, the inventions of theology were
flung hissing upon him.
Did he believe that heathen, unacquainted with Christ, were saved?
What did he hold became of the souls of those who died in infancy?
If they happened to be born dead, what was their fate?
Explain his views on the doctrine of Justification by Faith.
State explicitly his conception of the Trinity. Had none? Ah--ah!
Were the three Persons in the Trinity separate as qualities or as
natures? Did not _know_? Ah--ah.
State the precise nature, province, and character of each Person.
Did not feel qualified to do so? Ha--hum.
What was the difference between Arianism and Socinianism?
Did the Son exist coördinate with, and yet subordinate to the
Father?
What is the distinction between the attributes and the faculties of
the Deity?
Did an impenitent person ever pray?
Describe the doctrine of Free Will.
Is a sinner ever able to repent, of his own choice?
Is he punished for not being able to do so?
Is the human race responsible for the guilt of Adam?
Why not?
Explain the process of sanctification, and the exact province of
the Holy Spirit.
Carefully elucidate your views on Total Depravity.
Could a man--did we understand you?--become regenerate without
waiting for the compelling action of the Holy Spirit?
Is there any Scriptural ground for belief in the possibility of a
second probation? What? Please repeat that reply.
Did not the first sin of a child justly expose him to eternal
punishment? _What?_
At this point in the trial, Bayard was acutely conscious of the
controlled voice of Professor Carruth, who had asked no question
up to that moment. Dear old Professor! he was trying to haul his
favorite student out of the fire before it was too late.
“But,” he asked gently, “is not one act of sin an infinite wrong?”
“I believe it is; or it may reasonably become so.”
“Is it not a wrong committed against an Infinite Being?”
“Yes, sir, it is.”
“Does not an infinite wrong committed against an Infinite Being
deserve an infinite punishment?” pleaded the Professor of Theology.
“You have taught me so, sir.”
A rustle swept the house. The stern face of the Professor melted in
its sudden, winning fashion. He drew in his breath. At least, the
reputation of the Department was secured!
“Do you not believe what you have been taught?”
“Professor,” said Bayard, smiling, “do you?”
It being well known that the now conservative Professor of Theology
had been the liberal and the progressive of his first youth, this
reply created a slight smile. But the Professor did not smile. The
crisis was too serious.
“The candidate does not deny the doctrine,” he urged. “He will
undoubtedly grow into it as other men have done before him.”
“Whether men are eternally damned”--began Bayard.
“Job,” whispered the Italian back by the door, “he swear at ’em!”
“No, he ain’t,” said the sober fellow. “It’s the way they talk in
churches.”
“What tongue is it they do speak?” persisted the Italian.
“Blamed if I know,” whispered Job Slip with unusual decorum. “I
think it’s High Dutch.”
“No, it ain’t; it’s Latin,” corrected the sober fellow. “I can make
out a word now and then. They translate parts as they go along.
It’s darn queer gibberish, ain’t it? I guess the natives used to
talk like that in Bible times.”
“All this row,” said Job Slip, whose befuddled brain was actively
busy with the personal fate of a minister who could knock him down,
“all this d---- row’s along of me. It’s because he was late to
meetin’!”