The events told in the last two chapters had taken place toward the
close of the week. On Saturday evening the Reverend Chauncy Fairweather
received a note which was left at his door by an unknown person who
departed without saying a word. Its words were these: “One who is in
distress of mind requests the prayers of this congregation that God
would be pleased to look in mercy upon the soul that he has afflicted.”
There was nothing to show from whom the note came, or the sex or age
or special source of spiritual discomfort or anxiety of the writer. The
handwriting was delicate and might well be a woman's. The clergyman was
not aware of any particular affliction among his parishioners which was
likely to be made the subject of a request of this kind. Surely neither
of the Venners would advertise the attempted crime of their relative in
this way. But who else was there? The more he thought about it, the
more it puzzled him, and as he did not like to pray in the dark, without
knowing for whom he was praying, he could think of nothing better than
to step into old Doctor Kittredge's and see what he had to say about it.
The old Doctor was sitting alone in his study when the Reverend Mr.
Fairweather was ushered in. He received his visitor very pleasantly,
expecting, as a matter of course, that he would begin with some new
grievance, dyspeptic, neuralgic, bronchitic, or other. The minister,
however, began with questioning the old Doctor about the sequel of the
other night's adventure; for he was already getting a little Jesuitical,
and kept back the object of his visit until it should come up as if
accidentally in the course of conversation.
“It was a pretty bold thing to go off alone with that reprobate, as you
did,” said the minister.
“I don't know what there was bold about it,” the Doctor answered. “All
he wanted was to get away. He was not quite a reprobate, you see; he
didn't like the thought of disgracing his family or facing his uncle. I
think he was ashamed to see his cousin, too, after what he had done.”
“Did he talk with you on the way?”
“Not much. For half an hour or so he did n't speak a word. Then he asked
where I was driving him. I told him, and he seemed to be surprised into
a sort of grateful feeling. Bad enough, no doubt, but might be worse.
Has some humanity left in him yet. Let him go. God can judge him,--I
can't.”
“You are too charitable, Doctor,” the minister said. “I condemn him just
as if he had carried out his project, which, they say, was to make it
appear as if the schoolmaster had committed suicide. That's what people
think the rope found by him was for. He has saved his neck,--but his
soul is a lost one, I am afraid, beyond question.”
“I can't judge men's souls,” the Doctor said. “I can judge their acts,
and hold them responsible for those,--but I don't know much about their
souls. If you or I had found our soul in a half-breed body; and been
turned loose to run among the Indians, we might have been playing
just such tricks as this fellow has been trying. What if you or I had
inherited all the tendencies that were born with his cousin Elsie?”
“Oh, that reminds me,”--the minister said, in a sudden way,--“I have
received a note, which I am requested to read from the pulpit tomorrow.
I wish you would just have the kindness to look at it and see where you
think it came from.”
The Doctor examined it carefully. It was a woman's or girl's note, he
thought. Might come from one of the school-girls who was anxious about
her spiritual condition. Handwriting was disguised; looked a little like
Elsie Veneer's, but not characteristic enough to make it certain. It
would be a new thing, if she had asked public prayers for herself, and
a very favorable indication of a change in her singular moral nature. It
was just possible Elsie might have sent that note. Nobody could foretell
her actions. It would be well to see the girl and find out whether
any unusual impression had been produced on her mind by the recent
occurrence or by any other cause.
The Reverend Mr. Fairweather folded the note and put it into his pocket.
“I have been a good deal exercised in mind lately, myself,” he said.
The old Doctor looked at him through his spectacles, and said, in his
usual professional tone,
“Put out your tongue.”
The minister obeyed him in that feeble way common with persons of weak
character,--for people differ as much in their mode of performing this
trifling act as Gideon's soldiers in their way of drinking at the brook.
The Doctor took his hand and placed a finger mechanically on his wrist.
“It is more spiritual, I think, than bodily,” said the Reverend Mr.
Fairweather.
“Is your appetite as good as usual?” the Doctor asked.
“Pretty good,” the minister answered; “but my sleep, my sleep,
Doctor,--I am greatly troubled at night with lying awake and thinking of
my future, I am not at ease in mind.”
He looked round at all the doors, to be sure they were shut, and moved
his chair up close to the Doctor's.
“You do not know the mental trials I have been going through for the
last few months.”
“I think I do,” the old Doctor said. “You want to get out of the new
church into the old one, don't you?”
The minister blushed deeply; he thought he had been going on in a very
quiet way, and that nobody suspected his secret. As the old Doctor was
his counsellor in sickness, and almost everybody's confidant in trouble,
he had intended to impart cautiously to him some hints of the change of
sentiments through which he had been passing. He was too late with his
information, it appeared, and there was nothing to be done but to throw
himself on the Doctor's good sense and kindness, which everybody knew,
and get what hints he could from him as to the practical course he
should pursue. He began, after an awkward pause,
“You would not have me stay in a communion which I feel to be alien to
the true church, would you?”
“Have you stay, my friend?” said the Doctor, with a pleasant, friendly
look,--“have you stay? Not a month, nor a week, nor a day, if I could
help it. You have got into the wrong pulpit, and I have known it from
the first. The sooner you go where you belong, the better. And I'm very
glad you don't mean to stop half-way. Don't you know you've always
come to me when you've been dyspeptic or sick anyhow, and wanted to put
yourself wholly into my hands, so that I might order you like a child
just what to do and what to take? That 's exactly what you want
in religion. I don't blame you for it. You never liked to take the
responsibility of your own body; I don't see why you should want to have
the charge of your own soul. But I'm glad you're going to the Old Mother
of all. You wouldn't have been contented short of that.”
The Reverend Mr. Fairweather breathed with more freedom. The Doctor saw
into his soul through those awful spectacles of his,--into it and
beyond it, as one sees through a thin fog. But it was with a real human
kindness, after all. He felt like a child before a strong man; but the
strong man looked on him with a father's indulgence. Many and many a
time, when he had come desponding and bemoaning himself on account of
some contemptible bodily infirmity, the old Doctor had looked at him
through his spectacles, listened patiently while he told his ailments,
and then, in his large parental way, given him a few words of wholesome
advice, and cheered him up so that he went off with a light heart,
thinking that the heaven he was so much afraid of was not so very near,
after all. It was the same thing now. He felt, as feeble natures always
do in the presence of strong ones, overmastered, circumscribed, shut in,
humbled; but yet it seemed as if the old Doctor did not despise him any
more for what he considered weakness of mind than he used to despise him
when he complained of his nerves or his digestion.
Men who see into their neighbors are very apt to be contemptuous; but
men who see through them find something lying behind every human soul
which it is not for them to sit in judgment on, or to attempt to sneer
out of the order of God's manifold universe.
Little as the Doctor had said out of which comfort could be extracted,
his genial manner had something grateful in it. A film of gratitude
came over the poor man's cloudy, uncertain eye, and a look of tremulous
relief and satisfaction played about his weak mouth. He was gravitating
to the majority, where he hoped to find “rest”; but he was dreadfully
sensitive to the opinions of the minority he was on the point of
leaving.
The old Doctor saw plainly enough what was going on in his mind.
“I sha'n't quarrel with you,” he said,--“you know that very well; but
you mustn't quarrel with me, if I talk honestly with you; it isn't
everybody that will take the trouble. You flatter yourself that you will
make a good many enemies by leaving your old communion. Not so many as
you think. This is the way the common sort of people will talk:--'You
have got your ticket to the feast of life, as much as any other man that
ever lived. Protestantism says,--“Help yourself; here's a clean plate,
and a knife and fork of your own, and plenty of fresh dishes to choose
from.” The Old Mother says,--“Give me your ticket, my dear, and I'll
feed you with my gold spoon off these beautiful old wooden trenchers.
Such nice bits as those good old gentlemen have left for you!” There is
no quarrelling with a man who prefers broken victuals. That's what the
rougher sort will say; and then, where one scolds, ten will laugh. But,
mind you, I don't either scold or laugh. I don't feel sure that you
could very well have helped doing what you will soon do. You know you
were never easy without some medicine to take when you felt ill in
body. I'm afraid I've given you trashy stuff sometimes, just to keep
you quiet. Now, let me tell you, there is just the same difference in
spiritual patients that there is in bodily ones. One set believes
in wholesome ways of living, and another must have a great list of
specifics for all the soul's complaints. You belong with the last, and
got accidentally shuffled in with the others.”
The minister smiled faintly, but did not reply. Of course, he considered
that way of talking as the result of the Doctor's professional training.
It would not have been worth while to take offence at his plain speech,
if he had been so disposed; for he might wish to consult him the next
day as to “what he should take” for his dyspepsia or his neuralgia.
He left the Doctor with a hollow feeling at the bottom of his soul, as
if a good piece of his manhood had been scooped out of him. His hollow
aching did not explain itself in words, but it grumbled and worried down
among the unshaped thoughts which lie beneath them. He knew that he had
been trying to reason himself out of his birthright of reason. He knew
that the inspiration which gave him understanding was losing its throne
in his intelligence, and the almighty Majority-Vote was proclaiming
itself in its stead. He knew that the great primal truths, which each
successive revelation only confirmed, were fast becoming hidden beneath
the mechanical forms of thought, which, as with all new converts,
engrossed so large a share of his attention. The “peace,” the “rest,”
which he had purchased were dearly bought to one who had been trained
to the arms of thought, and whose noble privilege it might have been
to live in perpetual warfare for the advancing truth which the next
generation will claim as the legacy of the present.
The Reverend Mr. Fairweather was getting careless about his sermons. He
must wait the fitting moment to declare himself; and in the mean time
he was preaching to heretics. It did not matter much what he preached,
under such circumstances. He pulled out two old yellow sermons from a
heap of such, and began looking over that for the forenoon. Naturally
enough, he fell asleep over it, and, sleeping, he began to dream.
He dreamed that he was under the high arches of an old cathedral, amidst
a throng of worshippers. The light streamed in through vast windows,
dark with the purple robes of royal saints, or blazing with yellow
glories around the heads of earthly martyrs and heavenly messengers. The
billows of the great organ roared among the clustered columns, as the
sea breaks amidst the basaltic pillars which crowd the stormy cavern of
the Hebrides. The voice of the alternate choirs of singing boys swung
back and forward, as the silver censer swung in the hands of the
white-robed children. The sweet cloud of incense rose in soft, fleecy
mists, full of penetrating suggestions of the East and its perfumed
altars. The knees of twenty generations had worn the pavement; their
feet had hollowed the steps; their shoulders had smoothed the columns.
Dead bishops and abbots lay under the marble of the floor in their
crumbled vestments; dead warriors, in rusted armor, were stretched
beneath their sculptured effigies. And all at once all the buried
multitudes who had ever worshipped there came thronging in through the
aisles. They choked every space, they swarmed into all the chapels, they
hung in clusters over the parapets of the galleries, they clung to
the images in every niche, and still the vast throng kept flowing and
flowing in, until the living were lost in the rush of the returning dead
who had reclaimed their own. Then, as his dream became more fantastic,
the huge cathedral itself seemed to change into the wreck of some mighty
antediluvian vertebrate; its flying-buttresses arched round like ribs,
its piers shaped themselves into limbs, and the sound of the organ-blast
changed to the wind whistling through its thousand-jointed skeleton.
And presently the sound lulled, and softened and softened, until it was
as the murmur of a distant swarm of bees. A procession of monks wound
along through an old street, chanting, as they walked. In his dream he
glided in among them and bore his part in the burden of their song.
He entered with the long train under a low arch, and presently he was
kneeling in a narrow cell before an image of the Blessed Maiden holding
the Divine Child in her arms, and his lips seemed to whisper,
Sancta Maria, ora pro nobis!
He turned to the crucifix, and, prostrating himself before the spare,
agonizing shape of the Holy Sufferer, fell into a long passion of tears
and broken prayers. He rose and flung himself, worn-out, upon his hard
pallet, and, seeming to slumber, dreamed again within his dream. Once
more in the vast cathedral, with throngs of the living choking its
aisles, amidst jubilant peals from the cavernous depths of the great
organ, and choral melodies ringing from the fluty throats of the singing
boys. A day of great rejoicings,--for a prelate was to be consecrated,
and the bones of the mighty skeleton-minster were shaking with anthems,
as if there were life of its own within its buttressed ribs. He looked
down at his feet; the folds of the sacred robe were flowing about them:
he put his hand to his head; it was crowned with the holy mitre. A
long sigh, as of perfect content in the consummation of all his earthly
hopes, breathed through the dreamer's lips, and shaped itself, as it
escaped, into the blissful murmur,
Ego sum Episcopus!
One grinning gargoyle looked in from beneath the roof through an opening
in a stained window. It was the face of a mocking fiend, such as the old
builders loved to place under the eaves to spout the rain through their
open mouths. It looked at him, as he sat in his mitred chair, with its
hideous grin growing broader and broader, until it laughed out aloud,
such a hard, stony, mocking laugh, that he awoke out of his second dream
through his first into his common consciousness, and shivered, as he
turned to the two yellow sermons which he was to pick over and weed of
the little thought they might contain, for the next day's service.
The Reverend Chauncy Fairweather was too much taken up with his own
bodily and spiritual condition to be deeply mindful of others. He
carried the note requesting the prayers of the congregation in his
pocket all day; and the soul in distress, which a single tender petition
might have soothed, and perhaps have saved from despair or fatal error,
found no voice in the temple to plead for it before the Throne of Mercy!