I.

On their way back to the farm-house where they were boarding, Sewell's

wife reproached him for what she called his recklessness. “You had no

right,” she said, “to give the poor boy false hopes. You ought to have

discouraged him--that would have been the most merciful way--if you knew

the poetry was bad. Now, he will go on building all sorts of castles

in the air on your praise, and sooner or later they will come tumbling

about his ears--just to gratify your passion for saying pleasant things

to people.”

“I wish you had a passion for saying pleasant things to me, my dear,”

suggested her husband evasively.

“Oh, a nice time I should have!”

“I don't know about _your_ nice time, but I feel pretty certain of my

own. How do you know--Oh, _do_ get up, you implacable cripple!” he broke

off to the lame mare he was driving, and pulled at the reins.

“Don't saw her mouth!” cried Mrs. Sewell.

“Well, let her get up, then, and I won't. I don't like to saw her

mouth; but I have to do something when you come down on me with your

interminable consequences. I dare say the boy will never think of my

praise again. And besides, as I was saying when this animal interrupted

me with her ill-timed attempts at grazing, how do you know that I knew

the poetry was bad?”

“How? By the sound of your voice. I could tell you were dishonest in the

dark, David.”

“Perhaps the boy knew that I was dishonest too,” suggested Sewell.

“Oh no, he didn't. I could see that he pinned his faith to every

syllable.”

“He used a quantity of pins, then; for I was particularly profuse of

syllables. I find that it requires no end of them to make the worse

appear the better reason to a poet who reads his own verses to you. But

come, now, Lucy, let me off a syllable or two. I--I have a conscience,

you know well enough, and if I thought--But pshaw! I've merely cheered a

lonely hour for the boy, and he'll go back to hoeing potatoes to-morrow,

and that will be the end of it.”

“I _hope_ that will be the end of it,” said Mrs. Sewell, with the

darkling reserve of ladies intimate with the designs of Providence.

“Well,” argued her husband, who was trying to keep the matter from being

serious, “perhaps he may turn out a poet yet. You never can tell where

the lightning is going to strike. He has some idea of rhyme, and some

perception of reason, and--yes, some of the lines _were_ musical. His

general attitude reminded me of Piers Plowman. Didn't he recall Piers

Plowman to you?”

“I'm glad you can console yourself in that way, David,” said his wife

relentlessly.

The mare stopped again, and Sewell looked over his shoulder at the

house, now black in the twilight, on the crest of the low hill across

the hollow behind them. “I declare,” he said, “the loneliness of that

place almost broke my heart. There!” he added, as the faint sickle

gleamed in the sky above the roof, “I've got the new moon right over my

left shoulder for my pains. That's what comes of having a sympathetic

nature.”

* * * * *

The boy was looking at the new moon, across the broken gate which

stopped the largest gap in the tumbled stone wall. He still gripped in

his hand the manuscript which he had been reading to the minister.

“There, Lem,” called his mother's voice from the house, “I guess you've

seen the last of 'em for one while. I'm 'fraid you'll take cold out

there 'n the dew. Come in, child.”

The boy obeyed. “I was looking at the new moon, mother. I saw it over my

right shoulder. Did you hear--hear him,” he asked, in a broken and husky

voice,--“hear how he praised my poetry, mother?”

* * * * *

“Oh, _do_ make her get up, David!” cried Mrs. Sewell. “These mosquitoes

are eating me alive!”

“I will saw her mouth all to the finest sort of kindling-wood, if she

doesn't get up this very instant,” said Sewell, jerking the reins

so wildly that the mare leaped into a galvanic canter, and continued

without further urging for twenty paces. “Of course, Lucy,” he resumed,

profiting by the opportunity for conversation which the mare's temporary

activity afforded, “I should feel myself greatly to blame if I thought I

had gone beyond mere kindness in my treatment of the poor fellow. But at

first I couldn't realise that the stuff was so bad. Their saying that

he read all the books he could get, and was writing every spare moment,

gave me the idea that he _must_ be some sort of literary genius in

the germ, and I listened on and on, expecting every moment that he was

coming to some passage with a little lift or life in it; and when he got

to the end, and hadn't come to it, I couldn't quite pull myself together

to say so. I had gone there so full of the wish to recognise and

encourage, that I couldn't turn about for the other thing. Well! I

shall know another time how to value a rural neighbourhood report of the

existence of a local poet. Usually there is some hardheaded cynic in the

community with native perception enough to enlighten the rest as to the

true value of the phenomenon; but there seems to have been none here. I

ought to have come sooner to see him, and then I could have had a chance

to go again and talk soberly and kindly with him, and show him gently

how much he had mistaken himself. Oh, _get_ up!” By this time the mare

had lapsed again into her habitual absent-mindedness, and was limping

along the dark road with a tendency to come to a full stop, from step to

step. The remorse in the minister's soul was so keen that he could not

use her with the cruelty necessary to rouse her flagging energies; as he

held the reins he flapped his elbows up toward his face, as if they were

wings, and contrived to beat away a few of the mosquitoes with them;

Mrs. Sewell, in silent exasperation, fought them from her with the bough

which she had torn from an overhanging birch-tree.

In the morning they returned to Boston, and Sewell's parish duties began

again; he was rather faithfuller and busier in these than he might have

been if he had not laid so much stress upon duties of all sorts, and

so little upon beliefs. He declared that he envied the ministers of the

good old times who had only to teach their people that they would be

lost if they did not do right; it was much simpler than to make them

understand that they were often to be good for reasons not immediately

connected with their present or future comfort, and that they could not

confidently expect to be lost for any given transgression, or even to be

lost at all. He found it necessary to do his work largely in a personal

way, by meeting and talking with people, and this took up a great deal

of his time, especially after the summer vacation, when he had to get

into relations with them anew, and to help them recover themselves

from the moral lassitude into which people fall during that season of

physical recuperation.

He was occupied with these matters one morning late in October when

a letter came addressed in a handwriting of copybook carefulness, but

showing in every painstaking stroke the writer's want of training,

which, when he read it, filled Sewell with dismay. It was a letter from

Lemuel Barker, whom Sewell remembered, with a pang of self-upbraiding,

as the poor fellow he had visited with his wife the evening before they

left Willoughby Pastures; and it enclosed passages of a long poem which

Barker said he had written since he got the fall work done. The passages

were not submitted for Sewell's criticism, but were offered as examples

of the character of the whole poem, for which the author wished to find

a publisher. They were not without ideas of a didactic and satirical

sort, but they seemed so wanting in literary art beyond a mechanical

facility of versification, that Sewell wondered how the writer should

have mastered the notion of anything so literary as publication, till

he came to that part of the letter in which Barker spoke of their having

had so much sickness in the family that he thought he would try to

do something to help along. The avowal of this meritorious ambition

inflicted another wound upon Sewell's guilty consciousness; but what

made his blood run cold was Barker's proposal to come down to Boston, if

Sewell advised, and find a publisher with Sewell's assistance.

This would never do, and the minister went to his desk with the

intention of despatching a note of prompt and total discouragement.

But in crossing the room from the chair into which he had sunk, with a

cheerful curiosity, to read the letter, he could not help some natural

rebellion against the punishment visited upon him. He could not deny

that he deserved punishment, but he thought that this, to say the least,

was very ill-timed. He had often warned other sinners who came to him

in like resentment that it was this very quality of inopportuneness that

was perhaps the most sanative and divine property of retribution; the

eternal justice fell upon us, he said, at the very moment when we were

least able to bear it, or thought ourselves so; but now in his own case

the clear-sighted prophet cried out and revolted in his heart. It was

Saturday morning, when every minute was precious to him for his sermon,

and it would take him fully an hour to write that letter; it must be

done with the greatest sympathy; he had seen that this poor foolish boy

was very sensitive, and yet it must be done with such thoroughness as to

cut off all hope of anything like literary achievement for him.

At the moment Sewell reached his desk, with a spirit disciplined to the

sacrifice required of it, he heard his wife's step outside his study

door, and he had just time to pull open a drawer, throw the letter into

it, and shut it again before she entered. He did not mean finally to

conceal it from her, but he was willing to give himself breath before he

faced her with the fact that he had received such a letter. Nothing in

its way was more terrible to this good man than the righteousness of

that good woman. In their case, as in that of most other couples who

cherish an ideal of dutiful living, she was the custodian of their

potential virtue, and he was the instrument, often faltering and

imperfect, of its application to circumstances; and without wishing to

spare himself too much, he was sometimes aware that she did not spare

him enough. She worked his moral forces as mercilessly as a woman uses

the physical strength of a man when it is placed at her direction.

“What is the matter, David?” she asked, with a keen glance at the face

he turned upon her over his shoulder.

“Nothing that I wish to talk of at present, my dear,” answered Sewell,

with a boldness that he knew would not avail him if she persisted in

knowing.

“Well, there would be no time if you did,” said his wife. “I'm

dreadfully sorry for you, David, but it's really a case you can't

refuse. Their own minister is taken sick, and it's appointed for this

afternoon at two o'clock, and the poor thing has set her heart upon

having you, and you must go. In fact, I promised you would. I'll see

that you're not disturbed this morning, so that you'll have the whole

forenoon to yourself. But I thought I'd better tell you at once. It's

only a child--a little boy. You won't have to say much.”

“Oh, of course I must go,” answered Sewell, with impatient resignation;

and when his wife left the room, which she did after praising him and

pitying him in a way that was always very sweet to him, he saw that he

must begin his sermon at once, if he meant to get through with it in

time, and must put off all hope of replying to Lemuel Barker till Monday

at least. But he chose quite a different theme from that on which he had

intended to preach. By an immediate inspiration he wrote a sermon on the

text, “The tender mercies of the wicked are cruel,” in which he taught

how great harm could be done by the habit of saying what are called kind

things. He showed that this habit arose not from goodness of heart,

or from the desire to make others happy, but from the wish to spare

one's-self the troublesome duty of formulating the truth so that it

would perform its heavenly office without wounding those whom it was

intended to heal. He warned his hearers that the kind things spoken

from this motive were so many sins committed against the soul of the

flatterer and the soul of him they were intended to flatter; they were

deceits, lies; and he besought all within the sound of his voice to

try to practise with one another an affectionate sincerity, which was

compatible not only with the brotherliness of Christianity, but

the politeness of the world. He enforced his points with many apt

illustrations, and he treated the whole subject with so much fulness and

fervour, that he fell into the error of the literary temperament, and

almost felt that he had atoned for his wrongdoing by the force with

which he had portrayed it.

Mrs. Sewell, who did not always go to her husband's sermons, was at

church that day, and joined him when some ladies who had lingered to

thank him for the excellent lesson he had given them at last left him to

her.

“Really, David,” she said, “I wondered your congregation could keep

their countenances while you were going on. Did you think of that poor

boy up at Willoughby Pastures when you were writing that sermon?”

“Yes, my dear,” replied Sewell gravely; “he was in my mind the whole

time.”

“Well, you were rather hard upon yourself; and I think I was rather too

hard upon you, that time, though I was so vexed with you. But nothing

has come of it, and I suppose there are cases where people are so lost

to common sense that you can't do anything for them by telling them the

truth.”

“But you'd better tell it, all the same,” said Sewell, still in a glow

of righteous warmth from his atonement; and now a sudden temptation to

play with fire seized him. “You wouldn't have excused me if any trouble

had come of it.”

“No, I certainly shouldn't,” said his wife. “But I don't regret it

altogether if it's made you see what danger you run from that tendency

of yours. What in the world made you think of it?”

“Oh, it came into my mind.” said Sewell.

He did not find time to write to Barker the next day, and on recurring

to his letter he saw that there was no danger of his taking another step

without his advice, and he began to postpone it; when he had time he was

not in the mood; he waited for the time and the mood to come together,

and he also waited for the most favourable moment to tell his wife that

he had got that letter from Barker and to ask her advice about answering

it. If it had been really a serious matter, he would have told her at

once; but being the thing it was, he did not know just how to approach

it, after his first concealment. He knew that, to begin with, he would

have to account for his mistake in attempting to keep it from her, and

would have to bear some just upbraiding for this unmanly course, and

would then be miserably led to the distasteful contemplation of the

folly by which he had brought this trouble upon himself. Sewell smiled

to think how much easier it was to make one's peace with one's God

than with one's wife; and before he had brought himself to the point of

answering Barker's letter, there came a busy season in which he forgot

him altogether.