“Well?” said Sewell's wife, when they were gone.
“Well,” he responded; and after a moment he said, “There's this comfort
about it which we don't always have in such cases: there doesn't seem to
be anybody else. It would be indefinitely worse if there were.”
“Why, of course. What in the world are you thinking about?”
“About that foolish girl who came to me with her miserable love-trouble.
I declare, I can't get rid of it. I feel morally certain that she went
away from me and dismissed the poor fellow who was looking to her love
to save him.”
“At the cost of some other poor creature who'd trusted and believed in
him till his silly fancy changed? I hope for the credit of women that
she did. But you may be morally certain she did nothing of the kind.
Girls don't give up all their hopes in life so easily as that. She might
think she would do it, because she had read of such things, and thought
it was fine, but when it came to the pinch, she wouldn't.”
“I hope not. If she did she would commit a great error, a criminal
error.”
“Well, you needn't be afraid. Look at Mrs. Tom Corey. And that was her
own sister!”
“That was different. Corey had never thought of her sister, much less
made love to her, or promised to marry her. Besides, Mrs. Corey had her
father and mother to advise her, and support her in behaving sensibly.
And this poor creature had nothing but her own novel fed fancies, and
her crazy conscience. She thought that because she inflicted suffering
upon herself she was acting unselfishly. Really the fakirs of India and
the Penitentes of New Mexico are more harmless; for they don't hurt any
one else. If she has forced some poor fellow into a marriage like this
of Barker's she's committed a deadly sin. She'd better driven him to
suicide, than condemned him to live a lie to the end of his days. No
doubt she regarded it as a momentary act of expiation. That's the way
her romances taught her to look at loveless marriage--as something
spectacular, transitory, instead of the enduring, degrading squalor that
it is!”
“What in the world are you talking about, David? I should think _you_
were a novelist yourself, by the wild way you go on! You have no proof
whatever that Barker isn't happily engaged. I'm sure he's got a much
better girl than he deserves, and one that's fully his equal. She's only
too fond of that dry stick. Such a girl as the one you described,--like
that mysterious visitor of yours,--what possible relation could she have
with him? She was a lady!”
“Yes, yes! Of course, it's absurd. But everybody seems to be tangled
up with everybody else. My dear, will you give me a cup of tea? I think
I'll go to writing at once.”
Before she left her husband to order his tea Mrs. Sewell asked, “And do
you think you have got through with him now?”
“I have just begun with him,” replied Sewell.
His mind, naturally enough in connection with Lemuel, was running upon
his friend Evans, and the subject they had once talked of in that room.
It was primarily in thinking of him that he begun to write his sermon
on Complicity, which made a great impression at the time, and had a more
lasting effect as enlarged from the newspaper reports, and reprinted in
pamphlet form. His evolution from the text, “Remember them that are
in bonds as bound with them,” of a complete philosophy of life, was
humorously treated by some of his critics as a phase of Darwinism,
but upon the whole the sermon met with great favour. It not only
strengthened Sewell's hold upon the affections of his own congregation,
but carried his name beyond Boston, and made him the topic of editorials
in the Sunday editions of leading newspapers as far off as Chicago.
It struck one of those popular moods of intelligent sympathy when the
failure of a large class of underpaid and worthy workers to assert their
right to a living wage against a powerful monopoly had sent a thrill of
respectful pity through every generous heart in the country; and it
was largely supposed that Sewell's sermon referred indirectly to the
telegraphers' strike. Those who were aware of his habit of seeking to
produce a personal rather than a general effect, of his belief that you
can have a righteous public only by the slow process of having righteous
men and women, knew that he meant something much nearer home to each
of his hearers when he preached the old Christ-humanity to them, and
enforced again the lessons that no one for good or for evil, for sorrow
or joy, for sickness or health, stood apart from his fellows, but each
was bound to the highest and the lowest by ties that centred in the hand
of God. No man, he said, sinned or suffered to himself alone; his error
and his pain darkened and afflicted men who never heard of his name. If
a community was corrupt, if an age was immoral, it was not because
of the vicious, but the virtuous who fancied themselves indifferent
spectators. It was not the tyrant who oppressed, it was the wickedness
that had made him possible. The gospel--Christ--God, so far as men had
imagined him,--was but a lesson, a type, a witness from everlasting
to everlasting of the spiritual unity of man. As we grew in grace,
in humanity, in civilisation, our recognition of this truth would be
transfigured from a duty to a privilege, a joy, a heavenly rapture. Many
men might go through life harmlessly without realising this, perhaps,
but sterilely; only those who had had the care of others laid upon them,
lived usefully, fruitfully. Let no one shrink from such a burden, or
seek to rid himself of it. Rather let him bind it fast upon his neck,
and rejoice in it. The wretched, the foolish, the ignorant whom we found
at every turn, were something more; they were the messengers of God,
sent to tell his secret to any that would hear it. Happy he in whose
ears their cry for help was a perpetual voice, for that man, whatever
his creed, knew God and could never forget him. In his responsibility
for his weaker brethren he was Godlike, for God was but the
impersonation of loving responsibility, of infinite and never-ceasing
care for us all.
When Sewell came down from his pulpit, many people came up to speak to
him of his sermon. Some of the women's faces showed the traces of tears,
and each person had made its application to himself. There were two
or three who had heard between the words. Old Bromfield Corey, who was
coming a good deal more to church since his eyes began to fail him,
because it was a change and a sort of relief from being read to, said--
“I didn't know that they had translated it Barker in the revised
version. Well, you must let me know how he's getting on, Sewell, and
give me a chance at the revelation, too, if he ever gets troublesome to
you again.”
Miss Vane was standing at the door with his wife when Sewell came out.
She took his hand and pressed it.
“Do you think I threw away my chance?” she demanded. She had her veil
down, and at first Sewell thought it was laughter that shook her voice,
but it was not that.
He did not know quite what to say, but he did say, “He was sent to
_me_.'”