The hand of the clock fastened up on the white wall of the conference
room, just over the framed card bearing the words "Stand up for Jesus,"
and between two other similar cards, respectively bearing the sentences
"Come unto Me," and "The Wonderful, the Counsellor," pointed to ten
minutes of nine. As was usual at this period of Newville prayer-meetings,
a prolonged pause had supervened. The regular standbyes had all taken
their usual part, and for any one to speak or pray would have been about
as irregular as for one of the regulars to fail in doing so. For the
attendants at Newville prayer-meetings were strictly divided into the two
classes of speakers and listeners, and, except during revivals or times
of special interest, the distinction was scrupulously observed.
Deacon Tuttle had spoken and prayed, Deacon Miller had prayed and spoken,
Brother Hunt had amplified a point in last Sunday's sermon, Brother
Taylor had called attention to a recent death in the village as a warning
to sinners, and Sister Morris had prayed twice, the second time it must
be admitted, with a certain perceptible petulance of tone, as if willing
to have it understood that she was doing more than ought to be expected
of her. But while it was extremely improbable that any others of the
twenty or thirty persons assembled would feel called on to break the
silence, though it stretched to the crack of doom, yet, on the other
hand, to close the meeting before the mill bell had struck nine would
have been regarded as a dangerous innovation. Accordingly, it only
remained to wait in decorous silence during the remaining ten minutes.
The clock ticked on with that judicial intonation characteristic of
time-pieces that measure sacred time and wasted opportunities. At
intervals the pastor, with an innocent affectation of having just
observed the silence, would remark: "There is yet opportunity. . . . .
Time is passing, brethren. . . . . Any brother or sister. . . . . We
shall be glad to hear from any one." Farmer Bragg, tired with his day's
hoeing, snored quietly in the corner of a seat. Mrs. Parker dropped a
hymn-book. Little Tommy Blake, who had fallen over while napping and hit
his nose, snivelled under his breath. Madeline Brand, as she sat at the
melodeon below the minister's desk, stifled a small yawn with her pretty
fingers. A June bug boomed through the open window and circled around
Deacon Tuttle's head, affecting that good man with the solicitude
characteristic of bald-headed persons when buzzing things are about. Next
it made a dive at Madeline, attracted, perhaps, by her shining eyes, and
the little gesture of panic with which she evaded it was the prettiest
thing in the world; at least, so it seemed to Henry Burr, a
broad-shouldered young fellow on the back seat, whose strong, serious
face is just now lit up by a pleasant smile.
Mr. Lewis, the minister, being seated directly under the clock, cannot
see it without turning around, wherein the audience has an advantage of
him, which it makes full use of. Indeed, so closely is the general
attention concentrated upon the time-piece, that a stranger might draw
the mistaken inference that this was the object for whose worship the
little company had gathered. Finally, making a slight concession of
etiquette to curiosity, Mr. Lewis turns and looks up at the clock, and,
again facing the people, observes, with the air of communicating a piece
of intelligence, "There are yet a few moments."
In fact, and not to put too fine a point upon it, there are five minutes
left, and the young men on the back seats, who attend prayer-meetings to
go home with the girls, are experiencing increasing qualms of alternate
hope and fear as the moment draws near when they shall put their fortune
to the test, and win or lose it all. As they furtively glance over at the
girls, how formidable they look, how superior to common affections, how
serenely and icily indifferent, as if the existence of youth of the other
sex in their vicinity at that moment was the thought furthest from their
minds! How presumptuous, how audacious, to those youth themselves now
appears the design, a little while ago so jauntily entertained, of
accompanying these dainty beings home, how weak and inadequate the
phrases of request which they had framed wherewith to accost them!
Madeline Brand is looking particularly grave, as becomes a young lady who
knows that she has three would-be escorts waiting for her just outside
the church door, not to count one or two within, between whose
conflicting claims she has only five minutes more to make up her mind.
The minister had taken up his hymn-book, and was turning over the leaves
to select the closing hymn, when some one rose in the back part of the
room. Every head turned as if pulled by one wire to see who it was, and
Deacon Tuttle put on his spectacles to inspect more closely this dilatory
person, who was moved to exhortation at so unnecessary a time.
It was George Bayley, a young man of good education, excellent training,
and once of great promise, but of most unfortunate recent experience.
About a year previous he had embezzled a small amount of the funds of a
corporation in Newville, of which he was paymaster, for the purpose of
raising money for a pressing emergency. Various circumstances showed that
his repentance had been poignant, even before his theft was discovered.
He had reimbursed the corporation, and there was no prosecution, because
his dishonest act had been no part of generally vicious habits, but a
single unaccountable deflection from rectitude. The evident intensity of
his remorse had excited general sympathy, and when Parker, the village
druggist, gave him employment as clerk, the act was generally applauded,
and all the village folk had endeavoured with one accord, by a friendly
and hearty manner, to make him feel that they were disposed to forget the
past, and help him to begin life over again. He had been converted at a
revival the previous winter, but was counted to have backslidden of late,
and become indifferent to religion. He looked badly. His face was
exceedingly pale, and his eyes were sunken. But these symptoms of mental
sickness were dominated by an expression of singular peace and profound
calm. He had the look of one whom, after a wasting illness, the fever has
finally left; of one who has struggled hard, but whose struggle is over.
And his voice, when he began to speak, was very soft and clear.
"If it will not be too great an inconvenience," he said; "I should like
to keep you a few minutes while I talk about myself a little. You
remember, perhaps, that I professed to be converted last winter. Since
then I am aware that I have shown a lack of interest in religious
matters, which has certainly justified you in supposing that I was either
hasty or insincere in my profession. I have made my arrangements to leave
you soon, and should be sorry to have that impression remain on the minds
of my friends. Hasty I may have been, but not insincere. Perhaps you will
excuse me if I refer to an unpleasant subject, but I can make my meaning
clearer by reviewing a little of my unfortunate history."
The suavity with which he apologized for alluding to his own ruin, as if
he had passed beyond the point of any personal feeling in the matter, had
something uncanny and creeping in its effect on the listeners, as if they
heard a dead soul speaking through living lips.
"After my disgrace," pursued the young man in the same quietly
explanatory tone, "the way I felt about myself was very much, I presume,
as a mechanic feels, who by an unlucky stroke has hopelessly spoiled the
looks of a piece of work, which he nevertheless has got to go on and
complete as best he can. Now you know that in order to find any pleasure
in his work, the workman must be able to take a certain amount of pride
in it. Nothing is more disheartening for him than to have to keep on with
a job with which he must be disgusted every time he returns to it, every
time his eye glances it over. Do I make my meaning clear? I felt like
that beaten crew in last week's regatta, which, when it saw itself
hopelessly distanced at the very outset, had no pluck to row out the
race, but just pulled ashore and went home.
"Why, I remember when I was a little boy in school, and one day made a
big blot on the very first page of my new copybook, that I didn't have
the heart to go on any further, and I recollect well how I teased my
father to buy me a new book, and cried and sulked until he finally took
his knife and neatly cut out the blotted page. Then I was comforted and
took heart, and I believe I finished that copybook so well that the
teacher gave me the prize.
"Now you see, don't you," he continued, the ghost of a smile glimmering
about his eyes, "how it was that after my disgrace I couldn't seem to
take an interest any more in anything? Then came the revival, and that
gave me a notion that religion might help me. I had heard, from a child,
that the blood of Christ had a power to wash away sins and to leave one
white and spotless with a sense of being new and clean every whit. That
was what I wanted, just what I wanted. I am sure that you never had a
more sincere, more dead-in-earnest convert than I was."
He paused a moment, as if in mental contemplation, and then the words
dropped slowly from his lips, as a dim self-pitying smile rested on his
haggard face.
"I really think you would be sorry for me if you knew how very bitter was
my disappointment when I found that, these bright promises were only
figurative expressions which I had taken literally. Doubtless I should
not have fallen into such a ridiculous mistake if my great need had not
made my wishes fathers to my thoughts. Nobody was at all to blame but
myself; nobody at all. I'm blaming no one. Forgiving sins, I should have
known, is not blotting, them out. The blood of Christ only turns them red
instead of black. It leaves them in the record. It leaves them in the
memory. That day when I blotted my copybook at school, to have had the
teacher forgive me ever so kindly would not have made me feel the least
bit better so long as the blot was there. It wasn't any penalty from
without, but the hurt to my own pride which the spot made, that I wanted
taken away, so I might get heart to go on. Supposing one of you--and
you'll excuse me for asking you to put yourself a moment in my place--had
picked a pocket. Would it make a great deal of difference in your state
of mind that the person whose pocket you had picked kindly forgave you,
and declined to prosecute? Your offence against him was trifling, and
easily repaired. Your chief offence was against yourself, and that was
irreparable. No other person with his forgiveness can mediate between you
and yourself. Until you have been in such a fix, you can't imagine,
perhaps, how curiously impertinent it sounds to hear talk about somebody
else forgiving you for ruining yourself. It is like mocking."
The nine o'clock bell pealed out from the mill tower.
"I am trespassing on your kindness, but I have only a few more words to
say. The ancients had a beautiful fable about the water of Lethe, in
which the soul that was bathed straightway forgot all that was sad and
evil in its previous life; the most stained, disgraced, and mournful of
souls coming forth fresh, blithe, and bright as a baby's. I suppose my
absurd misunderstanding arose from a vague notion that the blood of
Christ had in it something like this virtue of Lethe water. Just think
how blessed a thing for men it would be if such were indeed the case, if
their memories could be cleansed and disinfected at the same time their
hearts were purified! Then the most disgraced and ashamed might live good
and happy lives again. Men would be redeemed from their sins in fact, and
not merely in name. The figurative promises of the Gospel would become
literally true. But this is idle dreaming. I will not keep you," and,
checking himself abruptly, he sat down.
The moment he did so, Mr. Lewis rose and pronounced the benediction,
dismissing the meeting without the usual closing hymn. He was afraid that
something might be said by Deacon Tuttle or Deacon Miller, who were good
men, but not very subtile in their spiritual insight, which would still
further alienate the unfortunate young man. His own intention of finding
opportunity for a little private talk with him after the meeting was,
however, disappointed by the promptness with which Bayley left the room.
He did not seem to notice the sympathetic faces and out-stretched hands
around him. There was a set smile on his face, and his eyes seemed to
look through people without seeing them. There was a buzz of conversation
as the people began to talk together of the decided novelty in the line
of conference-meeting exhortations to which they had just listened. The
tone of almost all was sympathetic, though many were shocked and pained,
and others declared that they did not understand what he had meant. Many
insisted that he must be a little out of his head, calling attention to
the fact that he looked so pale. None of these good hearts were half so
much offended by anything heretical in the utterances of the young man as
they were stirred with sympathy for his evident discouragement. Mr. Lewis
was perhaps the only one who had received a very distinct impression of
the line of thought underlying his words, and he came walking down the
aisle with his head bent and a very grave face, not joining any of the
groups which were engaged in talk. Henry Burr was standing near the door,
his hat in his hand, watching Madeline out of the corners of his eyes, as
she closed the melodeon and adjusted her shawl.
"Good-evening, Henry," said Mr. Lewis, pausing beside the young man. "Do
you know whether anything unpleasant has happened to George lately to
account for what he said to-night?"
"I do not, sir," replied Henry.
"I had a fancy that he might have been slighted by some one, or given the
cold shoulder. He is very sensitive."
"I don't think any one in the village would slight him," said Henry.
"I should have said so too," remarked the minister, reflectively. "Poor
boy, poor boy! He seems to feel very badly, and it is hard to know how to
cheer him."
"Yes, sir--that is--certainly," replied Henry incoherently, for
Madeline was now coming down the aisle.
In his own preoccupation not noticing the young man's, Mr. Lewis passed
out.
As she approached the door Madeline was talking animatedly with another
young lady.
"Good-evening," said Henry.
"Poor fellow!" continued Madeline to her companion, "he seemed quite
hopeless."
"Good-evening," repeated Henry.
Looking around, she appeared to observe him for the first time.
"Good-evening," she said.
"May I escort you home?" he asked, becoming slightly red in the face.
She looked at him for a moment as if she could scarcely believe her ears
that such an audacious proposal had been made to her. Then she said, with
a bewitching smile--
"I shall be much obliged."
As he drew her arm beneath his own the contact diffused an ecstatic
sensation of security through his stalwart but tremulous limbs. He had
got her, and his tribulations were forgotten. For a while they walked
silently along the dark streets, both too much impressed by the tragic
suggestions of poor Bayley's outbreak to drop at once into trivialities.
For it must be understood that Madeline's little touch of coquetry had
been merely instinctive, a sort of unconscious reflex action of the
feminine nervous system, quite consistent with very lugubrious
engrossments.
To Henry there was something strangely sweet in sharing with her for the
first time a mood of solemnity, seeing that their intercourse had always
before been in the vein of pleasantry and badinage common to the first
stages of courtships. This new experience appeared to dignify their
relation, and weave them together with a new strand. At length she said--
"Why didn't you go after poor George and cheer him up instead of going
home with me? Anybody could have done that."
"No doubt," replied Henry, seriously; "but, if I'd left anybody else to
do it, I should have needed cheering up as much as George does."
"Dear me," she exclaimed, as a little smile, not exactly of vexation,
curved her lips under cover of the darkness, "you take a most
unwarrantable liberty in being jealous of me. I never gave you nor
anybody else any right to be, and I won't have it!"
"Very well. It shall be just as you say," he replied. The sarcastic
humility of his tone made her laugh in spite of herself, and she
immediately changed the subject, demanding--
"Where is Laura to-night?"
"She's at home, making cake for the picnic," he said.
"The good girl! and I ought to be making some, too. I wonder if poor
George will be at the picnic?"
"I doubt it," said Henry. "You know he never goes to any sort of party.
The last time I saw him at such a place was at Mr. Bradford's. He was
playing whist, and they were joking about cheating. Somebody said--Mr.
Bradford it was--'I can trust my wife's honesty. She doesn't know enough
to cheat, but I don't know about George.' George was her partner.
Bradford didn't mean any harm; he forgot, you see. He'd have bitten his
tongue off otherwise sooner than have said it. But everybody saw the
application, and there was a dead silence. George got red as fire, and
then pale as death. I don't know how they finished the hand, but
presently somebody made an excuse, and the game was broken off."
"Oh, dear! dear! That was cruel! cruel! How could Mr. Bradford do it? I
should think he would never forgive himself! never!" exclaimed Madeline,
with an accent of poignant sympathy, involuntarily pressing Henry's arm,
and thereby causing him instantly to forget all about George and his
misfortunes, and setting his heart to beating so tumultuously that he was
afraid she would notice it and be offended. But she did not seem to be
conscious of the intoxicating effluence she was giving forth, and
presently added, in a tone of sweetest pity--
"He used to be so frank and dashing in his manner, and now when he meets
one of us girls on the street he seems so embarrassed, and looks away or
at the ground, as if he thought we should not like to bow to him, or
meant to cut him. I'm sure we'd cut our heads off sooner. It's enough to
make one cry, such times, to see how wretched he is, and so sensitive
that no one can say a word to cheer him. Did you notice what he said
about leaving town? I hadn't heard anything about it before, had you?"
"No," said Henry, "not a word. Wonder where he's going. Perhaps he thinks
it will be easier for him in some place where they don't know him."
They walked on in silence a few moments, and then Madeline said, in a
musing tone--
"How strange it would seem if one really could have unpleasant things
blotted out of their memories! What dreadful thing would you forget now,
if you could? Confess."
"I would blot out the recollection that you went boat-riding with Will
Taylor last Wednesday afternoon, and what I've felt about it ever since."
"Dear me, Mr. Henry Burr," said Madeline, with an air of excessive
disdain, "how long is it since I authorized you to concern yourself with
my affairs? If it wouldn't please you too much, I'd certainly box your
ears.
"I think you're rather unreasonable," he protested, in a hurt tone. "You
said a minute ago that you wouldn't permit me to be jealous of you, and
just because I'm so anxious to obey you that I want to forget that I ever
was, you are vexed."
A small noise, expressive of scorn, and not to be represented by letters
of the alphabet, was all the reply she deigned to this more ingenious
than ingenuous plea.
"I've made my confession, and it's only fair you should make yours," he
said next. "What remorseful deed have you done that you'd like to
forget?"
"You needn't speak in that babying tone. I fancy I could commit sins as
well as you, with all your big moustache, if I wanted to. I don't believe
you'd hurt a fly, although you do look so like a pirate. You've probably
got a goody little conscience, so white and soft that you'd die of shame
to have people see it."
"Excuse me, Lady Macbeth," he said, laughing; "I don't wish to underrate
your powers of depravity, but which of your soul-destroying sins would
you prefer to forget, if indeed any of them are shocking enough to
trouble your excessively hardened conscience?
"Well, I must admit," said Madeline, seriously, "that I wouldn't care to
forget anything I've done, not even my faults and follies. I should be
afraid if they were taken away that I shouldn't have any character left."
"Don't put it on that ground," said Henry, "it's sheer vanity that makes
you say so. You know your faults are just big enough to be beauty-spots,
and that's why you'd rather keep 'em."
She reflected a moment, and then said, decisively--
"That's a compliment. I don't believe I like 'em from you. Don't make me
any more."
Perhaps she did not take the trouble to analyse the sentiment that
prompted her words. Had she done so, she would doubtless have found it in
a consciousness when in his presence of being surrounded with so fine and
delicate an atmosphere of unspoken devotion that words of flattery sounded
almost gross.
They paused before a gate. Pushing it open and passing within, she said,
"Good-night."
"One word more. I have a favour to ask," he said. "May I take you to the
picnic?"
"Why, I think no escort will be necessary," she replied; "we go in broad
daylight; and there are no bears or Indians at Hemlock Hollow."
"But your basket. You'll need somebody to carry your basket."
"Oh yes, to be sure, my basket," she exclaimed, with an ironical accent.
"It will weigh at least two pounds, and I couldn't possibly carry it
myself, of course. By all means come, and much obliged for your
thoughtfulness."
But as she turned to go in she gave him a glance which had just enough
sweetness in it to neutralize the irony of her words. In the treatment of
her lovers, Madeline always punctured the skin before applying a drop of
sweetness, and perhaps this accounted for the potent effect it had to
inflame the blood, compared with more profuse but superficial
applications of less sharp-tongued maidens.
Henry waited until the graceful figure had a moment revealed its charming
outline against the lamp-lit interior, as she half turned to close the
door. Love has occasional metaphysical turns, and it was an odd feeling
that came over him as he walked away, being nothing less than a rush of
thankfulness and self-congratulation that he was not Madeline. For, if he
had been she, he would have lost the ecstasy of loving her, of
worshipping her. Ah, how much she lost, how much all those lose, who,
fated to be the incarnations of beauty, goodness, and grace, are
precluded from being their own worshippers! Well, it was a consolation
that she didn't know it, that she actually thought that, with her little
coquetries and exactions, she was enjoying the chief usufruct of her
beauty. God make up to the haughty, wilful darling in some other way for
missing the passing sweetness of the thrall she held her lovers in!
When Burr reached home, he found his sister Laura standing at the gate in
a patch of moonlight.
"How pretty you look to-night!" he said, pinching her round cheek.
The young lady merely shrugged her shoulders, and replied dryly--
"So she let you go home with her."
"How do you know that?" he asked, laughing at her shrewd guess.
"Because you're so sweet, you goosey, of course."
But, in truth, any such mode of accounting for Henry's favourable comment
on her appearance was quite unnecessary. Laura, with her petite, plump
figure, sloe-black eyes, quick in moving, curly head, and dark, clear
cheeks, carnation-tinted, would have been thought by many quite as
charming a specimen of American girlhood as the stately pale brunette who
swayed her brother's affections.
"Come for a walk, chicken! It is much too pretty a night to go indoors,"
he said.
"Yes, and furnish ears for Madeline's praises, with a few more reflected
compliments for pay, perhaps," she replied, contemptuously. "Besides,"
she added, "I must go into the house and keep father company. I only came
out to cool off after baking the cake. You'd better come in too. These
moonlight nights always make him specially sad, you know."
The brother and sister had been left motherless not long before, and
Laura, in trying to fill her mother's place in the household, so far as
she might, was always looking out that her father should have as little
opportunity as possible to brood alone over his companionless condition.