"Once more, there is not a moment to spare," said Mrs. Romulus, turning
suddenly upon the clergyman. "The question is, Shall we put you upon our
Order of Exercises?"
"It would not sound badly," insinuated Stellato, perusing the document
in imagination: "'Chant, by the Choir; Recitation of Original Verses, by
Jane Romulus; Prayer, by the Reverend Charles Clifton'"--
"Stop!" cried the clergyman. "I decline all connection with this
business. I have no sympathy with its promoters, and I will never cower
before the mob-tyranny they evoke. If I have yet any influence in the
First Church, it shall be used in solemnly counselling all youths and
maidens of the congregation to report themselves at Mrs. Widesworth's
singing-school. The feverish paroxysms of these public meetings are
doubtless more stimulating than the humble duties of home, or the modest
pleasures at which a lady of Mrs. Widesworth's character is willing to
preside; but it is not the wholesome activity which a wise man may
promote. And I know that to the children of our public schools such
excitement is far more fatal than the cup they never coveted: their
minds should be nurtured in moderation and simplicity, even as their
bodies are best nourished upon bread and milk."
"Bread and milk!" echoed Mrs. Romulus in shrill falsetto; "say rather
loaves of plaster and alum crumbed into bowls of chalk-mixture! This is
the sort of bread and milk furnished by your barbarous civilization!
But the beginning of the end of this priestridden world has at length
come. A new era is dawning upon earth. Much-oppressed Woman asserts her
entire freedom; she insists upon her passional independence, and demands
harmonial development. She is going to get it, too! Stellato, come
along!"
We watched them up the gravel-walk, and then off upon the dusty road.
The minister meditated in silence, as one who had the gift of
penetrating beyond his fellows into the mystery of sin. Now he was
distrustful: the time might soon come when he would be desperate. I
think he almost longed for the power to become a proselyte to any active
communion, even if it proposed but a new whitewashing of the sepulchre
which hides the corruptions of society. Notwithstanding the vigorous
words he had spoken, I knew him for one who could never take hearty
satisfaction in denouncing any form of Error, because always fated to
discern behind it the muffled figure of Truth. More than most men he
felt the pressure of an awful fact which weighs upon such as are gifted
with any fine apprehension of these worlds of spirit and
matter,--namely, the impossibility of drawing anywhere in Nature those
definite lines of demarcation which the mind craves to limit and fortify
its feeble beliefs. If the boundaries of the animal and vegetable
kingdoms are hopelessly interlaced, it is only an image of the confusion
in which our blackest sins are shaded off into the sunlight of virtue.
"But why am I here?" exclaimed Clifton, suddenly starting to his feet.
"I can at, least swim a few desperate strokes against this current,
before sinking beneath it forever! I can do something to save a few
ardent maidens from this whirling water of Reform!
"And yet," he continued, after a pause, "yet many, perhaps most of these
wretched people, drained dry by their one idea, are devoted with
absolute singleness of purpose to the pursuit of an honest thing. Let us
consider whom and what we may be found fighting against. If these
subverters do not altogether prove the truth of their own opinions, do
they not at least demonstrate the error of those who totally oppose
them? Here is Miss Hurribattle,--who will not acknowledge her noble
contempt for the accidental and the transitory? I believe that woman
desires Truth as earnestly as men desire wealth or reputation!"
"It is so, indeed," I assented. "Her large nature will assimilate
whatever grandeur of idea may be found among this acid folk. After a
little time she will reproduce in saintly form whatever gives its real
vitality to this movement."
"Never!" said the clergyman; "they will put upon her the strait-jacket
of their system, and carry her off to doom."
Soon after this we went in different ways through the town.
I called upon Mrs. Widesworth, who had a culinary engagement, and could
not appear, and then walked to the top of the hill, where a number of
the faithful were heaping tar-barrels and shavings about the solitary
cider-mill. Regarding their operations from a little distance stood
Deacon Greenlaw; his face wore an expression of grim humor, underlaid by
a shrewd intelligence of the true position of affairs.
"They are making lively preparations for your holocaust," said I.
"Well, 't isn't exactly that long word neither," replied the Deacon.
Fact is, I just looked it out in the dictionary, and there they call it
'a whole burnt-offering'; but it won't mean all that with me, I can tell
you!"
"But, my dear Sir, surely you mean to go under the Juggernaut
handsomely, and not squirm in the process?"
The Deacon indulged in an interrogative whistle, and jerked his thumb in
the direction of a corn-barn which stood near the base of the hill.