There were scores of people in Ashfield who would have been delighted to
speak consolation to the bereaved clergyman; but he was not a man to be
approached easily with the ordinary phrases of sympathy. He bore himself
too sternly under his grief. What, indeed, can be said in the face of
affliction, where the manner of the sufferer seems to say, "God has done
it, and God does all things well"? Ordinary human sympathy falls below
such a standpoint, and is wasted in the utterance.
Yet there are those, who delight in breaking in upon the serene dignity
which this condition of mind implies with a noisy proffer of
consolation, and an aggravating rehearsal of the occasion for it; as if
such comforters entertained a certain jealousy of the serenity they do
not comprehend, and were determined to test its sufficiency. Dame
Tourtelot was eminently such a person.
"It's a dreadful blow to ye, Mr. Johns," said she, "I know it is. Almiry
is a'most as much took down by it as you are. 'She was such a lovely
woman,' she says; and the poor, dear little boy,--won't you let him come
and pass a day or two with us? Almiry is very fond of children."
"Later, later, my good woman," says the parson. "I can't spare the boy
now; the house is too empty."
"Oh, Mr. Johns,--the poor lonely thing!" (And she says this, with her
hands in black mits, clasped together.) "It's a bitter blow! As I was
a-sayin' to the Deacon, 'Such a lovely young woman, and such a good
comfortable home, and she, poor thing, enjoyin' it so much!' I do hope
you'll bear up under it, Mr. Johns."
"By God's help, I will, my good woman."
Dame Tourtelot was disappointed to find the parson wincing so little as
he did under her stimulative sympathy. On returning home, she opened her
views to the Deacon in this style:--
"Tourtelot, the parson is not so much broke down by this as we've been
thinkin'; he was as cool, when I spoke to him to-day, as any man I ever
see in my life. The truth is, she was a flighty young person, noways
equal to the parson. I've been a-suspectin' it this long while; she
never, in my opinion, took a real hard hold upon him. But, Tourtelot,
you should go and see Mr. Johns; and I hope you'll talk consolingly and
Scripterally to him. It's your duty."
And hereupon she shifted the needles in her knitting, and, smoothing
down the big blue stocking-leg over her knee, cast a glance at the
Deacon which signified command. The dame was thoroughly mistress in her
own household, as well as in the households of not a few of her
neighbors. Long before, the meek, mild-mannered little man who was her
husband had by her active and resolute negotiation been made a deacon of
the parish,--for which office he was not indeed ill-fitted, being
religiously disposed, strict in his observance of all duties, and
well-grounded in the Larger Catechism. He had, moreover, certain secular
endowments which were even more marked,--among them, a wonderful
instinct at a bargain, which had been polished by Dame Tourtelot's
superior address to a wonderful degree of sharpness; and by reason of
this the less respectful of the townspeople were accustomed to say, "The
Deacon is very small at home, but great in a trade." Not that the Deacon
could by any means be called an avaricious or miserly man: he had always
his old Spanish milled quarter ready for the contribution-box upon
Collection-Sundays; and no man in the parish brought a heavier turkey to
the parson's larder on donation-days: but he could no more resist the
sharpening of a bargain than he could resist a command of his wife. He
talked of a good trade to the old heads up and down the village street
as a lad talks of a new toy.
"Squire," he would say, addressing a neighbor on the Common, "what do
you s'pose I paid for that brindle ye'rlin' o' mine? Give us a guess."
"Waael, Deacon, I guess you paid about ten dollars."
"Only eight!" the Deacon would say, with a smile that was fairly
luminous,--"and a pootty likely critter I call it for eight dollars."
"Five hogs this year," (in this way the Deacon was used to
soliloquize,)--"I hope to make 'em three hundred apiece. The
price works up about Christmas: Deacon Simmons has sold his'n at
five,--distillery-pork; that's sleezy, wastes in bilin'; folks know it:
mine, bein' corn-fed, ought to bring half a cent more,--and say, for
Christmas, six; that'll give a gain of a cent,--on five hogs, at three
hundred apiece, will be fifteen dollars. That'll pay half my pew-rent,
and leave somethin' over for Almiry, who's always wantin' fresh ribbons
about New-Year's."
The Deacon cherished a strong dread of formal visits to the parsonage:
first, because it involved his Sunday toilet, in which he was never
easy, except at conference or in his pew at the meeting-house; and next,
because he counted it necessary on such occasions to give a Scriptural
garnish to his talk, in which attempt he almost always, under the
authoritative look of the parson, blundered into difficulty. Yet
Tourtelot, in obedience to his wife's suggestion, and primed with a text
from Matthew, undertook the visit of condolence,--and, being a really
kind-hearted man, bore himself well in it. Over and over the good parson
shook his hand in thanks.
"It'll all be right," says the Deacon. "'Blessed are the mourners,' is
the Scripteral language, 'for they shall inherit the earth.'"
"No, not that, Deacon," says the minister, to whom a misquotation was
like a wound in the flesh; "the last thing I want is to inherit the
earth. 'They shall be comforted,'--that's the promise, Deacon, and I
count on it."
It was mortifying to his visitor to be caught napping on so familiar a
text; the parson saw it, and spoke consolingly. But if not strong in
texts, the Deacon knew what his strong points were; so, before leaving,
he invites a little offhand discussion of more familiar topics.
"Pootty tight spell o' weather we've been havin', Parson."
"Rather cool, certainly," says the unsuspecting clergyman.
"Got all your winter's stock o' wood in yit?"
"No, I haven't," says the parson.
"Waael, Mr. Johns, I've got a lot of pastur'-hickory cut and corded,
that's well seared over now,--and if you'd like some of it, I can let
you have it _very reasonable indeed_."
The sympathy of the Elderkins, if less formal, was none the less hearty.
The Squire had been largely instrumental in securing the settlement of
Mr. Johns, and had been a political friend of his father's. In early
life he had been engaged in the West India trade from the neighboring
port of Middletown; and on one or two occasions he had himself made the
voyage to Porto Rico, taking out a cargo of horses, and bringing back
sugar, molasses, and rum. But it was remarked approvingly in the
bar-room of the Eagle Tavern that this foreign travel had not made the
Squire proud,--nor yet the moderate fortune which he had secured by the
business, in which he was still understood to bear an interest. His
paternal home in Ashfield he had fitted up some years before with
balustrade and other architectural adornments, which, it was averred by
the learned in those matters, were copied from certain palatial
residences in the West Indies.
The Squire united eminently in himself all those qualities which a
Connecticut observer of those times expressed by the words, "right down
smart man." Not a turnpike enterprise could be started in that quarter
of the State, but the Squire was enlisted, and as shareholder or
director contributed to its execution. A clear-headed, kindly, energetic
man, never idle, prone rather to do needless things than to do nothing;
an ardent disciple of the Jeffersonian school, and in this combating
many of those who relied most upon his sagacity in matters of business;
a man, in short, about whom it was always asked, in regard to any
question of town or State policy, "What does the Squire think?" or "How
does the Squire mean to vote?" And the Squire's opinion was sure to be a
round, hearty one, which he came by honestly, and about which one who
thought differently might safely rally his columns of attack. The
opinion of Giles Elderkin was not inquired into for the sake of a tame
following-after,--that was not the Connecticut mode,--but for the sake
of discussing and toying with it: very much as a sly old grimalkin toys
with a mouse,--now seeming to entertain it kindly, then giving it a run,
then leaping after it, crunching a limb of it, bearing it off into some
private corner, giving it a new escape, swallowing it perhaps at last,
and appropriating it by long process of digestion. And even then, the
shrewd Connecticut man, if accused of modulating his own opinions after
those of the Squire, would say, "No, I allers thought so."
Such a man as Giles Elderkin is of course ready with a hearty, outspoken
word of cheer for his minister. Nay, the very religion of the Squire,
which the parson had looked upon as somewhat discursive and
human,--giving too large a place to good works,--was decisive and to the
point in the present emergency.
"It's God's doing," said he; "we must take the cup He gives us. For the
best, isn't it, Parson?"
"I do, Squire. Thank God, I can."
There was good Mrs. Elderkin--who made up by her devotion to the special
tenets of the clergyman many of the shortcomings of the Squire--insisted
upon sending for the poor boy Reuben, that he might forget his grief in
her kindness, and in frolic with the Elderkins through that famous
garden, with its huge hedges of box,--such a garden as was certainly not
to be matched elsewhere in Ashfield. The same good woman, too, sends
down a wagon-load of substantial things from her larder, for the present
relief of the stricken household; to which the Squire has added a little
round jug of choice Santa Cruz rum,--remembering the long watches of the
parson. This may shock us now; and yet it is to be feared that in our
day the sin of hypocrisy is to be added to the sin of indulgence: the
old people nestled under no cover of liver specifics or bitters. Reform
has made a grand march indeed; but the Devil, with his square bottles
and Scheidam schnapps, has kept a pretty even pace with it.