"I trust she does, Sister Cooper."
"You may trust every bit of it. She"s got the smartness, the same as it is in books--"
"But the gift of talents, Sister Cooper, is a dangerous gift."
"I don"t see, Brother Cross, how good things that come from G.o.d can be dangerous things."
"If I could see the books, Sister Cooper;--I say not that they are evil--"
John Cross began in tones that denoted something like despair; certainly dissatisfaction was in them, when Alfred Stevens, who had long since tired of what was going on, heard a light footfall behind him. He turned his eyes and beheld the fair maiden, herself, the propriety of whose reading was under discussion, standing in the doorway. It appeared that she had gathered from what had reached her ears, some knowledge of what was going on, for a smile of ineffable scorn curled her cla.s.sic and n.o.bly-chiselled mouth, while her brow was the index to a very haughty volume. In turning, Alfred Stevens betrayed to her the playful smile upon his own lips--their eyes met, and that single glance established a certain understanding between them.
Her coming did not avail to stifle the subject of discussion. John Cross was too resolute in the prosecution of his supposed duty, to give up the cause he had once undertaken. He had all the inveteracy of the stout old puritan. The usual introduction over and he resumed, though he now addressed himself to the daughter rather than the mother. She scarcely heard him to the end.
"The books were my father"s, Mr. Cross; they are valuable to me on that account. They are dear to me on their own. They are almost my only companions, and though I believe you would find nothing in them which might be held detrimental, yet I must confess, if there were, I should be sorry to be made acquainted with the fact. I have not yet discovered it myself, and should be loath to have it shown by another."
"But you will let me see them, Margaret?"
"Yes, sir, whenever you please. I can have no objection to that, but if by seeing them you only desire an opportunity to say what I shall read and what not, I can only tell you that your labor will be taken in vain.
Indeed, the evil is already done. I have not a volume which I have not read repeatedly."
It is needless to add that Brother Cross was compelled to forego his book examination at the widow Cooper"s, though strongly recommended there to press it at Widow Thackeray"s. Alfred Stevens was a mute observer during the interview, which did not last very long after the appearance of Margaret. He was confirmed in all his previous impressions of her beauty, nor did the brevity of the conference prevent him from perceiving her intense self-esteem, which under certain influences of temperament is only another name for vanity. Besides they had exchanged glances which were volumes, rendering unnecessary much future explanation. She had seen that he was secretly laughing at the simple preacher, and that was a source of sympathy between them. She was very much in the habit of doing the same thing. He, on the other hand, was very well satisfied that the daughter of such a mother must be perverse and vain; and he was moralist enough to know that there is no heart so accessible to the tempter as the proud and wilful heart. But few words had pa.s.sed between them, but those were expressive, and they both parted, with the firm conviction that they must necessarily meet again.
CHAPTER IX.
HOW THE TOAD GRINS UPON THE ALTAR.
Shall we go the rounds with our pastor? Shall we look in upon him at Mrs. Thackeray"s, while, obeying the suggestion of the widow Cooper, he purges her library of twenty volumes, casting out the devils and setting up the true G.o.ds? It is scarcely necessary. Enough to know that, under his expurgatorial finger, our beloved and bosom friend, William Shakspere, was the first to suffer. Plays! The one word was enough.
Some lying histories were permitted to escape. The name of history saved them! Robinson Crusoe was preserved as a true narrative; and Swift"s Tale of a Tub escaped, as it was a.s.sumed (there being no time to read any of the books, and in this respect John Cross showed himself much more of a professional critic than he conjectured) to be a treatise on one branch of the cooperage business, and so, important to domestic mechanics in a new country. The reader will remember the manner in which the library of the knight of La Mancha was disposed of. He would err, however, if he supposed that John Cross dismissed the books from the window, or did anything farther than simply to open the eyes of Mrs.
Thackeray to the bad quality of some of the company she kept. That sagacious lady did not think it worth while to dispute the ipse dixit of a teacher so single-minded, if not sagacious. She bowed respectfully to all his suggestions, promised no longer to bestow her smiles on the undeserving--a promise of no small importance when it is remembered that, at thirty-three, Mrs. Thackeray was for the first time a widow--and that night she might have been seen laughing heartily with Mesdames Ford and Quickly at the amorous pertinacity of the baffled knight of Eastcheap.
Under the paternal wing of John Cross, Alfred Stevens obtained the desired entree into the bosom of the flock. He was everywhere admitted with gladness--everywhere welcomed as to a home; and the unsophisticated old teacher by whose agency this was effected, congratulated his congregation and himself, on leaving the village, that he had left in it a person so full of grace, and one who, with the blessing of G.o.d, was so likely to bring about the birth of grace in others. The good old man bestowed long and repeated counsels upon his neophyte. The course of study which he prescribed was very simple. The Bible was the Alpha and the Omega--it was the essential whole. It would be well to read other books if they could be had--Clarke and Wesley were, of course, spoken of--but they could be done without. The word of G.o.d was in the one volume, and it needed no help from commentators to win its way and suffice the hungering and thirsting soul.
"If you could lay hands upon the book of sermons written by Brother Peter c.u.mmins, which his wife had printed, I"m thinking it would serve, next to G.o.d"s own blessed word, to put you in the right way. It"s been a great helping to me, Alfred Stevens, that same book of sermons; and, I reckon it"s because it"s so good a book that it"s not printed now.
I don"t see it much about. But I"ll get you one if I can, and bring or send it to you, soon enough to help you to the wisdom that you"re a seeking after. If it only wakes the spirit in you as it did in me--if it only stirs you up with the spirit of divine love--you"ll find it easy enough to understand the teachings of the holy volume. All things become clear in that blessed light. By its help you read, and by its working you inwardly digest all the needful learning. The Lord be with you, Alfred Stevens, and bring to perfect ripening your present undertaking."
"Amen!" was the solemn response of the hypocrite, but we need not say what an irreverent and unholy thought lay at the bottom of his mind in making this e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n.
Before the departure of John Cross, the latter had made terms with Squire Hinkley for the board and lodging of Brother Stevens and his horse. Hinkley would have preferred taking nothing, considering the praiseworthy purpose of the supposed theological student; but Stevens shrunk from receiving such an obligation with a feeling of pride, which yet had no scruples at practising so wretched an imposture. He insisted upon making compensation, or upon leaving the house; and, not to incur this risk, Hinkley consented to receive a weekly sum in payment; but the charge was considerably smaller, as we may suppose, than it would have been had the lodger simply appeared as an inoffensive traveller, practising no fraud and making no professions of religion.
Having effected all these arrangements, to his own satisfaction and seemingly that of all others, John Cross departed once more into the wilderness on his single-hearted ministry of love. A st.u.r.dy and an honest worker was he in the tabernacle, with a right mind if not a very wise one; and doing more good in his generation, and after the fashion of his strength, than is often permitted to the stall-fed doctors of his vocation.
The reader will suppose that the old man has been already gone some seven days. Meanwhile, the young student has fairly made himself at home in Charlemont. He has a snug room, entirely to himself, at Squire Hinkley"s, and, by the excellent care of the worthy dame, it is provided with the best bedding and the finest furniture. Her own hands sweep it clean, morning and night, for the incipient parson; she makes up the bed, and, in customary phrase, puts it in all respects to rights. His wants are antic.i.p.ated, his slightest suggestion met with the most prompt consideration; and John Cross himself, humble and unexacting as he was, might have felt some little twinges of mortal envy could he have known that his protege promised to become a much greater favorite than himself.
This, indeed, seemed very likely to be the case. A good young man in the sight of the ladies is always a more attractive person than a good old man. Dame Hinkley, though no longer young herself, remembered that she had been so, and preserved all her sympathies, in consequence, for young people. She thought Alfred Stevens so handsome, and he smiled so sweetly, and he spoke so genty, and, in short, so great had been his progress in the affections of his hostess in the brief s.p.a.ce of a single week, that we are constrained to confess ourselves rejoiced that she herself was an old woman, as well on her own account as on that of her worthy spouse.
Her good man was very well satisfied, whether from confidence or indifference, that such should be the case. Her attentions to the young stranger probably diverted them from himself. But not so with William Hinkley--the son. We have already had some glimpses of the character of this young man. We may now add that the short week"s residence of Stevens in Charlemont had increased the soreness at his heart. In that week he had seen fairly established that intimacy between his rival and the lady of his love which seemed to give the death-blow to any pretensions of his. He had seen them meet; had seen them go forth together; beheld their mutual eyes, and, turning his own inward, saw how deeply his heart was concerned in the probable sympathies of theirs.
Then, to turn to his own habitation, and to behold THAT, mother and all, devoted to the same absolute stranger; to pa.s.s unheeded in the presence of those whom he best loved--over whom natural ties gave him inalienable rights; to feel himself put aside for one only known of yesterday; to look with yearning, and meet eyes only of disregard and indifference!
Such being the suggestions of his jealous and suffering nature, it is surely no matter of wonder that the youth grew melancholy and abstracted.
Our adventurer was snugly seated in the little but select chamber which had been given him in the house of Squire Hinkley. A table, neatly spread with a cotton cover, stood before him: a travelling-portfolio was opened beneath his hand, with a broad sheet of paper, already well written over, and waiting nothing but his signature, and perhaps the postscript. He was absorbed unusually in his cogitations, and nibbled into bits the feathery end of the gray goosequill of which he had been making such excellent use. While he meditates, unseeing, we will use the liberty of an old acquaintance to scan the letter--for such it is--which he has been writing. Perhaps we shall gather from it some matters which it may concern us yet to know:--
"Dear Barnabas: The strangest adventure--positively the very strangest--that ever happened to a son of Murkey"s, will keep me from the embraces of the brethren a few weeks longer. I am benighted, bewildered, taken with art-magic, trans.m.u.ted, TRANSMOGRIFIED, not myself nor yet another, but, as they say in Mississippi, "a sort of betweenity." Fancy me suddenly become a convert to the bluest presbyterianism, as our late excellent brother Woodford became, when he found that he could not get Moll Parkinson on any other terms--and your guess will not be very far from the true one. I am suddenly touched with conviction. I have seen a light on my way from Tarsus. The scales have fallen from my eyes. I have seen the wickedness of my ways, and yours too, you dog; and, having resolved on my own repentance, I am taking lessons which shall enable me to effect yours. Precious deal of salt will it need for that! Salt river will fall, while its value rises. But the glory of the thing--think of that, my boy! What a triumph it will be to revolutionize Murkey"s!--to turnout the drinkers and smokers, and money-changers; to say, "Hem! my brethren, let us pay no more taxes to sin in this place!" There shall be no more cakes and ale. Ginger shall have no heat i" the mouth there; and, in place of smoking meats and tobacco, give you nothing but smoking methodism! Won"t that be a sight and a triumph which shall stir the dry bones in our valley--ay, and bones not so dry? There shall be a quaking of the flesh in sundry places. Flam will perish in the first fit of consternation; and if Joe Burke"s sides do not run into sop and jelly, through the mere humor of the thing, then prophecy is out of its element quite.
"Seriously, you dog, I have become a theological student! Don"t you see proofs of my progress in my unctuous phraseology. I was taken suddenly upon the highway--a brand plucked from the burning--and to be stuck up on high, still lighted, however, as a sort of lantern and lighthouse to other wayfarers--wandering rogues like yourself, who need some better lights than your own if it only be to show you how to sin decently. I am professedly a convert to the true faith, though which that is, I think, has not well been determined among you at Murkey"s, or, indeed, anywhere else. I believe the vox populi, vox Dei, still comprises the only wholesome decision which has yet been made on the subject. The popular vote here declares it to be methodism; with you it is baptism or presbyterianism--which? I am a flexible student, however, and when I meet you again at Murkey"s, shall be prepared to concur with the majority.
"But, in sober fact, I am a professor--actually recognised by my neighbors as one of the elect--set apart to be and do mighty things.
How I came so, will call for a long story, which I defer to another occasion. Enough to tell you that an accidental rencontre with a silly old preacher (whose gullet I filled with raw brandy, which I recommended to him, under another name, as a sovereign remedy against flatulence, and which nearly strangled him he took such a premeditated swallow), brought me into one of the loveliest little villages in all this western country, and there I saw many things--among others--a woman!--
"A woman!--that one word, you dog, will explain the mystery--will show you why I am thus trans.m.u.ted, TRANSMOGRIFIED, and in "a state of betweenity." Nothing less, I a.s.sure you, could make me disguise myself after the present fashion; wear the sanctimonious and sour phiz which the common law of modern religion prescribes, and keep me much longer from the pleasanter communion of such glorious imps, as I suppose, are, even now, beginning to gather in the dingy smoke-room of our sovereign Murkey. But this woman, you will ask. Ay, ay, but you shall have no answer yet. It shall be enough for you that she is a queen of Sheba, after her own fashion. A proud, imperious, pa.s.sionate creature--tall, really beautiful--and so majestic! You should see the flashing of her eyes to know what sort of a thing is moral lightning. Her face kindles up in an instant. She is an intensifier, and like most such, cursedly smart. Young too--scarce eighteen, I think; queer too--almost tyrannical at times--but full of blood, of unregulated pa.s.sions, moody, capricious, and, of course, easy game, if the sportsman knows anything of the habits of the bird. She is a country-girl, but no hoyden. Her intensity of character, her pride and great self-esteem, have made her a solitary.
Unsophisticated in some respects, she is yet not to be surprised. In solitude, and a taste for it, she has acquired a sort of moral composure which makes her secure against surprise. I am really taken with the girl, and COULD love her, I tell you--nay, do love her--so long as love can keep himself--out of a state of bondage! I do not think, at this moment, that I shall violate any of the laws of the conventicle, like small-witted Brother Woodford; though, so far as the woman is concerned, I should leave it without argument to the free vote of all the Lads of Fancy that ever gather round Murkey"s round table, if my justification for turning traitor, would not prove immeasurably more complete than his.
"So! so! There are bones enough for you to crunch, you professional bandog. I had not meant to tell you half so much. There is some danger that one may lose his game altogether, if he suffers his nose to point unnecessarily to the cover where it lies. I know what keen scents are in the club, some of which would be on my track in no time if they knew where to find me; but I shall baffle you, you villains. My post-town is fifty miles from the place where I pursue my theological studies; you are too wise to attempt a wild-goose chase. You may smack your chaps, Barney, with envy; bite them too if you please, and it will only whet my own sense of pleasure to fancy your confusion, and your hopeless denunciations in the club. I shall be back in time for term--meanwhile get the papers in readiness. Write to me at the post-town of Ellisland, and remember to address me as Alfred Stevens--nay, perhaps, you may even say, "Rev. Alfred Stevens," it will grace the externals of the doc.u.ment with a more unctuous aspect, and secure the recipient a more wholesome degree of respect. Send all my letters to this town under envelope with this direction. I wrote you twice from Somerville. Did I tell you that old Hunks has been deused liberal? I can laugh at the small terms, yet go to Murkey"s and shine through the smoke with the best of you. I solicit the prayers of the Round Table.
"Faithfully, yours, &c."
So far our profligate had written to his brother profligate, when a tap was heard at the entrance of his chamber. Thrusting the written papers into his portfolio, he rose, and opening the door discovered his hostess at the entrance.
"I came, Brother Stevens," said the old lady, "if you not too busy in your studies, to have a little talk with you, and to get your counsel upon a subject that a little distresses me. But you look as if you were busy now--"
"Not too busy, Mrs. Hinkley, to oblige you in this or in any other respect," replied the guest with suitable suavity of expression--"shall I attend you down stairs."
"Oh! no! it won"t need," said she. "I"ll take a seat with you awhile. We shall be less liable to interruption here."
Stevens scarcely repressed his smile, but the seniority of the old lady made her proceedings very innocent, however much they might have been adverse to the rules. He threw wide the door, and without more hesitation she followed him at once into the chamber.
CHAPTER X.
THE MOTHER"S GRIEFS.
The business upon which Mrs. Hinkley sought the chamber of her guest was a very simple one, and easily expressed. Not that she expressed it in few words. That is scarcely possible at any time with an ancient lady.
But the long story which she told, when compressed into intelligible form, related to her son William. She had some maternal fears on his account. The lad was a decided melancholic. His appet.i.te was bad; his looks were thin and unhappy; he lacked the usual spirit of youth; he lacked his own usual spirit. What was the cause of the change which had come over him so suddenly, she could not divine. Her anxiety was for the remedy. She had consulted Brother Cross on the subject before he departed; but that good man, after a brief examination of the patient, had freely admitted his inability to say what was the matter with him, and what was proper for his cure. To the object of this solicitude himself, he had given much good counsel, concluding finally with a recommendation to read devoutly certain chapters in Job and Isaiah.