So he took some fresh paper, and wrote, instead of his lurid text from Hebrews, "Ye shall be my sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty."
But when Helen went out of the study, she thought very little of sermons or doctrines. John filled her mind, and she had no room for wondering about his beliefs; he could believe anything he chose; he was hers,--that was enough.
She went into her small kitchen, the smile still lingering upon her lips, and through its open doorway saw her little maid, Alfaretta, out in the sunny garden at the back of the house. She had an armful of fresh white tea-towels, which had been put out to dry on the row of gooseberry bushes at the end of the garden, and was coming up the path, singing cheerily, with all the force of her strong young lungs. Helen caught the words as she drew near:--
"My thoughts on awful subjects roll, d.a.m.nation and the dead.
What horrors seize the guilty soul, Upon the dying bed!
"Where endless crowds of sinners lie, And darkness makes their chains, Tortured with keen despair they cry, Yet wait for fiercer pains!"
"Oh, Alfaretta!" her mistress cried, in indignant astonishment. "How can you say such terrible words!" Alfaretta stood still, in open-mouthed amazement, an injured look in her good-natured blue eyes. The incongruity of this rosy-faced, happy girl, standing in the sunshine, with all the scents and sounds of a July day about her, and singing in her cheerful voice these hopeless words, almost made Helen smile; but she added gravely, "I hope you will not sing that again. I do not like it."
"But ma"am--but Mrs. Ward," said the girl, plainly hurt at the reproof, "I was practicing. I belong to the choir."
Alfaretta had dropped the tea-towels, hot with sunshine and smelling of clover-blossoms, upon her well-scoured dresser, and then turned and looked at her mistress reproachfully. "I don"t know what I am going to do if I can"t practice," she said.
"You don"t mean to say you sing that in church?" cried Helen. "Where do you go?"
"Why, I go to your church," said the still injured Alfaretta,--"to Mr.
Ward"s. We"re to have that hymn on Sabbath"--
"Oh, there must be some mistake," remonstrated Helen. "I"m sure Mr. Ward did not notice that verse."
"But it"s all like that; it says"--
"Don"t tell me any more," Helen said. "I"ve heard enough. I had no idea such awful words were written." Then she stopped abruptly, feeling her position as the preacher"s wife in a way of which she had never thought.
Alfaretta"s father was an elder in John"s church, which gave her a certain ease in speaking to her mistress that did not mean the slightest disrespect.
"Is it the words of it you don"t like?" said Alfaretta, rather relieved, since her singing had not been criticised.
"Yes," Helen answered, "it is the words. Don"t you see how dreadful they are?"
Alfaretta stood with her plump red hands on her hips, and regarded Mrs.
Ward with interest. "I hadn"t ever thought of "em," she said. "Yes, ma"am. I suppose they are awful bad," and swinging back and forth on her heels, her eyes fixed meditatively on the ceiling, she said,--
""Then swift and dreadful she descends Down to the fiery coast, Amongst abominable fiends"--
Yes, that does sound dreadful. Worst of it is, you get used to "em, and don"t notice "em much. Why, I"ve sung that hymn dozens of times in church, and never thought of the meanin". And there"s Tom Davis: he drinks most of the time, but he has sung once or twice in the choir (though he ain"t been ever converted yet, and he is really terrible wicked; don"t do nothin" but swear and drink). But I don"t suppose he noticed the words of this hymn,--though I know he sung it,--for he keeps right on in his sin; and he couldn"t, you know, Mrs. Ward, if that hymn was true to him."
Helen left Alfaretta to reflect upon the hymn, and went back to the study; but the door was shut, and she heard the scratching of her husband"s pen. She turned away, for she had lived in a minister"s household, and had been brought up to know that nothing must disturb a man who was writing a sermon. But John had hurriedly opened the door.
"Did you want to speak to me, dearest?" he said, standing at the foot of the stairs, his pen still between his fingers. "I heard your step."
"But I must not interrupt you," she answered, smiling at him over the bal.u.s.ters.
"You never could interrupt me. Come into the study and tell me what it is."
"Only to ask you about a hymn which Alfaretta says is to be sung on Sunday," Helen said. "Of course there is some mistake about it, but Alfaretta says the choir has been practicing it, and I know you would not want it."
"Do you remember what it was, dear?"
"I can"t quote it," Helen answered, "but it began something about "d.a.m.nation and the dead.""
"Oh, yes, I know;" and then he added, slowly, "Why don"t you like it, Helen?"
She looked at him in astonishment. "Why, it"s absurd; it"s horrible."
John was silent for a few moments, and then he sighed: "We will not sing it, dear."
"But, John," she cried, "how could such a hymn ever have been printed? Of course I know people used to think such things, but I had no idea anybody thought of h.e.l.l in that literal way to-day, or that h.e.l.l itself was a real belief to very many people; however, I suppose, if such hymns are printed, the doctrine is still taught?"
"Yes," John said, "it is as real to-day as G.o.d himself,--as it always has been and must be; and it is believed by Christians as earnestly as ever.
We cannot help it, Helen."
Helen looked at him thoughtfully. "It is very terrible; but oh, John, what sublime faith, to be able to believe G.o.d capable of such awful cruelty, and yet to love and trust Him!"
John"s face grew suddenly bright. ""Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him,"" he said, with the simplicity of a.s.surance. But when he went back again to his sermon, he was convinced that he had been wise to put off for a little while the instruction in doctrine of which his wife"s soul stood in such sore need.
"I was right," he thought; "the Light must come gradually, the blaze of truth at once would blind her to the perfection of justice. She would not be able to understand there was mercy, too."
So the choir was told the hymn would be "Welcome, sweet day of rest,"
which, after all, was much better suited to the sermon.
CHAPTER V.
Why the Misses Woodhouse, and Mr. Dale, and Mr. Denner should go to the rectory for their Sat.u.r.day night games of whist was never very clear to any of them. The rector did not understand the game, he said, and it was perhaps to learn that he watched every play so closely. Lois, of course, had no part in it, for Mrs. Dale was always ready to take a hand, if one of the usual four failed. Mrs. Dale was too impatient to play whist from choice, but she enjoyed the consciousness of doing a favor.
Lois"s only occupation was to be useful. Ashurst was strangely behind the times in thinking that it was a privilege, as it ought to be a pleasure, for young people to wait upon their elders and betters.
True, Mr. Denner, with old-fashioned politeness, always offered his services when Lois went for the wine and cake at close of the rubber; but the little gentleman would have been conscious of distinct surprise had she accepted them, for Lois, in his eyes, was still a little girl. This was perhaps because Mr. Denner, at sixty-two, did not realize that he had ceased to be, as he would have expressed it, "a gentleman in middle life." He had no landmarks of great emotions to show him how far the sleepy years had carried him from his youth; and life in Ashurst was very placid. There were no cases to try; property rarely went out of families which had held it when Mr. Denner"s father wrote their wills and drew up their deeds in the same brick office which his son occupied now, and it was a point of decency and honor that wills should not be disputed.
Yet Mr. Denner felt that his life was full of occupation. He had his practicing in the dim organ-loft of St. Michael"s and All Angels; and every day when dinner was over, his little nephew slipped from his chair, and stood with his hands behind him to recite his _rego regere_; then there were always his flies and rods to keep in order against the season when he and the rector started on long fishing tramps; and in the evenings, when Willie had gone to bed, and his cook was reading "The Death Beds of Eminent Saints" by the kitchen fire, Mr. Denner worked out chess problems by himself in his library, or read Cavendish and thought of next Sat.u.r.day; and besides all this, he went once a week to Mercer, and sat waiting for clients in a dark back office, while he studied his weekly paper.
But though there seemed plenty to do, sometimes Mr. Denner would sigh, and say to himself that it was somewhat lonely, and Mary was certainly severe. He supposed that was because she had no mistress to keep an eye on her.
These weekly games of whist were a great pleasure to him. The library at the rectory was cheerful, and there was a feeling of importance in playing a game at which the rector and Mrs. Dale only looked on. It was understood that the gentlemen might smoke, though the formality of asking permission of the ladies, and being urged by them, always took place. Mr.
Denner"s weekly remark to the Misses Woodhouse in this connection, as he stood ready to strike a match on the hearth of the big fireplace, was well known. "When ladies," he would say, bowing to each sister in turn, with his little heels close together and his toes turned well out,--"when ladies are so charitable to our vices, we will not reform, lest we lose the pleasure of being forgiven." Mr. Denner smoked a cigar, but Mr. Dale always drew from his pocket a quaint silver pipe, very long and slender, and with an odd suggestion of its owner about it; for he was tall and frail, and his thin white hair, combed back from his mild face, had a silvery gleam in the lamplight. Often the pipe would be between the pages of a book, from the leaves of which Lois would have to shake the loose ashes before putting it back in his pocket.
The whist party sat in high-backed chairs about a square mahogany table, whose shining top betokened much muscle on the part of Sally. At each corner was a candle in a tall silver candlestick, because Miss Deborah objected to a shadow on the board, which would have been cast by a hanging lamp. The August night was hot, and doors and windows were open for any breath of air that might be stirring in the dark garden. Max had retreated to the empty fireplace, finding the bricks cooler than the carpeted floor. All was very still, save when the emphatic sweep of a trump card made the candle flames flicker. But the deals were a diversion. Then the rector, who had tiptoed about, to look over the shoulder of each player, might say, "You didn"t answer Miss Ruth"s call, Denner;" or, "Bless my soul, Dale, what made you play a ten-spot on that second hand round? You ought not to send a boy to take a trick, sir!"
It was in one of these pauses that Mrs. Dale, drawing a shining knitting-needle out of her work, said, "I suppose you got my message this morning, brother, that Arabella Forsythe didn"t feel well enough to come to-night? I told her she should have Henry"s place, but she said she wasn"t equal to the excitement." Mrs. Dale gave a careful laugh; she did not wish to make Mrs. Forsythe absurd in the eyes of one person present.
"You offered her my place, my dear?" Mr. Dale asked, turning his blue eyes upon her. "I didn"t know that, but it was quite right."