He spoke as one who is humbled by self-accusation, yet in a manly way, as became his honorable and truthful character.
"Master Gridley," he said, "I stand convicted before you. I know too well what you are thinking of. It is true, I cannot continue my attendance on Myrtle--on Miss Hazard, for you mean her--without peril to both of us. She is not herself. G.o.d forbid that I should cease to be myself! I have been thinking of a summer tour, and I will at once set out upon it, and leave this patient in my father"s hands. I think he will find strength to visit her under the circ.u.mstances."
The Doctor went off the next morning without saying a word to Myrtle Hazard, and his father made the customary visit in his place.
That night the spirit tare her, as may well be supposed, and so the second night. But there was no help for it: her doctor was gone, and the old physician, with great effort, came instead, sat by her, spoke kindly to her, left wise directions to her attendants, and above all a.s.sured them that, if they would have a little patience, they would see all this storm blow over.
On the third night after his visit, the spirit rent her sore, and came out of her, or, in the phrase of to-day, she had a fierce paroxysm, after which the violence of the conflict ceased, and she might be called convalescent so far as that was concerned.
But all this series of nervous disturbances left her in a very impressible and excitable condition. This was just the state to invite the spiritual manipulations of one of those theological pract.i.tioners who consider that the treatment of all morbid states of mind short of raving madness belongs to them and not to the doctors. This same condition was equally favorable for the operations of any professional experimenter who would use the flame of religious excitement to light the torch of an earthly pa.s.sion. So many fingers that begin on the black keys stray to the white ones before the tune is played out!
If Myrtle Hazard was in charge of any angelic guardian, the time was at hand when she would need all celestial influences; for the Rev. Joseph Bellamy Stoker was about to take a deep interest in her spiritual welfare."
CHAPTER XII. SKIRMISHING.
"So the Rev. Joseph Bellamy Stoker has called upon you, Susan Posey, has he? And wants you to come and talk religion with him in his study, Susan Posey, does he? Religion is a good thing, my dear, the best thing in the world, and never better than when we are young, and no young people need it more than young girls. There are temptations to all, and to them as often as to any, Susan Posey. And temptations come to them in places where they don"t look for them, and from persons they never thought of as tempters. So I am very glad to have your thoughts called to the subject of religion. "Remember thy Creator in the days of thy youth."
"But Susan Posey, my dear, I think you hard better not break in upon the pious meditations of the Rev. Joseph Bellamy Stoker in his private study. A monk"s cell and a minister"s library are hardly the places for young ladies. They distract the attention of these good men from their devotions and their sermons. If you think you must go, you had better take Mrs. Hopkins with you. She likes religious conversation, and it will do her good too, and save a great deal of time for the minister, conversing with two at once. She is of discreet age, and will tell you when it is time to come away,--you might stay too long, you know. I"ve known young persons stay a good deal too long at these interviews,--a great deal too long, Susan Posey!"
Such was the fatherly counsel of Master Byles Gridley.
Susan was not very quick of apprehension, but she could not help seeing the justice of Master Gridley"s remark, that for a young person to go and break in on the hours that a minister requires for his studies, without being accompanied by a mature friend who would remind her when it was time to go, would be taking an unfair advantage of his kindness in asking her to call upon him. She promised, therefore, that she would never go without having Mrs. Hopkins as her companion, and with this a.s.surance her old friend rested satisfied.
It is altogether likely that he had some deeper reason for his advice than those with which he satisfied the simple nature of Susan Posey.
Of that it will be easier to judge after a glance at the conditions and character of the minister and his household.
The Rev. Mr. Stoker had, in addition to the personal advantages already alluded to, some other qualities which might prove attractive to many women. He had, in particular, that art of sliding into easy intimacy with them which implies some knowledge of the female nature, and, above all, confidence in one"s powers. There was little doubt, the gossips maintained, that many of the younger women of his parish would have been willing, in certain contingencies, to lift for him that other end of his yoke under which poor Mrs. Stoker was fainting, unequal to the burden.
That lady must have been some years older than her husband,--how many we need not inquire too curiously,--but in vitality she had long pa.s.sed the prime in which he was still flourishing. She had borne him five children, and cried her eyes hollow over the graves of three of them.
Household cares had dragged upon her; the routine of village life wearied her; the parishioners expected too much of her as the minister"s wife; she had wanted more fresh air and more cheerful companionship; and her thoughts had fed too much on death and sin,--good bitter tonics to increase the appet.i.te for virtue, but not good as food and drink for the spirit.
But there was another grief which lay hidden far beneath these obvious depressing influences. She felt that she was no longer to her husband what she had been to him, and felt it with something of self-reproach,--which was a wrong to herself, for she had been a true and tender wife. Deeper than all the rest was still another feeling, which had hardly risen into the region of inwardly articulated thought, but lay unshaped beneath all the syllabled trains of sleeping or waking consciousness.
The minister was often consulted by his parishioners upon spiritual matters, and was in the habit of receiving in his study visitors who came with such intent. Sometimes it was old weak-eyed Deacon Rumrill, in great iron-bowed spectacles, with hanging nether lip and tremulous voice, who had got his brain onto a muddle about the beast with two horns, or the woman that fled into the wilderness, or other points not settled to his mind in Scott"s Commentary. The minister was always very busy at such times, and made short work of his deacon"s doubts. Or it might be that an ancient woman, a mother or a grandmother in Israel, came with her questions and her perplexities to her pastor; and it was pretty certain that just at that moment he was very deep in his next sermon, or had a pressing visit to make.
But it would also happen occasionally that one of the tenderer ewe-lambs of the flock needed comfort from the presence of the shepherd. Poor Mrs. Stoker noticed, or thought she noticed, that the good man had more leisure for the youthful and blooming sister than for the more discreet and venerable matron or spinster. The sitting was apt to be longer; and the worthy pastor would often linger awhile about the door, to speed the parting guest, perhaps, but a little too much after the fashion of young people who are not displeased with each other, and who often find it as hard to cross a threshold single as a witch finds it to get over a running stream. More than once, the pallid, faded wife had made an errand to the study, and, after a keen look at the bright young cheeks, flushed with the excitement of intimate spiritual communion, had gone back to her chamber with her hand pressed against her heart, and the bitterness of death in her soul.
The end of all these bodily and mental trials was, that the minister"s wife had fallen into a state of habitual invalidism, such as only women, who feel all the nerves which in men are as insensible as telegraph-wires, can experience.
The doctor did not know what to make of her case,--whether she would live or die,--whether she would languish for years, or, all at once, roused by some strong impression, or in obedience to some unexplained movement of the vital forces, take up her bed and walk. For her bed had become her home, where she lived as if it belonged to her organism.
There she lay, a not unpleasing invalid to contemplate, always looking resigned, patient, serene, except when the one deeper grief was stirred, always arrayed with simple neatness, and surrounded with little tokens that showed the constant presence with her of tasteful and thoughtful affection. She did not know, n.o.body could know, how steadily, how silently all this artificial life was draining the veins and blanching the cheek of her daughter Bathsheba, one of the everyday, air-breathing angels without nimbus or aureole who belong to every story which lets us into a few households, as much as the stars and the flowers belong to everybody"s verses.
Bathsheba"s devotion to her mother brought its own reward, but it was not in the shape of outward commendation. Some of the more censorious members of her father"s congregation were severe in their remarks upon her absorption in the supreme object of her care. It seems that this had prevented her from attending to other duties which they considered more imperative. They did n"t see why she shouldn"t keep a Sabbath-school as well as the rest, and as to her not comin" to meetin" three times on Sabbath day like other folks, they couldn"t account for it, except because she calculated that she could get along without the means of grace, bein" a minister"s daughter. Some went so far as to doubt if she had ever experienced religion, for all she was a professor. There was a good many indulged a false hope. To this, others objected her life of utter self-denial and entire surrender to her duties towards her mother as some evidence of Christian character. But old Deacon Rumrill put down that heresy by showing conclusively from Scott"s Commentary on Romans xi. 1-6, that this was altogether against her chance of being called, and that the better her disposition to perform good works, the more unlikely she was to be the subject of saving grace. Some of these severe critics were good people enough themselves, but they loved active work and stirring companionship, and would have found their real cross if they had been called to sit at an invalid"s bedside.
As for the Rev. Mr. Stoker, his duties did not allow him to give so much time to his suffering wife as his feelings would undoubtedly have prompted. He therefore relinquished the care of her (with great reluctance we may naturally suppose) to Bathsheba, who had inherited not only her mother"s youthful smile, but that self-forgetfulness which, born with some of G.o.d"s creatures, is, if not "grace," at least a manifestation of native depravity which might well be mistaken for it.
The intimacy of mother and daughter was complete, except on a single point. There was one subject on which no word ever pa.s.sed between them.
The excuse of duties to others was by a tacit understanding a mantle to cover all short-comings in the way of attention from the husband and father, and no word ever pa.s.sed between them implying a suspicion of the loyalty of his affections. Bathsheba came at last so to fill with her tenderness the s.p.a.ce left empty in the neglected heart, that her mother only spoke her habitual feeling when she said, "I should think you were in love with me, my darling, if you were not my daughter."
This was a dangerous state of things for the minister. Strange suggestions and unsafe speculations began to mingle with his dreams and reveries. The thought once admitted that another"s life is becoming superfluous and a burden, feeds like a ravenous vulture on the soul.
Woe to the man or woman whose days are pa.s.sed in watching the hour-gla.s.s through which the sands run too slowly for longings that are like a skulking procession of bloodless murders! Without affirming such horrors of the Rev. Mr. Stoker, it would not be libellous to say that his fancy was tampering with future possibilities, as it constantly happens with those who are getting themselves into training for some act of folly, or some crime, it may be, which will in its own time evolve itself as an idea in the consciousness, and by and by ripen into fact.
It must not be taken for granted that he was actually on the road to some fearful deed, or that he was an utterly lost soul. He was ready to yield to temptation if it came in his way; he would even court it, but he did not shape out any plan very definitely in his mind, as a more desperate sinner would have done. He liked the pleasurable excitement of emotional relations with his pretty lambs, and enjoyed it under the name of religious communion. There is a border land where one can stand on the territory of legitimate instincts and affections, and yet be so near, the pleasant garden of the Adversary, that his dangerous fruits and flowers are within easy reach. Once tasted, the next step is like to be the scaling of the wall. The Rev. Mr. Stoker was very fond of this border land. His imagination was wandering over it too often when his pen was travelling almost of itself along the weary parallels of the page before him. All at once a blinding flash would come over him the lines of his sermon would run together, the fresh ma.n.u.script would shrivel like a dead leaf, and the rows of hard-hearted theology on the shelves before him, and the broken-backed Concordance, and the Holy Book itself, would fade away as he gave himself up to the enchantment of his delirious dream.
The reader will probably consider it a discreet arrangement that pretty Susan Posey should seek her pastor in grave company. Mrs. Hopkins willingly consented to the arrangement which had been proposed, and agreed to go with the young lady on her visit to the Rev. Mr. Stoker"s study. They were both arrayed in their field-day splendors on this occasion. Susan was lovely in her light curls and blue ribbons, and the becoming dress which could not help betraying the modestly emphasized crescendos and gently graded diminuendos of her figure. She was as round as if she had been turned in a lathe, and as delicately finished as if she had been modelled for a Flora. She had naturally an airy toss of the head and a springy movement of the joints, such as some girls study in the gla.s.s (and make dreadful work of it), so that she danced all over without knowing it, like a little lively bobolink on a bulrush. In short, she looked fit to spoil a homily for Saint Anthony himself.
Mrs. Hopkins was not less perfect in her somewhat different style. She might be called impressive and imposing in her grand-costume, which she wore for this visit. It was a black silk dress, with a c.r.a.pe shawl, a firmly defensive bonnet, and an alpaca umbrella with a stern-looking and decided k.n.o.b presiding as its handle. The dried-leaf rustle of her silk dress was suggestive of the ripe autumn of life, bringing with it those golden fruits of wisdom and experience which the grave teachers of mankind so justly prefer to the idle blossoms of adolescence.
It is needless to say that the visit was conducted with the most perfect propriety in all respects. Mrs. Hopkins was disposed to take upon herself a large share of the conversation. The minister, on the other hand, would have devoted himself more particularly to Miss Susan, but, with a very natural make-believe obtuseness, the good woman drew his fire so constantly that few of his remarks, and hardly any of his insinuating looks, reached the tender object at which they were aimed.
It is probable that his features or tones betrayed some impatience at having thus been foiled of his purpose, for Mrs. Hopkins thought he looked all the time as if he wanted to get rid of her. The three parted, therefore, not in the best humor all round. Mrs. Hopkins declared she"d see the minister in Jericho before she"d fix herself up as if she was goin" to a weddin" to go and see him again. Why, he did n"t make any more of her than if she"d been a tabby-cat. She believed some of these ministers thought women"s souls dried up like peas in a pod by the time they was forty year old; anyhow, they did n"t seem to care any great about "em, except while they was green and tender. It was all Miss Se-usan, Miss Se-usan, Miss Se-usan, my dear! but as for her, she might jest as well have gone with her ap.r.o.n on, for any notice he took of her. She did n"t care, she was n"t goin" to be left out when there was talkin" goin" on, anyhow.
Susan Posey, on her part, said she did n"t like him a bit. He looked so sweet at her, and held his head on one side,--law! just as if he had been a young beau! And,--don"t tell,--but he whispered that he wished the next time I came I wouldn"t bring that Hopkins woman!
It would not be fair to repeat what the minister said to himself; but we may own as much as this, that, if worthy Mrs. Hopkins had heard it, she would have treated him to a string of adjectives which would have greatly enlarged his conceptions of the female vocabulary.
CHAPTER XIII. BATTLE.
In tracing the history of a human soul through its commonplace nervous perturbations, still more through its spiritual humiliations, there is danger that we shall feel a certain contempt for the subject of such weakness. It is easy to laugh at the erring impulses of a young girl; but you who remember when_______ _________, only fifteen years old, untouched by pa.s.sion, unsullied in name, was found in the shallow brook where she had sternly and surely sought her death,--(too true! too true!--ejus animae Jesu miserere!--but a generation has pa.s.sed since then,)--will not smile so scornfully.
Myrtle Hazard no longer required the physician"s visits, but her mind was very far from being poised in the just balance of its faculties. She was of a good natural const.i.tution and a fine temperament; but she had been overwrought by all that she had pa.s.sed through, and, though happening to have been born in another land, she was of American descent. Now, it has long been noticed that there is something in the influences, climatic or other, here prevailing, which predisposes to morbid religious excitement. The graver reader will not object to seeing the exact statement of a competent witness belonging to a by-gone century, confirmed as it is by all that we see about us.
"There is no Experienced Minister of the Gospel who hath not in the Cases of Tempted Souls often had this Experience, that the ill Cases of their distempered Bodies are the frequent Occasion and Original of their Temptations." "The Vitiated Humours in many Persons, yield the Steams whereinto Satan does insinuate himself, till he has gained a sort of Possession in them, or at least an Opportunity to shoot into the Mind as many Fiery Darts as may cause a sad Life unto them; yea, "t is well if Self-Murder be not the sad end into which these hurried. People are thus precipitated. New England, a country where Splenetic Maladies are prevailing and pernicious, perhaps above any other, hath afforded Numberless Instances, of even pious People, who have contracted these Melancholy Indispositions which have unhinged them from all Service or Comfort; yea, not a few Persons have been hurried thereby to lay Violent Hands upon themselves at the last. These are among the unsearchable Judgments of G.o.d!"
Such are the words of the Rev. Cotton Mather.
The minister had hardly recovered from his vexatious defeat in the skirmish where the Widow Hopkins was his princ.i.p.al opponent, when he received a note from Miss Silence Withers, which promised another and more important field of conflict. It contained a request that he would visit Myrtle Hazard, who seemed to be in a very excitable and impressible condition, and who might perhaps be easily brought under those influences which she had resisted from her early years, through inborn perversity of character.
When the Rev. Mr. Stoker received this note, he turned very pale,--which was a bad sign. Then he drew a long breath or two, and presently a flush tingled up to his cheek, where it remained a fixed burning glow. This may have been from the deep interest he felt in Myrtle"s spiritual welfare; but he had often been sent for by aged sinners in more immediate peril, apparently, without any such disturbance of the circulation.
To know whether a minister, young or still in flower; is in safe or dangerous paths, there are two psychometers, a comparison between which will give as infallible a return as the dry and wet bulbs of the ingenious "Hygrodeik." The first is the black broadcloth forming the knees of his pantaloons; the second, the patch of carpet before his mirror. If the first is unworn and the second is frayed and threadbare, pray for him. If the first is worn and shiny, while the second keeps its pattern and texture, get him to pray for you.
The Rev. Mr. Stoker should have gone down on his knees then and there, and sought fervently for the grace which he was like to need in the dangerous path just opening before him. He did not do this; but he stood up before his looking-gla.s.s and parted his hair as carefully as if he had been separating the saints of his congregation from the sinners, to send the list to the statistical columns of a religious newspaper. He selected a professional neckcloth, as spotlessly pure as if it had been washed in innocency, and adjusted it in a tie which was like the white rose of Sharon. Myrtle Hazard was, he thought, on the whole, the handsomest girl he had ever seen; Susan Posey was to her as a b.u.t.tercup from the meadow is to a tiger-lily. He, knew the nature of the nervous disturbances through which she had been pa.s.sing, and that she must be in a singularly impressible condition. He felt sure that he could establish intimate spiritual relations with her by drawing out her repressed sympathies, by feeding the fires of her religious imagination, by exercising all those lesser arts of fascination which are so familiar to the Don Giovannis, and not always unknown to the San Giovannis.
As for the hard doctrines which he used to produce sensations with in the pulpit, it would have been a great pity to worry so lovely a girl, in such a nervous state, with them. He remembered a savory text about being made all things to all men, which would bear application particularly well to the case of this young woman. He knew how to weaken his divinity, on occasion, as well as an old housewife to weaken her tea, lest it should keep people awake.
The Rev. Mr. Stoker was a man of emotions. He loved to feel his heart beat; he loved all the forms of non-alcoholic drunkenness, which are so much better than the vinous, because they taste themselves so keenly, whereas the other (according to the statement of experts who are familiar with its curious phenomena) has a certain sense of unreality connected with it. He delighted in the reflex stimulus of the excitement he produced in others by working on their feelings. A powerful preacher is open to the same sense of enjoyment--an awful, tremulous, goose-flesh sort of state, but still enjoyment--that a great tragedian feels when he curdles the blood of his audience.
Mr. Stoker was noted for the vividness of his descriptions of the future which was in store for the great bulk of his fellow-townsmen and fellow-worlds-men. He had three sermons on this subject, known to all the country round as the sweating sermon, the fainting sermon, and the convulsion-fit sermon, from the various effects said to have been produced by them when delivered before large audiences. It might be supposed that his reputation as a terrorist would have interfered with his attempts to ingratiate himself with his young favorites. But the tragedian who is fearful as Richard or as Iago finds that no hindrance to his success in the part of Romeo. Indeed, women rather take to terrible people; prize-fighters, pirates, highwaymen, rebel generals, Grand Turks, and Bluebeards generally have a fascination for the s.e.x; your virgin has a natural instinct to saddle your lion. The fact, therefore, that the young girl had sat under his tremendous pulpitings, through the sweating sermon, the fainting sermon, and the convulsion-fit sermon, did not secure her against the influence of his milder approaches.
Myrtle was naturally surprised at receiving a visit from him; but she was in just that unbalanced state in which almost any impression is welcome. He showed so much interest, first in her health, then in her thoughts and feelings, always following her lead in the conversation, that before he left her she felt as if she had made a great discovery; namely, that this man, so formidable behind the guns of his wooden bastion, was a most tenderhearted and sympathizing person when he came out of it unarmed. How delightful he was as he sat talking in the twilight in low and tender tones, with respectful pauses of listening, in which he looked as if he too had just made a discovery,--of an angel, to wit, to whom he could not help unbosoming his tenderest emotions, as to a being from another sphere!
It was a new experience to Myrtle. She was all ready for the spiritual manipulations of an expert. The excitability which had been showing itself in spasms and strange paroxysms had been transferred to those nervous centres, whatever they may be, cerebral or ganglionic, which are concerned in the emotional movements of the religious nature. It was taking her at an unfair disadvantage, no doubt. In the old communion, some priest might have wrought upon her while in this condition, and we might have had at this very moment among us another Saint Theresa or Jacqueline Pascal. She found but a dangerous subst.i.tute in the spiritual companionship of a saint like the Rev. Joseph Bellamy Stoker.