The Minister's Wooing. Stowe Harriet Beecher
it; for at heart the Doctor was a bashful man, that is, he had somewhere in his mental camp that treacherous fellow whom John Bunyan anathematizes under the name of Shame. The company rose on his entrance; the men bowed and the women curtsied, and all remained standing while he addressed to each, with punctilious decorum, those inquiries in regard to health and well-being which preface a social interview. Then, at a dignified sigh from Mrs. Katy, he advanced to the table, and all following his example, stood, while, with one hand uplifted, he went through a devotional exercise which, for length, more resembled a prayer than a grace, – after which the company were seated.
‘Well, Doctor,’ said Mr. Brown, who, as a householder of substance, felt a conscious right to be first in open conversation with the minister, ‘people are beginning to make a noise about your views. I was talking with Deacon Timmins the other day down on the wharf, and he said Dr. Stiles said that it was entirely new doctrine – entirely so, – and for his part he wanted the good old ways.’
‘They say so, do they?’ said the Doctor, kindling up from an abstraction into which he seemed to be gradually subsiding. ‘Well, let them. I had rather publish new divinity than any other, and the more of it the better, —if it be but true. I should think it hardly worth while to write, if I had nothing new to say.’
‘Well,’ said Deacon Twitchel, – his meek face flushing with awe of his minister – ‘Doctor, there’s all sorts of things said about you. Now the other day I was at the mill with a load of corn, and while I was a-waitin’, Amariah Wadsworth come along with his’n; and so while we were waitin’, he says to me, “Why, they say your minister is gettin’ to be an Arminian;” and he went on a-tellin’ how old Ma’am Badger told him that you interpreted some parts of Paul’s Epistles clear on the Arminian side. You know Ma’am Badger’s a master-hand at doctrines, and she’s ’most an uncommon Calvinist.’
‘That does not frighten me at all,’ said the sturdy Doctor. ‘Supposing I do interpret some texts like the Arminians. Can’t Arminians have anything right about them? Who wouldn’t rather go with the Arminians when they are right, than with the Calvinists when they are wrong?’
‘That’s it, – you’ve hit it, Doctor,’ said Simeon Brown. ‘That’s what I always say. I say, ‘Don’t he prove it? and how are you going to answer him?’ That gravels ’em.’
‘Well,’ said Deacon Twitchel, ‘Brother Seth – you know Brother Seth, – he says you deny depravity. He’s all for imputation of Adam’s sin, you know; and I have long talks with Seth about it, every time he comes to see me; and he says, that if we did not sin in Adam, it’s givin’ up the whole ground altogether; and then he insists you’re clean wrong about the unregenerate doings.’
‘Not at all, – not in the least,’ said the Doctor, promptly.
‘I wish Seth could talk with you some time, Doctor. Along in the spring, he was down helpin’ me to lay stone fence, – it was when we was fencin’ off the south-pastur’ lot, – and we talked pretty nigh all day; and it really did seem to me that the longer we talked, the sotter Seth grew. He’s a master-hand at readin’; and when he heard that your remarks on Dr. Mayhew had come out, Seth tackled up o’ purpose and come up to Newport to get them, and spent all his time, last winter, studyin’ on it and makin’ his remarks: and I tell you, sir, he’s a tight fellow to argue with. Why, that day, what with layin’ stone wall and what with arguin’ with Seth, I come home quite beat out, – Miss Twitchel will remember.’
‘That he was!’ said his helpmeet. ‘I ’member, when he came home, says I, “Father, you seem clean used up;” and I stirred ’round lively like, to get him his tea. But he jest went into the bedroom and laid down afore supper; and I says to Cerinthy Ann, “That’s a thing I ha’n’t seen your father do since he was took with the typhus.” And Cerinthy Ann, she said she knew ’twa’n’t anything but them old doctrines, – that it was always so when Uncle Seth come down. And after tea father was kinder chirked up a little, and he and Seth set by the fire, and was a-beginnin’ it ag’in, and I jest spoke out and said, – “Now, Seth, these ’ere things doesn’t hurt you; but the Deacon is weakly, and if he gets his mind riled after supper, he don’t sleep none all night. So,” says I, “you’d better jest let matters stop where they be; ’cause,” says I, “’twon’t make no difference, for to-night, which on ye’s got the right on’t; – reckon the Lord’ll go on his own way without you; and we shall find out, by’m-by, what that is.”’
‘Mr. Scudder used to think a great deal on these points,’ said Mrs. Katy, ‘and the last time he was home he wrote out his views. I haven’t ever shown them to you, Doctor; but I should be pleased to know what you think of them.’
‘Mr. Scudder was a good man, with a clear head,’ said the Doctor; ‘and I should be much pleased to see anything that he wrote.’
A flush of gratified feeling passed over Mrs. Katy’s face; – for one flower laid on the shrine which we keep in our hearts for the dead is worth more than any gift to our living selves.
We will not now pursue our party further, lest you, Reader, get more theological tea than you can drink. We will not recount the numerous nice points raised by Mr. Simeon Brown and adjusted by the Doctor, – and how Simeon invariably declared, that that was the way in which he disposed of them himself, and how he had thought it out ten years ago.
We will not relate, either, too minutely, how Mary changed colour and grew pale and red in quick succession, when Mr. Simeon Brown incidentally remarked that the ‘Monsoon’ was going to set sail that very afternoon for her three-years’ voyage. Nobody noticed – in the busy amenities – the sudden welling and ebbing of that one poor little heart-fountain.
So we go, – so little knowing what we touch and what touches us as we talk! We drop out a common piece of news, – ‘Mr. So-and-so is dead, – Miss Such-a-one is married, – such a ship has sailed,’ – and lo, on our right hand or our left, some heart has sunk under the news silently, – gone down in the great ocean of Fate, without even a bubble rising to tell its drowning pang. And this – God help us! – is what we call living!
CHAPTER V.
THE LETTER
Mary returned to the quietude of her room. The red of twilight had faded, and the silver moon, round and fair, was rising behind the thick boughs of the apple-trees. She sat down in the window, thoughtful and sad, and listened to the crickets, whose ignorant jollity often sounds as mournfully to us mortals as ours may to superior beings. There the little hoarse, black wretches were scraping and creaking, as if life and death were invented solely for their pleasure, and the world were created only to give them a good time in it. Now and then a little wind shivered among the boughs, and brought down a shower of white petals which shimmered in the slant beams of the moonlight; and now a ray touched some tall head of grass, and forthwith it blossomed into silver, and stirred itself with a quiet joy, like a new-born saint just awaking in Paradise. And ever and anon came on the still air the soft, eternal pulsations of the distant sea, – sound mournfullest, most mysterious, of all the harpings of Nature. It was the sea, – the deep, eternal sea, – the treacherous, soft, dreadful, inexplicable sea; and he was perhaps at this moment being borne away on it, – away, away, – to what sorrows, to what temptations, to what dangers, she knew not. She looked along the old, familiar, beaten path by which he came, by which he went, and thought, ‘What if he never should come back?’ There was a little path through the orchard out to a small elevation in the pasture-lot behind, whence the sea was distinctly visible, and Mary had often used her low-silled window as a door when she wanted to pass out thither; so now she stepped out, and, gathering her skirts back from the dewy grass, walked thoughtfully along the path and gained the hill. Newport harbour lay stretched out in the distance, with the rising moon casting a long, wavering track of silver upon it; and vessels, like silver-winged moths, were turning and shifting slowly to and fro upon it, and one stately ship in full sail passing fairly out under her white canvas, graceful as some grand, snowy bird. Mary’s beating heart told her that there was passing away from her one who carried a portion of her existence with him. She sat down under