Читать книгу A Singular Life - Elizabeth Stuart Phelps - Страница 8

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“Goshamighty, stand off there! Who in—— are you?”

This candid remark was addressed by a fisherman in blue flannel shirtsleeves to a gentleman in afternoon dress. It was in the month of September, and the fleets were busy in and off the harbor of the fishing-town. The autumn trips were well under sail, and the docks and streets of Windover buzzed and reeled with crews just anchored or about to weigh. At the juncture of the principal business avenue of the town with its principal nautical street—from a date passing the memory of living citizens irreverently named Angel Alley—a fight was in brisk progress. This was so common an incident in that part of the town that the residents had paid little attention to it. But the stranger, being a stranger, had paused and asked for a policeman.

The bystanders stared.

“There ain’t none nigher’n the station,” replied a girl who was watching the fight with evident relish. She wore a pert sailor hat of soiled white straw, set on one side of her head, and carried her hands in the pockets of a crumpled tan-colored reefer. Her eyes were handsome and bold. The crowd jostled her freely, which did not seem to trouble her. “There’s a fellow just arrested,” she explained cheerfully, “for smashing his wife with a coal-hod; they’re busy with him down to the station. He fit all the way over. It took four cops to hold him. Most the folks are gone over there to see the other game. This fun here won’t be spoiled just yet awhile.”

Something in the expression with which the gentleman regarded her attracted the girl’s attention. She took her hands out of her pockets, and scanned him with a dull surprise; then, with a motion which one could not call abashed, but which fell short of her previous ease of manner, she turned her back and walked a little away towards the edge of the crowd.

The fight was at its hottest. Two men, an Italian laborer and an American fisherman, were somewhat seriously belaboring each other, to their own undisguised satisfaction and the acclamation of the bystanders. Both were evidently more or less drunk. An open grogshop gaped behind them. Similar places of entertainment, with others less easily described, lined both sides of Angel Alley, multiplying fruitfully, till the wharves joined their grimy hands and barred the way to this black fertility.

It was a windy day; the breeze was rising, and the unseen sea could be heard moaning beyond.

Just as the stranger, with the indiscretion of youth and inexperience, was about to step into the ring and try to stop the row, a child pushed through the crowd. It was a boy; a little fellow, barely four or five years old. He ducked under the elbows and between the legs of the spectators with an adroitness which proclaimed him the son of a sailor, and ran straight to the combatants, crying:

“Father! Fa—ther! Marm says to please to stop! She says to ax you to please to stop, and come home wiv you’ little boy!”

He ran between the two men, and put up his little dirty fingers upon his father’s big, clenched hand; he repeated piteously, “Father, Fa—ther, Fa—ther!”

But more than this the little fellow had not time to say. The father’s dark, red face turned a sudden, ominous purple, and before any person of them all could stay him his brutal hand had turned upon the child.

Cries of shame and horror rose from the crowd; a woman’s shriek echoed from a window across the street, and the screams of the boy pierced the bedlam. The Italian, partly sobered, had slunk back.

“Stop him! Part them! Hold him, somebody! He’ll kill the child!” yelled the bystanders, and not a man of them stirred.

“Why, it’s only a baby!” cried the girl in the reefer, running up. “He’ll murder it! Oh, if I was a man!” she raved, wringing her hands.

At that moment, before one could have lifted the eyelash to see how it fell, a well-aimed blow struck the brute beneath the ear. He fell.

Hands snatched the writhing child away; his mother’s arms and screams received him; and over the fallen man a slight, tall figure was seen to tower. The stranger had thrown down his valise, and tossed off his silk hat. His delicate face was as white as a star. He quivered with holy rage. He trampled on the fellow with one foot, and ground him down; he had the attitude of the St. Michael in Guido’s great picture. He had that scorn and all that beauty.

A geyser of oaths spurted from the prostrate ruffian. The stranger stooped, and pinned him skillfully until they ceased.

“Now,” he said calmly, “get up. Get up, I say!” He released his clenched white hand from the other’s grimy flesh.

“He’ll thresh the life outen ye!” protested a voice from the increasing crowd. “You don’t know Job Slip ’s well ’s we do. He’ll make short work on ye, sir, if you darst let go him.”

“No, he won’t,” replied the stranger quietly. “He respects a good blow when he feels it. He knows how it ought to be planted. He would do as much himself, if he saw a man killing his own child. Wouldn’t you, Job Slip?”

He stepped back fearlessly and folded his arms. The rapidly sobering sot struggled to his feet, and instinctively squared off; looked at the gentleman blindly for a moment, then dropped his huge arms.

“Goshamighty!” he said, “who in—— are you?”

He took one of the stranger’s delicate hands in his black and bleeding palms, and critically examined it.

“That? Why, my woman’s paw is stronger ’n’ bigger ’n that!” contemptuously. “And you didn’t overdo it neither. Pity! If you’d only made it manslaughter—why, I could ha’ sent ye up on my antumortim deppysition.”

“Oh, I knew better than that,” replied the stranger calmly, turning for his hat. He thought of the boxing-lessons that he used to take on the Back Bay, years ago. Some one in the crowd brushed off the hat with the back of a dusty elbow, and handed it respectfully to the gentleman. The girl in the reefer picked up his valise.

“I’ve kep’ my eye on it, for you,” she said in a softened voice.

“Well,” said Job Slip slowly, “I guess I’ll keep my eye on him.”

“Do!” answered the stranger heartily. “I wish you would. They don’t fight where I’m going.”

“Who be you, anyway?” demanded Job Slip with undisguised admiration. He had not made up his mind yet whether to spring at the other’s throat, or to offer him a drink.

“I’m in too much of a hurry to tell you now,” answered the gentleman quietly. “I’ve missed the most important engagement of my life—to save your child.”

“He’s goin’ to his weddin’,” muttered a voice behind him. The girl started the chorus of a song which he had never heard before, and was not anxious to hear again.

“You have a good voice,” he said, turning. “You can put it to a better use than that.”

She stared at him, but made him no reply. The crowd parted and scattered, and he came through into the main street.

“Sir! Sir!” called a woman’s voice from a window over his head.

The young man looked up. The mother of the little boy held the child upon the window-sill for him to see.

“He ain’t much hurt!” she cried. “I thought you’d like to know it. It’s all along of you. God go with you, sir! God bless you, sir!”

He had put on his hat, but removed it at these words, and stood uncovered before the drunkard’s wife. She could not know how much it meant to him—that day. Without looking back he strode up the street. The Italian ran out and watched him. Job Slip hesitated for a moment; then he did the same, following the young man with perplexed and sodden eyes. The Italian stood amiably beside his late antagonist. Both men had forgotten what they fought about, now. A little group from the vanishing crowd joined them. The mother in the window—a gaunt Madonna—shaded her eyes with her hand to see the departing figure of the unknown while she pressed the bruised and sobbing child against her breast. The stranger halted at the steps of the old First Church of Windover; then ran up lightly, and disappeared within the open doors.

“I’ll be split and salted!” said a young man who had not been drinking, “if I don’t believe that’s the new parson come to town!”

The speaker had black eyebrows which met in a straight and heavy line.

“I’ll be——!” said Job Slip.

The church was thronged. Citizens and strangers jostled each other in the porch, the vestibules, and the aisles. It was one of those religious festivals so dear to the heart of New England, and so perplexing to gayer people. No metropolitan play could have collected a crowd like this in Windover.

The respectability of the town was out in force. The richest fish firms, the largest ship-owners, and the oldest families shed the little light of local glory upon the occasion. Most of them, in fact, were members of the parish. Windover had what an irreverent outsider had termed her codocracy. The examination—to be followed that evening by the ordination—of the new minister was an affair of note. Windover is not the only town on the map where the social leaders are fond of patronizing whatever ecclesiastical interests are dependent on the generosity of their pockets and the importance of their names. Nothing tends to the growth of a religious sect so much as the belief that the individual is important to it.

Upon the platform, decorated by the Ladies’ Aid Society with taste, piety, and goldenrod, sat the Council called to examine and to ordain Emanuel Bayard to the ministry of Christ. These were venerable men; they drove in from the surrounding parishes in their buggies, or took the trains from remoter towns. A few city names had responded; one or two of them were eminent. The columns of the “Windover Topsail” had these already set up in display type, and the reporters in the galleries dashed them off on yellow slips of paper.

As the minister-elect, panting with his haste, ran up the steps and into the church, the first thing that he perceived was the eye of one of his Cesarea Professors fastened sternly upon him. It gave him the feeling of a naughty little boy who was late to school. This guilty sensation was not lessened by a vision of the back of his uncle’s bald head in an eminent seat among the lay delegates, and by the sight of the jeweled Swiss repeater, familiar to his infancy, too visibly suspended from Mr. Hermon Worcester’s hand. The church clock (wearing for the occasion a wreath of purple asters, which had received an unfortunate lurch to one side, and gave that pious timepiece a tipsy air) charitably maintained that Bayard was but seven minutes late. The impatience of the Council and the anxiety of the audience seemed to aver that an hour would not cover, nor eternity pardon, the young man’s delay. He dropped his valise into the hand of the sexton, and strode up the broad aisle. The dust of the street fight still showed upon his fashionable clothes. His cheeks were flushed with his fine color. His disordered hair clung to his white forehead in curls that the straitest sect of the Pharisees could not have straightened. Every woman in the audience noticed this, and liked him the better for it. But the Council was composed of straight-haired men.

Somebody beckoned him into the minister’s room to repair damages: and as he crossed the platform to do so, Bayard stooped and exchanged a few whispered words with the moderator. The wrinkled face of that gentleman changed visibly. He rose at once and said:—

“It is due to our brother and to the audience to state that your minister-elect desires me to make his apologies to this parish for a tardiness which he found to be unavoidable—morally unavoidable, I might say. And I should observe,” added the moderator, hesitating, “that I have been requested not to explain the nature of the case, but I shall take it upon myself to defy this injunction, and to state that an act of Christian mercy detained our brother. I do not think,” said the moderator, dropping suddenly from the ecclesiastical to the human tone, “that it is every man who would have done it, under the circumstances; and I do not consider it any less creditable for that.”

A sound of relief stirred through the house as the moderator sat down. The audience ceased twisting its head to look at the tipsy clock, thus enabling the Ladies’ Aid Association to get that aster wreath for the first time out of mind. Mr. Hermon Worcester’s watch went back to its comfortable fob. A smile melted across the anxious face of Professor Haggai Carruth of Cesarea. The minister-elect reappeared with plumage properly smoothed, and the proceedings of the day set in, with the usual decorum of the denomination.

It is not a ceremonious sect, that of the Congregationalism of New England; and its polity allows much diversity upon occasions like these, whose programme depends a good deal upon the preference of the moderator. Bayard’s moderator was a gray-haired, kind-hearted, plain country minister, the oldest man in the Council, and one of the best. It was not his intention to subject the young man to one of the ecclesiastical roastings at that time in vogue, and for the course of events which followed he was not responsible. This was a matter of small moment at the time; but Bayard had afterwards occasion to remember it.

He listened dreamily to the conventional preliminary exercises of the afternoon. His mind was in a turmoil which poorly prepared the young man for the intellectual and emotional strain of the day. That scene in the street flashed and faded and reappeared before him, like the dark lantern which an evil hand brings into a sacred place. The blow of the man’s fist upon the child seemed to fall crashing upon his own flesh. Across the crescendo of the chorus of the hymn the cry of the little boy ran in piteous discord. The organ rolled up the oaths of the wharves. While the good, gray-haired moderator was praying, Bayard was shocked to find that the song of the street girl ran through his burning brain. The gaunt Madonna in the window of the drunkard’s home seemed to be stamped—a dark photographic letter-head—upon the license to preach the Christian religion which he was required (with more than usual precision) to produce.

“Why,” said a sour voice suddenly at his elbow, “why do you consider yourself a child of God?”

Bayard recalled himself with a start to the fact that the personal examination of the day had begun, and that the opening shot had come from the least important and most crabbed man in the Council. And now for three quivering hours the young man stood the fire of the most ingenious ecclesiastical inquisition which had been witnessed in that part of the State for many a year.

At first it rather amused him than otherwise, and he bore it with great good nature.

He was patient beyond his years with the small clergyman from the small interior parish, whose hobby was that theological students were not properly taught their Bibles, and who had invented a precious catechism of his own, calculated to prove to the audience how little they or the candidate knew of Boanerges, Gog and Magog, and the four beasts which are the chief zoological ornaments of the Apocalypse. Having treated these burning questions satisfactorily, Bayard fenced awhile with the learned clergyman who was alive only in the dead languages, and who put the candidate through his Greek and Hebrew paces as if he had been a college boy.

Bayard had felt no serious concern as to the outcome of the examination, a mere form, a husk, a shell, with which it was not worth a man’s while to quarrel. The people of the church—he had already begun to call them his people—were enthusiastically and lovingly pledged to him. He smiled into their familiar faces over the heads of his inquisitors, and manfully and cheerfully stood his ground. All, in fact, went well enough, until the theology of the young man came under investigation. Then a cloud no bigger than a man’s tongue, if one may say so, appeared to darken the interior of Windover First Church. The oldest and deafest men in the Council pricked up their ears. The youngest and best-natured grew uneasy. The candidate’s people looked at him anxiously. His uncle flushed; Professor Carruth coughed sternly. The moderator ruled and overruled, and tried with troubled kindness to quench the warming flame of ecclesiastical censure in which many a bright, devout young life goes out.

Suddenly Bayard awoke to the fact that the smoke was curling in the fagots at his feet; that the stake was at his back, the chains upon his hands; that he was in danger of being precondemned for heresy in the hearts of those gray old men, his elder brothers in the church, and disgraced before the eyes of the people who had loved and chosen him.

The house was now so full and so still that a sigh could be heard; and when a group from the street pushed noisily in, and stood by the entrance, impatient expressions leaped from pew to pew. Bayard looked up at the disturbance. There by the green baize doors stood the Italian, Job Slip, and the young fellow (with the eyebrows) who did not drink, two or three other spectators of the fight, and the girl in the reefer. An uninvited delegation from Angel Alley, these children of the devil had crept among those godly men and women, and stared about.

“A circumstance,” complained Mr. Hermon Worcester afterwards to Professor Carruth, “which might not happen on such an occasion in our New England churches once in twenty years.”

Bayard had been singularly gentle and patient with his tormentors up to this moment. But now he gathered himself, and fought for his life like a man. Brand after brand, the inventions of theology were flung hissing upon him.

Did he believe that heathen, unacquainted with Christ, were saved?

What did he hold became of the souls of those who died in infancy?

If they happened to be born dead, what was their fate?

Explain his views on the doctrine of Justification by Faith.

State explicitly his conception of the Trinity. Had none? Ah—ah!

Were the three Persons in the Trinity separate as qualities or as natures? Did not know? Ah—ah.

State the precise nature, province, and character of each Person. Did not feel qualified to do so? Ha—hum.

What was the difference between Arianism and Socinianism?

Did the Son exist coördinate with, and yet subordinate to the Father?

What is the distinction between the attributes and the faculties of the Deity?

Did an impenitent person ever pray?

Describe the doctrine of Free Will.

Is a sinner ever able to repent, of his own choice?

Is he punished for not being able to do so?

Is the human race responsible for the guilt of Adam?

Why not?

Explain the process of sanctification, and the exact province of the Holy Spirit.

Carefully elucidate your views on Total Depravity.

Could a man—did we understand you?—become regenerate without waiting for the compelling action of the Holy Spirit?

Is there any Scriptural ground for belief in the possibility of a second probation? What? Please repeat that reply.

Did not the first sin of a child justly expose him to eternal punishment? What?

At this point in the trial, Bayard was acutely conscious of the controlled voice of Professor Carruth, who had asked no question up to that moment. Dear old Professor! he was trying to haul his favorite student out of the fire before it was too late.

“But,” he asked gently, “is not one act of sin an infinite wrong?”

“I believe it is; or it may reasonably become so.”

“Is it not a wrong committed against an Infinite Being?”

“Yes, sir, it is.”

“Does not an infinite wrong committed against an Infinite Being deserve an infinite punishment?” pleaded the Professor of Theology.

“You have taught me so, sir.”

A rustle swept the house. The stern face of the Professor melted in its sudden, winning fashion. He drew in his breath. At least, the reputation of the Department was secured!

“Do you not believe what you have been taught?”

“Professor,” said Bayard, smiling, “do you?”

It being well known that the now conservative Professor of Theology had been the liberal and the progressive of his first youth, this reply created a slight smile. But the Professor did not smile. The crisis was too serious.

“The candidate does not deny the doctrine,” he urged. “He will undoubtedly grow into it as other men have done before him.”

“Whether men are eternally damned”—began Bayard.

“Job,” whispered the Italian back by the door, “he swear at ’em!”

“No, he ain’t,” said the sober fellow. “It’s the way they talk in churches.”

“What tongue is it they do speak?” persisted the Italian.

“Blamed if I know,” whispered Job Slip with unusual decorum. “I think it’s High Dutch.”

“No, it ain’t; it’s Latin,” corrected the sober fellow. “I can make out a word now and then. They translate parts as they go along. It’s darn queer gibberish, ain’t it? I guess the natives used to talk like that in Bible times.”

“All this row,” said Job Slip, whose befuddled brain was actively busy with the personal fate of a minister who could knock him down, “all this d—— row’s along of me. It’s because he was late to meetin’!”

The Italian nodded seriously. But the girl in the reefer said:—

“Shut up there! The second round’s on, now.”

“Explain the difference between verbal and plenary inspiration,” demanded the small clergyman in a small, suspicious voice.

“There! I said it was High Dutch!” whispered Job Slip triumphantly.

“Explain the difference,” repeated the small clergyman.

The candidate explained.

“Is every word of the Old and New Testament of the Scriptures equally inspired by Almighty God?”

“Please give me your definition of inspiration,” said Bayard, wheeling upon his questioner.

The small clergyman objected that this was the candidate’s business.

“It is one of the maxims of civil law that definitions are dangerous,” replied Bayard with a smile. But it was no time for smiling, and he knew it. He parried for a little in the usual technicalities of the schools; but it was without hope or interest. He knew now how it would all end. But he was not conscious of a moment’s hesitation. His soul seemed elate, remote from his fate. He looked out across the lake of faces upturned to his. He had now grown quite pale, and the natural fairness of his skin and delicacy of his features added to the effect of transparence which his high face gave. The dullest eye in the audience observed, and the coldest lip long afterwards acknowledged, the remarkable beauty of the man. With a sudden and impressive gesture of the hand, as if he cast the whole merciless scene away from him, he stepped unexpectedly forward, and in a ringing voice he said:—

“Fathers and brothers of the church! I believe in God Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth. I believe in Jesus Christ his Son, our Lord and Saviour. I believe in the sacredness and authority of the Bible, which contains the lesson and the history of His life. I believe in the guilt and the misery of sin, and I have spent the best years of my youth in your institutions of sacred learning, seeking to be taught how to teach my fellow-men to be better. I solemnly believe in the Life Eternal, and that its happiness and holiness are the gifts of Jesus Christ to the race; or to such of us as prove fit survivors, capable of immortality. I do not presume to explain how or why this is or may be so; for behold we are shown mysteries, of which this is one. If I am permitted to guide the people who have loved and chosen me, I expect to teach them many truths which I do not understand. I shall teach them none which I do not believe. Fathers and brothers, I show you my soul! Deal with me as you will!”

He stood for a space, tall, white, still, with that look—half angel, half human—which was peculiar to his face in moments of exaltation. His dazzling eyes blazed for an instant upon his tormentors, then fell upon his people and grew dim. He saw their uplifted faces pleadingly turned to him: troubled men whom he had been able to guide; bereaved women whom he had known how to comfort. Oh, his people! Tears were on their cheeks. Their faces swam before him. How dear, in those few months that he had served them, they had grown! To stand disgraced before them, a stigma on his Christian name forever, their faith deceived, their trust disappointed—his people, to be his no more!

“God!” he said in his heart. “Was there any other way?”

An instant’s darkness swept over him, and his soul staggered in it. Then, to the fine, inner ear of the spirit the answer came:—

“In honor, between Me and thee, thou hast no other way.”

The troubled voice of the moderator now recalled him, using the quaint phrase of elder times for such occasion made and provided: “The Council will now be by themselves.”

In three quarters of an hour the Council returned and reported upon the examination. Emanuel Bayard was refused ordination to the Christian ministry by a majority of five.

Now, the savage that lurks in the gentlest assemblage of men sprang with a war-cry upon the decorum of the crowded church. Agitated beyond self-control, the people split into factions, and resolved themselves into committees; they wept, they quarreled, they prayed, and they condemned by turns. The gray-haired moderator and the dejected Professor, themselves paler than the rejected candidate, sought to convert the confusion into something like order wherewith to close the exercises of that miserable day. Daring the momentary silence which their united efforts had enforced, a thick voice from the swaying crowd was distinctly heard.

Job Slip, who had somehow managed to take an extra drop from his pocket bottle during the electric disturbance of the last half hour, was staggering up the broad aisle, with the Italian and the sober man at either elbow.

“Lemme go!” cried Job, with an air of unprecedented politeness. “Lemme get up thar whar I ken make a speech. D—— ye, I won’t cuss ye, for this is a meetin’-house, but I will make my speech!”

“Hush, Job!” said the girl in the sailor hat. She came forward before all the people and laid her hand upon the drunkard’s arm. “Hush, Job, hush! You bother the minister. Come away, Job, come away. Mari’s here, and the young one. Come along to your wife, Job Slip!”

“I’ll join my wife when I get ready,” said Job solemnly, “for it’s proper that I should; but I ain’t a-goin’ to stand by an’ see a man that licked me licked out’n his rights an’ not do nothin’ for him! No, sir! Gentlemen,” cried Job pleasantly, assuming an oratorical attitude and facing round upon the disturbed house, “I’ll stick up for the minister every time. It ain’t his fault he was late to meetin’. You hadn’t oughter kick him out for that, now! It’s all along of me, gentlemen! I drink—and he—ye see—don’t. I was threshin’ the life out’n my little boy down to Angel Alley, and he knocked me down for’t. Fact, sir! That there little minister, he knocked me down. I’ll stand by him every round now, you bet! I’ll see’t he gets his rights in his own meetin’-house!”

Half a dozen hands were at Job’s mouth; a dozen more dragged him back. The Council sprang to their feet in horror. But Job squared off, and eyed these venerable Christians with the moral superiority of his condition. He pushed on towards the pulpit.

“Come on, Tony!” he cried to the Italian. “Come, Ben! You, Lena!” He beckoned to the girl, who had shrunk back. “Tell Mari an’ Joey to foller on! Won’t hear us, won’t they? Well, we’ll see! There ain’t a cove of the lot of them could knock me down! Jest to save a little fellar’s bones! Gentlemen! look a’ here. Look at us. We’re the delegation from Angel Alley, Sir. Now, sir, what are you pious a-goin’ to do with us?”

But a white, firm hand was laid upon Job’s shoulder. Pale, shining, frowning, Bayard stood beside him.

“Come, Job,” he said gently, “come out with me, and we will talk it over.”

The broad aisle quickly cleared, and the rejected minister left the church with the drunkard’s hand upon his arm. The remainder of the delegation from Angel Alley followed quietly, and the soft, green baize doors closed upon them.

“Say,” said Job Slip, recovering a portion of his scattered senses in the open air—“say, I thought you said they didn’t fight where you was goin’?”

The drunkard’s wife stood outside. She was crying. Bayard looked at her. He did not know what to say. Just then he felt a tug at the tail of his coat, and small, warm fingers crept into his cold hand. He looked down. It was the little boy.