Charlemont; Or, The Pride of the Village Part 7

It is evident, from his present course, that he had some inkling of the MODUS OPERANDI; but all his knowledge fell short of that saving wisdom which would have defrauded the social world of one of its moral earthquakes, and possibly deprived the survivors of the present moral story--for moral it is, though our hero is not exactly so.

It would be doing our subject and our theory equal injustice if we were to suppose that he had any fixed purpose, known to himself, when he borrowed the professional garment, and began to talk with the worthy John Cross in the language of theology, and with the tongue of a hypocrite. He designed to visit Charlemont--that was all--as he had really been impressed by the commanding figure and n.o.ble expression of beauty of that young damsel whom he had encountered by the roadside.

Even this impression, however, would have been suffered to escape from his mind, had it not been so perfectly convenient to revisit the spot, on his return to his usual place of residence. During the summer, Charlemont and its rustic attractions had been the frequent subject of a conversation, running into discussion, between himself and the amiable old man, his uncle. The latter repeatedly urged upon his nephew to make the visit; fondly conceiving that a nearer acquaintance with the pleasant spot which had so won upon his own affections, would be productive of a like effect upon his nephew. Alas, how little did he know the mischief he was doing!

In the very idleness of mood--with just that degree of curiosity which prompts one to turn about and look a second time--Alfred Stevens resumed the route which included Charlemont. But the devil had, by this time, found his way into the meditations of the youth, and lay lurking, unknown to himself, perhaps, at the bottom of this same curiosity. The look of pride and defiance which Margaret Cooper had betrayed, when the bold youth rode back to steal a second glance at her matchless person, was equivalent to an equally bold challenge; and his vanity hastily picked up the gauntlet which hers had thrown down. He wished to see the damsel again--to see if she WAS so beautiful--if she did, indeed, possess that intellectual strength and vivacity which flashed out so suddenly and with so much splendor from beneath her long, dark eye-lashes!

In this mood he met with John Cross; and the simplicity of that worthy creature offered another challenge, not less provoking than the former, to the levity and love of mischief which also actively predominated in the bosom of the youth. Fond of a malicious sort of fun, and ever on the look-out for subjects of quizzing, it was in compliance with a purely habitual movement of his mind that he conjured up that false, glozing story of his religious inclinations, which had so easily imposed upon the unsuspecting preacher. Never was proceeding less premeditated, or so completely the result of an after-thought, than this; and now that it had proved so perfectly successful--now that he found himself admitted into the very heart of the little village, and into the bosoms of the people--he began, for the first time, to feel the awkwardness of the situation in which he had placed himself, and the responsibilities, if not dangers, to which it subjected him. To play the part of a mere preacher--to talk glibly, and with proper unction, in the stereotype phraseology of the profession--was no difficult matter to a clever young lawyer of the West, having a due share of the gift of gab, and almost as profoundly familiar with scripture quotation as Henry Clay himself. But there was something awkward in the idea of detection, and he was not unaware of those summary dangers which are likely to follow, in those wild frontier regions, from the discovery of so doubtful a personage as "Bro' Wolf" in the clothing of a more innocent animal. Chief-Justice Lynch is a sacred authority in those parts; and, in such a case as his, Alfred Stevens did not doubt that the church itself would feel it only becoming to provide another sort of garment for the offender, which, whether pleasant or not, would at least be likely to stick more closely, and prove less comfortably warm.

But, once in, there was no help but to play out the game as it had been begun. Villagers are seldom very sagacious people, and elegant strangers are quite too much esteemed among them to make them very particular in knowing the whys and wherefores about them--whence they come, what they do, and whither they propose to go. Stevens had only to preserve his countenance and a due degree of caution, and the rest was easy. He had no reason to suppose himself an object of suspicion to anybody; and should he become so, nothing was more easy than to take his departure with sufficient promptness, and without unnecessarily soliciting the prayers of the church in behalf of the hurried traveller! At all events, he could lose nothing by the visit: perhaps something might be gained.

What was that something? Behold him in his chamber, preparing to ask and to answer this question for himself. The sabbath-day is finally over. He has been almost the lion of the day. We say almost, for the worthy John Cross could not easily be deprived, by any rivalry, of the loyal regards of his old parishioners. But, though the latter had most friends, the stranger, Alfred Stevens, had had most followers. All were anxious to know him--the young, in particular, maidens and men; and the grave old dames would have given their last remaining teeth, bone or waxen, to have heard him discourse. There was so much sense and solemnity in his profound, devout looks! he has been made known to them all; he has shaken hands with many. But he has exchanged the speech of sympathy and feeling with but one only--and that one!--

Of her he thinks in his chamber--his quiet, snug, little chamber--a mere closet, looking out upon a long garden-slip, in which he sees, without much heeding them, long lanes of culinary cabbage, and tracts of other growing and decaying vegetation, in which his interest is quite too small to make it needful that he should even ask its separate names. His chin rests upon his hands with an air of meditation; and gradually his thoughts rise up in soliloquy, which is suffered to invade no ear but ours:--

"Well! who'd have thought it? a parson!--devilish good indeed! How it will tell at Murkey's! What a metamorphose! if it don't stagger 'em, nothing will! It's the best thing I've done yet! I shall have to do it over a hundred times, and must get up a sermon or two beforehand, and swear that I preached them--and, egad! I may have to do it yet before I'm done--ha! ha! ha!"

The laughter was a quiet chuckle, not to be heard by vulgar ears; it subsided in the gorges of his throat. The idea of really getting up a sermon tickled him. He muttered over texts, all that he could remember; and proceeded to turn over the phrases for an introduction, such as, unctuous with good things in high degree, he fancied would be particularly commendable to his unsuspecting hearers. Alfred Stevens had no small talent for imitation, he derived a quiet sort of pleasure, on the present occasion, from its indulgence.

"I should have made a famous parson, and, if all trades fail, may yet.

But, now that I am here, what's to come of it? It's not so hard to put on a long face, and prose in scripture dialect; but, cui bono? Let me see--hem! The girl is pretty, devilish pretty--with such an eye, and looks so! There's soul in the wench--life--and a pa.s.sion that speaks out in every glance and movement. A very Cressid, with a cross of Corinne!

Should she be like her of Troy? At all events, it can do no harm to see what she's made of!

"But I must manage warily. I have something to lose in the business.

Frankfort is but fifty miles from Charlemont--fifty miles--and there's Ellisland, but fourteen. Fourteen!--an easy afternoon ride. That way it must be done. Ellisland shall be my post-town. I can gallop there in an afternoon, drop and receive my letters, and be back by a round-about which shall effectually baffle inquiry. A week or two will be enough.

I shall see, by that time, what can be done with her; though still, cautiously, Parson Stevens!--cautiously."

The farther cogitations of Stevens were subordinate to these, but of the same family complexion. They were such as to keep him wakeful. The Bible which had been placed upon his table, by the considerate providence of his hostess, lay there unopened; though, more than once, he lifted the cover of the sacred volume, letting it fall again suddenly, as if with a shrinking consciousness that such thoughts as at that moment filled his mind were scarcely consistent with the employment, in any degree, of such a companion. Finally, he undressed and went to bed. The hour had become very late.

"Good young man," muttered worthy Mrs. Hinkley to her drowsy spouse, in the apartment below, as she heard the movements of her guest-"good young man, he's just now going to bed. He's been studying all this while. I reckon Brother Cross has been sound this hour."

The light from Stevens's window glimmered out over the cabbage-garden, and was seen by many an ancient dame as she prepared for her own slumbers.

"Good young man," said they all with one accord. "I reckon he's at the Bible now. Oh! he'll be a blessed laborer in the vineyard, I promise you, when Brother Cross is taken."

"If it were not for the cursed bore of keeping up the farce beyond the possibility of keeping up the fun, such a rig as this would be incomparably pleasant; but"--yawning--"that's the devil! I get monstrous tired of a joke that needs dry nursing!"

Such were the last muttered words of Parson Stevens before he yielded himself up to his slumbers. Good young man--charitable old ladies--gullible enough, if not charitable! But the professions need such people, and we must not quarrel with them!

CHAPTER VIII.

PAROCHIAL PERFORMANCES.

The poor, conceited blackguards of this ungracious earth have a fancy that there must be huge confusion and a mighty bobbery in nature, corresponding with that which is for ever going on in their own little spheres. If we have a toothache, we look for a change of weather; our rheumatism is a sure sign that G.o.d has made his arrangements to give us a slapping rain; and, should the white bull or the brown heifer die, look out for hail, or thunderstorm, at least, as a forerunner of the event. Nothing less can possibly console or satisfy us for such a most unaccountable, not to say unnatural and unwarrantable, a dispensation.

The poets have ministered largely to this vanity on the part of mankind.

Shakspere is constantly at it, and Ben Jonson, and all the dramatists.

Not a butcher, in the whole long line of the butchering Caesars, from Augustus down, but, according to them, died in a sort of gloom glory, resulting from the explosion of innumerable stars and rockets, and the apparitions of as many comets! "Gorgons, and hydras, and chimeras dire,"

invariably announce the coming stroke of fate; and five or seven moons of a night have suddenly arisen to warn some miserable sublunarian that orders had been issued that there should be no moon for him that quarter, or, in military and more precise phrase, that he should have no "quarters" during that moon. Even our venerable and stern old puritan saint, Milton--he who was blessed with the blindness of his earthly eye, that he should be more perfectly enabled to contemplate the Deity within--has given way to this superst.i.tion when he subjects universal nature to an earthquake because Adam's wife followed the counsels of the snake.

A pretty condition of things it would be, if stars, suns, and systems, were to shoot madly from their spheres on such occasions! Well might the devil laugh if such were the case! How he would chuckle to behold globes and seas, and empires, fall into such irreverend antics because some poor earthling, be he kingling or common sodling, goes into desuetude, either by the operation of natural laws, or the sharp application of steel or shot! Verily, it makes precious little difference to the Great Reaper, by what process we finally become harvested. He is sure of us, though no graves gape, no stars fall, no comets rush out, like young colts from their stables, flinging their tails into the faces of the more sober and pacific brotherhood of lights. But, denied the satisfaction of chuckling at such sights as these, his satanic majesty chuckles not the less at the human vanity which looks for them. Nay, he himself is very likely to suggest this vanity. It is one of his forms of temptation--one of his manoeuvres; and we take leave, by way of warning, to hint to those worthy people, who judge of to-morrow's providence by the corns of their great toe, or their periodical lumbago, or the shooting of their warts, or the p.r.i.c.king of their palms, that it is in truth the devil which is at the bottom of all this, and that the Deity has nothing to do in the business. It is the devil instilling his vanities into the human heart, in that form which he thinks least likely to prove offensive, or rouse suspicion. The devil is most active in your affairs, Mrs. Thompson, the moment you imagine that there must be a revolution on your account in the universal laws of nature. At such a moment your best policy will be to have blood let, take physic, and go with all diligence to your prayers.

There was no sort of warning on the part of the natural to the moral world, on the day when Alfred Stevens set forth with the worthy John Cross, to visit the flock of the latter. There was not a lovelier morning in the whole calendar. The sun was alone in heaven, without a cloud; and on earth, the people in and about Charlemont, having been to church only the day before, necessarily made their appearance everywhere with petticoats and pantaloons tolerably clean and unrumpled. Cabbages had not yet been frost-bitten. Autumn had dressed up her children in the garments of beauty, preparatory to their funeral. There was a good crop of grain that year, and hogs were brisk, and cattle lively, and all "looking-up," in the language of the prices current. This was long before the time when Mr. M---- made his famous gammon speeches; but the people had a presentiment of what was coming, and to crown the eventful antic.i.p.ations of the season, there was quite a freshet in Salt river.

The signs were all and everywhere favorable. Speculation was beginning to c.h.i.n.k his money-bags; three hundred new banks, as many railways, were about to be established; old things were about to fleet and disappear; all things were becoming new; and the serpent entered Charlemont, and made his way among the people thereof, without any signs of combustion, or overthrow, or earthquake.

Everybody has some tolerable idea of what the visitation of a parson is, to the members of his flock. In the big cities he comes one day, and the quarterly collector the next. He sits down with the "gude wife" in a corner to themselves, and he speaks to her in precisely the same low tones which cunning lovers are apt to use. If he knows any one art better than another, it is that of finding his way to the affections of the female part of his flock. A subdued tone of voice betrays a certain deference for the party addressed. The lady is pleased with such a preliminary. She is flattered again by the pains he takes in behalf of her eternal interests; she is pretty sure he takes no such pains with any of her neighbors. It is a sign that he thinks her soul the most becoming little soul in the flock, and when he goes away, she looks after him and sighs, and thinks him the most blessed soul of a parson.

The next week she is the first to get up a subscription which she heads with her own name in connection with a sum realized by stinting her son of his gingerbread money, in order to make this excellent parson a life-member of the "Zion African Bible and Missionary Society, for disseminating the Word among the Heathen." The same fifty dollars so appropriated, would have provided fuel for a month to the starving poor of her own parish.

But Brother Cross gets no such windfalls. It is probable that he never heard of such a thing, and that if he did, he would unhesitatingly cry out, "Humbug," at the first intimation of it. Besides, his voice was not capable of that modulation which a young lover, or a city parson can give it. Accustomed to cry aloud and spare not, he usually spoke as if there were some marrow in his bones, and some vigor in his wind-bags.

When he came to see the good wife of his congregation, he gave her a hearty shake of the hand, congratulated her as he found her at her spinning-wheel; spoke with a hearty approbation, if he saw that her children were civil and cleanly; if otherwise, he blazed out with proper boldness, by telling her that all her praying and groaning, would avail nothing for her soul's safety, so long as Jackey's breeches were unclean; and that the mother of a rude and dirty child, was as sure of d.a.m.nation, as if she never prayed at all. He had no scruples about speaking the truth. He never looked about him for the gentle, easy phrases, by which to distinguish the conduct which he was compelled to condemn. He knew not only that the truth must be spoken, and be spoken by him, if by anybody, but that there is no language too strong--perhaps none quite strong enough--for the utterance of the truth. But it must not be supposed, that John Cross was in any respect an intolerant, or sour man. He was no hypocrite, and did not, therefore, need to clothe his features in the vinegar costume of that numerous cla.s.s. His limbs were put into no such rigid fetters as too often denote the unnatural restraints which such persons have imposed upon their inner minds. He could laugh and sing with the merriest, and though he did not absolutely shake a leg himself, yet none rejoiced more than he, when Ned Hinkley's fiddle summoned the village to this primitive exercise.

"Now, Alfred Stevens," said he, the breakfast being over, "what say'st thou to a visit with me among my people. Some of them know thee already; they will all be rejoiced to see thee. I will show thee how they live, and if thou shouldst continue to feel within thee, the growing of that good seed whose quickening thou hast declared to me, it will be well that thou shouldst begin early to practise the calling which may so shortly become thine own. Here mightest thou live a s.p.a.ce, toiling in thy spiritual studies, until the brethren should deem thee ripe for thy office; meanwhile, thy knowledge of the people with whom thou livest, and their knowledge of thee, would be matter of equal comfort and consolation, I trust, to thee as to them."

Alfred Stevens expressed himself pleased with the arrangement. Indeed, he desired nothing else.

"But shall we see all of them?" he demanded. The arch-hypocrite began to fear that his curiosity would be compelled to pay a heavy penalty to dullness.

"The flock is small," said John Cross. "A day will suffice, but I shall remain three days in Charlemont, and some I will see to-day, and some to-morrow, and some on the day after, which is Wednesday."

"Taken in moderate doses," murmured Stevens to himself, "one may stand it."

He declared himself in readiness, and the twain set forth. The outward behavior of Stevens was very exemplary. He had that morning contrived to alter his costume in some respects to suit the situation of affairs. For example, he had adopted that slavish affectation which seems to insist that a preacher of G.o.d should always wear a white cravat, so constructed and worn as to hide the tips of his shirt collar. If they wore none, they would look infinitely more n.o.ble, and we may add, never suffer from bronchitis. In his deportment, Stevens was quite as sanctified as heart could wish. He spoke always deliberately, and with great unction. If he had to say "cheese and mousetrap," he would look very solemn, shake his head with great gravity and slowness, and then deliberately and equally emphasizing every syllable, would roll forth the enormous sentence with all the conscious dignity of an ancient oracle. That "cheese and mousetrap," so spoken, acquired in the ears of the hearer, a degree of importance and signification, which it confounded them to think they had never perceived before in the same felicitous collocation of syllables.

John Cross was not without his vanities. Who is? Vanity is quite as natural as any other of our endowments. It is a guaranty for amiability.

A vain man is always a conciliatory one. He is kind to others, because the approbation of others is a strong desire in his mind. Accordingly, even vanity is not wholly evil. It has its uses.

John Cross had his share, and Alfred Stevens soon discovered that he ministered to it in no small degree. The good old preacher took to himself the credit of having effected his conversion, so far as it had gone. It was his hand that had plucked the brand from the burning. He spoke freely of his protege, as well before his face as behind his back.

In his presence he dwelt upon the holy importance of his calling; to others he dilated upon the importance of securing for the church a young man of so much talent, yet of so much devotion: qualities not always united, it would seem, among the churchlings of modern times.

Alfred Stevens seemed to promise great honor to his teacher. That cunning which is the wisdom of the worldling, and which he possessed in a very surprising degree, enabled him to adopt a course of conduct, look, and remark, which amply satisfied the exactions of the scrupulous, and secured the unhesitating confidence of those who were of a more yielding nature. He soon caught the phraseology of his companion, and avoiding his intensity, was less likely to offend his hearers. His manner was better subdued to the social tone of ordinary life, his voice lacked the sharp tw.a.n.g of the backwoods man; and, unlike John Cross, he was able to modulate it to those undertones, which, as we have before intimated, are so agreeable from the lips of young lovers and fashionable preachers. At all events, John Cross himself, was something more than satisfied with his pupil, and took considerable pains to show him off. He was a sort of living and speaking monument of the good man's religious prowess.

It does not need that we should follow the two into all the abodes which they were compelled to visit. The reader would scarcely conceal his yawns though Stevens did. Enough, that a very unctuous business was made of it that morning. Many an old lady was refreshed with the spiritual beverage bestowed in sufficient quant.i.ty to last for another quarter; while many a young one rejoiced in the countenance of so promising a shepherd as appeared under the name of Alfred Stevens. But the latter thought of the one damsel only. He said many pleasant things to those whom he did see; but his mind ran only upon one. He began to apprehend that she might be among the flock who were destined to wait for the second or last day's visitation; when, to his great relief, John Cross called his attention to the dwelling of the widow Cooper, to whom they were fast approaching.

Stevens remarked that the dwelling had very much the appearance of poverty--he did not fail to perceive that it lacked the flower-garden in front which distinguished the greater number of the cottages in Charlemont; and there was an appearance of coldness and loneliness about its externals which impressed itself very strongly upon his thoughts, and seemed to speak unfavorably for the taste of the inmates. One is apt to a.s.sociate the love of flowers with sweetness and gentleness of disposition, and such a pa.s.sion would seem as natural, as it certainly would be becoming, to a young lady of taste and sensibility. But the sign is a very doubtful one. Taste and gentleness may satisfy themselves with other objects. A pa.s.sion for books is very apt to exclude a very active pa.s.sion for flowers, and it will be found, I suspect, that these persons who are most remarkable for the cultivation of flowers are least sensible to the charms of letters. It seems monstrous, indeed, that a human being should expend hours and days in the nursing and tendance of such stupid beauties as plants and flowers, when earth is filled with so many lovelier objects that come to us commended by the superior sympathies which belong to humanity. Our cities are filled with the sweetest orphans--flowers destined to be immortal; angels in form, that might be angels in spirit--that must be, whether for good or evil--whom we never cultivate--whom we suffer to escape our tendance, and leave to the most pitiable ignorance, and the most wretched emergencies of want.

The life that is wasted upon dahlias, must, prima facie, be the life of one heartless and insensible, and most probably, brutish in a high degree.

But Alfred Stevens had very little time for further reflection. They were at the door of the cottage. Never did the widow Cooper receive her parson in more tidy trim, and with an expression of less qualified delight. She brought forth the best chair, brushed the deerskin-seat with her ap.r.o.n, and having adjusted the old man to her own satisfaction as well as his, she prepared to do a like office for the young one.

Having seated them fairly, and smoothed her ap.r.o.n, and gone through the usual preliminaries, and placed herself a little aloof, on a third seat, and rubbed her hands, and struggled into a brief pause in her brisk action, she allowed her tongue to do the office for which her whole soul was impatient.

"Oh, Brother Cross, what a searching sermon you gave us yesterday. You stirred the hearts of everybody, I warrant you, as you stirred up mine. We've been a needing it for a precious long time, I tell you; and there's no knowing what more's a wanting to make us sensible to the evil that's in us. I know from myself what it is, and I guess from the doings of others. We're none of us perfect, that's certain; but it's no harm to say that some's more and some's not so perfect as others. There's a difference in sin, Brother Cross, I'm a thinking, and I'd like you to explain why, and what's the difference. One won't have so much, and one will have more; one will take a longer spell of preaching, and half the quant.i.ty will be a dose to work another out clean, entire. I'm not boastful for myself, Brother Cross, but I do say, I'd give up in despair if I thought it took half so much to do me, as it would take for a person like that Mrs. Thackeray."

"Sister Cooper," said brother Cross, rebukingly, "beware of the temptation to vain-glory. Be not like the Pharisee, disdainful of the publican. To be too well pleased with one's self is to be displeasing to the Lord."