John Ward, Preacher Part 48

The rector had hurried down the entry to find Jean, who indeed needed no rousing, for Sally had told her who had come. "Let me know when Miss Helen is comfortable," he said.

And when the old woman, awed by Helen's still, white face, told him his niece was in bed, he came up again, holding the decanter by the throat, and begging her to take another gla.s.s of wine. But she only turned her head away and asked to be alone. She would not say anything more, and did not seem to hear his a.s.surances that it would be "all right in the morning," and that "she must not worry."

It was the kindest thing to her, but it was very hard for the rector to go down to his library still in ignorance. The spell of peace had been rudely broken, and his fire was out. He lifted Helen's bonnet, still heavy with rain, and laid it on the cloak she had thrown across a chair, and then stood and looked at them as though they could explain the mystery of her return. The tall clock on the stairs struck eleven, and outside the storm beat and complained.

Dr. Howe was up early the next morning. He went through the silent house before Sally had crept yawning from her room, and, throwing open the doors at each end of the hall, let a burst of suns.h.i.+ne and fresh wind into the darkness and stillness. Then he went out, and began to walk up and down the porch as a sort of outlet to his impatience. Over and over he said, "What can it be?" Indeed, Dr. Howe had asked himself that question even in his dreams. "I hope there's no woman at the bottom of it," he thought. "But no; Ward's a fool, but he is a good man."

He stopped once, to lift a trailing vine and twist it about a support.

The rain had done great damage in the night: the locust blossoms had been torn from the trees, and the lawn was white with them; the soft, wet petals of the climbing roses were scattered upon the path by the side of the house; and a long branch of honeysuckle, wrenched from its trellis, was p.r.o.ne upon the porch. These small interests quieted the rector, and he was able soon to reason himself into the belief that his niece's return was a trifling affair, perhaps a little uncomfortable, and certainly silly, but he would soon make it all right; so that when he saw her coming slowly down-stairs, with Lois creeping after her, almost afraid to speak, he was able to greet her very tranquilly.

"Are you rested, my child? After breakfast, we'll have a good talk, and everything shall be straightened out."

Breakfast was a dreary affair. Helen's abstraction was too profound for her to make even the pretense of eating. Once or twice, when Lois's voice pierced through the clouds and reached her heart, she looked up, and tried to reply. But they were all glad when it was over, and the rector put his arm gently over his niece's shoulders, and drew her into the library.

"If any one comes, Lois," he said, "you had better just say Helen changed her mind about going yesterday, and has come back for a few days."

"No," interrupted Helen slowly. "You had better say what is the truth, Lois. I have come back to Ashurst to stay."

"Now, my dear," remonstrated the rector when they were in the library, and he had shut the door, "that is really very unwise. These little affairs, little misunderstandings, are soon cleared up, and they are even forgotten by the people most interested in them. But outsiders never forget. So it is very unwise to speak of them."

Helen had seated herself on the other side of his writing-table, brus.h.i.+ng away the litter of papers and unanswered letters, so that she could lean her elbow on it, and now she looked steadily across at him.

"Uncle," she said, calmly "you do not know. There is no misunderstanding.

It is just what I told you last night: he thinks it best that I should leave him indefinitely. I know that it is forever. Yes, it seems to him best. And I am sure, feeling as he does, he is right. Yes, John is right."

Dr. Howe threw himself back in his revolving chair, and spun half-way round. "Helen," he said, "this is folly; you must talk like a sensible woman. You know you cannot leave your husband. I suppose you and Ward, like all the rest of the world that is married, have had some falling out; and now, being young, you think your lives are over. Nonsense!

Bless my soul, child, your aunt and I had dozens of them, and all as silly as this, I'll be bound. But I'm sure we did not take the public into our confidence by declaring that we would live apart. I should have given you credit for more sense, indeed I should."

Helen did not notice the reprimand.

"Now tell me all about it," he continued. "You know you can trust me, and I'll write your husband a letter which will make things clear."

Helen shook her head wearily. "You will not understand. Nothing can be done; it is as fixed as--death. We can neither of us alter it and be ourselves. Oh, I have tried and tried to see some way out of it, until it seems as if my soul were tired."

"I did not intend to be severe, my child," the rector said, with remorseful gentleness, "but in one way it is a more serious thing than you realize. I don't mean this foolishness of a separation; that will all be straightened out in a day or two. But we do not want it gossiped about, and your being here at all, after having started home, looks strange; and of course, if you say anything about having had a--a falling out with Ward, it will make it ten times worse. But you haven't told me what it is?"

"Yes, I'll tell you," she answered, "and then perhaps you will see that it is useless to talk about it. I must just take up the burden of life as well as I can."

"Go on," said the rector.

"John has been much distressed lately," Helen began, looking down at her hands, clasping each other until the skin was white across the knuckles, "because I have not believed in eternal punishment. He has felt that my eternal happiness depended upon holding such a belief." Dr. Howe looked incredulous. "Some weeks ago, one of his elders came to him and told him I was spreading heresy in the church, and d.a.m.ning my own soul and the souls of others who might come to believe as I did,--you know I told Mrs.

Davis that her husband had not gone to h.e.l.l,--and he reproached John for neglecting me and his church too; for John, to spare me, had not preached as he used to, on eternal punishment. It almost killed him, uncle," she said, and her voice, which had given no hint of tears since her return, grew unsteady. "Oh, he has suffered so! and he has felt that it was his fault, a failure in his love, that I did not believe what he holds to be true."

"Heavens!" cried the rector explosively, "heresy? Is this the nineteenth century?"

"Since I have been away," Helen went on, without noticing the interruption, "they have insisted that I should be sessioned,--dealt with, they call it. John won't let me come back to that; but if that were his only reason, we could move away from Lockhaven. He has a n.o.bler reason: he feels that this unbelief of mine will bring eternal misery to my soul, and he would convert me by any means. He has tried all that he knows (for oh, we have discussed it endlessly, uncle Archie!),--argument, prayer, love, tenderness, and now--sorrow."

The rector was sitting very straight in his chair, his plump hands gripping the arms of it, and his lips compressed with anger, while he struggled for patience to hear this preposterous story through.

"He makes me suffer," Helen continued, "that I may be saved. And indeed I don't see how he can do anything else. If a man believes his wife will be d.a.m.ned for all eternity unless she accepts certain doctrines, I should think he would move heaven and earth to make her accept them. And John does believe that. In denying reprobation, I deny revelation, he says, and also the Atonement, upon which salvation depends. So now you see why he says I shall not come back to him until I have found the truth."

Then Dr. Howe burst into a torrent of indignant remonstrance. A clergyman send his wife from him because she does not believe some dogma! Were we back in the dark ages? It was too monstrously absurd! If the idiots he preached to forced him to do it, let him leave them; let him come to Ashurst. The rector would build him a meeting-house, and he could preach his abominable doctrine to anybody who was fool enough to go and hear him.

Dr. Howe was walking hastily up and down the room, gesticulating as he talked. Helen's patient eyes followed him. Again and again she tried to point out to him her husband's intense sincerity, and the necessity which his convictions forced upon him. But the rector refused to think Mr.

Ward's att.i.tude worthy of serious consideration. "The man is insane!"

he cried. "Send his wife away from him to force her into a certain belief? Madness,--I tell you, madness!"

"I cannot hear you speak so of my husband," Helen said very quietly, but it caused Dr. Howe to conceal his wrath.

"He'll think differently in a day or two," he said. "This nonsense won't last."

Then Helen, having exhausted all her arguments to show that John was immovable, said, "Let me read you what he says himself; then you will understand, perhaps, how real it all is to him, and how he cannot help it."

"Bah!" cried Dr. Howe, and certainly it was trying to have Helen attempt to excuse such folly. "I've no patience with--There, there! I didn't mean to lose my temper, but bless my soul, this is the worst thing I ever knew. See here, Helen, if the man is so determined, you'll have to change your views, or go back to your old views, I mean,--I don't know what you do believe,--that's all there is about it."

Helen was unfolding John's letter, and she looked up at her uncle with a fleeting smile. "Change my views so that I can go back? Do you think that would satisfy John? Do you think I could? Why, uncle Archie, do you believe in eternal d.a.m.nation? I know you pray to be delivered from it in the Litany, but do you believe in it?"

"That has nothing to do with the question, Helen," he answered, frowning, "and of course I believe that the consequences of sin are eternal."

"You know that is not what the prayer means," she insisted; "you have to put your private interpretation upon it. Well, it is my private interpretation which John thinks is sin, and sin which will receive what it denies."

"Well, you must believe it, then," the rector said, striking his fist on the arm of his chair; "it is the wife's place to yield; and while I acknowledge it is all folly, you must give in."

"You mean," she said, "that I must say I believe it. Can I change a belief? You know I cannot, uncle Archie. And when you hear what John says, you will see I must be true, no matter where truth leads me."

Helen knew every word of that letter by heart. She had read it while she drove towards the depot, and when she dismissed the carriage it was with a vague idea of flying to Lockhaven, and brus.h.i.+ng all this cobweb of unreason away, and claiming her right to take her place at her husband's side. But as she sat in the station, waiting, every sentence of the letter began to burn into her heart, and she slowly realized that she could not go back. The long day pa.s.sed, and the people, coming and going, looked curiously at her; one kindly woman, seeing the agony in her white face, came up and asked her if she were ill, and could she help her?

Helen stared at her like a person in a dream, and shook her head. Then, in a numb sort of way, she began to understand that she must go back to Ashurst. She did not notice that it had begun to rain, or think of a carriage, but plodded, half blind and dazed, over the country road to her old home, sometimes sitting down, not so much to rest as to take the letter from its envelope again and read it.

She looked at it now, with a sudden gasp of pain; it was as though a dagger had been turned in a wound. It seemed too sacred to read to Dr.

Howe, but it was just to John that it should be heard, even if only partly understood; and it was also just to her--for Helen had one of those healthy souls which could be just to itself. With the letter had come a clear and logical statement of the doctrine of reprobation, together with the arguments and reasons for holding it; besides this, there was a list of books which he meant to send her. All these she handed to her uncle.

"I will not read you all he writes," she said, "but even a little will show you the hopelessness of thinking I can ever go back to him. He tells me first of a meeting of his Session, where the elders told him they wished to have me summoned before them, and of another visit from Mr.

Dean, of whom I spoke to you, insisting that John had been faithless in his duty to his church and me. 'I could only listen,' he writes, 'in a.s.senting anguish, when he charged me with having been careless of your spiritual life; and when he said that the sin of your unbelief had crept from soul to soul, like an insidious and fatal disease unseen by the eyes of the church, until spiritual death, striking first one and then another, roused us to our danger. How can I write that word "us," as though I arrayed myself with them against you, dearest! Yet it is not you, but this fatal unbelief! They charged me, these elders, whose place it is to guard the spiritual life of the church, with having preached peace to them, when there was no peace, and leaving unspoken the words of warning that eternal death awaits unrepented sin. They told me Davis had died in his sin, not having had the fear of h.e.l.l before his eyes to convert his soul. And, Helen, I know it is all true! When they insisted that you, like any other member of the church, should be brought before the Session, that they might reason with you, and by the blessing of G.o.d convert your soul to a saving knowledge of the truth, or at least bind you to silence for the sake of others, I would not listen. Here I felt my right was greater than theirs, for you are like my own soul. I told them I would not permit it; I knew it would but drive you further from grace.

I cannot think I sinned in this, though I apparently neglect a means of salvation for you; but I could not subject you to that,--I could not put your soul into their hands. I distrust myself (I have need, having loved earthly happiness more than your immortal peace, and called it wisdom), yet I think I am right in this. G.o.d grant that the means of grace which I choose instead, which will crucify my own heart, may, by his blessing, save your soul. And I have faith to believe it will. The promises of G.o.d fail not.

"'Oh, Helen, if I loved you less! Sometimes, in these two weeks, while this purpose has been growing up in my mind, I have shrunk back, and cried that I could not drink of the cup, and in the depth of human weakness I have felt, if I loved her less, I could not do what I have to do, and so the pain would be spared. But love is too mighty for me. I shall save you! When I think of the months since we were married, which I have kept unruffled by a single entreaty that you would turn from darkness into light, my eyes are blasted by the sight of my own sin; despair and death lay hold upon me. But He has had mercy upon me. He has shown me one way in which you shall be saved, and by his strength I am not disobedient to the heavenly vision. Reason and argument have not shown you the light. Joy and peace have not led you to it. There is one other path, beloved, which I have faith to believe shall not fail. It is sorrow. Sorrow can bring the truth home to you as no other thing will.

The relentless pressure of grief will force you to seek for light. It will admit of no evasion; it will receive no subtilty; it will bring you face to face with the eternal verities; it will save your soul. And what sorrow, Helen, can come to you such as making me suffer? And is there a pang which can tear my soul in this world like absence from my beloved? I trample my own happiness under my feet. Too long I have been weak, too long I have loved you with but half my nature; now I am strong. Therefore I say, before G.o.d, for your soul's sake, you shall not see my face until you have found the truth. This pain, which will be to me but the just punishment for my sin, will be to you like some sharp and bitter medicine which shall heal you of what would otherwise bring eternal death. Even as I write I am filled with strength from G.o.d to save you. For G.o.d has shown me the way. And it shall be soon,--I know it shall be soon. The Lord's hand is not shortened that it cannot save. He has revealed to me the one last way of showing you the truth, and He will lighten your eyes. Yet, oh, my love, my wife, help me to be strong for you,--my Helen, help me in these days or weeks of waiting.

"'There is one mercy vouchsafed to me who am all unworthy of the least favor: it is the knowledge of your understanding it all,--the bitter distress, the absolute conviction, and the necessity which follows it.

You see what the temptation was to fly with you to some spot where your unbelief could not injure any one, and there work and pray for your salvation; leaving these souls, which my neglect of you and so of them, has allowed to drift deep into sin. You will understand that, believing (oh, knowing, Helen, knowing) that salvation depends upon a right conception of truth, I have no choice but to force you by any means to save your soul. This knowledge makes me strong. So I am set, with strength which you yourself give me, to inflict this suffering upon you.

Take this absence and use its bitterness to sting you to search for truth. Take its anguish to G.o.d. Pray for light, pray for the Spirit of G.o.d. And when light comes--Oh, love, the thought of that joy seems too great to bear except before the throne of G.o.d! I shall not write again; you will meet this grief in the solitude of your own soul, where even I dare not come to break the silence which may be the voice of G.o.d. Write me any questionings, that I may help those first faint stirrings of the Holy Spirit, but unless questionings come I shall be silent.'"

Helen had not read all of this aloud, and there was yet more, on which she looked a moment before she folded the letter. The closing words were full of a human tenderness too divine and holy for any heart but her own; a faint smile crept about her lips for a moment, as she leaned out of her distress to rest upon her husband's love, and then she woke again to the present.

CHAPTER XXVII.