The Old Helmet Volume I Part 53

CHAPTER XVIII.

AT MRS. POWLIS'S.

"I glanced within a rock's cleft breast, A lonely, safely-sheltered nest.

There as successive seasons go, And tides alternate ebb and flow, Full many a wing is trained for flight In heaven's blue field--in heaven's broad light."

The next morning at breakfast Eleanor and her aunt were alone as usual.

There was no avoiding anything.

"Did you have a pleasant evening?" Mrs. Caxton asked.

"I had a very pleasant ride, aunt Caxton."

"How was the sermon?"

"It was--I suppose it was very good; but it was very peculiar."

"In what way?"

"I don't know, ma'am;--it excited the people very much. They could not keep still."

"Do you like preaching better that does not excite people?"

Eleanor hesitated. "No, ma'am; but I do not like them to make a noise."

"What sort of a noise?"

Eleanor paused again, and to her astonishment found her own lip quivering and her eyes watering as she answered,--"It was a noise of weeping and of shouting--not loud shouting; but that is what it was."

"I have often known such effects under faithful presenting of the truth," said Mrs. Caxton composedly. "When people's feelings are much moved, it is very natural to give them expression."

"For uncultivated people, particularly."

"I don't know about the cultivation," said Mrs. Caxton. "Robert Hall's sermons used to leave two thirds of his hearers on their feet. I have seen a man in middle life, a judge in the courts, one of the heads of the community in which he lived, so excited that he could not undo the fastenings of his pew door; and he put his foot on the seat and sprang over into the aisle."

"Do you like such things, aunt Caxton?"

"I prefer another mode of getting out of church, my dear."

"But shouting, or crying out, is what people of refinement would not do, even if they could not open their pew doors."

Eleanor was a little sorry the moment she had uttered this speech; her spirits were in a whirl of disorder and uncomfortableness, and she had spoken hastily. Mrs. Caxton answered with great composure.

"What do you call those words that you are accustomed to hear, the 'Gloria in Excelsis'?--'Glory be to G.o.d on high, and on earth peace, good will towards men. We praise thee, we bless thee, we wors.h.i.+p thee, we glorify thee, we give thanks to thee for thy great glory, O Lord G.o.d, heavenly King.'"

"What do you call it, aunt Caxton?"

"If it is not a shout of joy, I can make nothing of it. Or the one hundred and fiftieth psalm--'O praise G.o.d in his holiness; praise him in the firmament of his power. Praise him in his n.o.ble acts; praise him according to his excellent greatness. Praise him in the sound of the trumpet; praise him upon the lute and harp. Praise him in the cymbals and dances; praise him upon the strings and pipe. Praise him upon the well tuned cymbals; praise him upon the loud cymbals. Let everything that hath breath praise the Lord.'--What is that but a shout of praise?"

"It never sounded like a shout," said Eleanor.

"It did once, I think," said Mrs. Caxton.

"When was that, ma'am?"

"When Ezra sang it, with the priests and the people to help him, after they were returned from captivity. Then the people shouted with a loud shout, and the noise was heard afar off. All the people shouted with a great shout, when they praised the Lord."

"But aunt Caxton," said Eleanor, who felt herself taken down a little, as a secure talker is apt to be by a manner very composed in his opponent--"it is surely the habit of refined persons in these times not to get excited--or not to express their feelings very publicly?"

"A very good habit," said Mrs. Caxton. "Nevertheless I have seen a man--a gentleman--and a man in very high standing, in a public a.s.sembly, go white with anger and become absolutely speechless, with the strength of pa.s.sion, at some offence he had taken."

"O such pa.s.sions, of course, will display themselves sometimes," said Eleanor. "Bad pa.s.sions often will. They escape control."

"I have seen a lady--a lovely and refined lady--faint away at the sudden tidings that a child's life was secure,--whom she had almost given up for lost."

"But, dear aunt Caxton! you do not call that a parallel case?"

"A parallel case with what?"

"Anybody might be excited at such a thing. You would wonder if they were not."

"I do not see the justness of your reasoning, Eleanor. A man may turn white with pa.s.sion, and it is natural; woman may faint with joy at receiving back her child from death; and you are not surprised. But the joy of suddenly seeing eternal life one's own--the joy of knowing that G.o.d has forgiven our sins--you think may be borne calmly. I have known people faint under that joy as well."

"Aunt Caxton," said Eleanor, her voice growing hoa.r.s.e, "I do not see how anybody can have it. How can they know their sins are forgiven?"

"You may find it in your Bible, Eleanor; did you never see it there?

'The Spirit witnesseth with our spirit, that we are the children of G.o.d.'"

"But Paul was inspired?"

"Yes, thank G.o.d!--to declare that dividend of present joy to all shareholders in the stock of eternal life. But doubtless, only faith can take it out."

Eleanor sat silent, chewing bitter thoughts. "O this is what these people have!"--she said to herself;--"this is the helmet of salvation!

And I am as far from it as ever!" The conversation ended there. Eleanor was miserable all day. She did not explain herself; Mrs. Caxton only saw her preoccupied, moody, and silent.

"There is preaching again at Glanog to-night," she said a few days afterwards; "I am not yet quite well enough to go. Do you choose to go, Eleanor?"

Eleanor looked down and answered yes.

She went; and again, and again, and again. Sundays or week days, Eleanor missed no chance of riding her pony to the little valley church. Mrs. Caxton generally went with her, after the first week; but going in her car she was no hindrance to the thoughtfulness and solitude of the rides on horseback; and Eleanor sometimes wept all the way home, and oftener came with a confused pain in her heart, dull or acute as the case might be. She saw truth that seemed beautiful and glorious to her; she saw it in the faces and lives as well as in the words of others; she longed to share their immunity and the peace she perceived them possessed of; but how to lay hold of it she could not find. She seemed to herself too evil ever to become good; she tried, but her heart seemed as hard as a stone. She prayed, but no relief came. She did not see how she _could_ be saved, while evil had such a hold of her; and to dislodge it she was powerless. Eleanor was in a constant state of uneasiness and distress now. Her usually fine temper was more easily roughened than she had ever known it; the services she had long been accustomed to render to others who needed her, she felt it now very hard to give. She was dissatisfied with herself and very unhappy, and she said to herself that she was unfit to properly minister to anybody else. She became a comparatively silent and ungenial companion to her aunt. Mrs. Caxton perhaps understood her; for she made no remark on this change, seemed to take no notice; was as evenly and tenderly affectionate to her niece as ever before, with perhaps a little added expression of sympathy now and then. She did not even ask an explanation of Eleanor's manner of getting out of church.

Eleanor and her aunt, as it happened, always occupied a seat very near the front and almost under the pulpit. It had been Eleanor's custom ever since the first time she came there, to slip out of her seat and make her way down the aisle with eager though quiet haste; leaving her aunt to follow at her leisure; and she was generally mounted and off before Mrs. Caxton reached the front door. During the service always now, Eleanor's eyes were fastened upon the preacher; his often looked at her; he recognized her of course; and Eleanor had a vague fear that if she were not out of the way he would some time or other come down and accost her. It was an unreasoning fear; she gave no account of it to herself; except that her mind was in an unsettled, out-of-order state, that would not bear questioning; and if he came he would be certain to question her. So Eleanor fled and let her aunt do the talking--if any there were. Eleanor never asked and never knew.

This went on for some weeks. Spring had burst upon the hills, and the valleys were green in beauty and flus.h.i.+ng with flowers; and Eleanor's heart was barren and cold more than she had ever felt it to be. She began to have a most miserable opinion of herself.