Chapter XL: Christian Charity

Great as was the curiosity, even consternation, in the village when that old lady passed out of it, the feeling was nothing in comparison with the effect produced on the two men she left behind in the parsonage.

Shaking off his amazement, the minister arose, went into the next room, and finding no one there, hurried to the door. Directly he came back looking greatly distressed.

“She is gone, sitting upright on her horse like a young woman,” he said; “never in my life did I see such change in a human being.”

“Nor I; her face was white like a ghost’s, all but the eyes; they were fire,” said the deacon.

“It is very painful. She must have heard all that you said of her grandchild,” observed the minister, walking the room nervously.

“Well,” returned the deacon, with a cowardly attempt to exculpate himself, “I was only repeating what other folks said—I ain’t answerable.”

“Poor girl!” sighed the clergyman. “I fear that she was terribly wronged.”

“That face, those eyes, I shall never forget them,” said the deacon, fairly shivering at the recollection.

“It is my duty, I must and will get at the truth in this matter.”

“Yes, as a minister I think it is your duty; but just now hadn’t we better drop it?”

“No, Deacon Jones, these charges are of too much importance. This old woman has a right to demand a retraction at our hands if, as I hope, her child has been a victim to evil tongues. I am too much disturbed just now, but come to me in the evening. You will excuse me now, brother Jones?”

“Of course, of course; don’t mind me; I must go home anyhow, or my wife’ll think I’m lost.”

The minister conducted his guest to the door without further apology, and Deacon Jones took his way home uneasy in his mind and divided in his thoughts between certain qualms of conscience, where Clara Anderson was concerned, and the greeting which he might receive from Mrs. Jones after having delayed her tea beyond the usual hour.

After a domestic lecture from his wife, who had been at a sewing circle that day, where Clara Anderson was discussed with all the sweet charities that commonplace women bestow on their beautiful sisters, the deacon was ready to take up the question, inspired to new vigor by the extra venom imparted by his wife.

The impression made upon him by the sudden appearance of that old woman was swept away utterly by the force of Mrs. Jones’ eloquence. So he went back to the minister’s at dusk, resolved to press the matter of a church investigation to some purpose.

“I have thought this matter over thoroughly, prayerfully, minister—I and Mrs. Jones—and we are a unit, yes, a unit. These Andersons must leave the place. The ladies have decided on it. Not a stitch of work will she get from a member of your congregation.”

“What! before we have had time for proper inquiry? Do you call this justice, Deacon Jones?”

“Justice! If she had that I don’t know what would become of the creature. You don’t know, of course, that young Lane has been at her house this very day, in open defiance of his father; and threatens to marry the creature off hand.”

“That, at least, speaks well for the girl. Young Lane would never do that if he did not know these rumors to be false,” said the minister.

“I don’t believe they are false,” said the deacon. “I always thought there was something wrong about the girl—I don’t believe it is the duty of a Christian minister to give sympathy to sinners.”

“Nay, they have all the more need,” returned the minister gently.

“If they repent, not otherwise.”

“But no one has talked to her, no one has tried to bring her out of the error of her ways, if she is indeed in error.”

“It wouldn’t be of any use; why, she has the pride of Lucifer.”

“And pride goeth before a fall,” murmured the clergyman, hardly aware of the force of his quotation.

“Of course it does; every child who learned his catechism knows that,” replied the deacon, in a self-satisfied voice. “I guess she has found it out by this time.”

“I meant to have seen her to-day,” said the minister.

“It wouldn’t have done any good if you had seen her; she would have been as insulting as possible.”

“We can’t tell that.”

“Yes, we can, I know her! Besides she don’t come to meeting once a month—always going about on the hills Sunday. I’ve seen her myself. If the sisters are hard on her we’ve no call to take her part.”

“Brother Jones, that should not hinder us from doing all the good we can.”

“You couldn’t do any good there, I tell you.”

“She’s very young; even if she be as imprudent and wrong as they say, she cannot be hardened.”

“Do you call such conduct by names like those?”

“They are harsh enough for men who profess to be Christians, when applied to a young girl.”

“No, they ain’t; wickedness is wickedness! I tell you that girl ought to be held up as an example. If times were what they were thirty years ago she’d be put out of the town; the select men wouldn’t let her stay, but now sin is never punished.”

The deacon paused here to groan over the delinquency of these latter days.

“It would be very cruel treatment,” replied the minister, more decidedly than he often spoke. “I cannot believe that such harsh measures would be of any avail, they might drive the erring to utter desperation.”

“So they ought to,” retorted the deacon; “we are warned to hold no communication with the wicked, to flee from the wrath to come—”

“And to act kindly towards all men,” added the minister.

The deacon coughed a little, nestled in his chair in a dissatisfied way and finally said—

“The long and the short of it is, the women folks have got this case in hand, prayerfully in hand. This last step of Edward Lane’s has aroused them to a sense of their duty to the sex, and to Judge Lane as a pillar of the church. Take my word for it now, the minister that sets himself agin the women of a congregation don’t stay in his pulpit long. A queen bee in a wasp’s nest is nothing to it.”

The minister arose with a slight flush on his benign face.

“The conversation is taking a form that I would rather not listen to,” he said. “Excuse me, but I fancied that some one was moving in the next room.”

The good man took a light from his table, and standing in the door held it up. All its rays fell on that young girl who had no idea how long she had been standing there, or what she wished, now that no sign of the doctor appeared.

The blaze of light falling strongly on her face aroused her: she came forward at once.

“She is dying or dead; I cannot tell if it is one or the other, but I have been searching for the doctor and cannot find him. Could you tell me where he is?”

“The doctor—dying? Who is it that is ill, Miss Anderson?”

“My grandmother. She was here to-day, and I am afraid it killed her. We Andersons are not used to disgrace, and it hurts us more than people think.”

The minister turned a rebuking look on Deacon Jones, who became extremely busy with the hat which he had taken up in haste the moment he became aware of that strange presence.

“Have you been waiting long?” said the minister, anxious that she should not have heard all the cruel things said in the study.

“Long—I do not know. Still, how could I stop anywhere long? Tell me, please, where I can find the doctor?”

“Deacon Jones, you will have the goodness to find the doctor at once. I shall go home with this young lady, and see what calamity has befallen my old friend. God grant that it is not so serious as I fear. Take my arm, Miss Clara, you scarcely seem able to stand.”

Clara took his arm, and hurried out of the house, without a look at the deacon, whom she remembered afterward, as we try to outline figures in a half-forgotten dream. The air was heavy with coming storms, and dark with fog. Scarcely a word was spoken between these two; but the girl fairly dragged her companion along. She had forgotten the doctor, and placed all her faith in him.

“This way,” she said, leading him through the darkness into her grandmother’s room. “She will be glad to see you. It is better to bring a true friend than a doctor. Oh, God help us, how still it is!”

Still indeed. A white sheet was flung over the bed. Betsey Vose, seeing the minister, turned the linen back, and revealed a locked white face, a scattering of soft hair, gleaming like silvered snow on the pillow, and two small hands folded over the bosom of a night-gown that looked like a shroud.