Chapter III: Front Matter (3)

On either side of the street the farmers' wagons stood backed up against the sidewalk, each making a cheap shop, by which stood the sturdy owners under the trees, laughing and chaffering with their customers. We ourselves turned aside and walked down the centre of the street under the sheds. On either side at the entry of the market odd business was being plied, the traders being mostly colored women with bright chintz dresses and richly-colored bandanna handkerchiefs coiled turban-like above their dark faces. There were rows of roses in red pots, and venders of marsh calamus, and "Hot corn, sah, smokin' hot," and "Pepperpot, bery nice," and sellers of horse-radish and snapping-turtles, and of doughnuts dear to grammar-school lads. Within the market was a crowd of gentlefolks, followed by their black servants with baskets--the elderly men in white or gray stockings, with knee-buckles, the younger in very tight nankeen breeches and pumps, frilled shirts and ample cravats and long blue swallow-tailed coats with brass buttons. Ladies whose grandchildren go no more to market were there in gowns with strangely short waists and broad gypsy-bonnets, with the flaps tied down by wide ribbons over the ears. It was a busy and good-humored throng.

"Ah," said Schmidt, "what color!" and he stood quite wrapped in the joy it gave him looking at the piles of fruit, where the level morning sunlight, broken by the moving crowd, fell on great heaps of dark-green watermelons and rough cantaloupes, and warmed the wealth of peaches piled on trays backed by red rows of what were then called love-apples, and are now known as tomatoes; while below the royal yellow of vast overgrown pumpkins seemed to have set the long summer sunshine in their golden tints.

"If these were mine," said Schmidt, "I could not for ever sell them. What pleasure to see them grow and steal to themselves such sweet colors out of the rainbow which is in the light!"

"Thee would make a poor gardener," said Wholesome, "sitting on thee fence in the sun and watching thee pumpkins--damn nasty things anyhow!"

I looked up amazed at the oath, but Schmidt did not seem to remark it, and went on with us, lingering here and there to please himself with the lovely contrasts of the autumn fruit.

"Curious man is Schmidt," remarked Wholesome as we passed along. "I could wish thee had seen him when we took him this way first. Old Betsey yonder sells magnolia flowers in June, and also pond-lilies, which thee may know as reasonably pleasant things to thee or me; but of a sudden I find our friend Schmidt kneeling on the pavement with his head over a tub of these flowers, and every one around much amazed."

"Was it not seemly?" said Schmidt, joining us. "There are who like music, but to me what music is there like the great attunement of color? and mayhap no race can in this rise over our black artists hereabout the market-ends."

"Thee is crazed of many colors," said Wholesome laughing--"a bull of but one."

Schmidt stopped short in the crowd, to Wholesome's disgust. "What," said he, quite forgetful of the crowd, "is more cordial than color? This he recalleth was a woman black as night, with a red turban and a lapful of magnolias, and to one side red crabs in a basket, and to one side a tubful of lilies. Moss all about, I remember."

"Come along," said Wholesome. "The man is cracked, and in sunny weather the crack widens."

And so we went away down street to our several tasks, chatting and amused.

Those were most happy days for me, and I found at evening one of my greatest pleasures when Schmidt called for me after our early tea and we would stroll together down to the Delaware, where the great India ships lay at wharves covered with casks of madeira and boxes of tea and spices. Then we would put out in his little rowboat and pull away toward Jersey, and, after a plunge in the river at Cooper's Point, would lazily row back again while the spire of Christ Church grew dim against the fading sunset, and the lights would begin to show here and there in the long line of sombre houses. By this time we had grown to be sure friends, and a little help from me at a moment when I chanced to guess that he wanted money had made the bond yet stronger. So it came that he talked to me, though I was but a lad, with a curious freedom, which very soon opened to me a full knowledge of those with whom I lived.

One evening, when we had been drifting silently with the tide, he suddenly said aloud, "A lion in the fleece of the sheep."

"What?" said I, laughing.

"I was thinking of Wholesome," he replied. "But you do not know him. Yet he has that in his countenance which would betray a more cunning creature."

"How so?" I urged, being eager to know more of the man who wore the garb and tongue of Penn, and could swear roundly when moved.

"If it will amuse," said the German, "I will tell you what it befell me to hear to-day, being come into the parlor when Mistress White and Wholesome were in the garden, of themselves lonely."

"Do you mean," said I, "that you listened when they did not know of your being there?"

"And why not?" he replied. "It did interest me, and to them only good might come."

"But," said I, "it was not--"

"Well?" he added as I paused. "--'Was not honor,' you were going to say to me. And why not? I obey my nature, which is more curious than stocked with honor. I did listen."

"And what did you hear?" said I.

"Ah, hear!" he answered. "What better is the receiver than is the thief? Well, then, if you will share my stolen goods, you shall know, and I will tell you as I heard, my memory being good."

"But--" said I.

"Too late you stop me," he added: "you must hear now."

The scene which he went on to sketch was to me strange and curious, nor could I have thought he could give so perfect a rendering of the language, and even the accent, of the two speakers. It was a curious revelation of the man himself, and he seemed to enjoy his power, and yet to suffer in the telling, without perhaps being fully conscious of it. The oars dropped from his hands and fell in against the thwarts of the boat, and he clasped his knees and looked up as he talked, not regarding at all his single silent listener.

"When this is to be put upon the stage there shall be a garden and two personages."

"Also," said I, "a jealous listener behind the scenes."

"If you please," he said promptly, and plunged at once into the dialogue he had overheard:

"'Richard, thee may never again say the words which thee has said to me to-night. There is, thee knows, that between us which is builded up like as a wall to keep us the one from the other.'

"'But men and women change, and a wall crumbles, or thee knows it may be made to. Years have gone away, and the man who stole from thee thy promise may be dead, for all thee knows.'

"'Hush! thee makes me to see him, and though the dead rise not here, I am some way assured he is not yet dead, and may come and say to me, "'Cilla"--that is what he called me--"thee remembers the night and thy promise, and the lightning all around us, and who took thee to shore from the wrecked packet on the Bulkhead Bar." The life he saved I promised.'

"Well, and thee knows--By Heaven! you well enough know who tortured the life he gave--who robbed you--who grew to be a mean sot, and went away and left you; and to such you hold, with such keep faith, and wear out the sweetness of life waiting for him!'

"'Richard!'

"'Have I also not waited, and given up for thee a life, a career--little to give. I hope thee knows I feel that. Has thee no limit, Priscilla? Thee knows--God help me! how well you know--I love you. The world, the old world of war and venture, pulls at me always. Will not you find it worth while to put out a hand of help? Would it not be God taking your hand and putting it in mine?'

"'Thee knows I love thee.'

"'And if the devil sent him back to curse you anew--'

"'Shame, Richard! I would say, God, who layeth out for each his way, has pointed mine.'

"'And I?'

"'Thee would continue in goodness, loving me as a sister hardly tried.'

"'By God! I should go away to sea.'

"'Richard!'

"Which is the last word of this scene," added Schmidt. "You mayhap have about you punk and flint and steel."

I struck alight in silence, feeling moved by the story of the hurt hearts of these good people, and wondering at the man and his tale. Then I said, "Was that all?"

"Could you, if not a boy, ask me to say more of it? Light thy pipe and hold thy peace. Happy those who think not of women. I, who have for a hearth-side only the fire of an honest pipe--'Way there, my lad! pull us in and forget what a loose tongue and a soft summer night have given thee to hear from a silly old German who is grown weak of head and sore at soul. How the lights twinkle!"

Had I felt any doubt at all of the truth of his narration I should have ceased to do so when for the next few days I watched Mr. Wholesome, and saw him, while off his guard, looking at Mistress White askance with a certain wistful sadness, as of a great honest dog somehow hurt and stricken.

When an India ship came in, the great casks of madeira, southside, grape juice, bual and what not were rolled away into the deep cellars of the India houses on the wharves, and left to purge their vinous consciences of such perilous stuff as was shaken up from their depths during the long homeward voyage. Then, when a couple of months had gone by, it was a custom for the merchant to summon a few old gentlemen to a solemn tasting of the wines old and new. Of this, Mr. Wholesome told me one day, and thought I had better remain to go through the cellars and drive out the bungs and drop in the testers, and the like. "I will also stay with thee," he added, "knowing perhaps better than thee the prices."

I learned afterward that Wholesome always stayed on these occasions, and I had reason to be glad that I too was asked to stay, for, as it chanced, it gave me a further insight into the character of my friend the junior partner.

I recall well the long cellar running far back under Water street, with its rows of great casks, of which Wholesome and I started the bungs while awaiting the new-comers. Presently came slowly down the cellar-steps our senior partner in nankeen shanks, silk stockings and pumps--a frosty-visaged old man, with a nose which had fully earned the right to be called bottle. Behind him limped our old porter in a blue check apron. He went round the cellar, and at every second cask, having lighted a candle, he held it upside down until the grease had fallen thick on the cask, and then turning the candle stuck it fast in its little pile of tallow, so that by and by the cellar was pretty well lighted. Presently, in groups or singly, came old and middle-aged gentlemen, and with the last our friend Schmidt, who wandered off to a corner and sat on a barrel-head watching the effects of the mingling of daylight and candlelight, and amused in his quiet way at the scene and the intense interest of the chief actors in it, which, like other things he did not comprehend, had for him the charm of oddness. I went over and stood by him while the porter dropped the tester-glass into the cool depths of cask after cask, and solemn counsel was held and grave decisions reached. I was enchanted with one meagre, little old gentleman of frail and refined figure, who bent over his wine with closed eyes, as if to shut out all the sense-impressions he did not need, while the rest waited to hear what he had to say.

"Needs a milk fining," muttered the old gentleman, with eyes shut as if in prayer.

"Wants its back broke with a good lot of eggshell," said a short, stout man with a snuff-colored coat, the collar well up the back of his head.

"Ach!" murmured Schmidt. "The back to be hurt with eggshell! What hath he of meaning?"

"Pshaw!" said a third: "give it a little rest, and then the white of an egg to every five gallons. Is it bual?"

"Is it gruel?" said our senior sarcastically.

"Wants age. A good wine for one's grandchildren," murmured my old friend with shut eyes.

"What is it he calls gruel?" whispered Schmidt. "How nice is a picture he makes when he shuts his eyes and the light of the candle comes through the wine, all bright ruby, in the dark here! And ah, what is that?" for Wholesome, who had been taking his wine in a kindly way, and having his say with that sense of being always sure which an old taster affects, glancing out of one of the little barred cellar-windows which looked out over the wharf, said abruptly, "Ha! ha! that won't do!"

Turning, I saw under the broad-brimmed hat in the clear gray eyes a sudden sparkle of excitement as he ran hastily up the cellar-stairs. Seeing that something unusual was afloat, I followed him quickly out on to the wharf, where presently the cause of his movement was made plain.

Beside the wharf was a large ship, with two planks running down from her decks to the wharf. Just at the top of the farther one from us a large black-haired, swarthy man was brutally kicking an aged negro, who was hastily moving downward, clinging to the hand-rail. Colored folks were then apt to be old servants--that is to say, friends--and this was our pensioned porter, Old Tom. I was close behind Wholesome at the door of the counting-house. I am almost sure he said "Damnation!" At all events, he threw down his hat, and in a moment was away up the nearer plank to the ship's deck, followed by me. Meanwhile, however, the black, followed by his pursuer, had reached the wharf, where the negro, stumbling and still clinging to the rail, was seized by the man who had struck him. In the short struggle which ensued the plank was pulled away from the ship's side, and fell just as Wholesome was about to move down it. He uttered an oath, caught at a loose rope which hung from a yard, tried it to see if it was fast, went up it hand over hand a few feet, set a foot on the bulwarks, and swung himself fiercely back across the ship, and then, with the force thus gained, flew far in air above the wharf, and dropping lightly on to a pile of hogs-heads, leapt without a word to the ground, and struck out with easy power at the man he sought, who fell as if a butcher's mallet had stunned him--fell, and lay as one dead. The whole action would have been amazing in any man, but to see a Quaker thus suddenly shed his false skin and come out the true man he was, was altogether bewildering--the more so for the easy grace with which the feat was done. Everybody ran forward, while Wholesome stood a strange picture, his eyes wide open and his pupils dilated, his face flushed and lips a little apart, showing his set white teeth while he awaited his foe. Then, as the man rallied and sat up, staring widely, Wholesome ran forward and looked at him, waving the crowd aside. In a moment, as the man rose still bewildered, his gaze fell on Wholesome, and, growing suddenly white, he sat down on a bundle of staves, saying faintly, "Take him away! Don't let him come near!"

"Coward!" said I: "one might have guessed that."

"There is to him," said Schmidt at my elbow, "some great mortal fear; the soul is struck."

"Yes," said Wholesome, "the soul is struck. Some one help him"--for the man had fallen over in something like a fit--and so saying strode away, thoughtful and disturbed in face, as one who had seen a ghost.

As he entered the counting-house through the group of dignified old merchants, who had come out to see what it all meant, one of them said, "Pretty well for a Quaker, friend Richard!"

Wholesome did not seem to hear him, but walked in, drank a glass of wine which stood on a table, and sat down silently.

"Not the first feat of that kind he has done," said the elder of the wine-tasters.

"No," said a sea-captain near by. "He boarded the Penelope in that fashion during the war, and as he lit on her deck cleared a space with his cutlass till the boarding-party joined him."

"With his cutlass?" said I. "Then he was not always a Quaker?"

"No," said our senior: "they don't learn these gymnastics at Fourth and Arch, though perchance the committee may have a word to say about it."

"Quaker or not," said the wine-taster, "I wish any of you had legs as good or a heart as sound. Very good body, not too old, and none the worse for a Quaker fining."

"That's the longest sentence I ever heard Wilton speak," said a young fellow aside to me; "and, by Jove! he is right."

I went back into the counting-house, and was struck with the grim sadness of face of our junior partner. He had taken up a paper and affected to be reading, but, as I saw, was staring into space. Our senior said something to him about Old Tom, but he answered in an absent way, as one who half hears or half heeds. In a few moments he looked up at the clock, which was on the stroke of twelve, and seeing me ready, hat in hand, to return home for our one-o'clock dinner, he gathered himself up, as it were, limb by limb, and taking his wide-brimmed hat brushed it absently with his sleeve. Then he looked at it a moment with a half smile, put it on decisively and went out and away up Arch street with swifter and swifter strides. By and by he said, "You do not walk as well as usual."

"But," said I, "no one could keep up with you."

"Do not try to: leave a sore man to nurse his hurts. I suppose you saw my folly on the wharf--saw how I forgot myself?"

"Ach!" said Schmidt, who had toiled after us hot and red, and who now slipped his quaint form in between us--"Ach! 'You forgot yourself.' This say you. I do think you did remember your true self for a time this morning."

"Hush! I am a man ashamed. Let us talk no more of it. I have ill kept my faith," returned Wholesome impatiently.

"You may believe God doth not honor an honest man," said Schmidt; "which is perhaps a God Quaker, not the God I see to myself."

I had so far kept my peace, noting the bitter self-reproach of Wholesome, and having a lad's shyness before an older man's calamity; but now I said indignantly, "If it be Friends' creed to see the poor and old and feeble hurt without raising a hand, let us pray to be saved from such religion."

"But," said Wholesome, "I should have spoken to him in kindness first. Now I have only made of him a worse beast, and taught him more hatred. And he of all men!"

"There is much salvation in some mistakes," said Schmidt smiling.

Just then we were stopped by two middle-aged Friends in drab of orthodox tint, from which now-a-days Friends have much fallen away into gay browns and blacks. They asked a question or two about an insurance on one of our ships; and then the elder said, "Thee hand seems bleeding, friend Richard;" which was true: he had cut his knuckles on his opponent's teeth, and around them had wrapped hastily a handkerchief which showed stains of blood here and there.

"Ach!" said Schmidt, hastening to save his friend annoyance. "He ran against something.--And how late is it! Let us go."

But Wholesome, who would have no man lie ever so little for his benefit, said quietly, "I hurt it knocking a man down;" and now for the first time to-day I observed the old amused look steal over his handsome face and set it a-twitching with some sense of humor as he saw the shock which went over the faces of the two elders when we bade them good-morning and turned away.

Wholesome walked on ahead quickly, and as it seemed plain that he would be alone, we dropped behind.

"What is all this?" said I. "Does a man grieve thus because he chastises a scoundrel?"

"No," said Schmidt. "The Friend Wholesome was, as you may never yet know, an officer of the navy, and when your war being done he comes here. There is a beautiful woman whom he must fall to loving, and this with some men being a grave disorder, he must go and spoil a good natural man with the clothes of a Quaker, seeing that what the woman did was good in his sight."

"But," said I, "I don't understand."

"No," said he; "yet you have read of Eve and Adam. Sometimes they give us good apples and sometimes bad. This was a russet, as it were, and at times the apple disagrees with him for that with the new apple he got not a new stomach."

I laughed a little, but said, "This is not all. There was something between him and the man he struck which we do not yet know. Did you see him?"

"Yes, and before this--last week some time in the market-place. He was looking at old Dinah's tub of white lilies when I noticed him, and to me came a curious thinking of how he was so unlike them, many people having for me flower-likeness, and this man, being of a yellow swarthiness and squat-browed, 'minded me soon of the toadstool you call a corpse-light."

"Perhaps we shall know some time; but here is home, and will he speak of it to Mistress White, do you think?"

"Not ever, I suppose," said Schmidt; and we went in.

The sight we saw troubled me. In the little back parlor, at a round mahogany table with scrolled edges and claw toes, sat facing the light Mistress White. She was clad in a gray silk with tight sleeves, and her profusion of rich chestnut hair, with its willful curliness that forbade it to be smooth on her temples, was coiled in a great knot at the back of her head. Its double tints and strange changefulness, and the smooth creamy cheeks with their moving islets of roses that would come and go at a word, were pretty protests of Nature, I used to think, against the demure tints of her pearl-gray silken gown. She was looking out into the garden, quite heedless of the older dame, who sat as her wont was between the windows, and chirruped now and then, mechanically, "Has thee a four-leaved clover?" As I learned some time after, one of our older clerks, perhaps with a little malice of self-comfort at the fall of his senior's principles, had, on coming home, told her laughingly all the story of the morning. Perhaps one should be a woman and a Friend to enter into her feelings. She was tied by a promise and by a sense of personal pledge to a low and disgraced man, and then coming to love another despite herself she had grown greatly to honor him. She might reason as she would that only a sense of right and a yearning for the fullness of a righteous life had made him give up his profession and fellows and turn aside to follow the harder creed of Fox, but she well knew with a woman's keenness of view that she herself had gone for something in this change; and now, as sometimes before, she reproached herself with his failures. As we came in she hastily dried her eyes and went out of the room. At dinner little was said, but in the afternoon there was a scene of which I came to know all a good while later.

Some of us had gone back to the afternoon work when Mr. Wholesome, who had lingered behind, strayed thoughtfully into the little back garden. There under a thin-leaved apricot tree sat Mistress White, very pretty, with her long fair fingers clasped over a book which lay face down on her lap. Presently she was aware of Richard Wholesome walking to and fro and smoking a long-stemmed clay pipe, then, as yet in England, called a churchwarden. These were two more than commonly good-looking persons, come of sturdy English breeds, fined down by that in this climate which has taken the coarseness of line and feature out of so many of our broods, and has made more than one English painter regret that the Vandyke faces had crossed the ocean to return no more.

Schmidt and I looked out a moment into the long vista where, between the rose-boughs bending from either wall under the apricot, we could see the gray silvery shimmer of the woman's dress, and beyond it, passing to and fro, the broad shoulders of the ex-captain.

"Come," I said, "walk down with me to the wharf."

"Yet leave me," he returned. "I shall wisely do to sit here on the step over the council-fire of my pipe. Besides, when there are not markets and flowers, and only a straight-down, early-afternoon sun, I shall find it a more noble usage of time to see of my drama another scene. The actors are good;" and he pointed with his pipe-stem down to the garden. "And this," he said, "is the mute chorus of the play," indicating a kitten which had made prey of the grand-dame's ball of worsted, and was rolling it here and there with delight.

"But," I answered, "it is not right or decent to spy upon others' actions."

"For right!" he said. "Ach! what I find right to me is my right; and for decent, I understand you not. But if I tell you what is true, I find my pleasure to sit here and see the maiden when at times the winds pull up the curtain of the leaves."

"Well! well!" said I, for most of the time he was not altogether plain as to what he meant, as when he spoke of the cat as a chorus--"Well! well! you will go out with me on the water at sundown?"

"That may be," he answered; and I went away.

I have observed since then, in the long life I have lived, that the passion called love, when it is a hopeless one, acts on men as ferments do on fluids after their kind--turning some to honest wine and some to vinegar. With our stout little German all trials seemed to be of the former use, so that he took no ill from those hurts and bruises which leave other men sore and tender. Indeed, he talked of Mistress White to me, or even to Wholesome, whom he much embarrassed, in a calm, half-amused way, as of a venture which he had made, and, having failed, found it pleasant to look back upon as an experience not altogether to be regretted. We none of us knew until much later that it was more than a mere fancy for a woman who was altogether so sweet and winsome that no man needed an excuse for loving her. When by and by I also came to love a good woman, I used to try myself by the measure of this man's lack of self-love, and wonder how he could have seen with good-will the woman he cared for come to like another man better. This utter sweetness of soul has ever been to me a riddle.

An hour passed by, when Schmidt heard a footfall in the room behind him, and rising saw an old member of the Society of Friends who came at times to our house, and was indeed trustee for a small estate which belonged to Mistress White. Nicholas Oldmixon was an overseer in the Fourth street meeting, and much looked up to among Friends as a prompt and vigilant guardian of their discipline. Perhaps he would have been surprised to be told that he had that in his nature which made the post of official fault-finder agreeable; but so it was, I fancy, and he was here on such an errand. The asceticism of Friends in those days, and the extent to which Mr. Oldmixon, like the more strict of his sect, carried their views as to gravity of manner and the absence of color in dress and furniture, were especially hateful to Schmidt, who lived and was happy in a region of color and sentiment and gayety. Both, I doubt not, were good men, but each was by nature and training altogether unable to sympathize with the other.

"Good-evening!" said Schmidt, keeping his seat in the low window-sill.

Mr. Oldmixon returned, "Thee is well, I trust?"

"Ach! with such a sun and the last roses, which seem the most sweet, and these most lovely of fall-flowers, and a good book and a pipe," said Schmidt, "who will not be well? Have you the honest blessing of being a smoker?"

"Nay," said the Quaker, with evident guarding of his words. "Thee will not take it amiss should I say it is a vain waste of time?"

"But," answered Schmidt, "time hath many uses. The one is to be wasted; and this a pipe mightily helps. I did think once, when I went to meeting, how much more solemn it would be for each man to have a pipe to excuse his silence."

"Thee jests idly, I fear," said the Friend, coloring and evidently holding himself in check. "Is that friend Wholesome in the garden? I have need to see him."

"Yea," said Schmidt, with a broad smile, "he is yonder under a tree, like Adam in the garden. Let us take a peep at Paradise."

Mr. Oldmixon held his peace, and walked quietly out of the window and down the graveled path. There were some who surmised that his years and his remembrance of the three wives he had outlived did not altogether suffice to put away from him a strong sentiment of the sweetness of his ward. Perhaps it was this notion which lit up with mirth the ruddy face of the German as he walked down the garden behind the slim ascetic figure of the overseer of meeting in his broad hat and drab clothes. On the way the German plucked a dozen scarlet roses, a late geranium or two and a few leaves of motley Poinsetta.

Wholesome paused a moment to greet quietly the new-comer, and straightway betook himself absently to his walk again to and fro across the garden. Mistress White would have had the old overseer take her seat, but this he would not do. He stood a moment near her, as if irresolute, while Schmidt threw himself down on the sward, and, half turning over, tossed roses into the gray lap of Mistress White, saying, "How prettily the God of heaven has dressed them!"

Mistress White took up the flowers, not answering the challenge, but glancing under her long lashes at the ex-captain, to whom presently the overseer turned, saying, "Would thee give me a word or two with thee by ourselves, Richard?"

"There are none in the parlor," said Priscilla, "if thee will talk there."

"If," said Wholesome, "it be of business, let it wait till to-morrow, and I will call upon thee: I am not altogether myself to-day."

"Nay," said Nicholas, gathering himself up a little, "thee must know theeself that I would not come to thee here for business: thee knows my exactness in such matters."

"And for what, then, are you come?" said Wholesome with unusual abruptness.

"For speech of that in thee conduct which were better, as between an elder friend and a younger, to be talked over alone," said Mr. Oldmixon severely.

Now, Wholesome, though disgusted by his lack of power to keep the silent pledges he had given when he entered the Society of Friends, was not dissatisfied with his conduct as he judged it by his own standard of right. Moreover, like many warm-hearted people, he was quick of temper, as we have seen. His face flushed, and he paused beside the overseer: "There are none here who do not know most of what passed this morning; but as you do not know all, let me advise you to hold your peace and go your ways, and leave me to such reproach as God may send me."

"If that God send thee any," muttered Schmidt.

But Nicholas Oldmixon was like a war-horse smelling the battle afar off, and anything like resistance to an overseer in the way of duty roused him into the sternness which by no means belonged to the office, but rather to the man. "If," he said, "any in membership with us do countenance or promote tumults, they shall be dealt with as disorderly persons. Wherefore did thee give way to rash violence this morning?"

Priscilla grew pale, I think. She said, "Friend Nicholas, thee forgets the Christian courtesy of our people one to another. Let it rest a while: friend Richard may come to think better of it by and by."

"And that I trust he may never," muttered Schmidt.

But the overseer was not to be stayed. "Thee would do better to mind the things of thy house and leave us," he said. "The ways of this young man have been more than once a scandal, and are like to come before the preparative meeting to be dealt with."

"Sir," returned Wholesome, approaching him and quite forgetting his plain speech to make it plainer, "your manners do little credit to your age or your place. Listen: I told you to speak no more of this matter;" and he seized him by the lappel of his coat and drew him aside a few paces. "For your own sake, I mean. Let it die out, with no more of talk or nonsense."

"For my sake!" exclaimed the overseer; "and why? Most surely thee forgets theeself."

"For your own sake," said Wholesome, drawing him still farther away, and bending toward him, so that his words were lost to Schmidt and Priscilla, "and for your son John's. It was he I struck to-day."

Mr. Oldmixon grew white and staggered as if stricken. "Why did thee not come and tell me?" he said. "It had been kinder; and where is that unhappy man?"

"I do not know," returned Wholesome.

"Nevertheless, be it he or another, thee was in the wrong, and I have done my duty,--God help us all! and is my son yet alive?" and so saying, he turned away, and without other words walked through the house with uncertain steps and went down the street, while Wholesome, with softened face, watched him from the doorstep. Then he went back quietly into the garden, and turning to Schmidt, said, "Will you oblige me by leaving me with Mistress White? I will explain to thee by and by."

Schmidt looked up surprised, but seeing how pale and stern he looked, rose and went into the house. The woman looked up expectant.

"Priscilla, the time has come when thee must choose between me and him."

"He has come back? I knew always he would come."

"Yes, he has come back: I saw him to-day," said Wholesome, "and the John Oldmixon of to-day is more than ever cruel and brutal. Will thee trust me to make thee believe that?"

"I believe thee," she returned; "but because he is this and worse, shall I forget my word or turn aside from that which, if bitter for me, may save his soul alive?"

"And yet you love me?"

"Have I said so?" she murmured with a half smile.

The young man came closer and seized both hands in his: "Will it not be a greater sin, loving me, to marry him?"

"But he may never ask me, and then I shall wait, for I had better die fit in soul to be yours than come to you unworthy of a good man's love."

He dropped her hands and moved slowly away, she watching him with full eyes. Then he turned and said, "But should he fall--fall as he must--and come to be what his life will surely make him, a felon whom no woman could marry--"

"Thee makes duty hard for me, Richard," she answered. "Do not make me think thee cruel. When in God's good time he shall send me back the words of promise I wrote when he went away a disgraced man, to whom, nevertheless I owed my life, then--Oh, Richard, I love thee! Do not hurt me. Pray for me and him."

"God help us!" he said. "We have great need, to be helped;" and suddenly leaning over he kissed her forehead for the first time, and went away up the garden and into the house.

EDWARD KEARSLEY.

MODERN HUGUENOTS.

It demands a good deal of energy, and it involves a little hardship, to see the Protestant communities of the High Alps of France, but the picturesque and historic interests of the journey furnish a sufficient motive and make ample amends. I can think of no route so entirely unhackneyed to recommend to blasé tourists. The point of departure is Grenoble, reached in an hour or so from Chambéry, and in itself well worth turning aside from the Mont Cenis thoroughfare to visit. As far as Corps the way lies over the beaten track of the Salette pilgrims, of which the charms are recorded in many a devout description.

It happened to us, however, to get a preliminary glimpse of French Protestantism in a characteristic, although wholly modern, development before leaving Grenoble. We applied to the Protestant clergyman there for information respecting the details of our proposed tour. Pleased with our project, he told us the story of a mission which he had established under circumstances altogether unique, and invited us to join him in paying it a visit. The scene of his enterprise was a sunny little village lying high among vineyarded hills, and bearing the name of Notre Dame des Commiers. Owing to its remoteness and insignificance, the Roman Catholic authorities had never replaced its last priest, who withdrew during the turmoils of the Revolution. For all their ecclesiastical needs the people were obliged to descend to the next village, the curé of which gave them little pastoral care beyond the thrifty collection of his dues. Learning these facts, our Grenoble friend determined to take advantage of the situation. He presented himself in the village and told the people he was willing to become their pastor. He only asked them to acknowledge the validity of baptism and marriage performed by him, and to pledge him their support in the struggle with the priests that would probably ensue. Later, he said, he hoped to convince them that he taught a better religion than that at the hands of whose ministers they had suffered such neglect. A majority of the villagers accepted his proposal, and by a formal act constituted themselves a Protestant commune. By so doing they were able to secure recognition by the government as belonging to the National Protestant Church of France. It was not long before the parishioners grew warmly attached to their new pastor. His position of assistant at Grenoble enabled him to assume the sole charge of the enterprise. Week after week he made the tedious stage-coach journey, walking up the two-mile hill at the foot of which he had to quit the highway. Often in winter he toiled for hours through deep snow and faced violent storms in making the ascent. In the worst weather it sometimes happened that the whole journey from Grenoble had to be made on foot. For two years he carried on the work unaided, holding his services in such rude quarters as he was able to secure. The village is now, after an interval of seven years since the missionary's first visit, adorned with a pretty chapel and school-house and provided with a resident minister.

In talking with the people we found abundant proof that their Protestant faith is both intelligent and practical. Such of them as were not busy in the fields surrounded their old pastor with greetings that touchingly expressed their affection and gratitude, and we, as his friends, had a share in the demonstration. One stalwart, clear-eyed old woman obliged us to sit down in front of her chalet, cheerfully explaining that she had just been burned out, and that the shed in which she had found a shelter was not fit for us to enter. She would take no refusal of her offer to fetch us grapes, and ran all the way to and from her vineyard on the opposite hillside, returning in an incredibly short time, scarcely out of breath, and carrying a basket heavy with great white and purple clusters. As she stood watching with delight our appreciation of her produce--the only sweet and luscious grapes, by the way, that we found throughout the autumn in that land of vines--she talked frankly of her religious vicissitudes, summing up as follows: "The priests used to say to me that I had turned Protestant because that is an easier religion than the Roman Catholic. But I have not found it so at all. _Il est beaucoup plus facile de me confesser que de me corriger._" Presently another woman came up the hill, bending painfully under the weight of two water-pails hanging from the ends of a yoke that rested on her shoulders. "Ah," said our hostess, "if they would but let us build the aqueduct, we should not have that ugly work to do." And then we learned that among the small minority of Roman Catholics left in the village, to care for whom, as soon as it was found a wolf had entered the fold, a priest arrived promptly enough, there prevail the wildest superstitions concerning the Protestants. Among many improvements introduced by the latter an aqueduct had been planned to furnish the hamlet with wholesome water. The project was defeated by the opposition of the Roman Catholics, who considered it a scheme for poisoning them _en masse_. It was here that we heard for the first time the epithet Huguenots applied as a term of reproach and derision to the Protestants. Afterward, in regions where Protestants have a history of centuries, we found it commonly used in the same way.

Our visit to Notre Dame des Commiers was like reading a living page of early Reformation history, and the whole neighborhood made a fitting stage for such a reproduction. Some six or seven miles from Grenoble we passed the restored but still, in parts at least, historic château of Lesdiguières at Vizille. Nearer our mountain-village we stopped to admire an ivy-covered bit of tower-ruin, associated by a grim tradition with the same Dauphiné hero. A prisoner confined here by the apostate constable had, says the legend, a lady true who came every night and clasped her lover's hand stretched out to her between the bars of his dungeon window. Lesdiguières discovered the rendezvous, and the spot is still pointed out where his soldier was stationed one fatal night to chop off the hand that sought its accustomed pledge. The historical associations of our excursion were, indeed, somewhat confused, but a fresh feature was added to its interest by the departure, which we chanced to witness, of Monsieur Thiers from the Château de Vizille, now occupied by Casimir Perier, whom the ex-president had been visiting.

The two days' diligence journey from Grenoble to the département des Hautes-Alpes was over one of those broad macadamized highways which make driving a luxury in many parts of Europe. If we were more huddled than in the less-antiquated Swiss diligences, we had the compensation of far more original fellow-travelers than one is apt to find among the tourists that monopolize those vehicles. There were generally two or three priests, half a dozen merry peasants, and a sprinkling of small officers and country-townspeople, who respectively lost no time in establishing a pleasant intimacy with their neighbors. The unflagging chatter, in which all joined vivaciously, and often all at once, was in striking contrast with the silent gloom which would have enshrouded a similar party of English or American travelers. It was impossible to resist the contagion of cheerfulness or to refuse to mingle more or less in the talk.

On the second evening, having trusted to the map and the very meagre information supplied by _Murray_, we found ourselves deposited at an isolated wayside cabaret. It presently transpired that St. Bonnet, where we expected to pass the Sunday, was some half mile or more off the high-road on which this was the nearest station. While we waited in a long, low, dimly-lighted room for the guide we had bespoken, two gendarmes and a peasant sat listening to, or rather looking at, a vivid account of some shooting adventure given in extraordinary pantomime by a deaf and dumb huntsman. In time a withered gnome trundling a wheelbarrow took possession of us and our light belongings, and led us forth into the night. We traversed the valley, mounted the hill on the other side, and at last entered the deeper night of a lampless village, and began to thread its steep, black streets. The only gleam of light was at what seemed to be the central fountain. Many women were gathered there, chatting as they filled their pails or stood with the replenished vessels poised on their heads. The inn was of a piece with all those at which we lodged in Dauphiné, deficient in everything for which an inn exists. The feature of these inns which I remember, I think, with the least relish was the condition of the floors. It is literally true that they are never washed. A daily sprinkling is the only cleansing process they undergo: its effect is to soften the wood until it begins to absorb a large proportion of the rubbish which is often but never thoroughly swept up, and grows black and evil-odored. This result is most manifest, of course, and most offensive in the dining-rooms.

St. Bonnet offered even less than we anticipated of interest. On the Sunday morning we gladly drove away in such an equipage as the place afforded to the not very distant village of St. Laurent en Champsaur. Here we reached our first point in what was fifty years ago the parish of Felix Neff, and has been for centuries a refuge of Protestantism. It is a hamlet of stone cottages, lying on a kind of plateau and overlooking a wide and fertile valley. The surrounding hills, though mostly bare, were broken and beautified on that still autumn morning with dim clefts of shadow. The sun was not yet high, and broad masses of purple fell here and there across the plain and the brawling stream that divides it, still the Drac, which we had seen an almost stately river near Grenoble.

Having already learned something of the local habits, we bade our driver take us to the _temple_. That is the distinctive name of a Protestant church in these Roman Catholic lands. The morning service was in progress when we entered the square and austere little chapel. Every pew was occupied, the men and women taking different sides of the one stone-paved aisle. A gentle-looking old man was reading from a book with much clearness and expression, and in a singularly pleasant voice, what we soon found to be an excellent sermon. At its close a quaint, slow hymn was sung, and the congregation was dismissed. To our amusement, the simple folk formed a double line outside the door to inspect us as we emerged. It was easy to imagine their interest in an apparition so unusual as foreign visitors, and we submitted to their curious but entirely respectful scrutiny, wishing that our aspect might give them half the satisfaction we had in watching their eager faces and noting their droll costumes. Ludicrously high stocks and "swallow-tail" coats of brown homespun made the dress of the men different from that of corresponding rustics in America. The chief peculiarity in the women's attire was a straw hat, of which the towering crown, decked with huge bows, and the vast flapping brim, were like an extravagant caricature of the poke-bonnets of our grandmothers.

As we stood demurely in the midst of the group, the old man who had read, and who proved to be the schoolmaster, hastened out to greet us. It was his habit, he said, in the pastor's absence, to conduct the service. For more than thirty years, although the parish had repeatedly been for months without a minister, he had not allowed the temple to remain closed a single Sunday. His wife appeared directly, and both insisted, with apologies for their peasant fare, that we should stop to dinner at their house, a few yards from the church. We were in truth nothing loath to accept the invitation, and found little to excuse in the savory soup, the fresh-laid eggs and the fruit that composed the simple feast, while we were scarcely less regaled with the neatness of the rooms and the spectacle of well-washed floors and spotless though coarsely-woven linen. But most of all to be enjoyed and remembered was the peep we got into this good old man's life and history. From his youth he had been schoolmaster at St. Laurent, and it seemed never to have occurred to him that he might claim a more distinguished post. Unconscious of any special self-sacrifice, he told us about his work, heroic through its quiet faithfulness, in that obscure hamlet. He enumerated with pride the various pastors and teachers who had been his scholars--among the former his eldest son, among the latter two of his daughters. Listening to his talk, we understood the intelligence of expression in many faces and the large proportion of young men at the service of the morning.

In our walks about the village after dinner the schoolmaster took us to see an ancient woman who in her youth had been a catechumen of Felix Neff. It is curious to find that term, which was applied by the early Church to candidates for admission, in use now among the Protestants of France and Italy. With tears in her eyes and an enthusiasm that made her speech almost incoherent, the grandame talked of "Monsieur Neff," his courage, his friendliness, how he went among his people like one of themselves, and what good words he always spoke. As we left St. Laurent our host and his wife bore us company to the brow of a little hill whither we had sent on our chaise, and stood there to wave us an adieu as we descended on the other side. Then we saw them turn back toward the group of thatched and moss-grown cottages which was all their world.