The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865

V >> Various >> The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865

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XXXVIII.

Mr. Brindlock had, may-be, exaggerated somewhat the story of Reuben's
extravagances, but he was anxious that a word of caution should be
dropped in his ear from some other lips than his own. The allowance from
the Doctor, notwithstanding all the economies of Miss Eliza's frugal
administration, would have been, indeed, somewhat narrow, and could by
no means have kept Reuben upon his feet in the ambitious city-career
upon which he had entered. But Mr. Brindlock had taken a great fancy to
the lad, and, besides the stipend granted for his duties about the
counting-room, had given him certain shares in a few private ventures
which had resulted very prosperously,--so prosperously, indeed, that the
prudent merchant had determined to hold the full knowledge of the
success in reserve. The prospects of Reuben, however, he being the
favorite nephew of a well-established merchant, were regarded by the
most indifferent observers as extremely flattering; and Mr. Bowrigg was
not disposed to look unfavorably upon the young man's occasional
attentions to the dashing Sophie.

But the Brindlocks, though winking at a great deal which the Doctor
would have counted grievous sin, still were uneasy at the lad's growing
dissoluteness of habit. Would the prayers of the good people of Ashfield
help him?

It was some time in the month of September, of the same autumn in which
poor Adele lay sick at the parsonage, that Reuben came in one night, at
twelve or thereabout, to his home at the Brindlocks', (living at this
time in the neighborhood of Washington Square,) with his head cruelly
battered, and altogether in a very piteous plight. Mrs. Brindlock,
terribly frightened,--in her woman's way,--was for summoning the Doctor
at once; but Reuben pleaded against it; he had been in a row, that was
all, and had caught a big knock or two. The truth was, he had been upon
one of his frolics with his old boon companions; and it so happened that
one had spoken sneeringly of the parson's son, in a way which to the
fiery young fellow seemed to cast ridicule upon the old gentleman. And
thereupon Reuben, though somewhat maudlin with wine, yet with the
generous spirit not wholly quenched in him, had entered upon a glowing
little speech in praise of the old gentleman and of his profession,--a
speech which, if it were garnished with here and there an objectionable
expletive, was very earnest and did him credit.

"Good for Reuben!" the party had cried out. "Get him a pulpit!"

"Hang me, if he wouldn't preach better now than the old man!" said one.

"And a deused sight livelier," said another.

"Hold your tongue, you blackguard!" burst out Reuben.

And from this the matter came very shortly to blows, in the course of
which poor Reuben was severely punished, though he must have hit some
hard blows, for he was wondrously active, and not a few boxing-lessons
had gone to make up the tale of his city accomplishments.

Howbeit, he was housed now, in view of his black eye, for many days, and
had ample time for reflection. In aid of this came a full sheet of
serious expostulations from the Doctor, and that letter of advice which
Squire Elderkin had promised, with a little warm-hearted postscript from
good Mrs. Elderkin,--so unlike to the carefully modulated letters of
Aunt Eliza! The Doctor's missive, very likely, did not impress him more
than the scores that had gone before it; but there was a practical tact,
and good-natured, common-sense homeliness, in the urgence of the Squire,
which engaged all Reuben's attention; and the words of the good woman,
his wife, were worth more than a sermon to him. "We all want," she
writes, "to think well of you, Reuben; we _do_ think well of you. Don't
disappoint us. I can't think of the cheery, bright face, that for so
many an evening shone amid our household, as anything but bright and
cheery now. We all pray for your well-being and happiness, Reuben; and I
_do_ hope you have not forgotten to pray for it yourself."

And with the memory of the kindly woman which this letter called up came
a pleasant vision of the winsome face of Rose, as she used to sit, with
downcast eyes, beside her mother in the old house of Ashfield,--of Rose,
as she used to lower upon him in their frolic, with those great hazel
eyes sparkling with indignation. And if the vision did not quicken any
lingering sentiment, it at the least gave a mellow tint to his
thought,--a mellowness which even the hardness of Aunt Eliza could not
wholly do away.

"I feel it my duty to write you, Reuben," she says, "and to inform you
how very much we have all been shocked and astonished by the accounts
which reach us of your continued indifference to religious duties, and
your reckless extravagance. Let me implore you to be frugal and
virtuous. If you learn to save now, the habit will be of very great
service when you come to take your stand on the arena of life. I am
aware that the temptations of a great city are almost innumerable; but I
need hardly inform you that you will greatly consult your own interests
and mitigate our harassment of feeling by practising a strict economy
with your funds, and by attending regularly at church. You will excuse
all errors in my writing, since I indite this by the sick-bed of Adele."

Adele, then, is sick; and upon that point alone in the Aunt's letter the
thought of Reuben fastens. Adele is sick! He knows where she must be
lying,--in that little room at the parsonage looking out upon the
orchard; there are white hangings to the bed; careful steps go up and
down the stairway. There had never been much illness in the parson's
home, indeed, but certain early awful days Reuben just remembers; there
were white bed-curtains, (he recalls those,) and a face as white lying
beneath; the nurse, too, lifting a warning finger at him with a low
"hist!" the knocker tied over thickly with a great muffler of cloth,
lest the sound might come into the chamber; and then, awful stillness.
On a morning later, all the windows are suddenly thrown open, and
strange men bring a red coffin into the house, which, after a day or
two, goes out borne by different people, who tread uneasily and
awkwardly under the weight, but very softly; and after this a weary,
weary loneliness. All which drifting over the mind of Reuben, and
stirring his sensibilities with a quick rush of vague, boyish griefs,
induces a train of melancholy religious musings, which, if they do no
good, can hardly, it would seem, work harm. Under their influence,
indeed, (which lasted for several days,) he astonished his Aunt Mabel,
on the next Sunday, by declaring his intention to attend church.

It is not the ponderous Dr. Mowry, fortunately or unfortunately, that he
is called upon to listen to; but a younger man, of ripe age, indeed, but
full of fervor and earnestness, and with a piercing magnetic quality of
voice that electrifies from the beginning. And Reuben listens to his
reading of the hymn,

"Return, O wanderer! now return!"

with parted lips, and with an exaltation of feeling that is wholly
strange to him. With the prayer it seems to him that all the religious
influences to which he has ever been subject are slowly and surely
converging their forces upon his mind; and, rapt as he is in the
preacher's utterance, there come to him shadowy recollections of some
tender admonition addressed to him by dear womanly lips in boyhood,
which now, on a sudden, flames into the semblance of a Divine summons.
Then comes the sermon, from the text, "My son, give me thine heart."
There is no repulsive formality, no array of logical presentment to
arouse antagonism of thought, but only inglowing enthusiasm, that
transfuses the Scriptural appeal, and illuminates it with winning
illustration. Reuben sees that the evangelist feels in his inmost soul
what he utters; the thrill of his voice and the touching earnestness of
his manner declare it. It is as if our eager listener were, by every
successive appeal, placed in full _rapport_ with a great battery of
religious emotions, and at every touch were growing into fuller and
fuller entertainment of the truths which so fired and sublimed the
speaker's utterance.

Do we use too gross a figure to represent what many people would call
the influences of the Spirit? Heaven forgive us, if we do; but nothing
can more definitely describe the seemingly electrical influences which
were working upon the mind of Reuben, as he caught, ever and again,
breaking through the torrent of the speaker's language, the tender,
appealing refrain, _"My son, give me thine heart!"_

All thought of God the Avenger and of God the Judge, which had been so
linked with most of his boyish instructions, seemed now to melt away in
an aureole of golden light, through which he saw only God the Father!
And the first prayer he ever learned comes to his mind with a grace and
a meaning and a power that he never felt before.

"Whether we obey Him," (it is the preacher we quote,) "or distrust Him,
or revile Him, or forget Him, or struggle to ignore Him, always, always
He is our Father. And whatever we may do, however we may sin, however
recreant we may be to early faith or early teaching, however unmoved by
the voice of conscience,--which is smiting on your hearts, as it is on
mine to-day,--whatever we are, or whatever we may be, yet, ever while
life is in us, that great, serene voice of the All-Merciful is sounding
in our ears, 'My son, give me thine heart!' Ay, the flowers repeat it in
their bloom, the birds in their summer carol, the rejoicing brooks, and
the seasons in their courses, all, all repeat it, 'My son, give me thine
heart!'

"Oh, my hearers, this is real, this is true! It is our Father who says
it; and we, unworthy ministers of His word and messengers to declare His
beneficence, repeat it for Him, 'My son, give me thine heart!' Not to
crush, not to spurn, not for a toy. The great God asks your hearts
because He wishes your gratitude and your love. Do you believe He asks
it? Yes, you do. Do you believe He asks it idly? No, you do not. What,
then, does this appeal mean? It means, that God is love,--that you are
His children,--straying, outcast, wretched, may-be, but still His
children,--and by the abounding love which is in Him, He asks your love
in return. Will you give it?"

And Reuben says to himself, yet almost audibly, "I will."

The sermon was altogether such a one as to act with prodigious force
upon so emotional a nature as that of Reuben. Yet we dare say there were
gray-haired men in the church, and sallow-faced young men, who nodded
their heads wisely and coolly, as they went out, and said, "An eloquent
sermon, quite; but not much argument in it." As if all men were to plod
to heaven on the vertebrae of an inexorable logic, and not--God
willing--to be rapt away thitherward by the clinging force of a glowing
and confiding heart! Alas, how the intellect droops in its attempt to
measure or comprehend the infinite! How the heart leaps and grows large
in its reach toward the altitude of Boundless Love, if only it be buoyed
with faith!

"Is this religion?" Reuben asked himself, as he went out of the church,
with his pride all subdued. And the very atmosphere seemed to wear a new
glory, and a new lien of brotherhood to tie him to every creature he met
upon the thronged streets. All the time, too, was sounding in his ears
(as if he had yielded full assent) the mellow and grateful cadence of
the hymn,

"Return, O wanderer! now return!"

XXXIX.

Reuben wrote to the Doctor, under the influence of this new glow of
feeling, in a way that at once amazed and delighted the good old
gentleman. And yet there were ill-defined, but very decided, terrors and
doubts in his delight Dr. Johns, by nature as well as by education, was
disposed to look distrustfully upon any sudden conviction of duty which
had its spring in any extraordinary exaltation of feeling, rather than
in that full intellectual seizure of the Divine Word, which it seemed to
him could come only after a determined wrestling with those dogmas that
to his mind were the aptest and compactest expression of the truth
toward which we must agonize. The day of Pentecost showed a great
miracle, indeed; but was not the day of miracles past?

The Doctor, however, did not allow his entertainment of a secret fear to
color in any way his letters of earnest gratulation to his son. If God
has miraculously snatched him from the ways that lead to destruction,
(such was his thought,) let us rejoice.

"Be steadfast, my dear Reuben," he writes. "You have now a cross to
bear. Do not dishonor its holy character; do not faint upon the way. Our
beloved Adele, as you have been told, is trembling upon the verge of the
grave. May God in His mercy spare her, until, at least, she gain some
more fitting sense of the great mission of His Son, and of the divine
scheme of atonement! I fear greatly that she has but loose ideas upon
these all-important subjects. It pains me beyond belief to find her
indifferent to the godly counsels of your pious aunt, which she does not
fail to urge upon her, 'in season and out of season'; and she has shown
a tenacity in guarding that wretched relic of her early life, the rosary
and crucifix, which, I fear, augurs the worst. Pray for her, my son;
pray that all the vanities and idolatries of this world may be swept
from her thoughts."

And Reuben, still living in that roseate atmosphere of religious
meditation, is shocked by this story of the danger of Adele. Is he not
himself in some measure accountable? In those days when they raced
through the Catechism together, did he never provoke her mocking smiles
by his sneers at the ponderous language? Did he not tempt her to some
mischievous sally of mirth, on many a day when they were kneeling in
couple about the family altar?

And in the flush of his exalted feeling he writes her how bitterly he
deplores all this, and, borrowing his language from the sermons he now
listens to with greed, he urges Adele "to plant her feet upon the Rock
of Ages, to eschew all vanities, and to trust to those blessed promises
which were given from the foundation of the world."

Indeed, there is a fervor in his feeling which pushes him into such
extravagances of expression as the Doctor would have found it necessary
to qualify, if Adele, poor child, had not been by far too weak for their
comprehension.

The Brindlocks were, of course, utterly amazed at this new aspect in the
character of their pet young nephew from the country. Mr. Brindlock
said, consolingly, to his wife, when the truth became only too apparent,
"My dear, it's atmospheric, I think. It's a 'revival' season; there was
such a one, I remember, in my young days."

(Mrs. Brindlock laughed at this quite merrily.)

"To be sure there was, my dear, and I was really quite deeply affected.
Reuben will come out all right; we shall see him settling down soon to
good merchant habits again."

But the _animus_ of the new tendency was far stronger than Brindlock had
supposed; and within a month Reuben had come to a quiet rupture with his
city patron. The smack of worldliness was too strong for him. He felt
that he must go back to his old home, and place himself again under the
instructions of the father whose counsels he had once so spurned.

"You don't say you mean to become a parson?" said Mr. Brindlock, more
than ever astounded.

"It is very likely," said Reuben; "or possibly a missionary."

"Well, Reuben, if you must, you must. But I don't see things in that
light. However, my boy, we'll keep our little private ventures astir;
you may need them some day."

And so they parted; and Reuben went home to Ashfield, taking an
affectionate leave of his Aunt Mabel, who had been over-kind to him, and
praying in his heart that that good, but exceedingly worldly woman,
might some day look on serious things as he looked on them.

He had thought in his wild days, that, when he should go back to
Ashfield for any lengthened stay, (for thus far his visits had been few
and flying ones,) he should considerably astonish the old people there
by his air and city cultivation. It is quite possible that he had laid
by certain flaming cravats which he thought would have a killing effect
in the country church, and anticipated a very handsome triumph by the
easy swagger with which he would greet old Deacon Tourtelot and ask
after the health of Miss Almira. But the hope of all such triumphs was
now dropped utterly. Such things clearly belonged to the lusts of the
eye and the pride of life. He even left behind him some of the most
flashy articles of his attire, with the request to Aunt Mabel that she
would bestow them upon some needy person, or, in default of this, make
them over to the Missionary Society for distribution among the
heathen,--a purpose for which some of them, by reason of their brilliant
colors, were certainly most admirably adapted. Under his changed view of
life, it appeared to Reuben that every unnecessary indulgence, whether
of dress or food, was a sin. With the glowing enthusiasm of youth, he
put such beautiful construction upon the rules of Christian faith as
would hardly survive the rough every-day wear of the world. Even the
stiff dignity of Dr. Mowry he was inclined to count only an accidental
incrustation of manner, beneath which the heart of the parson was all
aglow with the tenderest benevolence. We hope he may have been right in
this; it is certain, that, if he could carry forward the same loving
charity to the end of his days, he would have won the best third of the
elements of a Christian career, without respect to dogmas.

So Reuben goes back to Ashfield with a very modest and quiet bearing. He
is to look with other eyes now upon the life there, and to judge how far
it will sustain his new-found religious sympathies. All meet him kindly.
Old Squire Elderkin, who chances to be the first to greet him as he
alights from the coach, shakes him warmly by the hand, and taps him
patronizingly upon the shoulder.

"Welcome home again, Reuben! Well, well, they thought you were given
over to bad courses; but it's all right now, I hear; quite upon the
other tack, eh, Reuben? That's well, my good fellow, that's well."

And Reuben thanked him, thinking perhaps how odd it was that this
worldly old gentleman, of whom he had thought, since his late revulsion
of feeling, with a good deal of quiet pity, should commend what was so
foreign to his own habit. There were, then, some streaks of good-natured
worldliness which tallied with Christian duty. The serene, kindly look
of Mrs. Elderkin was in itself the tenderest welcome; and it was an
ennobling thought to Reuben, that he had at last placed himself (or
fancied he had) upon the same moral plane with that good woman. As for
Rose, the joyous, frolicsome, charming Rose, whom he had thought at one
time to electrify by his elegant city accomplishments,--was not even the
graceful Rose a veteran in the Christian army in which he had but now
enlisted? Why, then, should she show timidity and shyness at this
meeting with him? Yet her little fingers had a quick tremor in them as
she took his hand, and a swift change of color (he knew it of old) ran
over her face like a rosy cloud.

"It is delightful to think that Reuben is safe at last," said Mrs.
Elderkin, after he had gone.

"Yes, mamma," said Rose.

"It must be a great delight to them all at the parsonage."

"I suppose so, mamma. I wish Phil were here," said Rose again, in a
plaintive little tone.

"I wish he were, my child; it might have a good influence upon him: and
poor Adele, too; she must surely listen to Reuben, he is so earnest and
impassioned. Don't you think so, Rose?"

Rose is working with nervous rapidity.

"But, my child," says the mother; "are you not sewing that breadth upon
the wrong side?"

True enough, upon the wrong side,--so many weary stitches to undo!

Miss Eliza had shown a well-considered approval of Reuben's change of
opinions; but this had not forbidden a certain reserve of worldly regret
that he should give up so promising a business career. She had half
hinted as much to the Doctor.

"I do not see, brother," she had said, "that his piety will involve the
abandonment of mercantile life."

"His piety," said the Doctor, "if it be of the right stamp, will involve
an obedience to conscience."

And there the discussion had rested. The spinster received Reuben with
much warmth, in which her stately proprieties of manner, however, were
never for one moment forgotten.

Adele, who was now fortunately in a fair way of recovery, but who was
still very weak, and who looked charmingly in her white chamber-dress
with its simple black belt, received him with a tender-heartedness of
manner which he had never met in her before. The letter of Reuben had
been given her, and, with all its rawness of appeal, had somehow touched
her religious sentiment in a way it had never been touched before. He
had put so much of his youthful enthusiasm into his language, it showed
such an elasticity of hope and joy, as impressed her very strangely. It
made the formal homilies of Miss Eliza seem more harsh than ever. She
had listened, in those fatiguing and terrible days of illness, to psalms
long drawn out, and wearily; but here was some wild bird that chanted a
glorious carol in her ear,--a carol that seemed touched with Heaven's
own joy. And under its influence--exaggerated as it was by extreme
youthful emotion--she seemed to see the celestial gates of jasper and
pearl swing open before her, and the beckonings of the great crowd of
celestial inhabitants to enter and enjoy.

For a long time she had been hovering (how nearly she did not know) upon
the confines of the other world; but with a vague sense that its
mysteries might open upon her in any hour, she had, in her sane
intervals, ranked together the promises and penalties that had been set
before her by the good Doctor: now worrying her spirit, as it confronted
some awful catechismal dogma, that it sought vainly to solve; and then,
from sheer weakness and disappointment, seizing upon the symbol of the
cross, (of which the effigy was always near at hand,) and by a kiss and
a tear seeking to ally her fainting heart with the mystic company of the
elect who would find admission to the joys of paradise. But the dogmas
were vain, because she could not grapple them to her heart; the cross
was vain, because it was an empty symbol; the kisses and the tears left
her groping blindly for the key that would surely unlock for her the
wealth of the celestial kingdom. In this attitude of mind, wearied by
struggle and by fantasies, came to her the letter of Reuben,--the joyous
outburst of a pioneer who had found the way. She never once doubted that
the good Doctor had found it, too,--but so long ago, and by so hard a
road, that she despaired of following in his steps. But Reuben had
leaped to the conquest, and carried a blithe heart with him. Surely,
then, there must be a joy in believing.

"I thank you very much for your letter, Reuben," said Adele, and she
looked eagerly into his face for traces of that triumph which so
glittered throughout his letter.

And she did not look in vain; for, whether it were from the warm,
electric touch of those white, thin fingers of hers, or the eager
welcome in her eyes, or from more sacred cause, a great joy shone in his
face,--a joy that from thenceforward they began to share in common. At
last--at last, a bright illumination was spread over the dreary
teachings of these last years. Not a doubt, not a penalty, not a mystic,
blind utterance of the Catechism, but the glowing enthusiasm of Reuben
invested it with cheery promise, or covered it with the wonderful
glamour of his hope. Between these two young hearts--the one, till then,
all doubt and weariness, and the other, just now, all impassioned
exuberance--there came a grafting, by virtue of which the religious
sentiment, in Adele shot away from all the severities around her into an
atmosphere of peace and joy.

The Doctor saw it, and wondered at the abounding mercies of God. The
spinster saw it, and rejoiced at the welding of this new link in the
chain of her purposes. The village people all saw it, and said among
themselves, "If he has won her from the iniquities of the world, he can
win her for a wife, if he will."

And the echoes of such speeches come, as they needs must, to the ear of
Rose, without surprising her, so much do they seem the echo of her own
thought; and if her heart may droop a little under it, she conceals it
bravely, and abates no jot in her abounding love for Adele.

"I wish Phil were here," she says in the privacy of her home.

"So do I, darling," says the mother, and looks at her with a tender
inquisitiveness that makes the sweet girl flinch, and affect for a
moment a noisy gayety, which is not in her heart.

Rose! Rose! are you not taking wrong stitches again?

RODOLPHE TOePFFER,

THE GENEVESE CARICATURIST.

In 1842 there appeared in New York a little _brochure_ with scarcely any
letter-press, which contained many pages of the most humorous and
spirited sketches. Its title told the whole story, namely:--

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