Читать книгу: «Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVI., December, 1880.», страница 4

Poor Joan! The time had yet to come when she would spend herself with many a sad regret and sharp upbraiding that this and that had not been said and done; but now, her spirit swallowed up in desolation and sunk beneath the burden of despair, she sat all silent close by Jerrem's side, covering his hands with many a mute caress, yet never daring to lift up her eyes to look into his face without a burst of grief sweeping across to shake her like a reed. Jerrem could eat and drink, but Joan's lips never tasted food. A fever seemed to burn within and fill her with its restless torment: the beatings of her throbbing heart turned her first hot, then cold, as each pulse said the time to part was hurrying to its end.

By Jerrem's wish, Joan was not told that on the morning of his death to Reuben alone admittance to him had been granted: therefore when the eve of that morrow came, and the time to say farewell actually arrived, the girl was spared the knowledge that this parting was more than the shadow of that last good-bye which so soon would have to be said for ever. Still, the sudden change in Jerrem's face pierced her afresh and broke down that last barrier of control over a grief she could subdue no longer. In vain the turnkeys warned them that time was up and Joan must go. Reuben entreated too that they should say good-bye: the two but clung together in more desperate necessity, until Reuben, seeing that further force would be required, stepped forward, and stretching out his hand found it caught at by Jerrem and held at once with Joan's, while in words from which all strength of tone seemed to die away Jerrem whispered, "Reuben, if ever it could come to pass that when I'm gone you and she might find it some day in your minds to stand together—one—say 'twas the thing he wished for most before he went." Then, with a feeble effort to push her into Reuben's arms, he caught her back, and straining her close to his heart again cried out, "Oh, Joan, but death comes bitter when it means good-bye to such as you!" Another cry, a closer strain, then Jerrem's arms relax; his hold gives way, and Joan falls staggering back; the door is opened—shut; the struggle is past, and ere their sad voices can come echoing back Jerrem and Joan have looked their last in life.

CHAPTER XXXVIII

When Reuben found that to be a witness of Jerrem's death Joan must take her stand among the lawless mob who made holiday of such sad scenes as this, his decision was that the idea was untenable. Jerrem too had a strong desire that Joan should not see him die; and although his avoidance of anything that directly touched upon that dreaded moment had kept him from openly naming his wishes, the hints dropped satisfied Reuben that the knowledge of her absence would be a matter of relief to him. But how get Joan to listen to his scruples when her whole mind was set on keeping by Jerrem's side until hope was past and life was over?

"Couldn't 'ee get her to take sommat that her wouldn't sleep off till 'twas late?" Jerrem had said after Reuben had told him that the next morning he must come alone; and the suggestion made was seized on at once by Reuben, who, under pretence of getting something to steady her shaken nerves, procured from the apothecary near a simple draught, which Joan in good faith swallowed. And then, Reuben having promised in case she fell asleep to awaken her at the appointed hour, the poor soul, worn out by sorrow and fatigue, threw herself down, dressed as she was, upon the bed, and soon was in a heavy sleep, from which she did not rouse until well into the following day, when some one moving in the room made her start up. For a moment she seemed dazed: then, rubbing her eyes as if to clear away those happy visions which had come to her in sleep, she gazed about until Reuben, who had at first drawn back, came forward to speak to her. "Why, Reuben," she cried, "how's this? Have I been dreamin', or what? The daylight's come, and, see, the sun!"

And here she stopped, her parched mouth half unclosed, as fears came crowding thick upon her mind, choking her further utterance. One look at Reuben's face had told the tale; and though she did not speak again, the ashen hue that overspread and drove all color from her cheeks proclaimed to him that she had guessed the truth.

"'Twas best, my dear," he said, "that you should sleep while he went to his rest."

But the unlooked-for shock had been too great a strain on body and mind, alike overtaxed and weak, and, falling back, Joan lay for hours as one unconscious and devoid of life. And Reuben sat silent by her side, paying no heed as hour by hour went by, till night had come and all around was dark: then some one came softly up the stairs and crept into the room, and Eve's whispered "Reuben!" broke the spell.

Yes, all had gone well. The body, rescued and safe, was now placed within a house near to the churchyard in which Eve's mother lay: there it was to be buried. And there, the next day, the commonplace event of one among many funerals being over, the four thus linked by fate were brought together, and Adam and Joan again stood face to face. Heightened by the disguise which in order to avoid detection he was obliged to adopt, the alteration in Adam was so complete that Joan stood aghast before this seeming stranger, while a fresh smart came into Adam's open wounds as he gazed upon the changed face of the once comely Joan.

A terrible barrier—such as, until felt, they had never dreaded—seemed to have sprung up to separate and divide these two. Involuntarily they shrank at each other's touch and quailed beneath each other's gaze, while each turned with a feeling of relief to him and to her who now constituted their individual refuge and support. Yes, strange as it seemed to Adam and unaccountable to Joan, she clung to Reuben, he to Eve, before whom each could be natural and unrestrained, while between their present selves a great gulf had opened out which naught but time or distance could bridge over.

So Adam went back to his hiding-place, Reuben to his shop, and Joan and Eve to the old home in Knight's Passage, as much lost amid the crowd of thronged London as if they had already taken refuge in that far-off land which had now become the goal of Adam's thoughts and keen desires. Eve, too, fearing some fresh disaster, was equally anxious for their departure, and most of Reuben's spare time was swallowed up in making the necessary arrangements. A passage in his name for himself and his wife was secured in a ship about to start. At the last moment this passage was to be transferred to Adam and Eve, whose marriage would take place a day or two before the vessel sailed. The transactions on which the successful fulfilment of these various events depended were mostly conducted by Reuben, aided by the counsels of Mr. Osborne and the assistance of Captain Triggs, whose good-fellowship, no longer withheld, made him a valuable coadjutor.

Fortunately, Triggs's vessel, through some detention of its cargo, had remained in London for an unusually long time, and now, when it did sail, Joan was to take passage in it back to Polperro.

"Awh, Reuben, my dear," sighed Joan one evening as, Eve having gone to see Adam, the two walked out toward the little spot where Jerrem lay, and as they went discussed Joan's near departure, "I wish to goodness you'd pack up yer alls and come 'longs to Polperro home with me: 't 'ud be ever so much better than stayin' to this gashly London, where there ain't a blow o' air that's fresh to draw your breath in."

"Why, nonsense!" said Reuben: "you wouldn't have me if I'd come."

"How not have 'ee?" exclaimed Joan. "Why, if so be I thought you'd come I'd never stir from where I be until I got the promise of it."

"But there wouldn't be nothin' for me to do," said Reuben.

"Why, iss there would—oceans," returned Joan. "Laws! I knaws clocks by scores as hasn't gone for twenty year and more. Us has got two ourselves, that wan won't strike and t' other you can't make tick."

Reuben smiled: then, growing more serious, he said, "But do you know, Joan, that yours isn't the first head it's entered into about going down home with you? I've had a mind toward it myself many times of late."

"Why, then, do come to wance," said Joan excitedly; "for so long as they leaves me the house there'll be a home with me and Uncle Zebedee, and I'll go bail for the welcome you'll get gived 'ee there."

Reuben was silent, and Joan, attributing this to some hesitation over the plan, threw further weight into her argument by saying, "There's the chapel too, Reuben. Only to think o' the sight o' good you could do praichin' to 'em and that! for, though it didn't seem to make no odds before, I reckons there's not a few that wants, like me, to be told o' some place where they treats folks better than they does down here below."

"Joan," said Reuben after a pause, speaking out of his own thoughts and paying no heed to the words she had been saying, "you know all about Eve and me, don't you?"

Joan nodded her head.

"How I've felt about her, so that I believe the hold she's got on me no one on earth will ever push her off from."

"Awh, poor sawl!" sighed Joan compassionately: "I've often had a feelin' for what you'd to bear, and for this reason too—that I knaws myself what 'tis to be ousted from the heart you'm cravin' to call yer own."

"Why, yes, of course," said Reuben briskly: "you were set down for Adam once, weren't you?"

"Awh, and there's they to Polperro—mother amongst 'em, too—who'll tell 'ee now that if Eve had never shawed her face inside the place Adam 'ud ha' had me, after all. But there! all that's past and gone long ago."

There was another pause, which Reuben broke by saying suddenly, "Joan, should you take it very out of place if I was to ask you whether after a bit you could marry me? I dare say now such a thought never entered your head before."

"Well, iss it has," said Joan; 'and o' late, ever since that blessed dear spoke they words he did, I've often fell to wonderin' if so be 't 'ud ever come to pass. Not, mind, that I should ha' bin put out if 't had so happened that you'd never axed me, like, but still I thought sometimes as how you might, and then agen I says, 'Why should he, though?'"

"There's many a reason why I should ask you, Joan," said Reuben, smiling at her unconscious frankness, "though very few why you should consent to take a man whose love another woman has flung away."

"Awh, so far as that goes, the both of us is takin' what's another's orts, you knaw," smiled Joan.

"Then is it agreed?" asked Reuben, stretching out his hand.

"Iss, so far as I goes 'tis, with all my heart." Then as she took his hand a change came to her April face, and looking at him through her swimming eyes she said, "And very grateful too I'm to 'ee, Reuben, for I don't knaw by neither another wan who'd take up with a poor heart-broke maid like me, and they she's looked to all her life disgraced by others and theyselves."

Reuben pressed the hand that Joan had given to him, and drawing it through his arm the two walked on in silence, pondering over the unlooked-for ending to the strange events they both had lately passed through. Joan's heart was full of a contentment which made her think, "How pleased Adam will be! and won't mother be glad! and Uncle Zebedee 'ull have somebody to look to now and keep poor Jonathan straight and put things a bit in order;" while Reuben, bewildered by the thoughts which crowded to his mind, semed unable to disentangle them. Could it be possible that he, Reuben May, was going down to live at Polperro, a place whose very name he had once taught himself to abominate?—that he could be willingly casting his lot amid a people whom he had but lately branded as thieves, outcasts, reprobates? Involuntarily his eyes turned toward Joan, and a nimbus in which perfect charity was intertwined with great love and singleness of heart seemed to float about her head and shed its radiance on her face; and its sight was to Reuben as the first touch of love, for he was smitten with a sense of his own unworthiness, and, though he did not speak, he asked that a like spirit to that which filled Joan might rest upon himself.

That evening Eve was told the news which Joan and Reuben had to tell, and as she listened the mixed emotions which swelled within her perplexed her not a little, for even while feeling that the two wishes she most desired—Joan cared for and Reuben made happy—were thus fulfilled, her heart seemed weighted with a fresh disaster: another wrench had come to part her from that life soon to be nothing but a lesson and a memory. And Adam, when he was told, although the words he said were honest words and true, and truly he did rejoice, there yet within him lay a sadness born of regret at rendering up that love so freely given to him, now to be garnered for another's use; and henceforth every word that Reuben spoke, each promise that he gave, though all drawn forth by Adam's own requests, stuck every one a separate thorn within his heart, sore with the thought of being an outcast from the birthplace that he loved and cut off from those whose faces now he yearned to look upon.

No vision opened up to Adam's view the prosperous life the future held in store—no still small voice then whispered in his ear that out of this sorrow was to come the grace which made success sit well on him and Eve; and though, as years went by and intercourse became more rare, their now keen interest in Polperro and its people was swallowed up amid the many claims a busy life laid on them both, each noble action done, each good deed wrought, by Adam, and by Eve too, bore on it the unseen impress of that sore chastening through which they now were passing.

Out of the savings which from time to time Adam had placed with Mr. Macey enough was found to pay the passage-money out and keep them from being pushed by any pressing want on landing.

Already, at the nearest church, Adam and Eve had been married, and nothing now remained but to get on board the vessel, which had already dropped down the river and was to sail the following morning, Triggs had volunteered to put them and their possessions safely on board, and Reuben and Joan, with Eve's small personal belongings, were to meet them at the steps, close by which the Mary Jane's boat would be found waiting. The time had come when Adam could lay aside his disguise and appear in much the same trim he usually did when at Polperro.

Joan was the first to spy him drawing near, and holding out both her hands to greet the welcome change she cried, "Thank the Lord for lettin' me see un his ownself wance more!—Awh, Adam! awh, my dear! 't seems as if I could spake to 'ee now and know 'ee for the same agen.—Look to un, Reuben! you don't wonder now what made us all so proud of un at home."

Reuben smiled, but Adam shook his head: the desolation of this sad farewell robbed him of every other power but that of draining to the dregs its bitterness. During the whole of that long day Eve and he had hardly said one word, each racked with thoughts to which no speech gave utterance. Mechanically each asked about the things the other one had brought, and seemed to find relief in feigning much anxiety about their safety, until Triggs, fearing they might outstay their time, gave them a hint it would not do to linger long; and, with a view to their leavetaking being unconstrained, he volunteered to take the few remaining things down to the boat and stow them safely away, adding that when they should hear his whistle given it would be the signal that they must start without delay.

The spot they had fixed on for the starting-place was one but little used and well removed from all the bustle of a more frequented landing. A waterman lounged here and there, but seeing the party was another's fare vouchsafed to them no further interest. The ragged mud-imps stayed their noisy pranks to scrutinize the country build of Triggs's boat, leaving the four, unnoticed, to stand apart and see each in the other's face the reflection of that misery which filled his own.

Parting for ever! no hopes, no expectations, no looking forward, nothing to whisper "We shall meet again"! "Good-bye for ever" was written on each face and echoed in each heart. Words could not soothe that suffering which turned this common sorrow into an individual torture, which each must bear unaided and alone; and so they stood silent and with outward calm, knowing that on that brink of woe the quiver of an eye might overthrow their all but lost control.

The sun was sinking fast; the gathering mists of eventide were rising to shadow all around; the toil of day was drawing to its close; labor was past, repose was near at hand; its spirit seemed to hover around and breathe its calm upon those worn, tried souls. Suddenly a shrill whistle sounds upon their ears and breaks the spell: the women start and throw their arms around each other's necks. Adam stretches his hand out, and Reuben grasps it in his own.

"Reuben, good-bye. God deal with you as you shall deal with those you're going among!"

"Adam, be true to her, and I'll be true to those you leave behind."

"Joan!" and Adam's voice sounds hard and strained, and then a choking comes into his throat, and, though he wants to tell her what he feels, to ask her to forgive all he has made her suffer, he cannot speak a word. Vainly he strives, but not a sound will come; and these two, whose lives, so grown together, are now to be rent asunder, stand stricken and dumb, looking from out their eyes that last farewell which their poor quivering lips refuse to utter.

"God bless and keep you, Eve!" Reuben's voice is saying as, taking her hands within his own, he holds them to his heart and for a moment lets them rest there.—"Oh, friends," he says, "there is a land where partings never come: upon that shore may we four meet again!"

Then for a moment all their hands are clasped and held as in a vice, and then they turn, and two are gone and two are left behind.

And now the two on land stand with their eyes strained on the boat, which slowly fades away into the vapory mist which lies beyond: then Reuben turns and takes Joan by the hand, and silently the two go back together, while Adam and Eve draw near the ship which is to take them to that far-off shore to which Hope's torch, rekindled, now is pointing.

Good-bye is said to Triggs, the boat pushes off, and the two left standing side by side watch it away until it seems a speck, which suddenly is swallowed up and disappears from sight. Then Adam puts his arm round Eve, and as they draw closer together from out their lips come sighing forth the whispered words, "Fare-well! farewell!"

The Author of "Dorothy Fox".

OUR GRANDFATHERS' TEMPLES

If on the fourteenth day of May, 1607, when the Rev. Robert Hunt celebrated the first sacramental service of the Church of England on American soil, there had suddenly sprung up at Jamestown the pillars and arches of a fully-equipped cathedral, whose stones had remained to tell us of the days when they first enshrined the worship of the earliest colonists, our most ancient Christian church would still be less than three hundred years old—a hopelessly modern structure in comparison with many an abbey and cathedral of England and the Continent.

In a comparative sense, we look in vain for old churches in a new country, for in our architecture, if nowhere else, we are still a land of yesterday, where age seems venerable only when we refuse to look beyond the ocean, and where even a short two hundred years have taken away the larger share of such perishable ecclesiastical monuments as we once had. Our grandfathers' temples, whether they stood on the banks of the James River or on the colder shores of Massachusetts Bay, were built cheaply for a scanty population: their material was usually wood, sometimes unshapen logs, and their sites, chosen before the people and the country had become fitted to each other, were afterward often needed for other uses. So long as London tears down historic churches, even in the present days of fashionable devotion to the old and the quaint, and so long as the Rome of 1880 is still in danger from vandal hands, we need only be surprised that the list of existing American churches of former days is so long and so honorable as it is. If we have no York Minster or St. Alban's Abbey or Canterbury Cathedral, we may still turn to an Old South, a St. Paul's and a Christ Church. It is something, after all, to be able to count our most famous old churches on the fingers of both hands, and then to enumerate by tens those other temples whose legacy from bygone times is scarcely less rich.

The American churches of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were plain structures, unpretending without and unadorned within; and this for other reasons than the poverty of the community, the lack of the best building-materials, and the absence both of architects and of artistic tastes. It was a simple ritual which most of them were to house, and the absence of an ornate service demanded the absence of ornamentation, which would be meaningless because it would symbolize nothing. The influence of the Puritans in Massachusetts, the Baptists in Rhode Island, the Dutch Reformed in New York, the Lutherans and Presbyterians in the Middle and Southern colonies, and the Friends in Pennsylvania, whatever their denominational differences, was a unit in favor of the utmost simplicity consistent with decency and order; and though there was a difference between Congregational churches like the Old South in Boston and the Friends' meeting-houses in Philadelphia, the difference was far less marked than that existing between the new and old buildings of the Old South society, which the modern tourist may compare at his leisure in the Boston of to-day. Even the Episcopalians shared, or deferred to, the prevailing spirit of the time: they put no cross upon their Christ Church in Cambridge, nearly a hundred and thirty years after the settlement of the place, lest they should offend the tastes of their neighbors. The Methodists, the "Christians," the Swedenborgians, the Unitarians and the Universalists were not yet, and the Moravians were a small and little-understood body in Eastern Pennsylvania.

Nearly all the colonists, of whatever name, brought from Europe a conscientious love of religious simplicity and unpretentiousness: for the most part, the English-speaking settlers were dissenters from the Church which owned all the splendid architectural monuments of the country whence they came; and it was not strange that out of their religious thought grew churches that symbolized the sturdy qualities of a faith which, right or wrong, had to endure exile and poverty and privation—privation not only from social wealth, but from the rich store of ecclesiastical traditions which had accumulated for centuries in cathedral choirs and abbey cloisters.

Therefore, the typical New England meeting-house of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries may perhaps be taken as the best original example of what America has to show in the way of church-building. To be sure, its cost was modest, its material was perishable wood, its architectural design was often a curious medley of old ideas and new uses, and even its few ornaments were likely to be devoid of the beauty their designers fancied that they possessed. But it was, at any rate, an honest embodiment of a sincere idea—the idea of "freedom to worship God;" and it was adapted to the uses which it was designed to serve. It stood upon a hill, a square box with square windows cut in its sides—grim without and grim within, save as the mellowing seasons toned down its ruder aspects, and green grass and waving boughs framed it as if it were a picture. Within, the high pulpit, surmounted by a sounding-board, towered over the square-backed pews, facing a congregation kept orderly by stern tithing-man and sterner tradition. There was at first neither organ nor stove nor clock. The shivering congregation warmed itself as best it might by the aid of foot-stoves; the parson timed his sermon by an hour-glass; and in the singing-seats the fiddle and the bass—viol formed the sole link (and an unconscious one) between the simple song-service of the Puritan meeting-house and the orchestral accompaniments to the high masses of European cathedrals. The men still sat at the end of the pew—a custom which had grown up in the days when they went to the meeting-house gun in hand, not knowing when they should be hastily summoned forth to fight the Indians. In the earliest days the drum was the martial summons to worship, but soon European bells sent forth their milder call. Behind the meeting-houses were the horse-sheds for the use of distant comers—a species of ecclesiastical edifice still adorning the greater number of American country churches, and not likely to disappear for many a year to come.

In the elder day there was no such difference as now between city and country churches, for the limitations of money and material bore upon both more evenly. But with growing wealth and the choice of permanent locations for building came brick and stone; English architects received orders; and the prevailing revival led by Sir Christopher Wren and his followers dotted the Northern colonies with more pretentious churches, boasting spires not wholly unlike those which were then piercing London skies. With costlier churches of permanent material there came also the English fashion of burial in churchyards and chancel-vaults, and mural tablets and horizontal tombstones were laid into the mortar which has been permitted, in not a few cases, to preserve them for our own eyes.

But our oldest churches, as a rule, have been made more notable by the political events with which they have been associated than by the honorable interments that have taken place beneath their shadow. Their connection with the living has endeared them to our memories more than their relations to the dead. Not because it is Boston's Westminster Abbey or Temple Church has the Old South been permitted to come down to us as the best example of the Congregational meeting-houses of the eighteenth century, but because of the Revolutionary episodes of which it was the scene, and which are commemorated in the stone tablet upon its front. The Old South Church, built in 1729, belonged to the common class of brick structures which replaced wooden ones; for, like Solomon's temple, its predecessor had been built of cedar sixty years before. The convenient location of the Old South and the capaciousness of its interior brought to it the colonial meetings which preceded the Revolution, and especially that famous gathering of December 13, 1773, whence marched the disguised patriots to destroy the taxed tea in Boston harbor. The convenient access and spacious audience-room of the old church also led to its occupancy as a riding-school for British cavalry in 1775. Even now, in the quiet days following the recent excitement attending its escape from fire and from sale and demolition, the ancient church still finds occasional use as a place for lectures and public gatherings. Its chequered days within the past decade have at least served to make its appearance and its part in colonial history more familiar to us, and have done something to save other churches from the destruction which might have overtaken them.

As the Old South stands as the brick-and-mortar enshrinement of the best Puritan thought of the eighteenth century, so King's Chapel in Boston, built twenty-five years later, represents the statelier social customs and the more conservative political opinions of the early New England Episcopalians. Its predecessor, of wood, was the first building of the Church of England in New England. The present King's Chapel, with its sombre granite walls and its gently-lighted interior, suggests to the mind an impression of independence of time rather than of age. One reads on the walls, to be sure, such high-sounding old names as Vassall and Shirley and Abthorp, and on a tomb in the old graveyard near by one sees the inscriptions commemorating Governor John Winthrop of Massachusetts and his son John, governor of Connecticut. But King's Chapel seems the home of churchly peace and gracious content; so that, as we sit within its quaint three-sided pews, it is hard to remember the stormy scenes in which it has had part. Its Tory congregation, almost to a man, fled from its walls when the British general, Gage, evacuated Boston; the sterner worshippers of the Old South occupied its Anglican pews for a time; and later it was the scene of a theological movement which caused, in 1785, the first Episcopal church in New England—or rather its remnant—to become the first Unitarian society in America.

In Salem street, Boston, left almost alone at the extreme north end of the city, is Christ Church, built in 1723. Its tower contains the oldest chime of bells in America, and from it, according to some antiquarians, was hung the lantern which on April 18, 1775, announced to the waiting Paul Revere, and through him to the Middlesex patriots in all the surrounding country, that General Gage had despatched eight hundred men to seize and destroy the military stores gathered at Concord by the Massachusetts Committees of Safety and Supplies. Thus opened the Revolutionary war, for the battles at Lexington and Concord took place only the next day.

The white-spired building at the corner of Park and Tremont streets, Boston, known as the Park Street Church, is hardly so old as its extended fame would lead one to suppose, for it dates no farther back than the first quarter of the present century. Its position as the central point of the great theological controversies of 1820 in the Congregational churches of Eastern Massachusetts has made it almost as familiar as the "Saybrook Platform." The meeting-house was built at the time when the greater part of the Boston churches were modifying their creeds, and when the Old South itself would have changed its denominational relations but for the vote of a State official, cast to break a tie. Its inelegance and rawness are excused in part by its evident solidity and sincerity of appearance. In its shadow rest Faneuil, Revere, Samuel Adams and John Hancock.