John Ward, Preacher

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JOHN WARD, PREACHER

BY MARGARET DELAND

AUTHOR OF "THE OLD GARDEN"

I sent my soul through the invisible,
Some letter of that after-life to spell;
And by and by my soul returned to me,
And answered, "I myself am Heav'n and Hell"

Omar Khayyam

NEW YORK
GROSSET & DUNLAP
PUBLISHERS

Copyright, 1888,
By HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO.
_All rights reserved._

To LORIN DELAND
This Book
ALREADY MORE HIS THAN MINE
IS DEDICATED.

Boston, _December 25th, 1887_.

JOHN WARD, PREACHER.

CHAPTER I.

The evening before Helen Jeffrey's wedding day, the whole household at
the rectory came out into the garden.

"The fact is," said Dr. Howe, smiling good-naturedly at his niece, "the
importance of this occasion has made everybody so full of suppressed
excitement one can't breathe in the house."

And indeed a wedding in Ashurst had all the charm of novelty. "Why, bless
my soul," said the rector, "let me see: it must be ten--no, twelve years
since Mary Drayton was married, and that was our last wedding. Well, we
couldn't stand such dissipation oftener; it would wake us up."

But Ashurst rather prided itself upon being half asleep. The rush and
life of newer places had a certain vulgarity; haste was undignified, it
was almost ill bred, and the most striking thing about the village,
resting at the feet of its low green hills, was its atmosphere of leisure
and repose.

Its grassy road was nearly two miles long, so that Ashurst seemed to
cover a great deal of ground, though there were really very few houses.
A lane, leading to the rectory, curled about the foot of East Hill at one
end of the road, and at the other was the brick-walled garden of the
Misses Woodhouse.

Between these extremes the village had slowly grown; but its first youth
was so far past, no one quite remembered it, and even the trying stage of
middle age was over, and its days of growth were ended. This was perhaps
because of its distance from the county town, for Mercer was twelve miles
away, and there was no prospect of a railroad to unite them. It had been
talked of once; some of the shopkeepers, as well as Mr. Lash, the
carpenter, advocated it strenuously at Bulcher's grocery store in the
evenings, because, they said, they were at the mercy of Phibbs, the
package man, who brought their wares on his slow, creaking cart over the
dusty turnpike from Mercer. But others, looking into the future, objected
to a convenience which might result in a diminution of what little trade
they had. Among the families, however, who did not have to consider
"trade" there was great unanimity, though the Draytons murmured something
about the increased value of the land; possibly not so much with a view
to the welfare of Ashurst as because their property extended along the
proposed line of the road.

The rector was very firm in his opinion. "Why," said he, mopping his
forehead with his big silk handkerchief, "what do we want with a
railroad? My grandfather never thought of such a thing, so I think I can
get along without it, and it is a great deal better for the village not
to have it."

It would have cut off one corner of his barn; and though this could not
have interfered with the material or spiritual welfare of Ashurst, Dr.
Howe's opinion never wavered. And the rector but expressed the feelings
of the other "families," so that all Ashurst was conscious of relief when
the projectors of the railroad went no further than to make a cut at one
end of the Drayton pastures; and that was so long ago that now the earth,
which had shown a ragged yellow wound across the soft greenness of the
meadows, was sown by sweet clover and wild roses, and gave no sign of
ever having been gashed by picks and shovels.

The Misses Woodhouse's little orchard of gnarled and wrinkled apple-trees
came to the edge of the cut on one side, and then sloped down to the
kitchen garden and back door of their old house, which in front was shut
off from the road by a high brick wall, gray with lichens, and crumbling
in places where the mortar had rotted under the creepers and ivy, which
hung in heavy festoons over the coping. The tall iron gates had not been
closed for years, and, rusting on their hinges, had pressed back against
the inner wall, and were almost hidden by the tangle of vines, that were
woven in and out of the bars, and waved about in the sunshine from their
tops.

The square garden which the wall inclosed was full of cool, green
darkness; the trees were the growth of three generations, and the
syringas and lilacs were so thick and close they had scarcely light
enough for blossoming. The box borders, which edged the straight prim
walks, had grown, in spite of clippings, to be almost hedges, so that the
paths between them were damp, and the black, hard earth had a film of
moss over it. Old-fashioned flowers grew just where their ancestors had
stood fifty years before. "I could find the bed of white violets with my
eyes shut," said Miss Ruth Woodhouse; and she knew how far the lilies of
the valley spread each spring, and how much it would be necessary to
clip, every other year, the big arbor vitae, so that the sunshine might
fall upon her bunch of sweet-williams.

Miss Ruth was always very generous with her flowers, but now that there
was to be a wedding at the rectory she meant to strip the garden of every
blossom she could find, and her nephew was to take them to the church the
first thing in the morning.

Gifford Woodhouse had lately returned from Europe, and his three years'
travel had not prepared his aunts to treat him as anything but the boy he
seemed to them when he left the law school. They still "sent dear Giff"
here, or "brought him" there, and arranged his plans for him, in entire
unconsciousness that he might have a will of his own. Perhaps the big
fellow's silence rather helped the impression, for so long as he did not
remonstrate when they bade him do this or that, it was not of so much
consequence that, in the end, he did exactly as he pleased. This was not
often at variance with the desires of the two sisters, for the wordless
influence of his will so enveloped them that his wishes were apt to be
theirs. But no one could have been more surprised than the little ladies,
had they been told that their nephew's intention of practicing law in the
lumber town of Lockhaven had been his own idea.

They had cordially agreed with him when he observed that another lawyer
in Ashurst, beside Mr. Denner, would have no other occupation than to
make his own will; and they had nodded approvingly when the young man
added that it would seem scarcely gracious to settle in Mercer while Mr.
Denner still hoped to find clients there, and sat once a week, for an
hour, in a dingy back office waiting for them. True, they never came; but
Gifford had once read law with Mr. Denner, and knew and loved the little
gentleman, so he could not do a thing which might appear discourteous.
And when he further remarked that there seemed to be a good opening in
Lockhaven, which was a growing place, and that it would be very jolly to
have Helen Jeffrey there when she became Mrs. Ward, the two Misses
Woodhouse smiled, and said firmly that they approved of it, and that they
would send him to Lockhaven in the spring, and they were glad they had
thought of it.

On this June night, they had begged him to take a message to the rectory
about the flowers for the wedding. "He is glad enough to go, poor child,"
said Miss Deborah, sighing, when she saw the alacrity with which he
started; "he feels her marriage very much, though he is so young."

"Are you sure, dear Deborah?" asked Miss Ruth, doubtfully. "I never
really felt quite certain that he was interested in her."

"Certainly I am," answered Miss Deborah, sharply. "I've always maintained
they were made for each other."

But Gifford Woodhouse's pleasant gray eyes, under straight brown brows,
showed none of the despair of an unsuccessful lover; on the contrary, he
whistled softly through his blonde moustache, as he came along the
rectory lane, and then walked down the path to join the party in the
garden.

The four people who had gathered at the foot of the lawn were very
silent; Dr. Howe, whose cigar glowed and faded like a larger firefly than
those which were beginning to spangle the darkness, was the only one
ready to talk. "Well," he said, knocking off his cigar ashes on the arm
of his chair, "everything ready for to-morrow, girls? Trunks packed and
gowns trimmed? We'll have to keep you, Helen, to see that the house is
put in order after all this turmoil; don't you think so, Lois?"

Here the rector yawned secretly.

"You needn't worry about _order_, father," Lois said, lifting her head
from her cousin's shoulder, her red lower lip pouting a little, "but I
wish we could keep Helen."

"Do you hear that, Mr. Ward?" the rector said. "Yes, we're all going to
miss the child very much. Gifford Woodhouse was saying to-day Ashurst
would lose a great deal when she went. There's a compliment for you,
Helen! How that fellow has changed in these three years abroad! He's
quite a man, now. Why, how old is he? It's hard for us elders to realize
that children grow up."

"Giff is twenty-six," Lois said.

"Why, to be sure," said Dr. Howe, "so he is! Of course, I might have
known it: he was born the year your brother was, Lois, and he would have
been twenty-six if he'd lived. Nice fellow, Gifford is. I'm sorry he's
not going to practice in Mercer. He has a feeling that it might interfere
with Denner in some way. But dear me, Denner never had a case outside
Ashurst in his life. Still, it shows good feeling in the boy; and I'm
glad he's going to be in Lockhaven. He'll keep an eye on Helen, and let
us know if she behaves with proper dignity. I think you'll like him, Mr.
Ward,--I would say John,--my dear fellow!"

There was a lack of sympathy on the part of the rector for the man at his
side, which made it difficult for him to drop the formal address, and
think of him as one of the family. "I respect Ward," he said once to his
sister,--"I can't help respecting him; but bless my soul, I wish he was
more like other people!" There was something about the younger man, Dr.
Howe did not know just what, which irritated him. Ward's earnestness was
positively aggressive, he said, and there seemed a sort of undress of the
mind in his entire openness and frankness; his truthfulness, which
ignored the courteous deceits of social life, was a kind of impropriety.

But John Ward had not noticed either the apology or the omission; no one
answered the rector, so he went on talking, for mere occupation.

"I always liked Gifford as a boy," he said; "he was such a manly fellow,
and no blatherskite, talking his elders to death. He never had much to
say, and when he did talk it was to the point. I remember once seeing
him--why, let me see, he couldn't have been more than fifteen--breaking a
colt in the west pasture. It was one of Bet's fillies, and as black as a
coal: you remember her, don't you, Lois?--a beauty! I was coming home
from the village early in the morning; somebody was sick,--let me see,
wasn't it old Mrs. Drayton? yes,--and I'd been sent for; it must have
been about six,--and there was Gifford struggling with that young mare in
the west pasture. He had thrown off his coat, and caught her by the mane
and a rope bridle, and he was trying to ride her. That blonde head of his
was right against her neck, and when she reared he clung to her till she
lifted him off his feet. He got the best of her, though, and the first
thing she knew he was on her back. Jove! how she did plunge! but he
mastered her; he sat superbly. I felt Gifford had the making of a man in
him, after that. He inherits his father's pluck. You know Woodhouse made
a record at Lookout Mountain; he was killed the third day."

"Gifford used to say," said Helen, "that he wished he had been born in
time to go into the army."

"There's a good deal of fight in the boy," said the rector, chuckling.
"His aunts were always begging him not to get into rows with the village
boys. I even had to caution him myself. 'Never fight, sir,' I'd say; 'but
if you do fight, whip 'em!' Yes, it's a pity he couldn't have been in the
army."

"Well," said Lois, impatiently, "Giff would have fought, I know, but
he's so contradictory! I've heard him say the Southerners couldn't help
fighting for secession; it was a principle to them, and there was no
moral wrong about it, he said."

"Oh, nonsense!" cried the rector; "these young men, who haven't borne the
burden and heat of the day, pretend to instruct us, do they? No moral
wrong? I thought Gifford had some sense! They were condemned by God and
man."

"But, uncle Archie," Helen said, slowly, "if they thought they were
right, you can't say there was a moral wrong?"

"Oh, come, come," said Dr. Howe, with an indignant splutter, "you don't
understand these things my dear,--you're young yet, Helen. They were
wrong through and through; so don't be absurd." Then turning half
apologetically to John Ward, he added, "You'll have to keep this child's
ideas in order; I'm sure she never heard such sentiments from me. Mr.
Ward will think you haven't been well brought up, Helen. Principle?
Twaddle! their pockets were what they thought of. All this talk of
principle is rubbish."

The rector's face was flushed, and he brought his fist down with emphasis
upon the arm of his chair.

"And yet," said John Ward, lifting his thoughtful dark eyes to Dr. Howe's
handsome face, "I have always sympathized with a mistaken idea of duty,
and I am sure that many Southerners felt they were only doing their duty
in fighting for secession and the perpetuation of slavery."

"I don't agree with you, sir," said Dr. Howe, whose ideas of hospitality
forbade more vigorous speech, but his bushy gray eyebrows were drawn into
a frown.

"I think you are unfair not to admit that," John continued with gentle
persistence, while the rector looked at him in silent astonishment, and
the two young women smiled at each other in the darkness. ("The idea of
contradicting father!" Lois whispered.) "They felt," he went on, "that
they had found authority for slavery in the Bible, so what else could
they do but insist upon it?"

"Nonsense," said Dr. Howe, forgetting himself, "the Bible never taught
any such wicked thing. They believed in states rights, and they wanted
slavery."

"But," John said, "if they did believe the Bible permitted slavery, what
else could they do? Knowing that it is the inspired word of God, and that
every action of life is to be decided by it, they had to fight for an
institution which they believed sacred, even if their own judgment and
inclination did not concede that it was right. If you thought the Bible
taught that slavery was right, what could you do?"

"I never could think anything so absurd," the rector answered, a shade of
contempt in his good-natured voice.

"But if you did," John insisted, "even if you were unable to see that it
was right,--if the Bible taught it, inculcated it?"

Dr. Howe laughed impatiently, and flung the end of his cigar down into
the bushes, where it glowed for a moment like an angry eye. "I--I? Oh,
I'd read some other part of the book," he said. "But I refuse to think
such a crisis possible; you can always find some other meaning in a text,
you know."

"But, uncle Archie," Helen said, "if one did think the Bible taught
something to which one's conscience or one's reason could not assent, it
seems to me there could be only one thing to do,--give up the Bible!"

"Oh, no," said Dr. Howe, "don't be so extreme, Helen. There would be many
things to do; leave the consideration of slavery, or whatever the
supposed wrong was, until you'd mastered all the virtues of the Bible:
time enough to think of an alternative then,--eh, Ward? Well, thank
Heaven, the war's over, or we'd have you a rank copperhead. Come! it's
time to go into the house. I don't want any heavy eyes for to-morrow."

"What a speech for a minister's wife, Helen!" Lois cried, as they rose.
"What _would_ people say if they heard you announce that you 'would give
up the Bible'?"

"I hope no one will ever hear her say anything so foolish," said Dr.
Howe, but John Ward looked at Lois in honest surprise.

"Would it make any difference what people said?" he asked.

"Oh, I wasn't speaking very seriously," Lois answered, laughing, "but
still, one does not like to say anything which is unusual, you know,
about such things. And of course Helen doesn't really mean that she'd
give up the Bible."

"But I do," Helen interrupted, smiling; and she might have said more,
for she could not see John's troubled look in the darkness, but Gifford
Woodhouse came down the path to meet them and give Miss Ruth's message.

"Just in time, young man," said the rector, as Gifford silently took some
of John's burden of shawls and cushions, and turned and walked beside
him. "Here's Helen giving Ward an awful idea of her orthodoxy; come and
vouch for the teaching you get at St. Michael's."

Gifford laughed. "What is orthodoxy, doctor?" he said. "I'm sure I don't
know!"

"'The hungry sheep look up and are not fed,'" quoted the rector in a
burlesque despair. "Why, what we believe, boy,--what _we_ believe! The
rest of my flock know better, Mr. Ward, I assure you."

"I don't think we know what we do believe, uncle," Helen said lightly.

"This grows worse and worse," said the rector. "Come, Helen, when an
intelligent young woman, I might say a bright young woman, makes a
commonplace speech, it is a mental yawn, and denotes exhaustion. You and
Lois are tired; run up-stairs. Vanish! I say. Good night, dear child, and
God bless you!"

CHAPTER II.

Ashurst Rectory, in a green seclusion of vines and creepers, stood close
to the lane,--Strawberry Lane it was called, because of a tradition that
wild strawberries grew there. The richness of the garden was scarcely
kept in bounds by its high fence; the tops of the bushes looked over it,
and climbing roses shed their petals on the path below, and cherries,
blossoms, and fruit were picked by the passer-by. "There is enough for us
inside," said the rector.

The house itself was of gray stone, which seemed to have caught, where it
was not hidden by Virginia creepers and wistaria, the mellow coloring of
the sunset light, which flooded it from a gap in the western hills. Its
dormer-windows, their roofs like brown caps bent about their ears, had
lattices opening outward; and from one of these Lois Howe, on the evening
of Helen's wedding day, had seen her father wandering about the garden,
with the red setter at his heels, and had gone down to join him.

"I wonder," she said, as she wound her round young arm in his, which was
behind him, and held his stick, "if John Ward has a garden? I hope so;
Helen is so fond of flowers. But he never said anything about it; he just
went around as though he was in a dream. He was perfectly happy if he
could only look at Helen!"

"Well, that's right," said the rector; "that's proper. What else would
you have? The fact is, Lois, you don't like Ward. Now, he is a good
fellow; yes, good is just the word for him. Bless my soul, there's a
pitch of virtue about him that is exhausting. But that's our fault," he
added candidly.

"Oh, I'll like him," Lois said quickly, "if he will just make Helen
happy."

The rector shook his head. "I know how you feel," he said, "and I
acknowledge he is odd; that talk of his last night about slavery being
a righteous institution"--

"Oh, he didn't say that, father," Lois interrupted.

--"was preposterous," continued Dr. Howe, not noticing her; "but
he's earnest, he's sincere, and I have a great deal of respect for
earnestness. And look here, Lois, you must not let anybody see you are
not in sympathy with Helen's choice; be careful of that tongue of yours,
child. It's bad taste to make one's private disappointments public. I
wouldn't speak of it even to your aunt Deely, if I were you."

He stooped down to pull some matted grass from about the roots of a
laburnum-tree, whose dark leaves were lighted by golden loops of
blossoms, "Thirty-eight years ago," he said, "your mother and I planted
this; we had just come home from our wedding journey, and she had brought
this slip from her mother's garden in Virginia. But dear me, I suppose
I've told you that a dozen times. What? How to-day brings back that trip
of ours! We came through Lockhaven, but it was by stage-coach. I remember
we thought we were so fortunate because the other two passengers got out
there, and we had the coach to ourselves. Your mother had a striped
ribbon, or gauze,--I don't know what you call it,--on her bonnet, and it
kept blowing out of the window of the coach, like a little flag. You
young people can go further in less time, when you travel, but you will
never know the charm of staging it through the mountains. I declare, I
haven't thought of it for years, but to-day brings it all back to me!"

They had reached the rectory porch, and Dr. Howe settled himself in his
wicker chair and lighted his cigar, while Lois sat down on the steps, and
began to dig small holes in the gravel with the stick her father had
resigned to her.

The flood of soft lamplight from the open hall door threw the portly
figure of the rector into full relief, and, touching Lois's head, as she
sat in the shadow at the foot of the steps, with a faint aureole, fell in
a broad bright square on the lawn in front of the house. They had begun
to speak again of the wedding, when the click of the gate latch and the
swinging glimmer of a lantern through the lilacs and syringas warned them
that some one was coming, and in another moment the Misses Woodhouse
and their nephew stepped across the square of light.

Miss Deborah and Miss Ruth were quite unconscious that they gave the
impression of carrying Gifford about with them, rather than of being
supported by him, for each little lady had passed a determined arm
through one of his, and instead of letting her small hand, incased in its
black silk mitt, rest upon his sleeve, pressed it firmly to her breast.

Ashurst was a place where friendships grew in simplicity as well as
strength with the years, and because these three people had been most of
the morning at the rectory, arranging flowers, or moving furniture about,
or helping with some dainty cooking, and then had gone to the church at
noon for the wedding, they saw no reason why they should not come again
in the evening. So the sisters had put on their second-best black silks,
and, summoning Gifford, had walked through the twilight to the rectory.
Miss Deborah Woodhouse had a genius for economy, which gave her great
pleasure and involved but slight extra expense to the household, and she
would have felt it a shocking extravagance to have kept on the dress she
had worn to the wedding. Miss Ruth, who was an artist, the sisters said,
and fond of pretty things, reluctantly followed her example.

They sat down now on the rectory porch, and began to talk, in their
eager, delicate little voices, of the day's doings. They scarcely noticed
that their nephew and Lois had gone into the fragrant dusk of the garden.
It did not interest them that the young people should wish to see, as
Gifford had said, how the sunset light lingered behind the hills; and
when they had exhausted the subject of the wedding, Miss Ruth was anxious
to ask the rector about his greenhouse and the relative value of leaf
mould and bone dressing, so they gave no thought to the two who still
delayed among the flowers.

This was not surprising. Gifford and Lois had known each other all their
lives. They had quarreled and made up with kisses, and later on had
quarreled and made up without the kisses, but they had always felt
themselves the most cordial and simple friends. Then had come the time
when Gifford must go to college, and Lois had only seen him in his short
vacations; and these gradually became far from pleasant. "Gifford has
changed," she said petulantly. "He is so polite to me," she complained to
Helen; not that Gifford had ever been rude, but he had been brotherly.

He once asked her for a rose from a bunch she had fastened in her dress.
"Why don't you pick one yourself, Giff?" she said simply; and afterwards,
with a sparkle of indignant tears in her eyes and with a quick impatience
which made her an amusing copy of her father, she said to Helen, "I
suppose he meant to treat me as though I was some fine young lady. Why
can't he be just the old Giff?" And when he came back from Europe, she
declared he was still worse.

Yet even in their estrangement they united in devotion to Helen. It was
to Helen they appealed in all their differences, which were many, and her
judgment was final; Lois never doubted it, even though Helen generally
thought Gifford was in the right. So now, when her cousin had left her,
she was at least sure of the young man's sympathy.

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