Steadfast: the story of a saint and a sinner

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Preface

Ik sending out this book, I am aware that I shall meet with some sharp criticism about the statements made therein concerning the action of a certain ecclesiastical body. I have only to say that everything I have recorded relating to the acts of the consociation of Congregational churches of "Newport" county is strictly historical fact ; that, as far as his experience wi*h that consociation goes, Philemon " Hall " was a living man ; though I have changed his surname, as well as the name of the county.

I also desire to express here my obligations to the history of Wallingford, Connecticut, by Dr. Charles H. S. Davis, from which I have drawn the aforesaid facts, and copied the manifestoes of the consociations and Mr. Hall's replies.

Boss Tkbry Cookb.

Contents

CHAPTER l-AUl

I. Death . 11

II. Lova 28

Chapter II. Love

Smote the chord of Self, that, trembling, Passed in music out of sight.

Five years before this day of loss to the Dennis family, Rachel Mather, an orphan girl in Deerfield, had married Philemon Hall, a young minister to whom she had been engaged for five years.

There is nothing strange in so long an engagement, when the young man has to wait for his education and settlement, but yet this marriage made an unusual stir and talk in Deerfield. Rachel was poor, as well as an orphan, and had lived from her tenth year in the house of her aunt, the Widow Peek ; but her beauty and her sweetness of temper would have excused any man in those primitive days for loving and marrying her, had it been the governor of the State himself. She had more than one lover, but only one love, and that was Philemon Hall. She had been his sweetheart from the days when they trudged up to the Rock Corner schoolhouse hand in hand ; and when he made up his mind to become a minister, and asked Rachel if she would wait for him, it seemed to her as if a sudden glory out of heaven had fallen upon her.

She had a hard life in her aunt's house ; four little children and but a small amount of money were Mrs.

Peek's portion in this world, and she was a hard-natured, energetic woman, not inclined to indulge herself in laziness, or anybody else. Eachel was up before dawn and kept at her tasks till night. If candles had not been a luxury, even night would not have been spared to her. In winter a roaring fire of pine and hickory gave her light enough to spin by, but when a fire was no longer needed she could sit out on the doorstep, sometimes with Philemon beside her, and find in the fragrant breath of field and forest, the cries of young birds in their nest, the soft whisper of summer winds in the leaves, and the consciousness of a dear presence beside her, such a rest and refreshment as helped her to possess her soul in patience through the days of loveless and exhausting toil that were her lot. Day by day she seemed to grow lovelier ; her figure was slight and angular, there was no grace in its movement, no rounded outlines, no dimples; her chest was flat and narrow, her shoulders square, but her head was the head of a Greek statue, the straight features, the calm full lips, the low upright forehead and level brows, all illuminated by great blue eyes with thick golden lashes, and a wealth of pale gold hair waving, coiling, clinging about her beautiful head in classic fashion, as rare as lovely. Her skin was pale, but its colorless glow was the tint of health, and any sudden emotion flushed it with the very pink of a wild rose, as fair and as fleeting as that most delicate blossom.

Aunt Peek was furious when, before Philemon left

LOVE. 25

Deerfield to study theology with Father Niles in New Haven, he avowed his engagement to Rachel. It seemed as if for the next four years she set herself to work to devise fresh toils for the poor girl daily, toils whose only respite was the brief annual visit of her lover, who after a good old fashion spent his vacations teaching school, in order to help defray the expense of his own education. But Rachel worked in hope, and therefore uncomplainingly, undergoing a discipline she was soon to need. Mrs. Peek did not hesitate to express her feelings openly as the time for Philemon's return drew near.

" It's everlastin' hard," she confided to a neighbor at an apple-bee. " I've fetched her up sence her folks died ; I've gin her fair schooling board, lodging an' clothin', — and jest as she's gettin' real useful, she's got to up and get married. Seems as though she had ought to hev thought some of me."

" Couldn't ha' done no more 'ef she'd been your own daughter," dryly answered Mrs. Allen.

The Widow Peek stared ; like many other people, she had looked so intently on her own side of the matter that there seemed no other view possible to take, no other interest concerned in it.

The next day it happened to be Rachel's duty, after baking and ironing, to spread out a whole piece of homespun linen on the grass to bleach, and every hour or two to wet it thoroughly ; the heat of the Indian summer day was unusual and intense ; the girl was worn out with her work in the hot kitchen, and about four o'clock one of those autumnal thunderstorms set in that are so furious and so sudden. Occupied with her duties, she had not stepped out of doors since last she sprinkled the lengths of cloth lying across the sward of the home lot, but she was startled by a rapid darkness in the air, and looking out at the door she saw the black curtain of the storm coming over the mountain fast and furious, and a heavy rattling peal of thunder told how near its vanguard hung ; without stopping even for her sun-bonnet, she ran for the linen ; it must be brought in or the heavy rains would beat it into the grass and stain it, the wind tear it up and away, or, possibly, sharp assaults of hail riddle it. But the storm was swifter than her flying steps; before she could fold those lengths of solid linen, it was doubly weighty with water, and she herself drenched to the skin. Holding it up in her slender arms, blinded by the lightning and dazed by the loud thunder, she stumbled and groped slowly back to the house and then set herself, with no consideration for her own condition, to wringing the soaked cloth till it was dry again, or at least fit to hang before the fire, and not drip on the clean floor. Regardless of herself still, and afraid lest her aunt should come back to find the work of the day undone, she finished the last few bits of her ironing, hurried up into the shed loft to turn the heavy cheeses, and by that time the shower had passed over, and she must go to pasture after the cow, milk her, give her water, and then get supper.

LOTE. 27

Mrs. Peek and all her children had gone nutting in some distant woods that day, and they were sure to come back hungry, and expect Eachel to take back the neighbor's horse and wagon they had borrowed ; so it came about that her wet clothes were not changed till, as soon as darkness put an end to labor, she crept upstairs to the " garret-chamber " where she slept, and, aching in every fibre lay down to sleep if she could.

But people on the rack do not sleep : Eachel could not even rise when the dawn came ; she was helpless as a man fettered to his dungeon wall.

Her aunt scolded and fretted, but was forced for her own sake to fetch the doctor, and he shook his wise old head ; it was rheumatic fever, no one could tell how long it might last, or in what condition leave the patient. It is idle to detail her long and weary sufferings : ill with the most agonizing of diseases ; one that demands careful handling, exquisite nursing, warmth, nourishment, cheer ; Eachel had not one of these necessities ; her room was colder even than the barn, for that at least had a deep lining of hay, but her roof was leaky and old, snows drifted on her bed, and rain beat in at the dormer window, dripping in a pool to the floor beneath ; her food was scanty and grudgingly doled out to her ; and such nursing as she got was occasional voluntary service from the neighbors ; when spring at last came, the old doctor said, sadly and unwillingly enough, that there was no hope for her, not even the hope of dying ; she must live a bedridden cripple so long as life remained to her.

Mrs. Peek was furious ; she had no pity at all for this young life brought to so terrible a stand in the midst of its bloom and promise ; she considered this a personal injury done to herself, and never wearied of assuring Rachel that just as soon as the roads settled she should " cart her off to the town-house " a threat she was only too likely to fulfil. But, in her heavy trouble, Rachel had learned where the one consolation of loss can be found; educated in -the Puritan strictness of the time, she had learned chapter after chapter of the Bible, by heart, and almost all the hymn-book; and now that her wandering mind, shaken first by physical and then by mental torture, began to grasp the situation, and try, with that wonderful instinct the mind has, to adapt itself to its surroundings, she betook herself to such prayer as only the despairing can offer ; it seemed to her that her strong pleadings laid hold on heaven ; for in the very anguish of the flesh the gracious words of the Father, the pitiful and tender promises of the Son fell upon her like dew upon the parched ground and gave her strength to endure ; that strength so hard to attain.

While she lay ill in her garret, Philemon had more than once written her ; but the epistles had been thrown on the fire by Aunt Peek, who had no time to read them either to herself or Rachel, and neither wish nor ability to answer them.

But those were days of heavy postage, and weekly mails, sometimes lost from the boot of the stage that

LOVE. 29

carried them, swept out in the fording of a swollen river, or dropped by the breakage of a strap on some lonely mountain road. Philemon did not wonder that his epistles were not answered; his character was generous, confiding, unselfish, and just by nature ; and his earnest religious faith had but confirmed these traits, reformed his native obstinacy into perseverance, and controlled to an imprisoned and safe motive force that strong, high temper which might otherwise have desolated his life and the lives of those most dear to him. He never had a doubt of Kachel's affection, and the one refreshment of his heart through this, his last winter of theological grubbing, was the prospect of his return to Deerfield and to her, in the coming spring.

To her, the thought of seeing him again was exquisitely painful ; she knew that her life was set apart from all the ties that help women to live and be helpful; she knew just how hard it would be for Philemon to give her up ; and, in her pure pity and love, wept bitterer tears for him than ever she shed for her own wreck of hope and health; she tried every day, fortified by prayer and the remembered word of Scripture, to look forward and realize in her imagination the long future of poverty, solitude, and pain in store for her ; she did not yet know that the daily manna of the wanderers in the desert was but a type of the bread wherewith God feeds our hungry souls, a provision only given with the hour of need ; and she wondered sorrowfully why she could not gather courage to accept the life ordained for her, though not yet visited upon her as a fulfilled terror.

At last Philemon came back to Deerfield ; it was a sunny April day; the season was early, and Aunt Peek had said to her oldest girl that very morning, —

"<The roads is most settled; I must go up to the poorhouse an' tell Simonses folks to fix up one o' them rooms, below stairs for Rachel, for I shall jest git rid of her as soon as ever the turnpike's got so a cart can be driv' over it. I'm most tuckered out with fetchin' an carryin' ; its nigh about noonspell now, Mary Ann, you carry up her gruel, it's warm enough ; I dono but what if s smoked a mite, but beggars mustn't be choosers."

Hard indeed and rough of speech was Rachel's unwilling hostess; yet would the blade have cut less deep had it been inlaid and polished steel ? You can answer, poor and pitiable sisterhood, who live by sufferance in houses where your richer brothers and sisters endure you as a necessary evil ; where you wear your lives out in thankless service, scantily rewarded, " traversing another man's stairs " in lifelong humiliation, and abject acceptance of such a fate. Why have you not the courage to go out boldly and earn your bread in some honest calling for a just wage ? Why cannot you break these poor fetters of custom, and heartily and contentedly find and fill the places crying aloud, all about you, for the work of just such women as you are ? Is your false pride of position agreeable or comfortable enough to compensate you

LOVE. 81

for a life of sufferance, of contempt, of real oppression, and nominal reward? If it is, if you prefer husks to bread, continue then to eat them ; but never complain to man or woman of their huskiness, or stretch out your feeble hands for alms of pity.

However, though she did not know it, or expert him, Philemon had come, and he had not been an hour in the village before he heard of Rachel's wretched condition, and her aunt's intention. He, too, was an orphan, with an old uncle in Deerfield, his guardian and only relative ; a simple, kindly, good old man, who considered Philemon the " expectancy and rose " of all New England, and would not have thwarted him in his wildest wishes had it been in his power to grant them. There had been times in this young man's life when he thought sadly of his homeless state, and longed for the tender affection of a mother, or steady and wise fatherly guidance ; but now he felt a half unwilling thrill of joy that he was entirely his own master, and in full possession of the two thousand dollars that remained of his small property, since his education was finished and paid for. His first step was to visit old Doctor Prime and hold a long consultation with him, from which the doctor emerged winking his eyes very hard, growling under his breath, shaking his head, and generally behaving in an ominous manner. The two repaired at once to the parsonage, where a younger brother of the doctor held sway, and there another hour was spent in triple council; all these movements eagerly observed and commented on by female eyes, wherever the line of vision made it possible. But all that even the most assiduously observant woman heard, was these four words from Philemon's lips, as he shut the parsonage door after him in coming out, — "Remember! halfpast four."

It was three already when Philemon Hall arrived at Mrs. Peek's house, and nodding to the astonished Mary Ann, left on guard while her mother had gone up to settle Rachel's affairs with Mr. Simons, went straight up to that dingy garret where his Rachel lay.

She did not faint or cry out when he entered ; she had so long dreamed of this hour, waited, watched for, prayed over, feared it, that there was no shock of surprise, no start of unexpected emotion in her soul ; she looked up and smiled.

But Philemon stopped short on the threshold, and the love that, in tranquil surety of fulfilment, had so long grown with his growth and strengthened with his strength, seemed suddenly to reveal itself and take possession of his whole nature with a power that shook him to the heart.

It was not the beautiful, innocent, gentle girl he had left, who lay in that squalid bed, with eyes as large and limpid as the rock pools of an ebbing sea, with tangled masses of dull gold hair fringing the blue-veined forehead and wan, sunken cheeks; the. Rachel of the past was a child, this was a saint ; the very calm of heaven on her emaciated features, and its light in her tranquil eyes just dewed with unshed

LOVE. 88

tears. He knelt down beside her and set a reverent kiss on her forehead, and then looked at her without a word. She was first to break the silence.

"Are you well, Philemon ?" she said, gently and primly, as a daisy might speak if it could.

"But you, Rachel !" he answered, careless of any answer to her speech. "Do you suffer? do you ache? cannot you be lifted?"

" I ache some," she said ; " sometimes not so much, though," with a piteous little smile. "Nobody has tried to lift me ; I can move just a little."

"Fm coming back in one minute," he said, hurriedly.

Rachel thought he had gone out to control himself, that he could not endure the change in her aspect ; she did not know that she was lovelier than ever ; she sighed, for she was a woman, and she loved him.

But, inHhe shortest possible time, if it was more than a minute, he returned with Aunt Ruthy Wells, the nurse and friend of all the village ; and with her soft, strong hands, her skill of experience, her tenderness, and gentle ways, another hour saw Rachel bathed, clothed afresh, her bed daintily neat, her hair untangled, smoothed, braided loosely about her head and covered with a little linen cap ; then she fetched her a cup of hot broth with a spoonful of wine in it, and fed her like a child; rested and refreshed she looked up at Aunt Ruthy with grateful eyes, and had parted her lips to speak, when the door opened, and in walked Parson Prime, the doctor, and Philemon.

It was a stroke of strategy to be so sudden. Philemon did not stop to consider ; this was not a matter of duty; he loved Rachel with all his strong, faithful heart ; he could not leave her an hour longer in suffering ; there was, in his eyes, but one thing to do, and that was to marry her. If he gave her so much as an hour to consider, he knew where her unselfishness and good sense would land his plans and purposes, therefore, he would not give her that hour, but took for granted that her consent, given so long ago, was valid still ; and refused to listen to the hurried remonstrances she tried even now to make.

"I guess you'd as good keep still; talking '11 only wear ye out." grimly remarked the doctor. " He's as sot in his way as I ever see a man, and you haven't had dealings with 'em so long as I have. I tell you what! if the man's the head of the woman, as the Scripter says, you'll have a big head, Rachel, and you can't bend it much ! "

"Brother!" said Parson Prime, with an official scowl, "this is not a time to laugh."

The doctor took a pinch of snuff, and shut his mouth, but his eyes twinkled wickedly; and overborne by persuasion, by masculine dogmatism, by the suddenness and surprise of the thing ; protesting with every power of her mind, assenting with every throb of her heart, looking up at Philemon with the deprecating adoration of a mortal who beholds an angel stooping to earth's helpless, needy level, — Rachel Mather was married to Philemon Hall without a

LOVE. 86

crowd of friends, a wedding feast, a veiled bride, or even the flowers that should hare lent the last adornment to such a scene ; but no death-bed marriage could have been more solemn or as serene ; it was like a translation to the hopeless, earthly life of the woman ; an opening of heaven's gates ; and it was the rapture of fulfilment to the man, without one tinge of earth or self in its joy ; the stainless rapture of a seraph over the soul gathered to the love of eternity, safe in the heavenly rest. Strange, unworldly, unwise, impossible to mortal man as this tale seems, oh! friendly reader, it is true. And while you stare and wonder and almost disbelieve, just as Deerfield people did ; yet knowing that it was, and is, a fact of wellattested history, will you not for this man's sake have a grain of faith hereafter in the possibilities of humanity, when God breathes into its shape once more the breath of His life?

CHAPTER m.

CONTINUANCE.

Here may ye aee that ' men can ' be In loye meek, kind, and stable.

When Mrs. Peek came home from her visit to the poorhouse, which had been prolonged beyond her expectance by a sturdy squabble with Simmons, who kept it, concerning certain arrangements for Rachel, she was stunned to find her burden taken off her hands in such a way. She did not dare encounter Philemon's keen gray eye, which looked through her flimsy pretence of kindness, to the cruelty and injustice beneath ; and he, with that masculine wisdom which teaches a man to be silent in cases where a woman thinks, or rather feels that she must speak or die, did not offer any accusations or ask any explanations concerning the past.

He merely entered into certain discussions of a business nature, for it was needful that Rachel should have a place where she could be comfortable till he had a home of his own. He could have taken her to his uncle's house, but Doctor Prime would not allow her to be moved twice ; her extreme exhaustion and delicacy forbade the attempt. Philemon had been preaching during his last term of study in the little village of Trumbull, a growing town on the seashore, where certain magnates of the West India trade in New Haven had built them goodly homes, and attracted by their daily needs such tradesmen as the scant custom of an ordinary village did not allow. There was little doubt that when the young student was ready to be ordained he would receive a call to this parish, but till he was fairly settled it seemed best to have Rachel remain in her aunt's house.

After much higgling on Widow Peek's side, and a certain thrifty demur and sense of justice on Mr. Hall's, it was at last arranged that Rachel should occupy the spare room, which had a cheerful, sunny outlook, and an open fireplace ; and Aunt Ruthy be established as her nurse, providing and cooking both her food and Rachel's ; the bargain including the use of Mrs. Peek's kitchen fire for the latter purpose.

This being decided, Philemon set himself to his outside work, visiting his wife daily, bringing refreshment and rest in his very presence ; reading to her ; praying at her side; soothing her fears, her selfreproach, her doubts, with all the patience of love and the fervor of faith. Rachel grew happier, and, in that way, better, basking in all this sunshine ; but even the most profound affection, faithful care, and skilful nursing cannot restore to the distorted muscles and shattered nerves their supple strength and healthy calm. It became more and more unquestionable that she was to be a cripple for life ; and when, in the early fall, Philemon received and accepted his call to the church in Trumbull, and by slow and painful stages, in a vehicle fitted up for the purpose, Rachel was carried to her new home, she felt that it was for life and death; that never again her feet would tread the elastic sward, her eyes see the hills and valleys of her native township, or her knotted fingers pluck the spring-born blossoms from their lonely woodland haunts.

Aunt Ruthy had resolved to stay with her charge, whom she had learned to love with almost maternal affection, as general servant, nurse, and friend. She was tired of nursing from house to house, she was well-nigh fifty years old, and begun to hunger for a home ; and as her only child was a sailor, wandering from land to land with that craze for adventure that lays hold on some men to the extinction of natural ties, she had no prospect for her old age better than that offered her in the house of the minister. In those days a settlement in any parish meant a lifelong position, except under some peculiar circumstances, and Aunt Ruthy in becoming a member of Philemon Hall's family felt herself secure.

The patriarchal relation of servants to the served in the older times was, in the country, almost universal ; and though Aunt Ruthy cooked, washed, ironed, swept, dusted, sewed, and cared for the invalid beside, when her methodic and capable strength had done the day's work up with a calm despatch and neatness modern service knows nothing about, she put on her tamboured collar, changed her stuff skirt and check short gown for a gay chintz gown and petticoat, put a clean mob-cap on her gray hair rolled neatly over a small cushion, and sat down by Rachel to keep her company, helped to entertain her guests, and, with the quiet tact of an intelligent and self-respecting woman, made herself agreeable without being intrusive, and companionable without presumption or impertinence. Dear old Aunt Euthy ! you, whom I remember in your old age, with dark, dovelike eyes in whose depths lurked a great sorrow and a greater love ; your benign face and suave features lit with affection and appreciation, with love to God and man. You, who had the royal heart and the lavish hand of the ideal queen, where are your kind gone to ? Why have we, instead, a tribe of over-dressed, flaunting, silly, selfish creatures, good only for factory hands ? Is it education, is it liberty, is it cheap manufactures, or yellowcovered novels that have wrought this result in our women ?

It is not to be supposed that when the first flush of enthusiasm, generosity, pity, and indignation passed by, and Philemon Hall took up his life with a daily increasing consciousness of its incompleteness, that he was a happy, or a contented man ; for him, in lieu of the active joyful wife, ready to share in his work, to bear and guide his children, to be his heart's delight, companion as well as comforter, — there was only this sweet, pale saint shrined in her chamber, a creature

quite,

. . . " Too bright and good For human nature's daily food/'

and he was not yet old enough or disciplined enough to like daily manna, though it tasted of heaven.

He might almost as well have been a monk in a cell, with a shrined Madonna for his household goddess ; only that the image would not have been sensitive to every sad look, long-drawn breath, or heavy-hearted expression of its votary. It is hard to be a martyr at the stake, no doubt, but there are the exultation of triumphant faith, the wondering eyes of the crowd of witnesses, the rapture of victory, the abstraction of soul and spirit, all enabling the flesh to endure that sharp short agony; but a martyr by pin-pricks, or stung to death by mosquitoes would demand wonderful grace and faith to live to the end of his slow torture.

Yet Philemon Hall was so generous a man, so patient in his strength, so filled with deep affection for this shipwrecked love of his childhood and youth, that never a word of regret, of impatience, or coldness met her ear ; and if, in her morbid sense of dereliction from duty and unfitness for her position, she imagined traces of loss or weariness in his eye or voice, he learned at once to detect her thought, to meet the upturned, ( ^ye with a look of cheerful affection, and soou*; tfie apprehensive ear with words of tenderness and consolation.