Part 5 (1/2)
So he took some fresh paper, and wrote, instead of his lurid text from Hebrews, ”Ye shall be my sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty.”
But when Helen went out of the study, she thought very little of sermons or doctrines. John filled her mind, and she had no room for wondering about his beliefs; he could believe anything he chose; he was hers,--that was enough.
She went into her small kitchen, the smile still lingering upon her lips, and through its open doorway saw her little maid, Alfaretta, out in the sunny garden at the back of the house. She had an armful of fresh white tea-towels, which had been put out to dry on the row of gooseberry bushes at the end of the garden, and was coming up the path, singing cheerily, with all the force of her strong young lungs. Helen caught the words as she drew near:--
”My thoughts on awful subjects roll, d.a.m.nation and the dead.
What horrors seize the guilty soul, Upon the dying bed!
”Where endless crowds of sinners lie, And darkness makes their chains, Tortured with keen despair they cry, Yet wait for fiercer pains!”
”Oh, Alfaretta!” her mistress cried, in indignant astonishment. ”How can you say such terrible words!” Alfaretta stood still, in open-mouthed amazement, an injured look in her good-natured blue eyes. The incongruity of this rosy-faced, happy girl, standing in the suns.h.i.+ne, with all the scents and sounds of a July day about her, and singing in her cheerful voice these hopeless words, almost made Helen smile; but she added gravely, ”I hope you will not sing that again. I do not like it.”
”But ma'am--but Mrs. Ward,” said the girl, plainly hurt at the reproof, ”I was practicing. I belong to the choir.”
Alfaretta had dropped the tea-towels, hot with suns.h.i.+ne and smelling of clover-blossoms, upon her well-scoured dresser, and then turned and looked at her mistress reproachfully. ”I don't know what I am going to do if I can't practice,” she said.
”You don't mean to say you sing that in church?” cried Helen. ”Where do you go?”
”Why, I go to your church,” said the still injured Alfaretta,--”to Mr.
Ward's. We're to have that hymn on Sabbath”--
”Oh, there must be some mistake,” remonstrated Helen. ”I'm sure Mr. Ward did not notice that verse.”
”But it's all like that; it says”--
”Don't tell me any more,” Helen said. ”I've heard enough. I had no idea such awful words were written.” Then she stopped abruptly, feeling her position as the preacher's wife in a way of which she had never thought.
Alfaretta's father was an elder in John's church, which gave her a certain ease in speaking to her mistress that did not mean the slightest disrespect.
”Is it the words of it you don't like?” said Alfaretta, rather relieved, since her singing had not been criticised.
”Yes,” Helen answered, ”it is the words. Don't you see how dreadful they are?”
Alfaretta stood with her plump red hands on her hips, and regarded Mrs.
Ward with interest. ”I hadn't ever thought of 'em,” she said. ”Yes, ma'am. I suppose they are awful bad,” and swinging back and forth on her heels, her eyes fixed meditatively on the ceiling, she said,--
”'Then swift and dreadful she descends Down to the fiery coast, Amongst abominable fiends'--
Yes, that does sound dreadful. Worst of it is, you get used to 'em, and don't notice 'em much. Why, I've sung that hymn dozens of times in church, and never thought of the meanin'. And there's Tom Davis: he drinks most of the time, but he has sung once or twice in the choir (though he ain't been ever converted yet, and he is really terrible wicked; don't do nothin' but swear and drink). But I don't suppose he noticed the words of this hymn,--though I know he sung it,--for he keeps right on in his sin; and he couldn't, you know, Mrs. Ward, if that hymn was true to him.”
Helen left Alfaretta to reflect upon the hymn, and went back to the study; but the door was shut, and she heard the scratching of her husband's pen. She turned away, for she had lived in a minister's household, and had been brought up to know that nothing must disturb a man who was writing a sermon. But John had hurriedly opened the door.
”Did you want to speak to me, dearest?” he said, standing at the foot of the stairs, his pen still between his fingers. ”I heard your step.”
”But I must not interrupt you,” she answered, smiling at him over the bal.u.s.ters.
”You never could interrupt me. Come into the study and tell me what it is.”