Part 26 (1/2)

As he stopped, and the pause was prolonged, Agnes herself, by a powerful inner impulsion, took up the prayer aloud, and carried it along like inspiration. She was not of the strong-minded type of women, rather of the wholly loving; but the deep afflictions of the past few months, working down into the crevices and cells of her nature, had struck the impervious bed of piety, and so deluged it with sorrow and the lonely sense of helplessness that now a cry like an appeal to judgment broke from her, not despair nor accusation, but an appeal to the very equity of G.o.d.

It arose so frankly and in such majesty, finding its own aptest words by its unconscious instinct, that the aged minister was presently aware of a preternatural power at his side. Was this woman a witch, genius, demon, or the very priestess of G.o.d, he asked.

The solemn prayer ranged into his own experience by that touch of nature which unlocks the secret spring of all, being true unto its own deep needs. The minister was swept along in the resistless current of the prayer, and listened as if he were the penitent and she the priest. As the pet.i.tion died away in Agnes's physical exhaustion, the venerable man thought to himself:

”When Jacob wrestled all night at Peniel, his angel must have been a woman like this; for she has power with G.o.d and with men!”

CHAPTER VII.

FOCUS.

Calvin Van de Lear had been up-stairs with Duff Salter, and on his way out had heard the voice of Agnes Wilt praying. He slipped into the back parlor and listened at the crevice of the folding-door until his father had given the pastoral benediction and departed. Then with cool effrontery Calvin walked into the front parlor, where Agnes was sitting by the slats of the nearly darkened window.

”Pardon me, Agnes,” he said. ”I was calling on the deaf old gentleman up-stairs, and perceiving that devotions were being conducted here, stopped that I might not interrupt them.”

Calvin's commonplace nature had hardly been dazed by Agnes's prayer. He was only confirmed in the idea that she was a woman of genius, and would take half the work of a pastor off his hands. In the light of both desire and convenience she had, therefore, appreciated in his eyes. To marry her, become the proprietor of her snug home and ravis.h.i.+ng person, and send her off to pray with the sick and sup with the older women of the flock, seemed to him such a comfortable consummation as to have Heaven's especial approval. Thus do we deceive ourselves when the spirit of G.o.d has departed from us, even in youth, and construe our dreams of selfishness to be glimmerings of a purer life.

Calvin was precocious in a.s.surance, because, in addition to being unprincipled, he was in a manner ordained by election and birthright to rule over Kensington. His father had been one of those strong-willed, clear-visioned, intelligent young Eastern divinity students who brought to a place of more voluptuous and easy burgher society the secular vigor of New England pastors. Being always superior and always sincere, his rule had been ungrumblingly accepted. Another generation, at middle age, found him over them as he had been over their parents--a righteous, intrepid Protestant priest, good at denunciation, counsel, humor, or sympathy. The elders and deacons never thought of objecting to anything after he had insisted upon it, and in this spirit the whole church had heard submissively that Calvin Van de Lear was to be their next pastor.

This, of course, was conditional upon his behavior, and all knew that his father would be the last man to impose an injurious person on the church; they had little idea that ”Cal.” Van de Lear was devout, but took the old man's word that grace grew more and more in the sons of the Elect, and the young man had already professed ”conviction,” and voluntarily been received into the church. There he a.s.sumed, like an heir-apparent, the vicars.h.i.+p of the congregation, and it rather delighted his father that his son so promptly and complacently took direction of things, made his quasi pastoral rounds, led prayer-meetings, and exhorted Sunday-schools and missions. A priest knows the heart of his son no more than a king, and is less suspicious of him. The king's son may rebel from deferred expectation; the priest's son can hardly conspire against his father's pulpit. In the minister's family the line between the world and the faith is a wavering one; religion becomes a matter of course, and yet is without the mystery of religion as elsewhere, so that wife and sons regard ecclesiastical ambition as meritorious, whether the heart be in it piously or profanely. Calvin Van de Lear was in the church fold of his own accord, and his father could no more read that son's heart than any other member's. Indeed, the good old man was especially obtuse in the son's case, from his partiality, and thus grew up together on the same root the flower of piety and hypocrisy, the tree and the sucker.

”Calvin,” replied Agnes, ”I do not object to your necessary visits here.

Your father is very dear to me.”

”But can't I return to the subject we last talked of?” asked the young man, shrewdly.

”No. That is positively forbidden.”

”Agnes,” continued Calvin, ”you must know I love you!”

Agnes sank to her seat again with a look of resignation.

”Calvin,” she said, ”this is not the time. I am not the person for such remarks. I have just risen from my knees; my eyes are not in this world.”

”You will be turning nun if this continues.”

”I am in G.o.d's hands,” said Agnes. ”Yet the hour is dark with me.”

”Agnes, let me lift some of your burden upon myself. You don't hate me?”

”No. I wish you every happiness, Calvin.”

”Is there nothing you long for--nothing earthly and within the compa.s.s of possibility?”

”Yes, yes!” Agnes arose and walked across the floor almost unconsciously, with the palms of her hands held high together above her head. As she walked to and fro the theological student perceived a change so extraordinary in her appearance since his last visit that he measured her in his cool, worldly gaze as a butcher would compute the weight of a cow on chance reckoning.

”What is it, dear Agnes?”