John Ward, Preacher Part 27

"I'm afraid--I'm afraid he's going to take me away from here!"

"Take you away?" Helen said, surprised. "Why? Is the work too hard?"

"No--no ma'am," Alfaretta answered, choking.

"I'll go and see him at once," Helen said.

"Oh, no!" Alfaretta cried, catching her mistress's skirt with grimy hands, "don't go; 't won't do any good."

"Don't be foolish," Helen remonstrated, smiling; "of course I must speak to him. If your father thinks there is too much work, he must tell me, and I will arrange it differently."

She stooped, and took the hem of her cambric gown from between the girl's fingers, and then went quickly into the house.

She rapped lightly at the study door. "John, I must come in a moment, please."

She heard a chair pushed back, and John's footstep upon the floor. He opened the door, and stood looking at her with strange, unseeing eyes.

"Go away, Helen," he said hoa.r.s.ely, without waiting for her to speak, for she was dumb with astonishment at his face,--"go away, my darling."

He put out one hand as if to push her back, and closed the door, and she heard the bolt pushed. She stood a moment staring at the blank of the locked door. What could it mean? Alfaretta's misery and morals were forgotten; something troubled John,--she had no thought for anything else. She turned away as though in a dream, and began absently to take off her garden hat. John was in some distress. She went up-stairs to her bedroom, and tried to keep busy with sewing until she could go to him, but she was almost unconscious of what she did. How long, how very long, the morning was!

John had looked up from his writing to see Mr. Dean standing in the doorway.

"Good-morning," he said cordially, as he rose to give his hand to his elder. "I am glad to see you. How have things gone since I have been away?"

But Mr. Dean seemed to have nothing special to report, and let the preacher tell him of General a.s.sembly, while, embarra.s.sed and very uncomfortable, he sat twisting his hat round and round in his big, rough hands.

A bar of suns.h.i.+ne from the south window crept across the floor, and touched the low dish of violets on the table, and then John's face, making a sudden golden glint in his gentle dark eyes.

"Mr. Ward," the elder said, at last, opening his mouth once or twice before he began to speak, "I have a distress on my mind. I think the Spirit of the Lord's driven me to tell you of it."

"Are you in any trouble, my friend?" The tired look which had fallen upon John's face as he put down his pen was gone in a moment. "I am glad, then, I was not away any longer. I trust sickness has not come to your family?"

"No, sir," answered the other solemnly, "not sickness of body. What does the Good Book say to the Christian? 'He shall give his angels charge over thee.' No, I'm mercifully preserved from sickness; for, as for me and my house, we serve the Lord. My lumbago was bad while you was away; but it's better, I'm thankful to say. Sickness of the soul, Mr. Ward,--that is what is truly awful."

"I hope you are not feeling the power of Satan in doubts?" John said anxiously. "Such sickness of the soul is indeed worse than any which can come to the body."

"No," replied the elder, "no, my feet are fixed. I know whom I have believed. I have entered into the hidden things of G.o.d. I am not afraid of doubt, ever. Yet what a fearful thing doubt is, Brother Ward!"

"It is, indeed," John replied humbly. "Through the mercy of G.o.d, I have never known its temptation. He has kept me from ever questioning truth."

"What a terrible thing it would be," said Mr. Dean, beginning to forget his awkwardness, "if doubt was to grow up in any heart, or in any family, or in any church! I've sometimes wondered if, of late, you had given us enough sound doctrine in the pulpit, sir? The milk of the Word we can get out of the Bible for ourselves, but doctrines, they ain't to be found in Holy Writ as they'd ought to be preached."

John looked troubled. He knew the rebuke was merited. "I have feared my sermons were, as you say, scarcely doctrinal enough. Yet I have instructed you these six years in points of faith, and I felt it was perhaps wiser to turn more to the tenderness of G.o.d as it is in Christ.

And I cannot agree with you that the doctrines are not in the Bible, Mr.

Dean."

"Well," the elder admitted, "of course. But not so he that runs may read, or that the wayfaring man will not err therein. There is some folks as would take 'G.o.d is love' out of the Good Book, and forget 'Our G.o.d is a consuming fire.'"

John bent his head on his hand for a moment, and drove his mind back to his old arguments for silence. Neither of the men spoke for a little while, and then John said, still without raising his head:--

"Do you feel that this--neglect of mine has been of injury to any soul?

It is your duty to tell me."

It was here that Helen's knock came, and when John had taken his seat again he looked his accuser straight in the eyes.

"Do you?" he said.

"Sir," answered the elder, "I can't say. I ain't heard that it has--and yet--I'm fearful. Yet I didn't come to reproach you for that. You have your reasons for doing as you did, no doubt. But what I did come to do, preacher, was to warn you that there was a creepin' evil in the church; and we need strong doctrine now, if we ain't before. And I came the quicker to tell you, sir, because it's fastened on my own household. Yes, on my own child!"

"Your own child?" John said. "You have nothing to fear for Alfaretta; she is a very good, steady girl."

"She's good enough and she's steady enough," returned Mr. Dean, shaking his head; "and oh, Mr. Ward, when she joined the church, two years ago, there wasn't anybody (joinin' on profession) better grounded in the faith than she was. She knew her catechism through and through, and she never asked a question or had a doubt about it in her life. But now,--now it's different!"

"Do you mean," John asked, "that her faith is shaken,--that she has doubts? Such times are apt to come to very young Christians, though they are conscious of no insincerity, and the doubts are but superficial. Has she such doubts?"

"She has, sir, she has," cried the elder, "and it breaks my heart to see my child given over to the Evil One!"

"No, no," John said tenderly; "if she is one of the elect,--and we have reason to hope she is,--she will persevere. Remember, for your comfort, the perseverance of the saints. But how has this come about? Is it through any influence?"

"Yes, sir, it is," said the elder quickly.

"What is the especial doubt?" John asked.

"It is her views of h.e.l.l that distress me," answered the elder. John looked absently beyond him, with eyes which saw, not Alfaretta, but Helen.

"That is very serious," he said slowly.

"'T ain't natural to her," protested the elder. "She was grounded on h.e.l.l; she's been taught better. It's the influence she's been under, preacher."

"Surely it cannot be any one in our church," John said thoughtfully. "I can think of too many who are weak in grace and good works, but none who doubt the faith."

"Yes," replied the elder, "yes, it is in our church. That's why I came to beg you to teach sound doctrine, especially the doctrine of everlasting punishment. I could a' dealt with Alfaretta myself, and I'll bring her round, you can depend on that; but it is for the church I'm askin' you, and fer that person that's unsettled Alfaretta. Convert her, save her. It is a woman, sir, a member (by letter, Brother Ward) of our church, and she's spreadin' nets of eternal ruin for our youth, and I came to say she ought to be dealt with; the Session ought to take notice of it. The elders have been speakin' of it while you was away; and we don't see no way out of it, for her own soul's sake,--let alone other people's souls,--than to bring her before the Session. If we can't convert her to truth, leastways she'll be disciplined to silence."

That subtile distinction which John Ward had made between his love and his life was never more apparent than now. Though his elder's words brought him the keenest consciousness of his wife's unbelief, he never for an instant thought of her as the person whose influence in the church was to be feared. His church and his wife were too absolutely separate for such identification to be possible.

"And," Mr. Dean added, his metallic voice involuntarily softening, "our feelings, Mr. Ward, mustn't interfere with it; they mustn't make us unkind to her soul by slightin' her best good."

"No," John said, still absently, and scarcely listening to his elder,--"no, of course not. But have you seen her, and talked with her, and tried to lead her to the truth? That should be done with the tenderest patience before anything so extreme as Sessioning."

"We ain't," the elder answered significantly, "but I make no doubt she's been reasoned with and prayed with."

"Why, I have not spoken to her," John said, bewildered; "but you have not told me who it is, yet."

"Mr. Ward," said the other solemnly, "if you ain't spoke to her, you've neglected your duty; and if you don't give her poor soul a chance of salvation by bringing her to the Session, you are neglectin' your duty still more. Your church, sir, and the everlastin' happiness of her soul demand that this disease of unbelief should be rooted out. Yes, Brother Ward, if the Jonah in a church was our nearest and dearest--and it don't make no odds--the s.h.i.+p should be saved!"

They both rose; a terrible look was dawning in John Ward's face, and, seeing it, the elder's voice sunk to a hurried whisper as he spoke the last words.