The Minister's Charge; Or, The Apprenticeship of Lemuel Barker. William Dean Howells

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СКАЧАТЬ September. I hope your mother is well?”

      “She's middling,” said Barker, “but my married sister that came to live with us since you was there has had a good deal of sickness in her family. Her husband's laid up with the rheumatism most of the time.”

      “Oh!” murmured Sewell sympathetically. “Well! I ought to have told you at that time that I could not see much hope of your doing acceptable work in a literary way; and if I had supposed that you ever expected to exercise your faculty of versifying to any serious purpose—for anything but your own pleasure and entertainment—I should certainly have done so. And I tell you now that the specimens of the long poem you have sent me give me even less reason to encourage you than the things you read me at home.”

      Sewell expected the audible crash of Barker's air-castles to break the silence which the young man suffered to follow upon these words; but nothing of the kind happened, and for all that he could see, Barker remained wholly unaffected by what he had said. It nettled Sewell a little to see him apparently so besotted in his own conceit, and he added: “But I think I had better not ask you to rely altogether upon my opinion in the matter, and I will go with you to a publisher, and you can get a professional judgment. Excuse me a moment.”

      He left the room and went slowly upstairs to his wife. It appeared to him a very short journey to the third story, where he knew she was decking the guest-chamber for the visit of a friend whom they expected that evening. He imagined himself saying to her when his trial was well over that he did not see why she complained of those stairs; that he thought they were nothing at all. But this sense of the absurdity of the situation which played upon the surface of his distress flickered and fled at sight of his wife bustling cheerfully about, and he was tempted to go down and get Barker out of the house, and out of Boston if possible, without letting her know anything of his presence.

      “Well?” said Mrs. Sewell, meeting his face of perplexity with a penetrating glance. “What is it, David?”

      “Nothing. That is—everything! Lemuel Barker is here!”

      “Lemuel Barker? Who is Lemuel Barker?” She stood with the pillow-sham in her hand which she was just about to fasten on the pillow, and Sewell involuntarily took note of the fashion in which it was ironed.

      “Why, surely you remember! That simpleton at Willoughby Pastures.” If his wife had dropped the pillow-sham, and sunk into a chair beside the bed, fixing him with eyes of speechless reproach; if she had done anything dramatic, or said anything tragic, no matter how unjust or exaggerated, Sewell could have borne it; but she only went on tying the sham on the pillow, without a word. “The fact is, he wrote to me some weeks ago, and sent me some specimens of a long poem.”

      “Just before you preached that sermon on the tender mercies of the wicked?”

      “Yes,” faltered Sewell. “I had been waiting to show you the letter.”

      “You waited a good while, David.”

      “I know—I know,” said Sewell miserably. “I was waiting—waiting—” He stopped, and then added with a burst, “I was waiting till I could put it to you in some favourable light.”

      “I'm glad you're honest about it at last, my dear!”

      “Yes. And while I was waiting I forgot Barker's letter altogether. I put it away somewhere—I can't recollect just where, at the moment. But that makes no difference; he's here with the whole poem in his pocket, now.” Sewell gained a little courage from his wife's forbearance; she knew that she could trust him in all great matters, and perhaps she thought that for this little sin she would not add to his punishment. “And what I propose to do is to make a complete thing of it, this time. Of course,” he went on convicting himself, “I see that I shall inflict twice the pain that I should have done if I had spoken frankly to him at first; and of course there will be the added disappointment, and the expense of his coming to Boston. But,” he added brightly, “we can save him any expense while he's here, and perhaps I can contrive to get him to go home this afternoon.”

      “He wouldn't let you pay for his dinner out of the house anywhere,” said Mrs. Sewell. “You must ask him to dinner here.”

      “Well,” said Sewell, with resignation; and suspecting that his wife was too much piqued or hurt by his former concealment to ask what he now meant to do about Barker, he added: “I'm going to take him round to a publisher and let him convince himself that there's no hope for him in a literary way.”

      “David!” cried his wife; and now she left off adjusting the shams, and erecting herself looked at him across the bed, “You don't intend to do anything so cruel.”

      “Cruel?”

      “Yes! Why should you go and waste any publisher's time by getting him to look at such rubbish? Why should you expose the poor fellow to the mortification of a perfectly needless refusal? Do you want to shirk the responsibility—to put it on some one else?”

      “No; you know I don't.”

      “Well, then, tell him yourself that it won't do.”

      “I have told him.”

      “What does he say?”

      “He doesn't say anything. I can't make out whether he believes me or not.”

      “Very well, then; you've done your duty, at any rate.” Mrs. Sewell could not forbear saying also, “If you'd done it at first, David, there wouldn't have been any of this trouble.”

      “That's true,” owned her husband, so very humbly that her heart smote her.

      “Well, go down and tell him he must stay to dinner, and then try to get rid of him the best way you can. Your time is really too precious, David, to be wasted in this way. You must get rid of him, somehow.”

      Sewell went back to his guest in the reception-room, who seemed to have remained as immovably in his chair as if he had been a sitting statue of himself. He did not move when Sewell entered.

      “On second thoughts,” said the minister, “I believe I will not ask you to go to a publisher with me, as I had intended; it would expose you to unnecessary mortification, and it would be, from my point of view, an unjustifiable intrusion upon very busy people. I must ask you to take my word for it that no publisher would bring out your poem, and it never would pay you a cent if he did.” The boy remained silent as before, and Sewell had no means of knowing whether it was from silent conviction or from mulish obstinacy. “Mrs. Sewell will be down presently. She wished me to ask you to stay to dinner. We have an early dinner, and there will be time enough after that for you to look about the city.”

      “I shouldn't like to put you out,” said Barker.

      “Oh, not at all,” returned Sewell, grateful for this sign of animation, and not exigent of a more formal acceptance of his invitation. “You know,” he said, “that literature is a trade, like every other vocation, and that you must serve an apprenticeship if you expect to excel. But first of all you must have some natural aptitude for the business you undertake. You understand?” asked Sewell; for he had begun to doubt whether Barker understood anything. He seemed so much more stupid than he had at home; his faculties were apparently sealed up, and he had lost all the personal picturesqueness which he had when he came in out of the barn, at his mother's call, to receive Sewell.

      “Yes,” СКАЧАТЬ