John Ward, Preacher. Margaret Wade Campbell Deland

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СКАЧАТЬ lumberman lay in the sodden sleep with which he ended a spree. He had rolled up his coat for a pillow, and had thrown one arm across his purple, bloated face. Only the weak, helpless, open mouth could be seen. His muscular hands were relaxed, and the whole prostrate figure was pathetic in its unconsciousness of will and grotesque unhumanness. Fate had been too strong for Tom Davis. His birth and all the circumstances of his useless life had brought him with resistless certainty to this level, and his progress in the future could only be an ever-hastening plunge downward.

      But the preacher did not consider fate when he turned and looked at the drunken man. A stern look crept over the face which had smiled at Molly but a moment before.

      "This is the third time," he said, "that this has happened since Tom came and told me he would try to keep sober. I had hoped the Spirit of God had touched him."

      "I know," the woman answered, turning the coat she was mending, and moving the lamp a little to get a better light; "and it's awful hard on me, so it is; that's where all our money goes. I can't get shoes for the children's feet, let alone a decent rag to put on my back to wear of a Sabbath, and come to church. It's hard on me, now, I tell you, Mr. Ward."

      "It is harder on him," John replied. "Think of his immortal soul. Oh, Mrs. Davis, do you point out to him the future he is preparing for himself?"

      "Yes," she said, "I'm tellin' him he'll go to hell all the time; but it don't do no good. Tom's afraid of hell, though; it's the only thing as ever did keep him straight. After one o' them sermons of yours, I've known him swear off as long as two months. I ain't been to church this long time, till last Sabbath; and I was hopin' I'd hear one of that kind, all about hell, Mr. Ward, so I could tell Tom, but you didn't preach that way. Not but what it was good, though," she added, with an evident wish to be polite.

      John's face suddenly flushed. "I—I know I did not, but the love of God must constrain us, Mrs. Davis, as well as the fear of hell."

      Mrs. Davis sighed. Tom's spiritual condition, which had roused a momentary interest, was forgotten in the thought of her own misery. "Well, it's awful hard on me," she repeated with a little tremor in her weak chin.

      John looked at her with infinite pity in his eyes. "Yes," he said, "hard on you, because of the eternal suffering which may come to your husband. Nothing can be more frightful than to think of such a thing for one we love. Let us try to save him; pray always, pray without ceasing for his immortal soul, that he may not slight the day of salvation, and repent when it is too late to find the mercy of God. Oh, the horror of knowing that the day of grace has gone forever! 'For my spirit shall not always strive with man.'"

      He went over to the drunken man, and, kneeling down beside him, took one of the helpless hands in his. Mrs. Davis put down her sewing, and watched him.

      Perhaps the preacher prayed, as he knelt there, though she could not hear him; but when he rose and said good-night, she could see his sad eyes full of trouble which she could not understand, a pity beyond her comprehension.

      Molly came sidling up to her protector, as he stood a moment in the doorway, and, taking his hand in hers, stroked it softly.

      "I love you, preacher," she said, "'cause you're good."

      John's face brightened with a sudden smile; the love of little children was a great joy to him, and the touch of these small hands gave him the indefinable comfort of hope. God, who had made the sweetness of childhood, would be merciful to his own children. He would give them time, He would not withdraw the day of grace; surely Tom Davis's soul would yet be saved. There was a subtle thought below this of hope that for Helen, too, the day of grace might be prolonged, but he did not realize this himself; he did not know that he feared for one moment that she might not soon accept the truth. He was confident, he thought, of her, and yet more confident of the constraining power of the truth itself.

      He looked down at Molly, and put his hand gently on her yellow head. "Be a good girl, my little Molly;" then, with a quiet blessing upon the dreary home, he turned away.

      But what Mrs. Davis had said of going to church to hear a sermon on hell, and her evident disappointment, did not leave his mind. He walked slowly towards the parsonage, his head bent and his hands clasped behind him, and a questioning anxiety in his face. "I will use every chance to speak of the certain punishment of the wicked when I visit my people," he said, "but not in the pulpit. Not where Helen would hear it—yet. In her frame of mind, treating the whole question somewhat lightly, not realizing its awful importance, it would be productive of no good. I will try, little by little, to show her what to believe, and turn her thoughts to truth. For the present that is enough, that is wisest." And then his heart went back to her, and how happy they were. He stopped a moment, looking up at the stars, and saying, with a breathless awe in his voice, "My God, how good Thou art, how happy I am!"

CHAPTER VII.

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      The little stir which the arrival of the Forsythes made in Ashurst was delightful.

      "Of course," as Mrs. Dale said, "Arabella Forsythe had not been born there, and could not be expected to be just like Ashurst people; but it was something to have a new person to talk to, even if you had to talk about medicines most of the time."

      Lois Howe enjoyed it, for there were very few young people in Ashurst that summer; the two Drayton girls had gone away to visit a married brother, and there were no young men now Gifford had gone. So it was pleasant to have a person of her own age to talk to, and sometimes to walk with, though the rector never felt quite sure what his sister would say to that. However, Mrs. Dale had nothing to say; she shut her eyes to any impropriety, and even remarked severely to Miss Deborah Woodhouse that those old-fashioned ideas of a girl's being always under her mother's eye, were prim and old maidish; "and beside, Lois's mother is dead," she added, with a sort of triumph in her voice.

      As for Lois, she almost forgot that she had thought Ashurst lonely when Helen had gone, and Gifford; for of course, in so small a place, every one counted. She had wondered, sometimes, before the Forsythes came, with a self-consciousness which was a new experience, if any one thought she missed Gifford. But her anxiety was groundless—Ashurst imagination never rose to any such height; and certainly, if the letters the young man wrote to her could have been seen, such a thought would not have been suggested. They were pleasant and friendly; very short, and not very frequent; mostly of Helen and what she did; there was almost nothing of himself, and the past, at least as far as a certain night in June was concerned, was never mentioned. At first this was a relief to Lois, but by and by came a feeling too negative to be called pique, or even mortification at having been forgotten; it was rather an intangible soreness in her memory of him.

      "It is just as Miss Deborah says," she said to herself: "young men always forget those things. And it is better that they do. Gifford never thinks of what he said to me, and I'm sure I'm glad he doesn't—but still!" And then that absurd suggestion of Miss Deborah's about Helen would creep into her mind; she might banish it, because it was silly and impossible, yet she did not utterly forget it. However, she really thought very little about it; the presence of Mrs. Forsythe and her son gave her plenty of occupation. There was the round of teas and dinners which Ashurst felt it incumbent to give to a new arrival, and Lois was to have two new gowns in consequence of so much gayety.

      She spent a good deal of time with Mrs. Forsythe, for the elder lady needed her, she said. It was not altogether the companionship which fascinated Lois: the sunny drawing-room of the house the Forsythes had hired was filled with dainty things, and light, graceful furniture, and many harmlessly silly novels; there СКАЧАТЬ