The rector's face was flushed, and he brought his fist down with emphasis upon the arm of his chair.
"And yet," said John Ward, lifting his thoughtful dark eyes to Dr. Howe's handsome face, "I have always sympathized with a mistaken idea of duty, and I am sure that many Southerners felt they were only doing their duty in fighting for secession and the perpetuation of slavery."
"I don't agree with you, sir," said Dr. Howe, whose ideas of hospitality forbade more vigorous speech, but his bushy gray eyebrows were drawn into a frown.
"I think you are unfair not to admit that," John continued with gentle persistence, while the rector looked at him in silent astonishment, and the two young women smiled at each other in the darkness. ("The idea of contradicting father!" Lois whispered.) "They felt," he went on, "that they had found authority for slavery in the Bible, so what else could they do but insist upon it?"
"Nonsense," said Dr. Howe, forgetting himself, "the Bible never taught any such wicked thing. They believed in states rights, and they wanted slavery."
"But," John said, "if they did believe the Bible permitted slavery, what else could they do? Knowing that it is the inspired word of God, and that every action of life is to be decided by it, they had to fight for an institution which they believed sacred, even if their own judgment and inclination did not concede that it was right. If you thought the Bible taught that slavery was right, what could you do?"
"I never could think anything so absurd," the rector answered, a shade of contempt in his good-natured voice.
"But if you did," John insisted, "even if you were unable to see that it was right—if the Bible taught it, inculcated it?"
Dr. Howe laughed impatiently, and flung the end of his cigar down into the bushes, where it glowed for a moment like an angry eye. "I—I? Oh, I'd read some other part of the book," he said. "But I refuse to think such a crisis possible; you can always find some other meaning in a text, you know."
"But, uncle Archie," Helen said, "if one did think the Bible taught something to which one's conscience or one's reason could not assent, it seems to me there could be only one thing to do—give up the Bible!"
"Oh, no," said Dr. Howe, "don't be so extreme, Helen. There would be many things to do; leave the consideration of slavery, or whatever the supposed wrong was, until you'd mastered all the virtues of the Bible: time enough to think of an alternative then—eh, Ward? Well, thank Heaven, the war's over, or we'd have you a rank copperhead. Come! it's time to go into the house. I don't want any heavy eyes for to-morrow."
"What a speech for a minister's wife, Helen!" Lois cried, as they rose. "What would people say if they heard you announce that you 'would give up the Bible'?"
"I hope no one will ever hear her say anything so foolish," said Dr. Howe, but John Ward looked at Lois in honest surprise.
"Would it make any difference what people said?" he asked.
"Oh, I wasn't speaking very seriously," Lois answered, laughing, "but still, one does not like to say anything which is unusual, you know, about such things. And of course Helen doesn't really mean that she'd give up the Bible."
"But I do," Helen interrupted, smiling; and she might have said more, for she could not see John's troubled look in the darkness, but Gifford Woodhouse came down the path to meet them and give Miss Ruth's message.
"Just in time, young man," said the rector, as Gifford silently took some of John's burden of shawls and cushions, and turned and walked beside him. "Here's Helen giving Ward an awful idea of her orthodoxy; come and vouch for the teaching you get at St. Michael's."
Gifford laughed. "What is orthodoxy, doctor?" he said. "I'm sure I don't know!"
"'The hungry sheep look up and are not fed,'" quoted the rector in a burlesque despair. "Why, what we believe, boy—what we believe! The rest of my flock know better, Mr. Ward, I assure you."
"I don't think we know what we do believe, uncle," Helen said lightly.
"This grows worse and worse," said the rector. "Come, Helen, when an intelligent young woman, I might say a bright young woman, makes a commonplace speech, it is a mental yawn, and denotes exhaustion. You and Lois are tired; run up-stairs. Vanish! I say. Good night, dear child, and God bless you!"
CHAPTER II.
Ashurst Rectory, in a green seclusion of vines and creepers, stood close to the lane—Strawberry Lane it was called, because of a tradition that wild strawberries grew there. The richness of the garden was scarcely kept in bounds by its high fence; the tops of the bushes looked over it, and climbing roses shed their petals on the path below, and cherries, blossoms, and fruit were picked by the passer-by. "There is enough for us inside," said the rector.
The house itself was of gray stone, which seemed to have caught, where it was not hidden by Virginia creepers and wistaria, the mellow coloring of the sunset light, which flooded it from a gap in the western hills. Its dormer-windows, their roofs like brown caps bent about their ears, had lattices opening outward; and from one of these Lois Howe, on the evening of Helen's wedding day, had seen her father wandering about the garden, with the red setter at his heels, and had gone down to join him.
"I wonder," she said, as she wound her round young arm in his, which was behind him, and held his stick, "if John Ward has a garden? I hope so; Helen is so fond of flowers. But he never said anything about it; he just went around as though he was in a dream. He was perfectly happy if he could only look at Helen!"
"Well, that's right," said the rector; "that's proper. What else would you have? The fact is, Lois, you don't like Ward. Now, he is a good fellow; yes, good is just the word for him. Bless my soul, there's a pitch of virtue about him that is exhausting. But that's our fault," he added candidly.
"Oh, I'll like him," Lois said quickly, "if he will just make Helen happy."
The rector shook his head. "I know how you feel," he said, "and I acknowledge he is odd; that talk of his last night about slavery being a righteous institution"—
"Oh, he didn't say that, father," Lois interrupted.
—"was preposterous," continued Dr. Howe, not noticing her; "but he's earnest, he's sincere, and I have a great deal of respect for earnestness. And look here, Lois, you must not let anybody see you are not in sympathy with Helen's choice; be careful of that tongue of yours, child. It's bad taste to make one's private disappointments public. I wouldn't speak of it even to your aunt Deely, if I were you."
He stooped down to pull some matted grass from about the roots of a laburnum-tree, whose dark leaves were lighted by golden loops of blossoms, "Thirty-eight years ago," he said, "your mother and I planted this; we had just come home from our wedding journey, and she had brought this slip from her mother's garden in Virginia. But dear me, I suppose I've told you that a dozen times. What? How to-day brings back that trip of ours! We came through Lockhaven, but it was by stage-coach. I remember we thought we were so fortunate because the other two passengers got out there, and we had the coach to ourselves. Your mother had a striped ribbon, or gauze—I don't know what you call it—on her bonnet, and it kept blowing out of the window of the coach, like a little flag. You young people can go further in less time, when you travel, but you will never know the charm of staging it through the mountains. I declare, I haven't thought of it for years, but to-day brings it all back to me!"
They had reached the rectory porch, and Dr. Howe settled himself in