The Female Prose Writers of America/E. W. Barnes/The Young Rector
THE YOUNG RECTOR.
The crash startled from his revery a pale student, who, in the same apartment by his solitary lamp, sat poring over the pages of a ponderous volume, while beside it, on his writing-desk, lay the half- written page on which, with a vigorous and rapid pen, he wrote from time to time, with an energy which told how every faculty of his mind was absorbed in the work before him. He rose from his task as the shattered glass flew even over the table at which he sat, and, still engrossed in the thoughts which had occupied him for some hours, went mechanically to the window, thrust into the aperture some old and worn-out garment, and returned again abstractedly to his work.
The hours moved on, and no sound recalled him from the intellectual world in which his spirit was far away, except the continued discord of the elements without, and the monotonous ticking of the old clock, which had grown aged with the time-worn habitation in which it had stood for nearly a century. Page after page, glowing with his own deep earnestness of spirit, and the rich imagery which the study of the Sacred Volume and of classic lore had taught him, was filled, and at length the young rector rose wearily from his desk, and pressing his hand to his aching brow, walked to the window, and, for the first time, seemed quite aware of the rude conflict amid the elements of the outward world. Shading his eyes from the light, he peered out through the shattered casement. “What a night,” thought he, “for the poor and homeless! and ah! how many among my parishioners must feel this keen and cutting blast through the crevices in their wretched dwellings! Would that I could provide for each a comfortable shelter from the storm; but, alas! my miserable pittance!—what does it more than keep together the mortal body and the immortal soul?”
With a sigh he turned away, and drawing his chair in front of the fire, he stirred the expiring embers, and sat gazing abstractedly into them, while his thoughts dwelt upon the different allotments of good and ill which fall to the share of human destiny. He had seen the honest and deserving poor baffled in every effort to advance, bravely buffeting the billows of misfortune, with scarce a gleam of hope to cheer them on, yet blessing God daily and hourly in their hearts for the good things they received; and he had seen the wealthy revelling in their luxury, thankless and thoughtless, closing the ear to the appeals of starving poverty, and forgetful even of Him whose bounty they enjoyed. Then came his thoughts down to a narrower sphere, and dwelt on his own personal history. Far back his memory bore him to the days of early childhood, to its poverty and its privations. Then came the labours and struggles necessary to bear him through the years of his college life, upheld by the resolution to develop by culture the powers of a naturally fine and vigorous intellect.
Re-perusing, line by line, the pages of his past existence, and suffering a tear occasionally to fall,—prompted by bitter Memory, as if to blot out the record she had made,—the young rector sat in a half-reclining position, in his well-worn arm-chair, with his feet upon the fender, and in deep revery gazed musingly into the declining fire. Ever and anon it threw up a fitful gleam, that reminded him of some of the many hopes which had arisen on his horizon, and sunk again as soon in darkness. It was Christmas Eve, the eve preceding the great festival of the Nativity. Why, then, was he gloomy and depressed at this hour of triumph to the church he loved? Fain would he have shaken off the sad fantasies which hung like an incubus upon his spirit, but his efforts were in vain. Again and again they returned to the charge, and at every onset they became an ever-increasing, darkening host, resistless in their power. He tried to picture to his imagination those happy homes, which were drawing around them at this festive season, as round a dazzling nucleus, the wanderers who had gone out from them on the voyage of life. He fancied the happy meetings and the glad welcome home; the merry fire would sparkle in the grate, and send forth its ruddiest glow; the cheerful board would be spread; merry hearts and merry voices would hail the coming of the “merry Christmas;” the aged sire, with thin, white locks, would look round with satisfaction upon his children, and his children’s children, as he asked God’s blessing on the festive cheer. Alas! these pictures but restored, with a deeper colouring, his own sense of loneliness; and yielding finally to its resistless sway, he suffered the hours to wax and wane, all heedless of their flight: the surging of the great and limitless ocean on the shore of time, and its rapidly advancing waves, affected him not. He was alone;—alone must he meet his doom.
Still not a sound disturbed the deepening silence, or broke in upon his gloomy revery, but the same monotonous ticking of the venerable time-piece, the hollow moaning of the storm, or the faint falling of the waning embers. He leaned his head wearily upon his hand, and watched them as they sunk and were extinguished one by one. His revery deepened; silence was becoming almost audible; a torpor was stealing over him; but now, as his gaze was fixed steadfastly upon the declining fire, a light, thin vapour seemed to rise from beneath it, and curling gently upward and over it, partially obscured it to his vision. Gradually it ascended, wreathed itself over the antiquated fire-place, stole softly up to the ceiling, and wound its enfolding arms quietly about the old clock, till its face and hands became imperceptible in the pale lamp-light. Growing denser as it proceeded, round and round the time-stained walls it noiselessly crept, and continued its quiet circuitous motion, fold within fold, filling up the whole intermediate space between them and the chair of the young rector, and shutting out every familiar object in his desolate apartment, till he was hemmed in by an impervious atmosphere. Closer and closer the walls of his prison-house were pressing upon him at each moment; his breath came thicker and heavier at every inspiration; a sense of oppression, of suffocation, was upon him; yet had he no power of motion, no ability to seek relief.
How long he thus lay bound, manacled, speechless, he knew not. He heard no sound; even the tempest seemed to have ceased its moaning; and he asked himself, “Must I thus die?—is there no hand to aid?” There was a pause, during which it seemed as if thought itself were checked in its flow, and then there was observable a slight undulation in the dense mass; it trembled, it wavered, it parted in the midst—moved slowly, almost imperceptibly, but steadily, and falling back on either side, shaped itself gradually into graceful columns. First the base appeared, then rose the shaft, and then the finished capital. Moving thence gently upward, it threw its graceful mist-wreaths into noble Gothic arches. The marble pavement noiselessly spread itself beneath his feet, and he sat before the high altar of a great cathedral. Upon it stood seven golden candlesticks, and in the midst a golden censer. Soft moonlight, tinged with the rainbow dyes of the stained glass through which it passed, rested on the surrounding objects. There was a silence, so deep, so solemn, that it pervaded his whole being; and then the strains of the organ, soft, distant, as if amid the spheres, rolled through the high arches, which, as they grew deeper and louder, trembled beneath the vibrations.
Awe-struck, he listened, and then voices, as of unseen angels, mingled in the deep swell, and the “Stabat Mater” poured its holy strains on his rapt senses; and his soul, lifted, inspired by the divine harmony, seemed borne upward, even into the presence of the Holy One. With hands clasped and unconsciously upraised, he heard the strains die away softly upon the ear, but the echoes lingered long among the lofty arches. There was a pause, and not a sound of earth disturbed that hallowed stillness; but, though he saw them not, he felt the presence of angel forms around and above him, moving silently on their silver wings. Again breathed the tones of the organ, and the grand “Te Deum” rose to the “Lord God of Sabaoth;” and that too died away upon the ear, but its heavenly music vibrated long in the listening spirit.
Now from the golden censer a soft and fragrant incense slowly ascends; and with reverential awe he watches it, till, as it higher mounts, the edges of the light and vapoury folds are touched with a silver brightness, as if a glory from on high had lightened them. And on the bosom of the cloud, gracefully reposing, he beholds a form that has no parallel amid the forms of earth. Dimly and indistinctly he sees her, cradled within those misty folds; and slowly the silvery mass descends with its heavenly burden, until it rests above the sacred altar. A holy influence steals over his senses—an unspeakable serenity—a calm like that of Gennesareth, when the voice of the Saviour spoke to the troubled waters. Whence comes the hallowed peace, the sweet repose that pervades his spirit, as, rapt and awe-stricken, he gazes on that benignant face? Ah! could it be impressed for ever on the mirror of his soul, never more would it reflect the blackening cloud,—never more would it be ruffled by the storm-winds of passion, or shadowed by the darkness of despair. Would she but speak to him!—would she but make known her angel mission!—but no, she does but gaze upon him with sweetness, with pity, with benignity. The eyes, so gentle, never for a moment turned from his; and, as bound by a resistless spell, he yielded to the repose which they inspired. He was no longer of the earth: purified by that soft smile from every trace of its corruptions, he basked in the purity of that radiance, and trembled lest a cloud should overshadow it, lest the holy spell should be broken. Oh! to be ever thus—to know such transcendent peace! This it is to be in communion with the angels.
And now the beauteous vision, with its garments of silver vapour, stood upright upon the fleecy masses of the cloud, with her eye unmoved from the face of the entranced beholder. Her left arm slowly advanced from the mists around her, and, bending gently towards him, she extended the cross, one arm of it encircled by a crown of thorns, the other draped with the purple robe, and over it this motto: “On earth thou wilt wear these, for thy Saviour’s sake.”
Deep was the silence which followed. He moved not, spoke not, lest, like a dream, his happiness should vanish away. Soft strains of music were heard in the distance, growing fainter and fainter, till they were lost upon the ear. And now the right arm gradually rose, and a taper finger pointed upward. Following it with his eye, he descried, distant far and almost unseen, a crown, irradiated with a soft halo of golden light, and bearing these words: “This awaits thee in Heaven.”
One arm upraised, and one extending towards him the cross, her eye riveted upon him, she stood motionless as a statue. Again rose the soft strains of music, mingled with voices of angelic sweetness. Her voice was not heard among them, but her gaze seemed reading the secrets of that spirit, still condemned to struggle a while longer with the cares of earth. To pity and to soothe it seemed her mission; and that mission was fulfilled,—so calm, so deep was the peace which settled on his spirit, so elevated were his thoughts, and so attuned to worship. The music continued, now like the far distant sound of many waters surging upon an unseen shore, now nearer and nearer, and then floating upward and dying away in heaven. It ceased, and he fancied that the silver cloud was rising again, and that the vision was fading away. With an irresistible impulse he sprang forward, threw himself on his knees before the heavenly vision, and extended his arms to embrace the cross. Alas! in a moment all had vanished; the beautiful pageant was no more; and he awoke, to find himself prostrate, with out-stretched arms, before the desolate walls of his room. There were the remains of his decayed fire, there his arm-chair, and there the old time-piece, telling the same monotonous tale. The dawn was not yet breaking, and his dim lamp was just expiring in its socket.
It was indeed the old familiar scene, which had witnessed all his struggles, all his tears, but which he had briefly exchanged for the communion and the minstrelsy of heaven. He rose, and pressed his hand to his brow. It was then indeed a dream, and he had been revelling amid the hallowed joys of “the spirit-land?” Yet, if “millions of spiritual creatures walk the earth,” might not this be one, sent on a mission of mercy to his suffering, struggling spirit; to raise him from despondency; to bid him bear on unmurmuringly, and, while wearing the cross, to look ever upward and onward to the promised crown?
When the Rector awoke the next morning, the sun was brighter to his eye, the wind fell more softly on his cheek, and stirred the light clustering hair upon his brow. He was no more alone, for that ministering angel had taken up her abode within his soul, and her serene smile was fixed upon him ever. He loved the clouds, the air, the earth; he loved the glittering icicle that was melting in tears beneath the sunbeam; and he loved the snow-wreath that gracefully hung over the cottage porch. Love—love to God, and love to man—was the prevailing attribute of his soul; and those who listened that day to the voice of their rector in his village church, felt, though they knew not why, a higher, fuller sense of the “beauty of holiness.” His words were fraught with a new energy; his voice rose with his choir in the full strains of the Christmas anthem; and when he entered his pulpit, a new and divine inspiration seemed to have touched his lips, as with a live coal from the altar.
That vision of the night became to the young rector the vision also of his waking hours; and when his congregation wondered at the new traits which manifested themselves in his character,—when they saw his peculiar serenity under all the ever-varying phases of his existence, they saw not the angel within the sanctuary of his spirit, and the hand that, pointing upward to the crown, pointed also to the words—“This awaits thee in Heaven.”