CHAPTER XXVIII.

THE SABBATH MORNING.

The Sabbath dawned calm and peaceful and beautiful, and filled with Sabbatic stillness. Such a Sabbath as would have waked the holy muse of Donne or Herbert, of Keble or Heber, to celebrate its restful sanctity in sacred song. But its sweetest hymn was the gracious face of Muriel, as she sat at the organ in the library, singing in a low voice a psalm that breathed from heaven into the soul of David three thousand years ago.

The spirit of the music lived in her countenance as she sang, and lingered there when the tender and regal chant had failed. Too happy for even music to express, she rose from the instrument, and rapt in heavenly reverie, wandered to and fro about the room.

But a little while, however, for presently the bounding foot of Harrington was heard upon the stairs, and he came in.

“Ah, truant!” she playfully exclaimed, gliding to his arms, and gazing up into his smiling face, “where have you been. I woke this morning to find myself a widow. Now give me the morning kiss of which I was defrauded.”

He folded her in his arms, and fondly kissed her again and again.

“I have been to my house,” he said, “and do you know why? To see after my dog. Positively, I had almost forgotten the existence of that delectable animal, and my conscience smote me this morning lest he should have been neglected, which he has not been, for the boys have been his guardians. So I stole from your side like a thief of the night. You were sleeping so sweetly, and looked so beautiful in your sleep, that I did not dare to disturb you. Strange feeling I had in leaving you—it was almost like going never to return.”

“And I, too,” she replied, melting from her blushing smile into musing. “I woke from a singular dream of you. I dreamed that I was going about alone in the house and in the streets and among all sorts of people, and you were at an immeasurable distance above me, looking at me constantly from behind the air, as it were. The strangest thing was that I could not see you, though at the same time I knew you were there just as if I saw you. But we were separated. And yet I was not sad—indeed, the dream was happy. Presently I unclosed my eyes, and for a moment,” she said, laughing, “I really felt as if I were a widow, which I have no ambition to be, I assure you.”

Harrington laughed gaily, and pressed his lips to her forehead.

“Dreams are strange,” he said, lightly. “But how exquisite you are this morning! Every time I see you you look new. Stand back a pace, and let me admire you!”

She danced back a couple of yards, and stood playfully regarding him, with her beautiful and noble head bent a little on one side, while his eyes dwelt on her delicately tinted features, and wandered over the stately elegance of her form. She was robed that morning in pale rose-colored silk, with lace corsage and lace open sleeves. About her hung that indefinable and delicious patrician odor which we sometimes perceive around the persons of fair women, and which touches the imagination like the aroma of a poetic nobility of soul. A thrill fled through the veins of Harrington as he gazed on her, and then his eyes grew sad, and the smile on his face died slowly away.

“Ah, Muriel,” he said, in a low, rapt voice, “the beauty that my eyes see in you is the token of the beauty my soul knows in you. How could I bear to leave you! Once it was a joy to think of death, but now heaven could not tempt me from earth with you.”

She came quickly to him, with an agitated face, and passionately clung to him. He folded her to his breast, and felt, as his face drooped upon her forehead, a vague sense, as of some luminous shadow resting on them. In a moment, she lifted her face to his, serene, though the clear eyes were dim, and gazed ardently into his countenance.

“Do not speak of leaving me, John,” she said. “It was my foolish dream put that into your mind. Ah, we shall neither of us leave each other. Life is before us, and love. Come, let us not dwell on this, but speak of other things.”

“So be it,” he replied. “Well, what shall we do with ourselves to-day?”

“I don’t know,” she gaily answered, swinging around from his breast to his side, and putting her arm about him, while he encircled her waist. “Suppose we vary the general impiety of our proceedings by going to church.”

“Agreed. To Mr. Parker’s, of course.”

“Most assuredly. There’s the breakfast bell.”

And, arm in arm, they descended to the breakfast-room.

Church-time came, with the aërial pealing of bells, and with it came Wentworth, in gallant and perfumed attire, to convoy Emily to her devotions. Emily, however, had decided to go with Harrington and Muriel, and presently they all set out together, Mrs. Eastman, who had recovered her serenity, accompanying them.

The streets were full of church-goers, some of them haply wending their way to be regaled with exhortations to obey all laws, right or wrong, especially the Fugitive Slave Law, and to consent, if need be, to have their brothers go into slavery to save the Union. In that blissful period, it was agreed, among all respectable people, that ministers must not meddle with politics, unless they were pro-slavery politics, which were considered perfectly orthodox, _doulos_ of Christ having been ascertained to mean, not servant, but slave of Christ, and Paul having been proved to have sent back Onesimus, not at all as a brother beloved, but as a runaway Thomas Sims. The sedulous inculcation of these soul-elevating views and this cheering exegesis of Scripture, was understood to be in perfect harmony with the dictum that ministers musn’t meddle with politics, and many ministers conducted themselves accordingly.

Debarred by their own hardness and frowardness of heart from the holy solace of these ministrations, our little party held their perverse way to the Melodeon. The choir was singing as they entered, and the church was crowded as usual, for no minister in Boston gathered such a concourse as the mighty Theodore. A little movable pulpit, on which bloomed a vase of flowers, occupied the platform, and behind it, with clasped hands, musing, sat he who shall heave his noble thought in massive mountain-chains of strength and beauty never any more. Living, his presence was the magic spell that evoked and commanded Freedom. Oh, dying, was it less strong—less strong when he had died? Lo! he drew nigh the shores of Italy, and she rose, in the red storm of Magenta, from the bondage of ten centuries, free! He laid him down to sleep in the soil of her Florence, and pale and radiant from her long agony, all disenchanted of her doom, she stands above his dust, bastioned with hearts and swords, free! Free, and free forever, and secure of ever-broadening freedom, for the land can never rest in tyranny that holds within its bosom Parker’s grave!

There are thousands who remember those Sabbaths in his presence; but who shall paint them in hues that will not seem faint and unfaithful in the light of memory? What words shall revive his image as he stood behind the little pulpit—Socratic-featured, strong, earnest, reverend—the large volume of old Scripture open before him, the tinted flowers blooming by his side, the faces of thousands all mutely turned toward him, as once toward Luther, Savonarola, Abelard? What words shall tell of the firm eyes holding all those faces, the resolute features stirring, the orotund and fervent deep voice sounding, as he read from the sacred pages, lifting the verses into their fullest significance and life, and flooding the soul with all that is loftiest and sweetest in the old saints and prophets’ lore? Who shall bring back the hours when, as in that hour, the deep voice rose in the tender and gorgeous prayer, filled with the affluent sunshine, the flowers, the greenery, the wild-bird melodies, the living glory of the spring, all music-rich with reverential thought and feeling, all overflowed with gratitude and praise to the Giver, with faith, and piety, and aspiration, all throbbing with immortal longings, and raising the soul to the mystic’s vision of God, and kindling the heart with the hero’s hope of the ideal future of man? A streaming altar-flame, uprising rich with incense from hills and valleys lovely in the blue day and pomps of spring-time, thronged with the saints and saviors of all time, and echoing with the supplications and hosannas of mankind, might be the symbol of that prayer. But what symbol shall gather within it the strong and salient intellections of the following sermon—its massive breadth and scope of statement, its valiant dealing with the public sins and sinners of the time, its learning that swept all history, its knowledge that swept all life, the broad illumination of its eloquence, the prowess of its virtue, the sweetness of its piety? A torch of burning splendor upheld by Greatheart, and flashing on his brand and mail in the crash of combat with Apollyon—its blaze poured strong and definite upon the open midnight landscape of our mortal life, illumining the path of nobleness, lighting every danger, darting its ray upon the secret pitfall, and into the ambush of the foe, and streaming forward over all the perilous track to the gates of God—such might be the visioned symbol of a speech which yet no symbol can describe. Closed now in death that glorious eloquence, nor in a hundred years may such a bloom unfold again; but the continents shall remember how in an evil time burst forth its flower of flame, and its fragrance shall fill the world from age to age.

Every high heart has felt the sense of renewal and reconsecration which follows the words of a great pulpit orator; and with this sense strong within them, the little party left the church when the service was ended. On their way home, Wentworth stopped the others to announce that Emily was to dine at his father’s house, and return to Temple street late in the afternoon. A few moments passed in exchanging warm eulogiums on the sermon, and then Mrs. Eastman, Muriel, and Harrington left the other two and walked across the beautiful sunlit Common.

“Now, John,” said Muriel, gaily, “of course you have some criticism to make on Mr. Parker.”

“I declare no,” he responded; “I haven’t the conscience to criticise him. He makes one’s heart glow so with his manhood, that criticism must be dumb. I pass his theology, everything in fact, I might differ on, and rest only on his magnificent public service, and the inspiration of his example.”

“Still,” she returned, “you would differ, if you could.”

“To be sure,” he replied, smilingly. “If I could criticise, I would own to a divine dissatisfaction. For the sermon implied no theory that adequately accounts for the scheme of things, as my own theory does, at least to me. However, I won’t grumble. I have Emerson still for my refuge. All the modern thinkers cramp me in a cell, more or less spacious, but in Emerson, chiefly in his poems, I escape into the vast of space and stars, and breathe blithely like the self-existent soul I am.”

“Oh, heretic!” she gaily exclaimed. “But I agree with all you say, and especially about the poems. They are incomparably beyond all else the Muse has vouchsafed to our American bards.”

“Now, John,” said Mrs. Eastman, “I should really like to know what your theory of things is. Come, define your position.”

“My dear mother,” replied Harrington, laughing, “will it do to give it voice? The tell-tale birds might hear me, and carry the news to the orthodox, and then I should have a grand auto-da-fe, with all the great wits and little wits dancing around me in my expiring agonies.”

“Oh, but John,” she banteringly answered, “this is the age and land of free thought, you know.”

“Yes, indeed. Free thought meaning your freedom to think as the mass of your fellow-citizens do. Go beyond that, and they’ll melt up Judas Iscariot and Cæsar Borgia, and all the rascals, little and big, for colors, as Allston’s Paint-King melted up the lady, and paint your portrait in hues of earthquake and eclipse, as Shelley’s phrase has it. Political liberty with us includes the right to wallop your own nigger, and howl into Coventry, or hang to a tree, any humane person who objects. Social liberty means the right to make you submit to the ordinances of Mrs. Grundy, be they the prescriptions of a French tailor or milliner in regard to your dress, or the fancies of some conclave of bigots in regard to your actions, and if taste or conscience rises in revolt, Mrs. Grundy raps them on the head with a stick, as Lear’s cockney did the eels when she put them in the pie alive, and cries, ‘Down, wantons, down!’ Religious liberty involves the right to fling theological mud and fire on the good name of anybody who ventures beyond the notions of clergymen, and liberty in general means your privilege to say and do what moderate and immoderate intellects concede you may. Socially speaking, the very essential principle of liberty, toleration, is tucked away in Roger Williams’ grave. The people of this country think they love liberty. They don’t. They don’t know what liberty means. If they did they’d love tyranny. It is my deliberate conviction that if the people of this country understood what the doctrine of liberty involves and comprehends, as it lies in the pages of the scholars who conceived it, they would deny it utterly, and set up the despotism of the Middle Ages as their idol.”

Muriel laughed heartily at this outburst.

“Bravo, John!” she cried. “Methinks I hear you thundering that from the rostrum into the startled hearts of your fellow-citizens.”

“Yes, amidst groans and hisses,” returned the smiling Harrington. “But I should flash a bolder speech than that if I were to address the public. That is weak rose-water compared to what I would say when I came to recite the special instances of the civil or social abuses of which I complain.”

“Heaven save the sinners from your sprinkling then if that is only rose-water,” jested Muriel. “But here is mamma bursting with impatience for your theory of the Universe.”

“My dear mother,” said Harrington, laughingly, “another time, when I can collect my vagrant ideas, I will confide to you all I saw when I put my eye to a chink of this mortal prison, and looked out on the True. Meanwhile, you will find some slight hint of my notions in Goethe’s poem of ‘The Festival.’”

“Which I shall read when I get home,” replied Mrs. Eastman.

And talking in this strain, they reached the house in Temple street.