“Statira,” in a low tone said the puzzled voice of the Professor of Theology, “this is—I must say—really, a most extraordinary gathering. It quite impresses me.”
“I have read something somewhere it reminds me of,” mused Mrs. Carruth, with a knot between her placid brows. “Where was it, Haggai?—Helen! Helen! What have I read that is like this? I can’t think whether it is George Eliot, or Fox’s Book of Martyrs. Perhaps it is the Memoirs of Whitefield; but certainly”—
“Possibly,” suggested Helen, “it may have been the New Testament.”
“That’s it! You have it!” cried Mrs. Carruth, with mild relief. “That’s the very thing. How extraordinary! It is the New Testament I have got into my head.”
The Professor of Theology changed color slightly, but he made no answer to his wife. He was absorbed in watching the scene before him. There were many women in the crowd, but men predominated in proportion significant to the eye familiar with the painfully feminine character of New England religious audiences. Of these men, four fifths were toilers of the sea, red of face, uncertain of step, rough of hand, keen of eye, and open of heart,—
“Fearing no God but wind and wet.”
The scent of bad liquor was strong upon the heavy, windless air; oaths rippled to and fro as easily as the waves upon the beach, and (it seemed) quite as much according to the laws of Nature. Yet the men bore a decent look of personal respect for the situation. All wore their best clothes, and most were clean for the occasion. They chatted among themselves freely, paying small heed to the presence of strangers, these being regarded as inferior aliens who did not know how to man a boat in a gale.
The fisherman’s sense of his own superior position is, in any event, something delightful. In this case there was added the special aristocracy recognized in Angel Alley as belonging to Bayard’s people. Right under the ears of the Professor of Theology uprose these awful words:—
“D—— them swells. He don’t care a —— for them. We get along up to Christlove without ’em, don’t we, Bob? The parson’s ourn, anyhow. He can’t be bothered with the likes o’ them.”
“Look a’ Job Slip yonder! See the face of him, shaved like a dude. That’s him, a-passin’ round hymn-books. Who’d believe it? Job! Why, he ain’t teched a —— drop sence he swore off! Look a’ that young one of his taggin’ to his finger! That’s his wife, that bleached-out creetur in a new bunnet. See the look of her now!”