The Miller Of Old Church

by Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow

On the following Sunday, a mild autumn morning, Mr. Mullen preached one of his most impressive sermons from the text, "She looketh well to the ways of her household, and eateth not the bread of idleness."

Woman, he said in the course of it, was created to look after the ways of her household in order that man might go out into the world and make a career. No womanly woman cared to make a career. What the womanly woman desired was to remain an Incentive, an Ideal, an Inspiration. If the womanly woman possessed a talent, she did not use it—for this would unsex her—she sacrificed it in herself in order that she might return it to the race through her sons. Self-sacrifice—to use a worn metaphor—self-sacrifice was the breath of the nostrils of the womanly woman. It was for her power of self-sacrifice that men loved her and made an Ideal of her. Whatever else woman gave up, she must always retain her power of self-sacrifice if she expected the heart of her husband to rejoice in her. The home was founded on sacrifice, and woman was the pillar and the ornament of the home. There was her sphere, her purpose, her mission. All things outside of that sphere belonged to man, except the privilege of ministering to the sick and the afflicted in other households.

He leaned forward in the old pulpit, his shapely, well-kept hand hanging over the edge in one of his most characteristic gestures; and the autumn sunlight, falling through the plain glass windows, shone on his temples. Immediately below him, in a front pew, sat his mother, a dried little old woman, with beady black eyes and a pointed chin, which jutted out from between the stiff taffeta strings of her poke bonnet. She gazed upward, clasping her Prayer-book in her black woollen gloves, which were darned in the fingers; and though she appeared to listen attentively to the sermon, she was wondering all the time if the coloured servant at home would remember to baste the roast pig she had left in the oven. To-day was the Reverend Orlando's birthday, and the speckled pig she had fattened throughout the summer, lay now, with an apple in his mouth, on the trencher. She had invited Molly to dine with them rather against her wishes, for she harboured a secret fear that the girl was trying to marry the rector. Besides, as she said to herself, with her eyes on Orlando's hand, how on earth could he do full justice to the pig if there was a pretty parishioner to distract his attention?

In the pew next to Mrs. Mullen sat old Adam Doolittle, his hand behind his left ear, his withered old lips moving as if he were repeating the words of the sermon. From time to time he shook his head as though he disagreed with a sentence, and then his lips worked more rapidly, and an obstinate, argumentative look appeared in his face. Mentally he was conducting a theological dispute with the preacher in which the younger man suffered always a crushing rhetorical defeat. Behind him sat the miller and Blossom Revercomb, who threw an occasional anxious glance at the empty seat beside Mrs. Gay and Kesiah; and behind them Judy Hatch raised her plain, enraptured face to the pulpit, where the rector had shaken out an immaculately ironed handkerchief and wiped his brow. She knew who had ironed that handkerchief on Wednesday, which was Mrs. Mullen's washing day, and her heart rejoiced as she remembered the care with which she had folded the creases.

It made no difference, said Mr. Mullen, replacing the handkerchief somewhere under his white surplice, whether a woman was ugly or beautiful, since they possessed Scriptural authority for the statement that beauty was vain, and no God-fearing man would rank loveliness of face or form above the capacity for self-sacrifice and the unfailing attendance upon the sick and the afflicted in any parish. Beauty, indeed, was but too often a snare for the unwary—temptresses, he had been told, were usually beautiful persons.

Molly's lips trembled into a smile, and her eyes were wide and bright as she met those of the preacher. For an instant he looked at her, gentle, admonishing, reproachful—then his gaze passed over Judy's seraphic features to the face of an old grey horse that stared wonderingly in through the south window. Along the whitewashed plank fence of the church-yard, other horses were waiting patiently for the service to end, and from several side saddles, of an ancient pattern, hung flopping alpaca riding skirts, which the farmer's wives or daughters had worn over their best gowns to church. A few locust trees shed their remaining small yellow leaves on the sunken graves, which were surrounded by crumbling wooden enclosures. Here and there, farther off, a flat tombstone was still visible in the tall grass; and over the dust of old Jonathan Gay a high marble cross, selected by his brother's widow, bore the words, unstained by the dripping trees, and innocent of satire: "Here lieth in the hope of a joyful resurrection—-"

At the end of the service there was a rustle either of relief or disappointment, and the congregation filed slowly through the south doors, where the old grey horse stood resigned and expectant amid the obliterated graves. Mrs. Gay, who had lingered in the walk to speak to Mr. Mullen, raised her plaintive violet eyes to his face when he appeared.

"You are always so comforting. I don't know how to thank you for helping me," she murmured, and added impulsively to the little old woman at his side, "Oh, what a blessing such a son must be to you!"

"Orlando's never given me a moment's worry in his life, ma'am—not even when he was teething," replied Mrs. Mullen, who looked sharper and more withered than ever in the broad daylight. "If you'll believe me, he wasn't more than six months old when I said to his father that I could tell by the look of him he was intended for the ministry. Such sweetness, such self-control even as an infant."

"How happy he must make you! And then, to have the privilege of hearing his beautiful sermons! But you'll lose him some day, as I was just saying to Kesiah. It won't be long before some fortunate woman takes him away from you. We can only hope she will be worthy of the ideal he has for her."