The true Jordan, they were happy to find, ran directly through their own particular church, and they had only to continue their stated Sunday naps on its borders as before.
Mrs. Wouvermans, however, was not of a dozing or dreamy nature. Her mind, such as it was, was always wide awake and cognizant of what she was about. She was not susceptible of a dreamy state: to use an idiomatic phrase, she was always up and dressed; everything in her mental vision was clear cut and exact. The sermon was intensified in its effect upon her by the state of the Van Arsdel pew, of which she was on this Sunday the only occupant. The fact was, that the ancient and respectable church in which she worshiped had just been through a contest, in which Mr. Simons, a young assistant rector, had been attempting to introduce some of the very practices hinted at in the discourse. This fervid young man, full of fire and enthusiasm, had incautiously been made associate rector for this church, at the time when Dr. Cushing had been sent to Europe to recover from a bronchial attack. He was young, earnest and eloquent, and possessed with the idea that all those burning words and phrases in the prayer-book, which had dropped like precious gems dyed with the heart's blood of saints and martyrs, ought to mean something more than they seemed to do for modern Christians. Without introducing any new ritual, he set himself to make vivid and imperative every doctrine and direction of the prayer-book, and to bring the drowsy company of pew-holders somewhere up within sight of the plane of the glorious company of apostles and the noble army of martyrs with whose blood it was sealed. He labored and preached, and strove and prayed, tugging at the drowsy old church, like Pegasus harnessed to a stone cart. He set up morning and evening prayers, had communion every Sunday, and annoyed old rich saints by suggesting that it was their duty to build mission chapels and carry on mission works, after the pattern of St. Paul and other irrelevant and excessive worthies, who in their time were accused of turning the world upside down. Of course there was resistance and conflict, and more life in the old church than it had known for years; but the conflict became at last so wearisome that, on Mr. Cushing's return from Europe, the young angel spread his wings and fled away to a more congenial parish in a neighboring city.
But many in whom his labors had wakened a craving for something real and earnest in religion strayed off to other churches, and notably the younger members of the Van Arsdel family, to the no small scandal of Aunt Maria.
The Van Arsdel pew was a perfect fort and intrenchment of respectability. It was a great high, square wall-pew, well cushioned and ample, with an imposing array of prayer-books; there was room in it for a regiment of saints, and here Aunt Maria sat on this pleasant Sunday listening to the dangers of the church, all alone. She felt, in a measure, like Elijah the Tishbite, as if she only were left to stand up for the altars of her faith.
Mrs. Wouvermans was not a person to let an evil run on very far without a protest. "While she was musing the fire burned," and when she had again mounted guard in the pew at afternoon service, and still found herself alone, she resolved to clear her conscience; and so she walked straight up to Nellie's, to see why none of them were at church.
"It's a shame, Nellie, a perfect shame! There wasn't a creature but myself in our pew to-day, and good Dr. Cushing giving such a sermon this morning!"
This to Mrs. Van Arsdel, whom she found luxuriously ensconced on a sofa drawn up before the fire in her bedroom.
"Ah, well, the fact is, Maria, I had such a headache this morning," replied she, plaintively.
"Well, then, you ought to have made your husband and family go; somebody ought to be there! It positively isn't respectable."
"Ah, well, Maria, my husband, poor man, gets so tired and worn out with his week's work, I haven't a heart to get him up early enough for morning service. Mr. Van Arsdel isn't feeling quite well lately; he hasn't been out at all to-day."