And then they would walk on till they reached the commons, where they were sure to meet some of the family; and there talk over the subjects of the sermon—when they could understand it, which was not very often the case. The exposition of a doubtful text never made any thing the clearer to these simple minded people. They had the Scriptures, and they believed in the holy book most sincerely; nothing was a mystery to them; they thought that the words and actions of our blessed Saviour were easy enough to comprehend; and that they were all-sufficient to our salvation. They could not imagine why clergymen darkened up a point by hard words and cramped unintelligible terms and phrases, when the meaning was so clear to them. As to the doctrine of the Trinity—even Fanny, the least gifted, as to acuteness of intellect—even she could believe all and adore; for a tree, the sun, moon and stars, a living, moving being, and, above all, that perpetual spring of love which she felt within her towards the Almighty, towards her family, and towards her husband—all this was quite as incomprehensible to her as what her religion enjoined on her to believe. So that Fanny never speculated even on this subject.
Mr. Bangs felt nothing of all this; and his Sunday walk was to the shipyards or arsenal; and his Sunday talk, scanty enough, was of laying that that are ship would outsail the other; and that that are cannon would do for the English. He never would walk with his daughters, because they were not boys; and he always wound up by saying, “Time enough to walk out with you when Fanny gives me a grandson; there will be some sense in my going then.”
But Mr. Bangs was doomed to disappointment; for the little boy did not come; nor was there any sister to put his nose out of joint; yet Mr. Floss did not grieve, for Fanny was pet enough for him. When he was tired out with business, and did not want to take up a book, she would talk over her thoughts and feelings. Heavens! what a gush of tenderness and pathos it was; and how the young man’s soul melted away in him as she talked—and yet, what could it be about?
You will ask, perhaps, if Fanny ever read. Not much. When a child, and learning to read, she had little story-books of good and naughty boys and girls, which she read over and over again—wept over often—but sensible Mrs. Bangs saw no use in all this, and she therefore seldom opened her polished, mahogany book-case. Fanny loved poetry, tender, pathetic poetry; but as she selected only such, and as it always set her crying and sobbing, why, poetry was interdicted too. Mrs. Bangs gave her son several hints on this point; a thing which he soon found out of himself, as Fanny was made perfectly unhappy for a whole week after he had read Keats’s Isabella to her. She had the most tender love for a virtuous and beautiful heroine; the mishaps and death, therefore, which overtook her, were taken to heart with such earnest grief that Mr. Floss, after that, wisely, read all such things to himself. In fact, it soon amounted to this, that he never read aloud at all; for works of wit and fancy were lost on his gentle wife—a repartee she thought must cost somebody pain, and that brought no pleasure to her.
While her husband read in the long winter evenings, she sat in her rocking-chair and knitted or sewed; and had many little pleasant chats with one or the other of her sisters or her mother—Fanny was never alone. Let us listen to what she is saying to Robina; raising her voice to its highest pitch, that poor Hannah French, who now and then made one of the evening party, might feel that she was considered as one of the family.
“Oh, Robina, dear, what a delightful walk we had. I just went up to the laboratory with Gabriella, to say how do you do to my dear husband, when, there he stood, ready for a walk, (here Mr. Floss laid down his book to listen too) so up the road we went; and the warm sunshine, and the brisk winds seemed to be playing with each other, and gambolling, as it were, before us. We both felt grateful that we did not meet a single beggar or a discontented face. So we walked around our own division and inquired of the widows how they were getting on; and their glad looks, when they saw my husband”—“It was you, Fanny,” said he, interrupting her, “I am certain it was your sweet face, and not my hard, sunburnt one, that made them brighten up so.”
“Hannah French, has my husband a hard, sunburnt face?” said Fanny, raising her voice very loud—for she knew how very handsome poor Hannah thought he was.
“Sunburnt!” exclaimed Hannah,—“no, indeed—sometimes I have seen it smutted with the stuff which he is cooking over the great pots in his furnace; but he is not sunburnt—he is fire-burnt.”
“There,” said Mr. Floss, laughing, “you will not appeal to Hannah French again about my beauty—but go on, dearest; tell Gabriella all about your walk. I should really be glad to know, too, for although I was with you, yet my mind was so occupied with what I had been cooking, as Hannah calls it, in that great pot, that I just followed where you led; and yet I was sensible, all the time, of what you were saying. Her voice, Gabriella, is always so musical that I feel its influence even when the sound only makes an impression.”
“So mother always said,” answered the modest Gabriella. “Fanny never hurt her sweet voice by crying or getting in a passion, as some of us did when we were children.”