Mrs. Hallam's companion; and The Spring Farm, and other tales

by Mary Jane Holmes

The effect was electric, and every head was bowed as Phineas began the most remarkable prayer which was ever offered on shipboard. He was in deadly earnest, and, fired with the fervor and eloquence which made him so noted as a class-leader, he informed the Lord of the condition they were in and instructed Him how to improve it. Galilee, he said, was nothing to the Atlantic when on a tear as it was now, but the voice which had quieted the waters of Tiberias could stop this uproar. He presumed some of them ought to be drowned, he said, but they didn’t want to be, and were going to do better. Then he confessed every possible sin which might have been committed by the passengers, who, according to his statement, were about the wickedest lot, take them as a whole, that ever crossed the ocean. There were exceptions, of course. There were near and dear friends of his, and one blood kin, on board, for whom he especially asked aid. He had not looked upon the face of his kinswoman for years, but he had never forgotten the sweet counsel they took together when children in Sturbridge, and he would have her saved anyway. Like himself, she was old and stricken in years, but——

“Horrible!” came in muffled tones from something at his feet, and, looking down, he saw the bundle of shawls, which, in its excitement, had loosened its hold on the chair and was rolling down the inclined plane towards the centre of the room.

Reaching out his long arm, he pulled it back, and, putting his foot against it, went on with what was now a prayer of thanksgiving. Those who have been in a storm at sea like the one I am describing, will remember how quick they were to detect a change for the better, as the blows upon the ship became less frequent and heavy and the noise overhead began to subside.

Phineas was the first to notice it, and, with his foot still firmly planted against the struggling bundle to keep it in place, he exclaimed, in a voice which was almost a shriek:

“We are saved! We are saved! Don’t you feel it? Don’t you hear it?”

They did hear it and feel it, and with glad hearts responded to the words of thanksgiving which Phineas poured forth, saying the answer to his prayer had come sooner than he expected, and acknowledging that his faith had been weak as water. Then he promised a forsaking of their sins, and a life more consistent with the doctrine they professed, for them all, adapting himself as nearly as he could to the forms of worship familiar to the different denominations he knew must be assembled there. For the Presbyterians there was a mention made of foreordination and the Westminster Catechism, for the Baptists, immersion, for the Methodists, sanctification, for the Roman Catholics, the Blessed Virgin; but he forgot the Episcopalians, until, remembering, with a start, Rex and Lucy Ann, he wound up with:

“From pride, vainglory and hypocrisy, good Lord deliver us. Amen.”

The simple earnestness of the man so impressed his hearers that no one thought of smiling at his ludicrous language, and when the danger was really over and they could stand upon their feet, they crowded around him as if he had been their deliverer from deadly peril, while Rex introduced him as his particular friend. This stamped him as somebody, and he at once became a sort of lion. We are all more or less susceptible to flattery, and Phineas was not an exception; he received the attentions with a very satisfied air, thinking to himself that if his recent prayers had so impressed them, what would they say if they could hear him when fully under way at a camp-meeting?

“Where’s your aunt?” he asked Rex, suddenly, while Rex looked round for her, but could not find her.

More dead than alive, Mrs. Hallam had clung to the chair in momentary expectation of going down, never to rise again, and in that awful hour it seemed to her that everything connected with her life had passed before her. The old, yellow house, the grandmother to whom she had not always been kind, the early friends of whom she had been ashamed, the husband she had loved, but whom she had tried so often, all stood out so vividly that it seemed as if she could touch them.