After dinner he administered a sharp lecture to his pupils, admonishing them of the evils of disobedience, and warning them that "God sometimes left bad boys to their own evil courses, and to run like the herd of swine into which the unclean spirits entered,—of which account might be found in Mark v. 13,—down a steep place, and be choked."
The parson still had hope that Reuben might appear at evening; and he forecast a good turn which he would make, in such event, upon the parable of the Prodigal Son (with the omission, however, of the fatted calf). But the prodigal did not return. Next day there was the same hope, but fainter. Still, the prodigal Reuben did not return. Whereupon the parson thought it his duty to write to Brother Johns, advising him of the escape of Reuben,—"he having stolen away in the night, tying together and much draggling Mrs. Brummem's pair of company sheets, (no other being out of wash,) and myself following after vainly, the best portion of a day, much, perturbed in spirit, in my chaise. I duly instructed my parishioners to report him, if found, which has not been the case. I trust that in the paternal home, if he has made his way thither, he may be taught to open his 'ear to discipline,' and 'return from iniquity.' Job xxxvi. 10."
The good parson was a type of not a few retired country ministers in New England forty years ago: a heavy-minded, right-meaning man; utterly inaccessible to any of the graces of life; no bird ever sang in his ear; no flower ever bloomed for his eye; a man to whom life was only a serious spiritual toil, and all human joys a vanity to be spurned; preaching tediously long sermons, and counting the fatigue of the listeners a fitting oblation to spiritual truth; staggering through life with a great burden of theologies on his back, which it was his constant struggle to pack into smaller and smaller compass,—not so much, we fear, for the relief of others as of himself. Let us hope that the burden—like that of Christian in the "Pilgrim's Progress"—slipped away before he entered the Celestial Presence, and left him free to enjoy and admire, more than he found time to do on earth, the beauty of that blessed angel in the higher courts whose name is Charity.
XXV.
Reuben, meantime, pushed boldly down the open road, until broad sunlight warned him to a safer path across the fields. He had been too much of a rambler during those long Saturday afternoons at Ashfield, to have any dread of a tramp through swamp-land or briers. "Who cared for wet feet or a scratch? Who cared for a rough scramble through the bush, or a wade (if it came to that) through ever so big a brook? Who cared for old Brummem and his white-faced nag?" In fact, he had the pleasure of seeing the parson's venerable chaise lumbering along the public road at a safe distance away, an hour before noon; and he half wished he were near enough to give the jolly old nag a good switching across the flanks. He had begged a bit of warm breakfast in the morning at an outlying house, and at the hour when he caught sight of his pursuer he was lying under the edge of a wood, lunching upon the gingerbread Keziah had provided, and beginning to reckon up soberly what was to be done.
His first impulse had been simply to escape a good flogging and the taunts of the boys. He had shunned the direct Ashfield turnpike, because he knew pursuit—if there were any—would lead off in that direction. From the river road he might diverge into that, if he chose. But if he went home,—what then? The big gray eyes of Aunt Eliza he knew would greet him at the door, looking thunderbolts. Adèle, and maybe Rose, would welcome him in kindly way enough,—but very pityingly, when the Doctor should summon him quietly into his low study. For they knew, and he knew, that the big rod would presently come down from its place by the Major's sword,—a rod that never came down, except it had some swift office to perform. And next day, perhaps,—whatever might be the kindly pleadings of Adèle, (thus far he flattered himself,) the old horse Dobbins would be in harness to carry him back to Bolton Hill, where of a surety some new birch was already in pickle for the transgressor. Or, if this mortification were spared, there would be the same weary round of limitations and exactions from which he longed to break away. And as he sits there under the lee of the wood,—seeing presently Brummem's heavy cavalry wheel and retire from pursuit,—the whole scene of his last altercation, in the study at Ashfield drifts before him again clear as day.
"I'm bad," (this was the way he broke out upon the old man after the usual discipline,)—"I know I'm bad, and all the worse for the way you try to make me good. There's Phil Elderkin, now,—you say to me, over and over, 'See Phil, he doesn't do so.' But he does,—only his father knows he does; he a'n't punished, if he isn't in at nine o'clock for prayers, without telling where he's been. It's all underhanded with me, and with Phil it's all aboveboard. I have to read proper books that I don't care a copper about, and so I steal 'em into my chamber; and Aunt Eliza, prying about, finds 'Arabian Nights' hid under the sheets; and then there's a row! Phil reads 'em; and there's nobody forever looking over his shoulder to see what he's reading. I think Phil's father trusts him more than you do me."
"But, my son, you tell me you are bad, and that I can't trust you."
"You can't, because you don't; and that makes me feel the Devil in me."
"My son!"